Authors: Malcolm Rose
Tired after walking up one short flight of stairs, Ben gasped as he walked into the large, sparsely furnished living room. One entire side was made of glass panels and it overlooked Highgate
Cemetery. He was immediately drawn to the massive window and the view of stone crosses, plinths and headstones among the vegetation. It took him a few seconds to realize that the bizarre, fuzzy
shapes like frozen zombies were bushes growing up and over some of the monuments. He couldn’t make out the more distant trees and the bobbing heads of a group of visitors taking the guided
tour of the graveyard. They were lost in the permanent haze of his feeble vision.
“There’s a veranda above us that’s got an even better view. Good for recuperation.” Angel turned towards Ben and, sensing his frustration, added, “Your
vision’s one of the first things we’ll sort out.”
Ben was puzzled. The building appeared to be a large, modern yet ordinary home within Highgate Cemetery. “You said this was a specialized unit or something. It’s just a house. A
house in a graveyard!”
“Yes,” Angel replied, “but with some additional features that aren’t immediately obvious. You’ll see. Right now, though, you’re looking pale. You need rest
and I want my doctor to look you over in the medical room. There’s a lift down to it.”
“A lift? Down?”
“That’s one of the unusual features. Underground rooms.”
“What is this place? Not a hospital or a surgery.”
“It’s very private but still in the heart of London. It’s called Unit Red. We’ll talk about it once you’re settled.”
“My painkillers are wearing off.”
Angel nodded sympathetically. “Come on. I’ll show you your bedroom and then get the doctor to fix you up.”
Ben’s bedroom was up one more floor. A small airy room – clinically clean – with a view over the sleepy cemetery. He opened the wardrobe door and noticed a good range of brand
new clothes. After his house had been destroyed, he didn’t expect to see his own gear, but he became distressed straight away because the neatly arranged wardrobe reminded him of everything
he’d lost. “These aren’t mine!”
“I’m sorry,” said Angel. “They are all your size, though.”
Every shoe stored at the bottom of the wardrobe had Velcro fastenings. That was because human beings needed two hands to tie laces.
Ben flopped onto the edge of the bed and winced at the pain of his sudden movement. Head bowed, he muttered, “I’ve got nothing. No clothes, no family, no photos, no phone. No
possessions at all. No friends. Not even a home. Nothing.”
“I can get you whatever you need,” Angel told him.
“That’s not the point, is it? Can you bring my family back?”
“No.”
“What about my friend, Amy? I want to see her.”
Angel shook his head. “Now’s not the right time. Come on.” Angel guided him towards the door. “Let’s have you checked over.”
Ben needed the support of a crutch to keep him upright, but his body was so pathetic, he could manage only one. The lift took them down to a windowless corridor with a series of doors. Knowing
that the house had gravestones right outside, Ben realized that these hidden rooms must lie alongside the dead. On the other side of the walls had to be the decomposed remains of corpses. Ben
wasn’t sure if that was freaky or comforting. The occupants of the burial ground could cast an eerie shadow on the house or they might watch over it. He hoped that living next to them would
be like having the protection of ancestors.
He hesitated before he went into the medical room. Looking like a dentist’s surgery with a high-tech chair and all sorts of modern gadgetry, it made him feel anxious and reassured at the
same time. Clearly, the room had been prepared for him in advance because the walls were plastered with close-ups of his wounds, X-ray images and brain scans. He recognized some of them from the
hospital. The medical mural was the story of his infirmity: a shattered shoulder, a fractured skull, and a black hole in the marbled grey of his brain like a terrible storm cloud. Apparently, Unit
Red – whoever they were – already knew him inside out.
Over the coming weeks, Ben spent a lot of time in the medical room, mere metres away from the skeletons of Highgate Cemetery. He saw doctors, surgeons, an optician, a physiotherapist, even
engineers, technicians and computer experts to mend his broken body. And there was a psychiatrist. She wanted to mend his broken mind – to help him overcome the mental trauma of losing his
family and parts of his body. Apart from her, they all said the same old phrase –
you’re lucky to be alive
– before they set about improving him.
Above them all in the specialist centre was Angel. Unit Red’s boss came and went, but he was fond of saying that he would be available every step of the way as Ben learned to live again.
He was less fond of explanations. He always avoided talking about the exact nature and purpose of Unit Red.
Outside, the world carried on without Ben. The dead were laid to rest and mourned. The police were investigating the Thames explosion, following a lot of leads, but making no arrests. Most of
the ruins on the south Essex and north Kent coasts would be rebuilt. Some businesses and people would start up again. Many would find it too painful and move away. Confined to the Unit Red
headquarters in London, Ben would also be rebuilt.
Sometimes, thoughts of life beyond Highgate Cemetery came to Ben’s mind. Usually, they hit him when the pain would not go away or when he couldn’t sleep. He ached to know what had
happened to Amy and why, according to Angel, it was never the right time to be reunited with friends. He ached to know who had robbed him of his normal life, his friends and family, everything he
had. And he ached to know why.
Unit Red’s chief surgeon led Ben to the room at the end of the underground corridor. Hesitating by the door, he said, “This is where you’ll have the big
operations.” Going inside, he added, “Sometimes you’ll see it. Sometimes you won’t. It depends whether you need local or general anaesthetic.”
Ben gasped in amazement. He was inside a tiny observation room. Beyond the window was a fully equipped, modern and spotless operating theatre, just like in a hospital.
“It’s sealed,” the surgeon told him, “to prevent infections. We can’t go in without scrubbing up and getting into sterile clothing.”
Ben’s eyes struggled to focus. He couldn’t make out all of the equipment and, even if he could, he wouldn’t have recognized most of the high-tech kit. There was a large trolley
with electronic gear on each shelf and a long monitor at the top. A giant computer screen and a digital clock were attached to the left-hand wall. There was a cupboard that probably contained
horrible things like scalpels, drills and medical saws. Above the operating table were three massive round lights on jointed arms so that they could be moved into any position. There was also a
laser. At the head of the bed was a doughnut-shaped ring that would just about encircle a body like a lifebelt. “What’s that for?” Ben said, pointing at it.
“Ah. We’ll be using that straight away. It’s a brain scanner. MRI – magnetic resonance imaging – it’s called. I’m going to drill a couple of small holes
through your skull – nothing to worry about – and put implants directly into your brain. The scanner will let me see exactly what I’m doing while I’m doing it. And you can
talk to me at the same time.”
Ben looked horrified. “Talk? Won’t you knock me out first?”
“It’s better not to. That way, you can tell me if you can see better when I connect your optic nerve to a brain implant. You won’t feel any pain. A local anaesthetic will take
care of that.”
Ben shivered. He thought there was something weird and ghoulish about talking to a surgeon who was fiddling around inside his brain at the time. He didn’t want to hear any more. Instead,
he tried to get an answer to a question that Angel had sidestepped. He took a deep breath and asked, “What is Unit Red?”
The chief surgeon smiled. “I think I’ll let Angel handle that one – when you’re ready. My job is just to make you better.”
Ben needed several days to recover after every operation. To keep track of them all, he felt as if he should chalk them up on his bedroom wall in the Unit Red building, like a
prisoner marking each day in captivity.
His eyes had been fixed. Both irises had been fitted with a tiny camera and an electrode had been attached to the retina of each eye. The signal from the cameras was picked up by the electrodes
and fed directly into his optic nerve. The sensory information was handled partly by his brain and partly by an implant, letting him see clearly. More than clearly. He had the best eyesight in the
world. And it wasn’t just visible light. The cameras worked over a wide wavelength range. He had infrared vision so he could see in the dark and terahertz vision that allowed him to look
straight through people’s clothes. Except that he hadn’t mastered the full scope of his new eyes yet. Until he learned how to cope, he had to put up with the confusing crossover of
different wavelengths. He had to put up with the bizarre sensation that warm-blooded beings looked like radioactive aliens. And sometimes they appeared naked.
Even though he now had amazing high-tech eyes, no one would notice unless they came quite close.
The next operation was a big one. It was the first step to giving him a new arm and it meant general anaesthetic and a long recovery. Ben was scared and pleased at the same time. He was fed up
with looking odd and ugly, like a teapot without its spout. He was fed up with being unbalanced. Fed up with fighting his instincts to reach out with an arm that was no longer there. Fed up with
his slow and hopeless left arm. He longed for a time when eating, showering, dressing and undressing didn’t take an age. He wanted something to fill his shirtsleeve. He hated the way that
clothes simply hung from his right shoulder and flapped around uselessly, like a flag waving to show everyone his impairment. When the frustrations got to him, he’d go to the gym and take it
out on a punchbag, but that didn’t really work. He could hit it only with this ineffectual left arm.
One of the doctors peered closely at Ben’s stumpy shoulder. “You’ve healed nicely – to the point where we can start working on it. We’re going to implant titanium
rods into your remaining bones.” She demonstrated angles and directions with her pen. “They’ll poke through your skin like bolts and we’ll fix your new arm onto them. I know
it sounds horrible, but it’s simple. Not risky. And, when the arm’s on, you won’t see the fitting.”
Ben turned towards Angel, who stood to one side. “You said the arm’s really clever and complicated.”
“It is. Fantastic. If you call it advanced technology, you’re not doing it justice. It’s super-advanced. You’re the first person in the world to get this version.
You’ll love it. You’ll be able to do incredible things.”
The doctor explained, “The mechanism and electronics are tomorrow’s state of the art, but the fitting’s just nuts and bolts basically. That’s what I meant by calling it
simple.” She spoke clearly to make sure that Ben could hear. “Where you once had flesh, bone, blood and nerves, you’ll have motors, carbon-fibre rods, wires and fancy electronics.
But it’ll look realistic when we’ve finished.”
“Muscles are good,” Angel said, “but what you’re going to have will be better. Stronger.”
Ben gulped. It sounded like something a superhero in a comic would have. But he would not believe in the transformation until it happened. He also wondered what was in it for Unit Red. Why was
the mysterious organization helping him?
He asked, “How will I move this arm?”
Angel pointed towards his head. “With thoughts. I told you it was advanced.”
“By the way,” the doctor added, “while the surgeon’s at it, I’ll open up your right leg and put a battery under the skin.”
“A battery?”
“Something’s got to power all your enhancements,” she said.
“What happens when it goes flat? Do you have to...?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No. Once it’s in, that’s it. It won’t go flat. It’s rechargeable. It generates electricity from movement. You don’t have to do
anything extraordinary like jump up and down all the time. Just normal walking around and so on will power your arm, visual system and everything else.”
Ben didn’t like what he was – hampered by disability – but he also worried about what he was becoming.
Seven months after the explosion, Ben stood in front of a full-length mirror once more. Just for a moment, he had the strange sensation that the glass was a door. A weird boy
was outside the room, looking in at him. But he was wrong. The mirror was normal and he was the peculiar boy with the bald head. He lifted his left arm to prove it. His unfamiliar reflection did
the same.
This time, he wasn’t shocked by the damage. He was astonished by the power of surgery to reconstruct a body. Maybe body was the wrong word. He was part body, part machine. Whoever or
whatever he saw in the mirror, it wasn’t Ben Smith.
His right arm was a gadget. No matter how clever it was, no matter how many things it could do, it was attached to him and not really part of him. At this stage, the motors, metal rods and
joints were visible, but it was going to be encased in super-strong metal and covered with artificial skin. Even that wouldn’t convince him it was anything but a gadget. At least it would be
well disguised when his transformation was complete. From a distance, other people would not notice that he had a robotic arm.
He put his left hand on his cheek. Pure plastic. One ear had been rebuilt out of silicone. His bald head was covered with scars and odd bumps. Focusing on his eyes, he could see the tiny cameras
that almost everyone else would miss. The marks all over his body made him look like a carefully constructed jigsaw.
Apart from his right arm and ear, his body glowed yellowy-red. He knew that no one else would see the shimmering colour. His infrared vision was detecting warmth. His right arm and ear were cold
and dead. A lifeless blue colour. The patches of plastic on his face and trunk were a darker red. That was the warmth and life underneath struggling to show through.