The Codex:
Codex Entry no. 8, “Dr. Nathaniel Winters”
Doctor Nathaniel Winters is the mind behind six of the greatest achievements in science made in the last century. First, he is the man credited with actually curing cancer. Another, and more relevant achievement to myself though is that he is the mind which figured out how to reanimate corpses with a retrovirus and “perfect” their genetic codes using a template. This process is what created the Maine family, and the lack of ethics behind it and the spotty memories of my older family members about their lives before they were made into Maines are the reason for much of the animosity held towards the man.
The Doc is smart, in some ways I suspect smarter than even Robert Castle, but he’s also somewhat soft on morality. He’s experimented on human subjects for years, and only gets away with it due to his amazing results and the fact that he only uses criminals for his experiments. To this day it is beyond me how such a man became the Dean of the School of Science on Titan, but I suspect it was meant as a sort of exile meant to keep him in the fold and keep the discoveries coming while giving Martian officials plausible deniability about his actions.
My personal hatred of the man is separate from both of these aspects though. It relates back to my mother, whose identity I was not aware of until shortly after Dr. Winters died. I spent years trying to discover who she was in order to determine why I wasn’t as impressive physically as my cousins. I also hoped that I had another family besides the Maines who would be more suitable to support me when I returned to Mars. I begged Dean Winters for two years after I arrived on Titan and received news of my father’s death. I begged! He wouldn’t say who she was though. He admitted that he was the one who helped my father and the woman I was seeking create a child since the woman was having difficulty doing it the natural way, but that was it. I would never know until the man left it to me in his will with a very rare not of apology.
I’m not sure how I feel about the Doc anymore. I know my hate waned as the war went on. Somehow it just didn’t seem as important as it did when I was younger.
Dr. Nathaniel Winters is known today as a Martian hero and a monumental figure in the life sciences. Thanks to all I’ve done as Executor to bury the darker parts of his past, I am sure he will remain that way for a long time to come. No matter my opinions on the man, he does deserve to be remembered.
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Chapter 9, “vSports”
“Basketball? What’s that?”—the average Martian citizen when asked about many common Old Earth sports.
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Every culture has some sense of sport, and Martians are no different. As “evolved” as we claim to be, we are still just human beneath all the genetic engineering and monolithic education. Students on Titan, like many cultures centered around a military, consumed massive amounts of sports-themed media. The trouble was that media took 8 months to get to us, minimum, and often it would be longer than that as we didn’t get regular supply shipments. Titan was self-sustaining, so ships only came by once a year to pick-up and drop-off students. In such an environment as that, as isolation took hold in Titan’s early days, sports morphed into their Titan equivalent: vSports.
Earth’s eSports had been very popular for many years before the Intelligence War. It was so popular that there was a time where eSports were the third most-watched media category on Mars, and the first most-watched on Earth. The streaming and tactics aspects from esports had actually been coopted by the United Nations at one point to train peacekeepers in squad based tactics and drone warfare. Titan Cadets, with the Academy’s blessing, had taken that one step further by integrating virtual reality into the games using what we called “Terminals”.
Terminals looked a lot like the monitors from the early 2000’s, and they had no “smart” technology in them. No touchscreens, no biometric locks, no integrated cameras, and absolutely no way to mess with them. It is for that final reason that the Woodbrand Terminal had been so prolific amongst the Martian institutions: It was almost entirely tamper-proof.
I’d learned this early on in life, to my detriment. There were all kinds of security features that Terminals could be equipped with, and I’d experienced a fair bit of them and likely only survived because of my Maine blood. Among the various ways I’d been punished by the makers of the Terminals for trying to mess with machines around my family home was the time I was shot by a .45 ACP round two inches to the right of my heart when I was eleven, shocked the shit out of when I was twelve, and blown out of the second story window into a rose bush when I was thirteen. After the rose bushes I’d given up on trying to figure out who my mother was, so I’d never tried to illicitly gain access to a Terminal again.
Within a week after I’d come to the Vault I was bored. There was no duty station to which I’d been assigned, and Dean Winters kept telling me to be patient whenever I asked to pitch in. Patient… Ha! No! Even today I’m not known as a patient man. Despit thinking that I should hide what all I could do, initially, my boredom and vanity got the better of me. Boredom and vanity likely always get the better of me, if anyone close to me is to be trusted on such matters. On the boredom front though, I was not the only one who’d been afflicted.
Within the Vault many of the surviving students had turned to vSports to keep their minds off of what was going on outside and keep their skills sharp. I had come as far as I felt I could from training in Zeus’ virtual space, and so I needed a step closer to reality. I barely remember signing up for the vSports league in the Vault, but once I had I was one of several hundred people standing outside of medical looking to get scans done for my avatar.
Scans were important so that your avatar had the same basic capabilities as your real body. If you got a bad scan done, or just tried to use guess work to make an avatar, odds are that you would spend most of your time in VR trying to relearn how to use your body. Zeus had assured me that he could simulate all of the combat programs I’d been practicing even within vSports environments, so it was really just a matter of getting the scans done and loaded onto a drive so I could plug it into a Terminal and play, once I found the second piece I needed. For that, I turned to Robert, who’d decided to stand in line with me since he’d grown just as bored as I had.
“You could always play as well,” I proposed.
With a snort, Robert replied, “I’ll have to pass, Tom. I have this thing about dying.”
Rolling my eyes I countered, “There has never been a single person whose died in a vSports match.”
“You know what I mean,” Robert said, shaking his head, “death in there feels real. You had all that mental conditioning and practice courtesy of the Maine Program, plus the stuff the School of Intelligence did to you when you came through your first year. You know how to die and not let it mess you up. I don’t.”
As fair as Robert’s point was, I should clarify that death in vSports is not nearly so bad as an actual near-death experience, in my very qualified opinion. Still, I didn’t press the point too much more and instead asked, “Well, then do you think you could entertain yourself by updating my Link?”
Raising an eyebrow, Robert asked, “What’s wrong with the one that came with your Terminal?”
“It’s old,” I said with a shrug, “and I have a lot of-“ I hesitated a moment considering my words to not let too many people in on what I was talking about, “-extras that I’d rather not risk with old equipment. C’mon! You owe me still for ratting on me to the Dean!”
Robert sighed, and said, “Fine. That better be the last I hear about that though. You know I had no choice.”
A few days prior to us standing in that line, Robert and I had discussed what I learned from the Dean but refused to introduce me to his A.I., who I’d managed to pull out of him was named Cthulhu.
Apparently while the Cthulhu liked me alright, it was not such a fan of Zeus and wasn’t’ so sure of how to treat me now that Zeus was in my head. Robert and I had discussed a number of points about A.I. in society, though honestly not much of it surprised me after my conversation with Dean Winters. While there was much more to discuss, at some point in that conversation we had agreed to drop the matter until there was a better time to discuss it and both of us weren’t in a giant metal tomb on Titan.
The scanning process didn’t take very long, but the line did. vSports were growing in popularity the longer Martians remained in the Vault with nothing to do, from what I was told by the Doctor-in-training doing my scans. After the scans I did get a few questions from the medical staff, like: “Why is your genetic code so different than what we have on file?” and “Can you please explain what the stuff floating in your blood is?” I politely told them that was all classified, had them alter my medical profile to reflect the changes, and then took my scan back to my room with Robert in tow who quickly made a few modifications to my Link.
At that time, Links were a pair of thick metal cuffs that patched into the human nervous system via tiny needle-like wires. All a person had to do to use them was plug the Link into their Terminal, slap the cuffs on, and load up whichever VR server they were tapping into. Easy.
“Do you really think it’s smart to go lording yourself over a bunch of regular people as you are trying to conceal that you have the most hated Synthetic being in history locked up in yoru head?” Robert asked as I put the cuffs on and started navigating into “VaultScape”, the hastily set-up V.R. Server that the techs had put together using the Vault’s secure servers.
“People are going to know about me sooner or later,” I said, “but for now I can hide behind my genetics and alterations. Being a full-blooded Maine gives me plenty of reason to be topping my prior stats, and it seems like everyone in this place has heard about my daring escape by this point.”
Chuckling, Robert asked, “What about you sneaking around an Earth ship in borrowed clothes is daring?”
With a grin I asked, “Oh, you must not have heard the stories! As the story goes now, I knocked out several Earth Marines with a number of solid punches and one-liners, hijacked a shuttle that I piloted while keeping a cool, steely gaze, and was caught by Hannah after an epic duel on top of a the pharmacy annex which then forced me into the sewers. Now I am plotting to avenge my prior defeat.”
Robert deadpanned at me and asked, “Right, and I definitely didn’t shit my pants when Earth invaded. Where did you hear that drivel?”
“The Galley,” I answered, “It’s amazing what people say if you ask around and they don’t know your face.”
“Well, I’ll have to find the person who told you that and ask if they’re interested in writing for Hollywood. That’s all a terrific bit for a movie, but far too heroic for you,” Robert said with a snort.
“I liked the part where I wasn’t dragged around by Hannah’s Mandroids,” I admitted, as I pulled my keyboard closer to me and started logging in.
As soon as I clicked “Log in Now” the world went blue a moment as it normally did when I went to visit Zeus. The blue faded out and I stood in the center of what one could’ve mistaken for an airport terminal.
Zeus? I tried.
I’m here, Zeus confirmed, though this place, for me, is like moving underwater somewhat. I’m not sure how much help I’ll really be.
Just think of it as resistance training then, I counseled as I moved over to one of the large screens on a wall. The screen detailed different matches that were scheduled, and who needed extra players. There were some that were labelled “Battle Royale” and others labelled “True Team”. I ignored both titles and at last found a match I wanted, “Big Team Battle”. Though not intensely popular like the first two I mentioned, Big Team appealed to me for several reasons.
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First, it most closely resembled a real military operation. Second, Big Team players weren’t as bloodthirsty as the ghouls who played Battle Royale. By design, Big Team was more about completing complex objectives than outright killing your fellow cadets in virtual sport. The final reason I preferred Big Team though was that I didn’t have to be too much of a team player. The team was big enough that I could practice my own skills without damaging my team’s efforts, and often if I succeeded in whatever goal I had as an agent then the whole team would benefit greatly.
I walked briskly over to the ramp which led off to the Big Team Battleground I selected, and as I went over both team rosters in my head.
The clear choice was Blue Team, Zeus weighed in, they were an older, more experienced team. One of their players even had a special notation as being in the Top Fifty for the School of Warfare.
That’s why I don’t want to be on that team though, I told Zeus, winning with a perfect team is never as rewarding as pulling victory out of your ass at the last possible second by the skin of your teeth.
Reaching the ramp, I queued myself for the Red Team and quickly loaded in all my data. To my surprise, the system gave me a notification in blue lettering in front of me to see the Big Team Leader.
I followed the navigation marker I was given and walked onto the ramp through a doorway that dumped me into the middle of a box canyon. On either side were two identical structures, save one feature. The structure to my left had a blue flags and lighting. The structure to my right had red flags and lighting. Heading to the red one, which is also where the marker was, I passed through the battlements and several turret emplacements, as well as piles of sandbags that guys were moving around before finding a tall girl with a pair of binoculars at the tallest part of the tower-like structure.
“That asshole,” I heard the girl mutter as I stepped out onto the platform with her. The vantage point was breathtaking. You could see the whole map from there, and given the quality of the VR environment it felt so close to reality that I couldn’t tell the difference as the breeze passed over me.
“You are the BTL, yeah?” I asked, drawing her attention away from whatever she was looking at.
“Yup, that’s me,” The girl said, pulling away from her binoculars and looking at me. There were rings around her eyes from how hard she’d been pressing the things into her virtual flesh, and she was wearing what I recognized to be the most standard academy armor possible. Smart, as a common move in these games was for the other team to find the enemy commander and eliminate them early on.
“I got a notification that told me to come find you,” I informed the girl, “I’m Lt. Maine, School of Intelligence Top Ten, Spot Seven.”
The girl did a double take when I said that, looking me up and down before asking, “You’re the guy that socked that Hannah traitor in the face?”
“Something like that,” I evaded, not wanted to say it was more like she’d had a Maindroid put its fist in my gut.
Her face lighting up, she exclaimed, “Sweet! We may have a chance of getting a victory then! The system probably sent you to me because my battle plan called for all agents to report directly to me. I only have one other person from your school, but she’s only a first year so I’m putting her in as a Sniper. You are the closest thing the Academy has to a spy though, so I’m thinking of running some of my more ambitious thoughts by you. Are you game?”
I decided then and there that this girl, who’d later I’d learn was named Christine Hidalgo, was a person I could get along with very well.
“I’m definitely game,” I said with a nod.
“Good shit. Well, here is my issue. The enemy BTL is a classmate of mine, a stuck-up asshole from First Colony, and we put a bet on this match. He stacked his team though by trading rations, so he has a much more experienced team. As a part of their prep, they were able to complete a procurement requirement early, and the System gave them a heavy mech. Additionally, I heard that one of the girls he got to help him out for this match is a crack shot sniper whose so far ranked higher in the VaultScape leagues than anyone else, and based on what I’ve observed over there the guy is dug in like a tick.”
Nodding, I asked, “What are our victory conditions?”
“Kill the enemy commander or sabotage the enemy power plant at the center of their base. You can find where ours is downstairs pretty easily. Their base has the same floor plan,” Christine explained.
“Right… So, what can I do that would be the most helpful?” I asked.
With a shrug she answered, “Up to you. I’m not going to tell a guy two years my senior who’s Top Ten what the hell to do like that. Micromanaging isn’t really my thing. What would you like to help with?”
After a moment of thought, I asked, “What type of Heavy Mech did they get?”
“A Crab-Class,” Christine answered, putting her binoculars back to her face and resuming her observations.
“I would recommend getting shaped charges on the floor then,” I began, “Crabs have soft underbellies. Anti-Tank mines would be even better. Plus, the explosions could collapse the primary entrance and force your enemies to invade via the secondary entrances which are much more narrow and favor the defenders,” I said plainly, “I wouldn’t bother having your men outside if this sniper is the way you make her out to be. Turtling is your best option. If you can manage all of that and hold out long enough, I’ll kill the enemy commander and I’ll sabotage their power plant.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll make some adjustments. Get acquainted with everything and grab whatever you need. I owe you some of my rations if you can follow through,” Christine said as I turned to leave.
The armory was typical, but not bad overall. I selected a standard Martian Battle Rifle before I thought better of it and pulled out the Earth equivalent. I also took a side arm, several grenades, and selected a set of Standard School of Intelligence Armor that made me want to cry from how awful it was. Still, it was better than nothing, and it was compatible with Sniper’s Poncho, a hodded garment which obscured the user’s visual presence. It wasn’t invisibility, or even active camoflaughe per se. Instead, it was a step down from either of those, and made it possible for me to sneak around easer in broad daylight without getting gunned down by a sniper.
Zeus, do you have any idea who this sniper girl is? I asked as I loaded up.
With a buzzing noise that I took as a laugh, Zeus said, I don’t really think it’s a name you are looking for as much as key information. Let’s see… She’s a fourth-year School of Warfare cadet who specializes in Recon. She beat out the School of Intelligence’s Spot Ten for shooting this year. It’s noted that she has very few preferences when it comes to shooting, and so it makes her hard to predict.
Great. She’s scary and dangerous. Thanks for that, I grumbled.
Blame your academy for taking such shitty notes! Not me, Zeus huffed.
With a sigh, I went over to a machine which looked like a vending machine and punched in my control code. All vSports player could import an approved item of custom equipment. I had used my exploding knives for the past two years and had been very pleased with them. That day was no different. Once I pulled the knives from the vending machine, eight in all, I placed them around my body and started walking the base to get a better idea of the layout and how I could get in.
By the rules, any mvoes to bomb an objective kamikaze style were disallowed and would result in an automatic loss for the offending team. It was also hard to hide who you were when the system stained your armor blue. Both of those very promising, cheap options were closed to me, and I had to be smarter. That was the beauty of Big Team. It kept you on your toes, and forced you to think of new solutions.
As I walked the battlements and looked down at the floor below I found a solution that I decided was acceptable to my issue, if I could get the right equipment. Walking back to the armory I commandeered a bench and started working on a special set of shaped charges. I didn’t finish until two minutes until the match was due to start, but speed isn’t exactly something you want to focus on when working with explosives.
I’d done a decent job, I knew, but explosives were never my specialty. The girld who’d been Intelligence School Spot 2 had been the virtuoso there, but- Well, she was gone.
The match began with a loud “Go!” form some unseen announcer voice, but the movement was clear enough. The BTL apparently took my advice because as I ducked out the side door, I was the only one moving from his position. The moment I made it to the doorway, I triggered the camoflauge of my sniper’s poncho and dove behind some sandbags outside, crawling through the dirt in my armor like some kindo f bug. I didn’t care though. I wasn’t about ot get shot and killed that early in the match. I worked my way to the edge of the canyon wall and kept to the rocks and shadows as I did. The occasional crack of sniper fire pierced the roar of opposed gunfire and grenades, and looking over at the tower I saw that the crack sniper had elected for a traditional sniper’s nest.
Smart, for this setting, I thought, keeping everything textbook means thatnobody can accuse her of playing mean later. If the Opposing BTL hadn’t stacked the team I’d almost think he was intending to play fair, I mused.
Of course, I was far less interested in playing fair. My breath froze as I felt the dirt beneath me shake, and I heard the wine of robotic legs carrying a heavy metal chassis across the field. Peaking around the corner, I grimaced when I saw the crab-like mech. It’s six-legged form was unmistakable, and it had many, many more turrets than the stock model.
Are you sure your team can hold out against that? Zeus asked, It seems a bit… Well, it seems like the enemy team really wants to win.
Fuck what the opposing team wants, and they are an opposing team. Earth Invaders are the enemy. These are just Martians playing a damn game too seriously and like assholes, I explained to Zeus.
The distinction is still somewhat lost on me, but whatever you say, Zeus relented.
I didn’t move a muscle until the ground stopped shaking, and even then, until after I’d verified that the crab was almost at the doors of my team’s base. What came next was a mad dash for their side door where I dug the sharpened armored toes of my boots into the soft concrete making up the place. From there, I began my ascent up to their battlements and hauled myself up and over the railing. There were no guards, and with the help of the thermal filter in my contacts I could only find four heat signatures. One was a guy who looked like he was sitting down at a computer, one was the sniper up top, and the final two were next to where the power generator was.
Being my usual overkill self, I’d promised to kill the BTL and destroy the power plant. I wasn’t going to disappoint.
I began arranging my shape charge over the powerplant, careful to place the putty as I broadly wanted it to go. Once I had that set, I drew up my rifle, and took cover around a corner before detonating the charges. Six
I waited in an alcove and watched as the woman started coming around the battlements before pushing off with everything I had and launching myself and her over the railing with my rifle butt under her chin where the helmet had a soft layer rather than a hard shell. I felt a small crunch when we impacted and a notification let me know she’d been eliminated too.
Too easy, I thought cockily as I raced in through the entrance to eliminate the enemy BTL. All thoughts of that were dashed when I rounded the corner to the room he was in and saw him standing there with a side arm and a very, very large rocket launcher.
“Aw shit,” I cursed, just before rolling out of the way of a rocket. I felt the spray of debris on my back, but I didn’t look to see what damage he had done.
This guy was big, Riku big, and he had just fired a rocket launcher with one arm. Maines could do that, sometimes, but not regular Martians.
Zeus, is this guy Altered? I asked as I discarded my ruined rifle and drew my side arm and a knife.
I’ll check. Standby.
Standby, my ass! As I rose to my feet the BTL delivered a kick that I could feel through my armor which launched me down the hall. I bounced four times before coming to a stop on my back as I got the wind back in me. Unfortunately, that was my first-time being gut-punched since I’d been Altered, and I’d made the shocking discovery that for all my gifts, reinflating my lungs more rapidly than before wasn’t one of them. Sucking for breath, I kept my thoughts straight enough to fire off my whole magazine wildly to keep the big guy back and unable to reload that rocket launcher. The few rounds he fired at me either missed or bounced harmlessly off my armor.
Taking cover in a crater that used to be a thick support wall, I asked Zeus, Well?
Yes, he is Altered. No, I can’t find out what it is from inside this VR environment, Zeus determined.
Fine. Then let’s show him what we practiced. Overclock me with 100%, full burn. Set the fuse for three minutes. I’m not drawing this out, I ordered.
No sooner than I had finished thinking that did the world slow without taking me with it. Rounding the corner, I saw the big guy fire off shots, and with minor alterations to my steps none of them hit me. Once I’d reached point black range, I leveled the end of my pistol at one of the spaces in his armor on his abs and pulled the trigger as fast as I could. The rounds punched through, at some point, and made the guy crumple over in slow motion. As he reflexively bent down to clutch his gut, I swung up with my fist using my legs, abs, shoulders, and arms to amplify the hit. The jaw of the BTL’s helmet cracked, and he went stumbling back. I didn’t give him a moment to recover as I used both hands to grab him by the collar of his chest armor and drag him down the corridor, rounding two corners before coming in sight of the power plant.
The power plant was a large glowing ball of energy surrounded by a glass tube. It was not modelled off any actual power plant for any Martian installation. It was “all for looks” as I’d been told. It also disintegrated anything in the virtual environment it touched, hence the glass casing.
With one final heave, I flung the BTL at the ball and watched as he vaporized into smoke just as the notification came up “Red Team Wins!”
I had only a moment to grin about it before the world flashed blue around me and I was dumped back in the terminal as my inbox flooded with messages. One was flagged as important, and it came from a very familiar name with an unfamiliar one copied. The subject line read, “You Fucker!”
I read the body of the message and then laughed before logging out. I had apparently earned a date with the opposing team’s sniper.