The letter says the machines that run his hand will sunset at the end of the month. He logs the date on the wall calendar, as written. The letter does not say who bought them. He types an answer. The assistant suggests a warmer opening. He accepts the suggestion.
The hand is eleven years old. The flesh one went at forty-two, high on a ladder, in winter. At night the hand comes off to charge and the arm airs; the skin where they meet is the youngest he has. In the towers the lifts know everyone’s floor; the stairwell paint dried before he was born; sixty floors of wind take turns with the windows.
On the bus in the mornings some assistant reads the weather into his ear, gently, standardly, and once it ended on a word that was not his, and he did not look up.
The hand phones home every night. Eleven years of nights: grip, tremor, temperature, the month he stopped opening jars for two. Soon home will not answer. There is no local mode. Under POWER-DOWN, one field: FINAL POSITION.
On the last evening he buttons his shirt top to bottom, slowly, twice. He peels an orange in one unbroken spiral and eats it looking at the peel. He writes his name, once with each hand, and the two names agree.
He sets the field to CLOSED. He lies down and puts his living hand inside the other.
At midnight, universal time, the fingers come down around his, gently, on the last of the charge, and hold.
He stays until morning.
In the second week a letter comes from the counterparty thanking him for setting the field, since a hand left OPEN must be attended by a technician and a hand left CLOSED need never be visited again. It encloses a small credit.