by Dan Davis
Ram rubbed his face. “What should I do?”
“I think you should go for it. Give it everything you have. Go quickly, you do not want to be late for Bediako. He's almost as dangerous as Mael.”
13. BREAKING
They had already begun when he arrived. The subjects and attendants filled the long room, the ring section that contained the physical training equipment. Some were pounding away on treadmills. Others were sitting or lying inside bench and frame devices, pushing or pulling bars or handles attached to straps and wheels. The room resounded with grunting and clanging and whirring. Already it stank of sweat and warm plastic.
Bediako stood in the center of the action with his human-sized support staff gathered about him like cubs around the mother bear. Ram strode up to Bediako.
“Your timekeeping is appalling,” Bediako said, giving him a cursory glance but pausing, allowing Ram a chance to object or make excuses. Some distant memory of his early life in the crèche and nursery school rose up and set off a long-dormant survival instinct. Ram was about to speak but he held his tongue, sensing that it was a trap. Bediako made a tiny grunt before continuing. “How much resistance training experience do you have?”
Ram knew he had to make an impression. He had to prove his strength, prove he was tough. Still, he knew that being dishonest would do no more than catch him out down the line.
“None.” It was the truth.
Bediako shook his head. The assistants all appeared suitably horrified.
“You mean in all your precious Avar time you never taught yourself weight lifting? Why not?”
Ram was about to explain that there was no reason to do such a thing within Avar, where you use an avatar with whatever traits you want but again he sensed he was being led into a trap of defending himself, at which point his answers would be used against him. So he just gave what he hoped was a neutral answer.
“Just never did it.”
Ram watched Sifa laying on her back on a bench within a cube frame, heaving a weighted bar up and down over her as if it was nothing. He stared at her chest.
“How you came to be in my ludus, I will never know,” Bediako said, as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Now I have to train you on how to lift weights when I do not have time to spare to teach you everything from scratch.”
“It's just lifting heavy stuff, right?” Ram said, staring at Sifa and not paying enough attention to the words coming out of his mouth. “How hard can it be?”
Bediako spun about, glaring. The assistants froze. The subjects in earshot likewise ground to a halt.
Ram knew he'd made an error.
Bediako stalked over to Ram. Even though Ram had to look down slightly to maintain eye contact, he was suitably intimidated. “Really?” Bediako said, in a voice so low it was little more than a growl. “You're asking me to show you how hard it is, Rama? Is that what you want to know? I would be delighted to demonstrate. Here, take a seat in this leg press machine. You will learn today what hard work really means.”
Rama was put through his paces. Pushing, pulling, heaving, squatting, lifting. The weights were great slabs of iron strung together, lifted by pulleys as well as resistant, elasticated rods and stretch cables. Ram heaved, strained and sweated for hours. His arms, legs, and shoulders burned like fire. Again and again, he felt he could not go on but Bediako was always there in his face, forcing Ram to do more, lift again, push another repetition. Ram almost quit a dozen times, a hundred. But every time he reached the end of his tether, he found another layer of strength.
Milena was in his ear.
“You can do this, Ram.” She said it a hundred times. “You can do this. Don't give up. This is how you beat them, they want you to fail. They want you to be weak because it would confirm their preconceptions. Every rep, every set, you show that you are one of them. Push through the pain. Your body is capable. Your body is a miracle of science. Your body can do anything. Your body can go on for hours. I'm helping you, increasing the right hormones when you need them. You can do this, you have to fight. Push harder.”
At some point, he realized the other subjects were standing around him. Some muttering, a few others speaking to him but he could not make out their words. Most were silent, standing like grim, giant statues.
After some time Bediako pulled him upright, someone swiped a towel across his face and hands guided him to a new machine. Some sort of frame over and around him.
“This is the deadlift.” Bediako's voice. “Grasp the bar, bend your knees, point your toes this way. Hips back, shoulders back. Do not round your spine. Push your belly out, tense your core. Push your heels down.” On and on, Bediako's voice barked out instruction. The weight on the bar grew and grew. Ram's forearms ached, then they burned. His back spasmed and his grip faltered, dropping the bar. His audience cried out, disappointed. Ram's vision swam, misted, blurred.
“You can do this.” Milena, in his head. “You must focus for this final effort, for this final weight.”
“Why?” Ram was not sure if he spoke aloud or just thought the word.
Milena answered anyway. “No one ever lifted this much, not ever. So you must concentrate. Breathe.”
Bediako roared at him to try again, shouted to grasp the bar and to lift.
Milena in his ear. “Push, come on, everything you got, Rama. You can do this, you can do this.”
It was like pulling up a building by the foundations. The weight of it dragged him down, all through his body, arms, back, thighs. He moved it off the floor and up and up. His legs shook. A jolt of agony shot through his back. His fingers slipped, hands opening, the bar sliding down toward his fingertips. His neck, his shoulders quivered with the strain. Eyes squeezed shut, sweat poured into them but the cries of encouragement swelled him.
Ram pushed up with his legs and pulled with everything else.
His knees locked out and he stood straight. He held it up for a second before it slipped from his fingers.
Ram fell. Hands caught him. Carried him out.
***
When he woke, someone was there, over him.
“It has been a good while since I saw someone hospitalized for weight training.”
“Dr. Fo?” Ram said, blinking.
“Welcome back to my lair.” Dr. Fo cackled like a madman.
Ram rubbed his face and looked around.
“What happened? Where is everybody?”
“Oh, I don't know,” Dr. Fo said, shaking his head. “Something about breaking a record. Why you barbarians insist on killing yourselves attempting these arbitrary goals, I will never understand. They told me you were different from these brainless thugs, they said you were an educated man, wise beyond your years. Clearly, they were mistaken. As usual.”
“I feel fine,” Ram said, flexing his arms. “Can I go?”
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Fo said, waving a hand. “Your body can process stress chemicals rapidly. Your skeletal muscle will be sore for a few more hours. But you are mostly undamaged, all we did is rehydrate you. You're free to go back to the training ring.”
“I'd have preferred to stay here for a few more hours. A few more months, ideally. But okay, I'll head back now. Must be time for food anyway. Thanks, Doctor.”
“I will take you,” Milena said, stepping forward as Ram stood up.
She was smiling.
“What happened?” Ram asked.
They spoke while they walked through the ring sections.
“You were magnificent,” Milena said, grinning. Her smile was really something.
“I broke the record?”
“Two records,” Milena said, touching her fingers on his arm for a moment as they walked. “Heaviest weight ever lifted and the most mass lifted over four hours, adjusted for the reduced apparent gravity on the ship.”
“I beat Mael's record? That's great.”
“The heaviest weight was Alina's record but yes. But they weren't just onboard records, you beat every human who ever lived.”
“What about Artificial Persons? The ones engineered to do asteroid mining and stuff.”
Milena would not meet his eye. “Obviously, not them. I meant human records.”
“But I'm not human,” Ram said. “This body is not human. It was grown, right? In an artificial womb or whatever, like vat meat.”
Milena sighed. “Alright, so it’s a gray area, Rama, just accept that you broke a sporting world record and be happy.”
“Yeah, sure, okay, Milena. Take it easy.”
“I’m nervous,” Milena said. “Mael is angry, as you might expect. Who knows what he will try tonight.”
“But you told me to try harder,” Ram said. “You were playing with my chemistry the whole time, you pretty much forced me to beat him. Why did you do that if it was only going to make things worse for me?”
“It should force Alina's hand,” Milena said. “She will protect you now. Now that she sees you are worthy. And Sifa and Te will see Mael's anger. You should have more protection from now on.”
“Should? Great. Thanks for looking out for me.”
“Don’t act like a child,” Milena said, her eyebrows diving toward her nose. “Remember where you are right now. Remember where you are going. Why we’re all here and what is at stake. Stop feeling so wounded, so sorry for yourself. Accept this situation. Adapt. Learn. Survive. I will be with you as much as I can be. Go, now.”
She pushed Ram through the door into the ludus. On the other side, the ever-present, always-lurking ludus staff escorted him back to the barracks. Bediako was nowhere to be seen.
When he stepped through into the barracks, the subjects there in the central common area gave him a round of applause. They clapped and banged their table tops and a couple of people even cheered.
It was startling and almost overwhelming. Even Mael and Eziz were clapping and grinning. He was touched, thinking that he had won them over with his efforts.
Until he realized most of them were doing it mockingly.
“Hospitalized for weight lifting,” Gondar cried out, laughing hard. “That body is a wonder.”
Te and some others shouted him down and congratulated Rama for breaking the record. Ram mumbled his thanks and looked for somewhere to hide. He decided to just go straight to his quarters.
Alina sat hunched at the nearest of the three central benches, watching a screen. Her enormous shoulders rounded, her voluminous trapezius muscle bulging right up to her ears. She glanced up as Ram rushed by her for the relative safety of his room. He wanted to test the locking system, immediately.
“Rama,” Alina said, sticking out a palm the size of a dinner plate. “Wait. Come, sit here. You broke my record. Sit with me, I said.”
“I don't know what happened,” Ram said, sitting down. “I never even tried weight lifting before.”
Alina's gaze pierced his own. “Your driver drove you senseless with hormones. I saw. We all saw.”
“She did. It was like I was in another world. Separated from this one.”
“These hormonally induced states are powerful. When my driver, Noomi, first took me to levels like that? It reminded me of the late stages of the labor of childbirth. A powerful altered state of consciousness.”
Ram found it difficult to link the hulking, masculine figure sitting opposite him with the act of childbirth. “Oh really? You have kids back on Earth?”
Alina's eyes hardened. “You think I would abandon children to come on this mission? What sort of person do you think I am?”
“I don't know, I mean, I'm sorry, I spoke without thinking. You don't have kids, fine. Trying to get to know you, that's all.”
“Ah, I see now,” Alina said, nodding. “You were trying to change the subject away from yourself. My driver said that you do that.”
Ram glanced around over his shoulder. No one was paying much attention. “How does your driver know what I do?”
“The drivers all talk to each other. They all have access to information we do not. I bet there is a great deal of information that they know all about which is actively hidden from us.” She lowered her voice. “My driver, Noomi, has an inquisitive mind. I am certain that they have access to information that we do not have.”
Ram leaned in a little. “Like what?”
Alina lowered her voice, leaned over the table further. “Like where they actually get these bodies from. No synthetic body ever grown in the tanks looked and performed like ours. And like why there's so much security on this ship, so many Marines that they hide from us. And like why, when Mael killed Samira six months ago, are they only waking you up out of stasis now.”
Ram stared at Alina. “What did you say?”
Te and Sifa came over together to sit at the table with him and Alina.
Six months?
“How are you feeling, Rama Seti?” Te asked, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “Did she bring you down off that epi-cortisol cocktail? Oh man, you were so off your tits on hormones, you were in another dimension, bro. The juice dimension, right? On the other hand, you're officially the strongest person who has ever lived. What’s that feel like? Got to feel pretty good.”
He had been on the ship in stasis for at least six months?
Alina tutted. “You cannot say a thing such as that with any degree of confidence. There are countless untested people throughout history who may rival our strength, many outliers.”
Te hesitated, clearly wanting to argue. Instead, he laughed. “The human with the heaviest officially recorded deadlift, then, is that alright?”
“But is he truly human?” Alina said. “Are any of us?”
They all stared at Alina.
“Not this again,” Te said, finally, throwing his hands up.
“Where is your body coming from?” Alina asked Ram.
“What? I don't know?” Ram said. “Where did your body come from? Or yours?”
Six months of his life spent unconscious?
“They were grown for us,” Te said. “Same way they grow meat, same way they grow replacement limbs and organs. Same way they make Synthetic Persons, by growing the tissues in the tanks using our stem cells.”
“We do not know that,” Alina said. “All we know is what Dr. Fo tells us and what our drivers tell us and what they tell our drivers.”
“What else can it be?” Sifa said, flexing her arms in the double front biceps pose, causing her already thin top to stretch further across her breasts. Her nipples were erect. “Look at us. They grow these specially designed bodies in womb tanks for us, they perform a transplant and here we are with these bodies that are essentially synthetic versions of us.”
She lowered her arms, giving Ram a quick wink.
“Yeah and here we are,” Te said, nodding. “They grow the bodies in the tanks then sew our heads on later, Alina. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Wait a minute,” Ram said, lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder. “Alina, you just said something about Mael killing someone six months ago. And me being in stasis. Six months ago on this ship? How long exactly have you all been here?”
“Since we left Earth orbit?” Te said, blowing air through pursed lips. “Mate, that was like, two and a half years ago.”
Ram closed his eyes.
“How can that be?” Ram said, holding his head. “They said they cut off my head in my apartment. I just woke up here a few days ago. What in the fuck did they do with my head for two and half years?”
“This is what I am saying,” Alina said, pointing at Ram but speaking to the other two. “Director Zuma and Executive Zhukov claim to have this policy of telling truth, always. But they do not tell us everything. That is a lie by omission. A lie, all the same, is it not? They deceive us as a matter of course.”
“I can’t believe this,” Ram muttered, rubbing his hands over his shaved head. “Six months was bad enough but…”
“Maybe they do,” Sifa said, her voice harsh. “But what more do we need to know in order to do
our part? There are thousands of people back on Earth who worked on this project, worked to get us here. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Not just on Earth. Researchers on Mars and who knows where else. All working on their own jobs, all part of the larger project, even if they never heard of UNOP. What about the other people on this ship, do you think they know everything? The engineers work on the propulsion system, the navigators do their jobs. The Marines protect us. You think that we are special just because our jobs are near to the end of the mission?”
“Yes,” Alina said, deadly serious. “Of course we are special. It is ultimately we who must fight the alien.”
“You only think that way because it's probably going to be you that does the actual fighting,” Te said. “The rest of us are here to make you do it as best you can, right? We're backup. We're redundancy.”
“And you are happy with this?” Alina asked.
“I signed up, same as you,” Te said. “I knew what I was getting into. You went through the same vetting and assessment stuff, right?”
“Yes but he did not.” Alina nodded at Ram. “So we are so many, us twelve, we are training partners for the one who is the best. And also we are redundancy. So, Ram was redundancy for Samira. They kept him on ice or something like that until he was needed.”
Ram couldn’t believe it. “So you're saying my head was in a freezer for all that time? So yeah, it’s like you were saying, Alina, why hook me up now? Why didn’t they tell me this? My funeral must have been years ago.”
“Yes, you make my point,” Alina said. “Why, after we have been eleven subjects for the preceding six out of the last thirty-three months do they want to make us twelve again? And also, you know, if they had Rama Seti's head back there this entire time?” She trailed off.
“Maybe they have more,” Te said, staring unfocused at the wall as if he could see right through the bulkheads of the Victory.
“Indeed,” Alina said. “How many heads do we have? And what will happen to them if they are not needed? That is not acceptable to me, ethically.”
