part 4

This picks up about where the last left off. I need to go through what I have written and recompile and  put the overlapping parts together and distill the story a bit.

This is from the latest third-person narrative.

“This is curious.”

“What is?” Jim moved from his computer over to Tanya’s side.

She smacked his thigh with her fist. Jim collapsed as the force of the blow knocked him off balance.

“Ow. That hurt.” Jim cradled and massaged his leg, and shortly got back up to his knees, still rubbing his thigh.

Tanya rubbed her hand and shook it. “That did hurt. I just cut my own palm up.” She had four small slits on her palm where her talons had poked in.

Once they were able to pay attention, she pointed at some code on her screen.

“This coding: it’s changed us, seriously. Have you ever seen what happens when you put say, corn starch into water? Not just for food. I once saw a demonstration. The water was over saturated, almost to a paste. Then a man walked quickly across the top of the stuff.”

Jim nodded, as memories connected for him. “I’ve never seen it but have heard of it. Long chain molecules in a fluid; apply a sudden energy like walking or running and they tangle and harden. Stand still and you sink. I understand that impact resistant fabrics are similar to this.”

“This code, the cells in our skin and fat layers are impregnated with long chain molecules. Your thigh had almost no give.” Tanya rubbed her hand again.

A prurient thought about Tanya’s breasts jumped through Jim’s mind. He bit his tongue to keep from saying it.

“I wonder where else they put them?” Tanya continued. “I wish I had a code editor on this machine. Then I could scan better. What other parts of our bodies have been redesigned to be impact resistant?”

“I once read a fiction story about a martial artist that had this done in the characters brain, to keep from getting concussed. This was done so that hits to the head would not slow the character down.”