In the Lives of Puppets

by T.J. Klune

Dad tapped his breastbone twice with his middle finger. From inside his chest came a beep, followed by a low hiss. The hatch of his chest cavity sank inward slightly before sliding off to the right. There, in his father’s chest, was a heart. It wasn’t like the heart in Vic’s chest, one made of muscle that moved blood and oxygen throughout his body. The heart in Giovanni’s chest was made of metal and wood and shaped not like the organ but like a symbol of a heart about the size of Vic’s fist. The chest cavity around it glowed a dull green, made of wires and circuitry. The heart itself was of Dad’s own making, replacing what had been a power core nearly drained beyond repair before he’d changed it out for the mechanical heart. The shell of the heart was partially constructed of a rare wood called bocote. Wood was typically nonconductive, but Dad had found a way to force enough electricity through it, though it required over fifteen thousand volts. To ensure conduction, in addition to the bocote, the heart had bits of silver-coated copper and brass in the shell, metal that glittered in the low light. Wires extended from the top of the shell, attaching to the parts in his chest that fed into the biochip in his head. In the exposed interior of the heart a handful of gears spun slowly. Above them, a small white strip, two centimeters wide and three centimeters tall.