Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  Orin held up a hand. “No, no, ya’ll cain’t leave like ‘at.” He got up off his chair, grabbed some wrap and proceeded to portion out a take-away dinner for his guest. He handed the food over, saying, “Now, look, ya’ll prolly don’t know it, but Ah got mah men on t’other side of these here walls, waitin’ to shoot you in y’head.”

  Griffin held on to the meat with a clumsy hand. “Oh, that’s common sense, sa. Guy in a Suit o’ armor wrasslin’ a giant bull to death in the middle of a slaughterhouse’s worth of dead cow? Shit, Ah’d o’ just shot first, sure enough.”

  Orin nodded, once. The kid was from Trinityspace, was one of them deadly Enforcers, but he seemed right enough. “All right then.” He told Griffin the access codes for his truck. “Ah got more’n one an’ we’re a long way away from damn near everything out here. The cattle make a lot o’ noise an’ neighbors don’t much appreciate it.”

  At the door, Griffin turned. “Ah wasn’t jokin’ about hittin’ the gummint up fer some money, sa. They owe you. An’ thanks fer th’ride, much appreciated.”

  Orin sat back down. A few seconds later, Sa Cromwell, head of Orin Diversified Farms security, walked in, staring intently at his proteus.

  “Sa Orin, I’ve just received word that military personnel will be here shortly. They’re looking for … I assume they’re looking for the man who just left. What should we do?”

  Orin didn't intend to tell the Army where young Griffin had gotten himself to, but he did plan on doing as suggested. “Well, Cromwell, Ah reckon we should git ourselves a tally o’ how much meat the greenskins done bought for themselves when they shot that bullet at m’cows.” He paused for a minute. “An’ mayhap an estimate on how much it’d cost to get that hole filled in. Whatch'all think?”

  Cromwell nodded. “Ah do think that mahgt be a good idea, sa.”

  The Chairwoman Loses Her Shit Once and For All

  Bing bong bing

  “Ladies and gentlemen, sis and sas, this is your Chairwoman speaking. Due to recent events, this world, our world, Hospitalis, is now under Martial Law. Failure to abide by the rules will result in immediate death. Here are some of the more important ones for you to all remember:

  No one may gather in groups of more than two. No one may loiter in any one area for more than fifteen minutes. No one may question my authority. No one may question the authority of the OverCommander. No one may enter into their proteii a list of words –words to follow- for any purposes whatsoever, whether it be for your own personal notes or an announcement on your personal prote space.

  Curfew is in effect. Any man, woman, child, or small dog seen on the streets after 6pm is in violation of Martial Law Rule #216. You must remain in your homes, for your own safety, until 6am the next morning. Failure to abide by curfew will fill your remaining moments with extreme pain and regret.

  All businesses that rely on large groups of people will be closed until further notice. All businesses that rely on large groups of employees to operate fully will be closed until further notice. All group activities are canceled. Any remaining schools operating with previous Regime permission will close until further notice. The temporary Spaceports will be closed until further notice. Any individuals or groups of individuals waiting to land will be permitted to do so, whereupon they will be held.

  Travel between cities is forbidden. Apologies if you are not currently in the city of your residence. Make haste to your homes, brave citizens of Hospitalis! Make haste to your beds! Attempts to travel after hours will be met with reprisal. Attempts to smuggle items in will be met with airstrikes.

  Contact between planets is forbidden. Attempting to communicate with other planets will result in permanent deactivation of an individual’s prote access and ‘LINK accounts will be deleted. You will then be killed for treason.

  Speaking outright against Martial Law in any of the previously acceptable methods of rebellion will result in not only your death but also the deaths of your entire family and network of friends. You will be terminated last so that you might appreciate the totality of your actions.

  Never forget. We live in a Regime, ladies and gentlemen, sis and sas. I am the Chairwoman. My word is law. You live and breathe, laugh and love at my discretion.

  In all, there are four hundred and fifty rules and regulations to abide by during this time. I encourage you, my loyal citizens, to undertake the effort to familiarize yourself with them all. Four hundred forty-six of them bring swift death. Four of them will require more time to carry out fully.

  For staunch supporters of the Game, fear not. The Game is still permitted and will remain under way. Sadly, the only mass gathering I am prepared to accept at this time is for the Final Game, which is some days away still.

  In fairly short time, sis and sas, there will be a God soldier on every corner of every street in every city. They are there for the protection of the Regime. Do not approach them. Do not talk to them. Many of them may not be able to count to two and may simply choose to reduce the possible number of people they are attempting to count to the smallest and most easily digestible number, which is zero. There will be no repercussions for ‘accidental death’.

  Ladies and gentlemen, sis and sas, the Chair thanks you for your time and urges you to remember that you live and die by my whim. This message will repeat every fifteen minutes for the next two hours…

  Chapter Two

  You’ve Gotta Be Kidding Me

  “Wow.” Garth said as he fiddled with the screen of his main. Ute was currently driving the old Portsider’s van with something approaching reckless abandon. “That sounded … serious.”

  Ute wished he could relay the deadly serious nature of Martial Law on a world like Hospitalis. Never once in the entire reign of the Latelian Regime had any Chair called for such stringent measures of control, and there had been times in the past where it would’ve been so much easier. In five thousand years, the people of Hospitalis had essentially lived as free and easy as any world in Trinityspace. They had never truly felt the yoke of dictatorship. There was no telling what was going to happen. Not now.

  “It is, Garth. Incredibly serious.” Ute took a left. “Where am I headed?”

  “I …” Garth opened his mouth. He could tell the main had been messed with. Naoko had –sometime during his escapade with the Guillfoyle Building- fiddled with the guts. The Sheet bearing Huey’s modifications to the main, the baffle-sphere and its coding had been accessed. He whapped the side of the cumbersome machine with the heel of his hand. The monitor flickered, and then words –plus a countdown- appeared.

  Reformatting system, please wait

  “Huh.” Garth tilted his head from side to side before sighing. Ute had already started asking questions about the absolute importance he’d placed on retrieving the main from the Ultra Suite and soon enough he was going to start wondering why it was working without being plugged in.

  Saying ‘because it’s being powered by an AI sphere from Trinityspace, one that might be batshit insane’ would fill his newest companion with all kinds of consternation. Garth desperately hoped Naoko had finished the mods before being kidnapped, and not for his own, selfish reasons. If Huey wasn’t fixed all the way …

  “Sa? We can’t drive around Central all day.” Ute silenced the Chairwoman’s Martial Law announcement. “If I recall correctly, you mentioned something about having a very short time with which to save the world.”

  Garth stared at the countdown for a few more seconds before climbing over the guns to get into the passenger seat. There wasn’t time to worry about what was going inside the main. If they failed to save the world, a crazy AI would be the absolute last of their worries. “You’re right. Hey, at least we ain’t violating the law by hangin’ out together, am I right?”

  Ute considered the time. “If I read things properly, sa, we will be well past curfew when we attempt to save Hospitalis from what you have assured me will be a singularly bad explosion. Experience tells me we will need many mor
e men.”

  Pursing his lips, Garth fiddled with the van’s cheap ‘LINK controls. “That,” he admitted slowly, “is probably not going to happen, sa. Argh! Fuck this van is shit. I should’ve never stolen it.”

  Herrig’s face wavered into view on the van’s small screen. He looked worn out. “Hello, Garth. Did you blow up the Palazzo?”

  “Haha. No.” Garth jerked a thumb at Ute. “Herrig, Ute, Ute, Herrig. Herrig, Ute is my … um. Security specialist. Herrig pretends he’s not the most important person in my Conglomerate.”

  Blushing a bit at the compliment, Herrig nodded cordially. “Did he blow up the Palazzo?”

  Ute chuckled. “This man has been with you a fair while, yes, sa?”

  “You guys are both fucking hilarious.” Garth glowered for a few seconds, letting Ute and Herrig get things out of their system. When they both seemed like they were ready, he resumed. “And besides, this time it was two other dudes that went Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. That being said …”

  Herrig nodded wisely. “I shall get Sa Herman on it straight away, sa.” Herrig started typing on his prote, chubby fingers flying.

  “Herman?” Ute asked.

  “Legal team.” Garth’s subconscious tried to draw him back to Huey in the back of the van, but that threatened to remind him about Naoko, and that exposed him to lethal amounts of viperous rage. What he wanted to do, what he really wanted and needed to do, was rush out and start blowing shit up until someone told him where she’d been taken.

  When Herrig finished issuing orders to Herman Lanshell, Garth smiled in an effort to put his Number One at ease. It didn’t work, especially because by now Herrig knew well enough that when he was smiling, awful things were happening or were about to happen. “Now, don’t … don’t give me that look, pal, but yeah, it totally … yeah. Anyways. Random question. Do we, uh, own any high-resolution satellites?”

  “No.” They owned an awful lot of stuff, though; along with the list of names Garth had flashed him the day before, there’d been an even longer list of ‘starter equipment’ destined for use at each of the companies under the UltraMegaDynamaTron aegis. They had equipment for mining, deep-sea drilling, scientific research into a dozen areas, farming, construction … everything. But no satellites.

  Furthermore, there was no such thing as a random question where one Garth Nickels was concerned.

  “Can… can we get one?” Garth was reminded of when he’d first been introduced to the sophistication of satellite imagery on Hospitalis; that moment with his first prote, when he could’ve rendered his own path through Port City from a satellite somewhere overhead had blown him away. He really wanted to see what was going on wherever the duronium pile was before he and Ute stormed in to save the day. If things had gone badly, they could wind up being beaned in the head with strange and otherworldly quarks.

  That would be terrible.

  “How soon?” Herrig didn’t like the palpable sense of urgency emanating from the two men; it was painfully obvious that they were in the middle of something desperate, even though they were doing their best to pretend otherwise.

  Garth raised an eyebrow. “Five minutes?” He looked at Ute, who shrugged.

  “For the moment,” Ute explained, “I’m just a driver, Garth. I’ve got no real clue about any of this. You could,” he added suddenly, “be entirely wrong and I’ve just ruined my entire career.”

  “Five minutes.” Garth reiterated firmly. “Yeah. Super quick.”

  “It is lucky for you, sa,” Herrig replied blandly, polishing his glasses on a sleeve, “that we have an entire branch of staff dedicated to this sort of thing now.”

  “True, true.” Garth sat there, wondering how best to broach the next few things he needed, and in an abrupt hurry.

  Herrig sighed. He was going to have to man up and cut right to the bone. His employer was clearly distraught and having a difficult time. “Sa, are we looking at something similar to the Spaceport?”

  “Um.” Garth dwindled off for a moment, preoccupied with Naoko’s scent. “Worse? Like, well. No. Yeah. Totally way lots worse.”

  Herrig put his glasses back on. “Well, then, sa, I suggest you stop fucking around and tell me what it is you need. Begging your pardon, sa, for the cursing.”

  Garth whooped and hollered, slapping Ute on the shoulder. “You hear that? That is what I am fucking talking about! I’ve been trying to get this guy to kick me in the ass since I landed. Shit, if I’d known all it’d take was the threat of global catastrophe, I’d’ve done it a long damn time ago.”

  Herrig flushed. “Indeed. List, sa?”

  “Oh. Haha. Right.” Garth tapped a lip. “Well, first, would robots violate the curfew and crowd specifications of Martial Law?”

  “One second.”

  While Herrig read through the particulars of the Chairwoman’s Martial Law Proclamation, an indicator flashed across the screen; one of his employees had acquired a high-res satellite directly above Central City. He loved his team. They were just … just the best. Access codes scrolled by. Garth looked at Herrig. The man was still busy.

  “Can you open a port on your prote, please, sa?” Garth asked. The van’s ‘LINK was already straining under the effort of keeping a real-time video chat up and running; asking it to stream a satellite feed was courting disaster.

  Ute did so automatically, driving one-handed down the road smoothly. “Where should we go, sa?”

  “Um.” Garth grabbed the open port through the van’s avatars and tasked it to access the satellite. The passenger side screen split into two, throwing Herrig’s bald head into a smaller but still useful screen. Ragged edges of static appeared on the feed. Garth grimaced. Even with Ute’s prote, the stolen vehicle was at its limit. If they’d taken Ashok’s old car, they could’ve done all this and more with no problems. “Pull over into that parking lot over there.”

  Ute did as he was commanded, wondering precisely what the plan was. Garth’s goal –that of capping the dangerously unstable metal- was all good and well, but so far, the count of live human beings directly involved in engineering that goal numbered two. He’d been in his fair share of disasters down through the long years, and knew that for your world-shaking, global event, typically the number of people involved in the process should be in the neighborhood of several thousand.

  He mused. Two. Two men, one of extraordinary talents and himself, a man with … well, his own range of skills and abilities. Ute saw instinctively where Garth was headed and appreciated the elegance of the solution, but wanted to know what they’d be doing to further their goals. Herrig went to speak, so he focused.

  Garth watched both Herrig and the satellite screen –which said ‘acquiring data’- nervously. “Well?”

  “There is no mention of robots in any of the pertinent passages, sa.” Herrig dearly wanted to ask what kind of ‘global catastrophe’ they were looking at but didn’t for one very important reason; he only wanted to know out of a sick curiosity. Actually knowing would probably kick him right out of the new Herrig persona he’d suddenly discovered and right into the corner, weeping and crying like a little girl. “But I should warn you. Robotics on Hospitalis fell out of favor nearly a century ago.”

  “Around about the time the God Army stopped going to war.” Garth licked his teeth. He needed to brush them. “I’d pay a shiny penny to know why that was.” He felt Ute stiffen beside him but ignored it. “Anyways, yeah, I get it. They’ll be old robots. That’s cool.”

  “What sort of robot do you need?” Herrig started feeding data to the Acquisitions Branch of UltraMegaDynamaTron. “And in what quantities?”

  Ute looked out the window. Citizens were hurrying madly to finish whatever had them on the streets, even though they had plenty of time left. He knew why, though; many citizens on Hospitalis had only ever seen a God soldier on the Screens or during Games. Fear of meeting them in the flesh and duronium had them at wit’s end. Even now, God soldiers were lumbering slowly through the stre
ets. Soon, there really would be one of the hulks on every corner on every street in every city. And then, unless their commanding officers were extremely adept at programing the old protes everyone in the Army were using at the moment, blood would run in those same streets before the sun set. Onesies just didn’t have it in them to follow complex orders unless they had higher level assistance at all times.

  “Construction robots.” Garth answered definitively. “Capable of lifting extremely heavy weights but adept enough to work with extreme precision on small things. And a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Maybe all of the robots?” Images of a robot army trickled through the persistent worries and he smiled. Doans would lose her shit upon hearing her ‘personal’ Public Enemy Numero Uno had himself a robo-army.

  Still, it was nice to dream.

  “I presume you will need these quickly, as well? And undoubtedly shipped somewhere.” Herrig parsed Garth’s needs off into instructions that would make sense to a Latelian and waited; the dark-haired man was staring raptly at another portion of the Screen, no doubt at whatever he’d needed a satellite for in the first place.

  Ute pointed at the real-time display with a quavering finger. “Is that building glowing, sa?”

  Garth deflated. Things weren’t totally out of control. If the structure hadn’t phased out of existence yet, then there was still a little bit of time left before things got truly hairy. “Yeah.”