Monthly Archives: November 2020

Science Fiction, Technomology

Supra Humanum Imperium

Jason saw the colours before he felt the pain. Spotlights flared down on him from some vast urban backdrop as armed people in blue and black swarmed around him. He was pinned to the ground with a piercing weighting on his back and his hands held there with cold metal around his wrists.

There were other strangers too; an old lady, an overweight, pale man, a youngish, nondescript man, and a middle-aged dark-skinned janitor. The old woman was sobbing and the dark-skinned man was praying. Men were pinning all of them down with guns pointed at their heads as orders were shouted around.

And then the pain entered his consciousness! It erupted through his nerve-endings, making him cry out. It was the edge of intense pain and, although painful in its own right, it felt almost like a lingering shadow after some intense pain had already woken him up.

“That one’s awake,” a gruff disembodied voice barked above and behind him, “Hit him again and we’ll load them in for BWeP interrogation.”

A crackling, electric sound appeared moments before the pain erupted again, but this time it was not just the lingering shadow of the pain. A full, fiery lightning shot through his nerves. His muscles clenching so hard that, unable to open his mouth, he screamed through his teeth as he saw stars exploding before his eyes and then, thankfully, passed out unconscious.

The final words he heard sounded ominous: “Prep the deep scans. I’m not ruling out that these are perps but they look more like hacked victims to me…”

***

“Jason Ludwick Hargrieve? Please acknowledge your name and confirm that you understand what is happening,” a dull, almost bored sounded voice kept repeating as Jason blinked his eyes and became aware of his existence, “Jason Ludwick Hargrieve? Please acknowledge your name and confirm that you understand what is happening? Jason Lud–“

“A-ah, where?” he stammered, realizing that he was sitting in a chair, but his limbs were firmed tied to it and all he could do was move his head–a cord was connected to the back of his head meaning that someone must have hard-jacked into his Conduit, “Where am I? What is going on?”

“Jason Ludwick Hargrieve? Please acknowledge your name and confirm that you understand what is happening.” the monotonous voice repeated.

“Yes-yes,” he said looking around him; though the room was dark and there was a spotlight on him blinding him, he sensed tense shapes in the background, “Yes, I am Jason Ludwick Hargrieve but, no, I do not know what is going on. What is going on?”

He tried to see what was speaking but the voice’s answer made him realize that it was being broadcast into his own brain. Much like everyone these days, Jason had a Conduit implanted inside his brain that connected him with the Web and something was broadcasting directly into this, leapfrogging his ears and making his brain “hear” these words.

“Acknowledged. Identity confirmed,” the voice continued. Suddenly, he realized that it must some low-grade AI talking to him, thus the dull toneless drone of its speech, “Jason Ludwick Hargrieve your body was used in an iridium and rare metals vault robbery. You and others were apprehended by the police and the Bureau of Web Protocols scanners have indicated evidence of a Conduit hack that provides overwhelming evidence that someone had hijacked all of you for this robbery. There will be a BWeP trial shortly and I will be representing you as your free, public sector AI lawyer but I advise against pleading guilty. Given the evidence of your Conduit being hacked, we are pleading the Supra Humanum Imperium defence. This was beyond human control. We are being summoned, Mr Hargrieve, we will upload now.”

***

Jason felt his Conduit tingle as connections suddenly reached out of the Web and formed secure socket layers with it. He closed his eyes and the dark room with the spotlight disappeared to be replaced by grey, ambient area that now housed his consciousness.

He was in a virtual courtroom.

He looked down and his body was badly rendered and pixelated in this bland arena. Bloody Government, he thought, always cutting budgets. Standing next to him, his lawyer was also badly rendered in an awkward-looking elderly body while the AI Judge of whatever low court this was floated before them in flowing white robes.

“–and so, your Honour, we stand behind the Supra Humanum Imperium defence–Mr Hargrieve is far from the aggressor in this case. In fact, he is the victim and, thus, dragging out this unnecessary proceeding any more is simply cruel.”

The Judge nodded and looked directly at him.

“While the evidence is strongly in favour of the Defendant and I acknowledge the strength of your defence, I wish to ask him two questions directly.”

The AI lawyer squirmed a little and looked at Jason in a moment of panic. Obviously, whatever poor programming it had, it had never encountered such a request.

“Yes, your Honour, you may,” it meekly replied.

“Thank you,” the Judge began, “Mr Hargrieve, are you aware of the wave of Conduit hacks that have seen a spate of rare metal repositories being robbed?”

“N-no,” Jason said, stammering a little as these were the first words he had said in a while. Feeling awkward, he quickly added: “Your Honour.”

“Well, there have been a large number of these cases flowing through this court,” the Judge replied, “While the poor victims have to be let off due to the Supra Humanum Imperium defence–which rightly separates the crime your body committed from your own consciousness and intent–the police have neither found the actual hacker nor the iridium, ruthenium, osmium, and rhenium that has been stolen in all these cases. While none of the other victims of this hacking had any notable programming skills, you, Mr Hargrieve, are employed in the production of Conduits themselves. Not just would this give you the tools to hack Conduits, and the knowledge of where the rare metal repositories are, but it also would give you the channels to sell these rare, valuable metals into as the black market for illicit Conduits is a large and lucrative one.”

The virtual courtroom grew tense. Jason suddenly felt like his–or his brain–was being scanned. His muscles tensed and, vaguely, he felt himself gripping the chair in the room that his physical form was still sitting in. He shifted his weight nervously, a lump forming in his throat and he felt the walls closing in on him. He had a sudden urge to run away or cry. He looked at his squirming lawyer for help, but the Judge started speaking again.

“I repeat, Mr Hargrieve, the evidence is strongly in favour of your defence and I acknowledge this fact. But, Mr Hargrieve, I want to hear it from you: are you really the victim in all of this, or are you guilty?”

“Please! Please, your Honour!” he cried out, falling to his knees as waves of intense brain scans seemingly rolled over his neural pathways, “All I remember is getting home from work on Wednesday evening! It was late and I fed my dog and I sat down at my computer and, and–and I don’t remember anything else! Next thing, I’m on the ground and police are tazing me and, and–“

It was all too much and Jason collapsed sobbing.

“OK, OK, OK,” the Judge mumbled, waving a virtual hand and the brain scans stopped, “You appear to be telling the truth. The evidence of a Conduit hack in the case of Mr Hargrieves is clear and the Supra Humanum Imperium defence is upheld. Case dismissed.”

***

Jason’s head was still tender when they discharged him from the public sector hospital that the police had dropped him and the others off at. The medical bots had buzzed around them a bit, measuring and scanning while the BWeP restoration codes were uploaded into his Conduit to help repair some of the damaged sectors.

And then they had given him a dispirin and put him out onto the street.

He pulled his shirt–still the work shirt he had worn to work on Wednesday!–tighter around him. It was chilly and softly drizzling with rain. His shirt hardly helped. It was grubby and torn in a place, probably by the policeman who had pinned him to the ground, and it had what looked suspiciously like someone’s blood on one sleeve. Maybe even his own?

This nightmare is almost done, he kept reminding himself, almost done. All he wanted to do was to crawl into his bed and sleep for a week. He really, intensely wanted to get to his bed.

He pushed out a request from his Conduit into the Web and, moments later, a driverless taxi slid up in front of him. He jumped in and, as it pulled away, he rolled his head backwards, pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes with a sigh.

This nightmare is almost done. Almost done…

***

A couple hours later, Jason closed his front door and knelt down patting his dog. She was lovely and so excited that her Master was home, finally.

It was now Friday evening.

He sighed and walked to the kitchen. The poor beast had not eaten for two days, so he scooped an extra-large pile of cubes and plopped them down into her bowl. Almost immediately, she began to wolf it down.

He sighed again, this nightmare is over, he told himself as he took his ruined shirt off and threw it in the bin. It was time for a shower–a long, hot shower–and then he would crawl into his own bed.

He walked out of the kitchen, down his short corridor to his bedroom and then froze at the open door to it! His eyes widened and his hands tightened into fists! Lightning shot through him and his heart exploded in his chest as a wave of intense nausea hit him!

He ran, scrambling through the bedroom, to his en suite bathroom where he threw up what little was left in his stomach into the toilet.

Slowly, he raised his head from the porcelain bowl and looked back at his bed. His skin began to crawl and the hair on the back of his neck rose. Slowly, a geo-tagged, locally-cached memory that was set to trigger in him when he walked into his own bedroom began to leak into his Conduit and then into his mind.

Slowly, it began to reinstall and he began to remember…

He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, stood up and walked to the bed. There lay a number of black suitcases and, somehow, he knew all their combinations. Somehow he knew if anyone put the wrong combinations in, the contents of the suitcases would be atomized into gases and, thus, destroy any evidence.

He leaned down and, one by one, put the correct codes into the suitcases and flipped them open.

Jason Ludwick Hargrieve stood with a growing, wicked smile spreading across his face and looked down at all the iridium, ruthenium, osmium, and rhenium bars that he had stolen. It would be worth a fortune on the black market and, after he had reworked it into illicit Conduit hardware, it would be worth even more.

Although he had been caught this time, his fail-safe had worked brilliantly and they had merely labelled him as another Supra Humanum Imperium victim.

In the kitchen, his dog finished eating and he could hear her scampering to him in the bedroom. The nightmare is over and the dream begins. He threw his head back and began laughing wildly.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Music at Sea

In the late summer, before the storms began to roll in, Mary Antoinette Athelard drowned herself, or so the police said and the newspapers reported. And, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, that is what happened.

In the small hours of the morning when the world is darker than our forgotten nightmares and old fishermen are drunk in the tavern by the docks, the oldest of them tells a very different story. It is a much darker story and one that reaches back to the entwined roots of the oldest family in Blackpool Bay and the beginnings of the town itself.

Many years later and a world away, I write these words in my diary as a cautionary tale. You may or may not believe me, but trust me when I say that you should fear the music at sea.

***

I had schooled with Edward Junior Athelard, who had convinced me to spend summer vacation with him at his family home in Blackpool Bay. Both him and I had a fascination with diving, having done some scuba and spelunking around various places, and he had convinced me about the fascinating underwater ruins dotted around his ancestral shoreline back home.

Junior was the youngest of two siblings and the last in a line of Athelards stretching back to his great-great-grandmother who built both the family fortune and, arguably, their home town. He rarely mentioned his father or what had happened to him; the Athelard family was interspersed with tragedy in each generation and he tended to gloss over many other aspects of his family. Years later, these seemingly innocent omissions make my skin crawl and I find my ears straining to hear if there is any hint of music in the wind outside.

Junior had, though, spoken fondly of his elder sister. They had been a key source of companionship for each other growing up in such a small, isolated town penned in by a dark, brooding ocean on one side and the Old Mountains on the other. With the curiosity of children and the leisure of the wealthy, the two of them had spent many hours looking through these self-same underwater ruins that he wanted to show me and, thus, our first trip to Blackpool Bay was born.

Once we had jumped off the creaking, old boat at the smelly docks, we grabbed our bags and wandered up into town. Residing at number 2 Main Street, the Athelard family home was a wonderful old Victorian house that had probably seen better days but still carried itself well in this quaint setting.

A decrepit, piscine-looking butler with slightly bulging eyes opened for Master Edward and me, taking our bags and showing me to my room. Dinner was served shortly after that and, in this old wooded and quaint Victorian setting, I first met Mary. It would be the first of many times as, all those years ago, we grew close in our innocence as Junior, Mary, and I all explored those ancient, silent ruins so far below the brooding, stormy waters of Blackpool Bay.

We would spend weeks swimming around vast crumbling ruins of strange rock, carved in strong, flowing lines. There were pillars running in the deep from ancient times and for forgotten reasons with architectures intimating a great city with vast buildings and roads that ran up and through the town–if you knew where to look and what to look for–towards the darkest part of the Old Mountains where the bizarre Black Pool is rumored to lie.

We would throw around wild theories about the ruins and, on more than one occasion, I could swear that I heard strange, haunting music in the wild wind or vibrating through the waters far below the surface. But, I am uncertain whether I have merely fabricated these memories, as those eerie, crumbling, seaweed-infested ruins played on one’s minds long after you left them, as did my subsequent experience.

After all, those crumbling ruins were the strange, foreboding structures that distant, alien hands had lade while chiselling dark, twisted decorations with warped fish-like human forms amongst other horrors, all writhing through and around a great civilization whose very name has been forgotten to our mild, modern history books.

***

Those years flew by, but Junior ended up at a different college to me, though I hear that he dropped out after only a year and returned home. Not just the distance but also as he grew older I sensed him pulling away from me and, perhaps in hindsight, the rest of the modern world as he slipped back into the dark, isolation of Blackpool Bay.

For a while, Mary and I also maintained sporadic communication, but slowly, the dark, mysterious ruins below the waters Blackpool Bay receded into my memory and the Athelards receded back into their old Victorian home with all their secrets, money and isolation.

Slowly, I forgot the old, crumbling ruins and their haunt visage and horrific carvings. Slowly, I forgot the music I thought I heard sometimes in the howling, bitter ocean wind or vibrating deep underwater…

If only this had stayed that way. But, alas, the distance was shattered when the phone rang late one night and, on a crackling line, Mary’s voice breathlessly whispered out three short, panicked sentences before the line cut:

“Come, James, come quickly! It is happening to us again. It is hungry and I am not sure how long I can keep Junior safe!”

***

Less than a fortnight later, I was walking out to the docks with a pale, thin, babbling Mary pulling my hand and pushing me into one of the family boats. Junior was gone and I was too late.

Too late for what, I recall wondering?

I was shocked at how much Mary had aged and how empty their had home felt. The old, fishy butler was gone and shadows lurked everywhere in that building. As she cast off from the docks and we ploughed her family boat through stormy swell and cutting, bitter wind against the dark sky and hateful sea, she told me the strangest, most disjointed tale I have ever heard:

“James,” I still remember Mary, her voice edged with hysteria and her eyes wide with fear as she called above the sound of the boat, the wind and the water, “James, we Athelards have been here since the beginning. Did you know that? Did Edward tell you that we were the beginning? They made–we made a deal with them and it has a cost. I did not know, but the butler did–I think he is one of them. I think he keeps cutting the phone lines. Oh, god, James, what a cost! One every generation is taken. They never forget because they have to feed it. It began with Great-great-nan’s husband. He was the first to pay it. Some of the townsfolk are them, you know? They sometimes breed, but we–no, no, god, no, we are pure and just, just, just… You see, James, they took Junior and we have to get him back We have to get him back, and I found the old map in Great-great-nan’s old room and we are going to where the pillars end and their city starts and, god, James, how are we going to get him back? Nan’s said the music calls them but how? Why? God, James, god…!“

At this, Mary broke down crying and I jumped up and put my arms around her. She slumped back and I took over the boat’s steering, though I had no idea where we were going. She sat down, burying her face in her palms and began to sob.

The Athelards are a sturdier bunch than most old minted families, and soon she stood up, pushed me away from the wheel, and took over. Her eyes narrowed, jaw clenched and all she did was to point to the open maws of the Bay where the open ocean started with its wild, primordial water and say:

“That’s where we are going, James, that is where we are going.”

***

From this point, a lot of my tale becomes a blur, though I will try to recount it as accurately as possible.

Once we arrived at what appeared to be a very specific place, Mary took out a strange, metal whistle or flute and, amidst the howling wind and sea spray, she blew deeply into it. Perhaps it was growing on me, perhaps it was an old memory blurring with the strangeness of the present, or perhaps it was truly happening, but suddenly I became faintly aware of that self-same haunting music hidden in the hateful wind howling around us.

Gradually, I realized–and recognized!–that there was a strange, high-pitched melody in the wind. The waves were pounding against the boat became or were caused by drum beats; bass-filled echoes that the haunting, ethereal notes pitched and rolled against out in that vicious sea. It was growing louder and clearer, and my old memories came flooding back to me.

I recalled the strange, foreboding structures far below and around us that distant, alien hands had placed while carving dark, twisted decorations of fish-like horrors, all writhing through and around a great civilization whose very name has been forgotten to our shallow, self-centered history.

My head lolled back and I recall closing my eyes. The music was around me and filled me with unexpected thoughts and alien feelings from a forgotten place. Somehow the inhuman music reminded me of places I had never been and secrets that I did not know. Its darkly evocative and elusive melody was coursing through my vanes and the wild wind, waves, and stormy sky all fell away as I lost myself in it…

“James!”

The cry snapped me back to reality. My mouth was open and I had been singing or humming–or chanting!–and realized that my arms were outstretched for some reason with palms facing up like I was worshipping something.

“James!“

The second cry snapped me into action and I opened my eyes.

Mary was clutching me, shaking and pointing and I was hit by a sickening stench of rotting fish. I had no idea how they got there, but standing in the boat, facing us were two of the most bizarre terrifying beings I had ever seen. While certainly humanoid in shape, their thin, gaunt forms were covered in glistening slimy scales with webbed, wicked-looking claws on both hands and feet with fins running down parts of their bodies. They stood a little taller than me, though their builds were slight and they looked less comfortable on land than I suspect they would be underwater. All these details receded into the background when presented with the cold, fish-like faces that rose up from their gilled necks. Cold, unblinking inhuman eyes of uncalculatable intelligence stared at the two of us from across a gulf that my reason and all my knowledge could not cross without going insane.

These were the fish-men carved into the ruins we had dived through as children. And then it struck me, the ruins were not merely carved with their ancient, wicked forms, but the ruins themselves were the fish-mens’ own! At that moment, I knew as I know now, these ancient abominations from the depths of the sea were the builders and architects of those crumbling, eerie ruins through Blackpool Bay.

But, before I could do anything or speak, Mary darted forward and bowed before them, laying the strange metal fluit at their feet. The haunting, inhuman music on the wind was crescendoing as drums in the deep pushed out like the heartbeat of some giant horror awakening far below us where even the light of the brightest day does not reach.

“Please, please,” Mary begged, “Please can I have my brother James back. Please! Take me instead!”

“Now wait!” I remember shouting at Mary, stepping forward to stop her, but it was too late. The music at sea was crescendoing hellishly as the waves were getting bigger and a lightning bolt suddenly flashed from the blackening heavens, “Now wait, you, stop! Don’t touch her!”

I recall screaming, my voice lost in the music at sea as a fish-man grabbed poor Mary and I lunged at it. The one fish-man–surprisingly strong–batted me off like some buzzing insect while the other scooped up a sobbing Mary and leaped smoothly from the boat into the dark waters of where Blackpool Bay meets the wild, primordial open-ocean.

What happened then? This is a question that I struggle with.

I do not know but, in the darkest hours of the stormiest nights when I sometimes think I hear that strange, inhuman music on the hateful wind, I sometimes recall flashes of images from the moments following this.

I recall struggling with the remaining fish-man but being flung aside like I was nothing. My head hit something and the world began to darken. But something large and dark–sometimes I recall tentacles and teeth but sometimes it is worse–rose from that wild water and towered over the boat and me. I recall Mary screaming and the horrors of the cosmos itself reaching out with the hunger of countless millennium, the hunger of cold, inhuman space and the black depths of the ocean’s hidden floor…

And then I recall being woken by an old, weathered fisherman who helped me steer my listlessly drifting boat back to shore. The wind was silent again but I swear I could feel dark drumbeats rolling in the depths far below those primordial waves.

***

The Athelard family is no more but this is old news. After Junior’s reported disappearance, a piscine-looking policeman with bulbous eyes ruled that a grief-stricken Mary had thrown herself into the sea and drowned. This was despite my protests to the contrary. The newspapers had then reported her drowning, and the old family estate and the rotting town around it had receded back into isolation and brooding silence.

Years later, I write these words from far inland on another continent. Even this far away, I sometimes worry that the inhuman music at sea still lingers on the wind around here, its reach far longer than we can ever imagine. The fish-men and their horrors still haunt my waking dreams as I move towards the same fate that befell the Athelard family.

I am dying and am not long for this world. Junior is gone as is Mary and the entire Athelard family line. Soon, I will be too, though for more mundane reasons. One day, I think–or hope!–that Blackpool Bay will also rot away and disappear from our world.

But, I suspect, the strange, crumbling ruins of the ancient, inhuman civilization that lies below the dark waters of Blackpool Bay shall remain. The fish-men with their wicked, webbed claws and unblinking eyes shall probably slip from our age into another and, perhaps, even another, taking their secrets with them as well as their need to sate that nameless hunger that resides far below and at the center of their twisted lives and at the heart of the music at sea.