Bypass Gemini

Chapter 9

Karter and Lex stood in a stainless steel service elevator, silently waiting. The unstable host scratched at the socket where his arm should be, a vaguely distracted look on his face.

“So... what? The arm is running on automatic right now?” Lex asked.

“Wireless control.”

“… So you’re calibrating that thing blind?”

“There’s a camera on it.”

“… And where’s the video-”

“It is being broadcast into my eye,” he answered impatiently, “Look, let’s get all of that out of the way first. I lost my left arm at the shoulder and my left leg below the knee in two different explosions. The arm’s got a camera, it is wireless with a half mile range indoors and who knows how far outdoors, it can operate semi-autonomously, the hand has programmable fingerprints, a vibration motor, data interface capabilities-”

“Wait. A vibration motor in your hand? Why?”

“I’m a man, and I’m alone on the planet. Figure it out. Back to the prostheses. I was going to put wheels or something on the false foot, but then I’d keep busting my shoe, so basically the leg is just a leg. There’s a storage compartment, though. The eye and most of the right side of my head got wrecked by a coolant leak. The guts of my ear are still natural, but the flappy part on the outside along with my scalp and eye are replaced. The eye has video recording and playback, heads up display, network connectivity, the works. Aside from that, most of my internal organs are either cybernetic or synthetic. No bells and whistles. I don’t like to tinker with the vitals.”

“Most of your organs? Seriously?”

“Yep. One kidney, my liver, both lungs, my heart, I don’t even HAVE a gall bladder. I don’t have an appendix, either, but I replaced it with an organ that synthesizes caffeine. The fact that I didn’t have one already is a glaring evolutionary oversight, if you ask me. Then there’s the spleen, the pancreas... Hell, in many legal territories, I don’t count as alive. I’m on permanent life support. It just happens to be internal.”

“Hang on. If your arm was cybernetic, why did it bleed?”

“Oh, that’s the beauty part. All of the mechanical bits run on blood glucose fuel cells with battery backup. That way I don’t have to worry about running wires and charging things and what not, but it wreaks havoc with my blood sugar if I try anything fancy. And if I don’t remember to pump the blood back out of the limb before I remove it I start to get a little woozy. Gotta work on that.”

The elevator gave a pathetic little plink and the doors opened. Immediately, Lex was hit by a number of things. For one, this area was much less antiseptic and lifeless than the rest of the facility. It was subtle, but there was a disorganization, a lived-in quality, that indicated this was where he spent most of his time. Another interesting aspect was the almost museum-like presentation. The hall that greeted him was just as wide as those on the first floor, and was likewise lined with doors and display windows, but each one bore a lighted and labeled shelf. The shelves held rough, home-made looking devices surrounded with images, schematics, warnings, and manuals, all written in pencil. One thing thrust the rest of these observations aside and demanded to be addressed first. The smell.

It wasn’t strictly a bad smell, but it certainly wasn’t a good one, and there was a LOT of it. Lex didn’t have anything in his mental tool kit to compare the odor to. It was definitely biological, but nothing you would find in a locker room or bathroom. Not a human one, anyway. Whatever it was, it seemed to lay low, slipping under the nose’s radar until it got deep into the back, then asserting itself to the point that one could almost taste it. If Karter noticed it, he didn’t let on.