Axiom

by Gentry Race

  The lip of the side wall, where the ground curved up to meet the atmosphere, glowed as stray solar wind caused a green aurora.

  The daydream faded as she tried to rise to her feet, her mind reeling from the events that had just transpired. She felt resistance, and she looked down to see half of each leg encased in the wall before her. She had absorbed into building!

  “What?” she thought aloud. There must have been an error when I returned to normal.

  She wondered if her condition had worsened. For Annulusians, that type of glitch was unheard of. Solari blamed her consciousness because it was flawed.

  Arching her upper half, she looked around to see if the men had followed her. She noticed a side paneling not too far away on the wall she could reach. Maybe she could rewrite the nanites.

  A distant crack of twigs cut through the air like a knife. Solari was stricken with fear when she looked up to see a band of men with headsets making their way toward her. She must hurry.

  She hacked the panel, drawing up the doorway that would free her legs. An outline plus an extruded compartment should work, she thought. But where will I go if I free myself?

  The men drew closer, scanning for any movement with the flashlights that were attached to mag guns.

  “I located her!” one man yelled. The group sprinted to their fixed target.

  Solari, hard pressed and anxiously trying to keep her lines straight to connect, drew the extruding lines through the building to the other side and created a tunnel.

  She pressed execute as the building wall punched out. She pulled her legs free and quickly got on all fours as she scrambled to climb inside. Just as she made her way through, a man grabbed hold of her feet and pulled. She kicked him hard, causing him to lose his grip as the wall returned to normal and closed on his human flesh.

  Solari looked hypnotically at the pinched off arm, twitching slightly from the electrical signals fading as the limb lay in a puddle of blood. The sight of the red liquid was unfamiliar to her. She killed a human.

  She needed help and needed to run. She looked around the room and saw beakers, test tubes, and bunson burners. She must have been in one of the chemical labs.

  Pounding sounds came from just outside the wall as the men tried to break through. She brought herself to her feet and bolted out of the room. Where could she go?

  She thought of the one person who could help… Arthur. Solari closed her eyes just as the men burst through the wall and triggered her erratum once again. In the blink of an eye, she was gone and out of their grasp.

  25

  The air felt colder than usual to Jantzen as he stepped onto the walkway of the Upper Cruft behind the intake center. A horde of Mods off to the side carried black zipped-up bags. They were body bags with canary yellow print that read Earth. Jantzen assumed those were the bodies of the lucky ones who made the Naturalization.

  He looked around to see no one waited for him. He promised Boson his body no matter what, and the fixer was nowhere to be found. Jantzen walked away from the processing station and down a narrow bridge. He thought of Elise and how she could help him now.

  She is all I have, he thought.

  “Hey there, sailor,” a voice rang out from down the walkway.

  Jess stood there, her cybernetic hips cocked coquettishly. Jantzen was relieved to see her at first but then remembered the bar.

  “You got nerve showing up now,” Jantzen said.

  “What do ya mean, sweetie?” she asked as she approached.

  “The bar you left me at? You don’t wanna know what I woke up to,” Jantzen said as he wrapped his hands around her and kissed her.

  “Sorry about that. Mr. Boson said—”

  “You were watching me,” Jantzen said with new realization.

  “Of course, silly,” Jess said, rubbing her hands on Jantzen’s in a caressing manner. “Besides, how could I not?”

  Jantzen felt conflicted. How much of that whole process was a set up? At the adjacent walkway he heard footsteps approaching. Jantzen turned and saw a man in a long black trench coat approaching. It was Boson.

  “Your flesh was guaranteed, Mr. Cruz!” yelled Boson from afar.

  Jantzen’s eyes widened as Jess grabbed him by the neck and slammed him onto the panel walkway. He fought as Jess locked her metal legs around him, but they were too strong. The hydraulic motors screamed with pressure.

  “Take it easy on him, Jess. No damage!” Boson called out.

  He caught a glance of Boson getting closer as he felt the wires running along an inset of her legs. He panicked, pulling on the wires as hard as he could. Sparks of electricity shot out, and fluid spouted from Jess’s hamstring like a whale breaching topside.

  Jantzen pulled apart the servos and landed a clean punch to Jess’s face, knocking her back. He shot to his feet just in time for Boson to ram Jantzen in the stomach with his bulky metal mass. Jantzen struggled with his attacker’s artificial strength. He went for his usual move of eye gouging but felt only cold metal blocks for eyes.

  Jantzen and Boson rolled over the skyway, fumbling together and hitting the lower level walkway. Pain screamed through Jantzen’s body while Boson stood as if unaffected due to all the cyber-Modded enhancements.

  “Damn cyborgs!” Jantzen yelled. “You’ll never be human.”

  “I’m going easy on you. I need your body, Mr Cruz,” Boson said, pointing to the metal blocks for eyes.

  Jantzen then realized Boson had no plans to sell his body at all. He needed it for himself. Boson charged at Jantzen, and with a quick movement, Jantzen dropped to the ground. He felt a gust of motion above him. Cautiously, he turned and saw Boson was missing. His heart leaped with hope that his luck had changed.

  He stood and stepped to the edge of the walkway to see that Boson had fallen into the Lower Dregs.

  The Exit Depot of Annulus Station was tucked into the belly of the Upper Cruft, granting easy access for rejected humans and Mods to hop on a leaving freighter ship.

  Like Enconn terminal, Jantzen had to wait in line to be pre-screened for travel. Leaving Annulus was a less cumbersome process by far. However, that day, the lines were plentiful.

  Jantzen stepped forward, keeping ample distance from the person in front and behind him. No more lines, he thought. He noticed on the ancient ticker board above tiny white lettering that read Restriction Travel Advisory. Jantzen sized the line up again, checking to see how long he would have to wait until he could talk to an agent.

  He wondered if Boson survived that fall or if Jess was on her way to intercept him at the depot. There wasn’t really any option for a human on Annulus unless you wanted to live in the Dregs. And if that was it, Jantzen would take his chances back on Earth.

  “Tickets!” the agent called out, walking down the line. The agent checked each ticket, scanning info and moving onto the next. “Ticket?” the agent asked.

  Jantzen handed him the voucher the intake center had given him earlier. “What’s the travel restriction?”

  The agent looked at his ticket first, and it almost seemed it was to ignore him until he saw Jantzen’s country of origin. “Sorry, son. Cuba is on an embargo with the station.”

  “What do you mean?” Jantzen asked.

  “Ya can’t go home. Well, at least right now,” the agent said, handing him back the ticket.

  “What happened?”

  “There was an attack at the terminal. Seems an nPrint was responsible,” the agent explained.

  “An nPrint? But they only are on Annulus,” Jantzen said.

  “Not anymore,” the agent replied before walking off to the next patron.

  Aden lied in a gurney housed in a stark light blue room with medic bots scanning over his motionless body. Vital sounds bleeped more frantically as Chellis entered the room with two other men. His second skin was synched with the charts.

  Chellis’s disfigurement was on full display with the bones of his jaw exposed, connecting to open wounds that met with an abnormal
ly large backside. He watched curiously, tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Aden. I never meant for this.”

  “We can't guarantee he will return from the comatose state,” one man said from behind.

  “Enter him,” Chellis said.

  “Sir?”

  “Enter him!” Chellis exclaimed.

  “But the next of kin stated—”

  Chellis locked eyes with the other man. “I don’t care what he said. I asked Aden to come here. He will not be a vegetable because of me,” Chellis remorsefully explained.

  “As you wish,” the doctor said.

  The two doctors typed instructions into their arm bands, signaling the Med Bots to start a different task. The room changed from a medic bay to what looked like a scanning machine, tubular in shape and the perfect size for a human.

  Chellis watched from afar, trying to empathize with what Aden was going through. Chellis remembered when he was Naturalized and reflected on the cherished moment.

  Naturalization of the consciousness was a relatively painless process. Tasks of plotting the active neural network and DNA sequencing was to be taken. This would drive the nanites to do their work and bridge Aden back to the physical, storing his data safely.

  He watched nano-sized printer bots assemble one by one like a chain reaction being fed by the White Matter that Annulus created in its belly. The formation was Aden’s new body, perfect and undisturbed.

  Chellis knew there was a one percent chance Aden’s soul could reject the Naturalization process. For some, the mind refused to live on. Chellis looked at his second skin, watching the doctors navigate where Aden’s consciousness had been placed in the wetwork.

  “This will be the first non-consensual Naturalization,” one doctor said.

  The memSpace was a strange place. The scenery could change at any moment depending on each consciousness. Chellis thought of it as his personal heaven in a way.

  In the digital projection, Chellis could see a familiar face form. Warm eyes, bright skin, and perfect features. It was Aden.

  26

  Arthur Biggleston peered through a telescope, looking at Earth above. He watched the tiny lights twinkle from the atmospheric distortion. He swung his spying glass just ten degrees westward of the lights, watching the large smoke plumes from large fires on Earth billow up and carry along the jet stream across the globe.

  “Damn riots are getting worse down there,” Arthur mumbled to himself, taking a swig from his favorite flask.

  Elizabeth was not far, sorting the latest in geological samples she had collected from the day earlier. She watched Arthur meticulously jot down the positions of the fire storms ravaging Earth, making sure not to spill the latest batch of homemade hooch.

  “Arthur, quit watching those silly storms,” she called to him.

  As always, Arthur was reluctant to turn away from his work, but this time, Elizabeth saw Arthur’s head perk up much quicker than normal. He saw the small frame of a brown-haired woman walking from the distance once again. It was Solari.

  They briefly looked at one another before rushing to meet her. Neither one thought they would ever see her again. As they approached, Solari put a hand up as she looked back over her shoulders.

  “Inside. We need to talk, but we need to get inside first.”

  Arthur’s face turned serious as he, too, looked around, making sure no one had followed Solari. He placed a gentle hand on her back as they quickly made their way inside.

  “What happened?” Elizabeth asked as she tended to Solari with a warm blanket.

  “They are after me…” Solari said, faintly.

  “Who ? Where’s Elise?” Arthur asked.

  “Chellis. I don’t know how to stop him. I found Elise, but…”

  “But what, my dear?” Arthur asked, worry evident in his voice.

  Solari’s eyes were vacant as she stared at the wall. “They killed her.”

  Arthur did not know what she meant exactly since nPrints just regenerate. “You mean she reset?”

  “No, she’s is dead. She… attacked Annulus Tower,” Solari continued. “With some kind of… dirty bomb.”

  “Dirty bomb?” Arthur said surprised, looking at Elizabeth. “What was it composed of?”

  “Made with some sticky black pitch. NPrints were disfigured badly, and a human was put in a coma when he was impaled with the shrapnel.”

  “A human?” Elizabeth asked.

  “He was so young, a neopract from Earth,” Solari explained.

  “What happened to this pitch?” Arthur asked thoughtfully.

  “Officers were analyzing it. They tortured Elise!” Solari said, breaking into tears. She couldn’t hold back the facade of her emotions any longer. “Dad, I don’t know what to do. Elise is gone.”

  “It's okay, Sol,” Elizabeth said, hugging her.

  “I have an erratum,” Solari said, sulking in her tears. “It got me here, but I can’t control it.”

  Arthur hugged Solari and wiped her tears away. “Sol, come with me. I’m afraid this might be all my fault.”

  Arthur’s laboratory door was in the back, next to the sanitary pod Solari had played next to as a child. Arthur would spend nights working down there only to end in a clamor, leaving him covered in black soot. Her sister and her were not allowed down there for that reason.

  He lifted the blend of composited material that made up the hatch door, and Solari followed him to a staircase that spiraled down into the cool dirt of the Far Side. Along the walls hung obsolete trinkets along with printed articles from Earth. The ‘periodicals’ were stagnant and sparked Solari’s curiosity since she had not seen stationary media for a long time.

  She stopped on a step, glimpsing an article framed on the wall that read Enconn’s Man of The Year. Arthur was young and smiling while holding a lifeless mannequin-like doll.

  “You were famous?” Solari asked him.

  Arthur was at the base of his laboratory, rummaging through the contents of a shelf. “No, just a pawn,” he said, turning his attention back to the clutter.

  “Why have you brought me down here?” Solari asked.

  Arthur turned around holding a brown satchel with coarse fur.

  “What is it?”

  “Azoth.”

  “You have it still?”

  Arthur realized she thought he was talking about the satchel. “Yes, it is the antithesis of Annulus. You remember the dark times? All humans on the Far Side could do was ‘pan,’ trying to extract what white matter could from the crust. But this is what allowed me to frack into the crust.”

  Solari touched the satchel. “I remember.”

  Arthur took caution, pulling it away. “Sol, you must be careful with your body. This will necrotize your nanites.”

  Realization struck her. “This is what Elise used to create the device?”

  “I am sure of it, but I don’t know how she could weaponize it without destroying the very device itself.”

  Solari watched Arthur walk over to his workbench and pull out an old glass vile capped with a cork. He poured some of the liquid Azoth into the vile and capped it.

  “Shouldn’t it destroy that glass?” Solari asked.

  “The glass is not made of nanites,” Arthur said, holding the small vile up, handing her it. “It is from Earth.”

  A loud crash from upstairs sent panic rushing through them, and their eyes widened. Without hesitation, they turned and ran up the stairs. Arthur tried to keep up with Solari, but his leg held him back.

  They burst through the door to see the window had been smashed. The trail of glass led to the kitchen where they met a large beast-like creature with no mouth and tiny slits for eyes. Its arms seemed bound together, connected with a long skin strap that weighted down behind its neck.

  “Meson!” the creature cried.

  “Get back,” Solari said, taking guard.

  “What is it Sol?” Arthur asked.

  Elizabeth pushed between her husband and adopted da
ughter, armed with a large musket fitted with many of Arthur’s enhancements.

  “Supper!” Elizabeth said, pumping two rounds into the chest of the creature.

  The creature slid back, clawing through the floor and into the dirt. Its eyes opened just enough to show a deep black headiness to them. The wounds repaired within seconds before it lunged for Solari.

  Arthur nPrinted a long, thin sword in his hand, holding with it with grace. He slashed the beast, cleaving down the trapezium muscle only to see the beast’s flesh enclose over it. With a jutting motion, the creature jerked and pulled the sword free. It stepped forward and threw Arthur back.

  Solari ducked as the creature lunged at her, hitting the armoire by the door. She chaotically broke into tiny bits, swirling around and disorientating the beast. Arthur and Elizabeth could not believe their eyes. Solari had experienced a full erratum of some kind.

  Solari reassembled behind the creature. She jumped on its back and wrapped her arms around its neck, pulling back as hard as she could. “Use the vile!” she yelled to Arthur.

  Arthur snapped back, recovering quickly from what he’d seen Solari do. He rushed to load the musket with the vile but paused as he locked eyes with her. “But what if it gets you?”

  “DO IT!” Solari ordered, fighting the creature from breaking free.

  Glass, cork, and the Azoth spewed from the old musket shotgun towards Solari and the creature. Instinctively, Solari broke up into tiny bits as the creature took a dose of the viscous black liquid to the face.

  The creature screamed in pain as its face melted away. It reached up with its hands, the Azoth spreading to those and searing off chunks of flesh to the floor.

  Solari startled Arthur and Elizabeth as she solidified behind them. They watched the creature as it tried to cry for Meson one more time, falling weak and dead on the ground.

  27

  Arthur inspected the creature’s body with an upbeat curiosity. “Very intriguing. It seems to have created a crystalized neural network of some kind inside its head.”