By the late 2200s, humanity had wrestled much meaning from the Alien instruction sets, far beyond simply using them to build the spaceships. Centuries of research had expanded knowledge in huge numbers of fields of science. One field had remained stubbornly resistant - that of WF propulsion. WF Drives and spaceships had been tweaked and improved slightly - range and speed had increased, the cool down periods of the drives had been reduced - but building a brand new WF drive, with all the performance of those that were built from instructions, had remained impossible. Drives were built that could levitate huge masses, drives were built that could accelerate tiny masses to high speeds, drives were built with zero cool down periods - but that had a range measured in metres. It seemed you could have one, possibly two of the outputs you wanted, but not all three.
Langform Industries decided to take a different approach. Making use of the huge advances in neural nets, Langform decided to try and build a WF Drive in to the human-machine interface. In secret (all governments had banned human WF experimentation after the deaths of 6000 people in 2206. during the Pixel Plague), Langform started building human WF prototypes. At first they used volunteers from the prison programme, before moving on to even less ethical means of procurement. For six years, the only results were catastrophic, sudden, and messy deaths. There were signs however that the WF tech was beginning to function as designed.
Eventually, using subject WFX073 (a drunk from Galveston by the name of Eddie Canto), Langform achieved what was once thought of as impossible. Miniature WF elements were surgically implanted in to Eddie’s body, mainly in his skull and throughout his brain. A fin sat atop his cranium, like a cyborg mohican. When the WF tech was switched on(Eddie was tranquillised at this point), the tell tale glow of a WF drive surrounded his body. The body was piloted remotely, and its functions mapped. Eddie (still unaware) achieved a speed of 60,000kmh with the Weird Field protecting his body perfectly.
The experiment couldn’t be replicated. Eddie was little more than a forgotten test-bed for crazy WF theories for the next four years, until - through mismanagement due to lack of resources - he was allowed to wake up. Disorientated but, through his Neural connections to the tech, having a intuitive understanding of his capabilities - Eddie took flight. He left the Langform Institute on Luna, leaving a rapidly depressurising facility in his wake, and headed for Earth. He sought out the the safety of the UN WF Organisation and the Human/WF Directives, and was treated as a victim of a crime against humanity.
The WF tech couldn’t be safely removed, and Eddie remained the only Human/WF entity known in the Solar System.
James Cooper
2021-02-15 10:54:53 +0000 UTC