Author Archives: VayneLine

Proud Infinity pt 11

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Hey guys, thanks for reading the complete story is on amazon if you want to buy it.  Here is part 11:

 

I was confused.  “So, I can take it we do know each other, right?” I asked.

She was still coming down off her laughs, nodding rapidly.  “If you know my name, then we evidently do, Trego.”  She pulled her hand off me in a slightly sensual way, the fingers lingering behind ever so slowly.

“Yeah, well a lot of weird things have been happening, and right now I could believe just about anything.  We know each other’s name, but that could be for any reason.  Hell, for all I know I will be waking up any moment in a hospital with the rest of the world nuked outside my window.”  Damn, was that a scary thought.

Her response had nothing to do with what I had said.  “You do enjoy this color of hair, do you not?”

What?  I sat back a bit in my chair.  Something was kind of weird here.  I felt this aura of having to hurry to get something done, and it involved this girl, but somehow she knew I actually did like this hair color?  And why would she even ask?  Especially with me worrying that what I was experiencing was not reality, but maybe some delirium from a coma or worse.

“I do, but it’s odd you would ask that.  But about us knowing each other…”

“Is it indeed your favorite?” she asked, pressuring me, as she held a strand of hair in front of her.

“Uhh, well I guess it’s pretty good.  It’s actually my favorite color, I’m surprised it looks so good as a hair color.”

“And this?” She sat back in her chair, pulling her hands up to her breasts and cupping them, holding them for a moment for me to evidently savor before lowering her hands down her thin stomach and following through to her hips and legs.

My eyes narrowed a bit in suspicion, but I was also highly confused.  “…Yeah I guess.  I mean ‘favorite’ is a weird word, but you are probably the most attractive girl I’ve seen.  Why though?  I mean I’m as confused as hell right now as to what is going on.  This screams ‘trap’ louder than just about anything I’ve been in.  What is going on here?”

She had a soft smile that seemed to inspire a warm hope that everything was going to be okay.  I felt a little more relaxed just seeing how calm she was.  “It has just been such a long time since we had made it this far, and I wanted to make sure.  It has been so, so long, and wanted to ensure I had not forgotten details like this.  You see such base things as this prove to be a very important interactive facet to the success of what must be done.  Simple, but important.”  She nodded decisively.

I was sitting there, trying to piece together vague stories that might explain what exactly was going on with me, most involving drugs, torture, hospitalization, some experiment, or wondering if she would change into a different girl when she eventually said, “I know what you are wondering, and the answer is yes.”

The next instant the girl in front of me changed to another woman.  Proud had been replaced by a woman who was slightly taller, the medium length green hair was now a long blue, the side ribbon was now a red bow on the back, and the tight black body suit was now white, hugging a body as every bit as attractive as the former.  Though the appearance was in a way completely different, it was the same in its strange divine beauty, and the single infinity symbol on her cheek.

For a moment I was a bit stunned, but then I realized what it was.  The realization gave me a calm control as it finally made sense.  It was kind of simple, though maybe that’s the way truths were.  “I am crazy, aren’t I?”  I laughed at myself.  Hmm, well that is a relief.  Maybe being crazy isn’t that bad if at least I have a hot girl along with my visions.  I started laughing at the ceiling.  Maybe being crazy was actually kind of fun.  I was kind of tired of being responsible.  If this is what it is like, I’ll enjoy my new state quite a bit.  This was going to be fun, being crazy.

She shook her head ‘no’. “Not in the slightest.”  I sat there staring at this woman, whose words I believed more than my thin, slipping grip on reality when she said, “That’s why I chose you.”

“Chose me?”

“Yes, chose you.  Was I not clear?  Do I need to change my pronunciation or voice?”  Her words were not aggressive, rather completely sincere in making sure I understood.

I lifted my hand, shaking it and my head ‘no’. “No, I remember you can change your voice too.  I understand your words; I just don’t understand its implications.”

The blue-haired woman continued talking. “The fracture only goes so far back which limits options.  In terms of acting agents, there were only a few choices, and if you can believe it, you prove to be the most accepting and the fastest remedy.”

I understood the words she physically spoke, but I had no clue as to what exactly she was trying to say.  I was looking at her when the next instant she went back to the typical Proud appearance.  I closed my eyes. “Damn, can you stop that?  Unless this is part of your mission to see how much I can take before I go crazy and kill myself or something.  Probably would not take much to push me over the edge, literally.”

A dark thought suddenly came over me.  My friend had committed suicide, and I know a lot of former employees were dead.  Was this – ‘this’ being the possible succubus in front of me – the reason?  This might be nothing more than some sort of military psyche test of Solarian breaking points.  ReCorp’s purpose was actually setting up these dastardly tests.  Eliminate the ability to leave the planet, then test everyone until they eventually succumb.

I opened my narrowed eyes at her.  Yeah she was up to something.  Damn, what a rough test: get the most beautiful girl you can to see if you can crack a Solarian.  Yes, you can, and it often was not that hard.

Proud Infinity pt 10

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Thanks for reading the story so far, to catch up our hero Trego is a scientist who is fired when they were researching information on time flow, and he meets a interesting girl who no one else seems to see.  He is killed by a black wave, wakes up and thinks he saw this all in a dream.  Is it a dream, or something else?

 

Story:

I sprinted over to a fence separating where most people could come and where a road was that the supply vehicle was on as memories of my dream came flooding back.  There was not a single doubt about it, it was a…the ReCorp noisy vehicle I had seen later in town in my dreams.  I watched in a shocked silence until it and its noise were out of view.

I ran as fast as I could back to the port, the door sliding barely out of my way in time.  I was breathing hard, holding the frame of the door as I looked up at the flirty attendant, hoping I would not fall off, either off the door or perhaps off reality.

What I thought was ‘now’ seemed just another frame of a picture, the dreams were just as bold and vivid as what I was seeing in front of me.  Was this girl the girl of my dream?  I stared hard at her, perhaps crazily, while her questioning face looked back.  It was not.  The angles of her face and body were a bit different, no Strive, and her hair was black.  This girl was directly flirtatious, the other was more coquettish.

What was that name in my dream?  Was it her activation code?  Scenes flashed through my mind like some final moment before death.

“Prove…uh pride…proof?”  I said to the woman, a grasp on my sanity was slipping.  She blinked once and I ran out of the door before I thought I might lose it completely.  Running felt real, and I was ready to hang on to this fragile sense of reality as long as I, and my body, could.  My entire morning’s walk was reversed by my hard, panicked run.  That fence, where was the fence?

I took a few turns, heading towards the ReCorp pit, and came to the fence, but the guy was gone.  “Different…huuuu…time…” I said, breathing hard.  I lifted my face to the sky, sucking some air down while I tried to figure out what was happening.  There was no doubt what I was living now was real, and I felt a strange certainty that if I didn’t do something key, I actually would die here.  The dreams were warning me.  Holy shit.

Where was that bar?  I think over this way.  I headed through some alleys I was trying to navigate backwards through based entirely on some dreams.  Coming to it, I was not sure what I expected, and I paused only a moment before pushing the door open.

I think there was supposed to be a man who was my first fight over on the right, and my assassin further down…but the bar was empty.  The bartender was there, but in a different position than I remember in the dreams, and no one else was here at this time.  No one else was in the large bar, except for the green-haired girl with her bright pink bow in the corner.

‘Proud.’  Her name came to me in my mind.

I walked decisively over to her, throwing my credcard onto the bar telling him I’d take a few rounds but to leave me alone.  I was under no delusion that something big was happening, and my little credcard was far more useful saving my annoyance from this guy than anything else.  I sat down, and her happy face did not at all match my hurried-anguish.

“Proud,” I said definitively.  She did not respond.  My focus started dropping, did I mess something up?

“Proud?”  I asked this time.  She sat there blinking at me.

Get the name wrong?  I started to doubt myself.  Why would this girl’s name be something random from a dream?  Was I really crazy?  Damn, maybe I must be a victim of thought implant experimentations…But…everything was too perfect to just be a crazy delusion of mine!

“Proud!”  I yelled, trying to convince her as much as myself that I was not crazy.

The girl’s confused, silent face said otherwise.  My mouth opened in a shocked frown, how did I get something like this wrong?

Suddenly she started laughing, putting one hand out onto my arm as she bent forward, unable to control her laughs.  “Sor…sorry!” She lifted her face, one eye was squinted closed, the other half-open with tears coming out of both. “I was just kidding!  That reaction is usually priceless!”

Proud Infinity pt 9

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Hey guys thanks for reading, and commenting.  I love your comments, again I am a new(ish) writer to the world at large so love to learn and see how my writing comes off.  We last left our hero Trego wondering what he was experiencing in his ‘dreams’

 

“Unfortunately,” just with the first word my heart sank, “this spaceport has been decommissioned as a fully active port.  This stems from the fact this planet was demoted on the Solarian research colony status.”

I shook my head. “Tell me about it.”

“So while this does not have a ship off, down at Lest Rigo there is a small port with a ship that leaves about once every six or seven cycles.  Want me to come with you?”

I was a bit surprised by her request, the way she put emphasis on ‘come’ rather than ‘with’ caught me off guard.  Damn it, was that a double entendre like the Aelisha always are unloading?  “Uh, sure if you want to.”

“Haha, I’m just kidding.  My job is here; I just ask everyone to see what they say!”

I frowned a bit.  Dang, she was hot too; just teasing me.  I fell for that kind of stuff way too easy.  Might as well be a tricky fox girl.  “Well, hey, thanks for the info.  And I have a quick question, are you an android by chance?”

“Yes, I am.  What gave it away, out of curiosity?”

I was smiling that I finally had an edge on her. “A bit too-perfect of looks.”

“Aww…should I take that in the wrong way?”

“I don’t know, do you like taking things in…the wrong way?” I smirked at her, wondering if she would play along.

“I much prefer taking things in, the right way.”  Her smile widened.  “Is there anything else here I can give you a hand with?”  Whoa she was flirting right back.

“I’m pretty capable of doing it myself–”

“Me too!”  She interrupted.  Maybe I was reading into this, but she sure seemed like she was escalating the innuendo.

“But I am not one to turn down a helping hand.”

“Well my hands are extremely well taken care of.”  She offered her hand to me and I grabbed it, feeling how soft they were.  Our little banter and especially touching her hand turned me on pretty hard; it had been a while since I had explosive chemistry like that.  I’ll have to swing back here sometime and see if I can’t get with this girl.  Damn, I really wanted to take her out for some fun, if this weird mental thing wasn’t happening I’d be all over her.

I stepped back away from her lest my main mission get derailed.  “Anyway that reminds me of a random question I just remembered.  Is it true that androids either often have, or have to have, a secret phrase that can shut them down, or override their commands?  Sorry if that’s offensive or anything.”

She shook her head ‘no’. “Hardly.  I enjoy talking about our position in the universe.  You know there is not that much difference between an ‘android’, which may be completely made or restored from someone that died, and that of an engineered Solarian, implanted with nanites and so on.  In a way we are both made, just to different extents.”  I nodded to her point seeing as it was pretty true.  Anyone who hated androids didn’t really think about the subtle difference, her flesh and wit was real enough I was turned on by it.  “Anyway, yes, we do often have an override command.”

“Interesting.”  It was rumored that most androids had varying levels of combat capabilities installed in them ‘in case of emergencies’.  I had a very strong curiosity to reach over and touch her.  Could I feel difference?  Supposedly most androids could take bullets, but no one could tell the difference just by looking at one.

“You sure are curious.”  She put a hand on her slightly kipped out hip.  I tried to not look at how perfect her legs were, or how it seemed her hips were mathematically proportioned just correctly.  Ha, mathematically proportioned…that is definitely something I would notice.  Her long black hair was just so clean and straight.  As hot as she was, her intellect stimulated me the most.

“Yeah I used to be a scientist…” I might have continued flirting with her but then I heard a sound I was certain I had heard before, and it was unloading from the ship that had landed.  It was a supply vehicle with loose gravplates.  “I got to go,” I told her before I ran outside.  There was no way this was happening!

Proud Infinity pt8

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Thanks for those reading along, here is pt8 after Trego just ‘died’.

 

Something had awoken me enough out of a deep sleep that my eyes opened, but I felt like I might as well just sleep in.  Not like I had a job to go to or anything.  I rolled over a bit, letting the lethargy slowly fall off of me as I opened one eye and saw a spot of sunlight on my pillow, the bright white played on the blue color.  Color…

My eyes shot open.  I pressed myself up and looked around the room, everything was in color.  Why should it not be?  Had it not been that way my whole life?

I noticed my breathing was fast, my heartbeat accelerated.  A nightmare.  Uhh…what was it about though?  I lay back down, trying to not let my conscious mind take over, trying to let the subconscious remind me of what it was.  A dream within a dream?  A girl.  Yeah there was definitely a girl in there.  Something about it ending sexually?  Yeah, some really hot girl that came into my room feeling me up to try to get with me, been a while since one of those dreams.  Hmm, that seemed kind of right, but no, that was not the point of it; there was something profound in it floating at the edge of my consciousness.

Proud.

“Proud?”  I said the word that came to my subconscious.  Proud of what though?  The images coalesced a bit more.  Yeah, I think I got shot, or attacked.  Something about my pride because I was running from an attack?

I looked around my room, and everything was normal.  The white walls, the blue pillow, just as it had been every time before now.  Whatever that nightmare was shook me a bit.  I put a hand on my heart and was surprised how fast it was still beating.  I had a drop of sweat rolling down my nose.

That girl in the dream was the cause, I think, or maybe I was protecting her or something.  I think we could talk telepathically, but then again I don’t ever remember ‘speaking’ in dreams to begin with.  A fence.  Yeah, some guy who was in the military, we talked about something.

I sat up.  Whatever.  I had a dream of me being attacked, and ended up with some dominatrix girl.  Like it mattered.  I gave up on dreams a while ago.  I used to think they had meaning, but I don’t know if they were even metaphoric anymore.  I bent down to put a sock on, and my vision felt like it zoomed in on a spot while I fell backwards out of my body.

Just the simple act of looking at that sock unlocked a lot more of that dream.  Definitely a dream within a dream.  I remember that for sure.  I slapped myself.  Yeah there was pain, so at the very least this was real.

But I remembered being shot in one of them, and it ‘hurt’…well I think so.  Hmm, I turned a screen on and the text was visible; didn’t that supposedly prove you are awake if you could actually read?  I was definitely in reality now.  That could not be denied.

Anyway, yeah, shot in one of them, I think I died or something.  I woke up and was convinced I had psychic powers.  I didn’t get shot, but then I think that girl trapped me, or did something, I remember I was going to die again and she was interested feeling my body, creating some apocalypse sex scene as the world ended.  I laughed.  Ha, that’s kind of hot now that I think about it.  Maybe I needed to go find a girl if I was having weird sex dreams like that.

Hmm, green hair.  Kind of odd, I did not think that color was naturally engineered except in unique circumstances, but I had not kept up on the latest trends so I could be wrong.  What was her name?  Something weird.  It kind of fit, but it kind of did not.

‘Whatever, just drop it.’ I thought to myself.

I shook my head and got up and left.

At the very least, I felt like that by constantly being out and walking around I would have a good pulse on the community and know when an opportunity might arise I could get in on.  Really though I should probably just get out of here; this planet was toast as this was the only city and ReCorp wasn’t doing shit.  I had been hoping to ride out the ReCorp unemployment for a while now but it wasn’t heading anywhere.

Hmm, seems like I had recently talked to someone about getting out of here, but that there never seemed to be out-bound ships.  Yeah, that’s why I never left.  Never had an opportunity.  I was just making excuses though.  If there is a will, there will be a way.

I guess I will use today and see if there really is no way out of here.  That might be kind of interesting, though if either answer came down I might feel bad.  Obviously if there is no escape off the planet that caused some major problems, but I doubted it; I was sure there was a ship out-bound somewhere on the planet.  More than likely there was an occasional ship a city over, and then I would just have to battle myself and decide to actually get the hell out of here.

Might as well start at the spaceport, though for a while now it seemed like only a one-way port.  I walked for a while, enjoying the morning and trying to remember where exactly it was between the tall buildings.  I caught a glimpse of a trail coming down out of the sky and it confirmed where I was before a few more turns brought me to the port.

Though now it was a shell of its old glory.  Most ports tended to be open terranariums, Dimaglass windows enclosing the complex with plants, aliens, shops, just about everything going on.  The Dimaglass of the main complex was still there –  it wouldn’t be going anywhere unless you specifically had the equipment to dispose of it – but it was much smaller than it used to be.  Even the port itself had only one serviced landing pad that was actually kept clean, the rest in the process of being reclaimed by some of the more vicious ground plants.

Well this was kind of weird.  Clearly they had decommissioned a majority of the spaceport, but why?  ReCorp had not been here too long, unless this was part of some bigger thing at play here.  I recalled someone mentioning that ReCorp was propped up by an empire.  I sure hope I wasn’t trapped.  This was the perfect plot to experiment on an entire planet and when they all die it gets chalked up as an ‘accident’ or a Burn attack.

Inside there were only two people walking through a door for employees, and a single attendant.  She was female, and attractive, but a bit too attentive to my presence because she never looked away at all.  Probably an android.  The only biologic creatures I thought operated kiosks like this were the fox-race Aelisha because they enjoyed all the contact, otherwise they left the monotonous job to androids or robots.

Actually, Aelisha tended to flirt with anyone with about every line they uttered.  It was kind of funny, but also kind of annoying.  I never knew if they were serious, like when after commenting on one’s skillful hands of punching my information in she responded, ‘You should see what else I can do with my hands.’

“Hey,” I said walking up to the black-haired Solarian.  Had things become so bad that this woman was reduced to attending an empty port?  At least she still had a job.  She’d think I was just unemployed trash if she knew the truth.  How ironic given where I once was.

“Hello.” She gave me a big grin of perfect teeth.  It was tough to tell if she was an android.  Her appearance bordered on perfect, but a lot of people were engineered to our interpretation of Terran perfection.  The AGEd system absolutely blew away formed constructs of what was possible as far as appearance, intelligence, physicality.  “I don’t get many visitors here anymore,” she continued with a frown.

“I figured, so I have to know…  Is this spaceport active anymore?  I mean, I know ships are coming in, but can you get out of here?  Can I get out of here?”  I emphasized the final question.

Proud Infinity part 7

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Trego and Proud

Hey guys heres the next part, will Trego escape with what he thinks is his new found power, or are there things at work beyond his power?  We get to see more of Proud as well!

 

Story:

Hahaha, man what a relief.  Though I felt my shoulder burning and I remembered the Dimaglass cutting it.  It was a decent cut, the blood staining my white shirt; but compared to the gunshot, it was much preferred.  I guess this precognition worked slightly metaphorically given my injured shoulder.

It was probably stupid to have gone there, but I had to know.  Now I do.  Jeez, I guess I should pay attention to my dreams from now on.  My shoulder injury was hinted at through the dream, even if its source came differently.  So I guess my Sense did not protect against just a single path as I had quite clearly took a different one, but rather protected me from a general outcome.  Perfect.

Precognition was badass.  My feelings were elated with how exceptionally cool this was.  About time something like this happened to me.

I laughed a bit more, feeling the euphoria within me as it gradually subsided.  The euphoria left, and my mood continued to go down beyond normal.  I actually felt depressed.  Something was not right here, I was missing something.

And I think it had to do with that girl.  We were linked maybe?  I had heard of stories of people that had Sense ‘links’ between themselves, telepathic links of sorts.  Maybe that might have been it.

Senses, or the official term ‘Psionics’, were studied pretty thoroughly for their military application among other things.  What sounded closest to what was happening to me was the ‘Chrono’ branch of Psionics.  I don’t think I had ever met one, but they were supposedly pretty weird people, and they could see ‘manifestations of potential futures’.  Maybe that is what was happening here, but why I would have this now left a lot of questions.  Further, those people did not need others to do it.  Damn…I really should have read more about those linked Senses instead of just skipping to some dumb cat video or whatever was next in the queue at the time.

I for sure do not remember that girl beyond just the dream, but she seemed believable enough that she knew me.  Maybe our link is she can see through me, and I in return get some sort of precognition?  Eh, that was kind of weird.  If she had been seeing what I was doing with my life that could be pretty awkward given some recent…actions.

My mind thought of some other options.  Maybe she is the one with the precognition and I was gaining a touch of her ability?  Maybe she just knew that guy was violent and relayed that to me subconsciously?  Man, I was just throwing stuff out there.  None of it felt right.

Hmm.  I walked a few streets over to the main road into ReCorp and pulled up on a bench on the street.  I think it was a bit of time after this the next event happened in the dream with the loud truck and the fight where I killed the man.  Recalling the dream, I got into the bar scuffle, talked to the fence-guy for a while, then ended up on this street a bit further down.

Time passed by slowly and I was about to give up on seeing if this part actually occurred when I heard a truck with loose gravplates.  Sure enough it was the ReCorp supply truck.  I could not be sure, but the time seemed nearly identical.  Maybe because nothing I did altered this specific event’s outcome so it progressed unhindered?  That made a lot of sense, me screwing around didn’t change the truck’s route at all.

Interesting.  This precognition could be pretty useful.  I wonder what triggers it?  Just such a close call with death based on actions I might have chosen?  That was usually what triggers Senses to be unlocked.  Close brushes with death would sometimes ‘unlock’ latent Senses in people.  So maybe my close call was my potential gunshot and somehow I unlocked it?  No.  That didn’t seem right either.

Regardless  I could get off the planet for sure now. I just need to see and remember something that happens and make some credits off it.  Though I wonder if I need the girl with me?  How far do linked Senses range?

She seemed playful enough.  Maybe she liked me, or at the very least liked me because we gave each other our locked power.  ‘Yeah, I’ll do some unlocking on you, baby…’

This could be really useful.  I used to gamble a lot, but got out of it when I was low on creds.  If I knew what the results were going to be, I’d make so much.  It’d be perfect, she’d wear this sexy little dress, laugh and flirt with everyone nearby while I’m raking the chips in.  Would she be interested in being my gambling accomplice?

Alright, first thing first.  I need to get out of here and make sure I don’t end up on some other time path of me dying anyway.  It was odd.  In a single planet cycle, I now felt that a scary chance existed that I might be killed and not have ‘seen’ it coming since I did not see anything else of this day since I had changed what I was going to do.

Having this power conversely made me really cautious.  I found something really valuable and didn’t want to lose it.  I had to cash this in big while it still lasted.  Damn.  I used to feel tough, but now I felt really vulnerable of getting a smiting from the random heavens: a piece of building falling off, a bad driver, a murder, all of these chances seemed destined now to end me.  I had this crazy power, and it’d sure be poetic if I died by getting ran over.  That’s how this stuff always goes, I’ve seen the holos.  This was going to be different.  I was going to go all the way to the top with this power, and just be careful so it doesn’t end prematurely.

I walked back to my room quickly, nervous of anyone that came close to me.  I decided any details I knew now, but might forget later, could be the key to what happened here, so I sat down to record them.  I went through everything I could remember, from the fact that the dream seemed completely real, to the fact that I seemed to know where a building was and the people within, both of which I was pretty sure I did not actually know.

I first gave reasonable and simple explanations: it might be subconscious memories, or that I indeed might have met that girl before, or I simply knew of the bar and people because I have gone inside there.

Next were the cooler ideas I believed were true.  I went through explaining everything: that people behaved predictably until I gave a different line, the physical pain of the ‘gunshot’ and that I ended up hurting my shoulder which could have been symbolic of each other.  Other things like seeing the old man, or the rumbling of the vehicle.

As the day wore on and it started getting darker, I remembered to add the final part of the black sphere that signaled the end of the dream.  I was not sure what that part represented.  Maybe some symbolism of corruption taking over and to not use my power for evil?  Nah, I was a force for justice.

As I contemplated that, I realized something very grim.  My hands did not look the right color.  I lifted my head rapidly and looked around and indeed, all the colors were of that drained appearance.  “Oh no…” That black thing was not symbolic of my ‘evil intent’ at all…it was a tiding of what would actually occur!

I ran to the window, saying ‘no’ over and over, hoping I wouldn’t see what was going to destroy us all.  But there it was, the small black sphere that was ever so slowly expanding before it would start accelerating faster and faster.

“No…” I staggered back.  I dreamt I was going to die, and now here it was.  It felt like a colossal waste that I discovered this precognition and it was for nothing.

I shook my head, knocking the fear out and trying to think critically here.  There was only one thing that might work.  “Proud!  Hey, Proud, can you hear me!?”  I shouted desperately, hoping somehow she could talk back to me.  Maybe this link was the last thing that might work to do…something.

“Yes?”  Well that is odd, she sounds close.  Was this was telepathic communication is like?  I turned around and noticed she was right in my room.

“How…?”  I started, but she shook her head no.  “You’re right.  Look, can we stop this?”

“Not now.”  She walked up to me, grasping my hand and we turned towards the sphere that was now visibly picking up speed.

Her hand was warm, real.  She felt like the only real thing in this nightmare.

She jerked my hand and pulled me into her.  Her other hand went to my butt, and rubbed down my leg. “Ahh, bodies feel so enjoyable.”  She pressed into me somewhat roughly.  “At the least, this end is often fun.  Still, Physicals are so, so, foolish that they never understand what they have.”  My eyebrows shot up in surprise, what the hell was she doing?  I…we were about to die and she is feeling me up?

“Proud?” I asked her.

She lifted her face to mine.

“We are going to die, aren’t we?” I asked her.

“In a way, yes.”  Her words were simple, but they left me hopeless.  “This path is over, so I can do this without compromising the goal.”  Her hands moved sensually over me even though my body felt weak.

My body dropped, her hands went to my shoulders, holding me with surprising strength, as if I was weightless.  My limp body was looking upwards at her.  Her straight arms held me without flinching as I looked at her face.

Her light blue eyes had this otherworldly knowledge to them.  “Do not fear.  I will protect you.  I have to and I always will, Trego.  But you must learn.  You are the only chance.”

She held me tight, pulling me back into her.  I looked over at the well of blackness coming for us.  I turned back to Proud and lay my head on her body.  It felt comforting.

In the next few moments I was unraveled, amid the short time of pain and confusion I felt that Proud might have escaped the fate.  The pain was gone, there was nothing.  Then I ceased to exist.  Or maybe I ceased before nothing else did as well.

Proud Infinity pt 6

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Hey guys our hero Trego is having some weird things happen to him where he has seen the future before it happens and the playful/enegmatic Proud teases him about the situation.  Some more action is about to occur. Enjoy, like and comment!

Story:

We sat there for a while, her gaze never leaving mine, even though I would occasionally look around the room for something to pop out and say this was a joke, or I was in some experiment.  I was going to lash my hand out to grab hers, but she seemed to pull it back about the same time I had the thought.  That was kind of odd, maybe she knew what was going to happen as well

“So are you going to tell me what is going on?” I asked her.

“Kind of an odd question.”

I closed my eyes for a moment.  “Look, please, I get that, you have stated it enough times.  I am trying hard to not get angry here.  I want to know why I seemed to have had a dream about you, about this whole place.  That guy over there wanted to fight me, and this guy here,” I said, trying to point them out without making too much motion, “shoots me later and I almost die.  Then later the whole world goes black and everything on the planet dies.”

As soon as I said everything I wanted to grab them back.  Here I was pulling up to some amazingly attractive girl who gave nothing but cryptic answers to dodge my questions and I spilled my whole crazy psyche before her.  Trego, you fail the test, we condemn you to a permanent life of wandering the streets.

“If only you were right in the scope,” she said to herself before looking back to me.  “Did you learn anything?” she asked.

“Yeah, I learned a lot, but I am the one asking questions.”

She grinned, her perfect white teeth shone for a moment.  “Are you?  It appears you let me ask one.”  Evidently she possessed a bit of wittiness beyond her cryptic clauses.  I had to laugh once at her wit.  I liked her, even if she pissed me off.

“You aren’t used to having a conversation are you?”

“Do you want me to answer that?” she asked.

“Oh, so now you would answer some stupid question?  Look, don’t answer that one, but tell me this, have we met before?” I said emphasizing the last part.

“Yes.”

The first guy who fought me had now walked up; I did not like where this was going.  “You are scaring some of the others.  I think it is best if you left before something happens.”

I turned to him. “I think it’s best if you shut your face before something happens.”

I looked back at Proud who had resumed a tight, thin smile, almost as if she was trying to subdue a laugh.

“That so?” the guy asked loudly.  “Well why don’t you shut this!?”  My drink was sent crashing and spilling into me following his comment.

No!  My dream warned me about this, and it happened anyway!  I turned quickly back to the girl.

“We are involved in something big here, aren’t we?  By that I mean you and me right?”

“Yes, but that is an understatement.”

“I’ve seen this before last night in my dream, and I was supposed to avoid it.  But I know what I need to do to avoid getting shot.  I will be back.  I hope we will meet again.”

“I know.  You always are.  We always will.”

I wanted to ask her something about what she just said but a shot exploded off the Dimaglass on the window behind us.  I lifted my Liner pistol, firing at the glass myself until it shattered from the multitude of rounds unloading their kinetic energy into it and jumped through, feeling a shard tearing into my shoulder.

I ran and ran, getting away from there.  I stopped, breathing hard, and started laughing.

“Yes!  I did it!”  My dream warned me about today.  I must have some sort of Chrono Sense that was activating to prevent me from getting shot at.  Of course, this was nothing new; a lot of special people had some of these advanced Senses, but to have it myself?  Great!  Hell yeah Trego, you won’t be on the streets much longer now.

Proud Infinity pt 5

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Hey guys thanks for reading and liking, please leave any comments about your thoughts on the story!  Trego now is at the bar, and is going to meet the playful by myterious Proud.  Things are heating up!

story:

I laughed loud once. “Just kidding man.  Like anyone has a job since damn ReCorp came in.  Bastards,” I said shaking my head.  It was so weird.  I agreed with my statements, but I felt more like an actor watching and carefully picking my lines than actually living life.  “Get me your cheapest drink, I’ll be back.”

I turned and saw ‘Infinity Girl’ in the corner and went to stand up.  This time the man who wanted to fight me stayed seated.  He nodded to me while I walked passed him.  Good choice.  I laid you out once, I’ll do it again.

This girl had a very powerful aura about her that was intimidating, but I was more poised about this figure she represented compared to what might be happening to me internally.

“Hi,” I said, taking the seat across from her.  She had a deeply knowing smile on as she looked at me.  I kind of frowned for a moment as my poise left me.  Damn, it’d been a while since I had been unsettled like this by a woman.

Her dark green hair came a bit long around the face, leaving just enough room for bright blue eyes to look through like a window as the hair hung softly around the cheeks, leaving her Strive to be completely unobstructed.  She had a playfulness to her with the sly smile on, vastly out of position at a dump like this bar. Her pink bow spoke to her presumed confidence, and her tight black bodysuit she wore left nothing to imagination.

‘Ahh, the wonders of genetic engineering, eh?  Damn right.’  I conversed with myself.

I was staring at the shadows and shines on her adequate chest when she asked, “Enjoyable?” before softly laughing.  “I hoped it would be.”

“Damn, sorry.” I closed my eyes and shook my head.  I opened my eyes back up and concentrated on looking at her eyes, which was actually rather hard.  “Look, this is kind of a weird question, but…do we know each other?”

“That is an interesting question.  It is tough to tell.”

“Uh…it is?  Why?” I asked.

“If you do not yet know, perhaps we do not yet know each other?”  Her tone indicted she was asking a question, but I wasn’t sure.  I mean what kind of question is that?

She was as mysterious as her appearance.  Her eyes had a deep level of intelligence to them, as we stared at each other I felt like she knew far more than she let on.

“Is that a question for me?”  I asked.  “I don’t remember you, but it kind of seems like I know you.”

“Hey.” A new voice, I turned and it was the bartender.  He had my drink I didn’t really want.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why?”  I pulled out my credcard and he swiped it, deducting a few valuable credits.  I hoped it wasn’t the difference from getting a ticket off-world and not.

“Well you came in here before and ran off, now you are sitting at an empty table talking to the wall.”

My eyes flashed back to the girl, half expecting she would not be there and that I was going crazy.  Yeah, lock up ol’ Trego!  Ever since he lost his job he has just been on a downward spiral.  Next thing you know, he will be shooting people saying this was all a dream.

But she indeed was there, and perhaps that was even worse for my case of going crazy.  She smiled and nodded once.

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine.  Just still a bit messed up over losing my job and all.”

“Join the crowd,” the bartender said before he left.

I leaned forward to the girl.  “Okay, what the hell is going on?”

“That is also a tough question with many layers of complexity.”  I felt like she was playing me for the fool.

I balled my fist in anger; her coyness was pissing me off.   “Look, I get it.  My questions are ‘tough’ but start talking.  Why do these guys pretend you aren’t here, and why did I dream a scenario close to this, except I died and didn’t talk to you in it?!”  As soon as I released the torrent, I regretted it.  I didn’t even know this girl, and now suddenly I was acting like some crazy person.

I was glad she didn’t make an issue of it.  “Maybe you were supposed to talk to me then?” she asked innocently.

“It was a dream, you can’t control those things.  Maybe that’s why I am talking to you now, because of that vision.”  I was far more open with her than I normally ever would be, but the intensity of that dream kept me going.

“Vision?  Is that what you thought it was?” she asked, her eyebrows went up in a ‘what the hell are you talking about’ kind of look, kind of like everyone else had in the room.  For a moment I considered that maybe I was part of some reality show, or some military test to see if I would break.  No, I was tougher than this.  At the very least I had to see what she would say.

I gripped my fist hard, gritting my teeth.  This stupid bitch, I didn’t do good with coquette behavior.  I wanted to slap her.  For a moment I thought about threatening her with my pistol, but I left that idea on the table, so to say.  For now I’ll just try a different approach.

I sighed and tried again.  I wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery.  “Do you have a name?”

“I am a bit unsure on your standards, but isn’t it correct to give your name first?”

I frowned a bit; she was not making this easy.  “It’s Trego.”

“I know,” she stated flatly.

I raised an eyebrow.  “You already know?  Why would you even ask then?”  I realized that everyone in the bar had stopped talking and was looking at me.  I looked back at them, wondering how long they were going to keep their act up, and they went back to small talk.  Yes I get it; I’m probably part of a comedy show or some psyche experiment, go back to drowning your sorrows.

“Yes, I know your name,” she said.

“Uh, well okay, so what is yours?  Can you give it to me now?”  What was the point of her little show if she already knew mine?

“Proud,” she stated the single word and nothing more.

“ ‘Proud’?  That’s your name?”

She turned her head slightly, looked just a bit concerned.  “Is it not sufficient for a name?  Do I require something more?  I had hoped everything was sufficient, tailored specifically, in fact.  Does it need to be changed?  I’m sorry, this is my first time.  This is all new to me as well.”

“No, if that’s your name, it’s fine.  I just wasn’t sure I heard you right.”

Her tone of voice changed slightly, her pronunciation was now different.  “Is this easier for you to understand?”  It was not like adding or dropping an accent, which some people do, and it seemed beyond just a nanite filter of having them change the spoken words.  Her voice had changed.

My thoughts were racing, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’  I glanced behind me and everyone was staring at me.  I stared back at her, and half-expected her to be gone.

Proud Infinity pt 4

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Hey guys, here is the 4th path of Proud Infinity.

We last ended with Trego getting shot and stumbling back to his room where he sees a black wave come out of his old work place that destroys everything and in the next moment thinks he is killed.

Story:

***

 

“Ahh!”  I sat up, throwing the covers off of me.  My breaths came fast as I was hyperventilating, my eyes flung around, trying to feed my brain that everything was okay.  After a few panicked moments I realized I was alive and that it was the morning.  The sky was turning blue from its brilliant orange.  The colors of my shirt, the room, everything was there, and I never loved the morning so much.

“What was that…?”  I lay down again, holding my face and trying to figure out what that was.  Some crazy nightmare.  Ugh, been a while since I had something like that.  I opened my eyes through my splayed fingers and saw my two black socks on my desk, and it reminded me about the other part of being shot and the grim ends I resorted to.  Kind of badass in a way.  At least my subconscious thought I was legit.

For a moment my heart jumped.  It was just a dream right?  My left hand shot to my right shoulder, and nothing.  No shot, no pain.  My right hand worked perfectly.  But I remembered the pain, I remembered gunning that guy down and taking his gun, I remember throwing up over myself, but my white shirt was completely clean.

I put two fingers on my forehead and took a few deep breaths.  Okay, just some whack dream.  Damn, that was insanely real.  The more I thought about it, the more I remembered random details like the old guy by the fence, fighting that guy at the bar, and…that girl.  For some reason I felt she was really important to whatever that dream was about, even though she played almost no part in it at all.

I wiggled my fingers a few times, feeling that their motion was really divine; there was this complete satisfaction at the simple ability of being able to move them.  I moved one at a time right down the line, thinking about complex the movement actually was.

I heated something up for breakfast.  Tried reading a little, a book about a guy who would not take pain killers whereas all his enemies did and could not feel pain; I wasn’t convinced someone could win in a situation like that.  The sun was coming through the slits on my blind and the sunlight made me think about that dream again.

Man, I just could not drop this.  I had a few nightmares before, but this one just would not subside.  “Alright, just drop it.  I am not shot, and that whole thing never occurred.”  I rubbed my shoulder a few times and, convinced it really was just a dream, left my room to go about my day.

The monotony of the day once again lay before me.  But one thing was still bothering me.  It felt really stupid, but I wanted to check.  Levels of precognition existed, that was a fact.  There were three major varieties of the Chrono Psionic that was based on that.  I daydreamed a bit that maybe somehow I unlocked a power like that.

Strangely, there was a bar right where I had dreamt it.  My hopes raised a bit that maybe something special was going on with me.  My scientist mind tried to look for explanations.  It was possibly not that odd, as I was probably through here before and the subconscious has a really good memory.

My heart rate was quickening as I opened the door, and the bar lay out in front of me the same way I had seen it before.  There was the bartender I argued with, the guy close to me whom I had envisioned clubbing down after breaking his knee.  My heart fell when I recognized another man in here as the one who shot me and I killed later in the dream.

This was far clearer than any dream I had had before.  Faces were always kind of vague, even the most visual of dreams were based a lot more on feelings and metaphors.  I recognized this guy’s ugly face and I had never seen him in my life.

I staggered backwards. “What the hell is going on?”  My eyes went wide and my stomach dropped along with my heart.  People supposedly had precognizant dreams, but that was all bullshit, no way any of that happens in real life.  It defied science.  If this was some Chrono Psionic, no wonder those people were so awkward and fucked up given how weird this was to me.

How could I have known about these people I had never seen!?  The fear of what was happening was too much and I left before I checked much more.  I turned and ran to the next spot of the dream: the fence overlooking the ReCorp complex.

No one was around here.  Hmm, that was different.  And just that simple fact brought a much needed sense of relief to me.  I let a huge sigh out, and started laughing loudly.  Oh man, okay.  I have no idea what that was.  Some low probability dream, maybe I had been there when I was younger or something.  I was so desperate to find something, my mind assumed anyone’s random face was the face I supposedly saw in my dream.  Sounded about right.

Yeah, well, whatever.  Not like I was going to get gunned down later today.  Yeah, some dream to just tell me to avoid that spot.  Not that odd.  There was actually some pretty crazy research in Psionics/Senses, and to have a dream about your death that you are then able to avoid is a lot less crazy than some of the stuff I had heard about.  Not sure I believed any of it, but it was out there.  There was some ‘danger Sense’ or something that was pretty common in Solarians as well that kept people out of getting killed; maybe that’s how this thing went down.

Wait…why the hell am I even jumping to these conclusions?  It was some dream, period.

I laughed again, then my laugh got caught in my throat, and my breath froze.  A bit further down a saw an old man…the old man coming on his walk across here.

I shook my head in disbelief.  Okay, think critically.  Maybe I indeed have a latent Sense that is manifesting itself here, and I foresaw the danger I would be in from the gunfight and warned me about the events that would occur.  Take this slow, and experiment with what exactly will happen.  I hated that I didn’t read more about how the Chrono Psionics worked, so I was stumbling blindly trying to conclude if I had something I knew nothing about.

‘Some sight huh?’ My mind played, or maybe it was ‘replayed’.

“Some sight huh?” the man stated.  Hmm, what did I say back to him?  I think I was dismissive.  My mind found the right words as if I had said them a million times.

“Yeah, if you mean totally disrupting to the entire culture and planet that was already there.”  Consciously, I felt like a watcher on a play I had seen before.

He started coming closer to me.  I remember I did not want to talk to him, but actually I was quite interested now.  I wondered if my intent would change reality, or was it only things I actually did?  If I still acted the exact same but thought differently I wondered if that would change anything.

He came closer. “Yeah, you are young enough that I am sure you were displaced by what occurred here.”  His hand motions were moving the exact same way.

Now here was the time to experiment.  I think I was sarcastic with him.  But this time it would be different based on how I acted.  “You don’t seem too bothered.  Let me guess, you retired here?”

He stopped, and looked a bit confused.  I felt confused suddenly too, up to the moment I felt like I had seen this before, but now I was on a new path.  Blinded.

Damn, what the hell was going on?  Maybe precognition was weak.

“Good guess, yeah.  I made enough in the Solarian Space Forces to retire.  I feel bad for guys like you though.”

I almost got caught up in the conversation or the social mores of being polite but a deeper feeling reminded me that something profound had occurred here.  I just didn’t know what it was.

I turned away from him. “See you.” Then I ran back to the bar.  As I ran across the empty streets, dodging an occasional body, I wondered how much of my vision still applied?  Could this new power of mine protect me only from a specific path, or a wide band of actions?

I opened the door to the bar.  Last time I was spoiling for a fight, but no one would know what I wanted inside my mind, only my actual actions.

I went to the same chair and had the barkeep come over.

“What will you be having?” he asked.  Yeah, he said the same thing, but perhaps it is predictable, nothing to gleam out of this small interaction yet.  Anyone would say something regular like that.

The next part was something about asking about a job, and my mind said what it had said before: “Well, I’m here to find out if there are any jobs or contracts anyone has posted.”

He laughed dismissively.  Hmm, this definitely seemed familiar.  “I don’t even know you.  You think I’d tell you one with these many deserving people here?”

The grunts again came up from around the bar.  Hmm, definitely the same.  I was not sure why it was occurring the same way even though I had done different things.  I thought that maybe it was a very specific, A then B then C, and because I did B first it would change.  There was a lot to learn here.  The major thing right now though I had to end the timeline from occurring and ending up getting shot.

Proud Infinity Pt 3

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Here is the 3rd part of the new story Proud Infinity about a a guy who become stuck in a time loop.  We last ended with him wondering if he could get off the planet, the story is about to get heated:

 

I hit my hand on the ground in frustration.  Damn!  Why didn’t I leave?  What was keeping me around?  Seems stupid looking back on it, it is not like I have any purpose here now.  Okay, that settles it.  I am out of here.  I’ll buy a ticket and be gone in just a few cycles.

I pulled out my gun and ran my fingers over it.  At least this was a good purchase before things fell apart completely.  I was making a lot of credits at the time, and I spent a serious amount on the best pistol I could get without a military clearance.  I caught my Strive reflected in the large barrel of the pistol and thought of that strange girl at the bar with her simplistic pictogram.  The tattoo under my left eye was a straight line, followed by a perpendicular one, ending with a triangle beyond it.  The meaning was that the straightest path to anything might not be a straight line.  I liked to think that that inscription that had been with me from childhood helped me in my non-standard thinking of solving problems.

Regarding hers, I honestly did not think you could get a Strive that…simple.  I didn’t know the rules of the inscriptions, but I had never seen anyone with a single, non-complex design, so that’s what I based my assumption off of.

I hoped she wasn’t a regular there.  I do not know if I was ready to go back there anytime soon, given the size of the city seeing her elsewhere would be a low chance.  Damn, she was hot too.  My curiosity piqued by what exactly she was.  Maybe she was with ReCorp.

Motion.

I tilted my pistol just slightly to see a man obviously coming up behind me in its reflection.  Strange.  And not good.

I waited a bit more and when it was clear he was coming right at me I dashed forward and rapidly turned around.  Nice melee attack chump, prepare to die.

“Hey punk, this is for Walo!” He did not have a melee weapon, instead his leveled pistol erupted fire that tore into my shoulder.  Damn, he was good.  No warning.  Professional.

I let a little yelp out as I was torn to the ground.  My hand holding my pistol went to my right shoulder, feeling warm liquid leak out of it.

“Ha, guess there was nothing to you, huh boy?  Just a pathetic, lucky kid.  I will leave you here like the rest of the trash in this shithole.”  He smiled darkly as his pistol was pointing at me.

My rapid thoughts congealed and realized I had to act right now.  I brought the pistol onto the man who was stupid to not finish me and pulled the trigger.  The Liner pistol’s Gauss accelerators propelled the rounds from zero to maximum velocity within a very short time.  The caseless rounds tore through him at a far faster rate than his chemical propellant variety of weapon.  In a few fractions of a trigger pull easily over fifty rounds were out of my gun and through his body.  His torso exploded apart and he joined me down on the ground, except he was now completely dead.

“Uhh…” I gritted my teeth looking at my right arm.  I tried squeezing my fingers and they did not work despite the massive pain of trying.  I braced myself to try harder, screaming out in pain as I tried to close my limp hand.  Nothing.

Damn damn damn!  Was my arm shot through!?  I was not a soldier, I was a fucking scientist.  How did this happen!?

My mind was racing, scared of the blood leaking out of me.  There was a sizable hole through my shoulder, and while I could feel my nanites pumping chemicals through me and trying to close the hole, this was still a very serious wound.  My head swam for a moment before the chemicals started calming me.

I tried ripping my shirt with my left hand, gripping hard and pulling against my body but without a strong counter force it was not coming apart.  I took off my sock in desperation and started jamming it into the hole.  I was oddly self conscious that I was doing this and knew I should be in massive pain but I had so many synthesized chemicals in me from my system nanites I could not even feel anything anymore.  Even the panic had given away to my coldly calculating mind, distantly stuffing a sock in my shoulder.

The injury was further alarming because at every finger extension of me pushing the sock in, I would expect to find resistance of my body, such as a bone or my back.  I felt extreme nausea come over me at the implication of the massive hole in my shoulder that clearly went all the way through.

When the thin sock had completely been put into my shoulder, the very idea that part of it might be hanging out the backside – bloody and dripping – was too much and I started coughing before throwing up on the ground in front of me.  I was too dizzy, likely from the thoughts more than the feelings as nanites were quite capable of keeping someone fighting in worse condition that I was.  I leaned forward and sprawled out on the ground.

Normally the nanities would have mostly stopped the bleeding and within a cycle or two would heal over the hole.  Perhaps even now there may be a synthetic layer of skin covering a dirty sock in my shoulder…the thought of my sock disgusted me and I was sick again.

The spinning in my head slowly stopped, and the pain was distant.  I pushed myself to kneeling, then eventually to standing.

“Kckk…” I coughed a few times, rubbing my mouth and eyes on my shirt and stood up, having to catch my feet a few times from being mentally unsteady.  The blood and vomit where I was looked like a massacre occurred there.

I started to walk away, until realized I didn’t have my shoe.  I didn’t know if I could really put it on, so merely stupidly grabbed it, grabbed the weapon of the man I had killed in self-defense, and hobbled back to my room.  The few people I saw stare at me on the way back did not once ask if I was okay; I stared back with hatred.  Maybe I’ll just put a round through them.  In some fitting irony, I now looked exactly like the trash I despised so much.

I held my hand over my shoulder and by the time I made it back to my room, I felt a few fibers of synthetic material stringing itself across the wound to heal faster.  I would not be taking out the sock, and was grimly thinking about how eventually my nanites would slowly break the fiber down within me.  I would survive, but I was very worried if the nanites would be able to re-string the neurons or tendons or whatever was causing my lack of motor control.  The door shut behind me and I bent down, throwing the two weapons on the desk.  I stood back up as a massive wave of dizziness hit me.  I grabbed the desk, trying to stay up, but then blacked out and went down.

In my daze a growing pain woke me up, and I gradually realized I was laying on my shoulder.  I had been out for a while, as the room seemed darker.  I shook my head a few times and felt in control of my mental facilities.  Holy shit, my memories came back of what happened.  I patted my shoulder, still alive.  Yeah, if that was a sign to get out, this was it.

Everything was feeling okay, all things considered.  Only the color of my vision was wrong.

What the?  I had never been shot before, and I knew my nanites could heal me, but was this part of the healing process?

Everything was still ‘colored’ but it was like a black and white filter had been applied to everything, damping most of the color out of existence.  I stood up, holding my shoulder with its synthetic skin now completely across the wound, and walked over to the window that faced the ReCorp building.  Near the center it appeared to be completely binary in its color, but I thought it might just be because there wasn’t much color there anyway.  Some weird atmosphere or solar phenomenon?  The sky looked the same as the rest of the reduced color world.

A tug in my heart brought me back to looking at the complex.  From the center of it, a huge black sphere was now there, expanding outwards.  At first it was barely noticeable in its speed, but even as I watched it grew rapidly.

The next part I will describe using intuitive feelings, because any science I have would not explain what I felt.  It seemed like the black wave growing was a pulse of ‘motion freeze’, that there was nothing that would be moving within it.  Then the feeling grew into pure terror that even stillness would be happy to exist within the sphere.  My new fear knew that this was a wave of annihilation, that every dimension, the three physical, time, gravity, and whatever else there might be would be torn asunder, reduced to nothingness.  Reduced to non-reality.  I knew that for an intuitive fact.

I was under no delusion that that force was beyond me, beyond the entire Solarian race, maybe even beyond the entire universe.  I almost felt privileged for a moment to watch this source of destruction that would rip reality apart, but it was quickly replaced by revulsion at this deeply unnatural event.  The black sphere of nothingness grew larger and faster.  I would be annihilated, like everything else.

Then in the next moment, I was.

Proud Infinity pt2

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Hello readers, here is the 2nd part of the story Proud Infinity that is the new story I am putting together.  Enjoy and comment, I like to see your reactions!  Yesterday we read about Trego seeing a strange girl at a bar and how he was attacked and left.  We pick up right where we left off:

Trego and Proud

 

Pt 2:

 

As soon as I was outside I ran.  The only safety I had from anyone in there was raw distance.  At the very least I was no longer angry, just a little shaken.

I ran a couple of blocks until I was sure I was out of there and no one was behind me.  I doubted anyone actually would come after me after such domination, but I was just being safe.  A bit further ahead was a fence that appeared to be next to a pit.

I walked over and realized it overlooked the ReCorp complex.  Only a few steps in front of me was a steep cliff into a pit that surrounded the entire complex except for the single road in.  The small community’s buildings rose ominously from the void of ground all around it.  A few pillars of smoke or steam rose off the power plant that had been built strictly for this.  Even during the day, I could see the black buildings with their endlessly burning lights from here.  I switched my eye filters to pick up thermal, and the heat signatures radiating off of them disgusted me with the environmental damage they were probably doing.

“Some sight huh?”  I blinked and turned towards the sound, my eyes returning to normal.  It was an old man further down the fence looking at the eyesore, that cancer of the city, that tumor on our fair planet, that blight of aesthetics, a veritable citadel of pain on our hopes and dreams…

I waved the comment off.   “Yeah, if you mean totally disrupting to the entire culture and planet that was already here.”

He started walking towards me, but I didn’t really feel like talking.  He lifted a hand up towards me as if to include me. “Yeah, you are young enough that I am sure you were displaced by what occurred here.”

“ ‘Occurred here’ is right.  Like it was some sort of disaster.  Which is what it was.”  Where was a portable nuke launcher when I needed one?  I fantasized about sighting it up, then watching it all get blown away.

He turned back to overlook the pit and the city beyond.  “I retired here.  I was in the Solarian Space Force my whole life, and Center always intrigued me.  I have an off-planet account, completely filled with gems.  This depression has actually made me relatively more well off.”

I went to walk away once more. “Great for you, join the rest of us.  Unless you are going to give me money I don’t want to hear how much you got.”

“Hey, wait, I guess I got carried away.  Sorry about mentioning money.  It’s just… Look at you.  You clearly are not, or at least were not, in the dregs of society.  Tickets off-planet are not the expensive.  Why didn’t you get out?”

I laughed once. “I thought I was going to be hired.”  I looked back at the place I hated now.  Maybe I still wanted to go back.

He lifted his hands, trying to encompass the whole compound in his arms; it seemed he liked using his hands to communicate.  “Ahhhhh.” His hands came back to his side, and he turned back to me, smiling a bit crazily.  “That’s the mystery, isn’t it?  Being near Center, there are a lot of phenomena that is still being researched and even new discoveries happening fairly regularly.  Since this planet is within Center, naturally it makes sense that it was a beacon of research.  Let me guess, you were a researcher?”

At this point, I was a bit cautious of his craziness, but also intrigued as he seemed to know what was going on.  “Of course.  Just about everyone here was.”

He leaned his face in a bit towards me. “See that’s what strange.  What were you researching, if you don’t mind me asking?  If it’s not classified.”

“It was, but I don’t care anymore.  Everyone betrayed me so what’s the point of a misplaced loyalty?  We were studying the fabric of reality, component particles, its intervention with time and all that.”  I added the ‘all that’ because I am sure he had no idea what I was talking about.  “Notably that reality seemed to be potentially constructed differently near Center, and scales away from there based on distance.”

The man nodded. “That’s what adds to the mystery.  You clearly were in the know, but a large corporation comes in, buys out everything, and doesn’t even take any of the staff?”

I froze for a moment.  How’d he know all the staff got whacked?  I never mentioned it, which made me wary.

“Tell me about it,” I agreed, slightly suspicious.

He turned back to me. “Since you told me something, I’ll tell you something.  I am a bit intrigued by this, and looked into it, used some of my old contacts.  Guess what: ReCorp is not that big of a corporation.”

“Really?” I asked, intrigued quite a bit now by this guy I thought seemed crazy.  I had assumed that due to ReCorp’s massive buying power it had to have been huge, near empire status itself.  I couldn’t look up anything on it which was suspicious itself, so it always remained a mystery.  I suspected the void of information was just a payoff somewhere.

“Ha, got you interested?”  The old man’s eyes looked brighter than I gave him credit for; he still had a spark of life in him.  “Well guess what?  ReCorp does not even exist off planet.”

“What!?”  My mouth dropped open.

“Yeah, ‘ReCorp’ is nothing more than a puppet organization propped up by probably nothing less than a full-on empire.”

I shook my head. “I could see that now that you mention it.  Pisses me off.”

“It’s completely true.”

“Oh, I have no doubt of that.  It makes perfect sense.”  The info void and firing the old staff being the largest offenders.

I stood there for a few more moments, thinking about what he said before he told me, “Keep an eye out, reality has an…interesting aspect to it,” and left.  Well that sure was a random but interesting encounter.

Maybe I should buy a ticket off this dump like that guy suggested.  I figured I’d walk around the city like I usually do until something came to me for inspiration to get out of my plight or perhaps what to do for credits.  As I passed people again and again out on the streets, not doing anything, and having nothing to do, my thoughts drifted back to that man’s question as to why I just didn’t get out.  I had more than enough credits originally, but the thought had not crossed my mind.  I had no loyalty to this place; it was an odd decision for me to have made now I thought about it.

I continued thinking as I mindlessly walked forward, nearly stepping on a slumped body on the sidewalk. I stepped around the stagnant figure, not even sparing it a second glance as I kept walking. I honestly had no idea if the person was dead or just sleeping, but I didn’t really care either way. I saw this quite often around here, so I suppose I became immune to it in a way. I ignored the still body as I went back to my contemplating.

Part of the problem about me leaving though was that I was not ‘technical’ minded.  I had gotten my job because of a friend who indeed was good with the details and rote memorization of minute facts.  My skills lay in assimilation of facts and creative solutions or ideas.  I was actually lucky I had fallen into the position I had, but it was a very good relationship for both me and the research unit.

My big ‘breakout’ was when we were faced with some proof of time running differently within the same system.  The data was checked, and experiments reran, but it appeared that on one planet in the system, time indeed did ‘run faster’.

My suggestion was simple in my mind, but everyone else found it really profound.  I suggested we take a look at some of the old theories of time non-linearity and let’s assume it might not actually be linear everywhere.  I suggested that the five dimensions of space perhaps exhibited preferential pathing for the three physical dimensions, along with time, and gravity.  If we looked into the gravitational attraction constant we could see if it might be different, or at the very least gravity could be affecting the time dilation effects.

Ha, yeah.  That was back when I was a hero among the researchers, not some chump with a gun cruising the streets.  The fall from grace was pretty rapid, and in my own mind I still felt like I was ‘different’ from the rest of these fools.

‘I’m not just a chump, I’m a cut above.  At least advanced chump,’ I thought wistfully to myself.

I heard a rumbling of a large truck that drew me out of my reverie.  The grav plates must have been loose, because even though the truck was balanced as it floated down the street it was extremely noisy.  No surprise: it was a ReCorp truck.  I kind of just wanted to shoot the driver and drive the truck off the bridge.  Me inside?  I don’t know.

Anyway, my theory was probably about a solar cycle ago, and indeed we did find some data that seemed to correlate with my thoughts.  I was living on high for a while there, but then ReCorp came in, shut down all the research, bought out everything, and made their own compound isolated from anyone who was employed prior.

Maybe it was part of some big government cover up, like they didn’t like what we found out.  Made sense why all of us would be out.  What we had found was still in the early stages, so if that was true it’d be more to shut down the info rather than use it for themselves.

Oh, and my friend, the one good with the details and was actually pretty instrumental in getting our project to be so successful?  Committed suicide.  I found him in his room, took a tie and hung himself off the doorknob.  It was pretty fucked up, I doubt he died quick.  The claw marks at his neck suggested he thought twice about it after it was too late.  All because he ran out of credits…or maybe hope first, I don’t know.  For me, I still had credits, so I guess I still had hope.

In a lot of ways, what was once a vibrant city was rapidly falling apart.  Though not everyone here was involved in the massive research complex as researchers, it was easily the primary employer from logistics to food service and so on.  There were still a fair amount of people around, but I have noticed a decline in the amount still here.  I didn’t know if they left the planet, were murdered, or pulled their own pin.  In evidence of the later I found quite a few bodies just dumped in the streets.  I didn’t really pay that much attention after a while.  Really, you stop counting after about five.

I sat down for a moment, looking at the empty sky.  It was really calm now, and I mean that in a bad way.  There used to be a vibrant trade through here with ships coming and going through the sky; now only a single ship came once a cycle for supplies for ReCorp.  I can’t think of the last time I saw an alien…probably an Aelisha a few planet cycles after ReCorp came in and shut everything down.  I didn’t even see Aelishan patrols anymore; that was pretty odd itself.

I wonder if I could leave here now.  Could I have even left back then?