MuTerra-kindle (12 page)

“Hello son,” he said extending his hand, “Come on in.”

Son, not Keith; he must want something.

“Have a seat, I’ll be right with you,” he said as he turned to leave the room.

His father’s apartment was only slightly larger than his own. Keith did not concern himself about such things, and probably would not have even noticed this difference if it was not for Terri commenting on it the last time they were there. Things like that mattered to her. His father returned with two glasses filled to about an inch deep with an amber colored liquid Keith assumed was Scotch whiskey. He handed one to Keith and took a seat. They both took a sip enjoying the warmth of the highly controlled, and hard to come by, liquid.

“Okay. I got the Scotch, and the friendly welcome. What is it you want dad,” Keith said directly.

His father smiled and said, “We need someone to undergo some important treatments before we can safely return to the outside.”

“Who’s we?”

“The board of directors of course; but in a sense, everyone inside.”

“I assume you have me in mind for this job. Why me?”

“I can’t think of anyone more capable or trustworthy.”

Keith was not exactly buying that line, but his father was not known for flattery either. “What do you need me to do?”

“Go outside,” his father said evenly.

Keith raised his eyes in surprise, “Isn’t that a little bit dangerous, in fact suicidal?”

“In the condition you are in now, yes.”

“Condition; what do you mean ‘condition‘?”

“I don’t plan on sacrificing you son. In fact, just the opposite; you would undergo a procedure which would make the environmental factors outside harmless to you.”

“Why don’t you just treat everyone and we can all leave,” Keith responded.

“Because we can only do one treatment, otherwise we would. An element to the procedure must be obtained from outside. To do this, we not only need someone to go out there, we also need him to come back.”

“How sure are you that this will work?”

“One-hundred percent.”

Keith raised his eyes in question, “What makes you so certain?”

Frank Bishop took another sip from his glass, and considered his next words before replying. “How old do you think Dr. Maddow is,” he asked his son.

“I don’t know. I’d guess a few years older than you. Why,” he said wondering where the conversation was going.

“He is seventy-five.”

“He sure looks good for his age.”

“It is more than looks Keith. I’ve known Martin for almost twenty-five years. He looks the same now, as he did when I first met him. He is as healthy now as he was then. The man is a genius.
And I mean that in a literal way.”

“Okay. So what you’re telling me is that somehow your friend has found a way to continue to look younger than he is and to stay healthy―so what?”

“It is more than that Keith,” his father said annoyed slightly by his son’s flippancy. “He can do things; you’ll have to ask him for the technical terms, to make your system immune to the conditions on the surface. He can then do the same for everyone else if you are successful in obtaining what he needs to achieve that.”

Keith thought about that statement, and the whole conversation. He knew his father would not want him simply to do something that would cause his death. He also knew his father might not tell him everything, but he had never before told him an outright lie. “What does this treatment involve, and what is it I would need to find?”

“First you need to let me know if you are willing to do it. If not, then you don’t need to know, and I’ll have to find someone else.”

“I’ll do it. I think you knew that already Dad. You know I’m not one to put something off on someone else’s shoulders just because it might be a little dangerous.”

His father nodded in acceptance. “The procedure will not be painful, and it is done under sedation. I’m told you will be injected with several chemicals, all of which are safe, and some of which will need to be placed into the bone marrow. As to what it is we want you to find, it is a small worm called a planarian. They are generally less than a half inch in size, and are located in water, and sometimes under logs or in moist soils in humid areas.”

“You’re telling me that miniature worms are going to allow everyone to get out of here, and go back outside,” he stated skeptically.

“Yes.”

It was beginning to sound surreal. If he did not know the individual who was telling him this as well as he did, he would have laughed in his face and walked away. But he did know him, and he was saying it. His father challenged Keith throughout his life. He asked more from him than he did anyone else he knew, including his brother. He never lied to him, at least not that he ever knew of, but his father was also a very reserved man when it came to discussing anything of a personal or intimate nature. Keith respected him more than any other person he knew. But, he also realized there was another side of him that he would possibly never know. As incredulous as the conversation seemed, he found himself saying, “When do I start?”

―

The following morning his father escorted him to a private lab located behind several secured doors. This was not the lab in which Terri worked. In fact, it did not look to Keith like anyone worked there at all. Dr. Maddow explained some of the treatments he was going to receive, but in a way that Keith understood little more than when he had walked in. There was one attending nurse who Keith did not recall seeing before. That was strange, as he knew most of the people inside the mountain, at least by sight. After he was prepped by the nurse in another room, she wheeled him back out on a gurney. His father was gone.

“This is going to make you sleep. You won’t remember a thing,” she said as she injected the drug into his IV tube.  

Dr. Maddow dismissed her and said he would notify her when she was needed again, and to remain ready to return. She was a little taken aback by this, but she did as she was told.
You don’t argue with doctors, and never with Dr. Maddow,
she knew from experience. It was unheard of for a surgeon to operate alone, and this is what caught her by surprise.

Once he was sure the sedative was in full effect, he started with the first of several procedures. It was an injection of the same treatment he had received himself and had given to Frank Bishop. This one went into the bone marrow of the femur. He injected both legs to ensure success. When this was finished, he completed a series of other injections. Some went directly into glands, others into muscle. When these were complete, he moved the straps alongside the gurney across Keith’s body and cinched them down tight. He moved the IV line out of the way, released the catch from the bottom of the table, and rotated it until the patient was now upside down and facing the floor. He locked it in place and reached for a metallic device, which resembled a brace. This he secured around the patients head. He placed the long hypodermic syringe into the slot specifically made for it. When he was sure that it was lined up with the brain stem, he slowly pressed on the part of the device that held the needle. Once this stopped, he depressed the plunger of the needle itself.

Having completed this, he removed the metallic device, returned the patient to his original position, and removed the straps. All of the vital signs were good, but he knew that would change. He detached the IV bag containing the sedative, and replaced it with a much stronger one; however, it was labeled the same. The entire procedure lasted nearly one hour. He went into a glass walled office and turned on the portable monitor, which displayed the patient's vital signs. He sat down and called Frank Bishop. “It’s done.”

“I take it everything went well?”

“Fine; I won’t know for sure until I take some tissue samples to determine the full effect. I’ll do that in twenty-four hours.”

“What else did you do to him? You weren’t exactly clear on that earlier?”

“I just made him a little better is all. What I did for us, will allow our bodies to live indefinitely. That is, unless we experience trauma we are not able to recover from.”

“I know about us, what about him? And put it in terms I can understand.”

“Okay. He’ll need to do more than just survive the elements. He’ll need to be able to deal with anything he is faced with, and to deal with it alone. His immune system, as you know, will control the things he can’t see. His physical properties are what I manipulated. I injected a chemically modified form of follistatin, which will help temper the cellular activity from the cell regeneration, controlling both proliferation and differentiation. In other words, his regenerative abilities will work even better than ours does. This chemical will also increase his lean muscle composition nearly threefold. It will not be a threefold increase in size so much as it will be in strength. Another treatment was for his senses. His vision, hearing, motor skills, and so on will function at a heightened state.”

“Won’t his body burn itself out?”

“Not at all, I didn’t put his systems into overdrive, just enhanced them;
a state beyond reach by natural means. The regenerative abilities I hope to see will easily accommodate any increase in performance. Even his sleeping needs will diminish.”

“When will he be ready?” his father asked.

“I want five days with him. Some things will show up sooner than others will. I want to make sure we have the best chance to ensure we get what we are sending him out there for. Nothing can be left to chance.”

“I agree.”

“I’ll need to have some follow up visits before we send him out. Say, two months.”

“Okay.”

“I suggest you also take care of things with his wife. I can keep her busy while she’s at the lab, but I don’t think she knew he would be gone for this long and why.”

“I’ll take care of it. Call me when he is about to come out of sedation. I’ll want to be there.”

―

The nurse was instructed to administer enough sedation to keep the patient under. After three days, she had increased the amount to a level that worried her. When she called the doctor, he asked her to relate his vital statistics then instructed her to continue as before. By the next day, his amount of sedation was seven times greater than what they started with. On the fifth day, Dr. Maddow had returned to examine the patient himself. He listened as the nurse made her report, while analyzing his chart at the same time. He thanked her for her help, and advised her to return to her normal duties as the patient was going to be released shortly. It was with relief that she left. She did not know what exactly was going on, but she had never seen anything like it before.

He now made a call, “As soon as you can, stop by; I would like to show you something,”

“I’m on my way,” Frank Bishop said from his extension.

―

Dr. Maddow was talking while removing a scalpel from a metal tray. The only word that really registered with Keith’s father was “watch,” as he grasped the scalpel, holding it in a downward stabbing position, and did just that to Keith’s upper right forearm. His father reacted as anyone would. He flinched in shocked surprise. He was about to say something when he realized the doctor was still talking to him. “This is the third time I’ve done that.”

“Why,” Frank Bishop asked.

“Look,” Dr. Maddow said while pointing to the wound.

He did not need to be told to look, as he had not yet taken his eyes away. It did not seem to actually go in as deep as he would have thought, and by now, the blood had already stopped flowing.

“His response to, and recovery from, injury is like nothing ever seen before.”

“Where else did you do that?”

“The same place. His muscle is so dense, that injuries such as these will heal quite rapidly. Areas without significant musculature will heal faster than normal as well, but not like this.”

Frank Bishop saw no other puncture wounds and no telltale scars.

Knowing what was on his mind, Dr. Maddow continued, “The other two were yesterday,” he said as he took a cotton swab containing alcohol and rubbed it on the wound. When he was finished, the wound was little more than a red line. “Just imagine commanding an army such as him,” Maddow said pointing at Keith, “His ability to fight off the effects of sedation was astonishing. His system would function the same with any drug or chemical”

“One thing at a time… Are you sure he is going to be….normal. I mean, will there be any adverse side effects?”

“Not that I would predict, no. As far as normal goes, he will be functioning on a different level than any of us. That is part of the reason I want the follow up examinations. I will need to help him understand himself in a way he will accept, without explaining what it is that’s been done to him,” Dr. Maddow said.

―

Several minutes after his IV was removed, Keith regained consciousness. While reclaiming his senses, he sat upright in the bed. His father was at his side.

“How are you feeling,” Frank Bishop asked.

“Good,” Keith said while stretching his arms. “Great … actually.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Martin said you can go whenever you are ready.”

“Fine with me,” Keith said as he continued to move and stretch different parts of his body while getting to his feet. He
really had never felt better
, he was thinking to himself.

“I’d like to talk to you about what to tell Terri and your staff should they ask any questions,” he said while Keith was getting dressed.

Keith looked at him while waiting for him to explain.

“The procedure took a little longer than expected. Your absence has to be explained. It isn’t time yet to get people’s hopes up by telling them we are close to sending someone outside. I’d like to keep it simple for now, and for the near future. Some of these tunnels are quite lengthy. In fact, one of them was supposed to link up eventually with another facility on the other side of the mountain. It never materialized, but people do not need to know that now. Let’s say you were exploring that area to see if the passage was still open.”

“Okay. But I don’t see why a day away needs a creative explanation,” Keith said.