Brutalist Stories #27

“You are fucking with our programme, Terrance!” I shout and hear him screaming out his insane laugh as I take the goggles off for a second to go over the top.

They say never break out, never go over the top, it’ll ruin your sync and once that’s blown you’re as good as gone. Fuck that. I need to kick Terrance in his fucking side and get him back on board before this whole fucking thing goes south. Better my sync drops than him fucking killing the pair of us. So, I turn and swing my leg and it gets him in the ribs and the goggles go back on and we’re back.

“What the actual fuck!” He’s screaming inside the sync and we’re deep. A Takayoshi security protocol is on our asses, we’re cruising a meta-verse hack with primed Rawstone Heavy Industries diamond-grade AI, our hot-set has gone black and now I’m the one that’s laughing.

“You’re a god damn asshole, Terrance.” I scream at him as we rip through the vapour at Warp 2. Twice the speed of light with this fucking kit, consciousness beamed directly into the ether and amped right up by the AI into the warp, we can break through anything with this kit, fucking anything.

“I’m the asshole?” He turns to me. “You almost break our connection and I’m the asshole suddenly? What the hell would have happened to me if you’d gone out of sync?”

“Well, there’d be parts of your consciousness all over time and space. I guess one day someone could have pieced at least some of it back together. You know, that shitty personality of yours might have gotten erased.”

And he’s laughing maniacally again, screaming as we’re approaching Warp 3. I’m not worried, the AI hot-set can take it and our parallels are leveling off. We just need to keep fast enough that the Takayoshi doesn’t pinch our tails and we punch through the wrong god-damned universe into some fucking hell-hole.

“82 seconds until parallel sync, Terrance. Make sure you’re ready,” smooth as you like it. Countdown, just glide it in and through and we’ll get the fire they need, scoot back and home before the Takayoshi protocol even knows we’ve made the sync.

But something’s not right.

I turn and Terrance’s ball of consciousness is evaporating and I’m slowing down. The protocol hasn’t caught us, we’re charged and the hot-set is barely even cool. Then there it is.

Rip.

And I’m back in the concrete bunker that they’d sold us as impenetrable. Fucking impregnable the advert said, so who the fuck is this asshole with a gun to my head and my goggles in his hand.

“You, Bronze Mystic?” he says with a thick Russian accent. The god-damn Russians, who the hell sold us out to these pricks?

“Who’s asking?”

The bruiser shakes his head. “Him, you want his consciousness reinserted, you start cooperating.”

“Fucking, Terrance?” I click the switch in my tooth and the goggle set in the guy’s hand explodes and takes his arm off. “Fuck, Terrance.” And I’m up, through the smoke, blood, and soot and screaming Russian screams. Out and on my way back to another job. Man’s gotta eat.

Building inspiration: Adan Martin - Auditorio de Tenerife