Hello Steemians, here is the third and final part of Foreverman. In case you missed the either of the first two parts here is a link to them: Part one and Part two.
Enjoy!
PT 3.
Getting out of the SUV I walked into the compound that was designated for modifying subjects at SHED. There was the usual uneasiness as I walked past the sign on the wall that read “Private property. No trespassing.” And then in smaller letters underneath it read “Superior Human Endurance Development” SHED for short.
I had been here a dozen times before. Many times I was the subject… the guinea pig. But this time they wanted me here as a consultant for what they were doing. I had two masters, one in bioengineering and the second in Physics, so this wasn’t the first time that SHED wanted my input. But it was the first time that they wanted my input on something that wasn’t exactly related to me as a subject.
Walking into the main unit, I saw what I immediately recognized as the bonding tank. It looked like everything that you would find in a Sci-Fi movie for breeding monsters. A huge metal cylinder with a large window where the subject could be visually monitored for the thirty hour immersion. Across the room was a series of doors each leading into various rooms for the successive preceding steps in the bonding process.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked Dr. Gruber. He, a rather short and dumpy man with a face that somehow reminded you of a donut, was standing in the middle of the room working at a computer station. He was the one who oversaw the majority of the tests that SHED ran.
Turning to face me he replied quite matter-of-factly, “It needs your touch. Mr. Richards. We have the time ratio right but the bonds form too slowly, or too quickly entirely.”
“As I told Rodriguez whenever he first asked me to come aboard: your bonds-to-molecules over time is too high. If you’re sure you have the time right, then great, lessen the bonds or the molecules. One of the two and you should have the solution.” I responded.
“You’d think so wouldn’t you? But we’ve tried it both ways, and it still doesn’t seem to work.” Dr. Gruber gave me that look I knew all too well. The one that said “Fix this.”
Sighing I sat down at the computer and the good Doctor and I began pouring over the calculations.
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Peter kept falling. On and on forever it seemed. He began to wonder if he was dreaming, as this was an entirely new experience that would be rather hard to describe. But then suddenly he landed on his back. He was staring up at a ceiling that was close to ten meters high. He looked around the ceiling looking for some hole that he could have fallen through, but he couldn’t see anything. There was only a white panel that shined a steady bright light.
“Welcome to the world of the living.” Peter turned his head trying to see who had spoken. When this failed he tried to sit up but found that his arms weren’t moving. He wasn’t moving at all actually. Upon reflection he realized he hadn’t actually turned his head that much either. He opened his mouth and tried to say something. But absolutely nothing came out, and Peter wasn’t entirely sure that he had opened his mouth at all.
“Now don’t strain yourself. Your body has been torn to pieces and put back together again. Going through a containment plate is a great deal for anyone, including yourself.” Peter could just make out the dome of a balding head in his peripheral vision. “In fact, because of your molecular bonds it may take you a little bit longer to put yourself back together again. I’ll be back in a couple hours to see how you’re coming along.”
Six hours later we had come to the proper conclusion, or so we thought. Dr. Gruber, his colleagues and myself had been slaving with the experiment all that time. I had found some errors in their entry points for the injection nodes, and after several hours of stupidity, on Dr. Gruber’s part, we had agreed on the correct points, and ran some simulations. All was checking out, more or less.
Just as we were finishing up the final test the door to the lab opened, and some kid walked in. He was wearing a civvie suit but it was clear from the top of his close shave head to the tips of his polished shoes that he was military to the core. “Good morning sir.” He said addressing Dr. Gruber. “Are we going to finish this today?”
“Yes I do believe we are.” Replied the good Doctor.
“Finally.” Then the punk made a mistake, he turned and said something to me. “Who’re you?” He had the sort of look that most young bucks have when they think that they’re the top dog in the room. Sort of squinting as if to say, “hey you speck over there.” This didn’t work with me.
“Name’s Richards. I’m the guy who saved your life today. Dr. Gruber here had the tank all ready to kill you.”
The kid looked at Dr. Gruber and then back at me and then started laughing, a forced and annoying laugh. “You have no clue. I’m practically invincible already. The phases in this project that this man has been putting me through are incredible. Just yesterday I picked a fight with some guy in a bar, and he shanked me. But it barely scratched me.”
“What’d you do with him?” Dr. Gruber asked over his shoulder as he finished some clean up in the programming.
“I made short work of him of course” here the kid laughed again. Stupid annoying laugh. “and took my time with his girl.”
I wanted to kill him right then and there, but I knew that it would be a bad idea. Not because I couldn’t do it. I could easily. I had been through most of the same procedures, in fact I had perfected a number of them. But his stupid cockiness, the way he looked, acted, talked, laughed; He had no clue what was going on in here; going on in the world. He couldn’t see past the end of his exceptionally pointed nose. I knew what the repercussions of going through bonding process would be, and I knew that he would stand against time itself when it was over. Maybe then he would learn a thing or two about the world.
So instead I just snorted and walked out to have a smoke. Then he leaned over and spit at my feet while I headed for the door. He actually spit at me. That was it, I felt my face flush. I came at him from the side and planted my mechanical fist into the side of his soft baby face. It took him by surprise apparently, because it sent him flying toward the floor. But he was back on his feet before he had finished sliding. He stared at me absolutely infuriated. I was going to enjoy this. He took half a step back and whipped out a pistol from somewhere around his waist. That was slightly unexpected. He aimed it straight at my chest and pulled the trigger. I felt the bullet slam into my body, but like I’ve said before, I was a subject of SHED. It probably did more damage than I’d care to admit but I could shrug it off easy enough. I ran up to him and disarmed him, almost literally. But then I thought it would probably best to leave him intact. But before I could do anything further I felt my body jerk through a whole litany of various pain level, as all my muscles went limp and I dropped to the floor. Great, they had activated my collar.
The collar is an implant in the back of the neck that is given to all the subjects on their first test. Basically it just sits there most of the time, but due to the nature of some of the tests some subjects turn hostile. So every test conductor in SHED is given a remote that is designed to trigger up to two collars. I’ve never quite understood how the remote works but apparently there is only one remote per collar, so as to not get any crossed signals and randomly send a subject that isn’t doing anything to the ground. The actual mechanisms in the collar are quite simple: The collar will clamp down on the spinal cord slightly and send electrical impulses through the body. This was designed so that no matter how superior and enduring SHED has made you, you will drop before you realize what’s going on.
The punk slammed his foot into my ribs, but I couldn’t do so much as twitch. Then suddenly he hit the floor next to me, and we got to stare at each other as we drooled onto the floor. Even though he was paralyzed I could see the hate in his eyes.
Dr. Gruber walked over, shaking his head. “Really gentlemen? I didn’t expect you two to get along, but fighting? Trying to kill each other right before we finish this process just won’t do.”
I had my hands clenched in a fist still, at least I think I did, it was hard to tell because the collar was still activated, making way for a killer migraine. It could possibly do that. SHED wasn’t entirely, what you’d call legal. Sometimes in the past they used collars to… terminate especially hostile subjects
Then Gruber pushed a couple of buttons on his keypad and said “Mr. Rayne would you please get off the floor?”
I heard the kid suck in air through his teeth and he pushed himself up to hands and knees and then climbed onto his feet. He swayed there, slightly unsteady. My collar was still activated, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming now. The initial shock is horrible, but then it mellows out to make sure it doesn’t kill you. But even after it mellows it builds back up, and within a few minutes is far worse than any initial shock. That’s when it just may kill you.
“Mr. Rayne I think you’d do best to go ahead and strip down and head back to the nodular panel, Mr. Sutherlin will help to get you fitted.”
After the kid was out of sight, Dr. Gruber pushed a few more buttons on the remote and I felt all the pains subside and mobility along with awareness return to my limbs. He walked over and knelt beside me. “Thank you so much for doing that, but you know that I couldn’t have you damaging him.”
I struggled to my feet. The collar is brutal and effective, but after you’ve had it activated a few times you learn what to expect. “Yeah, I know,” I mutter. “sure wish I could though. I’d do all sorts of damage…”
“I know you would, and believe me I’d let you. But look, you two aren’t going to work together. I can trust you to behave yourself after he’s in the tank though can’t I?”
I glared at him for a moment and then slowly nodded.
“Good! Now, you go out, cool down, relax, and shake off the after-effects of the collar, and I’ll call you after we’ve got him locked in the tank. But you come as soon as I call. I’m going to need your help.”
I continued to hold my glare on him but replied to the affirmative and stalked out of the building.
Peter lay there for a while. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Ever since SHED there wasn’t anything that ever really got to him, with the exception of his collar, and a couple of different viruses that he had had close calls with. But since SHED, along with his collar’s remote, disappeared when Boston got hit, and he had developed immunity to those viruses, he had been pretty much impervious. But now that containment plate had him feeling like crap.
Within a couple of hours he found that he could wiggle his fingers and turn his head back and forth, and a good amount of his voice had returned. It was while he was practicing all of these that baldy came back into the room.
“I see you are doing better.” He stopped and stared at Peter for a while.
“Why did you kill her?” Peter asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Kill? Kill who?” The man asked, there was something mildly familiar about his rather large smooth face, but Peter couldn’t place it.
“Her name was Eowyn. The man who, put me into that containment plate, killed her.”
“Yes, well that was a rather unfortunate, amazing coincidence. Your female friend actually had quite a high price on her head, as did you.”
“Me? Why on earth?”
“Well you see, I know all about you. In fact a good number of people know all about you. You were one of SHED’s biggest accomplishments.” Peter felt as though someone had slugged him in the stomach. He hadn’t heard SHED’s name in a very long time and he was quite sure that after the wars no one knew anything about them.
The man continued. “We had thought that we had lost you in the wars when Boston was hit, but about a year ago some rumors surfaced in the party that you could still be alive. So we went ahead and contracted some hunters to look for you. We designed the containment plates expressly for your capture because we were quite sure that you wouldn’t come back willingly after what happened with the bonding process.” He gave a smile that seemed to roll his cheeks up to his temples.
“What are you talking about? What party? I thought when Boston was taken out SHED went too.”
“Yes SHED was disintegrated, I’ll admit, but it was the party’s decision; it had nothing to do with where some bombs may have fallen. SHED was just a subsidiary company of The Party. A mild passing interest, which had to be put aside to focus on the world’s issues at the time.”
“Issues? The world went to hell for decades because of those wars.” Peter could recall with vivid memory all the horrors of the time, and to hear them referred to with such carelessness always made him caustic.
The man in the coat laughed. “Yes, issues. As much as it may have felt like hell to you wherever you happened to be, I can assure you that it was not so all over the world. In fact there were people in South America, Africa, and Southern Asia who never even heard what was going on, never really cared. The world went on, Jared, and all in all wasn’t changed much by the happenings of the early 21st century. The US was the only country with a governmental collapse, but the other nations had been predicting it for years even before what happened. And yes SHED did disappear, but The Party continued. And before you ask, no I cannot tell you what exactly the party is...”
Peter didn’t know and really didn’t care who the party was. All this fell on muffled ears, as Peter’s mind focused on that one word. Jared. When the man had finished talking Peter said in a distant monotone “Why did he kill her if he was hunting me for you?”
“Ah yes, Eowyn.” The man sobered suddenly. “Well she was actually part of the party until about a year or so ago, when she, well defected we could call it. But this is strictly forbidden, so since we already had hunters in our employ looking for you, we sent them after her as well.” Here the man muttered something in New English which Peter couldn’t entirely make out, but it was something to the effect of making short work.
Then suddenly something clicked in Peter’s mind, and he began understanding. He struggled to raise his head and asked the man. “What is your name?”
A smile spread over the man’s face, “That’s not really any of your business, now is it?”
Peter lay his head back down. “Fine then. Answer this though, because it is very much my business. What is going to happen now?”
At this the man’s face darkened again “We’ll see… depends on what The Party decides to do with you. Sadly odds are you’ll end up in a containment plate for the rest of time, but…” Here he shrugged. “That’s not for me to say, we’ll see. But it was wonderful meeting you, Jared; I did enjoy our little talk today.” And with that the short balding man walked out of the room, leaving Peter alone with his own thoughts.
Photo by Tookapic
The smoke of my cigarette floated lazily upwards. It was a chill morning, but the sun had already been up for a little while and was warming the SHED compound. I was wandering back and forth, trying to relax. There was some slight nausea from the collar but I could get around that easy enough. I just had to determine not to kill the kid when I got back in there. I wasn’t sure I could kill him when I got back in there. The bonding process was impressive. If everything went according to plan then he would be the most resistant human being alive. Able to withstand, extreme, heat, cold, pressure, radiation, and have an almost invincible immune system. But most of all his aging would slow to less than a crawl, odds are he would live to be a thousand years old. Plus the reflex training that SHED had already given him, and whatever he had from the military. That stupid punk would be the ultimate super soldier. That is if everything went perfectly according to plan.
I’ll admit, I had half a mind to sabotage it. It was all too powerful to give to that one kid. But Dr. Gruber wasn’t a dummy, he would see me trying to mess with things. It just wouldn’t work. I could of course just go in there and shoot him, he would be sedated, and wouldn’t be able to put up a fight. But then SHED would come after me, that wouldn’t be pretty. I should just let them be. That was what needed to happen.
I threw the butt of my cigarette on the ground and pulled out a fourth. Of course I could just disconnect the anti-viral node. I would have to do it after the third checks, but it could… I was about to continue arguing with myself when Dr. Gruber appeared in the doorway to the building and called where I had been pacing.
“Mr. Richards, would you please join us now?”
Sighing I turned and trudged back into the building putting the cigarette back into the box on my way. When I walked in I saw Mr. Rayne already in the tank, with the breathing apparatus over his mouth, and various tubes snaking around into various parts of his body. His eyes were partially open, but it was evident that he wasn’t there.
“Would you please activate the beta sequence Mr. Richards?” Gruber said.
I went to the computer and typed in to the overseer program. “begin Beta sequence. Tank #1. Subject: Rayne, Jared” and I tapped the enter button. With that final keystroke the bonding process began.
I don't normally do SciFi but I had this idea rolling around in the back of my mind for a while. Thanks for reading, resteeming, upvoting, and following. See you all on the bock!