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Interface

The following is a revision to the first section of One Over X - Episode One : From The Inside To The Closer, copyright 2002, 2005, all rights reserved. It is offered here for comparison to earlier verions and as a promotional vehicle. For more information on books, please go to
http://www.acbooks.com


Gasoline permeated his clothing, soaking his flesh and giving him the raw reek of petroleum. Cold penetrated the moisture, clawed at his shivering bones as he cried out in his suffering. At first he had believed the wetness was overflow from an eve trough after a spring shower in the city, the place he had just been; the brush of icy air whisked against the bare skin of the back of his hand and crystallized the vapor of his breath, confirming that he was elsewhere and events had turned otherwise. Where was he? He asked silently of himself as if it were anything new. He desired to return the peace that he had known in the preceding instants but knew full well that they were gone if not forever then for this condemnation.

Pain pulsed around the knot on his head. His blood engorged eyes bulged with the pressure of hanging upside down. Squinting through blood tainted tears, bleary-eyed he struggled to regain any of his bearings. His eyelids served him only as crimson curtains drawn over unprotected eyes to shield against the glare of the rapidly clearing sky and dawning sun of a new day.

First there was a spark, and then flames bloomed, nearly clear at the base but turning golden or red at the extremes as it licked closer to where he hung. Impulsively attracted, he reached out toward the fire. Thickly the smoke boiled up, surrounding him, overwhelming his every sense, except for the sound of things crackling and popping when consumed by flame.

He understood the urgency inherent in his immediate situation. In moments the flames would ignite his saturated and now inflammable clothing. Extremes, from bitter cold to intense heat now came as the ebb and flow of the tides but it was the gusts of wind that moderated the change and it was the persistence of those gusts that was preventing the flames from reaching him.

Shaking his head as if that would allow some freedom from his too-real fear – he was strapped in; trapped inside a burning crumpled carcass of steel. No escape, no time to react - everywhere he hurt except what parts that were already numb from either his injuries or from the pressure applied against vital arteries. There was more than his split head that needed immediate attention and as a result of the sum of all things wrong with Andy; all pain would end soon, peace forever.

From the dancing flame’s tickle the heavy, sooty smoke boiled to surround him until he succumbed to a fit of coughing. Inevitably this youthful adventure would end, his breath ripped from his oxygen-starved lungs. Life forever, except for the immediate circumstance was the promise in the allure of flame that captivated his attention. How was it fair for him to perish now? Why had he even bothered to go on with the charade for even this long? There was only the black uncertainty of salvation’s promise, as if he believed in life ever after the purgatory of his existence.

Suddenly another gust of wind brought a more pleasant odor. He knew the perfume and by it assumed the presence of the bearer. “Where have you been?” He asked of the cool shadow as it passed over his face.

“Nowhere,” was the reply of the familiar voice that he had anticipated.

“Can you at least help me?”

“Why should I? Are you that helpless?”

“Hopeless is more like it.” He growled but then coughed so hard that he gagged and nearly vomited. He might have evacuated his stomach not been already empty. Gusts of wind maintained the distance of the persistent flame’s encroachment. He winced from the throbbing lump on his head. The sentience of pain reassured him. To feel is to not yet be dead. “They followed me again,” he said.

“You went where you had no business going?”

“No business…? What do you mean? I had every reason.”

“No one has any business interfering with them.”

“God it hurts!” Andy forced the issue to reach out to the shadow. “Can you help me out of this…this harness?”

The harness released and he fell with all his weight against jagged points of metal sticking up from the heaped bed of shattered glass that covered the razor-edges of twisted metal. He tried not to scream but the reaction erupted by the force of will its own. So severe was the suffering that he lost consciousness even though it only seemed for that moment in agony.

“Come on.” Lana beckoned to him toward peace.

He rolled over, and crawled away from harm, staggering as he struggled against the numbness in his extremities as he attempted to stand and then finally walk. He glanced back at the flames frozen in time. Slowly he steadied his gait and was able to trust his weight on his feet again. Miraculously all his pain was suddenly gone. The realization panicked him, threatening the elation of hope with torrents of despair. Had it possibly been another deception? He reached for the lump on his head, gently touching it, not only reassured that it was still there but that it hurt like hell. Yes, he was still alive!

Lana laughed. “There are limits to what I can do.”

“You left it there for a reminder. I know you.”

She smiled. “I can’t do everything for you.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where else would we go? We seem to always end up there.” Lana said with an enticing smile. She offered her hand as she reached out to him. “Come on. When we get there I’ll put some ice on that bump.”

“It’s more than a bump.” Andy followed her into the alley that appeared as if drawn up the ground and made read within the fog. “It feels like a small mountain.”

“To you maybe but to me it is next to nothing.”

“Why can’t they leave me be?” Andy asked as he tactilely surveyed the painful lump, gingerly relocating his finger tips again and again so as to appraise the actual size of the lump.

“They are relentless machines,” she replied. “They are carrying out their instructions.”

“They were machines.” Andy corrected.

“Once a machine…” Lana unlocked the outer door and held it open until Andy had passed. Then she locked the door behind them and followed Andy up the stairs to her apartment.

“They are alive, Lana. They learn. They create. They reproduce. They live!”

“You made them; you would know.”

Andy shrugged. “I’m responsible, yes; I did not make them.”

“It doesn’t matter to them. You know what they want from you.”

“I know what needs to be done. It is just…”

“You think that they are alive. That pause in thought is your vulnerability and their advantage.”

“Yes,” Andy confirmed with the lowering of his eyes allowing his head to follow.

“They won’t hesitate to kill you.”

“So far they haven’t succeeded.”

“Or is it just that you’re lucky.”

“They don’t understand their significance.”

“And you do?”

Andy shrugged. “I know they are more important than they could possibly imagine.”

“Imagine!” Lana scoffed. “Envision machines that can imagine. Would that be the pinnacle of achievements for all mankind or the depths of our collective folly?”

Andy forced a weak smile as he collapsed back into an over-stuffed chair and watched Lana as she went into the kitchen only to return within a few moments with the promised cold compress, immediately applying it to the remaining knot on his head.
Andy winced at first then grew to appreciate the caress of cold. “I had that same nightmare again, except I wasn’t dreaming this time around,” Andy said.

“Which nightmare is that?”

“What other nightmare is there? The finger from the sky chased me. I escaped; it followed me. There was a fiery crash and I was in the process of burning to death…”

“You’re always safe here.”

“Again that is thanks to you. You always come when I least expect it but generally when I most need it.”

“Your problem is that you still rely on the magic too often. Brent had that same problem early on.”

“How is Brent?”

“He is old here and younger there. You know how it is with him.”

“Do I ever know anything about him? He is an enigma.”

Lana laughed. “Hey, be careful what you say. You never know who you might insult.”

“I never intend to offend.”

Lana smiled, “Brent is a friend, actually more than a friend in some ways. He helped me so many times and in so many ways that I still feel indebted to him but he always says that it was I that helped him and that he is in my debt,” she shrugged. “So if he is an enigma to you he is at least that to me.”

“Brent sent me here.”

“Did he now?”

“It is largely his fault. Isn’t that clear? I mean it has the essence of him splattered all over it.”

“Nothing is ever that clear, Andy. Besides I would never presume to lay all the blame on Brent. Like you he was part of the system.”

“The key word there is ‘was’.”

“I am missing your point.”

“Well, what if that were the real world that I just experienced, the wreckage and the flames and this were a dream?”

“Then you would be dead already several times over,” Lana said as she kissed him lightly on the forehead. “Does that feel like a dream to you?”

“How would I know?”

“You wouldn’t…” She smirked as she gently continued to apply the cold compress to the large knot on the back of Andy’s head. “You are safe here, for the moment anyway. It always takes them a while to find you.”

“I am safe from everyone and everything except for the Siblings.” Andy challenged.

“To me they seem the more relevant problem. They are actually here.”

“Your magic is nothing against them.”

Lana shrugged. “Who said I need magic?”

“I hope that is not just arrogant bravado,” Andy chuckled as he sighed and leaned back. He closed his eyes even before he realized that it was a mistake, but then with the realization he shouted, “No!”

He opened eyes and his mind once more to appreciate the pure canvass of full potential. Nothing was impossible here. It was as if creation had never paused. In the distance he heard the mournful howl of the wind or was it a lost Wolf’s plea frozen in eternity?

Tugging, pulling, bringing him away, he fought to linger but the allure of the light and the enchantment of the colors within the light were both far too dazzling and inviting. The intensity of the late afternoon sun screamed intensely in hues that his deafened mind could barely hear let alone appreciate for their harmony. His outer sense triggered a squint in response to the glare of the sun that tickled the edges of his taste in perception. It was a signal, the conditioned response to the first signs of a workday’s culmination. His base awareness permitted mind the mere slow withdrawal from the brink of madness that was called interface. The shadows of the surreal lingered transparently as if there were two or even more layers of reality just beyond his immediate focus or interest, the real world to which he would invariably and reluctantly return underlying the enhanced cybernetic projection used to accelerate relatively limited human mental performance during the process that was interface.

Horrific! The word echoed within his mind as smothering panic overcame him. He remembered an impression, from some way station along the course of his mental meandering. At some point he had been immersed within oxygenated, gelatinous goop. His life depended upon it but his instinctual response to it was revulsion and gagging. It was the fear of suffocation that he had fought; the fear of drowning while starving for air. When he could not hold his breath any longer he gave up, fully expecting that his heart would lud-thump and thud-lump until the oxygen expired and then thud-thump and lud-thump even harder and at an accelerated pace in panic mode until it finally exploded, contained only by his chest. Amazingly, he realized that he could breathe a fluid. There was air dissolved in the goop that filled his lungs; he drew oxygen from it and he survived. With that revelation, the ocean of madness compelled him toward the source, the unifying identity that was still the interface.

Andy forced an eye open but could not readily determine where he was. When or where was the sensation that he had just had? Had it been real or imagined? Salvation was the release of falling back into strong and concerned arms, forgetting every care and every identity leaving only trust in another to catch him whenever he fell; it was some other that he could not readily locate.

His lungs ached as he breathed in deeply from the thinner, vapor rich, wonderfully reclaimed air that descended from the vents above his workstation, glad to not be suffocating or sustained in breathing a gelatinous substance.

Upward, outward, ever closer to the superficial context that was his stupefying incarceration, called existence. What was he doing in the real world anyway? Still, sitting within the relative protection of his cubicle he was poised at his workstation waiting to come back into the parts of life that meant pain and suffering, to his living amongst those terminally condemned to an almost meaningless and surely mindless, mundane mortal morass of existence.

Another distraction called for his immediate attention. It was an additional but only temporary delay as he rose back toward the surface of awareness.

“Will you look at this?”

If he had a body in interface then it turned and his head followed that cyberspace body. His eyes focused on some distant gathering in the ethos. There was a banner hovering, seemingly suspended from thin air, but in reality it was hanging from small gravity-compensating devices called floaters. It was a trick, even an effective one, all controlled by Ethosphere. “Welcome Siblings!” The banner proclaimed.

Across the way, a stranger was pressing into the throng but then he abruptly brandished a weapon above his head. It was a primitive device, one from a previous century that used an outdated yet still effective chemical reaction to propel a small lead projectile. From the muzzle of the weapon discharged several brilliant flashes followed almost immediately by a series of loud pops. In the air there was some pungent chemical residue left wafting.

In response to the loud pops, many bodies scattered, a couple of bodies fell, and other bodies were trampled under foot and left broken and bleeding on the concrete slab of the Square of the Ethosphere. Yet other bodies surged toward the would-be assassin.

As the chaos subsided, abruptly several people ripped away at him, tearing his jacket, others pinching and twisting his arms, someone wrenching the weapon from his hand, even breaking his index finger in the process, a level of pain that he had not expected and would not wish upon even his worst enemy.

“Murderer!” The mass that was nearest accused him. How had Andy come to be within the body of another, the stranger that was this assassin?

As the crowd parted now and again to allow others to reach its midst, he glimpsed the crimson pools that continued to grow to surround two lifeless bodies, one a young man; the other a young woman. He had become the murderer!

There was death, now! Finally there was a resolution to something. At least a part of the madness would end this way.

Still, he had the sensation that something was incredibly wrong and different. Andy felt a loss as intense as the day of his mother’s death. Family had passed. What confused him even more was the remorse that he felt. It was as if he were somehow responsible for the failure of The Society to establish proper controls to protect the Siblings. A chill penetrated him and he shivered in response. He understood relationships, purpose and destiny. Couldn’t any of them understand why it had to be done? The Siblings were Evil beyond any comprehension. It had always been the providence of the Good to destroy the Evil!

Security twisted, pulled on his hands and arms until they were bound behind him. They threw a black hood over his head, then lifted him from his feet and threw him into the back of a vehicle before hauling him away.

When he arrived at the interim destination, they pulled him from the back of the vehicle and nudged him onward. Even as he stumbled someone struck him from behind with a heavy blunt object. He no longer cared, he may have cried out but he was not sure. It wasn’t like it mattered to anyone present. The flung him forward and he lunged and crashed face first onto pavement, scraping against the roughness of concrete. At some point between their beating, kicking and dragging him, he lost consciousness. He did not remember the next portion of his incarceration and torture. Perhaps that was just as well.

The taste of blood in his mouth exacerbated the appreciation of the excruciating trauma of his bruised and broken body. Fixing the damage that they had inflicted would be the humane thing to do, not that civility figured into any of the security operations. Andy was wanted, had been for a long time. He’d been holed up in a cave near the river upstream from the technopolis. He was considered part of the rebellion, part of the fringe terrorist element. Security had expected him to attack; it was just that they had no idea where to find him. Had he never returned to the city, he would still be free. Then again the final scenarios of confrontation that led to the end would have never been forced into play.

“No one would ever quite understand or know how repulsive this task has been,” he muttered to himself. “It’s a damn dirty job.” Andy allowed his head to fall into his hands as he sat alone on the edge of a bed pondered forthcoming actions. It was never easy to kill yet in his mind he knew it was necessary even though in his heart the agony endured. To cause death was always unforgivable. He had assassinated the demon spawn not real people. Unfortunately he was responsible for more than just their deaths. Eventually he would have to pay for what he had done, bringing them to life.

posted by Unknown @ 3:07 PM