Connor stared.
You have to stare, he told himself. Because you’ve never seen anything like it before. To the best of his knowledge, no one had.
“What is it?” he murmured. “What the hell?”
Kate moved forward to stand beside him.
“More accurate to say, what hell?” She joined her husband in gazing at the disorientated prisoner. “The outer three epidermal layers reproduce their natural equivalent almost perfectly. I can’t tell if it has been engineered and grown, or if it’s real human skin that’s been modified. One characteristic that has already been noted is the remarkable healing properties it possesses.” She stepped forward and pointed with the large scalpel she was holding. “Look at that. I made the original incision there less than twelve hours ago. It’s already completely scarred over. Underneath is—well, see for yourself.”
Eyes widening, Wright gaped at the moving hand and the potentially lethal instrument it was holding.
“What are you doing to me?” Suspended in the heavy restraints, Wright stared at the people arrayed in front of him. “What have you done?”
Kate didn’t hesitate. A few quick, deft, practiced slashes with the blade opened the chest cavity wide. Stepping back, she studied the result as emotionlessly as if she had performed the opening on a cadaver. Except that a cadaver would have been far less unsettling.
“The heart is human, and very powerful. Given its powers of recuperation, that was to be expected. The brain is human too, and I think also original. But with some kind of chip interface. No one could have anticipated that. Even looking at it under the scanner, it’s hard to believe. But there’s no denying it.”
As she spoke she used the tip of the scalpel to indicate relevant parts of the prisoner, as if she was gesturing at an illustrative chart.
“There’s still quite a lot we haven’t analyzed. The pulmonary system is completely hydraulic and the heart muscle has been stabilized and enhanced accordingly to handle the increased flow and higher pressure. I can’t wait to get into the details of the nervous system and see how the hard wiring is integrated with the brain and the spinal cord. If it is a spinal cord and not just a braided cable.”
What were they talking about?
Wright had finally managed to come to grips with having awakened in a world gone mad. Now it seemed that he had been taken from that new world and dropped into a second one even more baffling and insane than its predecessor. The words of those who were coldly studying him, the detachment of their discussion, were as hurtful as they were incomprehensible. They couldn’t possibly be talking about him. He had inadvertently set off a landmine, sure, but it hardly meant that....
Dropping his head and lowering his gaze, he for the first time caught sight of himself, dangling above the high, deep drop. Despite a sudden desperate desire to do so, he found that he couldn’t scream. The shock of what he was seeing utterly overwhelmed the horror. And it had nothing to do with the height at which he found himself suspended.
He was looking at the inside of himself, and what he was seeing made no sense.
The woman they had called Kate was still talking. “...hybrid neural system for certain, but how it was accomplished is beyond me. Whoever did the work would have to have been part surgeon, part mechanical engineer, and all visionary. It’s as remarkable as it is disturbing. There appears to be a dual central cortex—one human, one machine.”
They were ignoring him, discussing him the way he had once discussed with his brother the best way to get more horsepower out of an old Ford big block. Did you remove this or that part, replace it, or have it remachined?
“What did you do to me? This isn’t me. What’s going on here?”
They paid no attention to his frantic questions. It was almost as if he wasn’t there.
Almost as if he wasn’t one of them.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“You were right, John.” Kate’s attention shifted back and forth between her husband and the—creature. “Something has changed. This—thing—is unlike anything we’ve encountered previously. Aside from the technology that’s been incorporated into it, the surgical skill required to fabricate such a hybrid is beyond anything I could even begin to imagine.” She turned thoughtful. “Even back in the late twentieth century they were successfully implanting all kinds of artificial parts into people. First hip joints, then tendons and ligaments. Hearts, too. But it’s one thing to transplant a heart from one human into another. Linking it up with an entirely synthetic circulatory system—that’s new.
“As for linking it all to a half-machine brain and still having the original retain its full bank of memories without any apparent permanent loss or damage....” She shook her head. “It’s a miracle or a horror—take your pick.”
Connor studied the agonized figure that was hanging in suspension.
“We don’t know that the brain in question is retaining actual memories from the original cortex. The ‘memories’ the creature is experiencing could be implants designed to enhance its feeling of humanity and thereby augment its ability to deceive.” His tone was icy. “It’s all clever programming. To make the thing believe it actually is human.”
She blinked. “That’s possible. Or there could be a cerebral divide; part original memories from the time when the brain was in a human body, and the rest adjectival programming by whoever fashioned the final amalgam.” She returned her attention to the despondent, dangling body. “Given time and access to sufficiently sophisticated instrumentation, there might be a way to separate them out.”
“There might be a quicker way. And an easier one.” He also turned back toward the hanging shape. “It might also reveal nothing. On the other hand, the cost in time and equipment will be negligible. We’ll just ask it.” Taking a step toward the figure, he waited until the eyes—human eyes, Kate had determined, but with ingeniously disguised electronic enhancements—rose to meet his own.
“Who built you? What is your ‘T-class’ designation? How are you supposed to carry out your prime function when depth scans have revealed no internal armament, no concealed explosives, and only internalized communications facilities?”
As the figure being questioned stared back at Connor, exhaustion and despair gave way to defiance.
“My name is Marcus...Wright.”
Fascinating, Connor mused. Enticing and yet repellant. With this device Skynet had really advanced its human-simulation programming. Probably one of the reasons they continued to seek and keep live captives. Study your enemy in order to duplicate him. This thing hanging before him was so convinced of its humanity that it was incapable of admitting the truth about itself even when exposed to irrefutable reality. Here was a case study for the machine psychologists as well as a demolition team.
Despite its apparent helplessness, did they dare allow it to continue functioning?
“So you’re Marcus Wright,” Connor reiterated. “And you think you’re human?”
Wright looked down at himself again. Looked into his wide-open chest, which ought to have been causing him excruciating pain, but was not. Eyed the gaping breach from which blood should have been pouring in streams, but was not. His visible heart beat steadily, even powerfully, giving no indication that it might cease to function. It was the same with the lights and instrumentation and gadgets and inexplicable mechanical contrivances that hummed softly in its vicinity.