Orb Station Zero (Galactic Arena Series Book 1)

by Dan Davis

  Whatever they were pumping him with, Ram had to admit it was delightful. He'd taken synthetic oxytocin and dopamine before but it was never as strong or as enchanting as whatever they were doing to him right there in the hospital room. Ram was quiet for a while as the people around him worked on his body. He peered down, moving only his eyes, as they prodded the tips of the monstrous fingers and toes. When the first sensations jerked through his body, it was a completely alien feeling.

  He tried to remember that he needed to escape, that the people around him were his enemies. But it was hard to retain the thought, it kept slipping away into a warm and fuzzy feeling.

  A biotechnician prodded the tip of his index finger and there was a subsequent reaction in his mind. Not one of pain, not the sensation of a needle being jabbed into his finger. It was akin to a blast of cold air, tinged with the color blue. The biotechnicians jabbed more needles all over his hands and arms, releasing a flood of warm, cold, green, red feelings, hisses of static and strange smells he could not identify before they were gone. And the sensations did not seem to be coming from his body but from somewhere else, either further outside himself, as if he could feel someone prodding the far wall, or else deep inside his guts.

  “Subject is registering,” a biotechnician said.

  “Lighting up all across the board,” another team member called out.

  “Visual, aural but tactile, too. Hits on all digits.”

  “Excellent,” Dr. Fo said, beaming up at him. “Very fast, Ram, very fast indeed.”

  “What’s going on?” Ram said, his vision clouding with tactile sensation.

  “We are helping your brain to mesh its new nervous system together,” Dr. Fo said, peering down again at a screen in his hands so that all Ram could see was the shining black top of his head. “Your conscious mind needs help to realize what nerves go where as they connect to your brain. Your brain can keep your vital processes running already. Your breathing and heartbeat and so on. But skin sensation? Fine control? These are incredibly complicated processes, Ram. We have done so much work on you already, so much work, yes indeed. Everything is in place and you are almost complete. But we have to be sure that you are not overwhelmed by strange sensations so we block certain signals reaching your moment to moment awareness. And we are now carefully removing that block. Your body and brain are all linked up but your consciousness now needs to catch up. Do you understand?”

  “I’m tasting strange colors. You’ve wired me up wrong,” Ram said, a distant fear and outrage bubbling up again.

  “A little synesthesia is perfectly normal. In fact, if you weren't experiencing it then I would be worried,” Dr. Fo said, chuckling and went back to his work.

  “I feel like I shouldn’t feel calm,” he said, wondering why he was admitting that to these people. “I should be feeling angry at you.”

  Shut up, you idiot, he told himself. He was babbling like a drunk.

  Dr. Fo laughed. “Regulating your hormone uptake stops what would be your ordinary fear and anger getting in the way of our final release protocols and it’s just easier for my team if you’re dumb and docile.”

  Ram grinned, pressure on his temples pushing his brain together behind his eyes, like that time he had accidentally overdosed on 2C-B, alone in his apartment only much more pleasant. Sweat broke out all over his face and body. “I feel like I’m tripping.”

  “Hmm,” the doctor said. “Perhaps we are dosing you too much but we tend to err on the side of caution. Without hormonal sedation, your distress at what we’re doing to you right now might create lasting psychological damage. Post-traumatic stress can have a significant impact on performance and poor Milena here has a tough enough job to do on your psyche as it is. Not a fully actualized personality, are you, Rama?”

  Intellectually, he knew that it was ethically worse to be controlling the workings of his mind that it was to restrain and even to exchange his body for a better model. But the outrage he felt at the endless violation of his rights was distant. Diluted. Hidden behind the waves of pleasure and flooding skin sensations. His arms prickled with a kind of itchy delight. He breathed deeply, smelling the cleaning chemicals and detergents of the walls and the doctors and technicians. Smelling the human sweat and breath of the people.

  Smelling the smell of the women in the room.

  Ram wondered if the body they had given him had a dick. He could almost feel it but he knew it was only his imagination.

  He looked down at himself. As far down as he could look with just his eyes. They had dressed him in a skin-tight gray vest and matching shorts. He thought he could see a bulge down there amongst the bumps and ridges of his huge thigh muscles. In truth, it was difficult to see past his massive pectorals. It was not so different from the usual difficulty he had seeing his genitalia, only that was because of his great big rolls of flab getting in the way.

  Perhaps they had not given him one. If the body was synthetic, grown as biological parts in a womb tank then maybe he didn't have one. The Artificial Persons they grew for space mining and stuff were often non-gendered. Or they were one or other but without working genitals. There were rumors about sex slaves but Ram had never especially believed the stories. Why would anyone bother to spend a fortune on growing someone when there were so many real people willing to sell their bodies cheap and enter contractual slavery? But Ram was afraid to ask. The worry was a distant one and was quickly buried under the continuing low pulses of pleasure flowing across his skin like—

  Searing agony shot through his body. His hand plunged into fire.

  Ram cried out, screaming at the burning, crisping of the skin on his hand, the bubbling, searing agony of it.

  The pain vanished like a light switched off in the darkness.

  Ram’s cry died in his throat and he was left panting, glancing down as far as he could at his big-boned hands where they rested on the arms of his mechanized chair. They were perfectly unscathed, the technicians prodding them with needles.

  “What the hell was that?” His heart was racing, the soft and calm feeling replaced by fear, exhilaration. He couldn’t keep up.

  I need to escape, he reminded himself. Bide my time until I can escape.

  “You are responding marvelously, adapting remarkably quickly,” Dr. Fo said, grinning. “In the ninety-fifth percentile, at least, I would guess. How curious.”

  “It's these older models,” the unseen woman said from behind Ram's upright gurney, her voice steady, smooth and rich with a Latin timbre. “The nerve pathways are shorter, simpler. And the guerrilla corporectomy compounded the issue by leaving so much of his original ganglia in his birth body.”

  The woman’s tone had been full of clarity and confidence and Ram found it arousing. Even without seeing her, Ram knew instantly that she would be forever out of his league. No one so self-possessed would give Ram the time of day. He wanted to see her, see what she was like. He was certain she would be physically attractive and he wanted her.

  “Of course,” Dr. Fo said, shaking his head. “You are right, of course. I am so forgetful. Look at his testosterone, Milena, it is shooting up again. I’m not sure what is causing it.”

  Footsteps on the tiles, light and careful. Ram glanced down.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Rama Seti.”

  It was the confident woman. And she was indeed out of his league. So far out that it was a relief he wouldn’t have to worry about playing any games with her. The young woman had a cascade of thick black hair, skin the color of milky coffee, huge dark eyes looking up at him, a huge, straight nose and lips like a goddess. Her body was fit underneath the tight black vest and loose black trousers, shoulders broad and muscular. She wore heavy boots, like a soldier. Her breasts were amazing. He knew he shouldn't stare at them but his vantage point was above her head and he could look right down her top and into cleavage where her lovely skin went underneath the top of her vest. They looked perfect, smooth and round, dense and heavy and yet high and firm, standing s
traight up without any support. He could not take his eyes away.

  “Hi,” Ram said, grinning. “Nice to meet you, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart? Why did I say that?

  Ram felt what must have been his new penis and scrotum stirring between his legs and under the sheets. Maybe it was actually there after all.

  “Testosterone spiking into the red,” one of the technicians said. “Vasopressin too. I'll deal with it.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows at Ram who felt a flush of shame as his lust receded. He looked away.

  “Hello, Ram,” she said. “I have been with you for some time now, since before you were first woken. I have helped to smooth out your moment-to-moment experience by adjusting your hormone uptake. Before then, I have been getting to know you. Studying your genes, your history, your environment, your achievements and failures, your hopes and your shame. And I feel that I do know you because I have seen you at your best and at your worst and your most mundane. So you need not feel any sense of embarrassment with me. My name is Milena Reis. It is enormously satisfying to finally speak to you face to face.”

  Ram did not know what to say. What did she mean she'd seen him at his worst?

  “It’s satisfying?” Ram said. “To meet me?”

  Ram wished he could move so that he could kick himself up the ass for being so catastrophically whatever the opposite of suave was.

  Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “You do not know how much is depending on this project. How much we have already invested in you. I have personally invested hundreds of hours in studying you, Rama Seti. Satisfying is putting how I feel about meeting you in the mildest possible terms.”

  “I still don’t understand this, I’m sorry. Who are you? Like, what’s your job? You’re my hormone pimp?”

  “I'm your driver,” Milena said, nodding slowly.

  “Oh,” Rama said, recalling what the word meant when it was applied to a person and not software. “Okay. Where are you driving me?”

  “A very long way from here,” Milena said, a strange, half-amused look on her face. “But I am not that sort of driver.”

  Milena moved to the side of Rama's huge chair and tapped away against the side of it, out of his sight. The chair beneath him hummed into life and the thing rotated, turned ninety degrees. Ram got a view of the room and the people in it as it turned. Men, women, nurses, technicians, all busy working on screens and whirring machines. Still no security guards, as far as he could see. Hopefully, he was in a normal hospital or clinic and he could force his way out onto the street in no time. Just as soon as they gave him the ability to move.

  “Are you going to let me go now, right?” Ram said. “Let me get up out of this chair, I mean?”

  Milena and Doctor Fo walked around so that they both stayed in Ram's field of vision.

  “Do you want to escape?” the gorgeous woman asked, tilting her head to one side.

  Ram’s heart raced. He knew they were monitoring his every breath so he tried to relax. “No,” he said, feigning casualness.

  Milena and the doctor glanced at each other but did not bother to address Ram’s obvious lie.

  “We have kept you immobilized until now because of the danger that you pose to yourself, to that body and to the valuable people and equipment in this room. If you lose control and destroy it, that would mean an awful lot of people’s hard work has been wasted. So you must learn control, first of all. Then you may walk, run, jump, exercise, train. And then, finally, you may begin to fight.”

  “Fight?” Rama said, trying to stay calm. They were going to let him out soon but only if he pretended he was playing along, only if he proved that he was no threat.

  Dr. Fo turned away, calling out congratulations and thanks to his team for their work.

  “Come with me,” Milena said. Under its own power, the gurney-chair rolled away from the center of the room to a corner that was free of machines or screens, taking Ram with it. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life. They could do anything to him and yet he could do nothing in return. When he got free, he was going to end them, one way or another. Whoever they were. “You were a fan of gladiatorial, person versus person Avar gaming, were you not?” Milena said.

  “I was kind of into fighting games but not really. How is that relevant?” Ram asked, his chair rolling after her rubber tires screeching softly to a stop on the tiled flooring. He wondered if she had the ability to read his mind. Could she see that he was planning violence? He knew that it was possible to extract specific memories and knowledge but he didn’t know if it was possible in real time. If she could read his mind then she might be watching him think the thoughts that he was thinking in that moment.

  How could he hide his thoughts from himself? Don’t think about escaping, he thought.

  “I look forward to seeing your Avar abilities, that’s all,” she said. “We will now activate your body but before we start, you must know one thing.”

  “Okay,” Ram said, trying to not think about climbing out of his chair and charging for the closed door.

  “You must know that if you take any action that threatens anyone in this room or if you are in danger of harming yourself, we will switch you off. Dr. Fo can push one button that will remotely drop you in a nanosecond. Your skeletal muscles will immediately cease to function and you will collapse to the floor, unable to move even a little bit. Understand?”

  Ram swallowed, his throat dry. “I get it.”

  He wondered if his hope for escape was truly gone. Was she bluffing? He didn’t think she was.

  “Good. Now, your brain has never consciously used your skeletal muscles,” Milena said. “The relevant areas of that brain have been stimulated artificially while your corresponding muscles are simultaneously contracted. It is a crude method but we find it effective. But there's an error rate, Rama and it varies from subject to subject. Might be five per cent, might be fifty per cent but you could find your brain and your body has been wired improperly. Dr. Fo and his team might have been probing what they thought was your right biceps part but instead, they were tweaking your triceps. It's common for subjects on their first time in control to intend to bend their arm only to straighten it. I told a young subject once to clap her hands together and she punched herself in the nose. I'm not kidding. And it could be worse. What if they've aimed for your gluteus maximus but had a near miss? One subject a few years ago, when he tried to complete a standing jump he instead shit his pants. I'm not kidding. So, are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Here we go,” Milena said, unfolding a screen from her pocket. She tapped on it, expertly, as if she was used to 2D physical interfaces. “Try standing. Get out of that chair.”

  Ram forced his hands down to the arms of his chair. With his eyes fixed on the keypad by the closed door on the far side of the room, he planted his feet on the floor and heaved himself upright.

  Milena leaped back out of the way and Ram tipped forward onto his face. His arms did not respond properly and instead of bracing his fall they just tangled beneath his massive chest and his face smashed into the tiles with a crack. Breathing heavily, Ram rolled his head to the side and looked up. He didn’t have the guts to try to move his body.

  Milena roared with laughter and jabbed Ram's shoulder with her foot.

  “You did it,” Milena shouted. “I can't remember the last time someone did it their first time. Maybe never. Well, well.” She jiggled Ram's shoulder again. “Did you see that, Dr. Fo?”

  “Very impressive,” Dr. Fo said from across the room. A few people clapped.

  “Get to your feet, Ram,” Milena said. “Come on, get up, I believe in you.”

  If I can get up, I can get out of here.

  Ram pulled his hands under himself and took a breath. His arms were huge, the muscles so big they restricted how far he could bend them. He planted his meaty hands on the cold ceramic tile underneath his massive pectorals. He bent his knees up under himself and fe
lt his toes grip the smooth floor.

  He stood up, staggering and crashed into the side of his chair. He reeled off from it, staggering across the room with no control and banged into the wall. His face pressed against the cool white tile, breathing heavily.

  “Whoa, there, whoa,” Milena said, laughing. “That's some fine work there. You just have to watch out for that slight Coriolis effect, that's all. Try standing away from the wall.”

  Ram held himself away from it, stepping away, raising his arms for balance. His head span and he wobbled but he kept his feet.

  “I’m doing it,” Ram said, excited.

  “It's these older models,” Dr. Fo called out. “They don't make them like this anymore.”

  “It's not the model,” Milena said. “Ram has an iron will, don't you, Ram.”

  “I guess,” Ram said, realizing that he had to learn to control his body before he made a run for it.

  So, when Milena took Ram through exercise after exercise, he played along. Touching his fingers to his thumbs, flexing his knees, swinging his arms. Jumping, twirling, spinning. Ram hit his head a dozen times, bashing his elbows and knees. But each time he performed his tasks a little better than the last and he knew that he would soon be able to make his body do what he needed it to. He would have to find his way out of the medical facility and out into the real world. He wondered if he was still in Delhi or somewhere else in India. He could be anywhere on the continent, he supposed. A worrying thought but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. If he escaped and found himself in another country, he would have to find the Indian Consulate and then they would help him.

  If they believed him. He was in a giant body, 261 centimeters tall. That was eight feet and five inches tall and with the sort of muscles that only existed on professional bodybuilders and strongmen.

  A small part of him, he admitted, was thrilled.

  “Where did this body come from?” he asked Milena after an hour or so.