This Broken Earth: A Serial Novel by Alex Mastroianni Chapter One

The Combat Eyes darted about in the air like softball-sized gnats. They dodged the hurled shrapnel easily, though it moved at bullet speeds. The audiovisual drones were old hands at avoiding destruction.

Below them, in a section of flattened freeway, Ultra Giga launched more car doors and chunks of concrete at the annoying little things. Ultra was your basic type one meta; big and strong and hard to hurt. He considered himself part of the metahuman 'old school' so to speak. He was one of the oldest metas roaming about these days.

Giga was certain that Rad Lad would not have engaged him if the Combat Eyes weren't watching. Combat Eye Media, or CEM, was the only subscription entertainment service that broadcasted meta engagements live. Both Rad Lad and Ultra Giga were under CEM contract. Everyone was now. Every meta.

The word in the CEM chats was that Ultra Giga was losing his edge, and Rad Lad had been spoiling for a fight for a week now. Rad Lad was a young energy manipulator. Apparently Rad Lad was behind in his engagement quota and if he didn't get in a fight by the end of this month he'd be in breach of contract. This would explain why he accosted Ultra Giga, of all people, with almost no provocation. The fight had started in the desert of Nevada. Rad Lad made his 'home turf' an old nuclear test site and Giga, while jumping across America miles at a time, passed right through his turf without permission. A petty reason to fight by any one's standards. But a metahuman in the position that Rad was in could be very dangerous.

Rad Lad took advantage of the fact that Giga was preoccupied with the irksome Combat Eyes and sent a burst of plasma his way. Ultra Giga saw it almost in time and hurled half a car at the ball of fire. Still some of it hit its mark and the giant hollered in pain as the tiny sun singed him. A normal man would have been cremated.

Rad Lad hovered ominously fifty yards away. Ultra was infuriated now. Without thinking he hurled the other half of the car at Rad Lad, who dodged it in the air easily. Rad was laughing now, amused by the rage he stoked. Giga screamed something like "You little twit!' or "You little shit!". His face was very red. Then Giga looked up at the Combat Eyes again. In the CEM chats there was a collective sigh as people thought Giga would begin throwing stuff at them again. CEM subscribers wanted to see metas fight metas. A least this fight was in a densely populated part of Los Angeles. The Damage King-a forum administrator- estimated the collateral at almost ninety million US now. The loss of life was no mean number either, but it was something seldom speculated on. The impact of Giga's meteoric crash landing killed many in the immediate area outright. Anyone still alive would almost certainly contract acute radiation poisoning from Rad Lad.

Ultra Giga stared at the CombEyes for a long minute. His face was no longer red and he appeared to be breathing deeply. he was speaking, no, yelling now. The survivors in the immediate area could add hearing damage to the injuries they incurred today. Giga bellowed like a chorus of metatrons. "Rad Lad! I offer my apology. I did not mean to jump through your land. I'll give you one more chance. Let's make nice and we'll both walk away!"

One full second and then the chats exploded with derision. What was Ultra Giga thinking? Even Rad Lad, who was trying to keep his war face on, smirked. Giga was a little long in the tooth, and the older metas tend to get a little weepy and sentimental. Surely they both knew they couldn't just 'walk away'.

Contractually or otherwise, there would be a fight.

"I'm gonna put you down like a lame horse, old man! Apology or not!" With that, Rad Lad began to glow a yellowish green. he was absorbing ambient heat and light, condensing it into something hotter than the tiny sun he fired earlier. Giga hefted a crushed SUV over his head. The body of one of the occupants lolled out of the driver side window, as if it fell asleep while trying to escape. Birds were dropping out of the sky from the fallout oozing out of Rad Lad. His eyes became two white hot suns. "Nnng! You ready to die now? You old bastard!" Rad Lad thrust his arms forward, preparing to launch impossibly hot plasma at Giga. For his part, Giga tensed up, readying to launch the vehicle into the path of the plasma bolt. What neither of them knew is that Rad Lad's plasma, when its as amped up as it is now, can trigger total mass conversion. When the car hit it, the resultant explosion could easily vaporize most of Los Angleles, at a conservative estimate. In the chats, a few people realized this and were trying to let others know, but they were drowned put under the barrage of idiotic cheers and insults. This was going to be big.

Ultra Giga tensed up, and Rad Lad cocked his head back, as if he were channeling energy from the sun itself. "Don't do this kid!" Giga was pleading again.Maybe he knew about the potential for mass conversion. It didn't matter. If Ultra Giga lived through this, his reputation as a hard-ass would not. He was barely audible over the roar of the energy Rad Lad was generating.

Then something completely unexpected happened. Somebody, a child, screamed, they screamed so loud the audio pickups on the CombEyes went out one by one. it was coming from inside the SUV Giga was about to throw. The scream became a supersonic keening, drowning out the roar of Rad Lad's plasma and even Gigas own confused screaming. Then the most unbelievable thing ever happened.

Rad Lad stopped glowing and the color drained from his face. he seemed to turn gray. Then, he fell to the ground,clanking. An anatomically correct lead statue complete with hollow veins and hard, thin wisps of lead wire hair. Giga could not believe what he was seeing. The plasma Rad had absorbed just sort of...fizzled. it was then that Giga made a small, feeble choking sound that was incongruous with such a huge man. His pupils dilated to the point of obscuring his gunmetal irises. He too, dropped dead.



For the first time in years the CEM chats-at least the main ones- were silent. Everyone watched this unbelievable scene.Well, everyone that could afford the hourly subscription. The recovery teams, who seldom had anything but bodies to recover, entered the area of smashed freeway only when it had proven to been somehow scrubbed of its radiation. They wore full safety protocol anyway. Like bulky orange robots, they immediately went to the vehicle that now sat on top of Ultra Giga's corpse.

The driver was dead and so was the passenger. In the back under some sweatshirts was a nine year old girl. She was catatonic, seemingly. The finding of this survivor was relayed to the highest levels of CEM management. Somewhere, not even the metas knew where, a contract awaited the girl's signature.

rapt and rictus

A clutch of topology junkies laid into a ladyboy smoking Planck thyme. They inverted the poor fucker without creating a cuff. The antiquated nanofuzz pulsed a press meme to all the major meat drives. Billions would dream of haunting mugshots and Metatrons booming: 'Have you seen this man?'. The post-mythic deconstructionists sip blood and milk in a Maori cafe, grimacing at the ethanethiol stink of the living dead turning the corner before the zombies do. Quantum uncertainty ghouls. Supplicants of Schrodinger's corpse. The leader carries a caterwauling box with no air holes. Obsolete nanodrive PCs are rendered down to a carbohydrate feed paste for livestock traversing the galaxy. Since Chuck Seven Tusp broke the femto barrier, the near orbit scrapyards won't pay more than fifty thousand terrans a kilo for nanoform media. The rest goes to the dole houses so the poor bastard kids have something to learn on. Very few people alive today know the gut level despair of growing up using outdated media. It does something to one's resolve.



A thought bulletin screeches intrusively through the brains of a North America at the dinner table. A few dozen vacuum adapted belt miners- godlike things who prance through space with no aide- were flung from their silicate bore as its attitude jets misfired. Forever they will float, in the postures of snow angels. Closed biologies that make food from monohydrogen. There faces both rapt and rictus.



The investigation of the attempted assassination of a child who will be president years from now has revealed that he will lose the future election anyway. No one bothered to shift the bullet from where it waits for its victims heart, two decades hence.



What hasn't been made public was who our almost president lost to. Her name is Bluish James, the first president on welfare while holding office. Oh yes. Yes



A boy in First Chicago was arrested yesterday for checking the future to see if he will graduate cum laudi. Charges were dropped since he only observed his graduation. The Travelstone case of Broken Earth Noon provided the precedent. In quasi-Europe the latest fad seems to be world tinting. Cindy Secondsago has mostly reds and pinks and omits all grays and shadows. She does a pulsecolumn on sensourium customizing. Think here to download it.

The Schrodinger ghouls know. They know that forty minutes to the left of winter the far-flung space workers will return, having slingshot themselves around some default moon.

I don't know I'll know how to tell you this, but the vacuum adapted will return changed, like demigods having performed feats.

On the Ceres Manufact there is a dome called Place where its occupants are soaked in time oil and forced into the evolution of every conceivable ecological niche. Already a product is being marketed to the vampire sentients in its walls; Lac. Blood, milk and sugar. Already, recombinant focus groups are now in beta testing for mass production.

You can see them now, can't you? Those far-flung gods. They will make us all monsters. They will antiquate conscience.They will put us through agonizing alterations, and shove us naked out of airlocks. They'll give us horror and altered fluids. And we'll all be the better for it. Sipping blood, milk and sugar, our faces rapt and rictus.