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  DUBSTEP SUCCUBUS

  The Fallen Of Icarus

  Written by Aaron Siverling

  Copyright 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark. The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One: That Awkward Moment When You Realize…

  … I'm falling to my death.

  “Thiiiiis is juuust typicaaaaal!” I screamed.

  First I escaped Hell, then I survived having my body liquified and sold to a nutrient recycling company for hydroponics.

  For my next trick I needed to survive a 13,000 foot fall.

  I started laughing. I tend to laugh when I'm nervous. Or utterly terrified.

  I don't know why but I've always been that way.

  Like when I was twelve and too young to know any better, I told that nun, “You have the soul of a fat person." And a second later she was screaming non-nunish things at me while strangling me. I'd gasped out a few giggles then too.

  That's the other thing about me. I seem to have the uncanny ability to say the exact thing that pushes people. Pushes them right over the edge of the cliff of reasonable tolerance and into the pit of “I'm going to murder your face!”

  Seriously, it's like a super power.

  I just look at someone, say the first thing that comes to mind and then its strangulation city.

  Not always of course, sometimes it's just yelling or screaming or threatening or incoherent sputtering. Or a combination thereof.

  Maybe I’m psychic. Maybe it's a subconscious calculation of a person's thoughts, mood and personality traits based on their words, actions and physical appearance.

  Or maybe grandpapi forgot to tip a waitress at the pancake house and she turned out to be an evil witch so she put a curse upon my family.

  Who knows.

  It probably wasn't important at the moment seeing as I was, you know, falling to my death.

  The wind slapped me around like I was the punchline to a cosmic three stooges comedy.

  I gasped for air stolen by terror and hysterical laughter as I instinctively tried to stabilize my fall. You know, like that secret agent does in the movies? Falling out of a plane without a parachute, diving down through the air towards a henchmen and defeating him in aerial combat.

  Then he takes the bad guys parachute for his own and pulls the cord just in the nick of time. All the while Rock and Roll plays in the background.

  I wanted that to be me. I wanted to be that awesome.

  But that wasn't me. In that moment I was the exact opposite of awesome.

  In that moment it was about as fun as crashing a motorcycle.

  It's all fun and games until you hit the ground a hundred and twelve miles per hour. Bouncing and rolling down the road as the street gods took your tribute in skin and blood.

  So, you know, kinda fun.

  After several seconds of epicly failing to stabilize my fall, I decided to stop fighting and just enjoy the ride.

  I kept spinning around and around in the air. Seeing flashes of the sky, the forest beneath, then the sky again. Over and over in a terrifying, sideways merry go round of doom while I giggled on an adrenaline high.

  Hey, that would be a great name for a Heavy Metal band. Merry Go Round Of Doom!

  Then I fell through the trees. The sensation of the leaves and branches passing through my body was the fourth most disturbing thing I have ever experienced.

  Then, I could see the ground. The end of my life, rushing toward me. As implacable as a mastodons massive foot coming down to crush a cricket.

  “Eeep!” I squea - uh - roared in defiant fury, and forced myself to watch the end coming.

  I slammed into the ground… and… through the ground.

  “Well, this isn’t right." I spoke the words but couldn't hear them.

  Hitting the ground felt like landing in a bottomless pool of chocolate pudding.

  And not the good tasting pudding either. This was the sugarless, gluten free, fat free, fun free, why does this even exist, chocolate pudding that oozed through my body.

  Down, down, deeper and deeper while the pressure of it squeezed the adrenaline assisted giggles out of me. Until, finally, something like buoyancy won the day against gravity.

  I was pushed up, closer and closer to the surface, All the while feeling every stone, every wiggling worm and every bit of dirt pass through my body like I was a semi solid spectre.

  That was the third most disturbing thing I've ever experienced.

  I oozed out of the ground, jerked my head up and gasped for air. Though I hadn't felt the slightest bit suffocated while under the earth.

  I rolled onto my back, the ground mostly solid beneath me as I stared up at the world I had just fallen into.

  The air was filled with liquid multicolor. Winds of a million sunsets rushed and flowed like rivers and streams through the air.

  I could actually see the different streams moving at different speeds. Like falling into one set of rapids before tumbling into another, each one going in their own direction.

  I guess that was the reason my fall was so erratic.

  The world looked too bright, too intense and it felt like it should hurt to look at, but it didn't.

  Then the world started to lose its color. Well, no, the colors didn't lessen, they dimmed.

  The bark of a tree changed from silver to grey, the burnt orange dirt to brown, the blue white water of a stream darkened and the leaves faded to a normal, if still bright, green.

  I sat up jerkily, too breathless to laugh, panting and grinning so hard it almost hurt.

  I got woozily to my feet and just stood there. Swaying a little and letting myself be amazed. Amazed that I was alive. Amazed that there was no pain. No persistent, always there aches, that I had gotten so used too.

  Then, when I was able, I took a deep shuddering breath and said, “I wanna do that again!”

  ♦♦♦

  When You’re Going Through Hell, Roll With The Punches. Because Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolates. Eat What You Can, As Fast As You Can And Try Not To Puke Afterwards.

  Take a minute to imagine the world's most institutionalized, soul crushing, boring as possible prison.

  Got it? Good. Now imagine a place even less fun and you may possibly, have an inkling of what it was like to live in the Grey Hell.

  We call it the Grey Hell because it was designed by Gray Hall Enterprises. Well, that, plus everything there was in the same shade of mind numbing grey. Picked either because of its cheapness or because it seemed to suck the very life and joy out of anybody who looked at it too long.

  Most likely, it was a combination of both.

  Every day is exactly the same. We all wake up at the same time. The ultra efficient, ultra cheap, ultra
ugly white light snaps on at the same time, every day.

  A five second countdown appears in our field of view and we have five seconds to forget. To forget our names, our families, our dreams, our past and the Outside.

  Five seconds to shake off the concrete floor chill and to stand in formation. Each of us lined up in our own number Chain.

  My number Chain was 24601. I was 24601-01, so I was always first in line. Always facing forward, always looking forward. Never up or down nor left or right.

  The back wall we faced had pneumatic tubes running from the grey ceiling, down the grey walls. Two tubes for each line of Chains. One to send things up and the other to send things down.

  After the wake up counter hit zero a ten second countdown started. Which meant that every Zero One at the front of the line had that much time to strip. To roll up their grey shirt, pants, underwear and slippers into a single bundle.

  Black censor boxes automatically appeared in everyone's field of vision to hide specific areas. It was cheaper than real privacy and conformed to the public nudity laws.

  Everything moved like a clockwork machine, powered by despair, greased with hope and maintained by the Overseers.

  In the 024 Facility, every Chain consisted of five people. I didn’t know how many Chains per line or lines per facility. I did know that there were several thousand people in my Grey Hell.

  There were also a few facilities with Chains of differing amounts and they performed different jobs.

  I could ask 24601-03, my Chains third, for specifics. Zero Three could tell me if I really wanted to know.

  I didn't.

  We were chained together by shared pain and punishment. Love and friendship. The members of your Chain became your closest friends or your closest enemies.

  When one member fails, we all fail. When one lagged behind, we all lagged behind. When one fell, then it is up to the rest to carry them.

  Your Chain can hold you up or hold you back. It can save your sanity or spread the misery around. Because when one is punished, all are punished.

  Either way, the Chain serves its purpose. To keep us down, keep us in line, keep us quiet. To keep us from escaping.

  My Chain was lucky, we became friends. We shared and mitigated our suffering.

  I was their Zero One, always the first. Just like every other 01 at the front of the line. I was the first to step up to the pneumatic tube and pull out a canister.

  Each one contained a 12 oz bottle of grey nutrient mix and a one inch dissolvable toothbrush with a dab of hardened toothpaste between the bristles.

  Our daily dose of nutrient mix had all the fats, sugars, vitamins, minerals, nutrients and basically anything else a person needed for a full day of work.

  Supposedly.

  It also had the consistency of plastic flavoured tofu tossed into a blender. After three years of nothing else, you can't even taste it anymore.

  After "eating" we chewed on the brush's bristles get the toothpaste foaming. As we did that, we stuffed our clothes and the empty bottle into the canister to send back up.

  Another countdown started and we turned left, walking down the line, ignoring the fact that the only thing between you and public humiliation was a digital overlay.

  The line ends at the sanitation/elimination stations, a shower head above and a metal grate below. The grate slid open and you to expelled what little biological waste the nutrient mix gave you.

  The black censorship boxes covered everything, except the sounds of course.

  The grate slid shut and the shower turned on for thirty seconds. After the water shut off, grey gooey soap splat down and we had sixty seconds to scrub down.

  Shampoo you ask? Not necessary. Something in the food or in the soap makes it so all of our hair falls out. And I mean all hair. Body hair, head hair, face hair and even our eyebrows.

  Apparently it's cheaper that way. Less soap to clean, less water to rinse, less physical maintenance. Even our nails grew at a vastly slower pace.

  Another sixty seconds of water to rinse off and it's back to the end of the line to drip dry.

  Once we're back to the front of the line the pneumatic tubes start dispensing clean clothes and we have ten seconds to dress.

  This is what my generation had been reduced to. Not the whole generation of course, just the unlucky ones.

  Mind numbing, if not back breaking, labor. That's how work goes in the 024 Facility. Trapped in cages made of metal shelves that held boxes, day in and day out. The only opening in the cage faces a belt, conveying more boxes.

  Each one with a barcode that the computer in our collar reads through our AR interface.

  A string of numbers pops up with the Confirm command. We respond by sending the same string of numbers to the program and a confirm signal.

  Then it gives us a smaller string of numbers that corresponds to a digital overlay on one of the boxes on the shelf. These numbers designate the item location and amount needed.

  We send back a different string of numbers for verification and another confirm signal. Then we put the specified amount in the box.

  When the box has everything it needs, a query and confirm signal is sent to the system and the box is sent down to the next person in the Chain.

  Then you do it all over again, for fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Every year. For the foreseeable future. That is, every day except for the Rest Day.

  The Rest Day was an integral part of the system that kept us caged.

  In the beginning, in the first days we lived in the Grey Hell, work was all there was.

  Then they gave us the game.

  ♦♦♦

  Presently. I was Occupied With Surviving.

  “I liiiive!” I screamed into the sky, “Look at me now Overseers! I! Am! Free! I! Am! Alive! - Ow! My tung. Bit my tung! Soopid fangths."

  I spoke slower and with more care. "Okay, note to self. Learn to speak with fangs. Need practice. Lots of practice. Well, I have just the thing."

  I yelled various suggestions about how the Overseers could violate themselves with various parts of their own anatomy as I did my victory dance.

  Luckily no one was around to see it because my victory dance involves liberal usage of fist pumps and hip thrusts, a moonwalk and a bit of disco fever thrown in.

  Nobody needed to see that.

  “It's the first day of the rest of my life!" I sang at the top of my lungs, "Nothing can get me down because… huh… what is… huh. It's kinda cute, in a scary… ah! Get it off! Get it off! It's eating my face! IT'S EATING MY FACE!”

  Chapter Two: A Little Background. A Little Explaining. A Lot Of Civil Rights Violations.

  We were the runaways, the throwaways, the lockaways and all of us were born different. In the same way.

  Our parents expected us to have the world at our fingertips. Connected to the world's knowledge with a thought. Born with the genetic engineering our parents had invented. The world was at our fingertips.

  Originally, genetic engineering had to be tailored to every individual. A change to one gene affected another gene in a possible biological domino effect.

  Imagine a mad geneticist movie monster.

  Imagine the horror.

  One wrong tweak of the genetic code and your DNA is as twisted and tangled as a basket of yarn full of kittens.

  The kittens of horror.

  Hey. That would be a great name for a Heavy Metal band. Kittens Of Horror.

  Anyway, all that meant was that any alterations required careful tests, time researching the individuals genetic structure and stupid amounts of money. So only the super rich got "physical perfection".

  Then they found a way around all that. With the advance of technology they learned a way to, sort of, patch the genetic code of the general public. Making it affordable to everyone.

  And by affordable, I mean it was like having a monthly car payment for the next hundred years or so. But hey, when you get to live with perfect health (mostly) and with
an extra hundred years (or so), why not?

  Also, it was a guaranteed inheritable condition. Awesome for the kids right? Unless the parents died. Because those monthly payments were also inheritable. Then you're an orphan with half a lifetime debt.

  That's why parents had to sign a gene patch comprehensive life insurance policy before being eligible.

  A win win for the companies, not so much for the orphan.

  The patch made the aging process slow dramatically around the age of thirty. It was the same for the children born with the genetic patch.

  Except for a certain percentage of those children. A significant percentage actually. They didn't get the physical growth slowdown at thirty.

  We got it during puberty.

  And we didn’t just slow down. As far as the experts could tell, the ageing process was brought to a standstill.

  I mean we weren't immoral. They found that there was some sort of internal ageing going on with our organs and we would probably die at around two hundred.

  But our minds, hormones and physical appearance would be stuck.

  At least that was the general consensus. There were still people who got stuck at twelve and continued ageing, albeit still at the slower rate. But the common theory was that their appearance would stop aging when they physically hit their mid to late teens.

  That's what they thought anyway. They just didn’t know. I mean, ageing only on the inside? How did that even work?

  Whatever.

  It shouldn't of been a problem anyway. I mean, not really.

  The adults could have just accepted that some of their doctors, their lawyers, their bosses, senators and judges would look younger than them.

  Would it be an adjustment? Sure.

  A totally acceptable adjustment? You'd think.

  Except that it wasn't.

  There were "concerns" about how we would be able to perform certain jobs if we had "teenage hormones". Questions about whether we were responsible enough to have the same privileges as "real" adults.

  Were we really mature enough to vote? To own, lease or rent property? To buy a vehicle?