Voices in the Stream: Phase 02 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Read online

  THE EIGHTEENTH SHADOW

  Phase 2.0

  Jon Lee Grafton

  VOICES IN THE STREAM

  THE EIGHTEENTH SHADOW – PHASE 02

  Jon Lee Grafton

  Copyright © 2017 Jon Lee Grafton Books

  All Rights Reserved.

  eBook editions by booknook.biz

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events which may take place in, during or around the year 2082, as well as any resemblance to persons, alive now or long since gone to the stars, is purely coincidental.

  Digital piracy of copyrighted literature is illegal and punishable by law. In general, it’s just not cool. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  You can contact Jon Lee Grafton via e-mail at [email protected], visit us on the holostream at jonleegraftonbooks.com or on Facebook.

  CONTENTS

  VOICES IN THE STREAM

  Prologue

  Chapter 2.1 – Orientation

  Chapter 2.2 – The Courtezans

  Chapter 2.3 – Meanwhile in Downtown Lawrence

  Chapter 2.4 – The Tether

  Chapter 2.5 – Fractures in the Daydream

  Chapter 2.6 – The Gauntlet

  Chapter 2.7 – Voices in the Stream

  A glossary of terms and acronyms can be accessed HERE for reference.

  Acknowledgments

  To Jason Ryberg, thank you for the poetry and the inspiration. And a million kilograms of gratitude for the real Tara Dean, my amazing editor.

  VOICES IN THE STREAM

  THE EIGHTEENTH SHADOW

  PHASE 02

  Jon Lee Grafton

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  Chapter 2.1 – Orientation

  Enid, Oklahoma – 2062 – Twenty Years Before Event.

  The rabbit appeared at last. It took a few hops outside the burrow and then froze, testing the wind. Its whiskers twisted and danced. The peal of a hunting dog – the shadow of a hawk – a cat waiting to pounce. The boy stayed still.

  The dreaming man had told him, Hunting is 99% patience. 1% gunfire.

  The boy had been waiting so long he was afraid to breathe. In the past, he had moved too quickly, and the startled animal would vanish like a wisp of mist into the safety of the woods behind the house.

  This time there were no mistakes.

  Slow and heedful, the boy raised the machined barrel of his rifle and rested it on the deck railing. The .22 caliber Ruger’s oak stock felt reassuring in his hands. The wood smelled of polish. The black metal smelled of rubbed oil and smoke. His mother had given him the rifle when he was eight. Two years on he could shoot a drone-skeet from the sky every time with a single bullet. But shooting a drone wasn’t the same as shooting something with a heart.

  A good hunter never forgets his first kill.

  The boy despised this hare. He wanted to feel its soft, sallow body in his hands. The anger sickened him. His father would probably take its fur and sew it into the collar of one of his fancy, white leather jackets.

  The rabbit began nibbling on a small patch of clover in a glade at the edge of the trees. It was farther away than the boy would have liked, too distant for the cracked glass scope the rifle had come with. At least in this wind. But he had trudged door to door selling holozine subscriptions all summer for a reason – the new Zeiss Paladin GK7 HUD scope was it. He drew the bio-adaptive polymer eyepiece close and peered through. The tech made hunting almost unfair. Yet like many things come and gone in life, the experience of shooting an actual animal would be good. His parents were busy arguing in the house. It was time.

  More information than he could possibly need filled the scope’s holographic viewfinder. Wind speed 14.9 kph north by northwest. Temperature 28.3 Celsius. Humidity 67.74%. Distance to target 161.84 meters. He carefully turned a silver dial on the side of the scope with his finger. The digital image magnified. The small rabbit looked almost white with the wind blowing its brown fur backwards, revealing the soft down beneath. The animal’s large, twitchy eyes were the color of walnuts. The boy zoomed out. A 2.5d holographic rendering of the rabbit’s entire body now filled the viewfinder. He took a deep breath. The digital crosshairs turned green, indicating a fatal target lock.

  The rabbit hopped forward unexpectedly as the boy pulled the trigger. Eye through the scope, he watched in awe as the animal’s body spun violently. Its back leg dangled, almost ripped free from the hip.

  Damn. Hollow points next time.

  Not the cheap old lead rounds from the garage. The boy knew better.

  After a few seconds, the screaming began. A flock of sparrows took wing at the fright of the wounded hare. The boy looked up from the HUD, flushed with sudden guilt. There was nothing to see with regular eyes. The animal had dragged itself into the underbrush. Sounds of feral pain echoed off the trees and sky. The boy didn’t know rabbits made noise! The awful sobbing peal permeated an otherwise peaceful summer afternoon. The voices in the house stopped their bickering. Of course they had heard the crack of his rifle. A tear formed. He brushed it off with the sleeve of his jean jacket.

  Track the animal. Finish it with mercy. Use what you kill.

  I can’t!

  You must.

  The death squeal split the clouds. It echoed off the house.

  The boy stood and set the rifle down like he hadn’t touched it. Panic set in. He could run, but where? One second, two seconds, three seconds, four… maybe there was still time? He put his hand on the warm stock of the weapon and moved his Durango boots towards the stairs leading off the deck, old plastiwood boards creaking with every step.

  The screen door flew open. It smacked hard against the weathered clapboards. The boy froze. He wished it had been his mother. Or the dreaming man. He wished that more than anything in the world.

  Instead, it was his father.

  The man’s eyes were red with Pleasium saturation.

  His voice was like a knife, “For Dog’s sake, Billy! What is that squealing!? Have you shot an animal? I told your mother it was a mistake to get you that gun! This is not the country any longer. We have neighbors two acres on, and the subdivisions after that. I’m taking that rifle.”

  “The hell you are,” he squared up bravely, eyes in line with his dad’s belt buckle.

  The hand with the big gold ring slapped his cheek, whip fast, nearly knocking him down, “Don’t get lippy on my porch, child. Gather that rifle and hand it here. Then go ask your mother how you’ve made her feel.” He snapped his fingers, “Go on now! Tell her what you’ve done!”

  He was too strong. The boy picked up his rifle, new Zeiss scope and all, and handed it over. Tears for a rabbit, yes. But none for this man. His jaw burned where the ring had dug in, the copper taste of blood trickling down his lip. He turned sideways to slip past his father without touching him, shoulders smashing beneath the man’s gaze.

  His dad bellowed up the stairs after him, “Marilyn! See what he’s done? This is on you! This is why!�
�� as the boy began the eternal, arduous twelve step climb to the second story.

  The door closed behind him, screen first, nine pane second. The boy heard the pneumatic click of the deadbolt as it auto-locked. Somewhere in the house a window remained open, though, and through it the screams continued.

  It was one of the last things he could remember them doing together as a family. They sat in silence and listened to a rabbit’s far off cries as it died slowly, alone, unseen amongst the trees.

  Lawrence, Kansas – April 2077 – Five Years Six Months Before Event.

  Douglas County Hovway 1500 was a road built for vehicles, in a time when wheels and gasoline were yet concerns of the day. Dax Abner’s pilot floated them down the two lane hovway at a leisurely 130 kph, passing through glades of roadside red buds and walnut trees exploding with limey, April hues. The glades of trees marked property lines from one farm to the next and were often set at the crest of a hill where the hovroad cut through a valley pass and the rock had been dynamited out in the antique centuries.

  From the Lincoln’s window, William watched the black asphalt line of the hovroad rise and fall. Occasionally, a truck would float by, traveling the opposite way into town with a tightly sealed whoosh of jet air and blinking LED’s.

  As the black hovlimo flew effortlessly through the last of these woodsy glades, they came to an opening where the Earth dissolved into the clouds. It was here William gained a vista of the massive, fertile flood plain. Down the kilometer long curve of a hill before them, the land was dotted with efficiently organized rows of spring crops, and there were three distinct farms, each with white houses and red barns of varying size and one or two wind turbines per plot. A couple of the farms had one acre solar arrays as well, and the skeletal forms of orbital crop sprinklers stretched out across what was obviously a marijuana plantation. The sprinklers’ molded rubber tires, tall as a man, were still, as it was yet early spring and there was always plenty of rain in these months before the inevitable droughts of summer would bring the irrigation equipment to life.

  The hovlimo’s pilot had been blessedly silent for most of the float.

  The man, who seemed to grin perpetually, at last spoke in a rapid, unapologetically thick Mexican accent, tortoise shell wayfarers looking at William in the rearview mirror, “Yo, Meester Bill? Dere’s d’ pumpkin farm, away on your leeft, see?” He pointed to the nearest plot of land, “Eet’s the beeg white house and reed barn with the green roof, okay? You can’t see no pumpkins yet, but come d’ fall-time eet’s like a million basketballs een the dirt. The keeds come with their parents for d’ Halloween, you know? Thanksgeeving gourds and such. Mr. Abner geeves hay rides with d’ old electric tractor, free apple cider, eet’s a good time. We smoke d’ jane and drive d’ keeds on the tractor. We go slow, eet’s safe. Don’t worry.”

  William felt goosebumps raise on his arms. The white house reminded him of something, bringing on a strong sense of déjà vu.

  He snapped out of it, brought from reverie by a monotone female voice chiming briskly over the limo’s com, “Hugo Velasquez, be advised. A westbound Douglas County traffic drone will pass you in 31 seconds. Your rate of travel is twenty kilometers over the posted hover limit. For maximum security, please reduce velocity.”

  William listened as the pilot replied enthusiastically, “Que tal, Joan?! Zeero worries… we be turning here on d’ drive een ’bout thirty seeconds anyways.”

  The computerized voice responded, “Correction. At present rate of travel, you will turn north onto the farm drive in 86 seconds.”

  The pilot’s smile was big and bright in the rearview, “Yes ma’am, Mees Joan. I’s a slowing.”

  William kept quiet, pretending to stare out the window as he absorbed the details of the conversation.

  The pilot chuckled, the wispy ends of his thick, brown mustache twerking up and down as he spoke again to William, “You gon see some theengs today, soon. Dat’s Ms. Joan. She got our veinte, you see mang! See? Dere’s d’ drone scum now,” he pointed through the windshield.

  Sure enough, a black, oval-shaped citizen observation drone hummed past ten meters overhead. The drone was flying towards the city and passed innocuously without so much as a flash-scan from its LED array.

  COD’s were such a common sight in urban Lawrence that most people didn’t pay them a notion. In the country, they seemed out of place. The drones were fast, silent, hard to see, and could easily sneak up on a person in rural areas, floating on stealthy antigrav and electric propulsion.

  Hugo the pilot continued talking, “You will see, Meester Bill, okay? Okay. We turning now on d’ farm road. Mr. Dax weel show you some things,” he continued grinning. “You don’t worry. Missus Joan do more than keep us out of speed tickets. You see. Okay?”

  William was examining the dashboard instrument cluster with muted curiosity as the hovcar slowed and banked smoothly onto the private drive leading to Abner Family Pumpkin & Gourd. Everything appeared normal. The private hovdrive leading to the farm was a single lane of perfect asphalt with white gravel shoulders to either side that sloped gently into clean water irrigation ditches. The tall, spindly shoots of new cattails had just begun coming up at the edges of the drive. Their sharply angled leaves stretched furiously upwards to touch the sun.

  The field to the left of the hovdrive was filled with neat rows of early season, broad leaf gourds. Some of the plants sported yellow, flowering blossoms poking out beneath the shadows of their leaves. A couple of silver, humanoid labor robots worked in the distance alongside a small John Deere solar tractor. The robots were sprinkling some sort of powder at the base of the young plants, one after the other. The process seemed tedious. A fine job for bots.

  On the horizon above the tree line, a large wind turbine spun lackadaisically. The white house and red barn were set well back from the hovroad, two kilometers easy, nestled at the deep end of the property. Another half kilometer north, beyond the barn and a wall of woods, lay the broad, meandering Kansas River. To the west was the heavily wooded hill that they had just floated down as they passed the COD.

  His new employer’s expansive, two story farmhouse appeared ancient, aside from the four port garage addition that jutted off its western corner. The house had a yellow limestone foundation and alabaster clapboards with a modest front porch. William guessed it could be as old as the 19th century. The shake roof had long since been replaced with green steel, which matched the front door in color.

  An identical corrugated steel roof also sheltered the enormous barn which was easily five times the size of the house. The barn was fire engine red, sided with polymeric solar panels that simulated traditional cedar. The barn had two doors. A single, human sized entrance, and a large garage door capable of servicing the tractors. Between the house and barn stood a towering cottonwood. The trunk was ten meters in circumference if it was one. William let the corner of his mouth turn at the sight of an old fashioned tire swing suspended with hemp rope, dangling lazily from the tree’s lower branches.

  Fragmented Remains from the Cloud Diary of Daxane Julius Abner – December 31, 2076 7:25 am – Five Years Ten Months Before Event.

  “…olden sun comes through the window, and the smell of coffee. It is my favorite time of day. I am at peace and can see the scope of things.

  100 years from now, what will people think of prohibition? For that matter, what do the cyborgs think? The DOGS units are unruly. I see why the military keeps them on constant command and control. Every time I attempt IR, they behave… like animals. SIEGFRIED and SNOTRA immediately began playing fetch with Goran when I tried it yesterday, hurling him across the warehouse floor by his overalls and yipping with delight.

  Goran was not delighted. Neither was his kitten.

  Once I have someone who can control the sentinels, we will be unstoppable. I will spread rebellion to every c… UNSCHEDULED HARDWARE DESTRUCT / DATA COMPROMISE / INITIATE BACKUP.EXE FOR REINTEGRATION FORMA… LOSS. LOSS. LOS”

  The lan
d around the farmhouse and the barn was covered with a rich green lawn. A second John Deere tractor with a flatbed hay trailer attached was parked beside the barn charging wirelessly off a standard 220 volt solar feed. The power feed pulsed red, indicating that the tractor had recently been parked. William found the rugged appearance of the tractor reassuring, an echo of easier times.

  Hugo the pilot floated around the meandering turn of the driveway where it made a circle about the cottonwood. William’s new employer appeared, as if on cue, from the small barn door. Beside him trotted a sleek, bold Rottweiler. The dog was a female in the prime of its life. William had expected a borg, but from a distance the animal displayed none of the usual bot indicators. No jerky, linear repetitions of motion. No sign of gear shift as the neck moved. The reaction variables in the Rottweiler’s muscular-skeletal facial shifts and the motion of the panting tongue were too random, too organic.

  Just as he had been when he appeared out of the blue to pick William up from Greystone Behavioral Modification Hospital, Mr. Abner was impeccably dressed. He wore wire-rimmed sunglasses with circular green lenses and was attired in another fine taupe suit.

  William had never owned a suit. The black fedora on Mr. Abner’s head made him think of the fictional 20th century detective Dick Tracy. Abner was as clean shaven and well kept as his farm. He strode resolutely towards the Lincoln wearing a look of bemusement.

  Hugo glided the Lincoln to a stop beneath the branches of the cottonwood. The big hovcar’s levfans spooled down, and the hydraulic docking mounts deployed evenly, gently rocking the vehicle as it came to rest. Mr. Abner waited. The well behaved dog sat beside him, panting. William pushed his sunglasses up his nose, put on his cowboy hat and closed the hovcar door behind him.

  It was impossible to miss the private security drone that had floated around to the back of the barn. The bot was unarmed but buzzed to a hovering position ten meters overhead.

  William walked over to his new boss, extending a handshake, “Mr. Abner, sir.”