Signs and Portents
In two years, civilisation had been transformed. After Cocoon fell, everything had been in ruins, everything destroyed. Yet through advanced technology, and unending persistence, that civilisation had been reborn. Where only small villages had been, booming metropolis's sat, greater by far than anything that had come before it. Before, everything had been limited by space.
Cocoon was in the air, and so building new things was exceedingly difficult without Fal'cie approval. Now everyone was on the ground, and cities grew and grew, without stop. New Bodhum was already larger than Eden ever was, stretching miles and miles in all directions, away from the Arythe Sea, and that was only the city core. Without Fal'cie interference, the level of technology had increased exponentially, creating everything from Holo-TV's and new hyper-fast transport infrastructure to anti-matter-disruption systems, which utilised the energy created when anti-matter and matter met.
Technology was already thousands of years ahead of where Cocoon had been, and the human civilisation had never been greater. Admittedly, most of the new technology had come from studying the ruins on Gran Pulse. A great depositary had been found, several hundred miles to the north of New Bodhum. Not only had it contained a huge amount of history, but there was a great deal of technology there. Scientist were easily able to understand it through regressive analysis, and the results were nothing short of incredible.
In the depositary, was a tiny AMDS, which was powering the entire underground complex. Scientists had taken it apart, and rebuilt it, on a truly grand scale. The amount of energy produced was easily enough to power any rebuilding attempt. Where there was darkness, light now illuminated. He still remembered the giant machines littering the landscape, crowded with people, thousands of metres tall, towering up into the purple heavens as they constructed civilisation ender the setting sun. Houses were built in minutes, cities in hours; distributed under a work force that spanned billions of self-replicating machines. If he remembered correctly it had all started with the discovery of the Delta File. Located deep within the Grand Depositary it contained all of the combined knowledge of the last civilisation that had been crushed into dust; slowly, during a war that lasted thousands of years with a Fal'Cie enemy that had been immeasurably more powerful than now.
The Delta File had allowed scientists to spend six months creating a single machine, the size of a house, with self-replicating properties. Everyone waited in baited breaths from various refugee camps. The results spoke for themselves. Powered by an energy unit unlike anything made before, the machine acknowledged the order to recreate civilisation; the rest was history. The original machine was called the Dome, after its shape, but the machines that spawned from it took on various shapes for their various roles. Unlike Dome, they were not conscious, and required people to man them. Thus by necessity, the technology had been mastered.
A democratic system was set up, a parliament was elected and a woman assumed leadership of the ruined people- Jane Asmal Rapture. She immediately ordered plans to be drawn up, regarding rebuilding. Engineers, designed the buildings, and watched as they rose in front of them. Geographers determined the best building locations, the structures of the cities and their size. These not only included New Bodhum, but other area's as well. There was a general consensus to give new names to new cities, and New Bodhum was the only exception. It was founded by Nora; one of the new branches of the military, designated with the task of keeping out all dangerous wildlife. A dangerous job, considering how many monsters there were lurking out there. New Bodhum was allowed to keep its name, in recognition to the contributions Nora had made. New Bodhum, remained the same as its predecessor had been, only on a larger scale. It was still a calm and peaceful city, with hot weather and blue skies.
Under Rapture's command, buildings rose out of nothing, roads were paved where before there was only grass, power flowed where before nothing but the wind sang. First the gigantic AMDS stations were set up, then thousands and thousands of engineers and architects pored over the land. Using technology from the depositary, cities were created, far in excess of what had come before. In the four greatest cities-Nova, Cloud, Star Reach and Everlast towers rose up miles in the air, joined by rolling light bridges, and filled with air traffic. Velocycles had long since been abandoned, and replaced with new designs that had their own AMDS onboard, giving them tremendous power. Everything had changed, everything was so far ahead of what it had been, yet General Cid Raines, could never have believed that they had come this far.
He knew this boy-Hope Estheim, from back when he was a l'Cie. The message showing on his screen had to be impossible.
"This is a joke?" he said coldly. The man next to him shook his head slightly. He was taller than most, and wore a dark expression, his long dark hair, falling to his shoulders.
"Originally we thought so, but the blood works cannot lie. Originally we had no way of knowing what had happened, when it had happened, who had done this and what it meant."
"How did you get this?"
"Bloodworks from Sestopher Hospital, New Bodhum."
"New Bodhum? That's on the other side of the Phrate Mountains. How did you get it so quickly?" Raines asked.
"The matter was deemed important enough for instant transmission."
"I assume the other heads know?" Raines said.
"With the exception of General Villiers-yes sir."
"Why was he not notified?" Raines asked in surprise.
"He is off-duty-on leave following the birth of his daughter."
"Notify him immediately."
"Yes sir."
"The hologram here, Bowman is alerting me of a serious problem that threatens national security. Attached to it is a picture of one Hope Estheim, though he hardly looks like the boy I remember," Raines said turning around.
"There's actually a rather horrible reason for that sir."
"Yes...?" Raines said.
"I mentioned a few minutes ago that we had no way of knowing what had happened, when it had happened, who had done this and what it meant," the man said.
"Dr. Bowman-are you trying to confuse me?"
"Sorry sir. I was talking about the results of the blood works. It made no sense at all."
"Then I suggest that you make sense of it. How important would you say this issue is? I've got to court-marshal a soldier who raped a ten year old girl. More important than that?" Raines asked. Of course that was a lie, but it was a fair way of determining the importance of the topic. He couldn't recall a single time, when someone had said yes.
"Absolutely."
Raines stiffened.
"I said that we had no idea. That changed, unfortunately last night. We have a pretty good idea of some of these questions," the man said, speaking each word as efficiently as possible, though failing to hide a shudder.
"Do we need to call up a meeting of the general staff?"
"Yes sir-but you may want to hear this first."
He was clearly either deeply excited or scared. Probably both. The man usually showed as little emotion as a robot. Still, there was a reason he was Head Scientist-the man was brilliant at what he did, and that was all that really mattered. The Wide Area Response Brigade had long been disbanded by Rapture, but a whole new branch had been created. Next to Nora and the Guardian Corp, they were a general force, meant to provide backup in case either needed it. The GC, were mainly a police force, and so it was usually Nora who called upon them. That was changing. Nora was the largest force in the military, with more people joining everyday-no doubt thanks to the charismatic Snow Villiers, who Raines had also met. A good man. Saying that his own force wasn't much smaller, and composing the elite of the Pulsian army Raines felt comfortable in asserting their superiority.
The Cavalry had been replaced with the GRIP-General Reconnaissance and Internal Peace. Their main job was to root out terrorists. GC dealt with crime, and keeping the peace on the streets. GRIP made sure no-one blew up those streets. The faction Black Reid, were the main threat. They needed to be stopped.
Raines stared out of his window. He was on the nine hundredth floor, watching the flow of traffic pass him by, on their invisible airlines. Further beyond that, a pedestrian walked on a glowing bridge, carrying a bag of shopping. Cid was currently in the GRIP headquarters in Everlast, staring from his office window, on the top floor. One of the perks of being promoted from Brigadier to full General. At this altitude, wind should have been smashing into the buildings, the traffic, and even the multitudes of people on the light bridges, both on this level, and ones further down. He watched an old lady carrying a shopping bag get into her vehicle and speed off.
Currently Raines was 6.776354 miles above sea level. Only ten thousand feet higher, and he would be in the path of the commercial jets. Of course it was illegal to build anything higher than fourty thousand feet. Raines had no idea how it was managed. All this had been done in two years, with the help of incredibly advanced technology. This building alone used up nearly as much energy as an entire city would have in Cocoon. Though that was mostly for the labs on lower floors. Looking down, he could see only clouds floating in an orange sky.
"Continue," Cid replied, waiting for Dr. Bowman.
"Yes sir, but you're not going to like this. I believe that Hope Estheim is no longer human." Bowman said, causing Cid to whirl around.
"What?" he asked shocked.
"We analysed his blood. Then we analysed it again. Then we created a program with the sole purpose of deciphering his genetic make-up, and found something incredibly disturbing. His blood shows signs of incredible genetic modification. Take a look at this." Bow man said, flicking his finger. A Holo-TV came on.
"What am I looking at here?" Cid said. The screen showed, what looked like cells. Raines was not a biologist, and he didn't give a shit about it. He wanted answers.
"A weapon."
"What?" Raines asked, starting to sweat.
"They are cells," Bowman replied, looking at the images. "But not ordinary cells. We believe the process was activated at the onset of the subjects sixteenth birthday. It is estimated that the process will take up to four years to finish completely."
"Stop fooling around! Tell me everything! What fucking process?" Raines almost shouted.
"These cells are showing signs of turning into AMDS's" Bowman said quickly. That on its own should have been a case for worry.
Cid stared back at the screen. "These cells don't look like machines," he said, already relaxing. Maybe Bowman was wrong. There was only one problem. Bowman was never wrong.
"Machines? Well almost certainly not, not in that sense anyway. These look like ordinary cells, because they haven't started to change visibly yet. I believe that one cell will change first, providing enough energy to power everything else. What we suspect, is that each cell is turning into a hyper-powerful anti-matter power generator. Each cell would probably be capable of powering this building. They are biological power stations. The technology required to accomplish this is bio-engineering on a scale never before seen. It's millions of years ahead of us. We couldn't even begin to imagine how to create an AMDS that small-and for it to be biological? Not even in ten million years."
"Ten million years is a very long time." Raines asked heavily, staring at the image. It couldn't be.
"I don't think you understand sir. His body is being re-wired. Completely. We ran the program ahead, and it crashed. Our smartest computes were unable to comprehend even a millionth of a percentile of the change that's going on."
"Just blood cell?" Raines said sitting down heavily.
"No, every cell." Bowman replied.
"They can't just all be power...thingies!" Raines said emphasising with his hands.
"We don't know how it'll work. I can't even speculate." Bowman said, sounding frustrated.
"Look Bowman, I'm no fool. AMDS generators are powerful, but I doubt that a microscopic amount of matter and antimatter could power this building." Cid said.
"It's far more complex than that. We have a finished model of a modified red-blood cell. It may not be 100% accurate, but it gives us a good idea. Somehow, the matter and anti-matter are prevented from destroying each other."
"I thought that's where the energy came from," Cid frowned. He disliked science-but this was starting to get interesting, albeit in a scary way.
"Ordinarily, but this way is highly efficient. Judging from the results, we believe that the matter and anti-matter used are not from this dimension. In the dimension from which they are derived matter and anti-matter are many times more destructive. The matter and antimatter generate energy off each other, causing a chain reaction. Their power output will increase exponentially, to a theoretically limitless potential." Bowman said.
"Another dimension? How? Why don't we do that?" Raines asked.
"We believe that the dimension will be created by a central cell within the body. As for us doing it? We don't know how. Whenever we bring matter and anti-matter together, they destroy each other. We don't know how to access another dimension, never mind create a whole new one with properties tailor made to suit our needs. This technology is so far ahead of our own, its incomprehensible. Imagine...every cell," Bowman muttered.
"How can you possibly know this?"
"Sir the computers we have, have 10 to the power of 100 Floating Point Operations. Before it crashed it was accurate."
"A computer that powerful shouldn't have crashed."
"It went through a paradox loop."
"Whatever. You don't actually expect me to believe this!"
"All the top scientists have confirmed this."
"Impossible! There are over a hundred trillion cells in a human body! The energy would rip him apart!" Cid growled. This had to be a joke.
"It gets worse. To allow such a major rewrite to the subjects system, other changes would have to also follow." Bowman said.
"His name is Hope Estheim. He is not a subject!" Cid replied.
"Of course. We cannot tell from the blood works, what other changes will be." Bowman said.
"Is he going to turn into some kind of monster?" Cid asked.
"Highly unlikely. In fact, the modification has already changed the way he looks. He has gone from merely above average looking, to supernaturally beautiful, to the point where it has become ridiculous. Make no mistake-Hope Estheim is a weapon. As he gets older, they will only get better. We have two options-either we kill him whilst we still can, or we use him," Bowman said, his voice shaking.
"Use him? It sounds more humane to kill him."
"I'm sure he won't see it like that. I doubt very much he'll find these abilities a curse. We need to control him, so that when he does master them, we can use him for good, instead of letting him be on the rampage." Bowman said.
"What kind of a jail would hold him?"
"Jail? There are other ways of control. I guess the real question is...are you going to tell anyone?" Bowman replied.
"This will have to stay strictly amongst the top hierarchy. What about the doctors who brought this to our attention?" Raines asked.
"They've been dealt with."
"Not too messy I hope?"
"No sir."
Cid pursed his lips. He hated the thought of using Hope, but if he was a danger...Suddenly he turned around.
"When did this happen?" Raines demanded.
"We looked through his record, and apparently he went missing for two weeks, a few years ago. That's as good a time as any. The only problem is that there are no leads, nothing at all.
"Do we know who did this to him?" he demanded.
"No sir! And that's what's so scary."