Chapter 5

Will had no way of knowing that Dr. Robinson was under pressure to produce at least one working prototype. If he had known, it might have made some difference in the way he proceeded - at least until he discovered the fates of the other prototypes.

As it was, he spent hours on end exploring the strange visions, odors and sounds being routed to his brain from the artificial sensors implanted in his body.

Once a day, Carlos would appear and take him to the gym for a workout. Will went along, partly because he needed to get his atrophied muscles back into some kind of shape, and partly because he felt an obligation to try to make the program successful. He was so engrossed in learning how to use his new sensors, however, that he reluctantly came out of the 'trance' of exploration only long enough to complete the workout or eat a meal, then dove headfirst back into exploring his new world. So distracted was he that Will never noticed the absence of the other prototypes, and barely registered the fact that he was doing such amazing things as bicep exercises using a modified leg press machine.

He quickly discovered that the optical sensors were of very limited use. While they allowed him to 'see' things in the infrared and ultraviolet ranges, they were more of a distraction than a help. The only way he could isolate the artificial inputs from his natural sight was to close his eyes, which left him feeling very vulnerable. The other problem was figuring out where an image originated in relation to himself. The scientists and engineers had depended on his body treating the inputs as sight, and knowing automatically where the images came from, rather than having the computer tell him. Since his body had no way to automatically correlate the implanted position of the sensors with its own spatial orientation, and there was no positive method of determining which sensor provided which image, even with his eyes closed, he could not find a way to make sense of what he was seeing.

He discovered that by turning on only the sensors 'looking' in a particular direction, he could gain some use from the implants, but it was not the 'all-seeing eye' envisioned by the scientists. He achieved what he considered the optimum use of the capability by disabling all the sensors except those that looked forward, and using them to overlay and enhance his natural vision.

Auditory sensors were more useful since the scientists, in a flash of inspiration, had decided to take advantage of his brain's natural ability to locate sounds by placing all of the sensors on the sides of his body and connecting them to the auditory centers of the brain that responded to left and right. In this way, he was able to hear such minute sounds as the mice that scurried through the unseen spaces between the walls of his room and the rock from which the space was dug. He found he could hear subsonic rumblings from the rock that surrounded the complex as well as supersonic squeals from electronic equipment. The additional sensors also made it possible for him to locate things by sound. Even inanimate objects told him of their whereabouts and approximate density by the sound they reflected.

Dr. Robinson came by once a day to check on his progress, and was heartened to see that his physical enhancements seemed to be working perfectly. She was more than a little disappointed by the relative ineffectiveness of the optical sensors, but seemed bouyed when he reported his results with the auditory inputs.

"And what about the emissions sensors?" She asked after hearing the news about his hearing.

"I've been saving those for last." He replied, seeming to her a little distracted, even though his answers were lucid and responsive. "Those are totally foreign signals, and I suspect will be the hardest to integrate."

"Well, keep going, Ten." She said. "So far you've made the best showing of all, and we're counting on you to prove the success of this program."

Will got a sweet-sour scent and the aura he had grown accustomed to seeing overlaid on people's images turned a mixture of pastel green and translucent brown around Dr. Robinson. Somehow, he knew she was holding something back, but then, everyone around him was keeping secrets.

Never mind. He was so eager to get back to his exploration that he hardly acknowledged the woman's departure.

Will reclined on his bed, closed his eyes, turned off all sensors, then gave the mental command to activate the emissions sensors at twenty percent. A dim glow appeared, following almost straight lines through what must have been the walls of his chamber. He struggled for a moment with the spatial orientation, then realized that he must be seeing the electrical wires that fed the lights and outlets in his room. A quick peek with his eyes confirmed his deduction.

Now this could be useful! He ordered the embedded microprocessor in his brain to raise the input level to fifty percent, noting an increase in the strength and clarity of the images. Gradually, he raised the level until the sensors were operating at a hundred percent.

As the strength of the signals increased, so did the range of his perception. The entire underground complex that had been his home for almost a year appeared as a complex wireframe structure wherein tunnels, rooms and other spaces were sketched in as bright outlines by the electrical wiring in the walls. Dimmer, differently colored lines must have represented communication or some other electronic wiring. He could make out the shapes of computer circuitry by the currents flowing within them and the emissions of their displays.

What captured Will's interest most, however, was the images of living beings within the compound. Here, he recognized the aura of Dr. Robinson, seething with worried colors and smelling of confusion and concern. There scurried the bright little body of a mouse. Further away, in what seemed to be a storage space, a rat gnawed at the edge of something that he could see only by its effect on the energies surrounding it. He focussed his attention and found that by concentrating, he could make out the shape of a crate containing something whose shape he couldn't recognize.

Will was fascinated by what he was seeing. The resolution of these inputs seemed limitless! Far above, on the surface of the desert, he could barely make out the glowing shapes of a coyote and a rattlesnake as they went about their daily struggle for survival.

Something seemed to be limiting his ability to see further, and at first, he thought the batteries in the small power supply they allowed him when he wasn't working out might be running low. With that thought, his attention shifted to his own body. What he 'saw' gave him pause. His own body 'looked' much different than those of the other people in the complex. Instead of the harmony of energy flows he had 'seen' in each of them, his body was a crazy quilt of mismatched energy flows.

His mind focussed in on one area of his left arm where a collision of such energies seemed to be occurring. He had been having trouble with that arm during his workouts, though nothing serious enough that he wanted to take a chance of undergoing more surgery to have it corrected, so he had not mentioned it to anyone else.

Like a zoom lense on a camera, his 'vision' narrowed in on the trouble spot. There! He thought. That connection is wrong! This should be over here... To his astonishment, a tongue of some kind of energy reached into the trouble spot and changed the connection! When it withdrew, the connection seemed 'right' and energy flowed smoothly through it.

Was it possible that he had just performed some kind of surgery on himself, just by thinking about what needed to be done? Experimentally, Will moved his arm about. The expected twinge never occurred! Still skeptical, Will went looking for other areas that weren't 'right.'

He had no idea how long he had been 'fixing' himself, but Will began to realize that certain kinds of changes strengthened his perceptions, brightening the colors of the perceived energy flows and sharpening his focus. Even inanimate objects were easy to 'see' now. He had finished 'repairing' all the 'wrongness' in his body, including a couple of things that were apparently there before he started the program, though how he knew this, he couldn't say. There was one big, tangled mess in his brain that he realized was the implanted microprocessor and its connections to his brain.

Will had been avoiding this area out of fear that he would correct a 'wrongness' and no longer be able to use this new ability. As if coming out of a trance, Will sat up on the bed. As he did, a rain of small objects fell from his body. Picking one up at random, he stared at it in astonishment. He had apparently spent the last few hours removing most of his implants, though how that could be, he had no idea. There was no blood, no scarring. Even the scars that had been left from the surgery had disappeared! Experimentally, he stood, and with his left arm, lifted the steel framed bed from the floor. If anything, his strength seemed to have increased! He had no idea what he had done, but apparently it hadn't diminished the effectiveness of most of his functions.

A quick experiment showed no significant change in his optical capabilities, but his auditory functions seemed to work slightly better!

Suddenly, Will realized that he was famished. Sometime during his journey, someone had placed a tray of food on the table inside the door. Breakfast! Had he been away that long?

Will devoured the food on the tray, and finally settled back to think about what had happened. How was he going to explain the fact that many of his implants now lay scattered around the bed and on the floor of his cell? Then another realization hit him. These abilities went far beyond what the program had been aiming for, and if they became known, Will would soon become a guinea pig as they tried to figure out how he did what he did and how to replicate it. That was not what he signed on for.

Quickly, he gathered all the loose plastic and metal bits, shaking the bedding to be sure he got them all, then looked around for a place to hide them. The bed was no good, because someone would come in and change the sheets as soon as he left with Carlos for his workout. He had no locker in this room, nowhere to keep personal items. He thought of flushing them down the toilet, but didn't think many of them would make journey, and would just result in them sending someone in to see why the toilet was clogged.

He sat, hands full of 'enhancements' and wondered what to do. Suddenly, it came to him. Somehow, as he was working on himself, he had 'moved' these things outside his body without disturbing the surrounding flesh. Remembering the mice behind the walls, he wondered if he could 'move' the parts into the empty space between the wall of the room and the rock of the tunnel complex. Closing his eyes, he could still see the shapes of the devices heaped in his hands. Selecting one of them, he sought to remember, in the absence of 'wrongness' how to change the position of the object. He remembered, now, that this particular piece had been in his leg, but its energy had been slightly different there. Why? He moved his hands and the energy of the piece changed subtly, minutely. He returned his hands to their original position and the energy of the piece returned to its former state.

Positional energy? Suddenly, he realized that it was the surrounding energies that changed with the position of the object. When he had 'fixed' it, he had applied a small amount of energy to the device that had changed its relationship with the surrounding energies, making it impossible for the object to exist where it was, so it had disappeared and reappeared in the 'right' location for the new energy pattern.

Could he 'move' the device to a specific location? Will thought of the space behind the wall where he had perceived the mouse earlier, and reached out to the object on which his attention had been focussed. Without fuss, the device's energy disappeared from the pile in his hands, and reappeared at the spot he had been thinking about. His eyes confirmed that it was no longer in his hands, but could he be sure it had gone where he intended? After all, these senses and abilities were very new.

Will considered doing an experiment by 'moving' things within the room, but the rattling of a key in the lock told him he didn't have time. Quickly, mentally crossing his fingers, he concentrated once more on moving the entire pile of objects to the space behind the wall, just above the apparent location of the first piece, lest he try to have two objects occupying the same space. That could be disastrous!

Sure enough, as the door swung inward he heard a faint rattle in the wall as if something had fallen. He dropped his empty hands into his lap.

"Okay, Ten," Carlos called as his smiling face appeared around the door, "let's see if you're making any progress!"

As frustrating as it was to be interrupted in the midst of his explorations, Will determined not to give anyone any clues about his unexpected abilities. Carlos replaced his battery pack with the full-sized pack he used when exercising and walked with Will to the Gym.

Will's enhanced muscles seemed to have benefited from his repairs to the extent that he was lifting about twenty percent more and doing more reps than the day before. Carlos was so excited about his progress that he called Dr. Robinson in to see his prize pupil. Too late, Will wished he had thought to fake it. Shit! He thought, almost expecting Karen to admonish him for even thinking such language where Stacy might hear it. Now I'm going to have to show off for a while.