Two Steps Forward - One Step Back

[Maharg67]

Story Begins in the Captive City of Every Forced Harmony.

 

Two steps to freedom!?

 

 

A TO Z OF CHARACTERS

 

Annie, AlternateEarth of the 2030s

 

Astrid, AlternateEarth of the 2030s

 

DareDanDo, Special

 

Edward, AlternateEarth of the 1950s

 

Bernard Quatermass, AlternateEarth of the 1950s

 

Helen Hale, AlternateEarth of the 1950s

 

Lieutenant Crale, AlternateEarth of the 1950s

 

Lisa Evans

 

Marshal Nelson, AlternateEarth of the 1950s

 

Nina Sharp, AlternateEarth of the 2030s with the Great Sphere.

 

Paddy Jackson, Special, AlternateEarth of the 1980s. (False Eternal)

 

Peter Bishop #1, AlternateEarth of the 2030s with the Great Sphere (born on other AlternateEarth)

 

Olivia Dunham #1, AlternateEarth of the 2030s with the Great Sphere

 

Olivia Dunham #2, AlternateEarth of the 2030s with out the Great Sphere

 

SadHat, Special

 

SamWaSam, Special, HarmonyCity (Sammy Tomkins)

 

Stella Ketchen, AlternateEarth of the 1950s

 

SueToSar, HarmonyCity

 

Tammy Tomkins, Special, AlternateEarth of the 1980s

 

Tommy Tomkins, Special, AlternateEarth of the 2030s

 

TT-Jane, TT-Clone of Tommy Tomkin

 

TT-John, TT-Clone of Tommy Tomkin

 

TT-Tom, TT-Clone of Tommy Tomkin

 

Walter Bishop #1, AlternateEarth of the 2030s with the Great Sphere

 

Walter Bishop #2, AlternateEarth of the 2030s with out the Great Sphere

 

A TO Z OF PLACES

 

Adelaide, Australia

 

Bethena, Australia

 

Boston, former USA, Union of America

 

Brisbane, Australia

 

HarmonyCity, inside the Great Sphere

 

Melbourne, Australia

 

New York, former USA, Union of America

 

Perth, Australia

 

Robertville, Australia

 

Sydney, Australia

 

Washington DC, former USA, Union of America

 

A TO Z OF FACTIONS

 

British Commonwealth Empire, British Empire (Versions of this on more than one AlternateEarth)

 

DeathLords (Traditional FactionLords)

 

DeathlessLords (Former Traditional FactionLords)

 

Eternals, EternalLords (Unique)

 

GuardianLords (Alternate Origin)

 

HarmonyLords (Traditional FactionLords)

 

MassDynamic Corporation

 

SanctuaryLords (Alternate Origin)

 

TimeLords (Alternate Origin)

 

TripleLords, TripleEmpire (Former Traditional FactionLords)

 

TruthLords (Unknown Origin)

 

UndeathLords (Former Traditional FactionLords)

 

United States of America

 

United States of Earth

 

UnityLords, Unity (Former Traditional FactionLords and Unity)

 

UtopianLords, New Utopians (True Illuminati) (Traditional FactionLords)

 

To be edited and added to!

To be added to as the story extends out.

Edited July 9, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

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0001: Of SamWaSam and Others

 

Officially it was called the City of Every Forced Harmony but this was not a human given name and they just called it, with some irony, HarmonyCity. HarmonyCity was a slave city and humans were mostly slaves there, though quite well cared for slaves. The city was large but very basic in layout and in its various structures. It was a great disk edged by the great, low hulking rimwall. The buildings were all domes of differing sizes or cube blocks of differing sizes. The breings, the tall angular beings managing the city did not like this too much at all, would retreat to their garishly beautiful city when ever they could. The humans had gotten used to it and as for the plants and animals, they did not seem to care much. Who began to know what the quasiliving silicon based mechadroids thought. The breings were quasiliving silicon based entities but seemed more capable of communicating on a human level and visaversa.

 

SamWaSam was considering such matters as he planned escape, not just for himself but for others also, from the dreadfully oppressive and boring metropolis. Yet there was also the dark side to the city that humans did not often dare to, or want to talk about. SamWaSam had been carefully researching the existence of the Undercity, that officially did not even exist, and what went on there. Not forced harmony there, no, often quite the opposite. Yet he had never been there.

 

SamWaSam was a product of careful breeding of human stock and of genetic engineering. His people were not wild-humans of the LostEarth long ago absorbed, and transformed, by the expanding OomAnaOom, as the breings called it with out ever explaining what it meant. SamWaSam suspected that they did not even know but he also knew he could be quite wrong about this. He was often frustrated by his lack of knowledge and the many blocks to his learning more. SamWaSam was of standard adult size and shape for a young man. His skin was the dull copperish of a Gamma and if he was able to go higher through the Castes he would go through painful treatments to turn his skin silvery or even golden. He was hairless. His eyes were pale green. Humans did have variations of eye color being pale blue, green or brown.

 

Everything was as basic as possible and technologies were cut to a few multiple purpose units and a few special purpose units. SamWaSam was working his first duties as a Bicycle Courier, pedaling a basic but sturdy and reliable bicycle through the straight streets and ring circuits of the round city. He rode the bicycle carefully, but quickly as possible, wishing to both please his human overseers and breing managers while not incurring any fines or worse. There were many bicycles and other pedal-vehicles used by humans along with compact, basic electric vehicles. Being a male adult, SamWaSam wore a dark, dull blue set of coveralls along with a singlet, undershorts and socks. It was a typical type set of clothes that he had worn since being a baby but in his childhood everything had been a light, dull blue.

 

SamWaSam had taken the job because it was not very popular, being too risky for fines as far as most humans were concerned, to try to learn more about the layout and other facts of the city. So far he had ridden only through areas more familiar to him, of type even if he had not gone there. There were human residential zones, human work zones, human special service-support zones, special industrial zones, special service-support zones, breing residential zones and others he was not so sure of. There were electric trams and trains running through the Subway Network that also had underground roadways for normal, faster and slower heavier transports. That was the Midcity, that was below the Surfacecity but above the Undercity that officially did not even exist. Much of the Midcity was full of service-support networks of network-systems. Apart from the physical fitness, and the challenge of getting packages to given destinations in time enough to gain bonuses, he was quickly becoming frustrated with how little he was actually learning.

 

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[Maharg67]

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0002: Of SamWaSam and Others

 

SamWaSam liked looking at young women, at older women, all being 'slimly muscular and lightly voluptuous' as the official descriptions had it. SamWaSam was drawn to one young woman, though, for other reasons. She was hiding it very well but she was frightened. He could also 'sense' there was something different about her, something hinting strongly at a kind of mutation forbidden by the Coda of Every Forced Harmony, which humans called the HarmonyCode with a good deal of dark irony. The young man had finished doing a couple of longer courier runs, taking small important packages to various commercial operations centres. His bicycle was parked outside with others. There were no locks because there was almost no crime in HarmonyCity; nobody dared to commit any except for a very small minority. They were those who wished to escape down to Undercity, those who were professional criminals way beyond stealing mere bicycles, very cunning rebels or renegades and a few others.

 

They were in a community caferteria serving all citizens in theory but in practice serving mainly Copper Caste Citizens. The CCCs were the majority of all caste citizens. Everything was basic, standardized, about the venue, the furniture, the fittings, the decorations, the service, the goods, the employees and the customers.

 

He did not think that he was being very smart as he acted casually while going to her assistance. He came up beside her and spoke as if knowing her. "Fancy seeing you here. It has been ages since we were together in HarmonySchool!" He spoke of the one HarmonySchool that had many campuses, including the special central campus. All children went to HarmonySchool but not all managed to graduate. SamWaSam had not met this one in HarmonySchool but it would be hard to prove otherwise thanks to the way that HaromySchool was run.

 

She frowned softly at him, as if figuring he wanted to seduce her as was often the way with young men, but when she looked into his eyes she visibly relaxed. "Oh it is you but I fear I forget your name. Please forgive me. My name is SueToSar. I am new to this area. Perhaps you could assist me in finding a particular place that I am searching for. By your badges I note you are an official Bicycle Courier and there is a good chance you know this area."

 

"I am SamWaSam!" He began to flirt lightly with her, body language wise. "Yes, I can show you about because my jobs have ended for the day. I have been doing well and gained bonus free time that I can spend before any new jobs are given me to do. I will buy you a mealpack, a snackpack and a drinkpack to show my pleasure at our meeting together."

 

She smiled. "I will gratefully accept."

 

A perfectly square shaped 3Dscreen of a telescreen, on one wall, was showing apparently happy CCCs busy assembling deskcomputers from multiple modular, interchangeable, solid state parts. While a large minority of manufactured items went to be used by HarmonyCity itself, often being made from reclaimed or recycled parts, the majority went to unknown destinations and uses. The great majority of processed resources, as used in manufacturing, came from outside from unknown sources. 3DTV-sets, bicycles, electric stunguns, clothes, authorized books, multiple purpose disks, basic roboremote units, mealpacks, bandage-kits and a whole lot more. Yet there were also many items that were never used in HarmonyCity, at least not officially; these last were made in highly secured and secretive industrial complexes so SamWaSam had only heard vague whispers of the products from such places.

 

They found a booth designed for two, it would not be good to use a booth for more people if it did not have to be done, and consumed the items they had picked up from the bored serving staff.

 

The telescreen had switched to showing the awful way that wild humans behaved with one another. Filthy humans in ragged clothing, often exposing extra body areas with rips or just disregard for decency, a family crowded a dirty, chaotic dining room and shouted, screamed, groped each other, did other rude acts and generally were shown as being monstrously insane. The big problem with such propaganda was that HarmonyCity humans were openly supportive of the official point of view but secretly they often enjoyed observing such scenes on the telescreens. This was especially true for the 'rude' and 'violent' bits. SamWaSam figured this was because it was an escape from the enforced harmony that humans were placed under constantly. Perhaps the officials were not so dumb after all.

 

He groped one of her legs in a fashion that was supposed to be hidden and do so in a fairly clumsy manner, that was also deliberate. She not only put up with it but played along. This was a fairly common kind of event and others there pretended not to notice anything. Nobody could be bothered to call the HarmonyPolice and the HarmonyPolice would not have wanted to be called for such a petty act that was at most semilegal. Officially it was the duty of another network to deal with semilegal acts but nobody called them. In some ways the HarmonyCarers were hated more than were the HarmonyPolice.

 

The food and drink were fairly bland of flavor, the snacks less bland, and it was highly nutritional. Three times a week there was the offering of fresh fruit, vegetables and salad along with fruit juice. Coffu was the lightly nutritional coffee substitute as used by wild humans. They ate and drank everything that was served up to them for to do otherwise was considered bad, would attract unwelcome attention. As it was they got softly frowned at by a fanatical member of the HarmonyHelpers, a network of volunteers who actually seemed to believe all of the official propaganda. In some ways the HarmonyHelpers could be more dangerous than either the HarmonyPolice or HarmonyCarers.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

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0003: Of SamWaSam and Others

 

SamWaSam contacted his Area HQ and made sure he got no more jobs for that day. This did not greatly please HQ but neither did it annoy them for he had done very well as a bicycle courier. Then he stored the courier bicycle in a special bicycle locker before hiring a two person electric scooter for three hours plus. As a Gamma, or CCC, he did not get a great deal of credit for his work but hiring scooters was not very expensive; anyway he had managed to save up a fair amount of excess credit, so much so that the HarmonyGovernment had sent him Emails asking him to be a better consumer. They would only ask for so long then would come demands followed by fines.

 

SamWaSam enjoyed the way that the young woman snuggled against his back, liked the feel of her breasts against his back, and her arms around his waist. SueToSar seemed to enjoy being physically close up against him, or so he 'sensed' was the case. He was soon traveling carefully, efficiently, through the traffic as a courier was trained to do and he was an excellent courier. He wanted somewhere to go where there was a chance of real privacy. There were rental cubicles for adult lovers, complete with resources such as vibrating beds, holographic projectors and special vending-machines. Heterosexual couples got half price for some things for the government wanted new children to be born. Contraceptives were not allowed unless under special conditions. The problem with such places was that they were secretly monitored.

 

Yet SueToSar soon had them going to such a place where they made love three times but also massaged each other and talked about general stuff. It was very pleasurable but SamWaSam 'sensed' that his female companion had a hidden agenda, a secondary purpose behind what she was doing. He also knew, somehow, that he had helped to make her pregnant and that, it hit him, she had come looking for a man to do just that. How this information, or why, SamWaSam did not know.

 

SamWaSam woke up, from being drugged, with an awful throbbing headache and some nausea. He woke to the hard, fake smiles of two HarmonyPolice Constables and a Sergeant. The constables were Gammas, as was SamWaSam, but the sergeant was a silvery skinned Beta, or SCC. It did not help that he was draped, naked and uncovered, across the big vibrating bed that was humming softly. He groaned and then gratefully took a pill, a plastic glass of cool water and drank the pill down. He sat up, naked except for a sheet draped modestly across his lower half, and knew he was likely in trouble. Yet matters were not to work out as he feared.

 

After he felt better, he even got to take a very short massaging shower, he sat across from the woman sergeant. Of course he was dressed now as a courier once more. She was frowning softly at him as she spoke. "You will not be charged, though perhaps we could do so as to your acting like a typical young fool, but you have copulated with and, most likely, impregnated a very dangerous kind of rebel. Such women seek out young men, like yourself, who they 'sense' have a high psychic potential. Your life as a bicycle courier is over. Your plans to escape from the city are ended before you could get yourself into even greater trouble by trying to carry them out. Yes, we have been carefully observing you and, no, we are not really HarmonyPolice though we wear the uniforms of those clods. You are exceptionally intelligent, gifted in many other ways and you are a 'deep psychic'. We are HarmonyGuardians and you will be serving us from now on. It is either that or termination for you are too potentially dangerous to be allowed to be outside of our control. Of course you will have to graduate from our basic education training course first and in that I wish you luck. Now, you live in a communal cluster with five other young men that you seem not to have much social contact with."

 

The woman spoke not as if threatening him but as if she was simply giving him some hard facts.

 

He frowned, daring to be more honest. "They are typical Gammas. They want nothing more than a life of basic work, basic entertainments, some special holidays and events, followed by retirement to the standard nine years in the Pleasure Estates. Three are players-followers of bash-ball games, one is a player-follower of maze-racing and the other is addicted to adult stimsims. I suspect that you know all of this already."

 

The woman nodded. "The young man with the addiction has been picked up by the HarmonyCarers, good luck to him, for mandatory therapy at one of the Harmony Care Centres."

 

SamWaSam felt a moment of pity for the man though he had never really liked him but mostly he was busy feeling sorry for himself. Not only were his plans, to escape to freedom, been smashed but his pride had been badly hurt by the revelation that he had not been as clever as he had assumed he was being. "I could ask more questions about the woman, who tricked me into making her pregnant, but I suspect you will not answer."

 

The sergeant nodded. "Perhaps after you have graduated. Now you have another task to carry out. You will make love with, and help make pregnant, these two women. We will not want to lose your genetic inheritance in case you fail to graduate."

 

Now he figured to fail graduate meant some horrible fate, perhaps death or perhaps worse, he was not really in the mood for sex. Yet he managed to get himself into the proper mood. The two young women, fake constables, were attractive, sexy, to his way of thinking and so he did not find it too hard to get into the 'mood'. He doubted that this was a coincidence. The fake sergeant gave him a datacard, full of important data, and then she departed with out a backward glance. SamWaSam made love with the two women, both being young but a couple of years older than himself, and managed to help make both of them pregnant.

 

Then, as he had been instructed to do, he used the subway network to go home, going part of the way by monorail train and part of the way by monorail tram. 'People' would pick up the bicycle and return it to the courier network and the scooter would be returned to the public rental transport network. He was to have no further contact with people he had known. Since he had not really known anybody at all, this turned out to be quite easy. His world had become even less free, more transparent, than it had once been and this did not please him at all.

 

There were some special security networks that were spoken of only in careful whispers by most people. One was the HarmonyGuardian Network, another was the HarmonyEye Network and yet another was the HarmonyWatcher Network. Little practical, concrete, information was to be had on them for most people. For instance, what was the actual difference between the HarmonyEye and the HarmonyWatchers? Now he was being forced to serve one of those dreaded networks and he was feeling both fearful and yet excited by the challenge.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

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0004: Of SamWaSam and Others

 

The basic education training course for the HarmonyGuardians was hard, very hard, but not as terrible as SamWaSam had been led to believe before he started. He, and his few possessions, were shifted to a secured complex where he was placed in a fairly large and semiluxurious apartment. The course took of five days of every week, the weekends being odd ones for him. Yes he was generally free of duties but every weekend two or three fertile women were sent to be with him, for him to make love with, for him to help make pregnant. The basic education training went for three years and he was astonished by the large number of children that he fathered during that time. SamWaSam had never much considered many basic facts of the society that he was in but now he began to ask questions that before had not even occurred to him to ask. The answers astonished him!

 

Just how big was HarmonyCity? He had figured it was quite large, maybe very large, having only gone to a relatively small part of it. HarmonyCity was vast! It stretched out as a disk of one thousand kilometres width and was covered by a great dome that was not visible from many parts of the city because it was the sky. The sky above was an amazingly clever 3D fake as it went through accurate, amazing looking day night cycles. SamWaSam had assumed he would need to go over or beneath the rimwall to the great blue green landscape beyond that he had heard spoken of. That landscape was also a fake projection of the HarmonyDome. His plans had always been futile because he had not known the great obstacles that faced his freedom and the terrible truth that lay beyond the HarmonyDome.

 

How many people lived in HarmonyCity and how many types of people? SamWaSam had assumed humans and breings were the majority with some others he had heard whispered of such as subhumans, semihumans, demihumans, androids and something called exoticals. As for numbers, he supposed a few millions, perhaps even a hundred million at maximum. The true figure was over three and a half billion people including breings, humans, subhumans, semihumans, demihumans, androids, exoticals and breingals. This included the peoples of the Undercity, the populations that dwelt in Midcity in order to serve-support it and those in what were known as the Semicities along with unidentified zones. The Semicities were in their own bubbles at the rim of the greater city and there were eight of them at the main directions of the compass. One of those served the breings as their place of escapism and special purposes such as religious-spiritual rituals.

 

The information he gained was staggering but it begged as many questions as it gave answers. Who, what, were the true masters of HarmonyCity and why were they never observed by the vast majority of city peoples? Was there an ultimate purpose to the city and what was it, if there was one? Just what did lie beyond the HarmonyDome? There were many other mysteries to be solved.

 

SamWaSam went through painful enhancement, augmentation processes to become a special cyborg. He became far more dangerous and more capable of surviving dangerous situations. He got to know well other cadets but never got really close to any of them. It turned out that not all cadets who failed, died, but many did in such a harsh survival exercises and live fire exercises. Others who failed were simply given other duties to serve for the HarmonyGuardians while never becoming HarmonyGuardians themselves. Roughly speaking one out of ten graduated, three out of ten died and the others went to serve the HarmonyGuardians in other ways as servitors, workers, guards and in many other roles including special troopers.

 

HarmonyGuardians were elite of elite and that was only his basic education training, the start of many levels of education and training, every one of which could kill him.

 

The strangest thing was that even at his first graduation as a base grade HarmonyGuardian he had no real idea just what the main purpose and duties were those of the HarmonyGuardians; he had only a general, vague idea of what kind of duties that they could, would be called on to carry out.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

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0005: Of Others

 

The convoy of military, and appropriated civilian vehicles, moved steadily along a slowly crumbling highway that had once been busy with motorized traffic. Mostly the convoy carried combat fatigues, and body-armor, wearing soldiers but there were both military and civilian others there. Not for over five years had any humans gone that close to the great alien dome that had grown up to dominate the central region of the continent of Australia. As they moved, the vehicles passed long abandoned machines, slowly decaying on the side of the highway. They were going northwards from the struggling, fortified city of Adelaide. The great dome loomed up in the distance. Clouds scudded wildly across the sky. The climate, the weather, the whole geography of the world had undergone many changes since the dome, actually the upper third of a great bubble, had grown up out of the ground, pushing back what it did not absorb.

 

They mainly passed local flora and fauna, some of it feral, that had managed to adjust to the increased rainfall and other effects of the change, some of them quite exotic. Kangaroos rested in the shelter of trees as the first rains began to fall of the coming rainstorm. Some feral life was non-Australian, like the rabbits and cane-toads, but others had arrived since the emergence of the alien dome. Silicon based, quasiliving, rainbow-worms writhed through the ground or slithered over, the biggest being over nine metres long and three metres thick. They were actually quite harmless, feeding mostly on sunlight, water and small amounts of certain minerals. That is harmless unless the bigger ones accidentally ran into somebody or a building or a vehicle or so forth.

 

Satellites still functioned in low orbit, with extra difficulty than they had once done, and intelligence satellites had spotted the survivalist settlement. Then contact had been made using Combined Special Forces Teams made up of hand picked veterans from around the world. With reluctance the survivalists had agreed to the use of some of their territories by the Special Mobile Taskforce. Then the convoy leaders, armored recon vehicles, were slowing and turning to move along a dirt road to get to the survivalist settlement. There were thirty-eight vehicles but seventeen of them were civilian machines, some with added armor and weapons. They were all an odd assortment of well used, well cared for machines. Some showed bullet marks, scorch marks or other signs that they had been through times of conflict.

 

The machines came onto a large, fairly clear area of low cut grass. Beyond this area, that the survivalists had cleared as part of the agreement, was the low hulking survivalist settlement. There was a low, hulking wall fortified enough to keep back even larger rainbow-worms, some low buildings and a metal gridwork radio tower. Squat guard-towers and battlements overlooked everything.

 

A LandRover four wheel drive vehicle was parked out on the edge of the field with four humans and two large dogs next to it. They were survivalists in tough reliable clothes. Some of the clothes, and the boots, were good will gifts brought to the survivalists by the Combined Special Forces Teams, the CSFTs. Fairly close, but not too close, to the LandRover was a sleekly armored recon vehicle, being amphibious with six large wheels. Close to it stood four CSFT Soldiers, tough and quiet in specialized combat fatigues and body-armor. The CSFTs got some of the best of the best equipment and supplies that were available, which was not a great deal.

 

Adrian Barnaby strode towards the newcomers, frowning hard in a tough, no nonsense manner. With him came an older woman, shorter and slimmer, but no less tough appearing. Both wore a mixture of gear, including gifts from the Combined World Governing Authority, the CWGA. Adrian Barnaby was dusky white, the woman was lightly tanned white, they seemed to work well together. Then they were halting as the envoys from the taskforce approached them being three civilians and two officers. The officers wore pistols holstered at their sides but the civilians were not obviously armed. Then they were halted, were facing each other.

 

Adrian Barnaby scowled. "About time you people came to see what was happening here. Those Special Forces chappies of yours refused to say much about anything."

 

A tall, slimly muscular officer, a man, spoke. "Glad to hear it. They were instructed to give nothing but some basic information. There are very good reasons that nobody has come this way for over eleven years."

 

Adrian scowled some more. "At least the Australian Federal Government could have sent some people."

 

"Marshal Venture of the Combined Special Forces Service, the CSFS. There is no Australian Federal Government. It collapsed, along with the Australian Commonwealth, over five years ago." The officer spoke again. "People elsewhere have been busy dealing with their own problems. The world has changed greatly since the exodus, from this region, ended some nine years ago."

 

Adrian shook his head. "Still, I am surprised that nobody came looking. At least one of the superpowers had to want to discover something. What about the good old US of A?"

 

"Gone!" The officer sighed. "All of the old governments are gone and..." The officer shrugged. "This is not the first time that I have brought the truth to isolated groups around the world. When the Alien Invasion began, if one could really call it an 'invasion', there were just over eight billion people living on the Earth, officially speaking. Now there are from two and a half to three billion people and not all are human. At least four billion humans vanished, simply vanished, in the five years following the moment when the great bubble stopped expanding. Yes, we think it is a bubble, not a dome, for most of it is underground."

 

The man and woman looked shocked and who could blame them for that.

 

The officer sighed again. "My family vanished, along with most of the rest of the population of the city of London. Survival has been a great struggle for many skills, much experience, was lost. The changes in climate and weather did not help much, nor did the collapse of governments, the rise of anarchy, the appearance of the silicon based quasilifeforms and other... problems."

 

The woman spoke then, with an odd smile. "Such as rainbow-worms? I suggest we make ourselves comfortable before we go on talking."

 

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Edited July 16, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

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0006: Of Others

 

"They did a big air strike against the 'dome' when it was very large but still growing. Royal Australian Air Force F111s and Hornets came in fast and low, unleashed missiles and then retreated. The missiles exploded against the dome with no result at all, the aircraft fled back the way they had come from, and the 'aliens' did not even bother to respond. I wonder if they even noticed." The woman shook her head in wonder. Her name was Stella Barnaby and she was a half sister to the leader of the survivalist community. Both were on the leadership council. "I saw it from a distance. The Royal Australian Defense Service must have had observers in the area because no second air strike was ever attempted. Soon after that the big exodus really began. Only a few were willing to stay. I suppose they hoped to outrun the 'vanishings' and other strange events taking place."

 

They were close to the convoy of machines, now arrayed out in a defensive, efficient manner as possible. A strange metallic array was being assembled, was rising up into place.

 

Adrian Barnaby grinned. "So you found a way to draw energy out of the air as well. Tommy Tomkins showed us how before he vanished into the outback about two years ago. A very troubled young man, he was."

 

"More troubled because you and some others gave him a hard time." The woman frowned hard at her half brother for a short time. "It was as if you wanted to drive him away. He could have told much to the people now here, could have been very helpful to them and to us in understanding what they have to tell us."

 

High overhead two brown hawks circled on the rising thermal air currents.

 

The man growled softly. "I have already told you.... I don't know what got into me."

 

The woman looked surprised. "No, you have never said that before. All you have given are endless excuses."

 

A big bush fly hummed through the air, zigzagging to avoid possible attacks from humans.

 

The woman called Olivia Dunham, once of the Fringe Division of the now gone USA, wore dull orange civil fatigues that were just combat fatigues colored differently. "Yes, you have been under some kind of psychic manipulative influence. My psychic abilities have increased greatly, have stabilized, since the coming of the Great Bubble. Such heavy, cumbersome psychic intrusions leave behind psychic residues. I suspect strongly you have been having migraine headaches, not always but fairly regularly, since this Tommy Tomkins left."

 

Adrian looked from Olivia to the handsome old man named Walter Bishop and back again. Both were staring intently at him, and his half sister in a way that bothered him. He spoke. "Please do not read my mind."

 

Olivia sighed. "Then please stop projecting your thoughts all over the place in a wild fashion."

 

Walter smiled. "Now now, Olivia, you know that most people do not understand the psychic realm and what people do not know, they often fear. This Tommy Tomkins was born here in the settlement, was he?"

 

Stella Barnaby shook her head. "Showed up out of nowhere as a young boy. He was filthy and yet surprisingly healthy except for his mind. He did not speak, let alone answer any questions, for over a year. Some of the older boys tried to bully him at first but that quickly ended. There was something about him that radiated 'suppressed threat'. He made a few special friends in the settlement, including animals, and when he left they all went with him except for three individuals. Sometimes I suspect those three continue to have some kind of contact with Tommy Tomkins but they will reveal nothing. Yes, my brother has been having migraines but they have been decreasing in intensity and frequency. They were very bad at one stage."

 

Olivia nodded. "Psychic induced physical damage that the body has been healing, perhaps with some outside assistance of a very skilled, psychic nature. I have the 'impression' that this Tommy Tomkins a very deep psychic, a very powerful one."

 

"He was many things but not very good at social activities of a more 'normal' kind." Stella spoke again. "I suggest you bring all of your people, and your vehicles, into the settlement. The rainbow-worms will not intentionally do any harm but may do so anyway. There are also powerful creatures out there that will intentionally do harm."

 

Adrian did not appear happy at the idea but reluctantly nodded. "We also need your resources, such as that big portable generator of yours, for we have some some troubles recently."

 

So it was decided. The newcomers would get a largely unused 'corner' of the settlement for their own use. There would be no full mingling thanks to a lack of trust on either side. The big structure, not yet completed, was disassembled and packed away in a truck. Everybody was busy. A main gate was opened and the convoy moved into the settlement and then to its 'corner' that was mostly made up of some unused buildings and work yards. The facilities were far from great but were fairly useful. There were two big rainwater tanks on stilts, the buildings, the yards and some walls.

 

The newcomers became well established with surprising speed and efficiency.

 

http://i592.photobucket.com/albums/tt9/Dragonpen61/Forum%20Terminal%20Pix%201/TERMINAL-IT-Workit-00070.jpg

Edited July 20, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0007: Of Others

 

Peter Bishop made his way carefully along the area between two buildings, in dark clothes and boots, holding a silencer equipped 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Because of his strange life experiences, his having been born on another AlternateEarth, he had changed and now he was slowly, steadily gaining special abilities just as Olivia and others were. With him came Jacko, a shapeshifter entity from the world that Peter had been born on but one who was now loyal to the United Nations Special Investigations Assault Force, the UNSIAR or just SIAR. It was dark but both he and his 'female' companion used night-vision goggles.

 

There was something 'wrong' with the survivalist settlement, something 'wrong' with the survivalists who were there or so had warned the message from Tommy Tomkins. It had been an empathic-telepathic message received by Olivia in her dreams. The dream had given her valuable extra information about the settlement, about some of its secrets and about what had really happened to Tommy Tomkins and his companions. They had not left the settlement but were trapped inside a small bunker beneath the settlement that had been built by survivalists over two decades before the alien bubble had arisen. The real danger could not get at the occupants of the bunker but they could not get out either. Tommy Tomkins had done wonders to allow survival but time was running out for him and the others in that place.

 

So what was the real threat? Tommy Tomkins did not know for sure but he had spoken of psychic influence taking hold of some of the survivalists, of some survivalists being manipulated while others had become traitors to their own kind. Then there were fake survivalists, that is what he called shapeshifter shaperzae for unknown reasons, that had taken the places of missing survivalists. Other people had gone missing as had all the dogs and cats, along with other animals that attacked the shaperzae. Who were the traitors? Adrian Barnaby was the leader of the traitors but there were over a dozen of them. Who were the shaperzae? There were about another dozen of them but Stella Barnaby was their leader. The others were manipulated to various degrees or were in confinement or were gone.

 

Gone? Yes, the real Stella Barnaby had escaped with some others, including many of the animals. Other animals were in the overcrowded bunker. Many animals remained in the settlement because they were needed.

 

Tommy Tomkins had not managed to get all the information across clearly but there had been clues in the dream. So what had an impressively large, pink women's knickers hanging from a clothes line meant? Peter shook his head in wonder and decided perhaps he should focus on another of the clues. Then he saw it and he grinned to himself. It was an novelty nostalgia type item, a redone 19th Century advertisement for laundry soap. On it was a picture of some clothes hanging from a clothes line including a large, pink set of women's knickers. It was leaning against the side of a house, undeath a window heavily sealed by steel storm shutters. It was clear that the house had been modified by the survivalists as much as possible to strengthen it against new types of threats.

 

The shutters appeared to be firmly locked but were not, though they were firmly closed. Thankfully they were well enough oiled so they could be opened with out any horrible noise. Peter slipped through the window beyond, finding that a heavy grillwork had been removed and placed against a wall of the bedroom inside. There was a light layer of dust over what seemed to be the bedroom of a married couple. There was a wardrobe, a double sized bed, a dressing table complete with a three section mirror, a small table, a television set and some other items. Nothing had been taken, at least not since the dust had settled down. Peter stepped onto a large, round carpet that covered about half of the concrete floor of the chamber.

 

Jacko, who had taken the shapeform of a beautiful young oriental woman for reasons Peter did not really want to know about, slipped into the room behind him. She drew out a 9mm semiautomatic pistol complete with a silencer. Peter drew his own gun out, which was identical in type of both gun and silencer. They were standard issue weapons for SIAR field operatives. Peter wished he had something more powerful but, then again, he had some odd abilities and Jacko had enhanced physical abilities beyond those of humans.

 

They carefully closed the shutter behind themselves because being discovered in the room was something that they did not want to happen.

 

Jacko spoke softly. "Violent death has taken place here, perhaps about three months ago."

 

Peter knelt and looked under the bed. "Yes and here is some proof of it having happened and very strange proof it is."

 

The skeletal remains were of three adult figures but though they were wrapped in human type clothes, they were not humans.

 

Jacko frowned hard. "Not like my kind at all, a very different kind of shapeshifter. Hopefully they are not as dangerous as my kind are. They were shot dead, as far as I can ascertain, with much skill. Somebody assassinated them."

 

Peter felt an odd 'vibrancy' in the air and he looked around carefully but not for something that was visible in the normal 'way'. Both he and Olivia could see things that most others could not see. Then he saw the soft shimmering in the corner of the room, beneath a large coffee table type table with two large drawers. On it was an electric fan with an electric cable leading to a power point on the wall. Peter told Jacko what he was seeing and the two of them moved more slowly towards that corner.

 

The table vanished and was replaced by a wooden hatch in the floor. It had been an amazingly real seeming illusion, an extremely accurate one but mostly a trick on the minds of those observing the room. The power point was still there and next to it was the electric swivel-fan. Peter moved slowly towards the hatch and then stopped again. He was checking for yet more illusions and possible booby-traps but there seemed to be neither. The hatch was well made but of basic design. He opened it up by lifting up the hatch and then he was looking at a basic shaft going down through rock and a sturdy looking metal ladder bolted to one wall.

 

Jacko spoke. "I wonder why nobody has come here to take anything for use. I am going to see what has been left here in the way of resources."

 

There were mainly personal and domestic items like clothes, footwear, some books in a bookcase, some jewelry in a box on the dressing table, half full perfume bottles, a big old electric outdoors torch, a double barreled twelve gauge shotgun, a box with five shotgun shells, a big old notebook half full of scrawled notes, a laptop computer, some DVDs, magazines, newspapers, hiking boots, photograph albums and a few other such items.

 

Jacko showed Peter the big old notebook. "There are some odd jottings here. I suggest that you take a look."

Edited June 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0008: Of Others

 

The big old notebook listed curious events in a chronological order but under some curious abbreviations and anachronisms. 'Duplications' were noted as pertaining to numbers and types of items. 'Healings' to certain people or animals or even plants. Then there was something to do with 'summonings' along with odd items 'summoned'. Mostly there were terms that seemed to make no sense, along with lots of use of initials that did the same. The pattern ran over a time span of some three years before coming to an abrupt ending.

 

"So the survivalists also have tapped into the alien energies." Peter shook his head in wonder. "This close to the Great Bubble it appears that at least a couple of individuals were doing so. TT would most likely be Tommy Tomkins but there are at least.... yes, four other sets of initials here as linked with the 'powers'. Remember the woman in New York who summoned those hand-spiders with her nightmares?"

 

"Considering I was one of those who had to deal with them, thanks to my immunity to their venom, I certainly do." Jacko paused to admire herself in a mirror for a moment before speaking again. "She is in the Hexagon now, inside the Isolation Shield. When she does summon, they have her summoning pink fluffy rabbits with small sharp teeth. Not great but far less a threat than the hand-spiders."

 

Hand-spiders like a horrific combinations of malignant furry monster spiders and groping claw nailed hands. There were still some of them in confinement being studied. Luckily they could not reproduce for some dozens had escaped into the abandoned zones of New York. What had one surviving pop star called the times? Yes, the Big Bad Sad!

 

They put the notebook back after Peter carefully digital photoed every page and the covers.

 

The building was at the very edge of the area given over to the use of the expedition. Beyond it was a high metal fence, topped with barbed wire, that looked quite newish. It was as if at least some people in the settlement had made careful preparations for newcomers. Two large bombs had already been found, hidden beneath building foundations, and defused. Nobody in the expedition considered this the end of the danger indeed the Special Forces Soldiers said the bombs had been too easy to find, that they might well be tricks to make people feel safe when they were not.

 

Jacko went down the shaft ladder first and dropped lightly into a fairly large, bare rocky chamber full of darkness. The night-vision goggles took care of the darkness at first but after Peter reached the chamber, they turned on an electric light-bulb hanging from a ceiling. The big oblong shaped room was mostly used at one end, away from the hatch which was the other other end. Or at least it had been used. There were workbenches, worktables, machine-tools, racks of tools, work aprons on hooks, various items being worked on, a couple of tables and about five chairs close to the tables. There was a small basic kitchen area with refrigerator, turned off with the door open, a small electric cooker on a bench and some other kitchen type items.

 

There were two metal doors and a vent shaft covered with a metal grill.

 

Peter looked around with a puzzled look on his face. "Something is not quite right with this room, not quite right at all."

 

There was a strange shimmering effect and what had appeared to be an empty area now had a young woman, in stained coveralls and boots, standing there holding a revolver-pistol. Also the chamber also looked used now, as if it was always being used. The woman was Aboriginal with lighter dark skin of some European influence. She did not seem ready to use the gun but held it with the barrel aimed at the floor. She was more cute than threatening looking, having large brown eyes and lots of frizzy black hair.

 

She spoke. "Tommy said you would be coming. He drew drawings of you two. The horrors don't come down here. They can't find the place and they are frightened of Tommy Tomkins, though they pretend otherwise. This is where we spend time when we are waiting for visits from people living with the horrors up there. Shapeshifters but not like you, Jacko. You are not like us but there is something very awful about them. Tommy said you are a silicon based quasilifeform and that somebody called William Bell helped to design you but based on 'alien' materials found inside a meteorite. You are very lovely looking."

 

Jacko smiled, nodded and shook back her hair. "So are you, sweetie!"

 

Peter sighed. "You are both very pretty but can we please focus here. Where is Tommy Tomkins?"

 

The very young woman shrugged. "My name is Annie, by the way, and we do not know. He communicates with us through our dreams, sometimes. He says he is on something called an AlternateEarth and that the alien bubble is there also, is somehow on two different worlds but is the very same bubble, the very same place inside the bubble. He says lots of things like that! I find it hard to understand most of it but so do lots of people. The traitors may not be traitors, at least not all of them, because there may be something extra wrong with them. Tommy says they will leave soon because they failed to get Tommy and some others, which was their mission goal, and because you lot will show up, you being too dangerous for them."

 

Which was when a soft shudder of an explosion went through the chamber and the fighting began.

Edited June 10, 2012 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

0009: Of Tommy Tomkins and Others

 

Tommy darted across the abandoned street of the abandoned town, moving with amazingly fast speed. He leaped upwards, grabbed a fire-escape section and then was darting up the stairs. The metal fire-escape was rusting but it had been perhaps a year since the last of the humans had gone from the town. In his survival fatigues and other gear, Tommy came to a halt beside a open apartment window on the second level above the ground floor. There he crouched and, with great care, reached out with his mindeye after closing his eyes.

 

Two zombies were shambling stupidly along a footpath. They had once been a middle aged woman and a young man. They were transforming as their skin became hairless and leathery, their eyes blackened, their teeth extended into fangs and their nails of their hands into claws. One moaned softly, hungrily in the semidarkness of coming night. In the far distance lay the Great Dome, the exposed upper third of the Great Bubble. When it had come to that world, so had come the bizarre toxic gases as released from huge vent-tubes that had grown out of the surface of the 'dome'. The toxic gases were heavier than air and so moved closer to the ground as clumps of fog driven by local air movements though sometimes it seemed they moved all by themselves. Plants and many other lifeforms were immune or more immune. Animals either fled or dug downwards or climbed above the mists or found other, curious ways to survive as if some 'force' was guiding them to survive. Many humans had 'sensed' extreme danger and had fled from the Australian continent or had found other ways to deal safely with the toxic threat.

 

But not all humans of that world had been so wise as to deal with the Green Fogs so wisely.

 

Then had come the second wave of threats that arose out of the Green Fogs.

 

The majority of zombies were almost mindless unless controlled by the undeathly presence. A large minority were smarter, most being mindful enough to use guns, to take care of guns but never to design them. A very small minority were more intelligent and had strange powers including that to control the mindless zombies, to direct numbers of them; the number controlled depended on the power, talent and experience of the controller. Yet there was another set of minorities known as the superzombies and the vampires. Perhaps there were others that Tommy had not yet discovered either directly or indirectly.

 

Local human technologies were comparable to the 1940s and 1950s of the AlternateEarth that he had grown up on but with some odd exceptions. He had hidden away some of his hitech stuff and taken up a LeeEnfield bolt-action rifle because getting the ammo for it was much easier as were spare parts. The weapon was a type being replaced by automatic rifles that fired the same .303 calibre of bullets. Yet the dead soldiers he had found at the edge of the town had been armed with the older type guns. They were reliable, sturdy, powerful but slower to reload. He also had a well made, sharp, hard Japanese katana sword in a scabbard down across his back.

 

The green, softly glowing stingerbug flew clumsily through the air. It carried the zombie virus, the Z-virus, that was actually far more than just a virus but a whole biological package of doom. Only good things about stingerbugs was they had never come in anything but smaller swarms and many local lifeforms fed on them with out any ill effects or zombification changes. Tommy's hand moved with amazing speed, captured the insect like creature and soon had it placed safely inside a small sealed sample bottle. He added it to the rest of his collection.

 

The noise came clearly to his enhanced hearing. It was an electric vehicle of some kind. It approached the town from the east moving slowly and steadily. Why not an internal combustion engine driven machine? Probably because they tended to attract zombies and other threats. He focused his mindeye to pick up multiple impressions of a large, armored, large wheeled machine moving slowly towards the small metropolis. It carried equipment and supplies, protected some armor suited specialists. Soldiers in special armor suits were moving either side of it in formation. They carried automatic rifles, autorifles, that were fairly big and heavy but powerful.

 

In front of the vehicle moved a big, powerful damphir creature that had mutated alive, not become undead, that served the human cause as did others of its kind. The humanoid 'monster' was escorted by a human handler in a armor suit who bonded and cared for the big transformed human. The damphirs came in many shapeforms, many sizes, at least half looking quite human until one got closer; only a minority looked all human. One famous damphir was the black man called the BladeKnight but he was off in the USA dealing with vampires. Or at least a two year old newspaper had reported. Damphirs were a mixed bunch and a large number, though a minority, were as dangerous to humanity as were the undead while some undead were less dangerous than they were; this had been an ironic surprise for the living.

 

Tommy pondered how he would approach these newcomers. The soldiers, both in and outside of the odd electric vehicle, were understandably on edge. Then he noted the curious swiveling radar like device on top that was not a radar at all but which used N-ways to function. The laws of nature were different, it seemed, from those of the AlternateEarth that Tommy had come from, that not being the world of his birth. N-ray instrumentalities such as radar like nadars, were tricky and resource expensive to make especially since the industries of that world had suffered heavily, or were pushed to carry out demands put on them, in what was being called World War Z by many.

 

He made some basic plans.

 

Opening his eyes, he looked over the side of the two zombies and suddenly he was 'sensing' increased danger. The truth was that a powerful vampiric presence was influencing the movement of the two shambling basic undead but was doing so in a way to try to hide that they were being controlled in any way. A vampire could control all lesser undead, even the elite zombies who could control the almost mindless shamblers though the elite zombies were more troublesome to control. This was far from good. It indicated at least one cunning, powerful vampire was hidden in the area and too often such entities controlled small armies of lesser undead including almost mindless vampire-beasts. There was too much chance that the newcomers were going to fall into a trap.

 

Leaving behind the two zombies, Tommy moved rapidly across the town. First he went through the window, past some skeletal remains of dead humans who were actually killed by the Z-virus with out becoming zombies, then along a hallways, down a staircase and so on until he was running along a side street. He kept close to buildings on one side, running along the footpath. More than one kind of threat could fly and observe. Some kinds of vampire-beasts flew, acting as aerial eyes for vampires or elite zombies that were also known as zombiemans. Less intelligent, tool using zombies were also known as zombiemans. He ran past some mannequins in a display window and came to a tall building by modest local standards. It was a 'whole' ten levels high.

 

 

 

Edited June 21, 2012 by Maharg67