Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 7!

 Here's yet another installment of Sidekick Carl, because I really live and don't learn. For this chapter, I included an intro for a villain I decided to bring in a while ago, I swear from the original adventures. I also worked in a little bit of anecdotal research I did pretty early on in the project. And, here is a link for the last chapter, at least.

The creature in the enclosure was unmistakably a cat, but not like any other. It had a stocky, almost boxy body, broken up by ring-shaped spots. Its tail was a twitching stub, while its teeth protruded a little past its upper lips. Its jaw gaped 90 degrees as it yawned. It seemed indifferent as it surveyed the smattering of guests, a few children, two women, an old man, and a balding, well-dressed man who clearly wasn’t with any of the kids. The sign said, ANDEAN DIRK CAT. A caption below read, Last known living specimen, captured 1993.

After a few minutes, most of the visitors moved on, leaving the two men and one child. It was then that a someone came up to the well-dressed man. It was a woman, looking nervous. She glanced specifically and pointedly glanced at the cat. After a few moments, they moved a short distance to a shaded bench. “Sir,” the woman said, “you know the zoo had asked for a genetic analysis of the dirk cat, to confirm if it could interbreed with any other species?”

The man nodded, and began to smile. “Of course,” he said. “Did they find a match?”

“Sir,” the woman said, almost stammering, “see for yourself.” He looked at the printout she held out. His smile quickly became a frown.

“It must be an error, some kind of contamination,” he said.

The woman shook her head. “Three samples were tested. I collected one myself. There’s no chance of mistake. The genome is… human.” As she spoke, they both looked toward the enclosure. The old man and the child were gone.

 

So was the cat.

 

***

It was about noon, and Carl was in yet another conference room, as the presenter. The room was full enough that some were standing. One of them was Dana, who leaned against a wall at the back. Also present were Audrey, her mates, and a somber man from a previous panel who would have been identified as a career government agent from orbit.  Dana shifted as yet another pair in the audience looked at her and then whispered to each other. “When research into nanotechnology first began, people were afraid that nanobots could spread like a disease, and even enslave humans,” he said. As he spoke, he removed his helmet. There were murmurs and at least one gasp. “That was pure fantasy, at best, and propaganda and active sabotage at worst. All the real progress toward a human-nanite interface has been about making technology and organic life work together. I’ve lived in what you could call symbiosis with nanites for 20 years, and I can say, I wouldn’t be alive without it. Now… any questions?” Every other hand in the room went up.

“So,” said a bored-looking teenager, “are you really, like, half-machine?”

 “Well, the best answer I can give is to show you,” he said. He removed his gloves, revealing one hand of flesh and the other of translucent machinery. “It looks like this hand is mechanical and this one is biological, doesn’t it? But really, the tissue on this hand is maintained by constant activity from the nanites, and I still keep it covered most of the time, just in case. By the way, what you see is mostly from the last five years. Then the other hand is about as artificial as it looks, except that it’s supported by a mix of cloned nerves and microcircuits that goes down to my fingertips and up to my elbow at least. So, sure, you could say I’m part human and part machine, but there’s hardly anywhere you could look and say which part is which.”

Another question came: “Can they really fix any injury?”

Carl responded with a chuckle that was a little too disarming. “Well, obviously, I haven’t had an injury I couldn’t recover from yet,” he said. “What you have to remember is, nanites aren’t invulnerable. It took years just to make nanites that could survive contact with a single piece of dust. Even now, nanites need nearly anaerobic conditions to produce more of themselves. What I have is layered protection. First, there’s the helmet and the suit, which can self-seal against catastrophic injuries. Then there’s a polymer dermis that protects my muscles and their main work force. Then there’s the innermost defenses for my lungs and digestive system, completely and totally rebuilt, which is really the same as replacement.”

Another hand came up. “Then how do you know what they’re doing, or going to do?” a young man asked. “Can you talk to them? Or do they talk to you?”

Carl leaned back, clearly uneasy. “That’s not how it works,” he said. “The nanites have what you could call a hive mind. They probably couldn’t handle human language and communication even if they were trying. Sometimes, it seems like I talk to them, or they talk to me, always through dreams or subconscious thought. Even then, I’m pretty sure it’s mostly my mind trying to put their input into terms I can give a conscious meaning to, not what they’re doing themselves. As for the rest, almost everything they do is to solve an immediate problem. Once in a while, they do something new and we don’t know why. That’s what happened when they got to work on my face. I think, maybe, it was for the challenge.”

One more hand went, that of a man old enough to have been a fan as a child. Just from the expression, Carl knew it would be personal if not confrontational. Still, the question caught him unprepared: “Do you think there’s a chance the Toxo Warriors are still alive?”

Carl stopped himself from sighing, but did not hide his irritation. “I’ve already spoken about this, at this convention,” he said. “Their lab was destroyed. Nothing survived, nothing could have survived, I barely survived getting out of it. And if they had, what then? It was 12 years ago. Do you think they would have just laid low this whole time?”

“But… there’s reports…”

“What reports?” Carl said. In the very corner of his eye, he watched the agent. “Where? Of what? From whom?”

“Well… they’re talking about it online…”

“Then there you go,” Carl said. “You can’t believe everything you read.” As he watched, the somber agent showed no reaction. He leaned back in satisfaction, and did not notice the government man rise and leave.

As the session ended, the audience either started to leave or gathered for autographs and more questions. The man who asked the last question was among those who left. In the midst of it, he met eyes with Dana, who smiled and then Audrey, who cocked her ears. He quickly extricated himself from the crowd, to meet the small creature in a backstage storage area. “I have a question I need to ask,” Carl said, twirling his helmet in hand, “and I think you might be the one who can answer. Do you think… there’s really love at first sight?”

Her ears literally pricked as she nodded. “It’s complicated,” she said. “The thing about it is, it happens differently. Men think they feel it, once in a while. Women are the ones who know. It still doesn’t happen often, but we can mostly understand why it does, even if it’s to someone in another species.”

Carl nodded. “Did it ever happen to you?” He followed her gaze through the open door. Her two mates were just within view, one rusty red and the other piebald, managing half a dozen kits. Even at a glance, their personalities matched their appearance, the first confident, the other submissive and almost clumsy.

“Yes, you could say that,” she said. “I saw my first mate across Basiliskus’s pen. I came up to him, we both sniffed each other, and then I told him, `You will do.’”

“What about the other one?” Carl said.

Audrey had started to turn away when he spoke. She turned back with what could only be a smile on her face. “Oh, him? He followed me home one night and whined at the door till I let him in.”

She had started to leave in earnest when Carl called out, “After how long?”

She called over he shoulder, “About a week!” Then she was gone.

Carl found Dana at the door. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about last night,” he said, managing not to wince as quite a few eyes turned toward them. “I may not ready to get engaged, but I’m ready to try something. How about a two-week trip through Mogollon and back, off the grid?”

Dana smiled. “We can make it three,” she said. “When do you want to leave?”

“How about… now?”

“See?” she said as they hurried out. “We’re already thinking on the same wavelength…”

 

It was bare moments later that the government man reappeared, looking about intently. He reached the door just in time to hear Dana’s RV drive away.