Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (9 page)

The vast bureaucracy of the Colmarian
Confederation decided that those on Shaedsta would not be mutated. They were
too insignificant compared to the residents of Shaedsta-2 and not worth the
expense.

This was, for those remaining on Shaedsta, a
rather nasty kick in the face. Not only were they rejected by their own species
residing two planets away, and who tended to be brighter, healthier, and more
attractive, but they were rejected by their new empire.

At this point, Delovoa only had two eyes, a
round head, slight build, and was in all ways a normal Shaedstan. Which was to
say, exceedingly unremarkable. Even if he were to become the greatest athlete
and scholar on his entire planet, he would still lag behind the average person
on Shaedsta-2.

Add to that having no access to mutations—which
the Colmarian Confederation promised could only ever be beneficial—and Delovoa
found his future prospects truly depressing. But he was clever and ambitious…as
much as his sub-species could be. And unlike most of his countrymen, he was
excellent at telling falsehoods. In fact, he prided himself on the ability to
not tell the difference between reality and his own untruths.

The main mutation facilities were to be set up
on Shaedsta. The toxic chemicals and potential for catastrophic results were
deemed best left to the throwaway planet.

“Do you know what goes on here?” the tall and
handsome Shaedsta-2ian asked.

“No,” Delovoa lied.

“Have you ever worked as a janitor before?”

“Yes,” Delovoa lied again.

“Can you lift this?” The large man handed
Delovoa a bucket of water carefully. As if he was afraid it might rip the arms
off the smaller Shaedstan. But Delovoa managed.

“Sure. And I’m a hard worker, sir,” Delovoa
lied for the third time.

“Go to the examination room. You’ll have to be
tested regularly.”

“Thank you!” Delovoa said.

He turned to leave the room and passed another
hulking Shaedsta-2ian.

“Leave the bucket,” the man called after him.

Delovoa put it on the ground, saluted, and
left.

He could hear the men laughing at his back.

“Dumb Native,” one of them said.

Natives. That’s what they called those who had
remained behind. Only twenty generations and the Shaedsta-2ians looked like a
completely different species. Or more like adult versions, while Shaedstans
were stuck in gawky pre-puberty.

The doctor at the examination room didn’t even
ask Delovoa to stand or sit or take off his clothes. He did it for him. He picked
Delovoa up with one hand. Forced open his mouth. Turned him upside down. And
basically handled him like a spoiled kid abusing a doll.

Finally, he checked his arms.

“You can’t do any drugs or drink, you
understand? Drink alcohol. You still need to drink water or you’ll die.”

Delovoa was already humiliated by this ordeal
and was regretting coming here. His racial meekness was, paradoxically,
asserting itself.

“I understand, sir.”

“If I see you’ve been taking any drugs or
stealing anything or sleeping on the job, I’ll have your hide.”

“My hide, sir?”

“Skin you,” the doctor snarled.

“What do you want with my skin?”

“I’ll fire you, so don’t do those things!
You’re only here because we’re required to hire Natives. And there are plenty
more who want this job.”

Delovoa knew there weren’t. There weren’t many
left on Shaedsta and none wanted to work at the giant, high security facility,
with its army of Shaedsta-2ians marching around reminding them of how inferior
they were.

The installation did so many checks because
they were worried the Natives would hurt or otherwise contaminate themselves.
Or worse, interfere with the mutation process for the billions of
Shaedsta-2ians who had to be processed.

Still, it was relatively informal. When the
doctor saw Delovoa, he tended to batter and poke and twirl him around looking
for anything out of the ordinary.

Fortunately, this wasn’t very often because
Delovoa worked at night and the doctor tended to be in the afternoon. Still,
Delovoa dreaded their encounters.

Delovoa was amazed by the facility. He explored
it as best he could while still working. He found the machines they used to
administer mutations. The machines to monitor the process. The long-term
therapy areas. Everything associated with turning Colmarians into mutants, the
Confederation’s greatest scientific achievement.

But it took a month for Delovoa to find what he
was really looking for:

The actual mutation drugs.

His goal, the reason he was subjecting himself
to these daily indignities, was so he could give himself some of the Colmarian
Confederation’s guaranteed beneficial mutations.

Unfortunately, the Confederation had
exaggerated their success rate. A significant number of all mutations were
negative. And an even greater number were so slight as to be useless.

But more importantly, the process of mutating
someone was incredibly involved. You had to perfectly match their genes and
introduce the mutagen slowly.

Delovoa didn’t know that, however, as he was
just a janitor. A Shaedstan janitor well below average intelligence and not
remotely capable of understanding the intricacies of forced mutation.

It had taken him another month to finally get
the passcode for the door. Always mopping the same floor as scientists walked
in.

“Ah!” Said one biologist, after he slipped on
Delovoa’s preternaturally polished floor. “Go work on some other hallway,
stupid Native!”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Delovoa said, bowing.

It was only because his species was so
routinely ignored that he had been permitted to investigate as he had. He was
very nearly invisible.

Delovoa entered the mutagen storage center one
night and found himself surrounded by literally millions of samples. The
complexity of it all was crippling, and Delovoa found himself curled into a
ball on the floor, coughing and drooling instinctively.

The Shaedstan defense mechanism was to play
sick and diseased, so predators would be afraid to eat them.

Night after night Delovoa would enter the
storage center, gradually gaining more courage.

His dream was that he would mutate himself into
a form strong enough to survive on Shaedsta-2 where he could have a normal
life. The kind he read about in the new tele stories that featured
Shaedsta-2ian love affairs, and Shaedsta-2ian adventure series. No one wrote
about Shaedstans. They would only appear as an adjective now and then to
describe someone particularly dumb or small or worthless.

But coming this far, Delovoa didn’t quite have
the courage to take that final step. And he wasn’t sure what the final step
should be. He was not a biologist or doctor or engineer or any of the hundred
or so high tech professions required to instigate the mutation process.

What concerned him most, however, was getting
caught. It was Shaedstan instinct to stay away from danger, because playing
sickly wasn’t a very good last defense.

If he took the drugs the doctor would know. Or
the scientists. Or someone. And then what would they do to him?

“Come here, Native,” the doctor said.

Delovoa almost jumped out of his skin. He had
been staring at the mutagen storage area, daydreaming.

“Yes, sir,” Delovoa bowed.

He ran over and the doctor peered into his
eyes, nose, mouth, ears, lifted him up, checked his arms, pulled down his
pants, checked his knees, calves, feet, thighs, buttocks.

The doctor let him go and moved on.

Delovoa slowly collected himself and looked up
the hallway. He saw one of his fellow Shaedstan janitors lying on the floor. He
was playing sick. Seeing Delovoa so mistreated had triggered the other
janitor’s defensive instinct.

It was then that Delovoa decided for certain he
did not want to be like this. Even if the mutagens killed him, he would try.

Two nights later he got the opportunity.

He snuck into the storage area and was again
confronted by the library of gene formulas.

Delovoa reached up and grabbed a random sample.
It was in its own sealed, mechanical container. Delovoa had earlier stolen a
syringe that he knew could administer the containers and he put the sample in.

But where to apply it? His arm? His chest? The
doctor might see those.

He felt the top of his hairy head.

His hair! It would cover any injection marks.

Delovoa took a deep breath and injected himself
at the back of his skull.

He woke up on the floor an hour later, his head
throbbing, his vision blurred. He quickly replaced the sample and hurried out
of the mutagen center, running into walls and doorways along the way.

After three months, Delovoa had injected
himself eight different times with eight different samples. He was getting
better at the procedure.

Of course, the “procedure” was completely
incorrect. The mutagens were never meant to be injected directly into a
subject. The mutagens also shouldn’t be randomly chosen. And only one was
supposed to ever be used per patient.

Delovoa’s DNA was busy sliding around and
fighting with itself when he bumped into the doctor.

“Native. What’s wrong with your head?” he
asked.

Delovoa felt his skull, which was tender and
bruised. He didn’t know it, because mirrors were not tools regularly used by
Shaedstans, but his eyes were starting to become misaligned on his face, the
shape of his cranium was changing, and his hair was falling out in patches.

“I hit it on the doorway,” Delovoa answered.

The doctor looked at him hard.

“I hit it like ten times,” Delovoa clarified.

Some of the Shaedsta-2ians laughed at this.

“Go on,” the doctor motioned.

Delovoa continued to inject himself every
chance he could. He definitely felt himself changing.

When his mop started talking to him was when he
really got concerned.

“Whatcha’ doing?” the mop asked one night.

“Mopping,” Delovoa answered.

“Oh. Would you say I’m doing more work or you
are?”

“I’d guess about equal. I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you get more drugs?”

“That room frightens me.”

“Who are you talking to?”

A Shaedsta-2ian stood in front of Delovoa,
scowling at the smaller man.

“Shh,” Delovoa said, putting his finger to his
lips. Then he went back to mopping.

The reaction was so uncharacteristic of the
lesser species that the Shaedsta-2ian assumed there was some logic behind it
and he indeed quietly moved along.

Delovoa would have been found out if the
Shaedsta-2ian staff wasn’t regularly changed. Because of the weakened gravity
on the planet, the non-Native population had to return to their home planet
after six months or suffer long-term health consequences.

After three years, Delovoa had taken about a
thousand times the mutagen dosage that was normally administered. He had a
bald, misshapen head, he was a foot taller than his Shaedstan brothers, and he
had three unaligned eyes on his face that blinked and stared independently.

He was also almost completely insane from
having a body composed of a DNA cocktail of nearly every species in the galaxy.

There had been maybe a billion-to-one chance he
could have survived the ordeal, but whatever order he had arbitrarily chosen
the mutagens had protected him instead of just turning his body into a big pool
of gibbering protoplasm like it should have.

He did end up getting a real life Colmarian
Confederation mutation. He could generate a concentrated biological heat from
any point on his body to a target a few centimeters in diameter. So he could
set paper on fire or melt lead. It was a relatively useless mutation.

But the real changes were what happened to his
brain. Or brains. Because he now had three.

Two small brains had formed in his chest
cavity. One under his right lung and one above his liver. They were semi-formed
brains based on the DNA of other species which he had injected, but they were
fully connected to his nervous system.

Along with that, his own brain that resided in
his skull had grown and been remapped to different functions. His higher order
reasoning regions had taken over at the expense of his response inhibition,
muscle and motor control, and emotional awareness.

He became a brilliant, uncoordinated sociopath
with poor judgment.

By the time he could no longer fake being a
janitor because he didn’t care, he looked like a mutant and was rapidly outpacing
the intelligence of everyone at the facility.