Chapter 1

I was leading my group of Afghani irregulars through the mountain pass on a sort of impromptu hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Word had come down from HQ that he might be hiding in a cave complex located to our northwest. So what if that was nominally part of Pakistan? The border out here in the boondocks was so nebulous that I doubt that a surveying team could find the actual line. Anyway, I was the only Special Ops. man who happened to be at the CP when the word came down, so I grabbed the only people at hand to help me look. They were barely trained, though they were intimately familiar with their AK-47s. They certainly spent more time and expended more love on them than they did their wives!

Anyway, we came to a narrow trail that would only allow one person through at a time, so I told my squad to follow behind me, but not too close, in case I tripped a mine. They didn't require much persuading to follow this precaution, so I stepped of as carefully as I could to follow the trail. I have no idea whether I triggered a trip wire or if it was remotely controlled, but whatever it was, there was a tremendous explosion—overkill, if there ever was one. Anyway, it seemed like half the mountain side came down on me, and I was left with my head, my left arm, and part of my torso sticking out of a jumble of rock. Just before I passed out, I heard some rifle fire and some yelling, so I am sure that the rest of my little band of merry men took off for places unknown.

When I woke up, I was in an obvious hospital room, but one nothing like I had ever seen before. There were computer monitors all around me with displays of data and graphs on all of them, and some were pinging on a regular basis. My whole body was covered by a white sheet, and only my head was sticking out. A figure dressed like a female nurse was standing beside me, and spoke as soon as I woke up, "Sgt. Hamilton Specter, you are in a hospital where we are about to restore you to health, but you need to answer some questions, first.

"The first thing I need to do is to show you my true form. What you are seeing is only a computer-generated hologram. We wanted to protect you from too much shock as you regained consciousness, so my first appearance was as a normal human. Now, watch closely as I morph into my normal form."

The nurse lost the white uniform and stood before me as a nude human woman. She slowly grew a little shorter and thicker, and her breasts developed two nipples, each one about two inches long. The change made me think of a cow. I suddenly realized that she must be able to read my mind, because she giggled when that thought surfaced. Her skin turned a beautiful shade of green and she thanked me when she detected that thought. Her head almost doubled in size and she now looked at me with four eyes, her nose was just a slit, and her mouth was a lipless hole in the lower part of her face. Instead of hair, she had tentacles which continually writhed about on her head. I later found out that those tentacles were a form of sense organ that detected sound.

Her arms and legs thickened to about twice Earth normal and I saw that her hands had four fingers and two opposable thumbs. I couldn't see her feet, so I'll leave them off the list for now. Clothes now formed about her and she was wearing a sort of obi which was very attractive on her.

We want you to become an agent for us. You would become a kind of cosmic "James Bond." No, you would not be "Agent 007," since you would be 253 in the series. A giggle went with this statement. You would not be just a spy, but an instigator of change. We would want you to make adjustments in a society so that it would be a happier, more pleasant place to live. We, my species, has a strong altruistic streak, and that is the reason for doing what we do.

We have almost unlimited technology and resources because we have access to the infinity of universes. On the other hand, we have an unlimited opportunity to do good because of this same infinity of universes.

I know that you are wondering why we would choose you to be one of our agents. Well, the answer is relatively simple: you have this same altruism buried within you, you have extensive training in the kind of work we want done, and you are human, which means that you have the peculiar combination of will and drive necessary to succeed when the odds appear to be against you. So, what do you say?

Well, Uleen, I can't see that I have any realistic choice other than to join you. You have another recruit. When does the operation start?

That was when the lights went out. When I came to my senses, I had a new body, externally identical to my former one back on Earth. I was 6'-1" tall, weighed 183 pounds, and had dark hair and eyes. Some people would have called me handsome, but I thought of myself as looking pretty ordinary. The first thing I asked was about my sex life.

Ham, we know that you have always enjoyed an active sex life while off duty, so we have preserved that in your new body. We were able to install a complete set of equipment, and you are as fertile as you ever were. Your semen carries exactly the same DNA you had before, so any children you father will be exactly as they would have been before your little dust up.

Now, to another point. You now have installed within your body an AI which can answer any question that we can. You only have to think directly to it, just as if you were talking to someone. Give it a try, now, if you please.

My training was intense, but not rushed. These people, who called themselves The Center, I don't know why, but I don't really care, have complete control of time travel, trans-universe travel, and space transport. In other words, they can put me down at any time or any place that they want. I spent five years in training, though, thanks to my immortal body, I could easily spare the time and hardly noticed it.

There was some time for R&R, and I had a chance to determine that my rebuilt sex equipment lived up to the advertisement. To my delight, I discovered that I could change the length and diameter of my cock to fit the available receptacle. The women loved that trick!

My first assignment was a relatively easy one. I was sent to Earth on an assignment to stop the murder of a group of Cro-Magnons by a cave bear that wanted to take over their cave home. Other than a practice run for me, the need for this trip was strictly to keep some people from being killed by a quirk of chance.

Honeybunch modified my body to resemble the cave men so that I would not frighten them when I showed up. My weapons consisted of an atlatl, a special kind of throwing spear that the locals were not familiar with, and a titanium knife with a monomolecular blade that would never dull and was even sharper than a flint knife. My knife looked like a flint knife, so that it would not obviously be "magic."