Jordan Stryker: bionic agent

JORDAN STRYKER: BIONIC AGENT

Unit Red’s chief surgeon led Ben to the room at the end of the underground corridor. Hesitating by the door, he said, “This is where you’ll have the big operations.” Going inside, he added, “Sometimes you’ll see it. Sometimes you won’t. It depends whether you need local or general anaesthetic.”

Ben gasped in amazement. He was inside a tiny observation room. Beyond the window was a fully equipped, modern and spotless operating theatre, just like in a hospital.

“It’s sealed,” the surgeon told him, “to prevent infections. We can’t go in without scrubbing up and getting into sterile clothing.”

Ben’s eyes struggled to focus. He couldn’t make out all of the equipment and, even if he could, he wouldn’t have recognized most of the high-tech kit. There was a large trolley with electronic gear on each shelf and a long monitor at the top. A giant computer screen and a digital clock were attached to the left-hand wall. There was a cupboard that probably contained horrible things like scalpels, drills and medical saws. Above the operating table were three massive round lights on jointed arms so that they could be moved into any position. There was also a laser. At the head of the bed was a doughnut-shaped ring that would just about encircle a body like a lifebelt. “What’s that for?” Ben said, pointing at it.

“Ah. We’ll be using that straight away. It’s a brain scanner. MRI – magnetic resonance imaging – it’s called. I’m going to drill a couple of small holes through your skull – nothing to worry about – and put implants directly into your brain. The scanner will let me see exactly what I’m doing while I’m doing it. And you can talk to me at the same time.”

Ben looked horrified. “Talk? Won’t you knock me out first?”

“It’s better not to. That way, you can tell me if you can see better when I connect your optic nerve to a brain implant. You won’t feel any pain. A local anaesthetic will take care of that.”

Ben shivered. He thought there was something weird and ghoulish about talking to a surgeon who was fiddling around inside his brain at the time. He didn’t want to hear any more. Instead, he tried to get an answer to a question that Angel had sidestepped. He took a deep breath and asked, “What is Unit Red?”

The chief surgeon smiled. “I think I’ll let Angel handle that one – when you’re ready. My job is just to make you better.”

Ben needed several days to recover after every operation. To keep track of them all, he felt as if he should chalk them up on his bedroom wall in the Unit Red building, like a prisoner marking each day in captivity.

His eyes had been fixed. Both irises had been fitted with a tiny camera and an electrode had been attached to the retina of each eye. The signal from the cameras was picked up by the electrodes and fed directly into his optic nerve. The sensory information was handled partly by his brain and partly by an implant, letting him see clearly. More than clearly. He had the best eyesight in the world. And it wasn’t just visible light. The cameras worked over a wide wavelength range. He had infrared vision so he could see in the dark and terahertz vision that allowed him to look straight through people’s clothes. Except that he hadn’t mastered the full scope of his new eyes yet. Until he learned how to cope, he had to put up with the confusing crossover of different wavelengths. He had to put up with the bizarre sensation that warm-blooded beings looked like radioactive aliens. And sometimes they appeared naked.

Even though he now had amazing high-tech eyes, no one would notice unless they came quite close.

The next operation was a big one. It was the first step to giving him a new arm and it meant general anaesthetic and a long recovery. Ben was scared and pleased at the same time. He was fed up with looking odd and ugly, like a teapot without its spout. He was fed up with being unbalanced. Fed up with fighting his instincts to reach out with an arm that was no longer there. Fed up with his slow and hopeless left arm. He longed for a time when eating, showering, dressing and undressing didn’t take an age. He wanted something to fill his shirtsleeve. He hated the way that clothes simply hung from his right shoulder and flapped around uselessly, like a flag waving to show everyone his impairment. When the frustrations got to him, he’d go to the gym and take it out on a punchbag, but that didn’t really work. He could hit it only with this ineffectual left arm.

One of the doctors peered closely at Ben’s stumpy shoulder. “You’ve healed nicely – to the point where we can start working on it. We’re going to implant titanium rods into your remaining bones.” She demonstrated angles and directions with her pen. “They’ll poke through your skin like bolts and we’ll fix your new arm onto them. I know it sounds horrible, but it’s simple. Not risky. And, when the arm’s on, you won’t see the fitting.”

Ben turned towards Angel, who stood to one side. “You said the arm’s really clever and complicated.”

“It is. Fantastic. If you call it advanced technology, you’re not doing it justice. It’s super-advanced. You’re the first person in the world to get this version. You’ll love it. You’ll be able to do incredible things.”

The doctor explained, “The mechanism and electronics are tomorrow’s state of the art, but the fitting’s just nuts and bolts basically. That’s what I meant by calling it simple.” She spoke clearly to make sure that Ben could hear. “Where you once had flesh, bone, blood and nerves, you’ll have motors, carbon-fibre rods, wires and fancy electronics. But it’ll look realistic when we’ve finished.”

“Muscles are good,” Angel said, “but what you’re going to have will be better. Stronger.”

Ben gulped. It sounded like something a superhero in a comic would have. But he would not believe in the transformation until it happened. He also wondered what was in it for Unit Red. Why was the mysterious organization helping him?

He asked, “How will I move this arm?”

Angel pointed towards his head. “With thoughts. I told you it was advanced.”

“By the way,” the doctor added, “while the surgeon’s at it, I’ll open up your right leg and put a battery under the skin.”

“A battery?”

“Something’s got to power all your enhancements,” she said.

“What happens when it goes flat? Do you have to...?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No. Once it’s in, that’s it. It won’t go flat. It’s rechargeable. It generates electricity from movement. You don’t have to do anything extraordinary like jump up and down all the time. Just normal walking around and so on will power your arm, visual system and everything else.”

Ben didn’t like what he was – hampered by disability – but he also worried about what he was becoming.
* * *

Seven months after the explosion, Ben stood in front of a full-length mirror once more. Just for a moment, he had the strange sensation that the glass was a door. A weird boy was outside the room, looking in at him. But he was wrong. The mirror was normal and he was the peculiar boy with the bald head. He lifted his left arm to prove it. His unfamiliar reflection did the same.

This time, he wasn’t shocked by the damage. He was astonished by the power of surgery to reconstruct a body. Maybe body was the wrong word. He was part body, part machine. Whoever or whatever he saw in the mirror, it wasn’t Ben Smith.

His right arm was a gadget. No matter how clever it was, no matter how many things it could do, it was attached to him and not really part of him. At this stage, the motors, metal rods and joints were visible, but it was going to be encased in super-strong metal and covered with artificial skin. Even that wouldn’t convince him it was anything but a gadget. At least it would be well disguised when his transformation was complete. From a distance, other people would not notice that he had a robotic arm.

He put his left hand on his cheek. Pure plastic. One ear had been rebuilt out of silicone. His bald head was covered with scars and odd bumps. Focusing on his eyes, he could see the tiny cameras that almost everyone else would miss. The marks all over his body made him look like a carefully constructed jigsaw.

Apart from his right arm and ear, his body glowed yellowy-red. He knew that no one else would see the shimmering colour. His infrared vision was detecting warmth. His right arm and ear were cold and dead. A lifeless blue colour. The patches of plastic on his face and trunk were a darker red. That was the warmth and life underneath struggling to show through.

Taking him by surprise, Angel came up behind him and said, “Ben Smith died.”

He spun round. “What?”

“You look full of regret – in mourning for what you once were.”

“Can you blame me?”

“You deal with it by disowning that history.”

Ben hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“Like everyone else, you admit that Ben Smith died in the estuary blast. Your friends and relatives have had to come to terms with it. Let him go. You become a different boy. In fact,” Angel said, smiling at him, “I know who you are. You’re Jordan Stryker. I’ve got the birth certificate, ID and passport that prove it.”