Neon Haze: Snakes and Roses Read online

  Neon Haze

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  Snakes and Roses

  By Chris Sherrit

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark. The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Have you ever felt completely exhausted with the world? Dixon Callaway certainly does. A life of sour experiences and painful memories will do that to a man. That and the ridiculous dances he sees before him on this dancefloor. The year is 2109 and Dixon is celebrating this Friday night in much the same way he celebrates most nights. Sitting in the back of a bar or club pickling his brain until he passes out, while watching the rest of the world do its best to keep going. In Denver, Colorado people seem to be trying even more so to hide their own issues. The crippling reality that there is every chance they might get mugged, raped or killed on the way home looms overhead. Dancing like the population of a looney bin broke out and trying to exorcise demons seemed to work for many of these kids. If that didn’t - then drinking down the latest alcohol or firing the most popular drugs into their system certainly did the trick. The hangovers and downers the next day would only serve as a swift punch in the face to remind them that their life is still pitiful.

  Seated in the darkest corner of this dance club, Dixon takes a large swig from his bottle. Fermented root drinks are not popular, but can be found in a few less than pleasant places, sometimes cropping up in popular venues if you are willing to pay the right price. It doesn’t taste nice either, but to Dixon it’s strength that he chugs it down for. The almost rhubarb and beetroot taste help draw his attention away from his anger, sadness and continual pain. A pain he has suffered for years now, that heavy emotional suffering that you can force to the side from time to time while you shout at anyone trying to invade on your privacy.

  The band performing in the club are thankfully not all that terrible. The bright lights shining out from the musician’s costumes are almost all too regular now, as are the holographic instruments being projected before them. A green keytar floats in front of the lead singer as his vocals run through a sparkling mic that pulsates along with him. The guitarist and bassist also motioning away at their instruments, playing them through the haptic gloves they wear which also light up in time with the music. Even the drummer is playing a simulated drum kit, small plastic pads are the only thing real in the cage of neon light that surrounds him. When he finishes a song by smashing the bright yellow cymbals the entire club shoots a rainbow wave of colour through it. The audience is clearly loving it, and Dixon can’t help but find himself tapping his foot a little after polishing off another bottle of root booze.

  The kids themselves are dressed quite similarly to the band, bright neon colours emanating from their bodies and changing along with the music. It appears quite a few of the people are actual fans of the band in attendance as the band name “Zetsu” warps across their backs.

  People always imagine the future being just like all those sci-fi book covers or fancy big budget movies. Well, the future is now and for the most people, it’s a big fat dump. As Dixon stumbles out of the club halfway through the band's last song, he bumps into a group of youths. All wearing some variant of what Dixon likes to call “Fuck you!” Oversized leather coats with tribal style designs embroidered and with neon lights built into them, highlighting all of the additions they’ve made to their apparel.

  He notices that they don’t seem to have any actual tribal-style tattoos on their skin. Thinking it slightly odd that they seem to be some of the few he’s seen lately that haven’t had neon tattoos, or even worse holo-tattoo’s, embedded into their skin. That’s right, holographic displayed tattoo’s forced into the skin, running off of the power of the human body - all so that you can say “hey look at how useless I am!” Dixon despised these kinds of people, slightly ironic as he himself fell for the body modding craze when it was picking up heat in his younger years.

  He, of course, didn’t go for an in your face brightly lit tattoo. Body modding, or simply modding, goes far further than the purely aesthetic these days. When he signed up for the Leistung Authoritarian Force there was a mandatory body mod that had to be applied. All personnel must be constantly reachable and able to query the LAF database at all times, no exceptions. By that, they meant that you would have to have your phone grafted to your body, and the artificial intelligence switched out for the LAF database AI. Your location and vital statistics were then recorded all day, every day. Dixon had the device grafted to his arm much like most. He wasn’t much of a fan of the whole process; large amounts of pain and an everlasting connection to a foreign body were not pleasant thoughts.

  No longer working for the LAF, Dixon has had his access to the LAF database removed. “Bout damn time I’m free from that catalogue of horror” Dixon remarks when asked about it. His own irony being that he has now reinstated his old AI, affectionately called “RJ”. Being locked away in a digital prison for nearly forty years RJ has altered her attitude. It seems that some of the lines of coding have been burned out by the LAF database and have left a sarcastic asshole in its place, at least in Dixon’s words.

  “Come on, Dixon, get that old retired ass up,” RJ remarks in her custom smooth Irish accent as he slaps at his arm. Dixon falls to the ground trying his best to hold onto the contents of his stomach.

  “Yeah, yeah. You want me to rip you out of my arm? Call me a ride home will you?” He says, spitting pre vomit everywhere.

  “Rip me out of your arm? That’d be a sight for sore eyes. Drunk bum savages own arm to shut up phone, think I’ve seen that headline already.” The dry tone of RJ both insults and amuses Dixon. He smiles pulling himself to his feet. Focusing his eyesight he looks at his forearm seeing the emoji face looking back at him.

  “Home, RJ?”

  “Home, Dixon!”

  Chapter 2

  The future of today may not resemble the exciting visions of comics, album covers and filmmakers from the old days, but it certainly has come close. The buildings stand like massive obelisks arranged in odd shapes. Portions of buildings where one would expect to see structure and people working in offices are instead missing. The bright lights of the hover magnets, holding the higher portions of buildings hundreds of feet above the base, highlighting the skyline. Running through those buildings, the hustle and bustle of hover vehicles fly through the gaps. They roll and twist past each other constantly looking like they are on collision paths but avoiding it somehow.

  Most people who use transport opt for the automated hover vehicles, some are ‘access required’ vehicles designed officially for transporting employees. Others are paid transport, mainly focussed on bussing people to specific venues of high importance; business centres and indust
rial tech-mines. Those who can afford their own hover vehicles tend not to drive them through the city, but instead take the more scenic and safe route around the outside of the city limits. Too high up, however, the poorer masses rarely see any such vehicle in person. The only vehicles seen by them are advertised on the giant building faces showing commercials for the newest model.

  Large adverts roll across almost every surface of the buildings up to around two thousand feet. Above that, the towers owned by the rich and powerful glisten in the light. The adverts ranging from a variety of products from body modifications to robotic house appliances to the latest action movie coming this summer. News reports are broadcast on certain buildings at every hour of the day. Almost plastic looking faces that pose an inhuman smile inform the cities of the daily horrors and tragedies, making sure to put extra emphasis on any new merger or corporate move. The most common commercial seen around the city buildings are Halos pride and joy.

  The company, which came into existence around two hundred years ago, the first to have the idea of providing the world with a long line of non-lethal alternatives to weapons. Wanting to make the world use “zero rounds” of ammunition being their goal, hence the original branding of Zero Round Industries. ZR for short. After having only small success but large amounts of investments from rich liberal sources, they branched out to try and tackle humanities weaknesses. In the early twenty-first century, they struck gold, a discovery that within every person’s genes was a set of testable qualities that would allow the potential success of a person to be known. Taking the chance to rebrand themselves at this point to Halo Industries, perhaps to get a fresh slate with the public, perhaps to avoid the ironic holes in naming themselves Zero Round. Overnight the media went into a tornado of excitement, broadcasting around the globe that they could now predict how rich you would be, or how powerful. Of course, an exact profession could never be predicted from the genes, but to a quite impressive degree of accuracy, it worked. Becoming known as getting Gene Identified, then “Gene ID’d” and now more commonly just called an individual’s “GID”.

  Society changed very quickly after that. The sceptics continued to try and find evidence of foul play in the research or fabricated documents and results. Even with the investigation into what they thought was impossible, those non-believers still had themselves tested. After finding out that they were all within the mid to high-level GIDs, they quietened down.

  The high-level GIDs went on a yearlong celebration, patting themselves on the back for being born into their lifestyles. As a result, companies changed and there were fewer attempts to try and employ in a politically correct fashion. Now companies simply pick the best of the applicants, nobody argues that it’s unfair. Why would you?

  The low-level GIDs did an international shoulder shrug and tried their best to get on with things, ignoring the high levels as they went about their day to day trivial jobs. Appreciating that they hadn’t really achieved much in their life up to this point, the low levels didn’t have much ambition to try and push themselves towards anything in the future. There was no need for them to cause a giant fuss. It was now scientifically proven that they were in the right place. That notion came as a comfort to some - that they weren’t losing out on being their best self.

  The elite GIDs were those who were already living at the top of the food chain. The company CEO’s and world leaders, their high scores were what initially drew the sceptics to question everything. It was a little ironic that those earning the most were predicted to earn the most, like they had paid to have this result. Rather than irony, this was just proving the point that their GID scores were correct.

  All of the elites would react in the same way when they found out their results. Pretending to sit cool and calm in their boardrooms, they would wait patiently for the envelope to arrive. Upon opening it - their faces would pull an arrogant “I knew all along” - you could see the bead of sweat that rolled down their brow. They had confidence in themselves but there was the thought at the back of their heads that they may be useless.

  Prior to the discovery of the gene, the world has taken a very aggressive turn towards a corporate approach. Although the past would claim that corporations own everything and dictate the governments. Nowadays the corporations are the governments, the result of histories “Corporate wars”.

  Three years into a war that had broken out between the United States and China, a spies report to the US president of China’s technological superiority rumbled many fears. It was suspected that hackers had been posing as Russian nationals who were interfering in American companies and political elections. The suspicion of Russia brought fourth several strikes on Russian territories. China chortled as the two took strikes at each other. They never knew that Russia had in fact been hacking into their systems, and while sending forces to meet the American onslaught they took Chinese territory at a speedy rate. After Britain’s departure from the European Union, the EU banded together and united fully under one banner, seeking to take the island back during the chaos.

  In the year 2035, amidst all this, a dictator by the name of Tristan Moreno managed to rise to power in Argentina. A decorated general with a mean streak a hundred miles wide, and a level of focus that appeared unmatched, he took control of the country through force and was met with a high level of support initially. The people of Argentina felt their government was simply a collection of powerful men trying to line their pockets rather than improve the quality of life for everyone. Moreno’s eyes bulged with the amount of power he had taken on, putting military personnel in the highest levels of government and changing the constitution to better suit his intentions.

  Not one for thinking his political moves that far ahead, he quickly crashed the Argentinian economy. The currency fell to an all-time low and the population of most countries found that their yearly salary would be able to buy out Argentinian companies and property with change to spare. The changes that had been made didn’t stop or slow anyone from doing this either, they sped up the process in fact. Several of the larger industrial companies saw an opportunity and took a firm grasp of it. The oil and energy giant Leistung managed to take ownership of the most land and best property. The oil and energy contracts outstanding with all the normally functioning countries, provided a steady level of cash flow for them to build huge production plants around the airports, military bases and naval bases.

  With Leistung controlling so much, General Moreno had to create contracts with them to try and keep control. Again, his bold changes to the constitution ended up biting him, as the company used loopholes to their advantage. The bulk of the land that they had bought but weren’t using was farmland, and this turned the people against General Moreno in a demand for change. Leistung stepped in to provide help with the stockpile of supplies they had accumulated in their properties. Fast building the image that they were a company who was on the everyday man’s side their popularity grew. Teams of the military began to convert to Leistung and became corporate mercenaries. This led to the total take-over of the country by a corporation. The general, having cut ties to all other countries when he came to power and insulting almost every world leader, only helped the company in their coup.

  Having taken one country, Leistung began its move towards putting pressure on the neighbours around them. South America grinded to a halt as they tried to reason with this new entity. One by one countries began to fall and join Leistung in some of the largest “mergers and acquisitions” anyone had seen. In response to South America now being almost rebranded, other countries began to take action.

  Still spit-taking in disbelief, the USA and parts of the EU began forcing sanctions on the company and the business ventures they had outside of their new country. By this point it didn’t matter, the company replied in a guffaw - that the sanctions would be met with a far stricter show of action. All the production plants of North American and European countries within the Leistung republic would no longer be able to function, or wou
ld be forced out of ownership and re-purposed to their objectives.

  Rival businesses began to go into hysterical panic as they tried to put weight on governments to either pull away from fighting Leistung, or push them further into shutting them down. Potential political investors held the largest megaphones and governments followed their orders. North America pulled back and allowed several EU countries to take the hit as they pushed against this bully.

  With an understandable arrogance in themselves, troops were flown into the Leistung Republic, only to discover that this was an entire continent being run by the company. They were outnumbered massively, and with the pushes in technology Leistung had managed to carry out with all the resources they were dreadfully outgunned as well. The attempted battles only resulted in mass panic around Europe. At this point the loop of corporations pressuring governments and countries into changing leadership really took off. Leistung already had South America, Praetorium took control of Europe and parts of Africa. The rest of Africa along with Australia fell to Coracle, Fenghuang was eagerly waiting to rip through Asia, expanding out of China to take Japan and Russia. The USA and Canada were the last to tumble and surrendered to Zero Round.

  With that, the CEOs of these companies became the world leaders. With fewer voices to listen to and consider, the group formed a council that met on certain occasions to discuss “potential business”. Righting the wrongs they thought the world had, but only creating new ones in their place. Buildings got taller and taller, business got faster and faster and everyone stuck in between struggled to keep up. Certain companies brokered “peace deals” in order to try and solidify their territories. The LAF for example, partially a police force, partially mercenaries owned by Leistung, rented out a few spots across America in a deal with Zero Round. They, in turn, provided some factory space for Leistung to speed up their production line.