BLOGS

Running out of the doctor's office with Justin in tow, we tried to look inconspicuous as we got on the elevator. I did my part to look particularly robotic and Justin wiped the sweat off his face. The elevator had several people on it. Initially I did not pay them any attention until I turned my ears toward them and noted their incredibly fast heart rates. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. They has the heart rates of people engaged in a full out sprint. Their breathing was short and raspy. I pushed up against Justin's leg and he moved in the direction I pushed. His leg was hot and dry. He was already running a mild fever. All we could do was hope he would maintain until we got home. 

The two nervous people ran out of the elevator as if they were on fire and fled down the hallway away from the security station. As we got off the elevator, an alarm sounded, its high pitched repeating whine made me want to turn off my auditory sensors. Justin was counting on me. I tried to maintain an air of calm and was confident the paralytic I gave the doctor had not worn off sooner than it was supposed to. But judging from the behavior of the thronging masses already crowding the main doors, this had nothing to do with me.

"Cat, can you hear me? I am piggy backing off the security grid near where you are. There is a riot near the building you are in."

"Too late. I see it. Tell me there is another way out." I could see the Religious Police forming up outside with their shields and batons swinging. I could hear the alarms for the Active Denial System which should have them running away, but the people were wearing padded clothing, likely something designed to disrupt microwaves. So instead of beating, demoralized, screaming masses, the RPs were having to fight an aggressive and magically well-armed mob, as weaponry appeared from underneath jackets and long coats.

"All the security cameras tell me the building is surrounded and the crowd is ten or fifteen deep in some places. And more are coming every second, calculating escape avenues. Stay hot, Cat."

"A damn flash mob." I was disgusted. A fad started almost a century ago had been perfected in this age of implants and pocket computing. A flash mob could form in less than five minutes and be thousands strong in ten. Justin had moved toward one of the walls to lean against the cool marble while I deliberated on what to do. And then all hell broke loose.

The nervous and sweaty people who were on the elevator were now running down the corridor leading a thronging mass of shouting people. Without warning, the hallway was full of people who swung improvised clubs against anything or anyone not identified as a member of the flash mob. I tugged Justin alongside the wall near the security desk, but the mob just swept him up and pulled him into the tide.

The building's security team was immediately overcome like sand against the sea, even as they were firing their neural stunners. The masses just flowed over their downed comrades and kept coming. I tried to keep my eye on Justin but as one of the security people was waving his stun wand nearby, I was caught in its effect and had a cold-beam and video glitch. No more than fifteen seconds, but it was long enough. When I looked up again after my video feed reset, Justin was gone.

The mob was tearing into the Religious Police and began pushing them back. The mob was likely being updated in real time by someone who was not part of the attack on the ground but coordinating it from somewhere else. As the mob expanded, it became less controllable and more dangerous.

"I lost the boy." I tried altering my vision and swept the spectrum, but nothing helped differentiated Justin.

"I will try and lock onto his visor signal. I need you to use your cold beam for targeting." The House, Max, had a cool and professional sound to his voice. He didn't panic. 

I jumped up to the top of the security desk and then to the top of the scanning gateway, giving myself a nice fifteen foot height advantage. I turned my cold beam out onto the crowd and hoped to get a reply signal. The beam indicated dozens of interface units, but none of them responded with our preprogrammed code. I tried to gauge the flow of the crowd and turned to where I thought he might be moving. There. By the front door, he is moving outside. "Got him. I am going to try and grab him and get out of the crowd. Can you get us a cab? Two blocks down the street would be good."

"I'm on it. Don't lose him. Move fast, this is getting out of control."

I jumped down onto the heads and shoulders of a number of the pushing and shoving flash mob participants and by the time they realized what was happening, I have skipped from their heads to the next ones toward the mob outside. My weight always surprises them, but by the time I am felt, I am already gone. As I approach the doors, I see there is full scale fighting outside and the RPs, in their efforts to be humane are being trashed, surrounded and trampled. It looked like a full scale rout until I see and hear the roar of the black aero-drones of the Corporate Police.

Now, it was officially out of control.

"This area is surrounded. Lay down your weapons or you will be fired upon." The voice came from one of four triangular aircraft with an internally shielded rotor providing lift. These were smaller drones so they were likely unmanned. I could also see a number of ground vehicles pushing their way up the street, brutally running over anyone stupid enough to get in front of them. The teams that leapt from the back of them began stunning everything in sight and drew the ire of the crowd. The crowd, instead of being cowed, exploded into action, grabbing the RP's riot shields and equipment and turning this into a full-scale battle.

"This is your last warning! Cease and desist!"

And just like that, the Corporate Police were everywhere, corralling the shouting and crazed mob members but staying at the edge of the group. The aero-drones began moving closer to the center of the crowd and spread out to maximize their effect. Each point of the tri-cornered flying wedge mounted a sonic cannon bristling from beneath the ship, looking like a terrible claw of a black flying insect. Lights activated on the edge of the flying wedges indicating the weapons were hot.

"Cat, get out of there."

"I am just a few feet from him. I can't stop now."

I ran up to him and put my face against him. He grabs my still dragging leash and comes with me as I try to get through the crowd. I can see a large column not to far way and try to drag him toward it. He has hunkered down and pushed as hard as he can. He reaches the column and presses up against it.

I press my paws against his head and push him down low to the ground. People are hearing the warning siren of the aero-drones and taking their vengeance against any of the ground-based forces before the flying wedges fire. More Corporate Police vehicles arrive on the scene and they boiled out of their big black vehicles like ants, their weapons flashed and the terribly flying wedges fired systematically into the crowd. Their fire designed to demoralize and shatter the resolve of the mob, each sonic burst is calculated to spread the devastation across the entire group. They used ultrasonic weapons which struck into the crowd with destructive effect. Direct hits were shattered into piles of steaming meat by the beam of condensed sound and the splash of sonic energy cast a circle of crippling force, shredding flesh from bone, knocking people off their feet and rendering them unconscious, blood dripping from their noses, ears and eyes. The screams of panic now overpower the previous sounds of rabble-focused courage.

A man falls near Justin and I push Justin under his body, using the stunned man as a shield. A second blast resounds mere feet from us and the force of the weapon, blasted me away from Justin and over the crowd. I crash into the building's shatterproof glass and bounce to the ground. His human shield was nearly liquefied. All that is left is his skeleton as the flesh is ripped from his bones. But as I whirl away, I see Justin still moving and relatively uninjured, but covered in the flesh of that unknown man, before I lose sight of him. Once I land, I am in diagnostic mode and unable to move. The sonic weapon did not damage any of my vital duotronic processor systems but my physical superstructure required a systematic restart to determine if I was physically damaged. 

In a matter of moments, the riot was all but quelled, as the flash mob disappeared with the same speed it formed. There were hundreds of casualties and anyone who was unconscious on the scene was placed into one of the transports that arrived soon after. The Corporate Police moved with a terrible efficiency, gathering up identifying interface technology that survived their sonic weapons. The interface IDs were processed and then bagged, viscera still dripping from them. Their medical agents, dressed in white, rather than the normal Corporate Police black, tended the wounded before loading them into the vehicles.  

By the time, I had rebooted and the Corporate Police were approaching my location, they thought I was dead. As they reached for me, I jumped up and ran through their legs toward the truck that I saw the boy being carried to by one of the nurses. The nurse, a huge fellow, carried Justin as if he had no weight at all. He put him into the truck and into the hands of the other mob members. Many of the uninjured had a look of absolute terror on their faces and the Police stood at the of the truck making sure no one tried to escape. An aero-drone provided a more than menacing backup measure hovering behind him, its sonic cannons aimed into the vehicles.

Ducking out of sight, I had become one more strange thing in a day of strange things to the police and was just as quickly forgotten. The two nurses who were helping several of the mob who were a bit more injured than most were having a conversation whose tone I was not sure I liked.

"Why do they bother making us fix them up at all? I don't even see the point," said a attractive female with short brown hair. Her whites were covered in blood and she was still wiping her hands after depositing another survivor into the truck with her companion.

"You don't actually believe the myth of where they take the dissidents do you? That is just a media blurb. They get taken to the precinct and are released," said another young looking Indian fellow. He was a bit thin and his uniform bagged on his spare frame, flapping in the wind of the nearby aero-drones.

Brown hair retorted, "Hey new guy, get your head out of your ass. Does this look like the kind of scene you want anyone to tell people about? Haven't you found it a bit strange, how rarely these things end up in the news anymore? I have been to almost ten of these this month alone." The venom in her voice was apparent and she did not seem to care who heard her.

The Indian fellow shook his head in agreement and continued,"I just figured there were so many of these things, all over the city, they just stopped being news. What they were telling me was these people were taking to re-education camps in Pennsylvania and send to work on the Great Ship Project." He seemed to have a problem with his own propoganda.

"I heard they were taken to New Jersey and processed."

"Processed? Is there a camp there too?" Having taken the last person where they were working and placed them into the vehicle, the Indian fellow reached into his back to take out a dull-wrapped package and ripped it open with his teeth.

Miss Brown Hair, turns after placing her equipment back into her bag and as the Indian is about to place the food into his mouth, she slaps him and the food out of his mouth before he could take a bite. She vehemently stomps the product into dust on the ground.

"What the hell? What's wrong with you?"

"That was Humox, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, what about it? Some of us new guys, with our heads in our asses are poor and can't afford to eat like kings. We get a food subsidy where I live. They drop it off twice a week. That was my last bar for a few days. Lauren, what's got into you?"

"Promise me you will never eat that again, no matter how hungry you get. Promise me."

"Why? You know, you are starting to worry me."

A Corporate Policeman walks by the two of them and I crouch under a car so that I am not seen. The policeman waves his hand toward the truck and gives the go-ahead signal. He says into his vox, "Take them to processing in Jersey."

"See Lauren, they are going to processing." The young man was smiling as if he had just figured out some great secret.

"That is what I have been trying to tell you. I have a friend who works on the trucks. She tells me that there are these new plants springing up in all of the major cities around the world." Picking up the wrapper, she shows him where it says 'Made in New Jersey' on the wrapper. "There is a new plant there. Just opened last month. Before that, people were sent to Tennessee for processing." She lowers her voice, and looks around. She slides up close to the Indian and whispers just loud enough for me to hear. "My friend says Humox is people."

I didn't wait to hear any more. I tore up the street, chasing that truck like all the demons of hell were after me.

MODOC Part 10 - War and Pieces

'Metal Organism Designed only for Cuddling' © Thaddeus Howze 2010. All Rights Reserved