by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Andy knew he was a relic. He used to violently object when it was suggested that he was past his prime, but after a while the reality was too apparent to ignore.
It had been years, maybe decades since he’d been able to find factory fresh parts. Most of his equipment now was made up from bits scavenged and scrounged, then adapted as best he could.
Sometimes there would be an accident in the construction projects, and if he was lucky, and quick, he could tear off whole limbs or liberate power cells before the maintenance crews arrived to chase him away.
Most of these parts were too new, but some could be modified to fit, the rest traded away.
Andy found himself wandering through a section of the city that he remembered as it had been, vibrant and alive, but as he trudged down the streets and through the alleys, he found the roads in disrepair and littered with rubble and refuse. The once tall and gleaming buildings that reached skyward were now bent and broken, some leaning across the street on a neighbor, as if seeking comfort from the overwhelming decay.
This part of the city too, it seemed, had outlived its usefulness, now just awaiting its turn to be torn down and born again.
His head turned skyward, marveling at the battered structures holding each other aloft, Andy didn’t notice the road had given away before him until his weight had shifted too far over the empty space to recover.
Safety systems gone out of alignment and a battered gyroscopic guidance system struggled to orient him for a favorable landing, but Andy hit hard, scrambling circuits already oxidized to the point of being barely functional.
For a while, Andy was still, his world dark.
When he regained motor control, Andy pulled himself roughly and unsteadily upright. He was aware that he’d fallen, but could not recall the events preceding it. Around him he could make out the rough structure of a transit tunnel. Metal rails reached off in either direction in triplicate, no longer shiny from use but rather tarnished and pitted with age. Andy knew how they felt.
Andy picked a direction at random, and had trudged for some time before the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern on one side. In the middle, a pile of refuse burned surrounded by a cluster of shadowy figures who scattered into the darkness as he approached.
“Derelict maintenance droids, ” Andy muttered to himself, then loudly at the retreating figures, “if you were working for me I’d have your parts.”
Andy pulled himself up on the platform, then trundled to the fire, carefully stamping it out.
As he stood surveying the scene, he noticed one of the droids had not left, but rather was lying in a heap on the ground. Andy nudged its head with the toe of one large foot.
Nothing.
Excited, Andy pulled the droid into the middle of the platform where he had room to work. The droid was relatively small, but no doubt useful. As carefully as his tools would allow, Andy set to work disassembling the wiry unit.
Hydraulic fluid spilled everywhere, it’s plumbing obviously ruptured internally having no doubt resulted in overheating or loss of motor control.
Andy marveled at the delicacy of the inner workings of the unit, but was frustrated and confused that there didn’t seem to be a single part compatible with his own chassis.
Arriving back at the head, he examined the dent his foot had left in the casing. It was at this point that his headlights fell full on the droids eyes.
Andy paused, awestruck by the workmanship of these white and colored orbs staring back at him. They truly would be beautiful, Andy thought, if they weren’t so vacant.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
She watched him, often, from the other side of his bedroom mirror, a floor to ceiling affair that allowed her the privilege of spectating from the comfort of her own space.
He would come and go, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. He would wrap himself in sheets of colour, most times his companions would too, but other times they would press just their flesh against one another.
This fascinated her.
The shapes his face made were peculiar, and she began to recognize them as states of being. Sometimes his face was broad, his mouth wide, insides showing white and gleaming. Other times his face creased, contracted in upon itself, on occasion becoming shiny in patches as he quivered.
An unusual specimen to be sure.
She knew she was pleasing, knew from the various shapes and colours of the creatures he kept company with that she too could be satisfying to him, be satisfied by him. She was certain that he would share with her his illuminated state of being, the broad face and gaping maw that she believed was an indication of pleasure.
While he idled, resting, she reached out to him, siphoning away vibrations from his unconscious mind. These things excited her, these random experiential happenings that he shared so unknowingly.
She needed more from him.
There were times when he would stop while passing, looking at his mirror, looking right at her, as though he knew the mirror was merely a window, a portal into her space. She knew he could not see, knew with absolute certainty, but in these moments she froze, not daring to move. Sensations of fear, the need to escape overwhelmed her, but so did the need to stay, to be with him, to have him near her. He would shake away his gaze, his visage one of unusual creases, motion and contraction.
The sensations stayed with her for a time after he departed, and she found she was developing an insatiable appetite for them.
In the darkened hours, when the only light in his space was that filtering in from the portals to his outside world, she would thin the membrane between their spaces to its limit, pressing herself as closely to it as she dared without crossing over so as to be as close to him as was possible. Sometimes he would stare at her through the darkness, unsure of what he could see.
It was one such dark period that found them only the barest distance apart. He searching the darkness with his eyes, reaching tentatively towards a mirror that no longer showed a reflection he recognized, and she pressed against the membrane from the other side, frozen in place.
The sensations that flooded her senses were overwhelming, beyond even her ability to control them. She fought the urge to escape, to slip away, to opaque the wall between them and retreat to a safe distance. When his hand touched her from the other side, it was more than she could bear.
He slipped easily through the membrane, joining her in her own space without resistance. Where his hand first contacted her skin, she felt the heat of his presence, and she craved more of it. Enveloping him, she watched as his face began to undulate through the variations she was sure were those of pleasure. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, white endoskeletal elements exposed. His mouth gaped, closed and opened again, eyes wider as his body undulated, his fire radiating outward from him, through her into the cold vacuum of her space.
She found him beautiful, first in motion, then still.
Recognizing his stillness as a rest state, she contented herself with holding him as he cooled.
by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Harry nudged the body in the lobby with the toe of his boot, weapon unwaveringly pointed towards the head. Satisfied he was dead, Harry retrieved his knife and the man’s keys, turned and carefully locked the front doors.
The entrance secured, he stepped over the body, moved cautiously around the reception desk and slipped quiety through the doors deeper into the clinic.
From a distance, Harry could hear voices in a language he couldn’t make out.
Empty gurneys lined the hall, hospital-blue sheets cast grey in the dim after-hours lighting. At the first open door he paused, holding his gun down against his leg, two handed and ready, he peered around the doorway into the room. Empty. In the corner an LCD panel displayed the x-rays of the day’s last patient. Trans-tibial amputation. Left leg.
Continuing down the hall, the next doorway was closed off, light spilling into the passage through a plate sized portal at eye level. Harry stepped away from the door and allowed his eyes to adjust as he surveyed the room within. There was one doctor with his back to the door and two additional figures, gowned and masked passing instruments in response to barked instructions.
Harry wet his lips, then pushed open the door with his shoulder, bringing his gun to bear as he rotated into the room.
Two sets of eyes widened, then disappeared from view behind the table as his SIG Mauser barked twice, dropping the nurses where they stood.
The third figure spun about, scalpel pinched between thumb and forefinger, ready to cut.
“What are you doing? You can’t discharge a weapon in here, you’ll contaminate the merchandise.” The doctor’s English was crisp and matter of fact.
On the table behind him, Harry could make out part of a familiar phrase inked down the left arm the surgeon had been preparing to sever at the shoulder. “Fidelis”.
“You’ve made a bit of a mistake, Herr Doctor.” Harry moved away from the door, weapon leveled and steady. “That body you farmed this evening isn’t what you think.”
The doctor raised his hands slightly, the scalpel catching and reflecting the surgical lights overhead.
“Nothing more than some drunk soldier.” On the table Harry could see the body was covered in carefully drawn lines, a roadmap from which he was to be carved up like a side of beef. “Drunks are worthless alive, and this one less so if not promptly packaged. He’s losing value while you’re wasting my time. Get the hell out of my operating room, you’ve no idea who you’re messing with.”
Harry moved until he could see the supine man’s face, and the blossomed flesh of a bullet wound in the middle of his forehead.
“No, not ‘just a drunk soldier’. My drunk soldier, and my drunk soldier brought me here to see you.” Harry addressed the body on the table.
“Corporal, relieve the good doctor of his faculties.”
The doctor turned back to the table to find himself face to face with his naked cadaver, now sitting upright and eyeing him with a wolfish grin.
With lightening speed, the doctor lashed out with the scalpel, drawing it from the Corporal’s right shoulder along the line of his collarbone then upward to his throat. Where the skin peeled back, black carbon fibre mesh showed through from beneath flesh veneer. In a single motion, the Corporal grabbed the doctor by the throat, and standing, lifted him from the ground, the scalpel clattering to the floor.
“I’m afraid his parts won’t be much use to you.” Harry holstered his weapon and began rolling up his sleeves. “Your bits, however, are quite useful, and there are a few of our boys that you can rest assured will put them to good use.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Hans lay face down on the surgical table, completely immobilized and wide awake. His father’s rubber shoes moved in and out of his field of vision as the older man busied himself in preparation, his voice a constant hum of information in the otherwise empty room.
“We can’t effectively target inactive neural pathways, which is why you’re awake. You won’t feel anything, at least, I don’t think I did…” his father’s voice trailed off only for a moment. “If you do feel uncomfortable, be sure to speak up. We’ll want to make a note of when.”
His father double checked his handiwork, having laid out all the instruments he would need on a sterile back table nearby. Overhead hung a large spring-coiled umbilical of fibre optic cable truncated in a blunt two inch long conical tip. A second such cable snaked into the back of Hans Senior’s skull, following him as he moved about the room.
“The initial prototype is completely polarized,” he tapped the back of his head, “one way. The materials that the interface nodes fabricated from were by nature unidirectional.” Barely pausing between sentences he scrubbed the back of the boy’s neck with iodine before deftly slicing through the skin and subcutaneous layers with a scalpel.
“Still lucrative, even with its limitations. Reconnaissance personnel, witnesses, even the skin trade paid handsomely.”
From the table he plucked an insect like device of surgical steel and placed it over the incision. From it a myriad of tiny appendages unfolded, carefully holding aside the lacerated flesh before burrowing even deeper into the boys’ neck, then up into the base of his skull. At the required depth, it injected a thin catheter and, its task completed, simply stopped in place.
“Frustrating how long it took to solve the polarizing issue. So much time, lost.”
Hans Senior unpackaged a fibre cable socket with a long single organic strand trailing from it. Grasping it with a set of forceps, he fed the strand into the catheter.
“This will be so much better for you than it was for me.” No sooner had the strand contacted the tube, it began to pull itself in. Hans’ head flooded with sights, sounds, and smells that he hadn’t known in years. The strand divided and doubled back on itself, only to divide again, sending countless atom thin filaments off into Hans’ grey matter. His father held the endcap until the strand had reeled in all of its slack before carefully guiding it into the still waiting insectile appliance.
The tiny unit came back to life, grasping and aligning the jack with the flesh. It then glue stitched the inner layers to the device below the surface, and sutured the outer skin to its perforated outer edge.
Its job complete, the mechanism detached, and allowed itself to be picked up and set aside with the other bloodied instruments.
Hans felt the restraints relax, followed by a flood of sensation, not all of it pleasant.
“The pain should subside in a few days.” The older man helped his son into a sitting position before grasping the unattached cable from overhead and positioning it behind the boy’s head. There was a strobe of light and a magnetic snapping as the two ends oriented themselves and fitted together.
His father stood in front of him, and closed his eyes.
Hans felt a strange pressure in his head, then had a sudden awareness of why his father had pushed so hard to implant him now.
“You’re dying.” It wasn’t a question, the facts had been laid out for him.
“Yes. I’ve used up my life. I’ve learned so much, but there’s so much left undone.”
Hans felt the pressure again, followed by waves of knowledge. Not all of it was pleasant either.
by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 7, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Arway sat down gently at the desk. Dust was already starting to gather, defying the environment scrubber’s valiant attempts to keep the air spotless.
Two weeks, maybe three.
Careful not to disturb anything, he leaned as close as he dared to the desk’s surface and breathed in slowly, deeply. Hundreds of particles raced through his sinus, and he unconsciously rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth as they were identified, cross referenced and catalogued.
Without realizing, he’d closed his eyes as he took in the recent history of the space. He opened them quickly, hoping no one had noticed. Turning slowly, first left, then right, the entire gestalt of the working space was absorbed. Conventional writing instruments, ink dried on their rollerball tips. A collection of sticky notes, brief and cryptic impressions left behind from notes long taken and discarded. A transceiver for the holodeck pickup that he’d stepped over at the door. The contents of the machine it had last interfaced with was already downloaded, its information being indexed against the new data as Arway absorbed it. As he worked, patterns flared up in his line of sight, connections drawn in faint light-lines between objects in the real space around him; hyperlinked notes, tags associating items with each other and her file. There was a nearly infinite number of rabbit holes, each ranked as to their relevance by the intensity of their colour signature.
Arway stood up, and stepped back into the middle of the room.
Two uniformed officers and a plain clothes detective stood by the door, murmuring to each other in hushed tones. Their conversations were also logged, but their words were just so much static to Arway. He was used to their discomfort and resentment.
When he spoke, the three other men stopped talking and listened.
“She was here. She disconnected from virtual sixteen days ago, but stayed here for two days unplugged before leaving. There’s no evidence of electronic funds transfer anywhere near her.”
While he spoke, he stood staring blankly at the desk, not looking at the men behind him.
“She was living off soup and bread, but not it eating here. Probably visiting a food line nearby. She was bringing coffee back, dark roast – mostly Sumatra. That’s not food line coffee, she had to be buying that though there’s no evidence of hard currency. No paper dust, no ink scent, no trace. Whatever she’s spending she’s keeping it vacuum sealed for safety. We won’t be able to trace where her money’s coming from until she slips.” She wasn’t going to slip.
He flexed his shoulders underneath the heavy trenchcoat before continuing. The cramping muscles would soon bring on a headache if he didn’t work them out.
“She was alone. Her clothes are not laundered. No soap, lots of body residue. Dermis samples are present but no hair. She’s either shaving outside or inhibiting. Wherever she is, if she’s not laying down, she’s not leaving much of a footprint. While she was online she logged on average eighteen and one half hours of activity per day. Targets encrypted, currently decoding, information to follow.”
The detective interrupted from the doorway. “Targets? Multiple?”
Arway turned to look at him, the milky sheen of his implants catching the detective off guard as he tried to keep eye contact, forcing him to look away.
“Targets. Multiple.”
It was one of the uniforms that broke the silence that followed.
“Looks like your partner’s gone right off the reservation, eh Arway?”
The comment he filed away with the static, too immersed in the data of her presence to care what they thought.
They expected him to hunt her. He just wanted to understand.
