Radioactive Evolution

by Richard Hummel

  The huge cat eyed him warily, her sleek muscles poised to launch herself past him to rescue Elle.

  “I’m going to introduce you quick, and then you can come in.”

  Jared saw the rest of the colony surrounding Vanessa and Elle. Elle tried her best to greet the others, but he could tell she grew agitated by all the people, and she kept stealing glances in Scarlet’s direction.

  “Everyone,” Jared said as he entered the room. “Please, listen up for a second. Let’s give Elle some space. There will be plenty of time for you to talk with her, and there’s one more introduction I’d like to make. I wanted to warn you now so that no one freaks out. This is Elle’s companion.”

  The moment he’d finished speaking, Kitty walked into the room, not bothering to wait for his signal.

  Murmurs and whispers of surprise carried throughout the room, but thankfully, no one reacted violently like they had with Scarlet. Then, the black cat was much smaller and much less intimidating than a dragon. The more curious display was Kitty and Scarlet sizing each other up.

  Kitty stalked over to Scarlet and crouched in front of her, their eyes locked together in a contest of will.

  Curious, Jared reached out with his mind, probing Scarlet for any stray thoughts and found none.

  Everyone waited in tense silence as the protracted showdown ensued.

  Finally, the cat lowered itself to the ground in front of Scarlet.

  Releasing a sigh of relief, Jared walked over to Scarlet and caressed her side.

  Hey girl, what was that all about?

  The cat challenged my dominance. In the end, she bowed to my authority so long as it does not put her charge in harm’s way.

  Wow, you got all that from a staring contest there?

  It is difficult to explain. Maybe now is a good time for us to attempt a shared thought space? You can experience the moment for yourself.

  Looking around the room, everyone ignored the two of them as they crowded around Elle, listening to her accounting of the last nine years. While Jared wanted to hear that story himself, he could wait until everything died down.

  “Yeah. Let’s do it, but give me a moment first.”

  Jared walked over to the group that accompanied him into the city and asked them to study the weapons. That finished, he rejoined Scarlet and sat with his back to her.

  Okay, Scarlet, let’s do it.

  Are you ready? I will ease you into this so as not to overwhelm you.

  I’m ready.

  At first nothing happened, but slowly thoughts and emotions not his own started trickling into his mind. The emotional exchange was similar to how they already communicated, but gradually they increased intensity until they felt like his own. Before he knew what was happening, his mind raced as if he’d activated a slower version of Hyper-Cognition.

  The activity in his mind became a whirlwind as thousands of thoughts cascaded through Scarlet’s mind. It was too much for him to bear, but gradually the strain lessened as he found his place within the maelstrom that was Scarlet’s mind.

  Jared knew and understood everything. Every thought that flitted through like lightning made sense. It was altogether overwhelming and amazing.

  Where Jared’s mind often had a singleness of purpose, Scarlet’s fractured into thousands of threads at once, and Jared found it very difficult to focus on any of those threads.

  Conversations weren’t really a back and forth exchange, but a very intimate synchronized understanding between the two of them. A conversation that would normally take hours happened in the space of a heartbeat. If he’d had anything to hide, that was no longer the case. This method of communicating was an inspection of each other’s souls. It revealed the core of who they were.

  Even though Scarlet knew what he wanted to say before he formed the words in his head, it felt natural to form them anyway in order to slow down, and really express his amazement.

  Scarlet, this—how do you have so many thoughts occurring simultaneously? Is it always like this for you?

  Yes. Though I can control it at will. Your mind is also complex, thoughts running rampant and unchecked. Observe.

  One moment Jared was awash in the torrent of Scarlet’s thoughts, and the next it was like an all-encompassing wall of fog slammed into place. While there were still hundreds, thousands of thoughts flickering in and out of his waking consciousness, it was nowhere near the volume as Scarlet’s.

  This is your mind, and one day you will learn to live in this space as I do mine. Now, let us proceed with our original intent.

  Again, Scarlet switched focus to her mind, and the fog disappeared.

  Watch.

  The next thing Jared felt was a primal surge of emotion and overwhelming dominance. In his mind, he beheld Kitty poised in front of Scarlet. Only instead of seeing a large overgrown cat, Jared beheld a predator.

  They stared at each other, locked in a silent battle of will and domination. Raw, primal instinct, so utterly foreign to Jared flared in his mind, the very presence of another apex predator exuding an aura of power.

  Then, suddenly, Scarlet’s dominance asserted itself, and a switch flipped off, Kitty succumbing to Scarlet’s will.

  Whoa. All that happened with just a look?

  It was a contest of wills, and although my intellect is more advanced than any human, I am a predator by nature.

  Jared disengaged from their shared thought space. Though his mind still raced from the experience, his thoughts moved as if in a vat of molasses.

  Instantly, Jared wished to experience it again. The experience thrilled him, and he wished he never had to leave that space.

  Now I see why you said I need to work on my Mind enhancements, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do until I can do this on my own, Jared promised. That was incredible.

  Coming down off the adrenaline rush, Jared saw Kitty staring at them from across the room. He motioned her over.

  Kitty, I’d like for you to work with Scarlet and learn how you can protect Elle better. She will teach you how to work with Elle and assign nanites so that both of you grow and learn new abilities. Meanwhile, I’ll work with Elle so that she knows how to help the both of you grow. No doubt she doesn’t know how to assign anything, and in fact her ability can be used more effectively than it is now. I think she knows how to use it instinctually, but most likely she can activate it at will, and I’d like to show her how.

  I will submit, replied Kitty, bowing to Scarlet.

  After ensuring everyone was set, he climbed to his perch for some much-needed rest. While he lay there, Jared listened in on various conversations, all of which revolved around their new members.

  Everyone spoke with such enthusiasm, more optimistic about the future than ever.

  Vanessa and Elle broke away from the cluster of people and found an empty stall in the corner of the barn to spend one on one time with each other. As much as Jared tried to push the limits of his telepathy, he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  It seemed as though Scarlet planned on waiting to instruct Kitty, as the giant feline took up residence just outside the stall, ensuring the two sisters had as much personal time as they desired.

  Scarlet lifted her head to look at Jared and said, I would like to assign my remaining nanites. I want to have every advantage when we set out tomorrow.

  Rather than answer, Jared pulled up Scarlet’s status window and looked at her available allotments.

  You have 90% to assign, what’s the plan?

  I put a lot of thought into this over the past few days, and I will put everything into physical attributes once again. First, I want to increase my Muscle Mass fifty percent. Bone Density, Scale Hardening, and Skin Hardening ten percent each. Last, I want to enhance my Speed ten percent.

  Wow, fifty percent into Muscle Mass. You’re going to grow a lot!<
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  I really do not know at this point. My growth rate has already progressed so fast, I no longer have a frame of reference to gauge it. Although I must hunt before I sleep tonight to compensate for the rapid growth.

  You’re sure about these choices?

  I am.

  Jared trusted Scarlet more than himself and slid the nanites into the categories she’d specified.

  All right, you’re all set.

  Scarlet lumbered toward the door, and Jared jumped down to let her out before closing it behind her. When he turned around, he saw Vanessa had approached, holding Elle’s hand. The gesture brought a smile to his face, which was all too rare these days.

  “Where Scarlet go?” Vanessa said haltingly. Her voice sounded much better and rasped much less than it had just a couple days ago, but she still had much work to do before she spoke normally.

  “Your voice is getting much stronger,” Jared said. “Scarlet went to find food. She will undergo changes tonight, and she needs to eat and build up her energy reserves before she does.”

  “She get strong, like you learn talk in mind?”

  “Yes, but Scarlet decided to increase her body instead of her Mind like me. dragons have naturally high intelligence and mental capacity at birth, so she doesn’t really need to get stronger in that area. If you stay awake tonight, you’ll see the changes as she goes through them. It is a beautiful thing to watch, and I think you’d enjoy it.”

  “I try.”

  “Me too,” chimed in Elle.

  “You may join me in the loft if you’d like. I plan to keep watch through the night while she sleeps. The amount of changes she’s likely to experience might take longer than a night, but it’s hard to say for sure because she has really great control over the changes.”

  Scarlet returned several hours later looking satisfied. She dropped some roasted carcasses in the middle of the room for everyone before she curled up to sleep.

  “Thank you, Scarlet. I’ll keep watch while you rest.” With that Scarlet fell asleep, and the three of them settled in to watch the magic.

  Jared, Vanessa, and Elle sat together, their backs against a crate on the loft. Jared used the time to practice splitting his thoughts. Although he failed every time, he kept trying to replicate what Scarlet showed him. No matter how many times he tried, he hit some sort of barrier and just couldn’t get beyond no matter what he did.

  Growing bored with the failed attempts, Jared listened for any stray conversations, starting closer and working his way out to the edges of his ability. Unfortunately for him, most of those awake whispered in hushed tones instead of using telepathy.

  It was a start, but based on the short snippets he overheard, it’d take a long time before they recovered enough to speak normally. Even once they regained the ability, their sharp teeth gave them a slight lisp.

  Jared shook his head. Razael really did a number on them.

  Something tickled the back of his mind, like an itch between his shoulder blades. Looking around, Jared found Kitty feigning sleep while keeping a close watch on him and her companion.

  She’d wanted to jump up to the loft, but Jared was scared the added weight could make it collapse. Granted, everyone had been up here earlier, but he didn’t want to push his luck. If the loft collapsed, many people would get hurt, and there’s no telling how stable the explosives were.

  It only took a few minutes for sleep to claim Vanessa and her sister. Vanessa’s head rested on his shoulder and Elle in turn leaned into her sister. The both looked peaceful, content. Small smiles tugged at the corners of their lips. In spite of the trauma they both experienced, their reunion helped them reconcile the hand fate dealt, and nothing could diminish their happiness in that moment.

  His options to eavesdrop on conversations exhausted, he returned to his practice. By the time Jared gave up, he found that Scarlet’s transformation was underway. He hesitated in waking the sisters but knew that they’d want to see what was about to happen. It might be a long time before they saw anything like it again.

  He gently nudged Vanessa’s shoulder until she woke, sleep clouding her mind. She blinked a few times, squinting at him.

  Is everything okay?

  Jared pointed to Scarlet and whispered, “Watch.”

  Sleep vanished in an instant, and she whipped her head around to look at Scarlet. Just as gently, she prodded Elle awake to watch the magic unfold.

  Jared almost sent out a mental communication to the rest of the room, but he saw many—including Kitty—already watching the transformation.

  Mesmerized, everyone watched while the shimmer of nanites pulsed over Scarlet’s body. With each pulse, her mass increased in size, her muscles flexing. After several hours, many of those sitting around her had to back up as her body expanded. Jared couldn’t imagine going through such radical physical changes.

  Eventually, the pulsing and flexing stopped, the nanites switching to waves that washed over her from head to toe. Each pass modified her scales and skin, adding layers to both. The hardening process didn’t take as long, and just a few moments later, the outward transformation finished. No doubt there was a lot of work internally as the nanites worked on bone hardening and restructuring her musculature to support the increase in mass.

  Jared looked to Vanessa and Elle, who sat unblinking, completely entranced by what they’d seen. After several minutes with no further change, everyone returned to their activities or turned in for the evening. Vanessa and Elle climbed down from the loft and returned to the stall where Kitty waited, falling asleep against her side.

  Once everyone turned in for the night, Jared settled in for a long night of monotonous mental exercises. He’d been at it for six hours when he finally held two threads of conscious thought at the same time. It was fleeting, only a few seconds, but now that he knew what it felt like, he could repeat the steps to get there.

  He’d needed to clear his mind using meditation, but it wasn’t something he had a whole lot of practice with, so it took a long time to figure it out. Normally, subconscious thoughts only surfaced one at a time, and only as he changed the thread into an active, or conscious, thought. He’d never stopped to think about it before, but his mind was often a roiling mess of incomprehensible thoughts flitting by with no clear rhyme or reason. When he used Hyper-Cognition, he didn’t add any threads to process either, but rapidly moved between them like a master orchestrator.

  In order for him to control two at a time, he needed to clear his mind completely, tune out all other random clutter, his surroundings, and even his internal voice as he worked through the solution. In his mind, he came to a large empty room with an infinite number of doors lining the sides. In the middle of the open space, he existed. This was the byway of his mind, and each of these portals represented a conscious thought. Yet more branching entrances and exits represented the subconscious. Behind these barriers lay possibilities to come, past events, and memories sealed away. This was why he couldn’t progress before; they were impassable until he reached this centering of his mind.

  If he didn’t center himself before trying to split his focus, all that happened was the opening and closing of a single pathway within his mind. Although, there were always multiple paths opening and closing in rapid succession, sometimes much faster than he could comprehend, it was a singular thought no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise.

  The first few times he tried opening all the doors at once, he immediately lost focus and snapped out of his meditative trance. Trying to limit the number he opened proved futile because the first one closed the moment the second opened. It was very frustrating, but his mind simply wasn’t wired to process things in tandem. With continued practice, he could do it, but the only way he managed to process multiple thoughts at once was when he obliterated all barriers.

  Once he realized this method worked, he concentrated all
his efforts and quickly learned to focus on two separate threads at once. It was as if he’d entered a state between conscious and subconscious. Any time he tried to direct a thought, he reverted to a singular thread. If something outside the thought exerted influence, such as a diverging pathway, it yanked his focus into one thread.

  It was too easy for his mind to run amok and stray from the passive state he’d reached, but now that he knew the room existed in his mind, he could get back there, and believed it was the right step in training his mind. It needed conditioning so that he wasn’t stuck in this one-dimensional space that funneled all his thoughts into a teeny tiny bottle-neck, an information highway pinched off like an hourglass.

  Hello, Jared.

  Scarlet’s voice startled him, interrupting his training. After he’d learned to split his focus, he’d lost all track of time, but guessing from the light streaming into the room, it was well into the morning, if not the afternoon already.

  He blinked and stood to his feet. Stretching his stiff muscles, Jared asked, How do you feel?

  Sore. Though the pain is tolerable.

  You should be sore after all that. Scarlet, you massively increased your size. I think this change took longer than any others you went through.

  Yes, but arguably the most difficult due to my size.

  I don’t know if you’re going to fit through the door now. You barely fit as it was, but now? I guess it doesn’t matter since you can probably just walk straight through the wall.

  What were you doing just now? Before I interrupted?

  I did it! I managed to hold two conscious thoughts at the same time. Well, only for a few seconds, but I worked on it through the night.

  Excellent, said Scarlet excitedly. It will take a long time before you manage anything worthwhile. You are training your mind to function like a machine, or as humans call it, a computer. Compartmentalizing your thoughts and then separating them requires that your brain split into separate entities that simultaneously processes the distinct thoughts. The human mind was never made to dual process like that, at least not naturally.