That’s why, when I first woke up, I knew that everything was wrong. Bright light poured painfully into me, my skin was lit with a dull persistent ache, and my mind raced to try and find some reality, some identity, to hold on to. While all that was happening, a song that I had never heard, but will now never forget, was playing. It was chill, a thin female voice that seemed satisfied with life. But I couldn’t hold on to any of that—my tongue was yelling to me about my mouth. Where was I? Who was I? How long had I been asleep? Was this Earth? Did anyone know I was alive? None of that broke through the shouting of my tongue.

I tried to lock onto the song. I still remember every word she sang.

And weeks went by but felt like hours

Spring would lie in summer showers

In my hair were winter flowers

And weeks went by but felt like hours

This is going to be gross.

My tongue, dry and thick, did not find any teeth on the left side of my face. Indeed, it couldn’t feel much of anything on the top left. That caused me to bring my hand to that side of my face. As my hand approached, I noticed that I couldn’t see it because I couldn’t open my left eye. Or, as I soon discovered, because my left eye wasn’t there. My hand fell through the space where my face should have been. Part of my forehead, my left cheek, and a hunk of my nose were all gone. My lower jaw remained intact, though a number of the teeth were missing. I can’t describe this sensation in any other terms than nightmare. I’m recounting it here simply, step-by-step, but this all happened in a matter of shattering moments. I began to shake as I felt the space where my face should be. There was no pain; if anything, there was the slightest itchiness, as if the openness of my face, with its exposed tissues and shattered bone, wanted to be gently rubbed. Just before the panic and the sobs building inside of me bubbled through the surface, a new fear hit.

And weeks went by but felt like hours

Spring would lie in summer showers

In my hair were winter flowers

And weeks went by but felt like hours

“You should not touch there,” a clear tenor said, soft and kind. A voice I recognized, but I could not say from where.

“WHOSH ZHERE?!” I shouted in panic, my tongue clunking around in my unfamiliar mouth.

“You should not have woken,” the voice said. I moved to prop myself on my left arm to look over my shoulder. I failed to do this because of how my left arm, just above the elbow, did not exist anymore. Instead the stub at the end of my upper arm slammed into the bed I was lying on. Pain flared, shooting down from the elbow into the hand that was no longer there and then ricocheting back into the whole rest of my body.

In that moment I remembered the fire and then I fainted.

The second time I remember waking up, my mouth had been rebuilt. It still felt foreign, but at least it closed. Music played, but now it was instrumental, something you’d listen to while studying so you didn’t get distracted. It was chill; I was not. My next thought was of my arms. I lifted them both. My right arm remained whole, though there were some scabbed-over burns on the forearm. My left arm was much worse. The raw flesh stopped just before it got to my elbow, but then my arm continued, but it was not my arm. It was the size and shape of an arm, but it wasn’t made of April; it was a gemstone. Smooth and milky white, with shifting veins of cyan, green, yellow, and pink flecking and spidering through it. I ran my right arm over the surface, and it was cold but not hard. It had a very slight texture, like hard rubber, and it yielded slightly as I pushed my fingers into it. I felt the heat of my hand, and the pressure.

Then I remembered the rich, uncanny voice from the last time I’d woken and pushed myself up to look around, holding a thin sheet to my body, the only thing between me and complete nudity. I was lying on a bed … in a dive bar? The floors were unfinished wood, the booths lining the walls had cracked vinyl seats, and the bar was backed by racks where the booze should have been but wasn’t. The twin-sized bed that I was lying on was set up in front of a stage on what was once a dance floor. Dive bars are supposed to be dark, in part so you can’t see how long it’s been since anyone bothered to replace anything, but this room was brighter than a department store. Racks of fluorescent lights had been suspended from the ceiling, defying the dingy aesthetic of the rest of the room. Also incongruous were the several tables supporting quietly humming metal-looking boxes with LCD readout screens.

“Hello?” I called out groggily, clutching the sheet.

“Hello,” came a clear, somber reply, echoing around the room.

The panic hit hard and fast. I wanted to shout, but I didn’t know where to start.

I settled on “WHO’S THERE!?”

Something small and fuzzy leapt up onto the bed. I freaked. I pushed myself off with my good arm and swung my legs over the edge of the bed to run. As I crashed to the floor, my nightmare expanded again. Both my legs were gone. I pushed myself to a sitting position, and then my hands rushed to feel what my eyes didn’t believe. My right leg stopped halfway between the knee and ankle; my left ended just below my hip.

I frantically ran my hands over the rest of my naked body, the skin on the entire left side of my body was a raw and puckered mess of burn scars and scabs, but I felt no pain.

I looked up and saw Carl, life in their eyes, reaching down their massive hand to me. It didn’t seem possible that they could fit in the space. They were immense and inhuman, but at least they were familiar. I reached both hands up to them, the real one and the new opalescent. They lifted me with that one hand and put me back on the bed. I felt a prick in my neck, and was gone again.

“April.” It was Carl’s voice—I recognized it this time—clear and genderless. My eyes searched and suddenly found the source of the voice: a smart speaker sitting on the bar, its cord snaking off to an unseen plug. Under the voice played some eighties pop song I couldn’t place but that sounded familiar.

The robot Carl was nowhere in sight.

“I’m sorry I frightened you.” The light of the speaker ebbed and swelled as the voice flowed out of it. I searched the room but did not see Carl. As I thought about this, the song suddenly became familiar.

I’ve got one, two, three, four, five

Senses working overtime

Trying to taste the difference

’Tween a lemon and a lime

XTC—I’ve looked it up since. Jesus, Carl and their pop music.

“Are you here?” I asked.

“I am always here,” the voice said.

“What?”

“I am always here,” it said, matching its previous tone precisely.

“No, I mean, what does that mean?”

“I don’t have a body, so I think of myself as being wherever my senses reach. It’s not a perfect analog.”

I would have pushed, but I also had other questions.

“What was that?”

“What?”

“The fuzzy thing that jumped on the bed.”

“That was also me.”

It didn’t feel right to be having a protracted discussion with a smart speaker. Where was Carl? And how many were there?

And then, somehow, another need began to weigh more heavily than the need to know what the hell was going on.

I lifted my hands to my face.

Do me a favor. Take your hand to your face, and feel the bones beneath the muscles beneath the flesh. Feel the structure, the familiarity. You’ve lived with this face your whole life. Maybe you don’t love it, maybe you don’t think of it much, but it is your face. You pick your nose, you stroke your chin, you rub your eyes. In a substantial way, your face is you.