GeneSix

Copyright 2012, 2013 by Brad Dennison

All Rights Reserved

Chancey King, who came up with some brilliant ideas. Without him, this novel wouldn’t
have been nearly as much fun to write.

Randy Stairs, who was there at the beginning, and who first introduced me to the wonderful world of storytelling, imagination, and geekdom. Blame him.

My Dad, who first suggested I should take all this storytelling energy and harness it, and write a novel.

Runa Saha, who encouraged me to keep going when I was feeling kind of discouraged early on. Runa is a geek extroadinaire.

Sara King, who also offered encouragement, and some invaluable advice on punctuation.

Gene Roddenberry, for introducing the world of television to real science fiction. And as such, introducing it to a much younger version of myself.

Joss Whedon, for showing the world how to really tell a story.

Eva Rines, my eighth grade English teacher, who introduced me to the world of Philip K. Dick. My life has never been the same. She has since passed onward, but somewhere I think she is looking down on this effort with a smile, and thinking,
I taught that boy well
.

And most of all,

My loving wife Donna, for always being there, when it’s easy and when it’s not so easy. Being the wife of a writer is no small thing. She also provides tech support, is a sounding board for ideas, and she can even cook. It’s like, man, she can do it all.

A Few Words
From the Author(that’s me)

              The novel you see before you was actually written in pieces, over a period of years. It was originally intended as a series of novellas and three of them were posted at one time on writing.com, under different titles. The intention was to introduce a group of meta-humans, and maybe give you, the reader, a feel as to what they are about and what their lives are like, and to get the ball rolling on some story arcs that will carry on into other novels.

After a while, to give these characters better exposure, I decided t combine all five novellas together into one novel. As such, rather than being a story with a beginning, a middle and an ending, as is the case with most novels, what you have before you is an episodic story, essentially a small handful of stories with interconnecting and overlapping arcs.

This version is a slightly re-edited version of the original. I updated some dialogue, and changed some wording. I also caught a few typos that had to be corrected. One thing about Indie writers – we don’t have access to copy-editors. Sometimes it shows. I ask you to be patient with us.

GeneSix is the first of an intended series. More volumes are to follow. I hope you enjoy it. I would love to hear feedback from you. I can be reached at bradley.a.dennison.com and I’m on Facebook.

He had been human, once. But that was long ago.

He had been a child. He had run and played. He had gone to school and played on the slide at recess and threw a ball around with the other boys. Never girls, though. Girls had cooties, and you stayed away from them.

He grew and began leaving his childhood years behind, and was knocking on the door of adolescence. And he discovered strangely, girls no longer seemed to have cooties. It was kind of cool how their hair sort of flowed over their shoulders, and some of them had hips that were getting kind of curvy, and he would watch the girls walk away, seeing how their butts kind of swayed back and forth as they moved. He wondered how he had never noticed this before.

In the eighth grade, he found there was one girl he thought about way too much. Sondra Schwartz. Something about the way her hair sort of fell into her face and she had to keep sticking her lower lip out to blow the hair back up and away. And her hips did that to-and-fro thing when she walked. He never had the nerve to talk to her, though. She was kind of tall, and he was maybe four inches shorter and had funny-looking glasses, and she never looked twice at him. So he watched from a distance.

This was what he was doing one afternoon - watching from a distance as Sondra and a couple friends walked along a sidewalk. They were talking, their heads tilting a bit in one direction or another as they did so, and an occasional hand would be lifted and flipped one way or another. He heard Sondra’s musical laugh. Man, he was smitten.

He was standing on the sidewalk focusing intently on Sondra, and wasn’t aware of the three coming up from behind him. The bullies. Dirk Gardner had a buzz cut and wide shoulders for an eighth-grader (it was said he had stayed back at least once, and was really almost fifteen), and played on the school football team. Rance Milton was long and skinny and had a smile like a shark. He tagged along with Dirk wherever he went. He was given respect he never earned because he was one of Dirk’s cronies. And Mark Howard. Mark was usually a fairly decent kid, but he sometimes hung around with Dirk and Rance when he was bored just to see what kind of trouble they were going to stir up.

“Now it’s time, puke-head,” Dirk said to the boy with glasses. “I said I was gonna break those glasses in two, and now I’m gonna do it. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The boy tried to stand tough. After all, Sondra was still within listening distance. He couldn’t let her see him cower down. Not this time.

He had been pushed around by Dirk and Rance for years, and cowering down had been how he stayed alive. They had done things like plant him upside down in a trash can. They pushed him fully dressed into the shower in the boy’s locker room once, so he had to go through the day dripping wet. But by cowering down and not getting Dirk too mad at him, they had never actually beaten him up to the point of breaking bones.

But he was no longer a little kid anymore. He was almost a young man, and Sondra was within listening distance.

Dirk said, glancing with a smile toward Rance, “And you know what else I’m gonna do? I’m gonna twist this loser’s arm around his back until he cries like a little girl. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna make him cry like a little girl.”

Rance was smiling like a shark. “Yeah. Do it.”

Oh no, the boy with the glasses thought. There was nothing he could do. And Sondra was within listening distance.

Wait, there was one thing he could do. Her back was to him, so she wouldn’t see what he did.

He turned and ran like hell. Ran as fast as his feet could move. He had been carrying a couple text books, but he just let them fly. He gave all he had into achieving the best speed he could. He had to get enough of a head start on Dirk and Rance that they might not bother to chase him down.

He was so afraid, and trying to move so quickly, he didn’t hear the screeching tires until it was too late. He didn’t even feel the impact. He had a brief feeling of flying, and then he was crashing to the pavement.

Dirk and Rance and Mark just stood, their mouths hanging open. The three girls walking turned to look over their shoulders, and one of them said, “Oh, my God,” and they stood, staring.

Dirk turned and charged away. After all, if he wasn’t there when the cops arrived, then maybe no one could claim it was his fault. Rance, ever a follower but not quite as quick a thinker as Dirk, stood a moment longer and then turned and ran after Dirk.

Mark stood alone on the sidewalk, staring at the boy lying on the pavement. The boy’s eyes were shut, and his head was resting in a puddle of blood.

The boy awoke in a hospital bed. His head was wrapped in a white bandage, all the way to his cheekbones.

“Mother?” he said, in a small, weak voice. He had intended to cry out, but a whimpering squeak was about all he could manage.

He heard the warm voice of the woman who was for him the center of his life. “It’s all right, my son. I’m here.”

He realized his neck was in a brace, and he could feel nothing below his shoulders. He was breathing on his own and could speak a little, but that was about all. He could somehow sense she was touching his hand though he couldn’t feel it.

“Mother..,” he said, in a small voice.

“You were in an accident,” she said.

“Am I dead?”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “No, no. You’re here with me.”

“Everything is so foggy. So hazy.”

“It’s the drugs. You’re full of painkillers.”

“Mother? It’s so dark.”

“I know. You had a terrible injury. They say you were bleeding inside your head, and they had to operate. Your head is bandaged.” She had always told him she would tell him the truth and she did so now. The warmth of her voice somehow had a soothing effect and made the truth easier to take.

He said, “I can’t feel anything.”

“The doctors said that might be a possibility.”

“Will I ever get better?”

“They don’t know. But we hope so.”

And yet, he could somehow feel things. He knew the sheets were covering him to his chest. He knew there was another patient in the room, but a curtain had been drawn between the beds to give him and his mother some privacy. And he knew the lights were on. He could feel them above, in the ceiling, radiating down on him. Their luminescence felt hot on his face. In fact, almost uncomfortably hot.

And he could feel the darkness. Swirling about, at first around him, then within him. Almost somehow becoming him. He wasn’t afraid. Somehow, the swirling darkness felt comforting.

“It’s dark,” he said. “But it’s okay.”

He could hear tears in his mother’s voice. “What’s happening to you is similar to what happened to me. It just affected me differently. It affects every one of us differently.”

He realized his hand was somehow fading. His mother could see it, but no longer touch it. And he now no longer felt like he was in the bed, but instead above it, beside it, and even beneath it. He was all around.

“The lights are getting dimmer,” she said. “Are you doing that?”

“I don’t know,” the boy said, his voice now strong. “Mother, what’s happening to me?”

“It’ll be all right. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here.”

He knew she always would be. She loved him more than she loved anything else. That was one thing he had in this world, one thing he realized many other kids did not. Maybe that was why Dirk and Rance hated him so much.