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Page 3.

The dreams inside the new, good copy of Alex were sweet and efficient. The deoxyribonucleic acid polymers had long unraveled according to their programmed instructions. His genome/phenome had sparkled in the tank like an intricate glass spaghetti about six feet long and roughly in the shape of a human being, at least seven or eight months ago. The ancillary cellulation had grown in a steady process, all at once, dermis and epidermis forming at one level, striated muscle tissue under that, spongy bone at the core, and nerve filaments snaking through the entire structure according to some astronomically complex bioelectrical blueprint. His brain unpacked itself rather like a blow-up rescue boat inside his dura mater. Plop, went one cortex, plop went another, until the whole skull cavity was quite packed, while leaving nice room for the sinus cavities that would soon receive their first breath of air.

The Watcher could smell new life forming in the caverns and tunnels. He snuffled about, licking clean weedy water and eating mushrooms that glowed on the walls. He was often scared, and hungry anyway.

Ah, then he rose. He smelled the flower smell, the sweet smell, the mommy smell, the nursing hands and feeding tubes of where it was good to eat. This way! the good smell seemed to say, and the mushrooms glowing on the walls looked like big smiles as he stumbled, faster and faster.

In the ninth month of the new young man’s gestation, specific nanofactors started executing.

Some of it was RNA, working its way along natural zipper strips of genetic polysaccharides. Other bits of it were synthetically engineered machines no larger than molecules, building up protein sequences that would structure his memory for him. Even after such a vast time, a lot of it still worked. It all worked, and it worked at all, because the process had taken on a life of its own. The drive of life, tropism to the light, the push of root through wall, the symbiosis of coral and a thousand darting guest species, had won here too. He dreamed blissfully of Maryan Shurey as the specially programmed protein chains released their artfully packaged data, reel after reel of film, into his memory. Maryan was a slim, athletic blonde with an angel face and blue eyes. A dancer, a skater, casually tanned and even a bit wind-chapped as she whirled around him in tighter and tighter arcs while taking off, one piece at a time, every item of clothing except of course her skates. Her blue eyes and white teeth smiled into his soul. He was about to be born.

The chamber had been almost perfectly still for such a long time that the stalagmites rising drip by sedimentary drip from the gallery floors had time to touch, and in some cases meld with, stalactites hanging drip by longer drip from the gallery ceilings. Now it was the turn of the young man to be a brief drip in the unimaginably ancient life of this semi-darkened place. The water stirred in ripples, distorting his features, as he moved his hands in tiny twitching motions. Was that a faint smile on his perfectly formed lips and face? He had light brown hair, medium coarse, just long enough to fluff lightly at the edges as the water moved around his head. Everything was perfectly formed—the muscles in his shoulders, the biceps on his upper arms, the thick veins in his strong forearms. Now a fleck of blood drifted by his face. And another. The water stirred. His expression changed to one of displeasure, then pain. Thick gouts of blood swirled around him, looking more black than red in this faint greenish light.

The moment of his birth must have been barely hours or minutes away, and it was a good thing, for something unexpected was happening that he could not explain. He was not quite ready to open his eyes, but he knew that he must. His dreams of Maryan Shurey had fled; no bringing them, or her, back. He felt a searing pain, a terrible tearing in his gut, as if pieces of him were being torn out. He was not quite ready to take his first breath, but already he was screaming. Great silver and brass and ruby bubbles erupted as he doubled over, clutching his midsection. As he doubled over, he felt a slippery, slimy strength and realized it was someone-not-he, some other, for he could push against it and he did not feel anything, so it was not part of him. The Other pushed back when he pushed. The Other grew angrier, hungrier, more frantic, he didn’t know what to call it, but the pain doubled.

The Other tore at him, and he could feel parts of him shredding like cloth. He tasted his own blood as he screamed in underwater bubbles. He blared with excruciating, blinding agony as he struggled to hold his insides together. The Other shook him. He was flung up and down as the Other tore at him. He felt his teeth in him. He banged his head on the hard side of the birthing womb. As he rode up and down, his head bobbed into the air several times. Involuntarily, he took his first breath. He was pulled under and nearly drowned. Desperately, he made a fist and beat against his pulpy head, and he backed off for a minute or so, long enough for him to be born.

And so he was born, struggling for his very life before it was properly infused and inspired into him by contact with the air.

Lightning bolts of adrenalin surged through him in those incredible minutes. He could see in the dark; his pupils must have been fully extended. He hung back in horror, with his elbows pulled over the edges of the birthing tank, his body up his lowest ribs above the water.

He saw the thing that was eating him—it was a man not much unlike him, though covered with blood and gore, and staring with white hungry insane eyes. The Other’s teeth were bared, and its angry red hands held up like claws. The Other’s mouth made slobbering, anguished noises. The Other’s long hair was a mass of blood and strands of skin and gore. The Other wore some kind of simple hide cloak that steamed wetly in the poor light.

Terrified, the young man sat up splashing water from the tank. His pale new hands gripped the slippery marble-like stone rim of the tank or tub that surrounded him like a sarcophagus with no lid.

This was the moment of his birth, and he was shot through with a million volts of adrenalin for he was being eaten alive.