The Syn-En Solution

by Linda Andrews

  Exactly. See you do remember.

  Do I? The idea didn’t seem so much as a memory as a knowing, like the knowledge that came from nowhere. Her heart skipped a few beats before settling back into rhythm. Her scalp tingled then a warm languor filled her limbs.

  You do. Now take a deep breath and I’ll tell you why you passed out.

  Foreboding pulled against her. Nell tried to brace herself against what was coming, but couldn’t quite muster the energy. She felt drugged, disconnected from her thoughts.

  You fainted after learning that your family is dead.

  “My family is dead.” Nell jerked away from the wall. Tears stung her eyes and pricked her nose but the loss… She cupped her hand over mouth to hold in the wail threatening to burst from her lungs. Christ, if this was how she reacted upon hearing it the second time, no wonder she’d passed out the first time. Acknowledging it allowed memories to trickle in-the money, her family and her brother… The information came and went like a documentary. If helping the Syn-En didn’t gain her acceptance, perhaps her brother’s actions would. Yet a part of her whispered that there was something else. Something her mother/conscience didn’t want her to know.

  A sheet-covered lump by the door moved. “That is to be expected, isn’t it? I mean you are from over a century ago, aren’t you?”

  Nell waded through the tidal wave of grief to focus on the small feminine figure under the cloth. She trudged across the floor to uncover Richmond. “Yes.”

  But somehow she’d thought maybe her parents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews had also found a means to survive. The notion was absurd and stupid and yet… Nell inhaled a ragged breath.

  You are holding up well.

  Nell choked on a sob. Damn. Aside from her memories, that inner voice was all that remained of her mother. She was alone. No one would miss her if she just disappeared. Pity partied inside her head.

  That is why you must make yourself useful. Help the Syn-En so they will have no cause to make you disappear.

  Nell shuddered. The Syn-En had no problem accepting death, short term or permanent. Then again, as soldiers it had to be a constant companion. She clasped the injured girl’s hand. Life, warmth and vitality flowed against her palms. “Don’t you want to live?”

  The girl nodded then shrugged, but moisture glistened in her green eyes. “Doc can save forty Syn-En in the time it would take to fix me. It is not so bad a trade off. They are my family. Wouldn’t you die to save your family?”

  Information streamed through Nell’s mind. The Save our World Foundation had paid a large settlement to her family for Nell’s ‘death’. With the money, her parents had made contributions to a local food bank. Their donations had brought them to the attention of a group of thugs, which led to a home invasion and her family’s deaths. Enough! She shut off the thoughts and focused on the girl beside her. A droplet of water drifted in front of Nell. It took a moment to realize it was a tear. Her tear. “My being here caused my family’s death.”

  Although merely a rasp in the silence, the words burned her throat like acid. Stop thinking about it. Deal with it later, right now, make yourself useful. Maybe something good will come out of volunteering.

  “I am sorry for your loss.” The girl squeezed Nell’s hand.

  “Thank you.” Nell nodded, somewhat angry at the pat phrase. Couldn’t they have come up with something more comforting in a hundred years?

  “What do you think will happen to me once I cease functioning?” A watery sheen brightened her eyes.

  You can help her, Nell. You can save them all.

  Nell’s thoughts flipped to the quadruple amputee missing the lower half of his face. Somehow she doubted he could be saved, even with her mother/conscience’s newfound optimism. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try to help this one, would it?

  They’ve already been written off as dead.

  Dead. Nell hated the word. If she could deprive the grim reaper of one soul, it would be worth it. Anger forged her determination. “I’m going to fix you.”

  Hope blossomed in Richmond’s cheeks and lifted her lips. “You are?”

  “Yes.” Nell’s hands fluttered around her like stunned birds, confused about how to land. All right Mom. Tell me what to do.

  You must trust me, Nell. Follow your instincts without question. The slightest hesitation could result in the girl’s passing.

  Nell nodded. Trust my instincts. A part of her rebelled against the idea, but another surrendered. Those hardwired responses helped her survive, they were there to protect her. After counting to ten, she set her hands on the side of the gurney. I’m ready.

  We’ll need to scan her.

  As if watching from the outside, Nell slid the gurney out of its place, down the cleared aisle and maneuvered it under the imager. Pushing up the helmet, she lowered the imager’s arms and positioned the arc-shaped scanner near the girl’s head. Nell combed the hair away from the girl’s face and smiled down at her. “Try to be still while I scan okay?”

  “I can shut down my motion subroutines.” A spasm shook her shoulders.

  “Unfortunately, you can’t. I need to see what’s working and what isn’t.” Her mother/conscience’s words came out of Nell’s mouth. So this is what it’s like to be possessed. While not unpleasant, it didn’t seem quite right.

  Do you want to help her or not?

  I want to help. Striding over to the computer, Nell felt more herself. True, her body moved without conscious thought, but instead of feeling like a marionette to her mother/conscience puppeteer, knowledge trickled in. She knew what she was doing and why, no translator needed. Her fingers moved nimbly over the keyboard. A hum echoed around the room as the imager began to work its way down the girl’s body.

  Images popped up on the screen. Red highlighted the systems facing critical failures. Of the twelve listed, only two remained green.

  Nell tensed. Maybe she should have picked someone with not so many problems.

  The girl studied her crushed right arm. “Don’t worry Nell Stafford. I did not really think you could fix me, but I do appreciate you trying.”

  “Hey now, don’t give up.” Nell infused confidence in her voice. “I’m going to fix you.”

  Already her mother/conscience prioritized the repairs and Nell’s palms itched to begin as instinct kicked in. She grasped the girl’s crushed arm, pushed it up tighter into the joint and twisted to the left. The seal broke with a sigh and the arm came free from the torso. On the monitor, one of the red lights flashed green. “See I helped you already.”

  “And with the saved energy, I will live twelve minutes longer.”

  “You’re going to live decades longer, by the time I’m through with you.” Nell eased her hands under Richmond and rolled the girl onto her side. “I’m going to power down most of your cerebral interface, okay?”

  “That will disable my WA connection with the others.” Richmond’s lower lip trembled against her chin.

  “For a short period.” Nell opened the fingertips of the severed arm and jerked out the Phillips head screwdriver.

  “I’ll be all alone.”

  “I’m here and I’ll keep talking okay?” Carefully, Nell pushed away the skin covering the access panel and unscrewed the cover. Black charred the interior of the small box. She wiped away the soot and inspected the five separate compartments containing a mesh of nanoconnectors. They would all need to be replaced.

  “W-What will we talk about?”

  Nell snapped off a flathead screwdriver from the finger tool belt and worked it against the first cerebral-neural link. Removing it would paralyze Richmond from the waist down, lock her Smart Metal Alloy skin/armor in place and render her mute. Without removing the chip, Nell set the screwdriver down and looked around the room. Shouldn’t there be spare parts around, it was a hospital after all? “How about I tell you a story?”

  “A story?” Richmond relaxed. “Will cunning or strength win the battle?”

  “A li
ttle of both.” Jockeying the gurneys, Nell wove a crooked path to the cabinet next to the door. One by one, she opened and closed the embedded drawers, plucking out spare neural links, fine tools, and other assorted parts as she went.

  “I do not believe I have ever heard such a story.”

  “Well I hope you enjoy it, then.” After working her way back to her patient, Nell dumped her treasures on the space near Richmond’s head. Nell sifted through the information, looking for the one bright spot she remembered. Along with the medical information, her mother/conscience fed her what she wanted to know. “Do you know why the Syn-Ens were created?”

  “To protect citizens, then civilians. In that order.”

  Nell grabbed the cerebral interface forceps, opened and closed them to get a feel for the sensitivity of the highfalutin tweezers then set the tips against the first burnt out link. “I’m talking about in the beginning, before everything degenerated into a caste system.”

  Forceps poised, Nell waited for Richmond to answer.

  The girl glanced over her shoulder at Nell. “There is no such time.”

  Nell gently turned Richmond’s face away, wiggled the charred link free and tossed it on the floor. Using the forceps, she picked a new one and slipped it into place. “Before the solar flares of 2020, a great plague swept across Earth.”

  Richmond blinked and reared back slightly. Her partially severed bottom lip flopped against her chin. Starting from the point of attachment, the gash healed itself in a zipper motion. “According to my history ebook, the great plague decimated Earth’s population. Humanity went from almost a billion people to less than two hundred thousand in the span of four years.”

  Relieved that her efforts were working, Nell probed the next link. This would disable Richmond’s arms, neck and stop her artificial heart. A slight tremor shook Nell’s hands. If she messed up, Richmond’s brain wouldn’t get any oxygen and she’d die.

  You will not mess up.

  Nell popped out the next neural link. It clattered to the floor, but she didn’t care. She quickly selected another from the gurney and snapped it into place. The computer registered a heartbeat, then two. Nell took a calming breath. Syn-En’s hearts only beat twelve times a minute. There wasn’t much organic tissue left in them that required blood. “Actually, the human population dropped from over seven billion to less than five hundred million. The disease also wiped out ninety percent of all mammals and marsupials, eighty percent of birds and reptiles and half of the ocean’s populations.”

  “My systems register irreparable damage to my heart, lungs and digestive tract.”

  Nell checked the screen. While she knew replacing the links wouldn’t cure all of Richmond’s problems, Nell had hoped it might fix some of them. “I have to stabilize your interfaces before I open your chest cavity.”

  That sounded more appropriate on a medical drama than coming from an executive assistant. Sweat boiled from Nell’s upper lip. She wiped it on her sleeve then quickly replaced the last three links and closed the cerebral interface. Of course, no admin assistant had a mother/conscience like Nell’s.

  Richmond rolled onto her back and stared at Nell. “I had not realized there could be so many people. The UEN Council says Earth should not be burdened with more than five hundred million and are taking efforts to curb the reproduction rates.”

  The UEN lies. Afraid of insulting her patient or the Syn-Ens, Nell kept her thoughts to herself and continued her story. She skimmed Richmond’s tattered uniform until her fingers found the six indentations that would open the girl’s chest cavity. “Because of the disease’s virulence, many scientists believe the virus arrived in one of the meteor showers common in the early twenty-first century. In fact, it has an odd base pair not common on earth and…”

  Nell pushed the last indentation. There was a hiss and grind as Richmond’s chest split open along her sternum. Nell watched the remains of the girl’s uniform still attached to her small breasts. Could the magnets make the fabric cling to her skin?

  Not skin, armor. Their dermis is artificial and functions as armor.

  Waving away the cloud of noxious vapors, Nell peered inside. Expecting the chest to be packed tighter than a Toyota engine, she was shocked by its emptiness. Silver plate glinted off her ribs and spinal cord. Of course the pink tubes and blobs present were crushed and there was blood. To her surprise it didn’t float but slowly seemed to be disappearing.

  The SMA will return it to the heart, but we must stop the loss.

  Holding her breath against the stench, Nell donned a pair of gloves from the box attached to the wall then reached inside the chest cavity and wrapped her hands around the damaged tissue. Two small balloon-like sacs acted like lungs to oxygenate the blood going to Richmond’s brain. Both inflated in rapid succession to the hiss of leaking air. The pale pink heart was attached to the misshapen lungs. When the bottom of the tiny organ contracted, blood sprayed out of a puncture in the engorged top.

  That is not correct.

  Stopping, Nell waited for further instructions. God knew she didn’t want to do anything wrong. After a moment it dawned on her that her mother referred to the emptiness where the reproductive organs should be. How were the Syn-En supposed to have children?

  We’ll send Doc instructions on how to fix this. It shall work out very well. Very well indeed.

  Nell’s skin prickled from mother/conscience’s ‘stranger with candy’ tone. They were on the Syn-En’s side, weren’t they?

  Of course, we just haven’t the time to fix her reproductive issues.

  Before Nell could change her mind about accepting her mother/conscience’s help, her fears seemed to evaporate. She could trust that voice inside her head. She needed to if she wanted to survive and complete her mission.

  Richmond set her hand on Nell’s forearm. “How badly damaged am I?”

  Below a tiny stomach, a small coil of bowel was split and waste smeared the inside of the girl’s body. The SMA absorbed the mess and returned it to her bowels for excretion, where it leaked out again. Shaking herself, Nell dipped her hands into the steamy interior and felt for shrapnel. “Not too bad.”

  “You are not a good liar, Nell Stafford.” Richmond glanced down at the opening then frowned and wrinkled her nose. “Sometimes I think it would be better if the Syn-En had no biologic parts. They are very fragile.”

  “I don’t know about that. I mean we biologics came back from being nearly extinct several times.” Nell inserted a tissue knitting patch with built in antibiotic and antiseptic capabilities into the split bowel and sutured the gash closed with nanotubes. After washing the area with sterile water, she checked for leaks but detected none.

  “Yet this virus, something so small even Syn-En’s can’t see, has killed so many.”

  Nell attached the replacement lungs to the mechanical heart and set them aside. Using a syringe, she sucked up a few droplets of Richmond’s blood, injected it into the cellular coating sac and waited. “New diseases always decimate a population. Imagine a castle. You’ve seen one, right?”

  Nell’s palms sweated from tension. If the sac didn’t make the right mix of coating to cover the new synthetic lungs and heart, Richmond’s body would reject the organs, flooding her brain with antibodies and kill her. No pressure.

  “Of course, Syn-Ens receive an eighth level civilian education.” Richmond’s pride shone on her nearly repaired heart-shaped face. “Plus castles are not affected by the Great Plague.”

  “Well, a castle has a moat, walls, restricted entrance and exit points, turrets and arrow slits, right? Those are their defenses.” The coater beeped signaling its readiness. Nell plugged the nozzles on the bottom of the coater into the heart/lung interface. The lungs inflated and the heart began to pump.

  “I believe that is correct.”

  “So imagine your enemy has a shuttle and laser cannons.” Nell glanced up. Richmond’s face had completely healed. Not even a scar remained. “A castle can’t defend agai
nst a flying machine that can jump walls and ignore doors, nor could its walls withstand a barrage of high energy weapons. It takes time for the defenses to adapt and much life is lost in the mean time.”

  “But many people died.”

  “Those that survived adapted.” The light on the coater flashed green. The lungs and heart were ready for placement. “Your enhancements can’t adapt, they have to be changed out, replaced with upgrades.”

  “I would have died without them.”

  “Probably, but your armor punctured your organs, causing your fatal errors.” Nell carefully disconnected the damaged organs and began replacing them with the new ones. The system reminded her of a plumbing compression joints. Of course, these didn’t leak. After sealing the connection with nanotubes, Nell waited until all the blood was absorbed. Satisfied, she added an antibiotic stent in the mesh of vessels going to the brain and closed the chest cavity.

  “I am sorry, Nell Stafford, but that is not a very good story.”

  Nell smiled. She could imagine her niece saying the exact same thing. “Out of the chaos of the Great Plague and solar storms came the first enhanced citizens. These men and women were former soldiers who’d lost an arm or leg during the wars.”

  Switching on the imager, Nell began to scan Richmond for missed injuries.

  “Why would they volunteer for such a life?”

  “They signed up to save their friends and family from the little plagues and a lot of natural disasters.” All systems on the screen flashed green. She had done it! Nell resisted the urge to dance a happy jig and instead, helped Richmond to sit up.

  Richmond checked the movement in her arm and legs, then twisted and turned at the waist. “You did it. You saved me.” The girl threw her arms around Nell before quickly releasing her. “I mean, how high were their tech penalties?”

  “Tech penalties didn’t exist. They were citizens before and after. Many regarded them as heroes, because their implants allowed them to go where most people couldn’t. The more prosthetics they had, the more they could do. It wasn’t long before what remained of the government took notice and began using them almost exclusively.”