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Ian Fleming’s
James Bond 007
in
Beyond The
Known Frontiers
By
Gene Laurenciano[/size]
PROLOGUE:
SPECTRE in the Machine
The son watched his sleeping father.
It had been countless wakeful nights, but the son was not feeling the fatigue. Those nights were long, also the days, but whose counting? The son did not even bother to log the activities – a must for such a very delicate “experiment.” Doing such added nothing to the would-be over-all outcome of this endeavor.
And no records should exists – to succeed or to fail.
However, failure was not an option.
All that mattered was to succeed.
Every time he looked at his “father”, he couldn’t resist the overwhelming awe surging inside. Was it pride? Revulsion? The son didn’t know. Like keeping log, he doesn’t care whatever the source of that awe was. The son stared at the matter in a clear jar and he smiled. “It” was his father there inside the bottle filled with solution and poked with crisscrossing multi-colored wires, synapses aching for digital bridges, throbbing, floating, bobbing up and down as if yearning to communicate...
… craving to live.
The son glimpsed at a monitor behind him several feet away. It had to be far. Nothing electric, magnetic or electronic should be near that bottle that contained his father’s brain – except the probes. Their static conduction would affect the reading.
All must be accurate.
Nothing should be misread…
The digital display climbed a couple of thoughtputs. The dimensionless unit’s speed is usually measured in bits or bytes; and every bit or byte of increase put his father’s brain closer to the right hertz to communicate effectively.
The son had his father in the cryo after he was found in a chimneystack.
The greatest crimninal was introduced to him only as his benefactor before his pubescence. He was sent to the best schools and was encouraged more – given everything and anything that he needed to acquire knowledge.
The son, who had grown so rich and bored, very successful in the cyber business domain and the richest recluse in the world, was also in different spheres of medicine. With his money and learning, he trail blazed a new branch of science, which he called cyberneurophysiology.
It was anticipated—that new frontier, as his benefactor had kept hinting him…
-- For this eventually.
Somehow, when his benefactor one day was kidnapped for termination, he was prepared. The Einstein of crime was dead in a vent stack – presumably dropped there by a British field operative from a helicopter to end his long anti-social career. The heart had stopped beating – only a hint of neuronal dynamics remained, refusing to die, refusing to give up the dream to be the master of the world!
And that was enough.
With the knowledge in several fields of medicine combined with the latest in technology, the son went to work. He preserved his benefactor’s body in a cryo suspension. At that time, he didn’t know that he was his biological father. Later, to trace more, he subjected himself to a DNA test and compared the result to the man in the cryo chamber. There was mixed emotions when the result was out. With that awareness, welled a kinship and the end of his search for a father he didn’t know. The son vowed to get even with the man who almost killed his father.
The initial efforts were all frustrating. Something was hindering even an iota of progress.
A day came he realized that raising his father from the dead would be greatly impeded more if he would continue to attempt to bring him whole. His fathe
The brain would do.
All he needed was the brain -- not the sentimentality of the human flesh. The son was sure that his father had none, but somehow, the desire to conquer the world would be empty if he had no one to offer it to. Perhaps there was once a woman – or a family…
He must live! Forever!
Thus the new science was born.
The red indicator in the gauge was slowly turning violet.
A little more…
Then blue-green.
Finally, the son smiled. The indicator had turned full, verdant green -- the color of life.
Another monitor at the center of the hall flickered. The son excitedly leaped in large strides as if summoned by a king, passing by several crystal caskets in sentinel that contained other henchmen of his father’s – their undead lifeless bodies looked eerie from the light cast by the monitor. The son stopped before the OLED screen. A rotating image of a man was slowly formed, first in wireframes and then covered with skin – youthful in his late 30s, dressed in what could be the Armani in the cyberneurophysiology world, a full head of black hair and the scar in the face gone. It was the residual image of his father!
The accumulated fatigue was washed away and the son rejoiced, forgetting the almost endless string of frustrations, forgetting the hatred that nearly botched this project when his assistant… his lover – a young, beautiful and bright neurosurgeon / psychoanalysts -- found out what he was up to and left, puking angry like she had prostituted her talent to Dr. Frankenstein.
The son stood as if in front of an altar, eagerly waiting for the idol to issue a decree.
The rotating image stopped. The screen gradually focused on the face of the owner of the brain in the jar.
Suddenly Ernest Stavro Blofeld’s eyes opened.
Edited by Gene Laurenciano, 21 August 2010 - 04:57 AM.