A gift from the past ...

Harriet moved her hand along the upper abdomen, palpating gently. The little carapace kid squirmed under her touch, as the edge of the proto-chitin layer which was forming between fascia and dermis rolled beneath her fingers. 

‘Does that hurt?’ 

‘No,’ said Sol bravely. ‘Just tickles a bit.’ His eyes betrayed some of the fear he must have been feeling.

Harriet continued, silently defining with her fingers the shape that was to develop. Like a gladiator's breastplate, ready to resist the radiation of space, it would sit below the surface of the skin. Or at least that was the intention of the genetic engineers who had been working on it ever since the failed Mars mission of 2032. The astronauts had died before they got to their destination, victims of misadventure on a project that was way too early, its planners underestimating the deadly effects of solar radiation on their fragile human bodies when journeying beyond the protection of mother earth’s magnetosphere. Edgar Tusker was at the forefront of those vying to find the solution. Wrapping the living quarters in a cocoon of recycled water, distilled from the astronauts’ own urine, had failed. The rigidity of a suit worn continuously was too cumbersome. Tusker could see the only way was to incorporate the protection into the body itself. Through his company genie-feenie, he had inserted the carapace forming genes that encoded for chitin, the polymer that forms an arthropod’s exoskeleton, first into mice, then into human embryos. The first generation of his enhanced superbabies were just about ready. 

Sol was the third of the kids that Harriet had examined that morning. Selina had been the first to arrive, her parents nervously pushing her forward as Harriet crouched down to greet her.

‘Lovely to see you again Selina. This is going to be a special day.’ Harriet poked a furry head out of a bag she held in front of her. Selina tried to grab it. ’Not so fast Selina,’ Harriet frowned as she withdrew the toy out of reach. ‘He’s not ready to come out yet. He’s a bit scared you see. Do you know how to make him relax?’

‘Give him a tickle?’ Selina ventured. 

‘We could try,’ said Harriet. ‘Put your hand in and give him a tickle.’

The toy shuddered slightly at Selina’s touch, then yawned with accompanying lip smacking noises. Selina lifted him out of the bag and cuddled him. He had a twitching soft nose and an outer coat like an inverted hair brush.

‘What are you going to call your new hedgehog friend?’

‘How about …’ Selina looked blank for a second. ‘How about … Harry!’

‘That’s a great name. Harry the hedgehog. Look, he's got protection on his back.  How’s yours coming on?’

Selina’s mother explained the itching and slight cough. Only to be expected, reassured Harriet, some sort of immune response to chitin would be typical. 

‘Hop up on the couch there and let’s take a look.’

The package had been delivered by one of Big Alex’s sons. It was waiting in reception when Harriet had finished her surgery, with a paper label the mis-spelled words scrawled in shaky capitals :CONFIDENSHAL AND PRIVATE. TO BE OPEND BY DR SPARKES ONLY. “Only” was double underlined. The receptionist barely looked up when Harriet picked it up off the desk and retreated with it to the privacy of her consulting room. It sat there in front of her, radiating some kind of ominous portent. She tore through the grey plastic wrapper, and a note popped out. It was from Big Alex. 

WEVE HEARD YOUR GOING INTO SPACE. SOMEONE THINKS YOULL NEED THESE.

The contents were wrapped in another layer of film, but she could feel the soft resistance of two bodies crushed together, bound by bands of tape. It took some unpicking, but before long she had released them. Tears started to well up in her eyes. This was a message from the past. 

Chimp, a knitted soft toy, sat with a minimum of support on his rather ample posterior. His toothless mouth gaped open, two button eyes (of different sizes) looked upwards. He bore a worn label, in a place he would have considered undignified if it were ever examined, that said “hand crafted”. His companion, Monkey, didn’t have the benefit of a stable base. His long limbs of black furry fabric had no stuffing to speak of, so he lay collapsed, benignly smiling at the ceiling. A sob emerged from Harriet. She shook the wrapping then pulled it apart, but there was no concealed note. She had not heard anything from her mother for many years now.

Her mother Eileen’s face just wouldn’t materialise for her. She tried to see her before biomechanics had replaced much of the right orbit and maxilla, a bright ambitious research scientist on the cusp of greatness as gene technology was transforming the medical field. It seemed only sensible to go for broke with her own personal enhancement. Everyone was doing it, including her collaborator Edgar Tusker. It gave advantages they couldn’t have dreamed of a decade before, the hardware to ride a wave of AI advancements with a direct neural interface. But then everything turned sour. Tusker took his abilities and inherited wealth away leaving Eileen high and dry. And then the weeping started. Serous fluid drained from the edges of her implant, from orbit, temple and cheek, guttering down towards her chin as she tried to mop the drips. Anxiety and discomfort furrowed her forehead, and her tongue lashed out at the young Harriet. 

Harriet took the battering and withdrew into her shell. A teenager’s minor transgressions were piled into a heap of shit by her mother’s bad temper.  Eileen’s infected implant dominated the domestic scene, and Harriet, and her father, felt powerless to ameliorate the horror of the advancing ruination of her face. When things couldn’t get any worse, then came the fleas.

‘I knew that the bastard was working on autonomous gene injection,’ Eileen said, after her husband had succumbed in the first wave of the nanobot attack.  ‘That fucking cunt Tusker!’ she screamed as she collapsed, overwhelmed by grief. Harriet could hear the words now. Breaking through, an echo from the past, piercing the fog of clouded consciousness, obscured by denial and also a heavy dose of biome manipulation. 

Harriet gathered up her childhood toys and clutched them into her chest. Her mother must have got word that she was embarking on a project with Tusker, just as she herself had done so many years ago. A deal with the devil? Eileen is reaching out, but to what end?