» Sat May 28, 2011 12:34 am Tereba-4321 On the Run
Background
Somewhere in South Eastern Australia, deep beneath the surface, many people lived in a great VaultTec designed network of bunkers known as Utopiaplex.
They were constantly told that they were in a utopia where everybody had their life perfectly planned for them, where they should not be unhappy, where they should see only the good in life and the wonderfulness of the leadership and the artificial intelligence that created their life programs. They were given only a few basic possessions in real life but were given access to super virtual reality to make up for that so they could spend earned SVR points to pay for escapsims of many kinds. On top of that they were granted free use of the super virtual reality network-systems to serve the needs of the great secret underground complex. Life was basic with free provision of medical care, food, water, shelter, security, mass transit networks and other needs plus a few basic luxuries in real life.
But things were far from perfect! Nuclear weapons had struck the area above the hidden complex and some upper areas had been breached, had been destroyed. Radroach infestations, giant ants, giant termites, other threats and ghouls, those who had been in the upper areas of the Utopiaplex, were prone to trying to get into the main part of the city of cities. Feral ghouls were terminated or captured and experimented on until they died but smart ghouls ended up being slave labour in highly radiated areas.
Tereba was nearly thirty and then would come her next testing. She feared that the Utopian Guardians would detect her psychic mutation nature, her psychic links with others of her kind known as the Unity by themselves, would terminate her or worse, would use her as a test subject in the dreaded Ministry of Science research and development facility known as the Triple Hexagon. It was there that captured feral ghouls had ended up being experimented on brutally until they died, often horribly.
The Illuminati had built the Utopiaplex, the wonderful new society that would out survive all else and emerge to reclaim a new world, to terraform it into a new paradise. That was secretly but openly it had been a combined project between the American based VaultTec, something unknown to the USA government at the time, and secretive elements of the Australian government along with the Bunker Safe Corporation of Australia. Large amounts of resources had been smuggled to Australia from around the world including from the USA, something the American Government would have never have approved of. The vast majority of Australians never knew what was going on in their country thanks to a series of very clever tricks used to decoy public attention away from the truth and some other trickery.
Later had come the annexation by the USA of Canada, the attempt by Australians to smuggle weapons to Canadian rebels and the limited invasion of Australia by a large American combined naval marine taskforce including soldiers with powered armour, hovertanks and vertibirds. The Australians had fallen back fighting bravely but were losing and a treaty had been declared. Then the big nuclear war had come and many American sailors and marines found themselves stranded in Australia.
Not much was known about the hidden history by the great majority of citizens. Tereba had picked up whispers through the illegal whisper network and later, had picked up impressions of restricted data through the unitymind. It seemed that the Illuminati had suffered some kind of internal split, had cut away into two factions of the traditional Illuminati and the new Utopianati. The Illuminati had retained control of the greater part of the world conspiracy but the Utopianati had gained total control of a major prize, the great underground city. Before the Illuminati could build up enough forces to retake control of the huge Utopiaplex, the Third World War had taken place and the underground city of cities was isolated, was trapped beneath a series of great radioactive craters.
Tereba was not convinced it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the Unity shared her doubts.
Story!
Tereba would soon be on the run, would soon be in great danger, and yet she looked eagerly forward to trying to gain not just her freedom but that of her people.
Even as she made her way through the bustling crowds in her white meditech jumpsuit with white boots and cap-helmet, she could sense others of her kind, sense their minds and sense the unitymind that linked them all. There was hope, there was escape to Sanctuary, though one was not sure that Sanctuary even existed.
Coloured coded jumpsuit wearing citizens were moving along their proper lanes. Multimodular droidbots were big, medium or small chunky metallic and plastic humanoids thumping along with different types of tool or other modules attached to them. Robotic carrycarts hummed past with cargo in modular containers. It was damned busy and damned overcrowded. Tereba longed for open space, for some real elbow room. Everywhere she went and did anything was like that except for super virtual reality. It was like that for everybody but the elites. Everything was controlling, was hard, was dull coloured, was boring and security was everywhere. Not just openly but secretly in the form of the Order Police, the secret police of Utopiaplex.
A shudder ran through the hallway tunnel. The Utopiaplex was expanding again, was reaching out for new underground living space and other resources. Down drilled more huge driller-tentacles to dig into the hot areas below the great underground city of cities. Water would be pumped down, would turn to steam, the steam would rise and would power turbines that would provide electricity to the Utopiaplex. Rock, minerals, natural gas and crude oil were also drawn into the great complex. Soft shudders ran through the big hallway tunnel and some lights blinked because the drilling was taking place not very far away.
Civilators, Utopiaplex Civil Police, passed in lightly armoured jumpsuits being armed with stunpoles and pulsepistols. They ignored her but why shouldn't they? They did not know that she was of the Unity. In truth she feared the Securators, the Utopiaplex Security Police, far more which everybody with smarts did, even many in the elites. Securators were programmed killer, were special cloned in a secret base deep in Utopiaplex's Restricted Zone. These clones were known as Centrozo and they had no conscious, no moderating influence of compassion or mercy. Instead they were faster, stronger, more enduring and harder to damage or kill than standard humans were though all citizens were gen-engineered. In illegal slang they were called Iceminds.
She turned away from the crowds and walked down a largely deserted, smaller secondary hallway tunnel. Security turrets, each with holocams, sensors, scanners and pulseguns, automatically checked on her but she was not in a restricted or a forbidden area, was not visibly breaking any rule, regulation or law. She passed a big 3DTV telescreen showing off citizen health and fitness slogans and a group of jumpsuited men, women and children exercising together on lawn coloured carpetting in a big colourful chamber. In truth the room was too big for normal for Utopiaplex was crowded despite new efforts of expansionism and more efficient use of already existing space. Telescreens were two way and an official face could appear on it at any time to speak to her, to demand answers from her.
What she sought was a blind spot covered by no security turrets, telescreens, roving robots or any other device. Such spots were favoured by deviants, rebels, outlaws and others including many just seeking a moment of time in which they could feel unsupervised and less controlled by the state.
She found it in the form of a fairly narrow hallway tunnel lit only by low electricity using safety lights. Through the dim lighting she slipped past a couple hidden in shadows illegally making love, turned a small corner and found herself in a dusty dark small alcove. The alcove was one of those odd little mistakes in the huge robotically constructed complex that led to strange eccentricities. There were bits and pieces of equipment there, there was a utility hatch on the floor and, of all things, a small multidispenser unit on a wall that normally one would only find in an elite citizen's private apartment. The thug grinned at her, a citizen crim for sure and a hardboy for the gangers who hid in the shadows and fringes of the society stealing what they could both from the state, from citizens and from fringers. He had a big work knife in one hand, sharpened and dirty with dried blood, and he was confident because he was taller and broader than she was. But she was a psychic mutant and like the Iceminds she was stronger, faster, more enduring and harder to hurt than were standard humans. As a meditech, and not a lowly exoworker like this man was, she was given special survival training by the state including hand to hand combat. Exoworkers were given minimum training and education, were clamped into crude chunky powerful exosuits and set to work that was tedious and often dangerous. The feedback mechanism of the exosuits toughened them but this man did not stand or hold his knife like a fighter though she sensed he had killed before. Thousands of exoworkers were helping in the expansion of the great city of cities and every year hundreds were killed. Their bodies, like other organic stuff, was no wasted of course but recycled into biomush, along with other bodies, and then mattercated into rations for both citizens and livestock.
The fool grinned. "Some fun time and you get access to the dispenser but I get half of what you pay for. Seems good to me so you have to do it or else I cut you good and then do you anyway."
At that she sighed as if giving in, slumped her shoulders in apparent submission, and stepped towards him. Then she stabbed him with her pointed fingers in the solar plexus with such force that she killed him at once. Regretting the murder, she feared that he would reveal her identity having seen her face, she lowered his dead body to the floor.
The meditech stepped up to the multidispenser and reaching around it to a hidden nitche, she pulled out a locked and armoured flexipack. With a smile she opened it and inspected its contents. It was half full. Then she turned to the multidispenser but purchased only a few choice items. Ordering too many types or too large quantities of items, especially restricted items, would risk alerting the Utopianetwork that something was wrong so she had come here eighteen times, each time buying items not just for herself but to leave in hidden nitches elsewhere for other unity people to pick up and use or pass on. Unity folk did not meet face to face to form too strong visual impressions of each other that mindprobing might easily capture. Her wish was to meet others of her own kind, to see them, to hear them, to smell them, to touch them, to be friends and, in some cases, lovers. Escapism in SVR was limited in effect for her ESP told her that it wasn't real despite the excellent realism of the system and her vivid imagination.
She closed her eyes briefly and informed unitymind that she was starting her escape run. In at most about three hours the Utopianetwork would note her absence and have hunter-seekers searching for her. After that would come hunter-killers and worse. Unity informed her that she was good to go, that she was the first of the unity to attempt a full run to freedom being so close to the very edge of the great Utopiaplex. Others, not of the unity, had tried it before but they had all either been terminated, been vanished by the state or had otherwise never returned. What had happened to any who had escaped from Utopiaplex was a mystery.
She sighed a sigh of regret that she would no longer see some non-unity friends and then opening the hatch, she climbed down into a ladder tube, carefully closed the hatch behind herself and vanished down into the crazy complexity of the great substructure.
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