Tourniquet

[woodyloveslinkin]

I hate my printer...it's five hours away​

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Ravyn sat at her window again, this evening, looking down to the streets below, deep in thought once again as the bright neon lights from the billboards reflected against her face. She looked at the bicycles going past, hearing their bells being rung at people who were aimlessly wandering into their past and hearing abuse being yelled at one another. She didn’t understand why she felt so housebound. Joanna had never stopped her going out, she only stopped herself.
She was afraid of this society, afraid of the New World orders, afraid that she was going to forget a forbidden word, and eventually get exiled for at least something; she could just feel it coming. She never had any faith in herself since the Old World had been destroyed. She was too confused all the time.
She had pondered to herself many a time, if the dictatress in charge had any empathy or felt anything for the people that she ruled over. She shook her head at her own thought, knowing that the little hope that was left for a new ruler had already perished once she had inherited her throne to the City of the Fallen Angels.
Then it struck Ravyn. She remembered that moment. The moment when the heir to the throne of this city was announced and when her father was assassinated. Her memory was starting to come back to her, hopefully. She wasn’t sure if this was only a long term lapse that she was going through or just another short term lapse. She had too many of the short term lapses and it worried her. She was still young and yet, people called her a nut. It worried her a lot, but she knew she had Joanna for support. The only support that she really had and that she could remember was her youngest sister.
She couldn’t look to any type of religion for support; she would be exiled for it. She couldn’t talk openly about the Old World and its orders, anywhere that she wanted, it had to be restricted to certain ears. She couldn’t do anything in this New World without feeling contained and suppressed in a glass box.
She started to contemplate the possibility of going outside, into the night, just for a wander, or until she ran into Joanna down in the markets, like she said she would be if help was ever needed. Even though Ravyn had been out and about in society a number of times, she still felt a bit alienated, as there were a number of New Worlders out and about this evening.
Her sitting on the window sill for days at end had its benefits. She noticed the behavioural patterns of the people born in the beginnings and the times of the New World and how different they were compared to the Old Worlders. The New Worlders weren’t aware of the impact that Spyral had on them, they were usually too doped up on Ivna from what Ravyn had been noticing. Most of the Old Worlders could be found mostly at the only place in LA that served alcohol on the other side of the city.
Alcohol had been replaced with Ivna practically, as the top most used drug to escape one’s emotions. Ravyn couldn’t even recall the last time she tasted the sweet taste of alcohol, cheap or expensive. Alcohol prices skyrocketed after the war and oil prices went down to the point of where it was basically free. Everyone had stopped drinking alcohol because of the expensiveness of it and started filling the cars that they once had, up with whatever gas they could get their greedy hands onto. That was out of a few parts of the Old World that she remembered.
Consumed by greed and manufactured by politics.
Anyway, Ivna was deliberately made cheaper than noodles in the New World that people were forced to live in. Alcohol also had posed a threat to the risk of a stable society. Drunkards would get violent and usually ended up exiled because of their drunken rants on about how much they hated what the world had become. Spyral had decided to keep the alcohol, then the older generation of society thrived on, and then the Spyralans decided to tax it as the highest taxed item on the list of things to hike up the price of.
She got to her feet, after much contemplation and walked straight to do the door. She didn’t automatically open it; she stood there staring at the handle still contemplating deeply. Then she did it, she opened the door and in a matter of time she was on the street that she had previously looked down on. She didn’t know where to go. So she chose to follow the road that was behind her down until she decided to turn off to wherever.
Her curiosity had led her to Viking’s Chinese take-away dine-in shop, but the only difference was that he wasn’t there anymore; he was too busy trying to hide. She sat down at the bar, in between a young adult girl and a mild aged man. The girl was too busy stuffing her face with combination noodles and the man, looked like he had a bit too much to drink, assumed by the fact that he had in possession a banned item, a bottle of saki, rice wine, out in plan view. He held in it one hand and a shot glass in the other. She figured no one had noticed that it was saki. In fact, she was quite surprised to see a bottle of saki around. She hadn’t seen one before the war broke out.
One of the chefs came up to her.
“Want anything in particular missy?” asked the chef, wiping his hands on a dirty rag and shoving it back into his apron’s pocket.
“Boiled rice would do me fine,” answered Ravyn, trying not to look at the girl stuffing her face still on combination noodles. Ravyn hated the fact that there was no variety in fast food in the New World; Chinese, Russian, and Old World fast food chains that had been replaced with the word Spyral instead of their trademark names.
The reason for such a limited outlook on food was because both the Russians and Chinese were good allies of America and had strong political and social connections to Spyral.
“Is that all?” asked the chef, a bit amused that he could easily pull her order out of thin air.
“…Make it fried rice,” corrected Ravyn.
“Alright, I’ll do that for you,” concluded the chef, disappearing back into his kitchen. Ravyn didn’t know it, but he was the chef that had come in just as Viking was running for his life the previous evening.
She sat there, still not helping but to notice the girl next to her, as the girl sat up and wiped her mouth on her sleeve of her black shirt. She looked over to the drunk next to her, who still was at it.
“I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink,” noticed Ravyn, as the drunken guy looked at her. “Am I correct?” The drunk nodded. “Mind if I have some?” The drunk nodded again. “Okay in that case, I won’t have any if you won’t let me.”
“What? I said you could have some,” slurred the drunk, passing the bottle over to Ravyn. Ravyn was quite surprised that no one recognised the bottle that she now was holding was banned. Maybe these guys were New Worlders and hadn’t seen a bottle of rice wine before.
“I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” warned the girl, taking the bottle off Ravyn, and placing it on the other side of her. “It’s not saki. Chaz replaced it with straight bourbon so he could get drunk quicker, and eventually die quicker. He’s been here all night.”
“And what, like you haven’t?” asked the chef from the kitchen.
“I haven’t been drinking all night,” defended the girl, as her attention was diverted to the chef who kept reappearing and disappearing behind mountains of steam. “Last time I did that, I got done for it.”
“You’ve only been eating half my food,” snorted the chef.
“Just, shut up,” retorted the girl, as her attention was back on Ravyn. “It’s bad enough he went and broke New World order by saving this takeaway bottle from his trip overseas and hasn’t been done for it.”
“One thousand and one nights at sea…” Chaz lifted his head and started to sing out loud.
“Shut your trap seriously, I cannot stand it when I have to be near you and you’re drunk,” rectified the girl, who Ravyn had started to assume the girl had an attitude problem. The girl looked back to Ravyn and smiled. “I take it, Old World?”
“Yeah, how did you know?” asked Ravyn.
“You know saki, the New World generation don’t know what saki is, because it’s on the prohibited items list,” answered the girl. “Funny, what Spyral’s done to this generation’s heads. Makes me sick to the bone.”
“Here you go,” said the chef, appearing on the opposite side of the bar and placing Ravyn’s order down in front of her with her chop sticks.
“Ah…knife and fork?” requested Ravyn.
“Do I look rich lady?” asked the chef. “Be happy with it. Eat up and shut up, that’s my motto.” The chef smirked at his own motto and disappeared again back into his kitchen.
“Alright then,” sighed Ravyn, as she didn’t touch her food.
“What’s your name again?” asked the girl. “I didn’t think I caught it, before.”
“Me neither, but then again, that’s me for you, Ravyn,” answered Ravyn. “Yours…?”
“Melissa, Mel for short,” answered Mel. “It’s always nice to meet an Old Worlder. Those New World kids annoy me and give me propaganda bullshit about how they should just go and marry Spyral because they love them so much. For ****’s sake.”
“Anger management problem?” asked Ravyn.
“No, New World problem,” answered Mel, as she realised something, as she started to swing side to side on her bar stool. “You know what? I haven’t had someone say that to me for ages…anger management. Again, it’s called Ivna, that’s why. They are too doped up to realise that what they just hugged, was not their friend, well, unless of course they’ve befriended a tree.”
“Ravyn!” yelled Joanna, from the opposite side of the road, who stood there with a couple of bags in one hand and a confused look on her face. Ravyn swung around on her bar stool so that she faced her sister. “What are you doing?”
“Having a conversation, what about you?” asked Ravyn, as Joanna crossed the road and stood in front of her sister looking a bit surprised to see her sister and about.
“Just coming back from the markets,” answered Joanna, looking from Chaz to Mel. Then she noticed the bottle of saki next to Mel. Her eyes lit up and she pointed to the bottle. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Saki?” asked Mel, turning around and facing Joanna. She shook her head. “Chaz is dumb enough but not smart enough to drink that good grog.”
“It’s takeaway liquor though, and it’s imported,” gasped Joanna, as though Mel had just said the G word. Mel rolled her eyes. “How come the authorities haven’t been notified? This outrageous.”
“If it’s so outrageous why aren’t you doing anything about it?” asked Mel, already not liking the sound of Joanna.
“They’ve got to be notified immediately, Ravyn, they have to, someone’s done something wrong and Spyral has to be notified,” Joanna went into a panic attack over the saki bottle being present, as she turned to Ravyn for some support. “We have to take this bottle and this man to Spyral immediately.”
“I am not going over the Dark Hills, only for death I’ll go there,” objected Ravyn, rolling her eyes at her sister.
“We have to go Ravyn,” urged Joanna, as she grabbed Chaz by the arm, pulling him up the arm. He woke from his drunken sleep to start shoving Joanna off him. “Hey. Excuse me, but you do not treat a lady like that, criminal.”
“Hey, who said I was a criminal to start with?” asked Chaz, out of sheer blind drunkenness.
“Look, over there, right there, do you not see something banned?” asked Joanna, pointing to the saki bottle now in Mel’s hands.
Mel looked to Ravyn and screwed her face up as she frowned.
“I take it, New Worlder?” asked Mel, looking to Ravyn for answers. Ravyn nodded.
“I thought you said they didn’t know what was on the banned list?” Ravyn congratulated herself again for recalling another memory. Mel shrugged. “Tides change pretty fast don’t they?” Mel nodded.
“You criminal!” screeched Joanna, snatching the bottle out of Mel’s grip. She stopped what she was doing and shot Mel a nasty look. “You’re even worse!”
“What did I do that was so bad that I deserved such a look?” asked Mel, as though she had just been picked out of the line to be a shooting target.
“You didn’t do anything about it!” retorted Joanna, as though it was the end of the world.
“Joanna, calm down,” Ravyn tried to tell her sister, but her New World sister wasn’t listening to her Old World sister. “Let’s get some Ivna into you.” Mel rolled her eyes at such a disgusting thing that Spyral had created.
“Why are you letting them, get away with such a crime?” asked Joanna, dropping her bags in her hands and grabbing her sister by the shoulder. “What has gotten into you?”
“Nothing, but –” Ravyn was interrupted.
“Then do the right thing and report him… report them sister!” urged Joanna, as Ravyn threw her sister’s arms off her. Joanna looked to Chaz and grabbed him again by the arm, but he resisted and pulled away. “Criminal.”
“What?” asked Mel, surprised by this sudden turn in events. “Sister… what the ****? Now I don’t see that everyday.”
“Am not,” replied Chaz, as Joanna tried to grab Mel by the arm but Mel also threw Joanna off her. “Good luck lady. We didn’t do anything wrong.” Joanna stopped in her tracks and shot him another nasty look. “What the hell is your problem?”
“People like you, who go around and make this society hell for other people who haven’t done anything wrong,” answered Joanna, as Mel snorted. Joanna looked back to Mel. “What’s so funny, delinquent?”
“Hate to disappoint you, but I ain’t a delinquent lady,” answered Mel. “The reason why I laughed was because people like you don’t see that this society is already a living hell. Funny to see people like your kind and how they approach today’s society.”
“What do you mean your kind?” asked Joanna.
“New worlders,” answered Mel. “It’s kinda funny and kinda sad at the same time, now that I think about it.”
Joanna looked back to Ravyn, once again for support.
“Come on, I support you through whatever you’re going through, why don’t I get any support now?” asked Joanna.
“You’re overreacting,” answered Ravyn, blankly.
“I’m not overreacting, I’m abiding by the law, I am the one here trying to do what’s right,” defended Joanna, as she saw the chef walk behind the bar. “Hey you, chef.” The chef stopped and looked at Joanna blankly. “Don’t you care about the stability of this society?”
“I can’t give two ****s right now lady, got a job to do,” answered the chef, as he sarcastically smiled and walked off back into his kitchen.
“This unbelievable, you’re all traitors to this society, even my own sister,” Joanna couldn’t believe her eyes that she was witnessing such atrocity and such treachery. “You’re all enemies of the crown.”
“Crown?” snorted Chaz.
“What crown?” asked Mel. “The Tsarina? The dictatress? The autocratic spoilt little brat that sits on her ass all day in her mansion playing with people’s lives? Is that the bitch you’re talking about?”
“…All of you are traitors to the New World…even my own sister, dammit Ravyn, why?” asked Joanna, still in the state of unbelief.
“See you at home,” concluded Ravyn, rolling her eyes and sighing at her own sister and her patriotic attempts.
“I’m not going home now, I’m going to stay at a friends until…until you can find it in your heart to do the right thing and come with to the Dark Hills first thing once rested and report them,” replied Joanna, picking up her plastic bags that had stuff from the markets from the ground. She gave the three one last nasty glare. “You all talk ill of the New World. You are going to get exiled, so you may as well give yourselves up now.” Joanna stormed off in the opposite way that she was heading before she saw her sister sitting down at the Chinese eat-in dine-in shop on the side of the street.

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[Ravynlee]

I find it amusing Joanna was so willing to 'give up' on her sister over something so menial when I hd been under the impression previously she was a staunch supporter of the new world but was close to and 'saving' her sister like it was some sort of job or obligation. If Ravyn really was losing grip on this new world laws she hated so much I would've expected Joanna to really try harder to enforce her sister to 'come back' and not risk losing Ravyn to exile or worse. I was wrong. Also amused to note that the law was quick to pounce on Vikin's ass earlier for saying the word 'Jesus' or "christ' or God or some such - and here the three of them (four with Mel, five with the new cook) are openly discussing this blatand disregard for banned substances and there wasn't one guard around to enforce the law. That was weird. I was expecting something... must have been their lucky day. You might want to consider spacing apart the character's dialog because for a minute there it got a bit confusing. I reread it and it made sense but might suggest if you were going to take this to a publisher to at least give each character that speaks their own line so it doesn't bleed into what the next person was saying (you use the - mark for insections and interruptions for that ) but other than that story wise still thoroughly enjoying it. Very great. Loved the way the characters described your character too... haha. Evil aintcha

 

[woodyloveslinkin]

Ok. Well. Here's another one. Thanks for the comments as usual. Let's try and make this one more visually and um...what's that word? Okay I'm going to make up a word here, read-ally (lol) pleasing. Some things are explained in this chapter, that I forgot to mention in the previous one. Sorry about that whoops. Next update might in the next couple of day or so....quite busy racing around the next few days after family T_______T

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“There’s a what going around, Brad?” asked Sarah, staring at her associate in disbelief as she sat at in a chair that if swung around properly, it would face the Mirror Board. It was a device that was displayed in front of you as a hologram, and you can go through files and people’s hard drives through simple hand gestures. It was a super modified version of Google, but it was more powerful.
“A virus,” answered Brad, as he stood in the doorway of the room that she was in. He knew it wasn’t going to sit well with her.
“A virus, in the guards?” asked Sarah. Brad nodded. “How is this even physically possible?”
“Don’t know, the motherboard of the control panel got broken into the other night down at Dark Knight Station and there’s damage beyond a day’s fixture. But do not fear we’re on it.”
“Someone took down the motherboard and planted a virus in our system?” asked Sarah, still thinking what her associate was telling was not the truth. Brad nodded again. “What kind of virus?”
“Like I said before if you cared to open your ears, one that is powerful enough damage to bring it down for more than a day,” Brad retold. “What are you doing on the Mirror Board?”
“Looking for old articles of my father before the New World begun,” answered Sarah, knowing she was defying New World orders by going through Old World remains. Sarah had the ability to go past the firewalls that protected such artefacts, but the Mirror Board was denying her codes today.
“Sarah, you’re defying your blood’s laws,” reminded Brad. “You send people to exile for this type of stuff, and yet you are right here in front of me telling that you’re breaking the law.” Sarah nodded slowly. “Pity.”
“Well, think of it this way, I will be a better ruler if I knew how my father survived and how he ruled,” Sarah tried to explain. “I know its wrong, but right now, I’m just a bit lonely.”
“What did you want to know about your father?” asked Brad. “I can tell you information from the New World only though.”
“Tell me how he made it through lonely nights, tell me how he stayed motivated in such a job,” answered Sarah.
“You cannot quit your job right now, you’ve got too many enemies and you’ve got enough issues on your hands, you’ll get killed out in the real world, that’s why you inherited Spyral,” explained Brad, walking over to Sarah, walking behind her and swinging her around by her chair so that she faced the Mirror Board. “Take a look into the archives and you’ll only be digging up old wounds, so that’s why I suggest going through people’s hard drives in the building and see whatever dirt you can pull up from it. You never know what they might be saying behind your back.”
“Are you suggesting something bold of that nature, Brad?” asked Sarah. “The last thing I want to end up being is a memory of one of the greatest times in history. I want to be powerful like my father.”
“You are powerful like your father, and you’re doing a great job holding onto his legacy as a great ruler of the City of the Angels and the world,” Brad assured Sarah. “Come on. You’ve got better things to do rather than to linger on memories of the New World and of the Old World. You don’t have to go looking into old archives to please yourself. We’re your friends remember that.”
“Yeah,” Sarah whispered to herself. “You are my friends.”
“You want to see a cool trick I managed to do?” asked Brad, as he swung her back around again by the back of her chair. Sarah nodded. Brad reached inside his pocket and pulled out Creek Mary’s Blood. With its rare ruby stuck at the end of the silver key, the ruby shone brightly under the blue light emitted from the Mirror Board.
“Put that back, now,” growled Sarah, as she just realised that Brad had taken one of the Comet’s Eyes keys away from its safe haven. “You had no right to take that away from its safe haven. Give it to me, now.” Sarah was unhappy now, as Brad looked innocent and handed the key to Sarah. She wrapped it in the palm of her hand. “How dare you do that… I don’t want to lose the only keys we have to the Eye. The Eye is going to be the key to the improvement of human civilisation.”
“Now, you’re sounding like your father,” smiled Brad, as it hadn’t amused Sarah one bit. Sarah was showing it in her facial expressions that she wasn’t amused by her stern look on her face in which Brad was quick to pick up on. “I’ll go now.”
“Good,” replied Sarah, as Brad backed away slowly and left the room, closing the door behind him as he left. And then suddenly, a sharp pain came from Sarah’s hand. “What the –?” She opened her palm that had one of the keys to the Comet’s Eye wrapped in it, to see that she was bleeding heavily as the key was now doused in her own blood. “Brad! Come back!” She held her hand with the other hand as the key rolled out of her hand and onto the floor. There was a deep cut to where the rare ruby had been pressed against her skin, as Brad came back and opened the door.
“What’s wrong?” asked Brad, and then he saw the blood. “Oh no. I’ll get you something for it. Be right back, don’t move.” Brad ran out again out of sight, as Sarah sat down in the chair holding her bleeding palm.
“Did it cut you dear?” asked the Mirror Board, as Sarah swung around, surprised that the Mirror Board had stopped being shy from before to being too active at the wrong time. A digital face appeared in the blue light that the Board emitted off. The digital face had a voice of a female and her name was Spyro.
Spyro was created by Sarah’s father to not only hack into programs and files, but to keep him company. Someone who he could talk to when he felt a bit down about either himself or his job. Spyro had a lot of wisdom integrated into her motherboard and was almost like family to Sarah and in the old times, her father as well.
“Yeah, it’s never done it before though,” answered Sarah, still wondering about the key.
“It’s because you held it a certain way,” explained Spyro. “It detects your loneliness when you held it wrapped in your hands and it bleeds, just like how your heart bleeds when you’re lonely. It’s attached to you. That’s why it’s called Creek Mary’s Blood. Have you ever thought of why the other one is called Firestarter? It’s a cheap way to run electricity and of course, start fires around the place. Good tool in winter.”
“I must be loved by every piece of technology there is under this roof,” said Sarah. “But like Brad said, I have my friends.”
“You do dear, and you have me as a friend,” Spyro reinforced the friendships that Sarah still had within the walls of this building. “You’re a good ruler. I knew your father; he was a good man at both heart and brain.”
“You heard me talking about him didn’t you?” asked Sarah, as Brad appeared beside her with various healing aids and chemicals in which Sarah knew they would sting like crazy. Sarah stopped holding her hand with the other and focused her attention. “You stopped me going into those archives before didn’t you by denying my authorisation codes?” The blue woman’s head nodded. “You wanted me to know something specific but at the same time you wanted me to know only what you told me.”
“Sad, isn’t it, reality?” asked Spyro. “Imagine how I feel. I’m stuck here for the next kin to come along. How’s that going by the way?”
“Ouch,” Sarah frowned as Brad apologised for stinging her. “What do you mean, how’s that going? I’m not like that.”
“Oh, how so dear?” asked Spyro, artificially acting shocked, as Brad stopped attending to Sarah’s hand.
“If I marry, they’ll take my money and everything that I own,” answered Sarah, telling the integrated program her feelings about such a matter. “If I produce next of kin, I…” Sarah trailed off in her sentence not knowing what to say next.
“You don’t know in other words?” asked Spyro, as Sarah nodded and Brad started to wrap Sarah’s hand with a bandage. “Dear, there are many things in life you haven’t found out yet. And it will only be a matter of time until your feelings will change on such a thought.” Spyro started to jitter and fuzz up and then the program straightened itself back up, before Sarah had a chance to reach over and start pushing the buttons that were connected to a million of things but the physical structure of it was just air. “Sorry, got a virus and it interferes with me a lot.”
“Brad was telling me, the guards have got it bad,” replied Sarah. “I still stand by that I still think it is physically impossible to do that to our systems. I’ve never had a problem with viruses on this system while ruling.”
“You haven’t been here long enough,” muttered Brad to himself as he finished wrapping Sarah’s hand up and stood up with the various coloured bottles in his hands.
“Bradley just said something smart,” commented Spyro, giggling at her own comment. She had been programmed to do everything that a human could do, except for walking. She was very good at detecting emotional disturbances in people close by. She was the by-product of Ivna.
“Yeah,” whispered Sarah to herself, as she looked to the floor and then she looked back up at the luminous piece of technology. “Tell me about my mother, Spyro.”
“Ever heard of the project, Narcissi Extraction dear?” asked Spyro, as Sarah shook her head as Spyro was trying to get to her point and changed the topic completely. “It was a great project that aimed to rid the Old World generation of their memories of the Old World and hopefully replace them with blankness so they could start from scratch with the New World. It failed in the end though. But, if my records are right, there are still some survivors out there. Hold on for a sec, I’ll pull a name out of the hat for you.” Spyro replaced herself with a hat and an animation of a magician pulling a rabbit out of it. Sarah smiled. Spyro was full of tricks, as Sarah realised that Brad was still beside her and had laughed at Spyro’s magic trick. Spyro reappeared as her digital self. “Tah dar! I have one. Old micro chipping records show that she lives in this very city, and you know what her name is?” Sarah shook her head. “Ravyn.”
“So, what is that name meant to mean to me?” asked Sarah, a bit confused by Spyro’s mind games.
“She’s the one that got away from the project, she destroyed the project completely,” answered Spyro. “The chips don’t work anymore, so trying to pinpoint her exact location may be hard. She might not even live in this city anymore. It’s just where we had her last located. Attempts to find her failed back then. Not enough technology or political power to hold her for that crime.”
“So?” asked Sarah. “I still don’t understand.”
“She’s the one that killed your mother when she was trying to let herself loose from the testing facility,” Spyro replied, as the virus kicked back in. “I’m sorry this virus is…” Spyro had been overpowered by the infiltrating virus, as Sarah was more dazed and confused by what Spyro had just said about this woman, Ravyn, killing her mother. She slumped back into her chair, as Brad didn’t say or do anything. He just stood there to leave Sarah in darkened confusion.

~​

 

[Ravynlee]

Cool! I killed your mother! Haha that's great! Finally I see my role in this (I was wondering if I'd be typecast as some ditzy old maid for the rest of the story, thank heavens I was wrong!) But yay! On a more serious note I love the way you set the tension up, it's only a hint right now but it's most effective. You know something's going to happen you just don't know what it is. Like that. And I LOVE the Spyro artificial intelligence program/hollogram, nice futuristic feel. Nice play on times too, between what makes a person a pperson when individuality has pretty much been weeded out and technology has replicated humanity to the point (thanks to Ivna is it?) that the robots/technology is more human than people are. Well done. Very intelligent.

As for previous update with Mike's insertion, glad to see him around too. I know it was in no way implied but because I know Rob's Jewish and Mike's of course half Japanese that they have this ancestoral kind of kinship thanks to first Nazi Germany with the Jews and the WW with Japan. I know the Jews per se had no role as a race in this latest great world war so being Jewish really isn't a punnishable offense as being Asian is (good thing cause Brad would be in trouble) but I thought the pairing of these two specifically worked on another level you might not have intended consciously. Works very well. Have to say I don't know who I really feel sorrier for at this point, the Old Worlders who have lost their past so to speak or the New Worlders who were born to this mass sterilization and don't know any better.

Great as always. I repeat best thing you've ever written that I'm aware. Keep up the great, cerebral, work

 

[Jeezy]

Well...what should I say?

it's getting better with every update.
Keep on writing

 

[Pheonix791989]

good updates sis. i cant wait to read more.... and joanna in this story seems to be... i dunno weird. but keep it up

 

[woodyloveslinkin]

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Time hadn’t past too much for Mel as she was walking back to her place in a dark alleyway, with mist covering her feet and with Ravyn slowly trailing beside her. She was curious about this Old Worlder, a bit too much.
“Where did you come from, before you come to this hole?” asked Mel, crossing her arms to keep herself warm. “You don’t look like you’re from here, that’s all.”
“Don’t know,” answered Ravyn, a bit shaken up by Joanna’s departure. “I don’t remember a lot of things. That’s the trouble with me. Something that I can’t recall happened and it’s like I woke up in a different place in a different universe.” Ravyn wasn’t looking to Mel when they were exchanging conversation, but she was looking at the floor. “I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Well, I’m going home if that’s where you’re planning to follow me to,” explained Mel, still thinking there was something wrong with Ravyn and yet, she couldn’t figure it out. She tried to shake off the feeling, but it was as if Ravyn was part of the New World generation and she was trying to act the ways of an Old Worlder. Something just wasn’t sitting right with her. “You okay? You don’t seem very in it; ever since I saw you sit down.”
“Yeah, just all alone in space and time, nothing out of the ordinary,” Ravyn answered, as she realised there were pieces of shattered glasses that reflected off the street lights as a deep blue.
Someone had been in a fight previously, the only thing Spyral didn’t care to think of, violence, because they were so reliant on the power of Ivna. Ivna this, and Ivna could do that, Spyral assured the New World generation of people, but did a bad job of trying to convince the Old Worlders that it didn’t have the same effects on them as aspirin did or a good dose of therapy. Old Worlders considered Ivna as a placebo to life. It was a placebo to hide all emotions and act like a heroine addicted user. Ivna was also considered the best thing to start fights. Taken in the wrong dosage and misreading the directions of Ivna, as Joanna previously had indirectly explained, would cause psychotic fits of anger and rage. Taken the right way, and one would end up smiling like a drug addict, as demonstrated by Ravyn’s reaction to the drug.
Mel didn’t see the glass that was on the ground and nor was she paying attention to the cracking of the glass underneath her feet. A piece of glass had slowly managed to get its shiny little self into one of Mel’s shoes.
“Ah, **** that hurts,” complained Mel, as the sharpness of the glass had dug into her foot and she immediately stopped and cringed in pain. She stood on one foot, as Ravyn just noticed that Mel had stopped and turned around. Then it struck Mel, what was that on the back of Ravyn’s neck? And why did Mel recognise that silver chain around her neck so much? “Come here for a sec.” Mel hopped to the gutter where the broken glass hadn’t been shattered all over as Ravyn frowned in confusion. “Just do it, come here.” Ravyn trampled over the glass and walked over to Mel. Mel pointed to sit next to her, Ravyn didn’t bother to ask why, and she followed directions, as Mel rested her sore foot on her knee and took her shoe off.
“Nasty,” commented Ravyn, as she saw the sparkle of the tiny piece of glass through the blood that had started to pour out of Mel’s Old World veins. “Do you want me to help you with that?”
“Only if you can help me with something, afterwards,” negotiated Mel, as Ravyn lent over and pulled the piece of glass out of Mel’s foot. Mel had now learnt her lesson about not wearing socks. Ravyn looked at the blood against the glass and frowned as she looked at it as it sparkled in the light, emitting off a ruby red colour. She tossed it aside.
“Now what was it that you needed help with?” asked Ravyn.
“Turn around,” answered Mel, as Ravyn was a bit confused and figured there was something on her back and that Mel was only doing her a favour by getting rid of it. Ravyn turned around. Mel placed one hand on Ravyn’s shoulder, moved her hair, noticed a small bump under her skin, and pulled out what seemed to be an Old World orange colour. Then Ravyn just froze completely, as soon as Mel recognised it to be an old Spyral micro chip. “What…the....**** have you been up to?” It didn’t make sense to Mel at her and all of her knowledge about the New World and Spyral’s various projects. Then it struck her. Again, what was that tattooed on the back of her neck underneath where the old Spyral micro chip had been placed? It read – NE1503 in dark red ink, as though she had been branded, like they used to do to livestock back in the Old World. She had been an experiment in one of Spyral’s projects.
Then she asked herself a simple question, what projects of Spyral’s had the initials NE? The she had answered her question almost instantly, Narcissi Extraction. The numbers must’ve been like a sort of code. Mel’s eyes lit up as she realised who Ravyn might be.
Could she be Felicity’s, the wife of the previous ruler, killer?
Then she remembered the chain around her neck. What was it about it that caught Mel’s attention so quickly? She turned the silver chain around to see that there was a small pendant on it. It was no ordinary chain or pendant. Mel thought she would never live to see the day where she would befriend someone who had been experimented on, still live to tell the tale, and had one of these on her.
An indestructible chain that its ionic structure had been specifically designed for its links not to be broken. The pendant. It was of Spyral’s logo that they had taken from the Old World and was used back in those days as the medicine symbol, the two snakes wrapped around the pole. It was hollow and it could be opened.
Mel knew that New Worlders where given a pendant at birth and they were expected to use it for only patriotic purposes only. But Mel knew that Ravyn was from the Old World, because Ravyn recognised Old World terms, despite Mel’s uncertainty about Ravyn’s origins.
When a New Worlder cannot physically prove that someone did something to break the law, like own a banned item, as guards are not programmed to respond to banned items and it is up to the individual to report it. Memories can be extracted from the brain, using what was named as an ATM. Not an Automatic Teller Machine, like in the Old World where it dispensed notes of money, but it was an Automatic Telling Machine in the New World, which extracted memories from an individual and was stored in their pendant around in their neck. Each individual was given an inanimate pendant that was hollow. These were recognised on Spyral’s system by the variables of the thickness, length, and time of making, everyone had an individual pendant. Now after the memory was extracted, it was taken to the Board of Spyralians to be shown. Memories could not be forged, as Spyral had realised.
Mel made the mistake of opening it to reveal a hologram that flew up into a couple of metres into the air. It revealed something of a green map with a blue dot that was blinking at a particular spot along the yellow marked grid. This occurred for a couple of seconds and then it faded away. She closed it back up and turned the chain back around, as she realised she was still holding the chip in her hand.
What Mel unknowingly just did by opening that pendant of Ravyn’s, she just set off infra-red beams of invisible white light back to Spyral’s headquarters over the Dark Hills and Winter Station, which was the last check point before the corporation’s building. That blue dot was Spyro’s location. And what Mel didn’t know, is that Ravyn had never opened that pendant since her memory blankness had started, nor did she feel any discomfort from the chip that had been planted in the back of her neck.
Back in the Mirror Board chambers inside the dormant walls of the Spyral building, Spyro woke up from her digital powernap without warning, as her systems had just been restored and was tired from being re-programmed. No one was in the room with her, but her maps were blinking madly with binary zeros and ones, ASCII codes on another side of her, and map co-ordinates scrolling down the side of her.
Spyro had just found Felicity’s killer after all these years and she was still living in the City of Angels like Spyro had suspected all along.
The trail was now hot and dangerous.

****​

 

[Ravynlee]

Ohhooo awesome! I love the description you use in this, the level of detail with 'new' technology is quite extraordinary, and Spyro 'coming to life' (waking up) at the end there was a real sliff-hanger moment! Love the Chip idea and Mel's natural inhibitions a nice realistic touch.
Developing nicely. Great flow, easy to read, just awesome. :thumbsup:

 

[woodyloveslinkin]

****​

Los Angeles had become a world of its own since Japan dropped its bomb. There were few outsiders who ventured in the City of the Fallen Angels and came out with a good story to tell about it, who weren’t of the generation of that the New World had produced and sterilised.
Rob was sitting at his red couch, looking onto the coffee table, thinking about how different the times had been back in the Old World compared to what the world had come down to in this New World that he was living in. He wasn’t only just looking onto the coffee table, but he was looking on what the New World had called a Remberant. It wasn’t on the banned list at all, in fact, hardly anyone knew about this small silver coin because his friend who was an illegally operating inventor had invented it. Rob had only accepted it out of pure kindness to his friend.
He leant forward and picked up the small double-sided object that resembled a small coin at first, but once activated it was more than just a form of currency, it was a projecting hologram. He wrapped his hand around the coin, closed his eyes and opened them again, as the coin grew hot and then eventually hotter, until it started to burn into his skin, so he dropped it to the floor.
A bright light was emitted out of it, like a spotlight in the night’s sky at a grand opening of a casino, as Rob got to his feet and moved to the other side of the room. He sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the room, looking above at the ceiling and staring at the blank light being projected onto the ceiling.
He knew it was in the process of working out what he wanted it to do and what memories that he had closed his eyes to choose. He was trying to think about something that Mike had said to him, which had gotten to him on a deeper level. The whole household had been told that there was now a virus in the infrastructure of Spyral’s hardware and programs, from other Old Worlders. Rob just needed something to tell him that what Mike was planning to do, was the right thing to do. Rob wasn’t sure if he should keep on telling Mike to back down from his plans to try and overthrow Spyral or if Rob should listen to it and he should just encourage Fox to participate in such a dangerous activity.
“Program malfunction,” said a voice within the hologram of light on the ceiling. “Please select another memory to revisit.” The light disappeared as Rob didn’t move from his spot. He had now been too distracted trying to deconstruct lost memories and make sense of this New World with Mike’s crazy ideas.
Rob jumped as Fox and a hooded Mike came through the front door, carrying takeaway Chinese food with them. Mike was the one to close the door. He turned around and took off his hood and stared at Rob was now deep back in thought.
“What’s wrong with you now?” asked Mike, crossing his arms, hoping to get a reasonable answer, as Fox unpacked the plastic containers that had various dishes in them.
“I’m thinking about what you said,” answered Rob, as Mike’s face lit up in a I-told-you-so expression. “Spyral’s hardware has been infected with a virus that is crashing their mainframes. Someone downtown dropped the G word three times and there were no guards. Someone’s done something to disrupt their system. Thankfully, that person wasn’t around any New Worlders.” Rob was still precarious not to say God, because of the fear of Spyral having their systems back up and running.
“It can’t be that bad of a virus, though,” objected Fox, as she stopped what she was doing and focused on their conversation. “We still have the basics that Spyral provides us with. We have electricity, hot water, and we have the supply of food that are still exporting and importing for us.”
“I say it is a type of virus that was specifically aimed to mutilate and bypass all their automatic responses to crimes,” guessed Mike, walking over to the Remberant and picking it up, curious to know what it was. “What’s this, genius?” He turned to Rob for his answer.
“Just something I picked up, give it to me, it’s mine,” answered Rob, pulling out his hand as he received it with Mike asking no questions about what it could’ve been. He hid it quickly in his pocket. “This plan of yours, what does it consist of?”
“So, now you’re interested?” asked Mike, sitting on the couch that Rob had been previously sitting on, as Fox continued serving up the Chinese food on three plates. “What happened? Did an angel come out of the sky and tell you that this was the right thing to do, stand up for what you believe in?”
“I know for sure an angel didn’t tell me that,” Rob retorted without a doubt of knowing what he was saying. He had years to discover this about Los Angeles and narrowly missing being exiled several times. “Ever since the New World came into play I’ve learnt that this isn’t the City of Angels, this is where the angels fell. I’ve stopped believing in fate and started to believe what was real and what was happening. It doesn’t seem right. Taking down Spyral is a risky business and you can’t go into hiding after you fail.”
“Who said we were going to fail?” asked Mike, as Fox stopped serving up the Chinese and walked over to Mike and Rob with their plates. She laid them down in front of them on the coffee table as each of the men gave thanks to her. “Do you really want to continue living in a world that there is no justice and no passion to live life anymore?” Rob shook his head, as Fox disappeared to get her food that was left back on the bench in the kitchen. “It’s a well known fact that an Old Worlder brought Dark Knight Station down to its knees. Now all we need to do is make Winter Station and then eventually, make the headquarters of Spyral beg for mercy on their knees.” Fox came back again with her plate in one hand and started to eat her food with some chopsticks.
“I don’t know about it Mike, there’s something in the back of my head that tells me trying to overthrow Spyral is not a good idea,” replied Rob, as there was a knock at the door. Mike was going to reply but he didn’t, so he quickly hid his head under his hood, as Rob got to his feet to answer the door. “Who is it?”
“Bella,” answered the lady from next door who happened to be an Old Worlder as well. Rob opened the door, as he saw Bella and smiled. “Just popping around to say that Dark Knight Station is back up and running. Some genius **** gave the virus the biggest ass kicking ever and its systems have doubled the firewall power.”
“Where did you hear this?” asked Rob, frowning, as Bella just had good timing in ruining Mike’s plans to overthrow Spyral. “I didn’t catch the part where you told me your source.”
“Benji downstairs heard it off someone who lived near the Dark Hills area,” answered Bella, as Fox smiled at the mentioning of Benji’s name.
“Thanks for that, I’ll keep that in mind, whenever that will prove useful,” nodded Rob slowly, as Bella smiled, and disappeared out of sight. Rob closed the door, and turned around to see Mike taking off his hood. “How’s Bella’s **** timing for you doing there, Mike?”
“I’m still doing it,” answered Mike, stubbornly. “You have no idea what it feels like to be treated like, just because you’ve got some Japanese in you. It’s like you’re an alien to society. You get blamed for other people’s actions and you’re solely judged on the past and not on resolutions.”
“And you have no idea how bad it feels not knowing how to read when Spyral’s taken away schools and other forms of education that I needed in order to learn the basics to life,” added Fox, as she put her plate down on the coffee table and everyone turned to Fox to hear her hate for such a corporation. “Spyral’s taken away something that I needed. I envy everyone who can read here. I envy everyone who in the past got treated for such conditions as the ones I’m stuck with. Spyral has no idea what it feels like to be mocked and teased by other people from an older generation about how you cannot read. It hurts more than anyone can imagine.”
“I feel your pain, that’s why I had the heart to take you like I did,” replied Rob, as he started to walk over to Fox, who looked like she was going to have one of her breakdowns. Mike patted Fox on the arm, to try and calm her down.
“No one cares in this society; I wish I lived in a society where freedom was a promise not a defiance,” Fox continued, as a tear made its way down her face. The New Worlders would cure such tears with Ivna. However, since these three people were opposed to such an idea, they chose to face their emotions rather covering them up with artificial emotions. “The only people who care in this society are the people, you’re with, and even that is a challenge at times.” Rob knelt down in front of her, narrowly squeezing in between her and the coffee table and started to see her pain that he had felt too many a time. “I want to get back at them. I want to make them endure what I’ve had to put up with. Suffocation, restrictions, and autocratic rule… I’m sick of it, I’m sick of being a nobody, Rob. I want to be a somebody.”
“I know how it feels, but the only reason why I’m not agreeing to it entirely is because, it’s dangerous and we’re not equipped with the knowledge or the resources to even bring down Dark Knight Station,” Rob explained, as he held Fox’s hands and continued to watch Fox shed more tears.
“I don’t care, I’m in,” Fox retorted bringing out the stubbornness in her that didn’t show that often. “I want to make a difference.”
“I’m concerned though, what, what if something was to occur and we would have to rely on you to read something?” asked Mike, trying to put it as nice as possible. Fox hadn’t thought of that, so she didn’t say anything and shrugged. “My point precisely.” Mike looked to Rob, as Rob caught Mike’s glance and looked to him. “If we don’t have the knowledge or the resources between us three, how do we get the word across to the society of the Old Worlders that fill those streets down there, about this?”
“So what are you suggesting?” asked Rob, still trying to understand Mike and his jumbled ideas.
“We don’t work as a trio, we work together, all of the Old Worlders, because all of us know the difference between then and now,” Mike answered, trying to understand this plan himself. “If we get our generation together, and only our generation, we can overthrow Spyral. We work as a majority, not as a minority.” Fox nodded as she started to like the way that Mike was starting to think. “We hold meetings on a regular basis, because now, since the virus has been taken care of, this isn’t going to take two days to organise.”
“Because Spyral is a lot more sophisticated and complex then anyone thinks it is, there’s only one thing though,” added Rob, as he just remembered the three obstacles in their way. “The Dark Hills are a breeding ground for Spyral guards, Dark Knight Station and Winter Station are massive they are not just watch towers, and that’s just basic knowledge of the New World.”
“Yeah, we need to get the word out about this amongst the Old Worlders, but again, the question comes down to, how can we get only the Old World generation to hear it and not the New Worlders?” asked Mike, still deep in thought in answering his question.
Then it struck Rob like a baseball bat to the back of his head. Who was the number one person that loved spreading word about the misfortunes of Spyral amongst the Old Worlders?
“Bella,” answered Rob, suddenly realising the answer to his own personal question, as both Mike and Fox nodded in agreement. “We can do this now that I think of it. Yeah, we will do this now. We’re going to overthrow Spyral and show that spoilt little brat her true place in society.”

****​

 

[Ravynlee]

Muahaha Sarah's finally going to get what's coming to her! Loving this whole vibe of rebellion setting in, not too sure I trust Bella is it? But still, I get where they're coming from, have to play it smart, but who can you trust in that situation? Foxxy showing emotion was sweet, she's not normally known for that, and Rob taking charge was good to see and stepping up to join his friend, also great. As always your use of description is quite awe-inspiring, in some ways it's like you've had a glimpse into the future! Powerful stuff

 

[Pheonix791989]

good update... and the drunk chaz made me laugh lol. go me rav and chaz for rebellion sorry im a bit late with the review... working hard and all lol

 

[woodyloveslinkin]

****​

Joanna sat back in the yellow leather armchair, in which in all told truth to be told, it was Old World orange, with her legs crossed. She looked to the wall, as a tear fell down her face. She was busy contemplating something big, and she didn’t have her Ivna bottle on her so she couldn’t suppress them with the artificial drug. She wasn’t at home, she was still at her friends place, and she hadn’t been home since last night when she felt like she had been betrayed by her sister being near a banned substance.
Imported liquor was banned in Article SPY106 under the category of business relating to alcohol distribution and consumption.
She didn’t know what to do. Ivna couldn’t help her and her friend hadn’t bought some as she had run out of it.
Joanna had made the decision. She was going to do it. What they did was wrong and illegal and they shouldn’t have gotten away with it. Joanna was very patriotic in other words.
She fiddled with the small rose around her neck that was dangling off a silver chain. It was her pendant, her birth pendant. Joanna was only a year younger than Fox and in it that difference of a year apart, many things had happened to the world around her.
She stopped fiddling with the rose as she got to her feet, and left her friend’s house without any word being spoken or any indication that she had left. She opened the front door and soon found herself, on the street below. She stopped as soon as she got to the sidewalk and looked around, as she asked herself a simple question, now which way was the nearest ATM?
She didn’t know off by heart so she took a left as a random guess and followed that road down for a couple of minutes until she stopped and wondered where she was. She didn’t know where she was, but she was going to make herself believe that she wasn’t lost and continued her journey down the path as she recognised a group of Old Worlders. She scowled at them, but she wasn’t sure that the Old Worlders actually cared about the stability of this society.
Then she saw it. The Automatic Telling Machine on the corner of the street that she was about to cross. Old Worlders would consider the ATM the most useless and impertinent invention that Spyral had created so far in this world of corporation based tyrants.
In the Old World, the only useful thing that ATM’s were useful for was getting cash out of them to pay the bills. And if an Old Worlder was forced to described what the New World’s version of the ATM looked like, they would say it looked like a photo booth that would be planted on the side of the malls pathways, for teenagers to take stupid photos of them and their friends as they make weird faces to the camera inside. This was another thing that the New World had stolen from the Old World; Automatic Telling Machines were newer versions of Old World photo booths.
Of course, Joanna was completely unaware of such a pattern that existed in the society that she had dedicated her life to, as she walked over to the ATM and sat inside it, drawing the grey curtain shut so she could maintain her privacy as her memory was extracted from her.
“Welcome,” said the automatic detection voice inside the ATM, as the screen in front of her went from being plain blue to a nice shade of New World yellow. “Please sit still while in the process of Agama.” Agama was the codename given to the process of memory extraction and had been one of the first prototype that succeeded in its early days as just an experiment. Joanna sat still, as she looked to the screen in front of her, as it went it changed to a screensaver of an aquarium with exotic fish swimming around with oxygen bubbles rising on various parts of the screen. A red infra beam appeared at the top of the booth and a purple light appeared below it. They moved simultaneously down until they reached the bottom of Joanna’s neck. “Please sit still while in the process of Agama.” It repetitively told Joanna, as the beams moved back up to the top of her head and moved down again until they reached the bottom of her neck. The screensaver changed from its aquarium environment to a page that displayed a moving bar based on the progress of the extraction progress, Loading…it read above the purple light against the green background. The bar reached full as her memories were displayed in thumbnails in front of her and the beams of light had disappeared. “Please select desired memory to be crystallised.” She touched the one of the previous evening. “Is that all?” Joanna touched the okay button and it went to another page. “Please insert pendant in the tray.” Joanna removed her chain that had the rose hanging off it and placed it in the silver tray that had slid out. It slid back in once it received her pendant. “Attaching file to 1007868-980-888.” The number that the machine had quoted was what her birth pendant scanned and stored as. In a matter of seconds the screen went blank again and the silver tray slid back out as Joanna recollected it and put the chain back around her neck. The pendant now was glowing red as it signalled there was a memory that was classified as important now stored on it, as the tray disappeared out of sight. “Thank you for your co-operation 1007868-980-888. You have been approved access to the Leader as the committee is now on leave. Please take the hologram that will be provided to you, to travel directly to Spyral’s headquarters. Spyral thanks you for your patriotism and helping to make this world more stable and a better place to live in.” The screen went blank as a Yanac dropped out of the air and landed on Joanna’s lap.
A Yanac was a device that directly took a New Worlder to Spyral’s headquarters. The user would first appear as a hologram and then solidify twenty seconds later. Unlike the guards who used a more powerful version of a Yanac called a Sphinx that allowed them to appear solid ten seconds later. A Yanac could be used only twice, to get back and forth, while a Sphinx could be used up to twenty thousand times or until the guards were destroyed.
Joanna smiled as she got up and held the small device in her hand, like an Old World discus, and walked outside, pulling the grey curtains opened. She walked down the street to find somewhere private. It only took her a minute or two, as she found a small abandoned alleyway that was lighted up by the glowing of the neon colours of a billboard. She dropped the discus-like object to the ground and pressed the small green button with her foot.
In a matter of seconds, she saw her hand start to fade away and it crawled up both arms. The upper abdomen went first and then her legs.Then she completely disappeared, as the small green button had started to flash.
She soon found herself appearing slowly in a nice chamber room, with a young girl sitting at an antique armchair that had what appeared to be the Spyral logo of the two snakes and the pole (the Old World medicine symbol) at the top of the chair, and it was wrapped with ancient solid silver vines that wound themselves around the arms of the chair. The girl herself, she wore a black corset top with red laces down the front of her chest. Joanna noticed her boots as well. They were matching red and black boots. She tried to say something for the first couple of seconds but she could not hear herself, as she had completely forgotten about the twenty-second solidifying characteristic of a Yanac.
“So, you have information?” asked the girl, looking not surprised.
“Yeah,” answered Joanna, as she realised that the twenty seconds had past and she could now hear herself and the girl in the room.
“What’s your name?” asked the girl.
“Joanna,” answered Joanna. “Are you who I think you are?” The girl nodded. She was Sarah, Joanna realised, the ruler of the lands. “You look down on us, don’t you?”
“I look after you, there’s a fine line between looking down on you and taking care of you,” corrected Sarah. “Show me your pendant, Joanna.”
Joanna fumbled around for a second or two, and then undid the chain around her neck. She walked across the room, as Sarah held out her hand and Joanna piled the chain up in Sarah’s hands. Sarah looked down at the pendant and took the pendant by the top of it, so the chain dangled down from it.
“It’s not much, but I want to help, I want this society to be stable as much as you do,” explained Joanna, bringing out the patriotic side to her.
Sarah pressed a leaf on the vine that wrapped its way around the left arm of the ancient chair and it opened a small opening. Sarah piled the chain in it first and then dropped the glowing pendant in. She closed it but gently moving the lid of the opening over. A light appeared at the end of the arm of the chair, as Joanna realised that she had to move, so she did, to get away. The memory had been selected and now had changed from the blank snow white colour being projected on the back wall, just metres away from where Joanna had appeared, to a memory that was of that one night when she was walking home from the markets. It played out in front of Sarah like an Old World movie. It was a matter of minutes until it was over and then it went blank. Sarah opened the gap back up and handed Joanna’s pendant back to her. It had been extracted and therefore, the red glow was gone.
“Who were they?” asked Sarah. “Give me their pendants.”
“They don’t have pendants,” explained Joanna. “They are Old Worlders.”
“Who was that woman you were begging for her to stand up to them with you?” asked Sarah, as she realised that not a single name was spoken, except for the name that had disappeared out off Spyro’s map again, Ravyn. Spyro was hitting the roof that she had disappeared again and nothing and no one was found at her last location, in the alleyway with Mel the previous evening. An Old Worlder had outsmarted a program that basically controlled everything in Spyral’s systems. “Who is she?”
“She’s my sister, but I’m not here to report her,” Joanna answered, having a last change of heart. “It was that man, and that other woman. They did nothing about it.”
“Where can I find your sister?” asked Sarah, still rattled by Spyro’s news.
“I don’t know where she is to be honest, she could be anywhere,” answered Joanna, bending the truth to save her sister. Just say, a liar knows when liars lie.
“You’re a traitor to this society Joanna, your sister is a criminal and so are the rest of those people I just saw be played out,” Sarah told Joanna. “You are deliberately trying to withhold information from Spyral, by not telling me your sister’s location. She’s a traitor to this ruling as well, if you didn’t happen to know this. You’ll be seeing her soon, that I’ll be certain to guarantee you.” Solid guards appeared at the doorway, as Joanna spun around to see the guards coming towards her, in disbelief that her patriotism had just backfired on her completely. “You will be exiled in three days time precisely, that’s if you don’t choose to tell me your sister’s location.”
Joanna spun back around to face Sarah, as the guards grabbed her by the neck.
“You cannot do this to me, I didn’t do anything wrong!” Joanna tried to debate with Sarah, but she got dragged away too quickly for her to hear what Sarah had said in response to Joanna’s attempted debate, as the guards ripped her chain and pendant off her to give to Sarah.
Sarah sat back in the same chair that she had been sitting in all day hearing cases of truth and lies, since the committee were away; it was her job to do it. She was deep in thought, as she started to play with a pocket watch her father had given her a day before he got assassinated by that group of rebels. She played with it, sending it across the back of her knuckles, back and forth, contemplating what she was really going to do with Joanna’s life and eventually, what she would do with the woman’s life that killed Sarah’s mother.
Immediate death or damnation for eternity?
That was the question.

****



​

 

[Pheonix791989]

nice update.... haha thats what you get for being a snitch!! you rat me out.... XD.

 

[Jeezy]

hurry up to put up the next one...

I'm excited now...lol

 

[Ravynlee]

AWESOME! I have to say I LOVE this evil Sarah character, something about her is just... I dunno, captivating. You want to dislike her, everything's telling you she's the 'bad guy' and yet... she's just... intriguing. The chair sounds awesome, I love the tie in to the repeated symbolism, even what she was wearing (reminiscent in the colours in your sig, nice touch) and the guards grabbing Joanna at the end! I was like 'No! Not my sister!' but mind you she sort of did ask for it... wondering what that evil little wench has in store. She's great, I'll give ya that

 

[woodyloveslinkin]

Thanks for the comments Happy to know that everyone is enjoying it.

****​

It was the next day for the city where the angels fell for the Old World generation and where the angels had risen for the New World generation. Different generations had the most obvious differences in opinion when it came to the topic of what was wrong with the New World and what was right. The answer to the first part of the question according to the Old World was, what isn’t wrong about living in a society where your basic human rights are ignored? The New World’s response to the first part of the original question posed was mainly what’s wrong with you? There’s nothing wrong with the New World, the New World is a living heaven! Now the Old World generation in answering the second part of the original question primarily consisted of thinking right about such horrible thoughts, as thinking the New World actually had something positive about it is tyrannous, you make me sick. The New World generation’s reaction was too long in explaining what was right about the New World (that in most surveys conducted by Spyral out of sheer boredom and then followed by the mostly uncaring thoughts about people’s opinion of their world), so they had to limit responses to a couple of paragraphs and threatened with exile if they exceeded more than those few paragraphs instructed.
Sarah walked down the hallways of the Spyral’s building, in her usual corset fitting. But unlike yesterday the combination of the colours had changed. Instead of the previous red and black combination colours, today was dark blue and with light grey laced up the chest, corset top matched nicely with her French braided back to reveal the silver snake studs that filled her ear holes, and her dark blue boots with dark grey laces that laced their way up to her knees, as her dress stopped at her knees to show off her boots.
She wasn’t alone. She had her associates behind her chatting away like Old World howler monkeys in the rainforests of the Old World Brazil. She stood her ground by her silence as she led her associates to the meeting room that wasn’t far away. She was in authoritative figure mode right now and not-to-be-stuffed-around mode. She would exile her own associates if she wanted to do and they were easy to replace, as Sarah had learnt through many years of following her father around to these types of meetings and then it had been her turn a few years ago to take to the throne and stabilise society. The only noise that Sarah made was her boots treading against the ground and her pendant swinging on its ancient chain. Her pendant unlike Joanna’s meant more to her than anything in the world, even more than her programmable best friend Spyro. Her pendant was of an Old World Celtic Cross with vines wrapped around it with a blade for the bottom section of the cross, and a flower-like pattern in the centre. This pendant proved that she was born in the times of the New World as well and made her feel comfortable that she hadn’t been born in the times of the Old World, despite the fact that she didn’t know her father had chosen an Old World symbol for his only born, but in all truth, her father loved Celtic symbols, and he loved his daughter.
She took a sharp turn around a corner on her left, as she entered the meeting room that looked like it was fit for a king, or in this case, fit for a ruler who had autocratic powers and reined her tyrannical powers to the maximum of her ability. She saw her red cedar chair at the head of the Huon pine table that once belonged to the native forests of Old World South America, Australia, and Southeast Asia. But now it was the rarest timber in the New World and if sold, it could buy a lot of McSpyral burgers and fried rice. She passed the rare table and went to her chair that was lined with red velvet and the Spyral snakes wrapped around the pole which was plated in brass. She sat down at it and crossed her legs, waiting impatiently waiting for her associates to sit done at the Huon pine chairs that were lined with green velvet cushions.
“I am not waiting another year for you to sit down and start this meeting, I have other things to attend to!” snapped Sarah, impatiently as they quickened their search for the perfect chair next to their preferred choice of people to sit down next to. In a matter of seconds, everyone just grabbed any odd chair and sat down at it. “Why am I still hearing that whatever type of virus it is, why is it still affecting the guards so much?”
“We don’t know, Spyro’s up and running and she’s working perfectly,” explained the first associate, sitting the closest to Sarah, as Sarah crossed her arms unimpressed. “This is a type of virus our analysers have not seen before. Spyro said she felt drowsy all the time when she got infected and she’s never felt that way.”
“Is that all you’ve done in the past days we’ve had this virus?” asked Sarah. “I don’t want the electricity or the hot water supply to be victimised next.”
“We are doing the best we can do,” explained the second associate sitting at the other end of the table. “It’s not like we are lazing around on our asses all day and doing nothing.”
“Do not speak that tone with me,” requested Sarah, detecting that her associate was fed up with her asking questions. “You’ve seen the consequences in other instances someone has repetitively challenged my decisions on any topic. I advise just do your job and get rid of this damn virus. There’s going to be an uprising soon if we don’t have guards to keep world order and like hell, I am going to end up with the same fate as my father.” She looked around at her associates who had their eyes fixed on her, and fixed on every word that she was speaking. “I strongly advise do not challenge my authority, my dear associates; I am not here to swallow excuses I am here to ask how and why and try to keep a civilisation from burning down and going into chaos. The last thing I want to do is end up shaming my father’s grave just because a bunch of idiots didn’t know how to control a virus outbreak.”
“We have controlled it though, but we haven’t gotten rid of it,” explained the third associate who was halfway down the table as Sarah’s glance was diverted to him. “It doesn’t seem like it wants to die. It’s as though it is dormant or hibernating for something to happen. We are sure that an Old Worlder did this, but we cannot tell exactly who did this.”
“How the hell did an Old Worlder get past the Dark Hills and into Dark Knight Station without being detected by a single thing?” asked Sarah, very curious to know answers to her questions.
“We have no clue because there’s no pendant to trace up like we could be able to do if a New Worlder had done it,” answered the same associate, the third one. “Good news though Spyro is currently hacking into the memories of spies that we have got loose on the streets and she would be able to narrow the possibilities down to who had done it.”
“Narrowing and determining are two very different things, and I would prefer determining the real criminal rather than just narrowing it down to a second guess choice,” retorted Sarah, as she got to her feet. She looked around to her associates again. “We cannot afford to waste time here people. The longer we sit here and twiddle our thumbs the longer it will take for us to maintain order. Stability is a necessity not an option here. I thought you people told me that you worked with my father?”
“You exiled half of them, there’s only a few remaining,” answered the fourth associate. “But now that you mention it, I did work with your father. He was a great man and ruler to have worked for. And I may say, I am honoured to work for the next generation of Spyral rulers like as yourself.”
“Thank you for your satisfaction,” replied Sarah, sarcastically, not in the mood to be sucked up to right now, but more so wanting answers. “This is the final thing I am going to say for today’s interrupted meeting, as I am going to have a word to Spyro about the progress that we are lacking to complete. I am not here to ask questions and contemplate decisions all day long, I have other business to attend to but, I want the virus terminated and if you cannot terminate that virus, then yourselves will be terminated in a rocket that’s headed to a planet with no oxygen supply. Do you hear what I am saying, loud and clear?” Everyone in the room agreed and nodded their heads. “Good day to you all, gentlemen.” Sarah turned to leave the room, as she strolled past her associates who were now deep in a concerned conversation about their now threatened future with the corporation. Sarah exited the room, slamming the door behind her and making her associates jump with fright.
Sarah strolled past various other chambers that were used for different reasons and she had set her destination to Spyro’s bedroom, also known to others commonly as the chambers that held the Mirror Board. It was a matter of minutes before Sarah arrived there, as she opened the door to see the Mirror Board scrolling down numeric values like x = 789-90 + latitude of 50 SE. She stopped in the doorway as she saw other mathematic equations appearing, but they were the same specific location being repeated over again as Sarah realised that Spyro was thinking aloud and was writing down her thoughts as she was hiding in her motherboard. Sarah smiled, as she looked down to the ground and looked back up again to see the blue woman’s head staring right at Sarah leaning against the doorframe.
“Came to give me flowers, dear?” asked Spyro, as Sarah shook her head. “Oh. Was getting a bit lonely here doing all of these advanced calculus equations, and was getting a bit of a headache as well, I just assumed you were going to put my mind at ease.”
“This is the precise reason why we don’t need education, we have programs like you that do everything for us, that think for us and gives us advice,” commented Sarah. “Who needs a mother when you give me advice to what to do.”
“There’s a large line between what I can do right now and what I cannot do compared to what your mother did for you when she was alive,” explained Spyro.
“I detect sarcasm isn’t on your list of verbal speech tones you can pick up, I’ll tell Brad to put that in you next time you’re serviced,” Sarah made a mental note to herself, as the mother topic was sarcasm, obviously not picked up by Spyro.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, and wit my dear, you have too much of it,” Spyro said, as Sarah saw the chair in front of the mirror board and went over to sit down at it. “I was counting down to when you would see the chair.” Sarah sat down in the chair and crossed her legs. “I detect you are not here for personal reasons.”
“You are correct, I am here for strict business purposes only, the personal stuff can wait until later,” Sarah replied.
“Spyro is here, what can she do for you?” asked Spyro as she changed her form from a woman’s head to a small picture of various question marks.
“Just came out of a meeting and that virus is attacking us like crazy, well, not right now, but it is still affecting the guards, and I want to know what type of virus it is, I’ve never seen this virus before, it’s even in like a sleeping mode, it’s waiting for something to happen until it fully crashes the system or something like that,” Sarah answered Spyro, as she went back to her normal form on the blue touch screen in front of the ruler. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Okay, I have pinpointed what type of virus it is, but the bad news my dear, I don’t know how to override it, even though I am the most sophisticated program in the world, I cannot override the virus, I do not even know where to start looking for its inoculation,” replied the blue woman. “I have to put you through a history lesson, if you don’t mind, dear.”
“Go nuts,” Sarah gave the go-ahead for another entertaining and intelligent history lesson that Spyro was well known for giving to Sarah.
“In 2009 there was a virus that erupted from the banks of Egypt that got into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s main computer frame in a place called The Pentagon, which at that stage, that company investigated deaths and made a **** load of conspiracies by that time, and that virus my dear, was named Mississippi,” explained Spyro, as Sarah couldn’t help but to smirk at the program cussing. “Now they thought that this virus had gone for good, but by the time that World War Three had departed, Spyral had gotten an infection of its servers in Siberia and England, of the dormant virus, that was also the same one that had brought the Bureau of Investigation down to its knees. You cannot kill this virus Sarah my dear, despite how many times you give it a vaccine. It plays dead but then it reignites itself. I do not know if it is triggered by anything. So try all you want, the virus will always be there.”
“How come my father never wrote anything about this virus in his journal?” asked Sarah, remembering that she had started to read the words of her father’s early days in the Old World in a scrappy old brown book. Sarah hated the sound of the Old World where politics rolled in money like pigs did to mud, and how global corporations had no political power at all, but had political influence only to a certain extent. The technology as well, disgusted Sarah because they were so technologically disorganised.
Spyral stopped talking for a second in disbelief. She didn’t know that Sarah had been reading her father’s journal and didn’t want her to read the journal for the things that she would find out about the Old World.
“Sarah, do not continue your reading of that journal, there are many gruesome things about the Old World that would upset you a lot,” advised Spyro. “I am not saying out of narcissism, but for your own good. I am more concerned that you will emotionally lose the plot over the parts where your mother is included and you will not be able to conduct your job in a professional manner, but in a personal manner. You are a good person, dear, and you do not need to be destroyed by your father’s words.”
“But you said it yourself, he was a good man at heart and at brain, I look up to my father, he got me where I am now, and look at you, you wouldn’t be like this if it wasn’t for him,” debated Sarah, somewhat confused by the program’s reaction to her reading a scrappy old brown book that was hidden in the drawer next to Sarah’s bed. “I do not understand your reaction Spyro.”
“I am only trying to protect you from the details of the awful Old World, nothing more and nothing less, I do not wish to continue this conversation,” the program said to Sarah, as Sarah shook her head, declining termination of the conversation.
“Why? What are you afraid of?” asked Sarah, still trying to understand why Spyro was being stubborn about her reading her father’s journal. “I can only learn from the days that he was in, can’t I? So I can make a better society as my father has already set down the foundations for me?”
“He made some dangerous mistakes and I do not wish for you to know of them,” answered Spyro. “It’s for your own good. I am going to self-terminate in three seconds.”
“No, termination denied!” yelled Sarah at the blue screen, but it was already too late, as the digital blue woman’s head disappeared. “Spyro! Come back! I’ll manually override you to come back if you don’t tell me!” Sarah got to her feet, and walked over to the screen of air that emitted blue light off it, and started to move her hands side to side, up and down, following directions to override Spyro like Brad had taught her to do, as programs blinked on and off for a second, depending what Sarah was doing. Sarah started frantically push the buttons that felt like pushing air and still didn’t do anything.
She didn’t want to admit it but she knew when Spyro was stubborn and dead set on some things, and her father’s journal was one of them, as she sighed and slumped back into the chair that sat in front of the screen that was scrolling out Spyro’s mathematic thoughts and equations. She knew Spyro was in there, because she could not physically walk away but all she did was hide in her motherboard, while her thoughts poured out into scrolling columns of letters, numbers, values, and symbols that Sarah didn’t even know how it worked. That was the great thing about being a best friend to a program that was too sophisticated that it made Sarah’s head hurt and the only person that understood Spyro was herself, not even Sarah, not even the analysers or the technicians, it was a great thing to Sarah.
She was always up for a challenge, but she wasn’t sure if she was up to this personal challenge, not picking up her father’s journal and not reading it.

****​

Enjoy.​

 

[FireHawk]

God damn I wish I was an 8th of the writer of you. You are alike my goal when it comes to writing.

 

[woodyloveslinkin]

Really..?
Wow. I feel really special now.
There have been several people telling me that I should turn this into a book, and still thinking about it seriously. Well, let's see what the future brings for Tourniquet and the dreams/nightmares it gives to its readers. And I personally admit this is my best work so far.
Thanks as always.

 

[Ravynlee]

Fantastic as always. I love the relationship between Sarah and Spyro and the degree of humanity you've brought to the program as well. There's lots I like about this update... don't know where to start! Wondering what's in the journal of course, oh and the celtic symbolism! Awesome! (In being a fan with Celtic tattoos myself) oh and the meeting she had with her associates, THAT was commendable too. She's a real little powerhouse, isn't she? Wouldn't like to cross her path in a bad mood that's for sure! Just loving it... well done.

 

[woodyloveslinkin]

****​

Mel and a hooded Viking were walking down the deserted road of Los Angeles as they were walking the back streets to avoid any unwanted attention by Spyral guards that were now walking the streets of where the angels had fell down hard. Since Spyral had apparently dealt with the virus that they announced on Spyral Ltd (in which Mel had threw comments and rolled her eyes at the television set the whole time of the airing), they had stopped using guards that were programmable and used actual human guards that looked like body builders then anything.
In all truth to be told, they weren’t actual human guards, they appeared solid, and they couldn’t appear places via Sphinxes. They were genetically modified and genetically solidified androids in the disguise of humans, as appose to the other ones they were androids, but they were much sophisticated and had a much more diverse internal hard drive compared to these backups. The real things were classified as Class WTF – Class Western Taxic Furan, while compared to these back talking androids were classified as Class STFU – Class Southern Taxic Furan that Sarah had now threatened them with planting the virus Mississippi in them if they stopped following orders. The only program that was able to recognise and counter blackmail in the world was Spyro, it was Brad’s doing. These androids had been told what the virus could do to them and Sarah had directly ordered to do their jobs or face Mississippi and try to live through it without being sent to the scrap yard.
Mel took a sharp left as Viking trailed her, trying to remember the way to Ravyn’s apartment building as Ravyn had got lost several times trying to find it, but Mel ended up asking someone on the street for directions and they found it no time. Mel found herself on a main street, looking up at a pair of old concreted stairs that had cracked in a couple of thousand places. Mel sighed as she looked up to a window on the far right to see if Ravyn was doing her day job and looking out the window. She wasn’t. Mel sighed again, as she started to walk up the pair of stairs that led up to a door, and as Viking trailed. Mel pushed the door opened and held it open for Viking to walk through.
The door closed as the pair of wanted Old Worlders started to climb the stairs to the seventh floor of the building, to the seventh corridor and then to eventually open the door which was the seventh on the right with the number seven written on it with a gold seven shining dully under the hallway’s light.
“Welcome back to the hellhole that I call society,” grumbled Ravyn, as she appeared at the kitchen, as they had walked directly to the entertaining room and past the kitchen. They turned around to see a depressed Ravyn. “Exile is just a click away while freedom has been permanently deleted from your hard drive. Please reboot and start again. All unsaved files will be lost for eternity.”
“Have you been drinking, Ravyn?” asked Mel, unsure, as Viking frowned with worry and took off his hood.
“No, I wish I were though,” answered Ravyn. “Joanna hasn’t returned. I’m getting worried about her. If she was angry at me like she was at the Chinese place, she would’ve picked up her clothes and things. She hasn’t. What’s happened to her?”
“She’s a New Worlder, she can survive,” scoffed Mel, as she turned back around and started to walk over to the window, but Viking stood his ground. “New Worlders believe they have the potential to go and survive anything. I would love to see them survive Old World Africa with its deserts.” She stopped at the window and peered outside to see Spyral guards standing still and looking around for suspicious activity taking place. “Look at those guards. They are useless and dumb prototypes Spyral has got going there. Again, what this world has come down to is pathetic.”
“They aren’t dumb prototypes,” corrected Viking, as he spun around to face Mel, still concerned about Ravyn in the back of his head. Mel detached herself from staring out the window and looked to Viking. “They are another form of guards from Spyral, as a backup to the other ones. Apparently these ones annoy the crap out of the dictatress, because they refuse to follow orders and drive her mad with rage on occasions, says the word that’s going around about these guys.” Viking decided to take a look for himself as he walked over to the window and looked through the glass down to the pavement where the guards stood. “These Spyral guards were prototyped in the war, and made a bloody mess of the Japanese and the Germans in both Saigon and Berlin.” Ho Chi Minh City had been renamed Saigon in 2009 because of political opposition to the Vietnamese suppression of the Buddhist monks that now, in the New World, finding a Buddhist monk would be finding a needle in the haystack. The Japanese had started to invade Southeast Asia, as the Chinese were struggling to defend their territory; so the Japanese spared themselves bloodshed of either side and went around China. Didn’t take them long to shift an entire army around such a large country, and then raided Vietnam and the surrounding countries. As demonstrated in the previous World War, they didn’t stand a chance against the Australians when they had reached the bordering countries of the island nation. “They caused the commanding officers and the groups of technicians, trouble on a regular basis as they thrived on rebellion. I don’t know why they are back on the production line, that virus must’ve been a big one to hurt the normal bitches badly.”
“I thought you told us that you only fought in Berlin, where you fought off the Germans?” asked Mel, recalling their first decent conversation from the other night at the noodle bar. Ravyn stopped standing up in the kitchen and came over to the window, which was her window that she stared out of all day wondering what the hell was wrong with her. She sat on the window sill in between Viking and Mel. “I knew you fought in the war though.”
“You fought in the Third Great War and survived both Berlin and Saigon?” asked Ravyn, impressed already by this stranger that she knew as Viking. Viking had been staying there for about a day or two now, and he was planning to stay longer. “That’s really something to be proud of.”
“I was originally stationed in Saigon to take down the Japanese before they reached Jakarta and Singapore, but days before the invasion of Saigon I got deployed and moved over to Berlin, to try and fight off the Germans, you know, to try and attack them at the heart, at their beloved capital city,” remembered Viking, as he felt like he was the oldest one there because he had been the only one that had fought in the war and he held many memories of both camps that he had been stationed at it. “The Germans were ruthless in their attempts to get rid us, so these guys, downstairs, had been brought in, only just created they were still prototypes, but they were annoying outside of the fighting on the killing fields. They picked on certain soldiers and provoked the rest of us to fight them. We knew we would get a dishonourable discharge for causing trouble if we fought them. Then another soldier, Jimmy, we all called him that because he loved Jim Beam, cracked one day and threw a grenade at a whole bunch of them. But behind those guards were a bunch of emergency firecrackers, so he threw the grenade at them and caused an explosion that only set off the firecrackers and didn’t harm the guards at all. He died of third degree burns and internal haemorrhaging in his brain. The war was hell; the media depicted it in the best aspects only. Damn media control.”
“I’m sorry to hear,” replied Mel, as Viking returned from his trip down memory lane. Ravyn wanted to say something, but Mel had just said it for her. “I take it, what this society has become is worse than the war to you, or is it the opposite way around?”
“This society is worse, we at least in the war had a right to express our thoughts and opinions without being shot for it, that’s why I was originally there, to protect our freedom and our rights, funny isn’t it?” scoffed Viking. “I fought for nothing in the end.”
“Our loss is their gain,” added Ravyn, as everyone looked for Ravyn’s explanation of such a statement. “You fought for a G-o-d, and a country that had freedom of choice and freedom of thought, and that only made way for a ruling to take place which in the end, you regret ever fighting for this country because of the way society is now, it’s a tyrannical son of a bitch ruling. There’s no happiness and there’s just no nothing, you have to make a world of yours to retain your sanity. Even that is questionable with me right now, sanity; it’s like a contradiction in itself.”
“And even that you get punished for, making a world of your own, well, in all truth to be told, it’s hard to do anything that’s concerning the right to be an individual,” Mel added onto Ravyn’s sentence as she looked away from looking at Ravyn to back down at the guards that had now disappeared as they were too busy pinning someone else for an unreasonable crime. “It’s unbelievable how pathetic and the sort of level this society has stooped down to. I thought I would never survive the blast, but I didn’t know I would be awake to see such a rule like the one of Hitler’s but the only difference is, that, this is much worse than what the history documentaries on the History Channel told me about Hitler’s regime.”
“I hear a group of people are planning to go against the monarchy and try to override Spyral,” Viking changed the topic, as everyone looked to Viking in curiosity. “I know stupidity in its rawest form, but still remaining such a good idea. I know I’m even tempted to dig further into such a thought.”
“Who did you hear this from?” asked Ravyn, frowning as she couldn’t remember which Old Worlder had told her today about the exact same thing down at the Chinese takeaway shop that she had started turning up to and ordering the same thing on a daily basis. “I think I heard someone talking about the same thing. I just cannot remember who though.”
“Was it Bella from the bar?” asked Viking. Ravyn didn’t know, she couldn’t remember, so she shrugged as an answer to Viking’s enquiries. “Ah, Bella, my dear friend, her, and I go long back before the war, yeah me and Bar Bella, we all called her.” Then memories of Bella and him started to come back. “We were the best of mates–”
“Okay, your war story was great, but we seriously do not need to hear you relive memories of Bella and tell us details that in the first place, we didn’t need to be given,” Mel interrupted Viking’s second trip back down memory lane, as she had just stopped him floating around in space and time, and brought him back to earth. “What is this about a rebellion against the rule you mentioned before you went into your own little world with Bella?”
“You know her?” asked Viking to Mel, as Mel nodded. Mel knew Bella well, ever since she came to the City of Angels, they had survived the blast together, and they had helped each other out on various occasions concerning various reasons. “Wow, what a small world we really live in.”
“I repeat, what is this about a rebellion against the rule you mentioned before you went into your own little world with Bella?” Mel repeated the same question, knowing that if she started to talk about her history with Bella, Viking would get sidetracked and Mel had figured by now that she shouldn’t rely on Ravyn’s memory on everything.
“Oh that, yeah, well, rumour has it, there’s a group of Old Worlders, Bella said there were three of them who are planning to take society’s matters into their own and try and overthrow the bitch that lives upstairs,” answered Viking, recalling what Bella had told him as he had run into her outside the market place that day, as Mel had told him to sit in the corner opposite the market place, he wasn’t to speak and he wasn’t to show his face or to come into the marketplace with her. “I heard the draft plan out and I reckon it is a good start to such a clever idea.”
“What’s the draft plan so far, genius?” asked Mel, not impressed by such a thought of overtaking a large regime, but at the same time, torn between by being not impressed by an idea and thinking it was the greatest thing ever. The last time that she could think that an attempt to overthrow the New World orders and the people behind them, was the time where the old ruler had been assassinated by a group of rebels, and that was years ago.
“Bella said that there was going to be a meeting held in a couple of days to start drawing up who can do what and when, because she said that there isn’t enough resources and knowledge of Spyral to overthrow it just yet,” Viking explained, as he tried to remember what Bella had said to him, because he was too busy trying to keep his head down because Spyral guards had come past to survey the environment. “She said get the Old Worlders together, because a minority could not be able to construct such a sophisticated blue print of a plan. She said a majority would work better, and I actually agree with her there. It sounds so good to be true.”
“So what was the actual draft plan, Viking?” asked Mel, still torn between the pros and cons of such a tempting plan.
“I don’t know, I was too busy trying to keep my head down because of the Spyral guards that had just walked past, I heard they have face recognition software built into them,” answered Viking. “I didn’t want to get busted and plus, Bella said there wasn’t an actual blue print to the plan just yet.”
“But you said, you heard the draft plan out,” Ravyn remembered. “So, in all truth, you didn’t hear the draft out because there was no draft plan even constructed at the time of talking.” Viking looked a bit guilty of such a crime of misinforming his friends and nodded. “So in starters, you could’ve just said that you had heard a brilliant and tempting idea off Bella, instead of saying that there was already a draft drawn up and that you had heard it. Be clear next time Viking.” There was small silence in between the trio. “Now that I think of it, I think I did hear the same thing off an Old Worlder down at the Chinese place where we met.”
“Where do you mean? Jeezy’s?” asked Mel, as Ravyn shrugged, not knowing the name of the place, but knowing that it served good fried rice. “It’s called Jeezy’s Chinese Palace, Ravyn, if you didn’t know that. I should know that, been there almost every single day ever since it opened.”
“So what do I tell Bella, folks?” asked Viking. “I mean, I really haven’t heard any objection to a tempting proposition.”
“I say it’s a death on a stick,” answered Mel, bluntly. “Unless you can get a genius who knows the system back to front like the back of their hands, there’s no point, its suicide.”
“That’s what I think they are trying to do Melissa, they are trying to get us all together so we can work as a majority,” assumed Ravyn, remembering Viking’s explanation of what Bella had proposed to him. “They want us all in because we would have different talents at different things. I don’t know what I can do for the project, but heck, I’m in if I get my freedom back.”
“Well, at least I’m glad that I know you’re not completely senile and a total nutcase,” commented Viking, as Ravyn shot him a threatening look. “Just pulling your leg. You’re cool.”
“I don’t know about it, the Spyral system is protected thoroughly and it’s more sophisticated than I can think of it as being, and look at me, I basically know everything about the people and the society that the corporation have created,” contemplated Mel, thoroughly as she was starting to look at her options with a cringed face. “I guess, until I say no, I’m in.” Viking secretly hissed the word yes in his head, as he knew Mel’s intelligence about the New World would be greatly appreciated by both him and the rest of the Old Worlders that would be joining in their mission to save the world. “I could actually put my knowledge of the New World and of Spyral to great use this way, now that I think of it. And like Ravyn said, I’m in as well, but I want my freedom assured.”
“You should know better than that Melissa,” Viking started, folding his arms and frowning. “Freedom was always assured, it was just denied to us through global corporal takeovers like Spyral’s reign and manipulating leaders who like that tyrant up there, never put a return address on the back of our freedom.”

****​