by Starsky Hutch 76
A few nights later, Abe Danner sat in the living room reading the newspaper when he heard a banging noise coming from the kitchen. His wife was hammering a nail to hang something on the wall. Suddenly, a loud crash echoed through the house, and he saw his horrified wife staring at him through a two-foot hole in the wall.
For a few seconds, she was too stunned to make a sound. Then, she let out a scream of shock. “I… I… was trying to hang up the dreamcatcher Margie gave me, and… and… somehow…”
Maddie looked at Abe as if she were seeing him for the first time. “What have you done to us?” she shouted, smashing the hammer against the wall, creating another hole.
Abe quickly dashed into the kitchen, where she stood, and held onto her shoulders. “I injected myself with my nanites,” he explained. “It was the only way I had to test them. I had run out of options. I never meant for you to be affected by it.”
“You had to do it!” she exclaimed frantically. “You had to go and play God! You’ve damned us both! What about our baby?!”
“He will be perfect,” Abe said soothingly. “He’ll never be sick. He can never be physically hurt. He might not even grow old or die. He’ll be superior in every way.”
“This… this isn’t right,” Maddie sniffed, holding onto him. “We… we have to make this right. We… we need to go to church and pray. Promise me we can do that.”
“I promise,” Abe said, wrapping his arm around her. It was the least he could do after all he had put her through.
***
Abe and his wife walked up the aisle as the organ music filled the sanctuary. It had been some time since he last attended church, and it had been a while for his religious wife, too, thanks to her morning sickness. Still, he was surprised by the blank stares of their neighbors and fellow parishioners.
“Look, there’s room near the front,” Maddie said, tugging on his arm.
As he and his wife sat down, the man in front of them turned around and offered his hand in greeting. “Hi, I’m Mike Rodgers. Good to have you join us.”
Abe was taken aback. Why was a man he had known for years introducing himself? “Um… hi,” he replied. “I’m Abe Danner, and this is my wife, Ma–”
“Hey!” Mike interrupted, his face lighting up. “We have a guy in town named Abe Danner. He’s a professor at the college. A bit older than you. You guys cousins or something?” As the music stopped, he quickly added, “Looks like they’re getting started,” and turned back around.
The choir began to lead the parishioners in a hymn. Abe wasn’t comfortable singing in public, so he just barely moved his lips, mouthing the words without uttering a sound.
The pastor then began to lead everyone in a prayer of confession. Abe was puzzled when he saw his wife’s eyes light up.
As soon as it was over, Maddie whispered to her husband, “We arrived on the day of communion. This is just what we need.”
The worshippers began to file to the front. Since Maddie had led them to one of the front pews, they were one of the first in line.
Being a more traditional church, a single chalice of wine was used to represent the blood of Christ. An altar boy held it up to Abe’s lips to take a sip, and then he moved over to the one holding the bread that represented the body of Christ.
Nearly the entire town was in attendance that day. The few who recognized Abe and Maddie commented on how good they looked, but he was surprised by how few there were.
***
Over the next few weeks, strange things began to happen. The town drunk reluctantly quit drinking when he found that alcohol no longer had an effect on him. The paperboy was hit by a speeding car but walked away unscathed, though his bike was mangled beyond repair. The butcher’s son scored a home run for his little league team by hitting a ball into the next county.
A sick feeling washed over Abe as he continued to hear more stories like these. While he understood how the nanites had spread to his wife, he hadn’t counted on them being transmitted through saliva. The nanites must have been reproducing rapidly for them to begin affecting such a large group of people.
Similar stories began to emerge from the surrounding counties. A group of children chased down the ice cream man and stopped his truck by force. A camper pinned a bear that had tried to maul him before releasing it back into the wild. A mother who had turned her back on her toddler while they were at the park was startled to discover that her son had built a pyramid out of the parked cars in the parking lot.
As the infected traveled, the infection spread with them. Reports came in from farther and farther away. A surfer in California carelessly flung a shark onto the shore when it tried to bite him. A Texas cowboy at a rodeo cold-cocked a bull that was about to gore him, knocking it unconscious. In Chicago, a man dodging a reckless bus driver ended up leaping over a building in a single bound.
Eventually, stories began to trickle in from overseas, each more fantastic than the last.
A woman in Sweden slapped a potential rapist, and the blow snapped his neck.
A man in Switzerland climbing the Swiss Alps had his guide rope snap. He fell several hundred feet and landed unscathed.
An angry group of protesters in East Germany burst through the Berlin Wall, shrugging off the hail of bullets fired down on them from the panicked guards attempting to stop them.
A man in England attempted to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of him, shoved his foot through the bottom of the car, and sent it flipping into traffic. The car exploded, and he walked away without a scratch.
A suicide bomber in the Middle East attempted to blow himself up. He was beside himself when he discovered he was still alive and would not be receiving his seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Most of the ones he had been attempting to take with him were unharmed, as well.
And so it went. The nanites spread far and wide, like a viral epidemic. The world was in chaos. As more stories emerged of disasters caused by a world unprepared for their newfound abilities, Maddie could barely look at the husband she held responsible.
One morning, after a night he had chosen to sleep to escape his guilt, Abe awoke to discover his wife and child were gone. All he had left to remember them by was the crib they had fashioned out of steel bed frames and the metal baby toys he had made for little Hugo, which were covered with teething marks.
In the beginning, there were deaths. The uninfected found themselves caught in the crossfire as the infected tested the limits of their new powers against one another.
Eventually, there were no uninfected left. The world burned as titans clashed like gladiators. Emboldened by their newfound abilities, nations went to war. Criminal impulses were unleashed as those possessing them began to think of themselves as unstoppable.
A calm eventually settled over the world. Tyrants could not oppress those who could not be hurt. Nations could not fight soldiers on whom bullets had no effect. Criminals could not victimize those who could not be overpowered.
War became fruitless. Crime lost its purpose. Once everyone came to this understanding, they were able to go about the business of rebuilding the civilization that had been flattened. Man achieved world peace — not because of any greater enlightenment, but because violence against his fellow man was no longer possible.
Society rebuilt itself in the form of towering spires reaching far into the heavens. These structures were designed for beings no longer bound by the former limitations of humanity, featuring patios and entrances on every floor.
Unfazed by previously inhospitable environments, civilization spread from the coldest reaches of Antarctica to the deepest depths of the ocean, rendering overpopulation a thing of the past.
As man became accustomed to his immortality, the drive to procreate faded away. Hugo Danner was among the last of the new generations of man.
Untroubled by the drives that had formerly ruled them, a cultural renaissance occurred. Over the next thousand years, humanity turned to pursuits such as art, literature, science, and philosophy.
Eventually, even these pursuits grew tiresome as the years passed. A general ennui began to settle over the populace as mankind found itself faced with an endless expanse of years and no new challenges left on Earth.
The last avenue left was exploration. One by one, men and women began to soar into the heavens by the power of their own flight, never to be seen again. Some said they went on to become the gods of new worlds.
That was how Abe Danner came to find himself standing on the patio of a high tower, peering out at a seemingly desolate world. He was surprised when a beautiful figure floated into view — one he hadn’t seen in centuries. Her flowing white gown whipped in the winds at their high altitude.
“Maddie…” he gasped.
“Hello, Abe,” she replied.
“Maddie, I’ve missed you so much,” Abe said, his voice choked with emotion. “Our son…”
“He grew into a fine man,” Maddie said, smiling as she floated before him. “You would be proud of him. He and his wife left some time ago.”
“Maddie, I’m so sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” she said, smiling a beatific smile. “I’ve come to tell you I understand now… the gift you’ve given us. You were the instrument of God so that He might lift us up. We’re all angels now — each and every one of us. Angels.” With that, she flew into the air, disappearing into the distance. That was the last he saw of his former wife.
Samson picked that moment to poke his head out of Abe’s shirt pocket. As he stroked the small creature’s head, he mused that this all ended the same way it had begun — with just a man and his mouse.
The End