Nu Trilogy 1: The Esss Advance (5 page)

The Esss were coming to a standstill, and that was a big problem. They had not run into any further opposition in their galaxy since they wiped out the Nu, and that was so long ago that only the master chroniclers were even aware of the conflict.

Actually, those chronicles were very careful to avoid claiming that the Nu were extinct. The master chronicler on the battleship that chased the last remaining Nu scout recorded that the Nu ship was headed out of the galaxy toward their nearest galactic neighbor. The master chronicler speculated that the Nu ship was not likely to make the passage successfully. It was too long of a jump.

Now the Esss were faced with that same jump.

The Esss’ drive to procreate infused their every thought and action. They had been on a never-ending path of conquering every life-sustaining planetary system they encountered from time beyond memory. Their planet of origin was unknown even to the wisest chroniclers.

Expansion was their only option. Every suitable world they encountered was transformed into a nursery. Each nursery, when fully prepared, became a hive of procreative activity. With no natural predators, the planet’s resources were soon expended. Then the Esss moved on to the next world.

This pattern repeated itself until the galactic island of their origin could no longer support their numbers. There was nowhere else to go.

Then the chroniclers turned their attention to neighboring galaxies. The gaps were daunting. The time required to cross the gaps was enormous. How would the Esss be able to survive long enough to reach the nearest galaxy? Interstellar ships used to cross between the stars in their galaxy were not sufficient. Even their largest transports could not hold enough consumables to allow a small contingent of the various classes to survive.

The answer would come only by thinking on a grander scale.

“Let’s get started,” Emily said from the chair she had placed next to Sted’s bed. “The vice admiral has taken up quite a bit of your time over the last two days, so we have not even started to gauge the amount of emotional trauma you have suffered from the accident, let alone begun to work on healing the emotional scars. I know it will be very difficult to talk about the loss of your two crewmates in the airlock, so I want to start on something a little less sensitive. Can you give me some background on how and why you joined the Space Navy? I want to understand your motivations. I need more insight into your basic personality, including details that don’t show up in your fitness report. Can you share any of that with me today?”

“Do we really need to do this today?” Sted asked in a somber tone. “I’m really tired, and I don’t see how this will benefit me.”

“Yes, we do have to start today,” Emily replied. “If you aren’t up to filling in some of your background on your own, then why don’t I just ask you a series of questions that require simple answers? Then maybe along the way you will be able to expand on some of your responses without me asking additional questions. Are you up to trying this approach?”

Sted sighed in resignation. “I’ll do my best.”

“Let’s start with when and why you joined the United Space Navy.”

“I joined the Navy immediately after graduating from SMU in Dallas, Texas. That was almost twelve years ago, but it seems like another lifetime now.”

“That is half the answer,” Emily said. “Now
why
did you join?”

“Ever since I was a young boy growing up in Plano, Texas, I was fascinated with everything related to space. My father was an account executive at Texas Instruments, and he always tried to discourage me from pursuing a career in space. As far as Dad was concerned, that was a dream for little boys, something to be forgotten about when it came to real world opportunities. After all, how was I going to settle down and get married and have children for grandpa and grandma to spoil?”

“What first got you interested and eventually hooked on a career in space?”

“The answer to that is really quite simple,” Sted replied. “When I was just ten years old, I found an ancient copy of the book
Voyage of the Space Beagle
by A.E. van Vogt. The book was originally published in the 1950s, but the copy I found was the later 2008 reprint. Even so, the pages of the book were yellowed with age and ready to fall off the spine. This was my little secret treasure. I don’t think I had a single friend at school who had read a paperback novel. There was something magical in those pages.

“After that, I began searching out more of the classical science fiction stories from the middle of the last century. I discovered Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov classics that I could not put down until I finished each story. My parents were always looking for me to help out around the house, but I was always off somewhere reading.”

Sted settled himself back into the bed, obviously a bit more relaxed as he related part of his early life and thought about the many times he read through the entire night.

“Reading all of those larger than life stories really expanded my imagination, and I knew that I had to pursue something grander than anything offered on Earth. I had to be out among the stars. I knew what I wanted, and I studied all of the various options for getting into space. There were several different paths I could have chosen, but to me, the way to go was to join the Space Navy.”

“So, how did you go about making your dreams a reality?”

“I worked harder at my classes than anyone else I knew, and when I wasn’t studying for a class, I spent time studying the history of the formation of the Council of Eight and how and why they established the United Space Navy. I knew if I wanted to achieve my goal, I had to learn everything I could about all of the steps in between where I was and where I wanted to go.”

“And where did you want to go?” Emily asked in a conversational tone. She really wanted an honest answer to this question, but she did not want to seem overly anxious.

“I wanted to escape our solar system and visit the stars, of course,” Sted replied. “In fact, I wanted to lead the first mission to the stars.”

Sted paused and looked down at his legs, or what was left of them. The animation in his attitude and voice changed instantly. That dream was obviously not going to happen now. How could he lead such a mission when he was no longer eligible to be the captain of a Navy ship, let alone the first ship to head for the stars?

“I can see by the change in your body language that you still haven’t truly internalized your losses,” Emily said. “You were animated and almost happy when you described your goals but then became deflated when you realized once again the impact of the loss of your lower limbs on your goals. So, what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.” Sted rolled onto his side so that he faced away from Emily and her uncomfortable questions.

“So you are that easily defeated?” Emily asked in a quiet voice. “That does not seem anything like the man I’ve read about in your fitness reports.”

“Go away,” Sted intoned to the wall in front of him. “This session is over.”

Emily sat there for a few more minutes entering notes into Sted’s records. She typed “Loss of life goal due to the accident appears to be the surface cause of Captain Richardson’s emotional distress, but the loss of his two crew members is probably the driving force behind his serious depression. We will need to tackle that loss in the near future if we are going to make any real progress.”

After she finished entering her notes, Emily shut down her tablet and started for the door. She stopped in the doorway and addressed Sted’s back one more time. “We’ll pick up again tomorrow. I’m afraid you are a captive audience for now, and I am going to take advantage of that fact for as long as I can.”

“What happened to that true grit you demonstrated in the academy?” Emily asked. She had been trying for the last twenty minutes to provoke Sted into some kind of angry response to jump-start his psyche out of the doldrums of self-pity.

“In the academy, I was a whole person. My life and its goals were all in front of me. Now that life is over,” Sted replied.

“So, you’re allowing yourself to be defeated by a random event in the universe?”

Sted’s face contorted with anger. “Stop pushing my buttons! You’ve been badgering me now for the last two days. All I want to do is curl up and sleep! Can’t you see that?”

“Yes I can,” Emily replied. She kept her tone calm in response to the reaction she had been trying so hard to provoke. “Captain Richardson, you are not a quitter. We both know that. What you are experiencing now is grief in its rawest and most natural form. You are only human, and if you did not feel lost and depressed after what you’ve been through, I would question your humanity. What I’ve been trying to do for the last two days is to get some fire back in that belly. I have been provoking you to get the reaction you just exposed. That reaction gives me hope. The old Captain Richardson really is alive somewhere inside of you, and with time and therapy like this, I’m sure we can bring him back to the surface.”

“Just let the old me rest for a while,” Sted replied weakly as he rolled away from Emily, effectively bringing the day’s therapy session to a close.

Emily stood up. “Certainly. You should rest for a while before your next physical therapy session this afternoon. See if you can put a little of that fire into your workout.”

When the prosthetic legs arrived, Emily scheduled Sted for surgery. The latest prosthetic devices were attached surgically. Gone were the days of the simple mechanical devices that simulated the missing limb.

Above the biomechanical knee joint was the latest in medical technology. A 3D-printed carbon matrix hollow shaft was designed to slip over the severed femur bone. Then a calcium-based paste containing osteoblast cells from Sted’s original surgery was layered over the matrix to stimulate bone growth. The body, in effect, created its own glue by building bone tissue around the carbon matrix shaft. Once the prosthetic was joined to the bone, it sealed itself in a bond as strong as the original bone.

That was only the first step in the procedure. Next, the severed muscle and nerve tissue in the preserved stump was married, via stem cells, with the specially prepared ligament and electronic fibers in the prosthetic. The electronic fibers were connected to the processor embedded in the lower portion of the prosthetic. This allowed the actions of the lower leg and foot to be programmed to react to the stimuli from the brain through the nerve/fiber interface.

Just two days after the surgery, Sted was working with his physical therapist, Alice Wheeler, in programming the new legs.

Alice could be very intimidating when she wanted. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun to keep it out of the way of her work, and her eyes appeared to be almost too big for her face. This may have been due to the startling amount of mascara she wore and her long eyelashes. Regardless of the reason, Sted knew those eyes missed nothing. Now he knew what people meant when they said they felt like they were under a microscope.

They started with simple movements.

“Okay, Captain,” Alice said. “I need you to imagine each simple movement in your head, and then I need you to direct your body to execute that movement. Let’s start with the left foot. I want you to imagine you’re pointing the toe of your left foot toward me. I have initialized the processor in the left leg to read the electronic signal coming through the nerve/fiber interface in your thigh and to react by pointing the toe. Now, point your left toe at me.”

Sted obeyed just because he had nothing better to do with his life right now. He was sitting on a cushioned table in the PT suite dressed in a light blue form-fitting top and shorts. When he imagined pushing his toes forward and pulling his heel back, the muscles in the thigh reacted ever so slightly to accommodate that motion, and the nerve/fiber interface was stimulated by his brain. The fuzzy electronic signal the processor received was recorded and associated with pointing the toes.

“Works,” Sted reported laconically as his new foot pointed in a delayed reaction.

Alice nodded as she typed something on the keyboard that was connected to wires leading in to the heel of his left leg. “Now, imagine relaxing the foot. I have programed it to return to its normal position.”

Sted let off on the pushing motion in his mind, and his thigh muscles and nerves reacted again. The movement of the foot back to its normal position was delayed slightly once again as the processor made the association between the fuzzy electronic signal and the desired reaction.

“Okay,” Alice said, “this is a first level association between your body and the prosthetic. When you try to point that foot again and then relax, the reaction should be immediate. Why don’t you go through several repetitions and see if the reaction of the foot seems appropriate to you.”

Sted tried several times to cycle his foot from pointing and then back to relaxed mode. The foot responded immediately this time, though in a somewhat mechanical fashion. He was also surprised that he got feedback from his heel moving against the top of the cushioned table.

“What is that feeling I’m getting of the prosthetic heel moving against the top of this PT table?”

A big smile lit up Alice’s face. “We have built skin-like nerve sensors into the prosthetic that provide feedback to the processor, which slows down the signal enough for the nerve/fiber interface to pass the information back to the brain. It won’t take your brain long to map the returned stimuli to the feelings it got from your original nerve cells that relate to touch.”

“Does that mean I will eventually be able to feel everything my prosthetic legs and feet contact?”

“It is not an exact science at this point,” Alice replied. “The human brain is very adaptive and can usually fool itself into thinking that the returning nerve pulses come from what it thinks are your original legs. It takes time and practice, but we hope you will get the same results as some of our other patients, where the interface becomes almost transparent. We will just have to wait and see how your brain adapts.

“At this point, there is no nuance programmed in for doing this at different speeds, or doing it with or without moving the toes or any of a dozen other variations. We need to program in all of the gross motor movements first. We can program the fine motor movements once we have all of the larger movements settled.”

“Why do you have to connect wires to the processor in the leg?” Sted asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to do that wirelessly?”

Alice nodded. “Certainly, but how would you like someone to be able to control your new legs against your will with a simple wireless connection? Those leg processors have to be completely isolated and only responsive to your nerve/fiber interface. Once we finish programming your new legs, you will take complete responsibility for your own security. You will password protect the hardwired interface so that even I won’t be able to change the programming against your will.”

“So, when can I start walking?” Sted asked with the first sign of hope in his voice.

“We can’t begin walking practice until we test out all of the gross motor skills from the knees down. It’s going to take at least two days of trial and error to get all of your gross motor movements programmed. In particular, when we work our way up to knee flexing, we have to be careful with the bonding between the prosthetic and the bones and musculature in the thighs. We don’t want it to tear because we’ve not programmed the reaction of the prosthetic properly. You’re going to have to show some patience.”

Sted sighed. “I’ll follow orders while you do the programming. I really need to feel whole again, and I’m not going to do anything to slow down this process. What’s next? More motions with the left foot, or do we program the toe pointing in the right foot?”

“I’m going to program one leg at a time so you don’t get any ideas of trying to go off walking before you’re ready. I know your type, Captain!” Alice smiled. “We’re going to program rotating the left foot clockwise and counter-clockwise next. Then we go to toe curling and then wiggling your big toe. So, let me enter clockwise rotation. Now, rotate your left foot clockwise without rotating your hip joint. We’re just working on foot movements at this point.”

The two of them worked the entire morning on Sted’s left ankle, foot, and toe movements. Then Emily came back to the lab and placed Sted on his gurney and wheeled him to his room for his lunch break.

Sted hardly noticed the food he was consuming. His emotional state was very fragile, and he felt like his life was at a tipping point. He had been depressed and despondent from the time he first woke up after the accident until he “felt” the heel of his prosthetic move against the top of the PT table. That odd sensation had sparked an insane hope that he could climb back out of the disaster his life had become.

His life goal had seemed completely beyond his reach until now. But if he could learn to walk with his new legs and even “feel” sensations passed back to his brain from the sensors on the surface of the prosthetic device, then there was no reason to think he could not command a space vessel once again.

But then doubt crept in, and he whipsawed himself back into despair, because he knew that naval regulations prohibited him from commanding a ship. The interstellar ship that was about to be constructed would be under the command of a United Space Navy captain, so how could he possibly gain that position?

By the end of the meal, Sted had reached a decision. He would do everything in his power to get back into a captain’s chair, in or out of the Navy. Once there, he would prove his worthiness despite his injuries. To hell with the regulations! They weren’t written in stone. They could be changed, and he would make every effort to do just that.