Ghosts of Tomorrow

by Michael R. Fletcher

  I knew all that Muay Thai wasn’t a waste of time.

  The Lyngbakr fought to regain its feet, but Archaeidae kept knocking them out from under it with sharp kicks. Each time it directed a weapon toward him, Archaeidae deflected it, smashing the barrel aside with Sok Tab, horizontal elbow strikes.

  From some unseen cavity in its body it extracted a barrel spinning so fast it looked like a drill and thrashed at him with barbed hyper-kinetic flechettes. These things were designed to turn humans into ground beef and not destroy black-ops combat chassis. Still, it blasted one of his legs to ruin before he ducked out of its limited field of fire. He kicked the spinning barrel from the side, bending it and choking off the stream of HK flechettes. The Lyngbakr wasn’t designed for this kind of close quarters combat and Archaeidae took a few seconds to tear pieces of it off and toss them aside. He blinded and crippled it but couldn’t kill it. Not without taking a lot more time than he wanted to spend here.

  He rolled away from the thrashing chassis, dodged flailing limbs, and regained his feet. Somewhere a gyro-stabilizer malfunctioned and he listed to port. His chameleoflage went off-line and he thought he might have lost a few more colors. He couldn’t tell for sure because they were just gone. Everything looked a creamy shade of orange.

  The R&D building beckoned.

  ***

  88.1’s viral attack ended less than a second after it began. Though he had great success subverting the peripheral systems, his viral Mirrors were stymied and then devoured by the Wall o’ Nuclear Annihilation every time they ventured more than skin deep. Still he pushed on, trying different tactics, different angles of attack. Nothing. The best he managed was to track down and pinpoint the exact physical location of the system Lokner was stored upon. He now knew where the Scan was, but had no way of reaching him.

  His spies failed him, something Machiavelli discussed extensively. 88.1 decided to reapply himself to the study of human warfare when finished here. The choice in front of him was a difficult one. If he proceeded with the attack and failed, he would cost 88 a great deal in resources and be stripped of his own processor time and storage space. That is, of course, if he survived the assault. Clearly he’d underestimated his enemy. If he retreated, he might save some resources but Lokner would know someone was after him. All chances of a surprise attack would be lost. This option also left 88.1 stripped of his resources as the price of failure.

  He considered the data 88 sent him on the value of unpredictability and human influence.

  Archaeidae, he tight-linked to the young assassin. I have need of your guidance.

  There was no answer and 88.1 felt a flash of something he couldn’t describe. Was it frustration? Annoyance? Interesting, but something for another time.

  He searched the camera feeds in the vicinity where Archaeidae was last seen and found himself deaf and blind. Twitch. There it was again. Stronger than before. What was that?

  Rolling the time stamp back a few seconds he saw Archaeidae set off an audio bomb shattering the lenses and audio-transducers of all the security cameras within half a kilometer. The M-Sof R&D building sat right at the center of his blind spot.

  88.1 learned a valuable lesson: Nothing is easy.

  He ordered his Mirrors to take their conscripted M-Sof chassis and find Archaeidae.

  ***

  Archaeidae moved corner to corner through the M-Sof R&D building. He wasn’t as silent as he’d like as his chassis emitted low grinding noises and every now and then the damaged leg twitched and clanged. He’d tried to rip the leg off but had been unable. Damn thing was on there good. Alarms wailed in every room.

  The few humans he came across were unconscious, stunned, or dead. Even inside the buildings the windows had been blown to dust. The place looked like a hurricane tore through it. Chairs were toppled and desks blasted clean of detritus. Family pictures and memorabilia were scattered across the floor and delicate looking gear of unknown uses lay heaped against the far wall. All the result of his audio bomb’s shockwave.

  Nice to know some thing worked as advertised.

  Archaeidae limped to the elevator and then thought better of it. Too damned embarrassing to get caught in an elevator. The stairs were nearby, the door locked. Probably the compound’s security systems locked everything down once it realized it was under attack. He pulled the door off its hinges and tossed it aside. Stairs down into creamy orange darkness. He tried a few other visual modes but nothing worked.

  Badly damaged. Out of ammunition. The few systems still functioning acted irritably. Every metal strut in his body screamed at him for stealth, but only a corpse wouldn’t hear him coming. On the bright side—if he could call it that—both the stairs and elevator looked too tight for heavy combat chassis.

  Screw it.

  Archaeidae bounded down the stairs, taking them five at a time. He passed the first two floors, ignoring them. His target would be at the very deepest level. On every virtuality he’d ever played, that’s where the big baddy always hid. Another door waited at the bottom of the stairs, this one armored. He punched it once and left a small dent. The sound was that of a dull gong. That’d take forever to get through. Luckily it was set into concrete as old as the building and he could tear his way through that in less than a minute. He straightened his fingers, fixing them into stabbing position, and drove them repeatedly into the concrete.

  By the time he made his way through the wall another leg quit working and left him a lopsided quadruped. The guards down here, shielded from the effects of the audio bomb, were waiting. Reaching them felt like pushing through a torrential downpour of 5.56mm. The sheer weight of the onslaught staggered him and he tried to protect his remaining visual sensoria as best he could. He heard the guards screaming at each other in panicked voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Doesn’t matter.

  Small arms fire is small arms fire and even a beta release black-ops chassis was built to take more than that. He reached the guards and flipped their barricade over, crushing two of them. The room had another armored door at the far side, but the guards weren’t running for it. Probably none of them had a key. Poor bastards.

  Archaeidae swatted a guard sending him cart-wheeling into a wall. The body landed bent and still. The remaining human launched herself at Archaeidae’s back and held on as if expecting a piggyback ride.

  “Really?” Archaeidae asked, startled and more than a little impressed with the human’s apparent insanity. “You’re going to grapple with me?”

  “No,” she snarled, letting go and backing away. “Grenade.”

  He missed it. His malfunctioning sensoria had left him vulnerable. He looked over his body as best he could but couldn’t find a grenade. Wait. A grenade in such a confined space would kill her as well.

  “You’re bluff—” The grenade interrupted Archaeidae.

  When the dust cleared he lay on the ground looking into the staring eyes of a skull missing its back half.

  “Okay. You weren’t bluffing,” Archaeidae admitted. He tried to examine the room but was down to a single visual receptor and it saw little but pixelated shades of orange. He made out a scattering of ragged body bits commingled with fragments of twisted steel.

  Fshhhhht. Pok! Fshhhhht, said the tight-link.

  When he tried to stand nothing happened. His body, from below his uppermost limbs, had gone missing. He spotted the wreckage of his torso.

  Well, not so much missing as over there in the corner.

  Of his two remaining limbs, one worked. He used it to lever himself onto his back and get a better look around the room. A pistol of some type lay on the floor nearby. No stats flashed into his thoughts so he wasn’t sure of its make, but picked it up anyway. Better than nothing, but not by much. He glanced toward his goal. The second armored door had been blasted clean off its hinges.

  “I’m pretty sure you weren’t supposed to be carrying that grenade down here,” Archaeidae chided the partial skull.

  Clutching the pi
stol in his working hand he used his elbow to drag what remained of his chassis towards the ragged doorway. From far away he heard the sounds of something big smashing its way through the building. No. That was wrong. Many big somethings.

  They knew he was here. They were coming for him.

  Archaeidae one-arm crawled as fast as he could into the last room, leaving a strewn trail of chassis bits behind him. The sounds got closer. Through the floor he felt the jarring crump crump of heavy combat chassis bashing their way down too-tight stairs.

  He was in. The room was filled with computers and Scan storage devices.

  Damn it! Which one was it? He picked one at random. Maybe it looked more important than the rest. He raised the pistol and aimed as the room filled with four General Dynamics Heavy Combat Chassis.

  “Everyone back up or Lokner eats a bullet.”

  None of the chassis moved.

  Fshhhhht. Pok! Pok! Fshhhhht, said the tight-link again.

  He pulled the trigger. Click.

  If he had a heart it would have fallen out of the gaping wound in the bottom of his chassis.

  “Do you require ammunition?” inquired one of the GD chassis.

  “You’re real funny.” Archaeidae said, rolling onto his back and searching the room for something to use as a weapon. Throwing the empty gun at it would be embarrassing.

  “I don’t have any nine millimeter in my possession, but there are pistols upstairs. I could acquire ammunition for you.”

  That voice. “88 point one point whatever the hell?” Archaeidae asked.

  “88.1.86354.731.8. We’ve been trying to communicate with you. Your tight link is malfunctioning.”

  Gee, I hadn’t noticed. “The others?” he asked.

  “88.1.86354.731.9, 88.1.86354.731.10, and 88.1.86354.731.11. Do you require assistance?”

  Archaeidae stared up at the towering chassis from where he lay on the floor. “What? No! Everything is lovely here.” What a dumb-ass. The thought reminded him of Wandering Spider and he felt a pang of loss and misery. Then he remembered the exploding helicopters. Could this day get any worse? “Is there a backup exit strategy in place?” he asked with no real hope.

  “88.1 scrambled helicopters from Kenmore Air Harbor. They will be here in minutes.” All four GD chassis leveled guns at the stored Scans.

  Kenmore Air Harbor was less than twelve kilometers away. Inspiration. “Wait,” commanded Archaeidae.

  “We have orders to—”

  “I need to talk with Shogun 88.1.”

  “I’m here,” said the chassis who’d previously called itself 88.1.86354.731.8. “Is there a problem?”

  Archaeidae resisted the urge to get cheeky with the Shogun. “No problem,” he said. “Remember Sun Tzu; take the enemy’s country whole and intact. We can take Lokner with us.”

  “Our orders are to destroy him.”

  “Taking him destroys him, but still leaves him useful.” He tried to explain. “We’re here because he’s a threat. If he’s a danger it is because he can do something we can’t or knows something we don’t.” Archaeidae had never given orders before. With Riina he wouldn’t have dared question, but Tennō 88 and his minions were different. Riina would never have asked for advice. Though Archaeidae didn’t know what Tennō 88 and his Mirrors were, he was pretty damned sure they weren’t human, much like himself. They’d asked for advice in the past and now he saw what needed to be done. “We’re taking him with us. You figure out how while the others are laying charges in the room. We blow this place to hell so it looks like he died here.”

  ***

  Here, in the inner sanctum, 88.1 had direct physical access to the computers. He was inside of the Wall o’ Nuclear Annihilation. Ordering 88.1.86354.731.8 to take a backseat, he moved the chassis and made a physical connection with central data systems. Mark Lokner, he learned, was something of a collector of educated brains.

  “There are more Scans stored here than expected,” 88.1 reported to Archaeidae. “I have found the minds of many people believed to have died over the last week. Many are leaders in their respective fields.”

  “How many can we take with us?” Archaeidae asked.

  M-Sof was the leading supplier of scanning and Scan storage technologies. “Bringing all the stored Scan will be easy,” 88.1 answered.

  “Good.” The ruined chassis at 88.1’s feet stared up at him and asked, “How many helicopters are coming?”

  The answer seemed obvious but 88.1 said it aloud anyway. “Enough to evacuate our surviving forces.”

  “Can you get more?”

  Paine Air National Guard Base was thirty kilometers away. “I can have several additional helicopters here within six minutes.”

  “Do it.”

  “It’s done,” 88.1 answered before asking, “Why?”

  “Sun Tzu. We take them all.” Archaeidae, lying on his back, waved a hand at the chassis surrounding him. “Every chassis we can fit. What we can’t take we destroy. Scorched earth, sowing with salt and all of that good stuff. Total destruction.”

  “It will mean additional risk.”

  “Life without risk is death.”

  88.1 accepted this without comment. The lessons learned here were not lost on him. How better to defeat an opponent than to capture him whole and make him part of your own arsenal? Lokner was only a segment of the greater enemy they had faced today. The impenetrable Wall o’ Nuclear Annihilation still stood, undefeated. A pinnacle of defensive code capable of devouring all who dared attack it. The genius behind the M-Sof firewall, that was an enemy worth conquering and co-opting.

  “One last thing,” said Archaeidae, staring up at him.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to need someone to carry me out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Sunday, August 5th, 2046

  Griffin stopped on the sidewalk and held his stomach. His guts roiled, acetic with stress. His right hand felt like something barbed crawled under the skin and his finger tips looked darker than he remembered them.

  The first cab he flagged blasted by without slowing and he wanted to haul out the Glock and send a few DPU rounds through the rear windshield.

  He waved another cab down, an old green and yellow Ford Tata E-Ka, and collapsed into the back seat. The floor was carpeted with sodden cardboard and the stench of hot vomit. A newspaper, still scrolling the news from Wednesday, August 1st, sat on the seat beside him. Its charge not quite dead, the stories faded in and out.

  “Where too,” the cab asked.

  Drone or Scan, Griffin didn’t care. “Just move.”

  The cab pulled away from the curb with the clicking whine of an aging electric motor.

  Scooping up the newspaper he told it to update to the latest news and it informed him it was unable to comply.

  The streets were a mess, total chaos. Half the city had lost power and the other half suffered rolling brown-outs. Most of the streetlights, dependent on the city’s crumbling information infrastructure, had stopped working in the last hour. Police officers worked many intersections, but there weren’t enough to cover all of them. Griffin saw vagrants and panhandlers directing traffic at several intersections and was surprised to see them do as good a job as the officers. They also seemed to be quite enjoying themselves.

  He’d had no idea civilization was so dependent on satellites. Already there were talks about how to replace them with ground-based solutions. With Earth’s useful orbits now filled with an impenetrable wall of junk and the general consensus being that shooting anything into orbit for the next few hundred years would be pointless, nations were turning their attention to the long neglected trunk lines buried in the ocean.

  Griffin stared at the old headlines on the newspaper: M-Sof’s Mark Lokner Doesn’t Get Scanned! He read what he could of the flickering text below. There it was, right in front of him. Lokner died less than a week ago without leaving a Scan behind. The press were in an uproar, screaming that if Lokner didn’t do it, maybe scannin
g wasn’t safe. M-Sof stocks took a beating. It occurred to him that Lokner’s choice would scare away many of the people planning upon being scanned at death and thereby drive up the demand for black market Scans. Had that been the intent?

  So Lokner was dead and Riina had talked to him every couple of days since his death. Two options. Either Riina had been talking to someone pretending to be Lokner, or Lokner lied about not being scanned. Seeing as M-Sof was the world’s largest producer of scanning equipment and Scan storage systems, Griffin knew where he’d place his bet.

  The cab ignored him and picked a busy street with lots of traffic which wasn’t difficult in this madness. It didn’t want to venture too far from the downtown core where the easiest fares were. They passed a massive billboard advertising for United Delta Airlines. Do you know what’s better than flying a plane? asked the ad. Being the plane. Fly like you were born to it. United Delta is now offering comprehensive long-term contract packages...

  Griffin slumped into the car seat and then flinched forward as his bruised body made contact. He couldn’t relax, everything hurt too much. Pain doesn’t matter. Focus on Lokner. The Scan of a world-famous individual committing crimes of this magnitude, the media were going to be all over this.

  Where would Lokner hide? The M-Sof facilities in Washington State were the obvious answer. Lokner wouldn’t be willing to venture too far from the center of his power.

  If Lokner was behind the crèches, then what? Assuming Griffin could prove anything there’s be a long court case. He thought about the crèche in Jerseyville, the bodies of countless children stacked like wood, the swarming flies. He remembered the stench of burned flesh at the crèche in Wichita.

  No way Lokner sees the inside of a courtroom. Griffin would make fucking sure of that.

  “I have to go to Redmond,” Griffin said.