Echoes from the Past (Stories I have written for TME)
Feb 15, 2019 22:19:19 GMT -8
Chris the Chaotic GM likes this
Post by thorneldrich on Feb 15, 2019 22:19:19 GMT -8
These are stories I have written. Some started out as background or location information, others were just odd flights of fancy I bothered to record, & still others were ideas that never crystallized. None of them are "official TME-canon" of course. I'm no writer, hell I'm lucky they invented spell-checkers, but here is what I came up with.
[Part 1]
--[excerpts from the digital journal of Dr. Vivian Delgado, former assistant to Dr. Nathan Booth, Biotechnology Division Head of Bio-Tech Solutions R/D Lab, Los Angeles Annex]--
03/05/2159
Couldn't believe my ears when Mr. Mackie (my current BTS supervisor) told me that I was being promoted to the LA Annex as the new assistant to Dr. Booth! Dr. Nathan Booth is one of the greatest minds in the Biotechnology field! Half the bioreplicas in the world use biological technology he pioneered! To work with such a genius is the chance of a lifetime for me! Admittedly going into the LA Militarized Zone is a dangerous assignment but the BTS Annex is a high-security facility, hell it's almost qualifies as a small arcology with all the corporate housing, outlet mall, & hydroponics facilities attached to it. Getting there is safe since I'll be heading in on the deep-tunnel mag-Lev from BTS Headquarters in Sacramento.
Worldwide situation is real bleak right now. Reports on the NewsNet make it seem like the other countries of Earth are all being torn apart by the mutant/Synthetic uprisings, civil wars, & terrorism. Either that or the reports on the BAX-6 pandemic. Even BTS has dedicated most of our orbital research station "Hippocrates" to searching for a way stop BAX-6 from spreading & treatment for the infected. As it stands today, those poor souls infected with it are doomed to a horrible, lingering death.
The news for us here in the Coalition aren't any better. Damn "Mecha" broadcast viruses are turning our most trustworthy & productive synthetics into terrorists & mass-murderers. On top of that some greedy bastards in the corporate sector are staging full-on military attacks against rival corporations. hell, there has even been a couple of commando-style attacks on BTS facilities right here in California! The UDF has issued Cease & Desist warning to the attacking corporations but so far it doesn't look good. In a couple of instances I got info on (Robbie in Tech Support got uncensored transcripts from our com-sats before the got fed to BTS info-censors) the Corp forces literally massacred the UDF forces that tried to stop them. Scary as hell.
03/24/2159
Wow. That sounds so weak but it's really all I can say. The last few weeks have been thrilling, terrifying, & awe-inspiring. The trip here to the "Hive" (LA R/D Annex) was quick (those high-speed Mag-Lev's are fast). The time it took to get through the security scans (I've had full medical exams that weren't as thorough) was brutal, the 48 hour quarantine was boring, & the pre-assignment briefing was intense. The locator beacon implantation was a rude surprise as was the wide-spectrum vaccination panel. The "This is not a Drill" security alert that happened just after I got my apartment assignment scared the hell out of me. Seems the Hive is a prime target of those commando-style attacks I heard about. Thankfully we are eight levels below ground & the levels above us are security headquarters & their support services (medical, housing, cafeterias, waste disposal, that sort of thing). The surface levels are an Ultra-secure bunker-style installation (I'm told that there is even a wing of remote-piloted military-grade drone fighters in a launch bay up there).
A lot of the workers here are clones. Kind of spooky since they are all from the same templates. Females are all the "Sophie" technical template & the males are all the "Otto" technical template. Neither of the templates are very socially-skilled (or very attractive) & outside of work-related communication, they don't talk very much. Guess that is why this place got the "Hive" nickname, feels like working in an ant colony. The even have cyborgs as the security forces (way creepy)! Only real humans here are the research assistants, the R/D & Administration division heads, & the scientists in the bio-goo vats (ahem… I mean the biosynthesis Labs).
On the upside I am now working with Dr. Booth! The man radiates confidence. His insights into the minutiae of bioreplica creation is staggering! I've learned more listening to him in a week then I did in my entire year-long internship at the BTS body-bank in Colorado (ahem… I mean at the Bioreplica production Training Institute)!
Not sure what he is working on now but it is real hush-hush. All his personal notes are encrypted as he enters them so only he & whoever in the BTS R/D CoC (Chain of Command) know what they say.
04/15/2159
Got a UDF Death notification forwarded by BTS Personnel Department today. Danny is dead. My baby brother is dead. He was killed in action on his first combat deployment. Mecha-infected squad of heavy combots overran his defense post. No survivors. Only 29 civilians victims. The UDF notice said his squad fought a holding action & saved nearly a hundred civilians (including a junior-high science class on a field trip) before being overrun. I'm glad Mom & Dad are both passed away so they don't have to deal with this.
Damn it Danny why'd you just have to be a soldier? Just couldn't bring yourself to be a "nerd" like your big sister. I… I can't write anymore right now. Got to get ready for my shift.
04/22/2159
Dr. Booth forced me to take five days of Bereavement leave. Said I needed to grieve. Suggested (strongly) that I see one of the Councilors from over in Personal Services department. I did go see one. Helped a bit. They prescribed an anti-depressant but still having difficulty though. Danny was my only family. Only person on this damn rotten world I still cared about. Nothing left here but pain & sorrow now. I Need more sleep.
04/29/2159
Well I may be out of a job. Seems even with all my bio-tech training I still managed to fuck-up my suicide attempt. I have no idea how though. Calapex-X4 in the dosage I took should have shut down every organ in my body in under five minutes while I was unconscious. Instead, I wake up out of a coma in the High Security Ward of the BTS medical facility of the Hive six days later without a single failed organ.
The doctors say when I missed my shift on the evening of April 23rd that Dr. Booth sent a security officer to check on me. He used his Security passkey to open my apartment door & after searching it, found me on my bed in a coma with the empty bottle of Calapex-X4 next to me. They rushed me to the clinic & stabilized me. Wouldn't say anything more. Just waiting for security to come with my termination notice & the removal team to "evict" me. Maybe I'll get lucky & the security guard will get trigger happy.
06/19/2159
Seems I am so lucky. Come to find out that the bottle I took wasn't filled with Calafax-X4. Some corporate saboteur had altered the production run of that bottle's batch. I actually took a massive dose of an incorrectly formulated neurotoxin called "Blue Repose". In the dosage of the stuff I swallowed, if properly formulated, it could drop the entire population of a small city into lingering (month-long or more) comas before finally destroying the brain tissue & causing their death. Whoever reprogrammed the automated production line switched around two component chemical values. Instead of killing me, it dropped me into a coma & effectively sterilized me. Not only am I alone in the world, I can never have children. Ever.
Oh yeah, it gets its name from a side-effect of the drug, the sclera of my eyes are now permanently tinged blue & my irises are deep blue. So I am weird looking as well as a chemically sterilized freak. Just keeps getting better & better.
09/01/2159
Been a long time since I put anything in this journal. Had allot to deal with. Seems my suicide attempt actually saved thousands of lives. The tampered with run of Calafax-X4 medicine hadn't been publically distributed yet so BTS was able to recall all of it & destroy it. They even let me keep my job & didn't add the incident to my employee record (in fact they had me sign multiple legal non-disclosure agreements as a condition of my continued employment, to protect the company of course). I've received both psychological & medical treatment for the effects of the toxin. They can't fix my eyes or reverse the sterility but they did fix the other effects it had on me (insomnia, some loss of fine motor control, & a bit of muscular degeneration). Even stranger is that Dr. Booth actually requested I be reassigned to him as his assistant. I went back to work today. He acted very normal while I worked beside him. He never once showed any sign reacting to my weird blue eyes. Never once looked away. Was nice. Been hard getting used to the clones staring at my eyes or diverting their gaze when I looked at them. The security cyborgs don't seem to care (why should they, the clones give them the same treatment) but the other "normal" people all avoid me when not required to interact with me. Guess having a formerly suicidal co-worker who's now a chemically altered freak makes them nervous. Go figure.
09/26/2159
Getting back to work feels surprisingly good. Dr. Booth literally demanded I be given a security classification/clearance so I could work on the project more closely. Seems he gets what he wants too. The upped my security clearance to one step below his the next day. Guess not having a living relative left in the world & being a sterile blue-eyed freak kind of makes it hard for me to sneak around unnoticed or be coerced in some way. Besides, I haven't got any way to leave the Hive or its support areas. Only way in or out is on the secured Mag-Lev or up the unimaginably high security elevators to the surface. My only skill-set is bioreplica gene-tweaking. Hell I couldn't even build a bioreplica using the bio-goo vats if I had access to them. Hm.. well I guess I do technically have the access now (new security clearance & all) but still haven't got the know-how. Would take many years to get to that level of skill. Many, many years.
10/16/2159
Nathan is absolutely the finest mind in our field. The genius of his work is beyond description. His project is nothing less than the next step in Bioreplica development. No details (who knows if this journal is really that secure) but I am truly honored to be helping in my small way to work towards his final goal. Feels nice to actually be contributing something again.
12/24/2159
Xmas. Really wasn't expecting it to be a good time. Meds are holding off the worst of the depression but still lonely. Working with Nathan (he refuses to let me call him Dr. Booth anymore, says it makes him sound too "Stuffy" lol) has been good for me. He really is a nice guy. All those brains & a personality too. Who knew? He actually called me a colleague the other day. Was a nice gesture but hardly the truth. I'm a kid playing with a chemistry set compared to him.
Clones having a Xmas party in the lounge today. Among themselves they are pretty chatty I've discovered. Although they are pretty much non-sexual (despite their genders) they do form friendships with other clones of all the templates present in the facilities (I've discovered at least a half-dozen templates active throughout the Hive now). They still don't react well to my presence (my odd appearance seems to unsettle their sense of "normality"). Although one, Sophie-26 has actually started several "Small-talk" conversations with me in the break-room. She really seems to be sincere in her attempts at social interaction with me so I make it a point to not to face her during our chats. It seems to make her less nervous. She's got what I can only call an "addiction" to those re-mastered copies of twentieth century flat-screen videos. Really seems to love watching & re-watching them on her personal data tablet. I have to admit I've gotten a smile or too out of a couple she was watching myself. I wonder if they have any of those in the multimedia entertainment library? Guess I could … Someone at the door.
12/25/2159
I must say I have actually enjoyed the last few hours. BTS really surprised all of us here in the Hive when they announced the paid mandatory holiday leave for all employees (except for active security personnel of course, but even they got half-shift rotations for 2 days).
Sophie-26 came by my apartment last night (actually it was her at the door from last entry). She was almost like a little kid about the holiday. I guess it means something to clones too since her template is raised from decanting in fostering facilities, not force-grown to adulthood & neural-map trained like some templates are. She actually talked me into going to a club down in the Hive-Mall's entertainment sector. I stood out like a sore thumb, since the club was almost totally clone patronized. Seems that the holidays loosen up the clones though, they just kind of looked surprised at my presence but then relaxed when they saw I was clubbing with one of their own. Surprised me how much they all really celebrated the Xmas. The all did Karaoke Christmas carols from back in the 20th century, even sang some even older, 19th century stuff. Sad to say none of the templates represented could carry a tune in a bucket, but hell, nether can I lol! Had a fun night all in all. Got home early this morning to find my vid-phone message alert blinking. Shocked to find it was a Xmas diner invite from Nathan & his clone companion Alexandra (he'd spoken of her numerous times, stating that he didn't have time for a truly human relationship with his erratic work requirements but still found he needed someone to be there in the quiet times between work & sleep). I had found out that Alexandria was a rare custom template, designed to his specifications by the BTS subsidiary, GenePrint. The vid-call message was the first time I had actually seen her. Shock doesn't cover my surprise. She was just pretty, not super-model gorgeous like I had imagined, she had a nice figure from what I could see but not anything like the "Personal Companion" template. Her voice was soft, quite pleasant to the ear, & she had soft, curly chestnut brown hair. All in all I'd call her "cute". Why would Nathan have such a template designed? Didn't most men who could literally have their desires made flesh want something more, well sexually appealing?
Nathan called again around 3pm to make sure I got the invitation. I had honestly decided to gently decline his invite but he really insisted I come. I guess he was afraid I'd maybe try to do away with myself again. Not that I would. Beyond that stage now. I finally promised to be there promptly at 6pm (though I still have a bit of a hangover, even after taking a Detox tab. For clones, that Sophie-26 & her people can sure put away the synthahol & eggnog).
I dug out my good "going out" dress suit. Might as well get some use out of it at least once. Off to eat roast cloned turkey meat & soy-bread stuffing.
--[entries from 12/26/2059 to 04/13/2160 are missing]--
04/13/2160
How bad is it going to get I wonder? BTS Security finally put the entire Hive on Lock-Down notice. The fighting up top has gotten real intense. Several bio-technology corporations are marching towards the Hive's surface facility. They are using clone troops with bioreplica (combat soldier formats) officers. Been pounding the defenses for almost two days. Even down here we can feel the vibrations from some of the ordinance they are using. Thankfully we still have the deep run Mag-Lev for evacuation if it really comes to that point. I've read the security reports they sent to Nathan (he handed them to me). It isn't a pretty picture they paint. Seems NewsNet was spinning the news reports the entire time. Much of Europe is in chaos. Entire nations & corporate enclaves are literally gone. Between the pandemics (yes multiple pandemics, not just BAX-6), massive mutant uprisings, multiple Mecha factions, doomsday terrorist cells, & civil revolt, most of Eurasian continent has fallen into anarchy. The Asian Co-prosperity Union has reported masses of previously unknown mutants & cyborg units laying waste to urban areas. Large sections of Africa are giant open graveyards. Disease, bio-weapons, & the aforementioned causes have decimated it. Australia when dark after reports of a weaponized-Nanite release. The few satellite scans all come back as digital garbage, if the can gather anything at all. South America seems to be one continuous gorilla-war with bio-weapons being deployed that were never truly meant to be used (bio-agents that literally re-write the infected victims DNA, turning them into walking bio-weapons).
The planetary climate is spinning out of control. Massive storms are raking the coasts of all continents, violent atmospheric upheaval on a scale hereto unimagined. 150+mph winds, electromagnetic discharges on a level never seen before. Tornadoes, bowling ball sized hail, & torrential downpours, all tainted with bio-agents, chemical warfare agents, & worse. Perhaps the most terrifying are the multiple reports of nuclear weapon strikes & counter-strikes.
06/23/2160
I can't believe it has really come to this. BTS orbital "Hippocrates" has been knocked out of orbit by a fleet of unidentified assault ships. Multiple mass-driver strikes crippled its station-keeping thrusters & it was hit by multiple, massive laser fire barrages from the attacking fleet. It's reentering the atmosphere at this very moment. Most of it is projected to land in the Indian Ocean but large sections have already broken away from the main body & are most likely going to make planet-fall over Africa, Madagascar, The Indian sub-continent, & the various islands of that area. Some of the debris may even hit Australia (although at this point no one thinks there are any organic life left there to harm). Worse is the fact that the attack happened so fast & with absolutely no forewarning, that all the bio-agents, viral samples, bacterial cultures, & chemicals stored on it are all still viable & active (even the most optimistic computer projection states that nearly 22% of those stores will survive the reentry & contaminate any area they come in contact with. Any that don't his solid ground will further poison the oceans). What have we done?!
--[all entries from 07/2160 to 03/19/2161 are missing]--
03/19/2161
Food supplies are dwindling. Nathan stopped the security cyborgs from enacting Order 53c-0-1. Can you imagine BTS would have standing orders that every clone, Bioreplica, & all "non-essential" human employees (janitorial, Mall staff, & entertainment staff, etc…) be killed in an emergency like this!? The reason? Preserve the "Essential" employees (scientists, Researchers, Technicians, & of course Administration Division personnel) for as long as possible until rescue teams can arrive. Like that will ever happen. The deep run Mag-Lev tunnels are gone, not just a few cave-ins (the lie they repeatedly have given us), but near complete, system-wide collapse. I've seen the surface-penetrating scan images from the Spy-sat Otto-19 hacked into.
The area that was once a urban warzone above us? Now an uninhabited radioactive ruin that is quickly being submerged beneath the rising seas. The access shafts up to "ground" level? Literally filled with polycrete infused with lead to both prevent radiation contamination & flooding but also there to seal the shafts during the 2160 corp-war ground campaign. Lot of good that did any of them. Who's on top now? No one. Greed, ego, & human arrogance have doomed our species to possible extinction & for what? Money. Money that means absolutely nothing now. Money that isn't even worth burning because it gives of harmful chemical residue.
The Admin Division Heads are still "appealing" Nathan's countermand of Order 53c-0-1. Thankfully Nathan has higher corporate rank than the highest ranked Division head still alive. As much as they may not like it, he is in charge. Thank goodness for that.
04/12/2161
Nathan & Dr. Cavanagh from gene-tech division have come up with a sustainable (if nasty) solution to our food shortage. They have converted one of the huge bio-goo labs into an algae farm. The dried algae is ugly olive green & tastes like cardboard. It looks & feels like tiny-dried sponges, but it provides massive amounts of protein as well as several vitamins we desperately need to have in our systems to prevent various deficiencies from occurring (scurvy, calcium loss/bone weakening, etc…). This combined with the hydroponics labs vegetables & the uncontaminated deep-draw well we have, should keep us alive for a while. The Algae also acts as a form of natural air recycling/purification so our air quality should improve dramatically in the next few months. Good thing too, the air scrubbers are in desperate need of some down-time maintenance.
05/03/2161
Nathan was killed in a lab accident today. he never felt any pain, I know that. The main power conduit supplying power from mini-reactor 1 failed while he was right next to it. He was literally incinerated by the massive electrical discharge. Only a few charred bits of bone & ashes remained when the power-cutout kicked in. Several Ottos (23, 15, & 27) & a couple Sophies (25 & 27) were also reduced to ash in the surge. Mood among all of us down here is very low.
05/05/2161
Alexandria arranged a somber ceremony during which she interred Nathan's ashes in the "Vault" (it was once a cold-storage for organic remains but we’ve converted it to a mausoleum for the remains of those who have died down here. We use the bio-incinerator to cremate the remains, then put the ashes in a sealed bio-hazard bin with their ID cards & locator beacons). Alexandria is holding up very well but I think she honestly loved Nathan. No template made, custom or not contains that kind of emotional coding. I hope she can make it through this. I like her, have since that Xmas dinner back in 2159. She's a good person, custom clone or not.
Sophie-26 is still an emotional wreck. she grew up with 25 & 27 in the same fostering facility & they were best friends. She called them her sisters (I guess in a way they were). Clones held a small remembrance for their fallen fellows after Nathan's ceremony. They have used a utility storage room to store the cremated remains of all the clones who have died. I helped them set it up. Security originally attempted to "dispose of the bio-waste" in the room just after we got it started but Nathan put a stop to that too. I honestly though the clones were going to get violent with the cyborgs who were threatening to toss out their fallen comrades remains. Never seen clones (outside of combat templates) get so aggressive before.
05/08/2161
Well we just had our own version of a civil war down here. It lasted roughly one hour long. Seems when security got around to updating their command structure they realized I was the next highest ranked corporate employee in the Hive. I never realized that when Nathan had my clearance raised, he also had my ranking bumped up to one below his. I realize now that it was the Rank issue that caused all the ruffled feathers, not the security clearance issue. Here all this time I thought it was that a former suicidal/now tainted Freak employee being given a high clearance. Down here corporate rank has never been an issue (well outside of the administration division heads & their paper-pushing cronies) so I never noticed the change in status. Seems the admin folks did though. When the security chief announced the new chain of command to the Hive, stating I was now Hive Overseer, the Division heads & their staff blew a gasket. They ordered the security chief to remove me from the CoC & place their highest ranking member (who ranked 4 below me, & 2 below several other members in the R/D staff!) in the Overseer position. The Security Chief looked like he might even do it for a second or two before literally laughing in their faces. Seems the Board of Directors & the Head of BTS Corporate Security had foreseen this kind of situation (got to wonder what the hell kind of computer projection/simulations they must have had access to!) arising. The Security Chief informed them that Corporate CoC was not up for review & that sub-section 109-G24 directly covered this. He provided them with the entire corporate procedures digital manual (with ss109-G24 bookmarked) to their data readers & "requested" the review it before making anymore "invalid & inappropriate" requests". The entire administration Divisions & their staff then promptly withdrew from all interaction with the rest of the Hive.
05/10/2161
Today the Security Chief handed me a data tablet with their official request to "re-acquire" the "illegally seized" facility section that the admins were off pouting in. After reviewing it I changed the "action" permission from "Any means Necessary" to "non-lethal means only" & verbally added "We need to preserve every life we can, even those who for whatever reason haven't figured out that Ambition & Ego aren't in the equation anymore.". I also asked that any injuries be kept to a minimum since we had limited medical supplies to treat them with. I actually saw a smile on his face when he retrieved his tablet. "Of course Overseer, but bruises don't really require treatment do they?" he said & made a polite nod & left "my" new office. You know, I think I'm getting to like that cyborg for the first time.
05/12/2161
Seems a night spent sleeping in the locked down Mall (both unheated & unlit to conserve power resources) was enough for most of the admin "rebels". All but three former division heads have requested to be readmitted to the Hive proper. They all were very surprised to find out they were no longer employed by BTS, due to breaches of their employment contracts, by the Security officers at the Mall entry Post (never occurred to me that they had broken their employment contracts by refusing to obey Corporate Security or by refusing to follow the established CoC). Seems Sec Chief is very well read when it comes to the Corporate Manual & the Bylaws. I need to start reading the entire corporate law Manuals (which are way bigger than I thought now that I have Overseer access to all of them).
09/09/2161
What a fucking mess. I was called to my office by the Sec Chief Hobbs (finally learned his name after the Paper-Pusher Civil War back on 05/08/2161) at 3am. Seems the BTS CEO himself was on a direct live feed to my data uplink there.
"Dr. Delgado, I realize it has been a too long since the last communication but please, let me put all the cards, as they say, on the table.
First let me bring you up to speed on the state of the Coalition & Earth in general. The Coalition is gone. It officially ceased to exist as a political & governmental entity at 00:01am your time this morning.
Earth is a very bad way. Climactic upheavals have melted the icecaps to the point that your location is currently under nearly 254 feet of ocean. The majority on lower California is now a sea floor.
The biosphere of earth is near the breaking point. Mutagens are running rampant throughout all levels of remaining life. There is a very high possibility that if the biosphere recovers & if the atmosphere manages to remain capable of supporting oxygen-breathing life, humanity as it exists now will be unable to survive on its surface without the aid of life-support suits. The current level of radiation is too much for any human to survive unshielded for more than a few days in most areas. The current atmosphere is laced with a lethal cocktail of bio-warfare agents, chemical warfare agents, mutated viral strains (the pandemics where just the tip of that iceberg), & mutagenic materials from a myriad of sources, some of humanity's own making while others are natural in origin, released by the recent climactic shifts. This combined with the hostile mutant forces & Mecha-recoded synthetic armies roaming much of the Eurasian & African continents makes Earth a hostile & lethal environment for the remaining human race.
The Earth has been put under a strict "Planetary quarantine" by order of the Union of Sol Colonial Government. This quarantine bans any travel from or to the Earth's surface as well as any remaining orbital habitats, stations, or outposts not under strict USC military control. The remaining humans on Earth have officially been abandoned. Any ship attempting to leave or land on Earth will be destroyed by the USC fleet without warning. A non-computerized network of Communications Jamming orbitals is being put in place roughly half way between Earth & Luna to prevent any communication to or from Earth to the remainder of the colonies. Anything from Earth is now considered an imminent & deadly threat to the surviving human race of the USC until at what time the Planetary Quarantine is rescinded by the USC government. I am sorry. You cannot know the gut-wrenching sorrow this has caused throughout the USC.
I have been given access to this transmitter as have many other surviving off-world Corporate Leaders, former Earth nation representatives (ambassadors, diplomatic couriers, etc…), & others to inform as much of the still surviving population that we can contact about the Quarantine. My analysts agree with the UCS government specialist's assessment of Earth's possible future. It could over a century before the climactic upheaval begins to subside. It will be somewhere around a century before the level of toxic agents in the atmosphere drops to a level where the possibility of an unmutated human breathing the air without high-efficiency air filtration systems will even be possible (without suffering a horrible death).
Dr. Delgado, I am granting you CEO command level authority over any remaining BTS military, security, & civilian employees as well as total access to any surviving facilities & materials. I hope that this will aid you & your remaining staff in surviving the nightmare that you & they have been left to endure."
With those last words, an unfamiliar governmental crest filled the screen surrounded by the words "Union of Sol - Colonial Government" then the uplink was severed. Hobbs was sitting on the couch of my office, listening to the whole broadcast. I noticed he had poured himself a massive glass of real bourbon from the liquor cabinet & pointed to another one identical to his sitting on the edge of my desk. We both just sat there, drinking the bourbon & trying to get our heads wrapped around what had just happened. About half-way through the glass of bourbon the office computer system reset & when it came back up, the screen was a welcome screen to "Dr. Vivian Delgado, new CEO & sole owner of all BTS corporate holdings on & orbiting Earth". It was almost comical, here I sat, the most powerful executive, remaining planet-side, of a dead Corporation, trapped on a possibly dying Earth, surrounded by a lethally enforced, quarantine zone put in place by my own species to "protect" itself from the results of its own folly. After deciding not to borrow Hobbs's sidearm & swallowing one of its bullets I asked Hobbs what his intentions were. He looked at me oddly for a sec & then answered me.
"Madam CEO, I have worked for BTS since I signed that employment agreement just after my eighteenth birthday. I've worked in every division BTS has. Been everything from a janitor in a GTS bio-waste disposal facility in Montana to my current position as Sec Chief for this ultra-secure R/D facility. I've Lost organs, limbs, one eye, & even a piece of my spine while performing my duties in service to BTS. In return BTS has replaced or upgraded everything I lost in those years of service, they have treated me well, & seen to my every medical & personal need. All they have asked in return is my absolute & unwavering loyalty. You think some little thing like the end of the World as we know it is going to change my dedication to what remains of this corporation? I think not. What are your orders Madam CEO?"
We've started running through all corporate holding, finding those are still responding. This is going to be a long night.
--[there is a massive gap in the journal entries spanning from the previous entry on 09/09/2161 until the following entry, dated several years later]--
02/11/2164
Hobbs was right about not trusting the commander of the GenePrint Security remnant. They steamrolled into the mountain compound we identified as an access point to the Hive. Must have come as a real shock when they opened those blast doors. I do feel sorry for them though. We didn't know the containment seals had failed. At least they didn't suffer long. That level of radiation actually melted the entire first row of their attack force. The others weren't shielded nearly well enough to survive more than a few minutes. Really worried about the level of radiation that the site is continuing to emit. Nothing in the database of waste stored in that facility should be capable of releasing a tenth of that radiation. Even more frightening is the most current readings are showing the radiation level is climbing.
Sophie-26 stopped by today. She has been diagnosed with same degenerative spinal condition all the Sophie templates have been developing. The doctors can't identify the cause nor can the gene-techs find a single root source for the condition. They have given her about six months before the condition progresses to the point she will be totally paralyzed. She's already made arrangements to be placed into a induced coma & then painlessly have her life support terminated. We cried together for about half an hour. Another friend dying & all I can do for her is give her "Official" permission to terminate her own life (since under the old Coalition laws she was actually "corporate property" not a free sentient being). We made arrangements to get together later this evening. I'm Going to make sure she gets to enjoy the time she has left.
02/13/2164
Dr. Carter from cryonics came by this morning. He finished the last stasis chamber system checks last night. I just announced the voluntary lottery drawing for the "Cold Sleep" project. I've also made sure that everyone is aware that all remaining Hive personnel may put their name in for the drawing. The only person I am not allowing to enter the drawing is me. I'm not a candidate for deep sleep. I've already suffered extensive genetic damage & I'm sterile. Hell I'm even unsuitable for cloning source material (that genetic damage again)! There is no place for me in any possible future that the Cold Sleepers might find upon revival.
02/14/2164
I am honestly beginning to believe in a divine being, that & the fact he truly hates me & wishing to prolong my miserable life as long as possible. When I announced I had withheld my own name from the drawing, explaining my reasons (extensive genetic damage & sterility). The entire clone population then withdrew from the drawing sighting their own sterility as being a fair reason for withdrawing. Then the entire security force refused to take part in it siting a whole string of BTS bylaws forbidding cyborgs from abandoning their positions if it would leave the Executive officers or CEO without defenses. I started to argue with them when Hobbs gave me the "solution" to both problems. I had to put my name into the drawing like everyone else who chose to. Surprisingly a lot of folks (cyborg, clone, & human) chose not to enter the drawing.
We didn't have enough people in the drawing to fill all the chambers. I had to convince a few holdouts to join the project. So now I am slated to enter one of the stasis chambers on 09/01/2164. 200 dreamers hoping to revive in a better world. Guess I'll get to find out first hand. I've decided to spend the time left just being Sophie-26's friend & helping her enjoy the time she has left.
03/12/2164
I've named Hobbs as my successor to CEO/owner of BTS Earth (he showed his gratitude by not laughing till after I finished my little speech). I really have set it up though. as soon as my vitals enter stasis levels, the Hive computer will "officially" transfer leadership to him. Can't think of a better candidate.
08/22/2164
Sat at Sophie-26's bedside & we said our good-byes. Held her hand till after she was deep in the coma & they turned off her life support. Held her hand till the declared her dead. She really did seem to have found some peace at last. I hope my own end is as peaceful. Somehow though, I doubt it will be. Not with my luck.
08/30/2164
Last entry. Spent the day saying my good-byes. Had a last glass of bourbon with Hobbs. Taking the only family picture I have left (the one of Mom, Dad, me, & Danny right before he left for UDF boot camp) with me into the stasis chamber. Guess I don't want to leave them even now. Maybe I'll join them where ever the human awareness "goes" to when you die. the odds are slim any of us will survive the extended stasis period anyhow, but like they say, slim odds are better than none.
--[the following entries come from a different journal tablet that seems to pick up where the above journal stopped]--
6-21-2275
I was right, my "luck" is still holding. I woke up just as the stasis chamber finished its final stage or revival. A few of the cryonic bay's emergency lighting units are still functional. Place is a disaster. Looks like some kind of seismic even (or a few of them) have occurred since I entered my chamber. Some of the other stasis chambers where open, obviously having revived their occupants sometime in the past. The chronometer on my chamber (& several of the open but still powered chambers match mine's) says I've been in stasis a little over a hundred & eleven years! Checked the other unopened chambers & only found four still functional & active. Two clone sleepers & two human ones. All four showed extreme cerebral degeneration. They were all brain dead. Carter had said that was a possibility with extended periods of cryonic stasis. Out of the 200 who volunteered for Cold Sleep, only 21 seem to have been revived. All the other chambers have failed in some manner sometime in the passing years. What a waste of so much effort. For nothing.
6-25-2275
The Hive is still somewhat intact. No signs of life (outside the vegetable jungle that fills most of the hydroponics Labs level, the algae swamps that now cover all of the Bio-Development level). I found signs of some of the survivor's last campsites, & found a couple of the accessible storefronts in the Mall they used as make-shift tombs for their dead. found a few partially degraded personal journals. Seems the last entry is almost 30 years old. Otto-55, a former sample screening tech in the gene-tech labs. Poor clone used a working pistol he found to blow his brains out after the only other survivor (a "Deidra" template physical therapist from the Sec medical clinic) died from some form of degenerative condition (similar to the mysterious spinal degeneration the Sophie templates were suffering from but the Deidra template's condition was digestion based, she literally died of slow starvation when her digestive tract stopped processing organic material). I wish his gun still worked, I'd use it to escape this giant tomb.
7-15-2275
Accidentally discovered a small, expertly hidden chamber under the Mall level. Was heading back to the make-shift living bunker (the former Woodsman's Trader store in the mall) I have put together when the floor of the concourse I was walking on collapsed under me. Woke up laying in the remains of the floor I fell through some time before. Don't have a real watch so have no idea exactly how long I was out (since this journal tablet only shows the date, I only know I wasn't unconscious over 24 hours). Thankfully I don't seem to have suffered any real injuries from the fall (although I ache all over & have some lovely new bruises in many locations all over my body) & my vision isn't blurry.
Seems this was a secret Security fallback armory. Too bad the who place is soaked with moisture & everything in it is worthless rust, mold-encrusted, or just so waterlogged that it will never function again. Not even one working pistol. Or even one still viable bullet.
9-26-2276
This is most likely the last entry I will be able to put on this tablet. Mini-power cell is almost dead & I've got no way to recharge it. The Hive will be my tomb. There is no way for me to escape it, no place I could go even if I did. I have no idea if the world above is even habitable anymore. I won't starve or die of dehydration, I have plenty of both food & water to survive. The only non-natural cause of death down here is an accident or my own hand. Not sure which will come first. Insanity is another possibility, the oppressive emptiness of the remaining Hive is terrible to deal with.
Well there is the one minute power failure warning.
--[Final Entry of the last known survivor in the BTS "Hive" complex]--
03/05/2159
Couldn't believe my ears when Mr. Mackie (my current BTS supervisor) told me that I was being promoted to the LA Annex as the new assistant to Dr. Booth! Dr. Nathan Booth is one of the greatest minds in the Biotechnology field! Half the bioreplicas in the world use biological technology he pioneered! To work with such a genius is the chance of a lifetime for me! Admittedly going into the LA Militarized Zone is a dangerous assignment but the BTS Annex is a high-security facility, hell it's almost qualifies as a small arcology with all the corporate housing, outlet mall, & hydroponics facilities attached to it. Getting there is safe since I'll be heading in on the deep-tunnel mag-Lev from BTS Headquarters in Sacramento.
Worldwide situation is real bleak right now. Reports on the NewsNet make it seem like the other countries of Earth are all being torn apart by the mutant/Synthetic uprisings, civil wars, & terrorism. Either that or the reports on the BAX-6 pandemic. Even BTS has dedicated most of our orbital research station "Hippocrates" to searching for a way stop BAX-6 from spreading & treatment for the infected. As it stands today, those poor souls infected with it are doomed to a horrible, lingering death.
The news for us here in the Coalition aren't any better. Damn "Mecha" broadcast viruses are turning our most trustworthy & productive synthetics into terrorists & mass-murderers. On top of that some greedy bastards in the corporate sector are staging full-on military attacks against rival corporations. hell, there has even been a couple of commando-style attacks on BTS facilities right here in California! The UDF has issued Cease & Desist warning to the attacking corporations but so far it doesn't look good. In a couple of instances I got info on (Robbie in Tech Support got uncensored transcripts from our com-sats before the got fed to BTS info-censors) the Corp forces literally massacred the UDF forces that tried to stop them. Scary as hell.
03/24/2159
Wow. That sounds so weak but it's really all I can say. The last few weeks have been thrilling, terrifying, & awe-inspiring. The trip here to the "Hive" (LA R/D Annex) was quick (those high-speed Mag-Lev's are fast). The time it took to get through the security scans (I've had full medical exams that weren't as thorough) was brutal, the 48 hour quarantine was boring, & the pre-assignment briefing was intense. The locator beacon implantation was a rude surprise as was the wide-spectrum vaccination panel. The "This is not a Drill" security alert that happened just after I got my apartment assignment scared the hell out of me. Seems the Hive is a prime target of those commando-style attacks I heard about. Thankfully we are eight levels below ground & the levels above us are security headquarters & their support services (medical, housing, cafeterias, waste disposal, that sort of thing). The surface levels are an Ultra-secure bunker-style installation (I'm told that there is even a wing of remote-piloted military-grade drone fighters in a launch bay up there).
A lot of the workers here are clones. Kind of spooky since they are all from the same templates. Females are all the "Sophie" technical template & the males are all the "Otto" technical template. Neither of the templates are very socially-skilled (or very attractive) & outside of work-related communication, they don't talk very much. Guess that is why this place got the "Hive" nickname, feels like working in an ant colony. The even have cyborgs as the security forces (way creepy)! Only real humans here are the research assistants, the R/D & Administration division heads, & the scientists in the bio-goo vats (ahem… I mean the biosynthesis Labs).
On the upside I am now working with Dr. Booth! The man radiates confidence. His insights into the minutiae of bioreplica creation is staggering! I've learned more listening to him in a week then I did in my entire year-long internship at the BTS body-bank in Colorado (ahem… I mean at the Bioreplica production Training Institute)!
Not sure what he is working on now but it is real hush-hush. All his personal notes are encrypted as he enters them so only he & whoever in the BTS R/D CoC (Chain of Command) know what they say.
04/15/2159
Got a UDF Death notification forwarded by BTS Personnel Department today. Danny is dead. My baby brother is dead. He was killed in action on his first combat deployment. Mecha-infected squad of heavy combots overran his defense post. No survivors. Only 29 civilians victims. The UDF notice said his squad fought a holding action & saved nearly a hundred civilians (including a junior-high science class on a field trip) before being overrun. I'm glad Mom & Dad are both passed away so they don't have to deal with this.
Damn it Danny why'd you just have to be a soldier? Just couldn't bring yourself to be a "nerd" like your big sister. I… I can't write anymore right now. Got to get ready for my shift.
04/22/2159
Dr. Booth forced me to take five days of Bereavement leave. Said I needed to grieve. Suggested (strongly) that I see one of the Councilors from over in Personal Services department. I did go see one. Helped a bit. They prescribed an anti-depressant but still having difficulty though. Danny was my only family. Only person on this damn rotten world I still cared about. Nothing left here but pain & sorrow now. I Need more sleep.
04/29/2159
Well I may be out of a job. Seems even with all my bio-tech training I still managed to fuck-up my suicide attempt. I have no idea how though. Calapex-X4 in the dosage I took should have shut down every organ in my body in under five minutes while I was unconscious. Instead, I wake up out of a coma in the High Security Ward of the BTS medical facility of the Hive six days later without a single failed organ.
The doctors say when I missed my shift on the evening of April 23rd that Dr. Booth sent a security officer to check on me. He used his Security passkey to open my apartment door & after searching it, found me on my bed in a coma with the empty bottle of Calapex-X4 next to me. They rushed me to the clinic & stabilized me. Wouldn't say anything more. Just waiting for security to come with my termination notice & the removal team to "evict" me. Maybe I'll get lucky & the security guard will get trigger happy.
06/19/2159
Seems I am so lucky. Come to find out that the bottle I took wasn't filled with Calafax-X4. Some corporate saboteur had altered the production run of that bottle's batch. I actually took a massive dose of an incorrectly formulated neurotoxin called "Blue Repose". In the dosage of the stuff I swallowed, if properly formulated, it could drop the entire population of a small city into lingering (month-long or more) comas before finally destroying the brain tissue & causing their death. Whoever reprogrammed the automated production line switched around two component chemical values. Instead of killing me, it dropped me into a coma & effectively sterilized me. Not only am I alone in the world, I can never have children. Ever.
Oh yeah, it gets its name from a side-effect of the drug, the sclera of my eyes are now permanently tinged blue & my irises are deep blue. So I am weird looking as well as a chemically sterilized freak. Just keeps getting better & better.
09/01/2159
Been a long time since I put anything in this journal. Had allot to deal with. Seems my suicide attempt actually saved thousands of lives. The tampered with run of Calafax-X4 medicine hadn't been publically distributed yet so BTS was able to recall all of it & destroy it. They even let me keep my job & didn't add the incident to my employee record (in fact they had me sign multiple legal non-disclosure agreements as a condition of my continued employment, to protect the company of course). I've received both psychological & medical treatment for the effects of the toxin. They can't fix my eyes or reverse the sterility but they did fix the other effects it had on me (insomnia, some loss of fine motor control, & a bit of muscular degeneration). Even stranger is that Dr. Booth actually requested I be reassigned to him as his assistant. I went back to work today. He acted very normal while I worked beside him. He never once showed any sign reacting to my weird blue eyes. Never once looked away. Was nice. Been hard getting used to the clones staring at my eyes or diverting their gaze when I looked at them. The security cyborgs don't seem to care (why should they, the clones give them the same treatment) but the other "normal" people all avoid me when not required to interact with me. Guess having a formerly suicidal co-worker who's now a chemically altered freak makes them nervous. Go figure.
09/26/2159
Getting back to work feels surprisingly good. Dr. Booth literally demanded I be given a security classification/clearance so I could work on the project more closely. Seems he gets what he wants too. The upped my security clearance to one step below his the next day. Guess not having a living relative left in the world & being a sterile blue-eyed freak kind of makes it hard for me to sneak around unnoticed or be coerced in some way. Besides, I haven't got any way to leave the Hive or its support areas. Only way in or out is on the secured Mag-Lev or up the unimaginably high security elevators to the surface. My only skill-set is bioreplica gene-tweaking. Hell I couldn't even build a bioreplica using the bio-goo vats if I had access to them. Hm.. well I guess I do technically have the access now (new security clearance & all) but still haven't got the know-how. Would take many years to get to that level of skill. Many, many years.
10/16/2159
Nathan is absolutely the finest mind in our field. The genius of his work is beyond description. His project is nothing less than the next step in Bioreplica development. No details (who knows if this journal is really that secure) but I am truly honored to be helping in my small way to work towards his final goal. Feels nice to actually be contributing something again.
12/24/2159
Xmas. Really wasn't expecting it to be a good time. Meds are holding off the worst of the depression but still lonely. Working with Nathan (he refuses to let me call him Dr. Booth anymore, says it makes him sound too "Stuffy" lol) has been good for me. He really is a nice guy. All those brains & a personality too. Who knew? He actually called me a colleague the other day. Was a nice gesture but hardly the truth. I'm a kid playing with a chemistry set compared to him.
Clones having a Xmas party in the lounge today. Among themselves they are pretty chatty I've discovered. Although they are pretty much non-sexual (despite their genders) they do form friendships with other clones of all the templates present in the facilities (I've discovered at least a half-dozen templates active throughout the Hive now). They still don't react well to my presence (my odd appearance seems to unsettle their sense of "normality"). Although one, Sophie-26 has actually started several "Small-talk" conversations with me in the break-room. She really seems to be sincere in her attempts at social interaction with me so I make it a point to not to face her during our chats. It seems to make her less nervous. She's got what I can only call an "addiction" to those re-mastered copies of twentieth century flat-screen videos. Really seems to love watching & re-watching them on her personal data tablet. I have to admit I've gotten a smile or too out of a couple she was watching myself. I wonder if they have any of those in the multimedia entertainment library? Guess I could … Someone at the door.
12/25/2159
I must say I have actually enjoyed the last few hours. BTS really surprised all of us here in the Hive when they announced the paid mandatory holiday leave for all employees (except for active security personnel of course, but even they got half-shift rotations for 2 days).
Sophie-26 came by my apartment last night (actually it was her at the door from last entry). She was almost like a little kid about the holiday. I guess it means something to clones too since her template is raised from decanting in fostering facilities, not force-grown to adulthood & neural-map trained like some templates are. She actually talked me into going to a club down in the Hive-Mall's entertainment sector. I stood out like a sore thumb, since the club was almost totally clone patronized. Seems that the holidays loosen up the clones though, they just kind of looked surprised at my presence but then relaxed when they saw I was clubbing with one of their own. Surprised me how much they all really celebrated the Xmas. The all did Karaoke Christmas carols from back in the 20th century, even sang some even older, 19th century stuff. Sad to say none of the templates represented could carry a tune in a bucket, but hell, nether can I lol! Had a fun night all in all. Got home early this morning to find my vid-phone message alert blinking. Shocked to find it was a Xmas diner invite from Nathan & his clone companion Alexandra (he'd spoken of her numerous times, stating that he didn't have time for a truly human relationship with his erratic work requirements but still found he needed someone to be there in the quiet times between work & sleep). I had found out that Alexandria was a rare custom template, designed to his specifications by the BTS subsidiary, GenePrint. The vid-call message was the first time I had actually seen her. Shock doesn't cover my surprise. She was just pretty, not super-model gorgeous like I had imagined, she had a nice figure from what I could see but not anything like the "Personal Companion" template. Her voice was soft, quite pleasant to the ear, & she had soft, curly chestnut brown hair. All in all I'd call her "cute". Why would Nathan have such a template designed? Didn't most men who could literally have their desires made flesh want something more, well sexually appealing?
Nathan called again around 3pm to make sure I got the invitation. I had honestly decided to gently decline his invite but he really insisted I come. I guess he was afraid I'd maybe try to do away with myself again. Not that I would. Beyond that stage now. I finally promised to be there promptly at 6pm (though I still have a bit of a hangover, even after taking a Detox tab. For clones, that Sophie-26 & her people can sure put away the synthahol & eggnog).
I dug out my good "going out" dress suit. Might as well get some use out of it at least once. Off to eat roast cloned turkey meat & soy-bread stuffing.
--[entries from 12/26/2059 to 04/13/2160 are missing]--
04/13/2160
How bad is it going to get I wonder? BTS Security finally put the entire Hive on Lock-Down notice. The fighting up top has gotten real intense. Several bio-technology corporations are marching towards the Hive's surface facility. They are using clone troops with bioreplica (combat soldier formats) officers. Been pounding the defenses for almost two days. Even down here we can feel the vibrations from some of the ordinance they are using. Thankfully we still have the deep run Mag-Lev for evacuation if it really comes to that point. I've read the security reports they sent to Nathan (he handed them to me). It isn't a pretty picture they paint. Seems NewsNet was spinning the news reports the entire time. Much of Europe is in chaos. Entire nations & corporate enclaves are literally gone. Between the pandemics (yes multiple pandemics, not just BAX-6), massive mutant uprisings, multiple Mecha factions, doomsday terrorist cells, & civil revolt, most of Eurasian continent has fallen into anarchy. The Asian Co-prosperity Union has reported masses of previously unknown mutants & cyborg units laying waste to urban areas. Large sections of Africa are giant open graveyards. Disease, bio-weapons, & the aforementioned causes have decimated it. Australia when dark after reports of a weaponized-Nanite release. The few satellite scans all come back as digital garbage, if the can gather anything at all. South America seems to be one continuous gorilla-war with bio-weapons being deployed that were never truly meant to be used (bio-agents that literally re-write the infected victims DNA, turning them into walking bio-weapons).
The planetary climate is spinning out of control. Massive storms are raking the coasts of all continents, violent atmospheric upheaval on a scale hereto unimagined. 150+mph winds, electromagnetic discharges on a level never seen before. Tornadoes, bowling ball sized hail, & torrential downpours, all tainted with bio-agents, chemical warfare agents, & worse. Perhaps the most terrifying are the multiple reports of nuclear weapon strikes & counter-strikes.
06/23/2160
I can't believe it has really come to this. BTS orbital "Hippocrates" has been knocked out of orbit by a fleet of unidentified assault ships. Multiple mass-driver strikes crippled its station-keeping thrusters & it was hit by multiple, massive laser fire barrages from the attacking fleet. It's reentering the atmosphere at this very moment. Most of it is projected to land in the Indian Ocean but large sections have already broken away from the main body & are most likely going to make planet-fall over Africa, Madagascar, The Indian sub-continent, & the various islands of that area. Some of the debris may even hit Australia (although at this point no one thinks there are any organic life left there to harm). Worse is the fact that the attack happened so fast & with absolutely no forewarning, that all the bio-agents, viral samples, bacterial cultures, & chemicals stored on it are all still viable & active (even the most optimistic computer projection states that nearly 22% of those stores will survive the reentry & contaminate any area they come in contact with. Any that don't his solid ground will further poison the oceans). What have we done?!
--[all entries from 07/2160 to 03/19/2161 are missing]--
03/19/2161
Food supplies are dwindling. Nathan stopped the security cyborgs from enacting Order 53c-0-1. Can you imagine BTS would have standing orders that every clone, Bioreplica, & all "non-essential" human employees (janitorial, Mall staff, & entertainment staff, etc…) be killed in an emergency like this!? The reason? Preserve the "Essential" employees (scientists, Researchers, Technicians, & of course Administration Division personnel) for as long as possible until rescue teams can arrive. Like that will ever happen. The deep run Mag-Lev tunnels are gone, not just a few cave-ins (the lie they repeatedly have given us), but near complete, system-wide collapse. I've seen the surface-penetrating scan images from the Spy-sat Otto-19 hacked into.
The area that was once a urban warzone above us? Now an uninhabited radioactive ruin that is quickly being submerged beneath the rising seas. The access shafts up to "ground" level? Literally filled with polycrete infused with lead to both prevent radiation contamination & flooding but also there to seal the shafts during the 2160 corp-war ground campaign. Lot of good that did any of them. Who's on top now? No one. Greed, ego, & human arrogance have doomed our species to possible extinction & for what? Money. Money that means absolutely nothing now. Money that isn't even worth burning because it gives of harmful chemical residue.
The Admin Division Heads are still "appealing" Nathan's countermand of Order 53c-0-1. Thankfully Nathan has higher corporate rank than the highest ranked Division head still alive. As much as they may not like it, he is in charge. Thank goodness for that.
04/12/2161
Nathan & Dr. Cavanagh from gene-tech division have come up with a sustainable (if nasty) solution to our food shortage. They have converted one of the huge bio-goo labs into an algae farm. The dried algae is ugly olive green & tastes like cardboard. It looks & feels like tiny-dried sponges, but it provides massive amounts of protein as well as several vitamins we desperately need to have in our systems to prevent various deficiencies from occurring (scurvy, calcium loss/bone weakening, etc…). This combined with the hydroponics labs vegetables & the uncontaminated deep-draw well we have, should keep us alive for a while. The Algae also acts as a form of natural air recycling/purification so our air quality should improve dramatically in the next few months. Good thing too, the air scrubbers are in desperate need of some down-time maintenance.
05/03/2161
Nathan was killed in a lab accident today. he never felt any pain, I know that. The main power conduit supplying power from mini-reactor 1 failed while he was right next to it. He was literally incinerated by the massive electrical discharge. Only a few charred bits of bone & ashes remained when the power-cutout kicked in. Several Ottos (23, 15, & 27) & a couple Sophies (25 & 27) were also reduced to ash in the surge. Mood among all of us down here is very low.
05/05/2161
Alexandria arranged a somber ceremony during which she interred Nathan's ashes in the "Vault" (it was once a cold-storage for organic remains but we’ve converted it to a mausoleum for the remains of those who have died down here. We use the bio-incinerator to cremate the remains, then put the ashes in a sealed bio-hazard bin with their ID cards & locator beacons). Alexandria is holding up very well but I think she honestly loved Nathan. No template made, custom or not contains that kind of emotional coding. I hope she can make it through this. I like her, have since that Xmas dinner back in 2159. She's a good person, custom clone or not.
Sophie-26 is still an emotional wreck. she grew up with 25 & 27 in the same fostering facility & they were best friends. She called them her sisters (I guess in a way they were). Clones held a small remembrance for their fallen fellows after Nathan's ceremony. They have used a utility storage room to store the cremated remains of all the clones who have died. I helped them set it up. Security originally attempted to "dispose of the bio-waste" in the room just after we got it started but Nathan put a stop to that too. I honestly though the clones were going to get violent with the cyborgs who were threatening to toss out their fallen comrades remains. Never seen clones (outside of combat templates) get so aggressive before.
05/08/2161
Well we just had our own version of a civil war down here. It lasted roughly one hour long. Seems when security got around to updating their command structure they realized I was the next highest ranked corporate employee in the Hive. I never realized that when Nathan had my clearance raised, he also had my ranking bumped up to one below his. I realize now that it was the Rank issue that caused all the ruffled feathers, not the security clearance issue. Here all this time I thought it was that a former suicidal/now tainted Freak employee being given a high clearance. Down here corporate rank has never been an issue (well outside of the administration division heads & their paper-pushing cronies) so I never noticed the change in status. Seems the admin folks did though. When the security chief announced the new chain of command to the Hive, stating I was now Hive Overseer, the Division heads & their staff blew a gasket. They ordered the security chief to remove me from the CoC & place their highest ranking member (who ranked 4 below me, & 2 below several other members in the R/D staff!) in the Overseer position. The Security Chief looked like he might even do it for a second or two before literally laughing in their faces. Seems the Board of Directors & the Head of BTS Corporate Security had foreseen this kind of situation (got to wonder what the hell kind of computer projection/simulations they must have had access to!) arising. The Security Chief informed them that Corporate CoC was not up for review & that sub-section 109-G24 directly covered this. He provided them with the entire corporate procedures digital manual (with ss109-G24 bookmarked) to their data readers & "requested" the review it before making anymore "invalid & inappropriate" requests". The entire administration Divisions & their staff then promptly withdrew from all interaction with the rest of the Hive.
05/10/2161
Today the Security Chief handed me a data tablet with their official request to "re-acquire" the "illegally seized" facility section that the admins were off pouting in. After reviewing it I changed the "action" permission from "Any means Necessary" to "non-lethal means only" & verbally added "We need to preserve every life we can, even those who for whatever reason haven't figured out that Ambition & Ego aren't in the equation anymore.". I also asked that any injuries be kept to a minimum since we had limited medical supplies to treat them with. I actually saw a smile on his face when he retrieved his tablet. "Of course Overseer, but bruises don't really require treatment do they?" he said & made a polite nod & left "my" new office. You know, I think I'm getting to like that cyborg for the first time.
05/12/2161
Seems a night spent sleeping in the locked down Mall (both unheated & unlit to conserve power resources) was enough for most of the admin "rebels". All but three former division heads have requested to be readmitted to the Hive proper. They all were very surprised to find out they were no longer employed by BTS, due to breaches of their employment contracts, by the Security officers at the Mall entry Post (never occurred to me that they had broken their employment contracts by refusing to obey Corporate Security or by refusing to follow the established CoC). Seems Sec Chief is very well read when it comes to the Corporate Manual & the Bylaws. I need to start reading the entire corporate law Manuals (which are way bigger than I thought now that I have Overseer access to all of them).
09/09/2161
What a fucking mess. I was called to my office by the Sec Chief Hobbs (finally learned his name after the Paper-Pusher Civil War back on 05/08/2161) at 3am. Seems the BTS CEO himself was on a direct live feed to my data uplink there.
"Dr. Delgado, I realize it has been a too long since the last communication but please, let me put all the cards, as they say, on the table.
First let me bring you up to speed on the state of the Coalition & Earth in general. The Coalition is gone. It officially ceased to exist as a political & governmental entity at 00:01am your time this morning.
Earth is a very bad way. Climactic upheavals have melted the icecaps to the point that your location is currently under nearly 254 feet of ocean. The majority on lower California is now a sea floor.
The biosphere of earth is near the breaking point. Mutagens are running rampant throughout all levels of remaining life. There is a very high possibility that if the biosphere recovers & if the atmosphere manages to remain capable of supporting oxygen-breathing life, humanity as it exists now will be unable to survive on its surface without the aid of life-support suits. The current level of radiation is too much for any human to survive unshielded for more than a few days in most areas. The current atmosphere is laced with a lethal cocktail of bio-warfare agents, chemical warfare agents, mutated viral strains (the pandemics where just the tip of that iceberg), & mutagenic materials from a myriad of sources, some of humanity's own making while others are natural in origin, released by the recent climactic shifts. This combined with the hostile mutant forces & Mecha-recoded synthetic armies roaming much of the Eurasian & African continents makes Earth a hostile & lethal environment for the remaining human race.
The Earth has been put under a strict "Planetary quarantine" by order of the Union of Sol Colonial Government. This quarantine bans any travel from or to the Earth's surface as well as any remaining orbital habitats, stations, or outposts not under strict USC military control. The remaining humans on Earth have officially been abandoned. Any ship attempting to leave or land on Earth will be destroyed by the USC fleet without warning. A non-computerized network of Communications Jamming orbitals is being put in place roughly half way between Earth & Luna to prevent any communication to or from Earth to the remainder of the colonies. Anything from Earth is now considered an imminent & deadly threat to the surviving human race of the USC until at what time the Planetary Quarantine is rescinded by the USC government. I am sorry. You cannot know the gut-wrenching sorrow this has caused throughout the USC.
I have been given access to this transmitter as have many other surviving off-world Corporate Leaders, former Earth nation representatives (ambassadors, diplomatic couriers, etc…), & others to inform as much of the still surviving population that we can contact about the Quarantine. My analysts agree with the UCS government specialist's assessment of Earth's possible future. It could over a century before the climactic upheaval begins to subside. It will be somewhere around a century before the level of toxic agents in the atmosphere drops to a level where the possibility of an unmutated human breathing the air without high-efficiency air filtration systems will even be possible (without suffering a horrible death).
Dr. Delgado, I am granting you CEO command level authority over any remaining BTS military, security, & civilian employees as well as total access to any surviving facilities & materials. I hope that this will aid you & your remaining staff in surviving the nightmare that you & they have been left to endure."
With those last words, an unfamiliar governmental crest filled the screen surrounded by the words "Union of Sol - Colonial Government" then the uplink was severed. Hobbs was sitting on the couch of my office, listening to the whole broadcast. I noticed he had poured himself a massive glass of real bourbon from the liquor cabinet & pointed to another one identical to his sitting on the edge of my desk. We both just sat there, drinking the bourbon & trying to get our heads wrapped around what had just happened. About half-way through the glass of bourbon the office computer system reset & when it came back up, the screen was a welcome screen to "Dr. Vivian Delgado, new CEO & sole owner of all BTS corporate holdings on & orbiting Earth". It was almost comical, here I sat, the most powerful executive, remaining planet-side, of a dead Corporation, trapped on a possibly dying Earth, surrounded by a lethally enforced, quarantine zone put in place by my own species to "protect" itself from the results of its own folly. After deciding not to borrow Hobbs's sidearm & swallowing one of its bullets I asked Hobbs what his intentions were. He looked at me oddly for a sec & then answered me.
"Madam CEO, I have worked for BTS since I signed that employment agreement just after my eighteenth birthday. I've worked in every division BTS has. Been everything from a janitor in a GTS bio-waste disposal facility in Montana to my current position as Sec Chief for this ultra-secure R/D facility. I've Lost organs, limbs, one eye, & even a piece of my spine while performing my duties in service to BTS. In return BTS has replaced or upgraded everything I lost in those years of service, they have treated me well, & seen to my every medical & personal need. All they have asked in return is my absolute & unwavering loyalty. You think some little thing like the end of the World as we know it is going to change my dedication to what remains of this corporation? I think not. What are your orders Madam CEO?"
We've started running through all corporate holding, finding those are still responding. This is going to be a long night.
--[there is a massive gap in the journal entries spanning from the previous entry on 09/09/2161 until the following entry, dated several years later]--
02/11/2164
Hobbs was right about not trusting the commander of the GenePrint Security remnant. They steamrolled into the mountain compound we identified as an access point to the Hive. Must have come as a real shock when they opened those blast doors. I do feel sorry for them though. We didn't know the containment seals had failed. At least they didn't suffer long. That level of radiation actually melted the entire first row of their attack force. The others weren't shielded nearly well enough to survive more than a few minutes. Really worried about the level of radiation that the site is continuing to emit. Nothing in the database of waste stored in that facility should be capable of releasing a tenth of that radiation. Even more frightening is the most current readings are showing the radiation level is climbing.
Sophie-26 stopped by today. She has been diagnosed with same degenerative spinal condition all the Sophie templates have been developing. The doctors can't identify the cause nor can the gene-techs find a single root source for the condition. They have given her about six months before the condition progresses to the point she will be totally paralyzed. She's already made arrangements to be placed into a induced coma & then painlessly have her life support terminated. We cried together for about half an hour. Another friend dying & all I can do for her is give her "Official" permission to terminate her own life (since under the old Coalition laws she was actually "corporate property" not a free sentient being). We made arrangements to get together later this evening. I'm Going to make sure she gets to enjoy the time she has left.
02/13/2164
Dr. Carter from cryonics came by this morning. He finished the last stasis chamber system checks last night. I just announced the voluntary lottery drawing for the "Cold Sleep" project. I've also made sure that everyone is aware that all remaining Hive personnel may put their name in for the drawing. The only person I am not allowing to enter the drawing is me. I'm not a candidate for deep sleep. I've already suffered extensive genetic damage & I'm sterile. Hell I'm even unsuitable for cloning source material (that genetic damage again)! There is no place for me in any possible future that the Cold Sleepers might find upon revival.
02/14/2164
I am honestly beginning to believe in a divine being, that & the fact he truly hates me & wishing to prolong my miserable life as long as possible. When I announced I had withheld my own name from the drawing, explaining my reasons (extensive genetic damage & sterility). The entire clone population then withdrew from the drawing sighting their own sterility as being a fair reason for withdrawing. Then the entire security force refused to take part in it siting a whole string of BTS bylaws forbidding cyborgs from abandoning their positions if it would leave the Executive officers or CEO without defenses. I started to argue with them when Hobbs gave me the "solution" to both problems. I had to put my name into the drawing like everyone else who chose to. Surprisingly a lot of folks (cyborg, clone, & human) chose not to enter the drawing.
We didn't have enough people in the drawing to fill all the chambers. I had to convince a few holdouts to join the project. So now I am slated to enter one of the stasis chambers on 09/01/2164. 200 dreamers hoping to revive in a better world. Guess I'll get to find out first hand. I've decided to spend the time left just being Sophie-26's friend & helping her enjoy the time she has left.
03/12/2164
I've named Hobbs as my successor to CEO/owner of BTS Earth (he showed his gratitude by not laughing till after I finished my little speech). I really have set it up though. as soon as my vitals enter stasis levels, the Hive computer will "officially" transfer leadership to him. Can't think of a better candidate.
08/22/2164
Sat at Sophie-26's bedside & we said our good-byes. Held her hand till after she was deep in the coma & they turned off her life support. Held her hand till the declared her dead. She really did seem to have found some peace at last. I hope my own end is as peaceful. Somehow though, I doubt it will be. Not with my luck.
08/30/2164
Last entry. Spent the day saying my good-byes. Had a last glass of bourbon with Hobbs. Taking the only family picture I have left (the one of Mom, Dad, me, & Danny right before he left for UDF boot camp) with me into the stasis chamber. Guess I don't want to leave them even now. Maybe I'll join them where ever the human awareness "goes" to when you die. the odds are slim any of us will survive the extended stasis period anyhow, but like they say, slim odds are better than none.
--[the following entries come from a different journal tablet that seems to pick up where the above journal stopped]--
6-21-2275
I was right, my "luck" is still holding. I woke up just as the stasis chamber finished its final stage or revival. A few of the cryonic bay's emergency lighting units are still functional. Place is a disaster. Looks like some kind of seismic even (or a few of them) have occurred since I entered my chamber. Some of the other stasis chambers where open, obviously having revived their occupants sometime in the past. The chronometer on my chamber (& several of the open but still powered chambers match mine's) says I've been in stasis a little over a hundred & eleven years! Checked the other unopened chambers & only found four still functional & active. Two clone sleepers & two human ones. All four showed extreme cerebral degeneration. They were all brain dead. Carter had said that was a possibility with extended periods of cryonic stasis. Out of the 200 who volunteered for Cold Sleep, only 21 seem to have been revived. All the other chambers have failed in some manner sometime in the passing years. What a waste of so much effort. For nothing.
6-25-2275
The Hive is still somewhat intact. No signs of life (outside the vegetable jungle that fills most of the hydroponics Labs level, the algae swamps that now cover all of the Bio-Development level). I found signs of some of the survivor's last campsites, & found a couple of the accessible storefronts in the Mall they used as make-shift tombs for their dead. found a few partially degraded personal journals. Seems the last entry is almost 30 years old. Otto-55, a former sample screening tech in the gene-tech labs. Poor clone used a working pistol he found to blow his brains out after the only other survivor (a "Deidra" template physical therapist from the Sec medical clinic) died from some form of degenerative condition (similar to the mysterious spinal degeneration the Sophie templates were suffering from but the Deidra template's condition was digestion based, she literally died of slow starvation when her digestive tract stopped processing organic material). I wish his gun still worked, I'd use it to escape this giant tomb.
7-15-2275
Accidentally discovered a small, expertly hidden chamber under the Mall level. Was heading back to the make-shift living bunker (the former Woodsman's Trader store in the mall) I have put together when the floor of the concourse I was walking on collapsed under me. Woke up laying in the remains of the floor I fell through some time before. Don't have a real watch so have no idea exactly how long I was out (since this journal tablet only shows the date, I only know I wasn't unconscious over 24 hours). Thankfully I don't seem to have suffered any real injuries from the fall (although I ache all over & have some lovely new bruises in many locations all over my body) & my vision isn't blurry.
Seems this was a secret Security fallback armory. Too bad the who place is soaked with moisture & everything in it is worthless rust, mold-encrusted, or just so waterlogged that it will never function again. Not even one working pistol. Or even one still viable bullet.
9-26-2276
This is most likely the last entry I will be able to put on this tablet. Mini-power cell is almost dead & I've got no way to recharge it. The Hive will be my tomb. There is no way for me to escape it, no place I could go even if I did. I have no idea if the world above is even habitable anymore. I won't starve or die of dehydration, I have plenty of both food & water to survive. The only non-natural cause of death down here is an accident or my own hand. Not sure which will come first. Insanity is another possibility, the oppressive emptiness of the remaining Hive is terrible to deal with.
Well there is the one minute power failure warning.
--[Final Entry of the last known survivor in the BTS "Hive" complex]--