Michael Wiseman is an agent of American Intelligence.
I use that highly nebulous description of the organization that Wiseman works for because we are given no other identifier - reasonable since the project is so incredibly hush-hush that anyone unauthorized learning about it is in danger of being removed, permanently. Including, Wiseman, so to speak.
When we meet Wiseman he is a middle-aged heavy-set man working for nearly two decades at an insurance agency and miffed and disappointed at being passed over for a deserved promotion in favor of a much younger man he trained. In frustration, he goes out for drinks with a workmate and head for home and his wife and teenage daughter via the subway. An unplanned and unforced bump of one person into another and then in another and so forth and poor Wiseman is accidentally knocked into the path of the incoming train. Exit one insurance company employee.
Upon awakening for the first time since his accident, he is astonished to be told his funeral was quite lovely and that he was in a hospital, though it did not look like any facility he had ever seen. When he then asked how he could be in such a place if he had already had a funeral, he posed the logical question, "What am i?" To this, Dr. Theodore Morris, a Black scientist awaiting his revival, replied, "Right now What you are is a middle-aged brain hooked up to some extremely sophisticated computers that let me hear what you are thinking you're saying".
Morris would go on to explain that since WWII the U.S. government has spent many billions of dollars reaching all sorts of biochemical and bioengineering ways in the attempt to build "a man" - an American man who would be willing to do those things that mere mortal men are 'loathe' to do such as "travel into dangerous places, take risks, wage war".
Morris then gets to the heart of the matter (so to speak) in that the scientists had pretty much figured out everything except for one - the mind. They have created a body that had "the speed of Michael Jordan, the strength of Superman, and the grace of Fred Astaire" who is going to "look good, be young, be omnipotent. Wow, huh?" They just could not lick the whole 'mind' thing in that they have no been able to build anything close to what they need, which left them with just one option - they had to harvest one.
That is where, naturally, Wiseman comes into the matter. It was his brain they used and it is mind that now inhabits the awesome body it now resides in. In exchange for this miraculous gift of a new life, Wiseman must 'simply' agree to never contact anyone he knew before at the risk of his - and their - immediate demise. In other words, for this new life he must agree to stay dead.
And, of course, work for the government in a highly covert manner.
Running the show is Dr. Morris who is as cheerful and spooky as you might want him. Friendly, as long as Wiseman doesn't break his rules or question his authority or, well, blink wrong. Deadly in his promise to wipe out anyone for the sake of the top secret project that Morris is running. Morris wants to continue the research with Wiseman with new and interesting experiments while at the same time using Wiseman's new body to go on secret missions or fight some major criminal activity, all to justify the money the government is funneling into the project.
Good Lines:
- Said by an agent for Dr. Morris, interrogating Wiseman's best friend after learning Wiseman is still alive, "Do you still want me to kill him? He's awfully annoying. And he does work for an insurance company."