by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Tensevn broke cover on the fourth floor landing and sprinted flat out across the entire expanse of the building, hurdling the refuse of a hundred years of vacancy to take refuge in the fire escape on the South side. Beneath and behind him he could feel and hear his pursuer’s weapon reach through the concrete floor slabs, reducing the iron rebar inside to molten liquid and vapour.
“Quit running puppet, you’re only wasting my time.” The voice amplified, modulated, designed to strike fear into the enemy. It just pissed T off.
The fire escape still tenaciously gripped the exterior of the building. T wasn’t sure he’d reach the fifth floor before it too was dripping down to the broken asphalt below.
He found a fist sized chunk of rubble, tossed it far into the middle of the room then took the stairs three at a time to the next floor just as the trooper below realized the distraction and brought his cannon to bear on the space he’d just vacated. The metal sublimated in a hot mist, leaving T panting in an open doorway with reentry his only option.
“You’re fast, little puppet, unnaturally fast. It’s a shame I have to eliminate you, it would be interesting to take you apart and learn how you tick.”
T scanned the gloom of the floor in front of him, the middle littered with furniture and old filing cabinets, vacant desks lining the outside walls where windows, once filled with glass and sunshine were now just so many gaping wounds in the old corporate facade.
Taking a deep breath, he started a slow jog around the perimeter. Beneath him, the trooper’s weapon whined to life and started tracing his path just a few steps behind him. He could feel the energy, even through two floors and so many meters of concrete, the effect was painful. His heart fluttered, his breathing laboured as the weapon made it harder for his blood to move oxygen from his lungs. He sped up, trying to keep just ahead of the beam as he ran a complete lap of the floor, surveying the East and West fire escapes as he passed them, then half way around again to the same Northside stairwell he’d vacated on the floor below.
Here he waited and listened to the shuffle of heavy feet from the ground floor. His pursuer wasn’t following, just holding court in the atrium space turning slow circles, listening for any sign of his prey.
The building creaked and moaned, the stench of vapourized iron filling his nostrils.
“Why won’t you die, fucker? Why will you not die?” The voice was strained, T could hear the frustration even through the modulation. It made him smile.
He broke cover again and ran another lap, this time in the opposite direction. Again the rising whine, louder this time. The hunter turning up the output, no longer playing games. Behind him hot rivulets of orange metal burst steaming from the ceiling, above him sharp cracks as the superheated rebar shattered the concrete structure. T accelerated, then jumped through the opening onto the East side fire escape as the entire floor above sheared along the fault lines he’d tricked the trooper into tracing as he ran, the weapon weakening the structure until it could no longer hold its own weight. The sixth floor pancaked onto the fifth, tearing it free, then together they picked up the fourth floor, accelerating through the atrium space to crush the unprepared hunter into the basement below.
“Naturally fast, asshole. Naturally smart too. Comes from being a meat brain you metal headed fuck.”
Tensevn clung panting to the battered fire escape until the wind had cleared the dust and he could see the ground. He couldn’t afford to slip here, a fall would hurt like hell.
by Clint Wilson | Feb 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
He walked and he calculated. The intense red sun beat down yet, as always, the suit kept things temperate. He urinated without thinking, and on he walked. He glanced at his wrist and saw that it was nearly rest time.
The dry little planet was about 28,000 kilometers in circumference and by figuring his average walking speed he knew he might encounter his own footprints soon enough.
His chronometer beeped at him just as he spied a nice sand pile to lie back against. There weren’t many options. There was sand, rocks, and more sand. He lay back against his uncomfortable bed and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what he might do next after circumnavigating his dusty prison. The problem was the suit worked too damn well. And while his will to survive trundled along stubbornly within him, the tired part of his mind wished that some misfortune would befall him so he could just die quickly. He had been in the wretched thing for months now and could not take it off, could never take it off unless rescued. The air out there was poisonous and thin, the pressure drastically low. Every day he considered picking up a rock and smashing his face shield. But what if he only managed to crack it? A slow death was not on his agenda.
He slept furtively, dreaming of the accident and his so-called escape to this place. The screeching of metal as the hull tore apart, the explosions, finding the stray survival suit floating in the weightlessness.
They had already fallen into close orbit around the nearest planet as per emergency procedures, and just in time for his sake. As he had jettisoned into the stratosphere, feeling the crushing g-forces from the suit’s rockets slowing his orbital speed, he had watched Surveyor III disintegrate. He was the only one to make it out. No other white suits had followed. Then he had waited patiently for the chute to open. Had it sprung from his back too soon it would have been ripped uselessly away and he would have taken many long minutes to fall to his death.
He awoke and saw that the sun was nearly down. No matter, his helmet lights would show him the way as they did every night. He got up and trudged on westward, his back to the setting red dwarf.
There was microscopic biological material here, nothing registered as life but just the same there was ample matter along with moisture blowing around in the dusty atmosphere for the suit to continuously make food for his intravenous inputs. When he had first arrived it had been a worry. Despite all the suit’s capabilities he would surely starve or die of thirst on this rock, but surprisingly both the suit and the planet were still keeping him alive after all this time.
But what was the use? He could not be sure if their distress signal had ever been received. For all he knew no one in the universe knew he was here.
Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. On this journey he had previously had to skirt around canyons, mountains and other obstacles to maintain his linear course but this was a big crevasse, and with the sun down behind him now all was black before him. He took several small steps and then cautiously leaned forward to allow the helmet’s bright floodlights to shine down a nearly vertical wall with no bottom in sight.
He wondered how deep it was. Surely deep enough to smash a face shield he thought.
by submission | Feb 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Phil Newton
Sammy always used his polished titanium Tek-Tech Grav Boots to reach the Hundred Foot High Branch — cheater. I climbed. I climbed well. Still, grav boots were cool. I wish my parents had money.
‘Wiry’, that’s what coach called me. I should try wrestling. I needed more meat on my bones if I wanted to play football.
Sammy wasn’t cut out for football or wrestling, he carried too much meat. He would never be mistaken for wiry. On the other hand, he was the king of the cheap shot. That didn’t win him any friends. He didn’t need any. His parents had money.
Sammy always beat me to the high branch, but I was closing the gap. Grav boots were cool, but they weren’t fast. I was fast — getting faster. Sammy knew. Sammy feared. I overheard him whining to his dad over his wrist com. He wanted the upgrade. His dad refused. Sammy would wear him down. He always did. Sammy was a whining sissy baby. Still, grav boots were cool. I wish my parents had money.
My path is memorized. My muscles recalled each gap, the bounce of each branch. Yesterday, I nearly beat Sammy, even though I slipped on my second step. Sammy saw the inevitable end of his reign. His upgrade will be delivered tomorrow. I could not afford a mistake today.
My climb was perfection. I even flipped up from my last handhold into my perch atop the Hundred Foot High Branch. Sammy didn’t care for my show-boating, though he probably would have kicked me regardless. Grav boots are cool, and titanium is hard.
Sammy the rich boy…
Sammy the ass…
Still, half-way down I’m wishing my parents had money.
by Julian Miles | Feb 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
She cries into my arms as they come for us. Such a simple thing, this expression of heartbreak through physical reflex.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
Her hand brushes my cheek and curls around my neck. So soft. The touch is like a feather landing on a still afternoon.
“But you came back. You came back.”
I bow my head and crouch a little more to accommodate her legs as she brings them up to hook over my thighs.
“They can’t take you away again. No. I can’t do this anymore.”
I hear them approaching. Six units, two rolling heavy with ranged firepower, two clattering with ten man fire teams, one jingling with the medical team and one silent with command damping.
She hugs me hard and looks up at me. So small. So very precious. I agree with her totally. This time, we will not be separated. She senses my resolve and smiles with shimmers playing across her eyes in the unshed tears. Her words are a whisper with an adamantine core.
“We stay together or we go together.”
I nod. It was inevitable that it would come to this. So sad but so right. A love such as this cannot be denied by the actions of others. She slips from my arms and leans back against me.
“Show me, Sam. Show me what makes the enemy cry and why those who brought you back fear you so much.”
The acceptance in her voice is a release for my final doubt. I straighten up and deploy. Three metres of silken black ceramic biped blossoms as the shutters on my back release and tensor wings unfurl, blue-green in the streetlights. They arc two metres above my head and spread a metre either side of me. The irises on my forearms and calves open and my nyotentacles extend, their tips fading into invisibility where the monomolecular edges begin. My eyes are covered by silver lenses as my tactical comes up. I feel the faint vibration as my head deforms, rising in two peaks to reveal the needle laser cluster above the chronomantic array in my nasal cavity. With a casual flick of my elbow I drive a nanofilament down into the ground, fraying out to grab power feeds and data lines. I charge my combat arrays and my laminate dermal armours sparkle with slate fields. With a thought, I find that I can shape the fields around her as long as she remains in physical contact. My diagnostics tell me the little black gun she carries is a piconuke launcher with a ten pack. I pass the mapping of my environment to the augmentations and return to normal perceptions. Her voice shows as warm blue waves that fade into words as I shift sensory inputs.
“…beautiful, Samuel. My reincarnate angel, will you fly me away when you go?”
I have a voice in this form: “I shall. Never to be parted again.”
She smiles, tears still running down her face. The convoy turns the corner and screeches to an untidy stop when they see me fully deployed. No contrition this time. From the limo, a black uniformed figure strides down the road to stop a few steps away and regard us with her hands on her hips and tears in her eyes.
“Samuel, I give up. Despite the screaming of my scientists, I am going to take empirical proof and give you and Talia married quarters. Then we can all try to work out what they did right, because I am actually jealous of you two.”
by Duncan Shields | Feb 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.
The stew of Oddtown. The people that lived here knew that they’d never work in a place that required a dress code let alone a mannered way of behaving. The modifications they had done to themselves were extreme.
There was work that a person could get done that was reversible. Horns, smaller tattoos, piercings, subdermal implants, that sort of thing.
Judge’s kids got those to show that they were rebelling against a society that they didn’t create. All tasteful and done in places that could be covered up by business suits and hairstyles in later life when they realized that their destiny was to be a benefit to society rather than a burden.
They took their little rebellious walk in the wilderness on Oddside. If they were lucky, they made it back out with a few ‘hardcore’ stories and some street cred with the other kids from rich families. Learned a few staring tricks for negotiations in the boardroom when they finally accepted Daddy or Mommy’s tuition and went to law school. Memories to make them think that they had a soul or had experienced ‘real life’ for at least a little bit.
If they were unlucky, they met up with the people that didn’t give a fuck about their parents or futures. A few shots of crackoin later, a few hours of video later, and few ransom demands later, a few brain burns later, and the little girls and boys from the rich side of town ended up in pieces amongst the garbage bags in the alleys. Either that or just stumbling around dead-eyed until they starved to death.
But the smart inhabitants of Oddside realized that these kids had money and would soon be running things. Becoming friends with these kids could be good down the road. Ever since the inheritance act was passed, the poor became poor forever and the rich angled with each other for more money. The gulf between the two societies became an uncrossable trench littered with the Icarus skeletons of people who tried.
It’s all about appearance.
Take Mannycentric, for instance. He had robotic, cherry-red fists the size of oil drums. His shoulders and biceps were grafted to take the weight. If he relaxed, his knuckles dragged on the ground. Those fists could knock chunks out of buildings when they were fully charged. They weren’t gloves. The birth-meat of his forearms and hands was long gone.
Killie had antlers and four hearts. Her scars and tattoos ran the gamut from tribal to baroque. Not much of her original skin still showed. Hundreds of small, scalloped shark fins inserted from her tailbone up to her shoulder blades turned her entire back into a cheese grater.
Flail had extra joints installed in his legs. He ran like a deer and leapt like a flea. He had the buttonhole pupils of a goat.
They were currently letting a blonde rich girl buy them drinks and impressing her with violent stories, watching her eyes grow wide, feeling her excitement growing. She obviously thought she had a wild streak and was ready for whatever the night threw at her. She was wrong. Manny, Flail and Killie had been promised a hundred credits to deliver her to the Skinner. They were just waiting for the roofies to take effect. If they didn’t need the money, they might have tried to make her a friend.
It was a way of life down here to prove how far you were willing to go.
