Inside Man

by K.J. Parker

Not the first time I’d possessed an unborn child; maybe that’s why I got the job, because it’s not the sort of assignment that comes up every day, and there are technical issues. A certain level of experience and expertise would, therefore, be useful. It’s a long-term gig. If you go in that early, you can’t come out again until the kid’s at least five years old, not without killing it; besides, the whole point of going in before the subject’s even been born is to create a really high-class munitions-grade sleeper, an ultimate inside man. Ah well, not like I had anything better to do for the next twenty-thirty-forty years, and it was bound to be peaceful. No banging about, shouting, goading the subject into screaming fits, broken bones, acts of mayhem. Much more my sort of thing, because if you’re designing and creating a long-term weapon, you want it to be well equipped, versatile, efficient, high performance; therefore, you want a cultured, educated mind in a strong, healthy body, with good social skills, an ear for music, a thorough basic grounding in the arts and sciences, theology and scripture and everything else a person might need in order to carry out an important mission, the particulars of which are to be announced later but which might involve anything, so best to be prepared. It was my duty, in other words, to turn the subject into as close as I could get to the perfect human; the Saloninan Übermensch; a compendium of all the qualities, skills, and virtues; the...