5: The Newborn

Gus became aware that he had eyes again, and his vision returned. And his hearing, too... only too much, too loud.

He tried to open his eyes, but something unexpected happened. His eyelids flickered open-shut, open-shut, much faster than humanly possible. He made a mental effort to keep his eyelids open, and got a clear view of his surroundings. The body tank, now a blurred but frightening memory, stood in another end of the wide, low laboratory in which he sat. Focusing, he noticed that he was sitting in a partitioned section of the lab, surrounded by a panorama of ten-inch glass walls.

Another odd thing occurred when Gus focused his eyesight. He could immediately read a small signpost five feet away, with incredible sharpness. Hadn't he been thinking about buying contact lenses before the accident? He couldn't even afford a simple cornea transplant.

Several people stood on the other side of the glass walls: lab-coated men and women, staring at him with fascinated eyes, laughing and gesturing as if Gus was some kind of zoo exhibit. In one corner stood a pale, sturdy midget on a set of leg extensions; Gus wondered what a mutant from the Outer Planets was doing among a group of Earthmen.

Then he spotted the Kansler, in his trademark gray uniform and cap - the potato-nosed, confident face that dominated so many newscasts and video images on Earth. All these people seemed to move and talk too slowly, as if their life functions had halted almost to a standstill. Gus felt embarrassed in the famous Kansler's presence; it was the first time he had seen him in person. Was he supposed to salute him? Gus moved to stand up, and...

An alarm went off, when Gus instantly pivoted off his seat like a squash ball off a wall, and crashed into the ceiling. The reinforced concrete cracked like an eggshell. He bounced back down, hit the floor with a heavy thud, spun uncontrollably and smashed into one glass wall. A spider-web of cracks exploded across the surface layer of the glass - but the other three layers held. Gus stood to his feet - and against his will he shot up again, punching a second hole in the ceiling. He hung by his head through the hole for a moment, then fell down and landed his feet. Dust and debris rained down upon his large jet-black shoulders. Gus shook his head, expecting blood and pain.

No blood came, no sweat, no tears. The pain he had felt at the impact faded off in a moment.

"Now wait... just wait a minute... " he told himself, barely noticing that his voice sounded deeper than usual.

He managed to stand absolutely still, and slowly turned his head to take a second look at another puzzling detail. Why were his shoulders so oversized? He seemed to be dressed in some ridiculous tight bodysuit, completely black - except for a single yellow stripe that ran across his chest, and down the front of his left leg. Only his face and forehead remained bare, and seemed unchanged on the surface. A look in a mirror revealed that two large black bulges had replaced his ears.

"What is this?" he asked the onlookers, raising his voice to a shout - it, at least, stayed within normal boundaries.

Through a loudspeaker, the heavily accented voice of the Kansler was carried into the partition where Gus stood. He heard it spoken at normal speed, yet it sounded too slow in a way he could not define...

"This is you, Colonel Clarke. The new you. It took us a month to complete, cost billions, but we made it, like we promised - you are all you could ever be."

An involuntary reflex made Gus look down at himself, and he saw what was missing. It had to be a dream, he told himself. That's it, I bought a dream-vid and fell asleep with it running. Any moment now it'll shut off.

"Come on... shut it off... where's that bloody abort function?" he said, puzzling the assembled scientists and engineers.

"He thinks he's stuck in an ordinary simulation," Boulder Pi remarked. "Why would Clarke deny the reality of what he himself volunteered to? Isn't that odd?"

"It's the shock. I'll talk to him," the Kansler growled. "Everybody out, get out, I need to have a private talk with the Colonel. You too, Boulder - out! Shut off all surveillance!"

Alone, the two men faced each other. Gus kept concentrating on not moving a muscle. It was more than just the low lunar gravity, he understood now - something felt different about him, as if his limbs were stuffed with tightly coiled springs. All sensations were too sharp, too detailed, played too slowly.

"You must be very confused right now, Colonel, but trust me - you're not the first one. Remember what we told you about your predecessor. She lived - and so will you."

"This is all a great mistake, sir. I am not a colonel -"

"Quiet! Listen. Whoever you think you are does not matter, because you are much, much more than you ever were. Stronger, faster - and, if you learn well, smarter too. But such power comes at a cost. You have shouldered a great responsibility. This experiment is our last, best hope for peace, for a safe Solar System for our children. You can do it, with the right training. You can win this war and save the Earth. Mankind will be eternally grateful to you, and you will know it - because in this new form, you can live forever. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"But I'm not Colonel Clarke... you've got the wrong man! You must find -"

"Two men, who perfectly resembled Clarke, were found in the wreckage after the attempt on his life. One was blown to pieces, beyond saving. The other man was you... badly injured, but miraculously alive. It was my decision to seize the moment, and proceed with the planned transformation immediately, before the public started to worry that Clarke was too injured to follow through."

The Kansler's glassy eyes focused on Gus's eyes - which were no longer made of living tissue. The cyborg's irises shrank in a perfectly lifelike manner.

"It doesn't matter who you were, son. What matters now is that the people of Earth thinks that Colonel Clarke, the perfect candidate I chose, is alive and can follow through. Do we understand each other? Do you understand like I do the meaning of duty, of serving our beloved Mother Earth?"

The Kansler's speech had an electrifying effect on Gus. He desperately wanted things to make sense, and he wanted to do what was right.

"I understand," Gus said after a time. "How... how badly injured was I when you picked me up?"

The Kansler looked straight into Gus's eyes and stated, unflinchingly: "Some parts of you we were unable to save. I'm sorry." So am I, thought Gus, so am I.

"Can I talk to my friends back on Earth?"

The Kansler just shook his head.

"No, I guess not. I... I have a dog..."

"We can get you a new one, no problem. Or a synthetic one."

"I mean, my dog. He was with me when... when..." Gus shut his eyes, and waited for tears. His eyes remained completely dry. The Kansler had expressly asked for that design feature. After a minute, Gus looked up, and his face - if it was still his own - was a mask of grief.

"What should I do? All I know is boxing."

"It's a start. I shall supervise your training program here in the lunar complex. Once your training is complete, you will meet the public and visit Earth."

"I feel thirsty. Is there any drink here?"

The Kansler seemed puzzled for a moment, and wished Boulder Pi had been present to explain the technical details. Not one particle of flesh, blood or bone remained inside the hulking black shape that stood before him - only a perfect mold of a brain and nervous system, made directly on the original, which had been dissolved in the process. The result was, and the Kansler believed in it, a continued but altered existence of the original consciousness.

"Your sensations of thirst and hunger are just ghost reflexes. You can eat and drink, but you cannot digest it, or taste it quite the way you once did. Now you feed on pure energy."

"How?"

"The black surface layer of your outer skin contains a receptor membrane, part of a system which converts heat and sunlight into electricity. The energy is stored in superconductor rings inside your chest. You speak without breathing, for you have no lungs."

"I am a... robot?" Gus exclaimed, thinking of the pugilist robot that he had sparred with on the day of the accident. The comparison was absurd; he didn't feel like plastic and metal at all.

"A cyborg. Synthetic man. Whatever. Boulder Pi can explain it better. Do we have an agreement? You accept that you are now serving in the Fleet, and will not voice public doubts about your previous identity?"

"And if I did?"

"Your friends and kin are bound to think you died in the explosion. And even if they should recognize your face, could your life ever return to what it was? What is there to return to, if this war is lost? The enemy threatens all of us, also your friends. You, as I do, have a duty to protect them."

Gus thought about it for what seemed to him half an hour. Yet, when he checked the wall chronometer, less than a minute had passed. He missed his dog terribly.

"Okay. I'll do what you want, if it's for the good of Earth."

"I knew I could trust you, the moment I saw you. Welcome to the Fleet, Argus-A."

"Say what?" Gus asked, frowning with disbelief.

"A codename the Marketing department came up with. I wanted to call you simply 'Clarke', but... "

Gus shook his head, and it jerked spastically from side to side; this loss of self-control infuriated him.

"We'll start the next day-shift with basic coordination training," the Kansler told him. The whole experiment could still fail, and the thought of public fiasco frightened the potato-nosed man. "Try and get some rest. Goodnight, Colonel."

Gus found himself alone in the glass-walled partition, and spotted the bed in the corner. He reached out with one massive arm to support his balance against the nearest wall - and the palm of his hand struck out with the force of a jackhammer, punching a dent in the white-painted steel surface. He began to breathe more rapidly, only it was a delusion; he no longer had lungs, only the reflexes of his nervous system. Air was sucked into his abdomen, and was blown back out with each breath, but not a single oxygen atom was absorbed.

He clenched his teeth together, fearing he might accidentally bite off his artificial tongue, and attempted a painstakingly cautious step toward the bed - four feet away. One jerky step sent his thick foot smashing against the reinforced floor. Thinking frantically that he must relax, Gus moved his other foot. The floor took another heavy stomp, and he felt his entire frame vibrate as he struggled not to bounce up into the ceiling again. Not since he had first learned to walk 36 years ago, had he felt so awkward. Finally, he reached the bed and let himself fall onto it - too slowly, both due to the low lunar gravity and his sharpened senses. He glanced at the chronometer on the wall.

Four feet. It had taken him 1.5 hours to move that far. Gus shut his eyes and waited for sleep to come. His mind was overwhelmed. Yet he could not fall asleep. Keeping his eyes shut, he lay still and waited for the next dayshift.

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THE ARGUS PROJECT INTERNET EDITION (c)A.R.Yngve 1999, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.

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