Chaos Cipher (45 page)

Dak shuffled
through the dead leaves and foliage below and strolled through the
soft breeze that stirred them as more soft things fell and showered
from above. They sought out a suitable place to stay. Kyo noticed
how quiet it was here. Their oculars could pick up little sign of
life save the sleeping owl or the stooping vixen winding under the
scant autumn-dried bracken.

Kyo stood at
the edge of what was once the lake and looked at the huge cubic
basin now drained completely with Yachts sat at its bottom and the
bones of dead fish and stones and what looked like a small black
pool that hadn’t found its way out of the drainage
point.

‘
HELLO!’ He
called into the basin.

HELLO

HELLO

HELLO

Dak unzipped
one of the tents and the frames quickly snapped into position to
construct a huge self-assembled support. He opened up more of the
other bags to attach wing compartments to it, allowing structures
to pop up from the bags and carrying them over to the main tent’s
central compartment.

‘
Kyo,’ he
called. Kyo ran from the lake edge to assist. ‘Get some fireglass,’
Dak instructed. ‘Build us a fire, will ya?’

‘
Sure.’

*

Night fell
quickly. The wind lifted and whispered through the branches,
shaking loose dead twigs scattering to the floor. By the camp, a
hot fire fluttered in the breeze beneath a stove Kyo had
constructed out of stones. Soup was boiling in the pot, where
flames danced on the blackened glass pebbles of fireglass. They
glittered and glowed beneath the stirring flame and lit their faces
in deep tangerine ambience. Sonja was stirring soup and smelling
the herbs, eager to let Kyo try it and hopefully take his mind off
things. Dak leaned over his own knees and rubbed his hands by the
fireglass, the glowing embers holding fluence over his
thoughts.

‘
Pops,’ Kyo
said, huddling his knees and staring at the embers. ‘What’s in the
hardlands?’

‘
It’s just a
name, son.’ He said. ‘Just a new name they made for something that
was always there. It’s the parts of the planet we allowed to die.
Where people struggle to live between cities like Cerise Timbers
and the Atominii.’

‘
We won’t
have to go there, will we?’

‘
No,’ Sonja
answered for him.

The fire
sawed, constricting into serrated nails in a lifting wind,
expanding to long yellow fingers again as it calmed, dancing over
the ruby glow of the fireglass. An echo carried through the air, a
howling sound that none of them were familiar with.

‘
What’s
that?’ Kyo whispered.

‘
Wolves,’ Dak
guessed.

Kyo shivered
slightly as his mother passed him some soup and he sipped at the
liquid gently.

‘
What are the
Blue Lycans?’ he asked.

‘
I wouldn’t
worry about them,’ Sonja commented, sitting beside him and throwing
an extra cover over them both. ‘We track them and keep their
movements updated. They’re soldiers. They haven’t been in this area
for a long time. We’re safe here so long as we’re
discrete.’

‘
Why do they
kill us?’

‘
They kill
indiscriminately,’ Dak said, rubbing the warmth of his palms over
the back of his hands. ‘Back when the Olympians were fighting for
their survival, for their right to stay on Earth, these Blue Lycans
were our best support. They helped precariats learn about freedom
from the Atominii’s constraints. They fought many Syridan cyborgs
and shot down drones and kept on fighting and fighting. We think it
drove them insane, that war tainted anything good in them, that
murder became their only purpose. Now, they seem not to
differentiate between Titan and human.’

‘
Maybe there
is no difference?’ Kyo suggested, ‘you always say I’m
human.’

‘
You are,’
Sonja said softly from his side. ‘To lose your humanity, you have
to sell your heart and mind to an ideology first, and then you stop
becoming an equal.’

‘
What about
our way of life?’ he asked. ‘Don’t we have an ideology?’

‘
Yes,’ she
said, ‘however, keep in mind, when inequality comes from a dying
planet or unfortunate event unrelated to our structure then it is
easier to accept. If an asteroid is coming, for example, we had
nothing to do with the event. That’s why we don’t accept structural
inequality in living standards. Because we can help that if we want
to. Cerise Timbers is evidence of that.’

‘
But
sometimes people can be unequal, right?’ asked Kyo. ‘I look
different, I have different eyes…and teeth…and a tail…’

‘
Yeah,’ Sonja
nodded. ‘You can run pretty fast as well. But so what? Can you do
medicine like me? Why should our skills be equated as one more
valuable than the other? It’s a utilitarian view that excludes and
devalues others.’

‘
You’re
right,’ Kyo realised.

‘
If you build
a justice system of law and rules based on equality, like I have
something and you do not, then it is just as well founded on envy.
We don’t believe in such things. Envy still exists…but for social
reasons, not for living standards.’

‘
I heard the
Atominii has strong propaganda system, though.’ Said
Kyo.

‘
We even have
ideological propaganda if you think about it, we have stories about
a fearful hellish world from which a new world sprung.’ Said his
father.

‘
Like the
Beasts of the Shadow Boss?’ Kyo said.

‘
Yeah,’ Sonja
answered. ‘Ideologies also usually have theories like Marxism. But
we don’t, we simply live as best as we can to benefit all and
document success and failure for development.’

‘
So we’re
building an ideology?’

‘
I guess
slowly,’ she smiled. ‘So I suppose you could say that,
yeah.’

‘
Is that why
the Atominii hate us?’

‘
They try and
ignore us,’ she explained. ‘They don’t want attention on us too
much in the hardlands. They don’t want us to believe we’re worth
their attention. They think that for us, being ignored by them
would harm our way of life.’

‘
Why?’

‘
They don’t
want the unplugged population in the Hardlands to realise that
another world is possible,’ Sonja started to explain. ‘In Cerise
Timbers we dared to dream. Before the consulate of cyber cities we
created for ourselves an ecological revolution that was draining
power from the governments at the time. People began to realise
that continuing on the path of infinite growth and wealth was
killing everything. People questioned why another radically
different world was not possible if it was never at least attempted
or proven not to be. We dared to try. We saw it as an affront to
everyone to continue justifying the status-quo while never at least
trying to live differently, to see, to test. There’s nothing wrong
with imagining better worlds. The Atominii try to kill that
imagination. Edge Fenris is right. Imagination is dead in the
hardlands and Atominii. A good life was supposed to be our gift to
the world. But you cannot free the minds of people when they cannot
see the limits of their prison. Sometimes you have to show
them.’

‘
Why can’t
they see?’

‘
Why?’ Dak
asked. ‘Same reason why people kill for their job. Same reason why
people hurt each other. They believe it’s necessary, that they’re
doing good for the world. They believe there are a small group of
people who know better than everyone else how to organise the
world. History has shown what happens when a small elite run the
world. It fucks up. Because they don’t know better. They’re just a
self-interested ilk. And people fall in line to institutionalism
because human propensity for self-delusion is limitless. They’ll
let their masters beat them, starve them, humiliate them and people
will still believe they deserved it, that it is necessary, that it
is policy.’

‘
Perhaps it
is policy,’ said Sonja, sipping her soup. ‘But it’s not politics.
Politics is the open engagement and inclusion of all people on
equal grounds. All you can do with policy is hope to mitigate its
affects.’

‘
What is
policy?’ Kyo asked.

‘
Having a
neurophase in your head!’ Dak said pointing to his old implant
scars. ‘Getting wired up just to be included in the Atominii.
Committing yourself to the demands of a few, holding yourself in
lower esteem to others, allowing yourself to respect those who hurt
others or those who believe they are better than you. Power
concedes nothing without demand. That’s policy.’

Kyo
understood it. He agreed, but the Atominii sounded like a crazy
place. He would never understand how people could allow themselves
to be prisoners. But sometimes he could sense the prison growing,
reaching out to threaten now even his own existence.

‘
That’s one
thing I don’t get,’ said Kyo, ‘I don’t get how people let
themselves be treated badly. We would never stand for it at home.
The whole city is standing against Krupin and all for me. You could
all have abandoned me years ago and none of you did.’

‘
Because it’s
wrong,’ said Sonja. ‘None of this is your fault. We all deserve a
fair start in life. The Blue Lycans didn’t have one. They became
killers because of their unequal start in life. Their hearts
yearned to be free and they were sullied in blood, angry at the
world. Vengeful. A taste of violence by which their hearts have
been forever scarred’

-32-

A
s the day faded over Cerise
Timbers, the sun’s periwinkle glow cropped the forests black, the
lofty eventide glossed in darker Prussian tones of blue freckled
only by the glistering stars where the smiling lunar crescent
thinned. And all activity on the sky port strip was barren save the
Perigrussia Skybus, whose doors bloomed with golden light where two
body guards stood attentively at the bottom of the steps awaiting
instruction.

Inside the
Perigrussia Skybus main cabin was very contemporary and
comfortable, fashioned with the highest cybernetic technologies and
anatomical comforts. There were transformable seats arranged with
their own entertainment studios in their own spaces of the cabin,
each one surrounded by screens and each seat padded with relaxing
cushions. Vadim slumped into the seat closest to the cabin door,
while Krupin sat in the command chair. His underdressed
cheerleaders surrounded him and poured wine into a platinum goblet,
his first victory trophy won from battles in the
hardlands.

Horace was
walking in from the pilot room and he looked around,
confused.

‘
Problem
Horace?’ Krupin asked in his native tongue.

‘
The
cadonavis communication systems are not working,’ he
reported.

‘
Since
when?’

‘
I don’t
know.’ Horace shrugged.

‘
Log into the
city servers, try and acquire a signal boost from Cerise
Timbers.’

‘
Yes I
tried.’ He added. ‘But we are denied access.’

Krupin’s
countenance suddenly grimaced.

‘
What about
internal networks?’ he inquired.

‘
The Q-net is
operating fine.’

‘
Patch in,’
he ordered, ‘connect me to East B’ One’s Federal building. I will
speak to that bitch Chahuán and find out what the hell is
happening.’

Horace nodded
and returned to the pilot cabin, climbing into one of the four
pilot seats and looking out onto the dark air zone strips. He saw
the glowing city sparkling with movement and activity under the
dome. The vertical light strips of a few open hangar doors rattled
and flared with welding and maintenance activity.

‘
This is
Perigrussia Skybus operative to East B’One, come in East B’
One.’

There was a
long pause and Horace kept his eyes on the city.

‘
East B’One
respond!’

But there was
still no reply. Krupin lingered inside followed by a strong scent
of mould wine and he leaned on the side of the Pilot seat just
below Horace’s arm.

‘
Try her
personal Quantic.’

‘
I don’t
believe I have the number.’

‘
You can
access the Q-net,’ said Krupin, drinking. ‘Look her up.’

Horace
nodded. He began working at the visual screens and sat back with a
sigh.

‘
We have no
authorisation,’ he submitted, patting his thighs.

‘
So then,
keep trying the Federal building.’

‘
I doubt at
this time anyone will answer…’

‘
Run a
subroutine,’ Krupin suggested, ‘keep the call going and have it
inform us as soon as it gets through. Honestly, Horace would you
like me to do your job for you?’

Horace shook
his head shamefully as Krupin left and he began working a recalled
subroutine protocol from the bridge.