Biohackers: Cybernetic Agents

by Dean C. Moore

  BIOHACKERS

  “Cybernetic Agents”

  By

  Dean C. Moore

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Dean C. Moore. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  “The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly.”

  Klaatu from The Day The Earth Stood Still.

  ACT 1

  THE PROMISED LAND

  ONE

  Rural Oregon

  2020

  10 PM

  “You’re the brain surgeon? Yeah, right.” Roman surveyed the apparatuses about him. It was clearly some sort of auto repair shop, and not exactly a well maintained one. There was grease and soot and grime everywhere and in everything. The devices, assuming they still worked, barely looked like they could repair a ’55 Chevy. Even as a car repair place, it was a sorry excuse.

  The “doctor,” growing self-conscious under Roman’s scrutiny, said, “Let’s not be melodramatic. It’s not like my part in this is all that substantial.”

  “And just what is your part in all this, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  The “doctor” certainly looked geeky enough for the part; he had more twitches and nervous tics than the half-dead machines about them refusing to entirely quiet down, emitting settling-in noises like condemned men crawling into their graves unwillingly. He was rail thin, his limbs and torso gangly, like a four-limbed spider. His beak of a nose was little more than a slip-and-slide for his black plastic-rimmed glasses. All in all, the perfect cliché of geekdom, barring, of course, the greasy mechanic’s outfit, the oily hands, which he’d been toweling dry nonstop since Roman arrived, like a bad take on Lady Macbeth.

  “Shit!” the surgeon shouted, as some cable came undone and spat hydraulic fluid at Roman the second he sat in the doctor’s chair. “Sorry about that,” the doctor said, quieting the eruption and wiping Roman’s face. “Just that the brain surgery doesn’t exactly pay the bills.”

  “No shit.”

  “You got the two-hundred fifty dollars?”

  Roman dug in his jeans pocket and handed him the money. “I’m thinking it’d be better spent at a Roulette wheel.”

  The doctor slid his glasses up his nose, leaving a smudge on the lens, only the latest, making Roman wonder if per chance he moved around the room more like a bat, using some sonar implant, considering there was no way he could see through those things. His hand found its way to Roman’s money readily enough. “Dude, I’m about to make you one of the smartest people in the world. The smartest, considering you’re the first to get this procedure, and the rest can only hope to play catch up. And if the AI learning curve is anything like it’s purported to be, there is no catching up.”

  “Assuming you don’t kill me first.”

  The doctor sighed.

  “What’s your name, anyway? For the police report, I mean.” The doctor gave him a blank look. “For after I kill you for botching the surgery.”

  “Oh!” He sounded relieved now that he understood. “They call me the Mad Hatter.”

  Roman’s eyebrows furrowed just deeply enough to create a ridge for Lilliputians to do their suicide dives off of in an effort to plunge into the puddle of piss he was sure he’d left on the floor with the pronouncement.

  The good doctor rescued him with an explanation. “Sorry, I suppose I should explain. They call this the hat,” he said, pointing to a monitor he’d just flicked on that Roman was sure did double duty assessing cars’ electrical systems. The animation showed the surgery he was here for. A syringe injected a nanonet into a person’s skull, just over the grey matter of the brain. The net spread out until it looked like a wide-brimmed hat, and then it spread out some more until it was evenly canvassing the man’s noggin. “Looks more like an umbrella to me, to tell you the truth,” the doctor said. “But everyone who has gotten this surgery so far has gone stark raving mad. Hence my nickname.”

  Roman’s gasp brought with it the odors of decades of frustrated toil on broken down automobiles. How many decades more of frustration would be spent putting Humpty Dumpty back together following his brain surgery? “I thought you just said I was the first to get this procedure.”

  “The first to survive it, anyway. At least that’s the hope,” Hatter said with an encouraging smile. He slid his glasses back up his nose with a push of his index finger and batted his eyes, possibly in a vain hope to hide his lying eyes.

  “And you’re sure you’ve gotten the formula right this time because…?” If the good doctor could paint the shop over in Roman’s cynical tone, it might just be acid enough to strip all the grease out of the place in one application.

  “DARPA swears by it. Of course, they’ve only tried it out on mice so far. But they’re confident they’ve nailed it this time.”

  “How did you get your hands on DARPA tech?”

  The doctor shrugged. “I have two brothers and a sister. One’s a hacker. One’s a thief. One’s an assassin. All top shelf. Good gene pool.”

  “Ah, ha. Well, better get on with it then.”

  “I need to ask you why you’re getting the surgery, Roman. Just due diligence and all that.”

  Roman relaxed into the chair, hit the recline function. “It’s a new age, brother. And no one, but no one is getting to the Promised Land ahead of me.”

  “Yeah, I can dig it. That’d be my answer.”

  “How come you haven’t gotten it then?”

  “I think for this particular upgrade, I’ll settle for being number two in line.”

  Roman sighed. “Sanity, like reality, is overrated.”

  As the doctor filled the syringe, Roman thought he’d make small talk. “Mind if I ask what upgrades you got?”

  “Complete muscular-skeletal redo. Stronger than the hydraulic lift over there holding that car up.”

  Roman made a “Phew!” sound with his lips like a kettle letting off steam.

  “Some other things.” The doc said the last part as if he didn’t trust Roman enough yet to come clean on every enhancement he’d picked up along the way. He wouldn’t be the first biohacker to exercise caution in that department.

  “Of course, most of my tweaks are from using the CRISPR and MAGE units out back,” the doctor said. “Still not sure how I feel about artificial devices like this neuronet that allegedly couples with our biological systems without incident.”

  “Great, even my doctor doesn’t believe in the surgery.”

  “I find sounding more confident about it prior to collecting the $250 helps.”

  “No shit.” Roman found himself shifting his weight in the recliner, tensing up again. It suddenly felt hard, as if his cowered heart was no longer pumping enough blood to revitalize the parts of his body coming into contact with the chair.

  “Do you want me to strap you down, cause I don’t think you should be moving around for this?” the Mad Hatter said, holding up the filled syringe.

  Roman jerked in the chair at the sight of the mile-long needle and threw him another flabbergasted look. “Please. Love a good bondage scene.”

  The doctor set the syringe down and strapped him into the chair, securing h
is head with a band across his forehead as the last restraint he put in place.

  “What’s your portal of entry?” Roman asked.

  The doctor froze. “Sorry, that just sounded a bit gay.”

  Roman smiled. “I hope you can get past it.”

  “You don’t remember the video? Hmm. Must be the nerves.”

  “I remember it just fine, doc. That guy had the top of his skull removed.”

  The doctor picked up the power drill and fired it up. “I’ll be coming in through the top of your skull. No worries. I have a nice putty mix to seal that hole back up. Compound works great on bent car fenders too, in case you were wondering.”

  Roman gulped. If he could stare at that syringe without breaking a sweat, the sound of that drill definitely broke him.

  He didn’t remember much after that.

  ***

  “How’d it go?” Roman asked, looking up at the doctor’s face coming into focus just a few inches from his. Up this close, the brain surgeon’s gaunt, skeletal features made him look like an anorexic version of one of the Mt. Rushmore faces.

  Being as the doctor hadn’t administered an analgesic prior to the procedure and his passing out, he might have been right about Roman’s nerves acting up more than Roman cared to admit.

  The doctor rotated Roman’s seat so he could see. “Perfect deployment on that parachute, baby!” He was celebrating well ahead of Roman, half way through a bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Roman ran his eyes over the footage on the monitor and grabbed the bottle out of his hands. Took a swig. “You sure it worked?”

  “Well, I’ll be coming with you to make sure.”

  “Say again?” Roman rubbernecked from the screen so hard, he heard his cervical vertebrae pop.

  “’Fraid so. Only way to deal with any complications as they arise. No worries. Having a good mechanic on tap is just as important these days as having a good brain surgeon. And I make a great body guard. No one sees me coming, with the whole klutzy, anorexic geek thing I got going on, I mean.”

  “Like how long are we talking?”

  Hatter shrugged his shoulders. “Two, three years, maybe. We might have to expand that to five to ten if we hit any rough patches.” He slapped Roman on the back and grabbed the bottle back. “Enough time for me to grow on you.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Well, technically it’s my job to make sure you aren’t, but why split hairs?” He handed Roman the bottle back who decided he needed a drink more than ever.

  “Where are we headed, Patient Zero?”

  Roman gave him a sour look which the alcohol was softening fast. “I belong to a biohacker commune, hidden away up in the mountains. Far away from civilization.”

  “Yeah, I heard about them. A bunch of techno-hippies.”

  “That’d be us, all right. You should fit right in.”

  Hatter grimaced. “I’m a bit weird around other people.”

  “Like I said, you’ll fit right in.” Roman eased out of the chair and staggered. The doctor had to use his superhuman strength to keep him from falling on his face. “I gather that’s not a good sign.”

  “Dude, you just consumed a third of a bottle of Jack Daniels. Let’s not read too much in to the swagger.”

  Roman laughed. But Hatter’s concerned eyes sobered him.

  TWO

  The container ship had become a seesaw. Empty stomach or no, Elsa was still trying to heave her insides out. The waves splashing over the sides were rearranging the boxes. If the storm grew any more violent, they’d lose most of the canisters over the side; they’d capsized a fair amount already. It was time for some remedial measures.

  Elsa held her hand up to the sky at the next flash of lightning against the blackened expanse, drawing the jolt down and through her. She sustained the pulse long enough to electrify the ship. She just needed the all-metal surfaces of the ship magnetized enough to work her magic. For that to happen, the ship had to be pointing north. Check. And the metal surfaces had to receive repeated blasts until the atomic-level magnetic domains could rearrange themselves into a magnetic field. For that, she needed to ride out a few more lightning strikes, let the Thor’s hammer-force of each bolt do the rest for her. By the third pulse, the job was finished. Now the cases were “glued” to one another and to the deck just enough so they wouldn’t lose any more cargo over the side. The ship’s captain should thank her.

  The sensor disks all over the surface of her body just beneath the skin really weren’t made for this kind of punishment. They were designed for scanning and detecting most any kind of energy field, and reading whatever information was being trafficked along each slice of the EMF spectrum. But she’d seen to stringing nanowires throughout her body, a kind of backup nervous system for days like today. It usually just kept her from getting overloaded if someone tried a Taser on her. She really hadn’t anticipated channeling lightening at the time of her makeover. But she’d absorbed enough Taser-like blasts in her day for the body to get the hang of moving inordinate amounts of energy. However many biopsies and blood analyses later, her biohacker doctors had what they needed for additional CRISPR tweaks to her genome. So here she stood, goddess of the night sky.

  Elsa used the repulsing magnets in her feet to levitate over the deck of the ship as she jumped off the railing, sliding with the downward dipping bow towards mid-ship. There she once again grabbed hold of the railing, checked for her pirate ship pulling up alongside. The dutiful Chinese captain and his Chinese crew were keeping the recently appropriated trawler in line with the container ship. No easy feat in these waters. The slightest wrong move and the small renegade vessel would be smashed into kindling. It looked like a newborn baby whale riding alongside its mother.

  Shooter sent the harpoon hurtling towards her. It ran out of force just short of the mark. Elsa assisted it the rest of the way, levitating it towards her using the magnetic draw of the disks in her hand. Fastened the hook to the railing.

  As the crew scurried up the line, she went about her business feeling the containers for precious cargo, running her hands along their surfaces, scanning. With time and training she’d learned to read the impressions her scanners broadcasted to her, associate them with the proper images. Her wristbands were miniature battery-powered generators with ASIs built in that could read her mind, or more specifically the communiqués from her mindchip, and act on her directives. In this case to dial up the energy of the metal plate detectors in her finger tips to extend their range and direct the diagnostics outward instead of inward. The battery-powered generators in the wristband, along with their ASIs, were more of her proprietary tech, of course.

  The probes were reading precious cargo after about five crates on the bottommost layer of containers. She pointed a half-dozen or so of the Chinese pirates that had poured over the side to the bounty. They busied themselves with opening the container and stealing away with its merchandise. The raiders formed themselves into a line to ferry the goods back to the pirate ship. It was a small matter to drop the boxes over the side and let an AI-enabled crane snatch them up and lay them on deck where additional crew could ferry the booty into storage cabins beneath deck.

  They hadn’t figured on a container full of RPGs and their accompanying launchers. But what the hell? Illicit cargo was illicit cargo. And someone would pay mightily for it.

  She’d scanned a good twenty containers more before she hit on something truly interesting. Life signs. It was the most precious bounty of all. She gestured for another team to open the doors on the canister. Out poured the refugees.

  Elsa just smiled. Having anticipated this, she had a second ship in tow with a skeleton crew for the new recruits. The ship in tow had enough room to take everyone still alive. They were Haitian this time. It was a damn shame. A good amount of the Chinese refugees came with the requisite skill sets for playing pirate, with their martial arts training.

  Witness the ones currently fighting off the captain and his c
rew that had gotten wind of what was going on and felt brave enough to tackle the storm and the pirates both in the same fell swoop. Of course, many of the brave fools were being dispatched by the storm before her soldiers could even get to them. They hadn’t had the good sense to wear magnetic shoes as had her pirates. Between the rocking of the ship and the greedy arms of the waves, only one in three were getting close enough to her people to do any fighting at all. At which point they found out that karate kicks really did best shotguns and rifles and handguns when the ground you were standing on was heaving like the breasts of a woman about to climax.

  Shit! The ocean had picked up, and the crates were sliding towards one another, overcoming the magnetic field she’d taken such pains to generate. Elsa glided towards the tide of fleeing Haitians. Extended her hands to either side and screamed as she used her repulsing magnets to reverse the directions of the sliding crates closing in on them like the jaws of death.

  She held up her head to the sky, took the bolt of lightning straight to the center of her forehead. It gave her the boost she needed to push back the crates. And it had one more interesting side effect, besides knocking her out, the latter being the result she expected.

  The energy pulse had opened her third eye—wide open. She was seeing the near future, a point just minutes from now when the ship would crack in two and sink to the bottom, unable to take the wave action anymore. She could have been delusional, just as likely an explanation for taking a bolt like that to the forebrain. The cluster of disks just beneath her skin in that area notwithstanding. But she’d read enough of energy medicine practiced in the Far East to think there might indeed be another explanation. And even if she couldn’t believe in that explanation, forewarned is forearmed, even for a cynic.

  The spray of icy cold water from the latest wave over the deck snapped Elsa back into the present. Along with the fish market smell of so many sea creatures now sharing her fate aboard the container vessel, deposited by one or another wave. She was shivering to stay warm, or from the shock of what she’d just seen in her mind’s eye, take her pick. “Get off the ship, now!” she screamed.