Journey of Ric Heiden

The Journey of Rick Heiden

All Rights Reserved © 2018, Rick Haydn Horst

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Upon arrival, a flurry of movement had Amaré surrounded by medical people who carried him away. They monitored the portal night and day for any activity, awaiting his return. They believed he would bring back Cadmar and David; they never expected that result. After a diagnostic assessment, they determined that Aiden's quick actions prevented Amaré from bleeding out, saving his life. His enhancements would ensure a swift recovery, and we were relieved.

They kept the portal in the middle of a stark white, circular containment area where a bin lay on the floor and a small, sealed pass through the size of a breadbox on the wall. To the left, we could see people in the monitoring room through a thick, curved glass window, eyeing us with their entomological stares. The entrance to the room laid before me, and to my right, the door to decontamination, where we would find the exit.

They used level one containment to prevent contamination of the planet from microbes and insects, especially insects. Jiyū had no indigenous animals, and they took precautions to ensure none got through.

David pointed to the upper corner of the glass window. It had a series of numbers representing the time and date. It helped people orient themselves upon arrival due to the time differential. It read: 07:20.54-201-3154. The time was 07:20.54 on the 201st day of the jear 3154.

"I've been gone for a long time. I should let our communication system know I'm back," said David, pushing his pointer finger into his neck just behind his left ear, and after a moment, he tapped the spot twice. "Hello Iris, it's David. Yes, I'm back." David laughed, listening to the voice only he could hear. "Okay, I just wanted to say hello and let you know I'm on the system again should anyone wish to speak with me. It's good to hear from you too, but I must go. We need to get through decontamination. Okay, bye."

Aiden's face held a wide-eyed expression of wonder. "I want that!"

"Soon enough, Aiden," he said, "first thing's first."

"David," said one of the women behind the glass, "we've left gel and soap in the decontamination room. Do you need any nano-suspension?"

"We need one," David said.

She placed a four-ounce glass of something dark in the sealed pass-through. David retrieved it, giving it a whiff. "You have no vanilla?" he asked her. She shook her head, smiling. He held the glass out to Aiden.

"What is it?" Aiden asked. "It looks like prune juice."

"Hmm." David thought for a moment. "In computer terms, within this glass lies the operating system upon which all other enhancements function. If you want the secret to immortality, you can't have it without this first."

Aiden hadn't thought twice; he took it from David and downed it.

"What's it like?" I asked.

"Not bad. It's a bit thick. It tastes like fruit."

"It's okay," said David, "but the vanilla one tastes better. Oh well, keep an eye on the clocks, Aiden. Tomorrow at roughly two o'clock in the morning, yours should kick-in."

Next, we had to decontaminate ourselves in the next room. Although there were discussions for years about whether decon was even necessary, David had expected the standard procedure. They would also subject Amaré to it while they removed the bullet. We removed our clothing, placing them, our mobiles, and everything from our pockets into a containment bag for them to collect later.

The decontamination room consisted of another stark white round room, twelve feet in diameter. The center held a round shower head, four feet wide with a drain beneath it. The walls held a curved bench seat built into them, and I could see the exit on the opposite side. The goopy gel-like substance used to kill spores and microbes smelled a bit like antiseptic. David told us to cover ourselves with it, let it dry, then use the soap they provided to wash it off.

Standing naked with relative strangers caused Aiden some embarrassment, and he tried looking anywhere but our direction. I couldn't understand why he bothered; he had removed his glasses and couldn't see. I dealt with nudity as best I could, but I found it easier when David and I were alone. As for David, I had never met anyone with such extreme immodesty.

David began rubbing the gel into my back for me, and I noticed Aiden kept his head turned toward the wall. "You don't have to feel awkward, Aiden."

"No, but I do," he said.

"It seems only fair we should see you naked, Aiden," said David. "After all, you watched us screwing."

I couldn't help but laugh. David sometimes had a wicked sense of humor.

"I'm sorry," Aiden said as he struggled to keep his eyes diverted from David's direction. "I had no idea I would intercept that."

"I'm joking," said David, "it doesn't bother me."

"Well, it wouldn't bother you, would it?" Aiden asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"What do I mean? Look at him," Aiden said, gesturing to David. "Michelangelo would sculpt that."

David looked down at himself. I wouldn't call David's appearance perfect. He had a great upper body, little body fat, and a wonderful cock, but his disproportionate leg-heavy physique contrasted in every way with Aiden's.

"It's probably true, David," I said.

"I put on my trousers the same way as everyone else," David said to me. "Aiden, are you sure you're straight?" David smiled.

"I'm straight," he said, "but I know what attractive looks like."

"I'm sorry," said David. "I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable, and I promise, in just a few days, you will think of this in a whole new light. Trust me."

Afterward, we donned the robes left for us on hooks and exited level one containment. Traditional Japanese motifs covered many of the walls made of paper in level two containment. It had plenty of red-painted wood with all the columns, and a gorgeous stone tile covered the floor. Someone had strived to create the impression of an authentic Japanese temple, but I would find none of the rooms I saw while snooping in a temple. They had modern interiors, and some contained curious scientific-looking objects whose function I couldn't guess.

We met Cadmar's fraternal twin brother, Magnar, a tall, fit, thickly built, dirty blonde and bearded man with a gruff baritone voice. He wore the same clothes as Amaré, codpiece, and all, but his Prussian blue jacket had none of the embellishments that characterized the one worn by Amaré. He stood several inches taller than David, and he had the look of a man in his mid-twenties, like Amaré --if appearances meant anything. He seemed like an intelligent and rugged fellow, and I noted he wore the gold ring like that of his brother and Amaré. I tried to remember to ask David about them.

Magnar seemed to take Cadmar's death, and that his body was missing, as one might expect of a brother. I got the impression he would mourn later when he had time to himself. After relaying the story to him, Magnar blamed neither David nor Amaré for what had occurred, no one did, but I knew that David blamed himself.

They gave Aiden and me orientation the first day and scheduled a medical examination the next. Afterward, they would provide whatever enhancements we requested from the menu we received in orientation. It seemed they made getting enhanced so easy to accomplish, and so much a part of their everyday lives that they naturally assumed we would want it as well.

They gave us rooms for the night decorated in the traditional Japanese style, consisting of a small sitting area and two bedrooms. Upon the beds, they had laid clothing for us to wear until we could get our own, a pair of navy-blue, pull-on pants with a drawstring, a cream color pull-over, and slip-on shoes with sturdy soles.

In that area, they had made the internal walls of shōji --having partitions of paper left us little real privacy. We had a bathroom that had a bowl-sink decorated with plum blossoms, a large walk-in shower, and an unusual waterless toilet. I couldn't fathom how it functioned, and I never wanted to know. The room also had a thick, glass window on an exterior wall whose view faced away from the city, but we could see a dense rainforest below to the west. At the window, David's arms wrapped around me, we gazed at the expansive view.

"It's beautiful, just as you said."

"It's a tradition to watch the sun rise and set every day. It helps to keep your circadian rhythm to that of the planet."

"We'll have to do that," I said. "What's the weather like here?"

"One City lies in the tropical zone, so the temperature stays between fifteen- and thirty-two degrees. I guess that's between sixty- and ninety degrees Fahrenheit for you, although sometimes it gets hotter. It rains regularly, and while we get storms, we don't see any tornadoes or hurricanes here."

During orientation, we learned many important things. They measured time differently on Jiyū, counting days and jears with precision, and their clocks reflected that counting out 29-standard hours, 32-minutes, and 16-seconds for each day. Jiyū's jears, however, had 412-days, 3-hours, 45-minutes, and 12-seconds. Unlike on Earth, the measure of both days and jears occurred independently of one another to prevent the need to harmonize the two, so it could remain consistent. Jiyū couldn't measure months, as it had no moon, but they broke jears into quarters of 103 days, used to mark the seasons, and they halved each quarter into two periods of 51.5 days. They celebrated the New Year at what on Earth they would call the cross-quarter --the first actual day of Spring, or in One City's tropical location, the beginning of the rainy season.

We also learned community structure, expectations of the individual by the community, and a few hundred jears of Jiyū's history, which proved far less involved than the tales of Earth's cultures. Jiyū's contained none of the wars based on religion, resources, or ideologies. They had barely seen more than a fistfight. That, however, did not mean that the people of Jiyū had acclimatized themselves to passivity. They defended Jiyū in ways that far exceed the technology of Earth, although with so much to cover, I hadn't learned more about that at the time.

Due to the time dilation, and the absence of various progress impeding mechanisms indigenous to the cultures of Earth, Jiyū had advanced twenty-five hundred jears ahead of Earth with its culture and technology. It resulted in embracing an existence more harmonious with the planet sustaining them. So, when we left the facility the next day, we shouldn't have expected to see a shiny stereotypical city-of-the-future made of metal and glass. They preferred One City's advancement to remain concealed with a subtle integration of their technology, which allowed its aesthetics to shine through.

Humans evolved with the rhythm of the Earth, and just like Earth, the length of days and nights vary on Jiyū, albeit to a lesser degree in the tropics. Sleeping hours, known as

beddo

, consisted of a block of 9-hours, 32-minutes, and 16-seconds, which began two hours after sunset. The long nights also meant that people arose from their beds well before dawn.

David and I lounged in our sitting area, while Aiden took a long shower before beddo. I was reading the list of available exotic and fantastical enhancements we could receive the following day. Everyone had the main one, known as the Foundation. It integrated the nano-robots, known as nanos, into the body to set up a network in which all other enhancements function. It also made life in a higher gravity environment possible by making our bones super strong and toughen our joints while leaving them flexible. It also prevented illness and tuned our body toward the accumulation of stronger, denser muscle tissue. It did this through the alteration of gene expression and the manipulation of androgens, myostatin, and activin A, so that the higher gravity became less burdensome.

The list had some intriguing enhancement choices like life-long youth --known as

Forever Young

-- and

Fertility Control

, a form of birth control, where you and your partner could decide when you wanted children.

David told me that all pubescent children have Fertility Control. Unlike humans on Earth, the people of Jiyū refused to fight biology when it came to sexual matters. Centuries ago, they discovered that one could not stop teenagers from getting together and having sex. If they want to do it, they will do it whether adults wanted them to or not. So, with disease and religiously induced shame not an issue, along with its sexist, antiquated, and freakishly obsessive ideas about virginity, they had no reason to stop them. However, they had every reason to prevent unplanned pregnancies. The culture embraced that wholeheartedly by having their pubescent children's fertility controlled until they reached adulthood; at that point, they could have it reversed when they chose.

They had other treatments along sexual lines, things like libido and genitalia enhancement; it hadn't surprised me to see those on the list. Humans have concerned themselves with that since time began. It demonstrated how deeply sexual human beings were, as well as occasionally insecure, or acutely concerned about the sexual happiness of themselves or their mate.

For other things, they had the communication link, memory boost (and who wouldn't want that), synthetic eyes of various kinds and abilities. They offered enhanced hearing, permanent accretion or elimination of hair, height enhancement, and various other genetic and epigenetic alterations controlling anything from skin tone to tetrachromia. It seemed to me that the people of Jiyū studied the human body with immense interest, and with time and effort, they resolved to have no compunctions whatsoever in altering it.

David showed a keen interest in my choices, and as we had the discussion, I realized what David was doing. He attempted to take up the slack from Maggie's absence. I would miss our spirited debates.

I never viewed having augmentations or enhancements as a problem; humans had done that for ages, just to a lesser degree. We have used glasses, dentures, hearing aids, pacemakers, artificial limbs, and wheelchairs as augmentations or enhancements to improve or extend the lives of the people who used them.

I had the willingness to remain young for my entire life. To my mind, growing physically old serves no real purpose, and the notion of my new hair turning grey hadn't appealed to me. We could get nano-craft tattoos which sounded interesting. We both liked the eyes we had, and neither of us wanted to be taller.

"You used the communication link earlier, right?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said, "I recommend it; as our enhancement version of a mobile phone, you needn't worry about losing or breaking it. It links to Iris, the artificial intelligence that controls communication."

"Does she read your mind?"

"Oh no," David said, "your hearing and speech would connect to Iris in a far more ordinary way."

During that discussion of enhancements, a question came to mind. After having had sex with David, and with the list in my hand, I had to know. "Have you had the sexual enhancement?"

He grew a concerned look, "Are you not happy with me?"

"No, of course, I'm happy," I said. "It's just that, if you had gotten it, things would make a bit more sense."

David smiled. "No, I haven't, but if it would make you happier, I will."

I paused to think. "Aah...Saturday and Sunday night..."

"Yes, what about them?"

"Are you always that, aahm...consistent?"

"I don't know," he said, "did you not like that?"

"Yes, I loved it! It just surprised me, that's all." --I took a deep breath of regret at having mentioned it-- "Quickly moving along... Hair. Wow, you can customize quite a bit with nano-induced manscaping. I want some body hair, but I'll have to figure out what. So, have you any thoughts on body hair? Ever thought of becoming more bearish?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter to me," he said. "What would you prefer? Would it make you happier if I had hair like a bear or slick like a dolphin?"

I laughed. "We are having the strangest conversation, but I probably prefer bears to dolphins, but in the usual manly places. If you had asked Maggie, you'd have gotten a different answer. She loves hair. Just choose what you deem appropriate."

"I just want to consider your preferences when I upgrade your playground equipment," he said with a crooked smile. "Speaking of that, why did you skip over the genital enhancement? It's astonishing how common it is here. Does talk of penises embarrass you?"

My face reddened, and I felt like he caught me at something terrible. "Yes, it does. I'm from the American South where they have religious insanity over sexuality. They have a flair for making you feel like you shouldn't even have genitals, much less talk about them, and don't even think of using them."

David wrinkled his brow. "That doesn't sound conducive to a healthy adult sex life, but you do well, considering."

"Hey, I know a stunted sex life when I see one. I've worked hard to get where I am. Where I grew up, nudity was taboo, and you weren't allowed to be male in your clothes either. To them, that part of you should cease to exist the instant you put on a pair of trousers lest they shame you as

advertising

."

"Humans are highly sexual beings; it's unhealthy to make people think that way." --David tipped his head, and his brows lowered-- "At 30 years of age, why do you police yourself now when they're no longer around?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I guess they live rent-free in my head."

"No, they don't," he said. "Please, don't think that way. It gives them power over you they don't have. Let me tell you something. I see you as perceptive, intelligent, and courageous. In the United States, you saw what was coming. You knew you couldn't stop it, but you knew you didn't have to take it. So, you uprooted your entire life, like a big twenty-eight-year-old tree and did what you must to escape their tyranny. That takes courage; you beat them, and I think you can beat this too. You know they were manipulating you; so, be bold and don't let them get away with it.

"While we're on the subject," he said, "we have the perfect opportunity for you to understand something I said Saturday on the way to The Tea Room. Remember when I said people were being infantilized, among other things, and you thought that was going a bit too far?"

"Yes," I said, "and you're saying this is one of those ways."

"Oh, yes," he said. "Now, I know you can think as the adult you are, so let's do that. Let us have a rational and reasonable discussion about penises and throw out that foolishness they tried shoving into your head because it's not there if you don't believe that it is. The only thing stopping you is you. Now, you have the enviable position, in which many men would kill to find themselves, with the opportunity to alter your genitals. Would you be willing to do that? Why or why not?"

"Would some people kill?" I asked.

"Rick, on Earth, penis enlargement alone exists as a worldwide multi-billion-pound industry that cannot compare to what we do here. Then there's the libido enhancement, also another multi-billion-pound industry, responsible for the endangerment of several animal species, many of which are going extinct. So, would some men kill for the chance you have now? Absolutely. And most men wouldn't mind some alteration, even if only a little."