Nerve: A Short Story Read online

Nerve: A Short Story

  By Kevin T. Goddard

  Copyright 2011 Kevin T. Goddard

  Nerve

  The bomb had blasted a hole in the side of the building the soldiers were sweeping. It might have been planted. Maybe a suicide bomber avoided the street team. Whatever had happened, the bomb ripped brick and mortar, blood and bone into shards and shrapnel.

  Rock lifted himself off of the ground with his one good arm. The other arm dangled almost uselessly at his side. As he labored through the building, Rock tried to ignore the pain his nerves were firing through his body. He knew something really bad was wrong with his arm since he could barely lift it and there was very little feeling coming from it. A tingly, gone-to-sleep sort of feeling. Pain would be better than that.

  A groan brought his mind back to the present. Rock used his one good arm to pull a wall up far enough to see another soldier trapped underneath. The soldiers arm was gone. Rock knew the soldier would die without immediate treatment. Kneeling while jerking the wall into the air with all his might, Rock wedged his shoulder under the edge and lifted it vertical using his legs. He gave a mighty shove and the piece of wall toppled out of the way.

  He knelt and slid his good, right arm under the soldier's legs. Rock willed his bad arm to move. As he bent it at the elbow, Rock finally looked down at the damage. A chunk near the wrist was missing and flesh and bone were exposed. A weird detachment kept Rock from passing out. He wasn't sure it was really his arm. He slid it under the soldier's head and lifted the man into a cradle hold as if he were a giant baby.

  Rock had earned his nickname. He was a solid mass of muscle and he dove into dangerous situations with nerves of steel. Fellow soldiers admired his strength and resolve even though they knew he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Rock had no illusions as to his mental capacity. School had never been his strong suit and getting knocked around by his old man at home hadn't helped his brain function any.

  The military had been a quick way out of several bad situations including his abusive dad, a psychotically obsessive girlfriend, and a dead-end-jobless future. He gave his heart and soul to the military in exchange for three squares a day, a place to lay his head at night, and someone to tell him when to do each of those things along with all the excitement he could handle.

  As Rock straightened his back under the weight of the nearly dead soldier, the wound in his wrist came in contact with the stump of the grunt's arm. An astronomical fluke brushed an exposed nerve in Rock's arm against a nerve ending dangling from the other guy's mangled bicep. The flood of data transmitted across the space between the nerves overwhelmed Rock's nervous system and brought him to his knees.

  The other soldier's mind was trying to find an escape hatch from his dying body. The contact opened up a conduit for the full power of his consciousness to blast from the high pressure system in his frantic and fading body to the lower pressure system of Rock's biological vessel. Briefly, Rock got a flicker of the dying soldier's name--"Bronson"--then it was gone as the thoughts and memories transmitted into Rock's subconscious became one with his own physiology. Millions of electrical impulses hummed the infinitesimal span between their electrical grids.

  All of a sudden, Rock dropped the lifeless body of the soldier. He didn't even notice Bronson's blank eyes as he stepped over him and into the sunlight. His new consciousness included two life spans that became integrated together. His subconscious mind worked at fractional speeds to repair gaps and incongruities between the two lives lived to give Rock a complete, holistic time span that his conscious mind could believe.

  Rock also inherited the soldier's cognitive ability. Bronson had been really good at mechanical, hands-on things. He was studying to become an engineer for the Army when his life had been cut short. All of a sudden, Rock saw the physics and geometry in the world. This was a perspective he had never considered and didn't even know existed. It affected the way he moved, walked, and planned as he worked his way back to the rally point for his squad.

  He leaned against a Humvee and closed his eyes. Rock's primitive mind immediately recognized the potential for increased survival this assimilation of another's consciousness had provided. His body quickly used the increased IQ to take direct control of his body and began healing his injury on his wrist. It left an exposed nerve ending right at the surface for later.

  Rock's eyes snapped open. He moved over to one of the wounded being dragged in. The poor soul was on the cusp of death. Rock's mind put the pieces together. Quickly, Rock stooped and found the man's wound. A gaping hole in his chest had been hidden by a flap of clothing.

  Rock looked around quickly and saw that no one was watching. He took his left arm, made a fist, and plunged it into the wound. The man gasped.

  Twisting his arm around, Rock was looking for a quick connection to the nerve on his wrist. With the raw nerves exposed from the piece of shrapnel ripping its way through flesh, Rock's conduit touched an opening and the near-dead soldier's mind escaped into the shelter of Rock's being. This soldier was a medical assistant and all of his medical knowledge melded into Rock's mental toolbox.

  Rock pulled his fist from the soldier's dead body with a sucking sound as it released from the lungs. Rock stood and began assessing the situation. With his medical knowledge and engineering know-how combined, Rock began to quickly triage the remaining soldiers. For each soldier that had a chance to live, Rock forwarded them on to a staging area away from where the blast had occurred to meet the arriving medical units. For each soldier that wasn't going to make it, Rock found a way to quietly get his wrist near exposed nerve endings.

  By the end of the day, Rock was exhausted. Both physically and mentally tired, he had managed to also absorb the psyche of several reserve soldiers who held various occupations back in the states. Rock now knew how to teach high school language arts. He could handle a big rig in about any weather condition. And Rock had almost completed a degree in political science at Purdue.

  While he hadn't doubled his IQ with each assimilation, Rock had increased it significantly each time. He had improved from a low average IQ to somewhere near 200. But he wasn't done yet.

  As soon as Rock was back to base camp, his commander ran him through the usual protocol. The Army psychologist cleared Rock in record time. Rock had a new level of sophistication that each occupation had given him. He had very eloquently explained his fear, horror, and gratefulness at living through the day's events.

  Rock volunteered for the next mission in the hot zone. Moving through an area thick with insurgents, he used his medical knowledge to shoot hostiles with fatal, but slow to die shots. Moving the writhing victims, he became more and more adept at getting the conduit into position. Each soul quickly joined his growing arsenal.

  This time, Rock added a young terrorist's mind to his own. This teenager had a skill at hacking into secure computer and files. He ran a small cell's cyber-terror network. Rock now knew several computer languages as well as a couple of Middle East dialects. Next, he killed a bomb-maker and Rock had at his fingertips the knowledge of how these terrorists thought when they placed ambushes. He could quickly disarm explosives as the squad came across them.

  Rock quickly became the go-to-guy in about any situation. He was promoted, then promoted again. Rock flew through correspondence courses offered by the military adding some legitimate degrees and credentials to his file.

  With increased brain power, Rock's thinking became increasing complex. His thinking matured to the point that all of the secrets his subconscious had been keeping from him began to be released. Soon, Rock knew what had happened and what he had been doing. Instead of remorse, Rock felt as if he had saved something of these men when they had died.

  He realiz
ed he was bringing undue attention to himself. The heroics, the increased ability all caused the military to scrutinize his actions. Rock slowed down and dropped back into the background. He couldn't completely fade back into obscurity, so Rock used his new abilities to grow friendships and connections with other exceptional soldiers. With increasing clarity of purpose, Rock gained the confidence of several higher-ups stationed in the area.

  When his tour ended, Rock surprised everyone by not re-enlisting. He returned to the states a war-hero having saved several soldiers' lives during dangerous missions. Soon, Rock was running for office as a Senator in his home state of New Mexico. He wouldn't be the first Hispanic Senator from that state, but his goals were much more ambitious.

  As a Senator, Rock Espanoza spent