Reclamation

Reclamation

by

Gary A. Ballard

The Bridge Chronicles: Book 5

Copyright © 2016 by Gary A. Ballard

All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition 1.0 - 2016

Cover photography and design by

Gary A. Ballard

Author Photography by

Gary A. Ballard

Copyright © 2016 Gary A. Ballard

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Part 2 – Transorganisma

Interlude

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part 3 - The Gift of the Prophet

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part 4 – The Fong Reclamation

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

About the Author

About the Bridge Chronicles

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Part 1

Incursion

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Chapter 1

January 13, 2030

The Bottle City

Far-El flew over the Bottle City with a pensive grip on the hovercar’s oddly flat edge, regretting the decision to eschew safety concessions so as to be faithful to the car’s original comic book designs. Curt Swan’s drawings from the mid-20th Superman comics by DC Comics had been so evocative that the City’s concept artists had been enchanted, so they had not added any kind of roll cage to grab onto when your pilot happened to be a daredevil like Son-Do. Far-el remembered a discussion he’d had with Bon-Ak, the car’s designer, about that very thing. The young hacker from somewhere in the Pacific Rim had argued that a fall from the highest point in the Bottle City would have only caused a logout into the wider GlobalNet, with the concomitant mild migraine. As such, safety features really weren’t vital enough to damage the aesthetic. It still made Far-El’s virtual stomach turn over every time Son-Do took a tilting vector downwards for a landing.

Though Far-El knew that the Bottle City wasn’t a physical place, he still insisted on treating his time there as if it were. After all, he and the other 278 regular City inhabitants had all decided to make this virtual GlobalNet game space their home, eschewing physical lives as much as humanly possible. He estimated spending perhaps as little as five hours a week outside of his GlobalNet crèche and hating every moment of it. He no longer felt remotely comfortable in his own skin, with real air passing over his body and filling his lungs. He would endure moments of gender confusion every time he re-emerged into his physically female body. He knew what the meatheads out there thought of his choice, calling the whole lot of them escapees, with the implication that they were somehow escaping their real lives. When asked, he would refer to those like him as transcendents, those who chose to transcend their physical limitations rather than be anchored by them. Far-El only felt like himself when adorned in the digital clothing of the male leader of the Bottle City’s Council of Five.

It was official Council business that had brought him to the courtyard of Councilor Lara-Van. Even from above, he could tell the situation was bad. Three piles of vaguely-humanoid shaped dust lay on the yellow sidewalks that crisscrossed the gardens of alien crystal plants glittering brightly in the artificial red sun. Another pile of dust stood twenty meters away. The dust reminded him of the nuclear silhouettes on the ruined buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the wake of the first atom bomb detonations.

The hover car had barely settled on the ground when Far-El jumped over the side to plant his feet on firm ground, not even waiting for Son-Do to open the car’s door for him. Lara-Van stood with a pensive look on her face, staring down at the dust pile that must have been one of her guards.

Those are bodies, aren’t they?

Lara-Van nodded grimly, her blond hair waving with that somewhat surreal pseudo-gravity that the City’s graphic designers had yet to be able to get quite right. Perhaps it was the lack of actual dust in the air that imparted everything with an unnatural crispness. The frown on Lara’s face would have unsettled Far-El even had he not seen the dust piles. The one here, indicating the single pile at her feet, was my guard, Bosk-El.

An El? According to the world’s lore, this guard would have been some kind of relative of Far-El, a distant cousin perhaps or maybe something closer. He didn’t know the name though; they had not been associated in-world. How serious is it?

He’s not responding to messaging or phone calls, Lara-Van said with a scowl. I’ve sent one of the Starlets to his crèche to check on him. The Starlets were the Bottle City Boys’ physical arm, the bodyguards and enforcers who did the dirty work in the flesh, the ones who guarded the various crèche farms around Los Angeles that held the meat bodies of all the physically local citizens of the Bottle City. The Starlets were led by Far-El’s boyfriend, Johnny Cloud. I’m hoping it’s just a really bad migraine and not a feedback stroke.

What’s the story with those three over there?

Nothing. Nada. They are complete blanks. They don’t show up in the registry of authorized users or trialists.

The trialists wouldn’t have permissions to get this far into the inner city anyway, not without forcing their way in with a hack.

Nodding vigorously, Lara-Van said, And we both know the intrusion alarms didn’t go off. I’ve pulled up security footage of the incident. She retrieved a crystal from her bright green robes and held it in the palm of her hand. It hovered over her hand and spun, displaying a hologram of the scene in a beam of light radiating from the crystal’s center. Bosk-El stood on guard duty, walking calmly through the gardens with his thumbs looped into his belt. Something to his left startled him and the viewpoint shifted to show three indistinct shapes pop into existence. Humanoid silhouettes formed with streaks of light bleeding off of them in the shape of letters though not of any language Far-El recognized.

Bosk-El began to speak to the forms with his gun drawn. Though that likely sealed his fate, Bosk would have been perfectly within his rights to point his weapon at anyone entering a high-ranking councilor’s residence without permission. The shapes raised their arms and Bosk did what he would be expected to do. He fired a shot, then four more, all of them striking home. It did no good, as a beam of light exploded from each of the three figures, striking the guard dead center. Bosk dissolved into a pile of dust.

The victorious alien forms began to look at each other, either questioning their actions or discussing their next move. Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, they dissolved into the piles of dust that sat at his feet. Far-El’s brow wrinkled. What did I just watch?

I was hoping you could tell me. I’ve had the system doing scans on the remains and it appears our intrusion measures started to attack them once Bosk took a hit. Either it de-rezzed them or they de-rezzed themselves rather than fight it.

Did they ever fully rez? I mean, they looked like they were trying to but couldn’t. Are you sure they weren’t the result of a bug in the NPC spawn system?

Like some kind of random encounter? That seems very unlikely. Those systems aren’t allowed to spawn in our private domains without a manual override.

A voice replied from behind Far-El. These were clearly outside connections. The security system worked… sort of. Far-El turned to see the Councilor for World Security, Seyd-Il, walking into the garden towards them.

How can you say it worked? They acted on the world without the proper permissions.

Not entirely. I’ve got to analyze the logs and the remains of their code, but my working theory is they attempted world connection using some unknown, not-entirely compatible protocol.

"So we were hacked?" Lara-Van asked.

That’s a bit of a simplistic take on it, Seyd replied. A hack generally tries to pierce a specific opening by exploiting vulnerabilities in established connection points. There is no such connection point here. It’s like they either teleported in or attempted to create an avatar without actually creating an avatar.

That’s possible?

No, of course it’s not. Yet here we are.

Far-El scowled. That’s not an explanation that makes me happy. In fact, it tightens my headband. They all chuckled at that. Headbands were a fashion accessory worn by most Bottle City residents, owing to the puzzling preponderance of headbands worn by the characters in the comics. Take what you need and get me an answer as quick as you can.

Return to Table of Contents

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Chapter 2

January 14, 2030

The Bottle City

Far-El felt Johnny fidgeting in his arms. The younger man’s body couldn’t sit still even pressed against his own, constantly agitating towards some kind of motion that would take him out of the bed, away from his lover’s embrace. When they’d first met, Far-El had found this a cute, almost endearing affectation. Johnny Cloud, stoic muscle-bound leader of the Hollywood Starlets, feared across the Los Angeles LGL gang scene, the man who could stand watch over the crèche-encased bodies of the Bottle City Boys for days on end, couldn’t lie still in a post-coital embrace for more than twenty minutes without pacing around their virtual love nest. The cuteness had slowly drifted away like the tide, inexorably transforming into ripples of mild irritation before becoming the constant waves of the contempt of familiarity and finally oceans of doubts about the strength of their relationship. Far-El couldn’t help but thinking the blame lay in him rather than with Johnny’s restless nature and unease with non-physical liaisons.

Go ahead, Far-El finally said, releasing his grip on the younger man.

What do you mean? Johnny asked as if he didn’t understand.

You know what I mean. You’re about to explode. Go ahead and get up before you pop. Far-El lay back on the bed with his hands clasped behind his head. He couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at the eagerness with which Johnny leapt from the bed. The bodyguard started doing naked Taekwondo, kicking first at an imaginary opponent’s shins, then knees and on up until finishing with a roundhouse to the imaginary jaw. Let me call up something for you to beat on, Far-El said peevishly, a menu popping up at his fingertips with a thought.

I don’t need a fake target, Johnny said.

Oh? You feel the need to bash something in the real?

Maybe.

Far-El could feel a distance greater than necessary between the two. In the flesh, Johnny’s legendary stoicism gave many people the assumption that he had been struck mute. Most didn’t know that when he got engaged in a seriously heavy intellectual discussion, nobody could shut him up. These talks usually happened with the man-mountain they called The Prophet, a former bodyguard who had joined the New Black Panthers when they’d moved into the Gangland. With Far-El though, Johnny had proved just as loquacious. The physical, mute Johnny had crept into their liaisons more and more lately in disturbing fashion.

So much about their relationship didn’t fit even though they’d officially been an item since before the Los Angeles riots almost three years ago. Johnny had been the leader of a predominantly white gang called the Hollywood Starlets from East Hollywood. Even then he’d been more intelligent than anyone would have expected from a gangbanger, even one from the more posh parts of town. They had officially met when the Starlets had hired the Bottle City Boys to hack a local ATM firm’s network, grabbing a schedule for replenishment of the company’s cash machines. The heist had been the biggest score in the Starlets’ history and their criminal relationship had flourished since then. When the riots turned the city of Los Angeles into a burning cauldron of violence and unleashed resentments, the Bottle City Boys had helped coordinate the Starlets’ ground game, routing them around police presence they couldn’t overcome to strike where the police and corporate forces were the weakest, at least until the power had gone out around most of the city.

Far-El had set up their first date as a romantic cruise through a GlobalNet virtual world that took them to other planets and ended in a bed overlooking a waterfall under the watchful eyes of three moons. Their chemistry had been immediate and powerful. They had talked for hours nonstop before ending up in bed, and then for hours afterwards. Johnny had hopped out of bed almost as quickly then. He had made the excuse that he really didn’t feel completely comfortable outside of his physical body.

Unlike Far-El, Johnny’s GlobalNet avatar all too often looked strikingly similar to his physical body. In those early days, Johnny had not been taking the nanotech stimulants called the Benders. Though they increased his brain’s processing power immensely, they also added physical bulk like most other steroids. His avatar had a body-builder’s physique while maintaining his facial features. Johnny had always been very fit, but the Benders soon made his physical body more closely match the muscle-bound ideal he adopted in the GlobalNet.

Far-El’s physical body, on the other hand, told an entirely different story. For one thing, in what they still insultingly called real life, Far-El had the body of a woman named Melissa. Melissa had never been what anyone had called a catch. Always slightly overweight, she had been called frumpy by the nice people, and the not-so-nice girls in high school had given her the nickname Lumberdyke for her frame and her disdain of fashion. The purchase of a GlobalNet crèche by her mother for her sixteenth birthday had changed her entire life. Within a year, she had gotten her GED and dropped out of high school, spending increasing amounts of time in the soup, as they called being jacked into the GlobalNet through a crèche. They called it that because of the saline solution the user lay in, part of the total sensory deprivation that aided the perception of the virtual worlds of the GlobalNet. By the time she’d turned 20, she had been able to move into her own place, making her money with legitimate programming gigs supplemented by illicit funds gained from hacking. At the age of 22, she’d hooked up with a hacker gang known as the K@ndorians. They had taken the name because of their shared fascination with the city of exiled Kryptonians living in a miniaturized city trapped in a bottle located in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

Far-El watched Johnny’s naked exercises for a few minutes trying very hard not to say anything, even though he wanted to very badly. He knew, just could feel it in his bones, any word would cause some kind of argument. So he sat in silence and watched as his own mind began to fidget. All relationships had silences but their silences had become increasingly uncomfortable. At first, Far-El had chalked it up to the stress of helping the Five Families set up the Gangland but even as the Families had settled in, the silences had only grown more awkward.

Johnny stopped his exercises. Say what’s on your mind.

What? I wasn’t saying anything, just sitting here.

And your head was just about to explode. You have something to say, say it.

You never cuddle.

That isn’t cuddling. Cuddling happens because your body is drained after a good fuck. This body is never drained.

Is that why you’ve never wanted to cuddle?

I’d cuddle fine if I was tired which I never am when I’m in here. Virtual bodies don’t get tired, remember?

I can make you tired if you’d like.

Can you make a cuddling simulator? Far-El could tell Johnny regretted the words as soon as he said them but he’d started down the path now. The set furrow of Johnny’s brow told the story. This argument was happening with or without Far-El’s consent. That’s a cheap shot.

I’d be just fine cuddling with you if I could feel your skin.

My skin is probably about the color and texture of undercooked chicken right about now. Not to mention it’s got the wrong naughty bits.

That’s fixable.

And there it was. Not for the first time, Johnny had suggested Melissa become Mel. This had been a recurring bone of contention between them, one that unfortunately never got resolved. Far-El had known all along that Johnny felt no attraction toward females. Everyone in the Starlets, everyone in the Families knew that. Johnny had never been the least bit secretive or ashamed about his sexuality. Even though she’d been derided as a lesbian in high school, Melissa had never been attracted to anything but men. And even before she’d adopted a masculine avatar, she had always been incredibly turned on by gay male sex. Her first sexual encounter online, she had masqueraded as a gay man. What few physical relationships she’d had had been with men but none of them had ever given her the satisfaction of those fantastic gender bending virtual liaisons.

And yet, she couldn’t bear the thought of changing her physical sex. She had no philosophical objections against body modifications either cosmetic or functional, had no hang ups about living as a man in a physical body. The procedures were expensive and painful and she had never felt that the pain would be worth it. Regardless of its sex, she simply didn’t want to live in a physical body.

We’ve talked about this before. Do you know how much that surgery hurts even with the medical advances we have today? And years of hormone therapy, physical rehab, psychological counseling – do you even have the slightest idea of how much suffering you are asking me to go through just so you can lay down next to a sack of decaying skin that has a penis?

That’s your body!

That… thing is a body. It’s not my body. THIS is my body. Far-El pointed at his naked form. He had chosen a good physique, not crazy rock hard muscle monster like Johnny’s - leaner but still cut.

This is bits and bytes. This is a fantasy.

"This fantasy as you call it is how I choose to live my life. I’ve transcended that dying sack of proteins and amino acids. I don’t have to age. I don’t have to get fat. I don’t have to eat, I don’t have to sleep, I don’t get sweaty, I don’t stink, I don’t get dirty. I don’t have to deal