Tag Archives: short story

Proud Infinity pt 18

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“Uhh…” I woke up, looking at the beam of light on my colored pillow.  I woke up from something that had just killed me, of that I was fairly sure.  The longer I sat there thinking the clearer and more coalescing my thoughts became.  I had recalled variations of the unfolding day, at first thinking it was just dreams within dreams but they were too vivid, too painful.  On some level something really messed up was happening here.

I felt this aura or field around me, as if it was a physical medium.  It was dark and thick, like the feeling at graveyards but a thousand times stronger.  The more I lay there the more I could slowly start feeling experiences of sorts wash over me.  It was strong ones at first: fear, anger, lust.  But it had an instructive element to it, that I was relearning or recalling old knowledge or skills I had.  Like grabbing a bicycle after not riding it, I ‘remembered’ on a vague level of stuff rushing back to me.

What was this, the third?  The fourth?  My head swam, and I had a grim feeling somewhere in my mind it was much higher than that.

Maybe I had finally remembered simply by raw repetition of being unraveled.  It appeared to be true what that girl named ‘Proud’ had claimed: I was stuck in a time fracture.  Something at ReCorp had created a particle that was so destructive to our reality that either it or the universe somehow reverberated that destruction back into time to before it occurs to ensure it never actually occurs.

And according to Proud, I was the one who had to stop this.  My stomach dropped; the universe was probably screwed.

At this point I was seriously trying to decide how many times had I ‘lived’ this day.  I remembered the couple recent ones.  But it seemed like the further back ‘times’ I remember, the vaguer they were.  It was entirely possibly I had been through this a thousand, or a million times.

I got up and splashed some water on my face, helping remind me ‘this’ was real.  I sat down against the wall, trying to think critically.

Last time I actually seemed to gleam a lot of information.  I recalled the last loop in pretty good detail, but looking back on it, I knew things I should not have.  There were a lot of things I remember personally saying I was not sure I might normally understand.   I was accepting of a lot of Proud’s crazy ideas, and jumping to conclusions that did not necessarily follow.  What this meant to me is that somehow I knew things I normally should not have.  Maybe indeed I was many iterations into this fracture, and that knowledge was slowly accruing within my consciousness packets or whatever she said I had.

So, the question then was, when do I remember?  Right now I was piecing a little together, but not to the extent I was talking to her last time.  Wait….‘last time’ certainly isn’t the right word, but what else to call it?

I saw my white shirt on the desk and remembered her changing it to pink.  Today was definitely a new cycle, but her show definitely had something important to it, I just could not grasp it yet.  What did it mean that she could change a shirt, but I could not?  There was something profound I was missing.

Sitting there holding the white shirt I was thinking of the people I ran into this day, and how any of them could possibly help me.  One thing that was clear is that I seemed to only remember the most recent resets clearly.  There was no telling how many I actually endured, I might be really early, or really far in.  I’d have to keep that thought in mind.

There were a few major characters excluding Proud that stuck out and maybe had some clues for me.  There was the bartender, either of the two guys I fought, that old man at the pit, and the android girl.  They likely had some key to this.

Proud Infinity pt 16

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As usual her excuse was ready.  “The magnitude of the reality effect is proportional to the energy required.  I am strong, but not that strong.  Crashing that display machine was easy; its impact was small as only two were actual witnesses to it, and its overall impact to true reality is minor.  And actually the wall was even easier.  That male did not notice it, and to you it does not matter especially given the end to this thread we are rapidly hurtling towards.  But I cannot bring about massive changes to reality that will persist down through time.  Not alone anyway.”

I played along a little, but it was only a little.  I actually started wondering if this crazy girl and her crazy story might be real.

“Okay, so I understand that I think.  By stopping this, while the actual action of stopping it might be small, you are somehow bound by something that is related to the magnitude of its impact that it ‘persists through time’.  So since this is infinitely important given that the universe gets wiped out, it cannot be done by you?”

“You are quite adept at piecing this together Tre.”

‘Damn, talk about Chrono pathways, if this is true.  We really were onto something in my old research…’  In my own mind the various theories of time and ‘threads’ of intersecting time lines began to take on a much more real manifestation.

I bent down, grabbing a rock, then pitched it over the fence as it fell down and down.   “But why could I stop this then?  I mean you are a shape-shifting girl who can blow walls down, I’m a chump with a gun.”

A deep grin took over her. “I thought you were at least an ‘advanced chump’!”

I froze.  “How did you know that?”

Her smile was good-natured.  “You still don’t believe me, do you?”

“Would you believe me that something dumb like that made me believe you way more?”

“Our harmonic rate is finally increasing!  Anyway, what you have is the power of the physical plane inhabitants.  Where your freewill does exist,” and she tilted her head down to me, “and not to say it always does, your impacts are infinite in their potential magnitude.  You are not bound by what your actions may cause down the time thread.”

“That kind of implies you lack freewill as well in some circumstances?” I asked her.

“Yes, but our definition of ‘freewill’ is far more different, let’s just leave it there.  But remember this physical plane is the base from which the others arise and affect.  I can affect this freely, in direct inverse proportion to what its impacts are.”  She teleported beyond the fence, and was hovering in the air, her hair and ribbon slowly swaying in a breeze from the updraft of the massive pit.  She lifted her hands wide to her sides, and had a playful grin on, like a kid at a playground.

“Whoa…”  My mouth was open, watching her silently floating in the air.  Okay, she definitely looked more ‘godlike’ in this simple example.  I had little doubt remaining something serious was occurring here.

“However, as a physical, your actions are inherently very limited in your options.  For example, you cannot do this.  However, the scope of your impact can be, and indeed is, limitless.  So in a way, you are the weakest, but also the strongest.”

“Ha, so it’s like we are in the steerage of a ship.  Everyone above us can dump their trash on us and do what they want, but if we sink the boat, everyone else is going down too.  Evidently, the ship sinking attracted at least someone’s attention.”  I sat down and crossed my legs, and she teleported over and sat next to me as we looked over to the building.  She put her hand on my leg.  The touch was a bit surprising, but it felt comforting.  I liked her.

It was a bit scary that the sunset had now begun.  Soon that sphere of nothingness would be created, and everything would end.

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 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?

 

Sample of my next story ‘Proud Infinity’ Stuck in a time loop with only a god to keep him company

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Trego and Proud

I am going to be having parts from my next book ‘Proud Infinity’ for the next couple of days.  This story is about a guy who ends up stuck in a time fracture and the only other person who realizes it is a demi-goddess sent to help him end it.

 

This will be sequential and this is the beginning, enjoy!

Story:

 

One of the more interesting theories that have come to gain more credibility is the theory that certain events can be so damaging to the framework of reality that time fractures backwards to prevent this event from occurring.

…‘Time’ as used in the dimensional sense had grown to be an increasingly complex subject as there is mounting evidence of both a preferential flow to it, and in some cases what could only loosely be termed as a ‘reroute’.

– Terran Intradex Ver. 4 Excerpts on ‘Time Theories’

 

See also: ‘Preferential pathing of time’; ‘Time Fractures’

 

I hardly even noticed her the first time I saw her…the woman who would ruin, but also save, my life.  Looking back it seemed obvious, now that I was tuned to how things actually worked.  At the time, she was just another girl that I crossed paths with during my growing desperation.  I sometimes wonder if I knew then what would occur, and how painful it would be, if I would have made the same choice.

 

***

I didn’t usually go to a bar the first thing in the morning, but times had started to become desperate; besides, I felt drawn to it.  I had no doubt I was among the smartest people on this planet who was unemployed since ReCorp came in.  That fact pissed me off.  This had been my situation for a while, but while the credits still lasted I wasn’t that worried or upset.

The cycles marched on as they do, and my reserve funds dwindled as I tried to get hired with the corporation that displaced my old job.  Surely since I was so brilliant, they would have to hire me, right?

But they did not.  They did not hire a single person from the prior team.

I was normally fairly calculating, but today I was spoiling for a fight, an outlet for my anger building.  I really wanted someone, anyone, to question me, why someone of my caliber was not employed or doing something ‘meaningful’.  ‘As if just existing does not have inherent meaning!’ I would answer to them before smashing their face.  I was generally immune to nihilism and the lack of a job might not make me sad, but it certainly made me mad.

I caught my reflection in the dimaglass door of the bar, seeing my confident smirk framed by my shorter hair with the slight ‘fray’ in the middle I could never get to go away.  Yeah, that was someone ready to beat down some evil, and should have a job while he’s at it.

I had not been to this one before, but I guess they were pretty much the same anywhere.  The smoke slowly billowed out from the door I was holding open, wafting out from the dimly lit interior.  Why they never had better lighting, I didn’t know.  Maybe they might catch their pathetic reflection in their drinks; can’t have that!  Nope, not at all.

I stepped inside and quickly surveyed the surroundings.  It appeared to be a long shallow hall.  I was on one side and to my right the bar and tables went further down.  A few of the people lifted their heads, staring at me with a ‘what do you think you are doing here?’ look.  I laughed to myself and continued scanning the bar.  Alright, which one of you suckas wants to go?

I walked up to the empty set of chairs right by the door and waved the barkeep over.

“What will you be having?”

“Well, I’m here to find out if there are any jobs or contracts anyone has posted.”

He laughed dismissively, I looked back at him in surprise.  “I don’t even know you.  You think I’d tell you anything with these many deserving people here?”

There were a few grunts of ‘yeah’ or ‘who do you think you are’; I could feel the hostile aura grow a bit in this room.  I took note of it, but I was here for answers or action.

“Isn’t it your job to simply state the facts—” I began saying before he cut me off.

“Don’t you get it?  Ever since ReCorp came in, there haven’t been any jobs!”

Some people laughed, and a typical chorus of ‘yeahs!’ echoed at me.

I knew ReCorp had whacked all the jobs, but it didn’t mean there might not be new ones.  Didn’t these fucks have any optimism in their life?  My anger at him dissipated as the truth of his statement settled in.  I frowned and I looked away from him.  The room was entirely male, grinning and chuckling at me.

Except for the girl in the corner.  My natural eyes locked onto her, and my nanites in my eyes interpreted correctly to focus on her.  I felt my eyes tighten, and a network of nanites formed a lens over my eye as my vision zoomed in on her face.

Her bright pink bow on her right side of her dark green hair was strange enough for the two facts very few had that hair color naturally, and such a bright pink was deeply out of place in here, this wasteland of talent.  She was clearly looking right at me, but was neither smiling nor frowning; her lips were straight, her light blue eyes locked onto mine.  Other than her intense eyes, the final strange part was her Strive tattoo under her left eye: a single infinity sign.

What the hell was a girl like that doing here?  Though the term ‘girl’ might be demeaning to her: she was clearly a developed woman wearing a tight black body suit.  A prostitute?  Haha, even I might have been tempted.  Set a low enough price and I am sure she would clear house down here.

“What’s up with the girl over there?” I asked the bartender while nodding towards the girl.

“What are you talking about?”

I looked back at him angrily. “The girl over there, do you know her?  Prostitute or what?” I asked so I could justify my curiosity in her.

He looked confused, and his little act was pissing me off.  I shook my head, and looked away from him back at the girl who I think might have smiled slightly.  Heh, so she thought this was funny?

Hmm, well she might be interesting to talk to; damn cryptic-looking though.  I was not normally intimidated by anyone, but she might be the first, or at least real close to it.  I pushed myself away from the bar I was standing at and took a step towards her when I felt a huge force into my shoulder pushing me down to the ground.

“Watch where you are going,” said the large man who had clearly ran into me with the intention of driving me to the ground.  I heard some laughing around the room.

“Walo is going to fuck this guy up!”  I heard someone say, more laughter.

I looked right up at ‘Walo’, smiling deeply. “Bad move, bitch.”  Though this was going to be easy, I did not feel bad for him at all.

His first mistake, other than attacking me, was staying in range.  I braced myself up on my hands and lashed out a straight kick right into his knee cap, driving my foot far past the point his was normally supposed to bend.  I spun around, standing up and drawing my Liner pistol, smashing the handle down onto his head.  His broke patella and concussion shocking his system left him on the floor.

I stepped backwards towards the door, my pistol leveled and cycling between the nearest people, the girl in the back had a wild smile on as my pistol danced over her.  I wanted to fight, but having it actually happen sobered me up, and I did not need the whole bar coming after me.  “I’m leaving,” I stated firmly to those nearest me, and did just that.

Drawing of Fraylash characters

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My book Fraylash is recently out and offered for free today on Amazon.

Fan drawing of Frayno and Lashia

Fan drawing of Frayno and Lashia

 

Here is a fanart rendered in a realistic anime-esque style.  The story follows Frayno who is going after Lashia who has led a rebellion on a planet.  She has killed every hunter like Frayno so far.  He is one of the best and it starts to become personal when she taunts him and strings his life along.

Check out the main link on the story here.  Go to amazon and pick it up, today is the last free day!

Check out my free book today

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Check out on Amazon my book Fraylash is currently for free.

Check it out to see what my writing is all about.  Fraylash is a story about a misanthropic man named Frayno who is a elite bounty hunter who is tasked with bringing down the charismatic, attractive Lashia who she had killed all the bounty hunters after her.

My stories take place in the future where things like nanities that provide zooming to eyes, rapid healing, guns such as rail guns and androids that are indiscernible from humans.

 

Check out my story and leave any comment.  If you do read it, please leave a 5 star review, those are super important for new authors.  Thanks again!

Fraylash will be free Fri-Sun check out the book!

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Fraylash is my most recent book out.  It is a story about a hunter named Frayno  who

takes on an elusive woman named Lashia who has killed all the hunters before him.

 

I will be free tomorrow and I will post again about it.  But be sure to check out some of the pages about Fraylash.  Like the post and share, I would deeply appreciate it!