by Starsky Hutch 76
A smallish, bespectacled man slipped into the back of the space cab. “Delta Station,” he said, leaning forward to hand the Space Cabbie a fifty-credit note. “Keep the change.”
“I would,” the Space Cabbie laughed, “but this says ‘legal tender of the Holy Roman Intergalactic Empire.'”
“Oh, my,” the bookish-looking man chuckled nervously. “How did that get in there?”
“That building we just left… you’re with the Parallel Timeline Institute?” the Space Cabbie inquired.
“How did you know?” the passenger asked, surprised.
“Well, that note you just handed me, for one,” the Space Cabbie laughed.
“Ah, yes… hah, hah,” the passenger laughed nervously, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I suppose it must look quite strange. Circumstances in that universe kept the Roman Empire from ever falling. It’s funny how one small difference in events can change society so completely.”
“You ain’t kidding, pal,” the Space Cabbie said. “That reminds me of a fare I once had. He was from a universe where one medical breakthrough changed the course of civilization.”
***
Once upon a time, in a little town named Indian Creek, there lived a man named Abe Danner. Abe was a small man with small aspirations. He was content with his position at the university and simply hoped to remain long enough to secure tenure. His marriage was hardly passionate, and his wife, Maddie, could be overbearing and fiercely religious — something that often conflicted with his position as a man of science. Still, he was content in their relationship and did not complain.
The one place where his passions did rise was the small lab on the first floor of their modest home. There, he allowed himself to dream.
Unfortunately, his wife was not someone he could talk to about any breakthroughs he made in the lab. She was no longer the open-minded woman he had married. While he had known she was religious when he married her, that simple faith had evolved into a staunch fundamentalism. She considered any research he did an abomination — an attempt to undo that which God had created.
If he was to have any intellectual conversation, it had to come from his colleagues at the university. To that end, he occasionally invited them over for dinner. That was how he found himself, one evening, discussing his latest project with Professor Mudge, the department head.
For most of the night, Abe’s wife remained silent, only making the odd cough or snort when their conversation touched on topics of which she disapproved. Her attention focused on him, though, as he spoke of his theories, fixing him with an icy stare.
Abe pretended not to notice and continued his conversation. “… and these tiny, microscopic machines — I call them nanites — could cure society’s ills, rewriting man’s very genetic code and curing any infirmity.”
“It all sounds like science fiction to me,” Professor Mudge remarked. “But I suppose the same could be said about any major scientific breakthrough.”
“It sounds like an abomination to me,” Maddie interjected. “You are going against God’s will. As if man could improve on God’s design.”
“Who is to say what is God’s will?” Mudge chuckled condescendingly. “Were doctors going against God’s will when they developed the polio vaccine? Was it his will that people continue to succumb to the disease? Or were these doctors instruments of his will so that man might be spared from this affliction?”
Maddie fell silent, unconvinced.
Mudge took a sip of his wine and leaned back in his chair, a contemplative expression crossing his face. “Just think of the military applications of such a breakthrough. Soldiers who won’t succumb to any injury. Troops with unlimited endurance. Never tiring. Never slowing down…”
Straightening up, Mudge wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Yes… yes. Once you have developed your theories further, I should be happy to see any proposal you might submit. This could be a very profitable endeavor for the university.”
It was Abe Danner’s turn to look horrified. It was never his intention for his work to be used by the military to create an army of super-soldiers. It was meant to be used for the benefit of mankind.
The truth was, his work was further along than he had let on. It was obvious it would have to remain within the confines of his modest home laboratory, lest it be exploited.
***
The next day, Abe decided his research had reached the testing stage. He moved one of his white lab mice to a separate habitat. For the purposes of documentation, he named the mouse Samson.
Abe filled a syringe with a sterile fluid containing a sample of his nanites and injected it into Samson. He then took a cigarette break as he waited for the nanites to work their way through the mouse’s system. Upon returning, he used a scalpel to make an incision on its hindquarters. He watched with excitement as the wound began to close, the microscopic nanites busily knitting the flesh back together.
A few hours later, Abe sat in his living room, smoking his pipe while reading a scientific journal. A loud crash jolted him from his reading, so he set down his pipe and dashed to the lab.
His jaw dropped when he saw the state of Samson’s habitat. It looked as if someone had fired a gun at the thick glass wall, but from inside. Perhaps something even faster than a speeding bullet.
Abe was frantic. His test subject was missing. He searched desperately for Samson for several hours before finally finding him in the kitchen behind the refrigerator.
Quickly dashing back to his lab, Abe held the mouse up with both hands. He was eager to get a blood sample under the microscope to observe the nanite activity. There were obviously some additional benefits he hadn’t anticipated.
Holding the mouse in one hand and the syringe in the other, he prepared to take the sample. However, when he went to inject the needle, it snapped in two. He attempted again with a larger needle, but the same thing happened. Each time he tried with progressively larger needles, they continued to break. Finally, he resorted to his largest needle, typically used for extracting bone marrow, but it broke as well.
Deciding to try a mouth swab, he discovered that the mouse bit through the swab stick. Sighing, he put himself to the task of trying to contain the tiny titan. He placed the mouse in a heavy leaden box, flipped off the light switch, and went to bed.
When he awoke the next day and entered his lab, he was startled to see many lumps poking outward from the surface of the metal box. It was fortunate that the mouse had given up on trying to escape. If it hadn’t, it surely would have torn the box apart if Abe’s suspicions about the transformation taking place were accurate.
Although he could not perform any invasive tests, he still had other options. One was that he could run tests on his subject’s new abilities. The first experiment involved the old tried and true cheese maze. He placed a piece of cheese at one end of the maze, then released Samson at the other end. Abe’s jaw dropped as the mouse crashed through the walls of the maze, making a direct line to the cheese.
Abe continued to conduct tests. Apparently, Samson did not need to breathe and was impervious to flames, drowning, toxic gases, blades, and projectiles of any kind.
His actions quickly ceased to register as a threat to Samson, and the mouse began to see them as some sort of game. Their relationship began to shift from scientist and subject to owner and pet.
Eventually, Abe ran out of tests he could perform on Samson. He was left with a perplexing dilemma. Unable to derive any additional information from his current subject, he dared not move on to a larger mammal, such as a cat, dog, or monkey. He shuddered to think of the power the nanites endowed combined with their own predatory instincts. If he was unable to contain it, he would be unleashing a monster into the world.
Acquiring a human subject would be impossible without using university resources. Once again, he hesitated to do so for fear of his work being exploited.
One option began to creep into his mind. Dare he consider such a thing? Would it make him no better than a mad scientist from old horror stories? It seemed the only logical choice left to him, he reasoned. That was how he came to inject himself with the nanites from his own experiment.
The changes exhibited themselves slowly, at first. The next morning, when he went to reach for a mug to pour himself a cup of coffee, it shattered in his hand. He glanced around to see if his wife was around to witness it, then quietly swept up the pieces. He realized he would have to be more careful; he was not ready to reveal what he had done.
He felt more invigorated and energized than he had since childhood. It became a common occurrence to find himself reading or working into the night, and then being surprised when the sun came up. It appeared he no longer required sleep.
Physical changes began to manifest themselves, as well. He began to stand straighter, his hair thickened, his musculature began to tighten, and he even seemed taller.
***
One day, while leaving the campus, Abe rolled through a stop sign, and the blue lights of a police car filled his rearview mirror. He pulled off to the side road, followed by the police car.
A female police officer exited the patrol car, approached his window, and asked to see his driver’s license and registration. After examining his license and then looking at him, she repeated these actions three times before handing it back.
“You’ve had some work done,” she said, smiling slyly. “Looks good. I think I’m just going to let you off with a warning this time.”
Abe watched in his rearview mirror as she walked back to her patrol car. When he caught a glimpse of his own reflection, he realized what she meant. In their efforts to push him to the pinnacle of humanity, the nanites had been making his features more symmetrical. In short, they were making him more handsome.
These changes didn’t go completely unnoticed by his wife. While they had happened too subtly for her to suspect anything, she still reacted to them. She found herself attracted to him in a way she hadn’t been since they first started dating. Thus, she came to announce her pregnancy to him five months from the day he first injected himself with the nanites.
Abe was greatly alarmed by the news. He feared for her safety.
In the months since his transformation, he had discovered more about the extent of the changes the nanites had made to him. He could uproot huge trees without breaking a sweat. He could crush bricks in his bare hands. Eventually, he could even bend steel girders like a cartoon strongman.
The most startling ability presented itself in the week before his wife gave him the news about her pregnancy. Curious to test his jumping skills, he began to see how high he could leap with his newfound powers. The distances grew progressively higher and farther. Then one day, he seemed to defy gravity, willing himself to go even farther. He realized that if he never chose to land, he would simply keep ascending. When he finally decided to return to the ground, he hurtled down like a missile, leaving a small impact crater in the earth. His clothes were ragged, but he was otherwise unharmed.
If he could do all this, what would happen to the fetus growing inside his wife? Would it kick its way out of her?
Abe watched her like a hawk, constantly doting on her. His wife chuckled indulgently, believing his extra attention was simply that of a normal, anxious father-to-be.
Maddie began to exhibit a healthy glow that he attributed to her pregnancy. Then he began to notice other changes. Her once-mousy brown hair was now a luxurious auburn. Her features became more symmetrical, and the slight crook in her nose began to straighten.
The kicker came when Maddie descended the stairs with a dumbfounded look on her face, holding her glasses in her hand.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s the darndest thing,” she replied. “When I went to put on my glasses, everything was blurry. Then when I took them off, everything was clear.”
“Perhaps your prescription was too strong. That’s been known to happen. You haven’t worn them for a couple of days, so your eyes have had a chance to recover,” he suggested, hoping she would buy such a ridiculous excuse.
“I suppose,” she said, giving him a suspicious look. “I’ll have my eyes retested the next time I’m in town.”
Abe sighed inwardly. He already knew what the optometrist would say — that she no longer needed glasses. He worried about how much longer he could hide the truth from her.