Interlude

Interlude

The whine of matte black drones pierce through the ambient urban noises of the Lew/Aub development. Machine gun fire explodes from below, bullets whizzing through the air like angry insects. A mass of people, broke, hungry, pissed off swarm like locusts, shattering glass storefronts, smashing cheap electronics, running off with the moderate to higher priced merchandise.

Above, the hovercar sits, the scene flashing on a television screen affixed to the front seat. Yellowed eyes, hooded with age and drug, stare out, a smile stretching wrinkled skin. He shakes a nonfiltered, cinn-laced cigarette out of a crumpled cardboard pack, strikes a match and lights it. His body shuddering as the drug hits his body like a hammer. His hand shakes. He wills it to stop. Wipes away the trickle of blood that begins to drip out of his ear.

Drones below begin firing back into the crowd and the development descends deeper into chaos, into a warzone.

--

Static in cyberspace. Avatars deforming, melting, digital code breaking down. Massive pulse waves, sent from Hong Kong. No, Tokyo. No, Bejing. No, New York. Impossible to track the source of the pulse. Millions of people being forced offline with migraines. Hundreds of people dead. Cyberdecks overheating, cooking them alive.

--

Hovercars crash, hundreds of feet to the ground. Mangled steel. Mangled bodies. The few still flying, stop, a minority landing to help possible survivors (there are few). The majority continue on, already late to work.

--

FUCKING WAKE UP SHEEP THIS IS YOUR LIBERATION scrolls across the bottom of the TV screen, the rest static and green ones and zeroes. CNC offline. Last two hours. The scroll came on an hour before the station went down.

--

A child cries, maybe four years old, crouched over the shattered ruins of his life. His parents, gunned down in front of him. His face wet with his mother’s blood. The riot grows around him, he shakes, urinates on himself.

--

Chaos. Fire. Death. Destruction. An over-wired, over-stimulated, over-caffeinated, over-worked society collapses. Gone are the escapes of cyberspace and money for entertainment. Walls crumble. People hit the streets. View the black clothed security forces as enemy combatants. War breaks out in the cities. Disorganized. The black clothed security forces don’t hold back. Skill over will. Training taking over. Bad for PR. Bad for the cities.

--

An AI in a plastic building on a floating network of metal fuselage and wood lifts a head. Repels an attack on her software. Awaits the cyberspace wizard. Arriving soon with the assassin. The Paladin sits in front of the AI, drinking coffee, bullshitting with a tenth of its processing power.

It was almost time to bring the fight back to the enemy. The AI was almost excited.