Momenta

by Rudi Dornemann

We came through in tin, our useless armor clanking, and the room was all stairs, some M.C. Escher thing, and the soles of our metal shoes, of course, had no traction, so every step was nearly a slip, nearly a tumble down however many floors, but the stairs also went up, wrapped around behind the doorway, and we made our way on careful, slow, slow tiptoes up, and the stairs grew steeper and those greaves or whatever pinched when we lifted our legs higher for the stepping, but there was another door, which we were grateful to reach and be through–

–through into a forest, in clothes of vine-bound bark. And ants biting. We took advantage of our new mobility, jogged through the trees. The next door has to be somewhere/said Monice. Has to be somewhere; could be anywhere/said Solly. Are we done?/I said. There yet?/I panted. We weren’t, but nobody said it, just ran. To the next door, and through it. And into–

–sand. Sand. So much. Sand. Desert. Or vast beach. (Maybe that blue distance is water.) Insect carapace clothes. We trudged. Slowly slowed. To rest. (Solly: I hope we’re there soon. Monice: When we’ve learned what we need to, the quest will end. Solly: Learn? Learn what? We’re too busy running from place to place. (I was too tired to say anything. Just nodded.) But the sea. A flash-tide. Was coming. Was on us. And we went through to–

–stone-suited mountainside-sliding scree-riding tumbling cracking smacking avalanche-among crushed pressed pushed and–

–through in tin again, that Escher-stairway room again, and us too tired, too bruised, to tiptoe-climb again, and I fell first and heard Sol and Moni thunder-tumbling after; however, it wasn’t as far a fall as I’d expected, and I wasn’t too much worse by the time we landed on a landing, where the door was a rectangular well in the floor, and we dragged ourselves over, and Moni dropped through, then Sol, then I went–

–through. In eggshell smocks and feather bloomer-breeches. On the plains, astride ostriches. In the midst of a flock-stampede.

“Enough!” said Monice.

Dismounting, she ducked as the rest of the flock stiff-legged by.

Following, Sol and I jumped down and covered our heads.

“No,” I said, “We have to…”

“No,” said Sol. “She’s figured it.”

“The quest’s over when we say it’s over,” said Monice. “And I say it is.”

And it was.

Connected / Chapter 6: An Army of Me

by Jonathan Wood

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is the sixth 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 week or two.

Morello holds his son’s hand.  Two months Caul was in the coma now, since he was disconnected from his tribe.  A month since AI counselors talked Morello out of retribution.  He feels his wife’s grief through the wires like a toothache.  Feels a hundred sympathetic thoughts.  His tribe.  Caul’s.

He leaves his meatsack holding Caul’s hand.  His mind leaves one tribe for another.  Morello to Detective Morello.  The hum of police work thrums in his bones.

Abruptly: all hands on deck.  A steelsack depot hacked.  Rogue minds piloting sleek silver bodies.

Morello’s ‘sack is close.  He slams back into his flesh, starts running.  He sees steelsacks  tumbling past.  Hundreds clogging the street.  Too many to stop.

He pulls up security drone vid feeds.  Everywhere.  They’re coming from everywhere.  Converging on a residential block.

And then the army stops.  Its first wave collapses.  And he has seen these lifeless bodies before.  These mindless bodies.  Disconnected.  All around the buildings they pile up.  Wave after wave of bodies.  A demarcation zone of disconnection.

A steel body waits there for him.  Morello readies his firearm.  The steelsack holds out an arm.

“We have found them,” it says.  A familiar voice.  He tries to place it.  “They took your son.  But we cannot get closer.  They exist in the gaps of our knowledge, where we cannot go.  We can only point the way, but you must walk the path.”

“Who?” he asks.  “Who are you?”

“You.”

Morello doesn’t understand.  But then the steelsack sweeps aside his firewalls and he sees.  A new tribe.  His own.  Every steelsack steered by a copy of himself.

“The AI.  The counselors.  They copied you.”

Illegal digital copies of himself.  Sackless.  All working for the retribution he isn’t.  Unable to act in meatspace unless connected.  And here they lie.  Disconnected.  Over and over.  Like Caul.  Over and over.

He thinks of violence and a thousand carefully programmed reprimands spring into his mind.  This is giving in.  This is dangerous.  Revenge is not the basis of a sound society.

He looks at his hand.  It remembers the feel of Caul’s palm.  Skin-to-skin.  His pistol is in it now.  Society disapproves.  But he does not care about society now.  He cares about his own.  His tribe.  Caul’s tibe.  So Morello climbs the wall.  And Morello opens fire.