Legacy of a Mad Scientist (57 page)

Croswell had wanted to see how hard the other boys
could punch him. He asked each of them to give it all they had. He
dared them to out do each other in a single strike. After taking a
haymaker from everyone in the room, Tom got creative and broke a
glass beaker over Jim's head, his face looked like hamburger. The
boys stuck a straw in his mouth and coated his entire face in goo.
Andrew estimated it cost almost a hundred thousand dollars to wrap
Jim's face, but they had plenty left.

Bored, they began to discuss grievous, mortal wounds.
Andrew tried to dissuade them.

Gabriel joked about cutting Sandoval’s throat, who
happened to not be present. He challenged Andrew to save him before
he died.

Andrew countered that he'd never liked Enrique and
wouldn't be inclined help him. no matter what. That would leave
Gabe on the hook for murder.

Several boys laughed, and no one did anything
excessively stupid.

Andrew suggested it was time to lock the goo up.

Croswell peeled the rubber from his eyes. "I want to
try something bigger.”

"Something bigger like what?" Andrew asked.

"I want you to cut my arm off," Jim said.

"You're fucking crazy," Stanwood said.

"No I'm not," he replied to Joe.

Croswell looked over to Andrew. "I want you to cut my
arm off.”

"Stay here." Andrew left the room. Half a dozen boys
trailed after him.

Croswell, Stanwood and several others remained
behind.

"Seriously Joe, you should try it, it really works."
Croswell said.

"Fuck that," Stanwood said. "You don't know what the
side effects are. Maybe someday you wake up and who knows. This
shit might kill you a month from now.”

"Yeah, well, Fox will die first."

Andrew walked to the locked glass trophy case, in the
grand entrance hall of the academy. He picked up a nearby chair and
used it to knock the glass out. The surrounding boys watched as he
reached into the case and removed the long samurai sword, the
katana, from the daisho: a set of two swords.

The set had been awarded to the Rivendell Kendo Team
from the Yagyu Sword School of Japan. Andrew's great grandfather
had competed in the tournament that had claimed the glorious
victory. Now, the young man had pilfered his ancestor's trophy case
for an afternoon of raucous and juvenile amusement.

Andrew argued the points and counterpoints in his
mind. What he was doing was contributing to science. He needed
volunteers and to get them, he needed an extraordinary claim, an
outrageous claim, a bit of theatre.

He had broken the glass in a calculated gesture.

He needed to put an end to the experiment while they
still had a ton of goo. He needed to get caught, so the discovery
could be exposed, with a number of witnesses.

On the way back to the lab, the boys joked about what
they could do with such magical power. Several confirmed beatings
they intended to dole out and then supply the recipient with a bit
of blue goo to heal them right up. The lists of rivals were long,
and the actions to be taken against them were intricate, cunning
and cruel.

Once Andrew and the others returned with the sword,
the boys who'd waited behind fell silent. Andrew Fox looked Jim
Croswell in the eyes. He held the sword up, prepared to take it out
of the sheath.

Jim stepped close to the tub and held his left arm
out over it.

Andrew stepped back, and the other boys cleared back
a few steps, room enough for him to draw and swing the sword.

Andrew gestured to Stephen and Jesse, standing
opposite Croswell. "Grab his arm," Fox said.

The boys looked from Andrew to James, who nodded.
They reached out to his hand.

"When I hit it, you have to take it right down into
the goo. Then right back up to his arm," Andrew instructed.

"Goo? We should call it glue," Stephen said.

"Shouldn't we put some on his arm too?" Jesse
asked.

"Yeah. Becket," Andrew pointed, "stand here, next to
the tub. When I slash through the arm, Stephen and Jes are going to
be holding it. Wait for the sword to pass through, and then put
your hands in the tub. As they bring the forearm to the tub, I want
you to take a hand full of goo up to Jimmy's stump. Got it?”

Several kids laughed, but Tom nodded.

Andrew drew the sword from its sheath.

"I wonder if he'll scream," someone in the back
said.

Andrew looked James in the eye and without waiting
for a count of three or a ready, set, go, Fox slashed through
Croswell's bicep and humerus. The sword severed the boy's arm with
little more resistance that if it were slicing through smoke.
Andrew held the sword low and still after the cut.

James didn't scream. He didn't gasp. He didn't make a
sound.

Tom reached into the tub.

Stephen and Jesse brought Jim's forearm and elbow
down into the tub, passing Tom, on his way up to Jim's open stump.
As Tom applied the goo, an excited pulse of blood sprayed into the
room.

Jes and Stephen dunked the detached stump and
reattached it to Jimmy's remaining upper arm. The room was quiet,
except for the sound of blue and red drops hitting the floor.

The goo caused the skin to swell and knit together
where it had separated. Blood and blue syrup bubbled from the
bicep. As the excess ran off, the remainder of the goo grew darker,
harder, rubbery and thick.

James smiled. He took a deep breath and wiggled the
fingers of his left hand. Jesse and Stephen felt the arm come alive
under their grasp. It grabbed and shook them. It had taken less
than thirty seconds.

Croswell pulled the limb away and flexed it. Excess
goo and plasma burst from the seam, the scar, where the limb had
been severed. James punched his palm then turned and slammed his
hand through a wood paneled cabinet, laughing.

Withdrawing the fist, James saw he'd damaged it anew.
He laughed as he lathered the splintered fingers with, "Dr. Fox's
Super-Blue Healing Goo."

During that first week of eighth grade, all the boys
involved in the incident with the goo found themselves assembled in
a large conference room, seated with their parents and their
parent's lawyers.

Professor Cotton recited his discovery of the scene
in the laboratory. The adults got the whole story, from Andrew's
inspiration by Wendell's accident, to Jim's courageous
determination in the name of scientific progress.

The patent filed in Andrew's name resulted in a
massive windfall. In the final settlement, all the kids who'd
participated in the blue goo experiment received a king's ransom.
Joe Stanwood, who hadn't participated, got nothing.

December 31st, 2299 – Eight-and-half years
earlier

Another night on the office couch. It was just after
six when Fox awoke.

Being the dead of winter and the last day of the
year, the sun still had not yet lit the horizon. Fox had a couple
of hours before the Generals arrived. Fox knew the project waiting
outside his office, the ten thousand cyber-tanks, would win the
war.

It was footsteps that awakened him. Someone was
coming. Dr. Fox sat up in the darkness and rubbed his face.
Visitors' plural, there were at least two of them. Fox switched on
the light.

A moment later came the knock at his door. "Yes, come
in."

Chief Operator Chris Matthews and Special Agent Tasha
Vangen entered.

The Doctor smiled. "So, this is it. The big day.”

Matthews nodded, "We're all ready, Sir.”

Third Gate Citizen, Chris Matthews was one of those
gung-ho patriots that rarely looked before he leaped. Fox didn't
trust him to think for himself, but if you gave him an order, he'd
die before giving up. You couldn't have everything in a project
manager, and Matthews was better than most. He was honest and
loyal, and those were qualities valuable beyond measure.

"We've got thirty-six units spooled up and another
twenty-four taking on fluids and ammunition," Matthews
reported.

Special Agent Vangen looked troubled. Tasha was
special for several reasons, the least of which being her status as
in international dignitary on loan from Sweden. By default, the
clear-headed young woman often found herself elected to go up
against the party line Matthews.

She was the most socially well-adjusted scientist Dr.
Fox had met in years; she was sharp as a neutron laser, cool under
pressure, and a pleasure to work with.

Being from such a socially progressive country, Dr.
Fox suspected it was the tradition of community that allowed the
young researcher to share her discoveries and triumphs with the
team. Most of the other members, Citizens of the Republic, were
fiercely competitive.

Tasha was also dating his Andrew’s younger brother,
Geoffrey. They were secretly engaged and waiting for the project to
be officially over before they said anything.

From the look on Tasha’s face, it was clear something
had gone sideways. Fox knew, at this late stage of the game, that’s
just the way it went sometimes.

Major General Cruthers and his staff had arrived at
the nearby observation station a day earlier. Ten miles north of
the border, they reviewed intelligence data, watching in fast
forward as the enemy flooded into Tijuana over the past month.

Over two million strong, the Christian Socialists
intended take San Diego with the force of sheer numbers alone. The
tension in the room was palpable. The intelligence officers were
panicked, but not about the enemies’ numbers. They couldn't
identify any weapons. The enemy had arrived empty handed.

The socialists always marched with artillery. There
was no other way they could cross the border en-mass without some
method of detonating the mines. The presence of cannon had always
been the justification for the republic’s overwhelming
response.

It would be difficult for the talking heads in
Washington to explain the dropping of bulk munitions on a group of
civilians. The officers continued to scramble, but all they could
find were light arms: handguns and rifles. The People’s Army of
Christ the Redeemer hadn’t brought a single cannon. Usually they
had an overwhelming amount of artillery, but today, they had
none.

Cold California sunlight hit the few remaining
sandstone and glass structures. Ground-bound buildings and houses
that could not be moved reflected a dull, empty sky. Until as
little as a month ago, the sky was filled with hovering structures,
but now San Diego stood empty, evacuated.

Only freeway cables remained, hanging flat and
lifeless. All the hover-tech high-rises had flown away, north to
Angel City, or northeast to Palm Springs and Phoenix. Washington
did not want the relocations to become permanent, even if the
destruction of the ground based structures in San Diego proved
unavoidable. The concept of surrendering San Diego was
unacceptable. The Republic would rather see the remainder of the
city razed than to let it fall into enemy hands.

Despite the fact that the enemy was armed with little
more than light-arms and ethanol driven vehicles, once the
Christians marched in, the consensus in Washington would be to dump
bulk munitions, destroying the South American People's Army of
Christ the Redeemer, as well as the cities of San Diego and
Tijuana.

General Cruthers advocated dropping the big one and
being done with it.

His superiors strongly disagreed, arguing that the
radioactive fall-out would endanger the entire coastline.

General Cruthers didn't care much for California, but
his superiors made themselves clear that even a three-day
carpet-bombing campaign was preferable to a nuclear event on
national soil.

The General had been hearing good things about the
cyber-tank project, and he was excited about its delivery in just a
few hours. Today was New Years Eve, and if the intelligence
estimates were correct, the Socialist People's Army would be
massing at the border by sunset, crosses, guns and flags held high,
prayers on their lips.

It was always the same, the faithful came and died by
the thousands, and San Diego would succumb to it's bloody fate as
so many smaller cities already had. The socialists would not
retreat, and another rotting cavity would be created on the
Republic's southern border.

The General longed to be able to stop them without
destroying a hundred stories of steel and glass. He held no concern
for human life. In fact, San Diego was already lost.

No one had stayed. No one was going back anytime
soon.

The only thing left was to punish the enemy for their
forward momentum. That was enough for him. That was all he needed
to feel victorious.

The cyber-tanks were his best hope for that
victory.

Two hundred miles north and seventy miles west of the
coast, a twelve layer military testing facility hovered above the
ocean. The unit's anti-gravity drives maintained a comfortable ten
thousand feet above the water, nothing but ocean and sky in every
direction, as far as the eye could see.

Three prowlers circled the facility at a ten-mile
radius. Their weapons systems were always hot, ready to fire on any
errant vehicles that might enter their perimeter.

Each layer of the facility was composed of several
floors, with an array of hover-disks, working in unison to maintain
equilibrium. The twelve levels were arranged in a stacked
formation, several miles square. Each deck featured a unique
environment, desert, forest or swampland. The levels grew in square
footage as one went upward.

The top level stretched ten miles square and featured
a rich urban environment, several blocks of seven to ten story
buildings. The tests at this facility employed live ammunition and
many areas had been reduced to heaps of rubble and twisted steel.
While others were clearly in a state of construction, being rebuilt
for the umpteenth time.