Cyborg Girls

by Jane Brooke

  They made her possible too. Almost unbreakable bones, body parts, those were exceptional. But it was the brain, her brain, Ridnium powered that was remarkable. After all that is what the wars were all about, Ridnium.

  As Krull stares up, straight up, they get lucky for a full moon breaks through the crushing pollution, just for a wink. Its rare glow makes both of them feel human.

  Time for a smoke.

  Krull looks at her and smiles. She appears almost surreal translucent, as her silver reflector clothes layered along her body glint the Ozone back to space. She needed her Skins for even bots get fucked up from the gamma rays and the lingering radiation left over from the Islamic Wars.

  “Sector 34-6. What do you think Silver Girl?”

  Adray turns, smiles, loves when her man calls her Silver Girl.

  “Perhaps Major. Let me recon. Be right back. Love you.”

  Krull chuckles and nods that he loves her. He watches her as she, like some kind of exotic Praying Mantis moves into the fog and falling snow of the alley.

  It’s time for a smoke and why the hell not? Krull takes a pack, stripes a smoke to flames, lowers his face plate, inhales and exhales. The last thing on his mind is lung cancer. Hell, half of the populations, one way or the other already has some version of that.

  Tobacco being one of the coins of the realm, grown in green houses in the BUBBLES and contraband ZONE warehouses, including his ware house is a perk, part of his pay. It’s a small pleasure, so few of those, so he does.

  As he smokes, Adray half way down the alley turns and looks at him. He seems OK.

  She signs knowing that no human is OK in a cesspool called Planet Earth.

  She watches him a moment longer and, then peek’s her eyes at the end of the alley where she sees off on the horizon the great MIAMI BUBBLE glowing blue. It has an artificial atmosphere, the sky a teal color and how it once looked before it turned burnt orange and died.

  Like Paris, Rome, Manhattan, LA, London every major city capitol had one. That is if you paid the Americans VIG, a super power which pretty much ran the whole show.

  Most of The British Isles were gone, France, majority of Europe, Holland followed, but they had had time to get the fifty meter dykes done, like New York, Seattle, London and LA, etc. That’s what saved major cities in the end, the dykes.

  As usual, off of THE BUBBLES right off the mono-rail tracks that entered the guarded posts, called THE SHOOTS there were the slums. These were the danger zone teeming with vomit garbage survivors, living terrorist lives and only one set of warriors keep them out of THE BUBBLES, Ozone Cops.

  They we’re, the last defense.

  THE BUBBLE DOMES were beamed down from British satellites and were unique. A great ship orbited almost a thousand kilometers above British Moon. The CCSBM (CENTRAL COMMAND SATTELITE BUBBLE MONITORING) center was where the British monitored the five hundred bubbles that were being beamed down to Earth.

  They created atmospheres that allowed purified air, vegetables, fruits, beef, real beef, hot houses, green houses, farms, water, real water within these elite societies.

  Monorail cars in. Monorail cars out.

  That was the only way into the Bubbles from “THE ZONE.”

  Less than one percent of the world lived in them. Mostly thieves like Senators, Lords, Congressmen and the others sluts like corporate giants, pukes that caused all the bad shit to being with from their odious greed. Of course there were the filthy rich, ex Wall Street types, beautiful women, always needed those, no big surprise about that. Fuck, the rich always got the idiot models. Everyone knew that.

  THE BUBBLES were massive, sometimes fifty kilometer by fifty kilometer wide, some times larger and were ten kilometers high. They held pure air, water, estates, grocery stores, fish farms, purified air, kids, no skin diseases, tumors, leukemia, polio, diphtheria, leprosy, etc that had rampaged in THE ZONES.

  Hell, the teeners even had pets.

  They ate them in THE ZONE when they could find them.

  There were Electric cars, bicycles, no gas cars in THE ZONES and no oil except in the domed oil and shale fields left intact in inland Texas, The Dakotas, and parts of Canada. That was the reality of a new world. Oil was needed, but only at ten percent of the good old days.

  Once again the religious zealots of the USA controlled the planet, just as they had always WANTED to do.

  Ridnium clear domes looked like glass and were indestructible. They were built fortified for the power core people after the environment evaporated which was the final spike in the coffin for planet earth after the nuclear wars.

  Iran took out the Saudis after their Peace Accord with the Israelis. No more black oil for a thousand years and. Then, the Jews cremated Iran after their radars picked up a missile tracking.

  Too late, for a single-plutonium tipped missile out of Tehran had hit Tel-Aviv. Bye, bye Israel.

  For good measure, The Indians took out Pakistan and Iraq, just because they could. Better to be safe than sorry, thus creating a thousand year radiation tomb throughout the Middle East.

  It was just as that spooky book the Bible had prophesized.

  Then, finally some luck, that is if your were a Manifest Destiny thinking steam roller of a Super Power that would think it nothing to rock’n’roll across a continent, killing everything that existed to get what it needed. And, that is exactly what the USA had done.

  For quite by accident the Bolivian Ridnium deposits had been found at the bottom of a tin deposit shit hole gouged out of the face of the earth. It had been there since time began, and no one had ever known it.

  Ridnium was found, three times more powerful than Uranium, Plutonium.

  Of course The USA, the last Super Power had to have it.

  They trumped up a loco story, just like the Iraq and Vietnam and the Pakistan wars. You know, like weapons of mass destruction bullshit. They had marshaled up the ground troops, the jets, ships, predator-drones and, then ass reamed most of Mexico, Central America and South America on their Manifest Destiny rumble into Bolivia.

  The brutal wars lasted three years. The Americans won, duh, for they had always been Mein Furher great at genocide, whole sale homicide. No eye blinks as they mass murdered everything they saw and stripped mined the joint.

  They imprisoned millions of peons and turned the indigent people into slaves, shipped the slag back. They allowed the British to slam satellites into low Earth Orbit. They beamed down the domes from a massive British Transport CCSBM ship orbiting British Moon and sodomized and black mailed the rest of the world.

  “You want clean air?” FUCK YOU, PAY ME.

  “You want you’re elite wife and kids to be fuckcicles for a bunch of deranged homicidal murders?” FUCK YOU, PAY ME.

  “You want to eat something besides cock roaches and rats?” FUCK YOU, PAY ME.

  No brainer, countries coughed up the chips, quick like.

  The Americans, never missing a beat, partied hard, and that was that. They got what they always had wanted and that was to imprison the rest of the world in a gulag of their religious and zaf tag political and religious pagan zealotry.

  “Krull.” Venus whispered.

  Night dreaming, smoking, Krull blinked, blinked again under his infrared goggles. He looked at his partner, lover, his everything and nodded.

  Scanning down the alley, digitals seeing something others missed, she tilted her head staring into the smoke and haze.

  “Yeah, Venus.”

  “Master Assad, I will see. Be right back.”

  Krull quarter smiled, looked at the tip of his smoke, looked back at her and nodded again.

  “Do your thing doll.”

  Venus smiled and with her 357 magnum un-slung from her holster along her side, she began to stroll until she vanished several yards down the alley
into the pollution.

  Krull was spent, exhausted, he wanted out, bad and as most humans left on the planet, he could not help but dream; dream about British Moon.

  Four decades earlier, powered by the new fuel source, Ridnium, a Deep Space British Sniffer Probe almost four years out had found a planet. It was a planet like only one other. It was, similar and like Earth.

  What the probe has found had stunned the Americans and the British. They had fucked up paradise like Joni Mitchell had said, and the info the Sniffer Probe had sent back gave them new hope that they could sodomize another virgin again.

  British Moon they had named it that, was twice the size of the original. Filled with Oxygen from great oceans of green algae, the place was a naked, virgin, and just ripe for rape.

  The pics and the data that returned had shown a naked planet, no forests, jungles, no life, insects, animals, fish or birds. But, it did have fresh water rivers, oceans and lakes, oxygen, real dirt, that’s what the data had said.

  One problema, it was hot, really Gobi Desert hot. It was well over one-hundred and sixty-five-degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, which it did not have. It was zero degrees at night, which lasted three lunar nights and moons, the bitch, had three of them.

  The data showed clearly it was Earth like, maybe a few billion years ago, green house effect run amok, but cooling, like Earth had. No problema, the globe was habitable, livable, clean air, water, so they rumbled out there. Hell, that’s why air conditioners were invented to begin with.

  Since the Brits had discovered it, they had been put in charge by The Yanks of Central Control and the massive prison there. Also, under British control was the CCSBM control ship running the satellites beaming operations.

  The shuttles began, colonists, engineers, pioneers, whores, scientists, earth graders, gardeners, farmers, solar guys, cops, lots of cops, yet there was a problem. How do you get people to do the vicious, bone searing grunt work, trick the place out? With the atmosphere so boiling, conditions so grueling they had figured out why not send the desperate there.

  Make them a deal, so they had.

  British Moon also solved another problem. The prisons in the world were gutted, filled with the desperate, rapists, killers and maniacs. There was no room left and cannibalism was running amok, so why not let the prisoners make the place pretty.

  First thing went up, were the new prisons. Ship the garbage up there, flush the toilet, scrub Earth of the vermin and kill two birds with one bullet. The after birth, well, deal with that later.

  Centuries earlier, the Brits had done it with Australia. Most of those folks died in the NEW floods. But, it was a good game plan. So they cut a deal, not only with the convicts, but with other desperate folks and droids and it went like this.

  Work four years, running the graders, lifters, diggers, trucks in an almost impossible atmosphere, and if you lived, gutted it out, you got your ticket punched, BUBBLE life back at Earth.

  There were no BUBBLES on British Moon yet, for their infrastructure were a massive ordeal of construction. They were a year away, and three were planned for the first construction sites.

  Of course the military had a brutal and odious secret that perhaps one day would be exposed.

  Sometimes secrets are best kept to one’s self.

  Of course they needed a military presence and cops, Ozone Cops preferably. Humans were capable of anything, wholesale homicide being at the top of that list. So the cops were sent up there. They had cut the same deal for ex soldiers, police, mostly cops and ex GI’s that had been fucked up in the wars.

  Lots of half human men and women, Androids, Cyborg Girls, severed limbs, hands, legs, arms, all replaced by robotics and bionics were sent. Those folks would do anything to survive.

  They had put their palm prints on the Digital-Scanner contracts and were sent out there.

  THE BUBBLES still needed cops to protect them, so some elite Ozone Cops remained on Earth, like Krull.

  The new slaves had signed on the dotted line, in droves, and more than three and a half years was a long gig in deep space to get there. So they had Deep Sleeped them in Cryogenic Sleep Chambers using Cryonic Stasis, shutting them down for the trip.

  They still hadn’t figured out how to bring Steve Jobs or Ted Williams back, but they were close.

  That’s what saved The Cyborg Girls from the crushers, again. So they had reprogrammed the dolls into something useful.

  Almost four years in nothing, the void, utter darkness, counting stars, your toes, alone, isolated, could mess up a human being, but they figured not a BOT. So again they reengineered the angels as deep space shuttle pilots.

  Hell, it had cost a boat load of dough to make them, why not use them and they had.

  No one had ever asked the girls what it was like during those isolated years.

  Cold, no connection, no touch, no voices, nothing as they had monitored the sleep chambers while they simply sat alone, watching a blackness through the port holes only matching the darkness of their beautiful hearts.

  “Krull.”

  Krull blinked, then blinked again, opened his eyes, came back to the moment. He looked at Venus, he liked that, he loved her smile. For a heartbeat he felt human just looking at the way she was staring at him. He nodded for her to continue.

  Venus stared at him, such pain and worry in her mind and heart. He was human, so fallible, not like her, and she knew he would die, sooner than later. It was, unlike her his destiny and when the only man on the planet capable of loving her would die, she would die along with him.

  She aged less than one year for every Human. It was just how the dice rolled.

  Knowing that he needed tender loving care, and they could scrub The Zone forever and never really make a difference, she wanted him home, safe, secure and loved. They could always continue the search for The King later.

  So, why not now nudged her into making one more bad decision in a long line of them.

  It was what she needed, she was not selfish, but she needed to please him, as she needed his burnt hands on her own body, inside and out.

  “Krull, Darling.”

  Krull’s red veined blue eyes blinked and then blinked again.

  For a few moments he continued to dream and, then heard her voice. He blinked again and turned his gaze to his smiling beauty. Internally he gasped. He was always stunned by her exotic sexuality and could feel his breathing increasing.

  “Krull. Let’s go home. I need you tonight. We hunt for The King tomorrow. Virtual this night, yes my man?”

  Stepping to Krull, who had his air breather hanging around his neck, she touched his face. She lifted her arm and graced his burnt lips with her aquiline fingers. Pinching his cheeks sweetly, she smiled and whispered.

  “Come darling, lets us go home, it is time now.”

  Krull blinked, came back, blinked again, and focused his eyes on her smashing smile, her eyes that were softer now. He smiled, nodded, touched her face and nodded again. He re-slotted his air breather and allowed his woman to escort him away.

  There were no octane cars in THE ZONE for there was no gas to run them; unless you were in a BUBBLE where they had ELECTRO for that stuff. Most of the transportation of anything was man or woman labor, many Chinese coolies pulling Rickshaw small trucks. It was what it was, and human labor mostly was the only game in town.

  Curfew, 2 AM, had to have one, just to keep the nightly carnage at a controllable level. If a droid or a human or what ever you we’re got caught out, well the Sweepers came. That usually met ya got a one way ticket to the Crushers. Or, a one way all expense paid vacay to British Moon, where seldom did anyone ever see the gimps again.

  Of course just enough of the indentured servants had returned to Earth keep the myth alive.

  You know, just to keep the body count moving out th
ere. Central of course had a secret, but it would be a long time before that was exposed, thus changing the homicidal secrets of British Moon forever.

  When the secret would finally be exposed, it would be a game changer.

  Just for show some of the slave labor pukes had survived the four year gig on British Moon, thus returning on the transports to their new BUBBLE lives. They were known as the Ten per Centers the lucky ones. In actuality they were the 1% sent back to Earth.

  Gosh, the Americans and Brits were a swell people.

  But now, as the fog, smoke, pollution, all of it, especially the bitter cold swept against Krull’s goggled face he didn’t know that secret. It would be one day a secret he would learn in deep space and with in that moment of death and life he perhaps might die from finally knowing that truth.

  DRIVING his 959, LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) hyper power packed motor cycle through the vacant streets just outside of THE ZONE they roared towards THE MIAMI DOME.

  Venus was stitched to his back. Her hands were wrapped around his waist and neither felt cold nor the pollution, though she did wear goggles. She had to protect those oval giant eyes. They we’re, her Achilles Heel.

  Gassing the bike, Krull accelerated, hit fourth, and at 120 KPH whipped along a straight away, right near the putrid river that edged along for miles along the blue MIAMI BUBBLE. No one drank from the river or swam it. It was, hard to dodge around all the corpses free diving in it.

  After five klicks he slowed down, shifted three times, slowed more and cruised up to what looked like a two story fortress. It was made of red brick and, had carbon iron bars on elevated windows and carbon doors. It was all the stuff two love birds needed to keep the vermin out, human or other wise.

  Thirty feet from the double, eight foot high doors and at about twenty KPR, Venus lifted a small laser remote. She pressed the button, pressed in closer to her man. Hydraulically the double doors opened and with out hesitation Krull drove right through them into the ware house, doors grinding closed behind them.

  Once inside, he braked, skid the rubber, tilted the bike and slotted the front wheel into the floor carriage. He killed the engine right in front of the twelve foot high walled, sealed Plexiglas Powder Showers that were always their the first stop. They used them to disinfect before they entered the rest of the massive, towering 3000 sq. ft. warehouse/loft with a dozen sky lights welded into its domed roof.