9.3.2002
Danny Glaem. Top of his class academically and athletically
– a Rhodes scholar, actually. Three times an ace. He’s test-flying a new spy
plane over
He heads toward it. It’s hurtling down from above – the air around it is so hot that he doesn’t need to use the radar: the computer picks up the static from the plasma. Plus he can see it. Then it slows down.
He is flying towards it, closing rapidly. He uses the auto-track camera to zoom in. It’s a grayish craft, with a needle-nose and sharply swept back wings, and no tail. There’s a bulge under the nose, and another near the back of the spine. Suddenly, the craft disappears, both from radar and from view. No, wait: the camera is tracking a ripple in the air. The other aircraft is partially invisible. Then there’s a flash, and the grey aircraft is visible again. It’s trailing smoke and flames from the upper bulge.
Danny herds it towards the base at Edwards. It tilts down towards the runway as a strange voice speaking an unfamiliar language calls out over the radio… there’s no understanding it, other than to hear the rising panic in the voice.
Danny decides to make a low-altitude pass of the aircraft as it crashes into the emergency runway. He sets the cameras going, starts his run, and is greatly surprised when part of the grey craft goes roaring into the air, while the rest explodes. He narrowly misses hitting a recognizable pod… and his plane ingests flaming debris from the ground. Fire and explosions from behind him tell Danny that his number’s up.
Ben Kleiner is also a professional, but he’s a special breed: Golani Brigade. He’s testing out a laser cannon developed jointly by IDF and the US Army against a captured battery of Katyusha missiles.
One rises with a roar from the launcher to his left. With a roar, the cannon mixes its volatile fuels as the parabolic reflector turns to face the rocket. A white-hot plasma channel connects the two, and then the missile tumbles – breaks in half – explodes without hitting the ground.
The same thing happens, again and again. No missile hits the target – they are all destroyed by the computer-controlled laser. Finally, the battery commander calls, saying he’s empty.
Suddenly, there’s a roar from behind them. One of the spotters’ bunkers evaporates in a tower of flame. Katyushas begin to streak from a hidden launcher – an enemy launcher – and head towards the other spotters, the captured battery, and finally the laser.
After six seconds, only one Katyusha is left flying. It heads straight for the laser cannon. The reflector, however, does not move; instead, the computer emits a plaintive beep.
Out of fuel.
Ben starts to run, as does the crew of the laser. Then the rocket hits, and all is smoke and noise and fire…
And darkness.
Yan Chekov loves flying snakes. No machine is sweeter to him than an attack helicopter, and none more than his new Mil Model 48. He is flying his first mission in it, with his gunner up front. He cruises low over the treetops, looking for the truck convoy he was assigned to find. Two other Mi-48s follow him. They are all loaded for bear, with chainguns and incendiary rockets. They will, doubtless, wipe out the rebels and their pathetic weapons.
One of the wingmen makes a vaguely surprised noise over the radio; if he says anything else it’s drowned out by a power surge in Yan’s helicopter. Breakers pop open; he pushes them back in as he scans the rearview mirrors for his wingmen.
Both of whom are missing.
He, too, makes a mildly surprised noise, and he swings the nose of the chopper around to let the gunner focus on the cannon in front of them.
The turretman’s attention leaves the burning Model 48 that falls away to the east and comes to Yan’s machine. He starts firing before the helicopter is centered in his sights.
Bozhemoi, the muzzle flashes are beautiful, thinks Yan, I should have been a poet. He sighs as his aircraft is immolated in a blast of light.
“Yes,” said the physician, “they seem to all be in good health, and the implants seem to be working.” He turned away from the officer, who stands ramrod-straight in his ostentatiously plain olive green uniform.
“So, Doctor,” said the general, “please inform me. What, precisely, happened to these men? And who are they?”
The doctor sighed. This was at least the fifth time. “They
are the best men their nations had in their fields. We have a test pilot, a
Special Forces man, an expert in attack helicopters, a Marine Recon officer,
and others. Using technology we got from the alien scout that cracked up in the
The general pondered this. “You are saying that you tried an experiment on these men, using them as guinea pigs for an unknown process of genetic manipulation, after you used alien technology to restore their limbs?”
The doctor looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes, but it was for their benefit. They would have died, been crippled or retarded for the rest of their lives. Whatever we have done, I am quite sure that it won’t kill them.”
The general looked hard at the doctor. “You’re saying you don’t know precisely what will happen as the new genes take hold?”
The doctor shrugged. “Well, yes. But what could we do?”
Two years later, Ben Kleiner looked in the mirror. Without looking at his hands, he prepared a razor and a double handful of shaving lotion. He had noticed – he had been shaving much more hair than he had before the ambush and the reconstruction. His moustache, also, had become much more sensitive, as had his sense of smell. His back had also been bothering him. Of course, as soon as he had woken up after the first bout of facial reconstruction, his vision had been much sharper than it had been – he supposed it had something to do with the new genes. Who knew they would act that fast on his eyes?
Unfortunately, he also knew that his legs were not going to get much better than they were. After all, they were bionic, built partly out of steel and plastic, partly out of his own flesh that had grown on. It was just as good as the original, but there was no room for improvement.
He finished shaving and rinsed the lotion away. With it went a small hairball – all that he had removed from his cheeks. His face was swarthy, with a Roman nose; his jaw was narrow enough that it almost looked like a beak. Oddly enough, he had felt a looseness in his upper lip, as if the two lobes were beginning to part, and his teeth had changed, too. It was all very interesting.
He straightened up from the sink, and felt a wave of pain; the base of his spine made a crunching sound. He was getting used to that; it made it hard to move quickly when it was bad. It was bad now.
Idly, but with a touch of fear, Ben wondered if it might be some sort of cancer. After all, the gene therapy used viruses; it was experimental. Everyone knew that viruses could cause cancer, so could new therapies. A combination would be like playing Russian Roulette with an automatic.
He shrugged. Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do or die. It still rang true after all these years. Oh well, he was still a big man and could take care of himself, cancer or no cancer. If need be he would keep fighting till the day they nailed his coffin shut.
It was Danny’s turn to speak.
“Hi, my name is Danny… and I’ve been sober (and clean) for a year now.”
There was polite applause. Danny felt better.
He moved to his chair and sat down again, being careful to shift the growing appendage at the base of his spine. It sometimes seemed like he was growing a tail. The thing was movable – he could control it – and it was covered with the same fine golden hair that had once grown only on his head and chest, but had started spreading and growing thicker. His face was changing, too. He had felt the bones in his head, and his eye sockets were changing – his jaw was becoming narrower – his skull was broadening and flattening. His hand, too – the real one, not the one that had been lopped off in the crash and rebuilt – had changed. The fingers were shorter and broader, and there was an extra pair of tendons. His fingernails had also changed, to fit into grooves in his slightly furry fingers – the tips of which were roughening into pads.
Oh well, thought Danny, I’m turning into a freak. Sure beats being dead, though. Even fast-dead, like I almost was. Being snuffed out might not hurt, but living in any way shape or form beats that.
After the meeting, he went back home and greeted his dog, who lavished sloppy affection upon both his hands. He showered briefly, then called the military doctor who had been studying him.
“Good evening, Doc… Just wanted to touch base with you… I got your message. I’ve noticed some change in craniofacial arrangement, and my real hand… no, it’s just turning into a cat’s paw, sort of. And my tail is starting to get in my way… no, I like it where it is… Now that you mention it my face has hurt a lot every time I try to shave my moustache… Oh, yeah, my ears are also moving… Yes, some days I have trouble hearing… Well, the bones are grinding against each other, so that happens… Nothing really troublesome so far… Sure, I will. Night, Doc.” He hung up and went to brush his teeth.
Oh, he’d forgotten to mention his teeth to the doctor. As he cleaned them, he noted their positions and shapes. His incisors had been shrinking, while his eyeteeth were getting kind of large.
Take a bite out of crime, he thought, and laughed quietly.
The Marine’s name was Charlie. He had always wanted to start a family, but he barely lived through the reconstruction just before meeting the woman who was now his wife. It had been determined that he was sterile, so they had settled on adoption. It was interesting, though. What were you supposed to do when your three-year-old tugged on your whiskers, causing you to growl in pain?
But he dealt with it. After all, he loved his adopted son, and he loved his beautiful wife. And they loved him, despite his growing abnormalities. So it was all good until that afternoon, when he came back from the office at GenTek.
There was a tall man in a dark suit lounging against a tree up the block. Charlie could see, with his improved eyes, that the man was fiddling with a tiny telescope.
Hey, it’s the MIB, he thought, and walked towards his house.
On the way, he noticed two more: one seemingly listening to the stereo of his car, and the other on a deck chair across the street, seemingly soaking up the January sun.
He was still slightly surprised that when he entered his house, two more of them were waiting to greet him. His wife and son were not.
“Lieutenant Carlos Fuentes?” The one who spoke was shorter than the others at a measly six two, with impossibly broad shoulders.
Charlie nodded. “Yes, that’s me. Where’s my family?”
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. They are safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“You don’t need to know that right now.”
“Oh, no. I gave up taking shit as an answer when I left the Corps. Tell me NOW!” He was surprised to find that he was twitching – ready to tear the black-suited fool apart if he gave the wrong anwer.
“From you, for example,” replied the man.
“That’s bullshit. I threaten you only because I don’t know where my family is. Their lives are sacred to me. Your life is forfeit if I don’t like the answer.”
“Very well, Lieutenant. They’re in the back of the van that’s parked nearby, a bit uncomfortable, but safe if you cooperate – and I’m sure you will.”
There was a twang, and Charlie felt a sting at his neck, followed by a wave of dizziness. He reached back to pull out the dart, but felt himself lifted bodily out of the room. The spent dart hit the floor, and was crushed into powder by the MIB’s next step.
Yan Chekov
was making his early morning run when he saw the agents. They were following
him at a distance of about forty meters; but the streets were all straight, and
at this hour in
He ducked into a convenience store and ducked his head down in his windbreaker, trying to look inconspicuous. It couldn’t work, though; his ears were triangular at the top of his head, and he had a tail that was at least two feet long. All he could do was hope for the best… and then it appeared, in the form of a young, well-dressed man who approached the counter and asked for an unusual brand of cigarettes. When the clerk turned to look at the display, the dapper fellow drew out a large-magazine derringer and pointed it at his head. The clerk turned, and the gun was in his ear.
“Very carefully,” said the young man, “I want you to place all but one of the bills from each space in your register into this box that I am holding. If you do not, I will aaaagh!”
Yan had grabbed the back of his collar and hauled. The man’s gun hand came around, but – quick as a cat, Yan’s hand was gripping his wrist, and squeezing. The bones started to creak, and then one snapped, and then another and another –
The gun fell, and Yan caught it before it could hit the floor. He dropped the moaning would-be robber to the ground and looked around.
The agents outside had noticed the holdup, and were themselves holding up. Now he was untouchable – he had just saved the clerk’s life, perhaps, and saved him a lot of money. He decided to do another good deed.
Yan tucked the gun into his hip pocket and then reached down. He caught the gunman by the collar again, and started dragging him towards the door. Had his heart been the original one that he was born with, it would have been pounding.
“Here you are, officers, this man is a criminal! I request that you…”
They had slunk away to the shadows, and were almost invisible – except for his excellent eyesight. They were just biding their time.
As he passed a public trash can, he did a bit of sleight of hand: he tucked the gun into a paper bag he’d found in a park, but then removed it secretly and dropped the piece of rock he was holding into it. He then threw the bag into the can and walked away, bouncing as if he’d been relieved of a heavy load.
As soon as he was a good distance away, an MIB approached the can, probably checking the bag for the gun. Yan ducked behind a parked car, and then crawled under it. His jacket was getting stained by an oil leak, but it beat being carted off by these… people.
The nearest MIB to him had left his radio on, so Yan clearly heard the man by the trash say, “That was the gun, he’s dry.”
Puzzled, Yan decided to take advantage of the mistake. He flowed out from under the car, behind the MIB who had just passed him. Then he wrapped his clawed fingers around the man’s larynx with one hand while holding the gun to his spine with the other.
“Do not touch your radio,” he ordered, “and you may survive. I think you will tell me what is happening.”
Similar things happened wherever the Reconstructed – their term – lived. Some, like Charlie, were unlucky and got carted off. Some, like Yan, got lucky and took control of the situation. Of those who were unlucky, some were merely held for a time. Some were killed, and their bodies turned over to their next of kin.
The unluckiest of all, though, recalled the Bellman’s fate:
You will softly and silently vanish away
And never be heard from again…
Those who had armed themselves, or managed to escape,
contacted one of the international panel of military
physicians who had treated them: he was known as a man of conscience. By
whatever means they could, a few dozen of the Reconstructed got together in the
back of a hardware store in
They discussed what was happening for about an hour, and then there was a moment of panic when a fully human man in olive green walked through the door… but as soon as they saw the cross armband they relaxed. This was Doctor Joseph Mengele – no relation to the homonymous Frankenstein-type man who performed horrific experiments on his prisoners. It was this unlikely and unfortunate name that brought the Doctor, as he was known, to his position: trying to ensure the best medical care possible for military men, regardless of which side they might be on.
The Doctor sat down on the floor, and looked up at the Reconstructed. They were sitting all over: in the two chairs, on top of boxes and shelves, or on the floor as he was. They had also been arguing loudly.
He noticed that the accumulated change from the genetic alterations was clear. The men were all quite strong, though not all showed obvious muscles; their faces had changed, to a mixture of wolf, jaguar, and human; they had fully movable tails that were almost prehensile. Their ears, which ranged from a wolf’s pointed triangles to a big cat’s rounded curves, poked up through the hair on their heads. They were also covered with thin fur, which varied in color. Their posture showed that they were comfortable with being on two legs or four; they seemed also to have a sort of ranking system, based on something the Doctor could not see.
But now, he opened his mouth… and as if by magic, their mouths shut. They all turned to look at him.
“You men already know that something’s wrong.” This was answered with calm stares from most, though some nodded, and some made snide comments that earned them blows from neighbors.
“Other members of the commission have decided that you, as bearers of alien technology, must not be trusted. They have captured many of you, and detained and tortured them. Some have been released, some killed; and some were fed to the Boojum.”
The leader of the Reconstructed blinked almost audibly. “Pardon? Oh, Doc, I’m Ben.”
The doctor recalled the lines from the poem, the ones that had always made his hair stand on end:
You will softly and silently vanish away
And never be heard from again.
He recited them out loud. “It’s from The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll. What happens if your Snark is a Boojum, you see.”
The men reflected on that for a moment, and then most of them nodded.
“They have stated that they must not allow you to roam free, able to harm those who you choose. I sat in on those meetings, and that is how I know. You must try to-“
“Why were you not able to stop them? You are head of the commission.”
The doctor’s face fell.
“You never even tried, did you. It’s pathetic.” Ben spat at the doctor’s feet.
All the doctor could do was hide his face in shame.
NEWS DISPATCH
WILDLIFE EMERGENCY!
We apologize for the interruption of normal broadcast services. We instead wish to inform you that you may be in danger from local wildlife. Stay indoors, and secure all entrances that you cannot keep under constant watch. If you see an animal behaving strangely, or an unfamiliar creature, DO NOT attempt to capture or handle it. Run away and call the National Guard. If you are trapped, do not fight any animal you may encounter. Those citizens familiar with firearms or explosives, will you please call the National Guard Recruiting Office; a vehicle will come to your location to pick you up. Bring any weapons you own with you.
The FBI’s site in
The phones and the power went out first. The emergency generators lit up within ten seconds, though, so the occupants of the building thought they would be safe, just get through the doors, and –
The door were locked, and would not open. Closer inspection showed that the lock mechanisms had been jammed rather cleverly. Even this would not have been a problem, until the men and women who worked in their offices heard gunfire from the security stations. First gunfire, then screams from the men. Then silence.
It was broken only by a snarl behind the groups clustered around the locked doors. On every floor, the scene was the same.
A strange hybrid of man and beast had seemingly materialized out of thin air. He was armed with a pair of daggers, one in each hand, and he snarled again, showing a mouthful of nasty, nasty fangs. Then he attackedslashing, stabbing, punching and kicking, biting and butting.
Within ten minutes there were no living humans within the buildings. The police who arrived, sirens wailing, were greeted by a silent building, filled with the odors of gunsmoke and blood…
Until, an hour later, a massive bomb in the basement turned the whole facility into a smoking crater.
Similar situations cropped up in other places. Army bases, Guard armories, police stations, radio stations, a hospital or two, then the NSA headquarters. Then FBI and CIA. Finally the Pentagon fell. The White House was only taken after almost a week of bloody fighting, but it went up in flames in the end.
Then the radios came to life.
“We are men who had given you our full effort. We secured your freedoms by shedding our blood. We even died in service of our nations. But you saw fit to resurrect us. You brought us back, using alien technology and untested therapy to rebuild our shattered forms and reshape our minds.
“But then you turned on us, declared us a danger to humanity. You decided to destroy us, wipe us out as if we were just a mistake.
“As such, you have shown yourselves to be inhuman. You have forfeited your right to rule this world. We are here to take over. Formerly we were called the Reconstructed.
“Now we are the Replacements.
“Over and out.”