Even if the installment ends in the middle of a sentence.
I'll be doing this until it's over, which may be a long time, considering the fact that the average length of my novels is 90,000 words. So, buckle up. Get excited. Here it comes.
Binary Seven
0001: Binary-0111
“No, I don’t want to join your union.”
Aldon Jax stood underneath a scaffold, which stretched up to
the top of an unfinished planetary defense cannon, pointed at the skies of the
planet Haruna. Two small white suns
rotated around the horizon and cast healthy light on the skyscrapers which
filled the city in which the cannon sat.
Three men in black suits and yellow plasteel hard hats stood
in front of Aldon. The first one lifted
up his sunglasses. He looked straight up
at the suns above. He didn’t need to
blink. He grinned.
“Are you sure? You
know, what with the Overlords coming and all, things are going to get pretty
hectic. You might need your job security
then.”
Aldon kicked at a stray bolt on the ground. It rattled.
He looked up at the smaller white sun, Gemini.
“When they do come, job security will be the least of my
problems.”
A poster curled in the wind above Aldon’s head. It unfurled to reveal a robotic monster, with
six legs, a scorpion’s tail, and the face of the devil in chrome plates.
Defend against the
Overlords! Do your part in the defense
of humanity!
The Navy needs you!
The poster furled back with the wind. The pasty torn plastifiber sheet covered up the image.
Aldon looked at the
men who stood behind the union boss. He
laid his hand against the side of the panel he worked on. A riveting hammer leaned against the
metal. Aldon’s fingers closed around a
half-punched rivet.
“I don’t need what you’re offering. I can make my own job security.”
The union boss’s face flashed in anger. He grabbed an electronic cigar from his
breath pocket, lit it with the press of a button, and pointed the glowing end
at Aldon. The twin suns of Haruna
distorted the light into an ethereal mess.
The boss put it to his lips.
“You’ll regret that.”
He took a long puff, placed the cigar back into the pocket
of his suit, and turned on his heels.
His henchmen turned a half second later.
They clomped down the steel walkway and into the street below the
cannon. Electric cars hummed past. Bits of plastifiber fluttered in the soft
wind.
Aldon turned back to his work. He picked up his hammer and finished his
rivet. He picked up another rivet. He pressed it against the metal. He hammered, twice. His muscled arms forced the hammer into hard
contact with the metal heads. The moist
air of Haruna’s denser-than earth atmosphere beaded on his brow.
Later, the second sun of Haruna, Lupis, passed underneath
the city’s thirteenth space elevator, at the far west corner of the city’s main
street. The other elevators stretched
out behind it in a straight line, all in alignment with the planet’s
equator. Huge platforms sprinted up and
down at high speeds.
For thirty seconds, the City of New Tokyo went dark—from
overhead. Lights blasted out all over
the buildings in crazy patterns of neon color. The sun Gemini peeked over the horizon. The lights of New Tokyo dimmed, then
rescinded underneath the first sun’s soft glare.
Aldon hung his riveting hammer in his belt. Other workers rode the light elevators down
from the scaffolding up above. They held
automatic equipment, some of it embedded in their flesh. Power-riveters flashed in bold, bright
colors. Those who had them ignored
Aldon, and the rest of those who did not have them. Aldon ignored the ignorers, and clocked out
at the company booth. He leaned in for
his retina scan and blinked when the bright lasers shot into his eye for a
split second. He stepped out of line and
rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He
entered the elevated walkway above 5th street. Electric cars rolled beneath. Skyscrapers towered above. Aldon made the turn down to 34th
street, and changed walkways. The world
quieted down. The skyscrapers grew
squatter. Denser. Aldon stepped off of the walkway and into an
alleyway between apartments. Native
weeds sprouted up from cracks with grey hooks that pushed the concrete further
apart. Aldon rounded a corner.
He faced a dump. The
place where people put their electronic equipment when they wanted to get rid
of it but didn’t want to pay the processing fees. Aldon stepped up the pile, over a familiar
path. He browsed the junk for anything
new. He spotted a green sheen. A little jolt of excitement shot through his
chest. He moved in to inspect it.
A holographic playing card deck. Aldon picked it up. His arm jolted. He dropped it in a spasm of pain. A shorted haptic system. Impossible to fix. Aldon kicked the box away. He climbed up higher. Grey concrete walls rose above him. He reached the edge, still far below the
squat skyscraper that towered above.
A flash of blue caught his eye. He lifted a beam of twisted metal. More blue showed itself. He kicked away a ball of plastifiber. He dug through a days-old pile of rotten
vegetables. He tossed them aside. Soft skin appeared. Too soft to be real. An arm.
With a number tattooed on the shoulder, behind a word.
Binary-0111.
Written in cheap ink below:
Botone.
Aldon pushed up a fat piece of rusted steel. The rest of the body showed itself. An android.
Female. Blue hair, closed eyes,
and a pretty face. Of course. All androids had pretty faces.
Aldon pushed down his excitement. He brushed off the android’s lips, and
searched for an on button. He found
none. He felt around her backside. No button.
He ran his hand down her legs, through a wash of rotten vegetable
pulp. He shook his hand off. No button.
He tried to lift up the android’s eyelids. He pressed hard on her eyelashes. He breathed on her face, and polished it.
The android’s eyes flicked open.
Aldon lost his balance.
He flung his arms up. He tottered
on the edge of a beam of metal. Twisted
rebar reached up to meet his back. He
grabbed at a chain embedded in the pile.
It came loose with a shuffle.
His weight shifted. The rebar
swooned up to meet him.
An arm caught his shoulder.
The android. She lifted him up
with robotic ease, in a fluid motion more human than a human’s. She caught him. She stood up from her knees, and she brought
Aldon up with him. She picked carrot
peel out of her hair. Aldon sat back and
stared at her.
“What’s your designation?”
The android looked at Aldon with a curious eye. It said nothing.
Aldon muttered to himself.
“Great. Broken.”
The android touched Aldon’s shoulders. She shook her head.
Aldon raised one eyebrow.
The android copied him.
“Your facial recognition and speech software are intact, at
least.”
The android nodded.
“What else can you do?”
The android looked up, then back down. She shrugged.
Aldon looked at the tattoo on her shoulder.
“Is that your designation?”
The android nodded, then shook her head. She pointed to the tattoo below the
numbers.
Botone.
Aldon read it.
“Is that your name?”
The android smiled.
She nodded.
Aldon rolled the word on his tongue.
“Botone. What does it
mean?”
The android pushed herself up. She turned towards the exit to the garbage
patch, then began to climb down. Aldon
scrambled to his feet.
“Hey! Where are you
going? Do you have an owner, or
something?”
The android climbed down in silence.
Aldon bumbled his way down the pile of trash, until his feet
struck against solid concrete. Botone
stopped with him. She glanced at him,
and stood still. Aldon looked down the
alleyway, then at her.
“Do you want me to take you home? I might be able to do something about that
voice box of yours.”
Botone shook her head.
Aldon frowned.
“You don’t want me to take you home? Or you don’t think that I can fix you?”
Botone held up two fingers.
Aldon laughed. He
clapped Botone on the shoulder.
“Come on. I’ll show
you what I can do.”
He took her arm and pulled her along the alleyway. She weighed less than a normal human, even
for her size. All androids did. Her eyes stared out ahead, wide open. She blinked in perfect rhythm. Her blue hair rustled out behind her neck.
Aldon turned the corner onto the main street. He slowed his gait. He held Botone close to himself.
“Do you me to fix you?”
Botone nodded. She
gave a soft smile.
Aldon glanced around at the pedestrians in the walkway. Advertisements glared down from half-clear
windows. Pedestrians ignored them and
him. He pulled Botone closer to
himself.
An advertisement jumped up close to where Aldon walked. Aldon waved his hand at it.
“No, I don’t want it.”
The advertisement shimmered.
It chased after him. A beautiful
android with skin that glowed pointed at Botone. The android’s body merged flat with the shape
of the window. Buildings showed through
from behind it. It opened its mouth to
speak.
“Are you having trouble with your current—“
The voice dropped, turned robotic—
“Error. Reader ID unknown—“
It returned to normal.
“model android?”
Aldon pulled Botone away from the screen. He muttered to himself.
“ID card must be fried.
Which means that the desultory matrix motherboard must be damaged. That might explain the—“
The advertisement blew up huge on the window beside
him. Aldon increased his pace. Botone stared at the android in the
picture. The android smiled, and pointed
to its shoulder.
Forge-XXXX
“Then you need a new Forge model android! The latest in the award winning Alphabet
android series, my model will—“
Aldon slammed his fist against the glass.
“Go away.”
Botone lifted up her finger and pressed it on the
advertisement’s center. The picture
fizzled. Linear visual artifacts
appeared at the edges. The voice went
low.
“Will—will—will …”
The advertisement flickered off. The city showed through. Aldon stared at Botone.
“What did you do?”
Botone pointed her finger at Aldon and smiled. Aldon shrugged, and turned back towards his
destination. He led Botone beside
himself.
He took the 34th street exit and entered into a
run-down apartment building lobby. A few
other workers scattered around. They
came or went to their shifts across the city.
Aldon took the electric lift up to the 56th floor. He stepped out with Botone against his
arm. He led her down a dilapidated
hallway. A camera blinked in the corner
of the wall. Thick paint covered its
lens. Sparks ran down from wires exposed
beneath it. Aldon stepped in front of a
door. He lifted up a physical key, and
put it to the lock. The door
opened. Lights flickered on. Aldon looked both ways, and then jerked
Botone inside. He closed the door behind
himself and locked it.
He stood in the center of a single room, with a bed in one
corner, a stove in another, bits of salvaged equipment in the third, and a desk
underneath a bright headlamp in the fourth.
Aldon dragged Botone over to the desk.
He let go of her, and met her eyes.
They focused on his own in a precise fashion. A piece of vegetable matter hung on her
cheek. Aldon wiped it off. He leaned up close to her face and inspected
it under his light. He picked up a
device from the desk and pushed it into her ear. He took another device, with two sharp
blades, and slit open her throat with it.
A blue line appeared, and Botone’s skin unraveled to reveal a dark
plasteel interior. Artificial tendons
crisscrossed in front of ultra-light fiber spine disks. Electrical wires bunched up in the corners. Some of them sparkled. Black spots encroached upon a white
sythrubber tendon.
Aldon shoved his desk clean. A half-put together miniature computer tablet
clattered to the floor among a shower of nuts and assorted pieces of That's not counting the title, if you're counting.
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