First rejuve/Page4

Chapter 4 Meet Terrence.

During the afternoon, on the same day as violet's first day of school, the raven haired child was made to stand in front of an interactive whiteboard. No person was making her stand in particular, rather in spite of the nano-machines that were working to hear her well spanked bottom it still ached when she sat on it. Worse, it was itching like crazy so that Toby had to force the girl into a nappy and follow this up with a large bulky skirt for a little modesty. The new replicator machine was an interesting subject and had opened up some useful options to her department. "So, Since your rejuve!" Terrence was saying, "We've analysed the crystals and found that three have microscopic fractures in them. Which may have been limiting the amount of data and energy being stored in the crystal!" "Also on our test model we think we've found a way to transfer the energy using carbon-nano-tubes instead of the silicon fibres the Drakonian's were using!" Violet had worked her wonders of calculation at this point. It was Violet's contribution to the subject. While a terrible homemaker and apparently not that good at spelling anymore it took no effort for Violet to develop complex formulas and work out advanced mathematical algorithms in her head. Of course the computer could do this just as well by monitoring what she wrote on the whiteboard and projecting it underneath but she was usually quicker. That and sometimes the computer got it wrong. "The restructured system will also require computer monitoring!" Was Violet's input, "and fresh electromagnetic shielding plus we need to synthesize some Cradnium couplings." The shopping list went on. The hard part was that nobody had ever found a 100% working machine. Not yet at any rate. The Drakonian scientists had done wonders, getting the devices to work and using them as a form of emergency resuscitation device for people who couldn't be saved. When they had provided their version of technology as a part of a trade deal and shown its proper operation her team had been flabbergasted. At best they had thought the machine some form of advanced suspension capsule. Walking away at the end of that day, rubbing bleary eyes and toddling along through the halls with her partner in tow she reflected on this. Until they could find documentation of some kind on how the chambers were supposed to work or a repairers manual the most they could do was attach a room full of equipment to the devices to monitor them and show feedback. "I think the Drakonian's have the right of this!" she told her partner. "There's no way we can make the machine smaller than a room or a studio, certainly I question ever fitting it into trade vessels. We may have to make the installation of at least one of these mandatory for all the Trade Colonies!" "You remind me of that guy centuries ago who said, one room sized computer for every town would be enough and that everyday people would never need them!" "It may be the same thing!" Violet yawned, "I think the problem is that our technology at the moment is too different to whoever made these originally. It may be another hundred years before we even begin to understand them fully!" Violet stayed up late that night working on her calculations and fell asleep at her desk. Toby changed her and brought her to bed without waking his beloved. He was still unsure how to handle having his wife turned into a child. She was just as brilliant, charming and incredible as she used to be but things were too different. For starters they hadn't had sex in nearly a month. Not since the rejuve had been performed. "Maybe..." he wondered, "But not tonight!" and rolled over to sleep. The next day, like yesterday Violet somehow managed to get up before him, making Toby question her body clock and whether it was computer controlled. "Toby!" she cooed as she got her stuff ready for school, "Make sure they look over the calculations and energy requirements work I did last night! IF that Dobson tries to throw them out and go with the computer calculations again I will want to know why!" His little raven was bouncing and chirpier today now that the results of the spanking were over. Violet's driver drove the girl away as Toby got into the company supplied car and headed in the opposite direction with his partner's work. This was another thing that had happened post-rejuve. Once upon a time he would have referred to Violet as his 'Wife' and she refer to him as her 'husband'. The thinking had changed though since then. Both in his head and on paper he was calling Violet his 'Partner' or 'Subject Zero'. It was like the days before they had got married, before the disease had struck her down so suddenly. Now, she had her old energy back plus energy he'd never seen in her before but it was hard to see her as his wife anymore. Toby scratched his head with confusion and was still scratching when he arrived at the complex. It saved time that all the members of his team knew about Violets’s rejuve as this meant he didn't have to explain the sloppy handwriting or the little irritated squiggles in the margins of her work. Passing the pages to his staff they began trans-scribing them onto the whiteboard so the computer could log them and incorporate the data into their findings. Having established that he went for a walk to talk to Tessla. It was probably mean that he had recruited Violet’s best friend to monitor and analyze the feedback of the equipment he ha put in his beloved (post rejuve) but she was the main human biology specialist for the centre and head of her department. Tessla was going to find out sooner than later, so it was easier to approach her himself, When Toby found her she was going over the scans and footage taken yesterday during Violet’s spankings, the sound of her crying and the thwap, thwap, thwap playing in the background while she worked. “Well?” he enquired, not elaborating. “It’s as you suspected!” Tessla took off her glasses and polished them. “It’s more or less as you suspected! Her brain scans are a confused mishmash of data. Vivi is still a certified genius but her brain function has completely changed. She hasn’t just had a change in the body, the signals her brain are giving off are almost identical to a real child her age. The only real change is that her memory and cognitive areas are lit up more like that of a teenager.” “So I was right with my diagnosis?” “The brains of a child with the memories of an adult. Uh-huh!” Tessla activated an icon on her terminal marked “Live Feed Subject Zero” and a fist person view of the ground appeared in front of them. Moment later it moved away as hands came into her vision and then faces of children. A soccer ball went flying past her vision and Toby heard Violet curse. “I see the physical rehabilitation has begun. She never was much good at sports!” “Heart-rate, blood-pressure, all within normal. With the job the Rejuve chamber did in her she may be better at sport this time around!” Toby laughed as Violet seamed to trip over thin air again. “She’s going to be grumpy with me again tonight!” he observed. “You know, those topical nano-bots you use should really be made into a cream and sold – they did a wonderful job on her spanking yesterday.” Tessla made a non-committal grunt. One of her subordinates had come up with those nanites some years ago and was selling them to the hospitals. “You know what we need!" Toby said, non-comittally, "More human test-subjects. That's the problem, we're configuring the device for use on humans so we need humans. There are only so many pigs you can rejuvenate before the results become worthless!" "You're not getting me in that chamber!" Tessla laughed, "You'll just have me spanked like you did Violet!" "Such a shame, you bum would look pretty in a shade of red!" Toby gathered up the data that Tessla has made, he could never tell whether this idle flirting was serious or just her playing up to his foolish side. "As soon as Violet gets here you can abscond her for some tests, but after that I plan to take her home!" he said, waving goodbye. Tessla was already engrossed in her work.

Going back to the wing containing the rejuvenation chamber, Toby handed out the information and entered the large room. The middle of the room was a long chamber with glass walls and metal crossbars. Bigger than a human adult in all aspects it was clearly intended for a much larger being, and since the broken ones the Trade Federation had found were about the same size the Drakonian's had not changed this. The chamber sat on a long rectangular device that was made of some advanced plastic-metal hybrid that they had been unable to synthesize. The panelling was intricately engraved with a network of designs, depicting things that resembled strands of DNA, the person in the chamber and, most annoyingly, what looked like a giant aboriginal dot-painting.

It was very frustrating. The Archaeologists had theorised about it, the biologists had argued over it, the cryptographers had copied it down, the language specialists had run it through countless attempts to translate it and the philosophers had made poems about it. Only once the Drakonian's had demonstrated their working version had they been able to make any progress. The Drakonian's had not actually stripped the device apart, merely patching into the circuitry at various point attaching their own computers, electronics and monitoring systems in an attempt to gain control over it's functions. Similarly, Violet and his team had done the same, pulling out the large crystals, attaching long cables into everything, installing their own interfaces and setting up all kinds of monitoring devices, cameras and scanners around the chamber to monitor the progress of the patient.

Naturally the Drakonian's didn't take up as much room, but then they had been satisfied with a machine that made everyone who went into it approximately 10 years old. At least it made 'Them' ten years old. Humans seamed to come out about six. Toby sat down at his desk with head in hands, and again drafted up a letter to the board of directors for permission to obtain more human subjects. They were so close to having a working chamber now, it could do so much for the benefit of the human race. If only they could eliminate the variables that were causing gender suppression and such a low age.

Opening up his emails his jaw dropped. A letter from Director Chigowa. "We may have a test subject for you. Prepare to receive him in two days."

-

Darcon Caratas was the chief warden of Ellas Bottania, a large colony on the surface of Mars. A vast mining colony it existed as a collection of large metal domes with carbon re-enforced plastic windows showing vistas of windswept deserts that made up the martian surface. The Domes were technically huge, they had to be to handle the large strip-mining devices that ripped mineral sands, metals, ores and chemicals from the surface, converting them into glass, plastic, circuits and raw components required to maintain and run the colony.

Laid out in a classic snowflake pattern the area's not being strip-mined usually contained deep shaft mines maintained by robot crews and operated by teams of human miners. Humans had to be used in the shafts, the rock leached out water, sodium and nitrogen when exposed to oxygen which was damaging to the robots, so they could only stay down there for short periods of time. The non-robot's weren't mistreated. They got food, only worked for six hour shifts and were given plenty of rest breaks but even they disliked being down in the cold dark spaces, shivering in their fleece jackets.

When they came to the surface, they fought. All the time. "Well. What do they expect from hardened criminals. At least here they get a wage and aren't making nuisances of themselves."

Darcon sat at his desk in the shade of a plastic bougainvillea that took up the corner of the room. He had had the tree imported for the sake of brightening up the room. Rather it looked down on everything and made it look like Darcon was some lordly judge. At the knock on the door he grunted rather than answer, and watched as two guard robots led the requested 'gentleman' inside.

He was thin. Not because he wasn't well fed, rather no matter how much they seamed to feed him he never seamed to put on weight. Terrence Gardner was one of the least hardened working criminals on their file. In a fight he looked to be the sort that would lose in an instant, yet the prison records showed no indication of him ever being in a fight. "Terrence, Hired gunman, assassin, Driver. Charged with multiple accounts of reckless driving, use of a vehicle for property destruction, use of a vehicle for theft and murder. Multiple accounts of murder for pay and multiple accounts of accessory to all the above." Darcon looked at the man critically.

Terrance carried himself in an eternal slouch, his body barely moving except when working. All the reports from the guard indicated he was a hard worker and, better than that he had brought profit for the mines. "I want to congratulate you on the discovery of that seam the other day.. It panned out well and we're already getting profit from it. Record levels of copper and silver are already being send to the trade-ships for manufacture. We got a good price for it!"

Terrence Nodded, he did that a lot. "My reports from the staff and the security are that you have been one of our best miners. So, I'm willing to offer you a deal." "The thing about a deal is there is always a cost. What did you have in mind?" Darcon Bristled.

"The Board of Directors have recently put in a request!" Darcon said blunty. "They are looking for subjects for human experimentation using new technologies they've been developing." "Ahh. Which no doubt have dubious question of whether or not the person will live." "Actually no!" Darcon had wondered about that himself.

"According to this information the technologies are in regards to age-related technologies used to 'Reverse the effects of aging.'" Darcon didn't blame the man for his highly skeptical look. "It says here they are looking for older people who want to lead a quiet life, away from the eyes of others. That said subjects if the process works correctly will be given a full pardon for their crimes, and that their only obligation after receiving treatment would be to front up for regular scans and tests."

"So they expect the person to survive this treatment?" "Apparently so! and they claim its completely voluntary."

Terrence looked at the Warden.

"Terrence!" Darcon sighed, "You're a good man. I am well aware of your past but you've been here in the mines for twenty years already. Your not getting any younger and you have easily another twenty years before parole." For a man of sixty, Terrence didn't show it at all. He could have been a lord of a manor he was so relaxed. "You've been really helpful to our little colony but the fact is you're getting old. If this gives you a way out, I'd prefer to see the back of you than see the end of you down in our mines." The man's expression didn't change in the slightest.

"Will you give me some time to think about this?" he asked. Darcon nodded, "By all means. But I don't know how long this 'position' will be available. The request was sent to all the prisons and there are likely lots of other candidates so don't take too long."

'Reverse the effects of aging.' Terrence mused as he walked away, the two guards taking him back to the common area. As soon as his shadow was gone Terrence walked up to two large burly men who looked like they could have snapped the elderly man in half in a second. With a grunt of "Smokes" then "Drink!" he was given immediately what he asked for, the two men looking nervous until Terrence went away. Here in the mines, he was almost king. Nobody challenged him, there were ways you could make a person's life miserable that didn't require strength. Everyone gave him what he wanted and if there was trouble it usually avoided him.

But what the Warden said was true. He wasn't getting older. And this would get him back on Earth and away from the law. Terrence took a drag of his smoke and made a decision.