It still seems kind of messed up to say it like that, even after everything that happened, and even though it was nearly half my life ago. Six thirteenths of my life ago, to be precise, at three forty-one on a Tuesday afternoon. Or maybe it was Wednesday. But I was definitely out in the alley between First and Main, where I wasn't supposed to go, except the Maciejewskis had a loquat tree in their backyard that hung out over the fence and I really liked loquats, which they never have at the store. Shane was with me, like always, ever since I was one and a half and my parents took me to the doctor and I drank a bottle with the nanobots in it that built the wires and the chip in my head and my parents hired Shane to look after me. His name wasn't Shane then, it was Heisenberg, but obviously I couldn't say that, so I called him Shane, which was the closest I could get at the time to "Machine," which was the closest I could get to understanding what he was. And honestly, who wants a name like Heisenberg anyway?
