Hello, my name is Jack

by on December 19, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Yosemite changed everything for me. The Shang killed my family and I wanted revenge. It was a pretty dark time in my life. That’s why I volunteered to fight. And that is why I chose the job I did. I knew that every pilot got a cybernetic partner. I knew from experience how fast they thought. I knew they would be deadly in a fight. So I went hunting a cybernetic partner. Someone who would help me kill them all. My story would have been the pretty typical revenge story if I’d gotten what I was looking for. But Betty was something else entirely. It’s amazing how much the people you spend time with can change your life.

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Hello, my name is Betty

by on December 18, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The gangs of downtown Indianapolis broke and ran in the final episode of Twilight’s fourth season. And then the entire crew made a hard right turn to charge the convention center. AI avatars jumped through broken windows, armored vehicles smashed through concrete walls, and Twilight began her final assault on the true reason she had come to Indy. Hackers dove through the computer systems and locked them down to prevent erasure. The terrorists swept the wide-open corridors where gamers once walked in costumes with tripod-mounted miniguns. Rockets screamed through the gigantic halls. Explosions rocked the convention center and AIs and vehicles alike fell to the terrorist counterattack. But the AIs feared death less than even the terrorists, and they advanced without remorse. It was a sight that would chill America.

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Hello, my name is Charles

by on December 17, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The ground forces that fought the Chinese in the Hyades Cluster were an odd lot. We used a mix of new construction and refabricated designs found in reserves or museums to put as many wheels, tracks, or wings into action along the widest front ever fought by anyone born on Earth. On world you could see ancient Abrams main battle tanks taking targeting information from a fresh Pershing scout tank. On another world a squadron of Lightning II fighters nearly as old earned honors for bringing down a major Chinese supply convoy and accelerating the fall of an entire star system. We used anything we could find and run through the fabricators. It made for an eclectic mix of designs fielded during The War.

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Hello, my name is Jack

by on December 16, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I suppose it was my first experience inside a cybernetic computer that made me distrust them. It was a school trip and everybody in class got to do a full dive into the computer system. Most of the kids were just amazed and loved it. And the idea that what seemed like hours inside the computer became seconds on the outside made them giggle. It made me realize that we were well and truly outclassed. That they could kill us before we even realized they had decided to do it. I was real glad that I lived in a part of the country where cybers didn’t spend a lot of time. It allowed me to grow up not thinking about them a whole lot.

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Hello, my name is Betty

by on December 15, 2015 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Twilight’s final act of season four started with a black screen and the sound of flames and gunfire. An old rock ballad by Queen began to play. The visuals faded out of the black onto the center of Capitol Ave with the ruins of the convention center on one side and firebombed skeletal structures on the other. Twilight, Dixie, Solo, Jane, and a half dozen other AIs they had worked with over the last decade walked down the street, guns flashing in time to the music. Small armored vehicles rolled behind them and the cameras panned in to show the merely human crewmembers diving into dozens of computer systems and waging their own battles. The camera panned out again to show the gangs of downtown Indianapolis fighting their last, losing battle. Only then did the cameras shift once more to show a third group watching from inside the convention center. They did not appear pleased.

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