“It’s okay, look.” I let the gecko crawl up my arm. It perches on my shoulder looking left and right.
She reaches out a tentative hand.
...
“We figured it out, Jarrett,” my sister says to me on the phone. “We can download a person onto a computer, everything intact.”
“Really? What about personality?”
“It’s all there, Jarhead. I wouldn’t tell you otherwise. This, um... really isn’t me. There’s... been an accident.”
Wanda, I said to her with tears filling my eyes. You’re my sister.
“Yes, Jar,” was all she said.
A roar came from the hill behind me. It was time to get to business.
Activate heat shielding and set the sword to vibrate.
“You got it. He’s fifteen feet behind your right shoulder... Now.”
Using the shield on my shoulders as a sled, I boosted backwards with my vibrating sword pointed up. A blast of fire caught me as I boosted under him, but I went through so fast that it was a glancing blow at best. Even as hot as it was, the heat shielding was enough to keep me safe. The sword caught two front toes, skinned the metal scales off his left side, and sliced through part of the left rear thigh on my way by.
The dragon roared as he turned, flames chasing me. I stopped my boost and flipped over, pulling my shield off as I did. I held it in front of me as I advanced and he flapped his wings to rise up off the ground. I set my seekers to follow and boosted forward. The seekers caught him on both sides just before my blade found the left thigh I had just opened. It bit in deep, going through flesh and metal, and that’s when the dragon roared and swung its mechanical tail at me with all of its might.
The tail caught me on the right hip and sent me flying. I sailed across the stream and landed headfirst into the henge.
Both teams are fully engaged, taking heavy fire. The enemy is about to move in heavily on Team C. Taylor and Li are critical, Jorgy and Vasquez still laying down cover fire. I check my watch. Has it been long enough?
The lights flash in the arena. She did it. She completed her upload into the servers and disintegrated the bot that had carried her here. I give the signal.
We surrender.
I blinked my eyes to see the dragon flying toward me. My sword was gone.
Options? I ask my sister.
“I’m going to highlight some potential weak spots in orange on your optical display. I’m also overriding the baseline power limits that were installed on your equipment. It’s not needed — especially right now. You should be able to tear him apart. Go for this area first.” An area on the neck showed up in a blinking orange. I guessed that was where the flames came from.
I waited until the last second, boosted left, caught a wing, and swung up top. I rode the dragon up that hill while I tore out his flamethrower, ripped one wing off, and then disabled both front legs at the joint. I popped him a good hit on the snout just to be sure and walked away, thanking Wanda for her help.
Sometimes surrender is the strongest option available. Wanda, I wish I could hug you.
I could sense that hint of a smile on my optical sensor again. I missed her so much.
“Me too,” Wanda said. Then her tone shifted.
“Are you ready?” she asked. “They stole our home, our town, our planet. They took our dad, marooned our mom. They took your humanity and took away your very identity. The bomb in your head and the one by your heart has been disabled and they can no longer turn you off. You are now your own.”
I smiled grimly. I’m ready.
I looked up at the results screen. Eight stars. Someday soon it would all be over.
Pull up the team, Wanda.
Seventeen faces showed up on my optical display. We’d started with thirty-two in four teams. My eyes welled up again. I swallowed and then keyed the signal. One by one my team members checked in.
Wanda, initiate integrating all the sister A.I. into your matrix. Put me on speaker.
“You’re on, Jarrett.”
“Odyssey Team. Trojan Horse is a success. Stand by for phase two. All upgrades are complete.”
A Word from Paul K. Swardstrom
It was a Saturday morning and the family is headed out the door to go to the five-year-old's soccer practice and game. I'm about to drive separately because I'm supposed to play saxophone in a community band in two hours. That's when I get the text from Will.
“Check your messages!” So I do. There's a message from Samuel, inviting me to write for The Cyborg Chronicles. We're hurrying out the door, so I respond, “Cool!”
I try to drive and ask questions at the same time, neither very effectively. We get to a place where all my questions are answered and a couple minutes go by while I listen to tunes on the radio while driving. Then comes the message from Samuel, “Are you in? No?”
I'm on a freeway and I shouldn't even be looking but I don't want to miss this chance. I speak into my phone as I drive, “Sorry. Driving. I'd love to.”
Samuel's response? “OK then! Drive safely!”
Awesome! So I'm asked to write a story for The Cyborg Chronicles. What do I do? I play my saxophone in a band concert and ruminate throughout. Let the juices flow.
Cyborg goes bad? No. My brother is a cyborg? Maybe... Are you a cyborg, Will? Matt? No? Hmmm... Cyborg in a junkyard... Maybe. He keeps finding different ways to upgrade himself. I kinda like it, but where's the hook?
Oh wait, was that a wrong note... In the trombone section? Okay, back to ruminating. He's upgrading himself... That reminds me of a video game. Maybe he's not in a junkyard... He's in a winner-take-all tournament. Better. Now, how to make a story out of this? It can't just be a series of matches. Non-stop action doesn't tell a story.
Wait a minute. The root of many cyborg stories is the theme of identity. Who am I now that this has happened to me? How do I weave this through... Yeah! That'll do it. Wait, the conductor says to stand. I guess the concert is over. Cool!
And that's the genesis of “Upgrade Complete”. In January, my brother Will Swardstrom kind of fell into telling a story via Facebook posts. When he was several posts in I made a suggestion and before I realized it we were 70,000 words into the story together. It's that work, still in the process of being written that allowed me the opportunity to be considered for The Cyborg Chronicles. It will be a book called Blink.
I'm fairly new at this so I don't have a lot published to my name yet, but my handsomer-than-me brother Will is far more prolific. You can look him up at
www.amazon.com/author/willswardstrom
Perhaps I'll have more along the way someday.
Thank you to all the family and readers that helped along the way. It is a better story because of you.
It is my privilege to join this amazing group of authors and I can't wait to see what they write. I hope you enjoyed “Upgrade Complete”.
When Paul K. Swardstrom writes, he is looking to go on a journey. Sometimes it is a journey of discovery, and sometimes it is an adventure. Whatever the journey he hopes that it is a journey that the reader will want to travel with him.
He is a husband and a father, a music teacher by day and family man at night. He writes when he can and is enjoying the ride.
A Sun Devil who grew up all over but remembers Michigan fondly, he has settled in Oregon. He does have his own Amazon page now.
www.amazon.com/author/paulkswardstrom
Drop Dead, Droid
by Artie Cabrera
I
“FAMOUS DEPERKY ARTIST, OrganiZm, was shot and killed in front of his home today in what the GCS are calling a drug related incident. Stay tuned for updates,” said the voice on the radio. “Until then, coming up next on Gravity City's only satellite radio, XYZ1, The Ixoplax Syndrome, with their new hit single, 'Get Down with the Dewerpa!’” the DJ howled just as the dissonant warbling came cranking out of Johnny Rangers’ car speakers.
“They call this trash music?” Rangers groaned before turning o
ff the radio. He banked a sharp, screeching right and cut across Sixth Avenue toward Downtown, barreling through every red light. With the Vermicide heist last night, there was no time to waste.
The Downtown tenements sat on the edge of the sewage dam, sinking more each year, inch by inch. It was on the brink of breaking off from the rest of the city and falling in any minute.
Let it take everyone with it when it finally does, Rangers thought. The city would be better off without that eyesore.
Tenement Sector 3: Apartment 4G
“Open up, scumbag!” Rangers yelled.
“I’m busy, Rangers!” the wormy little bastard squealed from the other side of the door.
“You’ll be busy picking your teeth out of your morning dump after I kick ‘em down your stinkin’ throat!” Rangers shouted back.
“Gimme a break, Rangers, huh? I didn’t do nothin’. Leave me alone, will ya?”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? I guess I’ll be on my way, then.” Rangers waited a second, and then he took the door off its hinges with a clean, hard kick with his size twelve boot.
The stench and the roaches of Limpy’s filthy studio apartment were the first things to greet Rangers. Roaches on this side of town could grow as large as hubcaps and get a little pushy. When the first one came skittering across the tiles, Rangers gave it a nice little punt with his boot and sent it at the fridge with a thud! You didn’t want to step on those bastards, not unless you wanted to ruin a good pair of slacks.
Limpy was laid-up on the pullout couch with one of those beat-up prosti-droids from the vending terminals down the street. She sat in the cowgirl position with Limpy’s unmentionables clamped tightly inside her.
“Oh, Limpy, Limpy. What have you gotten yourself into this time?” Rangers stood over Limpy and the droid and lit up a smoke.
Underneath the neon lights coming in from the marquee outside, the droid’s skin was orange and splotchy, the hair missing from her head left bald patches along her scalp, and some of her body parts didn’t match…except for her breasts. Rangers could tell they’d been refitted recently (they were always the first to go on these things), and a good polish would bring out the shine on those babies.
Maybe once upon a time she was something to look at, but this mechanical meat jockey was in no better shape than a trash can you’d find on any street corner Downtown.
Limpy wasn’t in any better shape himself with the busted peg leg and all the junk he was pumping into himself.
“I don’t know what happened, Rangers. It was like, all of a sudden she shut down on me, yuh know. She’s not reading my currency card or nothin’!” Limpy cried, frantically waving the card at the droid’s face.
“I didn’t know these droids were runnin’ two-minute specials,” Rangers muttered as smoke seeped out from his nostrils.
“Very funny, Rangers. Are you just gonna stand there or are you gonna help me?”
“Swipe the card again,” Rangers told him.
Limpy swiped the card up and down in front of the droid’s dead eyes again, but still got nothing.
“That’s what you get for employing the Downtown models, Limpy. Every hobo in town’s pounding on these things, and they tend to break down. You should save up a little of that junk money and get one of them Uptown jobs. At least the city has the decency to clean those.”
“Quit foolin’, Rangers. Call someone!” Limpy begged.
“Oh, you want me to call somebody?”
“There’s got to be a number on her somewhere, right?”
“Sure, Limpy. I’ll get on it right away.” Rangers held his fingers up to his ear and feigned making a call. “Hello? Yes, is this the Hobo’s Droid Escort Emergency Hotline? Great. One of your models just happened to terminate a session prematurely and malfunctioned on my friend here. Excuse me? Hold on, I’ll ask him,” Rangers pulled his fingers away from his ear. “They want to know if it’s the Asian model.”
Poor Limpy was confused. “Huh? What’s Asian? How can you tell?”
“I wasn’t talking to anyone, you idiot,” Rangers snapped.
“Reach around and…and see if there’s…a reset button somewhere,” Limpy stammered, running his pathetically skinny fingers along and down the model’s back.
“No. I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you,” Rangers said quietly with an icy glare, and then he crushed his cigarette out on the droid’s arm. “You give me what I came here for, and I’ll call it in. I can have Squad here within ten minutes.”
“Oh man, Rangers! Squad? Waddaya want from me?”
Rangers pulled a device the size of a postcard from his coat pocket and held it up for Limpy to see. The digital image of a shadowy figure from the Vermicide heist appeared on the screen. “I want you to tell me where I can find these bottom feeders. Is it at Cosmos Cabana, the Earth Club? Tell me where. I know you know, so I’m going to go easy on you if you tell me.”
Limpy squinted at the image. “Never seen him, Rangers. Don’t get me into nothin’, will ya? I don’t need no heat on me. They’ll know I was whistlin’ to the cops!” Limpy was right about that.
“Well, what are you so worried about? I’m no cop.” Rangers smiled, and then pocketed the card.
“No, you’re worse. You’re the city’s most hated man on this side of the law. Guys like Dickey Jets would love to put a slug in your gut and hang your head on a wall!”
Dickey Jets. Rangers wouldn’t be surprised if Jets was the one behind the heist. He’d been on Rangers’ shit list for years now. Dickey wasn’t the goon in the picture though, but Rangers was willing to bet there was a connection.
“Dickey Jets, huh? Thank you, Limpy. That’ll be all.” Rangers gave the droid a tight smack in her rear and headed out the door.
“Ah, shit! Waitaminute, Rangers. Now, I didn’t say nuthin’!”
“You’ve said enough, Limp. Good luck with the dame. I hope for your sake Squad won’t need to use the chompers.”
II
BLUGO’S BAR and GIRLL
Blugo’s was a slapdash joint just outside of Downtown. It was a dingy hole in the wall unworthy of the rats—the misspelling on the sign didn’t help any—but it was the only joint where Rangers could watch the game in peace. The drinks were cheap enough, but the grub wasn’t worth a damn. The place had been slapped with so many health code violations one had to wonder why no one’d set fire to it yet. Not that it stopped any of the drunks and jerks from eating there.
Rangers watched the game from the back of the room, tucked away in the dark, away from the crowds gathering around the TV screens. The Downtown trade tended to get a little rowdy during game season. The way they drank and fought each other over some stupid game seemed like they thought they were making a difference in the world.
They weren’t going to change nothing. All they had was their refinery jobs and their dead dreams and their pissing and moaning.
The city may have survived recessions, social depression, and the incendiary inter-galactic civil rights movement of 2085, but she still bore the scars underneath. The world was changing, and it was leaving her behind. Big Industry’s droid distribution was on the rise, aliens were now eligible for free enterprise, and augmented humans considered themselves the “New Gods.”
Yes, gods. Wasn’t that something? What about the humans or what’s left of them? What did they get for paving the way so everyone else could have a better life? The higher up in the sky the so-called gods go in their high rises and chariots, the quicker the humans were left to rot down in the greasy pit that was the city.
Did we build the stairway to heaven in spite of ourselves, tricked into constructing this suffocating hell we live in?
Rangers often felt like he was the bastion of Gravity City, the last man standing, and the only one left who even gave a damn about their dying city enough to fight for it.
And what about her, the doll in the red dress and the long legs, standing over the jukebox like a cool drink of water? What was her story?
A working girl, a lady of the night, Rangers gathered.
Still, too classy for this sleazy part of town. Maybe she was with the greaseball who was suddenly breathing down her neck and talking nasty in her ear. But then when the punk got in too close, she said something that made him go white, and he split.
She tossed a dime into the jukebox and punched in her selection. The tune, some hot number, suddenly blared out over the noise of the drunks and the game. She made her way to Rangers’ table, her hips swaying with the music, ignoring the drunks yelling to turn that shit down.
Her fragrance cut through the smoke and the smell of the bar’s stale cloud like a sweet blade. It was pleasantly intoxicating and dreamy, like her eyes, twinkling emeralds embedded in the soft porcelain white of her skin. Most of the dollies around here reeked of engine oil.
“Hello,” she said to Rangers, her voice sounding smoky and sweet.
“Scram, lady. I like my women with a little more than circuitry inside of them,” Rangers said, keeping his eyes on the game.
“You’re a real gentleman, mister. I’m as real as they come, I can assure you of that.” She pulled a chair out for herself and sat.
“The last thing I’ve ever been accused of being is gentle. Waddaya want?”
“I’m just striking up conversation. Is being social considered a crime now in this town?” she answered.
“That depends on the company you keep, and I don’t feel like keeping any company,” Rangers replied, then emptied his glass.
“How about I buy you a drink?” She signaled the waiter over. She obviously wasn’t taking no for an answer.
The Cyborg Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 10