by Sean Kennedy
They moved through the forest of towering goods, and the spaces between the stacks opened to reveal the sloping roof of a monstrous barn. Red wooden boards melded with synthetic paneling and alloy siding like a patchwork quilt along its walls.
“Did the Kaizen build that?”
“Not originally, but like the house, they keep it going. I really don’t know what we would do without them.” Mac said pulling open a metal fire door. “C’mon, if you like the outside, wait ‘til you see what's inside.”
Curiosity took hold as he followed into the interior’s darkness. It took a moment for Jacob’s eyes to adjust, and he found himself in a maze of stacked shelving, where wires hung like dangling roots along racked walls of crates, overflowing with microelectronics.
Jacob's eye caught some movement and another Kaizen spider scurried out of sight, hiding amongst the shelving.
“How do you find anything in here?” Jacob called out,
Mac’s head popped back from the turn ahead. “Oh I don't, the Kaizen find it.”
Jacob followed Mac past the edge of the crate filled storage ring and into the largest room he’d ever seen. There, looming above several workbench stations, was a Kaizen Mark 7 Space Corps Gunship.
Jacob stared, unaware of anything, anywhere else in the universe that could be as beautiful as this olive drab craft. Its three landing gear struts perched on a vast concrete floor, its wings sheltering workstation benches beneath them. Jacob saw his Uncle Vincent wearing a diagnostic helmet in the angled cockpit with the the retractable armored canopy slid back. Behind it, the body of the craft spread into a slightly curved triangle, like a manta ray with a raven's head.
‘Rainwalker’ was written in red script on the nose, beneath a drawing of a buxom red-haired woman wearing only a clear plastic raincoat, laughing as she glanced over her shoulder through a transparent umbrella. She sat on the red letters, turned at just such an angle to hide her breasts.
Jacob couldn’t take his eyes off the wonder of the Rainwalker. He saw Slate pull off the helmet and give a quick wave before ducking into the body of the craft. Jacob heard Mac’s laughter and turned to see a dark t-droid sitting on the bench, like a patient waiting for an examination.
“It’s... it's... a spaceship!” Jacob stammered.
“Ho! Don’t let Vince hear you call it that,” Mac said, “that's a gunship, or at least it will be once it's finished. You can always tell by the color, Gunships are always green in the Space Corps, a holdover from the Marines I think,” Mac shrugged.
“Can it fly?” Jacob asked.
“It could if we had the fuel.” Jacob heard Slate’s gruff voice as he came down from between the rear landing struts. Jacob noticed how, for a big man, he was surprisingly nimble as he moved out of the Rainwalker’s shadow.
“The hybrid saber engines are functional, complete with virtual registration, but we need to get a couple of things before we can make it anything more than a simulator,” Mac said.
“What kind of things?” Jacobs asked, feeling his pulse pound. Mars was suddenly within his reach.
“We need thorium 6, and a pilot.”
“I can fly it!” Jacob blurted out, “I'm sure I can fly it!”
Listening, with his hands on his hips, Slate strode up beside Mac, “Is that so? you’ll have a chance to prove that, but you're going to need a navigator as well.”
“That's what I’m hoping we can do with this fellow,” Mac said, and Jacob peeled his eyes from the trans-atmospheric vision to the dull black t-droid sitting slumped forward on the workbench.
A long wire snaked around the body and fed into a port just under the base of its faceless head. He recognized its as the same boxed head he’d found running with Kage in the Hulls. The only features on the blank face were crosshair lines that stopped at a small ring of intense blue light where the left eye might have been. The smooth body was articulated to perfectly mirror human movement, like a poseable artist's model.
“Wow!” Jacob said, and stepped closer to what he realized was not a t-droid, but a Kaizen, “what does it do?”
“It's hard to say, the packaging was very vague. It looks a bit like a dorei.” Mac said.
“A what?”
“A dorei, it's a kind of synthetic humanoid they use in Japan for aggression sports, but Kaizen never made doreis, the concept went against their principals.”
“There’s no manual?” Jacob asked.
“It’s the generic Kaizen manual that ships with all units. It covers installation, not purpose, and this is a later model, produced as Kaizen was being smeared for having unpredictable droids. At that time they were selling off their core processors as fast as they could. Some said it was to liquidate stock, but I think Akakoda wanted to get the Kaizen into the wild.”
“What’s it doing?” Jacob asked, leaning close to the pulsing ring of cobalt blue.
“Processing,” Mac said with a hint of admiration in his voice, “on a regular machine, you just assemble it turn it on and start using it. These Kaizen units have to be turned on and then allowed to acclimate with their initialization data. It’s the only time they can be altered with an external interface.”
“Acclimate the data? Like, get used to it?”
“More like evolve into it. They usually only take twenty-four hours to go through the process, but never more than thirty,” Mac said, watching the subtle fluctuations of the circle.
“This poor fellow has been burning in for almost fifty hours now, and I’m not sure he's even going to boot up at all. The core you found had been sitting for the better part of a decade.”
“Where did you get its body?” Jacob asked, and Vincent unleashed a brutal cough, turning away and covering his mouth.
Mac spoke to distract Jacob from his Uncle’s fit, “The Kaizen bring back all the parts they find in the hulls. Most everything in this shop is Kaizen. Instructional bodies, like this one that’s for dance, are easy to come by. It's the heads that contain the core, and those are rare. It’s a sealed quantum processor. After the initial boot up, you can’t copy or access a Kaizen simtelligence.”
“Like a soul,” Jacob said softly.
Mac turned to him with a surprised smile, “Yes, I think so too. I was able to upload your genetic data, and the Rainwalkers navigation suite when I initialized the Kaizen core, but that may have been too tall an order.”
“My genetic data?” Jacob asked.
“You did say you wanted to get off world, didn’t you?” Slate asked, fixing him with a stare.
“Yes sir, very m...”
“‘Don’t call me sir!” Slate said, but quickly softened his tone, “Please Jacob, don’t call me that.”
“Sorry Uncle Vince,” Jacob said and smiled, “yes, I very much want to.”
“You're going to need a navigator then,” Mac said, “and we hoped this one might be able to do it, but I'm not sure it's going to take. I could turn it off but, I mean, there's still core activity, and it hasn’t given us the red ring of death.”
“Red ring of death?”
“If the quantum core is faulty, that circle of blue light on his face will start flashing red, and if the Kaizen corporation were still around, they would have sent us a new one. Since they're not, and we don’t have another core, I'm holding out that this one will pull through.”
“You gave it my genetic data, but it’s a synthetic unit, right?”
“Well, it's nothing to be worried about,” Mac said, “these Kaizen units take some of their owner's blood for licensing rights during the setup sequence. I took it while you were out and initialized everything else manually. As soon as this unit activates, it should belong to you.”
“He’s going to be ...mine?” Jacob blinked.
Mac shrugged, “As much as any Kaizen can belong to someone, and even then, it might not work. Kaizen ownership protocols are supposed to bond the units to their owners, but personally, I think that's why the failure rates were so high. I think the units coul
d see what their existence would be like with their new owners, and just aborted during burn in.”
“They’d kill themselves?” Jacob asked, horrified.
“It's the only reason I can think of to explain Kaizens high initialization failure rate.”
“Poor Kaizen,” Jacob said, “his maker's gone, and he’s forced into a world he doesn’t belong, to do something he wasn’t designed for.”
“Well, it takes one to know one,” Mac said, staring into its featureless face.
Jacob’s eyes focused back on the Rainwalker and more questions slid into his consciousness
“But how did you get a star... I mean gunship in here?”
“Good catch,” Slate said and glanced at Mac with a gruff smile.
Both uncles waited for the other to speak, and after a few seconds Slate said, “we built it.”
“You built it?” Jacob reeled, “But ... how could you build it... that's....”
“Impossible for a couple of old burnouts?” Slate offered and smiled more than Jacob had ever seen.
“Every Space Corps pilot knows how to build their ship from scratch,” Mac said, “it's part of our neural training. We know every wire and panel in that craft. I can't draw to save my life, but I know every curve of that girl on the ship. It’s implanted in case we need to self-rescue out in the black. If a ship crash lands or breaks down, chances are nobody is coming to get you.”
“Especially not the cutthroat cowboys they got running around on the belt now.” Slate added.
Mac went on. “The neural helmet that we used on you is the same kind the Space Corps used on us, but it’s considered obsolete now. The last thing any of the Big Seven want is to have people who know too much in orbit.”
“But.... how do you...” Jacob started, but his brain was sluggish, fatigue was filling his head like sand pouring in through his ears. He looked at the huge green vessel and tried to see the whole of the ship at once. He started shaking as more questions fueled his brainstorm.
“When do... will it be ready... to...” Jacob stammered.
“I just finished getting it reconfigured for training,” Slate said.
“Reconfigured....you said reconfigured,” Jacob said, trying to calm his mind, “what was it... configured for before?”
Both Slate and Mac shared a sad look for a moment before Mac spoke. “The very reason we know how to build it, is why we built it. We were going to blow this joint, but we ran into our materials problem.”
Jacob nodded to hide his shaking as it grew.
“Thorium 6,” Slate said, “it's a space mineral, extremely hard to get on Earth, and doubly so since jump-gate tech uses it. It's nearly impossible to find a few grams of the stuff, and we need Six Kilos for the Rainwalker’s engines and jump drive. Other than a that, the ship is complete in every way we can test.”
“But unless we can get the thorium, it's the world's most elaborate simulator,” Mac said.
“We’ll need to test your...” Mac started, but Jacob’s was suddenly lightheaded, and the ground began to shift. His knees buckled as he grabbed the workbench to catch himself.
“Easy now,” Mac said, and his gangly arms caught Jacob, “that’s enough for today Jacob, no more.”
“N-no,” Jacob protested, fighting to get his footing.
“I need to.... use.... can we...” Jacob’s words were lost in a sandstorm.
“Later,” Mac said, “you need time.”
“But I...”
“There's no shame in healing boy; pride will get you killed in space. It takes time to prepare for a successful attempt,” Slate’s voice had the sound of finality to it, and Jacob didn’t have the strength to argue.
He nodded weakly and leaned on Mac as he guided him back towards the shop’s entrance. Before reaching the storage racks, Mac was carrying an unconscious boy in an extra-small Kaizen Envirosuit.
Chapter 4
“Hey bro!” A voice cut into Jacob’s slumber. Opening his eyes, he found Teeva perched on the attic’s open windowsill.
“You okay bro?”
“H-hey,” Jacob said, and sat up with considerable effort. “Uh... What time it?” He looked around to get his bearings. He was laying on top of the blankets, still wearing the envirosuit.
“Almost six bro!” Teeva jumped down, and padded across the floor to drop himself into the closer of the two chairs, placing his courier bag and strap-tied ninjatō on the floor, “Nice threads, you’re lookin’ fast!”
“Thanks’ Jacob said, “Uncle Mac gave it to me, it’s pretty great,” Jacob said swinging his legs over the edge of the bunk.
“Looks warm.”
“Oh no, it auto-adjusts to keep a constant temperature,” Jacob said and wondered how he knew that.
“Huh!” Teeva nodded before looking down.
Jacob suddenly realized Teeva’s window entrance, “Why didn’t you just use the door?”
“Ninja Skills bro, gotta stay sharp. Besides, your uncle said you was resting when I came by before, so I wanted to be sure to see you,” Teeva said, still nodding. “So... how was the telepathine trip?’
“What?”
“That helmet that your uncles put on you bro! What was it like?”
“Oh,” Jacob rubbed his eyes, feeling the dull throbbing fade, “I can only remember bits and pieces, but I had Hummingbird Power Armor on Mars.
“Whoa!” Teeva gasped, blinking slightly red eyes, “was the vis tight?”
“Ummm...”
“The vis bro! Visibility. The graphics in the helmet.”
“Oh... bro...” Jacob said and smiled at how the word sounded coming out of his mouth. “It was like being with you here now. It was that real.”
“Whoa!” Teeva said again, “Rad!”
“It was incredible!”.
“Sweet! It'd be cool to see if we can find some registered armor,” Teeva laughed, “then we could show the plague what time it is.”
Jacob remembered what Mac said about the Rainwalker engines, “what does registered mean?”
“Registered with Immersion bro,” Teeva’s eyes cleared, “Sorry bro, I forgots you gots no data,” Teeva said, returning to his limber nodding, “I can try to explain it to you, but Joni’s the master on this.”
Teeva took a breath and closed his eyes. “See like, you can have whatever you want on your private servers, right? Like if you wanna set one up in your house and make it like a strip bar you could do that.”
“What’s a strip bar?”
“Seriously bro? For real?” Teeva recoiled. “Okay well... one thing at a time,” he shook his head. “Seriously bro, you're like... from another planet! Anyways, reality servers can make this room look like whatever, but only people who gots access to your circle can see it. Like... say I gots a gynoid...”
Teeva stopped and shook his head, “...or, let's say I gots a chair on my server, that's no big deal because it's my server. But if I want to go on the public servers, I gotta make sure the chair’s registered with Immersion, or I can’t bring it across. This way, people gotta worry about their virtual stuff and their real stuff, an’ that's why we gots problems with the Dead Droid Posse bro!”
“The t-droids,” Jacob said, to show he was following.
“You mean the sorry skags who you played bro!” Teeva laughed and held his closed fist out to Jacob. Jacob stared at it in the pregnant pause as it hovered in the air.
“Don’t leave me hanging bro!” Teeva said in a shrill voice
“Oh, right” Jacob said and quickly bumped his gloved fist against Teeva’s. “Sorry,” he said.
“S'okay you’re new,” Teeva laughed, “uh... where was I?” He scowled.
“I have to register my chair if it has to go online.” Jacob offered.
“Right, or you can just buy it online! It's like the guys who run Immersion came up with these rules, so AVR didn't just cesspool into violence porn. Online rights for salvage sells big, and with the t-droids, we all be makin’ payroll!
”
Teeva pumped his fist at Jacob again, and this time he was ready and bumped it.
“Boosh!” Teeva said and shook his head.
Jacob remembered the augmented sea around the a castle. “What about the Dojo? Is that in Immersion?”
“Oh yeah bro, there was a lake there, right? So, you can have a lake there again. Majka was able to build the castle because she sold the rights to the ship and built a same-size castle. All mil-kits been registered since the beginning bro, including warships. Majka took the cash and built the dojo server, an’ Devon’s posse been messin’ with us ever since.”
Jacob thought about virtual waves cresting in the moonlight. “So... what if they won?”
“Who?”
“Devon and his Dead Droid Posse, what if they beat you in Immersion?”
“Oh, that's kinda weird like, you gotta understand how the software works bro. See, Immersion was like a simulator when it was first made, so the real world is the most important part. Like, a thing that physically exists is more important than something made up.”
Jacob blinked trying to understand.
“Okay,” Teeva started again, “so, like, there’s the physical world, and there’s online, right?”
“Right,” Jacob said.
“Okay, so augmented reality is an overlay on the world, right?”
“Right,” Jacob said again.
“So how your AR works depends on what circles you subscribe too. So like, when you were on board the Dojo, Joni authorized your shields to be in our circle. We downloaded an' installed the software, an' bam!”
Teeva looked at Jacob to see he was still following. “But see, the thing is, since the quarantine zone is all public, no one really controls it, and you're never safe unless you're in a no combat zone. An’ if you do get dead, you’re offline for seventy-two hours.”
“Get dead? You can die?”
“Yeah, it gets weirder bro, there’s tons I gotta explain,” Teeva sighed. “So like, AVR in the zone runs as public access region, which means that anyone can virtually come flying around out here, from the deep city or whatever, if they want to go slumming in VTOLS an’ scrams. If they gots the cash, they can bring whatever they want into Immersion, but out here they’ll probably get their ride stolen, an’ get all cut up.”
