Tasting Fear

By Raven c.s. McCracken

Copyright 2001, all rights reserved.

Science fiction- 5, 900+ words

Introduction

The Newman world is one of intrigue on the edge of apocalypse. The people and places, while familiar, are colored by a future filled with dark adventures for survival. The characters are varied and open to interpretation. Mutations, genetic modifications, as well as AI’s, and cybernetic alterations, are commonplace, the technology represented pressed to an arguably unprecedented level.

It was raining and the world drowned. Mother earth was sorry for having to kill off the human race, she cried about it constantly. It was near sunset and the wet shadows held on to the victim’s name, even though her empty purse did not, if only the darkness could speak.

It’s a hell of a thing, to take a life. To think on it, every one alive was raised; had loved, laughed, and then...just because they turned left, instead of right, as they walked down the rain-soaked sidewalk… a hell of a thing. You spend far more time dead than alive. It makes life precious for that one little fact, if for anything at all.

The rain from the latest super-storm punched down from the sky for over 42 straight days, overflowing every gutter and downspout. It wasn’t the longest downpour, but it was close. For the most part, the alleys were now miniature streams surging to outright rivers. Normally a body like this would be washed away and wedged in some distant overworked storm drain. But this was too soon, her skin still warm, her life not so far away, and her eyes… The spread eagled position revealed that she had been nearly pulled apart by someone “BIG.” Almost for sure a Newman.

Three generations after an era of radical experimentation. An era brought to a halt by better understanding, and sophisticated alternatives, left a small portion of the human race with hidden traits. These traits, passed along through three generations, eventually manifested in astonishing ways. In time, this condition was identified and tests developed to recognize any pregnancy found to be “defective.” But this process took five years…And in five years, you get a lot of babies.

Eventually laws passed to interact with the childbirth licensing regulations forcing abortions for any child found to have Thakson’s Syndrome. Shot had even heard urb-legends of a few historic Morbidity Squads created to administer juvenile euthanasia.

Poison water plummeted from the iron grey above and the hypnotic sound called forth memories. Shot’s great granddaddy had been a rascal, military guinea pig, and fertile. So, here we are; no one wants us, and no one wants us to breed. Bet she was a Newman as well, probably pregnant, and now dead.

Shot tipped off some of the rain pooling on his hat and eyed his reflection in the water. His brown, almost green, eyes and short black hair, were on a rugged face. Standing just over average height, he managed to keep trim without serious exercise. His mixture of ethnicities made him hard to place in any nationality and gave him the freedom to mix freely with almost anyone.

The state of things could be much worse, the cops could be involved, but no sign of the Floaters anywhere, which was suspicious. The dead girl, if she was normal, was chipped. And for sure her death would have been monitored by Medvac. They would have recorded the exact chemical and medical state she was in at the onset of morbidity and broadbanned it to the cops. In some cases, a chip detected medical problems before they occurred, saving everybody a lot of time and effort. But chips had a downside, they could be used to execute, immobilize, and in all cases provide intimate details as to the physical state and location of the wearer. They were the ultimate watchdog and babysitter, remote, subversive, and almost invisible. To bad they didn’t usually work on a Newman, another clue to the identity of the victim. She was a Newman for sure or else the Floaters would have come to get her organs, if nothing else; eyes were a most precious commodity these days. Nice fresh eyes.

Shot searched the air for the remote arm of the police. Convenient, and nearly silent, equipped with home-arrest shackles, and chip tie’ins, the Floaters roamed the rain-soaked country while their operators sat in nice comfy and protected offices. He could see two in the distance searching out some other menace, but no one around here…Yet. It was nice to know that still, to this day; Floaters were armed with lethal weapons and powerful tasers. As if to announce that there was still a dangerous element out there; still the bad man to contend with. Shot smiled. There was indeed.

Nature has a serious side and a taste for dark irony. Well before we gained a true understanding into the complexities of what we were attempting, man toyed with nature, in a misguided attempt to rebuild himself. Nature took the hint and continued our work in secret, mixing and refining the genetic blends with all the variants found in the overflowing crucible that is humanity. And, preferring as always to improve on her work, evolution flourished: though not always in paths that were seen as beneficial by us.

In the first few years, before anyone knew what they were contending with, many syndrome births were said to be brought about by unknown factors, they were dismissed as one of the sad maladies of the era. That was until those with the syndrome began to show surprising beneficial adaptations. In almost every case, a positive trait was somehow amplified to beyond human norms. The earliest was Molly Clarkson, a girl who could “see’ with her hearing as well as a dolphin could see underwater with sonar. And others followed, all broad-banned on the net and posted to every site: Timmy the boy who could feel no pain and Sherwin the bloodhound. For the most part just harmless oddities until the day the cops caught Conrad Newman.

His story was that he generated symbiotic cells in the form of his dermis, moldable symbiotic cells. He could change his general appearance with a little effort and loosely mimic almost anyone his general height.

By the time the cops caught up to him, Conrad had killed hundreds of people and stolen their identities. Wealthy, he managed to remain at large-and killing, until he vanished without a trace. He was dubbed the first “Newman.” And from that point on another secret war began.

Shot glanced once more at the sky; it looked like the warm rain would not stop tonight. It fell in constant heavy sheets hardly disturbed by the wind. Shot considered the rain drops.

Shot could move just faster than normal life around him…most of life that is. The problem was the stinging pain. If he over did it, he would be incapacitated for a few minutes out of sheer agony, his blood burning throughout his body. Taxman could snatch his hands from his dry pockets, snake out between every drop, close her eye lids, and then return them as dry as they started. Shot discovered early on that moving faster than the rain was not usually necessary, especially when one had something weighty to throw.

Her purse was empty of everything valuable, making it look like a rape and robbery. The water was rising and it was only a matter of time before it would find a way to carry her away. He took a picture with his IDcell. Maybe the new free face match site, developed at some E-university, would be able to hook him up; probably cost him a few euros, but it was well spent. He banned the photo to his house in case he lost signal. Better safe than sorry.

And, as if his transmission was “heard” by one of the Floaters nearby, it suddenly changed course and started in his direction.

Taxman sighed, “Drown it.”

In a few moments Shot was swallowed by the shadows the rain and the alleyway streams. Eventually, the Floater found the body.

The operator was in fine spirits as he displayed the evidence file. Dead body: female, a suspect photographing the body and storing the image for later use. The only problem was DNA found in and on the body did not match the suspect. He was a non-chipped Newman with a surprising background. A Newman at one time employed by DHS the Department of Homeland Security.

The suspect had been a desk jockey his entire career, seems no one wanted to trust a Newman with a badge. Then one day he up and quits, and falls into the cracks. Rumors-hinted in the files-were that the company “retired’ him or his memories permanently. But the evidence didn’t lie; the IDcell belonged to Shot Taxman and no one else. Hell of a way to poke one’s head up.

Not too surprising, the victim turned out to be a Newman as well, a knocked up sex-worker, with twins no less; syndrome positive. The office was familiar with this situation: typically the babies’ delivery would be made under the worst possible conditions with both patients or in this case, all three, unlikely to survive. But, she still would have tried, a race fighting for survival.

Shot’s resume was as long as a senate hearing. Military advisor, Anti-Terrorist specialist, detailed involvement with busts of traffickers in controlled substances, weapons, implants, questionable technology and usage of information. The Newman’s research brought them all down. Just like the ancient prohibition czar Capone, and a simple tax case. Shot had crushed many a bad guy with little more than a computer and several hundred data bases. The Newman must have been in a position to know a lot more than he wanted to. And so eventually, he pulled a Houdini, made perfect sense. Sometimes it wasn’t what you did, as much as what you knew.

Officer Dalkis keyed everything into the database, flagged the AI about the case, and promptly forgot it, before moving on to process the rest of “his share” of the night’s workload. He scanned his file: 50 deaths, 30 murders, 176 assaults, hundreds of intoxications, marital disputes, and dozens of the PBU’s or Private Behaviors Unsuitable to the safety and well being of the homeland, or in short, domestic terrorists. Citizens who wore the illegal clothing, jewelry and cosmetics, along with overeaters, and those who had an interest in more actively undermining the government’s authority. Included in this group were the “Younger Uncle Reformist Party” entrenched in the shallows near the flooded International District.

They were organized, well educated; providing their own power and perpetuating a “tuned” EMP field strong enough to shut down any Smart Missile, Floater, or Chip command, that entered the area. Worse yet was that the EMP was growing in size with several others in operation in nearly every city across the country. Not even the National Guard was able to shut them down.

The Ap in front of him flashed and the AI alerted Officer Dalkis that an execution was sentenced. The code flashed to his console, along with the data confirming the evidence; the professional jury’s verdict, and all the necessary approvals. Three other officers were stationed to give the command, a Floater was in position and the suspect’s chip was online and ready to detonate. All four officers would send the command simultaneously; no one knew which terminal was actually sending the order.

As the countdown began, Dalkis wondered what the suspect was doing at this very moment. Probably wearing illegal clothing and overeating again. The sentencing AI committee often took months to reach a decision after an infraction had been secretly logged, without-of course, the suspect having any knowledge they had been caught. Served them right, no one had enough to eat. And anyone wearing the old fashions should be killed just on general purpose. One less terrorist, one more bank account to seize: it sometimes paid better than a life-time of taxes. The countdown reached zero, he pressed “Enter” and moved on to other cases without a second thought.

Shot hugged the alleys for as long as he could stand it where the water was too deep for a bike the only legal form of free transit left. He eventually turned upwards a block, the flood dropping away in a few footsteps. Stamping the water from his boots, Shot scrunched upwards, amidst the crowded foot traffic toward an intersection and its four cameras. Head down, step normal nothing to see here, he muttered, nothing to see here. Look just like another passerby, no way the hack on the end of the Floater had a case opened…yet.

Shot’s sub-let apartment, hugged the edge of the International District and was as far off of the grid as possible, and still be a structure within the city limits. Prepped from his first selecting it, Shot had taken every precaution he could think of, and even some wild extrapolations he thought might be developed in the next twenty years. Walls lined with lead and electrified copper mesh, that would act as a shield against microwave surveillance and even quantum signaling. No less than five back doors, all with evac-pacs containing passport-or copies thereof, money, an illegal firearm, and certificates of verification for all of his bank accounts, meager though they might be. And last, but not least, a change of clothing and appearance good enough to fool the facial recognition systems.

But his best defense was several specially encrypted, programmed chips, hidden in the many, many miles of circuitry. His EPROMS would detect any mention of his Id and, after copying and rerouting it to a secure home terminal, it would delete any, and all, of the attachments along with the data related to any case opened. Shot would vanish almost instantly, once the application was closed, unless the tech printed out the files as they were displayed on the terminal; not likely, and against the law, what with trees being endangered. They would have to replace every board on his old office floor to completely remove the 100 or so devices.

Shot was counting on the officer in charge to be overloaded and jaded to the point of slothfulness. It was a battle he himself had waged every day on the job. Sometimes he won, sometimes the workload won. Shot opened his phone and looked at the picture; it pissed him off.

Taxman eyed the line of National Guard just two blocks up from his building. They held the International District under siege and moved the line backwards as the EMP grew. Eventually, if not eliminated, the EMP would cover the entire city and the cops would have to resort to foot patrols and personal arrests, no more Floaters, no more chips. The electro-hydraulic tanks were armed with water cannons and microwave pain inducers. These weapons would penetrate the defenses and subdue without killing. Once a target was free of the EMP, techs could trigger the chips any way they saw fit. But, Taxman knew a little secret; it was only a matter of time before the government would send ghosts with knockout gas. The entire district could be “Put Down” and cleared in a night, maybe. It didn’t always work. Sometimes the ghosts got ghosted.

Rain sheeted down with a malignant pressure. As Shot neared home, there were kids, covered with homemade cosmetics, trying to dry-out under an awning. They dressed in outrageous and barely legal clothing, with illegal colored clothing and jewelry beneath, the newest trend in rebellion. Taxman shook his head, and muttered aloud at them, “Who would risk three months house arrest, just to wear gold.” One pretty girl stuck out her tongue; it was tattooed and multi-pierced with a new Idcell post that lit up a hologram reading, “Drown.” Shot shrugged and turned the corner to his alley.

They were hanging around in the rain just outside the entrance to his building. This in itself was not unusual, what caught Shot’s eye was that they were just beginning to look drenched, and one of them was largish. Patches of their clothing were still dry, their expressions those who were not used to the rain, yet; they had the look of men on the job, just out of a nice dry...what?

IC-Cars were illegal since the discovery that they alone were the source of the global warming: millions of heaters running night and day.

Could they be neighbors? They didn’t look very neighborly.

Taxman brassed it out, and made for his door. Maybe they weren’t here on his behalf. He knew he was wrong the moment they caught sight of him.

The quartet’s expressions showed relief, as if they dreaded spending any more time out in the rain. The largish one moved to block his way, the others began drawing weapons…sophisticated weapons, meant to subdue not kill. Defiantly not an undercover Morbidity Squad. He frantically searched his skull for a reason and came up zed.

Taxman forced a smile, “What, no clever banter?”

A weapon leveled his way; Shot exhaled and moved. This was going to hurt. Thankfully, his feet did not break traction. In four steps, Taxman circled behind the trio. As Shot passed, he drew his hands from his pockets and tossed a bean bag into the largish one’s midsection. At his velocity, it was very nearly a bullet.

He stopped behind the remaining three, his body afire, vision browning out from the g-force. The largish fellow crumpled unconscious. To their credit they were professionals, each spun calmly opened fire, and one moved a little too quickly, possibly a Newman. Shot had time to push the faster one’s weapon away, the high speed impact nearly breaking his hand.

As always, inertia was his enemy whenever he moved. The doctors explained that it was like when one spun their arm too quickly and a burning sensation erupted in the fingertips. The blood was being forced through capillaries and they screamed about it. It was the same effect throughout his entire body. Shot could move faster than his blood could keep up.

Taxman considered simply running, but if they found him here, they knew where to find him anywhere. He slowed down just enough to lessen the agony, and brushed the faster ones eyes with his finger tips, just as his sonic weapon discharged. It was set for wide, and playing a tune called unconsciousness; as the darkness closed in, Shot couldn’t decide if he liked the song or not.

Pain is an insistent alarm. Taxman awoke and chanced a look around. Above him an elaborate chandelier kept the shadows at bay. A group of well dressed men sat on expensive couches arranged into a conversation pit. The room itself was Spartan; decorated with white pillars and busts, as well as old time static paintings. The walls were a stone grey, the floor covered in a clean red carpet. The place had the look of a done up warehouse.

Three of the delivery boys were arranged to cover him. All had at least ten steps between them; weapons leveled. Shot smiled, the largest one was no where to be seen. Probably had a stomach ache and had, “called in sick.”

Taxman noticed he was dry which meant that he had been here for a while. Not surprising, since he hadn’t slept for almost two days. As his head cleared, Shot also noticed he couldn’t hear the rain.

One of the men in the room looked like a government issue Fleshmech, they were expensive to maintain and reasonably dangerous human and robotic mixes, the true form of what was called a cyborg in his grandfather’s day. The Fleshmech sat carefully poised for instant action. On his left, resting comfortably on the plush black leather couch was what could have only been a Grafter. He had the look of someone with too much cosmetic surgery, his expressions stiff, but his manicured hands were young and the muscles that played beneath the expensive near black suit, were fluid and taunt. Grafters remained alive with replacement parts from donors. This, coupled with stem cell regeneration of their brains and nervous systems, extended their life spans considerably. Most were barely in their second century. Grafter’s were either rich-rich, or else high ranking members of government. In general, Grafters preferred the term “Centurions,” to call one a Grafter was an insult.

The last member of the audience was obviously a Newman; smoking a very illegal cigarette. Shot did not like the look in his eyes. Disgust would have been preferable to what he found rotting there.

The Newman sat forward in his seat and said, “And you think pain is bad?” Taxman couldn’t quite place the man’s face, which was to be expected because it kept shifting; melting from one appearance to another: only the eyes remained the same.

Unexpectedly, the melting man’s eyes softened, “Guess you work for us, like it or not.”

“Don’t file.” Growled Taxman, he was starting to get angry.

The Fleshmech, displayed a vid in his palm, it was of the deadgirl, very much alive, and screaming.

Taxman rolled his eyes, “Yea, saw her, thought she was one of us: had the look. I might have done something about it if your delivery boys hadn’t interrupted me.”

The “Centurion” reached into his pocket, drew out his Idcell, and punched at the buttons. He nodded to the Fleshmech who rousted out Shot’s phone.

“Code?” Asked the grafter, Taxman obliged him, could see no reason not to. The Grafter placed the phone-face-open-on the arm of the couch, and pressed a few more buttons on his own cell. He grunted at what he saw on Shot’s phone and set it gently on Taxman’s knee.

The screen was opened to his bank book, which now had a balance with far too many zeros. That many zeros did not come with good news…ever.

“This puts me in a different bracket.” He complained.

The grafter managed to look apologetic, “One you’re not opposed to, I hope. We need your help.”

“Assuredly you have purchased that, my single query is… How, in all that is holy-and-glows-blue, did you find me? I thought I had made it impossible, I am off the grid.”

“It was the very fact that you are “off the grid,” and your home is suspiciously well protected against surveillance, that flagged us to you. You did your job too well. Next time leave something open, try to look as normal as possible. Something that impenetrable caught our attention this close to the EMP.

Shot tried to lessen the pain in his arms, and thought, and, if “we” could find it, it was only a matter of time…This was fast, too fast. The girl was fresh dead. He smelled set-up wrapped in the sweet scent of cash.

It was the Newman who cleared it all up; his eyes back to the burning once more, “What we have here is a case of you making your bones. Framed up, nice and sweet, you now work for us… or fry.”

Taxman considered his electronic backdoors, and smiled. “You know Conrad, you suck as a person.”

__

The night wind drowned as it crossed the hundred rooftop lakes of the International District. In the darkened streets, Ghost team 5 slid through the storm, the passive fiber-optic camouflage functioning where nothing else would. With no electronics, they moved in the old fashioned way, slow and quiet. With no communications, the team relied on hand signals and whispered instructions; it was just like in the old days.

Word was that they were the latest in a series of failed attempts to retake the International District. Their target: the building reputed to be the location of the EMP generator. Intel confirmed that this place was the only one wired for such extreme uses of power. Smelled like a set-up from the beginning. Too obvious.

Lt Cartmen9 checked his mechanical watch, 3am, almost dog hour. Orders were to take the building; plant the chem.-charges, however, Cartmen9 had better ideas. Armed with corner shot sniper rifles and old fashioned suppressors, he intended to ambush whoever had been eating his brothers for lunch. Starting at the perimeter and working inward: they had a lot of gas, darts, and restraint bands, plus all the time in the world.

“Find me targets,” whispered the Lieutenant, as they pushed out into the dark rubberized streets. “Hit anything that moves or shows up on infared.”

__

“The clones are moving out.” The Newman’s eyes glowed; the monochromatic scene viewed through the side of a building.

A voice from the shadows whispered, “Savages.”

The youngest member of the team adjusted his backpack, “How does she do that?”

The Newman replaced her glasses; they were thick and dark, “My vision stretches into the microwave spectrum, just like surveillance cams, so I can see through walls, sorta.”

“But otherwise you’re blind, right?”

“Well, not exactly blind, I can see, just badly, and bright light hurts my eyes.”

Another voice rumbled in the dark, “Perfect for a lookout, almost like she was designed for the job.” He rattled a palm-full of lead shot in his hand round and round with a soft clacking. His skin was covered with inch thick callous, bits of red and angry looking skin between them. His face was ribbed in a fashion that resembled the ritual scarring of the ancient Africans. He was strong and nearly dart, taser and bullet proof. A long time ago someone called him Pipe, and for some reason it stuck.

Pipe smiled at the youngest member of the team, Vess he called himself, just Vess. For a young kid, he had proven himself a good shot with any weapon. Eyes like an eagle, nerves so steady that he almost seemed dead. But it was the other things that made him unique; the kid had two of every vital organ somehow stuffed into his tiny little frame. Two hearts, livers, etc. any one set functioning normally could sustain his life. Already Pipe had seen Vess get tranked twice, at point blank range, before the boy put the clone down. As Far as Pipe knew the only organs Vess didn’t have duplicated for were eyes, ears and nose. But he did have a mouth somewhere Pipe would rather not speculate upon.

The calloused Newman noticed his reflection in a pair of black sunglasses. Abigail Edstrom was a near-beauty, microwave vision and an adrenalin gland ten times the norm. She could literally lift more than her body could stand or kill a normal man with a slap, in real life she was a database programmer, while for Pipe, this was real life. There was the tiniest of sounds and Abigail and pipe both glanced at last member of the group standing in the shadows, her eyes locked on a tiny crack between two boards.

Larissa, the team leader, with her black hair and green eyes, had the figure of a runway model, her skin covered by a camouflage birthmark. Actually, she was an ex-citizen, now labeled a domestic terrorist-of-the-most-lethal-caliber, who only accepted this assignment to get away from her lecherous Merc commander, recently hired by the “Younger Uncle.”

Larissa, just like the rest of the team, had other very unusual gifts. Able to change her scent at will, tune her body temperature to the ambient, and nearly perfect physical memory; show her any motor skill, and she could replicate it precisely, on the first try. She was one of the best, and most perfect Newman, Pipe had ever met. Even her camouflage birthmark seemed to suit her perfectly. If she had been born with snow white skin, she was the type that would have tattooed it that way.

Larissa hugged the shadows, her eyes narrowing as she whispered again, “Savages.” She had seen the clones in action. They were apart from humanity; they believed above it. The party worked to preserve each clone captured, however, typically they fought to the death with a suicidal righteous fury and the majority of clones taken prisoner would starve themselves to death. But a chance few have been made to see reason. Exposure to real people had opened minds and hearts, overwriting conditioning, training and in some cases, genetically inclined instinct.

Larissa heard a slight lessening of the constant downpour and then it stopped entirely as if the god of rain had perished. The release of pressure was almost ecstatic. Perhaps the world would not drown tonight after all.