"We're growing you a new eye—an exact replacement of your own. For all intents and purposes, it will be your eye." She hurried on with her answers to his questions, both voiced and unspoken. "We'll do the same with broken or crushed bones, nerves, tendons, sinews, muscles, arteries, veins, capillaries, even your lungs. That includes that ear you lost. It's being grown right now, including the inner organs of hearing. It's called rebirth through genetic medicine. Buck."
"Look," he broke in, "I had a friend who was busted up in the crash of his jet fighter. His leg was broken in several places. There was bone loss. Even in our times, the doctors could fix him. We had something called bioglass. It had just about all the characteristics of real bone. They connect the busted ends with bioglass. His leg bone latched on to it and began to grow over the bioglass. No rejection. What's wrong with that?"
"The bioglass doesn't have bone marrow, so it doesn't produce
A Life in the Future
red blood cells. The body must function by robbing from other sources. In its simplest terms, there's a deficiency of needed life materials, even though the man might walk or run again. Nature took many millions of years to create what we are. Artificial substitutions, like cardiac pacemakers, worked for a while, but they were never as good as the original. After the first experimental surgeries, heart implants became as good as the original, because the new heart was the patient's own heart."
Wilma took a deep breath. "It isn't just medicine. Buck. It's the very philosophy of life. If you had brain damage, we couldn't really help you. Your brain has a hundred billion neurons. That includes the glial structure that supports the brain. But if the cerebellum is damaged, we ease a patient's difficulties, but we can't replace that part of his brain that is the mind. We can do just about everj^thing else."
Buck let out a tremulous sigh. "So I go into deep sleep, you do the Humpty Dumpty routine on me, and—"
"Humpty Dumpty?"
"A children's fable. About a humanlike egg that falls off a wall and gets all cracked up, and nothing can put it together again. But it sounds as if you've solved that problem. I go to sleep, and while I'm in dreamland, I get a whole new bod, so to speak."
She smiled, but there was something different about the look on her face.
"Sorry, my friend. You don't get off that easily. Except for a few special procedures, you remain awake during the entire process."
He was startled with her words. "Hey, I can grit my teeth with the best of them," he said quickly. 'You know, Joe Hero and all that. But there's a limit, Wilma! You'll have me screaming like a madman."
"We'll block the pain, but not with drugs."
"What then? Are you going to use a sledgehammer to put me out?" he asked in mock seriousness.
"There are already probes implanted in your brain to stimulate a rush of endorphins that flood your body. We kick them off with electrical vibrations. They function better than any morphine or other painkiller. You remain aware of everything that's going on, but you're not tortured with pain. We've got to keep you alert and responsive so we're sure we're on the right track with everything
Buck Rogers
we do. We test as we go along, fix anything that isn't right."
"I sense I'll be something like a guinea pig."
"Are you feeling sorry for yourself?" she demanded.
"Anything but," he replied. "Befuddled, confused, bewildered, overwhelmed—you know, the thin line between acceptance and insanity, I guess."
"You'll do fine. Do you know there are more than sixty probes already implanted inside your body?"
"When? I don't recall anything like that."
"Of course not. The probes were put in place when you were in stimulated hypnosleep."
"Where are they? How come I can't feel them?"
"Each probe is so small it's almost invisible. Most of them are made of pure gold. Some are an alloy of iridium oxide and plan-tium. They're extraordinarily precise in transceiving physiological signals. In fact, they're capable of gathering data from even a single nerve cell. All together, they provide us with a precise real-time look at your nerve stimulation. We can tell how you're doing at a glance, because everything is telemetered to a computer that gives us ongoing readouts of how your body is functioning. That includes hearing, vision, kinesthetic sensing—"
"The whole ball of wax, I guess," he broke in.
"Crudely put, but true nevertheless. In short, we not only receive the data that tells us how your systems are functioning— or not functioning—but we can also transmit messages to your body to bring things on-line. The moment you're functioning normally, the probes become quiescent. They go on hold, so to speak, until they're needed."
"And if something isn't working up to snuff?"
"Each probe is paired with a microelectrode to determine needs for hormones, enzymes, electrolytes, or other needs. After a while, your body learns when to react to a need or problem, and your system takes over for itself"
Buck grinned. "I feel like a laboratory rat."
"So you are," she said easily.
"When does all this start?"
"It began three days ago."
"Three days! How come I . . ."
He fell into the deep hj^nosleep programmed to begin at precisely that moment.
A Life in the Future
Black Barney stood before the viewing window that looked down on the entire AkshunGames contest field. From this high, the figures below seemed ridiculously small. An upward glance showed every detail on a huge, curving television screen.
Barney snorted with disdain for the crowds that filled the Niagara Orgzone energy-shielded dome. The worst place to watch the competitions was right here in these bleachers and box seats. People were so distant from the real action that they needed soniplugs held in place against their skull to hear the sound, including men and women gasping for breath in their exertions. By wearing the plugs, you could even hear the scrape of floatsneaks against gravel in the relay races. And if you wanted to feel as if you were "down there among them," all you needed to do was to turn on the hologram viewer, and right before your eyes the competitors appeared in amazingly detailed three-dimensional holograms. Grimaces, bleeding, thudding body blows, teeth spit forth like white candy—whatever you wanted, it was right there.
But still they came to fill the bleachers and the front-row boxes. Although Barney now felt disdain toward such devotion, he, too, had once been one of the most avid fans of the sports games and competitions. The Gamesmasters really knew how to draw them in. Watching the games through electronics gave one a terrific view, but it lacked something the crowd needed.
"Watching even a 3-D," Barney had once explained to a group of friends, "is like kissing your sister. Something's missing."
He knew what it was. It was the same thing that drew thousands of people in the distant past to live circuses, jammed with exciting acts and stunts and dozens, sometimes hundreds, of animals to thrill the crowd. The circus in Buck Rogers's time had been a great crowd pleaser, with the smell of sawdust, the roars and bellows and stink of lions and elephants and horses and— Barney let this train of thought die. There hadn't been a circus band for hundreds of years. Everything came out of the computer now, and it was too good to keep you hanging on the edge. Lack of perfection was its own music sometimes. Barney laughed silently at himself He was acting like a traditionalist, immersing himself in a world only one man among them all really knew.
Buck Rogers
He watched that man at this moment as Buck Rogers went through his training regimen, with Wilma Deering riding him constantly, urging him to ever-better performance. She compelled him to run faster, jump higher, and throw farther—track and field, swimming, climbing, wrestling, all of it.
And despite her efforts, Buck was going to lose just about every competitive act in the book. That was part of the program. Barney watched as other men, one by one, exceeded the best of Buck's performances in everything from pole vaulting to hurl
ing the javelin. Finally he saw Buck stride away in disgust. He stopped before a training bench and dumped a pail of water over his head to wash away the sweat and cool down his body. Wilma followed him, laughing, and threw her arms about his neck, hugging him tightly. Barney nodded. The pairing of these two as a team was working better than they could have hoped for. Barney aimed a spinband helical antenna onto the field. He could hear every sound within a fifty-foot circle of the two people he watched.
"You've done it, Buck. Congratulations," Wilma told the exhausted man. Buck sat on the bench, soaked, drinking fortified dran, a mixture of juices, herbs, and electrolytes that would soon have his body ready for further testing. "This wraps it all up," Wilma continued.
Buck stared back, shaking his head. "Wraps it up? I just won the loser's cup, lady! I got my butt whipped by everybody out there, men and women!"
"Of course you did," Wilma replied, smiling patiently. "There was never any doubt about that."
"Then why the big charade?"
"It wasn't a charade," she said. "This wasn't a competition, even though we led you to believe that. Until now, that is. We had to learn your full physical parameters. Competition, or what you thought was competition, is the best way to bring that out. When you ran the track, you were up against men and women biologically altered to run faster than anyone else alive. The same with the swimming, the weight-lifting, all of it. Every competitor you faced was a champion in his or her own right. But if
A Life in the Future
you averaged out the performance of all the people today, you'd end up as one of the better-performing athletes out there."
He took a long pull of his energy drink. "And you're satisfied?"
"Better than that. The physical preparations are over. You're as sharp, as fast, as strong, as you ever were in your entire life. And you can apply those attributes to whatever you do." She paused. "You're ready now for what may well be a lot tougher for you to handle than anjrthing you did today."
"I'm all ears, lady"
"Tonight you learn what happened to your world after you were suspended in time. It's not a nice story. Psychologically, it could be devastating."
He started to ask her why, then clenched his teeth. He had a hunch she might be right.
Chapter 10
Buck sat within a learning cubicle in Niagara, running through three-dimensional holograms of a bewildering variety of fighting skycraft. Wilma presented flight scenes of the craziest machines Buck had ever seen. Very little made sense to him. Here he was in the twenty-fifth century, and he had been presented with an amalgam of aerial machines that ran from primitive canvas-covered ancient biplanes to clattering helicopters, from huge aerial battlewagons to sleek supersonic jet fighters.
His indoctrination came to an abrupt halt with the sudden appearance of Air Marshal Marcus Bergstrasser, a tall, lanky man with scarred features and the weathered look of a professional battler. He yanked open the cubicle door, ignoring the indoctrination program.
"Wilma, shut off that damned toy of yours," he commanded.
With a quiet, "Yes, sir," she did as ordered. The cubicle went silent, and the moving map and illuminated strongholds vanished. Soft lights came on. Bergstrasser closed the door behind him.
"We can talk here with full security," he announced to Wilma and Buck.
Buck smiled. "Full security here? Right in the command cen-
A Life in the Future
ter of your whole outfit?"
Bergstrasser leaned across the command panel and stabbed several computer keys. "All right. We're isolated now." He turned to Wilma. "Get me the data on the Half-Breeds. I want their main installation, peripheral guard battle stations, the works. Bring up the display showing their numbers, equipment, and current status."
"Half-Breeds?" Buck echoed aloud.
"Yes," Bergstrasser snapped, watching Wilma's fingers flying across the computer data boards. A glowing map of what had been the contiguous forty-eight states of America appeared on the screen. In the area just northwest of what had once been the metropolis of St. Louis, a group of glowing amber-colored lights appeared, surrounding a single large red glow.
"We don't have time for a full history lesson, Rogers," Bergstrasser said. "I can't really give you any orders until you're a sworn member of the Niagara Orgzone—our nation, or what's left of it. If you agree, I'll swear you in right now as a major in the Flight Combat Task Force. That's my outfit. We deal with atmospheric combat on tactical levels. We get down-and-dirty with the opposition. Damned little of the high-tech combat stuff. We don't defend cities or battle space cruisers or any of that nonsense. That's up to people like Black Barney, Killer Kane . . . people like that."
"I don't get your drift. Who are these Half-Breeds?"
"You'll understand in a few minutes," Bergstrasser promised. "I don't know how much Wilma has told you about the continental area, but the country you knew is gone. Except for our major strongholds and those of the invaders—the Mongols, the Chileans, the Golden Dragons, and some others—the country is a vast territory with guerilla outposts here and there." More lights flashed on the board; Bergstrasser pointed to different glowing sites.
"Here's where we are—the Niagara Orgzone, which simply means that's our organizational zone. We're the single most powerful outfit in the whole country, but we're a long way from controlling the rest of the land. Not that we haven't tried, but just holding our own is what we've settled for. If," he said with a tired pause, "we could bring together the feudal outposts and the roving guerilla forces, we could triple our strength and expand our
Buck Rogers
influence across most of the country. It's a big if, but you may be the key to breaking the deadlock we're in."
Buck stared at the glowing dots and colors across the three-dimensional map of the country. All of a sudden he forced himself away from the map. "Wait a moment," he protested. "You're going way too fast for me to make sense out of what you're saying. Guerrilla bands? Mongols? In the United States? And Chileans? That's just a small, backward country at the butt end of the Andes Mountains! You also said something about Golden Dragons. You know what you sound like, Marshal . . . ?" Buck hesitated, groping for his name
"Air Marshal Marcus Bergstrasser," came the reply. "Let's dispense with the rank and titles if you don't mind. Marcus will do just fine. And obviously Wilma hasn't had the opportunity to give you even a condensed version of what's happened to this country—or the rest of the world—in the last several hundred years."
"You just won the prize for the understatement of the year," Buck murmured.
"I'd hoped to bypass, at least for the moment, an elementary history lesson," Bergstrasser said, grimacing.
"No way," Buck said adamantly. "Whatever you've got up your sleeve. Air Marshal—Marcus—you're leaving me on the thin end of a long pole by not filling me in on what's gone on. Right now I seem to be in the middle of some cockamamie world with all new players, from what I've heard so far. And the old outlines of countries are the same, but inside the boundaries, I'm living on what seems like an alien planet. Just about anywhere I turn I'll be walking into something I don't understand. Take the time, Marcus Anybody who gets into a fight with only limited knowledge of what he's facing has already lost half the battle. I want better odds than that."
Marcus Bergstrasser sighed audibly. Finally he nodded, realizing the time schedule he had in mind was unworkable. "Wilma, take over," he directed. Bergstrasser grabbed a chair, shoved it back against a wall, and lit a long, thin cigar.
"Well, I'm glad to see not all the amenities have been lost," noted Buck. "It takes a civilized man to appreciate a good cigar. Although I'm puzzled. Where in this crazy country do you have the space or the time to cultivate tobacco farms?"
A Life in the Future
Bergstrasser rolled the cigar in his fingers and flicked ashes into a wall receptacle. They vanished in a thin curl of smoke. "We don't," he answered. "We don't have the time, the open c
ountry, or enough hydroponic farms for tobacco. This cigar is cultivated from seaweed, mixed with the fibers of the hemp plant, and infused with synthetic nicotine. It tastes like the best of the ancient Cuban cigars, but there aren't any harmful effects. Would you like one?"
"Later," Buck said. "Let me get the background now from Wilma."
She nodded. "All right. We'll do this with a combination of historical and current names and organizations. For a while, there will be so many you won't be able to retain them all, even though they all play a vital part in whatever the air marshal has planned for you."
"It sounds like you're going to run a film past me at full speed and all I'll see is a blur," Buck said with obvious impatience.
"Point well taken," Wilma admitted. "But tonight, when you're asleep, you'll be in hypnomemory training. Everything you see and hear now will be fed into your memory cells while you're sleeping. When you awake, everything you've learned will be as familiar as if you've lived in our present all your life."
"Neat trick," Buck murmured.
"Let's go back to your time," Wilma went on, ignoring Buck's comment. "How would you judge the state of the world in—1996, right?" Buck nodded.
"The danger of major war had diminished, I believe," she said.
"That's only partially true. The Second World War was more than fifty years behind us, but there were plenty of other wars— Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, a dozen or more wars in Africa. South and Central America were a hotbed of small wars. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Tibet, Argentina—well, we averaged between thirty and forty wars every year."
"Please keep that in mind," Bergstrasser asked. "It's important. And what about America? Your own country?"
"We were smack-dab in the middle of many of the small wars," Buck admitted. "Fifty thousand dead was pretty much the norm." He frowned. "You can add a few million missing and wounded to that."
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