Calamity

‘Sit rep. I repeat – sit rep.’

The light sliver she held tightly glowed blue and then disappeared. Litten pounded the ground in frustration – her only link to the outside world was gone. She lay in a shallow depression gazing at the roiling dust clouds forming above her. Not good. Winking her left eye to engage her neural enhancement – all she got was a blur. Her own eyes would have to do. Not much to see in a hole – she needed to break cover to see if the DPIWE had returned for her.

Clambering up the near vertical hill, grabbing onto every stray bush to pull herself up – trying not to break an ankle on the loose rock and shale – Litten heaved herself to a vantage point that let her survey the grey green bush around her. The earth on the other side had been gouged into furrows – the Grader had been through and fallen victim to the same forces that had split her from her patrol. She saw the giant machine twisted and melted – abandoned in a crater – just like the one she had left. Right to the horizon – the earth had been shattered to get to the rich awe deposits underneath.

Litten dropped to ground, careful not to silhouette against the darkening sky. A huge red bull ant – Inchman, the locals called them – found its way into her glove as she lay flat, her face in the earth – trying to stop the ringing in her head still left from the blast. The insect left her with a piercing pain that the top strength medisalve in her pocket only just managed to dull. She was surprised by the intensity of the pain – alone in a moonscape and cut off from her patrol – it seemed strange that an insect bite could be the jolt she needed to truly consider her predicament.

Raised in these Eastlands – Litten knew the storm would rip her to pieces. The need to find shelter from the purple and red clouds of the dust storm now became greater than her need to stay hidden. Jumping up, she ran for the lip of the next crater – no longer worried about being seen. If anything had been near her, she would be able to smell them anyway. It was why she was out on surface patrol in the first place – her unique ability to smell the greasy odour that emanated from the wraiths from kilometres away. Born last in a family of the gifted – sensing trouble before it began had been useful way of staying out of it. Skidding down the slope of the giant crater, she was now more concerned about not being flayed to the bone as she searched for the fissure in the earth that would take her away from the storm, and back to base.

Some choice words came to her as she scrambled to find the awe-hole that she knew must be close. She punched the section on her technical jacket where her last gel pack lay to activate it. She felt its warmth and heard its tell-tale hiss even as the stones around her were beginning to fling themselves into the air as the magnetised dust cloud came closer. Digglings to her right glowed brightly in the orange light as she changed course and started to pick up speed. Sprinting up the incline in the middle of the crater to the mineshaft she knew would be there – she raced as the metal stanchions holding the poppet head began to detach. Not pausing to slow down – Litten launched into the unfathomable abyss left by the awe miner. Her stomach lurched and just as the wicked lightning spiked clouds roared overhead, she slapped the gel patch and with a flash of purest bright light that enveloped the musty earth-streaked cavity, she was gone.

*

Her family had been normal people - just struggling to get by. Until one day – one unremarkable day – everything had changed. An overflow of free energy surged into the universe from above and below - a beautiful light - and two fundamental things happened. People started to feel what other people feel. Every being on the planet started experiencing everyone else’s emotions. Next, people started to be able to manifest whatever they desired, harnessing the free-floating energy given to them from the universe. If they believed, thought, wanted or need it – it became theirs to have.

It was chaos. And extraordinary. In one week – want vanished. The need to generate energy, work, grow food was gone. What people needed – they had. Hunger, deprivation and loneliness ceased. Humankind was free from the ills that had beset it from the beginning. For one week – everybody on earth was connected. Violence disappeared – to hurt another was to hurt yourself. There was nothing to fight over anyway as everyone’s material desire could be supplied without exploitation - no need to chop down one tree or kill any other sentient creature.

No one knew how it happened. Some called it a miracle. Scientists warned that it was a cataclysmic event. No one cared. But there was a cost, a terrible cost. A new being - one no one had ever contended with before – came into existence. Wraiths. Incorporeal beings manifested as a powerful vortex of dark energy that could send entire populations of people into writhing paroxysms of fear and loathing, so overwhelming that anyone affected would kill without mercy, ultimately ending their own lives to be free of the despair. Nature abhors a vacuum and with all that free energy released into the universe came something much, much darker.

Then, people began to lose their powers. And all the things they had manifested into existence disappeared. But not the wraiths – they were here to stay. And only a chosen few were left with their abilities - the gifted - and Litten and her family among them. The new world belonged to those who could fight the wraiths – the ones who could still track, find and harness that free energy. A new caste of humans was created overnight. And in the great severing of the world’s population – the rage of disconnection produced dark energy that consumed those it touched.

After the emergence and subsequent catastrophe – huge corporations stepped in to clean it up – and take over. The corporations vied with each other to patent the DNA of those who could manipulate the precious light energy. But humans are an adaptable species. Once again, they were content to submit – to believe those who said could keep them safe and to be pacified by the material goods and entertainments those corporations could provide. But it was never the same, and we couldn’t go back.

Whilst there was an enormous number of charlatans – pretenders who claimed to have the miracle cure, the abilities to give back those gifts people had lost – the real practitioners could perform what would have been seen as miracles in another age.

The gifted could travel through fissures in the earth created by the emergence of the light energy. Following these pathways –they tracked the emergence of the wraiths. Not to stop them – but to at least warn people who could do nothing but flee. Apart from those who chose to stay and fight. The darkness consumed them. Traditional defense forces were powerless – only those with the gift could fight it, using their light to contain the terrible dark energy. A few could observe the unique energy signature of the wraiths and sense it coming – like Litten. With her gift she had saved countless numbers of people. But it was never enough.

*

‘You’re not very good at your job – are you?’ Litten thought as her body hit the trampoline with an unforgiving thwack and she promptly bounced without ceremony onto a sundried lawn.

Her colleagues laughed at her while the trampoline dissolved and commented sardonically on her 70s pant suited form as Litten’s alt-reality buffalo lawn became the grimy rubber matting of the docking bay. Litten’s favourite heart-shaped locket lay within arm’s reach. She grabbed for it, but it winked out of existence – just as the original had done years before. The mindscape was a side effect of the loss of control of the manifest energy used to travel via fissure. Once all vestiges had disappeared, the recovery technicians dumped her in a Wheelbarrow – a curved rejuvenation pod with life support features on large grey wheels – and took her to the remake centre. Here she could recover the outer trappings of the life she lived day to day when she was not on missions.

Technicians moved purposefully around Litten monitoring her vital signs and her precious light energy. As part of DPIWE Engagement Crew she had the best equipment money could buy. Funded by the corporations that had benefitted most massively from all that happened five years ago – they didn’t want the minor drawback of the wraiths newly discovered existence to interfere with their absolute market domination. That sounded sinister, but the fact that Litten’s DNA was stamped with the logo of the Unicorn company said something about their influence. Litten reflected on all of this as her limp, spent body lay cocooned in her pod. After 30 minutes of low-intensity rejuvenation she would be as good as new.

Lying surrounded by light – Litten’s brusque supervisor, Agara, entered the pod room. The older woman was direct in her appraisal of the latest mission, her voice cutting through the soothing hum of the pod.

‘You cannot do that again. You are capable, Litten, but this desire to ignore standard operating procedure is going to get you killed. And much worse than that - it is going to get me fired.’

The woman’s golden eyes blazed at Litten as Litten returned the look with an air of ironic detachment and underlying murderous rage.

‘Lovely to see you too, mother. Yes, I’m glad I survived, as well’ Litten said serenely.

‘You have the abilities our blessed corporation values so dearly’, Agara continued, ignoring Litten, ‘But a massive sense of entitlement that translates into you thinking that the rules simply don’t apply to you!’

Litten blinked up at her, too spent to argue for a change.

‘How did you end up on your own?’

Reaching weakly into mission backpack, Litten found the scored piece of quartx – the reason she had been so distracted that she missed the massive blast of energy that had separated her from her patrol squad in the first place – and threw it deftly to her mother. She caught it without breaking her harangue.

Threaded through the quartx were the telltale signs of purple shimmer.

‘It's started’, Litten stated, as she yawned and settled back into the chemical glow of her rejuvenation pod.

‘He knows we are coming. We have lost.’

Agara blanched – no one but Litten would know the difference in her demeanor, but her youngest daughter was skilled in reading her mercurial mother’s face.

‘You are being dramatic – as usual,’ observed the older woman while holding the rock tightly in one fist where even imprisoned, its purple glow leaked into the low light of the remake centre.

‘I’m not being dramatic. And I’m not wrong. But I’ll find him, speak to him - and…’

‘No. You won’t.’ Agara replied, voice hard.

Uncharacteristically, Agara bent over Litten who shifted away involuntarily. She touched her daughter’s head with her strong hand and told her to get some rest before striding out. Litten was speechless – her mother never touched her and never showed love. It was not a luxury that she could have ever afforded. Tears pricked the younger woman’s eyes. She stretched them wide to stop the treacherous drops from falling. The pod glowed green, letting her know she was able to leave without dying instantly. Good enough. Litten had her next mission.