As the Wings Beat

Prologue

In the year 2064, a young Doctor named Edward Arch discovered a way to graft new muscles onto the human body. This breakthrough did wonders for his career and changed the medical industry. Muscle enhancements and replacements became the new way to get in shape fast. It started with the rich and famous, but slowly it became common in society.

This research naturally progressed into attempting to attach additional limbs to a body. Once human trials started, it was a disaster. Several died, and the remaining were paralyzed, it was a legal nightmare. Dr. Edward Arch was forced to resign because of the catastrophe. His name eventually faded from the spotlight until ninety years later, in 2154, his grandson Dr. Arvol Arch followed in his footsteps.

Arvol took his grandfather's idea back to the drawing board. Some of the problems his grandfather encountered with the additional limbs were the placement and functional capabilities. Arvol liked the idea, but he had his heart set on wings. He managed to grow wings in his lab and attach them to rats and a fox. The animals were able to voluntarily move the wings but could only obtain limited flight. His company, Arch Enterprises, put out an ad looking for people to participate in human trials, calling it the Icarus Project.

The first human trial was successful, although the wings were not able to be used in flight. The shoulder blades restricted the wings' movement and the wings had to be removed. While analyzing his anatomical illustrations, the only way to allow the wings proper movement was to create a spinal attachment to stabilize the wings off of the spine and away from the shoulder blades.

He managed five successful transplants with the new attachment. The subjects were able to consciously move the wings, and after several months of exercise and practice, they were able to utilize them properly. Since the human body is so heavy, the volunteers were unable to simply take off from the ground, but they could glide and sustain flight when dropped from above.

Dr. Arch yearned for further success. He started designing a new type of wing with a membrane instead of feathers, based off of a pterodactyl and bat design rather than a bird. The first few trials of the new wings were unsuccessful, and many lost the use of one or both of their arms in the process. The only way to fix the problems was to create new sockets lower on the back, that worked under and around the shoulder blades. Theoretically, it should have worked, but unfortunately the extra weight compressed the spine. The solution was to add a row of specially designed metal scales to support the spine and yet still allow full movement, but this had its own set of problems. The metal would tear through the skin with any movement, so it had to be applied on the outside of the body instead. After five more trials of problems and solutions, Dr. Arch believed he could make it work.