When Mr. Guttmann walked into the building, a person went to meet him.
“How may I help you, sir?”
“I need a pair of hands,” Mr. Guttmann answered.
“A pair of hands?”
“Yes, a pair of hands,” he repeated.
“Please follow me.” And the person moved away flipping a pen in the air.
Mr. Guttmann put his hands on the scanner and waited for the green light to flash on. When the light went on, the scanner sent a message through the Internet.
“For what do you need a pair of hands, sir?” The person asked.
“Well, my hands are unsteady as you can see. I am really limited to do things I would like to finish.”
At this moment, Mr. Guttmann remembered the ads in the website: All Purpose Store is the place to solve your impossibles. Even though the store was hidden in this old building, it had all to make you comfortable: air conditioning, nice lobby and walls decorated with photos of famous cities. For a few minutes, he brought his memories of the sculpting club.
“Sorry, sir, but we don’t have the model of your hands in our stock. They were discontinued few years ago,” the person interrupted. “What about a used pair of hands?”
“Mmm..! It depends if they qualify for what I need.”
“What will that be, sir?”
“I cannot tell you now boy,” Mr. Guttmann added.
“I understand! We will keep your personal data to contact you as soon as we find them.”
* * *
Mr. Guttmann was the last member of the sculpting club still alive. It was a group of sculptors whose members were fiercely pursued when the government decided to control any creation produced in this land. This free will was curtailed after the crisis of the intelligent machines.
* * *
When leaving the store, Mr. Guttmann checked around. He knew he was being followed. The car was programmed to drop him off one corner before his home, next to the Bibelot Park. Walking through it help him to conserve feelings and emotions, things he had missed during these last years of loneliness. The park was decorated with new sculptures. It had been hard for him to accept that this generation did not know that sculpting was first a human art. The men of today grew up knowing the intelligent machines, ignoring the truth behind this apparently perfect system. All they knew was a copy of what has been already created.
* * *
The phone rang and Mr. Guttmann stopped feeding his parrot.
“Hello!” A call without ID was displayed on his phone.
“May I speak with Mr. Guttmann?”
“Yes, Mr. Guttmann is speaking.”
“As we promised you, we found a used pair of hands, sir. We wonder if you are still interested.”
“Really? Yes, I am.”
“Then, you need to pass by again. Remember this code when you come.”
Mr. Guttmann wrote it down. “Ok, thanks.”
The caller hung up.
* * *
This morning, there were more people than normal at All Purpose Store. Mr. Guttmann turned red and his eyes were looking for the help desk.
“May I help you sir?”
“Yes, you called me yesterday to pass by. Here is my code.” Mr. Guttmann gave her the paper.
She typed it in the system and made a phone call. In a short, one man arrived to the counter desk. Mr. Guttmann felt like everybody’s eyes were on him.
“Follow me, please!” The man said.
They passed several rooms where people seen to be packing things in a hurry. The man came back carrying a nitrogen box.
“Please do not ask how we got them,” the man said. “They are steady, warm, and sensitive enough as you requested. We believe they are the correct hands for you, with their compatible stem cells and connective tissues ready to combine with yours without any side effects.”
Mr. Guttmann started feeling a pain in his stomach and his saliva got dry.
“We need to transfer all your abilities to these hands,” the man explained.
“Of course, you will feel a little tickling as we connect them. This is mandatory for tissues recognition…”
“Okay. How long should I wait before I can use them?” Mr. Guttmann asked.
“Twenty four hours,” he answered. “It is the time your brain needs to take over the new hands,” he ended the explanation.
* * *
When Mr. Guttmann woke up, his hands did not look but felt different. He searched for a visible scar but he could not find any. He opened and closed them, moved his fingers up and down and his wrist 180 degrees around. These hands were stronger and steadier than his previous ones, for sure.
* * *
That afternoon, he counted the remaining days to finish his mission and went to the basement. Down there, he cleaned his stand. The aluminum wire armature was still in good shape. He took the plots of ashes from the closet and poured them into a punch bowl. He mixed them with clay and warm water as the instructions of the sculpting club indicated. It was the last wish each member of the club signed up for: to be sculpted together in a single statue.
* * *
In the last decade, the intelligent machines absorbed all creators’ abilities including sculpting. Machines were capable of producing sculptures using 3D algorithms. If you were a creator, you must give your abilities to the government voluntarily or it forced you anyway. When the government proposed to use the intelligent machines to make human life easier, everybody voted in favor of the idea. But soon, people lost what made them human: the freedom to create. At the end, their abilities were uploaded into these machines. Therefore, since that, some members of the sculpting club were captured and their abilities absorbed; others died in hiding.
* * *
The statue was kneeled with the palms of its hands facing the sky. It was a multi face human body without gender, with eyes of different sizes and shapes, curly hair and open mouth. Mr. Guttmann breathed deeply; it was worthy. He looked at his hands and felt proud of them. After years, it was finally done. Now, he must go to the Bibelot Park and put it right in the middle without being notice. It would be a risky operation, but the last.
When Mr. Guttmann tried to grab the statue, his hands were unexpectedly trembling. Something was happening. His new hands felt today like the old ones. It was impossible, he thought. He took a deep breath and tried once again but his hands were unable to open. He sweated and looked at them; his palms and fingers were uncontrolled. The more he tried, the more they resisted. He called the store but none answered.
* * *
This morning when the police broke his door, Mr.Gutmann was found dead. The official diagnosed self-strangled as his hands were pressing his neck. At the same time, at the Bibelot Park, a group of people were amused looking a new statue. None knew how it got there. The intelligent machines inspected its algorithms but were unable to reproduce it. The material used to sculpt it was really weird.
* * *
A call without ID reached Mr.Gutmann voicemail.
“Hi Mr.Gutmann! We are calling you from All Purpose Store. We are really sorry to tell you that hands you have belonged to a wrestler. We understand you may be in problems pretty soon. Please pass by to replace them.”
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