A Collection of Science Fiction Gems

by David Scholes

  He was sometimes based in New York though his reach was global. Still that city’s crime rate dropped to the lowest of any major city. They called it the Zlelt effect. Whenever he was thought to be in the city it was enough to deter a lot of criminal activity.

  I often wondered whether Zlelt ever slept. Based on all the reports of his activity it seemed like he didn’t. He must have had something much less than human requirements.

  Though he was declared a criminal in many countries in the early days nobody seemed to be actively pursuing him. Even after he summarily dealt with a rogue CIA unit and endemic police corruption in several countries.

  Only later did people start to question him.

  I rather think it started when he began killing vicious child killers and rapists who had escaped prosecution on legal technicalities. A lot of people lauded such actions but some did not. Though Zlelt had frequently overridden human law before this was somehow a more obvious more brazen override. Even though his victims surely deserved what they got.

  The real watershed though was when he killed a couple of world leaders. I mean not that they didn’t get plenty of warning to cease and desist from their current policies. They, foolishly, just didn’t take any notice of Zlelt. Of course most people felt they deserved it. Also it could not be proven that Zlelt was responsible. It’s just that it had all the hallmarks of how he operated.

  When I looked back on it the really good things that Zlelt had done had been more in his earlier days. Such as destroying ISIS, deposing some of the worst African regimes, and even locating ships and aircraft that had gone missing and couldn’t be found. Some of his later achievements had been more controversial.

  Plans had been in place for a long time to deal with Zlelt if he got too much out of line. Plans shared and mainly agreed among the major powers. Though everybody hoped it would never come to that.

  Those plans were based on specially equipped combined UK and Australian SAS and US Navy seals Special Forces units backed by the highest possible technology. Including some technology learned from Zlelt and the Zlee.

  Despite his much touted ability to sense danger in advance the attack when it came caught Zlelt by surprise. Perhaps he was just getting careless. He had been here a long time and hadn’t encountered that much opposition. Perhaps he arrogantly thought there was nothing we could do about him.

  Earth had expected and braced for repercussions from the Zlee. Yet there were none. They came of course to retrieve Zlelt’s lifeless body.

  The Zlee never sent any more enforcers either. Perhaps they considered us ungrateful.

  At times I wondered why we left it so long before stopping Zlelt.

  I think many of us were in love with the idea of his instantly enforceable brand of justice. That untouchable people in the highest office could be touched and held instantly accountable for their actions.

  In the end, and it may sound strange, but his cumulative disregard for human laws international or of any individual country caused the bulk of us to fall out of love with him.

  End

  Urban Pacifiers

  The virtual reality urban pacifier simulations had helped but they did not fully prepare me for my first actual combat mission. I guess there is no substitute for experience.

  I brought up the rear in one of ten, four person units fanning out from Urban Pacification Central towards the infamous mile high Turnbull residential tower. Though residential was perhaps a polite word to describe what we knew of what went on in the colossal tower.

  We had two combination punisher/heavy lift bots with us as back up. Definitely reassuring.

  En route we encountered some disorganised resistance. From em bikers and truckers, star trooper vets, youthpaks and some other objectionables. In particular former Government pen pushers.

  It threatened to be quite nasty and we called in a jumbo drone support ready to level “expendable” “corridors” if need be. Whatever it took to get us to to our target.

  Yet when the assorted objectionables realised we were not after them or their particular neighbourhood many of them faded away. Or just perhaps it was the sight of the jumbo drone. They could be very persuasive.

  I had a soft spot for the tough star trooper vets and was glad they didn’t push us. I was even more pleased to know that they were not nearly as well equipped as we were. If they had been, well ___ that’s another story. The poor vets were held together with whatever bits and pieces came to hand. Particularly the younger ones returning to Earth after the collapse of Central Governments. Some of these ex-star troopers were more third rate cyborgs than men.

  In my deflector equipped state of the art armour with 10x10 exo-skeleton (10 times normal strength 10 times normal speed) and drug boosted I could afford to be a little smug.

  I did not have the same sympathy for the former Government pen pushers, the Govs or Pubs as they were sometimes known. They seemed more bitter, more twisted than everyone else put together. So what if their cushy Government pensions had been stopped? So had mine, so had everybody’s.

  Now I don’t want you to think that our modern day form of urban pacification just means killing people and levelling suburbs. Of course sometimes it does but that’s not what we are all about. If you can imagine the combined duties of industrial cleaners, noise inspectors, police, army troopers, Special Forces and sometimes even fire fighters then you have something of a handle on us.

  We could be called out for anything from major out of control partying or a major industrial clean up to a full scale urban rebellion or even an invasion of the Megalopolis. Though lord knows why anyone would bother to invade us. Still if it came to it we were the front line. We were the only line.

  The Turnbull tower stuck out like a sore thumb. Huge car parks lay around it with many of the nearby buildings flattened. Of those buildings still standing there was nothing in the area even remotely its height.

  The vast acres of parking around the tower had been the scene of some sort of battle. Tangled wrecks of old trucks and cars. Huge volumes of concrete had fallen from the scarred building. Unexploded ordinance lay about the area.

  I looked up in wonder at the building. Intended to be totally autonomous it had been built when engineering standards were at their very highest. Despite all the damage done to it the colossus, anchored deep in the bedrock below it, stood unbowed as structurally strong as ever. Or so the engineers said on their last inspection.

  With deflector shields set up against weapons fire from the building we put the punisher/heavy lift bots to clearing the car park area.

  Then all forty of us entered and swept the building. We did it by the book.

  It seemed such a ridiculously small number for such a colossus of a building but our mission was limited. Key agitators were to be arrested, certain individuals were to be freed and escorted safely away, med centres were to be put back on line, and power was to be restored to certain key areas of the building.

  The heavy duty bots later came into the lower floors. Reassuring just knowing these near invulnerables were there.

  As a final act we fired a one month noise suppression envelope over the building. Perhaps it seems silly but there had been noise complaints from what passed as neighbours and we had to act upon them.

  I realised that we would be back here again in three months or less to do the whole thing again.

  Later as we turned back towards Urban Pacifier Central I knew that three of our number had not made it. Jill, Ted and Xrrlth were all just as dead as Julius Caesar. Of course their exo-skeleton backed armour was still working. On automatic bringing them home with us. We flanked them to ensure they weren’t molested.

  We tried never to leave even our dead behind. It had happened once or twice and the locals had stripped their armour and exo-skeletons and done things to the bodies.

  Back at Central I got out of my pacifier armour and supporting exo-skeleton. It seemed to take me a while. This was followed by an air blast massage and I f
ell into an old fashioned hot tub. The “forever young” drug I had taken before going on the mission had now completely dissipated.

  Then I staggered into my wheel chair and fell asleep even before my android nurse aid could wheel me into bed. With some variations much the same thing was happening in other rooms to my fellow pacifiers.

  It still seemed to be our secret that most of us were old, disabled or both. With only the technology; the exo-skeleton armour, the heavy duty bots and the drones giving us the edge.

  Someone out there in the sprawling Megalopolis had to know the truth about us but it didn’t seem to have been passed along to be common knowledge. If it were we would surely encounter a more organised more determined resistance. Perhaps even direct attacks on Urban Pacifier Central

  My hope was that while the no longer repairable technology held up and we pacifiers remained young enough with the drugs that we could possibly maintain the status quo.

  After that?

  The truth is we urban pacifiers in each major megalopolis are the last links to any kind of order.

  When we are gone there will be nothing but total anarchy.

  End

  Help from another Dimension

  Somewhere on the Nullarbor Plains

  Australia, Earth

  “Look at the colour of that sky,” I said as we motored along the Nullarbor Plain in our ancient electro-magnetic Range Rover. We were not far from the border between Western Australia and South Australia.

  “Not just the sky but the whole landscape,” whispered my sister Joy “I’ve never seen anything vaguely like it.”

  The sky had gone from light blue with some white fluffy cloud to a thick magenta colour. There were still clouds, or I suppose they were clouds, but they were pitch black in colour. The landscape had transformed from a sandy brown to a dark reddish black with streaks of purple. All in the space of a few minutes. Or what seemed like a few minutes. Everything we had on us capable of measuring time had stopped.

  The landscape had changed shape also. Huge or presumably huge (it was increasingly hard to judge distance) jagged mountains appeared in the distance where there had only been level plains. The highway we had been travelling on was gone replaced by something I did not recognise. A surface of the same colour as the rest of the landscape but visibly shinier. It appeared to be radiating some form of energy. It didn’t look like a very suitable surface for us to travel on. Though it still appeared better than the alternative of anywhere else in the landscape.

  The Nullarbor plains provide their own sense of vastness and we still had that sense but it was now a sense of vastness of an entirely different order of magnitude.

  “I’m scared,” said Joy.

  “Me too,” I replied with a serious degree of understatement. In fact we were absolutely terrified.

  My first thoughts were that we were on another planet. Courtesy of an unseen gateway, one or two of which had started to appear on Earth in more recent times. Joy and I had both been off world by conventional means and yet we’d not seen anything quite like this. Of course that meant nothing. We’d seen enough to know there were worlds out there beyond our imagination. Even so this current environment didn’t quite seem to fit. For one thing we couldn’t see past the deep magenta sky even with vision aids. No instrumentation that might have measured distance was working. Though I had a sense that even if it had been it might not be reliable. Simply not calibrated properly for this place.

  We pulled over, just off the “shiny” highway, and just as soon as the change took place. We were not game at all to travel any further for fear of what else we might encounter. Though staying where we were hardly guaranteed our safety. We just wanted to try and take stock of the situation and decide what to do next. Even though we now had no way of measuring it I was certain that time had elapsed since we arrived. Well – almost certain. Unless time itself had no meaning here. Where we had been on Earth it should now be approaching night. Wherever we were we were both sure that we were no longer on Earth. I looked up again unable to take my eyes off the weird sky.

  There was no change to it and we still could not see through it to whatever might lay above. We could not see a moon or any stars. Or for that matter a sun. I think that bothered me the most the absence of a sun. Though light of a kind from an unknown source was coming through the magenta colored atmosphere above. Leastways I assumed it was an atmosphere.

  At least the atmosphere or whatever it was here, was still quite breathable even if we no longer had the means to analyse it. Gravity too seemed around about Earth normal give or take a little. Well for the moment at least. We were not currently equipped for any other situation and would soon perish if things changed in a major way here.

  From an inestimable distance away but seemingly not far from the horizon something was moving towards us across the ground very deliberately and at considerable speed. As it got closer it looked like a rail car sized but fat cigar shaped electro-magnetic cruiser. Though as it got closer still we felt it was not any kind of em vehicle. For a moment I thought it might be using the energy of the shiny road surface that lay ahead of us. Yet, no, it was near to but not quite on the road surface.

  The transportation device whatever it was pulled up close to us. A humanoid entity slightly taller than anyone human I’d ever seen left the cruiser like vehicle and greeted us in Aus-Eng. In fact his immediate fluency in Aus-Eng suggested to me that he may have briefly infiltrated our minds. Just enough to get a good grasp of our language. The more advanced aliens sometimes did that.

  His face and certainly his thoughts were unreadable. Not that I can even read human faces let alone alien ones. Similarly our telepathic capabilities were very limited making even compliant human minds hard for us to read. Let alone alien ones. Yet I couldn’t help but feel that looking at us he was perhaps a little disappointed in what he saw.

  “Let’s start with the basics” he said in a seemingly not unfriendly tone. “You do know that somehow or other the three of you have entered a dimension other than your own?”

  We knew about other dimensions. At least as a theoretical concept. The fact that this place was so very strange indeed. Quite unlike anything we’d ever experienced made it easier to believe that he might be telling the truth.

  “How do you know that we aren’t from around here,” Joy said somewhat defiantly.

  “If you were then you would be long since dead,” came the reply. “Also I have occasion to travel among some of the dimensions and I know yours.”

  “I came here on a mission to rescue several individuals from my own dimension that had gone astray,” he continued. “Unfortunately I was too late.” He didn’t amplify what he meant by this. “I was about to return home before detecting your presence here. If it’s too late to rescue those of my ilk perhaps it not too late to help you two humans.”

  “You travel freely among the dimensions then?” I enquired.

  “It depends on the dimension,” he replied, somewhat vaguely perhaps conservatively.

  Tlorthh, yes that was his name, took a look at our transportation and shook his head. “I’m afraid you are not going to get very far in that. Not here. You should know that this particular dimension while breathable to your race and of acceptable gravity is otherwise one of the most dangerous there is.”

  “To us?” I enquired.

  To anyone not coming from this dimension,” he replied

  He then took us inside his own vehicle.

  I had to admit it was quite large and very comfortable inside. Slightly larger I thought than the external dimensions suggested. Though that was perhaps just my imagination. It contained instrumentation the purpose of most of which I could only guess at. Once we were inside I could not think of it as some sort of ground cruiser or such – it just didn’t have the feel of that. No, it was more like something else.

  “Even in this purpose built vehicle of mine we might not last so long in this place,” said Tlorthh. “Originally I was
aiming for just a quick in and out rescue.”

  “Can’t you do that now?” I asked perhaps naively. “You said you’ve been to our dimension before.”

  “It’s not quite that simple,” was the reply “theoretically we could return to my dimension from here and then from my dimension travel to yours but in practice it doesn’t quite work like that.”

  “Why not?” I asked still naively. I mean what do I know about other dimensions? Until very recently indeed they were nothing more than a theoretical concept to me.

  “You and those of your ilk would be so totally alien to my dimension that you would likely be rejected outright. Also there is no known direct link from my dimension to yours.”

  I chuckled a little. Here was I beginning to think that Tlorthh was not so different from us, how wrong could I be? I mean if his own dimension would reject us outright?

  “Rather we need a direct link from here,” Tlorthh continued. “It can be a fixed permanent link with dial up facilities or a migratory temporary link that is attuned to your dimension. We just have to find something.”

  “Or an indirect route,” I suggested surprised as a newcomer to just how quickly I was cottoning on to the more practical aspects of dimensional travel.

  “That is definitely a possibility. It’s mainly the way I work,” said Tlorthh. “Yet a direct transit from this dimension to yours, if possible, would be best.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The residents of this dimension might take sufficient umbrage to follow you across to certain other dimensions to exact revenge. I do know that your Earth dimension is not one such.”

  He didn’t say anymore than this and Joy and I didn’t pursue it. We were both very aware that this man, this entity Tlorthh was basically sticking his neck out for us. He could easily just have put his own safety first and left us to die here. A very noble and courageous gesture by any standards I should think.