Chapter 5

Margaret sat quietly thinking over the fantastic tale she'd just heard. I could see in her expression that she didn't just buy it out of hand but she wasn't blowing it off either. My resemblance to the Brent she knew was just too close. Now was the time to hit her with irrefutable evidence. Hex had been sitting in the grass and watching us carefully from about twenty yards away. I looked at her and nodded. She stood and came toward us.

"Margaret," I said, "I'd like you to meet Hex."

She looked up at the tall figure standing in front of her and said, "This young man who calls himself Brent Baum tells me you don't look at all like you appear. I don't suppose you'd care to demonstrate."

Hex waited until a lone runner had jogged past and disappeared around a curve before she took the control device from inside her shirt. "Only for a few seconds. I'm sure you can appreciate how risky it is."

She pushed the buttons, instantly became herself, stood there for about five seconds and pushed the buttons again. Margaret's hand was at her heart and her wide eyes stared at the changeling.

"Oh my god, it's true!"

Hex sat beside her and took her hands. "Margaret, everything Brent has said is true. Over the next few years, your world is going to change the way it perceives itself and everything else. We need mature, responsible and intelligent people like you and Brent to help Earth through its transition into the multiverse. Between what I've learned of you through direct observation and what I've learned from Brent, I believe the two of you are ideally suited to the task. I'm asking you to accept this role and to go through the necessary preparation to carry it out."

"You mean the regeneration."

"Yes, that and a lot of training."

"What you're describing is an impossible task for the likes of Brent and me. You're going to need an army of ambassadors to accomplish such a monumental undertaking."

"Exactly right, Margaret. It will be up to us; you, Brent and I to recruit that army and coordinate their efforts to carry out that monumental undertaking. I believe you have a saying, 'All politics is local.' That's where we need your expertise. Because we're talking about billions of people being affected, we have to work with powerful people in the political sphere but we know those in power have a strong inclination to manipulate knowledge and make decisions that suit their own needs. It's going to be your job to keep us focused on the masses."

Margaret laughed, "You must think more of my old brain than I do. I'm afraid it isn't nearly as quick and agile as it used to be. Will your 'regeneration' be able to repair all the neurologic and cognitive degradation that has settled in over the years?"

"It will not only repair any damaged areas, it will drastically improve your learning capacity. Roughly speaking, you can count on improving your IQ by a factor of two."

"Well that might be interesting. And what if I agree to go through your process and then decide not to be one of your ambassadors?"

"Then you will be brought home and someone else will be found. We're not on any kind of deadline here. Returning would take some serious readjustment on your part though, since the changes in your body can't be reversed. Until the multiverse becomes common knowledge, and that could take many years, you'd probably have to live elsewhere as a different person to avoid the inevitable interest in the new you."

Margaret looked back and forth between Hex and I for several seconds as she considered her future then, taking a deep breath, reached over to take my hand. "Brent, if you don't mind my saying, you're ridiculously slow when it comes to courting a lady. I've been waiting for you to ask me out for over two years now. I suppose I should have come right out and asked you but I'm afraid I'm rather old-fashioned about things like that. I'd resigned myself to being a casual friend when you surprised me by inviting me to dinner yesterday. I finally had some hope that I wouldn't be alone in my dotage. So here's the deal; if you and Hex promise we'll stay together as a team, I'll agree."

I leaned forward and kissed her on her cheek and vowed, "Margaret, it's going to be the two of us or neither of us."

Hex stood and clapped her hands together. "Done and done! If you're ready, we can be on our way."

Margaret wasn't prepared to act so quickly. "What? You mean now?"

"Of course, now. I see no reason to delay, do you?"

"Well, I just thought there would be time to see to some things at home before I popped out of existence."

"Not necessary because you can pop back into existence at this exact same moment in time whenever you wish. Brent will explain it all to you." Looking over to me, Hex said, "You know what to do, Brent. Shall we?"

I tapped the infinity icon flashing on my iPad and took Margaret's hand.

Hum. Light. Flash. And there we were, all sitting on the stone bench.

The four of us sat facing each other over the low table in my living quarters; Margaret, Estron, Hex and myself. I munched on the last of the scones as Estron was explaining the basics of the regeneration process.

"After you are chemically sedated, all hair is shaved, your alimentary canal is flushed clean and you are immersed in a liquid that begins making changes to your body tissues. At the same time, every aspect of what makes you what you are will be scanned and analyzed. That includes all the bacteria that cohabit your body. When your optimum self is determined, the genetic composition in a large dose of what you call stem cells is programmed accordingly and introduced intravenously. Concurrently, millions of nanobots will be added to guide the stem cells to appropriate areas of your body and stimulate the generation of new tissues to replace the old and damaged tissue being eliminated. If there is anything in particular you would like to change about yourself, this would be the time to ask. We may or may not be able to satisfy your wishes."

Margaret thought for a moment and said, "The only thing that comes to mind is losing a lot of old unpleasant memories but I don't suppose that's possible, is it?"

"In fact, it is possible but I would caution against it. Unpleasant events in our lives often have more influence over how we develop and mature than pleasant ones. Those memories may seem a burden but they will steer you away from repeating past mistakes. What will change automatically is your ability to deal with those memories analytically rather than emotionally. They will no longer generate feelings of remorse or embarrassment."

"Yes," she agreed, "I see your point. Well, in that case, I suppose there's no time like the present to get this show on the road." Turning to me, she took my hands and said, "I want to see you standing right beside me when I wake up. Promise?"

"Promise!"

We entered the small room off the bedroom where I woke from my own regeneration. Estron handed Margaret a small glass of some liquid and asked her to drink it down. She grunted with pain as we helped her onto the table and laid her back in a supine position.

"Estron," she sighed, "Tell me this is the last time I'll feel this damnable pain in my hip!"

"You have my word," he promised.

As she began to fade out, I said, "See you soon, Margaret," and leaned down to give her a kiss. She turned her head presenting her cheek but I wouldn't have it. I took the lovely visage I'd learned to adore in my hands and kissed her full on the lips. She had a smile on her face when her eyes closed.

I turned to Estron and asked, "Since I'm going to be your student, will I be allowed to watch her regeneration take place?"

He waved his hands back and forth vigorously and answered, "Absolutely not! There are thousands of regenerations taking place in this building at any given time and you will have ample opportunity to study many of them. It is not a pretty thing to see. The next time you see Margaret, you do not want to have a picture of what she looked like half way through the process burned into your brain. Regeneration technicians are never allowed to observe those close to them. Besides, you still have several months of language studies before you even begin learning about regeneration."

"Of course. Please excuse the dumb question."

No doubt it had a lot to do with my enhanced learning capacity but speaking Common turned out to be amazingly easy to master. It's like they took all the languages in the multiverse and put them through a filter to eliminate all the ridiculous baggage languages take on during their evolution, then took the most descriptive terms from each and combined them into a single tongue. Naturally, each world added back colloquialisms of their own but at least they started with a common base that had very clear and logical rules of construction and spelling. I had to begin with a whole new alphabet of thirty-four characters and learn to think of numbers in terms of base eight but once that was mastered, everything else began to fall into place quickly.

The process went faster than I'd expected because of my intellectual improvement. I didn't seem to forget anything between lessons and in a month, Hex and I could carry on a simple conversation in Common. My biggest difficulty was training my mouth, tongue and breath control to make sounds that human mouths hadn't evolved to make. She explained that the physiologic differences between species' speaking apparatus was what often made it possible to identify the home world of someone by sound alone. I gained a whole new appreciation for her skill at speaking American English without a trace of an accent. She could have been a news anchor in Chicago.

Two months into my classes, I began learning the technical language of the regeneration techs and a month after that, I found myself sitting in Regeneration 101 classes. Estron was the head honcho so he wasn't much involved in teaching the basic stuff; that was handled by their version of a TA. I wouldn't be studying with the boss for some time yet.

My first instructor in the basic sciences behind regeneration was a creature that couldn't be described as humanoid in any respect. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say it evolved from something like a toad. The one meter-high body was round and bloated-looking, the legs were short and squat, the arms just long enough for the digits to clasp in front of its chest. The head sat directly on the shoulders with no apparent neck between them. Apparently, it was incapable of making the sounds necessary to speak Common and it wore a small device attached directly below its mouth that translated its various chitters, chatters, clicks, hums and croaks into an electronic voice that we students (there were four of us) heard through overhead speakers.

It took a couple of days of class before I got past staring at the instructor. It was apparently sexless so I didn't know whether to call it a he or a she but for the sake of convenience, I'll use 'he'. He patiently explained through the translator that we could refer to him as Rummpumm. No doubt, the poor fellow had to endure this clumsy adjustment with every new class.

Regardless of his peculiar appearance, he was quite a brilliant scientist in his own right and proved to be the best instructor in the entire program, even better than Estron himself who had a tendency to be a little impatient. There was no such thing as a dumb question and if a student was struggling with a concept, he wouldn't go on with the lesson until it was clearly understood by all. Since all the students had been through the regeneration process and therefore had enhanced learning capacity, progress was rapid. We were well advanced into our training by the time Margaret was ready to be weaned from the tank.

Hex and I were waiting in the small blue room when a panel slid open and Estron wheeled the table in. Margaret was lying on her back covered with a blue cloth, her new wavy black hair wet and plastered to her skull. The sharp smell of the nutrient chemical brought back memories.

I stepped up to the table and looked down at a stunningly beautiful face that was very strange and very familiar at the same time. Her eyes fluttered open when I laid the palm of my hand against her cheek.

She smiled up at me and said, "Hello, Brent. Is it time to stick a fork in me?"

"It's time, Margaret. You're done to perfection."

She glanced at Estron, Hex then back to me. "I take it you approve?"

"I always have. What's more important is that you're going to approve. You're absolutely gorgeous!"

She lifted her right leg and flexed the knee, then did the same with the left one. A grin spread across her face as she sighed, "It's gone! No more pain!" Turning to Estron, she said, "Even if I'd turned out looking like an ogre, I'd be thankful for that alone."

Estron nodded and said, "I believe you will be pleased with the rest of the results as well. Shall we have a look?"

"I can hardly wait!"

"Um, would you like me to step out?" I asked. "You're not wearing anything under that sheet."