Echo of Tomorrow: Book One (Drake chronicles)

by Rob Buckman

  "Navy,” Kessler muttered, as if savoring the word, “who or what is a Navy?” He asked, a happy expression on his face. Scott stopped, looking at the strange little man as alarm bells went off in his head.

  "I was a soldier, a Marine.” Scott said carefully, as a way of explanation. The conversation was getting odder by the minute.

  "And what is a... soldier?” He asked, still beaming. Scott gave him a careful look. This had to be a joke, but the expression on the Doctors face said it wasn’t.

  "It’s a bit hard to explain, really.” Scott thought about several possible answers to the question, then decided to throw a curve ball instead. “You might say my job was similar to that of an upper Decker cuckoo valve cleaner in a widget factory." From the blank look on the Doctor’s face, it was obvious he hadn’t got a clue what he was talking about. Scott didn’t for one moment believe that the idiom had vanished in fifty years, so the Doctor was pulling his leg. His next question came out of left field.

  "Is that something to do with, excuse me, I hate to use the word, killing?” He asked expectantly in a hushed whisper, almost as if he was using a dirty word. Scott blinked and did a double take, a frown crossing his face.

  "Yes, you could say that." He said at last, feeling a shiver run up his spine.

  "Oh good, we were hoping there might be some specimens with that ability, but we couldn't be sure. Wait here and drink your, err, coffee.”

  Saying that the little man rushed out of the room. The door slid silently shut behind him before Scott could ask the one question he wanted to. Scott sat sipping his second cup, feeling the food and coffee work its magic. Within moments, it felt as if he was coming out of a fog and his senses kicked into high gear. Odd items started dropping into place and he suspected that he'd been drugged and that was slowly wearing off with the help of the food and coffee. The room he woke up in, the passageway, this room all the others he'd seen had no windows. That could mean they were underground, but not the place he'd gone to sleep in. He took a walk around the dining room, examining the food dispenser and refilling his coffee cup. The machine didn’t tell him a thing. No nameplate, no instruction, no obvious controls, yet it filled his cup with hot, fresh, coffee the moment he put it under the nozzle. The other tables and chairs scattered about the room were just that, tables and chair, with nothing remarkable about them. He approached the sliding door at one end, but it didn’t open, nor the one at the other end of the room. He felt the wall to see if there was some sort of control unit you could feel but not see. Nothing, the wall was blank. Things had definitely changed in the time he’d been asleep, but doors with no obvious controls spoke more of a prison or a detention center than a hospital. The Doctor must have a means of controlling it, but that wasn’t what was worrying him. He had the uneasy feeling that something was out of place here. In the end, the only thing he could do was go back, sit, drink coffee, and wait. It wasn’t a long wait, as a few moments later, the little man rushed back in.

  "You will be glad to know Director Skinner is looking forward to seeing you." He positively beamed.

  "Whoopee for you, but who the hell is Director Skinner, and how soon can I get out of here, and why seeing, instead of meeting?” The odd phraseology bothered Scott, but he couldn’t say why.

  "He is the Director of the company whose facilities you are in,” that told Scott a lot about nothing, “and as for leaving, where on Earth would you go?” He chuckled, as if laughing at some secret joke. "Do you know if there are any more with your abilities in cryo-sleep?” He asked, raising one hairy eyebrow. It looked like a lost spider looking for its home.

  "I don't know, how many do you have here?" This was definitely not the same place he'd gone to sleep in.

  “Oh, we have thousands of people here."

  “Good God, that many?" Maybe they’d transferred him to a holding facility along with some other, and lost his document's en route.

  “Yes, that many.” The gnome nodded excitedly.

  “Haven't you woken up any one else?"

  “No… you are the first.” The way he said it caught Mike’s attention, as if he wasn’t telling him the exact truth. “We will have more very soon, if all goes well, that is.” Again, the odd terminology that spoke of hidden meanings.

  “So why did you wake me up.” That was the burning question, and one the mad Doctor should know the answer to.

  “Oh, that. Well, you see, you had the lowest numbers, so it was decided to revive you first." He said it as if he was getting something out of the freezer and checking the expiry date.

  "Would like to see the facility? I could explain what happen to you."

  "That would be nice, but first, can you tell how long I have been asleep?"

  "No, I can't." He answered, looking downcast.

  "Then how do you know I was the first?"

  "By your number on your cryo-chamber of course, yours was the lowest.” He said offhandedly, motioning for Scott to follow as he walked towards the door. That told Scott a lot about nothing. What number was he talking about?

  Scott pondered the implication of the Doctor’s statement, the feeling of unease growing stronger. The Doctor hustled him out of the dining room and down another passageway into a large laboratory like room, but even that didn't really fit the description. All the blank doors opened as they approached, and Scott didn’t see the gnome make any gestures or operate any sort of control. That meant the doors were keyed to him somehow. Scott looked around the lab, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. Some of the equipment he half recognized, but most of it looked like something out of a Star Wars, or a horror movie. A giant vat sat in one corner and odd equipment crammed every available flat surface in the place except one. That was something that looked a cross between an organ keyboard and a computer, set in front of an enormous curved TV or computer monitor. The last time he'd seen anything that big was in the war room under the Pentagon, or Cheyenne Mountain.

  "This is where you were reborn my boy, right here.” He said, beaming, patting the keyboard affectionately.

  "Reborn?” It didn't make sense. "What do you mean reborn?"

  "What do you know about genetics?” The Doctor asked, answering his question with a question.

  "I've read a few books on the subject...”

  "Junk, pure junk I expect, except for the basics. The mythical giants, Crick and Watson were right in that respect."

  "I don't understand?” This was getting out of hand.

  "Everybody wants to reduce genetics to a mathematical equation, a blueprint for the human body, it’s not. It’s more like a cooking recipe, or a great piece of music.” He prattled on as if he expected Scott to understand what he was talking about.

  “A pinch of this here, a dash of that there and you change the whole to something else. Do you know what would happen if you took Mozart’s ‘Pastoria’ and changed a few bars here of there? Junk. That's what you'd get." He tutted to himself and shook his hair. It didn’t help his hair, just sent it flying in all directions.

  "What has all this got to do with me?” Scott shifted uneasily, feeling his shoulder hunch, his uneasiness growing. A hot, angry feeling started to grow in the pit of his stomach, and it had nothing to do with the food he’d eaten.

  "Everything my boy, everything. You are my symphony, my masterpiece, my... oh, whatever, you know what I mean."

  "No, I don't. I haven’t a clue what you are talking about.” This was going completely over his head. Whatever the little man was talking about didn’t make Scott feel any better. He had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t going to like even less after this mad man explained it.

  "Then sit down here my boy and watch and learn.” The Doctor grabbed a lab chair and pulled it up next to the piano keyboard, dropping into the fixed seat before it.

  "This is where it all starts." His hands danced over the keyboard as if he was giving a piano recital.

  "What starts?" He asked in a hard voice.

  "The building block
of life." If the doctor heard the note in Scott’s voice, he ignored it. The screen came to life and looking up Scott saw images, flash before his eyes. Few made sense, but here and there, he recognized fragments of something. At last, one image remained on the screen and the Doctor turned. "Do you know what this is?"

  "Haven't got a clue."

  "That is the DNA sequence of an eight year old idiot savant, specifically the DNA sequence that enables him to compute prime numbers," he exclaimed, "and this,” he said, tapping the keyboard again. “Is one is from twenty five year old, early twentieth Century baseball pitcher who could launch a ball at over one hundred and fifteen miles an hour, consistently, all day."

  "What has all this got to do with me?"

  "It's simple, you are the end product of over one hundred and fifty year of genetic research. In these data banks I have collected over five million DNA codes.” He chuckled gleefully like some mad scientist from a horror movie. Scott felt a shudder run up his spine.

  “From the worst to the best. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, diplomats, serial killers, rapist, madmen, you name it, I have it." His hand continued caressing the keyboard and more images flashed before his eye.

  “You wouldn’t believe the number of graves I had to dig up to get them all.” He chuckled at some secret joke. Scott saw images of Doctor Frankenstein digging up corpse in some graveyard at midnight. "My only criterion was to find those people who were outstanding, the best of the best, so to speak. It didn't matter what they did, as long as they were the best at it."

  "Can we get to the point. Why?" Scott felt something like a headache coming on. None of this made any sense to him. He couldn’t relate to anything the mad Doctor said.

  "Patience my boy, patience. I started comparing them with the so-called ordinary man. What was it in the genetic code that made one man a super athlete and another man trip over his own feet.” He beamed, looking more like the mad scientist than ever. “What is it that gave some people that one special ability, say like a photographic memory while others couldn't remember their own comm number for two minutes."

  "And?"

  "Oh, I found it, or I should say I found them."

  "What?"

  "The specific code sequence that bestowed that gift on one person, and withholds it from another." The Doctor seemed oblivious to Scott’s feelings, or what effect it might have on him, he just kept prattling on.

  "I still don't get where you are going. So you can program a baby to have some or all these abilities, so what? I'm a grown man."

  "Precisely," Kessler exclaimed, "that was the problem. Any fool can monkey about with sperm and eggs and product something. But what about grown people, people like you."

  "Me? What was so special about me?" The Doctor tapped the keyboard, and another image flashed on the screen.

  The moment Scott saw it he shuddered. The screen showed a man, or what was left of one. Both legs and arms were gone. He had no genitalia and most of the right side of his face and body was a mass of scar tissue. It was obvious that he'd suffered massive injuries, some time before, as the body was shrunken with age, and loss of body mass.

  "Who the hell is that poor devil?"

  "This was a man who survived an explosion at a factory in West Africa, untreatable, and up until twenty years ago, he was confined to a hospital bed, deaf, dumb, and blind. Then I cracked the code and I was able to rebuild him, like this!” The Doctor tapped a key, and the screen showed a good-looking twenty-year-old man standing in the sunlight under a tree. “That is, the technology I used on you and the others.” The Doctor said softly.

  "What others?” Scott asked, rather sharply.

  "The others in the lab!” The Doctor sighed, giving him an odd look.

  "All of them?"

  "Why yes, of course. All of them, otherwise what was the point, one man wouldn’t be…” He stopped talking seeing the expression on Scott’s face.

  “Director Skinner approved all this you see." The Doctor waited for Drake's reaction, seeing his eye widen slightly as the implications of what the Doctor had done to him sunk in.

  Out of the corner of his eye, the doctor saw the edge of the stainless steel workbench Scott was holding on to start to bend under the pressure of his fingers. The edge buckled up, showing the indentation of each finger on the shiny steel surface. The Doctor swallowed, slipping his left hand into the pocket of his lab coat. He reminded himself not to get this man angry. If the bench was anything to go by, this man was five times stronger than any normal human. Sooner than he expected Scott Drake's universe settled back into its proper place and he could look at the Doctors again.

  "So how did you pull that little trick off Doctor, a brain switch or something?” The question was meant ironically, but instead the Doctor took him seriously, brushing the suggestion aside with a wave of his hand.

  "Don't be stupid, I did my best to eliminate that. It’s also crude and doesn’t work very well."

  "So tell me how and why?” Scott didn't take kindly to being called stupid by anyone, but he let it pass for the moment.

  "Have you ever heard of a retrovirus?"

  "Can't say that I have.” Not that he was particularly interested at the moment. He was beginning to feel like a laboratory animal with no say so on what happened to it.

  "Not surprising really. It’s more of a laboratory curiosity than anything else now, but a retrovirus is probably the most deadly virus in the world, once it enters the human body nothing can stop it.” He seemed to enjoy that fact for some reason, rubbing his hands together.

  "In less than twelve hours anyone infected would be dead. It can breech any defense, is totally resistant to all know drugs, and can infect every cell in the body within six to twelve hours. Even before that happens, the system collapses of course, heart, lungs, kidney, spleen turned to jelly, and by the time it’s finished it has infected the body, right down to the cells of the bone."

  "Shit! I hope I don't run into anything like that!"

  "You did, I infected you.” He dropped it like a bombshell, right into Scott’s lap.

  "You’re saying I was infected with this retrovirus?"

  "Oh yes, some nine months ago."

  "So how come I'm not dead them?"

  "Because my boy I gutted it.” He laughed, sounding like a little boy who’d just pulled the wings of an insect. “Think of the virus as a magic bullet, able to penetrate every cell of your body and replicate itself, but instead of depositing its own genetic code, I replaced it with a genetically engineered copy of your own."

  "And?” Scott said, his mental compass starting to spin again.

  "With that, and a few other techniques I developed, I regenerated your body." He said it like it was some sort of magic trick, but it did make sense, yet there was no other way to explain how his body had rebuilt itself. Scott had the impression that wasn't the end of the story.

  "What else did you do!” He asked sharply. The Doctors looked surprised, then evasive, and that reaction confirmed his suspicion. "Well!"

  "Well, yes. I did do some gene splicing...”

  "What the hell did you do?” He asked, rising to his feet. The Doctor slid backwards off the seat, moving away from him.

  "Nothing really, I just took out a few recessive genes and added some dominant ones."

  "Christ on a crutch!” He yelled, his temper starting to get away from him, and even that was unusual, as normally, he was the most even-tempered of men.

  "I... I improve your mental capacity, physical endurance, and stamina, and improved the regenerative capacity of your body." The Doctor continued backing away as Scott moved towards him.

  "Who the hell gave you the right to screw around with my body without asking me, and why screw around with in the first place, asshole?" Scott felt his fist clenching and unclenching.

  "I was told to by Director Skinner I could investigate this line of research, and he was the one that approved it."

  "And what gave Skinner the right to s
crew with my body, and why?" Scott saw a reddish haze around the peripheral of his vision and knew he was about to lose it, big time.

  "We had to, we had no choice.” At that moment, a chiming sound came from the keyboard.

  "Doctor. No match to the name Scott Drake has been found."

  "Oh my, that is unusual.” The Doctor exclaimed, swallowing hard, looking between Scott and the computer screen. This was not how he had expected the interview to progress. He’d imagined that the man would show his undying gratitude. The expression on the man's face told him that something was drastically wrong.

  "I was told that you all volunteered for these experiments and were willing to participate." Sweat stood out on his forehead as Scott moved towards him.

  "Whoever told you that lied!” Scott snapped, wondering if he should strangle this idiot now or later. "So why isn't my file in the computer if this is all approved?"