‘So I began working with small groups of students, and I would set them certain tasks. I would give them a particular item and say, “Examine it, strip it, take it to its nuts and bolts and tell me how it works. Build a replica. But remember, this is industrial design – if this were the business world then we’d have to be careful of industrial espionage, so no taking it outside of this room.”’
‘And these were parts from cars, you said?’
‘Oh, the Professor could come up with almost anything. He would come back from meetings, perhaps with people in the automotive industries, as I’ve said. But also with aerospace engineers, architectural houses, even cutting-edge sculptors and artists.
‘He’d throw some piece of kit at me and say, “This is what the next sculpture on the Fourth Plinth will be made of,” or, “This is the new LED material they’re going to use to coat the roof of the London Dome, take a look at it.” And I could find myself looking at all manner of amazing things.’
‘Such as?’
He pondered, ‘Well, I remember the material from the Dome. It was a piece of wiring that gave off a thousand different colours from pixels all along its length. It was to be strung into a net, and then draped across the entire structure – can you imagine that sight against the night sky? I don’t think they used it in the end, but it was in a U2 concert.
‘Or there was a coating for glass that, when a current ran through it, turned a clear panel black, or a black panel clear, or a red panel white, or whatever you wanted.
‘Imagine a roof of a car that became a window on bright days, or a side-window that became a sun-shield if it got too hot, or could be turned back to the colour of the rest of the bodywork. Camper-van windows or shower cubicles could give the occupants full privacy at the touch of a button.’
‘Go on.’
‘Or...’ Beck struggled to keep the flow of words in check. ‘Or metal alloy parts whose surface under pressure became their own lubricant, Teflon-like, without gaining heat or distorting. Imagine the axle or suspension joint of a car, or even the engine some day, needing no grease or oil.
‘Or a hard panel that had certain resistive properties, and so when electrified gave off heat from its surface. This would allow the structure of a house or vehicle to be its own heater...’
Locked in traffic on a sunny day, Eris said,
‘Well, right at this moment, I could imagine that’s the car they gave us.’
Chapter 20 – Life Study
Around the Mercedes, trucks idled, taxis beeped their horns, and tarmac melted. Within it, Eris asked,
‘And was it a good take-up?’
‘Yes, we had students from chemistry, biology, physics, the design courses. There were no boundaries, and people loved it.’
‘And was it a success?’
Beck again tried to fight down some of his growing enthusiasm, not felt since all this had been happening for real,
‘Well, after gaining our first batch of students, they began telling their friends about these exciting things they were doing in secret teams – but which they weren’t allowed to tell anyone about. Recruitment shot up. But it all caused a bit of a stir on campus.’
‘So the University didn’t entirely appreciate it?’
Beck shook his head, ‘Our students became so engrossed in our classes that they began to let their main courses slip. We had to put a notice up that if their regular test scores dipped then they were to leave our group and instead spend their afternoons in extra tuition. Meanwhile, other tutors lamented the loss of interest in their brightest pupils in what they were teaching them – they lobbied us to bar their students from our special groups, and generally dissuade them from being a part of whatever it was we were doing. Thankfully we fought that. And the fact that we were making waking waves only confirmed to me that what we were doing needed doing, and was generating interest.’
‘It must have been a very special time.’
‘Oh yes, I was jumping ship from pure biology, and Schmidt had a finger in every pie he could find. We had more volunteers than we could handle. It was a great time.’
‘And for you personally, I’d imagine?’
‘I became something of a star, a notable figure on campus. People whispered when I passed, or called out when they saw me. I had an aura about me, and people love a person with an aura – I hope I can say this without ego now, given the distance travelled, and with everything that has happened in-between.’
She nodded, in moral support as much as offering permission, asking,
‘But still these were technology items your students were trying to replicate?’
‘At that point, yes.’
‘Nothing... artif?’
‘Oh, we were a while away from that yet. We didn’t even know that that would be our intention at that stage.’
‘Indeed.’
‘But as we pulled these pieces of equipment apart we did began looking at ways to use them as joints and valves, applications for the human body. And we also looked to the natural world for inspiration. This was what I had been hired for – my knowledge of the structures of exoskeletons, limbs, eyes and joints of a hundred different species.’
Beck continued, ‘Although our work was closer to physics, a large number of chemists and biologists had joined, and they would be a great help. We branched the groups out into different areas; and we found that it wasn’t too much of a stretch for a group of biology students studying the construction of a butterfly’s wing in the daytime, to then go and build us a three-foot long version of that same wing using our new materials.’
Eris was awestruck. ‘Applied biomechanics. Inspired.’ She summarised, ‘So before you knew it, you had groups of the finest young minds in Britain, analysing and building all sorts of parts of different machines and creatures for you. All sworn to secrecy and unaware of what other groups were doing. With loyalty to you and Schmidt beyond that which they had for their own tutors, and furthermore convinced that they were working for some great cause to aid the University.’
Beck could only smile,
‘We even had them exhibit some of the early biological creations: the big butterfly’s wings and cricket’s legs, spider’s mandibles and wasp stings. It fostered a sense of friendly competition between the groups.’
‘In fact,’ Eris took up the story, ‘as far as I can see it, there was only one stage left to go for the pair of you.’
Beck was suddenly stung, as if by that massive wasp, with a hideous regret he knew must be showing on his face. He corrected her,
‘Oh, we were a long way from that. We did push on toward mammals and larger animals though – remember, we still thought the end result of this process was human science, replacement parts, and we had to get there somehow. But we began to hit a snag.’
‘Oh?’
‘As we moved on to larger creatures, so the scale of the creations became more life-sized. Some of the early objects were obviously hideous, in a Halloween-costume kind-of way. But people were still a lot happier building a three-foot radio-controlled Hornet and trying to get it aloft than having a life-sized dog’s leg twitching on the table in front of them.
‘I think the worst was a group effort to model the jaw actions of a mammal. I vividly remember being with that group, after weeks of dedication on their part, stood in horror at the sight of a cat’s head, disembodied, mewling silently on the table before us.
‘The group had been working on it feverishly, sculpting plastic bone and programming the most delicate intricacies of electrical current into finely overlapping strands of muscle. While others had stitched the perfect fur to fit around those green glass eyes.
‘And then there it was, a head, yawning and rolling to its side as the mouth opened and closed on a loop, repeating the sequence of muscle movements over and over.
‘You see, each had taken so much pride in their own part that they hadn’t realised what they were making, until they put it all together. And then none could
bear to touch it to switch it off. Someone yanked the cable out of the junction box, and swung the whole caboodle into a storage bin, never to be looked at again.
‘And similar scenes would be repeated with other animal parts. The girls especially didn’t like anything too accurate – and these were kids who spent their regular hours slicing and dicing in the dissection labs. At long as it was just the component parts, even when putting them together, they were fine – it was seen as something scientific, medical. Yet the moment it was switched on...
‘Somehow the pieces seemed alive – even though there wasn’t a living or dead atom in our workshop. But with the fur on, and the glass eyes, and the twitching... it was like we were messing with life.’
‘Ah, a telling phrase! Yet you continued?’
‘Some of the students stopped enjoying it as much, it stopped being such an adventure. And, as I say, there was always pressure from outside to end it. But this was exactly what Industrial Design was supposed to be about: pushing boundaries, finding out new things. And the course’s stated aim was still apparent, to earn our patents. And so we kept going, and we reorganised the groups.’
Chapter 21 – The Mechanical Human
Within the tinted glass of the dark car, Beck felt as if in a black bubble, a shadow on the face of a glorious spring day. He continued his life’s summation, talking of his students,
‘The squeamish ones were given technological projects – household objects, home electricals – and they soon got their excitement back, doing excellent work. Some of which Schmidt took back to his industrial contacts and were put into production, gaining the students credit for their courses, and making the University money to this day.’
‘And of the less-squeamish?’
Beck became thoughtful,
‘Even at the time of the cat’s head, there were some of our students who enjoyed the whole process of creating body parts in the same way as a cinema special effects department might relish its work. From the back of the room, we took note of them. And when it came time to re-evaluate, we quietly put these students together, and gave them slightly different work.
‘Even here though we stepped back, beginning with smaller, less visible and obvious parts – heart valves, hips and knee-caps. And there are thousands of these in people all over the world now, new and improved, enriching their lives...’
Eris rolled her eyes, ‘Yes, and the nation thanks you for it.’
‘...as well as being the start of a career in the field for many of the students involved.’
‘No one’s ever denied Schmidt’s project also did a lot of good. But go on with your part of it.’
Beck spoke more slowly now. Eris sensed Beck’s mood change, as he had to leave behind the abstract excitement of work he had obviously loved, and instead begin to give away the secrets of their creations,
‘As I say, we’d rolled the project back a bit from full on “body-horror”.’
She urged him on, ‘But you were close enough to something, and you wanted to pursue it?’
‘Indeed, but we didn’t know what that “something” was yet.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘But there must have come a moment...’
He breathed deeply, before beginning,
‘One evening we were in the lab after hours. The kids had left, and we could hear the music from the pub along the street. Schmidt kept a bottle of scotch in the filing cabinet, just like in The Sweeney.’ Beck chuckled momentarily, a last laugh. ‘And he poured us each a glass, and we sat there, lit by the workbench lamps, and...’
‘...one of you had the idea?’
‘I don’t honestly remember which.’
‘It’s okay. I won’t push you on it.’
‘I just don’t recall.’
‘It’s okay,’ she offered in consolation, hoping he would continue, which he did,
‘I mean, I can still see his wry smile from those days, when he would divulge his secrets. He’d tell me of East Germany, and how he outwitted his masters; or be burning to tell me of his latest plan or invention. And it might have been him looking at the students’ newest creations, admiring some wild object of theirs, and asking me, with a glint in his eye, “You know what we’re getting close to, Gawain?’’’
‘That sounds fair,’ she considered.
‘But I was so enthusiastic, and had so many ideas too back then. It could just as easily have been me blurting out, “But we’ve got this far! Why don’t we just build a whole human?’’’
‘Just as plausible,’ she judged.
‘But I don’t remember.’ As meekly as if speaking to his boyhood schoolteacher, as if he ever spoke to his teacher about such things, Beck then asked, ‘Miss Eris, do you believe in psychological repression?’
She considered, ‘I believe in emotional repression, like after a trauma: something’s there, we know it, we just can’t bring it front and centre.’
And he considered, ‘Yes, that sounds plausible too.’
She tried to counsel him, ‘Anyway, it’s okay, I’m not here to accuse you of anything, the hearings are long over. Whichever one of you voiced the thought, it doesn’t matter. But, go on. Tell me what happened after.’
Beck resumed, ‘Well, whoever said it, the other fell right on side. I don’t remember us arguing over it. One moment the idea wasn’t there, the next it was, for both of us.
‘And it was amazing. I remember feeling stunned – whether I had voiced the words or not – suddenly stunned at what we had in our hands, and saying, “We might be the only men in Europe capable of doing this.”
‘Everything was already in place, had arrived there without us even knowing it: our students in their groups encouraged to build and design, Schmidt with his thirty years of contacts in industry and academia, and me with a role where I could come and go as I pleased and ask anything of anyone in any department. We had the run of the University, and the cover of the Industrial Design project for as long as it lasted – which could have been forever with the successes we were seeing with some of the electrical and medical prototypes.
‘Schmidt and I agreed, that there was no way that we weren’t going to do this thing.’
‘The mechanical human?’
‘The mechanical human.’
Chapter 22 – The Hornet Wing
Eris asked Beck, ‘And how did that affect things?’
‘We’d moved far past giant hornets flying into the workshop walls,’ he answered. ‘We may have amused the students and ourselves with that stuff, but now we had to work fast. Anything which was going to be a part of the mechanical human project would have to be kept top secret, even from our students; and anything which wasn’t a part of it had to pay for that which was.’
She asked, ‘But it wasn’t a secret to all your students?’
‘No. As I say, among our more biologically minded faction we had filtered out an even more extreme wing. You might call them the “hornet wing”.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘These we spoke to openly and plainly – we would be making parts of bodies – and every one of them was on board. They would come to our classes, go into their own group space as normal, only they’d be taking direct instructions from us; and if the other groups asked what they were making, then they would blankly lie about it.’
‘And they accepted this?’
‘To a man and woman. They had relished the early projects and wanted to continue. And so one day when we broke up for holidays, and knowing we would be focussing on their exams when we got back, I said offhandedly, “Go on then, make me a human arm.’’’
‘Offhand?’
‘Sorry, unintentional,’ he cringed.
‘So, you threw this group a bone... sorry. And?’
‘And on the day I came back – from Tuscany, I recall – there it was, lying across my desk wrapped in blue paper. The skin was still too rubbery to guess it was real. But the craft of it, the way the mus
cles sat beneath the skin, how it bent at the elbow.
‘Next month the hand was done also, and later I saw it all matched together and attached to their computer. Faint electrical impulses were sent along a wire fed through the open shoulder, and we watched as the elbow pulled, the wrist turned, the fist opened and closed – we hadn’t got the fingers working independently by that time.’
‘And what were your reactions?’
‘Pride. I don’t think they’d been home or slept the whole two weeks.’
‘And it didn’t creep you out, like the cat?’
‘Oddly, no. Though a lot of that was down to enthusiasm.’
‘Pushing you along?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you set them other tasks? A leg?’
‘We could have used you on the project.’
‘And these other pieces?’
‘Were just as good. A leg, a better hand, and feet. They even made us a skull.’
‘A skull? So there was no pretence among you? I thought these were ostensibly prosthetics?’
‘By the end I don’t think that final group gave a damn what they were making, or what they were making them for. As I say, it was all Hammer Horror to some. I even saw a film one of the students put online, of them dressed up as zombies and vampires and slashing and tearing off each other’s fake body parts covered in special effects blood.’
‘Lord. I never saw that, not in all our seized materials.’
He explained, ‘You wouldn’t have. Schmidt put an end to that final group pretty quickly, worried that someone outside seeing their films would figure out what we were doing. As if you’d guess from a special effects arm?’
‘So he worried?’
Beck harrumphed, ‘I was impressed with our crack team, but Schmidt was scared of them. He thought them too obsessive, too keen, too close to his motives perhaps. I don’t know. But we kept the arms and whatnot, and packed the group off to the regular Industrial Design classes with the others that semester.’
‘But you were close by then?’
‘Close enough for us to continue the work alone, yes.’