Rowdy Dead Productions

By David C. Daoust

 

Dakota had a pretty solid hunch that Suzanne was having a hard time comprehending what she was saying.

Dakota, however, was not kidding when she told Suzanne she may actually be mad. Having someone there, to bounce her ideas off, was as important to Dakota, as it was to Suzanne to have enough information, to be able to make the right decisions- which would be the reasoning behind her current presentation.

Fact was, they were in a difficult-to-comprehend situation. So, no matter what doubts Dakota had of her own sanity, they were reinforced by the lack of a fully realistic reality… which, upon reflection, did not make things better.

Suddenly, the com-device at Suzanne’s side made an unusual bleep sound. With a quick flick of her wrist the mottled woman snatched up the device and pressed it to one ear. Without a word, she listened to whatever intel was conveyed to her.

Dakota waited silently, curious.

“They spotted a lone human heading into Wraith territory,” Suzanne filled Dakota in as she returned the communicator to her pocket.

It did not take the Good Doctor long to deduce who it was. Nor, she imagined, would it take anyone long, to deduce who it was, really. There was only that one guy missing from the lot of them- short of someone else suddenly freeing more of the trapped humans… it could only be Major Sims.

“Oh?” Dakota asked, her interest was perked. Her reaction brief enough to mask just how interested she was in the soldier’s whereabouts.

“Looks like they got a bead on Major,” Suzanne gave voice to Dakota’s very deduction, “Ivan and Company, are already on their way to see if they can scoop him up.”

“That is all well and good, but I think I want to try and take a look myself,” Dakota was finally capable to do the very thing she had been trying to do from the start– use the sea of nanites, that swarmed through the Everywhere, to scout other areas within the City-station. In point of fact, all to help find Major and get him to safety.

The first time Dakota tried to search the city, she had the problem of not knowing which ‘time pocket’ she was in- or even, that there were multiple time pockets that she could view. It was a learning experience. Yet, by organizing all the separate time periods, into separate days, she was finally able to weed out their current ‘day’.

With a push of a button, she opened the right data-stream. The blank hologram, filled with all those icons, representing each ‘day’, suddenly flickered away, to be replaced by the view of the city-station, just outside of their parked ship.

No sooner had the visual appeared around them, than Dakota was off and ‘spinning’- headed in the direction of the Children’s homes. The Cityscape passed around the two women, as though they were levitating through the air.

“You’re going to look in the past?” Suzanne asked as she witnessed Dakota suddenly summon the hologram around them.

“No, no,” Dakota shook her head. “In the now.”

“I thought you were using this holo-stage to look into the past?” Suzanne asked.

“Well yeah, but that… wasn’t really my original intent,” Dakota haltingly explained, not quite sure if she should try to explain the whole thing again. She was sure she had just covered this. The motor in her mouth took over though, so she just went ahead and plunged in, “I was taking all the amassed data from the nanites, to create a holographic representation of everything in our city-station. What I could not know at the time, was that the nanites are sharing data from each pocket they exist in, so I actually wound up viewing ‘yesterday’s pocket’. Arguably serendipitously, just in time to help you… I covered this.”

“Oh, right,” Suzanne said dryly, “because I followed all of that, both times. No problem.”

The bite in Suzanne’s voice reminded Dakota just how much information she’d dumped on her. She just let the sarcastic remark, at her own presumption, slide on by.

The virtual trackball was still difficult for Dakota to navigate, but she felt like she was going to start getting the knack for it any day now. Her hands had become steadier with it, so when she rolled it forward, the scenery glided smoothly around them. Of course, navigating such big movements, in the wide open skies above, was always the easy part. It was navigating the tighter corridors that tended to get her stuck; pressed against the wall, stuck in corners– sometimes even gliding through the wall- to the nanites data on the other side. It could be trying.

“You know I could just pull up a stream from Ivan?” Suzanne offered, noting Dakota struggling with the navigation. “I use holo-stages to track my agents all the time.”

“What if he’s not looking in the right place?” Dakota didn’t like that idea. “We’d be better off with two search parties- rather than just looking over Ivan’s shoulder…”

The city-scape continued to stream around them, as Dakota, guessing where Suzanne’s last comment came from, tried to relax. Maybe look a bit more at ease with trying to navigate her way to the children’s part of the city.

“Wait! What is that?” Suzanne asked, alarmed, pointing to the left of the direction Dakota was currently heading.

Dakota glanced to where Suzanne had just indicated. It was a mass of flying figures. They were too far away at the moment to tell, but Dakota would have to guess they were Wraiths…

“Where are they going?” Suzanne asked, clearly coming to the same conclusion Dakota had, “They’ve never been so brazen.”

“Looks like they are going after your ship…” Dakota indicated on the small mini-map of the city, (that she finally had the opportunity to set up) where the Otomo Cruiser was located, some distance away from the Red Faction ship they had taken to using as headquarters, “That’s a lot of Wraiths…”

“I barely have anyone stationed aboard,” Suzanne said to herself.

With that Suzanne’s communicator bleeped again.

Dakota was so intent on tracking down Major, she ignored Suzanne’s concerns.

Suzanne snapped up her communicator, pressed it back to her ear and listened intently.

Though Dakota could only hear Suzanne’s half of the conversation, it was clear that Ivan and Company had just sent back a report of the very thing they had just witnessed. A mass of Wraith’s– incoming!

“I have to be elsewhere, Dakota,” Suzanne said briefly, distractedly, “I’ll check in later.”

With that Suzanne climbed down, out of the Holostage. Out of her line of sight.

Momentarily worried Suzanne may try to commandeer her search, all to gain more information on the incoming Wraiths, Dakota was somewhat relieved.

Dakota knew the Wraiths were children. Children of the very people she had dominated in the Uber-brain. She knew a bit more than she ever let on. All she could ever see of them was that crying child she pulled from the Wraith, seemingly, so long ago. She was pretty sure they were harmless, though they were still powerful enough not to convey it to Suzanne. The list of their abilities was unworldly.

Dakota came upon Major abruptly, he was running from…? At first, Dakota did not know what from. Though as she got closer she noticed the sudden sound increase, she realized she was not the only one who had found him.

Ivan and Company bore down hard on the alarmed soldier.

Dakota, suddenly, had some insight into what was going wrong with collecting Major Sims. All the rest of those freed from the Uber-brain, were collected before they could pull themselves together enough to actually have a say in where they went. Major, however, was more than all the rest of Suzanne’s soldiers- he was an elite soldier. Trained by one of the strongest militaries in the Onion.

He was not about to lay there and be taken… Upon the thought of just how elite Major was– he suddenly slammed his shoulder into a sliding door. Well, she thought, that wasn’t impressive. No sooner had he backed away from the unbudging door, than the soldier, tripped, on seemingly nothing, and slammed his knee into the ground.

Dakota winced with him, she realized he was not going to go without a fight. He simply was not about to stop running from the massive metal centipede monster, chasing him through the ghost city that he had mysteriously awoken in— with no memory of how he got there or even how he got into a different set of clothes. Not to mention the alterations to his body, he was sure to have discovered by now. This all tracked. The different set of clothing alone would be enough to send Dakota, obstinately, scurrying to safety.

Dakota had to find a way to help him, preferably, before he did more harm to himself.

The Mistreated Soldier was in the Wraith’s part of the city, so there was actual power flowing throughout these buildings. Dakota could access the entire city-station from her holostage’s virtual terminal, finding the right door only took a matter of moments. It was just a matter of Dakota beating him to the next door…

She winced again as he bounced off the door… Dakota actually felt bad that she had failed to get the door to slide open on time. Succeeding only seconds after he had managed to slam himself, bodily, into another unmoving object. She tried!

“I tried!” she said aloud, apologetically, despite Major being unable to hear her, any more than he could see her.

Major had managed to make his way through the door.

Dakota, at the very least, relieved that he had reached a place that Ivan could not follow, quickly realized, she would now have to navigate through the narrow corridors of the building. Which meant she was going to be struggling to keep up with him.

Dakota followed best she could, only getting stuck, once, as he hurried up a flight of stairs. A flight of stairs that really weren’t quite a straight shot from where they had started.

By the time she caught up with him, her data stream was acting strangely. She did not know what that meant, but it was clear that there was a huge data sink. Upon closer inspection, there was a massive amount of nanites that were no longer sending their data through her system. She did not know what was going on. Only managing to pinpoint the faulty nanites, just as they started to swirl, tightening together, tighter than she had ever witnessed them before… they formed a humanoid body.

Dakota was taken aback, unclear what she had just witnessed.

The figure was yet in darkness.

Dakota managed to finagle herself closer without going way too far, as she was apt to do, every other time she had ever tried such an action.

It looked like a cross between a standard droid- and a Wraith.

And when it spoke, all color drained from her face. More so, when it mentioned her by name. The phrase ‘a True Scion of Ergos’ echoed through her mind. She puzzled what it could mean. As it continued to speak to Major, a reasonable amount of possibilities flooded her mind… half of which she dismissed as fantasy in a matter of seconds.

All of which was confounding enough before Dop suddenly climbed onto the holostage with her.

The familiar being of solid light murmured at her.

Dakota was confounded some more as Dop’s meaning erupted into her mind as though she had just heard her speak to her directly. Calling up a different set of controls from her virtual terminal, Dakota lowered the opacity of the hologram that engulfed her… outside, the good doctor Sun, found two guards, guns leveled at a lone Wraith, with Vincent- in Margo’s little girl form- standing bewildered between them…