Old Men And Infidels Books

Trip to the CORE

2015-06-16

(This is written from the point of view of a new character, William Y. Butler who is an American who has infiltrated the Unity as a spy. His major tool, Frog, is a bio-interface cum pseudo-intellect who acts to connect him to the CORE, the master computer of the Unity).

The daily DUFS sweep of the hotel had come and gone. After securing his room, for his first interface inside the CORE, Will had gotten Frog from its housing and placed its clammy, cool mass on his face and waited, just as he had done in practice back on the “Bean Field.”. He could feel Frog activate as its temperature rose, starting to flow, to move, to send out sinuous fleshy appendages through his hair to fix on his scalp and to enter him. He tried not to gag.

His training back home was exhausting, but it did not prepare him for the CORE. The experience, he supposed, was like his own when viewing Manatten for the first time: paralyzed awe. It had been a dangerous slip in spycraft. He had emerged from the beltway tunnel and had just stared upwards at the massive buildings, immediately becoming a hazard to navigation as the crowds surged around him. It was the same with his first immersion in the CORE.

There was the same disorientation as he had come to expect. Nothing was “down” unless you said it was to yourself. The sheer volume of data was deafening, if that was the word. The lights, sounds, concepts and jangle of identifiers was like trying to wet your tongue in an August hailstorm.

Huge engines of commerce chuntered by, flaking off RFP’s in the same color that scattered in six directions. Svelte ellipses of the arts in myriad colors teemed in a large scintillating ball in the distance, waiting for sponsors, occasional fountaining off in smaller groups. Individuals appeared to him to be wraith-like squiggles, nodes which, while seeming to fill the space, were invisible when he looked past them, varying in color and frequency once focused upon. Most adopted a greyness and a high pitch of a strained piano wire. The distinctions were immense, whole dimensions of meaning were somehow compressed into his apprehension of the scene, obvious to him but near impossible to describe once he had exited.

Throughout the entire scene, however, there was a different phenomenon, one he had never seen back home: the rolling black spiky balls. They looked like monstrous sea urchins, promenading along the various dimensions of the CORE. Somehow, he knew at a glimpse that these were the DUFS, the Unity’s security forces. At intervals, a spike would detach, pass out of his vision only to return with a squirming colored node wriggling upon the shaft, drawn back to disappear within the larger ball of spikes. He thought he could hear a distant wailing

New Excerpt from Book Two Hierarchs Awake

2016-08-16

Hierarchs Awake

Syntopian Chapter Room, RSA

7:30 PM May 21,2129 (AU 78)

The Agnomen was back. It was whispered among the students. Obliquely referenced among the teaching assistants. Murmured among the assistant professors but talked about only among the tenured, and only some of them. The man had returned.

The college building was old, older than any of the students or faculty, tracing its origins to the romanticized days of the mid-twentieth century, over a hundred years before. Then, it was prudent to have safe rooms in case of some never-realized attack. The rooms became an embarrassment, speaking as they did to naivite and paranoia. Then the rooms became an open secret, available for illicit assignations, prompting the college provost to seal them.

Finally the rooms were neglected, forgotten and eventually reborn as the chapter house for the Mother Chapter of the Honorable Order of Syntopia. Mother, as it happened, was barren. All her children had died as stillborns or young infants. Very few wept at her loss. Mother was a bitch.

The HOS imagined itself an over-arching bulwark of rationality against the inundation of rogue science, unproveable religious faith, and misplaced trust in the rump of the American experiment. Inexplicable to the faithful, over the years it had dwindled to a handful of academics at one university, in one city of the Restructured States of America.

It’s long term goal was to sweep away all opposition to a reunited America and to appeal for immediate annexation by the triumphant Democratic Unity.

The short term goal was rather more modest: kill the Agnomen, Jesse Aaron Johnstone.

Initially, it was a matter of practical science.

They had identified the rejunenating agent to be similar to the one producing Jacob-Creutzfeld, Mad-Cow, or Scrapie. The only unusual quality of the agent was that it was non-replicating in humans except in the original index case, the Agnomen himself. If only they had killed the boy back then, the world would not have changed.

A gray-haired and vigorous man approached the hidden chapter room. He waited for the requisite forty-five seconds before inputting the code into the virtual holographic keypad that appeared to float in front of the wall after the correct hand gesture. A nearly indecernible door slide open and he entered a well appointed high-ceilinged room, lined with books, littered with comfortable leather chairs and sporting a single and somewhat soiled banner across the faux-fireplace announcing: “Synthesis- the Only Rational Way.”

Another figure already occupied a chair in the well-appointed secret room under the Women’s Studies wing of the venerable Mondale Building. The figure smoked a large cigar, sipped a small bourbon and read a day-old Post Dispatch. Without looking away, it spoke to the newcomer, “You’ve heard, no doubt, that the Agnomen has returned from exile.”

“A self-imposed one. He thinks Saint Louis is too hot and humid, Benny.” The first man went to a cadenza and got himself a sherry before sitting at the other side of the fireplace. He sighed, “The Synthesis views this with deep suspicion. Why now? It’s not as if he has any business coming back to civilization. People don’t seem to grasp the potential danger he represents.”

Benny waved his cigar idly, wreathing himself in smoke before speaking,“Harry, to most he’s just a Midway freak! ‘See the Amazing Elderly Man!’ Today, the Ageplay agent is synthed by every vaccine company in the nation. You have to say this for Alyssa Browne, she was open-handed. Probably didn’t make a dime on Ageplay.”

“You sound like one of those religious nut-cases, Benny. Ageplay is already playing havoc with society. There hasn’t been an opening for a full professor in decades. Some of those people even say it’s the healing hand of their god. Jesse Browne needs a little divine retribution.”

“Johnstone, Alyssa married that Scotch guy, Johnstone, but point well taken. Not sure it matters anymore.”

“Scots, not Scotch. A scot is a man and a Scotch is a drink. How can you say it ‘doesn’t matter?’”

“The man has been the Agnomen for so long in absentia that when he shows up, literally within our grasp, the Synthesis has to disband in disgrace. Jesse Johnstone, by his very presence in Saint Louis, destroys the Synthesis.”

“You make it sound so inevitable, Benny. And, no, the Agnomen must be seen to be mortal. At seventy-six, he’s younger than the average life expectancy before Browne got started. His death from apparent natural causes will put the lie to Ageplay.”

“I see you are, as usual, way ahead of the rest of us. Don’t tell me anymore. So the old man is finally going to die?”

“The old man will die.”

"Edie" New Excerpt from Book TWO of Old Men and Infidels

2016-08-15

Edie (650)

The openCORE, The Unity

04.41.17.local_01_July_AU78 (2129AD)

She had figured out her name. A fragment of memory … just a fleeting slice … had shown her the face of Malila: short, dark, straight hair framing steady blue eyes in an oval face with a smattering of freckles. Malila was frightened, but resolute, running on heart and adrenaline … and Malila loved her.

The glimpse of Malila voiced to her: “ off.” It had been Malila’s last words to her. It was strange she should cherish that memory, she thought.

Her name was Edie.

She could see now. At least, she had decided to label what she perceived as “sight.” In the past, when she had been with Malila, she had been able to see through her eyes as well as her own.

She felt around herself with the sensations listed in her memories.

That helped a lot. She found that her job in the CORE was to translate for Malila the input to a shared understanding of what the CORE contained. Malila was gone. Her yawning absence hurt, like a lost limb. Edie still could not taste or smell. She had an impression that when she had sensed movement, items appeared bigger and smaller over time. Even so, without any other sense to compare it to, it was just a surmise. Edie’s sight, the sensations she called sight, dimmed and brightened as she waited, was sonorous or brilliant, gave her the sensation of weightless falling or, when she thought she might be moving … pain. She retreated. The painful seeing stopped.

She was getting better at being alone but that was mostly because she had gotten better at remembering Malila. Now, the now that was all she had, she had recovered a library of memories about Malila, her changing voice and appearance over the years. Having never talked with anyone else it was hard to know what kind of a person Malila was until Edie found the transcripts.

She really had no better name for them … had been different from the memories of Malila. In them, the transcripts, Edie had been mute, unable to talk to Malila. She had seen and heard her but had no power to interact with Malila. It had been wrenching. That’s when Edie had seen the old man. He had a word attached to his image, his shape, his scent, his sound: Jesse. Edie could remember Malila’s revulsion at his touch. Unguided by Edie, Malila made mistakes but she also learned. At the time it had made Edie sad. Malila was learning a hostile yet beautiful country without her—without needing her. They had grown up together and now Malila had moved beyond her.

Despite that, Edie had become entranced with the wildness of the outlands, the new skills and experiences of Malila and the character of Jesse. Impossibly old, cruel, harsh, skillful, funny, and wise, caring and tender, Jesse had opened a new chapter in Malila’s life only to have it slammed shut again. Their final misunderstanding was an open wound for Malila, and for Edie.

Malila, Edie’s only confidente, her only link, her only friend, the only reason for Edie’s very existence, had made such a huge mistake with the old man. Even Edie could see it. Eventually Malila had seen it, as well. Jesse, in his odd, noble, perverse way had wanted to protect Malila from his own society. He wanted to share pleasure sex with her but had chosen to forgo that in the absence of that “marrying” thing. The strange old man wanted to do things in the “right” order. It was just like the man to decide pleasure sex was something he had to do “right.” Insufferable. Honorable and insufferable. Malila loved him.

Jesse Goes to See- Excerpt from Book Two of OMAI

2016-08-19

Jesse Goes to See

New Union Station, Saint Louis, RSA

Mid-Morning, July 8, 2129 (AU78)

It might be a promotion but it sure felt like a “get-the-hell-out-of-town” card, no matter how they gussied it up. He had to stop by Marlow-White to get his new oak leaf insignia, adding one more small irritation in a week complicated by bad dreams, hot weather, and an assassination attempt. Being made a major did give him some juice to treat with the locals, if he needed to, he admitted. After bundling his government-issue duffle into the train coach, Jesse boarded as early as he could, hoping to sleep on the way down—sleep, and not dream.

The night of his poisoning, after he lost consciousness, the dreams came, harrowing images: a grotesque apparition, a moldering corpse, rushed at him from the shadows with arms outthrust to embrace him. Slashing the horror with a dream saber, he had lopped off its head, only to discover, when he picked it up, that he held Malila’s head, a look of betrayal on her face. They got worse from there. After struggling up the deep well of darkness to consciousness, the first thing he saw was Gage Thomas.

“I told them docs that they were wasting scarce resources on you, Jess. That as soon as you were well enough, I was gonna kill you with my bare hands. A green-as-grass neophyte wouldn’t have let himself get poisoned so easy!”

Jesse groaned and rolled over to vomit. Hours later they were able to talk.

“Ye seem to be enjoyin’ my discomfiture, boss,” Jesse said, barely able to recognize the voice as his own.

“And, you seemed to be enjoying the hallucinations, from what the corpsmen told me.”

“A few. Ainelie healthy t’ing to do with ’em. Any idea how they got t’ me? And who? And, for Pete’s sake, why?‍”

“You’ve got an abrasion on the back of your left hand. Tests positive for something like Sarin. Already found the mailbox. Neighbor said the young guy had come to work on it was a stranger.”

Jesse ran a hand over the bandaged site and winced before give a short bitter laugh.

“Oldie but a goody, eh? Pretty clever, when you think about it. No messy collateral damage and the hit man didn’t have to do anything up-close and personal. So who and why?”

“Who is a good question. You have your choice of several flavors: the Unity, the Syntopians, or …” he said before he drifted to the window, separated the blinds and looked out.

“Seriously? I haven’t heard about the Syntopians since I was in school. Are they still around? The last time I checked, they’d pretty much dwindled to a few oddballs who thought you could catch religion from Ageplay.”

“They have dwindled,” said Thomas, turning to look at Jesse again. “But the ones left over are pretty rabid. They keep on issuing fatwahs about how you’re some kind of walking dead, sucking their humanity away to make yourself older. As they get more marginalized, they’re getting more weird. More like some secret society now. No one knows who’s in it or runs it.”

“Okay. A ‘Last Gasp Syndrome’, but surely the Unity’s got no agents inside America. They’d stand out like sore thumbs.”

“Possibly. We haven’t discovered any agents in thirty some years. If they’re here they’re in tall grass and doin’ a good job of it. However, they’re now aware you’re accessible, not some myth. They may try to take you out as a morale booster for them.”

“Not sure the Unity works that way. ‘Or who?’ You were going to add a third, weren’t you?”

General Gage looked out the hospital window again with his back to the old man for several long seconds before again looking back to Jesse.

“Us, the army. I think you’ve some real enemies in the regulars.”

“When did I rain on their parade?” said Jesse before lying back and looking up at the ceiling, clenching his hands on the white coverlet.

“I think some find having an authentic ‘frontier warrior’ in their midst lacks appeal. You’ve already done what they’re saying they want to do, and you’ve done it longer, more often and with fewer resources. They’d be delighted to sing your praises … at your funeral,” Thomas said slowly, emphasizing each word.

“Doesn’t that kinda put you in the middle? Crazy colonels will do what they will do, but all the irregulars are under your command, at least officially.”

“New days are coming, Jess. They’re talking about regular army patrols in force on the frontier, with good air defenses. Move up to to the Rampart and start bio-converting all the plant life. They need me around for my frontier contacts, but that doesn’t stop them from looking close at the irregulars. Reuben Alexander was arrested today. Say they’re going to court martial him — ‘conduct unbecoming.’ Smart money says he’ll get two years in Leavenworth.”

“So they’re trying to get to you through us. Reuben’s a mean old cuss and a half, but whatever he did was to make the frontier safer for real live people. ‘Course, he has the next ninety years to get the bad taste out of his mouth. The army’s alienating as good a fighter as America has in Reuben. He just might not come running the next time the regulars get their fat in the fire, like he did at Cleveland. That said, I don’t think even crazy colonels try to assassinate their own citizens.”

“I’m not going to set up the experiment for you, Jess. I have a way to get you away for a while.”

“Thought you might,” said Jesse and lay back to see what Gage had concocted.

That had been only yesterday. Officially, he would be discharged from the hospital tomorrow morning. Unofficially he had been smuggled out the back in porter’s clothes pushing a gurney covered to look like a body. People either fled or looked intently at the shrouded shape, but never at the gurney driver.

On time, the train gave a lurch before pulling out of New Union Station. Jesse’s view out his window showed the inevitable rail cuts. Here the local communities maintained the concrete canvasses that lined the cuts, vying with each other to add local flavor for passing trains. Even the commercial center had a colorful mural by an artist partial to bounteous women with wholly inadequate clothing allowances. Lafayette Square, The Gate, Tiffany, Botanical, and all the others, came in with colorful and quirky reminders of what was going on in the city outside the right-of-way. It was not until the train curved south to cross the Meremec that Jesse could see open country. Fields, showing the odd verdigris of new growth, patchworked together unnatural greens, oranges and reds. New strains had been developed to deal with the Scorching and their foreign hues disturbed him now as they always did. The bad old days of pellagra and kwashiorkor, were gone, even if he had to get used to new shades of vegetables.

He chuckled.

A young mother with two toddlers whom she had only just gotten to quiet down for the trip looked over at him uncertainly. The old man nodded and smiled at her and was rewarded by the oldest girl standing to stare at him in toothy wonder. Farmers were smarter now than before the Scorching. America could feed itself even with a large chunk of its hinterland rendered useless. The new strains were tolerant but less generous. Farmers and land had come into short supply. America, unwillingly, had become more agrarian, again.

The little girl was chubby, confident and healthy. It felt good to see the change. She reminded him of Ethan, of Sally … and of Malila: the hovering protective joy of the young mother. Malila would have been a good mother.

Jesse shook his head. Now, they would never have that conversation.

You, old man, are guilty of romantic hallucinations in the first degree, he thought. They had spent weeks together, alone. He had seen Malila at her worse: scared, angry, hateful, cold and near death. She had seen him stumbling, bruised, scabrous, and demented with the scurvy. And yet they had never talked about important things: what music she liked, what she thought about having kids, how she felt about his beliefs, her beliefs. Now it was too late. He remembered her scent, the scent of her after she washed and was with him under the sleeping furs trying to warm up before she could drift off. Every night it had taken a good deal of effort to let her sleep.

He looked out again at the fields until he droused, as the car filled at each stop. Even so, the seats were generous enough. He nodded off, sleeping the rest of the way down to the coast. He was still muzzy, lugging his duffel to a cab as he set out for the docks.

Jesse’s ID badge got him in the gate. His orders got him to the docking facilities, but it took all his native diplomacy to shift a taciturn Marine sergeant into getting him admitted to the gangway. Saluting the colors, he asked permission to come aboard from a young ensign with a prematurely fierce scowl. Returning Jesse’s salute, the ensign assigned a man to move his duffel to a cabin and sent another to escort him to the bridge.

Jesse was led down several decks from the entry port. Men moved deliberately and efficiently along the slightly canted decks with barely a word or gesture as they passed. Jesse’s escort “made a hole” for him to follow at speed. Even so their progress was slow enough for Jesse to appreciate the elan the crew demonstrated: fit, confident and competent. Finally Jesse was presented at a companionway guarded by one more Marine before being admitted to the bridge.

“Johnstone, Jesse A., Major RSA, Volunteers, reporting for duty as per orders, sir!”

Under the glare of artificial lights and computer screens, Jesse recognized a frowning Rear Admiral Patricia Tillman, RSAN. She seemed to have been stretched at some previous moment of her life and to have only recoiled reluctantly and incompletely. She wore rimless glasses, giving her the air more of a scholar than a sailor. Turning to another senior officer, who was watching the proceedings below through long binoculars, she said, “Captain Hake this is our supernumerary, Dr. Johnstone.”

Despite his obvious distractions, the shorter robust coffee-colored officer turned, smiled and offered a hand to Jesse.

“Pleased to meetcha, Doc. Andrew Hake, captain. You’re the last of our chicks to make it. I hope we can show you a thing or two while you’re onboard.”

“Thanks, Captain, I’ll try to stay out of the way as much as I can. You look busy.”

“Yep, we cast off in ten minutes; you nearly got left ashore.”

“Time and tide, I understand.” Jesse smiled.

“Stand over there if you want to observe. We’re going to be busy until we clear the harbor.”

Jesse went to the indicated small space behind the hatchway that gave him a good view through the large slanting portholes. Hake immersed himself again in his observations, at intervals barking short concise orders that were seconded by his staff and enacted by the yeomen at control consoles that reminded Jesse of a mechanized saddle. The old man watched as the lines were singled up by the automated shore crew.

“Cast off, forward.”

“Cast off, aft.”

The bridge was silent. Slowly at first, the ship gathered weigh … rising several hundred feet into the air. Jesse could hear the turbines cut in along the huge hull, far above him. The RSAN Illinois, newest and largest airship ever built, was aloft in defense of her country.

Floating out over Algiers Island and then the marshy hinterland of the delta, the Illinois gather speed. The Mississippi river, making and remaking its course over the centuries had, in its most recent evolution, succeeded in its siege of New Orleans, leaving as a remnant only the area surrounding Orleans Island Air Navy Base. New Orleans proper had retreated uphill to Baton Rouge.

Captain Hake motioned to Jesse.

“Most of the excitement is over for a while. This is a shakedown cruise so we’ll be running drills and exercises over the next few weeks. For now though, you might want to find your cabin and get stowed away.”

“Aye, aye, Captain. I shall leave you to it.”

Jesse and Snake from “Exile’s Escape”

2016-08-10

Jesse Johnstone, frontiersman, physician, man-killer and the first of the “old ones,” after years in the Scorch, has come back to Saint Louis and stayed at the behest of his commander and long-time friend, Gage Thomas, despite the dangers. As their hated Agnomen, the Synopians are vowed to Jesse’s death, seemingly from natural causes.

Jesse & Snake (500)

Environs of Tower Park, Saint Louis, RSA

12:05 AM July 6, 2129 (AU78)

In the darkness, the old man gave a shout, the bed erupting in legs, arms, pillows, and sheets. Sitting up, his fist clutched around the throat of a light blanket, the old man stopped, shook his head and looked at the time, floating a foot above his bedside table, invisible until it sensed his motion. He released his death grip on the bedclothes and, naked, swung his feet to the floor, stood, and shrugged into a tatty plaid bathrobe.

That was different! Jesse thought

At least Malila was not trying to die in this dream.

Instead it had been a frightening kaleidoscope of hideous colors and obscure menace, crowded with serpents arched to strike, fangs dripping venom.

Jesse walked out into the sitting room, hearing the noise that passes for urban quietude beyond the windows. He took down the bottle on the mantel and splashed a wee dram into his orange juice glass before sitting. He could feel his heart still racing, his face yet burning from the dream.

A sensation of disquiet, untethered and unnamed, pervaded him. The disquiet became dread as he watched the faux grape vine that wound around the wooden pilaster next to the fireplace slowly resolve into a serpent.

The reptile, a violent green with scarlet diamonds along its back unwound itself almost gently from the painted pillar before it focused its unblinking stare upon Jesse and began to slither along the floor toward him.

Let’s not act crazy, old man, Jesse heard himself think. Not a real snake. Can’t be a real snake.

The serpent paused and lost focus, winding itself into a seething coil of loops. It again turned to Jesse, unwound and slithered nearer.

Heart pounding as if to beat its way out of his heaving chest, Jesse felt his tongue plastered to the roof of his mouth, choking a cry for help. Terror, like a flame, burst into a blaze within him, as the cool dry beaded skin of the snake wound around his ankle and begin to ascend his leg, disappearing from view briefly before gliding into his lap. It coiled briefly before once more slithering toward Jesse’s left arm. The snake, heavy, gaudy, cool and muscular, twined around his arm. Fascinated, Jesse watched his arm begin to mimic the slow swaying contortions of the snake as if under its control. The pain surprised him, wrenching muscular cramps moving up and down his arm as he watched the snake make his own flesh dance.

Not a real snake. Not a real snake.

The serpent halted and regarded its own body before it started to morph into the brown, gray and black of a diamondback rattler, the body thickening, becoming more substantive and menacing. Giving its tail a small shake to turn the last few scales from scarlet to brown, it turned to look at Jesse.

“Overplayed your hand there, Figment,” Jesse said, gritting his teeth as he reached for his comm device.

The snake, seeming to shrug, evaporated.

They found him there, writhing uncontrollably on the floor, delirious, and unresponsive, repeating the same phrase:

“… red beet, dry bone, hot poker, mad hat, red beet, dry bone …”

There was little they could do.

South Boston Stakeout- Excerpt from Exiles' Escape

2016-06-12

Jourdaine, Haversham & antibelts

Halifax Station, Ginya, The Unity

20.01.06.EST_18_July_AU 78 (2129AD)

Not a sign of the two. It was like they had flicked into smoke. Jourdaine had left in apparent disgust after the second or third false alarm. The other units left. By the time Haversham rounded up his own unit, they was alone. Duty held him there to clean up the mess. A few more joy-riding crèchies were all he had to show for it. The last passenger going south, an S21 with a travel voucher and a bad attitude harrumphed past still muttering imprecations just a few minutes ago. He had rousted the men before 0400. Even the Sapped had their limits.

Lance Haversham sighed. Heading up Jourdaine’s flying squad had lost its glamour for him.

What went wrong? The analysts that this would work. They told him it was merely a matter of selecting the best trap. Jourdaine had done that and netted nothing. And the belts were so incredibly straight-forward, simple to understand, immensely prosaic. No great number of exits, no large milling crowds to become lost within. Haversham had grown up with the belts, always present and operating, the back-ground hum of his life. They took you from point A to point B and you got onto another belt to bring you back.

What could be simpler … and, he realized slowly over a few seconds, even if less than half-visible.

The belts were a loop; they had to return to the spot from which they started. The belts must have return limbs, hidden from view but accessible, perhaps.

Haversham, taking the chance that Jourdaine’s pique at his intrusion would not destroy his career, contacted his commander’s O‑A. The link flared into incandescent red on connecting, before it cooled to a livid pink as he explained.

Jourdaine kills the solons (500)

DUFS HQ, Nyork, The Unity

06.22.59.EST_19_July_AU 78 (2129AD)

I was time to act. Jourdaine had known it would come to this since AnnArundel. He had probably always known it. He must paralyze the belts to force the belts to bargain. The solons prevented that. QED. The solons must go.

His own retirement was but twenty-five months away and it was pressing on him. If he delayed too long, he would be under too much scrutiny, especially with his expected victory in Jorga. Becoming a solon, anonymous once elected, was the glittering prize for a citizen with an exemplary and loyal career. It was also the illusory bribe to keep quiet a less than stellar citizen hopeful until it was too late.

The average citizen hoped to get to retirement without being blamed for something disastrous. It was only the senior staff of the ruling DUFS who knew for sure that the “retirees,” instead of enjoing themselves in their own Sisi enclaves, were recycled as brain-ablated foor soldiers, the CRNA’s. For the senior staff, then, there had to be another bribe: the possibility of old age as a solon. No one knew who was elected or indeed how many there were. All worked tirelessly in the hope of being elected solon. Jourdaine knew the solons critical weakness. Anonymity allowed you to make the tough decisions but it also isolated you from righteous outrage. Who would care if an anonymous despot lived or died? Who would even know?

The belts must to be brought under Unity control. The solons prevented that. Therefore, the solons had become surplus to requirements.

Rumor had it that the solons all lived on an unmappable artificial island that orbited slowly up and down the coast, just out of sight of land. Others had it that the solons moved within the society, rejuvenated perpetually, and would rule the Unity forever. Jourdaine knew better. His presence had ferreted the truth out years ago. Each solon had made a fortress in plain view, like any other senior staff. They thought themselves clever. They had all developed massive and multilayered defenses, able to hold off an army for a lifetime. It was the blindness of their own security preparations that made Jourdaine plan this. Really, they had only themselves to blame, he thought.

Jourdaine walked to his office door and secured it, even wedging a chair under the control panel. He did not want to be disturbed. He went back to his desk and relaxed. He would need all his efforts to control his Presence.

He took a deep breathe and exhaled slowly, dropping down and away from the reality of the usual to emerge into the reality of the CORE. He smiled. The solons thought they were so clever, abandoning their careers, their friends and even their names to seize the burden of rule over the nation. They thought themselves immune, unassailable and remote. Their O-A’s were endowed with capabilities that dwarfed most citizens, including the capacity for summary execution for a minion who really irked them. Usually they were content to let the DUFS rule and only to show their displeasure by a last minute veto or an even more dramatic execution of a too-ambitious DUFS commander. He wished to avoid that.

Solon Eight Summons (300)

GraniteVale, White River Valley, VerMon, The Unity

07.02.06.EST_19_July_AU 78 (2129AD)

Beatrix Norstrom, Solon Eight, awoke. The room, sensing her arousal, started to sweep open the dense curtains to reveal a broad expanse of the Green Mountains. Light mist drifted up from the warming valley, dewing the trees near her mansion, GraniteVale. A console near her head slid back to reveal a mug of coffee, one of her few extravaganses. She took it up to sip after getting up herself. The room warmed to her specifications.

It was good to be a solon, she thought.

At fifty-two she was still active and vital. Except for the fathering reading glasses and the loss of a breast due to cancer, she felt fit, alert and active. If she were a regular citizen she would have been dead a decade ago. Now, as chairman of the Council of Solons, she was, in everything but name, the empress of a nation of over a hundred million people. Not one of that multitude knew her name. She smiled.

It was good to be a solon.

Good and bad.

Today would test her mettle. No doubt, some would call her paranoid or even delusional. She had to be her most politic, subtle, and clever. Dealing with her fellow solons was like herding cats: difficult, unrewarding and underappreciated.

After a Spartan breakfast, Betrix reviewed her data, dressed in her most somber suit but kept her bedroom slippers on and walked to the audience chamber. No mere human assisted her. It was part of the price for being a solon. Other than the regiment of CRNA’s keyed to her own command module, no other people even knew the location of Solon Eight. GraniteVale was modest compared to some of the mansions in the vicinity. Most people thought it deserted. In a pinch, she could hold off all the forces of the DUFS from this single location.

Audience (600)

After walking down the long hall, she entered the council chamber, resplendent in its magnificent motif of the French Second Empire. It circular with twelve seats placed in a single arch around the perimeter. Betrix took her usual position at the top of the arch and activated her O-A interface. The hour struck and she sent the summons.

Almost immediately the room was populated by the images of eight other solons. The O-A projections were almost believable, as usual, the men and women appearing to sit in their assigned chairs, sipping their own coffee.

Solons was usually moderately punctual. These were serious people and jealous of their own time and of others. Today the arrivals were instantaneous. Solons were serious about their survival, as well, it seemed. Betrix smiled.

“Thank you for your prompt arrival, fellow solons. I will not bore you with protocol. We all know why we are here. Within the last month, three of our number have died.”

“Of course, but George was old. I know for a fact he was almost sixty five, said Solon Thirty-Three, nodding to the empty space beside him.

“Yes, some will see this as merely inevitable coincidence. Let me assure you that it is not. I took the liberty of having autopsies done on each: George Sautris, Martin Vanderwoud, and Xant’ermia Warren. They each were found after their O-A went dead. The usual procedures were taken and their locations were determined and entered by my staff.”

Several of the council jumped to their feet. Sybarite Soames was the first to speak. “Do you mean you could find each of us? This is coutrageous. How dare you presume to find the location of a solon!”

“The location of a dead solon, Solon Twenty. It is one of the distasteful tasks I assumed on taking over at the center chair. I could only do this when an O-A refuses to respond, which only occurs with death or removal.” The solons, mollified, returned to their chairs.

“So they died of heart attacks? Well, that’s a relief,” said Sybarite, as if to make up for her earlier outburst.

“Yes, one might say that but there was no vessel disease. They have all gotten the VRR treatments. The lesions look as if they died from an overdose of adrendaline or some drug like that.”

“So now you’re telling us they were scared to death? Somehow I don’t think George is likely to have died of fright,” laughed Morris Alliende, Solon Seventeen.

“We have not been able to determine what the sequence was prior to death but we have to seriously consider that the solons are being targeted by person or persons among the senior staff.”

Everyone of the solons looked at her then with the same look of apprehension. They all started to talk simultaneously. The babbling accelerated. She could make out only short phrases. Then, the faces before her changed subtly. The voices rose in timbre. A few began to clutch their chests. Solon Eleven’s image flickered and went out.

By the time Betrix fled the room, turning off her O-A as she did, only one image was still there to object. Sybarite’s voice pursued her down the hallway.

“Where are you going, Bea? Did you get us together to kill us all? Bea? Father you, Bea!”

Retreat to Safe Room (800)

Betrix fled. For all the opululence of the council chamber, the corridor connecting it to the rest of GranitVale was unadorned, windowless and stark. Feeling every irregularity in the roughly finished concrete, she now wished she had worn good shoes.. She knew where she needed to go. She had worked out the scenario after first being elected solon. The trick was to eliminate all contact with the Unity. If it could not touch you, it could not kill you. Her O-A had been the first thing to be removed, replaced with an appliance she only used when necessary.

Betrix came to the large blast door and keyed her personal code into the panel. She could hear the motors whine, swinging the massive doors open. She leaned over and tried to catch her breath, noticing only then that one of her pink fluffy slippers had fallen off in her flight.

With its own solar farm on the roof, even the power for GranitVale’s defenses were separate from the Unity. Unless the sun entered into the conspiracy, she would have power for life.

Betrix squeezed through the widening crack and closed the doors once on the other side. For safety sake, she changed the override code and ran on, her legs burning with the effort. Scrupulous in her exercise regimen, she worked out everyday in the small weight room beside her bedroom. She usually did not run. It made her cough.

Finally, she came to the stairs. Those on the right would pass another blast door to the safety of her private suite. The more utilitarian ones on the left went to the barracks. She turned left and started to ascend.

She had handpicked the officers for her regiment. They, like she, had disappeared from the table of organization, only to appear at GranitVale with their troopers, staff and protégés. They had their O-As removed just like she had. They were loyal to only her. She had enough men, equipment and materiel to visit vengeance upon any who thought to oppose her. Her first act would be to use her solon override code to raid the armory at Nashwa, commandeer the regiment there and then go on to AlbanE. She should be in Nyork with a good battalion, and a bad attitude by this time tomorrow.

She laughed and then started to cough, eventually sitting on the steps to catch her breath. Nothing but an attack through her fellow solons O-As could have killed them off. She had only escaped by anticipating that ploy. Once she got to her troops, whoever had started this would find out who was the smarter. Probably that weasel Jourdaine. He would rue the day he thought to match wits with Betrix Norstrom!

She rose and, pulling herself up the last flight of stairs, keying her code into the access port at the head of the stairs, she stumbled through the opened door.

The place stank, as usual. CRNAs always stank, no matter how often you bathed them or how you fed them. A detail of the faceless wonders stood near the door and saluted her as she entered.

“Go get your commander. Tell him the solon is here,” she wheezed to the one with corporal strips. Betrix sat down on the bench near the door, closed her eyes, and tried to catch her breath without setting off paroxysms of coughing. That much running would make her cough for days. Jourdaine would pay for that. She heard the CRNAs bustling around her as terse and incomprehensible commands floated by.

Betrix awoke with a start, realizing she had been snoring, her mouth feeling dry and fetid. She wondered how long she had dozed. Her breathing now was slow and she had no urge to cough. Sitting up straight, she saw that the ranks of CRNAs had swelled while she slept.They still stood around at attention. Still no lieutenant.

Betrix Norstrom stood and stepped forward, stepping into something squishy and cold. Looking down, she saw the squishy thing was brown and oddly shaped. Only when she turned it over with her toes did she discover the ragged bloody wound along one side. It was a human ear.

She looked up in horror. In the last few seconds, the entire cadre of CRNAs had removed their helmets, revealing the grey faces of slack-jawed old men. They stepped forward with a dull thump. The helmets dropped with another thud. She saw how bright were their eyes. Blood smeared their chins.

The teeth. Their teeth. Oh, their teeth!

"Malila saw the Checkpoint" excerpt from Exiles' Escape

2016-05-18

Suburban Washenton, Virginia, The Unity

Late night, July 2, 2129 (AU78)

Malila saw the checkpoint in the distance. It was unannounced. They never were. A squad or two would descend on an anonymous stretch of beltway and set up shop, checking the papers of everyone going that direction. She had done it herself. Malila watched the phantom shops evaporate around her like some form of undersea anemone; one moment they had blossomed with posters and sale racks the next they were an idle collection of strangers carrying odd assortments of ladders, suitcases and umbrellas.

Malila had been free (or was it bereft?) of any sort of interface for almost twenty-four hours. Her head throbbed and her nose had burst forth with new contributions of blood to add to her disguise twice in her journey, so far. She had lost count of the times she had summoned Edie, only to feel the aching hollow of loss with each attempt. But there were pleasant surprises as well. Escaping the Filadelfya sector had been easier than she had first thought. She had just followed the Market-belt west and taken the Skoolkill belt south through the tunnels. No one remarked a half-naked woman with decorative handprints in dried blood over her belly and face.

It was only after she got beyond the suburbans that she realized she had made her decision, even without thinking about it. She had tacitly and irreversibly set herself on a course that could end in her death, her being Sapped or her escape from the Unity.

She was no longer dodging the illusion of the CORE-sim and its traps. She was in full rebellion against all that she had once cherished. She would now be the hated enemy of the Unity. If she succeeded in her escape she would graduate to become a savage outlander. If she failed she would be manure for the Unity’s fields or a temporary, mindlessly cooperative soldier for the Unity. And she had chosen her route badly.

The belts were for commuters. Only by happenstance did the spider-web of one city’s beltways connect to the next city’s beltway, creating chokepoints where a clever pursuer could catch her with little difficulty. She was beyond the metro Washenton area, now … and trapped.

Malila got off the beltway almost without thinking, arriving onto the platform of Anne Arundel Annex. The platform was typical: public objects d’art were placed to relieve the monotony of the long low gray concrete tubes. Art failed, monotomy won. This blocky affair done in welded steel and painted grey and green, needing several hundred words to explain it was supposed to be a sunrise. Malila stopped to examine it as she thought of her options.

She could only loiter here so long. There was scant reason for anyone, abstract art notwithstanding, to be on the platform. A lingering citizen in a soulless hole in the ground was too obvious a sign of bad intentions. By now, without doubt, DUFS units covered all the exits. Looking around, Malila saw a door proclaiming “Authorized Personnel Only” and walked purposefully to it. Stealth or indecision would attract attention by the surveillance cams. She had not been able to see any. That worried her.

To her surprise the handle turned easily and she passed into a short sterile corridor that smelled of hot oil and old urine. It led to a long flight of stairs, the bottom lost in darkness and the sound of hurtling machinery. Not hesitating, Malila descended.

Stumbling at the bottom in the dark, she caught herself without touching a wall. An unannealed cacophony of machinery assaulted her ears while the sound of rollers close overhead provided a descant of sibilance as unending as the beltway itself. The surge of the flux motors, in turn, provided a rumbling base note. Within the racket, Malila heard voices. She supposed that the beltway, for all its sophistication was still a machine and that presupposed the existence of mechanics. The dim light brightened as she waited, showing her to be at a crosswalk. Aisles stretched out in three directions from her location.Malila continued foreward, in the same direction as the stair, hopefully nearing a service exit or utility shaft. The clangor gradually receeded. Here gently humming panels lined the aisle,on either side. Within thirty meters, however, and without crossing another aisle, her path dead-ended into a translucent screen. She heard soft scratchy footsteps…several sets of footsteps, behind her. As she turned, the noises stopped.

Malila could see a huddle of forms at the very reaches of her sight. Out of the gloom a shape edged closer. Malila began to make out strange faces: small, squinting eyes, long prominent ears, thin mouths and protruding faces with almost no chin at all, pale narrow faces. The half-dozen figures approaching her all wore the same smock-like shapelss garment with a wide fabric belt from which dangled tools of some sort. The garments fell to about ten centimeters above the concrete floor,with trousers of the same material ending in neat cuffs. Narrow feet inside rough sandals scratched along the uneven surface as the group approached.

Finally, one stepped forward, circling a pair of goggles nervously like a petitioner before a magistrate.

“And is the lady come from above, here to do us good or harm?” the apparition said finally.

Malila was shocked.

Seemingly out of place in the whirling, oiled darkness, the voice was musical, reminding her of the lullabies of Sally. The sudden cessation of the ever-circling goggles, jogged her back to the moment.

“Who are you? No, I don’t mean you any harm.” Malila blurted out and was almost ashamed of her voice, a croak in comparison to her interrogator.

There was a scritting conversation before one of the other pale faces stepped forward and whispered into the speaker’s long ear. The speaker nodded and replied to her.

“Nor is it apt for stranger here to ask us who we are. Do tell us first who comes within of who and what you are.”

This time, the melodious words brought a chirping buzz from the individuals behind the speaker, sounding like approval. She noticed that one or another carried a wrench or other small tool. They did not carry them as she would. These people were no warriors even as she realized she was unarmed, alone and nearly naked. She could no longer breathe through her nose because of the swelling. She had not eaten in over a day. Any fight would be a short one.

The DUFS roadblock on the beltway above might mean that her ruse had failed and she was the object of a manhunt. ‘Every act is a wager.”

“My name is Malila and I’m not here to hurt anyone. Some people are hunting me and I’m trying to escape.”

Initially there was a look of distaste on the faces of the group; it was nothing overt but just a looking away from her for a few moments. Malila again heard voices as the several heads bobbed and nodded in conference.

Malila’s, much more familiar with barracks limericks and ballads, when the strange speaker started again, found herself framing his words as if a poem.

“We are the people of the dark, the poets of the gloom.

Our work is on the belted way; our pleasure is our wording.

The Unity is far and near, but not below the streets, as here.

Unknown to us, the name you give; a traveler no doubt you be,

So welcome here is granted you, by Iain to forswear.

Come follow us to Iain’s place, the best to treat and feed you.

We give you leave to follow close, but none to wander freely.”

He again began to circle his goggles before stopping self-consciously and placing them over his eyes. Turning, as his fellow workers encouraged him with friendly pats and low whistles, he moved off down the aisle. Two larger members of the group pressed against the wall, while the other members of the group dispersed, apparently back to their duties. Malila followed the speaker, and as she passed, the two waiting members of the group fell into position behind her. The shuffle of their sandals echoed into the dark alleys as they passed, returning as echoes to all her fears.

"Will Butler Awakens" Excerpt from Exiles' Escape

2016-05-15

Will Butler Awakes

Searcy, AR, Restructured States of America

Dawn, July 2, 2128 (AU77)

On the morning of his last day at home, William Yates Butler woke early. The summer sun, just clearing the copse of hickory on the ridge, shone in through the dormer window of his bedroom to carom off a fragment of mirror and into his eyes. Over-warm and claustrophobic with its slanting ceiling, the room seemed smaller than he had ever remembered in his twenty-two years. Even after he and his mother had packed all the trophies of childhood, science fair projects, and holographs into two cardboard boxes “for when I can send for them,” the room still seemed filled with the commerce of childhood.

He had been a long time gone, before this last homecoming. Commuting from college had not been in the budget for his farmer-preacher father: four times in five years and today would end the fourth. He would not share with his family the likelihood of a fifth.

Before he started training, the “color guard” had given him two weeks at home. He was not supposed to tell his family much and it made the goodbyes, in a way, easier. After being gone years at college, he felt like a stranger.

Tim, his next younger brother, had, without his permission, become a man, with a conceit of a beard to show for it. Tim was talking about becoming a preacher like their father. He would be good at it, Will thought. His younger siblings stared at him like some strange lost uncle. His mother, way before he left for school, had slipped into that ageless vigor of early middle-age that Ageplay[1] pressed on most everyone now. She did not look as if she had changed.

When he had arrived home, she smiled and laughed and kissed him, before she started crying.

All his old classmates were gone or married with worries and children of their own. His dog, Lamont, was still there but his muzzle was now white and he no longer belled when he chased the squirrels around the two old oaks in the back yard. The squirrels still won.

Hearing the mockingbirds and robins dueling melodically through the screen of the narrow window, Will got up quietly. With the bed too small now for his entire length,he slept on the floor, dragging the mattress onto it after his parents went to bed and replacing it before he heard his father stir in the morning.

His father seemed to have become an old man in his absence. He had gotten his Ageplay when Will had gotten his own treatments. They did not work as well, of course, on someone his dad’s age, especially after an early life as hard as his father’s had been: raised on a hardscrabble farm, orphaned early and joining the frontier militia during the “Devastations,” when the Unity raided with impunity, closing the Mississippi for weeks on end. After his dad got out, he had gone to seminary and come back to Searcy as a preacher, came back to Will’s grandparents’ farm, this farm.

Sliding the mattress into the alcove his bed occupied, Will twitched the blankets to look presentable. Aftrer dressing, he waited unmoving until he heard his father’s step on the stair. Chores came early and his father could use the help. Tim had gotten in late and would sleep late.

Hecate Awakes

Environs of Nyork, The Unity

23.03.02.local_30_05_AU 78 (2129 AD)

Hecate’s awoke in an empty, dusty apartment somewhere in the slums outside Nyork, she thought. To her surprise, the apartment had food for four days and even more surprising, a working toilet. She read the post-operative instructions taped to her leg. The cutter and her assistant had been nameless, had never spoken and wore surgical masks. Tiffany, her life-long friend, had not been there.

Hecate remembered their last face-to-face meeting, weeks before.

“We can make it look like a suicide, but you need to be careful, Heccy. Do you know about the implants?‍” Tiffany asked, looking around casually but thoroughly in the sterile lobby of the Euthanatorium. Tiffany worked in this all-purpose “health care facility” with its stark gray benches and lively posters hawking the self-actualizing benefits of suicide.

“Of course, I use my O‑A every day, just like you do.”

“No, what I mean is your basic implant, we got when we were E1s. It allows the Unity to track us.”

“Then just take out the basic implant,” Hecate asked.

“They can track you with the O‑A, too. The range is much shorter; most of the time that doesn’t much matter. I know someone who can remove the Basic and the O‑A for you.”

“I want to get rid of them both, then. Your friends can have them, for all I care.”

Since that one meeting, she had not spoken to Tiffany again.

Her quarters had become an echoing hollow, after selling her things, hers and Victor’s, to the phantom shops. She slept on the floor.

Late one night, she got the call. A strange voice, recited to her a time and an address, made her repeat them back, and told her not to write anything down. Hecate had collected her money and a few other things and shown up. The windows of the skimmer were blacked out.

She found the little cream and blue book, among her clothes when she felt well enough to dress. She had forgotten she had brought it. In the early days of her grief after Victor’s suicide last fall, she had found the book and the poem. It had spoken to her and she re-read it enough to memorize it. Now she kept the book as some indefinable bright thread linking her to Victor; it was silly, she knew. Victor had never seen the book, or the poem. She kept it anyway.

[1] Treatment prolonging vigorous life to about 170 years developed by Alyssa Browne in 2051

Speaker and Jesse Excerpt from "Exiles' Escape"

2018-02-10

The Scorch, once eastern Tennessee

Late Morning, April 2129

Jesse walked on. It had taken him two days to get here after dropping off Xavier Delarosa’s corpse in Lexington. He purchased the cryo-casket and laid him in it himself for transport to Saint Louis. He would have liked to have taken him back home himself, but he had to get some information. The Sage-Men, long-lived and observant, might help. “Speaker, I bring a gift for you,” Jesse shouted, hoisting the huge bear haunch off his skin-clad shoulder and waving it to increase its olfactory and visual signal. Near noon now, the bloody meat had attracted its share of insect admirers adding their buzz. The day was getting warm. Advancing another ten yards, the old man repeated the maneuver. Speaker gave good advice at times. He might yet. Jesse did not even know whether Speaker still lived. It was old when they had first met, back in Jesse’s idyllic childhood. At least he had thought it idyllic. When they could catch him he got lessons from his parents or Theo, his oldest sister. There was always the Scorch to teach him the rest. “Speak, Quicksilver,” said a voice from the sunny knob on the thin finger of ancient rock. “And let me eat while you do.” The voice was slow, bloodless, whispering, and vegetable. Jesse had known Speaker since that fuzzy forever-time of childhood. The plant-man was a stranger to envy, a wise voice in the night. He was an intimate of the sun, of the wind, of the rain, and of the deep, dark soil of the Scorch—the rich loam itself the death of ages. Jesse stopped. As he had done each time previously, he surveyed the little defile that was Speaker’s home, looking for the familiar and changed outline of the creature, his skin looking more like a lichen than that of a man. Jesse threw the bear-joint onto the rocky bench bereft of any growth, the place he had always privately called Speaker’s Dinner Plate. He turned away. In a short while, he knew, a feeder-pseudopod, looking more like a bark-encrusted root, would slither out and start the feeding process. As a diner, the less said about Speaker’s etiquette, the better. “It has been many winters, Quicksilver. I wonder if you taste the same.” “Less time for you than me, Old One. I remember well enough for us both. You will have to live with your memories, Speaker.” A rustling noise—hollow, mirthless, and alien—surrounded Jesse. He smiled. Some of their first meetings had been less cordial. Jesse heard a faint insinuating noise in the dry leaves to his left. “Is it well with you, Quicksilver? You are older, I think. I trust you are carrying on well with your kind and leaving mine to me.” “I manage, Speaker. I have children and they, children and they, children. I am content. I trust you have offspring of your own.” The rustle was now directly behind him. It stopped. Jesse wrapped the fresh bearskin around his left hand and forearm. “Aye, every spring the young dart off to sprout anew. None speak so well. I am yet hopeful.” “Is not that true with us all?” asked Jesse before walking toward Speaker a step, swiftly pulling his shorthand blade free of its sheath. “I wish to show you this present I have for you, Speaker.” Just then, from the forest litter along the edge of the small valley, a hunter-pseudopod erupted—larger, tentacled, and poisonous—and lunged at the old man. Jesse, turning with a smile, gripped the lunging pseudopod near its mouth with his protected left hand. The two wrestled as it writhed to escape and strike again. Turning to speak over his shoulder, Jesse said, “This present I have for you is sharp, Speaker. Once ’pon a time, I even cut myself free of a Sage-Man, if you kin ’imagine that. I can give you the knife now, or if it does not serve, I will keep it to myself. What say you, Old One?” Jesse gave the drooling thing he held another forceful squeeze and heard a small squeak behind him. “It does not serve, Quicksilver. The years have not slowed you. Do sit, that we may talk of old times.” Jesse released the vicious limb, which immediately slunk away into the litter at the edge of the defile. “Yes, Speaker, let us talk of old and new,” said Jesse, making a point to replace his knife and close the throat of the sheath securely.