My name is Shark Darkson. I wanted to make love to a woman. But I couldn’t, because I was paralyzed.

My phone rang.

“I’m not paralyzed,” Steve said. “I can build muscles and win bodybuilding contests.”

“I agree, Steve. So why are you jealous of me? Carol wants you. She only feels sorry for me.”

He slammed the phone. Was he trying to get my goat? If he was, there was no goat to be got.

I wound up paralyzed by horsing around with my friend Blake Brimstone and falling out of a treehouse. Blake spent our whole childhood trying to make up for it. Almost every day he’d hook my wheelchair to his bike and pull me around the neighborhood. People waved at us. The wind rushed through my hair. For a few minutes I forgot I couldn’t walk.

With my body failing me, I poured everything into my brain. At thirteen, Blake and I built a hoverchair. My brain, his brawn. It gave me mobility I’d never dreamed of. Using only thought, I could zip around like a firefly.

Next we made touch‑sensitive arms. I was Superman.

With those arms, I built devices that made life easier for the handicapped. By my mid‑twenties, I had fame and fortune in the paraplegic world.

Life was great, right?

Not really. Blake had a car crash and came out of it with merry‑go‑round syndrome. His mind spun from one state to another. He stopped recognizing me. Eventually, we lost touch.

As for me, fame and fortune weren’t enough. At thirty‑one, I was hitting bottom. Money, a nice home, and robots weren’t enough. I wanted to make love to a woman. But I couldn’t breathe or speak without machines. I wasn’t a man — I was a brain in a chair.

One day, Max — my robot — urged me to go with him to Hope Auditorium to hear a “great spiritual leader” who promised handicapped people a Grand Exodus into the Afterlife.

I recognized most of the three thousand people — Zig Gladwell vibrating like a lizard in a transformer, Grip Grungerock cruising in the hoverbed I built, and the Krinklecrank twins sitting like ninety‑year‑old sages in ten‑year‑old bodies.

The lights shifted. A figure staggered onto the stage.

I froze.

Blake? Blake Brimstone? My childhood friend was the speaker?

My eyes bulged as he lurched forward with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, filthy and bleary‑eyed. He adjusted his tie and scanned the audience.

“Hey, freaks and mental defectives. Some of you look fine with your prosthetic eyes.” He grinned hideously. “If only you had your minds.”

The crowd roared. I roared too — until Max checked me with his titanium hand.

“Don’t embarrass me,” he said with the orange lips I’d genetically engineered. Somehow I’d created a bully. Giving him hormonal urges was a mistake. He never stopped reminding me he couldn’t satisfy his desires with the mechanical parts of his anatomy.

Did he really think I made him in my own image out of sexual frustration? Well… maybe I did. He was my first attempt at a sentient robot.

Blake pounded the lectern. “Hey, folks. I’m handicapped too.”

He scanned the crowd. “God whacked us with a wacky stick. That’s why we’re here. We all live with our conditions, but some conditions are more conditional than others.”

“Glory!” yelled a white‑haired woman with her head wrapped in foil. Gretchen Retchin — schizophrenic — ran one of the best Alzheimer’s clinics in the country.

Blake fell, and assistants rushed to help him up.

A woman shot to her feet. “You’re drunk!”

He clung to the lectern. “I have cerebral palsy. You shouldn’t make fun of the handicapped.”

She sat down. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Wow. She was easy.

“Bitchy witchy bop!” yelled a beautiful dark‑haired, green‑eyed woman in the front row.

“You look familiar. Do I know you?” Blake asked.

“I’m your wife.”

“And I’m your lovely daughter,” said the little girl in the hoverchair beside her. She wore leg braces but otherwise looked like her mother.

Blake glared at the braces. “I don’t recall having a crippled daughter.”

“I’m your daughter,” she said, “like it or lump it.”

He stared at her until his lips trembled.

“Everyone suffers, folks. It’s the price of life. But people like us don’t get a medical discount. And sometimes life hands us a crippled daughter.”

He took another swig. “People say happiness is a choice. Really? Do people choose to be deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, and crazy?”

“Hallelujah!” yelled a man with a tumor ballooning from his Hawaiian shirt.

I felt sorry for him, even though I was in worse shape.

Blake peeked at his wife. “Be thankful your wife doesn’t deny you sex.”

I couldn’t resist. I shook my fist. “I’m paralyzed and can’t have sex. Should I be thankful for that?”

Max flashed red. I’d hear about it later.

Blake shook his fist too. “Yes! God loves nothing better than to torture people with sex. You don’t have to worry about failure to perform. Not that I have that problem.”

Finally, he put the bottle away and gripped the lectern.

“For Jack Kevorkian so loved the world that he spent eight years in prison, that the afflicted who believe in him shall not perish but have eternal fun in the Afterlife.”

He glared at the audience. “On the Fourth of July, we’ll all leave in a spectacular Grand Exodus from planet Earth and rejoin in a wondrous afterlife. Everything will be beautiful forever. Thank you and good day.”

The audience roared.

Blake staggered backstage. I buzzed my hoverchair out and found him sitting on a pile of trash bags.

“Hi, Blake!”

“Who are you?”

Thunder cracked. I looked up at the dark clouds and shook my artificial arms.

“Shut up, God. Come Independence Day, you won’t have the disabled to kick around anymore.”

Max pulled up in my SUV. The door opened. His head flashed angry red. Another long ride home with my hot bot.

“Get in, Shark,” he said.

“Great speech, Blake,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said, though he clearly didn’t recognize me.

My phone rang. “What the hell is wrong with you?” a woman demanded.

“Lots of things. Why do you ask?”

“You cheered for a man who wants to execute the world’s disabled population.”

“What’s wrong with that? Blake Brimstone offers hope for the afflicted. Is this you, Carol? I thought you were an empath.”

“I am an empath, which is why I’m disgusted with you.”

“You have a right to be disgusted. I’m a pretty bad guy. Stick with Steve.”

“Shut up about Steve. I’m attracted to you, not Steve.”

“That’s just because your family taught you to be unselfish. You just feel sorry for me. That’s not love.”

I hung up.

Life was simple. It began and ended. Life was fine if it was good. If not, life was bad.

It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t feel, move, or speak without special devices.

Everything would change on July Fourth. I’d go to the Afterlife and walk, run, jump, and make out with gorgeous women. I’d never get tired, bored, or depressed.

Life would always be beautiful.

All I had to do was follow Blake into the Afterlife — even if he no longer knew me.