Cosmic Debris

Not long ago, he was the superhero Arsenal.

Now he was Peter Cat, and he was falling through airless clouds that made his nerves tingle with a deadening chill over a landscape of gray stone. There was no air, and not need to breathe.

He looked down, and saw that he would not be dashed on the stony surface -- a tiny hole was directly below him. He was accelerating in the airless void. His gaze was fixated by the rapidly growing spot of darkness that approached at terrific velocity, growing into a chasm that swallowed the misty horizon as it flashed past.

He fell into the darkness, illuminated from above by a ray of light. The sides of the pit came into view, festooned with stalactites like the hairs inside the belly of a carnivorous plant, pointing down into the abyss.

A huge mass of jagged gray stone flitted past, a double-ended conical lozenge of rock floating in the air. As Peter gawked at the spike of stone rapidly receding into the tiny point of light that marked the entrance to the chasm, his peripheral vision picked up a hint of motion.

A manacle on a chain was approaching him, falling with him to match his velocity. His body was numb with dread. The manacle clamped on his left forearm.

Three further manacles clamped to his free arm and his legs. With a tremendous jerk, his fall came to a sudden, wrenching stop. Above him, the spike of gray stone, tiny in the distance, hovered unsupported in the airless mist.

The chains tightened, pulling him up as they were drawn taut. He was being lifted up, fist slowly, but ever quicker, and with a moment of sick panic he realized that he would be impaled on the pointed end of the lozenge of stone.

Peering over the edge was a dark figure with glowing blue eyes. She was looking at him, and her laughter echoed through the airless pit.

The incongruity shocked Peter for a moment, and with the shock, the feeling of dream paralysis faded. He concentrated, and tried to use his powers to free himself.

The laughter stopped. Everything faded to featureless white. The manacles disappeared.

Peter felt around himself with his hands, and determined that he was lying on his back on a plane invisible in a dimensionless white room. He opened his mouth, and tried to remember how to breathe.

Jinx sat in her recording studio, blinking her eyes, awake from her trance. The psychogram was still running, still recording her mental landscape to be sent to the Corporation's Entertainment Division, but she was no longer there, and sat for a moment in her chair before the mixing board, stunned and numb. With a start, she realized that the white image on the studio monitor was from the inside of her own head.

"What? What?!"

She closed her eyes, her face contorted with fury.

She re-appeared in the mind-scape, wielding a barbed whip. She strode towards Peter, who rolled over and tried to stand. "What did you just do!? Don't--" She lifted her arm to scourge him, and then --

Nothing. She blinked in her studio chair, but recovered quickly. Re-appearing again, she confronted Peter, who was standing unsteadily in the featureless mind-scape.

"STOP THAT!" Jinx was apoplectic.

"Why do you want to hurt me?" Peter was calm, but the horrors of the last few moments were rapidly catching up to him. The dimensionless, airless void made him dizzy.

"We've covered this. This is the afterlife--"

"--and I'm in Hell." Peter crossed his arms and turned away from Jinx. "No way. Not possible."

"Why would I lie?" Jinx stood, arms akimbo, and barely resisted the urge to strike Peter.

"Everybody knows that clones don't have souls. How can this be the afterlife if I don't have a soul?"

Jinx felt puzzled. "Who told you that? They deceive themselves to quiet a bad conscience."

"What?" The confidence Peter regained was fading quickly. He felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, and wished he could remember how it felt to vomit.

"Mortals like stories better than reality. When a soul rejoins eternity, it must be purged of the lying taint of self." Jinx spoke coldly, her words were muted in the not-air of the afterlife.

Peter's legs buckled beneath him, and his hands scoured the featureless surface he was standing on. He tried to retch, but had forgotten how, so he simply curled up into a ball.

"You have not answered my question." Jinx became stern. "How did you banish me?"

"I don't know... I just wanted to defend myself..."

"You tried to use your powers?" Jinx's eyes narrowed.

Peter lifted his head, scowled at Jinx, and rallied. He looked her in the eyes, pushed himself up, and began to laugh.

Jinx, enraged, lunged at him -- only to spend the next moment spasming in the chair of her recording studio. She leaned forward, eyes burning with rage, and confronted Peter, who was grinning uneasily.

He taunted her. "Well, how about that? The big bad demoness is powerless inside her own mind! I can send you away any time I like--"

"Laugh it up, mortal! Let's see if it's so funny after I leave you alone for ten thousand years!" She disappeared again, this time voluntarily.

Inside the studio, she turned off the monitor, paused the recorder, and then sat, concentrating, with a cruel smile on her face.

She remained sitting for a few moments, opened her eyes. She resumed recording, turning the monitor back on, and returned to her mind-scape.

"Not so funny now, eh?" She strode towards Peter.

Peter turned to face her -- unchanged. "What? When do the ten thousand years start?"

Jinx was caught flat-footed. "Umm... how?"

Peter seemed annoyed and confused. "You told me it would be ten thousand years, but you were only gone a few minutes."

She looked at him, and her expression changed. He had become something of a mystery to her. "You have some means of perceiving external time. That shouldn't work. Count the seconds until I return."

Jinx returned to the studio. As she looked into the monitor -- showing a feed from a realm inside her own mind -- she saw Peter standing in the featureless white room.

He was defiant, and he was looking at her.

She switched the monitor off.

When Peter Met Jinx

Arsenal flew up, heading for the surface from the underground chamber.

A cloud of sparks intercepted him. Jinx materialized in front of him, and grappled him in mid-air. They fell.

Arsenal had the presence of mind to throw his hand-held computer through an insubstantial spot on the ceiling as Jinx's hands reached to crush his windpipe.

In the instant before impact, Jinx dematerialized again, leaving Arsenal behind in a cloud of sparks. As Arsenal slowly stood up, the shipping container beside him was lifted up and slammed into the container on the other side, momentarily pinning him between them for a brief, painful second before he could become intangible.

He emerged, ghost-like, from the side of the container Jinx was using to crush him. Before she could react, he stuck her with a shock wave bolt, which sent her skittering across the floor. In the moment of respite, he gestured, and the lights went out.

Concentrating again, he lifted his right arm, and a ghostly beam of grayish light played through the pitch black hall. He swept the beam of X-Rays in a broad arc, stopping suddenly when a shower of sparks and an anomalous air current made it clear to him that Jinx had teleported again.

He flew towards the disturbance, continuing his barrage of ionizing radiation. He soon found himself in another section of the underground chamber, filled with tanks of hydrocarbon solvent surrounding an assembly bay brightly lit by lamps on stands.

Behind the last row of shipping containers, Jinx pulled out a war spork, a dagger-like piece of plastic tipped with two vicious spikes that extended forwards from a razor-sharp round head. It glowed with a dim, reddish aura. She readied herself for a fraction of a second as Arsenal approached her position, then disappeared in a shower of sparks.

She re-materialized directly in front of him, thrust her arm forward, driving the left spike of the war spork into Arsenal's throat. Red lightning cascaded over Arsenal's body. With a sudden jerk, she tore open his throat, and he fell, covered in red sparks that traced out the paths of his nervous system.

She stood and watched him bleed as the sparks died down. His eyes rolled into his head as the pool of blood became larger. She turned around and walked away slowly, returning the war spork to its scabbard.

A noise from behind startled her. She spun around, and saw Arsenal, the front of his uniform drenched in blood from his mangled throat, struggling to his feet. He seemed to be having problems standing up straight.

Jinx muttered a mundane and vulgar curse beneath her breath, and leapt forwards. Her shoulder rammed into his blood-stained chest, knocking both of them to the ground.

Arsenal, pinned beneath Jinx, struggled to move. She grabbed his jaw, forcing him to look into her eyes. "You're not what I call living, really. You should have stayed down."

Her mouth opened as Arsenal's half-focused eyes made contact with her gaze. A glowing blue mist rose from Arsenal's body, and Jinx breathed it in. As the last of the blue mist disappeared into her mouth, she rolled off him and clutched her belly. "It burns! It burns!"

She lay, rolled up into a ball of pain, until her mind regained control of her body.

She approached one of the barrels of solvent, punched a hole in the top with her bare hand, and picked it up, carrying it to where Arsenal's lifeless body lay. She poured the volatile, colorless liquid over him, retrieved a lighter from a pocket in her blood-stained jacket, and set his corpse on fire.

She disappeared in a shower of sparks as the flames grew higher, reappearing in what appeared to be a small, dark recording studio.

She sat down on her comfortable chair, in front of a desk filled with mixing boards and a single, cloudy orb that began to glow as her mind focused upon it. One of the monitors sprang to life, showing Arsenal walking, disoriented, though gray mists, dressed in a dark business suit, unbloodied and whole.

She pressed a few buttons on the console, and an orange light lit up behind her -- she was recording.

In the gray psychic wasteland, Arsenal looked up as a gargantuan, demonic image of Jinx, with eyes of flame, confronted him. He stood his ground.

"Where am I? What is this place?"

A distorted voice boomed through the mists.

"THIS IS THE AFTERLIFE -- AND YOU'RE IN HELL!"

The ground disappeared beneath Arsenal's feet, and he fell, screaming, into the darkness.

Outside the hidden base, a small computer beeped as it coupled with the short-range maintenance network of the power sub-station. A script ran, and the computer tried to find a relay to send its message.

To no avail.

The Hidden Base

Arsenal suspected that this last site might be the right one when he felt a ward spark as he approached the front gate. He checked his communications implant, but it didn't work at all.

He looked carefully at the front gate in the crumbling, three meter high concrete wall. He shook his head, and opened the latch slowly, letting the door swing open. His left hand was balled into a fist -- hovering next to it was a glowing ball of plasma. He closed his eyes, probing the facing corners on the other side of a concrete barrier wall with his powers, but there was nothing there for him to find. Bracing his left hand in his right like a pistol, he and his glowing ball of plasma entered the courtyard.

He walked slowly, taking even, regular steps, pausing to scan behind the irregular clumps of rubble that dotted the courtyard. After a few paces, he came to an area where the dirt and debris were noticeably less weathered. With his right hand, he triggered the sound recorder on his hand-held computer.

"Arsenal here. I found a site protected by a ward, which disabled my comms implants. It appears to be deserted, but there is evidence of recent activity. I see a depression in the ground, approximately the size of a shipping container."

His eyes traced a path scraped into the ground, as if someone or something had dragged the container to the middle of the courtyard. He examined the rough, dusty ground, and then concentrated for a few moments.

"It appears that shipping containers have been moved to an underground chamber. I believe that there is an elevator platform in the middle of the courtyard, and my scans indicate a large underground area, approximately the same size at the courtyard. Entering now."

He passed through the ground into complete darkness, quickly finding the chamber. Setting down in a clear area, he used his powers to probe the darkness. He used his powers to turn on the overhead lights, illuminating the chamber with a grid of overhead spotlights.

The room was filled with shipping containers; line-of-sight was limited, even with the illumination. Arsenal walked to one of the containers, found the consignment number, and checked the number on his hand-held.

"I've found a shipping container belonging to one of the lost vessels. It looks like stolen goods were processed here. I'm going to see what's inside."

Arsenal walked to the end of the container, concentrated, and the large metal door on the end swung open. He used the plasma ball near his left hand as a flashlight to illuminate the interior of the container. A mock-up of a cockpit sat between two large pads, connected by cables to a cubical white box, which was attached to a pair of tripod-mounted projectors in the lower corners of the far side of the container.

"It appears to be a flight simulator. I see a cockpit and control yoke between two accelerator pads, a holographic display, and a control computer. I'll try to find out what scenario they were running on the computer."

He extinguished the plasma ball, sat in the cockpit and looked at the while cube, concentrating. The model cockpit rose into the air as the accelerator pads flickered to life. The holographic projectors displayed the hazy gray-blue surface of a planet as the simulated vessel accelerated, pulling away into a higher orbit.

"I've patched the simulator's state. It's an orbital attack scenario. I'm recording this now. As you see, the tactical displays indicate that the fighter is approaching the target..."

A small dot rose above the horizon, and grew larger.

"Sedgewick Station. The Corporate HQ. They're going to attack Sedgewick Station."

A few moments later Arsenal emerged into the chamber. He took his hand-held, composed a message containing he data he had acquired, and then examined it carefully. He arranged to have the message sent to Jolt, and, after a moment's hesitation, Admiral Kelmorran, who was responsible for the garrison at Sedgewick Station.

The FTL comms interface had been destroyed by the ward, but a short-range radio adapter was still working. He thought for a moment; there was a power distribution station nearby which offered an access point. He scripted for a few moments, arranging to have the message sent as soon as his hand-held could access a public network.

He looked up sharply as he finished the script -- there was a sudden change in air pressure in the underground chamber.

Someone had teleported into the room.

A Requiem For Bill and Bob

A darkened bridge, the infamous face and panic and an ice-cold grip dragged him into the darkness.

He was spinning slowly in vacuum. He turned to face his ship mere moments after he died.

She had murdered him by teleporting him one hundred meters outside the hull into deep space.

Bob left behind no parents and ten thousand identical twin brothers. It is unlikely anyone would have grieved for him.

He was a model 110 clone, optimized for boredom and button-pressing, requisitioned on the same work-order that had commissioned the frieghter he tended, conditioned to know the operational procedures and parameters of this and similar vessels -- and little else.

Any of his twin brothers could have taken his place.

His crew-mate Bill, another model 110 from a different batch, was ejected shortly afterwards. The pillow was still in his mouth.

Goodbye, Bill and Bob. Rest in peace on a vector to Suburbia.

As Seen On TV

Thresher looked up from a panel on the bridge of the Nightstalker, Honor Guard's patrol ship. He was a veteran powered armor trooper who was ambushed by a Reyll pyrokinetic; unlike many other casualties, he opted for superior replacement parts for his lost limbs.

"All right, kid -- listen up. I just sent you an arming code for your tac nuke."

On the view-screen, a shaken and nervous Victor pulled a beer-can sized grenade from his utility belt.

"Got it."

"You know what to do, Ensign. Hit him before he closes in!"

"Yes, sir!"

The young super-soldier in training flipped open the breech of the stubby grenade launcher, inserted the cartridge, and snapped the chamber closed. Control computers in the gun and the ammunition exchanged credentials; circuits energized within the shell and the gun. A blast of electrical energy drove the metallic sabot covering the physics package down a superconducting rail, driving the shell out of the barrel at a velocity carefully calculated to be slightly below the speed of sound.

"Duck and cover!"

The soldiers assumed the position, rolling into lethal armored giant pill bugs; their hard suits might have protected their bodies from the radiation in the event of a premature detonation downrange, but the shock wave from an atomic could easily tear an articulated limb from a main battle suit.

One kilometer downrange, the physics package produced a chaotic magnetic field inside the core of some few hundred grams of neptunium, drawing together the isolated paramagnetic clusters that formed around the super-heavy dopant atoms. Thousands of tiny super critical points formed, evenly distributed throughout the fissionable core.

Neutron begat neutron as nuclei shattered. A golden egg was laid at the feet of the oncoming fungoid monstrosity. The radiation blast shriveled and blackened its surface before the fireball tore the monster to vapor.

Bob swore and finished his can.

He paused the stream and looked around the bridge of the freighter. The re-run had been punishing by the rules of the Honor Guard drinking game; Victor had saved the day, again, and had demonstrated the value of regulated personal possession of nuclear weapons.

Six empty cans were strewn over the grubby bridge. Behind his back, a yellow light blinked on a panel; a momentary air pressure anomaly just occurred in the sealed, airless hold of the freighter.

He ignored the warning light. Pressure seals did, after all, just wear out sometimes. The hull was intact, it's only an internal problem.

His own virtual "Liquid Waste Storage Full" warning light was burning an angry red; he staggered off to the head.

The door to the sleeping quarters was closed, which prevented a great deal of screaming. His crew-mate had made a successful attempt to eat his pillow and had smothered.

On the bridge, a single light lit on the communications console -- video was being uploaded from the freighter's internal cameras. The lights dimmed, and the view-screen filled with blue static.

Bob, visibly relieved, walked into the bridge to see three words flashing on his view-screen in a field of static.

YOU'RE A WINNER!

He walked up to the window-sized flat screen, visibly confused.

A face appeared -- leonine with ice-cold blue eyes and a shock of dark hair, a short female with hypnotic eyes.

She said, "Don't turn around."

Bob panicked, and did.

An arm reached out of the view-screen and grabbed him by the nape of the neck, pulling him through to the other side.

"I told you not to turn around."

A moment later, the woman stepped casually out of the view-screen.

She sat down in the captain's chair, brushed an empty can off the armrest, and summoned a squat, fat brown toad-dog thing with flapping bat wings and scaly skin. It hovered uneasily a moment before the woman's gaze fell upon it; it spasmed and turned to face her.

"Enter, Demonslayer."

The imp opened its mouth to speak, and its voice was that of an old woman with a sing-song voice.

"Number Six. You've secured the vessel."

"No, just captured it. What do you need me to do to the cargo?"

"Ensure the charges can be armed locally, without outside interference, then land as per the flight plan. My agents will meet you at the East Pole star-port."

Jinx Bubastis thought for a moment. The cargo of ten thousand bug bombs would take days to prepare, although her mind raced for short-cuts. Perhaps she could steal the private key of an exterminator or demolitions specialist, provision a few thousand security modules, set them up to be unlocked with a simple transaction modules and a short PIN code...

"It will take a while."

"Don't rush."

The imp tried to pause dramatically, which was somewhat sabotaged by the frantic fluttering of his undersized bat-wings.

"You will betray me. I know this, I have prophetic dreams. But you will give me the tools we need. Fare thee well, hireling."

The imp went limp, and flopped gracelessly to the floor.

Jinx Bubastis glared at the ectoplasmic lower astral ambient tulpa, and it wearily opened a single urine-yellow eye.

"Clean up the bridge. I have some corpses to space."