Final Empire by Blake Northcott

Author:Blake Northcott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Superhero, Dystopian, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic, Adventure, Superheroes
Publisher: Noösphere Publishing
Published: 2015-07-29T23:00:00+00:00

The lab was empty during lunch hour, which afforded me not only privacy, but access to all the toys I needed to play with. The football stadium-sized underground space was glistening with pristine white metal, and rows upon rows of workstations containing every device imaginable: from old-school compound microscopes to the most state-of-the-art equipment. There was the immersive virtual reality rig (which was basically a giant metal hamster ball sitting on a gyroscope) that allowed me to climb in and control a remote presence with the combination of laser-mapped physical movements and a form of machine-augmented cognition. There was a ten zettabyte computer, with an interface no larger than a standard tablet, powerful enough to engineer the climate of every city in the Western hemisphere, tracking the amount of precipitation to the exact raindrop. Not to mention the neuro-informatics research center, which was used for designing various artificial intelligence programs. Back in The Fringe I’d spent more than one boozy night at the pub with Gavin, arguing about the perils of designing AI. He was convinced that Skynet would one day plunge the world into chaos, or that we’d eventually be relegated to pink amniotic sacks, being harvested for energy by our new robotic overlords (“No, Gav, despite hundreds of sci-fi movies to the contrary, there is absolutely no chance of a machine ‘turning evil’ and enslaving us. It’s like being afraid that your toaster is going to get jealous and slit your throat while you sleep.”)

I went to the comm center; a slab of cylindrical beveled glass propped up by a stone pedestal. Without the glowing access pad and touch-controls discreetly situated on the outermost edge, it would just look like a dinner table that could seat a party of ten. I swiped my gold access card across the pad and it chimed to life. With a voice command, a towering holographic projection of the Earth spread out before me, first as a sphere, and then flattening out into a more traditional-looking Peters Projection map. I leaned over the console with the illuminated touch pad at my fingertips, adjusting it into position. With a second command I brought Detective Dzobiak’s face into a smaller screen off to the side.

“Sorry to keep you on hold,” I apologized. “I needed to get somewhere private.”

“Huh. Thought it would be easy in a fortress the size of a city.”

I sighed. “And yet…”

“How did things go with Peyton?” he asked, wincing slightly, as if bracing for a disastrous response.

“I told her I loved her,” I said flatly, my attention focused on the map.

“That’s a good thing…right? I can never tell with you.”

I shrugged half-heartedly. “I think so. I don’t know. Do you have the results I asked for?”

“Right, right…link your console to mine and I’ll send the data right to your display. I can’t make heads or tails of this mess…I’m not a mapologist.”

“A what?” I said with a chuckle. “You mean a ‘cartographer’.”

“Whatever, man,” he scoffed. “I never claimed to be Christopher goddamned Columbus.

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