Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  This has an effect on their society. They have no concept of rape, incest, crimes of passion, sexual harassment, voyeurism, or – for that matter – true love. Oghaldzon "families" tend to be built around interest groups and societies; individual Oghaldzon who share interests, or work in the same line, will form groups that share ideas. The children, once they reach adulthood, are brought up by teachers, who introduce them to the basics of the dominant society. The rare Oghaldzon who is never reached by a teacher and becomes feral is regretfully destroyed as a danger to society.

  Oghaldzon society is generally composed and organised by the sharing of ideas – memes – and placing them into practice. The proof of the idea, as they put it, lies in how well it works in practice; the Oghaldzon cannot practice the concept of lying to their own people about how "they’ve never had it so good." Because of the drive of the Oghaldzon to preserve and pass on their way of life and culture derived from their method of reproduction, the history of Oghaldzon civilisation is one of warring memeplexes (sets of ideas – memes – which propagate as cooperative groups), with the extermination or conversion of defeated memeplexes playing a frequent role. Each memeplex is the equivalent of a tribe or nation of humans – but instead of genetics, each one is linked by a common set of ideas in which all members have an investment, one as strong as the investment humans put into their children. In effect, the ideas of a group are their parents and their children.

  The larger a meme-group grows, the more mass appeal its memes have to have, otherwise it simply will not grow, or last. Oghaldzon history is filled with examples of this, where meme-groups stagnate or fragment over time, leaving themselves open to more dynamic meme-groups. Inflexible meme-groups simply lose to those who could innovate. Of the flexible ones, competition over time let only the fittest survive; the harsh environment of Dhoz has done far more to weed out meme-groups with less ability to survive than has been the case in the relatively benign environment of Earth, where such ideas linger even in many mainstream societies. (The Oghaldzon experimented with communism, socialism and limited fascism, but – unlike many humans – realised that the flaws inherent in such structures would inevitably wreck such societies.)

  In time one memeplex evolved which was aggressive, disciplined and obedient, but also innovative and flexible, with initiative and memes for incorporating new ideas and technology into their memeplex. This gave them the advantage over all other meme-groups, and over time this pragmatic, empirical, flexible set of memes spread across Dhoz and came to dominate the meme-groups there, simply because it was the one that made groups with it best able to survive.

  However, different disparate groups adopting these ideas, combined with the frequent falls of civilisations resulting in regression and fragmenting of meme-groups, meant that the groups incorporating these memes never formed a single unified ideology, although they did all have similarities. Eventually one memeplex refined these memes and developed into a group able to take over all of Dhoz. The memetic similarity of many of the memeplexes across most of Dhoz did mean that this dominant culture was eventually able to impose its ideas on Dhoz without having to engage in "memocide" [the Oghaldzon equivalent of genocide].

  The dominant Oghaldzon memeplex reassembles a social democracy, to use a term humans would understand, including both free enterprise and a certain degree of mutual support/social security. Their culture is quite argumentative. But its discipline also means that discussion has its place; if there were a burning fire, or a military emergency, they would allow those best qualified to lead until the emergency was dealt with. The dominant memeplex walks a fine line between losing innovation and stagnating, or fracturing into subgroups; the balance of power within factions tends to shift, occasionally allowing small groups to split off and declare independence. This has been occurring much less often as the Oghaldzon gained more understanding; ideas which might appeal to the young were tried, tested, and either embraced by the overall whole or discarded. The handful of "semi-independent" subgroups tend not to last very long.

  In the dominant memeplex of the Oghaldzon, members of the race with the most practical ideas lead; as such it is a form of meritocracy. The idea to do this is another winning meme that has developed over time. Ideas that are impractical – such as stories – have a place too, but not as part of the leadership of their meme-group (the few "entertainer-cracies" that developed during Oghaldzon history did not survive long).

  The government of the dominant memeplex consists of a number of interlinked councils that perform the roles of government. At the top of the government is a Council of Councils which links them all into a unified whole. Even the largest and most stable memeplexes have smaller groups with radical views that do not fit in with the mainstream memeplex constantly splitting off from their 'edges'. Many of these are primitive memes, whose memeplexes, on Dhoz, live in what are essentially cultural reserves. However, some are radical groups whose wishes for advancement, by the avocation of things such as genetic engineering and cyborgisation, also lie outside the fringe of mainstream society, but in a very different direction to those of the "primitives".

  Because of the investment that individual Oghaldzon have in their memeplex, crime rates among the Oghaldzon tend to be low. However, crime does happen from time to time. When it does occur. it is considered to be because an individual has suffered contamination of their own memes, causing them to become misaligned with those of the memeplex as a whole – or, as a human might put it, "gone bad/fallen in with a bad crowd". These crimes tend to be classed as either ThrillKill or MemeKill; ThrillKill might be described as individual crime (robbery, murder, rape [impossible for the Oghaldzon], violation and so on) while MemeKill might be described as destroying ideas.

  A society driven by MemeKill, not unlike Soviet Russia or book-burning Nazi Germany, will essentially prevent its citizens from forming their own societies, enslaving them and brainwashing them to believe that something that manifestly did not work actually worked. Almost every war fought by the Oghaldzon after their world became more or less united was against a MemeKill proponent, such as Hitler, and the unfortunates brainwashed by him.

  The Oghaldzon, as of First Contact, were roughly fifty years ahead of the human race in most areas. Their lasers and some sensors were far in advance of anything humans had produced (the Oghaldzon were never very keen on chemical weapons), while they had taken the concept of the fusion drive several stages further, producing vastly increased power levels and allowing some operations within the atmosphere of Earth without causing environmental problems. Their computers, also, were considerably superior, particularly in the research and translations section; the Oghaldzon had no problems learning English from human broadcasts.

  The Oghaldzon – after discovering humanity right next door – were horrified. Unable to comprehend the slanted nature of most human news reports – the Oghaldzon never developed the tradition of biased reporting and wouldn’t have had any truck with it if they had – they concluded that humanity was far too dangerous to be permitted to spread outside their own solar system. Following an intensive debate, the Oghaldzon government decided to launch a major military force to Sol to either heal or contain humanity permanently. This brought them into conflict with the human race.

  Available now from co-author Leo Champion: Streets of New York City

  In dystopian 2184, gleaming arcology-skyscrapers tower above hellish industrial slums, streetgangers killing each other for trash in their shadows. Inside the arkscrapers life is said to be luxurious; on the abandoned streets it’s vicious and short.

  Airborne gang leader Jeff Hammer is an intellectual and a mercenary, surviving from contracts in the wars the tenement bosses wage amongst themselves. But he’s fed up with just dreaming about arkscraper luxury; it’s time to take action.

  When he’s set up to die and his gang is wiped out, his hand is forced. It’s rise or die, and Hammer doesn’t plan on dying. He’s going to set Manhattan on fire – and thr
eaten the very arkscrapers themselves.

  Get the book at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076YP1NT9

  Chapter One

  New York City, New York; August 2184.

  From two hundred feet above, as Hammer approaches on his attack run, all of Hell’s Kitchen looks like it’s on fire. Screams and yells are distantly audible, but the combatants on the streets below his hang-glider are no more than darkly illegible running shapes. Blades reflect in the firelight and the omnipresent glare of the third-of-a-mile high arkscrapers.

  There was fire on the rooftops and in the streets, fire set by Molotovs or bombs or just the butane burners of unaligned streetgangers. It was late August, the fiercest time of year in the city because shortly the hurricanes would begin and warring tenement bosses could consolidate what they’d taken now.

  Jeff Hammer dipped his glider’s wings slightly, identifying the target. He liked fire, so long as he wasn’t too close to it. It gave updrafts, which kept you in the air. It meant you could go in lower, stay in the area longer, maneuver more freely without losing unregainable height.

  He could feel the heat flowing across his body now as he went in lower, leading his gang toward the objective. Occasional bits of hot ash rose up from that one building, probably some kind of combustible industry, that was really blazing a few hundred yards to his north, thick black smoke pouring up from it. Smoke was bad news – smoke choked you, fucked with your visibility and got you killed – but this building was far enough away that it wasn’t a problem.

  His objective was a fortified building on the corner of Forty-Fifth Street and Tenth Avenue, intersecting two free roads and therefore inherently well defended. That was why the client had paid Hammer to soften it up first. Taking a fortified building from the ground was hard – you took casualties doing that. It was hard to take a fortified building from the air, too, but you could fuck with them.

  The roof wasn’t lit, but the towering arcology-skyscrapers threw off plenty of ambient light and he could see people there. A place like this, in the heart of tenement industrial country, would have electricity. Except for a single spotlight focused down on Tenth, scanning for trouble, they weren’t using it. Didn’t mean they didn’t have it.

  The wings of Hammer’s glider wiggled slightly as he descended now, by eye about a hundred and fifty feet above street level, exchanging height for speed as he went in. There didn’t seem to be much fighting in the immediate area, at least not right now. So the objective was rear-area; that made life a little easier. There would be fewer muskets and bows aimed upwards, or ready to be.

  Tonight’s wind came from the east-northeast, a light breeze coming off Long Island Sound. Directly in his path after Tenth Avenue was the dark Hudson, but a sharp left-turn would bring him to the Javitz Building and its heat outtakes. It wasn’t a big one, but you didn’t always need big. Outtakes meant warm air meaning height. You always knew where the nearest outtakes were, and the next-nearest just in case.

  A hundred and twenty feet above street level, descending. Wind whipped past Hammer’s tanned, brown, scarred face, through his short-cut black hair. A glance back showed the rest of the Hawks in line behind him, following his lead as they were supposed to. Six gliders in all, airbornes on the attack.

  Going in low was dangerous; it was also the only way to be a hundred percent sure your payload hit where it was supposed to. There were at least a dozen people on the target rooftop, one of them talking into a headset and jabbing at a lantern-lit map on a table. The others were mostly at the edge, looking down onto the streets. Grappling hooks, fast climbers and surprise – that was one way to take a building like this, although if you lost the surprise it could get messy.

  Airborne assault was another, and Hammer had met other airbornes who specialized in that kind of thing. They’d come in, make short landings and go hand-to-hand. Or use guns – those specialists charged a fortune and could afford that expensive hardware. But over his twenty-nine years, a long life in the gangs, Hammer had come to consider that insane. Flying low was an acceptable risk, part of the job. Doing dirt intentionally was incomprehensible. He’d been to street level exactly once in his life and that hadn’t been by choice.

  A hundred feet above the ground, thirty or forty above the rooftops, and the target was a hundred feet ahead of him as Hammer’s dark glider swept in at eighty miles per hour. His body moved slightly, fractionally, unconsciously, stabilizing and balancing with experienced muscles.

  He glanced back again for a moment, seeing the other five gliders all there in formation at his back. Everyone seemed fine. Random incoming was a normal fact of life this low; grounders hated airbornes. Too often your bombs missed, killed someone they weren’t meant to. A lot of people shot at you on sight. The street-made hang gliders were a tradeoff between weight and strength, not particularly resilient. A musket ball could cause a rip through the stretched plastic that would sink you. An arrow might do worse.

  He leaned his wiry body in a little more, coming in on the target at no higher than forty feet above rooftops that were green with potted plants, local food production.

  In front of him to the left was a wire bomb rack. It held eight two-pound bombs, the size and shape of the large soda bottles they filled. You could dump them as a load or throw them individually. Four of the bombs were nitroglycerin, four were Molotovs with cheap magnesium-ignition fuses. The glicks didn’t need fuses; they exploded on impact. Glick, nitroglycerin, was unstable as hell.

  It was an occupational hazard. You lived with occupational hazards – or died by them, if it was your time. Hammer had survived almost three decades. This probably would not be his time, tonight.

  But then, you never know when it is, he thought. It would be sometime.

  Seventy feet to target.

  Who was this guy? The contractor hadn’t volunteered and it was bad form to ask. Obviously some tenement industrial boss, a rival or enemy of the guy whose man had paid Hammer, half up front as per the usual arrangement, for the mission this morning. His title was perhaps City Councilor, maybe Ward Chair or District Services Administrator; old names of an ancient government from before civilization had moved up into the arkscrapers.

  Sixty-five feet to target.

  To Hammer’s right on the glider’s makeshift aluminum rack was a heavy repeating crossbow on a hundred-and-eighty-degree pivot, left and right up and down. It contained five bolts, each with a third of an ounce of glick coating their barbed tip. Underneath that was a one-shot flashgun, a foot-long barrel holding what amounted to a large shotgun shell.

  The client had asked for strafing. Hammer had replied Maybe, meaning no. These weapons were for self-defense, in case predators showed up. Strafing was dumb on a bomb run, because it gave warning. It was tactically imbecilic.

  Lizard used to like strafing, Hammer remembered.

  Lizard had never understood tactics.

  Lizard had been blown screaming out of the sky three years ago.

  Hammer hadn’t been there, but Ubi had told the story. Certainly the old gang leader had gone out and never come back. Ubi barely had.

  That night, Hammer had refused. He’d lived, although it had nearly killed him afterwards. But he’d moved first, and he was gang leader now for a reason. The others followed him.

  Fifty feet to drop release. Tenth Avenue opened up below him, wide and dark. His eyes were focused on the target as the wind swept past his goggled face, no time now to think of anything else. His weight shifted, keeping balance. His left hand reached over as math went through his mind and he hit the master safety switch on his bomb rack. Armed.

  Someone on the roof looked up and saw him. They pointed and screamed.

  Shit.

  Hammer banked left, a couple of yards, losing almost that much height. Down this low, he couldn’t afford that.

  Somebody started to manipulate the spotlight up towards him. The people on the roof were scurrying like panicked ants.

  “Get below!” someone femal
e shouted.

  No time to think about anything but hitting these fuckers and then the sharp left-turn he’d make. That’d get him to the burning rooftop a hundred and fifty yards away, which would give enough lift to make the Javitz outtakes. The others would follow his lead. Being smart had made Hammer gang leader. Being good was what had kept him around long enough to have the chance.

  His mind was calculating bombardment vectors. It was all math. The payload had a certain weight, fell at a certain speed, moved forwards as it fell. You could calculate it with a pen and paper. Hammer was an intellectual – he’d done just that. That was another reason he was good: you did the math on your roof, then flew in and applied it. The scratches you made on a pad ultimately determined how you came in to drop your bombs. The idea was nuts but it worked, so he didn’t talk about it. He just did it.

  He pushed the release switch, yanking the fuses of the Molotovs and disengaging the rack. Then swerved hard left, because he did not want to be just fifty feet from those things when they went off.

  The sound of ripping plastic. A long, feathered arrow had gone vertically through his wing.

  Shit, said Hammer’s instincts.

  An entirely survivable wound, said his mind.

  “I said to get below! He’s got friends!” the woman yelled.

  The fires were where he thought they’d be: scattered across the rooftop.

  Boo-boo-boo-BOOM went the glick shockwaves. Bits of debris flew. Something slashed his leg, somewhere between where his shorts ended and his old sockless runners began.