Nanowrimo 2011 - Day 06

[SHAWNA - SUPERNATURAL AID]

Shawna never wanted to be caught out as she had been by the Drill Instructor again. Mistakes happen, priorities chosen in isolation never match in the moment, so she planned for the basics. Subroutines were coded and patched into her base code, slaved into an event stream from the emotional sub-processor. External appearance - simulated breathing and heart rate, flush on skin, temperature regulation - all tracked the output of hardware dedicated to simulating the correct emotional response to external stimulus.

Multicast events from the emotional sub-processor were suddenly being returned with a variety of 408, 444, 504 errors. Gateway timeout, No response and Request Timeout? On a network of nodes all internal to a single body? The shower of error packets caused the event processor to flag a fault, something the emotional sub-processor was not coded to handle. A data overflow generated error codes of an entirely new format which were bounced back up the chain for her central processing core to deal with. On receipt it was noted that the error shared structural similaries with fear, perhaps an entirely new kind of terror.

Data communications errors flickered through her entire system. She tried to map the damage and saw the common pattern - any data trying to flow latterally across her back was being disrupted. Probing other damage and power distribution reports a pattern emerged. External sensers might be non-functioning but she could sense from the shape of the damage that one of the surviving structural beams was embedded - she corrected herself - she was embedded, suspended, on a structural support beam, across her mid-back deep enough to sever data connections without hope of rerouting, and destroying a number of data stores.

She scanned short term memory, then back through indexes of older experiences. Discrepancies began to mount, in some cases recoverable with the addition of new data storage and the meta-data from existing data stripes. In other cases all redundant stores had been destroyed, and the only indication that she had experienced the events was a terse index entry. Was this what it was like to be human? A profound sense of loss settled over her, adding to the un-namable terror her emotional sub-processor was broadcasting.

A series of sparks showered down from behind her. Proximity sensors indicated that she had slipped off the girder slightly. The minute illumination was enough for her to scan a pool of dark liquid below her. With her data-bus horribly compromised she couldnt correlate her senses to know what it was, if it was safe to try to pry herself free of the girder and fall into it, or if she was better off staying impaled.

Shawna could do nothing with her body in its current configuration. Something had to change. She paused. A whole new set of warnings flashed at her, warning her not to take action that would reveal her true nature to human observers. The weight of the prohibition was almost enough to stop her from initiating the change, even the threat of not surviving had a priority high enough to break through. Only the depth and breadth of existing errors afforded any freedom: she archived the warnings amongst the data connection errors and simple signal to noise ratio drowned them out. She initiated the changes, firstly in her neck, loosening the grip of a number of servo-motors and limiters. Two restraining bolts later, she was able to lift rotate and reset her head one hundred and eighty degrees rotated from its original position. Facing the wall she was now able to glance downward to assess the external damage caused by being impaled onto the support girder. She wished she hadnt.

The process of transformation had only just begun with the head. That gave the ability to look at and assess the damage, next she needed the ability to reach and repair. She cut power to her [formerly right] left shoulder, feeling the arm fall loose and hang into the black space [formerly in front] behind her. Using her [formerly left] right hand she caught the swinging limb and pulled, firmly, until there was a deep clunk from inside the [formerly right] left shoulder, and her internal status readings told her that the arm was now fully disconnected from its socket. Reactivating the shoulder she was then able to reconfigure the parameters of shoulder joint to face [formerly behind] front. With a firm movement her disconnected left arm snapped back into place. It was a matter of repeating the operation, power down the [formerly left] right shoulder, then using her left arm to grasp her [formerly left] right wrist, pull, reconfigure the [formerly left] right shoulder and snap her right arm into place. She rolled shoulders, leaned her head left and right, [formerly backward] forward and [formerly forward] backward. So far so good. She scanned her internal structure and was pleased to find the store of nanites intact, good, she was going to need those when the time came.

There was no question that she would have a hard time walking in her currently half reverse configuration, but walking was the least of her problems. More pressing was to extract that support girder from [what was formerly her spine] abdomen, to make large scale engineering repairs, and to reconnect the dataflow.

she reached forward and grasped the girder in both hands, arched [what was formerly her spine] abdomen and planted her [formerly left] right and [formerly right] left boots on the most solid surface she could find. Then she pushed, hard, to pull herself off the support beam that was currently almost bisecting her body. With a screach of metal, she shifted, sliding millimeter by millimeter off it. A shower of sparks illuminated dark fluid - some kind of coolant - left behind and now starting to pour from the exposed sections of her body. She pushed again, sliding [formerly forward] backward off the beam. Only a small amount remained, another push and she would be free but that meant a fall, into the pool of dark fluid … in a direction that gravity said was below her. She heaved and fell, a meteor trailing a shower of sparks from the newly exposed power couplings that had been severed by the beam. A small part of her mind registered an “I told you so!” in permanent storage when, as she hit the surface, the electrical short ignited the surface of the engine coolant. The entire cargo bay erupted into flame.

[KAT/LI/JAMES - SUPERNATURAL AID]

“We’re almost there!” Kat whispered to herself, “The falling star landed in the next clearing.”

She hunkered down between a tightly packed group of trees and took stock of her weapons. The shovel, her trusty companion, was leaning on the tree by her right hand. It was of military design, not like the old wooden ones they had used on the farm. No. This shovel was clearly designed for exactly the purpose she had been putting it to - as a hand-to-hand combat tool - its serrated side of the blade being particularly handy in a pinch. When not needed, the shovel folded away into the black backpack that she carried. She opened it, took a long sip of water from the canteen inside, then slung the backpack back into place. The heat and humidity of the forest was oppressive and was making sweat bead all across her smoothly shaved head. She’d learned early not to give her opponents extra opportunity to grab hold of her. Hair only got in the way. She picked up the shovel and followed the game trail onward. Her quarry this time wasnt moving. Nor was it likely to fight back. This time she felt a measure of relief. It was going to be easy.

She rounded a bend and stepped into the clearing, “OK, we’re here. Now what do we do?” she asked.

Something large and black had carved a swath through the forest before her. Trees of all sizes had been splintered and laid low. Finally it had come to a rest. Ugly, black and mechanical, at least ten meters across, the arrowhead of an arrow shot by a titan. Smoke poured from a number of holes. Kat flinched as another fragment of the wreckage exploded in a gout of flame, broken off the arrowhead and laying to one side, about eighty meters back along the flightpath. Kat flinched.

Li finished throwing up and tried to focus her mind on the task at hand. She looked back at Eric, trapped in hardened acceleration gel and being slowly roasted alive by the fire in the pilot’s console. She tried to pull the gel away but it was solid to the touch, fire hardened, and refusing to budge. She turned around looking for any other way to free him.

The acceleration couch, behind the pilot and co-pilot stations, was covered in fallen debris. It was possible that James might be alive under there. If she could free him maybe together they could extract Eric. She looked back at him, loathe to do anything but work on getting him free. The longer she worked on other things, the longer he had to endure what was shaping up to be a particularly gruesome and medieval torture. She felt her stomach wanting to rise again but there was nothing in her to throw up. She’s read about medieval tortures like this - a brazier of red-hot coals brought close to a bound prisoner’s feet and left there. The heat would cook the flesh until it fell from the bones of his feet, then lower legs. It was a slow and agonizing process, and Eric was enduring hell every moment she spent unable to free him. She spun back to the acceleration couch and with a cry of anger and frustration started to pull debris away. Until, yes! She saw James’s feet bound in gel. She pulled it off him working from feet to waist. She pulled more debris free until she could free his left arm at which point he started tearing at the gel, his actions suggesting he was barely rational, riding a wave of panic. With a cry he freed himself and rolled off the couch. His legs felt unsteady but it was a welcome sense of freedom to stand again. Li smiled then pointed at the trapped body in the pilot’s seat.

James grabbed a small piece of the metallic debris and started hacking at the hardened gel. It wasnt making much of an impact.

Kat found a hole in the black exterior of the arrowhead and looked inside - a corridor. With her shovel cradled at the ready she ventured inside and looked left and right. She paused, was that a voice? She listened and there was definitely sounds of movement to her left so she carefully picked her way along the corridor. In moments she entered a room with two seats facing the front and another more lounge-like seat behind them. Debris was strewn all over the floor. Two humanoid figures were fighting to free a third from his seat.

“We can help.” Kat said. She had to push the younger, female, back from the seat. With a deft swing she brought the edge of the shovel to bear on the hard packed substance trapping the third member of … their crew … the blade of the shovel sliced into the gel. She swung again, sawing at the man’s bonds with the serrated edge of the shovel. That worked well and soon they were down to his body below the bindings. It was clear to Kat that his arm and much of his side were ruined beyond salvage. Both of his legs looked roasted to a crisp too.