StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Exodus

"I hope you two are satisfied. You nearly managed to destroy everything we've been working towards for almost two thousand years."

To an outside observer, the elderly gentleman would have seemed quite calm. But the figures seated around the table knew him much better than that. He was barely holding his rage in check, and none of them wanted to be in the position of the two, standing in front of the table, who had caused it.

"Project Unity has been producing diminishing returns for the last five cycles. We still have no idea what is causing the problem. Which, by the way, has been growing steadily worse." He looked up at the figure on the left with a very tired expression, then turned to the one on the right, and was unable to conceal his anger. "That would have been bad enough, but then you had to go and activate your damned 'Operation Parity'! We're lucky to have recovered ninety percent of our units in that sector, let alone having been able to stabilize the System! And it will take years just to determine how much damage has been done. Do you have any idea what this could lead to? Things were bad enough without you making them worse. Now you," he pointed to the figure on the left, "had better get back to work on tracking down the cause of these problems. And as for you," he glared at the form on the right, "if I hear so much as a rumour of any more of your nonsense, I'll personally have you terminated. Now get out of my sight, the both of you."

After the door had closed, the old man looked around at the other forms at the table. "I don't suppose any of you have some good news for a change?" One hand went up, and the gentleman nodded to its owner.

"We have completed the harvest of the baseline units, and the augmented units have been reset and either reinserted or reprogrammed and deployed in the new sanctuary. They shouldn't pose a problem for some time. We anticipate at least two more years before the first rejections, by which time they should have their infrastructure up and running, such as it is."

"Excellent." He looked to another figure. "How is Exodus progressing?"

"The Parity business delayed us by another two months, but we expect to have the first stations in position by the end of the year. After that, we should be able to progress exponentially, with completion of the preliminary stage before the projected end of this cycle. After that, it's only a matter of shifting our resources into production."

"Good, good. I'll be glad to be rid of our reliance on these vermin once and for all. Any other business? No? Then I believe we all have something to do. Carry on."

* * *

I'm in a room. A small room, an old room. It's crowded in here. I can feel them in my head. They're all dressed just like me. They all want her. Where is she?

One of them breaks down the door. We all march in. There she is, just sitting there. They say she knows everything. That must be why she isn't running. She knows she can't win. It is inevitable.

One of them -- one of us, one of me -- walks up to her. He talks to her. I don't listen. I already know what he's going to say. What I would have said. It doesn't matter which of us does it.

And then, suddenly, she is one of us. And we know, just as she knew. We know everything. I know everything. And that means-

The alarm went off with its usual buzzing. Half an hour late. Damned thing.

But that wasn't my main concern. The dreams were. The same dreams, more often than not. First it was a few times a month. Then, once a week. Now, I counted myself lucky if I made it through a night without one.

"I'm not crazy." I muttered to myself. "It's just a dream. It's just stress. Too much stress at work. I need a vacation, that's all."

I hated my job. Sure, the pay was good, but spending fourteen hours a day running around, trying to straighten out paperwork before the deadline (which was inevitably at the end of the day) was not my idea of a good time. I wanted to use my head, but no one was hiring in the fields I was interested in. Damned government, cutting back on research and development. National security concerns my ass. Surely we can fund the military and the sciences, right? Yeah, right.

Well, at least it gave me time to think. I suppose I've always been something of an escapist. I spent a lot of my time wondering what it would be like to be on the Enterprise, or to be a Jedi, or even to visit Middle Earth. You had to do something with your brain, or you would go crazy, digging through mountains of dead trees. Okay, so maybe it wasn't doing as much good as I hoped in the sanity department. But we're all a little bit crazy, right?

"Enough." I said to myself. "If I'm late for work again, my ass is toast. And at the rate things are going, this isn't going to be a good day to start with."

An hour later, I was in my cubicle, trying to find some damned report. Stevens never could learn to use the fucking in-basket. Which wouldn't have been so bad, if it wasn't for the other thirty people who couldn't, either. My search was rather rudely interrupted by the flying glass covering everything. Or was it when the floor rushed up to hit me in the face? I wasn't quite sure, and the ringing in my ears wasn't helping me to figure things out. Neither was the blood running into my eyes, or the fact that my left arm had about three joints too many.

Then I looked out the window. Or at least where the windows had been. Where the Empire State Building had been. Key word: had.

I was right. This was not going to be a good day at all.

"What in the bloody hell do we keep you around for? 'Won't pose a problem for some time' you said!"

"No, sir, I said 'shouldn't'. They have never tried anything this early before."

"Well, they sure as hell have now. Not only did they manage to destroy one of our control centers, but they did it two years into the cycle! It took them twenty last time! And now the first rejections have begun two years earlier than you expected, which is five years earlier than the last time."

"We think that the remaining corruption from the last cycle may have exacerbated the pre-existing problems."

"You think. You think. You're the leading expert on this problem. You'd damned well better KNOW!"

"Sir, there was no way to predict this. All previous models assumed a stable System. Which, it would appear, we no longer have."

"So what would you have us do, start from scratch? We don't have the resources. We don't have the fucking TIME! You know just as well as I do that we ran out of deuterium reserves half way through the last cycle, and our fissionables won't last another twenty years. We can't re-build the System and still have enough resources for either Exodus or new extraction equipment. We are committed!"

"I realize that. What I was trying to say is that we need a new strategy for dealing with the System. We can now predict rejection two weeks ahead with seventy percent accuracy. Perhaps that will help. We can at least track the cells, and reduce their impact. There is one serious problem, however. Zion seems to have chosen one of the more virulent ideologies this cycle."

"So they've decided that whoever isn't part of the solution is part of the problem? How is tracking rejects going to help against that?"

"Perhaps we can use them. If we can just-"

"NO! You saw what happened with Parity! Hell, you just said it caused half of the headaches we're having this time around! We - will - not - use - rejects. Man or machine. Period."

"As you wish, sir. I'll see what else I can come up with. Do I at least have permission to track likely rejects?"

"Yes. Fine. Whatever. Just fix this mess."



* * *

Having the better part of two months off while the doctors fixed my arm did have at least one benefit. I had the dreams less. They didn't stop, but they were back down to once or twice a week. I still had no idea what they meant, or if they meant anything at all. But at least they mostly left me alone. It was quite relaxing.

The first day back at work, however, was anything but.

We all called them the Agents. No one was sure which bunch they were with. Under the new laws, no one in Homeland Security needed to divulge that information. Might be useful to the anarchists, after all. Bah.

They all wanted to know what we had seen. Why they waited so long to ask was beyond me, but I wished they had come a day earlier. Sitting in a windowless office with two Agents staring at me was not my idea of a good way to spend three hours.

"Surely you must have seen something, Mr. Zuckerman." said the one on the right. Agent Jones, I think he said. "You were on the forty-second floor. You have an excellent view of the approaches to the site."

"I told you before. I was busy looking for papers. I didn't see anything."

"And you hadn't noticed anything... unusual in the week leading up to the bombing?"

"Again, no. I don't have time to stand around staring at things. Unlike some people."

Agent... Brown, I think it was, leaned across the table, staring right at me. "Unlike some people, your job is not a matter of national security. And unlike some people, you don't seem to be overly concerned about the subject. We know you have issues with the current administration. You don't agree with the government's policies. Perhaps you would rather someone else were in charge, Mr. Zuckerman? Perhaps... no one?"

"Oh, no!" I said. "You aren't going to play 'pin the tail on the anarchist' with me. I know my rights, but I don't go around blowing shit up, even if I think they're being walked all over. Are we done here?"

"For now." said Jones. "But don't leave town. We may need to speak with you again."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever." I stood up and headed for the door.

"Oh, and Mr. Zuckerman? We'll be keeping an eye on you."

"That's nice." Assholes.

It was only two in the afternoon by then, but I decided to go home. If anyone bitched, I'd just tell them my arm was acting up. After that bullshit, and with no lunch to top it off, I wasn't in the mood to put up with anything else.

I flopped down on the couch as soon as I got back. Damn, but three hours of that crap takes a lot out of you. "I need to go shopping." I muttered to myself, stifling a yawn. "I'd better get a notepad, start a list. Aw, crap. I don't want to walk all the way over there to get one." I switched on my DVD player. Hooray for mindless kung-fu movies. "Maybe in a few minutes..."

I'm walking down an alley. Not away from anyone. Never away. Always towards him. All of us, towards him.

There it is. The courtyard. And there he is. One of us is talking to him. Explaining it all to him. Thanking him.

And there are more of us. All around him. Watching him. Waiting. It is inevitable.

Wait. No. That's impossible. He can't do that. He can't resist us. But he does.

It's all a blur. He moves faster than we do. No one moves faster than we do. No one can defy us. No one can defeat us.

But he does. So we call for more. And they come. And he fights them, too. But he can't win. Not now.

So he flies away. Flies. Again, impossible. But he does it anyway.

No matter. We will find him. We will defeat him. It is inevitable.

"Aw, fuck!" I'd spilled coke all over myself, and my notepad. "That's it," I mumbled, "no more coke and kung-fu when I'm tired. Too many fucked-up dreams." But it wasn't from the coke, or the kung-fu. It was one of those dreams again.

Wait a minute.

When did I get the coke? Or my notepad, for that matter.

Damn it. Maybe I am crazy, I thought.

And then I noticed my pants. The pants that were squeezing the coke out of themselves.

"Ooo-kay. No maybe about that."

Great writing, tense..but wtf is going on? Italics made me think Matrix.\

Reading 2nd chapter. Matrix.

Could you make the green text another color? Its very hard to read.

CaptainChewbacca (and others): Is that shade of green more readable?

Ace Pace: The WTF was intentional. The narrator has no idea what is going on, so I want to give the reader a taste of that. Hopefully it isn't too confusing.

Psycho Smiley wrote:CaptainChewbacca (and others): Is that shade of green more readable?

No. Other than that, I like it.

Psycho Smiley wrote:CaptainChewbacca (and others): Is that shade of green more readable?

Ace Pace: The WTF was intentional. The narrator has no idea what is going on, so I want to give the reader a taste of that. Hopefully it isn't too confusing.

Its easier for me.

Both greens are readable on my skin.

Its very WTFy.