Limelight: Measure of a Man
By Ghost in the Machine

Author's note: All characters appearing in this story belong to Warren Phillips. All rights reserved. Some characters mentioned, but not appearing in this story belong to Christopher Roxby and are mentioned with permission.

Limelight crashed landed on the floor of his Ready Room at the Institute for Basic Research where he worked. If not for the fact that the computer in his power harness kept minimal backups for the programs normally run on the helmet's operating system, he'd never have got that far. The battle, with MATRIX on one side and Quintus, Crowbar Malloy, the fallen hero Paramind and a couple of women that no one got the names of on the other, had started as a hijacking of a shipment of blood diamonds from Africa. It ended with Quintus escaping with maybe a tenth of the illegally mined stones and one of the women, the other three in police custody and Limelight's helmet smashed nearly to pieces by the combined efforts of Crowbar Malloy and Quintus' 'Power' form.

Even before he looked in the mirror, he knew there was no repairing the helmet from this one. Afterwards, he certain of it. No, this time it would have to be a complete replacement. This wasn't a problem as his brother Beej had been running tests on an upgraded helmet, with better recording gear and a stronger 'thought screen', for nearly a week.

But as long as he was replacing that key bit of hardware, perhaps it was time to make a complete upgrade. Design notes for an upgraded suit had been accumulating since before the existing suit was finished. The twenty months he'd spent as Limelight had provided a treasure trove of additional useful data, some from completely unexpected sources. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was time to upgrade. Even before he managed to pry his helmet off, Ceej Parsons decided to step away from MATRIX long enough to insure that when he stepped back, he'd be ready.

"Compile program Parsons-Foxtrot-Bravo-Gen-TwoPointZero and run it," Conrad Parsons told his computer system. An interrogative box popped up for verification. The voice recognition gear sometimes slipped a word here and there which had once resulted in the loss of three days' work. One tap on the touch sensitive screen confirmed that the machine had heard him right and therefore should get busy crunching ones and zeros.

He reached for his cup of coffee and found that it had gotten cold. On the way to the microwave, he passed the mirror his sister Angelica had installed in the lab for her own convenience. By reflex, he looked at himself. As always, he was less than pleased with the results. An inch under six feet. Blue eyes, but not a piercing blue, or a baby blue, just a faded blue verging on gray. Thinning black hair. His brother Bert had already given up and shaved his head to disguise a bald spot. Conrad Parsons realized he would have to decide whether or not to do the same within the next few years. Too thin, although his exercise regimen was devoted to flexibility and endurance, not raw strength. He'd finished the last New York City Marathon in 3:54:22.

2:35:40. That was Walter Corbell's time over the same course and he was just a bicycle messenger in training for a triathlon.

2:11:50. That was what Anderson claimed over a flat road course in Canada. His meta-gene gave him world class abilities without world class effort.

1:57:11. Sunray's time in a simulated marathon with all indications that she could have done it twice more without getting tired. Computer models suggested she could do it in 1:10:19 if she went flat out. Absolutely inhuman. In her 'civilian' form, that of a twelve year old girl, the computer's worst case scenario put her at 3:30:56. Almost a minute a mile faster than his best time.

Conrad James Parsons compulsively measured himself against others. Is it any wonder he tried to find ways to compensate?

343 to 1: Flex's power to mass ratio at his normal height and weight. The larger he got, the lower the ratio got. But even at his maximum mass, it exceeded 35 to 1. Considering he weighed nearly three tons at his max height of 5.77 meters, the total amount of raw strength he represented made the exact ratio relatively unimportant.

127 to 1: Big Tex. There were so many odd things about Big Tex that in his case Limelight merely filed the information and didn't think too much about it.

Rating undetermined: Wild Dragon. During his brief stay with MATRIX, the young martial artist had shown flashes of superhuman strength he attributed to 'chi'. In practice, his strength occasionally reached levels which were clearly superhuman, but never on a consistent basis. In analyses of tape from battles, his strength was best measured as 'whatever it took'. This was very annoying to a scientist of Conrad Parson's caliber.

34.4 to 1: Limelight (in armor). The force beam wave-guides that mimicked human musculature were good, no doubt about it. They multiplied the efforts of their wearer by a factor up to 50. The more force he put in, the more force he could get out. Still, with threat hardware improving almost daily, something would have to be done soon to keep pace.

5.5 to 1. Free Fall. Somehow the extradimensional energy that infused his body nearly tripled his normal strength, which was impressive for normal man in its own right.

4.2 to 1. Tach. Limelight figured Anderson's strength was merely another benefit of his mutant metabolism. He'd admitted that he used a 'strength training trick' on himself and his wife, but had never confided the details to Limelight.

3.2 to 1: Sunray (heroic form). It was Limelight's considered opinion that the true limits of Sunray's abilities might never be known. If she could channel her energy generation abilities into feats of strength, it was possible she'd be among the strongest beings on the planet.

2.6 to 1: Sidearm. She wasn't a meta. She didn't even wear a costume anymore. But something her husband did maintained her strength at a level most athletes could only dream of without it looking like she pumped iron at all.

1.02 to 1: Conrad Parsons. With a metabolism that kept him skinny and under muscled, he'd always concentrated on endurance over raw power. It was easier to improve the hardware than himself. But that didn't mean he wouldn't improve himself where possible.

Quantifying something as ill-defined as 'reaction time' was merely another question to Conrad Parson. He began by asking half a people whose jobs required fast reflexes for definitions and got half a dozen different answers. The track star only considered the time from when he heard the gun until he started moving. The circus gunslinger went strictly by time to draw and fire. (Actually hitting the target being considered a bonus.) The football player simply declared, "Reaction time is the body's ability to do unto others before they do unto you."

Preferring definitions he could test and measure, he used the other responses to guide his thoughts as he came up with his own answer.

0: Mirage (Combat). From his own observations, he'd proved that, on occasion, Mirage reacted to danger before it happened. It was clearly a psychic phenomenon of some kind, but the mechanics involved were not yet subject to analysis.

0.05: Mirage (Non-Combat), Wild Dragon. Conrad Parsons understood the synaptic connections in Mirage's body operated faster than a normal human's due to his specific mutations. The speed across individual nerve cells was merely at the high end of observed norms. Wild Dragon was a different story. Even granting that 'chi' could improve speed, the mechanisms behind how it did so had not yet been discerned.

0.06: Robert the Cat. That one actually made sense. Robert's nerve impulses didn't have nearly as far to go as a human's, so it was no surprise that his reflexes were 'catlike'.

0.07: Tach. There were a couple of purely human quick draw artists that could meet or surpass Anderson's rating. That was out of a world population of over 6 billion. World class abilities without world class effort. Again.

0.10: Sparx, Flex. Limelight called this 'Olympic Standard'. In competition, if an athlete started moving less than 0.1 seconds after the gun went off, it was called a false start. (Whether or not it actually was one.) It made a convenient dividing line between normal humans and everyone else.

0.11: Free Fall. While his reaction time was a touch under 'Olympic Standard', his actual speed once he started moving was high enough to make up for it in most circumstances. As his own armor's motion enhancement systems worked much the same way, it was a fact that Limelight never forgot.

0.12: Sunray (heroic form). See 0.11

0.13: Limelight (in Armor). See 0.11

After endurance, power and reaction time came things that were more difficult to quantify.

Fighting skill. Superhuman abilities could balance poor technique, but against opponents with enough raw toughness, skill without sufficient power meant nothing. As good as his combat computers were, they were still limited by his own abilities. Wild Dragon had shown Limelight how far martial arts could be taken, but even with mechanical enhancements, his own body simply could not reach that level.

Intuition. The dictionary definition, the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning, was acceptable but there was more to the term than that. "Experience gone subconscious," his brother claimed. "Attunement to one's environment," his sister countered. No matter what the definition, it was clear that others possessed more of it than he did. The anomaly assessment gear and other sensor suites helped counteract his deficiencies, but he still lacked the capacity for split-second accurate judgments that he knew others possessed.

Overall, Conrad James Parsons measured himself and found himself wanting. Not really a surprise as he'd felt that way about himself for a large portion of his life. But with the higher stakes he'd chosen with his life as Limelight, the need to do something about the problem was far more pressing.

Beej Parsons, when going over data his brother had gathered, immediately noticed two things. His brother made no comparisons of his intelligence with others and never considered any of his allies' abilities that were less than his own. He figured the intelligence thing was primarily ego on his brother's part. From comments Ceej had made, he held a somewhat grudging respect for Tach's brains but had little use for the rest of them. In Beej's mind, the other betrayed an unwillingness of his younger brother to look back and see if anyone was gaining on him.

Despite those 'perceptual' flaws, Bertram Jackson Parsons figured his brother had gathered enough data to make construction of the new Limelight suit go much faster than the original, assuming Aaj could find time in her schedule to assist in the design process.

"Why can't I get these damn things to work?" Angelica Parsons muttered under her breath. The current generation of nanobots had passed every test except one. They'd multiply when commanded, they'd stop multiplying when told to. They'd die when ordered to or when exposed to intense UV radiation. They didn't trigger immunosuppressive response in 99 percent of the samples tested.
They wouldn't tolerate mutated versions of themselves introduced into their environment. They would assemble themselves into a chain that could transmit tiny electrical pulses up and down their length. If the chain got damaged, they'd repair the damage if instructed to do so.

But the damn things would not properly interface with damaged animal nervous tissue. So the intended purpose, to jump the gaps in neural transmission left by trauma and thus restore motion to paralyzed limbs, could not be achieved. She'd been beating her head against the problem for years and was willing to continue for as long as it took. Such technology might have saved her father's life. As such, it was a project she would never abandon, even if she did set it aside from time to time.

When her brother asked her to assist on the new version of the Limelight suit, she set her quest aside as she had done several times before. Destroying the nanobots, just in case and in accordance with research standards, she prepared for the new task.

She didn't know what had happened months earlier.

Well over a year ago, her brother Ceej had pointed out that her definition of success in the nerve repair work was faulty. Bridging a gap between nerve cells, damaged or not, would work. But completely replacing the peripheral nervous system with an artificial nervous system would also work.

Thinking it a worthwhile idea, Angelica Parsons spent six months and considerable resources testing it. Those tests failed. While neural uptake to an undamaged spinal cord proceeded far better than her attempts at gap bridging, the results on her test animals were heartbreaking. Animals smashing themselves into the walls of their cages with enough force to injure or kill themselves. Seizures resembling massive epileptic attacks that once begun, never stopped short of death. Fatal tachycardia, even though the animal's autonomic systems were never touched.

One of her grad students leaked details on the testing and the results to the press. The publicity merely accelerated her plans to halt the experiments. Clearly, the complete replacement of a nervous system with a nano-tech built version was not a viable option.

Conrad Parsons was certain he knew what the problem was, although he never mentioned it to anyone. The test animals didn't, couldn't, know what was happening to them. The impulses traveling their new nerves were millions, if not billions, of times faster than what nature had provided. If only bridging a small gap, it wouldn't make enough difference to cause more than minor problems. But with an entire artificial nervous system functioning at near computer speed, what mere animal could hope to control the results?

So when Angelica Parsons gave one particular batch of nanobots the self destruct code, that was not the code actually transmitted by the room's computer system. When she bathed them in deadly UV light, a simple filter cut the UV light they received by two orders of magnitude. While a few of the nanobots died or were damaged, they were quickly scavenged by the remainder. When she placed the vial of still functioning nanobots into the destruction system that would heat the contents into ionized vapor for final disposal, it was a different vial, carefully rigged in advance, that was destroyed.

Conrad Parsons spent months studying his sister's work in his limited 'spare' time. Then he destroyed it as she had originally intended. But with the need for an upgrade clearly evident, he felt it time to exhume his sister's design and make a few subtle modifications.

Work proceeded on the new suit. Instead of being two separate devices, the functions of the harness and the old body suit were integrated into one device. The new design gave better intrinsic protection to the user and to itself. Hardware improvements designed over the previous two years were built. Software improvements were installed and tested as best as could be managed.

Work also proceeded on the new nanobots. The most important alteration was to put in a 'stutter'. Conrad Parsons knew that even if his nerve impulses operated at computer speeds, his mind and body could not. So instead of instantly transmitting impulses, the new nervous system would send them at whatever speed his body could handle. In theory.

Theory. Or more importantly, theory versus practice. Normal practice would require him to test his theory and procedure on animals, analyze the results and then, after many years, proceed to tests on human subjects, of which he would not be one. Even if those tests worked perfectly, any legitimate use of the procedure on himself would be years, if not decades, down the road.

Conrad Parsons was not that patient.

"I don't object in principle," Aaj said during the traditional monthly family dinner. "Hell, we can all use a vacation. But don't you think two months is bit excessive?"

"Especially since the new suit should be finished in no more than five weeks," Beej added.

"I have I ever taken a real 'get away from everyone and everything' vacation before?" Ceej asked rhetorically. His projections said that if the procedure worked, he should make a full recovery in six weeks. The extra time was his safety margin.

"No," his siblings chorused.

"So you can see why I might want one."

"Yes, but two months?" Aaj replied.

"Look sis, the way you said that, it's like you're expecting me to spend the entire time lying on a beach so I can watch pretty girls walk by."

"Nothing wrong with that," Beej said sotto voce.

"Oh, that's funny Bertram," his sister said sarcastically before turning her attention to her other brother. "So what would you be doing?"

"I don't know. Work out some, start some yoga. The new combat programs require that I be a lot more flexible than I am now."

"We could help you with that," Beej replied while patting his small pot belly.

"Honestly, I see enough of you two as it is. Basically, what I'm trying to do is avoid a potential 'garbage in, garbage out' problem with the new suit. The better I am, the better it'll be."

The fact that he'd made a completely true statement didn't hurt. Two days later, he was on his way to a rented cabin in New Mexico.

Conrad Parsons spent three days stocking the cabin while getting acclimated to the altitude and the dry heat. The refrigerator and cupboards were filled with everything he figured to need.

After a five kilometer run, he showered and dried off thoroughly. Still naked, he walked to the bedroom and opened the trunk of medical gear that he'd brought. Loading the vial containing the nanobots he'd clandestinely designed and manufactured into the injector, he placed a blood pressure collar around his skinny left biceps and pumped it until his median basilic vein showed clearly.

Before any last second doubts could stay his hand, he injected the microscopic devices into his body.

Bathing the injection site with intense UV rays, he slapped a specially designed bandage over the puncture before giving the used vial and injector similar treatment. While he didn't have the gear that would turn any stray nanobots left in them into ionized plasma, the small thermite based device he'd brought was more than adequate to handle the job.

Knowing it would take time for the nanobots to get organized and start building his new nervous system, he took four mineral tablets before making breakfast.

The first symptoms came a week later. Walking back to the cabin after a five kilometer run, his fastest yet, his left arm started twitching uncontrollably. Short, sharp, jerks pulled his hand toward his shoulder. Excited, Ceej raced back to the cabin and barely closed the door before his right arm began twitching in synch with his left.

He slowly extended his arms, his body fighting him all the way. The instant he relaxed, they began twitching again, inevitably doubling up. Giving up that battle, he wiggled his fingers to see if they would respond. They did, as did his wrists and shoulders.

"Damn, that's inconvenient," he muttered. There were blood samples he needed to take, diagnostic tests he needed to run and doing so with restricted movements would be exceedingly annoying. He'd barely begun when the unnatural restraint cut off. He'd scarcely got the blood pressure cuff on when both arms suddenly extended to their limits and locked there. His best efforts were insufficient to bend either elbow, although he could still flip his palms.

Conrad Parson reached for his 'chicken switch'. Thoroughly aware the procedure might not work the way he intended, he'd built a simple radio signaler that would cause the nanobots to self destruct. In theory, there was that word again, it was the only way to destroy them while they were inside his body. If all his voluntary muscles locked up, he was as good as dead and knew it. Twisting the dial, he set it for ten minutes. If that time expired without him resetting or disarming the device, it would go off, ending the experiment.

Four minutes into that span, his arms began working again. He reset the switch for thirty minutes and laid down to wait. If he remembered his anatomy right, it was fifth and sixth cervical nerves that controlled the biceps, but the seventh and eighth cervical nerves, through the musculo-spinal nerve, that handled the triceps. With over 600 muscles in the human body, the tests were going to take a while.

The next three days were sleepless and occasionally painful. As new sections of his artificial nervous system came online, they'd test the appropriate muscles, resisting, quite effectively, his own efforts at control. When a muscle was prevented from exercising its full range of motion, it hurt enough that Conrad Parson wished that he could take some pain killers. In theory, a word he quickly tired of, there wasn't any reason why he couldn't. But caution prevented him from taking any additional chances while the new nerves were still building and coming on line.

At least the limiters he'd designed to keep the nanobots from affecting anything from the neck up worked perfectly. So there had been no uncontrollable twitching in his face, no changes in his sight, smell, taste or hearing. Most importantly, no alterations to his brain. Nerves do more than just control muscles.

The critical test would come with the tenth cranial nerve, known as the pneumogastric or vagus nerve. Branches from that nerve control the voice box, the lungs, the stomach and most importantly, the heart. Thoroughly aware his heart was a muscle, the fact it is made from a different type of muscle than say, his biceps, had exempted it from earlier testing.

So Conrad Parsons sat nude in his cabin's bathtub, a cardiac monitor measuring his heartbeat, with his chicken switch at the ready and waited. He got tired of waiting a got up to get a book of logic puzzles to give his mind something to do while he waited.

Of course, that's when it started.

His heart rate jumped from 62 beats per minute to over 100 in seconds. Before he could get back to the bathroom, 120. Before he returned to the tub, 140. Before he sat down, 160. He felt an increased need to breath, to provide oxygen to be burned for his heart's benefit, but was able to resist. As an avid runner, he wasn't worried as the readout slowly climbed to 175. He'd reached that on his own before, even though it was over 90 percent of his suggested maximum heart rate. He kept his breathing slow and steady and decided to ride it out.

The nanobots conducting the test detected an increased need for oxygen. So they 'decided', if that word can be properly used, to get some.

Ceej lost control of his breathing. Air roared in and out of his lungs at a pace he'd never managed before in his life. The numbers on the readout blurred, passing 200 without slowing. Before the display was legible again, his pulse was at 230. His chest ached at the pain of the force inhalations and exhalation until the nanobots' pain management routines cut in and sensation in the area went dead. 235, 240. Four beats every second wasn't enough. Conrad Parson's thumb hovered above the button on his chicken switch. 243, 246, 249. 251. Heart and lungs racing out of control, he started slowly counting to ten. By five, the reading was at 254. By eight, 250. By ten, the control of his lungs had been released and his heart rate swiftly dropped to a healthy level before slowing to normal.

The remaining three days of self tests were occasionally messy or embarrassing, but not, as the cardiac test had been, nearly fatal. As far he knew, anyway.

Two weeks after injecting himself with the nanobots, Ceej resumed running and started yoga classes. A week after that, he was again setting personal bests in his training runs. Another week later, he cracked the 19 minute mark on a 5 kilometer run for the first time and knew, just knew, he had a sub 18 minute run in him.

He almost managed to forget why he'd injected himself with the nanobots in the first place.

Running through what passed as a local park, Ceej's feet hit the pavement in a smooth rhythm, bringing him to the top of the small hill that marked the last climb on his route. Taking a hit off his water bottle to combat the late morning heat, he picked up the pace and pounded downslope. A scream split the air.

It was a mark of his personal growth over the previous two years that the fact he wasn't wearing his armor didn't stop him from investigating. A second scream was suddenly cut off, but the direction it came from was clear enough. Turning from the jogging trail, he raced past unoccupied picnic tables and shouted at the hispanic woman with her three children to call 911 as he ran even faster past the playground equipment.

Behind a bandstand, he found the attacker was a large black man, the victim, a white woman who might have been pretty once, but between a drug habit, smoking and the harsh southwestern sun, had aged badly. Hearing Ceej's approach, the man turned, the revolver he'd struck the woman twice with in hand, and screamed, "YOU WANT SUMMA THIS!"

Tachypsychia is a neurological condition where time appears to slow down. Conrad Parsons' subconscious mind insisted on informing his consciousness of this fact while his body was busy having a world class case of it. His right hand shot forward to prevent the gun from being pointed at him. Pivoting slightly, he buried the knuckles of his left hand into his opponent's right shoulder with impossible speed. Instantly changing the block into a grab of the man's wrist, Ceej heaved with manic strength.

Then the reality of a man 180 centimeters, 66 kilograms attacking a man 188 centimeters, 105 kilograms asserted itself. Despite increased speed, despite something close to proper technique, Ceej didn't have the strength required to spin his opponent into to support framework for the bandstand as he had planned.

'This is going to be a very bad death,' Ceej thought as his opponent used superior strength to shrug off the attack. He managed to hold on to the man's wrist, but in slow, inevitable motion, his foe twisted his arm free and began turning his weapon toward his new target, thumbing back the hammer.

Ceej grabbed the gun just as the man pulled the trigger. If he'd been using a semiautomatic, Conrad Parson would have taken a round through his heart, out his back and been dead before hitting the ground. Instead, a flash of pain ran up his arm, from where the hammer had struck his pinky only to be cut off almost instantly by the pain management system of his new nerves.

Surprised by the failure of his weapon, and the reason why, the larger man pulled the gun down and away, taking a small piece of Ceej's skin in the process. The hammer's interrupted journey completed itself, with the resulting .357 magnum round blowing a chunk of wood from a support beam.

Using his injured right hand, Ceej feinted for his opponent's eyes. Reflexively, the man brought both hands up to guard them. It was exactly what Ceej had hoped for. He slid his left leg forward, planted his pivot foot, and brought his right knee into his target's undefended groin. That didn't immediately end the fight, but it made the outcome inevitable.

"I think I just passed the smoke test," Conrad Parsons muttered to himself before turning to fallen woman.

"Hey bro, looking good," Beej said as they met at Newark International Airport a week later. The tan and sunglasses made a difference by themselves, but his brother looked disgustingly healthy and relaxed to boot.

"Thanks," Ceej replied as he tossed his luggage into the trunk of his brother's Mercedes. "This vacation stuff has a lot to recommend for it. I feel like a new man."