《ODHM: Holst Curio and Convenience》51: Poor Carla Coleman
Advertisement
A harsh rain pounded the streets of Mega-City Decem. One of the pedestrians that were out and about that evening, glowered at the dark gray sky, before mentally interfacing with their electro-static umbrella to increase its strength and breadth.
As the rain fell harder, the weak shielding dome that was keeping her dry became more visible. Glowing a crackling blue-white against the gloom. Increasing the strength and range of the shield would of course increase the battery draw, but she had almost reached her destination and the use of an ambient charger anyway. So using a little of her umbrella’s battery charge was fine. Especially, if it saved her the cost of having to go back to the hair salon.
As she approached a crosswalk, she waved her hand across the sensor. When the stoplight turned red, the walk signal turned green. The woman crossed without incident. Then traffic resumed without incident. The woman walked an additional street length before turning right and entering a nondescript building that still had fliers hanging from it from back when it was a laundromat.
The headlights of one of the many self-driving cars, parked along the sidewalk, lit up as the vehicle unparked itself. The car drove past where the woman had entered. Then drove for a distance gently increasing its pace. Then it turned it right back and continued to move faster and faster.
Tires squealed leaving black markers on the pavement as the car turned sharply and flipped itself onto the sidewalk, and into the side of the nondescript building that the woman had entered. The car’s batteries overcharged themselves to the point of critical failure, and the capacitors failed to mitigate the failure resulting in the catastrophic release of all the energy contained within. Whether by some dark kismet, or the planning of some very insidious minds, the part of the building that car had crashed into, was filled with chemical fumes from a drug operation that was taking place in the building’s basement.
The whole building went up like a firework. Releasing colorful fire and steam, as the windows, doors, and weaker walls were blown out by the volatile explosion that was started by the “malfunctioning” self-driven vehicle. Several people managed to escape the building with their lives and only a few minor burns and smoke-inhalation-based ailments. The woman was not one of them. Nor were the five other souls that she’d arrived for the purpose of meeting and discussing business with.
Advertisement
Ultimately, this was all just another tragic and troublesome event that was taking place within the city. And though it would make it onto the local evening news, it would only be mentioned in passing. Which much of the world only distantly being aware of the event, as the reason they had to go the long way around why driving to and from that direction that day. Only the movers and operators of the city, the high and low-level folks that worked in shadows, would know exactly what had gone down.
A few weeks later, a small and silent, four-propeller drone, would descend from the sky. Hovering within, or rather slightly above, the open-air shrine for a certain temple. This wasn’t the only drone visiting the shrine telecast funeral processions and funeral attendance was quite popular nowadays. What stood out was the projection that was emitted from a three-projector camera at the bottom of a drone.
The projection was of a figure that hadn’t been seen in Decem in decades. Few would remember her now, but once upon a time she was quite the wanted woman, and there was still a fair sum on her head. Tall and slender with a dancer’s physique. Straight, black, knee-length hair. A wide face, with a large nose, clear bright-gray eyes, and full lips that were normally pulled upwards in a fox-like smile. It was the mercenary, courier, and sometimes thief, Emily Yang.
She approached the shrine, or rather the drone projecting her image made it seem like she did, while the drone moved forwards to properly settle in front of its intended destination. Emily found the picture that marked the part of the shrine where the ashes of the person she’d come to see had been interred. She found a picture of a woman of average height, a frail build, and tan red skin.
The woman had a square face, a round chin, a stubby nose, puffy cheeks, and large lips. Her blue eyes were close-set and her dark eyebrows were thick. This was a picture where she lacked the wide-metal spacers that she used to place in her ears, or the piercings and tattoos that used to cover her skin. This was a picture where she still wore the cowl and habit that the woman had worn back when she was a sister of this temple.
Advertisement
“Oh…Carla…You stupid, stupid, bitch…See you in hell. Okay, hon? Or like maybe not…Since I’m immortal now…Bye, I guess,” sighed Emily. Looking at the face of the foe that she’d never quite been able to make the time to get even with.
“Welp, time for sad dancing…I’m really sorry, I don’t even hate you enough to really feel like doing this, but I made a promise to myself and unlike you, I keep my promises,” said Emily. Slowly and somberly beginning to shake her money-maker before the grave of her enemy with a remix of certain show tunes as background music. Then Emily quickly left, so as to avoid disturbing the other mourners who’d come to visit the remains of others who were interred at the shrine.
*************************************************************************************************************
Life came and went at a speed and seeming randomness that made it hard to properly respond to things. It felt like it was only yesterday that Emily had still had Carla Coleman, the Monkey’s Paw, and the Dark Fire Corporation, earmarked as enemies that she’d have to take down one day to get her life back.
Then Emily found the store, and the NIIABs(New-Identity-In-A-Box), and her life took such a turn for the weird, but better, that Emily had all but forgotten about Carla and her rotten bosses, until she heard about Darkfire Corp stepping afoul of some of the true heavy hitters in the city, and getting themselves and all their allies and cohorts scrubbed from not only Decem, but from the rest of Lux-Aqua-Tempestas as well.
Emily found herself feeling downcast for much of the next few weeks. To tell the truth, it wasn’t actually Carla’s death that did it. After all, she’d hated Carla. The woman had been an unpleasant cheat, and terrible fixer, even before the double-cross. Also, Emily had kind of thought Carla had died years ago, so it had actually been something of a surprise to hear that the woman was dead again. This time for real.
Carla’s death had driven home that Mega-City Decem and Lux-Aqua had greatly changed. Once upon a time the Monkey’s Paws and the Darkfire Corp would have been fairly unfuckwithable. Now, mid-tier news, and social media advertising, corporations could turn to their big brothers and get the two groups wiped out, over basically nothing. It felt like the end of an age. So many of Emily’s former-peers, and contemporaries were either dropping out of the game, or getting “dropped”.
Even Emily herself had changed a lot. She had once been nothing but a low-level merc. Mostly human, and poor in rep, cash, and tech. Now, Emily was a hyper-advance, super-sapient, living machine. She had magically, and technologically linked, dyson-megastructures installed in multiple star-systems in multiple servers, throughout Horologia. She was now capable of running multiple copies of herself at one time, and was taking full advantage of that.
Now there were at least a three dozen versions of her, all running multiple identities as “they”, the Emily-Network, called the shots, and ran the jobs in Decem, and many other mega-cities within Lux-Aqua and a few other servers that she’d gradually begun to build footholds in thanks to her friends in the Holst Store. She had not only reached Carla’s position, she’d thoroughly surpassed it, becoming someone that others needed to impress if they wanted her to work with and/or for them.
The gray and black industries weren’t even the only game Emily was running. She had instances of herself operating identities in the corporate world, in politics, in the media. The Emily-Network was everywhere sticking its fingers in all sorts of pies, and in moments like this, it felt overwhelming.
Then Emily got a notification from an instance of herself that she had tasked with playing secretary and scheduler, and she was informed that her friend, and adopted niece, little Katie Ingram had come to visit. That was the point that Emily remembered that maybe all this change wasn’t a bad thing. She hadn’t really had any family, or friends worth calling friends, before.
Advertisement
Digital Haven
The modern world fell into a deep depression, and few options remained for the suffering lower class. The global economy crumbled under a growing energy crisis and overpopulation led to the creation of a virtual frontier known as Teurilia, the first full immersion virtual reality. Teurilia introduced a world of adventure and exploration leaning on human nature for greed and power. The world, built to be a realistic role-playing game offered players nearly unlimited freedom and became wildly popular around the world within weeks of its initial release. Originally intended to be a temporary relief from the real world, the world’s governments soon realized the potential of virtual existence with the release of technology to permanently transfer consciousness from physical bodies into virtual ones. Supported by economists of the world and political power from the United Nations, Teurilia received limitless funding to support the migration of millions of new citizens. Eric Williams like many low-class citizens immediately saw the potential new life in Teurilia offered and signed up for the migration program within the first week of its announcement. Eric always dreamed of grand adventure and Teurilia was his golden ticket. This is his story…
8 278The Right Place At The Wrong Time
"What will you feel if, by inevitable circumstance, you never see your most beloved ever again?" ~~~ In the year 2000, 18-year-old Steven Vincenzo moved from the Philippines to the USA due to his father's promotion. They settle down in a small neighborhood known as Izzaya, in a city called Haggrew. Just a few days after moving, he finds out about a dark past from the Prohibition Era that still haunts the neighborhood, a dark past full of grizzly murders and kidnappings. Determined to know more about it, he finds out that there are ties to an old abandoned house he always passes by in the neighborhood, seeing it as a lead. Hesitant at first, due to the fear of breaking and entering. In order to find out more, he needed to go into the abandoned house where he finds a mysterious door that isn't like any other in the house. The infamous door that was presumed to be "The Culprit's Room." He enters the room where he suddenly got sucked in by an unstoppable force. He wakes up outside the abandoned house, to a confused girl in front of him trying to get him back into his senses. This girl was wearing vintage clothing and had quite a distinct accent that Steven had never heard of before, except in movies and TV series. Looking around, he knew something was definitely wrong. The abandoned house looked newly built along with other old houses in the vicinity. Trying to understand the situation he's in with all the clues he has, he eventually asks the girl what year it currently was to confirm his speculations. To this, the girl replies with a serious tone, "1927." Steven doesn't know what to do with all this information. Will he be happy that he could know more about the dark past and possibly try preventing it? Will he be distressed in trying to figure out how to come back to his own time?
8 187An Adventure Of Memories
The plants rustled, the birds flew from their resting place in fear, her soft paws landed on the forest floor with stealth, her whiskers twitched with excitement, this was the first time she had actually tried hunting in the forest and not in her own backyard, and she loved it. The twenty dozen smells were so fresh, it was hard not to lose focus. But there was scent that she knew would stop at nothing to get to her, but it didn’t matter, if it were danger…she was undefeatable, if it were a happy and exciting, she would just cherish it. His eyes gleamed in the dark, tonight the forest was acquainted with an unfamiliar scent, his nose picked it up quite quickly, it was alluring almost drawing everything to it, but it said that you should be more wary of it, than anything else. He knew that it would be dangerous to seek the scent to its owner, but it just excited him more. He would stop at nothing to get to it. This is a story about a teen girl and a teen boy, but these two were gifted with extraordinary powers. They’re families were good friends, but if a seedling of doubt were dropped in between, would they go against each other? Would our dear leads stay together and ignore the seedling of doubt? Will their relationship as friends stay like that, bud into a rose, deeper than ever or rot like an apple and make them enemies?
8 114SWTOR: The Alpha Legacy - Alexandra 'Under the Black'
This was the first character backstory and first full story in The Old Republic era after 'Project Alpha: A Summary: 'Old Republic to Current Operational Era'. This one was actually written much later. Several of the full stories were done and there was a need to introduce the Mother of several of the main characters. Much later on I started a timeline and this seemed to fit nowhere else, but right after the introduction story: Alexandra De'nabre lost everything on one of the moons of Felucia. But life found her again. As a Mirialan Jedi, she was sworn to the Unity and to the Force; casting both away once she believed both left her. The Force finds her again. And brings her back a part of her life she believed she lost. Her children. But in a cruel twist of fate, the very Republic she once defended is suddenly out to get her. Not because in her new life as an infamous pirate she committed crimes against them. The children she lost are now wards of the Republic and a special project called: Alpha. And they will stop at nothing to keep Alexandra from reclaiming them.
8 154Re: Globus Online (Completed)
This is a story about an Otaku reincarnated into a game... But not as an NPC... But not as a player. What will this mix make him? Where will his story go? What will happen to him? Find out in this light novel! Inspired by multiple Light Novels across Royalroadl.
8 143Nobody Gets Me (Like You)
A single night out turned into a relationship no one expected. Betty never imagined falling for Toni's drummer, Jughead Jones. For a moment, he was just another guy. He was a guy in Toni's band who she thought was good looking. That didn't mean she wanted to date him. Then, suddenly, he was her world and she couldn't imagine being with anyone other than him.
8 66