James Axler – Shadow World

“If you have a question, I’d be glad”

“My question is, why are you bothering to make up this crap?”

“Ryan, if I may call you that, to convince you of the truth of my words, all I have to do is take you out of this chamber. The proof is there. It is absolute. I just want to prepare you for what you will see. To minimize the shock. Believe me, this is not your Earth.”

“Not Deathlands, but somewhere else?” Huth shook his head. “In this place, the Earth you know is the faintest of faint shadows, only visible under the most intense light imaginable.”

“I want to talk to your baron.”

“Baron?” Huth repeated, momentarily puzzled by the term. Then he smiled. “Oh, I see. After the holocaust your democratic society devolved into feudal associations. I’m sorry, Ryan. We have no such single authority figure here.”

“Assuming for the moment that what you say about this place is true, that it isn’t Earth, what do you want from Deathlands? Why have you sent your people there?”

“We want to help you recover from the disaster.”

Huth told him. “To use our century of progress to bring light back to your Earth.”

Ryan regarded the man skeptically. “All I’ve seen of your progress is some ugly new ways to chill. We don’t need that. We’ve got plenty of ways to die already.”

“What about those ways of dying?” Huth said. “What about disease? We can put an end to that. And radiation sickness? We can decontaminate your environment. Rebuild your cities. Raise your people up from the mud. You have no idea what our science can do.” He looked at Ryan’s face. “That lost eye of yours, for instance.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Surely you would prefer to have stereoscopic vision again. I can make you a replacement eye. The process will take about three hours, and another hour to implant and connect the new organ.”

“Why would you do any of that? What’s in it for you?”

“In a real way, we have a common ancestry and heritage. You are our flesh and blood. Our Lost Tribe. Ryan, think of it like this. If it hadn’t been for the holocaust, you would have a double here on our Earth, an identical twin. We can’t desert you now that we’ve found you. Especially now that we know what desperate straits your world is in. We owe it to you to help, so we can rejoin our futures.”

Ryan considered the man’s offer in light of the fact that the lives of his companions were being held as leverage to force him to cooperate. Coercion and compassion seemed a highly untrustworthy combination, but he really had no choice but to play along. For now.

From the pocket of his lab coat, Huth produced a cutting tool similar to the one Nara had used on him earlier. “Let me take a bit of skin and I can get started on the eye at once.”

“So you can really clone me a new one?” Ryan said as he held out his open palm.

“No, not clone,” Huth said. “That is a very inefficient and outdated technique. I’m going to use the DNA code from your skin sample to modify all the cells in an already existing eye. When the process is complete, it’ll be as much yours as the one you still have.”

“Won’t the eye’s original owner mind my using it?”

“The owner’s dead. Donated his body parts to science.”

The doctor took his sample and placed it in a vial, then he gave Ryan a sterile pad to stanch the flow of blood from the nick. After he placed the tube in his lab coat’s breast pocket, Huth said, “When we leave this chamber, we will move to another facility for a full debriefing and further medical and psychological testing. As I’ve tried to explain, our world is different from yours. Much more prolific. Perhaps alarmingly so. If it makes you feel uneasy, I can provide you with a drug to make you more comfortable.”

“I’m fine,” Ryan said.

Huth signaled and the bulkhead door opened. “Follow me, please,” he said, then started back across the catwalk.