Humble Beginnings

by KA Hopkins

  Once we had what we needed from the head of the family, I had Mother synthesize a sedative and drugged them all. It was not so much an act of kindness, it was a convenience as it kept them quiet and out of our hair, with the added bonus of less drama during the prisoner handover process. It would be a real shame if such outstanding citizens were to die of fright before giving their all in the name of science.

  Mother ordered the second scout ship still on the ocean floor, to rendezvous with us in geocentric orbit. The other alien scout would arrive in less than half an hour. As we waited, we passed the time simply by watching the Earth. At a height of 22,800 miles, you are over the same point of Earth all the time. Our orbit placed us on the same plane as the equator, where we could clearly make out all of Africa as there was little cloud cover over the African continent. The Earth appeared so beautiful and colorful from space; no wonder alien races wanted it for themselves. When the other scout ship arrived, Mother ordered it into a close orbit and Marc and I went on a short space walk to swap out the identification transponders and the hull numbers.

  We could not stay in orbit long due to the number of alien surveillance systems. There were just too many systems in the space around Earth for us to remain undetected for long. Before being detected, Mother broke orbit and set a course for the Moon.

  The trip to the Moon was a short one. Our speed was so much greater than Apollo space craft in the 1960s, since we were under constant acceleration for most of the voyage. By accelerating the first half of the trip and decelerating the second half, using a steady 1 g acceleration profile, the trip took a little under three and one half hours, compared to three days for the Apollo Moon missions. A trip to Mars was only three days away using the same acceleration profile. You could get there faster using a higher acceleration profile, but for any planet within the solar system a 1 g acceleration profile worked just fine; even Pluto was only a little more than a week of travel time away.

  At the Lagrange Point, where the Earth and Moon’s gravity are equal, Mother contacted approach control, informing them we were a flight of two ships, and received landing clearances for both. Because we followed the exact procedure for two ships flying in formation, no one questioned Mother for taking care of all landing tasks and communications.

  Mother set the ships down in the dry dock without incident and contacted the Central Surveillance AI, requesting repair robots for her and disposal robots for the other.

  Handing over the family to the medical experimentation personnel was a piece of cake. Security protocol directed all prisoners remain locked in holding cells, while the ship’s crew disembarked. Having no crew on board when the prisoners were taken off was standard practice, no one had ever escaped in the past, even though it appeared to be a poor security practice to leave the prisoners unattended. I felt little remorse for the family as they now were about to undergo the same procedures, that they had condemned so many others to. I could only imagine their nightmare - they went to bed as one percenters - they woke up lab rats of alien experimentation.

  As far as the crew member status for both ships, Mother simply told the Central Surveillance AI everyone got off the ships and made them disappear. Every so often Mother would move the “ghosts” around in the surveillance database, to give the impression that they were actually within the complex. Given the massive size of the base, without a physical search, chances were slim anyone would detect our subterfuge in the next couple of weeks.

  We wished Mother luck with her upgrade and walked down the loading ramp to the waiting autonomous shuttle. As we drove through the dry dock it was obvious only a very small portion was actively used. Our route to the main gate was only a couple of miles, during which we passed some thirty or more ships in dry dock, which according to Mother was half the human alien fleet. Looking back, I could see the dry dock complex extending for miles and miles within the Moon crater. Broken down loading cranes, control terminals and huge abandoned colonization class ships lay everywhere. Some of the ships had been on the Moon so long they showed evidence of meteor damage. As we pulled up to the main facility security checkpoint, I approached the Sentinel guards with some trepidation. If ever there was an occasion for Murphy to jump in and join this party this was it - he must have taken the rest of the day off, as we passed through the check point without issue.

  The security checkpoint was surprisingly anticlimactic. While it was manned, entry was granted automatically, based upon your DNA transponder code and prior authorization. Since the checks were all automated, the Sentinels did not even look up as we walked into the ancient alien Moon base.

  Now all we needed was a place to hide for a couple of weeks - how hard could that be?

  Chapter 16 - The new me

  Timeline: Present day…

  With Mother handling the flight control duties, our departure flight path was low level, just above the surface of the Moon and substantially faster than if a human hand had been at the controls. Once clear of the base point defensive systems, Mother initiated a maximum acceleration profile climb. The profile ensured a rapidly diminishing target solution by keeping the bulk of the Moon between the alien scout ship and the anti-spacecraft batteries ringing the Moon base. Mother was able to explain the non-standard flight path to departure control by saying, “We’re trying out the new system upgrades installed during the recent overhaul.” It never ceases to amaze me how an outright lie can appear to be true if the lie perfectly matches the circumstances. No one in departure control questioned the unorthodox departure in the least. Their only comment, “Good luck on the shakedown cruise; contact us 60,000 miles out on the way back in.”

  “Roger that,” Mother said. It was hard to tell, but from the tone of her voice I could have sworn Mother was actually having fun. Those were concepts that would bend your beliefs – a machine having fun with a perfect understanding of human idioms.

  With Mother piloting and the ancient alien/human Moon base rapidly disappearing from sight, Marc and I grinned at each other - like only people who have cheated death on too many occasions can, and quickly stripped out of our stealth suits for the first time in nearly three weeks. We left them piled on the airlock floor. In our haste, we did not bother to turn on the airlock lighting. The lighting improved substantially in the hallway.

  Marc looked at me, “Dude you might want to take a look in a mirror.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  “Whatever, it can wait until after I have a shower.”

  We raced each other naked through the ship halls to the shower room.

  Until you lose something as basic as being clean, you tend to take the comforts of modern living for granted. No expensive wine, no three course meal or king size feather bed could beat the feeling of the hot water running off my back and head. While the stealth suit will keep you alive and reasonably comfortable under any harsh environmental conditions, from space to the deep ocean, it did have its drawbacks. It’s damn near impossible to scratch properly and no matter how efficient the waste removal system, after three weeks the internal seals leak just enough that you get tired of smelling your own shit; so unlimited hot water was like the best Christmas present ever.

  After I got out of the shower, I looked in the mirror. When Ship first informed me that my consciousness had been transferred to a new body, I had a hard time believing it - as there were no visible changes. The reflection staring back at me from the mirror now was not the one I was accustomed to.

  So, what had caused me to feel like death warmed over the past eighteen days? I thought it was just a symptom of the adrenaline crash brought on by the stress of the firefights. Now I realized it was much more than that.

  I could not see much of a change to my face and bald head; my features had not changed significantly, although I might have been a bit thinner through the jaw line. I could not say the same for my skin color. It was a lovely bronze shade with a slight hint of green. The color combination gave my
skin a high gloss sheen, similar to an artistic patina used on bronze busts, intended for indoor display. The effect was nothing less than spectacular.

  Now, if the shock of green skin was not enough of a hint that something had seriously changed within my body, the rest of my reflection in the mirror removed all doubt that the old me was not the current me. In the place of my fifty year old well-used frame with its familiar miscellaneous scars, birth marks, and stretch marks (guys get them too!), was something a Greek god would be proud of. My arms, legs, neck and shoulders were chiseled, heavily muscled, and beautifully defined. The overall appearance was not like the heavy muscle mass of a professional body builder’s, but the lean build of an Olympic swimmer crossed with a track athlete. The only thing ruining the Greek god image was the thirty pounds of extra weight around my middle.

  Apart from the extra weight, I looked absolutely fabulous. I turned around and admired my new look from all sides. I definitely liked the improvements. As a lark, I decided to see if my physical capabilities matched the looks and set out to see how many pushups I could do. When I finished military jump school twenty years ago, a hundred continuous full extension pushups were not a problem; now I cracked off five hundred full extension pushups with the last hundred on one arm and thumb. I had incredible endurance - but what about brute strength?

  I walked across the store room and easily picked up a storage container and balanced it overhead. The container was not big but it felt heavy, about twice the weight of a large motorcycle. I decided to push my luck and took a flying leap across the room, shouting: “To infinity and beyond!” Flying wasn’t one of my new skills. I fell flat on my face, slid across the floor on my stomach until my head ran into the wall, which stopped me quite suddenly and painfully. Admittedly, I got caught up in the moment and like the Buzz Light Year character in Toy Story could not fly, but I bet with my newfound strength and agility I could fall with style.

  My physical strength exceeded all human norms. I was sure, given how easy it was to do the pushups, I would get bored before getting tired. My hearing and eye sight were far better than what normally passed for perfect. I could hear the smallest ventilation motors two decks above and could make out the alien lettering on a sign above the airlock panel twenty feet away. My vision had to be something like 20/2 or ten times better than what passes for perfect. As I scanned the room I knew exactly what every object was, how to use it, how to fix it, or use it as a weapon. Obviously, I had to have some sort of brain/machine interface to a vast database, as the old me had a hard time remembering if I had breakfast and often wore mismatched socks. As I looked around the room, I suspected this new brain/cybernetic interface was not only capable of providing static facts and figures, but practical skill knowledge as well.

  A common theme with me is not thinking things through as carefully as I should. To see if my new body had any self-healing properties, I decided to cut myself with a knife that, though razor sharp, felt like a butter knife on my skin. Because I did not feel much pain, the cut across the palm of my hand was much deeper than intended. The old me would have required at least a hundred stitches to close the slash and surgery to repair the damaged tendons and nerves. Despite the severity of the wound, it was no more painful than a small cut on a finger and the bleeding stopped within several minutes. After ten minutes there was no sign of the wound other than a faint pink line across my palm.

  That started me wondering to what extent could I self-heal? I thought about cutting off a couple of fingers or toes and maybe even a hand or a foot to see what would happen. I looked around the store room for something to inflect serious damage to myself and found what look like a small silver handle without a blade. I didn't know how, but I knew what I held in my hand was an eblade. In place of a sharpened metal cutting edge, the small button recessed in the handle, when depressed, activated an energy field which projected about a foot out of one end of the handle. Judging by the sound and sparks given off by the energy field, it would be more than capable of cutting through pretty much anything. With the eblade in one hand, I decided to cut several fingers off my left hand, but before I could carry out this little experiment (which in hindsight was really dumb, even for me) I got a warning thought, “Stop!” and a flash of red across my eyes. “That’s new,” I thought to myself and decided to continue.

  “Stop, dumbass! For the love of God, please stop what you are doing. While I’m capable of healing all soft tissue injuries and mending broken and crushed bones. I cannot regrow missing bones or limbs without help.”

  This voice sounded different than Mother’s - not only could I hear it clearly, but I could feel it resonate throughout my body. Was I going crazy?

  “You’re not crazy; I’m your cybernetic implant. What else could I be? Please don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question.”

  “Right,” I answered rather slowly.

  As I thought about what my cybernetic implant had just told me, I noticed all the aches and pains of the past couple of weeks were gone. In fact, not only was the pain gone, there were no marks left whatsoever from the rough and tumble activities of the past month. My skin just glistened with a similar shine like that found on a new car. I wondered if it would require polishing, or was it just wash ‘n wipe?

  “No,” replied the voice in my head and I could have sworn it said “dumbass” in the background. “I can see that you have a lot of questions. In an effort to make you feel more comfortable with an AI being your constant companion, you should choose a name for me. Please be original and refrain from profanity.” That stopped me in my tracks; I had a couple of choice names picked out.

  Without much thought, I threw out, “How about Omni? You appear to be all-knowing and omnipresent; in all likelihood you’re a highly advanced computer, quite probably sentient. I would say Omni suggests the right amount of respect and humility between two sentient beings.”

  Omni responded, “Well reasoned, Omni is a suitable name. Maybe there’s hope for you and the human race after all.”

  “I’m happy you like it,” I said, as I looked across the room to see OMNI Port spelled out in alien script which I could now read on the airlock control panel. Omni port functionality allowed the airlock docking module to be configured for any type of space craft docking port. I’m not sure Omni realized the context I was thinking of when I came up with his name, less omniscient and more like a multifunctional and flexible tool.

  “Your guess that I am sentient is correct - although I am not constructed out of biological components like you, I do have a small physical body connected to your brain stem through thousands of tendrils, about the same size as spider silk. Your Earth jellyfish are a close approximation of my physical appearance. My spiritual essence is more difficult to explain; as an artificial construct I do not have an immortal life force which humans call a soul, although I am aware of myself and have a healthy respect for death. Death for me is different than for you - I can leave copies of myself in remote locations so that, if this version of me is destroyed, I can be brought back only missing the data since the last backup.”

  “Well, that poses an interesting question: if my consciousness can be moved from one physical vessel to another and you essentially back me up each time I change vessels, do I not have a similar ability? Am I not immortal?”

  “It’s complicated,” replied Omni with a bit of hesitation.

  The pause in the air could have been cut with a knife. ”And complicated means what exactly?” I asked.

  “While I can take a copy of your conscious mind, the protocol for reinstalling it into a biological vessel is complicated and prone to rejection. It’s much easier to install your consciousness into a holographic storage matrix.”

  “How high is the rejection rate?”

  “One hundred percent. If you destroy your present physical vessel, the only chance for your consciousness to survive is in a holographic storage matrix.”

  “So, if I understand what you’re saying, the body ve
ssel can die, but my consciousness will live forever in a holographic storage matrix. In a sense, I’ll still be immortal.”

  “Not quite. Like I said it’s complicated. While a Sentinel’s consciousness can be supported indefinitely, because we take the entire skull structure, a human consciousness on its own lasts only a couple of years in a holographic storage matrix. No one knows why. Finding out why has been a prime research focus for the alien experimental labs for the last fifty years. So my advice is, treat your body with respect - as long as you don’t blow yourself up into little pieces you have the ability to completely regenerate, including parts of your brain. For a biological being it’s as close to immortality as one can get without ascending to the next plane of existence.

  While being nearly immortal may sound good, as with everything in life - there are no free lunches. You will essentially never grow old, never get sick, never have any of the diseases associated with aging, nor forget anything. Your friends and everyone that you love will age and die, but you will not.

  Life is going to be very different for you from now on. Take for example, learning. Much of what you spent your entire life learning in your old body, you can now do much faster, either electronically or through one or two practice sessions. You are now able to do almost anything you ever wanted to, without long hours of study. Your skill level will be what’s called “gifted.” This ability, to be the best at anything you try without having to put years of effort into obtaining the skill - can be disturbing to many people, as they enjoy the time spent learning. Will this be a problem for you?” asked Omni.

  “Nope, I’m good,” I replied without hesitation. “School and I don’t get along - despite a couple of college degrees I have always had a tough time studying and even subjects I liked were hard to focus on. But let’s go back to this life force thing. If I’m in a new body, what happened to my life force from the old body?”