by Mike Doom
Excerpt from the Documentary: Human History Dwarfed - Earth and the Federation
Human history is the story of people believing they are the best at what they do. Manifest Destiny, Individual Patent, even the great race to visit another star system, were all taken by one person or just a small group of select individuals. All of this has been placed aside.
The greatest change to the development of all human life was literally given to humans from outside. Now, humans have hit a new precipice. To literally subjugate as a race to the Federation of Higher Intelligent Life.
The original opening to other planets, first Mars, then so many more, allowed for the movement beyond nations, something unthinkable even one hundred years before First Contact. Yet, planetary governments are the norm now. Then as systems grew, system wide governments were the law of the land. All of this is small potatoes now.
The Colonies were forced to ban production of Freestanding AI Units, or Frees. Their use, particularly without pay, is banned in all Federation controlled systems. Abuses, with knowledge, are to be met with force. Something that the Z'arkadar are still threatening if full citizenship is not completely carried out per the amendments GovNet has recently passed.
Right now, in this very place, the newly elected Prime Minister of GovNet, Johann Hollis, is signing the Federation Charter. The final nail in the supremacy of man, at least in the views of man himself, has been laid. We are now fully at the mercy of beings with power so much greater, as to make our best weapons a form of non-violent protest in comparison. The time of man... Is over.
“Can you drive any faster?” Sunshine screams.
“No! No! I am driving as fast as this thing allows.” Truckee yells back.
“There are three cars following us.”
“I fucking know that, you think that I don’t fucking know that. You told me that like ten seconds ago, and I kind of hoped that they would just ‘vanish’, but I am not fucking mentally challenged and am fully aware that three cars are currently halfway up my motherfucking ass.”
“And you can’t drive any faster.”
“You can fucking walk if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Focus!” She shrieks, Truckee jerks the wheel left, the hover banking across the edge of a billboard. The hover veers heavily into the wrong lane of traffic before pulling quickly back into the correct one. A van swerves close enough to flip Truckee off before buzzing ahead. Something is keeping their hover slow.
“Big. Can this shit go any faster?”
“Not without accessing its Lance abilities!” Big yells.
“ Motherfucking AI. Will it do that if you drive?”
“Yeah!” Big yells, tapping his skull with two fingers. The wheel jerks out of Truckee’s hands and the hover doubles in speed and jumps up a nearby ramp.
“Every time I start almost, almost learning to tolerate you...” Truckee mutters under his breath, crossing his arms. Sunshine looks out the window, seeing the three hovers jamming their way up the ramp after them.
“Big, do you know who those people are?”
“One of them looks like the car that copy of you was driving!” He yells, while diving the car around a corner entirely too fast and almost running over three people. By a margin that took out the purse a woman was holding. Money, makeup and several tampons littering the windshield. Truckee yelps, Big turns on the windshield wipers.
“We’re all going to motherfucking die!”
“Wait.” Big says, and the hover does a barrel roll through two lanes of traffic. Sunshine activates a downer program as to avoid vomiting.
“Fuck!” Big manages to bank out of the roll and through an alleyway, Truckee slams his face into the main console and cracks his brow harshly. Sunshine is thrown around the backseat, but remains unharmed.
“Truckee? Are you alright?” Sunshine sort of screeches, Big lurches the car harshly downward, sans-ramp, plummeting several stories before churning the hover’s engines almost to a fault, and halting their progress on someone’s rooftop pool.
“Holy shit. Holy. Okay. Fucking gods hell. Okay. Truckee?” Sunshine is hysterical, looking out the window, holding Truckee’s shoulder, screaming. Truckee is bracing his face with his hands.
“Gods damn it. Big, you are NEVER going to drive this again.” Truckee scolds the tiny robot child, who pouts in response. Truckee starts laughing, which confuses Sunshine. Sunshine sits back in the seat, turning around to see if anyone had managed to follow them.
“Well, we appear to have lost them.”
“This hover is incapable of flight.” Big mumbles, his hands moving on invisible keys. Truckee takes that as a cue to get out of the car. Sunshine follows suit, risking the small jump from the pool over to the edge.
The rooftop is rather spacious, the pool area probably being a common space for the people of whatever building this is. Seven deckchairs line the poolside ahead, with a small bar with a grill along the stairway entrance to the building below. The brickwork edges are lined with thick vines, which lead to and from a thatched overhanging which hides a few tables with chairs. A woman is sitting at the table reading a book, or more so, she is holding a book.
“Sorry.” Sunshine shrugs.
“Can we play through?” Truckee laughs at the woman, as she drops the book.
“I always hated pool parties.” Sunshine smirks as they all walk for the stairs, the woman just kind of shaking in her chair. Truckee sort of waves while he holds the door for Sunshine and Big, and then she is behind them.
“Now what?”
“Okay. Okay. Where are we?”
“The capital! We’re about six miles from our destination.”
“Okay. The World still works here, so we catch a cab.”
“Won’t whoever is following us be able to… like trace our accounts or something?”
“Fuck, Big, is that right?”
“I could do that.”
“Okay. So we walk.”
“Six miles?” Sunshine groans, adrenaline risking a turn to exhaustion pretty quickly as they take the stairs for the third floor.
“How long would that take us?”
“Half an hour.” Assuming they take moving sidewalks for most of it.
“Fantastic. You have the location on your map, Big?”
“Yes.”
“Then everyone cut access. We need to be a low rez as possible here.” Truckee says, feeling like a professional.
“Oh. How many floors till we get to the pedestrian level?” Sunshine asks.
“Map says it’s the next one down!”
“Great.”
Olm-tok is much shorter in profile than Hojo City, the scrapers averaging in the low hundreds. As such, a lowers proper doesn’t exactly exist. Sure ground-floor is still ground-floor, but the light hits the baseboards here a lot more often. Also the lower pedestrian level has quite a wide array of trees, playing into the general agrarian nature of the planet. It also tends to make the area blend well; every neighborhood looks exactly the same. Without Big guiding them, the two tourists would be aimless. That said, it still has the effect of making it seem like they are walking in circles, passing the same restaurant on the same corner over and over.
“Are we lost?” Sunshine mutters, her eyes drawn to a woman carrying six bags of clothing out of what looks like a pawnshop. Second-hand clothing being so bizarre that Sunshine almost trips over Big when the child stops at an intersection.
“Place is straight ahead, up two floors in that building!” He is pointing ahead a building that looks like every other building in absolutely all conceivable ways.
“Well, let’s just hope that they found the place easier than we did.” Truckee says, mostly under his breath and for his own benefit. Sunshine is out in space somewhere, he grabs her hand and they make the rest of the way in silence.
“That will be a table for…”
“That is
a really good question. If everything goes as planned, what, seven?” Pepper taps his brow. The four of them, Sunshine, Truckee, and an android.
“Is that right?” Cirrhosis murmurs.
“Are you counting Big?" Epic is only half asking.
“Can we just agree on seven and sit down?”
“Follow me. I trust you’ve been here before?”
“Yeah yeah. Who’s spinning today?” Pepper musters the courage to ask.
“DJ Dunkin YoNuts.” The host states with more excitement than someone should have for someone who is a house DJ at a chain restaurant on a sprawl planet at three in the afternoon. He leads them to a booth, Cannata sits as far from Pepper as possible, Cirrhosis sits on her inside right, which leaves Pepper on the opposing end and Epic splayed out in the center.
“I hate this fucking place.”
“Dj Laser Eyes?” Epic sort of laughs. Having an opinion that extreme over a place this bland seems like overkill.
“I think it’s kinda nostalgic.” Cirrhosis shrugs.
“Where are they…”
“We’ve been here ten seconds; you have to give the girl time to walk up the stairs.”
“Their crash was twenty-five minutes ago.”
“At least they fell off grid after that, they probably are being good children and holding hands to cross roads. That’ll add a few minutes to drive time.”
“You two were watching them?” Cannata says sternly.
“They were being tailed by several hunters. The chatter was difficult to ignore.” Epic shrugs.
“Then why aren’t you there protecting her?” Cannata getting more angry.
“She’ll never learn if I do everything for her. Besides, if we were to act other players might start using their pieces as well. Strategy is just as much about inaction as it is about action.” Pepper mutters, seeming to be convincing himself as much as attempting to turn Cannata’s opinion. Which is probably for the best, as Cannata would never agree with Pepper intentionally.
“You’re worried for her?” Epic seems to mention off-hand.
“Of course. Of course, but I’ve put her in enough danger.” Pepper mutters. “I watched her, and I threw some AI cars to deflect people, but there wasn’t more I could do without tipping my hand. Without making it worse.”
“Thank you, Pepper.” Sunshine says, tapping Pepper on the shoulder lightly. His head snaps up, something complex on his face. Worry, happy, something else. Something very sad. Sunshine motions for him to stand, and gives the man a big hug.
“Hey hey hey, sit down. I need to stress eat.” Truckee laughs. Sunshine turns away from Pepper, turns back to Pepper, and then grins.
“More zero gee eats. Fuck I hate this place.” Pepper chuckles, Sunshine looks at him. Epic has seen that look before. That look is a very serious liability, in very large part because Pepper has that look too. He will not be S-class with his mind full of supermodels. This is an S-class mission, if Epic has any ability to measure it. The variables are only getting more complicated now.
“Hey. I just got an LT.” Cirrhosis looks disturbed. Epic doesn’t like that look either.
“From?” Epic says gravely.
“Toro Abobo.”
“Motherfucker.” Pepper mutters. Epic looks at Pepper, then back at Cirrhosis.
“He says that I need to go to Hess. He says he is going to meet me there. The jewel is apparently being sold from there.”
“From Hess?”
“Seems that way. This is bad isn’t it?”
“Really bad. Did he tell you why he is coming? Why he doesn’t trust you anymore?”
“No.”
“We have to assume something is going down there and that it has something to do with that day.”
“Who else is alive from then? You two, Toro, and who?”
“You for one.” Epic mentions. Cirrhosis was there. He doesn’t remember it well, but he had his mind scrubbed after getting rejuved. Usually people don’t handle that well, usually getting vented into space will make you uneven in some dramatic fashion. The human mind doesn’t go for mental reorganization; all of the memories are tied to each other in ways that can’t be predicted logistically. AI mind probes can test things, run scenarios, do the best job possible, but really traumatic stuff tends to surface in weird ways. Cannata was unusually angry about finding out how old her ex-boyfriend is, probably a point of contention during their break-up.
“All that is so fucking bizarre to me. That my parents lied to me for so long, and I have no way to prove it. I mean… it explains some stuff. Spooky stuff about me, but it’s all so fucking strange.” Cirrhosis puts his head down, scratches at his hair with both hands. Epic is worried that having all of them together might make Cirrhosis crack. Tempt fate too much.
“Cirrhosis. When is the race?”
“The what?” Cirrhosis looks up.
“My motherfucking race!” Truckee yells, and then looks embarrassed about it.
“Whoa. I… oh shit, it’s tomorrow isn’t it?” Cirrhosis looks frantic at Truckee, who checks his mental logs.
“No. Two days left.”
“Shit! I have to train and go over the route and... shit!”
“Okay. So we need to split up.” Epic states it as fact.
“Right. So the two of us, at least, are wanted on Hess for some purpose related to that incident before. Someone has an agenda for us, the survivors of that day. That means-“ Pepper starts.
“That Stardust will be there as well, which means it is very dangerous.”
“Right. Now, all of this is timed to the Race presumably related to the prize, which is what exactly?” Pepper asks Truckee. Everyone turns for the answer.
“Oh. Yeah. Well, it’s hard to explain.” Truckee scratches the back of his neck.
“Well hunker down and lay out the explanation already.” Epic is getting testy.
“The jewel, well at least as far as I could ever possible tell. It sort of twists things.”
“Twists them? What does it make pretzels?” Pepper ventures.
“Pull taffy?” Epic smirks.
“Calm natives?” Cirrhosis laughs.
“No. No, what it does is it twists reality. Things that aren’t possible become possible.”
“How?” Epic asks.
“You just kind of ask it for something.”
“What do you pay for it?” Pepper asks.
“What?”
“What do you pay in exchange? Things always require an exchange. You ask for an apple and you pay half a rico. You want a car, you need steel and glass and plastics and paint. So what does this jewel need?” Pepper runs off, attempting to work through it.
“It converts probability. It takes a wish and makes it happen, but something bad happens too.”
“What did you ask it for?” Cirrhosis is very confused.
“I asked it for fame. I was just a performer on a small stage on Selba Station before I got my hands on the Jewel. I asked it to be the most famous person in the known universe. Which was something very unlikely considering my particular talents.”
“To say nothing of your demeanor.” Epic interjects.
“Thank you.”
“Sorry. Continue.” Epic sort of shrugs.
“I asked it to make me famous, and that’s what it did. I got asked the next day to host a small sensivise program. Then everything went up from there.”
“What was the price?” Pepper directs.
“I am actually a very frugal man. Very frugal.”
“What does- the debt?” Epic's eyes widen.
“Exactly. My money, I would lose it in all these extremely secure sounding investments, but it was like…”
“You drained your luck.” Sunshine murmurs. Pepper smiles at her. Got it.
“So I think of it like this. The jewel takes something of a certain percent of unlikely, and then you w
ish for it. Well, say if I wish for a watch. I can afford one, so it’s not extremely unlikely. Take that, one good thing. Then, you take your bad percentage of equal measure. So I’d like stub my toe or something.”
“Even. Okay. So you only used it once?” Epic asks.
“I wouldn’t risk it twice, the fucker was a little too harsh. I mean, I’m trillions in debt.”
“So how does it work? Do you like hold it or rub it?” Sunshine asks, sipping her drink.
“You have to hook your dive to it, you dive into it and there is like a command prompt. Enter your wish, it says. You tell it and off you go.” Truckee sort of makes a sailing motion with his hand.
“Do you have to be on ansible?” Pepper again.
“Not that I can tell. But I was when it happened.”
“How long does it take from wish to it happening?”
“For me, I got the call about a full day after I wished. Probably exactly that long? I really have no idea. I guess that the decision to hire me was made earlier... so...” Truckee trails off.
“So we'll assume it is nearly instantaneous. Which means if whoever this was were to use the jewel tonight, he could throw the race.” Pepper is rubbing his chin.
“What the hell would you want to do that for? I mean, he could wish for anything at all, and he already has the prize.” Epic asks, not seeing the logic in this chain of reasoning. The vendetta appears to be with them, not with the race, at least not directly.
“I don’t think that likely either, however, we have to keep everything open. We still aren’t one hundred percent sure that this is about us. Truckee might be involved in some way that we aren’t thinking of yet.”
“Who are you most in debt to?” Epic asks Truckee. Money is always a good angle, right?
“A conglomerate owned by Corialis. He built T-Net tower for me, and I am still paying him off after some stocks went south.”
“You owe him for the race location too?” Cirrhosis asks. Everyone turns to look at him. “Hey, I just went on a tour of the station, and found out that he built the fucking place where the track is being built.” The end at least.
“The race ends in the Crystal Plaza, yes. He asked that we hold it there, he is promoting something new for his company and he wanted a big event to spark it off. Offered to knock a big chunk of my bills off were I to schedule something there and give him appropriate product placement.”
"But it starts on Torch, right?" Sunshine asks the question all but Cirrhosis was wondering about.
"The jumpgate in the plaza." Cirrhosis says with too much food in his mouth. Truckee nods.
"That is a spectacle." Pepper says with raised eyebrows. Old stationary drives drained a lot of energy, and couldn't go very far, but they are useful for certain things. For one, they are completely devoid of radioactivity, so you can use them for tunnels. Or in this case a race from two stations. The mathematics for holding that gate open are mind boggling. This sort of thing is usually only done in system.
“You don’t think?” Epic raises an eyebrow to Pepper. Pepper shrugs.
“I guess we won’t know until we get to Hess, but we have to assume that someone in Corrialis’ payroll, at least, has some involvement in this. Okay. So here’s the plan: Epic and I are going to Hess. Cirrhosis and Truckee you need to go back to the race, fuck Toro, we'll deal with that. Cannata and Sunshine should come with us, I cannot guarantee your safety if you are too far away from us, as there are still too many people on the board looking to kill us all for money. Big, I need you to go back to Selba Station with Truckee; he is going to need protection and an eye on the ground. If you have any lances in the area that can help, please get them there by the day of the race.”
“I am not taking orders from you.” Cannata gets a furious look on her face and storms away from the table. Pepper looks at everyone, and then gets up to follow her.
Cannata is outside the restaurant standing between a potted plant and a cigarette snuffer. She looks like she is waiting for a cab after being stood up.
“I need you to listen to what I have to say.”
“So, what the fuck does it matter? You are going to pontificate if you so desire. What does it matter what I think?”
“I don’t think I did anything to you, specifically, to deserve that. I want to start by saying that I am sorry that your brother was killed, but more sorry that I do not remember doing it.”
“Well, when you’ve killed so many, who is to be surprised if you lose one or two on your belt along the way.”
“Oh, and you are so clean?”
“I… I never killed a child.”
“Your brother was how old when he joined Destiny?”
“About sixteen.”
“So only a child in that he wasn’t terribly old. I am not justifying my killing a bystander, but he may have had a gun. He wasn’t completely innocent either. Give him two years, and he would have had a bounty too.”
“You would have taken it?”
“Never. I don’t do small fries, and kids are always small fries. Not enough time or experience to get into anything too dramatic yet. I apologize for cutting his career short.”
“That is a pretty fucking ridiculous way to apologize.”
“I guess so, isn’t it. Maybe it is because, even though I want to be, I am just not sorry. Your brother would have been a gang member, would have gotten decent rank by his connections too, regardless of any skill. Eventually, maybe in like ten years, someone would have done exactly what I did. More purposefully, sure, but they would have killed him. How much fucking crash did I keep off the streets? How many young girls not sold into prostitution? How many hovers left unstolen?“ Pepper makes a sort of recycling motion with his hand, round and round, adding up the damages.
“You have no idea what he would or would not have done.”
“Valid. I can’t argue with that. But I also can’t make it up either. He died, and there is nothing I can do or say that would fix it for you.”
“I can agree to that.”
“I’m only asking you to help me because we need more hands here. This guy, whoever it is, is fucking with you just as much as he’s fucking with me. Pinning Destiny with the theft will make your life more difficult.”
“That really isn’t that big of a deal.”
“Alright fine. You want money?”
“Not from you.”
“Do it for Cirrhosis?”
“We broke up at least a hundred years ago.”
“Then just do what the fuck you want then. I’m not trying to make friends here, I just need a fucking hand zeroing this guy out, and I thought maybe you’d like the challenge.”
“Challenge of what, this seems like a regular switch and heist sort of deal.”
“This guy can hack ansible, memory cores and apparently be in several places at once.”
“Huh. That is impressive.”
“Not to mention the whole ‘wishing stone’ thing.”
“You seriously expect me to believe I’ll get a piece of that?”
“No, but you strike me as a tech collector. I can get you some good stuff.”
“I haven’t seen you use a single item above human tech level. Hell, I haven’t seen you use something that wasn’t specifically made within the last ten years.”
“You kids always want flashy don’t you. Never get any points for style, it’s always big explosion big explosion bigger explosion. Used to be a time that people used only what they needed to, pride was in using bullshit to make masterpieces, but now it’s all fucked isn’t it.” Pepper mutters to himself mostly. He gestures for Cannata to walk into an alleyway with him. They walk a few steps and then behind a dumpster.
“One second.” Pepper says with some effort, visibly annoyed with having to have a pissing contest with some tech-aku.
“So you cut my World access. Big deal, I bet the model could manag
e that with a hundred rico and the right mods to her wetwiring.” Pepper holds his finger to his mouth, mostly to avoid shouting at her. Being flashy is completely against his character, but he had grown very used to being one of the most conspicuous hunters in the game. Cannata should be plenty old enough to know him better than just the guy who accidentally capped her brother.
“I will do this exactly one time, and I will not be recorded. Check your memory card and you will see that we never left the restaurant.” Pepper says with boredom. Cannata leans against the alley’s wall. Completely unimpressed by the warning, until Pepper completely disappears from vision. She runs every possible program in an attempt to pick him up, radar, sonar, x-ray, heat, and still nothing.
A moment passes, where she is wondering what the point of simply vanishing is, and Pepper returns. He is holding three items with him, a live dog, a Tellurian sniper rifle, and a cooked pork chop on a plate. He places the pork chop on the ground, feeding the dog with it, and hands Cannata the rifle. The gun has the ability to shoot through things, as in passing through them unharmed. It is on several banned lists.
“Bla-dow, I have been to Hojo City, my house in particular, and back. In about forty seconds. I also went to the pound and to a steak house about six miles from here. Which are awkwardly close together if you think too hard about it.”
“How did?”
“I did literally nothing. You’ll have no memory of any moment before this one. You want in?”
“Yes.” Cannata says a little faster than she would have expected. Pepper raises his eyebrows and the next thing Cannata knows they are in a car headed for the hoverport. She has a feeling that she agreed to something, but has no idea as to why.
“What did you need that chick for?” Epic eSes.
“We need an x-factor on both fronts. Whoever this is, she is the one person we have access to who has nothing to do with anything. With Big handling the race line, I need someone unpredictable on the station with us when we get there.”
“Yeah but she’s completely small time.”
“Eh. She’s middle time at least, we just have really high standards.”
“Won’t she just flip on you when the thing wears off?” Epic is fully aware of the abilities that Pepper used outside. It takes an exotic level of sensors, but Epic and Pepper have worked together for quite some time and have some mutual friends and enemies.
Generally they have a pact against using exotic technology in public and to anyone below their power-level, but drastic times are just so very drastic. Code Name, or whoever is trying to pretend they were Code, has some stuff that shouldn’t be available to ordinary people. Pepper’s stash is the toppest of notches, completely verboten technologies that would literally get them banned from the system where they detected in use. There are only a handful of humans carrying their level of technology, all listed on the omega bounty lists, most of them dead or otherwise disappeared a long time ago. Having a lot of power tends to do that to a person.
So unless Stardust has another angle on this, then someone else who was there that day is around and still alive and using shit that is definitely beyond the realm that some second string gang member can ‘jinx’ out of commission. Yet, Epic came here to find Pepper and teamed with him for a reason. Pepper just knows what to do, simply and without a doubt, he just knows.
“She’s wet for my tech, and that is all I need to drive her to the spot. After that she just needs to shoot at people who aren’t us. Either way, she or I or all three of us will probably be long dead by then.”
“Touché.” Epic grins nervously, excited at the possibility of a real challenge after all this time.