The Changing: Prologue
DISCLAIMER This is, obviously, a work of science-fiction. It will contains scenes of homosexual acts between men. If you are under 18, or it is illegal for you to read this where you live, then please do not continue. For everyone else, I hope you enjoy this prologue and I look forward to hearing your feedback. DISCLAIMER
Patient Zero: Professor Lukasz Zyro
Professor Lukasz Zyro turned on the camera. Looking over at his monitor, he awkwardly lined his portly frame up in 3rd person into the center of the screen, standing against the plain white wall of his lab. He clicked a button on the remote, and set it down on the counter next to him, looking up into the camera.
"This is the video journal of Professor Lukasz Zyro, July 14th 2014. Again and again, animal testing produces no results, as I predicted at the very start of the testing, eight months ago. The nanoconstructors are too finely tuned to human DNA to enable them to map animal DNA, even that of chimpanzees, to begin the processes of cohesion, leading to swarm intelligence and the de- and reconstruction phases. I'm absolutely sure of my data and in all simulations, the results are conclusive and satisfactory. But of course, without successful animal testing, human trials are a no-go; but as I've explained to my sponsors, the government and just about every academic I've come across, the differences are too vast to accurately demonstrate nanoconstructors at work in animal subjects, and I must be able to proceed with controlled human testing, otherwise seven years of single-minded determination and research will have amounted to nothing." His voice stuttered a little, fraying with the frustration that had slowly been filling him ever since he had made the breakthrough and actually synthesized his first nanoconstructor. He had since come so close, but was forced to work under such restrictive conditions, his hands tied whichever way he tried to go; dead ends in all directions leading nothing but insurmountable walls of deaf ears. Nobody realized the potential of what he was creating: his sponsors saw a money pit that they were quickly growing tired of throwing their funds into, with the promised results receding ever further back into science fiction. The government saw promising theories and the potential for economic and military supremacy, but their caution and choking bureaucracy blinkered them to what it all meant.
His fellow academics refused to believe that nanoconstructors had the resources to form complex swarm intelligence matrices that could self-sustain within a host, even now that he had produced the nanoconstructors (or NCs, as he referred to them). The fact they had refused to coalesce in animal subjects was simply because they were sourced from Lukasz's own proteins and coded to utilize human DNA, seeing just a jumble of nonsense when introduced into anything other than human, even our closest cousins. To construct NCs for a chimp, a dog, or even a simple mouse would mean at least another two years of work, plus it would have no relevant scientific bearing on human NCs. That he knew what he had created, but everyone else was blind to the monumental leap in human advancement he was presenting them was maddening. People were either too scared, like his backers, or simply wouldn't believe that what he had done could actually exist.
What were, at best, genetically modified proteins, couldn't possibly coordinate in groups large enough to carry out complex tasks, such as the reorganization of human tissue matter in a healthy way; they weren't living in a biological sense, so they couldn't be sentient, or so everyone else agreed. Only Lukasz saw that this was wrong. A single ant was chaotic, simple and meaningless, following nothing but pre-coded instructions hard-wired into each individual, yet ten thousand ants coalesced into a single unit, greater than the sum of its parts, to build complex structures, working for a common goal and solving problems, even to the extent of laying down their own lives. Even when you factored how basic each NC was as a single unit, compared even to an ant, extrapolate swarm intelligence out to the scale Lukasz's NCs were capable of and a unified system consisting of hundreds of billions of nanoconstructors could perform the unthinkable!
With an effort, Lukasz forced himself to calm down. He'd gone off onto one of his mental tangents again, probably had even been muttering a little to himself. Looking into the camera lens, he smiled. He'd edit that bit out later. His smile turned into a grin. Time to lay down his trump card.
"This evening, I am proceeding with human testing. This," Lukasz said triumphantly, holding up between his thumb and forefinger the most insignificant little glass ampoule, which was barely visible on the recording monitor, "Is an ampoule of nanoconstructors, around a thousand; enough, theoretically, to initialize cohesion, with a buffer to allow for losses and ineffective nanoconstructors. These nanoconstructors have been programmed to remain active for two days, after which they will, to all intents and purposes, die. They have been programmed to reduce my body fat levels and increase my muscle mass, which would certainly be an improvement," Lukasz said, with a chuckle and an affable tap at his flabby waistline. Lukasz, now so close to the point of no return, felt as though he were soaring; he'd already thrown himself from the cliffs of caution and was tumbling through the eddying thermals of possibility. His head was spinning with a wild feeling of elation.
"It will be interesting to see just how close my research models came."
On the recording monitor, Lukasz pinched together his thumbs and forefingers. Between them was the tiny glass ampoule, with what looked like the tiniest little speck of mercury within, which of course couldn't be seen on the recording. A fine etched line circumscribed the glass of the cylindrical bulb. Lukasz brought the ampoule in front of his face, exhaling deeply.
With the most delicate `TINK!' the ampoule split into two. For a brief second, a tiny, opalescent cloud billowed in front of Lukasz's wondering face, before he refilled his lungs, the cloud disappearing into his body through his mouth and nose as the professor filled his lungs to capacity, then waited.
On the recording monitor, which had not even been able to register the tiny cloud of NCs, Professor Lukasz Zyro was shown to be turning visibly red. His veins were bulging on his forehead, the two halves of the spent ampoule falling to the floor with a chiming like tiny bells as they tinkled off-camera. Sweat broke out over his entire face, his eyes bulging and rolling wildly like a panicked horse for a moment, until...
Breath exploded from Lukasz, and he doubled over, taking a few minutes to regain his composure, mopping his brow and smiling lopsidedly into the camera once again.
"Please excuse the dramatics, but I needed to ensure that maximum absorption had taken effect. I didn't want to breathe out most of the nanoconstructors, impairing their chances of cohesion," Lukasz now spoke quickly, jauntily; the edge of frustration in his voice vanished so completely that if it had not been recorded, you would not have known it was there. "I'll now take real-time measurements of my starting size to show conclusively what I have been "theorizing" all these years." He had the effusive edge to his voice of someone who knew they had won. After so much time, after ridicule and doubt, Lukasz couldn't have been surer of anything.
He began to remove his lab coat, followed by his clothes. He wasn't an impressive sight, his Polish genetics not helping in any way. Average height, little to no muscle, slightly pudgy and pale-skinned from too many late nights in his laboratory eating microwave meals, his was not a body to be shown off in a nightclub. With a flourish, he stripped off his baggy white boxers, and an equally unimpressive little cock poked out from a mousy little bush of brown hair. Lukasz wasn't very hairy at all and despite his 42 years, had the look of a slightly flabby, nerdy university student that puberty hadn't quite finished with yet.
As a slightly flabby, nerdy university student, he'd hardly looked as if he'd started puberty.
Bringing in electronic scales, calipers, thermometers and various other measuring devices that were linked to the computer and camera, he began to measure himself from top to toe, a process he'd practiced and pre-programmed, so that the measurements were fed electronically into an accompanying database, whilst the results blinking up on the recording and the monitor as he named them off. At the very end, he measured his meager dick.
"Two inches flaccid," he reported, his buoyant disposition slumping somewhat as `1.9 inches' blinked up on the recording monitor. "Well, I didn't say which muscles they were to increase. Maybe they'll be a little more metaphorical in the interpretations," he added with a self-conscious laugh, quickly pulling back on his boxers.
It had taken almost forty minutes to accurately take all his measurements. As he put away the last of the instruments, he raised a hand to his forehead. He rubbed his fingers together, his smile growing.
"A thin layer of sweat has developed on my brow with no apparent reason, added to the fact it feels considerably warmer in here now than ten minutes ago, although ambient temperature has remained constant according to readings. This could be the beginning of my feedback data. The feedback data everyone said I wouldn't get."
Quickly, he secured a rectal and aural thermometer into their respective cavities, and applied a small remote thermometer pad his temple to accompany the one he'd applied to his neck whilst taking his own measurements.
Sure enough, his core temperature had risen by almost an entire degree, and his dermal temperature was three degrees higher than when he'd taken his temperature twenty minutes before. Lukasz laughed, his laughter just a little too breathy and just a little too high-pitched. By now, it was clear to see on the monitor that the flabby scientist was beginning to sweat profusely. He removed the aural and rectal thermometers, placing them on a work-surface off-camera.
"It's actually happening! I... This is... Everything I've ever worked towards, everything I've ever wanted, is happening, right now, to me!" Lukasz hurriedly applied more thermal sensors to his chest, lower back and armpit, to corroborate the findings of the others. Indeed, his core temperature was already registering over a degree warmer, and his skin was almost five degrees warmer than his initial readings. Lukasz looked at the data with a slight ghost of worry in his eyes. "Such a huge exothermic reaction, the nanoconstructors must be reproducing exponentially, producing millions of copies; each nanoconstructor feeding back information, learning, adapting." Sweat was dripping from Lukasz, his entire body now slick with moisture, his voice still jubilant, but also with a faint air of tension. He quickly disappeared off-screen, returning with a half-gallon bottle of water, which he uncapped and started drinking from like a man dying of thirst. Panting, with a third of the bottle downed, he took another big swig before setting it on the floor, his hand shaking noticeably.
"Dermal perceptions appear to be starting already. Light pins and needles at all points of the body, quickly ramping up into intense tingling. Not sure if this is due to... Phew... Due to the increase in body temperature or directly because of the nanoconstructors. This could already be the start of the de- and reconstruction phases, which should happen simultaneously. My research models were never able to accurately predict when the event horizon' of... Oh, it's hot... the event horizon' of the nanoconstructor cohesion would take place. If it has already happened, this is much quicker than I... Ugh!... than I anticipated."
Lukasz slumped towards the floor as he charted the growing heat, pain and panic he was registering. With trembling hands almost numb with pain, he managed to uncap the bottle of water, but was unable to lift it, the muscles in his arm twitching wildly. Collapsing onto the floor, he managed to tip the bottle towards his mouth, sluicing water over his face, almost choking, but drinking as much as his burning throat would allow.
The bottle pitched sideways onto the floor as Lukasz did the same. On the recording monitor, the almost-naked scientist twitched and jerked in a spreading puddle of water. The camera silently recorded, the digital recording slowly filling up the terabyte of memory as Lukasz succumbed to the nanoconstructors within him.
END
This is just the prologue of what I hope will develop into a multi-part story. I already have a rough shape of how things will develop, but would love to hear any feedback, criticisms or ideas you may have. Please send them to niftyauthor@outlook.com