Konsk: The Great Takeover of the Place.

46. Hospice at the Somewhere Over The Rainbow Cantref.

Trueman flickered his tongue as the attack droid pivoted toward him. Its movement was slick, beginning and ending in absolute stillness, the action between the two motionless points so fast as to be only a blur of silver and blue. The instant the machine required to identify Trueman as a target and raise its weapon was almost too small to measure but it was long enough.

Already he had changed ammunition and a further facial twitch triggered a blast of hot rivets that hammered into the carbon fibre carapace of the droid. The discharge of the rivet gun was like a harsh thunder textured with a rich metallic shriek that awakened the echoes of pain in his skull. He used a spare millisecond to turn down the volume then concentrated on the destruction of his opponent.

The carapace peeled open under the onslaught revealing the flexible armour of the titanium interior. The droid triggered its twin peltons; they whined, rapidly running up to speed, hurling pesticide slugs with frightening accuracy. Trueman passed additional energy to his shoulder shield, turning slightly into the attack. The deflected slugs ricocheted wildly, some even rebounding to strike his assailant, leaving dark corrosive smears on the plating.

Trueman drew his wrist ‘pult and lobbed a futon grenade, the missile flopping over the left pelton, instantly halting its frenzied spinning. There came the harsh grinding of disintegrating bearings and the resulting chemical conflagration consumed much of the droid’s left side. At the same time he switched ammunition on his primary weapon, selecting the deep froe and getting in the one shot required to penetrate the secondary defences and cleave open the torso with a spectacular shower of multicoloured sparks.

The droid roared and attempted a futile self-repair, to no avail. Rather than making the final kill with the wood burner, Trueman leapt in close and poked his soldering iron into the silicon cerebellum, just for the hell of it. He barely had time to flip backwards over the crash barriers before the ground was rocked by a deep, booming explosion as the droid gave up and went for a suicidal draw. Trueman watched as the rain of debris clattered noisily around him.

Although still able to marvel at the realism of the depiction of diverse materials with all their textures, reflections and transparencies, he found himself somewhat dissatisfied by the behaviour of the rubble. The properties of the concrete fragments in particular caught his attention. The way they broke up into progressively smaller pieces on impact and their bounce were not quite convincing to him, as though the action was taking place in an environment with a slightly higher gravity or a thicker atmosphere. Still, he shrugged, minor details that could be fixed easily.

The shrug, even though largely mental, activated the heads up display. He used his tongue to deftly select the requisite parameters and tweaked the gravity and atmosphere, closely observing the test view until he was satisfied with the bounce. It’ll do, he thought, for now.

Next he called up and checked out his biometrics, noting the rapid pulse, already falling back from its intense 210 peak and that the respiratory rate had reached its high during the earlier ambush by the shock clones but had then slowed to his normal active state. He cycled through various other graphs and charts, pausing in particular to study the neuro-cortical outputs.

Yes, it was there again, the appearance of the theta waves and flatlining of alpha and beta rhythms, as though he had moved into a trance state or begun meditating. Summoning the event log he found the onset of the phenomena. As he suspected, it coincided with his most effective actions during his second offensive when he had not only intuited the code sequence to release the full body locks but also the locations of the aerial assault squad. The shoot out that followed ran like a machine demo as if the assailant (Trueman) had snooped all the defensive co-ordinates and the entire game strategy. Interesting, he mused.

He was roused from his pondering by a glowing interrupt that appeared in the top left of his field of vision. He opened its door and peaked out to find a face looking in. The annoyance at this intrusion proved only momentary, dissolving completely as he registered Nonna as the caller. His tongue twitched and slid the graphical display aside. There she was and Trueman landed squarely in the here and now, wherever and whenever they might be.

“How’s the master of the universe today?” she asked, leaning down to plant a wet kiss on his lips and then seating herself beside him on his bed. She laid a hand upon his naked chest, avoiding the sensory net that had been applied to his skin.

Trueman grinned sheepishly.

“It does have a serious, medical purpose,” he answered, mildly defensive.

“Of course!” Nonna laughed. “Like hitting nettles with a stick!”

Trueman turned away but smiled. His room at the Hospice of the Somewhere Over The Rainbow cantref, was small, only a little larger than his bed, or cot, he corrected himself, being that the device had the provision for rails to be raised.

The walls were smooth but uneven, occasionally bulging in or out, reflecting their mud construction. There were no hard angles between the various planes, only gentle curves that left nowhere for the eye to be drawn. The soft, pastel shades of earth pigments, a pale ochre immediately above him imperceptibly blurring into the hint of a green towards the garden door through which most of his physical visitors entered.

Outside was the Hospice garden of shrubs, flowers and fragrant herbs, a medicinal forest garden, according to Nonna, with tables and benches where those staying at the Hospice might relax, meet, talk and browse the edible vegetation. All part of the healing process, she'd said and they were encouraged to spend as much time outside as their health and the weather allowed.

Of his extraction from the World Enhanced Games Stadium and the Sub-Con Peninsula itself, he had only vague recollections. True, he had watched the recordings taken from various cams but in some ways these had served only to confuse him further. When threatened by a heavily armed group of non-local intransigents, Annest and Nonna had retreated down the access tunnel and brought the roof down behind them with their previously placed charges, effectively sealing that entrance.

They'd made their way through the inner jungle and arrived at the media centre to find Jodi attempting to resuscitate Trueman. Nonna had taken over just as a series of small explosions from above punched a hole in the transparent roof canopy, bringing a small section crashing down onto the forest towards the centre of the stadium, closely followed by a squad of Manson's special forces, descending lines strung from the roof, using powered devices. At which point, Jodi had gone out alone into the tangle of shattered trees and wreckage and proceeded to hunt each one down in turn.

There was still no coherent understanding of what had occurred to the INCO during his immersion, largely because Trueman himself had been sparse with details, claiming he couldn’t remember. Initially this had been of little interest to those who had attended him in the hospice, his physical survival being their primary concern. They had worked first to stabilise the radical heart arrhythmia, using plant extracts, belladonna to relax the spasms, digitalis as both cardiac stimulant and anti-arrhythmic.

above: foxglove, digitalis purpurea, among other properties, an excellent first coloniser, as here on clear-felled land.

As his condition stabilised, various vibratory therapies were introduced, in part by drumming workshops held in the garden. This had been reinforced by chanting and then regular rhythmical body massage conducted mainly by Nonna; painful slapping, Trueman called it, though, as these sessions generally culminated in increasingly energetic sex, he complained only mildly.

His initial distrust of his treatment, which he considered at first to be both bizarre and futile, though admittedly, at times, fun, was dispelled by the simple fact that it worked; his haphazard heartbeat returned to its strong, regular rhythm and he began to feel much better.

He was equally though more easily impressed by the technological treatment for the damage to his eyes. A mobile surgery unit had called at the Hospice on its regular circuit through the cantrefi and a laser had been successfully employed to remove the surface damage to his conjunctiva so that he could once more see clearly. It was presumed by the hospitallers that at some point during his immersion in the Sub-Con Peninsula local system, an overload had produced a virtual white-out of such intensity that it had burned the surface of his eyeballs.

Nonna and Annest had managed to haul Trueman to one of the lines dangling from the roof and raise him and themselves using the powered rope climbers left there by the special forces, while Jodi deployed smoke and flash bombs to distract their assailants. As they waited high on the stadium roof, Nonna administering emergency aid to Trueman’s twitching body as Annest calling for an extraction team, found that one had already arrived.

The last shots from a drone cam showed dense, black smoke suddenly boiling up through the holed roof canopy and then Jodi appeared, rolled slickly onto the roof surface, blood on her face dried to a dark brown, her features showing only a serene, somewhat terrifying calm as she squeezed off short bursts of fire from her machine pistol, down into the stadium.

The final extraction employed a flock of powered kites and several small ‘copters in manoeuvres that, save for the explosive context, might have been called balletic in their precision and grace. As the aerial convoy wheeled and turned in the glowing hues of the dust shrouded sunset, ground forces of local counter-intransigents backed up by co-ordination from the Temporary Support Tribe could be made out capturing surrendering attackers whose sophisticated modern armoured vehicles had mysteriously failing to operate.

It was only by aligning data from other sources with the events that took place in the media centre that any real clues could be gathered as to what had occurred. Net-watcher, for example, indicated that the Sub-Con Peninsula came back on line some brief minutes after Trueman hooked up to the local system. Simultaneously, a request was logged in at the Last Resort’s diffuse command centre for the extraction from the stadium, though no originator of the message could be traced. Very shortly afterwards, control signals were issued to a broad collection of military hardware that triggered permanent lock down of their systems.

It seemed unlikely that these correspondences were merely coincidental or synchronistic, though a detailed causal explanation was still impossible, especially without Trueman’s complete co-operation. He had stonewalled when questioned by the Last Resort coordinators, falling back on his “I can’t remember” method of avoiding any detailed explanation.

He needed time to think, he told himself, to work it out for himself first. The Last Resort coordinators appeared to accept this inability to provide them with the information they required quite happily, though he did overhear mention that he was “in denial” of certain facts or experiences.

Denial, ha! He mused. The exact opposite was in fact the case, for his honed, rational mind had surely discerned the very root of the conflict.

Certainly the remnant-UN was very satisfied with the operation and Trueman was seen as something of a hero, having successfully hacked into the system to break the firewall and thus opened up the databases to outside scrutiny. This in itself was seen as a great success.

above: mobile hospital unit, this one from India.

Admittedly it was considered slightly unfortunate by that same remnant-UN that the locals had then immediately taken control and expelled all outsiders, combatants and non-combatants alike, except for the old country's Disaster Recovery Design Trainers. The Last Resort of course saw this expulsion as even better and a very healthy sign.

Latest reports showed locals receiving basic training in discharge work, mediation and conflict resolution as well as ecological design practice. Already the refugees were being supported in creating their new community bases, employing natural principles and simple water harvesting techniques such as contour swales and pitting, building on their own extensive local knowledge of their own environment.

The Temporary Support Tribe, who also aided the locals in implementing positive news reporting, did not attempt to hide the enormity of the challenge facing the emergent society, particularly in channelling the energies of the intense personal and community traumas that had occurred. Yet their willingness to give attention to all those who had suffered, no matter what side they may have been on, certainly appeared to empower and hasten the recovery. Trueman was drawn to several reports of women’s groups establishing tree nurseries within weeks of his extraction, the speed of the development being greatly helped by the mysterious disabling of much of the armament in the area and the collapse of violent resistance.

This mass failure of the modern weaponry was where Trueman offered little in way of explanation, for it was a part of his own story that he was not yet ready to tell. Lacking sufficient factual detail, fuel had been added to pre-existent rumours and there was a great deal of discussion over the possible evolution of an artificial intelligence within the net or the intervention of aliens. Trueman sniggered slyly at these wild ideas, for though in some ways they were fanciful, even farcical explanations, in other ways they were remarkably accurate.

“Tho,” Trueman said. “What'th next? Do you think that they will give me a medal?”

“Ha! Depends who the mysterious they are. The cantrefi won't, for a while at least, that's for sure. They're still in their all aspects, all concerns evaluation, all the way up and all the way down, in homes, individual cantrefi and the wider collective. But there's a lot of other stuff going on, as usual.

“Tops at the mo' is whether to intervene in the middle lands. Its a bit soon to be going into another fair sized intervention project but its one of those complicated situations where the right nudge, right time and place could tip things into a really interesting position.

“Then there's the cantrefi's own annual action camp. We're taking a week rolling out the design for the Well Beyond watershed. I think there's gonna be around three or four thousand folk in on that one. Lots of smaller actions of course, running all the time really.

“Yeah,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “And the festival of the First Founding in less than a moon.”

Trueman picked up the subtle emphasis attached to this last statement.

“Um, I don't really get on with festivals.”

“You'll have a job trying not to with this one,” she said, poking him in the ribs, “Seeing as it’s for you. Besides," she added, "There's a bit of a problem you need to sort out."

Thanks for reading. Pics mostly mine, some from the public domain. More to come. Comments most welcome, as are new subscribers. Hwyl! Chris.