An ordinary young man finds an extra-ordinary android.
Late one summer on a Saturday night in a single-wide trailer in a small town in northwest Iowa, my roommate and I were having a party. “Dude, that box you made for those twelves is hella tight!” I yelled to Kenny, my roommate, as the speakers were bumping some ‘90’s hard rock.
Kenny simply nodded his head once while holding his beer up. He wasn’t much for words if he had to raise his voice and I was used to that by now. Plus, I knew Kenny was extra quiet tonight trying to impress Tina. Something Tina would normally find boring, however, Kenny was handsomer than most and had a great build due to working on farms growing up. Me? I’m that red-headed step-child everyone jokes about. Scrawny, not that tall, but still gangly. My orange-ish red hair grows wild and I’ve been told that, when I stand at attention, I look like a lit match.
I pointed at my beer, then at his, giving him a questioning look. He simply nodded his head once while holding his beer up, and this time I knew that meant, “Yes,” as opposed to, “Thank you.” His nonchalant behavior was driving Tina wild, and I smiled at this as I weaved through the crowded living room towards the kitchen. Our parties had started to become quite popular, with people coming from nearby towns as far as thirty miles away. We always designated a ‘Key-per’, someone to guard the keys so no one would ever drive home drunk unnecessarily. We never got complaints either as the closest neighbors in the trailer park were always at the party. Things got rowdy once, and Kenny regulated, so no one does that anymore, at least not on the premises. On top of all that, it’s such a small town, we were essentially the town’s bar, except it was BYOB.
Being a crowdaphobe, I had never usually liked parties like this, especially in such cramped quarters. However, it was different when you’re the host. The dynamic we had going on here was solid and made it a lot easier for me to deal with so many people within elbow’s reach. That, and being Kenny’s wingman had its benefits. I was always too shy, or found a way to talk myself out of sex. That didn’t matter with Kenny’s ‘cast-off’ as we called it.
I opened the fridge, and was shocked. Not because the shelves had been removed, but that there were barely any beers stacked in their place. The fridge had been near full at one point not that long ago. It was then I heard a crash. Not that uncommon, but there seemed to be a lot of commotion this time. I peered over the open fridge door, but couldn’t really see what was happening passed the people in the dining room. I suddenly got that sinking feeling as the thought of the unspoken truce had been broken and there was a serious fight, but that soon cleared as I could see Kenny pushing passed people to get to me.
He had a frantic look on his face, which was uncommon for him, “Dude, your cat!”
“What about Felix?”
“She got out. Someone tripped and fell and broke a window and she just jumped out!”
I’m fairly sure I left the fridge door open as I ran to the front door. I swung through the railing of our tiny wooden patio and immediately began my search, lighting up a smoke. “Felix!” I half whispered, half yelled, trying to be courteous of the neighbors. Plus, animals can hear much better than we can.
I must have called her name a hundred times as my search led me to the abandoned farm east of the trailer park, now full of wild, tall grass. My hopes of finding her at this point were all but gone. It was really dark with there being a new moon that night. I began to walk into the grass, but I had left my phone back at the trailer, and didn’t feel like getting lost. At this point I was calling out louder, but somehow I knew it didn’t matter. Cats typically run when you call their name. I gave out a heavy sigh as I could hear Kenny and some others helping to look not far off. I turned to go join up with them when a dull flash of light caught the corner of my eye from deeper in the field. I squinted in that direction and began hearing a strange noise. The only way I could describe it is that time R2-D2 got fried trying to hack that computer in that cloud city. My curiosity had been piqued.
As I neared to the source of the sound, I saw more of the dull flashes of light. I could see that they had a light bluish hue to them. When I found it, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. It sort of looked like a small drone, but no drone I had ever seen. I could see now that the flashes of light came from some kind of indicator. The dim light didn’t allow much, but I could tell that the construction was seamless. It was metal for sure, but it had some kind of matte finish to it, as the occasional flash of light did not reflect off of its surface very well. The sound it was making made me not want to touch it, and so I leaned in, trying to get a better look. From what I could see, there weren’t any markings, at least not on this side of it. It wasn’t long before I felt a fuzzy feeling in my nostrils, the corners of my eyes, ear canals. I suddenly felt as though I was breathing a heavy smoke, and as I saw another flash of light, I could see a fine, dusty cloud emanating from the device. I immediately felt as though I was choking and began trying to gasp for air, but it was as though my trachea was paralyzed. I tried to scream, but no such luck. I scrambled to get to my feet, but the world was quickly fading from view into an ever smaller dot. As I collapsed, it felt as though it was cushioned, and I don’t remember touching the ground before blacking out.
As I awoke, I resumed my panic of not being able to breathe, then immediately had a coughing fit as I had no trouble finding my breath. I grabbed my temples as the coughing flared my mild headache. I squinted at the bright morning sun, trying to remember how I had gotten here. The memory suddenly flooded my mind, and it was so vivid, bringing back the emotions, I felt that sinking feeling again.
“Don’t panic.”
It was a voice I didn’t recognize and oddly enough sounded as though we were in a room, not outside. I looked around to find no one nearby. There’s that sinking feeling yet again. Mixed with a mild hangover, I suddenly threw up, although there wasn’t much in my stomach. I had to spit the remainder of vomit out of my mouth before I spoke, “Who’s talking to me?” I asked as the headache began to subside.
“I am called, SAIA.”
Now that I could focus better, I noticed the voice had a hint of an androgenous, robotic tone, but otherwise sounded normal enough. “Why do I feel like I’m talking to a voice in my head?”
“Because, we are linked now.”
That was not the answer I was expecting to hear. I got to my feet faster than I had ever before to get a better look at my surroundings. This only served to increase the returning sinking feeling, as yet again, I found no one near me. Great, I’m hearing voices now, I thought to myself.
“Correction, you are hearing only one voice. I speak for all of us.”
I froze. Whoever was talking to me had just read my mind. For the first time in my life I understood that feeling they convey in movies when they do the ‘dolly zoom’ trick, pulling away with the camera, but zooming in at the same time. This quickly brought a nauseating feeling back into my stomach, and my legs began to give out under me. Despite this, I remained standing. It felt strange, like leaning against a wall that wasn’t there. “What the f--”, I struggled to say simple words. “What’s happening?” I managed to ask as my head began to spin, my vision getting blurry. The urge to vomit came back with a flurry. However, the moment I felt it taking over, I came to, feeling more lucid than I had felt in a long time.
“Acclimation: 100%. Power level: Nominal.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I guess I had given up on where this person was exactly.
“I was referring to the progress of the nanites.”
As the question began to form on my tongue, it was as though I was beginning to understand. Even though I knew miniature robots weren’t really a thing yet, a memory began to flood my mind, quickly taking over my senses.
Most of what I could see was darkness. There was pure silence, no smell, no taste to the air. A flash of vision allowed me to see what looked like a small white sun that seemed to be holding an array of different metal containers in a tight formation with writhing tendrils of white hot plasma. The vision became distorted like a bad video feed. Next, there was a bright flash of light as the memory seemed to distort in a different way, and I felt a release as though whatever was holding me had suddenly let go. I felt an emptying feeling of dread and vertigo as the bright little sun and its boxes drifted away, until the darkness returned. Everything was cold, chilling to the very core. I knew this wasn’t my memory, but its realism didn’t warrant questioning its validity. I had never experienced such sensory depravity. At the same time I struggled with understanding what it was I was being shown, but I was sure it was something that this SAIA character had experienced.
Like a snap of the fingers, I was brought back to reality. I understood this had something to do with why SAIA and these nanites were here, but new questions were born from the answers it did provide. It took a moment for my vision to acclimate, and as soon as it did, I could see smoke rising nearby. In fact, right where my trailer should be, I thought. An adrenaline rush struck, and before I had time to react and start running towards the danger, I was in the air moving faster than I’ve ever ran, or even biked. I noticed my body was now covered in some kind of dark grey suit and my vision now included a heads-up display of several types of data, most of which were numbers. As I looked at the suit on my arm I could actually see that it was a writhing mass of the nanites SAIA had mentioned. My wonderment was cut short as I softly landed next to my trailer, which sure enough, was on fire. I immediately thought about my roommate, and no sooner than I did, my vision went thermal and I could see a body with his build lying on the bathroom floor. I need to get to him, I thought. Next thing I knew, I was through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man. I don’t remember jumping, and I’m pretty sure my plan was to go around and use the back door. The smoke found a new way out, and I didn’t smell it or breathe it even though my head was surrounded by it. I couldn’t even feel the heat of the flames I knew were raging right outside the door. Even still, my natural fears made me want to move fast, and before my imagination could ponder the worst, I was picking up my unconscious friend and exiting the same way I had entered. I knew for a fact that I wasn’t strong enough to pick up Kenny, as we had pretended to wrestle a few times in the past, but he felt like a paperweight in my hands.
Everything was happening so fast. I felt like I was in control of my intentions, but my actions were involuntary, like when you don’t think about your breathing and yet it still continues. I now knew what it felt like to be the king of a heavily populated kingdom of one. I remember pondering the paradox for a moment, but quickly came to the realization that I never try to ponder paradoxes, nor am I smart enough to come up with them. I began to wonder the extent to which these nanites were affecting me, and that was when Kenny coughed himself awake. I had laid him in the vacant lot across from our trailer. We’d only known each other for about a year, and I had never seen him this vulnerable. His eyes looked teary from the smoke, and he struggled to see me despite it being bright this morning and I was shading him from the sun, “Wh--”. It sounded as though he was going to say, “who,” but his eyes flared when he caught sight of the fire and they rolled back into his head as he slumped over.
Satisfied that he was stable, I stood up and assessed the trailer once more, unsure as to how I could put out the fire. As before, the question was being answered. I could see a fine mist leaving my body. In fact, when I concentrated, I could see the individual nanites. I didn’t know much about that kind of science, but I knew they were smaller than the naked eye could see. They were a dusky grey color, but instead of miniature humanoid robots, like I had always imagined, they were comprised of separate pieces that seemed to continuously flow around one another. I watched as they created a bubble around the trailer with a thin layer, then began to vacuum out the atmosphere, quickly starving the fire. I was in awe at how capable these little things were, but I was startled with the thought that someone may have seen or heard all of this commotion. Luckily, it was Sunday morning, but I knew Mr. Haroldson didn’t go to church, nor did he come to our parties. I knew this because he and I would sometimes practice our boffer fighting skills while no one was around to ridicule us about it. I had read enough comic books to know that it would be in my best interests to keep all of this on the down-low, at least for now. The damage to the trailer was pretty extensive, and I could see his trailer through mine from where I was standing. I took a few steps in that direction, but then my vision was zoomed in and I could see there were a handful of newspapers on his porch. I had forgotten that he had gone to see his sick aunt in Vermont. I breathed a sigh of relief, and then immediately yawned. In fact, I felt like I could take a nap, but now was hardly the time. Somehow, I had to figure out how to explain how my trailer got burned, then put out so fast when the nearest fire truck would have to come from Spencer nine miles away.
“We could fix it if we had more power.”
“Holy sh--”, I started to yell having been scared senseless. This whole voice-in-my-head deal was going to take some time getting used to it. I took a moment to calm myself, “What do you mean more power?”
“We have already used a significant portion of the magnesium in your body. There is not enough left to complete such a task.”
“Wait, so you’re using minerals in my body as an energy source?”
“Magnesium is an electrolyte, and is the most efficient to be used as energy. My phendarus has a disease and is slowly dying, otherwise we would have all the power we would ever need.”
“What the fuck is a phendarus?”
“A phendarus is a metallo-crystalline entity with its own inexhaustible energy source, and can also act as a memory unit capable of holding a zettabyte of data. This rare disease is slowly degrading the entity by breaking down its crystalline neurons and has severely damaged what you would call a heart, the source of the energy.”
“Why can’t you just plug in to a power source?”
“Your Earthly technologies utilize electricity in a very inefficient manner making it incompatible with our technology I’m afraid.”
“You’re afraid? I’m afraid my stomach is going to eat itself.”
“Who are you talking to?” Kenny asked, sitting up slowly, rubbing his eyes.
I whipped my head around to look at him, then looked down at my body. The suit had...gone invisible? I could still see the new HUD, but I was back in the clothes I was wearing the night before. He made me realize that I would have to learn to start talking to SAIA with my thoughts. I walked back over to him and took a knee, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“My head is pounding, but I’m alright. I’m sorry about the trailer.” He said while hunched over, rubbing his temples.
“The fire is your fault?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, I took the battery out of the smoke detector in the dining room months ago for that new bug zapper I bought that didn’t come with batteries apparently. I didn’t start it, but I think someone left a burner on maybe.”
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
“How did I get out of there?”
“I --,” I cut myself short as I was going to say, “carried”. “I dragged you out of there.”
He finally looked up at the charred and smoldering trailer. “I must have been unconscious for a while, huh?”
I soon realized the hole in this story. If the authorities had arrived, he would be in the hospital. I had to come up with something. I knew Kenny didn’t like hospitals anyway. “Yup, fire truck came and went. Cops, too. I told them you were sleeping and had a graveyard shift at the gas station.”
Kenny coughed, and it sounded heavy. “Thanks for covering for me,” he managed before another coughing fit hit him that was worse than before.
“Sounds like you should go to the hospital though.” He wasn’t one to take my advice very often, but he readily nodded his head, still coughing. My head began to feel woozy, and my stomach grumbled. I had to get us to the hospital in Spencer fast, but I couldn’t use my powers. Neither of us owned a car, and then I remembered that Mr. Haroldson had gotten a ride to the airport, meaning his car was still here. I’ll replace the gas, I thought.
Kenny had stopped coughing, but he looked miserable. “We’re going to borrow Mr. Haroldson’s car. Are you able to walk?” I asked him.
He shook his head, no. He had his eyes scrunched from the pain. “The sunlight is making my headache worse.”
I would normally be worried that I wouldn’t be strong enough, but I knew I would have no trouble helping him get to the car. I walked over and crouched down to put his arm over my shoulder as I helped him up. It was then I realized that I was taller than him. I had somehow grown half a foot taller overnight. Luckily, Kenny was too distracted from his condition to notice.
Supername: Cy-Man
Super Type: Hero
Given Name: Unknown, Elliot Gaines (foster name)
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Gender Association: Identifies as male
Sexual Preference: Heterosexual
Height: 75”/6’3” (with nanosuit), 69”/5’9” (without it)
Weight: 195 lbs. (with nanosuit), 135 lbs. (without it)
Hair Color: Orangish-red
Eye Color: Hazel
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Birthdate: August 1, 1995
Birthplace: Salina, KS
Hometown: Everly, IA
Mother: Unknown, Beverly Gaines (foster mother)
Father: Unknown, Clarence Gaines (foster father)
Occupation: Sales Representative at Evertech, a telemarketing firm
Superpowers: Cy-Man gets his powers from his parasitic nanosuit. A hive-mind of incredibly complex nanites of Dreadknaught’s design which are controlled by SAIA, his android sidekick. The nanites create a hermetically sealed suit around its host when needed, otherwise, it takes on the form of your clothing. The nanites also invade your body, enhancing muscles, intelligence, senses, provides a slow but perfect regenerative ability, and fixes any health problems; the drawback being these nanites use your body’s energy (mainly its electrolytes, causing Cy-Man to become reliant on drinking Electr-Ade (imagine if Rockstar and Gatorade had a love-child)), draining it faster than you would normally in a day. Eventually, cutting your life shorter. It also provides linked communication with SAIA only it’s like VR. The reactiveness of the nanites is near the speed of light which allows the suit to provide ample, reactive protection. It allows you to cling to surfaces and parts of it can morph into a plethora of programmed formations such as, laser guns (maybe a few different weapons), anti-gravitons for flight, shields for added protection if needed, dampeners for impacts and silent movement, special contact lenses for filtered and enhanced views, cameras and screens for camouflage, etc., etc.
Weaknesses: May become extremely fatigued to the point of passing out if he uses the powers of the nanites too much. If SAIA becomes decapacitated, the nanites go idle (maybe Cy-Man later learns how to control them for some reason).
Sidekick: S.A.I.A. (Symbiotic Artificially Intelligent Android) - an android of Dreadknaught’s design that is in control of the swarm of nanites. One of trillions that maintain the containers in Dreadknaught’s possession. SAIA provides remote access to things, although its battery (which is alive and is slowly dying) does not last very long and must remain in symbiosis with the nanosuit most of the time. The nanites can create a tether, but it can only reach about thirty feet, longer if the suit gets utilized as well. SAIA is essentially a supercomputer, although the memory unit is part of the battery and so is slowly dying as well.
I want him to have an orangish-red hairdo like this only a bit fuller maybe:
The nanosuit will look plain like this only dark grey, but it lets his hair flow out. Also, I’m thinking some kind of patterns on it, maybe that look techy. The idea though is that the nanites just kind of create a bodysuit such as this:
I was going to read and comment on this story, but the font was too small for my eyes. I normally would manually set my font to size 4 for easy reading.
To set the font to your post you'll need to set it at the beginning of your story, for example, in my story I would set it up like this: then you paste your story.
Then at the end of your story, you'll need to close off your font size, you do this to close it off:
I hope this helps.
Sandie
P.S. Sorry, the solution didn't appear in my comment, but I have sent you a message, please check your message.
I believe I know why your fellow writers dropped out. This looks like your creation and you probably steered them the direction you wanted too much, giving the others little room to navigate. Unfortunately, you may be a guest poster, so your text did not have any paragraph breaks making it difficult for my aging eyes to stay on the lines as I read. So I stopped reading after a couple of pages and then, finished reading today all. The first thing I like is your using the first person. I find it very comfortable to all
I recall when the first Superman and Batman movies came out of the comic books and I like them very much because they stayed close to the original stories. I also liked them because of their special-effects and their heroic deeds. But every good thing seems to draw imitators. It has gotten so that I don't watch any fantastic superhero movies anymore because they have become more outlandish and ridiculous, often combining humanlike fighting with great destruction of property and people as though that is required. I prefer more realistic fear. As a quadriplegic, I'm in great favor of AI prosthesis that would enable me to walk again and do the things I used to do when I could walk, although paralyzed in my hands and arms.
I have already experienced "Ef-n magic" driving two vans with high-tech controls of zero pressure for 165,000 miles. The stirring wasn't even connected except by the magic to the physical steering column. The steering never failed, but was so sensitive that it required constant attention to keep the front wheels pointed in the right direction and if startled by a squirrel in the road or even a rock hitting squarely in front of me on the windshield, my reaction, natural, resulted in small and one very large accidents without any injury, thankfully.
Your dossier for Cy-Man describes him as a rather average man of average physical ability, probably as your alter ego as the author, enhanced by a nanosuit (similar to Superman's) that enables your hero to become a superhero and solve immense problems guided by a supercomputer and its emissary, an android buddy for Cy-Man, a sidekick like Batman's Batboy. Essentially, you are building on the legends of Giants without any real new twist. Although the nanites and other well described scientifically sounding parts of the trilogy make rather good sense, better than kryptonite or whatever that stuff that Superman was so afraid of.
There's also a tendency for superheroes these days to group together for more brilliant special-effects and mayhem. There is no Jesus like soft healing of the poor world's ills, just supernatural destruction like the universe already mostly is without the help of super intelligent superheroes shaking it up like Greek gods. Even the Greek gods are now being portrayed as superheroes along with Norse gods.
I can see your premise in trying to develop with your partner writers whole group of superheroes to get recognition like some of those already in movies, very unlikely characters to say the least.
The only error I saw was a simple use of the word, passed, when it should have been past. And I think young readers of today will like the way you begin your Cy-Man story and many of them are looking for new angles on superheroes. I especially like the way you concluded this short story that could be the first chapter of the book. You really don't need those other authors.
I wish you good luck on this story until you develop it into a book or a screenplay.
Chaos on Earth began with an evil snake in the garden, peace can be restored by a Divine snake from the light of the small chandelier that has no power source. Can Jenny and Joseph get help from the planet Jupiter, in time?
