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.
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 28, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Nathan hated fighting with Claire. It was inevitable; they’d been awake and otherwise alone with the ship, tending to its needs, granting their minds a temporary reprieve from the long sleep. If you spent a few months alone with only your partner hurtling through deep space, you’d find things to disagree on too.
He never meant to argue, she was just so pig-headed sometimes. Before he knew it a rolled eye and sharp comment became a tennis match of barked recriminations and rebuttals, and the inevitable storming off to opposite ends of the ship.
He watched her from his perch in the observation deck as she moved among the rows of plants in the greenery below. The outer hull plates were transparent now, the ship having rolled towards a star similar enough to Sol, so close as to provide light, yet distant enough not to scorch the delicate plant-life. He studied her as she stripped to the waist and soaked up the sun’s rays herself.
It was his captivation with the sheer beauty of her that afforded him the best possible view as a cluster of meteoroid’s lacerated the hull, tearing through the weakened greenery hull-plates like hot knives through fresh snow.
Nathan screamed at Claire’s upturned panicked face before the defense systems hardened the hull, opaquing his view and hers.
Nathan ran. He barely heard the warning messages describing the breach, and the steps being taken to contain it. He threw himself headfirst down the vertical shaft towards the core channel, grabbing the lower rungs of the ladder as he exited and with jarring force flipping himself to land feet first on the floor below. Sprinting to the greenery doors, he found them sealed tight.
He could only watch through the window of the door, pounding with flattened palms until his hands stung while mechanical spiders attached plate and injected alloy to repair the damaged hull inside.
On the ground, scant metres from where he stood helpless, a maintenance droid methodically held and sliced the scaffolding and shattered structure that had Claire pinned to the deck. Carefully removed pieces were set aside as it busied itself with freeing her. While it carved, a surgical droid scanned, glued and stitched the broken pieces of her body as they became accessible, it’s hands flitting in and around the cutters and clenched claws of the much heavier machine towering over it.
By the time the atmosphere was stabilized, and the doors opened, Nathans hands were numb and Claire was fully exposed on the floor. Her body was a latticework of suture lines and micropore patches, and while her chest raised and lowered, he could see the labour of her breathing. The surgeon stood still, its chest a billboard of vitals, its work done save for the occasional jolting of Claire’s heart back to motion. Nathan could see she was struggling, the muscle repaired but the shock to her system too great.
“You can’t leave me here, you can’t leave this all to me.” His voice caught in his throat, tears rising unbidden.
“You can’t quit, I need your help, I can’t do this by myself.” There was a too long moment of silence until the surgeon reminded her heart to keep beating.
Nathan felt his anger rising. “This is just like you, storming away from anything that seems too hard.” He found himself yelling without meaning to.
In his mind he saw Claire at their last argument, balled up fists and the fire of purpose in her eyes.
Nathan dropped to his knees, gently placed his cheek against hers and whispered, “I don’t want to live without you. I love you. Please don’t go.”
His tears fell warm against her skin, the only sound the now steady beating of her heart.
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
This is the first time I’ve been awake in… I don’t know. Months? Years?
The sentence they gave me was a twenty year stint in this meat locker. There’s nobody around to tell me how far in I am.
The air in here is brutally stale; heavy with the smell of sweat and piss. I should be on line air, and this can’s supposed to be sealed tight. It’s not though, there’s something wrong with the system and they’ve cracked all the lids so we can breathe.
Thoughtful bastards.
I must be on the downslope of this thing, my muscles don’t respond worth shit and I can feel the edges of my teeth where my gums are peeling back. That doesn’t happen overnight.
Some water would be nice, my mouth feels like something crawled in it and died. There’s nobody around to fetch a drink either.
Whatever they’ve broken, they’d better fix it soon. I’m not sure how long I’ve been awake in here; days I think, maybe a week or two.
Twenty years as a popsicle didn’t seem so bad at the start. Go to sleep, wake up and I deal with what I deal with when I get out. But this… this is inhumane.
I can feel the halo they screwed into my skull, the tugging and nagging pressure of the lead tapped in through the bone.
I think they jarred it when they took the lid off.
Or was it putting the lid back on?
I can’t remember, how long have I been awake? Days? Weeks?
Or am I still asleep?
Twenty years as a popsicle. Never occurred to me it could be so cold.
