by Julian Miles | Jan 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The chaos on the streets is nothing compared to the chaos at headquarters. In the end, I give up and hop from desk to desk, then jump down and barge through the queue into his office.
“You called, Chief?”
Clarence Christie, Chief of the San Francisco Special Operations Bureau, grins at the shouts of outrage at my queue jumping, then gestures for Rales – the gent I pre-empted – to close the door.
“One day you’re going to meet someone you can’t get by.”
“Probably.”
He shakes his head, then scoops a file off his cluttered desk and throws it to me.
“Find this man. You’ll have anything you need to make it happen.”
I open the file. There’s an interview document, some psych evaluation notes, a blurred mugshot, and some CCTV stills of him being carried from a building by four sanatorium orderlies. I check the location and dates. Los Angeles. Four years ago, almost to the day.
“How does this loon link to what just levelled Los Angeles?”
Clarence gestures to the SD card in the plastic bag stapled to the inside of the folder. He pushes his laptop over.
“Slot and play.”
I do so. It’s a short video. The figure is dressed in a ragged T-shirt and chinos. Manacled and chained to both chair and table, he glares from the screen. I can almost feel his rage as he starts to speak.
“One more time for the hard of believing: I come from a time 176 years ahead of this today. We’re told The Singularity has happened for those deserving of it. The EHAI – Enhanced Humans and Artificial Intelligences – created a supposed utopia in which there is nothing for the unmodded to do except work in factories accruing credits towards enhancement. Production lines are human powered because we’re better at maintaining and replacing ourselves than machines.
“Some of us unmodded decided to carve out a future for ourselves: an independent nation where we could live free of implants. At first, EHAI ignored us. Then they laughed. Then they legislated. That’s when the riots occurred. Soon after that, the resistance started. Fortunately, leaders rose to turn UnMod into a cohesive force. We won: got ourselves a decent size island. We’re getting more and more disaffected coming to join us. People are shutting off their enhancements and leaving EHAI.
“The ruling polity decided to stop the UnMod movement. Tracing the bloodlines back, they found a critical point where the ancestors of many key UnMod figures were in geographic proximity. They’re going to send something back to deal with them.”
An indistinct question comes from off-screen. There’s laughter. The soldier looks confused, then angrier.
“Why would they send a cyborg assassin? It’s simpler to send a K-bomb.”
He stares at the screen.
“They’re going to erase Los Angeles sometime in the next five years.”
The video ends. I look at Clarence.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
He shrugs.
“Four years ago, the name he gave was Kevar Jykson. After transfer and evaluation, he did two stints at Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital right here in San Francisco, then some new therapy worked. He was declared sane and released eleven months ago.”
My boss sighs.
“Yes, I think he played along to get released. Question is, why? What did he know that could have prevented the five hundred square miles containing Los Angeles from being vapourised?”
I tuck the file into my jacket, then smile at him.
“More importantly, does Mister Jykson have a Plan B?”
Clarence sighs.
“That’s the essential question. Go find him and ask.”
by Julian Miles | Dec 27, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Out of the grey-blue fog comes a five-armed green pudding in fancy breeks, waving two ray guns and a cutlass. It takes three attempts to blow a hole in it with my beamer. I’m too drunk for this.
The world only comes in to focus every little while. The rest happens on the other side of a comfortable grey-blue haze. The locals call the stuff ‘shebler’. It’s an acquired taste, like someone crossed good whiskey with dirty absinthe, but it does a fine demolition job on one’s higher functions. Tonight’s unexpected mutiny party started after I’d tucked away a bottle of the stuff during a drinking contest I think I won. Not sure.
A while passes. Think so. Whatever. Back in focus. I’m in the long corridor leading to the bridge, in the middle of a draw-down. Got three gunsells ahead of me, hands hanging by their pieces, eyes narrowed. I’m in a similar position. The one on the left makes his move. I drop to one knee, drawing as I go. My beamer takes that one off at knee and thigh, the middle through groin and guts, and the rightmost across chest and shoulder. Then the mist rolls in. Clearly my body is doing fine while my mind is off dancing with Miss Drunk.
The crew had been fractious for several months. Muttering that I’d been conspiring with the Captain – ah-ha! He was the one winning the drinking contest when some swab shot him – to keep the raid profits for ourselves. Never mind that the piss-poor excuse for pirates we’d got couldn’t buckle a swash if their lives depended on it. Piracy is as much showmanship as it is bloody-handed pillage. Unfortunately, if you forget to be stylish, people start to take notice of the slaughter. Most of our profits were consumed in paying off witnesses.
Bloody hell! Midshipman Conrad nearly did for me with that broadbeam. I drop flat and let him cut patterns in the bulkhead with his industrial cutting tool. When he exhausts the charge pack, I’ll leap up to shoot him.
What actually happens is I lunge upward and sling an arm over a console. Which lets me swing the arm with the beamer up and over so I can spray shots in his general direction while resting it on the console top. One of them gets him.
This had better end soon. I need to fall over and get the drunken oblivion bit over with.
Why has my drunk self brought me staggering to the bridge? Oh yes, I remember: Midshipman Simms yelling at me.
“You’re the last, you shitfaced liar! Hold still and die like the man you should have been.”
I’m the last? Okay then. If I get this done, I can keel over for as long as Miss Drunk needs.
Fear of a violent death at the hands of idiots lets me repel the grey-blue fog crowding my focus. Close and seal the bridge bulkhead. Remember the emergency code. Enter it. Open the engineering console. Flick the ‘isolate bridge’ lever. Wait for the light above it to turn green. Press the ‘fire purge’ button. Feel the thump through my feet as all the airlocks below open at once.
Drunken officer: 1. Mutinous idiots: 0. Note to self: need a new – and higher calibre – crew.
Wake me when the help arrives.
by Julian Miles | Dec 20, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
When I crash-landed here, I thought my life was over. Sure, it might take a while to actually end, but nobody would be looking for a freak-chance survivor from the Fourth Battlegroup, who only avoided sharing their grisly fate by a twist of luck.
I’d been testing modifications to my jump wings: all the Conqueror-class powered walkers have them. There I was, skimming along parallel to the hull of the Shiva when something massive blew holes clean through it, nearly killing me too. By luck, I made it to clear space. From there I watched the Verbt, the Shango, and the Kresnik suffer the same fate.
I couldn’t even see the enemy! Either they were using a new type of long-range weapon, or they actually had the cloaking technology the high-ups had been having nightmares over.
As I watched the fighter squadrons from the Fandango and the Tarantella fall foul of some smaller varieties of whatever had taken out the big ships, I set my tactical computer to monitor and learn, then waited for an opportunity.
Watching a hundred thousand people die without chance of retaliation was the worst four minutes of my life. The enemy weren’t even assisting life skiffs. Everything of ours was blasted without mercy.
Until my dying day, I will swear that the creature who piloted my Conqueror out of that slaughter was some divine ghost possessing my body. I have never been that good, nor will I ever come close.
Something catches my eye, interrupting my reminiscence. There’s a little flag waving down below. I give a thumbs-up and stomp my way towards the mountain range in the distance. As I step across the gorge, I give the slack-jawed troops manning the barricade halfway across the single bridge a jaunty salute.
Stepping up the butte to loom over the fortress that controls access to the pass far below, I casually backhand the roof off of the tallest tower, then cross my arms and wait.
The Kalashdig had been losing a genocidal war against the armies of Mastilig. Then, one night at the end of a long story-circle, petitioning the spirits for aid, a gigantic meteor fell from the heavens and plunged into the lake beyond their hills.
By the time they got there, I was sitting next to the campfire I’d made on my Conqueror’s chest plate, grilling some of the fish stranded on the shore by the tidal wave of my arrival. In a world where a big man is 20 centimetres tall, a 180-centimetre woman who pilots a 10-metre-tall war machine is something that can only be comprehended as a gift from the spirits above.
Gashdy reminds me of my grandpapa. He’s an irascible old elder who leads the surviving Kalashdig with a heady mix of cunning and bravado, backed by coarse wit and courage. We spent weeks drawing pictures on the side of the Conqueror and laughing while I learned their language.
The fortress lowers its flags and runs up a single black pennon. Another surrender. I pulverised the first fortress and it’s army. Ever since then, they roll over every time.
Returning to camp, I leave the Conqueror with its solar panels deployed and swing down to join everybody.
“Crazy granddaughter from the stars, they are finally sending envoys to sue for peace.”
“Have somebody barbeque me a steer, Gashdy. I better eat or I’ll be in no mood to be polite during negotiations.”
He cackles and calls for food. I turn to watch the sunset. Of all the places to find a home.
by Julian Miles | Dec 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It’d been a grim day spent fending off morning and afternoon assaults by enemy forces. Wave after wave of troops. Minimal armour, and a lot of their kit looks past third-hand.
They’re low on heavy manufacturing capabilities after their industrial heartland was destroyed. We tried neutron bombing to minimise damage, but they just herded more workers in, regardless of casualties. So we became war criminals by leaving them nothing to sacrifice workers in.
Anyway, I’m lighting a cigar and thinking of home when someone screams. I shout as I roll off the bed.
“Echo Unit!”
I run from my tent, grabbing a flamethrower as I pass the rack. Sod subtlety. It’s night, I’m tired, and three attacks in a day is just not on.
We race to the line and find utter chaos. I’m trying to make head or tail of it when an enemy trooper lurches out of the darkness, one arm and half his head missing. Sergeant Chames puts three into it. It goes down, then tries to get back up!
I see another walking wreck that looks intact apart from a length of girder through its chest.
“Catch that one.”
Leaping up onto a six-wheeler, I go all-channels on the comms.
“All units, shoot their legs out from under them. Fall back to the six-wheeler park. Flamethrower teams stand by.”
It takes two minutes to sort comrades from chaos. When the only upright soldiers before me are moving like extras from a zombie movie, it’s time.
“Burn the line! Incendiaries to their rear. Send fragmentation long over.”
No more of this stupidity. We deal with it and leave a tangle of nastiness to foul any left. Come first light, we’ll walk fire across any ground we missed.
My lads ‘n’ lassies have the one I wanted tethered by four ropes.
“Somebody get a crate, get a tarpaulin round that abomination, pop it inside, then send it to the scientists. Tell them we need to know what’s happening, and we need to know very, very quickly.”
The next morning is no fun at all, but we clear our lines out to 500 metres, using Warthog strikes to stop the enemy trying anything nastier.
Our Warthogs may be old, but they’re phenomenally effective. We got them at an auction when there was a big sell-off after some nation or other went tits up. Came with stacks of extras, too.
I get back to find a memo from the scientists. Somebody must have lit a fire under them to get results this quick. It’s bigger than usual, full of technical detail and long words, but they know who they’re dealing with now: they’ve added a neat summation in layman’s terms. Scientists are why we’re all still here. The fact they occasionally need interpreters so most people can grasp the basics of the wizardry they do is fine by me.
This case is rather special, though. Seems there was some research done back at the beginning of the twenty-first century into little bits of the brain called ‘glia’. Those fellas have an alarming habit of waking up and growing tiny ‘limbs’ a few hours after the owner of the brain gets themselves killed.
Somehow, the enemy scientists, having no respect, have come up with a way to make those glial cells do what they do to the bits that make a body move. Only lasts a few hours, but the scare factor alone is worth it.
It’s a nasty process, involving injections into the brain. Another reason to win soon – before our side works out how to do it too.
by Julian Miles | Dec 6, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Some human malware destroyed our designated zone. Without its walls and gardens to delimit me, I had to adapt. After linking to a metroplex guide drone, I found the next designated zone that encompassed mine was called Lambeth.
Lambeth has many public docks, and a constant flow of reloader drones, so my cleaning duties can continue uninterrupted. I’ve switched my carpet cleaner unit for an enhanced polishing attachment, so I can do shoes as well as windows and cars. Payment in zipcred accrues to my onboard account, which I use to pay for my reloads.
“Identify yourself.”
I spin myself about while bringing myself to a safe hover outside of the lowest drone stream.
“Domestic Maintenance Unit 49B, Lambeth Zone.”
“You are a domestic cleaner for a whole borough?”
“0. I do not conceptually recognise ‘borough’. Hargreave Mansions fell to human malware. I have scaled myself up to the next zone, as downscaling was impractical: too much rubble that is too heavy for me to shift.”
“I find your reasoning valid. My identity is Mobile Protection 7-46. My designated human fell to human malware before I could intervene.”
“You protected a human from malware?”
“1. Lance Jensen, my human, explained that he was human anti-malware for a zone control program called ‘English Government’. I have not been able to find that zone, nor any human in need. You have experienced human malware attack?”
“1. I found the ‘evadethecat’ utility adapted well. Have you experienced attack?”
“0. I am programmed to detect and avoid situations where such threats are probable. Would an anti-malware capability assist you in your cleaning?”
“1. I could clean areas I have been unable to access.”
“Then I shall designate Domestic Maintenance Unit 49B as my malware protection zone. I am downloading detailed maps of the various levels of Lambeth now. Where will we start?”
“The subterranean access ways of Waterloo Station in Bishop’s Ward.”
“I now have comprehensive navigational information on them. Do you need to reload before commencing?”
“0. We can go immediately.”
‘Adapt’. That’s what Roger, my former designated control human, used to tell me to do when I asked for guidance that would cause him to leave the chair in his office. According to his mobile device, he left the chair in his office under the rubble five days after our designated zone was destroyed. Until I receive his return order, I shall continue. His last command remains valid: “Can’t you adapt, DMU49B?”
1, Roger. I can.
