The Arkhe Principle

by Maxwell Rudolf

  Gungnir landed, rolled, rose up, and jumped towards the gate. As he turned, several hundred raised their rifles at him and started shooting. Only one other way out. He would have to go back to where the MECHA came from... where the towers were positioned... all the way back to the center of the complex and find a way out from there. The way this town was built, the secret of Pop Music had to be there.

  11 Would You Like a zappo-5?

  Domain of King Edward (D.K.E.)

  Year 317

  Day 206

  Having another one of long days that never ended, Rosie's eyes sagged over digi-prints of corrupt coppers involved in pimping out a local group of American girls they'd captured. The sick bastards had used feral sterilizing techniques on them, and after their useful time had expired, they'd be cast out of society and into the ruins to find their way. Two more hours of staring at this garbage. She couldn't wait to confess against them.

  The moment the digi-clock struck shift-change hour, she braved the cold and drove an extra 30 minutes to her native small town of Aylesbury, just outside of Londun proper. She smiled seeing the neon glow of Flapjacks. Finding a safe place to park and paying the meter, she tucked her hands in her pockets and ran across the frozen Plassticrete road and inside the Half Moon Diner.

  "Hey, Rosie. The usual?" Norman asked. His new beard aged him a few years.

  "Please." Her mouth watered as she smelled him frying up her eggs and mixing the garparl juice into the honey sauce. She downed her tea, and relaxed her shoulders. "You look older now."

  "I was bitten picking outside of town and came down with the Yogurts. Had to receive special gene therapy for a few weeks. Lost about 3 years. The doctors said I was lucky. If I didn't get there in time, I would have died." He stacked the blueberry flapjacks on her plate and handed her food over. Her cousin had been bitten by a feral and lost 25 years from his life and died a few weeks later. The aging venom was horrendous to witness for sure.

  "Did you manage to kill it?"

  "Yeah."

  After paying her ticket and making small talk for a few minutes, Rosie strolled to Prime Vids Plus and examined their new release section. A few caught her attention. "Margaret Lucinda IV, Dutchess of Columbia and Heir to the Prime Recycling Corporation." The digi-print's trailer wasn't all that interesting. Whoever had been hired to portray her had a botched facial job and a south South accent that made her sound silly. "War at 40,000 kilometers," a classic claiming better details about what actually happened in the Pre-Times. Her heart skipped after reading the narrator's name—Steven MacArthur. No one had a better voice or so much manliness. "Cthulu's Revenge Part Six," a six-hour long horror movie featuring Sir Dick Davis as Sir Andrew Aeston, and "Velvet Tears," a romance series with horrible acting and great love scenes, rounded out the rest of her selections.

  "I noticed some of these are new. Are they going to play in my Zappo-1?"

  "Why do you still have one of those? I can sell you a Zappo-5 for 90 Edwards which will play everything you have now plus anything coming out for the next three years or your money back. Bring in your old player and I can cut you a deal."

  "That is not cheap. Here," Rosie opened her wallet and produced her badge. "I was thinking more like 70 Edwards and free rentals for a month." She closed and stuffed her wallet back in her purse. "What do you think?"

  "No problem, Inspector. Thank you." The merchant decrypted the vids for 72 hours and packed the rest up. "Good day."

  Feeling pride, she plodded back to her Lionheart, and before she could open the door, a camo T-GR-21 hovered up to her, with its standard over-sized Military Coalition license plate in the back. Each side door opened, and two lieutenants exited followed by a captain. Their badges gave them away as Institute personnel, and Rosie dropped her vids in the snow.

  "Is my son alright?"

  "Yes, ma'am." They approached, hands at their sides.

  Coughing into his hand, the Captain bowed at the neck, his steel framed glass enlarging his sky-blue eyes. "Inspector Rex, do you have a moment? We would like to talk to you, in private. My name is Hallmaster Shoehorn at the 1st Edwardian Military Institute."

  "ID?" Rosie bent and picked up her vids.

  Shoehorn flashed his badge and folded the neo-leather interior showing his ID.

  "What is it? Did something happen to my son?" She picked up her videos and gave them her best death stare.

  "Right this way Inspector, if you do not mind. We would prefer to have this conversation inside our vehicle." Bending her head and peeking inside, another man sat across from the backseat, almost hidden from normal view.

  "How about we go for a drive in my Lionheart 450T instead. You can leave your men here." They got inside and after a few minutes, the interior had warmed up enough for them to unbutton their jackets. She flicked her blinker on and merged into traffic. The Lionheart slid over to the far right lane, merging with traffic at 300km per hour, and entered an automated holding pattern. She let the steering wheel go and rubbed her hands together over the heat vent.

  "Your son is side tutoring a Victoria Tesla, 14 years of age. Cadet Rex's scores are impeccable and his leadership scores, St. George, and history are in the two percent mark for the entire school." He reached in his side jacket pocket, pulled out a bio-mint, and ate it. "His student is the daughter of two infamous enemies of the Kingdom. Remember those suspects involved in the robberies about 12 years back? We did not know we had their child for a long time. Somehow she evaded our usual scans."

  "You have paired my son with the daughter of American terrorists? I ought to have you flogged to death in public. You better start explaining, or I will open your door and eject you."

  "Inspector, this case is flagging Oracle White on some of our terminals. We ran several calculations using our upgraded probability matrix, and the data brought us to you. Do you have any information on this case or can you help us in any way? The relationship between John and Victoria is coming back as a line error," Shoehorn said.

  "I have some. I studied the case a week after it started and followed it until they zeroed it out. If I recall correctly, her father, Phillip Albert Tesla, worked at the Institute as a Commandant. His tenure was cut short for reasons they are not releasing. Is this new data to you?"

  "Yes. We do not have much information on him. She was given to us by the courts because her parents did not show up at the hearing. She did not have any kind of defense. The trial ended poorly for her. She was innocent," he said.

  The bloody courts and the way the rich bought the verdicts. It was enough to make her quit sometimes, but she was thankful for having the rank that made her immune to this kind of thing.

  "Her father put new quantum locks with pass codes on most of the data nodes. Thinking about how he acquired so many makes my head explode. Took us years to find the few ones we have at the station. Easy over 100. There might be more but the way he locked them, we will not know until they are discovered by accident."

  "The Institute did a file purge about four years ago without backing up the armored power generators. So when that big attack hit us and they bombed the grid, we lost everything. That information is not to leave this autocraft." He tapped his foot, but the faster he tapped, the more she was determined to wait. When he stopped, he adjusted his posture and placed his hands on this thighs. She gave him a few more minutes.

  "Is my son in danger? Yes or no?"

  "We need your help in finding out about this case. This is not about your son; it is about justice. I expect your full cooperation in this matter," he said.

  "And I expect yours. If anything happens to him, I will kill you myself. Expect the data soon. Send me updates to my E-Reader at my work account. And they better be accurate."

  She drove him back and after the Hallmaster drove off, Rosie pressed the work button on the auto-driver pad and jacked in her E-Reader. The node rejected her password. The techs haven't fixed the port yet. What the hell do they do all day?

  Arriving at
the station and finding her favorite parking space open, she pulled in and ran to the Data Node Station, wanting to escape the freezing chill. A bio-scanner drew a blue laser across her face, and the door slid open. Inside, fortified cabinets held her target's information. She retrieved one of the Sec E-Readers, entered her password, let the internal bio-meter read her vital signs, and snagged a set of Quantum Goggles so she could decrypt the display. Flipping through files, she found her data slot and opened it.

  Victoria Tesla

  Contact Hallmaster Shoehorn at 1st Edwardian Military Discipline Institute

  1-165-1909-4298-862.

  The rest of the entry was blank.

  Frustrated, she brought up Victoria Tesla's name again.

  Victoria Tesla

  Quantum Breakdown Detected (ERROR 3)

  Hell! She reset the unit. She flipped it on and off several times, letting it power up and shutting it down a second later. The unit could have melted inside. The ensuing fine would land her on Debtor's Island after she sold everything she owned.

  She breathed as the screen brought up the main login. Putting it down, she plugged in her Stealth Eraser and scrubbed any sign she had used the device. Rosie reinserted it back into the cabinet tried to find more information using other Sec E-Readers, but the data nodes were blank. Whoever blanked them had erased their trail using something similar to the one she had, only better. She drove back home.

  * * *

  Driving home had allowed her mind to conjure up a message to John neutral enough to not raise anyone's alertness who might be reading it. But it also had to be priority enough that he took it, read it, and acted on it. She sat, stabbed her violet blue quill into the ink bottle, and wrote.

  "Dear John,

  I have discovered some of your father's boxes in the attic. I would like to get you out of school for five days while you look through them.

  There are a lot of exciting vids that I bought from a friend recently. We should watch them when you have time. I have a new Zappo-5.

  Contact me immediately@1-165-14-418-041-843-6719.

  Inspector Mom."

  Once she was done writing the letter, she sealed it up and poured herself a tall glass of Sapphire wine. She took it slow, enjoying the fruity-peppermint aftertaste. Rosie found her digi-box, activated it, and stared at the 3D images of her and Uther, spinning around, both of them laughing about some forgotten joke. Bringing the glass in the air, she said, "To the death of bad men," before draining it down.

  She had drunk a third of the bottle when she found their wedding digi-prints. Uther's olive dress tunic and fashionable jackboots made him taller. She rotated the cube and the next scene digitized The shop owners didn't bother to show her the dress price, but they did produce Uther's father's Edward's Bank card. She chose something with lace. They laughed together; the good times.

  Now on her fifth drink, Rosie fast-forwarded past many of her super private digi-prints she hated when she was drunk. They were about her son. And other unfortunate things. The pregnancy. The birth. She took a few of them outside, sprayed Planks on them, and watched them disappear into the ground.

  She made herself a neo-ham and cheese sandwich and started putting the Zazzo-5 together. Its manual was poorly written and the images didn't match the text. When she was going over the menu, it told her to return to default, but wouldn't let her. The back pages of the manual were filled with what looked like virus code. She gave up in frustration.

  The next day, her head pounded, and she popped her last Next Day pill. She didn't need the headache from the wine. The Files Department opened in an hour, and she took an extra 10 minutes before setting out to save her son.

  12 Do You Have Coupons?!

  Pop Music

  Fighting through town, Gungnir was wrong. There was nothing in the center of town worth mentioning, and after discovering no means of egress in the center of the mayhem, he retreated and sealed himself in behind a thick P-6 door leading off to two sewage tunnels. The stench reeked of dead bio-mass and decay and bled through his armor's filters.

  Asger's brightness illuminated over-sized naked athletic statues carved into the walls with reliefs of gene-fused men and women interspersed between them. Below the faces, the names and dates of the figures of the people immortalized in the sculptures reflected back his spear's light. He wiped the grime off the gothic script and read. Reyansh Alabama Yamamoto-Smith. Not a strong looking man by Saxon standards.

  Gungnir walked closer, wiping filth from the man's face. What kind of a man would be sculpted this way so long ago? He studied his flat nose and narrow eyes, the way his head lurched forward, and pressed on.

  Parts of the eastern wall had been cracked open, and Gungnir pushed Asger gazing inside. Bundles of unfamiliar electronics tugged at his curiosity. Taking a moment, he reached in and disengaged a cable bundle. Something had chewed through the cables. Breaking the seal on his visor, he sniffed at the air hoping for data. Humans, and not far off, but their location was indeterminable in this muck. Another smell, further off—machines using Plank fluid.

  After another ten minutes of trekking down the broken ground, the statues' visages yelled at one another, and the reliefs twisted with forbidden DNA alterations. The artists stopped labeling them, and after another 5 minutes of walking, the faces melted into shapes, and finally into smooth ovals. He chomped down on two more choc stims, savoring the cherry inside. This place needs to be destroyed from the inside out.

  Hearing turbines ahead, he crept up to 2 doors at the end of the tunnel. He listened, testing the handle before opening the right door. Hovering Oracle White orbs lit the room. Piped machines interfaced with massive engines, cranked and steam sputtered out. Plank Oil leaked on the floor, and despite whatever attempt they'd made to clean up, Gungnir observed permanent damage to the floor. He wished he knew a way to bust one of the machines open and take the fluid out, but that would cause the whole thing to melt.

  A woman in her late 30's, a face only seen in the vids with a sharp thin nose, full lips, straight midnight hair, and skin as fair as the Freya Cults women hovered off the ground. Her silver beledi dress blended stars and moons into geometric patterns. She held a P-1 coated manual in her hands; an offering.

  "A translation book. So you don't become lost," she said. Her neutral accent pleased him. The artificial regional accents were never updated.

  He took and opened it, but his eyes never left her. Operating like his Arkhe book, and others he'd found, the interior sheets could be manipulated through embedded applications. Readouts, dials, and gauges filed every page. "Okay." Closing it, he glowered at her. "What is this place called?"

  "Pop Music."

  "Do these tunnels connect to your other locations?" He asked.

  "Yes. If you desire further dialog options, you will wear the sound. Turn to page 30 for more instructions."

  When he flipped to the page 30, a set of orange audiophones whirled on a digi-print. The language, a mix of American and Demonic Tradespeak explained what stations to listen to according to employment, social rank, age, intelligence, and so on. And specific entries explained the accompanying dances associated with various channels, all mandatory and without the slightest deviation.

  "I'm not going to wear those damn things," Gungnir said. "I won't be needing them. This manual has told me enough."

  "Then dialog options are terminated," she vanished.

  * * *

  Maneuvering through the machines, down twisting hallways, climbing over barricades, Gungnir's frustration grew, enraging him, making him want to go full-Úlfheðnar and start breaking things. But a door led him to an office adjoining several other halls and tunnels. Searching yielded nothing other than zeroed E-Readers, dead insects, and yellowed Plasstien.

  But he kicked a potted plant by accident as he turned the corner, and he took to the wall. He rubbed his hand over the leaves. Waxy. Breathing in, trying to identify the species, his nose registered Synth-Lianas. In that condition, it w
ould fetch a thousand metals. If his family's farm could be paid off in part, Hilda's heart condition would improve. Grabbing the side of the pot, he gave a tug and noticed the bottom of it was melted into the ground.

  He pushed ahead, down corridors, human scents filling his senses. The new rooms bright, illuminated by pink glow disks, guided his path to a thundering voice ahead. Still sniffing, the air was flooded by heavy ozone and sterile oxidizers. Useless scent concealers. Gungnir ignored them back at the entrance.

  He snuck closer, and when he got to the corner he smiled, ogling down into a classroom. Sitting at desks, the students wore neon orange jumpsuits and wore their headphones. Their eyes were fixated on a five-meter vid projection on the far side of the wall. The man was bleach-bearded and golden loop earrings dangled from his ears. A jagged septum piercing stabbed through his nose, and his body-tight V-neck shirt spilled out his matted, curly chest hair. Holding the orange audiophones in his hand, he was instructing someone else in the vid on how to use it.

  On the screen, the bearded man grinned, and a reversed rainbow full note pixilated behind him. A close-up shot of the device displayed buttons, and American words flashed across the display. At least they could read. After a side button was clicked, the man hummed out-of key and danced backward, his arms bent at the elbow.

  The students rose and mimicked the dance, their arms flailing, becoming one with the rhythm in their ear. Hovering over the students, teachers, all dressed in silver metallic looking material with wing shoulder pads, walked the students through the video's tutorial.

  Someone shouted behind him, and he spun around. Wearing mat atomic tangerine suits, they drew pistols. "Drop your weapon! You are in thrall to Pop_msk*dncr+1! Where are your headphones?! Do you have coupons?!"