The Dead Man of Space - Chapter One

The Dead Man of Space

Chapter One
By David Pidgeon

Corman Antrus awoke on a metal slab in a sterile room. The room was white in colour but glowing with a faint blue luminescence from a source he couldn't identify. He couldn't remember how he got there, what had happened before. He barely remembered that his name was Corman Antrus. He tried to lift his right arm, but couldn't. He couldn't move at all. This instilled a faint quiver of panic in him which then caused him to notice something else. Normally when panicked, despite his hardy mental makeup, his pulse rose and his respiration sped up. But there was nothing. He was not breathing, his heart was not beating, there was no blood pumping through his veins.
"I'm dead!" he thought, struggling to beat down the wave of existential terror that came with such a thought.
Desperately, he threw every effort he had into moving the fingers on his right hand.
Nothing.
It remained still, there wasn't even any perception of effort. He tried again, aiming to do nothing more than wiggle the furthest extremity of the little finger of that hand.
Still nothing.
He heard a sound, all of a sudden, the whoosh of an automatic door opening and footsteps entering the room. He sensed more than saw movement above his head and then a figure walked into view.
Gaunt, skeletal and pale was the man. He was dressed in white laboratory clothing with a lab coat to complete the image. His eyes were sunken and hollow, more like black recesses in his skull than a human eye. His lips were thin and cold and blue, curved up into what Corman would later discover to be a permanent sneer.

"Hello, Mr Antrus" he said. His voice carried the effect of the sneer, it was high and reedy and sounded excruciatingly arrogant and pompous.
"No, no, don't get up" he added and snickered to himself, all the while staring down at the man on the table.
He pulled a small remote out of his pocket and said "this should make the conversation more interesting" as he pushed a button.
Sensation, or at least a faint whisper of sensation, flooded back into Corman's body. Instantly, responding as he had been preparing himself to do, he launched up off the table and threw himself at the interloper, intending on tackling him and getting a few answers out of him.

Before he laid a single hand on the man, there was a tremendous flash of light and a distant sensation of pain. He felt himself smash back against the metal slab on which he had been lying, before tumbling to the floor.
"I expected as much Mr Antrus. After all, you are a 'man of action' as it were. However my personal shield is more than adequate to keep me from harm, particularly at the brutish hands of one such as yourself.
Regaining his composure, Corman finally asked the man "what am I doing here?".
"Well Mr Antrus, there's quite an interesting answer to your rather simple question. To put it quite simply, I have returned you to life and imbued with you with increased and enhanced capabilities, for the purposes of you working for me."
"You? I don't even know who you are, how do you know I will work for you?" returned Corman, beginning to find himself angry.
"Oh you will, believe me. You'll quite simply have no choice in the matter. My name is Gardos, Mr Antrus. I am the creator and owner of the Gardos Agency which is, to put it bluntly, the last group keeping order in the universe".


Several minutes later Corman was dressed, having been directed to an appropriate suit of clothes by Gardos. They were seated in Gardos' office, facing one another across the desk which was a massive dense slab of some marvellously black and polished substance.
"We found your escape capsule, Mr Antrus, drifting through space some three centuries after you had launched from the doomed spaceship Achilles. You yourself were dead, having succumbed to the radiation of deep space after the capsule drifted through a particularly energetic cloud of particles. Due to conditions in the capsule, which we honestly know little about, your body was preserved perfectly. It was entirely intact. In the time since your death, there has been quite some research and development going on in the field of psychic energies, to the point where many of our citizens are possessed of psychic abilities far beyond those even thought possible in your time."
Corman slumped into his chair as Gardos continued talking. Three centuries, it was too long a time to fathom. And the fact that he had been dead. Sure, Corman has come close to death on more than one occasion, but to consider the fact that he had finally succumb was almost too much for him to grasp. Almost. But there was no choice other than to accept it and confront it.
"How is then, Mr Gardos, that I have come to be sitting here? And am I truly alive? My heart does not beat, my lungs do not breathe."
"It was an amazing process Mr Antrus, the first of its kind. First of all, we had to capture and restore your 'psychic imprint' as we call it, the thing that makes you unique. What used to be thought of as a soul. Once we had done that, we were able to transform your body into a vessel for said imprint. As you were dead, you no longer had any need for your internal organs. We removed them-"
"You removed my organs?!" shouted the dead man, leaping to his feet.
Gardos calmly regarded him, not reacting. "Of course we did, there was no need to keep them, you didn't need them and wouldn't be relying on them for function. It was quite simply necessary. Now, sit down and let me continue"
Corman sat, still glaring angrily.
"We removed your internal organs and replaced them with a variety of devices. In your cranial cavity, where your brain was, we placed a Psychic Field Generator. This device had several purposes. It would contain your psychic imprint and it would give that imprint control over your body. It would also give your formidable pyschic abilities. But, more importantly than that, it can generate a null-field. Within a null-field, no psychic abilities can take place.
You see, there are people who naturally generate a null-field, but they have no control over it and can never acquire psychic abilities. You on the other hand, can turn the null-field on and off and are already able to perform many psychic feats."
Corman's look had softened into one of astonishment.
"I'm psychic now?" he asked.
"Did I not just finish explaining that Mr Antrus? We have several capable trainers and psycho-scientists here who will be able to help you understand and make use of your newfound abilities. But that will come later.
Now, the next thing we did was install a small radio-nucleic generator into your chest, which powers all of your other abilities. This generator has enough power to run a spaceship and will last you for many years. It is as compact, powerful and rugged as we could possibly make it and given the scientific abilities of me and my organisation, that's saying quite a bit.
We also installed various weapons and sensory systems into your body. You can now emit offensive beams from your hands, you can hear and see with the greatest sensitivity, you can hear radio and see magnetic fields. You have a projectile weapon in your mouth. You are quite thoroughly armoured and armed, Mr Antrus. None of this has been activated yet, for your own safety and my own."
"I'm a walking weapon" said Corman, looking down at his own hands as if they weren't his own."
"There's one more thing" added Gardos. "You aren't just a walking weapon. The radio-nucleic generator in your chest has certain safety features that can, in extreme circumstances, be overidden manually. You are more than a walking weapon Mr Antrus.
You are a walking bomb, the destructive power of which has rarely been seen".