– Or Holy Deus Ex, Batman! –
The plan is simple; write a short story based on Deus Ex, then kill the Batman. Also, this is based on a theoretical future, in which human augmentation with technology is possible and common. Danny is entirely fictional. The initial-ed people are all real people, but I’m not putting their real names here.
Roster:
Name: Emily Milner
Age: 34
Sex: F
Family: Spouse (Male, 36), Children ( Male and Female, 5)
Known Occupation: Author, Publishing Writer/Editor
Active Augs: Enhanced Rebreather, Enhanced Legs, Icarus Landing System, Smart Vision, Social Enhancer
Status: Under Surveillance
It’s raining. Again. It’s been raining a lot in Chicago lately, not that I’m complaining. It’s the wind that gets me…and the cold, but I took that risk when I moved to Chicago with Danny seven years ago. The midwest is only ever cold. So much for global warming.
The kids are in bed still; I don’t know when in hell I picked up a 6:30 wake up time. El would be horrified. I’ll need to be quiet if I’m going to go out now – Danny’ll be up in fifteen, so the kids’ll be fine. I just need to get out of the house for a bit. Maybe call D or El or H. Just…out of the apartment. Not enough space here.
I throw a glance over at the wall. It takes a second, but I can see Kay and Neil’s sleeping forms through the wall. Still throws me off, these Eye-Know augs; seems like yesterday EL, D, and I were casually freaking out about this sort of thing in the lounge back in Blacksburg, and now…well, now we have them. Last I checked, D got the “lungs” he needed a few weeks ago. Haven’t heard from him since, but that’s normal for D.
Ah, there it is – aug use head ache. Completely expected, and not at all pleasant. I need the reminder sometimes, though, that these augs don’t fix everything – the pulse thrumming against my forehead is a decent enough memory jog. I’ll need to see my doctor about those tomorrow.
I reach the stairs in a matter of minutes and look down -no one appears to be around or up; time to have a bit of fun. Our apartment is on the fifth floor, and I can totally make that jump. The orange glow of the Icarus landing system is…weird, but I suppose it gets the job done. Slows everything down a bit, though I think that could just be some weird psychological thing. I am essentially free falling to the first floor and slowing my decent down enough to prevent damage. I land as silently as possible, what with all the goddamned noise this system makes. The lady at the front desk looks a little alarmed, but that’s normal. Most things alarm her.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Milner,” she says, her voice shaking a bit. “You’re up early.”
“Just going on a walk, Amy, chill.” I smile wanly, and she manages a polite, fake smile in return. I really should try to talk to her sometime, because you would think she’d be used to my ridiculousness after three months. It may require the Social Enhancer, though, which is what holds me back. I try to reserve that for working book deals and contracts. Outside of the office, it shouldn’t be necessary. Amy watches me walk quietly through the doors, which is totally not weird at all. I pull my flannel tighter around my torso. It’s cold, and the rain has been reduced to a drizzle. There’s a balcony in front of my building, which looks over a sort of park. I lean over the rail and watch the drizzle hit the fountain in the center of the park.
The city looks ridiculous from here, a forest of concrete, steel, and light. I haven’t see the stars since we took the kids out to see them a year ago. That’s ludicrous – taking a vacation to see the goddamned stars. We had to go pretty far to see them, too; about 50 miles out to reduce the light pollution enough to see anything.
I pull out a compact mirror from my back jean pocket, and just…look at myself. Objectively, I suppose nothing much has changed, out side of the scars. My hair is still short, close cropped, and light brown. My eyebrows are still wildly unkempt. Eyes remain brown, despite the augmentations. Nose still looks like a beak.
What gets me is the scarring. The strange web starts at my forehead and spreads down to my left eye. There’s a nasty line on the right side of my mouth from a fight I got into two years back. There’re scars on my lower back from Icarus, on my hips from the legs (sleek, white metal legs), and across my chest from the rebreather. Nothing and everything has changed about me in the last three years.
It bothers me, I suppose, as much as the light pollution of Chicago does. Enough to register, but not enough for me to worry about it constantly. It’s bothering me now, in the early hours of the morning, when I used to worry about things in college. It’s causing my chest to contract uncomfortable ways; panic attack, or the beginnings of one. God, I need a drink.
“Oi, Emily.” My info link knocks me out of my self-indulgent reverie. It’s EL. What the hell is she doing up?
“EL? How’d you get this frequency?” I answer, smirking at the inside joke.
“Ancient chinese secret. Now listen.” I can hear the sleep deprived delirium in her voice. She’s been up researching, or perhaps surfing the internet instead of sleeping. Typical.
“Haven’t gone to bed yet, eh?” I smile. “What is it now, uranium or new transhumanism things?”
“Oh, new Augs.” She says. “I researched new eye enhancements all night. Been running on…four hours of sleep today. Hey, what time is it?”
“My time? 6:30.” I say.
“Yeesh.”
I roll my eyes. “Scream at me about the new augs around 3 p.m. my time, I’ll be back from work around then.”
“Alright, fine.” El sighs. “Just know you’re encouraging me to stay up until midnight. Have you heard from A or D in a while?”
“Nah. D is just on radio silence, and A is probably out doing something…questionable.” I huff out a laugh. “How’s H?”
“Oh, she’s good. She’s coming to visit soon, so we can have story conversations.”
I smile. “Sounds great. Heard from N?”
“Isn’t he doing…confidential stuff? Something with robots, I think.”
“Well, that’s specific.” I snort. “Last I talked to him, he said airplanes. Just airplanes. I don’t know what that’s supposed to tell me.”
“Yeah, well, that’s N for you.” El says. “How are you doing, then?”
“Oh, you know, hanging in there.” I sigh. “Still getting used to my augs, and it’s proving…weird.”
“Well, talk to me if you need anything, Kay?” El pauses for a second. “I can ship you tea and hugs!”
I laugh a bit and push off from the rail. “Thanks, El.” I turn and walk back into the apartment building. “Promise me you’ll sleep tonight, kay? Sleep deprivation is not helpful.”
“Your mom’s not helpful.”
El disconnects. I’m still uncomfortable with my lot in life, but it’ll get better. It has to. I can get through these worries with my friends and Danny. Now, the kids should be up in half an hour, and I need to make breakfast.
January 16, 2013
Will All Be Forgiven
emigee93 character study, Deus Ex, Fanfic?, ridiculous augmentations, short story, transhumanism Self, Writing 2 Comments
– Or Cedar Reeves Has Emotional Issues –
UPDATED: Okay, so this is a short character study, set in the Deus Ex universe because…well, I can do that. This is now the second draft, but it will probably change even more. I’ll do my best to update it.
Detective Cedar Reeves was not a famous detective. She worked in East Lansing, Michigan as a homicide detective dabbling in petty crime, as homicides were rather rare on that side of Lansing. Or, at least, she did.
Cedar had been on bed rest for the last four months, and would continue to be on bed rest for the foreseeable future.
No, Detective Reeves was not a famous detective, but she was known for something. Her injury in the line of duty even made Picus news, which would have been shocking, except that Cedar’s injuries came at the hands of an augmented dead-beat.
She had been working a case, and had stupidly followed a lead on her own. The man she was tailing was huge, clearly a muscle head with the two largest arm augmentations Cedar had ever seem on a person. His name was Gabriel, and he looked like a gorilla. Which is why it was easy enough for him to overpower Cedar and steal her car.
Cedar woke up in the passenger seat of a car driving straight for a house. The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital, half way through a slew of surgeries. Both of her legs were still gone, but Cedar was too doped up to care.
Her mother had made the decision; ordered life saving surgery, and a complete overhaul of Cedar’s body.
“You’ll be able to work again.” Her mother had wailed when Cedar put her fist through a painting on her recovery room wall. The LIMB clinic moved her to isolated recovery some nights later.
Cedar sighed and pulled out her cigarette case. She had never really been a big smoker, but that was back when she had stuff to do. Currently, she was in her apartment, watching raindrops roll down the windows. She lit the cigarette.
Her apartment was large, by most standards. She was currently sitting in the living room, straight down the hall and down the stairs from her front door. It was cavernous; two rectangular couches sat in the center of the room, facing opposite walls. They were oversized, more like beds than couches; one faced the large, wall length windows on the north wall, and the other faced the TV on the south wall. Old family pictures and prints of Van Gogh paintings hung on the east wall, which was lined, at the bottom, with bookshelves full of well-loved print books.
The rest of the apartment was cramped in comparison to the living room. Cedar’s tiny kitchen was up the stairs and to the right. There was a window over looking the the single tree in the strip of grass between Cedar’s building and another in the complex. The bedroom was to the left of the stairs; large and mostly empty. Cedar spent most of her time on the couch in front of the windows.
On any normal day, she would also be accompanied by her German Shepard, Riddick, but he was at the kennel for another few days. He had been put there for the duration of Cedar’s ‘trip’ to visit her ex-boyfriend’s parents after his funeral. She came home a week early, but had paid for two weeks. He was probably a bit happier there, anyway; everyone needs a vacation.
Cedar took a long drag of her cigarette, exhaled, and slammed her head against the back of the couch. “The boredom,” she lamented to the ceiling, “the boredom, I could probably handle if I could go outside without feeling exposed. I can’t stand the staring.”
Cedar sat up, put her cigarette in a free slot on her ashtray, and ran a metal hand over her face.
It’s not as if she looks exceptionally weird. She’s six-o, built (but not bulky), and exasperated. Her face is round, the bags under her circuit-green eyes are a dark purple, and her short, brown hair is spiked up and out of her face. Cedar hadn’t been self-conscious about her looks since high school.
But now she was ‘missing’ an arm and a half, a leg and a half, and had scars running across the whole of her face. She had been angry over the change, yes; furious. Once she let it sink in, however, Cedar hadn’t thought much about the physical change. She even had humor enough to…adjust the wing tattoo on her left shoulder blade. It’s now broken, ragged where the metal meets her skin.
Most people, however, don’t share her humor about the situation. Fact is, someone made the call to have Cedar outfitted with SWAT-standard augs, and those scared people. Walk into a store with black, metal arms that give the user ridiculous levels of strength, and even the most pro-augmentation individual is going to give you the stink-eye.
It doesn’t help that ‘bed rest’ is a nice term for ‘recovery and therapy,’ which is still a nice way of saying ‘Detective Reeves is sending up all of our psychological red flags.’ She pulls her cigarette to her mouth on shaky fingers.
Drag.
Exhale.
“Computer, play artist: Murder By Death.” Cedar drawled lightly, amused that, somewhere along the line, her house computer became the computer of the starship Enterprise. If only it could make her a good cup of earl grey, too.
The computer complied and the first chords of ‘Shiola’ oozed out of the speaker system. Cedar scowled, but let it play. The rain picked up, and pounded against her window, trying desperately to get in. Each drop was backlit by the sulfur-yellow lights of the apartment complex.
Cedar put her cigarette back in the ashtray, and walked over to the window. The man who drove her through that house; he killed a couple and their three children before dying in the front seat of Cedar’s car. Picus had painted Cedar as some sort of hero, but she had made a rookie mistake. If she still had her job at the other end of this hell, she would be disappointed in the department.
That family died, and Cedar got to live. Stigma must be her punishment for that. Neuropozyne was a close second in terms of tourture.
She mouthed the words to the song: ‘Shiola, Shiola, will all be forgiven?’ Cedar pressed her forehead to the cold windowpane.
‘Shiola, Shiola, am I strong enough to start again alone?’