Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (9 page)

Revising his rating on the plasma
blade, Andrew said, “Oh, wow, that is pretty cool….um….now I know
it works, but why? How is this possible?”

“It all involves electrons. First off,
you send electricity through your nerves that connect to the
muscles in your hands. When the electrons currently flowing through
your hand are plentiful enough, which in this case occurs when you
tighten your hand by grabbing onto the hilt, those electrons
transmit a signal that triggers on a system within the
hilt.

“Okay, so it’s basically like a
pressure-activated system.”

“Essentially. After that triggers on,
electrons are produced and sent out of the hilt, into the air
surrounding the rod you see here. They react violently from being
sent out with such great force, causing them to change atomic
orbitals and give off energy. Since the rod is magnetized, the
electrons are confined to an area around the rod, therefore keeping
this smooth, stable shape. If this rod were not here, you would be
projecting electricity all over the room, unbound with the power to
kill an unarmored life-form.”

“How come I’m not affected? I mean, if
it’s so powerful, why am I not being shocked right now? Or you, for
that matter?”

“As for me, it’s for that confined
space from the rod that I just mentioned earlier. But for you, the
entire hilt is made of a non-conductive material that keeps any
electrons from breaking through and shocking you. I could go into
detail, but it would take hours or even days to explain everything.
What I’ve said is the basics of the plasma blade.”

Andrew pondered all of this for a few
seconds as he loosened his grip and turned the sword off. He came
up with another question to ask, but when he hardly opened his
mouth to talk, Juvir said, “I presume you want to know how this
works in battle, but it would be better for you to learn that from
experience rather than from my lectures.”

Andrew had an epiphany after hearing
this statement. He now knew that Juvir was planning to place him in
some sort of battle or alien boot camp or something. He wasn’t
going to stay on this world just as some sort of
civilian.

“And yes,” Juvir added, “you are going
to be a test subject. Not for anything like being a slave, though.
I want you to be a soldier. To become one, however, you’re going to
need some proper shots and tests taken.”

Andrew wasn’t fond of fighting or wars
in general. He had never been in a fight in his whole life, and he
had no gauge as to what an alien military would be like. Although,
come to think of it, he had endured the sodium hydroxide on the
Selentor ship, plus he beat down that one guy as well. Even with
all these ideas in his head, the dominant question that came out of
Andrew’s mouth was this: “What do you mean by ‘proper
shots?’”

“Genetic shots. They’re a part of a
procedure that will change your genes to make your body more
efficient, for battle and in general.”

Chapter 10

“Do I really have to do
this?”

“Well, you aren’t going back to Earth
anytime soon, and all the people outside of the AOIB can’t know
about your existence, so….yes, you’re stuck here.”

Nearby an operating table, Andrew
argued why he, out of all the other things he could do on this
planet, let alone in this universe, had to become a
genetically-engineered soldier.

“Furthermore,” Juvir continued, “I can
tell by mapping your genes whether your species has physical
potential; with the right genes, you could be one of our elite
soldiers.”

Andrew liked hearing the idea of him
being “elite,” but now wasn’t the time for pride. Now was the time
for hiding in a hole. In any other time and place, he wouldn’t
argue. But this was a moment of uncertainty and fear, and Andrew
hated to take big risks even more than arguing.

“Can I be honest? I scared about
this—I don’t know what’s gonna happen. What if—”

“You sound like I’m going to make the
mistake of doing the procedure myself.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’m going to bring in Lee. As a
robot, she will make fewer mistakes.”

“The fuck? Lee’s a robot? And a
female?”

“Lee’s actually designed to look like
a female, although technically she has no gender at all as a robot,
but, yes.”

Andrew believed Lee was a male,
considering the low voice she had. However, the human had no
experience with alien anatomy, and it’s a big universe, after all.
It’s full of many strange things, impossible to discover every
single one in a lifetime.

“Besides,” Juvir continued, “you
shouldn’t unnecessarily worry about things you don’t know. That
applies to everything in life, not just to tests such as
these.”

“That makes sense, but it doesn’t make
me much less afraid.”

“I’m not done yet. The point is that
fear of the unknown causes so many problems in this universe.
Whether it be meeting new alien species, experiencing new events,
or anything that somebody has no idea as to how it will go, fear
dominates over curiosity. The only way for that fear to go away is
for knowledge to replace it, and even then there are some people
who like to cling to their fears, surprisingly enough. You want to
know why you shouldn’t be afraid? Because Lee knows exactly what to
do without error, the procedure has always been completely painless
for everybody else, and after decades of working on genetic
procedures such as this, I have the experience and knowledge to
prove my words. And if you can’t accept my words, then just be
quiet, stay still, and find out for yourself.”

Andrew had chills down his spine—not
from fear, but from fascination. He had never met anybody in person
who had spoken so intelligently, so powerfully that Andrew couldn’t
help but believe him. In a way, there were some exceptions that
still needed to be discussed and taken care of, but Andrew felt
better, and that’s the most important part.

“Unfortunately, not everyone thinks
this way. I would suppose a few of you humans are open-minded, but
even more would be what I described earlier: scared of unfamiliar
beings, dealing with them by sweeping them aside as outcasts or
monsters. Am I correct?”

“Yeah. It’s always been like that.
Especially white men saying they’re the best while degrading
minorities and women before knowing what they can really
do.”

“Exactly. Just one of the
reasons—other than the treaty—that I don’t want you exposed to the
public. These people would treat you like an uncivilized
outcast.”

“Well, thank you for treating me so
well.”

Juvir created a corny smile—one that
was wide, yet his mouth was only slightly open—and said, “No
problem.”

“Ready to begin, sir,” said a voice as
it entered the room.

“Ah, Lee, you’re here. Okay, Andrew,
just lay on the table and Lee will get started right
away.”

“Hold on a sec,
Juvir,” said Andrew, who raised his hand up in an attempt to
somehow more likely get Juvir’s attention, “what exactly do
you
do
? I mean,
to the sound of it, you’re a vice-president, a doctor, a
philosopher, and—let me guess—my boss once I’m a soldier. Which one
of these do you actually do for a living?”

“Is it so wrong to have more than one
job? Besides, they’re more like hobbies than jobs, especially
philosophy.”

When Andrew was back on Earth, he
wanted to have a minor in anything such as psychology, sociology,
or philosophy, all the while getting a major in engineering. That
minor would act as his hobby while engineering would be the one to
bring home the bacon.

And so, Juvir left the room as Andrew
laid down onto the table. Lee asked him to take off the suit before
proceeding.

Lee studied Andrew like how the
Selentors did, except that Lee was more precise and cautious about
it. When he was told to stay still, she took out a tiny ball-shaped
device that was wirelessly connected to a computer within the room.
The device looked like a blue volleyball the size of a typical
bouncy ball. There were no sounds coming from it, and there was a
single light shining from one part of the sphere, signaling whether
the device was on or off. She placed the device onto the underside
of Andrew’s elbow, who expected to feel something such as a sharp
prick or a dull push. But during the second that the device was
used, he felt nothing.

“What was that for?”

“To analyze your blood. The device
took a sample of it and sent data to the computer over
there.”

After Andrew looked at his elbow, he
asked why there was no blood coming out since the device should
have made a wound.

“It’s because only a few blood cells
are necessary to be retrieved, along with some platelets and
plasma. This device has a microscopic tube that will pierce through
your skin and pull out painlessly, due to the fact that it’s too
small for your nerves to detect it. Plus, your platelets have
clotted up the hole already while your skin cells finish the
job.”

“OK, but what about bacteria? Since
you didn’t sanitize anything beforehand—”

“The device is coated with an
antibacterial formula that kills any microorganisms in range as it
punctures the skin—but it won’t harm your body, of course. Anything
else?”

Andrew closed his lips in
response.

With multiples of the same kind of
device, this procedure worked similarly for everything else in his
body. He had various fluids extracted with virtually no pain at
all, even in areas that would make people wince from the thought:
spinal fluid, sperm, synovial fluid, and even the fluid surrounding
his eyeballs. The only thing that Lee didn’t take was stomach acid,
considering how computers already retrieved data of it when Andrew
relieved himself of some after teleporting. All of these fluids
were tested and used to give the AOIB an idea of human
composition.

Andrew was given a break before moving
on to the next tests, which would involve looking at all the
muscles and organs inside using a special light rather than
surgery, similar to the Selentors’ methods. As intelligent beings
connect with each other and become more modern, their ideas,
traditions, etc. blend with each other and in time become one.
Although enemies now, the AOIB once showed the Selentors their
medical procedures so that they could move up in interstellar
society with them.

The black-haired human sat down with
questions and thoughts racing throughout his mind, trying to ignore
all of them in order to give his mind a break. All this stress from
all of these new things and ideas—everything was being rammed onto
his mind like large rubber dodgeballs onto a wall. If there’s
enough force and enough time applied to it, the wall will
eventually break.

However, as Juvir noted previously when Andrew first
saw the AOIB members, Lee was the type to ask plenty of questions
herself.

“So, Andrew, are there any robots on
your planet?”

“Yeah, but none of them are conscious
or even intelligent. The most complicated robots I’ve heard of are
just designed to trim hedges or play the violin or something. I
think the best we’ve got so far is this social robot with the IQ of
a dog.”

“I don’t know what
dogs are, but do
they
at least seem conscious or intelligent? Do they have
souls?”

Andrew was surprised to hear a robot bring up the
term “souls” in a conversation. “Well, I suppose dogs at least have
souls, considering they have emotions and free will.”

When most people
think of free will, they think of doing the opposite of whatever
someone wants them to do. However, in Andrew’s perspective, free
will is just the ability to decide—to apply independent thought to
some sort of situation. Dogs can have free will whenever a crisis
occurs. If a dog is lost five hundred miles away from home, it can
decide between three choices: to find a new home where it’s at, to
make the journey all the way back to the first home, or to just
give up and die. On the other end, some humans do not have free
will because they have been raised without truly having independent
thought; they accept whatever ideas other people throw at them and
say, “But they
are
my own….”

However, almost all humans have
consciousness because they think so much about themselves and their
own existence. If robots have consciousness and free will, then
what does that make them?

“Why do you ask?” said
Andrew.

“It’s nothing important,” said Lee, “I
just wanted to know what robots were like on Earth if there were
any.” There was more on her mind than what she said, and Andrew
could tell. That robot had a combination of miniscule gears,
cables, levers, and shafts, all working to pull that artificial
skin on Lee’s face into a specific form—an expression that one
would typically have if they were hiding something.

Andrew wasn’t always one to ask many
questions himself, though. All he wanted was to get through these
tests. He said, “Let’s move on to the next part now.”