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    Beyond the Beginning: Brock’s Adventures - Episode Two
    Beyond the Beginning: Brock’s Adventures - Episode Two
    Beyond the Beginning: Brock’s Adventures - Episode Two
    Ebook378 pages6 hours

    Beyond the Beginning: Brock’s Adventures - Episode Two

    By Marsell Morris

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    About this ebook

    The Earth’s population now rescued from their dying planet and moved to a beautiful new world, the benevolent and advanced rescuing Aliens realize they may have made a mistake.
    Instead of settling down and beginning a new existence in harmony, the humans begin quarreling amongst themselves, and eventually go to war.
    The Aliens do not tolerate the human behavior and using a strange twist, do something about it. However, their attempts to change the human’s violent tendencies backfires on them. They bring into existence a hybrid super human with a fatal genetic mutation that nearly assures the eventual extinction of both human and alien species.
    With the assistance of Captain Brock, a part human, part machine, cyborg, the Aliens are given a second chance, and this time are determined to get it right.
    Now having provided a way to save the human species twice, Brock indulges his need for adventure and encounters a deadly alien species which, in the end, again, threatens the existence of mankind.
    Brock is forced to come to the aid of the humans once more before embarking on an ultimate adventure....

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMarsell Morris
    Release dateMar 14, 2015
    ISBN9781310718007
    Beyond the Beginning: Brock’s Adventures - Episode Two
    Author

    Marsell Morris

    Marsell was born in Detroit Michigan in the year of... well, a good while ago. After graduating from Cass Technical High School, Marsell went to work for the Chrysler Corporation as a conveyor loader. Shortly after beginning his employment with Chrysler, he married, and fathered three children. Thirty-one years later, and after having gained the position of production supervisor, he retired at fifty.After retiring, he began playing golf everyday and all day. Having lowered his handicap to near scratch, and winning a tournament at even par, and behind a debilitating injury, he was unable to continue playing. He had a lot of free time on his hands, whereupon, he took up writing as a hobby and time killer and discovered he had talent for spinning a yarn.After pounding out eleven urban fictions, covering everything from drug use, prostitution, gang crime, murder, and romance/erotica, and having always been a science fiction fan from his teenage years, he thought he’d try his hand at writing a Sci-Fi tail, which culminated in his first work “Alien Plot - First Contact” now retitled "Alien Offensive - Nanobot Storm" and its four sequels, and which, at one time before he ran into problems with its publisher, was considered good fodder for production as a movie, not because he is such a great writer, but because of its unique, previously unexplored, plot.He still lives in Detroit, and being a compulsive writer, he spends most of his time wearing out his fourth keyboard replacement, while pursuing what he loves doing — writing more tails with unique story lines.

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      Beyond the Beginning - Marsell Morris

      Preface

      SYNOPSIS OF EPISODE ONE

      A half millennia earlier...

      A benevolent alien race looked down on mankind — studied him, and saw he’d done away with his murderous ways — saw he’d finally learned to live in harmony with those of his kind.

      They saw man beginning to master space travel, and beginning to visit other planets in his solar system. They also knew the human species was doomed without their aid, and even though he’d all but destroyed his home planet, decided to help him.

      After leaving a set of instructions on Mars Earth’s brother planet, for man to find at the right time, they returned to their home planet, and waited. It was now in humankind’s hands to save his species.

      Even with the instructions, it would take a global effort — all of humankind working together if he was to continue to exist. The alien race knew that failing a joint effort to follow their directions, the human race would parish much the same as countless other species of intelligent life-forms in the galaxy. But it has been proven many times over, their attempts to help other life-forms succeeded when that species put their collective minds together and were able to follow the instructions.

      Would man be one of those intelligent life-forms — only time would tell, and the benevolent alien race, who’d made it their mission to assist other endangered species, had a lot of time...

      *

      The present...

      The year, 2621 AD. The place, Earth Two, following the move of the human species from Old Earth. How did they get here — well, it’s a long story...

      *

      The scientist of Earth knew several-hundred-years earlier the Earth may be in trouble, and not only by the hyperactive Sun threatening to go red giant billions of years before its time.

      The releases of fluorocarbons into the atmosphere had been destroying the ozone layer for hundreds of years, while the increase of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere elevated the greenhouse affect, causing a gradual increase of the ambient temperature of the planet.

      Although attempts had been tried to stop them, the third world nations continued to clear their forest, cutting and burning the trees at the rate of hundreds of acres daily — trees that not only sucked up the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but also produced life supporting oxygen, while having the side effect of reducing the global oxygen level from its normal twenty-one-percent to below fifteen-percent.

      To add to the already irreversible problems, the Sun was going through a period of hyper-activity. Huge sunspots, and massive, unprecedented, solar eruptions in the form of solar mass ejections bombarded the Earth continually. Photon and ion storms proliferated at levels dooming anyone caught outside when they hit.

      Because the Earth was warming, the ice caps started to melt while exposing the darker ground underneath. Instead of being reflected back into space, the radiant heat from the Sun was soaked up by the exposed land and now larger oceans. The more the ice melted, the hotter the Earth got, the hotter the Earth got, the more the ice melted, causing the ocean levels to rise even more.

      Half the world’s landmass was lost under water. Weather patterns changed. It became hot where it once was cold and extremely hot where it once was temperate. Hurricanes and tornadoes roamed the Earth in increasing numbers, frequencies, and ferocity. The oceans currents changed or reversed. The Plankton and Krill died, and being the bottom of the food chain in the seas, caused most of the ocean’s life to, also, die, along with the carbon dioxide ingesting and oxygen producing algae, resulting in an interruption in the carbon and oxygen cycles and further accelerating global warming. It turned into a self-perpetuating system. Eventually, it reached the point it didn’t matter what man did — the damage was done beyond repair.

      Things were already bad enough, but large holes in the protective Ozone layer, also, allowed ultraviolet, gamma, infrared, and other harmful rays to reach the Earth's surface in dangerous levels. A worldwide ban on the use of anything further harming the Ozone layer was instituted, but much too late.

      In an attempt to slow the global warming, and help protect the planet from the harmful cosmic rays, a huge sunscreen, hundreds of miles across, was launched into space, and positioned between the Earth and the Sun. The hope was the screen would act as an umbrella, blocking the harmful rays as well as the radiant heat raining down, but those efforts were also too late — the damage was irreversible.

      The greenhouse affect continued unchecked. Global warming escalated to the point the polar caps, north and south, completely melted. The oceans levels rose a catastrophic one-hundred-feet above normal. Dead, lifeless, saltwater, and freshwater seas, that would never recover to their once magnificent glory, now covered half of the Earth’s once dry land, and became so putrid it required all of mankind’s best scientific efforts to purify enough drinking water for anyone still living.

      Due to the above ground radiation, no farming could be done — it was too dangerous to be in the sunlight, besides, any crops grown suffered genetic mutations while making them inedible.

      All aboveground wildlife died off, including insectoids while leaving the entire surface of Earth a barren, dust filled, scarred, desert. The only alternative was for man to move underground, which was thought at that time to be a temporary desperate measure to prolong the human species, but it was known that humankind’s existence was destined for an inevitable demise. Disease ran unchecked, hunger took its toll, and genetically damaged babies were born, and as quickly, died.

      Scientist had known of several underground caves for some time. All that had to be done was to excavate them, connect them, and make them amenable to supporting life. As time passed, the caves increased in size, sophistication, and numbers.

      By the time the caves were ready for habitation, two thirds of worlds population had died off.

      That was several-hundred-years ago. The move underground proved to be far more successful than anticipated, but was still thought to be a temporary solution to mankind’s problems — there was no way to avoid being incinerated by the expanding Sun when it happened.

      But, as bad as thing were, humankind’s will to survive wouldn’t be snuffed. With war no longer a threat, all surviving people of Earth learned to live in peace and combine their resources. A governing body was instituted, called the World Body Politic, it was deemed the decision making body for the entire world, and much like the United Nations of the past, had at least one member from every country remaining on the planet.

      Because the still expanding caves couldn’t support an unchecked birth rate, the World Body instituted strict population controls, which were stringently enforced. It was decided that all the caverns in what was left of Australia would be devoted to the underground growth of hydroponic plants for food. Everyone in the caves were now vegetarian — they had no choice. The caverns were not large enough to corral and feed enough meat producing animals to provide food for all the surviving people except for poultry in a few cave systems in some parts of the world.

      After many years of stabilizing the population and adapting to underground life, attention gradually returned to scientific pursuits including space travel, while focused on a desperate attempt to save the human species by finding a way to venturing outside the solar system in search of another habitual planet. It was a long shot, but was hoped to give everyone something to work towards while preventing a worldwide depression. Eventually man’s scientific prowess increased exponentially.

      He searched for ways to spread his seed though-out the Universe, such as returning to the Moon, hoping a way could be found to start a population there, and from there, use the Moon as a launching pad from which voyages to other star systems could be undertaken. Even though water had been discovered on Earth‘s satellite, man knew populating the Moon was a hopeless endeavor considering the condition of the Sun, but better than nothing. The same applied to Mars, where several small, self-supporting, colonies, were established.

      It was during the attempts to populate Mars, alien instructions showing how to build a Time Ship, and its radical alien engine were discovered. It took the scientist many years to make heads or tails of the instructions. But once the alien script was deciphered, and found to be mathematic in nature, serious work was begun on the Time Ship, and, simultaneously, Captain Brock’s brain, which was also illustrated and called for in the instructions.

      As time passed, work on the Ship progress relatively fast.

      The fifty-year construction of the Ship well under way, the only concern of the scientist was whether they had enough time to complete its fabrication, provision it, and prepare the genetically altered, Captain’s brain to lead the mission before the dangerous Sun began its death-throws.

      It was stated in the instructions this Captain, or pilot, must be human, but a human with unusual capabilities. The instructions illustrated how a human brain could be genetically altered, and placed in a protective brain case capable of withstanding the rigors of space travel. The human scientist followed the instructions to the letter, while, later, deciding to give him mobility, and call their super human, Captain 1-TS-1, an acronym for Captain One of the Time Ship One, which he quickly rejected in preference of a more human name after he gained consciousness. He called himself, simply, Brock. He felt the proper human name delineated him from the mindless droids in use at that time.

      Captain Brock, while still human because of his human brain, in other respects, was more of a machine. With his brain enclosed in a, protective, football shaped, nearly indestructible, brain case, and mounted on a transport capable of practicably all modes of transportation except flight, Brock was consider more cyborg than human by many who constructed him, and despite his constant insistence that he was no more than a human encased in a mobility aid, much as any other humans who used a wheelchair to get around, he couldn’t get other humans to see him as one of them. The fact that he walked around on six spider-like legs most of the time didn‘t help in his attempts to change their minds. Eventually, but only after he provided a solution to a problem with the Time Ship, which threatened the humankind saving mission, was he considered human and accepted as such.

      *

      Eventually, the Ship was completed and launched. After the Ship was launched, while containing one-thousand breeding couples as the crew, and Captain Brock at the helm, the Ship set off for its destination, the nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centurai, a red dwarf star in the Milky Way Galaxy. While traveling at ten times the speed of light, thanks to the radical alien engines that manipulated dark matter in a way that defied the laws of physics, the Ship reached its destination, and much sooner than anticipated.

      After an uneventful, year long, trip, and while near Proxima, Captain Brock was contacted by the benevolent aliens who were responsible for he being there, and was told of their plans to save not only the crew of his Ship, but all of mankind, and then send all of them to the planet they were seeking, which wasn’t the planet near Proxima.

      With the assistance of the aliens, and with Brock in the lead, everyone on Earth was loaded on huge alien contrived transports, and moved to the new world the humans later dubbed, Earth Two. But all was not as it seemed. Actually, the un-expecting humans were being tested.

      Because the human species was created by the advanced aliens, the results of a genetic experiment, the aliens felt an attachment for them, however, because the human species had shown a predilection towards violence, the aliens wanted to be sure mankind was ready to join the universe’ peaceful society. It was decided by the aliens that because of the way mankind had learned to live together while moving into the cave system, and had put warfare behind him, and was working together in his feeble attempts at space exploration, he was worthy of being saved, but the aliens had to be sure.

      While thinking they were on a beautiful new world that had all they could ask for, the humans, along with Brock, were actually placed in a stasis like sleep and moved to the alien’s planet where he along with all of humankind shared a common dream — a dream contrived in all their collective sub-consciousness’ — a dream exposing their true nature — a test. And it would be the results of the test that would determine the future of all humankind...

      Chapter 1

      THE TEST

      Captain Brock had been told to return to the Time Ship and marshal up as many droids as he though he’d need, and stand by while waiting for the order from Chairman Yang to begin his so called, police action.

      While on the Time Ship, and after putting together a militia of a couple hundred shuttles, each having three droids, two armed, and one piloting, Brock ordered the shuttles to form up outside the Ship. He would be ready when he received the signal to begin his attack, ah, law enforcement.

      While in the lead, and after receiving the order to begin from Chairman Yank, he signaled the droid pilots to follow, and began a long spiral decent to Earth Two and Cooper’s Town.

      He ordered the droids pilots to turn on their stabilizing fields, which would anchor the droids in position no matter the shuttle’s orientation, and to fly in a single line formation, one-hundred feet apart.

      His plan was to have the shuttles fly over the town while laid over on their sides, and have the armed droids fire straight down on their targets from the open shuttle bay doors. He wanted the attack, ah, police action to begin on the outskirts of town, flying in from the lake south of the town, and while flying in a large circle, spiral in towards the middle, destroying everything in their path.

      Once the attack reached the middle of the town, they’d fly straight up and reassemble over the lake, to resume the attack, while, again, working in to the middle. He ordered the droids to not fire at the women if possible, but knew it would be impossible to not kill the women if the men of Cooper’s militia were mingled in with them.

      The assault would continue until Brock was sure the village was completely devastated, and Cooper was dead or gave up. There would be no place for Cooper and his men to run, or hide. Brock pictured himself a gun-slinging sheriff, riding into town, guns blazing, killing the bad guys with one well placed shot after another. He was going to obliterate the town, but before he began his assault, he, having a strong sense of humanity, would give Cooper one last chance to surrender, or failing that, while knowing Cooper and his cowardly, murdering, army, would use the women as shields to avoid arrest or attack, would, at least, give the women a chance to leave the town and avoid being killed.

      His intention was to capture Cooper and take him back to the main village for trial, but he would do whatever was necessary to assure no further attacks on any neighboring towns by Cooper and his illegal, blood thirsty, militia. Maybe I can save the village, and many lives. I’m sure Chairman Yang would approve of my efforts, he thought, as he entered Earth Two’s atmosphere and headed for Cooper’s settlement..

      Leading the formation in a big circle over the settlement in a show of strength, the shuttle’s loud engines sounding as menacing as they were. Brock ordered the shuttles to stay in formation, circling the town, while he went down to try and get Cooper to surrender.

      He detached from the flotilla, flew over the center of town, and the ham in him rearing its childish head, he put the shuttle into a steep climb, flying high into the atmosphere, and then nosed over and dived straight down toward the ground in the middle of the town. The men on the ground, who’d come out to watch the long line of shuttles circling, all ducked and ran as Brock seemed destined to crash his shuttle.

      At the last moment, Brock leveled the shuttle, and performing a maneuver seemingly impossible by a craft of its size, spun the shuttle around, thereby reversing its thrust, and let the machine settle gently to the ground near Cooper’s cabin.

      After the dust settled, the shuttle’s bay door snapped open, and Brock, while walking on his spider legs, got off while followed by four droids. He told two of the droids to stay near the door of the shuttle, but to not fire unless ordered by him, and told the other two to come with him while giving them the same instructions. He was glad that the Body Politic had allowed him to bring sonic vortex cannons when the mission was originally launched. It was a close call as to whether or not weapons would be allowed on the Time Ship with most dissenters claming that the presents of any weapon would hinder any diplomatic solutions to any problems encountered. However, the majority won the debate while arguing that just because the weapons were on the Ship, doesn’t mean they’d automatically be used. And further argued the breeding crew must be protected at any cost, weapons or not. He could have disarmed the entire town, and captured Cooper without the armed droids, if he wished too, but felt the intimidation factor of the armed droids would make his job easier.

      With two skeleton looking droids following, Brock began walking toward Cooper’s cabin, his head swiveling left and right while watching the armed men he passed. Actually he wanted them to take a shot at him. He knew those insignificant rifles that had been manufacture on the Ship and brought down to arm hunters, wouldn’t do much damage to he or his droids. And if they did shoot at him, he’d have a chance to show the crowd what an armed droid could do. Besides, if he could give the Cooper’s town peoples a demonstration of his power — he might be able to prevent a later, larger, loss of life by not having to battle the whole town.

      As Brock approached Cooper’s cabin, the crowd re-gathered, but maintained a respectful distance. Many of the people looked up and pointed at the impressive line of menacing shuttles circling above while others watched Brock.

      A hand full of men ran to take up positions near Cooper’s cabin as if getting ready to take action if ordered by their General. Brock saw the men get into position, but didn’t figure they’d be foolish enough to attack him and the two skeleton like droids who were packing the deadly sonic vortex cannons.

      As Brock, while walking on his six legs for dramatic affect, neared the cabin, the several men posted nearby, began taking shots at him. He wasn’t sure if Cooper ordered them too, but they were shooting. Good, he thought, exactly what I want you to do. Now let me show the people of Cooper’s Town who they’re dealing with.

      He continued his approach as the bullets bounced off him like BBs off an armored battle tank. Brock ordered the flanking droids to take out the shooters. Snapping their cannons to their shoulders in perfect unison, the droids fired with deadly aim. The blast from the cannons rippled the air as they traveled towards their targets who were cowering behind several trees. The unwitting snipers had no chance. The cannon blasts, one from each droid, seemed to join in one large wave of destruction as they took out the trees along with the whole group of shooting idiots, splattering blood and guts over the side of the cabin, and continued on to shatter several trees behind them.

      The snipers neutralized, Brock continued his approach, stopping twenty feet from the cabin. He stood for a moment, his head swiveling as he scanned the other armed men in the compound, while hoping for another attack. He saw his demonstration of power might have brought some sense to the overmatched militia, but did see two men frantically digging shallow pits in the middle of the town’s main dirt road. He ignored the diggers and then, while amplifying his voice, it sounding loud as if from a megaphone, ordered Cooper out of the cabin. There was no immediate response. After a short while, a half naked woman came to the door, and in a timid, nervous, voice, said the General wasn’t there, and kept glancing to her right as she spoke. It was obvious she was lying. While switching his eyepiece into telescopic vision, Brock saw Cooper peeping through a crack on the hinged side of the door. He didn’t let on he’d seen the General, he was sure the man was in the cabin, and that’s all he had to know. He could have ordered the droids to blast the cabin to splinters at that very moment, but would have been no fun, and would probably have killed the women also.

      If the General is not in there, you and anyone else in the cabin, please come out now while you have a chance, Brock, ordered.

      The woman turned to look back inside the cabin, and without saying another word, slammed the door shut with it rattling on its weak hinges.

      Without another word, Brock turned to return to his shuttle, while thinking, I gave her a chance.

      As he returned, taking his time, and while swiveling his head from side to side in a defiant manor, and while glancing up at the impressive line of shuttles still flying overhead, the two not too bright men on his right, the same two he saw digging earlier, took a couple shots at him from their shallow foxholes while on their stomachs and their heads barely visible from the small ridge of dirt in front of them. Brock stopped, and looked at the foolish men. Another shot bounced off his transport, the bullet whirling ineffectively with a high pitch whistle. The rest of the people began scattering while expecting what was to come. Another shot rang out, the bullet striking Brock’s brain case not far from his lens package. That was enough — they had an idea where he was vulnerable. He, while again on the move, ordered one droid to neutralize the two snipers.

      The droid bringing the canon to its shoulder, and while still walking forward, turned at the waist and fired on the gunmen, seemingly, without aiming. The blast liquefied the foxholes and the men, blowing them high above ground too rain down in a bloody, muddy, mess, while splashing with a sickening thud. Several women screamed, and another called the name of one of the men. He was probably her husband. No one fired at Brock and the droids from then on, as the people further backed off while putting more distance between he and the menacing droids.

      Brock heard the door to Cooper’s cabin slam again. Evidently Cooper had been watching, but closed his door before Brock could turn around. If he’d had a face he’d been smiling. Stay right where you’re at, Mr. Cooper. I’ll be back in a minute, Brock thought as he continued to his shuttle.

      *

      Brock was not what someone would think of when they thought of a humanoid, android, or cyborg, which were usually somewhat human in appearance. Captain Brock’s brain case, which served as his head, resembled an oversized football with the ends cut off, and was temporally mounted on a conveyance contraption serving as his body, and was designed to allow him to move around on Earth.

      Looking at his football shaped, brain box, face on, and about one third in on the right side, he had a lens package containing four lenses serving as his eyes, and were linked to his brain through artificial optic nerves. Even though the optic nerves were artificial, the brain wasn’t and that was an important fact to remember. One lens was for regular vision, much the same as normal human vision, only panoramic. Two other lenses were for variable vision, one up to 1000x telescoping, the other for microscopic vision down to 1000x. The fourth lens was designed to see the full light spectrum, from ultra violet, to the infrared — no matter the light conditions, he’d be able to see.

      The brain container also provided his brain with the stuff of life — chemically oxygenated, protein rich, blood, and so forth, while having a years supply stored in his transport, and had a cooling system to protect his human brain should he have need to ventured into an extremely hot situation.

      The brain case had internal electrodes inserted into his brain. The electrodes were connected to sensors outside the case while providing Brock's brain with information about his surroundings. The information was of the most sophisticated level, including temperature, barometric pressure, and the nature of his atmospheric conditions down to the molecular level. He could also detect radioactivity, gamma ray, and other forms of rays. The engineers who designed his brain case decided he might need all the sensory perception they could throw in once he was on the Time Ship and in rout to his destination.

      The other end of the football contained his voice box that could amplify his electronically produced voice like a megaphone. He could, if he desired, ramp up his voice to 200 decibels and be heard from a great distance. He found he could, although he wouldn’t, rupture the eardrums of normal humans if he yelled at them from within a few feet. Of course he never used his voice box at its maximum volume because he could easily harm, if not, kill someone by causing a lung rupture and presumably an embolism due to air blast occurring at 200 decibels.

      His mobility conveyance resembled a rectangular, oversized, bread box, with the top and corners rounded off, and was about six-foot in length, four-foot in height, and three foot in width, not counting his legs or wheels when extended. His football shaped head was mounted near one end on a two-foot, flexible neck, which could be rotated one-hundred-eighty-degrees to allow him to be able to look directly behind him. With his legs or wheels extended, his height was just over eight-foot. Maybe that’s why he had a discomforting presents around most people who didn’t know him. His transport had six wheels, and two rubber treaded tank tracks that could be extended from the bottom, as could his six legs that protruded from the side when extended. He also had a flotation device — all designed to provide transportation no matter the terrain he had to navigate. He had the ability to switch between modes on the fly, if he wished. In wheeled mode, he could speed along at a leisurely one-hundred-miles-per-hour for as long as he wished or until something broke, which wasn’t likely considering the materials the machine was constructed of and with a cold fusion powered engine. The conveyance was designed to provide locomotion while on Earth, and on the new home world once he arrived, but not while on the Ship.

      Once on the Ship, the plan was for his football head to be permanently mounted on a command council in a radiation proof, armored, cubical, from where he’d be forced to run the Ship. The conveyance would be stored for later use when he reached his destination. But there was no way he was going to stay tied down in one location, especially with is need to move around.

      It was planed for him to communicate with his android crew via radio or through telepathy. His voice box would only be used to communicate with the human crew. He didn’t breathe or eat. He could survive in a vacuum, under water, or in a hostile atmosphere. An army of microbots, some the size of molecules, crawled around inside the brain case while monitoring and automatically repairing the almost indestructible container if needed.

      His superior human brain was the product of many years of genetic engineering. It was genetically altered to increase its size, and improve his cognitive abilities, and was ten-percent larger than a normal brain. Although his brain was housed in what could be called metal box, it was still a human brain, and was what made him human, in his eyes. He viewed himself much the same as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. Although he as a human, with a human brain, didn’t have the use of human limbs, he was still human. Therefore, his transport, his brain case, and transport can be considered no more than a futuristic wheelchair, it was used to transport he, a human.

      When his brain was first placed in the brain box, and, while connecting the sensory probes, brought to consciousness ten-years ago, it was fully developed in terms of adult brain size, but was still a child in maturity. He, like any child, had to go through growing pains including childish behavior. During his early development and when alone, he delighted in shattering laboratory beakers and test tubes with his powerful voice box. Eventually, as time passed, the childish behavior, as with any normal person, was replace with more adult concerns, but his brain being only ten-years of age, still held instinctive childish proclivities, which Brock, with some effort, managed to restrain.

      Actually, when he fist experienced consciousness, he wasn’t aware that he was human. He could see the difference between himself and other people around him. He, as a child, had a hard time understanding why his body was so different from other humans, and the more human like droids. It took a while for the doctors, scientist, and engineers, aided by a team of psychiatrist, to get the immature brain to understand that he was a complex combination of machine and human that incorporated the superior qualities of both.

      At first, he disliked his appearance, but as he matured and discovered his abilities, and saw the major differences between he and the androids that where all around him, he began liking who and what he was. He even liked his strange body, or conveyance, as the scientist and engineers called it.

      His mission was to captain the Time Ship, and within a few years of constant tutoring involving a steady stream of computer uploads of every subject the scientist thought necessary, he was ready.

      Yes, he was destined to be humankind’s only hope for salvation, and he had a human brain, but he couldn’t understand why the all-knowing engineers didn’t consider him as a member of the human species. He couldn’t

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