NANO Archive 01: The City of Fire

by Jason Crutchfield

  “Are you… going to add… another nanite?” The flip-flopping vision between my right and left eye as they struggled, and failed, to coordinate their droops offered me interesting shifts in the distorted scenery. My question was met with a brief pause; the doctor was obviously thinking.

  “Well I'm uncertain at this point, dear child. I'll need to take a look inside first, see how your activity is holding up with the other nanites clustered atop your neocortex,” Oswald chuckled as though he created some obscure pun which only he might have understood. Even the high pitched scream of the whirring surgical blade akin to a buzz saw coaxed only a subtle groan from the back of my throat, or perhaps I groaned at the doctor's poor taste in jokes. I decided to debate it later.

  As the grinding vibrations performed by my old friend chipped away at the back of my head, I felt the patch of skull covering Oswald's preferred operation sight jar loose. The tender, careful hands of the doctor removed any necessary sections, and the suction of tubes to keep stray blood at bay changed the trailer's serene quiet into a mechanical madhouse.

  I felt the wire which synchronously served as the link-up to my brain and the camera to guide Oswald's machinations feed into the moderately sized hole left by my absent patch of scalp. The sound of the doctor's holocomputer humming to life and the beep of the keys depressed by his skilled fingertips provided a soothing lullaby as I drifted in and out of awareness. I knew the routine; the doctor would input my real name, a fancy word for a secret password, and obtain a schematic of my brain detailing my every neurological trait ranging from my number of implants to their purpose and original designer.

  The data, stored in its entirety through a medium known as the New Neural Network, or N-3, provided Oswald with a road map to my augments every capability. The N-3 itself was one of humanity's great accomplishments. An entirely new intranet designed to completely replace the World Wide Web, the N-3 became a sensation upon its introduction in the early 2200's to accommodate the massive influx of neurotech data. With the Internet too prone to hackers, the N-3 implemented a series of high security walls with no proverbial backdoor. Either you possessed someone's true name and could access their files, or you did not and were out of luck.

  “Hm, it seems your cortical folds are still responding well. Every time I look at your brain it amazes me, so much is going on here! If we could just unlock its secrets…” Oswald's voice suggested one of his infamous scientific rants.

  “Doc…” The distressed droning of my voice like a sick child calling for its parent tugged him from his blabbering.

  “All right, all right. Well, everything looks remarkable as always. So I will add one more implant to test the limitations of your brain's innate adaptability. Just sit still for one moment… Goodness, I guess you haven't much choice, do you, dear child?” Oswald chortled. If the pursuit of vengeance against Bradich failed to end my life, the old codger's quips were sure to do the job.

  As always, I lost any sense of discernible time. The annoyance of Oswald's jokes faded to mumbled obscurity. It began as fragmented pieces of audio stimulus I recognized, but by the climax of the nanite's installation when the Panacea anesthetic reached its prime, Oswald sounded as though he spoke through a scratchy broken microphone with the volume set to “muffled.”

  I felt my lips move several times over the course of the operation, though I remained unaware as to what words passed between them. My reality consisted of several worlds overlapping one another; some possessed shades of gray, others were blotchy colors running together like streaks of rain down a window. At least, my eyes fed that information back to my drugged brain, or perhaps my drugged brain deciphered that information and sent it back to my eyes. Whichever organ was the culprit, I wished for them both to shut the hell up.

  “…and we're done!” The doctor's voice jarred me from my stupor like a buzzing alarm clock. My eyes shot wide open; the dim surroundings in the trailer remained unchanged as though I merely blinked and the action slipped my mind. If so, it was one hell of a blink. The nervous tempo of my heart would have offered a jack-rabbit's competition. I recognized a familiar sensation combing through my hair, and the rapid pitter-patter in my chest began to slow. The breath I held in the back of my throat finally hissed from between my lips in a relieved exhale.

  As was his ritual, Oswald sat behind me after stitching my scalp together; guided by his hand, a plastic brush combed through my lengthy hair which we messily bunched together at the procedure's beginning. No matter his excitement for science, Oswald never neglected to brush my hair after a surgery throughout all ten years I knew him. It soothed me from the jitters of my reawakening, and the gesture served as one of respect to Donovan, whose love for my hair remained one of my fondest memories.

  “How long was I out?” I murmured with a drowsy lull.

  “Long enough to blabber the coordinates in Colorado… about an hour,” Oswald laughed softly.

  I lifted my hand blindly over my head. As though reading my mind on cue, Oswald reached over, snatched up a set of maps from his table, and planted them in my outstretched palm. I unfurled them in my lap while the old codger finished brushing my strands of midnight. Oswald had marked the coordinates just below the center of the box denoting the border to the old state of Colorado; I could scarcely remember a time that such borders were not utterly trivial.

  “Raze said it's an old military base,” I commented.

  "Hm, well I suppose we'll see when we get there." Oswald stood and maneuvered to my anterior. A few moments later, and he beamed a bright light into my eyes. The doctor followed through with his promise to thoroughly inspect me. Whether or not I measured up to his standard of health in order to continue our journey was another matter. As I examined the maps and nonchalantly offered the old doctor my limbs and appendages when he motioned for them, Oswald's throat released ponderous sounds of, “Hmmm…” and “M'hm…”

  “So what's the damage?” I glanced up from my map examination.

  Oswald sighed and placed his tools on the nearby table, “Well, so be it. We should be all right to depart on the morrow. Your brain, your nanite adaptation, and even the efficiency of your nanites… everything about you is most remarkable, after all.” Oswald rubbed the wiry extension of his beard.

  “I see, As long as it means getting to Bradich sooner, I'll take it as a compliment.” I stood from the doctor's operating chair. The sudden rush of blood flooding my head and the faint throb at the back of my skull sent me staggering to one side. I placed my fingers atop Oswald's table to steady myself. Oswald placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “You might be feeling a bit under the weather, take it slow. That serum is quite potent. I've nearly perfected the concoction since the trial run at Raze's fortress! Haha!” Oswald kept his arm extended in the air in a gentlemanly offer. I felt my knees ready to crumble beneath my own weight, so I accepted.

  “Ugh. That stuff really kicks,” I grinned and steadied myself.

  “But of course. I made it, after all. By the way, I took the liberty of removing your bandages. I see little need for them anymore,” The doctor replied matter-of-factly.

  As he assisted my struggling attempts to move, Oswald snapped his fingers as though an important fact suddenly dawned on him, “Ah, that's right! Your new implant! After careful consideration regarding your Cognitive Accelerator, I have been wracking my brain over building an implant capable of…”

  “Doc, no offense, but I think I'm going to hurl. I need some fresh air… later, ok?” I lifted my hand to halt his rampant speech about nanites. His words sounded like little more than a garbled foreign language in my current state, anyway. My body swayed to and fro with my erratic gait toward the trailer's mouth; as I stepped into the wastelands, the wind's cold sting promptly greeted me.

  “Ihlia, your Panacea is still a touch impeded! Don't wander too far, dear child! The effect won't comple
tely subside for several hours! Stay out of trouble and head straight to the city!” Oswald's arduous warnings received a dismissive wave from my right hand as I trudged out into the barren wastelands of Old Texas. A smile touched my lips as I recalled similar warnings after each operation the doctor performed. Even the first time I met him when he arrived at the Cairo laboratory site to assist Donovan with his research, the first words he directed at me were exclamations of caution regarding an electrcocapacitor plate with which I was, obliviously, acting far too friendly.

  Some time amid my regard for Crelyos, Raze, and Oswald, my thoughts involuntarily drifted to the past. As my mind cleared in the crisp frozen desert surrounding the area of Loftsborough, I sighed at the power a vivid memory possessed on the frail human psyche. I understood the triviality of dwelling on the past and the folly of allowing it to affect my emotional state, but my heart sank anyway.

  Not one for empty “what if” or “maybe if I…” thoughts, I snapped myself from my fanciful daydreams and glanced around. Where the hell was Loftsborough? I spun on my heel and buzzed my vision enhancing augment to life. With acute telescopic vision I swept the horizon in a full three hundred sixty degrees to no avail. My concern for Loftsborough's location suddenly faded. Where the hell was I?

  I rigorously shook my head. “What the hell is in that stuff, Doc?” I muttered under my breath. I knew not how long my mind drifted through the realms of irrelevant recollection, nor did I know the direction in which I apparently meandered after escaping the stuffy confines of the old codger's trailer. Without a sense of bearing and with the darkness of night looming overhead, I quickly surveyed the surrounding landscape for an alternate means of assessing my situation. Considering the curvature of the earth's horizon impeded the full capabilities of my vision augment, my first order of business seemed clear; I required higher ground.

  The dusty wastelands of the desert region of Old Texas truly became an eerie display at the onset of dusk. The gray rocks, stripped of minerals and serving as empty, jagged testimonies to the desolation of the Titan Crisis, were painted with a mixture of blacks and purples as the luminescence of the moon filtered through the perpetual fallout rolling overhead. The sky, a volatile soup of clouds grumbling with thunder and flashing with the occasional streak of lightning, hung over the area like bad breath.

  The sour scents of dirt, rust, and sulfur blew in on the whistling breeze, and as the climax to the foreboding landscape, the only hopeful hill mountainous enough to provide a bird's eye view of the area was nestled at the far end of a valley formed by steep jagged cliffs erupting from the ground like a rocky ribcage not far from my location. “Perfect…” I sarcastically thought.

  File 22: The Lonely Little Girl

  The nameless valley formed the beginning of a series of small mountain chains which progressively grew taller and more numerous in lieu of the warped environment. Even from my position almost half a mile away, I saw gaping maws that formed the entrances to caves and tunnels no doubt worming through the earth like a labyrinth. As I approached the shadowy cliffs curling up around the valley, I noted two things: First, the cliffs looked infinitely smaller from a half a mile away, and second, at least a dozen openings peppered the ridges down the length of the valley. At the end of the ravine, taunting me like a checkered finish line, a mountainous hill swelled up like a pimple.

  Its surface, far smoother than the daggers which formed the surrounding cliffs, lifted high overhead before emptying into the mountain chains behind it. At the apex of the hill, discerning my whereabouts and the necessary course to ensure my safe return to Loftsborough would have been a breeze. Unfortunately, at the hill's base, framed by its bulbous ascension, a cave far larger than any of the foreboding maws dotting the sides of the valley stood with all the inviting allure of sudden dismemberment. The gentle crunch of my first footstep displaced long dormant rocks in the valley and sent a tingle up the length of my spine. It felt like the Reaper's icy, beckoning fingers guided my path.

  “Come on, everything's okay. Just one. more. step,” the imaginary voice cooed as a bolt of lightning struck one of the distant mountain peaks.

  I paused and kicked on all my sensory augments. A laughing bystander might have called it paranoia; I called it preparation. Though the winds tore through the ribcage shaped valley and kicked clouds of dust against the jagged rocks, the blacks and greens of my night vision in tandem with my telescopic sight afforded me careful surveillance of its nooks and crannies. That surveillance, however, only lasted a second.

  Unfortunately, for all my preparedness I failed to factor in the effect of Oswald's serum. A sharp pain suddenly cut through my skull, and I instinctively deactivated all my nanites and clutched my head; the pain subsided. Apparently, the serum did not merely inhibit the capabilities of Panacea. It was a side effect the doctor would no doubt be interested in knowing… if I ever returned to inform him.

  As I recovered from the sting that pinched my brain, I slammed my back against the rough wall that formed the towering ridge to my right. I inched through the shadows with my ultimate destination of the tall hill constantly in my sights. Each footstep increased the sensation of dread swelling up in my chest. Time felt like a snail creeping along the threads of existence with no purpose other than to torment me.

  As I neared the median, the realization sank in that I crossed the threshold of no return. If something sinister dwelt within the caves along the ridge, I was in deep, “Shit!” I cried out in a hushed whisper as a fist-sized rock tumbled down the side of the stone wall right next to my shoulder. A quick glance up revealed foreboding darkness until a brief flash of lightning illuminated a great, big, scary “nothing.”

  I released the breath caught in my throat as a relieved sigh. When I returned my gaze to the distant hill, I caught sight of a faint sheen of white among the black rocks decorating the valley. I clutched my head and prepared for the same intense pain from before as I activated my vision augment. Surprisingly, the buzz occurred normally, and I painlessly opened my eyes to zoom in on the strange heap in the middle of the valley. Perhaps the serum's effects were random? Or perhaps the number of augments activated at one time was the source of the pain? I ceased my inner debate as the shape and definition of the lump became clear. It was a pile of human bones.

  I immediately propelled myself to action. My hands clutched the jagged stones of the wall, and I hoisted myself vertically along its surface. Within moments I sat perched atop one of the small ridges that housed one of the many cave entrances along the ribcage valley. With faintly labored breath, I slid my backside against the wall formed by the cave's jutting lip and peered around the corner in the direction of the rotten white bones. Without the eternally hidden sun's ability to bleach it, the skeleton retained a grotesquely moist appearance no doubt accentuated by the occasional rainfall. Circumstances afforded me little time to hypothesize; in the direction of the hill, sudden ear-piercing screeches drowned out the howling winds.

  Three figures staggered from one of the many smaller openings at the base of the cliffs a few feet from the enormous cave. With my telescopic sight still active, I honed in on the event. Three hyped moved with twitching rage across the valley in the direction of the rounded cave. The depth of their affliction lent them an appearance far more akin to mythical beasts than humans. Their leathery skin and deformed muscles defined their misshapen husks; their solid black eyes were endless voids exchanging information through quick, twitchy glances incapable of deep thought.

  As their hunched figures clambered across boulders and over rocks with the creepy agility of lizards, one of the three dropped to his hands and knees and began howling in incoherent agony. He was injured; upon closer examination with my enhanced vision, his leg was horribly mangled. Panacea had long since healed the wound, but with no one to properly set the bone, it had healed in a terribly misshapen manner. The hyped's two pack mates encircled him with a slow gait
and grunted intermittently. After a few moments they both reached down, grabbed each of the fallen hyped's arms, and dragged him into the open. A few more hyped curiously poked their heads from the enormous cave at the bottom of the hill. My hill; at least, the hill I needed to ascend. “Great,” I thought to myself as I watched the scene play out before me, “a whole pack of ‘em.”

  After a few more moments of the injured hyped's protesting cries and a brief exchange of stares from his friends, the two healthy afflicted grabbed fist sized stones and excitedly screamed at the sky. They descended upon their pack mate with feral ferocity. His tortured screams intensified as they relentlessly bludgeoned his body to pieces. For the healthy members of the fickle pack, the weakened hyped would provide food and entertainment. That became evident when the curious hyped from the cave began excitedly hooting and yelping in response to the violence that took place before them. They dragged the bits of their meal into their den; I shook my head.

  A bulbous, dark shape suddenly cut in front of my enhanced vision and obstructed my view of the brutal display. I deactivated my augment in time to behold another hyped shooting from the cave which I used as a lean-to. Across the valley, a second large hyped emerged from another cave; both of them turned their dark eyes toward the spectacle they had just missed. I almost squeaked, but at the last moment I spun in a quick retreat and planted the small of my back against the wall separating the hyped and me. Unfortunately, the force sent a stone rolling down the cliff's side with a few undesired clicks and clacks as it smashed against the rocks. I cursed under my breath.

  From my position, completely bathed in the wall's shadows, the shift in the nearby hyped's attention was audible. He released a quick grunt; I heard his knuckles rap the ground as he crept toward my hiding place to investigate the noise. I slid my hands across my hips and clutched the pommels of my long daggers.