"Hearken" VI - Our Inevasible Fate (389 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by prophet (View user info) at 2005-10-25 14:46:08 EDT
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS OF "HEARKEN YON, O CHILD":
Chapter I - "Lonely Soul": http://www.ubersite.com/m/43146
Chapter II - "Dream Deferred": http://www.ubersite.com/m/44192
Chapter III - "An Itch of the Mind": http://www.ubersite.com/m/47585
Chapter IV - "Dawn of Awareness": http://www.ubersite.com/m/55411
Chapter V - "Essence of Divinity": http://www.ubersite.com/m/69014
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
26-Mar-2041
__________
Twenty-eight long and bleak years of human existence had passed since the face of the world changed completely.
To the biped ape descendants of Earth, the present moment in time was represented by a commonly accepted date of March 26th, 2041 CE.
Yet a small faction survived on the planet that didn't consider themselves quite human-- and consequently, didn't play by the rules laid in place by the rest of mankind... not even the ones the rest of mankind believed to be set in stone.
A faction hidden away in the cold and barren wastelands of central Australia, once marked by beautiful sweeping plains of grass and open deserts before it was used as the dumping grounds for hazardous waste and obselete technology.
A faction both the greatest progeny of and the greatest affront to God since the dawn of Man.
Perhaps the base of operations for their clandestine operations would have been discovered if any man dared venture into the wind-scorched and dusty flats where it resided, but the loads of scrap metal and ancient silicon electronics deposited there were left only by automatons that could move unhampered by the irradiated barrels of foul sludge littering the landscape.
Those among the Outsiders who knew anything of this mysterious brotherhood knew well enough to speak only of what they'd heard or seen in a voice softer than a whisper, and only in the safest of places.
For these ones known only to a select few humans as the Society, the date was recorded as 4-5-2-6-5: the fifth rotation, sixth segment, second stage, fifth cycle, fourth octet of the New Aeon.
Yet to the members of that Society, that categorization of the passage of time was as inherently empty and meaningless in substance as the illusory construct it chronicles.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Francesca tapped her stylus impatiently on her desk as she waited for the seconds to slowly tick by, turning over into minutes, hours and eventually, the end of her shift. A young receptionist living and working on the outskirts of neourban Sicily, she had a pale face shaped by delicate features as if gently chiseled from living marble, and framed by shimmering wavy locks of hair that ran just past her shoulders, black as the moonless night outside.
It was just a hair past eleven PM, and she was not even halfway through her night's post at the seldom visited Guicamo Heavy Industries building when a tall man, fashionably dressed in dark slacks and a black, skin-tight Nuvex shirt strode into the lobby. His skin was even lighter than hers, an alabaster white usually reserved for those with a melanin disorder-- yet the color of his hair marked a further exaggeration of her own dark curls, straight and long enough to run down the full of his back, and so deep in its inky hue that it made the black Nuvex shirt appear gray in contrast.
The receptionist had never seen the man before. She was obligated to take his information and compare it to the authorization list hovering two inches in front of a square glass eyepiece she wore over one eye. Her job depended on the enforcement of security policies that left little room for negotiation, and although she was of petite stature and incapable of physically defending the property, a press of a single panic button would lock all exits, separate her working space from the rest of the room with an incapacitating electric barrier comprised of highly ionized air, and artificially increase the gravity outside of it tenfold.
Guicamo was a strict business, as were all corporations of the era. Automatons had replaced all blue collar jobs a good two decades prior. The standard of education was high enough that every person, by fifteen years of age, had the wealth of knowledge a college graduate possessed half a century earlier. As such, businesses could afford to consider their hired help expendable while millions of erudite citizens starved in the alleys between the monolithic highrises. Shelters of huddled masses shivered in areas formerly temperate, the sun's rays turned away by the thick smog gathering around the tops of the looming black buildings whose alloy-fashioned surfaces reflected no light.
"Salve!" called Francesca after the man, in an attempt to initiate conversation and perhaps receive an explanation for how he managed to enter the building without her unlocking the front door.
The unidentified guest did not respond. He merely looked over his shoulder through a set of apparently opaque lenses, and smiled.
The young and pretty receptionist smiled back, reached over, and nonchalantly pressed a small black button.
Lab Four's entryway slid open with a pneumonic hiss, the tall man briskly stepping inside.
For a passing second, Francesca found herself strangely amused by the improbability of any man being able to come and go without requiring traditional authorization. It had never happened before in the six years she worked for Guicamo... let alone twice in one night.
Yet as out of place as the incident was, she hardly felt the need to dwell upon it, and brushed it off as one of the anomalies that came with her work. After all, she wouldn't have let either of them in unless they were very important.
Yes, she reassured herself-- those two men were probably close friends with Mr. Guicamo himself.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The only human beings who would ever be gifted with the secrets of the Society, for the duration of the totality of human existance, were an elite few called the Chosen.
The Chosen were those who were born into the Society in the first octet of the New Aeon-- from the beginning of the year 2013 to the end of 2020 by the common standard-- when the faction's ranks was formed from those born of flesh. Though standard reproductive means were still utilized in this fleeting and human-dependant era of the Society's advancement, the Chosen were gifted with talents only achievable through genetic engineering upon their unborn feti. Genge was a field the Outsiders barely scraped the surface of in the 21st century, mostly due to the religious and cultural meme complexes the populace at large still had trouble relinquishing. Such would be their undoing.
Yet it was not these talents that made the Chosen unique among all beings on Earth. Their successors in the Society-- the Kritam (or Created Ones)-- would possess far greater abilities than their own.
Rather, they were both unique and most valued among mankind because of the one quality they possessed that the Created did not:
Free and independant will.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Thomas stopped for a moment to survey his surroundings as the thick white doors slowly closed behind him, locking together with a muffled metallic click. The receptionist had seemed well intentioned, albeit weak-minded, and Thomas almost wished she hadn't accepted the mental suggestion he gave her so easily. She would probably end up taking a lot of abuse in her life if she didn't learn to build some resolve.
He smiled inwardly at the ease of his mission thus far as he walked forward between two rows of electronic components and tools encased in transparent, sterilized engineering cubes two feet to a side, turning over just how simple the job had been in his mind. For a brief moment, a grateful feeling washed over him for the opportunity to be doing something less taxing than his regular assignments. That feeling passed quickly, however, as he recalled bitterly that nobody employed the costly services of the Syndicate unless they were absolutely necessitated. He was in a different line of work now, and he knew that he would never enjoy such a thing as easy work again.
It was at about the same moment Thomas had this epiphany and was launched into a state of heightened awareness as a result of it that he perceived an active attack taking place on his subjective reality. Something was attempting to fog over a part of his capacity to apprehend his surroundings coherently.
Not a moment too soon, Thomas opened his mind and really "looked" at the room for the first time. Seeing something of what he had expected, he phased two meters backward in a fraction of a second as three darts, each bearing lethal poisons upon their impossibly sharp points, flew through his afterimage and sunk to the hilt into the tempered metal of the floor.
Having a brief moment to spare while his unseen enemy recuperated from the failed assault, Thomas silently wondered if he'd ever have another moment of real, unpeturbed rest before the grave... and then smiled again as he concluded:
"There simply isn't ever any rest for the wicked."
User Reviews
Submitted by Chinaski (user info) at 2005-10-25 15:01:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
awesome
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-10-25 14:55:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment