MuTerra

“Why,” Frank Bishop asked.

“Look,” Dr. Maddow said while pointing to the wound.

He did not need to be told to look, as he had not yet taken his eyes away. It did not seem to actually go in as deep as he would have thought, and by now, the blood had already stopped flowing.

“His response to, and recovery from, injury is like nothing ever seen before.”

“Where else did you do that?”

“The same place. His muscle is so dense, that injuries such as these will heal quite rapidly. Areas without significant musculature will heal faster than normal as well, but not like this.”

Frank Bishop saw no other puncture wounds and no telltale scars.

Knowing what was on his mind, Dr. Maddow continued, “The other two were yesterday,” he said as he took a cotton swab containing alcohol and rubbed it on the wound. When he was finished, the wound was little more than a red line. “Just imagine commanding an army such as him,” Maddow said pointing at Keith, “His ability to fight off the effects of sedation was astonishing. His system would function the same with any drug or chemical”

“One thing at a time… Are you sure he is going to be….normal. I mean, will there be any adverse side effects?”

“Not that I would predict, no. As far as normal goes, he will be functioning on a different level than any of us. That is part of the reason I want the follow up examinations. I will need to help him understand himself in a way he will accept, without explaining what it is that’s been done to him,” Dr. Maddow said.

?

Several minutes after his IV was removed, Keith regained consciousness. While reclaiming his senses, he sat upright in the bed. His father was at his side.

“How are you feeling,” Frank Bishop asked.

“Good,” Keith said while stretching his arms. “Great … actually.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Martin said you can go whenever you are ready.”

“Fine with me,” Keith said as he continued to move and stretch different parts of his body while getting to his feet. He really had never felt better, he was thinking to himself.

“I’d like to talk to you about what to tell Terri and your staff should they ask any questions,” he said while Keith was getting dressed.

Keith looked at him while waiting for him to explain.

“The procedure took a little longer than expected. Your absence has to be explained. It isn’t time yet to get people’s hopes up by telling them we are close to sending someone outside. I’d like to keep it simple for now, and for the near future. Some of these tunnels are quite lengthy. In fact, one of them was supposed to link up eventually with another facility on the other side of the mountain. It never materialized, but people do not need to know that now. Let’s say you were exploring that area to see if the passage was still open.”

“Okay. But I don’t see why a day away needs a creative explanation,” Keith said.

“It was a little longer than a day, and we can use this story again until it is time to reveal what we are doing to everyone” his father said before changing the topic, “Let’s just make sure you do what the doctor tells you, and we’ll go from there.”

?

When he returned to his apartment, Terri was not home. He looked through the cupboards to see what they had to eat. His appetite was immense. Once he started eating, he could not stop. The high protein food they created wasn’t the same as ‘all natural,’ but it was sure satisfying now, he thought as he ate. What he did not know was that he was compensating for the changes his body was already experiencing. Soon after he had finished eating, he heard the sound of the front door opening. He remained in the other room while waiting to surprise his wife. When she entered, he said, “Hey lady, if you don’t expect your husband anytime soon, I can think of something we could do to occupy the time.”

“Keith,” Terri said happily, as she walked to him and wrapped her arms around him.

“Hey honey, how are you?” he said returning her embrace.

“Me? How are you? I’ve missed you.”

“It hasn’t been that long baby,” he said thinking back to his conversation with his father. He held her close to him once again and turned to see the calendar they had hanging on the wall. As each day passed, they marked it with an X. There were five more X’s on the calendar than there were when he went to the lab.

“Is the calendar right honey?” he asked her.

“What? Oh, no, I just didn’t get to it today.” She walked over and marked off another day.

Six days, he thought. It seems like it was just yesterday.

“So, did you find anything on your hike,” she asked as she started to change from her work clothes.

He sat on the bed. “No. But I may need to go out again to explore further.”

“Yeah, your father told me what you were doing. It must have been exciting. I don’t get to see much outside of white lab coats and microscopes.”

“Well doctor, we each have our role to play,” he said in banter.

“I don’t think I will ever get tired of hearing that,” she said as she stopped undressing to look at him.

“You shouldn’t. Be proud of yourself, I am.”

She smiled at him. “I only wish my parents could see me now,” she said wistfully.

“I know honey,” he replied as he came near her, “We do the best we can, and take it one day at a time.”

They embraced once more. “If you don’t have any plans I thought maybe we could ‘play’ a little doctor,” he said while leaning his head backwards to look into her eyes.

She leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the lips. When he started to return her kiss with more intensity, she backed away and said, “We can’t. I mean we can’t right now. That’s why I’m home early. We’re having a little get-together over at Matt and Tracy’s, just a bunch of us from the lab.”

“Wonderful,” he said without much enthusiasm.

“Get changed, you’re going too,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I’m not really…” he started before he was interrupted.

“You’re going. I haven’t seen you in a week, and I can’t back out of my plans now. When we get back, we can discuss what you brought up earlier.”

He knew there was no sense in trying to get out of it. He didn’t want to leave her anyway, but he was not exactly thrilled with the idea of having to make small talk with people with which he had virtually nothing in common. He would call Cam when they were finished with their party, and would tell him that he would see him in the morning.

* * *

Life in the valley was improving. The population had finally stabilized, and was beginning to increase for the first time. They had buried close to seventy-five percent of those who had initially made the journey. Instead of burying them in the valley itself, they made the effort to find an area suitable for digging out on the rim, and transported them to avoid polluting the area, and to escape the constant reminder of the dead. At first, the birth rates were under ten percent. That is, less than ten percent lived beyond their first year. Now it was reaching almost forty percent.

Over the years they completely removed every viable piece of equipment, building material, and other furnishings from the nearest ruined city. They brought these provisions to Gateway, and carried them to the other villages as necessary. Now, there were only two. Bardin was simply a manned outpost. The elders, or leaders, of each village remained the same. There was no need or feeling of competition as they all knew what must be done to survive. There was no glamour, notoriety, or riches to complicate what was an already arduous life.

They all dealt with the effects of exposure to the radiation. While there was no significant radiation in the valley, they had been contaminated prior to reaching it. Their food and water supply also affected them. Some had lost all of their hair, their teeth, and a few lost the ability to speak due to deterioration of their vocal chords, while many of the young, developed more obvious deformities through birth and growth. There were those who went through secondary growth spurts, long past the age for such things, and became almost as giants among them. Others gained some curious abilities such as being able to see at night, and for some their skin became as tough as rawhide. Those who were no longer severely affected by the radiation were the ones chosen to explore the regions