PROTOTYPE 08
By Heck



Comments to heck@petermeyer.go-plus.net

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was a brief conversation.

Bouvier and Santana remained reticent about their plans for Lucy's future.
They skilfully avoided our questions on the subject, stating that they merely
wished to discover what had happened to her over the last sixty-four years,
to explore the effects of her changes, and to see if there were any lessons to
be learned that may be beneficial to the world. We both suspected that there
was far more to it than that, but had to be content. Lucy finally agreed to
remain at the facility because, like me, she believed there would be bloodshed
if she refused. She made some conditions, though.

"I'll stay", she had said. "But only on condition that you guarantee the
safety of Sean, here, Mike, and Rob. They are the only people I'm willing to
work with, so you can't replace them. And if I get any suggestions that you
have any plans to turn me into some kind of secret weapon, deal's off. OK?"

They had agreed but we both knew, as we saw them to the elevator, that it was
only because it suited them to do so. Neither of us trusted either of them as
far as we could throw them. Well, as far as I could throw them. In Lucy's
case, I suspected, that would be quite a long way.

"One last thing", Lucy had said as the elevator doors slid open in response to
their swipe card. "I never want to see you again". She was addressing Santana.
"You show your face to me, all bets are off. Am I making myself clear?"

Santana merely glared, leaving it to Bouvier to respond.

"Certainly, my dear". They stepped into the car. "Perfectly clear. Assistant
Director Santana will not return".

"Mr Bouvier". Lucy had the last word as the doors closed. "I am not your
dear".

We stood in silence for a moment, lost in our own thoughts. I leaned close and
spoke in a voice so quiet that Lucy would hear, but the bugs wouldn't. I
hoped.

"We have to get out of here".

She nodded, lips pressed tightly together.

"Let's go and talk to the others".

*

Mike and Rob were full of questions. We got together in the common room, and
told them about the bugs and everything else that had happened. We figured
that Bouvier et al would expect us to discus the events, so we didn't bother
to lower our voices.

"I see", Mike said when we had finished. We had told them everything except my
comment to Lucy by the elevator. "Looks to me like they got big plans for you,
Lucy, know'm'sayin'?"

"Ri-i-ight", Rob said. "They're totally gonna use you, man. And, like, not for
nothing good, neither".

"I know". Lucy shifted her position on the couch, tucking one leg under. "And
I'm not looking forward to it". She gave them both a meaningful look. "I
promised to cooperate for as long as I'm here".

Rob may be a near-genius and electronic whiz, but if you want him to react to
subtlety, you have to nail it to his head with a hammer. He just looked
vacant. Mike got it right off, though.

"I know where you're coming from", he said, non-comittally, but the look he
gave her spoke volumes. "We'll pick up on the testing tomorrow, and see where
we go from here". The emphasis loaded on the last three words told us all we
needed to know. He was on board. I moved over to sit next to Rob, leaning in
close so I could whisper in his ear.

"Laugh", I told him. "Act like I just told you a joke".

"Wha'?" He just doesn't get it, that laddie.

"When I finish speaking, I want you to laugh. Got it?"

"Ohh. Oh, yeah, ri-i-ight. Gotcha, Dude".

"And keep your voice down; just nod to say you understand, OK?" He nodded.
"All right. Now, can you isolate your computer workstation from the mainframe,
and make it look like a glitch?" Nod. "Good. And will you then be able to
bring up blueprints of this building?" Nod and shrug. He wasn't sure, but
thought he could. "Right, then that's what I want you to do, understand?" Nod.
"OK. Now laugh".

He laughed, all right. About as convincingly as a Mall Santa Claus, and I had
to nudge him hard to get him to stop.

"What was all that about?" Mike asked.

"Nothing for mixed company", I said, smiling and winking ferociously. "Ladies
present".

"Ah, right". He leaned forward, speaking directly to Lucy. "I got a gimmick",
he said. "It's mostly experimental, and I only have it as a sort of backup.
I'd almost forgotten it, until you maxed out all the equipment in the gym".

"What is it?" Lucy seemed intrigued.

"It's called a gravity scale. It's been developed for weighing stuff, big
stuff, to the nearest micron, but I think it could be used to measure your
strength. Are you game to try it out?"

"Why are you asking?" Lucy wondered. "Is it dangerous?"

"In and of itself, no", Mike explained. "But it wasn't designed to test
people, so I don't know. Could be, know'm'sayin'?"

Lucy chewed her bottom lip, pondering before coming to a decision.

"OK. I'll give it a whirl. I trust you to stop the test before it becomes
dangerous. What do you want me to do?"

"I haven't worked that out, yet. Let me sleep on it, and we'll try it out in
the morning".

*

It was my turn to stay awake. I lay tossing and turning in my bed, trying to
get my head round what it was that the shadowy people in charge really
expected of Lucy. Did they, in fact, want to turn her into some kind of
super-agent, or even a human weapon? God knew, she had the potential for
either. Or did they intend to conduct illicit experiments on her, a person
without official in society, a person who did not, officially, exist?

Or were they, even, genuinely concerned about her welfare and truly curious
about the effects of long-term hibernation, and looking for benefit to
humanity? I somehow doubted that.

Any way I looked at it, the cons outweighed the pros. I could think of only
one altruistic scenario, while the opposing possibilities seemed endless.

I dozed fitfully. From time to time I heard Lucy, having had her hour's sleep,
moving about the complex. At one stage, she turned on the TV for an hour or
so, but soon became bored with it. At last, at about five-thirty, I gave it up
as a bad job and got up. I ambled along to the common room, unwashed and
yawning, still in my boxers and a robe. Lucy was there, dressed in her spandex
shorts and top and looking fresh and bright as usual. Every magazine and book
in the place was laid out on the couch beside her.

"Been doing a wee bit of light reading?" I said by way of greeting. The
magazines comprised Mike's and my technical journals and Rob's sci-fi crap,
and I doubted they had been very entertaining.

"Yes", she smiled. "And I've found out something else about myself. I read all
of these in about an hour and a half, and I can remember every word of it".
She was obviously very pleased with herself. "Go on. Test me".

"Away with you. Every word?"

"Every word. You pick".

"OK". I picked one up at random, a copy of 'Modern Medicine', and I flicked
through the pages. "Page eighteen".

"Oh, that's just an advertisement for Insignus Medical Insurance", she said
without hesitation. "You can do better than that".

"Fair enough". I thumbed forward a few pages. "Page twenty-seven. Line
number.fourteen. Third word".

"Peristalsis. I like this game".

"How are you doing this? Are you reading my mind, or are you really
remembering?"

"I'm not reading your mind. I don't think I can, although I haven't tried.
Hey, that's a neat idea. We haven't gone there, yet. Do you want me to try?"

"Maybe later. Let's try another page". I turned some more leaves. "OK. Page
eighty-six. Third paragraph. Lines six to eight".

".or trauma to the occipital region, may result in copious epistaxis coupled
with permanent or transient blindness, depending upon the severity of the
injury. It has occasionally been noted."

"Hah! Right to the letter. That's pretty impressive, Lucy".

"It's fun. This time, find a word and concentrate on it. I'll try to guess".

"See if you're telepathic as well? All right". I scanned the mag, deliberately
avoiding medical terminology, settling on the word 'reason'. "Right, got one".

I concentrated hard, willing her to pick it up. Lucy narrowed her eyes, fixing
me with an intense stare and wrinkling her forehead in effort. After a minute,
she gave up.

"Anything?"

"No. Nothing. I didn't sense anything at all. Not an inkling. I guess I'm not
telepathic, after all". She seemed a little disappointed.

"Not to worry", I said. "It doesn't matter".

"But I was sure it'd work. I sensed you before you came in, although I guess
it must have been my enhanced hearing or smell, but I kind of hoped."

The door opened and Mike and Rob entered together.

"Did you sense them coming?"

"No". Her mouth drooped a tiny bit. "Not at all".

"What's this?" Mike asked. "And good morning, by the way".

We returned his greeting, including Rob in it, and I explained what had
transpired.

"So it seems", I finished, "that Lucy can speed read and has total recall, but
has no ESP talent on the face of it".

"Bummer". That was Rob.

"So, have you got your gravity scale set up?" Lucy wanted to know.

"Not yet. Lemme get some coffee first, know'm'sayin'?"

After breakfast, Mike disappeared to his room while the other three of us
wandered down to the gym. I'd asked him if he needed help, but he said no, he
could manage. We expected him to turn up with some sort of heavy gear on a
trolley or something, and were a little disappointed when he arrived with a
plastic container, a little bigger than a shoebox, tucked under him arm. He
sat on a bench and opened the lid.

"This", he said dramatically, extracting a fairly thick rectangle of plastic
about forty centimetres long and three wide, "is a gravity scale. Or part of
it, anyway. The interactive part". He handed it to Lucy, who frowned at it
curiously.

"It weighs almost nothing", she observed.

"Ah, now it weighs nothing. See these two metal discs on the underside? They
react with the Earth's gravity, and it can have a virtual weight of ... as much as
you like". He pulled an oblong gizmo with a keypad and digital display from
the box. "This is the control unit. I can adjust its virtual mass with this,
and I can fine tune it to the littlest micron". He put the controller down and
moved to stand behind Lucy, towering over her while he hooked up a heart
monitor. Next to him, she looked tiny. "Now, Lucy, hold your arms like this.
Straight out, palms up, and take a wide stance. That's fine. I'm just going to
balance the scale across your hands like this. OK. We're ready to go". He
retrieved the control unit and entered some numbers. "We'll start out easy.
Twenty-five kilos".

"Again with the kilos", Lucy tutted. "That doesn't sound much?"

"It'll be about fifty-five pounds. That's a lot of weight to hold at arm's
length, know'm'sayin'? All right. Here we go". He thumbed a button. A little
LED glowed on the scale, and it emitted a quiet hum. "How's that?"

"It's actually OK", Lucy grinned and nodded. "I can feel the weight, you know?
I mean, I know it's heavy? But it's not straining me at all".

"Your muscles haven't even tensed, yet", Mike observed. "Heart rate still at
your normal resting rate, thirty-two bpm. We'll go up by five kilo
increments". He touched a key. "How's that?"

"Fine. I didn't notice any difference".

I stood against a wall. Thirty kilos was a lot of weight to hold like that,
and I knew I wouldn't have been able to handle it. I glanced over at Rob, who
was sitting on the lat machine, alert as a meerkat. His eyes were riveted on
Lucy and I though he might start drooling at any minute. I knew how he felt.

Mike continued to increase the virtual weight. At fifty kilos, her muscles
began to show signs of effort, standing out in defined cords. At seventy-five,
her face took on a look of intense concentration, and at ninety she frowned
and set her teeth, but still held the scale rock steady at arms' length. By a
hundred and ten, her arms began to tremble slightly and her heart rate hit
sixty, but the display hit one-fifty before the strain became appreciable. She
still held it, though, and the readout reached two-oh-five kilograms before
beads of sweat appeared on her grimacing face. Her heart tripped along at
ninety-three.

I was sweating as much as Lucy, watching her display her incredible strength.
My heart pounded, and I had to sit down to stop my knees trembling. If I had
thought her show yesterday was erotic, this was off the scale. I actually had
to force myself to look away to avoid embarrassment. Nearby, Rob was letting
out tiny moans and gnawing at his bottom lip, and even Mike, usually the very
model of professional detachment, was watching her with wide eyes.

"I ... can't hold this.much longer". Lucy forced the words through tightly
clenched teeth.

"'S OK", Mike soothed. "We're close to two hundred fifty kilos, now. Nearly
one and a half times your bodyweight. Bring the scale in close to your body,
as if you were going to curl it. That's right. How does that feel?"

"Better". Her voice was immediately much less strained, and the grimace of
effort disappeared from her face. Almost straight away, her pulse dropped to
fifty-one. "Whew! I can go on, now. What're we up to?"

"Just on two-seventy kilos. That's, what, about six hundred pounds, give or
take".

"Far out!" Rob breathed. Lucy looked at him with a quizzically raised eyebrow.

"Far out?" She looked at me. "Did he just say 'far out'? Even in my time, we'd
stopped saying far out!"

"Aye, well, you know". My voice came out rough and husky. I cleared my throat.
"What goes around, comes around".

She shrugged, and returned her concentration to the scale.

"This is amazing". That was a strong statement, coming from Mike. "We just
passed three hundred kilos, but your muscles seem to have relaxed a little.
It's like you're continually adjusting, compensating to the workload. Pulse
now one-ten".

"I feel OK", Lucy told him. "Since I changed position, it's gotten a lot
easier".

The trial continued. When the reading showed four-nine-five, she had to shift
her stance to adapt, and you could almost watch her muscles adjusting
themselves to accommodate the ever-increasing weight. Approaching six hundred,
her forearms were again trembling, her heart hit a hundred and eighty-seven,
and the grimace was back. At seven-sixty-four, she had to let the scale down
so it was braced against her steady thighs. Once more her muscles lost much of
their tension, her heart rate fell, and her face relaxed.

"Better again", she told Mike. "How'm I doing?" He didn't reply immediately,
his eyes flickering between Lucy and the screen with a disbelieving
expression.

"Great", he said at last. "Fantastic. You just passed nine hundred-thirty
kilos, and we're heading for the tonne. Heart rate now approaching two hundred
bpm".

A glistening sheen of sweat covered her body, and little rivulets ran between
her breasts where, I couldn't help but notice, her nipples stood erect. She
was breathing heavily, and the strain showed on her face once more, but she
stood like the immoveable object supporting the irresistible force.

"That's it!" Mike whooped. "That's the tonne! One thousand kilos!"

"Oh, man!" Rob groaned and leapt from his perch. "Later, Dudes", he gasped,
and ran from the room. I could understand. I was only just managing to
maintain my own self-control.

"What's that in ... English?" Lucy panted. The supreme effort was telling on her,
now, and her entire body shook under the immense strain.

"Twenty-two hundred pounds", Mike told her. "You can give up any time you're
ready".

"No", she gasped. "You wanted to find my limit. I can take it a while longer".

Mike and I exchanged glances. I could tell that he wasn't turned on by her
show of sheer power, the way I was. My face felt hot and I was sweating
freely, bracing myself against the excited tremors that seized me. But he was
enormously impressed, all the same. Damned impressed. He pressed a key.

"Nnnnh!" The first vocal indication of Lucy's strain was wrenched from her
between gritted teeth.

"Ten-fifty!" Mike called. "Eleven hundred! Still OK?"

"Nnyeah! Keep it coming!"

"Eleven-twenty! Twenty-five! Thirty!"

"Nnnyeagh!!" Lucy opened her mouth and screamed defiantly at the ceiling.

"Eleven-sixty! Eleven-eighty! Twelve hundred!"

"It's going!" Lucy yelled. "I'm losing it!"

"OK. Turning it down, now. Critical point reached at.One-thousand-two-
hundred-eighteen kilos!"

"Aagh! It's hurting, now! Can I put it down, yet?"

"Just a minute! Until it's down below five hundred". Mike brushed a hand
across his forehead. Even he was sweating, now. "OK. Drop it!"

The little plastic rectangle hit the matt with a dull thud, incongruous and
out of all proportion with it's dimensions. Lucy lowered herself to the floor
and lay panting on her back with a forearm across her eyes, her splendid
breasts rising and falling with the rhythm of her respiration.

Mike stared at the figures, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Shit! I ain't never seen nothing like that, know'm'sayin'? We knew she'd be
super-strong, but I never even imagined anything like that! Her pulse never
passed two hundred! How're you doin', Lucy?"

In fact, she was doing fine. In the space of a few seconds her breathing had
returned almost to normal and the redness had left her cheeks. Her powers of
recuperation were obviously as stupendous as her strength. She sat up, beaming
all over her gorgeous face.

"I feel great!" She gave a little giggle. "I feel so powerful, it's amazing! I
almost feel like I could do it all again!"

Mike laughed heartily at her obvious and slightly girlish glee. I joined in,
out of sheer relief. Relief that I had managed to keep my decorum, if you know
what I mean.

If Lucy had been an enormous, muscle-bound, bodybuilder type, it would still
have been a terrifically impressive display, don't get me wrong. But the fact
that she looked like a normal athlete, and so beautiful and downright sexy to
boot, was what made the experience so intensely erotic for me, and so much
more impressive as a result.

"We'll give it a rest, for now", Mike said. "Damn, you're strong, girl!"

"How strong?" Lucy wanted to know. "What were the final figures? I didn't hear
properly, before".

"Twelve hundred eighteen kilograms", Mike grinned.

"Two-point-two pounds to the kilo, is that right?" Lucy asked. Mike nodded.
"That's ... two thousand six hundred seventy-nine-point-six pounds". She worked it
out in a second. "Wow! Nearly a ton and a quarter, in old money! I'm impressed
with me! Maybe those aliens did me a favour after all, huh?"

Her smile was so luminous that it lit up the room like a beacon. Infectious,
too, and both Mike and I beamed widely.

"C'mon", I said. "Let's dig up Rob and get some lunch".

After lunch, Lucy protested that she felt fine and wanted to do some more work
with the gravity scale. Under close supervision, Mike and I let her try to
reach her limit in differing disciplines, and were suitable amazed.

She maxed out her curl at three-eighty kilos, and benched six-oh-two. She
squatted well over a tonne and, with a great deal of strain and effort, to be
sure, managed a maximum deadlift of, get this, twenty-one hundred and
forty-three kilos. By the end of the afternoon, I was more exhausted than she
was.

Well, you try spending the better part of a whole day in a state of hyper-
arousal.