Tourniquet

Okay this story is not going to start off very fast, but very slow, as I am slowly finishing DS so this is something I just wrote for about an hour or so this morning, because I didn't want to write DS so I started something new.

 

Again. Not the cliche Bourdon-family story.

 

 

The fog over Los Angeles had started to sweep the city of its mist and the lights from the large spherical buildings that lined the skyline and the streets. People down on the street were rushing from one end to the other. They walked and they rode their bicycles. They ate on the sidewalk where Chinese eat-in shops were always opened twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, under large advertising billboards that glowed in the dark with their neon lights.

There was a girl, a young adult, she wore denim blue jeans that she had torn up the sides, matched it with a black short-sleeved shirt, had her hair tied back in a loose ponytail, and was kinda bored with the life that Los Angeles provided her. Just like the rest of the people that sat down at these Chinese shops. Mel sat down at one of these, eating her bowl full of noodles that the chef behind the counter, with the sweat beads and the grumpy look on his face had made her. She looked up to thank him, but he had disappeared in the mist of steam. She hated this world. A world controlled by global corporations.

Spyral was the largest corporation in the world. And what did they do for a living? They made the world artificial, nothing in the world was real because of them, Mel scoffed at her own thoughts as she shoved noodles down her throat with the help of the Chinese utensils that the chef had provided her with. Spyral, the largest building in Los Angeles, the one just over the Dark Hills that had the nice arches in the hallways, the antique framed mirrors and they owned the only existing Comet’s Eye. A super magnetic charged power ball that had the ability to destroy an entire continent. From what Mel had been told by various people on the streets of LA, the Comet’s Eye was that powerful in was kept in a thick vault underneath the headquarters of the company. Mel didn’t know to be honest, only rumours. The company had destroyed the technology they hated, such as the internet and computers, and made holograms and other artificial inventions a part of every day society. Television was still there. But it had one channel. Spyral Ltd. A sad excuse for them to gloat about their profits and new sufferings they had brought to the world.

Mel had thought to herself many times that she was the only normal human was around and everybody else was just holograms and ghouls of the past. The ghouls of the past were the worst things one could run into on the streets. Holograms, the really stingy ones, could be easily recognised by the pixilation and the fuzziness, and usually the lack of sound as well.

Things hadn’t been the same for a couple of years now. World War Three had broken out in Europe and in the end result of America’s involvement in the fighting on the lines, just say Japan’s second attack on supposedly Pearl Harbour in history, wasn’t aimed at Hawaii and it was no ordinary bomb either. It wiped out not only capitalism and democracy; it wiped out half the population. Spyral gained control of the nation’s politics not soon after that bomb, wiped the political status of every politician clean, and exiled them for eternity. Spyral had gained that much power of the world, the world was now Eisenhower’s domino theory brought to life. The world was now just a ball with a large building on it now.

Mel stopped shoving the noodles down her throat, stopped, and looked around, as people rang their bicycle bells at one another or at passing friends or relatives. The only people that were privileged enough to own cars and licensed to have cars, were the people that worked for Spyral. Mel had seen the boss of Spyral once. Mel wanted to run over and slap the boss for everything that came under her belt. She looked back to her noodles and started to pick the meat out of it. Not even the meat was real. It was over-processed and condensed tin meat that Spyral rationed the people with during the big war. Even though it wasn’t the war right now, Spyral had plenty left and encouraged the citizens of America to eat the rest of it. Mel couldn’t remember the last time she had real meat. The only real things that she had tasted lately were noodles, because they were one of out few things that were genetically real. She still didn’t know how Spyral did it, but they managed to annoy her more than her mother did.

She stopped eating and swung around on her bar stool, as she suspected someone was behind her. It wasn’t a someone, it was a something. It was a hologram of the mailman, shining brilliantly in the night time.

“Are you Melissa Phoenix, dear?” asked the hologram as Mel nodded and was handed what seemed to be a wavy envelope that was buzzing in and out in co-ordination to the mailman. One thing that she did like, they replaced email with an instant mailman hologram. Any place and anytime, if mail came he would be there in front of the recipient in a manner of seconds. She touched the envelope and it automatically became solid. “Take care dear.” Were the last words that came out of the hologram’s mouth as he buzzed off and disappeared out of Mel’s sight, as she opened the envelope, tearing at it impatiently like she felt it was something important. She chucked the envelope and its shreds to the ground.

It was a letter from Spyral warning about what she had done the previous night. She had gotten drunk and she was going to get fined for it. Mel remembered the ordering processes of drinks at a Chinese drinking place on the west side of the town, the only place permitted to sell any alcohol beverage. Sign your name, do an identity check and then you can drink. But drink more than five standard drinks if you’re a female and you’re automatically considered drunk and discriminated by Spyral as disorderly and defiant and then the present comes in the next day after Spyral’s systems have gone through and been analysed, a five hundred dollar fine for drinking, ignore it, and be prepared to be exiled. What a society she lived in…

She sighed as she put the letter down on the bench in front of her, as the chef that had made her the noodles that were going cold came out from the kitchen and leant against the bench looking to the fine in front of Melissa.

“Spyral being a bitch?” asked the chef.

“Why would you care?” asked Melissa. “You’re the person that makes my noodles and that’s it. I hate this society and what we have become.”

“You come here every second day and order the same thing, so I think I have a right to make conversation with you,” retorted the chef, wiping his hands clean on his once-white apron.

“Spyral’s always being a bitch, communism it’s called, we are the pawns in the game,” bitched Melissa.

“What, do you want to go back to living like we did back in the war?” asked the chef, somewhat defending Spyral’s actions. “Spyral saved us.”

“By sending me a five hundred fine for getting wasted?” asked Mel, a bit annoyed. “This isn’t democracy, its over-globalisation and corporal abuse.”

“Just, do you really want to go back living like we did in the war?” asked the chef. “I had no food, no supplies for my restaurant, I nearly went bankrupt, and because of that, I got conscripted into the army and fought in Berlin against the Germans.”

“Spyral would conscript us all if there was another war,” retorted Mel.

“And so would the Old World, where the politicians roamed around like lions in Africa,” argued the chef. “Spyral did at least me a favour by getting rid of the politicians. Wait, were you around in the Old World? You seem a bit young to be around back then.”

“Just, I was a teen,” answered Mel.

“I’m Viking by the way,” introduced Viking, as he held out a hand for her to shake. She smiled and shook it with a free hand. “You’re name is….?” The lights around them started to flicker, as Viking rolled his eyes. “I have to admit Spyral does a bad job maintaining the electricity around here though.”

“What are you talking about? They do a bad job at everything,” snorted Mel, as Viking was going to say something to it but didn’t. “Melissa by the way.”

“Glad to meet you Melissa, see you around this place a lot but I don’t say anything,” smiled Viking, letting go of Melissa’s hand and supporting himself with his two palms faced down on the bench and Mel placed her hands by her side.

“I have to go now,” said Mel, looking for excuses to not talk to a Spyral supporter.

“You didn’t finish your noodles,” replied Viking, taking the bowl in his hands.

“Not hungry anymore, the dry taste of artificial meat makes me sick sometimes,” explained Mel, as she got to her feet, picked up her fine, stopped, and smiled. “Nice to meet you Viking. I’ll be back tomorrow to have what I usually have.” She waved goodbye with a hand and Viking did the same thing, as he smiled and walked off just as Mel walked off down the road that was lighted by neon billboard lights and dodging bicycles and being yelled at for not sticking to the side of the road.

 

 

Anyone like?

ooh that was good Sarah!! write more damn it.

Ok here's more....

 

“Torn….i….et?” asked Fox, as she looked up from the book and looked at Rob in confusion. They sat down in an alleyway where there were various other children playing in the mist and amongst the trash cans. She could only see the words in the book because there was a street light nearby but she was having even more difficulty focusing because the street light was flickering. Spyral was getting lazy with their electricity supply, and maintenance, and Fox was finding it hard to cope with the blackouts. She was basically illiterate, had a severe anxiety disorder, and hadn’t had the proper schooling the other children had, before the schools were destroyed by the bomb and of course, by Spyral’s political correctness. Rob had taken her in after he found her by her dead mother’s side in what was originally a house, but it was nothing but rubble, after the bomb was dropped. He still didn’t know how he or anyone had survived the blast. “I’m lost Rob, again.”

“Tourniquet, it’s a French word,” Rob corrected, as he lent over and turned the page back a couple of thick pages. “I didn’t expect you to understand it. I didn’t understand it to be honest, when I first read it. What’s that word?”

Fox looked to where Rob pointed and frowned.

“Ahh…” Fox stared at the word, knowing that she had been taught this before, but she couldn’t understand the word. Aqua it read and she frowned. She was biting her bottom lip at the fact that she remembered the word but couldn’t remember how to pronounce it. “I know it, it’s just I can’t remember how to pronounce it. What is it?” Rob sighed. “I’m sorry I don’t know how to read.”

“That’s okay, it’s Spyral’s fault that they got rid of the correct facilities for you,” Rob clarified taking the book from Fox’s grip and flipping through the pages to look for another word that he had taught her and that one that he thought she could remember.

“What was the word anyway, Rob?” asked Fox, getting anxious. Rob looked up and smiled.

“You don’t have to worry about it, it’s nothing, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t care for you, in fact, I wouldn’t have picked up from the rubble and taken you in like I did,” answered Rob, sentimentally. “The word was aqua, it a shade of blue and it’s kinda greenish as well, and that’s why they call it aqua. It’s what is considered as an Old World colour. Again, it’s banned.” He stopped at one page, handed the book over to Fox, and pointed to the final word that he had concluded one more word and then he would take her out. He treated her like someone half her age, in which he felt guilty about. “Final word and we’ll be done for today. What’s that word?” He pointed to another word.

“Huh? Ron?” asked Fox, squinting at the page. It wasn’t the word but was more like a part of the word that Rob had given her, irony. “Is that it?” She looked back to Rob for answers. She hadn’t been shown this word before. “Is that it, Rob?” He shook his head. “I don’t know then. Maybe I’m just a kid that was supposed to not learn how to read.”

“Don’t be upset,” comforted Rob, patting Fox on the back and comforting her. “I know plenty of kids your age that don’t know how to read, because they were born after the war and not in the Old World like I was. See, back in the Old World, education and the basic tools to life were basically free, and now in this New World of ours, no such thing even exists. Spyral took it away.”

Education and medical needs were banned entirely. If someone were to be sick, they would have to either live with it or just simply die from it. Education was a threat to society and it would only create unbalance. And an unstable society was the last thing that Spyral needed.

It would be a domino effect. It would only have to start with one person to uproar and defy Spyral and then the whole world would start. But Spyral had its tactics to get rid of protesting pests to a certain extent; it was called exile from Earth entirely.

If someone was to be exiled and it was derived from Spyral’s orders, they wouldn’t be exiled from the state or the continent and shipped off to the USSR, they would be kicked off the planet entirely. Because Spyral was a global corporation that had a lot of influence on some kinds of people, which happened to be the ones that had a lot of power (and then Spyral came along and backstabbed them) and dominating powers, it didn’t stay still in one country, it was spread all over the globe like butter spread over toast. They had even gained control social and political control over NASA. That’s how they got away with it. There was not a single animal, ghoul, memory, or person that Spyral did not have any sort of power over.

Spyral had a reputation for being merciless.

Rob had heard nasty rumours about how people had been exiled and when people spread the word about who and who got kicked off the planet for damnation, they were usually very descriptive and gory.

“What was the word?” Fox repeated her question. “What was the word Rob?”

“Irony,” answered Rob, as Rob took the book from Fox’s grip and closed it. “We’re done for today. I hope you remember those three words Fox, well I don’t expect you to remember tourniquet, but remember irony and aqua.”

“What’s irony?” asked Fox.

“It’s something that contradicts itself or plays on words,” answered Rob, getting to his feet as a number of kids ran past him, almost knocking him over, and made him drop the book that he was holding. He turned around so that he faced the kids running off in the misty distance. “Watch it!”

“I know them, I hate them, they hang out behind the abandoned warehouse just before you reach the Dark Hills,” said Fox, getting to her feet and wiping off the dust that had made its way onto her black pants. Rob turned around to face Fox. “Where are we going now?”

“What were you doing near the Dark Hills?” asked Rob, a bit angry that she had tread near the Spyral building as he bent over and picked up his now soggy-paged book as he realised that there was a puddle of water there. “Do you not know those Spyral guards have a temper on them?”

“I was there with Benji, just chilling that’s all, well, then they came along, I’m sorry, I wasn’t there to stir the guards,” explained Fox, apologetic. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good, I don’t want you to get up to mischief after what I’ve sacrificed for you,” replied Rob. “Come on, I’ll show you some things with the billboards I’ve been noticing ever since the New World was created. This is completely ridiculous the New World’s advertising that Spyral has approved of.” Rob and Fox walked down the misty alleyway where the light of the street light became dimmer and dimmer the further they walked away. In a matter of time they had turned three corners, avoided being run over by three people on bicycles and arrived on of Los Angeles’ main roads. He stopped on the sidewalk with Fox on his side, crossed his arms, and then decided to uncross them. He pointed to a large advertising sign promoting an artificial food brand. “See that yellow?”

“What’s so special about it?” asked Fox, unimpressed by Rob’s attempts to impress her with knowledge about a colour that was practically everywhere. “It’s just yellow, the most overused colour in the world.”

“In the Old World terms… that’s not yellow, it’s orange,” explained Rob, as Fox was confused. “I shouldn’t be talking about the Old World so publicly. Don’t know about it these days, there are Spyral spies everywhere on these streets.”

It was considered unjust to the generation that was born in the times of the New World and treason to talk about the Old World and its ways. Spyral didn’t want anything to do with the Old World, that’s why Spyral had risen to social and political power to get rid of it. There main aim was to try and make a better society that was full of stability and logic, unlike the Old World where it was full of nothing but politics and wars. Spyral got rid of the trouble-makers to prevent a war.

“I don’t want you to get exiled,” commented Fox, looking to Rob innocently. “Who would teach me to read?”

“No one, who doesn’t have a decent heart set in them,” answered Rob, looking to the child that he had rescued from the rubble years ago and still, from day one, she still had a lot of trouble reading. “Come on, I’ll get you some takeaway. Chinese or McSpyral?” Rob had restrained himself from saying McDonalds, because he didn’t want to be exiled for saying an Old World term.

“I’m getting sick of having McSpyral’s burgers all the time, they don’t have look real or taste real, so I’ll go Chinese,” answered Fox, smiling happily. Rob smiled back as they started to walk to the other side of LA to the restaurant together.

Wow. Wow! Absolutely brilliant! One of the best things you have ever written! I know I just PM'd you that but seriously... I did not expect something like this from you. So mature. So... well thought out... I'm actually speechless here. Just... incredible.

Spyral Inc almost seems feesable in the not-too-distant future if you sit and think about it. Spooky.

 

 

 

Everything in this world was unnatural and the things that were natural, they were hated or bitched about. A lot of people approached the New World this way, for the people who were born in the New World hadn’t had the experience to live in the Old World right before Japan dropped the megaton blast that wiped out democracy, elections and of course, people. The bomb had brought communism, global corporations that dictated the way that people thought of things and controlled their lives, threatening them with exile if they defied orders. Spyral Incorporated Limited, had mottos like we bleed when you bleed and not one for one, that’s narcissism, but one for all and we’re all working together to bring a better society.

Ravyn hated these days, as she looked out her window and down to the dark streets below her apartment building. They had replaced the rectangular buildings with spherical buildings which made everyone living inside them; feel like they were living in a bubble. Even thinking about the Old World was hard for her.

She fell victim to their program to extinguish all memories of the Old World, which in all historical facts, failed greatly because people just went into hiding. The official name of the project that ended up being terminated was Narcissi Extraction.

Spyral had concluded that having lasting memories of the Old World was a threat to society and a threat to conformity. The last thing they wanted the residents to have was individualism.

Having memories of the Old World was considered narcissistic and wrong. And so they must be extracted and put into a compression chamber that held the memories of the Old World, so that Spyral could physically destroy them with a small dynamite blast. The things that were Spyral’s worst enemy was the fact that memories were atomically strong in their structure and they couldn’t just be ripped apart once outside of the head. They had to have a good force and pressure applied to them to let them implode.

Going into hiding hadn’t been an option for her from day one. Ravyn couldn’t remember much from those days, but she knew she didn’t like the New World. She wasn’t alone and she knew it, despite the fact that her sister was a Spyral supporter. Since those weeks of being experimented and their attempts to get rid of her memories of the Old World, she found it hard to retain the most simplest of things, that’s why she had to live with her sister. She continually asked herself; where did I put that? And who are you again?

She saw her sister down on the street below and frowned. Ravyn could easily recognise Joanna from anywhere, but put an object in front of her and then obviously hide it in your hand right in front of her; she wouldn’t be able to remember where the object was. They had done something to her that she couldn’t explain. She could remember the banned items and the banned words of the New World, and some people’s names, but not a lot, but she couldn’t explain it. It confused her a lot and she felt like she was housebound.

She saw Joanna enter the door downstairs and disappeared out of sight. Ravyn didn’t move from her window. Her memories were blurred of the Old World. She could recall certain characteristics of her house that she shared with her family and little bits and pieces, but again, she couldn’t even what her old cat’s name was. She knew she had a fluffy grey cat that would just look up to her in her dreams, with its red collar around its neck with a small silver bell hanging off it. It would meow at her in her dreams, and then wind in and out of her feet, wanting attention. But when she awoke, the only thing that was staring back in the mirror opposite her bed in her bedroom across from the bathroom was herself.

The front door opened and her younger sister came through with some plastic bags in her hand. Ravyn looked to Joanna who had been walking everywhere to get some Chinese, because it was one out of few types of food that was around nowadays. Joanna was red in the cheeks from walking everywhere, because there were a couple of Chinese side-shops that had stopped doing takeaway, they only had dine-in.

“Hey, are you alright?” asked Joanna, putting the bag with the plastic containers containing a combination of Chinese delicacies. Ravyn nodded but she didn’t say anything. Joanna was only six or so years younger than Ravyn and already she still felt like she couldn’t talk to her because of Joanna’s pro-Spyral attitude. “I got some fried rice, I got some prawn chips, and I got some duck with rice. Hopefully, it’s that artificial duck stuff. Tasted that real duck the other day at Yana’s on the corner, and it tasted awful, I had to even spit it out, yuck.”

“Sounds like fun,” muttered Ravyn, still in her lost sense of mind, still not taking her eyes off her sister. “Is that all you got?”

“Yeah, why? You think you’re going to be hungry after this?” asked Joanna, stopping what she was doing. Ravyn shook her head. “I don’t get you sometimes.”

“I just don’t like this New World, and I don’t like how I always ending up confused about what I did and what I didn’t do,” explained Ravyn. “I don’t know if you know this but there’s something in the back of my–”

“Head, and it feels like someone is etching to tell you that something but you cannot remember who that someone is, yes I’ve heard it before a million times,” interrupted Joanna, rolling her eyes, impatiently, at her sister. Joanna had to take care of her sister or else her sister wouldn’t survive in this New World. “I don’t get what’s so bad about this world. It’s absolutely grand and I’m living my life up to the full, Ravyn. Just think of it, there are neon colours everywhere. Don’t you think it’s pretty the sight of those glowing billboards?”

“The Old World was better, from what I remember of it, I feel so restricted here, I cannot do or say anything without being called a mental bitch or a nut, I can remember stuff, but not a lot, and I’m kinda not good at withholding information,” Ravyn tried to explain. Even though Joanna was her sister, she felt like she couldn’t talk to her, because half the time Joanna rolled her eyes and walked away. That part she could remember. “I don’t know what democracy is meant to mean anymore to me in this world. I think I’m going to go and kill myself near the Dark Hills now, if you don’t mind.” Ravyn stood up, as Joanna finished serving the Chinese and walked over to her sister, held her by her shoulders and looked to her in the eye. “Please, you don’t know how frustrating it is for me at times.”

“I empathise completely with you big sister, but you need to relax, take some Ivna,” advised Joanna, as she pulled out a small bottle out of her front pocket that read Ivna in black and blue letters. She spilled a couple of the white small dissolvable tablets into her palm and gave it to her sister. Ravyn took it without hesitation and swallowed it with a gulp. “Now is that better?”

Ivna or like it was in its full form, Intravenous Narcotica, it was a suppression drug for the emotions of an emotional citizen of Earth, and it was created for the soul purpose of maintaining stability amongst one another. It was created by Spyral to make sure there wasn’t a mass uprise against the corporation. It was something that Joanna made sure Ravyn had at least three times daily. The suppression drug worked within five minutes of consumption. Its atomic structure was so parallel, under a Spyral microscope which was the most powerful microscope on earth, the structure of it atomically, was to be considered the straightest of all lines. Even though medicines were banned, this was the only authorised medicine there was, because the Spyralans had made it for a good social and emotional purpose, one that would suit them very well. They assumed with the Narcissi Extraction project that memories could be suppressed by Ivna. The memories resisted treatment, while still contained within the walls of the human skull, and sent the patients into a violent psycho spree in which three scientists died during that terminated project.

“I can’t help but to think about that grey cat, and its bell ringing in my ears,” Ravyn explained. “What is it to me? Why is it coming to me in my dreams? What does it want with me?”

“Stop thinking about the cat and let the Ivna work,” advised Joanna, as she forced her sister to sit down back where she sat before at the window sill. Joanna let her sister sit there, knowing that the Ivna would start to work by now and walked back to the kitchen to pick up the plates that had been served up with the Chinese that Joanna had walked forever to get, get some spoons with a partially spare hand from the top drawer and walked back to her smiling sister. She placed the plates beside her elder sister and she sat down on the floor, watching her sister smile and nod her head, as she got a plate and a spoon from the sill. “Happy now?”

“Very, indeed, I have no idea what the hell I was thinking about before,” answered Ravyn, smiling like a drug addict. “What was I thinking about before again?”

“About how much you love artificial meat, the best kind,” answered Joanna, starting to eat her Chinese. “There’s food right next to you. You need to eat something or that Ivna’s not going to work properly and I’m going to end up with a psycho sister like last time you decided to not follow Ivna’s instructions.”

 

Haha awww, smiling like a drug addict. Haha. Don't ask me why that amused me so much but it did. Having said that this is so believable already, like some sci-fi movie or some such; the way you have Spyro set up is completely conceivable especially in this day and age of almost ludicrous political correctness and political beaurocracy gone mad as it has in every continent on the globe. I especially love the relationship you have already set up between Rav and her sister, one pro- one against the system, and the implication that Rav had already wigged out against orders set up an interesting proposition too. I had to smile at her memory lapses (it's an old age thing XD) and Joanna's fondness for this 'new world' that sounds so bright and too perfect for even my real life logical mind to appreciate. You nailed that well, that and the sisterly dynamic I mean.

Still highly impressed with the effort so far. Very well done. Keen for more to see where you take this. :ok:

I totally love the story so far....

can't wait to read some more

Thank you all

 

 

 

Another thing that society had created other than greed and its hunger for more power, socially, and politically speaking, was science. The Spyralans loved science and they dawdled in it like a pig rolling around in mud. The Comet’s Eye was an example of such a passion for something. Electromagnetic fields were like Jesus Christ to them.

Even religion had been ridden of as Spyral had concluded that since religion had caused such uproar in the past, given by historical events such as Jihad being declared on the west in the 2000 era and of course, the Crusades. Religion, following it or even using Jesus’ Christ name as a form of blasphemy in a sentence was considered a large form of exile material.

Religion was juvenile and it caused ethical and social instability, just what Spyral didn’t need.

But science was a religion to the people of Spyral Incorporated Limited, wither they would be willing to admit to and be exiled for it, was another matter altogether. There was not a single day that science was not mentioned or not spoken of.

Of course, there were moments in those days where people sat back and started to sing forbidden nursery rhymes on the job. Nursery rhymes had been affected by Spyral’s political correctness. They were the material of the Old World and material of the Old World was strictly forbidden for the sake of social instability. But they had been replaced with new nursery rhymes; they were called crib rhymes, which were modified versions of the original ones and replaced with other names.

“Over the hills and far away, for ten long years he’ll count the days…something, something, something, for prison life for him there’ll be,” sung Sarah, as she sat against her chair at the very top of the Spyral headquarters, with her boots on top of the desk in front of her and she was staring aimlessly into mid air, knowing there were laws to make, change, and delete. A woman’s job was never done around this place. Moondance was the crib rhyme that Sarah was singing. “I’m so bored. Someone give me something to do rather than to do work.” It was her lazy day today. “Just because I inherited Spyral doesn’t mean I cannot be bored with my job.”

Spyral was a family owned corporation and it was a family run corporation. Originally back in 2008, three years before the Japanese came back with a blasting tonne of power, (also two years before World War Three broke out) Spyral was a small business on the sidewalk downtown in what was now considered to be Old New York City. What Spyral had done when they had gotten to such a huge political and social status thanks to a couple of smart moves that Sarah’s father had made, they ripped down the Statue of Liberty as a sign of defiance against the French and showed the French that after the French had attacked California during World War Three, they showed the French they weren’t friends anymore. They simply replaced the Statue of Liberty with a statue of a dove, mounted on a Greek column, to show that Spyral was caring and peaceful and at the bottom of the statue it read;

We share because we care – Spyral Incorporated Limited.

The future was an awful place to live in and Sarah just couldn’t see how dreadful a place her father had created. She was too busy singing crib rhymes anyway.

“Got a minute?” asked Brad, as he popped his head through the door, wondering what Sarah was doing other than singing crib rhymes, because half the people could hear her singing in the corridor and they thought it was mildly amusing that the head of the Los Angeles headquarters was too busy singing rather than to do something proactive. Sarah stopped singing and looked to Brad. She nodded. “Good.” He walked in and gave Sarah a bunch of folders. “Today’s exiled.”

“Oh, so today it’s a fistful of papers now? What happened with yesterdays? Did the guards and spies not catch any of these idiots who try and defy Spyral and myself?” asked Sarah, as she slammed them down on the desk, not bothering to look at them.

“What’s on today’s agenda?” asked Brad, as he shrugged.

“Ah…sleep,” suggested Sarah, as Brad noticed what she was wearing today.

“You’re looking fine today, as always,” Brad complimented, as Sarah smiled and got off her backside and stood up in the corner of her office and spun around in her long pleated black skirt. “Nice skirt, but always got good taste in those corset tops of yours.” Sarah stopped and faced him and smiled, as she looked down to her black and red corset top, that had laces down up at the front.

“It’s not one of my best ones,” replied Sarah, sounding a bit disappointed. She looked to Brad, as she just thought of a great way to amuse herself. “Brad. Can I have the keys to the Eye again? I don’t know where I put my key.”

“I still have it, that’s why you couldn’t find it,” laughed Brad, as he pulled out a stack of keys that had two or more Vampire Bat key-rings on it. He smiled as he threw them over to Sarah and Sarah caught them, as she smiled, as she walked out of her office with Brad. She closed the door and stopped to see what Brad was doing. “Can I come?”

“Sure thing,” answered Sarah, as Brad smiled again and trailed along beside her as she walked down the stairs for a couple of minutes. “Over the hills and far away…” She started to sing again as Brad snorted with laughter. “What? What’s so funny?”

“You’re singing something that’s not even aimed at your age group,” answered Brad. “Sorry.” Brad went back to his straight face as he was failing greatly. Sarah opened the seventh door of the seventh floor and went in search of what was called the Creek Mary’s Blood the key that opened the first entrance to the Comet’s Eye.

She pressed the seventh brick, on the seventh line seven times. The brick shook itself and ejected itself onto the floor. She picked up the brick, to see a red velvet inner coating and in the middle of it, was a silver key that had a rare ruby placed at the end of it. She smiled as she separated the key from the brick and replaced the brick in the empty slot. She turned around and opened the wooden door with the key. The door opened without any tricks being done. She turned the brass handle and let Brad come through with her. Now she was in a room that was only lit by two lamps in the middle of the room on an antique-brown table.

“Here, let me do the honours,” offered Brad, as Brad knew this room too well. He walked over to the lamp, turned the lamp with a white shade off, pulled the shade off it, unscrewed the light bulb and pulled out another antique key that had a rare yellow amethyst stuck in the end of it, just like the rare ruby one that Sarah still had in her hands. This one was called Firestarter. He turned to Sarah. “Love this key. It glows like crazy when exposed to minimal oxygen, that’s why there’s no tungsten in this bulb. How clever is that?”

“Very,” answered Sarah, impressed by Brad’s scientific intelligence. “Next room, please.”

“Ah yes, was just getting to that,” smiled Brad, as he walked over to the steel door and clicked it open. “Boss first.” Sarah smiled as she accepted Brad’s invitation to walk through to the room which had a small ball in a cubic compression chamber glowing it and stared at it with amazement. “It’s always nice to see it, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” answered Sarah, as she had always been amazed by the Eye’s ever-changing colours. Spyral had been doing experiments on it. The Comet’s Eye changed colours synthetically, it had emotions. “How’s the progress with the project going?”

Lunar Strain was the project that she was talking about. Spyral had come to a conclusion that instead of destroying memories and wasting valuable dynamite, because they were starting to get low on it after all these number of years of using it, that they could feed the memories to the Comet’s Eye. There were organisms living in it that made it change emotions. Red for anger and a mixture of blue and green for when it was relaxed, it amazed Sarah to the point of just grabbing the cubic compression chamber and hugging it, but she didn’t.

“Good, we’re running some tests on other things before we start evaporating the memories and feeding it with them,” answered Brad, as Sarah noticed that the Eye had gone a slight shade of pink. She smiled.

“It’s shy or embarrassed or maybe both; it knows I’m here,” noticed Sarah, as she turned around to see Brad by her side. “You put Ivna into it and I will personally exile everyone on this project, you understand me?” Brad nodded, as he agreed to his direct orders, as Sarah stood up, with her eyes back on being glued onto the spherical multi-emotional and multi-coloured ball compressed in its clear compression chamber. It was still the shade of pink that it was before she had turned around to speak to her associate. “I love this future I’m living in.”

 

You should seriously go and write a whole book about this.

What an evil little wench! Haha, I guessed right. But I like her character in that she strikes me not as evil but almost like a playful rebellious carefree Hollywood brat not necessarily evil but she sort of knows no different. I mean, she has the propensity to go either way. But she has a human face and I like that. Bad guys with a sense of humour, way lilke that

I also like the description of the Eye. Sounds like an amazing sight to behold.

All in all love the way this is going. Really admirable.

really good updates sis. I really like the futuristic feel to it. kindda weird on how the whole Rob/Fox thing is in this story. Rob teaching Fox to read?? that's kindda weird lol. but i kindda like that though.

Awww you guys make me blush sometimes.

Mel - well, it's something new now isn't it? Well, futuristic feel to something like this is somewhat new? I thought I might try it and seems like everybody is liking it.

Again thankies

 

 

 

Mel was back again, at the same Chinese eat-in store, at the same bar stool where she had exchanged conversation with the chef, Viking, on the side of the busy road. She was hungry and she hadn’t bought any noodles from the markets, so she felt a bit down about it. Someone in her case, feeling such emotions would’ve taken Ivna as a way to stop feeling the way she did. Mel wasn’t like that at all. She opposed conformity and praised individualism…secretly. That’s why she hated this world; everything had come down to everything that was so wrong about this world. She had moved to the City of the Angels with her father when she was little, until she reached her teens, that when her life had been changed dramatically. She had come from breathing in freedom and democracy like natural air, to breathing in suppression and chaos like a poisonous gas, ready to suffocate her. She waited until she saw Viking appear opposite the counter after the steam from the food that he was cooking disappeared.

“Hey Viking, chuck us some combination noodles while you’re slaving over that hot stove of yours, why don’t you?” asked Mel, raising her voice a little bit and gaining unwanted attention from by passers and the people that were sitting beside her. She ignored them.

Viking looked at her strangely, as though he had just seen something spectacular. Even the neon lights behind Mel weren’t enough to amaze him let alone have any diverse effect on him.

“Is that all you eat noodles?” asked Viking.

“And also the stuff that comes with them, like whatever good meats I can get nowadays would be nice,” answered Mel. “You don’t happen to have real meat do you?” Viking shook his head. “You disappoint me.”

“Here have some combination Chow Mien; it’s on special if you hadn’t cared to take notice of the board right above you,” offered Viking, as he stepped out of Mel’s view and reappeared with a bowl in his hands. He opened a large pot that the meal that Viking was shouting her and started dishing her meal up. “Where did you head off to before?”

“None of your business,” retorted Mel, as Mel had only gone to the markets to see if there were any specials on. There was none this time around. Viking disappeared out of sight and reappeared but closer to Mel on the direct opposite end of where she was sitting. Viking placed the bowl down and handed her the utensils she needed to eat the meal with. “What are you doing here still?”

“About to get off shift,” answered Viking, turning around to see that the other chef had come in. “In fact, I’m off now.” Viking turned around and threw his now apron on the bench in front of Mel. “Thank God for that.”

He had said it.

People gasped, they stopped walking past to stare at him. He had forgotten there was no God and that religion was banned. Damnation for eternity.

“Did he just say what I thought he just said?” asked one of the old women sitting next to Mel to her friend that looked shocked. “He said blasphemy, he said that G-o-d existed.”

“But religion doesn’t exist Margaret, remember that?” asked the other, senile as the first woman. “So how does that work out?”

“Crap,” Viking managed to say, as the shock of him just breaking one of the banned words on the list was slowly starting to fade away. It was more like run for your life now than anything and running for ones life wasn’t advised, put attempts were still permitted.

When people lived in this society broke rules, a society that had been overruled by a spoilt Tsarina, who came down on harsh on people about breaking rules, there was not a single way to escape, as breaking rules was like bees being drawn to honey. Guards were programmed to automatically respond to rule breakers and they would automatically appear exactly ten feet from where the crime had been committed.

“Time to start running?” suggested Mel, as she shoved Viking’s last meal preparation for his shift down her throat.

“Yeah,” answered Viking, as he went pale and saw the Spyral guards’ holograms starting to fade in. The normal procedure would be that it took the guards approximately ten seconds to appear as solid, other than that, they weren’t very quick at solidifying themselves from holograms to humans.

“Good luck, see you in hell, because I know I’m going to end up in the real place soon,” smiled Mel, sarcastically and lowering her head back down and shoving more food down her throat with the chopsticks.

Viking turned around and started to run through the back of his kitchen, narrowly missing pots and pans, and narrowly running into walls as well. He ran out the back and looked either way. To his left, nothing. To his right, the guards hadn’t even solidified enough to even move, he was safe. But he knew he wasn’t safe for long. He was going to attempt fate and try to outrun the guards; he knew it was achieving the impossible. He ran down an alleyway, where there was a linked-wire gate at the end of it. He stopped for a second and thought to himself that he could climb over it and somehow lose the guards.

The guards, when solidified were strong beasts aimed with bulky muscles, a Taser in each hand and a very good sense in direction. GPRS systems programmed were programmed in as their basic hardware needs and were killing machines when set loose. They wore the royal S of the Spyral Corporation on their left hand side embodied in gold, while on a back drop of a red velvet uniform. The kind of material that had been genetically tampered with and was made stronger to make the uniforms last longer on them, as they also wore heavy black boots that could be heard from metres away.

He continued his desperate flight for life, as he ran up to the gate and started to climb up the gate, pulling his weight up as he went. Trying to co-ordinate his hands and legs without feeling a little bit weak in both limbs. He reached the top finally, after a heart-racing seconds and swung himself over the top.

“Viking, over here!” came a strong whisper that sounded too much like Melissa’s. Viking turned around to see Mel crouched behind a trashcan.

“What?” asked Viking, a bit short on breath. “I don’t have time to chat. I’m going to be eaten alive soon.”

“I’m not here to gossip,” defended Mel. “Decided you needed some escape routes. Go straight down this alleyway, two lefts and you’re at the junkyard. Their GPRS systems are allergic to any type of metal. They self-explode when they are near a heap of metal. Trust me, I know.”

“But I’m still on their wanted list anyway,” retorted Viking.

“Just go, take my advice, and just go!” urged Mel, knowing the feeling on being on Sypral’s most wanted list too well.

Viking nodded and was out of Mel’s sight within seconds. He reached the end of the alleyway, like Mel had told him to do, took a left into the next alleyway, as he was still running like there was no tomorrow, in which that’s what he feared, that there was going to be no tomorrow for him because he was going to be dead by that stage if he was caught by these Spyral guards. He also realised another thing as he looked back behind him, the guards were right behind him, and they had taken a shortcut and was gaining on him fast. He looked ahead as he could hear the stamping of their running.

If the Olympics were still around, these guys would be considered gold medallists, Viking thought to himself, faintly smirking at his own remark. He looked ahead, the next left was coming up, just if he could pick up his pace a bit more, he would be a bit happier. The left was coming up…and so were the guards, as he looked back, to see that he was a few feet from them, as they pulled out their weapons, ready to attack.

Finally, the left had come up and he took an immediate turn into one of the many entries of the junkyard, and run straight for a hiding spot near the fence that was smothered in red graffiti that rebellious teenagers got away with at one stage of this society and its orders. He didn’t see a piece of shiny metal sticking out and cut his shoulder on it, as he jumped into the spot and crouched down in it, as he realised what he had done. The cut was so forceful it had ripped his uniform open on his shoulder and what was once grey and white; it was now a dark shade of red, saturated with his own blood.

He could hear it. They had reached the entry of the junkyard, they had frozen. Viking looked to see what was happening. He had never seen a Spyral guard explode before.

They started to shake uncontrollably, they came out with weird robotic noises, and they started to what seemed to be, rust on them. The GPRS was failing and once that failed it brought the whole guard down to nothing but a pile of dirt. A spark could be seen coming out of the first guard, and then another out of the second. And in a matter of minutes there were about a hundred or so sparks coming out of them each. They were still talking their weird language and shaking as they there were having epilepsy fits. This went on for another five seconds until; there was just two huge explosions that made a shower of metal and what seemed to be sparkling fairy dust in the sky. Gravity pulled the pieces back down to Earth as Viking carefully came out of his hiding spot, holding his wounded shoulder in one hand. He saw nothing but two piles of dirt, exactly where the guards had been standing.

Viking realised now that he was now on the list of the wanted people that Spyral perceived as a social disturbance and had to be taken off the planet as soon as possible. He didn’t know how he would do it though. He shrugged the thought off thinking that now his opinion had changed of Spyral and its operations completely. Now, in the Old World, as they used to call it, he was a wanted criminal.

 

Yeah I really like that futuristic touch, too.

I feel like reading a movie script or soemthing...lol

 

The story really creates certain images in my mind.

Keep on writing!

As Jeezy said, it reads like a movie sceenplay adaptation or something. Futuristic, and not generally my forte, but great regardless. Envy your ability to create this 'world' in essence from scratch. Well done. And hey, have to say it, really loving the new sig/avy set. Awesome stuff.

Well done. And hey, have to say it, really loving the new sig/avy set. Awesome stuff.

 

yeah totally:D

Wow I wish I could write that good

lol what is this world coming to when I help wanted men? lol i love you fribby... most days.

 

This world had become an artificial colouring and preservatives heaven. Even the most noticeable things in the City of the Fallen Angels like it was most commonly referred to now, had been tampered with and Spyral had gotten their sticky little hands on it. Science had evolved to the point where it ruled humanisation, controlled humanisation with a tight grip, and it was more like as though Spyral was aiming to dehumanise the planet entirely. It was Big Brother all over again, but this time, everyone whether they liked it or not, was playing Spyral’s game.

Spyral had rules to this game. Many.

Defy one of them and prepared to see yourself in a five by five prison cell within ten minutes of committing the crime and wait for deportation off the planet entirely. If one were to escape the wraths of the controlling corporation, it was strongly advised to prepare to start living a life of a living hell.

Identity was victimised and destroyed and conformity was embraced with Spyral’s loving arms.

“I hated this world from day one anyway, so why would I start caring for it now?” asked Rob, as he stood in front of the television that was playing Spyral Ltd on it, as he was taking in the news that Spyral had sent out a number of threatening messages to people on the run. Fox was next to him and crossed her arms in disgust as well. He turned to Fox. “I hate them.”

“You don’t hate them, hate is a strong word,” Fox explained her perception on Rob’s hatred of the global corporation. “You distaste them.”

“When the New World came around, an evil man was in charge of Spyral, he got assassinated by a group of rebels that got tortured to death because of their actions,” Rob recalled the days of the Old World in his own home. He knew he could safely recall them without being picked up on it by passing strangers. It was the only crime that the guards weren’t programmed to detect, talking ill of the New World and talking positive of the Old World. “Now his daughter is in charge of Spyral, spoilt little brat, I say.”

“Have you ever seen her?” asked Fox. “Is she pretty?”

“She’s evil, I’ll give you that,” scoffed Rob, turning back to the only channel on the television. “I’ve only seen her on the box. I swear, the way she’s going with the new ruling of Spyral, someone’s going to lose the plot completely and give her the same fate as her father.”

“What about her mother? How come I never hear of her mother?” asked Fox as Rob turned back to Fox. “I just assumed, she had a mother, that’s all.”

“I don’t know what happened to her mother, there have been a number of rumours why she disappeared, some say that she died when the bomb was dropped, and some others say that the girl’s father murdered her,” answered Rob. “But one thing for sure is that she’s gone to a better place.” There was a knock at the door, as both Rob and Fox looked to the front door. “I’ll get it.” Rob disconnected himself from the conversation with Fox and standing next to her, stopped in front of the door, and pulled it open. There stood a hooded figure clad in navy blue clothes. “What the hell? Why are you roaming around the streets for? Come on in, you’re in trouble from Spyral even daring to come over here.”

Mike accepted Rob’s invitation to come in to his apartment, and walked in, as Rob closed the door and he took of his hood.

“Mike?” asked Fox as she looked to see Mike’s appearance, a bit confused about why Mike would be roaming the streets especially with his Japanese background. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m asking the same question,” agreed Rob, walking over to his friend and stopping next to him. “You know you’re not supposed to be. Spyral’s going to have you executed or just exiled. I don’t even know how you passed the borders.”

“I go over there back home, and you know what they tell me?” asked Mike, trying to defend himself. “They tell me to go back here, where I belong. I come back and I am a dead man walking.”

“You know Spyral doesn’t like the Japanese in general, you think of why they tried to get rid of them by sending that atomic blast years ago?” asked Rob, a bit concerned.

A couple of years ago, Spyral was at the end of its tether with the Japanese’s defiance of New World orders. They lingered on traditional Old World methods and ways, which didn’t sit with Spyral too well. So they resorted to sending an atomic bomb that this time, they said, was sure to get rid of the culture and people of Japan. They also said in their reason that it was also payback from what they did to the Americans in World War Three, primarily the reason that Japanese megaton blast they dropped wiped half the country of its population. However, there was a lighter side to that blast. It gave Spyral the best opportunity to stand up and gain enough power to dictate the way that people lived and breathed.

“I’m not running away from Spyral this time around, Rob,” said Mike, strongly, as he turned around and sat on the red leather couch. He sat down and leant back, as Fox did the same and sat down next to him. “Spyral has too much of a strong grip on society and I will be damned if I am going to be squeezed.”

“Please, you are not going to take on Spyral,” Rob rolled his eyes at Mike’s plans. “The only time in history that such a thought had succeeded was when…” Rob trailed off in his sentence. “Ah, never!”

“Why not?” asked Mike. “Let’s go and fuck them up like they’ve done to a million other people’s lives. Have you not heard what they did to the Eskimos in Alaska?”

“Yes, they imprisoned them and they starved to death,” Rob answered, walking over to red armchair and sitting down in it. “You are going to die trying, Mike. The only thing I appreciate out of that is that you’re trying, I don’t want you to be exiled for treason.”

“Treason?” Mike choked. “It’s not treason, it’s called standing up to the top guns, to the big guys who have more human rights then we do right now.”

“It’s treason whether you like it or not Mike, and God damn Mike, you’ve got Japanese in you, they are bound to torture you,” objected Rob. “Stop being brave, you’re going to end up at a fate that could’ve been prevented. Go into hiding, that’s what I suggest.”

“A fate that could’ve been prevented?” Mike choked, as he stood up suddenly. “Are you hearing yourself Rob? Like you’ve just said I’ve got Japanese in me, I’m already up for the slaughtering house, so I may as well go ahead with it anyway.” Rob got to his feet as well.

“Fine, you can go outside without that hood of yours on, and see how quickly the guards are called, and when they are called, you’ll be running for your life,” Rob used his scare tactic on Mike. “Then you’ll be tortured and accused of being a spy from Japan. You’ll be accused of insulting the New World as well. And then you’ll die, and you’ll never see anyone from anywhere ever again. You’ll end up as a memory and one of those hundreds of people that chose to defy Spyral. You’ll be forgotten by society, because even though I am one as well, we are pawns in the game, and we are all nobody’s compared to Spyral.”

There was a small silence.

“He’s right, you know?” asked Fox, as everyone looked to Fox still sitting on the couch. “We are all nobody’s. He’s hated because he’s from the Old World and me, well, I was born in the Old World, but raised in the New World, and still I can’t even do the simplest of things like read a book without asking Rob to help me with it. And you’re hated, because you’ve got Japanese blood in you, and Spyral hates the Japanese for their defiance of the ways of the New World.”

“I couldn’t have put it any better and simpler myself,” commented Rob, still with his eyes fixed on his friend. “You’re staying here with Fox and I, and you’re not going anywhere near the Dark Hills and Spyral. Understand?” Mike nodded, slowly, as he realised that Rob was only doing what a friend would only do. “Good.” There was another small silence amongst the trio. “We have dinner at six.”

 

wow, i'm late on getting into this *prints it all out* what i read looked good so i'm gonna get back to ya'll when i read all *looks at the printing screen* 16 fucking pages!!! holy hell oO

 

*goes off to start reading*

Yeah if my printer would work I would also print it out to read it when I'm not online.

 

 

 

 

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 fuck’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 fuck? 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 fucks 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.

 

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

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

 

 

 

“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.

 

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

Well...what should I say?

 

it's getting better with every update.

Keep on writing