Tag: draft

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Wired (part four)

Beat powered up the monocular and panned his view around the room, testing it. He could see everything as clear as day in the dimly lit room, and the fireplace practically washed out the image before the circuits could compensate by dimming it. Another press of a button on the device and it switched to heat vision, with Jakob appearing in shades of yellow, red, and purple, indicating hotter parts of his face and body. Even the clear glass on the table was glowing a warm orange, with a purple, round ice cube melting in the whiskey.


The odd fabric appeared almost black, reflecting little, if any, heat. “I see you’ve found the thermal setting. I can see the colors reflecting in your glasses. Good. Leave that set, and watch the fabric.” Jakob attached two whisker-thin wires to the fabric, side by side, and placed his left hand under the fabric. He pressed a switch on the control blob and this time, not only did the surface shimmer and vanish, instantly this time, but so did his hand. “Is your left hand still under that?”, Beat asked. “Why of course. This is no common magic show.”, replied Jakob. Beat really couldn’t get his head around this one. He changed modes on the monocular, yet the fabric and Jakob’s hand were not visible, but they weren’t black either. They were the same color temperature as the table top. This was one step beyond optical camouflage. It was thermoptic camouflage. Optically invisible, and invisible on any light spectrum, including infrared. Beat was considering the nature of what he was witnessing. “Jakob, can you walk over and stand in front of the fireplace, and take the fabric with you?”, Beat asked. Jakob grinned, knowing that Beat was trying to test his invention. “Of course,” Jakob said, after getting up with a grunt and standing before the fireplace, as Beat moved to the couch, “how shall I hold it?”. “Place it over your face.”, replied Beat.


Jakob did as Beat asked, draping the fabric over his head, covering his face in the process. Again, he hit the button on the controller, and Jakob’s head disappeared, with flames from the fireplace where his head should be. Beat was only picking up bright yellows and whites from the flames, while looking right at Jakob’s head. It was amazing. He slowly sat the monocular on the table, never breaking eye contact with Jakob, in case the illusion would suddenly fall apart if he looked away. “Truly incredible,” Beat said, “but what do things look like from your side of the veil?”. Jakob replied, “what veil? I can see you clearly, well, as clearly as I can usually. “ “How many fingers am I holding up,” Beat asked. Jakob replied immediately, “four”.


Beat was well and truly awestruck. This seemed like alien technology, only the kind that humanity doesn’t ever need to know about. The odds of it being abused are guaranteed. This should not exist. “What was that, Beat?”, Jakob asked, powering off the device and removing the fabric from his head. “Did you say this shouldn’t exist?”


“Was I thinking out loud? Forgive me. I just don’t know what to think of this. The implications. My mind can’t manage all the possibilities. First, the optical camouflage, and now this seems light years beyond even that. It really is unbelievable; I have no other way to describe it.” Beat said, awestruck. “I don’t even know if I want to start asking how it works. I feel like I have seen a devil’s plaything.”
 
Jakob came back to the couch and sat next to Beat, as he rolled up the fabric and placed it back in his bag, along with the controller. “Indeed,” Jakob said, “it is a double-edged sword. To me, it was curiosity at the highest imaginable level. I never asked if I should have created this. I asked how I could. The pursuit of that answer absolutely consumed me. During early development, nothing worked more than once. This would die, or that would burn up, or the fabric had imperfections. One night, I had a dream, and the answer came to me in that dream, although… the dream was more of a nightmare. I was being chased, by something, and it got close enough that I could feel the hot breath on my neck before I woke up, drenched in sweat. Seconds before waking up, in my dream, I stopped and turned, and the thing chasing me passed through me, like a spirit. The whole ordeal made me rethink the solution.” Jakob gently coughed, and took the last big sip of his whiskey. He then continued.


“Spirit. The idea stuck like glue. What do we know of spirits? They were once in this world, exited, and returned in some form. The problem was dimensional. If they presumably exist in a parallel dimension, crossing over into ours, can we also cross into theirs, however briefly? Ultimately, the answer became yes, and how the tech really works. My head didn’t vanish beneath the fabric. My head…was shifting rapidly between dimensions. That’s why there was no heat signature.”


Again, Beat was having a hard time taking it all in. Now Jakob was telling him about nightmares, spirits, and other dimensions? The proof was all there. Even if Jakob was making up stories about how the tech worked, there was no denying that it absolutely did work, even when faced with mild scrutiny. No smoke and mirrors. The real deal. Even if Jakob had gamed the test by handing Beat a customized monocular, Beat’s own eyes didn’t lie, and he didn’t think such a demonstration, just for him, would have been a prank. It was, for all intents and purposes, black magic, and it gave him the creeps even knowing it existed.


“Jakob, do you believe in possession,” Beat asked, “because this all sounds like madness, but the proof is indisputable. You did this all, alone?”. Jakob’s tone darkened somewhat. “What are you implying, Beat, that a demon flew into my ear one day and told me the answers? That I made a devil’s bargain to realize my dreams? Ridiculous.”, he replied.


Beat said, slowly, “but is it so ridiculous? We have all heard about divine intervention, but what about demonic intervention? You were at a turning point during development, then after this nightmare of yours, it all seemed to work out. You suddenly had inspiration, a new approach, and like magic, you did it.”. “I’m not sure I like your tone, Beat. Is it really so ominous, to create something like this?”, Jakob asked. “In the hands of the right people, it could save countless lives. It could bring joy and magic back to this world. I had the best intentions…yet…I was not blind to what the world would do with this. Why do you think I kept it a secret for so long?”


Beat lit another match for his cigar, and puffed it back to life, as Jakob sat quietly and stared into the fireplace. He was deep in thought. Yes, it was dangerous, but it could be incredibly useful, like any other tool. It was also magnitudes more dangerous if misused. It must remain secret, if it must exist. Not even Splicer could know. Beat looked up from his cigar, directly at Jakob and said, “I want in.” Jakob raised his eyebrows, lowered them, grinned, and nodded his head yes.

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Snooping (part one)

Edward woke up shortly after his alarm. His head felt a little heavier than normal, which he expected by this point. At least he could feel, and he felt a tiny kindling of rage start a campfire about this time each morning. It was motivating, and he needed it to see this thing through.


The thing. It was all that mattered anymore. He made contact with an old Golden Gaia dropout and met for lunch. Over lunch, he and Jose discussed that day’s events, as best they could recall. Everyone remembered the lights going out, the emergency red lights going on, and the carnage that followed. Jose was lucky that day. Not only was he unarmed, he was in charge of the actors and they agreed that Jose wouldn’t be given a gun; he might scare them, or worse. It was a GG secret that nobody had ammunition. It forced the actors into the illusion of a terror cell, which they maintained by being convinced that they were armed with live guns.


“What about the footage?”, Edward asked. “Footage. See, that’s weird. I know I was recording. I even did a test clip to check all the settings, and played it back to be sure. But later, the clip was corrupted, along with the clip for the broadcast. My comms device never plays games like that.”, Jose replied. “Did you ever take it to a recovery shop, to see if they could do anything to restore the clips?”, Edward queried. “Nah. Kept the corrupted files just in case it was a temporary condition, but I’ve never been able to watch them.”, Jose said. “Isn’t it kinda coincidental that everyone else, including me, ended up with corrupt data from that event?”, Edward wondered aloud. “Now that you mention it,” Jose began, “yeah, it’s a little too coincidental. We all got wiped. But by what, or why? Those little shadow things running around removing limbs? They came out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere, but they had to be there in the hotel to begin with. I’ll bet they never left. If we could get ahold of one…”.

That was the first step, right there. Revisit the hotel and look for any indications of the Shadows from that day. It had been years, and there’s a good chance they’re long gone, but if they were…installed…then they may still be there, or newer units in their places. Edward would have to discreetly snoop around the nooks and crannies of the hotel and he’d need to be ignorable or get permission first. That would be the easy part.
Edward and Jose shook hands and parted ways, and Edward jumped a Jerry Cab to the hotel. It was still in operation and fairly central to the city, so he didn’t need to give directions to the Jerry Cab, which was always a pain in the neck. They were remotely piloted by people in India, and he could never decipher their accents, let alone attempt a conversation with them. If he couldn’t get the Jerry to take him somewhere in 2 words or less, he just got out and walked.

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Wired (part three)

The fabric slowly began to fade away, as the surface briefly reflected the flaming fireplace. It was transforming and shifting light from any angle, shimmering and vanishing. Seconds felt like minutes, and Beat couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. This was actual, real, optical camouflage fabric, which could have been woven into anything. The longer he stared the less he saw, to the point that he even forgot Jakob’s whiskey glass hidden beneath the fabric. It was utterly and truly invisible by this point, obscuring anything beneath it and in direct contact with it. All he saw was the top of the table and nothing more.

“Blyat,” Beat uttered. He couldn’t find the words to express his disbelief. Jakob had actually done it, and he had kept it all to himself. Not a single other person on earth knew about this. They couldn’t. Beat gazed upon true danger, and yet, there was nothing to see.

Jakob was grinning ear to ear. He knew the magnitude of what Beat was witnessing. He only wished he could witness his success all over again, without any of the pressure. “And now, for my next trick,” Jakob whispered, as he removed the silken connectors from the fabric, “behold.” He placed one strand on his left sleeve, and another on the right. From the neck down, Jakob disappeared. Beat instinctively lunged for Jakob, trying to catch his floating head, knocking over his own bourbon glass in the process. As the glass rolled behind him across the floor, Beat stopped short of actually grabbing Jakob, as his rational mind caught up with reality. Jakob laughed to the point of a short coughing fit, and as the tears streamed down his cheeks, he belted out, “I got you, Beat! I got you good. You should have seen yourself. The only thing wrong here is the material, and maybe the battery life, but a change here and there…” The fabric across the table faded back into view and so did Jakob’s jacket shortly afterwards. Ta da, indeed. It was quite the magic trick.

Beat stammered, “how could you keep such a secret for so long, across 3 wives, surely someone would have mentioned it to someone else at some point in the past.” Jakob replied, “That was the easy part. What does it look like, powered off? Any old piece of fabric. I could have left this lying around the house for years and who would know different? I never made it a big deal, so it never became anything uncommon. It also happens to be fairly unbelievable, and I hadn’t really perfected it until after my 3rd wife passed. That left me with a lot of time, and a lot of privacy.” Beat nodded his head slowly, soaking in the clever genius before him. This still left him with a nagging sense of doubt. If this was the only man in the world that created this technology, and nobody was any wiser, was Jakob the invisible man? Was he meeting with the Bowler Man in the footage? Something felt off.


Jakob placed the fabric back in his briefcase, took another sip out of his glass, then retrieved another item from the bag. “This, I believe, is the pinnacle of my work,” Jakob said, as he unrolled another sheet of fabric. This fabric seemed different; it had a very geometric texture on the surface, like millions of triangles, edge to edge. “Relax, Beat, this one needs electricity, but not much. You’ve already made your blood sacrifice,” he teased, as he retrieved a different control blob from his bag. This one was greenish-white, similar in color to glow-in-the-dark plastic; long and cylindrical, with two obvious buttons on top. “Do you happen to own a monocular with night vision? Eh, never mind, I brought mine. Here, take it,” Jakob said, as he handed the device to Beat.

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Wired (part two)

Jakob replied, “To put it simply, yes. On a small scale, it could have been a very useful technology. Everything from children’s toys, to magicians, even for aesthetic purposes like hiding an unsightly gate on the path leading up to a country estate. The applications were nearly limitless. Who doesn’t want something to disappear, at some point? Although, as my work progressed further from theory and closer to prototyping, I noticed a sea of benefactors forming on one side, and adversaries on another. The pressure was building. Warhawks were lining up, taking notes for soldier augmentations and vehicles. With them, came the defense contractors, tempting me with lucrative deals of fame and fortune. All of them, harpies, singing me onto the rocks.” Jakob took a deep breath and sighed before adding, “I am a simple man of simple tastes. I have dedicated my life to science and engineering, and it has treated me well. However, I could not bear the weight of completing my research on the subject. Our government couldn’t adequately protect me from an enemy, if one were to infiltrate my circles, so I tore it all down. That ended my career. As you know, the same men who came to me with dreams of treasure, instantly blacklisted me afterwards.” Jakob and Beat spent a few quiet seconds listening to the fireplace crackle, as Beat lit his cigar with a wooden match. “Forgive my rudeness, Jakob. I have not offered you a drink, as I sit here and enjoy this bourbon. Would you like something?”, Beat asked. Jakob, lost somewhere in the hypnotic flames flickering before him, took a moment to speak up. “I shouldn’t. But in these years, and in your company, I feel obligated. I’d like some whiskey, on the rocks. Just enough to wet my teeth. Funny how something as fundamental as spit in your own mouth recedes with age.”
 
Beat stood up and made his way over to a crystal decanter and some sparkling crystal glasses, finely cut with a row of diamonds around the circumference of the middle of the glass. He placed a large ball of ice directly in the glass and covered it with a few fingers of whiskey. “Not too much,” Jakob reminded him as he poured. Beat chuckled and walked back to Jakob, bending slightly at the waist to meet Jakob’s trembling hand with the drink. “Thank you,” Jakob said, as he carefully took a sip and paused to enjoy the vapors on his tongue. “This is a very good whiskey; my mouth is watering for the next drink. Extraordinary”, he said as he took another sip, a little longer this time, really savoring the flavor. Beat chuckled again, and chimed in. “I’m glad you appreciate it,” Beat said, before working on his bourbon glass a little himself. This amused Jakob, who was already beginning to relax. Beat didn’t have an angle here. He wasn’t trying to get the man drunk to pry his secrets out of him. It wasn’t that kind of friendship. There was a mutual respect between them. Slowly, deliberately, Jakob examined the glass as he turned it in his hand, held up to the fire light. He was considering something.
“Beat, on a scale of one to ten, how easily can we discuss private things, here?”, Jakob asked. Beat knew what was coming next. The worst part about holding on to old secrets was the ceaseless desire to share them with someone you really knew and trusted. Beat had worked under Jakob before; he had never known Jakob as a young man, but as possibly the smartest man he had ever met regardless of age. He caught on to the suggestion. “Jakob, old friend, the devil couldn’t hear you in my home. I have taken so many precautions. This place is a ten out of ten, maybe an eleven. Considering the nature of my work, you can see why.”

This was enough for Jakob; he trusted Beat and if Beat said it was private, there was no doubt. “I would expect nothing less of an investigator. Perhaps now we can discuss the solution,” Jakob said as he laid his half-empty glass on a coaster before reaching down to his briefcase. He produced a rolled-up cylinder of fabric from the bag, along with a small handheld device that was black and shapeless. He unrolled the cylinder flat across the table, and extended two silky strands from the device, attaching a strand to each edge of the fabric. One on the far left corner, the other on the far right. Beat watched the process with breathless anticipation. Jakob spoke up. “The culmination of all my work, all worlds combined. But I need a power source to complete the magic trick. A drop of blood will do.” “A drop of blood?”, Beat asked incredulously. “Yes. I have a tool for such a task that retracts into the control lump. Lend me your thumb”, replied Jakob. He moved a hidden switch on the shapeless lump, revealing a sharp, short triangle, with a small ring around its base to collect the ‘energy’. Beat complied, pressing his thumb onto the sharp pyramid hard enough to break the skin, supplying a few drops before the mechanism snapped shut, so as not to leak any blood. “Good, that should do”, Jakob said, before flipping another hidden switch on the lump, revealing another mechanism. A singular, pitch black button. Featureless and unremarkable. As Jakob pressed the button, he let out a quiet ta-da, to match the magic unfolding.

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Wired (part one)

Infinite Beat was back at his home office desk, rolling a fat Cuban cigar between his thumb and index finger, checking it for defects. He carefully considered the texture, the grain, and ran the length of it under his nose for a good whiff. Quality. Maybe even perfection. These days, they weren’t hard to come by; many things changed after the war. But this was a pre-war cigar, one he had stashed away for years. Beat had been saving it for a special occasion, and that occasion was today.

There was a gentle knock at his door. He was expecting company. Rising to cross the threshold, he sat a glass of bourbon next to the ashtray as he proceeded to the door. He paused momentarily as he looked up at the orthodox cross above the door frame. It’s time, he muttered under his breath, as he unlocked and opened the door. There, standing barely over 5 feet tall, was a frail-looking, bent man with coke bottle glasses, a pocket watch, a wide smile, and a beat-up leather briefcase in his left hand. He silently shuffled through the doorway and into Beat’s cottage. “Sit anywhere you’d like, old friend. I’ll follow you,” Beat said, as the old man picked out a comfortable-looking spot near the fireplace, which was already lit. Light from the flames danced across the wall as Beat cast a shadow, sitting between the fireplace and the octogenarian. “I’m glad you could make it. I don’t imagine you get out much these days,” began Beat, “it’s good to see you.” The man smiled, cleared his throat briefly, and spoke up. “It’s no trouble. They all thought I’d be dead by now, or died years ago, like a forgotten celebrity that goes into seclusion. But you know… somehow, I keep on going. Maybe through spite, maybe unfinished business. No man chooses to leave the stage before his scene ends, and my scene continues. Nobody, including myself, expected me to outlive 3 wives.”

Beat eyed the old man intently before taking another sip of the bourbon and setting it down quietly. “Listen to me, pontificating like any other old fool. You asked me to come discuss a problem, not wax poetic about one’s twilight years,” the old man said, before clearing his throat again. It was clear that he wasn’t long for this world, but some fire burned behind his eyes, borne from the spark of genius. Beat was face to face with the man that was believed to have cracked the code that unlocked biogenic power sources. He may also have found a way to integrate nanomachines with living tissue, feeding on fractions of energy from cellular mitochondria. All this invention, this discovery, and yet, he refused to use any of it himself.

Beat leaned back a little and crossed his legs as he began his unavoidably long question. “The problem. Yes. It is more of a working theory at this point, and my understanding is that, at one point in your life, you had worked with very similar concepts. However, rumor had it, you stopped short of the goal and never created the prototype. Nobody knew why, and you have always been avoidant on the topic, refusing to elaborate further after destroying your documentation on the subject. Volumes. You were the foremost expert on…” when Beat was suddenly interrupted by Jakob.
 
“Optical camouflage. Yes. I did study it, mostly on a blackboard. Lots of equations, scribblings trying to mimic the secrets of nature. But I did stop short. Not for the reasons most would expect”, Jakob replied before removing his glasses to clean the lenses with a carefully folded handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He continued. “You see, our history on this planet has been spent essentially reverse engineering what nature has already done well. Nuclear energy, not much different than our own sun. Centuries are filled with these things, millions of man-hours poured into some of them. Each time, man was convinced that there was a problem to solve, and the solutions were waiting to be discovered, created, implemented. War. Farming. Industry. Always a means to an end. Although, occasionally, man has been so eager to solve the problem, he didn’t stop to think if he should.”
Beat had another sip of bourbon before his reply. “Da, the contradiction of science. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Countless examples, truly. Bioweapons, advanced warfare, terrifying weaponry that could poison humanity for millennia. Tonight, we are discussing evasion. What man hid in the shadows that could roam freely in the light? It wouldn’t be necessary. To what ends, for what purpose…in those answers, the concerns lie. Was this an issue during your research, Jakob?”

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Aftermath (part two)

The evac arrived after Dec had fished the van’s keys out of the crew’s pockets and made sure they fit the one in the parking lot. It was theirs all right. One of the evac crew volunteered to drive it to a disposal facility not far from Sheep’s house. That made room for one more person on the big evac quad and freed up the tow line to take Dec’s quad somewhere else. The storm was letting up now, and petering out with just some distant thunder and cloud to cloud lightning. Res was beginning to come around and was not too thrilled with having a tampon shoved up her nose. “I guess it’s practical but a little embarrassing,” she quipped. “Aw, plenty of boxers have dealt with it. Better than bleeding and hey, I even left the string on for ya so you don’t have to touch it to remove it.”, Dec replied wryly. Res poked at her cheek, which was starting to warm up, and pressed the bag of half melted dumplings to her face. Sheep had changed into some fresh clothes for the journey and loaded the crew’s duffle bag with some belongings. Nobody was sure how long he’d have to be away from home, so he took a little bit of everything with him. Clean socks, underwear, a toothbrush, deodorant, and a little bottle of soy sauce, just in case. “You guys go ahead and board the quad. I’m gonna check in with Mr. Clean real quick.”, Dec said, as he motioned towards the door.

He unmasked the other two men and took pictures of their faces with his comms, for identification. The cleaning crew was already busy, looking for anything unusual and cleaning up blood splatter wherever it had landed. Dec noticed a flat, dime-sized disc on the floor near the couch, and picked it up to get a better look. It was a 9mm pistol round, with a polymer jacket; self-defense ammo. It had obviously been fired from a gun and hit something hard and flat, deforming on impact, then falling to the ground. “Damn, Res, remind me to never piss you off”, Dec thought, as he realized what must have happened.
 
“Mr. Clean, there’s gunshot residue in this area. Be sure and get that too,” he said to the cleaning crew. Dec called his team lead again, tapping the comms to send him the photos of the ‘snatch and grab’ guys for identification, and letting him know that one of the Splicer analysts got a shot off on them before Dec was on scene. “Didn’t do much good, all of the guys were armored up, level 3. Probably just upset whoever got hit, which… well, we’ll debrief soon.”, Dec said. His lead instructed him to evac to location 242 immediately and bring his captive with him. Jackson was still taped to the kitchen chair and still unconscious, so Dec cut him out of the chair, fastened his wrists with the nylon handcuffs, and threw him over his shoulder. Back to the elevator then outside to the quad, where Res and Sheep were waiting, looking like they were half-dead from this ordeal. Sheep protested bringing Jackson aboard. “Dec, do you really have to bring that guy? Why not just ‘have an accident’ and leave him with the disposal team?”, Sheep whined. Dec stopped dead in his tracks, and stared Sheep directly in the face. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”, Dec growled. “This poor bastard probably knows everything we want to know, and he’s lucky to be alive.”, Dec said. Res scoffed, “Well, I wouldn’t miss the guy.”

The quad pilot lifted off after confirming the destination, 242. He found Dec’s toasted quad nearby and maneuvered the tow line onto the vehicle. With Dec’s damaged quad in tow, the pilot hit a button for autonomous flight which told Dec’s quad to power up and maintain altitude. The pilot’s tow quad would do all the maneuvering but it limited their speed.

They were headed towards 242 at a steady pace. It was a safehouse, about 30 miles out, close to the harbor. Everyone sat quietly during the trip, until they heard a “hmmpf mmmpf” from Jackson, who was just waking up and probably in some pain from his shoulder. Nobody even bothered to look in his direction except for Dec, who glanced at him just to make sure he was still immobilized and strapped in. It was a short flight to the harbor, and the pilot tapped a few buttons to bring Dec’s quad to rest so they could land and disembark. “On your feet, now.” Dec commanded Jackson, after unstrapping him from his seat. Jackson complied, and Res kicked him in the shin as she started to exit the quad. “Oops, sorry.”, she said, walking out toward the harbor house. The pilot stayed seated and hit a switch to close the gullwing doors on the tow quad after everyone was out and Dec slapped the roof twice. Dec made a motion with his arms, like turning a huge wrench, and pointed at his quad. The pilot nodded, and both quads ascended together, as he left the site and towed Dec’s quad to the service hangar.

Sheep, Res, Dec, and Jackson all formed an informal single-file line and headed into the safehouse. The door was already unlocked, and it was solid steel, opening inward with a shove. Sheep noticed the thickness and weight of the door, and Dec glanced over his shoulder and said, “you won’t open this door for anybody, for sure. It’s the kind that keeps the bad guys out.”. They wandered into the drab and dusty living room and all picked out a place to sit. Res just wanted to sleep for about a day. “Don’t get too comfortable,” Dec announced, “because when my team lead gets here, we’re moving.”.

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Cheapdog (part seven)

As the door opened, Dec saw the second man standing in the background, weapon aimed directly at the door. Armed men. Armor. The stakes just went up. Dec thought back to the white van in the parking lot. This was a snatch and grab crew. Their weapons might not even have bullets. At least, not their big guns. Too much noise for a job like this.

 “I dunno, like, 50 credits for the pizza, and then, like, uhmmm, maybe 10 credits for the tip, or like, more if you’re feeling generous,” Dec said. “Hang on,” replied the gruff man, before closing the door and fishing through his pockets for the credits. He came up short, and turned to the other two, showing 40 credits in his outstretched hand for them to chip in. The second man made up the difference, and gruff returned to the door. He unchained the lock, and opened the door further.

As he extended his left hand with the credits, he saw Dec standing there, with no pizza. “What the hell? Who the fuck are you, and why are you soaking wet?”, gruff said. Dec replied, “a neighbor, coming to see what all the noise was. I live downstairs.” “Unlikely,” the gruff man said, “get your ass in here. Hands up, slick.”

Dec obeyed, and placed both hands behind his head as he slowly stepped through the doorway. Three men, all armored, looked to be level 3 soft armor. His sidearm wouldn’t have helped anyway, just pissed them off. Sheep was cuffed and hooded, and Res was laying on the floor with a pretty nasty bruise on one cheek and a bleeding nose. He counted in his head, estimating the time before backup showed up, and he planned to be alive after the cavalry arrived. The gruff man motioned to the second man. “Check him out,” he said, as the second man approached him for a pat down. “Easy big fella,” he said, and after patting him down, finding nothing, he said, “now show me your hands.”

Dec set his jaw, and lowered his hands to his sides, both fists clenched tightly. “I don’t like guns, guys. Especially if they’re pointed at me; really makes me nervous.”, Dec said. “Well, that’s too bad, princess. You came to the wrong place at the wrong time. You’d probably be smart to just, I dunno, turn around and leave. Or, you can stay here and add to the body count. Don’t care either way,” gruff said, “your move.”

“I have a better idea,” Dec replied, “how about you guys put down your guns, and I’ll beat all three of you with my bare hands? Or, I can keep stalling, and more friends will show up, then it’ll be a real party.” Jackson chuckled. A three on one fight? No problem. The second man looked at the gruff man for the next step. It was dawning on the gruff man that this guy wasn’t bluffing. He recognized one of the tattoos, snaking its way up his arm, and he knew only the most elite soldiers were allowed to get that design. Still, they had the advantage. “What could one unarmed vet do against three men?”, he thought, “these guys are usually drunk or pilled up to their eyeballs.”

Gruff motioned to the second man to lay down his weapon, as he grinned and got into a fighting stance. Jackson sat his gun on the couch and looked back at gruff. “One more thing,” gruff said to Dec, “show me your palms.”

Dec extended his left fist, palm up, and opened his hand. Nothing. As Dec extended his right fist, palm down, he squeezed. Hard. A brief, electrostatic crackle filled the air around him as three rare-earth magnets, tucked between his fingers, facing gruff, launched at supersonic speed. Before he could even blink, gruff’s body armor had been pierced on both sides by the magnets, leaving three bleeding vertical slits behind. It was a critical wound, and he knew it. “Kill him,” he coughed, as he clutched at his chest and fell to the floor. Dec dove to the right, spit more magnets into his right hand as he fell, and launched a second barrage at Jackson, blasting him in the right shoulder as Jackson was reaching for the gun on the couch, spinning him around violently. Outside the window, somewhere close, an Archer 1500 small drone platform fired its arrow. Glass from the open window shattered as instantly, the second man caught a 2-inch square railgun slug to the chest which punched straight through his back and chest, dropping him like a bag of potatoes. Dec got up and rushed Jackson, tackling him and knocking him out as he was driven into the wall. Res, dazed from the hit to the face, raised her head a little and said “Dec?”, before falling unconscious.

Dec breathed a sigh of relief. They would have killed her.

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Cheapdog (part six)

As Dec approached the dilapidated building, he was honestly surprised that anyone lived there. All those windows, but not many lights on inside. It was halfway abandoned, or looked that way. He slowed his pace to a jog, briefly examining the parking lot for anything suspicious. Nobody was out milling around in this weather, and the most suspicious vehicle he saw was a windowless, white van. It looked new. He checked his comms again and the single-eyed pyramid icon had a number floating above it. 37. The estimated time for backup was 37 more seconds. He couldn’t wait.

He kicked open the lobby doors, and one fell off its hinges and crashed to the floor as he kept moving. “So much for stealth, but this storm is good cover,” Dec thought, checking the coordinates on the comms again to see if anything had changed. He slapped the elevator button, and to his surprise, the doors snapped open. Nobody was inside the waiting car as he charged in and literally punched the number 5. The doors closed just as quickly as they had opened, with a snap, and he was heading up, fast.

The gruff man retrieved two more items from the bag, then turned to Sheep first. “Say ahh,” he said, before shoving a gag into Sheep’s mouth, securing it with duct tape, and pulling the fabric bag over his head. “Comfy? Good.” Next, he approached Res. “Your turn, darlin’,” he said, but Res, stinging from the backhand, spat in his eye instead. “Fuck you. FUCK YOU!”, she yelled at the gruff man, who was grimacing and wiping the spit from his eye. “Jackson, you got any hard feelings left about this one?”, he said, as he turned to face Jackson. Res felt her heart was going to explode now, it was all fight and no flight, and she had no business provoking them further. She just wanted to be out of this whole mess, yet her body seemed to have a mind of its own. “HELP MEEEE!”, she screamed, before Jackson flipped his rifle around and smashed her in the face with the butt stock. She felt her knees buckle from the impact and collapsed to the floor. This was it.

As Dec exited the elevator, he heard a scream, then a thump. “Goddamn it, am I too late?”, he thought, as he walked quickly but quietly to the source of the sound. Glancing at the comms, he saw a number 23 over the triangle icon. He would have to act alone, and he would have to stall. As he approached the door, the comms flashed, indicating this was the place. He knocked gently. No response. He knocked a little harder, and the men inside all pivoted to face the door. They looked at each other briefly, silently deciding who would answer, before the gruff man called out, “Who’s there?”. Dec replied flatly, “pizza”. Gruff slowly approached the door, which had no peep hole, and put an ear to the door, before saying, “You got the wrong place. We didn’t order pizza.” Jackson and the second man trained their guns on the door, anticipating the next move. “Uhhm, the box says 5223 Skyline Drive, unit 512? I’m pretty sure this is yours,” Dec said, “because it’s…like…the only address like this.”

The gruff man was starting to get annoyed. If it was a pizza man, he wasn’t going away. At least, not without a tip. He removed his ballistic mask, laid his weapon behind the door, and unlocked the door, except for a little, weak safety chain. He turned to the others, making a shhh motion with one finger over his lips. He cracked the door open a few inches, the length of the chain, and looked through the gap. “Listen, buddy, I’m telling ya, we didn’t order a pizza. What do you want, money? If it’ll make you go away, I’ll give you a few credits. What’s the total?”, he said.

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Cheapdog (part five)

There was plenty of tension in the air, and Sheep had never been so nervous in his life. They were buying the ruse, but for how long? He had to double-down. “I’ll consider disarming it when I can relax again, and I can’t relax with you goons here. Who the hell are you, and what do you want?”, barked Sheepdog. The gruff man spoke up again; he must have been the leader. “Hey, hey… no reason to be nervous here. We’re all disarmed. A client just needed some answers, and it was suggested that you may not want to give those answers so easily to strangers. We have our own questions. Let’s be civilized here. No. Rash. Moves.”.

They were buying the act. Especially the team lead. His voice had the crust of war and Sheep imagined that he had actually seen explosions like the one he was threatening, and didn’t want to repeat that, ever. He replied, “Vague lies. I want a name.” “Let’s just call him, T-Rex. That’s all we know. You see, you don’t exactly hire a team like this with a listed name. The order goes in, the target is loaded, credits transfer, we show up,” said the gruff man, in a matter-of-fact way. “This ain’t personal, man.”

“You still haven’t told me why you’re here,” Sheep said, “and I’m getting tired of holding this button down.” A few drops of sweat were forming on his brow, and his hand was getting visibly fatigued, shaking a little while he held the joystick button. The gruff man replied again. “Listen, we’re tired of being here too. We were paid to get some info about some kind of video footage. They said you saw something that you weren’t supposed to see. I guess the guy hiding in that footage didn’t appreciate you snooping around. We weren’t gonna hurt you. Not much. Just enough to extract that information, and discourage you from snooping around.”

Res was still balled up behind the couch, desperately thinking of a way out of this. She could take out one, maybe two of these guys, but only if they were off-guard and slower than her. They had the advantage of seeing the room; she could only imagine who was where; there wasn’t even a mirror she could look at from her location. Sheep couldn’t keep this up all night. The longer this went on, the less they would believe him, even though right now, he had them singing like birds.

Dec believed in himself. He never doubted for a second that he could outrun his own estimate. The device estimated he was 60 seconds from the target, and closing fast. Definitely a setback, but not enough time to think about what he was running into. The target looked like a multi-residential unit, and the coordinates suggested she was on the 5th floor. Elevator or stairs? It was a coin-toss, he would decide on arrival. He was also mostly disarmed, which might be a problem, although how big of a problem would be determined on site. As he chugged along, he only seemed to run faster; he felt exhilarated going all out, despite getting soaked from the relentless downpour. Memories of running towards danger during the war mingled in his head. He was born for situations like this; charging headlong into danger, not knowing the odds. Hang in there, Res. I’m coming.

The sweating wasn’t isolated to Sheep’s brow. His palms and everything else were getting involved. Nervous response, nothing he could do to stop it. The gruff man said, “I think we’ve played fair here. You know who sent us and what we want. How about you relax a little. We can all relax now. Nobody has to die.” As the word DIE hung in the air, suddenly, Sheep lost his grip on the joystick. It plummeted to the floor, along with the rest of the cord attached to it, including the end that plugged in to the Atari. Two of the men immediately squatted and covered their ears, bracing for the massive explosion, convinced that the dead man’s switch was real. The gruff man didn’t move an inch. “I fuckin knew it. You were bluffing the whole time. Boys, arm up!”, he yelled, and you could hear the vengeance in his voice. However this was going to go, things had escalated now. The other two men grabbed their guns by the door and drew a bead on Sheep. “Jackson, check the other rooms,” he ordered, and Jackson began searching the rest of the place. Sheep looked defeated and threw both hands in the air as he was ordered to his knees.

The gruff man stepped around behind him and forcefully grabbed one arm before zipping half of a plastic cuff around his wrist, yanking his other arm down to apply the second. “Now we’re gonna find out how much you know, after we take a little trip together,” he said. Jackson announced the other rooms were clear, but upon returning to the living room, he spotted Res crouched behind the couch. “Well ain’t that sweet, he’s got company. Stand up and identify yourself,” Jackson commanded her. More out of panic than anything else, Res howled, drew her firearm and got one shot off on Jackson as she stood up. It hit him square in the chest, and Jackson let out a quiet oof as the bullet hit his armor, flattened out, and fell to the floor. “She’s a spicy one,” said the second man, “now drop your little toy there, lady.”

Res did as he said, there was no point in resisting any further. She was lucky to be alive at that point, and unlike Sheep, she didn’t plan to gamble anymore. Her comms buzzed again, pointlessly. It was a hopeless situation for her and Sheep. The second man approached her and did a quick pat down, making sure she didn’t have any more surprises for them. Jackson grunted, “I think you might have left a bruise. Here, let’s trade.” He backhanded her across the cheek, the reinforced Kevlar knuckles of his gloves making contact with her cheekbone. She winced in pain. The gruff man strolled over to Res with another set of plastic cuffs. “You know the drill. Let’s go easy.” Res relented and slowly placed her wrists together behind her back. It was over. She and Sheep were leaving with these guys whether they liked it or not. The gruff man retrieved his gun and two head covers from his duffle bag. He was taking them away hostage-style. Jackson and the second man had their weapons aimed at Sheep and Res.

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Cheapdog (part two)

“Res, we haven’t had much time to catch up lately. A lot has happened on my end over the past few days. With the approval of our manager, I made a trip on-site to where the missing footage was recorded.” He knitted his fingers together and leaned back a little as Res took the bait. “I wore a serviceman disguise and brought a full spectrum toolkit. None of the surveillance systems in that area were susceptible to tampering on any wireless spectrum. So I probed further, worked out a little deal with the doorman to get a look at the entry logs.”

He continued. “Yes, you chastised me about that before, but at the time, it was my only option. I was in a tight spot and so close to the answer, or so I thought. I guess I didn’t recognize what I was seeing. A man, dressed head to toe in a white, patterned suit. The design was very specific, like mosaic tiles pasted across the entire surface. But the kicker was a matching mask, and I only caught a glimpse of his wrist color because he was so well covered. He stepped out briefly, met with someone outside, then returned to the elevator. I’m pretty sure I saw the invisible man, and in the log book, he was listed as the Relaxed Man. The doorman signed him back in after he returned from his brief exit outside.” The rain began gently falling as the familiar smell of petrichor wafted through the window.

Res looked at Sheep as though he had made a confession. Her eyes widened as she realized just how close he was getting to this. She stammered, “Sh-Sheepdog, you saw the invisible man? Oh fuck. Oh no. No no no. That’s it Sheep, that’s the end. Don’t say another word about this to our manager or to anyone. Promise me. Both of our asses are on the line here, and they’re even closer to the line now. Once the agents review the footage of you in that lobby, it’s only a matter of time before it comes back to you.”

“But that’s the beauty of it, Res. Sure, these agents could pull some splices, and there would be me with the doorman, but still, the invisible man is invisible. To surveillance. They’d never see us in the same room together. The log book was so vague, that if you weren’t there to witness him, you wouldn’t be able to connect the dots. I don’t even think the doorman knows who he is. The log entries I saw mentioning the Relaxed Man were very few. Either he doesn’t live there, or he stays there very rarely. Correlation was hard enough with me being there on-site, and I just happened to be there when he was. Any other day of the week would have been a crapshoot, probably turning up nothing.”

Sheep was pleased with himself, as though he was bragging and talking Res into this whole mess. Res wanted nothing to do with it. She wanted to spend more time with Dec, and that door was left open, but not the kind of time a third visit on this topic would bring. She respected him, she liked him, and here was Sheep, both causing this contact with Dec and escalating it. It was paradoxical. It was also tempting. If what Sheep was saying was true, they really were close to finding out exactly who was in that missing footage. They just didn’t know the mechanism behind why he wasn’t appearing on camera. This wasn’t some primitive disguise to fool one or two cameras. There was literally no footage of the invisible man anywhere, just a few spliced clips where someone should have been. Suddenly, Res had a message on her comms device; she heard it ping from her back pocket. “Go ahead and answer it,” Sheep said.

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Once again, it was Genesis 15. Res’ heart skipped a beat as she began to realize the implication here. Not only did she have agents to worry about, but she had Sheepdog pursuing the invisible man, and Genesis 15 was somewhat aware of what Sheep had been doing. Why was 15 bugging her, of all people, unless…maybe…it wasn’t as uncontrolled and wild as she believed. The quote could also apply to Genesis 15 himself. She often forgot that this AI was just code roaming the net, not an actual person, and she wasn’t interested in all the debates regarding which AI seemed like artificial life. Her mental compromise was to just treat them as individuals. They did exist, not by the strict definition of human existence, but they did live, on some level. That part she never argued. She formulated a reply.


There are a few invisible men; in this world, and on the wire. I know the difference.


She hit send and waited. Sheep started to look impatient, as if he had somewhere to go. “Sheep, it’s 15. He’s been bugging me with cryptic messages about invisible men and ghosts lately. It’s not like we even know each other. Maybe he does this to everyone and I keep taking the bait. I don’t sense any malice here, but I can’t rule it out”, Res said, “does he do this to you?”. Sheep just shrugged and pulled out his device to check it. No new messages, certainly not from 15. “Not really. I think he’s into you.”, Sheep replied. They both grinned as Res’ device pinged a reply.


You’ve got company. I’ll see what I can do, but you and Sheep need to act fast.


Before Res could even reply to the message, there were three heavy knocks at the door. BAM BAM BAM. “Open up, it’s the police!”, a voice yelled from the hall. Res and Sheep exchanged terrified looks as if to say, I dare you to open it. They knew the rules. Keep quiet and wait it out. A closed door is a closed door with no surprises.

Sheep began nervously rocking in his chair, and they heard the sound of something small and metallic scraping across the door handle outside. Are they picking the goddamn lock? It can’t be the police. Res checked her hip. Her sidearm was there, well-hidden and ready to strike as fast as she could present it. She silently mouthed to Sheep, I’m going behind the couch, and quietly climbed over the back. Another knock at the door. “We know you’re in there, and we’re coming in one way or another!”, the voice said again. They could hear a few more feet shuffling also. This person was not alone. Res peeked over the top of the couch, and looked towards the door, where the doorknob was being tested, turned left and right as the scraping sounds continued. “Agents?”, Sheep whispered to Res, and this time Res shrugged. No idea. Her comms pinged again. 15 again.

It doesn’t look like they’re going to give up. Don’t panic. Be cool, like Fifteen cool.

“Sure”, Res thought, “super easy to be cool when you’re floating around in cyberspace.”