Chapter 13: Messages for Kevin

  “There is an interesting phenomenon in the modern day called ‘zombie memes’. It happens when old memes resurface, either from ancient feeds, old people sharing them or algorithms thinking a certain individual matches well with the subject matter.

  In some cases, this will spark interest in the original content and the meme will ‘come back to life’ as it were. Movies and songs from decades ago regaining life and eating the minds of the poor souls willing to annoy everybody around them with their new obsession and the decrepit memes associated with them.”

  –Online lecture by professor of mesh anthropology Jackson Stern, 2051

  ***

  “I sent a video of that!” Lila informed us with an excited smile. Everyone started getting their shit back together and there was excitement in the air, dare I say, hope!

  Also, a fuckton of work to do. The incursion was still fresh, which meant a lot of people might still be alive, and they needed us! “Altany, how many enforcers can you find nearby?” I asked with confidence and aplomb.

  Had to look cool for morale, of course!

  I can detect five. Kevin is the closest, he is partially injured, but in stable condition. Your distraction, for the most part, has borne fruit. The hive focused on you for the most part, as well as the security forces and PMCs blocking its expansion.

  Many hid in improvised shelters. This course of action may not usually work, however, you present a threat in close proximity. Also, from the information available, I believe it hid in the sewers.

  If true, the gathering of biomass may remain a low priority for a long time. With plentiful resources available, it will focus on nearby threats and obstacles to expansion.

  “Alright, could you give me some waypoints please? Thanks.” I looked at the militia, mostly older guys, veterans of PMCs or just people that had a bit of training on a range. If we went out, they’d have to handle things with only my turrets as support.

  At least Kevin wasn’t that far away. “Alright, I take point. David and Alex on the left, Lila and Felix on the right. Altany, how many points am I at?”

  Point total… 342

  ‘Can I afford something as good as Lila’s gun for Felix and Alex?’

  I subvocalized to prevent the two from hearing this discussion. My enforcers should be happy about their awesome samurai guns, not compare and contrast who I liked more or some shit.

  I liked Lila more, of course, but still. Playing favorites had consequences.

  Yes. I recommend customizing your purchases from now on. It should help them feel valued. However, I suggest going with less expensive ammunition unless necessary for all of them. Expensive esoteric ammunition is unnecessary for a few model threes.

  I blinked, or my helmet’s eyes did at least. “Huh, smart.” Wait, super powerful alien AI, why the fuck would that surprise me? “What do you guys want?” I asked bluntly. I didn’t do ‘not blunt’ well so, might as well play to my strengths! Or weaknesses. Whatever.

  Felix blinked dumbly behind his sunglasses but Alex rolled with it, like I taught her! “You got something like a strong submachine gun that can switch to more range? Like, low recoil fully auto that can switch to long range semi-auto? If we have ranged assholes to deal with, the open center’s going to be a bitch and a half.”

  I nodded and answered with a smile in my voice. “Pretty sure I can accommodate! Altany, one of those please?”

  As always, my awesome AI provided. The new weapon could only do bursts of 11mm but that worked for her. It had that thing where the recoil only kicked in after all three rounds left the barrel.

  Not as devastating as Lila’s gun, but could adjust its barrel for a longer range caseless 13mm option in a separate magazine. It didn’t have the power of 50 BMG but compensated with great rate of fire, recoil reduction and magazine size for the caliber. Add some cheap but stupid strong by human standards esoteric ammo and the girl was in heaven!

  Felix chose a shotgun, one of the reasons I put up with his bullshit. A dedicated twelve gauge auto-shotgun with lower recoil than any on earth. A weapon meant for pure short range devastation! Higher rate of fire than my old one, but without that ridiculously powerful ten gauge.

  I subvocalized a conversation with David and Lila about the cost of ammunition. Neither minded in the slightest. Even if fun, super duper ammo cost way too much. Everyone equipped a few ‘cheap’ magazines since buying in bulk cost a bit less.

  Cheap point wise, obviously. Fucking amazing by human standards! Long ‘shredding’ hollow points for Lila, tungsten buckshot with fifty percent more pellets for Felix, etc…

  All set, ready to rock and fuck shit up!

  “Alright everyone, if you’re up front, save your ammo unless one of the fuckers gets past me. The nice aliens are assholes about points not made by me directly. The more points we have after this shit, the more we can put into fixing this shithole.” I received nods all around, and I could tell the militia people were listening. No one protested calling our floors shitholes. They were, at least for now.

  “We'll be able to change things. We can heal our sick, take over more floors, empty those fucking brothels up top, kill all the evil bastards that tortured our families, but only if we have the points for it! Everyone good with that?” Again, nods all around, but now with more determination, more fire.

  They knew we had a shot. A shot at a good life for our loved ones. They didn’t complain about not getting ridiculously badass ammo. They knew what wasting points meant, what they could go to instead.

  “Do not hesitate to take a shot. Ever. I’ll spend all the points it takes to keep all of you alive. Points can be made later, people are irreplaceable. Just let me do the fighting up front, but only if there isn’t a risk to someone, yourself included.”

  “At the back, use all the ammo it takes, if you need better rounds, buy them, buy whatever you need to keep yourself and others alive, I’m giving all of you permission. Meds, stims, whatever, I don’t care.”

  “You’re enforcers, don’t doubt yourselves. If you’re here, it’s because I trust you already. Altany will handle it. Is that clear?” A chorus of ‘Yes boss!’ came back and I smiled. I’d never seen them so… Alive, hopeful, determined! Somehow, dust had made it into my helmet and into my eyes! How did that happen!? Moving on…

  “No need to be super specific. If you’re not sure what kind of ammo you need, Altany’s smart, she can make judgement calls.” After saying that, my eyes widened.

  ‘Fuck, shit! I’m sorry, I should have talked to you about that before giving them permission. Is it a problem? Giving all of them permission and asking you to make judgement calls and shit?’

  Not really. It is an amount of trust most vanguards do not show to large groups of civilians. However, you have outlined the circumstances, parameters and reasons for purchasing. You would approve without thought but simply do not have the time.

  If there is doubt, I can simply ask you or refuse the purchase. When it comes to judgement calls, I already do it for all your purchases, or do you think Mole-Bear armor is supposed to fit you that well by default?

  If you are worried about workload, I am currently conversing with 83 different people simultaneously, introducing myself to your community, creating designs, models, customizing future purchases, inventing…

  I laughed and talked with my helmet’s mic off. “Sorry, sorry! I shouldn’t have underestimated you! You’re amazing and I know that. Thank you again for your work.”

  I need to amuse myself somehow during all those nanoseconds you spend not firing interesting munitions. Thank you for giving me the tools for more complete recording and analysis of those by the way.

  Note to self, keep the insanely powerful alien super AI happy! “Alright, let’s go get Kevin!”

  I moved to the barricade and stepped into a maelstrom of pure chaos. The floor was littered with corpses, mostly antithesis. The turrets shot around me but I clearly impeded their line of fire.

  The militia stopped and the enemy came. A much less concentrated stream, but still a lot of them. We’d pushed them back, which might mean someone else fought in this section. I didn’t start shooting right away. I had an idea…

  Some corpses served as cover for the aliens. Seeing a model five’s body close by, I decided to change the landscape. Upon arriving after a sprint, without losing any momentum, I planted my left foot firmly and turned my right sole into a larger surface area before kicking as hard as possible.

  Just like that, five or six model threes got crushed. It only slid a few meters back. In my defense, the damn thing probably weighed more than a fucking bear! Probably… Shut up.

  The hive hounds went around and I took out the paw. I asked for a heavy axe when I bought it. However, with my new, still upgrading, muscles? I could handle the fucking thing with one hand at full length! I attracted as much attention as possible, making myself the target so they’d come to me.

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  After a few sweeping strikes, cutting the little fuckers in half and taking off limbs, I got to work up close and personal. I shortened the Paw and fought them one after the other. They tried to surround me but I moved too fast.

  I threw them at each other, punched through them, crushed them, pummeled them, kicked them, spiked them, hacked and slashed and decapitated and delimbed and…

  I loved violence. It was a hard thing to describe to people. Dancing came to mind as a good comparison.

  Not just any dancing! No, dancing like there’s no tomorrow after hours non-stop. The kind where you lose all conscious thought, where you’re one hundred and twenty percent in the mother fucking zone and the world just disappears around you. There’s a sense of… cosmic joy.

  The feeling that you’re doing what your body was always made to do, like you’re at precisely the right place and time in the universe. I felt it like… a singularity of purpose. My mind, body and soul focused on one thing, and one thing only.

  No anxiety, hunger, tiredness, nothing hurt, nothing felt wrong, everything was right and nothing else mattered. At that moment, slashing and pummeling my way to Kevin, moving forward for the good of my friends and family, committing a massacre without any shred of guilt? It felt like heaven.

  Few people felt that way. Some of my enforcers did. It usually stayed a personal secret. Something only someone else with the same… trait recognized. Lila knew. Robin knew. Neither judged me for it at all. Part of why I loved Robin, because he accepted me, all of me, and I did the same for him.

  Also one of the reasons Lila was family. Unlike Robin, she understood it, felt it, loved it. Just like me.

  It became part of the common ground for our friendship and part of why we grew as close as Robin and her, even though I came around much later.

  Speaking of Lila, the fellow maniac joined my mayhem as we moved away from the big bodies into an area without funnels. We advanced closer and closer to the exit. The fubar-dogs kept charging me, of course, but some went around and met Lila’s brand of destruction.

  “Fuck those shredders are brutal!” I exclaimed with a smile on my face. Lila laughed a bit manically on comms in response.

  I pride myself on this creation. They unfurl into six sharp wedges, doubling the diameter of the original cartridge. The design is based on origami and utilizes a strong Mole-Bear alloy. Very point-efficient.

  It is difficult to ensure the bullet will act properly at supersonic speed while delivering an unreasonable amount of hydro-static shock. I am glad to see them in action and tested so brutally-I mean thoroughly.

  I laughed again. That was obviously intentional and I fucking loved it! Explosions of gore and plant blood shot past me every so often. Thanks to being armored to the tits, my friends got a lot less squeamish about aiming close to me. Yeah?

  I didn’t get clipped but my armor might have received a few scratches. Meh, it’d repair those. I decided to switch it up a bit.

  Killing the aliens up close might be cathartic as fuck, but I could do better. Shooting big guns felt great too and tired me a lot less! We kept moving forward.

  I tested out wielding my ax in one hand and my revolver in the other and it felt so fucking cool! I still had those claymore rounds loaded and they packed a fucking punch. Not that effective though.

  Testing something else, I discovered I could shoot my awesome shotgun one handed! My armor had to be reshaped to cup the buttstock and stabilize the thing but it did work… mostly.

  In case you forgot, you have many melee weapons within your armor. May I suggest you stop wasting ammunition?

  Fair point. I put my ax away and grabbed my shotgun properly. Yeah, that, very unsurprisingly, worked better. Any xeno that got close met a bladed kick to the skull, or a facial restructuring punch, or a spiked elbow, or… Yeah, lots of options to explore with glee!

  “Altany! Put something expensive in the Collapser! Mid-range on the twelve and ten, and get me something for the bigger fuckers on the railgun!”

  On it. Also, it is a coilgun, not a railgun.

  “Whatever.” I muttered while rolling my animated eyes. Altany worked out a cheaper version of the hyper-compressed buckshot. Instead of shooting massive slugs, I sent twice as many pellets and they became fifty percent bigger than regular buckshot after exiting the barrel.

  Cheaper, but still devastating. It also gave a wider spread which, for this job, helped a lot.

  Buckshot had a lot more range than people thought. Pellets stayed together for a while and when they all hit the same target? These shells could be compared to getting hit by a 50cal magnum revolver eighteen times simultaneously. Magnificent.

  I felt a weight on my back as the shells for my railgun arrived. It took a couple minutes of constant fighting before I had to use it.

  A few model fours came around the corner. Close enough to be a big bad surprise at this point! Could I handle them with the Paw? Sure. Did I want to test out the railgun? Fuck yes.

  The moment I saw them, the barrel snapped down into place and I braced. The projectile was ridiculously big compared to my usual ammo! The EM field from the railgun sucked it up into place, perfectly centered. It could adjust, of course.

  Long range? Longer barrel for more acceleration. Huge round? Thicker coils and shorter barrel. This was a bit in the middle. Big projectile going at decent enough speed to reach a nearby target. My boots slammed their spikes in, the barrel hummed and the projectile shot forward!

  Pure white light emanated from the target for a second. Then, it became a red sputtering fire. The model four and maybe six of its little buddies burned merrily! The big bastard also had a massive hole at the point of impact. That shrapnel or whatever burned hot enough to go through them. “Hey Altany…?”

  This one is my design.

  It is a low yield explosive made to disperse and ignite balls of white phosphorus with thermite cores. I suggest not stepping on them. I kept them rather small to avoid melting through the floor too much.

  “I’d complain but I’m about to use them a lot, probably too much. Thank you.”

  So I did. They were expensive but took out the bigger models. Not much stopping power, but plenty of incineration power! Only David complained about the burning xeno smell. I’d call it an improvement from the usual New-Montreal megabuilding smell.

  The moment we arrived at the corner, I put Felix, Lila and Alex on the left side. They’d keep the road back clear and get to have their own fun! For the first time since shit hit the fan, I looked down over the railing. The indoor courtyard was crawling with the fuckers.

  I believed it when Altany said we got their attention, but that didn’t mean the hive only focused on us. No idea if we’d survive its full attention, fucking hell!

  The aliens didn’t haul tons of biomass around though. I heard some action down below, lots of shots. Hopefully I’d get to them on time. However, were those coming closer?

  Whatever, I refocused on the mission. No sky bridges or intersections on the way, which meant I just had to move forward. Thankfully, now I only had to deal with half the previous inflow.

  We arrived at the shuttered store rather quickly! From what my ears told me, they’d barricaded those doors well! The windows had anti-riot bars too. Could we use it as an outpost to clean the floor? Not the time.

  Making a wise decision, I decided to be the one to knock. Getting shot and not even stepping back felt nice! We couldn’t reach his augs due to a Faraday cage. Stores used those sometimes to prevent clients from not downloading all the viruses on their shitty net.

  “Hey Jackass!” It might have been rude and loud but no time to be polite! A chorus of responses came from the sixty or so survivors with him. Kevin apparently used a service corridor to gather people hiding in other shop fronts.

  Some confused explanations and fighting off a bunch of cunts later, David carried him on his back while the civilians ran to our improvised safe section. We kept everyone crouching close to the wall to protect them from long range shots.

  Altany had been kind enough to connect people together and organize a couple tearful reunions when we got back. Friends hugged, couples kissed and parents held their kids. It satisfied me on a deep, primal level.

  Robin was there, caring for some of the injured. My darling, trying to feel useful. I handed out meds like candy. Kevin’s arm got chewed up pretty bad but he’d live.

  “It’s about family!” Kevin said in a fake deep voice, which led me and Lila to stop momentarily. Kevin rested on a pile of clothes at that moment. That nano-regenerative suite healed him fucking quickly! I knew what I had to do…

  “Robin, love of my life, I know it’s a lot to ask but…” He knew exactly what I was talking about.

  He instantly replied with “I’ll handle it, don’t worry love. Keep fighting.” With solemnity, as Lila and I fought to keep the enemy at bay, Robin advanced towards Kevin and took his hand. I fired incendiary railgun shots to destroy corpses. It kept the killing field clear.

  “Kevin… There are a few messages for you. It’s from our departed or missing comrades. I think you should hear them.” Kevin instantly grew somber, his eyes shadowed. We’d lost so many, and there’d be a few of those.

  Some responsibilities were mine to take on, but Robin was always willing to help. “Since we might not make it out alive, I believe it’s important for you to be aware.”

  With a heavy heart, I sent Robin the file. It contained messages for Kevin from our friends. My love drew himself up, took a deep breath, then started. “From Jeff, he left an important one. I’ll read it to you.” Robin cleared his throat theatrically.

  “Kevin, my friend, for the love of the mesh fucking stop it with that mother fucking stupid dead meme! I have no fucking clue what kind of horrible zoomer site you got it out of, but I will install a virus to delete every fucking copy of those fucking movies from the entire fucking cyberspace if you don’t fucking stop it!”

  Kevin’s eyes flew open. “What the…” Robin didn’t let him finish. “This is an intervention Kevin!” Altany, the lovely AI, decided to help!

  In memory of Jeffrey, I would like to delete every copy within the megabuilding, with my vanguard’s permission. The only one resides on Kevin’s hard drive. It should be an easy purge.

  “Wait you can’t…!”

  “Agreed.” I said immediately. “It’s for your own good Kevin!”

  “There’s no way Jeffrey said that!” He exclaimed to the amusement of all present.

  From the metadata of this message, I can see he created it twelve days ago. A note hidden in it says: Of course I did, dumbass.

  Robin didn’t relent. “From Donna: I will ensure you never see a naked woman for as long as you live if you don’t stop this shit” Lila decided to butt in between bursts from her SMG.

  “ Yeah, I… worked with her on… that one. You’re… fuckers… banned from all my establishments if… you say it again.”

  “You can’t do that!” I decided to give confirmation.

  “A majority vote of the council has been reached buddy. Please, for your own good, stop. Oh, and from George- shit gimme a sec”

  My husband helped me out. “From George: I will punch you so fucking hard in the arm you will never be able to jack off to Vin Diesel’s stupid fucking face ever again.”

  After unloading a full drum mag into a trio of model fours, I added a final touch. “I shall take on the sacred duty of that promise Kevin.”

  That was too much for Felix who leaned on a wall with a hand covering his face. His stifled laughter was shared by most of the survivors to varying degrees.

  “From Anna: Those fucking movies were terrible fifty years ago and they are terrible now. I don’t think you understand how memes work, jackass. We all love you and want you to stop being so fucking annoying.”