I wonder if I could leave here now. Could I have even left back then?
I hit my hand on the ground in frustration. Damn! Why didn’t I leave? What was keeping me around? Seems stupid looking back on it, it is not like I have any purpose here now. Okay, that settles it. I am out of here. I’ll buy a ticket and be gone in just a few cycles.
I pulled out my gun and ran my fingers over it. At least this was a good purchase before things fell apart completely. I was making a lot of credits at the time, and I spent a serious amount on the best pistol I could get without a military clearance. I caught my Strive reflected in the large barrel of the pistol and thought of that strange girl at the bar with her simplistic pictogram. The tattoo under my left eye was a straight line, followed by a perpendicular one, ending with a triangle beyond it. The meaning was that the straightest path to anything might not be a straight line. I liked to think that that inscription that had been with me from childhood helped me in my non-standard thinking of solving problems.
Regarding hers, I honestly did not think you could get a Strive that…simple. I didn’t know the rules of the inscriptions, but I had never seen anyone with a single, non-complex design, so that’s what I based my assumption off of.
I hoped she wasn’t a regular there. I do not know if I was ready to go back there anytime soon, given the size of the city seeing her elsewhere would be a low chance. Damn, she was hot too. My curiosity piqued by what exactly she was. Maybe she was with ReCorp.
Motion.
I tilted my pistol just slightly to see a man obviously coming up behind me in its reflection. Strange. And not good.
I waited a bit more and when it was clear he was coming right at me I dashed forward and rapidly turned around. Nice melee attack chump, prepare to die.
“Hey punk, this is for Walo!” He did not have a melee weapon, instead his leveled pistol erupted fire that tore into my shoulder. Damn, he was good. No warning. Professional.
I let a little yelp out as I was torn to the ground. My hand holding my pistol went to my right shoulder, feeling warm liquid leak out of it.
“Ha, guess there was nothing to you, huh boy? Just a pathetic, lucky kid. I will leave you here like the rest of the trash in this shithole.” He smiled darkly as his pistol was pointing at me.
My rapid thoughts congealed and realized I had to act right now. I brought the pistol onto the man who was stupid to not finish me and pulled the trigger. The Liner pistol’s Gauss accelerators propelled the rounds from zero to maximum velocity within a very short time. The caseless rounds tore through him at a far faster rate than his chemical propellant variety of weapon. In a few fractions of a trigger pull easily over fifty rounds were out of my gun and through his body. His torso exploded apart and he joined me down on the ground, except he was now completely dead.
“Uhh…” I gritted my teeth looking at my right arm. I tried squeezing my fingers and they did not work despite the massive pain of trying. I braced myself to try harder, screaming out in pain as I tried to close my limp hand. Nothing.
Damn damn damn! Was my arm shot through!? I was not a soldier, I was a fucking scientist. How did this happen!?
My mind was racing, scared of the blood leaking out of me. There was a sizable hole through my shoulder, and while I could feel my nanites pumping chemicals through me and trying to close the hole, this was still a very serious wound. My head swam for a moment before the chemicals started calming me.
I tried ripping my shirt with my left hand, gripping hard and pulling against my body but without a strong counter force it was not coming apart. I took off my sock in desperation and started jamming it into the hole. I was oddly self-conscious that I was doing this and knew I should be in massive pain but I had so many synthesized chemicals in me from my system nanites I could not even feel anything anymore. Even the panic had given away to my coldly calculating mind, distantly stuffing a sock in my shoulder.
The injury was further alarming because at every finger extension of me pushing the sock in, I would expect to find resistance of my body, such as a bone or my back. I felt extreme nausea come over me at the implication of the massive hole in my shoulder that clearly went all the way through.
When the thin sock had completely been put into my shoulder, the very idea that part of it might be hanging out the backside - bloody and dripping - was too much and I started coughing before throwing up on the ground in front of me. I was too dizzy, likely from the thoughts more than the feelings as nanites were quite capable of keeping someone fighting in worse condition that I was. I leaned forward and sprawled out on the ground.
Normally the nanites would have mostly stopped the bleeding and within a cycle or two would heal over the hole. Perhaps even now there may be a synthetic layer of skin covering a dirty sock in my shoulder…the thought of my sock disgusted me and I was sick again.
The spinning in my head slowly stopped, and the pain was distant. I pushed myself to kneeling, then eventually to standing.
“Kckk…” I coughed a few times, rubbing my mouth and eyes on my shirt and stood up, having to catch my feet a few times from being mentally unsteady. The blood and vomit where I was looked like a massacre occurred there.
I started to walk away, until realized I didn’t have my shoe. I didn’t know if I could really put it on, so merely stupidly grabbed it, grabbed the weapon of the man I had killed in self-defense, and hobbled back to my room. The few people I saw stare at me on the way back did not once ask if I was okay; I stared back with hatred. Maybe I’ll just put a round through them. In some fitting irony, I now looked exactly like the trash I despised so much.
I held my hand over my shoulder and by the time I made it back to my room, I felt a few fibers of synthetic material stringing itself across the wound to heal faster. I would not be taking out the sock, and was grimly thinking about how eventually my nanites would slowly break the fiber down within me. I would survive, but I was very worried if the nanites would be able to re-string the neurons or tendons or whatever was causing my lack of motor control. The door shut behind me and I bent down, throwing the two weapons on the desk. I stood back up as a massive wave of dizziness hit me. I grabbed the desk, trying to stay up, but then blacked out and went down.
In my daze a growing pain woke me up, and I gradually realized I was laying on my shoulder. I had been out for a while, as the room seemed darker. I shook my head a few times and felt in control of my mental facilities. Holy shit, my memories came back of what happened. I patted my shoulder, still alive. Yeah, if that was a sign to get out, this was it.
Everything was feeling okay, all things considered. Only the color of my vision was wrong.
What the? I had never been shot before, and I knew my nanites could heal me, but was this part of the healing process?
Everything was still ‘colored’ but it was like a black and white filter had been applied to everything, damping most of the color out of existence. I stood up, holding my shoulder with its synthetic skin now completely across the wound, and walked over to the window that faced the ReCorp building. Near the center it appeared to be completely binary in its color, but I thought it might just be because there wasn’t much color there anyway. Some weird atmosphere or solar phenomenon? The sky looked the same as the rest of the reduced color world.
A tug in my heart brought me back to looking at the complex. From the center of it, a huge black sphere was now there, expanding outwards. At first it was barely noticeable in its speed, but even as I watched it grew rapidly.
The next part I will describe using intuitive feelings, because any science I have would not explain what I felt. It seemed like the black wave growing was a pulse of ‘motion freeze’, that there was nothing that would be moving within it. Then the feeling grew into pure terror that even stillness would be happy to exist within the sphere. My new fear knew that this was a wave of annihilation, that every dimension, the three physical, time, gravity, and whatever else there might be would be torn asunder, r
educed to nothingness. Reduced to non-reality. I knew that for an intuitive fact.
I was under no delusion that that force was beyond me, beyond the entire Solarian race, maybe even beyond the entire universe. I almost felt privileged for a moment to watch this source of destruction that would rip reality apart, but it was quickly replaced by revulsion at this deeply unnatural event. The black sphere of nothingness grew larger and faster. I would be annihilated, like everything else.
Then in the next moment, I was.
***
“Ahh!” I sat up, throwing the covers off of me. My breaths came fast as I was hyperventilating, my eyes flung around, trying to feed my brain that everything was okay. After a few panicked moments I realized I was alive and that it was the morning. The sky was turning blue from its brilliant orange. The colors of my shirt, the room, everything was there, and I never loved the morning so much.
“What was that…?” I lay down again, holding my face and trying to figure out what that was. Some crazy nightmare. Ugh, been a while since I had something like that. I opened my eyes through my splayed fingers and saw my two black socks on my desk, and it reminded me about the other part of being shot and the grim ends I resorted to. Kind of badass in a way. At least my subconscious thought I was legit.
For a moment my heart jumped. It was just a dream right? My left hand shot to my right shoulder, and nothing. No shot, no pain. My right hand worked perfectly. But I remembered the pain, I remembered gunning that guy down and taking his gun, I remember throwing up over myself, but my white shirt was completely clean.
I put two fingers on my forehead and took a few deep breaths. Okay, just some whack dream. Damn, that was insanely real. The more I thought about it, the more I remembered random details like the old guy by the fence, fighting that guy at the bar, and…that girl. For some reason I felt she was really important to whatever that dream was about, even though she played almost no part in it at all.
I wiggled my fingers a few times, feeling that their motion was really divine; there was this complete satisfaction at the simple ability of being able to move them. I moved one at a time right down the line, thinking about complex the movement actually was.
I heated something up for breakfast. Tried reading a little, a book about a guy who would not take pain killers whereas all his enemies did and could not feel pain; I wasn’t convinced someone could win in a situation like that. The sun was coming through the slits on my blind and the sunlight made me think about that dream again.
Man, I just could not drop this. I had a few nightmares before, but this one just would not subside. “Alright, just drop it. I am not shot, and that whole thing never occurred.” I rubbed my shoulder a few times and, convinced it really was just a dream, left my room to go about my day.
The monotony of the day once again lay before me. But one thing was still bothering me. It felt really stupid, but I wanted to check. Levels of precognition existed, that was a fact. There were three major varieties of the Chrono Psionic that was based on that. I daydreamed a bit that maybe somehow I unlocked a power like that.
Strangely, there was a bar right where I had dreamt it. My hopes raised a bit that maybe something special was going on with me. My scientist mind tried to look for explanations. It was possibly not that odd, as I was probably through here before and the subconscious has a really good memory.
My heart rate was quickening as I opened the door, and the bar lay out in front of me the same way I had seen it before. There was the bartender I argued with, the guy close to me whom I had envisioned clubbing down after breaking his knee. My heart fell when I recognized another man in here as the one who shot me and I killed later in the dream.
This was far clearer than any dream I had had before. Faces were always kind of vague, even the most visual of dreams were based a lot more on feelings and metaphors. I recognized this guy’s ugly face and I had never seen him in my life.
I staggered backwards. “What the hell is going on?” My eyes went wide and my stomach dropped along with my heart. People supposedly had precognizant dreams, but that was all bullshit, no way any of that happens in real life. It defied science. If this was some Chrono Psionic, no wonder those people were so awkward and fucked up given how weird this was to me.
How could I have known about these people I had never seen!? The fear of what was happening was too much and I left before I checked much more. I turned and ran to the next spot of the dream: the fence overlooking the ReCorp complex.
No one was around here. Hmm, that was different. And just that simple fact brought a much needed sense of relief to me. I let a huge sigh out, and started laughing loudly. Oh man, okay. I have no idea what that was. Some low probability dream, maybe I had been there when I was younger or something. I was so desperate to find something, my mind assumed anyone’s random face was the face I supposedly saw in my dream. Sounded about right.
Yeah, well, whatever. Not like I was going to get gunned down later today. Yeah, some dream to just tell me to avoid that spot. Not that odd. There was actually some pretty crazy research in Psionics/Senses, and to have a dream about your death that you are then able to avoid is a lot less crazy than some of the stuff I had heard about. Not sure I believed any of it, but it was out there. There was some ‘danger Sense’ or something that was pretty common in Solarians as well that kept people out of getting killed; maybe that’s how this thing went down.
Wait…why the hell am I even jumping to these conclusions? It was some dream, period.
I laughed again, then my laugh got caught in my throat, and my breath froze. A bit further down a saw an old man…the old man coming on his walk across here.
I shook my head in disbelief. Okay, think critically. Maybe I indeed have a latent Sense that is manifesting itself here, and I foresaw the danger I would be in from the gunfight and warned me about the events that would occur. Take this slow, and experiment with what exactly will happen. I hated that I didn’t read more about how the Chrono Psionics worked, so I was stumbling blindly trying to conclude if I had something I knew nothing about.
‘Some sight huh?’ My mind played, or maybe it was ‘replayed’.
“Some sight huh?” the man stated. Hmm, what did I say back to him? I think I was dismissive. My mind found the right words as if I had said them a million times.
“Yeah, if you mean totally disrupting to the entire culture and planet that was already there.” Consciously, I felt like a watcher on a play I had seen before.
He started coming closer to me. I remember I did not want to talk to him, but actually I was quite interested now. I wondered if my intent would change reality, or was it only things I actually did? If I still acted the exact same but thought differently I wondered if that would change anything.
He came closer. “Yeah, you are young enough that I am sure you were displaced by what occurred here.” His hand motions were moving the exact same way.
Now here was the time to experiment. I think I was sarcastic with him. But this time it would be different based on how I acted. “You don’t seem too bothered. Let me guess, you retired here?”
He stopped, and looked a bit confused. I felt confused suddenly too, up to the moment I felt like I had seen this before, but now I was on a new path. Blinded.
Damn, what the hell was going on? Maybe precognition was weak.
“Good guess, yeah. I made enough in the Solarian Space Forces to retire. I feel bad for guys like you though.”
I almost got caught up in the conversation or the social mores of being polite but a deeper feeling reminded me that something profound had occurred here. I just didn’t know what it was.
I turned away from him. “See you.” Then I ran back to the bar. As I ran across the empty streets, dodging an occasional body, I wondered how much of my vision still applied? Could this new power of mine protect me only from a specific path, or a wide band of actions?
I opened the door to the bar. Last time I was spoiling for a fight, but n
o one would know what I wanted inside my mind, only my actual actions.
I went to the same chair and had the barkeep come over.
“What will you be having?” he asked. Yeah, he said the same thing, but perhaps it is predictable, nothing to gleam out of this small interaction yet. Anyone would say something regular like that.
The next part was something about asking about a job, and my mind said what it had said before: “Well, I’m here to find out if there are any jobs or contracts anyone has posted.”
He laughed dismissively. Hmm, this definitely seemed familiar. “I don’t even know you. You think I’d tell you one with these many deserving people here?”
The grunts again came up from around the bar. Hmm, definitely the same. I was not sure why it was occurring the same way even though I had done different things. I thought that maybe it was a very specific, A then B then C, and because I did B first it would change. There was a lot to learn here. The major thing right now though I had to end the timeline from occurring and ending up getting shot.
I laughed loud once. “Just kidding man. Like anyone has a job since damn ReCorp came in. Bastards,” I said shaking my head. It was so weird. I agreed with my statements, but I felt more like an actor watching and carefully picking my lines than actually living life. “Get me your cheapest drink, I’ll be back.”
I turned and saw ‘Infinity Girl’ in the corner and went to stand up. This time the man who wanted to fight me stayed seated. He nodded to me while I walked passed him. Good choice. I laid you out once, I’ll do it again.
This girl had a very powerful aura about her that was intimidating, but I was more poised about this figure she represented compared to what might be happening to me internally.
“Hi,” I said, taking the seat across from her. She had a deeply knowing smile on as she looked at me. I kind of frowned for a moment as my poise left me. Damn, it’d been a while since I had been unsettled like this by a woman.
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