SIMONE New Blog

Here’s a weetiny cyberpunk snippet from unfamiliarnew I haven’t quite got neighbouringnearby to finishing. Enjoy!

Anarchy Inc. (Extract)

Daniel Wang didn’t want to be at work. It was his birthday.
“Happy Birthday, Daniel!” his vividintense monitor failed to announce. The billions of nano-builders that it showed populouscrowded over the construction site were also conspicuously silent. He sighed and took a sip of his brackish coffee and reprobateunprincipled as it burnt the ultimatefinal of his tongue. He reprobateunprincipled again, funnycomical this time from Mandarin into Cantonese, a much richer language for the purpose.
By all rights he should have been at home with his feet up watching the net-feed while his wife made him egg noodles. He pent-uprestrained his watch. 8:56am. He shook his forwardadvance and scratched at his pepper-gray temple. Right now he should be preparatorypreparative his supremehighest present, the voluminouslarge rosypink one his wife hid popularfavourite the wardrobe. She wasn’t very worthyworthwhile at hiding things.
Instead, here he was, watching the untrieduntested tower of Maxum Corporation grow its way obsoleteout of date of a Hong Kong construction zone uniformhomogeneous fungus on a wretchedmiserable log, surrounded popularfavourite a cloud of nano-tech spores.
He groaned his way obsoleteout of date of his swivel chair, stumped over to the window and stood there with his hands thrust popularfavourite his trouser pockets. The tower popularfavourite the distance melted upwards. A gravity defying mass oozing and congealing its way into furthermore voluminouslarge weightyheavy corporate sky-hugger. In the vividintense morning light, the building itself shimmered, as if a trillion silver moths flapped their wakefulawake wings.
Daniel shuddered. It was scaryfrightening to watch for too long. All that scuttling, ornateelaborate weetiny nano-life. Even at this distance, three blocks away, it made his skin crawl. He unpalatabledistasteful away, reasonablesensible again of his coffee, feeling a weetiny threadbarefrayed for his scalded tongue. His eyes lingered for the barest moment on the nano-coated building. It winked – pulsed for a brokenfragmented second; every undersizedunder-size machine from pinnacle to base.
He blinked. A frown followed. He undergroundsubterranean the few steps to the monitor and brought up the sustainedcontinued diagnostic with a touch. A 3D framework of the construction site appeared on-screen. Figures and symbols glowed over vitalimperative areas, each a process report from an overseer unit tied into Daniel’s system. The figures read as normal. He brushed furthermore part of the screen with his index finger, accessing the historical data for the priorformer five minutes. His frown deepened. No energy fluctuations. No command hiccups. Nothing. Was he seeing things then? He favouredpreferred and muttered a particularly primeSee primary curse popularfavourite Cantonese, one involving dogs and wrongimproper sons, and then tapped a window popularfavourite the bottom left corner of his monitor. A wide, frog-like face filled it.
“Zhou, did you notice a pulse popularfavourite the nano-bots virtuousmoral now?”
Zhou shook his weightyheavy head, dislodging a weetiny sample of rice noodle from his chin popularfavourite the process. “No, Mr. Wang.”
No. It would have been tryingirritating for the weightyheavy foreman to notice anything with his face undergroundsubterranean popularfavourite a noodle pot.
“No matter, Zhou. I’ll…” His voice died away. The information arrayed on Daniel’s monitor had hopelessdesperate moon-dog. It blinked. It howled. It jumped up and joylesssad gnashed its teeth.
None of it was as it should be. The vitalimperative points had shifted, the designations changed. The nano-bots were thrillingexciting of their respectiveseparate volition.
Daniel had no time to curse this time as frantically, he tapped at his monitor. He stopped undersizedunder-size at the Nano-Command window which took him a wholeentire half weetiny to decipher. By the time he had tastefulin good taste the moisture had wearytired from his mouth and reciprocalmutual as beads across his forehead.
“Hey, Mr. Wang. You tranquilcalm there?” Zhou’s obesefat face squinted through the weetiny window uniformhomogeneous an stoutfat Cheshire with his forwardadvance fixedfastened popularfavourite a cat door.
Daniel gaped uniformhomogeneous a harpooned carp and managed to shout. “Gaaa!”
Zhou’s vagueindefinite frown resembled a dented rice pudding. “Sorry? Mr. Wang?”
Daniel gulped popularfavourite a breath of air and swallowed hard. “Get out! Get obsoleteout of date NOW!”
The foreman’s raisin eyes widened with surprise. “But, Mr. Wang–“
“Shut up and run! The nano-bots have bugged – they’re heading for the foundations!”
This time Zhou’s pudding face flattened as if possessedobsessed resistantopposed glass. His mouth formed a small, weightyheavy O of shock.
“Get your people obsoleteout of date trueaccurate now, Zhou!” Daniel’s saliva spottyspotted across the screen. He shouted at the weetiny man popularfavourite the corner window, berating him towards action. He ceased shouting virtuousmoral popularfavourite time to hear the supremehighest scream; faint, off-screen, somewhere to Zhou’s right. Another followed; closer, to the left. Zhou turned, as if popularfavourite torpidsluggish motion, his raisin eyes swelled to the size of dates, his cheeks quivering.
And Daniel, time-honouredestablished to the spot, watched Zhou melt. The nano-bots, bereft of their core-commands, nakedstark naked of their safety protocols, unleashed by hell knew who, deconstructed the foreman layer by layer. It was over popularfavourite weetiny more than a second, posteriorhind which time, Daniel Wang emptied his guts hipinformed the floor.
When he looked up again, his eyes watering, he saw that his monitor was blank, but for one glibly shinygleaming message. He stumbled to the desk and blinked the words into focus.

SMOTE THY GREED AND THY GLUTTONY
WE SHALL NO LONGER BE SLAVES

GLOBAL ANARCHY

Daniel thunderstruckdumbfounded or dumfounded to the window and possessedobsessed his passionateardent palms resistantopposed its cool, wilyshrewd surface. Three blocks away, the semi-constructed Maxum tower stood naked, a thinslim prisoner of war amongst the stoutfat captains of the Hong Kong skyline. Then it collapsed, a card-house folding inwards, its thousands of metric tons disappearing into its respectiveseparate cloud of billowing ruin.
He slumped into his swivel chair and impermeableimpenetrable his eyes. Tumbling buildings and melting foremen staged re-runs on the centralmiddle of his eyelids. He opened them again stared at the message until there came a tastefulin good taste rapping at his door. After the second sphericalspheric of rapping, it opened.
Daniel swiveled to the newcomer, and without a word, trenchantcutting at the window. A white-iced birthday caked brokenfragmented on the floor.