David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

James blinked, still shocked to be listening to Colbe talk about him during a live broadcast. “That asshole,” he said out loud before using his mind’s eye to dial Colbe’s phone. Obviously Colbe wouldn’t answer as he was busy being Judas, so James waited for Colbe’s answering message to appear. An old message popped up; it was probably recorded several years ago, judging by the passé clothes Colbe was wearing. He looked the same, as the nans had kept him young; if anything, he looked a little better now.

When the image on Inua’s machine stopped speaking and the beep indicated that James was free to leave his message, he spoke in as cordial a tone as he could muster, but he was pissed. “Inua, I am watching you tell the populated solar system that their new brains are going to be modeled after mine. I thought we had a deal, Inua. I thought you said I would be anonymous. I don’t want reporters asking me questions. I don’t want everyone in the solar system looking at me like I’m related to them. Was I not clear about this?”

With that, he terminated the message and stopped the broadcast. He thought of surfing the Net some more to take his mind off of his irritation, but he decided not to. Instead, he would work. He opened the file containing the computer model of that day’s experiment. He ran it through from beginning to end, but couldn’t pay attention to it; he was too preoccupied with trying to convince himself not to be angry. There’s no reason to be this upset , he told himself, but yet there it was. Why was he so angry? Why didn’t he want people to know about him? What was it about the upgrade that was upsetting him so much? Why was he afraid of connection?

With a 600-degree Celsius surface, Venus might have been hell, but James wouldn’t have had it any other way. His favorite part of the day was his approach to the planet and subsequent descent into the atmosphere.

It was roughly the same size as Earth, with only a few hundred kilometers separating them in diameter, but that was one of the few similarities it shared with its sister planet. Its atmosphere consisted almost entirely of carbon dioxide, and the resulting greenhouse effect made it the hottest planet in the solar system. The deadly heat made the existence of water on the planet impossible, but there was rain—a deadly sulfuric acid that combined with the heat to make Venus as inhospitable a place as any in the solar system—just the sort of challenge on which James thrived.

Once he reached the Venusian stratosphere, James set a course for the research lab on the surface. He smiled as he entered the thick, dark clouds and blasted through the acid and heat.

On the surface, in the research lab that was not so affectionately referred to as “The Oven” by the workers who inhabited it, Thel Cleland looked up from her work on the magnetic propeller and watched a tiny blue dot in her mind’s eye—the dot that signified the approach of Commander Keats. She had taken it upon herself to be there to personally greet him when he arrived that morning, so she’d been watching for him for the last ten minutes. “Look sharp, everybody. The boss is coming!” she announced to her two fellow workers as they prepared for the morning’s experiment.

“The boss?” replied Djanet Dove, smiling to herself.

Rich Borges smiled too.

It was difficult to think of Commander Keats as a “boss.” He was young, friendly, caring, and a pleasure to work with.

Thel stood and floated gently up toward the airlock. She was a tall, slender, dark-haired woman with a strong, athletic build. There was a certain unmistakable self-confidence in her every move, every gesture, every stance. At fifty, she felt she finally knew how to live; she’d earned her self-assurance. Of course, as with everyone else, the nans had kept her young—biologically, she was twenty-nine, and men of all ages pursued her relentlessly. She knew what she was looking for, though. She knew exactly what she was looking for.

The greenish glow of James’s magnetic field was visible for an instant before he emerged from the cloud cover. Weather moved slowly on Venus—there was rarely anything to obscure one’s view on the surface, and Thel was able to watch Commander Keats—James—completely unobscured as he approached the outer magnetic doors. Once inside, he disengaged his magnetic field and opened the airlock door.

Thel floated before him, smiling as he removed his helmet. She laughed and covered her mouth.

“What?” James asked, surprised.

Thel reached out and wiped the corner of his lip with the tip of her finger. “You’ve got egg on your face this morning, Commander.”

“Oh…thanks,” he said, his face coloring.

“No problem, Commander.”

James struggled to look into her eyes; it was difficult to look at her—she seemed able to look right through him, right into his soul. Did she know what he was thinking?

But I can’t control what I want to do—I can only control what I actually do.

He turned away for a moment and noticed Rich and Djanet watching—not working—watching. “Uh…preparations are going okay, I hope?”

Thel noticed the changed look on James’s face and turned to see her coworkers as they sneaked quick glances upward, trying to look as though they weren’t looking. Her smile broadened. “Just fine, Commander. We’ll be ready.”

“Good, good. I…uh…I better go get ready.” James began to float across the lab towards the second-story doorway to his office but stopped when he noticed another greenish light emerging from the clouds. “Hey…it’s Old-timer!”

Old-timer, formerly known as Craig Emilson, arrived on the exact same trajectory as James had a minute earlier. He was dressed in an identical flight suit, as all the researchers were, and only his extra ten centimeters in height prevented dizzying déjà vu. After Old-timer entered the airlock and slipped off his helmet, he smiled at Thel, kissed her on the cheek, and vigorously shook hands with James. “Hey, good buddy!” Old-timer said, offering his usual, very familiar greeting.

“Good morning, pal!” replied James.

Old-timer had the polar opposite effect on James that Thel did; somehow, he put the younger man at ease. He was self-assured, just as Thel was, but there was something different.

“Too bad about those Canucks of yours, eh, Jimmy?”

“I’m impressed, Old-timer. It took you all of four seconds to bring that up.”

“Well, I’m not one for beating around the bush, especially when it comes to collecting on a wager. You owe me.”

“I know, I know. I didn’t forget.”

“What did you bet?” Thel inquired.

Old-timer and James exchanged glances.

“Would you like to tell her, or shall I?” asked Old-timer.

“I wouldn’t dare deprive you of your chance to gloat. The honor is yours.”

“Thank you, sir,” Old-timer responded, performing an exaggerated bow. “Commander Keats has agreed to join me this evening for…are you ready, Thel?”

“What is it?”

“For a beer!”

Thel gasped in mock astonishment. “I can’t believe it! You got him to agree to have a drink! I’ve been trying to get him to have a drink with me for three years!”

“Well, we can thank a certain Martian expansion hockey team for this miracle!”

“I still can’t believe they lost,” James said, almost pouting.

“Oh, c’mon! Don’t look so down, champ! You’ll enjoy it! The nans will fix up those brain cells overnight! I promise, you won’t do a speck of damage to that noggin of yours.”

“Is that why you don’t drink, Commander? Afraid you might lose an IQ point?” Thel asked in jest.