2585: ENTRY5
Yesterday was a good day in the Academy. Our trek team won several awards in the EP Midyear Conference, and I got the diamond pin in the 800m race. The pin is beautiful, and would be a great addition to my collection of 4 diamond and 3 sapphire pins I received for the previous years. I don’t know if I’d be allowed to participate in competitive athletics if my identity was disclosed. After all, I am a genetically enhanced person. However, my enhancements were all made before my birth, so in a way, I was born with my abilities.
Today’s session with Dr. Rama was a lot of fun for a change, because I told her about the race. She seemed genuinely interested, and not because of her task to monitor my psychological fitness for the service in the military. No, this time, she was actually interested in me personally.
“So what actually makes you different from the rest of us?”, She asked.
Well, let’s see. My vision, for example. My eye has a heightened ability to accommodate, like a telescope lens. As a result, I can see under water with no loss of resolution.
I can also see about nine times better compared to other humans in the daylight.
My eyes are larger, which gives me a wider angle of vision and makes it harder to creep up on me.
Purple pigment is the byproduct of my eye’s ability to filter various wavelengths outside of the normal human range. As a result, I can accommodate the lens to see the heat waves and certain spectrum of radiation. That’s 18 times better vision at night compared to any human.
Oh, almost forgot. The fun part. Did you know, that dogs have two types of color detecting cones (blue and green) and humans have additional red one. Guess how many I have? 16. My DNA was augmented with sequences from the Mantis shrimp. Sometimes, it is difficult for me to understand what the rest of humans cannot see, that is why at first I was shocked and amused with women’s makeup. I’d see seven distinct colors of skin tone, five types of blush, and don’t get me started on the eye shadows. The rest of the humans have noooo idea what they look like when they think they have flawless makeup. That is why I stay away from that stuff. Also, the fabrics, that the rest of humans think have solid colors, are actually more like tide died. Sometimes it is quite funny to see a huge light stain of color on a woman’s dress in awkward areas. On Earth Prime, I mostly wear black, because even if it is not solid from my perspective, it still looks better than the rest of color combinations.
Other than my eyes, I have enhancements in the metabolism, immune system, muscle structure, to name a few. For example, I can influence my metabolism through meditation. I can grow hair overnight, put on weight or lose it in a week, adjust the muscle bulk for different types of athletic abilities. Adjusting muscle structure takes loner than growing hair, but in general I can switch from the sprinter to boxer to a pole vaulter in two months of mindful workouts.
Also, I have much stronger connection between mind and body. Whenever I have an inflammation in my body, I can guide my cells through the healing process. This is not entirely easy and takes daily routine of meditation. Ever since I left the 4th, I neglected this rigorous ritual. If I got seriously ill, and my improved default immunity did not fight off the attack, I guess I’d have to use the regular human medical procedures. However, in the past two years, no incidents happened.
Dr. Rama listened to me with her mouth slightly open and her eyes firmly fixed on me. Finally she uttered:
“No wonder, our military wants you so bad.”
Yes, the Earth Nations military feel like they won a lottery when they recruited me. That explains why the officer who was in charge of retrieving me after the drop in the cargo unit was reassigned to the crowd control mission on Orenascu , the rioting colony in the Alpha Centauri Orbital Belt.
From my perspective, that unfortunate officer did me a service. For two weeks I explored Monrovia without anyone looking over my shoulder. Those were the first and the last two weeks of freedom in my life…
[To be continued]
You were reading the diary of Ensign Ebony River, that predates the events in the “Million Deaths of Lt. Mazula” mini-series. Two years later, in 2587, Ebony would be assigned to the classified mission on the home world of alien species with the designs on the Milky Way galaxy. The mission, authorized by the Earth Nations, was supposed to investigate the intelligence, according to which Unkari were testing powerful weapon in their home galaxy, Sagittarius Dwarf. The mission failed, and the entire Galactica class military vessel was obliterated. The only survivors, Lt. Mazula and En. River, struggle to stay alive, captured by the enemy. This diary reveals the mysteries of Ebony River, a citizen of an outcast human race that secluded themselves to the life of intellectualism through genetic engineering, drugs and radical robotic enhancements.
Copyright (2016) Ellie Maloney