[hider=Could It Be, Is It Syzygy?] “Could it Be, Is It Syzygy?”- Prologue-Memoriae EVAS “Gone are the days of Human vulnerability. Past is the time we should fear injury. Invalids, paraplegics, rejoice! Your salvation is at hand! The body you always wanted is yours for the taking! Now you can be strong enough to withstand any* disaster! Fast enough to escape your fears! Smart enough to bring the galaxy to your fingertips! The EVAS 4 is here!” -MitsuBrowning Enterprises advertisement for the first model of the fourth wave of Extra-Vehicular-Arms, Armor, and Augmentation System, the EVAS4.0, “built for skill and dressed to kill”, the MitsuBrowning M0.4 Jackal. The EVAS gave us a new way to live. The space race had just fired up again with a fervor, the likes of which hasn’t been seen or felt since the 1960’s. Acts of terrorism, all too frequent these days, claimed few, and natural disasters took fewer. The first wave of suits weren’t sealed, more of an exoskeleton without a shell. They enhanced the user’s strength and allowed the viability of jetpacks to the military-industrial complex. Men could move with new freedom. By the time the first EVAS 2’s rolled in, jetpacking to work was commonplace to the average citizen. “Since the Wright Brothers took that fateful flight in Kitty Hawk, mankind has reigned over the skies… clumsily. Bring finesse back to flight. Zephyrtech Industries: the future of 'Extra-Vehicular'". -Actual internet advertisement for the first model of EVAS2.0, the Zephyrtech Industries Aeromancer One, the first self contained suit, with a vacuum sealed shell, pressurized compartment, collapsible wings, and a massive tri-bine™ system designed to spin the wind current projected through the jets, providing a more stable thrust. It was pricey, but only until the other EVAS2.0’s released. War, more than anything, changed. World War 3 was considered the first real conflict fought exclusively in orbit. The stratosphere was the playground of infantry. What were once considered combat recon had become the “Bravo-Alpha Mike-Foxtrots”, the “Guardian Angels”, and “The Birds of Prey”. They were named “Skywalkers” by their admirers, and “High-Altitude Combat Specialists” by their superiors. The “Air Force” was all too eager to become “United States Space Command”, and specialized in high-altitude, orbital, and interstellar defense, (and offense), constantly dueling and at odds with the Navy over whose jurisdiction was whose. The Navy, meanwhile, focused on their excellent, incredible, and uncompromising Space Marine Corps. They were gods among men, the five-man company racking up over two hundred confirmed kills in just one tour in orbit. They each earned Purple Hearts, two earned Silver Stars, one received a Congressional Medal of Honor, and another was given the British equivalent after singlehandedly defeating a German SAK Assault squad and rescuing not only the son of the Prime Minister, but also his entire platoon. Also present was the daughter of a certain Second Sky Lord Alloa, a prominent figure in the war at the time. Nuclear weapons were never even placed on the table. The risk was considered too great even when China had Germany in a chokehold, and Mexico penetrated the U.S. border. Once they controlled the sky over their enemy, they could drop troops into any soft target, easily shooting down or evading any anti-air efforts. Mexico took Texas, Nevada, and much of California. “The EVAS 3 was actually a secret development. It was born out of a new breed of Patriotic American hackers, that had been specially designed to destroy enemy suit programming, and kill its enemy computers, stealing information as it went. This is where the first real artificial intelligences come in. The cool thing is, the guys in the suits, operating these complex weapons and modified armor, these, these, fucking wizards were just American nerds. Oh, yeah, did I mention we built it in Mexico-controlled Texas? Yeah. It was awesome.” -Mitch Grandeau, A.K.A. “L33C4”, (“Leech”), infamous “Tech Rebel”, self proclaimed “Technomancer”. The EVAS3.0 was horrifying to witness throughout Texas. It could march through a concentration camp, and with a wave of its hand, deactivate the guards’ weapons. Another wave, and they couldn’t move. It could short enemy superconductors, drain power, (L33C4), or even turn some poor sap’s suit into a bomb. It looked like magic, it felt like The Force, and Mexico’s robotics engineers couldn’t stop it when it sabotaged their drones. In the end, the U.S. declared Texas won, while Mexico called it neutral territory. The U.S. Army recruited as many former Tech Rebels as they could, and after much debate, and some playful cyber-vandalism, officially named the department of hacker warriors the “Technomancer’s Guild”. Their emblem changed several times the first year, but finally settled on a line pyramid. Some say it’s a four-sided die, others that it represents the All-Seeing Eye on the dollar, some still that it dates back to Egyptian warrior wizards. The Technomancer’s Guild has declined to clarify. Mankind’s reach stretched throughout the solar system, the furthest space station being Atë Station, and on the opposite end, Allegheri Station, specially shielded to protect it from the sun’s heat and radiation. We found new secrets. We uncovered new evidence that either we are not alone, or we are not the first intelligent life here. A strange configuration of glass and hematite that had strangely resonant quality was found imbedded deep in the ice of Europa. We played this “instrument”, producing a fluctuating subsonic to hypersonic hum that could be felt in the orbiting ship. Still, no one answered. The subterranean moon colony stretched wide enough to warrant political boundaries between lunar territories. Short hair was in, Mohawks, fauxhawks, and other similar hairstyles were big favorites for all genders. Social unrest on Earth was particularly due to a small number of people who denounced the use of powered armor, claiming it to be an affront to God. After several acts of “righteous terrorism” on Osiris Colony, martial law was placed, and a power hungry General became a power-hungry Warden. The EVAS4.0 was released not in a wave of corporations rushing to the same end, but in quiet personal research and development. Small independent EVAS firms popped up, Private Ventures, Lord Byron and Co., Durandal Arms and Armour, each bringing something new and different and amazing to the table. Private Ventures designed custom works of art that floated like butterflies and stung like bees, Lord Byron and Co. built a suit with such extraordinary cyber-warfare capabilities that it had to be sold illegally. Durandal Arms and Armour crafted an EVAS that could withstand antivehicle munitions and even meteorite impacts. Twas the golden age of the Augmentation Generation. The Augmentation Generation. What a name. What a title. We were the first generation to live, birth to death, encased in exoskeletons. We were the first to proclaim loudly and arrantly that the EVAS was the future of human evolution. How little did we know, how short was our sight, how conceited we were, to take evolution for granted. CHAPTER 1-1: THE FINDER My ship floated in limbo among the stars. So great is the space between Earth and Mars, that a vessel as small as the Jupiter’s Piece could wait for months here, unnoticed by all. But so great is my extranet presence that waiting here would be not only counterintuitive, but would be the epitome of profit’s opposite. My career is a lonely one, but it must remain so. Someone who does what I do can only be in the gaze of the public until someone recognizes them. But I am careful. Even when the Disappearings started, I was careful. As per my extranet site’s instructions, a message hovers over my main viewscreen. Attached to it is a transfer of one hundred fifty thousand dollars, and a name: Lana DuGaulle. The only other contents are the words: “Find her”. See, this is what I’m referring to. I like this anonymity. I don’t need to know my clients. They don’t need to know me. All I need is what they want with a healthy check behind it. All they need is someone to do what they can’t. Which I can. So, first thing’s first: cup of coffee. The chalky, dehydrated disc of grit in an aluminum canister simply and fittingly labeled ‘COFFEE’ was neither good nor bad. It contained all the necessary properties to make it coffee, and yet I was certain that it was not. Sometimes I wondered if it was just freeze-dried. Other times I reminded myself that everything was freeze-dried. Next came breakfast. I remember I was quite hungry that morning, having spent the day before with a normal breakfast, but a ‘liquid lunch’ and dinner. Sure, bourbon isn’t food, but once you’ve had enough, it feels like it should be. But that day was the kind of day when you know if you don’t start it right, you’ll end it wrong. Knowing this, I went for the gold, so to speak. A packet of beige powder, two short brown sticks, and a gritty white square barely filled a quarter of the steel plate I set into the Rehydrator. I pulled out a full plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. God, I love toast. It’s just crispy bread, but something changes when you toast it. I don’t know what it is, but no matter what you put on toast, it just gets better. Even that fake butter shit you don’t have to rehydrate is good on toast. I went for the that first. There are few foods more unsatisfying and chewy than cold toast. Cold bacon? Sure. Cold eggs? They’re a little weird, but sure. Cold toast? Why don’t you just kill me now and save me the suffering? In any case, I removed my helmet, savoring the little squeal of the seal as the suit decompressed, and ran a couple searches on Lana DuGaulle while I munched on that crunchy tan square of wonder. Earthnet came up with nothing. Police database had nothing. But I hit the motherlode when I punched her name into Osiris Security. Apparently, she’d only ever lived on the lunar colony, holding occupations as a nurse, a teacher’s assistant, and a data entry clerk. There was nothing special, nothing that would mark her as a target. She was unmarried, no children, and only twenty-six years old. I remember thinking, even then, how eerie it was that she was so ridiculously normal. Her medical records were even less interesting: broken leg when she was seven, recorded as an typical childhood accident, various standard vaccinations and inoculations, twenty-six years of age, one hundred and ninety-two pounds, five feet, two inches tall. No Cancer, no Diabetes, no Hepatitis, not even HPV. No crabs, Chlamydia, syphilis, or anything indicating a subversive sexual history. She was last seen in the always-crowded Osiris Sector 4, Cochrane Shopping Mall, retail district. I hated cases like these. I filed her under Missing Person- Mundane, where all of the missing person cases featuring subjects of extreme normality I receive inevitably go. I had no interest in this case, save the intrigue that the $150,000 check alone had caused. I remember being asked once how I make a living. My response had been “I do stuff, people pay me.” They asked what it was that I did. For brevity’s sake, I’d said, “I find things. I build things. People buy both.” Which, in hindsight, was a grotesque oversimplification of my career, or careers. In truth, I do two things. I build suits for people who can afford them, and I find things for people who can afford that service. I am very expensive. That having been said, any suit with the Private Ventures label seems to be fairly highly regarded. Last I heard, one of my favorite pieces went on auction with a final tag of just over twenty million dollars. I sold it for two hundred thousand. Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20. It’s a shame foresight isn’t the same. CHAPTER 1-2: The Lawman This Osiris Colony was my home. Its citizens were my children. Children are, by their very nature, unreliable witnesses. They have trouble distinguishing between their imagination and reality. They have trouble being objective observers. They fear the unknown. They fear change, malevolent or otherwise, and most of all, they crave distraction, entertainment. So imagine the blur of myriad emotion when the Disappearings began. Six citizens, six of my children were taken. One from a bustling stock exchange floor; two from crowded ports; one from the busiest mall in the colony; and two from their homes, one in the day, one at night. I feared the worst, but after eighteen hours, protocol is to end the search. The last had been gone three rotes. I needed to find those people. In almost two hundred years, we’d never had an unsolved case. Not ever. I was single, and having no children, one might assume my paternal instincts had been directed toward the colony. One might be right. I had been Head of Security of the Osiris Security Administration, (or “O-sec” as the locals say), for nearly five years now. Just look at the numbers and see for yourself the difference I made in my short time in office. Just thirty-six years old, and I had dropped the crime rate by over twenty per cent. I started with three tenets: Logos, Ethos, and Eros. Osiris had become quite… for lack of a better word, irate with us. You see, there was an uprising when I was about ten years old. It was the almighty and all-overreacting will of the people against the guns and tech of O-Sec. O-Sec won in a burst of tyranny and violence. My father was an activist. He believed in things. I couldn’t now say whether the ideals and people he followed were right or wrong. But he died fighting O-Sec, and my baby brother lost everything. They took his father, his limbs, and skin sensitivity in over thirty percent of his body. They, we also took away any chance for him to have a normal life. They gave him advanced implants, but his body rejected them. He was forced to find alternative means of regaining control. He suffered from multiple personalities, schizophrenia, manic dementia, and the most catatonic depression I’d ever even heard of. I had to be the father figure. The only things he kept were my father’s crusade, and my father’s hatred. It was no spacewalk. I applied to O-Sec as soon as I turned twenty-five, the minimum legal age. I passed my psych exam with flying colors, my examiner even labeling me as “exactly what the administration needs right now” on his report. As it turned out, I was able to eradicate twenty years of hatred, and fear of O-Sec in just four short years. Anyway, back to my initial three tenets. These were three basic initiatives I wanted every single officer, agent, or representative to follow. Logos: I demanded full disclosure. We kept no secrets. Of course, with more panicking details, for example, when Typhus evolved, and everyone was sick, we played it off as though it were a much more avoidable threat, recommending that everyone sanitize their suits as frequently as possible, and minimize face to face contact with strangers. Of course, that specific order hindered the second tenet temporarily, but I reinforced it all the same. Pathos: It was an order that demanded as much “face time” with the public as we could. It was an attempt to humanize the officers that the people so demonized. It worked perfectly, after the Typhus was over. I received reports of more positive outcomes to potentially violent situations than I’d ever seen. I remember vividly. A few of them made me cry. The third tenet, the most controversial, was the only secret the O-Sec had after my administration. Eros simply pushed an initiative to fraternize outside the administration, which had become a serious problem, and was on the verge of becoming inbreeding. It was born in the hope that gradually, we could remove this, this schism, between O-Sec and the citizens of Osiris American Moon Colony. All three tenets worked miracles. We were on our way to progress. On this particular day, the day the Disappearings started, there were no other events of significance. We slammed a local still, putting out moonshine of questionable quality. We picked up two hitchhikers from the Aphrodite station, both wanted for breaking and entering. Neither was armed. Osiris was in perfect harmony. Then, a panicked call to our Emergency Services. The twelve digit number was encrypted, jammed from an outside source. The call was also jammed, but we were able to extract four words from the noise: “They took my dad.” Officially, that was our first lead. Unofficially, this call meant nothing. We got prank calls every day, some credible, some incredible. We investigated every one to the best of our ability. Sometimes, things get away from you. CHAPTER 1-3: The Emissary The darkness would hide us, this I knew. The radiation in this system would conceal our thermal output, as well as our radio traffic. This, I also knew. No matter how strong my faith, I knew also that someday, someone would catch up to us. I lived in fear of this every day. God had warned me of this. He had warned me of another, a chosen one, like myself, with the capabilities to stop my divine work. But faith without works is dead, and my faith is very much alive. My ship is great, and mighty. Its weapons are unconventional, and therefore advantageous. Its armor is thick, and sturdy. Its thrusters are reliable, and well kept. My subjects are loyal, devoted to my God. And when he speaks, they are captivated. When I speak, they are captivated. My God lived within me. He spoke through me. He gave me His strength, his will, and I in turn, gave him my uncompromising allegiance. I have proven my worth. He gave us names. He told us to watch them. There were six of them. We were to observe them, monitor their every movement. I knew not why we studied them, documented their every activity, but we did it all the same. “Lana Avril DuGaulle, twenty-six years of age, one hundred and ninety-two pounds, five feet, two inches tall. She lives a life of little consequence. She is known to have a nurturing nature, and is sympathetic, and empathetic to the needs and desires of others. She has suffered only minor tragedy in her life, including the loss of a family pet bird in her childhood, and a grandmother, in her teens. She currently is unemployed, living off of her family’s savings. She is neither married, nor is a parent, and seldom interacts socially, indicating levels of loneliness ranking between moderate to severe. Daily contacts: none. Transportation habits include: Home> Astral Springs Café, Cochrane Shopping Mall, Osiris Colony, U.S. division, Sector Four> Rare Necessities Retail, Cochrane Shopping Mall, Osiris Colony, U.S. Division, Sector Four> ACGS Pet Shop, Cochrane Shopping Mall, Osiris Colony, U.S. Division, Sector 4. Other habits include: abstinence from premarital sex and illicit chemical usage, abstinence from alcoholic beverages, regular Sunday Mass attendance at St. Alonzo’s Catholic Chapel, Osiris Colony, U.S. Division, Sector Two.” We learned everything we could. Our ship’s sensors had been modified to be able to see even the serial numbers on a mark’s suit. We learned enough to write biographies on our subjects. Six of them. Then, they vanished. Once I could not walk, God helped me stand. Once I could not fight, God gave me the fire of His spirit. Once I could not speak, and God gave me his voice. Once, no one would listen, and God gave me his presence. My suit is God’s shield, my will is His sword, and my ship is His holy ark. In the same fashion, God gave me his resolve when the Disappearings began. He told me, “Fret not that your wards have gone. Their greatest work is being done. Our greatest work cannot even begin until theirs is finished. Have faith.” I had responded, “Faith is all I am.” Faith. CHAPTER 2-1: The Finder Errands today. First, I need to aquire a simple AI. I guess what I really needed was an assistant. Fuck that. [/hider]