REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES (24 page)

The engineers set about
their task of applying the suit to Thomas’s body.

“It’s easier if you just
relax sir. We just need to place your limbs and torso inside the
relevant parts of the bio-suit. If you could bear with us for a few
minutes. I know it’s a strange feeling – being helpless like this –
but in a few more minutes you’ll feel anything but
helpless.”

Once the leg and arm
coverings were in place the second engineer swiped an icon on the
portable calibration equipment and Thomas felt a tightening feeling
all over his body, as if someone were trying to remove his
skin.

“Nothing to worry about sir.
As I said, the suction-cup feeling will diminish and disappear in a
couple of days or so. It’ll be like wearing contact lenses - after
a short while you don’t even notice that they’re in your
eyes.”

The limbs and torso had
locked together using micro-docking tags and all that remained was
to attach the electrical inputs that would stimulate and assist his
internal muscles. This was why the nurse was necessary. The
procedure wasn’t excessively painful – no worse than having a
regular injection – but it was invasive, so a qualified medical
assistant was required to be on hand. Thomas flinched a little when
the inputs pierced the skin at the back of his neck, but it was an
inconvenience worth suffering in order to walk, talk, and breathe
properly again. Once the inputs were in place there was only one
more thing to do.

“The final thing we need to
do is to attach these small and unobtrusive energy packs to your
knee and elbow joints. As you walk along or use your arms, these
little beauties will use the momentum to charge the main
distribution pack that we’ll attach to your right hip.”

The installation of the
bio-suit now complete, Thomas wondered what was next.

“So, now what do we do? Do
you have to turn it on or something?”

“No sir. When all the pieces
are installed correctly, the suit is automatically switched on. Try
it sir. Think yourself off that table and standing on your own two
feet.”

It sounded a little
ridiculous and Thomas felt a little embarrassed to be trying his
first steps in front of other people.

“Come on, sir. No need to be
embarrassed. Take the suit for a test-drive.”

Thomas concentrated hard on
the thought of getting off the table. His legs started to twitch a
little.

“You’re trying too hard,
sir. Try to just let the idea flow through your body.”

This time Thomas didn’t
concentrate so hard, instead just allowing the thought of getting
off the table to move around his body and flow into the muscles.
Before he knew it, he was sitting upright on the table. Thomas
smiled a rare smile.

“How did it do that? How did
I do that?”

The other engineer
explained.

“Your brain sent a message
to the tiny receivers in the suit, which in turn did two things.
First, thousands of electrical messages were sent to the relevant
muscles to prepare them to work. Then a miniature but sufficiently
powerful magnetic force from the suit actually pulled the relevant
limb to the correct position. Put normal clothes over the bio-suit
and nobody will even know that you’re using one. Except for the
high collar. That can’t be helped. But we’re working on
it.”

“Can I walk
around?”

“Try it. You may be a little
wobbly at first, but pretty soon you’ll be walking around picking
up things just like you used to before you got sick.”

Thomas eased himself off the
table and stood up. This was a good sign. He didn’t feel at all
like he was going to fall over. He took a couple of tentative
steps. It felt good to walk without crutches again. He borrowed a
mobile phone from his assistant and threw it across the room onto a
deep green sofa. He walked over to the sofa, picked up the phone,
and returned it to its rightful owner.

“Thank you gentlemen, Thank
you for your excellent work. My assistant will show you
out.”

“Thank you sir. Any
problems, just give us a call and we’ll come right out and fix it
for you. Have a nice life.”

Thomas was pleased with
himself. He felt more secure in his position now that his
disability wasn’t so prominent. There wasn’t anything wrong with
being disabled of course and The Order took great pains to assist
those who had physical impediments – if they were considered by The
Order to be useful members of society. If not, well… the less said
about that the better.

Yes, this suit would do very
well until his scientists found a way to halt the infernal
aggressive aging of human clones.

The laboratory was buzzing
with excitement. For almost ten years a steady succession of adult
human to adult clones had been produced, each one created carrying
with it the hope that this one would age normally, that this one
would overcome the problem of accelerated aging. So many Recarns
had volunteered to occupy clones only to have their lives taken
away from them early by the passage of time, which didn’t so much
as walk alongside them but galloped ahead and dragged them in its
wake.

Something was different this
time. There were rumors that there was a clone who hadn’t only
passed the previous record of ninety-seven days of life, but
smashed it to smithereens.

Jayden 007
had been created four years
earlier in 2063. The process had been no different from any of the
other human to adult clone experiments except for one thing, the
anti-aging hormone had been applied at the age of twenty-five days.
He was the beneficiary of a mistake, a human error that led one of
the adult clones to age more slowly than the others. The clone in
question had been forgotten about and instead of having the growth
inhibiting hormone injected on his twentieth day of life, he
received the GHIH on his twenty-second day of existence. He
survived 150 days and eventually succumbed to the same aging
defects as his predecessors but it took him longer to reach his
death-date. This led researchers to think that perhaps they had
found the right dosage a while ago, but that the age of application
was a factor, a variable that they had somehow overlooked. It
wasn’t necessary for the clone to be a baby; the transfer just had
to take place at the correct age – not after twenty days of
accelerated growth. If the GHIH was applied at that stage of the
clone’s development, from that day on it would age at the normal
human rate.

More human souls were
transferred to adult clones, and the GHIH applied at various ages
from 22 days onward. All the clones aged slower than their
predecessors but the post-dosage acceleration still existed. One by
one, all the clones fell prey to old age, far sooner than the
average human would have been expected to – illnesses and accidents
notwithstanding. The two clones who were transferred at 24 days and
26 days lasted longer than most, both taking three hundred days for
their bodies to turn against them and kill them.

And then there was Jayden
007.

Jayden 007 wasn’t anything
special to look at. He had brown, wavy hair and big brown eyes. He
was short and looked a bit podgy. His smile wouldn’t light up a
room, but he had a very pleasant demeanor. His donor soul was
similarly unremarkable and was very happy with the body that he now
inhabited.

But the thing that made
Jayden 007 stand out as someone very special was that the clone had
been given his soul 1,440 days ago; He had been living for four
years and his twenty-five year old body now showed only four years
of aging. Jayden 007 was the first clone to return to a normal
growth rate.

Footsteps could be heard in
the corridor. The doors swished open and Thomas McCall strode
purposefully into the room. He was now 77 years old and those years
could be seen in his face. His body and his mobility, however,
belied his age. The bio suit that he had been wearing for the past
nine years was extremely efficient and allowed his seventy-seven
year old body to move around like that of a man at least forty
years younger. He strode over to where Jayden 007 was sitting,
reading an e-book. He tapped on the e-reader.

“Wake up!”

Jayden put his tablet on the
arm of the chair and, realising that he was being addressed by
someone with authority, stood up.

“Yes Sir.”

“How old are
you?”

“Erm… I was transferred in
2063 so that would make me around 29 years old now.”

“Around 29 years
old.”

“Yes. Around 29 years old
now, sir. My clone sitter can give you the exact
details.”

“And who are
you?”

“Now or before,
sir?”

“Both.”

“Now they call me Jayden 007
although I don’t really like the number being added to my name; it
makes me feel like I’m a product.”

“You are a product, Jayden
007. Live with it. Who were you before?”

“I was Jayden Anderson, a
stock-control officer.”

“Do you remember everything
about your past lives?”

“Yes Sir. How far do you
want me to go back?”

“Your last four lives will
do.”

“OK. I was Jayden Anderson –
as I just said – and before that I was Iska Ancheta, a Filipino
prostitute. I was killed by a violent punter. Before that, I was
Bethanee Schulhoff, a public prosecutor in Germany. I died in my
sleep. That was a good life. I enjoyed that one. Then before
Bethanee, I was Herbert Gould. I was a judge on the U.S. court
circuit. I got shot dead by the wife of a man I had just sent to
prison. I like the legal professions, though they can be a bit
dangerous.”

Thomas turned to one of his
assistants.

“Check the
database.”

The assistant verified that
the potted history was correct. Thomas smiled. A rare event in
recent times. In fact, the last time anybody remembered seeing
Thomas smile was when he first put on the bio suit. He turned to
the doctor who was in charge of Jayden 007’s welfare.

“No side effects? Nothing
detrimental to his health?”

“No Sir.”

“Good. In that case, let’s
go to the clone storage facility. I want to choose my next
body.”

The doctor was
shocked.

“Do you think that’s wise,
sir? I mean don’t you think that perhaps we should do more
tests?”

“Doctor, everything I say or
do is wise. If we procrastinate much longer I’ll be dead and who
knows where my soul will end up.”

Understandably Thomas felt a
little apprehension but this was overcome by the realisation that
Nathan, whoever he now was, must be close to making his return.
Thomas was seventy-seven years old so his nemesis must be
approaching eighteen years of age. Even with the bio-suit he didn’t
want to enter what could possibly be a physical confrontation with
someone sixty years his junior.

The clone storage facility
looked like something from a science fiction movie. Row upon row of
transparent pods containing frozen clone babies. Thomas could tell
that making the correct choice of host clone would not be a simple
task. It had to be a good physical specimen, naturally muscular. He
hadn’t had a blond haired host for a while now, so he fancied a bit
of a change. He went over to the selection panel and chose a number
of candidates from the clone attribute database. He mulled over a
few profiles and then called over the department
manager.

“This one. Marcus Gallagher
001. Prepare the product for soul transfer. It must be ready to be
used on its twenty-fifth day.”

The manager thought about
pointing out that he should really be given the relevant
documentation, but everybody knew of Professor Ingram’s fate, and
so he said nothing except to agree.

Marcus Gallagher 001 was
laying in the receiver compartment of the Transfer Unit, obediently
awaiting his new soul. He was a good looking young man, just as
Thomas had wanted; muscular with golden hair and piercing blue
eyes. An unprepared bystander would never have believed that he was
only twenty-five days old.

Even though he was the
Pindar, Thomas was obliged to strip naked, along with the clone. He
was unable to do so alone, so the same team that had assembled his
bio-suit was there, but this time to dismantle the suit. As is
often the case, disassembling something is easier than assembling
something, and five minutes later the severely weakened body of
Thomas McCall was assisted into the donor capsule.

The lid was closed, a touch
control was enabled and the air was drawn out of the transparent
casing of the donor capsule. It didn’t take long for Thomas to die,
his body and organs had spent the last nine years being supported
by the bio-suit and once that was gone his body just didn’t know
how to cope. A technician gave progress reports during each phase
of the process.