Chapter 2-5 Resurrection: Block War

Chapter 2-5 Resurrection: Block War

Attention: Warheads are inbound. Technothaumic reactor operating at maximum efficiency. Memetic integrity at one hundred percent. There is no need for panic. Please stay indoors and stay put until the end of this broadcast. For residents who wish to view block war entertainment options, please cast into one of our loci.

Optical telemetry from our interceptor missiles and drones is available for public view. To participate in hostilities, please register with your local Guild official for militia training and certification.

If you are still experiencing emotional distress, we offer fantastic discounts toward phylactery options in the event of your untimely demise. Simply sync your Metamind with the memory-code displayed in the corner of your perception to sync to our mind-lobby. A representative will be with you shortly

-Megablock PSA

2-5

Resurrection:

Block War

RESURRECTION - 10%

ENGAGING ANCHOR-MEMETICS - LOADING MEMORY

The first nuke went off in a blossom of light, unfurling a scar of brightness. Neon-soaked drizzle falling from the skies scythed at the blast, culling the radiation down to acceptable levels. Spreading shockwaves pulsed through the groaning exterior of the megablock, but failed to inflict any permanent damage.L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.

Inside the block, in a cramped hab-cell, a second-hand Kosla-12 Nethernexus media system strained its ghosts at max capacity to stream that little war happening beyond the walls.

Basked in its glow, a man and his infant ghoulling watched, beholding war as entertainment. All the while, a splashing broadcast spread from cell to cell, up level to level on winds of thought.

The cube-shaped machine swallowed a good fourth of the space remaining in the room, its hovering crystal locus spinning hot. The geometry of the hab-cell melded into a blended flurry around the gleaming needle that was its artificial mind, composing thought and memory into viewable phantasmic constructs.

A static-stained overview of the battlefield was projected as a whirlpool in the center of the room. Countless other menus displayed localized perspectives pulled from the various patrolling Specters swimming beneath the flesh of existence. Theirs was a design of reaching thought, crackled and unclear, but cheaply offered for all to see. Avo was less interested in viewing their feeds, however. He found himself drawn more to the ghosts peering down through the eyes of surveillance drones in a sub-void defense grid.

This block war was essentially a knife fight. Separated by a meager avenue and a hypertube station, a mere four hundred feet stood between the two feuding megablocks. That made the distance of engagement near instant and the exchange of nukes constant. Across the hulls of both blocks, gauss launchers flashed while spreading chasms of radiance yawned. From kiloton to megaton, the blast yields climbed, but no damage lingered. Neither did the radiation.

Some sixty thousand feet above, thousands of drones tore the midnight firmament into lattices of fire and shrapnel. Avo didnt get to see from those drones though. Those drones were offensive platforms piloted by professional jocks. Instruments that could phase forward through time and engage underwater, in the atmosphere, and in the stable-void.

The surveillance drones instead hung more like eyes in the sky, watching the pluming explosions cascade and dissolve from existence. Walton said they stayed that high up to avoid the electro-mag pulses and people Ghostjacking them somehow.

Avo didnt fully understand how that worked. All he knew was that everyone had one of the crowns here. It was as if everyone was a Low Master in this Tier. But then again, they didnt really treat each other that way.

RESURRECTION - 25%

Ghost-possessed missiles slammed down and detonated between the station. As with the blocks, the streets remained unblemished as did the crystalline glass plating the local hypertube. Such was the benefit of living in the Inner Rings of New Vultun, up the First Tier. Things here were forged from memetic matter, which meant the streets, tubes, and blocks were unbreakable so long as someone remembered their existence.

Hence, there were no attempts at interception for the warheads. Nukes were mostly used as suppressive weapons these days anyway. Something meant to delay the arrival of drones, mechs, or golems to an assault.

As another flash of light bloomed, the already blinding radiance grew painful to behold. Still, Avo refused to look away, his mind as ravenous as his body, taking in a world beyond his understanding.

Bright, hissed Avo, rubbing his eyes. Within the cramped confines of the hab-cell, it was like being inside a box with the sun. A month ago, he was below the city, waiting to die amidst the ashes, last thoughts tied to hunger and delirium.

Now, he mostly suffered bouts of confusion and wonderment. Of his brothers, only he had ascended the First Tier, but the Undercroft had been nothing like hed imagined. Squinting through the blinding flash, he found himself drawn to another blast, this one expanding against the northwestern corner of their block. The ghosts reconstructed and scrubbed the visuals clean in real-time, the details as if seen through his own eyes.

Beside him, the MasterAvo reminded himself that the Not-Master wanted to be called Waltonlaughed. Use the visor. Theres a reason I told you to steal them from that Hellminer. Ah, here, let me.

Through the blinding haze, Avo saw something reaching out for him. Sheer reflex made him flinch back. Huddle into himself. His mind screamed for him to prepare for a backhand. A whip. Or worse of all, a sad-stick. The Low Masters always used the sad-sticks on brothers who didnt listen.

What he got were a few careful tugs. With a final pull, Avo felt a strap tighten over the back of his skull, the visor now fastened tightly across his sensitive eyes.

RESURRECTION - 45%

Kid, Walton said.

Yes, MastWalton.

Remember what I told you yesterday after you tried to eat the neighbors nu-dog and I told you to stop?

Don't! Avo said, doing his best to mimic Waltons voice.

The man closed his eyes and his lips flattened into a rueful smile. After that.

I wont hit you,Avo said. Speaking the invaders tongueKosgan Standard, as they called itstill felt wrong, but up in the Undercroft no one spoke Nolothic of the high or low dialects.

Yeah: Im still not going to hit you. Walton chewed his lower lip in focus as he adjusted the visors leather straps. Despite the sweltering heat and leaking sewage dripping from the pipes within the walls, a tangerine scent wafted from the man. Even now, Avo wasnt sure how he managed to keep the fragrance.

There, done, Walton fixed Avo with a wry grin. Youre jumpier than a cat on nova, you know that?

The statement made little sense to Avo. Despite having Standard imprinted into his mind by the Low Masters, the native speakers of the language had strange phases that were beyond his understanding.

Through his new awareness, he saw Walton then in the Nether for the first time, no longer a man but a bird of prey molded from smoke and oil. A single burning eye occupied the crown of its skull. Each of its feathers played a memory, the exterior lined like blades of trauma, the layers beneath, comfort and warmth.

Through the forest of sprouting minds that was the Nether, Walton rose, his attention narrowed to seek the gleam of minds, shrouded beneath a skin of ghosts. Avo felt his adopted father grin. The emotion was purer than any expression could muster.

In a near-instant, they closed on their quarry.

+Cant run Incog forever,+ Walton said. +Ghost capacity has limits. The more minds that are aware of you, the more sequences are needed.+

As if to demonstrate this, spears of memory lashed out from Waltons feathers, plunging into one of the shrouded minds. The swirling ghosts around them tried to fight back, but Waltons spears transformed into jaws and bit down, severing them before they could form.

A chaotic deluge splashed through Avos thoughts now. A foreign cog-feed sputtered and flashed with warnings. It took him a moment to realize that he was looking out from the inside of a Snuffers mind.

Her face flashed through Avos perception: a pink-haired waif with twelve eyes grafted along the side of her right cheek. An icon displaying the condition of her body and mental stability frizzled and dissolved as Walton sank deeper into her consciousness. From a first-person perspective, Avo watched as the Snuffers chromed limbs seized while wailing sirens rang on in her mind.

+Ward breached! Ward breached! Ward breached!+

RESURRECTION - 99%

BEGINNING ONTOLOGICAL ANCHORING

Through her bloodshot eyes, Avo saw another lance of tungsten liquefy one of her companions. The last of them blinked out from his sight, blurring into a run before he too was cleaved in half by a shot too fast to perceive.

+Now, you see what happened here?+ Waltons asked. Avo nodded. Well, it felt like he nodded. +There are several things that went wrong here. The first is that this was clearly a suicide operation they attempted and they shouldnt have done it. The second is not accounting for unsuppressed weapon emplacements beyond visual range.+ He paused. +The third is trying to kill me.+

A flash of surprise rose through Avo. +Kill you?+

Walton hummed. +The explosion earlier. I scried it with my mind. Before we moved in here, I rented two cells. This one. And another closer to ground level. A Snuffer team inside the block activated and tried going for us there right when the initial barrage of nukes was launched. They managed to make it to the hab-cell I was supposedly in. Unfortunately, their Necro wasnt good enough to notice my ghost-triggered explosives. A shame.+

Avos mind was still whirling at all that had just been told to him. +Dont understand+

Walton chuckled. +Sometimes I dont either. Like why someone would send a perfectly good lance of Snuffers to their deaths. Its stupid. Meaningless. An insult.+

A speck of rage burned across Waltons mind. Back in reality, Avo shivered.

+They werent ready for this,+ Walton said. +Theyre new. The Snuffer I just nulled: her name is Kriggi Mevlo. I have her FATE-Skein. I have her local bank information, home address, transaction history, and the mem-code to her apartment. She lives in Little Huang Sha, Block F-14, Tower B, Room 24-5A.

Like tearing a blade from the guts of an adversary, he wrenched his consciousness out of her mind. Suddenly, the world around them went black. They were back in the Nether now. Between Waltons talons, withered strips of fragmenting ghosts peeled away from the screaming wisp that was Kriggis fading mind.

+Better this way,+ Walton said. +Spares her from getting her mind slaved to feed processing power to a mind-lobby. Her dreams might die, but theyll be her dreams in the end.+

Avo couldnt understand why Walton was offering so much mercy to a woman that was supposedly trying to kill them. She was an enemy. Prey. Something that could be eaten. This was pointless.

+No,+ Walton said, reading the thoughts directly from Avos mind. +She made a choice to attack the block, to try and come for us. Thats true. But this isnt about her. This is about me and what choice I make. What world I want to see manifest. And right now, I want a world where fewer juvs grafted into over-auged bodies get thrown into the grinder because of me.+

Avo still didnt understand. +Because of you?+

+She is here because she made a choice,+ Walton continued. His owl-like head stared off blankly at the massive coalescing trunk of minds spiraling up from their block. The Nether was a strange place. +We all make choices. Those choices pull us. Intertwine us. Bind us to each other. The pain in her life drove her into the embrace of implants and violence. My choice made me her target when I leaked details about how her employer was running an organ farm in the Warrens, deliberately selling tainted bioware to poison the choiceless that choose to buy from him. All to see them dead as fuel for his thaumaturgy as per the conditions of the contract.+

Walton shook his head. +Greed is an ugly thing, Avo. All vices are. They wear you. Make you choiceless. You should always fight them. Remain in control of yourself.+

+Choiceless?+ Avo asked. He barely understood the rest of what was said. It was like his mind were jaws, and what Walton presented was too much to swallow.

+Yes,+ Walton said. +The FATELESS. The ones in this city who cannot claim their dreams. Who are bound to the wills of others. Like you were. All choiceless. All without the means to decide on your own dreams.+

Avo considered that.

Walton continued. +Did the Low Masters ever give you the option to walk away? To live your own life? Did they ever offer you any kind of agency? Self-determination?+

The questions were beyond Avos understanding. Quietly, he chittered, his fangs grinding together as nervousness descended upon him. He wanted to hunt.He wanted to kill. Killing was a choice. Eating was a choice.

Walton shook his head. +Where does your slavery end, I wonder. In instinct? In conditioning? In habit?+ A thoughtful emotion flashed through Walton. +Avowould you like to learn to be a Necrojack? Learn my art, as I know it?+

The offer was granted like a piece of candy. Something cheap. Easily offered. But Avo had spent his life fearing the halo, fearing the ghosts. He wasnt worthy of its power. He wasnt

+Yes,+ Avo said. His admission surprised even himself. He wasnt worthy. But he wanted to be. He wanted to know powernow more than ever as he bore witness to what a Necro could do. He wanted to know what it was like to be a master, rather than a ghoul. That struck a beat into his thoughts as well. When had he ever wanted anything that wasnt in service of the Low Masters or his instinctive bloodthirst?

When had he wanted to be something else?

An incandescent smile spread through Waltons being. +You know, Im not sure if this is a choice either or just a reaction to a lifetime of powerlessness. Suppose well find out together.+

RESURRECTION - 100%

IMPLANTING NOUS