Carnage by Aer-ki Jyr (the chimp paradox .TXT) 📕

his Pefbar out and looking for surveillance equipment. The city streets didn’t look advanced enough to support such technology, but he found it numerous places. Tiny cameras set up where they were virtually invisible to onlookers. And through those they could see the streets and the faces of the individuals. With a little facial recognition programming they could track their guy wherever he went, with Paul wishing the Tri’meori was wearing a hood, though that wouldn’t matter if there was a continuous feed down the streets. If someone was watching they could just follow his silhouette, face showing or not.

“Be right back,” Paul said, wandering off in the crowd as he blacked out three of the nearest cameras using his Po’letvo, which essentially put a dark bubble around them so they couldn’t see anything. Usually it was a technique used to blind an opponent, but it worked just as well on camera technology, though not holo.

But they didn’t have holo, so as the nearest cameras were blacked out Paul walked over to the wall with one of them and jumped up to it, sticking to the wall with his robe covering his entire body so all anyone could see was the cloth…but he distracted those who noticed, making him essentially invisible to the nearby crowd while being quite obvious about his wall crawl.

He got a hand onto the camera and triggered his armored gauntlet on that arm to slither up and cover his fingers, from which he extended nanite tethers into the wiring and hacked into the cable connecting the camera to its source, for it wasn’t wireless.

The programming was pathetically simple, and it didn’t take more than .46 seconds for him to take control of the central hub and deactivate all the cameras within the city. How long it would take for them to unjam their systems was unknown. A good tech could do it quickly if they knew their systems, but almost all people who used computers did not understand how they worked, so Paul was guessing the system would be down until they were forced to do a full restart from factory defaults, and he and Cal-com would be out of here long before that could happen.

Paul dropped back down to the ground and ran to catch up, his cloak flapping in the wind of his movement as he went, but nobody around noticed as he had all the minds distracted as he passed by them within inches in some cases.

“Their eyes are gone,” he reported when he caught up to Cal-com. “Let’s deviate off this path in case they have the ability to follow a straight line,” Paul said, half sarcastically.

“Having fun?”

“Not today,” the Archon said icily. “But it’s a wake-up call I needed…and if we hadn’t come he’d be dead shortly. So worth on many levels.”

“Are you ok?”

“I’m ticked we let this shit happen when we have the power to stop it. Hadarak or no, we can’t let this continue. You were right.”

“I didn’t know that when I brought you here,” Cal-com admitted. “But I’m not surprised. The galaxy is so large there will always be corners for depravity to exist within. This is the galactic norm. Star Force is the beneficial anomaly.”

“Then the galaxy needs changed.”

“I agree. How do you want to go about doing that?”

Paul stared at the back of Cal-com’s hood as he trailed behind him a half step. “Are you testing me?”

“Life does the testing far better than I can. Are you taking responsibility on yourself?”

Paul checked himself. “I have to. I can’t stand by when this stuff is happening.”

“Then you risk burning yourself out with a load you cannot bear.”

“What’s my other option?”

“Take the same actions by choice, not responsibility. Saving people is optional, not required.”

“I feels required for me.”

“Not for me,” Cal-com differed. “I will make the same choice as you, and always intervene, but it’s because I answer the call of the lightside. Not because I’m responsible for the darkside happening out here.”

Paul closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “I see your point.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“What I can do. We get this guy to safety, then I call in an invasion force. This system’s sovereignty just got revoked.”

“Because that’s what you have to do?”

“Someone has to. The need is here.”

“That is the call I spoke of. Warriors respond to the need. And without the need the warriors are lost. In a universe of infinite dark corners, I do not believe we will ever be without that need. We just need to learn where to look for them.”

“That’s not enough. This…should not exist. It should not be this way. I can’t tolerate it.”

“Nor should you. It’s the way you don’t tolerate that is at issue. You are inefficient because you lay part of the blame on your inaction.”

Paul frowned. “Inefficient?”

“Your targeting sensors are misaligned if you think you are at fault in any way.”

“If I have the power to stop it and I don’t, then someone is suffering for my inaction.”

“They are suffering because the universe put them in this situation,” Cal-com said, his voice growing icy. “Not you. If you are going to hate something, hate the random birthing process the universe employs. You did not create it and are not responsible for it. And you are doing much to correct its madness.”

“I guess a clone would have a different perspective on that.”

“We are born when there is a need, and only when there is a need. The universe births people in the most horrid and unwinnable of situations. I often think the universe is darkside incarnate, but then Star Force is here, and pure darkside cannot spawn lightside, so some other dynamic must be in play,” Cal-com said as they switched streets again,