June 5, 2021 • 48 mins
This week's chapters from Robert's fiction podcast, "After the Revolution."
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After the Revolution. Richardson, Republic of Texas, Chapter one. Mannie
Mannie smiled the way the British journalist's face blanched as
(02:07):
the old Toyota hit the pothole. Reggie wasn't used to
bad roads, cars driven by actual humans, or the way
the heavy metal of the gun mount and the truck
bed made the aluminum frame groan. That was all familiar
to Mannie. He'd grown up in Siodad de Muerta, back
before the lake would blast, back when people had still
called it Dallice. The truck's driver veered around the bloated
(02:29):
corpse of a large dog lying in the middle of
the road. Reggie gripped the truck bed with white knuckles
and eyed the swaying ammo belt of the twenty millimeter
cannon like it was a coiled snake. The gunner, Mannie's cousin, Alejandro,
grinned down at the journalist. The suspeneon's a little fockt
ye eh. The brit nodded and turned greener. When the
technical hid another pothole. Mannie supposed he should offer a
(02:51):
comforting word to the man. That would be good business,
but a louder part of him looked at Reggie's brand
new boots and thought he can stand a little comfort.
The journalist would brag about this ride for months once
he got home. Escorting reporters from the safety of Austin
to the sundry hotspots of the old Metroplex was not
Manny's ideal career. Two years ago, he'd been working on
(03:14):
a bachelor's in business administration from the University of Austin.
The plan had been to get a job with Ages Biosystems,
then charm his way into a working visa and a
gig in the California Republic, but the fighting had started
up again and ruined all that. The culprit this time
was the Heavenly Kingdom, a loose assortment of Christian extremist militias.
(03:34):
They'd boiled out from the suburbs of the old Metroplex
and all but broken the Republic of Texas. The Autonomous
City of Austin had stabilized the situation with the help
of an alliance of leftist Texan militias, the Secular Defense Forces.
Beating them back had cost a lot in blood and
time and forced Manny to change every plan he'd ever
had for his life. So he'd embraced the situation and
(03:56):
started his own business, hiring on some friends as employees.
Together they'd built the best network of stringers in North Texas.
His boys fed him video contacts and news updates, and
he sold what he could to the big foreign media conglomerates.
In a couple more months, he'd have enough saved up
that he could fuck off, fly to Europe and apply
for a refugee visa. My ans are pretty good as
(04:18):
long as the war doesn't end too soon. The technical
rolled to a creaky stop in front of a checkpoint
that had clearly been erected within the last few days.
It was just a collapsible electronic gate and two sandbag
emplacements on either side of the battered highway. A street
sign nearby announced that they were on the edge of Richardson,
formerly a suburb of Dallas and currently a forward position
(04:39):
of the People's Protection Army, a local anarchist militia. Manny
could see the p PA's red black triangle emblem stitched
onto the jackets of the soldiers guarding the checkpoint. One
of the p PA men walked up to the driver's
side window and started chatting with Philip, the driver. Phil
and Manny's cousin Alejandro were both with the Citizens Front,
(04:59):
a more or less a political militia from the suburbs
of Austin. Both militias co existed under the broad umbrella
of the Secular Defense Forces. The SDF had been organized
by the Canadian government to lump all of North Texas's
palatable militant groups into a single package that could be
conveniently armed. While the first guard talk with Philip, his
partner did a circuit around the back of the truck.
(05:22):
The man was big, bulging, with muscles so sculpted and
prominent they had to be vat grown, and he moved
with the twitchy ungrace of a man who replaced his
nervous system with circuitry. His weapon was a very old,
very battered a R fifteen with an M two four
three grenade launcher below the barrel. The latter was old
U S military gear. The former had been someone's toy
(05:42):
before the Revolution gave America's half billion civilian guns a
new riis on debt. The man moved back to the
barricades when he had finished his lap. Reggie looked up
at Manny and asked, was he a Was he chromed?
Manny smiled. That was always one of the first questions.
As soon as any foreign journal saw trooper with a
large enough billed skin with an off shade, or who
(06:03):
just moved a little too fast to seem completely right.
Anything beyond basic aesthetic and medical modifications were banned. In
civilized countries like the UK. The real chrome, the implants
that would let a man lift a truck or take
a rocket to the belly that ship was locked up tight.
A few national militaries even used the stuff these days,
not after the revolution. He's got some fat, grown muscles,
(06:27):
Manny said, in an off handed way that suggested such
things were common aftermarket nerves too. Probably his stuff is
low grade, that's why it's so visible. Reggie nodded, his
eyes stayed locked on the big man. He was quiet
for a while before he spoke again. You just live
right alongside them, don't you. Manny shrugged. Everybody's got something
(06:47):
out here and the wet wears, but lets us hold
back the martyrs. They own the whole city if it
weren't for half fats like him. The journalist nodded, and
his gaze stayed fixed upon the militiaman until a troubled
look crossed his face. He glanced back to Manny. Are
you all chromed, Reggie asked. Manny smiled. I don't expect
either of us as stock sabien eh, but I doubt
(07:08):
I've got anything you don't. Reggie seemed somewhat comforted by this.
Most of what I've read about the really heavy mods
says they cause a lot of well unstable behavior. That's
why that's why this city such as ship Hole, Manny asked.
The journalist had the grace to blush. Manny looked away
for a moment. His eyes landed on the bones of
three large public housing buildings. A barrel bomb had detonated
(07:31):
in the center of the courtyard. All three shared. It
had peeled away the walls, some of the floors, and
the resulting firestorm had burned up everything that wasn't concrete, steel,
or rebar For just a moment, many felt bad about
hoping the war hung on. At other six months, the
old government blamed a lot on roided up veterans with
military grade mods. He told Reggie. Most was just propaganda,
(07:53):
fear mongering. People were pissed after twenty years of plague,
disaster and poverty. Manny shrugged, It's true, a lot of
chromed up vets turned on the government. You can't make
men into gods and expect them to keep fighting from men,
Reggie pointed back to the bolding militiaman, I take it,
muscles there is pretty far from a god, nah, Manny laughed.
He's just a guy with too much meat money. Gods
(08:15):
don't man checkpoints. The brit was excited. Now. These were
the questions he'd wanted to ask since they met yesterday.
Do you know where some of those people are. Reggie
couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice. Could we
talk to them? Manny didn't have any of those contacts,
nor did he know any other fixers who did. He
tried to let the Brit down easy. Most of those
folks live on the road in between the civilized parts
(08:38):
of Texas and the Republic of California, oh. Reggie looked disappointed.
The truck rolled past the wreckage of an old Catholic school.
It bore signs of being fortified, destroyed, refortified, and redestroyed
several times. The Brit was inches from asking another question
when the gate man waved them on, and the battered
Toyota farted its way into drive, belching and complaining past
(09:00):
network of potholes until it hit a relatively straight chunk
of asphalt. Only a few minutes now. Hef a. Manny said,
the p PA's forward position is about five minutes out.
He'll be in the ship then, or at least sit adjacent.
The journalist's face washed over in an even mix of
anxiety and pride. One of the first lessons Manny had
learned at this job was that phrases like the ship
(09:22):
made rich Gringo writers unreasonably excited. An excited journalists always
called Manny the next time they were in country, giving
white kids and keffee as a lifetime of bragging rights.
For surviving a couple of days in his home killed
his soul just a little bit, but Manny pushed down
the anger and told himself that a chip on the
shoulder was a lot less useful than money in the bank.
(09:42):
The Technical rolled off the old highway. Manny could see
twenty three and Spring Valley Road and blasmed on a
weather beaten, bullet scarred sign. The Technical pulled to the right,
the guns swayed in its mount Manny couldn't help smiling
as the brit instinctively pulled away from it. They rolled
up to what had once been a strip hall and
was now a forward operating base for the People's Protection Army.
(10:04):
An old laundromat, a bookstore, and a half dozen restaurants
now had their roofs ringed with barbed wire and machine
gun emplacements. Manny could see a line of bullet hole
stitched across three of the shops. None of the windows
were intact, but otherwise the buildings had weathered the war
rather well. Three M one ninety eight howitzers were parked
next to a taco shop that had once served the
(10:24):
local college kid's beer and cheap grub. There was a
flagpole out in front of the shop, and from it
hung the blue and white starburst flag of the SDF.
Three men in uniforms stood waiting as the old Toyota
rolled to a stop and Manny and Reggie disembarked. Two
of the men were officers in the p P, a
Colonel Jacob Milgram and Major Deshaun Clark. Milgram was a boring,
(10:45):
tight lipped nerdy type, but De Shaun was one of
Manny's favorite sources. He was an old infantry guy, a
consummate brawler with a face full of scars, and three
published books of poetry to his name. He actually had
a base of international fans, mostly in Spain. The third
man was Hamid Mohammed, an adviser from Syrian Kurdistan. The
Curds had been giving aid to the Sundry militias of
(11:06):
the Secular Defense Forces for years now. Manny considered Hamid
almost a local. He shook hands with Jacob since Manny
knew Deshaun better. He met the man with a full
embrace and used it as an opportunity to palm the
major a packet of his favorite cigarettes. Deshaun gave him
a wink and a smile. Manny shook Hamed's hand next,
and then kissed him on the cheek. Amid returned the kiss,
(11:27):
clapped him on the shoulder, and said, Emmanuel, my friend,
you really should get out of this business. One of
these days you'll come up here and it won't be safe.
Mannie frowned a little at the use of his birth name,
but he didn't make an issue out of the matter.
There's still a war on, right, he smiled at Hamid.
He'll get that ship under control. Maybe I'll work a
straight job again. Not too soon, though, he thought. The
(11:48):
least this work can do was last long enough to
get me out of Texas. Hamid smiled back, and Manny
introduced Reggie to the officers. The journalist was clearly awkward
in that special way Manny had come to expect from
new war correspondents. It was the norm for young writers
to be intimidated by grizzled military men. Some of them
got over that Manny had worked with a middle aged
(12:09):
der Schpiegel reporter last week, could probably take in as
much incoming fire as Major Clark. Colonel Milgram led them
into the militarized taco shop. A brief blast of nostalgia
squeezed Manny's lungs. The place had obviously been closed since
the revolution. The drink specials and meal prices printed on
the wall were given in U S dollars, a currency
as dead as the last American president. Many recognized ads
(12:32):
for bands and movies he remembered from his childhood. The
glass facade had shattered years ago. The kitchen had been
gutted and replaced by wall length screens displaying maps of
the city. At least a dozen uniformed men and women
milled around the space in small groups. He and Reggie
sat down at a long picnic table with Hamid and
the two officers. Reggie set his camera up on the table.
(12:53):
It was just a small silver sphere, but Manny knew
it could record everything happening around it at a higher
resolution than the human i and orderly brought in three beers,
shiner box from Austin and one dark brown tea and
a glass cup for hummade the brit raised his glass
in a friendly salute, thank you for meeting with me,
and then he started to ask questions. Manny leaned back
(13:14):
in his chair and enjoyed a long gulp of cold beer.
If he wasn't needed to translate, he generally checked out
during interviews. He used the free time to activate his
deck and check in on the two stringers he had
working right now. David Allenby was up in Addison today,
taking a Californian documentary crew on a tour of an
SDF training facility. He'd messaged Manny to let him know
they'd gotten through the checkpoints without any issue. Oscar Martinez
(13:38):
didn't have any journalists with him. He was embedded with
a Republic of Texas police unit getting footage from inside
a neighborhood that had recently been liberated from the Heavenly Kingdom.
There were no new messages from Oscar. His last check
in had been the night before. It was probably nothing,
but it concerned Manning. Nonetheless, what if Oscar got a
better offer for his footage. He'd always been loyal before,
(13:58):
but if that funk from the Areadian had gotten to him.
I'm interested in the Abrams Road bombing, Reggie told the colonel,
and many's attentions swung back to his reporter. That's an
odd thing to ask about. The bombing had occurred two
weeks back. It had been big news for a couple
of hours. Manny had paid one of his contacts and
rossa front for a video of a walk through of
the wreckage. It had brought in about three grand profit.
(14:21):
The Abrams Road bombing was not a martyrdom operation. Colonel
Milgram sounded almost angry, terribly sorry. Reggie said, you're right,
of course, there was no driver, so no martyr right right,
Deshaun Clark said. He pulled a folded piece of white
paper out of his pocket, opened it up, and smoothed
it out on the table. It was a map of
the df W area, color coded to show the positions
(14:43):
of the various militias in the region. We operate eight
checkpoints on that part of the Richardson line, DeShawn said,
as he pointed to each one. Five of them border
Republic controlled territory. The traffic from there is mostly autonomous,
and those vehicles slaved themselves to our traffic management system
before they can in our territory. The other three checkpoints
border territory controlled by the martyrs. They don't see much traffic,
(15:06):
and they're all heavily manned. Reggie was quiet for a
few seconds. Manny could almost hear the gears turning in
the journalist's head as he struggled to find the words
for his next question. Would it be fair to say
the autonomous checkpoints are less secure? Then, Deshaun smiled a thin,
quiet smile. Amid grimace. Colonel Milgram responded in a terse voice.
The autonomous checkpoints have fewer defenders, but they border republic territory.
(15:30):
The martyrs haven't pulled off an attack on one in
quite some time. Was Abrams Road not on such attack?
Reggie looked eager now, like a hound, following assent. We
don't know who bombed Agram's Road, Colonel Milgram said, No
one's taken credit, but we doubt it was the martyrs. Why,
the journalist asked, Manny leaned in a little interested, in
spite of himself, at where this was all going to lead. Perhaps,
(15:53):
Amid said, you should read a bit more about this
Heavenly Kingdom. They reject all autonomous technology. They even use
remote human pilots for their drones like it's two thousand
and fucking three. That's why our skies are always clear.
We jammed them. Reggie asked, is it possible they found
some way to hack your defense system? Hamid laughed, we
(16:14):
bought this system from the Israelis. If you're telling me
one of the Martyrs Brigades has a hacker who can
crack that, then I'm the King of Albuquerque. But something
still went wrong, Reggie insisted. Hamid smile turned cold. This
is war, Mr Reggie, It's mostly things going wrong. That's
where the line of questions petered out. Reggie asked them
(16:35):
for access to the security footage from the destroyed checkpoint,
and Colonel Milgram agreed to send it over. We'd like
to speak to the survivors as well, if possible, Manny interjected,
not waiting to see if the journalist would ask. He
knew those men were all stationed behind the line now,
which would make for a safer, easier rest of the
day than heading up to the wire, of course, Colonel
Milgram said, with a smile to Manny. They said their goodbyes,
(16:58):
and then Major Clark walked them out to their waiting Toyota.
The Texas heat hit like an oven as they exited,
and Manny was glad they'd be spending most of the
rest of their day in doors. Deshaun clapped a hand
on Manny's shoulder as he lit one of his new cigarettes.
It's good to see you, Emmanuel, he said, and then
he smiled at Reggie, and it's nice to meet you,
my British friend. I'm sorry you've come to the front
(17:19):
at a boring time. Why, Reggie asked, Because this Deshaun
gestured at the gun emplacements and loitering militiamen of the
command post. This is not war, not really. Your job
is to help your people, children of peace and plenty,
understand what is going on here. You must teach them
the language of war. And to paraphrase a dead poet,
(17:41):
the language of war is a language made of blood.
To be spoken, it must be earned. There was an
awkward pause, a little of the blood drained from the
journalist's face. Hugh Nutty, Old fuck, Manny thought, with more
amusement than fear. Classic DeShawn, he said, and laughed to
ease the tension. The major bid them both a good day,
hugged Manny, and sauntered off back to the command post.
(18:03):
Smoke from his cigarette curled up into the air behind
him as he walked. Manny's eyes lingered on it for
a second before he turned back to Reggie. Ready to go,
he asked Chipper as he could manage. Three hours, a
handful of interviews, and one short drive later, Manny and
Reggie arrived at their home for the night. The Richardson
Autonomous Project, once a Walmart, now a twenty two year
(18:26):
old experiment and sustainable urban living. The project was the
furthest island of civilization on the sd F side of
the Front. Its militias steadfastly refused to involve themselves in
the region's greater conflicts. They'd been targeted a few times
by the Heavenly Kingdom. The sd F, by contrast, left
them alone, so when a fixer like Manny found himself
(18:46):
on the wrong side of the L B J Freeway
after dark, he could usually trust the project to provide food, booze,
and shelter for a price. Of course, sleeping arrangements in
the project were broadly communal. The bulk of the old
Walmart had been converted into an indoor meadow with grow
lights hanging from the rafters and a wide, lush field
of native grass sprawling across most of the inhabited space.
(19:08):
Fruit trees, bushes full of berries, cannabis, plants, and copses
of bamboo lined the edges of the space. The center
of the field was dominated by a large circular kitchen
surrounded by a handsome oaken bar. Table tables, gazebos, and
sundry personal structures dotted the field, along with a pair
of dance floors. Reggie's face lit up when he saw
the bar. By the time Manny had dropped off their
(19:30):
bags and paid Charlie and the driver for the night,
the journalist was already three beers in the brit wasn't
precisely drunk or sober, but at that productive twilight in between,
he'd unrolled a portable screen and had a holographic display up,
looping four separate sections of the security footage Colonel Milgriman
sent over. The journalist alternated between typing furiously scrawling notes
(19:51):
in his journal and taking huge gulps of something brown
and foamy. He stopped working when he saw a Manny
approach and waved him into the adjacent seat. Hey brother,
check this out. Many pulled up a seat, and the
journalist directed his attention to a six second loop of
footage from immediately after the bombing. It showed two man
size silhouettes standing on top of an old garage. Many
(20:12):
remembered the building. It stood maybe two hundred meters from
the Abrams Road checkpoint. One of the silhouettes had a rifle.
The other held a short squat tube that Manny recognized
as a camera lens. Notice anything, spotters, Manny said, probably
trying to get a kill. Count. No, man, look at
where he's pointed. That Count's not looking at any post.
He's looking straight back deeper into the old town. And
(20:34):
I'll bet you he's high up enough to be staring
right at Colonel Milgram's command post. Manny looked again. He
thought about the angle. Okay, so what, he asked, You
think this was a probing attack for some big action.
The journalists shrugged. Maybe it's something new, is what interests me.
Two years of Modytem operations that all look more or
less the same, and now this weird one, an autonomous
(20:56):
vehicle bomb from a group of fanatics who think autonomous
vehicles are the evil. Yeah, Manny agreed, that does seem weird.
The bartender walked up and offered Manny his pick of
the finest liquor in this particular war zone. Manny ordered
a Shiner. It was the one beer a drinker could
find across both the Republic of Texas and the Austin
Autonomous Region. He looked back at the looping footage. They
(21:18):
both watched it twice more. Then Reggie spoke up again.
What have you heard about Pasta Mike, he asked. Manny
stiffened a little bit at the name. He had heard it,
of course, vague stories of rioting in Kansas, a fundamentalist
uprising inside the southernmost territories of the United Christian States.
He hadn't thought much about it at first, but two
years ago Pastor Mike had moved to Texas, shortly before
(21:41):
the Heavenly Kingdom had declared itself. It was hard to
say what role exactly the preacher played in the organization,
but he was certainly its most visible face. I know
who he is, Manny said. I know the Republic led
him in because they thought as followers might provide a
buffer against Austin's influence. I know that blew the funk
up in their faces. Manny took a long drink and continued,
(22:02):
that's an old story around here, the Republic using those
gone fondling nut fucks to push back against the leftists.
The journalist raised an eyebrow, and Manny instantly regretted his
crude response. He didn't really care about religion one way
or the other, but whenever he came out to the front,
it was hard not to get a little angry, especially
after a drink. Sorry, he said, it's been a long day.
(22:23):
Viggie looked down, coughed, and took a sip. He looked
back at Manny, took another sip and said, you know,
that's another subject I'd rather like to cover. What Manny asked,
anti Christian sentiment in North America. Manny grunted and looked
down at his drink. The brit barreled on, You're not
the first North American I've heard express anger towards Christians,
he said, in California, Cascadia, the North American Federation. I've
(22:46):
just seen a lot of hate. Look, Manny interrupted me.
I'm a man of piece. I love everybody, but this
continent's been torn apart in bleeding for the last twenty years,
A lot of people hate Christians. The ones that don't
hate Christians hate leftists, and everybody outside the American Federation
hates capitalists. Hate, hate, hate. Manny took a gulp of
his beer and set it down a little harder than
(23:08):
he had intended. He looked Reggie in the eye and finished,
There's exactly one thing all the broken bits of this
continent have in common. Hate. The journalist arched an eyebrow
at Manny and returned the gaze. He had the look
of a man peering into the enclosure of a particularly
exotic zoo animal. Manny wanted to resent it, but he'd
been doing this job long enough to know this was
(23:29):
just how journalists looked at people. Reggie downed his drink.
He reached a hand up to signal the bartender, and
then looked back at Manny. Can I buy you another round?
Manny shook his head, no thanks, I'm tired and I
don't want to drag ass at the front tomorrow. He
downed the last of his beer, bid Reggie a good night,
and headed over to the spot of turf where he'd
set up his sleeping bag and gear. He popped off
(23:51):
his shoes, his pants and his shirt and rubbed himself
down with a handful of wet naps. Then he grabbed
a night shirt and swept pants from his bag and
slipped them on. Manny considered clean pajamas a necessity. He
fired up his deck again once he was swaddled in
his sleeping bag. There was a juttering start, and then
the corners of his vision were populated by a series
of small, partly translucent screens. Each one bulged with updates,
(24:13):
friends asking about his weekend plans, spam from his college,
notifications about the new video uploads, and headlines from the
local news. David had messaged him twice more to let
him know he and his journalists were headed back to Austin,
and then that they'd arrived. Oscar still hadn't responded. Manny's
initial concern was over his loyalty. I got that fucker
started as a stringer. If he sold that video and
(24:35):
cutting me out of the deal, I'm going to going
to But the longer he thought about Oscar, the more
Manny worried something might have happened. He'd been working in
Plano today. You were a very stable chunk of the front,
but this far out almost anything could happen. Manny closed
his eyes, sighed, and tried to purge the anxiety from
his mind. There was nothing to do now other than
get to sleep so he could wake up tomorrow and
(24:56):
make more money. That thought prompted Manny to pull open
his Bank King app and check on the status of
his savings account. The numbers glowed fat and happy, and
the space in front of his head another five months
in the field, maybe six, then I buy that plane ticket.
He started to think about the pictures he'd seen of
Dublin and Berlin and Barcelona, all the places he thought
he might live if this war would just hang on
(25:18):
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college business class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn
about the real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works.
We got you interested in starting a truck and company
(26:44):
or vendor machine business. Not really sure about how taxes
or credit work. We got it all covered. The Earnier
Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Earnier Leisure on
the Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Robert sex Reese,
(27:05):
host of The Doctor sex Rees Show, and every episode
I listened to people talk about their sex and intimacy issues,
and yes, I despise every minute of it. She she
made mistakes too kill everyone at her wedding. But hell
is real. We're all trapped here and there's nothing any
of us can do about it. So join me, won't you?
(27:26):
Listen to The Doctor sex re Show every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio, app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
get your podcast. Chapter two, Rowland. He woke up suddenly
aware of two equally pressing problems. The acids worn off
and eight people are here to kill me. Both of
(27:49):
these facts concerned him equally. He couldn't remember his name
or where exactly he was, which made the impending kill
team all the more concerning. He opened his eyes, His
vision was blurry and unfocused. His head felt filled with
sand Roland, Oh ship, that's my name. Roland wondered how
long he'd been asleep. He reflexively triggered his deck before
The dim firing of a synapse reminded him that he'd
(28:10):
permanently disabled his data connection well a long time ago,
five million, two or twenty six thousand minutes. His hindbrain,
what Roland called the acres of microscopic processors and data banks,
spun into his blood, spat the knowledge out, unbidden into
his conscious mind. Roland tried to curse, but wound up
spitting out a wad of brackish flim instead. His eyes
(28:31):
settled on a quarter full bottle of fungus whiskey. He
grabbed it, drained it, and rooted around on the table
where he'd found it until his digging turned up a
sheet of acid. He ripped the sheet in half, ate
one half and pasted the other on his sweat damp chest.
Roland's brain didn't wait for the acid to do its job.
Nanomachines couriered the lysurgic diethyl acid directly to his synapses.
(28:52):
The drugs took hold in a matter of seconds. Acid
softened the world around him. His hindbrains running commentary faded
into a sort of gym roalized hyper awareness of the
world around him. He sighed, relaxed, and remembered woman hovered
over him, her hands on his shoulders, her knees on
either side of his body. Sweat dripped down from her
short black hair onto his face and chest. Her pupils
(29:14):
were the size of dinner plates. She smelled like acid
and desire. She smiled, revealing a row of Damascus steel teeth.
Roland pulled himself out of the memory. He felt the
strike team advance. His hindbrain generated a map of the
approaching assassins. They were still a solid minute from his hovel.
There were six men and two women on the team.
If he'd wanted a micro seconds focus could have told
(29:35):
him which members of the group were vegetarians, where two
of the team were on their minstrel cycles, and how
recently each of their firearms had been cleaned and oiled.
But Roland didn't care about that information. He was trying
to remember where he'd left his gun. The one room
hut Roland occupied was best described as squalid. He knew
he'd lived there for quite a long time, although he
wasn't sure if the home was his in any legal
(29:57):
sense of the word. It's one room held a filthy mattress,
a hot plate, several dozen empty bottles, of liquor and
a tinkling carpet of spent whippets. A large knife was
embedded in the door. Roland couldn't remember why he knew
he'd had a gun at one point, even though he
couldn't currently find it. He stood up, still wobbly from
the massive dose of g h B he'd taken with
(30:19):
his nightly tequila, and started kicking at the piles of
bottles and drug paraphernalia in the hope that one of
them might contain his gun. He found some bullets after
a few seconds search, at the bottom of a folger's
coffee tin that was half filled with marijuana. Next to
the tin was a large metal bowl of stagnant water.
Roland glanced in and caught sight of his own reflection.
(30:39):
His black skin looked ashen and clammy, unusually pale, he thought,
but he didn't recall enough about himself to know if
that was really true. His face was long and drawn,
with wide, jutting cheekbones and apache uneven beard. His head
was covered in stubble. The center of his face was
dominated by a crooked, heavily scarred nose. Roland had no
(30:59):
wreck election of why it was scarred, but he knew
the injury must have happened back before the army filled
with chrome. He turned away from his reflection and continued
to search through the house, scattering food, encrusted plates, empty
coke bags, an old fashioned print pornography into even less
organized piles. No dice that I pawn it, he wondered,
as his machine assisted adetic memory ward with his profound intoxication,
(31:22):
Roland was now conscious enough to remember that not remembering
much was pretty normal for him, and he should really
worry more about the assassin's coming to kill him. Oh
shit right, the strike team was just fifty meters out now.
He felt a gust of wind, and in the same
way felt as two of the men began to assemble
a large sound cannon behind a rocky hill that faced
his novel. He guessed it was a Callahan Mark thirty eight.
(31:45):
Roland didn't know how he knew the weapon's name, but
he knew it could burn out even his armored synapses
with a few seconds of continuous fire. One man was
on overwatch for the Callahan team. He carried a two
bore Ruger Fauscion anti vehicular rifle. The mingling odors of
fierce wet and baby formula wafting off him. Triggered since
memories of someone holding a new born infant, Roland guessed
(32:07):
the man must have a kid back home, a kid
he scared of leaving fatherless. Of some chromed out asset
had fillets him that was useful data. He filed it
away in the chunk of his brain least likely to
lose that information. Over the next four seconds, Roland's memory
was real good in four second chunks. Over the next
pico second, he caught equally informative whiffs of the others.
(32:28):
It was enough to suggest that two of the women
in the main assault team were lovers, and they'd both
had Millspeck's subdermal armor implanted recently. The acrid scent of
fresh suitures hung heavy in the air around them. Roland
could also tell that one of the men in the
assault party took heavy testosterone supplements, either because of a
genetic abnormality or because he'd been assigned female at birth.
(32:48):
The fourth man was moderately addicted to ephedric's and riding
into battle on a high stimulant wave. The last member
of the assault team was the only one to give
Roland any pause. He could guess the man's heightened way
eight six ft five hundred and forty pounds from the
sound of his footfalls. Roland could smell the sig Sour
five hundred submachine gun in his hands, but otherwise the
(33:08):
man was a sensory blank. No sweat, no hydraulics, and
black to thermographic sensors. The man was chromed, not so
heavily as Rowland, of course, but the competent and well
armed squad he led might be enough to narrow the gap.
We're in the shooting shit, shit, shit, did I leave
that gun? The static balance in the air changed as
the overwatch team warmed up their sound cannon. The assault
(33:31):
team was close, now barely a hundred feet out, waiting
in the cover provided by several large bowlders at the
base of the rise that held Roland's ramshackle home. He
knew how this fight would go. They'd unleashed the Callahan
for a good five seconds while the killed team moved
into position and kicked in the door. Next the big
bruiser and the two women would enter, while the remainder
of the assault team fanned out to cover the sides.
(33:52):
Textbook post human kill team tactics. He thought he didn't
actually remember any of the fights this conclusion was based on,
but he'd clearly lived through similar encounters, and if he
trusted his body and hindbrain, he would again. Roland finished
searching the apocalyptic ruin that was his kitchen sink. The
pile of plates had been large enough to hide a
short barrel, a R ten, but his gun wasn't there either.
(34:14):
Funck Nuts, he cursed. The profanity brought a tiny serotonin spike,
and Roland felt himself calm down even as the noose
tightened around him. His combat wet wear did most of
its work in the moments before meat met metal, so
Roland closed his eyes, slumped his shoulders, and relaxed while
it cross indexed his memories of past firefights with his
current sensory data. A moment later, Roland was presented with
(34:37):
three potential counter assault strategies. He selected the one that
sounded like the most fun. The Callaghan fired, blanketing his
home and much of the area beyond it in a
web of noise designed to assault and eventually fry the
synapses of anyone dumb enough to stand too long in
its wake Payne lashed from Roland's inner ear and sparked
out to every nerve in his body. It would have
(34:58):
been enough to leave a strong man curled on the ground,
shifting his guts out, but Roland just felt a distant ache.
His experience of the damage was more akin to seeing
the check engine light on a car than true agony.
He was aware that if he waited too long, the
sonic weapon would blow out the pain dampners on his
spinal nerve gates. Lucky for him, the assault team didn't
wait that long. Roland felt the big man arc his
(35:20):
leg up to kick in the door. He crumpled in,
and Roland lunged left. This helped him avoid the first
spray of covering fire. As the chromed man and both
women barreled inside, Roland flung himself into the hovel's main
structural support beam, which ran up the building's left wall.
He hit it with the rough speed and force of
a light truck going twenty miles an hour. His momentum
carried him and half the left wall into the rocky
(35:42):
ground outside. Roland's filthy little home tottered and swayed. It
collapsed first on the left side and then on the right.
As the whole structure failed, Roland was already up with
a jagged piece of two by four in his hands.
He rushed the ephedric's addict, holding down the left flank.
The man got two shots off, and to his credit,
both hit right where Roland's original heart had been, and
(36:03):
then Roland was on him. He shoved the wood into
the meat of the man's face. It gouged off enough
flesh to Philippine glass and shattered the poor fellow's jaw.
He went down hard. Roland smelled the familiar scent of
antihemiragic nanomachines as they rushed to save the man's life.
He caught a slight sour whiff of the cheap clotting
agents in the man's blood. Roland guessed it was Traumax brand,
(36:24):
which was convenient. Traumax had based their whole line off
a piece of Brazilian military wet wear that itself was
based on a crude synthesis of horseshoe crab blood. The
organs worked well enough unless you happen to be an
amphetamine attitude suffered massive tissue damage, then your Traumax unit
would flood your synapses with adenocene to knock you out
rather than risk pushing more amphetamines on your stressed heart.
(36:47):
Something in the smell of the man's blood set off
a powerful sense memory buried deep in Roland's hippocampus vine
slashing his face boiling jungle heat, and his fist connecting
with the face of a heavily armed young woman. Her
orbital bone broke un to the blow. He smelled her
blood meat the air, and she dropped, dropped, dropped. The
memory flashed by, free of context and the time it
took the other man to hit the ground. It was
(37:08):
frustrating to only remember the what of an action, and
not the why or the after. It was like knowing
how to ride a bike without remembering who'd taught you
and when only for everything. Roland found it somewhat unsettling.
A twelve gage slug hit him in the first It
dug deep, hit reinforced bone, and stopped. The little machines
in Roland's blood were already cutting it apart by the
(37:29):
time he stopped musing and bounded over to the other
flank man. Roland chucked the two by four hard as
he ran. The wood impacted above the assassin's temple with
an audible crack, shattering the man's sphenoid bone. The battle
drugs started to trickle into Roland's synapses. Now a cocktail
of endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin, and epinephrin concocted to make violence
(37:50):
as addictive as a fat rock of crystal meth. Roland
instantly wanted more, and he knew he could trigger a
greater dose by stomping on the downed man's skull and
ending his life. He fought down the urge and instead
grabbed the man's a a thirty two combat shotgun and
rolled for cover behind a red rock boulder. He was
almost fast enough, but either the overwatched man had some
(38:11):
aftermarket parts Roland hadn't smelled, or all the hardcore drug
abuse had done long term damage to his reflexes. Maybe
no more crack binges. Roland fought as a massive two
bore slug drew most of his left shoulder out into
the desert behind him. Roland belted out several fukwords as
pain flooded the banks of his dampners, and just that second,
with truly exquisite timing, the Callahan crew swiveled their weapon
(38:34):
round and poured sonic fire at him from above. For
refraction of a second, everything went dark. Roland's world was riotous, red, pain,
and little else. If his body had required the input
of his conscious mind, he would have been in a
real pickle. During the milliseconds it took for his dampners
to cut through the pain hayes, Roland's body dove ten
feet to the left, enough to take him out of
(38:55):
the Callahan spray and behind and outcropping of rocks. Two
rounds act into the rock above his head. Roland came
back to himself as the shards cut into his skin.
He glanced down at the ruin of his shoulder. His
little blood robots were already hard at work rebuilding the muscles, bones,
and sinews blown out by the giant's slug. A couple
seconds more and the limb would be usable again. But
(39:16):
Rowland had a better idea. He used his intact arm
as a flesh catapult and flung himself up over the
boulder towards the Callahan in its three guardians. The man
with the two boar fired again. Roland had known he would,
and his hind brain had already calculated the ideal emotions
to avoid the dozen most likely shot patterns. He sailed
over the half pound bullets with ease and used the
(39:37):
hand of his intact arm to rip his wounded arm
free at the shoulder. Roland landed hard in front of
the callahan. He swung his own severed limb like a
club and knocked the barrel to the left. Then he
laid into the gun's crew with a mix of pounding
swings from the arm and stomps to the other men's
knees and ankles. Bone shattered, assassin screamed. The man with
the two boar and the newborn child at home wavered
(39:59):
and broke. Roland had expected this. Many normal humans, even
hardened veterans, found it nauseating and unsettling to see a
man move as fast as he could move, ad beating
their friends half to death with a severed limb, and well,
he'd predicted the guy would break. It's not your fault, buddy,
Roland thought, as he watched the man run. Don't feel bad.
He'd wanted to say that out loud, but he was
(40:20):
having trouble working his vocal cords. In roughly seven seconds,
Roland had eliminated five out of eight threats in the
kill team. His hind brain predictions had given him six
more seconds at least before the entry team cleared themselves
from the debris of his collapsed hovel. But the other
post human, the man who'd shone blank on most of
Roland's senses, had freed himself faster. Roland realized this when
(40:41):
a trio of fifty caliber slugs burst into his chest cavity.
He dropped, avoiding the last three rounds of the burst,
and rolled behind another pair of bowlders with his severed
arm in hand. The two female assassins were close to
freeing themselves now. Roland could hear them struggle out through
the vibrations of their bodies in the red sand. He
couldn't see the other post hum, but he'd triangulated his
(41:01):
most likely location. Unfortunately, the other fucker had him dead
to rights. If Roland broke cover, he'd be shot to pieces,
maybe more pieces than his trauma organs could put back together.
All right, oh boy, do eat a bunch of lead
and charge the bastards to play the meat rockets and
run for a gun while they're blind. He suddenly remembered
the spring loaded assault razor embedded in his left forearm,
(41:22):
and then the twenty two millimeter grenade pistol buried in
between his small intestine and his sigmoid. Colin did I
remember to load it before shoving it in there? But
before he could take any action, the firefight was interrupted
by an oddly familiar voice. Hey, Rowland has its swinging.
(41:44):
I call the Union Hall as his male alife, and dear,
I think these people of planning to kill Doctor King.
On April fourth night, Doctor Martin Luther King was shot
and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl
Ray was arrested. He played guilty to the crime and
spent the rest of his life in prison. Case closed right,
(42:06):
James L. Ray was upon for the official story. The
authorities would parade all we found a gun that James L.
Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Dr King, Except it
wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. One of the
problems that came out when I got the Ray case
was that some of the evidence, as far as I
(42:28):
was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the
MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on
the I Heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The
millions of you has settled for unsatisfying jobs because they
(42:50):
paid the bills, and uh, you just kind of fell
into it, and you know, it's like totally fine, Just
another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself.
Of course, there is something else you could do. If
you've got something to say. You could, I don't know,
startup podcast with Spreaker from my heart and unleash your
(43:14):
creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about
stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money to
one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and
walk off into the sunset, Hey I'm no settler, I'm
an explorer. Spreaker dot com. That's spr e a k
(43:37):
e er hustle on over today. The Gangster Chronicles podcast
is a weekly conversation that revolves around underworld, the criminals
and entertainers, to victim's crime and law enforcement. We cover
all facets of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify
(43:59):
from motilicit that empties. We discussed the ramifications and repercussions
of the Exemptieppe wall. She played gamester games through an
ultimately rewarded with Gainster prizes. Our Heart Radio is number
one for podcast, but don't take our word for it.
Find Against the Chronicles podcast and I Heart Radio app
or wherever you get your podcast. Roland hadn't smelled or
(44:23):
heard this new man coming. The voice was very familiar.
Roland felt a name on the tip of his tongue,
but it just wouldn't come. Weapons down, lads, and glasses.
I've seen enough to guess the end. Roland smelled frustration,
waft off the two women now free and angry. The
other post human smelled like nothing, but Roland felt him
lower his weapon. Some gray, dead strand of memory pulsed
(44:45):
in the back of Roland's brain, and he guessed that
it was safe for him to stand up now, So
he did and put eyes on the mystery man. The
fellow had a lopsided, squarish jaw with a very deliberate
five o'clock shadow. His nose was thick and bulby. His
red hair was tangled into dreadlocks that were more the
result of inattention than stylistic choice. He was tall, muscular,
(45:07):
but lean, with a bare chest that was covered in
tattoos of black snakes. They writhed in time with the
beating of his heart. He wore nothing but a pair
of red leather chaps and a broad, calm smile. His
bare penis swung pingulous in the breeze. Both of his
palms were extended out front and visible. It was the
kind of gesture one used to calm an animal. Roland
(45:27):
synapses fired and misfired, and a string of fragmented memories
ran through his mind. He recalled a really good hot
dog on a sunny day, push ups in the mud,
searing pain in his genitals, and the taste of shitty ditchweed.
These memory fragments were all, somehow tied to the man
in front of him. It took Roland a moment, but
as soon as he got a full look at those
cold gray eyes, the man's name clicked in the place.
(45:50):
Oh ship, he croaked. Jim. Roland hadn't spoken to a
person in months, at least maybe longer. He sounded more
like a suffering cap an English speaking human. But Jim
understood him, Yep, he said. Roland's side looked at his
separate arm and crudely shoved it into place it had
clotted a bit, and his stubb burned as the tiny
(46:12):
robots in his blood got to work reattaching his once
in future limb. Jim, he said again, sounding a bit
less like a frog after a six day coke bene,
you funked up my house man. That's not cool. Roland
didn't know how long he'd known Jim. He couldn't even
pin down the man's last name, but he was pretty
sure they'd fought together back before the revolution, and he
(46:33):
was certain they'd had a threesome with a devilishly handsome
spet SNAs man. He couldn't remember that guy's name or
why they'd all been in Panama, but he didn't expect
that was the sort of experience past him would have
shared with someone who wasn't a friend. You remember me,
Jim asked, basically. Roland answered, good, because I got a
favor to ask. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here. I hope
(46:58):
you just enjoyed the chapter you listen to. I hope
you enjoyed the chapters to come. If you would like
to read the text version of this book either on
the web or on your e reader as an e
pub you can find those on the website a t
r book dot Com, so again the free ad free
e pub and the text of every chapter will be
on a t r book dot After thirty years, it's
(47:20):
time to return to the halls of West Beverly High
and hang out at the peach pit. On the podcast
nine O two one o MG, visit Jenny Garth and
Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly
Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning,
we get to tell the fans all of the behind
the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what
happened on camera obviously, but we can tell them all
(47:42):
the good stuff that happen off camera. Listen to nine
O two one o MG on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Gonzalez,
the host of s i s new podcast, Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Sports Illustrated has delivered some of the best storytelling in
sports for seven into years, and now that continues. On
(48:02):
our show. Each week, we'll dive deep into the best
stories from around the sports world. Sports Illustrated Weekly is
available every Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now. The
Black Effect Presents features honest conversations and exclusive interviews, a
(48:24):
space for artists, everyday people, and listeners to amplify, elevate,
and empower Black voices with great conversations. Make sure to
listen to The Black Effect Presents podcast on I Heart Radio,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast
Make sure to check out Drink Champs, your number one
music podcast. On the Black Effect Podcast Network, host n O.
R E and d J E f N sat down
with artists and icon Yea, which Vulture called one of
most significant interviews. I literally had to go like Danos
and I don't want to have to be the villain.
But when I went and did the Donda thing, he
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returned and anybody had to sit back and watch the
real leader. Check out Drink Champs conversation with Yea and
many more legendary artists each and every Friday on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or where ever you
listen to your favorite shows. Hey Leathal listeners, take here.
Last season on Lethal Lit, you might remember, I came
(00:41):
to Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt Best's
name and making sure justice was finally served. But I
hadn't counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart
the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger.
Though it wasn't all bad, I'm going to be real
(01:02):
ify Tig. I like you, but now all signs point
to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this
game is just starting, you better believe I'm gonna win.
I'm tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up
on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit,
(01:22):
a tig Torre's mystery out now, and then tune in
for all new thrills in season two, dropping weekly starting
February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen
to Leave the Lit on the I Heart Radio app,
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of a forest. Find a forest near you and start
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exploring it. Discover the forest dot Org, brought to you
by the United States Forest Service and the AD Council
After the Revolution. Richardson, Republic of Texas, Chapter one. Mannie
Mannie smiled the way the British journalist's face blanched as
(02:07):
the old Toyota hit the pothole. Reggie wasn't used to
bad roads, cars driven by actual humans, or the way
the heavy metal of the gun mount and the truck
bed made the aluminum frame groan. That was all familiar
to Mannie. He'd grown up in Siodad de Muerta, back
before the lake would blast, back when people had still
called it Dallice. The truck's driver veered around the bloated
(02:29):
corpse of a large dog lying in the middle of
the road. Reggie gripped the truck bed with white knuckles
and eyed the swaying ammo belt of the twenty millimeter
cannon like it was a coiled snake. The gunner, Mannie's cousin, Alejandro,
grinned down at the journalist. The suspeneon's a little fockt
ye eh. The brit nodded and turned greener. When the
technical hid another pothole. Mannie supposed he should offer a
(02:51):
comforting word to the man. That would be good business,
but a louder part of him looked at Reggie's brand
new boots and thought he can stand a little comfort.
The journalist would brag about this ride for months once
he got home. Escorting reporters from the safety of Austin
to the sundry hotspots of the old Metroplex was not
Manny's ideal career. Two years ago, he'd been working on
(03:14):
a bachelor's in business administration from the University of Austin.
The plan had been to get a job with Ages Biosystems,
then charm his way into a working visa and a
gig in the California Republic, but the fighting had started
up again and ruined all that. The culprit this time
was the Heavenly Kingdom, a loose assortment of Christian extremist militias.
(03:34):
They'd boiled out from the suburbs of the old Metroplex
and all but broken the Republic of Texas. The Autonomous
City of Austin had stabilized the situation with the help
of an alliance of leftist Texan militias, the Secular Defense Forces.
Beating them back had cost a lot in blood and
time and forced Manny to change every plan he'd ever
had for his life. So he'd embraced the situation and
(03:56):
started his own business, hiring on some friends as employees.
Together they'd built the best network of stringers in North Texas.
His boys fed him video contacts and news updates, and
he sold what he could to the big foreign media conglomerates.
In a couple more months, he'd have enough saved up
that he could fuck off, fly to Europe and apply
for a refugee visa. My ans are pretty good as
(04:18):
long as the war doesn't end too soon. The technical
rolled to a creaky stop in front of a checkpoint
that had clearly been erected within the last few days.
It was just a collapsible electronic gate and two sandbag
emplacements on either side of the battered highway. A street
sign nearby announced that they were on the edge of Richardson,
formerly a suburb of Dallas and currently a forward position
(04:39):
of the People's Protection Army, a local anarchist militia. Manny
could see the p PA's red black triangle emblem stitched
onto the jackets of the soldiers guarding the checkpoint. One
of the p PA men walked up to the driver's
side window and started chatting with Philip, the driver. Phil
and Manny's cousin Alejandro were both with the Citizens Front,
(04:59):
a more or less a political militia from the suburbs
of Austin. Both militias co existed under the broad umbrella
of the Secular Defense Forces. The SDF had been organized
by the Canadian government to lump all of North Texas's
palatable militant groups into a single package that could be
conveniently armed. While the first guard talk with Philip, his
partner did a circuit around the back of the truck.
(05:22):
The man was big, bulging, with muscles so sculpted and
prominent they had to be vat grown, and he moved
with the twitchy ungrace of a man who replaced his
nervous system with circuitry. His weapon was a very old,
very battered a R fifteen with an M two four
three grenade launcher below the barrel. The latter was old
U S military gear. The former had been someone's toy
(05:42):
before the Revolution gave America's half billion civilian guns a
new riis on debt. The man moved back to the
barricades when he had finished his lap. Reggie looked up
at Manny and asked, was he a Was he chromed?
Manny smiled. That was always one of the first questions.
As soon as any foreign journal saw trooper with a
large enough billed skin with an off shade, or who
(06:03):
just moved a little too fast to seem completely right.
Anything beyond basic aesthetic and medical modifications were banned. In
civilized countries like the UK. The real chrome, the implants
that would let a man lift a truck or take
a rocket to the belly that ship was locked up tight.
A few national militaries even used the stuff these days,
not after the revolution. He's got some fat, grown muscles,
(06:27):
Manny said, in an off handed way that suggested such
things were common aftermarket nerves too. Probably his stuff is
low grade, that's why it's so visible. Reggie nodded, his
eyes stayed locked on the big man. He was quiet
for a while before he spoke again. You just live
right alongside them, don't you. Manny shrugged. Everybody's got something
(06:47):
out here and the wet wears, but lets us hold
back the martyrs. They own the whole city if it
weren't for half fats like him. The journalist nodded, and
his gaze stayed fixed upon the militiaman until a troubled
look crossed his face. He glanced back to Manny. Are
you all chromed, Reggie asked. Manny smiled. I don't expect
either of us as stock sabien eh, but I doubt
(07:08):
I've got anything you don't. Reggie seemed somewhat comforted by this.
Most of what I've read about the really heavy mods
says they cause a lot of well unstable behavior. That's
why that's why this city such as ship Hole, Manny asked.
The journalist had the grace to blush. Manny looked away
for a moment. His eyes landed on the bones of
three large public housing buildings. A barrel bomb had detonated
(07:31):
in the center of the courtyard. All three shared. It
had peeled away the walls, some of the floors, and
the resulting firestorm had burned up everything that wasn't concrete, steel,
or rebar For just a moment, many felt bad about
hoping the war hung on. At other six months, the
old government blamed a lot on roided up veterans with
military grade mods. He told Reggie. Most was just propaganda,
(07:53):
fear mongering. People were pissed after twenty years of plague,
disaster and poverty. Manny shrugged, It's true, a lot of
chromed up vets turned on the government. You can't make
men into gods and expect them to keep fighting from men,
Reggie pointed back to the bolding militiaman, I take it,
muscles there is pretty far from a god, nah, Manny laughed.
He's just a guy with too much meat money. Gods
(08:15):
don't man checkpoints. The brit was excited. Now. These were
the questions he'd wanted to ask since they met yesterday.
Do you know where some of those people are. Reggie
couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice. Could we
talk to them? Manny didn't have any of those contacts,
nor did he know any other fixers who did. He
tried to let the Brit down easy. Most of those
folks live on the road in between the civilized parts
(08:38):
of Texas and the Republic of California, oh. Reggie looked disappointed.
The truck rolled past the wreckage of an old Catholic school.
It bore signs of being fortified, destroyed, refortified, and redestroyed
several times. The Brit was inches from asking another question
when the gate man waved them on, and the battered
Toyota farted its way into drive, belching and complaining past
(09:00):
network of potholes until it hit a relatively straight chunk
of asphalt. Only a few minutes now. Hef a. Manny said,
the p PA's forward position is about five minutes out.
He'll be in the ship then, or at least sit adjacent.
The journalist's face washed over in an even mix of
anxiety and pride. One of the first lessons Manny had
learned at this job was that phrases like the ship
(09:22):
made rich Gringo writers unreasonably excited. An excited journalists always
called Manny the next time they were in country, giving
white kids and keffee as a lifetime of bragging rights.
For surviving a couple of days in his home killed
his soul just a little bit, but Manny pushed down
the anger and told himself that a chip on the
shoulder was a lot less useful than money in the bank.
(09:42):
The Technical rolled off the old highway. Manny could see
twenty three and Spring Valley Road and blasmed on a
weather beaten, bullet scarred sign. The Technical pulled to the right,
the guns swayed in its mount Manny couldn't help smiling
as the brit instinctively pulled away from it. They rolled
up to what had once been a strip hall and
was now a forward operating base for the People's Protection Army.
(10:04):
An old laundromat, a bookstore, and a half dozen restaurants
now had their roofs ringed with barbed wire and machine
gun emplacements. Manny could see a line of bullet hole
stitched across three of the shops. None of the windows
were intact, but otherwise the buildings had weathered the war
rather well. Three M one ninety eight howitzers were parked
next to a taco shop that had once served the
(10:24):
local college kid's beer and cheap grub. There was a
flagpole out in front of the shop, and from it
hung the blue and white starburst flag of the SDF.
Three men in uniforms stood waiting as the old Toyota
rolled to a stop and Manny and Reggie disembarked. Two
of the men were officers in the p P, a
Colonel Jacob Milgram and Major Deshaun Clark. Milgram was a boring,
(10:45):
tight lipped nerdy type, but De Shaun was one of
Manny's favorite sources. He was an old infantry guy, a
consummate brawler with a face full of scars, and three
published books of poetry to his name. He actually had
a base of international fans, mostly in Spain. The third
man was Hamid Mohammed, an adviser from Syrian Kurdistan. The
Curds had been giving aid to the Sundry militias of
(11:06):
the Secular Defense Forces for years now. Manny considered Hamid
almost a local. He shook hands with Jacob since Manny
knew Deshaun better. He met the man with a full
embrace and used it as an opportunity to palm the
major a packet of his favorite cigarettes. Deshaun gave him
a wink and a smile. Manny shook Hamed's hand next,
and then kissed him on the cheek. Amid returned the kiss,
(11:27):
clapped him on the shoulder, and said, Emmanuel, my friend,
you really should get out of this business. One of
these days you'll come up here and it won't be safe.
Mannie frowned a little at the use of his birth name,
but he didn't make an issue out of the matter.
There's still a war on, right, he smiled at Hamid.
He'll get that ship under control. Maybe I'll work a
straight job again. Not too soon, though, he thought. The
(11:48):
least this work can do was last long enough to
get me out of Texas. Hamid smiled back, and Manny
introduced Reggie to the officers. The journalist was clearly awkward
in that special way Manny had come to expect from
new war correspondents. It was the norm for young writers
to be intimidated by grizzled military men. Some of them
got over that Manny had worked with a middle aged
(12:09):
der Schpiegel reporter last week, could probably take in as
much incoming fire as Major Clark. Colonel Milgram led them
into the militarized taco shop. A brief blast of nostalgia
squeezed Manny's lungs. The place had obviously been closed since
the revolution. The drink specials and meal prices printed on
the wall were given in U S dollars, a currency
as dead as the last American president. Many recognized ads
(12:32):
for bands and movies he remembered from his childhood. The
glass facade had shattered years ago. The kitchen had been
gutted and replaced by wall length screens displaying maps of
the city. At least a dozen uniformed men and women
milled around the space in small groups. He and Reggie
sat down at a long picnic table with Hamid and
the two officers. Reggie set his camera up on the table.
(12:53):
It was just a small silver sphere, but Manny knew
it could record everything happening around it at a higher
resolution than the human i and orderly brought in three beers,
shiner box from Austin and one dark brown tea and
a glass cup for hummade the brit raised his glass
in a friendly salute, thank you for meeting with me,
and then he started to ask questions. Manny leaned back
(13:14):
in his chair and enjoyed a long gulp of cold beer.
If he wasn't needed to translate, he generally checked out
during interviews. He used the free time to activate his
deck and check in on the two stringers he had
working right now. David Allenby was up in Addison today,
taking a Californian documentary crew on a tour of an
SDF training facility. He'd messaged Manny to let him know
they'd gotten through the checkpoints without any issue. Oscar Martinez
(13:38):
didn't have any journalists with him. He was embedded with
a Republic of Texas police unit getting footage from inside
a neighborhood that had recently been liberated from the Heavenly Kingdom.
There were no new messages from Oscar. His last check
in had been the night before. It was probably nothing,
but it concerned Manning. Nonetheless, what if Oscar got a
better offer for his footage. He'd always been loyal before,
(13:58):
but if that funk from the Areadian had gotten to him.
I'm interested in the Abrams Road bombing, Reggie told the colonel,
and many's attentions swung back to his reporter. That's an
odd thing to ask about. The bombing had occurred two
weeks back. It had been big news for a couple
of hours. Manny had paid one of his contacts and
rossa front for a video of a walk through of
the wreckage. It had brought in about three grand profit.
(14:21):
The Abrams Road bombing was not a martyrdom operation. Colonel
Milgram sounded almost angry, terribly sorry. Reggie said, you're right,
of course, there was no driver, so no martyr right right,
Deshaun Clark said. He pulled a folded piece of white
paper out of his pocket, opened it up, and smoothed
it out on the table. It was a map of
the df W area, color coded to show the positions
(14:43):
of the various militias in the region. We operate eight
checkpoints on that part of the Richardson line, DeShawn said,
as he pointed to each one. Five of them border
Republic controlled territory. The traffic from there is mostly autonomous,
and those vehicles slaved themselves to our traffic management system
before they can in our territory. The other three checkpoints
border territory controlled by the martyrs. They don't see much traffic,
(15:06):
and they're all heavily manned. Reggie was quiet for a
few seconds. Manny could almost hear the gears turning in
the journalist's head as he struggled to find the words
for his next question. Would it be fair to say
the autonomous checkpoints are less secure? Then, Deshaun smiled a thin,
quiet smile. Amid grimace. Colonel Milgram responded in a terse voice.
The autonomous checkpoints have fewer defenders, but they border republic territory.
(15:30):
The martyrs haven't pulled off an attack on one in
quite some time. Was Abrams Road not on such attack?
Reggie looked eager now, like a hound, following assent. We
don't know who bombed Agram's Road, Colonel Milgram said, No
one's taken credit, but we doubt it was the martyrs. Why,
the journalist asked, Manny leaned in a little interested, in
spite of himself, at where this was all going to lead. Perhaps,
(15:53):
Amid said, you should read a bit more about this
Heavenly Kingdom. They reject all autonomous technology. They even use
remote human pilots for their drones like it's two thousand
and fucking three. That's why our skies are always clear.
We jammed them. Reggie asked, is it possible they found
some way to hack your defense system? Hamid laughed, we
(16:14):
bought this system from the Israelis. If you're telling me
one of the Martyrs Brigades has a hacker who can
crack that, then I'm the King of Albuquerque. But something
still went wrong, Reggie insisted. Hamid smile turned cold. This
is war, Mr Reggie, It's mostly things going wrong. That's
where the line of questions petered out. Reggie asked them
(16:35):
for access to the security footage from the destroyed checkpoint,
and Colonel Milgram agreed to send it over. We'd like
to speak to the survivors as well, if possible, Manny interjected,
not waiting to see if the journalist would ask. He
knew those men were all stationed behind the line now,
which would make for a safer, easier rest of the
day than heading up to the wire, of course, Colonel
Milgram said, with a smile to Manny. They said their goodbyes,
(16:58):
and then Major Clark walked them out to their waiting Toyota.
The Texas heat hit like an oven as they exited,
and Manny was glad they'd be spending most of the
rest of their day in doors. Deshaun clapped a hand
on Manny's shoulder as he lit one of his new cigarettes.
It's good to see you, Emmanuel, he said, and then
he smiled at Reggie, and it's nice to meet you,
my British friend. I'm sorry you've come to the front
(17:19):
at a boring time. Why, Reggie asked, Because this Deshaun
gestured at the gun emplacements and loitering militiamen of the
command post. This is not war, not really. Your job
is to help your people, children of peace and plenty,
understand what is going on here. You must teach them
the language of war. And to paraphrase a dead poet,
(17:41):
the language of war is a language made of blood.
To be spoken, it must be earned. There was an
awkward pause, a little of the blood drained from the
journalist's face. Hugh Nutty, Old fuck, Manny thought, with more
amusement than fear. Classic DeShawn, he said, and laughed to
ease the tension. The major bid them both a good day,
hugged Manny, and sauntered off back to the command post.
(18:03):
Smoke from his cigarette curled up into the air behind
him as he walked. Manny's eyes lingered on it for
a second before he turned back to Reggie. Ready to go,
he asked Chipper as he could manage. Three hours, a
handful of interviews, and one short drive later, Manny and
Reggie arrived at their home for the night. The Richardson
Autonomous Project, once a Walmart, now a twenty two year
(18:26):
old experiment and sustainable urban living. The project was the
furthest island of civilization on the sd F side of
the Front. Its militias steadfastly refused to involve themselves in
the region's greater conflicts. They'd been targeted a few times
by the Heavenly Kingdom. The sd F, by contrast, left
them alone, so when a fixer like Manny found himself
(18:46):
on the wrong side of the L B J Freeway
after dark, he could usually trust the project to provide food, booze,
and shelter for a price. Of course, sleeping arrangements in
the project were broadly communal. The bulk of the old
Walmart had been converted into an indoor meadow with grow
lights hanging from the rafters and a wide, lush field
of native grass sprawling across most of the inhabited space.
(19:08):
Fruit trees, bushes full of berries, cannabis, plants, and copses
of bamboo lined the edges of the space. The center
of the field was dominated by a large circular kitchen
surrounded by a handsome oaken bar. Table tables, gazebos, and
sundry personal structures dotted the field, along with a pair
of dance floors. Reggie's face lit up when he saw
the bar. By the time Manny had dropped off their
(19:30):
bags and paid Charlie and the driver for the night,
the journalist was already three beers in the brit wasn't
precisely drunk or sober, but at that productive twilight in between,
he'd unrolled a portable screen and had a holographic display up,
looping four separate sections of the security footage Colonel Milgriman
sent over. The journalist alternated between typing furiously scrawling notes
(19:51):
in his journal and taking huge gulps of something brown
and foamy. He stopped working when he saw a Manny
approach and waved him into the adjacent seat. Hey brother,
check this out. Many pulled up a seat, and the
journalist directed his attention to a six second loop of
footage from immediately after the bombing. It showed two man
size silhouettes standing on top of an old garage. Many
(20:12):
remembered the building. It stood maybe two hundred meters from
the Abrams Road checkpoint. One of the silhouettes had a rifle.
The other held a short squat tube that Manny recognized
as a camera lens. Notice anything, spotters, Manny said, probably
trying to get a kill. Count. No, man, look at
where he's pointed. That Count's not looking at any post.
He's looking straight back deeper into the old town. And
(20:34):
I'll bet you he's high up enough to be staring
right at Colonel Milgram's command post. Manny looked again. He
thought about the angle. Okay, so what, he asked, You
think this was a probing attack for some big action.
The journalists shrugged. Maybe it's something new, is what interests me.
Two years of Modytem operations that all look more or
less the same, and now this weird one, an autonomous
(20:56):
vehicle bomb from a group of fanatics who think autonomous
vehicles are the evil. Yeah, Manny agreed, that does seem weird.
The bartender walked up and offered Manny his pick of
the finest liquor in this particular war zone. Manny ordered
a Shiner. It was the one beer a drinker could
find across both the Republic of Texas and the Austin
Autonomous Region. He looked back at the looping footage. They
(21:18):
both watched it twice more. Then Reggie spoke up again.
What have you heard about Pasta Mike, he asked. Manny
stiffened a little bit at the name. He had heard it,
of course, vague stories of rioting in Kansas, a fundamentalist
uprising inside the southernmost territories of the United Christian States.
He hadn't thought much about it at first, but two
years ago Pastor Mike had moved to Texas, shortly before
(21:41):
the Heavenly Kingdom had declared itself. It was hard to
say what role exactly the preacher played in the organization,
but he was certainly its most visible face. I know
who he is, Manny said. I know the Republic led
him in because they thought as followers might provide a
buffer against Austin's influence. I know that blew the funk
up in their faces. Manny took a long drink and continued,
(22:02):
that's an old story around here, the Republic using those
gone fondling nut fucks to push back against the leftists.
The journalist raised an eyebrow, and Manny instantly regretted his
crude response. He didn't really care about religion one way
or the other, but whenever he came out to the front,
it was hard not to get a little angry, especially
after a drink. Sorry, he said, it's been a long day.
(22:23):
Viggie looked down, coughed, and took a sip. He looked
back at Manny, took another sip and said, you know,
that's another subject I'd rather like to cover. What Manny asked,
anti Christian sentiment in North America. Manny grunted and looked
down at his drink. The brit barreled on, You're not
the first North American I've heard express anger towards Christians,
he said, in California, Cascadia, the North American Federation. I've
(22:46):
just seen a lot of hate. Look, Manny interrupted me.
I'm a man of piece. I love everybody, but this
continent's been torn apart in bleeding for the last twenty years,
A lot of people hate Christians. The ones that don't
hate Christians hate leftists, and everybody outside the American Federation
hates capitalists. Hate, hate, hate. Manny took a gulp of
his beer and set it down a little harder than
(23:08):
he had intended. He looked Reggie in the eye and finished,
There's exactly one thing all the broken bits of this
continent have in common. Hate. The journalist arched an eyebrow
at Manny and returned the gaze. He had the look
of a man peering into the enclosure of a particularly
exotic zoo animal. Manny wanted to resent it, but he'd
been doing this job long enough to know this was
(23:29):
just how journalists looked at people. Reggie downed his drink.
He reached a hand up to signal the bartender, and
then looked back at Manny. Can I buy you another round?
Manny shook his head, no thanks, I'm tired and I
don't want to drag ass at the front tomorrow. He
downed the last of his beer, bid Reggie a good night,
and headed over to the spot of turf where he'd
set up his sleeping bag and gear. He popped off
(23:51):
his shoes, his pants and his shirt and rubbed himself
down with a handful of wet naps. Then he grabbed
a night shirt and swept pants from his bag and
slipped them on. Manny considered clean pajamas a necessity. He
fired up his deck again once he was swaddled in
his sleeping bag. There was a juttering start, and then
the corners of his vision were populated by a series
of small, partly translucent screens. Each one bulged with updates,
(24:13):
friends asking about his weekend plans, spam from his college,
notifications about the new video uploads, and headlines from the
local news. David had messaged him twice more to let
him know he and his journalists were headed back to Austin,
and then that they'd arrived. Oscar still hadn't responded. Manny's
initial concern was over his loyalty. I got that fucker
started as a stringer. If he sold that video and
(24:35):
cutting me out of the deal, I'm going to going
to But the longer he thought about Oscar, the more
Manny worried something might have happened. He'd been working in
Plano today. You were a very stable chunk of the front,
but this far out almost anything could happen. Manny closed
his eyes, sighed, and tried to purge the anxiety from
his mind. There was nothing to do now other than
get to sleep so he could wake up tomorrow and
(24:56):
make more money. That thought prompted Manny to pull open
his Bank King app and check on the status of
his savings account. The numbers glowed fat and happy, and
the space in front of his head another five months
in the field, maybe six, then I buy that plane ticket.
He started to think about the pictures he'd seen of
Dublin and Berlin and Barcelona, all the places he thought
he might live if this war would just hang on
(25:18):
a little longer. He soon fell asleep and slept pretty
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Listen to The Doctor sex re Show every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio, app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
get your podcast. Chapter two, Rowland. He woke up suddenly
aware of two equally pressing problems. The acids worn off
and eight people are here to kill me. Both of
(27:49):
these facts concerned him equally. He couldn't remember his name
or where exactly he was, which made the impending kill
team all the more concerning. He opened his eyes, His
vision was blurry and unfocused. His head felt filled with
sand Roland, Oh ship, that's my name. Roland wondered how
long he'd been asleep. He reflexively triggered his deck before
The dim firing of a synapse reminded him that he'd
(28:10):
permanently disabled his data connection well a long time ago,
five million, two or twenty six thousand minutes. His hindbrain,
what Roland called the acres of microscopic processors and data banks,
spun into his blood, spat the knowledge out, unbidden into
his conscious mind. Roland tried to curse, but wound up
spitting out a wad of brackish flim instead. His eyes
(28:31):
settled on a quarter full bottle of fungus whiskey. He
grabbed it, drained it, and rooted around on the table
where he'd found it until his digging turned up a
sheet of acid. He ripped the sheet in half, ate
one half and pasted the other on his sweat damp chest.
Roland's brain didn't wait for the acid to do its job.
Nanomachines couriered the lysurgic diethyl acid directly to his synapses.
(28:52):
The drugs took hold in a matter of seconds. Acid
softened the world around him. His hindbrains running commentary faded
into a sort of gym roalized hyper awareness of the
world around him. He sighed, relaxed, and remembered woman hovered
over him, her hands on his shoulders, her knees on
either side of his body. Sweat dripped down from her
short black hair onto his face and chest. Her pupils
(29:14):
were the size of dinner plates. She smelled like acid
and desire. She smiled, revealing a row of Damascus steel teeth.
Roland pulled himself out of the memory. He felt the
strike team advance. His hindbrain generated a map of the
approaching assassins. They were still a solid minute from his hovel.
There were six men and two women on the team.
If he'd wanted a micro seconds focus could have told
(29:35):
him which members of the group were vegetarians, where two
of the team were on their minstrel cycles, and how
recently each of their firearms had been cleaned and oiled.
But Roland didn't care about that information. He was trying
to remember where he'd left his gun. The one room
hut Roland occupied was best described as squalid. He knew
he'd lived there for quite a long time, although he
wasn't sure if the home was his in any legal
(29:57):
sense of the word. It's one room held a filthy mattress,
a hot plate, several dozen empty bottles, of liquor and
a tinkling carpet of spent whippets. A large knife was
embedded in the door. Roland couldn't remember why he knew
he'd had a gun at one point, even though he
couldn't currently find it. He stood up, still wobbly from
the massive dose of g h B he'd taken with
(30:19):
his nightly tequila, and started kicking at the piles of
bottles and drug paraphernalia in the hope that one of
them might contain his gun. He found some bullets after
a few seconds search, at the bottom of a folger's
coffee tin that was half filled with marijuana. Next to
the tin was a large metal bowl of stagnant water.
Roland glanced in and caught sight of his own reflection.
(30:39):
His black skin looked ashen and clammy, unusually pale, he thought,
but he didn't recall enough about himself to know if
that was really true. His face was long and drawn,
with wide, jutting cheekbones and apache uneven beard. His head
was covered in stubble. The center of his face was
dominated by a crooked, heavily scarred nose. Roland had no
(30:59):
wreck election of why it was scarred, but he knew
the injury must have happened back before the army filled
with chrome. He turned away from his reflection and continued
to search through the house, scattering food, encrusted plates, empty
coke bags, an old fashioned print pornography into even less
organized piles. No dice that I pawn it, he wondered,
as his machine assisted adetic memory ward with his profound intoxication,
(31:22):
Roland was now conscious enough to remember that not remembering
much was pretty normal for him, and he should really
worry more about the assassin's coming to kill him. Oh
shit right, the strike team was just fifty meters out now.
He felt a gust of wind, and in the same
way felt as two of the men began to assemble
a large sound cannon behind a rocky hill that faced
his novel. He guessed it was a Callahan Mark thirty eight.
(31:45):
Roland didn't know how he knew the weapon's name, but
he knew it could burn out even his armored synapses
with a few seconds of continuous fire. One man was
on overwatch for the Callahan team. He carried a two
bore Ruger Fauscion anti vehicular rifle. The mingling odors of
fierce wet and baby formula wafting off him. Triggered since
memories of someone holding a new born infant, Roland guessed
(32:07):
the man must have a kid back home, a kid
he scared of leaving fatherless. Of some chromed out asset
had fillets him that was useful data. He filed it
away in the chunk of his brain least likely to
lose that information. Over the next four seconds, Roland's memory
was real good in four second chunks. Over the next
pico second, he caught equally informative whiffs of the others.
(32:28):
It was enough to suggest that two of the women
in the main assault team were lovers, and they'd both
had Millspeck's subdermal armor implanted recently. The acrid scent of
fresh suitures hung heavy in the air around them. Roland
could also tell that one of the men in the
assault party took heavy testosterone supplements, either because of a
genetic abnormality or because he'd been assigned female at birth.
(32:48):
The fourth man was moderately addicted to ephedric's and riding
into battle on a high stimulant wave. The last member
of the assault team was the only one to give
Roland any pause. He could guess the man's heightened way
eight six ft five hundred and forty pounds from the
sound of his footfalls. Roland could smell the sig Sour
five hundred submachine gun in his hands, but otherwise the
(33:08):
man was a sensory blank. No sweat, no hydraulics, and
black to thermographic sensors. The man was chromed, not so
heavily as Rowland, of course, but the competent and well
armed squad he led might be enough to narrow the gap.
We're in the shooting shit, shit, shit, did I leave
that gun? The static balance in the air changed as
the overwatch team warmed up their sound cannon. The assault
(33:31):
team was close, now barely a hundred feet out, waiting
in the cover provided by several large bowlders at the
base of the rise that held Roland's ramshackle home. He
knew how this fight would go. They'd unleashed the Callahan
for a good five seconds while the killed team moved
into position and kicked in the door. Next the big
bruiser and the two women would enter, while the remainder
of the assault team fanned out to cover the sides.
(33:52):
Textbook post human kill team tactics. He thought he didn't
actually remember any of the fights this conclusion was based on,
but he'd clearly lived through similar encounters, and if he
trusted his body and hindbrain, he would again. Roland finished
searching the apocalyptic ruin that was his kitchen sink. The
pile of plates had been large enough to hide a
short barrel, a R ten, but his gun wasn't there either.
(34:14):
Funck Nuts, he cursed. The profanity brought a tiny serotonin spike,
and Roland felt himself calm down even as the noose
tightened around him. His combat wet wear did most of
its work in the moments before meat met metal, so
Roland closed his eyes, slumped his shoulders, and relaxed while
it cross indexed his memories of past firefights with his
current sensory data. A moment later, Roland was presented with
(34:37):
three potential counter assault strategies. He selected the one that
sounded like the most fun. The Callaghan fired, blanketing his
home and much of the area beyond it in a
web of noise designed to assault and eventually fry the
synapses of anyone dumb enough to stand too long in
its wake Payne lashed from Roland's inner ear and sparked
out to every nerve in his body. It would have
(34:58):
been enough to leave a strong man curled on the ground,
shifting his guts out, but Roland just felt a distant ache.
His experience of the damage was more akin to seeing
the check engine light on a car than true agony.
He was aware that if he waited too long, the
sonic weapon would blow out the pain dampners on his
spinal nerve gates. Lucky for him, the assault team didn't
wait that long. Roland felt the big man arc his
(35:20):
leg up to kick in the door. He crumpled in,
and Roland lunged left. This helped him avoid the first
spray of covering fire. As the chromed man and both
women barreled inside, Roland flung himself into the hovel's main
structural support beam, which ran up the building's left wall.
He hit it with the rough speed and force of
a light truck going twenty miles an hour. His momentum
carried him and half the left wall into the rocky
(35:42):
ground outside. Roland's filthy little home tottered and swayed. It
collapsed first on the left side and then on the right.
As the whole structure failed, Roland was already up with
a jagged piece of two by four in his hands.
He rushed the ephedric's addict, holding down the left flank.
The man got two shots off, and to his credit,
both hit right where Roland's original heart had been, and
(36:03):
then Roland was on him. He shoved the wood into
the meat of the man's face. It gouged off enough
flesh to Philippine glass and shattered the poor fellow's jaw.
He went down hard. Roland smelled the familiar scent of
antihemiragic nanomachines as they rushed to save the man's life.
He caught a slight sour whiff of the cheap clotting
agents in the man's blood. Roland guessed it was Traumax brand,
(36:24):
which was convenient. Traumax had based their whole line off
a piece of Brazilian military wet wear that itself was
based on a crude synthesis of horseshoe crab blood. The
organs worked well enough unless you happen to be an
amphetamine attitude suffered massive tissue damage, then your Traumax unit
would flood your synapses with adenocene to knock you out
rather than risk pushing more amphetamines on your stressed heart.
(36:47):
Something in the smell of the man's blood set off
a powerful sense memory buried deep in Roland's hippocampus vine
slashing his face boiling jungle heat, and his fist connecting
with the face of a heavily armed young woman. Her
orbital bone broke un to the blow. He smelled her
blood meat the air, and she dropped, dropped, dropped. The
memory flashed by, free of context and the time it
took the other man to hit the ground. It was
(37:08):
frustrating to only remember the what of an action, and
not the why or the after. It was like knowing
how to ride a bike without remembering who'd taught you
and when only for everything. Roland found it somewhat unsettling.
A twelve gage slug hit him in the first It
dug deep, hit reinforced bone, and stopped. The little machines
in Roland's blood were already cutting it apart by the
(37:29):
time he stopped musing and bounded over to the other
flank man. Roland chucked the two by four hard as
he ran. The wood impacted above the assassin's temple with
an audible crack, shattering the man's sphenoid bone. The battle
drugs started to trickle into Roland's synapses. Now a cocktail
of endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin, and epinephrin concocted to make violence
(37:50):
as addictive as a fat rock of crystal meth. Roland
instantly wanted more, and he knew he could trigger a
greater dose by stomping on the downed man's skull and
ending his life. He fought down the urge and instead
grabbed the man's a a thirty two combat shotgun and
rolled for cover behind a red rock boulder. He was
almost fast enough, but either the overwatched man had some
(38:11):
aftermarket parts Roland hadn't smelled, or all the hardcore drug
abuse had done long term damage to his reflexes. Maybe
no more crack binges. Roland fought as a massive two
bore slug drew most of his left shoulder out into
the desert behind him. Roland belted out several fukwords as
pain flooded the banks of his dampners, and just that second,
with truly exquisite timing, the Callahan crew swiveled their weapon
(38:34):
round and poured sonic fire at him from above. For
refraction of a second, everything went dark. Roland's world was riotous, red, pain,
and little else. If his body had required the input
of his conscious mind, he would have been in a
real pickle. During the milliseconds it took for his dampners
to cut through the pain hayes, Roland's body dove ten
feet to the left, enough to take him out of
(38:55):
the Callahan spray and behind and outcropping of rocks. Two
rounds act into the rock above his head. Roland came
back to himself as the shards cut into his skin.
He glanced down at the ruin of his shoulder. His
little blood robots were already hard at work rebuilding the muscles, bones,
and sinews blown out by the giant's slug. A couple
seconds more and the limb would be usable again. But
(39:16):
Rowland had a better idea. He used his intact arm
as a flesh catapult and flung himself up over the
boulder towards the Callahan in its three guardians. The man
with the two boar fired again. Roland had known he would,
and his hind brain had already calculated the ideal emotions
to avoid the dozen most likely shot patterns. He sailed
over the half pound bullets with ease and used the
(39:37):
hand of his intact arm to rip his wounded arm
free at the shoulder. Roland landed hard in front of
the callahan. He swung his own severed limb like a
club and knocked the barrel to the left. Then he
laid into the gun's crew with a mix of pounding
swings from the arm and stomps to the other men's
knees and ankles. Bone shattered, assassin screamed. The man with
the two boar and the newborn child at home wavered
(39:59):
and broke. Roland had expected this. Many normal humans, even
hardened veterans, found it nauseating and unsettling to see a
man move as fast as he could move, ad beating
their friends half to death with a severed limb, and well,
he'd predicted the guy would break. It's not your fault, buddy,
Roland thought, as he watched the man run. Don't feel bad.
He'd wanted to say that out loud, but he was
(40:20):
having trouble working his vocal cords. In roughly seven seconds,
Roland had eliminated five out of eight threats in the
kill team. His hind brain predictions had given him six
more seconds at least before the entry team cleared themselves
from the debris of his collapsed hovel. But the other
post human, the man who'd shone blank on most of
Roland's senses, had freed himself faster. Roland realized this when
(40:41):
a trio of fifty caliber slugs burst into his chest cavity.
He dropped, avoiding the last three rounds of the burst,
and rolled behind another pair of bowlders with his severed
arm in hand. The two female assassins were close to
freeing themselves now. Roland could hear them struggle out through
the vibrations of their bodies in the red sand. He
couldn't see the other post hum, but he'd triangulated his
(41:01):
most likely location. Unfortunately, the other fucker had him dead
to rights. If Roland broke cover, he'd be shot to pieces,
maybe more pieces than his trauma organs could put back together.
All right, oh boy, do eat a bunch of lead
and charge the bastards to play the meat rockets and
run for a gun while they're blind. He suddenly remembered
the spring loaded assault razor embedded in his left forearm,
(41:22):
and then the twenty two millimeter grenade pistol buried in
between his small intestine and his sigmoid. Colin did I
remember to load it before shoving it in there? But
before he could take any action, the firefight was interrupted
by an oddly familiar voice. Hey, Rowland has its swinging.
(41:44):
I call the Union Hall as his male alife, and dear,
I think these people of planning to kill Doctor King.
On April fourth night, Doctor Martin Luther King was shot
and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl
Ray was arrested. He played guilty to the crime and
spent the rest of his life in prison. Case closed right,
(42:06):
James L. Ray was upon for the official story. The
authorities would parade all we found a gun that James L.
Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Dr King, Except it
wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. One of the
problems that came out when I got the Ray case
was that some of the evidence, as far as I
(42:28):
was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the
MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on
the I Heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The
millions of you has settled for unsatisfying jobs because they
(42:50):
paid the bills, and uh, you just kind of fell
into it, and you know, it's like totally fine, Just
another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself.
Of course, there is something else you could do. If
you've got something to say. You could, I don't know,
startup podcast with Spreaker from my heart and unleash your
(43:14):
creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about
stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money to
one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and
walk off into the sunset, Hey I'm no settler, I'm
an explorer. Spreaker dot com. That's spr e a k
(43:37):
e er hustle on over today. The Gangster Chronicles podcast
is a weekly conversation that revolves around underworld, the criminals
and entertainers, to victim's crime and law enforcement. We cover
all facets of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify
(43:59):
from motilicit that empties. We discussed the ramifications and repercussions
of the Exemptieppe wall. She played gamester games through an
ultimately rewarded with Gainster prizes. Our Heart Radio is number
one for podcast, but don't take our word for it.
Find Against the Chronicles podcast and I Heart Radio app
or wherever you get your podcast. Roland hadn't smelled or
(44:23):
heard this new man coming. The voice was very familiar.
Roland felt a name on the tip of his tongue,
but it just wouldn't come. Weapons down, lads, and glasses.
I've seen enough to guess the end. Roland smelled frustration,
waft off the two women now free and angry. The
other post human smelled like nothing, but Roland felt him
lower his weapon. Some gray, dead strand of memory pulsed
(44:45):
in the back of Roland's brain, and he guessed that
it was safe for him to stand up now, So
he did and put eyes on the mystery man. The
fellow had a lopsided, squarish jaw with a very deliberate
five o'clock shadow. His nose was thick and bulby. His
red hair was tangled into dreadlocks that were more the
result of inattention than stylistic choice. He was tall, muscular,
(45:07):
but lean, with a bare chest that was covered in
tattoos of black snakes. They writhed in time with the
beating of his heart. He wore nothing but a pair
of red leather chaps and a broad, calm smile. His
bare penis swung pingulous in the breeze. Both of his
palms were extended out front and visible. It was the
kind of gesture one used to calm an animal. Roland
(45:27):
synapses fired and misfired, and a string of fragmented memories
ran through his mind. He recalled a really good hot
dog on a sunny day, push ups in the mud,
searing pain in his genitals, and the taste of shitty ditchweed.
These memory fragments were all, somehow tied to the man
in front of him. It took Roland a moment, but
as soon as he got a full look at those
cold gray eyes, the man's name clicked in the place.
(45:50):
Oh ship, he croaked. Jim. Roland hadn't spoken to a
person in months, at least maybe longer. He sounded more
like a suffering cap an English speaking human. But Jim
understood him, Yep, he said. Roland's side looked at his
separate arm and crudely shoved it into place it had
clotted a bit, and his stubb burned as the tiny
(46:12):
robots in his blood got to work reattaching his once
in future limb. Jim, he said again, sounding a bit
less like a frog after a six day coke bene,
you funked up my house man. That's not cool. Roland
didn't know how long he'd known Jim. He couldn't even
pin down the man's last name, but he was pretty
sure they'd fought together back before the revolution, and he
(46:33):
was certain they'd had a threesome with a devilishly handsome
spet SNAs man. He couldn't remember that guy's name or
why they'd all been in Panama, but he didn't expect
that was the sort of experience past him would have
shared with someone who wasn't a friend. You remember me,
Jim asked, basically. Roland answered, good, because I got a
favor to ask. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here. I hope
(46:58):
you just enjoyed the chapter you listen to. I hope
you enjoyed the chapters to come. If you would like
to read the text version of this book either on
the web or on your e reader as an e
pub you can find those on the website a t
r book dot Com, so again the free ad free
e pub and the text of every chapter will be
on a t r book dot After thirty years, it's
(47:20):
time to return to the halls of West Beverly High
and hang out at the peach pit. On the podcast
nine O two one o MG, visit Jenny Garth and
Tory Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly
Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning,
we get to tell the fans all of the behind
the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what
happened on camera obviously, but we can tell them all
(47:42):
the good stuff that happen off camera. Listen to nine
O two one o MG on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Gonzalez,
the host of s i s new podcast, Sports Illustrated Weekly.
Sports Illustrated has delivered some of the best storytelling in
sports for seven into years, and now that continues. On
(48:02):
our show. Each week, we'll dive deep into the best
stories from around the sports world. Sports Illustrated Weekly is
available every Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now. The
Black Effect Presents features honest conversations and exclusive interviews, a
(48:24):
space for artists, everyday people, and listeners to amplify, elevate,
and empower Black voices with great conversations. Make sure to
listen to The Black Effect Presents podcast on I Heart Radio,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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