The chattering of the news upon my radio feed stirs me from my sleep. A string of small ice planet terraforming bombs in some far off country kill untold numbers. A global paedophile ring had been discovered to be led by a high up in the social services. A parent murders four hundred young children believing them to be spawns of the devil.
Modern society sickens me.
Every day I awaken to the news of societies ever increasing decay. The ever increasing social entropy as the world falls towards the anarchical state I see awakening slowly every day.
I glance at the clock. It's 10:49 am. I sigh back in to my pillow.
It's too fucking early for philosophy.
This life is starting to get real old some days.
Fifteen or so minutes later, I finally drag myself out of bed much to my loathing, and haul myself into the shower to clean away the stench of sweat, marijuana smoke and spilt alcohol from the night before. The rising steam clears my airways enough that I, at least for now, can feel a little better for the moment. However, with that ailment cured, the true menace of the night before comes to my focus.
The hangover, being that it was now late morning, was mostly faded; the majority of it slept away. With my body refreshed by the hot torrent of water: aching muscles relaxed, phlegm clogged airways cleared and the last of my groggy sleep washed away so I was prepared for the day, my headache felt all the more terrible.
Switching the shower off, I dry myself off lacklusteringly, my long hair still dripping down my back as I return to my bedroom draped in nothing but my towel. It's in this state I will spend the next few hours while I catch up with the world around me, watching my favourite shows that I set to download overnight and then browsing the web for the latest news.
This is my real passion in life, my real face, but it is not the one that is shown so regularly. I am afraid of the world around me and yet, if you knew me, you would not know it.
So surrounded by the ailing state on all sides, swamped by the lewd and inappropriate state of the society I am born into, that instead of finding myself alone in this unfamiliar world I reluctantly began to embraced it, such that I find myself on the outside of my soul to be the very thing I despise so strongly.
And in many respects, due to this, I am the very cancer that eats away at humanity, but begrudgingly I accept it, for when the change in me came I was too weak and afraid of the loneliness of solitude to make a stand and try to preserve my humanity any longer.
Finally I grow bored of surfing the net and checking up with the buzz of the blogosphere, pour myself a cup of black tea, down it in one scolding my mouth and get dressed in a hurried fashion. I again sink into that realization the next few hours will further the dehumanization of my soul, but as always am compelled as such. Out I go, into the unfriendly and unwelcoming jungle of the world outside, where like the first colonial visitors to foreign lands I feel alone and cut off from my origins.
I realize now I have not yet introduced myself, nor why I write this. For the later, I believe it is best to leave my narrative to explain that; but the first, though it has no bearing on the outcome of this story, is a formality I feel obliged to fulfill.
I am Quinne Xavier Rothschild though my friends call me "Roth", a shortened version of my surname, others simply Q. I am the 41st cousin of the King of the as Defunct monarchy that now carries only a symbolic status. I am 428th in the line to the throne. Random, useless crap I know. But as my aforementioned statement attests this entire duty I have the compulsion to carry out this is all pointless crap.
I am among the few known as "purestrains". To all those out there living under a rock humanity, as I've mentioned before, grows more inhumane by the day. Literally. We live in a posthuman age of genetic surgery and augmentation. The process is still fairly new, but already we have fallen to a state I barely recognize the world some mornings, when I remember what we once were.
Once we held such noble goals. Once we reached them, we forgot and instead fell into self-serving a society. A society until recently I did my best to avoid. A society every day I become a bit more immersed in.
I look across the street, and see the verministic twisted form humanity takes. A man, wires protruding from every part of his body, his face half covered with a metal lining that gave the impression of circuit boards. As far as I guessed, it was probably neuro-enhancing machinery on his face, or some kind of augmentation for the eyes.
Another person I eyed was a drug-fueled girl, with medpacks on her belt that pumped through a myriad of tubes large quantities of stimulants into her system, a large gas canister on her back with a mask on her face, probably full of a gas that counteracted the worst affects of the stimulants so that her energy never went too high. She was part of a cult known as The Sleepless.
Cults were so commonplace these days, any idea or belief shared spawned a cult or a religion or a political party these days.
And thus, even in two people, you see how fallen we have become. And how obscenely human in this modern age I am.
And in three days, even I will succumb to destroying a portion of my humanity.
The corrupted air of the city was particularly bad today, pollution levels high enough to suggest the burning engines of industry were beating harder than a whores heart on four lines of cocaine. Unclasping the rebreather from my belt, I placed the belt of the apparatus around my head and placed the breathing piece in my mouth.
The first inhalation of a newly purchased rebreather is always the best, the air always the freshest, and the opium gas this particular brand comes with always tastes the sweetest on that first hit. These days anyone who isn't on drugs are the losers, faced with this festering shitbowl of a city who wouldn't want to be high twentyfour seven.
I considered my options of where to go to ail my boredom, and ultimately decided in the increasingly foggy judgment of my mind as the drugs kicked in on heading down to the local diner. This was the stomping grounds of the some of the few freaks in this city I found tolerable enough to call friends, the place they marked as their home. Their territory. But behind the facade of tough gangsters, these were some blokes who knew how to have a good time, had the best news and always had the best hook up for drugs.
Gangs in this city was common, and few people didn't swear allegiance under one banner or colour or handsign or some of that bullshit. I, being somewhat noble of birth, and by that merit somewhat vaguely well off, had the particular honor of being one of the few people amongst the scum of the city to know the right people in the right places to go round. I was rarely trusted, and there was ALWAYS a gone pointed at my back from some shadowy recluse should they ever find I'm pulling shit behind their eyes; but since I played my part I hadn't met the end so many greedy fucks had.
These guys belonged to a fairly unknown gang, one that was barely acknowledgment enough to warrant much in the way of violence of trouble, and knowing just how insignificant they were outside of this small collections of streets they never flashed a gun or badmouthed someone who was two words away from shoving the butt of their gun so far up their arses that they'd be puking lead.
As I entered the diner, I was recognized instantly by a guy with topknot of long, greasy dreadlocks on an otherwise perfectly bald head, around which swirled all kinds of symbolic tattoos denoting his various deeds, allegiances and the like. This was Arzex, also known as Patches, so named because upon his initiation to his gang a young cocky punkish fellow called him that when he noticed his cheetah print legs.
He of course did not realise this meant Arzex had genetic traits that gave him rather remarkable agility, mainly due to the fact his legs were biologically that of a cheetah, a long extinct creature that was in it's day known for it's ferocious speed, his respitory system also increased to match that. His light weight might give him a vulnerable look, but in a knife fight with Arzex, he's got you sliced before you know what hits you.
This punk however, didn't know that this biological jigsaw puzzle actually gave him added fighting ability. Suffice to say after the punk had his throat torn out by the sharp teeth of Arzex, he was welcomed into the gang with open arms. From time to time someone pushed their luck and called him patches. Rarely did it go well.
The first was 489. 489 wasn't his real name, but that was all we knew him as. He was another one of those cultists fucks, but his group were a group who believed that their pasts could only be forgiven if they renounced their identity and began afresh. That and they murder the number of people their number dictates. 489 had 489 counts of violations against their beliefs, and only by killing that many people could he enter the afterlife. At best count, he was well on his way to 300. As you might of guessed, this had left him very unattached from emotion, for in his eyes one wrong act against his churches beliefs sentenced you to being a sacrifice to his religion. Let me tell you now, this guy is NEVER a good guy to invite to parties, you rarely get fifteen minutes in before he's murdered three pushers and a mutated whore's baby. But in a way, he truly thought this was his only redemption, and although wholly selfish of this, from this he carried an aura of holiness.
Another was Archy, short for archangel, which at a glance was extremely obvious why. At just over 140, but not showing much beyond 30, he was one of the first generations of slummers to experience full working nerve and muscle synced augments as the market demand forced prices down. Before that, genetic and augmentation surgeries were only for the higher classes, but Archy beat down enough whores and robbed enough pushers to get his wings. They weren't, of course, made for flying, but his great metal wings that were at this moment folded behind his back gave a very commanding presence. Being amongst one of the oldest citizens of the slums, who rarely lived into their 90s, he was regarded almost as a local hero. No wonder after many power struggles he was elected into the position head to the gang Arzex and the other cretins in the diner called their own.
I suppose again, for those who live under a rock, that in this age of science, those inside the cities who can obtain the right set of genetics and drugs can live well into their second century should they wish, but most commit suicide midway into the first disgusted by the society in which they are stuck in, and the rest rarely reach their first, especially in the slums.
The last to welcome me was the one here I considered myself the closest to, and her name was Okenia. She was, just like the others in comparison to myself, ghastly unhuman, but despite this I often forgot just how very different we were. This was a girl that amongst any others in this city, I would give the questionable title of my true love to. Born into a rich middle class family much of myself, she had lived the majority of her 20 or so years of her life in relative comfort, relative of course because in this city comfort is a luxury none can truly afford without needles sticking into every vein in their body and anti-overdose meds being crammed down their throat constantly while being in a constant comatose state. But at the age of 23, four years before I would meet her she was horribly injured by a disease ridden mutant who escaped from one of the science labs. Infecting her with it's bioengineered disease, she had little chance of survival without drastic procedure, as every last organ in her body began shutting down and eating itself. On the outside, she is of flesh, but inside the majority of her body is wire work and circuitry.
Despite this, her brain was luckily saved, meaning she was in some sense still human, though he brain could have been uploaded into computers and robots and preserved for all eternity with her new body.
But still, in a way, despite this monstrous truth, I loved her.
And such was the very contradiction of my existence. As much as I despised the inhuman immorality of modern existence, and so verily attributed worth with my ability to stay a purestrain this long, I knew deep inside that life would require me to soon change, otherwise like the humans of the past, I be swept under the carpet as part of yesterdays filth.
I spat out the rebreather and let it hand loosely around my neck, and moved towards those who welcomed me.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
PostHuman? Chapter 3
Four of the intolerable wretches were lined up against the wall, hands cuffed behind their necks and legs forced apart by bars so as to prevent them fleeing. The fate of these barbaric and insolent bastards lay in my hands, and most furiously my wrath would fall upon them.
My hand buried itself into my officers issue trench coat, a pure white leather with edging of the purest yellow gold around the edges. The guardsmen and police around me knew this only meant one thing, and from it my air of authority drove them into subservient sycophancy. I was a Lord Justicar of the Cities Secret Branch, an unofficial, unacknowledged branch of the Government Security Sect, but it was no secret to the people we existed, and in many cases our unofficial status left us as a rumor and legend in the peoples mind, inspiring the fear and infamy we needed and deserved to suppress the worst of disorder.
From the coat, I withdrew my pistol, an ancient device handed down through my family and routinely maintained. So old was this device that I had to employ people solely to manufacture ammo for it. In this day and age it was an outdated relic of a mundane age centuries ago, a time long forgot to the most of society, but it was symbol of my long and powerful Germanic heritage. The gun had first been carried in the greatest war of the time and in my eyes held an elegant simplicity of an age of great learning. Such an outdated arm was useless in open combat, however I rarely engaged into battle armed with it, preferring my sidearm of a much more powerful modern gravpistol. However, when I in the name of order committed a soul to death by execution, this was the tool I used. It was my beautiful semi-automatic, recoil-operated work of mechanical art superior to all of this modern and ugly age, a weapon of the great order of the universe, the bringer of death upon the chaotic and the unclean.
I walked down the line, and true of most gangers, they for the most part faced their death valiantly. I asked each down the line and I walked behind them if they repented for their disruption of the natural order of existence, and the first three answered with only one reply:
“It is in chaos we will return true order from your dogmatic heresy”
Each of them received a just and fair answer, the mocking blast of the pistol before their skull was penetrated and their lives reaped by my glorious righteousness.
It was only with the last one I received any sign of weakness. She was a wonderful figure and the most gorgeous shade of red hair under all the grease and dirt that caked it, and would not have been far mistaken from a handmaiden of the Justicar’s temple had she not been smeared in the grime of the streets and wore the whorish garbs of a city wretch. When I stepped behind her, my heavy boots kicking up grime and soot leaving faint footprints on the ground, she fell to her knees. For such a despicable bitch, who lived in such an unorderly and despised way, facing death should not have broken her.
I paused for a second, looking back at her friends and wondering why she was so unlike the others, and wondered why she must shame her final moments by betraying the honour of her hideous faction, but like the others I asked her to repent, for once seriously wondering if she would. Her reply was not a repeat of her companions sacrilegious promise, and but she did not beg for mercy. She only made one promise “My master will avenge us, and on that day you will feel the full wrath of all those you kill Justicar. And then you will know the truth of your own impure chaos, and that we are the agents of the ordered.”
I looked her deep in her eyes, as she turned to look at me, and in those eyes I saw a vengeful and passionate flame of pure hatred. She truly held the conviction that I was not the blessed of order, and that she was its true agent. I choked out a dry laugh at her claim, and only for the vaguest of curiosities replied to her “Then lass, tell me, who is this master of yours, whose might is such that he can with force take us into the fires of damnation and destruction?”
She looked down at her dead compatriots, then back at me, and with a fiery last insult spoke only one quick phrase. “Araj The Spider, King of the streets and the webs of fate!”
I froze, stiff as a corpse laid on the frozen plains created in the nuclear winter zone far north. I searched all my memory implants, scanned every note I had stored, searched deep for that one name. The name was eerily familiar and for unknown reasons chillingly haunting to my mind, so much so it froze me in my space as I went to raise my gun to her brow.
Noticing my hesitance, she laughed, weakly at first but it rose into a cacophony of maniacal humor that rang in my already stunned ears like a maelstrom of diabolical delight and insanity. As the storm of thundering loud laughter ended, she tilted her head back forward and let it droop, chin almost resting on bottom of her slender neck, and looked me straight in the eyes, no longer showing fear.
And then in a second sign of resistance she spat at my feet, and turned around, awaiting her end. I stood, bemused. How had this girl gone from the fearing and cowering maggot into a passionate and cursing harlot with the tongue of a serpent that licked with the burning flames of hatred that burned with such passion and intensity that in my mind not could find no equal since the times of long ago, when men fought dragons on horseback.
Inside of my, awakened by such disregard for the natural order, my own blazing furnace awoke in an all consuming flash of flame. How dare this wench speak to me, and throw such names that for unknowable reasons struck my heart with an icy touch. How dare she. How dare the malformed brat of chaos do such a thing. I signaled the nearest guard, who raised his gun, but I shook my head, and returned his questioning glare with a smile that let him suddenly realise my intentions.
While the names meaning might have escaped me, it would not escape the ears of our finest blades who specialized in extracting information. For unsettling my personal balance so much as she had, she would receive worse than the quick and clean death I would of have given her. If she wept before her resisting passion grasped her whoreish heart, it could only bring me pleasure to see how she cried when she was left torn and ragged by hands finer and more deadly than my own.
I gave her only one last question as the policeman bundled her up and pushed her into the van with little resistance. "Lass, what name does one give to one with such a fiery tongue as you hold?"
She laughed, turned her head back to me and glared, responding simply with "Iola, m'lord. Good day to you" before the door to the hover cruiser was closed and I lost sight of her.
I returned my pistol into the holster in my coat, and then wiped the blood from my hands and face. I motioned to the remaining guards to follow me, and see if we could deal any more damage to these bastardly street rats. I had much rage to resolve at this moment in time.
My hand buried itself into my officers issue trench coat, a pure white leather with edging of the purest yellow gold around the edges. The guardsmen and police around me knew this only meant one thing, and from it my air of authority drove them into subservient sycophancy. I was a Lord Justicar of the Cities Secret Branch, an unofficial, unacknowledged branch of the Government Security Sect, but it was no secret to the people we existed, and in many cases our unofficial status left us as a rumor and legend in the peoples mind, inspiring the fear and infamy we needed and deserved to suppress the worst of disorder.
From the coat, I withdrew my pistol, an ancient device handed down through my family and routinely maintained. So old was this device that I had to employ people solely to manufacture ammo for it. In this day and age it was an outdated relic of a mundane age centuries ago, a time long forgot to the most of society, but it was symbol of my long and powerful Germanic heritage. The gun had first been carried in the greatest war of the time and in my eyes held an elegant simplicity of an age of great learning. Such an outdated arm was useless in open combat, however I rarely engaged into battle armed with it, preferring my sidearm of a much more powerful modern gravpistol. However, when I in the name of order committed a soul to death by execution, this was the tool I used. It was my beautiful semi-automatic, recoil-operated work of mechanical art superior to all of this modern and ugly age, a weapon of the great order of the universe, the bringer of death upon the chaotic and the unclean.
I walked down the line, and true of most gangers, they for the most part faced their death valiantly. I asked each down the line and I walked behind them if they repented for their disruption of the natural order of existence, and the first three answered with only one reply:
“It is in chaos we will return true order from your dogmatic heresy”
Each of them received a just and fair answer, the mocking blast of the pistol before their skull was penetrated and their lives reaped by my glorious righteousness.
It was only with the last one I received any sign of weakness. She was a wonderful figure and the most gorgeous shade of red hair under all the grease and dirt that caked it, and would not have been far mistaken from a handmaiden of the Justicar’s temple had she not been smeared in the grime of the streets and wore the whorish garbs of a city wretch. When I stepped behind her, my heavy boots kicking up grime and soot leaving faint footprints on the ground, she fell to her knees. For such a despicable bitch, who lived in such an unorderly and despised way, facing death should not have broken her.
I paused for a second, looking back at her friends and wondering why she was so unlike the others, and wondered why she must shame her final moments by betraying the honour of her hideous faction, but like the others I asked her to repent, for once seriously wondering if she would. Her reply was not a repeat of her companions sacrilegious promise, and but she did not beg for mercy. She only made one promise “My master will avenge us, and on that day you will feel the full wrath of all those you kill Justicar. And then you will know the truth of your own impure chaos, and that we are the agents of the ordered.”
I looked her deep in her eyes, as she turned to look at me, and in those eyes I saw a vengeful and passionate flame of pure hatred. She truly held the conviction that I was not the blessed of order, and that she was its true agent. I choked out a dry laugh at her claim, and only for the vaguest of curiosities replied to her “Then lass, tell me, who is this master of yours, whose might is such that he can with force take us into the fires of damnation and destruction?”
She looked down at her dead compatriots, then back at me, and with a fiery last insult spoke only one quick phrase. “Araj The Spider, King of the streets and the webs of fate!”
I froze, stiff as a corpse laid on the frozen plains created in the nuclear winter zone far north. I searched all my memory implants, scanned every note I had stored, searched deep for that one name. The name was eerily familiar and for unknown reasons chillingly haunting to my mind, so much so it froze me in my space as I went to raise my gun to her brow.
Noticing my hesitance, she laughed, weakly at first but it rose into a cacophony of maniacal humor that rang in my already stunned ears like a maelstrom of diabolical delight and insanity. As the storm of thundering loud laughter ended, she tilted her head back forward and let it droop, chin almost resting on bottom of her slender neck, and looked me straight in the eyes, no longer showing fear.
And then in a second sign of resistance she spat at my feet, and turned around, awaiting her end. I stood, bemused. How had this girl gone from the fearing and cowering maggot into a passionate and cursing harlot with the tongue of a serpent that licked with the burning flames of hatred that burned with such passion and intensity that in my mind not could find no equal since the times of long ago, when men fought dragons on horseback.
Inside of my, awakened by such disregard for the natural order, my own blazing furnace awoke in an all consuming flash of flame. How dare this wench speak to me, and throw such names that for unknowable reasons struck my heart with an icy touch. How dare she. How dare the malformed brat of chaos do such a thing. I signaled the nearest guard, who raised his gun, but I shook my head, and returned his questioning glare with a smile that let him suddenly realise my intentions.
While the names meaning might have escaped me, it would not escape the ears of our finest blades who specialized in extracting information. For unsettling my personal balance so much as she had, she would receive worse than the quick and clean death I would of have given her. If she wept before her resisting passion grasped her whoreish heart, it could only bring me pleasure to see how she cried when she was left torn and ragged by hands finer and more deadly than my own.
I gave her only one last question as the policeman bundled her up and pushed her into the van with little resistance. "Lass, what name does one give to one with such a fiery tongue as you hold?"
She laughed, turned her head back to me and glared, responding simply with "Iola, m'lord. Good day to you" before the door to the hover cruiser was closed and I lost sight of her.
I returned my pistol into the holster in my coat, and then wiped the blood from my hands and face. I motioned to the remaining guards to follow me, and see if we could deal any more damage to these bastardly street rats. I had much rage to resolve at this moment in time.
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