The Legacy of Daddy

By Angus H Day

What happens when a Graduate student competes for a PhD in a dystopian society by experimenting with dangerous alien technology? Does humankind need technological help to leave Earth? These and other questions are awkwardly dealt with in The Legacy of Daddy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angus H Day
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476152028

Angus H Day

I'm married, father of two fine children and I have made Fort Collins Colorado my home. Currently I work as a manufacturing chemist in the pharmaceutical industry, swim and write science fiction.

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By Angus H. Day

Copyright 2012 Angus H. Day

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The things that matter

Chapter 2: The Help

Chapter 3: The proper way to talk to oneself

Chapter 4: A religious protest?

Chapter 5: Recuperation and progress

Chapter 6: The rogue planet at last

Chapter 7: Basil to the Rescue

Chapter 8: The Change of Leadership

Chapter 9: Life without Horace

Chapter 10: Nova Caledone

Chapter 11: Superspies

Chapter 1: The things that matter.

I, Robert Abrams Focsile, was a typical graduate student in the Geneva Domed city state. My mother was a victim of the exchange and my father was killed by the Peace Corps for protesting the exchange. I was a loner in mandatory school and selected to pursue an academic track due to my exam scores and lack of physical skills. Just because I was a loner-nerd didn’t mean I wasn’t horny. Before leaving mandatory school I would trade tutoring for sex with the most attractive and desperate girls I could manage. I even married the hottest one of them all once she heard I was going to graduate school. The graduate student couples apartment really should have been called a closet. With my loving, conniving, wife Bridgette’s shit taking up most of the space normal people would use for walking, it was a wonder the building health inspectors hadn’t chucked us out on the street. If she didn’t do the most abnormal things, such as have sex with me, I think I would have sent her packing. Another perk was that being married counted for more C-points, an indication of responsibility I guess.

Tomorrow was to be the PhD practical and I had to have this alien device not only working by then, but be able to have a batch of nanites viewable under a quantum scope. It’s bad enough that my memory is slipping under the pressure, there are programs I’ve apparently sleep written on the device that I don’t remember, let alone what they do. It’s probably a good idea that Bridgette went out fucking around tonight, I have no illusions about what she does when she is out.

I’d better eat something before I start or I’ll forget until morning and that won’t help things. I’ll make that fish I put in the freezer yesterday. I went for a knife to open the package and tripped over a pair of B’s pants. Why on earth did I try to walk in this kitchen with a Butcher knife? Looking down I realized that a knife handle protruding from my abdomen was quite a surrealistic scene. Well I’m fucked. There isn’t going to be any emergency services except hauling my dead ass out of here.

I’ve got nothing to lose, might as well use the device and figure out what that Fix this program is all about. I triggered the program on the Human Machine Interface (HMI) that I had built and placed the hose from the device next to the knife in the wound. I felt like my insides were crawling and I saw the knife disappear, the blood close by seemed to move on its own back into my body and the wound closed. Then a thought occurred to me, sleep.

B came back home drunk early in the morning and tripped over me lying on the floor. When she raised herself up to get a look at me I opened my eyes in time for her to vomit all over the upper half of my body and face. Isn’t marriage bliss?

Good morning dear; have a nice evening out did we? Mind if I ask why you’re not wearing any panties? For some reason I notice these things.

Um, sure if you give me a good answer as to why you were laying on the floor. The odor of vomit forced me into retreat; I pushed her off of me and jumped into the shower with all my clothes on. I’m going to have to find a way to free myself of this useless twit. Just as this thought was forming I heard B brushing her teeth and hitting the mouthwash. She then entered the shower, disrobed me and reminded me of why I married her. She would have sex with me. I have some great standards.

We didn’t speak anymore that morning and I left in some mostly clean smelling clothes with the device to get set up at the laboratory hall. Today was going to be my day at last.

The lab was bustling with activity as everyone tried to get a last minute edge in the competition for integrating the alien artifacts with human tech. The first demonstration was about to begin while I finished installing a control circuit I had been up for three days building. The artifacts had been recovered from a derelict ship found adrift in the Kuiper belt; the farthest humans had managed to reach thus far. The particular tech he had drawn in the lottery had appeared to be a nanite manufacturing device with a programmable interface that our race was years from deciphering.

Roberts PhD and C-points were on the chopping block based on his success with this project, not to mention the substantial credit bonus being offered by a new company ‘Next You’. His goal was to control the device with a human machine interface. He would program the nanites to enter a host that was diseased, communicate the genetic causes of the disease to a second set of nanites. The second set would scrounge bases from non-coding DNA to form oligonucleotides that would cure the disease.

The installation was complete and he had nothing left to do but watch the other students demonstrate their efforts and await his turn. His wife Bridgette would be so proud of him and ecstatic if he could win the credits. They really wanted to have a child the natural way before they got too old.

Smoke and a large crashing noise distracted Robert from his daydream as a tank on a students project exploded sending the badly damaged woman flying across the hall and through a plate glass window. Everyone flocked over to the student to determine if they could help or at least see the mess. It was going to be a miracle if they could save her.

Knowing no emergency service was going to arrive fast enough to save her Robert shouldered his way though the crowd with his project and attached ominous looking tubes to her mouth and the gash in her neck where an artery was busy trying to water the lawn. He already had the HMI powered up and he loaded a program that he didn’t even remember writing labeled simply Fix this.

After a couple of minutes of lights cycling on the alien portion of the device two pulses of light traveled per each tube into the patient. The student appeared to be taking a final gasp of air when her skin looked like it was moving; resembling a swarm of army ants on redecorating day. It took almost a half hour for emergency services to arrive to find that the student was not only up and fully healed, but that the Multiple Sclerosis the student had started to show signs of was gone as well.

The proctor for the demonstrations found Robert slumped in a corner babbling to himself. She was going to die anyway, she was going to die anyway, she was going to die anyway,…

What did you think you were doing? I’m going to have to present this to the ethics committee. You don’t use untested tech on humans.

Robert seemed to come around at that. It wasn’t untested. I repaired myself with it last night.

The horrified proctor stormed out of the hall to find someone to report this breach to and Robert, now somewhat out of shock, made his way over to the device and removed a small part. He managed to grind it to bits beneath his heel before the proctor returned with three armed guards who arrested him.

The C-points penalty of the ‘Reckless Endangerment’ charge alone will probably undo all you have achieved to date. Why did you do it?

The helpful answer would have been ‘I needed to take action to save that woman's life but what came out of his mouth for the floating evidence recorders was I knew my design would work and you feeble minded gits aren’t ready for my genius.

That landed him in restraints in a guest suite at the University of New Bern Hospital mental health wing, more like an isolation tower. His every need was met for two weeks until the Citizenship tribunal convened to hear his case, at which time he was conveniently determined to be of sound mind to attend. An hour prior to the hearing a guard escorted his wife Bridgette in for a visit and locked the windowless door upon leaving.

The hearing is soon and we may not get a chance to be together for a long time. Do you think you’re up for making love? she said.

I’m always up for you Bridgette. Robert heard a voice screaming inside of him Don’t you touch her you fucking alien! It was the last time Robert would hear that voice that cared for others.

They almost ripped each other’s clothes in their haste to get down to it and when they had both climaxed after thirty minutes the room was a mess with clothes everywhere except on a body. That may have been the best sex ever!

There was a wisp of smoke that came from Bridgette’s vagina and she shuddered with a chill. Wow, I didn’t expect that. How come it took an event like this to have that experience?

The wisp of smoke was actually something she should have worried a little more about. Will you be allowed in the hearing?

I was told no as my presence would not contribute anything to the process. I’ll be waiting for word outside in the corridor, and hoping.

They redressed and the guard returned to escort her to the corridor. A few minutes later Robert was led in tether shackles to the tribunal chamber. There were five judges and two armed Bailiffs. The proceedings were to be holographically recorded for shits and giggles. No one has ever second guessed this tribunal since its founding after the global genocide war of 2140.

The woman head judge asked me my name for the record Robert Abrams Focsile. You are convicted of Reckless Endangerment of a human. The maximum penalty is the termination of your lineage. The minimum penalty is you lose all of your C-points and are barred from further accumulation for three years. I believe that Next You, Inc. has weighed in on your behalf, because your victim lived, therefore I’m sentencing you to the minimum penalty and you will become a legal ward of Next You, Inc. for the next three years off planet.

Fuck me. Thank you your Honor. What a bitch. One of the Bailiffs came forward with a locator implanter and right in front of the judges injected a tracker into my thigh.

If you go AWOL or return to Earth before the three years are up you will be tracked and executed, got it?

Yes Ma’am.

You are hereby released into the custody of the Next You representative in the corridor.

I walked very rapidly to the doors trying not to break into a run. Once in the corridor I spotted my wife and a man who looked like all the nerves in his face had been turned off.

Are you the Next You representative?

Yes Dr. Focsile, I understand you will be staying with us for a while off planet. My name is Calabrini and I will be your escort for about the next week of travel and orientation.

Can my wife Bridgette come with us if she desires? You just referred to me as Doctor Focsile?

No and Yes; no she doesn’t wish to leave Earth; and yes we had some pull with the University and had them award your Doctorate.

Are you divorcing me? What was all that back in the waiting room?

I thought I’d give you one last ride before you got sentenced. I had no idea they were going to exile you. I only married you because I thought it was a sure road to Citizenship. I’m not divorcing you by the way. If you get any royalties from Next You I’m going to be set.

I think I’m ready to go now Calabrini, before I get remanded back into custody.

Before we leave, the company would like me to have a word with you in private.

That was Bridgette’s cue to leave. Goodbye Dear. She stomped off.

And the word is?

What did you do to sabotage the nanite generator? The company has been trying to get it to work since we took custody of it a week ago.

I destroyed a control circuit that allowed the HMI to translate anything meaningful to the machine. The Doctorate program is very back-stabbing and I wasn’t about to let the proctor have the device.

You can of course repair it?

Yes.

Very good. Let’s leave this place.

We left for the Switzerland Starport without another word. That was the last time I was with Bridgette. I found out three months later, while I was on the Jovian Industrial Research Station, that she was pregnant and desperate. The smoke from her vagina apparently was the nanites digesting her contraception and the same nanites had acted as an activator for my inert sperm. That turn of events had me examining my blood for the nanites and I found them. These were not the short lived designs I had made for my PhD project. These were persistent and to be my little secret, at least for a while. Bridgette was hauled in front of the tribunal and convicted of undermining the law of exchange without a Writ of Citizenship.

When the pregnancy came to term she was allowed to name the baby as the final wish, Angelique. As soon as the name was recorded the lethal injection was administered to Bridgette, she was no more. Angelique was placed into the State Home for exchange babies and I was permitted to send gifts.

The reason Next You, Inc. was so generous to me was that I was their golden goose. Anything that was alien tech I could figure out and meld with human control systems. I became very wealthy in credits and Angelique would have wanted for nothing. When she turned six I was able to get her to stay with me at the orbiting laboratories of Saturn. There were ten other primary school aged children who all worshipped her friendship, except for this little dolt named Pavel.

Pavel was the son of this dour Russian engineer who was making bootleg Vodka in the hydroponics heat exchangers. The boy kept playing pranks on Angelique until she would start crying.

I did my best to be both Mother and Father to Angelique, but I had no experience with either of my own parents to guide me. One day an explosion occurred in the heat exchangers and the Russian was killed. Pavel was to be remanded to the Exchange school on Earth and Angelique told me she wanted to go too.

I thought that little boy made you cry.

Only because I really liked him and he was mean. I don’t think that anymore and I miss home.

I had nothing to offer, this was no place for a child. She returned to Earth and I began to hear voices again, usually whenever I thought of her. "You know she is really not your child right?"

I looked around and decided that I hadn’t heard anything. "She will never be a human daughter to you; you are so much more now." That’s great, where’s that Vodka I bought off of that kids dad. "Just accept it and let’s get back to work. I have an idea that will make you so indispensable that Next You, Inc. might just have to elevate you to owner status."

I stood up and looked in the mirror of my room. It was my face but it looked like it belonged to someone else. There is no way I can tell this to anyone. I sat back