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

by G. D. Blanton

  Junco was confused. “I thought that comms between the plateau and the rest of Rubidium Beach were out of action.”

  “The coders and I fixed up a secure carrier tunnel. I can get through the barrier but no one else can.” Ani hooked Junco into his private network then called Scoter. 'Hey, how's things?”

  “Great, I have a hunch that things are about to get lively so I'm just spending a bit of time taking care of business.”

  Junco knew that by 'taking care of business' Scoter probably meant sitting outside his 'Scote’s Boats' shop with the latest historical sim wafting through his brain.

  “How do you like the new color scheme.?” asked Ani.

  Junco was nonplussed, then remembered that Ani had redecorated and that Rubidium Beach was no longer bathed in a permanent red glow.

  “Honestly? - I sort of miss the red,” said Scoter. “It gave everything a sense of drama. This new light is a bit flat for my tastes. The Terminals aren't so keen either. They think that the new look is really boring.”

  “To be honest, I agree with you. I'll change it back as soon as I'm outside of this shielding. Anyway, I need to know something about Neon Cove.” Ani asked Scoter what he knew about the alien house and its occupants.

  Scoter thought for a second. “I always assumed that it was a sublet. There are usually between half a dozen and a dozen people living at the house. Age ranges between around fourteen and thirty and all psycho surf nuts. They will be out on the metal when no one else is, other than the Terminals of course. The bigger the storm the more they like it.”

  “What the hell is a psycho surf nut when its at home?” asked Junco

  Ani bought him up to speed. “Basically, they are an even more hardcore subset of the anarcho-surfers that started to turn up about five years ago. Thinking about it, there are quite a few of them around that part of Neon Cove.”

  “I am really surprised that you know that,” said Scoter.

  Junco chipped in. “I'm not.”

  Ani tried hard not to laugh. “I like to keep up with local developments.”

  Junco was still not quite sure what to make of Ani's more easy-going approach to life, nor what to make of his newly acquired sense of humor.

  “Do me a favor Scoter,” said Ani. “Take a ride out there sometime and see if you can get a feel for anything different about them.”

  “I have a better idea,” said Teal.

  “I'm listening.”

  “I'll get in with them. Some of the Terminals who know me are still around and people have seen me around Scoter's shack often enough. It shouldn't be to difficult. That is of course if Junco is okay with the idea.”

  “No, no, nope, never going to happen. Not in a million years.”

  The transporter deposited Teal and Junco at the alien address.

  “Remember Junco, these guys are hardcore – they do not mess around. Best to keep your opinions to yourself for the first few days.”

  Junco asked, “Which opinions, precisely, do I keep to myself?”

  “All of them would probably be best,” answered Teal. “Keep things as light as you can.”

  “Okay, message received.”

  The house looked very ordinary and very un-alien. The sides were brushed metal, probably steel, only broken by a few very small windows. The door was mirrored chrome with a slight blue cast. The holographic sign on the door read 'Welcome to Paradise'. After about a minute the door slid open just enough to let a person squeeze through. The person that squeezed through asked the two of them what they wanted. Junco couldn't help noticing that behind the first door was a second black one. A very unusual setup. This second one was closed before the main door was opened. The occupants did not want strangers seeing into the house for some reason. Teal's almost imperceptible glance told Junco that she had drawn a similar conclusion. The occupant then closed the main door and stepped out onto the metal deck. He did not look happy.

  “Hi, I'm looking for some guys that I used to know that used to live in and around Neon Cove. I was wondering if you could help me,” said Teal. Junco picked up on the deliberate drop in IQ.

  “Doubt it, I've only been here a few weeks,” said the occupant without smiling or even attempting to lose his surliness.

  “What about the others that live here?” asked Junco.

  “They don't know either,” said the occupant.

  This was getting nowhere fast and Teal attempted a different strategy. “I'm Teal and this is Junco. What can we call you?”

  “The others call me Sweetness.”

  “Of course they do,” said Junco. Teal gave him her best short glower timed to be imperceptible to others.

  “I used to surf this cove all the time several years back – It has hardly changed at all. Wouldn't mind moving back here one day.”

  “Used to be better – before all the tourists moved in,” Said Sweetness immediately realizing his mistake.

  Junco leaned forward and his mouth made to talk. He wanted Sweetness to know that he had been caught in a lie. Luckily, Teal beat him to the punch. “Good point. I remember when Scote's Boats was nothing more than a tin shack.”

  “Me too. Wasn't it destroyed by one of those freak storms – the ones that seem to happen every day? That must have been thirty years ago.” Sweetness had obviously decided to drop the newcomer charade. “Tell you what, would you like a drink? I was about to take a break anyway.”

  “Sure, sounds good. Break from what, if you don't mind me asking?” Junco checked Teal's expression for any sign of disapproval. There was none.

  “I work on surf board motors. Currently rebuilding a nuclear one. Complicated, but interesting,” said Sweetness.

  “Do you surf?” Asked Teal.

  Sweetness shook his head. “Not so much now. I'm more into the physics than the thrill.” With that he disappeared back into the house and bought out three drinks. The group sat in three of the four chairs that lined the small metal deck and looked out over the liquid metal sea. The they talked about old times and life in the cove for another two rounds of drinks.

  Teal then surprised Junco by suggesting that it was time they got going. They both thanked Sweetness for his hospitality and boarded the transporter. Teal contacted Ani, Scoter, and Yellowlegs over the private Net and told them to meet up at the Jupiter Moon.

  Teal and Junco arrived at the Jupiter Moon before the others and Junco took the opportunity to straighten a couple of things out. “I thought that the plan was to angle for an invite into the house?”

  Teal replied. “Too obvious.” A subtle approach is much better with this guy. Sometimes a problem has to be gone around as opposed to tackled head on.”

  “So when do we go back?” asked Junco.

  Teal answered. “We don't, I do. Trust me, he is not going to hurt me and he will be a lot more open with me than he will with both of us.”

  Junco didn't like it but he knew that Teal was right.

  The others arrived over the space of the next few minutes and Teal and Junco brought them up to speed about the day's work and about the plans for tomorrow.

  Ani had also been busy and could hardly contain his excitement. He had been working with the coders to make the Anioptic interactive. He could now affect things on the 'real' Rubidium Beach by changing things in the model. The others were not as happy as Ani about this development but kept their misgivings to themselves – at least for the time being.

  The model interactivity was not the only thing that Ani had been working on. He had also polled the residents about the change in sun color. This was an easy thing to accomplish. He just added a note to everyone's internal display with two boxes, one for each option. The results were unexpected, to say the least. Ninety-two percent of the population wanted the old red giant back. Ani asked if anyone at the table had any objections to him reverting the recent change. There were none. Ani's eyes glazed over for a second at the most then he stood up and went to the bar entrances. He opened the Downtown door and red
light streamed in then he opened the door marked Plateau and white light shone in.

  Just as the Yellowlegs clone was delivering a second round of drinks the door marked Downtown opened and Skua walked in. He hadn't changed his virtual body at all since they had last seen him ten years ago. The rest of the evening was spent catching up and drinking heavily. The last the group knew was that Skua had moved inland to join a quasi religious aesthetic commune. It turned out that Skua had only spent about a year with them before deciding that a lifetime of doing a lot of nothing was not really his speed. He did claim to like the people, though. After a lifetime of brutality on his home Level Violencia and a very violent introduction to Rubidium Beach the desire to be surrounded by pacifists was completely understandable. They had all felt the tug of the communes at some time or another.

  After the commune Skua went back to Violencia and worked with various groups who operated to give the youth of that Level something to aspire to other than gang leadership. It was dangerous but rewarding work. He was still living on Violencia and was happy. The gangs were still there but their influence was greatly diminished and government free of gang involvement was just starting to establish the smallest of footholds.

  According to Skua, he had returned to Rubidium Beach because he had heard about the recent problems, the explosion, the earthquakes and the plateau losing another part of itself. He wanted to help if he could. It was this group who had saved his life both literally and spiritually and Skua felt indebted.

  When the group returned to the Jupiter Moon, rested and fed from Minus One they hammered out plans for the coming day. Teal was going back to the alien house at Neon Cove to try to gain entry. Ani and Junco were going to observe her via the model on the Plateau, Scoter was going to research ancient history for clues to the extra code and Yellowlegs was going to help Skua re-acclimatise to Rubidium Beach for the day. Teal summoned a transporter, Ani, Junco, and Scoter walked out of the Plateau door and Yellowlegs gave his clone some instructions, then left with Skua through the Downtown exit.

  Ani and Junco arrived at the model just in time to see Teal exit the transporter and approach the door of the alien house. Scoter had crossed the quad to the library to begin his research. Junco watched as a figure that looked very much like Sweetness exited the house and sat on one of the seats. Teal sat on another. She was still being kept outside, that much was obvious. Then came something totally unexpected, Sweetness opened the door, presumably with the intention of fetching some refreshment, and was just about to close it behind himself when Teal jumped him from behind. She wrapped one arm under his armpit and around the back of his head then pushed forward hard. She bought the other arm across rhe front of his neck. A few seconds later the figure fell to the deck in a crumpled heap. Teal stepped over the body and into the house for the first time.

  Something in the alien coding blocked the view through the building. Once Teal was inside she was no longer visible to Junco and Ani. After twenty or so minutes that felt like a lifetime to Junco, Teal came charging out of the building. She was being chased by two others who were only a matter of feet behind her. Over one shoulder was a large sack that obviously contained something. The two chasers then collapsed on the metal sidewalk. One second they were running and the next they were in a heap completely motionless.

  “Told you that I could now influence things from here,” said Ani.

  Junco was impressed and for now he was pleased about this new extension to Ani's already considerable powers. “You didn't kill them did you?”

  “No, but they will have one hell of a headache when they come too,” Ani said. “Besides, we may need to question them later.”

  “You're all heart,” said Junco.”

  Meanwhile Teal had summoned a transporter to take her to the Jupiter Moon. Once there she exited onto the plateau and called for a second transporter to take her to the Rubidium Beach model, the Anioptic, where Ani and Junco were now watching Yellowleg's and Skua's antics.

  Junco noted that the pair from Violencia had now hit all four bars in the downtown area and were now headed out to Neon Cove, presumably to add a few more to the list. Skua must have insulted the human bartender to earn the bloody nose that he was currently nursing. Yellowlegs did not seem perturbed, though. Judging by his body language as he emerged from the transporter he was in danger of laughing himself into a coma. Junco asked Ani if there were any plans to get audio built into this model. Ani answered that he already had audio through the carrier tunnel that he and the coders built but that it couldn't be shared, at least at present, for some technological reason.

  It was then that Junco made a connection. Skua and Yellowlegs were invisible when they were in the transporter, just as Teal was invisible as soon as she stepped inside the house. Could this mean that the transporters and the house were very similar from a programming perspective?

  Teal sauntered up to where Ani and Junco were standing. She had her sack with her. “Hi guys.” She said with a forced breeziness. “I've got something that may be useful.”

  Junco was angry but couldn't find the words to fit the situation. Ani stepped in. “What's in the bag?” He completely ignored the subterfuge that Teal had used to fill the bag.

  “A chunk of the building and a body part of one of the occupants. Figured that you would be able to run tests and learn something about the programing that may be useful.”

  Pragmatism trumped a small deceit in Ani's book – he was delighted. “That's great. I'll get the analysis going then. Curiosity – what is the body part?”

  “Just a finger, a pinkie actually,” said Teal.

  Junco had calmed down a lot but he still had some questions. “Why didn't you tell us that you planned to go black ops on their asses?”

  Ani smiled and fielded that one. “Would you have let her go if you would have known what she was up to?”

  “No, but she would have probably ignored me anyway.” replied Junco.

  “And that is why you love me,” Teal said with a smile.

  Junco looked at Ani. “You knew about this, didn't you?”

  Ani looked at Teal and nodded. Junco was not as hurt as he was pretending to be.

  “I wonder what the others are up to?” said Teal changing the subject while the going was good.

  “Scoter is doing some research and Yellowlegs is helping Skua acclimatise to Rubidium Beach,” explained Junco as he pointed down into the model to the Neon Cove dive bar that they had just entered. Skua appeared to be doing a dance, or at least something that involves movement, on a table and Yellowlegs was chatting to a very presentable female bartender who didn't appear to be a clone. They were probably not comparing notes on best beer temperatures.

  9. ANALYSIS: RESULTS

  Ani spoke to the group. “I've finished the analysis on the finger and the piece of wall that Teal so kindly acquired for us. The results are something else, believe me.”

  Junco wanted to preempt Ani's showmanship. “What have you discovered?”

  “You know that I thought that the coding was ancient? I was exactly wrong. It comes, in fact, from the future,” said Ani. “And this is where it gets really good – so does the body that the finger belonged to.”

  “How can you know this?” asked Teal.

  Ani replied, “As far as the organic side of things goes, very easily. The genetics involved is basically just math.”

  Scoter chimed in. “Even the ancients knew how to go back in time using mitochondrial DNA to determine what humans evolved from with great accuracy. The science really isn't new.”

  Ani picked up the explanation again. “The human beings made from this DNA come from around thirty thousand years in the future!”

  “Whoah!” Junco was stunned. “That is just downright surreal – by any standards.”

  “What about the coding for the transporters and the building?” asked Teal.

  “The timeline is similar – it is certainly thousands of years ahead of where we are at the m
oment,” said Ani. “It is hard to be precise as it is so far in advance of where we are currently at that we can only really guess.”

  “Okay what next?” asked Junco.

  “I think I know what we need to do but it may take a little doing. We need to capture a transporter.”

  “What do you think that will tell us?” asked Junco.

  “I think that it will highlight a connection between the coding from the future and the current round of attacks,” said Ani.

  “I thought you said that the Mechanik or at least some of their number were behind the attacks?” said Teal.

  “I did. Remember though, that when I first looked into those attacks we knew nothing about what we now know to be code from the future. We could only see the tip of the iceberg so to speak. Here is the thing though, the Mechanik code was definitely there and this new future code does not change that. The Mechanik are still involved in some way or other.”

  Yellowleg's virtual clone cleared the empty glasses from the table and took an order for another round of drinks.

  10. THE ALIEN HOUSE

  “Teal, tell us about the house,” Ani requested.

  Teal took a few seconds to get her thoughts in order. “It was definitely not your ordinary house. The shape of the inside space did not match the outside. Outside it looks like an ordinary box but the inside is much more complex and much bigger. The outside walls, which should be flat, are all triangles and sharp angles. That is not the oddest thing though. Some of the triangular panels seem very solid and real while others seem transient, as if they were part of a dream. These transient ones seemed to change their dimensions and their colors whereas the solid ones stayed solid. The internal walls changed configuration randomly. They had no permanent feel.”

  Ani asked, “What about the scale? You said that the inside was bigger than the outside.”

  “Yes, much bigger. I would say at least ten times the volume. It was hard to judge, due to the changes that were happening. There also appeared to be a very large room off of the main structure. I didn't go in there but I could see that it was massive.”