Cyborg Girls

by Jane Brooke

  Entirely run by a state of the art organic computer, it was skeleton-staffed with twenty or so elite British Air Generals and officers. Down the rank it went with men and women technicians, all finely dressed in their black uniforms and with egos as large as the distance between Earth and British Moon.

  With reinforced great meter thick windows facing deep space and British Moon, it was plush with the best the old world had ever offered. Living quarters were large and elegant and food and drink of anything a man or a woman could dream of was forever at an officer or technicians fingertips.

  The crown jewel of the space station/ship was the great dome. It was the size of a soccer pitch and beveled along its bending roof. Again there were meter thick, carbon reinforced plates of windows. It was a dramatic and stunning piece of engineering.

  At night it showed billions of stars and planets as well as the two golden moons that hung in the sky over British Moon. During the day, the blistering day, and completely computer generated, the windows grew dark, from Sky Light filters. Thus dimming the relentless Sun and heat from penetrating Bubble Main Control.

  Fastened into the walls there were five hundred-plus, three meter by five meter flat screen, HD monitors. Each one projected back to roaming black uniformed officer and technicians the status of the Bubbles that were being beamed down by satellites over the ultra elite capitols of planet Earth.

  Surrounding them and on carbon black desk consoles, there were computers, buttons, switches, monitoring devices all blinking and pulsing red blue and green lights, none ever RED, yet.

  Set, along each computer and key board was a RED button and until the day it had only been activated once. It had been used just to drive the reality into those that would not pay of the consequences of what would happen to them if they did not cough up their monthly bounties to the coffers of their cerebral jailers.

  Nairobi had called Centrals bluff, and had gotten the RED button. Thus, wiping them off the face of the earth within a-blood lust carnage so horrific, well no one ever called Centrals bluff again.

  Because one bio engineered SUPER computer ran other computers everything, there had never been a glitch in the machines that gave so few, so much life and luxury on planet Earth.

  Because the rich always get richer, and the Americans and The British had basically black mailed those receiving life from the Bubbles, the scare of a disappearing bubble was always the great leveler. Threat of death by maniacs and homicidal drug addicted killers had continued to make the elite more prosperous and that threat was THE RED BUTTON.

  THE RED BUTTON was a double key activation threat that every Bubble recipient had a digital picture of within their own small Bubble Fiefdom operations buildings.

  Each Bubble computer station had one, and could be activated by a General with his Control Key that was hanging on his neck. The main fear to everyone on Bubble Earth, was that in a state of madness, some Maniac would, after securing both keys, would activate the Master Red Button, thus shutting down all bubble domes on Earth.

  It was an insane idea at the time, but religious and corporate zealots thought in the end that it was better for the Bubble cities on Earth to think it possible, then to do something absurd and actually make it happen.

  It was Doctor Strangelove all over again with The Doomsday Machine scenario. It had worked, though it made no sense at all and of course the little Nairobi experience had cemented that reality to them.

  Basically the Master Red Button SAID to anyone that if they ever thought of attacking the Space Station, well. If you did, there was always one last survivor with the keys that would push the Master Red Button. Thus KAPOW, Earth would, in a matter of minutes be deep fat fried by millions of axe and machete wielding drug addled homicidal killers

  Since Suicide by Cop was as old as time, the idea had seemed insane. But clinical fear is always the great leveler when human being seek to continue life in any form.

  In the end, it worked.

  But now, back at the Earth Transport Shuttle Station and finished with processing, about two thousand weary and sick worker were entering the shuttle back to Earth. All were ravaged, sick, many with skin tumors and cancerous soars covering their bodies as they began to funnel in a long line inside the glass tube entering into the shuttle.

  Shadowing them, and monitoring them several black uniformed British soldiers, all carrying laser cannons cautiously watched. Their job was a dangerous one. Many of the worker survivors were either insane or close to madness. Some in the past had finally gone over the edge, so close to their escape and had revolted; many had committed suicide.

  Back at British Moon Central Command and in the vast domed ceiling computer monitors rooms everything was humming right along. In the great dome, black uniform workers were scurrying here and there checking video feeds of Satellite Beaming operation. Also, they were monitoring the loading shuttle, where staring at duel monitors feeds, a British General stood.

  Next to him was a grey uniformed older English gentlemen, the power full Prison Warden.

  Looking smartly dressed in their black and grey uniforms, they were stoic and cold watching the loading of what they thought was sub human offal.

  Four star General Rodger Clark and Warden Horrace Hendley silently watched one monitor of dozens of monitors stacked around the room. Under The Generals arm was a smart riding crop.

  Seemingly bored, they lit to light as two beautiful English birds, looking tart in their black lieutenant skin tight uniforms, carrying computer tablets, walked by in their high heels.

  General Clark raised an eyebrow at Warden Hendley. He tilted his head at the girls and got an elitist British wink in return. Partying with the two female lieutenants was primetime on their minds for the evening.

  Both of the Gentlemen detested their post on such a ghastly place. They yearned for the green meadows and fields of mother England. The fact that there were no more green-fields and meadows of their mother country bothered them greatly.

  All of that beauty had vanished decades ago and now unless they were tripping around in VR, which they did whenever they could they had never really experienced one of the great gifts nature had ever bestowed on a country.

  As they continued to monitor the loading of the two thousand refugees onto the shuttle, twenty or so black clad uniformed male and female officers tended to their chores at various computer stations staked around the domed room.

  They were monitoring the construction of the main city, THE NEW CITY that was the 1st in an agenda of many more like it.

  Building a New Earth, well it was construction project of such a massive magnitude that it took the best brains in the world to make it so.

  With the morality rate of the workers at %80, just disposing of the corpses was a twenty-four-hour-seven day a week chore.

  Somehow Slakes had stowed away on a transport decades ago. As they always had, they had taken to the intricate lines of the sewers that crisscrossed under the entire length of the domed buildings.

  They had been tolerated in the end, for they served a very real purpose. They ate the offal, human feces, the corpses, and the garbage pumped down there. Within an odious stroke of luck the Slakes fixed a very real problem of any city in the world. Where, to put the garbage?

  On a bi monthly basis, elite Refuse Disposal units would go subterranean and gather the larger Slakes in Control Funnel Nets. Then, in a fit of generosity they would process them, package them and, then feed them to the prisoners and workers in The Villages as some of the delicacies that awaited them back on Earth.

  As multiple thousands perished of course The PR campaign back on Earth was still moving at full bore and there seemed no shortage of the desperate and the insane to fill the coffers of the construction project.

  Paying for all of that was another matter. The crew in the dome also monitored and ran the trans
ports back to earth, all filled with the elements, minerals and slag British Moon puked from her guts on a daily basis.

  It was a monstrous task, but whom better than the Brits, with their attention to detail could have been picked to run it.

  They had been a theocratic Manifest Destiny kind of people from the beginning. They thought, and they had been lucky since the day their Deep Space Sniffer Probe had found British Moon that she would be just one more colony, in a long list of those that they had lost.

  As the Generals and Warden watched the last worker enter the Shuttle Transport back to Earth, they both looked at each other with no curiosity what’s so ever in their-eyes.

  Watching a Hermo Sealed clothed Guard lock the shuttle hatch and, then with his other soldier buddies walk along the glass tunnel back into the main station, his hand moved to a switch on the desk next to his computer console. Next to it mounted on the desk was a Orange Button.

  Both men wore wrap around mouth pieces with head phones bent over their ears.

  “Fire up.” General Smith whispered.

  Watching through the monitor both men watched as flames began to funnel out of the torpedo shaped Rear Spits Ports of the transport with its blunt wings staked on its side came to life.

  The building began to slightly shake as the shuttle began to tilt its nose towards space, being lifted by a powerful hydraulic lift.

  “Clear all stations.”

  “Stations all clear.” Filtered through his head phones.

  “Count down, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11.”

  As the twin engines began to belch smoke and fire out of its rear end, Generals Smiths fingers began to dance, just a little on the Orange Button.

  “3,2,1, ignition.” He said as his finger strayed from the Orange Button and, then he flicked the lever of the switch down.

  Emotionless, and tweaking their proper British moustaches, both elitists watched through the monitor as the shuttles engines roared and smoke and flames erupted out of its twin Spit Ports.

  Minutes later they casually scrutinized the shuttle as it was now over one-hundred kilometers from the ejection port.

  Reading the digital green numbers on the flight monitors, General Smith began counting down.

  “One hundred Kilometers’...Three hundred kilometers...Eight hundred kilometers...Ignite.”

  Without so much as a blink of an eye, he looked at Warden Hendley, smiled and, then slammed his palm down on the Orange Button.

  Instantly a tremendous explosion of bright light filled the monitor. After a moment and after the smoke and fire dissipated, he smiled as he saw just remnants of the obliterated human and shuttle transports cargo filtering around space.

  Turning to General Smith Warden Hendley tweaked his moustache, and said. “I say old man, how about a spot of tea; perhaps a whirl around the dance floor with the lieutenants?”

  “Spot on, capitol idea old man.”

  Then, without any emotion, the two men turned and walked past the other uniformed technicians tending their monitoring stations, all emotionless as well and walked through the octagon shaped open door.

  World domination can and has always been a risky matter. One moment, enslaving a world population perhaps is a capitol idea. The next, well it might just be the end of an empire.

  What the two smug prigs did not know as they moved to That Spot of Tea was that now the wheels of a colonist’s destiny they thought was set in Carbon would soon be changing.

  Within their once very elitist and so bright future and soon, perhaps their worlds would be set with in a holocaust of change, thus ripping their utopia asunder.

  Evolution, well she was a cruel mistress, something both military men perhaps would find out far too soon for their liking.

  Change was coming and it would be deadly.

  Sector 35-56...The Zone

  IT was cold, yet the snow had ceased to fall, and there was no moon. It simply said, could not pierce the punishing dying atmosphere of a once pristine planet turned into a globe of suet.

  One AM, Saturday early morning, hours to curfew, though most of the crazed denizens of the dangerous Sector 35-56 as curfew came, moved deep into the underground sewer clubs.

  It was King Mohammad’s turf and ruled by his crews and gangs of gargoyle brutal Droids and men.

  Before the intro of Pink Panic, it was mostly ignored by Ozone Cops, though they were always the last card in the deck defense when the riots and whole sale murder showed its face.

  Located in a once sea side wonder-land of decadence called South Beach it was now shrouded in smoke, fog and pollution and dead bodies bloating in putrid alley ways. It was stacked, heel to toe with street vendors, hawkers, prostitutes, gang bangers, criminal sociopaths and men, women, Droids, and even Cyborg Girls.

  It was a last stand for The Girls that had given up on life. With no hope and no future they now mostly sought pleasure anyway they could get it. It was cryptic and tragic moments before they would seek death, their only way out from a world they had never asked to be a part of to begin with.

  AT point, and again in her silver, skin tight Reflector Skins, Adray Venus and Krull moved through the teaming crowd.

  Recognizing the infamous duo of Ozone Cops, a swath of people parted as they two cops moved down the main street of Sector 35-56.

  As they passed building after dilapidated building they could see many giant Droid men, bouncers, door men, diseased, burnt skin, scabs, cuts on their faces and flesh etc guarding entry to a variety of underground establishments’ staked along the street.

  Averted eyes, red lined, Pink Panic eyes looked off as they passed.

  As they moved into the very bowls of the human wreckage of the human soul, they could hear Acid Rock Music booming out from doors ajar. There was no shortage of screams, of pleasure and pain, as well as blinding strobe lights puking from the innards of the clubs.

  Aligning the streets there were the female prostitutes, many human, some Cyborg Girls. Most we’re young, exotic, tragic and beautiful within the standards where beauty was a subjective matter.

  Passing two prostitutes that Venus knew, she stalled out, gave Krull a wink. He nodded back, pulled out a smoke, removed his air breather and lit it. He leaned against a building and inhaled a plume of smoke.

  Standing before two tall young girls one a blond with burnt white skin and the other an onyx, sinewy African once gorgeous female, Venus monitored both of them through her Digital Brain Optics.

  The girls were Vogued out in the usual street sex worker threads. Both girls wore four inch stilettos, and their feet and toes were covered with grime and street filth. The blond was topless, wearing a day glow green micro mini skirt and was The Lure as it always had been for women of the night to get the men to cough up the dough to fuck them.

  Protruding from her forehead and staked under her skin were several Knob Bolts. Venus internally groaned seeing the two silver spikes staked directly through her breasts, nose, ears, lips and stomach.

  For a moment she thought.

  There for but the grace of Krull am I.

  Looking into the dull stoned out girls once blue eyes, she saw a-numbness for they were tinted with the color red.

  From her long neck down and travelling down her entire body, breasts, stomach, arms, cunt, and down her legs were tattoos. They were of Chinese butterflies, moths, cobras, dragons and flower petals she had never seen in a world without flowers.

  Dressed exactly like her blond friend the black girl in stilettos and wearing a-blue neon colored micro skirt held no tattoos. Her large breasts were staked, nipples too with silver spikes. She wore a chain mail head piece, attached to her bald skull with silver bolts and rivets driven in to the top of her dome. The chains fell past her tattooed eyebrows, and connected to her nose, which was Ethiopian delicate, sharp, aquili
ne and was an adjacent to her exotic beauty.

  Once black her eyes, they were now ruby red. Venus, sneaking a kook at Krull smoking groaned, as she took a step closer to the blond, who was smoking a cigarette attached to her soiled and brown stained fingers.

  Though the temperature was 35 degrees F, neither girl showed any effects of the cold. The drug they were Zooming on was a Body Thermal Enhancer. They were mostly impervious to something as minor as freezing temperatures.

  As Venus began to talk to the stoned out white girl, Krull smoking, winced as five Chinese men passed, all wearing their silver Reflector Capes and coolie Reflector Hats. They were pushing a cart filled with dead Slakes. Of course Krull for a micro moment flashed back to a time when he fought for his life against them in the sewers of Bolivia.

  No one had known how it had happened, but even on British Moon, with its intricate tunnels and sewers Slakes had taken a hold. They were the equivalent of past Earth Cockroaches.

  His brain was also filled with angst, anger and caution. The orders had come down from CENTRAL COMMAND. They wanted King Mohammad taken alive.

  They wanted a show place, a public trial and execution for him. Just a reminder to the maniacs what happened to a criminal when they dared to go against the forces that would be.

  In his mind it was a bad idea at a bad time. But, he was a Ranger, a soldier, a cop and he took his orders as they were when they came.

  “Krull.”

  Lost in thought, he felt his brain sizzling with his horrid memories as a hand touched his face.

  Krull darling...Krull.”

  Blinking several times, he came back. He stared at Venus who was staring back at him with a look of concern on her face.

  “Sorry...Yes.”

  “One sector over, they think. An off street dungeon called Panic. I don’t know. Shall we call in back-up?

  Looking past her at the two prostitutes, he now saw that they were talking to the giant, seven-foot Android doorman who was now holding an axe that had been in his leather belt in his hand.