by Aer-ki Jyr
“Outside my area of expertise,” the tech said with a bashful smile as she turned back to her own console. “I’ll let you to it then.”
Paul nodded, but didn’t turn around. Instead, he pulled up the schematic of a mobile unit, far larger than any jumpship Star Force had constructed…larger than even one of the Hycre ones, and he stared at it for a long time, hardly believing his eyes.
“They actually built one,” he whispered to himself. “They built a freaking Star Forge.”
6
November 15, 2409
Solar System
Earth
“You’re up,” the tech said to Paul as Darren-7933 walked out of the genetic alteration machine, his procedure now complete.
Paul passed him halfway and clapped him on the shoulder as he walked by, then he stepped inside the small cage-like confines as the tech on station began scanning him.
“Your ID?”
“Paul-024.”
The tech raised his eyebrows as he pulled up his file on the V’kit’no’sat equipment. “Last of the trailblazers…or no, second to last. Taryn’s still missing, isn’t she?”
“She’s on the Nestafar front. She won’t be back for a while.”
“Where have you been?” the tech asked, working the controls. “The others got here quick as they could.”
“Lizard front,” Paul answered simply, forcing himself to be calm. Something about being in the center of the machine unnerved him.
“Well, looks like this is going to be a simple procedure…you’re not showing any growths as of yet, so I’m just going to activate your latent abilities. No repair work needed. You want any changes made?”
Paul frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We figured out how to make some small modifications about 6 months ago. It’s a part of the standard program, but like most V’kit’no’sat coding it was hidden in the customized options. We thought the machine was locked into Zen’zat genetics…which it is, but there’s some variability there. I can change your hair color, eye color, stuff like that…”
“Don’t suppose you can turn my facial hair off?” Paul half joked. He hated shaving.
“Sure can,” the tech said, “but I’ll need you to pick a line for your sideburns.”
Paul raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah, it’s not hard. Some of the others turned off their body hair too, and some their head hair. I don’t know why you’d want to be bald, unless it’s something to do with the helmet thing? I can turn off or on any follicles you want.”
“How do I show you the sideburns?”
“Step over here.”
Paul walked out and around to the operator’s side of the machine and saw a hologram of his body. The tech zoomed into his head, then his right ear.
“Draw your mark,” the tech prompted.
Paul looked at the hologram, seeing all the hair follicle locations tagged…including places on his face that currently didn’t have hairs. He took his finger and traced a line across the side of his head, cutting off his hairline where he currently had it shaved. The tiny red icons switched to blue, indicating that they were tagged for deactivation.
Paul spun the hologram around and did the other side of his face, then ran his finger over his ears, taking off the tiny hairs there, and drew a line across the top of his neck.
“Is there an area highlighter?”
“Here,” the tech said, pulling up an option on the menu.
“Thanks,” Paul said, dragging it over his face to cover his facial hair while missing his eyebrows and eyelashes…then he chiseled those the way he liked, zooming in quite close to get the shape he wanted. “I assume these can be turned back on later?”
“Can be, but right now this is the only unit capable of doing it.”
“Good,” Paul said, highlighting his entire body below the neck and turning all the follicles blue.
“Hair color?”
“I’m fine with black,” Paul said, checking over to make sure he’d tagged everything he wanted. “Looks good,” he said, walking back around and inside the machine.
“Going with the streamlined look, huh?”
“Will the hairs fall out?” Paul asked.
“Give it a few days, but yeah, you’ll be shedding for a while. You might have to scrape your face a bit to dislodge the tiny pieces, given that there’s not much there. I had to.”
“You’ve used the machine?” Paul asked, a bit concerned.
“Only Archons have gotten the Zen’zat upgrades, but we experimented with some of the other stuff on ourselves. Now I’ve got a perfect goatee that I no longer have to trim up, just shave down to length. Takes all of 30 seconds where it used to take 10 minutes.”
“Is that why I noticed a female tech with aqua-colored hair?”
“Sharron…yeah, she did that with the machine. You can get some really weird combinations…even some striping. There’s quite a few ‘experiments’ walking around the pyramid right now.”
“Any side effects?”
“Not so far, and I don’t think there will be. It’s pretty straight forward stuff. If anything I’d be concerned with the psionics upgrades, but there hasn’t been one reported case of problems to make its way back here.”
“There hasn’t been,” Paul confirmed.
“I guess you’d know before me,” the tech admitted. “You guys seem to keep things pretty close to the vest, if you ask me.”
“When you do what we do,” Paul explained, “other people just don’t get it. If we want to share something, better to share it with those that will understand. Are we good to go?”
“Just running a few final checks. There’s a bit of anomalous coding in your genome. Don’t want you to end up growing another arm or something,” he joked.
Paul frowned. “Define ‘anomalous?’”
“Something that doesn’t match the Zen’zat template. I’ve seen a few of these before. Standard protocol is not to touch them, but I like to give the person the option…which is why I’m trying to isolate what the deviation is. Don’t want to take away any accidental superpowers you’ve developed,” he said with a wink.
“What were the others?”
“The ones that I personally handled were mostly dormant, so we lost them in the wash. Two were active. One was an alteration in the lungs, the other was a growth in her feet. The lungs was an improvement, the feet weren’t, so we undid the growth. Never heard how that turned out, but since we didn’t get back any bad news I assumed there wasn’t a problem.”
“Do you remember who she was?”
“Don’t have to, have the file saved,” the tech said, pulling up a side menu and going back through the history logs. “Agnieszka-2117. Came through here a little under a year ago.”
“What was the growth?”
“It waaassss…” he said, checking, “a lump in the ankle. A bone growth, to be specific. It wasn’t hindering movement, but it didn’t need to be there so she opted to have it removed.”
“How long did that take?”
“The regenerator in this thing can take you apart and put you back together alarmingly fast, though technically it doesn’t tear anything down, it just regrows you to specs…but if there’s tissue there that’s not in the specs it has to get rid of it.”
“What if you use the wrong scan? Do I end up with someone else’s body?”
“No, it doesn’t work off a scan. It pulls directly from your living genetics, which is why we have to alter those first. There are gobs of safety protocols built in, so don’t worry. I’ve been using it enough that I pretty much know what I’m doing,” he said with a smile.
“I’m overflowing with confidence,” Paul said sarcastically.
“Here we go…your anomalous coding is centered around your nose. Looks like a deformity.”
“How does it know that, based off of Zen’zat standards?”
“Zen’zat genetics don’t include any deformities…or, to put it another
way, there’s a range of possible body shapes, and when something is outside of them it flags it as a deformity. Yours makes your nasal passage a bit larger than normal. That probably allows you to get a bit more air into your lungs…”
“And water up my nose?”
“I can’t say to that, I’m not much of a swimmer.”
“Tempting…” Paul said, considering the revision, “but leave it as is for now. Anything else?”
“Nope…scan is clean aside from that. Well, I mean clean as in big stuff. There’s a lot of dormant coding that will uncover that won’t have any immediate effect. Stuff that’s supposed to be dormant at the outset, but not buried as far as it is now.”
“Second tier psionics?”
“Not what I was getting at, but probably. Over the millennia our genetics have adapted to fit the requirements of our daily lives. Zen’zat are fighting and training. The populace…not so much, so some of the shifts have been detrimental, making you work harder for advancement than you should have been. Think of it like a parking lot that gets snowed on and never used. Builds up a thick layer a foot or so deep. Then you try and drive in and park and have trouble moving through it all. When we reset to defaults, the snow gets wiped away.”
“End result?”
“You get a little more superhuman than normal? I don’t really know. You’d have to ask the other Archons that have had the procedure…though it would be different for each of you, to some degree. I would guess the younger ones would see more of an effect, given that you guys have already brushed off most of the ‘snow’ already with your insane training…hence the spontaneous psionics appearing.”
“Or I can just find out firsthand,” Paul commented.
“Yeah…can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“We’ve all got Zen’zat genetics…so when are you going to let non-Archons get the procedure?”
“For what purpose?” Paul asked neutrally.
“Well…you’d think that the Knights should, at least.”
“The Knights are trained to do one thing and one thing only, and that’s fight hand to hand. If they branch out into other areas it will dilute their efficiency. They’re not as good as us, so the only way they can keep up on the battlefield is to focus all their training into one area. That and the drug enhancements are the only reason they’re on par with us.”
“What about the rest of us then?”
“Other than it just being cool, what do you need them for?”
“General advancement of the Human race, for starters. I’m sure I could cite several specifics if I had time to think about it.”
“Let me ask you a different way…why aren’t we giving all the Archons the procedure?”
“I wondered that myself.”
“Because the adepts already have a lot on their plate, and they need to focus on other areas of training. Throw too much at them and it’ll slow their development. Let them master a few things first, then give the psionics a go. Stair-step advancement.”
“I suppose that makes sense, from a certain point of view.”
“Feeling left out?”
“I suppose you could say that…especially since I’m operating the very machine that makes it happen and I’m not allowed to use it on myself.”
“I can understand that,” Paul sympathized.
“But you’re still not going to let us?”
“I won’t say an absolute no, but if we’re not letting adepts, why would we let anyone else of lower rank?”
“What about the Director?”
Paul raised an eyebrow. “Has he been down here?”
“No…just thinking out loud.”
“Fine, you win…” Paul relented. “When 900 years old you reach, get the procedure, you will.”
The tech frowned. “You’re not even 900 yet.”
Paul shrugged. “Archon.”
The tech pointed at him. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
Paul smiled. “How old are you?”
“112.”
“Remind me in 788 years.”
“Deal,” the tech said, glancing over the final settings. “Looks like we’re good to go. Try and hold still while the machine makes contact. After that you’ll be numbed up and can’t move anyway.”
Paul rolled up his sleeves as he’d seen the previous Archon do and placed his hands on two circular pylons in front of him. “Ready.”
“One Archon car wash coming up,” the tech said deadpan as he activated the machine.
The entryway Paul had walked in through disappeared as several arm-like mechanical extensions twisted around the chamber like fast-growing roots of a metallic tree, with several of them moving in and making contact with Paul’s body. Both of his arms and the back of his neck were targeted, then he felt a numbness creep down his back and up his arms as the liquid metal spread out across his body underneath his clothing like a regenerator, finally spreading up over his face in tendrils and causing him to get drowsy enough that his eyelids flopped down and cut off his vision.
“Just relax,” the tech said reassuringly. “Your genetic code is being reset, and it takes a while to hit every cell of your body, especially the deep tissue. The range of the filaments is rather short, but considering the rewrite they’re doing it’s downright amazing. I’m tracking the progress on the hologram and everything is proceeding normally. Just wait this out for a few minutes.”
Not like Paul had a choice. He felt like he was wrapped up in a numbing cocoon.
“If you’re curious to know, the genetic reset would be sufficient on its own,” the tech said, purposefully making conversation to give Paul something to focus on, “but the growth process of the new tissue would take time and could develop problems, somewhat like your fellow Archons were suffering from. By building the tissue here and now that problem is avoided…and you have instant access to the new abilities, though it will take time to learn how to use them…you’re at 25% now and looking good.”
Paul would have nodded, had he any control over his head. He sensed it was still upright, but had no way of knowing if that was an illusion or the machine was locking it in place. All he saw was staticy black with a disembodied feeling, almost like he was floating in a cool sea of nothingness.
He’d used a regenerator before, but it had never taken this long, nor had it had this total body takeover…then again, his injuries had never been so massive as to require it, either. He wondered how much this would hurt if he wasn’t numbed, or if the genetic alterations could even be felt.
“50% now…still going strong. Getting down into your skeleton a bit. This thing goes after every cell, no matter how compacted or dead. Even the hairs on your head get altered so there’s no competing genetics. A bit of overkill if you ask me, but the V’kit’no’sat tech has a reputation for being thorough…at least the medical implements are. Don’t know about the rest.”
“Looks like it’s into your major organs now,” the tech continued. “Don’t worry, operation of your heart and lungs won’t be affected, the machine hits them on the run, so to speak. 75%, and now transitioning up into the brain. Last stop for the changes…and don’t be alarmed if your vision and hearing go…”
Paul heard a pause, then several seconds later the man’s voice returned.
“…and that’s when it gets reset. Looks like it’s just about finished…now. 100% genetic transformation. Congratulations, you’ve just had your Zen’zat genetic bath, now to get your physical parts matching up.”
In mind’s eye Paul’s legs and arms came back into existence, but only partially. He could feel they were there but still couldn’t move them.
“Don’t try to move, even though you may be sensing some motor control returning. The psionics are all centered in your brain, so it’s important to keep your head still while the regenerator grows them. You’ll be gaining a few grams of tissue, by the way, so you may have something of a headache for a day or two while your equilibrium resets.
The regenerator takes care of most of that, but I’ve heard stories of it taking a few days for the effects to fully wear off, and you Archons aren’t given to whining, so I assume it must be significant if you’re talking about it.”
As he spoke, Paul could feel a pressure building inside his mostly numbed head, then it subsided, only to repeat again several times before the regenerator liquid leads finally retracted from his back and gave him full use of his body below his neck, but his head was held in a brace that the machine arms had formed that wouldn’t let him move so much as a millimeter.
As instructed he tried to remain still, but had the urge to twitch his finger…which he found was firmly stuck to the pedestal his hand was on.
“Almost done now,” the tech said. “Making some final calibrations to the rest of your brain tissue to accommodate the new hardware. Your hands should disconnect shortly. That’s where the extra material for the new issue is entering your body. If you could see the hologram you’d be impressed with all the micro-conduits the regenerator is creating and disassembling inside of you. How it doesn’t damage your tissue in the process still amazes me…there, procedure complete.”
Paul’s head unnumbed to a slight headache as the mechanical arms retracted, both away from his body and into their previous placements, opening up the doorway out of the transformational cage.
“Take it slow,” the tech urged. “Best to let your head settle before you try…”
Suddenly Paul’s vision snapped open…or rather his visual information was augmented by his Pefbar ability, allowing him to see the cage around him in all directions, lacking in detail as it was save for the areas still in his vision, which now seemed to be laden with extra clarity.
“Holy crap,” Paul said, getting used to the spherical vision, “this is so cool.”
“I hear that a lot,” the tech mildly complained. “Guess I’ll have to wait 788 years to find out for myself.”
Paul grinned. “Test out as an Archon and you can do it in less than half that time.”
