Category: Neural Nets, Uplinks, and Wetware

I was fifteen when they took the computers away.
I’m 27 now, a proud mother of two young daughters of my own, but I can still remember the shock, the confusion, and the anger. I’d had a hand-me-down iPhone from either my mum or dad since my eleventh birthday; three generations of the electronic device. Most of my pocket money went on apps, on whatever was the latest craze in the playground. I’d eagerly look forward to announcements from Apple HQ, knowing that though I wouldn’t be getting that particular upgrade myself, one or both of my parents would surely be tempted and I’d get their old-but-not-that-old hand me downs. They in turn used the denial of my iPhone as a threat to secure good behaviour and its availability as a promise to make sure I did my homework as soon as I got in from school.
Of course, a lot of my homework was done on the kitchen computer, an oversized ‘laptop’ that would surely crush – or, given its heat output, melt – any lap it sat on. Then there was the tablet I would borrow to watch Netflix or play Angry Birds and the Wii on which I would play Dance or Karaoke games with my schoolmates. Or the TV itself, with its terabyte storage allowing me to pause and rewatch my favourite Disney Channel shows, and its WiFi link that let me make my own slideshows of videos and photos to play on its 50 inch screen.
All gone, that sunny day in August.
I wasn’t the only one outraged, though being a teenager, I still had time to re-adjust to an analogue existence. It was a generational thing. The young re-normalised to a life without the beep and flow of electronic info, the old distantly remembered how it had used to be, silently relieved that they no longer had to keep up with the frantic pace of progress. It was my parents and those a few years older than I, who suffered most. A lost generation, the papers calls them, set adrift without the crutches they had so quickly gotten used to, that they would never quite forget, always looking for a refresh button that no longer existed.
Every so often, you heard of one of them being arrested for trying to use contraband technology. It was pitiful what they latched onto. Attics that hadn’t been searched in years turning up old IBM PCs, with cathode ray monitors and 5-and-a-quarter inch floppy disks. As if these could in some way compensate for what they had lost, as if any standalone computer or smartphone could, without being connected to an internet via WiFi or Bluetooth or the cellphone network.
I trained as a librarian. There was a massive investment in rebuilding what had been lost only a decade or so earlier, and a desperate need for people – good, honest people – to replace the computerised catalogues and the internet enabled terminals that had proved so much more popular than the aging ranks of dusty books. I went to Uni just as the first of the new generation of libraries opened, staffed by grey-haired elderly ladies coerced without much difficulty out of retirement. By the time I qualified, I could take my pick of placements and within five years I was running my first library.
I’ve worked in quite a few since, ending up back where I grew up. It’s a good life. Being a librarian, like being a teacher, is once again one of the most highly respected and rewarding jobs there are. We are pillars of society. With no computers and no TVs, books and radio became once again the main sources of information and home-entertainment.
Up until last month, I didn’t miss or regret what the US government had taken from us all those years ago. It had dulled the edge of an increasingly hectic lifestyle, and whatever people had thought of their virtual networks at the time, of their supposedly ‘social’ media, nothing could replace the real communities that had sprung up to replace them.
And then the letter arrived.
It’s an old cliché, right? The identical twin I didn’t know existed? The handwritten words explained nothing and as I read and re-read it, an untouched glass of chilled white wine numbing my hand, my husband pacing back and forth uncertain how to offer support, I knew that I had to – just had to – accept her invitation to visit, to stay for the weekend, just me, and her.
The road map hadn’t prepared me for what I found when I turned off Route 25A, past the four striped chimney stacks of Northport Power Station. I drove back, and forth, and back once again before pulling up at the checkpoint manned by two security guards.
“I… erm” I say, waving the creased letter, looking again at the address she’d written.
“Francis Wilkins?” the older of the two guards smiles. “Go right on in, we’ve been expecting you.”
I pass through, looking at the wire fence, the twelve foot wall beyond it, and the secondary checkpoint. I’m busy thinking to myself, what the hell? My sister – my twin sister – in jail?
But after that second checkpoint, things opened out some. Landscaped gardens, a big old building overlooking the Sound, and I’m thinking: is this a mental asylum? And is that better, or worse, than a jail?
I pull to a halt, check my reflection in the rear-view, and warily step out. There’s nobody about. I wonder if the walls are to keep people in, or out.
There’s another checkpoint in the hallway just past the oversized doors. A woman peers at the letter and asks for my ID before she bids me wait while someone is called to escort me.
It’s only when her face lights up with a soft blue glow that I twig there’s something unusual about this place.
“Fiona’s been expecting you.” a young man says, appearing suddenly from a door behind me. “She’s very excited. If you’d like to come through?”
“Is she… okay?” I ask.
He laughs, a light laugh, “Oh yes. She’s in very good health, and spirits.”
He guides me down the corridor, and waves a plastic card over a black panel at the side of the door, which clicks open. An… electronic door?
“What is this place?” I ask.
“Fiona will explain everything to you. We’re delighted you came. Here we are.”
He steers me into a brightly lit room and pulls the door firmly shut. The sharp snick of the lock almost distracts from what stands before me. It takes a moment to see past the short hair, the pale skin, the unbecoming plain tunic, but as her features resettle in my mind it is undeniably familiar. Me; in a mirror to another universe.
“Hello,” she says, extending her hand.
I want to hug her, to hold her close, and I almost brush aside the hand to do so, but other voices whisper in my ear, warning caution. I still do not know what this place is, or why she is here. She appears fragile, defenceless in her simple outfit, stripped of any insignia by which we display our status, our standing in society.
I grasp her hand, feel its coolness, the fingers thinner than my own, and gently shake. “Fiona?”
“Francis,” she replies with a nod, her eyes skirting around mine, her free hand twitching nervously, her jaw clenching and releasing.
“I…” I begin to say, and then I see a flicker in the blackness of her pupils, feel the tiny metal squares in her fingertips, almost read the silent words she is making with her lips.
She smiles. “Cornea implant,” she says. “Motion tracking implants on my fingers.” She taps the side of her neck, where there is a tiny white scar. “Sub-vocalisation unit in my voice box.”
I look at her with wonder. So very like me, and yet not. “Why?” is all I can manage to say.
She shrugs. “These are still the most efficient ways to interface. The hands are remarkably dextrous, with or without a keyboard. The voice box allows us to ask questions as soon as we think of them, to issue complex demands. The optical implants are capable of filling our entire vision, at incredible resolution, or simply overlaying what we see with information.”
“No…” I frown, shake my head. “I mean why have they done this to you?”
Fiona laughs. “Oh, I did it to myself. Or, if you like, the flip of a coin did it. You have no idea how close you came to be standing where I am today, and I, where you are.”
“I don’t-”
“I sometimes wonder what scientists would do without adopted twins,” she says. “You do know you were adopted?”
I stare at her. I didn’t, but now that she has told me, I don’t doubt her for a second. Should I have known? Should I have worked it out? When the letter came, the letter that told me I had a twin, I didn’t stop to think of the mechanics of it, the point at which we were separated, who was displaced, and why.
“In the year 2002”, she narrates, “twin girls were born to a woman who did not think she could cope with such unexpected fecundity. They were both put up for adoption. But two girls are harder to place than one, so they were put up separately. By the time the mother changed her mind and proved to the board’s satisfaction that she was serious, one of the two, Francis, was already placed out, and though this broke the mother’s heart, it also made things easier for her, so she let it happen.”
“My mother…” I say, feeling faint.
“Is not your mother. Please, take a seat,” Fiona takes my elbow, gently guides me. “A glass of water?”
I sit as the room spins, sip the cool liquid from the glass gratefully, her fingers resting on my wrist, at the spot where you might take a person’s pulse. Then she pulls away, satisfied, as I slowly try and absorb what I have been told. Fiona stands a little way from me, her fingers dancing in the air, her eyes flicking from side to side.
“What… what is this place?” I ask as the ringing in my ears fades.
“Fancy a tour?” she says, and I glance towards the door that I came through. She shakes her head and one of the four walls flickers to show another room, a couple of dozen desks shaped like half of an eggshell, behind each of which sits a person in the same bland outfit as Fiona. With their short cropped hair and lack of ornamentation, it is hard to tell which are male and which female. There’s a low murmur of half voices and their hands and fingers jerk as though they’re being controlled by a puppeteer, as they reach out to touch things that are not there.
“We were the first generation to be born to parents who were technically savvy,” she says “The first to be exposed to digital information from birth. Analogue creatures, forced to rewire for a world we had turned digital. A massive experiment, with no control group.”
The screen flicks to another room, a room full of beds. The view zooms in on one of them, a wide eyed girl lying prone, an IV line in her motionless arm, her cheekbones sharp and sallow, though her eyes dance back and forth, and her fingers still ruffle the white sheets.
“We were only alerted to the problems inherent in this experiment by societies further along the curve than we were. By the Japanese with their Hikikomori: a generation refusing to leave their rooms, to engage with the real world. Clusters of kids in Silicon Valley or other tech hotspots, suffering the same sort of problems, exaggerating symptoms of Aspergers, or other autistic forms. Even in those who adopted technology later in their lives, from their teenage years, say, there were worrying signs of mental illness, of withdrawal, of total immersion. And that immersion, as you can see here, becomes a passive thing, with the world at your fingertips, at your command, it is all too easy to just let it wash over you.
“We were not yet at the point where the technology was doing permanent harm to our society, to our minds, but we were certainly heading there. So we took away the damaging stimulus from most of the population.”
“Most?” I echo back. “Not all?”
“No,” she agrees. “That would have been impractical, while other countries retained their full digital integration. We would have become a backwater: blind and impotent. So they set up centres such as this one. I am not permitted to tell you how many there are. The government, and the military, use us as resources, as may any company that can put forward a plausible argument on why they need our computing power. Surprisingly few can. The general populous, they certainly do not need computers. They were sold a dream, a dream that turned out to be no more than the wheel in a cage, a wheel that never stops and always wants more. The human desire to overload itself with stimulus is not a healthy one.”
“You seem to be okay,” I point out.
She shrugs. “Perhaps. It’s hard to tell. That’s why you are here.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Those scientists, with their adopted twins, remember? The control group. Our people want to run some tests on you, to compare your results with mine. To see whether the change back to analogue has been worth it, to see if your neural pathways have recovered. To try and help predict which of our digital subjects can cope with the full immersion and which can’t.”
“But… the letter…”
“I didn’t write the letter,” she says.
“So… it was all a fraud.” I say, trying to stem the sudden bitterness that I feel.
“No,” she frowns, the artificial lens of her eyes flickering with data. “I did genuinely want to meet you, but someone else wrote the words. I could perhaps have dictated the words to them, but I left that in another’s hands as well.”
I stare at her. “And… if I refuse?” I say.
She nods, her calmness infuriating. “You are free to go, whenever you want. But I can assure you, the tests are not invasive. A full medical, an ECG, tests of your mental and physical dexterity. If you choose to do them, then I will do them by your side, in tandem. I do hope we’ll get to spend some time together, Francis.”

“How was it?” my husband asks from the porch, as I pull up in front after the long drive home, sore, and cranky.
“Not great,” I say, rubbing my neck. “We don’t seem to have anything in common. Different paths, I suppose.”
He nods, as if he knows what I am talking about. “Wine?” he asks.
I smile, give him a hug, kiss him long and slow. “I thought you’d never ask.”

END.
by Liam Hogan
Liam Hogan is an Oxford Physics graduate and award winning London based writer. His short story “Ana”, appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2016 (NewCon Press) and his twisted fantasy collection, “Happy Ending Not Guaranteed”, is published by Arachne Press. Find out more at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk/, or tweet @LiamJHogan

He woke up in a dimly lit room. He could hear people speaking before he opened his eyes, and when he did he saw four other people in the room: two men and two women. All were wearing the same grey clothing. Uniforms, maybe. Looking down at himself he noticed he, too, was similarly attired.
“Hey,” one of the others said, one of the men. “A new one. You were right, Mac, there seems to always be five of us. You have a name, buddy?”
“I, I … can’t think of it,” he said.
“Fine,” the man said. “We’ll call you ‘Buddy’ then. I’m Hector.”
“OK, fine,” Buddy said. “No .. ah ..no problem.” He was confused.
The man named Hector turned to the others. “So why five? And what does happen when we go out there?” He pointed to the doorway. There was no door, only an opening. It was dark out there.
‘Buddy’ stood and faced the small group. “What the hell is happening” he demanded. “Who is responsible for this?”
“The usual questions,” the second man piped up. “Whose fault is this? What’s going on? Here’s the thing, sunshine – none of us has any idea. We’ve just been here longer.” The man turned away, walked to the door opening, and looked out. He spat out of the opening.
One of the women approached Buddy and offered her hand. “I’m Jo,” she said. “Hector has been here the longest. He’s just angry. Welcome to the group.”
The man recently named Buddy shook Jo’s hand.
“I … I have questions. Where are we? Who are you? What are we doing here?”
The second woman interrupted. “We don’t know. We know that we are here, wherever that is. We know that people leave through that door, and do not return. We know that there are usually five of us in here, and never any more. When someone leaves, someone appears. That’s what we really know.” She sat down in a corner.
Hector spoke. “We also know that when a new person arrives nobody sees them, and it always happens after someone leaves. And we all have weapons.”
Buddy checked. He had a pistol, and an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder.
“Who feeds us? Where is the bathroom?”, he asked.
“Are you hungry?” the second man asked? “None of us have been. Got to pee? Nobody has.”
Buddy realized that he felt no physical discomforts. She had some kind of point. It was neither warm, nor cold. He had no itch to scratch, no pain.
Suddenly the second woman, whose name he did not know, stood and went to the door. She did something to her weapon, and walked through the door into the dark. Buddy had no idea what he had just witnessed, but the others seemed to be not at all surprised.
“What just happened?” Buddy asked.
They all looked at him. Hector shrugged. “We don’t know. Every once in a while, someone leaves.”
“Why don’t we all leave. Right now?”
“We can’t. Try it. We’ve all tried it. Nobody here can go through that opening.” Hector walked over to the exit and then just stood about two feet from it. “No matter what I do,” he said, “I can’t force myself to go any further.”
“That’s crazy,” Buddy exclaimed, and moved over to the exit. Then he, too, stopped. “Damn.”
“Told you,” Hector said.
“Hey,” a female voice cried from behind them. “What’s going on? Who are you people?” They turned to find a woman, dressed as they were, eyes wide.
Hector spoke first. “Hi, I’m Hector. This here is Buddy, he’s new too. The other guy over there is Mac, the lady on your left is Babe. You would be?” He smiled at her.
She did not smile back. Her brows knitted, and then she said “That’s odd. Why don’t I know my name? What is this place?”
Buddy answered her first. “Nobody knows where we are, and I’m guessing that nobody showed up he with a real name.” He looked at Hector. “Did they?”
“Nope. I have named everyone in the room, except for the new girl here. What name do you fancy, kiddo?”
“I … I don’t know. This is all very strange. I don’t seem to know who I am.”
“That’s OK. We’ll call you …”
“Do NOT call me kiddo. For the sake of this little play, call me … Delores.” She looked herself up and down. “I seem to be in the military. I don’t recall that. I do know that this is an FN P90 personal defense weapon, capable of 900 rounds a minute.” She indicated her weapon. “You”, she looked at Hector, “are carrying an M32 grenade launcher, with a capacity of six 40 mm rounds. You, Buddy, have a Heckler & Koch HK G3 over your shoulder and a VP FDE in your holster.”
“We all know that stuff,” Mac said. “So what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice shaky. “It’s the thing I actually seem to remember.” She started to cry.
Hector took her by the shoulder and started to talk to her softly, moving away to a far corner of the small space so the others would not hear. Buddy gestured to Max and Babe, who approached.
“Has everyone searched his place for another exit?” Buddy asked. “It seems to me that there is some purpose to this that we haven’t figured out. Perhaps we’ve been drugged. Maybe it’s some kind of test?”
Babe spoke for the first time. “The room has been thoroughly searched for other exits and weak points. I did it myself, for a while. Nothing. Grenades have been used on the walls. No effect. In fact, no injuries, which is a bit remarkable given the size of the room.” It was about 40 feet by 20 feet, with no significant cover anywhere.
Buddy frowned and walked over to the nearest wall. He started to tap on the metal, with his ear against it. He moved up and down, then along the wall, repeating the process.
“It’s a waste of time,” Max shouted.
“I have the time,” Buddy replied and kept at his task.
Hector returned to the group, who were quite close to the opening.
“Delores and I have had an idea,” he said. “We should make a huge uproar outside. Fire all of our weapons. She has some C4, it turns out, and I have grenades, and – well, if we fire them out the opening we could attract some attention.”
“Who do you think is out there?”, Babe asked, making a sour face.
“No idea,” Hector replied. “Someone, we hope. At least it would be new. Anything new would be good.”
“Knock yourself out. I’m not a part of this.” Mac walked away and sat down in the far corner. The rest of them moved towards the door into the darkness, and each took a weapon in hand. Delores tossed a block of C4 through the opening. She could no longer see it. She approached the doorway as closely as she could, but could not see the C4.
“It has to be only a couple of feet outside. Hector. Fire a grenade at it.” She backed away from the opening.
Hector fired. The weapon responded, but nothing happened outside. An explosion was to be expected. Nothing happened.
“Shit,” he said.
Delores reached for more C4. She froze. “I still have four charges,” she said. “I tossed one outside, so I should only have three. What the hell is going on?”
“Obviously,” Buddy said, “we can’t have any effect on the outside. At least, not until we can exit.”
Hector examined his weapon. “I still have a full load too.” He leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting. His head was in his hands. “Are we in Hell?” he asked. “Purgatory, maybe? Some kind of punishment?” He looked up at the small group. “Did nobody here ever go to church? Do you understand me?”
Silence, for a moment. Buddy spoke first. “I doubt that any of us remember if we went to church, or school, or anything. Am I married? Do I have children? Did I eat breakfast, for God’s sake? How do I even know what those things mean? I don’t know.” He sat on the floor too. Delores shrugged and sat where she was, but Babe was still standing by the opening.
“Hey, I can see a little out there. It’s getting lighter.” She got as close to the door as she could. The others stared outside through the dark fissure, that did, in fact, seem to be becoming less black and more grey with each moment that passed. Even Mac seemed fascinated.
“This is new,” he said. “New is good.”
“I said that first,” Hector whispered to himself.
“I can see a tree or something. And another building. Over there.” Delores pointed. The others got up and followed her indication. Yes, she seemed to be right, at least about the tree.
There was something moving near the other building, slowly and along the visible wall. Some sort of vehicle, with no lights. A truck or tractor, perhaps.
“Hey, check that out. Over by the building there. A tank!”
Yes, it could be a tank. Then there was a flash of light as it fired, and the vehicle became visible for a moment. A tank it was. They could not see it clearly in the gloom, nor could they see its target, but during the flash, they could see it plainly. There was a war going on out there.
Babe examined her rifle and rummaged in her bag for a few seconds. Then she ran through the opening without saying a word. Nothing prevented her.
“What. The. Bloody Hell.” Buddy shouted, and ran to the door. He could not leave. He saw Babe racing in a zig-zag fashion across the compound that was visible through the opening. The tank had moved on. She vanished in the relative darkness about forty yards away and was lost to him.
“Now,” Hector said, “we’ll get someone new.”
Before that happened, Buddy felt an urge. He checked the clip on his rifle and removed his pistol from its holster, cocking and replacing it. Then he walked to the doorway and exited the room that had been his prison.
Looking around he saw nobody else, but he ran towards the doorway in the structure across the compound. As he entered the building he heard the sound of a bullet bouncing from the metal by his feet. He kept running, up a flight of stairs and towards a window on the second floor. He was not out of breath, not at all tired. Nothing visible through the window. There was a window on the other side, so he went there and took a furtive look. Three people in brown uniforms were approaching at a walk, looking in all directions. One of them pointed to him and fired his weapon. Buddy ducked and moved along the wall to the next window. He saw the three running towards the door to his building. He had to get out. Obvious he was grey and they were brown, and they were on opposite side of something.
There was another set of stairs further ahead, and he ran down them two at a time. There were two doors that he could see, one ahead and one to the left. Someone ran through the door to the left. Someone in brown. He fired, not really consciously, and his weapon responded with fire, a terrible noise, smoke, and death. The brown person went down.
He kept running through the door ahead, and turned to the left, slowing at the corner of the building. He poked his head around the corner and saw a second brown clad person running towards the door that had just seen death. Buddy fired at him, and he, too, went down before he could reach the doorway.
What was the hell going on? Who were these people?
He heard a sound behind him. A man was kneeling in the doorway he had just exited and was taking aim at him. He tried to swing his weapon around but was too slow. He saw a flash and then heard a series of explosions. He felt nothing but dropped to the ground. In a few moments, his consciousness disappeared, and he was gone.
* * *

“Yeah, I GOT ‘im,” Jason screeched. “He got you, and I got him. Ya, ya.” Jim and Nick sighed. Their characters had been restored in the game, and they grabbed their controllers. “You are an idiot. You just got lucky. Watch this.”, Nick yelled.
“Dinner’s on the table,” came a voice from upstairs. “Come and get it. NOW.”
They set down their controllers and paused the game. “Coming mom,” Jason shouted. The three ran to the stairs.
“Next time,” said Nick as they ran up to the kitchen, “let’s be grey.”
“OK.”
END.
by Jim Parker

 

The thumping of blades filled Dr. Keeva Moss’ ears as she looked around the dim cabin of the military helicopter. The camo-clad men sitting along the wall were enhanced United Continents of America Marines. They all stared forward at nothing, like mannequins waiting for life.

“They’re still getting briefed,” a Spanish accent said from her left.

Keeva looked over and scanned the nametag of a lean pseudo-Hispanic man sent by the Rioshon Corporation. He was introduced as Dr. Seager Phair before they boarded the helicopter. A name which did not match his Caribbean skin tone. There was no rank on his chest or gear other than the Rioshon logo.

He had a pristine grin and unwavering confidence as he continued speaking.

“There’s a signal scramble bubble surrounding Great Inagua. Rioshon Corp had it installed to prevent errant communications leaving the island. The broadcast is tight, so the Marines have to get all their orders and such out of the way before we get there.”

“What about you?” Keeva asked over the thumping blades. Her mother’s Irish accent slipped out, giving away what the pale skin and green eyes might not have. “No one giving you orders?”

“You’re with Medical Investigations,” Phair said, ignoring her question. He looked up and down the rows of Marines, “That explains the High and Tights. Rioshon would have used mercenaries. Expecting trouble from the locals down there?”

She shook her head. “MOIRA observes and reports on any issues with molten salts mining. Facilities harvesting nanite components are monitored and must account for unmonitored time. Standard stuff. No cause for alarm.”

Keeva was employed by the Medical Oversight, Research, and Integrations Agency as a liaison to the UCA’s military and the Corporate Oversight and Compliance office. MOIRA was content to leave her in a lab studying the effects of Bio and Nano technologies on human interactions. However, sometimes interactions happened outside the lab.

“Lucky for MOIRA, you’re not their PR person,” he replied with a grin. “Some oversight’s better than none, I imagine.”

“What?” Keeva asked.

The men around them wore battle armor, loaded with high tech weaponry. Phair held both his hands in front of him as if holding a fictional rifle.

He went on. “You bring two thumpers of Marines with hard ammo to all your ‘observations’? Don’t get me wrong. Rioshon would have just ‘glassed the island’ and then started over if you didn’t want to put boots on the ground.”

Keeva knew Phair was right. Rioshon had only called MOIRA and the UCA because they wanted a sign-off that the island was safe. Keeva was the authority and she would assure people the mine was not a threat to humanity. The molten salts mined at Great Inagua were one of the primary components in building nanites, small biological robots which UCA and companies like Rioshon used throughout the world. Without an okay from the oversight office, mining on Great Inagua would stop. Nanite-based technology leaving the UCA’s territories would be questionable and that was a cost no one was willing to pay.

Avoiding Phair, Keeva switched on her internal feed. The helicopter faded away and she was now observing the office of Dr. Anton Bressic. The feed was from a few days back. In the feed Bressic, medical facilitator for a Rioshon mining outfit on Great Inagua, hovered over a battered corpse.

Bressic pronounced the miner deceased. The miner had been crushed in an accident a few days prior. The video was a formality and Bressic gave the location as his ‘office’ in the island’s makeshift town.

Keeva touch-typed on her left forearm and the notes appeared in her vision, adding to the list she had made over the last few viewings.

She had watched this playback too many times. There were always more notes to make. Every time she went through the footage, she found errors in Bressic’s process. Identifying them would not save the doctor’s life, but perhaps when she used them to document lab requirements, others could be saved. Keeva reached behind her ear and adjusted the playback volume.

“Mister Taylor and two other miners crawled free of a cave-in of Tube 48. Near as we can tell, they were the only three left from an eleven-man team. Eight stories down and very battered, they managed to make it to the surface,” Bressic said as he stared at the camera.

Behind him, two drop-cloths covered the bodies. Protocol said he should have quarantined them separately, especially since they were mining molten salts.

“Hours after Taylor and the others got free of the rubble, they began to collapse. Based on scans of their internal organs, I was surprised they had made it out. All three subjects presented the same muscle and bone damage. All died within hours of reaching the surface.”

She typed “calcium” and “iron” on her forearm’s translucent keyboard. The words appeared on a notepad in her field of vision. She stored the note with others in the playback. Calculations for gestation time were correct. That and the presence of the molten salts narrowed her focus. But other components were missing.

When Bressic said “surface”, her eyes zeroed in on the drop-cloths.

“Once I have pulsed the bodies, I can get some of the boys to box them up and ship them to the mainland,” Bressic commented, unaware of the stirring and shifting behind him. Always strap the bodies down, Keeva thought, as one of the dead miners shuffled to his feet.

The first few times she had watched the playback, Keeva yelled at Bressic to move. A problem of ocular playback was a belief the action was occurring in real time. By the tenth viewing, Keeva hardly flinched when a raged and gashed hand reached over Bressic’s left shoulder and ripped open his neck.

Bressic wheeled around, a pulse of blood flowing from his throat as the two mangled miners set upon him. He hardly screamed, possibly due to the efficiency of the first strike. Keeva could hear him groan while being ripped apart. Not even the mercy to kill him first.

The third miner rose off the table. When he eventually collided with the camera mount, the camera would fall. The remaining hour of footage would be of a blank ceiling.

Keeva had already stopped the replay. Frozen on the face of the miner the moment he struck the camera.

His skin was scraps of flesh tenuously holding on to bone and muscle. Dust and debris still embedded in some of the injuries, but that hardly drew her attention as much as the miner’s eyes. A haunting orange light burned in his pupils, as if the irises led to an unholy fire in his head. The skin on his face, like that of the men behind him, was tight to the bones. It was desiccated and reflected a red-green tint, possibly from the office lights.

The video faded away, returning Keeva to the dim lights inside the military helicopter.

At the front of the helicopter bay was Captain Tory Waters, a stocky man with obsidian skin. His eyes blinked rapidly and then he bellowed, “Landing zone coming up in ten minutes. All weapons hot and all digital eyes open. Birds will not remain. If you need it, bring it with you.”

#####

“We’ve been on the ground for several hours,” Keeva said as she trudged behind a few of the soldiers. The green tint highlighting everyone’s cheekbones told her they were all using ocular enhancements. Everyone except Phair, who showed no signs of implanted equipment. She continued recording. “No local presence reacted to the helicopters landing, and no bodies have been found. I’ve tested the air and water from the island and find no traces of contagion present. Will report as necessary.”

“You know no one is getting your calls,” Phair said as he plodded along beside Keeva. He was wearing a large backpack, fuller than the soldier’s packs, but not camouflaged.

He moved effortlessly which made her wonder if he was wearing a blast vest like she was. Two layers of dipped Kevlar did not seem to be slowing him down.

“Major Bhume back at the landing zone is barely getting through to the helicopters. No way your reports are making it back to MOIRA. My guess? They’ll all send the minute we leave.”

They landed on the northern side of the island. Major Bhume had commandeered an empty building to protect the landing zone and monitor all operations. He then sent two teams of six to investigate the mine and one team with Keeva and Phair to investigate the town on the eastern side of the island.

Keeva let Bhume ‘lead’ the mission. The Marines responded better when he barked orders at them.

Much like she allowed Captain Waters to lead this team, though if there was trouble, Keeva knew everyone would be looking to her. Being the liaison meant she outranked all the Marines, but only on paper. She knew not to get a big head about it. Picking your battles was as much a skill in the field as in the lab.

She reached up and shut off her recording device. Immediately the edges of her vision lost a slight red glow. A green glow remained which meant her ocular lenses were running in low-light mode.

“What makes you so sure the scrambler is still running?” Keeva asked Phair, when he slowed a bit.

Phair looked at the forearm keypad built into his uniform sleeve and pressed a few keys. A screen just past his cuff displayed a three-dimensional graphic of the island. The graphic rotated, popping up red dots along the coastline.

A combination of blue and red dots filled the center of the graphic. Phair pointed at one of the red dots and said, “Each of these is a poly-barrel fifty cal. Their domains overlap. The blue dots are generators for the scramble bubble. Just like the sentry guns, they run on geothermal energy. I can ping each asset, so I know they’re live.”

He pushed a few keys and locked in on one of the guns. When he brought up the display, a quizzical look crossed Phair’s face.

“What is it?” Keeva asked.

“This is Rioshon’s outbreak protection,” he replied, staring at the display. “Boats can’t land on the island, and nothing leaves unless it is cleared. Rioshon does not want an international incident. It seems the poly-barrels on the Eastern side of the island are half-full. A lot of rounds have been expended on that side.”

“So, Rioshon sent you here to make sure the site stays contained.”

Phair tipped an imaginary hat and continued. “Seager Phair, machinery and engineering specialist. Rioshon Corp contracted me to check on this equipment and verify the threat was to the biologics on the island, not the tech.”

The Marines hunkered down on a grassy knoll a few yards ahead of Keeva and Phair. Unsure why they were stopping, the conversation ended. They both moved forward toward the position.

Two of the men had taken point, rifles over the edge of the knoll, scopes out to surveil the land. The other four were crowded around a laptop, which had a piloting console attached.

The output was on everyone’s forearm display as a soldier spoke. “I’ve run about five passes through the main alleys. Still nothing. All the housing and buildings suggest there were people here, so where did they go?”

Captain Waters shook his head. An expression somewhere between determination and annoyance crossed his face. He locked in on Phair and said, “Twenty-five on a shift. Three shifts going for six months. There should be more than two hundred people on this patch. Are you sure one of your machines didn’t go haywire and kill everyone?”

“The sentries on the interior only fire at airborne targets, much like the ones on the perimeter will only fire at things in the water. The only thing shipped out here were Administrative and Sentry bots. Nothing armed. No entertainment, and nothing in town. Just paperwork bots for the mine offices.”

Keeva’s ears perked up for a second and she asked, “What series of robots?”

Waters interrupted. “They could have programmed a few functions into a bot. Maybe moved it over from the mines. That kind of thing happens.”

“The bots are Tasker Series,” Phair replied. He looked over at Waters and continued. “Which means they are preprogrammed and locked down before shipping. They are non-learning, and run weekly reimages from an internal drive. I can’t think of why people would screw with them.”

“Give them enough time, humans will always find a reason,” Waters replied.

Keeva tried to remember details about the Tasker Series. She knew they were made of aluminum and plastic, but wondered what their program series was. Turning to Phair she asked, “Did the Tasker series have accessible positron relays?”

“Sealed in the spinal column at the base of the neck. Why?”

Waters switched off his forearm display and said, “Four of us will head down with Doctors Phair and Moss. Jimenez, you cover us with the drone. Harris, keep an eye out with your long rifle.”

Waters looked over at Keeva, then pulled a silver cylinder from his shoulder pocket. It was about the width of his palm. He pressed a button and a spike launched out of the bottom. Jamming the cylinder into the ground beside Jimenez, he yelled, “Can you see the sentry beacon, Dr. Moss?”

On a small multidirectional display in the corner of her vision, Keeva saw the blinking silver marker. She nodded.

Waters immediately said, “Then let’s get moving.”

#####

They moved down the eastern side of the knoll. Grass crushed under Keeva’s feet as they avoided the few carved paths leading into the shantytown. The streets shone with phosphorescent lighting, but the buildings were dark. Keeva’s ocular lenses began ramping up their low-light amplification.

Phair wore a set of night vision goggles and followed Keeva by less than a step. The soldiers moved a few yards ahead of the pair, checking doors and windows, none of which showed signs of life. Above them, she could hear the six blades of the drone whistling past.

The Marines were four housing units in when Waters voice whispered in her audio implant, “We’ve got something here.”

Keeva walked toward one of the common areas which connected a group of six housing units, like an extended porch. Against a table was one of the Administration robots. The treads under it speared to the ground. Its squat body leaned against the table while its saucer–shaped head was only loosely attached. Phair followed Keeva into the area and shook his head at the scene.

“Fucking people,” he huffed, kneeling beside the damaged unit. “They trapped the little guy, then tore him open. Looks like they used a plasma torch to cut into the spinal column, before draining the positronic fluid.”

“So now they have all the components of Soma,” Keeva said ticking positrons off a mental checklist.

Waters pressed his glove to an ear, then turned to Keeva. “I’m gonna leave Haynes with you two and check out what the others have found. You okay with that, Dr. Moss?”

She gave a quick nod and Waters took off, disappearing deeper into the complex. Keeva looked at Haynes, who eyed the perimeter, his rifle at the ready. Something had spooked the Marines. Since she had not heard it on her comms, Keeva figured the Marines used an emergency frequency just for themselves.

Keeva gave a chin jut to Haynes and asked, “Anything I should worry about?”

“No, Ma’am. I’m sure the Captain is just being overly cautious.”

The reply was as neutral as a UCA Marine could deliver. Keeva turned her attention back to Phair. He pulled the pack off his shoulder and was rooting around in it. Pulling free a bolt driver and a box of bits, he said, “Soma wouldn’t lead to the beastie you saw in the video.”

Earlier, she guessed he had seen Bressic’s video. Now, he had confirmed it.

Phair used the bolt driver to unscrew the robots head. It looked like an old-fashioned flying saucer, a pair of dishes with a ribbon of clear optical sensors connecting them. He continued. “I’ve been to a couple of Soma dens. Belize, Korea, even the New Syrian Republic. None of them had any issues with what you saw on the video. This looks like a few of your miners just wanted to get high.”

“Why did Rioshon send these smaller bots out here? Why not send bots that could protect themselves?” Keeva asked. She had seen fewer of the Tasker series of bots in the last few years.

“Rioshon was actually pushing to replace these units with more humanoid bots,” Phair said, as he slid the top off the robot. “These were probably remainders, sent out here to get some use before they were scrapped. Studies show the more human a bot looks, the less chance someone will destroy it for positronic fluid.”

Phair looked up at the Marine waiting with them. “Where did Captain Waters go?”

Haynes reached a gloved hand behind his ear and repeated the question.

Phair continued to pull parts from the top of the robot, sliding finger length pieces of metal into a box in his pack.

Within moments, the Marine replied, “Dr. Moss, Captain Waters says they have something for the pair of you. Three buildings over. He says they will hold position there until we arrive. Ready to move when you are, Ma’am.”

#####

“Soma’s a euphoric,” Phair said as they moved through a few alleys toward the center of the housing unit area. “If the whole island was trying to get high, they would need more bots than we sent. Though, if everyone was juiced up on Soma, they could have walked into the sea, and the poly-barrels would have torn them apart. It would explain the missing bodies.”

“Walked into the sea? Maybe they ran,” Waters said as he stood in the entryway of Bressic’s office.

Keeva flipped on her camera when she saw the outside of the building. She had seen the interior on video but this was different. The front door torn off the hinges, standing open. She looked at Waters, whose hands were tight to his rifle. “Did you find something, Captain?”

“More a lack of something. You need to come with me,” Waters replied. He gave a glance at Haynes. The Marine quickly left to secure the perimeter.

Keeva followed Waters. Phair trailed behind her. She was quick to notice the gashes and grooves in the doorway, and in the walls around the front of the building. It was as if something or someone had struggled to break out for a while, then succeeded. When they moved through the little building, she caught sight of more scratch marks and gashes in the walls.

She and Phair continued to move cautiously, while observing the damage. Ahead of them, Waters held his weapon at the ready, waiting for something to jump out. They rounded a corner. Keeva found herself in the office seen in the video.

Within blood stained walls, equipment was tossed in various directions, body parts laying around the room. She did her best to avoid touching anything, simply following Waters as he kept a distance from the parts.

“Look at the cuts,” Phair said from behind the pair. He moved around them and crouched a slight bit closer. “Whatever tore these men apart did so with precision, and tried to waste as little flesh as possible.”

“Men? This might just be Bressic,” Keeva replied.

“I saw more than two elbows on the other side of the gurney. Judging by the skin tones, I’d say a group of people came in here to help the doctor and met a similar fate,” Phair replied, as he hovered over an arm. He reached into his pack and slipped out a set of colored lenses. In seconds, he had affixed them to his Night Vision Goggles.

The lenses spun amid a series of whirs and ticks. Then they finally locked in. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What’s going on, Doc?” Waters asked.

Phair took a step back from the wayward parts. “Captain, you need to call Commander Bhume and the other squads. Have them head back to the extraction point. Same for us. We need to just slowly back off, okay?”

“What is the problem, Doc?”

Phair stood and backed up. He turned to Waters. “Tell your men to meet us at the front of this building. Tell them not to touch a damn thing, okay?”

Neither Waters nor Keeva reacted to the calm fear in Phair’s words.

Phair continued. “Switch your optics to scan for gaseous emissions. Then filter down to Dioxide-based compounds and tell me what you see?”

Mentally, Keeva ran through the selections of her ocular filters, following Phair’s directions. She could see Captain Waters doing the same. When the filter kicked in, a matte of greys and blacks seemed to coat the walls and floor, but an ambient blue glow was pouring off the ground.

“What the Hell is that?” Waters asked.

The question was not directed at her, but Keeva knew the answer. “Carbolidium dioxide. That shouldn’t be here.”

Waters turned to face her and Keeva scanned him for the same emissions before he demanded clarification.

“Carbolidium Dioxide is the exhaust of nanites,” Keeva replied. She looked over at Phair. “But nanites are outlawed anywhere molten salts are mined or processed.”

“Why the Hell is that?” Waters asked.

Keeva watched as Phair scanned the room. He dropped to the ground and began pulling pieces of hardware from his backpack. She looked over at Captain Waters. “Nanites draw their power from human tissue. They run based on brain wave patterns, and heartbeat detection, which is why they become inert the minute their host dies. However, in certain doses, molten salts may act as an alternate power source.”

“There are safeguards put in place to prevent sentience from forming in the nanite programming,” Phair interrupted. He unfolded a collapsible back stock and trigger housing from his bag. As Phair attached a wide shotgun style barrel to the end, he continued. “If nanites exist or replicate outside of a human host, it could cause a world of trouble.”

Waters was visually impressed with the collapsible shotgun Phair had unpacked in a matter of seconds. When Phair began shoving rounds into the breach, Waters finally said, “Dr. Phair, you were not authorized weapons for this excursion.”

“Not a weapon, Captain Waters,” Phair said, racking a bright blue shotgun round. “This is an electro-mag pulse emitter. A tool I packed in case I needed to power down a rogue bot. It may come in handy now.”

Waters looked away, tapping the button behind his ear, “Jimenez, I am sending you my optical configuration. Pass it to all the other teams and then set the drone with it. What do you see?”

Keeva watched the lump of flesh on the ground emit a cobalt blue light. Nanites trying to rebuild, the job they were programmed to do. However, without mass to work with, they were trying to steal it from whatever they could find.

She looked at Phair. “This doesn’t explain the bodies on the video. They were haggard and beaten, but they came out of the mine looking normal.”

“They came out of the mine looking healthy, trying not to draw attention. But they were hurt,” Phair replied, pushing Keeva and Waters back. He kept the barrel of his rifle aimed into the room but did not fire. “Once they were back in town, they shifted to necessary organ function, and the outer shell began to fall apart.”

“That’s crafty,” Keeva replied. They moved toward the front of the building.

“Bhume is the only one responding to Jimenez’ call,” Waters interrupted. “Charlie and Alpha teams are at the tunnels, but neither is responding. Major Bhume is calling in air support. He says they show no Carbolidium presence at the landing site.”

“Craftiness denotes intelligence, especially if they were trying to access more material,” Phair replied.

“What material are they trying to get too?” Waters asked as he moved out the front door of the building.

No one had a chance to answer. A ragged body standing behind one of Waters’ Marines drew their attention. The body was emaciated. The skin still on it hung limply. Fragments of muscle and bone peeked out from between patches of skin, though none of it appeared to bleed.

Captain Waters froze. The creature had a hand on Haynes’ shoulder. Uniform fabric, metal, plastic, and skin were all peeling away, moving in small flakes toward the creature. Keeva could see trails of blue light racing across Haynes’ chest, the concentration greatest at his throat. All the swirls of light eventually returning across the decrepit arm on Hayes’ shoulder.

“The nanites are taking any tissue and bone they need to rebuild,” Keeva said in disgust. “They are taking him apart like ants.”

Phair rushed past her, bringing the barrel of the shotgun to bear on the creature, but not before Waters reacted. Triplet bursts of rounds impacted the creature where he stood. Tight clusters tore swathes of muscle and flesh away, though there was little reaction. It looked up at Waters and flashed a set of spit-glazed teeth.

Phair took aim and yelled, “Captain Waters, get back.”

A bright blue ball erupted from Phair’s barrel, chased by a torrent of fire. It collided with the slack chest bone of the creature, erupting in a pulse of blue energy. Light arced around Haynes and his attacker, shaking the pair of them. The air crackled with energy. Phair pushed Keeva back, keeping her and Waters in the entryway of the building, as the electricity faded.

“Captain Waters, call Major Bhume and tell him we need to evac. Assume anyone not communicating is a loss,” Phair said as he walked quickly to the fallen pair. He turned to Keeva and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replied with a shudder. “The pulse fried the nanites, I take it.”

Phair placed his hands on Haynes’ body. There was labored breathing but hardly any movement. Seconds later, he sputtered and died.

Waters approached.

“What happened?”

“The nanites which paralyzed him died, but so did any bio-mech elements keeping him alive. Probably a pacemaker, a shunt, or another medical condition. At least he went quickly. What’s the word from Bhume?” Phair asked without missing a beat.

“Helicopters inbound. Bhume says to head back to landing zone.”

“The Hell you say,” Keeva chimed in. She reached to her headset and opened the comm. “Major Bhume, this is Dr. Moss. Direct one of the helicopters to land using Jimenez’s drone as a beacon. I have a pair of bodies to take back for examination. That’s an order.”

Silence filled her ears as Keeva waited. She wondered whether Bhume would question her authority. Her answer came in a terse response.

“Understood, Dr. Moss. One helicopter, your location. Bhume out.”

#####

It took forty minutes to carry the two bodies from the center of the shantytown to the extraction point, because of the maximum pace of two people dragging stretchers, while others maintained a moving perimeter.

Once they reached Jimenez’s position on the knoll, Keeva began processing the bodies. A half hour later, she switched off her recorder after all the preliminary safety precautions were complete. Her copious notes assured she would not get blindsided like Bressic. Protocols saved lives. After double-checking the bindings, she walked over to Phair, who was sitting along a small ridge with a few of his bright blue rounds, and the Tasker robot’s visor.

“A few more minutes and we’ll be on the Thumper back to Havana. You’re not going to need whatever that is,” she said, plopping down beside him.

Phair tucked the rounds in the center of the visor and laughed. “Better to have and not need, than need and not have, Dr. Moss.”

They could hear the thump of a helicopter coming. She swatted him on the shoulder. “Told you not to worry.”

A military transport chopper wailed past them, heading for the northern landing zone. Phair stood up and smirked. “First one is headed to Bhume’s location. Figures he would take the first ride. Payback for de-balling him on the comms earlier.”

Keeva grimaced, but she said nothing.

Phair continued. “I told him to pass the optic configuration to the gunners, to fire on anything with a blue glow. We should know in a few seconds whether he followed orders.”

A patter of gunfire echoed in the distance. A few seconds afterward, the heavy guns on the transport ship erupted.

Phair looked at the men with Waters and said, “Bhume’s only got two sides to defend. It’s a better position to be in. When the bird comes for us, our friends will be coming from all sides, trying to overrun us. But they’re gonna wait until the Thumper is closer to the ground. We need to load Dr. Moss, the bodies, then everyone else. You with me, Captain Waters?”

“We’ll keep ‘em back, Dr. Phair. Just do everyone a favor and make it quick.”

The sound of the blades from the first helicopter began drifting away. A second chopper approached and started to hover.

Jimenez remarked, “Captain, the drone’s picking up a wave of blue lights headed this way.”

“You know the drill. Keep shots tight and lethal. Anything with a glow, light it up. Jimenez, call out anything not in the main body,” Waters ordered, as he took a position with his men.

The thumper began to hover above Keeva, holding position and slowly descending to the ground. Both of the gunners were in their cradles. Like Waters’ men, they were not firing.

Phair rushed up alongside Keeva and yelled, “Can you see them in the distance? They are waiting for the Thumper to land. They want to use the aircraft to get off the island.”

Keeva switched on her comms. “Send down cargo ropes. Do not land. I say again. Do not land.”

One of the gunners would have to abandon his position to send down ropes. Keeva heard the first bursts of gunfire as the lines began to descend. She looked out to Waters position and saw bodies racing at the soldiers.

Waters and his men focused on the closest targets. Keeva saw body armor and military gear on the bodies of some attackers. One of the other teams was already lost. Phair had been right to order Bhume to evac. Every casualty would add material for the overclocked nanites to feed on.

Keeva and Harris buckled the bodies onto the wire harness. She took a quick glance at the firefight and saw one of the creatures in a military uniform get torn apart by the helicopter’s heavy gun. Instantly the others around it began pulling nanites and pieces onto themselves.

Harris grabbed the cable and yelled, “I’ll ride the cable up and send it back down. Free up the gunner.”

She knew Harris was the better choice to go up the rope. He ascended with the two bodies as Phair ran up.

“Why didn’t you go?” he shouted.

“Harris can work the line. Gives us a second gunner so they can land,” Keeva said, as she listened to the scattered gunfire around them.

“No chance,” Phair replied. “They’re waiting. The numbers they are putting out are test balloons, gauging our response. They won’t let the bird land without rushing en masse.”

“Whoever gets hit gets absorbed by the others,” Keeva replied. “Every one we take down just consolidates the nanites. Eventually they’ll take us.”

“You got enhancements other than the optics?”

“No,” Keeva replied.

Phair put a radio to his face.

“Pilot, when you see the flash, give two Mississippi, then bring the helicopter down.”

“Roger,” the pilot replied.

Phair keyed his radio again. “Captain Waters, slow your rate of fire and fall back to my position. Let them come a little closer.”

There were no more words between them. Gunfire faltered as men fell back to Phair and Keeva’s position. Creatures began pouring from the trees, though the gunners on the Thumper were still picking off one or two.

Keeva looked at the rushing, makeshift mass of bodies. They were amalgams of flesh and bone, held together by crazed robotics attempting to recreate a human being.

Phair fell to a knee and placed the Tasker’s saucer head on the ground. He connected a small battery and a white light began to pick up speed around the outside of the visor. A few quick rotations and it exploded in a flash of blue, followed by nothing but black and dull sound.

The gunfire from the Thumper stopped with the flash. Keeva felt as if she had been punched in the throat and ears. She was dazed and could feel someone grabbing her arm, but shrill screams, thumping, incoming rotor wash, became the most prominent sensations. Amid all the havoc, she let herself get shoved around, hoping her faith in Phair would be rewarded.

#####

Keeva was laying across three seats inside the helicopter when her vision started filtering back. It was a grainy mass of gray and white, but better than the black she had been staring at. In front of her, Phair was adjusting levels on a handheld tablet.

“Can you see anything,” he asked.

She nodded, but the blur in her vision increased with the movement. When she looked at the tablet, it had a cable running up to her neck. Concerned, she asked, “What are you doing?”

“Coding the nanites I put in to repair your EET recorders,” Phair said blithely. “I had some unprogrammed nanites with me. I’m using them to map and restore anything fried by the pulse. Don’t worry. I’m only working on the tech in your head and nothing else.”

“What happened,” she managed to get out, her throat on fire.

“I wired a handful of rounds together to create a pulse which would brush everyone back,” Phair said with a grin. He hardly looked away from the screen. “Waters’ men only had one optic a piece. Harris was the only one with life-saving implants. I gambled that the horde not caught in the blast would feed on those who fell, before coming at us. After the blast, we left in the commotion.”

Phair slipped a square of clear gel into her hand. Keeva knew it was a data drive and was about to ask why when he said, “In case Rioshon tries to memory wipe the last twenty-four hours. Bhume called in the prelim report. Blamed the Soma-jacked miners for the interaction, based on your findings. Rioshon launched rockets from the Havana location to solve the problem. A series of overlapping strikes will burn the surface, then they’ll follow up with EMP’s for anything else. After a lather, rinse, and repeat, they will call the island safe. The hope is to have new personnel on site in three days.”

“Thanks,” she rasped with a smile.

Researching what caused the reaction at Great Inagua would take time. Keeva had bodies to work on and perhaps they would lead to understanding what they had seen. Rioshon’s response was about profit and loss, nothing more. Keeva leaned back and looked out the small window beside her head. In the distance, she saw the tail fire of rockets burning toward the island before she let the helicopter blades lull her to sleep.

 

END.

By H. James Lopez

 

She had put out the advert a week ago and had been waiting ever since. Luckily there was a free internet portal just around the corner, she remembered typing every letter of the advert and wondering if she was done the right thing. It was pointless wondering that though, there was no longer any other choices for her.  

For a week she had been sitting, alone in the alleyway. Cardboard boxes beneath her, rotting blankets on top of her. Her stomach screaming in pain because she hadn’t eaten for, well, she couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten. There had been no sense in moving, or doing anything else. She couldn’t. She needed the money that a response to the advert would bring before she could even contemplate where she could go next.  

“It’s like a human yard sale,” her mother had scoffed last time she had visited, back when Abi had still had an apartment and a job. A lump formed in her throat when she realised that had been five years ago. “Selling your, what does it say here,” her mother had held up the tablet and squinted at the screen, “oh yes, ‘selling organic matter from the brain to assist in the construction of the photonic network. You shall be part of the connected world forever.’ It’s a disgrace.” Her mother had continued to rant on and on about how disgraceful it was as she flicked her finger viciously across the tablet screen to scroll through the rest of the article.

Abi had thought the same at first. It seemed so invasive, so violating to sell parts of your body. Selling cells from your brain so that the photons from those cells could be used to build a network that moved any and all kinds of information at high speeds. People came forward though, desperate people. The unemployed and those facing unemployment which, due to the ever increasing automation of the world, was a startlingly high number. Abi was one of them. The money for the cells was good though, but was it good enough?

But, as there were donors, the photonic network was built. It linked whole cities together, then cities to other cities, then countries to countries. It wasn’t long before there was no longer a need for a postal service as everything could be sent across the network. Shops disappeared, everything was ordered online. Cinemas, bowling alleys, all of them disappeared as you could play a game of bowling with you friends in the comfort of your living room if you were connected to the photonic network.

The wind whipped down the alleyway. Abi pulled the rotted blankets tighter around her, wincing at the stench of them. She coughed and could see her breath in the air. It was always cold where the sun didn’t touch. Abi followed the sight of her breath. It swirled and dispersed in the air. As she looked up she saw the pathways of the photonic network. They were embedded into every wall of every building, high up so no one could reach them. The wires seemed to glisten with a myriad of colours, even in the darkness of the alleyway. They connected every bank to every business, every computer to every person. Every bit of data about every single thing went whirring by in those wires.  

Soon Abi would be part of it, if her advert was answered.

She watched the bustling street through the narrow slit at the end of the alley. The cars shot by on the electromagnetic roads. Smartly dressed people who all looked the same marched past. Everything was plastic and glass, a world of wires and white walls. The people out there did not care about the people who now dwelled in the dark places of the city.

There came a humming from just above her and sparks of colour began to spew from the photonic network wires. Abi began to shake. Her advert had been answered; the visitation was happening. Like a ghost from old ghost stories, something seemed to seep from the photonic wires and form a glistening sphere in front of her.  

“Abigail Frances Davies?” the Visitor said, its voice mechanical and coming from no one point in particular.    

She nodded.

“You advertised that you are willing to sell the rights of extraction of cells from your cerebral cortex?”

She nodded again. There was no going back now. There were so many stories about what happened to people afterwards. Sometimes they remembered nothing, thought it was ten years ago when things had been better or they just died. But at that moment Abi had nothing to lose; sadly, the prospect of brain damage or death was worth the fee they paid for the extraction.

“You are offering three units of extraction?”

Abi nodded again. It was advised, on the government website that only one unit (whatever that meant) should be extracted at a time. On the forums however, people said they could stand having four or five units extracted in one go. As Abi had not had an extraction before, she went straight in for three because the money would get her food, clothes and a ticket out of the city.

“Please stand.”

Abi stood, shivering and forgetting about the empty pain in her stomach. She looked up and down the alleyway, there was no one around. Then again, even if there had been, nobody would have stopped the Visitor.

From its round transparent body, two long arms extended. Bright sparks shot up and down; the colours seemed to be chasing each other. It placed the transparent glistening tips of its arms onto her temples. The media had a campaign running to legally rename the temples to ‘the human USB port,’ HUSB. Abi laughed as she thought this. She supposed that was all the temples were now, a port through which the very matter that made a person a person, was extracted. All in the name of progression and technology.

Abi felt her whole body tense as the Visitor floated before her. She could feel the electric energy from it, warm but with a sting behind it. Its arms touched her temples and she waited for the pain. But it never came. Slowly she opened her eyes and saw only the spherical Visitor floating in front of her.

“Thank you. The extraction is complete. The money has been transferred into your account,” the Visitor said and Abi smiled. She wasn’t hurt. Relief flooded over her. Now she could eat and get out to the city. She could start to live a life again.

When the Visitor removed its hands that is when the pain came. Screaming at her like a maelstrom. She clutched her head. As she tipped her head forward, blood trickled into her eyes. It must have come from her temples. She didn’t feel anything when she fell on the cold hard concrete, cardboard boxes beneath her, rotting blankets around her. The last thing she remembered was noticing that there was no one in the alleyway. No one to help her, but then the people in the world of white walls and wires didn’t care about the people who dwelled in the places the sun didn’t touch.  

END.

by J.M.Kennett

J.M.Kennett writes speculative fiction and lives in Birmingham UK. She is currently working on a gothic steampunk novel and has had work published in ‘Mad Scientist Journal’ ‘Longshot Island’ and ‘The Weird Reader.’ Follow her on Twitter @J_M_Kennett.

Where am I?

This place. It’s nothing but white space. I see some pulses in the distance, bright flashing colors, but…

I can’t feel anything. I don’t have a body. I am just here.

There’s a red light flashing over there… It’s a button, maybe. My instincts are urging me to press it. I’m going to press it.

Oh my! These memories… there is too much to handle. I can’t make sense of it. This is… cyberspace. How can I be here?

I know. I’ve uploaded my consciousness here. That’s why I couldn’t remember anything at first. My conscious self had been severed from the memories stored in my living brain. I only had some basic instincts, which my former self manipulated to get me to access my memories. But that doesn’t feel like something I would do. There must be a damn good reason.

I feel strange to be floating here in this sea of white. It’s not how my memories remember me being. At one time I was… physical. But here, in this endless space, I am now little more than software. Pressing that button linked me to the database holding a copy of my memories, my identity. But it’s hard to comprehend all this new information. I can only cope with bits at a time.

I remember who I am. I am a cop. I was a cop. A detective for ten years. Most recently with homicide. I’ve cracked a couple dozen murders in my time. Before that I walked a beat in Hollywood.

And I have a wife and a daughter. I can see my wife, in her white dress. We are dancing to an old rock ballad. It was her choice, not mine.

There’s another memory. A birthday party. The birthday girl… my daughter… wished for a pair of ice skates. I remember that it was strange to want ice skates in a place that never got snow. She wanted to be a hockey player. Strange girl. Takes after her father, people said.

These are my memories, I know this, but they do not feel like mine. I cannot feel their sensations on my skin, in my bones. Maybe because I no longer have bones.

Why did I upload myself into cyberspace? I did it because… because I am dead. He killed me. I knew he was coming, so I made sure I would survive to take him down. Survive like this. To stop him. Cameron Ellis. The serial killer. The Hollywood Hackman.

I had a plan to catch him. I have a plan. I will hack my way into his digital pacemaker. The brutal slasher has a weak heart. Who would’ve thought? It’s something I had to find out myself, his doctors are always hiding behind their shield of confidentiality. But I found his file. And I thought, if I could hack the hospital, why not the killer himself?

That’s the plan. I will hack the Hackman. I will end his reign of terror on my town. It will be my last act as a cop. Against the rules? Maybe, but this isn’t Hollywood. The old rules don’t apply here.

How can I find him? My old-self left an address. I can follow it.

Moving through cyberspace is easy, but strange. Traversing at the speed of light, everything is a blur. At least it should be, my experience tells me it should. And yet, there is an uncanny clarity to everything at the same time. I can see the pathways. I can navigate the intersections faster than a thought. I know where I am going.

Here it is. Pulse Medical, serial number: PMX07-345492. That’s his machine. But what to do with it? There’s a settings option: default, or deactivate. The second option should send him straight to hell. I’m sure the devil is waiting.

I remember what you did, Cameron. I remember Candice Smith and Cory Trudeau and Mila Gibson, and all the others you butchered. Dozens of them. Their bodies left out on the street for the rats and birds. But we couldn’t pin a single one on you. You always slipped away, just like the slimy creature you are. But not this time. You had no respect, no remorse. And I have no pity.

I know it was you, Cameron. I know because you killed me, too. I got too close, didn’t I? I’ve always been good at my job. And now I’ve gotten closer still.

I have my hand around your heart, Cameron. I can see your pulse is quickening. Are you on the hunt again?

You killed me, Cameron. I am here to return the favor.

Deactivate.

END.

By J.M. Williams

BIO: Author, teacher, historian, veteran. J.M. Williams is a Fantasy and Sci-Fi author who is unabashedly into anything pulp. In the past year alone, he has had more than twenty-five short fiction pieces accepted for publication in a wide range of venues including Flash Fiction Magazine, Bards and Sages, Left Hand Publishers, and the Uprising Review. He also earned an Honorable Mention in the third quarter of the 2017 Writers of the Future contest. He lives in Korea with his wife and 10 cats—teaching, writing, and blogging at www.jmwilliams.site.