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.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Jackson3 walked home from the factory in knee deep snow, although the snow bothered him about as much as the sun did in the summer, which was not at all. The water couldn’t penetrate his joints, and a thin layer of laser warmed air kept the moisture away from his lenses. He dragged his boots as he walked, using his heavy angular feet to clear as wide a path on the walkways as possible for the people who might travel there after him. Most people weren’t weatherproof.
As he passed by the scaffolding where the workers were refacing the old Drake, he stopped, unclipped his carry-all and fished inside.
“Hey Jacks. Some crazy snow. How’s the factory today?” The voice preceded the middle aged man from the shadows, and Jackson3 waited as he carefully unfolded himself from the cardboard and tarpaulin shelter he kept tucked out of the wind.
“Snow is snow Peter, it has neither life nor intellectual capacity, so therefore it cannot be crazy.” Jackson3 watched as the man shook his head. “The factory also lacks life and intellectual capacity, which may be why they continue to provide three meals each day to its workers, even to those who cannot eat.”
Jackson3 held out the foil packages to Peter, who took them gratefully as he shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot in the snow.
“How come you feed me? I mean, I appreciate that you do, but I don’t understand why you come here every day and feed me.” Peter searched Jackson’s featureless bare metal visage for any sign of emotion, but there was no indication of any kind of feeling, and yet the metal man stopped each and every day.
Jackson3 closed up his carry-all, and rotated it on its strap under his armpit and back up into the middle of his back out of the way of his massive arms.
“You’re alone. I’m alone. We loners must take care of each other.” With that he turned and trudged off into the snow, leaving Peter still shuffling in the cold.
At the end of the street Jackson3 turned left, and marched against the wind the remaining few blocks to his building. Years ago his credentials would have automatically opened the front door and called the lift, but both stopped working some time ago, so he took the stairs at the East end of the lobby and climbed the four flights to his floor and let himself into room four nineteen. He took the three steps into the middle of the dark and empty unit, fished the power cable from where it dangled from the ceiling and plugged it into his charging receptacle.
There was still no power.
He could read the display in the corner of his visor. Twenty two percent. He could stay powered up while on the job, but his fuel cell was almost depleted, and clearing snow all the way home took almost as much power as he could store. It would be hard to make it back to work in the morning without a live feed to charge with overnight. When he was new, his fuel cells could maintain him for weeks at a time, but the company didn’t provide replacements to line workers, and without a wage or patron, his options were few.
As Jackson slowly powered down everything he wouldn’t need until morning, he heard footsteps in the hall, and then a knock on his door.
“Hey Jacks, I’ve got a present for you.” Peter once again appeared from the shadows and wandered blindly into the room. He took off his own backpack and, putting it down on the floor, opened it to retrieve four fuel cells still in their factory plastic wrap.
“It’s kind of funny, your factory gives you food you can’t eat, and social assistance gives me fuel cells for hardware I can’t afford.” He held the cells out to Jackson3, who accepted them tentatively.
“Why–” Jackson3 started, but Peter cut him off gently.
“You’re alone. I’m alone.” He smiled. “We loners gotta take care of each other.”
With that he turned and as he headed back through the door he called over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow Jacks”, and left one kind of cold to go back to his own.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 17, 2014 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
“It’s a pure stroke of genius that I was able to downsize the stabilizer assembly in time for the conference.” Stuart fiddled with his bowtie with his free hand while piloting the sedan with the other. “Does this look alright?”
His wife leaned forward and reached to straighten her husband’s tie as he cut her off. “Of course it’s alright, you need to make sure not to answer any technical questions tonight, I want complete control over the disclosure.”
It was her work that allowed them to pack the stabilizer assembly into one of the containers that took up most of the back seat. She bit her tongue and focused her attention instead on the passing trees just beyond the cone of their headlights.
“There’s going to be a lot more of this, they’re going to want me on the conference circuit, that’s for certain.” He adjusted the rearview mirror to fuss with his hair, gone awry with the mid-summer humidity. “Publication and talk shows, I’ll be gone a lot.”
Julia mused that even sharing a bed and most of their waking moments together, he was seldom entirely present.
“We should be able to push a minute or two on the battery charge, and longer if we get power to the backup, but we’re still not stable on the grid, are we?” He paused and looked right at her, was the man she’d once loved still in there somewhere? “You could have put a little more effort into that, a couple of minutes back isn’t nearly as dramatic as I was hoping for.”
No. That man was gone.
Stuart checked his phone again and read the few new congratulatory texts and emails.
“Stuart, please, pay attention.” Julia tensed in her seat as the car drifted over the centerline. He looked up and corrected, a pair of headlights sliding by punctuated by a long angry horn blast.
“Don’t backseat drive Julia, I am paying attention.” He put his phone upside down in the cupholder and fished for the charging cable to attach to it. “And don’t correct me during my speech tonight either, I hate it when you do that.”
Because you’re usually wrong when you’re talking about my part of the project, Julia thought to herself. She shook her head and looked from the road ahead to where he fumbled one handed with his phone.
“Here, let me do that, you drive.” She picked up the phone and he snatched it back.
“Leave that alone–” The glare of headlights caught the words in his throat, and he jerked back into his lane seconds before they both felt the tires lose their grip on the asphalt. The car began a slow rotation until the oncoming vehicle hammered them where their trunk encroached on its lane, spinning them violently in the opposite direction before stopping abruptly, the ragged end of an already damaged guardrail skewering the passenger door and Julia’s right side.
For a moment there was silence, Julia in complete shock as blood pooled in her lap.
“Jesus Christ, why didn’t you leave it alone?” Stuart was screaming at her, but the words seemed muffled in her ears.
She had a hazy awareness of him climbing in the back seat of the car, opening the cases and wiring up their demonstration equipment, and then in a flash of white light–
–he jerked back into the lane, then immediately over corrected, losing control and catching the passenger wheels on the gravel shoulder, putting the car into a long skid that he couldn’t correct before–
–he pulled back into the lane slowly, but the oncoming car had already swerved, losing control on the far shoulder and hitting them fender to fender head-on, sending them into a violent sideways slide before they hit–
–he hammered the brakes, the tires losing grip on the wet pavement putting the car into a slow-motion sliding turn until the–
“Stuart!” Julia screamed at him as he climbed into the back seat for the fifth or fiftieth time. He hesitated. “Stuart stop, please stop.”
“Julia, I almost got it last time, if I can–”
She cut him off for once. “Stuart, stop. You keep killing me, just let me die.”
She held his arm until she was sure the few minutes had passed, and then they both let go.
