“Good. They are coming inside the nature-cage. Try not to move as you will frighten them.” The man – Tane -- blinked again and Grant gawked at his eyes for a few seconds before hearing the words.
“Frighten easily? Frightened of what?”
“Frightened of you, my friend. Of you.”
“Me?” Grant asked. He saw other figures approaching from the periphery of his vision. “I can barely move. How can they be scared of me?”
“It is a long story, but one that you will hear soon.”
“I can hardly wait,” Grant choked. His throat felt like fresh sandpaper. “How about a drink in the meantime?”
Grant saw Tane take something from one of the figures just outside his vision and lean over his body. He was in the process of asking what was happening when he felt the pressure to his thigh and a slight prick. He never got the words out.
“Take him to the room that’s been set aside,” Tane said.
* * *
Sergeant First Class Grant Justice awoke to find himself lying in a bed, his eyes opened toward the white ceiling overhead. He was no longer thirsty, but he still could not move his arms or legs.
He let his gaze travel down the wall – also white – and glanced around the room. It looked like a hospital room. The door opened and in walked the man from the garden – Tane something or other.
Grant noticed that the door seemed to lock behind the man, and he studied the smaller man closely as he approached the bed. He again noted the clouded, secondary set of eyelids. Other than the eyes, the man’s face was nice and hinted of intelligence and humor. He liked the man almost immediately but not without chastising himself for the unwarranted reaction. For all he knew, this could be a doctor for the European Front Army with orders to perform a de-nutting.
“So, who the hell are you?” he asked, never one to let unanswered questions remain unanswered. “And how did I get here? The last I remember, I was headed for the bottom of a frozen lake. With no arms or legs.” There were other memories -- memories of death, and memories of endless memories – but Grant didn’t think he wanted to get into that with this guy. All he wanted to know was where he was and how he got new parts for what had been a very fucked up body.
The small man smiled and nodded.
“My name is Tane Rolan. I am a Senior Scientist of the N’mercan Culture.” The lids covering his eyes rose and fell as he spoke and Grant got a closer look at the deformity. The lids appeared somehow opaque, but it was obvious that the man could see through them without any difficulty. He had seen the same trait in certain reptiles at zoos he had visited. The lids for those animals served to protect their eyes underwater and he wondered if Tane’s lids offered the same benefit for him. The question was pushed out of his mind by more important ones, though.
“Okay. I can buy that. But what the hell does that mean, Doc? Where am I and how the fuck did I get here?”
“Please. Do not use profanity. It represents a verbal form of violence.” He spoke as though reprimanding a child and Grant was slightly amused by the apparent scolding. The small man had balls. “And what do you mean by ‘you can buy that?’”
“Wait a minute, wait just a damn minute, Doc.” Grant was in no mood for answering questions. He wanted answers of his own. “Someone’s got a lot of explaining to do and, seeing as how you’re the only one here, you’re elected!”
Grant tried to sit up and found that he could still not move his arms and legs easily. His body lifted a few inches, but it weighed a ton. Reluctantly, he laid back, took two deep breaths, and tried to relax.
“First question: What the fuck is wrong with my body? Forget that! How do I even have a body at all?”
“Be with Peace!” Tane whispered as he looked over his shoulder to the closed door. “If you cannot be with Peace and refrain from this violent behavior I will be required to inject you with a calming agent. The moment the others realize that you have awakened they will want to see you, and I must speak with you first.”
The scientist’s actions and obvious agitation got Grant’s attention. “Okay, Senior Scientist Tane Rolan, I give up. I’m just going to lie here and shut the fu… I’m not going to say anything. But will you please just tell me what’s going on?”
“Of course,” Tane answered, relieved. “But first could you please tell me your name? I have worked on you for nearly two years now and the matter of what to call you has bothered me for some time.”
“Two years?” Grant asked, then waved it off. “Never mind. This is going to be some story Doc,” he said, shaking his head at the scientist’s words. “But okay, I’ll play it your way. My name is Grant Justice – no comments please, I’ve heard them all before. I will say that it’s not a nice name to have, especially if you’re a professional soldier like me, you dig? Now, you tell me what the heck is going on or I’m gonna show you some real violence.”
“This is not going to be easy for me to explain. Or for you to understand. Accept that before I begin.”
“Agreed,” was all Grant said.
Slowly, almost too slowly at first, Grant listened as the scientist relayed the story of his rebirth. It took Tane over an hour to explain how the damaged body had been found and the steps that had been taken to resurrect him. In detail, answering as many questions as he could, the scientist explained how Grant’s body had been discovered, still frozen, from the lake where he had died. He explained how the body had been re-grown, re-shaped and ultimately revived by Tane’s scientific group, working as a team. He told how Grant’s new legs and arms were grown in the experimental cell tissue incubators and how the damaged appendages had been replaced with newer, stronger versions. He described how broken bones and damaged organs were exchanged with man-made replacements and how the replacements were better than the originals. Item by item, like a child showing off his new toys, Tane Rolan pointed out the differences between Grant’s old battered body and his new, “better” body.
Tane was describing the new body’s ability to tune out pain when Grant finally had enough and begged the doctor to stop.
“Please, Doc. Don’t say anything else. I’m not sure I like being your experiment.”
“I’m sorry, I --”
“No more! Don’t say anything else. I need time to think, that’s all. Just time to think!” Grant’s anger flashed briefly and was gone. He looked toward the ceiling, his thoughts rushing through his mind like a wind storm through a wheat field. He fought to raise his hand to his forehead and massaged his temples. The movement seemed to take hours.
“You sound so proud of the job you did, Doc, but I can barely move. Maybe you’d better send me back to the lab for a few adjustments, huh? I guess they don’t make Frankensteins like they used to!”
“No, no!” Tane was quick to answer and laid his hand on Grant’s arm. “You are fine. It will take a few days to get back to where your body is fully functional. In a couple of months you should be able to do everything you could do before your accident. Even more!”
“Accident!” Grant shouted, his body suddenly a flurry of waving arms and kicking legs. “Hah! It was no fucking accident that put me at the bottom of a lake with no arms and legs, Doc!”
Tane covered the two steps toward the bed quickly and slapped Grant sharply across the face.
“What the–,“ Grant managed to squeak out before he was grabbed by the small scientist and shaken roughly. In his weakened condition he could not resist. All he could do was take the abuse until, finally, the shaking stopped and Tane stepped away from him.
Grant glared at the smaller man and swore to himself that, when his body was able, he’d set things square between himself and the doctor. Tane, to his credit, just returned the stare.
“Listen to me, Grant! You must be with Peace! For your sake, as well as for mine and the entire world’s. You cannot display violence where it could do harm t
o another human.”
“Oh man, you keep talking about ‘being with peace’ and not being violent. Just what the hell does that mean anyway? I haven’t hit or kicked anyone… yet” He let the last comment linger but Tane ignored it.
“Grant, listen to me,” Tane began slowly. “The world… earth… is different now. You’ve been gone a long time and things have changed. People have changed. How we think, how we look…”
“How you speak also. Does everyone sound like you? All prim and proper?” Grant demanded.
“Well, I… yes, it is Earth Standard language. Everyone is taught to speak it clearly and carefully. It helps instill Peace and avoid misunderstandings.”
“Yeah? Well it makes you sound like a pompous ass. Sorry.”
Tane stared. His mouth hung open but no words came out. Grant thought he might have pushed the little guy into speechlessness, but it was short-lived. The need to educate obviously overcame the initial shock of Grant’s taunt.
“Earth Standard is our formal language. In addition to Standard, each of the six Cultures has its own language, and most have more than one. At last count, the world had more than a hundred functioning languages. Culture languages are less formal and are reserved for conversations among families and friends.” The small scientist ended his tutorial on languages.
“Got it. People talk funny now, unless they are at home. How else have things changed? How are people so different, Tane? What else besides the way you speak? Does everyone have eyes like you?” Grant asked cruelly, taking a childish verbal shot at the small scientist.
Grant felt terrible as soon as the words left his mouth, but he wanted to get back at the doctor for making him an experiment, for answering his questions, for shaking him like a small child. So he had picked out the man’s deformity and used it as a weapon.
Grant was suddenly struck by the humor of the thought, regardless of how cruel it was. He imagined a world full of freaks with extra eyelids and he laughed for the first time since rejoining the living. It felt good to laugh and he never wanted to stop, but he did with Tane’s reply.
“Why… yes. We all have two sets.” Grant was stopped in mid-laugh, the sound choked from his throat. The man was serious. “But that is not the only change, we --”
“Wait!” he held up a hand, it came up easier now. “You mean everyone has eyes like you?”
“Yes. Well, there are a few who are born deformed, with only one set, but most have the protective lids as I do.”
“Deformed with only one set? You’re kidding, right?”
“I am sorry, but no. At first, those who were born with the secondary lids were considered deformed, but over the course of a few generations, the evolutionary change became evident in over ninety-nine percent of all humans. Now, less than one in 100,000 is born with the deformity of a single set.
“Some early scientists theorized that it was a changed precipitated by global warming or by the depletion of the ozone layer, a natural method of protecting our eyes from the sun’s rays. Others thought the change came about as protection against constant exposure to vid-screens, computers and – what was it called? Oh yes, television.
“The human structure is an amazing thing, Grant. It protects us from harm, sometimes in spite of ourselves.”
Grant was tired and wanted suddenly, desperately to sleep. He was dazed and wondered how many more answers he could take from the scientist. There was one more he had to know, though, and he refused to give in to his exhaustion until he found out.
“How long, Tane?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“I’m sorry… how long what, Grant?”
“How long have I been gone?”
The question seemed to catch the scientist by surprise and he tried to change the subject. “But our eyes are not the only change we have undergone –“
“How long, Tane?”
“Peace. All living humans are encouraged to live a life of Peace and to forsake all forms of violence. From the time they are born, while they live and marry, until the day they die, all humans are encouraged and trained to be at Peace with each other and all other things.” Tane stepped toward the bed as he explained and Grant watched the scientist intently.
“There are no more wars, no more battles, and no crimes of violence, except for those committed by the insane. And even the insane are treated well.”
“How long?”
“The earth is at Peace, except for – well, except for the… the…“
“My God, Tane,” Grant whispered once more. “How long have I been dead?” The small scientist stared at Grant, obviously frightened and not wanting to answer the question. But he finally did.
“As near as I can determine from the documents we found with you, you were at the bottom of that lake for more than six hundred years.”
“Six… hundred…years? Damn.” Grant sank back into the bed, finally ready to embrace sleep.
Tane watched as tears slid down Grant’s cheek. Then he unlocked the door and quietly let himself out of the room.
CHAPTER FIVE
Grant awoke with a start, keenly aware of his surroundings. As a soldier he had learned the art of immediate wakefulness. The ability to change from a sleeping state to complete awareness had saved his life on more than one occasion. He did not question that the trait had not disappeared in the six hundred years since his “death”. It was as much a part of him as his head was. And his head, he recalled with some distaste, was one of the few original body parts that he still retained.
The memory of how he lost his limbs came back to him as it had thousands of times. Only this time, he had a body to help him remember and his thoughts went immediately to his new arms and legs. He forced his right arm into movement and managed to push off the thin white blanket covering his body. He saw that he was naked except for a pair of loose briefs.
He struggled with his new limbs and fought his body to a seated position. Once seated, he slowly forced his legs over the side of the bed. His muscles strained, almost to the point of concession, but his feet hit the strange marble-like tile of the floor with a loud thump. He felt nothing. He looked at the feet where they rested on the off-white tile and the realization hit him like a blow. His own feet were forever gone, blown away by a bullet. The memory of that moment caused him to moan with the loss.
His new feet looked to be normal except that they were pale and appeared extremely soft. They aren’t soldier’s feet, Grant thought. There was no sign of the calluses and toughness that he had spent a lifetime building and he wondered how they would hold up over a 20-kilometer march with a 60-pound pack and a full load of ammunition. Not very well, he concluded, and his eyes traveled up to his legs.
He slowly traced the curve of his legs from the ankle, up the calf, past the knees. There were no scars on either leg and they were pale and nearly hairless, like the legs of a pre-pubescent teen. Just above the thighs, the paleness gave way to pinkish skin where (he assumed) the doctors had had to begin the re-growth process. Other than the lack of color, scars, tattoos and hair, they were a lot like his previous legs – long and muscular, built for both endurance and power. He tried to flex, first the right and then the left, but neither cooperated fully. There was movement, though, and Grant was sure he was making progress.
He continued his visual inspection and moved up to the groin. Visually, everything looked to be in place and Grant forced his right arm into movement. He tugged the waist band away from his body and completed the inspection.
The sight of his own member was a welcome sight and he felt a rush of relief.
“Fuckin’ eh!” he exclaimed. There was no way the small scientist could have duplicated his dick and balls in such precise detail and Grant nodded as if greeting a lost friend. “Fucking eh.”
He took stock of the rest of his body, his eyes lingering overlong on his hands and arms. The appendages were unfa
miliar, the old scars and calluses gone, replaced by unmarked skin desperately in need of some sun. He recalled the missing scars with affection and mourned their loss. Each defect had represented a small part of his life. The burn scar, now missing from his right elbow, had been the result of a close escape from a burning helicopter. The aircraft had been a victim of a well-aimed burst of automatic rifle fire that had reached out to them from below. Grant, and most of his team, had managed to escape from the downed craft before it exploded with the pilot and co-pilot still inside.
The three puckered holes that had lined his left arm from the wrist to the elbow were also gone, but not the memory of the ambush that had caused the injury. He had been a cherry, a new guy on his first patrol, when the inexperienced lieutenant in charge of the mission walked them into an enemy kill zone. The platoon sergeant had warned the officer of the potential danger, but the man had ignored his NCO’s advice and ordered the group on. The lieutenant died because of his stupidity and Grant, a private at the time, escaped with a damaged arm and a growing respect for the sergeant. Grant had learned an important lesson on that mission: when your life is on the line, rank is of no value. Experience is what counts. Those three bullet wounds helped him remember that lesson countless times through his years as a soldier. Now they were gone and he grieved their loss.
His sudden despondency irritated Grant, and he pushed the growing depression out of his mind as he completed the physical inventory. His entire body, which had been numb, now began to tingle. He likened it to the feeling of waking up to find your arm in pain, but useless for several minutes, while the blood flow returned. It was intensely uncomfortable and he did not chance trying to stand up right away. Instead, he sat where he was and considered his surroundings as he waited for the pin pricks to go away.