Tag: Futuristic

Short Story: The Grand Oops

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 3 Comments

The ship had lost control, the Pilot with his hands at its helm as useless as the Engineer in the decks fighting to restore lost power. The planet’s atmosphere set fire to the ship’s steep angle while the alarm klaxons blared inside of it. Sparks rained over the cock-pit from the largest bouts of turbulent friction that fried more systems, jolted the ship further from the Pilot’s grasp. Were he a less stubborn man, he’d have fled for the escape pods with the rest of the crew.

Unfortunately, even the inkling of fear he had was suppressed by his concentration and attempts to keep the stick straight. The Engineer would fight to her last breath to return control to him, patch the blown conduits and re-fire the engines. Until then, they were in free-fall at precisely the right angle to burn them up on re-entry or pancake them against the ground on impact. Emergency lighting kicked on through the ship, a main conduit severed on the exterior hull from the heat.

Another, apex up-heave from friction and the ship was cast sideways, helpless against the planet’s gravitational fury. The ship was certainly lighter now, beginning to spiral like a poorly thrown football. Still the Pilot fought, the Engineer cut, soldered, re-connected. Like the pilot, she knew of nothing else but the whims and will of her instincts exerted over her body. Long bits of copper cabling were yanked from one panel’s dark innards, sliced, spliced, and welded to another’s. Light flickered in the engineering compartment, then went out, plunged her into total darkness. She tripped over strewn tools, boxes, spare parts, groped for the dead-center of the room with a spanner in-hand.

The Pilot watched the blue sky turn red around him, become spackled and splattered with the gradated yellows and browns of a dusty, dune-laden desert. The ground approached at terminal velocity, ready to greet him with emptiness and death.

The Engineer’s hands worked double time. Her forehead poured sweat into already-useless eyes, burned them. She swallowed terror to crank back a nut that would re-seat the engines’ igniter. Then with a slap of a hand against a console, she lunged for the far wall, smacked a control panel.

“Light it up!”

The Pilot fought his turbulent tumult for a set of switches, tripped them up. Then with a mutter of “about fucking time,” he threw the ignition switch. The turbine-shaped engines at the ship’s rear glowed blue, sputtered and spit fire. Then with blast of thrust, the turbine’s rocketed the ship forward toward the ground.

“Woah, woah, woah!” The pilot said.

He yanked back on the stick, control returned to him. The ship’s trajectory made a wide, deep parabola, its vertex only meters from the ground. Another jolt said something was ripped off the ship’s belly as its rising ascent signaled a high-pitched, roaring laughter from the Pilot. It bled through the ship’s open comm to the Engineer’s ears with a heaving bosom in the darkened enclosure. She sank back against a wall, leaned forward with her hands on her thighs.

“You’re worth every penny, Em,” He shouted between laughs.

“Thank you, sir,” she panted. She took a breath, then, “We need to set down to asses exterior damage. We can’t follow the pods’ tracking beacons until I restore power to the Auxiliary systems.”

“Roger that, I’m on it.”

He straightened the ship out mid-way up the parabola’s far-side, jetted forward at full speed to come around again. The ship angled downward gradually, sank onto a damaged landing gear just over the rise of a high plateau that made a mockery of the ship’s ninety-foot height– even more so of its blocky, three-hundred foot length and hundred-foot wingspan. It set down at a lean, its left-most rear gear jammed in place from a severed hydraulic line somewhere in its housing.

The Pilot jogged through the ship’s innards with a set of flash-lights. All along the way, the random, over-loaded circuits of secondary and tertiary systems spit angry sparks at him, or arced the last of their currents over load-bearing struts and supports. He hurried into the Engineering compartment, ready to aid the woman doubled over against the wall.

“I wanna’ raise,” she panted at him.

He laughed with an affirming nod, “Consider it done.”

“Good,” she said as she straightened from the wall. “Let’s get this tub back in order.”

It was only a few hours before she’d gotten the ship fully-running again, retraced the escape-pods’ trajectory toward the crew. They were mostly intact, save a few cuts and bruises from their bumpy rides and rougher landings. In less than a day, the ship was repaired– even the landing gear’s hydraulics that required the ship to be re-started. It hovered above the ground as the last gear extended, and with an exhausted collapse, fell back to the ground more level than before.

The ongoing question all through-out the repairs was what had happened. There had been no epic space battle, no forced ejection from hyper-flight, nothing as an obvious prelude to damage. In fact, the flight had been rather dull; a routine delivery of medical supplies to a Galactic Alliance outpost– a high-paid, by the books courier job. Sabotage was the next concern on the list, but all of their advanced tech and good-old fashioned interrogation techniques told both them no-one aboard was guilty of wrongdoing.

All theories of foul play were thrown out as the Engineer set about searching for the problem’s physical source. The main culprit had to be a conduit between the engine’s cock-pit controls and the engines themselves. Indeed, it didn’t take much in-depth examination to locate the faulty part; a stripped and corroded, five-prong connector mid-way through the ship’s wiring.

“It was supposed to have been replaced,” The Pilot said cheekily to the Engineer.

“Yes, sir,” she dead-panned. “Then you said to leave it and if the tub was gonna’ fall outta’ the sky that you’d make sure it never hit the ground.”

“I did?” The Pilot asked blankly.

“Yes, sir, right before you unbuckled your pants and closed the door to the consort’s chambers in my face,” the Engineer said.

“Oh.” He stared off with a distant duality of shame and mortification, “Oops.”

“A grand “oops,” sir,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

He shrugged, shook off his trance, “Well, I was right though, we didn’t hit the ground. See? Gotta’ trust in your Captain, Em.”

He turned from the Engineering compartment with a smarmy smile. Em stared upward in defeat, shook her head.

Bonus Poem: 200 and Counting

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 1 Comment

200 and counting, human years do I mean.
Awakened half-dead to a world once seen,
as progress and virtue now contaminated, unclean.
Where is the hope which we all wish to glean?

Poisoned by radiation, a cry-ogenic dream,
I search for gradation in what ominous I deem;
to follow the dog or to leave it I seem,
to recall that a fall was lonely downstream.

A world once burned up in lust,
from a greater than great, quite dismal distrust,
it cost us a fortune greater when lost,
but the masters have gone, are now turned to dust.

Now minutes between men and women adorned,
by the punctual gun-fire of early morn,
but battles to wage are an acceptable thorn,
for part of a world that is bred but not born.

And when night-fall comes with a beacon of light,
ahead a dominating, large diamond site.
A green jewel of modern, machined upper-class,
that to decayed folks is a pain in their ass.

Is it a friend or foe, a lover or tribal,
that I meet just upon my arrival,
for I know the Piper of the marble,
papers are often on the lips as a garble.

Japanese robots and synthetic fear,
swirl ironically in the air,
while no-one else is really quite clear,
of what it is that’s in the water ’round here.

Mutated husks from captives retrieved,
stolen at night, just like the thieved,
whose hounds howled with greatness but weaved,
alerted that others were madly aggrieved.

To run or to fight, the eternal questions,
when faced with this world’s endless distractions,
To wish or to hope are both useless abstractions,
when cog and sword form metal contraptions.

A final repose is all that there be,
when the fires of synthetics are all that you see,
For the Railroad is hidden and so is its plea,
And they’re simply of no further uses to me.

So after 200 years and some change,
We’re back to warm fires and home on the range,
while around us doth nuclear fission estrange,
the past and the future from the present’s dog-mange.

The Collective: Part 4

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 2 Comments

4.

Sibling Rivalry

The GSS team breached Rachel Dahl’s apartment with the same master code Lex had used. Late afternoon sun now shone through the hall’s window. With the GSS squad was Calista Dahl, whom entered and ordered the men to fan out, search for her sister. Contrary to her way, Rachel had missed work. With the deaths of Li and Kay still fresh, it was obvious something had happened to her. When she reached the coffee table, Lex’s recorded hologram engaged.

Lex’s hooded silhouette stood with Rachel before her, a blade out and poised against the woman’s belly to show Lex’s menace. The hooded figure began to speak, her voice garbled through encrypted filters to slow the GSS’ eventual analysis. It came through deep, as though she were half machine, half human, with emphasis on the masculine end of that spectrum.

“Calista Dahl; you stand accused of crimes against the people. Your sentence is death. Your only choice is to come quietly or watch your sister die with you. The terms are not negotiable. At the end of this message, an address will appear, come alone or she dies.”

Lex and Rachel fizzed out of focus, fell away in static to a few, stationary lines of text. The address was somewhere on the edge of Tokyo, just outside the city’s concentrated innards. Calista knew it well; the land was open, flat, with plenty of trees for cover. Distant buildings and their orientation made for poor placement of any long-range security details in all but a few spots, but she was certain the area had a maze of sewer lines that led into them. Her people could approach unnoticed, but the question remained of if she wanted to risk Rachel’s life. When faced with her own, certain death, her answer was emphatically yes.

Across Tokyo, Lex kicked open the door of an old, bamboo and grass shed. It had been designed to blend into the garden park. Once the home of a tender, his job, livelihood, and purpose had been stolen from him by the Sleep. He hanged himself in the center of the small, one-room hut, was only after days of baking in the hot sun made the stench so foul the park’s visitors took notice.

Lex was there when they cut him down. She’d been a devotee of the garden’s calming nature since before her incarceration. The old, half-blind and hunched grounds-keeper’s death was a proverbial cherry atop her frothing cream of hatred, spite. The Sleepers knew not what they did, weren’t to be faulted. Like all humans, they’d merely succumbed to their desires. Unfortunately, unlike most humans through history, they could be given no reprieve, nor even hope that they might lift themselves from the throes of addiction. It was, like most things nowadays, nearly impossible to wake the Sleepers without some sort apocalyptic event.

Lex drug Rachel to the shack by the binds around her wrists, tossed her inside and across it to kick the door shut. Rachel collided with the wall of rusted garden tools, hands out to save her face from being impaling by a claw-rake. She immediately rebounded with it in hand, swiped at Lex. Her arms were up. Lex pulled it forward with Rachel, whom stumbled to her knees. Lex’s fist collided with her face. She fell sideways in the dusty floor, bleeding from the lip and weeping. She sobbed, screamed, cursed. Lex replaced the rake, calmly pulled Rachel up.

“You’ll find attacking me is useless,” Lex warned. “I am faster, stronger, and smarter than you. Do as I say, and you’ll go free.”

“Liar!” Rachel shrieked with a raspy breath. “You’re crazy! You’re just gonna’ kill me anyhow!”

Lex pulled a chair from a corner of the room, scraped it against the dusty, cement floor, set it down with its back toward Rachel. She threw a leg around it to lean against the chair-back, look down on Rachel.

“If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you when you opened the door to the bathroom,” she reminded. “Now, either quiet down and listen or I’ll gag you.” Rachel’s head hung sideways as she quieted, wet sniffles audible every few seconds. “Good girl. Now, there’s something we need to straighten out before we go any further– the notion that I am crazed.”

“You are,” Rachel argued with a tremor.

“No, no, no,” Lex said emphatically. “It’s important you understand that I am not, or else what’s happening won’t have proper context. This is like a composer in a world without music imagining notes, writing and playing them: in a world without music, the composer is a heretic, a loon, one that hears voices and sounds. In our world, he is a genius.”

Rachel angled a squiggled frown upward that punctuated her wet eyes, “Every nutcase thinks they’re a genius.”

Lex gave a long sigh with a shake of her head, “You’re missing the point.”

“I don’t need the context of a lunatic’s creation to know they’re insane,” Rachel spat. “You all have your stories, your reasons, and none of them change what you are.”

Lex watched her for a long moment as she leaned her chin against her forearms on the chair-back. The shack was quiet, tense. Rachel stared into Lex’s eyes, admittedly questioning her own judgment. There was something pained in them– somewhere beneath all the make-up, blood, and anger, a little girl wandered aimlessly for love, attention.

Rachel took a sharp breath, cast her eyes back on the floor. Lex nodded slowly to herself, “You know me– by reputation, if nothing else. I assume it was Calista, or your former position as head of the European Trade Union, that made you aware of me.” She took a breath, straightened in her seat, “Whatever it was, I know what you’ve done– what you did, anyhow. You went off the grid after you signed over your power– Europe’s power— to Viktor Steinsson and Ville Andersson– Swiss bankers extraordinaire.”

Rachel’s eyes rose again, more guilty than anything, “I did what I thought would protect the Union.”

Lex countered, “Or so you were led to believe.” She shook her head, “No, what you really did, and discovered for yourself soon enough afterward, was relinquish the only governmental control left to the Collective.”

“I didn’t—”

Lex was firm, loud, “You did!” Rachel’s throat squeaked from a sharp breath. Lex softened, quieted, “I don’t fault you for that. And in fact, provided you’re agreeable, you’ll be the only one of the Collective left alive when I am done. You are part of them in name only. I intend to coat my blade in the blood of the twelve, but I would rather see it be eleven if it means acquiring an asset. ”

Rachel was silent and still for a moment. Then, with a hard swallow, she met Lex’s eyes again, “Why?”

Lex rose from her seat to pull Rachel up, set her into it. She leaned against a table beside her, “Your sister’s crimes are irredeemable. To some, yours are too. But not to me. I know you were coerced, because I know your sister.”

She shook her head, “She’s not the monster you make her out to be.”

Lex leaned forward in a hunch, her arms crossed, “We both know she’ll sacrifice you for herself tonight without a moment’s hesitation.” Rachel’s eyes met the floor again, her hands twisted in the binds to tense against one another. Lex straightened, “You have a choice, Rachel. Maybe not much of one, but one nonetheless. Provided you choose appropriately, you will live. Either way, Calista will die tonight. There is no stopping that. It is inevitable. Imminent. Blood of kinship may mean something to you, but know it means nothing to her. If you look deep enough, you’ll see that truth.”

Missed part 3? Read it here!

The Collective: Part 3

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

3.

State of the Union

Lex headed back to the alley she’d come from. There was no doubt one of the few monitor-lackeys left had seen the murder. Even if they hadn’t, the bodies draining of blood on the sidewalk would be found soon enough. She kept calm, chose to leave, not flee. She feared neither discovery, confrontation, nor death, but couldn’t allow any yet. She’d seen her blades coated in the Collective’s blood, each of them deserving of the most brutal tortures. They would receive mercy instead; swift death, a kindness they did not deserve, but that Lex had no objections in granting.

Before the Sleep, Lex had never touched a sword nor even manifested anger. She’d never spoken out of turn, really. The Sleep’s long, lulling effects had a way of turning even the most gentle of creatures into raging monsters though. For her, it began with a simple question to her parents; why they’d seemingly abandoned her.

They hadn’t, they said– they were always home, always available. In truth, they were locked in their V-R worlds, chasing super-models or humping stallions, or completing mindless, trivial tasks that kept their headsets and neural nets locked in cyberspace. Being a young, precocious child whom wanted to experience the world, Lex felt she had no choice. She wished to see her family laugh, love, be together again, not stagnate in vegetation.

When she finally lashed out, she was oblivious to a new set of laws enacted regarding the technology and tampering with it. From a technical stand-point, they made sense. The VR tech and neural interfaces were far too complex to allow those untrained to alter them. Anyone whom wished to do so with malice could easily configure the tech to surge, fry a person’s brain, or even inject viruses into the cyber-worlds visited through them. Perhaps if Lex had known that she would have done things differently, but being a teenager and more stubborn by the day, there were no alternatives to her mind.

The fateful night determined her life’s course, was always heavy in her mind. It manifested as her feet compelled her through the zig-zag maze of Tokyo’s once-infested alleyways and streets. Fresh rain splattered the sidewalks. She tromped through puddles, rippled their reflected neon pinks, oranges, and countless, LED screens that shined from walls or vacant doorways.

As any neglected teenager, Lex had been angry. She’d lusted for boys, girls, friendship, commitment, purpose but found none. When she wished and begged for aid, she was shut out for the suckle of virtual teats in the vain hope of even a single, lowly drop of Mother’s milk. It kept the chaos outside at bay, but couldn’t keep Lex from her rage. Her thick make-up ran constantly, like an aging glam-rocker on-stage too long and greased with sweat and water. Still, her parents remained in their worlds, content despite their daughter’s pleas. She was forced into action, spiteful of the addiction that had claimed them. They’d withered to mindless, masses of flesh, husks of their former selves.

She stole a fire-axe from the building she lived in, a remnant of the fire-department era. With it, she did the only thing could; yanked the V-R head sets off her parents, smashed them against the floor, then planted the axe into the rear of each chair where their power sources were. The shower of sparks from the last swing arced electricity off the axe-head, snaked up the metal handle and into Lex. She landed, half-fired and unconscious.

The damage didn’t fully reveal itself until she awoke in a hospital room, one of few places people still gathered at the time. Things had changed since the invention of auto-diagnostic software. Home diagnosis of every possible medical affliction was no possible through the VR setups. Coupled with subscription pill services, even a cancer patient never had to see a doctor. Everyone merely allowed their V-R machines to send out data to external servers. Medications were automatically prescribed, shipped in, and installed by specialized drones that entered people’s homes at will.

Full-service, free medical care was the future, and it took– just like every other vise that kept the Sleepers’ bound to their chairs, atrophied them with mental stimulation. Whether they believed it or not, Lex was fighting for them. Their awakening would happen, come hell or high-water. Her own awakening in the hospital however, ensured she would never be one of the Sleepers.

The blaring white of a sterile room infected her eyes with the stink of bleach. Combined with a morphine drip in her arm, the fumes forced nauseated waves through her. She tried to sit up, found her wrists and ankles chained to either side of her bed. With a wail, a round, sympathetic woman rushed in, tended to her.

When Lex inquired about her parents, the woman went quiet, hands atop one another at her waist. She looked ready to speak when the door opened on a woman in a black skirt and blouse. Black, square glasses framed cold eyes that recessed in her face with bags and lines of premature age. She adjusted them as she entered, flanked by two GSS officers with rifles in hand. The woman gestured the nurse out, prompted her to rush away, eyes hidden as the two men guarded the door.

The businesswoman stopped at the foot of the bed, ensured the malicious point to her features was visible, then spoke with an English accent, “I am Calista Dahl, legal representative for Global Entertainment. We received word today that two of our machines were hacked. Indeed, when our security forces arrived, they discovered they had been– hacked to pieces, by a foolish little girl with an axe.” Lex opened her mouth as if to speak. The woman was quicker, “Your parents are dead. Your little stunt killed them.” Lex’s face fell away. She began to sob over Dahl, “You would have died yourself if not for luck. You should have. But now you will stand–”

The cries irritated Dahl. She took a few steps forward, planted a lone, hard smack across Lex’s face, then forced her chin forward to meet her eyes. Lex went quiet, teeth grit against the grip.

“You are hereby accused of crimes against Global Entertainment and its properties, and separately, for the manslaughter of your parents. How do you plead?”

She released Lex’s mouth enough for her speak; Her eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. She spit in Dahl’s face, “Go. To. Hell.”

The beatings and imprisonment Lex was subjected to afterward would have hardened anyone. Instead of becoming a psychopath or a complacent slave– either malleable enough to be put down– she refined her strengths, convictions, planned for her eventual escape or release. The prison cell she occupied alone was one of few still used. Her appeal was made automatically by algorithms that took into account every possible variable of her crime, conviction, and behavior, concluded she would no longer present a problem.

They were wrong. Autonomous systems were like that; able to account for every variable, judge and determine whatever they wanted, but in the end, they knew nothing of the “human element.” Respiration, brain-wave patterns, heart-rate, everything could be monitored, but it didn’t change a human’s intuition. Had anyone seen one of their species wronged, ready to respond as Lex was, they’d have never let her go. Doing so was a grievous mistake for the Collective. Had they recognized the importance of her inability to sleep, they might have saved themselves.

Instead, she left prison, found others whom refused to sleep. In time her plans were laid, and her training complete. She became a weapon of steel and flesh. Her sole motives to survive became eliminating her parents’ real killers– those whom planted the machines in their brains. She was going to avenge every single person who had lost something, everything even, to the Sleep. The why was simple enough. The how was a river of blood just beginning to flow.

She stepped up a curb in the rain with a light slap of a boot, pulled open a door to an apartment building. She already knew where to go; top floor, last apartment on the left. The GSS would have only just responded to the first attack, would require time to connect the messages left to the need of protecting the Collective. Any reality otherwise was just more blood for the river.

She emerged on the top floor. Chrome doors gleamed along the hall’s low-light, reflected multicolored iridescence of neon and LEDs from beyond a nearby window. Building-tops outside were punctuated by the cool, deep blues of touch-screen panels along the hall’s doors.

Lex was prepared, had memorized the GSS master-codes her people had pulled from their private servers. When she reached the last door on the left, there was nothing to stop her. It slid open on an apartment that, like every other dwelling in Tokyo, resembled her former home. The only differences were in the few, luxury items afforded by the wealthy owner.

Her feet were quiet, dry by the time she entered. A light glowed beneath the bathroom door, said her target was readying herself for bed– or perhaps work, as was the way with the sociopaths and sycophants that now ran the world. Whichever her target was, she wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t matter with what was to come to them.

The door slid open on the face Lex remembered from so long ago. The eyes were warmer now though, more youthful, vibrant. The expression of shock on the woman’s face said she knew who Lex was, but there was a cower to her cries. Lex grabbed her by the tied robe, threw her further into the main-room of the apartment. The robe fell open to expose her night-time nudity, unfurled on either side of her arms and legs. She slid backward for the door on her hands. Lex’s boot was quick, held her down with a heavy foot.

Lex’s blades sang as they slid from their sheathes, “Where is Calista?”

“M-my sister?” The woman choked with an English accent.

“Your twin,” she affirmed with a level tone.

“I-I don’t know,” Dahl stammered. “I s-s-swear. I h-haven’t known since she was promoted to head of Global Entertainment.”

“You’re lying,” Lex said, a blade rising to press her throat.

The woman cried, “I’m not. I swear. God, just leave me alone!”

Lex pressed the blade inward, forced their eyes to meet, “Rachel Dahl; where is your sister?”

She swallowed hard, eyes and voice wet with sincerity, “I don’t know– b-but I might be able to find out.”

The blade at Rachel’s throat went lateral, forced a flinch that trickled blood down her neck. With it, Lex’s head tilted, “How?”

She swallowed hard again, “Com-computer. Email. I c-can schedule a m-meet.”

Lex snarled. The blade twisted to a whimper, “I thought you didn’t know where she was.”

Rachel squeaked a cry, “I don’t! I swear. I just know how to c-contact her.”

Lex’s dilemma was clear in her eyes for a moment. The blades lowered into their resting position and her boot rose from Rachel’s chest, “Get up.”

The woman’s feet slipped and slid as she rose, hugged her robe closed, “Wh-what are you going to do to me?”

“You’re going to get dressed and come with me,” she instructed. “And if for even a second I believe you’ve contacted GSS, you’ll be cut into so many pieces they’ll never find all of you. Is that understood?” Rachel gave a single, timid nod. The katanas whirled, re-sheathed. “Good. Now play nice, and get dressed.”

She followed Dahl, watched her dress in what once had been called street-clothes; jeans, T-shirt, long leather coat, and battered running shoes. Lex pulled Rachel’s hood up, instructed her to keep her face hidden, then stepped for the living-room’s center. After a few moments, she dropped a small, personal recorder on the coffee table and escorted Rachel out.

Missed part 2? Read it here!