72 R&R

Merlin took a long drag of the NicStic in his fingers. The stick’s far end lit up with a cool blue light for a few seconds before he parted ways with it, and exhaled a large vapor cloud into the air.

historical

It smelled a little sweet, and a little earthy.

He, along with a shadowy man, stood just inside of a dirty alleyway next to an old bar, somewhere in one of the seedier districts in Helios.

“What’cha got for us?” asked the shadow.

When Merlin spoke, his previous stoic and simple accent was gone. Instead, he spoke with much more informality and with a very slight American drawl.

“I found some great tech y’all might be really interested in,” he said. “Way better than those AniMox pods you’re all so attached to.”

“Oh?” said the shadow. “Better than the brainwave pods? AniMox has got the potential to hack people, man. Imagine bein’ in control of the Grand Minister – everything you want suddenly became law. So you’d better not be fucking with me with your ‘way better than’ crap. Ain’t nothin’ more powerful than mind control.”

Merlin took another drag casually, and waved away the hostility.

“Trust me man, it’s like the evolution of AniMox. Picture yourself directly connected to your piloting core. Mentally. Like, you can control the fucking thing with my brain. You think ‘left’, and the damned thing goes left. Controlling a 20 meter machine of death sounds pretty goddamned badass to me. Tell me that’s inferior to her pods.”

.....

The shadow’s eyes went wide as Merlin spoke about Prometheus. A neurolink to a piloting core? That sounded inconceivable to him. Then his eyes narrowed.

“This better not be a joke,” he warned. “Coz if that thing’s real, then we need to get our hands on it.”

“Oh, the thing’s real,” replied Merlin. “Hell, I had to use the AniMox pod just to recover from using it. But I dunno how I’m gonna get a damn thing outta there. The base is locked down tight. I don’t even know where the fuck it is.”

The shadow leaned back slightly as he pondered the situation.

“Don’t worry about it for now. Just keep spreading those Blips like I toldja.”

Merlin pulled out one of the Blips from out of his pocket, and toyed with it a little. It was a small cylindrical container, and rather inconspicuous. Anyone who saw one of these on the side of a road wouldn’t think twice about it.

In fact, it looked like it belonged with the rest of the detritus that littered the alleyway they were in.

“You sure this thing works? I put down maybe a half dozen of ’em already.”

The shadow nodded emphatically.

“Since it’s an asteroid base, you’ll have to scatter at least ‘nother dozen. But yeah, they’ll work. Just be sure to activate ’em when we send you the signal.”

Merlin nodded, then put the device back in his pocket.

The shadow was clearly in thought. The possibilities that the Admiral’s experimental core could bring were limitless. Most critically, they’d have the technological advantage in any of their sorties.

And out there, in the black, every advantage meant more profit.

“Get us this score,” continued the shadow, “And I’ll induct you as a Templar personally.”

Merlin’s eyes went wide at the shadow’s words. He straightened his back almost immediately.

“Hail Eris,” he said.

The shadow merely nodded in response.

~

The huge hyperpturbine engines on the racing pods screamed as they sped by. The pods were little more than tiny cockpits strapped to giant engines, and they went incredibly fast. In fact, far faster than the best fighter jets out there. These could easily perform at three hundred meters per second, and could traverse entire landmasses in the blink of an eye.

Of course, that was far different in atmosphere. Gravity, wind resistance, and atmospheric pressure tamped down that racer’s fire. But they could still go pretty damn fast, and the thrill of speed was barely dampened.

And these racers sped around the California coastline at blazing speeds. They wound around the city’s skyline, and dared to veer closer and closer to every building they passed. The smallest mistake on their part would result in their deaths. And the deaths of whoever was in any building they might have struck.

But that didn’t stop them from winding around the city with their throttles set to ludicrous speeds. And they invited death every moment they spent in the sprawl that combined both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In this new universe, both cities had spread outwards, mostly towards each other. The two cities eventually collided somewhere in the middle, and made for a dual-city sprawl that encompassed half of California’s coastline. And all the way up and down that coastline were towering skyscrapers that glittered under the night sky.

Redstar sat in her racer as she expertly wove between the buildings. Her movements were deft and precise, and her racer reflected her movements. She skimmed the surrounding buildings by less than a meter, as though she dared the heavens to intervene.

Not that they ever needed to. She was a natural.

Her friends, too. They sped in between the towers almost as easily as she did. Their hoots and hollers were loud over their open comms. But Redstar was dead quiet.

In fact, she hardly felt any joy at their outing.

She had always looked forward to impromptu street races with her peers. The thrill of it all always got to her, always made her feel whole.

Not any longer, apparently. The experiment had changed her, greatly.

It was its speed; its responsiveness.

Every other core was impossibly slow compared to it. Everything she did in her highly-tuned racing core felt sluggish and weak. It was as though every input she made came with an eternal delay before the ship responded.

The difference might have only been a tenth of a second, but she still noticed. And it bothered her greatly. Deeply.

She came to a realization that all other cores were trash, and that she was no longer the same pilot. She wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

The Admiral was right – we got altered. What if I end up like one of those ferals?

Redstar shook her head in absolute disgust at the thought.

Red and blue lights suddenly flashed brightly in their area as a helmeted, clean-cut, square-jawed officer appeared on all their comms displays. He didn’t look the least bit happy.

“San Francisco Metropolitan Police!” he screamed. “Cease all velocity this instant! You are all in violation of Municipal Code TDF-63.5041-B. Idle your turbines and be prepared to be scanned!”

“Finally,” interrupted one of Redstar’s friends. “Now we can have a proper race! Come catch me, porky!”

They launched into a cacophony of oinking noises as they opened up their engines.

Redstar, too. But the joy still lacked from her face. She yelped and hollered like the others, but her tone was flat and her heart felt hollow. It all suddenly felt routine to her. She jammed her throttle to the max anyway, and hoped that the thrill of speed would revive her.

A half dozen SFMP speeders then launched forward and gave chase to each of them. Their red and blue lights blazed through the darkness, and reflected off the multitude of glass windows surrounding.

~

Like Redstar, Miko had taken a shuttle over to Gaea as she had wanted to see what her home planet had become. She ended up walking the streets of Tokyo over the course of a few cycles, and explored the little nooks and crannies they had to offer.

She even had her EyeCast out, and took some great shots of the urban scenery around her.

Japan had become one gigantic city, with multiple levels both above and below the ground. Like many others, it had become a megacity, and was home to close to a billion people.

Calling the city densely populated was putting it lightly.

Miko explored the many businesses and shops at the city center near what used to be Akiba, up and down multiple levels. She found that the charm of the lights and the sounds had made their way through to this universe. And all the little food booths along the side of the roads, or in the small alleyways delighted her to no end.

She spent a great deal of her time at the topmost levels, where the most boutique shops resided. More than that, there was a vestige of greenery, and some of the space was cordoned-off so that grass could grow.

A small food booth caught her eye, and she immediately headed there. She gazed at the food vendor, who was expertly making some of his specialties. The little balls sizzled in their trays as the smell of it wafted in the air.

Miko quickly ordered a takoyaki – octopus balls – and paid through her DI.

The vendor picked out the juicer balls, stuck them onto a skewer, and drizzled them generously with a thick brown takoyaki sauce.

Her eyes sparkled as he handed them over.

They bowed to each other in thanks, then she walked off and took little bites of her snack. Her EyeCast had caught every step of it, from the moment the food was made, to the point where she took the first bite.

She found it excellent beyond belief, and her eyes misted up as her thoughts turned to her old life.

Miko missed it greatly.

Then, she came across an amazing sight, one that made her forget her old life in an instant.

It was a cylindrical building with huge doors flanked by two mecha statues. The signage that they held up simply read “Mechanized Armature Hackerspace”.

Miko headed straight in without a shred of hesitation.