Akanor: Tales From Necro Box Set Read online

  The smell of delicious homemade food awoke ma’ hunger. I was ravenous and felt ma’ whole body salivate. But the food never came.

  Voices sprung to life around me. I felt nauseated and heart-sunken instead of fearful. The voices of children filled the air and I could do nothing more than whimper, softened by some unknown emotion, Is this a trick? A trap implanted by the overseer to capture an intruder, to drive him mad?, I thought as I cried ma’ soul out.

  A brilliant white light surrounded me.

  SHOCK! SHOCK! The Shockers have gotten to me, it’s a trap!, I thought.

  “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!”, bellowed out a Compressor. I felt panic and tried to run away, yet I could no longer see anything…

  A tunnel. People.

  “He’s alive! He opened his eyes! Mr. Jones! Can you hear me? Get me the ICU nurses right away!” yelled a young man in blue scrubs as he flashed a penlight in ma’ eyes. Pain spurred ma’ brain as the brilliance made me acutely aware of reality.

  “My love!” yelled a brown haired woman at me. I couldn’t move ma’ head so much as to see her face because a tube was sticking down ma’ throat. I could feel it all the way down ma’ lungs. This was torture as pure as I could think of it. Why was I here?

  “You’re gonna be OK, dear!” She yelled, her voice a wafting echo. I could only see her head. Damn! Who is she?

  I tried to smile but that goddamned torture tube inflating ma’ chest wouldn’t let me go. I tried to move ma’ hands but understood ma’ body wasn’t obeying any commands. Move, goddamn you!, I yelled trying to understand what the hell was wrong with ma’ body. C’mon you…move!, I yelled again, but got nothing back but the echo of ma’ thoughts.

  A suited man with a white coat came into the room. The bastard had a smirk on his face. I saw him take an apparatus to his ears and place it on top of ma’ chest. I couldn’t move and found ma’self too tired to even object. I was at his mercy. I would’ve clubbed him otherwise, no one listens to ma’ chest without ma’ consent.

  “Mr. Jones, you’re gonna be OK,” he said with an unconvincing smile.

  I began to cough vigorously, ma’ chest heaving like a puffing rhino. The pain seared ma’ nerves and I could tell that brown haired woman was crying. Someone screaming. The only words I heard were, “…sedation…”

  No! No sedation, I just woke up! I tried to say. I felt a tingle rush through my body. As much as I tried to move and talk, my body was paralyzed and despair conquered my soul once again.

  Blackness came rushing in to take me, its cold tentacles embracing my body with the warmth of maternity. Pitch nothingness stared back at me, greeting me with a sardonic yet invisible smile.

  I was back. Kill me now, I thought as I realized I was a prisoner of desolation once again. But then again this is what I had thought the last time I was in the abyss, hadn’t I?

  Only one thing that was certain: I needed to escape this fortress of desolation no matter what. I could already hear the Bloodsuckers screeching outside the black pit, looking for my body to drain its blood. Come and get it.

  ––The End.––

  Thank you for reading these short stories. If you liked them (or not), please do leave a review behind expressing your thoughts.

  THE ACTOR

  Dedication

  To those who live the dystopia. To the world.

  I

  A heavily armored scout patrolled the northern borders of Texalifornia, its radio-frequency radar scanning the wastelands beyond. Random radio signals could mean the presence of rebels, who almost always used this old technology after WWIII devastated the earth. The scout was just off the cornfields, at the brink of entering the banshee-like wails of the barren land.

  Ash. Dust. Death. The world was a petrified carcass, the earth a caked, solid paste of flesh turned into dust, with many a shadow engraved in it after the Great Battle of Atomic Bombs.

  The sentinel was a full-fledged Mechanized Warrior, a robot the size of a three-story building, with two arms and two legs. Its right shoulder was armed with a missile silo holding sixteen warheads, and its left shoulder held a plasma repeater. A micro-rail gun was equipped in the right arm, and the left arm had powerful claws with which it could either dig deep into the earth to find a buried enemy silo or create a path where stone or dead ships blocked its way.

  The cockpit was empty, sealed to the main hull. The Mech moved from side to side as it patrolled the border. It continued marching, ever watchful. Each of its steps was accompanied by a heavy thud, shaking the dead earth underneath it: thak, thak, thak while its gears and bolts moved in perfect synchrony.

  The Mech stopped. It had picked up a radio signal. It could be an old radio station, but nevertheless, its algorithms would never allow its AI to ignore a chance to destroy an Offgridder silo or a buried rebel city.

  The Mech swerved with dexterity, facing the direction of the signal. It then clamped itself to the land like a tripod, both legs lunged outward, an arm in the middle, its torso facing the heavens. The missile silo flicked open violently, sending off a loud clacking sound. A sudden fury of gas and fire erupted behind it, and a fist of ultra-pressurized hydrogen flew within the warhead. Minutes after, a micro-nuclear fusion bomb exploded miles away. The Mech disengaged and continued patrolling its designated area, sending its report back to the UniCorn servers where the data would be analyzed.

  The sky was a mantle of darkness due to a combination of nuclear winter and a vast nanobot cloud which covered every corner of Texalifornia. The dominion of this empire extended from the north, from what once was Canada and the Northern United States, to the furthest reach of what once was once known as the Falkland Islands. Under this nanobot cloud bloomed the empire’s cities and its main source of food: corn.

  Ultra-GMO corn was a fearsome plant. After having undergone many genetic manipulations prior to WWIII, it had survived the nuclear apocalypse and would thrive only under the shade created by the vast, artificial cloud. This plant was like a cancer: metastatic, invasive—its roots dug deep into the earth to obtain the nutrients it needed. The plant was also capable of killing prey by strangulation, its roots acting like a constrictor. Its victims were mostly Offgridder POWs.

  Beyond the territory of Texalifornia baked the rest of the land under the pressure of nuclear winter, and beyond the land, the ocean had become a toxic, gunk-like cemetery that boiled under the intense pressure of the atmosphere. This toxic wasteland was called The Offgrid. It was no man’s land. Nothing thrived in it. In some hidden part of its vastness remained various buried cities. In these cities lived the people whom the Empire called rebels, or simply Offgridders.

  The fields of corn flourished exclusively in the north due to the richness of the soil. This was where most of the armies had fallen, and thus most of the soil was rich in iron, calcium, magnesium, and especially nitrogen.

  Unmanned Harvesters, octopus-like machines, were busy harvesting the mature corncobs. As many as one thousand Harvesters occupied a single field, as the plant matured quickly due to its genetic manipulation. The UniCorn logo was etched on every machine.

  Further south of what was once Middle America and still under the extensive nanobot cloud flourished the Texalifornian Empire. Its cities were ablaze with brilliant light.

  New Hollow was the capital and foremost city of this vast dominion, which had immediately erupted into life once WWIII had begun. Its complex Skyway system could be seen from afar, flowing with hovering vehicles.

  The capital was the central nervous system of Texalifornia, where UniCorn Corp’s headquarters governed. A palace-like structure known as the Globus Theater was also located in the capital—and was its emotion-controlling center.

  The theater was shaped like a bird’s beak. The distinct superstructure was noticeable from any direction, overtaking most buildings in height, by far the widest structure in the city.

  The two cusps of the theater were open to the sky, its bright lights
visible from afar. The sound emerging from the ongoing play could be heard from miles away. Episode two hundred and fifty-nine was about to reach its zenith.

  Every row, every seat, every single corner of the Theater was occupied by a thirsty pair of eyes in search of ultimate entertainment. A digital transmission of the play was never enough; seeing the entertainment in the flesh was the closest thing to enlightenment.

  The audience was captivated. Grey lights danced across the emotional shirts they wore, which were woven with mechanisms that displayed a user’s emotions in real time. The “emotional standard” was a dance of greyness, but the shirts would occasionally flare yellow or blue light.

  The stage was tense, the secondary actors paralyzed as they watched Yulius Zezar, the brand-name of The Actor, commit career suicide by improvising what should be a standardized play. But the famous man had gone haywire, acting impromptu as if he were fearless of the consequences.

  At the center of the stage, The Actor—Yulius—studied the users’ shifting shirt colors. His eyes swept over the audience, trying to decide if his effort to “awaken” his fans was working.

  Noticing the shirts of his audience return to the “emotional standard” of grey lights, he strove to trigger yellow or blue once again.

  His voice filled the air with a melody:

  “Had I the heavens embroidered cloths,

  Enwrought with golden and silver light,

  The blue, the dim and the dark cloths,

  Of night and light and the half-light,

  I would spread these cloths under your feet.

  But I, being poor, have only my dreams.

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

  — By William Butler Yeats.”

  The crowd exploded with a joyous cheer. It was an empty ovation, filled without a purpose other than to venerate something, anything.

  The Actor’s pale, white flesh was hidden by an inch-thick layer of makeup, his balding head covered by a curly, golden wig. His attire was a presidential uniform: a blue suit with a black tie, various medals of honor on his shoulder, none of which he had truly earned.

  The music died in a decrescendo as the Conductor halted the Orchestra, frustrated after yet another improvised line.

  Yulius could feel the stares of the musicians piercing his skull, and yet his own eyes stayed on the audience. If there was hope, it would be found in the general public, in how they reacted to his efforts to inspire.

  The stage darkened, highlighting the dramatist’s fat face with a single beam of concentrated light. He spread his arms long and wide to receive the ray as if he were welcoming divinity.

  The stage was elevated several feet from the ground floor. Immediately below it was the Orchestra Pit. The front two rows of the audience were populated by a score of plump politicians. Only political members had VIP access, which gave them an annoyingly intimate proximity to the superstar.

  The politicians were slurping on five-gallon capacity corn-colas. They were also wearing sophisticated emotional cloth made entirely of nanobots. When not worn, the cloth was all black; once donned, it would immediately power up with a human’s intrinsic electrical activity. The cloth was part of the new biotechnological developments by Minotaur Biotech.

  Yulius scoffed as he studied the politicians in front of him. Those faces, those expressions of derision he hated deeply. He sighed.

  Only until recently, just months away from his final play, had the man living behind the alias of Yulius Zezar found a life-defining purpose in acting. He longed to inspire people, not just feed them the poison that was making them braindead. He wasn’t sure why he felt this longing; he just knew it was important, perhaps because it harbored the key to making humans wish for anything besides constant entertainment.

  Improvising his role in the play was the only way he could think to change the mindset of his fans. If he could get a message across, it was whilst acting. His alter ego held the power, not the man behind the makeup. Yes, he was breaching the contract he had signed almost five years ago with UniCorn. But he didn’t care. Transferring his own emotional status to his audience was what truly mattered. Improvisation, however, only reached so far. There had to be more, something more effective. But what? What else could he do? Could he make his audience feel…existential? Could this emotion be transmitted at all?

  The word “existential” was new to The Actor, recently dug from the wastelands of knowledge. He recalled how he had once been an automaton as good as any other citizen born in the New World—living, eating, festering in his daily living death. But he had awoken after being strangled by the bliss of ignorance. It was sadness that broke him.

  No one knew about the treasures of the past, about literature and art, architecture and science. These treasures were literally a blink away. With a RetinaCommand—achieved by a pattern of eye movements—you could summon your personal AI to search for anything within the UniCorn servers.

  Every digitized piece of information from the Old and New Worlds could be found there. You could learn about the Universe, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Industrial Revolution, dinosaurs, Mozart, lions, spiders, trees, flowers, you name it! But no one searched for those Old Memories. No one cared. Statistically, the four most sought for keywords by users were: The Actor, Yulius Zezar, Honky Dory, and Bionic Pancreas.

  The past should never be forgotten, thought Yulius as he stared at his audience. But people nowadays don’t even know what the word “past” means! An ocean of grey shadows danced before him. Nothing. No reaction from his fans. Just a flickering shade.

  Months ago, the entertainer was surprised to find that some of the Script’s lines had been improvised. He felt as if he had finally found a true friend with whom he shared the need to externalize his soul. But he was friends in silence and in anonymity with the author. He had never met him or her. It was difficult to tell the gender of the dramatist by analyzing the writing style. Whomever the Screenwriter was could be feeling nostalgic as well. He often wondered about this writer and the creative process; that is, if he or she had one. Would he ever meet the artist? Eventually, perhaps. Never, most likely.

  “You can only hear what comes from within if you listen intently, and while you’re embraced by the coolness of silence…” said the performer to his audience.

  No reaction this time. Just stares.

  Having original thoughts was not prosecuted in the New World. It was, however, ridiculed and disgraced like a whore whose body has been raped by the masses, and once raped, loathed for being a reminder of a monstrous act. And much like that whore, information had devolved into a cemetery no one visited. Reasoning was an old prune; reflection an act of repulsion; self-worth the teratogenesis of civilization.

  The living had become a speeding flicker of souls in search of immediate pleasure, with no time to dedicate to the inconvenient pursuit of ideas.

  The Actor caught a flash of yellow and blue lights within the audience. Another and another. Those were the colors that represented either joy or deep emotion. But monotonous grey reigned once again.

  The audience gasped collectively as Yulius Zezar continued acting. His movements were slow and deliberate.

  The Jellyfish digital recorders—Minotaur Biotech’s latest technological development in the media world—loomed over the performer’s head, capturing the scene. The engineered organism was translucent and moved with the cadence of the animal that inspired its creation. The device was alive, with its own nervous system.

  In addition to the Jellyfish devices, Falcon digital recorders flew above the Globus Theater, capturing a distant overview. Biomimicry dominated both technology and architecture. The theater, for example, was built to move like a bird’s beak. When it was closed, the two cusps would clasp and become a spearhead pointing toward the blackness of heaven.

  This is futile, a waste of my time. I’m only feeding theses automatons poison…are they androids? Is
that why they seem brain-dead? Has humanity been lost? thought The Actor.

  The politicians in the front rows were mumbling among themselves, criticizing the dramatist for lingering between scenes and falling out of Script with alarming frequency.

  The Actor ignored them. He was interested in the thousands of randomly selected citizens. At least one of them had a soul, and if he could ignite it, then perhaps humanity could be saved.

  Sweets, he thought as he watched a citizen slurping on a five-gallon capacity corn-cola, strapped to his back like a backpack with two long straws on each side of his lips, sucking the ultra-sweet liquid with a vengeance. Everyone was slurping on a similar soft drink. Refills were free everywhere, anywhere. Endless sweets, endless pleasure. Running out of juice was never a problem in the New World.

  Drink sweets, eat sweets, play mindless games…and listen to me…that’s all anyone wants to do nowadays. He noted the politicians eyeballing him.

  “Why do you even listen to me if you are not listening to me?” he implored his audience. No one but the politicians seemed to understand the message.

  Soon…very soon, thought Yulius. His five-year contract with UniCorn was about to expire, and with its flux would come a new beginning. The long-awaited transition into Unification would commence. Once Unified, however, he had no idea what would become of him.

  Some rumors circulating in The Actor’s Guild said previous Actors promoted to Unification had been awarded with the opportunity to travel to outer space to one of the military colonies of the Empire. Others said that previous Actors were sent to Luna Terra to live in a mansion.

  No one truly knew what had become of the fifty former retired Actors. There was no record of it, which was strange since an overabundance of information could be found buried within the Unicorn servers.

  Robert Thorns, the actual citizen behind the alias, the man who played Yulius Zesar, slipped out of character for a second. He needed a moment to collect himself. It was becoming increasingly difficult to continue acting without the impulsive need to rebel against his employers.