Friday, November 19, 2010

Newspaper Airplanes Prt 3

Yuri backpedals, eyes wide in stringent shock.

"What!?" He yells, stepping forward now. Aggressive, alpha, predatory, hunter. "WHAT!?" Fists slam into a desk before convulsing fingers grip the edges and throw the construct with more physical force than the look of a gentlemanly older man he'd so cultivated would be capable of.

Brent backpedals as Yuri approaches him. "Look, man, look, it's just not working out."

"Is not working out!? You-!" Yuri spat, his language jerking into something altogether foreign. Brent has his hands up to appease or calm Yuri, only the older man backhands him strong enough to bawl him over. He shakes his head, hard, trying to find grounding. His neck is smarting something fierce.

"We come to this city, you promise us much. Now you wish not to fulfill deal?"

"Look, man, Yuri -- it's..., it's just, what you're doing man, it ain't right."

"Is not right? We give you money, weapons, power, you give us...minerals. What is hard?"

"Have you even fucking looked outside, Yuri!?" Brent shrieked.

"Is beautiful, yes."

"You can't fuckin' destroy the city, man! It's wrong!"

Yuri falls silent. Brent waits, watches, feels his gut turning. He's starting to smile wickedly, like this is a game, a joke with a punchline he isn't getting.

"Yuri, are you even listening to me?"

The wrenching in his stomach becomes reality as a blade shivers through his spine into his abdominal cavity. He's falling now, eyes staring at a ceiling just as disturbed as the landscape outside. Craters everywhere. And Yuri, he walks over to stand above him, a monolith.

"You understand little,... Brent. We do not care about your cities, only resources."

He then nods and Brent never sees again as a foot connects with the base of his skull.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Newspaper Airplanes Prt 2

Dvor is still talking with the older gentleman. They're ironing out details of the exchange, deciding on a place and time for the drop point. He's asking about the technology that will be received as payment for the transaction. Outside, the rumble of diesel engines quakes in the night, echoing with the onslaught of the disturbed reverberations as trucks pass by not even a hundred meters from the meeting place with seacans straddling their frames.

A horn bellows as a cargo ship begins to cast off farther down at a different pier. Crisscrossing slashes of lightbeams cut through the darkness that feels heavy with fumes. Yosef coughs as a flicker of a spark erupts from his lighter and he inhales deeply on the cigarette. His face becomes subsumed in an orange glow a moment before being drowned in a small eruption of smoke.

Dvor is talking, explaining that the technology needs to be handed over, and soon, or there may be repercussions. But the old man isn't paying any mind to the threat, only molesting a dull brass coin in his fingers. That silence extends, awkward, frustrating, perhaps irritable as that man places a reassuring hand upon Dvor's shoulder.

"I'm afraid you misunderstood my intentions," he says. "I said I was going to take it. All of it."

Dvor turns his face to reply, only as his head turns, it crumples beneath a sudden surge of light and noise. Green/black blood, grey bone with grey matter and what looks like computerized parts all smudge together in macabre art painting a scene on the floor as Dvor's arms go slack and his legs give as his dead body collapses in on itself in a heap.

The old mans attention turns. Yosef stands at the doorway, the stub of a cigarette clutched in his hand. His face is set in rage, almost impotent. He shifts, trains, but Yosef is moving. Outside, away. Another display of shock and awe ripples through the muffled night. Only there is no shuffling off of a mortal coil.

"You missed, boss."

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Newspaper Airplanes Prt 1

The white static of an overcast sky scudded over the bustling port. A dark parapet wavered off in the distance, the musings of a storm slowly percolating forward. Later with the onset of evening, the usual rumble of the cranes removing cargo from the ships on Pier 19 to be loaded onto trucks and ferried off ground to a halt with the shift change in process. White spotlights came on, drowning the darkness in some sections as evening turned to night in a slow parody of death.

Yosef danced past a forklift and through the maze of sea-cans. A little further in, into and out of pools of light amid the sudden beginnings of renewed hustling, and he arrived at the warehouse. Through a sliding door and past holes that glinted beneath the light pollution burning at the edges of shadows with vigor, he checked over a number of carry cases piled together. His crew was opening some, pulling the contents out of the foam packing.

Behind him, an older man was being shown about the varying displays of technical force application. He was grandfatherly, Yosef thought, but his motives were fairly clear in this regard -- a need for the application of will to make known a resolute disposition that force would indeed be used as the ultimatum. The means would make for a rich end for some, and a dead end for others. He heard Dvor talking. "This you will like. Is railgun, but better. Fires two foot long self replicating explosive nanites. Kinetic blast, it acts as primer, trigger, for self replicating explosive. You can destroy whole city block with one shot."

The man nodded as Yosef passed by, moving toward another case. Looking over the markings, he opened it and glanced at the weapons inside. Styled after an assault rifle and chambered for what looked like a twelve-gauge slug. SD20s. Nasty business, those. Shockwave rounds capable of pulverizing most anything through blunt force alone. If those didn't sell, well, Yosef didn't know what would.

"You will like these," Dvor began again, going on about some new gadget that would pulverize the tallest skyscraper and the most heavily armored vehicle. Capable of turning them into disfigured corpses, twisted amalgams of metallic polymer constructs mimicking a functional form no longer. There was definitely an allusion to macabre artwork in there, somewhere.

The old man, he nodded again. "I'll take it," he said. "Which ones?" Dvor asked. "All of it," he replied with a glint.

Yosef spun his right arm around in a quick circle over his head, calling for everything to be packed up and moved. Dvor and the man were now talking details while Yosef moved the materials out. Outside, the rustle of machinery echoed as the whine of a diesel motor rose and fell, churning. A few liftgates were lowered, doors opened, equipment loaded. It would be dropped off at a location yet to be decided -- Dvor and the old man were deciding that now. Yosef just liked the fact he'd be getting paid. Who cared who died or what got destroyed? Who cared...