Copyright 2015 © Objurgation
All content created by Objurgation and used fictitiously. All characters and places are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This work is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Objurgation.
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Terra-33
Episode 0.1
Remi looked down at his smartphone, groaning as he saw the list inside his dispatch app growing. He had signed on with a hardware and electronics firm for a four-day contract, working on demand using this app. The stupid thing seemed to never run out of tasks though, and Remi was getting sick of the basic maintenance jobs that he was getting stuck with. The next job looked alright though.
Harris Polytronics, pretty sure they make construct receivers and brains,
he thought. The job was to assess a construct who was not responding to her owner's commands. It was annoying that he had to repair other peoples' constructs while he waited for his new brain to arrive, but at least he was getting more physical activity. He had been bored and was thinking about hitting the red light district or at least a bar tonight. Friday was usually the best night to meet likely partners, and he hadn't made any progress finding Trix. She probably wouldn't be going out after the load they had pulled, he wouldn't be either in her place, he'd be gaming.
An annoying email had arrived in his gamer inbox a couple days after she killed his construct, along with a credit attachment. Apparently she had offloaded the helot onto some company for 500,000 credits and wanted him to have his share.
50,000... What a scrooge.
At least she had given him something though, otherwise he had burned through 200 rounds of primary ammo and busted his armor up for nothing. The fact that the 50,000 barely covered his repairs was galling, but Remi was making quadruple that for this contract, so the money wasn't the biggest issue. He was honestly more pissed about the fact that she hadn't even finished him off before shooting him in the face. Some online snooping hadn't revealed much either. She was pretty scrubbed clean online, as far as a real name being attached to her gamer profile, and he couldn't find any actual girl related to the handle Trix. His search had revealed a bevy of forum entries about a blue-haired cock-tease who used players for help and then murdered their constructs.
At least I wasn't the first,
Remi thought as he jumped onto his mag-bike. She had struck a few others before him and somehow avoided retribution, according to the updates on the threads. Trix wouldn't be able to avoid him though. He would find her, in the game or in the Burg. And when he did... Remi grinned as he sped around traffic, causing quite a few middle fingers to pop up in his wake. He had tweaked his mag-bike a bit outside of the colony's regulations and the machine could turn on a dime at fifty miles an hour. It used an interesting gravity engine and electronic magnets to hover above the ground, only needing fuel for propulsion. The bike did need to be charged regularly, but he was able to plug in when he arrived at most of his destinations. Zooming past a taxi, Remi saw Harris Poly rising up before him, the six-story building looming at the end of the street. Remi slid to a stop in a parking space near a charging post and hopped off, plugging in his bike. He looked up at the dome, judging it was late afternoon by the glare of the sun on the REAL ™ Glass.
Why does everything have a ™ anyway?
Remi grabbed his tool kit and slung it over his shoulder, opening the flap to check that his electronics assessor was present. The huge main doors rose nearly a story as Remi approached through the large parking lot. The building itself was huge. It looked to be made of tinted glass and some kind of polished metal, maybe even helot++. He couldn't be sure without analyzing it, but it wouldn't surprise him. Harris Poly had plenty of creds to waste having the market on high-end construct receivers cornered for the time being. Remi had actually just paid them 15,000 creds to get a new receiver for his own construct. Thinking about the Game just made him mad, and crave it. He had been a gamer on Earth but it was nothing like this. Colony drop-teams had experimented with clone technology to create constructs, DNA specific replicas of people, volunteer gamers specifically. With the new immersion technology, your body could be safe and fed for days at a time while you were controlling the body of your construct. The goo and equipment you had to strap into to get in the game actually worked your slow twitch muscles too, making it not a purely sedentary activity. What Remi loved about the Game was that you could earn real creds while playing, which you could spend to keep playing or upgrade your gear, stockpile ammo, etc. His cousin had hit it big on Terra-2, becoming an overnight millionaire and heading back to Earth to live on a yacht, with a harem of sexy women and all the tech he wanted. It had been motivating to get Remi off of the games he had been playing and onto the next dropship bound for Terra-33.
Walking through the door, Remi watched the giant entry open completely at a light push from him. He thought it a stupidly ostentatious touch that didn't impress him with its functionality, but he wasn't the normal New Bernburg resident, so maybe it worked to help their sales team or something. Walking briskly to the reception desk, Remi presented his Gear-Corp credentials and waited as the bored-looking girl scanned the ID. With a weird sucking, kiss sound, the receptionist pointed to a sign-in sheet, real paper and pen sitting patiently on her desk. Frowning, Remi signed in, filling out his purpose and smartphone number, the date, time, his company, his contact, basically anything they could think of to justify having a paper sign-in sheet. When he set the pen back down, the girl made the sound again and Remi involuntarily crunched up his left eye and shrugged questioningly. She peered over the desktop at the counter and pointed at his name.
"Full name, please..."
She stared at Remi as he rolled his eyes and turned back to the pen and paper. He appended Remi with Remigius Eriksson and glanced back at the receptionist. She poked her head up again and tapped the page.
"Middle initial..."
Remi filled it in and without another word, the girl turned to her console and began typing. Remi just stood there, having gone through worse than this in the past but still annoyed by the whole process. Eventually, the previously quiet elevators to his left chimed and a man in a business suit exited, waving him over. They shook hands and the man pressed the button for the sixth floor as the elevator doors closed behind them.
Remi was led down a long hall, tall cubicles with windows housing a variety of bored office workers. They were doing a lot of different things, but Remi thought that most of them looked like they were doing anything but working. Every one of them perked up when they walked by, maybe wondering what the newcomer was in for. After a few awkward smiles, Remi just ignored them and started looking around. It looked like the building was constructed around the backbone of the elevators, which were in the center of the floor. The elevators were housed in a large rectangle of walls with offices, windowless rooms and restrooms fanning out from the elevators. The cubes spread out from there, running all the way to the windows for as far as Remi could see in both directions. The suit that was leading him was heading for a back corner, one of the only places that seemed different from the farm of desperate cube workers.
A solid wall formed a room that was probably twenty feet squared. There was a strip of window about a foot tall at eye-level with Remi that ran almost the entire length of the room on the side facing them. When they arrived at the square corner room, Remi's escort gestured him toward the window. Remi stepped up and his eyes took in the clinically white room, scanning over mostly featureless walls until coming to rest on the only occupant. She was sitting on a couch, leaning back against the wall and either asleep or resting. Naked, with her legs spread, Remi felt himself stir just at the sight of her in this languid state. She was even better formed than Trix, which Remi hadn't thought possible just a couple of days ago. Her breasts were large but firm, not sagging much despite her poor posture. Tight stomach, toned arms and legs, well-trimmed pubic hair not leaving a lot to the imagination. She was quite tan, almost brown, and had dark, burnished-russet colored hair. Eventually, Remi began to wonder why there would be a naked chick sitting on a white couch in a white room with an observation window, and realized that this was the construct he was here to analyze.
"Wow!" Remi said quietly. "She's, amazing..."
"Fuck yeah, the boys and me keep her naked just so we can look at her when we walk by," his contact responded.
"So, who is her owner? She must be one fine piece."
"You know the Super Micro AMP girl?"
"Holy shit, she's on New Bernburg and a
