RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy)) (62 page)

His beloved wife from his prior life was a good lover and he had no complaints but this was off the map, he had never seen anything like this before, this chick was in uncharted territory!  Toby had read of the extended male orgasm one time in a magazine while sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room and he laughed out loud when he read it.  He didn’t believe that it was possible for a guy to have an experience similar to what a woman does but much to his surprise he was wrong.  Alice was such a wild lover that she had caused him to experience the phenomenon and he nearly passed out.  It was like a fantastic euphoric experience that somehow he managed to avoid through an entire lifetime in his first body, he marveled at how that was even possible.  He actually fell sound asleep as soon as it was over with and didn’t awaken for quite some time.

Alice laid her head on his chest.  She felt so good when she was with him, like she never felt before with any man, not even her husband.  Not that she had been around, she only had a few relationships before she married Mark, but this was different, Toby was special for some reason, she didn’t know why and she didn’t care to question it.

As she lay there almost asleep she thought about her prior life.  She felt less guilty now about what they were doing because she was finally accepting that Mark was gone.  He had moved on, finally convinced that she was dead, he had remarried.  The woman he fell in love with seemed nice and she was playing the role of Mother to Alice’s children, Sally and Phillip.  Oh how she longed to hold them in her arms again, maybe someday, somehow, she would. 

At first she hated Leila for being there with her husband and her children, she felt such anger, but as time passed she realized it was a good thing and Mark must love Leila very much.  There was no doubt in her mind that he needed someone to help with the children.  She was at peace with it now.  She just wanted to get out of this thing alive so that she could see them again and hopefully start a new life with Toby.  They were both asleep now, holding on to each other and feeling victorious in having dead ended Cyrus once again.

Chapter 29
   
 
In a private wash room adjacent to his office; Cyrus disrobed to clean himself up.  Bathing for Cyrus was no easy task.  His genetic abnormalities made him smart, fast, and strong, but they also caused him many physical problems as side effects.  His skin would continuously ooze because it grew too fast and this caused it to peel and bleed weekly. 

He
couldn’t wear clothing directly against his skin as it would stick badly and tear massive pieces of skin off his body when removed.  Instead he had to cover his entire body wherever clothing made contact with a petroleum jelly like substance that he himself had developed.  It was odorless so that he didn’t smell too bad and it had a special blend of softeners and antibiotics in it that helped his skin to heal faster than it would otherwise. 

On top of the layer of grease he had to wear body stockings made of a nylon material that would help hold the skin together while still letting some air in so that it could breathe.  He simply
couldn’t sweat or there would be some very messy consequences with his skin so his entire leather suit that he wore exteriorly was air conditioned by a pack that he wore around his waist in the small of his back.  It was powered by four rechargeable nuclium cells and forced the cold air through tiny capillaries built into the leather suite. 

The cool air constantly flowed keeping his skin cool and preventing him from sweating.  When in a situation like he was tonight there was no avoiding getting heated up, now he had a mess to contend with.  Once the leather suite was removed, he had to remove the tubes that connected the AC unit to the pants
and jacket.  Then he had to remove both his solid waste bag and his liquid waste bag and replace them with new ones. 

The tubes to each of the bags had to be sterilized and capped off for showering.  After this he stood in front of the mirror and observed his badly displaced nose.  His nerve endings were not normal and so he felt little if any pain as a result of the injury but it did piss him off.  He reached up with both hands and inserted his index fingers into his nose.  He began feeling around for the broken bones and gradually massaged them back into place. 

It took a few minutes due to the swelling making it so difficult to feel around inside.  Once he got his nose bones set fairly well, he removed his fingers to see if he could breath okay and he could but now the blood had begun to flow all over again from having disturbed the clots that had formed in his nose.  He gave up on stopping the bleeding and decided to let it flow for a bit. 

He dried his hands off and got some tape out of a nearby medicine cabinet.  He put several pieces of waterproof medical tape on his nose to hold it in place.  With that complete he leaned over the sink and blew out both nostrils as hard as he could to evacuate the clots and immediately packed his nostrils tightly with gauze.  He couldn’t breathe out of his nose now but at least the bleeding was stopped. 

He had cooled off now and attempted to remove the body stockings from his skin.  They were simply stuck much too well and removing them would tear large patches of skin away with the stockings.  Whenever this situation occurred he would have to get in the shower allowing the moisture to loosen the stockings from his skin so that he could remove the garment without removing his skin with it.  First though, he had another task that needed tending to, he had to change the power cell for his pacemaker. 

He took a small knife from the vanity drawer and slit the body stocking around the edge of the circular device imbedded in his chest.  Once the material was removed he could see the battery monitor lamp which showed a change battery status by flashing continuously at fast pace.  He removed a small screwdriver from the vanity drawer and opened the battery compartment by removing two star head screws.  He replaced one of the two batteries with a new one and flipped a small switch
on the inside of the cavity to select the new battery as the primary source of power.  He replaced the cover and got into the shower. 

He would have liked to take hot showers but the hot water caused more sweating so he showered cold, after about fifteen minutes the stocking material began to come away from his skin more easily.  Two hours later Cyrus emerged fully dressed and feeling better.  Because of his condition he spent nearly all of his time fully clothed.  He didn’t sleep so lying in bed wasn’t an issue.  Sometimes he would sit in his recliner and watch TV and try to rest but his mind was always racing, another side effect of his corrupted DNA. 

He turned on the TV and got a bottle of water from the cooler and set it on the small table by his chair.  He went back into the wash room and carefully removed the gauss from his nostrils to find the bleeding had stopped.  He sat down in his big chair and got comfortable just in time for the late news broadcast.  He watched it every night just to see what opportunities might we waiting for him out in the world.

That same day out at the farm the clones continued with their martial arts, gun training, and research on the compound.  They were also introduced to another area of the farm they had not previously seen.  Jason took them to a barn behind the main dairy building and unveiled several military vehicles that John’s uncle had purchased and stored.  His uncle had kept them in good running order until his health began to fail a few years before he passed.  His Uncle, like Grandpa Kerrington, didn’t like the idea of Restoration and it was still fairly new when he passed away, so unfortunately he was gone.

The vehicles had been in this barn now for about fifteen years without being started or cared for much other than a smart trickle charger on each battery.  They were covered up and kept out of the elements so they were in good shape but would need to be started and tested out.  Their minds were going crazy now thinking about how they could use these new tools in their assault on the compound, it was a good day.

While Alice was busy in the lab with Cyrus and Glitch all day, Toby and Todd had gone down to the oven and looked around a bit more.  Todd was already proving to be a great asset, he knew many of the people and he had been there longer than most.  He was friendly with most of the guards and knew where everything was in the compound.  He even had several ideas on
how they could seal the oven from the inside when the time came to do so. 

Todd took Toby to three different areas in the compound where he knew there was left over building materials stored.  They found two cases of metal duct tape left over from the installation of the heat, ac, and ventilation systems for the labs, kitchen, and computer labs.  Now they just had to move it from there to the oven.  It came in fifty foot rolls so they did some calculations and discovered they only needed about six
rolls, this would be a very easy problem to solve.  Todd wanted to contribute to the effort in his own way so he spent the next three hours milling around in the compound looking busy and visiting with a few of his buddies that were either guards or maintenance workers.  He had conversations with several of them and found himself scrutinizing them now in a way he never had before.  Now he was viewing them only as “in” or “out.”  He was putting them in these categories in his mind of either being on his new side or his old side.  He was imagining whether or not he could talk to them and get them to join their team at some point. 

Throughout his day he also managed to drop off all six rolls of tape one at a time to the oven.  He carried them one at a time out in the open in his hand.  One of his guard buddies noticed him with three of the six rolls at different times.  He laughed and said
         “Jeeze Todd, you gonna carry that stupid roll of tape around all day!”  He just thought it was the same roll and assumed that Todd was gonna tape up some old broken thing at the house.  Todd said, yeah I know, I’ve been meaning to put it in the van but I keep getting side tracked.  As he walked away, he thought, sometimes the best way to hide something is to just leave it right out in the open. 

He was observant every time he approached the ovens to be sure the same people were not still in the area.  He went in each time and put the tape in the paint storage cabinet in an old paint can and put a rag in on top of it.  He was surprised that Cyrus didn’t have any cameras down in that area, but then again, there was nothing of any value down there and there were no computers or anything else that could be used to breach security.   

The guards patrolled the area but only once or twice daily, and they were very sloppy about it.  Everyone was so terrified of Cyrus that no one dared do anything wrong anyway.  He had always terminated wrong doers in the past and now he had set a precedent that no one dared to test.  It was very late now and he was exhausted, he went to his room and fell asleep reading a how to book about restoring antique gasoline powered hotrods.

The next morning Alice woke early knowing that she had to get up and face another long day.  She knew Glitch and Cyrus would both be expecting results from the investigation into the
dysfunctional clones.  She would need to make some progress in order to keep Cyrus from killing several people, just to amuse himself. 

As she tried to roll over she realized she was tangled in the sheets and Toby was laying on them.  She gave it a hearty yank and got enough slack to get free, Toby let out a weird noise and went back to heavy breathing that was near to a snore.  As she got up off the bed she nearly let out a little scream but managed to hold it in.  She was painfully sore, the muscles in her legs and arms and the small of her back were all hurting.  She giggled a little bit as she attempted to walk it off on the way to the shower.  It had been years since she woke up after a wild night of sex with so many sore muscles, it must have been more physical than she realized while doing it.  She took a hot shower to loosen up and was almost ready when Glitch’s voice came over her intercom.
         “Miss Covings, are you up?”  She went to the intercom and mashed the talk button.     

“Yes Glitch, I am” she answered reluctantly into the thin vertical slits on the old brass plate.
         “I’ll be there shortly,” she added.
         “Yes,” Glitch’s voice crackled back, “see that you are, we have much to do.” 

She figured that would happen.  Glitch wouldn’t rest until he had answers about the clones not being so talkative while Cyrus was coercing them. 

She finished getting ready and jumped on top of Toby and woke him up.  She laid on top of him for a minute and then kissed his face all over.  He opened his eyes and smiled up at her.     

“Oh my god, that was some night huh?”
         “It sure was,” she said, as she got up off of him and went to the mirror to fix her hair. 

He got up and stretched and she saw him wince in the mirror.
         “Ouch! oh man, my back, damn, what did we do?” 

Alice spun around, grabbed him and kissed him passionately.
         “I have to go stud, but I’ll see you at lunch if you’re down there.”
         “Okay,” he said as he continued to stretch his back and make awful faces.  She hurried out the door and went down to the kitchen to grab some breakfast. 

She got to the lab by 6:45 a.m., way too early as far as she was concerned.  She was relieved to find only Glitch inside when she
arrived, she had no desire to listen to that lunatic Cyrus ranting this early in the morning.  Glitch was already leaning over one of the more powerful microscopes examining the chip he had removed from the brain of clone number one.  He motioned Alice over to look at it.