THE EIGHTEEN HUNDREDTH JOB

(Art: EVOLUTION by Lorenzo Lanfranconi)

These busy hours under the moon planet, red silk, pounded by years of asteroids, other military bombardments, the avalanche photon of an autumnlate sun. The sun, farther and farther off than for Mother Earth. As far as her memory – hah. Religion.

I came to kill a priest.

Before me: The Eighteen Hundredth and Gold Outpost. constructed standard x dryboard, Dempth cut out. behind the desert blackened intricately. It was yet another outpost on this world, put together with despicable care, the low light they could afford. It pulsed wearily in the early dawn. Small too. most of it was underground.

Enter no easy thing. ZZsspt.

Past .tor | the groundsfolk cast suspicion on the commshield I wore | backside, Dempth, a deep yellow disc. The people here | traders and their security, waste scoundrels, beaten down families, ex-patriots, 1les, the crust. Most could suspect the rest of the hardware. You bet. You bet. And you bet. Once in, I was in with the people. What lied below ground in great, dark hallways, clanking. < visor. Some weeks would pass, and I'd come up and learn the surface to its more wicked peoples. visor > Rising above at the center of the desert, far from the outpost, the Corporation loomed at dark angles like power's teeth. Moan landscape tectonic; the air wept my figure, felt like some all too common children's story. What the wind knew of me, the stranger with the gun. The strange chill to the strange bone. And I came to kill a priest.

Say .Where would you find religion but in the Cylinders? That's where the refugees held tight to their lives. They were packed in. Found rot cigars packed in as tight – hah. Closed in.

Religion. They owned the Cylinders. My gun heavy and me nestled in it. took real joy -/- balance in my hand. .. The Cylinders tamped the downslope westward, sideways depression, and I could feel the unfamiliar gravity walking towards it, careful. Probes flew close. .. They came to me in that canine way machines do, with bloodshot eyes. .. Engine ribbed past. The commshield I could sense was flickering, but it held strong. Only the people knew I was here. .. They were of no concern.

People couldn’t be hacked. People were gorgeous. They were. Tha-That's what I loved about them. They posed me no threat. People couldn’t be hacked. Their information of me passed so slow as to not pass atttttt alllllll. But people could not be hacked.

I kicked down the Cylinder door and disabled the rProbe with a long arc [tapper module.] The room lit up sparks. Intermittent light. I saw their faces in rows, refugees [shadows] against the wall’d acid weltsThey lay or sat in filthThe tap chord would waver darkly in my mind as the light died down, and the image stayed in my head < visor. Sparked figure, and him moving interlight amid the unholy howls, flashlight jagged to the corridorFollow focusThe figure slipping away like c-maze. He grasped at the nude dementia, fumbled wall supports and then to fall through a floor mold. to where. 

.. The cylinder fell quiet. ..

I passed through this open stage with its unfortunate audience. I performed MySelf. I walked to where the figure fallen, creepers piling darkwide. They squinted when I shone them the light. I shot five with the enjector. THEy knocked away like pale pins. I looked down and bellowed, "What will your God do now?"

A voice sent blackly called, "Why, he has sent you. what else. .." the priest. a moon bat with no features.

“Never heard it like that,” I called, threw a protein pack to the creepers. Sic’d mounted a basechord (+) and the wall gave with its draw. My eyes widened, glowed.

to me. They pushed forth. man came for the bit, with hollow eyes and wet hair and buying time.ooking up, “It is still of Earth,” he murmured. I bit the flashlight, freed my hand. I looked down and saw the priestTheir whites unblooded.

So I took the man over, was to blow blood down on those priestly eyes. Couldn't be hacked.

He was

he was he was he was was was in the hole. Beneath me. I knew, vaguely. I was being traumatized. Tdwet hair in my facehe metal taste in my nose. That I was traumatizing myself. The priest was undergoing traumatization. no matter to what. what. what. the blood poured upon him, and I let the body fall. It must have seen from him an angry silhouette.

when I said, “Who sent me?”

“The AI.” And his was small like mine.

“Were you expecting me?”

The refugees, they are the hopeful optimists are they, bellowed: Now.

Yet mine wasn’t small at all.

“What do you preach to these shades for! You tell me that.”

The mob approached as a froth. 

And then, their noise fell us to a nothing. Afar scurrying, another had entered the Cylinder < visor. I hooked myself into the basechord and leapt down on the zip to the priest, into the muck, the basechord separated, snapped to my hip. His eyes opened in the blood. 

And we took one another in.

I said, “What’s this news. Is it Earth or AI.” I said.

A turning in his irises.

And I said, “Tell me because you’re a dead man,” a light searched above. A roving then dark. A gripping of his shoulder, I was gripping his shoulder, “and so am I, but I got pretty sweet access. Pretty sweet access. None of this matters.” And this was true. We were in an underneath of concrete. He said, “Have you ever left Adorne--” “A local religion, really? No,” I snapped, and he blinked his retarded response slowly. Seemed. seemed. seemed in the dark like a child. From above, the searchlight rotated down, to us, and those shining, priestly features became gore.

“Who are you?” they asked in their metallic tones.

I told them, “Ock.”

Beneath me, I could hear the blood. < visor.

“What are you doing?”

I told them, “Kəˈmyo͞onyən.”

I looked up with the strength of my jaw.

That day, the Eighteenth Hundred and Gold Outpost was and had been but an insignificant node to/in dot the AIiiiiiiiiiiiiiii -- and the powerlines, which barely lay with electricity, could be traced cold on the outland from the air. They led to the center. Thin as devil’s hair.

Pow, pow, pow.

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#minds #writes #flashfiction #art #beauty #creativity #scifi #writing #writer

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