In this one secluded room, where only his inner circle could see him, Norman Dockran could be himself. He didn't have to fly around in a four-meter sphere, or project his face larger than life, or call himself "Mister Eternal" and treat his every pronouncement like an edict from God. And he didn't have to hide the disfigurements that cursed so much of his body from the chest down.
"The Army commanders finally gave me their report, Norman," said a pudgy business-suited man from his seat at the table. His youthful face sported a couple days' worth of stubble growth, the kind Miami Vice had made popular. "It looks pretty bad."
Norman Dockran nodded. "Let's have it, Stan."
The pudgy man continued: "The operation acquired one hundred fifteen thousand troy ounces of gold, with a market value of around 46 million U.S. dollars. This was enough to pay for the op itself, but not much else. Sixty-eight members of C Company didn't make it back. Of those 68, only a tiny handful escaped. The rest were either captured, or killed."
Norman grunted.
"And it gets worse," Stan said. "This news report aired in New York just an hour ago."
He pressed a button on a remote, and the screen at one end of the room flared into life. It showed a news desk, with a primly dressed anchorwoman looking sternly at her viewing audience. The upper-right corner showed a film of one of the soldiers in the Perpetual Army, dressed in a prison uniform with his hands cuffed together behind his back. The newswoman spoke: "Federal police are questioning the suspects captured in yesterday's failed attempt to rob Fort Knox. They've released footage of this man, who identifies himself only as Vlad. His left arm is completely mechanical and surprisingly sophisticated, well beyond any prosthetic technology available to either the U.S. or the Soviet Union. He had this to say."
The film in the corner expanded to fill the screen. An interrogator's voice replaced the newswoman's: "So, why did you try to rob the most heavily guarded gold repository in the world?"
Vlad replied, in a low voice, "I'm a soldier."
"A soldier in what army?" the interrogator asked.
Vlad sneered. "Not just an army. A cause."
The interrogator asked, "What kind of sick 'cause' does robbing Fort —"
Vlad cut him off, bellowing "Eternal Mankind!"
Stan pressed another button and shut off the screen.
Norman Dockran's face was a blank, unreadable slate. He looked down, slightly. "Well," he mumbled, "Now they know it's us." He looked back up. "We knew this day would come sooner or later."
Stan frowned. "And with it, the U.S. now considers us an enemy. Those strikefighter flyovers could turn into actual bombing runs any day now."
Norman glanced over at Glenda, his chief tech officer. She knew what that look meant. She said, "Good news is, we're prepared. The force shield generators are all tested and ready to be switched on at a moment's notice. We have enough to cover nearly all of the island. They're rated to screen out any number of simultaneous explosive hits, and can handle any bomb up to a five thousand pound yield."
Norman smirked. Despite how advanced T.H.E.M.'s technology base had become, the force shield generators weren't actually developed on the island. They'd stolen the design from a military contractor last year. At least that operation hadn't gone south — just a few operatives snuck in, and snuck back out, and if any of them had been captured their brainwashing would've kept T.H.E.M. looking squeaky-clean and innocent. It was too bad such brainwashing couldn't be used on the Perpetual Army en masse.
"Those force shield generators should keep us safe for a while," Stan noted. "Unless, and until, the U.S. starts deploying bunker-buster bombs that can slam through them."
Norman sighed. "The fighter-bombers are a threat, but they're not my main concern. Our carefully planned raid on the gold repository was thwarted not by an army, but by a single individual with super powers. That same individual could decide to attack us on our home turf."
Stan said, "We do have contingency plans for Infra Man in place now. All of our soldiers carry something rusty on their persons."
"That will work for Infra Man," Norman said, "but he's not the only super-powered threat. What if we're attacked by Brick One, or Blue Shooter, or Mauler, or Hay Man, or — or Tracer! Even if they leave the island alone, interference with our operations is going to become more and more commonplace as more super-powered people come onto the scene." He leaned forward. "We need super-powered people of our own."
Glenda shrugged. "We do have Nova."
Norman snorted. "Spare me. We need assets, not liabilities."
Stan rubbed his chin. "Barring unpredictable laboratory accidents, or deals with space aliens, our best source of super-powered individuals is probably going to come from cybernetics."
"You'll get no argument from me," came a man's voice from the other side of the table. It belonged to a gruff, graying Indian fellow, sitting with his arms folded in front of him.
"I figured you'd agree, Prakesh," Normal said. "Your division's cybernetics have definitely enhanced the capabilities of everyone, or nearly everyone, who's received them. But 'enhanced' isn't the same thing as super-powered. It's not even within the same order of magnitude."
Prakesh frowned at him, wordlessly.
"That's why," Norman went on, "I've enlisted some outside help." He glanced over his shoulder, and a man who'd been standing on one side of the room stepped forward to stand next to him. "Allow me to introduce Dr. Jake Rasmussen, the new co-chair of the cybernetics division."
"Co-chair?!" Prakesh fumed. "This guy looks like he's still wet behind the ears! I'm not babysitting some Johnny-come-lately with his own harebrained ideas borne from naïveté. I'll bet he's never overseen the hookup of a single human-electronic interface in his life!"
"You won't be babysitting him," Norman said. "His R&D, and his subjects, will be completely independent of yours."
"And you're correct," Dr. Rasmussen said. All eyes turned to him. "I haven't overseen the installation of a human-electronic interface — because as far as I'm concerned, that technology is a dead end."
Prakesh's eyebrows shot up. "You think the use of electronic interfaces is a dead end? In cybernetics?"
"You've all thought in terms of hooking up nerves to metal," Dr. Rasmussen went on, "Because metal robots are the only kinds you've worked with. You've backed yourselves into a corner. Servomotors can only drive so fast, hydraulics can only push so hard, even when things do work they need constant maintenance and adjustment, and immune-system rejection is a constant threat when the things grafted to flesh aren't even alive. And that's where my new direction comes in."
Prakesh scowled. "You want to connect human tissue to living matter? How is that an improvement? What are you going to do, give a human a gorilla's leg? Or a rhinoceros's?"
"No." Dr. Rasmussen smiled. "I was thinking . . . wood."
Prakesh folded his arms and glared, not saying a thing. He didn't need to say anything. His stare said it all.
"Not the dead wood you're used to, like lumber," Rasmussen went on, "Live wood. It can be made to move, powerfully, and with surprising speed. It heals its own injuries, is self-maintaining, and with the right coaxing has no problem taking commands from animal neurons — or providing tactile feedback."
Prakesh giggled. "Really. You think you can make a wooden cybernetic body."
"Oh, I don't think I can," Rasmussen answered, "I already have. I put a rat's brain in a wooden rat body earlier this year. I had to make its new body bigger than its old one, but the rat brain adapted surprisingly fast. It was scurrying around within minutes of regaining consciousness, eating, sniffing, gnawing, doing all the normal things a rat would do — but considerably stronger than a normal rat." He pulled out a VHS videocassette. "I could show you the films if you'd like."
Prakesh blinked and stared, dumbfounded.
Rasmussen turned to Norman Dockran. "One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to integrate your energy receiver technology into the cyberwood. The first subject will have to give that up. He or she will have to eat and breathe, just like a normal person. More importantly, the procedure won't be reversible. So I'll need a volunteer."
Now it was Norman's turn to fold his arms. "It's easy to get volunteers for cybernetics, if they've lost limbs. But you're talking about a complete body replacement. Unless you're talking about someone on the brink of death —"
"Uh," Rasmussen held up a hand, "That won't work. Not yet, anyway. The procedure, currently, is only survivable if the brain comes from a body in prime physical condition."
Norman sighed. "Then I can't call for volunteers. The last time we tried anything of this magnitude, word got out that the first subject died, and the volunteer pool dried up immediately." He set his jaw. "So, we're going to have to draft the first subject."
Rasmussen raised his eyebrows.
"Draw up a list of candidates from the Perpetual Army," Norman said. "We can get you physical and psychological stats on every one of them. It would be most . . . prudent . . . if you took someone who was on the Blue List."
Stan frowned. "That's the list of soldiers who are likely to become dissidents."
"Precisely," Norman said. "It's simple calculus. Since the subject might not survive the procedure, we want it to be someone who's . . . more expendable than average."
"I'll get right on it," Rasmussen said.
"And keep this on the down-low," Norman finished. "We do not want rumors to start flying."
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