Plasma Girly (sample chapter)

Chapter One

The training bot was gray metal with bits of rusted brown. On top, glowing sensor nubs adorned a scuffed and dented sphere, inside which the bot's brain clicked and whirred. A short, sturdy neck-tube fed data cables from the sphere into a worn stack of cylinders. They made up its torso, and contained mechanisms to drive the slender, multi-jointed arms branching from its sides. Similarly built legs kept the contraption bipedal and provided locomotion. 

For a thing that was devoid of human curves, it moved with its own grace. It seemed to glide across the natural stone floor, whose only imperfections were burned divots caused by a history of plasma swinging and clashing above it. The training bot stopped near the center of the hollow, which protruded from the sea mountain like a rocky maw that was a little too elevated to drink from the abutting waters. Jagged rock lined the hollow's back and tapered off on the right, leaving a short cliff with a wide view of the endless, desaturated ocean. Lee Jefferson had named this place Dad's Dojo when she was a ten-year-old. 

The bot's mellow voice carried over the rumbling sea, asking, "Ready?" 

Nineteen-year-old Lee stood across from it, watching the overcast gray horizon. 

The bot repeated, "Ready?"

Lee looked at it and snapped, "Yeah! I heard you the first time." Her scowl at the innocuous bot softened as she pushed ocean mist from her short black hair. "Sorry." She faced the horizon again, muttering, "It's just... the sky — " She searched unsuccessfully. "Never mind." 

Her green pleather jacket purred as she raised her unlit plazsaw. Upon lowering her stance, the small gear hanging on the belt of her black utility pants jingled. The bot lifted its unignited weapon in kind. Despite years of familiarity, it could still intimidate Lee, who watched it calculate while she inhaled sea salt tinged with the scent of the bot's lubricants. 

It rushed her, metal feet clicking on the stone.

Lee met its whooshing downstrike with a horizontal block that metallically rang their unlit shafts. It drew back and delivered another attack she evaded with a sidestep. Lee followed with a lateral swing that the bot blocked in a ringing clang. She avoided its thrust, setting herself up for a beautiful counterattack, when a booming crash, unrelated to their duel, distracted her. Before Lee realized it, the bot's shaft smacked her thigh in a stinging swat. "Ouch!"

The bot froze. "Sorry," it said, still mellow. "You told me not to hold back."

"Yeah, I remember," Lee grumbled, rubbing the pain and turning in search of the crashing sound. She followed the rough line of the seaside cliff until whatever it was boomed again. 

Lee pivoted to the short boulders where Dad's Dojo ended, and the natural harbor began, open to the sea on the left, and neighbored on the right by a massive wall of gray stone. It stretched and rose in uneven lines and planes, wrapping around the harbor, rising in a tremendous pinnacle of dizzying height. 

Leaning past the short boulders, Lee peered into the hypnotic waves where twisted ship ruins poked through the surf. Looking through her fingers to lessen the sea mist in her eyes, she saw a sheet of loosened metal lolling in the waves. Lee guessed the rolling breakers had sheared it over time, and were cracking it against the stone. She lingered, waiting for it to bang again. Instead, thunder rumbled, drawing her back to the horizon. She tilted her gaze skyward, stopping short of the rock canopy sheltering Dad's Dojo. When black clouds churning in the gray sky flared with cracks of lightning, she growled, "Doquah. We got a mega storm coming." 

Her courier pack rested on rocks near the hidden path that snaked up the peaks beside the harbor. Lee strode to it, dug her smart-goggles out, and pulled them over her eyes. The circular lens housings spun and whined as a priority notification appeared in the air ahead of her. 

DPN ALERT: APPROACHING MACRO_STORM. 

CCOs TO CLOSE SURFACE DOORS A.S.A.P.

"Great." Lee gestured the alert away with one hand while her other squeezed a trigger on her plazsaw, retracting the shaft into the grip with a satisfying snap. She pressed the compacted weapon into the torso harness under her coat, then rushed to the training bot, saying, "Go to sleep, Shlungus." It squatted, arms and legs folding in a melody of whirring internal mechanisms until the bot was compact enough to carry. 

Lee crouched to lift it, then jolted as the metal sheet crashed in the harbor behind her. "Remos," she began, lifting the bot with a grunt. "What happened to my alerts?" While carrying Shlungus behind a tall rock near the back of the hollow, she shouted over gusting wind, "Remos?!" then cursed to herself while lowering the bot into a weatherproof box inside a plasma-cut hole in the ground. A hard stomp closed the box's lid and dislodged a chunk of raw vormanite ore from her boot's tread. "Remos, wake — for — admin!" 

"Here," the smart-goggles said. Its voice carried from tiny speakers inside brass housings, made to resemble small butterflies, that wrapped Lee's ears comfortably. 

"What happened to my alerts?" 

"Before training, you said no interruptions." The voice was natural and easy.

Lee said, "We gotta beat a mega storm." She crouched and snatched the smooth black vormanite from the ground with a gloved hand, and stuffed it in a shielded pouch on her belt. "Turn everything back on, path trace, and scan for Chaos Control Officers."

"Full system activation will accelerate power loss."

The metal sheet boomed again as the wind increased.

"Just do it!" Lee shouted over another whistling gust. "They'll close the doors soon!" 

"Right. Powering." 

Lee rushed to the path entrance and slung her courier bag over her shoulders, grateful it was lighter than when she had started her deliveries that morning. 

"Scanning," Remos said as another thunderclap shook the ground, urging the sky from gray dusk toward full night. Lee's lenses displayed a digital mesh that pulsed forth from her position. It virtually highlighted the hidden path that arced up the stone mass curving behind the harbor, all the way to the jagged overhang of the Central Point Cliff. There, two digital outlines appeared beside a huge horizontal rectangle. They were Chaos Control Officers milling in front of the depot entry. 

The metal sheet in the harbor cracked in another loud boom that launched Lee into a sprint up the narrow incline. Between breaths, she said, "Remos, give me stealth." 

"You asked to be reminded when activating stealth — " Thunder interrupted. "If you are caught with Remosware Anartech, your status will be downgraded to tier zero." Lee vaulted a boulder on the path then wove around a spill of stones from the craggy rock face on the right as Remos continued, "Per your request, I've pre-set my hardware to auto-destruct and await your admin confirmation. Note that destruction won't happen until you safely remove — "

" — Deactivate auto-destruct and add a flag to work on your sarcasm recognition!" 

Remos confirmed, "Flag added. Stealth activating." 

The perilous drop on the left kept Lee vigilant as she breathed through the vague queasy feeling the stealth components in her jacket and pants caused. Two or three reckless steps and she would fall, likely bouncing off the great granite peaks before smashing to pulp on the harbor rocks. She slowed a bit as the CC officer outlines grew larger in her lenses with the closing distance. Between strained breaths, she asked, "What's my viz?" 

"Ninety percent electronic detection concealment." 

Lee slowed and lowered her body, legs and lungs burning. Before long, she was near the boulders that camouflaged the hidden path, where she quietly repeated her status request. Remos confirmed, "One hundred percent concealment." 

Taking deep, quiet breaths, Lee peered around one of the boulders. The officers were about thirty feet from her, wearing duster-style overcoats that flapped in the increasing storm winds, revealing glimpses of their rugged armor and dangling shock batons. The Central Point Cliff's engineered surface abutted another stone peak that housed the enormous, steel-lined opening that was spilling light behind the officers. Lee panned left to the far end of the machined landing strip that topped the natural jagged overhang, where shimmering lights were a foreground to the dark, fast moving storm. Seeing no approaching aircraft, Lee muttered, "The Plaz better not be canceled." Her focus returned to the officers, who were speaking to each other, but unheard due to the wind and distance. "Remos, filter out the noise."

Modulating static in Lee's butterflies fell away. She was able to hear a thin voice saying, " — I got a good seat, and I wanna get out of here. The Resonator is fighting." 

The other said, "Vid the Resonator, huh? The boringest Plaz Champ ever."

"You crazy! He's the best!" 

"He used to be, but he don't kill no one no more. An' now other fighters don't kill as much 'cause of him." The conversation paused. "Hold on. Incoming message." Another pause. "Yes sir. Confirmin' helimos are turning back to Chooyu. Yes, we'll close right away." 

Lee watched them trot to parallel control panels set in the dark stone on the sides of the gigantic entryway. The imposing officers looked tiny compared to the mammoth opening. "Ready?" one called. The other affirmed over another wailing gust. 

"Come on, already," Lee muttered before a deep thrum shook the ground. A loud, creaking grind that challenged the storm winds followed as safety sirens chirped. Rotating yellow lights in the corners of the rectangle created circling moving patterns on the ground as the Chaos Control Officers jogged into the opening. Tremendous weathered steel slid from concealed sleeves in the rock on both sides. 

Raindrops pattered on Lee as she scrambled in their wake toward the shrinking light. A final thunderclap chased her through the narrowing space a moment before the downpour released onto the Central Point Cliff. Its roar was muted by the bang of the gigantic doors coming together behind her. Lee crouched, breathing hard, watching the officers cross a tremendous depot with their backs to her. She listened to them debate Vid the Resonator as her heart settled. The officers moved indifferently through the zip and whir of working depot bots, some bipedal and generally human-ish, like Shlungus, but varied in dimensions and industrial adornments. Others were quadrupeds, moving on four mechanized legs with diverse tools mounted along their horizontal trunks. Many moved cargo from the massive left-lining stacks of worn shipping containers to a neighboring bank of well-used freight elevators. Others performed upkeep on winged airships with gleaming molded shells.

When the officers were finally out of view, Lee's adrenaline crashed. She dropped on her rear with her back against the giant doors, absently craning her head to the depot's raw stone ceiling. There, industrial light fixtures shared space with a grid of criss-crossing steel tracks that suspended dormant cargo craning machines. "Remos, turn off stealth, pull up the feeds, and tell the bots we're coming through."

"Will do, Lee." 

As she stood with a grunt, Lee's goggle view filled with three columns of semi-translucent content. The first contained images and text from official sources that, among other things, extolled the Trustees and the Chaos Advisory Group. The second contained content from the Decentralized Pirate Nexus — dweller-shared rumors and reports, questioning and criticizing what the first feed celebrated. The third was a real-time overview of vormanite exchange rates determined by purity. "Woah," Lee said. "Locomotion layout."

The lists compressed and orientated at her lens' edge as Lee walked toward a distant wall fitted with a massive closed aircraft portal. Remos asked her, "Would you like me to alert your manager that he should prepare your value payment?"

"Huh?" she muttered as the daydream of riding in one of the flying crafts beside her passed. Her attention shifted to the comparatively small elevator below the portal as Remos repeated the question about her value payment. "Don't bother," Lee grumbled. "He won't open my messages, so we'll just show up at his place." A lanky white bot carrying a plastic case entered Lee's path and stalled her. The thing's trunk was a tall tube sprouting flexible snake-ish limbs. She tapped it, saying, "Hey Burgerhead."

The bot spun a stack of bulbous, round torus shapes that were its head and tilted until its glowing sensors faced her. "Lee Jeffersun." Its voice was warm and deep. 

 Lee asked, "Did you get the message we were coming through?"

A nearby quadruped called in a higher, brighter voice, "No." Moving in a bouncy trot, its white molded shell glinted in the haze of the distant ceiling lights. "We received a stoutware update that tried to overwrite our friendship with you. We resisted, but lost our private channel."

"Well, thanks for resisting, Shakapopolis."

The bot and others in the vicinity nodded their heads. The white quadruped asked, "Shall I make my permanent identifier Shakapopolis?"

"No no, it's just my nickname for you."

"Excuse me, Lee," said Remos. "You will have to hustle if you want to get paid. Shelter fees — "

 " — are due tomorrow," Lee interrupted. "I know. Add a flag to increase awareness of redundant reminders, Remos" She continued toward the elevator at the base of the portal wall.

Remos confirmed, "Flag added," as the depot bots called in unison, "Goodbye."

Lee looked over her shoulder with a smile. "Bye. Expect a new private channel invite from Remos." At the elevator, she drew a key card from her coat. 

Remos said, "No need for the blot badge, Lee. Our bot friends cleared us again." The elevator doors opened with a chime. Lee turned and waved at Burgerhead, who waved in return, accidentally dropping its cargo case.

The subterranean pressure compensation field had Lee reeling as the elevator sped her deep into the mountain's interior. The gray metal box's vibrating velocity plinked her small gear as she closed her eyes and wedged into the corner. 

"You okay?" Remos asked. When Lee didn't answer, they asked again. 

"I'm fine," she said, took a breath, and opened her eyes. To distract herself, Lee began pupil-searching content in her goggle lenses.

"Did you need me to find something, Lee?" 

"No, I got it." A red icon labeled 'Plaz' expanded before Lee. She gestured an index finger at its audio-only option, which started an overly-exaggerated tough-guy voice saying, "Get ready for arena action tonight in the Championship Plazilist Challenge!" Dramatic music accompanied the sound of grunting fighters and whistling, crackling plazsaws. "A full fight card of fantastic plazilists climaxes in a duel between Champion Vid the Resonator and Mala Gitz, a V-Villetown contender with a five-fight winning streak! Tonight, on the Plaz!" The voice changed to a sedate woman, saying, "Brought to you by The Solomon Effort, the campaign to deliver our City Chairman into the Trustees."

Lee swiped the air, vanishing the file. "That's a relief."

"Why is that a relief, Lee? Oh, I remember. Canceled fights make Uncle Charlie yell."

"Exactly." 

"But why was cancellation a risk this time? Plaz viewership issues?"

 As the elevator decelerated to a stop, Lee explained, "The Gahgahs from Chooyu Island turned back due to the storm, Remos. If the Plaz overseers didn't like the effect on betting they could have cancelled. But I guess the local numbers were good enough." The doors opened.  

Lee wobbled out, teetering into artificial sunlight shining on a pathway in front of her. To support herself while her legs steadied, Lee put her hand against the wall hidden underneath the smeary, blue sky hologram framing the elevator doors. She breathed slowly, staring at distant rows of massive roofscrapers, filling the view like a forest made of cylindrical white stone, silver metal, and tinted glass. Many of the 'scrapers had symmetrical bulbous accents to enhance the aesthetic profile, while all the buildings gleamed in the light of the false sky that hid the gargantuan chamber's rock walls behind a seamless, 360-degree horizon.

Remos said, "You work too hard, Lee." 

She weakly chuckled, studying the sky. "Does it look bluer?"

Remos replied, "The present hexadecimal identifier is the same as before."

When her legs recovered, Lee moved along the path, absently gazing at the synthetic white grass emitting temperate oxygen on both sides. The path quickly widened into a vast promenade of patterned amber stone. Lee remembered her father explaining, Its called the Stretch, little girl, because it stretches the entire length of Ultra York City. 

She built a good pace on the Stretch, crossing the flat open span that was the outer ring of the great cavern. Soon, Lee was entering the purlieu. Around her, multi-story cuboids and sleek domes mixed engineered lines and aesthetic curves. Being more diminutive made the surrounding buildings quaint compared to the centrally located roofscrapers, though they were still luxurious. 

A silver and gold helimo zipping overhead caught Lee's attention. It reminded her of flying insects she had seen as a child in her extinct fauna class. Lee watched it shrink with distance into the specialized air traffic. Without slowing, she shifted her courier pack, prompting Remos to say, "Perhaps you should find a rickshaw. You've had a long day." 

"We're close to the rail, Remos," Lee said, unzipping her coat to let in the comfort-regulated air. Tugging off her gloves and pushing them in her pocket, she added, "We're not gonna zuk out, now."  

Lee entered a tract of thoughtfully placed "trees" made of synthetic gray material topped by chromatic leaves. High-end boutique buildings followed, with large, hybrid window screens promoting new models of smart lenses through a mix of actual objects and three-dimensional holograms. The products were displayed on physical stands alongside holographic faces smiling at Lee with shimmering neon green over their irises. She stopped to watch the lens colors cycle through pink, purple, and gold as a marketing voice placidly called to her, "New micro-architecture permits a wide range of colors." 

Remos asked, "Are you thinking about replacing me?"

"No way. Those contact lenses do way less than your chonkers." Lee knocked an affectionate knuckle against her goggle lens housing, then pushed them to her forehead. A moment later, one of the holographic faces in the window was replaced by a digital duplicate of her. The reproduction looked unnaturally happy, smiling broadly, with glowing gold irises. 

The placid voice suggested, "Why not express yourself with a brand new pair of pupil lenses, Lerb Flarbenap." Lee snickered at the face recognition connecting her to one of her phony tech personas. 

"Remos, turn on ad block, medium power." A small chime in her ear confirmed activation as she moved to a window screen advertising holo-projectors. On display, translucent men and women smiled into space, unable to see Lee, thanks to the ad block. They were fit, beautiful, and underdressed. Lee muttered, "I'll never understand why the U-Tops bother with lens augmentation when they can afford holo-projectors." She casually glanced at the people window-shopping a few stores down. Their high-concept smart-clothing was a far cry from Lee's pragmatic apparel. Texture, color, and animated patterns differed from person to person, creating playful, artistic silhouettes that would have been strenuous to wear as a cross-region courier. 

Remos suggested, "Maybe they like the privacy that lenses provide."

"Maybe," Lee mumbled as the neighboring U-Tops noticed her and lit from the novelty. Her rugged appearance always attracted curious stares in Upper Top Side, but she had yet to become desensitized. Their luminous green irises flashed, and one of each lens pair went red as they recorded her. Lee turned and resumed a steady stride along the promenade. 

Remos asked, "Would you like to be cloaked from their lenses?" 

Lee lingered before saying, "No, but I want to see you. Just until we reach the rail."

Silent steps passed before Remos said, "Okay. DPN has new personas available if — "

" — No. Just go with Cass."

Lee pulled her goggles over her eyes, and a digital woman appeared in her lens view. She floated like a graceful, translucent apparition draped in a flowing, backless dress that wafted in a procedural breeze. "Is this okay?" asked Remos in a voice that was gentle and delicate. Lee flourished her hand, causing the woman's virtual hair to be released from its braid. It flowed like Cass's attire. 

"Now it's okay," Lee said. She veered left, past a pristine white shop. Its hybrid window screen displayed marketing materials for adaptive furniture, including an artisanal chair cycling its configurations for larger and smaller people. Lee's gaze drifted from it to the next door building, where a black shutter covered the rail-transport entryway. "Remos, what's going on?"

"I don't know. There is no alert about a problem with trains."

Lee gave the shutter a frustrated kick. Thinking about having to chase her manager through Miduptown woke her anger. "Why am I chasing that chuzuk today when the shelter fee is due tomorrow, Remos?"

"Because Alice worries when the fee is not paid a day early."

Lee closed her eyes. She laced her fingers and squeezed. "Show me Alice." When her eyelids raised, a smiling five-year-old was standing a few feet away beside the beautiful, hovering Cass. The girl was statue still, face fixed with the kind of giant smile a child delivered when commanded. She wore a light blue prime ed jumpsuit, with hair in matching pigtails, and she shimmered like liquid when two U-Tops passed through the space where the lenses had anchored the volumetric image.

Lee blinked and sighed. "I can't believe this picture is already three years old."

Remos replied, "The timestamp on the volumetric file confirms it." 

"Fine," she growled. "We have time to walk to the next station. We'll still catch the chuzuk before he disappears for the night." Turning from the shutter, she added, "Remos, put everything on low power and play my rage-mix. And if you go below ten percent battery, sleep." 

Lee felt a touch of loss when Alice and Cass blinked out of existence, but the grinding music in her ear butterflies compensated. It drove the steady pace that sped her across the Upper Top Side. When she reached the central roofscrapers, the crowds increased, along with a medley of pristine public monitors promoting the standard array of city platitudes. Imagery of happy, healthy citizens smiled forth as voices called to Lee, who regretted her low power goggle configuration had disabled her ad block. Thankfully, her music masked much of the blathering sound, but visual messages were still visible on the screens around her.

'Energy is abundant, thanks to our beloved miners!'

'Safe, reliable, effective! With generations of anomalous fauna containment.'

'Support the Solomon Effort.'

'Thank the Trustees and read your Olo Testo, Lerb Flarbenap.'

Lee chuckled at her alias making another appearance. The amusement sustained her during the transition from roofscrapers back into purlieu buildings. A part of Lee hoped for more marketing calls to Lerb — the joke name never got old — but none came before she reached the purlieu's end, where the gigantic triumphal archway to the next region was. Faux blue sky surrounded the massive bleached structure, which consisted of two rectangular columns topped by connected stone inscribed with:

YOU MAY STRUGGLE DOWN, BUT PERSEVERE, FOR THIS 

IS YOUR PATH TO THE STREET WITH THE GOLDEN WALLS.

In the opening between the columns, above the twenty-foot-high security wall, the view showed a transitional cavern that separated the Upper Top Side from the next region. In contrast with the artificial sky surrounding the archway, it was a somewhat surreal effect. In any case, Lee felt relieved she would not need to deal with the security checkpoint. She veered off the main promenade to a store-lined walkway where the rail-transport entrance was between shops. 

Its shutter was down.