Project Symbiote, Part 1

This is a new story I am writing. Not sure how long it'll be. That'll happen as I write it. Please leave comments and suggestions!

The room had gotten very quiet since night had fallen. Rich was sitting at his computer, the screen shining back into his vacant eyes. I was sitting on the bed, eyeing my phone nervously and listening to Front 242 on a nondescript digital player. When the phone started vibrating, I essentially fell out of the bed. Rich looked over for a second, rolled his eyes, then got back to playing whatever game it was he was playing. I finally managed to fumble the phone to my ear.

“Wha-a?”

“We need to go. Get your stuff.” The caller hung up. I was kind of expecting Liz, but that was definitely a guy on the other end. Maybe this whole thing had gotten bigger than I thought. I slipped my laptop and the tangle of accompanying cables into my bag, along with a leather-bound journal and two mountain dews. Then, I reached under my mattress, and pulled out the Glock I had been saving. At this point, I wasn’t really sure if I’d need it, but one can never be too safe. The three clips hidden in my hollowed-out course catalog were full, of course, so I slipped them into the bag as well. Rich saw one of the ACP rounds, and screwed up his face accordingly.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll have the room to yourself tonight.” I put on my coat and left before he even got out another word.

It was the time of the year where it was getting cold outside, but that was hardly an issue. I walked down by the quad, and saw the small car parked in the turnaround. I approached cautiously, but Liz pulled me into the backseat before I even had a chance to see who else was there. By the time I looked around, we were speeding down the road, and already the surroundings were unfamiliar.

“So hang on. What is going on?”

“Something, I’ll say that much.” Liz was never much for talking, and when she did, you either wished she didn’t, or that she at least said something understandable.

“All right then…say, you never told me why the hell you wanted me involved in this. I would’ve kind of preferred to stay home and study. I have a physics exam tomorrow…” The driver looked through the rear-view mirror with dangerous eyes.

“Trust me. Physics is the last thing you have to worry about.” I looked up long enough to notice we were on the interstate. I had a sinking feeling no studying would occur this weekend.

The car slowed down, and pulled into a clearing on the side of the road. Everyone got out, and Liz pulled me out accordingly, despite my attempt to get out on my own. She was impatient…but I had known that. Three men carrying guns emerged from the woods, and looked us over. The one in the middle looked at me.

“You’re Max, right?” I nodded, though confused.

“All right. Come with us. The rest of you, wait here. We’ll be back in an hour.” The man grabbed me by the forearm, and led me quickly through the woods. We got to a small cabin about ten minutes later, though it looked very dark, and very quiet. One of the other men opened the door, and then motioned for us to follow. The cabin was completely unfurnished, though there was a sewer grate in the middle of the floor, which was very strange. The first man opened the grate, and the rest of us were beckoned downward.

About forty feet down, the ladder ended, and we were greeted by dim lighting, and a fairly dry sewer tunnel. The men walked down the tunnel, and I followed accordingly, having no idea what was going on. Finally, we approached a small room, where four other men in lab coats stood, looking bored.

“We have him.”

“Are you sure this is sample 563?”

“We do have to conduct the conduit testing.” I had no idea what they were talking about, which made me worried. The anxiety compounded when I saw one of the men in lab coats bring out a small cabinet covered in electrical equipment. One of the men handed me a pill and a glass of water. I looked at the pill, and then looked at him.

“You swallow it. It isn’t that hard.” I rolled my eyes and flipped him off, but decided to swallow the thing anyway. Almost immediately, my arms and legs felt very itchy. This was not cool. It got worse. By the time I knew what was going on, I woke back up. The pain throughout my body was evident, and judging by the dull body throb, I had a feeling it was worse when I was passed out. What made my anxiety worse was when I felt the metallic protrusion from the back of my neck. The men in lab coats were murmuring, and I could hear snippets of the conversation.

“…implant nodes….reflexive algorithms…maintenance amplification…” I was horribly confused. Well, that was an understatement.

“Max, are you awake?” I slowly nodded, still prodding the thing on my neck.

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll hook it up to the modules, but it will recede below your skin about three hours after we’re done. So will the nerve conduits.” I screwed up my face, and the man in the lab coat pointed to my wrist. Indeed, there were small protrusions on my wrist, similar to the one on my neck. The one on my left wrist, however, had a USB port.

“Okay, what the hell is this?” I was freaked out. I could hook my mp3 player into my wrist, which was not a pleasant idea.

“This, Max, is Project Symbiote. You were one of 600 children who were implanted with symbiotic nanoagents during your infancy.”

“600 kids? What the hell have you people been doing? Is there some secret army I’m about to join?”

“Hardly. Out of those 600, only about 75 survived past age 3. The rest died from immune complications resulting from the nanoagents. There were two lines that were particularly successful, and those were the initial #00 experiments and the block of #55, of which you are one.”

“Uh…cool?”

“Well, there’s an issue with this, which is why we’re now retrieving the Symbiote kids from college campuses.”

“Huh.” The researcher looked at me.

“You’re definitely taking this a little….easier than most of your colleagues. You and your other friend.”

“You mean Liz? She’s in this too?”

“Yes…we got her about a year ago, and she reacted very similarly.”

“That’s not too surprising. She’s a computer geek and I’m a gadget nerd. We’ve all read Gibson.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“What, you haven’t read Gibson?”

“No, but it’s odd only you two came out this way.”

“And it’s a coincidence we know each other. Well, looks like we settled the nature and nurture debate.” The researcher just stared at me. The pain had subsided, so I hopped off the operating table and reached for my bag. I pulled out a Mountain Dew, and began drinking. Something unpleasantly cold prodded my neck, but that didn’t keep me from my caffeine. I reflexively looked at my watch. 3 Am. No wonder the Dew felt so good.

“I’ve just hooked up your node to an extension module. Now that we need you, we need you to be topped up.”

“A what?”

“Extension module. Basically, we’re topping off what your syms have already done.”

“Syms?”

“Symbiotes.”

“Oh. What have they already done?”

“The symbiotes allow your hippocampus to emulate RNA-style learning. Essentially, they augment your ability to learn stuff.”

“Stuff? Very scientific.”

“We’re only human, Max.” I snickered. The man swiped my dew, took a swig, and then gave it back. I glared, but he just smiled. I suppose I knew who was a geek at heart here.

“So what are you plugging into me, if these sym things can already do that?”

“Some subroutines and a couple little cool things most of our other subjects have enjoyed.

“Uh…dare I ask?”

“Well, mostly just little modules that improve your reflexes, extend your vision threshold, and increase your sensitivity to reflexive learning.”

“Which means…?”

“They make you awesome.”

“You’re sounding less and less like a scientist, dude.”

“Well, yeah. But the other things are tactile and auditory hookups.”

“Tact- to what now?” This guy was confusing me.

“Well, you can use the USB port in your arm to use computers without keyboard and mouse, and use the other jack to listen to music.”

“In my head?”

“Yup.”

“Is there an equalizer?”

“Yup.”

“I love you.” Damn. This guy knew how to win me over. “So, why are we here, anyway?”

“You’ll see.”

“I’ll see?”

“You’ll see.” After another twenty minutes, he unplugged the probe, and led me to another small room, with a bed. They had taken my bag briefly after I got my dew, and it was sitting on the bed, apparently untampered with. I rifled through, but found my Glock was missing. I suppose being disarmed wasn’t so surprising. It had only been an hour since I had that dew, but the caffeine was already starting to wear off. Liz was standing at the door, something I didn’t notice before, probably because of the crash.

“So, we’re experiments. Cool, huh?”

“Uh…sure. Why are we here?”

“Beats the hell out of me, but after they picked me up, they told me this was going to happen. So I’m not terribly surprised.”

“Yeah. You certainly didn’t act it.”

“Well, yeah…but tomorrow we may be doing something crazy. So I’d get some sleep.” Liz moved out of the door way, and closed the door behind her. I fell on to the bed, and almost immediately started to fuzz out. I guess I had a little more to worry about than the physics at this point.