Voices in the Stream: Phase 02 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Page 7

  “Yes, but psychologically hybridized with the instinctual engrams of the wild animals their morphology is based on: pack mentality, a taste for blood, etc.”

  “So those first DOGS units, the Coyotes, were half domesticated, half wild?”

  “Yes. And transcripts from the Darkpool Laboratories research indicate that Dr. Adler functioned as the Coyotes’ tether. However, just like any wild animal that is somewhat domesticated, the Coyotes, particularly Coyote One, were not fully functional in the closed environment of the lab. That’s the theory at least. Their code was nascent. Vulnerable.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “All we know is that someone associated with Dr. Adler’s team attempted to modify their behavioral overrides. Possibly Dr. Goldstein. Consequently, the Coyotes rebelled, slaughtered the laboratory staff, then escaped into the wild. No one knows, but it’s a little pet project of mine to find out.”

  “That’s some potty shit,” said William. “How’d you get inside news on the events at Darkpool anyhow?”

  Dax pointed to the far side of the barn, “The answer lies right there.”

  William turned. The wooden framework that made up the barn wall lay before him. Empty space.

  “The answer is a barn wall?”

  Dax barely smiled, “So it would appear.”

  William walked closer, “Looks like nothing, Mr. Abner.”

  “Indeed. And you look like a cowboy.” Dax drew his hands from his pockets, gesturing with excitement and speaking faster, “But in fact, you are the key to safely increasing the output of my still ten fold.” He walked up behind William and clapped him on the back, “You are the tether.”

  “Huh?”

  Dax Abner casually waved a hand, “Well, LOFN seems to think so. Now we’ll find out how the rest of the pack feels.” He touched his combud, “Joan, be a doll and deactivate the lift hologram. Yes. I am bringing him now. Give us time to take in Goran by the still, then have the DOGS units meet us in the warehouse.” Dax frowned, “What? Well, tell him I understand. Nonetheless, spool the units with protocols off. Correct. Thank you.” Dax smiled at William like hovcar salesman, cocking his head whimsically, “Sorry, that’s the office manager.” He pointed at what had been the empty wall of the barn, “Now what do you see?”

  Fragmented Remains from the Cloud Diary of Daxane Julius Abner – July 4, 2077 12:01 am – Five Years Three Months Before Event.

  “…ppy Independence Day. Have a drink on me. Have a 100,000 on me. We are officially the number one black market alcohol production facility in the North American United States as of last week. The DOGS units sweep the 600 acre perimeter radiating Joan’s dark network. The creatures are relentless, obsessed with pleasing William. From the moment I told him about the true nature of this pumpkin farm, he was a duck on the pond. He walked out of the briefing with Joan without a blink, as though I’d just hired him to be a barista at The Pony. He sends one of the cyborgs on each outgoing shipment, tells them to obey Hugo, and they do, perfectly. No safety protocols. Fascinating is the only word.

  I need an on-site manager to assist Hugo. The Israeli says the person will come to us throug… UNSCHEDULED HARDWARE DESTRUCT / DATA COMPROMISE / INITIATE BACKUP.EXE FOR REINTEGRATION FORMA… LOSS. LOSS. LOS”

  William took a step back. The barn wall began to blink and vibrate like an enormous holovision screen getting a corrupted feed. Quickly revealed was a three sided cargo elevator with metal side rails large enough to accommodate a hovtruck. The elevator bed was perfectly flush with the asphalt floor. Beside the cargo elevator, a human sized, six-panel wooden door had also materialized. The green door looked as if it had been painted 200 years ago, hung on hammered brass hinges in the dusted corners of a saloon where the whiskey poured like western rain in the antique centuries. Despite the door’s rough appearance, it was hefty and solid in construction and was secured with a liquid plasma hand scanner. A single red LED blinked slowly on and off in the upper right hand corner of the machine. An identical biometric scanner was mounted to the railing on the cargo elevator.

  Dax stood to one side, inclining his head, “Care to scan us in?”

  William squinted with trepidation, then put it together, “My hand imprint on the employment agreement, when you jumped me at the hospital.”

  Dax gave an offhand shrug, “My hiring practices are unorthodox, but I have a schedule to keep.”

  William placed his hand against the semi-liquid surface. The scanner’s gelatinous plasma folded around his fingers, and the red LED blinked to green, popping the door open with a rush of cool, dry air. The backside of the door was covered by a two cm steel plate and revealed a metal staircase.

  William started down, followed by Dax. The walls on either side were concrete, illuminated by recessed lights in the ceiling. As they descended, nothing was visible but a landing at the bottom. William guessed that the forty or so steps took them twelve meters underneath the barn. At the bottom was a metal door with an old fashioned knob.

  Dax spoke as if to himself, “Here we go then…”

  William didn’t blink. He turned the knob and walked into a cavernous room nearly the size of the barn, with seven meter ceilings of reinforced structural concrete like a docking garage. The warehouse was bright, clean. On all sides, its cement walls were illuminated by rows of hanging shop lights that gave the cement an odd, green hue. Directly to the left of the door was the enormous pad for the freight elevator he had seen upstairs. To his right was a gray blast door wide enough for a person. Or a dog.

  Beside the freight lift sat stacks of neatly organized wooden crates laser stamped with a bar code and the text, 2077.04.05 G&C indicating the date of production. It was vodka. Thousands of liters of vodka. William had seen crates like these before, behind bars in various Oklahoma speakeasies, filled with one liter masons of liquor. Two humanoid warehouse robots stood idle next to a large ceiling mounted hammock filled with packing peanuts and a trunk that hung down to dispense them into the crates. A large table with a few empty crates beneath it sat against the far wall, a packaging station for the outgoing booze. The sleeping warehouse robots, though heavy duty, were just like stocking bots in any warehouse. They had egg shaped domes for heads with a single camera “eye” in the center, along with a microphone and basic spatial array.

  Dax was silent, a bemused grin on his face as he let William take it in. At the center of the warehouse was the still itself. It was composed of four towering copper fractionating columns punctuated with circular glass portals that made each look like a tall golden flute standing on end. Beside the fractionating columns were the boiling tanks, each silver colored with a bell shaped, copper dome. Flanking the dual stills were the yet larger stainless steel fermentation tanks, each 4,000 liters in volume, resting like fat, lazy kick drums. A dizzying matrix of copper tubing and plumbing framed the setup, including a twelve cm water supply line routed across the warehouse ceiling.

  Heavy duty conduits emerged from the western wall, supplying electricity to the heating elements beneath the boiling tanks. Steam jets whistled from release valves at the tops of the fractionating columns, giving the entire scene the smoldering appearance of a 19th century factory. The only area he couldn’t see was the distant, shadowed corner of the warehouse beyond the still where the lights were off.

  William turned to Dax and whistled softly, “Damn.”

  Dax looked on pridefully, “We anticipate producing 22,000 undiluted liters every thirty days by the end of next month. We at Abner Family Pumpkin & Gourd supply speakeasy distributors as far away as Denver and Chicago with the finest black market vodka in the North American Union. Oh, and look, here comes the little master now.”

  Rounding the long curve of the fractionating columns, walking over the metal scaffolding that surrounded the boiler tanks, a tiny black man appeared. A dwarf. He wore snug fitting, blue hemp-jean overalls and boots and looked to be in his early 50’s with a thick beard the color of overcast winter sky and a bla
ck pirate’s patch over his right eye. His right arm was bionic from the shoulder down, with a magnetic tool socket where the wrist would be. The socket presently contained a hefty, well-worn crescent wrench that the man periodically closed and opened as though of unconscious habit. On his left shoulder perched a white baby Felix the size of a softball.

  William looked at Dax, then back without a word. The dwarf was muscular, solidly built. The tattoo of a vicious looking, yellow dragon was prominent on his neck. He darted down the corrugated metal stairs in front of the still with surprising agility and arrived shortly, standing in front of the two men.

  Dax took his vaporjoint out and handed it to William who nodded, took a long hit and then handed it back, casually exhaling the vapor.

  Dax tucked the e-joint back in his coat and said, “William, this is Goran and Cat. Goran, Cat, this is William. William’s here to wrangle the dogs, after a fashion.”

  The white kitten hissed and arched her back at the mention of the DOGS units.

  William tipped his hat towards the little man, “A pleasure, sir.”

  The dwarf did not respond. His expression remained stern and fixed. The kitten however, hopped from one shoulder to the next and sat up on its hindquarters, mewling plaintively. William noted a nasty scar running down from the patch-covered eye to the tiny man’s upper lip. After a few more seconds of awkward silence, he looked over at Dax.

  “Goran doesn’t talk, William. Several years ago he was caught in a speakeasy raid, fought back, poured straight moonshine over an agent and set him on fire. In retaliation, they blinded him, put his arm through a sonic wood chipper and cut out his tongue, left him for dead in a ditch.”

  “Jeezus,” said William coolly.

  “I’m afraid The Great Dog wasn’t involved, in fact. Goran makes his own fortune. He’s the one who built this still, he cooks our vodka.”

  “Russian?” asked William.

  Cat immediately hissed and turned her pink, BIOSKIN© kitten butthole in William’s direction and released a petite fart. Goran’s lone blue eye stared at the two men. The wrench attached to his right arm opened and closed. Otherwise, he remained still and stone-faced.

  Dax laughed, “He is most certainly not Russian. They have no shortage of vodka distillers there. No, Goran is from Marfa, Texas.”

  “Texas,” William growled. “No wonder CNED cut him down so hard. Only place rougher is Oklahoma.”

  Cat the kitten spun back around, changed shoulders, meowed in agreement then began licking her teeny paw.

  “Did you rescue him, kinda like you rescued my sorry ass?” asked William.

  “So to speak.”

  “How do you talk to each other? Engram translator?”

  Dax smiled politely, “He has no tech. Goran just knows what to do.”

  “I’m not even gonna ask.”

  “Sometimes that’s best,” said Dax pleasantly. “Good day, Goran.”

  Cat meowed again and gave William a little bow as Goran stepped between the two men without ceremony and disappeared out the door to the upstairs. The warehouse was quiet once more, save the steam clicks and rattles of the plumbing feeding the still.

  William eyed the stacks of crated vodka with new appreciation.

  Dax effused, “Without Goran and his Felix, this whole operation would not be possible.”

  “They’re a cool pair,” said William. “What’s up with the dragon tattoo?”

  “The ink is a totem indicating The Order of Adelonda. The order is a worldwide consortium of dwarfs who are considered to be master craftsmen in their respective trade.

  “Like a dwarfs’ master union?”

  “Yes. But for any field of practice from medicine to astronomy to music. Goran was a member of the Marfa chapter of Adelonda; highly exclusive, highly secretive. His mate was murdered in the same raid that left him mute. But those days are long past. Goran has Cat, Cat has Goran. They just know. You’ll see. Like engineering the perfect, high capacity vodka still. Goran walked in with the knowledge. The only difference between this one and a still created 200 years ago is the anti-corrosive linings of the coils. And, of course, the fact that ours is heated by fusion.”

  William stood with his hands on his belt, looking at the still, “That sucker must cook up some strong shit.”

  “Potent indeed, from what I understand.”

  William turned, “You don’t drink?”

  Dax looked offended, “Don’t be absurd. I would rather hurl my naked body into a pit of salted glass shards than drink alcohol. No problem with it philosophically,” he conceded. “My physiology simply doesn’t prefer the effects. I am a marijuana man, through and through. Besides, don’t sample your product is drug dealer axiom number one, right?”

  “Fair enough,” said William. “For the record, my drug philosophy is, if it gets you high and not too many people have died, I’ll give it a shot.”

  Dax raised his eyebrows, “How conservative of you, William. But what say we chat socially later on? I do believe some four legged members of our team have joined us.” Dax nodded over his shoulder with a tight, edgy smile.

  Fragmented Remains from the Cloud Diary of Daxane Julius Abner – September 11, 2077 4:20 am – Five Years One Month Before Event.

  “…an we call it murder? I say these CNED mercenaries, humdroids, are but casualties of their own violence. We have just an hour ago come in from hosing blood off the cyborgs. Unanticipated brutality. William says it happens with animals, seems unsurprised. The DOGS units have been free-functioning since the day he arrived however, and I am personally feeling no compunction about the deaths. These humdroids found exactly what they wanted to find; a still.

  Well, actually all they found was our property line. They were greeted by William, who will not go on patrol alone again with nothing but a .30 caliber hunting rifle to defend himself. He has suffered five fractured ribs and a bruised lung. I do believe he is beginning to understand the scope of this war. He attempted to verbally warn two CNED hunters that they were trespassing. The CNED’s responded by firing a sonic shotgun at his chest. Fortunately, he was wearing armor. Alas, nanobots can osteo-weld broken bones.

  The attack luckily happened within scan range of SNOTRA and SIEGFRIED. The cyborgs’ response… SIEGFRIED promptly dismembered a Mr. Stanley Jenks, while SNOTRA pinned his colleague, a Mr. Philbert A. Tramm to the Earth, driving her foot pedestal through the man’s shoulder. Agent Tramm was still alive while he watched SIEGFRIED rip apart his friend. Then both cyborgs dismembered Mr. Tramm in a team effort.

  When I say dismembered, let me be clear. The DOGS units ripped the arms and legs off these men, chewed their torsos in half and crushed their sonic shotguns in their jaws. The animals were protecting their tether. Upon review, the cyborgs’ code is perfectly stable, which leads me to conclude that the emotional response of the human tether may be transmitted to his subordinates? In less than 120 seconds, Joan erased the final moments of these mens’ lives from the Govcloud. A last known swipe of Stanley Jenks’ combud occurred at a jane store on the opposite side of the city. In about twelve hours, their families will start pinging the police. They will find wind. The DOGS units dragged the remains of the bodies and weapons into the river. Stanley Jenks and Phillip Tramm are now carp food.

  The person most upset has been Hugo. He was the first to see SIEGFRIED covered in ripped flesh and cl… UNSCHEDULED HARDWARE DESTRUCT / DATA COMPROMISE / INITIATE BACKUP.EXE FOR REINTEGRATION FORMA… LOSS. LOSS. LOS”

  William turned. With their backs to the warehouse, the gray blast door had quietly slid open. The three DOGS units had padded up behind them in perfect silence. First encounter. William dropped to one knee, putting himself at eye level with the creatures.

  The Rottweilers stood side by side, ignoring Dax. The largest, a male, cocked his head to one side. The two females behind him immediately turned their heads at the same angle. Their short, bobbed tails wagged freely. William examined each cyborg, one after the other. T
heir eyes were brownish-yellow in color with broad, black, holographic pupils. Each tracked his line of sight perfectly. If the cyborgs bore him any physical danger, they did not communicate such. In fact, it appeared they wanted to play?

  William jumped to his boots, “Come on!”

  He ran to the open area of the warehouse before the still and turned. The cyborgs barked with puppy-like excitement and bounded over, encircling him. William was knocked to the floor and assaulted with nuzzles and licks. He noted the strength of the DOGS units’ limbs as he half-smiled and shoved them helplessly, rubbing their ears and fluffy, white-tufted chests. They were obviously restraining themselves from using anywhere near their full power. As he ran his hands over their shiny, black bodies it was easy to pick out the structural differences in their titanalum skeletons. The rib cages moved and flexed when the cyborgs relaxed, but with the slightest motion, their bones once more turned hard as stone. The Rottweilers shouldered and nipped. He was able to play amongst them for nearly thirty seconds before a hand got pinched in the wrong spot between two hip plates.

  William clutched his fingers, standing with anger, “Son of a bitch! All three of you, sit the hell down,” he growled at the largest cyborg. The Rottweilers clipped to a sitting position, six eyes looking at him attentively. He held his hand grimacing. He wasn’t really hurt, it was just damn painful.

  William again shook his head and whistled, “They’re so strong! But they dial it back. Otherwise they’d crush me like a snail on a rock. What would happen if you turned off their safety protocols?”

  Dax Abner walked slowly closer, holding his fingers in a tent. He examined the animals as if seeing them for the first time.

  “William, that is what I meant about you being the tether. LOFN outside, these three, all safety protocols have been off from the start.”

  William bent over to pick his cowboy hat up off the floor, “Huh?”

  “They are choosing to sit. They chose to adjust their kinetic responses. They chose to play!” Dax said with delight.