My Lost (an unfinished) Sci Fi Novel

My Lost (and unfinished) Sci Fi Novel

Graham Swanson

Pretext: During 2020 I decided to write about the world one hundreds years or so after COVID. This way, all the problems of today would be gone, but the future wouldn't be so perfect that everything is a utopia. For example, there are cyborgs but they aren't going on adventures, they're practically disabled and unable to live comfortable lives. There is a lot of depressing things, but also a great deal of healing. My hard drive burned up before I could finish it. There are many characters, some powerful wardens of planets, others just lowly wage serfs, others are teenagers who break all the rules. This is just one scene close to the beginning of the novel that I uncovered while looking for projects to work on.

 Screeching wingless birds fell from the windmill and bounced on the porch overlooking the gravity orb

hovering over the ocean. Oze whistled over the misty shore beyond the old brick plaster buildings

towards the noiseless contraption of modern electric homes flying over the deep scars in the forests that

used to be highways. Every clipped wing sounded like the arrival of the terrorist helicopter. The footage

remained repeating on the screen. The fake Wolfe Qindrip stood behind a table of scythes, hammers,

flintlock pistols, going on and on about how his Defeatists will bring the world back to a peaceful time,

an easier time, a greater time, once the clock hit midnight, the glitches they imbedded into the code will

cause gravity orbs all over the country to collapse. 

Oze imagined over and over again the meteor strike of 2033, how North Dakota still hadn’t recovered, and all the misery it caused for decades to come. The smallest gravity orb is large enough to block every volcano in the uninhabitable ash heap that was once Hawaii. They rotated with the ease of a snail on rock slime, spinning around once every 6 days, one side of the panels reflected the pale beams from the flying city, and the other side reflected the burning light from the landfill in flames down in the old towns. Towers of gas fumes obscured the shadowy lanes of drone craft where the cold tent towns gathered. Snowflakes started to crown the caliper holding two halves of skull helmet over the cyborg’s contorted brain. 

When the fake Wolfe announced his new movement’s presence to the world, Oze did not cower or fear for his life like the other 311.6 million cyborgs between Taiwan and Olde England. He first met Wolfe at the graduation ceremony in his castle to discuss how easily a cyber terrorist can access their lives. The fraud did not fool him, because the real Qindrip also depended on a heart cylinder to keep him alive, and brain plates to keep his skull from collapsing. The man instead gave the information away to the Amish Extremists to use in the war against the robots. No one dared step up to Wolfe Qindrip, those few who did wound up converted to fuel in an energy converter in a lost warehouse. 

The fake Qindrip rolled up his sleeves, straightened his wool vest, and brushed the little strand of hair from his forehead back to the party locks combed on his scalp. In the 1700s, he would’ve burned the hearts out of many  women, married or no, with his steel brown eyes, and pouting lips that he liked to bite as he battled with contradictions in his mind. Oze almost let the magnetism fool him until he remembered the scars on the glass of Qindrips heart cylinder, and the plates on his head didn’t just keep his skull together, they went all the way into his brain, and the medical probes sticking out under his tongue turned different collors depending his emotions. No technician designed it this way, and no one could tell Qindrip why it occurred, no matter how much money he spent around the world looking for an answer. 

Oze pumped his heart valves, and let his upgraded legs clank to the window and reflected on his handicapped accessible surroundings. The pins in his spine ached, his optical scope needed oiled, and the salt in the air gave his one remaining elbow joint pains, and no matter how much the sound of crashing waves sent him into dreamspells about snorkling at the bottom to search for pearls again, the thought of sand getting into his anemic laboratory box made him feel the dolls of his sister he used to pull apart as a child, thread by thread. The plug slots blinked with red ringlets of death, all houses in the flying city came on top with their own power stations, all tailored with emergency levers, emergency landing pads, drains for hosing down in the shower, and elevators for each specific body augment keeping his legal practice alive. Even if Seto Inc.  wanted to release waterproof upgrades, right now he’d die in the fifteen minute travel time to the surface of the earth. 

Below Amish castles claimed the Pennslyvania coast against the Lakerfront. They gave all the land away to horses and cattle to feed on, and erected barns to store lamp oil, forgeries to hammer out steel nails, even dirt roads for their wagons. He poured out a bottle of cytofossils over their crops where he sometimes saw teenage mothers playing with their children. The Amish extremists wore heavy robes, collected robotics and “cleansed” them in the landfill fire. Nothing made Oze’s anxiety meters flash than the luddites trying to repress the progress of a cybernetic world. 

Seeing all the women with their children made him even more frustrated, and this meter he tore out o his fuse flower long ago. In his footlocker, he kept three things hid away. His favorite novel. His Olympic medal. A pillow shaped like Pikahcu he hoped to give to his own child as an heirloom to sleep on after playing, to nibble on when scared, to leave in the dirt when a kite flies over head. The Amish kept having children too. More, and more, and more, more, and more. His balls were the first thing to go when the surgeons started laser trimming away all his destroyed body tissue. Now he faced the mockery of life from a series of wires, batteries, and cooling fans. 

Over the towers of the Amish holds, the mist cleared, and the sun started to rise. A helicopter shadow pressed against the pumpkins, arriving from the twilight blue of sea fog, wings blowing away the landfill smoke, directly towards the landing pad of Oze’s flying house. Too shy to crash, it hovered over his porch, with each whisk of its rotors a humming bird echoed. High winds blew its landing gear to the side. The door slid open.

The slacking figure of a smoking shadow stepped with one foot onto the landing gear, one arm tightly confined by a tether, and the silhouette of a ceremonial sword on his waist. As the helicopter sank, his long skinny legs, thick powerful shoulders came into the light. Short hair obscured the face of the visitor. He flicked his cigarette down to the burning landfill, and the wind unbottuned his shirt. Flesh and polyester scales woven togetether. 

Wolfe Qindrip didn’t loose his footing even as the wind picked back up. His hair blew from his face, whipped his eyes and lips, but he didn't let go of his tether or the sword. the polyester around his chest became fully exposed, he made no effort to hide his body. People, Amish and Cyborg, condemned him all the time, but no court of the public convicted him. He wore boots of horse leather.

The helicopter landed and Qindrip told the autopilot to leave the rotors spinning. Oze watched from the dimness of the window, he took an explosive knife from the banister, and hid it in his fuse chamber. His remaining bones shook against hot metal. Not only did he need to get plugged in to charge, but his cardio data went offline, and he’d need fresh dilation serum to prevent overheated nylon from melting into his bloodstream. He stayed up all night reading up on cases and neglected to take care of himself. Qindrip held a vile of steaming cold blue neon and gestured at the one way mirror windows. 

Pistons sank, grates spun, and resting mounds of bird feathers fluttered into the air and rained down on the earth as the porch door lifted open. A screen remained tight over the entrance to keep the wind and air out. The house rocked, and the cyborg gripped a rail to keep his feet stable, but Qindrip remained upright, his clean shaven face, his manicured fingernails, in the rear of his helicopter waited 3 bearded shadows in black overalls, eyes concealed by wide hat brims, not a single button, lace or chain stitched into their jackets, but heavy rifles rested in each of their laps. Most Amish renounced this small faction back when only six members rioted against self driving cars, but the more intrusive technology became, the more fiery  young farmers left home to train with them, little did they know cybernatic implants would be forcibly installed.

“Mr. Wo, I want your endorsement for President.” Qindrip proposed buttoning his shirt  as the rocking ceased and the cyborg got back to his feet. His heart cylinder ran after, smoother, silently, his brain plates didn’t take his hair to fall out, instead his hair covered the receptor blades.

“Any one can become a cyborg.”

“That’s why it's so important that we come together. Did you ask to become a cyborg?  No. You used to be a human. You miss being a human too.”

“You’d turn all of this into nuts and bolts, you’re not welcome here. You’re just wasting time and money on this campaign.”

“The Transhumanists will turn you nuts and bolts. I want you to be a human again, Ozzy, I want you to swim again, and have lots of healthy children. I know it looks uncertain, but we grow stronger day by day. We already have seats in Olde England, we’re expanding into Florida, Ohio, and there are millions of new cyborgs in every state. All we need is one seat, and we’ll sip orange juice on the veranda seeing  the entire country fall in line.”

“Are you even on the ballot?”

Qindrip bent over hurling kind laughter, his mouth glowed bright like a yellow flashlight. “Oh, Ozzy, you really are a number. There’s still time to save ourselves. I see the error of my ways now. It was wrong to try to cleanse… destroy the cyborgs. You were right, no infant chooses to be a cyborg. That’s why my new plan is to harness the awesome  power of recycling, and use those shiny new plants to reverse this travesty, give us back our flesh, give us back our bodies, and return the soul to this beautiful body.” 

“You mean the fraud is running for president. This guy on the screen.”

“Oh him. Well yeah, I anticipate difficulties educating the people on the issues, and I'd rather have a face that’s more willing to take a risk out in public while I monitor from the fortitude of my headquarters. It’s the only way to make up for the harm I’ve caused.”

“You could go to prison and do your time.”

“We both know they’d just send me back to the Earth's surface. Those aren't prisons, they are high school locker rooms. I’ve been through that process about twelve times now, and worse people than me are being set free.”

“You only want to use the flying cities as prisons.”

“Flying cities are prison.”

“Then I'll keep my support for Seto. He’s a good man, he’ll stop chuting criminals to the surface and keep the cyberterrorists from hacking into our homes. We’ll be free once there are charging stations on the earths’ surface.”

“You really believe that? Very well, Mr. Wo, you know more than I do perhaps. How are the lawsuits going? Not well. Everyone knows it's a lost cause, but my Amish Cyborgs, they are rooting for you. You are loved. That’s why I've decided to tell you where my code stealer is.”

“Who?

“The man who rigged the gravity orb codes. He can tell you how to fix it. He lives on a hemp farm down in the forests. Good luck, Mr. Wo.” Qindrip stepped on his landing gear, and as the helicopter lifted back into the air, he enjoyed the cool wet air on his smooth cheeks, and sipped the serum. Pieces of dead birds continued raining down to the earth below. 

Oze tried to prevent a bird from flying into the windmill blades, but only ended up catching it before it fell through the porch grating. His capacitors ran empty, the tube in his mouth emitted nothing but hot air, and he struggled to breath, to see, to walk as he carried the injured bird to his work desk. Qindrip was wrong about one thing. His life might depend on machines, but his will to live never dissipated. As he collected the tools and material he’d need, bonded serum for the bird, and made coffee for himself, he failed to realize his heart cylinder had already stopped turning.