1 Rob - crash site
Squinting through his misted face-shield at the remains of the flight he had miraculously missed Rob wanted to vomit. Mushroomed intake flare, bubbled hunk of helmet, a shredded boot, one carbonized toe protruding. His colleagues left no ghosts, his grimy perspective their only remembrance.
He caught a repair craft to the next outpost; grabbing an errant frequency they crossed trajectories with a glass tourist blimp as Rob was ejected then drifting to a vacuum port whisked in. His code entitled him to a private cubicle away from the stadium-sized cattle pen of picnicking senior citizens with their beady stares and shrill giggles and polyglot babble.
Shuddering from somewhere below his fifth chakra and above his scrotum as the barricade to the blast site slid open Rob was greeted by a polite but harried Federal Inspector. Asking routine questions the ex-KGB officer alternated between vague apology and subtle arrogance. When Rob saw the dull eyes narrow for a split second he knew a full scale investigation had already begun. The inspector went about his dingy business, directing underlings scrambling around pulled by chirping sensors. In the pale half-light as their sooty shapes melted away only the strain in their eyes marked them as human.
The crater was a dwarf forest of blistered, lusterless alloy shards trembling in the greasy turbine wind. Crouching, Rob scratched at the mound. A thin wisp of grey dust was instantly sucked away by the turbines. Below, more slag. Thirty-six hours without sleep began to catch up on him as white-hot neurons of pain spattered his cranial membrane like gravel on tin.
With the death of three members at the same time in an unprecedented disaster the council was immediately, drastically changed. Rob went from number six to number three, Sarah from number nine to number six. Two junior assistants joined the council as numbers seven and eight.
Then the new number nine, Christopher. First pure native on the Council. A one in a trillion glitch, an imaginary number gone haywire, a few symbiotic neurons drifting out of mode, and he was chosen. His chromo-scan revealed an unusually high number of programmable cells. By pure chance he matched the most advanced models under cultivation, and he didn’t even know it. Responded to his impulses as if they mattered, as if they were really his! Everybody seemed to like him.
Squinting through his misted face-shield at the remains of the flight he had miraculously missed Rob wanted to vomit. Mushroomed intake flare, bubbled hunk of helmet, a shredded boot, one carbonized toe protruding. His colleagues left no ghosts, his grimy perspective their only remembrance.
He caught a repair craft to the next outpost; grabbing an errant frequency they crossed trajectories with a glass tourist blimp as Rob was ejected then drifting to a vacuum port whisked in. His code entitled him to a private cubicle away from the stadium-sized cattle pen of picnicking senior citizens with their beady stares and shrill giggles and polyglot babble.
Shuddering from somewhere below his fifth chakra and above his scrotum as the barricade to the blast site slid open Rob was greeted by a polite but harried Federal Inspector. Asking routine questions the ex-KGB officer alternated between vague apology and subtle arrogance. When Rob saw the dull eyes narrow for a split second he knew a full scale investigation had already begun. The inspector went about his dingy business, directing underlings scrambling around pulled by chirping sensors. In the pale half-light as their sooty shapes melted away only the strain in their eyes marked them as human.
The crater was a dwarf forest of blistered, lusterless alloy shards trembling in the greasy turbine wind. Crouching, Rob scratched at the mound. A thin wisp of grey dust was instantly sucked away by the turbines. Below, more slag. Thirty-six hours without sleep began to catch up on him as white-hot neurons of pain spattered his cranial membrane like gravel on tin.
With the death of three members at the same time in an unprecedented disaster the council was immediately, drastically changed. Rob went from number six to number three, Sarah from number nine to number six. Two junior assistants joined the council as numbers seven and eight.
Then the new number nine, Christopher. First pure native on the Council. A one in a trillion glitch, an imaginary number gone haywire, a few symbiotic neurons drifting out of mode, and he was chosen. His chromo-scan revealed an unusually high number of programmable cells. By pure chance he matched the most advanced models under cultivation, and he didn’t even know it. Responded to his impulses as if they mattered, as if they were really his! Everybody seemed to like him.
