Recall

Something new, something different and a bit of a personal challenge. I aimed for a broader cast of diverse characters and focused a little more on the interpersonal aspects of the story. Still new to the craft, I thrive to learn and one of the ways to do that for me is to keep writing. With this book that also comprised of creating a world that only existed inside my head. It wasn’t as if I could just use Google Street view to describe an underground city.

This book will introduce you to a range of new characters wrapped in an action-packed story. I really enjoyed writing all their different quirks and as I have just started writing the sequel, I have a feeling Maece, Saera and the others might stick around for a while.

Check out a preview of Recall

Chapter one

A warm breeze wafted up from far below and stirred a few strands of my hair. The airflow released by the relief valves littering the ground level trailed up along the high-rises and added to the already uncomfortable humid temperatures. Even as I stood on the roof of this tall building, the hot gushes of steam that rushed up from the vents originating from within the deepest regions of this planet’s core dampened my skin.

I ignored the tangy heat as my gaze shifted over the tightly clustered buildings and narrow streets that crisscrossed their way into the center of the City of Umbras—one of the last four known remaining cities and part of the Combined Districts of Tenebrae.

Colorful arrays of lights bathed the buildings in a sugar-candy brightness for reasons unknown to me, except that the visual distortions helped to hide the fact that most of the structures had seen better days. This city was falling apart along with the rest of the planet. If it weren’t for the deteriorating buildings or the wastelands just beyond the borders of the protective dome, then surely the sun taking its first steps toward the red giant phase hovering ninety-five million miles above our heads would give away that this planet was dying.

The massive shiny disk looked to be so close that it seemed as if it were on a collision course, but then the sun hadn’t been that distant lifeline that it used to be for a long time.

Most of the sun’s hydrogen inside its core had been exhausted and converted into helium. This helium caused the pressure in the core to rise, resulting in a massive increase in the sun’s output of heat and luminosity. This left the city bathing in a bright reddish-orange hue.

It would probably still be over a billion years before the sun would start the red giant phase, but the effects had already been devastating. The planet had turned into a wasteland unable to sustain human life, and if it weren’t for the dome shields protecting our cities, we all would have been gone a long time by now.

The communications device lodged in my ear beeped, and neon-green letters flashed across the lenses of the heads-up display strapped to my head. The black-tinted shades looked like goggles covering most of my face and were strapped around my head with a wide band to support its weight. They provided me with the information and advanced vision needed to complete the missions assigned to me.

I glanced up at the dome and switched to the enhanced-vision setting of my heads-up to see the individual energy particles that created the shield. Combined, those particles protected us from outside heat and radiation.

The com device beeped again, and I redirected my attention to the message that blinked across the screen of my heads-up: “Target en route, be advised.” Sightseeing was over, and I took a deep breath, if only to pretend to calm my nerves.

As an artificial representation, calm nerves—or rather, anxiety—wasn’t something I needed to worry about. Although the materials used by the bioprinter to construct this body were very much human—the synthesized brain programmed to control this vessel wasn’t. Still, I saw no harm in pretending to be more than just a thing sometimes, and apparently neither did my CPU.

I straightened while my eyes roamed the multitude of colors that glistened in the windows of the tall blocks of concrete. The lights bounced off the glass in a colorful rainbow, creating the illusion of a beautiful city plastered over the crumbling layers of rock and cement. The rays spread across the city skyline until they hit the dome’s grimy, soot-covered surface.

Exposure to millennia’s worth of polluted steam rising from the inner workings of the planet caused the dome to be barely see-through, but in a way, that helped to hide the wastelands beyond and the reality of a dying planet. But the dirt wouldn’t prevent the sun from bathing the city in a red haze.

I lined my sight on the end of an alley wedged between the buildings, where the bright spotlights couldn’t reach ground level. My heads-up compensated for the darkness, switching to a green spectrum that opened a world of tossed-over garbage cans, discarded boxes, more trash, and a drifter or two. There was a twitch in the spectrum, going from black to green, and the heads-up zoomed in automatically.

Even at this distance, it wasn’t hard to see the young man running down the alley as he headed straight for the building I was standing on. The young man panted franticly as he whipped his head to look over his shoulder before facing the front again. I took in the old, rundown garments and crappy shoes. Blood trickled down his shirt, and it left stains on the collar next to a tear in the fabric that revealed his hairless chest. He ran to me without having any inkling that I was there.

From a previous encounter of the night, I could piece together an image of the surprise that would seize the man’s face the moment I revealed myself, or should I say the horror. The fright in his eyes, the quaver in his voice as he begged for my forgiveness, seemed unavoidable.

I did not enjoy this part of the job, not that I enjoyed any part of this job. But it’s not as if I were supposed to have any emotional attachment to these things. It’s not as if they’d haunt me in my dreams or gnaw at my conscience. I didn’t have a conscience; I wasn’t a conscientious being. After my shift, I would return to the Tenebrae Enforcer Department and have my mind wiped clean of the day’s events.

My artificial brain would be hooked up to the central mainframe located in a room that had been dubbed “Memory Junction” by the human law enforcement officers, and whatever was about to happen would be erased from my mind—reset, back to original parameters, every fraction of my day gone.

The slapping of footsteps, the sound enhanced by my heads-up, increased as the young man got closer. Behind him, I could hear the heavy tread of my partner’s boots. With my enhanced vision, I could tell the man’s eyes were wide with fear as his hand reached to wipe a mop of hair from his forehead. His face looked strained, and his muscles worked throughout his body, while sweat mixed with the blood on his shirt.

I edged the tip of my boots closer to the edge of the ledge. A variation of information trickled down the lenses of my heads-up and was fed into my central processing unit. It ranged from the man’s running speed to the distance from my position to the ground along with gravitational pull and intended trajectory. For a moment, I took it all in and then took that final step over the edge.

Except for the hair on my head and the barely exposed skin of my face, my body was protected from the muggy air rushing by. Letters scrolled across my lenses, informing me of my descent and viable options. I slightly spread my arms to balance my fall.

My bodysuit was made of an armor reduced to an atomic-scale honeycomb lattice that protected me from most assault weapons available, and the built-in exoskeleton could absorb most forces my limbs could be exposed to.

My boots clanked on a metal emergency staircase bolted to the building normally used as an escape route. The structure moaned under my weight. As my knees flexed, I grabbed the railing and used my momentum to fling my legs over and continued my drop.

In the street below, the man still hadn’t noticed me, and he reacted in shock when I landed in a crouched position right in front of him. His arms flailed as he struggled to stop his running pace. Before he could collide with me, I stretched my leg, swung it around without raising from my crouch, and connected with the man’s shins.

The man still had some momentum going, and my kick sent him careening past me before he fell to the ground. Without effort, I kept my movement going into a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn to face the body crashing to the asphalt. He cried out when his bare flesh scraped the concrete, and he hit the ground.

Behind me, I heard my partner’s footsteps slow to a steady walk. He knew I had control, although the young man in front of me didn’t seem convinced of that. He scrambled to his feet, his mouth twisted into a sneer. An all-or-nothing battle cry bounced off the buildings as he shouted his defiance. The knife he held in his right hand shone bright green from behind my display.

I ducked underneath his swing, jabbed him with a fist in his stomach, and grabbed the arm holding the knife. The man grunted but didn’t relent, and I planted a flat palm against his nose. Blood gushed down into his mouth and chin when I whirled around him, gripping the arm behind his back, wrenching until it snapped.

He fell to his knees, screaming in pain while I took the knife from his hand and dumped it into a nearby garbage can. For good measure, I kicked him. The blow forced him on his back, and I placed my thick-soled boot on his chest. His rib cage rose and fell with the man’s ragged breath, and I waited for my partner to step in.

“Enforcer 959,” my partner called out as he stepped closer. At the mention of my formal designation, I turned my head. My partner for that night had been Enforcer 877. Because of his lower number, he had seniority. It meant he had been built before me, but that didn’t mean he had more experience. Like me, he had his brain wiped clean every night, and his skills were mere programming: just like mine.

Enforcer 877 looked disheveled, his face was streaked with grime, and he had removed his heads-up display. I sensed an almost shocked sensation, but since I couldn’t feel shock, I dismissed it as a misfire in my circuitry. Still, I had never seen an enforcer without his heads-up, not that I would remember anyway. Even in this dark alley, his pupils were nonexistent, leaving his irises an overwhelming bright blue. Those blue eyes staring back at me caused an image to flash across my mind. The sharp-edged features of a young woman appeared vividly before my eyes and I had to blink twice to refocus.

The fact that I could even remember this image was an anomaly. Every night after our shifts as enforcers, we were expected to report back to the Tenebrae Enforcer Department headquarters, or TED, for short. There they wiped all nonessential information from our CPUs at Memory Junction. As far as I was aware—as far as anyone was aware—this process had a one hundred percent success rate. It had never failed, except for this one faint residual image that seemed stuck in my head.

The tech guy at the station had been unsuccessful in removing the image of the young woman. Eventually, I’d told him that I couldn’t remember what he was talking about and had given him the impression that he had succeeded. For some reason, the picture and the fact that I knew about it remained stuck in my mainframe, but after the numerous failures to remove it, I had decided to act as if the issue were solved.

It had occurred to me that this could be some type of virus messing with my CPU. How else would I be able to remember why the tech guy hadn’t succeeded in erasing it? But this weird secret inside my head made my circuits tingle, and I wanted to keep it for myself. None of this made any sense considering my construct, but that had only inflamed my decision.

As if to draw my attention, 877 lifted his heads-up display for me to see.

“He got the jump on me,” he said. His low voice had a lot of bass and didn’t sound robotic as one might expect. Nor did he look anything else but human. We all did. The bioprinter that constructed our bodies used a set of human templates. This meant enforcers could look the same, but with the headgear covering most of our faces, it hadn’t occurred to me to compare. I wondered if I looked anything like 877.

My processor kicked in as my sensors scanned my partner: male, constructed two years ago, average height. As a rule, an enforcer was never allowed and technologically denied scanning his own body, so I couldn’t be sure, but 877 seemed to be taller than me, which suggested he had come from a different template.

Enforcer 877’s arm dropped to his side. “Handle the rest,” he said unapologetically.

I turned to the man on the ground, wedged underneath my boot, and waited for the information to scroll across my screen. As the bright-green letters appeared, I read them aloud.

“Thomas D. Laevis, you have been arrested by Enforcer 959 in the employment of the Tenebrae Enforcer Department under suspicion of stealing, looting, aggressive behavior, and acts of noncitizenship.” I paused for the information on my screen to accumulate. It sometimes took a while for an official to type out or dictate his verdict. Our programming didn’t allow for us to make our own rulings, so there was always a human judge on call to oversee our work.

“Considering the evidence, you have been found guilty of all the charges read to you. Prepare to hear your verdict,” I said.

There was another pause, and for some reason, I felt my throat clench. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I could guess the verdict. No other verdict had made it past mine or my partner’s lips the entire night. The man at my feet also seemed to know what was to come. He squirmed and jerked under my boot, trying for a way out.

Finally, the screen started to flow again. It wasn’t always the brightest officials on the other line at these hours of the night.

“Under the jurisdiction of the Combined Districts of Tenebrae you will be put to death so no further disruptions will come from your feeble mind. Enforcer 959, you have permission to validate the verdict.”

The green letters blinked once before they disappeared from my screen and left me faced with the man beneath my boot. He had stopped squirming. He knew it was too late. Permission had been granted, and that allowed me to deliver his verdict in every which way I deemed necessary. This included shooting him in the back if he attempted to run.

A shiver ran up my spine, and I sensed a strange buzz at the back of my skull. It forced me to close my eyes for a second in an attempt to register the sensation. Had I ever sensed anything like it? Could it be the thrilling vibe of the sixth kill of the night or maybe a couple of fried circuits? I wondered if I should tell the tech guy at Memory Junction after I got back.

“Enforcer 959,” 877 said. My eyes flashed open. I grabbed the weapon from my holster before the man on the ground could blink and fired twice. Two bullets embedded themselves in the man’s forehead. His body jerked, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and the rise and fall of his chest ceased underneath my boot.

“Alert the Whitewashers,” 877 said. I complied and alerted the cleanup crew that was supposed to dispose of the body.

“We need to stop at the station for a new heads-up display,” he added.

Before following my partner out of the alley, I glanced down at the lifeless body sprawled at my feet. It occurred to me that the man wasn’t a man at all. He looked too young to be a man. This body had belonged to a mere boy, and I had taken his life. The thought lingered for a moment as I stepped over the corpse and walked up to my partner.

Enforcer 877 watched as I strode up to him, staring at me with those bright blue eyes. Every time I looked at them, they had this weird effect on me, but I was not supposed to have any reaction to what I experienced—not at having killed that boy and not at 877’s eyes.

That picture of the woman reentered my mind. It was the only thing I had to keep me occupied after the events of my day had been purged from my system and I sat in my chair inside Memory Junction. Now it seemed to invade my mind while I worked. This wasn’t good.

These distractions could keep me from performing my duties to the utmost of my abilities. Still, for some reason, I had no compulsion to report the incident. If the tech guy found out, then fine, and he would purge the problem. If not, I would have something to occupy my nights.

Except for my training and information essential to performing my duties, all memories were removed, and I had analyzed what had remained to perfection. It had gotten kind of tedious, and I welcomed the variation in my thought patterns. But I hoped I would lose the memory of the boy by the end of my shift.

“Are you malfunctioning,” 877 asked as I stopped in front of him. Without giving him an answer, I tapped the side of my heads-up device. Green letters scrolled down the screen, and I took them in before I replied.

“Error log is clear.”

He cocked his head and watched me. His heads-up device had been damaged, and he couldn’t confirm my findings with his own scan.

“You seemed to have a slight hesitation in your motor function. Perhaps your memory banks are reaching full capacity.”

“Hesitation?” I asked. It seemed obvious what he meant. I had hesitated in carrying out the judge’s verdict.

“Just an observation,” he said, “I cannot confirm, but I will report the incident after we return to headquarters.”

With that, he turned on his heels, and I followed him to the mouth of the alley.

Chapter two

At the end of the alley, it was as if we’d stepped into a different world. We had ventured into one of the few main streets that would lead all the way up to the center of the city, and it bustled with activity.

Because this was one of the main streets, it held a central Hymag line. The spirals that held the aerodynamically shaped transportation pod curled their way along the length of the street until they disappeared around a bend. Electromagnetic energy surged through the spirals, keeping the pod and its passengers secure as it propelled the transport at high velocity from A to B within the confines of the dome. These Hymag lines were a simplified version of the transport we used for travel between the remaining cities, and although these were a lot smaller, they still took up most of the street.

People who were unlikely to ever travel inside one of those Hymags maneuvered around and over the fast-moving pieces of technology as if the Hymags didn’t exist at all. Hymags were reserved for the upper-class members of society, although that distinction would never be made by any government official.

The lesser privileged used metal scaffolds, constructed to climb over the spirals. These structures, aiding to cross the street, rose as high as a two-story building and gave the people living in this area access to the different parts of the city.

The people crowding the streets came in all varieties. Because of the humidity, most were dressed in flimsy garments that hung loosely around their bodies. The light-yellow clothing stood out against the hard-gray bricks where the rainbow lights decorating the buildings up top couldn’t find their way down to the streets.

Although the area sat packed with people even at these late hours, traveling through the masses didn’t take much of an effort on our part. We stood out in our black-armored uniforms with embedded exoskeletons and weapons. In these suits, we appeared taller and more impressive in general. Also, the green lights that reflected of our heads-up displays made us attract attention as if we had set off a beacon.

As soon as we were spotted, people almost froze on the spot. Years of interaction with the enforcers roaming the streets kept them from stopping, though. Through some unconscious, almost animal, instinct, they would step aside and make room for us to pass. Citizens feared us for what we could do to them, but tonight they seemed especially skittish.

Fortunately, most of the glares passed me and fell on 877. Like me, not many had seen an enforcer without his heads-up display covering most of his face.

As we walked side by side, an incoming message blinked across my screen. Because 877 had lost the use of his heads-up, I read our next assignment aloud as I received it.

“Severe breach of conduct, enforcers in distress—assistance requested immediately.”

I glanced up at 877 as I relayed the location. It had been a busy night already, and it seemed it wasn’t about to let up. Enforcer 877 looked down at the device he held in his hand. Although still formidable, he wouldn’t be as effective in the field without the aid of his heads-up, and besides, it was against regulations. It wasn’t just orders we received through the device; the heads-up also recorded everything that happened around us and could be used to validate our conduct.

“Have additional support responded to the call?” he asked in a hushed tone. I nodded.

“Two units have been dispatched,” I said. This meant four enforcers had responded to the call. 877 and I would be five and six.

“That should suffice,” he said, but I held up my hand before he could say anything else. Another message blinked across my screen.

“Additional support is demanded, and our presence is required,” I said. Enforcer 877 gave me a placid look. Not a single muscle in his face moved as he seemed to calculate his next decision.

“You move in,” he finally said. “I will join you once my HUD is replaced.”

Left standing on my own, I watched as the crowd dispersed and made room for 877 to pass them as he ran in the direction from which we had come. He disappeared as the crowd dispersed and returned to what they had been doing in the first place.

A repeat of the message appeared on my screen, and I started to make my way toward the scene of the crime. It seemed a bit overkill to send a fifth enforcer to a breach of conduct case even if they were severe and an enforcer was in distress. Usually, only a handful of enforcers would be able to take on a crowd of five hundred.

I started to run, but even with people shouting ahead to warn others of my approach, my progress was less than what I was used to. Midrun, I glanced up past the array of colorful lights and sought a good spot to climb a building. Traffic was a lot less heavy up high than down here on the ground. I spotted a ladder suspended over a door inside a recess in the wall of one of the buildings.

It was another escape route, and the ladder would be lowered if the inhabitants needed a rapid exit. With the exoskeleton embedded in my suit, the jump to reach the ladder would be easy enough, but an image on one of the display screens of a nearby shop drew my attention.

A mere advertisement shouldn’t have been able to distract me like that, but this image wasn’t anything like the colorful, fast-paced commercials for taste enhancers to add a little more flavor to our diet of converted mushrooms and molds.

I stopped for a moment and glanced at the unmoving picture. I blinked and gasped. It was her—the woman whose picture sat stuck in my head. This was a different picture, but I was sure it was her.

There didn’t appear to be a message or an advertisement attached to the image displayed. I checked the other screens in the window display, and they all showed the same standard news items that were always broadcasted across the feed.

Most of the mainstream information like the news was broadcast by ArtRep Enterprises across the feed and could be received by most any electronic device—if in range. ArtRep maintained the basic infrastructure and controlled the central network, although it was a known fact that anyone with enough knowledge of the system would be able to link up. Basically, anyone could tap into the vast communication network and download or upload anything they wanted or needed to know or share. But because ArtRep was also the same company that built us, Artificial Representations, caution was advised not to engage in any illegal activities. Heavy penalties were put in place to discourage people with malicious intent to hack the system and undermine the government, but that didn’t stop them from trying. For some people, the flow of information was a powerful thing, and it was up to the ARs to stop them.

As I returned my gaze to the picture, it baffled me for a moment for as far as anything could even baffle me. I snapped out of it as my heads-up beeped and a reminder of the impending emergency blinked in the corner of my screen. Redirecting my focus, I moved into the recess in the wall and jumped to grab hold of the ladder. Hoisting myself up, I started my way up to the roof.

I pushed the woman’s image from my mind and focused on jumping from rooftop to rooftop until I reached the location my heads-up had directed me to. Around me, the world looked peaceful, even with the residual gleam of the sun dominating the sky. The sun’s increased illumination kept the nights from being what they used to be and blocked out everything else space had to offer. It was only from the history files embedded in my memory banks that I knew that, once, billions of stars had decorated our night skies, but none of those were visible anymore.

Below me, the streets seemed abandoned, and I checked the location given to me earlier. I had come to the right spot, but apparently, whatever had happened had played out without me, and the other enforcers must have dealt with the situation. Because the file hadn’t been closed and I hadn’t been issued any other orders, I presumed my presence was still required. If it hadn’t, my heads-up would have informed me. I decided to investigate and descended to ground level.

Cautiously, I walked into the street and scanned the area. This was one of the side streets, far from any main streets and Hymag lines. High above me, spotlights blazed, lighting up the buildings, but the shop windows on the lower levels of those buildings looked dark and empty. Usually, shops, or government distribution outlets as they were officially known, were open 24/7 in this district. Except for two black multiperson speeders, the street sat deprived of vehicles.

Unable to detect anything with my heads-up display, I started to jog and scanned the side alleys as I ran. I maintained a steady pace until a figure stepped onto the otherwise empty street. This caught me by surprise because there hadn’t been any signs of life indicated by my heads-up. This person must have been standing in a secluded spot that my scans had been unable to reach. Maybe he or she had hidden there during the reported turmoil.

As I closed the distance, I noticed the figure to be a woman. She stood in the middle of my path, wearing heavy boots, black pants, and a sturdy black jacket in good condition—too good for this neighborhood. Her clothing seemed odd and looked nothing like what residents of this city usually wore, although I recognized the style.

According to my memory bank, it appeared to be something people living in Subterra might wear. Subterra was one of the four remaining cities, but unlike the other three, it was built underground where temperatures were lower and heavier clothing would be required. It also wasn’t a part of the Combined Districts of Tenebrae. With the growing unrest and government upheaval between the districts and Subterra, it seemed unlikely for a citizen of Subterra to find her way to the City of Umbras. One certainly wouldn’t want to stand out as she was doing right now.

It wasn’t as if Subterrans weren’t allowed here, but you never knew who you’d come across. Umbras citizens had the tendency to hold some radical views, which might lead to situations that could be threatening to any Subterran.

A few strands of short blond hair poked out from under the cap that hid her eyes and most of her face. Black lines of what looked to be the remnants of a tattoo were visible as they strayed from her neck over to her collarbone, but I couldn’t decipher the design.

As I got closer, she didn’t move from my path. I had never encountered anyone who hadn’t moved from my path, and my CPU seemed to have a hard time processing the anomaly. Even the citizens of Subterra knew of our existence. This was a rough neighborhood, tough, and perhaps these folks weren’t as impressed by an enforcer as I might have been led to believe. The distance between the woman and me quickly evaporated, and I couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t move.

I switched to a stride and stopped in front of her. She didn’t react. Watching her for a moment, I contemplated my next move and searched the information available in my database, but it was as if it wasn’t there anymore. Like the failure to detect the woman’s presence, my heads-up display did not react now, either.

I was about to start another system check when a green light flashed so brightly it hurt my eyes, and my vision went white. Blinking, I fought to see and caught the woman lifting her gaze. As I realized what my eyes were seeing, I gasped at the stabbing pain attacking the back of my skull. Circuits went wild, shorting, then flaring, rendering the information on my screen a blur of green blobs. I stepped back, trying to keep my balance while that same woman from the picture stuck in my mainframe stared back at me.

As enforcers, our bodies were well protected by the best technology had to offer, but this pain wasn’t external. This pain came from within, as if someone had set my CPU on fire, and I clamped my mouth shut to keep myself from screaming.

As the pain started to subside, I bent over to catch my breath, and as my vision settled, I noticed the woman hadn’t moved an inch. Heat rose up my neck and crept into my cheeks as I straightened. In that same moment, I realized that feeling embarrassed was a human emotion that didn’t belong to an artificial representation. Something was definitely off with my programming.

My heads-up display flashed again, blinding me once more, and I ripped it from my head. Unsettled by the exposure and my inability to react appropriately toward certain threats without the device, I swirled my head around to check my surroundings. Inhaling deeply, I decided to accept my abilities had been impaired. If anything did happen, I would have to deal with it on my own without the heads-up and without backup.

I turned my attention to the woman still standing motionless in front of me. It took me a moment to realize that there was moisture in her blue eyes. She blinked, and water rolled down her cheeks. For some reason, I recognized the pain radiating from behind those eyes. It seemed to grab me by the throat, and I figured another circuit must have gone down because I couldn’t breathe. Her lower lip quivered as she opened her mouth, and for a moment I thought she might speak, but she didn’t.

Still, she captured my full attention, and I barely heard the high-pitched hum of one of the multiperson speeders I had passed earlier as it started its engine.

The woman’s eyes flickered for a beat from me to the speeder but then focused back on me. Her quivering lip rose at the corner for just a smidgen. It lifted some of the pain from her expression but then transformed into concern. I couldn’t pull my gaze from her as the speeder pulled up next to us, and the black door of the vehicle flew open.

With a slight hesitation, the woman turned on her heel and slipped inside the speeder. My limbs seemed frozen to the ground, and I just stood there as I watched the aerodynamically shaped lines of the speeder disappear around a corner.