Puppetry

By Ion Fyr

ISBN: 978-1-7331291-1-4

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real or imagined people or events is purely coincidental.

I wish to thank M, K and R for their support. I also dedicate this to my Invisible Friend and h and j, wherever they are now. (Specific people will understand. Calm down.)

Published by Jon Rodebaugh

Ion.Fyr@gmail.com

Londbridge, Terra, the year 247 of the World Commercial Congress.

The vast and populous city stretched from the coast inland for a great distance, its boundaries clear along the southern rim, where the depopulated agricultural land was a deep green against the grey of the city. Arcologies reached skyward like geometrically formed mountains. They stretched up through the brownish-orange fog, to the bottoms of intermittent, low hanging clouds. The wind off the sea to the west pushed the ground-hugging smog inland, where it flowed over the plastic and concrete housing blocks of the low-slung slums and wards.

Crude, steel rectangular blocks—massive airships—plied unseen lanes in the air. Some were a kilometer long, many were far less than that. They were cargo ships of the air, haulers of raw materials and finished products and everything in between. There were passenger transports and the occasional Corporate-emblazoned Skyship. Among them was a car shaped like a scarab of ancient Kemet.

The car was a low profile, sleek oblong of metal and synthetics. It’s skin was somewhat dark and greener than iridescent and there were no windscreens visible from the exterior. Unlike many, far less expensive vehicles with protruding nacelles, in this case the gravity-repelling Naskovich drives were enclosed in four slightly visible hips, two on the front sides and two on the back, otherwise it was featureless. It settled into the local traffic lanes at a lower altitude as soon as it crossed the perimeter fence separating urban squalor from automated farmland.

Inside was a man, lit only by the glow of dimmed wraparound screens showing the view outside mingled with telemetric data and a map overlay. He was of Mediterranean complexion, tanned by the sun, having thick black hair reaching his collarbone and a matching beard which he unconsciously stroked. He was bare-chested and muscular, and wore linen pants and sandals. It would seem he was ill prepared for the climate of northwestern Europa throughout most of the year.

Connect-device -car6 | Course-plot -new -1605 Attilastrass/178th Ward/Londbridge District -efficient | Velocity -LocalityLegal

Force-thinking, for those with wireless internal drives, was a simple process once one got used to it. It amounted to running code with one’s brain. Preprogrammed commands and related implanted hardware augmentation allowed wireless interaction with the ubiquitous Network.

Wireless worked effectively to a hundred meters, beyond that without a wired network connection or light-node semaphoric line of sight coms, one was out of luck. The wired part of the network spanned much of Eurasia and the Sint—the subcontinent embedded in the south of Asia, and the northern half of the Farad, the southern continent.

Luc knew he was already connected to the the car, but it didn’t hurt to initiate the connection to “car6” again.

Change-IdentCert -car6 | New-IdentCert “12hA126334w6”

A little sloppy. More important on the way out. He should have changed the vehicle’s identification before coming into range of the city’s cameras. The slop in the air will do something to obscure their visuals, though. He was going to church.

The Attican Universal Church on Attilastrasse was largely a tourist attraction these days. Once it’s gothic architecture drew supplicants and worshipers from all over Europa. Now, hardly anyone believed the the ancient Neoplatonic version of the gods. Not even in backwater Hellas.

He already missed the white and blue visual textures of Hellas.

The car chimed warmly at his arrival. Luc slipped his feet into his sandals. Looked first left, then right, and found his holstered pistol. He clipped it to his belt, in the small of his back. He then looked around. He was not a believer, by any means, but him entering an ancient sacred space without a shirt would have horrified his mother.

Luc didn’t have a shirt.

Instead, he pulled a barely used leather jacket from an under-seat compartment and slipped his arms into the stiff sleeves, the leather rustling like new. He had worn it once before on a trip north in the winter. He dimly remembered he had a shirt back then, too.

It was black, vat-leather and remained unzipped. It was almost too tight to zip anyway. From a different under-seat compartment, he shifted some detritus and pulled out two loaded magazines for his pistol, slipping these into his pocket. He also found a breather, one that would cover his nose and mouth and allow normal breathing under the toxic haze. For good measure he put on his sunglasses, which formed seal around the edges, protecting his eyes against the air as well. The sun was not even visible at the street level here, but that wasn’t the point.

With a fluid motion the car slowed to landing velocity and the four landing legs unfurled themselves just as the car settled to the ground.

Luc opened the gull-wing door and set foot on the damp pavement outside. Despite the smog-cover, the bright lights did their part in illuminating the street. There were other vehicles parked without regard for orientation or pedestrian traffic. Even beyond the 100 meters of practical visibility, one could still make out the multi-hued urban glow.

Surface traffic on the road had ceased a century ago, at least by passenger-carrying surface vehicles. There was a crunch of debris underfoot, forming heaps in some spots.

He could feel cool air on his chest, along with a slight chemical sting. While standing, the jacket just barely covered his pistol.

Luc scanned the street. There was at least one (albeit damaged) camera to the left, two indeterminate ones to the right. Six vehicles sat on the street, perched on their legs like giant plastic beetles, mostly shit economy rides.

The ancient architecture of the temple, or church, had been damaged considerably during the Wars of Consolidation over two hundred fifty years ago. Sometime after the half-destroyed structure was refurbished and stabilized in an unfortunately clashing architectural style. Its collapsing roof was now supported by cylindrical steel columns and a monstrosity of a replacement wall.

He pulled open the right side of a set of double doors and entered the tall building. Luc’s footsteps, the soft flap of his sandals on the cold stone floor, echoed. The building’s shattered acoustics still reflected the sounds from the left side.

The interior was thick with sandalwood incense, even detectable through his breather, and despite the efforts of the building’s atmosphere scrubbers. There were perhaps a dozen ancient, gilded, life-size bronze statues representing the Olympian gods. Each was enclosed in a plasti-glass cube, to prevent unwanted touching (or theft.)

At the fore of the temple was a massive stone sculpture of Zeus. On the floor in front of the king of the gods was a smoking bowl of some intentionally antiquated looking ceramic. There were only two other individuals in the place, a man and a woman. They were not together. The man crouched close to the incense bowl and was old. He looked Hellic. The woman was younger and was sketching with a stylus on an open scroll, its screen unfurled from its cylindrical shaft, it’s bluish glow reflected off her features.

Luc walked down the center of the building, imagining what it would have looked like when it was built hundreds of years ago. He did not like the aesthetics of mingling late Industrial Age girders with ancient wood ceiling beams. He scowled faintly at the the plasti-glass enclosures. They were eyesores and were smudged by hundreds, maybe thousands of tourists pushing their grubby fingers and noses against them, hoping to gain a better view or wondering if the gilded bronze was actually gold.

He walked toward Aphrodite and stood, admiring the beautifully sculpted figure. He waited.

A few minutes later—late—footsteps approached. Commando boots on the worn marble of the floor, echoing more boldly than his sandals, expressing the strength of her approach.

Luc turned slowly, his right hand on his hip, near the butt of his pistol, more out of paranoid habit than anything else. He knew who he was expecting, and could tell by her stride it was her.

“Lucretius, welcome back.” The girl was exuberant. Pretty, Luc thought. Vandalian emigre, north Farad complexion, from the other side of the Mediterranean. Black hair in two braids, one dyed a glowing pink. Leather head to toe, a jacket longer than the one he wore, matching pants with lots of pockets, boots.

“Hey, Nosrit, I haven’t spoken Standard for three years. Forgive me.” The words were spoken slowly, with concentration on the correct pronunciation.

“That’s ok. You look the same. Still no shirt. Aren’t you cold?”

“You look…older.” No longer a child. “So, Muskrat tells me there is a problem with some twat in Tanic Park?”

“Yeah, I’m just supposed to give you the contact data.” She slipped him an external, a little black wafer of data, a few millimeters square. Not wireless.

“I will look into this. Tell Muskrat I will contact him.”

Back in the car, Luc wired into the external. Data cascaded through him through the intermediary encrypted wireless node. There was a mafioso wannabe thug pressing his people.

Tanic Park was a poor community in the shadow of Dogtown Arcology, a mix of peoples from all over, some from outside the WCC. They were too poor to merit protections from MetSec. Londbridge Metropolitan Security was at best a hinderance, if not an outright threat. Only their drones patrolled Tanic, and then only in some areas. Nets strung across streets kept them out of certain others.

In the lawless, refuse-filled streets, an economy developed. In the polished halls of Dogtown Arc people lived in a heaven of sorts. The unaware upper echelons of Londbridge went about their shallow lives oblivious to places like this. Luc was fully aware that arcology life was far from perfect. He just resented their compliant, obedient comfort.

Here it was far from that polished existence, though from most places in the Park residents could see the looming monolith of the Arc. Automation brought riches to some, but there was no work for the majority of the residents of Tanic Park. No work. No money. Amidst the untold wealth, in the shadow of gilded statues, people starved. And starving, they fell prey to petty thugs with balls and uppity ambitions.

Marcus Dusselberg was a small time gangster with such ambition. Somehow, he had gotten himself a military grade assault bot, one of those things that were like cement blocks propped on two legs, bristling with guns and sensors. His muscle.

Out of retirement, I guess, Luc thought. Dank Londbridge was not where he wanted to be, but his friends were here. Family.II

Muskrat was a skinny man with a badly shaved head and an unflattering mustache. He had jacks—five of them—but the gossip was that only one of them did anything. The rest were cosmetic. He smelled of booze and cheap cologne, which he used to cover the smell of the booze, as if any of that mattered in the Park.

The warehouse where they met—the address coming from the data chip—was spartan and bleak. Muskrat’s battered breather was under his chin. Luc kept his on. The air here was shit.

“Mr. Lucretius, thank you for coming,” he began, sniveling.

“What do you want, Muskrat? You call me back here to deal with some shit who you don’t have the balls to fight back against?” Brethmanic Standard was coming back easily.

“Luc, these are your people. They asked me to send for you.”

I did come all of this way. Luc thought, still not sure what he was doing back. He knew he always would have come back to help his people—that wasn’t the problem. What was the problem? What led to Muskrat being left in charge?

“This man threatens the community with a robot?” Knowing the answer. The 1500 kilometer flight was not spent idle. I did some thinking and some research.

“Military. Bought surplus from some Aquacorp off-load.” Muskrat stuttered.

Who named themselves after extinct animals? Wolf or bear he could see, but Muskrat?

“When I left, Muskrat, I left you in charge. I had faith that you’d look after the community. I know it is hard. I did it myself for years. It’s five fucking blocks, man. What the fuck are you doing? How do you lose that to some petty shit gangster?”

“Mr Lucretius, you didn’t leave us with any weight. We are light. Only boys and girls and old women.” An attempt to swagger. It’s not about being a man or not, not in any literal sense.

Nosrit will be experienced enough in a couple years. She’s got it. But what is it? Enthusiasm. Drive.

“I mean no disrespect,” Muskrat held himself back, stepped back.

“Ok. So the shit has a mech, a mec, a meh?” How do you spell robot warrior from future, from entertainment fiction? Luc laughed out loud at his own joke, disquieting Muskrat who stepped back again another half a meter.

“I need a truck that can fly 300 kg and handle urban-use projectiles thrown at it. I’ll do the ops and code myself.” Luc’s mind was spinning, churning. “Truck needs to be stripped and off-net, Can Nosrit drive?”

She couldn’t. She didn’t have to, though.

The code was not complex. Once the identity of the vehicle was wiped and also, once the net was wiped of any hint of Luc, Muskrat and Nosrit, Luc was somewhat satisfied. The absence of information would eventually appear on the State servers like shadows from unseen objects, but for now they would be invisible.

The truck was a bulbous monstrosity. It sat on its landing legs like an egg with parasite-like nacelles. The ass-end opened with two curved doors. It will do the job.

Nosrit was there. She hadn’t had the three lateral piercings across the bridge of her nose when he had seen her last, years ago, and he hadn’t even noticed them in the church on Attilastrasse. Six steel balls lined up between her eyes that weren’t there three years ago. Community. She was going to drive.

Connect-device -ShittyTransportVehicle | Course-plot “Londbridge Metropolitan Security/Floor 67”

“Remember, girl, ditch this thing after we are done. It will go fast. And by that I mean, our activities will,” he added, “This piece of shit won’t go fast.”

Nosrit giggled a little, then pulled herself back into adulthood and tried to look serious.

The truck dropped up into the local traffic lanes. Nosrit looked nervous. Luc had confidence, both in her and the plan. Even though he hadn’t seen or talked to her in several years, he had kept tabs on his community. He still knew every one of them, remotely pushed them in beneficial ways. I need to be here. Gods, I hate Londbridge.

There was a grating buzz when the truck/car/cargo transport pod—however you render it—arrived at the destination.

The plasti-glass windscreen, through decades of abrasions, showed floor 67 of Londbridge MetSec HQ.

Luc turned it, so that the aft end was facing the building.

“There will be a slight impact. Are you strapped in?”

She was. He accelerated in reverse, crashing the truck through the window panel. Glass rained down into the street below. The bulk of it flew into the 67th floor of the building.

“Open the doors.”

Nosrit unbuckled and moved to the back of the truck. The doors butterflied out and open. The truck was still hovering, the Naskovich drives keeping it aloft, though the ass-end was two meters into the building.

“Stay here…” Luc drew his pistol. He was shirtless, jacket less, and his breather hung around his neck, its rubber pulling at his beard. He cranked up the intensity of his goggles. The ambient light was exaggerated, revealing the contents of the room.

It was storage. Dozens of anthromorphs—humanoid robots—designed to be controlled wirelessly by remote human operators, stood in ranks. Somewhere, outside of this space, this storage place, were the wireless repeaters that allowed humans to control them well outside the range of even most standard military wireless tech.

Don’t have time for that. Put it on the wish list. Luc could probably crowdsource a solution to make up for that anyway. 20 million cred for a mesh-network!? They’re all scamming each other. Focus now, Luc. Small fish to fry this time. Luc dropped out of thoughts and back into the contours of the meat-sac realm.

Luc quickly, and with purpose, walked to the nearest one and abruptly ripped a wire out of the back of its head. Contact point. Wireless connection. Stupid design.

He pushed it and it made a loud crash as it landed on its back. It was armored and harden. It would be unharmed. The dim red glow of its internal mechanisms didn’t even flicker.

They were made of some hardened version of plasti-glass, classified stuff. The material itself was transparent. Anthromorphs, after construction, after the biomechanical servos and structure were in place, were cloaked in counter-projectile armor. The gaps in the armor glowed red, a design feature intended to create an effect—especially since their interiors glowed red all along.

Just gave us something to aim at, idiots.

Luc took it by the feet. Only seconds had passed.

It was heavy, but he was strong. Nosrit added her slight weight to the pulling as he got to the truck, which shifted slightly, either from their movement or from some fluctuation in the Naskovich field, maybe even from the wind.

Glass dropped out of the gape as they accelerated out of the building, dropping with stomach-churning speed, into the lower-city murk. They returned via a circuitous route.

Nosrit was driving, which really only consisted of issuing commands to the vehicle’s otherwise autonomous navigation system. She had no visible wireless nodes, but that didn’t mean anything. Neither did Luc.

III

The truck rested on its reinforced, weight-handling legs in the same warehouse where Luc had recently met Muskrat.

“They didn’t even see you?”

“They probably did. Someone probably did. The truck needs to be destroyed.”

The anthromorph was heavy. It took all three of them to get it upright. Nosrit had enthusiasm and contributed more to the effort than Muskrat.

There would be a brief microsecond, after replugging the coms cable, when the thing could call home, recontact MetSec servers, looking for its proper master.

Luc had the code waiting though. It would reroute the anthromorph’s command and control to him, as well as block out every other user.

“Do it,” he ordered.

Muskrat reconnected the wireless controls with strands of wires looped over his forearms. Luc streamed his override package the same instant.

The thing stood more erect, coming to life. The red glow from its biomech insides increased. Was there a biological component?

Luc could feel it, feel its extremities, feel it like a second body. It was powerful.

It was unarmed.

“I will need a weapon, Muskrat.”

It took a day, but Muskrat found an old energy gun, rifle shaped, glass rods in the place of a barrel. It was sticky and covered in grime, like it had spent decades in a shed or storage locker. They charged it up to around 80%. The battery wouldn’t take more than that. Luc and Nosrit spray-painted the anthromorph a matte black, masking its eyes. Every other part of it was black. Some loose oversized robe was gathered and the sleeves slit from wrist to armpit and this tent was draped over the thing, giving it the appearance of an oversized streetfella, if one didn’t look too closely. The gun would be noticed, especially by other streetfellas.

Luc, in control of the MecSec commando anthromorph, took the weapon into his symbiotic arms. The bio-feedback was precise and intense. This will do, he laughed, high on the feed back with the mech, or was it meh?

Dusselberg was in a low, two story building in Tanic Park, in a very precise location that Luc had scoped out years ago. Five blocks, he thought. Someone—not him—had long ago hollowed out much of the second story and connected a series of flats, which had then been reinforced, fortified and hardened.

Luc being Luc drove there himself in his own car. Nosrit and the anthromorph sat behind him. She looked at the anthromorph like she’d look at a set-up date, some guy her parents wanted her to hook up with. No, she thought, repelled them. I am not that girl.

The car could seat eight comfortably and, honestly, could probably sleep at least six. It was spacious. The anthromorph had the gun across it’s lap as it sat, approximating a human sitting posture. It was a tight fit. The thing was two and a half meters tall, big enough to be imposing, but just small enough to move in normal human environments, hallways of buildings.

Word had it that the mech belonging to Dusselberg was in the cellar beneath the housing block. Luc maneuvered between the gaps in the nets that the locals had put up to impede MetSec security drones. The things weren’t good with nets. Tended to get caught—nacelles tangled. Gutterpunks would then strip them of essentials.

The block, Luc remembered, was in a camera-free dead-zone. That meant no cameras for Dusselberg. No cameras for him either.

Why was he bringing Nosrit? Maybe she could drive if he was injured, though that was unlikely. He liked the company. It also gave her valuable trade experience. Someday she might run her own missions, look out for her community, the community.

He set the car down in the street outside the block. First the anthromorph stepped out. Luc was sure of that as soon as it did. Shit would unleash. He was right.

A trio of hired thuggery stood outside the main entrance to the block—some cross-sections of streets from two hundred years ago—becoming suddenly alert to the MetSec anthromorph stepping out of Luc’s car, despite the streetfella “disguise” they had come up with.

It was never easy to switch back and forth between moving his own body and piloting the anthromorph, but he managed to slide out of the car behind the thing, loosely holding his pistol in his hand.

The anthromorph fired at the men. A pink-blue beam crackled and arced from the thing’s gun at them like a lightning bolt. They fell, smoldering on the way down, bodies filigreed along the path of the current. The door behind them now hung from its hinges. Their bodies were entangled on the stoop.

The speed of the anthromorph was better than a human’s. Luc force-thought its actions, seeing what its eyes saw, superimposed on his own vision. The door was flung aside and the bodies were stepped on, stepped over.

Dusselberg must have been alerted, because a stream of heavy caliber projectiles sliced through the floor of the building’s atrium from below.

The mech was awake.

Ratty carpet fibers drifted in the wake of the bullets strafing up from the basement. The projectiles would land miles away at that angle, probably killing people somewhere else in the city. Luc rolled the anthromorph to the side and leaned against the car. Nosrit was watching the screens inside. Why did I bring her?

The anthromorph fired down, through the floor. This was not going to work. New plan.

He called the anthromorph back to the car. He and it hung out the opened door. Nosrit flew them to the roof of the building, while the surplus mech extricated itself from the cellar, using a freight elevator in the rear of the building, by the loading dock.

The roof of the building had an open-ended car shelter, big enough for two or three cars. Nosrit set Luc’s car down in the open though, near the small shed that contained the building’s roof-access stairs. The second floor had reinforced windows.

The anthromorph, followed by a appreciably clumsy Luc, dropped to the roof’s surface as soon as they were close. Controlling the anthromorph made Luc’s equilibrium sketchy.

The plasti-glass-armored commando android fired at the shed, turning the door and most of the housing into metal and plastic slag.

In the hallway below, down the aging, crumbling stairs, they faced the mech. It had come up—Luc wasn’t sure if it was moving under its own automated volition or if Dusselberg was controlling it. It didn’t matter. Luc swung himself back into the stairwell as the thing sprayed the hallway with high-velocity ammunition, shattering the wall at the far end, over the entrance. It had to hunch down, keeping its girder-like legs bent, with its weapons-bristling, block-like head scrapping the ceiling.

Luc looked at the MetSec anthromorph next to him, shielding it by moving it back from the fire in the doorway of the stairwell. It was dizzying controlling it and his own body at the same time. The android had taken some hits. Luc could feel them. One to the hip. Three to the torso. The armor took most of the impact, however. There was no loss of function.

The anthromorph swung out, just as the mech was reaching their location two meters from the entry to the stairwell. Its lightning beam strafed the hallway, blacking the walls, searing them and the mech’s metal block-head.

Ammunition stored within—its magazine deep within its steel bulk—erupted in a fizzing explosion, held in by its own armor plating. Sensors, cameras were thrown out, burned out by the fire within, ejected violently by the internal pressure. The smell of electricity and smoldering plastic filled the hallway.

It listed to the side, the servos in its right leg cutting out. It broke through the wall while still sparking from an inferno inside. Magnesium-white fire flared from its empty camera sockets, sparks falling into the smoldering carpet.

Luc looked at the doors on the other side of the hallway, the side with the reinforced external windows. Dusselberg was in there.

The doors were more than likely reinforced. Luc force-thought the anthromorph to fire at the wall between them. By this point the hallway was full of smoke. A lick of flame ate at the wall around where the mech fell through.

Lighting ripped through the opposite wall. Luc was glad for his breather, now on his nose and mouth, though he should have worn the goggles also. He squinted against the heat and the searing light of the energy weapon born by the anthromorph.V

The space on the other side of the wall was open and, at some point, had been gutted, opening a large space that had once been five or six flats. Dusselberg hadn’t been here long. He also had little taste in furnishings.

He sat in a swivel desk chair surrounded by monitors, a scrawny little man. He was armed. He had his own energy gun, not as big as the anthromorph’s, but just as effective. That gun’s beam practically cut the anthromorph in half, and would have cut Luc in half had he not rolled to the ground.

Luc fired a half dozen shots at Dusselberg from behind a wheeled tool chest. The anthromorph was dead, its connection to Luc’s mind broken. Its servos still tried to get it upright with a futility that approached that of an animal struggling to live.

Luc fired a few more shots from the pistol. His ears rang now from the cover fire. It was a distraction while he pulled the energy weapon from the anthromorph’s hands. Back behind the tool chest, Luc checked the power level remaining in the energy gun.

It had plenty. The thing was made for combat. He could hear movement. Dusselberg was trying to flee.

“Luc?” said Nosrit, sticking her head in through the hole in the wall.

“Stay down! Out!” He yelled.

She pulled her head out, back into the hallway as Dusselberg’s beam burned an arc across the wall. The distraction served well, however, as Luc took the opportunity to burn a gaping hole in Dusselberg’s chest. The man fell to the bare floor, smoking and oozing. His own smaller weapon sliding from his hands. Some of the wall behind him burned as well. Nosrit peaked in again hesitantly, then smiled when she saw that Luc was intact.

“Welcome back, Lucretius,” laughed Nosrit.

Out of retirement, I guess.

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