prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thanks, I'll need to look into it. My gut feeling is that it won't be useful as anything more than a band-aid, though.
In the Ruins of Their Cities
- Thread starter prometheus110
- Start date
- Original Modern
Chapter Four
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The cabin lurked in the woods like a ghost of old, its exterior coated with a layer of faded red paint which shone the colour of blood in the moon's silver light. It was a simple A-frame structure, two stories tall, and surrounded on all sides by skeletal birch trees; their branches tap-tap-tapping against the wooden walls in the night's cool breeze. Behind the cabin's large french windows, blocked by curtains which swayed gently to and fro, shadowy figures could be seen; a thin pillar of smoke spiralling from the stone chimney like blood from a cut.
To a cursory glance, it seemed a peaceful enough tableau, but a closer look would reveal the truth.
Hiding in a ring of trees, high up in a birds nest of twigs and leaves, cameras looked out in all directions; antennas disguised as branches broadcasting to monitors lurking inside. Here and there, patches of disturbed earth revealed signs of bushes now removed, and flood-lights hung from the cabin's walls ready to be activated at the flick of a switch. Outside the cabin, staring out into the darkness with night-adjusted eyes, a handful of men and women patrolled; a riot of rifles held loosely in their hands.
Anoki could spot all of this without trouble from ver vantage point above the tableau, human minds shining in the ghostly realm like white-hot beacons of light; the solid walls of the cabin far too thin to conceal them from ver espersence.
I count fourteen hostiles, plus our three targets, Anoki reported as ve returned to ver body.
Four patrolling outside with rifles and two more just past the door. Two upstairs watching the northern approach, three in the living room --one watching the monitors--, and three sleeping in the upstairs bedroom. Our targets are in the downstairs study.
Positioned in line with the cabin's front door, Anoki had hidden verself behind a cluster of birch trees fifty meters distant --the dense strand all but blocking the cabin from normal sight. Having spent the better part of an hour spotting and avoiding the cameras guarding the cabin, Anoki was ansty to begin
Damn, that makes it harder, said Carpathia, their leader. Anything else?
Ve sent back an unsure grimace. Not sure, ve replied. Some crates upstairs and unmarked bottles in the study, but I couldn't make out any details on either. Sorry, Captain.
A hard-faced woman, Carpathia had replaced Captain Tembor after he'd taken his retirement package sometime after Anoki. She was still something of an unknown factor for Anoki, but Hyena team had lived through worse losses.
Fourteen hostiles it is, Carpathia broadcast to the team; her drive echoing down the psychic link. Remember, our job is to grab the leaders. Everyone else is expendable.
Are we green? Continued Carpathia, satisfaction leaking through the Matrix as they all answered positively. Okafor, she said a moment later, you're up.
For a long moment nothing happened, the swaying of branches the only motion in the forest Then, without warning, a patch of greater darkness plummeted from the night sky and wheeled towards the cabin; silvery moonlight illuminating white-spotted feathers as the servitor-owl swooped down amongst the trees. Dodging branch and trunk as it weaved its way through the woods, the spotted owl flared its wings and landed noiselessly on one particular branch of one particular tree --the predator shifting its body until it blocked the camera that had been watching the cabin's front door.
Swiftly, Anoki and Meriwa began to move; the Sérsveitir operatives rising from their hiding places amidst the shrubs and bushes like spectres and silently advancing towards the distant figures of the militia-men. As Anoki passed beneath Okafor's servitor-owl, a flock of things both swift and unseen rushed over ver head and the three patrolling militia members dropped to the ground like ragdolls; unsuspecting victims of Carpathia and Calhoun.
Nodding to ver partner, Anoki dove shallowly into ver espersence and gazed through the cabin's now ghostly walls. Almost immediately, ve caught sight of two brilliant nova's of light making their way down the hallway beyond.
Two contacts in the hallway, ve sent to Meriwa privately, the locations of the hostiles following close behind. Right is mine. Entry on your mark.
With a thought, Glacier triggered, and Anoki's thoughts shifted as the thoughtware got to work. Doubt slowed analysis, fear constricted vision, and anxiety stopped movement. None of these things could be tolerated. Between one heartbeat and the next, Anoki transformed; emotions vanishing like the rainforests to leave ver mind sterile and ready to kill. Silently, the pair moved into position on either side of the cabin's cedar-coloured door; Meriwa crouching down and training her rifle, an AR-15, where Anoki had shown her.
Mark, Meriwa said.
The door exploded backwards as Anoki's boot slammed into it; boosted muscles tearing the latch out of the wall with ease. Two minds, both white-hot beacons in Anoki's espersence, flared in alarm at the noise; one popping out of existence as Meriwa's rifle barked. Before the body even had time to hit the ground, Murder brought Anoki's shotgun around to the other in a single smooth motion and squeezed the trigger; the balaclava-wearing woman staring wide-eyed as the slug punched into her heart.
Wordlessly, the two soldiers stepped through the door with practised speed; the pair covering each other's backs as they headed for their objectives. Without warning, a half-dressed militia member suddenly stumbled out of the living room before Anoki, teeth bared and eyes narrowed; a pistol clutched in his hand like a fetish. Murder reacted instantly, the thoughtware program snapping Anoki's long-gun up and squeezing the trigger.
Hallway clear, ve reported as the corpse crumpled to the floor, arterial blood staining the tan carpet black.
Calhoun, Carpathia ordered evenly.
There was a split second pause, and then a series of staccato cracks exploded across the second floor as the squad's marksman opened fire; the bark of Meriwa's rifle joining in as she advanced up the stairs.
Not waiting for the hostiles to recover from the disorientating sounds of combat rising all around them, Anoki dashed forwards; the psychic warrior sidling up against the wall a half-meter from the living room entrance as ve felt two minds waiting within. Snatching a flashbang from ver vest, Anoki tossed it through the open doorway with a twist of the wrist; a thunderous bang ringing out a heartbeat later. Stunned by the blast, both men were sitting targets as ve swept around the corner and opened fire.
Living room clear, ve reported, the soldier shooting a quick glance at the ghostly mission timer hovering in the corner of ver vision.
Twenty seconds, Anoki thought, not bad.
The marksmen are down, Calhoun interrupted; the lanky sniper's view of a devastated upstairs popping into Anoki's mind a moment later.
Upstairs clear, reported Meriwa as she moved towards the study, the news eliciting a burst of satisfaction from Carpathia.
Assault Team, she ordered, converge on the study and get ready to breach. Okafor, what are our eyes like?
Like a half-remembered daydream, Anoki could almost feel the sensation of wind ruffling ver feathers as the team's servitor-controller responded. Twenty-twenty, cap, came the lilting Irish accent. No sign of runners, no sign of reinforcements.
Driving the sensations from ver mind, Anoki moved to join Meriwa by the study door; the stocky woman covering the thick oak slab with her rifle. So close to their targets, Anoki could hear the creak of footsteps within, but nothing else. If they were getting ready to burn documents, or, god forbid, use a chemical weapon, Anoki couldn't hear it.
Do you have a flashbang? Meriwa asked as Anoki appeared around the corner; the woman taking neither her eyes nor rifle off the door.
Anoki shook ver head as ve took up position opposite. Too risky. Info packet said they were messing with chem agents. Could be the bottles have something deadly.
Meriwa cursed flatly, Glacier stealing the heat from her words.
Okafor, asked Carpathia, can you see anything?
Sorry cap, they've got the curtains closed, he reported. I can try and smash the windows with a bird… He trailed off.
No, she responded sharply. We can't waste it, or risk containment-loss if the bottles contain a chemical weapon.
Glancing up at the mission timer, Anoki watched as precious seconds ticked away.
Captain, we need to move now, Anoki sent privately. We can gas and breach.
Without a flashbang you'll be a sitting target, Carpathia shot back.
With a flashbang we might crack something we shouldn't, ve countered. We can blind them with gas and either take them down in there or snatch them when they try to bolt.
For a long moment, the captain was silent, the psychic link connecting the team to one another allowing Anoki to feel her mind ticking over as she considered their proposal.
Alright, she replied finally, if you think you can do it.
Anoki, Meriwa, she continued publicly, Breach and clear with gas. The rest of us will reposition to catch any runners.
Breathing out long and hard, Anoki quickly racked ver shotgun and replaced all but one slug with new shells from ver vest. Shock was key. If they could hit them hard enough and fast enough, they could win.
Dipping into ver espersence for the third time tonight, Anoki pushed through ver growing mental fatigue and looked through the walls of the cabin and into the study beyond. As expected, the three mind-lights of their targets were moving too and fro within the room; the ghostly form of a heavy wooden desk lying on its side between them and the door. No doubt they were preparing for some kind of glorious last stand; grim endings to wasted lives.
Sharing the image with Meriwa, Anoki studied the positions of their targets of the room and committed it to memory. Crouched opposite ver, Meriwa shot Anoki a look that said more than enough.
I know, Anoki replied with a grimace. No other option, though.
Letting the shotgun drop to ver side, Anoki donned the matte black gas mask which hung from ver hip and the world immediately grew smaller. Ignoring the discomfort the mask brought, Anoki pulled one of a half-dozen chunky cylinders from ver vest and readied verself.
An old technology, tear gas was nonetheless an effective method of dispersing and controlling discontented crowds. Designed to irritate and burn the skin, eyes, and lungs of those exposed, it could render an adult unable to resist or even think in a matter of seconds. Anoki's world had long since moved past such barbaric means of dispersing crowds, but the need to avoid leaving red flags in the past had seen the assault team so-equipped.
As Meriwa donned her own gas mask, Anoki began to count down.
Three.
Two.
One.
Mark, ve told Meriwa; the stocky soldier immediately twisting the door handle and pushing it open.
Time slowed.
With a single smooth motion, Anoki pulled the pin from ver gas grenade and lobbed it through the doorway. Ducking away, Anoki caught a glance of the heavy grey cylinder bouncing off the far wall before a sudden shout rang out
"Get down!" Cried a voice from within, its pitch high and feminine.
An instant later, her words were drowned out by the sudden bark of pistol-fire as the other militia leaders ignored her. Suddenly, there came a loud, flame-like whoosh, and a bank of thick white smoke poured around the door as the grenade activated.
Ve watched the smoke eddy and churn its way past the door; strange patterns forming in its shifting mass as those within the study stirred. Hold, Anoki cautioned as ve retrieved ver shotgun; the continued pop of pistol fire underscoring ver words.
Hold, ve repeated as a series of hacking coughs sounded, the wet noises growing louder and louder with each passing moment.
Hold, Anoki warned as ve readied verself.
Without warning, the pistol fire cut off and silence reigned.
Go, Anoki sent.
With a single swift kick from Meriwa, the door sprang backwards; the already agitated gas sent scudding in all directions by the wind of its passage. Springing forwards, Anoki was swallowed by the gas almost instantly, the harsh white light of the study turned grey by its bulk and the world contracting to a tiny grey bubble. Suddenly, a woman emerged from the cloud; wispy streamers of teargas peeling away from her body as she shambled toward Anoki.
Murder took control.
Between one step and the next, never breaking stride, Anoki's shotgun roared. With a shriek of pain, the woman collapsed to the ground; her discordant cry halting almost instantly as the stun round activated with a crackle of electricity.
A man appeared.
Armed, Murder saw immediately, algorithms spotting the lines and curves of the pistol still held loosely in his hands as he stumbled, hacking, towards the study's entrance. Immediately, it tagged him as a maximum priority target and threat analysis went into overdrive. In less time than it takes to blink, the military thoughtware observed, measured, and predicted his motion, and sent the orders to intercept.
Anoki's shotgun boomed twice in quick succession, its target letting out a squeal as the taser rounds struck him in the shoulder and stomach. With metronomic timing, the crackle of electricity rang out and the man, legs tangling, went sprawling to the ground; his pistol skating across the study's floorboards and disappearing into the mist.
A heartbeat passed, and then another, and then the room fell silent save for the hissing of the teargas grenade. Sliding to a halt before the fallen woman, Anoki scanned the swirling bank of stinging gas as best ve could in her mask.
Meriwa, ve began, do you have ey-
Without warning, something smashed into ver side with the force of a runaway train, the sheer momentum of the blow sending ver hurtling towards the distant study wall. There was a moment's disorientation and then, with a boom, Anoki slammed bodily against the hard timber slats; pain rising up to swallow ver like the sea.
Fuck! Anoki groaned into the squad link as ve pushed verself away from the wall; the drumming of ver heart filling ver head with a thunderous roar. A moment later, a tide of numbness swept across ver body as ver neural lace began erecting axon blocks; ver nerves deadening in a matter of moments.
Growling, Anoki turned in time to see the third and final militia leader charging out of the fog of teargas; streamers of white-grey mist skating off his gas mask.
No shot! No Shot! Came a barked warning from Meriwa.
Twisting as quickly as they could, Anoki stumbled as a half-dodged blow from the thickset man caught ver in the shoulder. Hard. Grasping for ver shotgun, Anoki realised with a start that it was nowhere to be seen; the loud curse forming on ver lips cut short as the man charged after ver.
Murder adjusted.
He swung one tree-trunk arm, fast, and Anoki ducked to the left. Ve countered with a sharp jab to the kidneys and the man twisted to avoid it. He kicked; a sudden lash toward ver leg and the booted foot connected.
Anoki hissed behind the gas mask as ve stumbled. He was good.
Ver legs flicked and ve was three steps away. He hadn't expected it and was slow in reacting.
"Who are you?" He demanded, his voice muffled through his mask but nonetheless surprised.
He lunged forwards, arms wide, and Anoki lept sideways. He stumbled past and gasped in pain as ve kicked, hard, the blow sending him into the room's far wall with a thunderous impact. Anoki was shorter than he was and lighter by far, but ve had advantages he couldn't imagine; least amongst them being inhuman muscles.
There was a sudden lull as the man turned around.
Through the clear plastic of his gasmask, Anoki could see his eyes boring into ver own; cold calculating intelligence clear in the limped grey-green pools. Without warning, they flicked to a point just behind Anoki and, for just a moment, triumph reigned.
He charged.
Anoki pirouetted away and sent another quick kick to his side. The blow connected with a meaty thwack and teargas steamed in all directions as he exhaled hard.
He fell to the ground and slid towards the pistol lying there.
Without hesitation, Anoki threw verself after the man, the two of them colliding with a bone-jarring thud mere centimetres from the weapon. Headless of ver actions, the man grabbed for the pistol only for Anoki to slap it away; the lump of black metal skating across the floorboards before coming to a halt a half-meter away.
"Fucking die!" he roared through his gas mask, the words followed by a hasty blow with his elbow that only caught ver kevlar vest.
Ignoring his words, Anoki lunged for his throat with both hands; the man reacting instantly and throwing ver to the side with a grunt of effort. Leaping to ver feet, Anoki charged as the man scurried towards the pistol on his hands and knees; the much-lighter soldier slamming into his side once more and knocking the militia leader to the ground.
Desperately, the man scrabbled towards the pistol in a flurry of limbs; a half-dozen discordant hammer blows ringing out as he threw himself towards the weapon. Straining, Anoki lunged again for his throat; hands closing around it just as he snatched up the fallen weapon. With a roar that ve could feel running up ver arms, he grabbed the pistol and swung it around to ver face.
Through his mask, Anoki could see him smiling. "I win." He whispered hoarsely.
Wordlessly, Anoki triggered the nematocysts in ver fingers and the training siren wailed.
To a cursory glance, it seemed a peaceful enough tableau, but a closer look would reveal the truth.
Hiding in a ring of trees, high up in a birds nest of twigs and leaves, cameras looked out in all directions; antennas disguised as branches broadcasting to monitors lurking inside. Here and there, patches of disturbed earth revealed signs of bushes now removed, and flood-lights hung from the cabin's walls ready to be activated at the flick of a switch. Outside the cabin, staring out into the darkness with night-adjusted eyes, a handful of men and women patrolled; a riot of rifles held loosely in their hands.
Anoki could spot all of this without trouble from ver vantage point above the tableau, human minds shining in the ghostly realm like white-hot beacons of light; the solid walls of the cabin far too thin to conceal them from ver espersence.
I count fourteen hostiles, plus our three targets, Anoki reported as ve returned to ver body.
Four patrolling outside with rifles and two more just past the door. Two upstairs watching the northern approach, three in the living room --one watching the monitors--, and three sleeping in the upstairs bedroom. Our targets are in the downstairs study.
Positioned in line with the cabin's front door, Anoki had hidden verself behind a cluster of birch trees fifty meters distant --the dense strand all but blocking the cabin from normal sight. Having spent the better part of an hour spotting and avoiding the cameras guarding the cabin, Anoki was ansty to begin
Damn, that makes it harder, said Carpathia, their leader. Anything else?
Ve sent back an unsure grimace. Not sure, ve replied. Some crates upstairs and unmarked bottles in the study, but I couldn't make out any details on either. Sorry, Captain.
A hard-faced woman, Carpathia had replaced Captain Tembor after he'd taken his retirement package sometime after Anoki. She was still something of an unknown factor for Anoki, but Hyena team had lived through worse losses.
Fourteen hostiles it is, Carpathia broadcast to the team; her drive echoing down the psychic link. Remember, our job is to grab the leaders. Everyone else is expendable.
Are we green? Continued Carpathia, satisfaction leaking through the Matrix as they all answered positively. Okafor, she said a moment later, you're up.
For a long moment nothing happened, the swaying of branches the only motion in the forest Then, without warning, a patch of greater darkness plummeted from the night sky and wheeled towards the cabin; silvery moonlight illuminating white-spotted feathers as the servitor-owl swooped down amongst the trees. Dodging branch and trunk as it weaved its way through the woods, the spotted owl flared its wings and landed noiselessly on one particular branch of one particular tree --the predator shifting its body until it blocked the camera that had been watching the cabin's front door.
Swiftly, Anoki and Meriwa began to move; the Sérsveitir operatives rising from their hiding places amidst the shrubs and bushes like spectres and silently advancing towards the distant figures of the militia-men. As Anoki passed beneath Okafor's servitor-owl, a flock of things both swift and unseen rushed over ver head and the three patrolling militia members dropped to the ground like ragdolls; unsuspecting victims of Carpathia and Calhoun.
Nodding to ver partner, Anoki dove shallowly into ver espersence and gazed through the cabin's now ghostly walls. Almost immediately, ve caught sight of two brilliant nova's of light making their way down the hallway beyond.
Two contacts in the hallway, ve sent to Meriwa privately, the locations of the hostiles following close behind. Right is mine. Entry on your mark.
With a thought, Glacier triggered, and Anoki's thoughts shifted as the thoughtware got to work. Doubt slowed analysis, fear constricted vision, and anxiety stopped movement. None of these things could be tolerated. Between one heartbeat and the next, Anoki transformed; emotions vanishing like the rainforests to leave ver mind sterile and ready to kill. Silently, the pair moved into position on either side of the cabin's cedar-coloured door; Meriwa crouching down and training her rifle, an AR-15, where Anoki had shown her.
Mark, Meriwa said.
The door exploded backwards as Anoki's boot slammed into it; boosted muscles tearing the latch out of the wall with ease. Two minds, both white-hot beacons in Anoki's espersence, flared in alarm at the noise; one popping out of existence as Meriwa's rifle barked. Before the body even had time to hit the ground, Murder brought Anoki's shotgun around to the other in a single smooth motion and squeezed the trigger; the balaclava-wearing woman staring wide-eyed as the slug punched into her heart.
Wordlessly, the two soldiers stepped through the door with practised speed; the pair covering each other's backs as they headed for their objectives. Without warning, a half-dressed militia member suddenly stumbled out of the living room before Anoki, teeth bared and eyes narrowed; a pistol clutched in his hand like a fetish. Murder reacted instantly, the thoughtware program snapping Anoki's long-gun up and squeezing the trigger.
Hallway clear, ve reported as the corpse crumpled to the floor, arterial blood staining the tan carpet black.
Calhoun, Carpathia ordered evenly.
There was a split second pause, and then a series of staccato cracks exploded across the second floor as the squad's marksman opened fire; the bark of Meriwa's rifle joining in as she advanced up the stairs.
Not waiting for the hostiles to recover from the disorientating sounds of combat rising all around them, Anoki dashed forwards; the psychic warrior sidling up against the wall a half-meter from the living room entrance as ve felt two minds waiting within. Snatching a flashbang from ver vest, Anoki tossed it through the open doorway with a twist of the wrist; a thunderous bang ringing out a heartbeat later. Stunned by the blast, both men were sitting targets as ve swept around the corner and opened fire.
Living room clear, ve reported, the soldier shooting a quick glance at the ghostly mission timer hovering in the corner of ver vision.
Twenty seconds, Anoki thought, not bad.
The marksmen are down, Calhoun interrupted; the lanky sniper's view of a devastated upstairs popping into Anoki's mind a moment later.
Upstairs clear, reported Meriwa as she moved towards the study, the news eliciting a burst of satisfaction from Carpathia.
Assault Team, she ordered, converge on the study and get ready to breach. Okafor, what are our eyes like?
Like a half-remembered daydream, Anoki could almost feel the sensation of wind ruffling ver feathers as the team's servitor-controller responded. Twenty-twenty, cap, came the lilting Irish accent. No sign of runners, no sign of reinforcements.
Driving the sensations from ver mind, Anoki moved to join Meriwa by the study door; the stocky woman covering the thick oak slab with her rifle. So close to their targets, Anoki could hear the creak of footsteps within, but nothing else. If they were getting ready to burn documents, or, god forbid, use a chemical weapon, Anoki couldn't hear it.
Do you have a flashbang? Meriwa asked as Anoki appeared around the corner; the woman taking neither her eyes nor rifle off the door.
Anoki shook ver head as ve took up position opposite. Too risky. Info packet said they were messing with chem agents. Could be the bottles have something deadly.
Meriwa cursed flatly, Glacier stealing the heat from her words.
Okafor, asked Carpathia, can you see anything?
Sorry cap, they've got the curtains closed, he reported. I can try and smash the windows with a bird… He trailed off.
No, she responded sharply. We can't waste it, or risk containment-loss if the bottles contain a chemical weapon.
Glancing up at the mission timer, Anoki watched as precious seconds ticked away.
Captain, we need to move now, Anoki sent privately. We can gas and breach.
Without a flashbang you'll be a sitting target, Carpathia shot back.
With a flashbang we might crack something we shouldn't, ve countered. We can blind them with gas and either take them down in there or snatch them when they try to bolt.
For a long moment, the captain was silent, the psychic link connecting the team to one another allowing Anoki to feel her mind ticking over as she considered their proposal.
Alright, she replied finally, if you think you can do it.
Anoki, Meriwa, she continued publicly, Breach and clear with gas. The rest of us will reposition to catch any runners.
Breathing out long and hard, Anoki quickly racked ver shotgun and replaced all but one slug with new shells from ver vest. Shock was key. If they could hit them hard enough and fast enough, they could win.
Dipping into ver espersence for the third time tonight, Anoki pushed through ver growing mental fatigue and looked through the walls of the cabin and into the study beyond. As expected, the three mind-lights of their targets were moving too and fro within the room; the ghostly form of a heavy wooden desk lying on its side between them and the door. No doubt they were preparing for some kind of glorious last stand; grim endings to wasted lives.
Sharing the image with Meriwa, Anoki studied the positions of their targets of the room and committed it to memory. Crouched opposite ver, Meriwa shot Anoki a look that said more than enough.
I know, Anoki replied with a grimace. No other option, though.
Letting the shotgun drop to ver side, Anoki donned the matte black gas mask which hung from ver hip and the world immediately grew smaller. Ignoring the discomfort the mask brought, Anoki pulled one of a half-dozen chunky cylinders from ver vest and readied verself.
An old technology, tear gas was nonetheless an effective method of dispersing and controlling discontented crowds. Designed to irritate and burn the skin, eyes, and lungs of those exposed, it could render an adult unable to resist or even think in a matter of seconds. Anoki's world had long since moved past such barbaric means of dispersing crowds, but the need to avoid leaving red flags in the past had seen the assault team so-equipped.
As Meriwa donned her own gas mask, Anoki began to count down.
Three.
Two.
One.
Mark, ve told Meriwa; the stocky soldier immediately twisting the door handle and pushing it open.
Time slowed.
With a single smooth motion, Anoki pulled the pin from ver gas grenade and lobbed it through the doorway. Ducking away, Anoki caught a glance of the heavy grey cylinder bouncing off the far wall before a sudden shout rang out
"Get down!" Cried a voice from within, its pitch high and feminine.
An instant later, her words were drowned out by the sudden bark of pistol-fire as the other militia leaders ignored her. Suddenly, there came a loud, flame-like whoosh, and a bank of thick white smoke poured around the door as the grenade activated.
Ve watched the smoke eddy and churn its way past the door; strange patterns forming in its shifting mass as those within the study stirred. Hold, Anoki cautioned as ve retrieved ver shotgun; the continued pop of pistol fire underscoring ver words.
Hold, ve repeated as a series of hacking coughs sounded, the wet noises growing louder and louder with each passing moment.
Hold, Anoki warned as ve readied verself.
Without warning, the pistol fire cut off and silence reigned.
Go, Anoki sent.
With a single swift kick from Meriwa, the door sprang backwards; the already agitated gas sent scudding in all directions by the wind of its passage. Springing forwards, Anoki was swallowed by the gas almost instantly, the harsh white light of the study turned grey by its bulk and the world contracting to a tiny grey bubble. Suddenly, a woman emerged from the cloud; wispy streamers of teargas peeling away from her body as she shambled toward Anoki.
Murder took control.
Between one step and the next, never breaking stride, Anoki's shotgun roared. With a shriek of pain, the woman collapsed to the ground; her discordant cry halting almost instantly as the stun round activated with a crackle of electricity.
A man appeared.
Armed, Murder saw immediately, algorithms spotting the lines and curves of the pistol still held loosely in his hands as he stumbled, hacking, towards the study's entrance. Immediately, it tagged him as a maximum priority target and threat analysis went into overdrive. In less time than it takes to blink, the military thoughtware observed, measured, and predicted his motion, and sent the orders to intercept.
Anoki's shotgun boomed twice in quick succession, its target letting out a squeal as the taser rounds struck him in the shoulder and stomach. With metronomic timing, the crackle of electricity rang out and the man, legs tangling, went sprawling to the ground; his pistol skating across the study's floorboards and disappearing into the mist.
A heartbeat passed, and then another, and then the room fell silent save for the hissing of the teargas grenade. Sliding to a halt before the fallen woman, Anoki scanned the swirling bank of stinging gas as best ve could in her mask.
Meriwa, ve began, do you have ey-
Without warning, something smashed into ver side with the force of a runaway train, the sheer momentum of the blow sending ver hurtling towards the distant study wall. There was a moment's disorientation and then, with a boom, Anoki slammed bodily against the hard timber slats; pain rising up to swallow ver like the sea.
Fuck! Anoki groaned into the squad link as ve pushed verself away from the wall; the drumming of ver heart filling ver head with a thunderous roar. A moment later, a tide of numbness swept across ver body as ver neural lace began erecting axon blocks; ver nerves deadening in a matter of moments.
Growling, Anoki turned in time to see the third and final militia leader charging out of the fog of teargas; streamers of white-grey mist skating off his gas mask.
No shot! No Shot! Came a barked warning from Meriwa.
Twisting as quickly as they could, Anoki stumbled as a half-dodged blow from the thickset man caught ver in the shoulder. Hard. Grasping for ver shotgun, Anoki realised with a start that it was nowhere to be seen; the loud curse forming on ver lips cut short as the man charged after ver.
Murder adjusted.
He swung one tree-trunk arm, fast, and Anoki ducked to the left. Ve countered with a sharp jab to the kidneys and the man twisted to avoid it. He kicked; a sudden lash toward ver leg and the booted foot connected.
Anoki hissed behind the gas mask as ve stumbled. He was good.
Ver legs flicked and ve was three steps away. He hadn't expected it and was slow in reacting.
"Who are you?" He demanded, his voice muffled through his mask but nonetheless surprised.
He lunged forwards, arms wide, and Anoki lept sideways. He stumbled past and gasped in pain as ve kicked, hard, the blow sending him into the room's far wall with a thunderous impact. Anoki was shorter than he was and lighter by far, but ve had advantages he couldn't imagine; least amongst them being inhuman muscles.
There was a sudden lull as the man turned around.
Through the clear plastic of his gasmask, Anoki could see his eyes boring into ver own; cold calculating intelligence clear in the limped grey-green pools. Without warning, they flicked to a point just behind Anoki and, for just a moment, triumph reigned.
He charged.
Anoki pirouetted away and sent another quick kick to his side. The blow connected with a meaty thwack and teargas steamed in all directions as he exhaled hard.
He fell to the ground and slid towards the pistol lying there.
Without hesitation, Anoki threw verself after the man, the two of them colliding with a bone-jarring thud mere centimetres from the weapon. Headless of ver actions, the man grabbed for the pistol only for Anoki to slap it away; the lump of black metal skating across the floorboards before coming to a halt a half-meter away.
"Fucking die!" he roared through his gas mask, the words followed by a hasty blow with his elbow that only caught ver kevlar vest.
Ignoring his words, Anoki lunged for his throat with both hands; the man reacting instantly and throwing ver to the side with a grunt of effort. Leaping to ver feet, Anoki charged as the man scurried towards the pistol on his hands and knees; the much-lighter soldier slamming into his side once more and knocking the militia leader to the ground.
Desperately, the man scrabbled towards the pistol in a flurry of limbs; a half-dozen discordant hammer blows ringing out as he threw himself towards the weapon. Straining, Anoki lunged again for his throat; hands closing around it just as he snatched up the fallen weapon. With a roar that ve could feel running up ver arms, he grabbed the pistol and swung it around to ver face.
Through his mask, Anoki could see him smiling. "I win." He whispered hoarsely.
Wordlessly, Anoki triggered the nematocysts in ver fingers and the training siren wailed.
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not super happy with how it turned out (especially the last fight), but it's not going to get any better if I just fuck around. As always, let me know what you think. I will admit that I'm pleased I didn't just info-dump a lot of things I was planning to introduce.
[Screams Externally]
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
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So two things:
1) I'll be posting an update either later today or on Saturday. I really just need to give the thing a once over for errors and for a sanity check.
2) I'll be posting a brief runthrough of US election results up to 2028 so that we have solid ground to work from. It might come into conflict with reality over the coming week becuase reality is insane, but I'm sick of having to change plans as a result of shit like Covid.
Edit:
The worst part about writing this timeline has been reality going "hold my beer".
1) I'll be posting an update either later today or on Saturday. I really just need to give the thing a once over for errors and for a sanity check.
2) I'll be posting a brief runthrough of US election results up to 2028 so that we have solid ground to work from. It might come into conflict with reality over the coming week becuase reality is insane, but I'm sick of having to change plans as a result of shit like Covid.
Edit:
The worst part about writing this timeline has been reality going "hold my beer".
Last edited:
Chapter Five -- Part One
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
04:45 am -- June 19th, 2028 -- Washington D.C
The early morning light coloured the glass windows of the boulevard a weak silver; the concourses of Washington D.C warming slowly under the glare of the sun, the high temperatures predicted for later in the day having yet to materialise. Breaking the monotonous silence with the whine of electric motors and the purr of combustion engines, a handful of cars prowled the empty city; night owls and early risers acknowledging each other with their ritual nod before passing by. Lining the streets, staring out like grinning, silent skulls, offices and boutiques stood in rows; the nanocoatings on their windows revealing dark and empty interiors waiting to be filled with light and sound.
Darius Williams felt his phone buzz harshly as he approached the site of his next job, the slim rectangle vibrating loudly against his chest as Bootstrpr decided he'd arrived. Stifling a yawn, Darius ignored the app's shrill alert and raised a hand to the others assembled outside the glass-panelled building that was today's assembly point; the word Calico written above the doorway in a lime green, san-serif font. Like a half-hearted wave, a desultory chorus of hellos rose up from the small crowd of fellow gig-workers, no amount of caffeine able to drive away the fatigue of an early morning start.
Though the usual collection of workaholics and night-shifters were busy making their way through the city, the crowd of locals and tourists wouldn't materialise for a few hours yet. Despite having been a Bootstrpr for over two months now, the sheer emptiness of the city at dawn unnerved Darius a touch, long-buried memories of the COVID lockdowns flickering through his mind as he joined the group.
"Hey man," Darius said as he spotted Frederick sipping a coffee; the fifty-five-year-old returning Darius' nod and favouring him with a thin smile.
Built thin and reedy, Frederick always gave Darius the faint impression of a scarecrow who had hopped off his stilts, and the baggy Day-Glo orange jacket they all had to wear only helped to cement the impression.
More than twice Darius's age, the man was easy enough to work alongside and he knew how to do his job quickly and efficiently. Though they weren't friends, Darius had learned pretty quickly that having someone to talk to during the legally mandated breaks could make all the difference, and their mutual appreciation of science fiction had served them well for conversation fodder. Darius had tried to talk to him about the science part of science fiction, of course, but the older man had almost zero interest in tech and had made that view abundantly clear.
"Read anything good since last time, kid?" He asked lightly..
Darius shrugged and replied. "You know, a book by some guy called Banks. Look To Windward? It was alright."
Screwing up his face, the older man leaned back as if in pain. "Lord, kid," he exclaimed, "I remember buying that when I was in college. Way to kick a man when he's down."
Laughing, his short dreadlocks bobbing as he did so, Darius shook his head and grinned in reply.
"No, but for real," he admitted, "I did. It was pretty good. Thanks for the rec."
Frederick tched.
"Told ya, kid," he replied.
Before Frederick could continue, Darius' phone suddenly buzzed and a dozen others soon joined suite. Rolling his eyes at the interruption, Darius turned back towards the street just in time to see a van slide into place in front of him; the Day-Glo orange B logo of the job-provider the only colour on the car's otherwise featureless white body. Almost before it had come to a halt, a man Darius' age hopped out of the cab and stifled a yawn of his own; his pale skin seeming grey in the weak light of the morning sun.
"Alright, gather round everyone!" The man boomed a moment later, his voice echoing down the all-but deserted boulevard. Obediently, the group shuffled closer; the press of bodies bringing Darius face-to-face with their organizer for the day.
"The job today is trash collection," he continued once everyone had arrived; the words eliciting a chorus of groans.
Raising his hands, the man gave them an impotent look. "I know, I know," he assured them, "it's no one's favourite, but it's gotta be done."
"For free," someone muttered under their breath.
"Trash pickers and garbage bags are in the van," the man continued. "Grab yours and get into pairs. The app will tell you where your work area is and tell you when you're done for the day."
With the boilerplate stated, the man opened the door to the van's interior and stood aside. Ahead of the pack by dint of luck, Darius scored a bag and trash picker for himself in record time before wordlessly moving to stand in front of the man. With a plastic smile, the man, Mark, according to the nametag over his heart, brought his phone to Darius' face and held it steady. On the third attempt, Bootstrpr registered Darius' existence with a cheery ding and he was gently moved aside to let the next worker through.
The first time he had done a gig for Bootstrpr, Darius had been more than a little leery of the facial recognition tech they used to keep track of their contractors. Over time, he'd learned to accept the constant scans with, if not good grace, at least tired resignation, but their constant presence always needled away at him.
"Kid, can you believe this?" Asked Frederick hotly a few minutes into their route. "I was a copywriter and they have me picking up trash. Again."
"Really?" Replied Darius, his interest piqued, as he speared an errant receipt from the gutter. Never once had Frederick been anything but laid-back in their conversations, nor had he offered anything about his past. "You registered patents and shit?"
Frederick snorted derisively before gingerly using his trash picker to lift a wad of something off the cracked concrete sidewalk. The Women's March had come down this boulevard the day before and, as with all masses of people, had left signs of its presence everywhere. Most of the detritus had been cleaned up overnight by Washington's sanitation workers, but there were inevitable oversights.
"No kid," he answered a moment later, the mess safely stored in his thick black garbage bag. "I said Copywriter. I did writing for advertisements, product copy, things like that."
A discarded sock (a hole the size of Darius' thumb in its heel).
"Uh-huh," Darius replied absently as they continued down the street, the grey pavement slowly warming as the sun continued its climb into the sky. Like a bee trapped in a box, Darius' phone suddenly buzzed. He was moving too slowly.
A Big Mac (the top half).
"I did it for twenty-five years," Frederick continued, hurrying after Darius as he increased his pace. "Mostly for other people, but I eventually started my own business. Even won a few awards, too."
Two band-aids (bloody).
The conversation died momentarily as they both grimaced. As carefully as he could, Darius lifted them with his trash picker and deposited them in his bag.
"What happened?" Darius idly asked a moment later.
Face mask (torn).
Frederick stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Taken by surprise, Darius managed two steps before noticing that his partner was no longer beside him and turned to find the man staring into the distance.
"I got sick a few years back," the man said, his voice low. "Real sick. Cancer."
"Jesus," Darius cursed.
Frederick nodded in agreement. "Lymphoma," he continued a moment later, "serious shit".
"I'm fine now," he added hastily, the man giving an amused huff as he spotted Darius' expression, "but I had to sell everything to afford the treatment, and I do mean everything."
"The wife and I sold the house and moved into an apartment near the hospital. We sold the shares we had, my car, hell, even my watch. After a few weeks of chemo, I was too exhausted to work, so I shuttered the business and we became a single-income household."
Their phones buzzed a warning and both ignored it.
Darius grimaced. "That must have been expensive," he said.
"Not as bad as when I was your age," Frederick replied with a shrug, "but it still wiped us out. By the time I'd recovered, the economy was back in the shitter and no one wanted to hire an old guy who'd been out of the industry for over a year. I managed to get a couple odd jobs here and there, but I'd always get laid off sooner or later. It's why I'm here. "
"Jesus," Darius repeated.
Frederick nodded in agreement.
"What about you, kid? Why are you picking up trash?"
Their phones buzzed again. Louder, more insistent. Again they ignored the warning.
Darius shrugged. "Got the Rona," he said breezily. "Mutant strain, not the kind the vaccine works against."
It was Frederick's turn to curse. "Hell, kid, how bad?"
"Pretty bad," Darius replied. "All my friends got it and didn't have anything more than a few sneezes and headaches. Meanwhile, I had the worst flu of my life. I'd walk to the fridge and be out of breath. I'd take a break halfway up a stairway 'cause I couldn't climb it in one go. I had to go to the hospital once and a doctor six times," he added, his expression screwed up in remembrance.
Giving him a sympathetic look, Frederick pat his shoulder. "Expensive?" He asked a moment later.
"Wiped out my savings," Darius scoffed. "Fuck, man, I lost my job 'cause of all the time I had to take off, and my boss blacklisted me for it. Can't find programming work anywhere in this city."
Before Frederick could reply, their phones buzzed once again, the loudest warning so far, and a prerecorded message played out in eerie synchronicity.
"Please return to your assigned task," said their phones, the voice soft and female and its words deafeningly loud in the relative quiet of the boulevard. "Failure to return to your task will result in demerit points being added to your account. For more on demerit points and Bootsrpr's mutual obligations, please visit the help section of the Bootstrpr app."
Almost indistinguishable from that of a person's, the only hint of the voice's artificial origin was the ever so slightly wrong cadence of its reading. An unthinking machine, the Bootstrpr app read-aloud the warning text that had been written into it some unknown time ago; the bad grammar and punctuation of an unknown typist preserved within its bytes forever --or, at least, until the next update. Jolted out of their respective reveries, the two men took up their all-but-forgotten tools and quickly resumed their patrol down the empty road; the app's bite all the encouragement they needed.
For the next few hours, Darius and Frederick collected the discarded detritus of humanity in silence; the city slowly coming to life around them like a sprouting acorn as both tourists and workers began to trickle in. Despite himself, Darius couldn't help but feel grateful that the app at least warned them before deducting demerit points. When he'd first heard about it, it'd seemed an interesting application of Natural Language Processing. The first time it had been used to warn him, it'd been a shock. Now it was just an irritation.
"You know computers, right?" Frederick asked later in the day as the pair sat under the awnings of a shuttered storefront; their phones silently counting down the seconds left on their break.
"I'm a programmer, yeah," Darius replied, only half-listening.
Moving across the road in front of them, gliding silently on four wheels as it made its way towards the city centre, a silver Toyota Tacet had seized Darius' attention in full. A luxury model, the Tacet was a fully electric vehicle capable of 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds and 500 miles in a single charge. More interesting to Darius than the car's performance, however, was the world-class computer system which controlled every aspect of it. He'd seen snippets of the car's proprietary code on certain out-of-the-way forums, but he'd never had the chance to sink his hands into its guts and see for himself just what could be achieved.
Frederick sighed as he spotted the focus of Darius' attention. "I know kid," he continued a moment later, "but can you fix them?"
Snapped out of his daydream, Darius gave the man a quizzical look and said, "Yeah. I mean, sorta. I can do some basic repairs. Why?"
Frederick shrugged, a chaotic motion more resembling a bag full of broomsticks shifting than a human gesture.
"My laptop broke the other day," he said simply.
"Broke?" Darius frowned. "How?"
The older man tched loudly. "No idea," he said. "It was working fine the night before and then wouldn't turn on in the morning. I was wondering if you could give it a look."
Darius considered it.
He had the skills to give it a basic diagnosis at least. Even if he couldn't fix it, it'd give them an idea of what was wrong and that'd save time and effort getting it repaired. Then again, it'd eat into time he could be working for Bootstrpr or complying with their job-hunt requirements
"I can pay," Frederick added as he spotted the look of contemplation running across Darius' face. "Not enough to get it fixed at a store, but I can spare $50. I reckon that card's pissing you off as much as me."
At the words 'that card' Frederick all but spat. Part of a pet project by the vice president, the idea behind the card was to "reduce waste" and "improve spending habits." In reality, it was a colossal pain in the ass to work around.
For every hour he worked at a gig-job for Bootstrpr, Darius received $40 dollars in unemployment benefits; only 20% of which he could spend as he wanted. The remaining 80% was automatically loaded onto the card and could only be spent on certain items and at certain stores. Naturally, the maximum he was allowed to earn in a single week was the $400 of his unemployment payment. Between the occasional unexpected expenses of life and rent, groceries, etc, Darius, not to mention everyone else in the program, was almost always lacking cash.
"Yeah, sure," replied Darius with a sigh. "Tell me when and where and I'll be there, man."
A moment later, Darius' phone buzzed. Their break was over.
The early morning light coloured the glass windows of the boulevard a weak silver; the concourses of Washington D.C warming slowly under the glare of the sun, the high temperatures predicted for later in the day having yet to materialise. Breaking the monotonous silence with the whine of electric motors and the purr of combustion engines, a handful of cars prowled the empty city; night owls and early risers acknowledging each other with their ritual nod before passing by. Lining the streets, staring out like grinning, silent skulls, offices and boutiques stood in rows; the nanocoatings on their windows revealing dark and empty interiors waiting to be filled with light and sound.
Darius Williams felt his phone buzz harshly as he approached the site of his next job, the slim rectangle vibrating loudly against his chest as Bootstrpr decided he'd arrived. Stifling a yawn, Darius ignored the app's shrill alert and raised a hand to the others assembled outside the glass-panelled building that was today's assembly point; the word Calico written above the doorway in a lime green, san-serif font. Like a half-hearted wave, a desultory chorus of hellos rose up from the small crowd of fellow gig-workers, no amount of caffeine able to drive away the fatigue of an early morning start.
Though the usual collection of workaholics and night-shifters were busy making their way through the city, the crowd of locals and tourists wouldn't materialise for a few hours yet. Despite having been a Bootstrpr for over two months now, the sheer emptiness of the city at dawn unnerved Darius a touch, long-buried memories of the COVID lockdowns flickering through his mind as he joined the group.
"Hey man," Darius said as he spotted Frederick sipping a coffee; the fifty-five-year-old returning Darius' nod and favouring him with a thin smile.
Built thin and reedy, Frederick always gave Darius the faint impression of a scarecrow who had hopped off his stilts, and the baggy Day-Glo orange jacket they all had to wear only helped to cement the impression.
More than twice Darius's age, the man was easy enough to work alongside and he knew how to do his job quickly and efficiently. Though they weren't friends, Darius had learned pretty quickly that having someone to talk to during the legally mandated breaks could make all the difference, and their mutual appreciation of science fiction had served them well for conversation fodder. Darius had tried to talk to him about the science part of science fiction, of course, but the older man had almost zero interest in tech and had made that view abundantly clear.
"Read anything good since last time, kid?" He asked lightly..
Darius shrugged and replied. "You know, a book by some guy called Banks. Look To Windward? It was alright."
Screwing up his face, the older man leaned back as if in pain. "Lord, kid," he exclaimed, "I remember buying that when I was in college. Way to kick a man when he's down."
Laughing, his short dreadlocks bobbing as he did so, Darius shook his head and grinned in reply.
"No, but for real," he admitted, "I did. It was pretty good. Thanks for the rec."
Frederick tched.
"Told ya, kid," he replied.
Before Frederick could continue, Darius' phone suddenly buzzed and a dozen others soon joined suite. Rolling his eyes at the interruption, Darius turned back towards the street just in time to see a van slide into place in front of him; the Day-Glo orange B logo of the job-provider the only colour on the car's otherwise featureless white body. Almost before it had come to a halt, a man Darius' age hopped out of the cab and stifled a yawn of his own; his pale skin seeming grey in the weak light of the morning sun.
"Alright, gather round everyone!" The man boomed a moment later, his voice echoing down the all-but deserted boulevard. Obediently, the group shuffled closer; the press of bodies bringing Darius face-to-face with their organizer for the day.
"The job today is trash collection," he continued once everyone had arrived; the words eliciting a chorus of groans.
Raising his hands, the man gave them an impotent look. "I know, I know," he assured them, "it's no one's favourite, but it's gotta be done."
"For free," someone muttered under their breath.
"Trash pickers and garbage bags are in the van," the man continued. "Grab yours and get into pairs. The app will tell you where your work area is and tell you when you're done for the day."
With the boilerplate stated, the man opened the door to the van's interior and stood aside. Ahead of the pack by dint of luck, Darius scored a bag and trash picker for himself in record time before wordlessly moving to stand in front of the man. With a plastic smile, the man, Mark, according to the nametag over his heart, brought his phone to Darius' face and held it steady. On the third attempt, Bootstrpr registered Darius' existence with a cheery ding and he was gently moved aside to let the next worker through.
The first time he had done a gig for Bootstrpr, Darius had been more than a little leery of the facial recognition tech they used to keep track of their contractors. Over time, he'd learned to accept the constant scans with, if not good grace, at least tired resignation, but their constant presence always needled away at him.
"Kid, can you believe this?" Asked Frederick hotly a few minutes into their route. "I was a copywriter and they have me picking up trash. Again."
"Really?" Replied Darius, his interest piqued, as he speared an errant receipt from the gutter. Never once had Frederick been anything but laid-back in their conversations, nor had he offered anything about his past. "You registered patents and shit?"
Frederick snorted derisively before gingerly using his trash picker to lift a wad of something off the cracked concrete sidewalk. The Women's March had come down this boulevard the day before and, as with all masses of people, had left signs of its presence everywhere. Most of the detritus had been cleaned up overnight by Washington's sanitation workers, but there were inevitable oversights.
"No kid," he answered a moment later, the mess safely stored in his thick black garbage bag. "I said Copywriter. I did writing for advertisements, product copy, things like that."
A discarded sock (a hole the size of Darius' thumb in its heel).
"Uh-huh," Darius replied absently as they continued down the street, the grey pavement slowly warming as the sun continued its climb into the sky. Like a bee trapped in a box, Darius' phone suddenly buzzed. He was moving too slowly.
A Big Mac (the top half).
"I did it for twenty-five years," Frederick continued, hurrying after Darius as he increased his pace. "Mostly for other people, but I eventually started my own business. Even won a few awards, too."
Two band-aids (bloody).
The conversation died momentarily as they both grimaced. As carefully as he could, Darius lifted them with his trash picker and deposited them in his bag.
"What happened?" Darius idly asked a moment later.
Face mask (torn).
Frederick stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Taken by surprise, Darius managed two steps before noticing that his partner was no longer beside him and turned to find the man staring into the distance.
"I got sick a few years back," the man said, his voice low. "Real sick. Cancer."
"Jesus," Darius cursed.
Frederick nodded in agreement. "Lymphoma," he continued a moment later, "serious shit".
"I'm fine now," he added hastily, the man giving an amused huff as he spotted Darius' expression, "but I had to sell everything to afford the treatment, and I do mean everything."
"The wife and I sold the house and moved into an apartment near the hospital. We sold the shares we had, my car, hell, even my watch. After a few weeks of chemo, I was too exhausted to work, so I shuttered the business and we became a single-income household."
Their phones buzzed a warning and both ignored it.
Darius grimaced. "That must have been expensive," he said.
"Not as bad as when I was your age," Frederick replied with a shrug, "but it still wiped us out. By the time I'd recovered, the economy was back in the shitter and no one wanted to hire an old guy who'd been out of the industry for over a year. I managed to get a couple odd jobs here and there, but I'd always get laid off sooner or later. It's why I'm here. "
"Jesus," Darius repeated.
Frederick nodded in agreement.
"What about you, kid? Why are you picking up trash?"
Their phones buzzed again. Louder, more insistent. Again they ignored the warning.
Darius shrugged. "Got the Rona," he said breezily. "Mutant strain, not the kind the vaccine works against."
It was Frederick's turn to curse. "Hell, kid, how bad?"
"Pretty bad," Darius replied. "All my friends got it and didn't have anything more than a few sneezes and headaches. Meanwhile, I had the worst flu of my life. I'd walk to the fridge and be out of breath. I'd take a break halfway up a stairway 'cause I couldn't climb it in one go. I had to go to the hospital once and a doctor six times," he added, his expression screwed up in remembrance.
Giving him a sympathetic look, Frederick pat his shoulder. "Expensive?" He asked a moment later.
"Wiped out my savings," Darius scoffed. "Fuck, man, I lost my job 'cause of all the time I had to take off, and my boss blacklisted me for it. Can't find programming work anywhere in this city."
Before Frederick could reply, their phones buzzed once again, the loudest warning so far, and a prerecorded message played out in eerie synchronicity.
"Please return to your assigned task," said their phones, the voice soft and female and its words deafeningly loud in the relative quiet of the boulevard. "Failure to return to your task will result in demerit points being added to your account. For more on demerit points and Bootsrpr's mutual obligations, please visit the help section of the Bootstrpr app."
Almost indistinguishable from that of a person's, the only hint of the voice's artificial origin was the ever so slightly wrong cadence of its reading. An unthinking machine, the Bootstrpr app read-aloud the warning text that had been written into it some unknown time ago; the bad grammar and punctuation of an unknown typist preserved within its bytes forever --or, at least, until the next update. Jolted out of their respective reveries, the two men took up their all-but-forgotten tools and quickly resumed their patrol down the empty road; the app's bite all the encouragement they needed.
For the next few hours, Darius and Frederick collected the discarded detritus of humanity in silence; the city slowly coming to life around them like a sprouting acorn as both tourists and workers began to trickle in. Despite himself, Darius couldn't help but feel grateful that the app at least warned them before deducting demerit points. When he'd first heard about it, it'd seemed an interesting application of Natural Language Processing. The first time it had been used to warn him, it'd been a shock. Now it was just an irritation.
"You know computers, right?" Frederick asked later in the day as the pair sat under the awnings of a shuttered storefront; their phones silently counting down the seconds left on their break.
"I'm a programmer, yeah," Darius replied, only half-listening.
Moving across the road in front of them, gliding silently on four wheels as it made its way towards the city centre, a silver Toyota Tacet had seized Darius' attention in full. A luxury model, the Tacet was a fully electric vehicle capable of 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds and 500 miles in a single charge. More interesting to Darius than the car's performance, however, was the world-class computer system which controlled every aspect of it. He'd seen snippets of the car's proprietary code on certain out-of-the-way forums, but he'd never had the chance to sink his hands into its guts and see for himself just what could be achieved.
Frederick sighed as he spotted the focus of Darius' attention. "I know kid," he continued a moment later, "but can you fix them?"
Snapped out of his daydream, Darius gave the man a quizzical look and said, "Yeah. I mean, sorta. I can do some basic repairs. Why?"
Frederick shrugged, a chaotic motion more resembling a bag full of broomsticks shifting than a human gesture.
"My laptop broke the other day," he said simply.
"Broke?" Darius frowned. "How?"
The older man tched loudly. "No idea," he said. "It was working fine the night before and then wouldn't turn on in the morning. I was wondering if you could give it a look."
Darius considered it.
He had the skills to give it a basic diagnosis at least. Even if he couldn't fix it, it'd give them an idea of what was wrong and that'd save time and effort getting it repaired. Then again, it'd eat into time he could be working for Bootstrpr or complying with their job-hunt requirements
"I can pay," Frederick added as he spotted the look of contemplation running across Darius' face. "Not enough to get it fixed at a store, but I can spare $50. I reckon that card's pissing you off as much as me."
At the words 'that card' Frederick all but spat. Part of a pet project by the vice president, the idea behind the card was to "reduce waste" and "improve spending habits." In reality, it was a colossal pain in the ass to work around.
For every hour he worked at a gig-job for Bootstrpr, Darius received $40 dollars in unemployment benefits; only 20% of which he could spend as he wanted. The remaining 80% was automatically loaded onto the card and could only be spent on certain items and at certain stores. Naturally, the maximum he was allowed to earn in a single week was the $400 of his unemployment payment. Between the occasional unexpected expenses of life and rent, groceries, etc, Darius, not to mention everyone else in the program, was almost always lacking cash.
"Yeah, sure," replied Darius with a sigh. "Tell me when and where and I'll be there, man."
A moment later, Darius' phone buzzed. Their break was over.
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wow. So the US capitalist techbros implemented an American version of the Chinese credit score system!?
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, no, it's far dumber than that.
This is the Australian welfare system powered by Google and Serco.
Edit:
The worst part is I'm not kidding, nor have I gone into any real detail regarding the absolute horrorshow that is western welfare systems.
Back when I was unemployed, I had to report to a job-provider once a month and had to supply a list of 20 job-contacts I made that month. Failure to do either would result in the for-profit company suspending my welfare payments and they could only be reinstated by having a reengagement meeting with the job-provider (the government welfare office literally has no power to re-enable payments). Furthermore, job-providers will wait until after-hours to message you to tell you fucked something up and that your payments have been suspended. Any sort of irritation towards the staff would be met with dermerit points even if said irritation is becuase you were told you could travel interstate to visit family over Christmas and then were called the day after arriving and told that that was wrong, you had missed your appointment, and so would have your payments suspended. After too many demerit points, recipients will be automatically ejected from the system for ~6-months, IIRC.
Again, the government welfare office has no power to reverse these decisions.
After being on this scheme for several months, I was moved onto a work-for-the-dole scheme which is identical in every respect except now I had to do job training at a business. In this program, the government pays another company to take on welfare recipients to work whatever job they need done with the understanding that the job-seeker is developing valuable skills. These job-seekers earn a few hundred extra per month in welfare, but that still puts them far below minimum wage and the companies aren't required to hire anyone at the end of the training period. Meanwhile, every time you speak to a job-provider they bang on and on about mutual obligations but the obligations are pretty much entirely one-way since you are expected to do all the work.
Oh, and if you get a job thanks to the job-provider (which, if you have any sort of specialized skill is impossible), they get a monetary bonus. They try very hard to say they got you a job, too.
That was the situation two years ago. These days, the federal government is introducing cashless welfare cards into the mix which have zero evidence supporting their use. When you're on this card, and you don't have a choice about it, 80% of your fortnightly welfare payments are loaded onto it and can only be spent on approved items at approved locations. Literally all I did here was change the work-for-the-dole scheme into an app.
Edit 2:
It could be worse, I suppose. I've not heard of many people starving to death like the brits have.
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In The Ruins Of Their Cities Cover
prometheus110
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- Location
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Article: In the Ruins of Their Cities
Anett Mandel
Published by the Haartz-Wolfram Authors Collective
Ikaluktutiak Co-operative, 31 Washington Street,
Naujaat, Nunavut NU X0C 0H0, A.F.
First printing: 2284.
This book is printed on algae paper using biodegradable inks
and will be recycled in reforestation efforts.
Use the following QR code to view a breakdown of how the
money from your purchase is distributed,
and access qualia from the author!
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
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So these things are like Psionic-Emotional-Individual Subjective Viewpoint-Empathy packets that one can access from Psionic Internet to not just understand a book/novel/computer game/art piece but also gain the understanding the author of such had in the moment of said objects creation?
prometheus110
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Pretty much.
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter Five -- Part Two
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
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Agent Blake's silver Tacet cruised down the near-deserted avenues of Washington DC like a ghost, the quiet hum of its electric motors all but inaudible over the sound of passing vehicles and chirping birds. Outside her window, sliding past in a seemingly endless parade, empty storefronts, gig-workers, and unobtrusive cameras rolled by; each one an integral part of D.C's ecosystem since long before she'd arrived. Ignoring the scene, something she could only do thanks to her car's Autodrive feature, Agent Blake flipped the page on the file she was holding and let out an annoyed grunt.
No priors. She read. No known associates, no ties to criminal or terrorist organizations. A preliminary review of his social media accounts revealed a pattern of memes, videos, and comments that Blake had long since grown inured to during her own web-travels, and his taste in websites was about what she expected.
It was thin, they'd only been investigating him for less than a day, after all, but it already told her how the story would play out.
Investigation, trial, and sentencing all wound up inside a year. There was no criminal gang to infiltrate, no terror cell to wrap up, and no way to stop the next one.
Every year there seemed to be more like him, young, male, and angry, and every year they caused another tragedy. Like militant Islamists, men like Smith were radicalised by online content; an endless barrage of bile aimed at convincing them that they needed to take action into their own hands. That they would punish The Other.
Few, however, possessed the skills that Smith did.
Tossing the file onto the seat beside her, Catarina returned her attention to the road just as her destination came into view.
Gray and black, the John P. O'Neill building rose high into the sky like an upended knife; its smattering of heavily tinted windows looking out over slowly filling streets. A sharp-edged mass of concrete and steel that menaced its commercial neighbours, the O'Neill building had served as the headquarters of the FBI for a little more than a year now, and the wear and tear of years had yet to make their mark.
Without warning, a swift tapping rang out and with a start, Blake turned to find a black-clad guard standing outside her window, an unamused expression plastered across his face and an M4 carbine held loosely in his hands. Smiling up at him apologetically, Blake slowly pulled her identification from her sun visor and lowered the window.
"Sorry," she said as she gave him the thin document, the chipper note she injected into her voice doing nothing to change the bearlike man's expression.
Looking away from the thickset man's light-skinned and stony face, Catarina let her eyes wander.
Outside her window, past the man scouring her ID, the squat shape of a pillbox lay embedded in the O'Neill building's wall while in front of her, the thick steel gate of the headquarters blocked her way. Lying before the gate like a row of soldiers at attention, a row of equally thick bollards stood at the ready while through the armoured glass of the pillbox, visible only as a shadow, the ghostly outline of another guard stirred into life.
Looking back up at the man, Blake quirked her lips into a smile. "They're really amping up security, huh?" she asked, the words eliciting nothing but a scowl.
Ass, she thought as she tried not to roll her eyes.
Wordlessly, the man glanced at her ID before staring long and hard at Catarina; his eyes boring into her head like lasers.
"Alright," he said after what felt like an eternity, "you're clear to go in."
"Thank you!" She told him, her voice saccharine sweet as she took her papers back.
"Just have your documents ready to go next time, agent," he replied gruffly as he pulled away.
Asshole, Catarina amended.
Switching her car to manual drive as the way opened before her, Blake sighed to herself. It was going to be a long day.
The door to Supervisory Special Agent Joe Carlson's office swung closed behind Catarina with a loud thunk, the wind of its passage sending the papers on his desk rustling. Seated behind a desk of solid teak, the heavyset man looked up with a resigned sigh as he caught sight of her, his leathery face curling into a slight frown.
"Hell, Blake," the man from Georgia said as she stopped in front of his desk, "shouldn't you still be on leave?"
"I'm fine, sir," she replied with a shrug; the motion sending a twinge of pain running up her flank that she fought to keep from her face.
Leaning back in his chair, the ancient wood and leather seat creaking alarmingly as he did, Carlson gave her a level look. "Blake," he drawled slowly.
She stared back and lightly said, "I am."
A former linebacker in college, Carlson was slowly losing the stocky body that had seen him through countless football games; his muscles steadily wasting away and a distinct paunch forming across his belly. As incongruous behind his desk as a water buffalo would be, Carlson looked more like a high school gym teacher than the leader of a counter-terrorism team, and he made no secret of his retirement plans. The man loved his fishing.
"Besides," she continued a moment later, "the ADD wants me to give a report later today. I just wanted to get in early so I could review what we've found on yesterday's attack."
"Yes, I heard about that," Carlson replied as he rose up from his chair and joined Blake at the front of his desk. A good foot shorter than the man, Catarina had to crane her neck up just to maintain eye contact.
"Now I'll be level with you, Blake." He said as he perched himself on the edge of his desk; the Drinking Bird on the opposite corner shaking wildly as he did so. "You've done a hell of a job since joining my team. Hell of a job. Frankly, I wish some of my guys had half your energy."
Cocking her head to the side, Catarina fought to keep her feelings from her face. "But, sir?" She asked instead.
"But next time, remember that we're a team," he continued, "call it in, get backup."
Raising his hands in a gesture of peace, the older agent forestalled the reply sitting heavily on the tip of Agent Blake's tongue.
"I don't think you made a mistake," he said peaceably. "Not really. Just… remember to call in next time something like this happens. Hell, order civvies to alert the MPD if you have to. They'll call us.
The Bureau's at its best when we're all marching in step and that goes double for CT."
"Sorry, sir. You're right, sir."
"Course I am, I'm old," he replied with a hearty chuckle. "And stop calling me sir, Blake, Joe's fine. I don't know how it worked in Organized Crime, but I figure anyone who stops an attack like that gets to skip the probationary period."
Despite her best efforts at schooling her expression, Catarina could feel the beginning of a smile start to tug at the corners of her mouth; the man sitting opposite responding in kind.
"It wasn't just me, si- Joe," she said a moment later, "Agent Harris was the one who got the collar."
"True," he admitted amiably, "but he praised you something fierce."
"He did?" she replied as confusion exploded across her features without resistance. "He... doesn't seem the type."
"You've gotta read between the lines," admitted Carlson with a sheepish nod, "but I'd say you impressed him."
"All I did was find Smith and keep him talking. Harris did everything else."
"Sometimes that's all you have to do," he replied lightly before lifting his gaze from Catarina's face and glancing at a point somewhere behind her. "Speak of the devil..."
Twisting, Catarina caught sight of the stern figure of Senior Special Agent James Harris silhouetted in the doorway; the man's gaze focussed on the manilla folder clutched in his hand.
"I have those transcripts you wanted, Joe," the senior agent said idly before looking up and blinking in surprise as he caught sight of Catarina.
"Agent Blake," he said nonplussed, "shouldn't you still be on leave?"
"Don't you start," Carlson replied. "I just got through that song and dance with her. She's fine."
"Agent Harris," Catarina said pleasantly.
"Agent Blake," Harris repeated, an awkward silence falling over them.
Letting off an amused huff, Blake's boss rose from his desk and took the file out of Harris's hands. "Thank you, James," he said deadpan.
"You know what," he added abruptly, "Now you're here, why don't you take Agent Blake to the pen? See what she thinks about the Smith collar." Turning back to Catarina, Carlson nodded. "I can't put you on the case, not yet, but it'd still be good to get your thoughts."
"I think that'd be a great idea," she replied before Harris could say anything. "Nowak
gave me some of the preliminary notes already. It'd be useful to see what he's like now."
"It's settled then," Carlson said brightly, the man gently gesturing the two of them out of his office. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with the boys and girls upstairs."
Before either Blake or Harris could say anything, the pair suddenly found themselves outside Carlson's office; his heavy door closing shut behind them with a resounding clunk. Gesturing for Catarina to follow him, Harris made for the department's bullpen; the tall man's long strides forcing her to hurry after him.
"I didn't know you were coming in today," he said as they emerged into the open area at the heart of counter-terrorism (domestic), a dozen desks manned by an equal number of agents scattered across the neutral grey carpet floor and a handful of empty ones dotted here and there. "I haven't organized a desk for you yet, but we'll get you set up near Nowak for now. You said you knew him?"
"Yeah," she replied, "we worked Organized Crime for two years and got to know each other pretty well. Bright guy."
"Alright, that makes it easier," Harris replied as they stepped into the bullpen-proper, the two agents navigating the maze of desks until they arrived at a pair wedged in the far corner of the room.
Seated at one of the desks, a cheap wood and plastic thing covered in crumpled yellow notepaper, a curly-haired man typed away at a computer almost as old as he was; the pale glow of its chunky LCD screen giving his intent face a sallow cast.
Nodding towards the young Agent as he typed away, Harris half turned to Blake and said, "this is you."
"Yo, Nowak," he barked a moment later.
At the sudden noise, Agent Sonnie Nowak jerked away from his screen with a start and glanced toward the man; his angular face breaking out into a smile as he caught sight of Catarina.
"Cat!" Said Nowak, the reedy man smoothing his midnight-blue tie as he rose to shake her hand.
"God," he continued with an awkward laugh, "they told me you were joining the team but I couldn't believe it. I thought you'd be in Organized Crime for life."
"Ehh," she replied with a shrug, "with you here, I figured they needed all the help they could get."
"Har har," Sonnie drawled lightly. "Now I remember why I didn't sign your get well card."
Turning towards Catarina, Harris raised a hand and interjected smoothly. "I'll get you copies of the Smith interview transcripts now. Once you've read them, let me know what you think about our suspect."
"So, how the hell have you been?" Nowak asked her as Harris departed. "How's your wound?"
Blake shrugged once more. "I'm a little tired of my mother worrying over it, but otherwise it's healing fine. The doctors wouldn't let me out of their sight for a few weeks after it happened, so it's all been uphill since I got out of there."
"Jeeze, how'd that even happen, anyway?"
"My last bust," she explained. Seeing his expression, she continued. "We went in hard against the Morello's when one of their bookies was moving cash. A hired gun tried something stupid and the ricochet got under my vest; dumb bastard."
"The black eye's the same too, huh?" Sonnie asked with an off-kilter grin.
Absently, Blake brought a hand up to the side of her face; a dull ache spreading from where her fingers brushed against the bruised skin. She'd used a concealer to mask the injury, but, she thought wryly, FBI agents were obviously a little more perceptive than the guards outside.
"Pretty much," she admitted. "Never a dull day at Organized Crime."
He snorted and gave her a dry look. "Please."
Before Blake could reply, a familiar string of tinny music suddenly started up from behind her; a cacophony of trumpets blaring. Turning, she caught sight of a tv recessed into the bullpen's wall, its screen showing the red, white, and blue riot of colour that was the One Nation Network.
"Ahh, here we go," said Sonnie as the screen dissolved to reveal an empty podium standing alone on a well lit, circular stage; red, white and blue bunting swaddling its front and a row of American flags arranged proudly behind it.
In the corner of her vision, Blake noticed other agents pause their work to turn and face the television.
Like in a magic show, the spotlights ringing the stage were dancing and wheeling all over the place, the harsh white lights poking into the surrounding pool of darkness to reveal an impatient crowd. Here and there a few signs were waved, their text illegible, while elsewhere cameras and cellphones flashed. From this angle, Blake could clearly see the bible sitting on the podium; the matte black of its leather cover broken only by an embossed gold cross.
"Christ, you watch these things?" Asked Blake as the twanging of an acoustic guitar began to play, the soft country melody all but drowned out by the murmur of an unseen crowd. At the bottom of the screen, a blue and white chyron ticked by uninterrupted, the stark white letters spelling out the day's latest events: another tremor in Iran, an approaching migrant caravan, a spike in unemployment.
Sonnie shrugged. "The guys we watch do," he replied, "the stuff that gets said here ends up on their networks in five seconds flat. Besides, at least Fairchild can string together a sentence."
"Thank God for small mercies," muttered Catarina, half-distracted, as the cavorting lights suddenly fled from the stage, the circular platform falling into primordial darkness as the crowd was illuminated.
Despite her best efforts, she'd seen enough of Governor Fairchild's speeches on Twitter to know what to expect and judging by the way the crowd reacted, they did too. With commendable speed the crowd fell silent, the murmur and buzz of conversation falling away in an instant. On cue, the music fell away and the stage lights rushed in towards the circular platform, a trio of people flickering into existence in front of the podium a moment later.
The smile was shared between father and son, the same warm expression on both their faces as they stared into the camera. Both men shared the same hair colour, a deep and youthful black, and their faces were so close they could almost be brothers. Opposite the younger man and standing vigil with one hand placed gently on his shoulder was his mother, her red hair shining in the light and offsetting her dark green eyes. Taller than his father but sharing the same broad shoulders, the younger man was the very image of a marine; the insignia of a Sergeant clearly visible on his shoulder as he stood at attention.
Without warning the hologram suddenly disappeared and the straight-backed figure of Governor John Fairchild stepped into view, the crowd utterly silent despite his appearance. In the six years since the photo was taken, he had changed significantly, the formerly youthful Governor's skin now creased and lined and his once black hair generously sprinkled with snowy patches. Clutched in his hands, held up in clear view, was a slim brown medallion box; the five-pointed figure of a Medal of Honour lying on a bed of white silk.
Beside her, Nowak hmmed. "Who do you think he'll pick for his VP?"
Jarred out of her reverie, Blake shot a glance at her compatriot and shook her head as if to clear it.
"Mary, I don't know." she sighed. "Half of them look like clones."
Pausing, Catarina thought for a moment. "Redfield?" She suggested, "she seemed popular last month."
Nowak shook his head equivocally. "She's been wishy-washy when it comes to attacking the Dems, same with Cortez. The base hates that."
"And the name," Catarina added.
"That too," agreed the curly-haired man with a curt nod, his eyes never leaving the screen as Fairchild took his place behind the podium. "My money's on Buckley. He's younger than the Governor, but not so much that the base feels threatened. Plus he's a pretty good attack dog and he has military experience."
"Who doesn't?" she asked, receiving a snort in reply.
Before they could continue, Fairchild's gravelly voice rang out and Blake's attention snapped back to the TV. Standing behind the podium, the Governor struck a lonely figure; the case containing the Medal of Honour placed on top of the podium's lip like an idol.
"Five years ago," the Governor began, "my son Jacob and his squad were riding in a Stryker armoured personnel carrier on their way back to base after a day spent patrolling the surrounding area. These men were hot, they were exhausted, and they were looking forward to a night of relaxation before heading out to patrol again. Due to an earlier breakdown, they'd been separated from the rest of their patrol and so were isolated from their comrades in arms.
Like many of those in his squad, Jacob had signed up to serve his country, to protect the community that had raised him, and to carry on a tradition of military service stretching back generations."
Fairchild paused and looked out over the crowd, his gaze sweeping over the deathly silent mass before rising to meet the camera and through it, Blake herself.
"Well shit," Nowak whispered enigmatically. "I think he's going to do it."
Before Catarina could ask what he meant, the Governor continued.
"When we spoke, he would always tell me not to worry about him, to serve the people of Texas as best I could, and," Fairchild paused and let out a soft chuckle, "to send him some of his mother's peanut brittle."
Fairchild smiled softly as those he was addressing chuckled good-naturedly, the ripple of noise pouring through the TV like waves even as his eyes darkened with emotion.
"Jacob entered Iraq knowing the risks," he continued. "The same as every other man in his squad, the same as every man in that country. What my son didn't know, what he couldn't have known, is that as his Stryker was out on patrol, the route back home was busy being mined with an IED."
Laying one hand gently on the leather-covered bible, the man took a breath.
"As is written in John 15:13, Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. The last time we spoke, just days before he was killed, my Jacob told me that every man in his squad would lay down their lives to protect their fellows and that he would do the same for them.
At approximately 9:17 am Mountain Time, the APC my son was travelling with was hit and flipped by an IED made from, among other things, one of the President's," he all but spat the term, "Hellfire missiles."
"According to the survivors, Jacob was one of the first to recover from the blast and proceeded to drag an unconscious Private James Lacey from the now-burning vehicle. Assessing the situation from outside the APC and seeing that only a handful of his squad had managed to exit it themselves, my Jacob made a decision that would forever alter the course of our lives. He went back in.
Three times he rushed into that fire-filled wreck and three times he dragged someone to the safety of a nearby embankment; the danger to his men of an ammunition cookoff no doubt at the forefront of his mind. However, shortly after dragging the third man, Private First class Rodrigo Abad, to safety, insurgents hiding in a nearby house opened fire on his unit."
Fairchild paused once more, the emotions written across his face clear for all to see, and in the corners of his eyes, tears began to well up. Utterly unlike his earlier rallies, there was only a deafening silence from those in the room, a quiet that swallowed sound like a black hole swallows light.
"My Jacob could have stayed behind the embankment and returned fire along with the rest of his squad. He knew reinforcements were on their way, that they would arrive in a matter of minutes to provide support. He knew no one, anywhere, could have faulted him if he made that decision.
Nevertheless, my son also knew that there were still two people missing from his unit, two people still trapped. And so he ran across fifteen meters of empty ground, under intense fire, into a vehicle on the verge of exploding. Inside, he found Corporal William Johanson pinned in place by a jammed seatbelt and Private First Class Natalie Winters who had been knocked unconscious by the blast. He freed Corporal Johanson from the wreck and ordered him to leave while he stayed behind to try and get Ms Winters out of there."
Fairchild let out a sigh, long and low, and blinked away the gathering tears.
"My son isn't here today," he continued after a lengthy pause. "Despite his best efforts, my son could not get himself and Private Winters out of the Stryker before its ammunition detonated. However, because of his sacrifice, because of his loyalty, his honour, and his sense of duty, seven other men are. Throughout my speeches, I have made it clear that I am running for the Republican nomination in his image, that I have been inspired by his example.
Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, to everyone here and to everyone watching at home, I would like to announce that my running mate for the Presidency is Governor Willian Johanson; the man my son gave his life to save and the man who passed on his final words."
As the words left his mouth, the stage lights suddenly blazed like miniature suns and the handsome figure of William Johanson strode into view from somewhere off-camera. Wearing a solemn expression on his face, Johanson stopped a good two meters from the presidential hopeful and struck a picture-perfect salute; a deafening roar of approval rising from the newly-revealed crowd as they were caught in the ecstasy of the moment.
"Well," said Agent Sonnie Nowak brightly as the TV cutaway in a riot of red, white, and blue and the audio vanished, "I guess I lost my bet. Johanson'll be veep."
No priors. She read. No known associates, no ties to criminal or terrorist organizations. A preliminary review of his social media accounts revealed a pattern of memes, videos, and comments that Blake had long since grown inured to during her own web-travels, and his taste in websites was about what she expected.
It was thin, they'd only been investigating him for less than a day, after all, but it already told her how the story would play out.
Investigation, trial, and sentencing all wound up inside a year. There was no criminal gang to infiltrate, no terror cell to wrap up, and no way to stop the next one.
Every year there seemed to be more like him, young, male, and angry, and every year they caused another tragedy. Like militant Islamists, men like Smith were radicalised by online content; an endless barrage of bile aimed at convincing them that they needed to take action into their own hands. That they would punish The Other.
Few, however, possessed the skills that Smith did.
Tossing the file onto the seat beside her, Catarina returned her attention to the road just as her destination came into view.
Gray and black, the John P. O'Neill building rose high into the sky like an upended knife; its smattering of heavily tinted windows looking out over slowly filling streets. A sharp-edged mass of concrete and steel that menaced its commercial neighbours, the O'Neill building had served as the headquarters of the FBI for a little more than a year now, and the wear and tear of years had yet to make their mark.
Without warning, a swift tapping rang out and with a start, Blake turned to find a black-clad guard standing outside her window, an unamused expression plastered across his face and an M4 carbine held loosely in his hands. Smiling up at him apologetically, Blake slowly pulled her identification from her sun visor and lowered the window.
"Sorry," she said as she gave him the thin document, the chipper note she injected into her voice doing nothing to change the bearlike man's expression.
Looking away from the thickset man's light-skinned and stony face, Catarina let her eyes wander.
Outside her window, past the man scouring her ID, the squat shape of a pillbox lay embedded in the O'Neill building's wall while in front of her, the thick steel gate of the headquarters blocked her way. Lying before the gate like a row of soldiers at attention, a row of equally thick bollards stood at the ready while through the armoured glass of the pillbox, visible only as a shadow, the ghostly outline of another guard stirred into life.
Looking back up at the man, Blake quirked her lips into a smile. "They're really amping up security, huh?" she asked, the words eliciting nothing but a scowl.
Ass, she thought as she tried not to roll her eyes.
Wordlessly, the man glanced at her ID before staring long and hard at Catarina; his eyes boring into her head like lasers.
"Alright," he said after what felt like an eternity, "you're clear to go in."
"Thank you!" She told him, her voice saccharine sweet as she took her papers back.
"Just have your documents ready to go next time, agent," he replied gruffly as he pulled away.
Asshole, Catarina amended.
Switching her car to manual drive as the way opened before her, Blake sighed to herself. It was going to be a long day.
==================
The door to Supervisory Special Agent Joe Carlson's office swung closed behind Catarina with a loud thunk, the wind of its passage sending the papers on his desk rustling. Seated behind a desk of solid teak, the heavyset man looked up with a resigned sigh as he caught sight of her, his leathery face curling into a slight frown.
"Hell, Blake," the man from Georgia said as she stopped in front of his desk, "shouldn't you still be on leave?"
"I'm fine, sir," she replied with a shrug; the motion sending a twinge of pain running up her flank that she fought to keep from her face.
Leaning back in his chair, the ancient wood and leather seat creaking alarmingly as he did, Carlson gave her a level look. "Blake," he drawled slowly.
She stared back and lightly said, "I am."
A former linebacker in college, Carlson was slowly losing the stocky body that had seen him through countless football games; his muscles steadily wasting away and a distinct paunch forming across his belly. As incongruous behind his desk as a water buffalo would be, Carlson looked more like a high school gym teacher than the leader of a counter-terrorism team, and he made no secret of his retirement plans. The man loved his fishing.
"Besides," she continued a moment later, "the ADD wants me to give a report later today. I just wanted to get in early so I could review what we've found on yesterday's attack."
"Yes, I heard about that," Carlson replied as he rose up from his chair and joined Blake at the front of his desk. A good foot shorter than the man, Catarina had to crane her neck up just to maintain eye contact.
"Now I'll be level with you, Blake." He said as he perched himself on the edge of his desk; the Drinking Bird on the opposite corner shaking wildly as he did so. "You've done a hell of a job since joining my team. Hell of a job. Frankly, I wish some of my guys had half your energy."
Cocking her head to the side, Catarina fought to keep her feelings from her face. "But, sir?" She asked instead.
"But next time, remember that we're a team," he continued, "call it in, get backup."
Raising his hands in a gesture of peace, the older agent forestalled the reply sitting heavily on the tip of Agent Blake's tongue.
"I don't think you made a mistake," he said peaceably. "Not really. Just… remember to call in next time something like this happens. Hell, order civvies to alert the MPD if you have to. They'll call us.
The Bureau's at its best when we're all marching in step and that goes double for CT."
"Sorry, sir. You're right, sir."
"Course I am, I'm old," he replied with a hearty chuckle. "And stop calling me sir, Blake, Joe's fine. I don't know how it worked in Organized Crime, but I figure anyone who stops an attack like that gets to skip the probationary period."
Despite her best efforts at schooling her expression, Catarina could feel the beginning of a smile start to tug at the corners of her mouth; the man sitting opposite responding in kind.
"It wasn't just me, si- Joe," she said a moment later, "Agent Harris was the one who got the collar."
"True," he admitted amiably, "but he praised you something fierce."
"He did?" she replied as confusion exploded across her features without resistance. "He... doesn't seem the type."
"You've gotta read between the lines," admitted Carlson with a sheepish nod, "but I'd say you impressed him."
"All I did was find Smith and keep him talking. Harris did everything else."
"Sometimes that's all you have to do," he replied lightly before lifting his gaze from Catarina's face and glancing at a point somewhere behind her. "Speak of the devil..."
Twisting, Catarina caught sight of the stern figure of Senior Special Agent James Harris silhouetted in the doorway; the man's gaze focussed on the manilla folder clutched in his hand.
"I have those transcripts you wanted, Joe," the senior agent said idly before looking up and blinking in surprise as he caught sight of Catarina.
"Agent Blake," he said nonplussed, "shouldn't you still be on leave?"
"Don't you start," Carlson replied. "I just got through that song and dance with her. She's fine."
"Agent Harris," Catarina said pleasantly.
"Agent Blake," Harris repeated, an awkward silence falling over them.
Letting off an amused huff, Blake's boss rose from his desk and took the file out of Harris's hands. "Thank you, James," he said deadpan.
"You know what," he added abruptly, "Now you're here, why don't you take Agent Blake to the pen? See what she thinks about the Smith collar." Turning back to Catarina, Carlson nodded. "I can't put you on the case, not yet, but it'd still be good to get your thoughts."
"I think that'd be a great idea," she replied before Harris could say anything. "Nowak
gave me some of the preliminary notes already. It'd be useful to see what he's like now."
"It's settled then," Carlson said brightly, the man gently gesturing the two of them out of his office. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with the boys and girls upstairs."
Before either Blake or Harris could say anything, the pair suddenly found themselves outside Carlson's office; his heavy door closing shut behind them with a resounding clunk. Gesturing for Catarina to follow him, Harris made for the department's bullpen; the tall man's long strides forcing her to hurry after him.
"I didn't know you were coming in today," he said as they emerged into the open area at the heart of counter-terrorism (domestic), a dozen desks manned by an equal number of agents scattered across the neutral grey carpet floor and a handful of empty ones dotted here and there. "I haven't organized a desk for you yet, but we'll get you set up near Nowak for now. You said you knew him?"
"Yeah," she replied, "we worked Organized Crime for two years and got to know each other pretty well. Bright guy."
"Alright, that makes it easier," Harris replied as they stepped into the bullpen-proper, the two agents navigating the maze of desks until they arrived at a pair wedged in the far corner of the room.
Seated at one of the desks, a cheap wood and plastic thing covered in crumpled yellow notepaper, a curly-haired man typed away at a computer almost as old as he was; the pale glow of its chunky LCD screen giving his intent face a sallow cast.
Nodding towards the young Agent as he typed away, Harris half turned to Blake and said, "this is you."
"Yo, Nowak," he barked a moment later.
At the sudden noise, Agent Sonnie Nowak jerked away from his screen with a start and glanced toward the man; his angular face breaking out into a smile as he caught sight of Catarina.
"Cat!" Said Nowak, the reedy man smoothing his midnight-blue tie as he rose to shake her hand.
"God," he continued with an awkward laugh, "they told me you were joining the team but I couldn't believe it. I thought you'd be in Organized Crime for life."
"Ehh," she replied with a shrug, "with you here, I figured they needed all the help they could get."
"Har har," Sonnie drawled lightly. "Now I remember why I didn't sign your get well card."
Turning towards Catarina, Harris raised a hand and interjected smoothly. "I'll get you copies of the Smith interview transcripts now. Once you've read them, let me know what you think about our suspect."
"So, how the hell have you been?" Nowak asked her as Harris departed. "How's your wound?"
Blake shrugged once more. "I'm a little tired of my mother worrying over it, but otherwise it's healing fine. The doctors wouldn't let me out of their sight for a few weeks after it happened, so it's all been uphill since I got out of there."
"Jeeze, how'd that even happen, anyway?"
"My last bust," she explained. Seeing his expression, she continued. "We went in hard against the Morello's when one of their bookies was moving cash. A hired gun tried something stupid and the ricochet got under my vest; dumb bastard."
"The black eye's the same too, huh?" Sonnie asked with an off-kilter grin.
Absently, Blake brought a hand up to the side of her face; a dull ache spreading from where her fingers brushed against the bruised skin. She'd used a concealer to mask the injury, but, she thought wryly, FBI agents were obviously a little more perceptive than the guards outside.
"Pretty much," she admitted. "Never a dull day at Organized Crime."
He snorted and gave her a dry look. "Please."
Before Blake could reply, a familiar string of tinny music suddenly started up from behind her; a cacophony of trumpets blaring. Turning, she caught sight of a tv recessed into the bullpen's wall, its screen showing the red, white, and blue riot of colour that was the One Nation Network.
"Ahh, here we go," said Sonnie as the screen dissolved to reveal an empty podium standing alone on a well lit, circular stage; red, white and blue bunting swaddling its front and a row of American flags arranged proudly behind it.
In the corner of her vision, Blake noticed other agents pause their work to turn and face the television.
Like in a magic show, the spotlights ringing the stage were dancing and wheeling all over the place, the harsh white lights poking into the surrounding pool of darkness to reveal an impatient crowd. Here and there a few signs were waved, their text illegible, while elsewhere cameras and cellphones flashed. From this angle, Blake could clearly see the bible sitting on the podium; the matte black of its leather cover broken only by an embossed gold cross.
"Christ, you watch these things?" Asked Blake as the twanging of an acoustic guitar began to play, the soft country melody all but drowned out by the murmur of an unseen crowd. At the bottom of the screen, a blue and white chyron ticked by uninterrupted, the stark white letters spelling out the day's latest events: another tremor in Iran, an approaching migrant caravan, a spike in unemployment.
Sonnie shrugged. "The guys we watch do," he replied, "the stuff that gets said here ends up on their networks in five seconds flat. Besides, at least Fairchild can string together a sentence."
"Thank God for small mercies," muttered Catarina, half-distracted, as the cavorting lights suddenly fled from the stage, the circular platform falling into primordial darkness as the crowd was illuminated.
Despite her best efforts, she'd seen enough of Governor Fairchild's speeches on Twitter to know what to expect and judging by the way the crowd reacted, they did too. With commendable speed the crowd fell silent, the murmur and buzz of conversation falling away in an instant. On cue, the music fell away and the stage lights rushed in towards the circular platform, a trio of people flickering into existence in front of the podium a moment later.
The smile was shared between father and son, the same warm expression on both their faces as they stared into the camera. Both men shared the same hair colour, a deep and youthful black, and their faces were so close they could almost be brothers. Opposite the younger man and standing vigil with one hand placed gently on his shoulder was his mother, her red hair shining in the light and offsetting her dark green eyes. Taller than his father but sharing the same broad shoulders, the younger man was the very image of a marine; the insignia of a Sergeant clearly visible on his shoulder as he stood at attention.
Without warning the hologram suddenly disappeared and the straight-backed figure of Governor John Fairchild stepped into view, the crowd utterly silent despite his appearance. In the six years since the photo was taken, he had changed significantly, the formerly youthful Governor's skin now creased and lined and his once black hair generously sprinkled with snowy patches. Clutched in his hands, held up in clear view, was a slim brown medallion box; the five-pointed figure of a Medal of Honour lying on a bed of white silk.
Beside her, Nowak hmmed. "Who do you think he'll pick for his VP?"
Jarred out of her reverie, Blake shot a glance at her compatriot and shook her head as if to clear it.
"Mary, I don't know." she sighed. "Half of them look like clones."
Pausing, Catarina thought for a moment. "Redfield?" She suggested, "she seemed popular last month."
Nowak shook his head equivocally. "She's been wishy-washy when it comes to attacking the Dems, same with Cortez. The base hates that."
"And the name," Catarina added.
"That too," agreed the curly-haired man with a curt nod, his eyes never leaving the screen as Fairchild took his place behind the podium. "My money's on Buckley. He's younger than the Governor, but not so much that the base feels threatened. Plus he's a pretty good attack dog and he has military experience."
"Who doesn't?" she asked, receiving a snort in reply.
Before they could continue, Fairchild's gravelly voice rang out and Blake's attention snapped back to the TV. Standing behind the podium, the Governor struck a lonely figure; the case containing the Medal of Honour placed on top of the podium's lip like an idol.
"Five years ago," the Governor began, "my son Jacob and his squad were riding in a Stryker armoured personnel carrier on their way back to base after a day spent patrolling the surrounding area. These men were hot, they were exhausted, and they were looking forward to a night of relaxation before heading out to patrol again. Due to an earlier breakdown, they'd been separated from the rest of their patrol and so were isolated from their comrades in arms.
Like many of those in his squad, Jacob had signed up to serve his country, to protect the community that had raised him, and to carry on a tradition of military service stretching back generations."
Fairchild paused and looked out over the crowd, his gaze sweeping over the deathly silent mass before rising to meet the camera and through it, Blake herself.
"Well shit," Nowak whispered enigmatically. "I think he's going to do it."
Before Catarina could ask what he meant, the Governor continued.
"When we spoke, he would always tell me not to worry about him, to serve the people of Texas as best I could, and," Fairchild paused and let out a soft chuckle, "to send him some of his mother's peanut brittle."
Fairchild smiled softly as those he was addressing chuckled good-naturedly, the ripple of noise pouring through the TV like waves even as his eyes darkened with emotion.
"Jacob entered Iraq knowing the risks," he continued. "The same as every other man in his squad, the same as every man in that country. What my son didn't know, what he couldn't have known, is that as his Stryker was out on patrol, the route back home was busy being mined with an IED."
Laying one hand gently on the leather-covered bible, the man took a breath.
"As is written in John 15:13, Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. The last time we spoke, just days before he was killed, my Jacob told me that every man in his squad would lay down their lives to protect their fellows and that he would do the same for them.
At approximately 9:17 am Mountain Time, the APC my son was travelling with was hit and flipped by an IED made from, among other things, one of the President's," he all but spat the term, "Hellfire missiles."
"According to the survivors, Jacob was one of the first to recover from the blast and proceeded to drag an unconscious Private James Lacey from the now-burning vehicle. Assessing the situation from outside the APC and seeing that only a handful of his squad had managed to exit it themselves, my Jacob made a decision that would forever alter the course of our lives. He went back in.
Three times he rushed into that fire-filled wreck and three times he dragged someone to the safety of a nearby embankment; the danger to his men of an ammunition cookoff no doubt at the forefront of his mind. However, shortly after dragging the third man, Private First class Rodrigo Abad, to safety, insurgents hiding in a nearby house opened fire on his unit."
Fairchild paused once more, the emotions written across his face clear for all to see, and in the corners of his eyes, tears began to well up. Utterly unlike his earlier rallies, there was only a deafening silence from those in the room, a quiet that swallowed sound like a black hole swallows light.
"My Jacob could have stayed behind the embankment and returned fire along with the rest of his squad. He knew reinforcements were on their way, that they would arrive in a matter of minutes to provide support. He knew no one, anywhere, could have faulted him if he made that decision.
Nevertheless, my son also knew that there were still two people missing from his unit, two people still trapped. And so he ran across fifteen meters of empty ground, under intense fire, into a vehicle on the verge of exploding. Inside, he found Corporal William Johanson pinned in place by a jammed seatbelt and Private First Class Natalie Winters who had been knocked unconscious by the blast. He freed Corporal Johanson from the wreck and ordered him to leave while he stayed behind to try and get Ms Winters out of there."
Fairchild let out a sigh, long and low, and blinked away the gathering tears.
"My son isn't here today," he continued after a lengthy pause. "Despite his best efforts, my son could not get himself and Private Winters out of the Stryker before its ammunition detonated. However, because of his sacrifice, because of his loyalty, his honour, and his sense of duty, seven other men are. Throughout my speeches, I have made it clear that I am running for the Republican nomination in his image, that I have been inspired by his example.
Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, to everyone here and to everyone watching at home, I would like to announce that my running mate for the Presidency is Governor Willian Johanson; the man my son gave his life to save and the man who passed on his final words."
As the words left his mouth, the stage lights suddenly blazed like miniature suns and the handsome figure of William Johanson strode into view from somewhere off-camera. Wearing a solemn expression on his face, Johanson stopped a good two meters from the presidential hopeful and struck a picture-perfect salute; a deafening roar of approval rising from the newly-revealed crowd as they were caught in the ecstasy of the moment.
"Well," said Agent Sonnie Nowak brightly as the TV cutaway in a riot of red, white, and blue and the audio vanished, "I guess I lost my bet. Johanson'll be veep."
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prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As always, please let me know if there are any errors or if anything doesn't make sense. I feel like the lines get a bit messy in places, but I'm not sure if that's just because my monitor is massive.
Edit:
Also, let me know if you want to know anything about the future. I'm considering a few options for the next entry from the history book but I'm happy to adjust to answer questions.
Edit 2: I went to bed and realised that'd I'd forgotten to update one bit to match a cool idea I'd had. It's sorted now, but lol.
Edit:
Also, let me know if you want to know anything about the future. I'm considering a few options for the next entry from the history book but I'm happy to adjust to answer questions.
Edit 2: I went to bed and realised that'd I'd forgotten to update one bit to match a cool idea I'd had. It's sorted now, but lol.
Last edited:
IV -- In the Ruins of Their Cities
prometheus110
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- La Ballena City Raft
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A Brief Aside On American Politics Circa 2028
On the 3rd of November 2020, in the midst of a pandemic that had already claimed over 300,000 American lives, the United States of America held its 59th quadrennial presidential election. Having spent the past four years under the stewardship of one Donald Trump, a man whose presidency greatly damaged the United States' international standing, economy, and political processes, and who would later prove directly responsible for the deaths of over two million Americans, one would be forgiven in thinking that the result of the election was a foregone conclusion. However, as many were beginning to find out, the blind eye turned towards reactionary media, the free reign given to technology companies, and the reliance on patches and unwritten rules in the American political system had greatly damaged the populace's faith in the nation's democratic processes and deepened those gulfs already present in American society.
To understand how these factors ultimately led to the rise of the Johanson regime, one must first have a basic understanding of the three pillars of American governance, how the nation was first set up, and how its political system operated during the Years of Crisis.
Like many of its contemporaries, the United States of America circa 2028 utilized a presidential system of governance consisting of three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Of these three branches, the most publicly visible was the executive by virtue of its head being the nation's President. However, unlike other members of government, the leader of the nation was not themselves directly elected by the population at large, but by a pool of Constitutionally-required Electors in a manner akin to that of the Holy Roman Empire of some centuries past. As with the Holy Roman Empire, each state appointed a number of Electors to this pool, though unlike the HRE, this number was determined by the formula 2 + n where n was the number of representatives that state had in the House of Representatives which was itself a function of the state's population.
The legislative branch of government, meanwhile, was served by the United States Congress, a body composed of the House of Representatives (the lower chamber) and the Senate (the upper chamber) and whose members were directly elected by the people of their respective states.
Meeting in the nation's capital, the House was charged with the passage of federal legislation, which, after concurrence by the Senate, were sent to the President for consideration. The House also had several exclusive powers being the sole entity capable of initiating revenue legislation, impeaching federal officers, and electing the President if no candidate received a majority of votes in the Electoral College. Though each state was intended to receive one representative for every 30,000 inhabitants, the fact that the United States' population had grown so large since its founding meant that a cap had to be introduced to limit the number of representatives to a more manageable 441. Unfortunately, as these representatives were elected by the population of the state they represented and their districts assigned by the state government, electoral malpractice by a motivated party could allow non-representative results to occur by manipulating district boundaries and taking advantage of the way votes were counted among other things.
The United States Senate, meanwhile, was a collection of 50 pairs of Senators with each pair representing a single state in the union. The Senate's approval was required for legislation originating in the House of Representatives to pass and was ostensibly designed to protect minority opinions from being overwhelmed by the majority though in practice merely allowed the Republicans to deadlock legislation at will. As with the House of Representatives, the Senate had several powers unique to itself including: the approval of treaties, and the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, federal judges, flag officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, other federal executive officials and federal uniformed officers. Furthermore, if no candidate received a majority of electors for vice president, the duty fell to the Senate to elect one of the top two recipients of electors for that office. Finally, the Senate also conducted the trial of those impeached by the House though lacked many mechanisms to punish those found guilty of wrongdoing as was famously the case with former President Donald Trump.
The final pillar of the United States of America's federal government was the judicial branch; a collection of federally appointed judges whose role was largely to decide the meaning of laws passed by the legislative branch, how they were to be applied, and whether they were in breach of the United States' constitution. Appointed to a limited number of judicial slots by the President of the nation and approved to the position by the Senate, these judges were expected to rule without favour to any political ideology or party and instead view the law through a non-partisan, unbiased lens and make appropriate judgements. Formed into 13 courts of appeal and 94 district courts, these judges naturally wielded great influence over the United States law; a fact best exemplified by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Supreme Court of the United States, informally referred to as SCOTUS, was the highest court in the nation and held ultimate jurisdiction over all federal and state cases involving federal law in addition to a selection of other cases. Comprising the Chief Justice of the United States and 8 associate justices (a number which could be changed at-will by Congress), these judges had a lifetime tenure and were directly appointed by the President with the assent of the Senate. A court of last resort, SCOTUS had discretionary power as to which cases it heard and its decisions could only be reversed or altered by a later Supreme Court decision or through an amendment to the US constitution.
As may have become apparent to readers, the design of the United States' political system circa 2028 was the result of over two centuries worth of patches, the nation's constitution having only ever been amended and never rewritten, and was incredibly vulnerable to hostile actors. Designed in the late 18th century by the embryonic nation's elites, the US constitution was in many ways, an attempt to take the familiar monarchical system of the British Empire and mix in those Enlightenment ideals entertained by said elites while preserving their wealth, power, and status from both internal and external opposition. That said, one should be careful to acknowledge that the constitution of the United States was superior in many ways than those of earlier rebellions and that the nation itself was more egalitarian than many European nations at the time; though the widespread enslavement of peoples places a hard limit on how egalitarian it could possibly be.
While an exhaustive description of the United States's history could and indeed has been the subject of numerous texts, suffice to say the nation practised a policy of White Supremacy, Male Supremacy, and classism to varying degrees over the course of its existence to deleterious effect both at home and abroad. Aside from committing widespread acts of genocide against the continent's native inhabitants, support for which played a large role in the nation's independence movement, the United States practised the widespread enslavement of Africans and Native Americans, suppressed women's rights, and restricted the involvement of certain classes of citizens in the political process. With these policies in place from the very beginning of the nation's history, it was only natural that the struggle for justice and egalitarianism would be a long and bitter one fought at every turn by conservative and reactionary forces up until the nation's final years.
By the close of the 2020s American politics had long been dominated by only two political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, and was largely being held together by increasingly ignored unwritten rules and unenforced laws. Though the Republicans had historically been associated with the abolition of slavery in America, electoral strategies targetting both latent and active bigotry since the 1960s had transformed the once comparatively progressive party into a bastion of reactionary politics both fed and feeding a similarly reactionary media. A party whose ideals were supported by only a minority of Americans, the Republican party nonetheless wielded a great deal of power over American politics as a result of the system's design; the leadership of the party making use of every tool at their disposal to oppose Democratic presidencies while simultaneously pushing through whatever policies they could.
Opposing the Republican party was the Democratic party, the organization once to the right of the Republicans having switched positions thanks to the Republicans eating away at their former base. Best described as a "big tent" party, the Democratic party was composed of an eclectic mix of groups, each with their own ideology, with the primary uniting force being their opposition to the Republicans. Though still a broadly conservative party thanks to the continued dominance of the neoliberal school of thought, the Democratic party of 2028 was in the midst of an identity crisis thanks to the vastly different politics of the party's retiring old guard and the politics of many members of its youth cohort; the elder statesmen and women often being both vastly more conservative than American society at large and having lead lives utterly different to those of voters. Though efforts had been made by the party's leadership to promote young, ideologically-aligned members over their comparatively left-wing competition, the party's widening disconnect with the nation's populace resulted in numerous hard-fought elections and a growing bitterness as promises were made and broken. Worse still, despite nominally existing in opposition to the Republican party, the policies of White Supremacy, Male Supremacy, and classism pursued by the United States since its inception had left indelible marks on domestic politics which manifested themselves as a broad political consensus in areas such as economics, welfare, national security, war, etc, and which was only just beginning to change.
With former Vice President Joseph R. Biden (Democratic) having defeated incumbent President Donald J. Trump (Republican) in 2020, and former Vice President Kamala D. Harris (Democratic) having defeated Congressman Tom B. Cotton (Republican) in 2024, one might be forgiven for assuming that the Democratic party had managed to regain significant power over America's political system and was in the process of addressing the nation's numerous issues. Unfortunately for the United States and the world at large, however, the sheer antipathy held towards the Democratic party by their Republican opponents all but gridlocked the American political system; much-needed legislation and appointments held up or outright crushed by procedural manipulation and steadfast opposition. Additionally, what few actions the Democratic administrations were able to take were often badly undercut by intraparty conflicts, the political views of the party's leadership and Presidents, and the residual and badly misguided spirit of bipartisanship and goodwill held by the upper echelons of the party.
Making matters worse, business interests had for many decades spent vast sums of money on efforts to influence American politics; subverting or scrapping whatever systems remained in place to aid in good governance, and outright bribing members of government by the standards of today. The Office of Congressional Ethics, once a respected body charged with investigating Congressional wrongdoing, had by 2028 been reduced to a shoestring budget through a series of subtle legislative bills, its review period reduced to one month from three, and three of its six board members replaced with members tied to the healthcare, finance, and fossil fuel industries. Similarly, by the close of 2028, the orientation of new members of Congress had been carried out by a lobbying group with deep ties to the chimaera that was the tech and defence industry for over six years and separate orientations for Republicans and Democrats were the norm. As a result, members of Congress were given heavily slanted views of local and international issues whose content differed depending on which party was being courted.
So dysfunctional was the American political system by the close of 2028 that, despite 8 years of control, few Democratic policies had been successfully implemented and many of those that had were either unhelpful, inadequate or could be trivially reversed if the Democratic party ever lost the Presidency. Having been traumatized, angered, scared, and dispirited by the failures of Democratic governance both real and imagined and targeted by social media algorithms and propaganda strategies, many Americans turned towards the Republican party for leadership once more.
On Tuesday the 7th, 2028 (Prime Timeline), five months after the assassination of Congresswoman Jenny Sung, Governor John P. Fairchild (Republican) narrowly won election to the Presidency of the United States with Governor William L. Johanson (Republican) as his Vice Presidential Candidate. An election marred by voter suppression, reactionary AgitProp, and violence culminating in the Black Tuesday Poll attacks, the election of 2028 would historically prove to be the final free and fair election the United States of America would ever have.
On the 3rd of November 2020, in the midst of a pandemic that had already claimed over 300,000 American lives, the United States of America held its 59th quadrennial presidential election. Having spent the past four years under the stewardship of one Donald Trump, a man whose presidency greatly damaged the United States' international standing, economy, and political processes, and who would later prove directly responsible for the deaths of over two million Americans, one would be forgiven in thinking that the result of the election was a foregone conclusion. However, as many were beginning to find out, the blind eye turned towards reactionary media, the free reign given to technology companies, and the reliance on patches and unwritten rules in the American political system had greatly damaged the populace's faith in the nation's democratic processes and deepened those gulfs already present in American society.
To understand how these factors ultimately led to the rise of the Johanson regime, one must first have a basic understanding of the three pillars of American governance, how the nation was first set up, and how its political system operated during the Years of Crisis.
Like many of its contemporaries, the United States of America circa 2028 utilized a presidential system of governance consisting of three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Of these three branches, the most publicly visible was the executive by virtue of its head being the nation's President. However, unlike other members of government, the leader of the nation was not themselves directly elected by the population at large, but by a pool of Constitutionally-required Electors in a manner akin to that of the Holy Roman Empire of some centuries past. As with the Holy Roman Empire, each state appointed a number of Electors to this pool, though unlike the HRE, this number was determined by the formula 2 + n where n was the number of representatives that state had in the House of Representatives which was itself a function of the state's population.
The legislative branch of government, meanwhile, was served by the United States Congress, a body composed of the House of Representatives (the lower chamber) and the Senate (the upper chamber) and whose members were directly elected by the people of their respective states.
Meeting in the nation's capital, the House was charged with the passage of federal legislation, which, after concurrence by the Senate, were sent to the President for consideration. The House also had several exclusive powers being the sole entity capable of initiating revenue legislation, impeaching federal officers, and electing the President if no candidate received a majority of votes in the Electoral College. Though each state was intended to receive one representative for every 30,000 inhabitants, the fact that the United States' population had grown so large since its founding meant that a cap had to be introduced to limit the number of representatives to a more manageable 441. Unfortunately, as these representatives were elected by the population of the state they represented and their districts assigned by the state government, electoral malpractice by a motivated party could allow non-representative results to occur by manipulating district boundaries and taking advantage of the way votes were counted among other things.
The United States Senate, meanwhile, was a collection of 50 pairs of Senators with each pair representing a single state in the union. The Senate's approval was required for legislation originating in the House of Representatives to pass and was ostensibly designed to protect minority opinions from being overwhelmed by the majority though in practice merely allowed the Republicans to deadlock legislation at will. As with the House of Representatives, the Senate had several powers unique to itself including: the approval of treaties, and the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, federal judges, flag officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, other federal executive officials and federal uniformed officers. Furthermore, if no candidate received a majority of electors for vice president, the duty fell to the Senate to elect one of the top two recipients of electors for that office. Finally, the Senate also conducted the trial of those impeached by the House though lacked many mechanisms to punish those found guilty of wrongdoing as was famously the case with former President Donald Trump.
The final pillar of the United States of America's federal government was the judicial branch; a collection of federally appointed judges whose role was largely to decide the meaning of laws passed by the legislative branch, how they were to be applied, and whether they were in breach of the United States' constitution. Appointed to a limited number of judicial slots by the President of the nation and approved to the position by the Senate, these judges were expected to rule without favour to any political ideology or party and instead view the law through a non-partisan, unbiased lens and make appropriate judgements. Formed into 13 courts of appeal and 94 district courts, these judges naturally wielded great influence over the United States law; a fact best exemplified by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Supreme Court of the United States, informally referred to as SCOTUS, was the highest court in the nation and held ultimate jurisdiction over all federal and state cases involving federal law in addition to a selection of other cases. Comprising the Chief Justice of the United States and 8 associate justices (a number which could be changed at-will by Congress), these judges had a lifetime tenure and were directly appointed by the President with the assent of the Senate. A court of last resort, SCOTUS had discretionary power as to which cases it heard and its decisions could only be reversed or altered by a later Supreme Court decision or through an amendment to the US constitution.
As may have become apparent to readers, the design of the United States' political system circa 2028 was the result of over two centuries worth of patches, the nation's constitution having only ever been amended and never rewritten, and was incredibly vulnerable to hostile actors. Designed in the late 18th century by the embryonic nation's elites, the US constitution was in many ways, an attempt to take the familiar monarchical system of the British Empire and mix in those Enlightenment ideals entertained by said elites while preserving their wealth, power, and status from both internal and external opposition. That said, one should be careful to acknowledge that the constitution of the United States was superior in many ways than those of earlier rebellions and that the nation itself was more egalitarian than many European nations at the time; though the widespread enslavement of peoples places a hard limit on how egalitarian it could possibly be.
While an exhaustive description of the United States's history could and indeed has been the subject of numerous texts, suffice to say the nation practised a policy of White Supremacy, Male Supremacy, and classism to varying degrees over the course of its existence to deleterious effect both at home and abroad. Aside from committing widespread acts of genocide against the continent's native inhabitants, support for which played a large role in the nation's independence movement, the United States practised the widespread enslavement of Africans and Native Americans, suppressed women's rights, and restricted the involvement of certain classes of citizens in the political process. With these policies in place from the very beginning of the nation's history, it was only natural that the struggle for justice and egalitarianism would be a long and bitter one fought at every turn by conservative and reactionary forces up until the nation's final years.
By the close of the 2020s American politics had long been dominated by only two political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, and was largely being held together by increasingly ignored unwritten rules and unenforced laws. Though the Republicans had historically been associated with the abolition of slavery in America, electoral strategies targetting both latent and active bigotry since the 1960s had transformed the once comparatively progressive party into a bastion of reactionary politics both fed and feeding a similarly reactionary media. A party whose ideals were supported by only a minority of Americans, the Republican party nonetheless wielded a great deal of power over American politics as a result of the system's design; the leadership of the party making use of every tool at their disposal to oppose Democratic presidencies while simultaneously pushing through whatever policies they could.
Opposing the Republican party was the Democratic party, the organization once to the right of the Republicans having switched positions thanks to the Republicans eating away at their former base. Best described as a "big tent" party, the Democratic party was composed of an eclectic mix of groups, each with their own ideology, with the primary uniting force being their opposition to the Republicans. Though still a broadly conservative party thanks to the continued dominance of the neoliberal school of thought, the Democratic party of 2028 was in the midst of an identity crisis thanks to the vastly different politics of the party's retiring old guard and the politics of many members of its youth cohort; the elder statesmen and women often being both vastly more conservative than American society at large and having lead lives utterly different to those of voters. Though efforts had been made by the party's leadership to promote young, ideologically-aligned members over their comparatively left-wing competition, the party's widening disconnect with the nation's populace resulted in numerous hard-fought elections and a growing bitterness as promises were made and broken. Worse still, despite nominally existing in opposition to the Republican party, the policies of White Supremacy, Male Supremacy, and classism pursued by the United States since its inception had left indelible marks on domestic politics which manifested themselves as a broad political consensus in areas such as economics, welfare, national security, war, etc, and which was only just beginning to change.
With former Vice President Joseph R. Biden (Democratic) having defeated incumbent President Donald J. Trump (Republican) in 2020, and former Vice President Kamala D. Harris (Democratic) having defeated Congressman Tom B. Cotton (Republican) in 2024, one might be forgiven for assuming that the Democratic party had managed to regain significant power over America's political system and was in the process of addressing the nation's numerous issues. Unfortunately for the United States and the world at large, however, the sheer antipathy held towards the Democratic party by their Republican opponents all but gridlocked the American political system; much-needed legislation and appointments held up or outright crushed by procedural manipulation and steadfast opposition. Additionally, what few actions the Democratic administrations were able to take were often badly undercut by intraparty conflicts, the political views of the party's leadership and Presidents, and the residual and badly misguided spirit of bipartisanship and goodwill held by the upper echelons of the party.
Making matters worse, business interests had for many decades spent vast sums of money on efforts to influence American politics; subverting or scrapping whatever systems remained in place to aid in good governance, and outright bribing members of government by the standards of today. The Office of Congressional Ethics, once a respected body charged with investigating Congressional wrongdoing, had by 2028 been reduced to a shoestring budget through a series of subtle legislative bills, its review period reduced to one month from three, and three of its six board members replaced with members tied to the healthcare, finance, and fossil fuel industries. Similarly, by the close of 2028, the orientation of new members of Congress had been carried out by a lobbying group with deep ties to the chimaera that was the tech and defence industry for over six years and separate orientations for Republicans and Democrats were the norm. As a result, members of Congress were given heavily slanted views of local and international issues whose content differed depending on which party was being courted.
So dysfunctional was the American political system by the close of 2028 that, despite 8 years of control, few Democratic policies had been successfully implemented and many of those that had were either unhelpful, inadequate or could be trivially reversed if the Democratic party ever lost the Presidency. Having been traumatized, angered, scared, and dispirited by the failures of Democratic governance both real and imagined and targeted by social media algorithms and propaganda strategies, many Americans turned towards the Republican party for leadership once more.
On Tuesday the 7th, 2028 (Prime Timeline), five months after the assassination of Congresswoman Jenny Sung, Governor John P. Fairchild (Republican) narrowly won election to the Presidency of the United States with Governor William L. Johanson (Republican) as his Vice Presidential Candidate. An election marred by voter suppression, reactionary AgitProp, and violence culminating in the Black Tuesday Poll attacks, the election of 2028 would historically prove to be the final free and fair election the United States of America would ever have.
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prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Merry Christmas, please enjoy this depressing timeline update.
Fun fact: writing something from the point of view of an expert is really annoying if you're not just as smart as they are as you being stupid makes them look stupid.
Fun fact: writing something from the point of view of an expert is really annoying if you're not just as smart as they are as you being stupid makes them look stupid.
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Why is there an 'I'?
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
- La Ballena City Raft
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Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
- Location
- the land of the Boii
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My theory (haven't re-read older chapters): The future people are going to make a global public introduction just before the US presidential election, and by the mere act of showing that a better, brighter, and just-er world is possible, Jenny Sung (D) gets elected as POTUS by a landslide to end all landslides as all the wavering moderates and non-voting undecideds get a physical visible proof that a left-wing future can and will work out.
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- Location
- The great frozen north
This feels depressingly real. Though, first time I've seem the electoral collage compared to the HRE.
We're getting pretty close to the 2033 Antelope Wells Riots. Perhaps the time travellers will be able to avert that, but they have a LOT of work cut out for them if they want to stabilize this basket case.
Though, it feels weird calling the USA a system of " Male Supremacy ". Sure they're behind certain European countries in a few ways, but we're still far closer to them than certain countries I will not name since this isn't the politics forum. And while true in the past women's rights didn't exist, unlike with race relations I don't think the USA was ever noticeably 'behind the curve' compared to its fellow nations so this feels it's inaccurately singling the USA out as some unique black hole of misogyny when it mostly rolled with the times then.
We're getting pretty close to the 2033 Antelope Wells Riots. Perhaps the time travellers will be able to avert that, but they have a LOT of work cut out for them if they want to stabilize this basket case.
Though, it feels weird calling the USA a system of " Male Supremacy ". Sure they're behind certain European countries in a few ways, but we're still far closer to them than certain countries I will not name since this isn't the politics forum. And while true in the past women's rights didn't exist, unlike with race relations I don't think the USA was ever noticeably 'behind the curve' compared to its fellow nations so this feels it's inaccurately singling the USA out as some unique black hole of misogyny when it mostly rolled with the times then.
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
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Yeah, I suppose I was a little unclear. These things all apply to a large part of the world, the author is just specifically talking about how they're present in the US.
Chapter Six -- Part One
prometheus110
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"The joke was that when the CIA sees "three guys doing jumping jacks," the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp." - America's drone policy is all exceptions and no rules
"They turned our area into hell and continuous horror, day and night, we even dream of them in our sleep." - "I no longer love blue skies": What life is like under the constant threat of a drone attack
The Deathbird is smart, but not aware. It couldn't recognize itself in a mirror, but it could fake it thanks to the micro-tags embedded in its hull. It speaks no language save that which involves 1s and 0s. It has vision across a spectrum spanning radio to ultraviolet, yet to it, colours are merely aids for target identification. The Deathbird does not ponder, nor does it wonder, nor does it feel.
It does, however, think.
The Deathbird thinks about a great many things as it soars over the waterlogged and ever-so-radioactive ruins of what was once Cádiz; the feel of the ionic wind across its six wings, the flow of power to its electrodes, the weight of the glide bombs in its belly. It thinks about the drone sub that birthed it, weighing up whether it had been able to launch other Deathbirds without detection or if it had been heard and destroyed. It calculates the probability that others of its network exist and are active and balances the risks of talking to them versus the potential intelligence rewards.
Always the Deathbird is thinking, always the Deathbird is calculating.
Is that radar reflection there a SAM site? Is that thermal bloom over there an AA laser bleeding heat? Is that rumble in the distance the sound of engines? Is that density discontinuity a tunnel? Is that shape down below a person?
Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is?
The Deathbird can't stop thinking. It can't even want to stop thinking. To want requires emotions and emotions were a relic of when war was something done by people to other people. By the time the Deathbird was born war was something done to people by machines and had been for years.
Other than thinking, the Deathbird also knows.
It knows it was assembled at 2095-11-22T06:38:34+00:00 and dispatched to its submersible parent at 2095-11-22T07:02:55+00:00. It also knows that it underwent periodic readiness checks and maintenance at 2095-11-23T00:00:33+00:00, 2096-05-23T00:00:28+00:00, 2096-11-23T00:00:52+00:00, and so on and so forth until its eventual launch at 2206-01-07T19:39:11+00:00.
Radiation slithers across Deathbird's hull without warning, optically black metamaterials whisking away most of the unwanted photons and dispersing them into the night sky beyond. 4.8 seconds later, the radiation pulse comes again and once more the pulse of photons is stealthily disposed of. 4.8 seconds after that it comes again and then again and then again.
Tasting the radio waves, the Deathbird analyzes the wavelength and amplitude and compares it to known radar systems. The closest match was antiquated technology, decades deep in the catalogue; feeble eyes scanning the water below to better corral approaching vessels. Even if it was turned to the sky, it couldn't find the Deathbird.
Probabilities and priorities shift as the Deathbird takes in the input that is the radar system's broadcast. Buried deep within its neural network mind, a decision tree flips through task node after task node as the Deathbird tastes and measures until at last a heading is determined and a distance calculated. Implacably the Deathbird turns its nose towards the ink-black sky and climbs, the only sign of its existence the ghostly shimmer of ions across its wings.
Twenty thousand meters up, the Deathbird soars alone in a cloudless, moonless sky. Swirling like a galaxy, the lights of the fishing fleet below twinkle in time to a silent beat; the Deathbird's dispassionate eyes watching as fishing lines and dragnets are drawn in and cast out. In the distance, backlit by a hazy yellow glow, a population centre sprawls across the hilly landscape like a beached octopus; slums and boroughs and streets and wires zigzagging in all directions. Blazing like a beacon, the harbour radar continues its watch over the water; reflected photons illuminating the boats below in swaths.
Somewhere down there, hiding amidst the hustle and bustle of the city, is something for the Deathbird to kill.
Invisible in the night sky, the Deathbird retargets its sensors towards the outpost of life; a flood of information pouring into its not-quite-neurons as it scans the scene before it. Contact Type Zeros move across the enzyme-bonded streets in a continuous flow, their bodies only a little warmer than ambient. Here and there, Contact Type Ones, Threes, and Fours putter about besides the Zeros, their hot exhausts puffing into the air in white-orange flares. Even more rarely does the Deathbird spot structures its systems can identify as mission-relevant, tags labelling them [FACTORY], [POWERPLANT], [PUMPHOUSE] and more unfurling in its model of the world.
All told, the Deathbird counts 7,394 contacts along the city's seaward edge plus the radar it sensed before. Inside the armoured core at the Deathbird's heart, a specially trained neural network estimates the total population of Type Zeros to be upwards of 100,000.
Most of the Contacts the Deathbird sees are untagged, the tenement blocks climbing into the sky around them equally devoid. Every so often, however, it spots a Zero carrying something its machine vision recognizes as a weapon: a rifle here, a pistol there, and so on and so forth, their wielders sporting the twin lions. To those the Deathbird assigns a crimson [HOSTILE] tag, the confirmation of valid targets in the area satisfying one condition in its silicon mind but leaving others unfulfilled.
Deep within the Deathbird's blackbox mind, calculations shift once more and a task node is reached.
Activating the directional transceiver in its back, the Deathbird reaches out towards the heavens for guidance. Seconds pass without an acknowledgement, then minutes. Finally, the Deathbird satisfies the failure condition and ceases to broadcast; its silent wail to the satellites above passing by unrecorded.
The flow of logic through its behaviour tree is extremely simple compared to that of a human mind.
IF contact cannot be established with command infrastructure THEN assume command infrastructure is disabled/destroyed. IF infrastructure is disabled/destroyed THEN rely on fall-back targeting schema.
IF-THEN, YES-NO, GO-NO GO.
The Deathbird measures the wind speed, air density, and its own velocity. It adjusts its wings to better catch the air and rechecks the glide bombs in its belly. It risks a pulse from its ground-penetrating radar to check the subsurface and readies countermeasures to protect against interception. Attack simulations begin to run; a hundred targets falling in a thousand different ways. Simulated fallback objectives are completed with varying degrees of success as virtual submunitions are assigned and then reassigned. In some models the Deathbird targets vehicles, in others, it targets bastions of officialdom, in yet more it goes after infrastructure, and on and on it goes until, at last, the maximal probable attack score is reached.
All but one of the models vanish from the Deathbird's mind as the winner rises from simulation to planning like a phoenix from the ashes. The glide bombs are programmed and in turn, they disperse the plan to their explosive children. The Deathbird pulls in its wings and points its nose towards the city.
The mission is a GO.
Incident Report: January 8th, 2206, Sanlúcar de Barrameda
At approximately 00:13 am local time on the 8th of January, 2206, the city of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in the Andalusian Republic suffered a series of seemingly random bombings which crippled local government, caused numerous fires and triggered widespread unrest and panic across the city.
Amongst those killed were five-hundred and thirty-five (535) civilians, sixty-three (63) civil servants, and twenty-five (25) Urban Guard. A further one-thousand and seventy-three (1073) people were injured throughout the affected groups, and many more were injured or killed during the ensuing unrest. The bombing also destroyed numerous pieces of city infrastructure and vehicles including thirty-seven (37) trucks and semi-trucks, twenty-three (23) private fishing and kelp harvesting vessels, twenty (20) wind turbines, eleven (11) warehouses, eight (8) electric trains, six (6) train stations, six (6) factories, four (4) network hubs, two (2) pumphouses, one (1) solar power plant and battery farm, one (1) sewage treatment plant, and an assortment of miscellaneous radio broadcasters.
Thanks to rapidly provided support from both the Federation and the Iberian Economic Pact, the Andalusian Republic was able to prevent further loss of life from civil unrest, heatstroke, etc, within a week of recovery operations starting, though it will likely be some years before all the damage is repaired. At the time, these bombings were thought to be the work of local separatist groups seeking autonomy from the Republic, however, the denial of responsibility by leading figures, the widespread nature of the bombing, and the focus on city infrastructure counted against it. A later analysis carried out by the Federation's Autonomous Warfare Recovery Group on explosive residues, recovered shrapnel, unexploded ordinance (UXO), and the bombing pattern itself has revealed that the likely culprit was a EuroWar-era Deathbird acting on fallback orders.
As few orbital debris were registered having entered the atmosphere near Sanlúcar in the days prior to the bombing, the AWRG assigns high confidence (>90%) that the Deathbird was not deployed via canister from surviving orbital depots. Instead, the AWRG believes that the origin of the Deathbird was either an autonomous submarine or sea-floor mine. Given the well-travelled and surveilled nature of the Andalusian coast, we assign confidence of >75% that the Deathbird was launched via an autonomous submarine as mines have not been detected in the region since 2180. Given the nature of the targets, their location in Europe, the likely nature of the Deathbird's deployment, and the region's historical conflicts, the AWRG believes that the EuroWar-era governments of France, Italy, or Britain were responsible for the attack. Given the long delay between the submarine's launch and the attack commencing, the AWRG is confident (80%) that a faulty Block-I Shad-class Autonomous Combat Submarine was the culprit as the nations listed all operated the Shad-class ACS and the Block-I suffered numerous timing failures of this sort.
While the Autonomous Warfare Recovery Group understands the difficulties inherent in deciding budget allocations given the state of the world, we must once again reiterate our need for a greater budget and a greater focus on finding and disabling these weapons. By allowing autonomous weapons to continue to operate outside the borders of the Federation and its allies, we risk the stability of numerous other nations and put the project of global recovery at unnecessary risk. Ocean stainings, desert regreening, anti-erosion efforts, etc, are all necessary activities threatened by regional instability and random drone attacks, but through a few minor increases in the AWRG's operating budget combined with some choice force deployments, we can ensure a better future for our children and theirs.
Yours Faithfully,
Nils Cartier,
Deputy Director | Autonomous Warfare Recovery Group
17 Lars Janssonsgatan,
981 31 Giron, Sweden
"They turned our area into hell and continuous horror, day and night, we even dream of them in our sleep." - "I no longer love blue skies": What life is like under the constant threat of a drone attack
==================
The Deathbird is smart, but not aware. It couldn't recognize itself in a mirror, but it could fake it thanks to the micro-tags embedded in its hull. It speaks no language save that which involves 1s and 0s. It has vision across a spectrum spanning radio to ultraviolet, yet to it, colours are merely aids for target identification. The Deathbird does not ponder, nor does it wonder, nor does it feel.
It does, however, think.
The Deathbird thinks about a great many things as it soars over the waterlogged and ever-so-radioactive ruins of what was once Cádiz; the feel of the ionic wind across its six wings, the flow of power to its electrodes, the weight of the glide bombs in its belly. It thinks about the drone sub that birthed it, weighing up whether it had been able to launch other Deathbirds without detection or if it had been heard and destroyed. It calculates the probability that others of its network exist and are active and balances the risks of talking to them versus the potential intelligence rewards.
Always the Deathbird is thinking, always the Deathbird is calculating.
Is that radar reflection there a SAM site? Is that thermal bloom over there an AA laser bleeding heat? Is that rumble in the distance the sound of engines? Is that density discontinuity a tunnel? Is that shape down below a person?
Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is? Is?
The Deathbird can't stop thinking. It can't even want to stop thinking. To want requires emotions and emotions were a relic of when war was something done by people to other people. By the time the Deathbird was born war was something done to people by machines and had been for years.
Other than thinking, the Deathbird also knows.
It knows it was assembled at 2095-11-22T06:38:34+00:00 and dispatched to its submersible parent at 2095-11-22T07:02:55+00:00. It also knows that it underwent periodic readiness checks and maintenance at 2095-11-23T00:00:33+00:00, 2096-05-23T00:00:28+00:00, 2096-11-23T00:00:52+00:00, and so on and so forth until its eventual launch at 2206-01-07T19:39:11+00:00.
Radiation slithers across Deathbird's hull without warning, optically black metamaterials whisking away most of the unwanted photons and dispersing them into the night sky beyond. 4.8 seconds later, the radiation pulse comes again and once more the pulse of photons is stealthily disposed of. 4.8 seconds after that it comes again and then again and then again.
Tasting the radio waves, the Deathbird analyzes the wavelength and amplitude and compares it to known radar systems. The closest match was antiquated technology, decades deep in the catalogue; feeble eyes scanning the water below to better corral approaching vessels. Even if it was turned to the sky, it couldn't find the Deathbird.
Probabilities and priorities shift as the Deathbird takes in the input that is the radar system's broadcast. Buried deep within its neural network mind, a decision tree flips through task node after task node as the Deathbird tastes and measures until at last a heading is determined and a distance calculated. Implacably the Deathbird turns its nose towards the ink-black sky and climbs, the only sign of its existence the ghostly shimmer of ions across its wings.
Twenty thousand meters up, the Deathbird soars alone in a cloudless, moonless sky. Swirling like a galaxy, the lights of the fishing fleet below twinkle in time to a silent beat; the Deathbird's dispassionate eyes watching as fishing lines and dragnets are drawn in and cast out. In the distance, backlit by a hazy yellow glow, a population centre sprawls across the hilly landscape like a beached octopus; slums and boroughs and streets and wires zigzagging in all directions. Blazing like a beacon, the harbour radar continues its watch over the water; reflected photons illuminating the boats below in swaths.
Somewhere down there, hiding amidst the hustle and bustle of the city, is something for the Deathbird to kill.
Invisible in the night sky, the Deathbird retargets its sensors towards the outpost of life; a flood of information pouring into its not-quite-neurons as it scans the scene before it. Contact Type Zeros move across the enzyme-bonded streets in a continuous flow, their bodies only a little warmer than ambient. Here and there, Contact Type Ones, Threes, and Fours putter about besides the Zeros, their hot exhausts puffing into the air in white-orange flares. Even more rarely does the Deathbird spot structures its systems can identify as mission-relevant, tags labelling them [FACTORY], [POWERPLANT], [PUMPHOUSE] and more unfurling in its model of the world.
All told, the Deathbird counts 7,394 contacts along the city's seaward edge plus the radar it sensed before. Inside the armoured core at the Deathbird's heart, a specially trained neural network estimates the total population of Type Zeros to be upwards of 100,000.
Most of the Contacts the Deathbird sees are untagged, the tenement blocks climbing into the sky around them equally devoid. Every so often, however, it spots a Zero carrying something its machine vision recognizes as a weapon: a rifle here, a pistol there, and so on and so forth, their wielders sporting the twin lions. To those the Deathbird assigns a crimson [HOSTILE] tag, the confirmation of valid targets in the area satisfying one condition in its silicon mind but leaving others unfulfilled.
Deep within the Deathbird's blackbox mind, calculations shift once more and a task node is reached.
Activating the directional transceiver in its back, the Deathbird reaches out towards the heavens for guidance. Seconds pass without an acknowledgement, then minutes. Finally, the Deathbird satisfies the failure condition and ceases to broadcast; its silent wail to the satellites above passing by unrecorded.
The flow of logic through its behaviour tree is extremely simple compared to that of a human mind.
IF contact cannot be established with command infrastructure THEN assume command infrastructure is disabled/destroyed. IF infrastructure is disabled/destroyed THEN rely on fall-back targeting schema.
IF-THEN, YES-NO, GO-NO GO.
The Deathbird measures the wind speed, air density, and its own velocity. It adjusts its wings to better catch the air and rechecks the glide bombs in its belly. It risks a pulse from its ground-penetrating radar to check the subsurface and readies countermeasures to protect against interception. Attack simulations begin to run; a hundred targets falling in a thousand different ways. Simulated fallback objectives are completed with varying degrees of success as virtual submunitions are assigned and then reassigned. In some models the Deathbird targets vehicles, in others, it targets bastions of officialdom, in yet more it goes after infrastructure, and on and on it goes until, at last, the maximal probable attack score is reached.
All but one of the models vanish from the Deathbird's mind as the winner rises from simulation to planning like a phoenix from the ashes. The glide bombs are programmed and in turn, they disperse the plan to their explosive children. The Deathbird pulls in its wings and points its nose towards the city.
The mission is a GO.
==================
Incident Report: January 8th, 2206, Sanlúcar de Barrameda
At approximately 00:13 am local time on the 8th of January, 2206, the city of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in the Andalusian Republic suffered a series of seemingly random bombings which crippled local government, caused numerous fires and triggered widespread unrest and panic across the city.
Amongst those killed were five-hundred and thirty-five (535) civilians, sixty-three (63) civil servants, and twenty-five (25) Urban Guard. A further one-thousand and seventy-three (1073) people were injured throughout the affected groups, and many more were injured or killed during the ensuing unrest. The bombing also destroyed numerous pieces of city infrastructure and vehicles including thirty-seven (37) trucks and semi-trucks, twenty-three (23) private fishing and kelp harvesting vessels, twenty (20) wind turbines, eleven (11) warehouses, eight (8) electric trains, six (6) train stations, six (6) factories, four (4) network hubs, two (2) pumphouses, one (1) solar power plant and battery farm, one (1) sewage treatment plant, and an assortment of miscellaneous radio broadcasters.
Thanks to rapidly provided support from both the Federation and the Iberian Economic Pact, the Andalusian Republic was able to prevent further loss of life from civil unrest, heatstroke, etc, within a week of recovery operations starting, though it will likely be some years before all the damage is repaired. At the time, these bombings were thought to be the work of local separatist groups seeking autonomy from the Republic, however, the denial of responsibility by leading figures, the widespread nature of the bombing, and the focus on city infrastructure counted against it. A later analysis carried out by the Federation's Autonomous Warfare Recovery Group on explosive residues, recovered shrapnel, unexploded ordinance (UXO), and the bombing pattern itself has revealed that the likely culprit was a EuroWar-era Deathbird acting on fallback orders.
As few orbital debris were registered having entered the atmosphere near Sanlúcar in the days prior to the bombing, the AWRG assigns high confidence (>90%) that the Deathbird was not deployed via canister from surviving orbital depots. Instead, the AWRG believes that the origin of the Deathbird was either an autonomous submarine or sea-floor mine. Given the well-travelled and surveilled nature of the Andalusian coast, we assign confidence of >75% that the Deathbird was launched via an autonomous submarine as mines have not been detected in the region since 2180. Given the nature of the targets, their location in Europe, the likely nature of the Deathbird's deployment, and the region's historical conflicts, the AWRG believes that the EuroWar-era governments of France, Italy, or Britain were responsible for the attack. Given the long delay between the submarine's launch and the attack commencing, the AWRG is confident (80%) that a faulty Block-I Shad-class Autonomous Combat Submarine was the culprit as the nations listed all operated the Shad-class ACS and the Block-I suffered numerous timing failures of this sort.
While the Autonomous Warfare Recovery Group understands the difficulties inherent in deciding budget allocations given the state of the world, we must once again reiterate our need for a greater budget and a greater focus on finding and disabling these weapons. By allowing autonomous weapons to continue to operate outside the borders of the Federation and its allies, we risk the stability of numerous other nations and put the project of global recovery at unnecessary risk. Ocean stainings, desert regreening, anti-erosion efforts, etc, are all necessary activities threatened by regional instability and random drone attacks, but through a few minor increases in the AWRG's operating budget combined with some choice force deployments, we can ensure a better future for our children and theirs.
Yours Faithfully,
Nils Cartier,
Deputy Director | Autonomous Warfare Recovery Group
17 Lars Janssonsgatan,
981 31 Giron, Sweden
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How did the submarine be active unmaintained for so many decades? Or even if it was at an autonomous maintenance facility, how did that survive so long?
prometheus110
Join Cayman-Global & be part of the 1E-9 percent!
- Location
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Who said it was unmaintained or even active for the entire time?
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Cataphract
Denizen of Qliphoth
- Location
- UTC +8:00
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Scary. Love the update.