“Yes,” the old man smirked, “That was when I realized that I’d have to do the same thing for your body as I had for your mind. Fortunately, I had done the hard part already. Brain and spinal tissue is so much more difficult to work with than bone and muscle. I simply created nanobots that would gently enhance your body to better bring it in line with your mind.”
He shook his head, “It was very difficult to get the systems calibrated, though. You had fourteen years of proprioception and reflexes that had to be relearned and readjusted to your new nervous system. It took a ton of feedback and testing, over many years.” He smiled, “All the martial arts and other such training was to help with that calibration, dear.”
He grunted, “You always hated ballet. At least it looks like all that muay thai silliness was more useful in the long run, anyway.”
Lucia had to agree with that, but a mouth full of syrupy French toast prevented her from giving more than a nod of agreement.
“So, dear Lucy, you can do all those wonderful things because your body is host to millions of machines that are replacing a sizeable portion of your regular cells.”
He frowned, “There are incredible ramifications of this technology, I imagine. But I could never make the machines entirely stable in a normal brain. I was always working to cure Lucia, you see, so my template was not specifically, er… normal. But Lucia’s mutation seemed to prevent minor feedback problems and blunt the impact of the major ones. I still don’t know exactly how, but the chaotic electrical activity caused by your condition seems to help regulate the signal transfer, dear. I’m not sure if it would be a good idea to try these on a regular brain. Not without a lot more research anyway…”
Roland nudged Lucia, who was shoveling food into her mouth, “Told ya your brain wasn’t right.” She scowled at him and tossed an elbow into his healing ribs; then grunted in pain when it bounced off his armored skin.
Lucia took a moment to contemplate her father’s words, and then swallowed her food to speak, “What does that mean for me?” She asked, realizing too late how open-ended the question was.
Donald smiled, “Right now, based upon what we’ve seen already?”
He shrugged, and gestured to her, “You are going to continue to age very… uhm… gracefully?” He looked over at Roland, “Which is probably good if you are going to… date… that one over there…” No one was exactly sure how much of the growl in the doctor’s voice was real and how much was for humor’s sake. Roland didn’t dare guess, “… since he won’t age much at all, either,” the doctor finished.
“You will continue to get stronger and faster, and you will gain new skills more quickly and more easily. Even your anxiety attacks should improve, as the machines learn to better regulate your brain chemistry under stress.”
“I did notice that the more action I saw, the better I got with it,” the small woman opined, “I could feel myself getting better and being less scared with each fight. By the time we got to you, it all felt kind of… I don’t know, normal? Is that right?”
The doctor scowled, “That is not how I would have preferred to calibrate those parameters, but yes. The machines will correct abnormal brain chemistry outside of a predetermined range. I was working on dialing them in manually, as I did not want to expose you to that sort of stimulus.” He sighed heavily and scowled at Roland, “But yes, the more you challenge the machines the more they will try to adapt, within certain limits.”
Lucia frowned, “Limits? That sounds ominous.”
Her father bobbed his head in thought, “Nothing serious, dear. You have a finite number of the ’bots, and they will need periodic replacement unless we can get them to self-replicate somehow. That was another item I was working on when those bastards grabbed me.”
He continued, “They also can’t enhance anything beyond the genetic potential of the host itself. You will eventually reach the limit of muscle mass you can grow and the speed at which your brain can operate without latency issues.” He took a gulp of black coffee, “That’s why you were getting those migraines, by the way. Too much signal loss. I was working on calibrating them during our treatment sessions these last few weeks.”
He shrugged, and looked into his daughter’s eyes, “Please don’t be angry with me for not telling you all of this. I honestly did not know how well it would work or for how long, or if it would terrify you to know. I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing you like I did your mother…”
Lucia reached over and gave her father a hug, “It’s all right, Dad. I never doubted you had your reasons. I just needed to know what they were is all. As long as we are all OK, we can figure the rest out as we go. I’ve actually rather enjoyed being a bionic super commando or whatever these last few days.”
The old man leaned back in his chair, and took in the scope of the two people across the table from him, “And how, pray tell, does the rest of this go?” his thin gray eyebrows rose like the twin arches of a suspension bridge, “I presume you will want to return to your hovel on the docks, Roland? And what of you, Lucia? Will you return to your old life or are you going to be a… ah… ‘bionic super commando’ professionally now?”
The old man’s face was a study in paternal disapproval, which Roland correctly discerned was aimed squarely at a certain giant black-skinned cyborg. Roland didn’t have sweat glands, for which he was eternally grateful at this moment. Lucia rescued him. “However the hell I want it to go, Dad.”
“Donald pointed to Roland, “Does he know that?”
Roland finally spoke, “He is figuring that out. The hard way, mostly.”
Donald nodded sagely, “That is the only way anyone ever does, my friend.”
Roland was feeling good. It was not a feeling he was accustomed to, and it was taking some getting used to. He could not deny, however, that sitting here with a pretty girl who seemed rather fond of him and the man who had saved his life, eating breakfast and laughing, felt very nice.
But he also knew that Uptown was not his world, and he could not stay here. Both Lucia and Donald had made it clear he was welcome to stay, but Roland had no taste for the clean, antiseptic, and sterile world of glistening glass and steel towers populated by the wealthy and the banal.
Lucia knew that she couldn’t keep him here either, but she didn’t feel like she wanted to. Roland was a soldier, and he needed a fight every now and then. She was beginning to understand that herself, as a little fire was smoldering in her belly, too.
Donald resumed the conversation, “So what are you two going to do today? Since this frail old codger won’t require your immediate care and attention?”
Roland didn’t know what to say, and as usual, Lucia rescued him, “Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking we might want to go see Billy McGinty and check on his latest project. What do you think, Big Guy?”
A grin took shape on Roland’s face.
Yup. Pretty sure I’m in love, he thought.
“That, my dear, sounds like a great idea!”
“Who’s Billy McGinty?” Donald asked.
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