Read Online Ability (Omnibus) by Travis Hill - Free Book Online Page A

Lyborsol, but the induction doesn’t stick, and the trip itself is very, very unpleasant. If I had a pro lab and some assistants, I could probably synthesize it. I’m too far into the revisions of the drug to back all the way out and try to get this one specific effect from some other compound. Again…a lab and assistants, and this wouldn’t be a problem.” Brian looked down at his feet.
    “Okay. We’ll figure something out, I’m sure.” She put down the tablet that she’d been typing notes into.
    “That’s it? Just ‘okay?’”
    “What else can I do, Brian? You’re the chemist. The ‘cooker.’ I’m a stupid Lit major that always gets ranked out when I try to talk about science with you or Garret.”
    “You aren’t stupid, Derry,” he said. He moved out of his computer chair and into the beanbag chair with her. “You were the one who got us to stop being stupid. You were… are the voice of reason. What we are going to do is probably destructive. Is it a good idea to maybe give humanity a big evolutionary push without any of the small, sometimes tedious steps between major jumps in technology or biology?”
    “You know how I feel about that,” she said. “But it’s going to happen one way or another. I’m just in it to make sure we try and do it with the least amount of heartache.”
    “What if you can’t?” he asked, wrapping an arm around her.
    “I can at least say I tried.”
     
    *****
     
    February, 2044
     
    “Check this out,” Garret said the instant Brian walked in the door.
    “Let me get my ass in the door, man.” Brian laughed. “I need a beer. And a bowl.”
    “Fuck that, man. Sit your ass down and check this out,” Garret demanded, handing Brian the pipe when he sat down in the computer chair.
    “What am I supposed to be checking out?” Brian asked through a cloud of smoke.
    “Just check this out. What language do you want to learn the most?”
    “Klingon?” Brian joked. Garret didn’t crack a smile. “Okay. Uh…how about Blackfoot or Cherokee, Native American?”
    “Har har,” Garret said. “Be serious, dammit. This is going to blow your jock off.”
    “All right. How about Japanese?”
    “What’s with you and Japanese?” Garret asked with a frown. He’d been hoping Brian would say Russian or Sanskrit. Something exotic. Half the world spoke Japanese these days.
    “Fine. What should I learn to speak? Just pick something. You’re harshing my buzz.”
    Garret loaded up the Japanese Language H-Vis module, set it to sync with Brian’s H-Vis contacts, gave Brian a smile, and hit Play. Brian’s body tensed, jerked in his seat for three seconds, then relaxed. After thirty seconds, he looked up at Garret, wondering if the module had crashed before finishing. Garret gave him a toothy grin and motioned the command for the video on the left monitor to play. He patted Brian on the head, then walked into the kitchen to make a sandwich.
    Garret was leaning against the counter in the tiny kitchen, eating his peanut butter and banana sandwich, a favorite from the beginning of his venture into solid foods at age two, when Brian rounded the half-wall divider of the living room.
    “Holy shit!” Brian said. “I just watched a half hour of Tokyo-2 News and understood everything. Even context. I could even read the text! I can still read the text!”
    “I know,” Garret said, chewing on a mouthful of sandwich.
    “Tell me what you did. How long does it last without the Receiver? Have you tried it with Receiver?”
    Brian fired off the questions to him with growing excitement. In all of their previous experiments, retaining an induction without the drug had been a struggle at best. Garret had extended the retention period up to seven minutes without the chemical enhancement, but that had required looping the module for at least thirty minutes.
    “Calm down, old man,” Garret said, chewing slowly on purpose. He was back to torturing Brian in ways that only good friends