GFP 010: Phantom Blinks

Jeremy hid amongst the thick ponderosa pine behind his house, spying on his two daughters playing in the backyard. He stared silently, quiet, waiting. The girls were taking turns cooking for each other with plastic toy pots and pans, plates and utensils, gobbling up make-believe meals one after another.

There was a peace in their hustling and bustling. A sweetness in their hurried play. Something Jeremy will biochemically forget in less than 72 hours.

The morning glint of sunlight bounced off the swing set he had assembled two summers ago, before he was deployed to Iraq, a lifetime and a half ago.

Fearing he had grown inhumanly numb in his transition back, a swelling cotton ache finally blistered inside his thorax. His soft parts shuddered.

It hurt so much to see them. He wanted to go to them, hold them, tickle them, hear their squealing up close again. But in his state, the way he looked now, he couldn’t. He was unrecognizable. A monster.

Jeremy felt tears welling up. He tried to blink, but couldn’t. He did not have eyelids anymore. They had replaced them with clear scales.

The bullet-proof rostrum covering his head was rigid. The carapace on his shoulders, firm. The somites down his spine hardened. Jeremy had grown nicely into his CNT exoskeleton at the lab. They were quite pleased with him. The apex of their scientific careers.

That was, until 0600 this morning when he decided to escape. And succeeded. Not surprisingly, as they had severely underestimated the security required to keep Jeremy captive.

But it could also be because he was loyal, patriotic and honest to a fault. He was a good soldier. He had made this devil’s bargain with no fingers crossed behind his back or otherwise.

Jeremy had always been a man of his word, even as they slowly step-by-step made him more animal than man.

Although, there was that third night in, after the agreement. He wrestled in despair what he had done. How much of his decision was for his country? And how much of it was to stop the excruciating, inexorable pain?

In Landstuhl Regional, they had a lacerated quadripeligic with third-degree burns swimming in a wild cocktail of morphine, oxycodone, trumdel, fentanyl and codeine.

A good soldier who had unfortunately stepped on an IED and had yet somehow miraculously survived.

That man, Jeremy had often wondered since, was a certified drug addict. Was he in any capacity to sign anything, let alone a contract?

What’s done is done.

He stretched his regrown salamander limbs and flexed beneath his exoskeleton.

He kept watching Lily and Emma play. Inside, by the kitchen island, Bev was reading a book in her panties and his light-blue button-down, her hair tied up in a loose bun.

At any moment now, Jeremy knew, two men will drive up in a black Lincoln towncar. They will solemnly approach the frontdoor of his house. They will hesitantly, but surely ring the doorbell.

Bev, startled at first by unexpected morning visitors… will be filled with dread the very next instant. She will know who they are without them introducing themselves, without knowing their names. It won’t matter.

One will be captain Stokes. The other, sargeant Chan. They will be in class A uniforms. They will speak calmly and with poise.

Bev will lean against the doorframe, collapse and mourn.

Knowing all this and in spite of it, Jeremy chose to be here when it happened. In fact, he had temporarily deserted to be here. It was an act of masochism, yes. But also matyrdom. And duty perhaps. Or romantic poignancy. He couldn’t decide.

He waited. They promised they would do it today. To give them closure. And to trigger the insurance policy. They said they would take care of it.

Jeremy stood straighter, flexing his solmites. He imagined the rush of nanobots coursing through his bloodstream, converting his DNA bit-by-bit, atom-by-atom. Each one of them also acting as millions of tracking devices.

They will come for me soon. Please let me see this at least… please, just this one thing… ☣