Emptiness at the Centre
The explosive sequel to NEON Lieben
Descend into the explosive continuation of NEON Lieben with Emptiness at the Centre, where two timelines collide in the epic conclusion of the White Plastic Tunnels.
Will Max Allard and AD-001 Aderastos rescue the other Assets, Singh and Adelia Fridley before The Syndicate of the Human Expanse studies their genetic gifts?
What does Lieben have to do with the whispers in KT-002 Kate's organic neural net? Back in the 2090's, how do Lieben, Demyan Anastas, Ego and Mog shift the paradigm of the planet in time for Lieben to be named Haven Queen? Emotional depth plus lightness wrap this sequel in a pugilist's garb..
2092
“The recuperation of Demyan Anastas is of utmost importance. We shall have to, as you say, make do. I will not rouse him prematurely.” Disquiet split the drip-drop of the IV’s constant push as the stubborn machine refused to leave the hidden soldier.
‘Da’at. The Emptiness at the Centre…’ The voice slunk into Demyan’s ear like his own thoughts after too little vodka. Sunken eyes swung open, Demyan’s breath caught in a hiss. “Who…”
“I don’t care what’s of utmost import, if you don’t leave this ruddy room, we’re all going to be raven feed before sun up. We can barely defend the place without Demyan, but you?”
“Defend…” The dazed spear of consciousness overwhelmed Demyan’s post-surgical mind. He clung to the idea of consciousness, to the syllables, which seemed to hide behind the ache in his eyelids. “Status.. Meine what is our status?”
Can they escape the Conglom's net in time?
2156
Accidentally awakened gene-spliced Conglomerate Bio Machs Aderastos wades to shore in Ucluelet, BC to the hum of the Mater Machine Lieben’s Hymn Electric. Harmless Lt.Max Allard is tasked by Earl Rammage to drag him back to the CGM Ithavoll, before Lieben claims ‘it’ for her own, and Aderastos’ fellow Assets are destroyed.
Will the Assets find the same freedom they try to give others from the The Syndicate of the Human Expanse?
Characters
2085
“I’m scared.” The fragility of her birdsong voice halted Demyan’s attempt at pushing gingerly off the mattress. He fought with the urge to gnash his teeth, to bellow that was Sophia’s, his Sophie’s fear in her artificial algorithms and if he got to Sophia’s body an idea would come to him, a plan or a prayer his Orthodox family refused without lighting incense in front of their family altar and its tarnished gold icons. Faith he ran from in tandem with the sound of drone laser fire, comrades’ bodies falling limbs akimbo, the same sort of fall as Sophia in the white plastic tunnel. No. What was to be done? The rush of his petulance smacked emaciated against the fevered weakness in his bones. Instead, he shifted with a groan and opened his arm to the miraculous machine.
Lieben crawled to his side, set her cheek on his shoulder and although her lungs didn’t breathe, the heat of her powered systems reminded him enough of holding Sophia in the dark.
Recompiling her data banks after the disastrous escape from Kaoru Tea House, Lieben clings to the companions who risked everything to rescue her. Most of all, Demyan Anastas.
Lord Stanley reminds them all, Lieben is a powder keg who needs to be taught prudence, through empathy her programming lacks.
The dull ache of narcotics did not wake Demyan Anastas in his borrowed medical bed. The IV on his right wrist, while uncomfortable, did not wake him. As Demyan grunted at the burn of his eyelids, smacked his lips against dehydration, he woke to the pressure of someone on the bed, without a correspondent sound of breathing. The ghost of Sophia splayed limbs akimbo in the tunnel of white bespeckled plastic, an echo in his sedated mind. He grit his teeth, breath haggard at the sight which paid into his soul with every pound and pence he gave to the damned Idless.
Wounded in the final battle, Demyan spends his waking hours in the care of former enemies-come-friends. He worries at the alien nature of his beloved Sophie's memories uploaded into the Prototype Android, while his fear that Crypt.AI will be taken limits his options.
“Ego seemed an innocent enough confidante on the server where Baiko discovered him. A friend in a throuple, who talked about living on the road as the only form of humane freedom left without selling out to corpocracy. Subversive and anti-establishment, the Idless surged from tiny home van-life rebels, or hipsters who thrust away from brick and mortar to live on the road. Their children, well, what country did they belong to, when the world was before them?
When they were born without a sense of place?
Idless considered identification cards or passports a form of entrapment, and freedom was the top commandment. When Baiko mentioned Lieben, well.
The messages stopped.
An anarchist raised in the Idless, Ego traveled North, Central and South America with his lovers Mog and Fester in their bespoke tiny home.
When they met Baiko online, Ego mobilized. This was it, finally a link to Crypt.AI or at least an artificial intelligence they could mould to free the world.
"No! I need friends! And I don't give a single flipping heck whether they're in Babylon's boudoir or went through watching their former lives on fire, so sit the flip down, shut the flip up and listen! You are not in charge here. Neither am I. Face it, Percy, Cill and Demyan know more about this world than either of us." Another shove and Katherine's relatively diminutive stature pounced to send Clive backward into a setee along the side of the room. "Demyan? You have permission to speak."
Lord Stanley whistled. "My, my. Where were you, when I needed to marry?"
"About twenty years from being born." Katherine blew the Lord a tense kiss, and the man chuckled.
2155
No. The Asset had a name. Scrawled into the side of the casket, a series of letters Rykstra was probably foaming at the mouth to analyse. 'Aderastos'.
The first successful The Conglomerate of Gaia Assets, Aderastos is an experimental biological war machine. Sealed on the CGM Ithavoll, AD-001 Aderastos broke out in 2155 and swam to Uclulet, BC.
A quiet, but imposing 8ft giant, Aderastos saw humans for the first time in the Uclulet Haven, reached out, and healed them.
In the Haven's hospital, he came across Max Allard, and in one silent stare, the fate of humanity got a breath or two kinder.
Emptiness at the Centre.
"Ka does recon. Rachel is our backup, going to stay between the coracle and the whatever-it-is we find down there. Likely will be a hatch or such, probably double-hatch lock to avoid their atmo being vented to the ocean every time someone knocks on the door. Which means, we've got to find a way in without decompressing their chambers, or we and our people could drown in a few minutes flat."
"Oh my god, Allard actually knows something, this is more terrifying than Ka."
"Ah... I am a pretty good mechanic, you know."
"Right. Sorry, Sir. It's just... strange to see your competence. Sir."
"Thank you? Umm."
There was no way the biological war machine could see anything but 'kicked puppy' in Allard, right?
Pity Aderastos saw unexpected depths, and Max's fate was tied to the Assets forevermore.
Emptiness at the Centre.
Silence scratched at Commodore Rammage & Lt. Commander Allard’s eardrums, a taught texture to the room. Allard slumped into a chair across from Rammage’s desk without asking, right arm flopped across his thighs, the other strapped to his chest by a medical brace. Rank threads shimmered against yellowed and red stains in the bandages woven up Allard’s uniform.
The boy’s eyes… Rammage grit his teeth. Allard looked the picture of boyhood in mid-crash of an innocence Rammage thought impossible for a soldier to keep. But of course, Allard wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t sign up proud to wear the uniform expensed to the paycheques, which were excised to pay his mother’s debt.
This kid, whose eyes crushed into Rammage with the only thing more dangerous than his superiors knowing Lieben visited their unknowable ship, was the only one who could make him doubt. And he hated the child's innocence, the dumb width to his eyes looking at the authority figure for 'Daddy to make it better'.
There was no better. Not until the tin goddess was scrap metal for dog food cans.
Born in the world before Lieben, Rammage remembered the period of relative peace between the Flag War and Control Day. The world exploded, and in the paradigm shift, Lieben took her kilogram of technology with her, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves.
A hard navy man with a lifetime in control under his belt, Rammage does not suffer fools, the indignant or insubordination. He will bring the Assets under heel, or he will annihilate them piecemeal.
“Aderastos isn’t a machine.”
“We built AD-001, brick by erogenous brick. The bio-mach is, no matter the window dressings, a machine.”
“Yes, Sir!” Adelia attempted to salute in her shackles, lips pursed in a frown. “We shall objectify the miracle worker, Sir! Dehumanize the incredibly talented member of the crew, Sir!”
“That is enough, Lieutenant!” Rammage’s palms slammed against the desktop. The hearing implants skittered on the manilla envelope, brought Rammage’s attention back to the reason for shackles today. This… flippant bird of a girl and her lies. Who else could wake up KT-002, how did no one see it?
"Yes, Sir!” Another tiny salute. “What would a woman officer know, Sir!? Mansplain it, Sir!”
Daughter of a bona fide rock god and fine artist, Adelia Fridley was born with the best silver spoon in the The Conglomerate of Gaia's marketplace. Hazard anyone surprised, when Daddy's Princess chose a career in the Navy.
With a purchased commission under her belt, she fell in with the likes of Max Allard and damaged her semi-perfect record.
Factions
Themes
Artificial Sapience
Can an artificial intelligence become sapient? Will people treat an AI with the same rights and freedoms as a person? Should they? What about genetically engineered beings born in tanks? Biological machines not meant originally for humanity, but war? Can they too gain not only sapience but respect of personhood?
Lieben in the 2085 timeline and Aderastos in 2155 highlight the two sides of this thematic struggle.Genetic Memory
If scientists found a way to unlock genetic memories, and clone a person with their past intact, does that make them a different person? What of the soul? Can we reach unlimited immortality through the download of genetic memory into another body?
Do memories make the soul? Is the soul something intrinsic, shareable, or one-and-done?
Control vs Freedom
What is better for society as a whole? Freedom from beurocracy and a libertarian economy built on barter, or an algorithmically controlled system where health care and essentials are free, but require the individual to be tracked by AI? Will people take freely given gifts from a superhuman entity, or is it human to fight for control of oneself?
Is the human desire for control superceded by grace based on trust?
Inspiration
My main cyberpunk influences are William Gibson (The Sprawl Trilogy), Philip K Dick (Ubik), Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) and Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase). When it comes to the emotional grounding of the works, I dive headfirst into Thomas Merton, Madeleine L'Engle and John Keats. Yeah. Totally oldschool.
Visually? Still working on developing a style, based on the comic art I used to love in the late 90's - early 00's. Plenty of Image Comics, Alex Ross, Joe Quesada... it's been so long since I've done any illustrations, I'm still finding my way where that's concerned.
Chapters 1 & 2
Interesting article and nice design. Thanks for sharing and entering into the Special Category! God bless and much success with your New Year's plans! <3
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Thanks! I'm glad you liked the design!