by Stephen R. Smith | May 29, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tamis woke under the heat of the mid morning sun, the ocean reaching tentative tendrils up the smooth sand to lick at his feet. The last evening was a grey cloud, but he’d evidently passed out on the beach again. Levering up on one elbow, he followed the beach-line unbroken to the horizon, then pushed up into a sitting position and turning, scanned to the horizon on his other side. Nothing to see, apparently nobody up yet.
Last night…
A fragment of a song flitted through his mind, and he latched onto it, pushing at its edges to try and expose the entire tune. There was something familiar, but without context…
The girl breezed by in the periphery of his mind’s eye, but as he reached for the memory it dissolved, like a chalk drawing in the rain.
On the sand he’d absently scratched the crude outline of a heart, and the letter ‘T’.
She must be here somewhere.
Climbing to his feet he began to walk along the shoreline, the waves still reaching for him and he staying just beyond their touch, taunting the massive body of water. ‘You can want me, but you can’t have me.’
The beach gave way on one side to a thick expanse of jungle, trees reaching skyward choked at their bases by vines and bushes peppered with brightly coloured flowers. Birds chattered to each other unseen, and occasionally something big would breach out in the open water. Close to the shore schools of needlefish darted towards the shore and back again, a glittering mass of light-ribbons moving as one just beneath the surface.
He passed an almost familiar Victorian mansion set back in the greenery and covered with plant-life, it’s architect long forgotten and the jungle slowly reclaiming it. The structure filled him with a nagging unease that he could neither shake nor coax out in to the light over the next hour of walking.
From the corner of his eye he saw her again, tanned skin wrapped in red tropical printed silk, but as he turned to look she had disappeared into the green. A fist closed on his heart and his stomach lurched, he had to find her, had to have her again… Again?
In the sand at his feet was the crude outline of a heart, the letter ‘T’ scratched inside.
Had he been walking that long? Was the island that small? He looked again, slowly turning, following the beach to the horizon in both directions.
Not an island. A loop. A construct.
His mind raced as he started walking again, consciously willing his heart-rate to remain neutral, his pace natural. If he was jacked in someone would be monitoring his vitals and he needed to exploit the relative freedom the unpopulated beach afforded him while it lasted.
Venturing closer to the water, he let the cool ocean wash over his feet as he walked, the schools of needlefish parting and swimming past him seemingly unconcerned by his presence, but not oblivious to it.
Stopping, he dropped to his hands and knees in the sand and dug a hole half a meter across, forming a berm with the wet sand around its edges. The hole filled from the water beneath, and once it was complete he busied himself coaxing the slender fish towards him then flipping them out of the ocean and into the pool. Having trapped enough, he sorted the construct’s predictably sized simulacra, small, medium and large, and returned all but three of the largest and half a dozen of the smallest back into the ocean. The remaining fish he pinned gently to the bottom of the pool with one finger, watching his print burn into their scaly skin. He could affect the programming of insignificant things, he’d spent enough time in virtual and coding constructs to do that, but he would need to be very careful. He sequenced them, the short ones one through three, and seven through nine, and the long ones four through six, then busied himself for a while digging a trench from the pool back out to the open water.
When the fish had all escaped, he struck off towards the jungle and the red dressed woman he knew he was expected to find, but must be careful not to. Whatever she was, whatever piece of knowledge she represented, it must remain out of his reach, and thus the reach of his interrogators until his message arrived and a trace negotiated back to him.
The song fragment raised itself again, and he pushed it aside, humming instead a Gaelic tune he’d practiced for such an eventuality.
It was a song he could lose himself in for days.
by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 2, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
“It’s not meat you know.”
He’d slipped up silently beside me at the meat counter and was pointing to the shrink-wrapped flat of striploin I was holding.
“They print those, from meat flavoured engineered inks, but they’re not meat.”
As I turned to look at him, he withdrew slightly and glanced furtively around, shrinking into the hooded sweater he was wearing.
“LeGrange and Baxter, those are real meat. Grown in a field, real. Not those ones though, they’re all printed.”
I put the steak down and looked further down the coolers at the LeGrange display.
“Your jeans too, not cotton. They sell them as cotton, but it’s not organically grown cotton, it’s engineered. Ever wonder why it itches? You should stick to Levi Strauss and Company, quality clothing for over one hundred and sixty years.”
It took a moment to process that the man was just talking about Levi’s. I stopped and took a look around. This was the strangest man I’d bumped into at the grocery store in recent memory.
“You’re a jean snob too?” I grinned despite myself at the man’s odd phrases.
“Quality never goes out of style.”
I noted that he was without a cart or basket. “Are you shopping, or just here to help me make better choices?”
Before he could answer, there was a shout from the end of the aisle.
“Hey, I told you buggers to stay out of my shop!” A heavy-set man in a green apron tied at the waist was hobbling up the aisle towards us, pointing.
The man beside me blurted “Pick Energizer, keeps going and going and going,” as he turned and ran, making it almost to the top of the aisle before another man in a white butcher coat rounded the corner weilding a large aluminum shovel. The strange man skidded, turned sharply and sprinted back past me, arms and legs pumping in a manner that suggested he wasn’t used to this level of exertion. He raced right at the green aproned grocer, then tried to dodge around him at the last instant. The shopkeeper raised one meaty arm, catching the strange man around the neck and clotheslined him, lifting him clear off his feat to drop like a stone on the floor unmoving.
I abandoned my steak shopping and my cart and rushed to kneel beside the man lying motionless on the floor.
“Jesus, that was a bit unnecessary don’t you think?” The storekeeper stared at me, seemingly just noticing I was there. Behind me I heard the butcher arrive with the shovel and grunt as he leaned on it. “He was just making conversation,” I continued “weird conversation granted, but he wasn’t doing any harm.”
The shopkeeper reached down and roughly unzipped the supine man’s sweater.
Where the still man’s hands extended from the cuffs, they were convincingly flesh toned, and his face was similarly real looking, but beneath the fabric he was merely a pale plastic shell, more like a carefully articulated mannequin than a man.
“Jesus.”
“You keep saying that. I assure you god had nothing to do with these things.” He stood back up and toed the thing none too gently where the ribs would be. “I get at least one of these a month in here. They’re paid advertisements, corporately sponsored. Mostly they’ll walk around the big box stores where there are no real sales staff to discover them, but occasionally they’ll wind up here in the independents.” He kicked the thing again. “I’ve got four in a bin out back. I’m pretty sure they’ll have them GPS tagged, but nobody’s come offering to buy them back.”
As I stood again, I couldn’t help noticing the shop keeper was wearing Levi’s.
I nodded and smiled, then backed away slowly to where my cart sat abandoned. Without a word the butcher folded the thing at the waist and carried it past me up the aisle to the back room.
I decided to have chicken instead. That’s probably what the steak was made out of anyways.
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 13, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Carter Blake woke screaming into sweat soaked sheets again. It had been over a year, but the memories were still crystal clear and relentless; from the calm serenity of an afternoon patrol to the searing heat, the sudden impact and as his vision cleared, the view past the freshly cauterized stump where his right arm had been to the dusty blue sky.
He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, feeling the polished hardwood beneath his artificial feet. He scratched idly at the point where the real flesh of his thigh faded into the artificial and then stood, not missing the arthritic pain that had plagued his knees before the event.
Clasping his hands behind his back, one real, one a poor facsimile he pulled his arms back and up behind him, feeling the strain ease in his shoulders, then twisted hard left and right once to feel the satisfying pop as the pressure released in his spine.
He was parched.
The lights followed him from the bedroom into the eat-in kitchen, glowing dimly to guide him while respecting that it was still the middle of the night.
Carter fished through the glasses on the counter by the sink and found one with only water in it, which he dumped and refilled from the tap before downing it in several continuous gulps. He’d started drinking right handed again, now that he’d relearned how to hold things without breaking them.
From the kitchen he had a view across the empty living room to the full length window overlooking the city. The fog outside and the dim light inside turned the glass into a soft focused mirror, and he looked at himself. Turning sideways he flexed and posed like he’d done back in the day trying to impress the girls on the beach, but he didn’t recognize the man flexing back at him. He jumped, reflexively putting his arms up to cushion the blow as he reached the ceiling without even trying.
His legs below mid-thigh were artificial, some kind of bio-mechanical hybrid grafted onto what was left of his own body. His arm too was different, and although he’d stood here, in the early hours of countless sleepless nights watching the freak he was reflected in the glass, he still couldn’t rationalize his defect. Still couldn’t fully accept the man he saw in front of him. They had warned him there may be some rejection, but assured him he would adjust in time. How much time, he wondered.
Carter turned back to the kitchen and, fishing a bottle of bourbon from the counter and his Desert Eagle from the back of the cutlery drawer, sat himself down at the kitchen table beside the wirephone.
He opened the bourbon and took a generous drink straight from the bottle before lifting the phone off the cradle and dialing the Veterans hospital.
The phone rang twice before a young woman answered. “Worcestershire Memorial, good evening Sergeant Blake, trouble sleeping?”
Carter cradled the phone gingerly against his left ear and took a few deep breaths before replying.
“Please send someone quickly, there’s been an accident.”
Without waiting for a reply, he replaced the handset on the cradle, and with his artificial arm picked up the massive handgun, pushed the barrel into the fleshy crook of his elbow and pulled the trigger, shearing the limb off none to cleanly at the joint.
He considered that he should have perhaps tied off the arm first, but he expected the VA emergency response unit would be there quickly enough before the blood loss was too severe.
Then they would make him whole again, and this time rejection wouldn’t be a problem.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 14, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Eratz perched on the last of the big branches reaching out from the forest towards the massive clearing the space-farers had scorched into his landscape . His body stretched almost flush with the limb, lost in the blue leaves and rough bark, one leg and one arm stretched out completely, fingers and toes curled tightly around while the remaining arm and leg were tucked up, coiled to launch him into flight. His bare skin bristled in the cool nighttime air, its colour mimicking exactly the bark he had veneered himself to.
He waited.
Beneath him, like clockwork, the patrol of soldiers lumbered by. Copper skin covered in tribal markings, hair cropped short, heavy weapons cradled in well muscled arms. These were the off-world intruders, masters of brute force and ignorance.
Eratz barely breathed as they slipped by scant few meters beneath him completely unaware.
When they stopped at the perimeter midpoint, as they always did, Eratz narrowed his eyes to slits and focused on a point twenty meters beyond, above the fence line, and in his mind plotted the trajectory and landing. When he heard the lighter snick, the soldier’s night vision momentarily spoiled in the glare, Eratz launched, arms and legs coiling and uncoiling with the fury of purpose as he reached the end of the branch without so much as moving it and launched into the air. His groundward flesh took on the colour of the night sky, and his skyward flesh the colour of the ground as he spread his arms and legs, pulling tight the glider flesh and made the fence-line and that distance again beyond in a silent rush, before diving and coming to a complete stop, his body now blending completely with the ground as he flattened himself to it and cooled his body to its exact temperature.
He barely breathed, didn’t move, opened his ears as wide as he could and once again waited.
Beyond the fence he could make out the steady inhalation and exhalation of the soldiers as they smoked their cigarettes, the measure of their laboured breathing. He could hear the hardware shift as their weapons were repositioned at the end of well worn carrying straps.
There were no sounds of detection.
Eratz cooled and conserved until the soldiers resumed their patrol, then he resumed his forward motion.
He kept plastered almost completely to the ground, arms and legs coiling and uncoiling, joints bending so as to keep his body flat, its only motion forward towards the landing platform. Where the ground cover changed into the glasphalt of the landing pad, Eratz’ skin adjusted again, taking on the smooth flecked grey of the new material as he continued across its surface.
He moved slowly, steadily, closing the distance to the nearest starfighter with spider-like precision of movement and laser focus.
If he turned his head he’d be able to clearly make out the guard towers at either end of the compound, and the control tower looming overhead. He would be able to make out the eyes of those soldiers inside charged with protecting their equipment from just this sort of intrusion. He didn’t turn his head as he knew he didn’t need to. If they spotted him, if his skin betrayed his true colour, or his body temperature rose so much as half a degree he’d be gunned down in an instant, there was no value in foreknowledge of that eventuality should it occur.
Once beneath the safe cover of the nose gear, Eratz cycled through the schematics of this craft in his head, then slithered up the skid into the landing gear compartment, dialed open the maintenance hatch and crawled through the munitions access tube to the navigator’s compartment, then between the seats into the cockpit proper.
He ran through the startup sequence once from memory, then in a mad flurry of fired switches and interface overrides the vertical thrusters bathed the tarmac in flame as the craft shot up into the night sky, nosed down as the take off thrusters rotated for forward motion and the ship was gone, Eratz madly coding through all the tracking interfaces and shutting them down as he pushed the throttle as far as it would go.
These intruders had taught him the value of invisibility, and once he’d grafted that to their firepower he would teach them to disappear.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 1, 2015 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Zenn realized fairly quickly he’d misunderstood the conversation. Terrance Hopter had said “I’d like to hire you. Party at the beach house, Friday night, seven thirty.” Zenn agreed, and upon asking about the dress code Mr Hopter had said simply “black tie”, and terminated the call.
As soon as he climbed out of the cab he realized his mistake.
The guests were dressed in something between casual and not at all, it was the staff who were sporting black tuxedos.
This wasn’t the kind of work Zenn had done in a long, long time.
As he stood contemplating his options a pair of immaculately underdressed women exited a snub nosed sports coupe, the driver leaning in close and whispering in his ear as she slipped the valet fob and her hand down the front of his pants. “Make it shiny”, she squeezed, the smell of the chemostim on her breath made his lip curl.
He vacillated between fury and resignation as he piloted the coupe back to the parking lot. He owed Hopter, a lot. He assumed he would be able to work if off with honest jobs; wet work, demolitions, large scale data extraction or deletion. If this was Hopter’s idea of punishment, Zenn wasn’t playing.
In the lot he found the rest of the team he’d been most recently busted with. Zippo was picking through a pile of personal items he’d undoubtedly liberated from the parked cars, Turk was lying on the ground in front of the gatehouse, feet propped up on the wall, and Gaze was half way through the pass key rack taking inventory.
Zenn slammed the coupe door hard. “You believe this shit?” Zippo was the only one to look up. Turk just grunted.
Gaze spoke without turning around. “We’ve got the richest mothers in SoCal here tonight. Do you know how much money is unattended in these pricks homes while they’re here at this bohemian love fest?”
Zenn smiled.
“How many of them have orbital evac gear?”
The question stopped Gaze and turned her around.
“You planning on leaving?” She cocked her head to one side, a half smile forming on her lips.
“I think we all know where we stand with Hopp Crotch right now. None of these assholes are going to go anywhere for days. We pick a ride that comes with keys, that gets us in a house. Pick the right house and we have cash and evac lift to the orbital station, and anyone with an evac booster has a cruiser in a slip upstairs. We can be on a sub space ride before anyone even looks for their pants, much less anything else.”
Zippo stopped picking.
“Gaze, you plotted a money train off any of those keys?”
“You know I have.” The half smile widened to a grin.
“Turk? Zippo? Any reason to stick around here?”
Zippo stuffed some odds and ends in his pocket as he stood up and straightened his cuffs. “I don’t believe in reason.”
Turk just grunted.
—
Somewhere between the orbital relay and the shipyards on Mars the ownership of the cruiser they’d liberated changed several times, and before they left for good the ship was theirs clean and clear.
“Well then,” Zenn curled his fingers around the arms on the Captain’s chair, “here’s to new beginnings.”
Gaze and Zippo harmonized a hearty “Oorah”.
Turk just grunted.
