The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (5 page)

"I know, but the simple fact is that injecting even half of our citizens with the military nanites would bankrupt our economy. We would have to pass across-the-board increases to the franchise requirements. Provisional citizens would have to work for thousands, possibly tens of thousands of additional hours to provide the additional resources for that kind of upgrade program. Our entire society would be thrown into disarray as people stopped seeking self-improvement, abandoning the precepts in favor of unsustainable increases to their life expectancies."

"I will never speak of this to anyone, Citizen-President."

I was having a hard time containing my excitement, but he seemed to understand that it wasn't simple greed that was driving me. It was vindication. My mantra—
her
mantra—had finally proven to be true. I'd made sacrifices—greater sacrifices than anyone not in the military track—and now I was receiving a reward commensurate with that sacrifice.

"Let's go ahead and get started then, Skye. If you'll lie down on the table over there, I'll administer the first injection."

I complied with his instructions, but couldn't stop another question from slipping out.

"You're going to administer it yourself, sir? Aren't there usually doctors present for these kinds of procedures?"

"Generally, yes, but as you're aware, this is a special circumstance. The general medical staff isn't cleared to know about this nanite variant, and the scientists behind the development of the upgraded nanites aren't any more qualified to be administering injections than I am. Don't worry, the procedure is very low-risk and I've been studying for weeks in preparation for this moment."

"Yes, sir."

He placed both sets of syringes on a nearby counter as he picked up an iodine solution. "You'll need to lift up your shirt to expose your ribs, Skye. Even the regular injections are location-specific, but the upgraded version has additional injections that also have to be administered to precise parts of the body.

"The first injections are designed to prepare the body to host the nanites. At the time of the Desolation, the creation of nanites was understood, but their uses were limited to short-term injections that eventually washed out of the recipient's system."

He finished swabbing a spot about halfway up and just to the right of my sternum, and then picked up a syringe.

"The invention of this solution changed all of that. In what was one of the most impressive scientific advances in the history of mankind, the Founder discovered a way to merge nature and machine. The Destroyer was the one who hit upon a method for powering mechanical and electronic constructs from the reserves of the host body, but it was the Founder who made it so that the host body wouldn't attack the mechanical components once they were installed.

"This injection will prepare the site for the nanite factory that will be responsible for creating replacement nanites to insure that your nanite load never drops below specific levels. You're going to need to hold absolutely still, my dear."

He stabbed the needle into my flesh without further warning, and I wanted to scream. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I knew just how close he was to my heart. I held my breath and hoped that his hands were steady enough to avoid damaging my heart.

"I'm sorry, I know that stung a little, but there is an anesthesia included in the formula so the next injection to that site won't hurt as badly."

He reached for the top of my shirt and slipped it down off my left shoulder. Once again, he swabbed my skin down with disinfectant—without jostling my shirt enough to expose me or have it slip back down and contaminate the area he'd already disinfected.

"We need to give the first injection a little time to take effect before injecting the nanites, but there's no reason not to proceed with the preparation for the second injection site. This one will be injected up above the heart next to the spine."

He waited for a second while I took a couple of preparatory breaths, and then once I'd exhaled halfway he plunged the second needle into my chest. The pain was just as bad as the first time, but I managed to hold still again, and a couple of seconds later he finished pushing the plunger home and withdrew the needle.

"Very good, Skye. You're doing great. That second site is where the nanites will tap into your nervous system. They'll run a biomechanical interface directly into the center of the spine and up into the base of your brain so that the computer at that location can interface between the nanites and your conscious mind."

"Computer, sir?"

"Yes, Skye. These nanites are going to do more than just make you stronger and faster, they are going to accept a primitive set of instructions—something that has never been possible before now. We're going to have to make a number of additional injections at secondary sites—creating a kind of network of biomechanical computers at key locations inside of your circulatory system—but once that is done you won't just be faster and stronger than the best of our military personnel, you'll be able to instruct the nanites to change the actual structure of your face."

Chapter 4

The Society Military Training Complex
Six months earlier

The Citizen-President was as good as his word. Despite the discomfort inherent in the injections, they went off without a hitch. He prepared each of the main and secondary sites over the course of ten minutes, and then he proceeded to inject the specialized nanites into each of those sites, talking me through what was happening at each stage.

As he made the first injection, he talked about the marvel of technology that the nanites had just started constructing in the space between my lungs, the factory that was capable of creating nanites to replace those that inadvertently got expelled from my body. Apparently this strain of nanites was even better at staying out of the digestive tract, respiratory system, and perspiration ducts than any previous breed, but there was still going to be some loss no matter how good the technology was.

When the plunger went home for the nanite injection into the second site he talked about how the nanites would soon be constructing a flexible metal ring around my aorta. Apparently it would serve as a transmitter so the computer could interface with the nanites as they used my circulatory system to move around my body.

"The interface between your central nervous system and the computer is unfortunately not capable of transmitting complex commands, so you won't be able to do much more than command the nanites to change your face between two or three different structures, but the computer still provides other benefits that aren't possible with the other two nanite strains."

"How so, sir?"

"It will register the presence of adrenaline in your system and instruct some of the nanites to take up position along key neurons inside of your body. Electricity normally travels at about one-tenth the speed of light. You're probably not aware of this, but nerve impulses in the human body are much slower than that. At their best, they only manage about fourteen percent of the speed that electricity would travel down a metal wire.

"Fortunately a chain of nanites stretched alongside the body of a given nerve can register the presence of signals coming from the brain and then send that signal down the chain of nanites running down the spine. It means that the signal can cross a significant percentage of the distance it needs to travel at more than six times its normal speed.

"It's going to take some getting used to, but once you've finished your training I'm assured that you'll gain additional speed over and above even what your increased strength would otherwise suggest."

Each of the secondary injections created another processing node that wrapped itself around another vein or artery to ensure that the nanites would react as quickly as possible to any changes in my body.

Once all of the secondary injections were completed, the Citizen-President went to the back of the room to retrieve two big syringes that looked like they were filled with graphite, and injected them into the site where the factory was being built. Apparently that was another benefit to this strain of nanites. For franchised citizens and soldiers both, it was important for them to eat special dietary supplements to make sure that they consumed enough heavy metals to provide the factories with the requisite raw materials for nanite construction.

My nanites—my factory—were capable of safely storing extensive amounts of heavy metals so that I would be able to go for long periods of time without worrying about my nanite load dropping below peak operating levels. Given that I was going to a grubber city, it was less of a concern than it otherwise would have been—the water in the cities tended to have more heavy metals in it than the purified water consumed inside the barrier—but it was still nice to know that I had plenty of reserves and wouldn't find myself deprived of a key edge at a critical time.

The Citizen-President monitored my vitals for half an hour, and then pronounced me to be in perfect health. Twenty minutes later I was being escorted back to the juvenile dorms to gather up my few possessions and carry them over to my new home in a special, classified section of the administration building.

I was on cloud nine for the first week. There was some residual soreness and exhaustion for the first twenty-four hours as the nanites finished constructing the factory and the computer systems inside of my body, but after that I felt like an entirely different person.

I needed slightly less sleep than before becoming franchised, was stronger, faster, and my bones were the next best thing to unbreakable—a fact I learned fairly quickly once my revised training program started up.

My new instructors all thought that I was running the standard military nanite pack, but they still managed to stress my body nearly to its limit simply because nobody had bothered to tell them that I was doing PT sessions twice a day rather than just once as was standard for military candidates. Obstacle courses, weapons training, hand-to-hand, it all added up to a ruinous toll that would have killed me if not for the superior regenerative properties of my new body.

I woke up wearing my old face—the one that I'd worn my entire life—and then once my morning training was over I switched to the new face—the one that looked older with higher cheekbones and a different eye color. I had my doubts at first, but the Citizen-President was right—none of my instructors realized that Skye from the morning training sessions was the same person as the Stacy their colleagues were so busy trying to kill in the afternoon sessions.

I thought the gig was up the first time I missed a block while learning how to use a baton and had my ribs broken by my six-six, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound instructor. I just knew that I was going to favor that side in the afternoon session and not be able to explain how Stacy ended up with broken ribs, but they healed up over lunch to the point where I didn't have to favor them, and by the time the next morning arrived they were completely healed. I spent the next couple of days acting as though they were still a little sore in my role as Skye, and that was that.

The injury did provide a secondary benefit though. After watching Skye favor her ribs like that, anyone who might have been suspicious of the similarities in weight and height between Skye and Stacy
knew
that Skye couldn't possibly have survived the beating Stacy received in hand-to-hand—not with a set of broken ribs.

I'd always been dedicated to my classes, but my fervor had reached new heights by the time that I made it to the end of my first week. The nanites—even the experimental version inside of me—didn't replace a person's normal strength, they just acted as a multiplier.

The stronger I was underneath the new advantages I'd received, the more of a benefit they could provide. I suddenly had an incredible incentive to strain for every possible ounce of muscle I could pack on my body.

The fact that I was sleeping less and training harder than anyone else meant that it took less time than I'd been expecting to get the hang of the speed assist that the nanites sometimes provided to my nervous system, and once that happened, my skill level soared. I was well on my way towards feeling invulnerable when I was ordered—as Skye—to take a morning weapons class over on the other side of the compound from where I normally trained.

My mood instantly soured when I saw what was waiting for me. I'd been expecting to be added into a normal class of newly-franchised military recruits. Instead, I was sent to a class that before my arrival had included a grand total of one student.

The Citizen-President had told me just days before that there were only two people in my age-group who'd done everything that had been asked of them rather than dropping out of school and training to go off and start working towards their franchise. I was one of the two, and I knew without asking that Megan was the other.

We'd never been friends, but even as a child I'd known that there was something unnatural about Megan. I'd had to be coached into obeying the rules—chided with the mantra that my nurses had repeated to me at every turn. Megan had never seemed to need any prompting. She followed the rules even to the point of alienating the other kids.

I'd learned early on that if I wanted to both obey the rules and not make enemies I was going to have to be careful to make myself scarce when my companions started thinking about testing the boundaries. It wasn't pleasant because it meant that, as time went on, I spent more and more time by myself, but I knew it was the only way I was going to earn the reward that was waiting out there for me.

Megan, on the other hand, never tried for that kind of subtlety. She went wherever she pleased—inside the strictures of the rules we'd been given—and she reported every sin or misdemeanor with a smirk that told everyone around her that she'd known all along that they wouldn't measure up to her standards.

My isolation was self-imposed. Megan's isolation was because she'd made an enemy out of every single person she'd had even the slightest contact with. By all outward evidence, she'd spent every waking moment honing herself into whatever our Society needed her to be. I, however, knew the truth, a truth that I'd never even suspected before the Citizen-President had walked into that office and changed my life forever.