(DJ Syncope 2) The best audiences are captive

October 2, 2007 by Deightine.

Smoothing down the back of her robe, Syn’ found herself a comfortable pose on her large and entirely natural leather couch. Fingers ran down the authentic texture of 100% Cow and she was instantly happier that she chose it over the cheaper alternative. She soaked in her material wealth, a martini in her right hand and her left tapping out a cheroot. Syn’ made for a sensuous image, sprawled out with her head laying back on the cushioned neck rest and her bare legs propped up on a blown glass coffee table held aloft by two reclining Greek goddesses cut in marble. Life had been good to her recently, she thought, and at the rate things were going this would be her best year in some time.

Taking the cheroot between her lips, she chewed at the end of the small cigar-like vice and enjoying the taste of the little bits of fiber coming off to the sharp edge of her teeth when she rolled it back and forth. Her eyes closed and she focused on the music issuing from the walls of her entertainment room, a rolling drum and bass rhythm plated in gold stringed guitar riffs and accented with the sighs and moans of a movie starlet. Every now and again, whispers would echo around the room, tied very quietly into the music and only meant to be picked up by machines and Syn’s neuria-acute hearing. Taking the cheroot from her mouth, she layed it on the arm rest as always — she loved the way it tasted, but hated the smoke — and took a long draw off of her martini. Cool bitter fluid sifted over her lips in a slow waterfall, tumbling over her tongue and finally unhindered down her throat with one smooth swallow. Yes, life definitely couldn’t get better. She lost herself in the music, hips rolling with the beat and by virtue of dry skin failed to stick to the clinging leather.

It was at this vulnerable moment when Syn’ felt something cold and metallic press against her right temple. She didn’t open her eyes, adrenaline pounding up through her nervous system, and instead took in what of her environment she had access to. The metal was coldly smooth in a fashion mostly found with round, polished cylinders and bondage handcuffs. Counting out the latter option, she relaxed further to keep whomever now had her at their mercy from finding a fast excuse to kill her. The scent of gun oil was entirely absent, which was strange and she hadn’t heard them approach. Inwardly she cursed herself for not checking the 6 layer security system after her consort left for the night, taking for granted that its hard-intelligence would kick it in and bolt the door. Thinking back, she didn’t recall the sound of the bolt locking into place after it opened to let her toy out. Whomever was with her now had been either hiding here all night or found a way to circumnavigate the security intelligence. That meant a pro.

Opening her eyes slowly, Syn’ took in the figure leering down above her. He was in his early twenties, the gun clutched in a hand used to carrying a gun but not muscled enough to be used to firing it. His wrist shook nearly imperceptibly from nervous tension and a bead of sweat was clinging to the side of his nose. And what a nose it was, thin and hooked like a predatory bird’s beak and distracting attention from the acne pocked face behind it. His hair was lank and black, skin faintly shiny in the dim light and his eyes shined with the fervor of a man possessed. Whomever he was, he meant business and she carefully set her martini on the short table beside the couch. Wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, she ignored the cold metal against her skull and spoke aloud. “If you meant to kill me, you would have done it by now.”

He did not react, the sweat bead on his nose collecting smaller ones and getting bigger. This detail was annoying her, it looked dirty and she wanted to take a shower just seeing it from her angle. “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked, and again no response. She waited what seemed like five entire minutes before his lips moved, and his free hand came up to rub a sleeve along his mouth. Oh god, she thought as realization struck, his other hand had been in his jeans that entire time. He was some kind of pervert and by stroke of insane luck, he must have wandered across her apartment. Her very expensive apartment, with the door man, locked ascension elevator and hundreds of chits worth of security. No, she realized, he had to be there with a purpose to have gotten past all of the measures in place.

She wondered how much he had seen from during the show. It wouldn’t be even a bump on her public ratings if it got out that she fucked while DJ’ing but it would take a serious hit if he released -who- she had been fucking at the time. The man was an animal, wanted for breaking and defacing several other fighters in very demeaning manners during the cage fights and certainly not popular. She had found him interesting because despite the reputation in the meat pits, he was very well endowed both physically and philosophically. He had very pure opinions on things, even if he came off sounding like a homicidal maniac when he tried to explain the definitions of good and evil.

Bringing herself out of the mental wandering, she realized the man had been talking to her for several minutes and she had ignored pretty much all of it. Just like her, she thought, always skipping the parts that might tell her how to survive a situation.

“…and that is why I think you need to focus on more of your old style of material.” he said.

Syn’ quirked an eyebrow, he was critiquing her catalog and it really pissed her off. She could feel the heat in her face rising, possibly even beginning to warm the tip of the gun on her temple. “That’s very interesting… I’ll take it under advisement for my next compilation.”

For a moment he seemed speechless, like he had planned for her to be very angry about what he felt were superior tastes in the techno genre. He even almost quirked a grin at the edges of his mouth, pulling the gun back just a little as he relaxed his muscles. “That’s so good to know, I’m one of your biggest fans! I’ve been listening for probably 5 years now, even the underground stuff you played down in the club districts under the name TawnyKitten18-” and he tried to finish the sentence, but it was cut short by the shock of wind leaving his lungs.

During the moment the fanatic had his gun pulled away, Syn’ focused on bunching up all of the muscles in her middle and grabbed the backboard of the couch, making fists. Swinging both feet up, she brought her naked shins down on his shoulders and exposing the full blossom of her womanhood to his view. In that one moment, he probably thought all of his stalking and studying had payed off, she was offering herself to him like the god he was after all… Wrong.

With a quick scissoring of her legs, she grasped him by the head and swung her hips back down. He came with her legs, flailing as he sailed over the couch and down back-first onto the glass and marble coffee table. The resounding bursts of noise as the glass shattered was enough to make Syn’ wish he had died on impact. Gritting her teeth, she clutched his head still between her calves and kept his back arched at an unhealthy angle while his spine took most of the marble impact. He didn’t move a lot, but he tried to point the gun up at her. She smacked it away with a quick chop of her martini hand and leaned forward to pick the gun up from where it fell on the ground. Pressing it against his forehead and smoothing her robe back over her hips for the sake of a propriety that was mostly instinctual, she looked down into the man’s eyes.

“You’re going to lay here, dying very slowly from that spine injury and you’re going to listen to -me- for awhile… You have to remember your place, the listener. I’m the DJ, that means I spin the music and you dance to it. If you don’t like the music, you turn it off and walk away… There are all sorts of music out there and you’re bound to find something you like better than me. But no, no, that isn’t going to be enough for a hot stud like you. You came here to tell me the errors of my ways, so I think it only fair that you have to come to appreciate my newer music for what it is… An evolution, a new step in music that you’ve already become a dinosaur to. It evolved too quickly for your ear and now you blame me for it being bad when in reality… It is your ears that are behind, not my methods.”

She cocked the hammer on the gun and tears leaked from the edges of his eyes. She re-guessed his age, he couldn’t be any older than 20 but the dull look in his eyes had convinced her before he had lived a little longer. He did everything he could to keep from blathering and in some ways she respected that despite his madness. She layed back on the couch and tightened her hold around his head and neck. “If you move before we’re done, I’m going to break your neck and it will be hours before I report your death. After all, they could bring you back in perhaps half of an hour, but I don’t think I want that. I want you to have to listen.”

Syn’ looked up at the entertainment system, calling out to the hard intelligence in it. “Play prototype melody 5, Plutonium Afterglow.” she said, and the system hummed to life. She made a rare exception and began to listen to a new song she was preparing for an upcoming event. The man between her calves sobbed like a young boy, totally emasculated and terrified of the gun still pointing at his head. She glanced down, “You should have thought of all of that before you came here, to -my- house and did something stupid like this.” The music swelled from the walls and violins played a staccato melody, accenting the high notes and filling the spaces between with rich valleys of noise. At random intervals of 4 to 8 seconds, the remixed sound of a plutonium reactor exploding in the distance would play back in one of the major keys.

Closing her eyes, Syn’ relaxed everything but her legs. Legs used to having sex in the same position for hours at a time, hardened by martial arts and toned by years of Yoga. Her free hand reached out over her gun arm, grabbing the martini and drinking it sloppily. The man made his first attempt to shift and her legs forced him back into position, thousands of pieces of broken glass re-settling in his back and legs. It jarred her and she laughed when some of it ran down between her breasts, trailed over her stomach and pooled above her mons. “You made me spill.” she said, and she hummed along with the violins. Hum, huuuum, huuuum, hum, huuuum… bang.

The gun went off and Syn’s legs grew warm from the blood now running down them, knocked free from the exposed mind before her. She didn’t bother to look, reminded entirely too much of her first menstruation and how her mother had yelled when she ruined her best sunday outfit. She spoke out to the corpse, “Now, if you listen closely you can hear the point at which the sampled violin’s bow just barely clears the edge of the strings… But then, you probably won’t care. I get the impression you don’t really have a head for this sort of thing. Nevermind.”

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »

(DJ Syncope 1) Lesser Addictions

September 4, 2007 by Deightine.

The Young Starlet™ danced a close grind with her elder date, a “From Russia” edition Connery™. Her clothing was immaculate and all of her grooming was straight out of the box. She obviously had little skill on the Grid and was probably attending the DRave on her father’s work console. She couldn’t be a day over 18, if 16 and it showed. She looked the part of a spoiled brat dancer and it fit her better than the automagically painted chinese fingernails. The Connery™ on the other hand kept up like a fellow teenager, belying his obvious lack of maturity under the guise of an older man. She was bound to be disappointed later in the evening when his G-Cred account was significantly lower than the sugar daddies she was used to on the Grid. The DJ was unimpressed, but they were the most immediate crowd below her and had gotten her attention on a downbeat in the show. She put them out of her thoughts.

Things were starting to heat up in Open Space, a Gridlined rave club and broadcasting point that currently featured the highest popularity rating. This was important, because it also meant that the DJ must have one of the highest popularity rates going. But one wouldn’t want to ask her, between keeping busy and her icy yet seductive demeanor, she would shut you down in a heartbeat. Few had ever gotten through her fourteen programmed layers of Gridline defense far enough to so much as speak to her while she was working, and all of them were the types of people you didn’t turn away. High on a floating dais and hunched over what would look to the uninitiated as a mixing board and old fashioned record player, she was clad entirely in oil slicked black glitter from toe to crown. Whenever the light would hit her, it absorbed per the in-world shadow simulators and through an old hack that had never been corrected, it did not bounce off. In effect, one couldn’t see anything but her outline, glimmering skin, pale blue eyes and long blond hair pulled up severely. Stunning, yet unapproachable… just how she liked it. Staring at her too long would hurt even your digital eyes.

Her hips ground in pace with the beat of a remixed 90s tune she once sampled horn work from in her most famous track, “The Light of My eyes burning down Your Life”. Her spine arched back, and she examined the myriad switches that moved of their own accord in time with her meticulously pre-planned playlist. Anyone from below or over the Airline would assume she was actively tweaking the music running, just like any other remixer. Her dirty little secret was that everything was planned ahead. She could tweak it, she just didn’t want to. This way she would arrange the compilation days ahead, rest until the club date, run the playlist and enjoy it like all of the other people in the club. In effect, she didn’t even know what her own music would sound like until she danced to it with the masses. One mix was ending and the next had yet to be set. DJ Syncope snapped out of the trance watching the crowd had brought on, she reached over and motioned for the large black vinyl record to flip. A small heads up menu popped above the menu to show it was loading: 1tb, 2tb, 3tb, finished. The music started again an 8th of a second later and nobody even missed a beat. She glanced down at another user interface, it read ‘2 hours : 14 minutes’ in unsympathetic white against semi-transparent black. This was going to be a long session.

The DJ reached out with her right hand and picked up a decadently resolutioned martini glass and lifted it from the surface of her play table. The glass flickered its acknowledgment and she lifted it to her lips and she knew that less than half a second later her physical body would be doing the same, and the taste washed over her lips and down into her throat with practiced ease. She caught the toothpick in her teeth and squeezed down on the olive, popping it and feeling the bitterness take over her mouth. In Open Space, she sat the glass down and it flickered into an empty state, the olive and pick remaining attached to the glass, eye candy only. In reality, she ground on the pick between her teeth, a contented sigh leaving her lips.

Up beat, up beat, up beat, down beat, up beat… She tapped her foot to rhythm in her avatar form, whole body still slowly moving and shifting, making slow love to the music in a way that would agonize a lover. She imagined the touch of the music notes and in the quasi-reality of the NeuriaLink on her Aeos, she could almost make out the hallucinatory form of a lover reaching out to her from beyond the dais and inviting her to the dance floor. Syn’ shook it away, trying to keep her concentration off of the distractions of liquor and sex. The heat building in her, liquor flowing through her veins and the sex stirring her insides, rolled around and echoed off of reality.

Eyes clearing of the fog, she was startled by a note she disliked and struck it from the music before it would roll out over the ‘line to her live audience. In the third instrumental chorus, the synthesizer running the malign saloon piano suddenly switched out a C note for a D note and nobody would ever know it was any way other than she had meant it. Perfection was as much her addiction as the music. The haze retook her and she went back to grinding, holding back the building climax that was echoed in her music.

Two hours passed by and it came into the final stretch, the audience slowing down despite that their real bodies were comfortably resting in a chair right now feeling the phantom dance fatigue their memories created. Syn’ grinned a devil’s death wish and unloaded on the floor full of manicured angels, turning up the pace on the last half of her final piece. Cellos played like heavy metal guitar to a dance beat she discovered in a cultural notation from the old Middle East. The crowd went nearly into riot, all at once trying to keep up and cheering for the odd twist in the music.

DJ Syncope closed her eyes and rested her hands on the edge of her play table, body grinding hard and fast to the music like the rats that now danced to her piping below, the sensation of sweat running down her brow and her pulse quickening in her body. One hand raised in the real world to feel her chest, judging her heartbeat while she bounced up and down, legs aching and muscles beginning to cramp. In Open Space, a beatific smile carved itself into her lips and she lost herself in the waves of the orgiastic climax. All of the Neuria mechanisms buried in her back down the length of her spine and throughout her muscles were fired a million messages a second, a blood rush filled her ears and her whole body shook imperceptibly with the tension. After the longest — and most fulfilling — ten seconds of her day, she began to relax on her digital legs. A final cheer from the floor rose as the final beats stopped and two full seconds passed to prove there would be no encore. In the real world, a crowd of this nature would tear a place apart but here on the Grid, customers just began putting back up personal blocks that darkened out their avatar bodies and others headed for the doors to try to beat the bandwidth lag to come during mass exodus.

With a gesture, eyes still closed, the DJ pulled a digital curtain around the dais and fell back against the flesh occupying her chair. The sensation was like falling down a deep well into cold water, as neurons realigned from the Neuria back to normal function and took over her full range of motor skills. Her arms, legs and hips hurt. She groaned despite the pleasant glow that came over her. Naked but for the makeup she put on out of habit that afternoon, she rested back against the chest of her latest conquest. From the sound of it, she had utterly destroyed both his will and his stamina, yet he was groaning in frustration. She didn’t so much as look at the man as she got up (against his sudden protests) and left him frustrated in his own lap. Pulling on a robe she had set aside for such occasions, she walked toward the bar with her empty martini glass. “You can go now, you didn’t do very well and to be honest, it’s too large… -ly uninspired. For being a professional cage fighter, I would think a man of your physique should have a bit more stamina.”

Rejected, sexually frustrated and pumped to the moon with artificial hormones, he got to his feet in a way that sounded threatening to the lady DJ. He moved toward her blind back, feet crushing down the fibers of her 1 chit/square foot carpet and every sound reached her artificially enhanced ears like a bull busting down a rattan hut. Her response was to pick up an old-era cattle prod from next to the bar that had previously rested in shadow. She sat it on the bar once he stopped moving and went back to making her drink. Two olives on a toothpick landed in the imported French vodka, the grains harvested in Winter and distilled more times than Syn’ cared to think about. A dash of dry white vermuth to set it off and an olive popped into the mouth completed the drink. She cherished the bitterness like a childhood memory, amused highly when she heard the heavy footfalls travel down the hall and out of her front door. A slight buzz began in her head from the booze and she turned down her hearing with a thought right before the door slammed shut.

Shortly after she spoke in the direction of her Aeos, “Play ‘Die For Me’.” the music began pouring from all of the walls of her apartment. Smooth soul singer lyrics played in stark contrast to the heavy bass line, thud thud thudding away. She wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t treat men so poorly, especially after he had been trying to get her to climax for almost three hours. As quick as it came, the thought faded with the new beats that her favorite song was inspiring for her next show. Her lesser addictions could wait, the music wanted her now.

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »

(Range 0) “Sake is the drink of the celebrant and the bitter, old, and alone.”

August 31, 2007 by Deightine.

“The view from Hashida Tower is spectacular. Perfectly regimented streets were lined up using GPS, and buildings were sized specifically to allow maximum viewing of the Tower from every possible angle. In fact, all of Hashida Prefecture was designed with the tower as it’s most premium tourist attraction. It stands 112 stories, beating out the Taipei 101 destroyed in 2017 along with Taipei itself. The Hashida Tower is now in the lead for the Emporis award, this year, 2028.”

The stewardess-like woman in the short Truman-era cap with veil lead a blue streak through the outer edge of Hashida Tower’s lowest tier, the Hashida archology. She would occasionally stop to point over a balcony or out of a tall standing tinted window, making gestures that made Range want to buy a vowel. He would say something, but beyond being impolite, he was afraid to set his age so well before the rest of the tourists in his company. Many of them probably wouldn’t get the joke anyway, it was nearly 30 years old. Coming to a turn in the hall, in fact a sharp corner that overlooked much of the city’s newly rebuilt shopping district. The neon signs were understated per city ordnance, the streetwalkers were few and well dressed, blending into the business crowd just leaving work for lunch. Range was impressed, but despite his focus on the town, he would still hear the guide’s works hollowly echoing throughout his ears.

“Next, on our right you will see at street level the new shopping district. With it’s grand opening this past week, all of the property values in the city went up 6%, thanks to Mr. Hashida’s suggestion it be placed outside the archology to aid in local revenue building! Mr. Hashida is very generous.” And the woman moved on, Range still chewing on the totally contrived words she had spit at him.

The tour passed by, nobody noticing the absence of one more tourist from the group. Especially an old, sake-scented retiree office worker on a joy-tour. Range straightened up a little from the stoop he had affected for the walk up here to the 4th floor and turned to examine the industrial elevator behind him. In the distance he could hear the guide discussing with her tour the benefits of the Endangré Leeching Process used to get all of the radioactivity from the soil of Old Hiroshima. Without it, Hashida Prefecture could not have been settled as a far extension of Tokyo proper. From how deep into the rattling dialogue the woman was getting, Range decided she must not have noted his absence. With any luck, she would have no idea where in the building he was lost.

With a shake of his head and a scrubbing motion at his day old shadow of whiskers, Range produced a matte black prong-like key from his sleeve. With the pressure of his whole weight, he managed to insert it into a plate next to the elevator. Normally a gun-like machine was used for this, but it would have been much more expensive than the key alone on the black market. With some effort and a good bit of backbone he had not used in years, Range heard the elevator make a bell tone to signal it would be coming down. Stepping aside and looking out the window, he picked up the role of tourist once more. A dull look came over his eyes and the doors opened behind him, and making no human noises. Range took this as a good sign and stepped in, quickly reaching for the up button only to discover a smooth plate in its place. The doors closed and a hollow voice whispered in his ear, “Floor?”. Range nearly jumped from his skin and muttered, “All the way to the top?”. The elevator answered with another bell tone and began heading up.

Range sighed in relief, not sure how to react to it simply obeying him. He surveyed the walls, pulling his ancient-looking trenchcoat in tight around him to feel a little more secure. No cameras? He looked at the corners with a sense of awe, and noticed that the elevator had another key entry like the one in the hall. He nodded sagely to himself, some of the floors must require a key to get out on. Restraining the urge to tap his foot, he listened as the elevator announced every tenth floor, speeding upwards in a way he could barely feel. Range remembered a time when he was younger where it would have taken a whole two minutes to reach the top of a fifty story building. The office building he worked in until the times of the great upheaval and war was at most fifty stories, but he was never sure. The elevator claimed to go to the fiftieth floor, but he only ever counted 49 floors from the outside on his 15 minute lunch breaks. The disparity always bothered him. But it wouldn’t much longer, Range had decided to take up religion in his old age. One of the tenets of his new faith was not to question the things that bother you, but simply to let them be as it is God’s will that not all things be understood. This tenet made sense to Range, more sense than the actions he was about to undertake.

The elevator spoke out “One hundred, ten. One hundred, twelve.” in it’s patronizing robotic monotone. The doors opened into sunlight and greenery. An arbory rose around him, the final story of the tower walled in thick glass and filled with trees native to the one lush Hiroshima. They were not very tall yet, but had at least another fourty feet to grow before they would touch the ceiling. Range spent enough time gawking at the room that the doors almost closed before he exited the elevator. In an effort not to press his luck, the old man padded out warily into the open. The trees spread out to either side, but a wide golden sand path lead from the elevator to a sitting area full of benches at the edge of the tower. Range disturbed patterns drawn in the sand with each step, noting they must have taken ours to form by men careful not to disturb the underbrush while in a state of Zen. Reaching the glass wall, he looked back to see what damage he had done and he saw the most remarkable thing. The sand rolled over itself, the tiny pieces of quartz returning to the places they last remember without any prompting. In less than a minute, the path looked untread.

Range was disgusted. He reached into his coat, pulling out the two things that meant the most to him in life. One was a flask he quickly opened and pulled a swig from, looking down from the tower to admire the new city. He followed the streets with his eyes, “I’ll be damned, she was right… It’s a perfect grid down there. Like God reached down and drew lines in the sand and they used them for roads.” On that thought he glanced back at the path again and shook his head, “Man trying to recreate his great work. Hashida must be a monster to think he could do such things so idly.”

In his right hand, Range examined a cylinder the size of a small thermos, with a red push button on the top of it. It looked very low tech, but Range held it delicately and sat it on the edge next to the glass. He looked down at the city, through the clowds and took in man’s misguided work. He was bothered that such effort was put into perfection when the world was already perfect, it was man’s bombs that made it imperfect. Hiroshima, Taiwan, all in the world had felt the effects of these weapons in one way or another. He pulled a pamphlet from his pocket, examining the front of it. His mouth opened and he spoke out in time with reading the words, and old habit he hadn’t lost since his children had grown up. He used to read to them before they thought him useless and stodgy.

“The Revisitationist Church, established 2009. You seek answers stolen from you, you seek solutions you do not understand and you want nothing but benefit for anyone else.” The pamphlet had been given to him when he went to speak with the leaders of his new church. They had given him the standard cylinder, not one tenth the size of the one he now carried and entrusted it to him as they passed on to speak to the next Visitor in line. When he followed the speaker, he was told to go away and that many others had come to pay their respects and find solitude. But Range was not tame in his need, and told the speaker of his wish to do something. One day before Range entered the tour, he gained the church’s trust and was asked to carry a great burden. A burden he had no trouble baring.

Range nodded with the sentiment and continued, “But it has been taken from us, taken from you, from everyone by those that would revel in their god-like creations. A vast grid of energy spans across the world, shooting through the lower Heavens and cutting a stark pattern against God’s stars. Stars put there for us to look at them, to marvel at and understand how small and unimportant we are in his great Machination, but the times have come for that to end.”

Taking a step back from the ledge, Range looked around to make sure he was alone. He licked at his lips and guzzled the sake with abandon. Looking down at the empty flask, the old man marveled at how many times in his life he spent nursing a sake or holding it in toast. “Sake is the drink of the celebrant and the bitter, old, and alone. Yes. That is one truth of my life… It is good to see these truths so close to the end. I will miss my daughters, but I will not miss my sons. They are selfish and learned it from a life of selfishness I lead. That is my burden to carry. That is my only regret… Well, beyond the regret of letting my wife run off with a fishmonger. I do still regret that. But there are some things a man just cannot do, and putting my lips-… Well, enough of that.”

With another look around the garden, Range approached the metal cylinder he sat down only to rest a finger on it’s top. “But there is one thing I will not regret… I will not regret opening a hole to Heaven so that my children will make it Home.”

Range pushed down the button, and the top of Hashida Tower lit up a shade of orange so bright that it looked to all below as if the sun rose. To ignite at the height of 112 stories, the explosive had been made hot enough to incinerate the five floors below it as well. Mr. Hashida did not even have time to react to the burning sensation on the floor below before becoming a newly falling layer of ash and hot metal sailing toward the ground. Glass filled the high winds around the tower, glittering like shining pixie dusted comet trails, carrying the light of the blast for miles. At the top of the glass room, a smaller room the size of a closet incinerated holding the primary node for the Grid in the Hashida Prefecture region and Range Ogura’s children noticed a minute five second lapse in service. Forced back into their prospective Aeos units to await a relink, they cursed the efforts of tyrants and religious fanatics.

Below in Hashida proper, it took a total of ten seconds before the backup nodes realigned close to the ground and the Grid was back online in the Prefecture.

Range’s ashes blew around in the lower atmosphere, his soul well on its way for wherever they go, and his work was already undone.

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »

(Andresh 1) “Please… Just let me explain.”

August 14, 2007 by Deightine.

Her pumps were whiter than the softest cloud but lacked all of the subtlety while strutting down a golded paved iron cage. It was a runway, not unlike the ones at the airport in that it had lights running down either side; glowing cigarette tips stuck out like hot pokers from the darkness. From the darkest corner the room had to offer, Andresh imagined the dancer could smell the occasional cherry Krests or the rare clove still scented with it’s port of origin’s original flavor. The crowd was encapsulated in the smoke, hazed in it, held up and possibly even kept down beneath the weight. Nobody stirred and this wasn’t the type of peeler bar where people moved around much anyway. All of the action was up on stage. All of it. A blonde girl that couldn’t be a day over 30 danced within the body of a 13 year old pedophilic wet dream, fulfilling dreams for many of the men that had to come miles to the playground to see one. Orphans don’t get into town much, the local security aren’t too fond of the subculture they carry in their wake.

This girl carried herself like a diva, strutting back and forth and lip-syncing with the music that played harshly from resonating tone-deaf speakers. At times, she would splay herself out, fingers running down her body and bent back with the ease of a contortionist. Fingertips would come in contact with bikini bottom, and if the audience around the stage was offering enough chit to her, it would be peeled back ever so slightly to offer a view of her Nirvana. It was a retro tattoo done in twinkling glitter and showing off the faded face of a long dead rock star. This was most often a distraction for all but her most avid customers, whom knew to look beneath it and into the darkly shadowed folds of her skin to see the prize they coveted and would have ravaged if not for the steel bars in their path.

Andresh was amused despite his nerves, watching the newer customers tapping violently on their Aeos while still trying to watch the dancer. Their fingers touched screens, made offers and with the aid of a nearly microscopic earpieces that she wore, she would entertain them. If it was enough, she might even venture toward their edge of the runway long enough to offer them a peek or a sultry soprano lyric while grinding against the bars. Andresh found the most of his amusement during those moments where a customer became entirely too enamored, too engorged on the show, adrenaline risen through the roof and all sense of self preservation absent for the equation. It was at those times when a fan, possibly even a potential stalker, would reach out to try to grab at her and discover why it is that she never took off her heels. A spark of electricity would arc from her skin to their fingertips, her whole body in union with the electrified cage and grounded on the metallic stage. She felt nothing, but the grabby patron would need to see someone wearing a red cross before morning. Yet still, they kept tapping over and over, trying to get her attention and continuing to be shocked.

Only the rare and most brazen of the girls ever ventured into the audience, braving the sea of bristled militia bodyguards and pawing blue collar rebuilders. One of those most jaded beauties made her way toward the pit of self-loathing that was Andresh’s table, she even managed to walk a straight line despite the strong drugs her eyes danced to. Her widely dilated pupils even managed to hold his attention for a full ten seconds before he took in the rest of her, smoke blowing from overbit lips and down his chin onto his chest. It would be rude to blow smoke at her, even if she wouldn’t be able to tell it from the cloud she called work. He glanced down at his Aeos, suddenly calming and resolved himself to action. A few taps and a flick of his eyes to direct the transfer and the girl’s head whipped toward him suddenly, their eyes almost meeting if not for a curtain of raggedly cut (in the new style) black hair. She regarded him with a wariness, eyes squinting from behind the ebony curtain but relaxing to approach his table.

She had accepted his offer.

The girl walked up to his table not a day over nineteen and showing the poise of what would someday be a full blown woman. Andresh couldn’t help but think that she must make a poor living here on The Playground, even at a place as dive-like as 2 Inches. Her body was clothed in dark red PVC and her belt wasn’t meant to conceal the tazer tucked behind it. In some ways, despite her breasts almost bursting the vinyl-like material, she didn’t look entirely up to entertaining… But behind dilated eyes, Andresh could see her curiosity. A man had just offered her enough chits to eat for months, a once in a lifetime offer that comes with dangers. After all, he might want her to take him in back so he can have his way with her, or even want her to leave with him to some dark room where when she comes out, much of that chit would be traded away for surgery to repair the damage. For a moment, he entertains the idea, the image of this young woman under him in the backseat of his economy car all tied down and grinding beneath his weight. The image is all at once cramped but alluring enough to cause sweat to form on the back of his neck, and he taps the seat next to him in the round booth. She accepts it skiddishly, preparing to bolt even though he makes no threatening move. She hesitates, but does not slip back away, their transaction not yet finalized.

Green eyes. Yes, green, Andresh thinks to himself. They relaxed just enough to show their color, and he finds himself offering a timidly tired smile. She relaxes, and he thinks to himself that she probably feels she has him pegged. Locked on like a target, she moves closer and leans against him. Her body curved and gifted with ripeness presses against his, and he has to keep from smirking. “That’s a big transfer… What are you looking for?” she asks, her lips peeled back from bleached white teeth. He stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray and sits back, letting her get as close as she can before turning his head.

“It’s my birthday-” he gets out before she cuts him off with “I don’t do free dance-” only for him to cut her off with a quiet but bitter laugh. “Not asking for free, girl, just bear with me. Please… Just let me explain.” Smoke curled from Andresh’s lips with his words and he leaned toward her, lips coming up close to her ear. He knew that someone in the control room would be monitoring everything she heard, feeding her the data pulses relayed from the Aeos payments, providing feedback on the offers and whether they could be backed up or not. He knew that, but he talked anyway. “I want you to sit in my lap, all night, and drink with me.”

The girl cocked her head to one side as if to ask if that was all. He pursed his lips and breathed deeply, a ragged breathe wrought with anxiety. “And I want you to listen. Someone has to listen… you might as well get payed big. I won’t keep you past closing, and if you listen close enough, I might even give you a tip.” Her eyes squinted, not really familiar with the idea of tipping as peeling has become a more direct and less friendly business since the old days.

“My name is Gabriele… and thats all you need to know. I’ll take your offer, but if you do anything funny, I’m not afraid to stick you with both leads.” she said, looking at him warily while tapping the tazer under her belt. Andresh got the impression she had done it before, and might have been more comfortable with the request that she come out to his car with him.

Andresh slid his hand around her middle and helped her into his lip, looking her in the eyes up close while his fingers teased down the inside of her thigh. Through the thick material, he was pretty sure she couldn’t feel it, but he loved the idea. It was rare that he got to act out, to let any form of emotion take hold of him and he was sure she realized that by how she shifted her weight to press down more on the raging and confined aspect of his sexuality.

“Well, Gabriele… Do you play the horn by chance? No, nevermind, you wouldn’t get that joke, would you? You don’t really want to know all of this, but I really need to tell someone. I work for the government, well, what’s left of the government. I sit in a cubicle all day, never guaranteed the same one from one day to another. They’re sort of determined by who gets to work first and rotate around a giant hollow warehouse like a ferris wheel. That look tells me you do recognize that bit of history… Well, today is my birthday and to celebrate my birthday I did something monumentally stupid. Mind you, it wasn’t really my idea… When God talked, I decided to listen.”

She blinked at him, ignoring the bulge in his pants below her all of a sudden. It didn’t make her a fiftieth as uncomfortable as the words he had just spoken to her and she turned, putting her back to his chest to wave down one of the heavily protected waitresses, “How about those drinks, huh?”

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »

My Thoughts Are Free (graphic novel scriptlet)

August 8, 2007 by Deightine.

Scriptlet (In this case a comic format, not lasting more than 8-10 pages, barely skimming the barrel of intention. It is in a plotted art style with dialogue and rough description of what should occur on each page. Paneling, art style, literal interpretation, etc would be left up to the artist. NOTE: This piece is never meant to be published and is a work unfinished for all intents and purposes. Should someone want to do the art, the lines would need to be rewritten or allowance for use would be required for the copywritten German translations.)

Cast

Jacob Schmitt - Burned out beat detective, early fourties, square jaw, black hair, five o’clock shadow, tan trenchcoat and ruffled business suit underneath (minus the jacket). Kind of guy you imagine faintly smelling of Glenfiddich. All close up views of his face should show a haunted, but determined demeanor.
Andy Schmitt - Teenage boy, age indeterminately between 13 and 17, mostly in the background. Corduroy pants and t-shirts type. Slight similarities in appearance to Jacob.
Series of police officers - Clean cut military look to each one, aged between 20 and 35 (except for the rare 40), all in standard North American civil officer uniforms but in gunmetal gray instead of black. Each should have a nearly brainwashed look to them, eyes dilated and staring through people.

Scene Progression

The scenes should pass back and forth from a dingey but not disgusting apartment, to the police department and back, as indicated. The first two pages will be in the apartment, Jacob talking to Andy and then Jacob will start to sing. The singing will continue on the next page, as the action sequences at the police station begin.

Beginning, “My Thoughts Are Free” potentially Issue #1 of a comic book entitled “Hindsight”.

PAGE 1: One large panel, Jacob having a glass of scotch in the new and barely furnished apartment while Andy goes about unpacking in the kitchen beyond. “Dad, why did we have to move all of a sudden?” Andy asks, with his head turned to look toward his father whom is staring into space. “Dad?.. Dad, are you listening?” There should be a brown paper wrapped box on the table next to the bottle of scotch, but don’t make it terribly obvious. It’s scenery.

PAGE 2: Several panels, just need to fit the dialog. Scene remains in the apartment, conversation between Jacob and Andy.

Andy: Dad, are you ok? You haven’t said a thing since we got here. And where’s your gun? I haven’t seen you without it since mom…

Jacob: Andy… Andy. [shakes his head, downs the last of his scotch] I’m just tired is all. Don’t mind me, and don’t worry about the gun. I had to put it somewhere safe. This building’s clean, nobody is going to kick in our front door here. It’s an entirely different kind of neighborhood, ok?

Andy: Alright. So what are we going to do? There isn’t a computer. There is no radio, tv, or good views from the windows. We’re going to go nuts in here. Why couldn’t we bring all of our stuff? Why did we have to pack so quickly?

Jacob: I told you when we were packing, I got cited for a violation. You know what happens when you get cited for a violation. We have to move, is what happens.

Jacob: But don’t worry about all of that. Do you remember when you were little? Your mom and I used to teach you songs when you wouldn’t settle down. We taught you The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and all that good stuff. Well, when I was a kid, I would sit at my grandfather’s knee and he would tell me about the wars he had seen back in the old days, being in the desert and fighting in the middle east. He once also taught me a song that he said his grandfather — your great-great-great-grandfather — had taught him.

Jacob: Now humor me Andy, and listen close. Don’t know when I’ll be in a mood like this again… It was called ‘Die Gedanken Sind Frei’.

Andy moves closer to listen, looking conflicted by a sense of childishness.

PAGE 3: Series of panels, first opening with a widespread view of a police station with small tank-like vehicles parked around it. All of it is near-future technology, nothing terribly high-tech, but still very shiny. The kind of vehicles that make you recoil in fear if you’ve even -thought- about doing something wrong. Sort of thing you don’t want coming in through your living-room wall. The following dialog is a German song from the 1800s, and should be worked in as punctuation to the actions presented by Jacob. The dashed bullet points note what action should be happening in line with which words.

“Die Gedanken sind frei
My thoughts freely flower.,”

- Jacob standing before the police station, a piece of paper clutched in his left hand and a gun clutched in his right along with a black gymbag. Probably best viewed from behind.

“Die Gedanken sind frei
My thoughts give me power.”

- Jacob using the hand with the paper in it to throw open one of the front double doors of the police precinct.

“No scholar can map them,
No hunter can trap them,”

- Jacob passes by some startled (but passive-aggressive) young officers that do not actually react to his presence. They obviously don’t think him a threat, and fail to notice the gun at first.

“No man can deny:
Die Gedanken sind frei!”

- Jacob does a police leap (one hand down, full weight across) the front desk and past another startled officer.

PAGE 4: Jacob heads across the middle of the precinct, and many of the officers now begin clearing some space away from him. Some pull their guns but keep them low, reacting to training without even thinking.

“I think as I please,
And this gives me pleasure.,”

- Jacob drops the bag he was carrying and punches a young officer in the gut with his gun barrel. The ‘kid’ was trying to get in his way, and Jacob drops him without slowing down for a second. The man balls up as he falls over, not used to physical violence being directed at him.

“My conscience decrees,
This right I must treasure;”

- Jacob knocks aside another young man that tries to step into his way, an office door now visible beyond the falling young man. The window is marked ‘Police Commissioner Charleston’.

“My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator,
No man can deny:–
Die Gedanken sind frei! ”

- Jacob kicks in the man’s door, busting it nearly from the hinges in the process and revealing a very surprised Police Commissioner on the other side of his desk. The man is old, overweight, pockmarked, etc. ‘An ugly sun-of-a-gun.’ … Reminiscent of Baron Harkonen, only squeezed into an outfit 4 sizes too small.

PAGE 5: Page opens with first panel kind of big, from the commissioner’s perspective with the gun barrel pressed against his forehead and Jacob looming over the desk at him. Jacob’s face should look determined edging on raging, but still collected. Controlled insanity after years of practice, playing the bad cop. Subsequent panels will be him leaving the police station and making his exit.

“And if tyrants take me
And throw me in prison,”

- Jacob backs slowly through the gathered crowd, a gun at the Commissioner’s head, whispering in his ear but his mouth obscured by the gun while the fat bastard tries to keep from stepping on his captor’s foot.

“My thoughts will burst free,
Like blossoms in season.”

- Jacob spins the Commissioner around as he backs through the front door, and stuffs the paper in the man’s mouth, gun pressed against his forehead.

- Jacob kicks the man backwards (the man’s eyes widening) into the room full of officers who all drop their guns in an effort to grab him. This -should- look unnatural, like they’re programmed to go for the grab, like the commissioner is more important than his captor.

- Jacob slams the doors closed, tipping his gun between the handles in such a way as to at least delay anyone following. It isn’t supposed to look like it will hold them long, but at most they’ll be able to bring the doors open to a sort of a peek before the gun stops it… and one or two shoves and the gun would fall. They don’t get the chance, however.

“Foundations will crumble,
The structure will tumble
And free men will cry:
Die Gedanken sind frei!”

- Jacob is walking away from the station (maybe 100 yards away) and the doors thrusting open behind him in the background to unload fire rather than officers. The back half of the precinct produces fire from the roof and particles of building materials. If able to be done artistically, bits of people too. In the foreground, Jacob has dropped a hand-detonator shaped like a roll of breath mints with a glowing button pushed in on the end. The detonator is falling to the ground as the image finishes up.

PAGE 6: First two panels are in a restaurant/bar type place. Third is in the apartment again.

“Neither trouble or pain
Will ever touch me again.”

- Jacob is having a drink, sitting at the bar of a restaurant. A man walks in, clothed in a fashion to suggest some sort of street life to him and sits down next to Jacob. He then pulls out a small package and lays it on the bar in front of him. Jacob slides the man an envelope in return. A bottle of scotch is visible in the background (on the bar) as this happens.

“No good comes of fretting.,
My hope’s in forgetting.”

- Jacob is walking out the door of the restaurant, seen from behind. The package is gone from the bar, the glass of scotch is empty and the bottle there previously is missing now.

“Within myself still
I can think as I will,
But I laugh, do not cry:
Die Gedanken sind frei!”

- Panel is of Jacob sitting at the table again, a tear rolling down one cheek but his expression unchanged. Andy is turning away into the kitchen, uncomfortable by it according to his expression. His father now appears quiet.

- Final panel is the door of the apartment closing as Andy turns, Jacob now missing and the package looming more on the table than it had before. Drawn more distinctly, more richly, than it had been.

PAGE 7: These panels have no dialog. Only the following situations…

- Andy moves toward the table, grabs for the package and begins untying the string wrapped around it. The box has sort of a butcher’s package look to it and this although not necessary, is part of the feel and eludes to a coming scene.

- Jacob sits in his car, in a busy parkinglot across from a train station or other busy public place. Police are patrolling somewhere in the background, and he has another gun in his hand. He’s staring straight forward, and there is no warning for what is about to come.

- Andy holds a wallet in his hands, the opened box on the table below him in the background. Inside the wallet is his picture on an ID card with the name ‘Eric Wallace’ and the age listed as ‘18′ with his approximate description next to it. The ID should be somewhat futuristic and feature an RFID-looking chip imbedded on it and a future-ish USA logo at the top. Below it is the slogon ‘Keeping track of YOUR interests.’. Money pokes out of the wallet, largish bills but more colorful than the traditional greenbacks. More in the style of European currency.

- Jacob puts the gun to the side of his head, below his right ear.

- Panel shows the car in the parking lot. The windows are sprayed red, and the cops are running toward the vehicle while pigeons are startled from their roosts on buildings around it.

- Andy collapses into the chair next to the table, staring into the wallet and although he doesn’t yet know what has happened… He looks worried beyond anything seen so far.

End

– Necessary attribution goes to Arthur Kevess, the song’s English translation (Die Gedanken Sind Frei / “My Thoughts Are Free”) was copyrighted in 1950 and is used without any commercial gain at this point. I’m trying to find a means to contact him and see if he would allow it’s use. Sadly, it’s not that easy tracking a person down 57 years later.

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »

(John 3) 16.

July 24, 2007 by Deightine.

Vision flickered in John’s eyes with the bright flashes of snow he was more used to seeing on old abandoned televisions than in the world around him. With this startling, blinking and screaming optical sensation came the whine of bees in his ears and the sensation of tumbling deep into himself. With a startled gasp — his skin soaked in cold sweat from the bad air conditioning — John sat straight up on the unforgiving motel bed, a stoney erection clenched in his fist and the room echoing in hollow emptiness. With sudden speed, he tumbled sideways across the bed and grasped at the floor for his bag. He found it still present, following the dive with a sigh of relief.

Lifting blurry vision from the ground, John was overcome with nausea and thumped back down on the bed. The ceiling was a shade of institutional nicotine cream that did nothing good for his stomach. Light burst up through the thin excuse for curtains over the windows, playing patterns across the ceiling and lulling John into a sense of ease. His stomach slowed its chaotic churns and he was distracted. The scent of his night’s companion still lingered, oranges and chocolate mixed with the lingering cherry clove.

Street sounds filtered up from ground level to his second story economy lust palace. Breathing deeply of the scents around him, John took stock of what life had brought today. From the echo of the lot, he would hazard much of the motel complex was empty by now. Many of the company men and their guests would be back in town proper, terrified of their pictures ending up in the hands of someone enterprising. Their nocturnal visitors caught what sleep they could for the next night’s curbside vigil, dreaming of their next rich john. Reaching off of the bed and into his bag, John pulled free his Aeos unit. Tilting it to avoid window glare on the screen, his eyes searched over the unit until it registered his proximity. The screen flipped into itself, coming to life with a USAP flag he had to resist saluting and reminded him that he needed to find someone to change the loading screen. With a redirection of his irises and a thumb press, he was into the storage account that kept track of food allotments. Being recently released from the military, he was a little nervous of walking around with so much and the possibility of his Aeos being hacked.

The screen registered 191 units of credited food among the federal stocks. This represented the next four years of his life if he was careful not to squander it, minus the single week of rationing he payed to last night’s distraction. The smallest trade he had was enough food to live for an entire week; fresh food that would keep Lyria well fed in return for her 12 straight hours of ministrations.

John dropped the device back into the bag, landing with a military grade thunk atop the service weapon he had been allowed to keep when he came ashore. The broken down Fabrique Nationale Herstal SCAR-H could be called a relic compared to the weapons John had been issued during Last Incursion but it served him well and could do everything he might want in a pinch. Not to mention, how does a guy complain when the entirety of your Honorable Discharge is a short and uncomfortable bureaucrat crediting you nearly 200 food chits right as you step off of the boat with a good luck pat on the back and a free ride to the nearest major city? They hadn’t collected any of his gear, any weapons aside his long range rifle and special munitions, and left him standing in a major city only slightly less capable of sieging a foreign country. Much of that gear went missing or was traded at stops along the journey to Midwest Regional Block 14, old Cincinnati. A young woman from his dreams had said what a wonderful place it had once been, right before they witnessed the white glare of Taiwan’s beaches turning smokey quartz.

With a groan, John hauled his carcass up to his bare feet and walked with a step by step chain of grunts to the bathroom. His bones ached, muscles burned and he could only imagine how the girl felt today, sleeping off a night of aggressive and almost violent sex. John had been careful not to mark her up or do her any lingering damage, but by the time he had finally fallen asleep she looked ready to retire from her night job. This thought pulled out a chuckle as John leaned forward over the toilet, relieving himself with his cheek pressed against the cool tile wall. Whatever drug it was that Lyria had found for him at his request, it left lastnight a long sweaty haze. It also let him be startled nearly to death when an alarm monitor in the room went off and announced in bright red lights that he had 45 minutes until he would be charged again or rousted by staff. John found some amusement in this as Lyria had payed the room fee, and he could easily imagine a couple of grown men dragging him naked out of the room and pitching him headlong into the parkinglot.

“Fourty-five, huh? Just enough time…” he muttered and reached into the shower, turning the knob and frowning at the pathetic excuse for water pressure. “Well, if they throw my ass out, it is going to be a clean ass for at least a few minutes.” Without ceremony or even a thought to close the bathroom door, John stepped into the tub and fought against the still frigid water for his right of cleanliness.

It was probably the tub that kept the shrapnel from getting him, and the water that kept the fire from charring the skin from the bone. At least, that is how John would rationalize it later that night. First thing, the tub began falling but John had his eyes closed at the time and could only sense the tumbling down while much of the bathroom went upward in a concussive blast like a geyser. His eyes flashed open in time for his body to be smashed against the bottom of the tub when it made contact with the one below. After a moment of recovery, he pushed the puce shower curtain aside while it smoked and got a good view of the room he had landed in. Obviously, someone in the room below him had brought about a world of pain for themselves. Pushing himself up, he stepped out onto the smoking floor. The fire had burned so hot and so suddenly that it had exhausted the air in the room and imploded the floor above.

John looked up, trying to judge how difficult it would be to get back up to his things. “Suits me fucking right for thinking back home would be any better.” he said and grimaced. His left foot caught in something wet and hot, and he looked down to regard the skinless charred victim of the morning’s sudden burst of energy. The age and gender were indeterminate, but it was obvious they had a taste for vinyl clothing by the smell that moving his foot stirred. The whole room stank of burned carbon and ozone, a taste that permeated John’s mouth as he headed toward his neighbor’s bed. The room was notably devoid of any personal possessions beyond a carelessly pitched Aeos. John’s toes tingled and he bit at the inside of his cheek for a tenth of a second before grabbing the Aeos and heading for the door. He wanted to know why this had happened and especially if it had been directed at him in some way.

All that stood between John and his clothes was a fifty yard dash, a stair climb and another fifty yard dash. And by now, who knows? Maybe the whole welcome wagon would get to see him streak in the mid-day light away from this scene of carnage? He didn’t think about it once he got the door open, he just made the distance pass by. Aside of one very startled looking cleaning staff member that saw him charging down the walkway toward her, erection acting as a moving advertisement for the power of adrenaline and then finally past. Beyond that, his short journey was uneventful.

John’s clothes fit tightly and the sticky wetness transfered from his left foot into his left boot with a wince. He had heard of these sorts of things happening, but not while hold up inside a five square mile brothel at the edge of town. He had to get out of this Playground quietly, before anyone could tie him to it.

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »

(John 2) another snippet.

May 26, 2007 by Deightine.

Dust obscured the green eyed hawk vision of John’s range-finder, he blew on the lens to try to clear it, returning to his cautious watch. It was hot, humid, and stinking of fried noodles in his perch on the roof of a noodle shop in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. John was miserable, and when he wasn’t blowing dust or stone grit from his finder, he was wiping away the dripping sweat. At the particular moment, John was considering his options and what actions he may once have committed in a past life that left him watching a deserted city street in the middle of the night, in enemy territory when he could be back in the USAP drinking a cold beer.

Below on the street, the occasional late night drunk was heading home and of little consequence to John; everything was quiet and that was how he liked it. His official briefing details told him where to be, how long to be there, and what his target was. This night was the onset of a several day mission entitled Last Incursion. Within one week, an embarking party of some 60,000 soldiers would occupy the island of Taiwan in hopes of locating a factory that produced the RA-46 nanovirus now ravaging the children and aluminum siding of the ‘States proper. By the time John reached his roof, youthful stealth machines wired to the gills with experimental nanotechnology were already in place all over the island. They had arrived for several weeks, children of every race and creed between the ages of 9 and 16. Each one with a beautiful and unmarred face, untouched by age and voiced with a softness uncommon for puberty. The Orphans still unnerved John, but he had already seen them tested.

On the ship over from the ‘States, he had watched a fairly large Marine mouth off at one of the younger ones, cracking ageist jokes and making remarks about the Orphans needing their mommies. It had been a terrible mistake. That day a Marine was sent to the infirmary with 82 broken bones, administered in less than 5 seconds by an 8 year old girl. John was stunned; he was shocked enough by the memory that he almost missed someone moving at street level below him.

Edging his rifle past the line of the roof, John peered down through his starlight scope and tried to avoid going blind from the gaudy neon store signs. He searched for a shadow, vision moving across the buildings and coming to rest on an alley. He squinted and propped the gun against his shoulder and tried to get a better look at his prey. The form was not terribly tall, perhaps no older than a teenage boy, and built like an athlete. It wore all black up to the neck, parts of its body wet with viscous dripping substances and shaking despite the night’s unpleasant temperature. Despite his view, he couldn’t get a clear shot. John ran through his orders in his head, he was to look for deserting Orphans and to make sure they didn’t get a chance to flee in face of conflict. His superiors, and their superiors, were very worried about the effect the heavy nanotechnological tinkering would have on their minds and it was his responsibility none of the ones in his sector turned on the regular soldiers. And yet? He could not verify that this one was doing anything wrong. The kid might even be in trouble.

Shouldering his rifle, John hopped from his building to the next, headed toward the alley down the road. He had not made it more than two roofs before he came face to face with the Orphan, waiting like it had taken him all night to get over there. It could not have been more than twenty seconds since he had begun moving, and the clearly wounded Orphan still made it up the side of the building fast enough to take a seat at it’s edge on an air conditioner vent. He had been wrong, the teenager was definitely not a boy. The girl was around 16 years of age, and as curvaceous as any young adult with pouty thick lips and dusky skin tone. This could barely soften the scowl on those same lips when she regarded him. Suddenly John realized his nearly grievous error, her small chest pin denoted her being more than three ranks above he himself.

John eyed her up, “Do you need assistance?” and she apparently found what he said funny, clutching at her left thigh after a short quiet laugh. “No, I need a fucking bullet in my head, soldier. Only way either of us are getting off this island in time.”

With a startled change of posture, John regarded her suddenly differently. Her voice spoke like a 5 year veteran (and John had only been in 3 himself), and definitely secured the rank pin upon her chest with a battle hardening he hardly expected.

“You, Soldier, have 1 hour to make it to the beach. Consider it my gift for not shooting me as a deserter back there.” And the girl thumbed back over her shoulder toward the alleyway, “I’m probably not going to make it out, but you are still fresh. I’ve been running all night. Take this drive back for me.”

The girl tossed a pocketdrive at John, which he caught a bare second before it would have shot off of the roof. Her coordination was suffering horribly, and John could see the fatigue in her eyes. Her long brown curls were pulled up tight about her head, face unmarred by makeup, but she wore a type of reactive contact he had only ever seen infiltrators wear. The black sclera covered the whites of her eyes completely, tiny red circles of light moving around on them from the inside. The combination range finder, body heat sensor, and camera lens was a piece of hardware on the short life expectancy list. Only given to operatives undertaking the sorts of missions they aren’t allowed to admit to later. Probably make her blind for life if she kept them in for a few days.

John considered the situation, looking at the drive and then back at the girl now slumping down on the AC box. His lips twitched and he took in her beauty, her youthful face and muscular body. It would be a waste to destroy something so prepared for warfare, like burying a completely fine rifle in the wet sand of a beach at low tide. He cleared his throat some, “Sir, I think you will have to come with me.” and before she could react, he had already pulled her up to his shoulder, tugging her right arm up around his neck.

The girl began to protest, muttering something about court martial but giving in after a minute of being dragged across the roof. “You need to get out of here, soldier. Take the drive and leave me be. I’m content to die here.”

John stared down at his superior’s wound, it wouldn’t be enough to kill her. He grew confused, but only long enough to lift her from the ground and jump to the next rooftop. “What do you mean by ‘I’m content to die here’? You’re not going to die, that’s barely bleeding. I can feel you’re not cold, you’re not in shock and you aren’t broken enough. And what is this about us having an hour… sir?”

“Stop calling me sir… Call me Lourdes, that’s my code. Lourdes.”

“Ok.. Lourdes, what is up with the hour?”

Lourdes looked up at John, “In an hour the nuclear bomb rigged in the nanovirus factory goes off. It has sufficient payload to glass Kentucky, and give everyone in Hawaii a tan.”

John nearly stumbled off of the roof at the news, having been prepared for a lot but not that. “Have you told anyone? Warned anyone? What about everyone on the island?”

The young girl looked down, “We’re all on forced silence, every one of us, we can only passively receive right now. I tried to radio in, but all I could get is static.”

“Well then, sir-… Lourdes. Lets get back to the boats and raise some noise. I intend to toast you on your 21st.”

Looking up at John, Lourdes screwed up her face with indecision — should she smile or shoot the soldier in front of her? An enigmatic smile crept onto her lips, beginning to hobble forward next to him.

The last thing John remembered as he woke from the memory was the fact that she had smelled like blood, cordite, and peppermint. He rolled over onto his side, arm surrounding the small but firm body next to his on the flea-bait bed. She stirred, rolling over to face him. Lyria planted a kiss on his cheek, timidly, an almost practiced affection. Quietly, under her breath she whispered to him, “Again?”

John nodded, “Again.” and hurriedly kicked off the cheap plastic-coated motel covers.

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »

(John 1) A side snippet, a moment of time that would otherwise never be written, but exists in a literary universe of mine…

May 18, 2007 by Deightine.

Lyria peered through squinted eyes down into those of her latest lover, her small frame sitting astride his spread body, back arched and skin glistening with sweat. She cocked her head to one side, tapping a Krest from the pack on the nightstand. The cool touch of the filter pressed against her lips, leaving the clove there and pushing the short cropped gold and brown hair from her face; her pincurls falling every which way. He seemed sedate to her, sated, tired from a long night well spent. Good money spent. Looking back, the soldier, only offering his name up as John opened his lips for the second time the whole night.

“So are you going to light it, or just sit there with it hangin’?”

Strangely bothered by the dangling clove, its black paper unusually opaque against Lyria’s exceptionally pale vampire-wannabe skin, John seemed most distracted by its presence. He reached the table with his free right hand, snatching up the Zippo lighter and holding it up. With a snap of his finger, the cap popped off and the flame lit. Lyria leaned forward some, lighting the K’ while watching the strange man’s haunted eyes. Breathing in quickly at first, the flame catching and burning a quarter inch from the clove; Lyria sighed out with accustomed delight. The pungent cough syrup fumes, too rich with cherry sent, blew down on John’s chest in a wave of reddish blue smoke. It billowed, losing her face to him but only eclipsing her eyes.

Without the K’, John knew that this girl probably in her 30s but trapped in the body of a 13 year old girl would begin to slowly go mad from sleep deprivation. The Krests kept the nannites infesting her bloodstream at bay, packed with electron inhibitors, forcing them out through the purging. His eyes focusing again, John watched a bead of sweat run its way from her forehead down her cheek, her neck, her shoulder and down one breast to dangle on the precipital point of her areola. It dropped as if in slow motion, falling quickly toward his chest and parting the wave of smoke in its path. It struck, cool on his burning skin and for a split second he jolted with the impact. The nymph astride his middle nestled down on his pelvic bone, and began to laugh at his reaction to the droplet. Smoke poured from her nostrils up into the air like cherry scented dragon’s fire, head tilted back and enjoying her moment. Each laugh sent a shiver through the muscles of her torso, which like the beads of sweat rode down toward her pelvis, muscles grinding against him. He gasped, and she laughed some more.

With the grace of a dancer, she disengaged from his body and stood up on the rented bed in this seedy Playground motel. John watched Lyria walk away, the practiced walk of a woman three times her age and the old military linkup ports showing on the joints of her arms and trailing up her spine and into her hair. Without ceremony she walked into the bathroom and took the doorknob in hand. She looked back at him, eyes lingering on his much older looking frame. “I’ve gotta take a shit.”

With that, she closed the door and John drifted off, hoping his bag by the bed would still be there when the drugs wore off.

Posted in Short Fiction | Print | No Comments »