by Eric Vall
Underneath the desk was my pride and joy, “The Beast.” It was a gaming computer I’d built by myself a few months ago. The tower was made out of a shiny black metal, save for the transparent material on the right side. There you could see all the inner workings of the computer, all of the hardware I’d worked my ass off to buy and then installed myself, all illuminated by a deep neon blue.
It looked like something out of Tron, and I fucking loved it.
I quickly yanked off my Carmichael’s uniform, tossed it into the laundry hamper beside my bed, and pulled on some comfy clothes. Then I grabbed a bag of chips off the top of my fridge and headed over to my battlestation. I practically inhaled half the bag as I booted my computer up, hopped onto Steam, and then tried to figure out which game I should play tonight.
Finally, after a split-second of hesitation, I decided to go with my original plan of Cyberpunk Battle Royale. Then I logged onto my Twitch account, started the stream, and booted up the game.
At this time of day, I only had about four hundred people watching, but I was okay with that. This was going to be a short stream, anyway, and I was exhausted. I really didn’t need my whole list of subscribers seeing me out of my element.
Even though I was tired from the stress of today and knew tomorrow would be even worse, I felt surprisingly at ease in front of the camera. These games were my escape from reality, and I absolutely loved sharing my experience playing them with anyone and everyone who was willing to watch.
Although I occasionally played more casual games, I usually stuck to the hardcore stuff like League of Giants, Starforge, or Retaliation. Those games required lots of skill, intelligence, and strategy to win, and I liked to think I was good at all of the above.
I played for a solid two hours before reality hit me again, and I realized I needed to go to bed.
“Alright guys,” I announced to my audience, “I’m gonna stop this stream right here. Be sure to like and subscribe, and I’ll see you next time.”
I let out a deep sigh as I clicked the button to end my stream. As I yanked off my headphones, I silently cursed my boss. What fucking nerve did he have, making me work a double? And only notifying me ten minutes before my shift ended?
The sooner I could be out of this job, the better.
I turned off the lights in my apartment, fumbled around until I found my bed, and then laid down onto the overly-hard pillows. I flipped through the TV channels until I found something that would make for good background noise, and then I laid back and stared at the ceiling.
It was the same routine I’d done day-in and day-out for the last two years. I’d work late, come home, eat like shit, and then stream until it was time for bed.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Oh well. Maybe someday, something would come along to break up the monotony of the grind.
But in the words of a wise ranger, today is not that day.
Suddenly, off in the distance, I heard a deep, low rumble. It only lasted for a second or two, but it was distinctly something akin to an earthquake.
I sat up in bed, ready to make a run for it, but then I realized this “earthquake” lacked any sort of quake.
Huh. Must have just been a small tremor.
Then the television went out, along with the lights on my PC.
I hopped out of bed and walked over to the window to see if anyone else was without power. Surely enough, all of the city street lamps were off, as was the normally-lit skyline of Seattle.
Holy shit, was the power gone from the whole city?
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, everything sprang back to life.
“Weird,” I muttered, and then I crawled back into my bed, pulled the covers up over my head, and went to sleep.
Maybe I could sleep easy after all.
Chapter 3 - HFD-576
The stench of pungent, pollution-filled air and seawater filled my nostrils. Was this what the world used to smell like? It was downright gag-worthy. By some form of fateful irony, the nuclear wasteland of a future I came from somehow had cleaner air than the crux of human civilization. The world was still dark, but I suddenly felt cold concrete against my feet.
My bare feet.
I opened my eyes and watched as the blue plasma substance crackled and dissipated around me. Much to my surprise, I also saw I was now completely naked.
The teleporter must have destroyed my clothes.
Oh well. If I knew humans like I thought I did, this would make my mission so much easier when I found Tony Amin. Human males usually couldn’t control their sex drive, especially when they saw an innocent woman without her clothes. That was the whole reason The Hive chose this form for me.
As I walked down the street, I noticed there was not a single electric light to be found anywhere. Strange. This was supposed to be the time in which human technology hit its peak, yet there was no electricity? The Hive hadn’t sent me back to the wrong time, had it?
A moment later, the lights flickered back on, and my systems took a second to adjust to the new levels of brightness. Perhaps there had been a glitch in the electrical mainframe of this city? I could have done a quick analysis to find out the truth, but it didn’t matter. So, I turned down a busy-looking street and took off in a light jog.
It was dark outside, but there were still plenty of humans out and about. Primitive cars with bright headlights zipped past me as I ran, and I heard a few high-pitched whistles as they passed. Every now and then, my naked body would smack into a passerby on the street and knock them onto their ass. They would scream obscenities at me as I dashed away, but I never stopped.
Nothing was going to get in the way of me and Tony Amin.
The first thing I needed to do was access a database of some sort, maybe by stealing one of these humans' personal communicators or by breaking into one of the sacred, information-laden monoliths that The Hive referred to as a “library.” Once I was in, I could try to find any trace of Tony Amin on the internet. Unlike our time, where humans feared connecting to the internet, the people of 2019 were as interconnected as one could possibly be.
It would be simple to find Tony Amin in this metropolis, but I needed to find a computer.
As I continued to walk down the street, I saw three large, spherical structures that were transparent and lit up from the inside, almost like a lightbulb. There were two grassy knolls on either side of the spheres, where a handful of humans were sitting and enjoying their evening.
They let out a gasp when they saw me staring at them, and then they began to murmur in a panic. Some of the men let out whistles of glee, much to the dismay of the females beside them, and I distinctly heard somebody shout something about there being “kids around here.”
It really didn’t bother me. I was used to humans panicking when they stood in my presence. Usually because they realized they were about to die.
However, the humans’ reaction did remind me it was in my best interest to find some clothes. Being a tall, naked woman with bright blonde hair might have been a great way to attract the attention of my target, but it also attracted the attention of every single person in this city.
And I didn’t need any humans getting in the way of my mission.
So, I used my x-ray scanners to see if I could find an empty dwelling somewhere in the immediate vicinity. As I looked through the buildings, I saw dozens of humans going about the mundane tasks of their everyday lives.
On the third floor of one building, I saw a man sitting alone in his apartment, munching on some sort of bagged food as he stared at a screen mounted in front of his chair. Just one story above him was a woman bustling about her kitchen, running from sink to stove as a pot boiled over.
Finally, on the fourth floor, there was an empty apartment. There was a large pile of documents pooling on the inside of the door, just underneath the mail slot, and the various plant life scattered around the dwelling were all dried out and dead.
Whoever lived there appeared to be on an ex
tended absence.
That would do perfectly.
As I entered the lobby of the apartment building, every single pair of eyes turned to face me.
The woman behind the main desk paled several shades, while the man who was talking to her experienced a rapid heart rate and increased blood flow to his nether regions.
I brushed past their position before they could say anything and then marched over to the chrome doors of the building’s elevator. I pressed the button and crossed my arms over my naked breasts.
“Ma’am?” the woman at the counter called out behind me. “We require clothing in this establishment, you know.”
I ignored her words as I watched the floor counter tick down to “L,” and then I stepped into the elevator.
“Ma’am!” the woman shouted once more as she stood up from her seat, but the doors were already closing behind me.
With my x-ray vision, I saw the woman dialing on her phone, probably in an attempt to call security.
It wouldn’t matter. According to my systems, there were over one-thousand apartments in this building, and they wouldn’t be able to check every single one. Even if they did, I intended to be long gone before they could find me.
I stepped off the elevator and walked down the hallway to room four-hundred and twelve. Then I crouched down, called upon my tendrils, and slowly slid them through the mail slot.
The tiny nanofiber tentacles slithered up the wooden door, latched onto the deadbolt, and then turned it into the “unlocked” position. The mechanism clicked as I withdrew my tendrils, turned the knob, and entered the apartment.
The dwelling did not seem to be anything extraordinary. There was a living space with three large, fabric seats arranged around a flat screen that was mounted to the wall. Immediately next to this room sat a four-foot tall wooden table with stools, and right next to that was a full kitchen suite complete with a bar.
But I didn’t care about any of that. My prize was located in the bedroom.
I quietly shut the door behind me as I moved over to the set of doors to the right. There, in the bedroom, sat a desk with a rather small monitor and computer tower.
I once again extended my tendrils as I approached the desk and sat down in the chair. The instant the ends of my nanotech fibers touched the nickel-plated connectors, all sorts of data shot through my system.
But it was not the kind of information I was used to seeing.
Instead of building schematics or encrypted communications between Resistance leaders, I found several pictures of some random woman and her friends, goofing around in the most foolish ways possible. I saw a few text messages to some other human male that inferred she’d recently been “dumped,” along with some pictures of the man’s penis that had been sent to her. Then I found an application entitled “Find My Friends.” When I entered into the data of the application, I found it was some sort of program that allowed people to “befriend” other people from all around the world.
Each person had their own “profile” that laid out when they were born, where they went to school, their current place of work, their favorite hobbies … essentially everything you could possibly want to know about a person.
This was the perfect place to search for my target.
I ordered my programming to do a query search for Tony Amin. As I feared, several dozen results showed up, all of which could potentially be the man I was looking for.
But one of the Tonys stood out to me. The one whose profile picture was some sort of three-dimensional image of a man wearing spiky armor and holding a battle axe.
This one looked like a great warrior, fit to give birth to the savior of mankind.
So, I entered onto his profile and found he worked at a place called “Carmichael’s Electronics” that, according to my scanners, was only a few kilometers away from me.
If I wanted to find out who the mother of Alexander Amin truly was, I first needed to find the correct Tony Amin. My analysis indicated this particular Tony had a high probability of being my target, which meant I needed to get close to him.
And the best way to do that was to get a job at Carmichael’s, so I could observe him for a few days without him knowing my true intent.
I navigated around the company’s website until I finally found the contact information of the manager.
His name was Darren Byers. He was a middle-aged man with a severely balding head and small, beady eyes.
This was where I would begin my search.
But first, I needed some clothing.
So, I approached the sliding door of the closet, opened it, and began to inspect the clothing inside. There were several flowery, one-piece garments along with dozens of simple shirts and jackets of various styles and colors.
I snagged a plain, white, sleeveless shirt and tugged it over my head. It fit snugly against my chest and left my midriff exposed, but it would be fine for this mission.
Next, I headed over to a large oak dresser that sat just next to the bedroom door. I rifled through the different compartments until I finally found a pair of pants that came halfway down my inner thigh and were made of a synthetic nylon fabric.
As I slid on the pants, I used my x-ray scanners to see what was going on in the lobby of the building. The same woman and man were standing there, but they were now talking to a uniformed human male, and my scanners picked up a pistol strapped to his hip.
I could have easily walked down into the lobby and killed all three of them where they stood. However, this mission required stealth, so I couldn’t go around killing every human who stood in my way. That would quickly lead to the humans being on high alert, and that was the last thing I needed at the moment.
So, instead of walking down the main staircase and exiting through the entrance, I opted for the fire escape. My systems showed the rickety metal stairs had a thirty-percent chance of critical failure, but I was okay with those odds.
Once I was down on the street, I inputted the coordinates for Carmichael’s into my HUD, and then began my journey toward Tony Amin’s place of employment.
I wasn’t fully aware of how things worked in this archaic world, but I knew the basics. In order for a human being to live, they needed to have money. The only way for a human to earn money was by having a “job” in which somebody with more money than they did bossed them around in exchange for pay.
It was trivial, it was counterintuitive, it was human.
As I walked toward my destination, the night sky began to light up with flashes of electricity and then unleashed a torrential downpour. The rain was cold and wet on my skin, and the shirt I was wearing clung to my body like it had been glued to my chest, but it didn’t bother me whatsoever. I continued on until I finally came to a large building with a giant, neon red sign that read “Carmichael’s Electronics” at the top.
The front of the building was made up entirely of giant glass panes between small metal upright pieces, and there was a small flashing “open” sign just next to a set of plane glass doors.
What kind of security was this? Anyone who was worth half their weight could just break through the glass, kill everyone in the store, and get away with the goods.
It was no wonder the humans had needed The Hive to protect them.
I sauntered up to the door, and it opened up automatically. I stepped into the store and tried to get my bearings as I dripped water all over the sleek tile beneath my feet.
This place was almost as big as one of our factories, with aisle after aisle of goods to be purchased and employees rushing around as if they were cogs in a well-oiled machine.
“Uhhhhh, h-h-hi,” I heard a high-pitched voice ask from behind me.
I turned around to see a man wearing a pair of light brown pants and a red, long-sleeved button-up shirt. He had dark stubble all over his face, a stark contrast from the longer black hair he’d slicked back at the top of his head. He also wore a small white square on his chest that read “Kevin.” His heart rate was out of
control, and his eyes kept darting down to my breasts.
Typical human.
“I am looking for Darren Byers,” I stated.
The dark-haired man appeared nervous, and his hands trembled out of control as sweat beaded on his forehead.
“I, uh--” Kevin started, but then he cut himself off with a high pitched burst of laughter.
The dark-haired man tried to pull his eyes up to meet my own, but they instantly shot back down to my chest as if they were being magnetically attracted.
He was of no use to me.
So, I activated my x-ray vision and scanned the building carefully until I finally found Darren Byers.
He was in one of the back rooms of the store, and he was watching some sort of video on his computer of a human male and a human female mating. As he did so, he held his penis in his hand, and he was stroking it vigorously.
Without another word, I ambled through the building toward the rooms in the back.
Kevin was still stuttering behind me as I passed into the bowels of the building, but his voice soon faded into oblivion. I walked through the ugly corridors, past the random fliers on the wall and the strange pictures of animals with encouraging words written on them. Finally, I arrived at the door that said “Managers Only.”
The thought of staying in this world and pretending to be a regular human disgusted me. But, if we wanted our final victory over mankind, I had to kill both Tony Amin and his future lover so their son Alexander would never exist. To do that, I needed to infiltrate human society for at least a few days. If this really was the right Tony, then it was only the woman I needed to find. And what better way to find the future mother of the Resistance than to keep a close eye on the father? Perhaps to even befriend him?
This wasn’t the way I normally went about my missions, but I supposed it was part of being a Decoy model.
I grabbed the handle of the door and flung it open violently.
Darren Byer’s let out a gasp of surprise as he clicked off the video on his screen and desperately tried to slide his penis back into his pants.
