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- The Reveal (a fragment)
- by H. A. Kirsch
- Copyright 2013
- ---
- This is a fragment, possibly an early draft of a chapter from a novel I'm working on. Most likely, the finished product won't be very much like this.
- A lot of stuff has happened before this scene, but I like it and am curious how people will react to this sort of thing.
- Leo, Dr. Soren, and Dary appear in various other stories by me, some of them published ("Attachments", in Will of the Alpha, for example.)
- What you need to know is:
- - Leo is a fox who was in a train accident as a nine-year-old boy. He was burned severely and lost his forearms, lower legs, and tail. He later
- suffered an infection that required the removal of his genitals. He later received cybernetic replacements for all missing parts.
- - Dr. Angelo Soren is one of Leo's doctors, a cybernetic prosthetist who specialized in genital reconstruction. He's an albino jackal.
- - Kenny Waleman is one of Leo's medical techs, assigned to him throughout his recovery process at Davidson Biotechnology. He's a Shenaus, a black wolf
- with no fur.
- - Dary is Leo's boyfriend, a Beauceron dog (the French version of a Doberman)
- - Baxter is Dr. Soren's pet four-legger dog, a large German Shepherd.
- ---
- Leo could not have picked a worse night to show up at Dr. Soren's home. The taxi driver let him off at the end of the private drive, refusing to go
- further. Halfway up the considerable driveway, the splattering of lightning finally gave way to a drenching downpour. By the time Leo rang the
- doorbell, he was soaked through.
- The jackal was preceded by a muted scrabbling inside, and then energetic chesty German Shepherd barking. Dr. Soren opened the door with one hand on
- his dog's collar. "My apologies, Baxter has always been rather bad with gue-"
- "Just let me the fuck in, I'm wet," Leo hissed.
- Dog and jackal disappeared behind the door, and it opened. Leo rushed in and backed the door shut. Dr. Soren wrangled Baxter away, finally distracting
- him with a tug toy after several aborted attempts that had the canine trotting around part of the house and back. The two disappeared, and only Dr.
- Soren returned.
- Leo had only ever seen Dr. Soren in casual dress once before. He wore khaki shorts, hiking sandals, a black neru tee-shirt, and an expensive
- wristwatch that seemed to tell the time using arcane symbology. He seemed normal, with his platinum albino fur and haunting pink eyes, but the
- mechanical iridescence in his eyes gave him away. The fox scowled at it.
- Dr. Soren directed his eyes at the floor. "Ahh, you seem to be taking to those hooves quite well."
- "Cut the crap, creepazoid," Leo growled. "You're screwing up my life. You're screwing up everyone's life. I can't take it."
- The jackal blinked.
- You don't need to blink, Leo thought. Don't give me that look. He didn't say it though, jaw too tight to let words come out.
- "What exactly are you talking about?"
- "I..." and then Leo's fierce intentions melted into tears that ran down the sides of his muzzle, almost unseen due to the rankled, wet fur. Dary.
- Dr. Soren ducked away around a corner and returned with a large beach towel, then wrapped it around the wet fox. "Come here, I'll try to find you
- something to wear that isn't sopping wet, and you can explain what's got you so bothered," the jackal said, gently guiding Leo into the airy living
- room. It was lit with an inviting night glow, punctured by the occasional brilliant flash of lightning from the storm outside.
- Leo sat where indicated, towel protecting the leather sofa. He had imagined coming in and exposing Dr. Soren for the terrific, perverse fraud that he
- was, but couldn't even be mad that his own plot had been torn up merely by the thought of the poor dog. When Dr. Soren returned with an undershirt and
- a pair of gym shorts, the fox took a sob-gasp breath and tried to talk again. "Dary's dying."
- The jackal set the clothing down on Leo's lap, and then sat down on the ottoman. He looked genuinely hurt. "I know."
- Leo cradled his face in his hands. "How fucked up is this, that you _know_ what's going on? I... he just got food poisoning with me a few weeks ago,
- it sucked but you know, we got better. Then he, he was over visiting and said he was feeling like he had the flu, you know, achey and feverish. I left
- the room to do some chores and there was this big crash, and he'd yelled out that he couldn't stand up, and suddenly we're at the hospital and his,
- his immune system is attacking all of his peripheral nerves, and they're being destroyed and he's paralyzed and now he can't, he can't do anything at
- all except lie there and stare into space." Leo facepalmed again, dizzy as he had managed to squeeze more words out than he had air.
- Dr. Soren sighed. "I assure you, Leo, that I am not any more instrumental in this than God. I trust that you aren't particularly faithful. You don't
- strike me as the type."
- "That isn't going to cut it."
- "But it's the truth. I only found out earlier today. I was going to contact you, despite the numerous laws against that sort of thing. As it is, it is
- probably illegal for me to know. It was dumb luck, even, that Dary's neurologist happened to go to school with a colleague of mine and chose to
- consult him. But I'm sorry. I'm sorry about what's happened, Leo. I'm sorry that I know. I'm sorry that you know me. I am, at times, too hard to
- trust."
- Leo stared. "Too hard to trust?"
- "I am quite observant. Do you think I wouldn't notice someone following me? And of course, there was the little sting operation you arranged. That
- does not reflect very well on you, regardless of what you think of my interests-"
- "Your interests fucked me up! I'm a perverted freak now!" Leo almost laughed, so unprepared for Dr. Soren's regretfully knowing attitude. Nevermind
- that the doctor actually looked wounded.
- "You seem to have done well with the AnimaLogic referral, though."
- "That's not what I'm talking about! You know what I'm talking about!"
- "I do nothing without consent, Leo. Are you going to just sit here and accuse me of things? We both have better things to do."
- "Like what? Tie guys up and jerk them off?"
- "You could be spending time with your poor dog-"
- "Poor dog! He can't fucking do anything except stare off into space! What am I going to do, fucking cry all over him for hours on end?"
- Dr. Soren stood up. "Would you like some tea? It might help break the second stage of grief in you, so that you can do something other than yell and
- wave your arms."
- Leo gave up and slumped on the sofa. He unconsciously pulled a leg up, then stared down at the very obvious seam between flesh and prosthetic. At some
- point, real fur and faux fur had to meet, and water always spread the two apart. "Fine."
- The jackal left, and returned a quarter hour later with a mug of tea. It smelled fresh and herbal. He handed it to Leo, and kept nothing for himself.
- "All I can offer you is sympathy, and tea. And perhaps even some empathy."
- "Empathy for what? You've never had someone crippled in front of your eyes," Leo grunted, then carefully tasted the tea. It had to be a relaxation
- blend, with the savory taste of chamomile and vanilla hiding in the hot leafy water.
- "Only myself. That, and I shot someone's legs off, to be blunt about it."
- The fox put his hoofed foot back down to the floor with a clop and he chuffed. "Don't try to one up me. It won't work. You know that. I mean, the
- whole accident and- wait, you did what?"
- "I shot someone's legs off. I was quite unprepared for how viscerally destructive a shotgun blast could be at short range. Not completely off, to be
- macabre. But enough that they had to be amputated."
- Shot someone's legs off, Leo thought. That was so familiar. He put aside the fact that Dr. Soren was admitting to mauling someone and tried to chase
- the black cat of deja vu.
- ---
- "You are going to see something that might be very disturbing," the jackal said, holding one pale hand up to a door off of the main hallway in the
- house. The doctor was wearing quite average clothes, a pair of khaki shorts and a light v-neck fabric teeshirt, hiking sandals. Despite the class of
- his clothing, he exuded a profoundly important air.
- "Fine," Leo said, unconsciously pinching his thumbs as he fisted his hands up by his sides. It hurt a little, but then he wondered, did it really? His
- fingers were not crushing his thumb. Mechanical joints and synthetic biocontractors were pulling a circuit-mesh protective tactile covering against
- the same, and a computer somewhere was translating that sensation into what he had decided was the sensation of crushing his thumb. He walked into the
- room.
- It was completely dark. "I have been waiting years to show this to someone who was not unfortunately connected to my stain," Dr. Soren said, closing
- the door behind him. "I'm sorry, this is not supposed to be alarming."
- Leo trembled so hard, he swore he was catching a chill. He let go of his fingers and leaned back, into the doctor.
- The jackal did not embrace Leo. He gently pressed the fox off, then snapped a switch on. A small picture lamp lit up a large printout of a horrific
- picture. It looked vaguely recognizable as a humanoid form. No, canid. The picture seemed out of focus, but then Leo squinted and saw the
- indistinctness turn to ghastly horror. The shape was twisted, wretched, black leathery something, split all over with glistening red lines. Medical
- tubes stuck out in random places, including one skewering in between the legs.
- "We share something, Leo," he said, then produced two switch snaps at once. That light shut off, and displayed a large picture of two uniformed mates.
- One of them was ink black, leathery, almost furless except for some black chestruff that came out of his unbuttoned uniform shirt collar and a black
- crewcut. The other was Dr. Soren, but far younger, exuberant and almost doggish in his grin. Both were clasping at beer bottles. "But we don't share
- the same thing. Do you know who this is a picture of?"
- "That's Kenny," Leo said, staring at the black figure. Dr. Soren had a somewhat gleeful, feral look about him; Kenny looked like he was militant and
- tough.
- "And you knew that, already. You know what happened. You found out. I also told you, but I lied, because I couldn't just _tell_ you, Leo," Dr. Soren
- said, and put a hand on Leo's shoulder. "Kenny was everything I wanted. Strange, in that he was so affectionately cold, so visibly opposite of me, so
- thrifty with math that I was both glad to partner with him and humiliated at my own inadequacies."
- Dr. Soren changed the lights again, adding a picture of a strange mess of metal. Dr. Soren was inside it, mugging for the impromptu photograph. Leo
- turned to look at him, and the jackal's face was completely devoid of anything, perhaps even life. "This is the project we were working on. Imagine a
- camera flash, something that produces a bright burst of light focused in one direction. Then, imagine the inside of a microwave, sending out radio
- waves that resonate in every day objects. Imagine combining them, but on a massive scale. Enough power to decimate the electronics at a radar
- installation from miles away."
- "I wanted Kenny, but he had his own life. I couldn't understand that, Leo. He was going to be mine, and it seemed so simple, so irritatingly obvious.
- He had his own life, his own girlfriend. He had his own research, which was going to be my research. It ate away at me, and then it came out, to
- threaten him, to stalk him. I finally lost it after he told me he was petitioning to have me removed from the project."
- Dr. Soren said all of this while staring at the picture, through the picture, hands behind his back.
- "I found one of the high-powered shotguns from the quartermaster's workshop, which I had stolen weeks before. We were researchers; we never needed
- weapons, but they gave them to us. War is bloody. I took it to the lab, and I confronted Kenny. He stood up as I stormed in, and I shot him in the
- thigh. Then, I pulled the gun over and shot him in his other thigh. Both point blank, both right here," the jackal pointed to his thigh a couple of
- inches above the white fur at the cuff of his shorts.
- "He moved to attack me, but fell over, legs bending where they never should bend. He screamed, and by the time I realized what had happened, security
- was about to barge into the door. So, I ran. There was only one way to run, only one sort of space, a dark hole, that I could go into. I ran into the
- test chamber for the weaponized maser we were working on. Kenny somehow pulled himself up, and overrode the safety interlocks. Then, he fired an
- experimental burst, two seconds of a three-hundred kilowatt maser. I was microwaved alive, third degree burns over seventy five percent of my body,
- with the remainder being fourth degree burns. A forth degree burn is what happens to your steak when you leave it far too long and it turns to char,"
- Dr. Soren said, then changed the image again, to the next picture over.
- This one was a legal document, words too small for Leo to read. A photograph. "Kenny lived, as you are well aware. I lived as well, although I have no
- memory of what happened for several months. It did not exactly hurt; it instantaneously killed all of my peripheral nerves. It deafened me. It blinded
- me. One day, they managed to shove a speaker up against my head and start talking to me. I could barely hear it, but I did. They informed me that I
- was convicted of first-degree murder, which held a court-martial sentence of execution. This was not under the auspices of any one national
- government. It was top secret. But, they would spare me. I was in a unique state, alive but sure to die in weeks, if not days. No chance of survival
- beyond that. I would give my life to research. I became the property of Samek-Davidson Medical Devices. You might recognize part of that name.
- Davidson soon split off."
- The jackal switched the picture again. They were now on the next wall, at the end of the room. It was a medical room, an immense amount of dated
- equipment and medical pumps and tubes. "When I was convicted, my name was killed. I was executed at gunpoint. But just like my skin, my name is only
- one part of me. I gained a new name, Angelo Soren. This picture is myself at three months old. Prior to this, a picture would have been far more
- ghastly than the first. My body had for the most part died, but I was not yet removed from it. This, in particular, is me." He pulled a laser pointer
- out of his pocket and shone a dot on the image, then circled it around where much of the tubing seemed to lead. Leo had to go up close to the picture
- to see what it was. It was a clear cannister, with something inside of it, a roundish shape. It looked like a walnut.
- Leo's throat caught and gurgled, but he choked it back down. "That's impossible."
- "Leo, you have seen _inside of me_, and you say that is impossible? How else do you connect primitive wooden legs or barely useful hook and claw
- prosthetic arms, to _This_?" Dr. Soren swept his hands down his body. Despite looking like a tall, albino jackal, his entire body was synthetic. "The
- project was simple, in a way. Preserve someone's brain outside of their body, but keep it functioning. Interact with it."
- Another picture, this time of a whole person. It was vaguely humanoid, and not at all canine. It was almost a mannequin, an incomplete plastic
- structure over indiscernible metal parts. An umbilical of cables ran from the back to a wall full of complicated equipment. "This is me at two years.
- As you can see, technology has progressed. No longer were we limited to preserving the functioning brains of homicidal recruits in jars; we could give
- them bodies! That sounds quite like a terrible movie plot, doesn't it? Destined to fail, as well, because once evil, never turned."
- The next image had a much more canid shape to the figure in it, although the it was close enough that the attempt at a functioning face looked like a
- dog mask that a human would wear at a costume party. The umbilical led to a single console this time, a few feet square. "At this stage, there was big
- funding talk about building a body that required support units that were only as large as washing machines. The idea being that they could allow those
- who needed to be... supported... to live in a familiar, residential setting."
- Now, an actual recognizable Dr. Soren, with an articulated head but not much beyond mechanics for a body, wielding a rather substantial backpack.
- "This is what they called the hiker project. I preferred to be known as Jackal Plus, but had a devil of a time convincing anyone to go along. None of
- them seem to have read any Frederik Pohl... At this point, I was becoming more outgoing. Untethered, I felt like I was actually alive again. And I
- felt very-"
- "Jackal Plus?"
- "Yes, Leo."
- "That's like that book. Where the guy is made into a cyborg so he can go to Mars. Instead of humans trying to live in an alien environment, the human
- is re-engineered to be perfectly suited to it!" As Leo described, his look of queasy discomfort perked up into giddy astonishment.
- "I see you and I share the same reading tastes," Dr. Soren said, voice as cold as the machine in the picture. "Yes and no, same general idea, much
- more disturbing outcome. Imagine what the military could possibly want with the ability to take a soldier's brain out of his body and implant it in a
- machine. A machine that can be stronger, purpose-built, repaired, replaced."
- Leo did not lose his wide-eyed awe.
- "Luckily, that never came to pass," Dr. Soren continued. "At least as far as I know. I don't know why. Perhaps it was just too far away, too inhuman.
- The research then turned to whether we could replace the bodies of people and have them live a normal life. That produced me." The final picture was a
- fantastic image. The doctor's body was covered in some actual fur, some colorless gummy protective nerve matrix, and then completely exposed in other
- places. He was holding an apple and staring into the camera with his mechano-iridescent eyes. There were strange rectangles on the image, obscuring
- parts of it. "This will be the cover of TIME magazine in a few months."
- Dr. Soren turned the final light down, then opened the door and led Leo back out.
- "Why do you have a room like that?" Leo asked, amazement draining back to the weary tension he had been wearing.
- "Because I intend to hold the occasional private meeting here, where it may be useful to deliver a personal explanation of my involvement."
- "Involvement in what?"
- "There are five full transfers, including myself. Two men, one woman." Dr. Soren led Leo into a back sitting room. The room was minimalist and oddly
- comforting in its Danish squareness, partly because the far wall was entirely glass and looked out over a fantastic terrace and garden maze. "Now, we
- are ready to produce our first production prototype, if you will. That will change everything. Leo, I am broken. The only thing that exists in me that
- I was born with is my brain and part of my spinal column. Everything else is a machine. Everything has been manufactured to a design that iterated up
- from the torment of being literally preserved floating in a jar with no body. But I am somehow fixed as well, like the evil, the stain in me, was
- erased as my body died. And now, I am refined away from torture and mutilation and vengeance and narcissistic obsession. I have always had a need to
- form things to the way I see fit. That almost killed Kenneth Waleman, but yet, I have become someone who is so different that we mended our wounds
- together."
- Leo sat down on the sofa adjacent to the windows and looked out, away from the jackal. Dr. Soren went up close to it and continued talking when Leo
- made no sound.
- "I have suffered enough for what I did. You have suffered as well. You have lived through having your mother killed and your body burnt to cinders at
- your hands and feet, through having your arms cut off, then your legs, then all four replaced, then your tail, then the terror of the infectious
- malpractice that left you neutered for years as you went through the most formative pubescent years of your life."
- Leo could not comprehend the sheer horror of what Dr. Soren was saying. The words simply rang around the room, arranging themselves into blocks of
- dissociated thought like so many pieces of cubist furniture.
- "And now, you are complete. I am complete. Everyone should be complete. Everyone will be complete. Everyone _has to be_ complete. I have to get my
- fingers into everyone and everything. I have to mold the world to what is inside of my head. I directed all of that desperation into a ridiculous,
- petty, biological squabble that almost cost an innocent brilliant man his life. Now, refined, remanufactured, reworked, I direct that to building a
- world where those who are free to mold their selves can learn, and live, and grow."
- "Is that a speech you give?" Leo asked, voice still warbled with confused hurt.
- "Perhaps it will be," the jackal sighed.
- "You said there were five full transfers. But you named two men and one woman, and then yourself. That's four. I'm not an idiot," Leo said, staring at
- Dr. Soren's ghostly reflection in the window. The misty spring day had become the low glow of twilight and sent the jackal's form back as an
- apparition standing over the far wood of the property.
- "Neither am I. There is a fifth. There is a first for everything. Someone was the first to make love. Someone was the first to kill someone else.
- Someone was the first hybrid. Someone was the first to receive cybernetic implants. I was the first to be made into a full transfer. And, someone was
- the first to have their species changed."
- Leo deflated, simply because his suspicion was confirmed. "Baxter."
- "Baxter was so obsessed with being a dog that it destroyed his life. He was institutionalized to prevent him from hurting himself. He wanted to be a
- dog, and every day of his life was torment as he was very clearly human and not a dog. One of my peripheral colleagues, at AnimaLogic, pondered
- whether you could change someone's physical design, as opposed to merely reconstructing them. The answer is a resounding, horizon-destroying yes, and
- that answer is sleeping in his crate on his favorite blanket right now, or I would bring him out again."
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