* * *
He didn't think for long. Later that morning I was treated, once again, to the good doctor's presence. This time he wasn't alone. Again, the doctor was dressed the same, but this time he wore the round sunglasses that hid his mechanical eyes. He entered the office from the stairs with something vaguely resembling a person behind him. Covered in a brown overcoat and hat, the thing bulged in all the wrong places. It stunk of the same antiseptic smell as the doctor's lab and a soft whirring sound escaped as it glided across the floor.
"What's that?" I inquired as the doctor shook Khan's hand.
Khan had donned his new suit. It was skin tight and all blue with what looked to be a white racing stripe around the chest just under the arms. The stripe met in the back at a central vertical stripe that ran from his forehead, over his head, down his back, split at the buttocks and ran down the back of the legs. The suit covered everything but the face, which was left open. It looked like a seamless wetsuit. Khan's face, except for his goatee and eyebrows, was bright red. I had to suppress a laugh every time I looked at him.
"Eh?" Medico replied. "Oh, that's just Assistant. He's here to..." the doctor got lost in some device he was waving all over Khan's body.
"Assist?" I finished.
"Oh... eh... yes, of course," the doctor answered absently before turning to Khan. "And I'm told you've always been this way? What treatments have you tried in the past?"
The doctor and Khan spoke about his history at length. At first, Assistant stood by silently, but eventually, it dropped the coat and hat and began to help. I was a bit taken aback at first at its appearance. It had four arms, two human and two mechanical. The human ones looked unfinished - too smooth, no hair - it was creepy. The mechanical ones had a large cylinder at the end, which rotated occasionally to provide the doctor with the proper tool. The head, if you could call it that, was covered in skin but had no mouth, no ears, and no hair. It looked like skin wrapped over a huge, smooth thimble. Around the circumference was a metal band that looked suspiciously like larger and more complicated versions of the doctor's mechanical eyes. The skin of the head and human arms seemed to meld into a metal chassis. Exposed wires, servos and other devices I didn't have names for terminated in a set of tank-like treads. The whirring sound was ever-present from the creature but became louder when it moved.
It was clear that Assistant and the doctor had worked together for some time. A number of times during the examination of Khan, the doctor would start to ask for something, and before he could finish asking, the creature would hand it to him.
Suddenly, it hit me, "Hey, Medico, was Assistant on the table last night?"
"Eh," Medico turned away from Khan for a moment, "oh, yes. Yes. It had developed a bit of cancer. Had to cut it out, you see."
"So you made this thing?" I asked.
"Of course, who else?" He resumed his examination, "Quite a help this one. Bio-mechanical robot. Very helpful."
"Bio-what?"
"Bio-mechanical," the doctor replied. "It's a robot, for the most part, but I integrated a few human tissues. Can't get them to heal properly, though. It just won't regenerate skin like we do. I can improve upon some of the senses and abilities of humans but not all of them. Yet," he added.
I grimaced, "Where'd ya get the parts?"
"Huh? Oh," he thought for a second, "well, the chassis was left over from..."
"No, no," I interrupted, "the human parts."
"Oh, those!" he turned and smiled at me. "I grew them, of course. From my own cells."
I turned back to the bio-mechanical creature with a touch of awe. He grew arms, skin and Lord knows what else. I still had to take antihistamines every spring and this guy was Frankensteining up a glorified cup holder.
"You grew the brain too?"
The doctor scoffed, "Oh, no, of course not. You wouldn't know this, but there are prohibitions against using real brains or even sophisticated Artificial Intelligences."
Not only did I know about the prohibitions, just about everyone did. After a super-villain made a series of robots that eventually turned on him rather than doing his bidding, a law had been passed. It was in all the news.
The doctor continued, "Underneath all the skin is a titanium alloy shell with a rather, if I may say so, unsophisticated robotic brain. It really doesn't need to think much. But it uses the fine motor control of the humanoid arms and the sense of touch to assist me in my diagnoses. I've actually managed to upgrade some of the human senses quite a bit. What would be undetectable to our hands is quite obvious to Assistant's."
"Does it talk?"
"No," his brow furrowed, "why would it need to?"
"To assist you and all that?"
"Oh, my Handheld has a connection to everything it perceives. I can access it all whenever I want." He held up the device that he'd been working with since he began with Khan. He turned back to my assistant, "All right, I think we have what we need. Now Khan, I have some theories as to what is going on with you, but there is only one way to be sure. I'll need to take some during-and-after performance measurements. Can you speed yourself up without actually moving?"
Khan shrugged, "I suppose, I've never really tried it."
"Well, it seems plausible," Medico responded. "I'd like you to stand here "accelerated" for three seconds while Assistant and I take some measurements. Then run for twenty-three seconds. And then stand here again for three more. That should give you a second or so to spare.” He directed his last question to me, “I assume he can rest here for the requisite time afterwards?"
I nodded, "You might want to change the sheets during the running part. Starting to get a little ripe in there."
The doctor continued, "Good, we'll take some measurements again when you are asleep. By the time you wake up, I should know something."
Khan shook his hand, "Thanks Doc." He reached up to where his ear would be behind the fabric of the suit. He touched a point on the hood and a shimmering field appeared all around him.
"Now before you go running off," I interjected, "take this." I handed him a small, flat disk about the size of an ashtray. "And you too, Ignaro. These are trackers. We'll be using them to monitor your whereabouts." I shrugged at Khan's look of concern, "Just in case."
The doctor replied, "Good idea. I suppose you have more for my other patients?"
"Yeah, I've got a whole mess of them," I replied, gesturing behind me toward my cabinet. "All you'll need to do is call me and let me know when you've handed one out and to whom. You can make up whatever story you like, but make sure you get them to carry it on them. They aren't going to do anyone any good if they just throw them on their nightstand after you leave."
He nodded. "Assistant, are you ready?" the doctor looked at his Handheld. It looked like a large calculator with oddly shaped buttons and an overlarge, for a calculator, screen. "Good," he replied to the device. He pointed the Handheld at Khan, waited a moment and then said, "Alright, BEGIN!"
For three seconds nothing seemed to happen except that Khan's facial features seemed to soften slightly. I realized it was because he wasn't standing exactly still and it was causing a slight blur. Then suddenly, he was gone. What I presumed was twenty-three seconds later, he reappeared, his features strained and jittery. A few seconds later and he was gone again. We checked the bedroom and found him, face down, sweat pouring from his body. He'd changed the sheets (and cleaned the room from the looks of it), but I could only hope he had the foresight to put some plastic down underneath. The room already stank like a teenage boy's locker room.
The doctor and Assistant waved their respective measurement devices over Khan a few times and Assistant even touched him on a few occasions. All the while, the doctor murmured to himself, occasionally asking questions of Assistant, which were answered silently. I left them to it and went back to my office to retrieve the additional tracking devices. A few minutes later, the doctor and Assistant joined me.
"Now don't forget to pass th
ese out to all your patients," I reminded him.
The doctor took the plain paper bag from me and glanced inside.
"Each one is labeled with a number. Just call my office and leave a message if Khan or I don't pick up. Let us know the number of the device, who they are and anything else you might think is relevant."
"Eh..." the doctor looked confused, "how will I know what else might be relevant?"
"You tell me," I retorted. "You're the one who thinks people are going missing."
The doctor grimaced and turned to leave. Assistant picked up the jacket and hat, awkwardly, and donned them. A light started to glow from under the coat as it reached the stairs. Slowly, it floated down after its creator. I exhaled and closed the door at the top of the stairs.
To the left of my desk was a small closet. Inside, I kept the terminal that Gale had left when she moved out. It was basically a small desk with a TV and keyboard built into the top. Inside were state-of-the-art electronics (as of five years ago). The terminal, among other things, connected somehow to Mind, the supercomputer that ran the space station where the members of The Bulwark lived. I was never sure how it made the connection. In fact, I wasn't quite sure that a supercomputer was a real thing. All I had to do was plug the terminal in and it worked. Through it, I had access to all of The Bulwark’s personnel files and databases. Mind could also be tasked with analysis if I wanted, but I was afraid if I did that too often they'd figure out that Gale had left this terminal behind and take it from me. While there were prohibitions and actual laws about advanced robots, Mind was the exception. It was rumored that it wasn't a machine program at all but actually a super that somehow melded with a computing device. It didn't really matter. As you got higher and higher up in the Super State government, laws became more and more flexible. What might land you in jail for the rest of your life as a tippy was a party favor for the super elite.
I pressed the power button and watched the monochrome screen come to life. I knew that recently, the Super State developed some sort of wrist communicator, which accessed Mind and the Network. The Network was the best source of information on the planet. While most tippys had to rely on calls to experts or encyclopedias, with the Network, most of the world's knowledge was at my fingertips. Unfortunately, the Super State highly restricted access to the Network under the auspices of its use of proprietary technology. Honestly, while it was convenient, it wasn't something I used often. Just screen after screen of information.
Ted, a while back, had built the trackers as a dare. One thing I had to respect about Ted is that he loved a challenge. I bet him he couldn't build a device that could be put in people’s pockets to track their locations all over the planet. Technically, he'd lost because it doesn’t work at magnetic north or south, but if he hadn't told me, I certainly wouldn't have known. Even though Ted is a low level citizen of the Super State, he still has access to technology and resources that the rest of us can only dream about. If not for Gale leaving the terminal behind, I'd be just as in the dark as everyone else.
As the terminal came to life, I accessed the tracking program Ted created and saw a crude overlay of the city. The doctor was on his way to his next appointment; his beacon glowed extra brightly as he had nearly all the trackers on him. They would split into multiple dots on the map as he handed them out. I got a pad of paper and a pen and set it next to the terminal so I could list who went with which tracker. I got up to make a cup of coffee. From the kitchen, I glanced into my bedroom. Khan's snores were barely audible from my office, but they were a bit louder from here. I poured a steaming cup of the high octane brew and settled in to wait. In six hours Khan would know more about his condition and I'd leave him to monitor the doctor. I thought back to the doctor and Assistant and shuddered. When Khan woke up, the first thing I planned was a shower.
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