Chapter 001 Pythonic World
Attributes of Human
# power challenge: has to get chaos deleted, and stopped from ruining life
Neural implants are dangerous to wear beneath the stormy red daystar. Kar walks toward the distant border-wall and gives Integer his last two rhodium coins from a small hidden pocket on his belt. Int is sweet and short at least compared to him. She’s obsessed with the numbers. Two coins is all he has left—ever since the AI stole his job and his woman ran off with an order-bot. Int has never seen a grown man cry. He brushes it off, excuses it off, blaming it on the sun in his eyes. She brushes his hand.
Kar’s Heads Up Display : Coins: 0
Int’s Heads Up Display : Coins: 2
Two coins soon to be used!
Int’s face appears fragmented and pixelated—like sandy-colored squares flickering across Kar’s augmented vision. Only the true-brave dare use the neural mind-chip. Only the brave dare return to the automated city where everyone is networked, them constantly questioning their worth and place, with never enough space. Their neo-feudal system hands out class titles making survival feel uncertain in their shimmering augmented world.
Only the courageous have ventured into the desert assisting a friend search for her lost father source. Father was her rock of guidance before the failed time experiment. Their chips are disconnected from the city’s wireless network out here in the desert. Their chips lights remain off for the time being. Kar reminds her of father with his intelligence, always know where to go next.
They’re meant to be the next link in humanity’s progress—still ninety percent organic, one percent chip, eight percent soul. But if they fail, everyone falls back into the techno feudal dark age where overactive sun flares affects their systems and they own nothing. Chips don’t play nice with electrical storms like a bad boy teasing a good girl.
The light storm and storm cloud seems to follow Kar around, always arriving just after rare highlights of life. All the same, the risk is worthwhile in helping Integer find her father—who is lost somewhere in time. Int knows her father took the risk to advance their evolution. The light show dazzles across their vision trailing through the sky in the afterglow as electromagnetic rays hit the atmosphere appearing like angels forgetting their wings scurrying into a fleeting trail off into space. And this is Kar’s opportunity to finish something for the first time in his life.
White desert sands of time pass the hour and drift beneath the glorious red daystar, stretching into the savannah where sparse grasses mark the edge of the termination zone. When Integer sees Kar’s face, she walks with renewed strength. But she’s got those sweet puppy blues locked on him as if a goddess pulled her out of the ocean and dipped her hair in a red auburn volcano. Their search for her father must be paused—he who is lost forever after the failed time crystal experiment. Because they only have so much battery strength left. But the wireless radio waves of the city will soon help charge their chips. But they will have to reconnect their chips to the wireless network. Right now, all is quiet, and all they have is each other. Best friends they have been for a while. The desert is tranquil besides the light show and much appreciated out here away from the bustling city of flashing lights and beeping computer sounds from the overclockers of the sun working away in their preordained roles under the AI and neo feudal system.
Heads Up Displays (both) : Battery: 20%
Behind them, the dayside of the planet rages and roars—purple skies flash with lightning. Ahead stands endless border, stretching forever along horizon to the north. They’ll need to bribe the order-bot to make it back through. They already snuck out once. Now they must sneak back in. Int’s father would have just talked their way through the border with his smooth charm. Kar isn’t quite the charmer but she has him practicing. Kar is more of a Python charmer, a programmer, who works with machines. It’s a computer language.
They amble through the white sand of silicon and soft micro crystal, with real gun blasters on their hips—guns that will need to be checked at the border in exchange for their standard cap-guns, which work better than any taser conveniently solving the gun control problem inside their border city. Kar keeps his periphereal vision wide open, on her, on the horizon. Hey, even a friend can notice things. He looks out for her. She hopes he looks at her.
For a micro second, Integer appears like a ghost in Kar’s vision—almost divine, as if operating from behind reality. But then she solidifies, returning to something that could almost be called 'normal'—if normal exists. She is so far from normal, so far from home. Born under a red super nova of another stellar system, an inorganic birth. Her father had her since age two. They brace for the sun’s rise, even if it always stays between eight and noon, because with it comes the destructive electromagnetic rays that affect their powers and microchips.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Both Heads Up Display : Battery: 15%
Kar and Int, both still young, trudge side by side, their neural mind-chips embedded on the side of their foreheads. Kar’s chip shimmers sapphire luminescent crystal, flickering on this light and stormy day. About the size of a small silver coin, it looks like a sleek, high-tech device, yet it holds secrets and powers as ancient as time itself.
They make it to the border wall! Hands in hands, best friends. They support each other through the hard times and adventures. Kar tries his best to be her rock.
They make it to the wall!
Kar squares up at the palisade door, taps his chip, tilts his neck, ready for war. He tilts his head to the side like a prize fighter. He takes a half-step forward, then stops. An explosion rings out in the distance! His chip was meant to warn him: keep his nerves at peace. Explosions chase him near the border’s line, both north and south, they follow every time. He feels guilty for bringing this feud, this bad attention, to his friend Int.
Red neon is flowing like lights in the sky, and bathing the heavens in other-wordly dye. The red daystar sun hangs just above the eighth-hour position, casting light around the quartz border-wall. They call it dusk only because they've been awake so long, still searching for Father. When the sun barely moves, dusk and dawn feel the same.
“We need to move fast”, says Int to Kar. “and hack the door.”
“My chip CANNOT. The only thing fixing my chip will be an upgraded one. We will need your rounder (chip).” Their slang is from another epoch but makes sense.
“Those cost a small destiny of fortune. You must sell your cargo box.”
“I keep having to relocate anyway.”
“Could stay at my place. But it’s small and round. Ha! You square man.”
Kar’s Heads Up Display : EMP Interfence: 80%
“You are my number one hacker,” says Kar to Int. Only programmers get away with saying such hubris. She’s the hacker of many men to aruin, and border door walls. Blasts them down like London bridges falling down.
Kar wishes his expand-tabs weren’t soothing. But he knows that from pain will come his passion, the strength he’ll need to help Int complete her search later. He pops a tab, hoping to calm his nerves from the wreckless explosions in the distance.
There’s no escape beyond the twilight termination zone, where the border wall stretches endlessly from the south to the north pole, curving back down the other side of the world in an infinite line crossing the latitudes. They are locked out. They’re lucky to be alive after surviving the desert. The light storm rages on.
My expand-tabs make me think faster. Got to deal with these fragging explosions. Gots to take care of my friend.
The chip is his overclocked companion, a silent partner whose pulse hums beneath his temple, feeding him thoughts he never asked for—like a technetronic best friend, making him smarter, preparing his nerves for violent jerks.
Int stands with her keyboard-glove wrapped around one hand looking at the border-wall door waiting to hack some secret code on the keypad to the door! A thin red glow light traces the outline of her hand over the synthetic leather glove. Int is his best hacker, different skills, in a smarter different kind of way. She’s a little younger than him and more up to date on cybersecurity.
Kar and Int, carry cap-guns on their hips. The quasi pistols display four small blue lights on the rail. The cartridges don’t appear like bullets but small, tiny capacitors. The cap loads appear more suited for the electronics of a super computer.
Kar looks at the quartz stone wall, making a fist, like one of those mech-punks who live in the desert. Boom! Explosions crack like lightning in the mid distance but feel as if next to his soul jerking his body from nose to toe. The body eventually grows accustomed to the violent jerk. Set is a real frag hole. Kar’s nerves are bad today.
“How will you hack it this time?” asks Kar. An explosion rings out closer. His head jolts and jerks.
“I CANNOT brute force it. It will lock up the keypad. I will need to drill it.”
“You brought the drill, right?” asks Int. Wide eyes and glossy. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her. She examines his face. There’s a pause.
“Then we will have to try brute forcing the code,” she says.
“No, chances are too slim. The code is programmed to lock out after so many attempts. We have to make a run for it. Find an order-bot to bribe. We so need my father right now.”
Another explosion rings out from the mech tyrant. Set’s outline barely visible to the north. Now they know for sure where the destruction is coming from. But Kar already knew. Because there’s a neo feud.
“Let’s hurry south,” she says. “Won’t be too far.”
Int tugs Kar’s hand. She likes to lead when she can. He lets her. Her dirty sandy hair brushes his face in a flash of auburn red as she lunges forward pulling him with her.
Kar keeps his eyes on the horizon, on the lookout for Set, the mech tyrant. He admires Integer’s gear. She has straps holding her metal mesh leggings up as shields against the desert scorpions. Outside the leggings, boots laced up high to her knees. She’s the prepared type of girl. A responsible type. And loves the numbers and probabilities.
Trudging and sludging, ambeling and walking, they keep going. Step after step. Pace after pace. Another opportunity to cross over should be close.
It’s not long before they come across an open door guarded by an android, more bot than human, with mechatronic body. It has a square face. It doesn’t smile.
Int knows this android from before. His square head smiles at her. It’s teeth are too perfect, as in scarry perfect. Eyes beam and frighten her every time. It leans it’s hand out expecting a tip. It already knows. It remembers her face using facial recognition. At least the network allows the order-bot some autonomy, enough to stay corruptible.
They bribe their way through the border wall door with the two coins!
Int wipes the beads of sweat from her face. She’s happy to be back inside the temperate weather zone inside the city. She unzips her jacket to cool off not meaning to draw too much attention for a geek who loves numbers. But the men certainly do notice even if their cultural is built on sapiosexual values where mind fragging is the new sex.
Which Tech Power Upgrade Sounds More Fun
