Ability (Omnibus) (11 page)

“I think we’ve arrived at an important point in this,” Brian announced as they sat around the apartment, eating cold fried chicken and warm cherry pie.

“What do you mean?” Derry asked.

“We’ve got the modules tuned to where they have a temporary effect without the Receiver, and a permanent effect with it. I say we find someone to test it on.” When they gave him concerned looks, he clarified what he meant. “Not like ‘kidnap someone and force him to.’ Sheesh. I meant we should find a proper candidate to test it on. Remember, we’ve been doing this for over a year now. We might not be able to notice some of the effects anymore because of our experience and our tolerance. What if a virgin dose gives someone crazy abilities? What if it makes them foam at the mouth and their heart explode? We’ve been on a steady progression of formulas and dosage strengths for a long time. We need someone who has never taken Receiver, and has never watched one of the modules.”

“I agree,” Garret said through a mouthful of cherry pie. He set the plate and fork down and chewed for a few seconds before going on. “We’ve never been able to replicate the thing that Bri did that first night. But we’ve flashed how much crap by now? Twenty-five modules? We can speak eleven different languages, play hockey with the big boys, cook, clean any weapon from a pistol to a shotgun to a military assault rifle, and shoot them all with expert marksmanship. We’ve learned how to play musical instruments, do advanced trigonometry, understand psychology, and can even perform surgery if the situation should arise, God forbid. We know it works on us. We need to know if maybe we’ve just done too many drugs.”

“You mean it might not work on someone else?” Derry asked.

“Exactly. All of us had dosed with Receiver for a year or more before we found out what it could do when combined with the modules. What if we give it to someone and have him watch modules, but nothing happens? What happens if his head explodes all over the apartment? What if he watches a module and does like Brian did, but freezes one of
us
solid, out of fear? Or just because the dude is an asshole?” Garret asked, making the other two think about it carefully.

“Who should we ask?” Brian wondered.

“I was thinking of my old prof, since I showed him the module part already,” Garret answered.

“That’s actually a good idea, except he is still a professor at UT-A, and asking him to do drugs is a hell of a lot more than asking him to watch a module and speak Arabic for ten minutes,” Brian said. “I could always find one of the chem hackers close to Austin. They’re secretive as hell.”

“I don’t know,” Garret said, “I think we’d be better with someone we actually know. What if the hack is a psycho, or a paranoid schizo or something? If somehow something out of the ordinary happened, I’d rather it be with someone we know and can talk down from the ledge before he fries us with his mind. Even if nothing like that happens, I’d feel better with someone we could trust to give us honest answers or feedback. And that we knew well enough to know if they were lying or hiding something from us.”

“I know someone,” Derry offered. Both of the boys turned to look at her.

“Who is he?” Garret asked.

“It’s not a he, you gender-mangling misogynist,” she said. “
She
is one of my best friends. You’ve met her before.”

“Nira?” Brian asked, hopeful it would be the girl with flawless, midnight-black skin that Derry had hung out with often during the last year of his college career. She’d been a lot of fun to party with, though Brian thought he would suffocate each of the twenty or so times he’d
almost
wound his courage up enough to ask her out.

“No, but that’s also a good choice, other than you want to eye-fuck her,” Derry said with a huff. “Michelle James. The redhead that went clubbing with us a bunch.”

“Another good choice,” Garret said, remembering the fiery girl with the sultry voice, and the take-no-shit attitude that let him know within five minutes of meeting her that she’d rather eat her own feet than give him the time of day. It didn’t stop him from constantly ogling her, no matter how many times she caught him.

“Why her?” Brian asked. He remembered her as well, remembered rubbing against her at the club many times while rolling on X. She had a scent that was so unique that he had always figured it was the drug messing with him. It wasn’t musky, or sweet, or anything that he’d ever experienced before.

“Because she has a brain in her head, unlike you two idiots,” Derry said, pointing a finger at each of them. “She’s a Psych major. She’s never had any kind of trauma in her life, like being molested or raped or beaten, and I roomed with her for two semesters. And she’s hot as hell.”

The two boys raised their eyebrows. Derry smiled back at them. Brian had to agree with her assessment of Michelle’s looks. He didn’t figure Michelle and Derry as compatible though, since neither had ever given any hint or indication that they swung that way, not even after a night of rolling on multiple hits of X.

“Are you done fantasizing yet, pervs?” She asked after giving them a minute to digest what she’d said. “Fucking men. A woman calls another woman attractive or comments on her tits, and your dicks get so hard that you start to think of all the porn you’ve consumed over the years since you found out what it was really for.” The looks on their faces told her she’d scored a direct hit. “Stupid boys, girls can be attracted to and talk about each other’s looks without being queer. So remember that.”

Brian let out a breath. “So what’s the plan then? You’ll just call her up and say ‘hey, Michelle, remember Brian? He made this killer drug. And remember Garret? He made this other nerd thing. We want you to come over, eat a pill, watch a video, and then tell us if you can turn people to stone or pick up a chair with your mind.’?”

“I think I’ll be a bit more subtle, but yeah, that’s about the gist of it,” she said.

“When?” Garret asked.

“I’ll find out what her schedule is like, since she actually has a job, but hopefully by the end of the month we can set it all up.”

*****

January 2045

Michelle James was still as fiery as ever, and she still took no shit from Garret. Garret couldn’t help himself around her. He made a fool of himself trying to impress her, talk to her, be near her. She’d finally sat on Brian’s lap and put her arms around his neck, snuffing out the last hope Garret had of some magical connection happening between them. Derry had smiled and sat on Garret’s lap, and didn’t even seem to mind that he couldn’t hide that she was second choice for him around Michelle.

“How long does it take?” Michelle asked after they’d settled into the beanbag chair.

“Should be about ten more minutes to make a full hour,” Brian said, shifting some of her hair out of his face. Whatever her scent was, it was driving him a bit mad, and he was trying to keep her from feeling that madness through his pants.

“And you think I’ll be able to learn Japanese in thirty seconds?” she asked.

“Practically guarantee it,” Garret said over his shoulder while he queued up the learning module.

“But how will I know if I’ve learned it completely?” she asked, still doubtful.

Brian and Derry began conversing in Japanese, then switched to Mandarin, then to Russian. Michelle stared at them with wide eyes as if the two of them had performed a magic trick. Garret added a comment in German with an exaggerated falsetto that ended in a choreographed three-way high five. They broke out into gales of laughter when they saw Michelle’s face rotating between the three of them, trying to determine if they were having her on in an elaborate joke.

“I’m sorry,” Brian said, and kissed her on the cheek. “You’ll understand in a few minutes. Trust me.” He wasn’t sure if he was going to end up naked with her before the night was over, but he wouldn’t be upset one bit if it happened. He’d always wondered what she looked like without her frilly skirts and tight, full-sleeved tops.

“I’ve heard all of those things from men too many times before,” Michelle said, eliciting another high-five from Derry.

“Okay, it’s ‘go time,’” Garret announced.

Michelle made her way over to Garret’s computer chair and sat down. He adjusted a few settings, then asked her for her H-Vis access code. Once that was locked in, she confirmed that she could see the module, frozen in her field of vision.

“Ready?” he asked her.

Michelle took in a deep breath and asked, “Will it hurt?” Three chuckles hinted that it would not hurt. “How long does it take again?”

“Thirty seconds of your life,” Derry said, putting a hand on Michelle’s shoulder. Girl power, or girl support. Derry elbowed Brian in the ribs when he gave her a leering grin.

Garret tapped the command, and they stood silently while Michelle’s body stiffened, jerked, and then relaxed. Brian tried to not look at his friends, but he couldn’t help it, and he saw his fears mirrored in their eyes. It would still be a triumph of technology, even if it didn’t work on Michelle, for the fact that it worked just fine for them. There wasn’t much chance of getting people to take the drug regularly for a full year just to condition their brains to finally start accepting the inductions. At the least, Garret had said earlier, the fact that they’d advanced this far was promising enough to be able to get some kind of attention, cause some kind of waves. Maybe some European researchers would take them in and study the combination of Receiver and the induction process.

Michelle looked up at the three of them. “Is that it?”

“That’s it!” Derry said, her face lit with excitement.

“I don’t think it worked,” Michelle said, disappointed.

“Except we are speaking in Japanese,” Garret informed her. He reached over and motioned a command for the left monitor on his desk to play the live feed of Tokyo-2. A game show was on, brightly dressed contestants smacking each other with foam sledgehammers, the announcer shouting in a mocking voice as to which ones were scoring the most points.

“Oh my God,” Michelle said, this time in English. She switched back to Japanese and said, “Oh my God. This is…crazy!” She paused again, and asked in English, “Is there no word for ‘fucking?’ I couldn’t think of one.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Brian explained to her. “You have to practice the language to pick up all of the nuances. It should feel like you’ve spoken Japanese all your life. You can also think fluently in Japanese, but you’ve never actually done that either, so your mind is still trying to make proper neural connections. Watch the monitor for about half an hour, and you’ll be able to quit your job and work as a Japanese translator if you want. Keep watching the Japanese feeds or reading Japanese sites to hone the skill.”

“Oh my God,” she said again in English. She came out of the chair like a spring and almost jumped into Brian’s arms. “Thank you so much! This is awesome!” She turned and hugged Derry and kissed her on the cheek, then turned to Garret but only offered her hand for him to shake.

“I love you,” Garret said in Russian. Michelle looked at him with a curious smile, then to Brian. Brian shook his head as if to say it was nothing, don’t worry about it.

“Now, here’s the thing,” Derry said grabbing one of Michelle’s hands. “You cannot tell
anyone
about this. If someone asks you how you suddenly know how to speak Japanese, you just tell them you studied it in school, and have been practicing at one of the online schools. You
will
slip up for the first week or so as your brain tries to figure out which is your dominant language. You’ll find yourself thinking in Japanese, so sometimes the words that come out will be Japanese. It goes away, especially if you practice by watching Japanese holo or switch your tablet’s language to it. I spent a week reading about anime and baseball on the Osaka Professional News Service.”

“Why can’t I tell anyone?” Michelle asked. “This is absolutely incredible! You should be selling this to everyone who has a credit to their name.”

The three friends smiled at each other. “We have a plan,” Derry told her. “But for right now, please, please, Michelle, please don’t say anything to anyone. I know you won’t say anything about the dope, but you can’t talk about the induction module and how you learned Japanese from it. Please.”

“Okay, okay,” Michelle said when she saw the serious looks in the other three faces. “Can I learn something else?”

“Do you know anything about trauma surgery?” Garret asked, tapping commands into the computer.

CHAPTER 10

March, 2045

Brian was greeted by three expectant faces when he opened the apartment door. He shot them a grin as he closed the door before heading to his computer desk. He inched out of his jacket, then began to fold it neatly, with careful, deliberate attention to seams and creases. Three throats cleared in unison, letting him know to stop being an ass and get on with it. Brian laughed and pulled the small plastic case out of his pants pocket. He opened the lid and dropped a pill to each waiting hand.

“This one is it,” he told them. “This is pure pocket Receiver. It took me all of one hour to make, and I made it out of bits I bought at the Save-A-Tron for twenty-two credits. Six doses.”

“That’s awesome, baby,” Michelle said. She hugged him, then kissed him on the cheek.