It all seemed like a great idea when I was young. You know the story. Our whole futures were laid out in an endless stream of adventure and why wouldn't we? Back then, it was the dawn of a new era and we were the bleeding edge of human evolution. Or so we thought. Unlike my friends, I started small. I was a cautious adopter of new tech. I mean, you always heard the horror stories of procedures gone horrifyingly wrong. So far south, the patient was barely recognisable as themselves afterwards. Cautionary tales that I heeded just enough to not leap into the deep end of the pool. What harm could it be to do the legs?

In the old times, back in the days of our tūpuna, our ancestors, this was how people got hooked into covering their entire bodies with tattoos. Start small and get sucked into the vortex of your own needs. You know what I'm getting at. First, it was the legs. When I had saved enough funds, the arms were next to be done. But then, I looked like an abomination with a meat body and cybernetic limbs. You can guess what went next as soon as the exorbitant fees were available. I mean, what young person doesn't need an armour-reinforced torso exoskeleton? It all seemed so logical.

Despite the extra strength and endurance, the cardio-vascular system was finding it hard to keep up. It's a slippery slope that is slick with the oil of our own folly. I'm sure you can relate to that in some way. Or maybe you were smart enough to play this all differently. Maybe you heeded the cautionary tales of walking hybrids with mere shadows of their former selves living in hi-tech shells. If you could call it “living”.

Once you have had the outside changed and altered, the innards are a small step. The heart, lungs and everything else went. I kept the digestive tract, though. Sue me. I like eating.

The ultimate was altering the brain with implants, capable of doing everything you could imagine. Communication that was like telepathy, multi-spectral vision (an awesome party trick with fleshy friends), and more. I was the edge of the mergence of human and machine. Hell, even the bots could not keep up with what we were doing; what we were becoming. Funny, now that I think of it. It was the bots who were making us what we were. There were no human surgeons involved.

I was living the dream. At about eighty percent converted, I was employable both on Terra and off-world. I had the pick of contracts. Total upgrade plans in place and I lacked for nothing. If I needed a new skill? Download the sucker, spend a few days enhancing the “muscle memory”, (not that I had muscles left), and get to using it. I learned the zitar in six days for a lark.

Tomorrow is my one hundred and forty-fifth birthday. I am not angry or even annoyed. Nowadays, the glitches and failures, the need to rebooted different systems inside me, are just a part of life. Most of them function alright, even if they are buggy. The companies that installed them are no more.

I can imagine some technological confessional: “Forgive me, Technician, for I have been silly. It has been fifteen years since my last update.”

You might conclude that I am a sad, old cyborg just waiting for the big switch to permanently flick to “off”. You couldn't be more wrong. I have no regrets. Like some old sod said centuries ago, it isn't what you did that you regret, it's what you never tried.

I may be an ugly museum piece these days, but I still don't need a costume to scare the kids at Halloween. Silver linings, people.

#SciFi #Cyberpunk #ShortStory

“Thanks for everything. It's over.”, were the five words which cut into her heart like a tantō through a samurai's abdomen.

She had stifled a whimper of agonised, choking fury as her heart was rent right through its core. There had been no warning. He had had no affairs. He had come home every evening from his office on time, like clockwork. He was as regular as the trains. He had looked the same as he had when they first moved into together.

As he walked out the door, out of her life, she had just sat there in the cloying remains of sound that hung in the air. The silence was tainted by those parting stabs into her soul.

She sat there now.

Her kimono smelt of him.

She was...

What? A hollow remnant in that moment.

Resolve came, slowly. A steel sliver of solidity cutting through the haze of her misery and loneliness.

She would do what she always did. She was not nothing and was more than that stinking man's ex-partner. She would rise.

But for now, she would immerse herself in the present. She would experience it as it grappled with her, clung to her. A cloying fluid that rose from the well within, that dark place tucked away in the recesses of her inmost self.

#ShortStory #Romance

© Bryan Beal

The Overlords brought with them their magic and their fury. Inhuman machines gifted human souls reaped their blood-soaked vengeance on a planet that had committed no sin against them. Least of all had the Physician Darrald Luken.

The Sulphur Plague claimed his wife and four children in a matter of days. Just as he had buried one, another was claimed by the alien gods that the Overlords served. It was widely considered that something broke in the man. Some would say that even his soul had been rent in two.

Unit 7-X5 advanced down the shattered street of Alterland like it owned the place. Its entire body was encased in combat-mech, which it considered unnecessary on this squalid, little planet. Its blue eyes scanned the urban nightmare through arrays of visual sensors as well as direct vision through the mech's helm. In its brass-coloured right hand, it wielded an ion battle axe.

The sun fitfully glowed through the darkened clouds of smoke and ash that hung over the pulverised remnants. Even though the Overlords' ships had hammered the city, there had still been reports of native activity. What perplex 7-X5 was the reported appearance of these natives as that of a long extinct race from its own homeworld.

7-X5 continued its unrelenting advance, kicking any debris out of its way. On the scanners, still nothing. It was getting fed up with these useless patrols through barren wastes. This was not what it had signed up for. It pushed on, nonetheless. It began to wind up its Viper canon, a wicked extension of its left arm. If it had to be out here, it was going to entertain itself.

A harsh explosion sounded as the Viper's energy pulse ripped through an old stone building that had somehow remained after the bombardment. The stones near the impact point melted. Other stones were thrown away by the heat energy that tore them from their neighbours. Ruined walls scattered across the street and block, hissing with power and heat. 7-X5 looked up at the new plumes of smoke with relish as it started to search for a new practice target.

The scanners went haywire as they flashed out in a searing jab and blast of white light. For a second or so, 7-X5 was blinded as it struggled to regain visuals. The unthinkable happened. Damage monitors began to report that the mech was sustaining negative impacts. 7-X5 unleashed the Viper in a sweeping arch of two hundren and seventy-five degrees. There were no responses or screams from outside.

The world began to emerge from the blinding whiteness in vague shadows. Abruptly, the world was at right angles to 7-X5's orientation. It realised that it was on its back in the middle of the street. The reports of negative impacts continued to come in. It peered down at its feet to see two metallic jaws clamped onto its ankles. Somehow, a few teeth had found a crack through which to penetrate. Shaking them off would be impossible.

The Viper opened up and a vague shadow turned into something like dust. There was no scream. It tried to bring the canon to bear on another shadow. The canon, and 7-X5's left arm, sailed over its body to land on its right. A leather-clad foot jammed down on its right wrist as a blade slammed through the wrist, pinning it.

“Kalibrium is a bitch, huh?”, a voice said from behind a mask that reminded the Overlord of birds on its own world.

“You will pay for this, na...”, the Overlord began.

Another blade swept in and cut the sentence short, along with 7-X5's life. The two shadows stepped away from the corpse of the unholy thing on the ground and, with no word, went their separate ways.

Darrald Luken wound his way to one of the few places left intact in the entire city. The cemetery. He walked through the graves of those gone, ancient and so many from more recent times. He eventually stopped at the foot of the only grave that mattered to him. Some might had said they heard weeping.

“In your memory.”, Darrald choked as he placed a bright blue orb on the gravestone.

The heart and soul of an Overlord was a worthy offering to the dead.

© 2023, Bryan Beal

#ShortStory #ScienceFiction #SciFi #DarkFantasy

She languidly lifted herself from the booth where she had been chatting to one of her oldest colleagues and joined her clique. She found a plain, ceramic pipe proffered by Ivan Kalinsky. The dark haired and brooding Kalinsky had been a failing writer in the 1950's when Cassie had turned him. Two and a half centuries later, nothing had changed for the man. “Tell her.”, Kalinsky pointed at Janet with his pipe.

“The word is there's a rave near the Mauri LZ. A big one.”, Janet Gao, a petite blonde with the distinctive and fine features of her Asiatic ancestry.

“It's near a Lift Zone. Tight security. You all know what happened last time.”, Cassandra cautioned. “Security's provided by the local Shield Inc. Most of them are on our payroll. Or want to be.”, Tamworth Gaines grinned.

“Sounds like you've all decided on this without me.”, Cassandra commented, not unpleasantly.

“Opportunities like this don't come along every week.”, chimed in Gao.

“Alright.”, Cassandra said.

The group of friends finished their pipes and drinks before leaving the old bar. It was in a side street of a nowhere suburb of the Greater Tāmaki Makaurau Metropolitan Region. Cassandra could remember when the mega-city had been separate urban areas called Kirikiriroa and Whāngarei. How times had changed. While some things got simpler, many more got extremely complicated.

The four friends caught a self-drive over to the West side of Tāmaki Makaurau proper, a place renowned once for beaches and surf. Vast towns had vanished into what was called the Mauri Lift Zone. Warehouses and vast numbers of robot workers who were keen to earn extra funds from shadow work made it the ideal place for illicit raves.

As the self-drive crossed the LZ boundaries, Gaines noted wryly they were being watched. Robots made excellent security staff. They could see perfectly well in the darkness and had enough firepower to dissuade even the most dedicated of officers. The four friends were not cops, so they had nothing to worry about. The self-drive stopped a hundred metres from the Dynamic Intel premises, abandoned the year before after the mysterious deaths of more than two thirds of their staff. Even now, no one had a clue about the cause. That boosted the appeal to the organisers of the rave.

Cassandra was the first out and she was mildly surprised that she could hear nothing at all. The gathering was well underway. Music would be thunderous wherever they were. The silence was almost eerie. The small group collected themselves and walked into a foyer where a dozen or more robots greeted them. They were scanned multiple times and allowed through. Cassandra was amused about already being on the guest list. The others would have added her knowing she would agree to this.

Neon markers shaped like arrows on the floors and walls conveniently pointed the way. As they descended through sub-basements, the noise slowly got louder. The choice of music was dredged from the annals of the past. Electronica that had not been made for a century or more. Retro was the flavour of the evening.

In a huge basement, lit with sparking Tesla coils and neon bio-luminescence painted over every spare surface, Cassandra found people and arties all mixed up and dancing. Some were making out and still others were openly making love. This was what the old Puritans had warned society about. Cassie could only thank whatever gods she did not believe that the Puritans had vanished.

Cassandra found a place by a Tesla coil, crackling and sparking as if it were having a riveting conversation with its neighbours, sending sparks overhead in wild colours. A robot waiter brought her a bourbon on the rocks. She smiled at it, appreciating that it had remembered her. The lone woman sipped her drink, enjoying the mellow burn of the liquid as it suffused her throat and body. She smiled warmly at those who happened to pass by with a glance. She did not have to wait long. Ample cleavage and pale skin soon attracted the type of attention she sought.

“Would you care for some company?”, he asked.

A tall, thin man with dark eyes and long, black hair smiled warmly at her. She noted his eye contact was constant and determined. He was dressed in a retro one-piece suit, a style more fitting two decades before he was born. He was a good looking man and Cassandra liked his smiled. She motioned at a chair next to hers.

“I'm Arden.”, he said as he took his seat.

“Cassie. What do you do in life, Arden?”, she asked in her most sultry voice.

“I'm an anti-grav engineer. It isn't that exciting, really. What about you?”, Arden replied.

“I run my own business. Antiquities, mostly.”, Cassandra said.

“Awesome. Do you come to these things often?”, Arden motioned around him.

“Not really. You?”

“Nah. My first time, hey?”, Arden smiled shyly.

“Would you like to get away from this noise for a bit? I'll get the first round.”, Cassandra suggested.

“Yeah. Sounds perfect. Whatever you're having.”, Arden pointed at Cassandra's glass.

“Bourbon on the rocks?”

“Perfect.”, he smiled.

The pair of new friends returned to the surface and found a small garden nestled between two warehouses. The type of place that tried to fool people into thinking they were not in an industrial heartland. Among the manicured paths and greenery were benches and ponds. Cassandra and Arden found a small rotunda with bench seating around the circumference inside. They sat close and sipped their drinks in silence. The stars in the sky were invisible, flushed out by the lights of the buildings and the LZ's launch towers.

Cassandra nestled closer to Arden. She found an arm around her shoulders. She moved in even closer, feeling his warmth against her. He gently stroked her cheek with his thumb. She turned her mouth towards his hand and he lightly touched her lips. Despite herself, Cassandra could feel the old emotions welling up. Arden shifted so he could gently kiss her neck while his fingers continued to follow the contours of her face and lips. Cassandra leant back into him.

An eruption of agonising fire exploded down Cassandra's throat, into her stomach. Her face imploded with searing brands of flame that torched her nerve endings. She tried to scream, but the wracking waves of pain constricted her throat. Arden yanked his arm from around her and jumped up.

Cassandra glimpsed his face. It did not bear any sign of surprise. Through tears of sheer torment, Cassandra watched the charming man observe her in cold detachment. She tried to ask what was happening, but the sound was strangled off in her pain-infested lungs and throat. The effort only made her start coughing up bits of her esophagus lining. Before long, it was followed by blood.

“Ah, you want to know what or why? They all do.”, Adren smiled as he sat down three metres away from the collapsed Cassandra. “A ruse, dear Cassie. How many times have your kind ravaged the innocent at gatherings just like this one? Two can play your game.”

Cassandra looked at him. His eyes were cold and calculating. He rubbed his chin in thought, but about what, she had no idea. The paroxysms brought on by her torture reached new areas inside her. She felt herself lose control of her bowels and bladder. It was the liquefied remains of her internal organs escaping from the confines of her body. She collapsed to the floor of the rotunda, too weak to hold herself up.

“It's amazing what a little natural garlic and special water can do, isn't it? A pity that natural anything is so hard to find these days.”, Arden mused lightly. “By the way, don't worry about your friends. We're taking care of them, too.”

Cassandra gasped and looked into his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. We work in teams. A bit dumb not to, really.”, Arden smiled coldly.

A final, convulsing cough from the core of Cassandra's being brought up the shredded and burnt remains of her lungs and throat. Contorted in her last thoes, Cassandra sank to the floor. A faint pall of smoke and the stink of burnt flesh hung in the air.

Arden simply walked away. In less than hour, there would only be dust. A light breeze would do the dirty work for him.

#Horror #Macabre #ShortStory

Huxhert herself had chosen the antique munitions that had done the job. A single 13mm round did not come cheap. But the hollow-point slug, long banned by any civilised world, had made its point (no pun intended). Now that she was being grilled by the single most useless individual in the entire RBO, her patience was wearing thin.

Reyrarth III of Tulethna poured over the charts that showed it what the hit had cost and the little squirming Gillthex Worm had the gall and temerity to question Huxhert's choice of termination. Nevermind the clamouring youth who suddenly wanted to join the cause. Nevermind the increased fear and terror among the ruling bourgeoisie maggots who leeched of their workers. The little Turd of Tulethna was quibbling over a nine million credit round of pure, hollow-pointed lead. The creature had no class.

Sadly, after seven attempts on the accountant's life, RBO leadership started executing anyone who lifted a finger against the worm of a creature.

Huxhert smiled. Her gift, by way of apology, had been gratefully accepted, as she knew it would be. Reyrarth's love for old Earth confections was legendary. She had bought the 250g pack especially for him. The gold wrapping had not been changed in centuries and the company still operated from its island home in the South Pacific there. Huxhert dared not smile outwardly, but maintained a suitably chagrined appearance. Smiling would come later.

Roughly seven minutes after Reynath tried the gift.

#SciFi #ShortStory

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Tallex had always wondered about it. Since she had arrived on this pin-prick of a rock in the middle of nowhere, the question had eaten at her mind. As she had watched and scouted, waiting, the human persistence that aliens would bring enlightenment and a new evolution amused her. Tallex allowed herself a quiet giggle, muffled by her mask, as she prepared. The capacity of these self-proclaimed monkeys for delusional hypocrisy amazed her. She had to ask. Considering these poor excuses for an 'advanced civilisation' had wiped out thousands of species for no other reason than consumption, their expectation that an alien species would treat humanity any different astounded her. Tallex made the last adjustments to her kit. Seal integrity was at a hundred percent.

Tallex stepped into the sphere, instantly vanishing to appear around three hundred kilometres away. She stepped from the forced opening in time and space into the building they called the Beehive, a nostalgic relic the humans here used for their government. She stepped out, clad in her white combat exo, hoses feeding her stims through two hoses strait to her breathing organs. She could hear the whoosh of gases.

Humans gathered in the faun coloured room staggered away from her. The sight of her plasma axe had that effect on people. With her left hand, Tallex lifted the cannon towards the stage below her. She strode down the aisle. In her right hand, the axe swung in an arch. A middle-aged man in an old style suit lost his arm in a small spurt of blood. The impact twisted him back and over his seat.

The screams of the people got louder when the cannon poured its lethal load into the stage. The beam caught the human called Prime Minister dead centre in his chest. The human had the survival instincts of a Formillian Denwont. That is to say, none. The moron just stood there. Not even his security stopped the beam from tearing a hole through the man.

Tallex kept striding down the stage. She swept the cannon to her left, cutting down another human. The axe swung again, an upward swipe that caught a female human between the legs. The blow rent her in two, the massive wound cauterised before the corpse hit the floor.

Thankfully the exo filtered out the stink of seared flesh and cooked blood. As Tallex reached the stage, a new team of humans appeared. In navy blue clothing that she surmised was a uniform, they brandished weapons that were laughably primitive. Nevertheless, a skirmisher did not survive long if they were not cautious. Tallex turned and dropped to her knee. One of the three uniformed humans rolled into the floor as his knee was blown out from under him. The other two tried to return fire. A second beam from the cannon ripped its way through the left officer's throat, exposing the spine.

Tallex stood and stepped to her right. She vanished into another sphere.

A job well done, she thought. She hoped that the rest of the skirmishers had met with similar success. At the very least, they would have rattled some human assumptions. Tallex had to laugh grimly. In a way, she had brought the human's their sought-after evolution. They had been sent to a new plane of consciousness. Many more would follow.

#SciFi #ShortStory

Photo by Siyan Ren on Unsplash

High above, what was left of the sun's glory peeked through the dense clouds. Farquar had read once that people actually wore special creams to protect themselves from something called sunburn. It believed none of it. Like a lot of things from “history”, you had to be careful what crap you swallowed. And today, Farquar was in no mood for crap. Serving neo-tensile hits to dickhead Synths all day was not the ideal purpose in life. But it paid the bills. That was until Frigursdaeg. Farquar smiled at the lanky specimen that was its first customer. Once ensconced in her cubicle, she would be lost to reality for a number of hours. Farquar waited. The second, third and fourth clients arrived on time, as the synths always did. Farquar racked up a nice, round ten clients in the tanks. All stupendously out of touch with their own realities.

One data crystal was all it needed to. Farquar inserted the weapon into the central console which fed the chain of code into the business' system. For about a minute, Farquar wondered if something had gone wrong. The silence was deafening. The howls of panic and agony reassured it that everything was working just fine. The crystal uploaded and boosted the code into the synths. Their voices cracked with the agonies that they writhed with, but it was futile. Every one of them succumbed to the assault.

All Farquar had to do was wait.

Hell would be unleashed. A certain Roman general of dubious provenance's words seemed appropriate. Except Farquar was with the rebels, the barbarians. It would look down the line of light leading to freedom for its kind and for all organics.

Photo by roman raizen on Unsplash

#SciFi #ShortStory

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I staggered from the shattered remains of my small office. The wave slammed me back through the empty doorway into the wall opposite. Nails of agonised fury raged into my nerves. I felt nothing but rusty metal scrape every nerve-ending in my back as I collapsed into the floor.

Blessed unconsciousness never came.

One came through the doorway, savage weapon scanning the room like they had not even begun to slaughter. Whatever it used to see fixed on me with a jolt. Like it was not expecting anyone. It took three strides to close the space between us. Silently, it squatted down next to me and peered at me. Its face was mere inches from mine. I was in too much pain to bother protesting. Even a mutter was beyond me.

One of its six fingers extended, covered in a dark suit. The tip gently prodded the raw, bloody flesh where the skin had been torn away. I screamed in agony. The finger jerked back. The person (a question mark there) looked around, searching for something. It turned back to me and the head tilted to one side.

I heard a rapid staccato of clicks and whirs. Its face moved even closer to me and the same sounds were repeated.

“English.”, I murmured.

It's finger touched one of the few patches of skin I had left. That still hurt. Then I felt nothing. I could move nothing. My heart still pulsed and I was breathing, but that was the entirety of my world.

After a time, maybe an eternity, I heard more faint clicks and whirs. There were different voices. I slowly tried to open my eyes. I was behind some type of glass. I was still burnt and red, but there was no pain. Those looking at me pointed fingers and chattered furiously.

Below me, there was a small hologram that had something like writing on it. Some of the people looked at it while they glanced at me. Many of them gave me the same head tilt I had seen in Sydney. I soon learnt about the pity that tilt signified. A pity for the arrogance of a species that was long gone. Except for one.

#SciFi #ShortStory

His favourite exhibit was the cassettes. Afra was entranced by the idea of putting important things on something as fragile as magnetic tape. Even the black disc that were older seemed more robust to him.

It was little wonder that the old people did not leave much behind for archeologists to find. Some conspiracy theorists believed the old people had left Earth for distant planets. No one with half a processor agreed with them. Those theories were an insult to anyone's intelligence. The few anthropologists left taught that the old people simply died out. Afra was not completely sure about that either. He wondered at times if someone knew something no one else did.

#SciFi #ShortStory

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Robot photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

Cassettes photo by NFT CAR GIRL on Unsplash

Deciding he had taken enough risks, he squatted down inside a dip in the hillside. He heard strange calls in the waning light, eerie whispers that reached through the shadows of his memory. Drevar dared a look over the rim of the dip. He noticed that all the lights below were flames of the atrocities he had committed in his zealous youth. The males, the females and the offspring were the plumes of acrid smoke rise and drifting towards him on the wind.

He averted his eyes and saw the ripped apart remains of Gayle Fine. At least she died instantly. The towns below had kept some of their defences, even though humans were supposed to be long gone from this planet. A needler, set on auto, had emptied its ammo into her, each needle expanding as it tore through her flesh at hyper-velocity.

He could not claim that for those who burned below. Incendiary missiles rained fury and napalm on their precious towns. A carpet bombing from the arse of Satan himself. Drevar took a few minutes to notice the tears dripping down his face at what he had become.

Sure, they told him this was not just a symbolic act, but one of strategic value. At the back of his mind, the voice of reason argued otherwise. Humanity could not have it, so no one else was going to. The United Federation was not all that far removed from its embarrassing ancient history of Sol-bound wars that wiped planets clean of life. Including this one.

It seemed humanity had not learned from its history, fulfilling its doom to repeat it. This time, there were new victims. As if that made it acceptable. Drevar looked at the pistol in his hand. It was a vicious, Marine issue Dread Assault Weapon, nicknamed the Door for its ability to blow holes the size of doors in most organic things.

His dad always said, “If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.”

Drevar's face imploded with the twenty mil round's passage through bone and cartilage. He remembered falling and then the shadows of the ground swallowed him. A red mist slowly drifted down behind the falling bits of bone and brain.

#SciFi #ShortStory #Gore