***
Exiting the protection of the city. Into the park, and estimates were correct. At least a 10.48 second lead on the nearest Chaser. The burden becomes heavy. While carrying it underarm is a detriment, construction of it had been easy. The chip did everything, all the analysis itself. The result was essentially a battery, made from apparently innocuous components. But the chip knew more than people did. Forcefully held in place against the shield to avoid a violent repulsion, the device would absorb the plasma-electric energy. In a matter of 3.73-4.15 seconds it would release it again in reverse. The resulting chain reaction along the Shield Inception Wall would deactivate and cripple the shield almost instantly. If the device was jostled or could not be kept in position, the shock would also incinerate him simultaneously. The Chasers are in the park. The fence is in view.
***
Tannec’s eyes slowly opened. He was alone in a closed room, and all around him was perfectly sanitized white, white, white. The inside of the recovery ward, obviously. So that indicated that the experimental new universal chip was inside and operating successfully. He knew that this meant he was forever connected to the almighty Supreme Council, not just like the regular adult population, but in a special and unique way that no one else was. A strange feeling of pride arose within him and he smiled sleepily. Before he could doze off again, however, a doctor garbed in what else but blinding white opened the door and walked over to Tannec’s bedside.
“So, our little pioneer is awake.” He said with an obviously enhanced grin.
Tannec made a small, satisfied noise of affirmation and waited for the man to continue.
“There are some things you should know right away. The first of which is that, like regular people, now that you are implanted you can select additional physical implants and augmentations to enhance yourself with. However, unlike regular people, you have the capacity to select three instead of two. A, shall we say, special bonus that comes with your implant.”
Tannec listened with intrigue as everything else was explained to him. He was to be taken out of standard school immediately and given access to only the highest learning materials, something which he questioned the possibility of but was assured was going to work out fine. Forever would he be a faster and better thinker than any of his peers could dream of being. There seemed to be no downsides to it at all, a somewhat suspicious fact that compelled Tannec to question the doctor.
“I must admit that this all sounds wonderful,” he said, “but is this not being forced upon me because I saw that thing outside the dome? I would expect significant negative repercussions, not the reward of supreme intelligence…”
The doctor’s tailored smile darkened and his brow furrowed slightly.
“That is none of your concern, young… Tannec is it? No harm is intended in any of this. Remember, the Supreme Council is even more intelligent than you will be. They have always guided us since the Calamity and you must have faith in them.”
His smirk returned.
The doctor was, of course, correct. Tannec pressed the issue no further and at the doctor’s prompting instead turned his mind to which enhancements he desired.
Eventually he selected aural implants that could boost and locate the source of any noises at will, muscle stimulators for his legs that would give him much greater endurance over long distances, and tendon enforcers for his hands that provided him with a powerful and sure grip on any surface. It was a more than a week of recovery time before he was allowed to exit the medical facility after having all of his augmentations installed. In that time, though, he was introduced to his new and advanced curriculum and had more than enough time to immerse himself in it.
Tannec’s mind constantly swam with new facts about every topic he could imagine, until it felt as if the information was nothing but a crushing weight on his conscience. He learned all about the Calamity and the century since: How Proper humanity had been making more progress than ever, but there were many who claimed that the advancements were destroying the planet. It didn’t matter how much the Propers proved that all the so-called “dirty” technology would be phased out soon enough by more advanced things like dome tech; the Impropers insisted it wasn’t soon enough. They waged a preemptive war against civilization, and the days grew hotter and the storms grew stronger as Proper humanity was forced to utilize everything at their disposal, old and new. As the tundra melted and the skies began to burn, mushroom clouds rose above every country and the Great Calamity was born. Billions were wiped off the face of the Earth, but in the end it was the Propers that prevailed, with virtually all of Improper humanity reduced to dust.
The victors built up what they had left to protect themselves from the heat and the wind and the radiation. A new world order was established, and technology allowed for Proper humanity to continue their self-assisted evolution all within the safe confines of the domed cities. The implants and Temporex ensured that. No one remembered anything before the Calamity, and no one had to. It was pointless to maintain any connection, no matter how small, to the disgusting Impropers who had destroyed the world the Propers had worked so hard to create. Now there was nothing but peaceful bliss, a new world that promised a future free of unnecessary imperfections and reminders of the past.
Tannec absorbed this and much more with no trouble. Eventually he could go a full day without seeing those flaming blue eyes in that flowing black shape, but never did they fade completely. He studied harder. More advanced mathematics and theories. Anything to purge himself.
***
“They have reduced significantly, but he is having visions of the creature.”
“So some progress is, at the least, being made then?”
“So far it has been. But he has just passed the threshold where we can no longer monitor individual synaptic connections. There’s too much quantitative white noise.”
“Can we target connections on a broad-spectrum basis and break through?”
“It’s physically impossible. The chip automatically absorbs and analyzes data faster than we could ever hope to erase it.”
“But he has a desire to take in more. He is obedient. We must have faith that eventually he will succeed in correcting his mind.”
“How can we if we have no control any longer? We can’t see his individual thought processes. He has become a supercomputer, just streams of data flowing through his lobes quicker than anything can comprehend.”
“His physical location is always monitored. If there is any suspicion he may be in danger of exposing others to what he knows we can hunt him down and simply say that the experiment went horribly wrong.”
***
They have to proceed on foot in the park. There is an even greater margin of error, then. The fence is easily scaled with assistance from the augmentations. Over the top and falling, down down down into the canal. The G-force hits hard but is no distraction. Pumping legs and arms, churning the water and clutching the shield destroyer close. Up the other bank- an impossible task without limb implants. Force vectors work out subconsciously; the best route up is taken before it is visually seen. Now on ground again and the Chasers are at the fence. Extrapolations indicate a probable several seconds of verbalized warnings before the firing of weapons. Enough time to scale the wall.
***
Tannec clamped his eyes shut and fell backwards limply on his bed. He could not sleep. The sensations had started to become overwhelming, and it was all he could do to keep from screaming out of a pain impossible to classify. There was everything he had read, seen, and done in the last two weeks clearly presented to him out of the depths of his gray matter at once. He couldn’t recall where it started or what purpose it served anymore. Why was it even there? He just knew that he couldn’t stop, that he had to get more. It clawed and scratched and screamed at his mind relentlessly like a dog trapped in a cage.
A dog… a dark figure… with eyes as bright as supernovae…
Where had this vision come from?
The park… the shield… and an endless desert beyond….
“AAAAAHHHH!” Tannec writhed in agony on top of his sheets. Now it was all he could see, but it had no place, it had no answer. Everything else, every question he had learned, every formula, had an answer unless it was explicitly stated otherwise. But his goal was to obtain more answers, so he must pursue this one.
Flashes of blue again.
“NO! NO MORE!” Tannec bolted out of bed.
He no longer thought. He just did. His mother heard the screaming and came to investigate; her cosmetic facial enhancements were no match for Tannec’s artificially strengthened fist. He left her sprawled on the floor without a second glance. Everything he would need could be scavenged from the building. A power supply, cases and conduits and terminals and all, combined after being ripped from walls and appliances in a matter of hours to form his creation. No normal human would ever have the mental facilities to accommodate the knowledge necessary to construct it. Even the Supreme Council could not have predicted it.
He left his residential block with the shield still dark, much as he had two weeks before. Just like then, all that mattered was what he didn’t know yet. Only this time he was on foot, headed for the East Perimeter park. And, if his analytical predictions were correct, the wasteland beyond.
***
“What is he doing? He must be stopped!”
“We’ve already dispatched the Chasers.”
“This will ensure a catastrophic failure of the experiment!”
“We will face the greatest catastrophe of our age if he is permitted to follow through with whatever plan he has in mind.”
“This indeed has gone too far. We lost control long ago. Now it is time to put him down.”
***
Leaping up the wall in a matter of seconds is easily accomplished. The Chasers stand on the opposite bank, yelling their admonitions across the canal. Their viciously sleek hovercars are of no use now. They stand in their paneled white body armor and blank facemasks and aim their railguns. Five seconds more they will allow. Time is up.
Turning to the great wall of energy, Tannec locked his legs and plunged the terminals of his device into the shield.
One second…
The resistance was massive, but he held it in place.
Two seconds…
“TAKE HIM OUT!”
He ducked and pressed all of his weight against his creation. The sound of railgun blasts was deafening. Three seconds…
“BRING HIM DOWN! BRING HIM DOWN!”
He felt his spine and shoulders and legs explode as the hypersonic metal bolts impaled him like a pincushion. But there was no pain: Only the screeching and crackling noise of the massive barrier in front of him degenerating at exponentially increasing speed, the sensation of unfathomably parched air rushing into the wretched city, and behind it all that agonizingly vivid and torturous memory. His broken body tumbled forward over the wall where the dome had stood erect mere moments ago, leaving the terrified screams of the Chasers behind.
As he fell towards the flat dusty plain, his fading vision caught brief sight of something in the near distance. A pair of silhouettes against the sand turned their sharp faces towards him, tails waving with the wind. There was no conviction in those eyes now, though. They watched him almost sympathetically, he thought, as darkness overtook his senses. He smiled softly, mind at an awed ease, and let the desert claim what it would.
