Tag: Futuristic

Bonus Short Story: Make It Worth It

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

“It began with an election,” she said, sparking a cigarette in a way that would’ve made James Dean jealous.

The old rebel could’ve never hoped to imitate it though; She had a booted-foot kicked up backward against a sheet-metal warehouse. Her leather pants were tucked into her calf-high boots, tight enough to say her legs were slender, beautiful, and chromed polyalloys– forced augments after an accident had claimed the real ones. The slightest hint of electric blue encircled her hazel irises, said she’d only elected to get her HUD installed afterward.

Her eyes morphed between brown and green with tilts of her head as she took a long drag. She flicked ash at the gusts with one natural hand, the other stuffed in her pocket and unmoving. Another bionic, claimed with her legs by the same awfulness. Like them, there was an angular rigidity to her otherwise soft, supple face, that screamed alloy bone-weaves. Maybe it was the cheeks, or forehead, their skin stretched a little too unnaturally to be organic.

She took another drag, and plumed smoke, “It began with an election, like most shit-storms in history. World War two did– pretty much anyhow. Hitler’s election sealed the world’s fate. Truman’s election sealed Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s fates. Even Vietnam’s fate was sealed by Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Hell, the only reason Nixon pulled out was ’cause he was too damned corrupt to keep track of everything.”

She scoffed angrily, then flicked more ash.

“Whatever. Point is, everything begins with an election, or the lack thereof, or the assassination of some smart-mouthed politician. We humans and our trust… we really gotta’ learn we’re all out for ourselves. Even I’m only telling you this for the sake of it not being forgotten, ’cause I don’t want it to be.”

Her lone audience member was inert, his HUD recording her every move and word.

She sighed, “Anyway, the great American hive-mind voted in some businessman who’d gotten a wild hair up his ass to be president. He wanted to run the country like a business ’cause we had money problems. Big fuckin’ deal, who doesn’t? Problem was, just about every business he’d run, he’d actually run into the ground. Sorta telling looking back, huh?”

She was quiet for a moment, staring out across the horizon. Between the two sides of the harbor there were enough rundown, ramshackle, sheet-metal warehouses to prove her point. Behind them, their horizons rose in waves of countless skyscrapers. Corporate logos and digital billboards were splattered across them in sickening, electric colors from LEDs and Neon signs, offensive to the otherwise unrelenting gray that formed the sky.

It wasn’t hard for anyone to see the corporate-takeover she was referring to. It managed to enslave a good portion of the country to their government’s debts and screw everyone in the process.

“So this guy,” she said animatedly with her smoking hand. “Gets elected with all these promises to dick around certain, specific groups of people. The country fuckin’ eats it up, like he’s some god damned spunk-shooting john and they’re all his whores swallowing for their payday.”

She snorted a burst of air like a desperate laugh. Her lone audience member gave a silent chuckle to himself.

She continued astutely, “So they lap it all up, like good little servants, and the bastard gets his pay day. He gets on Capitol Hill, and lo and behold, suddenly he’s writing all these laws, submitting ’em to Congress.”

She flicked her cigarette to the ground, pulled another from her pocket with the other hand. The augment’s hand was a chrome skeleton, like an old terminator’s, but with forty-years and billions more in research behind it.

“All these laws getting submitted– and eventually passed– were fed through a Congress bought and paid for by companies lobbying for certain agendas to be passed.” She covered her mouth a moment to spark a lighter with her augment, then shoved both back into her pockets until it was time to flick ash again. “The country knew even then it was happening,” she admitted angrily. “But we couldn’t do anything. Congress had the power, and the corporations had Congress. Even the fuckin’ President helping them didn’t have more than the power of suggestion. But see, that was the thing, they gave him the suggestions. Then when the time came, he shoved those bills into the legal system and their cronies passed ’em without ever realizing they were being so wholly manipulated. Or if they did, they didn’t care. After all, billions were being paid out to collectively keep them complicit!”

She’d gotten herself into such a fury she was forced to pause to calm down. She did it over the span of a couple of drags. Then, with her augged hand, she produced a flask and threw down a gulp. She offered it to her listener, and he swigged with a “thank you” and a wince.

When she started up again, she was calmer, more morose, “So the corporations passed all these laws without any oversight or consideration of the “common” man. With a few, specific laws, they nullified almost all privacy, Citizen’s rights, and any hopes for peacefully assembling against them.”

She took another drink from the flask, then twisted the cap on with the hand, her cigarette between two, real fingers. She slipped it back into her pocket with a casual move and her augged hand disappeared again.

“A lotta’ people then thought people like me– the ones that saw where we were heading– were nut-job conspiracy theorists. You’d think after we’d been proven right about governmental agencies spying on us they’d have at least given us the benefit of the doubt. But nope. Instead we got the same old rigmarole. We were paranoid, lying, or just plain crazy.”

She stared off for a moment, her thoughts elsewhere. Her listener wondered if he should say something to keep her going, but she sighed, shook her head, and looked at the ground.“If we’d been smarter, maybe we’d have rebelled then and there.” Her eyes rose at him again, “But we didn’t. Instead, we took it, hoping one day things would turn out better. Now we’re all screwed. Over the course of a decade, the corporations and that lame-brain puppet we called a President completely overwrote the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Their friends on Wall Street and in their corporate towers were the only ones that benefitted. Meanwhile, we became slaves to corps, so weighed down by debt and fear of the monsters looming over us we’re petrified against action.”

She drifted off on this thought. Her distant look of depression told her listener that his only recourse was to speak. He wasn’t sure what to say though. Instead, he reiterated his initial question– the one that had led to the history lecture.

“So… that’s why you’re taking off? The corps? What about your friends? What about me?”

She sighed, “One day you’re gonna’ learn that the only reason we’re all poor and living on the street’s ’cause we weren’t ready to let go of things and fight back. When that day comes, maybe you’ll let go and take off too. Maybe then you’ll find me again. I hope so, anyhow. I like you, but you’re too young and I’m too old. The gap between’s still too much.”

He shook his head, “I think you’re just running off ’cause you’re afraid.”

She put her one, real hand on his shoulder, “We’re all afraid, Ra. What separates us is how we react to that fear, what it turns us into. Me? It’s turned me into a fighter. If it just made me afraid, why would I run off to follow rumors of the resistance?”

He couldn’t argue with her logic. Then again, she was a decade older than him, and in her late twenties. He’d only just turned eighteen. He doubted he’d ever be able to outsmart her, or even win an argument. Still, he loved her, and she seemed to care about him.

For this last point he made a case, “If you didn’t care you wouldn’t be lecturing me.”

She shrugged, “Maybe that’s the other reason I’m going. There’s no place for love in this world. No place for caring or kindness. It’s all cold calculus and living and dying by the dime. Maybe you oughta’ think about that. Maybe I do love you, and maybe that’s too hard to deal with until I do something to change things.”

He wasn’t sure if she was speaking in earnest or whether she was just trying to shake off his questions. He liked to think the former, if only to keep himself hopeful.

She flicked away her last butt, and lifted her pack to a shoulder, “One day, if the world’s meant to have love in it, we’ll find each other. Until then, stay safe, and know there’s at least one person out there fighting for you. So make it worth it.”

She turned away, her face steeled against undeniable emotions. Ra watched her leave, wondering if he’d ever see her again. At the very least, he knew for certain he’d follow her soon enough. One day, he’d find the courage to say enough was enough, and seek out the resistance. Until then, he’d remain forced to scour the ghettos for food and shelter, his only thoughts otherwise always of her. He’d make it worth it, no matter what. It was the least he could do for her.

Short Story: Chameleon

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The pale glow of moonlight threw streaks of white across a puddle of warm, crimson blood. It formed a wet trail along hardwood flooring, slivered between strands of dry floor that shined of freshly-dried lacquer. The trail grew toward the wretch at its source as he drug himself forward. Light steps tamped a rhythm behind him, their gait paced to miss the blood entirely. The effeminate figure’s thin legs stepped forward with an almost reptilian sway toward the soon-to-be corpse.

A hand grabbed the old wretch by the shoulder, began to morph as it turned him over. The five-fingered hand turned to a four-clawed, reptilian fore-foot. The face of the sultry woman above it transformed to the swept-back, armor-plated features so common to her Chameleon race. The old man’s face was whiter than his hair, a difficult task even for a man of nearly two-hundred. The reptilian assassin leaned in with a sniff. Its head turned curiously to allow its panoramic sight to engulf the old man’s dying breaths.

He shook with a death rattle that jostled him in the lizard’s grip. His last thoughts centered on the knowledge that there’d be no corpse left to discover. Indeed, even after his body was wholly consumed, what little bits of his blood formed the trail would be lapped up. Any particulate remnants therein would be bleached away by the creature’s volatile saliva. There would be no evidence he was attacked, killed, or even– due to the wretch’s appetites– that anyone had been in the apartment.

That was what made them such efficient assassins, allowed them to charge the most exorbitant prices on the black market. They were nigh-on undetectable, impossible to suss out or catch even if spotted. Like humans, and a half-dozen other species, they’d evolved from Earth, aided by biochemical toxins dispersed into its atmosphere during the First Contact War. The virulent, gene-altering poisons were meant to distract Humanity during the war, bring chaos to Earth in order to weaken its hold on Mars and Sol’s colonies. It did that and so much more.

But none of that mattered now. Not to the old man. He felt his knurled innards rend, harden, then numb as the creature’s paralytic took effect. The Chameleons– MeLons– had won the evolutionary arms race. Their adaptations blew Canines and Felines out of the water, their minds even more cunning than the Corvian Crows and Raptors that now ruled most scientific institutions.

What had once been simple, color-changing camouflage to hide among their habitats for became the ability to shape-shift. They could copy, then hide among, any creature’s species as spies, refugees, or any other purpose they saw fit. While most MeLons had used the ability to blend, make themselves more humanoid, others used it for profit. It was mostly rumors, but the old man knew them to be true. He’d hired more than a few to do his dirty work over the years.

The assassin knelt over the wretch as the life faded from his eyes. His last breath left his lungs with a rattle. She inhaled the fresh stench of death pervading the room from the human’s lacerated torso– the ambrosia of a fresh kill ready to be savored piece-by-piece. Before she could begin though, she reached for his neck, jerked a pendant off it. It rose in the scaled palm of her hand, its faceted ruby twinkling in the light.

That was it; what her client had paid so handsomely for. In addition to his murder, and the stipulation that she clean up her mess, he added one other caveat. She slipped the jewel into a pocket of now ill-fitting clothing, leaned down to begin her meal. What her client wanted the data-jewel for, she couldn’t say. Nor was she certain of why the corpse needed to become a corpse, but she wasn’t paid to think or question, only to do the job, and do it well.

The balance of the galaxy had pivoted wildly. The powers were out of control. The Human Federation’s expansion was too rapid, their colonies too far apart and too numerous to be properly supported or defended. The HAA was no different, kowtowing to the Federation’s demands as if its plaything. Their subversive, inner-elements were gaining ground, the shift felt everywhere.

The assassin understood the chaos more than most, had suffered her share during the genetic alterations. Everyone’s life-span increased near tenfold over normal, her own included. Where humans had only minor birth anomalies of psycho and telekinetic power– her entire species had been changed.

Most MeLons that had survived the transformation had died off to poverty, in-fighting, or racist agendas. At that, most deaths were largely due to their own egos or carelessness. Like her, they saw their place in the galaxy as above others, but not one steeped in shadow. Most MeLons now lacked the subtle finesse and patience that had once been their biggest asset as lower-beings.

Inevitably, patience ran thin for the new-gen “MeLons” due to lacking any memory of their former station. For a species that used to do little but remain still, lying in wait to hunt or blending subtly with their environments to hide, it was ironic to say the least. Still, the new age of MeLons were letting themselves go extinct, refusing to adapt to the reality thrust upon them. She was different though, and nothing would keep her from living this strange, new life to the fullest.

It was nearly a full-hour before she’d lapped up the last of the blood puddle, dried her saliva with a hand towel from her pocket. She took great care not to overflex the Lycra bodysuit requested by the old wretch and now pulled taught over her scaly body.

She rose to her feet, ambrosial blood still fresh in her mouth, then began a slow walk toward the apartment door. Each step saw her morph more into the black-haired, pale-skinned nubian she’d been when she’d first entered. She stepped out fully shape-shifted, rode the elevator down. On the ground floor she made for the doors, the data-jewel hidden between her thighs. With a crooked smile at the door man, she disappeared out into the metropolis– just one more creature in the billions, but perfectly suited to her profession.

Hot Iron: Part 2

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

3.

Kennedy Hart, a full-time nurse at Neo-Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, had seen just about everything someone in her occupation could. Between the ICU and ER units in a metropolis, she’d tended to her share of GSWs, horrendous accident victims, every type illness and infection known, and more than an abundance of O-Ds. In short, she wasn’t the squeamish type and had the chops to back it up.

She fast-walked toward the E-R doors in teal scrubs. Her brunette locks were wound up in a bun under an elastic band that bobbed from the half-nod she gave the receptionists. The sea of non-emergency admissions were fixated phones, tablets, and the large flat-screens inlaid into the walls, there to steal attention from those unlucky saps that deserved it more. Comprising more than half the ER’s visitors in the night, it left the unit short-staffed, rushed, and half its patients unstable and spilling over into ICU when they should’ve still been in the ER.

As usual, Kennedy would have to deal with it. She shoved her way through double doors as a buzzer unlocked them at her approach. The RFID chip in her hospital I-D, and its readers stationed around the facility, were probably the most useless, advanced form of technology they had. Funds had been appropriated from various, other places to install the readers. In the process, short-staffed units got overtime when they should’ve gotten new staff. Such was the way of the “industry” these days.

Kennedy emerged from a long hallway for the nurse’s station. Station was a liberal term. It was a desk stacked with black-screen charting tablets, and a pair of flat-screen monitors. Behind it on the wall was a second pair, massive in comparison, and probably costing more then Kennedy’s car. Subdivisions of vitals read out the two-dozen patients’ states networked in from their rooms. From here, a nurse could watch and chart the various EEGs, heart and O-2 monitors before shooting off and up the hall. There, she’d draw meds, pass them out, then double chart and check the patients again for “posterity’s” sake– in other words, to keep from losing her job to a network error.

Given her enormous school debts, the amount of time it had taken to attain her RN status, and the general ire of those she worked with, she found it difficult to believe anyone walking into her field was sane. She certainly didn’t feel like it anymore.

She grabbed a charting tablet off the desk, engaged its screen to thumb at it. Two, equally over-worked, and underpaid women watched with general disapproval. She was too young, too inexperienced to be in charge, or so they felt, anyway. Evidently, their superior felt otherwise. Kennedy loathed her for that.

“Two new admits?” She asked the older, grayer of the two women.

“Mhmm.” Her fingers tapped information into a digital form. “Man and a woman.”

“Severe Burns?” Kennedy said, flipping through the pages. “Who the hell sent us burn patients?” The woman only shrugged. “Christ, clocked in five minutes and already screwing me over.”

“That surprise you?” The less-gray woman asked.

“No, it pisses me off.”

She rounded for the patient rooms, tablet in-hand as she skipped through the last few hours of charts. The new admits had been stuck across from one another, nothing unusual, but certainly not something she’d expected. According to the information, they’d been admitted at the same time, moved from the ER, and into the ICU with orders to treat as burn-ward patients. That was impossible, especially on an understaffed ICU.

She rounded the hallway for their rooms. A line of police officers speaking in hushed tones were clustered through-out the hall between the patients’ rooms. They were packed densely enough Kennedy had to force her way through with a command. She sidled past badges and body-cameras, pushed her way into the first room.

According to her charts, the woman had been placed in a medical coma due to the severity of the 3rd degree burns on her back and side. Kennedy couldn’t see them directly, but the bandage wrapped along her side, back, and angled forward over her shoulder and chest, left no doubt of the severity of her state. The bandages would have to be changed every four hours, the wounds scrubbed, and the anesthetic drip replenished.

Kennedy fumed. There was no way in hell they were equipped to handle a burn victim of this magnitude. They barely had enough people to administer meds on schedule. The kind of intimate care required for a lone burn victim was extensive. Several people and powerful meds were needed to keep them stable, even to clean and re-bandage the wounds. Caring for two was going to be impossible.

Kennedy growled futility, checked the woman’s vitals as quickly as possible, and entered the information into the tablet. She noted the name “Mendez,” under the time, then pushed out and through the crowd for the other room.

The man was considerably worse off– in a way that stung Kennedy’s usually hardened heart. The whole right-half of his face was hidden under bandages, the left side streaked with debris wounds that reddened his olive skin. Little else on him was visible, save random, small bits of unaffected skin between bandages.

Kennedy swallowed hard, felt her chest tighten, then lifted the chart to read “Torres.” Her knees turned to rubber from sickness curdling in her gut. A shaking index finger trembled against the tablet to scroll through the information: Torres’ entire right-side and back had been scorched extensively, it said. The images accompanying the report were grisly. Freshly charred skin mingled with the burned impressions left by super-heated armor plates. According to the O-R report, he’d been operated on for four hours to extricate melted fabric and plastic from his wounds. It was a wonder he was alive, to say the least, but what the hell happened to him, and when? The report was days old.

She ran her quick check, then returned to the nurse’s station to make a call to a superior. When the woman answered she was quick to tell Kennedy someone was already headed down to explain things. The call ended immediately after.

Kennedy was dumbstruck, put off by a finality in the woman’s tone that held something more beneath. The only thing she could place it as was fear, but what scared a burnt-out nurse in one of the busiest hospitals, in one of the largest cities in the world? Kennedy wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t be good.

She turned for the hall and straight into a man with a suit cut sharp it made her eyes bleed. She was stunned. He pulled out a bi-fold wallet, flashed a badge that vaguely registered as FBI.

“Missus Hart?”

“Miss,” she corrected habitually. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Miss Hart, would you come with me please?”

Kennedy glanced at the other nurses behind the station. They stared up, open-mouthed. Kennedy cleared her throat, stammered out a reply, then followed with a curious amble. The FBI man directed her into a room with other suited men and women, extended a hand to a offer her a seat, and shut the door behind him.

Kennedy eased into her seat, and the room sat together. A man at the head of table examined her for a long moment. Then, with a lean, he interlocked his fingers on the table, “Everything you’re about to hear is a matter of National Security, should any of this be repeated outside this room, you will be jailed and tried for high-treason. Do you understand?”

Kennedy stared.

4.

There was a literal, full minute of silence before Kennedy’s mouth shut and she stammered out a response, “Wh-what’s this all about?”

The man at the head of the table, his face cloaked in dim shadow, cleared a gravelly throat. Someone flipped a switch below the table, and a projection appeared in the middle of it. Two images, side-by-side, were repeated in four places, like a three dimensional cube connected at its vertical faces with the table forming their base. Judging from the ID-like images, and the obvious collars of NCPD uniforms, the two people projected were her patients.

She almost didn’t recognize Torres. It only worsened her gut-sickness. Combined with the clandestine feeling of the dark room, its air, and the people in it, she guessed things wouldn’t be getting better anytime soon.

The gravel-throated man all but confirmed her hunch as he began to speak. “The two patients currently occupying your ward are members of NCPD’s SWAT team. Several days ago, Officer Juan Torres conducted a raid on a suspected heroin refinery. The exact location is classified. We’ve been fortunate to retain media black-out, but several officers were killed in the explosion. It is our hope that we may work together to ensure these two officers do not suffer the same fate.”

A woman down the table, whose only identity lay in the overt confidence of her tone, continued from there, “Miss Hart, we believe these patients may be targeted for retribution by certain suspects or their associates. Given their states, and the care required, it is necessary to reallocate them, as well as their care-givers, to your ward from others units across the campus.”

“Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency hope you will accommodate us in this matter,” the man at the head of the table added. It sounded more like a casually veiled threat than anything.

The room settled back into a ringing silence. Kennedy still stared. She wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Everything beyond “retribution” had been lost on her. Who the hell sought retribution against cops for something like this? And why’d she have to be worried about it? Moreover, why the hell did they choose the ICU of all places?

The questions kept coming. With no answers in sight, her mouth finally shut. She readied to reply as formally as possible, the situation evidently hinged less on her compliance than her job did. She let out a short breath, “I will, of course, do whatever I can to ensure the safety of my patients. But I’m charge-nurse… for tonight. My job, for tonight, is to act as liaison for the unit’s nurses and our superior. I don’t really have any power.”

“From here on out,” a man said nearer to her. His features were dark, eyes unyielding. He slid over a micro SD card, “You will act as liaison between us and those assigned to these patients. The staff directly in charge of them will take your word as ours. Your other duties are suspended until such time as the two officers make a full-recovery.”

Kennedy drew the tablet over with a hand, slotted the card to access it. A pair of folders appeared with patient ID numbers as the names. Those numbers were the same as the ones used by the various machines reporting their vitals and meds through the hospital’s network. Kennedy could ID both of the patients by them alone.

She gave an outward look to no-one in particular, “I can offer compliance in my case– I certainly can’t refuse anyway, but I have questions.” A resonant pause ushered her onward. “First of all, why have you assigned these patients here, instead of the burn-ward?”

A woman with slightly less confidence than the last explained, “We believe anyone seeking retribution will know to check N-C’s burn-wards. We hope placing them here will better obscure their presence and still allow for the care they require.”

The dark man nearer her added, “Upon closer inspection, you’ll see those files have been doctored. Their real names do not appear anywhere.”

She took his word for it, “Okay. Then my next question–”

The man at the head of the room anticipated her, “We believe the person, or persons, targeting these patients have access to internal NCPD and FBI intelligence. In order to draw them out, and ensure the officers’ survival, we must allow all agencies involved to believe both Torres and Mendez are dead.”

Her eyes widened, “There are thirty cops in the hallway, and you think you can contain this?”

Another man spoke, one that hadn’t yet. From his air of superiority and vernacular she suspected him a doctor, a veteran one at that. “That is why, once your team is in place, you will simulate a cardiac incident on both patients. We will prepare everything externally necessary. Otherwise, you will receive further instructions soon. For all intents and purposes, it will appear as if your patients have died.”

Kennedy’s eyes narrowed skeptically, her tongue sharp– the same way she was when she dealt with her ex that’d left her a week before their wedding. “You want me to fake their deaths!?” Another resonant silence. Awkwardness underlined it this time. Kennedy felt herself squirm involuntarily. She swallowed hard, “I… don’t see how I can refuse, but I’d like it noted I have reservations.”

“Duly noted, Miss Kennedy,” someone said.

She didn’t see them speak, was too busy wrapped in her thoughts. Losing not one, but two patients would look bad on her record. She could lose her job. More importantly, she could lose any hope of getting another if this assembly decided to take charade the next step and “investigate” her. If the media ever did get wind of it, she’d be black-balled faster than she could click a pen.

She spoke to this effect, “I can do what you request, but it will take time. More importantly, I can’t allow this to permanently affect my license. When this is over, any public knowledge must be officially retracted so my livelihood isn’t lost.”

The man at the head of the table replied firmly, “Your livelihood will not be permanently affected, but you may have to follow through with things. We will brief you in time on what that may require.”

With that, the projected image dissolved and the table rose together, save Kennedy. She was stuck in place for another, full-minute before she rose snatched up her tablet and followed after them. She stepped into the hall to find they’d disappeared. The one, confident woman remained behind to speak to an officer. Her hair was fine, golden threads in the lights that reflected off it in a wet-like sheen and gave her a glow that modestly accented tanned skin.

Clearly whatever she did officially allowed for more fun in the sun than being stuck in an ICU all day or night. Kennedy envied her for that alone.

She returned to the empty nurse’s station just as the uniformed officers began to disperse. Two men and women remained to stand guard on either side of the patients’ doors. The blonde woman clicked and clacked her way past along the hall, her face fixed with indifference, and her mind consumed by her work. Her heels sounded her progress past, then disappeared into a stairwell beyond a heavy, closing door.

The grayer of the two nurses appeared, snapping bright-orange, nicotine gum in her jaws, “S’that all about?”

Kennedy shrugged, checked her watch, “Hell if I know.”

Short Story: Apex

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 2 Comments

The night air was frozen with inaction, the wind petrified by its own icy gale. When it did see fit to blow, it did so begrudgingly and with a fury that froze everything to its very core. Even the stars saw no reason to appear despite the cloudless sky. It was as if some phantom force had turned them off until it felt they were needed again.

Beneath that vast emptiness was nothing but glacial fields and sprawling ice. That is, unless directed southeast, nearest the pole. There a few, hilly rises would break the monotonous flatness until they were over-passed and the land became flat again. The nearer one approached however, the more their shapes would redefine.

From their distant, mound-like forms, they would turn first to dome half-spheres. Then, upon even closer inspection, the domes would reveal a pattern. The largest would be seen to tower above the rest and encircle it like particles to an atomic nucleus. Upon being beside or beneath these semi-spheres it would then become obvious that each was composed of individual panes of glass, each one slightly conical in the center to keep off snow and ice, and otherwise were curved to varying degrees.

One by one, the rows of panes curved to form the dome shapes. Beneath them though, the truly wondrous marvel was a creation of neither man’s ingenuity nor his daring. Rather, it was a creation of nature, fused into a block of ice roughly ten feet wide, six feet deep, and eight feet long.

Located with a 3-D Resonance Imager– a device that sent sound-waves through objects then recorded their vibrations. The interpreting computer then read the reverberations, and arranged them into a picture of various contrasts of light and dark, that by degrees, formed an accurate render of the site examined. All of this was carried out via antarctic rovers, computer-guided across barren tundra, from one room beneath the largest dome.

The other twelve domes housed full-sized living spaces for the scientists, researchers, and various others staffing the facility. The entity in charge of this great place, known as the International Collective of Scientists, had footed the project’s five billion dollar costs with grants from just about every country in the world. From each of them too, it drew its employees; every individual required, and to the best of abilities, accommodated, to live in the Antarctic glacial lands for an indeterminate amount of time. The structures they occupied were surrounded by ice, that for millenia-untold, had been undisturbed by anything beyond the gales of ice and snow.

The Antarctic Research Treaty, created by men and women infinitely smarter than those that passed it, was a piece of UN legislation meant to help collaborative scientific efforts. Thus, the ICS was born and the domes built. If asked though, the people there would have simply called it “The Dome.” Though they lived spread across the other domes, it was in the largest of them that their lives were carried out. Whether in research, work, eating, or even recreation, life was lived largely in “the Dome.” That was the level of commitment the ICS had built it with.

Still, the wonder in the laboratory of one, particular team of scientists rivaled everything else in the Dome. Arguably, it might even rival anything thus far discovered by humanity. It would, if all suspicions were true, confirm an eon of speculation. Moreover, it would rewrite the history of the planet– if not the universe.

Presently, heat lamps were stationed around the block of ice that was half-melted. Streams of cold water leaked down into the floor. The team responsible for its discovery were clustered around it in white, level-1 containment suits to protect themselves from the discovery and vice-versa. A few held clipboards, but all of their faces were fixed in consternation, staring at the ice and the thing half-protruding from it.

For nearly two days the team went without sleep. Most fell into varying stupors, near collapse, awaiting the moment they could, with the utmost care, gather round to liberate the find from the ice. The twisted, humanoid creature, was perfectly preserved down to its blue, leathery hide. Once removed and laid upon a table, the remaining ice-block was combed for any particulate matter left behind. After thorough analysis, it was concluded that not so much as a skin cell had been misplaced. The creature was intact down to its cellular level, preserved as if in a time-capsule at the moment of its freezing.

A few people took pictures for the record. Flash-bulbs strobed from cameras that homed in on the strangely embryonic features of the subject. It appeared as human fetus might, early in its development; at least as far as the head, eyes, and face were concerned. They had oblong, grotesque proportions. The arms and legs were distended, over-long with hands whose five fingers were similarly longer than normal. Nail-like claws a few centimeters in length adorned the grisly hands with points so sharp it hurt to look at them too long.

Clearly, this creature had evolved for combat, adapted to either extreme defense or hunting. The mouth was merely a slit in the otherwise overly large head, suggesting the creature had little to no use for vocalization. Most fascinating of all however, were the thick, bone-like plates plateauing the broader area of the limbs and torso. The protective adaptations broke only for the neck, head, and joint areas that were marred by deep gouges, scars leftover from its life.

Clearly, this creature had come from violence.

Someone made careful measurements of the claws and the wounds, concluding they must have come from the another of the creature’s species. The debate it sparked, however academic, seemed to conclude in one way; this species was a violent predator. More importantly, it possessed strength that easily rivaled humans. Despite its distended, yet muscled form, someone theorized that with its brain size its intelligence would rival humanity’s. Were this creature alive today, it could topple Humanity with enough numbers.

The extraction of a skin sample immediately confirmed Earthen DNA. This was no visitor. Rather, it was a distant relative who’d appeared first on the evolutionary chain. The team would have to keep it quiet for now, but there was no doubt this species would have supplanted humans if living.

It was then that someone took another skin sample. The man leaned over to begin a small incision. The bulbous eyes flitted. The room froze. The person with the scalpel keeled over. Blood streamed from his eyes, nose, and mouth. His body stilled.

The creature sat up. All at once the team crumpled. They tried to scream, found their airways closed by invisible hands. The pressure in their heads built. Blood leaked from orifices. They fought to cry out. One by one, they realized what they’d done before dying from it: they’d awakened an apex predator– one capable of reason, intelligence, and very angry.

They knew their mistake when its words entered their minds. As if harsh whispers on a surf of disharmony, everything they’d only theorized was confirmed. With a lone sentiment, its hidden properties were revealed; “My kind will reclaim this world from you.”

The last to die was merely one of the first.