Coach ne-Voosen shared an office with another coach in the school of medicine, and she had a young intern, and he was a prototype. His name was Zen. He explained to me how it all worked.
The role of a prototype is to verify the platform. All e3 have a standard set of enhancements, the fundamental systems that all have to work together properly or the subject dies. Already proven in the lab, the core chipset -- the genetic alterations, the array of biological, electronic and neural devices, and the control systems that bind them together -- are installed in volunteer infants and carefully monitored for complications. Scientific rigor is critical to their safety and those who follow, so it's important to minimize variables. On the other hand, there many more extensions of the base platform that also need testing. As result, every e3 prototype gets one specific extension.
Zen has a kit that alters the chemistry of his muscles and tendons. His unique mix of different muscle fibers and the increased strength of his connective tissues make him a natural-born athlete. Well, an athlete anyway, however he was born. When I was doing some of my own training at the school's underground track, I watched him vet applicants for the field program. As they would run as fast as they could, sweating and straining, Zen would run backwards in front of them so he could watch their form. That is, as Zen put it, his parlor trick.
The Alpha session started shortly after that. I knew we had an e3 on the short list, but I had never bothered to look up who it was. I was far too busy with my own preparation. Several grueling days after we arrived the entire team came together for a social event at a makeshift club that someone had whipped up on one side of the oceanographic lab. Whoever it was had cleverly darkened the main part of the bar so that the only lighting came from large windows into a huge tank. The eerie bluish light danced over everyone and made us all look like were we at the bottom of the sea. With the various seashell motifs in the rest of the decoration the result was quite spectacular.
As Umam, who was the only one I really knew at that point, introduced me around to some of her colleagues, I suddenly noticed there was a naked girl in the tank. She seemed to have been there quite a while and didn't act in a hurry to leave. She casually worked her way through bits of underwater equipment, turning off valves and securing them with binding straps. Her blond ponytail streamed out behind her as she moved and flared out into snaking tentacles when she stopped, making her oddly long head look rather like an octopus. She eventually swam for the surface and disappeared, her body arcing in a lazy dolphin kick like a serpent. She had been holding her breath for at least 30 minutes.
I saw her later, somewhat more clothed and talking gaily with a large group of admirers. I went over.
"That was your parlor trick, wasn't it?" I said, a bit more accusingly than I had intended. I hiked my thumb over my shoulder toward the glowing tank windows.
She smiled brightly, white straight teeth gleaming in her clean, 19 year-old face. Her hair was still a little wet, and yet it shone as she nodded. "V-gap hemoglobin." She bowed politely. "I'm Evo."
"I know" I said. I bowed and smiled, and I think my teeth ground a little. If her prototype ears could hear it she kept on smiling.
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