by R. K. Sidler
“First you need to let me know if you are willing to do it. If not, then you don’t need to know, and I’ll have to find someone else.”
“I’ll do it. I think you knew that already Dad. You know I’m not one to put something off on someone else’s shoulders just because it might be a little dangerous.”
His father nodded in acceptance. “The procedure will not be painful, and it is done under sedation. I’m told you will be injected with several chemicals, all of which are safe, and some of which will need to be placed into the bone marrow. As to what it is we want you to find, it is a small worm called a planarian. They are generally less than a half inch in size, and are located in water, and sometimes under logs or in moist soils in humid areas.”
“You’re telling me that miniature worms are going to allow everyone to get out of here, and go back outside,” he stated skeptically.
“Yes.”
It was beginning to sound surreal. If he did not know the individual who was telling him this as well as he did, he would have laughed in his face and walked away. But he did know him, and he was saying it. His father challenged Keith throughout his life. He asked more from him than he did anyone else he knew, including his brother. He never lied to him, at least not that he ever knew of, but his father was also a very reserved man when it came to discussing anything of a personal or intimate nature. Keith respected him more than any other person he knew. But, he also realized there was another side of him that he would possibly never know. As incredulous as the conversation seemed, he found himself saying, “When do I start?”
―
The following morning his father escorted him to a private lab located behind several secured doors. This was not the lab in which Terri worked. In fact, it did not look to Keith like anyone worked there at all. Dr. Maddow explained some of the treatments he was going to receive, but in a way that Keith understood little more than when he had walked in. There was one attending nurse who Keith did not recall seeing before. That was strange, as he knew most of the people inside the mountain, at least by sight. After he was prepped by the nurse in another room, she wheeled him back out on a gurney. His father was gone.
“This is going to make you sleep. You won’t remember a thing,” she said as she injected the drug into his IV tube.
Dr. Maddow dismissed her and said he would notify her when she was needed again, and to remain ready to return. She was a little taken aback by this, but she did as she was told. You don’t argue with doctors, and never with Dr. Maddow, she knew from experience. It was unheard of for a surgeon to operate alone, and this is what caught her by surprise.
Once he was sure the sedative was in full effect, he started with the first of several procedures. It was an injection of the same treatment he had received himself and had given to Frank Bishop. This one went into the bone marrow of the femur. He injected both legs to ensure success. When this was finished, he completed a series of other injections. Some went directly into glands, others into muscle. When these were complete, he moved the straps alongside the gurney across Keith’s body and cinched them down tight. He moved the IV line out of the way, released the catch from the bottom of the table, and rotated it until the patient was now upside down and facing the floor. He locked it in place and reached for a metallic device, which resembled a brace. This he secured around the patients head. He placed the long hypodermic syringe into the slot specifically made for it. When he was sure that it was lined up with the brain stem, he slowly pressed on the part of the device that held the needle. Once this stopped, he depressed the plunger of the needle itself.
Having completed this, he removed the metallic device, returned the patient to his original position, and removed the straps. All of the vital signs were good, but he knew that would change. He detached the IV bag containing the sedative, and replaced it with a much stronger one; however, it was labeled the same. The entire procedure lasted nearly one hour. He went into a glass walled office and turned on the portable monitor, which displayed the patient’s vital signs. He sat down and called Frank Bishop. “It’s done.”
“I take it everything went well?”
“Fine; I won’t know for sure until I take some tissue samples to determine the full effect. I’ll do that in twenty-four hours.”
“What else did you do to him? You weren’t exactly clear on that earlier?”
“I just made him a little better is all. What I did for us, will allow our bodies to live indefinitely. That is, unless we experience trauma we are not able to recover from.”
“I know about us, what about him? And put it in terms I can understand.”
“Okay. He’ll need to do more than just survive the elements. He’ll need to be able to deal with anything he is faced with, and to deal with it alone. His immune system, as you know, will control the things he can’t see. His physical properties are what I manipulated. I injected a chemically modified form of follistatin, which will help temper the cellular activity from the cell regeneration, controlling both proliferation and differentiation. In other words, his regenerative abilities will work even better than ours does. This chemical will also increase his lean muscle composition nearly threefold. It will not be a threefold increase in size so much as it will be in strength. Another treatment was for his senses. His vision, hearing, motor skills, and so on will function at a heightened state.”
“Won’t his body burn itself out?”
“Not at all, I didn’t put his systems into overdrive, just enhanced them; a state beyond reach by natural means. The regenerative abilities I hope to see will easily accommodate any increase in performance. Even his sleeping needs will diminish.”
“When will he be ready?” his father asked.
“I want five days with him. Some things will show up sooner than others will. I want to make sure we have the best chance to ensure we get what we are sending him out there for. Nothing can be left to chance.”
“I agree.”
“I’ll need to have some follow up visits before we send him out. Say, two months.”
“Okay.”
“I suggest you also take care of things with his wife. I can keep her busy while she’s at the lab, but I don’t think she knew he would be gone for this long and why.”
“I’ll take care of it. Call me when he is about to come out of sedation. I’ll want to be there.”
―
The nurse was instructed to administer enough sedation to keep the patient under. After three days, she had increased the amount to a level that worried her. When she called the doctor, he asked her to relate his vital statistics then instructed her to continue as before. By the next day, his amount of sedation was seven times greater than what they started with. On the fifth day, Dr. Maddow had returned to examine the patient himself. He listened as the nurse made her report, while analyzing his chart at the same time. He thanked her for her help, and advised her to return to her normal duties as the patient was going to be released shortly. It was with relief that she left. She did not know what exactly was going on, but she had never seen anything like it before.
He now made a call, “As soon as you can, stop by; I would like to show you something,”
“I’m on my way,” Frank Bishop said from his extension.
―
Dr. Maddow was talking while removing a scalpel from a metal tray. The only word that really registered with Keith’s father was “watch,” as he grasped the scalpel, holding it in a downward stabbing position, and did just that to Keith’s upper right forearm. His father reacted as anyone would. He flinched in shocked surprise. He was about to say something when he realized the doctor was still talking to him. “This is the third time I’ve done that.”
“Why,” Frank Bishop asked.
“Look,” Dr. Maddow said while pointing to the wound.
He did not need to be told to look, as he had not yet taken his eyes away. It did not seem to actually go in as deep as he would have thought, and by now, the blood had
already stopped flowing.
“His response to, and recovery from, injury is like nothing ever seen before.”
“Where else did you do that?”
“The same place. His muscle is so dense, that injuries such as these will heal quite rapidly. Areas without significant musculature will heal faster than normal as well, but not like this.”
Frank Bishop saw no other puncture wounds and no telltale scars.
Knowing what was on his mind, Dr. Maddow continued, “The other two were yesterday,” he said as he took a cotton swab containing alcohol and rubbed it on the wound. When he was finished, the wound was little more than a red line. “Just imagine commanding an army such as him,” Maddow said pointing at Keith, “His ability to fight off the effects of sedation was astonishing. His system would function the same with any drug or chemical”
“One thing at a time… Are you sure he is going to be….normal. I mean, will there be any adverse side effects?”
“Not that I would predict, no. As far as normal goes, he will be functioning on a different level than any of us. That is part of the reason I want the follow up examinations. I will need to help him understand himself in a way he will accept, without explaining what it is that’s been done to him,” Dr. Maddow said.
―
Several minutes after his IV was removed, Keith regained consciousness. While reclaiming his senses, he sat upright in the bed. His father was at his side.
“How are you feeling,” Frank Bishop asked.
“Good,” Keith said while stretching his arms. “Great … actually.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Martin said you can go whenever you are ready.”
“Fine with me,” Keith said as he continued to move and stretch different parts of his body while getting to his feet. He really had never felt better, he was thinking to himself.
“I’d like to talk to you about what to tell Terri and your staff should they ask any questions,” he said while Keith was getting dressed.
Keith looked at him while waiting for him to explain.
“The procedure took a little longer than expected. Your absence has to be explained. It isn’t time yet to get people’s hopes up by telling them we are close to sending someone outside. I’d like to keep it simple for now, and for the near future. Some of these tunnels are quite lengthy. In fact, one of them was supposed to link up eventually with another facility on the other side of the mountain. It never materialized, but people do not need to know that now. Let’s say you were exploring that area to see if the passage was still open.”
“Okay. But I don’t see why a day away needs a creative explanation,” Keith said.
“It was a little longer than a day, and we can use this story again until it is time to reveal what we are doing to everyone” his father said before changing the topic, “Let’s just make sure you do what the doctor tells you, and we’ll go from there.”
―
When he returned to his apartment, Terri was not home. He looked through the cupboards to see what they had to eat. His appetite was immense. Once he started eating, he could not stop. The high protein food they created wasn’t the same as ‘all natural,’ but it was sure satisfying now, he thought as he ate. What he did not know was that he was compensating for the changes his body was already experiencing. Soon after he had finished eating, he heard the sound of the front door opening. He remained in the other room while waiting to surprise his wife. When she entered, he said, “Hey lady, if you don’t expect your husband anytime soon, I can think of something we could do to occupy the time.”
“Keith,” Terri said happily, as she walked to him and wrapped her arms around him.
“Hey honey, how are you?” he said returning her embrace.
“Me? How are you? I’ve missed you.”
“It hasn’t been that long baby,” he said thinking back to his conversation with his father. He held her close to him once again and turned to see the calendar they had hanging on the wall. As each day passed, they marked it with an X. There were five more X’s on the calendar than there were when he went to the lab.
“Is the calendar right honey?” he asked her.
“What? Oh, no, I just didn’t get to it today.” She walked over and marked off another day.
Six days, he thought. It seems like it was just yesterday.
“So, did you find anything on your hike,” she asked as she started to change from her work clothes.
He sat on the bed. “No. But I may need to go out again to explore further.”
“Yeah, your father told me what you were doing. It must have been exciting. I don’t get to see much outside of white lab coats and microscopes.”
“Well doctor, we each have our role to play,” he said in banter.
“I don’t think I will ever get tired of hearing that,” she said as she stopped undressing to look at him.
“You shouldn’t. Be proud of yourself, I am.”
She smiled at him. “I only wish my parents could see me now,” she said wistfully.
“I know honey,” he replied as he came near her, “We do the best we can, and take it one day at a time.”
They embraced once more. “If you don’t have any plans I thought maybe we could ‘play’ a little doctor,” he said while leaning his head backwards to look into her eyes.
She leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the lips. When he started to return her kiss with more intensity, she backed away and said, “We can’t. I mean we can’t right now. That’s why I’m home early. We’re having a little get-together over at Matt and Tracy’s, just a bunch of us from the lab.”
“Wonderful,” he said without much enthusiasm.
“Get changed, you’re going too,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I’m not really…” he started before he was interrupted.
“You’re going. I haven’t seen you in a week, and I can’t back out of my plans now. When we get back, we can discuss what you brought up earlier.”
He knew there was no sense in trying to get out of it. He didn’t want to leave her anyway, but he was not exactly thrilled with the idea of having to make small talk with people with which he had virtually nothing in common. He would call Cam when they were finished with their party, and would tell him that he would see him in the morning.
* * *
Life in the valley was improving. The population had finally stabilized, and was beginning to increase for the first time. They had buried close to seventy-five percent of those who had initially made the journey. Instead of burying them in the valley itself, they made the effort to find an area suitable for digging out on the rim, and transported them to avoid polluting the area, and to escape the constant reminder of the dead. At first, the birth rates were under ten percent. That is, less than ten percent lived beyond their first year. Now it was reaching almost forty percent.
Over the years they completely removed every viable piece of equipment, building material, and other furnishings from the nearest ruined city. They brought these provisions to Gateway, and carried them to the other villages as necessary. Now, there were only two. Bardin was simply a manned outpost. The elders, or leaders, of each village remained the same. There was no need or feeling of competition as they all knew what must be done to survive. There was no glamour, notoriety, or riches to complicate what was an already arduous life.
They all dealt with the effects of exposure to the radiation. While there was no significant radiation in the valley, they had been contaminated prior to reaching it. Their food and water supply also affected them. Some had lost all of their hair, their teeth, and a few lost the ability to speak due to deterioration of their vocal chords, while many of the young, developed more obvious deformities through birth and growth. There were those who went through secondary growth spurts, long past the age for such things, and became almost as giants among them. Others gained some curious abilities such as being able to see at night, and for some their skin became as tough as rawhide.
Those who were no longer severely affected by the radiation were the ones chosen to explore the regions outside of the valley. They hunted, gathered, and learned. They had made a determined effort to keep the balance, within the valley itself, as it was. They were producing crops, not much at first, but more each year as they produced more seed, and made sure the animal population remained healthy. The animals knew to stay in the valley through their own instincts, but it was troublesome when the creatures that lived outside found their way in.
It was one such animal, which had gotten the attention of the hunters from Gateway. The tracks were discovered that morning by a young man at the side of the valley stream. They belonged to the great cat. It appeared to be a hybrid of the jaguar. It was dark brown in color, and much larger with prehistoric type features; large curving teeth and oversized paws. It was rare that they ever saw this particular beast, or even the signs of them, on the rim, but with one making its way in, they had to rid themselves of it and fast. The damage they could do to their herds, and other animals, was too great. Let alone if one of the villagers should come upon it alone.
Instead of tracking it, they decided to lure it to them. The firearms they had were of no use. The ammunition had been spent years ago. They crafted their own bows, crossbows, and spears along with an array of smaller weapons. While on their way to the place where they intended to set their trap, one of the men killed a rabbit. They left the bolt in the animal, and tied a thin rope to it.
One member of the party climbed a pine tree, and suspended the rabbit until it was about five feet off the ground. Another took his knife and sliced the rabbit open to allow its entrails to spill out and for the rest of the blood to drain. The man in the tree sat quietly with his small crossbow and spear, while the others took their places nearby.
It was well into the afternoon when they were aware of the presence of the predator. Sounds from birds and other small animals had ceased. The only thing that could be heard was the mild breeze sifting through the leaves. They knew it was near and no doubt, the beast could smell them. It was hoped the easy meal was too much of a temptation for the cat to pass up. When they finally saw it, they remained calm, yet excited. The cat took his time approaching the bait. He looked at his surroundings and sniffed the air periodically. He walked slowly to the hanging pile of fur and blood and sniffed once more. As soon as he was directly below the man in the tree, the hushed thud of the bolt from the crossbow struck the cat between its shoulder blades. Rather than making its escape, this only managed to anger the beast. He snarled and let out a cry as he extended his great claws and began to climb the tree toward his attacker.
