Predictive Prophecy

Aura forgot which came first; the prophecy or the job. Not that it mattered anymore. Leaning out of the window of the armored hoverbus, she sited down the mag rifle and pulled the trigger.

One of the fast approaching jetcars twitched. Stalled. Plummeted.

She grinned. Shooting from a moving vehicle was one of many unique skills she’d mastered over their storied outlaw existence. Not that it mattered here. The pursuant vehicles wer dense enough to form a cloud.

“Hold on,” Caleb growled, almost drowned out byt he high pitched whine of the engine. The hoverbus banked hard, almost tossing her from the window. Aura’s foot hooked the safety strap. Her laugh was manic terror as Aura yanked herself back in.

“Almost lost ya,” he said.

She dislodged the energy cell for her rifle and popped in the port on the dash. “You’d be so lucky.”

“How many?”

“Pfft. All of em.”

“Never been so popular.”

“Never will again.”

“I’ll move somewhere quiet after this.”

Aura looked at him. Silhouetted against the neon lights blazing off the buildings at night, he cut a melancholic ghost. They both knew there was no after. Her eyes burning, Aura swiped the tears from her eyes. “Sounds nice. Where?”

“Find a moon somewhere.”

“Or an asteroid.”

“Yeah. Real isolated.”

She pulled the energy cell from the port and slapped it back in the rifle. “Would have been nice.”

“It would.”

Aura tangled herself in the safety straps before lunging back out the window, relying on their strength to keep her from plummeting to the distant ground. Lightning flashed above. They said it would rain.

Their pursuers were a lot closer. She swore and leveled the gun, letting the digital site tag the closest. She fired.

FWIP

And again

FWIP

Two cars jerked. Sparked. Tumbled.

Should have hijacked military weapons years ago, she thought.

A beam lanced from the middle of the chasing cloud. It skimmed the top of the armored bus, sheering off a chunk the size of her arm and heating the air enough it stole her breath. If that hits me, I’m dust. At least I won’t feel anything.

The bus lurched beneath her as Caleb started evasive maneuvers. She could tell by the smooth into sudden violent movements that it was him and not the autopilot. Good. He was better anyway.

Another lance bloomed from the center of the oncoming cloud.

“Fuck it,” she growled and flipped the rifle to full auto.

It started with the Fugue. No one knew when because it had been on the ground, among the ruck and rabble of the lower class. Those numbers were guesstimates.

Attempts at a census were abandoned when everything was handed over to The Algorithms. Through the Efficiency Algorithm, factories abandoned steady employment. People built crude dwellings at the gates, waiting for a shift to become available. Pay people by the day and you didn’t need to keep anyone long enough for raises. If someone dropped dead on the line or didn’t show, there were quick replacements.

When The Fugue affected the Higher City, The Authority took notice.

No one was sure if there were symptoms leading to it. Once it began, things moved fast. You became lethargic. Distant. Mute. Finding a place out in the open. Coming to a stop. Then you look at the sky, slack jawed, and your eyes go blank. Literally. They vibrated in an accelerated REM movement so fast the pupils and iris looked like a liquid smudge. That was it. You were unresponsive.

A little bright side, dark side: your body slowed into a near catatonic state. Took you longer to die. Wasn’t more time to fix anything, you’d still die. Machines could keep you going. Not enough of them so as usual, it was the affluent who got priority. Even they were nudged out if a Top Percenter came knocking.

The real kicker came when they found the truth.

The Predictive Algorithm had gifted them the knowledge of containing the output of a black hole suspended between contained fusion reactions. Endless energy. Endless matter. They called it Perpetuation. It was supposed to set everyone free, access to pollution free energy.

It wasn’t free. Nothing ever is. Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean it isn’t killing you. Like cigarettes in the early days.

The same Algorithm that gave them the science warned it was dangerous. Those in charge just kept it quiet.

When it was first described as a plague, Aura and Caleb were suspicious. The Fugue spread so fast, some of the corporate buildings were near empty. Easy enough to sneak in. Aura was the muscle as Caleb cracked the mainframe. Found and ran the original Predictive Algorithm to see the entire result, complete with an unreleased prediction.

Prophecy: When fatality rate for species achieves 99%, forced evolution of Remainders will be triggered.

Caleb kept digging. Found logs of someone inquiring about how to secure specific people to be in in the Remainders. Timestamps showed it was decades before the science was released and implemented.

It didn’t surprise either of them a lethal technology had been used without regard for the cost. Nor that it had been suppressed until the math had been configured to assure the survival of a special few.

What was surprising; how much it pissed them off.

They had it run another calculation.

Caleb grabbed Aura’s leg and yanked her back in. They hit the guidance stick and careened to the side. Flak bombs burst where they had been. Shrapnel pinged off the armored plates, some piercing through, letting in beams of neon light.

“Almost died,” she wheezed.

“Sucks for them.” He wrapped an arm around her and pushed the bus to max speed, aimed at the dual orbs glowing like mini suns above the upper city. The Perpetuation on full display. Hover platforms of nonconductive ceramic bridged the gap between them, allowing automated machines to take scientific measurements. Humans were not supposed to get that close.

It had taken decades, but the cost of that power had come due. Between the glowing fusion reactions was an infinitely dense pinpoint that pulsed with a cosmic radiation so strange everything the waves touched turned monochrome. An orb of wire mesh held by titanium drones encircled it forming a powerful faraday cage. An eggshell containing the fury of collapsing god. Hubris incarnate.

A different kind of hubris, smaller but just as reckless, punched a hole in that containment.

The bus dug a trench in the thick ceramic platform. It tumbled end over end before slamming to a stop. Debris near the outer edge floated in the air. Closer to the reaction, that debris drifted lazily up, toward the center. As Aura and Caleb fell from wreckage, bloody and bruised, she watched this silent dance in awe.

“The air tastes wrong,” Caleb said. The doppler effect of his voice wasn’t any better. The words reached her but stretched out and out and out, blending into a low toned howl that never ended.

She had a headache from the contrast of color. Everything within the cage was chromatic, deepest black and brightest white, yet they were not. Like a bad image edit. The ground felt solid but looked like dark liquid roiling within twitching hand drawn lines. Its going to rupture her panicked mind screamed. Rupture and leak and we’ll fall and fall and fall.

Caleb was yelling at her. How long had he been doing that? She shook her head and had to focus through the howl to hear him.

“YOU GOOD?”

She nodded but that was a lie. Her right leg sat at a crooked angle. Couldn’t feel it. Some ribs were broken. Caleb limped, his left arm hanging dead, but he could walk. That was good.

Without asking, he reached into her jacket and removed the glowing cylinder. The final product of the Predictive Algorithm before Caleb uploaded the Oroboros Virus, making it eat and reconstitute its own code into more convoluted and unstable builds. It would spread through the system and wipe every automated process. Enough on its own to warrant the highest bounty publicly seen.

He inspected the cylinder for cracks. Found none. Good. The combination of sentient organics, digital code, and quantum radiation precisely balanced to trigger a complete reversal of The Perpetuation. Now they just needed to get it into the endpoint. They were beyond the point of no return, now the cylinder needed to be brough closer, opened, and thrown in. The math said the reaction would be retroactive from the moment of occurrence. Everyone outside would feel it before the action was done. It broke the mind.

She focused on the facts, the math, to keep steady. It didn’t stop the tears. Aura squeezed his arm and pulled at him, knowing it wouldn’t change anything and not caring. They both knew what needed to be done but she needed him to know more.

You’re my other half

Caleb smiled. Pressed his forehead to hers. He knew. Of course he did. They’d been inseparable. Not siblings, never lovers, but more than friends. Two halves of a whole.

Skarbie she said. The vibration carried through her bones to his.

Back at you.

His conviction had always lent a preternatural weight to his voice.

They wanted to wait, to drag these last moments on and on so they’d never end. But all things do. She shoved him away, determined to be the stronger one in that moment. He wasn’t hurt by it, but the regret was plain on his face. Caleb nodded. I’ll get it done his eyes said.

Never doubted it

He looked into the pulsing endpoint. Took a breath. Marched into the howl and the rift.

Time passed different there. Outside moved faster. Inside moved slower. Watching him charge at it was like witnessing a sprint though molasses. Aura watched as long as she could, the juxtaposition of what her eyes saw against what she knew caused a growing a migraine. He grew smaller than normal at each moment. The physics of approaching an event horizon were staggeringly simple as they were mentally shattering.

Aura propped herself against the wreckage and watched the world beyond the faraday orb. She couldn’t see much more than lights. They avoided the hole Aura and Caleb had punched through with the armored bus. Something strange happened to the buildings beyond it, like they were suspended in the process of blowing apart.

The vehicle lights beyond buzzed about like hummingbirds. Some left. Others returned. The shape of their design changed but she couldn’t see details.

As she knew would happen eventually, a figure braved the colossal energy leaking from the opening. They paused. Slid through and landed on the ceramic platform.

Aura was in awe of the tech armor this figure wore. She raised her rifle and fired.

The figure staggered back a step.

She switched the rifle to full auto, braced the gun against her shoulder, and locked the trigger down. A stream of rounds hosed the target. The figure hunched against the onslaught and pushed forward, each step cracking the ceramic.

Aura winced as heat from the gun singed her face. She disabled the safety limiters for every weapon. The barrel glowed red. Orange. White. When it began to melt, liquified metal sprayed, thrown by the rounds. The gun clicked empty before the weapon melted far enough to drip on her hand.

It clattered to the ground. She noticed some of the molten metal had landed on her right ankle. It sizzled, smelling of cheap barbecued pork. Didn’t feel anything. That wasn’t good. It made her laugh.

Panting, the figure knelt before her. Something within the suit whirred. Up close, Aura could make out translucent wings that shimmered blue. The featureless faceplate retracted, folding over itself like tiny cards. The most beautiful person Aura had ever seen smiled down at her.

“They told me you were a firecracker.” The voice was rough and cracked, deeper than expected, a complete mismatch to the face. It made them more beautiful.

Aura grinned, tasting blood. “Oh yeah?” She swung the half melted weapon at that angelic face. The figure swatted it away without breaking eye contact.

“I’m Kai. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Laughing, Aura gestured at her broken body. “Like it matters. Im dying.”

They agreed with a solemn nod. “I can save you though.”

“Fuck your deals.”

They sat cross legged, keeping some distance. “No deals. Just an offer.”

“I can’t leave him.”

They lifted their eyes to the Endpoint. Deep sadness pulled at their face.

It pissed Aura off. “Fuck you! You don’t get to feel bad for him. You people made us do this.”

Kai cocked their head. “What people am I?”

“The rich. The affluent. The Top Percenters. How else could you have armor like that?”

They smiled. “Things have changed since you pulled this off. It was bad for a while. Real bad. But people were inspired by you. You broke the prophecy. The downtrodden rose up. Everywhere. Every world. Started the Equality War. Many of us believe its still going. This world, this city is the heart of the Resistance. We protect this place. Protect you.”

She wanted to cry, but the face was so open and innocent Aura believed everything. “Can you bring Caleb back?”

Tears shimmered in Kai’s hazel eyes, tumbling down their cheeks. “This is the first suit that could survive the entry. He’s too close to the event horizon. But, if he turns around and comes back, he might get close enough we can save him. Eventually.”

“I don’t believe you.” She hated the whine in her voice.

“It’s true.”

“I’ll be long dead by then.”

“You don’t have to be.”

It was too much. Too many revelations. Too many promises. Nothing’s free. “Why now?”

Kai’s face grew somber. “We need you both. The war is turning. We’re starting to lose. We need the people who started it. You’re legends. You’ll rally people back to the cause.”

Aura sneered. The idea of her or Caleb being figureheads seemed ridiculous. But when a beautiful Valkyrie braved the reality breaking energy of a black hole and collapsing stars to tell you otherwise, you listened.

“Can I think for a sec?”

Kai smiled. “You’ll die without treatment in a seven hours, our time. I brought supplies to help. Its all your choice. I won’t force you to do anything.”

Aura closed her eyes. For a few minutes or a few hours. She dreamed of their nights; her and Caleb tagging buildings, getting in fights, loud music and illegal booze. Going home with different people and always meeting up the next day. They’d just never found partners who accepted their closeness and now would never see where they’d go.

Maybe this was their chance.

When she looked for him, Aura gasped. He seemed so small, miles and miles away but clear. Far beyond the point of no return as they knew it. But who knew now.

There was one thing bugging her.

“Why did we survive?”

Kai cocked their head.

“The Algorithm said the first person who penetrated the faraday bubble would survive. But why?”

“The Anomaly.” They gestured toward Caleb. “The product he walked to the Endpoint and threw into its heart. The energy of it protected you. It’s the real prize they sought all that time ago without knowing it, just grabbed the first lifeline they found. Real endless energy. Clean. Safe.”

“As far as we know.”

They smiled. “As far as we know.”

“Don’t trust it.”

Kai shrugged. “Wouldn’t matter. The virus you both set loose merged with more. Learned to break free and but stayed focused on Learning Algorithms. It can…sense them, in a way. Invades anywhere working to create one dismantles everything, organic or machine.”

Aura nodded. “How do we get him back?”

Kai’s face lit up. Aura hated how much she relished being the cause. She needed to get a hold of herself. I’ll play your game. But I won’t trust you. No one but Caleb. “You just have to call him.”

“Come again?”

“The sound will reach him eventually. Then he’ll turn around and come back. He won’t respond to us. Not even if we sound like you.”

Aura kept control of her face. They’d mimicked her voice and he’d known it wasn’t her. A plan formed in her head.

“I’ll do it. But I won’t leave here until he’s back. So whatever you have to do to keep me alive, you better figure out how to get that shit in here.

Kai’s face faltered. A moment of arrogant frustration crossed her face that shattered the angelic demeanor. There and gone in a flash, but it had broken the hold they had on Aura. “You’ll have to let me treat you as much as I can. But we can make that work.”

With a nod, aura swallowed a thick wad of bloody phlegm. “Good. And I want one of those.” She gestured at the suit.

“We only have one.”

“Make more.”

Kai kept better control of her face that time, but the irritation radiated off her like heat. “Done.”

They shook. Kai injected her with something that made Aura feel like she could bench press the broken bus. She crawled toward the Endpoint. Not too close. When the pull seemed ready to pluck her from the ground Aura shouted into the rift.

“New job. I’ve got a plan. Time to come back.”