Chapter 2

I'd expected to be led to some type of landing craft or some such but it was nothing like that at all. In fact it was decidedly a non-event, sensation wise at least. It happened in the blink of an eye you might say, especially since so many others have said it before. Actually, my eyes were the only things that let me know anything had happened. Suddenly I was somewhere else. It was a place I recognized at once but never in my wildest had I envisioned being here.

We were in the Oval Office and there behind the desk was Madam President, Nancy Pelosi. She didn't look all that presidential though - not impressive or awe inspiring at all. In fact my first read on her mood was trepidation. It reminded me of an old saying. She looked like a kid who'd been spanked for pootin'.

Shikictaawa must have called ahead, because Nancy had obviously been expecting this visit. Not only that but there were no Secret Service personnel with us in the closed office. Apparently the space men had put the fear of God into Nancy and company.

"Mrs Pelosi, this is Jake Gordon. Jake is our selection for off planet training," Shikictaawa said.

"I'm pleased to me you Mr Gordon. What branch of the service are you in?" the first female POTUS asked.

"I'm not in any branch of any service," I said, and her look of distress advanced alarmingly.

"I don't know how this will be received by our military leaders," she said, even though I could tell she didn't want to say a thing.

"Do not trouble yourself with those details. If it's necessary we will explain things to them for you. I have no doubt they will enjoy interacting with Jack much more than they would the alternative," Shikictaawa said, and it didn't take a genius to see that his manner with Nancy was not nearly as nice as it had been with me.

"For now, what kind of progress are you making with adapting the technology we shared into your worldwide weapons systems?" he asked.

"As I expected, resistance is widespread, but after your earlier demonstrations the governments are not causing it. Most of the friction is coming from large corporations. They are complaining about how they'll justify it to their shareholders. Of course that's just for appearances, they're really just jockeying for positions to make more profit," she said.

"Can you name what I think you call a ring leader? Someone who would make the biggest impression on the others if he or she were to lose their head, literally?" Shikictaawa asked.

"Oh yes. Mr Ichiro, the real power behind the throne at Sony. He is the main fly in our ointment. He takes pride in coming up with schemes like the Sony Rootkit and them blaming them on his current CEO if they backfire. No matter how much shit he causes to be thrown around, none of it ever sticks to him," Madam President said.

"Maybe he would be more malleable if he were a head shorter," Shikictaawa said.

"May I make a suggestion?" I asked.

"Certainly," Shikictaawa said.

"Since you can do such wonders with medical science, I recommend you remove his penis, testicles, pubic hair and trousers. He sounds like a man who would be very sensitive to something like that, as if there were a man anywhere on earth that wouldn't be. Making that type of example of him and promising more of the same for others who don't toe the line might just help things along. Doing it in a place with good news coverage would probably help," I said.

"I like it," the President said, smiling for the first time since we'd come.

"Very well, we will make it so. Please let me know if you need more examples Nancy."

Another dose of whatever Shikictaawa had done to get us into the Oval Office put us somewhere else in a flash. It was another almost non-event but our new location was not in Washington or Kansas. I couldn't help myself. I had to ask.

"Where are we?"

"You are now aboard one of our ships. It is currently orbiting around the gas giant you call Jupiter," he said.

"I hope like hell you're going to teach us that trick."

"Yes, it could cure all your upcoming ills, today in fact, but if you were within fifty years of learning its secrets you wouldn't need our help at all. I'm afraid things will be a little more difficult. Still there is a possibility that some of your scientist can make the leap from a few things we'll be sharing with them. None of ours were able to though, in the time we learned the things we'll be sharing. This technology is roughly one hundred and fifty years beyond what will be revealed."

"Well if we don't get it, what's next for me?"

"Our medical people get the first hands on crack at you."

"I thought I'd already been spruced up along those lines," I said.

"You have been to some extent, but these last modifications might have made you alarming to some of your species," he said.

"Please tell me you're not going to turn me into some sort of cyborg."

"We're not, but some of the improvements will be similar. You will not appear any different than now, except we will complete the regression in apparent age.

"The most obvious difference you may notice will be the changes to your nervous system and your muscular efficiency. Your standard issue was fine for life on earth, but the changes we'll make will be very beneficial in combat.

"First we will speed up the travel time of your nerve impulses and we will also increase the speed of your muscles. You will actually be able to think and move faster. Putting it into perspective, after the treatments are done you should be able to run a one hundred meter dash in six seconds, and you should be easily able to bench press more than eleven hundred pounds."

"So I'll be able to operate in two thirds of the time the fastest human on earth can now, and I'll be fifty percent stronger?" I asked.

"That is approximately correct. Your speed of thought will also increase by a similar percentage."

"And these Ralla can think and move this fast?" I asked.

"Actually, they can't. They have discovered these techniques and use them, but they were not as fast as your people in the first place. Unfortunately they started out with a strength advantage. Since they have what amounts to the same techniques, the outcome is skewed both ways because of the relative starting positions. Your people will now have a slightly better advantage in speed while they have gained a greater advantage in strength. It is the same technique, almost exactly; some parts of it work better for your species and some work better for the Ralla." he said.

"If I'm the first one you are doing this to, how do you know?"

"You aren't the first one to receive this, or any of the treatments you'll get. You're merely the first that will live over it. After things started happening fast on your world, we took the opportunity to recruit some people to experiment on. We didn't need them for anything but the fine-tuning, and we placed them with others who died after we were done with them.

"Don't worry, they were individuals who weren't going to be allowed to live anyway. All of them would have been put to death on your planet if the extent of their crimes were fully known. In fact, many were what you would have called terrorist. A large number of them came from Afghanistan but we did take a few from almost every distinct group."

"That's better. I was feeling a little pensive about being the first to try this."

The next few days were some of the most boring I'd ever spent. I seemed to go from one machine to another for some sort of test or imaging or God only knew what. Every now and then they'd give me an injection with one of those air-gun type hypos. The only thing I really noticed was that my hair seemed to be coming in thicker and my face was starting to look younger. I assumed my beard would lose its gray too as it grew out.

Three weeks it took, exactly. On the final day they took me to a running track and timed me in a few hundred-meter dashes. As advertised my time was now around six seconds, usually just under it, into the very high fives. Though they hadn't mentioned it specifically my endurance was improved also. A sub three-minute mile was a piece of cake.

Otherwise I didn't really notice the changes. Oh, I felt a little more alert, and it did seem that it was easier to calculate in my head, but nothing that knocked my socks off.

Near the end of the day I learned about the implant I'd been given during my sleep, and hadn't noticed.

"Think of it as a wireless connection," Shikictaawa said.

"Maybe, but a connection to what?"

"To almost anything. It will help you control a vessel and even help you to aim a rifle, or pistol," he said.

"Mind elaborating a little?"

"Your weapons will all have computers built in. They are aimed with a laser that puts a dot on the target. The implant will inform the computer of the angle between the aim points of your eyes and it will calculate the distance to target from that, then it can adjust the angle between the laser and the rifle's barrel if necessary."

"You mean the rifle can be resighted for range?"

"Yes, and for windage too, but it will only happen if there is significant need. It wouldn't change for the difference between thirty and forty feet for instance."

"I see, but it makes me wonder about the weapons. I'd expected to have some type of laser pistol or something," I said.

"The phasers from Star Trek would be nice, wouldn't they?" he asked.

"Well yeh, they would. Are they too far advanced for us?" I asked.

"They are too far advanced for us. We don't know how to make them either," Shikictaawa said, and I got the impression that he'd have been laughing if they ever did such a thing.

I was surprised with the first advanced weapon I came into contact with. Hell, it looked a lot like an M1 Garand, and I said so.

"It is a lot like an M1, because that's what we used for a pattern. It is an excellent firearm, even in its unimproved state. Its action is one of the most trouble free we've ever encountered, especially for a species equivalent to yours.

"I'll admit that the magazine and reloading technique left a lot to be desired, but with a slight modification of the action to allow a little more width to work with, we were able to come up with an excellent removable magazine system.

"You might notice that it is more compact in other dimensions, especially length, and I'm sure you can tell it isn't made of the same type steel you're accustomed to."

"Is it stainless steel? It looks like it might be, but somehow it doesn't weight what it should if it were," I said.

"No, the metal has most of the best properties of stainless steel but is lighter than titanium. It is also much more durable. Even if it had an endless magazine, you couldn't fire it fast enough to make heat degrade the barrel."

"You mean it doesn't get hot? How can that be?"

"Oh it gets hot, but it is able to withstand the heat. I doubt that anything on earth now can cut it. Not even a plasma arc cutter," he said, and it made me wonder just how they made it in the first place, but I didn't bother to ask.

"I'll say one thing for it, the damned thing was accurate. I could sit down at a bench and do nearly as well as any earth made bench rest rifle I'd ever heard of. It would do half minute of angle and keep it up as long as I could. The barrel's heating seemed not to have any effect.