Chapter 005: Vivisection

Variants were subspecies of Mankind created by the Humanity 2.5 Project - the second of the four large scale attempts of genetically engineering mankind, launched during the times of the Solar Commonwealth. Unlike the earlier Humanity 2.0 Project (whose focus was fixing pre-existing flaws in the human genome), H2.5 was supposed to enhance the phenotypic diversity of Mankind to assist in the colonization of new worlds.

What started with Variants tailored to thrive on high and low gravity worlds has quickly strayed from the planned path. More and more popular petitions demanded the creation of new Variants, each of them more outlandish than the last one. After miraculous results of Humanity 2.0, Mankind believed that manipulations of their DNA could achieve everything. Variants ended up having to pay the price for that.

Many resulting genomes turned out to be unstable, as too many changes (sometimes partially contradictory on the genetic level) had to be made to achieve what the public demanded. The result was a plague of genetic instabilities and diseases that has struck numerous Variants - some of them lethally. More of them died out during the War of Purity. While genetic flaws were mostly fixed during the post-War of Purity Human Diversity Restoration Project, these few decades of delay in growth were enough to reduce Variants to what they are now - a small and often embattled minority throughout the Human Space.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 3, page 423

***

EGS Echo - Command Deck

01:57 29.03.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

Commander Drathari was theoretically off-duty, however she wasn’t going to miss a chance to observe the Echo’s officers at work. She met all of them (save for Lieutenant Commander Athalia) briefly, but it wasn’t enough. There was a stark difference between talking with someone in relaxed circumstances and seeing them at work.

The occasion presented itself when officers were cordially invited by the Captain to meet up on the bridge. The message explicitly said that due to her recent arrival, Commander Drathari is excluded but might attend at her own leisure - and so she decided to do so.

When she entered the bridge, she quickly scanned the whole room. It was a large open space, with the command platform right in front of the entrance with which it was on the same level. To the right and left of it the floor lowered itself slightly. Here were the workplaces of various officers and their assistants.

The ceiling above the officer workstations lowered itself slightly, with the resulting surface used to place a number of displays for the commanding officer to use.

Of course, the displays were redundant. Each crewmember of the bridge could access their workplace by using their commimplants, regardless of where they were aboard the ship. Even when on the bridge, everything could be displayed through Augmented Reality, with the implants modifying the visual feed between the eyes and the brain. However, implants could malfunction, or some hacking sabotage could bring down the whole system. On warships, everything had redundancies. Even the redundancies.

The Captain was sitting in his seat on the command platform, which turned to face the new arrivals.

“Oh, Commander Drathari decided to visit us.” He looked pleasantly surprised. Lena had no idea why he didn’t simply order the ship’s security system to inform him if she headed towards the bridge. “How nice of you.”

“Still no twintails in sight.” Colonel Anna Nowak, the head of the Echo’s marines, said. Her voice could be easily used to refrigerate food.

In Lena’s opinion, she was a perfect example of a highborn Visegradian. Tall brunette with a slavic type of beauty, who tended to value her words. And also a superhuman killing machine. Commander Drathari was extremely curious how Keller got her to join the Echo. The Visegradian mercenaries were an incredibly costly investment.

“Don’t tell me you’re sad about it.” This time the beauty was latino-american. Lieutenant Commander Eva Mendez, the ship’s astrogator. She doubled as a communication’s officer and the head of security. Nowak’s marines merely provided muscles. Unorthodox, but sensible when the ship was understaffed so badly.

It was almost suspicious to see how many beauties were among the Echo’s officers. If you excluded Captain Keller and added Lena (a debatable case), there were eight officers - five of them women, each vastly different in looks. Innocent wasn’t even human, and Athalia was a tale in himself.

The situation was tipped even more in the female's favour when you added the Chief Petty Officer, though she wasn’t present. But neither was Lith, nor the chief engineer. This meant that besides Captain Keller, there were five women, one suspiciously silent robot and one man participating in the meeting.

She could only hope the Echo wasn’t one of those ships. They tended to be anything but efficient, and Keller had a long list of achievements, so it didn’t seem possible. Furthermore, she had a strange suspicion that Innocent wouldn’t be here if that was the case.

Colonel Nowak didn’t reply. Lena made a mental note that she seemed to have some sort of beef with Athalia. It could be useful knowledge. Her small arsenal of such tidbits of information was going to grow in the coming weeks.

“Well, I didn’t expect Athalia to show up, either way.” the Captain said. “The same with our chief engineer. They’re lone wolves. I’m letting them practise their trades aboard the ship because they show results, especially Lith. Their interest in day-to-day operations of this ship is close to none. And I let it stay that way, so long as they follow orders and do their job.”

There was a short wave of chuckles which Lena didn’t join. She was an outsider, only arrived a few hours ago, and not understanding an insider joke was a symptom of that. It was going to take a while to blend in.

“All right, so as you might have already heard, we’re leaving.” the Captain continued. “For the past few months we were patrolling the routes between the colonized worlds of this subsector. We’ve visited the capitals of all four independent countries that shared this cake between them. I believe it’s enough sightseeing.” Colonel Nowak snarled. There was something scary in her eyes.

Colonel Nowak doesn’t like boredom. Aaand… added to my notes.

“So, we depart into the unknown.” Lieutenant Commander Mendez commented. “Good. I have the course already plotted.” Lena had never visited the human colonies in the Sagittarius Arm. But she had to admit that either the popular picture of the latino-americans she was exposed to in her country was wrong, or Mendez was a strange one. Innocent was more expressive than her, and he was an alien robot.

“I knew you’d say that.” the Captain replied, provoking another burst of laughter. “Anything to add, Yuri?” The officer in question opened his mouth. “Just please, not the usual ‘we’re all going to die’.”

This time the laughter was slightly more reserved.

“The situation in the subsector is slowly declining.” Yuri Yegorov was a tall but skinny man. Another Slav in the group, and the quartermaster and political officer of the Echo, which meant that he was responsible for the ship’s supplies, and for the prediction of threats to the ship caused by volatile politics of the locals.

He was one of the people that Commander Drathari would never employ on her own ship. Some neognostics were scary. The Captain’s jokes about monthly blood sacrifices in the accountancy department to appease the ‘bloodthirsty spirits of bureaucracy’ weren’t funny.

If they were jokes. Neognostics had a… reputation. Why did Keller hire one?

“For now, it’s just a foolish military posturing.” Yegorov continued. “But I estimate that within two years a full-blown war between the Republic of Triana and the Techtrian Hierocracy will occur. Whether the Divine Directorate of Plesja and the Numenian Council will join in is hard to estimate and might depend on the results of initial engagements. The closer to the outbreak of hostilities, the less attention the countries will pay to the security of the trade routes and the outlying colonies.”

“So, we can expect predators to arrive.” Captain concluded. “And while we won’t change a lot with a single ship, every threat we scare off might mean a few lives saved.” Many citizens of the Confederation forget about this, but it was part of the Explorers’ Guild job to keep the border safe. Nobody wanted another Machine Wars. “Yuri?”

“Our magazines are full.” The ship’s quartermaster shrugged. “We can restock en route. No problems on my side.”

“Ava?” the Captain asked another question, this time to the ship’s enviro officer. Another beauty, one of the lesser known Variants. Her suit was almost completely transparent, and her hair in full bloom, both a completely normal thing for this particular subspecies of Mankind.

“Everything’s optimal in my section.” Lieutenant Commander Ava Taim said with a scarce nod. Everyone seemed to be used to how she looked, judging from the complete lack of reaction or even acknowledgment of the fact that she was almost naked. Or maybe everyone but Lena filtered that part out with augmented reality? She quickly checked the network and confirmed it.

One quick download later, she saw things just as the other officers did. The first day on the job wasn’t a good moment for trying to be different from everyone.

“With a crew so small we produce enough food to sustain the entire crew.” Ava continued. “Even when we empty our storages of the food from Triana, hunger will not be a concern.”

“Great. Anyone else have something to add?” the Captain said with a tone and words suggesting that the meeting was about to be finished.

“Locals are a bunch of asshats.” Colonel Nowak stated. “And we’re right next to their transshipment station. Requesting permissions to…”

“Denied.” Captain stated flatly. When the laughter subsided, he continued speaking. “This ship is officially banned from entering the Divine Directorate’ and Council’s space. Let’s not mess up our relations with the Republic any more if we can avoid it. If we end up being forced to rely on the Hierocracy as our base of operations, Lith’s going to explode. Anything else to add? This time without a risk of provoking an open war?”

The only answer he got was silence.

“Great, time to leave this place.” Captain clapped his hands. “Those of you who are off-duty are free to go. Eva, set course. And please inform our esteemed hosts that our attention is currently needed elsewhere. I’m going to make an announcement to the crew in a second.”

Lena’s mixed feelings grew even more. Several officers not present (and the Captain being ok with that), head of the ship's marines wanting to start a war and not even getting chastised for it… she began to miss her times in the Navy.

***

EGS Echo - Crew Deck

09:04 29.03.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

Christopher Hall’s first day as a crewmember of a spaceship could only be summed up as ‘horror’. And it wasn’t even a joke, but a clear and accurate description of events.

The Echo was on the move. It started around 2am ‘Standard Terran Time’ (according to his teammates - he had no chronometer on himself), and immediately made Christopher recall his earliest memory in the future. Only here, the acceleration was faster.

He barely had any sleep during the night. The dizziness and nausea was killing him. Anxiety was a problem as well; he was plagued by a serious fear of choking on his own vomit while asleep.

His brief and turbulent sleep was interrupted in the morning, when someone knocked on his door. He failed to answer before Tiriel entered his small room with a package in her hands. She was wearing the same pretty elven dress as earlier.

She looked ten times better than Christopher. He was never so envious in his whole life.

“Pardon me for the intrusion.” She said, laying down the package on the desk. Christopher felt so weak, he didn’t offer any resistance to this violation of the sanctity of his private room. “But yesterday you did give me permission to visit you in the morning. So I brought you some spare clothes. The uniform will be delivered in a few hours.”

“No work... today?” Christopher managed to utter. She pulled a chair closer to his bed and sat on it.

“I am technically working right now.” She replied. “I have some medical training. Lieutenant Commander Athalia decided that someone needs to have an eye on you two during the acceleration. And if you asked about yourself, well, you are free until the acceleration ends. How do you feel?”

After the ‘medical training’ and ‘Athalia decided’ Christopher had a brief vision of Tiriel wearing the same type of nurse clothing as Lith. It would be a very nice view, if not for the circumstances. His nausea ruined everything.

“Like... “ He was about to say ‘shit’ but somehow it felt wrong to use such words with Tiriel around. She was too lady-like for it to feel appropriate. “Quite bad.”

“Nausea, dizziness, headaches, vertigo, occasionally nystagmus.” She recited. “Often anxiety, hallucinations, depression, and general behavioural changes, but always short term and mild. It is the acceleration disease, also known as spacesickness. No need to say what its naval equivalent is, right?” He didn’t answer, but it was pretty obvious. She pulled a small tube-like object, with both ends flattened. “Extend your arm.”

It was an injection. When she pressed one of the flat ends to his skin, he felt a slight pinch.

“This should alleviate the worst symptoms.” She announced. “Nanomachine cocktail tailored specifically for your body. It is a bit of a rough solution, as nothing can be done about the cause of the problem. But it will render you practically unable to feel nausea for a few hours. Dizziness should subside a little, too.”

She was right. He felt better. Not much, but at least this recurring feeling of something swelling up in his esophagus was gone. But he still didn’t feel like leaving his bed. The fact that, due to a lack of any sort of sleepwear, he wore nothing more than boxer shorts under the quilt contributed greatly, but it was mostly because he just felt really weak.

It would be super awkward to be seen like that. And there’s also the fact I’m supposed to be her superior… Ugh. How did I let myself end up in this mess?! I’m smarter than this.

He sat up, letting his back rest on the wall behind the bed.

“So, please tell me… how long is the acceleration going to last?” He still felt weak, but at least his last meal didn’t threaten to leave him each time he opened his mouth. Conversation was finally an option.“I think you forgot to mention that yesterday.”

“It typically lasts for about twenty hours.” She replied. This wasn’t an answer he wanted to hear. “We are almost halfway through though.” She paused suddenly, and looked at him. She suddenly seemed… embarrassed? That was something new to Christopher.

“Listen, I apologize for the dinner yesterday.” The elf said. “If I had known that we would depart this quickly, I would have picked something lighter for the stomach. We were initially supposed to spend three more days here, and…” He raised his hand, interrupting her.

“I figured out that it wasn’t an assasination attempt seven hours ago.” He answered. “I saw your surprise after the announcement. Out of curiosity, what causes the sickness?” He added, to change the subject.

“We are currently accelerating with ten times the Earth’s gravity.” She replied. “3 to 4g is enough to knock you unconscious. 5g can cause cardiac arrest if the body is wrongly aligned to the vector of acceleration. 10g requires some inertia dampening for the crew to survive. We are using diamagnetism, a type of magnetism that can affect living flesh. However this also means that we are currently resting inside really powerful electromagnets.”

“So, it's electromagnetism that messes me up this much?” Christopher asked. He believed that negative influences of electromagnetic fields on human health weren’t conclusively proven in his times. Some even considered it to be para-science. Then again, this electromagnetism seemed to be on a whole other level.

“To a degree, yes.” Tiriel replied. “The problem is that you cannot calculate everything perfectly. And you cannot put electromagnetic field generators in every wall, as doors are something gravely incompatible with such a set-up. The results are the minuscule fluctuations of the inertia dampening fields resulting in parts of your body being influenced by the ship’s acceleration, but with slightly varying strength and direction. You might not feel it, but your blood circulation and labyrinth certainly do. And hence, spacesickness.”

“But you can get used to it?” Tiriel’s apparent healthiness was proof of it, but he wanted to make sure. This could still be some special trait of space elves and overly happy ship captains.

“Yep.” She replied with a smile. “I still feel pretty bad, but it is manageable now. You should have seen me during my first spaceflight.” She rolled her eyes. “You at least managed to keep everything inside.”

He chuckled lightly. He wondered how long it would take him to reach the ‘manageable’ level. The sooner the better, that’s for sure.

“So, back to the subject.” Tiriel finished the subject on a stern note. “I brought you clothes. We had enough historical data in the ship’s database to know what sort of clothes were worn in your times, and we had them sewn according to the measurements taken during the medical examination. The uniform is a bit more complicated, so it will take a few more hours to manufacture it. Athalia has also informed me that neither you nor Ryan will require further medical procedures.”

“That’s a relief.” Christopher said, taking advantage of her brief pause. “Don’t get me wrong, I keep hearing that he’s a wonderful doctor and so on and I actually saw nothing thus far which would prove that assessment wrong, but…”

“I get what you mean.” She replied with a chuckle. “He is a bit unnerving. If half of the tales about his skill are true then he is a solid competitor for the seat of humanity’s best doctor that he so often claims to be. But he is a bit… eccentric. Half of the crew could sue him for one thing or another after being treated by him, but he does a wonderful job with patching people up.”

I can only hope I won’t have to find that out personally.

“Normally, you’d have one more surgery.” Tiriel continued. “The communication implant, commplant in short, but the term ‘personal computer’ is even more common. It’s what lets you operate machinery, connect directly to the ship’s network, use full-immersion Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, and so on. One of the two basic implants without which you are pretty much a societal outcast. But to Athalia’s surprise, you already had that implant installed.”

“What?” Christopher would have noticed if someone had messed with his brain when he was conscious. So there was only one option. It happened before he landed in the 27th Century.

“It’s not a human technology.” Tiriel continued unloading the news on Christopher. “Previously unknown exotech. Full interface with our technology, so whoever made it knew how our tech works. Functionally it’s pretty much our standard commplant, but with fifty thousand times more space on its harddrive and ten thousand times more processing power. For your info, the Guild’s commplants are cutting-edge according to Confederation of Mankind’s standards.”

“Okay, I’m starting to see why exotechs are so valuable.” Christopher said slowly. He had no idea what was considered ‘cutting edge’ in the Confederation of Mankind, but it was probably something utterly crazy from the perspective of 21st Century computer knowledge. “So I have a supercomputer in my head?” She replied with a nod.

“That basically sums it up, yes.” The elf said. “Actually, I am also here to show you how to use it. Don’t ask me who made the brilliant decision to connect something like this to the network, but they did it several hours ago. It is so similar to our technology that Lieutenant Commander Innocent managed to set up some software blockade to keep two thirds of harddrive space and the processor’s speed offline, just in case it tried something funny.”

It sounded like a reasonable thing to do. In theory. If whoever made this thing was so much more advanced than Mankind, how could its programmers hope to keep it contained? It was like trying to restrain a truly genius-level Artificial Intelligence - there were numerous sci-fi stories proving why it never worked. Christopher felt that it was done pro forma.

“Excuse me for phrasing it this way... “ Christopher decided to ask, despite knowing that it could feel a bit insensitive. “...but isn’t Tendrik a bit more, uhm, qualified for that part? I thought you were a bit…”

“I have both the commplant and the translation implant installed.” She informed him, though her voice did feel a bit cold. “You are right, though. I am using the former to a fraction of what it can truly do. This is why I am only going to show you how to activate it.”

She raised her right hand, fingers in a distance from each other. Christopher’s attention was immediately drawn to how pretty her hand was. It was a small detail, yes. But the delicate yet healthy skin, perfectly proportional fingers… and there also was the body behind the hand.

Then he reminded himself that he was twenty-seven years old, not sixteen. Admiring a hand was probably better than staring at something more obvious (which he managed to avoid progressing to), but it was still rather pathetic. He wasn’t sure what was going on with him, but he felt like he was back in high school. It was just one of the few things that seriously irked him after he arrived in the future.

Should I ask her about that? Ugh. I can’t imagine how I should even start that talk.

“Now close your eyes.” She continued, unaware of his internal problems. He did as ordered. “Imagine that you have a sixth finger on either hand and try to move it.”

“Err… what?” He opened his right eye slightly and stared at Tiriel. He wasn’t sure what he just heard.

“Your implant is programmed to activate the UI when faced with some specific neural activity.” The elf said. “In this case it is the neural activity accompanying you imagining that you move a non-existent finger. It’s something you can’t activate by accident. Having your eyes closed is just for you to better focus on it.”

He tried a few more times. Finally he got it right. Something resembling a half-transparent user interface of a computer game showed up in front of him. A flashing button informed him that he had four unread messages.

First one was from Captain Keller. Alexander apologized for his lack of time to continue their talk. He suggested that Christopher should focus on training for now, but also to send him a message if anything unexpected happened to him. Even if it was a really strange dream.

Next two messages were from Lith Athalia. The first one was titled ‘Vivisection Results’, with results of the medical examination in the attachment and a ‘just ask the elf for summary’ note. The second one was a number of links for medical programs that Christopher should install onto his personal computer.

The final message was simply a notification that he had received a number of friend requests on something that sounded like the Echo’s social media. He quickly dismissed it for now, and decided to face Tiriel. Who was looking at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

“Uhm, sorry. I got a bit…” She interrupted him before he could finish the sentence.

“I get it, I get it.” This time, an obvious smile. “It must be something new to you. We are probably going to lose you for a while when you discover how modern VR games look. Anything else you need to know?”

“Well… anything of note in my medical results?” He might as well ‘ask the elf’ immediately.

“A few things.” She answered. For some reason, she didn’t look happy at all. “During the early Solar Commonwealth Mankind got genetically revamped. Humanity 2.0 Project has wired out all sorts of imperfections in the human genome, while also making many previously rare yet beneficial genes something standard for the entire Mankind. Since you are from the year 2020, you should be a Human 1.0. However, you are not. Athalia called you ‘Human 2.1’ in his report.”

“Wait, so…” He quickly unpacked her words in his mind. “... it’s not my own body, right?”

“That is correct.” She nodded before continuing her answer. “You have genetic markers consistent with Terra’s population of the early 21st Century. That’s why Athalia suggests that someone cloned you, then tinkered around your genome and finally transferred your memories and consciousness to the resulting body. We do not have access to your original DNA so we cannot say for sure how much was changed, but your DNA is 76% consistent with the modern version of Humanity 2.0 genetic template. The rest we believe is either your original genes or… modifications.”

“Modifications?” He already had an idea of what it was going to be, but he wanted clarification.

“Improvements, according to Athalia.” She said. “You are not a superhuman by any means, but you are slightly above what is considered normal for baseline Mankind. Many Variants, most transhumans and some fenosculpts are still above you in one or more departments, but you are at the very least in a competitive range. Which, together with the commplant, seems to cover your ‘second gift’.”

“You’re right.” Now that Christopher thought about it, it made perfect sense. “This certainly is a ‘body better suited for the future’.” He decided not to think about the cloning part. He wasn’t sure how Athalia came to the conclusion that his consciousness was transferred either. Wasn’t it easier to just copy memories? He could only hope that the weeb supreme of Echo was as good as people were telling him.

“So, as a whole, you are now slightly stronger, slightly more agile, you have slightly better orientation in space, and you are healthier.” The elf said. “Athalia also believes that your intelligence was improved, but that is something hard to test without knowing what the base level was. Do you…” She paused, but the question she was asking was obvious.

Christopher spent a while introspecting. Finally he reached a conclusion.

“Well, I never felt particularly lacking in that regard.” He finished university with very good grades. He had nothing to be ashamed of, maybe save for his lifestyle. “But I do admit that I feel like it's easier to concentrate on something. And I do feel much more clear headed. So… probably.” Her initial answer was a nod. Then came the words.

“As a whole, you are probably somewhere slightly above the average for two-zeroes.” Tiriel said. “For two-zeroes, the normal IQ level ranges between 105 to 125. Any other changes to your body that you noticed after the examination? Athalia told me to interrogate you about that.”

There was one thing, related to his strangely wandering thoughts, but it wasn’t something Christopher felt comfortable talking about. It might have been the only thing that he would prefer to talk about with the chief medical officer.