The Rubidium Beach Series - Episodes 1 Through 4: Cyberpunk/Dystopian Science Fiction

by G. D. Blanton

  Episodes 1-4

  Rubidium Beach

  Battle for Rubidium Beach

  Violencia

  Alien Code

  The Rubidium Beach Series of Novellas

  By

  G.D. Blanton

  Published by

  Wolfe Johnson Inc

  Copyright 2014 G.D. Blanton

  All Rights Reserved

  Web: http://rubidiumbeach.com

  CONTENTS

  Rubidium Beach

  Battle for Rubidium Beach

  Violencia

  Alien Code

  RUBIDIUM BEACH

  Of course this was the freebie, the teaser. The full version could only be unlocked by moving a small number of virtual credits from his account to the programmer's. So here he was in a low-budget, one cut above home made VR production lounge bar. This particular app only had two other scenes: an excruciatingly badly rendered brothel and an all-night pasta shop which wasn't horrible – if the one available user review was to be believed.

  He was sitting at the bar sipping brown water and debating whether to spend one in-app credit to taste something stronger or two credits for both taste and accompanying buzz. Then everything whited out and hurt like hell. Some sleazeball programmer had maxed out the pain setting without as much as a warning dialog. Gross incompetence or malice, the end result is still the same – pain, lots and lots of pain.

  Junco came to with a strange arm around his throat and a spandex clad biker type taking up his full field of vision. He sunk his teeth into the arm, hard into soft flesh. The owner of the arm cursed and released his hold but this still left the over-decorated biker, who had somehow managed to conjure up a sonic boomer. Before Junco could make a lunge for the device biker dude managed to activate the weapon. Suddenly a thousand psychotic jack-hammering maniacs were trying to break his skull from the inside out and turn his internals into soup.

  It was at this point he decided enough was enough and shut down the Scenario, silently cursing the invitation to unlock the full version for a ten second only special offer of 2% off the usual price. They would have to pay him a crap-load of money to hook into this scenario again.

  1. LEVEL ZERO

  Back in Level Zero reality, Junco had time to do a little thinking before his shift at Old World Reality Inc was due to start. The where and what was self explanatory, but the who and the why were a complete mystery. Sure, he had pissed off some people back in the day but whoever set up the beating certainly bore a grudge and knew how to get around his personal firewalls, not to mention other sundry legal and not quite so legal defenses. Half an hour later and still none the wiser, despite several discrete, heavily encrypted calls, Junco closed his eyes, flicked an internal switch and was at his workstation.

  The usual sets of names and numbers appeared behind his eyes and everything looked to be in order. Level Minus One, or Earth as the ancients called it, was humming along nicely and no indicators were even close to red. All of the robots and AI programs were functioning as they should.

  Junco's team was responsible for Minus One's oil production and supporting infrastructure, everything from getting it out of the ground to getting it where it was needed. Of course the whole process was automated from the mining of metals, to building transporters, to the production of software routines that determined how many new robots or drill rigs to build. Even the checks and balances were designed by intelligent software. Human oversight was a legal requirement but was, in fact, completely unnecessary and Junco knew this.

  Like most people, Junco spent only the time he had to on Minus One. He would drop down for the 'three Es.' exercise, eat and excrete, but that was about it. Even during these times he was still fully hooked up to Level One and almost as immersed as when his physical body was disconnected. He did once spend a whole week there for no other reason than to satisfy curiosity. He watched the drones deliver the food, the machines clean the houses, and only saw a few other people during that time, a strange experience that he he had little desire to repeat. Virtual was much cleaner, much nicer.

  It was while musing about the past that he made the connection: Vireo, one of the people he met during this week out from his normal life had talked about something that resonated. The exact words eluded Junco but the meaning was very clear. Vireo had advised him to be really careful, especially with cheap or no name software as the Wreckers were now at the point where they could easily screw with just about any program and not only that but they could go in deep enough to cause irreparable damage to both the user's biology and implanted hardware. At the time Junco had just marked this down as a side effect of too much Minus One time on Vireo's part.

  2. LEVEL MINUS ONE

  After work Junco usually dropped down to Level Minus One for exactly as long as it took to unpack and eat his rations, take care of his personal hygiene and relieve himself. Of course he would be running virtual at the same time so the bland but nutritious food paste would look and taste like anything in his current gourmet subscription library. His current favorite shower program incorporated gold gargoyle fountains, a liquid silver lake and a Jovian sunset. This day was going to be very different though – he was going to find Vireo and see if he could get some answers or at least some useful information. The altercation with Spandex and friend had left him pretty shaken.

  Vireo wasn't hard to track down, a quick search through the current edition of 'Habitats and Occupants' showed him to be living on the Southern tip of what used to be called South Africa. Junco summoned a transporter and was standing outside Vireo's home within the hour. Home did not really describe what Junco was now looking at, however, the words that came to mind were more along the lines of fortress, brutal, massive, and hardened. He knew that Vireo tended towards the paranoid, but this setup was something else altogether. His reverie was interrupted by a barked command to face the camera that was set into the concrete gatepost. The sound was real, not virtual, not inside his head. He did as instructed remembering that Vireo did not do tech – or so he thought.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” boomed out from the concealed speakers. The voice did not belong to Vireo, of that Junco was certain. This was a surprise, Junco hadn't even considered the fact that Vireo may not be living the loner's life.

  “Junco and I was umm.. wondering if Vireo was home?” The gates slid open and Junco took that as an invitation to walk up the sizable drive and towards the massive steel shutters that appeared to be the only entrance to the fortress.

  As soon as he entered the building his tech died, the offline symbol appeared briefly then disappeared along with all his ongoing health numbers, people in the vicinity graphic and his work link. He suddenly felt very alone.

  Vireo appeared from a side room, smiling and confident, not at all the nervous introvert Junco was expecting. “You got my message then?”

  “Ummm yah, spandex biker and actual pain – really?”

  “Serves you right for using that cruddy software, especially after my warning.” Vireo was smiling.

  The most remarkable thing about this room was that it was real, every last bit of it. The wooden table was a tree at one time, the soft leather on the chairs did come from cows, and the smells all emanated from surfaces, not lines of code. Junco hated it. It made him feel disconnected which of course he now was for the first time in his life. The feeling went much deeper than this, though; his own thoughts now seemed random and untethered without the constant interplay of the biological and the technological
.

  “Don't worry, it'll soon pass. Happens to everyone at first”

  Junco was skeptical, as the untethered feeling had an edge of permanence about it. He begged to be allowed to get back online. Vireo explained that the whole building was protected against all and every type of signal that may be used to carry data and that this approach was essential for reasons that would be made clear later, when the reality sickness abated and Junco could think straight.

  3. DAY TWO

  Day two. He woke with a start and only his own thoughts to keep him company. It took several seconds to put all the pieces together and remember where he was, why he was there and, most importantly why his tech was not functioning. On a good note , he no longer felt disoriented and nauseous. Vireo it turned out, was right on that score.

  There were a dozen or so people seated around a table which occupied a small corner of a very large room, some looking happy to be there and others looking anything but. After a quick round of introductions, Vireo cleared his throat and started to speak: 'Before I get to the main point I'd like to apologize for the method used to get you all here. It was underhand and, if someone had done to me what I've done to you I'd be extremely pissed.” The words said sorry but but the expression did not.

  Junco: “So, you sent Spandex into whatever Level One diversion we happened to be in to kick the crap out of us? Charming.”

  “Something like that. The others' scenarios didn't involve bikers, beatings or scuzzy dive bars – that one was tailored to you.” Some in the group smiled nervously. “Some of the scenarios didn't involve virtual reality at all, they were played out entirely on Level Minus One.”

  Teal, a twenty something athletic female who, on this Level, lived in a place called the Yemen looked at Vireo, “Did you meet us all in the flesh so to speak before pulling this little stunt or was that an honor reserved for me?”

  “I met you all, wanted to get a feel for the real versions, to see if your virtual personas were a true recreation or if you were creating fantasies – I suppose I might as well admit this, I've been hooked into your virtual feeds for some time.”

  “You hacked us?” Junco was mad. “Why, how deep, and for how long?” he demanded.

  Teal looked hard at Vireo. “Unless you come up with some really good answers this room will empty.” the others in the room were nodding in agreement. “The only question is whether you walk out of here with us or not.” In the time that she had been speaking a knife had appeared in her fist, seemingly out of thin air. Junco was impressed and judging by the looks on their faces, so were the others.

  Vireo did not look at all perturbed. He seemed to be enjoying the show and was now laughing at Teal, goading her into attacking him. Teal obliged. She lunged across the table and slammed the knife straight and hard into Vireo's neck. Or at least that is what should have happened according to the senses. The reality was different. One instant Vireo was in the room the next he wasn't. Teal went sprawling across the table and into a heap on the floor.

  “There's a tech damper field operating here – that should not have happened,” Junco said, with masterful understatement.

  “About that.” The now rematerialized Vireo smiled. “Partially true. Your tech is dead in the water, mine isn't.” It was at this exact moment that what looked like steel shutters slammed down from the ceiling turning the room into a prison. Whether the shutters were real or virtual made little difference; the group was just as trapped either way.

  Scoter, who was in his mid-to-late thirties and was the oldest of the group, wandered over to the nearest shutter and stared at it for several seconds before addressing the group. “See these markings – they are old, really old.”

  “Go on.” encouraged Junco

  “This is the mark of a militant splinter group active during the Second Uprising, They fought against the creation of Level Zero. Went by the name of the Anti-Abstractionists. The symbol is a simplification of a bullet shattering a zero.”

  “Are you a historian or something?” Teal asked with a trace of mockery.

  “Actually, I am.”

  Junco suddenly felt very tired even though he was not short on sleep. The events of the past couple of days were starting to take on a slightly surreal edge. It was almost as if they were happening to someone else and that he was merely an observer. As far as he was concerned, things started to go sideways when he accessed the low-budget bar and brothel sim and was on the wrong end of that bizarre virtual beating. That led him here, trapped in non-virtual form on Level Minus One by a madman, and with a bunch of strangers. It had not been a good day.

  Of course the whole chain of events had been unfolding way before Junco had any idea that anything was wrong and that his comfortable, pleasant, if slightly boring, life was about to be turned on its head. Vireo had been observing him for who knew how long before he made contact on Junco's week long visit to Level Minus One. That visit was eight years ago when he was sixteen. That meant that Vireo could well have been around for half of his life. A chill went up his spine.

  The sense of violation was overwhelming. Vireo was obviously no slouch when it came to technology and therefore could have accessed just about every part of Junco's life and being. From his sleeping dreams to his working life to his interesting tastes in entertainment – it was unlikely that any of this was beyond Vireo's reach. This upset him far more than the fact that he was currently imprisoned and with a very uncertain future, if indeed he had a future worth speaking of. Looking around what was now a prison cell he could see that the same realization was coming to the others. Their stories may have differed in detail, but the conclusions were no doubt very similar to his own.

  Junco went over to where Teal was sitting and started up a conversation; he noted that the others in the room were wary of her. That didn't make much sense to him as she was exactly the person he would want around and on his side when things got crappy – which wasn't overstating the badness of the current situation. Several minutes later Scoter the amateur historian ambled over to the corner that Teal and Junco were occupying and politely asked to join them. After introductions were made, Teal was the first to tell a part of her story.

  4. TEAL

  Teal was born to parents who had rejected any form of implanted technology for all of their lives as had their parents and generations of parents before them. They were part of an enclave that had been formed as the direct result of the anti-tech uprisings in the late twenty first century. The uprisings were fueled by a distrust of the ruling corporations and their political servants. The majority of the planet's population went along with the 'Free Chip Implants for All' program quite willingly. The combined incentives of a guaranteed basic standard of living coupled with free entertainment and other distractions was too much for most to resist.

  The uprisings were stop-start affairs, flurries of attacks and counter attacks punctuated with periods of relative calm. During the flare ups the corporations used unmanned drones and other technologies to kill anyone that they suspected of being either anti-tech or sympathetic to the group. The servile politicians signed off on this extrajudicial activity without missing a beat. The anti-techs fought back using old school tactics, occupying financial centers, bombing media facilities, and divulging the personal habits and less than savory backgrounds of the corporate leaders on the original device-dependent web.

  The Anti-techs biggest asset was decentralization: individual members and small groups were operating form all parts of the globe. The corporations and puppet governments of the world simply couldn't bomb the rebels out of existence, regardless of how much explosive power it threw at them. Add to this the blindingly obvious fact that for every dissenter killed ten more would rise up and only one outcome was really possible – stalemate.

  The result of this stalemate was a negotiated peace of sorts. The Anti-techs got their own piece of the planet, an area that was once known as New York State. Anyone who lived in or was affiliated to this region did not ha
ve to be chipped at birth.

  This was mostly all news to Junco. He knew about the Uprisings but had always assumed, or rather been taught, that they had petered out and that everyone was now implanted. The idea that there was a whole group going about their whole lives on Level Minus Zero with no implant technology was mind-blowing.

  Denial seemed to be the logical route, “You're making this up – you have to be”

  Teal was obviously used to this reaction. “Just because it isn't covered in your history sims doesn't mean it didn't happen.”

  Junco was struggling “How do we know that this isn't all an invention, a cover and that you are not working with Vireo?” He regretted the words as soon as they had left his mouth.

  Teal did not seem overly upset though. “Ummm, just maybe because I tried to stab him?”

  It was then that Scoter chimed in. “Junco, there is a theory that the Anti-tech uprising had a different ending than the one commonly taught. Over the centuries there have been many rumors of ongoing activity and even of a resurgence. Some of these theories were considered pretty wild and were definitely outside of the academic mainstream. Personally though, I think Teal's version of the history does stack up. Historically, very little is ever completely final.”

  “Junco felt a little less defensive now. “So you are admitting to being outside of the academic mainstream?”

  “One of the perks of being an amateur.”

  Teal went on to tell the others how her compatriots were kept fully informed about personal tech and about Level Zero and how the Levels and numbering conventions worked. Every schoolkid new that Level Zero was the basic plane of existence for the vast majority of people, that Level Minus One was the non-virtual world and that the Levels were numbered according to the Level they were accessed from. She also explained that her people were not anti all technology, just that which directly interfaced with a person's biological systems.