BethAnn opens her eyes, finds it more difficult than usual to make the transition from sleep to wakefulness.

“Shit,” she mutters, her voice hoarse. She was up till after midnight—texting friends, checking Instagram, posting pics to her Snapchat—and had apparently dropped off with her phone in her hand.

It’s a quarter past eight. She’s got cell biology at nine, and she’s already racked up two absences. If she misses again, Hengeveld will make her write an extra paper. Gross.

She sits up, swings her feet over the edge of the bed, stands—unsteadily, she drank a lot of wine last night—and crosses to her dresser, where she sets down her phone.

Except, what the fuck?

Her fingers seem glued to the glittery pink case. What’s that all about? With her right hand, she attempts to bend back the fingers of her left, so she can dump the phone.

“Jesus!” She finds a pencil and works it in as far as she can between the phone and her left pinkie, wriggles the pencil from side to side but is unable to break the seal between phone and flesh.

Maybe she should start with her thumb. She sits and examines it. It’s a thumb. She knows from A&P that there are distal and proximal phalanxes in there, an extensor tendon and a radial lateral ligament, the median nerve that runs through the carpal tunnel—but none of that is visible, of course. What she can see are the friction ridges that make up her thumbprint. It all looks perfectly normal, exactly the way it should.

She thumbwrestles her thumb to no avail. Swearing, she heads for the bathroom but trips over her backpack and falls flat on her face.

Lying there, both knees aching from the impact, she checks her left hand. It’s still clutching the effing phone. There’s no way she can show up for class like this. Hengeveld has a strict no-electronics policy, and he’ll ream her out if he spots her with a cellphone in her fist.

Take a shower? No, she’s still paying the stupid thing off, thirty-two dollars a month added to her AT&T bill, and a shower will wreck it. Plus, electrocution would definitely ding her GPA. Wait a sec. She finds a Ziploc baggie in her closet and rubberbands it around her wrist, steps into the shower and clumsily loofas her body, shampoos and conditions her short blond hair. All the while, she hopes against hope her problem will have solved itself by the time she towels off, but no such luck. With difficulty given the unavailability of her left hand, she manages to get dressed.

Maybe Tasha can help her. She knocks on her friend’s door on the other side of the dorm corridor. There’s no answer. But the door next door to Tasha’s creaks open to reveal Geraldine, bleary-eyed, in panties and an oversized T-shirt.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Geri complains. “What’s up?”

BethAnn holds out her hand. “I can’t let go of my goddamn phone.”

“Excuse me?”

“My phone. I can’t put it down.”

A male voice comes from inside the room. “Who’s that?”

“It’s BethAnn,” Geri calls over her shoulder. “That’s Dan,” she explains. “He stayed over.”

“Can you guys help me, Ger?” BethAnn can hear the anxiety in her voice. “Try not to hurt me, okay?”

Dan appears behind Gerry. He’s wearing a pair of Rick and Morty boxers, nothing else. “You need a hand here, babe?”

“Got one,” Geri smiles, holding BethAnn’s in both of her own, examining the stubborn cellphone from every angle. “Looks like it’s glued to your skin,” she says.

BethAnn shakes her head. “No, it’s just stuck.”

Dan scratches his chest. “Your phone’s stuck to your hand? Are you messing with us?”

BethAnn flips her hand upside down, but whatever’s going on is stronger than gravity, and the phone doesn’t fall.

Dan laughs.

“It’s not funny,” Geraldine and BethAnn say together, as if they’ve rehearsed the line.

“Sorry, Beth,” Dan says, “no offense.”

“BethAnn,” Geri corrects him, sweeping a pile of dirty laundry off a chair. “Sit down.”

BethAnn rests her arm on the arm of the chair. Her right hand claws futilely at the cell phone. “See?” she says, barely above a whisper. “It won’t budge.”

Dan bends down for a closer look. He tries to loosen her fingers, but they remain inflexible.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” Dan says. “Sometimes it’s gotta hurt to help.”

“If you want us to help,” says Geraldine.

“You sure you didn’t have an accident with a tube of superglue?” Dan wonders.

“Of course I’m sure. I’m not an idiot. You think I would superglue my damn hand?”

It’s eleven o’clock. BethAnn has been sitting in the waiting room of her doctor’s office for almost an hour and considers herself lucky to have been granted a same-day appointment at all. The only other patients ahead of her are a mother and her young son. BethAnn is convinced that the mother has been staring at her hand. The boy is preoccupied with a pile of Legos.

At last a nurse takes mother and son back to the doctor. BethAnn looks at her watch. She would normally check the time on her phone, but she powered it down before leaving the dorm, in the hope that doing so might in some way cause the miserable thing to release its hold on her, which it didn’t. Her class has just ended. She’ll have to write that extra paper. She can imagine Hengeveld’s smug expression as he slams her with the assignment, as if it somehow benefits him to saddle her with busy work.

She looks up to find Dr. Goldzier standing in front of her. “Well, well,” he says. “You’re next, BethAnn. Let’s go back.”

He leads her to an examining room and waves her to the edge of the padded table. “You’re looking fine, young lady. What seems to be the problem?”

She holds out her hand.

The doctor glances at it, then meets BethAnn’s worried gaze. “Yes?”

“It’s been like this since I got up this morning. I can’t put it down.”

“I see.” Goldzier sounds skeptical, as if he thinks he’s being made the butt of a practical joke. “That’s not really possible, you know.”

“And yet,” says BethAnn, her eyes beginning to well with tears.

The doctor sits beside her on the edge of the examining table and puts an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll figure it out.” He bends over her hand and pushes gingerly at the phone, then takes hold of it and attempts to twist it loose. But the mobile phone remains immobile. “Odd,” he murmurs, more to himself than to BethAnn. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

He moves to a small computer desk. “It was like this when you got up?”

“Yes.”

“So you fell asleep holding your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a regular occurrence?”

“Excuse me?”

“How often do you go to sleep with your phone in your hand?”

“Sometimes, not every night. But this is the first time—”

Goldzier interrupts her. “You spend a lot of time on your phone? Texting, making calls, email?”

BethAnn nods.

“How many hours a day?”

“I don’t know. All day, on and off. Maybe three or four hours?”

“Maybe more than that?”

“I guess.”

The doctor opens a document on his computer and makes some notes. “I see it’s powered down. Since when?”

“A little after I woke up. My friends are probably wondering why they haven’t heard from me.”

“You’d usually have been in contact with them by now?”

“Sure. I’ll send a text, or post something to my Instagram, or whatever.”

Goldzier swallows a sigh. “Well, something’s going on, some sort of unusual cramping of your fingers and thumb. Let me have another look.”

He holds out his hand, and BethAnn lays hers on his palm, the cell phone facing up. The doctor gently kneads her fingers, her thumb.

“Feel any change?”

“It’s a little warm,” BethAnn says. “Otherwise, nothing.”

Goldzier opens a desk drawer and finds a magnifying glass. He hunkers over BethAnn’s hand and studies it. “I can’t see any space between the phone and your flesh,” he says. “This is very unusual. It’s as if they’ve fused in some way.”

BethAnn wipes tears from her eyes. “Isn’t there something you can do?”

“I can refer you to an orthopedic specialist,” the doctor says.

By calling in a favor, Dr. Goldzier is able to get BethAnn an appointment for two-thirty the following afternoon with Dr. A. Wong, who Healthgrades.com tells her is one of the top orthos in the DelMarVa area. At three-fifteen, still sitting in Wong’s waiting room at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, she asks the receptionist when the doctor will be able to see her. “I’m sorry, hon, we’re running way behind. An emergency case.”

She is completely on edge. Her hand kept her awake most of the night. Her fucking hand and her fucking cell phone. When she got back to the dorm from Goldzier’s office, she ate a slice of leftover pizza and went straight to bed. Two hours later, she was still wide awake when Geri popped in to see how she was doing. She was doing really shitty, thank you very much. Geri pulled out her own cell and Googled “orthopedic specialist.”

“Orthopedic surgeon,” she read aloud. “That’s the same as a specialist, right? Okay, here: ‘Orthopedic surgeons are devoted to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disorders of the bones, joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles.’ So you’ve got some kind of disorder, right?”

The only word of this BethAnn hears is “surgeon,” and it’s that word and the idea that she might need surgery that keeps her tossing and turning through the night. When she is able to drop off for a few minutes, she’s wracked by terrible dreams, but all she can remember of them is being chased across campus by a pack of howling knives.

When a nurse finally leads her back to the doctor’s office, it’s ten minutes to four. The surgeon is an unimposing Asian woman in a white lab coat, perhaps a fraction of an inch over five feet. She introduces herself as Dr. Wong. “Have a seat,” she says, waving at a comfortable armchair. She herself sits behind an oversized desk that dwarfs her. Her head seems to float just above the desktop. BethAnn knows that one thing has nothing to do with the other, but the doctor’s diminutive stature worries her.

“So, let’s talk about your situation. But would you put the phone away, please? I find those things very distracting.”

“I can’t,” BethAnn wails. “That’s the problem.”

“What exactly can’t you do, Miss”—the doctor glances at the file lying open on her desk—“Miss Llewelyn?”

BethAnn explains, as calmly as her emotions and her exhaustion will allow: yesterday morning’s discovery of the problem, her session with Dr. Goldzier, his referral.

Dr. Wong nods. “Let’s have a look, then, shall we?” She comes around from behind her desk and takes BethAnn’s hand in both of her own soft, childlike hands. She holds it close to her bespectacled eyes and rubs the fingers and thumb, cautiously at first, then with a strength that takes BethAnn by surprise in a woman so apparently delicate. At last she turns back to her desk and reaches for an object that looks like a letter opener.

“You’re not going to h-hurt me, are you?” BethAnn stammers.

“Not at all,” the doctor promises. “This is just a preliminary examination, not a surgical procedure.”

Dr. Wong attempts to slip the point of the letter opener between the cell phone and BethAnn’s palm. The metal tip is chilly. BethAnn prepares herself to scream in pain, but Wong is careful not to press hard enough to break the skin.

“Interesting,” she murmurs. “A comprehensive merging of living tissue and inorganic matter.”

“What does that mean?” BethAnn demands. “What’s wrong with me?”

The surgeon smiles reassuringly. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. But I’d like to see what a colleague of mine has to say. If he’s in his office, I expect he’ll make time for us.” She returns to her desk and places a call. It takes more than a minute before the proper connection is made. “André,” Dr. Wong says at last, “I’m glad I caught you in. I’ve got a young woman in my office you’re going to want to see, really something quite new. Is there any chance you can come down and have a look?… Yes, Suite 341, that’s right…. Very good, we’ll see you soon.”

For the next five minutes, BethAnn and Dr. Wong sit across from each other, separated by the broad expanse of the surgeon’s desk, not speaking. BethAnn has a million questions, but she has no idea where to begin. At last the door swings open and the same nurse who brought BethAnn back ushers in a man in tan chinos and a dark-brown corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. He resembles her father more than just a little, which is weird but somehow comforting. “André Cipollini,” the newcomer says, holding out his right hand. BethAnn shakes it, holding her left hand and its burden shyly behind her back.

“Dr. Wong tells me you’re very special,” Cipollini says.

Without a word, BethAnn presents her problem hand for his inspection.

“Some new kind of reciprocal parasitism,” Dr. Wong suggests. Next to Dr. Cipollini, who is more than six feet tall, she seems even smaller than before.

Cipollini releases BethAnn’s right hand and takes her left. Like Goldzier and Wong before him, he carefully examines it, carefully rubs the fingers and thumb, carefully attempts to wiggle the cell phone loose.

“Yes,” he says, “I’ve been expecting something along these lines.”

“Expecting?” echoes BethAnn, and the question seems to hang in the air for long seconds while Dr. Cipollini prepares a response.

“My area of specialization,” he says at last, “is biomechanical engineering, and I’m going to ask you to indulge me for a few moments while I deliver a bit of a lecture.”

He folds his hands across his abdomen and gathers his thoughts. “On the one hand—if you’ll excuse the perhaps inappropriate idiom,” he begins, “we human beings have been adding mechanical enhancements to our bodies for millennia. In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of Hegesistratus, who amputated his own foot to escape the Spartans and then replaced it with a wooden one. In the first century AD, Pliny the Elder reported that Roman general Marcus Sergius lost a hand in battle and had an iron one made to take its place. George Washington famously wore false teeth—though they were made of ivory, not wood, as most people have been misinformed. Thermistocles Gluck proposed ivory knee replacements in the 1880s. Experiments with artificial hearts began in the 1930s. Today, dentures and knee replacements and artificial hearts have become commonplace, and we are coming close to a point when we’ll be able to implant artificial lungs and truly functional artificial cartilage.”

He pauses for a moment to look at Dr. Wong, who nods for him to continue. “On the other hand,” he says, “we’re making amazing strides in the development of artificial intelligence, and we now have robots on factory floors that can not only do the work of human hands but even, to some extent, of human brains. These mechanical marvels are in some cases even capable of diagnosing and repairing their own malfunctions. The expectation in the field,” he says, “is that our ever-smarter smart technology will eventually, inevitably, reach a point where it can and will begin to initiate the process of merging with mankind.”

Dr. Cipollini leans closer to Dr. Wong. His voice more conversational now, he says, “I’m so glad you called me down, Angie. This is truly exciting. You are unique, young lady, a precursor of a new stage in human evolution. To the best of my knowledge, you’re the first.”

BethAnn scoots her chair forward and tugs at Cipollini’s corduroy sleeve. “The first what?” she asks plaintively.

He straightens up and resumes his professorial tone. “I suppose you’ve heard of robotization?”

She frowns. “Ro,” she says, cutting herself off only partway into the word.

“You go to the movies, don’t you?”

“Not so much, no. I don’t have—”

“But you watch them on TV?”

“On Netflix sometimes, sure.”

“You’ve seen The Terminator? Robocop? I, Robot?”

“I saw one of the Terminator movies, I think. I didn’t—”

Cipollini smiles indulgently. “In those science-fiction films and others like them, machines are given human characteristics. To a certain extent, they begin to become human. Well, robotization is what we call it when people begin to take on some of the characteristics of machines. With the proliferation of cell phones, tablets, video games, smart home appliances, digital assistants like Siri and Alexa, we’ve begun to see some indications of robotization not just in the multiplex but in real life. And you, my dear”—he takes her left hand in both of his own and strokes it tenderly—“you seem to be the next step in that evolution. You’ve integrated non-living material into your flesh. Your phone has attached itself to your body, has become not just a device but an organ, a part of your physical existence. This is truly revolutionary, and we’re going to need to study you much more closely.”

BethAnn tries to pull her hand back, but Dr. Cipollini holds on tightly.

“I’m going to move you into my lab, and we’ll begin extensive testing at once. That’s all right with you, isn’t it, Angie?”

“Yes, of course,” Dr. Wong nods. “But what about her clothing?”

“Give me her address, and I’ll send a grad student to her home to fetch whatever she might need.”

BethAnn clears her throat to draw their attention back to her. “You’ll do surgery and cut it off me, though, right, so I can—”

“Oh, my, no.” Dr. Cipollini shakes his head. “Absolutely not! We’re going to study you, my dear, not destroy the one thing that makes you unique.”

The room begins to spin slowly before BethAnn’s eyes. Her phone rings, though the two doctors seem unaware of the sound. She looks down at her hand to see who’s calling, but the screen is dark and she remembers the damn thing is powered down.

Then why is it ringing, she wonders, and why don’t they hear it?

“Isn’t somebody going to get that?” she says.

JOSH PACHTER is the author of more than a hundred short crime stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and many other periodicals and anthologies. In 2015, The Tree of Life (a collection of all ten of his Mahboob Chaudri stories) was published by Wildside Press. In 2022, Crippen & Landru published The Adventures of the Puzzle Club and Other Stories, containing five stories by Ellery Queen and nine by Pachter. His first novel, Dutch T(h)reat, will be published by Genius Books this fall, and his first chapter book for younger readers, First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet, will be published by Level Best Books in February 2024. He also edits anthologies and translates fiction from Dutch and other languages. In 2020, he received the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement.

RENÉ APPEL spent many years as a linguist and professor of Dutch as a Second Language at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of twenty-three crime novels and is known as “the godfather of the Dutch psychological thriller.” He won the Golden Noose for Best Dutch Crime Novel in 1991 and again in 2001. In English, his short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and his novel The Amsterdam Lawyer was published in 2023, all translated by Josh Pachter; together, they co-edited Amsterdam Noir (Akashic Books, 2019).