Errant Contact

by T. Michael Ford

  “When I was eight, I started receiving my first implants; those became my annual birthday presents from my parents. I spent a month or more in the hospital every year until I reached twelve or so. Also at eight, I started the combat simulations. They started out simply at first, one or two clumsy robotic opponents and hand weapons. By the time I was ten, the simulations were using live weapons against me and I against them. I probably destroyed thousands of robotic opponents in my twelfth year alone. Some were designed to look like aliens, some like Quetanae; hell, some were even dressed up like children and their pets. Laree, they were even fashioned to bleed like corporeal creatures. The older I became, the more realistic the challenges. My opponents planned, developed tactical changes on the fly, and coordinated their attacks. Sometimes, I had advanced weaponry; other times, nothing more than a stick. The testers would deliberately cause my weapons to malfunction to see if I could adapt and still complete my mission. I learned to trust no one, trust no situation; everyone was a threat to be eliminated. Then, one day, it all came to an end.

  “On my thirteenth birthday, I was surprised to find myself not in the hospital, but in a huge training complex that I had never seen before. By that time, I already had most of the enhancements that I have now, and I was as large as a full-grown Quetanae adult. I was unaware that it was a special day beyond my birthday, which I had never liked anyway. It was the day my parents had decided they had collected enough data on their test subject that they could reproduce more like me. It was the day they were going to show me off to their military masters.

  “I never actually found out the sequence of events that led to the disaster. My parents had been sending regular reports and vids of my progress to the general in charge of overseeing the program. He was aware of how I performed in simulations. But to the military mind, simulations, no matter how realistic, are flawed because they lack a real live opponent’s ingenuity.

  “Surely, someone like Kalaya could have…”

  “No,” he interrupted vehemently, “none of Kalaya’s people would have ever consented to be a part of anything like that. Anyway, that training compound was run by the regular military; it was not part of my parents’ covert facility, so they had no control there. It occurred to me later that it was very strange that there appeared to be civilians in viewing stands above the arena. Men, women, children with balloons, all gaily dressed as if they were going to a sporting event or a performance of some kind. That mattered little to me, however, I was trained not to lose my focus for any reason.

  “I had no way of knowing that those civilians were the families of the men and women I was going to kill. The general had replaced the combat simulation robots I was supposed to fight with twenty living soldiers in full military battle gear. To his credit, all of the weapons provided were set to non-lethal settings.”

  “Oh, my God, a thirteen-year-old boy against twenty professional soldiers?” I gasped. He looked down and I could see tears forming in his eyes.

  “It was a standard elimination scenario designed to look like the ruins of a city. Simple, burned-out vehicles, chunks of stone and ferrocrete, twisted beams, and shards of glass. When the exercise began, I was at one end of the compound and they were spread out at the other. I immediately realized after my first couple of shots that the weapon I had been given was worthless to complete my mission.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I improvised,” Kodo said in a halting, hushed, almost eerie voice devoid of emotion. “I saw the blood; I heard the orders to stand down being screamed from the loudspeakers. But I had seen those tricks before, you see. I couldn’t stand down until I had finished the mission, so I finished the mission. When it was over, I waited back in the clearing where I began, watching with curious detachment as the doors burst open and hospital corpsmen flooded the area and began checking my simulation opponents. High above me on the main viewing stand, I could see my parents being put into restraints by armed security personnel.

  “I watched as a group of what looked like high-ranking officials argued off to one side and occasionally pointed down at me. I suppose I retained enough self-consciousness that I looked down at myself to try and figure out what they were pointing at. I was completely covered in blood. Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest, but simulation blood usually became clear in color and odorless as soon as the game was over. This didn’t.”

  Kodo cleared his throat and wiped a tear from his dirty face. “I remember the face of a little girl from the civilian viewing stands. She had wandered down to the railing closest to where I stood and was crying and screaming at me. ‘Why? Why?’ I couldn’t answer her; I had no idea what she was asking. Finally, after I had stood there at a stiff parade rest for at least an hour, someone came for me.

  “It was a woman in uniform, but not a military style. She introduced herself as Janneal and asked me my name. I couldn’t tell her because I wasn’t aware that I had one. She had blonde hair and a nice smile and seemed genuinely concerned about what had happened. I was confused, my simulation exercise was over, yet I hadn’t been taken back to my quarters. In fact, everyone seemed to have left the area; the corpsmen had retrieved the bodies and everyone had left the viewing stands. As far as I could tell, she and I were alone.

  “Since I hadn’t been ordered not to speak to this woman, I began haltingly responding to her questions. ‘Do you mind if I call you Kodo?’ she asked, flashing me that disarming smile again, as she led me over to a bench not far from the door where I entered the area. We sat and immediately a small-tracked robot appeared carrying a tray of sandwiches and a tumbler of milk. ‘You must be starving. Please eat; we can talk when you are finished.’

  “I remember she looked at the drone and touched its head lightly. The little guy tore out of there so fast I thought he would cast a track. A few minutes later, it returned carrying clean fatigues in my size and some warm damp cloths. At her suggestion, I cleaned my face and hands as best I could and changed clothes. Finally, I started to resemble a young man again, and our robot friend carried off the bloody rags.

  “We must have talked for hours; this was an entirely new experience for me. Most of my commands from my handlers were in short, direct sentences. Of course, I had listened to one-on-one discussions on the historical vids that I was allowed to watch, but I had never been a participant. She asked about my life, what things did I enjoy, did I have any friends? Most of those questions I had no answer for and this seemed to trouble her immensely. She looked angry when I explained all the surgeries and implants that I had experienced.

  “Finally, she took a deep breath and looked at me as if she was making an assessment of my entire being. ‘Kodo, I appreciate you talking to me and answering my questions. We really need to look at getting you a hot shower and getting you to bed, young man! I have one last request, though; would you mind if I touched you on the back of your neck? It would help me understand you better.’ I shrugged and nodded. Captivated by the uniqueness of her presence, I probably would have walked through a pool of burning pitch if she had asked. I guess you could say she was my first crush.

  “She reached out hesitantly, and where her hand rested, I felt a tingle that resembled a mild electrical current that then passed deeper into my upper spine. She withdrew it a few seconds later and graced me with a smile tinged with sadness. ‘Thank you, Kodo. Believe me when I say that I am so sorry about what those people put you through, and I will do everything in my power to get you the help you need.’”

  I was becoming increasingly disturbed by this story, but I reasoned that it had to get better at some point, didn’t it? “So what happened to your parents?” I asked quivering.

  “I found out from Janneal that when the authorities hacked into the research complex, they found all the records and files on me, and they were exposed for what they had done. In Quetanae society, the experiments were considered immoral and illegal, even if done in the name of science. They were tried in court and b
riefly jailed, but certain elements in the government considered them too valuable to rot in a cell. So they were sentenced to life imprisonment working at an off-world research facility supposedly under close watch. I remember how angry Janneal became when she told me about that.

  “I spent that night in a small quiet room at the compound. The next day, I found out that sixteen of the twenty Quetanae soldiers that I had believed to be simulations were dead; the other four would never pick up a weapon again. The military was deliberating about what exactly to do with me. I received another visit from Janneal. She explained that, while no one placed any of the blame for the incident directly on me, they couldn’t exactly set someone with my past free onto an unsuspecting society either.

  “A few hours later my life changed for the better in so many ways. There was a knock on my door and a nice woman stepped inside and told me that she was going to be taking care of me. Her name was Mercia; she was the eldest daughter of a captain of one of the divisions of the cyber police. Her husband and young son had died tragically in a shuttle malfunction a few years earlier. She was a municipal structures design specialist so she did most of her work from home.”

  Kodo smiled genuinely for the first time since he started his story. “So I left my life of combat training and moved in with the woman I consider my real mother. Even though we only had a few years together, those were some of the best years of my life. The only thing I didn’t like was that she insisted I go to school. In retrospect, it was an all-around bad idea. I had no experience with kids my age, and the teenage years can be a handful for normal children.

  “Back then, I was a lot like I am now. I didn’t talk much and I didn’t show much in the way of emotions. The other kids couldn’t relate to me and I couldn’t relate to them. There were a few times when a headstrong kid would try something even though I was always bigger and stronger. They took my silence for timidity and a few fights occurred. Several times, Mercia was called down to the school, and I think even Janneal showed up once to smooth things over with the teachers and the other kid’s family. But never once did either of them say they were mad at me; I never understood why.

  “But eventually, the school had had enough and I was sent to a different school. There, I couldn’t get dragged into a physical confrontation even if I wanted to. It was a school for synthetic organisms, basically Kalaya’s people.”

  Wow, they actually go to a real school? Kalaya’s people take their integration into society seriously. I tried to imagine a classroom populated only by holograms. Writing with holographic pens on holographic paper. Doing research on holographic microscopes, eating holographic mystery meat pizza…

  “Anyway,” he continued, his words snapping me out of my daydream, “school there was a lot better, except they made me start all over yet again. But it wasn’t such a big deal at the time. I actually started learning to integrate into society and even had fun with my classmates. Fast forwarding a bit, I finally graduated from what you would consider basic school, and it was time to decide what I wanted to do with my life.

  “The military had always kept tabs on me and they wanted me to enlist with them. They even went so far as to send a general to talk to me and offer me an officer’s position right out of college. But I was done with all that; every time I picked up a rifle, I saw the face of that crying little girl at the simulation arena.

  “Mercia insisted that I follow my heart, and what it turned out I really loved was in the same field that she enjoyed. I told you that she was a structures design specialist. Sometimes at night, I would sneak down to her office and make some improvements on her engineering drawings. She knew it was me, of course, but she always made a show of claiming it was the potted plant in the corner or that we must have pixies in the neighborhood.

  “When I announced that I was going into the starship design/build field, she was ecstatic, as she loved space. Some of my fondest memories are of Mom and me working on her projects or my homework together. I should mention that because of our longer life spans, our passage through school and college takes longer than it does for you humans. We graduate at approximately the equivalent of your thirty or so.”

  He continued, but I could tell he was reaching the end of his story.

  “I should probably explain that when I moved in with Mercia, that’s when I also met Royson, the leader of this expedition. He lived just down the street and we became friends over time. College came and I was thrust back into school with flesh and blood classmates. By then, I had learned to have my nanites dial down my strength to that of a normal Quetanae so there were no issues. Besides, many of my synthetic high school friends were there as well. So to sum things up, I eventually learned how to act like a real citizen, graduated at the top of my college class, and started my own design/build company. When Royson contacted me with this story about a starship project that was way behind; well, the rest is history.”

  And here I thought Kalaya was messed up. “Did you ever see your real parents again?”

  “No, and I never wanted to either. Mercia became my family and I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to undo the damage they caused me. Because of them, I could never be a real Quetanae, could never father normal children. I’m just some sort of engineered freak of the unnatural.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but I gulped and asked the hard question that I had been dying to ask, “What exactly did they do to you?”

  He sighed and looked away. “Many things. Hell, even with all the records they took from my parents’ lab, it took weeks for the medical personnel to catalog them all. Here is the short version; my entire spine was replaced by a rare metals cybernetic implant that functions as a computer. My brain stem was modified to accept not only the spine hardware but also to transmit instructions to all the other implants. Muscles were grown with the direction of nanites to make them more powerful and recover from fatigue faster. Bones that could be expected to fracture in a combat situation were replaced with more durable materials. The eyelid thing that you have seen me do is to prevent me from being blinded by grenade explosions or bothered by muzzle flash. I have baffles in my ears that can lock down to protect my hearing. There were hundreds of other minor adjustments to my physical body that can’t be covered in a conversation like this. But if my real parents were here today, this is what they would be most proud of…”

  A small, wickedly sharp knife popped out of his tool gauntlet, and with some effort, he drew it across the skin of his bare wrist without even wincing. I watched in horror as he cut his arm, but then something even more upsetting occurred. Instead of blood bubbling up out of the wound, a bright silvery trickle like liquid mercury ran out onto his wrist and threatened to drip off his arm. However, it paused for a second, then quickly reversed course. The blood was actually drawn back to the wound site. A few seconds later, all that remained was a faint silver line of a scab.

  “My blood is primarily nanites now. They are able to take on the role of any cell in my body based on my needs. One of the unique features of my spine module is the ability to produce nanites as needed. I’m essentially a nanite factory.”

  “So your spine makes robots?”

  “Just little ones, lucky for you,” he chuckled nervously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kalaya didn’t tell you? The nanites she used to heal you came from my blood.”

  She did what? I choked down a scream of rage, not wanting to sound ungrateful. “Umm, no, I believe she failed to mention that part,” I said with an extremely forced sense of calm that probably fooled no one.

  “Well, you were unconscious. She’s no medical tech, but from what she described of the damage, you might have died if she hadn’t done something immediately. So you may want to take it easy on her.” He grinned. “Tell you what, how about we both get a little payback on ‘Miss High and Manipulative?’ There’s one thing she doesn’t know about what I’ve told you that will probably drive her nuts…or more nuts anyway
.”

  “Revenge? Yes, please!”

  He laughed and said, “Hey, Kalaya…Sweetie, I know you’ve got to be listening in on all this juicy storytelling. You know Janneal, the nice lady who made the decision not to let them kill me after the incident? Yeah, that is the same Janneal you know – your mother! As a matter of fact, I had cake and ice cream at your house to celebrate my graduation from college the year before you were born; small world, huh?”

  I could hear some muffled shouting coming over speakers in other areas of the ship. It must have been pretty loud to seep through these bulkheads. Fortunately, all the speakers in this construction zone must have been too heavily damaged to work, and Kodo just grinned widely. Apparently, he could block her ranting through his implants if he desired.

  He pulled me to my feet. “You best get going before she starts sending the construction drones after us.”

  His hand felt warm and human-like, but I had just learned I needed time to digest all this. Just being alone in my room for a while seemed the best course of action. “Are you going to be alright, Kodo?”

  “I’ll be fine. Everything I told you is ancient history now. I’m over it.”

  Liar.

  Chapter 15

  Kodo

  “How are you feeling?” asked Kalaya quietly. She materialized alongside me as I padded down the empty corridors to my room for a shower and clean clothes.

  “You know the answer to that. You can sense my heart and respiratory functions, detect changes in my posture and muscle tone. Scan for telling eye movement, changes in blood chemistry or what I have for blood anyway. Hell, if you really wanted to, you could probably hack into my inner thoughts.” Kalaya shuddered and suppressed a small gasp of horror. She ran a light hand over my biceps, which had the effect of making all my arm hairs stand on end, as I continued. “I spent a long time repressing most of those memories and now they are out in the open like some sort of jagged, festering wound. So when you ask how I am feeling, I have to wonder if you are inquiring to satisfy your penchant for psychobabble meddling or if you really care.”