Short Fiction All Kinds of Time, Matt McHugh Not From Concentrate, Liam Hogan UPGRADE, C.J. Dotson Do You Human, Joachim Heijndermans FLASH-Annual Maintenance Report-BLINK, Stanley Hendren Serial Works Dragons with Three Billion Eyes, Gustavo Bondoni
January 2021 & February 2021 Write Ahead The Future Looms
Volume 13
A cyberpunk magazine from Britain and Zurich
table of contents
5
UPGRADE, C.J. Dotson
16
A question, a statement, a quest, a second, a lesson, an exchange; a window into the unknown and mechanistic scholarship.
@AheadLooms
34
Cover image: Tithi Luadthong Pixel Art: Mykar
A word from one of our editors. A fragment of the impending, one of the threat and the likely promise, a preparation for the hospice, your departure to that sunset hotel.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut
A heist, a break-in, a fight, a traitor and the everlasting luster of professional advancement. Which desire will win out in the end?
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All Kinds of Time, Matt McHugh
&
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Dragons with Three Billion Eyes, Gustavo Bondoni
Article Title
www.writeaheadthefuturelooms.com
Deep in the twist and only getting deeper... Can Sked find his way out of this mess in time? And can he get Akane to come with him?
60
Annual Maintenance Report, Stanley Hendren
Do You Human, Joachim Heijndermans
30
editor@writeaheadthefuturelooms.com
Not From Concentrate, Liam Hogan
9
25
If you could project backward into yourself, what would you do and say? Would you think beyond your own needs?
Only the best! The media we give to our young must be of the highest quality! the most educational, curated and directed with only pure intention! Think of the children!
Section Header
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T
C.J. Dotson
he big fight wasn't the only propaganda program out there disguised as mere pastime. Not by a long shot, Leah thought, understanding for fact that most entertainment was government-sanctioned, and taking it on faith that it was more than merely possible that “most” was actually “all.” No, this certainly wasn't the only one. Just the most obvious. Leah's team was too new to trust with anything more subtle, or more vital. But if we can disrupt the wrestling match, we prove we're ready for more important roles, Leah reminded herself. This may be a shit job, but I've gotta take it seriously. She glanced around the van that had been set aside for her team. The lookalike had his eyes closed, breathing slowly, ear buds in. He was playing recordings of the promos at such a high volume that she could catch scraps of over-the-top, scripted threats. She heard the target's voice clearly, which meant he must have been bellowing in the promo, “There is no way the Pinnacle is gonna lose the belt to a glorified household appliance!” The four bruisers, Omar, Marisol, Lucas, and the cyborg, were watching her with serious eyes. She'd expected some affected, preparatory behavior – cracking knuckles, making meathead comments. Instead they sat still, attentive, waiting on her word. Even the cyborg. Stop thinking of him like that, she reprimanded herself, Use his name. Jim. Not his fault his parents “upgraded” him when he was too young to say no... Whether or not he was at fault for what he was, Leah had a hard time looking directly at him. “I'm going to initiate the sequence soon,” she said, glancing at her tablet, “We have to be quick.” A month of digitally mapping the street meant that she could spoof the security systems without resorting to anything so crude as looping footage. That part was easy. “Get the target subdued fast, I'll need to work quickly to get the systems in the house under control.” “We've been over this,” Omar said. “It's- “We'll go over it again,” the cyborg – Jim – interrupted. He gestured for Leah to continue. “Thank you,” Leah said, still not meeting his gaze, “But that was all I needed to say. Remember to get him down quick. I've got everything I need.” She touched her satchel. “When I say 'go,' it'll be time.” She reached over and tapped the lookalike's knee. He opened his eyes to see the team all watching him, nodded, and pulled his earbuds out. “Time to pick up my new duds?” he asked. Leah snorted. His voice already sounded less like it had when they'd met, more like The Pinnacle. “Yep. Time to,” she paused for a split second, finger over the touch-key that would begin the spoof sequence, letting the team ready themselves, “go.” The bruisers led the way out of the van and across the street in a silent run, safe from digital eyes and sensors but moving fast to minimize the risk of a neighbor glancing out of one of the multitude of well-lit windows at the wrong moment. Leah was after them a split second later, tablet clutched to her chest. She was only halfway across the street when the attack team shoved the target's door open, and at the same moment she was overtaken by the lookalike. As she stepped from pavement to soft grass, Leah heard the first shouts from within the mansion. By the time she crossed the threshold and shut the door behind her, all four of the attack team were on the target. The entry hall was bigger than her entire apartment, every surface gleaming. A massive staircase at the far end swept up and out of sight, the lookalike disappearing from view at the top. To her right a door was open, and through it a television announcer voice was shouting. It was a promo for the pro wrestling match. The Pinnacle versus Grind. The Pinnacle's voice shouted from the TV in the other room. The man himself, Jackson Perez, shouted with rage from the center of the tussle before her. “Hold him still,” Leah yelled. “Not helping,” Marisol grunted back. She dodged a blow and snarled. Leah folded her arms and watched. The wrestler wrenched his arm free of Lucas's grip and aimed a blow at Jim's head. The cyborg caught the fist and pushed, sending Perez stumbling back. Omar took the opportunity to wrap his arms around Perez's right arm, and tangled his legs around the wrestler's knees. The target bore all of Omar's weight on one side, he was off-balance, and his legs were restrained. Still, he didn't fall until Melissa tackled him. The four members of the attack team managed to get a limb each. At the end they were panting and hanging on as Perez heaved. Just as Leah thought the situation was under control, Perez yanked a leg free and lashed out, kicking Omar so hard in the chest that he was shoved backwards into the wall. The impact knocked down a huge, gold-framed mirror. It shattered, scattering glass shards across the marble floor, the sound almost covering the first beep of the security system trying to reboot. The soft noise made Leah's skin crawl, her heart race. “Shit! This is taking too long,” she hissed. There was no more time to wait. She set her tablet on one of the few unbroken pieces of furniture in the hall, yanked open the satchel at her hip, and pulled out the vial she'd prepared earlier that day. She loaded it into the delivery mechanism, round at one end to fit well in her grip, a thumb switch to activate the injection. Narrowing her eyes as she watched Omar rejoin the fight, she was pleased to see there was a rhythm to the brawl. “Now,” she whispered to herself, and darted forward. She ducked under an elbow and jabbed in with a syringe protruding from the long end of the delivery device, sticking into her target just before Lucas stumbled into her. They sprawled, and The Pinnacle heaved with his newly freed arm, throwing Marisol away and pushing himself upright. He laced his fingers together and brought his joined fists down like a hammer on top of the cyborg's head. He winced as his fists struck a skull more solid than bone. “Fucking psycho fans,” he shouted. “Stay out of the way,” Lucas yelled, trying to push her back even as he scrambled to his feet. The panic in his eyes was understandable but unwarranted. The Pinnacle's arms dropped abruptly, his body swaying, eyes widening. “Lay him on his back again,” Leah commanded, sitting up. Within moments the pro wrestler was flat on the floor again, but still this time. He was paralyzed from the neck down. “How'd you do that?” Jim asked. “Advanced gene-edited subjects' medical data is all on record. Everything. Even the records that aren't supposed to be kept,” Leah said, “And there's not a server in the world that can't be hacked with enough skill and time.” She paused a moment and glanced at the cyborg fully for the first time, letting her eyes linger on the access ports on his hands. What he was may not have been his fault, but she wasn't going to let him forget that she could neutralize him, too, if she needed too. Before he could respond to her gaze, she went on in a mild voice, “I got all the information on Jackson Perez, a.k.a. The Pinnacle, that exists and whipped up a sedative tailored specifically to his … very unique system. Mister Perez, I think you don't even know the half of what special alterations have been made to you. And there's one I know you don't know about.” “You're not Grind fans, are you?” the prone wrestler panted. “Who are you people?” “Hmm. Hold still.” There was only one object left in her satchel. A mask, based off of tech she'd seen when she'd been working as a government contractor but cobbled together in her private lab – in my basement, let's not get grandiose. It looked like something out of a grainy old sci fi flick. Metal, straps, wires, little lights. She buckled it over his head with impersonal efficiency. “I could've made a face-map from your promo videos,” she spoke as much to keep him distracted as to keep her own nerves under control. Uncomfortable chatter had always been her particular talent. “But it wouldn't have been perfect. Close enough to fool your security system, but not the other one.” At those words the wrestler stilled. “What other one?” he asked. Leah snorted, narrowed her eyes as the indicators on the outside of the hood began to flash. “You think they're not monitoring you? Your bosses aren't the ones who decided you'd lose tonight's match, and you know it. What you don't know...” A small light turned green, she flipped a switch. “...Well, there's a lot you don't know I guess. The important thing you don't know is why. The government doesn't like people making up their own minds between gene therapy and cyborg upgrades. Playing you two off of each other worked really well for a long time, but that's over now. The cyborgs are easier to control. Malware can be very subtle.” A sensor in the hood apparatus dinged, and she unbuckled it. “So you're what, anti-cyborg activists?” the wrestler asked, his gaze going to the incongruous team member, “I thought you were Grind fanatics. Some of those psychos don't get that it's all scripted. Last year three guys were attacked by fans trying to give their favorite an edge.” At that moment the lookalike came back down the steps. His build was nearly perfect, one of those incredibly rare natural-born matches for gene edited physique. When he spoke, his voice was an unsettling imitation of Jackson Perez, and with The Pinnacle's outfit on all that was missing was the face. Leah hurried up to him and all but threw the bag over his head. “You've got to finish disarming the security system. It's clever, the government monitoring software is hooked up to Perez's civilian system. If he disarms one, the other is less likely to go on alert. It'll buy me enough time to get into it directly.” “What d'you think you're gonna accomplish?” Perez said, “You think this guy can beat Grind? Gimme a break.” “This guy,” the lookalike said, voice muffled by Leah's hooded mask, “can beat damn near anyone. And if I go down it'll be honestly.” He paused. “Completely honestly.” Leah had never learned the lookalike's name for this reason. If he won the match, he'd be taken into custody and locked away at the least, and his ruse discovered eventually. If he lost, he'd expose everything he knew. The “live” camera feed had a two-minute delay that would be enough to kill any speech he could make before it could hit any tv screens, but there was an audience at these events. A big one. For that, he'd be killed. So he had no name, he was only the lookalike. “I can't wait to see what they do to you gullible-” “Shut up,” Leah said absentmindedly, activating the hood covering the lookalike's head. The process was quicker. When he pulled it off, his face was exactly Perez's face, distorted by the most minor blur when he moved his head. But with The Pinnacle's mask, there'd be nothing to ruin the illusion. “Go defuse the security situation.” The lookalike headed for the scanner and keypad combo near the front door. Leah snatched up her tablet. For a few moments as her fingers flew across the keys, none of what was going on around her registered as more than buzzing background noise. Her eyes were on the screen before her, on the process of hacking the wireless signal from the standard security system, sneaking through the hijack link for the government's monitoring programs. The world around her faded, briefly inconsequential. She felt her shoulders loosen, gut unknot. “This is some beautiful work,” she murmured under her breath, smiling serenely at her screen, “But mine's better.” A few seconds later she leaned back and looked up at the team. “We're good until the match starts. Right now this is the safest place in the city to lay low. Once the fight is underway, though, we'll need to book it before the Pinnacle's handlers figure out that-” “You don't think you're going to get away with this?” Perez scoffed, “You're screwed, and I'm gonna love seeing it.” “You won't see anything,” Leah said with a snort, pulling up an open, saved document on her tablet. She turned it around and angled the screen so that Jackson Perez could see it from where he lay. “You're scheduled for a medical emergency in three days. The Pinnacle losing the biggest fight of the year to a cyborg wrestler will persuade some of the population to do with their bodies what the government wants. But having one of the most prominent gene-edited citizens in the country die as a direct result of side effects of gene-editing will go a lot further. You're a one-man one-two strike, Perez.” “I gotta go catch my ride,” the lookalike said, inserting himself into the moment before the prone wrestler could find words to respond to what Leah was showing him. “Good luck, guys.” None of the rest of the team wished him luck in return. They knew they wouldn't see him again either way. Once he was gone, some of the tension dissipated. The lookalike was a risk. He had as little information about the team or the rest of the resistance as he could and still be included tonight; he didn't even know what the team really looked like – Leah's face-masking tech was hard at work on every one of them. Still, his presence had been a strain. “Turn on the tv,” Leah said to Marisol. “When the first bell rings, we split.” Perez said, “Wait, wait, isn't there anything you can do?” Leah glanced over as if she'd already forgotten he was there. “Do?” “Yeah, anything you can do? You got all this tech shit. I don't wanna die.” “You took tainted money to try to help trick people into hurting themselves,” Leah said, standing up over him. “You're getting what you deserve. And after tonight,” she glanced with approval at her team, even met the cyborg's eyes, “I think we'll be getting a promotion.”
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Editor's notes
Step out of the dark, dear reader, and into the neon-glare as we offer you a strobing flash of fiction. Are you ready to take a chance, dear reader, and see what it takes to be human? Or will you hearken to a distant future voice, even if it doesn’t have your best interests in mind? Once again, we delight in bringing you into another world where you can live any life possible, even if you simply want to step back into the ordinary. Final report: Take a deep breath and feel that smooth, synthetic air flow through you. Anything could happen. This is only the beginning.
Lock in, Lock out, Print and Run. Our Annual Maintenance Report, is the question ‘Do You Human?’ And and our answer will always be: ‘I hope so.’ We have All Kinds of Time, during which our Upgrade may as well turn to a simple pounding upon the top of the alarm clock. More, and it had better be Not From Concentrate. More in a second and at the drop of the falling hand. More for the dragons, The Dragons with Three Billion Eyes.
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