Caprica Season 2 at Beginning of Line is brought to you with limited commercial interruptions by Capri-Tours.
Previously on Caprica...
Tamara, with Zoe's help, finds closure with her family and realizes what she wants to do with the rest of her life. However, what she wants to do has nothing to do with V-World, and everything to do with Tauron and a 6-foot metal body. (Episode Fifteen - posted on 12/6/11)
"The Future..." Photo manipulation by radak.
Caprica Season 2, Episode Sixteen
Assassin Nation
by D. Shipway
1-1
“When all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All place shall be hell that is not heaven.”
Christopher Marlowe
The slick, jet-black suit serves two important purposes: It’s stylish enough to pass seamlessly through the sordid night clubs of New Cap City, and necessary camouflage for prowling shadows on rooftops and stalking the dark alleys below.
The hat? The hat is all style points.
I’ve spent so much time staring at this digitally dreary world through a rifle scope I think it’s given me selective tunnel vision. Even now the whole rain-soaked city seems to wash out of my peripheral vision, as if by sheer force of will I could make it all disappear. Every lost soul below ceases to exist, every ominous building becomes basic background geometry, nothing else matters.
There is only me, and the target. The predator, and the prey. The offending line of code, and the almighty delete key. Everything else is just details.
I exhale slowly, gently squeezing the trigger but not firing just yet. I want to share the moment first. There is always a split-second when it feels like we connect. Complete strangers whose eyes meet across the distance between us. The sultry, saccharine instant when I can see the resignation; the romanticized acceptance of what has to happen.
There it is.
The rifle screams into the night as it throws itself into my shoulder. I can see straight through the exit wound for a moment until he derezzes into a pixelated mess; dissipating into the electronic ether. The echo reverberates for what feels like forever -- my smile lasts almost as long.
And then the moment passes.
I disassemble the rifle and return it to its case. I know it’s trite to carry around a guitar case, but there’s a reason why it became cliché. It’s handy, plenty of storage capacity, and more importantly adds a whole other angle to my avatar -- a kind of troubadour intrigue established by an accessory. When I played in a garage band in the folly of my youth (although oddly enough I can’t for the life of me remember what kind of music we played) most people treated it as suspicious anyway. May as well give their fears a basis in fact. As an added bonus, people have a tendency to frak with you a whole lot less when they assume you’re armed to the teeth. I designed most of my weapons myself, spending caffeine-infused all-nighters coding to match deadliness with effectiveness. Precise, Instantaneous, Devastating. The right weapon, the right reputation, with the right contacts to make it all worth it, all make me damn good at getting the job done.
Now the hard part: collecting my payment.
They’re always so eager to put out the hit. Jilted lovers, business adversaries, general malevolence -- shoulders carrying chips so big they have bandwidth issues. They’re all the same short-fused grudge-holders who are bound to cross paths from time to time. The City always draws a certain type of individual, and each and every one has an expiration date. They will all be obsolete sooner or later and their retirement is just a instant message away. Those messages so easily sent in angry haste, next to impossible to guiltily retract. Those messages swarm around V-world like gnats. The pay-cheques, not so much. Not having enough credit, changing their mind on the hit in the first place, or haggling after the fact -- I’ve heard every excuse in the book and it’s spanning multiple volumes. I should start getting payment up front, but when every single other citizen is a competitor you have to cater to the client.
Just a couple more hits. It’s my new mantra. Just a couple more hits and I’ll have enough to retire myself (in the good way, of course). Get myself a ship -- nothing fancy, just something to get me out of here and never come back. Maybe when I get off-world I’ll join an inter-colonial fleet and explore the interstitial universe. I’d rather have to worry about maintaining food, water and oxygen supplies than the monotonous mendacity of everyday existence. Social status, class systems, taxes and paperwork -- I’d rather live whatever remains of this wretched life as a nomad traveling the stars.
The distant, droning chant of the zeppelin blanketing the city in vigilance means I have at least ten minutes before it opens fire on this sector again. As I make my way down the fire escape I lose my footing on the cold, wet metal giving me an excuse to hurl some choice curses into the night. I leap to the streets and find my bearings -- checking every dark corner of the alley, scanning every inch of the overhanging gloom as I walk through the damp streets. The City is dark shadows and silhouettes, both in the ambiance and the people that fill it.
I didn’t get this far by being careless. Any random chickenhead can pick up a weapon, aim it at someone, then fire. With no deterrent for doing so in this technological Tartarus of our own creation, it’s not just a way of life but as natural as breathing. No, I made it this long and if-I do-say-so-myself-successfully by compiling piles of what most of these ‘digital born killers’ seem to be completely unable to grasp: common sense. Practical precautions make all the difference. No amps: short-term gain for a long-term cost that’s just way too high (pun intended). No need to overload my synapses with pre-programming: a marksman app, a locational positioning system, and basic piloting for most vehicles. The gut feeling is entirely organic, as is the paranoia which has kept me alive this long.
Always assume armed assailants are awaiting along all avenues. Every person I meet could kill me, even if they don’t know it yet. The pistol concealed in my sleeve is the only reason I’ll ever shake hands with anyone... although to be honest, it’s never come up all that much.
Mysteries. I’m certainly not going to be the glad-handing-dandy in this bar filled to the brim with faces as vacant as the buildings outside. As I brush against the crowd I can feel the greasy film left on my sleeves. Big, shiny smiles as fake as the avatars they sit on. I’ve been to this club dozens of times before but it always feels completely different. Unless I’m remembering it wrong and I’ve simply been too many places. Trying to find my contact in these throbbing, heaving piles of electro-flesh was difficult.
Luckily she sticks out like a sore thumb -- a sultry and enchanting sore thumb.
“Emmanuelle,” I speak into her ear so only she can hear me, “It’s done.”
“That was just a test,” she says, barely peering over the rim of her glass. Even without looking at me I can see the distaste on her lips -- and it’s not from the drink. The slender phial full of something unidentifiable, but as cold and icy as she was. “Now, if you think you can handle it, comes the real job.”
“You know what? No thanks. I’ve been doing this way too long to kowtow to strangers who want to treat me like I’m some Sagittaran schoolkid, begging for food and scraps of information. Just transfer the cubits and I’ll be on my way to more -- favourable conditions.”
She shakes her head. As she flips the curls of her black hair through her fingers, I instantly feel the temperature warming, both in her demeanour and in my pants. A familiar, warm sensation travels up my lower back. Dames.
“Oh, I think you might be interested. Have you seen those symbols popping up around New Cap City? The stylized ‘T’ that you see in windows and on graffiti?”
“I may have seen it -- in passing. Once or twice, maybe.” She certainly knows which buttons to push to engage my curiosity overdrive. I’ve been trying to figure out that puzzle for weeks and it was driving me insane, “The Deadwalker, or so I’ve heard.”
“I want you to find her. Once you do, I’ll let you know what comes next.”
“Follow the breadcrumbs, into the forest. Is that the kind of game you think I play?”
“Triple the last contract. Double that again if you do it in twenty four hours.”
“That’s the kind of carrot I can’t ignore.” I flip through the ship catalogue in my mind, shopping for supplies with a giddy glee unbecoming of a professional like myself, “Even though I haven’t seen the stick, I can’t say no.”
She speaks over her exquisite shoulder as she walks away, her voice dripping down the back of her perfectly rendered avatar, “And that’s just one of the reasons I chose you, specifically.”
I gotta get out of this bar and into a long, bitter-cold shower to get my head back in the game.
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1-2
“Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.”
Philip K. Dick
It wasn’t hard to find clues, it was hard to correlate them all together. The sigil was everywhere: spray-paint tags, banners draped from the skyscrapers, carved into the foreheads of thugs congregating over flaming barrels. Some exhibitionist hacker even tapped into one of the zeppelins and that same crooked ‘T’ was broadcast over the whole city, even if it was only for a few minutes.
I’m looking for the hay in a stack of needles. I’m going to have to cash in some chips to make sense of this mess. I hate calling in favours -- somehow it rarely works out in my favour.
As I walk the lonely, neon streets I’m reminded of how little a grasp hackers have on the concept of ‘urban planning.’ There are times when it comes in handy to have a bar or night club on every single corner, but that leaves little room for other kinds of establishments. The places of any practical use are so few and far between that it takes an awfully long and dangerous route just to commute. Not too long ago the ‘Avenging Angels’ transformed the whole game, creating a mountain fortress that wiped out half the city. Over what was surely too short a span of time the anarchist architects recoded, the unsavoury element creeped back in, and the old habits simply refused to die. New Cap City was back, perhaps even more dangerous.
Three scuffles with random thugs, two bruised knuckles and one bullet-whizzing-too-closely-past-my-ear later I arrive at the Bradbury Hotel. Somehow even in an artificially created world this place found a way to fall into ruins. It may have been designed that way, as if to lure the vermin it ended up attracting.
Nobody feels like realizing their secret fantasy of playing ‘lobby clerk’ or ‘bellboy’ so I make my way through the expansive lobby (that may have been great at some time) unimpeded and unnoticed. Although it looks ancient, the elevator is surprisingly efficient and I make it to the penthouse in seconds -- just enough time for the infectious muzak to invade my brain through the tinny speaker in the top corner. The song reminds of the music I played in that band when I was younger. Either someone has a fantastic mind for intricate details, or a twisted sense of humour. It takes longer for someone to answer the door then it did to get here, and when the hulking brute finally does he eclipses the entire doorway.
“It felt more inviting with door closed,” I say to the monster’s navel. “Where’s Ugarte?”
“Boss says he’s not taking visitors today. And he’s not here,” rumbles at me from above, the bass so deep it rattles in my chest.
“I REALLY don’t have time for this, hired goon. The Lilliputians need to have a talk, so kindly frak off.”
A fist the size, colour (and presumable hardness) of a frozen turkey flies toward me. Luckily the brute was as slow with his hands as he was with his head. The ‘modified’ brass knuckles I’d worn for just such an occasion spark and crackle with electricity as I punch him in the groin. Hard. Twice. It was more difficult to step over his whining, quivering body than it was to put him down in the first place.
“Good help is so hard to find. Noobs are harder to come by, and you just broke my newest toy,” comes the sniveling, slimy voice from the next room.
“Don’t worry, I’ll clean up,” I say over the sound of my casual pistol fire. Half the room behind me flashes with the pixel fireworks of the goon’s derez and I’m alone in the room. I make my way towards the sound, and heat, of a roaring fire in the posh living room.
Trophies hung on the wall and the mantle above the fireplace, but for achievements so morbid and unthinkable I’m surprised someone would etch those phrases into brass. Facing me in an over-sized wing chair, made gigantic by comparison to his diminutive frame, was Ugarte. If a ferret decided to shave, stand upright, and wear an over-priced suit he’d be a dead-ringer for my reluctant host. The tiny man is the head of a ruthless crime syndicate whose primary commodity is information, and he got there with an unabashed enthusiasm for the work. Completely bereft of troublesome morals or ethics to get in his way, he slithered to the top of a corrupt mob by piling up corpses with no secrets left untold. All that (and the three giant, armed ruffians standing behind him with rifles aimed at my face) meant I will have to choose my words carefully.
“I’m looking for the Deadwalker.” Simple enough, to the point. I guess the fact that I didn’t immediately open fire on their weaselly boss allows the goons to relax and aim at my torso instead.
“Aren’t we all, hmmm? Aren’t we all. Chiron just offered me a sizable sum for information on that mythical beast,” he spits out his words like they’re distasteful, but still manages to linger on all the wrong syllables and make it sound slimy.
“An old buddy like me? We’ve been friends for years. Well I’m calling in a favour, so you can tell me what you told him. ”
“I don’t know you, and by my reckoning,” he counts on his slender, bony fingers, ”You’re all out of favours.”
“I put my neck out for you, take out that Ha’la’tha -- situation -- you had on Tauron last year, and this is the kind of gratitude I get?”
He dismisses the notion with a wave of his hand, “You put your neck out for no one, we both know that. Besides, we squared up with that tip I gave you last month.”
“Some might consider sending me into a rat’s nest of mobsters and feds more of an ‘ambush’ than a ‘favour.’ You can throw me this bone, at least.”
“It’s a meaty bone, indeed. If I share this morsel with you, not only will your, er... services be paid in full, but you will have to grant me a boon in addition. Hmmm?”
The last thing I want to do is be under his malicious, scheming thumb for any reason whatsoever. Anything he asks is bound to get me killed, or more likely something much worse. Having no alternative options is becoming pricey for me. My curt nod is less an affirmative signal to him than the grimace of regret I can’t keep from my face.
“Very good. She’ll be at the sports stadium first thing this morning for the Pyramid-X league game. I’ll send you an instant message with her location before the first period. Shortly thereafter I’ll contact you again with any...” he has an uncanny way of stretching any pause into an awkward silence, “...business arrangements.”
I pour as much sarcasm as possible into a few choice words, “I’m looking forward to hearing from you.”
His death’s head grin spreads from ear to ear in response and my blood runs cold. It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve seen in a while, and that’s saying a lot.
1-3
“For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game.”
Jack Nowirth
I still love getting to the pyramid game just before tip-off. By timing it right, I can sit down right at the horn and let the emotion of the crowd flood over me. Waves and waves of it. Like electric current. Perched high above the stadium, staring down through a rifle scope I can feel that energy surge through me. I’ve always been a C-Bucs fan. Like most sports teams it’s more heritage than anything else. My father took me to my first pyramid game in a stadium just like this one -- odd, it’s identical to the one I remember. I guess all arenas look the same.
Even with Ugarte’s information I’m looking at a mosaic one pebble at a time. Thousands upon thousands of people were crammed into the stadium; an undulating, screaming mass of digital humanity. There were no individuals anymore, they simply became a single united hivemind behind a cause. There is an ironic harmony in the chaos. I double check the seating map and resume scanning row by row until I find the right seat.
A cherub with long, razor-straight raven tresses that flow over a white fur collar catches my eye. She’s also the only one in the arena not paying attention to the game. She’s looking at me with innocent eyes that hack into my soul.
In the shared instance I freeze. The entire world around us pauses; a crowd of thousands, including myself, frozen in time. I cannot move, or breathe, or even think; unable to do anything other than stare. The passage of time is rendered meaningless, and after what feels like a decade she does the absolute last thing I would expect from anyone. She winks at me. Dead centre in the cross-hairs her perfect eye winks at me. She stole my moment.
By reflex more than thought my trigger finger acts on its own and twitches. Months, years, a lifetime of training and I simply lose control for a fraction on an instant. I watch the bullet’s contrail draw a straight line between us in high resolution and excruciatingly slow motion. I don’t know if the crowd screams in terror or for a particularly good play by the home team, but it all slows to a muffled roar. The bullet finds its intended target dead centre -- I watch the skin ripple outward from the impact.
I finally remember to breathe and take a deep gasp as I look up from the eyepiece.
I hear a whisper caressing the tiny hairs on my ear I’m suddenly thankful the scanners are accurate enough to pick up, “You‘ve done well. You’re ready. I knew you had potential. It’s one of the reasons I chose you, specifically.”
A pair of icicles slide into my back and I feel the air I just drew in flow right back out again. I marvel at the intricate details of the sensation -- a warm trickle of wetness pours down my back. I look over my shoulder with a smile I can’t suppress, and her paradisiac eyes penetrate directly into my brain. Her perfect black curls bounce above her exquisite shoulders leading to supple arms ending in twin glittering blades and she’s the most sublime valkyrie I’ve ever seen.
Everything becomes 8-bit -- the entire world around us decomposes into cubes which explode into squares. I’m awash in a downpour of blood-red datastream raining behind my eyes.
For a moment, just a moment, I witness something real between the lines of code.
Caprica ©2010, Syfy. A Division of NBC Universal.
Beginning of Line is a fan site with no affiliation to Caprica, Syfy, or NBC Universal. You should totes know that.
And "Assassin Nation" belongs to D. Shipway. No, the characters aren't his, and he can't get paid for it, but if you want to reprint it anywhere, it'd be nice if you asked.
Beginning of Line is a fan site with no affiliation to Caprica, Syfy, or NBC Universal. You should totes know that.
And "Assassin Nation" belongs to D. Shipway. No, the characters aren't his, and he can't get paid for it, but if you want to reprint it anywhere, it'd be nice if you asked.
