A few centuries after the Collapse of the Old World, what remained of the state governments of California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona formed their own independent cooperative they called the New Western Conglomerate (NWC). Following this, efforts were made to restart major shipping lines between each other, each state supplying their own surplus goods to help rebuild their megacities and give the survivors a place to live.
Following reconstruction efforts, they then began to expand outwards, first surrounding each central megacity with outer cities that served as both a wall and a border checkpoint, then finally extending their reach much further outward into the ruins of smaller towns and villages, allowing citizens various different job opportunities, as well as options to where they might want to live.
-Rhys Mackey, The History of the West, vol. 1
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The town of Impact was built into the ruins of a bombed-out city about four centuries after the Collapse, and around three after the completion of the Western Rise. It consisted of two main districts, the outer being what remained of a sparse, old suburban neighborhood and the inner being the main trade and commerce hub.
Folks of all shapes and sizes called Impact home, and the inner city was always busy. Carts and stalls stocked with street food lined the cracked asphalt streets, vendors peddling bubbling bowls of perpetual stew, little boiled potato and vegetable dumplings, synmeat on sticks coated in a spicy fire-red sauce, and hot cups of tea to soothe a weary traveler’s mind. Racks on racks of woven rugs and tapestries were hawked by barrel-chested men and their grandmothers, showing off the intricate patterns and vibrant colors that seemed to bewitch the mind and befuddle the senses. Just a ways away from them, a merry band of musicians shouted folk-punk anthems to a cheering crowd, playing acoustic guitars, washtub basses, raggedy concertinas and the occasional trumpet or other brass instrument as they yelled about everything and nothing at once. It wasn’t paradise, but for them, it was home sweet home.
The tinny growl of a dirt bike’s engine fills the air of a quiet street on the east side of town, atop it sitting a man clad in dusty patchwork garb, his face and head obscured by a pale khaki hooded cloak and a sharp, angular helmet that lends him an almost canine silhouette. On the back of his bike, tied to an old luggage rack is a burlap sack, rough fabric held taut against its contents as it and the man sped down the road, kicking up sand and asphalt as they went.
Soon, he’d arrive behind a large brick building, weaving both him and his ride through a chicken-wire gate and into an open garage, leaning it against the wall and removing his helmet, revealing a scratched and scarred visage topped with scraggly brown hair. Resting his helmet on a loose chair, the man retrieved the bag from the back of his bike, struggling with both arms to lug it through a doorway and into the room behind the neon-lit frontage of TK’s Robotics and Repairs.
The back rooms were quiet, the space mostly used as a private lounge, storage room, and multi-purpose workshop for its owner (and by extension, his friends), its many walls lined with rusted metal shelves stuffed with scavenged pre-Collapse tech from all around Nevada. On one end of the room a few leather couches sit against the walls, their dusty old cushions haphazardly stitched and long since broken-in. By a desk with an archaic, boxy-looking computer perched atop it is a door, behind which the loud chattering of two voices can be heard. On the other end, a black pleather surgical chair is mounted in the center of the space, bordered by a few empty tables and a long workbench, the drawers ajar and the surface cluttered with loose tools. A wall rack with many hooks and brackets holds up a collection of cyberware prosthetics, arms, legs, neuroware, burnished steel sealed with a thin layer of wax, surfaces chipped and flaking but never rusted. High-ware like those are rare in these parts, after all, and TK cared for his collection.
Resting the package on one of the empty tables, the man dusted off his hands and sighed, before retreating to one of the empty couches, flopping down on his back and sinking into its cushions like a capsizing ship as he stared at a small spider crawling across the ceiling.
“Yeah, no problem man! Have a good one!” he hears, muffled by the wall leading into TK’s storefront proper, as the door opens and a towering figure steps into the room.
Tony Kowalski, better known by his patrons and friends as TK, was a very tall man, mostly due to his legs having been replaced by digitigrade cyberware prostheses after an accident he never wishes to recall, the pneumatic valves hissing and whistling quietly with every step he takes. On his back were mounted two pairs of cybernetic arms with thin, spindly fingers, interfaced with his spine by a set of long needles that let him articulate them with grade and precision. With his hunched stance and strange choice of cyberware, he’d look almost monstrous, if it weren’t for the pallid skin, brown mullet, stained black tank top and desert camouflage cargo shorts he always dresses himself in.
The door closes gently behind him as he turns to see the figure on his couch, staring idly at a spider in its web on the ceiling. His face brightens, and he smiles, a toothy grin that shows off a chipped incisor and a plated silver canine.
“Hey! Gibs, my man, how’ve you been!” he shouts, stretching his back and cracking his knuckles as he ambles over to the couch across from him.
One Randall Gibbon, a lean and limber man of average height and above-average dustiness would have been startled off the couch completely, if it weren’t for his right arm being jammed between the back and seat cushions, leaving him in a strange predicament where he was, in fact, in a heap on the floor, but his forearm was still trapped between the foam-filled leather blocks he once rested on. His eyes flitted about the room as he regained his bearings, finally locking onto the form of the corpulent man-spider that sat in front of him, clearly struggling to hold back a thunderous guffaw at his friend’s predicament.
He sighed, freeing his arms from their leathery prison and reintroducing his back to the couch in a significantly more comfortable manner. “Hey, TK. How’s biz been?”
“Oh, not too bad! Emi and John came by a bit ago for some minor adjustments, and guess what!” he responds, fiddling with the finger joints on one of his cyberarms. “Big bro Alex and Ma came by an hour ago to check up on me! She and Pa got real worried since it’s been a week since they said they heard anything, but apparently Rena didn’t relay the ping I sent her to Ma, even though I asked her to! Ain’t that somethin?”
“Weird.” said Gibbon, walking over to the table where the burlap package sits quietly. “Probably the dust storms, honestly. Sigs ‘round here always get a li'l finicky when it’s red out.” he replies, undoing the knot holding it together and carefully unwrapping his quarry. “Anywhose, check this out.”
TK obliges, meandering over to take a good look at the now-freed artifact. “Huh. Whatsit?” he asks.
On the table rests a metal sphere, supported by the layers of burlap cloth beneath it. Its surface is cold and smooth, covered in shifting swirls of navy blue and black that seem to flow like lava as they stare at it. A circular seam is seen at its top, as well as three trapezoidal ones on its lower sides, impossibly thin and perfectly set. Putting his ear to it, Gibbon hears a low buzz, like flowing electricity mixed with a hornet’s nest, and as he pulls away, he feels some of the hairs on his face stand on end.
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“Not a damn clue.” he replies, scratching his head. “S’why I brought it to you. Could swear it was glowing blue last I looked at it, so I thought it could use some of that techno-magical mumbo jumbo you’re known for”.
“Aw, dude, you flatter me. Been a minute since I tinkered with anythin’ like this, but I could give it a shot. No promises that anything’ll happen, though.” he says, resting his hand on the top of the orb before pressing down gently. They both hear a click, as the artifact springs to life, three trapezoidal legs extending out from the surface of the orb, lifting it a few inches off the surface of the table. As TK and Gibbon retreat back, the topmost circle extrudes upwards a few inches, revealing multiple silvery ports embedded within a matte, jet-black material. The buzzing grows louder as branching, geometric lines just under its surface begin to glow, quickly filling with a luminescent teal fluid that flows upward through the orb’s surface, converging in three concentric lines just before the top opening.
“Holy shit.” they both say, in shock and awe.
TK was the first to move, carefully inspecting each port on the sphere as he circled around it. Gibbon retreated back a few more steps, hand securely on his hip where a heavy-barreled revolver sat in its holster, rubbing his thumb against the carved grooves in its hammer.
“Looks to me like sockets for neural interface, display, user input, and some others I don’t recognize.” TK says, scratching his chin. “Old World tech, probably, but the design is way too slick for anything consumer-grade. Where’n the hell'd you find this thing again?” he asks, glancing over to Gibbon.
He trudges forward, hand still firmly on the grip of his gun. “Abandoned building. Big thing, pre-Collapse, windows double my size and buried way in the sand.” he responds, eyes narrowed and focused on the artifact. “Too dark to see much in there, but it was in this dusty old room, sat on this weird pedestal-looking thing surrounded by broken-down security systems. Grabbed it and scrammed when I realized the ceiling was sinking down a little too close for comfort and managed to get out before it collapsed entirely.”
“Now, hold on a sec.” TK responds, standing up straight and leaning against the wall. “You went into a derelict Old World building, saw this thing surrounded by what were probably old gun turrets, knowing the place I sent you, that could’ve torn you to shreds, said ‘fuck it”, and just grabbed the thing and left?” he said, in mild disbelief. “Without questioning at all why it had that much security to begin with?”
“Uh. Yeah.” Gibbon replies, sheepishly. “It’d been the only shiny thing I found down there that wasn’t too big for my bike or too small to be worth taking.”
TK pinches his eyes, groaning. “Fuck’s sake, Gibs.” he says, turning around to retrieve something from a cabinet on the opposite side of the room. “You’re a crazy motherfucker, you know that? Let’s just see if this thing you brought in’ll explode like last time.”
The artifact groans in response, a low, guttural sound. The two men look at it in shock and disbelief, then at each other. A frown quickly sweeps across Gibbon’s face as TK stares back at him, gesturing toward the object with both hands without breaking eye contact.
“Come on, man, that was a year ago!” he said, shifting out of the way as TK brings over a few bits of chunky old tech and bundles of cords. He toils away, hooking up the monitor, keyboard and mouse to the sphere, before reaching down to connect the monitor to a power strip under the table. A small flash and a light pop were heard as it sparked and began to hum, brimming with power.
“Alright, moment of truth.” said the impromptu techie, as he reached behind the monitor to a red plastic power switch. He flicked it on, and the screen came to life, showing nothing but cascading black and white static. He sighed. “Dammit, hold on a sec” he said, the sound of clacking keys filling the room as he fiddled with his setup for a bit. Gibbon approached slowly as he worked, taking his hand off his gun and looking curiously over TK’s shoulder as colors began to flash and warp on the monitor’s screen. Then, after messing about with the cables for a few more minutes, the screen blinked and displayed a black and white command prompt. TK chuckled.
“Now we’re talkin’. Let’s see what we can do here.”
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Hours went by.
TK had gone up to the front of his store to lock up after the first half-hour of fiddling with the device, and not much progress had been made until the sun started to set outside. Gibbon had quickly commandeered his couch as his buddy worked, cleaning his revolver with a small rag as he laid on his back with his legs dangling over the armrest. After he’d finished with that, and saw that TK was still busy at the monitor, he’d taken to writing in a small journal he’d tucked away in a pocket on his pants, documenting his day as the last glimpse of sunlight faded away, doodling little shapes and creatures in the margins as another dust storm began to roll in on the horizon.
Then, as his eyelids drooped and he began to doze off, TK clapped his hands and cackled loudly.
“AHAHA, YES!” he yelled triumphantly, launching the chair he was sitting in backwards with such force that it knocked against a shelf behind him. “Alrighty, great news! Made some progress, looks like whatever’s on this thing was definitely experimental Old World soft, but it’s locked behind a few layers of encryption and probably some incredibly fucked up ICE, so I’ll have to do a dive to crack it.” he said, stretching.
He heard a groan from across the room as his friend rose from his torpor. “Good stuff, I guess.” replied Gibbon, freeing his form from the cushions with the grace of a corpse.
“Probably gonna do it tomorrow, since it’s getting late.” TK said, walking over and looking out the window. “Either way, you should probably head out soon. It’s getting late and there’s a helluva storm on the horizon and you already know I ain’t got much for sleepin’ accommodations in the shop.”
Gibbon stretches, popping several vertebrae as he sits up and hops off the couch, walking toward the door to the garage. “Good plan. See ya tomorrow, then.” he said, patting down his pockets.
“Stay safe!” yells TK from inside, as Gibbon enters the garage, closing the door behind him.
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The ride home was quiet, uneventful. Just how he liked it. Gibbon and his bike pulled into the front yard of an old suburban bungalow in the middle of an abandoned neighborhood, through the wispy dried grass and compacted dirt into a shed just next to it, where his bike and helmet would rest for the night as he locked it up with a padlock he kept on his bench. Clomping up the steps of his porch and retrieving a key from around his neck, Gibbon unlocked the door and went in.
It was a humble little hovel, boarded up windows barely letting any light inside, a living room with a couch and a radio, a messy kitchen holding all his outdoor cooking stuff, a bathroom, and a strange little hallway with a string and weight at the end of it. He turned to face the door, looking up and down at all the locks, deadbolts, and two sturdy iron brackets with a large plank resting next to the doorframe, and smiled. In his own little ritual, he flipped every latch, pushed every deadbolt, and turned every lock, before setting the plank in place, taking a few steps back and admiring his work before he turned back around and went down the hallway towards the string. He tugged, and a ladder came down, which he promptly climbed, into the attic, into his little sanctum.
To him, this was home, sweet home. A wardrobe and rack stood next to a rickety old desk on one side of the wall, one of the doors slightly ajar (he never could figure out how to fix that hinge). On the other side sat a stack of crates, a couple months’ worth of dry supplies he’d traded for some choice bits of road scrap from previous expeditions: oats, flour, sugar, salt, synmeat jerky in vacuum-sealed bags, and precious, precious coffee. Rounding out the space, a hammock holding a pillow and blanket hung off two supporting pillars at the end of the room, head positioned right where the morning sun would shine directly into his face (it was the only consistent way he’d wake up), and a patterned rug below it, guarding his bare feet from the cold, rickety wood below.
Gibbon sighed as he began deconstructing his outfit, hanging his coat and cloak in his wardrobe, unbuckling his holster and resting his piece on his desk, and carefully removing his boots before placing them under his hammock so he could change into a thin black tee and a pair of loose shorts. He was tired, to say the least. Today had been busy, and he deserved this.
Into the safety of his hammock he went, and he pulled the blanket over himself, sinking deep into slumber, comforted by the whipping winds of the dust storm outside. And it was good.
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Deep in the storm, a figure marched toward the western outskirts of town. They wore a hooded cloak tied around their neck, their face obscured by a goggled helmet with many lenses that seemed to sink into their face. Their ragged breaths were muffled by a respirator, tubes snaking from their back, over their shoulders and to their face. In one hand, they carried a briefcase. In the other, they held a stubby submachine gun, plated with navy-blue metal.
They looked forward, speaking garbled, unintelligible words to the air around them. Four blinks of green behind one of their lenses confirmed nothing. The apertures of their eyes narrowed, and they continued their march, leaving a moonman’s footprints behind, quickly swept away by the shifting sands.