The blind date with his sister-in-law’s girlfriend had actually gone well until things became hot and heavy in the bedroom. When the woman asked him to remove the prosthetic because its sharp edges were scratching her Adam obliged, only the site of his mangled stump made her so squeamish that she quickly excused herself to use the bathroom.
She then claimed to have a hangover and left, never to be heard from again.
Embarrassment being the mother of invention, Adam set out to design a prosthetic limb that not only functioned well but was covered in an artificial flesh that looked and felt real to the touch. The new leg was coated in a soft and porous heat-conducive foam embedded with wires. An electrical charge warmed the leg; a small dial controlled the temperature.
He finished the prototype just in time to wear it on his dinner date with Jessica Marulli.
Adam showed up at her townhome dressed in a sports jacket, tee-shirt, and jeans, carrying a dozen red roses and a stuffed animal. He rang the doorbell, his heart fluttering like a virgin on prom night, his artificial leg pumping out heat.
Jessica answered the door, wearing only a gray tee-shirt which barely covered her groin. “You bought me a Koala bear… how sweet.”
The sight of the scantily-clad blonde caused Adam to break out in sweat. “Am I early? I mean… you’re not dressed.”
“No… I thought we’d have sex before we went out to eat. That okay with you?”
He barely managed to nod when he was suddenly overcome by the stench of burning plastic.
“Adam, are you just happy to see me or are your pants on fire?”
They would laugh about it later — Adam rolling on the front lawn, Jessica drenching him with the garden hose. Yes, she had known he was an amputee and as she quickly demonstrated she had no problem dealing with his stump. What endeared him to her was the lengths Adam had gone to please her, and she promised to help him work out the technical challenges of the prosthetic flesh.
Jessica only had one rule — that they keep their personal life private and out of the workplace because of “security issues.”
Jessica, will you marry me.
Adam inspected the two slips of paper before carefully replacing them for the ones he had removed from the fortune cookies that had come with his lunch. His plan was to swap out the fortune cookies at dinner when the check came. While Jessica was reading his marriage proposal he’d remove the engagement ring from his other pocket and place it on the table in front of her. It wasn’t much — an oval-shaped three-quarter carat diamond set in a twisted gold braid. The jeweler had given him an extensive education on cut, clarity, carats, and color and he had opted for the largest white diamond he could afford.
A petite package of perfection… just like Jess.
He glanced at the desk clock again — his heart skipping a beat as his laptop screensaver obliterated the Kemp Aerospace Industry logo to alert him that he was receiving a call on a secured line.
Adam clicked on the ACCEPT MESSAGE icon and then typed in his password.
A moment later he found himself being stared down by a former three-star general.
Thomas J. Cubit was a military advisor with hundreds of contacts in the Defense Department who now made millions of dollars working in the private sector. A bit of a ball-buster with a wry sense of humor, the fifty-six-year-old Philadelphia native never hesitated to let Adam know that the military industrial complex had eyes everywhere.
“General? I thought our call was scheduled for next Wednesday?”
“This is courtesy call, Captain. Lockheed’s engineers need Dr. Marulli on site in early August.”
Adam split the screen, accessing his monthly planner. “How long will you need her for?”
“At least a month.”
“A month? Sir, Dr. Marulli’s overseeing two of our biggest projects; I can’t spare her for that long. How about Nick Mastramico?”
“Dr. Mastramico doesn’t have the necessary clearances.”
“He has his Q clearance, General. That’s sufficient to program the satellites.”
“Not in a command post. If Strategic Command goes into a full alert, anyone not wearing a Zebra badge or higher will have exactly sixty seconds to vacate the facility before our marines shoot them.”
“What could possibly cause a full alert?”
“I’d tell you, Captain, only you don’t have the clearance to discuss it! Now pay attention: Lockheed will have a private jet waiting for Dr. Marulli at the Martin State Airport in Baltimore on the third of August at thirteen hundred hours; make sure your girlfriend is on it. Or should I say your fiancée.”
Adam felt his face flush.
“Going with a smaller stone. . it’s a good move. At least you’ll know if she really loves you.” The general winked. “We’ll talk more on Wednesday. Cubit out.”
The connection severed, the screensaver returned.
Bastard… probably has my office bugged.
Adam leaned back in his chair and peered through the horizontal slats of the silver Venetian blinds. The window looked down onto an extensive work area that was roughly the size of a high school gym.
The satellite, part of a black ops project code-named Zeus, occupied most of the Plexiglas-enclosed suite of Lab-3. The rectangular-shaped device was twelve feet high and eight feet wide, with a depth just under six feet. It stood upright like an onyx wall, its two solar panels, attached to either side of its frame, folded inward. As large as it was, the object was merely a three-hundred-pound replica used by Kemp’s design team to test the configuration of its internal circuits under space conditions. The actual satellite was a four-ton monstrosity — one of twenty that were housed at an unknown location — most likely a secret military base.
Jessica was not inside the work station, which meant she was probably inside the CHIL.
Adam stood up from behind his desk, pausing to allow the internal pistons of his new prosthetic device to align with the working muscles of his right leg. A remarkable piece of machinery, the artificial limb’s titanium skeleton extended from his stump all the way to its five working toes, all of which were capable of flexion and extension. The weight, length, and musculatures of the limb matched that of his right leg, down to the temperature of the spongy flesh-like skin.
To complete the visual, he had waxed the hair off of his real leg.
Adam had nearly trashed the device on its first day as he struggled to coordinate the complex movements of the fake appendage with his right leg. It had taken him hours just to learn how to sit without falling over sideways, his frustrations quelled only by Jessica’s patience.
“I’m sure this is a lot like flying the Apache, Adam. Your brain is being asked to control two completely different limbs and coordinate these independent movements so that you can walk. The problem is that your right leg’s brain is thirty years ahead of your prosthetic device, which was literally born this morning. As your brain learns to compensate, the smart chips embedded within the joints of your left limb will segregate the successful movements from the failures and over time you’ll learn to walk without consciously thinking about it.”