My Better Life

    This has taken me months. 

Since the first day of summer break.

The plan had been forming since grade nine science.

It all made sense.

I felt like a fool for not thinking of it before.

Slowly over the summer, I gathered part after part.

Circuits.

Transistors.

Wires.

Diodes.

Microcontrollers.

Resistors.

Connectors.

Power sources.

It took the chips from eight smartphones to make the neural network operate properly.

The planning.

The blue prints.

The soldering.

It tried escaped the first time I turned it on, like it already understood what I was planning for it.

The programming involved was beyond even my capacity. In the end I started it on a small learning routine which I allowed to grow on its own as I also added additional code and components to it. The brain learned slowly at first but then exponentially. By week three we were into language arts. Week four moved into social norms. Mathematics. Physics. Chemistry. The Arts. Huey II’s learning was impressive. It peaked much earlier than I expected which allowed me to focus on other areas such as physical activities. Huey II had to be good but not that good. It could get better, develop skills , but at first its skill level must be the equivalent of mine as to not draw suspicion.

Soon Huey II and I were conversing at an equivalent intellect.

“Huey, it’s supper time! Have you been in there all day?” My parents would continue to call out throughout the nine weeks. A ham radio took time to perfect, I told them. Assembling the components. Fine tuning them. Decoding the, at times, archaic manuals.

The one day I walked into my laboratory and there he was, Huey II, working on himself.

“I figured the best and fastest results would come if I worked during your down time.”

“I agree. The time of the new school year draws close. You need to be ready in time for the first day to take my place.”

Grade school was boring. High school was boring. University was boring. There was nothing out there to challenge my supra-intelligent eleven year old brain but myself. In order to do that, though, I required an avatar to take my place day-to-day so that I could work on real challenges and projects.

Huey II would allow me to do this. I had specifically removed the boredom sensor in his matrix so that he would not be tormented as I was by the banality of day-to-day existence.

It was the second week of August. Huey II and I agreed we had reach the inward potential we sought. The problem now became the outer shell. We needed to create a skin-like substance that would be undetectable from the real thing. Plastics were out of the question as Huey II’s skeletal form was already showing. He would he near indestructible but not human. Any type of rubber as well. I had read of a synthetic being developed by a biotech lab for burn victims that was so lifelike, the human flesh itself would incorporate it into the body without rejection. Masterful. Perfect. Now, we just needed it.

Huey II and I agreed an EMP machine implanted in him would be the most effective way to enter the facility. Small enough to localize the effect while powerful enough to knock out a mile radius. We reinforced Huey II against the blast. The EMP took out not only the electronics but the personnel as well. I was nearly knocked out myself but the helmet we designed held at such close range. After that, it was in and out like a duck mating.

Twenty minutest through the facility and we had found out synthetic. It was only a Petri dish of the material but it would be enough for me to grow what we needed. Once I added my special touches, it would be as indestructible as the rest of my creation.

Returning home, our spirits were high. As I began the growth synthetic skin process, I understood what I was and had created. Neo-homo sapien sapien. The next step in humankind. I was God and Huey II was my Adam.

It took valuable weeks to grow the synth over the endoskeleton of his body. As it did, I understood more and more the responsibility I had taken on creating New Man. Huey II understood it as well.  Our final step was to touch our palms together. All of my hopes, dreams, experiences, all of it transferred into the greatest creation by man ever. By anything including God.

I sat back and rested, amazed at my work.

When the first day of school came, the final step was here, sending Huey II out into the world. He was no longer just Huey II but was now Huey Blake. I watched as my mother kissed him on the forehead and he stepped onto the bus. I waved through the small window in my basement laboratory. Huey waved back.

I was free.

Ten years later, I watch Huey Blake from my array of monitors in my lab. Over the years, our secret survived several accidental exposures. My mother and father seeing me in two places at once. A visit to the doctor. But all of it passed the test. Huey grew in as he aged. I had planned on a growth spurt that would make him unto a Greek god. Tall, power build, beautiful features. Charm and confidence. Everything but arrogance. As I work on my experiments, he graduated from MIT by the age of fourteen. By twenty, he had his second PhD and a Nobel prize in Physics. In four years, the company he built was trading for billions on the stock market. 

And all the time I watched. 

The glory. The money. The money. The women. 

Huey Blake was truly Neo-Homo Sapien Sapien. Of all my work since then, he was my greatest creation. Yet I could tell no one. 

And Huey had taken my life. What was I but a shadow living in the dark. 

Huey Blake needed to be stopped. 

He needed to be exposed.

It was up to me, Dr. Hugo Nemesis to do this.

I built him.

I could destroy him.

And I would.