NEW WORLD DISORDER: MECH COMMAND BOOK 1

by George Mahaffey

Vidmark grabbed my arm and pulled me forward through the metal door which slammed shut behind us. He released my arm and I lay on the ground, staring up at him. Vidmark was holding another device, what looked like a small mini-cannon that had been loaded with syringes.

  “What is it with you people and needles?” I asked.

  Vidmark fired the cannon at me, and I blacked out.

  * * *

  I woke to find myself under the glare of a harsh overhead light, strapped to a metal table with one of those blue, disposable surgical drapes being held up by a person in a surgical gown and mask. I wanted to call out to the person, but the words collapsed in my mouth. Whatever drug I’d been given prevented me from speaking. More people in surgical gowns appeared, and I could tell from the titanium legs on one of them that it was Vidmark.

  I was rolled over onto my chest, and then I heard a power tool whir to life. There was a pinching sensation at the small of my back, and my torso went completely numb. I couldn’t feel anything, and the sound of the power tool changed, becoming muted as if its blade was being plunged into something solid. Next came a sensation like fingers wiggling in the flesh near my back and then my eyes closed and I passed out a final time.

  9

  “Rise, Lazarus,” a voice said.

  My eyes flipped open. Gone was the harsh light from the room with the people in masks and surgical gowns. I heard the sound of birds chirping and saw the top of a tree through a nearby window. Daylight streamed through the window, and I could smell the odor of freshly mowed grass. I elbowed myself up and collapsed. A searing pain shot through the middle of my back.

  “Try laying on your side,” the voice said. “It will relieve some of the pressure.”

  I did and heard the familiar clicking sound made by Vidmark’s legs as he moved across a tiled floor. My head canted and I caught sight of him. He neared me and flashed those white teeth of his, the ones that looked like freshly polished tombstones.

  “Have you ever heard of the Wu-Wei, Danny?”

  “You mean that old rap group?”

  Vidmark shook his head. “It’s an element of Taoism. It concerns things like effortless action and non-willful action and says that those who move without deliberation have virtue. Does that make any sense at all?”

  I nodded even though I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. He smiled again and pointed down at my leg, and God help me I saw it. Down past my underwear (I was half naked under a blanket on a wooden table), I saw that my bare toes were wagging ever so gently. And then I sensed whatever impulses were causing the movement and next came a powerful surge of something, what felt like electricity, wash over me. The only way I can describe it is it was like my entire body was somehow coming back online.

  “Jesus,” I whispered. “Jesus.”

  “You moved them, and yet you didn’t even realize it. That’s a virtuous act.” I looked up at him, and he pointed. “Please. Do it again.”

  I did. The toes on my left foot first, then my right. I smacked myself in the face to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, and Vidmark threw back his head in delight and laughed. “The look that somebody has when they’re given their legs back. That’s why I do what I do,” he said. He moved briskly around the room which had stone and glass walls and reminded me a bit of a greenhouse in a children’s book my mom used to read to me. Vidmark stopped and a moment passed between us.

  “Where am I?”

  “‘The Hermitage. It was a facility that once was used by the aliens. We’ve taken it over and done some … repurposing.”

  I nodded, but remained silent for several seconds.

  “I imagine you have additional questions,” he said.

  “You have no idea, Mr. Vidmark.”

  “You know who I am then?”

  I nodded. “I heard you were dead.”

  He smiled again. “The news of my death has been, by design, greatly exaggerated.”

  “I told the others that. Jezzy and Spence said you were gonzo, but I knew an inventor—”

  “Technologist.”

  “—technologist like you wouldn’t have gone down easy. I knew you were alive and then I saw it on my phone.”

  “You received the text?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you stand, Danny?”

  My hand reached down and around, and I could feel surgical padding in both areas. I was worried that if I tried to stand, I might reinjure myself or worse.

  “The surgery was minimally invasive,” Vidmark said. “We were blessed with the technology that the aliens left behind. Powdered blood, flesh mist, injectable decompression foams and nanites, among other items. Things that worked well with the regenerative medicine one of my companies pioneered. The procedure we utilized with you, for instance, is like laparoscopy on steroids. You still might suffer from core spasms and bouts of nausea, but your recovery time has been whittled down to mere hours.”

  My eyes found his, and he nodded. “Go on, give it a try. Activity equals recovery.”

  I closed my eyes and focused. I hadn’t had the use of my legs in more than a week, and my muscles were jittery. I could feel them straining, and so I gripped the table and slid them around. My bare feet met cold cement and the sensation, the first time I’d felt anything in the souls of my feet since my accident, was like being born again. A grateful smile tugged at the corner of my mouth and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I almost broke down in tears. I guess it’s like that old song says, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.

  My right foot inched over, then my left. I took several steps and nearly collapsed, and so I lurched back and grabbed the edge of the wooden table, righting myself. “The more you do, the better you’ll be,” Vidmark said. “Take a break and try to walk four steps next time. Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

  I nodded, catching my breath. “Why?” I asked again. “Why are you helping me.”

  “Do I need a reason?” Vidmark replied.

  “I just don’t remember agreeing to have any of this done.”

  “You were lucid when you signed the waiver.”

  I had no recollection of signing anything, but who’s to say I didn’t scribble my John Hancock at or around the time the drugs kicked in. My gaze wandered to the ground for a moment. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Mr. Vidmark. It’s just … people used to do stuff for other people all the time in the days before,” I said. “But after the scuds, after the invasion—”

  “Things became more tribal, didn’t they?”

  I nodded and his face clouded. “There’s no doubt that we’ve endured much. The invasion, occupation, and everything that came after it. It brought about great change. It was a tribulation, a test.”

  “Did we pass or fail?”

  He smirked. “We won’t know that until we’ve taken the final examination.”

  “Please don’t tell me something else is gonna happen.”

  Slowly he nodded. “What if I were to tell you that the worst may be yet to come, Danny?”

  “I’d say if I was wearing boots, I’d be quaking in them.”

  His eyes remained firmly focused on me.

  “What is it?” I croaked. “What else might be coming?”

  He snorted. “That’s a concern for another day. Right now, your focus should be on recovery.”

  My gaze smoked into his. “You never answered my earlier question, sir. Why me? I mean, I like to think of myself as a pretty righteous dude, but there are others who’d say I’m a nobody. A broke, busted down crook.”

  He smiled warmly. “It’s like that verse in Proverbs, isn’t it? Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. We’re doing something special here, and we need people with unique skills such as yourself. You’ve been highly recommended.”

  “By who?”

  “By people whose opinions I value.”

  “For the Mech Command?”

  Vidmark just stared at me, his face inscru
table. “We’ll talk later,” he said before moving away. I watched him go, and there was something about the play of light off of his profile that made me realize I had seen him before.

  “You were watching me, weren’t you?” I called out.

  He stopped and looked back over a shoulder. “At the prison. The therapy room with the glass walls,” I continued. “That was you watching me, wasn’t it?”

  He registered this. “And if it was?”

  “Why did you make me go through all of that with Stryker?”

  “I needed to be sure you could pass the test.”

  “Did I?” I asked.

  “Do you think you’d be here if you hadn’t?”

  “Then how come I’m not with the others? The mech pilots?”

  “Operators,” Vidmark said, correcting me. “And you’re assuming there was only one test to pass.”

  “Is what I’m doing here right now another one?”

  “Do you think it is?” he replied. The guy had a knack for answering questions with questions, and I could tell that I shouldn’t push things. “Are we done here, Danny?” he finally asked.

  I nodded, and he smiled. My eyes strayed to the ground, and when I looked up, he was gone, vanishing through a side door that closed behind him with a sucking sound.

  I sat near the edge of the wooden table for several minutes collecting my thoughts. What had he meant by “unique skills”? Since when was bullshitting people a unique skill? I grew anxious, worried that they’d soon find out I was a phony, somebody with no unique skills of any kind. Somebody who wasn’t worth salvaging. And when they did that, what would happen? Would they take my legs back and toss me into the clink with Timbo and the other scuds? Grimacing, I lowered myself down to the floor and took several more steps.

  There was a mirror on the far wall next to a window, and I inched forward until I was standing before it in all my paleness. I felt myself all over with my hands, running my fingers over the scratches on my head, neck, and chest. Several of the bruises beneath my chin were still tender to the touch, but I was in pretty good shape considering everything that had happened.

  I was about to turn away when I noticed something on the back of my neck. It was barely visible near my hairline, but it looked like a series of tiny numbers in black ink. I moved in closer, squinting, and yep, it was indeed what looked like a minute tattoo, almost like … a barcode on something you’d buy at a store.

  Having no idea when I’d been inked, I focused on my legs. They hadn’t been very large, to begin with, and it’s amazing how a lack of a vertical life causes you to lose mass. My legs were indeed spindly, my stomach and back ridged from where the operation had occurred.

  I was, however, shocked at the minimal amount of scarring around my midsection, which didn’t look half as bad as my lip, which was still swollen from where Stryker had whacked me. Like any idiot my age, I tried to make a “most muscular” pose in the mirror, but there wasn’t much muscle to flex, and my back started throbbing. I leaned against the wall, then peeked through the window and stared outside.

  The grounds on the other side of the window resembled an office park by way of a summer camp. I could see what looked like a volleyball pit and several exercise courses marked by oversized tires and past those, a statue of what I thought was a dinosaur, and then three one-story buildings made almost entirely of black glass. The frosted black glass on the buildings immediately reminded me of Darth Vader’s helmet.

  My eyes ratcheted up, and I spotted, several thousand yards beyond the black-glassed buildings, a colossal, square structure that was crowned with various antennae and wrapped in some kind of silver, metallic skin. My mom had taken me to an air show at what used to be Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and the silver-skinned building resembled one of those hangars where they kept planes. Only this one was larger. Much larger. And it had a door on the side that was huge, at least thirty-feet tall. Unless Clifford the Big Red Dog was living somewhere inside, I wondered why anyone would need a door that big.

  I flinched upon seeing several groups of people moving down a gravel walkway that snaked between the low-slung buildings. They were of various ages and ethnicities, dressed in sleek, gray jumpsuits, some carrying what appeared to be helmets, all of them wearing the same kind of sunglasses.

  There was a woman amongst the group, a long-limbed stunner with amber hair, who took my breath away. She stopped for a moment and removed her glasses. She looked back, and I think she spotted me. Embarrassed by my half-nakedness, I ducked and gimped over to the wooden table like an injured dog where I collapsed, my energy stores used up.

  A few minutes later, a voiceless, squat service drone that looked like a college refrigerator on wheels, entered the room to bring me a pair of odd-looking sunglasses, some food (including a glass of what looked like orange juice), pain meds, and a change of clothing: boots, compression pants, compression shirt (all black).

  The food was wolfed down in seconds, along with the pain meds that were chased with the glass of OJ. I turned my attention to the sunglasses, lifting them, surprised at how little they weighed. The lenses instantly adapted to the amount of light that splashed across them. I angled the glasses toward the light from a nearby window and the lenses darkened. I lowered the glasses and the lenses were nearly clear. Sliding them on, I flinched as information flashed at my right eye. The glasses came off, and I squinted, realizing the right lens was actually a mini-head-up display housed inside what I assumed were a pair of neural glasses.

  Back when my parents were kids, people had things like smartphones and tablets, but those became obsolete with advances in “surrounding tech,” tiny machines and chips and sensors embedded in your clothing and personal accessories. The surrounding tech was then replaced with things like the neural glasses which cut down on interfacing big time, meaning the tech could be activated just by tapping or speaking. I remember seeing stories about more advanced technology, what was called “BCI” for instance, brain-computer interface tech, stuff that would involve injecting nanorobots into the brain to provide full-on virtual reality and whatnot, but most of that tech was in the research and planning stages and got scuttled when the aliens invaded. So at the end of the day, all that was left were the neural glasses along with smartphones and tablets, retro tech that people were forced to revert to.

  My right index finger explored the neural glasses, tracing the contours of the frames and arms which contained a tiny touchpad, including a little trackball. I learned that I could control the information on the head-up display simply by sliding my finger over the trackball. I scrolled through all of the information in the right lens which I came to find consisted of material concerning the government’s rebuilding efforts and events at The Hermitage. I figured that Vidmark and his people had found a way to synch the neural glasses with what looked like The Hermitage’s intranet, making it an easy way for everyone to communicate. I trawled through some of the reports and information, but it just ended up giving me a crushing headache.

  Pain spiking between my ears, I removed the glasses and lowered myself onto the wooden table and took in my surroundings. It was quiet like a museum. You really don’t appreciate just how beautiful a hushed room is until you’ve spent some time in jail. I savored the quietude, thinking about how much my life had changed over the last few weeks. I’d been orphaned by war only to become an occasional bandit, then a criminal, and now something else entirely. It felt like everything I’d done before had led up to that moment which pained me, because the very thing that had brought me there, the alien invasion, had taken away my family. I prayed that Frank and my mother and father were in a better place and then I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

  10

  I slept soundly for the first time in several weeks, rousing a little after dawn only because I had to pee. Whether it was the rest or the pain meds, I felt strong enough to climb into my new clothes and venture outside the room. Realizing that my leg muscles were still weak, I ma
de sure to move slowly and keep within a few feet of a wall or another object in case I was about to collapse.

  I made it to the bathroom connected to my room and emptied my bladder. Then I hesitated for several heartbeats, waiting to see if anyone would come to check on me. When they didn’t, I moved back over and grabbed the neural glasses and then angled over to the only door out of the room which, surprisingly, was unlocked.

  On the other side of the door was a walkway that sloped past several rooms which were filled with supplies and medical and technical gear, along with six or seven “Napping Pods,” sleep stations that were crazy popular in the days before the invasion.

  The pods looked like reclining benches hidden inside giant carbon-fiber eggshells, a contraption that fitted over your upper body and allowed you to catch a few quick winks or chill while listening to some tunes or watching movies. Legs were sticking out of some of the pods, and I hoped the users were asleep. I continued on, silent as a thief, clutching the railing on the walkway, heading toward a glass that door that led outside.

  With much effort, I shouldered open the door and tasted the fresh air which invigorated me. I stepped onto the still-dewy grass and looked around. The building I’d been in resembled an old mill that had been retrofitted. Its walls were of solid, sandstone-colored rock, but its windows had been replaced by high-tech reflective glass. There were solar panels and wind turbines on the roof, along with three satellite dishes.

  Attached to this building was another, smaller building that was made entirely of stainless steel with several oval windows that I couldn’t see through. The doors to this building were centered with biometric scanners and I assumed something important was housed inside. Out beyond this, through gaps in a row of trees, I spotted a tall metal fence that was topped by razor wire. It seemed to encircle the entire compound.

  Pivoting, I moved slowly up the gravel walkway, expecting at any moment to be stopped by heavy-handed guards. But there was nobody around, and I was surprised at the lack of security, aside from several small drones that loitered far overhead.