6/27/19

To Be or Not to Be
By Yadira Álvarez Betancourt (translated by Toshiya Kamei)


First, it was the accident that left her mutilated, and the divine providence of bionic prostheses appeared, then the complexity of her work required the brain modules, then the sensory enhancers, the muscles, and the synthetic skin; and from then on, chip by chip, piece by piece, she was drifting further away from herself. She didn't even recognize herself in the mirror anymore. The last straw was when her youngest son cried when she tried to carry him. The interventions had changed her so much that the baby didn't know who she was.

And now she was facing that limit announced after her first surgical procedure: when the percentage of artificial elements in her body disqualified her as a human being. One more drop that would overflow the cup changing her into something different. She wasn't quite sure if she wanted it.

The informative capsule waited to be activated in her hand. Inside it, the definitive answer was asleep. Would she be able to receive another component? Would her body be fit for it? If that wasn't the case, no one could demand that she include the new module in her organic resources. The options were to dismiss her or accept her as she was. But if the answer was affirmative, she had no choice but to suffer the intervention and lose her "human" status.

In any case, what was that qualification for? To vote at community meetings? To have the right to a position in health or education institutions? She hated other people's children, she didn't like hospitals, and the right to vote had become as useless as the moon in a cloudy sky. But there was something, something that moved away proportionally to the imminent activation of the capsule.

She activated the device and contemplated the three-dimensional diagnosis that emerged from it.

When night fell, the woman was still watching the increasingly hazy and flickering hologram, which faded as her capsule ran out of power.


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Born in Havana in 1980, Yadira Álvarez Betancourt is the author of the short story collection Al oeste del sol y otros cuentos (2016). Her short story "A Shared Dream" is forthcoming in Helios Quarterly Magazine.