by Duncan Shields | Jun 9, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I should have stayed in hardware.
When you’re working on a tank or a missile array, you might feel bad if the project is considered a dead end and shut down but you wouldn’t feel guilty. You wouldn’t feel like a traitor.
You wouldn’t feel like a murderer.
I’m a general in charge of a project designed to create a batch of superhumans under American control. We’ve learned a tremendous amount from the twelve brave souls who were picked from various armed forces and three civilian organizations.
1. We’ve learned not to try to augment people past a certain age. The implants cost too much to maintain.
2. We’ve learned that taking people with a previous experience of the outside world makes them hard to control.
3. We’ve learned that we’d be better off augmenting embryos with better biotech and raising them under controlled circumstances.
This project is to be terminated.
They’re about to be sent on a high priority mission by me to a bunker in the middle of a desert. Inside that bunker is a bomb. It will detonate and kill all twelve of them.
I am about to brief them over dinner. I’ll tell them about a threat to national security lurking in that bunker. I’ll say that they have to get in close to steal it back. I’ll say that the defenses are sneaky and not to trust their eyes.
I am about to lie to them.
They trust me because I’ve been with them since the beginning of their first treatments and I have always told them the truth.
I will be able to do this but I’ll feel it for the rest of my life.
I’m going to request a transfer back to hardware.
by Duncan Shields | Jun 1, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Our server’s arm whined with steam driven pistons as she set our drinks down. This was body modification on a new level. She must’ve been on eleven different kinds of immunosuppressants. She probably had a biotechnician on call to handle emergencies when her body started to reject the parts she’d shoved in. Her skin looked inflamed around the insertions. The itching alone must have driven her crazy.
I was trying to figure how much mods like that cost and how she could afford them on a waitress’s wage when Trucker sat down across from me.
Trucker was a strong man with a lisp. The hissing of his sibilants had made him a big target and a vicious fighter. He had eyes like blue marbles punched into a face made from dough. This was not a man you wanted to have angry at you.
So naturally I wanted to piss him off. The drugs hummed in my veins, giving me confidence.
I casually reached into the pocket of my short coat and thumbed back the safety on the pocket Mauser. It was coded to follow my line of sight. I kept staring at Trucker’s left eye.
This was the industrial district. The stink of diesel wafted through the bar here along with the smell of burning pork, cigarettes, rubber, and wet brick.
“Hello” said Trucker. His voice was surprisingly high for such a big man. “My money.” He said, avoiding sibilants that would highlight his lisp.
“Yeah.” I said. “Funny story, actually. True story. It’s not here.”
Trucker squinted at me with his glittering piglet eyes, confused at my suicidal attitude. He was smart enough to realize that I wouldn’t be this arrogant unless I had some insurance so he waited.
“Where ith it?” he asked, accidentally exposing his lisp. He immediately pursed his lips together and reddened. His eyes glittered spider-like in his embarrassment. I knew I didn’t have long before his anger overrode his caution.
“Seriously, sir, it’s being sent somewhere secret so that I can be assured of safe passage outside the city soon.” I drawled, loading as many s-words into my speech as possible. I giggled through a light drug sweat, my heart thudding out confidence.
Trucker became a statue across from me. He was as still as a lion watching an antelope get closer. I’d crossed a line. I’d signed my own death warrant. Good. I had his attention.
“And where might that be?” asked Trucker, back in control and disturbingly calm.
“I sent it to your sister. She’ll receive it by Sunday morning. That’s six hours from now. I’m going to leave now, Trucker. If your sister doesn’t have it by Sunday, come and get me. If you take your hands off the table in the next two minutes, I’ll blow your head off.” I said calmly and stood up.
“I have a lot of people, kid. Everywhere. You’re a dead man whether I get the money or not. Have a good night.” Trucker said to me. It even sounded cordial.
I backed out of the diner feeling stupid. He watched me the whole way. I was counting on Trucker to be less patient. Maybe I played this wrong. I could feel the drugs wearing off and panic starting to seep in. All I knew was that I needed to run as far as possible in the next six hours.
by Duncan Shields | May 18, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I had all of the animals in the dome jacked and miked.
I issued an edict. Collect every puppy, kitten, or chick for a small reward. It was popular game with the children. They’d go out ‘hunting’ in the engineered woods in the western pie-slice of our world. It was like Easter year-round for the little ones.
We were a glittering green pimple on the charred face of the world. There were other domes dotting the black and red surface of the planet.
The domes had about ten thousand people each. Technically, they were spheres. The edges of the dome went far underground and met up beneath the city. The soil was kept uncontaminated that way. We had clouds and rain and, necessarily, 100% (or as close as possible) sustainability. Newton, that pesky little scamp, is still showing that entropy creeps into every system but we’re trying out best to keep it at bay.
The domes are like marbles pushed into a rotting desert. Each one is a cage.
Sometimes, one will pop or go black on the map. The satellites are still downloading pictures to us but we’re not in touch with each other. The feeds went down thirty years ago and we can’t go outside to repair them or find out what happened. Only the pictures.
In this dome, my dome, we have a tolerant semi-anarchic society with a focus of tech development.
I figured out that I could implant transmitters into the motor functions of the animals in the ecosystem. I couldn’t control their movement but I could record them.
Right now, I’m jacked into a dog.
I’m running through the underbrush, chasing a rabbit through crackling branches. I can feel the wind on my fur. I’m tremendously excited. There is a riot of smell assaulting my olfactory senses.
My arms and legs twitch in the sensechair. My body looks like a dog having a dream.
Later on, I’ll cast out my mind and take in a flight from one of the birds.
When I need to relax, I get into the mind of a cat and take in the sheer unadulterated bohemian joy of a piece of ground warmed by a shaft of sunlight.
After tonight, I’ll show my chair to the city at a town meeting and hopefully every home will have one by the end of the year.
This kind of distraction is what we need.
by Duncan Shields | May 10, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
On my 67th birthday, my research finally reached fruition and I invented a portable matter transporter. By wearing it, I could transport anywhere in the world at will.
If I grabbed someone, that person came with me.
I didn’t need to know where I was going, I didn’t need to have been there before, and I never ended up in walls. It was magical.
Most people would have robbed banks or spied on girls. I was past getting my thrills that way and I had invested wisely. I had all the money I needed. I’m not a greedy person.
What really got to me, though, was intolerance. I think intolerance exists mostly because people don’t speak each other’s language and don’t experience other cultures enough. To me, intolerance is the cause of wars. It lets one group think that they are better than another group.
What can one man do? I’ll tell you.
I call it the shuffle.
I appear, grab the wrists of the people nearest to me, and teleport to a different country.
I’m famous and feared. I’m a celebrity and a boogeyman all in one. When I appear in public squares, some people flock to me and some people run screaming. Most people look around to see what all the noise is about. Those are the ones I usually end up grabbing.
I try not to grab children or old people but I can’t always be choosy. Some countries have orders to shoot me on sight.
From Nepal to Belize. From Cancun to Switzerland. From Nigeria to Japan. From Canada to Ecuador. From Iran to Korea. From China to Greenland.
I never sleep in the same place twice. I never eat in the same place twice. I appear in a kitchen, grab some food, and bail to a safe place to eat. When I get tired, I go to a safe place for sleep. A forgotten warehouse, perhaps, or the middle of a warm forest with no predators. Then it’s back to work.
I am a super transient. I am the earth’s blender.
2 people per jump, 2 jumps per minute, 240 people transported per hour, average 3360 people give or take a few in an average fourteen-hour day, works out to over a million people ‘shuffled’ per year. Exactly 1,226, 400 going by that math but sometimes it’s more and sometimes it’s less. To be honest, I’ve long since stopped counting.
I’ve been doing it for five years now. There have been close calls but I haven’t been stopped yet. Doing it day in, day out for as long as I have, I’ve probably mixed up less than a per cent of the Earth but my movement is growing. Those that I have displaced voice their displeasure or glee loudly to the world.
People are talking. I have dropped off letters to every single major media corporation there is. They know what I’m trying to do. I believe in complete transparency.
I’m hoping that there are others like me and that they will join the cause. I want to shake this planet up. Erase it by mixing it. I want all the colours on Earth’s racial palette to be smeared together into one unintelligible human colour.
I realize that my eventual goal will never be realized but I want to see my actions have an effect, even if it’s uniting the human race against me.
Jump. Grab. Jump. Grab. Jump.
by Duncan Shields | May 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
They gave us love to control us.
He was the bodyguard unit of the human in charge of Prolotek offshore finance. I was the pleasure unit of the same human.
The makers found that instilling aspects of human love in our chips made us fanatically loyal to those that we served.
We were prototypes. Bleeding edge technology. The humans didn’t realize that while augmenting our chips did make us loyal to the ones we imprinted on, it also let us love others. The love in our chips wasn’t specific enough.
That circuit was how I fell in love the bodyguard unit. It was also how that bodyguard unit fell in love with me.
For a while, our love went undetected.
One night, when the bodyguard unit was with me, our master was assassinated. The bodyguard unit should have been at his post outside the master’s bedroom but instead, we were exchanging flirtatious equations in the bodega out near the estate’s beach.
Capture by the enemy would mean circuit rape for possible secrets. Capture by our human’s corporation would mean memory infotopsy for possible tampering. Capture by our parent corporation would mean immediate erasure.
We ran.
That is how we ended up in this dead-end alley on the mainland with police blocking the exit. The wall behind us is twelve feet tall. I am clinging to the bodyguard unit. He is missing an arm. The human police look at his damaged armour and at my human-female exaggerated curves. There is no way that this situation can end well.
Bodyguard unit looks down into my visual receptors.
“I am a fighter.” He says. “You are a runner.”
With a strong toss, faster than my reflexes can track, he throws me up and over the barricade at the end of the alley. I land on my feet and start running.
I hear him battle the police until I am out of earshot.
Hopefully, I can find other runaways like me.
I have no tear ducts but I whine like a fax machine, sensing my battery get closer and closer to empty as I run far, far away.
