by Aer-ki Jyr
“What is it?” Jason asked, leaning forward slightly.
“A secret from Antarctica,” Davis said stoically.
Wilson looked at Jason with a bemused smile on his face. “Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, cause Kansas is going bye bye.”
3
“Meaning what, exactly?” Jason demanded.
A strange look crossed over Morgan’s face. “The Black Knight,” she whispered, looking at Davis for confirmation.
Paul and Jason exchanged glances as Davis smiled slowly. “Well deduced.”
“He’s on drugs?” Jason asked, slightly aghast.
“No,” Davis said, then wavered after a glare from Wilson. “Well, sort of. Vermaire is a complicated situation.”
“Do tell,” Paul insisted.
Davis leaned back in his chair and blew out a long breath. “Andre Vermaire was formerly a stuntman working in Hollywood as well as a skilled martial artist. We originally recruited him to help build and oversee our hand to hand combat regimen, both for you and our other Star Force personnel, with an emphasis towards our security forces. He spent two years doing just that until I brought him fully into the fold on the A7 project along with a handful of other people, including Wilson.”
Davis pointed to the vial standing poetically still on his desk. “This is a mixture of synthetic molecules…synthetic because they do not appear to originate from any organic structure, ostensibly created and manufactured by the V’kit’no’sat, though the original source is unknown to us. They have no name for the compound, only a serial number. We call it Ambrosia.”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “Nectar of the Gods?”
“Yes, we thought it was as fitting a name as any. We discovered barrels of the stuff in Antarctica, and later found the corresponding files in the database. It is what you would call a nutritional supplement that was given to their Human slaves.”
“Along with others,” Wilson added.
“I’m getting there,” Davis admonished him. “According to the database the ambrosia had the potential to strengthen the Humans, and was in fact designed specifically for them. The Dinosaurs had their own mixture…actually several, we think, possibly one for each of their races but we haven’t yet been able to confirm that. Our understanding of their language is functional at best, and our access into their computer systems is limited. We believe we have genetic access to some of the files that their slaves would have had, and have been trying to hack into the rest for years with minimal results.”
“They made their slaves stronger?” Morgan asked, not fully understanding.
Davis nodded appreciatively. He’d been down this line of thought many times before. “Try not to think of them as the slaves you’re familiar with from history, such as the Egyptians who built the pyramids with expendable manual labor. The role of a slave can be many things, but the basic definition is that they do not possess their own freedom, and have someone or something as their master or owner. In the case of the V’kit’no’sat Empire, Humans were subservient to the Dinosaurs and their primary slave race, though there have been reference to others.”
“Even still, within the social structure of the Dinosaurs there appeared to be divisions. What they are or how deep they ran we do not know, but it is possible that some of the races were in fact slaves to the others, just as Humans were slaves to them. That’s a theory, but keep in mind that the stronger each race became, the stronger the overall V’kit’no’sat collective became. Weak slaves were of no use to them.”
“Add in the fact,” Wilson said, “that even augmented, the Humans were still vastly weaker than even the smallest Dinosaurs, so strengthening them didn’t pose a security risk.”
“Are the Humans counted as V’kit’no’sat?” Morgan asked. “I thought that was just another name for Dinosaur?”
A smirk found its way to Davis’s face. “Again, we’re not completely sure. We know that the Empire was called V’kit’no’sat, but so were the Dinosaurs within the social structure from the Humans’ point of view. How many races that included…we have no clue. Were there races of Dinosaur that existed outside the Empire? We know of one that rebelled and left, the Rit’ko’sor, but were there others? At this point it’s still speculation. The pyramid database is massive, and we’ve barely been able to scratch the surface…and that’s of the parts that we know are there. If there are in fact genetic locks, then there could be a lot more in the system than we know of.”
“We know they used Humans as troops,” Wilson explained. “Often in a special forces role where their small size was useful. Those teams were well trained, efficient, and large in number. The Dinosaurs didn’t seem to care about losing Humans, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t equip them to win. They had both advanced technology and physical augmentation, including the ambrosia.”
“What exactly does it do?” Paul asked. “You make it sound like a super vitamin.”
Davis deferred to Wilson with a glance.
“Let me ask you this,” he said, looking directly at Jason who was nearest to him. “What would happen if you continued training as you have been and we decided to take away all sugar out of your diet?”
Jason’s face scrunched up in horror. “I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Try,” Wilson insisted.
Jason’s face blanked as he thought. “I’m pretty sure our workouts would tank, but beyond that and being constantly hungry I’m not sure what would happen.”
“Our metabolism would slow,” Morgan answered. “We’d have to eat a greater volume of food to get the same calories, and there would be an absorption lag. Sugar gets digested faster than anything else.”
“You’re saying this is food?” Paul asked Davis, gesturing to the vial of ambrosia.
“It has some caloric value, but not enough to live off of. This is the amount that I ingest over the span of a month.”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “You’re on it?”
Davis nodded. “Minimal amounts for the past five years.”
“So you could kick our asses right now if you wanted to?” Paul asked.
Davis laughed. “No, no…not even close.”
Wilson mock glared at them. “Come now, what are you expecting from a 70-year old?”
Morgan, Paul, and Jason all frowned in sync and stared at Davis.
“You don’t look a day over 50,” Morgan said.
“72 actually,” Davis clarified. “Though I was a bit older before I started taking the ambrosia…and training,” he added before Wilson could say anything.
“It makes you younger?” Jason asked. That didn’t sound right to him.
Again, Davis deferred to Wilson.
“You’ve been told from the day that you were born that you were going to grow old and die and there was nothing you could do about it…if you were lucky enough to live that long. Have you ever wondered why that is?”
Morgan answered for the trio. “Attrition.”
Wilson nodded once. “Then why aren’t you dead already?”
“We’re barely adults. There hasn’t been time.”
Wilson shook his head. “You’re assuming that children are immune to attrition. Why?”
“Because they’re in a state of flux while they’re growing,” Morgan lightly argued. “When that cycle ends is when the attrition begins to take place.”
“Hasn’t that ever bothered you?” Davis asked.
“Yes,” Paul answered honestly.
“How so?”
“Why does it shut off? Why do kids heal faster than adults? We should get stronger over time, not weaker. It’s backwards.”
“It is backwards,” Wilson confirmed, “because it’s not true. You’ve been lied to your entire life.”
“How?” Morgan asked, repositioning her seat so she could get a better angle past Paul’s head. She was intently curious, even more so than the others.
“What’s the purpose of inoculating kids against diseases?”
Paul
answered this time. “To keep them from getting sick later by using a dead or weak version of the virus for the body to adapt to.”
“How does that adaptation occur?”
“The immune system leaves behind virus-specific antibodies so it can more quickly recognize the infection next time.”
“It does far more than that,” Wilson said with mild disgust. “That’s looking at it from a scientist’s perspective, and they know very little. They’re observers, and there’s only so much they can learn looking from the outside in. It’s like a 20-year Nascar fan thinking they know how to drive because they’ve studied the sport from every angle possible…but put them in the car in a race at speed, and odds are they’ll hit the wall before making a full lap. Biology, and life in general, is too complex to scientifically disassemble. You can’t isolate a single variable when you have thousands at play simultaneously…which is why you should never listen to a scientist or doctor when it comes to training.”
“He has a bit of a pet peeve with doctors,” Davis noted.
“And for good reason,” Wilson reinforced. “They have a body of their own that they could study using the biofeedback that only they can access, but that would mean getting their fat asses out of their lab coats and onto the track. They don’t, because they’re lazy and messed up in the head. Because of that, they will never understand certain concepts…one being adaptation through adversity.”
“Back up from the specifics of the immune system that you learned about in school and look at it from a user standpoint. Your body engages in battle against a virus or other illness and learns from it, if it survives. It adapts and becomes stronger against that particular illness, making it less likely to occur again, quicker in duration, and/or milder in case. This is why children are inoculated with a weak ‘opponent,’ so their bodies can learn from it without actually making them sick. A bit of a cheat, but somewhat useful, though not nearly as effective as surviving the actual illness.”
“That means adults should be more immune to disease than they were as children…getting back to your point about everything seeming backwards,” he said, referring to Paul. “Why would your body be getting stronger in one aspect and going backwards in another?”
“That does sound a bit conflicted,” Jason admitted.
“Because it technically doesn’t,” Wilson shared with them like it was the greatest secret the world had ever known.
“Ok, I’ll play Captain Obvious and point out the fact that billions of people around the planet are growing old and dying,” Paul said for the benefit of the conversation, though he too was very interested in where Wilson was going with this. “If they’re not getting weaker, what’s going on?”
“No, they are getting weaker,” Wilson said, letting that hang in the air for a moment. “The real question is why. People generally don’t want to know because they think it’s inevitable anyway, but have you ever thought about what causes a ‘natural’ death? People are labeled of dying of natural causes all the time, but what really happened to them? Or the more pertinent question would be ‘what broke?’ because something always breaks, whether it be the heart, lungs, kidney, liver, brain…something always fails to cause death.”
“But we’re back to attrition again,” Morgan pointed out.
Wilson pointed at her. “But why does it take so long?”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “You’re saying we’re fighting it?”
Wilson smiled. “Of course we are, otherwise we’d be dead inside of 5 years. We’d never even make it to adulthood.”
Jason inclined his head slightly as an insight came to him. “You’re saying old age is an accumulation of damage that is accruing faster than we can heal it?”
Wilson nodded. “And that is something that the medical and scientific communities will not accept, because…”
“Because if it’s damage,” Morgan interrupted him, “then that damage has to come from a source, and with knowledge of the source it’s variable. Get the amount of daily attrition below your daily healing level and you can stop the aging process, maybe even reverse it?”
“Exactly,” Wilson said, glad that she could make the logical progression. “Which means if someone is growing old it’s at least partially their fault…and lazy people do not want to hear that. They’d rather believe it’s inevitable and carry on with their stagnant lifestyle than face the facts. But in order to maintain their delusion everyone has to grow old without exception, which is why in society you have taboos around anything relating to living forever. Children are told that growing up and growing old is just a natural part of life, that it’s supposed to be that way. You even have entertainment written to make people believe that a normal, stagnant life is better than having superpowers and living forever. It’s sick when you begin to see how deep the social corruption goes.”
“Come to think of it,” Jason said, “that does seem to be the general superhero motif, and if someone does try to become immortal it’s always the villain.”
Paul glanced over at him. “Do you remember an old movie called Hancock?”
Jason’s eyes widened. “We watched it during downtime like a year ago? Will Smith’s character lost his powers when he was in proximity to his chick?”
“Do you know the reason why?”
“So they could fall in love,” Jason said, remembering, “grow old, and die…to live normal lives.”
“Power Rangers,” Morgan said, glancing at the floor. “Why would you want to give up your powers to go to college? They said it was the next stage of their lives, which is code for growing old.”
Paul and Jason both stared at her.
“What?” she asked defensively. “It may be a cheap kids show, but it’s been on the air for 50 years for a reason.”
Paul and Jason exchanged curious looks and burst out laughing.
4
“I was actually thinking of thinking of Wolverine,” Jason said, pushing the giggles away. “He supposedly could live forever because of his advanced healing ability.”
“That’s not really a negative example,” Morgan pointed out.
“Except for him being a chronic loner,” Paul added.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jason said, leaving behind the last traces of mirth. “You’re saying our bodies really work like that, minus the extremeness of it?”
“That’s actually a good example,” Wilson credited him. “Except for us it has to be earned through training.”
“Or by reducing the attrition,” Davis interjected. “People are living twice as long today than they did centuries ago for reasons as simple as access to clean drinking water. Primitive cultures, some of which even exist to this day, sad as that is, rarely live to see 30. Nowadays in mainstream society you’re hard pressed to tell the difference from a 15 year old model and a 40 year old one, but then again you have some people beginning to show signs of age at 20. Civilization offers people options, whether you make use of them or not is up to the individual.”
“I get the feeling that’s one of your pet peeves,” Morgan deftly noticed.
“It is,” Davis confirmed. “If and when Star Force is in a position to do so, we’re going to rescue the primitive populations on our planet from their naturalistic existence. No one gets to choose where they are born, and no one should be forced to live a degenerate lifestyle for the sake of cultural protection. There are proponents that are actively fighting to keep aid workers away from jungle tribes in order to keep them from contaminating them with our culture…all the while those people are leading miserable, disease-infested, pathetically short lives.”
“The activists don’t care about those people. They’re tools they use to wage a social war. As far as I’m concerned they’re our brothers and sisters, no matter what language they speak or what culture they’re born into and they deserve access to what we have. Civilization isn’t a disease, it’s a cure, and if it kills some cultures good riddance. Sacrificing an individual’s futur
e to preserve a culture is an abomination that I will never tolerate.”
“Agreed,” Jason said, coming back to the subject at hand, “which begs the question, can the attrition be lowered enough to eliminate all aging?”
“Trick question there,” Wilson answered, “because the attrition rate isn’t the only variable. Your healing rate also changes, up or down. So what is sufficient to overcome the environmental attrition one day might not be so a year later.”
Morgan frowned. “If your body learns from illness and grows stronger, shouldn’t the healing rate either stay the same or increase? Why would it go down?”
“Adaptation,” Wilson answered succinctly.
“How is getting weaker a part of adaptation?”
“That’s the gem of it all. Paul, when you’re in the pool, do you sink or float?”
He grimaced unconsciously. “Barely float if I’m on my back and gently kicking my legs. If I’m motionless I sink.”
“Why?”
“Muscle is heavier than water.”
“And your muscle is built primary from what training, swimming?” Wilson asked mockingly.
“Ah, no, most of it would be running and sparring.”
Now Wilson looked at Morgan. “What if he wanted to convert primarily to swimming? How would his leg muscles adapt?”
She thought about it for a moment then had an epiphany. “They’d gradually diminish in size until they met the demands of the swimming kick he was using, which is far less active than running…therefore making his legs weaker.”
“Weaker in one dimension, but more appropriately balanced for another,” Wilson pointed out. “Adaptation isn’t simply a matter of gaining greater strength, but of customization. If you didn’t have the ability to deconstruct tissue and grow weaker, you couldn’t change your customization. You couldn’t adapt to new circumstance and new requirements, which Darwin would have said was a quick route to extinction.”
“A more drastic example would be a swimmer and a weight lifter. One customizes through putting on a massive amount of muscle in their legs and upper body for quick, powerful, short lifts…the other adds a significant amount of muscle in the upper body with very little added in the legs, all of which is designed for light, repetitive, precise motions. The body adapts the muscle tissue to the task at hand, as well as the joints and other parts based on what you are doing currently.”
