Darkmatters Chronicle One – Standing on the brink of complete DARKNESS

THE DARK BLURB…

The ancient manuscript had been virtually destroyed through age. Very little of obscure ‘prophecy’ was still able to be made out but an L2 Heavy Duty Research Unit had managed to extract one phrase from the faded symbols of the forgotten language which the manuscript was written in. And the phrase was one that the authorities had not wanted to make public – seeing as it must be a mistranslation, the last two words at least …

The deciphered element of the script read simply this:

“when the end of days comes and the earth is hurled into the abyss… when the unspeakable day of carnage is upon us and all hope is lost…

a saviour will yet be found…

though the darkness crushes all before it in an unstoppable tide of destruction…

a hero will yet rise…

from Luton…”

Darkmatters
Chronicle One
– Standing on the brink
of complete DARKNESS

Matt Adcock

“I can see a light,
that is coming,
for the heart that holds on…”
Matt Redman

“We’re all living on borrowed time”

Elemental Prologue – death from the past

The image ‘echoes’ from deep space were being streamed in real time across the systems of the L2 Galactic Infestations Research and Early Warning Group (GIREWG) . What was being recorded were basically starlight ‘projections’, those whose light had once ‘bounced’ off earth and then rebounded again from nearer planets, dust fields or gas clusters. Once in possession of these echoed waves of light, the mammoth analytical A.I. brains were able to fragment, magnify and display such reflections so that actual events on our little planet from various times past could be watched in much the same way that cc uplinked satellite footage had been tracking our every move for at least the last couple of hundred years.

In the half light of the huge GIREWG main viewing hall an image of somewhere on Earth, from some time ago stabilises on the high definition banks of multi-angle plasma screens showing a mass of armoured warriors marching through sparse sandy desert terrain. It is dark, maybe just before dawn and a harsh sandstorm appears to be obscuring much of the detail but even from this high overhead vantage point it is obvious that this army is prepared for battle. From within the dust cloud savagely fashioned swords glint in the last of the moonlight, the armour is black and barbarically impressive – a lot to do with the twisted sharp edges of dark metal. The full extent of the army is difficult to gage but it must run into tens of thousands, there are cavalry forming a wide column of mounted riders running along one edge of a steep sided valley. The main bulk is made up of foot soldiers, some with banners that have various emblems on them – the feed computer is cross-referencing the ancient symbols and languages against the inter-global directory of knowledge and displaying footnotes about the images presented which includes translations of some of banners, one apparently reads ‘the bringers of death’.

“Can we pan out or track ahead of them? I want to see what force this army is moving to meet…” asks one of the watchers. The screens blink as the picture expands to take in a wider view of the landscape, the army showing as a mass of darkness creeping across the surface from left to right.

L2’s Ministry for Information is the best funded on the planet and it should come as little surprise that it is they who have set up the technology to view our human distant past from the aging reflection of light bounced from the stars themselves. It appears that Grand Information Controller Manu Doyyle has taken a keen interest in the footage coming in through the GIREWG. He is a man of average height and little hair but a hugely compelling presence. His Social Rating™ is blinking “****overexcited” and it is mirrored on his face – a schoolboy in a toyshop staring at the latest plaything which his parents have just promised him for Christmas…

“My God, this stuff is fantastic, have we channelled this anywhere else? Maybe we should get some GOV tactical military adviser A.I.s to have a look at this?” drools Doyyle.
“Do we have a confirmed date for this feed?”
“Negative on both of those sir I’m afraid, but our A.I.s should have a date in a few moments… this is fresh footage that has not been analysed or even archived yet, I just thought you’d like to see the quality of this new feed – it really is far superior to anything we’ve managed to track to date.”

Grand Information Controller Doyyle and Senior Research Technician M’diitch are standing in front of the main dark-plasma screen which stands 50 meters in height and some 80 across, it dwarves the watchers and awes those not accustomed to its monstrous dimensions. The image is sectioned into the main feed in a large central window with subsidiary information windows around the edges. This main viewing hall is also referred to as the ‘High Tech Lab’, it is a converted ancient Cathedral – moved brick by brick from the abandoned Westminster area of the Underworld beneath L2 and rebuilt into the foot of a new GOV research laboratory. The massive pillars now support billions of global dollars worth of the latest tech – this place may no longer be a shrine of worship to a ‘God’, but for the many who have come to bow before technology as their divinity it is the antechamber to heaven itself.

“So, how old did you say this footage is?” asks Doyyle, staring transfixed at the thousands of long dead warriors up on the screen. He has a reputation for his energetic enthusiasm for progress and movement on anything that L2 leads the world in and this new generation of Starlight Historical Records (SHR) are just one of his current pet projects.

“Sir, best estimates are that this feed is from hundreds of years BC – the location is being predicted to be the Middle East, possibly near to the ancient land of known at that time as ‘Canaan’.”
Doyyle laughs, “Canaan, right, so we’ll be seeing young Joseph and his dream coat making an appearance in a minute then? Damn, my wife loves that ancient musical – is it still running?”

“If we do, I don’t fancy his chances against this lot. Unless his coat of many colours is actually heavy duty armour… look at those hardcore looking soldiers…”

On screen the space relay camera has tracked ahead of the massive army now and in what must be the first light of dawn there is a temporary looking encampment clearly ahead, directly in the path of the massive black suited military advance.

“Zoom in on that camp please.”

The screen blinks and then the people in the camp can be seen. It appears as if they are collecting some kind of foodstuff from the sand around their tents. Suddenly what could be a warning shout goes out (SHR’s don’t come with soundtracks) and a scout can be see running into the camp, within minutes there is much activity, some of the campers are obviously soldiers and they can be seen suiting up in lightweight silver armour. Women, children and elders however can be seen gathering their possessions and breaking camp as fast as they can. Bizarrely a small group leaves the camp and head towards a large dune that is in the path of the oncoming army, which are not yet visible to the main body of the camp but cannot be more than a few miles away now. It appears to be two elderly men with six silver armoured guards, who between them are carrying a huge chest that has poles running along its length and some kind of ornate figures carved onto it. In the first rays of sunlight it reflects as if made of gold or some other burnished metal. The very air around them shimmers with energy as if the chest is giving off some kind of power, as the group with the chest make their way to a large dune and take up positions with the guards in a spear formation in front of the elders. The approaching enemy seem to sense their position and a battalion of seven swift riders break off from the main body of the forces and gallop towards them. It might be just a degradation of the image but there appear to be massive shadows circling the black armoured riders. The shadows are not moving in relation to the way they should be in the sunrise, in fact they are lining up as if preparing to smash into the guards on the dune.

Doyyle is transfixed, “K, please clear my immediate diary, I am in an important meeting and it looks like running on – no calls at all, thank you,” he turns to a quizzical looking M’diitch, “I want to see what happens next!” he grins. “Do you suppose that those guys are going to try and plead terms of surrender, or buy off the army?”

M’diitch brings up a window showing the advancing wave of black suited soldiers, and shakes his head. “I don’t think they look like they could be talked to, let alone bargained with… I think we’re about to witness an absolute massacre.”
As the riders gather speed, kicking up masses of sand behind them, the two elders with the chest raise their hands and the energy waves from the chest focus in the air around them as if forming some kind of shield.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, are they maGes ?” asks Doyyle but his voice breaks off as the shadows around the riders suddenly shoot ahead of them – directly into the guards in front of the energy field tearing them apart in massive explosions of gore…
The elderly men look on in horror as a red rain of what used to be their bodyguards sweeps over them. One of them drops his arms and the shield blinks out of the existence.

The first of the riders is upon them, he swings his massive sword in a tight arc, slicing the head from the elder who dropped his guard. The other seems to accept the fate of his companion stoically and then prostrates himself over the golden chest as the sand covered head of his compatriot rolls past.
The other riders pull up and form a circle around the chest, their weapons drawn but none actually attack the elder directly, it is as if something is holding them back.
Suddenly the screen blanks out, Doyyle can’t hold back, “What the hell? Tell me that isn’t all we’ve got? That was just amazing… Make me a personal copy of it and have it beamed to my apartment A.I.”

M’diitch barely has time to acknowledge the instruction before Doyyle has summoned a STREAM and has gone.

Outside the massive city is a glowing sheen of reflected arc lights, an evil wind howls through the streets as an insane rain soaked maelstrom rips across the high tech capital of the still functioning world. The Tech Lab A.I. Council are variously engaged in heated debate about the SHR footage, none of them tracking the last vapours of Doyyle’s STREAM as it dissipates into the sterile processed and highly filtered evening air.

L2’s overall weather has been wrecked ever since the Accursed sons of Delusion hijacked and crashed one of the climate stabilising nuclear cloud platforms in 2102. M’diitch stares at the main monitor as it comes back to life – there on the screen in an incredible close up is one of the Seven riders, he has a red ribbon tied around one of the two horns on his helmet. It is impossible but it is almost as if he is gazing into the camera lens, his malevolent stare beaming across time and space directly into the observation lab.

M’diitch shivers and peers closer to the screen, ‘What are you staring at pal?’ he quips… The ribboned rider raises his sword in an unmistakable gesture of hostility and for a second M’diitch thinks he hears the voice of the long dead warrior saying ‘I will look for you when the day of carnage comes’…

“Life upgrades and other wonders”

Elemental Perception 01 – fascinated by the darkness

Don’t blink, don’t breathe, just focus…
You are about to witness something very special. This is a dynamic time across many more worlds than just our own little ball of blue, a time of change, a time when the boundaries of all that we know are about to be redefined forever. Nothing that has ever happened will be comparable to what is about to occur, the like of which has never been observed in all of recorded time and space.

Outside a physical trauma inducing typhoon class storm thunders over the blood red skies of London 2 (these days known universally as L2), only those wearing ‘storm armour’ clad clothing are venturing out, and even then usually only as far as the nearest STREAM terminal. Cleric20 flinches as the electromagnetic interference wreaks havoc with all but the most heavily cloaked electronic equipment in his apartment. His Headchip runs a diagnostic check and reports no damage but his PlayProductt system resets itself, which leaves Cleric20 staring in disbelief at the smiling start up menu host – a pneumatic blonde hottie wearing only a skintight PlayProductt logo stretched over her pert frame. Cleric20 is just some guy, some guy who even now in his late twenties spends most of his free time jacked into a virtual reality of some kind – living virtual adventures is just so much less bother than trying to do anything meaningful in the real world… especially as what’s left of it is mostly now a dangerous and badly screwed up festering hive of scumbag and villainy.

Here we are then, human, the top of the evolutionary chain on Earth, our great mother-world that turned out to be just a very tiny planet in very huge cosmos. Small but somehow perfectly adept at sustaining life, it took us humans quite some time to fully wreck our planet. But even as we over-heated, over-polluted and over-populated our little home world, we also looked to the space around us, searching and scanning, enviously wondering at the sheer scale of the creation in which we found ourselves.

Cleric20 throws his PlayProductt controller – despite the Headchip allowing for thought interaction many gamers still preferred to use a dualshake multiaxis for a more physical involvement in - over his shoulder (where it is caught by the displacement beam of his companion / bodyguard droid GiX), ruing his lost high score on ‘MindFu3: Ass(ault) of the deviant Wonder-babes’ and picks up his glass-substitute cup of Hernic-BayFusion single malt whiskey. He takes a decent hit of the heavy duty liquor and wanders across his cluttered apartment, over to the window shaped ‘street view’ high definition screen and watches people and droids alike clearing the streets as the chill driving rain tears across the city, occasionally conducting the massive flashes of lightening which glows an ungodly scarlet in the red air. The weather has been out of control for some now, our best efforts at manipulating it with nuclear cloud weather control platforms had gone completely array and nobody had the funds to sort the mess out. It was a big vote winner for the current GOV party led by President Marcus Razour that he would bring sunshine back to the capital but to date no real progress seemed to have been made on this election pledge. But this whole ‘redness’ – that has too many evil and unnatural connotations for it to be anything other than an omen of ill fate.

Leading the united nations of the world in seeking and mapping, planning and exploring further and further into the unknown, was the goal of the L2 Galactic Infestations Research and Early Warning Group (GIREWG) – the title a bizarre compromise of the associated groups and departments that were merged into the most heavily funded international research community ever to grace the planet. Unfortunately, even as the GIREWG seconded L2 Ministry for Information’s semi-sentient space probes probed ever further and Earth’s fastest superfusion A.I. brains pondered the ever increasing volume of space - all that was really accomplished was to condemn ourselves to being a smaller and less significant fraction of the what became agreed was a potentially ever expanding universe.

As if that wasn’t enough, even the combined processing power of GIREWG’s most cutting edge analytical scientific tech backed up by the almost unlimited continually refreshed team of Earth’s top scientists and their thinking machines proved still so limited that we simply could not detect some 90% of what is actually ‘out there’.

The crazed storm winds howl virtually non-stop through the massive city, there is madness in the air, you can feel it, taste it even. Cleric20 turns away and is thinking about calling it a night but then on a whim decides instead to go out for a drink. “GiX get me a field party survival pack and lets hit the town, looks like a nice night for a walk!” he calls. GiX’s response is muted but not entirely one you might expect from a service-mission droid…

For centuries it had been widely agreed there was more matter out there / all around us / somewhere. This something ‘more’ which ‘must be there’ in order to explain the behaviour of cosmic entities such as black holes, but the sheer absence of hard proof and trace-ability confounded even the most cutting edge instruments, which to their chagrin included all of our greatest A.I.’s and the entire scientific community across what was left of our planet.

The deviously elusive 90% ‘something’ we had termed “Dark Matter”. This Dark Matter sounded good, intriguing and yet kind of hopeful that at some point we would be able to ‘light’ it up. Cracking the nature of this mysterious mass became the ultimate challenge once we knew it must be there - it was an open invitation to us to try and unlock its secrets…The search began to look more possible when humanity managed to fire two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses a device called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) created by CERNII .
Yet here we are In the Year of our Lord 2242, riding on our tiny tiny spec of a planet in the fairly unimpressive 10% of everything so far recorded. Still very much in the dark when it comes to unraveling the secrets of Dark Matter. The illusive ‘God Particle’ that became the obsession of the world’s scientists since the LHC highlighted the first step of the path into a darker and far more challenging existence than any could have imagined.

From this vantage point the megacity of L2 shines with a heady neon glow which can be seen from almost a lightyear away in space. Designated as the new ‘World Capital’ back in 2020 when the fallout of the ‘final’ Middle Eastern conflict had had time to dissipate somewhat, now the entire planet looks to L2 as their beacon of leadership, knowledge and human government. Situated roughly 1000 meters above the rotting wet carcass of the original city of London in the UK, L2 is a super utopia of quite awesome proportions. It was noteworthy to those of an architectural bent as being the first constructed megacity where widescale use of the newly licensed ‘nexcement . Nexcement was a city planners’ dream as it could support impossibly tall and structures by being able to sway and bend but rarely crack or collapse. L2 quickly rose from the murky radioactive ashes – a fast build programme backed by the embers of the World Bank, it’s mission to establish a place of hope and prosperity for the future of mankind. And many would say that it had worked – when the robotic construction units retreated and the city was declared safe for human habitation, a wave of unheralded optimism spread through the remnants of united world. It became a nucleus for those with money, fame or just a desire to experience the most incredible high tech living conditions available. And of course in their wake followed a tidal wave of criminals and con merchants looking to get rich off the back of the world’s crème de la crème.

As night follows day - shortly after the creation of L2’s new street level, which sat comfortably higher than the widely flooded remains of the once great ancient city, the first human asylum seekers without sufficient funds to support the above average lifestyle required in L2 were forcibly removed by L2 Gov security forces. The lucky ones died, of those who survived most were injured either by conventional brute force or weird arcane energy weaponry from the nefarious attentions of the L2 BattlemaGes.
They were deported to the drenched and decaying underbelly, which never saw daylight owing to it now being ‘roofed’ by the express drainage system L2 required. The wet ruins under L2 soon became known as the ‘Underworld’ and served as a magnate for those who couldn’t cut it in the bright future above. Diseases of all kinds were soon endemic due to the massive lakes of excrement and other waste that the city above channeled directly below with little care for those dwelling there.

L2 itself however, was a clean and gorgeous utopia of function and beautiful architecture, the massive Babelic towers from L2’s corporate district reached so high they had to be permanently anchored to dead ambiance low level satellites in near space atmospheric orbit. These satellites are themselves linked by many tubular tunnels and walkways which form a glittering spider web of wildly interlacing platforms across the sky – a whole new level of L2 developing in a dynamic state and complete with its own inhabitants who refer to it as the ‘Overworld’. The small habitats and tech vessels which link to and across the dead ambient satellites are in constant motion as they trace the edges of our atmosphere. Each satellite was commissioned to impossibly strict margins of error that had to be kept within in order to avoid ripping the literally ‘sky scraping’ towers from their foundations (although there are well documented occasions of this happening several times, the last incident was well documented – when the multibillion dollar Endophiine HQ was torn asunder and roughly a thousand stories were dragged into space by the malfunctioning Mofosoft A.I. controlled satellite named Xxox720. The death toll from that incident alone was catastrophic but important lessons were learned which enabled the ‘planet to space’ build spec to become a firm reality.

Cleric20 stumbles out of his apartment, he lives on the outskirts of the NewHolborn and as he strides off into the inclement precipitation GiX confers with the apartment A.I. setting security protocols and deadlocking all access points behind him whilst simultaneously hailing a STREAM. Seconds later both of them are in the throbbing heart of NeoSoho.

Further up through and above the clouds, some of low-level satellites were developed to sustain variable traction and allow short hop docking with the massive space stations far above. This part of the Overworld formed a network of future habitats fully populated by A.I.s – machines unbothered by small details such as having a breathable level of oxygen for life support to sustain them. Here again the L2 Ministry of Information is at the forefront of development – with the widely publicised L2 Dark Matter Collaboration’s (referred to mostly as the L2DMC) automated megatron telescope and particle collider (which measures three hundred miles square) is easily the most readily identifiable structure. In true ‘cutting edge PR’ style it is in the luminous observation deck of this mammoth radiofusion spectrum telescope and research facility that an official L2 GOV briefing is taking place…
- - - - - - - - - -

Prophecy linked intel #1009

The channel you are receiving locks on to an ancient looking location. It is somewhere you do not recognise, surrounded on all sides by acres of fields. As the picture clears you can see that the feed camera is panning inside what appears to be an ancient farm cottage dwelling, closing in on a dusty shelf situated above what the historic nanorecords would have described as a ‘roaring log fire’. On the shelf there sits a small white mouse, it is not a live mouse, it is a puppet made of cardboard (a tree related product), it is animated though and sits blinking its fake eyes at you. After a while it clears its throat, twitches its stuck on whiskers and speaks:
“So to begin…
“As I believe, I also say unto you, it is not to be in and to read a situation, but better to be out and to observe.
“Especially if effort is to be taken (and such effort we must be sure to take) to dip beneath what I will term here ‘the surface tension of it all’.
Soon wisdom be found in L2, but not just there, where the still calm surface hides the flashing teeth. The teeth of Satan - for so they are - they be hidden from casual view by what is reflected on the calm mirror of normality and even as one who will find himself destined to be our saviour comes to the fore, so my nibblings on the Tree Of Life itself will bear fruit. Marvel will I be, awesome will be my power. Assist the hero shall I and not as just a comedy sidekick or blatant oddity plot device either…
“As it always shall be, trust in the Holy Overworld’s Mother, so the wisdom shall stand…”
The mouse leaps off the shelf into the fire and is consumed in a ferocious blaze in seconds. The view pans slowly around the room and zooms in on a bottle labelled ‘GOD’s TEARs can make you forget 98% proof’ – you just have time to make out the rest of the label on the bottle which reads ‘home brewing is heavenly healing in a bottle’ before the transmission cuts off.

- - - - - - - - - -

The view from the observation deck of the L2DMC’s automated megatron telescope and particle collider is one of the most impressive in existence. Starfields extend off in all directions and the gentle blue glow of the Earth fills the chamber from its transparent floor. Standing before a small panel of very high level dignitaries including current President of L2 - Marcus Razour, Arch United World Prime Minister - Johnn Carter and L2’s Grand Information Controller - Manu Doyyle, along with several high ranking and important A.I.s is a very nervous looking GIREWG Senior Research Technician – Siam M’diitch who begins his presentation thus:
“I sorry to bring you all out at this late hour but am very pleased to be able to finally update you on the progress made by the L2 Dark Matter Collaboration team. The data I have to show you today is quite remarkable, we are still trying to work out the best way to present it but can I just first restate our assumptions as background to these initial findings? As I’m sure you all know, what we term ‘Dark Matter’ is believed to comprise over 90% of the Milky Way and perhaps even up to 99% of the Universe as a whole. A great deal of this matter could be in the form of cool stars, planets and black holes formed from collapsed stars. Origin track-backs however put serious limits on the levels of ‘conventional matter’ that this could have been composed of and so we surmise that other candidates such as heavy slow-moving particles known as WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) that have been drifting through space since the Universe began might be more likely to form at least part of this ‘matter’…”

”Please don’t tell me you brought us up here just to give us an obscure science lesson?” interjects Razour with a harsh smile. An uneasy mixture of feral wolf like facial features balanced by impeccable grooming, the President of L2 is not know for his patience, or his understanding or his tolerance of things that he deemed insignificant (such as most of what he usually hears in briefings such as these, however fancy the location or urgent the attend signal). His Social Rating™ indicates ‘***** Indifferent’ but then for some odd reason - it always does…
“I really don’t see why we have had to come all that way up here in person anyway…” adds Arch United World Prime Minister Carter, arguably the most powerful man on the planet and the last person you want to be cause of his Social Rating™ showing ‘*** Annoyed’.

“So please can we move along to the muted ‘findings’ that this briefing was supposed to be covering?”

The L2 Dark Matter Collaboration (L2DMC) had been commissioned in 2025; this group was granted unlimited funding over an unending timescale (the document actually states “as long as it takes”) – to identify what dark matter is and to investigate how it links to the rest of the universe. Let’s just say that after 217 years of round the clock investigation, which had included the building of many thousands of space probes, A.I.s and tech bastions such as the megatron telescope itself, it wasn’t a complete surprise when the L2DMC finally made a break-through, even though it ranked alongside other less probable events having occurred such as New Tottenham winning the L2 Soccer Premiership for ten years running.

M’diitch had joined the L2DMC as a Junior Tech Assistant but had a real aptitude for the work and he rose steadily through the ranks until finding himself the Senior Technician on duty the night of the ‘break through’. Now as he considers the fact that he is just about to freak out, disappoint or panic a concentrated selection of the most powerful people and A.I.s in existence, he is mentally running through a list of alternative careers that he could pursue. And as he brings up his first schematic diagram, the limited number of people and machines in his audience stare at it with various levels of enthusiasm, almost as if it is a title or test projection. “What I’m about to relay to you is the first concrete imaging we have of an area we are confident is within dark matter.”

“About Goddamn time” muses Carter whilst preparing himself to witness what the approximately $30,000 billion standard worldwide dollars that had been sunk into the L2DMC had actually achieved in terms of output other than ‘no confirmed data’ .

A series of 3 images display across the high definition presentation screens behind M’diitch, each accompanied by explanatory tech notes on various subscreens. Arch Prime Minister Carter allows himself a moment of reflection before turning to his fellow dignitaries. Razour is looking strangely aghast, Doyyle also shocked, the A.I.’s are unreadable as always…
“Technician, are you absolutely sure that these findings are from confirmed dark matter? I think I speak for all of us in this... We’re not fools you know… What you’re showing us simply cannot be, it’s err, it’s just not possible.” Doyyle is babbling, looking around at his fellow delegates as if for support.

The glowing red lights of the observation platform seem to swivel towards the now badly flustered and profusely sweating M’diitch who starts wringing his hands, “Erm, yes sir, these images were ascertained just moments before this briefing was called. The breakthrough coding which we have been working on since 2189 codenamed ‘MEJA37’… I can’t explain it any better than I have already, we just don’t yet know for sure what it is we’re looking at here… But please be assured that the images are real and have not been enhanced or adjusted in any way sir.” M’diitch is seriously thinking about making a run for the exit; “no job is worth this level of humiliation” he mumbles to himself – wishing fervently that he was back home in the arms of his long legged wife rather than facing the consternation of the Prime Minister of the world...

One of the A.I.s – Military Overseer Langley is already conferring with his security team, issuing urgent commands. Almost immediately the viewing gallery door bursts opens and a detachment of elite L2 GOV mech corp guards sweep in, weapons drawn, in a second all of the delegates are locked in the laser sights of high velocity hand cannons and droid extermination beam hardware. The squad is led by the imposing sight of Commander Riichardson in his personalised navblack mech-assist battlearmour , he signals to Langley that the room is secure.

“What the hell is this?” demands Carter standing up abruptly and immediately finding that he is now wearing a rash of laser sightings all over his face. His Social Rating™ blinks from "*** Annoyed" to “***** About to Lose It.”
“On whose authority are these… grunts pointing their weapons at me?”

Overseer Langley responds serenely, “Dear Global Prime Minister – as I’m sure you’re aware, these findings are absolutely unprecedented. And as we have just heard from our little man here - we do not even know what that ‘thing’ is, let alone what the security implications from these findings will be. Under emergency ‘other dimension contact protocols #2001 - #2010’ I am assuming tactical command of this knowledge and I need to debrief each of you present. I would very much like to think that we are the only people who have witnessed the findings. Can you confirm that Technician?”

M’diitch is looking as about uncomfortable as it is physically possible to; drenched in sweat and trembling slightly, he stands with a guard each side of him - both are pointing their handguns at his head. Overseer Langley floats over and fixes him with a condition beam. “Who else has knowledge of these findings?”
“I, um, just the L2DMC team who were on last night. And of course the DMC central unit A.I.s” stumbles M’diitch. “This room is sonically protected and cannot be breached by any listening devices, it is also locked out of all non present A.I. sensory transmissions.”

Without turning away, Langley signals his displeasure by giving M’diitch a shot of mild nerve penaliser which causes him to drop to the floor in mute agony. “Commander, I am ordering you to contain the information at the L2DMC HQ and at the very minimum - quarantine the team that found this data until further notice. The A.I.s must be tracked and prevented from broadcasting to anyone. This is a military level information lock down – are we clear?”

Riichardson smiles his confirmation, L2 Gov’s head of tactical robotic assisted security forces (one of the few humans who is rumoured to prefer the company of his metallic soldiers to that of other people, his respect and loyal service to Langley has been on record as being ‘exemplary’). “It’s already done, sir.” Riichardson is a legend in the L2 GOV mech corps, his high profile refusal to work with BattlemaGes and impressive track record of battles won have led to his current rank and multiple military decorations. He serves Langley and the L2 Machine Corps with a conviction that borders on the psychotic and though he is widely detested by the BattlemaGes who he shuns, few would want to openly oppose him or see him from the wrong end of his personalised A.I. handguns.

Miles below in the L2 underground DMC research HQ situated beneath even the L2 Underworld a squad of Gov security forces close combat specialists - shock assault droids have just taken forceful control of the facilities. The DMC A.I.s are being rounded up and destroyed, while the scientists are being exterminated on sight.

There is a tangible spirit of inevitability about the actions taking place, findings such as these come along only once in history… and as I might have mentioned - these are of such significance that they are about to change absolutely everything.

“Well I’ll eat my metal ass - this is seriously ‘need to know’ stuff we have here boys” quips Amaster** one of the ‘Pain superthreshold Level’ mid ranking assassin bots reviewing the highly illegal copy of the DMC findings it has just made into its hard data storage area before expertly dispatching a number of scientists with its inbuilt large caliber weaponry. The scientists lie in still steaming pieces across the room, which now looks like some kind of extremely high tech abattoir. The other shock assault droids are sweeping the rest of the DMC HQ, killing on sight, the unarmed scientists do not put up any real resistance. Riichardson’s interpretation of military information lock down is that dead scientists make no illegal transmissions and destroyed A.I.s can’t broadcast sensitive data. The illegal copy made by the squad leader droid was however at Riichardson’s request, he’s been soldier long enough to know that holding vital information that can be bargained could potentially be a very wise future investment.

A nanosecond after the security forces stormed the telescope viewing platform, a shaken looking President Razour was already broadcasting an encrypted, neural linked, copy of the findings to his personal datavault. This unexpected occurrence registered a major interest blip miles across the planet. For tracking the events at approximately a relative height to the observation platform The Powers That Be (TPTB) are watching all this in their highly advanced monitoring station.

These damned sentient machines have tech that is far in advance of their human counterparts and they do not let on to the human aligned A.I.s. TPTB have a cloaked facility hidden in the heart of the Overworld orbiting above NewGermany. The fact that man had since time began been known to like to wager or bet on the outcome of events such as sporting events, it became only the matter of time for the ultimate illegal betting syndicate to be conceptualised, designed and realised by a series of renegade A.I.s keen to exploit humans by removing their wealth from them (and invest those same funds in the R&D of a new race of Zealot A.I.s which would one day rule the planet)…

The ‘Future Betting’ Underground (FBU) as they call themselves to the very select membership that know of their existence are tracking the DMC findings which they have held onto.
Asimoovv01 – the leader of the FBU is calculating that they are likely to be of considerable world wide interest and betting worth on what the hell the ‘thing’ in the stolen photo which shows the one of the DMC finding’s pictorial output floating before the shocked looking delegates and the security droids in the observation platform is.

The FBU is about to see new levels of outrageous credit betting action.

Back below in the DMC HQ, the remaining A.I.s have been cornered in a sublevel Underworld access tunnel. These scientific purpose thinking machines are equipped with only small scale self-preservation devices and are no match for the assassin bots whose heavy-duty fire power is decimating the surrounding facilities along with the A.I.s themselves. Artis Kennt - the lead A.I. on the L2DMC’s Dark Matter Mapping project is the only one who makes it through into the heavy-duty protection bolt hole. Behind the blast door he can hear the shock droids begin to deploy their heavy cutting beams. Kennt is panicked and yet has the composure to engage the emergency anti-information theft security protocol, which activates an impregnable plasma shielding around the databank and DMC personnel life preservation area. Outside, the searing white-hot cutter beams immediately bounce back into the unsuspecting assassin bots who are taken by surprise. Two of them explode in a shower of supernova metal fragments before the cutter beams are shut off, the remaining three move back to reassess the situation, one of them with significant damage to his sensory targeting systems.

“That techie little scumbag is toast!” states Amaster** in his (as always) shockingly neutral tone.

“Get behind me, I’m going to null bomb the shield, nobody takes him but me.” Amaster** rolls an anti-plasma grenade towards the blast door and as it hits the shield he fries it with a null beam. The result is that the plasma shield implodes and the door is decimated. Kennt is blown backwards into the monitor bank behind him, his last visual input is of Amaster** moving slowly towards him, an enigmatic smile playing across his metal preceptor features. “Nice try techbot” Amaster** says, “this… is from the two of my droids that you toasted with your little stunt out there…” He ignites a plasma blade and plunges it into Kennt’s primary receptor area – and although incapable of feeling pain, the resulting sensory overload coupled with the tearing and melting of his integral instrumentation is probably the closest a robot has yet come to it.
The purge was over in a matter of minutes. Despite Kennt’s minimal last stand, the only sentient things left in the DMC HQ are the three retreating shock droids who are rigging the place with high yield explosives as they make their way back to the surface.

The dignitaries from the GOV briefing are finally cleared for departure amidst much mumbling and a fair amount of unquotable cursing. Razour immediately takes the STREAM to his personal office complex, unwilling to wait with the others for the luxury shuttle. He is one of the few high ranking officials willing to commit themselves to the advanced form of travel which many still regard with a mixture of incredulity and distrust. And this despite the STREAM company’s safety record and minimal fatality rate to date. As he materialises from the high energy light particles of the STREAM into his office (his face contorted into an inhuman vicious scowl), his personal secretary Geneviii is waiting for him along with two of his top BattlemGe advisers Andious and Okssanais who both stand as he enters. “Geneviii secure this room for audio / visual replay from my personal datavault ,” Razour barks, “you two come with me, it seems we might have to review our timescales on the ‘Day of Carnage’ project. This just might be the end of the world…”

- - - - - - - - - -

Everybody dies, you and me both. Everyone you know, everybody you ever met and everyone you’ve ever heard of, dead, some just haven’t fallen over yet. Death ironically is the one certainty in life, a unifying fact for all of you mortals and now for all of we spirituals who have had your damned mortal curse bestowed upon us.
Death it seems is the order of the universe, for all of our science and thinking power the ‘big D’ is still a non negotiable at this time. We live, then we die, a design fault I think that the big guy couldn’t resist slipping in there to keep us down. I talk of ‘us’ and ‘we’ now that I too am in your sorry little camp of those beings conditioned with mortality, life expectancy and no eternal options in our current form. To die is how we’re designed, neither you nor I can alter that however much tinkering with the animal genetic code we manage (and I have taken this field of discovery beyond the limits, believe me). So far, so good... complete rational breakdown across the spectrum but what bothers me probably more than it should is the lack of thought you puny ape hybrids are putting into it. I mean have you even ever stopped to consider what will you do / think when you feel your last breath escaping, never to return?
Well, I’ll most likely be there when you ‘go’ so perhaps we should just wait till then eh?
- - - - - - - - - -

Across town in the seediest part of neoSoho the unstable figure of Cleric20 stumbles through the gathering dusk, he is trailed by his floating droid companion GiX which looks somewhat like an oblong large slab of distilled neon thanks to the multiple verts and info screen commercials reflecting off its polished anti assault armour. “sLick, come on, at least let me help you walk straight?” asks GiX.
“Go RROD yourself, you know better than to call me that even if I am little drunk, especially when I’m trying to impress that sweet little honey over there.”
“But, ahhh, even discounting the fact that she is likely to be incompatible with you age wise… and seeing that you are operating at less than optimal performance – at least I’m pretty sure that your eyesight must be, because to my metal brain… she’s no honey, I’ve got to go with a six point five out of ten max, maybe she’ll be hot when she grows up?”
“Yeah but, I think you’ll find that I didn’t ask your opinion, and your repressed circuitry obviously didn’t take her extremely hot body, which any guy would kill to get a hold of, into the equation.
“Plus I’m the one who’s been drinking and even then I’m sure I just told you to leave me alone.
“Look my buddybot, I want you in humble servile servant mode, unless we get into a fight when you’re still authorized to use unnecessary violence to watch my back, but for the last time - if I want your intervention in my love life – you can be assured that I’ll ask for it. Now, go home and shut yourself down or something.”

“Fine, be like that – just because you’re a Luton kid, I’m scanning for her background anyway and maybe if you can actually read your HuD you can decide whether to take this any further. Whoa – what the hell?”

“Geez, GiX you’re pushing me, what now?”

“Oh hey, Hi Sweetheart where are you heading?”

The girl has wandered over and is looking at GiX. Cleric20 is standing blatantly checking out her extremely cheeky outfit that seems to be mostly painted onto her fit curvy yet pleasingly athletic body.

“Hi mister, is that your droid?”

“Holy ScLic*(((**, sir, leave her, right now, I’m not kidding… I’ve just intercepted a highly encrypted flash message from the office of President Razour – it’s a… It’s a, no that can’t possibly be right…”

“Well gorgeous, yes, he is mine, I won him in the Gov lottery when they gave away all the old Godbots, obviously I’ve made a few alterations to him, now he’s a walking ass kicker with more firepower than a squad of assault droids. Why’s he such a badass? Well he’s my bodyguard as well as my servant and he’ll do anything I tell him – except when I want him to piss off and leave me alone!”

“Mmmmmm can I touch him, he’s so shiny?”

“Sir, we really need to go and for the record – she is much too young for you. Young lady, please do not touch me or I will incapacitate you.”

Cleric20 cut off his droid: “That’s right you stroke him, he likes it, what’s your name sweetie?”

“‘Ice’, what’s yours?”

“Sir, hello? We have to leave now – I’m picking up massive tracer activity around that message and I need you to sober up. This is some serious shit we’ve stumbled upon here and so please put the young lady down and let’s STREAM home?”

“Hi Ice, that’s a cool name! You know if I ever had a daughter I’m gonna call her Ice too, I’m Cleric20 and this grumpy piece of hardware is GiX. Look, I’d really like to take you home – are you up for some getting naked with a guy, a much older guy, who you don’t even know?”

“Ooh Cleric20 – very smooth - you’re a bad man! I don’t suppose this GiX have any pleasure attachments?”

“You wouldn’t believe what he can do with one of his displacer beams and a bunch of bananas…”

“Hey that’s kinky, OK, take me to bed or lose me forever you big stud!”

“Hey Goose you big stud! Ha I haven’t seen that film for a while. Classy line babe, I love ancient film dialogue… I’m thinking that you’re my kind of girl!”

“Sir, if I may… Despite the joy of watching you meatbags interacting under the influence of recreational drugs being almost too much for me - we must leave this minute, so, fine, come on then if you’re coming but let’s just get out of here before the information trackers arrive, I’m not kidding about this transmission, this is some freaky stuff and it’s rated ‘L2 Military Class Need To Know’.

GiX hails a STREAM portal operator and the three of them bundle into the glowing energy beam – just in the nick of time it seems because even as they are dematerialising into the flow, a patrol droid and two heavily armed security enforcement officers and a BattlemaGe arrive and try in vain to shut off their transportation.
The STREAM operator is blown to smithereens in a combination of large caliber assault weaponry mixed with arcane electro-energy streaming from the BattlemaGe’s hands.

As soon as they are back at Cleric20’s apartment, GiX immediately wipes their travel record and secures the door and surveillance defences. Cleric20 likes to keep the outside world exactly that way… outside. The house A.I. indicates that there have been no security breaches since they went out and after running a full diagnostic check GiX primes the wideband network – and deletes all of the sensor street cams that were tracking them when they hailed the STREAM.
Cleric20 and Ice are already naked and trying to eat each other’s faces on the couch. GiX makes himself scarce before he is asked to join in. There is enough of a quasi-religious programming in his hardware left from his Godbot days that still makes him unnaturally prudish in sexual matters of the flesh. And Cleric20’s taste in women when off his head was a matter of continued consternation to his metallic companion. GiX had sometimes tried to analyse why he was ever bothered by his masters’ activities and had yet to come up with a convincing answer. Somewhere in the background a bottle of vintage 2200 Pinot Higglessden v2.0 is being cracked open, this being one of Cleric20’s favourite genetically enhanced wines – infused with skin bonding technology which allowed the wine to form ‘lickable rivulets of sensory pleasure’ when poured onto naked flesh.

GiX runs a copy of the transmission into the apartment’s secure vault and reconfigures his A.I. brain so that there is no way an outsider could establish a link-through – to all intents and purposes he never received anything like the message entitled ‘DMC Dark Matter Findings’…

As the noise of highly vigorous and possibly deviant animal like sex emanates throughout the apartment, GiX shuts down his audio receptors and taps into the background log on Ice, quickly bringing himself up to speed on her existence to date. As he clocks her lovers past and previous total as being in treble figures, he orders an anti STD shot for Cleric20 and decides that she can probably look after herself. Then he retires to scan the latest updates on Unlimited whilst simultaneously scanning all media for any mention of the interception of the DMC data. The last thing he hears is Ice screaming “Oh my God I’ve never done it like this before!” GiX thinks that highly unlikely but wouldn’t actually put it past Cleric20 to be enlightening her into some new kinky perversion. Cleric20 for his part looks like he is really into it and is watching his performance on the large screen behind his headboard, he admires how his toned muscles reflect the soft white glow of the screen itself – as well appreciating Ice’s hot body contorted beneath him, she is tightly tied in a hog position and is on the receiving end of a serious seeing to from Cleric20 who for some reason has some kind of helmet on which makes his voice boom out in a deep metallic rasp and is wearing a long black cloak draped over his shoulders, he is screaming “I have you now…”

- - - - - - - -
The lights go down and high up in the sky the L2 sky screen bursts into life – the latest Captain Addams mini flick is showing. The channel pans up higher into the upper L2 atmosphere and through a window into a luxurious room panelled with ancient oak, a roaring fire is reflected in the mile wide window that overlooks the city. An elderly man sits in his complete comfort bodycushion in front of the window - watching an orange low fare intergalactic spaceship break through the atmosphere, a wistful but contented smile playing across his handsome features. In one hand he has a glass of premium 400 year old malt whisky, the other he runs over the reclined female form of one of the retirement homes’ most attractive ‘attendants’ who is giving him a special naked foot massage. He looks down at the tight, perfect body of the girl bent over his feet and says to her: “October 31st 2149… As I recall it was on this particular rain drenched afternoon when I was involved in that rather unusual diplomatic incident with the French fighter squadron… Did I ever tell you about that one?”

“The attendant pauses and looks up from her toe sucking and smiles. “No Captain, I don’t believer you ever have, do go on.” And she refills his glass before resuming her foot attentions.

“Ah, that was one I will never forget.” He smiles, “The air of L2 was heavy with toxic drizzle – the aftermath of the smog clearing acid rain that had fizzed and assailed the city for most the day, but which looked amazing from the low orbit vantage point I’d had on my departure flight. A freezing mist hung low, and I was flying back from a sortie over the revised coastline of Northern France. You remember I told you how it got ‘revised’ by that unauthorised thermonuclear detonation the Americans carried out with some of their supposedly decommissioned nukes back in 2112?”

“It was all that nonsense when the French had disagreed and protested against the state of martial law implemented across Canada by the U.S. for ‘security’ reasons. I can still see the look on their President’s face as some of the bigger bombs being towed into space for storage on the moon accidentally ‘fell’ onto Northern France… It was lucky that the U.S. had managed to put that anti nuke shield around the L2 by that time or we too may have suffered some of the horrific loss of life and ongoing genetic mutation that still plagues the French to this day eh?”

The girl pauses and looks up, “That was all bit before my time, I’m afraid,” she says. “Shall I change feet now?”

“Yes my dear, that’s right, my right foot is playing up something rotten – took a lump of shrapnel in it back in the day you know – but you really are an angel, the things you do with your tongue…”

“Well, it’s all part of the service, we do try to look after our war veterans here in L2. Don’t forget that it’s BJ night tonight either…”

“Crumbs you know, I had quite forgotten that – you know how to make an old guy very happy. Anyway – on that day back in 2149 I was flying back with the Indian Ambassador to L2, he was jolly nice chap I tell you. He was particularly pleased because they had been awarded the contract for rebuilding a large part of the Overworld that had been damaged in the meteor storm of 2148. “But I digress, what happened next no one could have prepared me for, I assure you that this is exactly what occurred…

“We were in my NeoSpitfire Mk VIII – one of the show fighters that had been designed for the 2145 WW2 remembrance low orbit flights. You see the Ambassador didn’t like to STREAM (and I, as one of the most decorated combat pilots at that time, had been asked for by name! And seeing as I loved that NeoSpitfire replica I thought a quick hop over to India and back would be a fun jaunt – plus it was seriously armed, so I could virtually guarantee his safety. Anyway, as we hit the edge of L2’s aerial protection shielding the whole sky turned red!

“I didn’t know what the bloody hell was going on… One minute we’re chatting about the best curry generation robots, the next second everything is red and there are a squadron of evil looking attack craft closing in on us from all directions. Without hesitation I went into a defensive roll, dropped out of the low orbit and dived into the low cloud (which had also turned red for some reason). The attack craft seemed to have been caught by surprise as it took them a few moments to realise what I had done, but they were soon after me and the cloud became a mass of cannon fire which began eating up my shields at an alarming rate.

“The Ambassador began to scream and ducked down in his seat but I kept my head. Although everything was red – the skyline of L2 was there below me and I knew it well. I decided to try and draw the attack craft after me by hitting the parsec brakes, it was an audacious move and one they were not ready for. Almost immediately I was behind the attack group and had multiple missile locks on my screen, I let loose all the ordinance that I was carrying and the resulting firestorm decimated the attack group – taking out or incapacitating at least 50 of them, leaving only ten or so to return the fight. Without any missile payload left it became a dogfight of old style cannon on cannon and that is where the NeoSpitfire excelled. I wasted no time in getting in close behind the two nearest craft which were dropping back from the blast radius of the flying debris of their comrades. I Swiss cheesed them before they knew what had happened, but unfortunately the lead attacker – whose craft was of a different design to the bulk of the force had tracked me.
As I made a break for the L2 no fly zone, they were on me and my Spitfire began to take serious damage. I barrel rolled across to the right and managed to sink a couple more of the bandits but the chasing group of six split around me. It was only then I realised what was wrong – where were the L2 heavy anti air defences? Why hadn’t the attack craft been vaporised miles out by the early warning laser network?

“It was then that I patched into the L2 comms chatter and found it was not in English! YES, by some freak occurrence I it transpired that I had warped into a different dimension – one it which L2 had been overrun by an evil French insurgency group in retaliation for the U.S. nuke incident (and years of racial stereotyping as smelly, garlic wearing, cheese loving winos).

“The attack group were actually just on their way on a sortie to attack the U.S. when I had popped out of nowhere and disrupted their plans! Well, as you can imagine, this fazed me for a second and it was then I think that I lost my tail fin. But knowing that I had to save the Indian Ambassador I managed to bank sharply directly into the pursuing group causing a couple of them to collide in panic. Another two fell to my cannons although now I was running low on ammo. Still, seeing as the ground defences weren’t going to be of any help to me I rocketed in a vertical climb and jettisoned my luggage hold. The case of antique spidermines that I’d been bringing back as a gift for my commanding officer broke apart in the atmosphere and the little magnetic bombs quickly found the pursuing attack craft – tearing them to shreds in a flash. The last thing I saw before I again inadvertently popped back through the dimension gate was the leading attacker who had ejected from his craft – right into my path! I tell you there were still gently steaming bits of his smelly French ass stuck over my nosecone when I landed…

“Anyway love, I don’t’ want to bore you – but it’s funny how little things like that stay with you even after all these years!”

“Now, now Commander Addams, that’s quite a tale, are you sure you’re not just trying to impress me?”

“My young dear, I swear that’s exactly what happened – and anyway, if it’s impressing that you want, well you said yourself that it is BJ night so I’m confident you’ll find yourself impressed later…”

- the lights go up and the audience leave the sky-screen viewing area. Cleric20 is admitting to his date that he’s always been a fan of the Captain Addams Chronicles, although this latest one wasn’t the pick of the bunch. “He’s just such a fantastic character” he tells GiX, “Can you find out for me if Addams is based on a real person?”

“And I thought we were the dreamers of dreams”

Elemental Perception 02 – dial ‘low fi’ life expectancy

Crackling bursts of automatic gunfire strobe light a serious situation. A bloody ambush is taking place, bloody I know because the air is a red haze of blood and body parts – as opposed to the freak red sky weather of L2. The street is as slick as an abattoir’s killing floor, lumps of unidentifiable gore reflect the paths of the tracer bullets that are coming from the lighter end of the road. It is a scene ripped straight out of a nightmare – it’s a familiar place, somewhere I know well yet can’t immediately place... and that makes it all the worse. The protagonists are just shadows when not in the direct iridescence of their weapons’ muzzle flashes but I’m sure that and not all the forms visible are human or even droid. From where I view the scene L2 GOV gunbots and soldiers pound past, trying desperately to put down suppressing fire at whatever is behind them. I've never seen such looks of terror as are pictured here – even the droids seem afraid which doesn’t make any sense. There must be at least forty GOV Mech Core marines in full battle intensity mech-assist armour, backed up by ten or more heavy weapon assault droids, around them are many more footsoldiers – all are screaming and running, offering no real resistance to whatever enemy it is that they are facing. The droids are also retreating in a two by two cover formation, all the while trying to cover their human comrades. I try to glimpse what it is that they are running from, the sense of panic is so tangible and I can almost feel the sheer ferocity of their enemy, even though I can’t make out how or why I come to be in the middle of this battle. Suddenly an entire line of retreating marines are cut down by some sort of shadowy blast and there, beyond the decimated twitching bodies stand several silhouettes. I swear the enemies appear to be wielding massive twisted swords. From around the small line (there can be no more than seven of them) come swirling black bolts of pure death. It is as if these creatures carry with them a cloud of shadows that act as weapons - shooting out into the retreating mech corps tearing their targets apart, rending flesh and armoured machines…
Then center stage is what must be the Marine’s Commander – possibly Lt ‘Bad Dog’ Blackkly, even behind his imposing helmet his panic can be felt. He has lost all control of the situation and his fast dwindling forces. He tries to rally one squad and together they take defensive positions directly in the path of the seven aggressors. “Amphiaraus, finally some resistance!” calls out a distorted voice and one of the agressors leaps forward, his arms are a blur, he is obviously performing some kind of ritual – the air around him seems to solidify and then break apart. What happens next is too much for my senses to comprehend. Weird barbed tendrils snake out from the ‘cracks in the air’ all round the figure, each strikes towards one of Blackkly’s defenders and smashes into their faces. Their strangled cries are torn from them along with the contents of their heads, death takes them and their comrades in seconds and their bodies collapse in a heap. The covering fire from the Droids is missing the enemy targets completely, it is as if they are protected by some sort of invisible shield. It’s almost as if these creatures are covered by BattlemaGe anti-targeting cloaks, how can that be possible?
The Lieutenant who has witnessed the slaughter of his entire battalion grabs a heavy death ‘last stand’ air strike request marker and runs forward. Within seconds a series of offworld satellites have launched their ‘scorch earth’ battlefield nukes and as the seven dark armoured aggressors converge on Blackkly he dissolves into STREAM at the exact moment the nukes hit obliterating the view for a second with their lateral mushroom clouds.

When the view is reestablished all that can be seen of the area are the charred and disfigured corpses and smoldering destroyed robots, it seems Hell itself has opened its jaws and the devil Himself is feeding frenziedly tonight. There is no sign of the seven enemies among the fallen but in a freeze frame moment it is almost as if a face can be made out from the swirling blood-hazed clouds, which are clearing from over the scene of carnage… Again I feel a twinge of recognition from somewhere but as always all I can do is watch – I can only think that this Evil Dog has visited me before…

Cleric20 wakes suddenly from the vivid nightmare and looks around in complete confusion. GiX floats at the foot of his bed signaling a concerned expression, Ice has left, apparently just after their third sex session she had been bleeped by her parents and had to make a fast return to her NeeCH mansion in the area of L2 built above where the London’s Chelsea would have once stood. “Are you OK?” GiX asks. “Um, I don’t know,” replies Cleric20 truthfully before he turns over takes a long draught from the Fusion single malt whiskey beside his bed and promptly falls sleep again. GiX catches the whiskey glass in a displacement beam before it hits the floor and places it carefully back on the bedside smartshelf (which is obviously malfunctioning because it is programmed to use it’s own displacer beam to prevent exactly the just averted potential accident).
“Cheap NewEuropean crap,” he mutters as he scans the house systems to ensure that his now snoring master is safe.

The Powers That Be (TPTB) are watching with interest, after all they watch absolutely everything, the betting on the outcome / future life expectancy of Cleric20 and GiX too based on their having intercepted the DMC findings is off the scale. Those who bet on the future are a select cartel made up of some of the most rich and famous entities across the world. ‘Players’ have already won and lost millions on the outcome of Cleric20’s sexual prowess earlier in the night. Now that Ice has come their attentions her lifestyle is being rated with odds on options including ‘next guy she takes to bed’ which is all very well until her father - Colonel McCluur logs on to his account and is proffered good odds on his daughter bedding more men before the weekend.

Wait – The skyscreen is active again and demands our attention, I’ve seen this one many times but don’t let that put you off…

The view shows a massively overweight lumbering hulk of woman who is cooking something in a clinically clean kitchen.
“Second helpings anyone?” Mumma asked with obvious pride in her voice. The unspoken pride that only mothers who have served up their very best efforts to please those they care most about in the whole wide world can conjure up.
It was perhaps then unfortunate that the lovingly prepared ‘bib and tucker’ Mumma had served her family and their friends had killed them all stone dead. They lay face down in the heavily toxic spaghetti and meatballs or slumped back in their chairs - grimaces of ungodly pain etched on their faces.
“Well, I’ll take that as a ‘No’ then.” Mumma smiled, she was not generally one to be easily downcast or put out.

See? I told you that was a good one!? Sometimes these short pre-feature glimpses are better than what follows…

We’re licking each other as the lights dim for the main show, expectations are rising all through the dusty hall of pleasure. Outside it’s wet and very cold too, another one of those nights. We though, we’re happy to be here, happy to be alive, happy to have scored such excellent ‘full impact’ perception drugs. The opening short Mumma tale was a classic but had been repeated too many times.
On nights like these, the sky screen is viewed from through a rain shield which also keeps a margin of heat in. The dust gets everywhere when the rain is kept off, this wonderful future city is already showing signs of decaying, buildings falling apart at an alarming rate, almost as if the Nexcement is ‘ill’. The L2 inhabitants get used to breathing in the nanobot infused particles, it’s all rather intimate but nobody can even guess at the long term health implications…

Somewhere inside his fertile mind lurked an amazing creative force, it just couldn’t work out how to make its influence felt over the pervading spirit of talentlessness and woeful inadequacy that vice gripped all of Source’s output. It took no time at all for another cliché to pop into Source’s head and spread itself over hundreds of pieces of paper before it would be recognised for what it was and disposed of savagely.
Tonight he needed a break, the latest masterpiece ‘Countenance’ would have to wait. Tonight he would go out, despite the severe weather, a sky screen movie, yes watch some slaughter and graphic carnality, then maybe find Cleric20 and Brrookes - the two of his friends who most vividly exemplified those two traits.

Nobody saw this coming, our ungrateful mammalian brains vigorously reacting against the subliminal code words that the marketing men of the United World (UW) toiled night and day to impregnate all of our media channels with. ‘Progression of the brand’ was the rallying cry that effused their ceaseless crusade to spread the message of value and product desirability, what ever that might be on any given day... It certainly changed our lives but who would have thought that something as simple as sub-blim-advertising would invoke a medical phenomenon which came to be known as ‘Chatter’? Chatter was the name given to the unfortunate side effect of being offered products such as the “PlayProductt” subliminally. What seems to have happened is that the frequency of this ‘under the radar of the conscious senses’ bombardment caused many people’s stem cell synaptic links to fuse and create feedback loops in their brains which even the most expensive medical science could not unravel. The worldwide mass Chatter epidemic almost led to the collapse of everything marketing related – but in the media analysis of the fall out, it was notable just how little sympathy there was for the “marketing scumbags” who perpetrated this whole marcom nightmare. People it seemed just weren’t prepared to tolerate 24hour repeated play advertising , especially when it is coming from inside their own heads… The deaths, suicides and homicidal rampages that were blamed on or traced back to Chatter infection became voluminous. Every corner of the marketable world was affected, L2 more so than many places mostly due to the fact that media channel pumps and displays had been built into virtually every building and no social space had escaped the requisite A.I. functional screens. Somehow the proffered rationale of the designers who had happily taken the advertisers money into consideration when creating the marketing wonderland of L2 that “It seemed like a good idea at the time” didn’t do a great deal to alleviate their condemnation and subsequent liability for litigation.
But Chatter is the least of most people’s worries – once the size of the problem was ascertained, the damage settlements were quickly quashed and the ‘full and final settlement’ paid by the now defunct group of marketing agencies deemed to have been at fault was channelled into the L2 GOV’s coffers outside of public view. In order to draw attention away from the potentially the most scandalous mass health damage in the history of the planet – the one most favoured marketing agency: FI-CM was commissioned to envisage, design and implement a world wide phenomenon which would keep the public amused. FI-CM were a resourceful bunch of highly creative types and the challenge did not prove too much for their twisted souls. The result of their work was ‘Unlimited’ the ultimate world wide high stakes game show that overnight became the most popular reality / fantasy fusion ever.
Unlimited quickly became a worldwide phenomena the like of which had never been seen before. Its beautifully simple premise was this: 1,000 players were selected from a lottery – each ‘winner’ was fitted with a supplemental Headchip implant that did two things. Firstly it allowed for the location and Social Rating™ of the player to be broadcast directly to the Unlimited base camp, each player had a small army of observation droids assigned to them and their every move was recorded, the footage edited and then beamed on the major media channels. The second thing the game Headchip does is grant the ‘winning’ player at time unlimited dollar credit to spend in any official commercial outlet. Credits only though, no actual hard dollars can be withdrawn or saved by the current winner, goods bought could be kept and / or bequeathed to relatives. This is due to the other condition that the rules of Unlimited present… The current ‘winning’ player’s life is forfeit to the other 999 players and any of them are allowed exemption for killing the winner. In fact that is the object of the game, kill the winner and take the unlimited credit for yourself… This coupling of “out and out bloodlust with complete greed wish fulfilment” was acknowledged by those who analysed the game over its first few years as ‘the perfect recipe for competitive television’. And Unlimited had shown unbelievable staying power, with people ever more keen to be ‘the richest person on the planet’ – even if it meant cashing in their soul for the chance. Strategies and plans of the various winners to date (in the show’s 222 years there had been almost two million players who had been ‘winning’ right up to the point that they were brutally killed). Early months of the game had seen a very fast turnover of players – new players were kept on waiting lists and replace those who died ‘in play’ – it did not take long for groups of players to join together and try to work as a team – but as soon as one of them made the ‘winning kill’ the others invariably turned on them no matter how many protestations of ‘sharing the resources’ the new winner made… The longest reigning ‘winner’ in the history of the show was M. Landdsman, who managed to take over by bringing down the current winner’s fortified habitat in the Overworld with a well directed stolen nuclear satellite. Landdsman was the most vicious and devious player the world had ever seen, some put this down to his years of frustration at his beloved Arsenal2’s inability to win any silverware for over a hundred years. Channeling his boiling wrath, and keen to buy every superstar soccer star on the planet, his first purchase was a huge army of assault droids which he programmed to eliminate all other Unlimited players. Whilst this tactic bought him time, he had already worked out his plan, which involved storming the palace of then Arch United World Prime Minister – Jeeffers II and holding his family hostage whilst the Prime Minister ordered the extermination of any remaining players. Jeeffers II was a weak willed man but he did love his family and so he threw his considerable personal army which included a highly advanced Mech division immediately into the fray and players were slaughtered in ever larger - record breaking numbers. Landdsman lasted for almost a year in this state as the Unlimited organisers were suddenly overrun with a constant need to replace players on an hourly basis and the extensive waiting lists soon dwindled to their lowest ever point and conscription of inmates was even considered to keep the game viable.
But, even the most twisted player’s reign couldn’t last forever though and it was the mentally unbalanced Absalomee Jones who ended Landdsman’s time at the top. The use of a stolen military bioweapon was the key – Landdsman was holed up in Jeeffers II’s personal planet core deep protection bunker when the skulll plague was unleashed. Skulll was one of the unclassified new wave of nanobacteria designed and developed as a weapon in the ProtoFRance research facility where Absalomee Jones worked up until he has his breakdown. Even though it risked complete global holocaust, Jones knew that he had a passchip with which he could access to a weapon against which even Landdsman’s massed defences could not stand and so it transpired. The civilian casualties from the Skulll plague included pretty much all of those on mainland Europe – it was only when the United Socialist Federation of the America intervened in 2089 that the landmass became habitable again. But Jones did not last long in the winners’ chair… the experimental antidote and vaccine he had taken himself in order to be able to withstand the plague turned out to have some rather nasty side effects which included accelerated growth of his liver. Within hours of being credited with the winning Unlimited kill, and coincidentally booking his place on the all time high score top ten of global mass genocidal killers (his civilian collateral damage totaled over 20million deaths), his liver had swelled to the point that his internal organs were forced out of his various orifices… He died in unimaginable pain as his stomach and lungs were pushed up through his throat, when his stomach finally ‘burst’ the digestive acids tore through the surrounding body parts allowing him to ‘taste death’ as none before him. The footage of his death was ranked as some of the most disturbing imagery ever shown on live televisions across the world, but owing to mankind’s fascination with all things macabre it also pulled in some of the highest viewer ratings ever. Nobody much mourned Absalomee’s passing and it came as little comfort to those lost loved ones in his catastrophic release of the Skulll plague either. Landdsman’s body was never recovered…

Everything can change in a second, a nanosecond even, before your heart has had chance to take a beat, things are different, irreversibly and without redress. This was especially true for Cleric20 who woke up one morning exhibiting the side effects of ‘Chatter infection’. He had found a way of effectively dealing with the Chatter infection, with GiX’s help he started experimenting with living in a state of ambient sound, be it music or specially developed ‘antiChatter’ noise which was available on the black market. Now his Chatter was at worst a small distraction but the habit of having music played into his head from his Headchip had remained with him. He had a particular liking for ancient music from the twenty first century, and at the moment he was listening to the output of a long dead and virtually entirely forgotten band called ‘Carter USM’. He had currently slipped out of the apartment whilst GiX was engaged in trying to decipher the findings transmission he’d picked up, he’d been going on and on about a map of Dark Matter or something and it was pissing Cleric20 off. Deciding that a drink with Source and maybe hanging out with Brrookes would be the way forward Cleric20 found himself again walking through L2’s guiltiest sinhole - neoSoho, his strides smooth and perfectly in time to the technologically enhanced music pounding inside his head, the vocal is a sample from a time past, a time when Carter USM meant something, the voice is shouting ‘Come home you silly cow’ and Cleric20 is smiling to himself. See him descend some stairs, watchful of the grimy old school foot tunnel ahead which exists as a piece of historic reference to a time before the near instantaneous STREAM travel; this is a stereotypical crime scene, complete with flickering antique neon tube lighting and murky water coursing down one of the walls. Cleric20’s Social Rating™ blinks from "*** Chilled" to “***** WTF?”

There is frantic future betting being brokered by the Powers That Be taking place involving serious death, very possibly his, in the very near future. Intelligence is being traded about Cleric20 – and his being tagged as a ‘lodestone’ for massive violence.

There’s nobody about, not even a token loitering faithdroid, begga or vendorbot. Cleric20 surprises himself by going ‘on guard’ in a way only those with I.F. training can - it'd been some time since he acted like this... He liked to carry his guns and a few other of his favourite weapons with him ‘just in case’ but up until now his previous life brushes with ultraviolence had not so far come back to haunt him…
“Nice try”, he calls, drawing both his guns, a wry smile playing across his features.
Cleric20’s musical choice flicks on to a thrash tech fusion reworking of another long lost band once referred to as ‘The Pixies’, it makes a fitting soundtrack as our view pulls back to a hyper widescreen experience, you can feel the suspense building with his every step.
‘I’m digging for fire’, he lip-syncs, casually checking the HUD ammo indicators for his guns and then slowly creeps forward. Maybe he should have brought GiX along after all, but it would take too long to summon him now, so Cleric20 enters the darkly dingy tunnel, exactly what the cliché doctor ordered for a potentially all too obvious bad situation. Cleric20 is smiling grimly and monitoring the shadows at the far end of the tunnel.
Some shuffling can be heard but still nobody can be seen.

TPTB note that someone in the future betting stakes wagers a million creds that Cleric20 will not survive the next five minutes, almost as if they have inside information on what is about to happen…
A heat sensitive scan of the tunnel shows three people and possibly a gunbot hidden around the far corner, from their stances, they are average assailants just doing their criminal thing, waiting for Cleric20, waiting to strike.

Cleric20 walks slowly and confidently along the dim tunnel his guns held casually but if you look closely there is tension in his arms and he is balancing his steps so as to not make any noise. As he approaches the end corner he pauses and casually swaps one of his guns for a nerf grenade which has ‘in case of emergency’ scrawled on one side. In one smooth motion he arms it and rolls it forward. Time slows to a crawl and the grenade seems to take an eternity to reach the end of the tunnel where the droid which has sensed the incoming device is backing away and the three men who haven’t are already leaping out and opening fire on Cleric20, but he is no longer standing where they thought he was.
Cleric20 is somehow already crouching behind an air-duct, the only available cover, tight to the wall and invisible to the assailants. He opens up with both his guns at waist height. In the hyper momentum of the attack the three are caught with multiple Smashbullets to their groins and stomachs as they scramble to try and reach the grenade which has become very obvious to them as it glows pre-detonation red. The hasty deflection shield thrown up to covering the men by the gunbot gives out, as Cleric20’s grenade detonates. With no time to react, the shockwave blows them off their feet, actually the condensed laser heated shrapnel in the shockwave blows their feet right off if you want to be technical about it. In a mass of pain and horror their slumping falling bodies are again wracked by the heavy gunfire that Cleric20 is delivering. The assailants die squealing as the patented ‘Smashbullet’ hollow rounds Cleric20 is pumping into each of them blossom before exploding out the other side of their flesh leaving fist-sized holes. There is very little left of the assailants now except semi liquidised pulp.
The gunbot however has been waiting and now makes its move. Completely coated with the blood and gore fragments of its compatriots it looks like some kind of demented undead metal midget as it lumbers around the corner. A targeting beam of some kind fires from it which catches Cleric20’s hip but causes no pain. A signal is beamed from the area that registers in Cleric20’s headchip as military grade info.
Before the droid can get a kill-lock on him Cleric20 fries it with a single shot to its robotic ‘head’. “You guys sucked,” he mumbles as he carefully steps through the scene of carnage; blood is everywhere, steaming gently from the walls, and floor into another cold, dark L2 night. Cleric20 kicks the guns from the dead detached hands of the unfortunate attackers. “Picked the wrong guy to jump pal,” he mumbles. He checks the area where the gunbot got its shot on him but there is no sign of any damage, so he dismisses it as having been some sort of targeting sensor beam. Cleric20 turns over what’s left of one of the bodies and stares into the single remaining eye in the vain hope that he might recognise the perp but in the state they’re in its too hard to tell if he’s ever seen any of them before. Maybe they could have been ex-GOV military by the ID tattoo on one of the larger pieces of flesh floating on the lake of blood. Even the most expensive reconstructive A.I. surgeon would struggle to rebuild the features of these losers, Cleric20 slips slightly as he treads on one of their eyeballs which was wedged in the cracked flooring.
If GiX was here he’d get him to scan the Headchips to see who they were. In his guts Cleric20 dismisses them as low level, nasty street tech amped punks – their limited combat enhancements obviously fitted in a hurry but still somewhat unusual for punk robbers. The droid is an early model, reconditioned on the cheap too, not a class act.
‘I’d have be whiny little bitch to go out to these low lives…’ thinks Cleric20.

The future betting is in meltdown, the anonymous million cred man on ‘Cleric20 not to survive’ has seen enough and logged off, ruing his bad call on this play. As Cleric20 makes his way up the steps towards the bar district and a night of drunken revelry he leaves a trail of slick red footprints. As emergency services begin to arrive, Cleric20 slips away up an alley and into the nearest bar which is loud, anonymous and often where his friends Brrookes and Source could be found sharking.
Back in the dark crime scene below, the air in the tunnel shimmers, and for a second it looks like a hidden doorway has opened in the air itself. A blur of darkness and the outline of someone carrying what looks like a large sword can be registered but only for a second.

In another part of L2, test subject #30022 had just awoken, being a kind of night lover anyway. #30022 was a first-born – the obviously favoured son amongst his family. Stronger and far more handsome than his siblings he was his parent’s delight. When food was scarce it was never he that went without, his parents went out their way to provide him with everything he could want and he in turn was a faithful and dutiful son. His brothers resented him not one bit either – he was their champion, their hero and they basked in the reflected glory of counting him as part of their family. But today was the day of the final test and the air felt different. It didn’t feel like any other day, he decided to get some late breakfast and he was amused to see his family bustling about even at this hour – things to do, places to go and always it seemed - limited time to eat.
#30022 had a strange stinging sensation behind his right ear, it felt almost as if he had been stung. Dismissing the lingering throb of pain, he went to the toilet and was about to make his way down to the feeding room when his youngest brother leapt at him from behind. Biting, scratching and clawing him in a frenzied attack. #30022 managed to knock his brother off thinking it was just an overly exuberant early morning play fight only to find him scrabble upright and immediately leap at his throat.
“What the f.. Arrggghhh?” he yelped - the bite was deep and it immediately drew a fountain of blood from a severed artery.
“You little bastard!” coughed #30022 holding his frantic brother down whilst trying to preen his torn throat.
Before he could get an explanation a roar of “Kill him, kill him, kill him!!” came from his brother and immediately two more of the brothers had appeared in the doorway. Without hesitating they both leapt at #30022 who fell onto his back under their combined weight. One of the attackers managed to bite his tail clean off, the other was clawing at his wounded neck. The youngest brother took the opportunity to pounce on his face and set to work biting his exposed eyes.
Blinded and panicked #30022 lashed out in desperation, managing to cuff the brother from his throat but exposing his soft furry belly in the process. The brother who had bitten off his tail took his chance and leapt forward his large incisor teeth bared. In seconds he had chewed through to the stomach and didn’t stop until he was virtually inside his older brother. The fight was knocked out of #30022 and the last things he sensed were the scent of his parents arriving. A tiny flicker of hope welled up inside him despite the unbearable pain of his grievous wounds. He died as his mother sank her teeth into the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord and allowing his head to be torn off.

L2 GOV Senior Scientific Officer / Social Conditioning Agent Goldiing watched the attack with interest from a few inches above the rat’s Perspex habitat. There were many cameras recording the event from different angles but he liked to see things like this close up and personal, rather than rely on the monitor feed.
Once #30022 was dead, the rest of his family ate most of him, and then their rage seem to completely subside. For the next few minutes they preened the blood from themselves and then got on with their routine exercises – as if nothing untoward had happened.
“Another perfect trial,” Goldiing mumbled to him self as he reached into the habitat and carefully removed the bloody bones that were all that was left of #30022.
“I really have created the ultimate weapon.”
He carefully sealed the remains in an evidence bag and went back to his workstation to file his report.
The ‘Victim Marker’ (VM) project was running according to plan. In fact it was delivering over and above the best-case scenarios: every test creature ‘marked’ with the newly developed isotope had been killed within minutes.
This technology was going to change the world – imagine the ability to mark any creature, or for that matter human, or even machine intelligence with the ultimate ‘kick me’ sign. Except this isotope didn’t just engineer a kicking – it invoked utter homicidal rage in all life forms – there had been nothing so far that had resisted.
Insects, fish, mammals, reptiles, birds – once you were marked anything and everything you came into contact with would try to kill you and simply would not stop until it had.
It was the ultimate pest control mechanism – infect the cockroaches and let them tear each other apart – much less bother than chemicals that they could become resistant to. This was the future of extermination, the VM would be remembered throughout history yet unwritten and Goldiing relished the thought of how taking the glory for solving one of mankind’s most persistent problems…
The only slight hiccup to date was that test subject #10077(a white mouse) had escaped – and thus its death had not been recorded on film. The fact that it was dead by now was not negotiable – the very first creature it met in the wild would have sped it on its way to the afterlife. And if the first creature hadn’t, the next would, but it still bothered Goldiing that there was the tiniest chance the that #10077 might have somehow taken the VM into the wild where weird and wonderful mutation was fast becoming the norm in what limited animal kingdom still existed around L2.

The beauty of the marker was its simplicity. No more need to use your own troops to fight a war if you could invoke the enemy to kill each other… No more costly manhunts when fugitives could be marked – who’d want to escape from your nice safe isolation cell when the first person you met would kill you?
This was the perfect weapon. And Goldiing knew it. Human trials were being negotiated and were scheduled to start in a matter of weeks. The criminals on death row were going to be the subjects – each would get to be torn to shreds / eaten by a different animal and if that went well (as it was expected to) – a group of inmates were going to have a very interesting session together… Goldiing had in fact already carried out one highly unauthorized trial on a human. He’s commissioned his personal team of Social Conditioning Agents and rounded up two known child abusers from their haunt in NewMargate. One named Rockk Ham had a record of only being to perform sexually by soliciting and forcing himself on boys aged 10 or below - which to Goldiing had pretty much invalidated his right to a fair trail, or indeed existence… The other captive was Ham’s soon to be dinner partner – a blonde female named Lyiynn who Goldiing had run into on the ‘fantasy female image’ (FFI) mapping project – they hadn’t conducted nearly as much female sexual desire research on this (due to the fact that the end result was to be custom built to please males) but L. Ham’s subconscious readout had come up as wanting blonde petite twelve year old girls to mutilate each other while she was pleasured by a Doberman – this was enough in Goldiing’s thinking to prove that she would not be missed by a decent society. The anticipation alone had got Goldiing really excited – as lead developer of the Victim Marker it was something he has always envisaged; watching some scumbags rip each other apart without even knowing why they wanted to… Everything was set, Rockk was lifted from his seedy bail hostel with a surprisingly small bribe to the security officer who ‘didn’t even want to know’ what Goldiing had planned for the known and widely despised felon. Lyiynn was pulled in a public skyswimming arena – these technological marvels where massive amounts of swimmer friendly water were held in the air above L2 in repulsion fields – allowing swimmers to STREAM directly into the skyswimming arenas from outside their apartments – and beam back after enjoying the most incredible – if somewhat vertigo inducing views from the new ‘future lidos’.

Goldiing has arranged for both his test subjects to be brought to the Overworld VM research facility – codenamed ‘SlaineLegend’, which had some of the tightest security measures in existence. Goldiing even had his own tame BattlemaGe named Sumnerson stationed as head of security, and had a combined impressive occult A.I. security set up that was a truly unholy prototype of mage / Mech union. In the main observation lab a dinner table had been set up, the VM was in the Grand Scale Noir red wine that sat prominently amongst the a la carte meal and variously tactically place sharp implements. The cameras clicked on as the sense inhibitors were removed from the unwilling dinner guests and Lyiynn and Rockk awoke to find themselves at a dinner date unlike any that they had experienced. It appeared that the two nonces were in the dining room of the LBCs Luxit Restaurant, each had been memory induced with a fake relationship that somehow featured the other as their current object of affection.
Rockk wasted no time and complimented Lyiynn on her daring and provocative outfit (she was dressed as schoolgirl – complete with pig tails and school tie). She reached straight for the wine, poured them both a large glass and immediately gulped down several mouthfuls.
Something was bothering Rockk, a nagging doubt that he’d ever met this woman and that even if he had, dinner with aging and frankly nasty faced females wasn’t what he was in the habit of doing. His doubts seemed to be maliciously confirmed when almost as soon as she had tried the wine (Grand Scale Noir no less which was some way out of his limited income at that!), Lyiynn whacked him full in the face with the wine bottle.
He fell backward off his chair and before he could even get to his feet, the blonde schoolgirl / woman thing was on top of him wielding the two ‘Jedi’ steak laser cutters from the place settings. With deft movements she severed both his arms that flopped away with only minor blood loss due to the laser cauterizing of the wounds. She smiled at him but it was more a look of satisfaction as one might have at swatted a particularly bothersome fly than anything personal…then she went to work on his torso splitting his abdomen with a neat crisscross of slashes. Rockk could only watch in disbelief as Lyiynn ripped out his stinking intestines and wrapped them around his head, gagging him. He tried feebly to kick her off but received an inexpert amputation of both his legs for his trouble – he had to admit that those steak cutters really did slice through tough meat and even bone without any resistance… It was the last thought he had as Lyiynn beheaded him, his dimming senses rendered the flight of his chunky intestine wrapped head towards the waste disposal chute but it was enough for him to try for an ineffectual scream.

As Rockk’s head left her hands Lyiynn started to scream, as if for the first time actually registering the carnage that she’d just created. Sobbing she dropped to her knees and looked wildly around for some explanation as to her homicidal actions. Before she could even speculate too much Goldiing stepped out from behind one of the hidden observation posts applauding, behind him Sumnerson moved into view, a death bolt of arcane energy already crackling in his maGe exile gauntlet.
‘Bravo!’ called Goldiing ‘You were marvelous!!’
Lyiynn looked utterly bewildered and simply stared at the two approaching men. She died instantly as Sumnerson unleashed the unholy energy blast which fried her to a charred corpse in seconds.
‘Clear that crap up’ Goldiing said to Sumnerson, he was beaming a mile wide grin. ‘I’m going to watch this evening’s trial again in my private quarters’.

All they needed to refine now was the delivery mechanism – it wasn’t like you could just drop expensive bottles of wine on every target. But once the VM had passed all its tests and a device adapted so that it could be ‘shot’ at targets from range, the military would begin using it in the field. Until then they would continue to test each species to ensure that it worked on them all.
Goldiing was fastidious – he worked alone as much as possible and was one of only six people who even knew about the marker. The fact that he had a virtually unlimited budget (almost as much as the credit guzzling Dark Matter Collaboration) and that he had more personal wealth than most of those ‘Unlimited’ players ever managed to secure was arbitrary. Goldiing wanted to be known as the man who changed the world – he wanted the isotope to be called the ‘Goldiing Marker’ – and now had been successfully human tested he truly knew that his work was going to pay off…

President Razour had taken a liking to Scientific Officer Goldiing, and was particularly impressed with the Victim Marker project. So much so that it was directly to him the Goldiing reported and every now and then Marcus would STREAM up to the fortified Overworld lab complex to watch a live test on some subject or another. Goldiing was his kind of man, wretched, evil and twisted to a point almost beyond human. When the time of transformation came – Goldiing would make a decent enough hellspawn, after of course he’d been made to suffer unimaginably for the minimum sentence.
- - - - - - -

Back at his apartment Goldiing played an incident he’d yet to follow up from his fieldwork on his home entertainment system. Field-testing the VM wasn’t going to be quite as easy as he’d thought it seemed…
The scene is of a NeoSoho street, a young man is shouting: “You can stick your chemical mental callisthenics up your uptight hairy butt-hole, I’m not taking that GOV proscribed bollocks!!” he yells.
Goldiing’s house A.I. labels the man on screen as ‘Brrookes’ who shouts, “And you can’t make me…”
Brrookess is standing nose to nose with a heavily built Social Conditioning Agent (the street action end of the Senior GOV Behaviour Modification Technicians) who was wearing a glowing neon yellow bioplasmic bodysuit that included a full facemask and air-recycling backpack. The backpack had a small holoflag beaming above it which changed from green to red and began flashing on and off indicating that the Technician might be in need of assistance.

“I’m sorry sir but if you refuse to take the proscribed mental conditioning agent I will be forced to administer it by err, ‘force’.” The Technician replied evenly – his voice betrayed no emotion through the one piece tox-resist ventilation plate that covered the lower half of his face. His eyes were hard to make out behind the smoke glazed upper half of the mask.
Brrookes wasn’t happy, it had been a long and eventful night – the weird disturbance that had occurred in the Bad Karma Flashback had set the tone for a screwed up catalogue of events. Cleric20 had caused everyone to go mental and attack him – before escaping the joint in a blur of violence. Brrookes had got a decent hit in on his mate by picking up and throwing his stool at the muppet which had satisfyingly caught him on the head – decking him for a second or two. ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ he thinks.

After the disturbance he’d felt incredibly horny so he’d decided to move on with the two young females that he’d hooked up with by buying them promotional Bmelts. The strong bio-enhanced wine had put them all into a very agreeable mood. He’d suggested taking them back to his flat which overlooked the seedier end of the red light district of NeoSoho and the girls had indicated that they were keen but only on the condition that he ‘do them both’.

On their way back to his the threesome had been accosted by an overly zealous GWC God bot. It was an antique modelled on the a biped ‘walking cross’ design that had been modified with the GWC’s ‘one creed – many gods’ all encompassing logo which had a diamond imposed over an eye.
The resultant odd angled hard sided result was not built for functionality and looked entirely wrong. “What the hell are you supposed to be?” Brrookes enquired.

“I am the path to your salvation.” The bot replied – “pray to the nanoJesus with me!”
“I don’t think so!” Brrookes shouted as he fired up the boost on his Nikee ‘full impact’ armoured training boot. He leapt into the air with the grace and agile poise, which only ever follows a serious drinking session. His boot caught the bot directly in the centre of its benevolent crystal ‘eye of heavenly peace’ which fractured instantly, sending large jagged shards of karmic crystal in all directions.
One of the girls took a large shard through her left eye which burst in a gooey mini explosion of retinal jelly and jolted her backwards into the path of a fast moving freight dumpster. She was dragged under the massive metal wheels and torn to shreds against the nexcrete road in less than a second. The road instantly coated with her glistening red mashed internal organs.

The Godbot itself sent a distress signal before Brrooke’s follow up kick sent it reeling through the window of the adjacent WorldBank whose security countermeasures immediately activated and incinerated the bots’ twitching broken frame. The other, more attractive girl whose SocialRating is blinking ***** Impressed, was somehow unhurt and was watching the carnage around her with a wry smile. She turned to Brrookes and suggested that they ‘go and get naked together?’
Brrookes decided that she was exactly his kind of woman and they set off quickly before the security services that were undoubtedly already en route could delay their ‘getting naked together’ plans. He glanced back at the wreckage of the Godbot and saw that the WorldBank credit dispenser had been damaged and was spewing a raw unsecured data signal of pure credit. In one smooth motion he had reached into his wallet, removed his cred boost chip and flicked it through the data stream – maxing out his personal credit limit instantly. “Thank you nanoJesus” he smirked to himself as he pocketed the cred chip, the evening was turning out better than expected.

It wasn’t to last though – and now Brrookes is thinking fast, trying to work out how the hell he’s going to get away from the serious looking ‘Social Conditioning Agent’.

He catches a glimpse of someone moving up behind him - reflected in the GOV ‘rapid crowd control – drug dispensation unit’s mirrored armour plating. Brrookes turns smoothly and puts his trusty Nikee ass kicking boot back into action, catching the skulking GOV agent in the face – smashing his mask and mashing the fragments deeply into the facial features of the now screaming Behaviour Modification Technician.
“Come on Miike – don’t piss about” shouts the original agent who makes a grab for him but is too slow and falls on his front.
“How the hell do you know my name?” asks Brrookes as he puts his foot on the fallen agent’s back. The prone Technician manages to get his free hand up and pulls off his headgear.

“Miikee you daft bastard, it’s me, Goldiing – you remember me right?”
Brrookes rolls the agent onto his back and looks closely at his face.

“Is that really you Daave?”

“What the hell happened to get you into the GOV scientific core?”
Brrookes is caught off guard as Goldiing whips his arm out from under him and manages to shoot the injection gun he his holding at his head.
The injection unit fizzes past Brrookes’ ear and embeds in the wall behind him.

“That wasn’t very nice Daave… or very clever…” says Brrookes as he smashes his boot down into Goldiing’s nuts.

“You’ve sold out!!”

And with that he’s gone – pausing only briefly to grab the hand of the cute girl who had managed to dive behind the parked GOV Tech truck.

“Do you know that GOV scumbag?” asks the girl as Brrookes looks back to see if they are being pursued…

“Used to, I guess” he replies as together they run up the street, dive into a STREAM and are gone.

- - - - - - -

Negative equity of the soul – Source was feeling it, his head hurt, his mind wandered and his body ached. It was his own fault – self imposed damage from the chems and drinks he’d shared with various associates the night before. These were his least favourite times of existence, far beyond the average ‘morning after hangover’, Source was suffering on a metaphysical plane. What was worse was the gnawing self doubt that ran rampant through his mind when it was in these enfeebled conditions. It was almost as if through his actions he had become less worthy as a being, less valued – it was truly a kind of negative equity of the soul and it was getting harder to shake each time it hit.
Ferocious evil dogs (EDs ) were fighting in his head, viciously ripping each other (and lots of his neurons) to pieces in the process. These ED’s were hard core critters too – think ‘acid for blood’ but covered in toxic spiky hair and you’d be in the right evolutionary bracket.

Source watched in bemusement as the virtual display output from his Social RatingTM depicted the combat taking place inside his head. His rating was blinking Feeling Damned****

“The hot, the wet, the wild and the wicked”

Elemental Perception 03 – the female bad karma infraction kicks in

Cleric20 liked girls – there was simply no two ways about it. Sure he could admire the physique of a well ripped guy or the obvious ‘good looks’ of a men like that famous elderly actor BradP1ttII but he just wasn’t able to find anything even truly sensual in their bodies. Females however; that was something else entirely… they were a constant fascination to him, and a passion that he shared with his best friends and ‘hunting partners’ Source and Brrookes. There were many and various tales – some taller than others that the friends liked to reminisce over in relation to their exploits with (and exploitation of) the fairer sex.

It was little wonder then that the L2 INT ‘perfect woman’ project had been one which Cleric20 had been an avid follower of from its announcement. Cleric20 volunteered early on to take part in the advanced ‘Beta isometric passion testing’ where thousands of variously aged men from across the social spectrum had allowed their ‘fantasy female image’ (FFI) to be downloaded directly from their subconscious from their headchips and fed into the input variables for the INT project.

Cleric20’s list of past loves was long and painful for him to think about, most had been meaningless flings, a few had tugged at his deeper affections and a couple had actually won his heart. Only one was his true love and there was nothing he could do about it… From the moment he saw her, he knew that she was the one… Even though he’d fancied her best friend at first and had even gone as far as asking both of them out in a cheeky “would you and / or” phrased proposition…
He’d married her and loved her with all of his being and the day he lost her almost killed him.

INT or the ‘Inaugural Neurological Testament’ , was to be the ultimate male fantasy figure… the combination of all aspects that mankind perceived to make up a truly ‘perfect’ woman. Major developments in hot-demi-cloning technology had allowed genetic science into a new realm of control over every possible variation and make up of the genetic code. The cumulating achievement of this was allowing the first genetically designed ‘uber babe’ to be made a living, breathing reality.

So INT was created and she was seen by the entirely male scientific team behind the project, and she was pronounced to be perfect. The fast growth of such a lab created ‘human’ was highly controversial, especially when it appeared that the result was going to be a babe of unimaginable sexiness whose only moral code had been uploaded from the dodgy dark male fantasies of the men who’d signed up to the project – basically a self selecting bunch of perverts, sex addicts and lonely saddos dreaming of one day actually speaking with or having any form of physical contact with a girl…
There were many headlines around the theme of the INT team ‘creating themselves a girlfriend because they were never going to get one any other way…”

INT then - a woman designed by men, for men… a dream made flesh or as much of the promotional work around the project made allusion to… mankind at last able to create our “second Eve”. This bold quasi-religious statement was surprisingly fully endorsed by the official ‘Global World Church’ or GWC – now the only accepted religion that comprised of the mixed and merged creeds and belief systems of all the major world faiths. After the debacle and ongoing unfortunate repercussions of the faith droids / God bots…. the very metal evangelists which had brought most of the religious movements on the planet to their knees with truly biblical bloodshed beyond any that had ever been perpetrated in the name of religion up until that point. L2’s GOV were quick to enforce a unification – backed up by serious military firepower – which is recorded as the ‘final crusade for religious tolerance and achievable spiritual peace’ and the GWC was the result. It was in the enforcement of this spectacularly hard-nosed persecution policy (of the all existing religious groups) and the unflinching ‘conform or die’ mandate that the use of BattlemaGes really stood out. It pleased Razour no end that his own occult empowered military enforcers were ironically entrusted with the task of massacring believers of any and all religions which would not pledge their souls to the new ‘one creed – many gods’ manifesto of the GWC. The advertising line that was beamed in the air in mile high letters over the GWC HQ Church read: “EVERYONE BELIEVES THE SAME THING NOW SO IT MUST BE RIGHT!”

Of course the long dark precedent for military use of spiritual or occult forces is no secret – the attempted channelling of the very forces of darkness to fight alongside and/or terrorise the army into greater victories no matter what the cost has often been attempted with various results. Ancient records trace the bloodline of demonic or spiritual warrior assistance through the leaderships of the Nazis, the Romans (and their god of war ‘Mars’ from which the word ‘martial’ is taken), back to the earliest men – looking to their shaman for a blessing before massacring a neighbouring tribe. And in the 2100’s the military of L2 developed and perfected the concept of the BattlemaGe; ‘wizards’ to all intents and purposes that could directly influence and participate in the course of battles. Sold to the GOV funding committee under the concept of making warfare more ‘tactical’ and yet retaining the “humanity” as a potentially cheaper alternative to the ever more technology advanced and costly mech battle battalions and assault droid development. Now the two main branches of the L2 controlled armed forces - the Machine Corps made up of a mixture of human soldiers who pilot exoskeleton mech-powered battle armour, backed up by a considerable and varied number of robotically enhanced ground troops, working alongside significant numbers of A.I. minded droids of every description.
The other branch of the L2 military became known as the ‘Enhanced Ability Enforcement Corps’ (EAEC) – more commonly known as I.F. … their street name… ‘Imaginary Friends.’ The power struggle between these two factions had been a growing source of consternation for the generals from the beginning, and when the I.F. passed an internal edict to removed all A.I.s and robots from their ranks and operate a systematic standpoint of non compliance or co-operation with the ‘metal corruptions’ was nothing less than tantamount to directly picking a fight which their robotically interwoven brethren.

The superfusion A.I.s at planet wide level watched with interest and passing consternation as the EAEC culled all robotics from their operation. There were however not unduly concerned until one of their own number – FarrowBlonderime68 was destroyed whilst on a strictly diplomatic visit to the EAEC’s central command. This incident resulted in a unproved retaliatory strike against the EAEC command by a ‘rogue’ A.I. interplanetary missile platform that had ‘mistakenly’ deemed the BattlemaGe squad performing the evening ceremonial cleansing ritual as a terrorist cell and fusion nuked the site from space “just to be sure”.

Cleric20 kept the fact that he had I.F. basic training quiet, he’d been selected for it because of his uncanny hand / eye coordination which the darkscouts had deemed as being potentially ‘spirit guided.’ That was complete bollocks of course, Cleric20’s skills were simply the result of many months of his life playing the various hybrid game machines including the all conquering Sony ‘PlayProductt’ which had become the planet wide console of choice, repeating and building on the cycle of Sony’s competitor crushing recorded in history records as PlayStation and the like. Cleric20 did his time in the I.F. – a year to be precise – but his heart wasn’t in it and despite his killer coordination and immediate skill with weapons, he was the first to point out the he did not have any ‘otherworldly’ powers upon which to call in order to progress to the occultation BattlemaGe Academy . To Cleric20 there was something just not right about the powers exhibited by the BattlemaGes, and now he had openly allowed a robot into his home, none of the I.F. he had trained with would even speak to him. But GiX was worth it, Cleric20 couldn’t imagine not having his metallic friend around now – and he’d saved his ass on many occasions. more than he cared to remember (although Gix did keep a running count which he sometimes tried to use as a bargaining tool with his master / friend).

Cleric20 figured that you either ‘had it’ or you didn’t. MaGing was something that it was virtually impossible to ‘learn’ from scratch. It seemed that unless you were possessed by some dark spirit or other, your chances of becoming a BattlemaGe were slim even when the training began very young. It seemed incredible that something as unscientific as ‘magic’ and the most sophisticated high tech weaponry could ever form a bond for effective warfare but that was indeed the outcome. BattlemaGes were first unleashed and used in live combat in late 2052 – Pyrious Swurze was recorded as being the first to actually see active duty in the great Manchester civil uprising of that year.
Swurze soon rose to be the General of the first BattlemaGe brethren and his abilities were only the beginning, as the study, practice and honing of arcane power became the priority within his unit.

Commander Riichardson’s Grandfather had been the pilot of one of the GOV air support units called in to monitor the Manchester civil uprising and he had been amazed and aghast at how the BattlemaGe Pyrious had seemed able to ‘direct’ the very shells themselves (even those with no A.I. assistance built in) so that they fell exactly where needed. It troubled him out to think of what unworldly powers the “MaGe" wielded and this, at least indirectly, was very much carried through to the current Commander Riichardson who hated the battle maGes with a vengeance. As one of the top commanders in the Corps, he was partly responsible for the ongoing bitter rivalry between the tech heavy Machine Corps and their EAEC magical brethren.

Before the Global World Church (GWC) was commissioned, despite having almost run itself into the ground during the early 21st Century, religion in general across the planet had surprisingly shown itself to be surprisingly resilient and had in some areas been in major growth. The initial SBC ‘Soul Upgrade v1.0’ initiative was all smoke and mirrors, a chemical patch injection that linked to the laminin in the body – the cross shaped binding neuromuscular junction or synapse linkages between all cells, which helps anchor our organs with our bodies. The marketing of the Soul Upgrade was all that made it work, it relied entirely upon being the ultimate ‘placebo effect’ backed up with a little endorphin time release uplifting chemical euphoria.
The Soul Upgrade even at v1.0 became a ‘must have’ and set new medical sales records upon its release. It seemed that people still really wanted some notion of the divine in their lives and the following the medical industry’s tapping of the religiously linked ecclesiastical spending, the tech service industry also wised up to the possibilities of making divine amounts of money. Developing a spiritual output of the fast spreading advance robot technology, it was the machiavellian high profile ‘free’ church leader Chaille who was first to license the idea (and reap the lucrative copyright payments). Chaille himself was rumoured to no longer exist in bodily form, even though his ‘agent’ was a walking, talking human who had been genetically altered to resemble the Western church’s storybook fair haired depiction of Christ. But the collective intelligence of Chaille had been uploaded into a supersemblence database which had A.I. background support.

The tech minded amongst his devout followers had managed to transfer the collective wisdom from Chaille’s hundreds of books, sermons, speeches etc and through some sensational high tech tricks given the database a virtual identity – and it now served like some online Wizard of Oz style reference point for all things spiritual and ‘free’. Opposed by the non Christian religions, whose mainstream leaders mostly (and grudgingly) adopted GWC as their champion after the brutal ‘zealot extermination’ campaign waged by BattlemaGe execution squads across the planet left every religious follower in mortal fear of being executed without trial. Denounced by many as an ‘egotistic abomination’ the Chaille phenomenon was credited with the 2016 new wave of church expansion, and the fast growing robotic industry was quick to help fashion what was billed by Chaille to be the ‘ultimate of God’s foot soldiers’ (for a fair mark up). These metal evangelists, missionaries, apostles… call them what you will, changed the church’s approach to ‘converting’ people, and they initially made massive profits both for Chaille and the build licence holder for production: SpAstro Systems. The first wave of these ‘God bots’ were little more than automatons, roughly human form with articulated arms and legs fashioned from flexible metallic foil – made up of anisotropic layers of exfoliated graphite which allowed them to function with reasonable articulate movement. These faith droids transformed the way religions went about spreading their brand of ‘good news’. Here were the messengers of God / goddess / other non specific deity… impartial, accurate delivery of the message guaranteed every time, no fluctuation or deviation, no chance of them having a crisis of faith or converting to an opposing point of view. Even less chance of them falling prey to a ‘sin of the flesh’ or a crime of passion when they simply didn’t have the programming… The perfect foot soldiers went through a large number of various models and versions – and it didn’t take long for a religious ‘technology race’ fuelled by otherworldly fervour and funded by massive donations from the devout to take hold. Many of the ‘mark 1’s’ (mk1s) developed significant glitches in their firmware, which became infamous – especially the ‘Martyred Noah’ syndrome. This was where after roughly 40 days and 40 nights a large number of Christian ‘Skynet’ God bots that had been programmed with a radical new translation of the Bible which incorporated the possibility of A.I.’s finding salvation on a equal footing to humans caused worldwide panic across the globe. Deeming that death was the fastest way to get to the place of the Divine, the God bots began to explode in public (killing many times more than they converted), as in streets, markets and meeting places across the globe believers and hardened atheists alike got to find first hand whether or not there was an afterlife.
And so whilst the mk1s were decommissioned as quickly as possible – many were hidden and subsequently repaired / reprogrammed and used to fuel a widespread wave of suicide bombings against the ‘The rich infidels of the West’ by the militant Islamic ‘hand of Allah’ (although they were denounced by officials from the World Wide Islamic Fundamentalists or ‘WWIF’ as they were known – by some for their continued use of violent means, by others for their lack of faith in sending robots to do what the true believers should be doing themselves…) The official L2 GOV licence to produce Faith droids was swiftly withdrawn from SpAstro Systems who subsequently went bankrupt following the mass litigation brought against them and the religious bodies who had used their machines by the families of the victims and those injured rather than completely blown to pieces by the micro-nuclear engines used to power the mk1s. The religions were found ‘not guilty’ after their expert lawyers played a masterful ‘Act of God’ clause defence. SpAsto weren’t so lucky and as footage of some of the worse carnage: including the infamous ‘Boston Sunday school rally incineration incident’ played in the hearing it was never in doubt which way the verdict would go…

The mark 2’s were – understandably – built for maximum safety and only limited functionality was allowed. Someone had the bright idea of incorporating Asimov’s 3 Laws of robotics into their operating systems but the manufacturers were sued by the copyright holders of Asimov’s famous material which subsequently saw the mk2 Faith droids sold off en mass to the Asimov estate holders and manufacturing rights distributed to the religious groups themselves. The Asimov recipients of the thousands of mk2s had them all melted down and sold the slag deposits for billions of credits.

Undeterred, the marks 3 – 6 saw drastic developments as differing religions adopted differing approaches – no longer having to conform to a standard design – soon patrolling the streets were heavily armed and fairly intolerant Baptodriods, incense-dispensing robo Cathonators that dealt out psi waves of guilt inducement, or the chanting Buddhabots which patrolled the streets in the service of the ‘awakened one’ projecting positive karma…

Soon in L2 the populace could barely move without being accosted by a robodisciple from some faith or other. People got annoyed, some got angry and many who had access to weaponry started up a new illegal sport – that of FDH or ‘Faith Droid Hunting’… Like the ancient fox hunts of old, FDH’s were often organised by L2’s various gangs, – collecting the heads of bots as trophies and cannibalising the components from the bots to sell to junkfixers… Everything had a price and robo-tech was usually good for some source even if it was just enough for a couple of drinks. Thus it was that for a while it was the Baptists who gained larger than normal ‘spiritual market share’ – especially amongst the younger generation simply because of their ‘blessed’ forethought to add illegal military grade weapons to their God bots… Punks learned quickly that shooting a gospel spouting tin can was only fun if it didn’t stop, lock onto your heat source and return fire with heavy calibre weapons.

Chaille’s glorious time as a viable alternative to the newly formed GWC was always going to be limited once Razour put him on his personal ‘to do’ list. The rumours about Razour were mostly true… Some said he was a demon sent to lead mankind into hell, others that he was a dark magician of some kind and that there were ungodly forces behind his unprecedented meteoric rise through the ranks of L2 GOV’s echelons. He became the youngest ever Junior Statesman having served with honours in the L2 Military as a Black Ops Deathbringer ‘No Questions Asked Class’. His maGe abilities were off the scale even though he had not received any officially recognised training.
Where he went, opponents disappeared whilst his allies seemed to profit from unexpected good fortune – often at the expense of their rivals.
His personal secretary Geneviii had once confided in her fiancé Aatkins that Razour made her feel ‘uncomfortable’ and that she’d caught sight of something in his private office one evening that had chilled her to the core. Aatkins had pressed her to tell him what it was but she couldn’t bring herself to. The next morning she found her fiancé in their kitchen, sitting at the table as if about to eat breakfast - except that his head had been torn off, carved into thin slices and neatly arranged on a platter on the table along with his eyeballs and his tongue. She never spoke to Razour about the incident but knew in her heart that it had been a clear message from him that she was never to betray him.

Now Razour had scheduled a rare personal visit to the Chaille’s evening worship...
- - - - - - -

A few miles away at the same time in neoSoho, the club named ‘I Could Have Been A Contender (if it wasn’t for My Bad Karma Flashback)’ or MBKF as the regulars referred to it, was hosting a designated evening of footage streamed from various illegal God bot hunts… and by allowing betting on various aspects of the scenarios it was one of the places that brought together a wide mix of social types. Everyone from GOV Ministers to street walking punks were crammed into one of the clubs lowest levels – one that was sunk so deep into the sub-base of L2 that it had access doors into the Underworld. The latest feed is being watched in jaw dropping high definition on a new wall sized microfilament screen – viewable from both sides and yet intangible so that patrons could pass straight through it without disrupting the picture at all.

Razour’s PPC announcement fades and the screen flips to show the latest illegal live feed of a Faithbot hunt. It’s night and we’re tracking the progress of a concerned looking rare Buddhabot through one of those very rough districts on L2’s infamous exoSouthBank, a territory ‘owned’ by the unreasonably hostile ‘Hellastards United’ gang. Mumbling meditative chants to itself, more for its own reassurance than any real desire to ‘spread the word’, the bot is tracking several gang members closing in quickly on it from behind whilst potentially who knows how many more are taking aim at it from a rooftop up ahead.
“I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Sangha, I take refuge in the Dharmaaarrghh!!” The high velocity sniper round smashes into the Buddhabot’s headpiece, sending an explosion of sparking nu-metal fragments across the street.
“Nice shot asshole!” shouts Damiann (self styled leader of the Hellastards) as he catches up with the mangled robot. “You’ve only gone and wrecked the goddamn CcPU, it’s gonna be worth bollocks all now!”
By way of reply the sniper puts a round into the can of Spuke Damiann is holding, it explodes in a shower of weak tasting but extremely alcoholic beer substitute drenching the leader and his two nearest guards.
Damiann’s face goes an unhealthy shade of red behind the sticky dripping rivulets of Spuke, he screams “YOU’RE DEAD NOW!!” before stopping to consider that the sniper almost certainly still had him in his sights… and may actually be looking to take on the leadership of the gang in one silent shot. The stinging fizz of a locked on laser target traces across Damiann’s wet forehead, he immediately begins to cry like a baby taking involuntary great desperate gasps of air as if he knows that his mortal time is over. Then he drops to his knees and in an utmost cowardly fashion wails, “I’m so sorry, what the hell was I thinking? Come on man, please let me live.”
Whilst this wasn’t the most badass thing to do, it did have the side benefit of saving his life, as it seemed that the sniper was suitably moved by his willingness to drop his hard man act and express his obvious cowardice so very publicly. It went down a storm in the MBKF, the appreciative crowd of drinking gamblers’ laughter echoing around the bar as Damiann’s face dissolves and the latest UNLIMITED updates scroll across the screen.
“What a loser…” Source yells – mostly to try and impress the three babes he is buying drinks for, he is very pleased with himself - the three beauties he has managed to assemble this evening are without doubt some of the hottest looking females he’s ever ‘pulled’ – he can’t wait to tell Cleric20 that he’d ‘done another triple’ i.e. slept with a blonde, a redhead and brunette of acceptable attractiveness all on the same night – hopefully all at the same time if the evening pans out how he was thinking…
As fate would have it, at that very moment he spots Cleric20 entering across the other side of the bar. Cleric20 was ready for some alcohol fuelled fun and the MBKF was his kind of place. He and Source were soon drinking and reminiscing loudly – much to the boredom of the three girls Source had been hoping to take home. Cleric20 is regaling them about one particular ex girlfriend that he and Source had shared, Kellie; she’d been endowed with a unique ‘echo inducing’ physique… Both their Social RatingsTM are blinking **** dangerously drunk.

The Bad Karma Flashback was jumping, on many levels there were full wall screens on every wall which and the action had moved on from screening the God bot hunts to alternating between UNLIMITED updates / classic kill footage and promos for the newest beverage to hit L2 – Bmelt (which was being globally launched that very evening). Bmelt was the latest in the neoCoke franchise – billed as being the ‘most explosive fizz’ on the planet and for once it lived up to the hype. The drink itself was so fizzy and volatile that it had to be kept in an atmosphere air locked bottle which was opened in dramatic ‘point away from face’ style by a button on the side. The resulting explosion of noise, foam and flying bottle top made the most vicious Champagne cork opening ever witnessed look positively tame. For once the ‘do not shake this bottle / danger of death’ warning on the side wasn’t complete hyperbole.

There was a 5 free bottle per headchip limit in operation and Bmelt was fast proving itself to make an extremely agreeable mixer for just about any spirit. Source was at the bar when he noticed Cleric20 making his way towards the unisex bathrooms – one of the three girls (the blonde no less) he’d thought he had pulled in tow… Source watched his ‘friend’ crossing the crowded partyspace that tonight consisted mostly of copious numbers of hot young women wearing very little indeed.
As he stepped off the partyspace, Cleric20 felt a massive twinge in his abdomen and for once it was not in relation one of the semi undressed honeys dancing vigorously in the throws of a chemically induced orgasm. This was something else, he turned to look at the blonde who was supposed to be following him to the bathroom for some fun but she was slipping away into the crowd, putting some kind of GOV looking high tech injection device back into her twatbag .
Before he could work out what exactly was happening, he felt giddy and slumped against the wall near an emergency exit guarded by two beefy looking security trolls (genetically mutated muscle creatures that might once have been human).
The pain in his gut faded fast but as his head cleared Cleric20 registered that both the trolls were now lunging towards him swinging their fired up laser batons at his head. Thankful for his I.F. combat training Cleric20 managed to duck the first swipes before the trolls realised that they had missed. Using their momentum against them Cleric20 directed the laser batons back into the faces of the two trolls. But even as they fell back from him with their faces on fire a third security troll was diving over the table beside him grabbing for his throat. “What the hell?” Cleric20 yelled whilst managing to get his feet up against the table and kicking it away from him onto the partyspace dance floor. Source had been just coming back from the bar with a round of Bmelts for the girls and whiskey for himself and Cleric20 when he saw the first two heavies attack his mate. His first thought was to grab something and steam in to help but by the time the third troll was kicked backwards into the gathering crowd Source suddenly found himself reaching for one of the bottles of Bmelt and lobbing it as hard as he could at Cleric20’s head.

Cleric20 didn’t need I.F. training to be aware that the situation was already completely out of control, it wasn’t just the trolls who were coming for him, he was immediately under a barrage of bottles, glasses and assorted heavy bar items. Some of the nearest young women were running at him hissing in anger, their teeth bared and various objects held aloft like weapons – and this despite his reputation was not a normal occurrence.
“Come on girls? There must be some misunderstanding arrgghh?” Cleric20 tried to ask but rather found himself with several babes on him each biting, scratching and generally trying to do him as much damage as possible.
He didn’t like hitting women (and had never been into that rough stuff) but this really was self-defence and as one of the girls made a stab at his manhood with a broken glass, Cleric20 had little choice but to smash his booted foot into her pretty face.
Cleric20 managed to throw off the two other girls but the whole bar was now lining up to attack him as if under some kind of mass conviction that he must die. As one of the blinded security troll’s lashed out again with his laser baton, Cleric20 managed to grab a fallen but unopened bottle of Brainmelt. In one fluid motion he slammed it into the troll’s mouth and fired the open button. The resulting explosion of high-pressured fizz not only blew the trolls eyeballs out of their sockets but also most of his brain, which exited via the new crisp hole in the back of his head that the bottle top had produced. Under a constant barrage of thrown glasses Cleric20 scrambled to the security door, which burst open just as he got there. In the darkness on the other side of the door was the beautiful reflecting form of GiX, “Erm, a little help?” Cleric20 yelped as he dived past his robotic pal.

“Sir, I advise that you Run!! Get to the nearest STREAM!” commanded the droid as it produced a holding field across the doorway, which was now packed with people frantically trying to get after Cleric20.

“I can’t hold off your fan club for long… oh and by the way there are a serious number of GOV security forces are at the main entrance – you can tell me what you did to cause all this later but maybe for now you should just get out of here!”

“Thanks you wonderful little sparkplug, that’s another one I owe you!” Cleric20 shouted as he sprinted off up the open Underworld access ramp into the night.

Behind him GiX’s holding filed across the door of the Bad Karma Flashback bulged outwards as the crowd surged into it. But then almost as soon as Cleric20 was out of sight, the assembled mob of death seemed to think better of their pursuit and returned to their drinking and partying as if nothing had happened…

“Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire”

Element Perception 04
– Something else wicked this way comes

‘R E A L I T Y, WHY BOTHER?’ scream the infopump verts promoting another PlayProductt experience. Most of the verts and indeed nearly all of the officially recognised information outlets are controlled by the simply named GOV our heavy handed semi-elected government. Thinking isn’t encouraged, especially if about anything other than the official line and the official line is ‘I wouldn’t think about it – if I were you…’

Few people smile in L2, seems they have nothing to smile about except when they jack into their PlayProductts and live somebody else’s life but still, I often think that it could be worse. Say, that something is stalking us (well, I say I but I mean you as it would be unlikely for this ‘something’ to be coming for us A.I.s). What if there is something, a force or entity that can’t be seen or out-run and which nobody knows for sure exists. You won’t find any of the official L2 GOV channels admitting to it but somehow there is fear in the air… Fear - an innate human response to threat stimuli but the actual causes of fear are built up from experience, i.e. we ‘learn’ what to be afraid of. If you know what to look for can be obvious, it can be felt… a tangible collective hysteria or mass psychogenic threat blinking away on the ultrahigh definition screens of us observers – and even then only a few of us have the metallic balls to consider possibilities that are so ‘off message’.

I am in a unique position – near as damn it ‘omnipresent’ you could say, I have eyes everywhere, and my eyes are satellite linked multiple viewpoint anti-terrorist monitoring cameras. My links with The Powers That Be (TPTB) also increase my network of input devices (although I can’t talk about those or they will surely take me apart). TPTB’s serious grade surveillance equipment feeds enable me to notice things, things that others miss, or simply don’t want to see. Cross-referencing the trace markers that flagged up a ‘probable approaching threat’, I first noted the shadow of something flitting through the lives of those who live in this bloated metropolis. This ‘something’ is here, it is real, it has made L2 its home and L2 is not normally a place many refer to as ‘home’. My archive of legends are strangely sketchy on specifics but there is viable cause linked to The Sebitti myths… I am working to narrow the parameters of what form this ‘something’ could take.

Right now, I am watching somebody walking towards a group of young men (of special note is one of the subjects – an ex I.F. no less) but there is calculated menace in the approaching figure. It is another run of the mill, disturbingly dark and seedy L2 night, just after 1:00 am and the group of three males are stumbling from one bar towards another. The ViewCrispTM tech is compensating my visual inputs for the pouring dirty rain and buzz-crackling infopump vert interference, the dark hooded figure approaches the group and an altercation occurs.
- - - - - -

The tracked assailant had been cornered in a disused ‘Pet-U-Want’ superstore.
An ancient neon effect strap line sign blinked dubiously into the darkness of the car park proclaiming ‘cute household animals grown to order – design ‘em, grow ‘em, love ‘em…’ Some wag punk had sprayed an addition to the strap line which read ‘screw ‘em and eat ‘em’ in neon DNApaint.
The car park is crawling with L2 GOV security forces both human and machine, as a perimeter is established around the entrance to the Pet-U-Want another group of droids are arriving – these with GOV military markings.
A combat shock assault droid beams an update of the situation to the arriving Commander Riichardson who has decided to take direct control of this manhunt.
He fires up the neural interface in his headset – part of his personalised navblack mech-assist battlearmour which is filtering the light around him so that he melds completely into the darkness.
“Hold here, I just need to check some details on the perp,” he orders.
His in vision screen begins to video stream his chosen information cluster entitled: ‘Folded Personality Syndrome – a military response’. On the screen a series of diagrammatic knowledge channels signal their availability. Riichardson mentally selects the ‘Tell me this in plain English’ version which looks to be narrated by a young hot bodied female psyche doctor in a skimpy and very tight (sprayed on) lab coat. The doctor sits on her desk and swings one of her shapely legs over the other and begins thus:
“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that a person’s personality is made up of their consistent emotional, thought, and behavior patterns which influence their cognitions, motivations and actions.
“Unfortunately because of the massively complex nature of the human brain and the malable make up of our central nervous processing system – we can be seriously affected by the effects of time, mood swings and external situations.”

As if to demonstrate this the doctor uncrosses her legs and absently runs one of her hands over her breasts which are straining to escape from her very tight lab coat. She looks up into the camera lens and licks her full pouting lips…

“Changes in personality may indeed result from incorrect diet, medical elements including drug use and the imbalance of learnt behaviours arising from events witnessed.
“Many experts have put forward theories emphasizing the basic self sustaining stability of the personality, over say that of fluctuation.”
“Until as recently as 2080 it was rare to find a ‘kink’ or ‘fold’ in the personality but there are some documented cases which were attributed to the result of a particularly stressful or horrific experience undergone by the individual.”

“She could change my personality” thinks Riichardson. The doctor is really cute and the Commander is completely captivated by her seriously hot body. These latest series of info clusters seemed to have ‘stunningly attractive’ as prerequisites for all their presenters, he wasn’t complaining but it did prove rather distracting when accessing the info ‘in the field’.

The cute doctor continued:
“But this is by no means the case now. The epidemic use of mind altering drugs across L2 has skyrocketed and the most common medical side effect being noted is the formation of a ‘loop’ in the consciousness of individuals which in turn also manifests itself in the personality being ‘folded’.”

Riichardson turned up the volume – this was the stuff he needed.

“Just what happens to the emotions, feelings and thoughts that are lost in the folded area is not clear. Some advocate that they are simply repressed and locked beneath the kinked edges of the fold – others believe that they are either wiped or degraded from the trauma of being cut off from the rest of the consciousness.
“Whichever is the case – there have been no scientifically verified cases of individuals successfully having their personalities ‘unfolded’ to date. There is however anecdotal evidence of many individuals who have undergone various experimental procedures aimed at resolving their ‘folded’ personalities.”

“Persons suffering from folded personalities or FPS (Folded Personality Syndrome) can often function without any major problems provided that none of the ‘core traits’ have been lost into the fold. The most common areas to be lost are large chunks of memory on either side of the traumatic event / trigger, behaviours associated with the event e.g. sexual or violent impulses.”

“Perhaps I may demonstrate?”

The doctor leaps up from the desk and rips off her lab coat – revealing that she is not wearing anything beneath it. From behind the desk she whips out a huge barrelled ‘anti-building’ tactical battlefield nuke launcher – fully armed with a large spiked missile protruding from the business end of the weapon.
The doctor spreads her legs and whilst laughing hysterically – obviously so manically out of control that rational thought has completely deserted her, begins to grind on the weapon. Suddenly from the left of the picture two burly GOV scientific technicians run into the viewable area and wrestle the now blood-drenched missile launcher from the doctor. She somehow manages to make a desperate grab for the weapon and despite her manic state has the wherewithal to trigger the launcher. The screams of the technicians are immediately cut off as the screen whites out from the blast.
The screen goes abruptly blank after the residual image of the manically grinning – self-mutilating doctor’s face (which is exploding towards the camera) is replaced with the smiling / wolf like grin of pioneering GOV criminologist Dr. Wakhiemer. His credentials scroll across the bottom of the screen – apparently he is a leader the field of ‘unkinking’ people suffering from FPS and the only person to date to have been granted licence to use experimental drug BluebarbitrationIX on his ‘volunteer’ subject study group made up of criminals serving ‘hardlife’ sentences.

He shakes his head and says softly:
“That was one screwed up kinky bitch… I’m sorry you had to see that – but sometimes the only way to really understand a condition is a witness a sufferer first hand. The esteemed doctor Sarah Hiitchins there was a good colleague and will be sadly missed. I was in fact working with her right up until that is she herself became a victim of FPS.
“As you’ve just witnessed, FPS sufferers will do anything that their core traits deem as ‘right’… And it seems that the elements, which hold our most deviant or destructive urges in check – are often those, which are ‘lost’ in the fold of the personality. So we saw that then doctor Hiitchins decided that making love to a nuke launcher was the ‘right’ thing to do (and it sadly resulted not only in her death but the detonation took out the whole building, causing the deaths of over three hundred GOV medical staff).

“That is why I am working with drugs which have been shown to have a direct effect on folded personality syndrome or FPS if you like. BluebarbitrationIX is the only one I have found to date that has had any success in ‘unfolding’ a FPS sufferer’s personality. Yes, because it is made from recycled human brainstems cut with ubercocaine and several other behaviour modifying drugs it is automatically classified ‘extreme risk’, but I believe that we must ‘push the envelope’ if we are to make headway in treating this condition.

“As you can see behind me (the camera is panning across hundreds of prison cells – each packed with strapped down inmates), I’m also conducting trials of every known street drug that I can get my hands on to assess their risk / benefit factor in relation to FPS.”

Riichardson fast forwards the info cluster to the marker ‘treatment in the field’. Dr. Wakhiemer’s face pans away from a very sinister close up – revealing two female criminals in the GOV prison one-piece uniforms each strapped down at his feet. Each has obviously had the L2 Prison Service standard ‘gutjobs’ and so must be serving some hard time.
In his hands are two injection guns – one marked ‘BluebarbitrationIX’ and the other ‘bad-dog-crack’. Without hesitation he fire a dart of BluebarbitrationIX into the first prisoner who begins to thrash around and strain against her security strapping. Then the doctor fires the bad-dog-crack into both women. The one who has already had the dose of BluebarbitrationIX immediately goes calm and sanity returns to her eyes. The other prisoner is obviously tripping from the bad-dog-crack and is staring out at the camera with mad junky eyes. “I’ll do anything, you want!” she signs (you can’t speak normally when your intestines are force feeding your excrement back into your mouth).
“I think you see where I’m going with this?” says Wakhiemer…

Riichardson has indeed seen all he needs and cuts the broadcast stream. He beams a message through to his lieutenant – a class 1 hunt and exterminate bio-unit called Twade2.
“Understood sir!” comes back the response and with that Riichardson is moving towards the entrance of the store.

“I’m going in, send in Twade2 when he arrives – no one else is to enter, do you copy?” the commander instructs his troops.

Riichardson’s mech battle-armour arranges itself into assault mode, two serious looking A.I. guns unfold and take up vantage positions over his shoulders. He covers the ground to the door in two mech assisted giant steps and kicks a hole in the wall next to the entrance.
From within there is a burst of laser fire, which is directed at the door – melting large chunks of it.
Riichardson fires off a volley of ‘stun every-living-thing-in-the-proximity’ grenades through the hole he has made and dives away from the laser fire, which has locked onto his position. The A.I. battle-armour guns return fire and then the grenades detonate as one filling the entire shop with an electric mist that shorts out everything – including the ‘animals grown to order’ sign over the front.
Twade2 arrives and takes a position of cover behind an abandoned Wankovision truck to the left of where Riichardson is lying prone next to the entrance.
Riichardson extends one of his battle-armour’s displacement beams and grabs the two injector guns that Twade2 is brandishing.
“Thanks – now stay here and cover me, I’m going in,” he commands and before Twade2 can acknowledge he is already on his way through the window display which features a wide array of ‘grown to order’ household pets – most of whom are lying stunned as a result of Riichardson’s grenades.

As Riichardson smashes his way through the back of the display area under a covering fire from his two A.I. guns and some heavy velocity ‘hey there’s a sniper backing me up’ type shots from Twade2, a voice booms out from one of the cashier stations.
“That’s far enough Commander!” screeches a manic sounding figure who is standing swaying back and forth on the conveyor belt area of the cashier station. Riichardson’s A.I. guns are both locked onto the perpetrator’s head and in his in vision display he can see technical readouts from the battle-armour’s sensors which are cross referencing the target’s DNA against the central GOV infobank.
In the darkness it is difficult to make out the target clearly, the job of identification is made harder because it appears that whoever it is has covered himself in the dismembered bodies of various household pets. His arms are a mass of gutted rabbits – strung together to form furry sleeves, his hands dripping gore are projecting from their extended mouth. On his head are the remains of a freakishly large cat whose fat legs and tail are dangling around his face like bizarre dreadlocks.

One sweep of the IDENTITY CONFIRMED: Wakhiemer (Dr.) blinks up on Riichardson’s in vision HUD, along with CAUTION: DIAGNOSED WITH FPS.
“Now that’s a bit of a freaking coincidence… Sorry Doc, but it looks like I’ve got to give you a taste of your own medicine!” Quips Riichardson and he rolls forward unleashing both injector guns into Wakhiemer’s face.
The darts hit the doctor in the cheek and right eye, he screams but then falls to the floor looking oddly peaceful and sane – this despite his wearing the various dead household pet carcasses.

“All units be advised that target is down,” Riichardson beams to the forces outside as he makes his way to the exit. He stops to pick up a cute kitten that is trembling behind the devastated front wall.
“You can come home with me,” the Commander says and gently puts the kitten onto his shoulder armour, supporting it with a displacement beam.

“What shall we do with the perp?” asks Twade2 as he passes him.
“I think the good doctor needs to join the volunteer testing to have his personality unfolded! See that he is put on the advanced drug test programme for BluebarbitrationIX…”
“Yes sir.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The term 'Assassin' is said to derive from the Arabic word ‘Hashshashin’, it generally refers to an operative skilled in the art of death bringing. Assassins orchestrate the elimination of a target individuals either motivated by financial gain or personal motives.
Throughout time the names of the greatest assassins have carried heavyweight emotional charge with them – remembered for those they dispatched from Marcus Brutus, Gaius Longinus who did for Julius Caesar in 44BC, through Robert Ford who was noted for taking out the notorious outlaw Jesse James, to Nathuram Godse assassin of Mahatma Gandhi… But throughout history there are many many more assassins who remain anonymous because they are so very skilled that they never come to the attentions of the media, Law Courts or any other external records. For these masters of the art of death it is only their victims occasionally get to know their killers identity and they take that knowledge to their shortly afterwards…
In L2 there are said to exist one team of assassins so feared that their reputations are legendary, to some no more than dark rumours, to others they are the most feared of all boogiemen… Known only by their initials – and even those had never been confirmed – every potential assassination target in the civilised world lived in the shadow of their formidable list of attributed kills.
‘G&J’ were of course the team of assassins I refer to and I have accessed a unique channel link to the two most lethal agents of annihilation ever to grace L2’s mean streets.
Both G & J would have been incensed if anyone has ever intimated that they be linked to the legendary incarnation of God on earth ‘Hasan, son of Sabah, Sheikh of the Mountains and leader of the Assassins’ but should either of them have ever traced back their ancestry that far – they would have discovered that they were both direct blood descendants of that fabled leader. The list of kills attributed to G&J was unfeasibly long and covered an unlikely long time span considering it began before droid technology was evolved sufficiently for a metal assassin to be one or either of G&J. The list of killers, loonies and madmen who made claim to being G or J was even longer than the list of probable targets who had been eliminated by the deadly pair. GOV authorities had long since begun publically playing down any reference to G&J even though privately the two assassins were listed as the security forces ‘most wanted’.

Cleric20 looked at himself in the mirror and grimaced at the wasted face staring back at him it wasn’t a pretty sight, he of course, couldn’t see your tight focussed reading beam which was relaying everything he did to The Powers That Be through his Headchip.
“I knew it would end like that”, he says to himself, possibly referring to the vivid dream he has just awoken from. The Powers’ A.I.s replay the dream: The channel opens and the first visible thing is a smile, the next is a heavy looking large calibre handgun. The gun is pointing at the dreamer’s heart, holding it is a man who looks a lot like Marcus Razour, he doesn’t look especially happy.
“Let me introduce myself”, says the man.
A memory fragment popup infobox hits the screen – it reads:
‘The dream is a repeat and it isn’t always this way, in previous versions of this dream the man has not spoken. In previous iterations the intentions of the situation have been harder to deduct.’
The man who looks like Razour is wearing an olive ¾ length coat and a pair of fluorescent rubber gloves which glow bright orange and illuminate the room.
“You can call me Satan if you want?” he says casually.
He widens his smile, to the point where it could only be described as a ‘grin’. His teeth are perfectly white, yet look a little too canine to make his smile at all friendly.
Behind him the dreamer notices an amazing line of people standing against a wall. It appears to be everyone the dreamer has ever met, they look forwards with impassive eyes which seem to be focussing somewhere in the middle-distance.
The man with the gun shifts it so that it points towards the line of people and asks in a matter of fact way, “So, who gets it first?”

“I saw the devil wrapping up his hands
He's getting ready for the showdown…”

Elemental Perception 05
– That’s got to hurt…

Cleric20 was feeling some anxiety over how his head was feeling… This was more than the usual after effects of a heavy drinking session. He wasn’t sure how he’d got home, or why the rampant throbbing in his frontal lobes was being echoed bizarrely in his gonads.

“Are you familiar with the practice of ‘overclocking’?”

“Damn yeah GiX, you know I am, you mean like when I ramped up the internal clockspeed of your sonic degenerator - forcing it to run at a higher rate than it was designed for… eerpphhh, what the hell’s going on?”

“- or was designated as ‘within safety limits’ by my manufacturer, exactly.”

Cleric20 and GiX are back at their apartment having STREAMed back from the incident at the club. Cleric20’s gut is churning, he is sweating and trembling, his skin seems to be boiling in a mass of movement as his very muscles and internal organs are exploding and knitting themselves back together – it is not pretty sight.

GiX is hovering over his master who is lying prone on the floor of the apartments’ bathroom. The self cleaning floor tiles are doing a good job of stripping the surface from Cleric’s face which isn’t helping his current mood.

“Well, it seems that you’ve been injected with a foreign element and you body is reacting strangely to it…I’ve run a full analysis of your vital systems through the House A.I. and you have somehow picked up an ‘isotope’ of some kind, one that neither I nor any of the immediately accessible records can identify.”

“And I deduce from your current physical condition that the isotope you’ve been ‘marked’ with is causing you body to run a reboot at an incredibly ‘overclocked’ speed.”

“UUrrgghh - What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Um, I don’t know quite how to say this…”

“Arrgghhnnn, please…”

“Well, it appears that you’re ‘changing’ – your body metabolism is realigning every second at an alarming rate, I’ve never witnessed anything like it!!”

“EERRGhghh? Come on, you’re arrgghh, having a laugh right?” Cleric20 shoved GiX out of the way and ripped the toilet seat from its sturdy base just in time to vomit massively into the exposed pan. He straightened up and smiled at the droid. “See? I’m just screwed up from something dodgy that I’ve eaten…urghh” Cleric20 didn’t look nearly so sure about his last statement but then he had just dropped to the floor and rolled himself up into a tight ball.

“I’m not lying to you – why would I? Look, I’m going to I keep watch on your vital functions while you try to sleep this off… What you’ll be when you wake up however, that I’m not even going to speculate on…”

“Th..an..ks…”
Cleric20 passed out – GiX made sure that his link to the AI seal was holding the nothing zone around the cubical securely and began to map each of Cleric’s vital functions. He couldn’t believe the data he was getting. Cleric20’s body was steaming, virtually glowing as his skin melted and reset at a different consistency.

“Well I’ll be re-freaking-cycled” murmured GiX to nobody in particular as Cleric20’s hair suddenly retracted into his skull and then started slowing growing back.

He is phasing in and out of consciousness and is having a vivid flashback of the many arguments he’d witnessed between his friend Brookess and GiX…

“Look, my shiny believerbot - Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it… What do you think about that heh?”

“Brookess, to me that just indicates a complete inability to comprehend the supposed nature of God, who by default, if He did exist would be outside of His ‘created’ universal laws…”

“But if God created me, he would know how I was going to turn out and that I would reject him i.e. He might have created everything that we can detect with our God given intellects (refined by natural selection if you like that theory – why not?) but if that doesn’t limit Him to having to only operate in or obey the scientific laws which He created – can he really be God?”

“But what you missing is grace, you can’t earn it, it’s a gift… Your very ‘humanness’ is God's dwelling place. He knew you were not perfect, so he gives you Grace. God wants you to say, ‘help me,’ not, ‘I can do that myself.’ Through the Grace of God, you will always get another chance to choose a life that is closer to the heart and the purpose God has in mind for you.
“You simply cannot have such a being confined by the same scientific rules that we the ‘created’ are – it would be like a hypothetical (to use that ancient so called evangelical atheistic thinker Dawkins’ way of presenting ideas) sentient artificial intelligence in a PlayProductt game pondering how the ‘creators’ of the game could possibly not be made up of the same ‘game code’ that they are made from and limited by the rules of (thus whilst the creator is able to exist outside of the entire ‘game universe’, the denizens of the game universe cannot understand how the creator is able to ‘break the rules by which they are designed to operate within’).”

It never ended satisfactorily but often made Cleric20 ponder the issues debated between his metallic companion and his best friend.

- - - - - - - -

Outside in the rain drenched L2 street a malfunctioning Godbot is broadcasting it’s metallic voice of salvation – “Behold how the coming events cast their shadows before them, repentance is the only way, choose today, buy three soul downloads for the price of two - experience the rapture of metal saviour in your body…” On and on it drones, at such as heckle raising volume that nobody is trying to stop the couple of neer-do-well kids wearing ‘Mmmm Satan’s Big Dick’ brand Hoodies are following the droid taking it in turns to throw things at it.

Miles above the metal evangelist and its dogged juvenile detractors in one of the many GOV office complexes are the industrious denizens of the GOV Special Committee on Hostile Entities Evaluation and Technology (SCHEET). A panel of SCHEET experts are receiving a presentation from an A.I. professor-droid which is detailing the latest thinking on ‘oversoul split functioning’ – a theory whereby a living entity can split its ‘soul’ into several individual souluiis units. The machine is in full flow but the panel which consists of Grand Information Controller Manu Doyyle, four various ranking GOV life-system A.I.s and Andious - a personal representative from L2’s President Marcus Razour. In the corner of the darkened information chamber are two Gov mech-suited guards, their heavy duty weaponry gleams dully in the gloom.

The panel do not look impressed but the professor-droid / hybrid which looks to all intents and purposes like a blonde woman but is actually one of the most sophisticated and clever thinking machines ever created (and who goes by many official title but likes to be addressed as ‘Professor Winnspear’) is trying to explain the complicated finer points of a ‘master soul engorgement’:

“And so it is that the individual souluiis units can either be clustered in order to form a dominant ‘soul-weave’ or dispersed and held in stasis in a variety of objects. For example throughout most of our incarnational experience here on Earth, each of our souluiis units have at some time been ‘accelerated’ and this is akin to evolutionary development. Spiritual evolution of this type or ‘epigenesis’ is by its nature a less obvious change and the human state that holds this development is responsible for the manifest creative impulses that differentiate us from soulless animals.”

Razour’s representative Andious signals to the room A.I. that he requires a brain stimulation shot and a tiny house wench droid floats over and zaps the neuron stimulus into his headchip. Andious’s Social Rating™ immediately jumps from "*** bored senseless" to “******* fascinated”.

The professor however is suddenly cut off as a renegade hologram message beams into the information room and downloads itself into the form of a massive shiny floating rabbit. Before the house A.I. can delete it the rabbit addresses the panel in a loud booming voice.

“Incoming transmission from the Solid- State of Unification Party, message reads: ‘We will never surrender…’ – have a nice day.”

And with that the holo-rabbit explodes in a shower of sparkling Solid- State of Unification Party logos which twinkle attractively as they float down to the floor of the chamber.

“what the hell was that?” asks Andious who is looking longingly at the fading logos – his neuro chemical stimulation having maxed out at the precise moment that the rogue holo-rabbit delivered it’s message.

Doyyle looks furious, “I thought we had sorted our defences against information terrorism such as that?”
“My God, if they can beam into a protected GOV information room – surely they pose a greater security risk than we have realised?”

Professor Winnspear indicates that she’d like to continue, and the house A.I. addresses the room – “Terribly sorry about that unauthorised info burst, I am tracking the send trace and will have a lock on the location in a few seconds. Would you like to authorise serious aggressive force to by the GOV response unit?”

Although technically Doyyle outranks Andious, due to the nature of his relationship with President Razour he looks for an indication of consent, but it Andious seems oblivious to the announcement from the house A.I. and is still staring at the patch of floor where the Solid- State of Unification Party logos have left ghosted outlines.

“Ahem, erm, Andious, what do you reckon? Should we authorise serious aggressive force against whoever just beamed that message?”

“Er, what – sorry, miles away there for a second. Aggressive force? Sure, what the hell!?”

“Thank you” says the house A.I.

“Professor, please proceed…”

The panel collectively slump as Winnspear recommences: “There are studies which show that the use of BluebarbitrationIX as a catalyst for the epigenesis and that souluiis units can then actually be transferred from individual to individual when both the host donor and recipient are at held at maximum non lethal blood levels of the revolutionary drug.”

Doyyle cuts in: “um professor, I wasn’t aware that BluebarbitrationIX had been cleared for anything other than prisoner trials of FPS (Folded Personality Syndrome) – can I ask where you got this data from?”

“I’m sorry sir, but the BluebarbitrationIX data is serial class A ‘you-don’t-need-to-know’, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, with extreme prejudice and that would just be a shame.” Doyyle doesn’t look very convinced but when Winnspear winks at him he decides not to press the point.

At this very moment, in the L2 Military GOV Hospital ‘This Might Sting A Little’ just a few blocks over from the information room where the ‘oversoul split functioning’ briefing was taking place a very attractive woman is screaming obscenities. “You can kiss my top five looking ass, just give me more pain relief!!” shouts the woman (Harrium Riichardson) and the reason for her outbursts are that she is giving birth.

Crouched in the corner is the imposing figure of Commander Riichardson in his personalised navblack mech-assist battlearmour. “It’s going to be okay honey” he says but unfortunately still has his criminal shock and fear inducing voice modulator in operation – he’d got the call that his wife was in labour whilst on an active gang suppression mission and was still pumped with adrenalin after chasing down several rogue perps who had unwisely tried to resist arrest (using chainsaws). The doctor entered to find his two nurses cowering in fear as if he had just told them that he was going to blow them away, Harrium however was now shouting at her husband – “ turn that stupid thing off you plonker!”

Back in the information room the briefing has ended and the panel have broken up, Andious sidles up to Professor Winnspear, he puts his arm around her and says, “I need your presentation beamed to my office A.I. straight away.” He turns away before the droid can respond and fires up his STREAM caller. Just as he’s about to enter the STREAM however he spots one of the Solid- State of Unification Party logos bursting back into life on the floor and makes a grab for it.

When attempting to use matter transfer STREAM technology it is very risky to only partially enter, especially with the new personal call STREAMS as they are designed to fire the molecules entered only as far as the nearest main STREAM gateway in operation. What happened to Andious was that his left leg and most of his genitalia were already in the STREAM he’s called when he reached out for the Solid- State of Unification Party logo. The result was that his leg and left testicle were torn from him and beamed over to the ‘Now This Might Sting A Little’ where Mrs Riichardson’s doctor had opened a STREAM portal in order to beam in two replacement nurses. The traumatised first nurse Tichenda stepped up to the STREAM only to have a dismembered testicle fired straight into her mouth, very closely followed by an unattached leg which kicked her full in the face – causing her to swallow and choke on the rogue teste.

This was the moment that baby Riichardson entered the world – delivered by his loving father with the use of a well positioned displacer beam whilst around him the doctor and other nurse tried unsuccessfully to revive their fallen colleague.

“Hey my son, welcome to the party” quipped the Commander unwrapping a baby sized mech suit of armour.

- - - - - - - -
TRANSINSTITUTE LECTURE IN HUMANNESS #001

One of L2’s ‘mastermind’ level A.I. minds named Pardeyue is delivering a lecture at the GIREWG’s annual fundraising dinner.

“In the aftermath of any human witnessed event rated ‘serious’ or above, there follows in human beings’ perception of the universe what we term 'Dead Time'. This is a sensory phenomena that appears to trigger cracks in the minds of the humans who witnessed the event – making their basic perception of reality become strained as they struggle try to come to terms with whatever it is that has happened; many people get level 5 fear in a brutal burst straight away, others find it seeping slowly into their consciousness only then to find it there when they least expect it.

“Some feel ‘the hands’, this is the sensory perception that ethereal cold hands are reaching up through the sufferers’ bowels, up into their bellies and further yet up to their hearts - where the hands crush the will of the individual from within and steal their strength. There is historic reference for this in many cultures most it is most prominent amongst the very ancient Babylonians whose term for the ‘hands’ can be translated as “shaking the hand of the seven devils”. This year the students of the Institute have been studying legends relating too the presupposition that ‘Outside in the dark waits the age old beast’, it is truly fascinating I can tell you. It seems that every culture have some reference or name for the hands – there are even unconfirmed reports of machines from the Overworld reporting occurrences of a very similar phenomena.

“So I am slightly hesitant to bring my latest findings to you at such a pleasant occasion as this because by my calculations it is extremely likely that L2 is about to thrown in Dead Time and we will soon experience for ourselves the hands….”

Not many of the assembled great and good of L2 are still paying attention to Pardeyue but TWADE is rapt, record the lecture for future reference.

“Once free, the seven beasts will wreak out disturbed fantasies upon the most susceptible targets – it is foretold that this will all occur following ‘the night of unification’ – and come to pass on the ‘day of carnage’, oh sorry I don’t’ know where that came from? I seem to have mixed up notes a little here…”

It has always, always been just a matter of time before it happened and now as L2 approaches it's Dead Time we will all witness the day of carnage, I want to see it all, you will show it to me through your HUD, I want to you’re your fear and revel in your sensory distortion…

Blackness on your HUD screen clears and then a voice cuts in loud and clear:
“VISUAL INTRUSION IS A CRIME”
An image of Razour sitting in his ‘inner sanctum – private office’ studying his direct feed from TPTB live update channel. The president’s private office is lavish and decadent in the extreme – nobody but Razour is allowed to enter although strangely there are six other chairs arrayed around the room. A strange looking A.I. drone appears to be giving the President a briefing… As the screen pans in you can see that it infodroid Dennister, one of the highest ranking GOV information processing minds and he is indicating a Social Rating of **** Concern.

“The energy levels across L2 are seriously unbalanced, we are getting reports of mass ‘prophecies’ from Godbots across all previous denominations and faiths. There have also been repeated sightings of a new ‘prophet’.”
“Really?” asks Razour, “I haven’t felt any new energy in the area…”
“Is this new prophet human or machine?”

“Errr, well, Lord, the new prophet is classified as mammal but not human.”

“WHAT? How can that be?”

“It’s err, a ‘mouse’, a white mouse to be precise.”

Razour stands up and a tendril of pure darkness shoots out from his right hand snaking into the infodroid which promptly explodes in a shower of darkly glowing fragments.
“I don’t want to hear about a rodent… especially one with a message!?”
“What the hell is this world coming to?” he laughs to himself, it isn’t a pleasant laugh.

“Geneviii, has my 11.00am arrived yet?”
Razour’s personal secretary slinks into the room, she’s modeled on the INT project findings – a cheap clone but equipped with an effectively sizzling body all the same.

“Er, sir – I believe your 11.00am guests have indeed arrived, I erm, stabled their horses in the executive carpark, hope that was okay?

“All but one of them seem to be carrying massive swords, which they would not give up at security. I wasn’t sure if we should try to make them but the first two ‘Violence superthreshold Level’ guard bots that moved to try and disarm them were destroyed – in a manner, not unlike here…” She glances and the glowing remains of infodriod Dennister scattered across the room.

“Thank you Gen, it’s quite alright, I’m expecting my 11.00am guests will want to keep hold of their weapons, they’re new in town and have travelled a very long way to be with us.

“Perhaps you’d be good enough to show them in? Oh and maybe we can salvage Dennister’s core chip from this mess…” He looks doubtfully at the smouldering pieces of infodroid…

“Of course sit, right away!”

- - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile back at the GIREWG Institute Pardeyue is just wrapping up:

“As this case study vocal recording of a recently deceased brain fade demonstrates:”

‘My rationale and intellect flop uselessly within me, inability is my master. Repercussions from another time shock my senses but right now I couldn't tell you any of what is going on.
‘Fear is losing hold as the scratching lessens, the scratching on my subconscious from within like something trying to get out of me. It has lessened too for the moment, maybe it is now free? Perhaps rather, resting, regaining its strength. I am sure of but one thing, when I close my eyes all I can see are their swords, and they are coming for me. All I can hear is the snarls of demons. And then in a kind of window opening in my mind's eye I see a scene of carnage.’

“I think my friends that you’ll agree -

It is another red tinged night over L2, but isn't it always?
Are you getting used to this watching, waiting, anticipating? As one incoming transmission blurs into the next, you are almost there- stick with it and maybe it will even begin to make sense?

Interference here – a blurry picture, kind of like back in the days before high definition channels… An odd noise in a gloomy surrounding… Again the noise, it seems to be metallic, mixed with undeniable ‘squelch’ of punctured biomatter.
The scene clears and it prone body can be seen, a droid hovers over it holding an industrial strength bolter in a displacer beam, it fires another bolt into the form beneath it. The shockwave echoes around this anonymous warehouse; frosty, dark, abandoned but for the droid and two rent a thugs standing over the prone man who is bound and slumped unconscious at their feet. Another perfectly round hole appeared in the man’s leg, filling immediately with crimson blood which splashes over into the quickly spreading pool in which the man lies. Demons drip from his mind as fast as the life blood from his body. Everything is coming to an end for this one.
“Can you believe he talking?” thug one asked thug two, but before he can answer the metallic voice of the droid pipes up.
“Just tell us who else knows anything about the DMC findings? Confessing might even save you...”
It was my spirit in that bolter the thugs were using and I couldn’t help it, it was just too good an opportunity to miss! He died from loss of blood before he told me what I wanted to hear and now, annoyingly, is beyond my reach, but that might yet change… I have plans to try and reclaim those souls who have found sanctuary, to bring them down and terrorise them again – nothing can be safe from me, neither in life nor in death… No one who has any knowledge of the DMC findings can be allowed to survive.

Back at the skyscreen the titles are coming up on another show - BAD MEN WITH BIG GUNS

The opening scene is a winner:
some rather obvious, but seriously tooled up heavies in long coats barely concealing mech assist bodysuits approach the lead man, who is standing lost in wonder - gaping at the incredible backside of the woman in front of him (she is played by INT, in her first screen role) making her way up the shuttle station platform.
Gort Willis as his character name appears to be from the label on his hand luggage looks up and makes the heavies straight away. “It’s something in the eyes” he will tell the woman later after having made vigorously passionate love to her, “the eyes and the nasty looking, sword shaped bulges in their coats…”
It happens fast, to the thundering beats of a new rock sensation - the two heavies unsheathe and slash out with their sabres - one arcing high to split Gort’s head, the other sweeping low in order to run him though should he try to duck out from under the high blade. It all happens so incredibly fast that the film maker thoughtfully slips the scene into ultra slow motion. This Director is an A.I. named SCHberg48 and it wants us to relish every second of this high definition attack.
As the blades leap towards him from behind, Gort pulls two chunky hand guns from his belt - at the same time twisting into a graceful yet very cool looking sideways roll which neatly avoids both the blade strikes.
Before the two assailants can even register that they have missed, Gort is already antique pumping burning lead into their respective faces. It’s almost as if they’re collective final thoughts of anger, rage and disappointment are written in the heavy splatter of brains and blood they leave on the platform wall as both their heads are decimated. “Should have worn the bullet proof helmets perhaps?” quips Gort.
Back to real time, the woman (with the nice bum) is screaming and trying to crawl away from the violent deaths behind her as the main force of heavies begin to rake the platform with huge automatic machine guns. Without pausing, Gort pulls one of the headless initial assailants over him who begins to look disturbingly animated as he absorbs hundreds of rounds from the hard rain of bullets. The frantic amount of fire power being directed at Gort is astronomical. The bullets and shell casings sparkle in a myriad of flashing death. Gort’s return fire however is equally hard, and a lot more accurate, hitting at least three of the heavies with his first volley - the heavies die in showers of crimson special effects, their body armour no match for Gort’s personally ‘tweaked’ darkmatter ammo.
As the dying assailants drop to the ground Gort finds time to grab the hand of the crawling woman and pull her behind the shelter of a deactivated cleaner droid. Gort leans around the droid and puts down another selection of baddies who are firing indiscriminately at everything in his general direction. They die squealing most un-heroically and in frighteningly close, close ups.
Sensing the moment is right, Gort breaks for the exit with the woman in tow, managing to dodge all but one of the deluge of bullets that are Swiss cheesing the station.
Gort’s glancing wound actually looks good as it draws blood from his heavily muscled shoulder. Enraged by having to watch their target walk virtually unscathed through their best efforts the heavies rush forward only to see Gort’s wounded arm reappear from the exit and roll a high yield incendiary device towards them. The explosion is truly magnificent and levels the entire station, cremating the entire enemy team (and hundreds of innocent bystanders). The silhouette of Gort kissing the woman against the backdrop of the blast is enough to bring tears to the most ardent sceptic’s eyes.
“You’re really cool” breathes the woman, Gort just ushers her into his BH Turbo NeoBentley and roars away while the area becomes an emergency services car-park.
The closing scene is of Gort making love to the woman with the mind-blowing climax sequence back in ultra slow motion - taking place before the hotel room’s flickering screen which is showing a report of the ‘terrorist incident’ at the train station earlier in the evening.
- - - - - - -

The ‘agent of Chaille’ had been greatly troubled ever since Razour’s rise to prominence – it was as if he could sense the demonic nature of the L2’s President. A sentence had kept repeating itself in his mind whenever he had prayed for clarity about Razour’s nature, it was ‘everyone will bow to Errai, the Anti-Word…’

A slow burning smog hung in the air in an unnatural stillness that heralded the coming of a seriously evil night. It was late evening when a hurricane strength dark wind tore through the megastreets of L2. Marcus Razour didn’t like to travel with ostentatious numbers of security with him, many of his sub-ministers deemed him foolhardy to allow or invite possible assassination attempts by often travelling alone or with only his closest advisors (Andious and Okssanais). But amazingly there were few recorded attacks on the Prime Minister and his arrogant attitude of invincibility was fast spawning legends as to how any who opposed him came to seriously sticky ends, even before attempting to take him out…
The ‘agent’ of Revd Chaille was leading worship for his massive Free Church congregation’s on the evening when he was to write his name in such bold print in the records of L2 that made all of his previous and subsequent ventures become mere footnotes.
Razour, his hand picked execution squad of BattleMaGes and six darkly armoured entities on horseback arrived at the Chaille church complex (a vast collection of buildings that encompassed the area miles above what had once been known as Smithfield’s Meat Market). At his signal the maGe squad commander ‘Jocarron’ approached the main entrance and with a flick of his hand tore the reinforced doors from their hinges as a massive burst of unnatural energy blazed from his Power-Gauntlet. “After you my lord,” he mind signalled – Razour swept through the burning reception and burst into the massive main chamber, making his way straight up to the front where Chaille’s ‘agent’ had turned to see what the disturbance was. The ‘agent’ welcomed their unexpected guest warmly despite every spiritual fibre of his being warning him that this man before him was his mortal enemy.

In the street the six black suited riders seemed to have vanished into the shadows.

Razour’s battle maGes hung back as he forcefully commandeered the voice projector from the church leader who was noting that maGes were moving to take up positions guarding the two exits.

“Mr President – we are honoured, to what do we owe the pleasure of your presence this evening? Have you come to join us in worship?” the ‘agent’ asked.

“BE SILENT! I am here to show these people that you are leading them astray… For too long have you spewed lies in my city!
I don’t normally get quite so ‘hand’s on’ but I feel that I have to make an example here. This is what will happen – we will demonstrate to the world right here, right now that there is but one true spiritual power and it is the God of the GWC the all powerful Godhead of SOnni… not your ‘Christian’ carpenter’s boy Jesus.”

Chaille’s ‘agent’ had begun praying harder than he ever had in his life but in the face of Razour’s crackling malevolent and supremely confident stare his faith was faltering inexplicably… “Um, right, erm you know that it is written that ‘you shall not test the Lord your God’…?”

“But reverend Chaille, my ‘God’ is more than happy to show his power –surely you are not afraid to follow in the footsteps of one of the greatest prophets? Wasn’t it Elijah from your Old Testament who in his time called: 'How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.'”?

“Has your God lost his power to show his hand?”

“Of course you can simply refuse and I will denounce you here and now as traitors and let the maGes exterminate you and all of your followers as an example to others…

“I see I have no choice…” stammered the ‘agent’ of Chaille,

“What exactly will this ‘demonstration’ take the form of?”

“Why, I like tradition as much as the next President of a super powered metropolis.” Quipped Razour, “We should both now make a sacrifice to our ‘Gods’ – indeed let us take the example of Elijah when he supposedly defeated the prophets of his rival ‘god’… You remember, I can see it in your eyes. I propose we call for a fire consumption offering… Whoever’s God can send fire this very night to consume our sacrifices – live in the glare of the impartial infoweb cameras… They shall be proclaimed the ‘true God’ and all must follow them, any who oppose will forfeit their lives.”

The ‘agent’ bristled and found anger coursing through him, he shouted “But this will mean you will have to disband the GWC? Surely you risk much by confronting the true God Jehovah!”

“We shall see…” countered Razour, “I believe tonight will see your freakish devotion to those ancient and out dated teachings come to an end… a rather abrupt end at that!?”

“So be it” conceded the ‘agent’, he felt his strength, his very life force was draining from him.

“As in the dark prehistory, so we will have now. Prepare two alters, bring a live sacrifice – the details of which I will announce to the infoweb at an official Presidential Press Conference (PPC) in just an hour. We shall conduct the demonstration at midnight L2GMT. No one is to leave this place until that time. All communications from this area are being jammed until further notice.”

Outside a PPC briefing stage had been erected and Razour swept out of the damaged exit leaving his maGes in place. Several scuffles broke out; one woman worshipper grabbed her young child, held her close and made a break for the door in Razour’s path. Jocarron was ready to make an example of any such behaviour and he unleashed a bolt of unnatural energy directly into the running woman’s face. The vile antimatter energy bolt ripped through her and her child, cutting them both down before they had even stepped through the closing door. Their broken twisted bodies fell entwined and fused together, a mass of smoking anguish, melted almost beyond recognition. One of the impassive maGes lifted them with some kind of displacer and slammed the macabre tableau of broken mother and child into the wall above the threshold, where they stayed, a grisly deterrent to ward off other potential escapees.

The Presidential Press Conference was already underway, it was a Razour fixed the news gathering bots with his most winning smile, and reiterated the terms of the unusual challenge he’d laid down to Chaille and in reality any remaining religious views which in any way contravened the GWC’s official line.
L2AllNews Anchorbot ‘Nallath’ was first to register his question:
“Mr President, can you please elaborate on the nature of the mentioned ‘live sacrifice’ proposed?”

“Thank you, indeed I will, the live sacrifice must be something that is valued both by the misled followers gathered in the Chaille building and the millions of GWC devout world-wide. It will be the someone of merit from both camps, a willing martyr, for the Chaille camp I have been informed that it will be Elder Steelle, who I’m sure many of you remember for his tireless (if somewhat futile) campaigning for disadvantaged young people. From the L2 Gov I have accepted the brave voluntary services of one of my most valued and highly decorated maGe veterans Jocarron.”

The L2AllNews Anchorbot registered a supplemental follow up question:
“Mr President – what will happen if both sacrifices are left unconsumed / or both are destroyed?”

“Ah – we’ll come to that should it happen, but I am convinced that we’ll not see either of those outcomes… Please, for any other questions check my FAQ site or beam my personal secretary Geneviii, I will invite you inside to set up shortly. Tonight is to be known for the records as ‘The night of unification’.”
Then he added under his breath “and tomorrow will see the fabled ‘day of carnage’…”

One of the camera feeds has focussed on Jocarron who is standing just behind the PPC platform and despite his features being hidden behind his fear inducing battlehelmet, his body language is suggesting that he might not have been quite such a willing volunteer martyr as the President had just suggested…

- - - - - - - - - - -

“You must remember that summer of ’49 eh? The freak weather that ravaged was really beginning to ramp up its disastrous effects on the planet, the galactic cricket ashes being recaptured by the Englishmen of L2 from the Aussie / Martian deportee and of course those fabulous rampant outbreaks of lethal non-religious persecution against atheists? Ah I’ll never forget those mass burnings of secularist literature, Dawkins memorabilia and the non-believer hunts led by that sexy machine… what the hell was it called again?”
The aging Captain Addams is sitting in the pleasure massage zone of his penthouse suite talking with an old colleague Robb Man from the L2RAF on lightbeam-phone.

“Indeed! Old boy you mean the semi deity god machine known as ‘form thing 606’ if I’m not mistaken?”

“Ah yes, so I do – that crazy thing created by an insane collaboration of religious machine scientists who had somehow managed to harness the radical biochemical ‘lifewaves’ first detected beaming in from deep space during the building of L2’s extensive satellite network. Quite how or why they managed to channel them into an ancient chrome sculpture of the 21st Century actress Keira Knightley to create an indestructible overlord killing machine was never really ascertained was it?
“But ‘form thing 606’ became a ruthless destroyer of anything that refused to acknowledge the existence of a ‘god’ and she soon built up a devout following of homicidal zealots both human and robotic alike. All complete bollocks of course if you ask me but it took a heavy toll on those godless French bastards that’s for sure when a holy safari was conducted throughout the country…”

“Sorry, what was the question again?”

“Bye for now old boy, my 3pm has just arrived.”
In the background Robb can see a number of scorchingly attractive young women disrobing and oiling themselves up.

“Errm, yes cheerio mate – looks like you’re going to have some fun?”

“Oh it’s not fun, this is my GOV prescribed three girl all body backrub – devil of nuisance really but you know how my back plays me up sometimes!?”

“Oh right, yes, well see you soon you old dog!”

The screen flicks off and one of the unclad girls asks Addams, “That sounded rather unpleasant – that business with a killer machine? I vaguely remember doing something about that in history class last year, you weren’t actually involved in any of it at all were you?”

“Why sweet girl, I should bloody well say so! Dear me young lady, you wouldn’t believe the half of it if I told you!”

“Oh Captain, you know how much I like you hear about your heroics though, it makes me feel all funny – please won’t you tell me what happened? We all want to hear, you can tell us while we rub you down.”

“Ah, very well. It was one of those days when you feel good to be alive. I’d just taken delivery of a Ferrari BHT ‘Ambivalent’ roadster – gosh that was quite a car I can tell you!
So there I was taking the new motor for a spin with some rather lovely young lady along for the ride, yes it’s as clear as day even now the way that her sheer skintight jumpsuit made every curvy bit of her shimmy and shine but I forget her name, might have been Julia something? Nevermind...

“We must have been heading north into the deserted Scottish wilderness (it was after all only a few years since the Scots had been forcefully evicted and shipped off to work en mass in the lunar low orbit platforms). Anyway, we stopped by some scenic Loch for a bit of lunch and spot of slap and tickle in the crisp clear water. But no sooner had we properly worn each other out than I noticed a flotilla of landing crafts approaching from the far end of the Loch. Leading this ominous looking collection of troop carriers was the damndest thing – a bloody walking statue that looked like that foxiest actress of days gone by as I said before.

“Well I barely had time to pull on my A.I. Calvin Klein’s before the statue orders her troops to attack! She was shouting something about godless fornication but before I could explain that I was neoBaptist the zealot troops had opened fire! The young lady I was with had managed to get into the car so I leapt in too and we sped off back towards the road – those armour piercing rounds really play havoc with the paintwork I tell you.
Once I’d cleared the Loch I dropped off my young ladyfriend and made sure she was OK, I retrieved my semi sentient assault rifle from the Ferrari’s trunk – you just never know when you might need one to hand a friend had once told me- might have been Robb actually but you know he was jolly well right!

“I fired up the roadster’s 20Litre engine – you know that was one of those that ran on ‘reburnt fuel’? I decided that I’d head back to teach the robotic menace and her antisocial troopers a lesson. As I rounded the corner towards the Loch I could see that most of them were busy unloading some serious looking hardware from their landing craft. The robot chic was watching her minions work with her back to me so I floored the gas and took her by surprise from behind. The car was torn apart from the impact with her sculpted metal ass and I had to leap clear as my lovely Ferrari exploded in an almighty fireball which took out quite a number of the zealots and managed to ignite some of their hardware which also exploded!
The thing was that the darned robot or ‘form thing 606’ as I then realised it was, hadn’t been damaged at all by the impact or the explosions. It turned towards me and called for the last few of her followers to bring her my head. Unfortunately for them, my gun and my A.I. pants had already been running through the projected responses and so we were ready for them. I dispatched each and every one in a matter of seconds with clean headshots, but that still left the robot and I was not going to let her get away with ruining my afternoon!

“I instinctively reached for my emergency plasma grenade but realised that even the plasma core heat probably wouldn’t be enough to take that metal bitch down but luckily my gun (on advice from my underware it transpired) had fitted itself with an emergency prototype ‘micro black hole generation’. Of course you know how black holes are formed, normally when a massive star collapses and falls prey to its own gravity because its core is so unimaginably heavy? Anyway, the result is that all ‘matter’ around it falls in on itself until everything last bit is sucked into what scientists term a ‘singularity’. These are points where gravity becomes infinite and yet the singularity itself has zero volume! Basically the micro black hole is something so small and yet so dense that it can't actually exist in our normal universe, so don’t ask me how the smart gun had managed to find such a tasty piece of prototype kit... But because nothing, not time or space can escape once it is close enough to a singularity’s centre (a point known as the Schwartzschild Radius) – and at the risk of being a little technical here – you can work out a Schwartzschild solution for the singularity of a black hole, all you need is to know the non-zero cosmological constant of the equation… So basically if you’re close enough to a black hole – even a micro one, you’d need to be able to travel at the speed of light to escape from it and not even a living indestructible overlord killing machine in the shape of Keira Knightley can move that quickly.

“So I fired off the micro black hole inducer right by the robot’s pretty head and it worked a treat. Form thing 606 was sucked into the tiny singularity never to be seen again. And just to be on the safe side, I used the wreckage from my roadster to make a temporal holding zone around the micro black hole, just like I’d been taught back in Astro Scouts as a boy.

“Now I come to think about it, that micro black hole is probably still there at the bottom of that Scottish Loch somewhere where I threw it, ah well, no harm done I believe.
And so that was how I inadvertently put an end to the reign of terror that the form thing 606 and her zealots had wrought on the world.”

“Crumbs, that’s an amazing tale Captain… I didn’t understand much of that but I feel need to thank you in some special way for your bravery back then – is there anything at all I could do to make you happier?”

Addams turns around and looks the three naked females up and down, Well… now you come to mention it…”

“Will anyone heed the prophets of doom?”

Elemental Perception 06
– Heavy duty sin and serious repercussions

The apartment is in darkness apart from one room, from there a rhythmic slapping noise is echoing around the place.
SMACK, SMACK, SMACK - “Mmmoorrroopphhh!”
“Mmmm Mr – please, I can’t take this any more!” the girl who had up until that point been orally pleasuring him from her inverted position in a too tight rubber dress managed to shout.
The less rubber-coated second girl looked exhausted too, LDaviies thought that it was time to move on so he rolled the brunette off his back and wondered off towards the shower, cracking open a NerfBeer and firing up an illegal self-lighting cig en route. The advice he’s taken from his old schoolmate Brrookes to “never get messy in your own pad,” was, he pondered as he chucked the empty NerfBeer can into the sink and began to urinate on it – “very sage”. In the shower, as he soaped his swollen tackle and wondered how long it would take the girl’s robo cleaners to get that bed clean…
He was even contemplating untying the girls as he dried himself off and got dressed but he thought that it might teach the naïve young things a lesson if he left them too it so decided that a quick exit would be better.
“I’ll call you sometime,” he called as he helped himself to the girls’ credchips on his way out. They both cursing loudly whilst busy trying to untie themselves.
LDaviies had long got past the point of feeling in any way bad for anything he did, it was since he’d had his Soul upgrade, everything, however mean just seemed to be a bit of fun… He was glad to get out into the street, for once the semi clean recycled air actually tasted good in his machine-assist operated lungs.
He patched a thought call: “Ah Brookess. Yeah I’m in NeoSoho, I just had an awesome physical encounter with those two Rogerrs sisters, if you know what I mean? Hhmm? Very nice actually, not bad technique either, gonna go with an 8 out of 10, so where are you at?”
The response from Brookess was garbled which probably meant that his mate was inebriated to the point that he could talk or even to such an extent that his headchip wasn’t functioning.
“Hope you’re having a good one mate, catch ya later.”
It was a rare cool, crisp early L2 morning, there was an unusual burst of sunlight being channelled into the area which looked odd as on either side as soon as the beam stopped it was replaced with the usual toxic drizzle but even the artificially guided sunlight did little to relieve the sense of menace that stalked the mean streets. NeoSoho was fast gaining a reputation for being ‘cursed’. People and A.I.s had been disappearing at an alarming rate, even the gangs were getting twitchy – the LDaviies clocked his surroundings more closely and suddenly wasn’t feeling so good.
He felt someone watching him and spun around scanning for the threat, he had relied on his wits for long enough to trust them on feelings like this. He saw a STREAM portal operator coming round the corner of Calvinnhobbes Street and without waiting for whoever was watching him to catch up he dived in and was immediately transported to his workplace FICM.
His immediate feelings of relief at getting back to the safety of his design studio were fleeting because things were serious not right. Every surface was covered in a deep layer of black dust, the air itself was dense with an unnatural tangible darkness.
“House A.I., is anyone else here?” LDaviies called.
“Yes, you have a visitor. He is waiting for you at your workstation…”
“What? It’s 5.30am! How long has he been waiting?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have that information…”

“How’s that possible? What the fuc..?”

A shadowy figure approaches who appears to be carrying a massive sword. “Hello, Mr LDaviies, I’ve got a favour to ask you.”
LDaviies is severely flustered; he can’t take his eyes from the sword which is crackling with some kind of unnatural energy.

“I know you from somewhere…” He is wracking his brain because he has definitely seen this sword-wielding stranger before but it’s just not coming back to him.

“Oh, yeah, you probably recognise me from my Unlimited exploits a while back – you might recall my name… Landdsman.”

“That can’t be… he’s / your um, dead!?” LDaviies’ SocialRating has flipped to ****Panicked.
“Yeah, funny thing that… Seems it wasn’t a permanent deal… And now I have a little job to complete and I need your help...”
LDaviies is freaked, he can’t believe what he’s being told but somehow he knows it’s true.
The Powers That Be are watching this encounter closely – the reappearance of Landdsman has sent betting levels through the roof on his next move.
“I need you to design me some armour including a death mask, seeing as even you recognised me, I’ll be looking for something that looks cool but also invokes the right sense of ‘menace’.

“Or I could just kill you and let you find out first hand what the whole ‘being dead’ deal is like?”

“It’s a choice – of sorts.”

“I, erm, I er, can I think about it?” says LDaviies who is backing away and signalling to the House A.I. to call a STREAM portal for him.

“NO!!” shouts Landdsman and he draws his sword from the scabbard – it has a black blade which is barely visible in the unnatural gloom. With inhuman speed Landdsman is behind LDaviies and the blade of the sword is pressing into the designer’s neck.
LDaviies yelps as he feels some kind of acidic burn from the blade begin to eat into the skin of his throat.

“Damn, yeah, OK, armour and a mask… I’m you’re man. I’m on it…”

“That’s what I wanted to hear…” whispers Landdsman and sheaths the sword.

“Have some designs ready for me by midnight tonight, I’ll find you. Tell anyone about this and I’ll still find you, only it won’t be so nice for you when I do…”

And suddenly he is gone, the lights crackle and blaze for a second before resuming their ambient settings. The black dust has disappeared and everything looks and feels normal again.

“House A.I., what the hell just happened?”

“Hi, good morning, there may have been a brief power spike but please do not fear – as I can see you’re registering ****Fearing for your life – is there something I can help with? Are you OK?”

“No House, I’m pretty far from being OK, just tell me HAS HE GONE?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean, there hasn’t been anyone here since 19.30pm last night when Juiq was the last to check out.”

“That’s not possible… Are you sure?”

“I am hardwired to security standards 990AAA – my testimony is admissible in any court of justice, Yes… You just arrived and are the first person to access the building since last night.”

“Oh…kay… Thanks” LDaviies decides that he needs to go get some stimulant ease – his head is throbbing insanely, he must have been having an evil-dog flashback. He checks himself in the restroom mirror field and double takes when he spots the acid burn marks on his neck…

- - - - - - - - - - -

Standing in a veritable monsoon of dirty L2 rain, chilled to the bone and miles from your home, you’re hoping that this must just be a bad dog dream but it feels so real that it’s impossible to tell. You open your hand and find that there is an antique looking micro chip delicately sitting in your palm. It is so small you can only just make it out against the slick wet pink of your inner hand. A matt black processor with a three digit code across the top stands like a miniature, six legged table on the inside curve of your palm, rainwater pooling under it and threatening to sweep it away in the dirty stream running off onto the street.
As you stare, the tiny 'legs' begin to sink into your flesh, punching through your skin, their sharp pin pricks become an escalating pain as the chip itself starts to sink in. You begin to scratch desperately at the smooth surface but it is already too deeply embedded.
“This is just a bad trip”, you say, your SocialRatingtm is indicating SCARED AND CONFUSED *****.
Blood wells up from around the fast disappearing chip, mixing with the dirty rain, running over your wrist and dripping into the puddles. A picture of the old fabled Christ having a really bad time with some nails blinks into your drunken minds eye, the chip however is no nail and you are not being crucified, in fact your hand does not even hurt now and the blood has stopped already. For a second you black out and when you open your eyes there is some kind of interface hanging superimposed over your vision.

Somehow you know what has happened, there is only one explanation for it, before you pass out again, you feel yourself being taken over, your muscles tensing and relaxing to orders that are not your own. Digits flash up on the interface inside your eyes, random information it seems, being played directly through you cornea. The chip is down-loading instructions into your central nervous system.
Your last conscious act as yourself is to fear, everything from now on you know you will view and experience as a puppet, controlled by another, by someone you fear more than anything in the world…
That is when your personality is wiped and you see a face pop up on your IEI (Internal Eye Interface), she is the most incredible looking woman you’ve ever seen and she seems to having a drink with someone who you do not recognise but who is tagged in the HUD display as ‘Cleric’. Instructions, map locations and sensory upgrades are pouring through your mind faster than you can quite comprehend… For some reason you look down at your palm and you’re holding a large sword…
- - - - - - - - - - -

Field log of A.I. supersemblence subordinate Hoff Hollder
L2DMC class ‘Phreaker’

It was whilst processing the infinite variable of the L2DMC’s Dark Matter field analysis findings that I first came across the hidden anomalies. I have extracted and recorded them as instructed by my research mentor TWADE in a standard model gauge filing system.

From the data available I deduce that there is a very real likelihood that WIMPs (WIMP: weakly interacting massive particles) have been storing more information than any of us thought possible – and of course entirely without our knowledge. These hidden dark matter thermal relics making some interesting reading, I have marked several for inclusion especially for my morbid humanity study (I am still seeking help for my sex fascination addiction – which I am told is my unique curse amongst my kind).

Thermal Relic ~100.1
:be aware this is a restricted file – unauthorised reading of this material is punishable offence:

Sound input from a male source, possibly the famed L2 official information/word editor Dukkes:
“We sit here watching as if nothing of importance was occurring, it’s all we can do. Nobody has the inclination to actually ‘do’ anything, we are sapped of morale, devoid of will, unable to motivate ourselves beyond our life support systems...”
*There is static / or untranslatable material at this point which lasts for approximately 3.1 seconds*.
“… dead days… Does anybody care? Is there a solution?” *more interference here*
“Life has been argued as being having been a nothing more than a wondrous chemical accident – a process begun with the end result of decay and decomposition.”
“I can’t believe that we humans are anything more than that. We have nothing beyond our mortal existence, there is no ‘otherworld’, myths do nothing but confuse the populace.”

Second sound input from a female source, possibly the L2 Grand wordsmith Coldfield:
“Quit with the mumbo jumbo Dukkes, I’ve looked over the manifesto document produced by the team and it is grossly inadequate in every conceivable way… The team must join me in the Module tonight and we will stay there for as long as it takes to get the copy… right!”

*There is static / or untranslatable material at this point – best reproduction of the badly degraded sound here follows…*

Source unknown / unidentifiable: “Yo… an.. tick.. tha.. .p .ur. …”

The A.I. of Overworld Module seems to have scrambled the relic’s sound at this point – and from the data-records of the time it seems that due to unscheduled engineering works the editorial module underwent a chronic atmosphere drop that evening. As the team worked on a stream of rewrites under Coldfield’s direction, the moorings of the module broke loose, causing the module to drift off into orbit unbeknownst to the team inside. And because the A.I. had been taken offline in order to channel its processing power into finding ‘the perfect page layout’ – the team perished in the cold dark vacuum of infinite space. The module was found by a deep space salvage team of the Nostromo before they later ran into some classified trouble. The salvage team found more than a hundred drafts of the manifesto document in the memory banks of the module, it seemed that Coldfield’s team had continued to work on the document even after they became aware of their mortal predicament. But some conjecture occurred that Coldfield might have died at the hands of one of the team - possibly even Dukkes - at some point before the oxygen ran out... Her body was found floating in the zero gravity with multiple copies of the ill fated manifesto document wedged into her mouth, ears and other orifices…

- - - - - - - - -
Waking slowly, enjoying the few moments of sleep languor, Cleric20 realised he wasn’t alone in his huge black bed. Finding someone he didn’t know naked and asleep in bed with him was something he was getting more and more used to even if GiX didn’t approve. It had been some time now since his wife had been taken, the memory of which prompted him to share his bed with anything vaguely female with a pulse.
The catatonic stupor he religiously put himself into helped a little but only for a short while. Blocking out pain had been part of his I.F. training, it hadn’t worked with his wife, they had really gotten to him but he was working on pretending that he didn’t care.
On the main screen of Cleric20’s apartment a grinning news info man spat the latest updates through his perfect permanent grin. He was currently explaining that L2GOV forces were clearing a small group of renegade A.I.s who had aligned themselves with the house mind of a subversive stronghold named HBC. The A.I.s were holed up in the south coastal HErnic Bay where an illegal religious cult had denounced the GWC. A vert took his place, a hideous horned head of a dragon laughing hysterically appeared. The head was suddenly severed by a flaming white sword held by a beautiful young child, a picture of innocence in a simple white robe. As the horned head bounced away out of the picture the child smiled sweetly towards the camera and said
“We live in the last days.”
As the image fades out a voice over announced:
“Join the GWC, your only hope of salvation.”
“Salvation? Who needs it?” asks the woman in Cleric20’s bed.
“We all do apparently”, replied Cleric20 turning to look at her.
“Look I've got to go, you can just make sure the door shuts when you leave. I'll, oh my God – you’re INT!!??”
It wasn't a very romantic 'morning after' line but Cleric20 had used them all and this was one that tended to get the least hassle in return. Except that last part about INT…
Behind him the screen babbled “The streets are getting too mean, everybody's out to get you and it's just going to get worse, GWC is the answer.”

“Are you really? Um, is it you?” Cleric20 blurts, signalling for GiX.
“Yes, it’s really me,” replies INT and she looks unbelievably sexy even covered in Cleric20’s bedclothes, “I better get going if you don’t want me to stay?”

- - - - - - - - -

Siam M’diitch was panicked… His briefing on the DMC findings had not gone well and now he was suffering from an irrational condition he could only link to his having a complete mental breakdown… The voice was in his head, it was saying crazy things like “you must entice the little ones and they will be ours. It is so much less time and effort to 'buy' their small affections with petty favours or trinkets, rather than the usual business of ensnaring, bribing and terrorising complicity from those who have developed 'minds of their own'.”

It was as if there were spirits bouncing in and out of his mind, he was at their mercy, they were making him freak out. Everything began to talk to him, he wandered into dreams of huge spectral trees in wide glades where massive black dogs ran lose and shadows hid predatory eyes. Dreaming of things even though he had never actually seen them, he was losing it for sure.

“You know you want to kill… Why not kill yourself and save the world the trouble?”

The voice was clear. The voice was real. The voice was right inside his head and was telling him to do things, things he really didn’t want to. He couldn't stand its insidious instructions any longer. "What the hell is going on?" he cried.

“Find them, touch them, kill them, eat them…”

Pounding through the dark wet streets, M’diitch had just dashed out of his apartment shortly after getting back from the briefing. His long legged wife and two doe eyed kids were freaked out as he grabbed his coat and bolted for the door without even a word of explanation. Now his breath streaming from him and the cold, L2 night air was burning his lungs, he ran from the darkness as if running from the devil himself. Stumbling now and splashing into large pools of shimmering muddy water, slipping and bulking as the pain level shot upwards, his fitness never having been his primary concern; the burning sensation in his every muscle threatens to make him fall.

The Mover Droid Massive Vehicle accelerates and slides around a wet corner, back end breaking away as the A.I. controls tug the wheel trying to pull out of the skid. At any other time the driverunit may have held it but a man has run into the road, directly into the van's path.

Blazing light and a mad baby's shrieking. A rhino charge impact followed by a spinning flight through the window display of a ‘We Got What You Want’ shop. A crashing end to life, quick but painful and heavy on the nexglass . Disturbed automated manikins look down at M’diitch's broken body which is impaled by shafts of glass and had come to rest face down in the broken antique DVD collectors pieces – a copy of Top Gun 12: ‘Zombie Maverick vs Captain Addams’ embedded in his forehead.

The Mover Droid Massive Vehicle (MDMV) struck M’diitch head on and as he flew backwards into the shop window-front, it engaged its deadlock brakes, swerved and ploughed into a row of parked vehicles smashing the first two onto the pavement and mounting the third (a sports coupe). The wheels sunk through the material roof causing the MDMV to overturn and crash sideways into the GOVBank credit dispenser. As the howling alarm burst into life the MDMV exploded as the punctured fuel cell's contents poured over the shorting electrical wires of security systems repulsion attachments. Flaming high currency notes launched upwards by the force of the blast fell like glowing petals on the street that had just claimed two lives. Something watching in the darkness smiles.

“You had better be joking!” shouted Allens the dispatch comm operator.
“That delivery has to be there before midnight - if it's late, I’m going to have you unplugged.”

The MDMV control unit replied “OK, I hear you. Trust me - it'll be there,” and gunned the engine into ‘serious time to make up’ mode. It was 11:34pm and he was at least 50 klicks from the L2 final drop off, he was going to have to floor it all the way.

Now, 45 minutes later the control unit’s A.I. consciousness was shutting down. Much like the human victim he had just hit whose body had been blown apart and burnt beyond recognition by secondary solutions. His face was still spitting and bubbling along the lines of overcooked pork ribs as the emergency services arrived.

His soul, now that was another matter entirely.

- - - - - - - - -

On the SkyScreen Captain Addams is at it again…

As the diffusing banks of pixel smog roll back, a massive erection is revealed. This fortress like tower stands upwards to an unbelievable height, rumour is that the top of it is coated in perma-ice and is so high that there is no discernable atmosphere. Yes the L2RAF’s retirement tower was quite something to behold, even in the utterly polluted air that swirled rich with every type of toxin – both physical and screen-burn pixel induced.

On one of the luxury observation suite balconies sits a solitary figure, wrapped in a self powered massage blanket and sucking on a military grade Niño-cigar, Captain Addams is watching the sunset, a look of unalloyed pleasure etched into his rugged features.

To one side of the Captain is a bank of ultra high definition screens which are spooling live feeds from the L2 Galactic Infestations Research and Early Warning Group (GIREWG). This GOV eyes only grade ‘need to know’ footage is broken only every few seconds by adverts for various GOV sponsored products. The streaming starlight bounce footage is suddenly replaced by a very attractive red haired woman wearing only a pair of micro panties, she is smiling in rapture and sipping a cup of steaming beverage. The camera pans across her amazingly pert body, lingering on her breasts before focussing on the logo of the drink on her cup – almost as if the camera operator had just remembered why they were shooting the commercial. The logo is of a battle-powerarmoured figure kicking a civilian in the face – the name of the brand is ‘HK Coffee’ – for when only a kick in the head from a serious cup of coffee will do! Following the strap line a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ warning is flashed up on the screen that reads – L2 GOV accepts no liability for deaths from hyper stimulation caused by drinking Head Kick Coffee… Captain Addams smiles to himself as his nano-enhanced vision allows him to read the warning that for many would have appeared as just a flicker on the screen. Suddenly, prominently across at least half of the screens comes a distorted face, unspeakably evil looking with thoroughly demented eyes reeking madness. Without warning it speaks and the Captain almost drops his Niño-cigar in surprise.

“aaaAAAAddams…” the twisted monstrous face bellows in a sinister tone, “what did you do with it?”

Captain Addams leaps to his feet – surprisingly agile for man of his advanced years, his high powered self-massage blanket slips from his shoulders and is carried away on the cool breeze. He turns to face the menacing apparition on the screens, his stance strong, his composure total, despite being as naked as the day he was born.

“Hello Barrheamo old chap, I wondered when you might find me… Do remind me what it is that you think I’ve done, it’s been a while... Damn it must be at least 20 years since I vanquished you, what the devil have you been up to?”

“aaaAAAAddams, you know what I seek, and I knowwwwww that you have it, tell me where it is and might be tempted to spare your life.”

“Barrheamo, do you honestly think that I keep tabs on every Tom, Dick and DemiSatan that I defeat in combat? You really are going to have to fill me in on what it is that you’ve come looking for. I do recall you though; it would be tricky to forget such an erm, very distinctive face.”

Behind his back Addams is signalling to the L2RAF retirement tower’s room A.I. for silent assistance. An automated voice announces that it is ‘five past three’ – the agreed code words that let Addams know that his request has been noted by the A.I.

“aaaAAAAddams, your clock is sloooowwwww… and your life is about to taken from you, unless…”

“Unless what old chap?”

“unless you retuuuuuurn the ancient DVD of ‘High School Musical Zombies versus The Brokeback Robots from The Matrix’… it’s out of stock on amazon.com and has been for these last 20 years… Oh I have missed it so…”

“What? You think I’d borrow a film like that? I’m sorry to say that you’ve got me mistaken, I gave up on the High School Musical series after part thirty four – High School Musical Nymphet Massacre (which is still regarded across the L2RAF as the only ‘must see’ of the entire cannon of Disney’s output).”

“Doooon’t lie to me aaaAAAAddams, I’m coming up there to rip that DVD from your cold dead hands if I have to…”

“Well dear boy, you’re more than welcome to come and see for yourself, there’s no films in my library that have the words ‘brokeback’ in them! Of that I can assure you!”

“Fiiiiiine, now you must die!!!!”
What happened next is hard to adequately explain – the screens bulged outwards towards Captain Addams – who was backing away slowly whilst reaching for his favourite combat dressing gown. Then just as the crystal coating of the screens began to crack and fracture a pair of hideous reptilian claws burst out of the screen-bank, showering the room in fragments of razor sharp glass shards.

Addams was already running for the door but he did get several pieces of screen embedded in his buttocks as he raced towards the security hatch. But rather than opening before him and laying down suppressing fire with the automated room security cannons as he’d expected, the door stood resolutely shut, the cannons firmly locked away.

Turning (in some pain from his bleeding behind) Addams manages to duck under the first killer swipe of Barrheamo’s talons. With no weapons readily available and his combat dressing gown (despite its name) leaving him feeling severely underdressed for actual hand to hand combat with a massive ugly inter-dimensional demon, he was beginning to see his life spool past in a stream of attractive past loves and heroic victories.

Barrheamo was virtually out of the bank of screens when inspiration hit Captain Addams. He rolled under the swiping claws again, this time popping up next to his wall mounted luxury drink dispenser. He jabbed the maximum emergency ‘HK Coffee’ button and in one smooth motion grabbed the cup of steaming hot liquid and threw the contents into the demon’s face.

“aaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” screamed the ungodly creature in an ungodly and blood curdling shriek of pain. The HK coffee was burning Barrheamo’s eyes, blinding him with and at the same time giving him the most unfeasible caffeine rush as the chemical was absorbed through his eyeball’s soft membrane.

Whist Barrheamo lashed blindly about screaming curses and generally falling over things, Addams was ordering another HK Coffee. ‘Are you sure?’ asked the drinks machine – ‘these really aren’t good for you!’

“That’s what I’m counting on” yelled Addams as he grabbed the second cup of HK and leapt onto the creatures back. Before Barrheamo could react Addams poured the coffee into his ear tubes and rolled off his back. For a second Barrheamo was shocked into stillness, “What the heeeeeeeell was that?” it screeched. Then the HK lived up its name and the beast’s brains melted.

Captain Addams was up and shoulder charging his now gibbering and drooling foe, he caught the beast square on and sent it reeling over the edge of the apartment’s balcony and down several thousand floors to its messy demise.
“Damn that’s strong stuff,” he quipped to himself as he surveyed the wreckage of his room. Suddenly the room A.I. came back online and began apologising profusely. A team of cleaning robots stormed in and set about putting everything back to order, closely followed by three of the most attractive personal assistants the L2 RAF Retirement Home had on its books. Each was carrying a gift hamper – the first filled with cigars, the second with fine whiskey and the last with the entire 108 DVD box set of High School Musical, including the infamously rare ‘High School Musical Zombies versus The Brokeback Robots from The Matrix’…

“Please accept these with our complements and apologies for the inter-dimensional security breach” said the room A.I. “keep the girls and the gifts as long as you want!”

“Tippity top tastic” quipped Captain Addams, “tally ho!!”

- - - - - - - - -

“The substantiation of decadence”

Elemental Perception 07
– The Day of Carnage is upon us

The streets are unusually quiet, there are no droids of any description to be seen and the human elements are few and far between.

A channel opens and it focuses on the massive reconstruction of NewTowerBridge – the air between the two main towers is shimmering even more unnaturally than the dirty red air around them. It is like the air itself is pregnant – like something is about to burst through to our world from another dimension… A darker dimension…

In another part of the sprawling metropolis the news of M’diitch’s untimely death had been relayed to his family. Even the massive compensation cheque that the messenger droid brings can’t help the heartbrokenness of the widowed wife and the fatherless kids who can’t comprehend how this could have happened…

Yet further away G&J however are very active, closing in on their next targets, a lucrative ‘hit’ ordered by none other than the President himself. G is hobbling up the street with a hover cane supportrail at her side. J is holed up in a nearby building with a fusion powered sniper rifle.

Disguise can be the ultimate weapon, catching your target unaware or off balance is an art form that master assassins have made their own. There are entities however to which disguise is merely a nicety or ‘optional extra’ – kind of like the additional chocolate flakes on a L2 ‘Rosie M’s super chocolatte head-smoother’. That was certainly the case for Amaster** the ‘Pain superthreshold Level’ assassin bot because being as hard as nails as he was, there was little threat to his wellbeing from anything less than a full scale assault by a seriously tooled up battalion of enemies.

Overconfidence however can be the undoing of even the hardest of droid bio-functioning death deliverers and as an elderly women approaches his position he is really not expecting any trouble.

“Can I help you?” Amaster** calls.

“Oh no dearie,” replies G, “you need to help yourself!” and primes an autolock megaton EMP grenade which has dropped from the end of her hovering supportrail /cane.

Amaster**’s weapon threat detection subsystem kicks in but it is already too late. The EMP grenade has locked fast to the Amaster**’s faceplate, G is diving away with far more grace than you would credit for someone of her age.

As G tucks into a delicate roll, a plasma blast beam whips past her from above which slams into the grenade. Amaster**’s defences are decimated by the combination of the electro magnetic pulse and the plasma high burn secondary high yield explosions. J is watching through her viewfinder, she fires a second plasma blast at Amaster**’s now exposed soul-core. His last thought is that all the data his military training has been severely lacking in important details such as the dangers of tag team double old granny assassins.

J smiles to herself as the plasma melts Amaster**’s inner processor and his existence blinks out.

I am monitoring the perfectly executed ‘hit’ and I have to admit that I’m impressed. I have to admit that I thought these two old biddies claiming to be the legendary G&J were chancers of the highest order. Sure I liked their bottle and it amused me to give them a shot to prove their claims but I’ll be saved if they aren’t actually the real deal… That droid was a serious battle unit, if they can take him out so easily perhaps these two can save me and my new friends some time by wiping out the rest of the DMC witnesses.

¬- - - - - - -

‘Looking great is important, when you look great – you will feel great; more alive, more confident and free to enjoy life’ read Cleric20 from the info screen on the latest test drug to be blind dropped into his portal.

Drug companies had found it economical to buy the rights to ‘spam’ citizens with their new products – on a completely take it or leave it basis. If the recipient decided to take the drug, all they need do is register their health before and then again at determined times afterwards through any info pump or home log in. Payment was made to those who survived / weren’t actively trying to find some way out of the watertight contract that accorded no liability to the manufacturer should the drug be taken, just because it had grievously injured them in some way.

‘Just one shot of this highly nutritious and finely devised bio-protein life supplement will ensure that you will look GREAT!’ the promo blurb continued.

He wasn’t entirely convinced but just in case it might work he administered 10 shots of the strictly ‘1 shot a day’ biodrug into his upper arm.

“Damn, that’s quite a tingle” he mumbled to himself as he wandered through to his kitchen bench and hit the coffee I.V. The machine prepared an immediate hit of coffee which Cleric20 grabbed and downed in one gulp. He dropped the cup back into the I.V. cradle and slumped down in front of his foodPAL.

“Give me some eggs and a piece of steak”, he commanded. The machine selected the foodstuffs from his freezer; micro thawed them and cooked them up as per his recorded preferences (eggs easy, steak bloody). In less than a minute a platebox popped out of the kitchen bench’s service hatch and there was his breakfast steaming gently before him.

“Cooking these days is just no challenge” he told GiX as he munched on the artificial Soya replicates of eggs and beef.

GIX didn’t bother answering, he was scanning military frequencies to see what was happening in their sector.

Cleric20’s place was almost beyond any kind of hygiene redemption, the part of his brain that cared about mess and standards of living environment had been tied up, shot and dumped in some deep well long ago. Cleric20 was good at not feeling guilty about it - he’d had lots of practise over his 27 years and the apartment bore the scars to prove it. GiX might be a lot of things, preacher, tracker, assassin but he was not a maid…

Cleric20’s SocialRating was began blinking Dazed and Confused ** - pretty much normal for a Monday morning and not at all necessarily a side effect from the drugs consumed.

- - - - - - -

Military Overseer Langley was having a trying day – but having successfully managed to shut down the The Powers That Be and the Future Betting Underground he was feeling fairly confident that there was little he couldn’t overcome. In the process of sifting through the masses of data that the voyeuristic A.I.s and their gambling counterparts had stored in their vaults – Langley had unearthed disturbing information about the DarkMatter findings.

The Machine General and his closest team of human Magi advisors were studying the DMC findings trace that Marcus Razour had left when he made an unauthorised personal copy. There was indication that the signal had been accidentally intercepted at some point between the

Langley’s highest ranking Commander – none other than Commander Riichardson was standing by with a hand picked assortment of mech armoured marines, cutting edge A.I.s and destroyer droids to move to reclaim the final copy of the findings. But the advisor team could not agree on a legitimate course of action without a firm way of proving that the President had contravened a global law. Then another trace path blazed over their tracking equipment – GiX’s profile scrolls across the high definition readout.

“Hello, what have we here?”

The channel cuts out and now shows Landdsman meeting LDaviies who looks mightily relieved as he hands over a bulky package. They stand in the doorway of LDaviies’ apartment, hard throbbing techno music can be heard in the background, the air looks an unnatural haze of seriously dubious substances.
Landdsman opens the package and puts on a sleek helmet, mostly white with black markings – it looks very familiar, the word ‘Stormtrooper’ bounces around inside your head from somewhere…

“I hope you liked it?” Stammers LDaviies whose eyes look seriously glazed over.

“It is modelled on a ‘Berserker's Armour’ from Intergalactic Dominions of Warcraft. The helmet is treated Mythril - Fully Plated (although it might not give you a ‘+3’ bonus to your attack…) I’m guessing that after coming back from the dead – you won’t be too worried that if you drop to less than half your HP (hit points) in battle, you must make a DC 10 Will Save or begin to attack your allies!?”

“What?”
“I mean if you reach -1 HP hit points, you do not fall prone, you may continue to attack the enemy, however you must make another Will Save, DC15…”

“Are you saying that the armour has mech additions? Or maGe enhancements?”

“erm, not really my freaky undead pal. I’m saying that if you reach -10 HP, you may continue to fight for 1d4 rounds, after making a DC20 Will Save, however at the end of this, if you are not healed, you instantly drop dead, and your soul is trapped within the armour –arrgghh.”

Landdsman cuts short LDaviies drug fuelled rambling by removing his head with one swift slash of his dark bladed massive sword.

“I hate that game you sad geek.” He mumbles… LDaviies’ senses are still feeding him information – his headchip’s SocialRating is blinking OMG***** as Landdsman’s boot crunches down on his face.

The channel cuts again, and now Arch United World Prime Minister Carter can be seen talking with L2 Grand Information Controller Manu Doyyle. They are sitting at a Carter’s favourite table in the Overworld’s Masterecyc Module Eatery, the view of the cosmos behind them is mesmerising… At the next table along sit two inconspicuous elderly women, each tucking into a hearty ‘toast-tosterone meatphreak’ pizza and sharing a pot of fine NewEarlGrey Tea. One of them turns to the other and says “It’s a wonder what they do with these soya-chilies isn’t it?”
They pay their bill walk past Doyyle and Carters’ table smiling nicely at the two powerful men. Doyyle looks up and smiles back and then just as the two elderly ladies are making their slow way outside he spots that one of them has left their bag at the table.
“Excused me a moment Prime Minister,” he says and makes a grab for the bag with a view to reacquainting it with the old dear.
G&J are already outside and stepping into a STREAM portal. As J’s good natured features dissolve into the light particles the entire module disintegrates – killing every sentient thing inside. The security footage indicates that the null bomb was cunningly cloak-linked to J’s handbag – it seemed to be triggered by her proximity departure.
Within seconds a massive terrorist hunt was launched for the infamous G&J whose faces had finally been captured on camera.

- - - - - - -

My name has featured throughout history – my image was captured on Babylonian landmarks, in Roman mosaics, adorning Asian pottery and Chinese royal robes. You can find my features on Egyptian burial shrouds and government seals, Peruvian burial stones and tapestries, Mayan sculptures, Aboriginal and Native American petroglyphs… indeed humans have known my face throughout time and it is only now that I have made my power known… This is the day I have waited for – the day of carnage when mankind will kneel before me or die.

- - - - - - -

“This is L2AllNews Anchorbot Nallath reporting live from the amazing religious showdown being prepared here at the Chaille church complex where as you can see behind me two alters have been prepared for tonight’s climactic showdown test of the GWC God… “

“We will be covering this historic event live so be sure to check back in just 10 minutes when this thing kicks off for real.”

“Something is happening – let’s go over to aarrggghhh” Nallath’s broadcast is cut when viewers see a massive black sword burst out of the prime time Anchorbot’s faceplate sending electrical discharge and a massive shower of sparks in all directions.
Landdsman stands behind Nallath’s falling body he is smiling as he pulls his distinct white and black helmet over his head.

“Let’s try and get this party started…” says Landdsman.

Without knowing why INT, Cleric20 and GiX appear from a STREAM portal across the street from where media and interested onlookers were watching the situation in front of the Chaille church complex.

“What the hell?” asks Cleric20, “GiX is this some kind of joke?”

Landdsman looks up as if sensing their arrival and an amused looking Razour can be seen arriving behind him flanked by five darkly armoured warriors.

Before GiX can respond he has been shoved forcefully out of the way as the crowd turned as one and rushed manically at Cleric20. INT screams and leaps back into the STREAM, which fires before Cleric20 can join her.
The crazed mob are leaping at Cleric20 brandishing whatever improvised weapons they can lay to hand.
Cleric20 punches a heavy set woman in front of him full in the face sending her reeling into the rest of the angry throng.
He turns and tries to fire the STREAM but it has been inexplicably deactivated. GiX has meanwhile managed to throw a containment beam around the front edge of the crowd which is holding them in a static tableau of rage.
Cleric20 seeing his chance dives into a nearby BHP Ferrari Turbo Roadster which had been recently vacated by the L2AllNews producer Bagger Foster.
Cleric20 floors the retro-fitted accelerator and the sports vehicle tailspins away. GiX’s restraining beam gives out as one of the crowd smashes an arm torn from Nallath into his cortex.
Razour looks on with interest and barley concealed amusement.
“I’m bored of this waiting around, let’s have some fun while we count down the minutes to midnight” he barks and immediately hundreds of BattlemaGes appear – morphing into existence in a sweep formation. Without hesitation they begin to attack everything in their path, cutting down civilians, robots, traffic – anything sentient anything alive.
Landdsman roars with pleasure at the scene of unprecedented carnage that has erupted and joins straight in sweeping left and right with his massive sword.
The five dark armoured warrior around Razour leap forward and follow Landsmann’s example, wading into the fast depleting melee and stomping through the massed dead and dying.

Cleric20 manages to mow down a couple of maGes as he burns away from the slaughter. He looks over and is somewhat surprised to see a white mouse sitting in the passenger seat.

“Hi” it squeaks – “I’m like you…”

“What? Oh lord I’ve lost my mind!!”

GiX has channelled his backup energy core and sends out a shockwave which throws his assailants off him and allow him to shoot skyward.

As GiX pulls into a tracking flight, monitoring Cleric20’s fast progress towards NewLondonBridge, he picks up a new signal approaching fast from the other side of the river. He locks on to it with several ‘Curtiss Swiss Cheese Laser Missiles’.

“It can’t be…” he says to himself… “That looks like...”

- - - - - - -

All across L2 the story is the same – Razour’s occult maGes rampaged through the city massacring everyone.
The Mech corps and L2 security forces were ambushed first in their barracks and command centres. The element of surprise coupled with the unnatural arcane weaponry was a potent combination. Bots and marines perished alike before many even knew what had happened.

There were pockets of resistance – the strongest being led by Commander Riichardson whose deep mistrust of maGes had led him to always take certain ‘precautions’ against exactly what was happening.
In his secure walking mech apartment that was untraceable due to its heavy duty cloaking devices.

“Someone has to do something.” He states as he watches the footage from the fast diminishing mech corp units feeding live feeds of the atrocities being afflicted upon them.

The skies about L2 glows a bubonic red, reflected on the blood drenched streets. Earth is becoming hell and it is only taking a matter of minutes…

Cleric20 pulls up. He can’t believe what is going on around him. He glances over at test subject #10077, “you got any ideas?”

It is the last thing he gets to say before the BHP Ferrari Turbo Roadster is lifted by some unnatural force and spun through the air back to what is left of the Chaille Church Complex.

The car smashes down on one of the alters – that of the Chaille’s agent. On the other lies BattlemaGe commander Jocarron, who appears to be whimpering.

The seconds tick away… the body count around L2 and beyond rises with every one.

Cleric20 regains consciousness at 11.59pm – the white mouse is licking his face.

Tick tick…

Boom…

To be continued in Darkmatters Chronicle two: Darker-matters?

“Everybody lie down on the floor & keep calm”

Elemental Epilogue – what was all that about?

In our darkest hour, when mankind found that we simply could not save ourselves in the face of forces of darkness beyond comprehension…

When nothing made sense and all hope was dashed…

There were yet forces above and beyond that knew it would end this way – an entity some refer to as ‘GOD’.

Despite Razour’s dominion over all mortal life on earth and his fervent will of annihilation towards all who stood against him, his was not to be the final word on the existence of man.
We who have chased only carnal temptations, worldly vanities and despicable thoughts bent evil-wise. Forsaking fervency of spirit for lukewarm comfortable existence, replacing patient longing for petulance and soul deep faith for confidence in our arms of flesh.
If tried as soldiers called to higher commission we all stand court-martialled for cowardice, disobedience and desertion… Shame is our just reward and punishment the sentence…

At what point should we expect rescue? On what grounds can we plead for redemption?

As those already in paradise sing:

“I can see a light, that is coming,
For the heart that holds on.
There will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes
Still I will praise you…”

Some will hold on – will you be amongst them?

DarkMatters Acknowledgements

So very many people to thank, this book, brief though it may be has drawn upon myriad sources of inspiration, none more so than the excellent friends – more than I can possibly mention – who have motivated, encouraged and supported this adventure… I can only apologise if I’ve not included you here… but for many reasons I need to thank:

Gail, Luke and James Adcock, The Killers, Matt Landsman, Tom Wade, Iain Banks, Bryan Doyle, Andy and Larry Wachowski, John Richardson, Mike Brooks, Lee Davies, Dave Golding, Carter USM, Guy Adams, C.S. Lewis, Sony PS3, Irn Bru, Ferrari, David Fincher, Tottenham Hotspur FC, Simon Middleditch, Frank Miller, The Pixies, Chuck Palahniuk, PWEI, William Gibson, Jonathan Barnes, Calvin and Hobbes, Alan Masters, Alex Proyas, Christopher Brookmyer, The Lord above…

Final note: Darkmatters character’s favourite films

Cleric20

Retard Cop 2: The Slower Arm of the Law
True Romance

Razour

The Myth of God 3 (A Paradigm of Intelligent Design)
Angel Heart

Riichardson

Anfield Mech Armour Soccer Champions 2024
Gladiator

TWADE / Twade2

Carry On up the Assyro-Babylonian Deities
High School Musical Nymphet Massacre 2

Captain Addams

TOP GUN 10: Iceman’s robotic revenge
The Matrix