blue
She never could get used to the blue sun. After all those years of yellow and orange burning in the sky, blue just never looked right. It made evening interesting, darker than it was in the past, and the lack of streetlights in this section of town didn't help matters. Valeri crouched down and rested her back against the wall of the row house, removed her black leather glove and looked at her thigh-pack. Only about 2 days worth of regen left, after that it was foraging through the mess for food. Never a pleasant proposition.
Her last scan indicated three of them, in the prototypical Scourer fashion, one on point, the other two flanking. They never vary their pattern, luckily. Well, at least they never used to; the left blip on the scanner started moving to the center, backing up the point. Several yards behind, if her guess was correct. Valeri nodded her head in a silent mental note to program this anomaly into her scanner. The blueness was deepening, and she moved her ungloved hand to her thigh, found the series of tubes attached to the leavlar pants and pressed the middle tube. She felt a slight prick, and even flinched as if she didn't know what was coming, and closed her eyes momentarily. The swirl moved behind her eyes, seemingly intoxicating for a brief moment, then she rose and moved through the debris as quietly as possible, pulling her glove back on while moving. The sight mod had taken affect, and her vision had reacted accordingly. The blueness was lighter now, like a wispy fog. The still flanked Scourer was now in sight, distantly, but she knew the movements. It would approach and find cover approximately 4 foot high at minimum. It would lock and target, feed approximate environmental condition variables to it's system, and calculate the probabilities of how target would react in similar situations. After extensive calculations, it would attack with sporadic automatic bursts at .25 second intervals.
Valeri didn't go to those extremes. Instead she quickly fitted a bulbous extension to her rifle, popped her head quickly over the wall and let off two quick bursts. The grenades flew in an arc, landing close to the Scourer. Before it could react, they exploded, leaving nothing but a black mark on the remaining wall and an echoing sound through the empty streets. Valeri checked the scanner, and noted the trailing blip closing towards her position, the point blip still heading away from her to a potential cutoff. She shouldered her rifle and pulled the handgun, screwing the silencing extension as she made her way towards the tallest of the row houses that looked habitable. She knew that her supplies were low, and if she was going to get rid of them she'd have to take the best defensive position she could. The bullets that impacted above her head were not errors, she knew the Scourer was trying to flush her. Glancing at her scanner Valeri knew it was closing fast, and she really didn't care. Rolling out from her position behind the doorway of the tall row house, she fired as she rolled, aiming for the head. The slugs ripped into the flesh, jerking the Scourer's head back, and it went down. Valeri crouch-ran forward, pistol held at head-height with two hands. The Scourer was down, but the hands were moving towards the chest panel in a shaking fashion. Valeri emptied the clip with little zipping sounds into the head of the Scourer, and it quit moving. Good, it hadn't been able to send the coord signal.
Now it was a question of time. How long before the link between this Scourer and the point Scourer ceased completely, and how long would she have before she had to run? There was enough debris between her and the point Scourer, so Valeri set to scavenging. Comm unit, destroyed. Slam rifle, good, 10 clips. Levelar cowl, useless. She knew she'd used too many rounds on its head, but it was an emotional thing. Waste of ammunition, but it felt too good. Blue bag? Intact. Bingo. Tonight hadn't been a complete loss, if she could evade the point Scourer. Point Scourer. Valeri looked at her scanner. Damn, she'd taken too long. It was advancing quickly, and the landscape did not look inviting. Valeri threw the slam rifle over her shoulder, clipped the blue bag to her pack and started running at top speed to the row house.
The stairs were partially missing to the second floor, and the remains of a table blocked her entry to the room to the left. The stairs looked as if they'd hold her if she could get there. She backed up as far as she could, and ran towards them, jumping at the last minute. Her hands found the rail, and she pulled herself up to the stairs and crawled up. She could hear the entry of the point Scourer into the house, and knew it would be after her soon. The stairs landing was a dead end, the wall had fallen in on the rest of the staircase, but where the wall fell there was a hole. Valeri started climbing, and crawled through the hole, noticing the rebar from the outside wall poking through the hole, making it smaller than she thought originally. A tight squeeze with all of the gear. The point Scourer had to be right behind; she crawled through the hole and found herself on a balcony overlooking what used to be a courtyard. Now it was pocked with grenade holes and a burned out campsite. Valeri checked the clip on her handgun, ejected it and loaded another. Down to two clips left. She steadied herself, braced herself into proper shooting fashion and got ready to take the point Scourer with her if it came to that. The sound of the shotgun took her by surprise. Two shots, rapidly. Boom, cka-chuk, boom, cka-chuk. A pump. She waited. If something was taking out Scourers, it probably wouldn't like her much either. One more blast, then silence.
"You're quite safe now, my dear." The voice came from below. British, unmistakable accent. Valeri didn't know anyone British. Either way she was screwed, so there really wasn't a choice. She managed the steps, and ended down in the entryway of the house with a thud, pistol drawn. He didn't look dangerous, but you could never trust that.
"You can put that away, please, I mean you no harm. It's getting quite late, I was wondering if you'd like to join me for dinner." He was mid-50's if she was guessing right, balding, and wearing a hunting jacket. The pump shotgun was resting in the crook of his left arm.
"You have real food?" Valeri was surprised. Hard to find these days, especially in places like this. "Follow me, my dear." He motioned her with is right hand, and they left the row house. She noticed the blue bag of a Scourer bumping along in the game bag of the hunting jacket.
The path to the English man's dwelling was uneventful. Just the standard crumbling architecture of an outside city, one of the once proud cities of Earth. Valeri could see the remnants of the typical stores, coffee shops and houses. She'd seen too many places like this after leaving the system, but the alternatives were not something that she could stomach.
After entering through a low door in a basement of a blackened building, they made their way to his house, if it could be called that. Low, faint yellow lights hung from the ceiling at uneven intervals, providing weak light. He placed the shotgun and the blue bag on a counter, and opened the refrig unit. He looked to her with a weak smile. "I'm afraid that an omelet is the best I can do under the current circumstances." Valeri was completely surprised, eggs out here? "Synthetic or…" "The real thing, my dear, I have my sources." And with a small laugh, he started busying himself with the preparation of the omelets.
Valeri seated herself at a small table, on the chair that looked the steadiest. Everything was unmatched here, like most things were in the outside cities. He turned his head over his shoulder while whipping the eggs in a silver bowl, "My name is Bradley. And you are…" She sat with her hands placed flat on the table. Without looking up she answered softly, "Valeri. My name is Valeri." He laughed slightly, "So good to meet you Valeri. If you don't mind my impertinence, what brings you to Des Moines?"
What did bring her here? Was this where Iowa used to be? It was hard to tell anymore, with the destruction that the System brought back, what was it, fifteen years ago? "Just trying to get by, survive. Trying to find someplace that isn't so damn blue."
At first they had been a godsend, an alien presence that could overcome the imminent death of the planet. They'd negotiated with all of the governments on Earth, given them a way out of the finality of the sun dying. It would be a trading agreement, no more no less. They would provide a technological sun that would provide Earth with a way of surviving, and in turn adventurous people would travel to their system to help solve their resource problem. They were a slowly withering race, their biology had not kept up with their technology. A combination of biology and technology had helped them survive for a while, but their skill at planetary commerce had stretched their ranks to a dangerously thin level. Earth was a perfect solution for them, they'd give us a reprieve from death in return for our most bountiful resource, people.
The blue sun was beautiful at first, the thin haze that covered everything made ordinary objects sparkle and luminesce. Somehow they'd managed to minimize the demise of the sun. It's eventual destruction had severely destroyed several parts of the earth, what used to be South America and Nova Scotia specifically, but everyplace else made it through pretty well. After Blue Day 1, the System, named by some politician, began their rebuilding process, selecting larger population centers such as New York and Chicago, then spreading to the west coast. Life went on as normal as possible in those places, people still got married, marketers blitzed the media with their inane jingles and billboards, and the governments acted like they still had authority over their populations. But those governments acquiesced to the System's demands a little too quickly, probably in gratitude. Escaping completely imminent death does that to one, some believe.
At first it was specific pieces of new technology, adapted for our use. The technogeeks jumped at the ideas, incorporating the concepts and tools to everyday life. Law enforcement was the biggest beneficiary, new biotechnology allowed for officers to keep in contact by having a chip implanted in their body somewhere, the exact location was never officially divulged. Subsequent Scourer dissections proved that it was just behind the left ear, which was why the outsider tactic was to shoot for the head first, ask questions later.
After four or five years, the population became increasingly tired of the level of control that the System had instituted on Earth. Instead of being a volunteer for offworld service, it became a draft system. Women were prized above men, because of their reproductive capabilities. The blue sun had a strange effect on the physiology of people. For some reason all artificial means of reproduction was suddenly impossible, the only way to propagate the human race was the natural way. As the System learned of its effects on human biology, their shift towards earth became even more pronounced. The only official places to live were in the blue cities, the ones devised by the System. All other people living outside of the blue cities were not under their control, and therefore not providing the resources required. The implant chip technology became standard issue for all citizens of the blue cities, as it gave important biofeedback to the System of the health of its resources. There were some positive benefits of the chip, as all diseases were destroyed. Cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis; all were eliminated from human existence. Families were encouraged to the point of excluding all those incapable of breeding. Slowly at first, but then in mass exoduses, women who couldn't conceive, sterile men, homosexuals, left the cities. Eventually the System would know that no attempts to breed had been made in the last few months, and that person would be considered a waste of resources such as food and living space. It was the gay community that first alerted mankind to the fact that essentially we are all simply cattle, smart cattle, but cattle nonetheless.
When the populace became disillusioned enough to begin to think about taking matters into their own hands, the System began it's weapons control measures. All nuclear weapons were immediately rendered useless. The great strategic maneuvers of the former United States and former Soviet Union in the past were left as important as the box a mime makes. See-through and irrelevant. Cities that were not blue were destroyed. The only technology of war that worked were the old ones, firearms like shotguns, rifles, bow and arrow. There was even a large black market in swords in the outside cities. The weapons were necessary as the System began producing Scourers, the former law enforcement agents who adopted the chips early. They became more machine than man, with several critical technological pieces implanted and grafted onto the body. Computers married to man, controlled by the System. It was their job to hunt down the outsiders, those who would not live in the blue cities.
At first those who lived outside tried to keep in touch with their loved ones in the blue cities, but they soon realized that it was fruitless. The blue cities affected people in many ways, and the control of the System was greater in the radius of the cities. They were like brainwashed cult members, and a church of sorts grew up around the System. The acolytes wore their electric blue robes, and helped reinforce the System's message at their meetings, required attendance for all living in the blue cities. The cultures shifted in the cities. Racism disappeared, but then again so did choice. Blue was the color of the clothes, of the houses, of the furniture; everything a gradiation of blue. The shock of an outsider managing to meet a former loved one was immense. They were dressed in blue, their house was blue, and they spoke only in reference to the System. For all purposes, the person living in the blue city was dead to the outsider. After a few initial visits, the outsiders realized that it was dangerous meeting with their former friends and families, and left altogether, joining each other in the destroyed remnants of cities that had not been chosen to be blue.
Valeri thought about Randy, how crushed they both were when they found out that she couldn't have children. That had been in the yellow sun, and he reassured her that it would be ok, that there were other things that they could do. It was true, they adopted Li, a girl from China, and they were happy for quite a while. Valeri taught literature at the local high school, and Randy owned a music store. Then the blue sun.
She closed her eyes and placed her head on the table.
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