Dreams Forsaken: and Other Short Stories Read online

  “Earthquake!” the girl exclaimed as she leapt up to take my hand.

  I thought she would lead me to the stairs, a pointless gesture as we would never make it. But she pulled me straight for the single pane window overlooking the street below.

  I tried to protest, but her slim hands grabbed my upper arms in a vice like grip and with deliberate intent, she flung herself backwards through the window, dragging me after her.

  Down we plummeted, surrounded by shards of sparkling glass refracting neon light.

  She held me tightly as we plunged down, her wide eyes locked on mine. I wished I could switch places with her, that I could somehow break her fall and save her life.

  Yet just before impact, she drew her knees and lower legs beneath me and bent her arms. Then as we impacted the unforgiving pavement, she used her arms and legs like shock absorbers to cushion my fall.

  Due to her efforts, instead of dying instantly, I landed on top of her, receiving only light bruises. Her arms and legs collapsed upon concrete shattered by her fall.

  The ground still pitched and yawed beneath us, but I had eyes only for the nameless girl who had died saving me. I knew I should make for the nearest open space, but could not tear myself from her.

  Suddenly, her dark eyes snapped open.

  “Are you okay?” I asked incredulously.

  “Ow?” she said, eyes sparkling humorously.

  “Ow?! How can you be alive?” I stammered. Her fall had broken the sidewalk!

  Rolling me off her, the girl regained her feet and dragged me by the hand towards a nearby park, limping badly. The ground continued heaving to and fro as glass, wood and broken masonry from surrounding buildings bombarded the street about us.

  “Run!” she ordered.

  “Who, or what are you?” I gasped.

  “An artificial person, a prototype,” she said.

  “A robot?”

  “In effect.”

  “Doishite - why did you risk yourself to save me? You could have been destroyed,” I panted as we ran.

  “Because you treated me as a person - no one has done that before.”

  We reached the relative safety of the park and I collapsed to regain my breath. She sat beside me with some difficulty, due to her damaged left leg. “I never caught your name,” I asked.

  “Eiko.”

  “It suits you,” I said, smiling. Eiko was Japanese for grace.

  Short Memories

  A meaty fist pounded the reinforced plasteel door. “This is Captain Heydrich of the Geheime Globalpolizei—open up!”

  The vidscreen beside the door flickered to life, revealing a young man’s face. “This is an independent arcology. Your authority is not recognized here, Gestapo.”

  “Our global mandate gives us free access to all arcologies, fool. You have five seconds,” snarled the black uniformed police officer.

  Five seconds elapsed but the door remained steadfastly shut. The young captain lifted a hand to summon his men. Two rushed forth and using a universal-key, had the door open in seconds.

  A dozen Geheime Globalpolizei sprinted into the house, taser prods to the fore. The young man from the vidscreen tried to deny their entry but Captain Heydrich tasered him senseless without breaking his stride.

  Ten minutes of sensor sweeps enabled the police to locate the fifty-seventh floor apartment’s secret room, its door hidden seamlessly in a pantry wall. Falling prey to the universal-key, the door slid open to reveal two people in a laboratory crammed with state of the art medical apparatus.

  “Stay away!” shouted one occupant, a woman in her thirties.

  “We have a warrant for your arrest, Senator Lena Schmidt. We are launching an investigation into your arcology’s uncanny ability to predict social and market trends way above the norm. Clandestine investigations revealed…” the captain’s voice faded away in shock. Then, pointing at the wrinkled, white haired elderly man beside the woman, he gasped: “What is that?”

  “Niklas Stein, my eighty year old grandfather,” the woman protested.

  “Terminate him!” the captain ordered.

  A Geheime Globalpolizei thumbed his taser to full power and thrust it at the elderly man, but leaping in front of him, the senator took the taser’s full discharge upon her brow. The acrid stench of burnt flesh filled the laboratory as she collapsed to the floor.

  Tears cascading down weathered cheeks like diamonds on sackcloth, Niklas Stein knelt beside his granddaughter’s still form to cradle her head. “Am I really such a threat? Or do you merely seek to hide the truth that there are those such as myself who are immune to the biologically engineered genetic flaw that causes all humans to ‘ascend’ or die at forty-five?”

  “Do not play games with me, old man. How is it that you live?” the captain hissed.

  “There is a power that transcends our arrogant human genetic tinkering,” Niklas shot back. “The aged are a necessary part of society, Captain.”

  “Rubbish. Catastrophic worldwide overpopulation and financially unmaintainable aged populations were cured by the introduction of the ascension policy.”

  “The ‘ascension’ policy introduced ninety years ago did not fix that problem, Captain. In fact, by removing the elderly, we removed the most important human generation of all—the grandparents’ generation. Without the knowledge, memories and wisdom of grandparents, our society is doomed to making the same mistakes again and again,” Niklas explained.

  “What mistakes?” shouted the captain.

  “Did you know that recently formed Neu-Globalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei is the third such regime to form within the last seventy years? And that each regime has followed in its predecessor’s footsteps? Past experiences allow me to predict that your regime will soon attempt to subvert all independent arcologies, and that minority groups which do not fit into your world view will be quietly ascended.”

  “I do not believe you.”

  “Captain, not only have I lived through this twice, but I also remember each previous regime being overthrown after a massive loss of life. Your regime will also fail,” the old man confirmed.

  “So the senator used you, her grandparent, and your knowledge to predict social and economic trends?”

  Niklas shook his head. “No, Captain, she did not use me. My granddaughter loved and respected me, and valued my wisdom. That is why our arcology has flourished.”

  “So, Grandfather, if you can predict trends so well, why did you not foresee my arrival today?” smirked the captain.

  “Who says I didn’t?” Niklas murmured, pointing at cluttered laboratory benches. “Discovery was inevitable, so it gives me great pleasure to inform you that you are too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “Three days ago we released an untraceable compound into the world’s water supplies. The biologically engineered genetic flaw that causes all people to die at forty-five has been neutralized.”

  All Geheime Globalpolizei stepped back involuntarily.

  “Captain, I hope you survive the pending war, live to a ripe old age, and become a grandparent like myself. Restoring the grandparents’ generation is the only way to address the problem of your short memories.”

  * * *

  Geheime Globalpolizei – Secret Global Police

  Arcology – an enormous, completely self-contained, self-sufficient city.

  Neu-Globalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei – New Global Socialist Party

  Replicate

  “The CD cases and discs are covered with scuff marks - these ain’t bootlegs - they’re the genuine article! Where’d you get them, Sis? They’re practically priceless!” I gasped.

  Sitting beside me on the bunk bed, Katiana squeezed my hand. “Happy Birthday, Bro. You are happy, right?”

  “You think I’m faking this, Kiddo? I’ve been searching for these antiques for decades. And here you are giving me all three twenty-first century Ami Takahashi Virtual trance presents ami trance albums!” Although elated, a glance
at her ruined face sent excruciating pangs of guilt shooting through my stomach. Decades had passed since she took that bullet in the face, but I would never become accustomed to the sight of her once beautiful features marred by translucent synthetic skin covering polymer muscles and ceramic bone replacements.

  “Thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Pleased doesn’t even begin to describe it, Sis,” I said. “I want to hear them now - you think I can skip the presentation?”

  “Come on, Mike, you’re a war hero. Go get your medal. Then we can jack into the net and pop these albums on continuous play until we’re all ‘tranced’ out.”

  With great reluctance I handed the discs back to her and stood to straighten my uniform.

  Reality, however, took a right turn into the realm of hallucinatory dreams when the ami trance 2 disc disintegrated into a cloud of microscopic dust - dust which of its own accord preceded to envelope my sister’s exposed arm.

  “Arrr…ungh…get them off me!” Katiana shrieked as her skin began absorbing the dust. It was like watching a mold spore’s explosion played backwards in slow motion.

  I swatted frantically at the dust but this barely even impeded its progress. In a moment all traces of it were gone - assimilated by her arm. She tried to grab me but collapsed to the metal decking, back arched in agony while mouthing voiceless screams.

  The door chimed.

  This was no coincidence - the timing was too precise.

  “Open,” I snapped.

  The door swished open to admit two corporate-types in black suits and mirror shades: illegal arms dealers.

  “What have you done to my sister?”

  “Cooperate and we’ll remove the nanites. Don’t and we’ll let them replicate - inside her.”

  “What do you want?”

  A suit stepped forward. “The president pins a medal on your chest in two hours, Mister War Hero. Thanks to his orbital’s dampening field rendering our nanotech inactive, we can’t touch him. So you’re going to terminate him for us.”

  Aghast, I looked at my sister as she writhed on the floor. Eight thousand orbitals had warred for seven centuries resulting in the deaths of millions. President Berenger not only brokered the ceasefire but also maintained the peace. Remove him, and the conflict would resume.

  “You have any idea of how much she loves you? She spent a decade’s wages buying those ‘albums’ from us. You just gonna let us waste her?” the suit said.

  His words cut to me to the core. But the proof of her selfless love for me was not these CDs, but her fearsome injuries - injuries that should have been mine. I hung my head, defeated. “I’ll do it.”

  “Of course you will. Now hold out your left hand.”

  The ami trance 3 disc dissolved into another cloud of nanites that my outstretched left hand absorbed in seconds. Paralysed, I watched in dismay as the nanites opened my hand, rebuilt the bones inside into a fully functional needle gun that was undetectable by known security devices, and then closed up the wound. The nanites poured back out of me.

  “When Berenger pins the medal to your chest, make a fist, aim it at him, and squeeze the hand.”

  I was trapped and I knew it. I made for the door.

  The suit touched my shoulder on the way past. “It takes an hour for replicating nanites to consume a human host. I’m told the pain is beyond human comprehension. Don’t fail.”

  * * *

  President Berenger was pinning a medal on my copilot’s chest. I was next.

  I thought of my sister, contorted in agony, waiting for release. Her life was in my hand, literally. Two long centuries of memories flashed through my mind. Oh, the times we had spent together, the things we had seen. The support we had given to Berenger as he fought to end the chaos.

  My face burned as guilt consumed me. Everything that so many had worked for, for so long, would collapse when I assassinated the only man whom could maintain the peace. The government would fall, chaos would ensue, the illegal arms traders would resume their lucrative business, and millions more would die as orbitals resumed open warfare - all because of me.

  Anger raged through me at the unfairness of having been placed in such a predicament. I knew what I was about to do was wrong, but what choice did I have? That bounty hunter’s bullet had my name on it, but my sister leapt in front of me, knowing what it would cost her. I owed her everything, and would not sacrifice her for some indeterminate greater good.

  Unaware of his imminent doom, President Berenger stood before me. He shook my right hand while he placed the medal on my chest.

  My pulse roared as I made a fist with my left hand and aimed it at his heart. One squeeze and it would be over. My sister would be safe, and the Orbital Coalition would collapse.

  “Well done, Wing Commander Daniels,” said the President. Then, for my ears only, “Thanks, Mike - I could not have done it without you.”

  I lowered the hand. “Forgive me, Sis,” I mouthed.

  A tear fell. My heart died.

  “You okay, friend?” asked the President, about to move on.

  “Emotional day, Sir.”

  Books by Peter R Stone

  Forager, Book One in the Forager Trilogy. Eighteen-year-old Ethan Jones lives in Newhome, a town built on the decaying ruins of post-apocalyptic Melbourne. A town ruled by the draconian paramilitary Custodians. When he rescues an enigmatic Japanese girl from the ferocious, savage Skel, she breaks the town's rigid conventions in her attempts to get to know him.

  Infiltrator, Book Two in the Forager Trilogy, available on Amazon Kindle and in paperback.

  Expatriate Book Three in the Forager Trilogy, available on Amazon Kindle and in paperback.