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Terrorist Guide - Mute
Version 1.0

CreativeCommons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike March 2007
Danyl Strype

[note: this was written to be part of Intersurface but I don't know if I need it for that, although I like it. If I pass all the dialogue from the guide to the female character he could be the mute character I've been conceptualizing for quite some time.]

The man squatted low, tensed and almost imperceptibly shaking, sniffing at the air like a spooked deer. His eyes narrowed to slits as he scanned the vicinity. Silence. Nothing moved.He rose slowly to his full height as if drawn from above on a string and pulled two sonice disruptors from the holsters on his back.

"Two come, " he muttered, drawing his charge in behind him, his eyes fully closed, his energetic senses extending their web to their limit. "They may be friendly... and dangerous. I detect... one has boiling thoughts, red and orange, black place too. The other feels like a machine but walks like a woman."

He turned to his charge and dropped his voice to a whisper, "They are very close... moving so smoothly, the man in front, the woman at his left side, hanging slightly back... she is..." His eyes snapped open in shock, then the lids crunched together again, his lips moving in a dance of muttered gibberish, his breath gasping in and whistling out through the words. The charge flattened herself against the wall. She was nervous. She had never seen him act like this. Who were they?

* * * * *

"Clove, have you made contact?" asked Rankell. Clove walked along behind him, her eyes tracking automatically around her range of vision. Her attention was elsewhere. Rankell took her silence as confirmation and continued walking. Clove would stop him if there was danger. He could defend himself if need be but he was tired. He hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Clove spoke, "He has agreed to meet. Weapons to be powered down and on display." Rankell cast her a questioning glance. "He will know", she added. Rankell trusted the accuracy of this statement. Clove had always checked such claims before reporting them to him.
"Let's go have tea with the queen then, eh Tracer?" He allowed himself a cynical grimace that almost passed for a smile. Clove was unaffected.
"They are in the next tunnel," she said passionlessly, "waiting for us."

* * * * *

The Kestrel Phalien was skeptical.
"What do you mean she is a Tracer? There is no such thing. Children's stories invented by spooked old navigators. Those who claim to meet Monitors from another world with guardian spirits have clearly spent too long in pseudospace."

The man turned to her, his eyes drilling into her, his breath still coming in bursts from the frenetic bitstorm he had been interpreting.
"I saw her mind... there's no way she's human, nor genehack. Her thoughts are made of... are a vast starry sky of ons and offs," he shook his head emphatically, "she is software."

Phalien hesitated, trying to digest the implications of this. "How close are they now?"
"Close, we will see them in minutes... seconds."
"We come in pants," said Rankell as he rounded the corner. The absurdity injections the Worm had given him to survive the trip across pseudospace were still swimming about in his back brain. Clove glided soundlessly to a stop beside him, locking eyes with the guide.

"Hmm. So you do," replied Phalien, looking him up and down.
"The Kestrel Phalien I presume?" he queried.
"Yes, Mr Rankell, it is I and who is your companion?"
"This is Clove, my personal assistant. From the Office."
Clove looked blankly at her, not blinking.

Last updated: 21/06/2007

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"Anarchism's great project is to dissolve the asymmetry of power. How? There are thousands of alternatives and there is not only one solution. To advance 'one' solution would be a doctrine of power, a manifestation of power."
- Venezuelan University Academic Alfredo Vallota
quoted from El Libertario

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