Archive for June, 2010
Connected / Chapter 2: Lost signal
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the second chapter of an ongoing flash serial, “Connected.” Search for the tag “Connected” to find other chapters. Subscribe to the Daily Cabal RSS feed for a new chapter every 2 weeks.
Two bodies now. Both disconnected from the grid. Both suicides. The first one fried his wires. The second went for an analogue exit – a bullet rupturing his meatsack.
Why do it?
Morello contemplates this while his ‘sack eats supper and he and his wife patch a corporate comedy stream. Somewhere deep he feels his son, Caul’s adrenaline–steering a steelsack through laser fire. He can taste the diluted flavors from some chef’s feed his mother is streaming.
Why do it? Why disconnect? The concept terrifies Morello. It pushed two men over the edge.
#
“They’re wackjobs.” The theory courtesy Chambers, proving himself an adept handler of the on-scene detectives motor cortex.
A third body. Still no sign of a crime. But a pattern is emerging.
Then a newsfeed obliterates everything.
“Urgent: Lost signal in SoHo.” The message pans across his vision. A pause before he grasps its enormity. Three blocks. Three blocks disconnected. SoHo. His son’s ‘sack is there. Physical training.
His son. Caul.
Lost signal.
He ditches the crime scene. Slams into his ‘sack. Selects macros to pilot it home. Then he’s off, the white noise scream of his son’s feed echoing in his ears. Smacks into a rental steelsack. Fights through disorientation. AIs are already setting up a cordon on the area. There are bodies on the ground. Staring eyes. They try to restrain him, but servo-driven limbs send him through.
One step. Two-
Lost signal.
He’s thrown out into his own flesh and meat. Like a physical blow. His meatsack reels on the subway. He has no time for this. Dials up another steelsack.
He waits this time. He can see the steelsack he piloted over the cordon. Lying there. Lifeless.
It’s five minutes before they restore signal. Five more minutes Caul lies there. Alone.
And then… “Signal restored.”
He runs, leaps, drains the steelsack’s power in a surge of movement.
Caul is curled fetally. But whole. Shaking like when they were having problems with the filters and the night terrors still got through. Morello scoops him up. Holds him.
“It’s me, Caul,” the steelsack’s speakers stutter. “It’s dad. I have you now. I have you now.”
Caul does not respond. Caul curls there in his arms and does not say a word. And still one question burns in Morello’s mind.
Why do it?
But he will have his answers.
The Jester’s Sorrow
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
At evening, with one of the ring moons rising and another halfway to zenith, signals flashed between the spires of the city.
Zaurbino watched through his panoculars, jotting notes on the slate of the parapet wall, until a little after the river-chimes sounded midnight, when he snapped his chalk and hurled it into the dark garden below. “Politics,” he said, turning his back on the view.
I didn’t say anything, but kept my hand ready in my pocket if he demanded another stick of chalk.
He sucked his teeth with a smacking sound, something he did when frustrated.
“They can’t see it,” he said, “None of them.” He stared at some of his scribbles. “Idiots!”
I said nothing. As a jester of the 37th pattern, Zaurbino had earned his moods.
“Famine by midsummer. Panic among the banks. War by autumn. Chance of plague by spring.” He looked over his shoulder and squinted at the play of lights among the spires. He sat on the wall, his backside erasing the last hour’s notes. “An evil year for being.”
Most people never see a jester above the 12th pattern outside the great festivals, so they either expect them to be as sublime as the festival pageants or as antic as lower-level clowns. Truth is, being valet to Zaurbino was depressing, even if he didn’t confine himself to lightless rooms like my previous employer.
Instead, he insisted on bribes and spies and cracking the signal-codes of the leading families. As far as I could tell, he did it so he could obsess over the all the catastrophes their leadership would inevitably bring us.
When he began humming the dirge of the nine sisters in a self-pitying falsetto, I was unable to contain myself.
“Why torture yourself–and me–any longer? Throw yourself over the railing and be done with it.”
He looked dolefully at the rocks and thorn trees below. “No,” he said. “My lot is to know too much. To be able to do too little.”
“All you do is mope! Can you do anything littler than that?”
He just sniffled.
“At least you could go mope in the grand square. Spread some misery to the first families.”
A smile cracked his asymetrical moon face.
“Misery,” he said. “Their misery. A delightful thought.”
This didn’t bode well, but as I followed down the spiral stair into the city, I sensed my own melancholy might be lifting, or at least my boredom.