Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  “Language.” Naoko stated firmly. The equations to steal the most holy of holies of the CyberPriests completed itself. Her laughter rang out. “Oh you fools. Oh you utter, utter fools.”

  Anode looked worriedly at Faraday. “How … how is she doing this?”

  Naoko smiled sweetly as her other hand completed the math to get her free. “You failed to consider my predilection for hacking, George Stevens.”

  Anode blinked and sputtered electronic hash. “What?” That name hadn’t been spoken aloud in thirty thousand years. “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you in the beginning. She was genetically modified at birth to be a technical wunderkind. It was where I came up with the idea of turning her into Savior 2.0. Even prior to her exposure to the extra-dimensionality, it’s highly probable that Naoko Kamagana was the smartest organic being in Trinityspace.”

  “Beyond.” Naoko replied smugly. For all the simplicity of Unreal math, solving for teleportation was a chore.

  Faraday sneered. “It is good to see that a lack of humility is something shared by both our failed Saviors. Regardless. Contact with the extra-dimensionality and Garth N’Chalez himself has obviously had an effect on her.”

  “Make her stay!” Anode shouted in a voice without electric fire. “Make her stay and destroy everything for us!”

  Naoko repeated her sweet smile. “Maybe one day, if I get bored.” Her eyes glittered with Unreal numbers. “But before that can happen, I need to see if I can get this … this … simulation running properly.”

  Faraday felt whatever passed for blood in his body run ice cold. Anode, who apparently was having a difficult time dealing with the fact that Naoko had spoken his real name aloud if the abrupt lack of distortion in his voice was any indication, stepped back. They both looked to the shimmering code that glittered in the air. She was so close. It’d taken them four hundred years and it was taking her four minutes.

  Why hadn’t she just taken the formula from them?

  “Because,” Naoko said as the final numbers slid into place, “it’s funner this way. Fun is something I learned from my dear boyfriend Garth N’Chalez and fun is something I’m going to have making this Unreality run like a proper program should.”

  “I highly fucking doubt that, you stupid bitch.” Erg phased in and beaned her good and proper on the back of the head with a fist that was currently three times normal size; at the end of the battle with Toman, he’d decided to see if he could punch the Enforcer right out of his Suit. No such luck, but luckily, a gigantic fist was just what was needed here.

  A sickening crunch splashed against the walls, but it was too late; as Naoko fell, she scrawled out the final bit needed for teleportation and she was gone.

  Faraday threw up his hands. “I’m going on vacation.”

  Erg looked around the room. “What happened here?”

  “Talk to Anode.” Faraday shouted from the other room. “I am going on vacation.”

  Erg tilted his head at George Stevens. “What happened to you?”

  “She spoke my birth name.” George responded sullenly, looking at his stupid, fleshy hands. “Except there was math in it. She spoke my name and made me mortal. And I think she did something to Faraday.”

  “No,” Faraday snapped irritably, “she didn’t do anything to Faraday. Faraday tried to warn you that we needed to be more careful before turning Savior 2.0 on but you were in a hurry to get to the good part. We’ve been waiting for thirty thousand years. You lot couldn’t wait one more second. I had all kinds of tests to run and protocols to check on. Now she’s out there doing who knows what!”

  Erg commanded his fist to go back to normal. It took a lot of doing. As malleable as they were, commanding their bodies along destructive lines was time consuming. “I beaned her good and proper, Faraday. That much damage mixed with teleportation will result in delayed regeneration. I know what I’m talking about. It’s how Trinity got me. At the very least, we’ll have two or three years. We might not even have to worry at all.”

  “Good. I’m glad. You can round up the others and figure out what to about her and … and … and this.” Faraday gestured angrily at George Stevens, who was occupied in looking down his own pants and being quite happy at what he saw.

  “Where will you be?” Erg asked, wrinkling his nose at the human wreck that used to be Anode221. How were they going to undo that? But Faraday was already gone.

  George Stevens, once named Anode221, passed out. Erg sighed. Sometimes being the arbiters of absolute nothing was a real pain in the ass.

  ***

  Contrary to popular belief, the destruction of so much of Jordan Bishop’s holdings and the disappearance of his key asset, Spur, did not result in the complete and utter dissolution of the mighty machine that was BishopCo.

  The one thing that people forget, would always forget, even when the evidence was all around them, was that certain things, like the earth beneath their feet, like Trinity, Bishop was eternal. After thirty thousand years of growth and progress, there had been moments where BishopCo had dwindled down to a single solar system, only to sprout back up again like a poisonous mushroom.

  When Jordan’s co-conspirators and main detractors –Voss_Uderhell, T/F, others- attempted to seize hold of the presumably dead man’s assets on other worlds in other solar systems, they’d found themselves staring at the assembled might of armies. At the head of army, telepresent from some hitherto unknown fortress, was Ariel Bishop, Jordan’s daughter.

  Ariel was not her father. Never had been. Never would be. BishopCo’s relationship with the Dark Age Cabal and all such clandestine operations was severed. Fees, fines, levies and outright blackmail was handed out to each member of each Conglomerate, great and small, responsible for raiding the gutted corpse that’d once been BishopCo’s terrestrial home.

  At the end, her father had been a madman, driven there by Garth Nickels. Well, Garth Nickels was no more and now she held the reigns of a beast that galloped between Galaxies. Ariel Bishop figured that the relationship between the mysterious ‘caveman’ and BishopCo was well and truly over. There was a standing order for all employees in every installation everywhere; if, for whatever reason Garth Nickels showed up, he was to be treated with courtesy and thanked for his efforts whether what had happened had been intentional or otherwise.

  Then, because Ariel was no fool, he was to be told that he wasn’t allowed near any BishopCo installation. That if he tried to enter a building that building would blow up. That if he tried to steal a spaceship belonging to BishopCo, that vessel wouldn’t make it out of the dock.

  Ariel Bishop had learned from her father’s mistakes. Thirty thousand year old caveman Garth Nickels might very well be, but death and destruction followed the man around like a plague. He was a modern-day Typhoid Mary and Ariel intended to double or even triple her father’s legendary reign as The Bishop.

  Getting involved with Garth Nickels was a bad idea.

  ***

  “You … you … you came.”

  Golden eyes surveyed the dank room festooned with corroded and shoddy equipment with disgust with perhaps a tiny smidgeon of amusement. “Of course I came. I honor all contracts.”

  “It took you … you so long.”

  Golden hands rippled forth from soft amber robes to gesture magisterially to the roof above them. Or, more precisely, the rack and ruin that was above that. “The shattered buildings above our heads are patrolled day and night, night and day by everything from Turing Regulators to Enforcers and all manner of things the good citizens of this planet has never seen before. The … destruction … of BishopCo’s legendary Earth holdings has Trinity most concerned. There were many projects within these walls that skirted and sometimes violated It’s Laws quite flagrantly. Getting past all that took some doing, old friend.”

  “Progress … progress for … progress’ sake.” Bishop said through clenched teeth. “Old … old friend.”

  Andros Medellos bowed briefly
from the waist, allowing as how the sentiment was one he well understood. Why, if he didn’t believe in progress for the sake of progress, then he wouldn’t be known throughout hundreds of Galaxies as ‘the man to see’ when you wanted bizarre and strange things done to you. He resumed speaking, his honey-hued voice filling the dank little room. “It is good to see that the emergency protocols I built into your survival pack worked.”

  Jordan snorted. “Worked, yes. Worked well, no. I have no arms.”

  Andros shrugged. “When you approached me some fifty years ago in search of the type of first aid kit you described to me, you were more concerned about being shot in the back or stabbed or one of those other ridiculous things that people worried about internecine Conglomerate conflicts fear. You were not worried about having your arms blown off by an Enforcer.”

  Jordan clenched his jaws every time he thought about the Enforcer. “I had to have a robot feed me.” The ex-patriarch of the Bishop Conglomerate jerked his chin at a roster of machines at the far end of the room. “Amongst … amongst other things.”

  He hadn’t been so humiliated since the very beginning of his life, when he’d been a suckling babe cradled in his mother’s arms.

  “For a year.” Jordan shouted bitterly. “For a year, catered to by robots with no AI. The horrors I have endured.”

  “Oh, Jordan.” Andros smiled a glittering smile. “Have you never heard that in order to rise, you must first fall? For that is what you intend now, yes? You intend to rise to the very heights of Olympus itself? To exact revenge on Trinity and this … this Garth Nickels?”

  Jordan nodded assiduously, eyes flashing. “Yes, that, and more.”

  Andros stepped forward so his men could enter the room. As the handful of med-techs clustered around his old friend, Andros Medellos, sole genius responsible for the Black Clinics, spoke. “The modifications you wish made have never been successfully completed, Jordan. The changes to your DNA, to the very atomic structure of your being, are … intense. Even if you survive, you may lose your mind. Or be … intellectually diminished. You may live an hour, or a day, or even a week. Others underdoing these procedures have done this much. I have seen men and women unravel into genetic soup before my very eyes. I have seen the regenerative programs go awry in the middle of repair, turning fingers into eyes and eyes into tongues.”

  “I don’t care.” Jordan didn’t flinch as the med-techs bundled him up. After being manhandled by machines, there wasn’t much he couldn’t handle. “I would rather die in the attempt than remain as I am.”

  “It is not too late, Jordan. I can give you back your arms right here and now. I will gladly return the money you paid me so long ago. You can live anywhere, in any style.” Andros said the words, but didn’t mean them; in truth, he wanted to plug Jordan Bishop as full of as many genetic enhancements and alterations as he possibly could. Alas, his own personal code of ethics, as bent and as warped as they may be, required that he make the effort. He might even consider honoring Jordan’s wishes, should he change his mind. “There is no need to take this risk.”

  “No.” Jordan shouted as the med-techs carried him out of the room. “No. I want this. Either I die, or I survive, then I can exact revenge on those who’ve done me wrong. I will be transformed, Andros. With your aid, I will bring terror to the world.”

  Andros smiled at the empty room. “By your wish. Terror you will become.”

  In Between

  Oscar Sabellik wondered, even still, what he’d been thinking. The fire that’d burned inside him, that’d driven him to create the Improbability Device, to … ‘pick’ a destination that didn’t even exist yet … it’d all made so much sense when his mind had been twinned with Garth’s.

  Why, if he wasn’t careful still, Garth’s passions started burning, and Oscar would find himself edging towards the machinery that kept him hurtling through a literal void, fingers twitching to modify this or fiddle with that. It was hair-raising.

  It was at times like that that Oscar wished he’d done something less interesting with his life, like joining the Regime Military Sciences Projects, or, like, sun diving. Diving into the sun. Just as rational as some of the urges he struggled against.

  As Oscar stared gloomily out through the invisible shield protecting him from the inky void that would –at least one day- be filled with Reality 2.0, he thanked Pete that the journey so far had only been roughly half an hour. He’d brought magazines and books and a slew of other time wasters aboard, all loaded onto his proteus and ready to be accessed the moment he got bored.

  There was something … alluring … about the void. Oscar didn’t know how to explain it, but then again, he’d never been very good at explaining anything, had he? Between the stutter and the conflagration of ideas inside him, actually trying to explain anything to anyone outside the halls of academia, well, if ever there’d been a better description of pointless, Oscar’d never seen it.

  Alluring was a good word. At times, it seemed as though the nothing was changing, which, when you got down to it, implied that nothing was becoming something. A subtle shift to the neutral color that was no color, a … a … shift, if you will, here or there suggesting growth. It was always over quickly, leaving Oscar with more questions than answers. He wanted to use the onboard systems, delicate and seriously advanced machinery that he could barely remember creating, to plumb the depths of the nothing that he sailed through, but absolute fear over breaking something and leaving him stranded stayed his hand.

  The Improbability Device used the fabric of Existence as its energy source, and it was separate from the systems that were taking him to the new Reality –or, where the new Reality would possibly show up-… if guidance went down, he’d be trapped on the other side of everything forever.

  Oscar rose from the ‘floor’ and took a few steps. He hated it when his brain did that. It’d happened a few times already. His brain was a traitor, latching on to the grimmest and scariest things it could imagine, and when you were surrounded by Nothing, your brain could go to some very weird places indeed.

  Suddenly and with intense ferocity, a quicksilver illumination sheared through the blankness, forcing everything around Oscar and the Improbability Device into wholly new and never before seen concepts. The Latelian found himself pressed up against the cool, impenetrable shield, hand cupped around his eyes, looking desperately to see what could be seen.

  The blazing quicksilver light was intense, and … sickening. Oscar’s skin felt greasy, which he knew was stupid and impossible because nothing could get through the shields. He continued watching, ever mindful to look away should the light blind him.

  The nothingness that would one day yield a new Existence, a real and proper Sphere to join the other Spheres that already existed, fought back, mysteriously organizing itself into an envelope. As Oscar watched, mouth agape, eyes watering against the painful brilliance of the strobing mercurial illumination, the envelope of absence folded itself around the shabby intrusion. Seams of light appeared for a moment, followed by a quick burst of nova-bright energy, then it was just … Nothing.

  Nothing all over again.

  Oscar took his face away from the shield, lips pursed. He was a voyager on an unknown sea surrounded by unknowable things. Was what he’d seen a natural phenomenon of the Nothing or was it something else? He’d been led to believe that the Improbability Device was a thing that could never be reproduced, that the events leading up to its creation had taken thousands of years to maneuver into place.

  “Matter intrusion.”

  The voice, unexpected in every way, startled Oscar clean out of his wits for a solid minute. He stood there in the middle of his ship, lips working, trying not to pass out from sheer, unadulterated panic.

  “Matter intrusion.” The voice said again, as calmly and as matter-of-factly as before.

  “Impossible.” Oscar said to the machine. “Nothing can penetrate the shields. That’s … their whole purpose.” He looked around, not a little sm
ugly, eager to prove the machines running his Improbable Ship wrong, a purely Latelian action that made him as nerdy as anything.

  The shields flickered briefly with holographic lights, and then, in a seemingly smug counter-move, formed into a map that led Oscar directly to the ‘matter intrusion’.

  “Son of a bitch.” Oscar knelt down, ignoring his popping knees as he struggled into a better position to stare at what’d done the impossible. “Matter intrusion.”

  The Latelian poked the hunk of metal that’d somehow become lodged in the shield with a finger. He made noises with his mouth. Then, remembering his proteus, he ran some preliminary scans.

  “Well, I know what you feel like, but that isn’t possible.” Oscar stared at the readouts. If what he was looking was what he thought it was, the fact that his prote, one of the most advanced of its kind, was telling him that there was nothing there seemed to prove his theory in one fell swoop.

  “Recalibrating shield size. Please wait.”

  Oscar stepped back and watched as the chunk of not-possible metal clatter to the floor ‘floor’. He nudged it with a toe, then picked it up. It had virtually no weight. It looked like duronium, but after his time with Garth N’Chalez, he knew precisely what it was.

  It was a solid chunk of quadronium and there was only one place it could’ve come from, and that wasn’t a good thing to think about.

  Hefting the mysterious prize back and forth, Oscar moved to the workbench to run proper tests with the Improbable Ship’s computers.

  “Matter weakness evident in sample.” The ship said calmly. “Six hours, forty-three minutes before cohesion is restored.”

  Oscar looked down at the lump of metal. “Does that mean it’s malleable right now?”

  “Yes.”

  The Latelian scientist swallowed nervously. He could feel the fire of an idea burning from the spot in his brain that he’d labeled ‘Garth’s Crazy Insane Ideas’ and before he knew what was happening, he was working on creating a proteus.