"What about our plans? You must remember that the Middle East is not like any other part of the world. Here, blood-ties, bloodlines are very important. You and your little secret group of ex-Western Europans don't understand that. Your goals will never succeed without understanding that. What blood-ties do you have to land you seek to re-conquer?"
"Royal blood, you mean?"
"Yes, which of your people that survived have blood-ties to that land? That would be your claim to the land, not that you once lived there. No one cares about that."
"There's the Swedish royal family that escaped. Three of them, sisters, are still alive. We think Denmark's got out too, but none of the others."
"That would be valid claims, but I don't think any would respect countries that made laws that forced men to sit on a stool when they had to pee."
"There's also the last remaining monarch of Great Britain; changed his names many times."
"That would be better, much better. A male heir, a respected country of Old Western Europa."
"The last king of England."
"Do you know this man?"
Edison takes another slow puff from his pipe before he says, "I am that man."
Kashi smiles. He always suspected there was something more to Edison. The man's words scream of hate for the region, but his body demonstrates the opposite, a longing for it. "But no heirs?"
"No."
"That is not good. You must have a wife and you must have children. That is what we will do for you. We will have our Kurdish Homeland. You will have your English Homeland. They may...be the same thing, because if you have Kurdish children, heirs, you would have your own...Muslim army."
Edison looks on with a smirk.
"Wouldn't that be ironic," Kashi says. "You were run out your Homeland by Muslim armies, only to return one day to reclaim it with your own Muslim army."
"What you're saying Kashi...you're bloody mad."
"Allah's way often seems that way to us. He does have a sense of humor. One day."
"Yes, one day."
Intercepted Voice Transmission
12 noon, 3 April 2093
"Yes, this is Sprocket. I found Edison Blair...yeah. I can't believe they consider this guy a terrorist. He's a freedom fighter, that's what he is. I know who killed my parent, who they sent? It was a secret government operation run straight out of the White House by the President. Yeah...Logan was going to expose their killing of Lucifer Mestopheles. Yeah...the President's national campaign manager...yeah. He was going to tell this campaign manager's parents next, probably the only people on the planet that could bring his presidency down. Well we're working on the story now. It's dynamite. The hit-man is called the Man Made Out of String, that's the code name...I don't know what it means. We don't even know if its human, but we'll find out. And here's the kicker, this hit-man always works with another person...yea...the Delivery Man. We're going to expose him, too."
Department of Homeland Defense and Intelligence Agency Security Dispatch / 3 April 2093
Notify HOMELAND that communication was intercepted by subject: Sprocket working with subject: Edison Blair, ex-citizen of Old England, immigrated to United States in 2065, now a terrorist fugitive overseas. Top secret-SCI projects MAN-STRING and DELIVERY MAN referenced.
Chapter Seven: The Delivery Man
Washington Hilton Hotel Ballroom, Washington DC (Four Years Ago)
6:30 p.m., 4 June 2089
President Wilson has not been seen in public for many months. The event is a special fundraiser of his major donors in the District. It is a tuxedo affair for the men and little black dress affair for the women.
He mingles in the crowd with his Secret Service detail close. They move him from the VIP section of the banquet, with its one hundred major donors, to the general area, where thousands of people wait behind a partition—smiling, cheering, and reaching out their hands to greet him. He immediately walks to them. Wilson shakes hands with a large smile on his face.
A man in a red fedora extends his hand towards the president. The man is smiling, unthreatening, but instead of shaking the president's hand, he reaches in and pokes him in the center of his chest with an index finger.
"The finger of God," he says and starts to walk backwards.
President Wilson is unnerved, and his Secret Service detail is already calling in on their ear-sets to apprehend the man. The man seems to be enveloped by the crowd. Plainclothes Secret Servicemen rush into the crowd from three different sides. The man ducks down into the mass of people. They can't see him. The three Secret Servicemen reach the spot and all there is, lying on the ground, is the red fedora. The man is gone.
The lead Secret Service agent takes no chances. They surround the president and whisk him out of a side door to the secure parking lot and into the presidential limousine. Agents swarm into the banquet hall to detain the entire body of attendees.
The White House, Washington DC
12 noon, 3 April 2093
"My dear visitors, you must now consider yourselves to be members of the initiated. You must never refer to this grand tek-city as Washington DC or even simply DC. That is the language of the unsophisticated. There are forty thousand cities in America, but there is only one District." Those are the lines of "Mr. District," the tek-city's self-appointed tourism czar.
President Wilson remembers the "finger of God" incident. He touches his chest, but focuses his attention back to his two division heads.
"I don't want your divisions distracted by trivialities. I don't want to hear about wormhole weapons, or imaginary bases on Mars, or anything else. Deployment! When I was Homeland Director, I wrote a report for the President and Vice President.
"We don't have enough enlisted troops to fight a three-front war, which is my mandate, and the Joint Chiefs' recommendation to simply re-instate the draft is foolish. We can't re-institute such a thing after more than a century. No one would comply, neither in the tek-cities nor the outer tek–cities. And most of them we wouldn't want in our military forces under any circumstances. We have a growing sub-culture, and I'm not talking about the Jew-Christians. The problem is having the bodies, the units, to fill as many military uniforms as possible.
"Do you know why I'm planning to go to this juvenile summit in Russia?" the President asks. "Because I need to see with my own eyes the tek that our enemies have. They'll show it off out of national vanity. I need to see where they are; anything we haven't gotten from our spy services. If it comes down to a man-to-man battle, we lose. No one has more people than the CHINs and the Caliphate, who since absorbing Western Europe, have more people than us. So it comes down to superior tek."
Mr. West, a sleek man with silver, braided hair, speaks first. "Sir, I want you to know that you will have all the units you need. We're calling them anthro-droids. They don't just look human; their systems are self-sustaining, self-repairing, and they're virtually sentient."
The other man scoffs. "Robots can't be self-aware," Mr. Garrison says. He is a relatively small man. "I can talk to a pet and fool myself into believing it understands me, but it doesn't."
"Sir, we have a standing robot army now," West continues. "And with the auxiliary tek from the program, we will also be able to create the latest advanced mech robot shock troops, robot-suits for our human soldiers, and also be able to create temporary cyborgs, as needed, for any military deployment."
"Mr. President, all robots are vulnerable to EMP attacks—" Garrison adds before being interrupted.
"Not these units."
"What about hack-attacks from enemy tek-heads? Use our own robot forces against us."
"That is not possible, Mr. President."
"Biologic units are the best option for any real, major war, sir."
The President verbally steps in. "Gentlemen, the purpose of Project New People is to give this country all options. Whether it's a robot army, cyborg army, cybernetically-enhanced army,"—he turns to Garrison—"clone army or MML army, we need it all.
Whether it is our successors or theirs in the future, this country must be prepared and ready for all threats, using everything we have. That is, and will always be, our primary duty to the American people."
"Everything will be kept out of the public eye, until deployed by you, sir," says West.
"We will deliver all the biological units you need, sir," Mr. Garrison says.
"We're not doing anything our enemies aren't. We just have to do it better."
"Yes, Mr. President," they both say.
The Outlands, Florida
10 a.m., 4 April 2093
Every state in the US has them—the Outlands. The outskirts of the tek-cities are technically part of the city, but for the average tek-dweller they are not. They are the border towns, the neo-suburbs; the places where people live who don't—or can't—live in the tek-cities for whatever reason, but work in the city. The Outlands are associated with "lower" classes, Jew-Christians, or the criminal-class. It's next to the tek-cities, but not a part of it really, and it isn't the crazy Trog-lands much further away. The buildings are not as tall, the tek is not as good, drones are not as frequent, lots of underutilized space, and the Metro lines don't go there. The government created the tek-cities. Random people created the Outlands outside of them.
The sky is very overcast today. Sprocket enters the sprawling two-story housing structure; it's spread out over two miles.
The Delivery Man arrives and exits his car. Most of the Outlands in America don't have auto-drive—these towns are not connected to the Grid—which is probably the main reason tek-dwellers don't come here (or like it); they can't get here. Tek-city dwellers don't know how to manually drive; the Grid does that.
He is a plain man, dressed in a purple office-suit with a white shirt, and a black hat, which is tilted down to conceal his face. In his right hand is a silver case. It doesn't take him long to get to the closest entrance of the two-story building mega-complex. He casually walks up to the second level. When he reaches a secluded spot between two apartment homes, he stops to wait, reading something on his palm tablet.
10:09 a.m.
Sprocket watches the man on the vid-cam feed on his tablet while sitting in his secure room. How exactly did it happen? Did his father even see this Delivery Man? Did he see his Man Made Out of String killer? The questions race through his mind and he remembers what Edison Blair told him. "I begged him not to go home. I begged so hard that if I could have come through his phone and grabbed him, I would have, but he didn't see the danger." Sprocket does know the danger. He wishes he was a fighter, but he'll have to save that for a nice dream. This is the closest he will ever get; the professionals will take over from here. He gets up and disappears down the secret stairway. Next destination: Canada—my new home.
The Delivery Man looks back and sees two men slowly coming around the corner, talking some kind of drug deal. He hears a door open and turns back. At the other end of the hallway, a woman puts one suitcase after another into the hallway and closes the door. She grabs them and starts towards him.
The hallways are narrow. The Delivery Man stands against the wall to give her a path to pass. He glances at the two men at the other end who continue their deal. They notice the woman too and follow his lead by moving closer to the wall.
A musical theme starts to play. The Delivery Man tilts up his hat and touches his ear to answer his phone. "Hello."
The woman throws a suitcase at him. The sonic explosion knocks the Delivery Man up and into the wall. He falls to the ground. The two men approach with their collapsible taser rifles and fire multiple electrical stun rounds times into his body. The contractor is down and out cold before he even knew what hit him.
A perfect take-down, an easy operation. Now "grab him and bag him."
One of the men reaches for the silver case. The Delivery Man's head turns and he swings his body around to kick the man. The first man is knocked off his feet and, before the second man can shoot at him again, the Delivery Man jumps to his feet and kicks again. The second man falls backwards to the floor. The Delivery Man grabs the silver case, spins, and throws it at the woman, hitting her in the face and knocking her to the ground as she drops the gun she was about to shoot him with.
From a door at the other end of the hallway, a third man steps out and fires at the Delivery Man with a tek-rifle. It hits the contract killer in the chest and sends him flying back through the air and crashing to the ground again. Goth Lila appears behind the third man with her own tek-rifle. They both run towards everyone.
The first man who was going to grab the silver case tries to do so again. The Delivery Man stands up again. The whole center of his office-suit is black, but he runs at them. A gun appears in his hand and he fires once; all the lights in the hallway go out.
The team hits the ground as their optics engage—they are all wearing corneal lenses and see in both night- and infrared-vision. The hallway is dark, but they can see everything. He's gone. Lila notices an open door. Something metal hits the ground near them. Lila instinctively gets up in the dark and jumps over everyone to the front.
"Override! Shields!" All of theirs activate.
The grenade explodes and throws all of them back. Their "lobster-claw" shields saved them—the high-tek, collapsible shields popped out from the upper back portion of their body armor.
The team throws photo-grenades, and the entire hallway is instantaneously bright. The tek-rifleman fires a drone round which re-acquires the target and flies through the open door of one of the apartments. They hear the explosion. The other three team members run to the open door and throw in multiple stun grenades. The grenades explode in rapid succession; they can objects inside fall, shatter, and break.
The Delivery Man is in the bedroom in the apartment and is about to jump out the window. The window shatters. He's hit in the chest again and looks outside to see four more tek-riflemen firing at him from the parking lot. Every round hits its mark. He collapses to ground, falling to his back.
They want me alive—very unwise.
The team appears at the bedroom door with weapons aimed as they approach cautiously. One man scans the contractor's body for weapons.
"Nothing," says one of them. "He has a very faint heart beat."
"Do you see any body armor underneath his clothes?" asks another. "I don't see anything."
Two of them reach down to him to shackle his hands; the other two, his legs.
"Where's that silver case?" Lila asks.
The Delivery Man sits up. He breaks his hand shackles, grabs the first tek-rifleman, and throws him violently into Lila, sending them both falling out the bedroom entrance. He grabs the other man and woman by their necks, choking them.
The remaining man takes his rifle and smashes the butt of the weapon into the contractor's face, but nothing happens. He strikes again and again, each time with more force. The Delivery Man doesn't flinch and continues choking the two people to death. Lila appears and fires point-blank at his arm joint, blowing out his elbow and splattering blood. Both people are released and dropped, gasping for air. The Delivery Man leaps to his feet again and, with his other arm, hits Lila and the other man, sending both of them falling back across the room.
The man, who was almost choked to death, grabs the Delivery Man by the neck and now chokes him with the cybernetic-enhancement of his own body-armor gloves. The woman fires one electric round after another into the contractor's chest. The man notices something about the contract killer's eyes. The Delivery Man grabs the man's hands from his neck and everyone hears as the bones being crushed.
"Ahhh!" the man yells out as he's thrown across the room and the contractor kicks the woman back.
The Delivery Man grabs the single bed in the room with his super-strength and is about to—Lila swings her tek-rifle at the Delivery Man's head, with lightning speed and every ounce of force her enhanced body-armor can provide. Crack!
Lila extended the metal hook attachment at the tip of her rifle. With it, the t
ek-rifle can be used to cut, stab, or as a hook weapon. The Delivery Man feels his head wound with the hand of his good arm; the metal hook tip is fully embedded in his head. He yanks it out and they all hear something snap, the hook itself. His skin seems to be slipping from his skull. He reaches and starts to rip off his own face off—skin and dripping blood. Lila and her team watch in shock. They see it now—his metallic face.
"Take it down!" Lila yells. "No more non-lethal, deadly force!"
The other two members fire non-stop at it. The robot ignores them as it takes the tek-rifle, aims, and pulls the trigger rapidly.
"You need to be human to fire that, robot!" Lila has pulled her secondary weapon and the three of them fire.
The robot goes down again. It's not moving.
"Where's that case?" Lila yells. "Get it!"
The female team member runs out of the room. Lila looks at the wounded male team members. Actually, they're all wounded to some degree. Her body-armor is damaged in the back and arm areas, and something is cutting into her shoulder.
"Okay?" she asks.
"I'm okay," he says, but his hands are visibly crushed and bleeding.
The others arrive and the room fills up with more than a dozen armed team members.
"Keep your weapons on it," Lila says. "No, in fact—"
They all begin to fire non-stop at the robot and only stop when its body is smoldering. The smoke clears.
"There was something about his eyes," says the male team member with the crushed hands. "Something was off."
The female team member returns to the room with the case. "I got it."
Lila is about to reach for it when the team starts firing again. She turns to see the robot on its feet again as it dives out the window. Team members run to the window and continue to fire at it.
"Target has escaped!" she yells into her wrist-comm. "Have our drones target anything moving on the ground within the perimeter. Use localized EMP rounds. Target is a robot, I repeat, target is a combat robot."
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