DarkFall::The Map of Agon
Friday, September 25, 2009
AfterWorld::"The Quarantine Zone"
translation of the short story by biker
This zone has no tip or edge. Once I reached out to its borders, and then far away in the haze, i caught a glimple of huge lifeless walls, reaching up to the sky. But most of the time I wander on the endless hills in a senseless pursuit of the next kilograms of incandescent copper or corrosive nitrate, rubbing my feet to the blood in my cheap jackboots. And all that time there was only one thought that kept me going - just one thought that gave me strength to carry on.
Now, in the center of the quarantine, the dazzling relentless sun once again is striping off my scorched skin. As I squeeze a cheap pickaxe into my right hand it's inconvenient handle painfully burns my blood blisters. But if I don't bring in half a ton of resources before the evening this smegging Warrant Officer deprives me again my shabby piece of bread and a pitiful handful of dollars. Worst of all, then I have to sleep under the open sky - and nobody knows whether in the night-time the unstable blocking energy shields don't fail again, freeing the repulsive monsters on the other side - evil mother wolf, ghoulish molesaurs or even a giant walking R-57..
Elite fighters, armed with "Kashtans" and Anela-type heavy swords, of course, will laugh at us, simple noobs whose only weapons are heavy and uncomfortable pickaxes. Their squad's firepower can turn any creature into heap of rubble from hundreds of meters away. But they prefer to watch from a distance as powerful bolotoids rush onto us, leaving behind them a repellent trail of human organs and intestines, or as high-speed lasers of bigfoots maim us, cutting off our arms and legs. One day I will become as powerful as they are - no, even better! - And I will take my revenge! My revenge for their indifference, ruthlessness and contempt for ordinary slaves. But to make this happen...
I look around cautiously. No-one to be seen, just lifeless boring slopes of parched dunes, and the sound of occassional distand blows of the pickaxe of another noob like me from half a kilometre away. But who knows what implants the masters of this harsh world have planted into our brains? Maybe their computers are capable of scanning even our most secret thoughts? Oh, whatever, i can't care less. What is the difference if I will be eaten up by a mad bear or given a life sentence to the forced labor camp by the local security services?
In order to take my revenge, I must run away from here!
Silence. No reaction, nothing changed in the world around me. Under the feet crackles fine sand and the dry barbed grass that sways lightly in the sultry wind, shivering my legs. Seems the Masters don't suspect anything. Excellent!
My plan is simple, but extremely risky. However, it seems, now is the time. Have to sneak closer to the energy shields, try to stay unnoticed and not attract the attention of police or elite fighters who love to spend their time near the "zoo" - holding area for the monsters behind the transparent protective wall. Sometimes the energy wall fails, and then these creatures rush out into Quarantine zone. For the elites it is an entertainment but for us ordinary plodders - painful injuries or death. The next time when the wall crashes I should try to escape from this hell zone. One friend - who was translukated last week for his failure to gather prescribed amount of mineral ores by two kilograms - told me a secret about a relatively safe route to Saransk. There, according to him, is underground Resistance, the opposition to governing regime. He even told to me whom i must contact to get a forged passport of a citizen. Yes, this is my only chance.
Escape from the quarantine!
Oh, that was what I have dreamed about in these endless quarantine nights, wheezing and coughing on my crude wooden bunk. All these years only the idea about escape gave me energy to survive. And now... Recently, the frequency of failures in screens has definitely increased, and i should use the opportunity before it's too late. If the cyborg-repairmen arrive this way out Quarantine will be closed down forever.
Tonight, when everything has fallen silent I will crawl closer to the power tower, and then I will tirelessly wait for my chance.
But meanwhile I have to complete this goddamn norm in order to get slice of bread and pottage, otherwise I don't have the strenght to hike up to the tower! I cast a look on the hot cheerless landscape and rise my heavy pickaxe up over my head. Only two thousand three hundred ninety-six strikes to go...
Wind is sweeping the surface layer of the soil, and the poisonous dust painfully chokes my heat-swollen eyes. But I try not to blink in order to not to miss a moment, when the dim red light on the tower flashes a couple of times, signaling about a decrease of the tension in the cable grid. The dark clouds in an almost black sky are rushing directly at me, like a severe security guards, who have spotted the scampering noob.
My tattered boilersuit noisily flutters in the gust of wind, I wince and nearly miss the cherished moment. Signal tracker on the rig went off! Yes, the force field has finally shut down - for kilometers to the east I can't see a single characteristic electric flash. Stupid monsters, of course, didn't realize what just happened - they may break in the Quarantine only by coincidence, but nevertheless - I must hurry. Most important now is to avoid ending up as a dinner for some hungry creature.
I duck and charge forward, trying to keep myself low, running to the north, towards my freedom. To the right I can hear the viperous barking of the feral hogs and the hissing of elslugs, the bony tails of huge scorpions strike my boots, and far away I can see the giant figures of the huge walking devices. But I rush forward, from time to time mustering all my remaining strenght to sweep my axe towards the threatening shadows. And then a miracle happens - somehow, with the seventh sense, I feel that I have escaped from the quarantine! Before me unfolds an amazing scenery - lush green forests, filled with endless downpours; rocky mountaintops wrapped into frenzied whirlwinds of snow, the abandoned cities, where unusual cybernetic machines are roaming around; the fierce firefights boiling around the deserted plants; caravans of armored oiltanker-trucks, stretching over several kilometers, plundered by gangs of bandits...
Suddenly, my brain stops working. The surrounding world just dies out and freezes. I try to turn my head, and then I realize that I'm completely paralyzed. Time stops, red and white sparks are dancing before my eyes, sharp pain pierces my head, and I feel like a fly, caught into viscous sticky web from which there is no escape... not even the slightest chance...
Chief AW-hitektor slowly sipped black coffee with a thick invigorating scent from the greenish melchior cup with a built-in heater, very pleasant to the touch. Cozy cyber-armchair smoothly rearranged itself according to little bit tired body of it's owner, and AW-hitektor touched the sensor "Light Massage". Once again, he enjoyed a delicious aroma of his favorite drink, and after that just as slowly puffed his Havana cigar, which was only recently carefully twisted up by sweaty young mulates for the owner of this private plantation.
The twelve-dimensional programming system dynamically visualized holographic pattern of information flows of the AfterWorld. Semantic meta-analysators monitored the individual threads and to identify suspicious patterns in the one-exabyte network traffic, heuristic tracer of critical alerts quickly formed a yellow spiral, signaling about the emergence of the suspicious event of a fourth threshold, which was automatically locked.
- Logs - throwed Chief AW-hitektor disgruntledly, and the next moment before his eyes howered uninterrupted flow of whimsical characters into which was coded the behavior of the beings of the subsidiary world. There! AW-hitektor slide his index finger, pulling desired lines out of the colorful ribbons. He carefully eyed on them, pondered and scratched back of his head. Then he sighed and leaned back to the backrest of the obliging intellectual armchair.
Yes, no doubt, it is a bug. Somewhere, apparently, did not initialize a temporary variable, which had to keep pointer to a dynamic object in the global self-organized memory, and as a result, from time to time an idea fix occurred to some noob to try some utterly stupid action - for example, try to escape from the quarantine zone. Bug was simple, and as soon as he can spare a couple of hours, he will fix it in the appropriate server nano-scripts.
But not today - in a hour starts a party in honor of the release of the last mega-patch, where four models are waiting for the AW-hitektor. Models are not virtual - they are very much alive - brunette, two blondes and a red-head of the particularly energetic type.
Meanwhile the malfunctioning noob will be simply respawned back to the quarantine - let him keep working. AW-hitektor quickly gave the corresponding order to the gateway debugger of the AfterWorld kernel and reached for the cup of coffee.
...I rubbed the palms of my hands, and wearily let my pickaxe fall down to stone nugget with glittering veins of nickel. Hot air roasted my lungs. For the miles around me there was not even the slightest scant of shade, and wiping the caustic prespiration off my forehead to the cankerous sand that was glowing in the fierce sun, I droopily continued my unending work.
Another couple thousand hits, and the norm will be filled. But I spit on the norm! I'm not doing it to meet the demands of the local police force. There is only one thought that motivates me, only this one thought fills me with infinite energy.
Escape from the Quarantine!
Hail, heavy work,
Plow, shovel and pick!
-- Valery Briusov
Plow, shovel and pick!
-- Valery Briusov
This zone has no tip or edge. Once I reached out to its borders, and then far away in the haze, i caught a glimple of huge lifeless walls, reaching up to the sky. But most of the time I wander on the endless hills in a senseless pursuit of the next kilograms of incandescent copper or corrosive nitrate, rubbing my feet to the blood in my cheap jackboots. And all that time there was only one thought that kept me going - just one thought that gave me strength to carry on.
Now, in the center of the quarantine, the dazzling relentless sun once again is striping off my scorched skin. As I squeeze a cheap pickaxe into my right hand it's inconvenient handle painfully burns my blood blisters. But if I don't bring in half a ton of resources before the evening this smegging Warrant Officer deprives me again my shabby piece of bread and a pitiful handful of dollars. Worst of all, then I have to sleep under the open sky - and nobody knows whether in the night-time the unstable blocking energy shields don't fail again, freeing the repulsive monsters on the other side - evil mother wolf, ghoulish molesaurs or even a giant walking R-57..
Elite fighters, armed with "Kashtans" and Anela-type heavy swords, of course, will laugh at us, simple noobs whose only weapons are heavy and uncomfortable pickaxes. Their squad's firepower can turn any creature into heap of rubble from hundreds of meters away. But they prefer to watch from a distance as powerful bolotoids rush onto us, leaving behind them a repellent trail of human organs and intestines, or as high-speed lasers of bigfoots maim us, cutting off our arms and legs. One day I will become as powerful as they are - no, even better! - And I will take my revenge! My revenge for their indifference, ruthlessness and contempt for ordinary slaves. But to make this happen...
I look around cautiously. No-one to be seen, just lifeless boring slopes of parched dunes, and the sound of occassional distand blows of the pickaxe of another noob like me from half a kilometre away. But who knows what implants the masters of this harsh world have planted into our brains? Maybe their computers are capable of scanning even our most secret thoughts? Oh, whatever, i can't care less. What is the difference if I will be eaten up by a mad bear or given a life sentence to the forced labor camp by the local security services?
In order to take my revenge, I must run away from here!
Silence. No reaction, nothing changed in the world around me. Under the feet crackles fine sand and the dry barbed grass that sways lightly in the sultry wind, shivering my legs. Seems the Masters don't suspect anything. Excellent!
My plan is simple, but extremely risky. However, it seems, now is the time. Have to sneak closer to the energy shields, try to stay unnoticed and not attract the attention of police or elite fighters who love to spend their time near the "zoo" - holding area for the monsters behind the transparent protective wall. Sometimes the energy wall fails, and then these creatures rush out into Quarantine zone. For the elites it is an entertainment but for us ordinary plodders - painful injuries or death. The next time when the wall crashes I should try to escape from this hell zone. One friend - who was translukated last week for his failure to gather prescribed amount of mineral ores by two kilograms - told me a secret about a relatively safe route to Saransk. There, according to him, is underground Resistance, the opposition to governing regime. He even told to me whom i must contact to get a forged passport of a citizen. Yes, this is my only chance.
Escape from the quarantine!
Oh, that was what I have dreamed about in these endless quarantine nights, wheezing and coughing on my crude wooden bunk. All these years only the idea about escape gave me energy to survive. And now... Recently, the frequency of failures in screens has definitely increased, and i should use the opportunity before it's too late. If the cyborg-repairmen arrive this way out Quarantine will be closed down forever.
Tonight, when everything has fallen silent I will crawl closer to the power tower, and then I will tirelessly wait for my chance.
But meanwhile I have to complete this goddamn norm in order to get slice of bread and pottage, otherwise I don't have the strenght to hike up to the tower! I cast a look on the hot cheerless landscape and rise my heavy pickaxe up over my head. Only two thousand three hundred ninety-six strikes to go...
Wind is sweeping the surface layer of the soil, and the poisonous dust painfully chokes my heat-swollen eyes. But I try not to blink in order to not to miss a moment, when the dim red light on the tower flashes a couple of times, signaling about a decrease of the tension in the cable grid. The dark clouds in an almost black sky are rushing directly at me, like a severe security guards, who have spotted the scampering noob.
My tattered boilersuit noisily flutters in the gust of wind, I wince and nearly miss the cherished moment. Signal tracker on the rig went off! Yes, the force field has finally shut down - for kilometers to the east I can't see a single characteristic electric flash. Stupid monsters, of course, didn't realize what just happened - they may break in the Quarantine only by coincidence, but nevertheless - I must hurry. Most important now is to avoid ending up as a dinner for some hungry creature.
I duck and charge forward, trying to keep myself low, running to the north, towards my freedom. To the right I can hear the viperous barking of the feral hogs and the hissing of elslugs, the bony tails of huge scorpions strike my boots, and far away I can see the giant figures of the huge walking devices. But I rush forward, from time to time mustering all my remaining strenght to sweep my axe towards the threatening shadows. And then a miracle happens - somehow, with the seventh sense, I feel that I have escaped from the quarantine! Before me unfolds an amazing scenery - lush green forests, filled with endless downpours; rocky mountaintops wrapped into frenzied whirlwinds of snow, the abandoned cities, where unusual cybernetic machines are roaming around; the fierce firefights boiling around the deserted plants; caravans of armored oiltanker-trucks, stretching over several kilometers, plundered by gangs of bandits...
Suddenly, my brain stops working. The surrounding world just dies out and freezes. I try to turn my head, and then I realize that I'm completely paralyzed. Time stops, red and white sparks are dancing before my eyes, sharp pain pierces my head, and I feel like a fly, caught into viscous sticky web from which there is no escape... not even the slightest chance...
Chief AW-hitektor slowly sipped black coffee with a thick invigorating scent from the greenish melchior cup with a built-in heater, very pleasant to the touch. Cozy cyber-armchair smoothly rearranged itself according to little bit tired body of it's owner, and AW-hitektor touched the sensor "Light Massage". Once again, he enjoyed a delicious aroma of his favorite drink, and after that just as slowly puffed his Havana cigar, which was only recently carefully twisted up by sweaty young mulates for the owner of this private plantation.
The twelve-dimensional programming system dynamically visualized holographic pattern of information flows of the AfterWorld. Semantic meta-analysators monitored the individual threads and to identify suspicious patterns in the one-exabyte network traffic, heuristic tracer of critical alerts quickly formed a yellow spiral, signaling about the emergence of the suspicious event of a fourth threshold, which was automatically locked.
- Logs - throwed Chief AW-hitektor disgruntledly, and the next moment before his eyes howered uninterrupted flow of whimsical characters into which was coded the behavior of the beings of the subsidiary world. There! AW-hitektor slide his index finger, pulling desired lines out of the colorful ribbons. He carefully eyed on them, pondered and scratched back of his head. Then he sighed and leaned back to the backrest of the obliging intellectual armchair.
Yes, no doubt, it is a bug. Somewhere, apparently, did not initialize a temporary variable, which had to keep pointer to a dynamic object in the global self-organized memory, and as a result, from time to time an idea fix occurred to some noob to try some utterly stupid action - for example, try to escape from the quarantine zone. Bug was simple, and as soon as he can spare a couple of hours, he will fix it in the appropriate server nano-scripts.
But not today - in a hour starts a party in honor of the release of the last mega-patch, where four models are waiting for the AW-hitektor. Models are not virtual - they are very much alive - brunette, two blondes and a red-head of the particularly energetic type.
Meanwhile the malfunctioning noob will be simply respawned back to the quarantine - let him keep working. AW-hitektor quickly gave the corresponding order to the gateway debugger of the AfterWorld kernel and reached for the cup of coffee.
...I rubbed the palms of my hands, and wearily let my pickaxe fall down to stone nugget with glittering veins of nickel. Hot air roasted my lungs. For the miles around me there was not even the slightest scant of shade, and wiping the caustic prespiration off my forehead to the cankerous sand that was glowing in the fierce sun, I droopily continued my unending work.
Another couple thousand hits, and the norm will be filled. But I spit on the norm! I'm not doing it to meet the demands of the local police force. There is only one thought that motivates me, only this one thought fills me with infinite energy.
Escape from the Quarantine!
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