《Hello, My Defunct Machine Heart》Routine
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RFL-D-3901 is a man of routine.
Or Renfield, as he likes to be called. The RLF-D designation indicates he's from the Rifleman Division, and 3901 is his serial number within the division. Pretty simple stuff, as Renfield prefers things simple.
At 5:30 am, Renfield wakes up to the wall-chimer playing his favourite music piece. Sometimes it's stuff the older generation of the Sanctorium would consider "degenerate" music, sometimes it's just ska.
At 6:00 am, Renfield finishes showering, shaving, dental cleaning, dressing, folding his blankets, heating up food-pac (On-the-Go®), consuming food-pac, cleaning up utensils, feeding his isopod, watering his chia pet, checking equipment, and writing out his daily to-do list. He makes it just in time to the transit stop.
At 6:45 am, Renfield is squeezed out of transit by the sheer mass of bodies, and plops right in front of the Panopticon Tower. He will always take a moment to watch the synthetic snow falling on his gas mask before heading inside.
He then spends the next minute and thirty seconds or so chatting with the guardsmen. Mainly about cafeteria food and the price of cheese.
"Hope there's no wind today." One of the guards will always say.
"The wind doesn't bother me." Is Renfield's standard response.
At 7:00 am, Renfield arrives at the top of the Panopticon Tower. Before leaving the thermal chamber, he has to run one last equipment check. It takes him about 15 minutes to disassemble, clean, and reassemble his rifle.
At 7:15 am, Renfield gets out of the thermal chamber and into the cold solitude 1.45km above Sector Sigma. Sanctorium is a big place, but from his position, he can almost see the other sectors.
He wonders for a moment, what life is like in places far away.
At 7:20 am he finishes calibrating his scope. Then he lies prone and waits for any moving figures on the horizon.
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Every five minutes, the survey drone next to him chimes out the time, wind speed and direction, and scans the barren landscape beyond the sector borders for signs of life. Every five minutes Renfield gets startled out of his daydream and resists the urge to smack the drone.
At 8:00 am, he finally has had enough of the droning. He flops over onto his back, dusts the snow off himself, and squeezes a frozen tube of On-the-Go® ambiguously flavoured nutrient paste into his mouth through an opening in his gas mask.
Then at 8:02 am he gets right back to his rifle and stares at the grey landscape.
If he seems something move, he pulls the trigger. It usually stops moving on the first pull. If it doesn't, he'll hear a rifle go off from the level below him. And another level below if the thing keeps moving, so on and so forth.
Sometimes he will see a little black dot flap its way across the sky while honking. For reasons unknown it bothers him to shoot down that thing.
At 12:00 pm, Renfield finishes his 40-second lunch of rationed Bragels® and cheese. If he chokes on the food, the drone will helpfully punch him in the stomach. And if he's making good time, he will allow himself to roll over in pain.
Pain is a luxury within Sanctorium.
2:00 pm is when the commandant drone comes over to inspect. Renfield reports his serial number, bullet count, and logs anything out of the ordinary.
"This concludes today's inspection. Please return to your post." The drone chimes pleasantly.
At 2:08 pm, Renfield notices dark shapes writhing in the distance. He knows he should run from it, but he never quite makes it far.
The tox storm sweeps across Sector Sigma like a tidal wave of black cinder. It's billions of sentient, biomechanical insectoids congregating under the command of one hive mind, controlled through electromagnetic signals exploding in the sky.
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At the heart of Sector Sigma, the Nexus activates its Aegis Protocol to envelope the city in interlocking anti-cognition grids. The interference is enough to shut down any form of communication within the swarm. The few that pass through the barrier drop harmlessly into the city streets.
However, the Panopticon towers far above reaches of Aegis. And Renfield, left all alone among the clouds, sets down his rifle to watch the swarm split up.
Like a kid playing with magic sand, the swarm stretches itself into long, pointy bits made for killing. The hivemind fragments, seeps in whispers of destruction, and they begin tearing at the barrier.
At 2:11 pm, Renfield gets impatient. He could go back to the thermal chamber and wait out the storm, but he doesn't want to. The survey drone beeps uselessly behind him as he loads another round.
At 2:15 pm, Renfield runs out of bullets. The swarm tires, no longer wary of his rifle. One of them leaps at him and skewers him on its bladed arm like he's a marshmallow. The others follow suit.
At 2:16 pm, Renfield is visually and psychologically indistinguishable from tomato paste
The swarm evaporates as wisps of smoke with the north wind, and the brilliant neurons of Aegis fizzle out as well.
At 2: 30 pm, Renfield wakes up in the Vivarium of Sector Sigma, which is located within the Ministry of Death. He grabs his spare set of uniform, gets dressed, and heads up to the Panopticon again.
At 2: 45 pm, Renfield arrives at the Panopticon. The two guardsmen earlier have left their shift already, and he's greeted by two new recruits.
"ID please. And take your gas mask off." The short one says.
The tall one elbows his colleague, "That's the one they told us not to ID, idiot."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. He's kind of a big deal, I guess?"
Renfield waits for those two to sort things out between themselves, before a command drone flies down and lightly tases the shorter guardsman.
He gets through the rest of the tower no problem.
At 3:00 pm, Renfield spots some kind of small convoy moving through the Bleak Lands beyond Sanctorium. Those must be the illegal firearms dealers he had been informed of in a debrief weeks prior.
He takes out one of the tires on the leading truck, then another, then another. Renfield grins at himself as the convoy comes to a panicked halt. He shoots off the hat on who looks like the leader just for fun.
At 3:19 pm, a shot from somewhere in the Bleak Lands makes its way through Renfield's skull and lungs. He dies choking on his own blood.
At 3:30 pm, Renfield wakes up in the Vivarium again. He heads for the Panopticon as usual.
At 6:00 pm, Renfield eats the other half of his Bragels® while the survey drone rattles off wind speed and weather forecast.
Then at 6:02 pm he nearly scratches that itchy spot on his face underneath the mask. Instead of doing that, he tries to think about his isopod.
At 11:30 pm, Renfield gets the notice to pack up and leave. He kicks the survey drone on his way out.
At 12:00 pm, Renfield gets squeezed out of the transit and plops right in front of his apartment.
At 12:20 pm, Renfield finishes cleaning himself up, measuring his chia pet, feeding his isopod, hanging up his drying clothes, and falls asleep playing pong on his holo-screen.
He dreams about the snow, the storm, his Bragels® and ska.
It's a good day for RFL-D-3901.
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Entangled Fates Book 1 - Quantum Beginnings
“By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.” —Eliezer Yudkowsky Hey all, we're moving over to book 2. This content is in a state of transition. The book is now availble on Amazon (includes extra chapters): https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B07W1534R8 Artificial intelligence was nearly mankind’s last invention. AI took off like a rocket, then when it racked up an impressive death toll, it crashed before it could blossom and took most high-tech industries with it. Resistance and fears became deep-set. Two decades after the infamous Rev. 4.6 incidents, humanity hasn’t quit dreaming of the wealth and power that could be at their fingertips. A new generation of mega-corporations rose from the ashes. When one melds a quantum computer to a barely functional mental patient as a PR move, there are those who seek to profit, those who want to destroy it, and Alex. Alex Sage is a typical college student trying to keep up his grades and maybe find a meaningful connection with the fairer sex. Then, an automated semi crashes into his home, killing his family and turning his head into a pin cushion in the process. Alex awakens to find most of his memories gone and an illegal AI hidden in his brain implant. Now the pet project of a tech billionaire and heavily in debt, Alex struggles to stay valuable enough to be kept online. Still grappling with the repercussions of his injuries, and threats from a dangerous anti-augmentation political movement, there are no easy answers and threats loom around every corner. Alex must use whatever resources he can to escape from under the thumb of a ruthless corporation, while keeping those he comes to love safe. Chapters will stay up on RRL until Aug 10. It'll go up on Kindle Unlimited after that. How do you get those extra chapters I didn't have planned for RR? If you want them, they'll be in the published book. Book 2 will still make sense without them - I made sure of that. But... isn't $3 a lot for extra chapters? Think of it as tipping me for a good job and you'd also be getting my eternal thanks. If you enjoyed it so much that the idea of missing out a few chapters haunts you, I did my job as an author and made an engaging story. What's in those extra chapters? Resolving a few issues, set up for the cybernetic revolution, a rather intense sex scene with a new partner, revelations of who's really pulling strings, and a bit of set up for book 2. Complaints that people missed out on it when it was published here won't help (sorry!). I posted this for the folks who helped me shape the book, which is you all! (Again, yay!) But... Why! Why not keep it all on RR forever? My editor likes being paid for one. For two, I'd like the ability to get broader readership. If I break even on editor costs, I'll be incredibly happy. What about book 2? Drafts for Book 2 will go up around Sept 10. My draft of Book 2 is done, and it will be handed to the editor once Book 1 is published. Feedback has been even more positive. Beta readers devoured it and wanted more. I'll add a link to Book 2 once it's up on RR. I'm more or less, using you all for Beta Readers, so you get it before it's "canon" and edited. I invite active and meaningful feedback during this process. In return, you get early access to chapters. That does mean that the book content or plot might be adjusted before it gets published as I refine it. Sex Y/N? Yes. I heard the feedback, 90% wanted it explicit. You all will get the "full" experience. Will I dump all of book 2 here? Honestly, I'm not sure yet. At a minimum, it'll be up to the 75% mark as we collect feedback, much like what I did with book 1. It really depends on how good the feedback is and how nice people are. Lots of support + meaningful feedback to make it better = higher likelihood you get all the book. Will be it up here indefinitely? No, it'll probably go up on KU at some point, but I'll make sure there's enough time for a large readership to grab it here. Then we move to book 3 which already is around 60K words already. What about other adventures in the same universe/characters? Yep. Absolutely. Nothing ready to share yet though. I plan to keep those side chapters and more slice of life stories as RR exclusive. Since I'm carving this off in book-sized segments, I'll have to figure out where those disconnected story arcs belong. I'm open to suggestions.
8 142Bookworld Online: Marsh Man
Welcome dear friends, to the Virtual Reality Full Immersion System called Bookworld Online! Your name is David Drake and you are a 10 year old slave to the Marsh Hag. You were bought from your parents when you were only a small child at two years old. You don't really remember your old family at all. That's a good thing, since you would hate them on sight for selling you to her. All you've know for your whole life is pain. You are usually quickly healed and receive a lot of training and experience as her unofficial apprentice. It's unofficial because she would never pay to have you registered as an actual apprentice. To everyone else, you are just the boy she took pity on and brought into her home. What they don't know is that you are much more than that. So much more. You are her food. She uses you as her own personal buffet and she indulges herself quite often. You even have the permanent scars to prove it. You have learned many things from her, mostly without her knowing, since you have been helping more and more with her spell work the last few years and her potion making. The only parts you can't do are the magic condensing rituals that her potions require and the mana infusions that a lot of her other creations need. Do you wish to initiate the Main Storyline with these parameters? Please Note: I publish daily.Second Note: I changed this story to a fan fiction. It is based on Swamp Boy. The old story is about 4 years old and was dropped after 19 long chapters. The author hasn't been online since then, so I figured it was safe to do my own take on it.
8 1072Earth's Greatest Magus
What if Magic has always existed ever since the beginning of the Earth we are living on, but history has been written in order to hide these facts. What if the prosperous and well-known people in history is actually a mage? Enter a magic academy, rule your country. Be at the pinnacle of life! Join me in the journey of Emery and the others in the world of Knights and Magic as he becomes the Earth's Greatest Magus. Authors Note:I have always been fascinated by writing fantasy relating to historical facts. In this story, you will find characters inspired by the real world and facts. The universe I created hopefully will make the reader's imagination excited and logically plausible. I hope you enjoy it.
8 165I was reincarnated on the One piece World
An ex marine officer who was fired by the government was executed with death penalty for case of theft of private and secret documents in the Pentagon of United States and being a part of International Terrorists Isis. Unfortunately, all of this was just an alleged accusation. Despite of his prestige and good record in marine, he was still sentence to death. Before he died, he just remembered his favorite anime One piece. Remembering Whitebeards word, he terribly shouted his dying will. " ONE PIECE EXIST....ONE PIECE IS REAL ". Yet, soon as he knows that his death had arrived, his body trembled and an unconscious calmness covered him. He was like a golden Buddha who had reached Nirvana. Facing Death with out regret. Later he find himself in another world, a world where in he himself is very familiar off. He wonders around it and saw a huge crowd around the corridor of every street. On his way he saw a tall execution platform. Yun , cannot believe what lies in his sight. For right in front of him was none other than the famous execution platform, where the said pirate king was slain. The platform where Pirate King Gol D Roger was executed.. The Logue Town.. Jason an ordinary exmarine was revived on the Real One Piece World...
8 95Pokemon: Retold
A new take on the Pokemon franchise that attempts to combine the games, anime, and other source material. Follow the adventures of Red as he explores the Kanto region! Be warned, it's probably gonna be shit
8 204Story Ideas and Beginnings
I just write some of my story Ideas here, so you are free to take them and make something out of it. I would be happy to read your own version or story. (Also on Webnovel)
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