She had warned them both that multiple iterations might be needed. Someone had mentioned Frankenstein as a crude analog of what they were trying to do.
The big day came and Angie gathered with Rob and Tracey and Dr. Wriston, with Dr. Holland outside the containment chamber in Redfield Lab, headquarters of the Autonomous Systems Lab. Inside the chamber, a small bed had been placed, for Chase to lie on when ‘he’ was fully restored. Just in case, electron beam injectors were primed and ready.
“We can’t violate safety protocols, even in this situation,” Holland explained.
Angie was doubtful but said nothing, while Holland scanned her board and made some adjustments. “I’ve got the Config Engine loaded now. From the scans we did of Chase before, we have lots of data. I had a quite a time massaging and tweaking and converting all that data, trying to get something clean. You don’t know it, but I’ve already run some tests…yesterday. Things looked promising.”
Angie was curious. “What kind of tests, Dr. Holland?”
Holland was reluctant to go into details now. Clients were sometimes sensitive about these matters. “Oh, just little tests. I extracted some of the data and ran it through the Config Engine…you know, assembling small things, simple structures.”
“Of Chase? What kind of simple structures?”
“It was just a test—“
“What kind of structures, Doc?” Angie asked, a little more firmly.
Holland shrugged, went back to her instruments. “A finger here, a hand there. Really, it went well.”
Angie nearly choked. “A finger? You assembled one of Chase’s fingers? And a hand? What are—what happened?”
“The test went fine. The Config Engine performed as expected. I examined the…er, the structures and found them well formed, molecularly correct, consistent with the templates from your data. It was…what can I say?...a finger.”
“And a hand.”
“Exactly.”
“What did you do with them?”
Holland looked surprised. Sometimes, she figured it was better if the clients didn’t know all the details. People reacted differently. “I let it go. That is, the Config Engine broke them down, disassembled them. Back into feedstock.”
Angie swallowed hard. Maybe Chase had been right. Normal couples shouldn’t be able to just conjure up limbs and fingers of their loved ones. But then again, since nanobotic assemblers had been invented twenty years ago, maybe they could. It was all very confusing.
“Okay, Doc…I guess we really didn’t need to hear about that. What’s next?”
Holland turned back to her control station. “Next is releasing the feedstock into the chamber.” She pressed a few buttons and on the monitor, a faint mist began issuing from a row of ports. The chamber quickly filled with the mist. “Just raw stock. A bunch of atoms and molecules…standard stuff…oxygens, irons, phosphorous and nitrogens…you name it. Ingredients for the cook….” Immediately she wished she hadn’t said that. Every client reacted differently. And this one was one of the Sea People…already a celebrity.
The filling took about three minutes. “All the templates of Chase are loaded in the Config Engine now. When the previous…uh, version was scanned and disassembled, I took a memory field map of all those atoms in structure, combined it with similar data scanned from him earlier, and created these templates. We should be able to put together a new Chase better than ever, assuming the Conicthyotic bacteria have done their job.”
Angie just shook her head. “This is just creepy, Doc, hearing my Chase talked about like this. Could you just get on with it—“
“Of course.” Holland pressed a few more buttons.
Inside the containment chamber, the master assembler had just been released. The master was a nanobotic device that orchestrated assembly of feedstock atoms and molecules into whatever structures were contained in the template. The template had been developed from multiple genetic scans over the last few days.
The monitor showed a mist filling the chamber, like an early morning fog, only this mist sparkled as if a billion fireflies were embedded. The mist thickened until the bed was lost to view. Minutes passed. Holland followed her instruments, adjusting the Config Engine on the fly.
“Threshold density,” she announced. “Memory field steady, all parameters in the green.”
The first hint of structure emerged from the fog, in the form of a faint, translucent, almost ghostly hand, alongside the edge of the bed. Fluctuations in the fog caused more structure to become intermittently visible: several fingers, part of a forearm, a brief glimpse of a knee. From these structures, Dr. Wriston silently estimated where Chase’s head and face should be and began a silent count under his breath. But nothing was visible yet.
More minutes passed. Then, Angie gasped softly. She pointed.
The barest outlines of a face materialized into view, slipping in and out of the fog like a wraith. There was the faint blond beard and moustache, the blue eyes, the scar above his right eye due to fishing accident, the chin dimple (not easily seen), the silly big ears. And the lips—and that unruly lock of hair.
“It’s him!” Angie breathed. Involuntarily, she clutched Tracey Rook tightly, leaning against the intern’s shoulder. “It’s Chase—“
“I see it…I see it.” Tracey watched in amazement as more and more structure came into view. From everything she could see, it was Chase, though Tracey had never seen the original before. She knew how the technology worked. She understood how assemblers slammed atoms together according to a template. She’d helped designed and run more configs than Dr. Wriston had ever dreamed about…working with Holland, they all had. But this…this was different.
Holland watched the monitor and her instruments carefully, making some minor adjustments. “Config still stable. No alarms…no issues. He’s coming in beautifully. Everything within tolerances, right in the middle of the band. I’m adding more feedstock… we’re approaching minimum density…what do you think, Angie, Dr. Wriston?”
Angie let her eyes play across the prostrate form of her boyfriend, inside the containment chamber. Part of her mind told her this couldn’t be Chase…it was a 3-d sim, or a fab, a near-perfect likeness, but still a likeness. But her own feelings and Dr. Wriston’s reactions overruled that hard logic and she felt a lump in the back of her throat. It couldn’t be Chase.
But it was Chase. The original recipe.
To keep control of himself and act as he figured a department manager should act, Dr. Wriston focused on the instruments, on the swarm inside the vault, on critiquing the process, on config stability, anything to smother all those feelings that were bubbling up. His shoulder ached from where Tracey had been clutching him and, gently as he could, he extricated himself.
“How long, Josey?”
Holland studied the board, watched as more and more of Chase emerged from the mist into solid structure. “Well, scans are showing about sixty-five percent complete. This should be done in about two more hours. After we reach target density, I’ve got to run some tests. See how stable the config is. Make sure the pattern buffers are cleared out. And we’ll spot check the config against the original memory field. That’ll be another hour.”
“This is so unreal,” Angie said. “It’s a vid, like some kind of animation. I just want to get in there and hug him to death.”
By mid-afternoon, Holland pronounced herself satisfied. Looking through the portholes of the containment chamber, Chase was lying on his side on the bed, seemingly asleep. He seemed to be breathing normally; his chest rose and fell with a rhythmic pattern.
“I think it’s safe to let him out now,” Holland decided. She enjoyed the look of anticipation on Angie Gilliam’s face. She also took a quick peek at the electron beam injectors, just in case. Subjects sometimes developed glitches and hiccups in their program during assembly. It happened. You couldn’t take too many chances. “I’m shutting down security systems. Latches coming un-done.” A few clicks, pops and squeaks
sounded at the hatch. Then a hiss, as pressures equalized. Holland went over and dogged the hatch open.
With some urging and hand-signaling. Chase got up and waddled slowly, a bit awkwardly out, a sheepish grin on his face.,
”Ya’ll look like you’ve seen a ghost.” His hair was disheveled and Angie reached up automatically and brushed back that lock of hair that had a mind of its own. She let her fingers run along his blond stubble, scarcely believing it.
“Chase…it’s really you—”
“Of course it’s me…who did you expect?”
Angie grabbed both of his arms and swung them, like he was a one-year old, simply astonished to her have her old gangly Chase back, fit and trim as ever. She grinned, laughed giddily. She turned to Holland.
“Doctor, I’m…I don’t know what to say—”
Holland was grinning too. “I’d say the operation was a success.” To Wriston, “Walter, maybe you and I should talk some more about that raise…and my new lab.”
Wriston was agog at the scene. “I never thought this would work…yeah, sure, Josey. I’ll take it up with the Board…today, this afternoon.”
Holland came back to earth. “There are still some tests I’d like to do…genetic stability, bacterial counts, configuration checks, that sort of thing. After that, I’m guessing you two would like to be alone.”
Chase and Angie were oblivious. They stared into each other’s eyes and said nothing, their faces lit up with broad grins. What was there to say?
Full recovery took a week. In that time, Chase learned that the conicthyosis procedure wasn’t quite a one hundred-percent restoration process after all.
In the surgical pool, Dr. Holland watched Chase doing free-style laps with flip turns as she explained the residual effects to Angie.
“The templates I used in the Config Engine do the best they can with the existing genotype. Many of the changes are structural changes effected by the nanobots according to the Config Engine. But the bots can’t make changes that aren’t supported by the genes; for major modifications, the genes have to be altered as well. And when you start doing that, affecting the genotype, you’re in potentially dangerous territory.”
Chase stopped his set and popped up at the wall, slightly out of breath. “Wow…Dr. Holland, I’ve never been able to do laps like this. It’s like I can still breathe underwater.:”
“That’s because you can, Chase. You have some residual amphibious capabilities.”
“What?” Angie cried. “Amphib—what exactly do you mean?”
“Chase, show her your hands.”
Chase held up his hands. There was a faint fold of tissue between his fingers. “Like webbed feet, but not as much as before.”
Angie blinked hard. “I thought you said this procedure would reverse everything.”
“Not quite everything. His dorsal fin’s gone, just a slight bony ridge there now. No more armfins. Some residual webbing on his hands and toes. Structurally, the exterior mods went well, as I expected.”
“Exterior…what about interior?”
Now Holland smiled faintly. “Ah, yes…the interior. Well, you know that many amphibious species do what we call cutaneous respiration…their skin is highly vascularized and as long as its moist, they can actually breathe through their skin.”
Angie appeared dumbfounded. “Through their skin….”
“So, Chase can do this as well. Plus, he has residual gills…Chase, show her your armpits.”
Chase lifted his arms. Gill sacs were visible there, as slightly puffy bulges, flexing in and out after his exertions.
Angie nearly fainted.
“My boyfriend’s a frog…is that what you’re saying?”
“Not exactly. Chase is actually what we would call a hybridized amphibious vertebrate animal. Ninety percent indistinguishable from you and me, that is to say human. But with some additional…shall we say features. Physiologically, anatomically, he’s normal, but there are differences in his respiratory system. As I said, my Config Engine is inhibited from making changes at the cellular level that threaten the life of the subject. Based on what we had to work with, this phenotype is the best match. And as you can see—”
“As I can see…I’m getting ninety percent of my Chase back, as long as I don’t look to close and see that he’s a mutant.”
Dr. Holland sniffed. “Really, I think that—”
With that, Chase took off into another set of laps, this time a smooth and powerful butterfly stroke. He made turns and laps at a speed Angie had never seen before.
But what the hell had he become now?
When he was done, Chase hoisted himself onto the side of the pool deck and dried off. That’s when Angie realized he was completely naked. She looked him over as he dried off and wrapped a towel around his waist.
Well, at least some things haven’t been lost….
The three of them went to Dr. Holland’s lab. Tracey and Ron were also there, armed with instruments and scopes that made Angie shudder at the sight of them.
“I’d really like for you to stay a few days longer, Chase,” Holland was saying. She sat behind her desk, called up some diagrams on her monitor and pressed a few buttons. Three-D images materialized on top of the desk, anatomical images of Chase in varying stages of the conicthyosis process, rotating slowly. “I’d like to run some more tests, do some DNA and blood sampling, measure what we’ve got here against my Config Engine templates and tune the bots for future sessions.”
“Future sessions? I thought I was done.” Chase said.
Holland smiled. “I think for you, we’ve done about all we can do for the moment. I was thinking of future possibilities. Tracey here, my intern, thinks that with more data from you, we may be able to evolve the procedure to the point where any creature, say some of your Sea People friends, could actually be modified into something like a Seomish-human hybrid, as you are.”
That got Chase’s attention. “Really? Seomish kelke could actually be like human…by the way, they call us Tailless…among other things.”
Tracey spoke up, pointing out features of the rotating 3-d image of Chase, recorded from inside the containment compartment. “It would take some doing, of course. The Seomish are evolved over I’m guessing millions of years to a marine, underwater environment. We’d have to do extensive genetic research…and testing.”
“I’d really like to try it,” Holland went on. “Maybe you’d could convince some of your friends to come by the Lab for some tests.”
Angie was visibly appalled. “It’s like Frankenstein…what you’re trying to do here—”
But Chase held up a hand. “Maybe not. I know a few who might be willing…there’s a scientist named Likteek for one. And a female, Tulcheah…that would be interesting.”
Angie wanted to get away from Holland and the lab as fast as she could. She glared at Chase with barely concealed annoyance. “Chase, I think you need to go visit your family. Your mom’s been worried sick for weeks…and your Dad, you really do need to go see him.”
“Of course, we can’t keep you here,” Holland admitted. “I can sign the release papers now, if you want. But more tests would be helpful.”
Tracey said, “He really should be kept under observation…for a few more days. Just to be sure.”
Angie was already hoisting Chase up by his arms, ready to march right out of the office. “No way. We’ve got to be going…come on, Chase.”
He let her drag him right out into the hall. “I need to get some clothes, Ang. I can’t go out like this. Do you have a car?”
“We can take a botcar to the hotel. I think I saw a robe in the pool area.” They went to the pool and found it and Chase cinched it up as Angie was pulling him along.
“Hey, girl, what the hell’s gotten into you? You heard Dr. Holland…I’m not ready to be released yet.”
“Oh yes you are. You’re not staying around here a moment longer. We’re going back to the hotel immediately…away from that witc
h doctor and her crew.”
They hailed a robocab and rode in sullen silence all the way back to the Challenger Hotel north of the Institute along Quissett Avenue. The taxi deposited them at a Cape Cod-looking place, with steep slate roofs, gables, turrets and odd cupolas at either end.
In her room, Angie busied herself with an odd-looking device. It resembled a big seashell lined with recessed buttons along the bottom. Chase put on some more decent clothes, jeans and a T-shirt.
“What’s that?”
Angie didn’t reply at first, while she fiddled with the thing. Then: “They called it a ‘coupler.’ I just say what I’ve seen, scan it around and it records everything. Sends it off.”
“Off where?”
“To the government, silly. I’m a spy, remember. I’m supposed to report in every day.” She aimed it at Chase, who smiled and mugged, lifting up his T-shirt to show off his abs…and his gills. Angie huffed in exasperation.
Chase flopped back on the bed and stuck his arms behind his head. He wiggled his webbed feet, watching the toes for a few moments.
“You really want to go back to Scotland Beach? There’s nothing there for me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Angie finished with her scan and put the coupler back in her bag. “Your whole family’s there. Your Dad’s just back from the hospital. You need to see him, show him you care. You do care, don’t you?”
Chase closed his eyes. He had to keep reminding himself that this was a different time stream, that things might not play out as they had before. They had come through the Farpool, Chase and the surviving Seomish, to a time before he and Angie had ever encountered the original Farpool off Half-Moon Cove. He wasn’t really sure what might happen next, how different this time stream might be. From what Angie had said, his Dad had still been shot in the holdup at the Turtle Key Surf and Board Shop. He’d been wounded, gone through surgery, survived and was now home recovering. But would the time stream play out like before or were there subtle differences? It seemed impossible to tell from the clues he could see and hear.
The Farpool_Exodus Page 36
