Hummer

We find out how Beth and her friends came to be who they are.

 

Hummer

 

I made it to Hummer and I was in the clear. They did not detect me or realize I was missing. Dr. Menedoza told me to trust her and I would be okay. She made no promises for the rest of the group. I did not like her answers and every fiber in my body told me it was time to make a run for freedom.

            Hummer came to life with the touch of a button. The powerful engine roared to life and I was off on an adventure I did not choose to take. I scanned the communications from the facility. For all practical purposes, they registered me as missing and presumed terminated. The Sleep Crews had my name marked off, but no body to go along with the name. Since Dr. Menedoza was supposed to put me to sleep, she must have marked my name off when she put me in the small cage. They could not find Dr. Menedoza. 

Dr. Caleb assumed Dr. Menedoza left the base to mourn my passing. He was a total jerk in so many ways and on so many levels. I swiped Dr. Menedoza’s access card so I could leave the lab during the lockdown. I altered the computer records to show her off base for the rest of the day and on personal time for the rest of the week. Since they never allowed personal vehicles inside the gates, I did not have to worry about her car. All of the staff rode buses to work. After I snuck out in Dr. James’ truck a few years ago, they made everyone ride buses to and from the facility. Only the highest military officials ever brought vehicles inside the gates.

I knew Doreen found Dr. Menedoza, but I did not know if she began to reverse Dr. Menedoza's transformation. The bugs I planted provided some sketchy information. A dog was running loose in the compound.  Since there were no dogs in the compound, the good doctor was still a dog. Doreen cornered the dog at my bedside and I lost contact with my listening devices. I stopped and climbed on top of Hummer so I could take a quick look back at the base. My listening devices went down due to power failure. I could see the low intensity lights come on as the generators powered up. My bugs were on the main grid, not the back up grid.

I had to go. I saw one pleasant sight among all the bad. Marianna was alive. I saw her at the main power station. She pulled the main breakers to shut the facility down. How she escaped the Sleep Crews, I had no idea. She was part of the plan, but she was supposed to be on the outside now, not the inside. She ran back to the dorm. I started Hummer and got moving again. I was in enemy territory. It was time to keep moving or risk capture.   Everyone who got out was to keep moving.

“Thanks Marianna,” I whispered to myself.

Hummer had GPS, but GPS in all military vehicles is an open tracking system. I clicked it on and off to discover where I was and to mess with them just a bit. I could trick the GPS into making them assume I was hundreds of miles away and traveling in any direction I chose. 

First of all, where was I? The last time I knew where I was, I was home in Georgia. Even though they sent us outside the base for most of our training, they never let us know in what state we were located. We were that secret. The GPS gave me a position somewhere in Arizona. Talk about not being in Kansas anymore! The landscape looked foreign to me, but since this was my first time outside the barriers in something like, ever, most landscape would look vaguely foreign.   

Once the GPS pinpointed my position for me, I realized I was somewhere near the San Carlos reservoir and I was traveling west on Highway 70. I wanted to go east, so I turned around and stepped Hummer up a bit. I wanted to hit I-10 and put lots distance between that place and myself very rapidly. For the time being, I was free and I was running for my life literally.

With my bearings and direction figured out, I switched the GPS off, cranked up the music and set the radar-jamming device to record my speed as the posted speed limit on any police radar that just might try to lock in on me. Even the laser speed detectors would never know I was traveling faster than the posted speed limits. That is just a failsafe device for me. Cruise control set for seventy-five and I was happily cruising towards a new life that did not involve medical testing and military training.

I really love the feeling of being out here on the open road. It felt like forever since I had the chance to feel like I was free. The last taste of true freedom I had was several years ago. Walls bother me, rooms without windows bother me, people who deceive me disturb me, and above all else, people who try to eliminate me really bother me.

            That was why I ran. I believed these people and they tried to eliminate me, along with several of my only friends. They really ticked me off and that is where they made their biggest mistake. I have a really bad attitude problem when people lie to me and then try to murder me. 

No, I am not a criminal, but they trained me to kill, trained, to blow things up, trained me to heal, and trained me to operate almost every piece of military hardware our country has to offer and a few things still in the experimental stages. I love operating anything that moves and I really love computers as well.   I also love medical stuff, and I am very good at finding out what is wrong with a person and then taking the proper steps to make it right and make them well.

They tell me I am very intelligent, very charming and most of the time I have a great personality and love to have fun. Yeah, for all of that to mean anything I must stay alive. The accident was not my mistake. It was their fault. They allowed Dr. Caleb to push Amie too far. Amie killed. I did not kill anyone. Dr. Caleb turned Amie into a killing machine and that is what they wanted. We were all ideally suited as top soldiers, but not a one of us liked to kill, except for Amie. She was different, like I am different in the opposite direction. 

I had one chance to run and I took it. I know others got away before the Sleep Crews took over. Dr. Menedoza was supposed to put me to sleep herself, but I did not hang around long enough for her to do it. I was supposed to be the first one killed because I was the “leader” of the group. She had other plans for me, but what were they? She planned to take my DNA and try to clone me, but what good would that do me? DNA is the recipe for all living things, but I have all the memories of my life. A clone would not possess what I possess. Once this body dies, those memories die with it and I want to remember my prior life, my mother, my father and my friends. I like being alive. It is fun, most of the time. 

            I do not trust adults. I cannot trust adults.  I will die if I trust adults. So far, that is the scope of my trusting anyone in adulthood. The adults in my life lied to me, the adults were cruel for scientific reasons and the adults were very selfish. We were their ticket to something greater. We were their projects and the things they learned from studying us, well, let us say that the next time you can spray something up your nose to get over a cold in less than two days, you can thank our immune system. That is the tip of the iceberg. The research on me alone rendered the cure for several forms of leukemia. 

I am not a test tube baby, I was not born in a lab and I do not owe my existence to sexual encounters with extraterrestrials. I am a girl, mostly human and I am the result of a genetic experiment performed on my mother. I know of at least two or three other locations doing the same testing and genetic engineering. I know they exist because I did genetic engineering on some of the girls for them. I never did any genetic improvements on males. There was only one boy in the compound and he claimed to know of at least thirty other boys and girls who could do the things we could do. I am not so sure I trust him because he is a boy and I am well, you know a girl and all. I grew to lose trust in many people because they lied to me a lot. From the day I woke up in the barracks, they lied. I knew they were liars because I can feel deceit in people, especially when the whole group of them is in it, whatever it was, up to their stinking eyeballs.

             There is just one detail I left out. I am twelve, well okay, I look like I am twelve and therefore should not be able to drive legally, but this Hummer does not know the difference. When I was about ten years old, they slowed my aging process. I am probably closer to twenty-one or twenty-two years in age and I now age at one fourth the normal human rate of aging. I, and others like me, have some very special abilities that any nation’s military would love to possess. You see, all I have to do to operate any type of machine is touch it and I know how to use it. I can communicate with any machine on earth, no matter what it is and it will do what I want it to do. Like this Hummer will go anywhere I tell it to go, almost like an autopilot but it will also not let me get hurt, unlike the one person who promised me she would protect me from the tests and being put to sleep. She lied and I mean she really lied or my escape and adventure I am on now would have never happened. I am going to let you in on something if you are into this kidnapping and doing genetic experimentation on preteens. Do not pick one with an attitude and do not give them abilities like mine or you will pay dearly. I really liked this doctor, but from all I can tell, she is paying dearly for not protecting me when she could have done so very easily. 

            Okay, I agree that turning her into a dog might have been a little extreme, but they were going to exterminate me. Human beings have this thing called the fight or flight syndrome when their lives are in danger and I really do want to live to see my teenage years like any other twelve year old. It is not as if I killed her or anything. She is just going to have to learn to tell her age in dog years and lift her leg in order to pee.  I also made her afraid of cats and did I tell you she is a male dog? I guess that lifting her leg to pee thing gave that away. I let her keep her vocal cords and memories, but I am not sure she will ever learn to do anything but bark and fetch. She knows she has the memories, she knows she has vocal cords like a human's but that is kind of like giving a baby a steak. Oh yeah, that looks good, but what do I do with that?   Well, since I left her DNA behind, her lab assistants could reverse the procedure. 

            Now, as to how I got these amazing abilities is the next part of the story. There is a place to eat up ahead and I am very hungry. The energy bars I have stowed away are for dire emergencies, and they are not very high on my list of favorites, so I would rather find a real restaurant with real food. I had to run something like six miles to escape and find Hummer and I had to do it in less than ten minutes, so I burned up a lot of energy. I can store a lot of food in my system, a little gift left somewhere in my abdomen by a team of surgeons. In one of Dr. Caleb’s nice little experiments, he made me eat as much food as I could possibly eat and then made sure I did not get any more food for over a month. I broke the trainee's wrist when he handed me my food tray. I could not help it and I told him I was very sorry, but I was really very, very, very hungry. 

            Right now, I am seriously very hungry, I need to get myself something to eat, and then I can maybe tell more of the story. I am not worried about money as a rule. There is an ATM outside the restaurant and it is like a machine. I can tell it to give me money and it will. If I have to hurry, I just ask for twenty or thirty dollars out of the last open account, but if I get to take my time, I like to find the highest balance in the bank and hit it for a few dollars. They usually do not miss the money.

            You know, I mentioned giving a baby a steak and that made me think about baby back ribs. A full rack of baby back ribs would be very good right now and this place really liked to advertise how great their ribs are supposed to be. They had really better be very good for the mood I am in right now. 

            You know something? Being twelve in an adult world can really be a pain in the butt. I am not even a teenager, but I can out think, out drive, out fly and out run any adult on the planet, but I cannot buy Tylenol for muscle aches. I tend to get some very severe leg pain when I have run something like five miles to get away from an extermination crew. Well, there has to be a vending machine with Tylenol in it somewhere close. The ATM gave out a little information when I got cash for lunch.

            I ordered a full rack of ribs with all the trimmings and my server made sure they charged me the pre-teenage price for my food. She was very nice and did not mind the fact I was alone too much when I told her my parents were vegetarians and abhorred meat, so they were at a little hippie like joint across the way while I polluted my body with unholy red meat. I could lay it on thick when I needed to, and I was very good at covering my tracks.

            The ribs were good and so was the service so I left a whole twenty on the table. The ironic twist here? My server had used the ATM right before I hit it. Had I known she was as nice a person as she seemed to be, I would have transferred a few dollars her way.   

            Well, now that I do not have to eat again for like six to ten hours or so I can continue this adventure. At this point, I did not really know where I was going and maybe that was for the best right now. I was on the move and in enemy territory. They trained us to keep moving once we landed in enemy territory. My problem was I had no idea where friendly territory would begin, so I had to keep moving. A stationary target is very easy to find. Moving targets leave trails, but I found it very easy to cover my tracks. 

I thought about going back home.  I know, selfish move on my part. My job now was to do as I promised and find the ones who escaped. Anyway, I think it was a long way to my parents’ home.  They took me away from there when I was somewhere around five. Memories of a five year old are not very great I guess. 

I do remember my Mom was fussing about the house, cleaning everything in sight because of her allergies and Dad was trying to fix our old riding mower. It was very old and it would not start. 

            I sat on it and touched the start switch. I pulled my hand back quickly like it shocked me, but I think I remember feeling the engine was messed up. I touched it again and asked my dad to clean something to do with the fuel and put some better gas in the tank. He laughed but he did what I said anyway and then it worked. The engine was not messed up anymore and I was cutting the grass! It was fun. Even then, I loved to drive. 

This police officer drove by and told my dad he really should not let me drive a mower with the blades on, but I guess he told someone else because Dad and Mom had many visitors over the next few days and they were not very nice to my parents. They accused my parents of a lot of stuff but then they mentioned this thing called child endangerment.   They had a hard time taking me away because their car would not work. If I touched the metal anywhere on the car, it just stopped because I was sad and angry. The car would not go if I did not want it to go. 

            This is funny now that I think of it because one of the people wanted to call for a helicopter. This woman with him was very frightened of being in a machine with me hundreds or thousands of feet in the air if I was not happy. She was afraid, and she should have been very afraid. Think about it. You have this angry little five-year-old stopping your car every five feet on the ground. What would happen had this been a helicopter or an airplane? Yeah, one big fireball and several crispy critters on the ground. No more them and then I would be really ticked at being dead, so what then. Would my spirit inhabit a machine and go for revenge? I did not want to know the answer to that question because I love living. Did I mention I am just twelve years old and would love to live long enough to become a teenager? They also said I have this short-term memory thing going on when I get excited.

            Well now that my Hummer and I are cruising down the road again I can continue to tell you what happened after I finally let the car drive away, or rather they forced me to let the car drive away. They put rubber gloves on my hands and I could not touch metal. Worst of all, I am allergic to latex. I had a lot of trouble breathing, I passed out cold and they rushed me to this military base or some type of training facility. 

            I woke up a few times in a bed about the size of a small room. I could not touch any thing metal or I could get things to work for me. I loved to turn things on and off by touching a metal lamp or anything metal connected to a wall socket. That is the five year old me that did that kind of stuff for fun.

            I do not remember much for the next few months except being in a hospital bed and getting injections because of the allergic reactions I had to latex. I think maybe I almost died and they had to keep me in the hospital area of the facility until they realized I was allergic to latex, bananas, and the green stuff they put on Mexican foods.

            Well, now we can get on with my story and what else happened to me along the way. My dad was a mathematical genius. He could keep multiple page spreadsheets in his head and balance them twice as fast as anyone could do the same task with a computer.   He was a top of the heap CPA, and they paid him very well for his expertise. Bet you thought I was going to say he was some geneticist who experimented on his own kid, but that was not him. He was a really uptight kind of person who rarely, if ever, relaxed. Even on vacation, he counted the dollars we spent until we were at the point of go home or run out of gas trying to go home. He was nice, just not always a lot of fun. He did not like athletics and I loved to watch soccer on TV. I could not wait until I was old enough to play. Mom was cool most of the time, but she was very small and seemed always to be sick with something. She was a history teacher at the local high school. I was their only child because the way my dad put it: “We make enough to have one child and provide for a basic four-year degree.” That was some really exciting stuff there Dad. Did you forget about prom or softball, maybe I would want to play soccer or be a brainiac and get a scholarship?

Well, with my above genius level intelligence, he assumed I might be too smart for most normal schools and maybe my education would be much more involved than going to traditional colleges. He factored in schools like St. John’s, the inflation factors, and all that. He estimated my education could cost upwards of three hundred thousand a year. He did not factor in variables well. I was incredibly smart even before these people took me away and I was already doing Algebra I, the college level, not high school level, but finances were all black and white and his job was to keep his company and us in the black. Anyway, at five years old I was already in second grade and far ahead of the rest of my class. I was born very, very intelligent, all I had to do to learn was touch a diskette, memory card, CD, DVD or computer, and I can instantly download all the information into my own brain. I had tremendous amounts of knowledge stored in my brain by the time these strange people showed up at my house.

            How did I come by these amazing abilities? It was all a part of a genetic mutation and I was one big accident. The intelligence I think was from my parents. They both tested off the scale from what I remember of them. Mom scored perfect on her ACT’s, MCAT and SAT. Dad was slightly smarter. He graduated high school at age twelve and college at fifteen. When he earned his Masters degree he was seventeen and in love with my mother. 

            The ability to learn through my fingertips I guess I owe that to a scorpion, or at least to the one who gave up the DNA for me to have metal in my finger tips. I know, DNA is DNA and it does not matter where the DNA comes from. How it is placed in sequence is the DNA code. You will have to follow this one closely. In an effort to reduce the infant mortality rate, medical researchers focused first on the iron levels in the mothers. Low iron levels caused anemia in the fetus and that was a hard start for any baby. They tried upping the iron levels through iron supplements and vitamins, but the human body can only retain so much iron before massive tissue damage to the heart, lungs and liver occur due to hemochromatosis, or iron overload and this increased the infant mortality rate. Wrong direction. 

            With a promoter gene, adding scorpion DNA, filtered to allow the skeletal retention of iron, this eliminated the problems associated with massive does of iron. Excess iron was not stored in the organs, but the body would store the excess minerals in the large bones. This avoided the condition of hemochromatosis.    Normal use of the new drug allowed the expectant mother to retain more iron, allowed the body to use this iron as well as other metals, and thus decreased the incidence of infant anemia. The trial showed great success and they approved the drug for general use, although highly restricted to those mothers who actually had miscarriages due in part to anemia.

            My mother lost two children due to anemia and low hemoglobin counts before I was born, so they called me their miracle baby. Once Mom realized she was pregnant with me, she insisted she be placed on this new drug. She told me once her brother gave her all the information on this research and he made sure her name was on the list of candidates for the drug trials. 

My mother was so determined to make sure I was going to be born healthy; she took iron supplements as well as the drug. Due to the promoter gene, the scorpion DNA told my developing body to deposit iron in my fingertips and in the nail matrix, the live part of my fingernails. Since excess iron was present from the onset of my development, my central nervous system integrated the iron into its structure, giving me the ability to use this genetic anomaly to communicate with machines.

            As I said, these strange people showed up at our house one day. Like a normal five year old, I ran from them. I did not want to know who they were. The claimed to be from Children’s Protective Services, but my mother knew most of the social workers in the area due to her work in the school system. She did not buy their story and they left, but they were very insistent that I go somewhere with them. I did not go with them that day.

            My mother was very upset, as was my father. These people were wicked. I recall that sensation. They were liars. My parents talked about leaving that night. He had an idea of a place we might be safe for a while, but safe from what? Well, I was about to discover from what the hard way.

            We started packing our things up the next day. My father made several phone calls and had everything set up for us to move. We had the truck packed up by the end of the second day and we wanted to get on the road, but we were all three extremely tired. I tried to convince my father he could let me drive, but he was certain that I would attract too much attention, even in the middle of the night. We slept on the floor in sleeping bags that night, well for part of the night anyway.

            That night, they came to get me. They came in through every door and window of the house. Three of them came into my room and tried to carry me away. They placed a heavy hood over my head as they tried to take me out of the house. I got in some damage with my nails, but it was no use. I was strong for a five year old, but not strong enough to escape. I ripped open my hood and saw them carrying my mother and father away. I did not know if they were dead or alive. I felt they were still alive, but if I screamed for help, they would kill my parents. I could sense that from the one I cut deeply with my nails. He did not like me and he seriously did not want to have anything to do with my parents or me.

            I further got the definite impression that everyone on this extraction team was afraid of me. I could sense their fear, especially in one of the soldiers. He gave the orders, but I cut him very deeply across his face with my nails. He was very afraid of me and wanted to kill me right there. That made me scared of everyone and all I wanted to do was find a way to leave, run away and live my life in freedom.

            One of the soldiers put a large magnet on both my hands. The magnet attracted the iron in my fingertips and stuck fast to the magnet. The magnetic bond hurt so bad I started crying. My fingers felt like they were on fire.

            “She's the one. There's no doubt. Look at the electrical activity around her fingers,” said one of the team.

            “Get that magnet off her. We test with that. It's hurting her. Dr. Caleb, remove the magnet now,” the second soldier in command said as he chambered a round into his side arm. I got the impression he was really going to kill that doctor if he did not release me from the magnet.

            He removed the magnet and the soldier holstered his gun. It was very tense between them. “Okay Mack, I removed the magnet. Just don't get too attached to this one. These mutants are for testing purposes only. They will never see the light of day once we get them into Hummer. Probably won't live too long either. I've seen the battery of trials they intend to carry out.”

            “This child is human you idiots. Let's go. This isn't the time or place for this debate.”      

            They put me in the back seat of a car and I toyed with them for a while. Every time they got the car going, I touched metal and the car stopped. They pushed the car with a military vehicle of some sort, but the metal conducted my commands to the CPU in each vehicle they used and we stopped again. I was not sneaky enough and they caught me at my little trick. I remember the itchy feeling of the latex on my hands, and then I passed out. 

            They placed me in this padded room and took the gloves off me. I remember feeling there was latex in everything, but I am not so sure that was real or not.

            I do not know how long I slept in that room. I woke up at times and itched everywhere. Then I would get an injection and I was off to dream land again. I heard talk of project termination at times also. Finally, they did something that worked. I had a very unique DNA structure and they overlooked the fact I could have a weakness in this perfect DNA. I was deathly allergic to many chemicals, specifically latex. I reacted in some odd ways and that had masked the diagnosis. When I encountered latex, I passed out cold. 

            Dr. Menedoza was a young woman with a very bright smile and clear grey eyes. She explained what happened to me with the latex allergy and what she did to correct it. They did stem cell injections and boosted an already top-notch immune system. I did not talk to her much on that first day of total awareness. I only answered some questions.

            The next few days, I learned things I did not want to know. Dr. Menedoza, Dr. Caleb, Mack and Captain Jennings, M.D. were all involved in a research project. They called it Project Hummer. I was their first research subject. I was here to learn to live with my amazing new abilities and to learn my place in the world order.

            “Why do you call me Project Hummer?”

            “Project Hummer? Oh, that was Captain Jennings' idea. Calling it Project Hummer keeps everyone thinking we are working on a new military attack vehicle, which we are, but in reality, that is a cover name. We are building the vehicle and it will be keyed to each operator's DNA. The vehicle will be useless in battle if captured, almost like the Paso Fino horses of the Spanish Conquistadors. They allowed but one rider, rendering them useless to any enemy if captured. Beth, you are one of many other children affected by the drug treatment your mothers took. We found three more and they are coming in tonight.”

            “Three more like me?”

            “Well, not quite like you. They have blonde hair like you, blue eyes like you and their mothers took the same drug and additional iron supplements like your mother. They are not quite as intelligent as you are. You are the smartest child I have ever known. Now, how are you feeling today?”

            “Like I need to go run. This room is very small. My back itches a lot.”

            “There's no latex in here, and even if there were, we took care of that for you. You could be allergic to something else we overlooked. Let me see your back, Beth.”

            I took off the gown to let the doctor examine my back. Something about the way she touched some raised areas on my back made me a little suspicious of what she told me.

            “Well, this is definitely not an allergic reaction. Beth, it looks like we need to do some minor surgery. You have a growth on your back and it is cutting through your skin. You should not worry about this though. You heal so rapidly, you will be up and running around again in no time. I promise.”

            “What's wrong now? Jennings gave me something that he shouldn't have again?”

            “No, I don’t think so, but I’ll ask him. He is such a slob with his paperwork. We document everything and then he comes in and does procedures in the lab without anyone even knowing he was there. Drives me nuts. Dr. Caleb is not much better. Men!”

            “Are the new ones boys or girls?”

            “Girls. All the ones like you so far are girls. Dr. Caleb is working with a boy subject now, but it is not going very well. Beth, I have stayed too long. Jennings will take my lab time if I do not get back in there. Dr. James will be doing your surgery in the morning. If you need me, well, you know.”

            “Okay, I guess. Can I ever see my parents again?”

            “Beth, can we talk about this after your surgery? There is a lot at stake here. You have no idea how important you really are to the world.”

            “I’m five.”

            “You had a birthday. You are six now and your age holds no meaning to your importance. You need to rest. This is a minor procedure, but we have to do it. That extra bone has to be removed.”

            I waited until I was sure Dr. Menedoza was safely back in the lab before I snuck out of bed. I found little areas between the walls I could squeeze myself into and spy on the doctors, guards and research assistants. The lab was close to my room, and it was very easy to find.

            They were talking very loudly when I parked in my little hole. I like to know what they are doing to me, and since I know Jennings and Dr. Caleb lie every time they speak to me, spying on them was one way to learn the truth. 

Reviews

[None]

This is so suspenseful. What an imaginative story full of interesting information that interlocks the whole writing. I'm looking forward to more. Secretly, I'm hoping Beth gets reunited with her parents somehow.

[Raef C. Boylan]

"I wanted to hit I-10 and put lots distance between that" [lots of?]

"Right now, I am seriously very hungry, I need to get myself something to eat, and then I can maybe tell more of the story." [should the reader assume that the story is being told to them as it happens? It's mostly in the past tense, but occasionally lapses into present tense:
"I really love(PRESENT) the feeling of being out here(PRESENT) on the open road. It felt (PAST) like forever". I think you should consider making it clear when this tale is being narrated; you don't have to spell it out, just show it through consistent tenses]

Overall, a good chapter. Lots of detail, plenty of flashback events to help us understand Beth's story and also plenty of things that help us learn more about Beth herself.

Nice work.

[Raef C. Boylan]

Hmm...I wonder was Beth growing wings...[read your blurb]...?

I've read the whole of this so far; I'll go back to the beginning and give you some reviews.
Thanks for changing the font.