The Logical World

[Ford Prefect]

This is my magnum opus (or opus magnum), which I'm quite proud of. There's a No-prize for those who can get all of the references.



The Logical World

Chapter One

Tuesday


Far from Sol, far, far away from it, there is a world called Legatos.

Legatos is a high classed world, in the way that its annual tithe is quite high. It is not a worldcity, not yet, at least, yet it is heavily populated. Over two hundred million citizens lived in the capital alone. It is a teeming mass of humanity, yet it is dwarfed by the mere idea of other worlds. Two systems away was the gargantuan Amoroso, whose capital population (if it had a capital, that is) was in the upper billions, yet even that was an insignificant speck if you looked at the Empire as a whole.

Markus Delgado had no idea how many people there was in the galaxy. He probably had heard the number in the ISEPEL funded lessons he’d taken for more than half his life, but that was a decade ago.

As it was, Markus Delgado didn’t really care how many people there were in the Empire. Or in fact, how many people there was in his city. The current state of the Empire as a whole didn’t really concern him. As it was, compared to the Empire as a whole, he was on the sub-atomic level.

Markus Delgado, was a librarian.

Markus wasn’t exactly a high ranking librarian. In the Intergalactic Librarians Guild, he was very low on the ladder. His job was simple; he stacked books, putting them in order, according to the Imperial Decimal System (which had replaced the Dewey version almost seven hundred years ago). Sometimes he ran the library. But in most cases, he read.

He avoided reading at any of the windows along the north wall. From those you could see the Overwatch’s Precinct. And if you could see the Overwatch, the Overwatch could see you. And besides, Markus didn’t like the huge, white, pyramidal Watchtower. It was so sterile and quiet to be creepy. It made him feel guilty, even though Markus had never broken the law.

This morning started like any other. His alarm clock bleeped on, playing Triple L, his favourite breakfast radio station. It was seven in the morning, very early, considering Legatos had a thirty hour day.

Markus cracked open one eye and looked at the blue-green holo display with distaste. He hated Tuesday mornings, out of all nine mornings on Legatos. He closed his eye again, sighed, and then opened them both. He pushed back the covers of his bed, and then swung his feet onto the floor. It had carpet this time, which his last apartment hadn’t had. He stretched and his back cracked loudly.

Markus lived in a bloc, a building with nothing but hundreds of thousands of identical, single roomed apartments. His shower was on top of his fridge; his bed came out from under the wall. It was the fourth place he’d moved to in the last two months, but if anything, it was the best. Which wasn’t really saying much.

The room was rectangular, six by ten, with the door in one of the short sides. What little space he had was taken up by stacks of books that covered the floor. There was a space before the door where there were no books, but that was it. He didn’t pull his bed back into the wall very often either, as there were books strewn across that, too.

As he walked away from his bed, he placed his chipped, white mug beneath the percolator, and took his glasses off the top of it. He slipped them on over his nose as he reached the blank wall. He tapped it and a panel slid up into the roof. Markus leaned onto the sill as Legatos’ fresh, if somewhat thick, air began to circulate around his home. The sun was rising, its first light seeping between the towers on the other side of Main Street.

“And in related news, the subversive group calling itself ‘The Sons of Earth’ was broken by a strike force of Deathwatch led by Arbiter Melkum Harst. The Sons, who advocated that The Administration was corrupt, had carried out a series of devastating terrorist attacks on our sister planet Letaman,” the announcer, Rick Harst (of no relation to Legatos’ finest citizen, Melkum) was saying “and caused the death of dozens of Overwatch officers and hundreds of citizens, when they struck the Fortress Precinct in the capital. Arbiter Harst, who has released the following statement-”

At this point, Markus tuned out. Listening to the bombastic, and highly successful, Arbiter Harst made Markus irritable. Instead, he watched the boats float by and leaned out into the street. He looked up the street and saw her there. The redhead from five doors up. She was watering her flowers, then only used flower box on this entire wall, and probably the whole bloc.

Her hair shimmered in the sun. Markus sipped his coffee. It was terrible. He tipped it out into the street, and then went to shower.

*

He shut the door to his yellow walled apartment and looked up the hall. The redhead was closing her door as well. Markus snapped his eyes back to the door, with its flaked and peeling ‘411205’ stencilled in black. He ran his fingers through his brown hair, straightened the lapels of his jacket and started to walk for the elevator, at the same time as the girl.

She checked her watch as she turned around to face the door.

“Good morning,” Markus said as they began to descend to ground level.

“I suppose it is.” She replied flatly. Her response made him narrow his eyebrows.

“They say that a terrorist group was smashed on Letaman.” He began conversationally.

She turned and looked up at him with big, cobalt blue eyes “Yes. It should be a lesson for all like them. The Empire is humanity. Let no one dispute it.” The elevator doors opened and she walked away. Markus paused for a moment and when the elevator asked if he was going to get off or not, he jumped and walked out as well.

On the street was a fuming man with black hair greying at the temples in a dark blue suit. He was shouting about having hot coffee tipped on him at the doorman. Markus shrugged at Gerd, who was looking somewhat ruffled. The doorman made the tiniest shrug back, yet the man in the suit picked up on this and started verbally assaulting Gerd with renewed vigour.

The girl was gone. Markus sighed then turned left from the main door, heading up Main Street. Boats floated overhead and other vehicles rumbled along besides him. The street was enormously crowded, like a sea of warm, disinterested bodies. Markus knew that he was as disinterested as the rest, like everyone in the Empire. This was a Tuesday, and everyone had something to do on Tuesday.

*

The library was a small building, a good twenty stories or so tall and covering about a third of its city block. It was the only building on this block, and was surrounded by immaculate gardens, carefully groomed by a dedicated team of gardeners. Markus walked through the neatly trimmed grass, past artistically twisted trees and fields of intricate flower pictures. The stairs of the library had a painting on it; a black and white face, presenting the greatest writer of the last two hundred years: Vermont Callum. Markus stepped in his eye and walked through the doors.

The floor was carpet in a rich dark green colour and covered in looped, linked handwriting in gold. These were the words of the greatest writers from the ages past. Markus had never been bothered to read much of it; to read the whole library’s floor would take years. One of the scrollers had once said conversationally to Markus as he had passed through their department that the true name of the man in charge of the Empire was hidden in that writing. Markus paid him no heed; anyone who copied perfectly good books, disk and data crystals out on to scrolls of parchment had to be a little loopy.

Still.

Markus headed towards one of the two stair cases from the lobby, briefly waving to Curtis at the front desk. He wondered even more briefly if Curtis had lodgings here, like lots of the librarians, only one or two ranks higher than Markus. It did seem likely.

He sighed as he got into the elevator and pressed the button for the fourteenth floor. Library lodgings. That would make his day. The chance to not have to get up so early in the morning, to not have to walk for half an hour each morning to get to work. To be able to read books, any books he wanted, whenever he liked, in the comfort of his own home. He’d have more space too, not having to keep books in his house.

He stepped out onto his floor then turned into the first door on this hallway. He was greeted by the sight of row after row of bookcases, desks and reading lamps.

“Good morning Markus.” The senior librarian said flatly, not looking up from the gargantuan logbook on his desk.

“Librarian Carpenter.” Markus nodded to him, though he probably didn’t notice. Jason Carpenter, a librarian for the past thirty nine years, would not look up from the logbook unless he was finished. They said that during an insurrection the library was invaded, and Carpenter didn’t look up, even at gunpoint. As Markus went towards the returns trolley (he groaned inwardly when he saw the number), Carpenter piped up.

“No, you won’t do that now. We have new books in. Six are in an old Anglo language; you need to translate them all into True.” He moved his head almost imperceptibly towards six books; two hard covers, a paper back, one leather covered and two metals. Markus went over and picked up the first book. He rubbed its spine with his thumb.

“How old are they?” he asked, looking up from the silver writing on the cover.

“I don’t know.” Carpenter said, pausing to lick the nib of his quill “You should find out soon enough. Just get on with it.”

“Right away, Librarian Carpenter.”

He sat down and set the book in front of him. He stared at the scarlet cover for a moment, and then opened his navi, the holoscreen flickering into life after a few seconds. He probably could have gotten a better model, but it never bothered Markus. After opening the appropriate program and dictionaries, he opened the book.

The pages weren’t cracked, so the book wasn’t that old. He trailed his fingertips lightly against the surface of the cover page, which he couldn’t read. It felt nice. Soft almost. But his absorption in the book was suddenly broken by a sudden entrance.

“Good morning Jason.” Her voice was bright, and almost boisterous.

“Good morning Claire.” Carpenter replied, without moving except to write and look at the page. “You’re on translation duty with Markus today.”

“Really? Oh good.” Markus looked back down at the book as she walked over.

He glanced upwards at her “Good morning Librarian Vorsti.” He said, looking back down. He glanced back up, because Claire Vorsti was a joy to look at. With her flat belly, high breasts and long, long legs, she was the subject of many prolonged glances and dry mouths among all of the younger librarians. She sat down next to him, tilted his head up and pressed her lips into his.

“Good morning Markus. Why do you have to be so formal?” she asked, pushing her blonde hair out of her ridiculously brown eyes.

He didn’t reply. He’d stopped trying to explain why. She wouldn’t listen.

“So what are we translating?”

“I don’t know yet. I only just started.”

The letters were fundamentally identically to normal Anglo, in the way that they were identical. However, unlike the Anglo spoken on some worlds (In which most librarians are reasonably fluent), this was complete gibberish that didn’t come out right. Claire roughly pronounced the title as ‘Dewan Sendok, Raja Nasib Manusia’, which wasn’t even vaguely Anglo. Nor was it related to True, or Nippon, nor even the crazy language known as Esperanto Prime. He might have attributed it to some base primitive language, or an alien race.

Except that primitives didn’t write books, and aliens didn’t write them anything like this. And besides, how would an alien book get into the hands of a normal library? It couldn’t, that’s how.

“We can’t translate a language that hasn’t been invented yet.” Claire said angrily, slapping her pen down onto her page of scrawled notes.

“Of course it’s been invented.” Markus said in an annoyingly knowing voice. “Otherwise, this book couldn’t have been written.” She blinked slowly in reply.

“I realise that, Markus, but there is nothing in the language database, or in the Grosset Webster Language Dictionary for the New Millenium, or even the Oxford Dictionary of Language. And if it isn’t in that, then frankly, it doesn’t exist.” She said this with a sort of metaphorical finality, as though this closed the subject.

“But Claire, it does exist, we’re looking at it.”

She gritted her teeth. “I know that, Markus, I realise it does exists, but no one has ever encountered it before.” He shrugged vaguely.

“I suppose.”

*

Time passed, as it does, and Claire’s head hit the table with a loud thump. Markus jumped involuntarily and pulled his nose out of the worn pages of The Chinese Language and its Origins, and looked up at her. As he was about to open his mouth and ask her a question, when he heard a soft clumping sound. He froze.

White masked, dark grey armoured, with the mark of the Overwatch on the right breast. His maul was hanging from the back of his belt, and a large combat knife was on his left shoulder. His chrome service handgun was on his hip.

The Enforcer stood in the door way, his emotionless, sterile helmet surveying the room. In a second he’ll unhook his shock maul, Markus told himself, cold sweat beginning to trickle into his eyes, then he’ll come after me. The officer took stepped inside and raised the book in his hand, then placed it down on Carpenter’s desk.

“Officer Magnus Storm,” the officer said, his voice distorted beyond normal human vocalisations, to be something powerful and commanding “Returning this book.”

Markus whimpered quietly and slumped back in his chair as Carpenter opened the logbook and licked his quill “Yes . . . yes. Officer Storm. I hoped you enjoyed it.”

“I did.”

“Will you be taking out another one?” Carpenter asked, quill poised with the nib on the yellowed paper.

“I think I might.” The officer said, before heading into the aisles. Markus opened his eyes and looked at his navi’s screen. The search had come up apples. Finally.

“Sendok, similar to the word seldoc, a Nekelesian word meaning cutlery.” Markus read out and Claire raised her head up off the table, a piece of paper stuck to her forehead.

“What’s that?” she asked, as the paper fell slowly to the table top.

“Nekelesia . . . Nekelesia.” Markus mused, moving the holo windows around with his fingers, then opened up his galaxial library. “Here we go. Nekelesia, gamma class world, yada yada yada . . . was originally settled by a large group out of Indonesia, an island chain on Old Terra.” He paused and looked over at the bored looking librarian with her chin hovering above the table top. “You know what this means?” he asked.

“What?”

“This language is Indonesian. That has to be in Historical Languages of Earth.” He got out of his chair and fair jogged to the right aisle. He stopped suddenly as he saw that Officer Storm was there as well, his hand holding onto a book with crazy art for a cover with the word Samur diagonally down the front. There was more to the title of course, but it was still hidden.

The officer was watching Markus intently, his unblinking stare unnerving. He could feel sweat trickle down his sides as he walked to where the officer was. Without moving his gaze away from the eye lenses, Markus grabbed his book, nodded, then walked away. He went back to the table and began flicking through, till he stopped on the page marked Indonesia. He flipped through to se, then went down the page.

“Sendok, spoon.” He said aloud. “Spoon?”

Claire raised her eyebrows. “A spoon?”

“Well, that’s what it says.” Markus confirmed, looking down the page. The Indonesian section was five pages long. It was missing a lot. “You know, I could probably use this.”

“What, analyse the structure of words in relation to True?”

“Why not?”

*

Six hours later, he’d made no real progress, and Claire had given up on him. He refused her offer to go out that night, because he wanted to try and get a real Indonesian to True translation running. It was going to be difficult of course, but he was a librarian in the market for a promotion. This could be the best way to do it.

His apartment was just as small as before, although he left the window open so that the early evening air could waft in. The sky was a gradually darkening purple, the cityscape like jagged black teeth spotted with yellow decay.

He blinked several times as his glasses slid down the bridge of his nose. He needed a break.

Markus turned away from his navi’s holographic screen, then got up onto the window sill and looked out into his city, at those cars, at those boats, at the slow moving carpet of the citizens of Legata. From here, on the sixty fourth floor of Legata Bloc 172, looking down on it all, it was almost pretty. Beautiful, even.

The redhead from room 411200 was also sitting on her window sill, her hair blowing in the light wind. She had her eyes closed, as though she was contemplating something. But what did a florist have to contemplate?

[Trogdor]

It's interesting. It's got potential. Markus must really want that promotion if he turned down a woman as attractive as Claire to go home and translate a book in a language he's got only five pages on.

The huge white pyramid of the Overwatch is a reference to the buildings that the various Ministries in 1984 had. I can't spot any other references, but I still want my No-prize!

[Ford Prefect]

That wasn't even the easiest reference to spot either. No-prize awarded, be pleased with yourself. And now, the next chapter.


The Logical World

Chapter Two

Better Than Life


“Good morning Legata!” announcer Rick Harst announced in a loud, happy voice, as though even though it was early morning, it wasn’t that bad.

Markus agreed. It was Wednesday, and Wednesday was his favourite day. He swung himself off his bed almost instantly, narrowly avoided slipping on his partially translated book, and put his cracked mug beneath the percolator. He opened his window and breathed in the fresh, morning air.

“It’s a bea-utiful day today, with meteorological reports coming in saying the temperature will be a perfect twenty three degrees.” As coffee spurted into the cup, Marcus could imagine Rick Harst’s award winning smile “I feel sorry for those people in Legatos Secund, whose weather is rarely as good as ours.”

Markus took a mouthful of his coffee, which tasted better today; drinkable in the least. He was hungry. He felt expansive. So he stuck his head out the window and shouted: “Hey, Yu!”

In the relative quiet, Markus’ shout could be heard well across the way. The object of his shout was a boat floating in the opposite direction. The boat really did look like a boat, a Chinese one at that. The man who owned it shouted back in a Chinese accent:

“What do you want?” The boat began to arc around slowly, merely puttering along. Other, faster boats swerved out of the way, ducked beneath it, or went over it. One flipped in the process and plummeted to the earth. Markus cringed and replied:

“Breakfast!”

“It’s always breakfast, isn’t it.” Yu grumbled loudly as he drew up alongside Markus’ window, pans and woks and chickens and ducks and knives swaying gently from the roof. Yu’s Floating Chinese, it was called.

“Mmm, come on. I want the usual.” Markus said impatiently.

Yu narrowed his eyes at Markus and sighed “You young people, always in a rush,” He grabbed one of his woks and dropped his noodles into it. “Why are you so happy?”

“I think I might have resurrected a dead language.” He said breathlessly as Yu placed a plate down on Markus’ sill, then threw a pair of chop sticks into it. Markus began to spoon noodles into his mouth.

“Is that all?” Yu asked, leaning forward so that his head was level with his customer’s.

As Markus chewed on a piece of pork (From Sol, Yu said, home to the best livestock and produce in the galaxy. But how did Yu afford the import costs from across sixty thousand light years?). he looked ruffled “That isn’t an achievement?”

“Markus, the galaxy is about nine point four six one billion billion kilometres across and contains about two hundred billion stars. There are well over a trillion trillion citizens in the Empire. No one cares about old languages.” Yu said matter-of-factly “They care about battles and wars and the current state of their lives. Not about languages they’ll never speak.” He tapped his fingers against the edge of his boat “Payment please.”

Markus paused with noodles still hanging from his mouth. He slurped them into his mouth, chewed, then swallowed. He sighed then walked over to his suit. He rummaged around with his pockets and pulled out four silvery gold coins. He frowned at them.

“I’m running short.” Markus said, more to himself than anything.

Yu tapped his fingers more rapidly “I can’t give you credit, you know.” He said “Times are harsh on Legatos.”

“I know, I know.” Markus replied, putting two of the coins back into his suit’s money pocket. He gave the other two to Yu. The old Chinese man flicked them into his sleeve then stroked his long beard with another flicking motion.

“Good doing business with you.” Yu said, hitting the rudder and angling his boat away from the wall. “Have a nice day!” As Yu puttered away across the street (Markus cringed when he saw a boat crash into a balcony garden), Markus considered his current economic status. His rent was up soon, and he didn’t want the inconvenience of being relocated. But rent was three Aquillia. His pay was not due in for another two weeks.

Maybe Carpenter would give him a loan.

*

Markus’ only thought as he dashed over Vermont Callum’s face was that Carpenter needed to like his new work. A whole new language almost rediscovered. A loan was definitely in order.

He was however, rather late, and Carpenter did not like lateness.

“Morning Librarian Delgado.” Curtis said, rounding his fingernails with a knife. Markus didn’t reply, he had no time. When he reached his lift, he had to wait almost forty seconds for it to arrive. He got in, slammed his hand into the button for the fourteenth floor, but got the fifteenth instead. He hit the fourteenth floor’s button impatiently and finally got out onto his floor.

His door was their, close. As he ran, he realized his right foot wouldn’t move anymore. He fell, his book, his navi and his notes flying out before him. He hit the carpet with a saddened thud and groaned. Markus looked behind him and sighed. There was a robot standing on one of his shoe laces.

“Get off robot-boy.” He said and the blue, eleven foot tall machine did so. It was pushing a cart filled with books. Markus got up and brushed himself off. “You supposedly high performance robots. You’re useless.”

The robot couldn’t actually speak. Robots didn’t need to speak. They could communicate, but rarely did. Markus gathered up his things and glared at it. He didn’t like robots like this one. You couldn’t tell what it was thinking, it never voiced any concerns. If anything, you could have called Markus a Luddite. He trusted machines about as far as he could throw them.

“Go on then.” He said “Get back to work.” The robot turned away and kept rolling his cart down the hall into the elevator.

Markus turned away from the closed doors and entered his small library and bowed slightly to Carpenter, who was hunkered over the logbook, as per usual. “Sorry I’m late Librarian Carpenter,” he said, almost breathlessly “But I-”

Carpenter cut him off with a wave of his quill “Never mind that now, Markus, you have books to translate. You spent far to long working on that one yesterday.” He licked the nib of his quill, dipped it in some dark blue ink, then continued writing.

Markus listened to the scratch of quill to paper, then said: “That’s the thing, I-”

Carpenter sighed pointedly “Never mind that now, I said. Claire needs some help. Now get over there.” Markus sighed in return, then walked away from Carpenter’s desk, back to the table he’d been at the day before. Claire was already sitting there, hunkered down, copying one of the metal covered books text into a master copy. Her handwriting was flawless.

He sat down by her “Good morning Claire,” he said conversationally, before turning her face towards his and leaning forward to kiss her. But as he did so, she mumbled a curse.

“Markus you idiot, you made me mess that up.” She said angrily, and when he looked down, he saw that she’d ceased writing in a flowing, straight line of True, and had gone below the line of ruler straight text.

“Sorry,” he said stupidly, turning away.

“Now I’ll have start that page again, and the one before it.” She complained, flicking her hair out behind her. Claire took a hold of the page and gave a short yank. It came out clean, and she brought her fountain pen down on the new, white page.

“Well, I made headway with that mystery language.” He said conversationally “I’ve got a goodly amount of the lexicon down, and I’ve almost got the sentence structure right.”

“Uh huh, that’s nice.” Claire said with disinterest. “Will you please start translating that leather bound one there? It shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Yes, but-”

“Thank you Markus, you’re an angel.”

Markus sighed, then reached over for the book. He opened a black bound master copy, unscrewed the lid on his pen and gave it a shake. He gave the publication page a glance over, then started writing it down, in True. After a minute or two, he had gotten into the swing of it, and his pen swam across the page with the ease of a Strider across the plains. His hypnotherapy in being a dictate kicked in and his machine like writing was almost eerie.

*

After copying the entirety of the book out in less than hour, he left Claire where she was, working into the thickest of the books. He did not look at her, because the trance freaked him out; that unblinking stare as they simply transferred information, without taking any of it in. Markus knew that you could tell dictates things and they would recite them to people without hearing it. You couldn’t steal information transported in that way.

He shivered and walked over to where Carpenter was rearranging books in a proper order. He straightened his lapels and coughed quietly.

“Yes Markus?” the librarian asked, without really acknowledging his presence.

“Uh, Librarian Carpenter, I was wondering . . .” Markus said nervously, shuffling his feet slightly.

“No, you cannot have an advance on your salary. You know that better than anyone.” Carpenter looked briefly at the book in his hand, then put it back where he got it from.

“But-”

“No buts.”

Markus sighed quietly, then turned away. He went back to the table and slumped into his chair. Claire looked up at him. She raised her eyebrow at him and put her pen down.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, propping her chin up on her hands.

“Nothing.” He replied, not looking up. Claire got out of her chair, walked behind him and crossed her arms around his neck. She rubbed her cheek against his.

“You can’t pay the rent again, can you?” She asked, running her nose up his face, her eyes closed.

“No.”

“You should stop buying so many books.”

“Why would I do that?”

She paused at Markus’ temple. “You could always ask me for a loan.” She offered.

“I could never do that.”

“What about your mother?” she asked innocently.

Markus sniffed back some laughter. “Yeah, right.” He brought his lip back over his teeth “I can’t ask her for anything, or she’ll start ranting at me. Markus this, Markus tha-” Claire cut him off suddenly and unexpectantly.

“Earlobe.” She said quietly. Markus turned his head slightly and uttered a short ‘wha?’ before she bit down on it, raising his eyebrows. Despite how nice it felt, he decided he needed to concentrate, but she was persistant. He was about to suggest that she stop sucking, when a heavy clomping sound hit their ears.

They both turned to the door, his earlobe still between her teeth. Standing surveying the room, maul in hand, was an officer of the Overwatch, with a couple of his friends standing behind him. Carpenter dusted off his hands and looked up at the leader, adjusting his pince-nez on the bridge of his nose.

“What can I help you gentlemen with?” he asked, putting his hands in the small of his back.

“We’re looking for a fugitive,” the leader said, holding out a cylinder. A white holo screen slid down into existence, with a picture on it, of a startled man spilling a glass of wine into midair.

“That was your birthday party last year.” Claire said distantly.

“His name is Markus Delgado, he is wanted for treason.” The officer continued in his evil sounding voice.

“Oh,” Carpenter frowned “He’s in the back. Over there.” He pointed towards where Markus and Claire were. Markus froze in terror.

“Thank you librarian.” The officer said almost smugly, moving towards his quarry with his comrades.

“Very well, I’ll leave you to it.” He moved back to his reordering duties. Sweat was beading on Markus’ forehead, and he couldn’t get the motor skills required to get up and run together. The only thought in his head was that he was going there, to that place. It wasn’t until Claire had got him out of his chair and was pushing him down towards the back of the library that he remembered that he could run.

She pushed her mouth against his for a moment and whispered “Run. I’ll try and keep them here.” He stepped away, his hand in hers, and she had to pull away from him. As Markus turned away he saw the last officer walk past.

He knew that he should simply run, but he wanted to stay, to see what she did. Markus peered through the bookshelf.

“Librarian,” the first one began, towering over Claire “We’re searching for a fugitive, Librarian Markus Delgado. Have you seen which way he went?”

Markus admired her courage; he would have cracked by now. He could see her swallow, then she spoke in a firm, if quiet, voice and said “No, I haven’t. But,” she walked her fingers up his chest plate “I’ve seen you.” He looked ahead, then backhanded her, throwing her into the table.

“Find the traitor.” He said as Claire fell to the floor, clutching her face. Markus ran.

He heard one of them shout ‘halt!’ but he didn’t. Instead, he fell as he ran out the door, he got to his feet and went for the elevator. Markus jabbed the down button continuously, muttering “Come on, come on.” It opened just as one of the Overwatch got to the hallway. He looked up, the down, just as the doors began to close. He flicked out his maul and switched it on, then sprinted towards Markus.

The elevator doors slid shut and the Enforcer swung his maul into it, leaving a large looking dent. Markus slumped against the lift wall, and took in a deep, shuddering breath and tried to take stock of the situation. He couldn’t manage it. His head was spinning.

The doors slid open and he stepped out, then ran for the lobby.

The main doors were within sight, he began to run for them, until a pair of Enforcers walked in. Markus slowed to a sudden stop, then felt a sharp pain in his side. He toppled to the ground, gasping for breath, the Enforcer standing over him, maul switched off in his hand. The head began to crackle with lethal blue energy and the Enforcer raised it up.

“Help!” Markus shouted involuntarily, even though he knew there was no help to be had. But, just as the officer was about to bring his consciousness to an end, a fast moving book cart struck him, throwing him to the floor violently. Markus looked up. It was that robot from before. The Overwatch had paused, probably blinking at it.

Markus pushed himself to his feet, his scared mind remembering that the robots here had been programmed to do what the staff ordered. So he gasped another couple of times and shouted: “Get them out of my way!”

The robot leapt across the lobby, landing before the Enforcers. It grabbed one of their heads, and swung him into his partner, they both went sprawling, twenty feet away. Markus winced his way to the robot’s side. He looked up at it.

“Get me out of here.” The robot grabbed Markus by the collar, hefted him easily into the air and burst into the sunlight. An Overwatch APC was parked haphazardly onto the library grounds, an Enforcer standing straight by it. Upon sighting Markus and his robotic handler, he unholstered his handgun, raised it up quickly and opened fire.

Nine millimetre rounds bounced from the robot’s armoured skin, and one tore through Markus’ collar, bounced off the robot’s fingers and slid down Markus’ back. The slug was hot and Markus squealed in pain. The robot sprinted towards the APC, then leapt forward, landed on the roof, and pushed off again. The Enforcer stared after him for a moment, pulled his spent cartridge from his gun, then slammed another home.

The robot sprinted down the street, as the APC got onto the street and started coming after them. Markus was yelling incoherently as the robot jumped towards a building wall. It smashed its hand into the wall for the briefest moment, then pushed off again, soaring through the air, shaped tungsten death flying past them.

They hit the ground hard enough to splinter it, then the robot took off again, just as another Overwatch APC screamed round the corner. The robot ran over its dark blue steel roof and went down the street it had just come. The APC swerved around, its tires screeching and smoking, banged into a civillian’s car, then came down the street after its quarry. The other APC got to intersection, executed an excellent handbrake turn, hitting the same car as its brother, crushing its bodywork then accelerated.

Markus pushed his glasses up his face, afraid that he’d lose them, then realised that it didn’t matter. This robot certainly was high-performance, but those APCs were as well, complete beasts that seemed to have engines that were alive and roaring. The robot leapt again, swinging him round, then hurling him onto the roof. The robot pushed off the edge of the building’s roof, and sailed across the street.

Markus lay gasping, his glasses lying a few feet away, remarkably unbroken. He got to his shaking feet, stumbled forward and to the left then bent to get his glasses. He slid them on and froze at a soft whupping sound. He turned around and his hair was blown off of his forehead. The helicopter’s down draft made a veritable storm of old bits of paper, dust, and bits of furniture.

“Predator. They’ve sent a gunship after me.” He breathed, only just able to hear his own words. He wasn’t sure wether to be scared or flattered.

A burst of machinegun fire kicked up chips of concrete near his feet and a god-like voice said:

“Fugitive, you are under arrest.” Markus stared up at it and its sleek lines “Get down on the ground.”

Markus didn’t hesitate this time. He ran straight for the door. The building was probably thirty stories tall. He might be able to avoid the Overwatch and get into the backstreets. If only TV-boy hadn’t run off. He could have used his help right now.

Markus hit the door running. It wasn’t half closed, so he fell, sliding painfully down the stairs. He rammed into the wall at the same instant that the Overwatch helicopter stitched the stair well with cannon rounds. A half second later, they shredded it. Markus straightened his glasses, then used the wall to pull himself to his feet. He leaned against the old green paint for a moment, then set off down the hall, his shoes squeaking against the black and white checked linoleum.

He turned a corner and slowed down, his feet making hollow sounds against the curiously wooden steps. As he neared the bottom, they gave way beneath his weight and he fell, snapping the first dozen or so. He lay amongst the broken spars, blood seeping from a gash in his arm. He winced in pain, then dragged himself away from the stairs.

Markus got to his feet once more and staggered into the next room. It was empty and had floor boards. It was sparse, save for single chair by the door just to his right. Looking at the chair, he looked through the doorway and saw a pair of Enforcers coming into the hallway, they made eye contact, then flicked out their mauls, switching them on as they did so.

“He’s up here.” One of them said as the paced down the hallway, almost in step. Markus rushed to the door and slammed it shut, shaking free a thin layer of dust. He lodged the chair up beneath the door handle then tossed his head around, looking for a way out.

The windows were too high above the street and the only other door was the one he had come through. Even as the thought that whoever built this building needed to be shot entered his mind, the door splintered with a percussive thud. A second blow knocked it off its hinges. The chair slipped over and door fell onto it, but the Overwatch pushed past.

“Get him.” Said one, and they all advanced. Markus slipped as he ran backwards. The lead Enforcer raised his maul up above his head, when blood spurted from his knee and he fell in time with a pair of gunshots. The other three half turned and two spun out, the force from the bullets hitting their armour knocked them from their feet, their mauls skidding across the floor.

The third’s maul was shot out of his fist. Markus caught a blur and the Enforcer copped a shoulder to the chest, knocking him backwards. As he regained his footing, he took a kick to same spot, sending him bouncing him against the wall. His assailant shoved their gun into his throat, pushing him against the wall. One booming report later and he was sliding down it, leaving a thick trail of red against the dark green paint.

Of the remaining three Enforcers, two got up, the other clutched at his knee, blood periodically spurting from between his fingers. The claret’s really starting to flow, Markus thought to himself dimly as the other two officers yanked their knives from their shoulder sheaths. They both tensed into a fighting stance, knife and hand held before them.

Their attacker holstered her gun in the small of her back, then raised her hands up, one to her face, the other about level with her abdomen.

The first Enforcer struck out with his empty left hand, but the girl ducked back, the hair of her fringe blowing in the after wake of the blow. She stepped back as the Enforcer’s momentum let him spin around, bringing his knife toward her throat. She caught his wrist, then used his weight and movement to flip him onto his back.

The second slashed downward and the girl grabbed his wrist and twisted, locking his arm straight. His knife clattered against floor, then he kicked out at her, his boot impacting her abdomen. She staggered backward and the other Enforcer grabbed her beneath the arms, pulling them away from her body.

Her foot impacted his coming fist and she grunted, pushing off his chest and breaking free of her captor. She somersaulted over his head, landed lightly and grabbed his head. She jerked to the left and his neck snapped with a loud crunch. She shoved him into his partner who threw him aside, snapping his fists out at her. She kept her arms up, and Markus could hear the meaty impacts.

He growled as he drew back his right fist. He punched forward and she ducked beneath his arm and planted her palm over his helmeted jaw. He took a few steps back, clutching at his throat. His gurgling was amplified before he fell to the ground, spasming, blood spurting the stab wound to his neck.

The blade retracted into her sleeve and she rushed over to Markus, kneeling down beside him.

It was the florist from up the hall. She flicked her red hair over her shoulder and asked “Are you alright?”

[Trogdor]

So Markus is now an enemy of the state. Was there something in that book the people in power didn't want anyone to know?

Seems weird that a Chinese food salesman would know exactly how far across the galaxy is. Apparently the education's very good in the future.

The "Earlobe" thing and the TV robot are references to that weird anime Fooley Cooley, right?

[Ford Prefect]

Education of the future is how I'd like education to be. Plus Yu is actually wrong, I think. And yes, that was another reference that you managed to grab. And because you were so quick to reply, I reward you with, another chapter!


The Logical World

Chapter Three

Nova Prospekt


Markus blinked up at her, then glanced around the room, at the Enforcer still alive, unholstering his handgun. The florist got up, walked over to him and easily pried the gun from his shaking hand. “Most painful place to get shot is the knee.” She said, pointing the gun towards his head. She pulled the trigger three times, punching through his white mask.

“Waa?” Markus asked, pushing himself into a sitting position. She looked around at him.

“We have to get you out of here.” She said, offering him her hand. He took it and she hauled him up to his feet. “The Overwatch won’t rest till you’ve been caught, or killed.” She glanced around the room, then went for the shattered staircase that Markus had come down.

“You can’t go that way. The door to the roof is blocked.” He said helpfully.

“I know,” she replied, gesturing for him to come over “You need to climb up there.” She ordered, pushing him forward.

“But, even if we cou-”

She cut him off impatiently “I know, there’s a Predator out there. We’re not going onto the roof.” She tapped her foot against the floor “Now get going. There’ll be more soon.”

Markus sighed barely and stepped through the wreckage of his fall. He reached up, grabbed the stair above his head and tried to lift his weight up. He failed and slipped, falling into the wooden planks again. He could hear the redhead giggling and he got to his feet. After brushing himself down, Markus jumped, getting his palms onto the stair. He grunted with the effort of getting his elbows onto it.

He paused for a moment, then felt a force beneath his feet. The florist was pushing him up. When his knees touched the wood, Markus crawled up the stairs as fast as he could, lest they collapse some more. Turning his head, he saw the florist pull herself almost effortlessly up. She passed him and started to walk down the hall.

She passed four doors, then stopped at the fifth. She raised the Overwatch USP and pulled the trigger, blowing a sizeable chunk out of it, removing the lock. She pushed the door open, and entered. Markus followed.

The room was just as empty as the last one, but smaller. The girl crossed the room and opened the window, stepping through it onto the fire escape. Markus did the same after she had started to climb down.

Markus hit the street with a soft whump, then fell onto his backside. She helped him up as an APC raced past on the road.

“Well.” She said.

“Well.” He agreed.


“I’m Elisa.”

“What?” he asked distractedly; it was starting to rain.

“Elisa. My name’s Elisa.” She didn’t hold out her hand to shake, but instead checked the clip of her new gun.

“I’m Markus, Markus Delgado.” But even as he said it, he got the feeling that she already knew this. Her knowledge was beginning to get on his nerves. He felt like asking a question, but realised that he didn’t know quite what question to ask.

“I think I better take you to meet the others.” She said, after pushing the cartridge home and cocking it. “Come on.” She set off down the alley, with Markus following behind, raindrops falling on his head.

They stopped before they got onto the street. Elisa carefully looked around the corner, then said “Under my jacket is a gun. Take it. The safety is on, so it won’t go off.” Markus picked up her jacket and pulled her pistol from its holster “Put it in your pocket.” He did so.

Elisa looked over her shoulder at him “When I say go, cross the street. You have to be quick, but not too quick.” She looked back ahead, when there was a gunshot.

“There they are!” shouted an Enforcer from the roof.

“Shit. Go.” She sprinted out into the street as more bullets began to rain down. Markus watched her as he ran; she spun around and jumped, landing and sliding across the bonnet of a taxi. She was pulling the trigger as she slid. At this range she didn’t get any actually hits, but she did clip the side of his head with one round, throwing him off balance. She somersaulted backwards as she reached the edge of the bonnet, landing on her feet.

The Predator came up over the roof before Markus had even gotten halfway across. He turned his head to look at it, then saw the muzzle flash. A burst of cannon rounds hit the cars around him, going through them like a hot knife through butter. The taxi just behind him took blows to its engine, the hood buckling, big black holes appearing in the yellow metal.

His feet hit the sidewalk as the gunship opened up again, spraying the building to his left with bullets. The taxi exploded suddenly, sending out thick black smoke and orange flames.

Markus took in a long breath as he saw Elisa up ahead pause, waiting for him. When he caught up, she puts her hand on his pocket and pulled her gun out. “Sorry,” she said breathlessly “I think we’ll be better off if I have it.” He didn’t object.

They started up again, feet pounding against the pavement. They didn’t stop at the next street; they kept going. Markus thanked his lucky stars that the traffic wasn’t moving very much. The Overwatch had blockaded the street, making it easier to cross. How ironic.

She had started to climb up another fire escape, and Markus stopped to gasp in some air. His lungs were burning; he’d hadn’t done so much running since he’d left school.

As his chest heaved, he heard her shout down at him. Markus looked up at the side of the building, and saw she was at the first window. He made his way to the ladder, then started climbing. When he reached the first window, he felt a hand grab his collar, then he was on his back in the new apartment.

It was, as Markus noted, a proper apartment, with more than one room, and real furniture. There was a little old lady sitting in a rocking armchair knitting, and a pot of tea in a tea cosy that looked fairly moth-eaten. Elisa and the old lady appeared to be ignoring each other.

“Rest for a bit.” She said walking to the door. Elisa opened it and peered into the hallway.

Markus blinked up at the old lady as she knitted. She was very passive, he realised, just knitting as a pair of intruders invaded her home. Maybe you lost interest when you got old.

He chose to ignore the fact that he himself was completely disinterested in the world around him as well.

Elisa turned from the door and looked at Markus “Come on, it’s clear.” He pushed himself to his feet then rounded the coffee table. When he reached her side she spoke to him again.

“When I say, go out into the hallway, then go left. Run to the end.” She waited barely a second then shoved him out into the hall. He paused longer than that, then sprinted for the end of the hallway she had told him to.

Elisa’s hand twisted open the knob and they crashed through, tumbling across the floor. Her foot shot out, and the door slammed shut. She sighed briefly, then got off of Markus, then went to lock the door. When that was done, she twisted and slumped against the door, sliding down to a sitting position.

“We’ll be safe for now.” She asserted, running her hands over her head.

“You think?” he asked sarcastically, but she missed it.

“Yes. I don’t think they know where we are. It’s a fairly big building.” Markus rolled his eyes to the ceiling, but Elisa missed that as well.

He got himself into a sitting position and looked her over “Who are you?” he asked, mostly involuntarily.

“What’s that?” she asked, looking up at the librarian.

“Who are you?” Markus repeated.

“I’m Elisa Hartman. I’m a florist.” She said, as though this would explain everything.

“Right.” Markus said, casting his eyes across the floor “A florist.”

“I’m also a part of one of those subversive groups you were talking about.” She smiled at him, amiably even, though Markus didn’t quite trust that smile.

“Oh, interesting.” Markus paused for a moment, then continued “Did they send you?”

“Kinda.” Was the reply.

“Kinda?”

“Well, I happened to be nearby when the Overwatch started chasing a librarian carrying robot. So I thought I’d intervene.” She got flat on her belly and peered under the door. Elisa turned her head so that she was looking at Markus. “I think I better take you to see a friend.”

*

They were in the boiler room. It was fairly small, compared with the boiler room of a bloc, but you couldn’t really compare the needs of a couple of hundred with the needs of a few hundred thousand. Elisa purposefully made her way towards the back wall, where there was a notice board, covered in bits of newspaper, scribbled ads and what looked suspiciously like an extract from Macbeth II. What struck Markus was how out of place it was, a notice board in a place like this.

Elisa looked at one of the pieces of newspaper (it was a story about Legata’s four hundredth birthday) and said “Hi Doc, care to let us in?”

In response, after a few moments where Markus thought his rescuer was insane, the wall swung open on a pair of hinges attached to the back of the door. Beyond this was a well lit corridor covered in green linoleum with green wall tiles. The door swung shut behind them.

They were silent as the walked down the hall. Markus had questions to ask, but he didn’t ask them. As they approached the end of the hallway, there was a juddering rumble and the wall ground out their way, opening into what appeared to be a small warehouse, albeit an underground one. There were computer panels everywhere, along with three large, armoured doors. There was also a nervous looking man in a white coat and a horrible tie.

The man, who was quite obviously a scientist, wiped his damp, balding head and looked up at the new comers, pushing his thick rimmed glasses up his nose.

“Hello Elisa, who’s this?” he asked, stopping whatever it was he was doing, then got out of his chair.

“This is Markus Delgado, Doc, and Markus, this is Doctor Aulfred Wineham.” Elisa said, walking around the desk to sit in the chair. “He’s a librarian, Fred.”

“A librarian? Really?” the scientist asked, grasping Markus’ hand in a fairly clammy handshake “With dictate hypnotherapy?”

Markus nodded “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Amazing.” Wineham said, sounding breathless. He took a step backwards and surveyed Markus with the eye of a fanatic, rather than a scientist.

He kept staring with a big smile on his face and Markus started to fidget. Elisa was smiling in obvious amusement when a voice said “Aulfred, are you there? Elisa?”

Wineham walked around to the other side of the desk and Markus followed, so that he could see the big screen. There was a man’s face there. He looked as though he was getting on in years, from the contrast between his white-grey beard and dark skin.

“Hi there Jonas.” Elisa said, “What’s the call for?” Wineham pulled the wheeled chair away and stood directly in front of the screen.

“Jonas, this is unexpected, even more than their arrival.” He gestured towards Elisa and Markus, and Jonas looked over at Markus.

“Who’s this . . .” Jonas paused, then looked down at something “That’s him, the one the Overwatch is after! What’s he doing there?!”

“Elisa brought him, and what do you mean, ‘after him’?” Markus got the impression that Doctor Wineham was not the most alert of people.

Apparently, Jonas knew this as well, and he slapped his face in frustration “You have access to all their communications, and you don’t know? That librarian has the whole Watchtower after him, after he used a robot to escape! He’s dangerous!” Markus didn’t reply, even as the man continued, saying “If he’s flagged with being with Elisa, she could be in danger, along with the whole operation!”

“Well, it’s to late now Jonas,” Elisa said, cleaning dirt from beneath her nails “He’s wanted, and could end up an anticitizen, like you.”

The man’s face softened at that, and he sighed “Alright, but you can’t stay there, they’ll probably track him to you once they get the library on side. You’ll have to send him through to us.”

“Yes, yes, that would be wise.” Wineham said, getting out of his seat “It needs more human tests, they’ll be perfect.”

The scientist walked towards the largest of the three steel doors and hit one of the buttons on a heavy duty panel next to it. The door slid slowly open and Wineham walked through when it was wide enough for him. Elisa spun around in the chair and got up, walking after him.

“Go on then,” Jonas sighed and Markus looked up at him “I guess I’ll see you when you get here.” The screen blinked off, and Markus was somewhat confused, so he went after the others.

The room was taller, but smaller in terms of area. Much of the room was made up of a strange looking machine that looked like a round cage elevator. It was connected to a console by a series of thick cables, and yet more cables ran all over the room. Wineham was busy fiddling with the console and Elisa was tapping her foot impatiently. A small screen set into the wall above their head height, and Jonas’ face reappeared.

“Are you sure this thing is safe, Aulfred?” he asked, concern forming his brows into a set of wiggly lines.

“Yes yes Jonas, the teleportal is completely safe. Not one of the tests went wrong.”

“Wait.” Markus said loudly “That’s one of those godforsaken matter transporters?”

“What?” they all said at once, looking at Markus with confusion evident on their faces.

He became nervous at once and said “Y-you know, they disassemble your matter, then reassemble it at the other end. Aren’t they supposed to be morally objectionable because they kill you then clone you?” there was a fairly long silence until Wineham started to laugh.

“Don’t be silly boy,” he said, taking off his glasses to wipe a tear from his left eye “We wouldn’t use one of those abominations, even if we had no other choice. That’s a Teleportal Array System, a completely different device. Matter transporter indeed.” He chuckled again.

“Oh, but ho-” he grimaced and looked down. Elisa had driven her heel into his foot.

“Don’t ask,” she said quietly “It won’t make any sense, and really, you expect it to go wrong if you know how it works.” Markus nodded in reply and Jonas coughed.

“Can we move on please?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s ready now,” Wineham said “Elisa, you first.” He gestured toward the cage, and the door snapped open to each side, one half of it sliding back around the cage, the other half to the other side. She stepped inside it and the cage door closed.

“Excellent, uh, Mr Delgado, could you please pull that switch by you?” Markus turned to his right and saw the switch. It was coved in warning signs, and despite it being the only switch there, he asked:

“This one?”

“That’s the one, pull it all the way down, and when the transfer is complete, put it back to the original position.”

So Markus did. He could here a growing whine and looked over at the cage. It had risen up over two metres, and large disks were spinning around the inside of the cage. There was crackling now, and the machine was shaking.

What looked like lightning began to cross the interior of the cage and Markus could feel his eyebrows twitching. Elisa waved, then there was a loud crack, and she was gone.

“Now Markus!” Wineham shouted over the whine, and the librarian threw the switch into what he assumed was the off position.

“Has she arrived yet?” Wineham asked as the teleportal cage lowered itself down to the ground.

“Hold on,” said Jonas, his head turning. A high pitched whining could be heard through the speakers, then another crack. A few moments passed and Elisa had shoved her head into the path of the camera.

“Hi guys,” she said cheerily “Doc, that was cool!”

Markus blinked. Cool? It seemed pretty dangerous to him.

“Any problems?” Wineham asked, already working on the console.

“None so far.” Elisa replied, then Jonas pushed her out of the way.

“You’ll have to hurry up Aulfred, they’ll be able to detect the energy signature from orbit.” He said, sound flushed.

“Not to worry my friend, it’s ready. The Overwatch won’t ever track it back to us.” The cage opened and the fairly absentminded professor rushed over to the switch, pushing Markus towards the cage. “Get in, get in!”

Markus stumbled forward, tripped on one of the cables and went headlong into the cage. He yanked his foot away from the closing door, saving the ankle from probable breaking. Wineham threw the switch.

He was raised up just as Elisa was, then the disks started to move around the cage, gaining speed. He could hear them whistle past, and he felt as though he was in an incredibly strong wind. The lightning that Markus had seen before was jumping from the disks, and it lashed against him, causing him no real discomfort.

The whining in his ears reached a fever pitch, then he heard a whip crack, then he was no longer in Wineham’s teleportal lab. Instead he was in a space of complete, empty blackness.

Markus was falling, headfirst falling, through a vast expanse of nothing. Though there was no actual wind, his clothes and hair snapped and blew as though he was rushing through the air. He was afraid that his glasses would come off.

He was falling towards nothing, until he could see a pinprick of brightness. It rushed up at him, until it filled his vision with nothing but white.

He heard the crack of displaced air, and heard a high pitched whine, and as he blinked, his vision returned. He could also hear voices. Someone was shouting “Shut it off!” and another was saying “Disconnect the power couplings.” When Markus could see properly, he saw that he was in another cage, but in a completely different place. For one there were more people around.

The cage opened and he staggered out and was caught by Elisa.

“You alright?” she asked.

“I feel a little, weird.” He replied as they walked away from the teleportal cage.

“A sort of knot in your stomach?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Markus said vaguely, then he stopped “Where am I?”

“Here?” Elisa looked around the room “This is rebellion.” She paused and looked at Markus “Come on, you need to meet Jonas.”

[Trogdor]

Wow, even these people find the use of ST type transporters morally loathsome.

How the hell did you get another chapter out so fast? Are you one of those authors who writes the whole thing and then puts it out piece by piece?

[Ford Prefect]

Not quite. I've written the first four chapters and are into the fifth. And speaking of fourth, I'll put that up, methinks. And you won't have another chapter for awhile after this, so enjoy.


The Logical World

Chapter Four

Nova Prospekt


Markus’ first impression he had of this Jonas character was that he was a man with a lot on his plate, and was on the verge of losing control. Now, in his presence, he somehow felt he was utterly, utterly wrong. Jonas was calm, Jonas was collected, Jonas was in control. He was also rather tall.

He turned around as Elisa tugged Markus up to him, and opened his arms wide in an expression of welcome which didn’t sit right with the librarian, not at all.

“Markus Delgado, public enemy number four.” Jonas said conversationally, holding out his hand for Markus to shake. He had a firm, confident grip, which Markus noted.

“Public enemy number four?” Markus asked, slightly confused.

“Disappointed?” Jonas replied, raising his eyebrows. Markus could hear Elisa giggling quietly “It takes more than escaping an Overwatch Cordon using an Omnitask Mechanoid, Markus.”

Markus frowned “It wasn’t my idea to cause so much trouble. I blame it on robot-head.”

“I don’t blame you for that.” Jonas said, turning around so he could walk to a bank of sub-meson computers. He sat down, tapped some keys and opened a window on the largest of the screens. It was a news report. Live too.

“. . . nitask is managing to evade capture by staying within heavily populated areas in Central Legata, reducing the Overwatch’s ability to use heavy weapons to nothing. It is hard to believe that this red machine was once a simple librarian robot-”

“Red?” Markus broke in “He’s supposed to be blue.”

“It changed colour when they sent gunships after it,” Jonas said “It’s like a chameleon. Changes colour depending on its mood.”

The revelation about robot-boy’s chameleonic tendencies seemed to affect Markus more than the fact that the robot, who pushed large carts around, could take on a whole cordon of Enforcers. And win.

Jonas muted the report “The mechanoid has been rampaging for hours now and has caused amazing amounts of damage to the Overwatch. It is a small blow, but one we should make use of.” He sounded decisive, cunning. A man with a plan. “The ruckus has shifted all other Overwatch priorities around. They have completely forgotten about some, including you, Markus.”

Elisa leaned forward, resting her forearm on Jonas’ shoulder “You think we should strike the Watchtower?”

“It seems like a good time for it.” Jonas replied “But I’d have to talk to the others about it.”

As they continued to talk about doing the impossible, Markus twisted around and took a few steps away. “Where am I?” he asked loudly.

“You’re in one of the storage complexes near Paradise Spaceport,” said a voice. Markus turned around and saw a man in his late forties, his black hair greying at the temples. He felt familiar. “An underground part of it, of course.”

Markus wracked his brain for a moment, but he couldn’t place the face. “Thanks, um . . .”

“Steven William,” he supplied. Markus raised his eyebrows, for Steven William was among the richest business men on Legatos. He worked for the Callisto Navigator Trade House on the executive board. The Callisto family made lots of money because of Steven William. And Steven William made the business pages of the Legatos Inquirer every few days.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what is this place? Elisa called it rebellion, but that isn’t very informative.”

William rubbed his chin “Well, she’s partially right. We are an anti-Empire movement. But we aren’t a rebellion as such.” He started to walk around the room.

“You’re like the Sons of Earth?” Markus asked as he followed.

William sniffed back a laugh “Not quite as extreme. We happen to be a small, paramilitary organisation, started by a group of like minded individuals.” They were standing looking at the teleportal cage. “See that, the first teleportal array, created by our own Aulfred Wineham. A technological marvel that we took from the Empire.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. We base ourselves so close to large power supplies so we can use that thing. The power signature is detectable from orbit, but we cause power surges so that you can’t tell.”

Markus supposed that was smart. He was going to ask another question when the voice of Jonas called, saying “Bill! Get over here, and bring Markus!” William nodded, waved backwards, then turned to Markus.

“Better do as the man says, he’s the boss.” He said, then led the way towards a set of elevator doors. When inside the raw metal box, William hit the button marked ten, and they climbed a good fifteen floors, onto the office levels. They turned left and walked down a short hallway into what could have been called a board room.

Jonas was at the head of the table, with Elisa at his left. William sat down to his right, and beckoned for Markus to join them. He might have commented on how small a board meeting it was, when Jonas spoke up.

“We’ll have to wait. It’s awfully short notice for this sort of thing. The others will be here shortly.”

“Even Maggie?” Elisa asked, a look of concern crossing her face “Wouldn’t it be dangerous, considering the situation?”

“He can make it.” Jonas assured, as the screen at the far end of the room blinked on, and the balding Wineham’s face appeared.

“Aulfred.” Jonas said, nodding to the screen.

“Hello Jonas, everyone.” The scientist replied, wiping his pate with a dirty handkerchief.

The door opened suddenly and a good looking man with blonde hair and a toothy smile entered. Elisa said “Hi Rick.” And Markus blinked twice. Rick Harst? Legata’s favourite voice? The man with the third best smile in the entire galaxy? It was, of course, but it didn’t stop Markus from being astounded.

“Hey guys.” He said, his voice sounding nearly but not quite unlike his radio voice. He sat down opposite Markus and frowned at him “Who’s this?” he asked, pointing at the librarian opposite while looking to Jonas.

“That’s Markus Delgado.” Jonas replied “The fugitive owner of the robot.”

“Oh, that guy.” Harst smiled at Markus and Markus smiled back. “So, what’s this about?” he interlocked his fingers and raised his eyebrows into a peak.

“We still have to wait, Rick.”

“Alright,” Harst replied.

Markus was going to who else they had to wait for, when the door opened and someone Markus couldn’t fail to recognise walked in. A face he saw everyday as he walked into the library. The greatest writer of the past two hundred years; Vermont Callum. He looked just like his painting on the library steps, his dark hair swept across his forehead, his eyes grey and contemplative.

He sat down next Markus and immediately steepled his fingers like he did on the cover of his biopic, Vermont Callum, From Centauri to Legatos which Markus had read countless times. Callum greeted everyone, then shook Markus’ hand.

“This is pretty short notice, Jonas.” Callum said with no irritation in his voice “Who are we waiting for?”

“Hamish can’t be here, nor could Max or Harri. Just waiting for Magnus and we can start.” Jonas replied, and Callum replied with a slow nod.

Markus looked around the room and saw that they were talking among themselves, at least Harst and Elisa were. Jonas was going over something on his navi that Markus couldn’t see, and Wineham had left the screen. He had leant his elbow against the table and had propped his head on his hand when he realised he was being spoken to.

“I said, how are you?” Markus got his head off of his hand and looked to his left.

“Oh, sorry. I can get like that sometimes.” He said apologetically.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you had things to think about. It’s barely lunchtime.” Markus glanced at his watch when Callum had said that, and saw that he was right. It was barely lunchtime. “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it.” He said consolingly.

“I think it’s going to get longer.” Markus said darkly, then he remembered another question “Hey, do you kno-” but he cut himself off when the door opened again, and someone else walked in.

He, like all Enforcers, wore dark grey, almost black body armour. His knife was on his right shoulder and Markus couldn’t see a service pistol, which denoted left handedness. His white helmet was under his arm. He was almost desperately trying to brush his brown hair straight with his fingers.

“Magnus, good, good, we can begin.” Jonas said “Once Aulfred gets back – ah, here he is.” With Wineham back in the picture, Jonas was able to begin.

“We have been hoping to strike a blow against the Empire for some time now.” He said importantly, with everyone watching him “The best way to do that is to strike the Overwatch Fortress.”

“Jonas, that’s insane.” Magnus said, his brow creased with a frown “We’ve seen what happened to the Sons on Letaman, and I’ll tell you myself: We can’t do enough damage, and it will simply give the Overwatch a reason to come after us.”

Wineham broke in at that point. “Magnus is of course correct.” He said “Even without its shield, the Watchtower is impervious to all but the heaviest of weapons. That is where the Sons failed; they used a shaped charge to blow a hole in the wall, but it wasn’t very destructive.”

“Exactly.” Jonas said, a confident smile on his face.

“So what’s the plan?” Callum asked, leaning forward. Harst was muttering something by now, and had leant back in his seat.

“We can’t just damage it, we need to demolish it. So that’s what we’re going to do. Blow it up from the inside.”

“I knew it.” Harst said darkly, straightening his head up “And how do you propose we even get inside? As Magnus would tell you, no one gets in unless they’re an Enforcer.”

“And I can’t get near anything vital.” Magnus conceded, frowning “There’s no way it can be done.”

“Oh yes it can,” Jonas said with a knowing smile “That’s why Librarian Delgado is here.” He gestured towards Markus, who gulped.

“Me? What can I do?” he asked, perplexed.

“Rick is wrong when he says that only Enforcers get inside the Precinct proper. Prisoners do as well.”

Markus caught on a few seconds before everyone else “Oh no. I am not being arrested.” He said as firmly as he could manage.

But no one seemed to have heard him. This seemed like such a good plan. So Markus thought he better bring something up. “What about the Enforcers inside? Even if I did this, which I’m not, wouldn’t they be after me?”

“He has a point Jonas.” Elisa pointed out “Markus’d never get through the Watchtower with the Overwatch after him.”

“You know, that robot has been causing a lot of trouble,” Magnus said “It’s smart, keeping to heavily populated areas. The Overwatch is getting on edge. We could start other distractions too; riots, bombings, that sort of thing. It would seriously drain Overwatch manpower if we started a citywide problem.”

“Especially if we could somehow convince the robot to attack a more important location, then it could quite conceivably draw even more Overwatch attention.” Wineham suggested.

“Where do you think would be best?” Jonas asked, resting his nose on his fist.

“Here, the spaceport. It is among the highest priorities for protection.” The group nodded in agreement. Markus’ head was starting to hurt. “And as it appears that Librarian Delgado appears to have control over it, he could order it to do so.”

“Um,” he said, but no one heard.

William was asking Magnus if he could somehow avoid being sent off and the Enforcer replied that he could. Jonas was busy writing out plans, referencing to Elisa every so often, who would occasionally confer with Harst. It was about then that Callum spoke up, loudly and clearly, saying:

“Perhaps we should ask Markus whether or not he will aid us in our endeavours, rather than making all these plans without consulting him. It does seem they rely somewhat on his cooperation.” His hand was on Markus’ shoulder, and it squeezed for a moment.

They were all looking at him. He could feel a cold trickle of sweat run down his sides. Markus shook his head after a moment “No, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want any part of this.” He stood up, his chair sliding backwards as he did so. He stepped around his chair, then walked out the door, closing it behind himself.

Markus strode down the hall and stopped at the elevator. He hit the down button and crossed his arms, waiting.

“Markus, wait!” he heard Elisa call, as she jogged up next him, a long brown jacket over one arm. “Can I talk you?” she asked as the doors opened.

“You already are.” Markus said as he stepped inside the elevator, and Elisa followed. He reached for the buttons, when Elisa caught his hand.

“I know we heaped a lot on you just then, but you have to realise, an opportunity to hit the Empire this hard doesn’t come along very often.” She sounded sincere, assured that she was right.

“You know you can’t win, right?” Markus said in a voice which he thought sounded factual, but actually sounded nasty. “If an alien empire of fifty thousand systems can’t do it, than you definitely can’t.”

“But that’s the thing, they’re on the outside, on the back foot; we’re inside the Empire, they don’t know we’re coming, hell, they don’t even know we exist. We have a chance, Markus, that’s all. A small one, but it’s better than sitting around, doing nothing.” She sounded convinced of this, even though Markus knew she was wrong. There was no chance at all that a small group like this could do more than bother the Empire.

He yanked his hand away “I’m not helping you.” He said in a final sort of way.

“Alright.” She pressed the ground floor button herself, and the lift descended. When the doors opened, they walked across an almost empty lobby. The door was unlocked for them and they stood in the doorway.

Elisa handed him the coat. “It looks like rain.” She said “Take care, Markus.” He walked way, pulling the coat on. The end of it swung about his ankles and he looked at the monstrous Paradise Spaceport that stretched for miles and reached high into the sky. The clouds did look grey and heavy with water.

Markus threaded the buttons through the jacket, then set out towards the not to distant buildings of Legata.

Elisa watched him walk away and felt someone behind her. She turned and saw Callum.

“We need him. Jonas is right, this is the best chance we have.”

“I know, but Monty, we can’t force him to join us.” She said, glancing back in Markus’ direction.

“One way or the other, by tomorrow, we won’t have to.”

*

Elisa had been right, it did rain. It wasn’t very heavy, but it made Markus bow his head and fold his coat’s collar up. He didn’t know where he was going, though he tried to give himself some sort of purpose, so he didn’t look aimless. He was debating whether he should go home. He supposed they’d be looking for him there.

He stopped and looked up. Rain drops splattered across his face, making it hard to see through his glasses. He was in one of the more upmarket parts of Legata. He recognised on of the buildings as the one where Claire lived. On another day he would have told himself that that was far too convenient. But today was different.

Markus entered the apartment block and immediately crossed to the elevator. He flicked his glasses off of his face, in order to get the water off the lenses, while he waited for the elevator. When it arrived he hit the button for the thirty second floor.

He buzzed door two thousand two hundred and sixty two and waited for a minute till the door cracked open. He could see one eye, then the door flung open and he had a warm body clinging to him.

As Markus recovered from the shock, he could hear Claire talking to him “I thought they’d taken you, then someone said you’d been shot, then that you’d used one of the service androids to break through them and then, and then,” Markus never found out and then what. She had stopped speaking to kiss him. Tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes. “Come inside.” She said quietly.

Markus had always liked Claire’s apartment. It was personal, unlike his own. Where as all that was personal about his apartment were the books that littered it; Claire had real furniture, a nice soft carpet (and Markus knew it was soft) and dark green walls. Markus knew nothing at all about a room’s décor, but he did know that it was nice.

Claire sat down on the couch, Markus’ hands in hers. She tucked her legs up beneath her as he sat down. He glanced over at the muted television and saw that it was on news. His head was turned back and he could easily notice the large, purple bruise to the right side of her face.

Markus grimaced and gently laid a hand on it “He hit you that hard.” He said stupidly.

She grasped his hand “It’s alright, it didn’t hurt that much. I was worried about you. Is it true they sent a gunship after you?” Markus nodded and she gasped “I can’t believe it. What do they think you’ve done?”

“I have no idea. I think I’m wanted for treason.” He replied as Claire lay down against his chest, her head resting in the crook of his neck.

“Treason? You?”

“Yeah, it does seem kind of strange.”

Markus ran his fingers through her hair as he considered it. What had he done that could have been considered treasonable? There wasn’t much that he did that he hadn’t done before, so his crime eluded him. He felt Claire’s hand against his neck and he looked down at her.

“Markus, I’m scared. You could be executed.” She propped herself up so her face was inches from his “I don’t want you to die.” He could see her eyelashes glistening with tears as she moved her face in closer “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.” he said, that last word becoming muffled as her mouth covered his. He could feel her hand on the back of his head.

What have I done? He asked himself as Claire crossed her leg across his waist. She pulled away from Markus’ face, her fingers alighting on his cheeks. Claire straightened up, seized the hem of her nightshirt and raised it over her head.

And Markus decided not to think for the time being.

*

It was dark in the room. But the shutters were open, and the glass had not been tinted. The light of two moons shone through the window and illuminated bare skin, and glinted off of the blade of a knife.

They were both asleep on their sides, the girl facing away from her partner. His arms were wrapped loosely around her body, his forehead against the back of neck. The bed sheets were bunched around their lower legs.

She opened her eyes when she felt a gloved hand clamp itself over her mouth. Her eyes widened when she saw the knife.

“Don’t move, or I swear to God I’ll kill him too.” Hissed a voice into Claire’s ear, the speaker so close that she could feel their lips brushing against her skin.

Claire knew she was about to die. She felt cold, even though she could feel the heat of two very close bodies. She wanted to shout out, to move, to cry, to do something, but she didn’t, because she was convinced that this way, Markus would live.

There was a brief moment when she felt the cold blade against her skin, then she felt another source of warmth.

Claire Vorsti’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she died.

[darthdavid]

That's good.

[Ford Prefect]

It's about bloody time I got this chapter finished. Share and enjoy.

The Logical World

Chapter Five

Statement of Intent

Markus woke up without opening his eyes. His arms tightened around Claire’s breasts and he raised his head up to kiss her neck. As he did so he could taste something strangely metallic. He opened his eyes and saw her neck was red, as were the sheets in front of her, stretching down almost to her waist, as were his hands. He rolled away as a knee jerk reaction, and fell off the bed, taking the sheets with him.

Her body rolled limply her back with his movement, and her head lolled to face him. Markus stared at her lovely, dead face, his mouth open in disbelief. He glanced down at his hands, and they were bloodstained. His eyes sent the images to his brain, but his brain was doing a good job of denying them all.

He pushed himself to his feet and staggered to his right. He was disorientated, shocked. She was dead.

Markus sat down on the bed and pulled her head into his chest. Tears streamed down his face and into her hair.

*

There was a click as he pulled the door shut. Markus took a deep breath, turned around, and headed for the elevator. He hit the down button and rapped his fingers impatiently against the wood panelled door, his eyes firmly on the old styled dial that tracked the floor the elevator was on.

It reached him, then he got in, with an olive skinned woman in a flowy, fruit patterned dress, and head scarf of the same material. She had earbud headphones in the cup of each ear and was humming something tribal. She didn’t react to Markus’ entry, and he didn’t react to her presence. They stood next to each other, and when the doors opened onto the ground floor, they both exited. As they parted ways on the street, Markus didn’t know it, but he would meet that woman again.

Markus dug his hands further into his pockets and hunched his shoulders up. It was still raining, albeit lightly. He wasn’t entirely sure what he would do. He really had nothing to loose in this sort of situation. With Claire dead, there were very few people he could go to. His life was over, simple as that. No job, no future.

Unless . . . he remembered Elisa and the resistance. They needed him, something about access to the deeper parts of the Watchtower, an unexpected attack, he wasn’t sure. But perhaps he could be of some use. Markus stopped and waved a hand. The taxi came to a halt by the curb just ahead of him. The rear door slid open and Markus climbed in, fishing his last Aquilia out of his pocket.

Markus held the coin in front of him. Bye bye hard cash. He handed it over to the cabbie. “Bloc 172.” He said briefly, then sat back in the fairly comfortable seat.

“Eh, not the best weather we’ve been having.” The driver said to Markus without looking back.

“I suppose not.” Markus said disinterestedly in reply, resting his head on his fist, looking out the window. The driver didn’t say anything back. He was one of those sorts of cab drivers who minded their passengers choice to not talk. They were rare on Legatos, apparently, one of those relished commodities that the perpetually neutral citizens of Legatos craved.

As drops of water slid down his window, Markus half expected some sort of melancholy jazz tune to be playing. Traffic ground to a halt and Markus waited, staring out over the sea of people, a moving mass of bodies, almost corpse like in their way. The taxi started moving again, flowing along with the river of cars.

They arrived of course, much faster than Markus would have managed on foot. He got out of the cab, then walked towards the doors of Bloc 172. He said hello to Gerd, whose eyes followed Markus in, but he didn’t notice that. The librarian waited for a few moments with a small group of people, till one of the elevators arrived on his floor, spilling four people out, including very old man who hobbled past Markus.

The lift was filled with people, and buttons were pressed. The elevator stopped and started, leaking one or two people out with each stop. Markus left three people standing in the lift, then walked towards Elisa’s door, numbered 411200. He rang the bell.

Door 411200 slid open and Elisa was standing just beyond the door, wearing a very large shirt that hung halfway to her knees. It took her a moment to realise that there was someone desperate in front of her, but like most people in such a position, she wasn’t exactly helpful.

“Markus,” Elisa said in that surprised and unhelpful way “What are you doing here?”

Markus pushed his way inside and made the door shut behind him. He glanced around the room. It was identical to his own room five doors down, except it was tidier, cleaner and more homelike. There was a cat licking its paw and Markus stared at it for a moment, then turned back to Elisa.

“Someone killed my girlfriend!” he snapped at her, angrily.

“Sorry, what?” Elisa replied.

“In the night, someone, they came in, and killed her!” He snapped again and Elisa frowned.

“You have a girlfriend?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

“What?” Markus asked in reply, thrown slightly off track.

“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend. It’s a bit of a surprise, actually.”

Markus blinked, completely distracted “Why’s that?”

“Well, you seem kind of geeky. And how many librarians have girlfriends?” she walked away from the door and stood in the middle of the small room, her back to him.

“This one!” he shouted angrily. She raised her hands up in defence and Markus could see roughly fist sized bruises along the backs of her forearms. Thinking back on it, he supposed it could have been worse, considering the strength of an armoured Enforcer. “I don’t know why, or how, or who did it. And I want to know.”

“Well, I would say it was the Overwatch.” Elisa said, placing a small cup beneath her percolator. As black coffee squirted into the cup she continued “According to Magnus, they didn’t have that much on you. There was an order, and they went after you. Things sort of escalated after that.” She walked over to Markus and handed him the cup. “I think they framed you. A real crime, so they can get rid of you.”

Markus sipped at the coffee, not noting it tasted better than his own percolator’s excretions. “That seems a little, convoluted.”

“Well, whatever they want you for is pretty secret. To secret for the Enforcers, so they need something a little more mundane.” She shrugged “And they’re the only ones who could do it.”

Rolling the cup between his hands, Markus looked up, and wished he had somewhere to sit. “Are you sure it was the Empire?” he asked, after quite some time. Elisa stared back at him, partly frowning, then spoke.

“I’m positive.” She sounded utterly convinced and in his current state, Markus wasn’t really in the mood for questioning her, so he accepted what she had to say. He took another sip of his drink, then prepared himself for the plunge.

“I’ll help your rebellion,” he took a step forward and held out his cup, no longer thirsty. Elisa took it from him, her grin stretching from ear to ear. She put down the cup and threw her arms around Markus.

After letting go of him, she took two steps away and knelt down in front of the set of drawers set alongside her fridge “This is perfect,” she was saying, as she searched through them, occasionally pulling out some item of clothing “I know this might sound a little callous, but you are a perfect opportunity to get at them.” She stood up, her back to Markus and pulled off her shirt. She picked up her bra with her toes and pulled it on, “We’ll have to be careful though,” she said turning her head towards him, before bending down for her trousers “We have to get you to Jonas, so we can plan this properly, and then come up with some way of talking to that robot of yours.”

“He isn’t my robot,” Markus assured Elisa, even as she turned to him, now actually clothed. She dismissed it with a wave of her hand and turned him towards the door.

“Whatever Markus, just get to the spaceport. Don’t act suspicious, but keep your head down. No one should really be looking for you, what with that robot running around, but one can never be to careful.” Her hand slipped past him and hit the small pad of buttons based around opening and closing and locking the door. “I’ll see you there,” she said “You know, for security.”

The door shut and Markus was alone in the corridor. He mused for a moment and turned around, heading for the elevators.

Markus stood in front of the elevators, waiting for them, as you do. He thought about elevators. Apparently there were thinking elevators now, at least on the Worldcities. He thought about what the use of giving an elevator artificial intelligence was; according to the Science it was a serious waste of time giving self awareness to mundane items like couches and elevators, or at least the apprentice engineer that Markus knew said the said that. Markus thought of how an elevator might become afraid of heights or something stupid like that, or go and sulk in the boiler levels, or trap its riders inside.

Self Aware Artificial Intelligence was originally developed not by the Scientific Union, but rather a very large corporation, Celestial Cybertech. Celestial is considered the most useless company in human history, and over five thousand years of development and production has produced nothing successful. While Voxnet Incorporated produced faster than light communication, and Linux-Macintosh produced the computers in use across the Imperial Commonwealth, from a citizen’s personal Navi to the powerful Sub-meson brains and Dipolar computers of Imperial Navy ships, Celestial Cybertech produced hysterical and depressed programs. And thinking elevators.

The doors split open and Markus stepped inside, pushed the ground floor button and crossed his arms, settling his eyes on the floor counter. It dropped down from the nineties till it read ground, and the doors slid apart. The librarian stepped into the lobby and found him face to muzzle with a dozen USP Machs held by a dozen Overwatch Enforcers. Markus raised his hands.

“Take him.” Said one and another holstered his gun and stepped forward. Markus felt his lip twitch involuntarily and the Enforcer seized his wrist and easily twisted it behind his back. Markus could feel the hard steel of a pair of restraining binders clamp around his wrist. His other arm twisted with a little effort from the Enforcer and was clamped against the other.

They lead him into the street and Markus looked over at Gerd. The doorman looked guilty and cast his eyes across the three Overwatch cruisers and the single APC parked onto the sidewalk. Markus shook his head just before he was forcibly tossed into the APC, then joined by several of his captors.

The four dark gunmetal vehicles reversed onto the road, then growled away.

*

WE ARE FOR YOUR PROTECTION

That is the motto of the Overwatch. It’s everywhere inside the Watchtower. Markus was staring at it, emblazoned across the wall in front of him. The room itself had white walls and a white ceiling. The floor was black, as was the chunky neo-retro-futuristic table with the curved corners. Markus decided that the whole room was decidedly chunky with the rounded corners and trim.

He looked around himself. There was nothing about him that passed for a door. No protrusions. No cameras. No one way windows. There was no clue at all as to whether he was being watched. He knew he was being watched. It was what they did best.

Markus was afraid of looking at the Precinct because he felt that if he could see the Overwatch, the Overwatch could see him. This has less to do with an irrational paranoia on Markus’ part. Quite the contrary in fact, this is entirely true. There are crystal lenses and sound wave detectors in the Watchtower that can watch a citizen and listen to their conversations from miles away. They were linked to Sky Eye satellites continually tracking there way around the planet, each one armed in a way that if a rebellion was detected it could be excised like a cancer – sliced away by a careful razer cannon.

He could feel a definite vibration, a hum, coming through the floor, a side effect of having a heavy duty Imulsion eactor present within it. A whole Imulsion reactor, similar to the one providing power to much of the Legatos, designed around powering the Precinct’s shield projectors and various graser, tesla and mass driver emplacements. He knew that this was what it was like to be aboard a space ship, with the reactor hum ever present while you were aboard.

Markus, despite being perpetually afraid of this place, realised he knew a frightening amount about it.

He heard a click and saw a part of the wall push out from it. It slid to the side and a man stepped through, dressed in the same very-dark-grey-almost-black uniform like everyone else. He was helmetless, however, and his hair was short, dark grey much like his uniform, though the hair at his temples was almost white. His face was creased with age (experience?) and his eyes were a pale blue colour. Bombardiers eyes, Markus would describe them as. Killers eyes, he would later decide.

Markus knew the face from the times he had laid on Claire’s couch to watch her TV. The times that Arbiter Harst had appeared on the screen had made Markus completely disinterested in anything other than Claire, and so off went the television. But none the less he knew about Melkum Harst, the harshest lawmaker in the Cygnus Arm. He was the most feared name for all criminals and rebels for a dozen sectors in every direction. A bastion of incorruptible law.

The Arbiter sat down opposite Markus and placed a white file on the shiny black surface of the table. He shoved it and it slid across to Markus, rotating as it did so. Markus slammed his hand down on it. He didn’t look down. Instead he stared across at Harst.

“Markus Delgado,” he said, his voice dry like some blasted radioactive desert “A librarian at Main Street Library. A noble profession.” Markus narrowed his eyebrows “Some fairly serious charges have been levelled against you. Murder in the first.”

“Murder in the first? Murder in the first?”

“The evidence fits.” Harst said simply “Forensic science was frighteningly accurate six thousand years ago. We’ve come a long way. You had sex with Miss Vorsti about an hour before she had her throat slit.”

Markus of course hadn’t known how long it had been between sleeping with Claire and her death. He didn’t reply to Harst, but instead stared ahead at him. Harst laced his fingers together and placed them down on the surface of the table. “In addition to physical evidence found on Miss Vorsti’s body, we have metaphysical evidence as well.” As he spoke a series of holo displays popped into existence above the table, projected by a hololith built into the table itself.

Markus watched himself entwine with his late partner. It was strange to watch, not just because he’d never actually seen himself make love before, but more because the perspective, which continually changed, seemed slightly strange. Also, the colours weren’t quite right, much duller, almost black and white. It wasn’t very extreme, but he could tell the differences. It was as if it hadn’t been seen or recorded in the normal sense, but rather pieced together from feelings and ideas.

He saw Claire’s climax, then saw her face change from one of intense satisfaction to indescribable horror. There was a silvery flash, a spray of very bright red and the holo stopped. Harst twisted his hand anticlockwise and the holo reversed several frames, stopping at the point where the silvery flash was against her throat. Not moving, it was a knife, which Markus recognised. He gasped slightly, and realised that that was a mistake. He saw the corner of Harst’s lip twitch in response to his recognition.

The Arbiter moved his hand around for a moment, dragging a section of the holo away. It expanded out to show a reflection of Markus’ face. A brief moment passed and it cleared up. It was Markus’ face, seemingly awake, in a position perfect to cut a person’s throat.

“That was our clairvoyants’ metaphysically reconstruction. You killed her using an eight inch kitchen knife. A single deep cut from cheek to cheek, severing the carotid artery. Brutal, Mister Delgado, very brutal.” Harst said, and the holos disappeared.

“I didn’t kill her.” Markus replied, surprising himself with his calmness. He should have been a jumpy mass of nerves.

“Well, I hate to say this, but that’s what they all say.” Harst replied with a shrug “You’re fucked Delgado. The evidence is stacked against you, rather heavily. I give you no chance of getting a court hearing. Cut and cried, case closed.” He laced his fingers together again “I suspect you’ll be shipped off to a Worldfarm or Worldfactory for the rest of your natural. Or they might not bother and simply execute you.”

“This is bullshit!” Markus shouted suddenly “For one, I didn’t kill her, and another, you lot started chasing me before killed her!”

“So you did murder Claire Vorsti.” Harst said bemusedly. Markus snapped.

“Of course not! And that’s not the point!” Markus planted his hands flat on the table and pushed himself up “You came after me before you had any charges laid against me!” he gritted his teeth at Harst and just missed the Arbiter reach over and small his face into his file, which in itself wouldn’t have been that bad, had it not been sitting on a very solid table.

Markus grasped at his face, then pulled his hand away, his fingers splattered with his blood. It dripped from his nostrils and splashed onto his file, leaving vivid red circles on the white cardboard. He covered his nose again.

“The thing is, Mister Delgado, you’re right. We didn’t have any charges against you. Orders came down from the top that said you needed to be brought in. Nothing bad, just to have some questions asked of you.” Markus narrowed his eyes at his interrogator. It was that simple? It couldn’t have been. “However, things escalated exponentially almost instantly. There were reports that you were running and had some sort of illegal high-performance robot providing you assistance. After that you were considered a danger to the citizenry of Legata.”

Markus sat back in his chair. It seemed as though it was all his fault, and that everything had spiralled out of control because of him. This was both confusing and distressing. He wanted to ask questions, but there were none for him to ask.

Arbiter Harst stood up, pushing his chair away from the table as he did so. He circumnavigated the table then yanked Markus to his feet, leading him towards where the door was opening “The thing about you though is that you didn’t stop there,” Harst was saying “Your sentence has steadily gotten worse, and hasn’t even peaked yet.”

*

The cell was smaller than the interview room, but just as deliciously chuncky, if not more so. Markus could have compared the style of architecture inside the Watchtower to some of Yu’s noodles.

He thought about the old Chinese man who owned a flying take away restaurant, and wondered why he hadn’t been named a danger to the citizenry of Legata. After all, how much damage had Yu caused just by performing u-turns in the middle of the street? Probably more than Markus had caused with that idiot robot.

“Why am I getting blamed for this?” Markus asked aloud as he lay upon his chunky black bedplate. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, perhaps even less comfortable than the floor, but he didn’t lie on the floor as a matter of principle “It isn’t like I told the robot to cause havoc.” He sat up and twisted at the same time, so that he sat on the edge of his shiny plastic bed. Markus ran his fingers through his hair.

Hours passed. He stood in the corner. He tried to meditate. He sat with his legs running up the wall. He laid beneath the stupid bedplate. He tried to pry the bedplate off the wall, to use as a weapon. He tried that for a long time. In the end Markus decided it would be best if he just laid down on his chunky neo-retro-futuristic bed and waited until they came to take him to be shipped off into slavery or have him shot.

A click sounded in the cell and Markus looked over at the opposite wall. He watched a panel fold out of the wall (he gathered this was the section of wall that was also the door) and become a small shelf. A tray was placed on this shelf and a voice said “Take it.” Markus did.

He carried his tray back over to his bed as the shelf folded back into what he assumed was the door then took the lid off. There was a bowl of white paste, a spoon, and a cup, filled with water. His last meal it seemed happened to be in the neo-retro-futuristic style, just like the rest of the whole damn building.

Markus gritted his teeth, place the lid back on the tray and placed it calmly on the floor. Then he got up and started to jump on the tray. It stayed frustratingly undeformed and sat on the floor as Markus stared down at it, breathing heavily. It was mocking him, safe in its hyperstrong superiority. Markus knew that if it had a face, then the tray and its lid would be smiling self indulgently at him. Markus howled and kicked it, spattering the wall with white paste.

The bowl bounced to the other side of the cell and spun around on its edge, then settled down. Markus sat down on his bed and looked at the floor, then noticed the rectangular object on the floor. He only just noticed it because it was a shiny black and partially covered in white paste, and the floor around it was a matte black. He skidded down onto his knees before it, grasping it desperately.

Markus recognised it as a Sub-etha voxcaster, a device that would allow him to talk to people on the other side of the galaxy as if they were actually a whole lot closer than that. On second inspection, he realised that it was a Sub-etha holocaster, which had the added bonus of hologrammatic representations of who you were talking to. Markus wiped whatever it was they were going to feed him off of the holocaster and turned it on, calling up a holo display featuring a series of numbers. He turned it off. He had no one he could call.

As it was, it didn’t matter that much even if Markus had had a number he could have called, it wouldn’t have gone out. The entire Watchtower was doused in so much electronic jamming, including the output of their reactor, that only a military-grade high-gain device was going to contact someone twenty metres away.

Markus put the holocaster in his pocket and went back to lying dejectedly on the bedplate.

Long minutes passed, then he heard a beeping noise coming from his pocket. For a moment he had no idea what it was, then he remembered his useless gift. He snatched it from his pocket and answered it, and Jonas’ head popped into hologrammatic existence before him.

“Jonas!” Markus said, surprised.

“Markus, we have to be fast. We latched this call onto another transmission going in, so we haven’t got much time.” Despite his rate of speaking, Markus marvelled at Jonas’ collected state “While we never had time to get you ready, we can’t miss this opportunity. In three hours, Magnus is going to open your cell and let you out. We need you to get down to the Imulsion Reactor and overload it.”

“What? Overload, what?”

“Never mind that now!” Jonas snapped “We’ll tell you more later. Just be ready.” With that, Jonas’ head disappeared.

Markus scratched his forehead and slid the holocaster into his pocket. Overload the Imulsion Reactor. That’s all he had to do. He sniffed to himself, like that was going to be easy.

Markus stretched himself out onto his bedplate and stared up at the ceiling. Three hours. That was the real challenge, the waiting.

[Crazedwraith]

Very nice. I'm liking the convoluted twists and turn of the plot.

[Ford Prefect]

At last! I get off my lazy arse and finished writing this chapter. It only took me about a month. It's the longest so far, I believe. Now, Share and Enjoy(tm)

The Logical World

Chapter Six

Live and Learn

“I personally think it’s ridiculous.” Jessica Cereus stopped the recording of the interrogation. She sat back in her partner’s chair and crossed her legs. “It’s a bit of a leap, from a runner to a murderer.” She ran her gloved fingers through her short auburn hair, then turned her sceptical eyes over to Harst.

“I agree,” he replied, sitting on the corner of his desk “I don’t believe he did it. Anyone of us would determine that he’s innocent.” The arbiter shrugged “But orders came down from the Knights. He was to be charged for murder. It was just our luck that evidence against him already existed.”

Cereus tapped a sequence of keys and dragged a holosquare into the centre field. “Clairvoyant visions aren’t exactly considered much in the way of evidence.” She said as the scene played out before her “And it certainly wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. It is far too vague to be reliable.”

“That’s true.” Harst admitted, stroking his chin.

As her partner mused, Cereus considered “You’re counting on the vagueness, aren’t you? Along with the DNA evidence, of course.”

“Right on the button, Arbiter Cereus.” Harst answered truthfully, not taking his eyes off of the far wall “I swear you’re a better detective than me.”

“How modest of you,” she replied sarcastically as the lights flickered briefly. Cereus frowned “Another short circuit.” She sighed “They should really do something about that. It really is embarrassing to work in the only Precinct for eight thousand light years with faulty electrical work. One of these days the cameras are going to stop working, and the lockdown controls will freeze, and the weapon systems will deactivate.”

“Indeed.” Harkus agreed.

*

Fate can be fickle at times, but it is said that fate is not without a sense of humour. The Legata Precinct had been plagued with faulty wiring ever since the refit four years previously. It wasn’t really serious, just the occasional fluctuation of power that made the lights flicker. Considering the huge size of the Precinct, it was considered too costly and too time consuming to fix. The Science of Improbability would call what happened next a basket case.

The previous fluctuation affected one of the twelve Sub-meson brains that controlled the day to day running of the huge Dipolar computer banks beneath the Watchtower. The brain suffered the closest thing a non-sentient, unself-aware artificial intelligence can to confusion, and immediately scanned the Sub-etha transmissions within the Watchtower for instructions.

It heard the following: Order some real beef from Sol or Melenanius, stop the cameras from working, freeze the lockdown controls, deactivate the weapon systems and download milk.

It did each, ordering enough beef from Melenanius to feed the four hundred thousand men and women of the precinct for the next ten years, depleting the budget in one move. It then proceeded to turn off all the cameras, lock the Overwatch out of their ability to close down the entire building and removed their access to the weapons systems, disallowing them from flooding the corridors with nerve gases, acids and heavy weapons fire. After that was done, it tried to download milk, promptly blew itself out and made all of its previous actions undoable for at least three to eight days.

*

In his cell (which didn’t have a camera in the first place, for whatever reason), Markus thought back to his previous evening. He tried to fathom why they had killed Claire, but he was having trouble with it. He decided that the reason wasn’t all that important, and he should rather focus on the fact they had.

“I went looking for you, when they let me out of the hospital.” She had said to him as they lay together.

“How bad was it?” he had asked, running the back of his fingers against her throat. The bruise was purple and livid on her pale face.

“Apparently I was lucky. They had to piece one side of my face together and I had a mild concussion.”

Markus winced in both his memory and reality. The whole left side of her jaw had been shattered. He thanked modern medical science. The fact that she’d still seen fit to go hunting around Legata for him had been touching in the least.

As he ventured deeper in his thoughts, the door into Markus’ cell opened, and an Enforcer stood there, looking in ominously. “Delgado.” Said the Enforcer and Markus sat up “Come on, you’ve got a job to do.”

Markus stepped lightly into the corridor, once again white walled and black floored. He looked up at the Enforcer (whom he was assuming was Magnus) and asked “What now?”

“Something weird happened just a little earlier. The Overwatch have been locked out of the security system, so life should be a whole lot easier for you.” As he spoke Magnus pushed something into Markus’ hand, a shiny new USP Mach “You know how to use a gun?” Markus nodded a little tentatively. Sure, he knew how, but could he hit anything? “Twelve millimetres armour piercing ammunition. It’s got a bit of a kick, but it won’t be that bad.”

Magnus looked up and down the hallway then back to Markus “You’re looking at about eight to ten rounds or so to get through an Enforcer’s breastplate, two to three for the helmet. Don’t waste ammo.” With that he shoved a clip into Markus’ pocket.

“I’m worried about this,” he said as he yanked Markus along by the arm “I’ve got ten minutes before I have to get back to my post, and I’m entrusting the most important mission so far of this rebellion to you.” They stopped at an intersection. Magnus handed a small rectangular item over to Markus, a PDA. “It has the map of the Precinct. Make sure you don’t wander around aimlessly.” With that, he strode off down the left hallway. Markus leant against the wall.

“This is complete idiocy.” He said to himself as he perused his PDA’s map. He discovered that his target, the powerful Imulsion reactor, was not to far from him. For whatever reason, someone had decided that the Watchtower would be best served with its power source sitting in the middle of it. Markus glanced down the right hallway then jogged down it.

The Enforcer rounded the corner just as Markus reached it, and they collided. For Markus, it was if he had hit a solid wall. He dropped to the floor hard, his PDA skidding away. The Enforcer had been surprised, but recovered quickly, dragging his or her gun out of its holster, pointing it at the man on the floor and the first bullets impacted the automuscle around his or her neck.

Compensators within the big handgun worked to counter the recoil of the weapon and the electro thermally propelled twelve millimetre rounds punched through the body glove with ease, though not designed to penetrate armour, automuscle was only a very light form of armour, not particularly up to defending against modern weaponry. Droplets of blood landed on Markus’ suit jacket and the Enforcer teetered weakly, before toppling forward like a great old oak on Arcturus. Markus rolled to the side and the officer hit the ground solidly.

Markus whistled as blood pooled across the dark floor. He rubbed his palms slowly, they tingled and felt slightly numb. The entire back part of the Enforcer’s neck had been torn open, and blood had sprayed across the white wall. Grimacing, Markus got to his feet, bent for his gun and stepped over the corpse for his PAD. He looked down at the blank screen and tried turning it on. It didn’t work. He tapped several times, got frustrated and stamped on it, til it was little more than so much broken plastic and metal.

“Stupid substandard piece of crap.” He grumbled walking away, searching his mind for the path to the reactor, but it eluded him. Things looked grim as he peeked around a corner. He knew where the reactor was, but getting to it would be a whole lot harder, considering the huge size of the building and the dozens upon dozens of hallways, elevators and most probably armed policemen he would have to traverse. Getting lost, he reflected, would be rather easy.

As his foot almost touched the floor past the corner, he paused. Wandering around would just get him shot. And unlike the Enforcers, he lacked the super strong armour that was for them standard issue. He also lacked the considerable amount of training and enhanced reaction times, speed and strength. Markus considered himself lucky; he’d had the element of surprise before, but that wouldn’t help him in a straight gunfight. There was no cover for him to even consider making use of.

He strained the mass of flesh the consistency of cold porridge in his head, trying to recall the map. Markus knew for a fact that he had a terrible visual memory, and a worse sense of direction.

But, he decided that there was no point standing around thinking about it. He strode off forward, consoling himself with the notion that it was the right direction.

*

The design of an Overwatch Watchtower is intended to intimidate. In most cases a half kilometre tall pyramid with a base area of a kilometre squared. Legata had a vast square set aside from the buildings, a generally quiet place of manicured gardens and old sculpture. In wartime the building was a bastion of the Empire, capable of holding out against even the most dedicated attacks.

The building was huge for a reason, though Markus didn’t particularly care what that reason was as he travelled down yet another corridor, one of thousands with the a hundred and fifty million cubic metres of internal volume the Overwatch boasted about in tourist brochures, along with the huge shield system and weapon systems.

He should have counted himself lucky as he did not encounter any Enforcers, by sheer dint of luck. The improbability of him not running into and Enforcer was very high, considering the four hundred thousand strong garrison.

What was more improbable was that Markus wouldn’t find the main generator room. It was a very large part of the building right in his path. However, Markus is not to know this sort of thing.

*

The words DANGER IMULSION – HIGH ENERGY LIGHT-MASS REACTIONS TAKING PLACE blared out in red letters on a yellow rectangle across what appeared to be a very heavy door. Markus read them more than once, and frowned. He had no idea what Imulsion involved, apart from apparently high energy light-mass reactions. He didn’t know whether or not if he entered the room he’d be irradiated or poisoned or whatnot. But frankly, he was fed up with not knowing what was going on.

Markus turned towards the wall panel that he assumed controlled the door. He feared some sort of code, but was pleasantly surprised when he found that it only appeared to have one button. H tapped it and the big door split open. Markus stepped through, noting that the door was a good foot thick.

The door shut behind him, quickly, quietly, and he was standing in a relatively small room, the door ahead of him shut tight. The waited for a moment, for there didn’t appear to be any control panels on this side of the door. That was disconcerting, to say the least, but before Markus had a chance to panic, the second door had opened.

In contrast to the white walls, black floors and chunky neo-retro-futuristic stylings that Markus was frankly tired of, the generator room was pleasantly utilitarian. It was also very large, dominated by a vast, bulbous structure in the centre of the room. It looked heavily armoured and from where Markus was standing, two hundred metres long. Huge pipes ran two a fro, looking far wider than he and just as armoured as the reactor they connected to. Walkways and gantries trailed and twisted through the pipes, around the sixty metre tall Imulsion reactor and all across the generator room.

Markus walked slowly to the rail in front of him and peaked over the edge. He was almost thirty metres above the vaguely peanut shaped construction, he supposed. Far below him he saw countless monotask mechanoids going about their business. Other than the mechanical life, it seemed pretty empty.

His left hand trailing limply against the cold steel rail, Markus walked slowly above the complex piece of mega-machinery pumping power through the building. He stopped at the first ladder he saw, shoved his USP into the waistband of his trousers and climbed onto it. He grasped each rung in turn, slowly descending into the bowels of the reactor room.

As he climbed downwards, he heard a beeping from his pocket. He was startled by it, and almost lost his grip. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, accepting the call. Aulfred Wineham popped into life.

“Ah, Markus, good to see you, good to see you.” Said the bald, professor, wiping the top of his bald head.

“H . . hi.” Markus replied. Had he been a technical man, he’d have known that this conversation shouldn’t be possible.

The good doctor shifted his glasses around a little and continued “If you’re wondering, we jacked this line onto a technical support call the Overwatch is making. It seems they’ve had a catastrophic system error.” Markus nodded dimly in response “I gave you half an hour to get to the reactor chamber. I’m going to talk you through overloading the reactor.”

Markus started climbing down again, more awkwardly this time. “Is it going to be hard?” he asked the floating head, knowing that he wouldn’t handle complex instructions.

“Oh no, oh no,” Wineham assured him as the bottom floor crawled ever closer upward “It will be very simple, so long as Magnus can get the codes we need.”

“Codes?” Markus inquired politely, stepping off the ladder and turning from the wall. It really was big, he decided. “What codes are those?”

The absent minded professor was whistling and didn’t take heed of Markus’ question for a moment. Then he finished and whistling and answered “Oh, codes for access to the reactor control, to bypass the safety features that were built in. There are so many ways for this thing to shut down or be cut of in the event of malfunction it is bordering on ridiculous.”

Marcus crossed the floor to the reactor, turned around and put his back against the reactor’s armoured hide. It was quite cold. “What exactly is going to happen when I overload this thing?”

“Well, you’re going to convert some of the surrounding mass into energy.” Said Wineham cheerily “It’s practically magic.” He grinned widely at Markus. Markus didn’t think about it. “Just wait a while, Magnus won’t be too long.”

Waiting is often a very boring and tedious action but is generally considered very necessary in the grand scheme of things. You should often wait, say the military tacticians of the Eurasian Alliance (as opposed to saying ‘You should not attempt to make much of an effort at all, militarily speaking,’ as they do in the Chossok Republic). Markus thought he was very good at waiting, but he soon realised that he’d never really waited without doing something. Tedium stretched like a cloud of plasma as robots of all shapes and sizes trundled past.

It was then the Enforcer rounded the far end of the reactor. Markus saw him first and raised his handgun. A split second later the Enforcer had snatched his USP from his holster and fired, even before Markus had begun tightening his finger around the trigger.

The first round opened a cut on Markus’ cheek, and the next two punched through his shoulder and came out the other side, leaving a neat set of holes. The force of the shots twisted Markus’ body around and tossed him into a bleeding heap on the floor.

It was a long shot, no doubt. Even with the considerably advanced electro-chemical-thermal projectile weaponry used by people in the eighth millennium, handguns were still short ranged weapons, limited to accuracy over a distance of no more than forty metres, or maybe fifty if you were feeling lucky. Markus would have been at least three times the maximum range of an Overwatch issue USP Mach. There was no denying the marksmanship of the Overwatch, but it was a fluke shot.

There was a sound of running boots and through squinting, pain-blinded eyes Markus saw his shooter, holding him under his own Mach. As Markus waited for a kill-shot or to shocked into unconsciousness, there was another set of running boots. The Enforcer turned slightly and said in a confused voice “Storm?” His voice was followed up by a quick series of three explosions.

Blood burst from Enforcer’s back and he clattered to the ground. A second Enforcers slid to a sudden stop, a heavy, blocky looking automatic shotgun in his hands.

“Goddamn it Delgado,” Storm said angrily “You can’t do anything quietly, can you? She reported to control. The Deathwatch will be here in less than five minutes.” He slid an injector out of his belt, inserted a small capsule and placed it against Markus’ neck. Compressed air pushed the serum through Markus’ skin and in seconds the pain had passed and his vision had sharpened. He didn’t notice it, but the wounds he’d sustained had begun to quickly heal, the blood clotting and his bone and skin regeneration accelerating.

He sat up “What was that?”

“Combat stimms, great in very small doses, but dangerous.” Magnus replied, removing his helmet and clipping it the back of his belt.. He reached past Markus and grabbed his holocaster.

“Magnus!” ejaculated Wineham frantically “Wha-”

“No time Doc, we’ve got a limited amount of time.” The reply was terse, impatient. “Tell me what to do.”

The scientist seemed to mutter for a moment, then spoke again “Well, you have the codes? Good. You’ll need to enter them into the auxiliary control centre. Then Markus will need to open the control pylon.”

Storm dropped the holocaster and frowned at Markus. After the barest moment, Magnus had pushed a larger weapon into Markus’ hands. “MP-7 personal defence weapon, sixty rounds.” He tugged briefly on the buttstock and it telescoped out. “Keep that hard against your shoulder and squeeze the trigger briefly. Do not hold it down.” With that he was on his feet, TOPAS in his hand. He was out of sight nearly four seconds after he had left.

“You’ll need to wait as long as you can, Markus.” Wineham said from the floor, and Markus scooped up the holocaster, before pushing himself to his feet “I’m going to send a teleportal in so you can get out-” there was a short series of gunshots. “Get on top of the reactor.”

Markus clumsily started to climb the first ladder he could find, phone in his back pocket, sub-machinegun in one hand. It took him almost a minute to climb to the top, and when he got there, he could see Magnus diligently at work behind a shattered window. There were a lot of safety measures to override.

The holocaster came back out and Markus saw Wineham wiping his pate again. “As you can see, this is the control rod.” Markus didn’t agree. It looked more like another section of the reactor and he said so.

“That’s because it is beneath two metres of armour Markus! The amount of damage one of these things can do when not closed is immense!”

“Alright, alright.” Markus said as in a placating tone of voice, and noticed a small podium with a large control pad on it. “Don’t tell me, I’ll open it with this. Life can be all too convenient sometimes.” But life wasn’t as Markus could have hoped. Access to the control panel was currently cut off until Magnus decided to give the panel any power, and he was currently busy.

“As it is, you’ll just have to wait, both for him and for me. I have to target the teleportal, which will be rather difficult. Wh-” the call had ended. Obviously the Precinct had terminated its call with tech support, probably not because their questions had been answered however. Markus pocketed the holocaster.

Doors slid open and the Deathwatch stormed in. Heavier armoured then their policeman cousins, their uniforms and helmets an actual black as opposed to a very dark grey and their eyepieces an evil blue colour, they were an elite strike force superior to the normal Overwatch. Markus had never seen a Deathwatch officer before (in actual fact he had, on more than one occasion), although he’d heard rumours about them.

Some came with heavy suppression shields and weapons identical to that Markus carried now; others had F3000 assault weapons, while others still had automatic combat shotguns like Magnus. All in all there was two dozen, at least half on the ground floor, the remaining officers on the gantries.

“Stand down!” roared one of them, as though he intended to take Markus into custody. There was no such intention, of course, but it was an opportunity for PR for the Deathwatch, showing them as slightly better than rapid and efficient killers. Markus glanced over at Magnus and swallowed.

Storm made his move, twisting the key his hand was hovering above. Almost instantaneously power was supplied to the control panel that Markus himself was hovering over. His hand instinctively slapped the controls and by his feet two metres of armasteel slid apart, opening up a set of stairs into a pit. Markus threw himself in the very second bullets started flying.

His pain receptors still under the influence of the combat stimms, he recovered from the fall far quicker than he would normally been capable. Beneath one hand was a half foot wide circle marked DO NOT REMOVE with a handle and on the wall before him it said the following:

EXTREME DANGER. DO NOT REMOVE CONTROL LOCK ROD WHILE IMULSION IS TAKING PLACE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN MASS ENERGY CONVERSION LEADING TO DEATH AND/OR PLANETARY DESTRUCTION.

Markus read that then started to tug at the rod.

The firing angles that the Deathwatch possessed at that moment were too low for them to shoot Markus, so the troopers vaulted across onto the reactor. Magnus saw this, jumped from his chair, took a sort run up and leapt through the already shattered window, hitting the reactor rolling. He was hopelessly outnumbered, and his armour would proffer him that much protection against the armour piercing bullet and micromissile Judge shells that the Deathwatch had loaded into their shotguns.

At the far end, liquid wires had attached themselves to the roof and more Deathwatch were rapidly climbing onto the reactor. With barely a split second before they acquired him as a target, Magnus made a decision. He snatched his only super-frag grenade from his belt, primed it and flung it forward. It detonated three seconds later, forty metres beyond Markus and only thirty metres from the ascending troopers. Shrapnel wouldn’t kill them, as he well-knew, but the explosion had the intended effect – confusion.

Magnus opened fire as soon as he could get his weapon into his hands. With an effective range of only fifty metres, the slugs would barely cause the Deathwatch a reason to cause for consternation. But one takes notice when they’re being shot.

Even as Magnus was playing cat and mouse not so far away from him, Markus was struggling with the control rod. His knuckles were white as he pulled, the muscles in his back and arms and neck were strained to their limits. Undoubtedly he could do it, but the removal system had been designed to be as difficult as possible, to prevent events much like this one. For someone with an automuscle suit it would have been practically effortless, but for one librarian it was taxing work.

He ground his teeth together and his eyes were tightly shut. The rod inched slowly up, and Markus yelled in sudden triumph as it finally gave way to brute force. The red column rose up and Markus fell backwards. Nothing else happened. He gaped. He saw a white arrow pointing in a counter-clockwise direction.

Using the pole as a means to get himself off the floor, Markus did just that, got off the floor. He seized the top handle and strained to twist the two and a half tall key. When the handle was vertical in relation to him, klaxons started screaming, red lights began flashing and the reactor beneath his feet began to rumble. The vast machine began to split open and Markus saw through the tiny split a roiling sea of light. He was mesmerised for a moment but then he ran as the metal beneath his feet began to give way.

The Deathwatch had their weapons trained on Storm, preparing to shoot him, as they knew they must. However, he was a comrade, so it took them a little longer to make the decision. As their finger tightened, Markus handiwork became known to them and they twisted around to see the librarian running for dear life towards the edge of the reactor.

A crack of displaced air later and a floating, crackling ball of light popped into existence, confounding them further. Magnus raced past them, actuated muscle-like fibre-bundles giving him far superior speed to any normal human. He passed the librarian in seconds and leapt towards the light, disappearing into it. Markus followed suit, though he barely made it.

The light popped into nothing as suddenly as it had come, and the last thing the Deathwatch pondered before they were wiped from existence was what had just happened.

*

A subjective instant later Markus emerged halfway to the edge of the square that the Watchtower sat at the centre of, ten metres above the ground. As he fell, the Precinct exploded in the greatest display of fireworks seen in the Legatos system for four thousand years. The destruction of the Legatos Fortress Precinct would be called by Legata residents “the biggest explosion since the Imperial Navy and the Nomads had clashed in the skies above us,” referring of course to one of the million or so battles fought during the Imperial Commonwealth’s rise to power during the Great War.

The shockwave caught Markus in mid fall and sent him skidding across thirty metres of ground. A hot wind singed hair and dried the moisture off of his body. Flaming wreckage was raining from the sky, to crash like falling comets across the whole of Legata proper. When the wind dies down, Markus rolled onto his back and pushed himself up.

The once mighty Watchtower lay in ruins, with almost four hundred thousand people killed by the explosion. He saw glowing metal hurtle through the air, black smoke coil up into the atmosphere. The gardens were starting to burn.

Markus got to his feet and looked to Magnus, who was only ten metres away. Markus thought he should speak, ask what to do next, but his words were cut off as a hand grabbed him and a great strength flung him bodily into Magnus. They both hit ground hard, tangled into one. Storm forcefully extricated Markus from himself and pushed him away.

“Delgado, and Officer Storm?” asked Melkum Harst, his face twisted with fury, his hands clenched into tight fists “Hello! You killed them all. Prepare to die.”

[Tiger Ace]

NICE, though I was suprised they survived, I honestly thought this was the last chapter.

[Hawkwings]

wow, awesome story!

...though so many references/ripoffs of Half-Life 2 that it's painful. Oh yes, and the elevators are a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Am I missing something? Why did they try to arrest him in the first place. All of a sudden he was a fugitive and a robot went nuts.

P.S. Markus' appartment is identical to Bruce Willis' appartment in 5th Element, and the flying chinese restraunt-boat is also from 5th element.

[Ford Prefect]

NICE, though I was suprised they survived, I honestly thought this was the last chapter.

You were? You thought this was the last chapter? Cool.

wow, awesome story!

Thankyou.

...though so many references/ripoffs of Half-Life 2 that it's painful.

Tell me about it. This first came about during my HL2 phase. With any luck they should dissapear into the mists of time and space.

Am I missing something? Why did they try to arrest him in the first place. All of a sudden he was a fugitive and a robot went nuts.

No, you shouldn't really know why they tried to arrest him in the first place (if anyone does know, they're precognitive). There are clues though. Just don't question the mysterious movements of the Knights.

And Hawkings, Chewie, have a Noprize each for nabbing those.

[darthdavid]

You rock man.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I saw 5th element the day before I read this, so it wasn't hard. And thanks for clearing up the arrest thing, I thought I was going nuts.

[Hawkwings]

does this have anything to do with... pre-crime? From Minority Report?

[Ford Prefect]

No.

Though there are psychics involved in police work and such, the evidence they present is rarely accepted in court (Inaccuracy and all). Also, near perfect precognition is not present in most psychics. Rest assured that they did not predict Markus doing anything, but rather managed to get a rather inaccurate picture of events from getting a psychic to review the scene.

[Ford Prefect]

The Logical World

Chapter Seven

Hold Tight London

Melkum Hurst kneaded his knuckles unconsciously as the Enforcer pushed himself to his feet and the librarian sat stunned on the ground. Nearly a kilometre away the once noble Precinct blazed and Arbiter Harst wept inwardly for the good men and women whose’ lives had been snatched away from them. More so he lamented the death of his partner. Almost twenty five years they had worked together, but now she was dead.

No guns were drawn by either of the Enforcers. Harst suspected that Storm might have been feeling guilt, for helping to commit this act of murder, against his own comrades, no less. It was well within Harst’s abilities to draw and shoot them both, but he decided not to. It would be far more satisfying to drive their heads into ground.

Magnus was not prepared for the arbiter’s bull-rush; his head was still spinning from the concussive blast-wave that he had just helped cause. Harst hit, shoulder forward, picking Magnus up and tossing him back ten feet. Storm tumbled and came to a halt on his back, gasping for breath.

Markus began to push himself away, but Harst had grabbed him by the front of his clothes, hauling him effortlessly into the air. Markus struggled, one hand desperately and futilely prying at the iron tight grip. The other cocked back into a readied fist, and he threw and equally desperate punch at the arbiter, an effort that was responded by Harst grabbing Markus’ fist.

He could feel the bones begin to give way, and he could see Magnus pushing himself to his feet. He also noticed that a dull ache was spreading from his shoulder; the stimms were wearing off.

Harst released his grip briefly, dropping Markus and catching his throat. He felt a slow, crushing force closing his airways off. Markus’ eyes bulged and he gasp for breath, even as Storm finally got to his feet. Black spots exploded in front of his vision, and he was sure he was about to die. It was then that Markus’ robot showed up, landing heavily, one hand planting firmly into the stone ground. He head turned to look at Harst and his crushing of Markus’ throat.

Arbiter Harst dropped Markus in surprise and the librarian hit the ground sucking in deep lung fulls of air. Harst turned to face the robot as the robot got to its full height. They stared at each other. The red mechanoid tore forward, a massive metal fist ploughing into the arbiter’s chest. The blow pitched Harst back more than a hundred metres, ending the standoff.

Markus and Magnus both came to the robot, then they turned to look back at the Watchtower.

*

“Barely half an hour ago, the Legata Overwatch Precinct was destroyed in a massive explosion, killing all inside.” The reporter was standing a good kilometre away from the still-smoking ruins, Predator helicopters in the air behind her, and even larger Pearlcutter gunships from the closest airbase. “I’m here with Arbiter Melkum Harst, now most senior of officers on Legatos, and in charge of the investigations,” the picture changed to show Harst, standing straight and tall as always, no worse for wear than his encounter with the robot.

“Arbiter Harst, any clues on how this happened?” The reporter asked, and Harst was silent for a moment.

“The Imulsion Reactor at the heart of the Precinct was sabotaged.” He said evenly, as though it wasn’t that big a deal.

“Sabotage? Isn’t that a somewhat large assumption to make?”

Harst did not point out to the reporter, and to the billions watching, that the chances of an Imulsion Reactor going into a catastrophic opening sequence, on its own, was literally astronomical.

“I make no assumptions. This was sabotage and I know who did it. And let you all be assured that I will hunt them down and bring them to justice for what they have done.” He stared into the camera, despite what he would have been told before hand “The murder of four hundred thousand good men and women of the Overwatch as well as the li-”

The broadcast’s sound cut out, and Jonas bashed his fist onto the table, facing the people firmly entrenched in his rebellious cell “What do we have to say about that!” he shouted.

The group roared its collective approval. There weren’t many of them, it turned out. In the grand scheme of things, you couldn’t afford many actual members inside society. Too many potential leaks to deal with. The blow they had struck was gargantuan, of course, but it drew unwanted attention. With the vicious Arbiter Harst out for justice, and knowing that both Markus and Magnus, and also this robot, were involved, staying on Legatos was dangerous.

It was Hamish MacDougal who spoke up, an Imperial Army veteran with only one leg. He’d been struck hard by a sudden economic depression in the Cygnus Arm, and so the Army had not replaced his leg, either with a vat grown replacement or a proper bionic. “We can’t stay,” he said from behind his enormous walrus moustache “That’s an attack that’ll be replied with extreme prejudice. Martial law, blanket sensor scans, building searches.”

Jonas scratched his salt and pepper beard “I suppose we won’t survive it then.”

MacDougal shook his head while electronics expert and dataslicer Max (no last name given) added some input “Focussed scanner sweeps will burn through any stealth precautions we’ve taken, or detect them. Sub-etha investigations will reveal all calls made between the Watchtower and anywhere, and will also allow them to track the teleportals we made.” He shrugged his shoulders dejectedly “I can’t do anything to stop this; even if I could get a link up to any ships or satellites, an Imperial Encryption Maze is a tough nut to crack, secretly, and they’ll have dozens, not to mention the practically endless barrier walls.”

“So, Legatos is now unsafe. Harri, do you think we can get out of here?”

He was addressing a small woman that Markus had only met briefly, when Steve had introduced her as a naval pilot. Markus found her rather attractive, and though she was short, her legs seemed to go on for, well, ever. He also noticed that she regarded him with a sort of dissatisfied disinterest.

She spoke up “The Thunderchild is always ready to fly Jonas. But martial law means we won’t be allowed to take off.”

“Then we blast our way out.” Rick Harst suggested grimly. His suggestion was met with bitter silence. The idea of running the defence picket was less than preferable, to say the least. Jonas looked concerned.

“Well, I suppose we have only one other choice. If we stay, we will most likely be found, and then summarily executed. We will run.” He certainly didn’t look happy about the idea. “We’d have to be quick, and hope they don’t get the pickets up before we jump out of the system.”

Jonas was referring to the grav-pickets designed for interdiction. They could generate what amounted to a stellar level gravity well across a considerable portion of space. Most drive systems couldn’t operate in the presence of such a strong mass shadow. And the orbitals were designed to destroy very large ships. They’d never escape the devastating force of the artificially generated mass shadows before they were perforated by grasers and kinetic kill missiles.

And that was assuming they got past the fearsome patrols of Pearlcutters which, while not as fast as fighter craft, carried enough firepower to level most cities to rubble. Then there was the aerospace assets themselves. Super fast and capable of following a ship into space, they’d pose a considerable threat.


Harri scratched her nose “I never said it would be easy, but I can do it.”

“Than it’s settled.” Jonas straightened up, but the frown didn’t leave his face.

*

Markus stared up at Thunderchild.

It was an Epoch class Guncutter. It was a big machine, to say the least. It certainly wasn’t a bloated cargo hauler – it was a gunship, designed with speed in mind, and payload delivery. Markus knew next nothing about space craft, but he knew one thing; The Thunderchild would have been expensive. Looking at it, even though it wasn’t exactly a gleaming ship, it was an advanced piece of machinery that would have been bought with Swiss Metabonds, or at least Imperial Pounds.

The robot nudged Markus with its foot. They were carrying parts of the teleportal array (or rather, the robot was carrying most of the teleportal array, and Markus had whatever was left over). It had been fairly difficult, secretly moving all the equipment that was deemed important from the warehouse to the hangar in the spaceport.

They stepped into the gondola that had been lowered from one of the holds. Markus thought nothing of being winched up into the ship, but the robot did. It wondered why this ship, a particularly advanced gunship, would still be using an actual pulley system, when such devices as anti-grav lifts would have been more efficient. It considered the make of ship they were going to make use of, a Boeing model, to be sure, and fairly young. Perhaps the group’s economic status precluded the use of such things, which weren’t standard on a ship such as this one.

Markus looked the boxes into the floor via the use of heavy industrial grade locks built into their bottoms. The equipment was apparently very expensive, and not quite as robust as one would hope, so it was vital that it stay in its place, not only through the box-locks, but through artificial-gravity and electromagnetic locking mechanisms as well.

Markus and the robot stepped back onto the elevator and dropped back down to the armasteel floor, before making their way around to the main entrance ramp beneath the Thunderchild’s considerable bulk.

“Exciting, isn’t it?” asked Vermont Callum, sitting cross-leggedly at the bottom of the ramp.

“I suppose it is.” Markus replied, though he wasn’t really sure you could call a run though a gauntlet of powerful weaponry, even in a well-armoured vessel such as the Thunderchild, ‘exciting’.

“I have to say, I never thought we’d ever end up doing much,” Callum mused, before pushing himself to his feet “We made plans, we talked about ways to make the Imperial Commonwealth ‘stay honest’, as it were.

“We liberated Aulfred from the Scientific Union, taking away the lead researcher in their Sub-etha Transport program, thus taking away a useful an important technology from the Empire.” He paused for effect and made a Mannerism, popularised in the early twenty first century as the preferred method of punctuating one’s speech.

“But that was it,” he finished after a short and well placed silence, “We made contact with people, with other anti-Imperial groups – we even tried to get in contact with aliens like the Chossok, the Johanik and even the Nomads (although they all failed), but till now, we had never actually done anything decidedly anti-Imperial.” He smiled wryly “Til you came along, we had nothing to offer the larger resistances.”

“Do we now?” Markus asked.

“Well, we destroyed an entire Precinct of Overwatch, minus the two cordons out after your robot friend here.” They walked up the ramp into the guncutter, the entrance to the main hold to Markus’ left, the engine room to his right. “The death of almost half a million soldiers of the Empire, though not even a pinprick in the grand scheme of things, is a noticeable act. Other groups will take notice, especially considering we have perhaps the only working Teleportal Array in the entire galaxy. Care to join me in the cockpit?”

Markus nodded, and followed Callum towards the ladder up, pausing briefly to tell the robot to go into the main hold. He watched the great writer grab a hold of one of the ladder’s rungs and pull himself up, floating straight up. He stepped up to the ladder and felt a sudden weight loss. Looking up he saw Callums feet disappear.

Sighing, Markus followed suit, pushing off the floor with great distaste. He hated null-gravity tubes with a vengeance, despite their convenience and space saving abilities. But then again, there was a lot of fairly ordinary technology that Markus disliked, possibly stemming from his love of books or a traumatic experience with a self-aware soup dispenser. Perhaps both.

After passing through five decks and floating past more than one person on their way down (and being passed by one on her way up), Callum grabbed his arm when he hit the buffer field at the very top of the shaft and yanked him from the null-grav field. Markus stumbled stupidly for several moments before he regained control of himself. Callum frowned at him, then walked the short distance towards a white door marked with red. As he approached, the red turned green and the door slid apart.

Markus stepped inside and the door shut behind him. The cockpit as Callum had called it should really have been referred to as a bridge, considering its size and the size of the Thunderchild.

The bridge itself wasn’t exactly large (unlike some ships of the line who had bridges capable of holding hundreds of people at a time), containing various consoles and some comfortable looking chairs, some of which were inhabited. Jonas himself was standing just behind one of the most forward chairs, that belonging to Harri.

“I see,” he was saying “Very well Paradise Control, I’ll standby for clearance to launch.” He nodded at Rick Harst, who Markus soon surmised was running communications, which was ironic in a way.

“Well, it looks like we can’t leave. They won’t open the doors for us.” He said, although he didn’t look all that concerned.

“There are Pearlcutters out there as well, Jonas.” Max said, spinning around in his chair next to Harri’s “A half dozen, two levels up.”

Jonas walked towards the midpoint of the bridge and scratched his nose “We should be done loading the Thunderchild.”

“The, uh, Teleportal Array was one of the last things to be loaded on,” Markus offered helpfully “And I did that before coming aboard.”

“Thankyou Markus,” Jonas replied “Harri, fire her up.”

*

Paradise Spaceport is a honeycombed structure designed around a series of shafts hundreds of metres deep, lined with docking bays for aerospace craft. Steve had rented out Shaft 8, Bay 6849 not long before he had bought the Thunderchild for the resistance. It was located almost four hundred metres down into Shaft 8 and featured a three foot thick armasteel blast door.

It was currently locked down, along with the other fifteen thousand bays of Shaft 8, just like in every one of the thirty other shafts. Currently six Pearlcutter pattern gunships were circling their way down the shaft. As had been predicted, a lot of activity in regards to the attack on the Watchtower had been traced to the docks area, and it always payed to have men on the scene.

The gunships reacted almost instantly the sudden build up of power levels in Bay 6849. They swooped down, taking up position as a semi-circle before the blast door.

One of the Pearlcutter’s co-pilots scanned the bay, while simultaneously bringing up the file on the owner of the bay and the owner’s ship. She managed to gasp before a bolt of energy hit her gunship, blowing it to fragments.

The other gunships danced away, strafing and pulling up from the now vaporised door as the Thunderchild dashed into the shaft. The Pearlcutters spun and unleashed hypersonic missile death from their mass drivers. The potent explosives exploded against the negatively charged shield wall the guncutter sported.

The ship went from horizontal to vertical (though inside the ship no one noticed thanks to the wonders of artificial gravity), graser turrets opening fire on the nimble Pearlcutters. In the few seconds before the Thunderchild fully activated its considerably powerful drive systems, those gunships that had not been able to outperform the turrets tracking abilities had been destroyed.

The shaft doors were closing, but the speed of the doors wasn’t quite fast enough and in less than a second the Thunderchild had left the shaft. One of the two remaining gunships in Shaft 8 managed to get out before the doors closed; the other did not, and it came close to being violently decelerated from the speed of sound to zero by the unrelenting steel of the main door.

Dozens upon dozens of gunships boiled from the spaceport shafts as the Thunderchild left her shaft. They opened fire with their belt-fed mass driver missile launchers, their energy weapons, and at closer ranges their heavy duty chainguns. It was a formidable hail of fire, and while the shielding of the Thunderchild were formidable as well, they would not stand up to hundreds upon hundreds of narrow radius blast effect missiles rated in the hundreds of megatons.

Needlessly to say it did not stick around, accelerating to speeds that the Pearlcutters could not hope to match.

Markus was gripping tightly to the wall, his heart hammering in his chest. The second they had opened fire on the docking bay door, reducing a hole easily big enough to fit the Thunderchild through to nothing but vapour in seconds, his knees had gone very weak. As the light blue sky changed to velvety black in moments he realised his was far out of his league. He also knew his life was seriously at risk when the Pearlcutters had started throwing around their considerable firepower.

“Start tunnelling!” Jonas snapped, using the short hand for ‘activate the Moledrive and get a wormhole open’. His orders were followed when someone cursed loudly.

“Shit! They got their grav-pickets up.”

Outside the ship, orbitals received their orders and started tracking the Thunderchild, lances of destructive energy filling the void in her wake. The ship was pulling an acceleration of at least twenty eight thousand gravities, but still most shots were close, and others still splashed against the ship's shields. Missile launchers attempted to burn through the high-powered electronic countermeasures denying them a true target lock.

“Jonas,” Harri said calmly, “Make a decision very quickly. They’ll have us soon and we’ll last maybe eight seconds against their weapons.” She hauled back on her controls as Jonas stood thinking, even as the shields took yet more glancing hits.

She rotated in space, still continuing on at her previous speed, before her engines overcame this backward motion. The Thunderchild raced off again, manoeuvring engines neutered her previous movement. Orbitals tried to reaffirm their target locks, trying to disable the ship so it could be boarded. Mag-pulse missiles would facilitate this – graser beams would punch holes through their engine blocks.

The Thunderchild could not hop to escape at this rate, the orbitals would track them and continue firing for millions of kilometres, and aboard the guncutter Jonas knew this. His daring escape was going to end unless he made a decision.

“Celsius Drive. We’ll use that.” He said in a low tone.

“Without a Navigator?” Callum raised his eyebrows incredulously “Are you insane?”

“It has to be done. Max, lock onto the Lighthouse closest to this side of Legatos.” Jonas order was a desperate one, and it was going to be close. MacDougal had called out the existence of incoming missiles, and even as the turrets rolled around to open fire, they all knew it wasn’t enough.

Markus felt a sudden knot appear in his guts. He grasped at his stomach and stumbled backwards into the door which opened helpfully for him. He hit the floor painfully and the bridge door slid shut on him.

The missiles drew closer.

Einsteinian Reality twisted and snapped.

The missiles detonated.

The Thunderchild stretched out twisted towards the billowing point the powerful Celsius Drive had torn into existence.

The magnetic pulses drew close to the unnaturally twisted ship and she zipped into the Slipspace foam.

The Slipspace Transition had taken only a few seconds, and there had really been no way for it to be stopped. The Thunderchild had disappeared into a higher plain of reality, and was even now accelerating far, far away from Legatos.

[darthdavid]

Is this gonna be similar to what happened in the Lost In Space movie?

[Tiger Ace]

at the end.

That reminded me of Abseloution gap.

[Ford Prefect]

Is this gonna be similar to what happened in the Lost In Space movie?

Nope.

And Ace, what's Absolution Gap? I've never heard of it?

[Tiger Ace]

GREAT Hard Sci-fi. Well..not hard but makes use of science extensivly.

[Ford Prefect]

I'll take it as a compliment then :p. Although I myself would prefer to not make to much use of science (which is different to ignoring it completely), unless it can highlight a particular scene. As it is I would be afraid of bogging it down in psuedoscience *gasp!*.