Out of the original two hundred and fifty net-feed droids only one hundred and eighty remained. He was pissed off about that. A dozen or so had been destroyed before Riser had given them the self preservation right, and the others had become 'collateral damage' because Riser hadn't been able to see what was happening while the power was out. Flying between two heavily armed enemies was a dangerous pastime for a net-feed droid, even with the self preservation rights enabled.
Riser gathered all the remaining droids and configured them for free style reconnaissance mode. Each droid now made its own way into Havers Compound through the nearest breached section of the wall.
Riser's awareness was split between all the remaining droids. The sensation of being in one hundred and eighty places at once was... disconcerting. Where the Information Cloud had been one coherent consciousness with all the droids working together to provide a wide coverage of what was essentially the same area, this new set of many distributed worlds split his mind into dozens of separate cells, each distinct from the others.
Groaned with pain, Riser felt as though a thousand fishing hooks were tearing his mind in every direction. The sensation was too much for him. He could feel his conscious mind unravelling. He wondered if this was how schizophrenics felt? Instead of having one mind, he could feel himself crumbling into multiple selves. It felt like death, falling from a high building, waiting for the pavement. No! Riser shook his head over and over again.
The Sphynx-II controller rack sitting on his desk recognised the gesture as a safety override. It simplified the feed, reducing the number of separate data streams, and encoding the real-time experience into a sequence of different locations one after another, rather than all at once. It also slowed down the data feed, buffering it to rates that his mind could handle more easily. It was as though the storm in his mind had become a series of manageable scenes from a movie.
For three-seconds he was high above Havers Compound looking down. Then he was inside the compound in a corridor full of bodies and bloodstained rubble. Three-seconds later he was in a laboratory with the lights off and just a glimpse of light shining from an adjoining room.
Riser started to breathe again. He felt the disparate threads of his mind coalescing back into a whole. His consciousness receded from so many different places, and became a single self again. The pavement of his mind receded, but Riser didn't feel like laughing anymore. He felt as though part of himself had been lost in a howling wind, and he wasn't sure if he would ever get it back again. It burned memories within him, memories that he'd rather forget.
'I'm me again,' he said, but he didn't quite manage a chuckle. What would have happened if he hadn't shaken his head in time? What if he hadn't remembered the safety override gesture? Where would his mind be now? Lost in the Cloud like butterflies thrown into a hurricane. Riser calmed himself. He was going to be okay. He just had to be a bit more careful until he got used to controlling the Sphynx-II controller rack. All this equipment wouldn't do him any good if he turned into a drooling idiot, unable to find his way back from all the strange new places in his mind.
+ + +
Damen watched his brother attend to his equipment. He looked strange wearing that cap. It barely covered the top of his head. It looked like some insane jelly fish was trying to devour his skull. Riser had made no attempt to stop it. He looked as though he might be enjoying it, but then from time to time he would flinch or scrunch up his eyes like when he was a kid. He had been groaning and shaking his head not long ago, but now he seemed more at peace, sitting with his head tilted back and his eyes closed.
Damen wasn't sure whether he should shake is brother to snap him out of what ever was happening to him, or whether he should just let leave him alone and let him carry on doing whatever he was doing. Riser hadn't really explained what any of the equipment was, or what he was doing with it. He had just told Damen to stay nearby, and make sure that the Hand-Box Generator didn't stop working. Damen didn't need to watch the generator. It would run for months without him standing over it. He was a little confused about Riser though. What was he doing? His wrists twitched in an eerie fashion. Now that he had stopped shaking his head, he looked like a twitching corpse in an electric chair that had just been switched off.
Riser's equipment was clearly expensive. One small box - Riser had called it a Sphincter box or some dumb shit - was definitely worth more than the rest of the stuff put together. Damen wondered just what sort of trouble Riser was mixed up in this time. Whatever it was, it looked as though he was going to be busy for some time.
Damen got up from his chair and wandered around the small cramped basement. There wasn't much room to explore. The ceiling hung low, just a few centimetres above Damen's head. The grey concrete walls were depressing, and the bunk in the far corner of the room looked dirty, even by Damen's standards. He couldn't understand how his brother had lived in this place so long.
When he found a security console at the back of the room, he sat down in front of it and started playing about with the controls. He managed to locate a camera attached to the top of the building. Turning it to face the building opposite, he looked for a window with wide black blinds that were bent in the middle. That was his own apartment. The blinds made sure that nobody could see what he was doing. There was nothing to feel guilty about if nobody knew what you were doing. That was how Damen saw it anyway. He adjusted the camera to face the window two levels up from his own. It was Mrs Tindal's apartment. With a little luck, she might be taking a shower.
The sound of vomiting made Damen jump. When he turned his head to look over his shoulder, he saw that Riser was slumped forwards, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor between his knees. He still had that jelly fish on his head, and his face looked pale and clammy. After retching a couple more times, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sat back upright in his chair, muttering something under his breath.
Damen tried to ignore the nasty acidic smell as best he could. He pulled a string that was hanging from the ceiling to turn on the air conditioning, and then returned his attention to Mrs Tindal who was apparently entertaining a guest. Her curvaceous figure cast a fine silhouette on the thin cream curtains of her apartment. Damen chewed a piece of dry pizza that he had found on the edge of the chair, watching with interest.
Time to Recharge
Havers Compound was a maze of rooms and corridors. Its pale white walls were clean and clinical, and its uniform white lighting gave it the appearance of the medical building that it had once been.
'Jacob,' Roy said, pacing back and forth in a long wide corridor. 'When will the satellite grid be ready to strike again?' With a conscious effort, he forced himself to remain still, reminding himself that others looked to him for guidance. He could not let these things bother him.
Jacob stood nearby, examining his hand-held console. He tapped its display, shaking his head from time to time. His dark brown hair was cut short, barely visible across the top of his head.
'We've drained the power banks,' he said. 'The satellite platform will take about four hours to recharge. We don't have enough control over it to configure anything faster. Until then, we'll have to rely on ground troops.'
Roy frowned. It wasn't what he had wanted to hear. Part of him had enjoyed watching the Security Forces suffer under the satellite platform's devastating blasts. Their Crocs had scurried back like wounded dogs, frightened when their own weapons had turned against them. The Security Forces would have no choice but to take the Kamari more seriously now.
Roy turned to his other son, hoping to distract himself from the problems with satellite platforms. 'Isor, how are we doing with the Bull Rangers?'
Isor was standing on the other side of the corridor. He was a little shorter than his brother and he lacked Jacob's muscular frame. His sandy blonde hair was longer, partly covering his ears. He was combat trained but his talents lay in other areas.
'We've taken some losses Roy,' he said. 'Around tw
o hundred soldiers have been killed so far, as far as I can tell. I've ordered the squad leaders to pull back to the inner strongholds and use the flux shields until I can go and sort this out in person.'
Roy shook his head, 'Can't they resolve this themselves?'
'They should be able to. I trained several units to do just that, but it looks like they have been killed.'
'Useless,' Roy wanted to grab the soldiers and shake them with his hands but it wouldn't do any good now. He needed to stay on top of the situation to make sure things didn't get any worse.
He glanced at each of his sons in turn. They were both looking at him for guidance, and that was exactly what they would receive. Jacob's brown eyes were intense as always. He was impatient and he wasn't afraid to use force where it was needed. Isor's eyes were calm blue spheres, taking in everything around him. He was an engineer and a designer. He wanted to take everything apart to understand how it worked.
'Any news on the movements of the Security Forces?' Roy said, keeping his voice neutral. Through calmness came strength.
Isor smiled, his straight hair hanging in a short fringe across his forehead. 'It looks like they weren't expecting that swarm of news droids.'
'Neither were we.'
'I guess they don't want the whole of the Orange Zone to see what a bunch of fools they are. The publicity won't do us any harm though. I was hoping we could use it to our advantage, but unfortunately somebody has shut Mekinet News down.'
'Shame,' Roy said.
'Yes, I was enjoying that,' Jacob said. 'Our friend put on quite a show for a while there. I was surprised by his enthusiasm. Maybe we should offer him a job?'
'Trent?' Roy said.
Jacob shrugged, 'Just a thought. He seems like the kind of man who might come in useful one day. We should keep him on file if he doesn't get himself killed.'
A distant explosion shook the compound walls. Dust trickled down from the ceiling above their heads. Roy flicked a little dust from his shoulder and cocked his head to one side, listening. He raised a hand to silence the others before they could ask what he was doing.
'I suspect one of our friends can hear us,' he said in a quiet voice, nodding towards a door at the end of the corridor.
As though summoned by his words, a Bull Ranger smashed through the door, sending it crashing onto the ground.
The Bull Ranger swung its bulbous head towards them, listening for the source of their voices. Its scanners penetrated the dust cloud as it thrust one thick fist towards them, releasing a plume of high-velocity liquid flame.
The three Kamari leaders remained motionless as the flames surrounded them in a fireball that stripped insulation from hanging cables, and blackened the walls around them. The flames fizzled ineffectively against their personal force fields.
'Tiresome,' Jacob said.
Roy stepped back, balancing on the balls of his feet. He turned towards Isor and said, 'Finish it!'
Isor dug into one of his many deep pockets and pulled out a small black device, tapping at it with a series of staccato commands.
The Bull Ranger took two steps towards an adjacent door, looking to continue its rampage through the compound, but then it noticed that its targets were not dead. It scanned them, clearly confused by what had happened, and then turned towards them once more. Its legs whined as they powered up for combat. A second later it propelled itself down the corridor towards them like an enraged battering ram.
Isor glanced up as he tapped away at the EMP device in his hand. The Bull Ranger was charging towards them at an alarming speed. He looked at Roy with a puzzled expression, holding the device at an angle so Roy could see the orange warning light. Roy stepped closer, holding the device in one hand while he typed in a short code.
The EMP discharged with a loud popping sound that left the hairs standing on the back of Roy's arms. The electromagnetic discharge was invisible but its powerful effects were immediately obvious. The Bull Ranger's legs gave way as it charged towards them. Jacob leapt out of its path as it crashed head first into the wall behind him. The wall shattered into a hundred pieces, scattering metal and stone across the floor.
'Bloody hell,' Jacob said, standing to one side with his impact pistol in his hand. Chunks of masonry fell from the ceiling, crashing onto metal equipment racks nearby. Jacob replaced his impact pistol in its holster and glared at Isor, 'Thanks for that.'
'I can never remember that code,' Isor said, scratching his head.
Roy patted his younger son's back. 'I hope you'll remember it when I'm not standing beside you.'
'Oh, I'm sure I will.'
Jacob picked up a piece of twisted metal from the floor, stared at it and then tossed it back to the ground with an audible sigh.
Roy heard footsteps approaching behind him. Somebody was running towards them at great speed, their boots slapping against the stone floor. They all turned in unison, with weapons drawn.
Michael Roneggar came to a sliding halt, just in time to be hit in the arm by a piece of metal that fell down from the ceiling. He clasped one hand over the streaming blood and grimaced.
'You want to be more careful, Michael,' Jacob said. 'You could get yourself killed.' The tone of his voice sounded more like a threat than friendly advice.
Michael nodded, sweat beading on his forehead. He gritted his teeth and scrunched his eyes shut, letting out a low groan.
'Are you okay?' Roy said.
Michael nodded, opening his eyes again. When he saw the Bull Ranger's legs jutting out from the wall, he stepped back so far that he almost fell. He reached for his impact pistol, pointing it towards the Bull Ranger with shaking hands.
'You realise it will recover?' he said. 'An electromagnetic pulse only puts them down for a few minutes. You can't kill those bastards!'
'Calm yourself,' Roy said. 'It's a droid - not a man. You are right that it cannot be killed because it was never alive. It can be handled however. Isor will deal with it now. Don't trouble yourself any further about it. Now tell me what you came to report.'
Michael didn't reply. He stared down at his feet, appearing to be lost in his own thoughts.
Roy gave Jacob a questioning look. Jacob shrugged in return. Perhaps Michael had forgotten what he had come to say?
Roy placed one arm across Michael's shoulders in a poor imitation of a caring gesture, guiding him away from the disturbing scenes of destruction as he tried to conceal his impatience.
Michael looked pale. His eyes darted in every direction at once. He turned back towards Isor with an intense look on his face. 'It will reload its firmware! Don't you understand? You're all just standing here, but it will recover any minute. It will kill us all!'
'No,' Isor said with authority. 'It will reload my firmware.' He was standing over the fallen Bull Ranger, tapping at a device that he had pulled from one of his many pockets. He waved one hand dismissively towards Michael and continued with what he was doing.
Roy pulled Michael away again, facing him head on so he could stare deep into his eyes as he emphasised each word as though talking to a child. 'Do not trouble yourself, Michael. As I have already told you, and Isor has told you too, everything is in hand. The Bull Ranger is not your problem. You came here for a reason. Now pull yourself together and tell me what you came here to say. I don't have time for this!'
Michael stiffened, an alertness returning to his eyes as he straightened his shoulders. He dropped his arms to his sides, ignoring the blood that still trailed from his elbow. 'We cannot hold them, sir. The Bull Rangers... they're tearing the place apart. So many of the men have been killed. We tried this EMP. It didn't stop them. Some fell for a time, but they recovered and became more deadly than ever. Others were too fast. They killed our soldiers before an EMP could even be deployed. How can we fight these machines? We are just men. Give us our own machines so we can fight back. Dead men litter the corridors everywhere I turn. Blood is thick on the walls. We can't go on like this!'
Roy nodded, 'Okay. We
will turn the tables a different way. Have your men pull back to the inner chambers, like Isor told them to. Use the flux shields, and wait for further instructions. Your men will be safe there.'
'But —'
'Do as I said. We will deal with the Bull Rangers. You deal with your men.'
Michael stared over Roy's shoulder with a frown. Roy turned to see what he was looking at. The Bull Ranger was now back on its feet, but standing passive in front of Isor. He was saying something to Jacob and waving a device at the Bull Ranger. Jacob was lighting a cigarette and nodding back casually. He looked bored.
Michael turned and ran, 'I'll do what you said,' he called over his shoulder.
Roy folded his arms and listened to Michael's footsteps as they receded down the corridor.
Mental Gymnastics
The feeling of dislocation had finally started to subside. Riser had struggled to split his mind into hundreds of separate cells. It wasn't something he had chosen to do, and he hadn't felt comfortable with it at all. After playing around with the countless options available, he had managed to reconfigure the Sphynx-II controller rack to enable augmented peripheral awareness (APA). The new configuration would allow him to handle multiple distributed streams in a different way.
Instead of splitting his mind into hundreds of separate mini-selves, APA injected high level summaries of each parallel stream directly into his visual cortex, making them into a kind of background high-level awareness hovering in his peripheral vision. Riser was aware of the location and environment of every net-feed droid, but he only had to focus on one of them at a time. It was a little bit like staring at a single image pinned to a wall, but being aware of countless other images all around it. His mind ached in places he had never felt before, but it felt like a more natural way of experiencing so much information. It was certainly better than having his mind shredded into tiny pieces until his head exploded.
Information Cloud: Science fiction and fantasy series (Tales of Cinnamon City Book 1) Page 13
