ESCAPE FROM THE FUTURE

Chapter 2

His chest repeatedly brushing up against his straightened legs and his face against his knees, Cutty Simmers breathlessly counted off the inverted sit-ups: "Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. Spread 'em." 

The droid splayed his legs into a split position. Still hanging upside down, he performed his side-bends. 

"Fifty-two is not easy to remember. Suggest fifty-five, or..." the utility droid offered helpfully in her hoarse, macho female voice. 

"Shut up. You'll break my concentration." Cutty panted as he hammered out the next set. 

"Recommend rings to best complement this battery of exercises." 

"Fine, have it your way." The droid released him and Cutty landed in a handstand before snapping upright to vertical, nursing his worn rotator cuff. But he didn't give himself time to catch his breath. 

The droid, with a torso of a cylindrical punching bag and the head of a teardrop shaped punching bag, indicative of just two more services rendered, morphed its hands into rings at the ends of its long mechanical arms. 

Before jumping on, Cutty gave the exercise droid a punch to the face, watching its punching bag head loll back and forth for some time. "I never quite get used to that," the exercise droid said. 

"That's for breaking my rhythm earlier." Cutty grabbed hold of the rings, as the droid adjusted his height off the floor. The arms worked like bands in a fireman's ladder, each section sliding over one another until it got him the required height from the floor for safety. 

Hera, the house computer, analyzed Cutty's movement on a large flatscreen against the wall using patches on his body as markers. 

After some twirling and showing off, he held his legs out straight, pressed together and horizontal to the ground, in a signature Rings Olympics competition maneuver, as long as he could. 

Then he dropped to the floor, and pulled off the patches. Rubbing his worn rotator cuff even harder, Cutty hit replay. 

Hera, speaking in a beguiling disembodied female voice, broke the bad news. "Ninety-two percent alignment with perfection." 

"Ninety-five would be easier to remember," he said, smart-assed. 

"Suggestions?" 

Cutty, still panting hard, managed a: "Sure, why not?" 

"Complete musculoskeletal replacement with buckyball strands and titanium, and nanoattachments to the neural net would allow for 99.2% alignment with perfection." 

Hera threw up a series of shots on the wall screen monitor to make her argument for her. A mediocre gymnast, judging from his floor routine, incurred a near-fatal car accident-the car skidding across an icy road and into a steel-reinforced cement telephone pole-and was confined to a wheelchair. After undergoing surgery, he performed the same choreography on the mats with superhuman prowess. 

"Holy Mother of God!" 

"Approved for C3 spinal injuries." 

Cutty watched more of the gymnast's floor acrobatics. They included not one, not two, but three aerial somersaults, multiple handless cartwheels, and corkscrew spirals in midair customarily only seen at Olympic high dive events off the tallest platform. 

"The military considers it one of the six most vital cyberenhancements, according to Time Magazine, May 5th, 2034." 

The gymnast on the screen, recruited by the army, responding to battlefield sounds, ably dodged shrapnel from exploding bombs with catlike reflexes and an enviable nervous system response usually not seen in biological lifeforms. Many of the same maneuvers earlier performed on a gymnastics mat at competitions, served him equally well on the battlefield, and seemed to make even more sense in the context of war.