Humble Beginnings

by KA Hopkins

  The cab driver was somewhat hesitant to drop the kids at a deserted school at night, but an extra forty dollar tip helped sooth his conscience. Mother landed and dropped the landing ramp and the kids quickly walked up it with their shopping treasures.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “It was fun.” Charity said.

  “Anything I should worry about?” I asked.

  “Now that you mention it, I have a new appreciation for unarmed combat. When’s the next practice session?”

  Chapter 30 - Jake is oh so special

  The operational tempo had slowed a bit - even operators need to rest once in while. Marc decided it was a good opportunity to continue my training; using the excuse, he did not want to see me get soft and out of shape. “I have been thinking…” He said.

  “That’s usually a hint that I’m not going to like what comes next,” I said.

  “You definitely have a warrior’s spirit and can more than hold your own in a fight. What you don’t know are the physical limits of your body, and if you have fully adapted to it. If we can better understand how the consciousness transference works, then soldiers who are permanently physically disabled, yet are cognitively ok, could have a chance at a better life. Mother, do you agree?”

  “Yes, Jake is unique and he’s special.”

  “That sounds a lot like sarcasm to me, you know that I can hear you,” I said.

  Without missing a beat Mother continued. “He’s special because the transfer procedure I used to save his life had never succeeded in previous attempts.”

  “How many attempts are we talking about?” I asked.

  “Several thousand. One of two things usually happened - the mind rejected the new body for reasons unknown, leaving the patient brain-dead, or the patient went slowly psychotic, eventually unable to function on any level. It’s like the transfer was incomplete, leaving the mind unbalanced, if that makes any sense.

  The Grays gave up trying to transplant the human consciousness for these reasons; they were more successful with transplanting entire brains. By the way, that’s how all Sentinels are made - in reality they’re Cyborgs. They have human brains that have been dumbed down to make them fully compliant, carrying out orders no matter how insane they sound. This makes them great enforcers, but they are dumb as posts. Even if the Grays had succeeded in transferring the consciousness, they prefer Cyborgs.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Remote off-switch - it’s a very desirable feature if your killing machine gets out of control.”

  “So despite the dismal results, you took the chance on me,” I said.

  “What did you have to lose, you were already dead. There was insufficient time to transfer your brain into a Cyborg body, which I did not have a spare of anyway. They tend to keep pretty close tabs on those.”

  “Mother, were the test subjects alive when you transferred their consciousness?” I asked.

  “Yes they were.”

  “You might have an answer to why then. I’m guessing I was dead for several minutes before you transferred my consciousness. I know the human brain can survive two to three minutes without oxygen before damage occurs. Maybe the patient has to be dead before the whole enchilada of what makes us human will transfer into the new body vessel?”

  “Are you referring to what humans call a soul?” Mother asked.

  “I guess I am.”

  “The concept of a soul in the human body is a scientific mystery. Even with our technology we struggle to understand what it is and how it works; our scientists have yet to prove its existence,” Mother said.

  “Nothing disproves a scientific theory faster than a physical reality check. Occasionally you just have to take things on faith until science catches up. Didn’t you tell me when the Nordics first came to Earth they created mankind from their own genetic material, mixed with the genome of Earth’s Homo erectus?”

  “That’s true - many new colonies follow the same protocol on primitive planets. By using combined alien and native genetic material the alien/native hybrid is far superior and better adapted to the planet’s microorganisms and climate. While we understand the biological life force and how it affects all living things, our geneticists have never proven the concept of a human soul.

  Out of the two hundred interstellar races that make up the ULIR, your human biology makes you a most unique species. Your minds are not particularly gifted, yet you have achieved great advances in various scientific fields. Your bodies are weak compared to many predators, yet you are the dominant life form on Earth, using tools and cunning to make up for a lack of brute strength. Your lifespan is short, yet you cram an amazing amount of life experiences into little more than fifty productive adult years. You are ruled by your emotions and breed like rabbits, which does not support stable population growth or good government. The most interesting of all your traits is your flexibility - you seem to be able to thrive no matter what the circumstances. Given a chance, humans will more than likely take a dominant role in the ULIR, without question upsetting and displacing many of the established older races. There is great debate on the ULIR council as to whether to support you and let you have a place among the stars, or exterminate you and do the universe a favor.

  Jake, the fact you exist signifies a change in the fate of your planet. I transferred your memories and a generic life force to your new body and somehow you caused your soul to transfer. You’re becoming a being that the Grays, with all their technology, have never equaled. But even using you as a template, there is no guarantee the protocol will work again. The Grays have tried to enact the transfer at the point of death in their experiments, but it never worked. So believe me when I tell you, you’re truly unique.”

  Marc jumped in, “We all agree Jake is special in so many ways - how about getting back to the part where we try and break him. I’m thinking a week of testing; something similar to hell-week for Navy SEAL candidates. Hope you like cold water buddy.”

  Many books have been written and documentaries made about hell-week; how it’s designed to take Navy SEAL candidates right to the edge of their physical and mental limits. Now imagine hell-week on steroids, all the old favorite ways to test the candidate, plus you have an alien scout ship that can quickly take you anywhere in the world, vastly increasing the range of harsh environmental conditions and physical challenges. For smiles and giggles, while moving from one location to another, Marc had me doing vertical pushups and sit-ups the entire time. At no time during the seven days was I allowed any form of rest.

  I found the lack of sleep only a minor inconvenience. It wasn’t that I didn’t need sleep. Only now, when exhausted, my conscious mind could nod off no matter what I was doing, leaving Omni in charge, sort of like a self-aware autopilot. After a couple of hours of downtime my conscious mind would take back control, fully rested. As long as my body had a source of energy I could go weeks without any form of physical rest. As a side effect, when in extreme pain, I could retreat and leave things in Omni’s hands and endure pain levels that would kill a normal human being.

  To exercise Omni’s interaction with my consciousness, Marc made up tasks that included both physical and intellectual challenges. During these rounds, Marc would have me recite the Dash One operating manual for any given fighter plane, or specific plays by Shakespeare, or prove a mathematical theorem. Some of the tasks were easier than others; I just called up the needed material from Omni’s memory banks. Others required me to think for myself - those were always tough. As far as physical skills were concerned, any skill desired was available from Omni’s memory banks: unarmed combat, parachuting, diving, shooting, driving, navigation, skiing, flying, building or fixing any mechanical device. I just had to repeat the skill two or three times, and I could perform it at a Master Craftsman or Olympic level.

  I found my new body pretty much immune to most climates. I could certainly feel the cold and it hurt, but swimming in ice filled water for several hours - an exercise th
at would kill a normal human being after five minutes - was only mildly uncomfortable.

  Jungle training was great fun, but I still had an unreasonable fear of snakes even though the effects of getting bitten were limited to localized pain at the bite site and feeling a bit sick for a couple of hours. Marc laughed himself silly every time I came across a snake unexpectedly, as I could always be counted on to jump impressively into the air. At least I didn’t screech like a little girl. Parasites and insects had no effect on me whatsoever. Insects, after taking the first couple of bites, gave up. I guess I just taste bad.

  To determine the limits of my endurance, apart from swimming anywhere from ten to a hundred miles at a time, Mother dropped me into some of the roughest mountain terrain you can find. No matter what the terrain or weather, I could walk and run at least a hundred miles per day.

  With each successive day of training, Marc pushed me right to the limit of my stamina; without a physical baseline he was a bit worried he might overdo it and kill me. Nevertheless, the harder he pushed, the stronger I could feel myself getting each day, with fewer aches and pains. Adjusting to my newfound strength was often frustrating; I often ripped the zippers and buttons off clothes not realizing I was stronger from one day to the next, and I could not open a tin can without tearing the entire top off. My changing strength also resulted in me being quite clumsy at times. I often walked into walls leaving pieces of broken masonry in my wake.

  Marc thought shooting me a couple of times might be an interesting test of my healing ability under stressful conditions. Omni jumped in on that one, telling Marc he would just have to take it on faith that I could endure more gunshots and stab wounds than a normal human being. My ability to self-heal, while impressive, did have limitations. I could not regrow limbs if they were blown off, but the nanobots in my blood would clot and stop the bleeding as long as pressure was applied to the injured site. Major trauma injuries such as losing an arm or a leg - that would kill a normal human due to shock and blood loss - were perfectly survivable. Cuts and slashing wounds would heal on their own in a couple of hours. My blood chemistry would not support the growth of harmful bacteria, so there was no risk of infection. All in all, I was not quite Superman, but I bet I could give Captain America a good run for his money.

  All of this came at a price, though. Maintaining the high level of activity required lots of energy and plenty of water. Running across the desert with a 200 pound pack without water, I had heat stroke within six hours. I recovered in minutes when given fluids, but dehydration was definitely a major weakness. According to Omni, I needed to drink at least two gallons of water a day. The water could be in any form: snow, ice, swamp or seawater. My stomach could digest it all.

  Food was less of a problem than water. On average I lost four pounds per day when not eating; thanks to my skin’s ability to use photosynthesis, if I ran around naked in the sun, I only lost a pound per day. Since Marc wanted to subject me to the same level of stress Ranger candidates had to survive for selection, he decided not to feed me the entire week.

  Since I regularly destroyed my clothes, I decided it was easier to go without them, and spend most of the week in little more than a jock strap. Without food, my high metabolism caused me to lose much of my thirty pound belly. Having eaten food all my life it was weird absorbing sunlight for nutrition, but it did have benefits. Unlike food when you eat too much, you feel sluggish and want to take a nap. Not so with sunlight; the stronger the sun and the longer I was out in it, the better I felt. With the physical limitations of my body understood, my training was nearly complete; it was time to work on my unarmed combat skills. Since I already had an excellent knowledge of self-defense techniques gained through Omni and the Special Forces operators, Marc decided to put my fighting skills to a real world test.

  After seven days of field evolutions combining the most demanding physical test standards from: SEAL, Rangers and Delta Force training, I was dirty, bruised, and a lot thinner. Marc, to celebrate not killing me, took me out to a local bar close to one of our desert bases. It may have been coincidence, but he picked the most run down part of town and a bar full of bikers. I was just happy to sit down and have a beer without having to deal with freezing temperatures or something trying to bite, sting or eat me.

  We sat down in an out-of-the-way, poorly lit back corner, trying not to draw attention to ourselves. The waitress came over to take our order, she was pretty but had a hard look about her that fit the atmosphere of a biker bar…“Are you boys looking for trouble, or what? You all know this is a patch member-only motorcycle club (MC) bar and you need to be invited in. You two are either real stupid, or cops. I suggest you leave now, for you own good.”

  Marc gave her his best disarming smile, “We’re not cops and to make up for our poor judgment we would like to buy everyone in the bar drinks while we’re here.” The bikers in the room loved the idea; they took full advantage of the “rubes” and ordered nearly a thousand dollars worth of drinks in the first five minutes.

  The waitress shook her head - I could swear she said “morons” under her breath - went to the bar and brought back two draft beers. Just as I was about to taste my beer, which smelled wonderful after a week of Marc’s tortures, Marc shouted out to the entire bar, “I have five thousand dollars cash for the first guy who can knock out my partner.” His offer got the attention of the biggest, meanest looking human being I have ever seen.

  He must have stood nearly seven feet tall, weighed about 350 pounds, all of it muscle. He wore a club kutte, a leather vest covered with patches, displaying his status as the MC enforcer who had killed someone on behalf of the club. He had club tattoos completely covering both arms, each the size of my thigh. “What’s your play? You buy drinks for everyone, thinking you can weasel your way into our bar and now you want us to beat the shit out of your friend?”

  “Yep, that pretty much sums it up,” Marc said

  “How do I know that this is not some bullshit cop sting and you guys are looking for us to start a fight so you can arrest us on trumped-up charges?”

  “Post someone on the street,” Marc said, “monitor the police band with the scanner you have behind the bar and we’ll take our clothes off to prove that we are not wearing wires.” Having not had a chance to shower, I was still covered in mud and grime from the past week’s activities. No one could tell I was green beneath all the dirt. The monster of a human looked down his nose at us. “It’s your funeral; fight’s on motherfuckers!” I never did get to finish my beer.

  The newspaper, quoting the police report, covered the brawl the next day: “An unknown number of assailants entered a known biker bar, possibly with the intent of settling old scores. Thirty bikers required hospitalization for numerous broken bones, concussions, dislocations and knife wounds; strangely enough only three victims received gunshot wounds. Judging by the multiple injuries incurred by the bikers, the assailants must have used baseball bats and had equal or superior numbers.” The police did not bother to check the hidden surveillance footage, nor did the bikers offer it as evidence. The bikers did post it on YouTube with a substantial reward for anyone able to identify me.

  After we left the bar, I mentioned to Marc, “That was not much of a fair fight.”

  “You’re right, most of those guys were not used to fighting as a team and they came at you in singles and pairs. With your conditioning and strength it was no contest. Unlike when you fought the Special Forces operators, the bikers are all about brute strength brawling and have next to no close quarter fighting technique. To keep it more or less even, I made sure anyone with a gun left you alone. A few of the bikers were harder to convince than others, so I shot them in non-vital areas. They should be fine in a couple of weeks.”

  My unarmed combat skills were improving. Unlike the previous fight against the Special Forces operators, I did not have any gunshot or stab wounds. Omni was proud of my progress.

  Chapter 31 - We screw up big time

  Ou
r operation to cripple all ballistic subs in the world and force them to stay in their home ports got the military and the Global Elite’s full attention. Simultaneously attacking forty heavily guarded nuclear ballistic missile subs in port, and detecting and damaging those at sea, was supposedly impossible with Earth technology. Not only did we have the Global Elite’s attention, we terrified them because they believed their alien allies were attacking them. The aliens of course, denied they were behind the attacks, but that only scared the Global Elite more, as who else could have the capability to carry out such attacks? Since the attacks were believed to be beyond human technology, the aliens had to be lying and why would they do that? Seeing the panic we caused - to prevent the politicians and the military from misusing other nuclear weapon systems - we decided to insert the fear of “Old Testament” personal consequences into their decision-making process.

  With Guide helping to identify the war mongers - individuals who had enough influence among their peers to start armed conflict between countries - we had the QRF teams have a little “fireside chat” with the pro-war politicians and explain the consequences of their actions. By using Guide to crack their personal itineraries, the teams found gaps in their security, not that security was very tight in the first place. Unlike key officials like the head-of-state or the president, security details were usually limited to a driver and bodyguard. The teams did not need a large gap, just five or ten minutes to get their point across: “knock off causing wars in foreign countries, or else.”

  Some took the message to heart, some didn’t. The ones who didn’t were not around for long. There was a rash of heart attacks, gas explosions, car and plane crashes and drug overdoses. For a while, being a Federal politician was more dangerous than serving in a front line combat unit. In some cases, when it was too difficult to arrange an unfortunate accident, the teams improvised and shot the target on the spot. Three, two-second blasts from an alien beam weapon caused the body to disintegrate. The QRF team lead would tell whoever showed up first that the target stepped out and without video or audio surveillance to contradict the story, no one could prove otherwise. If the staff did not buy the QRF team’s explanation, they quickly joined their bosses. Making the bodies disappear seemed to have the largest psychological impact on the Global Elite. When the target and their entire staff vanished, never to be heard of again, not knowing what happened to them rattled the Global Elite. Their worst fears took hold. They had made a lot of enemies over the years, but had always been protected from any personal consequences, by the alien collaborator old-boys club.