All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: authorsamuels@gmail.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Foreword
What if you had super powers? It’s a question many of us ask our friends as well as ourselves as we fantasize our way to sleep. What would your super power be? How did you get it? Would you be a hero or a villain, and most importantly what costume theme would you choose? Would the underwear be on the outside or inside?
Let’s face it, if it weren’t so popular for people to wish for supernatural ability, I am sure you would see a lot fewer movies, comics, and books, and our imaginations would probably die off from atrophy.
Hyper takes this question head on and gives our most skyward daydreams a bit of a reality check. A new drug finds its way onto the streets. At first, people think it’s a good high, a nice party drug with no ill effects. And for many this continues to stay true but for some, they get to answer the questions “What if…?”.
Find out how one scientist unlocks the greatest step in mankind’s evolution and watch as mind, body, spirit, of a few are transformed and the ripple effect it has on the rest of the world.
Look, if you ever thought “Wow, I sure wish I had a comic to read without so many pictures in it,” then you’re in luck. For over 15 years Arthur has worked on his brainchild Hyper. It was inspired by his perception of the “War on Drugs”. Why a war on some drugs and not others? Why would a drug be illegal before it’s even understood, or better yet why would a drug that would make you better be considered illegal in the first place?
Hyper was created to cast a light on this hypocrisy; a substance demonized by those in authority, at best out of ignorance, and worse, out of fear, to maintain their domination. When their superiority is threatened, how far are they willing to go to maintain the status quo?
I remember when he first shared a few preliminary chapters with me. That was it. I was hooked. Since he picked the project back up about three years ago, I have been involved with its formation for as much as I have been able. I love working with Arthur on this story. My favorite take on this style of storytelling is keeping a super’s power in check. Maintaining power regulation is hard in this genre, but it’s one of the principles used in telling this story that will keep the series relatable.
I’ll readily admit that it’s also got some campy and kooky spots that will really bring the inner nerd out in some, and spots that are just downright hilarious. It’s a fun read, and there is a lot more to come, wait and see.
~Jeff Atchison
Jeff is authorized to write stories set in my world. He is much less strident than I am on many issues, and I am grateful to have an alternate worldview..
~ Arthur Samuels
PREFACE
This is the first story set in the universe of Hyper.
Hyper was born from a confluence of several aspects of my worldview:
- I hate the War on Drugs, even though I, personally, ingest nothing more potent than caffeine. To be forced, by law, into being told what I can do with my own body, in my own home, is deeply repugnant to me. I prefer to call it The War on Some Drugs.
- I adore stories featuring people with superhuman powers, but want it to be reasonably believable, and have characters with consistent powers. They don’t have to be rock-hard SF, but I want them to at least make the attempt to portray real physics, like Star Trek used to, and Star Wars never did.
- I played RPGs for many years and use GURPS character sheets to define what my characters can do, and stick to it. Many writers fall into the trap of ‘I’ll just make the hero more powerful’. Unfortunately, this is almost always a one-way street: you rarely see writers de-powering their characters, unless it’s part of a huge reboot of their entire universe.
- I have a degree in physics, which helps me blend scientific fact into the outlandishness of superpowered characters.
- I want to suspend my disbelief, not hang it by the neck until dead.
In the world of Hyper, a new street drug has appeared on the streets of Los Angeles. It began as a top-secret military performance enhancer, then its creator absconded with their whole supply, and put it in the hands of the black market. The authorities crack down on it immediately, with their usual totalitarian police state tactics, however, some of the users acquire super powers.
The War on Drugs has new warriors, on the side of human liberty, and they have superhuman powers.
~ Arthur Samuels
~ Evil Genius
CHAPTER ONE
Doctor Erik Hunter:
“You know, Schrodinger, my job isn’t really that bad, is it? I mean, how many people actually get to do what they always wanted to do? Or, at least get close, right?”
Schrodinger listened intently, or at least he appeared to, enough for my purposes. He was far more intent on polishing off the bowl of food I had put out for him, as usual. Schrodinger was my name for the neighborhood cat.
I called him Schrodinger, even though there was no question about his life state. He was definitely alive. His location was often quite indeterminate, though, as he didn’t appear to have an owner, nor a name tag. Of course, ‘owning’ a cat is always problematical, right? Every cat I’ve ever met was much more of a co-owner than a pet, at least in his own mind.
“I mean, I did study to be a biochemist, right? I got my Ph.D. in it, and everything. I wanted to do something life-affirming, though. How did I wind up working on bioweapons? Of course, in this country, these days, what else is there to do? All we make in the USA anymore is ways to kill people.”
“Of course, for most people, the whole point of getting paid was because you are doing something you don’t really like. I mean, if someone liked it, they’d do if for free, right?”
Schrodinger stuck his head in my hand, begging for attention, and meowed in agreement. I scratched his back the way he liked it. I understood perfectly; I loved back scratches, too, although that was an exceedingly rare event in my life, unless I did it myself, which just isn’t the same.
The next day, I was at my work lab, and chatting with a co-worker, who was used to my constant talking. Hey, I think better if I talk a lot; it helps me rein in my ADHD.
“You know, this would be a better job, except that I’m always relegated to menial tasks; washing bottles, arranging equipment, that sort of thing.”
“Well, Erik, you could get into a lot more interesting work if you could hang on to a Top Secret clearance, or even a Secret. I can see by the color of your badge that you have just a Confidential clearance.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m lucky to even have that. I know I talk too much, but it’s hard to stop.”
“Yeah, I know how it goes. Here, help me make the labels for these things. You know, I hate to say this, but it doesn’t help that you’re half Native American. How did you wind up with a first name like ‘Erik’, anyway?”
“My mother is Norse, specifically, Icelandic, which accounts for my first name. My father was full-blooded Navache Indian, which accounts for my last name. An odd combination, but who has any say in their parentage, right?”
“That is kind of weird. How did your parents meet, anyway?”
“I have no idea. How many people know how their parents met? Do you know how yours did?”
“Uhhh, no, now that you mention it. Here, these samples need to be filed in the correct spots in the cabinet.”
There were adjacent labs where the more senior, ‘cool kid’ scientists got to work on advanced projects, which I only heard about tangentially, in the cafeteria, and such. They weren’t supposed to spout any secret stuff with anybody who didn’t have the all-important ‘need to know’, but scientists are notorious for sharing information. Hell, that’s how science works; secrecy, and compartmentalization are the death of scientific progress.
Many people like to blame scientists for coming up with things like tear gas, nerve gas, bioweapons, and nuclear bombs. Maybe we do have some responsibility, but scientists have to eat, you know, and we prefer to live indoors. So, we take jobs where the money is, and almost all the money is in figuring out ways for humans to kill each other more efficiently.
I suspect it’s pretty much always been this way. I’m sure there were Stone Age scientists who tried to tell their chiefs about better agricultural tools, and ways to grow food better, but there was usually an exchange like this:
“Later, Groof. Build me that better bow and spear thrower you was tellin’ me about. We are the hill people; and we have to go kill the valley people.”
“But, why? We can just grow more food with this magic trick I found. You see, you just take all the shit that the dogs poop out, and…”
“…are you mad? We worship Glooble, while they pray to Blefuk. They must all die for that.”
“Oh. That makes perfect sense to me.” Then he turned away, so the chief couldn’t see the huge eye roll. There have always been atheists, but, through most of history, they were smart enough to keep it to themselves – usually. We’ve always known that being burned at the stake can be really inconvenient.
Luckily, we’ve evolved way beyond Glooble and Blefuk, right? Now it’s Yahweh and Allah. That is totally different, for reasons that may come to me someday.
My job wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for, but what else was there to be done? There was no real way to fight back. Besides, who wanted to? My life isn’t that bad. Is it? I kept telling myself that.
I wasn’t exactly living the dream, until I had The Dream.
In this dream, I was seated cross-legged at a campfire. The smoke swirled about, and coalesced into the figure of a man, specifically, an old Indian man.
I have long had a habit of thinking out loud, which often got me into hot water, and made it hard to keep what little security clearance I had. However, it was a great way to rein in my ADHD-plagued brain, which was usually in spin cycle. Talking helped me focus. It was a large part of the reason I was relegated to minor projects.
Almost every one of my performance reviews contained a variation on the following: “Doctor Hunter, you are doing an adequate job scientifically, but you must remember that you are working on projects that have a need-to-know aspect to them. You have to stop talking out loud about them to everyone.”
“Sorry. I’ll try to work on that,” which I did, but with little success. It was just too hard to break old habits.
Apparently, that personality trait even applied in the dreamworld. The old Indian man just waited for me to collect my thoughts, smiling inscrutably. As always, I started blathering.
“You know, I’ve always wondered about that word. ‘Inscrutably’. Has anyone ever been scrutable? Is that even a word? Like being disgruntled; is a happy employee one who is ‘gruntled’?
The old man waited for me to return my attention to him. He seemed more patient than most with my quirks, letting me wind down on my own. He took some powder, and tossed it into the campfire, which erupted quite satisfyingly, and seemed to help me focus.
“Doctor Hunter. You have a destiny ahead of you. You are to be the spiritual father of a great leap forward for humanity.”
“Seriously? Me? A godfather? Then, I was eating a bowl of lasagna, around the campfire.
Then I was riding a horse, or something, headed somewhere important. There was a signpost up ahead: [WELCOME TO THE NAVACHE RESERVATION]. Is that Rod Serling?
Then there was something about the color violet, maybe a flower? Or maybe my lasagna turned purple?
That was the end of the dream. Unlike most dreams, my memory of it didn’t fade immediately, but stayed with me. So, the next day, I was overcome with an inexplicable urge to visit the Navache reservation. I did have paternal relatives there; aunts, uncles, cousins; you know, the usual. I had rarely visited, as I found the place depressing. The Indians had been herded onto some of the worst land, where crops could barely grow, ensuring that they would always be in grinding poverty.
Well, the US government had tried to ensure that, but the Indians in the late twentieth century had come up with a great plan. You probably know what I mean: casinos. They were taking their economic revenge on the White Man a (buffalo) nickel at a time, which was pretty effective. Nobody ever went broke feeding off the vices of Americans.
As it turned out, I had a lot of vacation time saved up. Yes, I was one of the very few people in the USA who actually still had ‘paid vacation’, a rare thing in modern America. The middle class was not completely extinct, but it was an endangered species. In fact, my time bank was creeping inexorably into the ‘use it or lose it’ zone, so I took two weeks, and packed for a vacation.
The lab I was working in was located near Temecula, California, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. The Navache reservation was in New Mexico, so it was a fairly long drive, but not excessively so; about twelve hours each way.
My visit with my relatives went about as I expected. My father worked at the casino as a security guard. The reason I had pursued a PhD in biochemistry was a desire to not wind up like him, combined with encouragement from my mother, who had moved back to Iceland a few years ago.
I guess she had finally wised up. Last I heard, she had married an engineer, and was living in a civilized country, where they had socialized medicine.
Of course, we had to spend a few evenings at the casino. I mostly played Pai Gow, which wasn’t beatable, but had one of the lowest house advantages, and at least required some mental acuity. I lost a few hundred bucks, but it was fun. Kind of.
Slot machines? Other researchers had literally taught chimpanzees to use money, and the very first thing they did was introduce prostitution. I doubt it would have been much of a stretch to teach them how to play slot machines. I wanted to use at least a small part of my intellect – more than that of a chimp, at least. Poker? With my inability to keep my mouth shut? Are you kidding?
After a week, I was really starting to remember why I never visited the reservation. I could literally feel my IQ dropping, just by being around that portion of my family tree.
Finally, I reached the end of my visit, said my goodbyes.
“I’ll come back and visit again, soon,” I lied. Ugh.
Finally, I was on my way home. On the way home, I was talking out loud to myself, as usual.
“Well, that went about as I expected. Why did I even come here? You know, as bad as it was, I’m not really excited about going back to work. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life working on weapons?”
I didn’t even get off the reservation, before it happened. It was during the twilight just after sunset, in the middle of nowhere, on a dark desert highway. The radio was actually playing ‘Hotel California’; I hate that song.
My car just died; and so did the radio. “This is really weird. This thing is only a few years old; and modern cars just don’t do that anymore.”
But mine did.
“Oh, well. I’ll just call for help on my cell phone.”
I pulled it out; and started to dial the number for AAA; then I noticed there was no signal. None. Nada. Zip.
“Weird. I know the reservation isn’t exactly a high-tech area, but I had always had at least one bar – until now. Well, hell. When things go wrong, they all go wrong at once, don’t they?”
Just to add to the fun, I was on one of those roads where it could be hours before another driver came by, and, even then, there was no guarantee I could flag him down. “This can’t be right. I don’t remember driving on any roads this desolate before, even on the reservation.”
But just bitching about it to nobody didn’t get me anywhere. I grabbed my cell phone, and slogged to the top of a small hill, nearby. Maybe I can pick up a signal from there, with a little altitude. “This isn’t much of a hill, but it can’t hurt to try.”
Still no bars.
However, I looked around from the top of the hill, and finally saw something that looked like a lucky break.
There was a campfire, just a few dozen yards off the road, complete with a human figure. “This is really weird. Who the hell sets up a campsite at a random location, just off the highway? Is that even legal?” It also occurred to me that it was similar to my dream. I had never bought into the ‘precognitive dream’ stuff, but I was always open to new data.
Well, I really didn’t have any other options. I trudged over to the fire. The man turned out to be an old Indian shaman, just like my dream. I had reached by surprise limit, and was just numb to it, at this point.
“You! I remember you from my dream. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you, Doctor Hunter.”
“This is just getting weirder and weirder. What is going on here?”
“Do you not remember, Erik? I am here to ensure that you fulfill your destiny.”
“OK. I don’t go for this mumbo-jumbo crap. I’m not buying this. Is this some kind of practical joke? Do you have a working cell phone?”
He smiled inscrutably, again. “Doctor. You are looking to accomplish something meaningful with your research. Isn’t that right?”
“Well, aren’t we all? Everybody wants to do something important, but who really gets to do that?”
“You shall. Here.” He was holding something out to me.
Here what? “A cactus?”
“Yes, Doctor Hunter. This is the key to your scientific quest. Take it. With this, you will be the father of a great revolution; a way to free the oppressed people of the world. This is the key to the next step in human evolution.”
“A cactus? Really? What do I do…” I trailed off, remembering how many pharmaceuticals had been discovered from plants throughout history. In fact, almost every drug came from plants. I had no illusions that humanity had discovered every medicinal plant on Earth.
This was just getting stranger and stranger. What the hell had I gotten into? Even I was stunned into silence by this turn of events. I knew I had co-workers who would love to find out the secret of getting me to shut up.
I don’t remember anything from the next few minutes. Then, I found myself in my car, parked at a rest stop. I checked my clock; and no time had passed, even though I clearly recalled the whole little powwow with the elderly Indian. I turned the key, and everything worked fine. My cell phone had signal, again. There was no indication that anything was wrong with my vehicle, or that anything had ever been wrong with it.
“A dream. It had all been a dream.” Or maybe a psychotic episode, but I don’t want to think about that.
I drove home, bemused, but fully ready to put this little episode of my life behind me. I don’t need this crazy crap in my life. I was fully ready to go back to my dull, boring life in the lab. Destiny, my ass.
Until I got home, then popped open my trunk. It was loaded with cacti. Violet cacti. The cacti from my dream – my special dream. They were little stubby plants; each no more than a foot tall, tops. They were the most vivid violet I had ever seen on any botanical, almost fluorescent. When I saw them, I suddenly just knew what I had to do with them. I just knew.
CHAPTER TWO
I brought the cactus samples into work. I would have preferred to have done it all at home, but I just didn’t have the equipment, nor could I do the whole project alone; this required a team effort. It was easy enough to smuggle in the special plants; it just looked like I was bringing in some weird stuff for lunch, as if I were a strange sort of cacto-vegan, or something. Furthermore, I had nowhere near a high enough security clearance such that I had my lunches inspected.
A few weeks went by as we ran tests. The earliest indications showed that its initial primary effect was to speed up tissue regeneration. The DNA sequencing on this stuff was just incredible. It appeared that it would have some steroid-like effects, combined with…something else. I couldn’t quite pin it down.
However, in an amazingly short time, I just knew what to do with it, and refined it into a pale violet powder, one that glowed strongly under ultraviolet. I put together a proposal, which I showed at one of our weekly meetings with our client representative; an army officer. My supervisor looked it over, reading parts of it out loud.
“Human Improvement Performance Reagent. That’s a nifty acronym: HIPR. You know how much the military loves its acronyms; I’m sure you will call it ‘hyper’. This will have to be approved by upper management before we can pursue it.”
I managed to keep silent, with effort. Upper management? This could take months, or years. It would most likely just turn into ‘never’. That was usually just code for ‘thanks, but no thanks, minion. Back to your dungeon – I mean lab’. Crestfallen, I packed up my notes and samples.
Then, salvation, or at least a chance to go somewhere with it, came from a most unexpected source. Our meetings always had a military contingent; sometimes a few officers, often just one. This time, it was just the one, a black woman. She met with me in private, immediately after the official staff meeting.
Her nametag read “Browne”. I knew enough military insignia to see that she held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
“Doctor Hunter. Please come in. I trust you brought all your proposal information?”
“Yes, I did. What is all this about?”
“I think you are on to something very special here, Doctor Hunter. I have arranged for you to have a private lab, where you can pursue your research.”
“A private lab? Can you do that?”
She smiled a very thin, dry smile. This lady is buttoned up pretty tight. “Doctor, I am the military commander of this entire research facility. I can do that. Do you accept?”
“My own lab? Of course! It’s a scientist’s dream come true. When can I start?”
“Immediately. Go pack up your desk, and we’ll get you moved. I hope that this decision will work out. I’m quite confident that this little personal project will produce something viable.”
Of course I’ve heard about equine presents, and whether or not to check their oral health, but I couldn’t resist.
“Colonel. Why? I am just an associate research assistant. Why this sudden quantum leap in my status?” A part of my mind was screaming ‘shut up! Shut the hell up! What are you doing?’, but my mouth was living its own life, wild and free.
She favored me with that dry smile of hers, which was more than a bit unnerving. “Well, Doctor, let’s just say that even I have hunches, and ideas that come to me in unconventional ways.”
“So everyone has a dream to chase, right?”
“Yes, Doctor. That is an eerily accurate way of putting it.”
I managed to think silently, rather than babbling, for once. Did she just tell me that she had a dream, too? What the hell is going on here? But I’d be insane to refuse this opportunity, wouldn’t I?
Unbidden, the face of the old shaman came to the forefront of my memory, and I just knew I had to accept Colonel Browne’s offer.
The next few weeks went by in a blur. Normally, the sort of thing I was trying to produce would take months, or even years, of careful development and testing. However, I appeared to have some help from a most unusual source. Every time I got stuck, I would have another one of those dreams with the old Indian shaman, then, the next day, I would have a new epiphany.
It may sound a bit weird for a scientist to have ideas come to him in a dream, but there is actually a long tradition of that. The guy who first accurately described covalent carbon bonding got it in a dream. I had to look up exactly who it was. The man’s name was Kekulé (I didn’t even try to pronounce it).
In an amazingly short time, as these things go, I had graduated to animal testing, up to and including small monkeys. Out of the animal test subjects, only a small percentage actually showed any real improvements. Most of the effects were temporary, but it varied from subject to subject. I did have two particular squirrel monkeys that were my stars. Based on them, Browne authorized fast-tracking human trials. After all, human DNA has about a 98% similarity to monkey DNA.
I had a meeting with Browne about my two monkeys.
“Colonel. I know that standard protocol calls for vivisecting animal subjects after use, but I recommend that we keep these two alive.”
“Why is that, Doctor?”
“Well, Colonel, they are continuing to mutate. You want the maximum effect possible, correct? These two have responded much more strongly than any of my other subjects. It would be invaluable to see just how radically then can mutate.”
“Very well, Doctor, but you will inform me immediately if they revert to normal. Understood?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
I didn’t want to tell her the next part, since scientists are supposed to maintain total detachment from their subjects, but I had grown quite fond of those two. I don’t always think out loud; I can keep my mouth shut, with effort, if necessary. Sometimes. This was one of the times that I was successful.
Shortly thereafter, I was able to deliver two hundred doses of hyper to Colonel Browne for human testing. As is common in military testing, they were more than willing to cut corners to get to the results.
A few weeks later, I got to go out to the field, to observe the human test subjects. I was stunned. Most soldiers didn’t respond at all, but the ones that did…oh my FINODH (Fill In Name of Deity Here – an atheist’s oath).
Every single man who responded to what we were now calling ‘hyper’ acquired some level of rapid healing. And by ‘men’; I mean only men. It was tested on women, but no woman ever responded, even minimally. Apparently, hyper bonded to the Y chromosome. That wasn’t terribly surprising, as the compound had a lot of similarities to testosterone.
We scientists love to make charts and quantify everything. Average human recovery times are well documented, so we came up with a ‘Healing Factor’; or HF. The military guys loved that sort of thing; they are worse with acronyms than we scientists are. Among the subjects, the average HF was just a bit under four; the lowest was two; while the highest was about ten; but that subject didn’t appear to have any other powers, other than a very moderate response in the next category (coming right up).
The second most common response was enhanced strength. About eighty percent of the…we started calling them ‘hyperhumans’…developed that trait, to varying levels.
The average hyperhuman manifested a seventy percent increase in strength. Our strongest subject had already been quite the weightlifter and ended up with an increase of 180% from his original strength, which worked out to a lot – see below.
We came up with a baseline based on the physical power of the average man, which made it trivial to rate the hyperhumans in multiples of that, which we called SF (Strength Factor). Another acronym, of course. The enhanced subjects ran from 1.5 to 6.5; well into the ‘gorilla’ range. Phenomenal.
There were a number of other odd powers manifested. Several had enhanced speed, and reflexes; one could long jump at superhuman levels. There was one guy who just became super lucky. That was one of the weirdest ones. How the hell do you change probabilities? Reminded me of some of the weirdest parts of quantum physics. I would have called it impossible; but I am a scientist, and I saw it with my own eyes. First rule of science: ‘If it happens, it must be possible’.
I don’t know for a fact that he snuck out to a local casino, but he did show up one day driving a Ferrari.
I still couldn’t call him my most inexplicable case. That one had to go to the infiltration specialist, a man named Noah Boddie. Yes, that was his real name. You know, I never thought of myself as the parental type, but even I wouldn’t have done that to a kid. That struck me as borderline child abuse.
But maybe they were on to something.
Noah had always been trained in stealth, and was quite good at it, but after manifesting powers? He could literally disappear from human sight, for all intents and purposes. He could walk through a meeting, and the video record would show him clearly. But nobody could remember him being there, and these were trained Special Forces guys.
He could infiltrate anywhere, and ‘magically’ impersonate people. Strangers would meet him, then later describe the encounter as being with an old friend they hadn’t seen in years. He could snatch items from shirt pockets, and nobody would detect him.
Special Forces troops may not have been superheroes, and most certainly did not gravitate toward colorful costumes (if anything, they preferred to be nondescript). However, they did like to give each other nicknames. Noah was dubbed ‘Shadow’. It wasn’t clear if he gave himself the nickname, or if he came up with it himself. I suppose it doesn’t matter.
‘You can’t give yourself a nickname.’; ‘Oh, yeah? Watch me.’
The hyper-enhanced group of troops gave themselves a team name, of course. They dubbed themselves ‘Zenith Force’, which still sounded like a superhero team name, although none of them went so far as to dress up in yellow spandex.
A few weeks later, I was present for their test run over the obstacle course. With the usual love for obfuscation common in militaries in a decaying empire, they had to come with a different name for that training exercise: the confidence course. This name was great for guys like the Special Forces troops, who could navigate the stations easily, even before being ‘hypered’. However, I could see where it would be a bad joke for a lot of recruits in the conventional forces, especially early into their training regimen.
After being…’hypered’, their performance was nothing short of phenomenal, of course. The USA could sweep the Olympics with a dozen of these guys. But that wasn’t what they had been created for, was it?
A few months after their formation, they were deployed to a live area. I met with Colonel Browne and expressed my concerns.
“Colonel. I would advise that you exercise care in assigning these men. We still don’t know if their abilities will be permanent. It’s only been a few weeks. It’s not conclusive, but there are indications that the DNA alterations can break down.”
“Noted, Doctor. But we have to have live data.”
“Live data. Is your ‘live data’ worth a dozen dead soldiers?”
But I was trying to appeal to the better nature of someone who didn’t have one. I had met a lot of people like that. She just made her face a blank.
“That will be all, Doctor. Dismissed.”
There were eleven men in the unit, and they were judged to be the equivalent of fifty conventional enemy troops. There was a great deal of excitement surrounding their first real test. The men themselves were too disciplined to be overly sanguine about it, but I could still tell that they were quietly cocksure.
They were still a cohesive group, despite being individually self-assured. Special Forces guys were trained to be more individually independent than the average grunt, but they were still team players, most of the time.
They did come up with a group name, of course. I heard that they had kicked around appellations such as ‘Super Squad’, ‘The Offenders’, and even ‘The Power Platoon’. They finally settled on Zenith Force, even though it was a little hard to say three times fast (or even one time fast, when it came down to it). I guess they figured they needed a ‘Z’ in there somewhere, as a nod to ‘Zurina’, that being Colonel Browne’s given name.
There was no way I could describe any one of these guys as truly being a misfit, except maybe Shadow; he rarely operated as part of a group, which was not too surprising, given his specialization. Somehow, he managed to be a member of the small platoon, while still being a loner.
I guess the military is not that dissimilar from any other organization, in some ways. If someone is good enough at their job, or has special knowledge no one else has, his flaws will be overlooked, as long as he supplies something badly needed.
I understood that, since I was experiencing the same thing, myself. I had always had a great deal of difficulty acquiring or maintaining any kind of clearance. Top Secret? I was lucky to get Bottom Secret. More seriously, I had gotten a Confidential clearance, but no further, during my career, which acted as a ‘glass ceiling’ for me..
That all changed when I figured out how to synthesize hyper. I had been assigned an assistant to train, but it was taking quite some time to get him up to speed. Apparently, he wasn’t getting hypnopaedic assistance, as I had gotten from the shaman. That had sped things up a lot for me.
But, for now, I was the only one who really knew the procedure. Given that, I was granted Top Secret, and even the one beyond that, called ‘Ultra’, which I always referred to as ‘Burn Before Reading’. Despite my inability to stop talking out loud about everything, they always found an excuse to let me keep it, as long I was the only one producing hyper.
Then, Zenith Force was assigned to a real mission. Shortly after that, I found myself in a one on one meeting with the redoubtable Colonel Browne. As usual, she went straight to the point.
“Doctor. The men in Ranger Squad 23 are all DOA, or MIA.”
Ranger squad 23 was the official designation of Zenith Force.
“What happened?” I asked, although I had a strong suspicion.
“In the middle of a critical point in the operation, when they were engaged in close combat, every single one of them lost their special abilities. Without those, they were overwhelmed. Most of them died, three of them are MIA.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that, but I did try to warn you about that.”
“Yes, yes. Did you not tell me earlier that your subjects have had their abilities take permanently?”
“Well, we never know for sure that they will be permanent. We can never know for sure if anything is permanent, at least not until a subject dies of natural causes. Even then, we can never be 100% sure. More importantly, we have too small a sample size, and have not had sufficient time to collect data.”
“Doctor, I can’t operate waiting for 100% certainty on anything. Everything in life is a gamble. Now, tell me about your star subjects again.”
“My star subjects, so to speak, are a pair of squirrel monkeys.” I had actually named them, but I decided not to share that particular factoid with the Colonel; one of the few instances where I managed to keep my thoughts to myself.
“They have responded more strongly than any of my other subjects,” I continued. “They have also recently exhibited a quantum jump in the magnitude of their abilities.”
At that, the Colonel sat up in her chair, and leaned toward me, listening intently.
“Really, Doctor? Please elaborate.”
I really disliked telling her all of this, but my vocal cords were living their own life, wild and free.
“One of them has abilities similar to those of Noah Boddie; the man who had usually gone by the nickname of ‘Shadow’. Anybody who interacts with him gets a strong urge to do whatever he seems to want. Everybody loves him. Most people actually see him as whichever pet they have loved the most in their lives, and will actually call him by that name.”
“And the other one?”
“The other one has acquired very high superhuman…well, supersimian…strength. He possesses physical power equivalent to about twelve times the average for his species, and is continuing to grow stronger.”
The Colonel was listening very intently, now. “That’s twice as much as any we’ve seen.”
“There is more, Colonel. Do you recall the scale we used to quantify how quickly subjects can recover from injuries?”
“Certainly, Doctor. Your ‘Healing Factor’ scale.”
“Correct. Most subjects have an HF of about four, with some as high as ten. My two star subjects are exhibiting this ability in the range of about fifty.”
The Colonel had a rare emotional reaction to this and started in her chair. “Fifty! Amazing. Do you think that the potential ultimate effects of this drug have been reached?”
“There’s no way to tell for sure, Colonel.”
“I’m asking for your opinion.”
“Very well, Colonel. In my opinion, no subject has reached the ultimate effect of what this drug can do.”
“I concur. We must continue this project, no matter the cost. You have authorization to keep those two alive, until further notice. Dismissed.”
I made my way back to my lab, my thoughts churning.
For some time, I had been having second thoughts about creating this drug for military use. With my monkeys becoming even more radically mutated, my concerns about the ultimate effects of hyper became that much stronger.
As I often did, I wound up talking out loud to my lab animals, who never interrupted me.
“What have I done? This drug is going to make the American military empire invincible. Then what? Yet more power to the power elite, more power to the top one tenth of one percent. They will use it to oppress the rest of us even more effectively than they already do.”
As always, my animals had nothing really useful to add, but it always felt good to talk to them about it; as though the monkeys were my therapists. They looked at me mournfully, as if asking me what my next move was going to be.
I threw my hands up. Literally. I continued my speechifying, even if I was sort of repeating myself. I glanced up at the poster on my wall, the one that read [DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT].
“My entire life, I was hoping to do something to help the masses, not hand even more power to the power elite. But that’s exactly what I’ve done.”
I was almost sobbing at this point. “What kind of world am I helping to create? We are already in a dystopia, but now it will just get exponentially worse, as the military industrial complex will become even harder to resist.
“What have I done? But…but…,” I choked on my own words, “…there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing.”
The beginnings of a wildly crazy plan started to form in my mind, as my monkeys just stared at me.
“Or is there?”
CHAPTER THREE
Thor and Loki watched me with lively, alert eyes as I went about my business. They had nothing in particular to say about the proceedings, other than some incoherent screeching; because squirrel monkeys had never developed the power of speech; not even these two.
“All right, all right. We’ll work something out. You’re both coming with me. Let’s go. You two sure are distinctive, though; I was hoping to keep a low profile.” Somehow, Loki’s gaze allayed my fears, and I began to feel more confident about my plan.
Well, at least the two monkeys always listened to me vocalize my thoughts with lively interest and had never once complained about my tendency to restate points multiple times. Can he actually understand what I’m saying? Could be; this ‘hyper’ drug has had the oddest effects on these two. They were both monkey misfits in the first place; they never did socialize all that well with the other monkeys.
“I know there is more potential to this compound. I cannot continue to do this for the military. If this has the ultimate effect that I think it will have, a handful of enhanced subjects could be a match for an army. Everybody should have a chance at this; it could be the next quantum jump in human evolution. I am not going to let this be monopolized by the existing power elite. There is already far too much power concentrated in far too few hands, as it is. This could be the chance for the human race to break the bonds of slavery the vast majority of us have been in; been in for millennia, now!”
So now I’m spouting rambling monologues to a pair of monkeys. What’s next? A secret lab, a maniacal laugh, and a plot to take over the world? Well, first step is just getting out of here. This lab is gonna blow in less than ten minutes.
I headed for the front door, valise and cages in hand. Moments later, I realized I had miscalculated, as a pair of security guards rounded the corner. Well, that didn’t take long. This could be trouble.
“Hey, doc. What are ya doin’ here so late? The lab closed hours ago. Do you have authorization to take those monkeys out of the building? What’s goin’ on?”
I started to panic, as I tried to come with a plausible story that would get me past the guards, and, more importantly, out the gate from the lab in the next ten minutes. I started to stutter and stammer…damn, I’ve never been good at thinking on my feet like this.
However, the guards were no longer even paying attention to me, at all. One was looking off to his left, at what, I could not discern.
That one drew his nightstick and motioned for the other one to follow. “Hey! Who’s there? Show yourself!” The first was obviously convinced that something, or someone was there, but I could not see anybody clearly, just a play of shadows that suggested a furtive form.
The other one motioned toward me to follow him, but his gaze fell upon Loki. The guard’s eyes glazed over, then he began speaking to the little monkey: “Chico? Chico! It’s really you! How can you be here, little guy? You died ten years ago, but here you are!”
I looked again at the smaller monkey on my left shoulder. It still looked like the same squirrel monkey to me, but the guard was obviously reliving some sort of vivid memory, while Loki just stared mournfully into his eyes.
What a stroke of luck! I don’t know what they thought they saw, but now the coast was clear. I headed out the door, to my car.
A few minutes later, the incendiary charges destroyed the lab, while I and my two simian companions managed to escape safely. I wasn’t a demolitions expert, so it was anything but a clean, efficient blast, but there were more than enough chemicals to thoroughly destroy the entire lab. It also generated incredibly pungent fumes; it was an organic chemistry lab, after all. I hadn’t had enough to destroy the entire building, but I hadn’t wanted to. The lab proper only took up a fraction of the installation, and that’s all I really intended to wipe out. I definitely wanted to minimize the danger to any possible innocents – night shift janitors, security guards, that sort of thing.
The mysterious shadows followed me, always just visible out of the corner of my eye. The shadows gave me a constant, unsettling feeling of being watched. I had had that same feeling a lot for weeks, but the sense was definitely getting stronger.
Once I got to the gate of the complex, I realized I had made another mistake. I should have timed the blast to allow me to escape this base. Now, they’re going to have the whole base on lockdown. I’ll never get out of this place.
However, at the front gate, the guard was not even at his post, and the gate was wide open. “Weird. How did that happen? Do I have a guardian angel or something?”
“Something like that,” came a faint, ethereal voice – out of nowhere.
“What?” I looked around frantically, but there was no apparent source for the voice. I must be imagining things. Was I going schizophrenic, on top of everything else?
“So now I’m hearing voices; along with deciding to take along two monkeys when trying to be inconspicuous! I really am going crazy! Can we be any more of an unusual sight? We are going to be painfully easy to identify!”
However, the sign for the public name of the facility [AgriLabs] was soon in my rearview mirror. Emergency vehicles had been dispatched; I saw them on the other side of the highway, sirens blaring. They had no reason to even attempt to detain me, as far as the civilian authorities knew; the secrecy worked in my favor, for once. Besides, they had much higher priorities.
A few days later, I found myself in a dilapidated building, in Alhambra, as I had planned. The whole neighborhood reeked of urine, failure, and despair. My two monkeys followed me everywhere; this time I also had my nephew with me, who was a lot better suited to this sort of thing. We were conferring with what was apparently a local gang leader of some kind. The drug dealer had already cut the pure drug, so the sample he had was now mostly white powder, with a smattering of violet crystals. My nephew did have connections that came through. Never thought I’d be grateful for having a family member with a record, but if this goes wrong, I’ll be just another chalk outline.
The local gang leader passed around a few samples of the new drug to his lieutenants, and snorted a line, himself.
“Hey, ese, this is some stone good shit you got here. What’s it called?”
“It’s called ‘hyper’, which stands for Human Improvement Performance Reagent” I shouldn’t have added that last part, but he didn’t seem to really care.
“How much you got? So how much for the whole batch?”
History shows that ‘nothing’ is often a good thing to do, and almost always a good thing to say, but I had never been that good at history. I’ve also always been terrible at salary negotiations. Somehow, this time, I managed to keep my mouth shut, and let my nephew handle things. I was out of my element, anyway.
It was a very unusual negotiation. My nephew haggled with the Latino gang leader, while Loki sat on his shoulder, staring into the other guy’s eyes. The gang leader, normally a hardass, seemed to mentally wander off into a hypnotic state while locking eyes with the enhanced squirrel monkey. I wound up getting a great deal, that way.
Some time later, I was in possession of a late model car, and more big bens than I had ever seen in my life.
I was more relieved that I had concluded the deal; the money would be useful, but was secondary. I just had to get the drug into circulation; which was the whole point of my crazy plan. If I had been caught with all the hyper in my possession, it would have all been for naught; the secret of hyper would still be in the hands of the authorities, and the powerless people of the world would lose a phenomenal chance to acquire power, enough power to break the shackles.
I just knew where I had to go – I’m not sure why I have been so influenced by those dreams I’ve had. Somehow, they seemed to be more than just ordinary dreams.
Shortly thereafter, I found myself on the road toward Albuquerque – along with my simian companions, of course. Several times, our odd little trio attracted the attention of the authorities, but each time, a similar scenario played out. If there was one cop, he would always be distracted by…something. Several times, I thought that I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, but each one faded away, as if it were a sleep deprivation induced hallucination. However, the cop, guard (or anyone impeding our progress) apparently saw the same thing, but even more clearly. Sometimes, Loki would catch his gaze, and the hapless human would fall into that weird, hypnotic fugue state.
“Since my escape, I have noticed even more extraordinary behavior from my you two, my simian companions.” I was talking to Thor and Loki. “It appears that you have bonded to me and see me as the alpha male of your troop. Your intelligence, especially yours (meaning Loki’s), is far above that of any other squirrel monkeys I have ever observed. You seem to cue off my body language and can anticipate my actions. It’s much like the behavior of a service animal, but you developed those skills on your own.”
Hours later, I continued to drive on I-40, heading east through California, headed toward Arizona. The two squirrel monkeys swarmed around the seats, chattering with each other. For about the hundredth time in as many miles, I kept glancing into the back seat. I could have sworn there was someone or something there. Those monkeys are sure being distracted by something, but I’ll be damned if I can see what it is.
Just past the Arizona border, in the rear-view mirror, I spotted what every driver fears; a state patrol car, shining its bright red lights directly at me. Oh, shit. What is this all about? I’m doing the same speed as all the other traffic. But there was nothing to do but pull over, as ordered. The two squirrel monkeys stared at me from the front passenger seat.
“Dammit. I wasn’t going any faster than the other traffic. What is this all about? Why do I keep getting hassled by the authorities?”
“You shouldn’t have accepted a vehicle from a gang chop shop. It’s probably stolen.”
“Yeah, I guess…hey! Who said that? Who’s there?” The voice had come from the back seat. But it was too late to investigate; the cop was at the window.
“Hello there. Could you get out your license and registration for me, please?”
I hated this. They were always so polite about it, but we all know it’s a damned order. I started to pull out the required papers. At the same moment, it seemed that something opened up the back door of the car, but a quick glance showed nothing there.
The officer started to head back to his patrol car, but only got a few steps, before finding himself struggling to retain his nightstick against … a three-pound monkey? Holy cow; that’s Thor! I knew his strength had increased, but he’s giving that cop everything he can handle. Thor managed to wrench the PR-24 from the cop’s hands, and a chase ensued. The cop rolled down the embankment; not seriously hurt, but Thor scampered back far more quickly than the human could, carrying his new prize. Well, the original Thor traditionally has a hammer, but I guess the tonfa will do. I had plenty of time to put a lot of distance between me and the cop, as he clambered back up to his car.
“Shit. That was really stupid of me. I’m sure he called in my license plate, and took notes on it. What am I going to do now?”
“Do not concern yourself about that, Doctor.” That voice out of nowhere, again. “I was able to deal with that issue, this time.”
A moment later, my license and registration reappeared in my shirt pocket, and there was more mysterious movement around my car; as though smoke and clouds had become sentient. A few more moments, and the shadows started to coalesce into a human form, in my back seat.
“Holy shit! I know you! You…you’re…”
“Just go, we can talk later”.
The four primates continued on their way. The world of recreational drugs was nothing if not open to experimentation, and a new fad was about to hit the Los Angeles party scene…
To be continued in Hyper: Emergence
APPENDIX
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Arthur’s website: www.authorsamuels.com
Upcoming books in this series:
Hyper Knight: Doctor Steele has a brother, who was also enhanced by hyper. His name is Arthur. He develops a suit of powered armor, a high-tech sword, and a time machine. He jaunts to England in the year 1352 for a short visit – and is stuck there. The legend of King Arthur meets Iron Man.
Hyper [Book One]: Emergence: Hyper hits the streets of Los Angeles. A bunch of misfits experiment with hyper, acquire super powers, and are roped into a 21st century Indian rebellion.
Hyper [Book Two]: Uprising: Follows the continuing adventures of Ogre and his Misfits as the 21st Century Indian rebellion heats up.
Hyper [Book Three]: Insurrection: Planned title for the final book in the Hyper trilogy.
We are also planning a collection of short stories set in the universe of Hyper. We don’t have a title yet. Suggestions are welcome!