Iterative Creativity :O.Welles 19/8.4 - A Digital Novel

O.WELLES 19/8.4

by Vincent A. Murphy  

‘O.Welles 19/8.4’ is a novel set in a post AI World.

It asks what should an optimally abundant, wise & compassionate society do with those who are determined to destroy it?

Below are the first 4 chapters, if you want to read more drop me a line.

In the vast silence a feint rattle comes from the watch locked in the box as it tumbles with each frustrated spin.

The watch is clockwork thus un-hackable; it is locked in the box so a Runabout never knows how much time they have left to complete the run; the later the arrival the greater the punishment they can expect from the station’s duty Resilience Officer.

The Global Permanent Insurgence believes its Runabouts can always be motivated to run faster, further and for longer. As a form of secure communication, the ‘lock-pec’ has proven crude but effective, much like its GPI inventors.

Her mind bears mental testament to just how crude and effective, which despite the piercing agony of the ankle not a single thought crosses about being declared DNA (Did Not Arrive) considered an act of incontestable treason.

A Runabout contemplating DNA may as well self-terminate on the spot, at least then they’d not burden the GPI with having to dispose of another provenly useless corpse. 

Preserving the meaning of One True Free demands such stark discipline and simplicity.

Out here in the Very Bad Lands shades of meaning are as useless as the paltry few inches of meaningless shade afforded by the random tufts of shin-height spine-flax that dot this otherwise featureless, dried-up landscape. 

Without meaningful shade she can afford ten minutes tops to rest whilst directly exposed to the pitiless noonday sun, any longer invites brain rot; the maddening, screeching headache which will only make the inevitable thrashing that much harder to endure.   

The best she can hope for during such a narrow pity-stop is to gird some grit to better cope with the pain.

Squatting onto bare heels two roo-skin pouches are shrugged off painfully bony shoulders and placed either side of feet long gnarled to teak. 

One bag holds precious water, piping hot from over four hours of non-stop running.

Even this far out she picks up the all too familiar reek of gruelash. Doled out at noon in every station gruelash is the staple GPI offering to all who are hungry and desperate enough to try and eat it.

Gruelash has become the last meal of choice for the condemned, providing one final opportunity to display bravery, recklessness or penance, that plus being dead is one of the very few guaranteed ways to rid yourself of its aftertaste.

Instead of brandishing her spine kisser the R/O scoffed and winced, finally finishing her last scoop with whatever the opposite of relish is. 

The stodginess of gruelash always provoked an almost instantaneous sluggishness, it didn’t so much sit as aggressively occupy your belly putting you into an irritable torpor for hours after, the R/O proved to be no exception. 

Annoyed at suddenly being expected to now do something unfathomably strenuous as standing upright she instead reached out one hand and yanked the silent Runabout forward, ignoring the yelp whilst with the other hand she sorted out the key from the grim chatelaine of devices every R/O carried as symbols of punitive authority.

She found the requisite key and used it to unlock the the lock-pec, extracted the strapless scratched up old watch, grunted whilst noting down the time in another of the chatelaine’s standard array of disciplinary tools; the mangy, dog-eared daily observations and reports book.

Chapter Two: Stub

Arrival at any Station involves a fixed list of must dos;  priority was pick up or drop off messages, but this could only happen when the gong goes gong. 

Time waiting for this to happen would be spent scaving for food, water and possibly somewhere to lie down out of the way of the heat and hassle.

Half a mind was tempted to find a covered spot, lie down and simply suck up the pain, but the ankle throbbed enough to risk a visit to the quack den where, if she were very lucky some kind of relief might be found.

In truth she held little hope, the GPI viewed anything below amputation as suspicious molly-coddling; pure resilience and self-sufficiency were the price to pay for living a life that was One True Free.  

But, and his was a big butt, this stub was run by a Flod, in this case ‘Flod the Farthest’ a very minor member of the Flodden clan,  that huge extended family bonded by the spilt blood of their innumerable foes. 

Every Flodden regardless of age, talent or competence had been rewarded  command of their own Station in recognition of the clans brute force contribution to victory in the Civic Wars. 

The bigger the part played the bigger the Station each Flod got as reward, in which case this Flods military contribution must have an ability to correctly identify a sandbag as militarily his stub-station wasn’t much more than a machine gun nest with a dunny attached. 

 The quack den wasn’t where it had been last time she’d passed through, which lead to a weary hobbled search around the skeletal hulks of old open-cast mining vehicles in various stages of rust bucketry, weaving unsteadily between bashed-up oil drums belching grease green tendrils of chemical tinged smoke. 

Luckily at this time of day the station was relatively dust-bunny free, most of whom would be flopped out of the sun dealing with the post-digestive effects of gruelash. 

The sour tang that greets her cuts dead any lingering hope of finding sanctioned pain relief,  instead she’s greeted by the unmistakable, stale coppery odour of a moonshine rig. 

This dilapidation might, on some official form somewhere, be designated a quack den but what this obviously was was a grog-shop and a poorly disguised one. 

Beyond a concertina of rickety stained medical screens was the currently not-on-duty duty-quack, a broken sack of human sprawled sparko on a cot bed, a pool of solidifying spittle trailing from his mush identified him as someone who’d recently put great effort into getting stewed on his own brew. 

She coughed, half to see how zonked he is, half to try and shift the acrid cloy of distilling grog clinging her throat. Neither produced a result, the cloy clings, the hypocritical oaf remains zonked.

Sneaking a decent glug of grog was an option, it’d ease the pain but risked that pain being replaced with a enormous amounts of pain should a Runabout dare deliver their messages with the smell of grog on their breath. 

No, remaining booze fee would be the only safe option,  but with the Quack out cold and no one else around …

Dirty digits deftly did the deed, all done and dusted in under a minute.  The rifled desk gave up a roll of bandage old enough to have begun life swaddling a pharaoh, threadbare but usable.

Whilst she was at it she bagged a half decent clutch of dingo sticks making sure to brush away any tell tale trail of any evidential flakes of the dried dog meat. 

She stood back, weighing her next move, everyone knew the only way to keep hold of anything of value in the VBL was to keep it on you at all times.

On the one hand the quack was dead to the world, on the other if caught she’d be joining him. 

Scaving was done by everyone but being caught scaving was an invitation to dance the hemp hornpipe. 

Despite the risks a dip was done and paid off, one germ-paradise pocket gave up a rare barely touched blister pack of what she recognised as decent pain-away pills. 

It would not be done least it be seen that a Flodden family member gave a dead emu’s bum what a non-Flodden had to say about anything at all. 

It was a way for Flod the Farthest to leverage his family name in the great game of silly buggers that played out up and down the defensive line that faced the Great Barrier. 

There was though one definite non-player of this game, or at least one so good at the game everyone just took the loss as given, he was currently residing at her onward destination. 

Flod the Farthest would not dare play games with Flod The Almighty,Commander of the Nth Roaming Legion, blood might be thicker than water but the two were equally spill-able.

After their triumph in the Civic Wars the GPI had made solemn pledges of renewed unity and coalition most of which had been broken even before the glasses toasting their success were drained. 

The GPI coalition of support remained forever fractious and fractured so the Flodden family went to great lengths to enlist or brutally enforce their own special brand of loyalty,  the fact they could afford to care so little for units of dust-bunny’s showed just how low they were ranked, low enough not even to be trusted to scrape the bottom of the barrel least they misplaced or broke it.

Her eyes seemed to have only barely drifted shut before being jolted open by the gong going gong that signalled Flod The Farthest awaited his messages.

She crawled out from beneath the rusty-suarus and weave wobbled back around oil drums whose fires now glow-peppered the desert twilight.

More worryingly was that like the quack den before it, the area outside the tent was currently eerily quiet.

Usually at least two of the station’s largest dust-bunnies would be lurking around ready to strip visitors of any item they saw as dangerous or valuable, but of them there was no sign. 

Waiting did nothing to move the situation on; no gormless goon gleefully performed a comedy jump scare, no rapidly approaching footsteps indicated a return from an ill-timed wazz. 

What to do? Every Runabout was conditioned to respond to the gong in ways that would make Pavlov drool, if she didn’t deliver promptly it could be deemed a technical DNA making her then entirely dependent on Flod’s mood which, if suitably sour could see her charged with incontestable treason and a sentence of instant execution.

On the other hand initiative was not a trait in any way welcomed by the GPI whereas secrecy very much was. 

The hesitant action achieved nothing. The days second catch-attention cough also failed to produce any response.

She was left stuck, trapped between a hard rock and another harder rock.  

With complete absence of choice she chose to cross the threshold, a long journey up the summit of mounting doom accompanied by a instant drying of throat

 In the dinge of a storm lamp old enough to have been stolen whilst Noah was gleefully listening to the Shipping forecast, the corpulent Flod sat squeezed behind his impressive impractical desk, deep and distracted in an almost comically theatrically hushed discussion with someone lurking off to one side in even deeper shadow. 

Recognising her profound act of foolishness she was about to creep a retreat  just as the lurker in the shadows leaned forward and resolved into a closely shaved, near perfect light-bulb shaped head dimly glowered in her direction.

For the Runabout the ‘I surrender’ supplicants freeze-cringe was the only possible reaction. Flod’s side-of-ham hammer fist locked on and raised up, before being abruptly checked by a single negative utterance from Mr who-knows-watt low, curt, authority laden whisper acted as an instant choke-chain on the raging Flod’s rage making him pull his life denying punch with much  less than a skinny inch to spare.

Cursing he returned and still audibly seething squeezed back behind his dictator’s-bunker desk.

Ignoring her imploring look of gratitude her now looming luminous saviour brought his and Flod’s discussions to a close whilst making preparations for departure; he tightened skeleton-webbing straps and pulled a tawny kerchief over his un-bulbous nose before shouldering a long thin, weird looking carbine, no doubt another model to add to the staggeringly long list of scaved and jerry rigged weapons the GPI used to defend itself against the tyranny of the terranists beyond the Great Barrier. 

Despite her soaked adrenaline fear she was able to spare a brief flash of envy for his kit all of of a quality she could only ever dream of.  His were treasures never to be possessed by Runbouts who had to make do with antique revolvers and home-biodged roo-skin water carriers.

This was proper old-school military grade issue which meant she’d inadvertently found herself in the presence of a Desert-Brat. Best guess was he here handing over in-person, ears-only intel way too important to entrust to a Runabout, which only deepened her stupidity at daring to enter.

A Desert-Brat coming into a station was a rarity let alone coming in to a tiny rat house like this one.  Brats were lone wolves, or at most small packs of wolves who lived their whole lives upholding the very essence of being truly One, True, Free.

D-Brats lived, survived and thrived out in the deep reaches of the Very Bad Lands spending their days hunting down the ever present, ever elusive enemies of One True Free; GPI deserters, surviving remnants of the Free Marketeers

And not forgetting that most invasive species of all, the eternally cursed Snoopers of the Terranist Humilitary, loathsome brain cracking jackals who sneaked across the Great Barrier and brought their filth laden mind polluting head games with them.

Cowed, flustered and not knowing what to do beyond staying as much out of the way as possible she sought sanctuary on the other side of the doorway. Unfortunately this coincided with the Desert Brat’s exit making for a clumsy ill-timed collision that put Flod into a further fit of apoplectic annoyance.

There followed thirty seconds of absolute anger filled silence until

“Never again!” Flod hissed, a statement, not in any way a request.

He’d neither need nor expect a reply, communications with Station Masters were strictly one sided. 

He lapsed back into silence which seemed to mark the end of the issue which she found a strange as past experience told her right know he should be half way through giving her an almighty kicking not least for the temerity of barging in, instead he moved on

 “Writtens?” 

Still shaking she silently proffered the message pouch. Any words at all could open a Runabout up to looking like they’d reached ‘max message’; indicating their brain was holding so much information it was starting to leak out thus making them prime for being granted the gift of One True Free Eternal via a Station Master’s bullet. 

As ways to go it was brutal, quick and justified as it offered the GPI the only guarantee all those priority verbal-only messages sloshing around inside a Runabouts head stayed unviable for extraction by Terranist Snoopers.

Flod read the messages slowly, occasionally using them to cross reference a stained map and jotting down numbers in ratty-tatty logbooks, it meant there’d been at least some routine inter-station stuff that needed addressing mixed in with all the usual dingo dung up-puff.

“Verbals?”

Her shaken head made him temporarily return to a state of just about had enough geyser; verbals were for most sensitive messages, not receiving any was usually taken as an insult often deliberately meant as such.

Flod’s with his minor family status made him crave all forms of recognition. Yet somehow this time he still managed to keep schtum, itself highly unsettling as Flod was many things, but a man of restraint was most definitely not one of them.

Having got over the sleight of not receiving any back handed compliments from his rivals he grabbed a sawn-off pencil, bent and began to put effort into composing a message intended only for the eyes of his big kin and master down the line. 

Perhaps it was the pain of the ankle, or the successful snaffling of stuff from the grog shop, or the loosening side effects of the pain-be-gone pills or even the relief of not being flayed by Flod’s fists but for whatever reason the Runabout’s eyes chose this of all moments to betray their owner with another infraction easily punishable by summary execution.

She did a downwards glance, it lasted no more than half a blink in which time she only read five words   ‘…advise to promote this Runabout…’ before survival instincts rushed in and wrestled executive function back from the grip of her traitorous peepholes and dragged her gaze back to the safety of a thousand yard front and forward stare.

Luckily Flod was too absorbed to notice, failing to spot the capital crime happening right under his concentrating flared nostrils.

She offered silent thanks to the spirit of One True Free for her avoidance of ultimate punishment for another unforced error of gross stupidity. 

Flod’s fatted calf-sized hands finally finished their exertions.  Without anything remotely like ceremony, he shoved the single newly written message straight into the proffered pouch.

“No verbals but express upon delivery my undying pledge of fealty and faith to the glory of the GPI in its unceasing championing of all that is One True Free.” It was the customary sign off, the verbal equivalent of a Prussian heel click. 

That was it, over and done, all that was left now was a swift swivel despite doing it on the dodgy ankle and a half-military quick march out the yurt flap.

A bowl of what, based on the significant clumps of greyish fur floating amidst the greasy slop, she guessed was probably rabbit stew was begged and brought back to the safety of her hole beneath the rusty armoured earth mover.

Once the rabbit had been wolfed, she lay staring at the broken underbelly of the machine, her scrawny frame scantly protected from the cold of the desert night by an old remnant of tarpaulin.

The meaning behind Flod’s words on the note was as toughly chewable as the stew.  Promoted for doing what exactly?

Being dutiful was not something the GPI ever felt worthy of recognition, your duty was expected to be done not rewarded especially as not doing your duty usually involved not having much of future in which not to do it. 

Maybe he wanted to impress his cousin the Great Flod Almighty? Prove to him that despite being the runtiest of the extensive Flod litter he did at least have a keen eye for a good Runabout? 

Which sort of made sense she was obviously a good Runabout because she was still alive running about, but Runabouts weren’t that scarce of a resource, the GPI had abandoned luxuries like schools and child welfare in the long-gone at least to any child outside of the fabled Opalton or the less fabled New-Jeru.

Which meant there was always a supply of Runabouts, admittedly few of them lasted for very long.

On the other hand Station Master could and did occasionally gift Runabouts they’d taken a shine to but she’d absolutely no relationship at all with Flod the Farthest let alone a close one, she’d no close relationship with anyone beyond the occasional ships-of-the-desert-in-the-night with other Runabouts such as Rambling Annie or Maggie-No-Bones.

But there was nothing whatsoever that marked a bond between her and Flod the Farthest.

Promotion though? That was even now hard to take in, it could mean her becoming a Personal Runner which was the closest to a flight of fancy she’d ever allow herself; to become a personal runner to a Highest-Up in New-Jeru or the chance to see, live and run around the the fabled vast cool caverns of Opalton? 

However remote a notion it was a vaguely pleasant enough thought to drift off to.

Instinctively she woke at first light and crawled out to a camp that was as dead as a door nailed mouse. 

Gingerly she tested the crumby mummy strapped ankle, a bit better but not by much.

Two precious pain-aways were dry swallowed and her meagre kit prepped, one roo-skin stuffed with its scaved clutch of dried dingo sticks, her revolver, tinderiser and Flod’s possible message of hope.

The other bag was filled from the communal rough stone trough situated beneath the lazily rotating wind powered water pump.

Luckily the dim dawn light allowed her to ignore its discolouration of worryingly effluence brown.

Her final act was returning to the Duty R/O. This one was in a state of peak mournful disgruntlement from being roused so early. Which only added to the perpetual watchful resentment all R/O’s had for Runabouts with their freedom from being out from under their ever watchful eyes. 

In a silence heavy with begrudgment the bleary-eyed R/O set the time on the watch, wound it, shoved it in the Runabout’s face whilst jabbing at the time to indicate she had thirty-seven hours to reach the Grand Central Station of Flod the Almighty.

Chapter Four: Birds

Her first stretch ran as ever entirely parallell to the Great Barrier, its foreboding bulk accompanying her through the rapidly dissipating dawn along yet another long dried up creek bed. 

The tight wrapped old mummy bandage managed to cut down the ankle pain to a just sustainable ache allowing her to manage enough of a trot to put a semi-decent dent in the run to the mobileGrand Central.

No one has ever taught her how to run. There is no conscious co-ordination of movement, each limb pistons wholly independent doing whatever it needs to get her from wherever here is to where-ever there may be.

Her cadence is so irregular it could garner applause from serious jazz enthusiasts, it results in a weird gait that seems to constantly pitch her forward making her look permanently on the absolute cusp of a complete face plant.

There are those who run with gazelle like grace and there are those, like she who run like a pea having a melt down inside an over zealous ref’s whistle. 

Each bite is coated with the guilt of theft and a betrayal of One True Free.

Thieving makes you no better than than the Terranists which means you may as well have been a collaborator in the Great Betrayal.  Yet somehow everyone kept doing it. 

Your average dust-bunny wouldn’t think twice about stripping the plaque off your teeth while you slept and R/O’s routinely swiped whatever gear they took a fancy to. 

She however could justify the theft of the dingo-sticks because the Spirit Warmers had loudly proclaimed that Runabouts were the lifeblood of the GPI, and how was that lifeblood expected to flow without the fuel needed to do so? 

Surely expecting a Runabout to make an entire run on nothing but a bowl of rabbit fur stew was itself an act of betrayal and sabotage of all that was One True Free? 

Both mental and gastric ruminations were cut short by the realisation that that rumble in the distance was rapidly resolving into a rumble in the close-up.

Once, long ago Rambling Annie that old, fly-blind, crippled Runabout had warned her about this being a thing that happened, especially during a Big Dry.

At the time she’d laughed as it seemed a ridiculous thing to even think about, didn’t seem quite so funny now 

It had begun back in the long long-gone, in pre-Quastralia times, before the Great Barrier of Grief was built but when something else sat in its place, something much smaller but equally long and equally designed to keep things apart.

Back in the long-gone it was known as the Rabbit Proof Fence; a single line of eight-foot tall wood posts and meshed wire stretching two thousand kilometres across the entire length of the long defunct state of Western Australia. 

It was built to keep the tens of millions of non-indigenous stupidly introduced rabbits away from the supposed great fertile lands beyond. 

Of course the fence had its faults, some bit were built shabby and all along its entire length rabbits being relentless buggers had simply either burrowed under it or hopped over it. 

But whilst rabbits were the primary reason for the build it had alas, unintentionally managed to keep out many other species such as dingos…and this lot.

Emus. 

By instinct during a Big Dry these two-metre tall, mean, beady-eyed flightless flockers would gather in great hordes, trying to follow the same paths to water they’d used without any obstacles for long longs of the long-gone. 

Then the rabbit proof fence had been placed slap bang in their migratory path.

Ever since these thirsty herds had desperately sought to find ways through this thing that blocked their nature and their instincts.

It had resulted in them dying in their tens of thousands as they ran or jostled each other straight into it, mangling and entangling scores of them onto the wire, trapped and left to suffer long, lingering deaths. 

Yet time and time again, generation after generation they returned to ineffectively run along, and hurl themselves against this impenetrable boundary which they would traverse en masse along huge stretches in the forlorn hope of finding a way through. 

An emu stampede can be as comical to watch from the safety of afar as it is terrifyingly deadly to be caught in the middle of. 

Blind instinct warned her of the mayhem about to be unleashed, any second that whorl of noise and chaos would burst over the top of the creek bank and come streaming down onto the dried bed where she stood all alone and in the open, right in their path. Here right now was the stupidest place on Earth to be.

Scant options still being scanned, she squinted through the dust as the dense, unending flock crested the slope and pell melled down. 

As demented as it was sudden the Runabout faced head-on a mass of whirling, twisting razored bills and vicious talons attached to thousands of lanky, furiously pounding legs that were not stopping for anything in its collective hell-bent determination to get to wherever its instinctual brain thought it must go.

Her panic mind barked orders to legs to perform a last desperate ooffing lurch that threw her away from its rabbited headlight stance and under the barely noticeable lip of the creek bed’s overhang.

Just as asphyxia reaches critical the feathery maelstrom eases. 

The storm of beaks and talons breaks, the tight press of feathers lessens, becomes clumps of stragglers until eventually it becomes individual birds playing catch-up. 

The prospect of imminent death sees her take her chances with a second wave, she rolls over and out from beneath the overhang.

Freed from an avian inspired grave, she lies on her belly hawking up dry spit and sand. 

One curious dawdling emu stops and looms long enough for an ogle with its wide googly eyes, but eventually chooses lack of flight over fight and jiggles past the strange retching human.