By David C. Daoust
“A long time ago, there were these stories that made their way around the Onion,” Gordon Hitch began as he casually tossed a small holo-mech from one hand to the other. He held the small device up before him as he collected his thoughts and tried to explain, “They were like ghost stories, like…” he paused to search for the right term, “like, an ’urban legend’ kind of thing.”
Colin was listening, even as he stripped out of his normal clothing and into the wired, skin-tight jumpsuit that he wore when he was submerged in that tank of nutrients that currently awaited his arrival.
The two men were in the backroom of the central command center of Colin Vice’s whole operation; Gave him a quiet place to change and shower, while the room full of nurses, set things up in the next room.
Normally, it gave him a quiet place, that is. Gordon Hitch was not really one to mind such situations. Especially when he’d been drinking. Which he had been, as they all had been…
Colin suddenly realized Hitch was waiting for some sort of response to what he was saying. Colin thrust his chin forward, in an affirmative, twitched an eyebrow– signaling that he was listening and it was okay to continue, even while he was still dressing.
“Anyway, for the most part, they were ghost stories…” Gordon, did just that, continued, “about this ‘shade’ that used to creep aboard ‘slaver’ ships.”
“Slaver Ships?” Colin asked in disbelief.
“Sure, sure,” Gordon dug deeper, “It was like the boogieman of the time- scaring people into not practicing such um… practices… ”
Colin nodded, still unclear where exactly Hitch was going with the information. And why he felt, whatever he was trying to express, needed such a lead in…
“It was like this monster really,” Gordon setup simply and then tried to paint, “This shadowy form with a jagged black knife…” he trailed off to try and read a reaction from Colin, “This monster would just slaughter anyone aboard, cut them, just, to pieces. Some of these stories were pretty graphic. It started out, they were saying these criminals could not get a word in -edgewise-… over the stories iterations, the monster was eventually, just became known as, ‘Edgewise’.”
“Never heard of it,” Colin finally interjected as he snapped himself into the garish though incredibly comfortable suit.
“Probably before your time. I’m pretty sure it was just a story…” Gordon backed off a little, slightly crestfallen that Colin was unfamiliar with the stories, “or like propaganda to scare people from trying such things…” he re-expressed a little with a slightly different attitude on the matter, “I was always like, ‘pfht! what are we, kids?’ Scared off by the boogieman…? But you know… Whatever works, I guess.”
Colin was dressed, feeling a bit cornered- waiting for the point.
“Anyway, those stories always kind of sparked my imagination—” Gordon finally confessed, “So I wound up trying to build a solid-light lattice based on this idea– Or like the image, of the monster, those stories put in my mind…”
It finally occurred to Colin that he was not going to be put in one of his normal holo-mechs. He put those thoughts to voice, “We’re not using one of mine?”
“Nah, this’ll work way better…” Gordon said rolling the new holo-mech over the back of his hand, and then catching it when it popped up in the air with the following flick of his wrist, “Its bigger, biggest I’ve made yet, should be more formidable against the Assault-bot.”
Colin was not averse to the idea.
“The design was only half done,” Gordon led them out of the back rooms, “At first I was going to splice the first half, with one of your old forms… somehow,” something about how he expressed this, made Colin think the idea was cast aside as ‘undoable’, “But I managed to just invert half of what I had, and copy the work- pretty fast.” The excitement started to build as he described, “It’s not my best- but really, it’s still pretty sick… it’s all shadowy, like the hounds… and I gave him his jagged knife… Pretty wicked really! But since I pretty much ‘copy/pasted and inverted’, what I already had… you’ll have two. One in each hand.”
Half Dozen nurses met the two men as they entered into the central command room. All of them poking and prodding at Colin, taking readings and connecting devices to the suit, all while he still continued forward… At the end of the long line of busy women, he met Deloris standing before the vat, eyes still a bit glassy from the whiskey, but otherwise ready to work.
“Did you tell him?” Deloris asked Gordon as he turned Colin around started hooking wires to him.
“Covered it,” Hitch expressed simply, as he handed the new Holo-mech over to the nurse.
Colin could only imagine what the man had planned to do with such a design, before the Crucible was infested with communist robots, trying to take over the Onion!
Discussion ¬