20 Years Earlier...
Of the five men standing just short of the edge of Sault's Bluff Adam stood out most of all. Not only because of his attire; white cotton drawstring pants, too short for his towering frame; a white tee shirt pulled tightly to his heavily muscled torso; and slippers that resembled those of someone interned in a hospital; but because of his statuesque physique, and Adonis like features.
The others, three soldiers dressed in full combat gear, and doctor Nolan Graham, Adam's creator, surrounded him only a few yards from the still idling Humvee they had just exited. To the casual observer this appeared to be some sort of escort duty or guard detail the way the soldiers stood vigilant over the good doctor, and Adam. The truth was that of the five men only Adam knew the dire purpose of this excursion from the only home he'd known during his brief time in existence—the secret government genetics research facility known as The New Eden Center.
In that time Adam had far exceeded all of his creator's expectations, except one—he wasn't a soldier. Physically he could be a great soldier having been gifted with tremendous strength, exceptional reflexes, and heightened senses, but he lacked the will to fight.
The unintended consequence of his genetically engineered body and brain was his burgeoning psychic abilities. From nearly the instant Adam had drawn his first breath he displayed mental abilities well beyond human capabilities. Early brain scans had revealed elevated activity in virtually his entire brain. Heightened intuition quickly gave way to clairvoyance, then full blown telepathic abilities, psychokinesis, dowsing, precognition, and many other abilities quickly manifested themselves much to the delight of Doctor Nolan Graham—and much to the displeasure of the base commander, Major Langdon Thomas Bradford.
Major Bradford's mission was to genetically engineer the perfect living military machine, to which end he was given full autonomy and a nearly limitless budget to accomplish this task. Although Dr. Graham and his team were the brains behind this project they had all been hand picked by the Major, a fact he reminded them of quite often... "I brought you into this facility, Nolan ... I can put you out!"
Their first attempt had taken nearly five years and had delivered a beast of an individual with a vicious spirit that bordered on animalistic. He possessed the physical prowess, exceptional intelligence, and warrior instinct that Major Bradford desired, but with such a sinister unpredictable demeanor he eventually proved to be untrustworthy and was deemed a failure.
Major Bradford had insisted the "creature", as the Major was fond of referring to him as, be terminated. But Nolan had pleaded with Bradford to spare him under the auspices that he, the Doctor, might be able to reprogram him in the future. With a great deal of trepidation Major Bradford relented his position and allowed the creature to live as long as he was housed in the recesses of the base. The Major made it clear that Dr. Graham would be entirely responsible for his well being and... "If anything, anything at all happened to just one of the inhabitants of my facility because of that creature I will exterminate him myself, and perhaps you, Dr. Graham, as well!"
Those words had given pause to Dr. Graham's decision, and had stuck with him throughout the next two and a half years as they developed Adam, but he had never regretted his decision, and couldn't foresee a time that he would.
Of that fact alone, he would be mistaken...
And here they were two and a half years later faced with yet another "creature", and yet another failure in Major Bradford's opinion. This time... "he would NOT make the same mistake!" While Adam was different, and not the sinister beast that their first creation had proven to be, he still posed a threat, albeit a much more complicated, and potentially much more dangerous threat to his facility.
The Major had made the decision to terminate Adam immediately, but he knew that no one could know his fate until that absolute final moment; not the doctor, not the escorts, and certainly not the man pulling the trigger.
Bradford had purposely kept his distance from Adam in hopes that he would not get a sense of what was about to happen. The Major informed Dr. Graham that he wanted him and three escorts to take Adam off base to a secluded area to measure his response to off base stimuli. He preceded to choose the escorts, two from Graham's personal detachment, who were intimately involved with the Adam project, and had a "relationship" with Adam, and the third, his most trusted subordinate, Captain Robert "Bob" Morgan—he would be the trigger man.
Each soldier was assigned a COM set through which they would receive simultaneous communications: two to STAND DOWN, and one to TERMINATE ADAM immediately. It was Bradford's hope that he acted quickly enough for this to play out as it needs to.
Now, on the bluff the three COM's chirp to life in unison and a fraction of a second later deliver their directive to their respective soldiers.
While the plan was well conceived, and the execution perfection, no one could have foreseen the conclusion—not even Adam. Adam's abilities had developed to such a level that he not only knew what was going to happen, he knew it before Major Bradford's decision had even been made. Adam was content to accept his fate—whatever that fate may be. He would allow this scenario to play out as the Major had envisioned.
Although Adam had already seen the whole ordeal play out in his mind, he hadn't seen the conclusion. And he wanted to know how it ended. He saw the COM message to each of the soldiers. He saw two soldiers confused by their apparent orders to stand down. He saw Robert Morgan's conflicted expression as he drew his pistol and raised it toward Adam's head. He saw the horrific expression on Nolan Graham's face, the man whom Adam regarded as his father, when the Captain raised his weapon and leveled it at Adam's head. He saw the depth of the confusion deepen on the faces of the two soldiers standing down as the situation unfolded before their eyes—and in his mind he heard the shot—then nothing.
As the circumstances Adam had seen in his mind came to fruition in the real world there was one thing Adam could not have experienced in his mind—the emotions. That was why he hadn't seen the culmination of events—because it wasn't a foregone conclusion.
In the few days since Adam's creation he had developed many magnificent abilities. Among them, empathy was the most confusing because the range of emotion he experienced had been confined to a small group of stoic military men and scientists.
Now, in the midst of this exigency, the flood of emotions was overwhelming, and time—stands still. The bullet stops dead in the chamber, and Dr. Graham and soldiers are frozen.
Adam absorbs the deluge of unfamiliar emotions that are bombarding him; fear, anger, confusion, and sadness radiate from the men surrounding him. With time still frozen around him Adam steps away from the bullet's inevitable path. As he moves amongst the men experiencing and deciphering their emotional states, he begins to believe there is so much more that he could accomplish if he lives. Adam sees this as an awakening. Not only is he able to read their emotions, but he truly understands because he is reading their minds; making their memories, and their knowledge, his own.
As he walks toward the bluffs edge and away from the small group of men frozen in time behind him he feels yet another surge of emotion; an even broader range of familiar, and unfamiliar sensations.
Then, having reached the edge of the bluff, he be holds the source—the city of Sault Ste Marie.
No comments:
Post a Comment