ENHANCED/Jones, Jr

1

ENHANCED/Jones, Jr.

Ralph L. Jones, Jr. 85,000 words

14625 S. Mountain Pkwy

#1011

Phoenix, Arizona85044

Copyright 2008

ENHANCED

AFuturistic Tale of Transgenic Beasts and Tribulation Saints
by

Ralph L. Jones, Jr.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.”

C.S. Lewis

Prologue: The Last Thing Debra Saw

Debra Sterling ran all the way up the concrete steps through the silent forest. She emerged from the trees at the top of the hill, crossed the gravel road and stopped. Panting, she held her sides with both arms and scanned the carnage before her. It would have been more natural to see the sun and moon snatched out of the sky. Her church was flattened like something gargantuan squashed it. She even checked the horizon for a mountain-sized behemoth but nothing was there. The sky was clearing and the late afternoon sun shined down on dozens of mutilated transgenic corpses spread out before what had been the front entrance to her church.

Shecaught her breath and kept going. As she ran past a medusa’s severed head,one of the six cobras that looked like rope-hair reared up to bite her. Debra leapt away from the poison fangs thengingerly dodged around the other hacked-up creatures. She climbed into the rubble of the church and made her way to the spot that filled her heart with foreboding.

Debra tore at the debris, lifted then tossed aside a huge support beam. She found her parents dead under the bits and pieces behind the crushed pulpit.

“No, no, no,” she whispered, caressing her parents’ broken bodies with her splinter-pierced hands.

The trees behind the church parking lot were green with summer and the hazy air should have been full of the droning of cicadas but only silence and stillness surrounded her. As Debra climbed back out of the rubble she wondered if this was the reward for her faithfulness. How could this horrific day be the day of deliverance? Dropping to her knees, she put her bleeding hands together but instead of praying broke down.

“I’m alone, oh God, I’m alone. Lord please, take me too!” She shouted out into the silence over and over and when she lost her voice she screamed it inside her head. After just a little more time the sobbing subsided. Something rose upfrom under her crushed spirit. After all, she had been shown this was going to happen.

The hymn “It is Well with My Soul”came toher and Debra stood up. The eighteen-year-old girl still felt emptiness smashing down on her but managed to walk over to the ruins of the tool shed to find a shovel. A massive winged shadow passed over and she looked up. The giant, owl-shaped silhouette with a whiplash tail three times the body length flew down at her. She hit the ground, the transgenic piasa bird swooped past, intentionally missing her, and she got up running for the tree line behind the parking lot. Halfway across the open ground the flying monster swooped downagain, knocking her off her feet with a bump from one of the great wings. She got up running as fast as she could and made it into the woods.
Debra ran stooping through a thicket. Big branches snapped off the tops of trees above her as the monster flew over. Frantically she searched for a place to hide. She spotted a secluded tunnel of underbrush made by a small animal and crawled into it. Curling up with her face pressing down on the ground, she covered her head with her arms. A hideous groan came two seconds later as the Great Pecan Tree crashed down right next to her hiding spot. She got up and ran again.
Debra kept under the trees as long as she could but finally was forced out into the open ground behind the lighthouse cliff. It’s almost over now, she told herself. As she ran across the short distance of open ground, the piasa bird gave an infrasonic scream so powerful it vibrated her sternum, stunning her. She collided into the cool bricks on the shaded side of the abandoned lighthouse and slumped down. She wanted to crawl around to the entrance but couldn’t move. The transgenic monster landed almost on top of her. Its heavy breathing filled up the dusk.
Debra’s adrenaline rush was over. Soaking with sweat, hands throbbing in pain from the big splinters, chiggers itching across the skin of her arms, she rolled over to face the eight-foot-tall beast that was part human, part owl, part stag, and part who-knows-what.
“Deb-ra,” the piasa bird spoke slowly with grotesque lips that should have been a beak.
“You’re never going to get what you want!” she yelled at the antlered, feathered monstrosity even as calm descended on her. She knew who it was now and felt sorry for it.

Out of nowhere Jimmy Owens appeared holding a hatchet above his head. Had he been inside the lighthouse? The overweight, freckled-face teenager yelled, “Leave her alone!” then threw the hatchet into the monster’s face.
The hatchet blade flipped into one of the dinner-plate-sized eyes. The monster screeched like a jack-knifing semi-truck. The long taillashed out as precisely as a giant’s bullwhip, snapping into Jimmy’s chest and knocking him off the edge of the cliff.
“No! Jimmy!” Debra heard an ear-splitting sonic boom then felt herself rising off the ground. Someone called her name, a strong and beautiful voice, not the transgenic piasa bird monster, and she fell up into the sky. The stars seemed different and a slow-motion lightning filled the eastern horizon. Across the riverabove the bluffs hovered unidentifiable transgenic creatures with condor wingspans the size of small airplanes. Tumbling far above them, she got control of her hands and pushed her mid-length blond hair away from her eyes.
The last thing Debra saw looking down at the twilight earth was some kind of bizarre giant wading up the Mississippi River. She felt pity for all the people remaining. In the most infinitesimal split-second her living body transformed. Debra ceased to merely feel; she became a fountain brimming over with profound and reverent joy, her peaceful face glowing like a lightning bolt inside a cloud as she ascended out of the universe.

I. Debra at the Lighthouse Eleven Weeks Earlier

“Someone’s at the lighthouse already, Jimmy,” Debra Sterling said as she led her five teenage friends up the pathfrom their church. This Sunday morning the forest was raucous with birdsong even though the trees were just starting to bud. Violets and other early spring wildflowers still covered the damp ground.

Jimmy Owens didn’t ask how Debra knew someone was already there because she could see things nobody else could. He hugged the portable sound system and hurried past her. He rounded the last bend in the trail, past the Great Pecan Tree, and stopped in the clearing behind the old brick lighthouse on the edge of a steep cliff facing the Mississippi River.
“Tyler!” Jimmy’s face broke out in a huge smile. “How’d you get up here so quick?”

Tyler Pandav stood there in jogging sweats not Sunday clothes. His walnut brown face and hands glistened with sweat from his run up the steep hill to get here. He greeted Jimmy and then everyone else as they strolled out into the clearing behind the small lighthouse.

“Why didn’t you go to church this morning?” Debra asked with a stern look. Tyler’s Indian Christian Church was three miles away in thelittle town of Riverton.
“Got some big news,” Tyler said. “Heard it on the radio this morning.”
“We better sit down for this,” Davy-Jake Diamond said. He and Lydia Machado were holding hands and the couple sat down together at the big log.
Jimmy, still cradling the portable sound system, sat down next to Davy-Jake. This news, Jimmy figured, was going to be important. He was all ears.

“Has Secretary-General Sebastiao come back?” Rick Machado sat down on the tree stump. Auburn-haired Kim Lemon stood behind him. Jimmy could tell Kim wasn’t happy.
“Nope, it isn’t that.” Tylersat down on the remnant of a brick wall that once ringed the lighthouse.

Jimmy watched Kim walk away from Rick. She went over to the log and sat down next to Lydia. Debra just stood there in her favorite floral print Sunday dress, holding her guitar and facing Tyler. Jimmy felt static in the air. It seemed any moment someone was going to yell at someone. Jimmy hated it when people yelled at each other.

“We need to pray and sing first,” Debra said. Her features softened a little. “We’ll raise our voices to heaven and then we’ll hear the news, okay?” They always started this way, but Tyler usually arrived after they were already listening to gospel music from the underground Christian radio station.
Debra recited the Lord’s Prayer. Jimmy said, “Amen” the loudest. Debra began softly playing her guitar. She sang two current gospel songs alone then asked them to all to sing “Amazing Grace” with her. After the last refrain Debra ceased strumming her perfectly tuned guitar. She nodded to Tyler and he stood up clearing his throat.
“Yeah, um, they said on the Global Radio News that a big group of multibillionaires is going to sponsor anybody that wants to get enhanced.” Tyler paused and then went on in a stronger voice. “Not only people disfigured in a bad accident but anyone who wants to become something special.”
“How could they afford to do cosmetic enhancements for everybody?” asked Lydia.

“It must have something to do with Secretary-General Sebastiao’s New Prosperity,” Rick said.

“Could you get changed into anything you want?” asked Kim.

All three spoke at the same time.Tyler put his hands up. It took a minute before everyone calmed down. Jimmy shook his head. He didn’t really understand what they were talking about but he didn’t want them to notice.

“What does Reverend Mandal say about massive injections of animal stem-cell DNA changing the architecture of a human body?” Debra asked Tyler.

“He doesn’t like it, any more than your father likes it.”
“But you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

“Deb, I’m thinking about it because it’s the only chance I’ve got to make a professional team. This year enhanced people are running faster than ostriches. The only reason our soccer team got into the regional championship is because nobody can afford to get enhanced here like they do in the Pacific Rim. I have to think about my future. I don’t want to change what I look like, just maximize my speed and agility.”

“Trade in your humanity for that?” Debra looked angry at and sorry for Tylerat the same time. Jimmy had never seen her look that way before.

“They say it causes big personality shifts,” Lydia said.

“It’s a long, painful eight-month process,” Davy-Jake added.

“God created man in his image,” Debra said. “Think of the honor for us. People always coveted the power of animals. They used to worship statues of human-animal combinations. Those false gods were all over the ancient world. But He came in our form. That has to mean something to us.”

“I’m ready to listen to some music!” Jimmy stood up. He didn’t want someone to say something that would hurt someone else’s feelings. This was supposed to be the best day of the week.
The others chimed in to agree. Debra leaned her guitar upright against the brick wall then finally sat down next to Tyler.
Jimmy unfolded the portable sound system. It looked like a notebook computer. He plugged it into the ground and into the log, pointing the tiny dish antenna to the south. He turned it on and found the station. The device turned the log and the ground into speakers.

In a second a deep, pulsating electronic music rose up through their feet. The station broadcast Christian music from somewhere to the south. The station was called Christian X and was illegal on the public airwaves but the authorities had not bothered to jam it.

Jimmy was overcome with the music of the first song. He got up and danced in jerky movements, singing along, almost in tune, with the singer who rap-sang about Jesus in the wilderness.
“Yeah, Jimmy,” Lydia sang out.

“Jimmy’s a song-and-dance man!” Davy-Jake started clapping his hands.

* * *

Rick Machado sat back and observed. Here was a person illegally allowed to be born, singing and dancing to illegally broadcast music. Jimmy must be one in a million. He sure was the only one of his kind in MoreauCounty. Still, there was no reason to idealize him. Jimmy could be annoying like no one else. He often burst into fits of rage, sometimes out of frustration at not understanding something, but more often for no reason at all. But Rick was used to him. Jimmywas just another human being trying to get through this confusing life.

When the first song ended, Jimmy turned to Debra and begged her to predict songs.

“No, Jimmy. I don’t feel like it yet.” But Debra said the title of the next song right before it came on. She did it for the next song and the next and the next and the next.
When she first started doing that in front of them five years ago ithad astonished Rick. The astonishment had worn off some but still this was the only uncanny thing he had ever experienced, and she did it over and over again. He asked her one time if she heard a voice. “No,” she had replied. “It’s just a feeling with information, like knowing what an echo is going to sound like.”

Rick was beginning to have some mechanistic-universe doubts. Did Debra really have the gift of prophecy from the Holy Spirit or did she just have some ultra-rare genes that formed her special brain so she could do that? Either way, he knew Debra Sterling was one in ten billion.

Out on the Mississippi Riversailboats and pleasure boats cruised up and down the winding highway of bronze water. The clear blue sky shined high above the lighthouse but across the rivera strongwind sculpted white clouds overthe hardwood forest covering the enormous bluffs. A big bird, probably a vulture, soared over the near bank downriver.

Rick daydreamed about meeting his absent father somewhere beyond dull, staid MoreauCounty. The roaming gambler had left the family the day before Rick’s younger sister Lydia was born, when Rick was a little over one year old. The manhad never writtena letter or called in over seventeen years. His mother Sara believed his father was dead but Rick believed he was still alive.
Rick needed a ticket out to find him. The economy in this part of the North American Free Trade Realm was getting a little better but the money supply was still tight because of the reparations the citizens of the former United States had to pay to the rest of the world. No bank would loan money to a kid for extended travel unless he was already rich. He had a plan, but it would mean giving up going to church and pretty much everything else in MoreauCounty. Right now that didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice to Rick.

Jimmy kept it up; he was tireless. Maybe it takes an outlaw existence to really have joy in this life. Jimmy sang and danced like he was getting away with something. Did the Christian doctor who falsified Jimmy’s mother’s amniocentesis report have that kind of joy too?

It suddenly came to Rick that Jimmy would no longer have to accept his fate. If what Tyler said about the multibillionaires sponsoring cosmetic gene therapy was true, Jimmy could certainly get a “normal” IQ with human stem cells for free. It was the non-human stem cells that turned you into a “terato.” But to get into a university law school, which was an important part ofRick’s secret plan, would require a major nervous system overhaul because of the enhanced competition. On the net-cast center at school he learned that they used cockroach proto-nerve stem cells to increase thinking speed. Something to do with the thicker nerve fibers cockroaches had made their nerve impulses faster. It made him a little squeamish to consider it but there was no doubt those academic elites in the Pacific Rim were far ahead of the game.