Still Without Sky
By William Mack
“Still Without Sky” is an adaptation and sequel to “Without Sky”, written by Natan Dubovitsky, which describes a dystopian future in the midst of World War V. William Mack is the psuedonym of a retired Army Officer, writer, and master of all things information-related.
There was no atmosphere over our region. That is why we moved to the Megacity: to breathe and to survive. MC-48 was the last option. It was the least populated of the world’s megacities, and hugged the coastline far from our home. Most importantly: MC-48 had not yet suspended immigration protocols like MCs 1–36 in Neweurasia.
Our new home was a cybernetic organism with an active metabolism which still supported growth and reproduction. In one of the largest slums, where the Platinum Mosque stood, they even built de-radicalization and re-conciliation centers after it was designated as a stable zone (SZ). The same projects were conducted in the smaller slums at the foot of the Grand Cathedral.
I understood the mentality of the MC people despite being from a much smaller city. They suffered greatly during the Period of Regional Conflict and Demographic Shifts. Though it was insulting that they considered us intruders and one step closer to collapse, we understood them. Most saw MC6 swell to 39 million people and collapse from extreme temperature inversion even though it had been a Stable Zone with suspended immigration protocols for quite some time. No matter what social networks managed to mobilize, they did not drive us away.
The more rational citizens understood that it was not our fault we were left with no atmosphere. On the contrary, it was a great honor for us in a way. A backhanded-blessing from history. Our atmosphere was compromised during the First Non-linear war, when aggressive extremist states were finally destroyed by Coalition Forces (CFs). Until then, our atmosphere was the best; it protected us from ultraviolet radiation which harmed our health, from solar winds that interfered with our technology, from dependence on other actors for air. All of these and more gave the Coalition Forces communication advantages on the global battlefield, and it’s not surprising: this was the era in which global forces were interconnected through cybernetic protocols.
This was the era of persistent conflict, a never ending result of the first Non-linear War. In the primitive wars of the twentieth century, wars were fought by opposing states or alliances of states. Early twenty-first century wars also involved conflict among states, emerging states and failed states. The first Non-linear War involved regular and irregular intercontinental coalitions and wasn’t two against two, or three against one. “It was all against all.”
After the war, new states emerged filling the space between the countless metroplexes. Violent domestic security departments disbanded while supranational courts and economic unions collapsed. After the collapse, rehabilitation projects in the MCs sprouted, and became Stable Zones. The Stable Zones re-established global connectivity and offered the most valuable commodity after the collapse: Security. For a short period, the overall Stability Rating in 72% of the MCs’ stable spaces was moderate.
The People’s Summer followed, which led to the creation of the Global Megacity Treaty. The first of the Megacity Treaty Protocols involved the Literacy and Resiliency Protocols, and these protocols were most certainly for the people. These initiatives prioritized predictive analysis of urban and population patterns on both terrestrial and extraterrestrial colonies. The Temporarily Administered Cities and outlying regions, which were all part of the initial Continental Rehabilitation Project, were partitioned, generously granted autonomy and disconnected from their parent regions. So much optimism and confusion was all mixed up in the momentum and reconstruction of the People’s Summer.
And what a summer it was! Not like the earlier ones. This summer connected and mobilized millions across the globe to re-establish peace and prosperity after the war. The summer was optimistic, but it was also practical and had goals. The People announced non-violent resistance movements centered on the rule of law, functioning economies, transparency, unity, equality, and most importantly: Security.
Megacity leaders rose from the victorious CFs with their experience, reputations and viral social media endorsements. They formed Megacity Unions linked by trade and protocol and transitioned CFs into the Protection and Preservation Services (PPS). The PPS was a civil-paramilitary organization with a two year mandatory conscription and integration into all cyber, diplomatic, political, economic, ecological, social, information, science and technology, infrastructure, urban terrain and time domains. The conscription stipulation was a predictive aspect of the security protocols, since the majority of the service members were veteran fighters of the early counterinsurgency campaigns, narco wars, and first Non-linear War. In Non-linear war we were taught that everyone fights, and now everybody would serve.
“War was understood as a process, more specifically part of a process, its acute phase, not the most important”. The most important processes were re-stabilizing massive population centers, re-distributing resources through the green market protocols which abolished corporate law and connecting the rapidly expanding metabolisms of the MCs digitally across the globe.
Therefore, most people came to the megacities purely for survival. Each megacity was a globalized microcosm with a municipal broadband “Meganet” and was composed of people fleeing unstable regions where anarchy was vying with cartel and extremist law and atmospheres were riddled with toxins, disease and poverty. The immigrants didn’t care about the ideologies on-line, they weren’t motivated by ideas. We cared about being able to breathe decent air (maybe not even the best), about being able to be alive and go outside without worrying who was coming. Millions of people we were, and we all just wanted security. We were cut-off, but we found out about the progress, about the Protocols, about the work and to all of us, each MC represented tolerance and economic possibility. Even the most overcrowded MC offered a cybernetic metabolism that was always there, always functioning, always consistent despite Revisionist or Extremist Populations with radical beliefs about technology, and culture, and religion and what was left of the environment. My mother couldn’t tell us what “radical views” meant when we were younger.
But all of this was realized and analyzed later by historians and economists. Then, it was just forever war and rather horrifying. I was 14. We were all 14 or younger, all 30 year olds in today’s society. We remember how, from all cardinal directions, the drones swooped down. There was no roaring from above and no rumbling from below.
At least 2,000 Protection and Preservation Services members and Extremist fighters decimated each other throughout the day deemed “silence in slum 822”. The PPF-A was a specialized force responsible for eradicating human drivers of instability in the mega-urban environment. They walked like ghosts through the slums. They combed the urban domains tracking Extremist State fighters behind cyber and physical attacks in our corner of the continent.
The Protection and Preservation Services also abolished the force segregation so that hybrid skilled formations could aggregate and disaggregate seamlessly. Service members were equipped with the latest MC technology, like direct neural interfaces linking them to autonomous machines and mission command systems. Their neutralizing tools were also biometrically enabled with synchronized cog and re-cog in real time. At that time, man-machine combinations were commonplace in all aspects of MC society. They introduced biometrically enabled and autonomous activities as part of everyday life. Our beloved “internet of being”.
As a result of the enhancements, the threshold for inhabitant and non-combatant casualties during urban operations was lowered and development support was increased drastically. There was practically no collateral damage, only the small and already damaged shanty homes typical of the camps. The only time “kill” was the effect involved close quarters chemical, biological, or radiological combat or hostage taking situations. Nuclear weapons threats decreased significantly after the First Non-linear War, in which regional capabilities were significantly disrupted. The non-lethal “capture” systems were effective across almost the complete depth of the battlefield. These systems not only accelerated human interrogations and intelligence fusion, but could also instantaneously share such intelligence globally. De-radicalization and assimilation protocols involving entire families were also enacted. These were crucial for re-evaluating Assimilation Success Rates and Societal Contribution Potential; crucial in activating or suspending specific MC protocols.
During the raid, our mother tried to shelter us in the slum-trenches with the rest of our estranged relatives. She smiled at us nervously. She held our heads in her arms and wrapped her beads tightly around each finger. She was very pretty even when she was afraid. Above the slum-trenches, the sky was vacant, but we were still trapped. They had initiated the isolation protocols as soon as the fighting started. The parents cried for help from our side of the bridge and begged them to take the children. At least the smallest children. The PPF occupied the bridges, and we children couldn’t understand them because they were not speaking any of our megacity’s five official languages. We were also still too young for language module implants in the cerebral cortex. We understood our parents, our relatives and most of the people in Slum 822 because they were from similar, forlorn regions.
My older brother said “They won’t let us in” and that we would have to dig down. We burrowed into the beach as fast as we could. I know it seems strange, but we are, in fact, much more nimble and intelligent than the drones and enhanced Protection and Preservation Services forces. And one detail: it was summer. Sweltering and decaying summer. It was always summer. The sand was malleable and too soft, and the air was already becoming thick. No one could breathe under the sand and under fire. For the first time, I felt like I was home.
Mama and my brother burrowed in together with me. They were wet and shaking. My brother, a brave and clever boy, activated his 6G mobile device to see what the slum was saying on the surface web. He synced it to mine, so that we could post together on ReReddit.com. With him, I was happy and not bored in our burrow, so my time passed splendidly. The tail of an MQ-9X reaper fell on us towards evening.
The drones which originated in the Western Coalition were now pirated everywhere and super-light, made of almost weightless materials. They were soundless and wirelessly linked to the individual forces on the ground. It’s no doubt; someone knows exactly where the tail fell above us.
The place where we were hiding attracted something else, something much larger. Unfortunately, it was a large component of a satellite’s structural subsystem. Our burrow was deep, but not as deep as the base of the satellite was heavy. The sand above us was damp and compacted, but all the same, it was sand, not concrete, not titanium, not the shawl of Our Lady: sand. And sand is not titanium. I learned this well then and know it now. To this day, wake me up in dark of night and ask me: Is sand titanium or not? I will answer with a question: Ask my Mama and brother.
I lay between Mama and my brother and didn’t hear the blow. It’s possible that he was streaming domestic crisis management protocols when the excessive weight crushed him. He yelled out something about water rations and frightened me. It’s possible that my mother also let out some kind of sound, but I’m not certain. I’m not sure she even had time for half a smile, like the one she always had when my teenage brother talked about cute girls or boys. I hope it wasn’t painful.
They were killed. I wasn’t. Death came to them swiftly in a scorching, metallic blow, but bypassed my bloodstained door. Fumes and fuel and flames seeped over everything. But only my brain was just touched by their dark and overwhelming presence. Something seeped out of my brain and evaporated: memory. It left with my family.
When they dug me out of the sandy, carbon-fiber fort, I was chilled to the bone. The scorching sun wasn’t up yet and my family was long gone in a pale slumber. I saw a hazy, gray-orange glow, with groups of shadows on the ground and in the air. I could feel the feathery touch of the scanners pass over my irises. “Who are you?” I asked in the first language I recalled. “We are you”, they answered calmly. Initially, I did not understand the response, but when repeated I understood. They spoke in a language vaguely familiar to me, but I did not know why. “Who are you?!?” I became frightened.
They treated my brain injury, but I still couldn’t remember. This type of injury and severe post-traumatic stress cannot be cured, can’t even really be managed. The satellite crushed my consciousness and wiped away my memory. What do I see in place of the air above the city? Nothing. What does it look like? What does it resemble? It looks like nothing, resembles nothing. Nothing was visible, not even the world’s tallest skyscrapers. There was just nothing when I looked up. Nothing when I inhaled.
After the raids, there were fewer casualties than I imagined. There was minimal destruction and the Protection and Preservation Services provided no emergency service in our slum. My 6G mobile interface was flashing in my right eye and no situational awareness holograms were active. I was taken to a place that quarantined a group of fifty boys and girls like me. All of us, taken from the rubble, turned out to be the same age. Why? No one knew. We were taken down the sacred hill where a Protection and Preservation Services cordon was in place. Drones and sixth-generation fighters loitered overhead and small units were still clearing already damaged shanty clusters outside of the cordon. They seemed to be passive searches and re-organization of personnel.
Not seeing the sky above the city was one thing, but no memory was something else. None of us knew where we came from. We had no memory of a time before the raid. There was no ambiguity and no coalition saving grace. There was nothing but uncertainty and chaos. We understood nothing of the conflict, of tactics or weapons. No one could tell us what anything meant, and no one of us could understand. They uploaded questions and downloaded answers. Many of us of course deteriorated and became confused, became suicidal. The rest of us organized ourselves to stay afloat, to save ourselves or suffocate together.
After an unknown amount of time had passed, we were joined by others. Others from the slums who looked like us and spoke like us. We were all transferred to the observation station up the hill where groups were gathered. “In these shadows and spider webs, in these false complexities, hide and multiply all the villainies of the world.” They are the House of Lies. When I looked closer at their insignia I saw “Protection and Preservation Services 6”. A person spoke to me, a woman, possibly a man: “We are here to protect you. You belong with us”. When I looked out towards the sea, I finally saw something gripping the coastline; an uncloaked naval fleet moving inland.
They will come tomorrow. They will conquer or perish. We have no other way.
Bibliography and Credits:
“Without Sky” is a science fiction short story, first published as an annex to the magazine Russian Pioneer, No 46 (May 2014).
http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue582/without_sky.html
Translation Copyright © 2014 by Bill Bowler
