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  ANNULUS

  Book 2 of the Cyberratum Series

  Gentry Race

  Copyright © 2019 by Gentry Race.

  Gentrifiction Publishing.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Cherise, Caillou, and my family.

  Glossary

  White Matter - A set of quarks that can derive all forms of matter.

  Nanites - Small nano sized robots that 3D print/voxelize white matter.

  Voxels - Volumetric pixels or 3D printed matter.

  Annulus - A space station composed entirely of voxelizing nanites built around Earth.

  Archeus/Wetwork - An organic matrix in Annulus the soul will reside in.

  Neology - A governing religion that will help man achieve transhumanism.

  Contents

  1. Annulus

  2. Stranded

  3. A deep wound

  4. Treasure Trash

  5. A smiling endeavor

  6. An Oncoming Storm

  7. The Beast

  8. Solari

  9. The ELFS Encampment

  10. The Shifting Lake

  11. Scanlines

  12. Resources

  13. Fracking

  14. Body of Lies

  15. Firestorm

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Gentry Race

  1

  Annulus

  Arthur Blaise leaned forward, wiping the balmy condensation from the frigid windshield of the provisional pod he traveled in. He marveled at the approaching space station, Annulus; its ring-shaped structure curving around Earth’s entirety. Within the lower half of the ring was a rocky terrain called the Umbral Zone. A barren landscape pockmarked with steaming fumaroles and glistening lakes disappeared into the curving upward horizon line.

  Led by joint efforts of science, technology, Neologian religion, and the Enconn corporation, Annulus was mankind’s pinnacle achievement. Set to be the next stage in human evolution, futurists considered it mankind’s ‘Jewel in the Sky’. A matrimonial band of spirit and technology, where the digital consciousness would bridge to the real world. At its crown, a gem of a city was being shaped, called Axiom City.

  He had been the consulting designer at the genesis of the project before setting sail to the Yucatan on his own adventure, in search of more precious mineral to help create the nanite construction. He never thought the consequences from that voyage would cause the death of a crewmate, the formation of four once-mermaidens, and the exile of him from his beliefs — his church.

  Despite his sickening guilt, Arthur tried to let his mind relax as the ship coasted in the upper atmosphere to the designated coordinates, fed into the dashboard from his vambrace — a personal device that controlled almost all aspects of the nano printing or ‘voxelization’ technology he’d once held on a pedestal. But now that was all gone. They were on the run with nowhere to go. This makeshift pod and the tank containing the stolen reserve of white matter was all they had to get them to safety.

  Next to him was his darling assistant, Elizabeth. Her beauty was ever so graceful and only superseded by her knowledge of the physical sciences. She was distraught as well, having just escaped with her life on this makeshift pod. Arthur had found a special place in his heart for her. He had learned on the unexpected, so-called adventure they had experienced together that, to his surprise, he truly loved her.

  For only a moment, with the spectacular space station in front of him and the lovely Elizabeth next to him, he forgot about the four maidens behind him. Or, to be more accurate, the four Atlantean mermaidens.

  Arthur looked back at the occupants of the four seats behind him, studying the gorgeous sisters in their entirety as they marveled at the sight out the window. Despite seeing them here now, in the flesh, something felt off. Not right.

  Are they mine now? My responsibility? They really have no one else, he thought.

  Then the words of General Malick stuck in his head like a knife. ‘Did you create them?’

  Manifesting something from nothing was preposterous, for alchemy’s first law of Equivalent Exchange stated that ‘Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost’.

  Arthur remembered his days in the lab and the hundreds of tests he had performed on the white-matter-printing nanobots. How consciousness could affect the nanites, making it suitable for what Enconn wanted, or really, what the Neologians wanted: the transcendence of consciousness into a technology. Sequencing the DNA of a human and voxelizing it back as a fully formed being that could not get sick or be harmed, for its conscious was eternal, and its flesh made of nanites.

  Is that even possible? Can a person’s soul be downloaded to a mainframe and then composed of the nanites themselves?

  Annulus would be the proving ground for all this to happen. It was only a matter of time before the ring world would be complete, and the Neologians could start their processing.

  Autumn sat, looking laden with surprise. Her deep brown hair snapping over her shoulders. She brushed her hair steadily, watching Annulus extending around the Earth and disappearing in the end of the circumference. One leg was crossed over the other, and her hands placed neatly over them, clasped. This pressed her perky breasts together, increasing her cleavage. Arthur’s eyes meandered over her seashell bra marked with the alchemical symbol for earth, an upside-down triangle with a line cutting through its lower third.

  Next to her was a fiery redhead of a woman, adjusting her seashell bra, which was decorated in the alchemical symbol of fire: a plain, right side up triangle. Summer’s comportment was less than hopeful and even more annoyed, exuding a feistier attitude than her siblings possessed. Her irises reflected this intensity, a crimson blaze within their depths. She was quick to nudge her dark-haired sister when she saw Arthur watching her.

  The inky-haired maiden, Winter, shot him a crooked eye and then a raised eyebrow of interest that was as empty as the element she once controlled — air. Arthur’s eyes sauntered along the deep blue indents that sculpted out the symbol on her seashell bra and formed another right-side up triangle with a line drawn across the upper two-thirds. Her breasts were ready to break from the thin, pasta-like straps that comprised their beauty. She gave him a wink as she ran her hand along her knee and inner thigh, contrasting her gloomy nature. Arthur smirked at the gesture and continued his count.

  The fourth and strongest of the sisters, Spring, sat sternly against the window. Her hair was as white as snow, contrasting against her tanned skin, and flowed like liquid starlight down her shoulders. Her plain, right-side up triangle winked up at Arthur’s eyes with the symbol of water, colored in a bright pink and white motif. The strength within her eyes was enough to show her determination and power over her sisters. She had been the final sister to be freed; it was her liberation that had unlocked what Arthur now had tucked in his pocket, the philosopher’s stone, or azoth.

  This necrotic ore decimated all nanites’ ability to voxelize matter.

  He felt the stone in his pocket, then pulled it out and held it over the flat vambrace on the console. A series of noises triggered a small laser that shone out from the top of the device and scanned the black ore. Arthur waited for some kind of result, but nothing chimed back. Instead, a series of molecular combinations were recorded before the display read, ‘Molecular Composition Unknown’.

  Arthur was flabbergasted by the lack of molecular breakdown. The azoth ore was truly something unique, he thought. He pivoted ba
ck around, pondering the once-mermaids and their beauty. Their hair seemed to grow faster than the average human rate. They were all magnificent, a quartet of dazzling beauty. Gone were the fishlike tails, iridescent scales descending on their lower halves, now splitting into soft human legs.

  However, the intimate weapons they used to protect their elemental gate were no more. Arthur had set them free and released them from their servitude along with any elemental manifestation they were able to conjure. In addition, Arthur’s world view had been spun around from spiritual to secular and thrusted into full magical in the recent turn of events.

  Again lingering on their ocean-themed lingerie, Arthur realized that his companions’ current attire was by no means fit for where they were going.

  “We will have to get you more suitable clothing when we land,” he told them with a cajoling smile as he looked at the white matter reserves count; one hundred and fifty units. Just enough to get us set up properly with a camp, he thought.

  “I think they all look very… arousing,” a provocative female voice said from the dash speaker.

  Liz squeezed her eyebrows together in stupefaction and snapped a staggered look at Arthur. His cheeks flushed scarlet as a rose, hearing the candid comment come from the dash speaker.

  “Who was that?” Liz asked. She searched the ship’s dash, finding a small button that read ‘SHIP A.I.’. With a soft press, she spoke into the waffle pattern inlet next to it. “Hello?”

  “You sound mighty sexy today,” the ship A.I. said.

  Liz was tickled, as was proven with a droll smile as she pressed the button again. “Um, who are you?”

  “My name is TRUDI,” the mechanical voice said in a more sensual, hypnotic way.

  Arthur was astounded and amused at the same time, never having heard this type of interface before. The sultry android female voice put him at ease.

  TRUDI continued, “That stands for ‘Titular Rational Universal Dynamic Interface’. I am here to please you.”

  Arthur watched Liz’s owlish eyes widen at the A.I.’s gall. Liz pressed the button again and spoke to the slinky bot. “Well, then, TRUDI, tell me. Did Professor Sloan create you?”

  “Yes,” she said with almost a moan at the close of her whisper. “He made me this sexy.”

  Arthur put his palm against his forehead in contempt. Another brilliant idea from the bygone professor. He could only imagine how little Liz would have progressed in her career if she would have stayed under that man’s tutelage. But then again, look where I have brought her.

  THUMP!

  The ship rocked violently. The passengers held on tight to the rickety pod seats, while Arthur steadied the controls from the lurching force.

  “What’s happening?” Liz asked nervously. Her voice was coated with uncertainty.

  Arthur was calm and cool when he replied, “We are entering the self-generated atmosphere of Annulus.”

  The infinite black of the vast universe was dotted in bright spangled stars that diminished as the atmospheric gas occluded to a faint azure. The pod was still thousands of feet from the surface and catching rogue tailwinds, oscillating about. The craft keeled around like a feather in a hurricane. Arthur’s breath caught in his throat from the panic.

  “Why is it so…” Liz asked, bracing herself while clinging to the armrest of her chair, “jerky?”

  “Well,” Arthur began to explain, caught in his own scientific hubris, but he was cut off by the tempting voice.

  “The voxelized particles that make the air are being generated from the tower in Axiom City, on the other side of the station. They are shot westward and eastward along the circumference of the structure,” TRUDI said. “This back half is known as the Umbral Zone, or what I like to call the anus, where the two currents collide, making the air unstable. I do hope we get a good rocking.”

  Arthur scoffed at her last comment, and pulled hard on the controls, hitting another dip then rising up and softly catching the next pocket of air.

  “Oh yeah, just like that, Daddy,” TRUDI sighed.

  “Jesus, Arthur,” Liz’s voice coaxed. “Just put us down.”

  “Shut her up, please,” Arthur exhorted.

  “Let the woman talk,” Summer balked.

  Another heave on the controls swung the craft upward, and then he pushed hard downward, plummeting the vessel. The indicators on the dash blinked wildly, and a repeating sexy mechanical voice urged, ‘Pull out!’.

  But Arthur couldn’t, as the controls wouldn’t budge.

  “You heard the ship, Arthur,” Liz shouted. “Pull out!”

  “I can’t,” he pleaded. “We are caught in some kind of downburst of air.”

  The ship started to screech. It reached terminal velocity, shuddered by air at thirty-two feet per second, the fastest an object could fall. Arthur’s heart beat in his throat, and he frantically pulled on the cockpit controls.

  “God dammit,” he yelled, leveraging his legs into a good spot and using his body to move the flaps.

  The pod was seconds away from crashing when finally, the controls gave way. The passengers all felt the sudden pull of gravity and centrifugal force on their bodies as the pod arched up and missed the silt. Arthur tried to steady the flight, but the pod hit the ground and bounced up, only to have Arthur angle it back down.

  CRASH!

  The pod went through a large fumarole jutting out of the ground, exploding sand and dirt all over the chassis. The pod careened sideways and rolled, toppling over.

  Still being carried on the ship’s momentum, they bounced as they went over another dip, and then they hit the ground again. With a garish thud, the pod tumbled and gouged into the ground, skidding through the soft dirt. Arthur and the women held on, hanging upside down from their chairs, held in place by safety belts. Arthur felt his heart working overtime, trying to push the gravity-laden blood to his legs above.

  Not far ahead, he could spot a highly reflective sheet of glass — one of the hot lakes. He gripped the controls, trying anything to change their trajectory. If they fell in one of those features, they would be cooked alive. He turned right and then left, the pod twisting back and forth as the flaps caught the dirt.

  They finally slowed to a halt, the pod swinging out just over a ledge. Arthur and the women could barely see through all the clotted dirt on the windshield to find what lurked below:

  a blistering hot abyss that would have scalded them alive if they hadn’t stopped.

  The current of the lake ebbed back and forth, like the tides of an ocean. The water receded, awaiting its time to come back.

  “Why is the water moving away from us?” Liz eked out under her breath.

  “They are called the shifting lakes. The soil is unstable,” TRUDI informed them, aroused. “Underneath lies condensing white matter. The nanites then convert into crust, and the water keeps everything cool while the fusion takes place. I wish I could fuse with one of you.”

  Arthur cringed at her comment, reaching out to steady the pod as he felt the weight of their bodies affecting the craft’s balance. He slowly looked to Liz, who was trying to hold herself up and keep the belt from digging into her waist. The maidens in the back all groaned, save for Autumn — who always seemed in high spirits, despite any tragedy they might have just faced.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” she said, unclipping her belt and falling down.

  “Wait!” Arthur yelled. “You’ll tip us!”

  The pod slid an inch further over the cliff, and turned on its axis, revealing the long track mark it had gouged into the dirt. Everyone watched as the farthest parts of the line crept toward each other, as if the land was healing itself. The gap closed and became perfect, crawling its way to the pod. When the mending rift reached the craft, it lifted it back, dangling them further over the edge, until finally, the ship containing Arthur, Liz and the four maidens went tumbling over, into the muddy abyss below.

  The pod hit the muddy shore, rightside up, where the scalding wat
er had just receded from. The force of the impact dislodged two of the sisters, Summer and Spring, who landed next to Autumn. Arthur quickly unsnapped his buckle, falling to the ceiling of the pod. His mind was racing, for he knew the boiling water would soon make its return to them.

  Liz struggled with her seatbelt, still upside down. Arthur ducked under her medium-length hair and tried to undo the restraint. Autumn was quick to help, forcing her tiny body around Liz’s, pulling on anything she could. Liz finally fell free, and Arthur and Autumn caught her, despite how awkward the position was. For a second, her beet-red face twisted a smile at Arthur, and then Autumn.

  “It’s coming closer,” Summer said, redirecting their attention toward the hazard bearing down upon them.

  “I can feel it,” Spring said cautiously.

  “I want you to feel it good,” TRUDI inserted unfittingly.

  Arthur was astonished and couldn’t help but cock his head oddly at the comment. Liz was now on her knees, and nudged Arthur to look up at Winter, still pinned in her restraints.

  “Shit,” he exclaimed. “We need to hurry.”

  Autumn and Liz stood up and reached for Winter, who was struggling frantically with her jammed belt. Arthur shook his head in disgust at the poor design, skipping the satisfaction of shooting Liz a disapproving look for her previous choice in professors. He quickly turned his attention to the mangled latch.

  “I can feel the water,” Spring said again, now looking out the dirty window at the oncoming boiling tide.

  Arthur stopped his attempt at opening the door to look quizzically at the young maiden spouting off odd sayings, and said, “You’re gonna feel it burning your skin if you don’t help me get this hatch open.”