The Girl Who Chases the Wind

Chapter 1: The Reporter

I received an article offer from one of my regular patrons between tea and staring at an old-timey, blinking cursor on a screen.

The offer came attached with a brief message detailing the potential for compensation and what would be expected of me. If it was a generation ago, I’d imagine a big, fluorescent-toned office with thin walls and glass rooms. A bearded editor strides in and pitches me the story he wants me to write for the newspaper.

Of course, even then, such situations never happened except in movies rooted a further generation in the past. This editor, who I could only imagine as some baby-face ten years my junior who could multitask data at a level I couldn’t even manage on the king of all caffeine rushes, spewed out words like a live dump from his active memory.

“...2K w least. Mantlemay Project invest into Qs of brains/humanity/corruption. Current rumor Dr A. Feldon pet project is fetish feed. Old men to hot girls. Background, Q all you can, media limit six. Get dirt.”

Two thousand words was a premiere piece, especially with a limit of six videos or photos. I’d heard of the Mantlemay Project. I went to my research shelf and pulled a few books off before I found what I needed.

The Mantlemay Project had its roots in a pair of DARPA initiatives. The first endeavored to instantly repair any wound without needing to transport a soldier from the theater of conflict. Replacements for complex body parts from harvested adult stem cells. The second involved special nanoparticles in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries. Due to late-stage funding cuts, the two projects had to be consolidated. Researchers forced to commute together between Irvine and San Diego had plenty of time to chat.

I paused my reading there and decided to take the job with a hand motion at my screen. I received travel directions along with some spending money to my account.

After packing a bag for several days along with all my equipment, I piled a few relevant texts into the car and let auto-drive lead the way.

I learned through my reading that Arnold Feldon was the patent holder on many of the Mantlemay Project technologies, but he released them all to the public, like some contemporary Jonas Salk. Because of that, just about every clinic offered some form of Mantlemay-inspired treatment for physical or neurological injuries. It didn’t do miracles. Miracles were for the Feldon Ranch, my destination.

I phoned ahead. Not a busy day for them. The receptionist listened to my story and passed me to the man himself.

“I hear you’re a reporter?”

Feldon’s voice carried through my car speakers like ice grinding against ice. An older voice but one with plenty of energy. He also had an accent which sounded European but from nowhere specific.

I captured the audio for notes. I told him who I was with and offered, “I’ve done some reading, but I honestly have no idea what you guys do. A lot of people don’t. They imagine science run amuck. Let me show them and demystify it.”

He was hesitant, citing, “I’ve not had good history with reporters. They like rumors.”

“I bet they just rush in, get the quick version and get out of there as quickly as possible.”

He didn’t dispute this assessment. I assured him, “I want the full tour. I want to understand, so I can pass along everything to my readers. You’re a humanitarian, a hero. You’ve saved so many lives. People need to remember that.”

Feldon didn’t require much cajoling before I had a room to stay and welcome access to the ranch. I could’ve returned to the books at this point, but I’d had my teaser.

If I had too much then it would prime me for what to expect. I wanted to be surprised in all the good ways. I hadn’t had a story like that in a while.

I napped till the road turned rough. I was way the heck out there, past the last embers of even spotty 6G reception. The wilds.

The ranch was impressive, with the gloss of bleeding edge photovoltaic materials on everything. Like a work of art dropped in the middle of nowhere. Horse stables, an athletic center, and a clay circular track lay fenced off to the side. I parked a distance out and took only the essentials, my advanced recorders and my ancient notepad.

I ambled towards the track. Fresh and well-maintained with some interior cement courts. A large pool glimmered in the distance. To my right, through the links of the fence, I noticed a twisting and twinkling swarm of green. Leaning, I could see a teenage girl in a pale tracksuit. Green hair flowed down behind her back. She was running.

She moved fast, faster than anyone I’d seen in person, and I started out covering track and field for my high school news blog. She pumped her arms and slammed her legs like pistons on a classic engine. It struck me that she wasn’t panting. She barely even seemed to be breathing. And there was just a single droplet of sweat by the side of her cheek. Or was that a tear? She was moving too quickly to tell.

Then, she noticed me. Her stiff, plain expression tightened into a scowl as she pulled up and stopped by the fence. I bowed my head politely and offered a quick, “Hello…”

She wasn’t much taller than one and a half meters. Considering her shape, she had to be in her teens, maybe not even in high school yet. She brushed her mint-toned hair from her eyes. She was breathing slowly as she approached the fence. And there was no sweat on her body, at all.

Her eyes, somewhere between the flat tones of a simple gray and the stark, bitter brilliance of blue, narrowed as she reached a small hand out to grip through the holes in the fence. I took a quick step back, partly out of politeness but mostly out of a sudden rush of fear.

She looked me up and down, gave a quick snort, and released the fence with a rattle. An instant later, she was off like a leaf caught in a sudden gale, only she was the wind.

I could merely gawk as she dwindled to a green smear around the loop of the track, legs still propelling her with unnatural force. I took note of a few other small buildings near the sports area before entering the main building.

While the exterior of the ranch appeared more contemporary, I could smell the fresh wood inside and see broad, unfinished timber spread across the ceiling. I gave a name to the receptionist and she guided me to an area which felt more like a clinic. Dr. Feldon rose from a plush, sprawling couch to shake my hand.

He clenched my hand with more strength than I was expecting. The back of his hand was taut with bands of leathery flesh in a subdued hue with the muddled masses of what used to be freckles. His face showed the same stretching, like a human suit not quite smoothed out. These lines felt odd not only because of the strength of his grip or the way he vaulted himself from the depths of his couch, but also from the refreshing energy with which he addressed me.

Small talk about the drive came first. I was offered something to drink, which I accepted but saved for later. After setting up my equipment, I took a few quick shots of the area for a media clip B-roll. For the interview, I started with my paper pad, which Dr. Feldon complimented me on and offered, “All my old notes came from paper. So easy when your battery is out or you can’t get to a keyboard to save an idea.”

I began with some general details about his life. I finally nailed down which part of Europe he was from. I traced his early days at UC Irvine. I brought the both of us closer to the present and even got a partial answer on why he gave up his patents.

“I pledged never to do it for the money. I could’ve made so much from the patents. Billions. But who would I be taking it from? That’s what I asked myself. And yet I still made enough for me and my foundation.”

I made some quick notes and points for later questions. Details on his current primary sources of funds. Stuff on the foundation and those who ran it aside from him. For the moment, I needed the overview.

“Let’s start off…assume I don’t know anything about what Mantlemay is…I just get treatments at a doctor’s office and I know it’s somehow involved. So…what is Mantlemay and what’s the big deal?”

Feldon stroked the dusty-snow beard perched on the fringes of his chin and bowed his head. “I actually have a room we can visit.”

I dragged along one of the better recording cameras. The room was covered in medical equipment. Some of it looked state-of-the-art, other things seemed painfully-dated, and a few things resembled castoffs from a medieval torture chamber.

He started by tapping a small contraption which resembled an unfurled armadillo with plates of its armor bunching up against one another.

“This was once a device of science fiction. It enables the mass production of lines of adult stem cells. So much begins right here. We had…a lot of trouble getting complex structures together. Bone cells, fine. Muscle cells, okay. But you want to make a leg for someone, there is so much else to the recipe. All the little things, so you have a functioning leg.”

I was grateful he didn’t dwell too much on the technical side. I had enough in my books to fill that out.

I pointed out, “But Mantlemay didn’t stop at new legs or new nerves.”

He gave a faint nod as he left some of the older contraptions for the newer ones. “That it did. Little thing too…the name. Most think it’s something to do with the Earth’s mantle…some fancy allegory of primal material. But my….dear departed wife was named May and her mother’s maiden name was Mantle. That’s all.”

Shame it wasn’t an allegory. I could’ve used that. Still, I made a note.

Letting off a quick sigh, Feldon caressed a device which looked like an upturned chalice without all the ornamentation. He explained, “Nanotech and stem cells. No reason they would go together. But a happy accident which resulted in Memetic Crystalline.”

Lifting the chalice, he revealed a lump of gray, shimmering material. I stepped back as though he’d just unveiled hot plutonium. I tried to be objective. It reminded me of ice cream which had melted into a gray mass and then refrozen with a shell of ice tracing the surface.

He waved me closer, explaining, “You’re fine. It won’t bite.” He poked it with a finger, which only made me wince. “This is not fully-formed Memetic Crystalline. It’s inert. And it’s been sitting here for years. Give it a touch.”

My eyes lingered on Feldon’s steady gaze. Nothing appeared insane there. He waved me closer. If I was truly a ‘smart man’ then I would’ve long ago realized freelance journalism is more trouble than it’s worth for words soon forgotten in an accelerating age and pay swiftly eaten away by a single month’s rent. But, being who I am, I poked the damn thing.

I expected fluffiness or maybe the texture of an old but still somehow moist piece of half-chewed gum dropped by a giant. It was as hard as a chunk of stone and as glossy as if it had been freshly washed. At the same time, I had the sensation that the act of poking it was also rousing it, pushing it by an invisible degree into a new shape.

Dr. Feldon’s only question was, “Pretty cool, no?”

I inspected my poking finger for holes before I finally replied, “Something like that…”

Though I knew the basic details, Dr. Feldon energetically told me, “Full Memetic Crystalline both absorbs and remembers. If you were to touch that…poof…it becomes your finger. But you can read every cell, every trace of genetic material, everything. All sealed away. A perfect record. Holograms in crystal. And that’s just the start…”

I took a few more notes as he led me through how records in Memetic could be reshaped and tweaked, a perfect recipe for building better organic parts, and even synthetic ones. I recalled a time when everyone wanted to store permanent records on (relatively) safe Memetic Crystalline. Still, most couldn’t quite get over the all-consuming blob image.

After a few nice close-ups, Dr. Feldon got this look in his eye. It was a little devious-looking but mostly playful. He rubbed his hands together softly and asked me, “Would you like to try some?”