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beyond
the last star
a
bird in hand |
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You can read the first 40% of this story for free; if you like it, you can read the rest for $.75 (payable by paypal or credit card.)
[ Read more about author Efraim Zimbalist Graves ]
In 2852, the U.S. is a wild west tourist attraction, where police sergeant Julian Gaston discovers the secret behind the shooting death of Duplicant Sheriff, Wyatt Earp...
Sergeant Julien Gaston drove a recent version of the PX-20, the solar and bio-powered squad car that ran through the Public Accord Transportation System (PATS). These were the isolated and well-protected freeways in the United States of Zinggong. "Zinggong" was a Chinese word meaning "palace on tour."
Unknown to his superiors, Gaston belonged to a secret group that met each week in a different location. They were the "Mnemonics," freaks whose brains had not been erased of long-term memory by the Zinggong scientists or they possessed extra-sensory abilities for which science still had no answer. They were humans who illegally gathered and patched together what was left from the "time of the written words." Over thousands of meetings, they had accumulated what was known of life before the "Awakening," which was the mass erasure of human memory.
In the year 2852, the Pan-Asian Society had taken over what used to be the sovereign nation of the United States of America. The Capitalists of the Republican-Democrat era had literally sold out the entire country for short-term investments and loans given to them by the Asian countries of China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Japan. In return, the USA had waged many decades of imperialist aggression against the Middle Eastern and other oil countries (like Nigeria and Venezuela) in order to supply the developing economies in Asia.
The Asians finally called in their chips in 2508, and the rest was, as Julien knew so well, revisionist history. The new Asian power brokers converted to alternate energies and they had also converted into a totally new kind of dictatorship.
In Zinggong, society in the Americas had been transformed into a vacation wonderland for Asia, and the Americans worked as slave wage laborers for the visiting Chinese, Japanese and other Asians who toured and vacationed in their colonial states at their leisure. The Constitution had been replaced in 2510 by the Pan-Asian Bill of Rights, which was a vague and meandering document that gave imperial power over the citizens by the occupying Asians.
Sergeant Gaston was part of the police force that worked for the Asian authorities. Included in this force were Duplicant officers and human officers, and Gaston often wondered which ones were the better programmed. What he did know was that he was committing the most serious violation of Zinggong authority; he was keeping a record of his thoughts. As the leader of the Mnemonics, Julien Gaston kept the only known record of the group's recollections, and he used his time alone on the job to record new historical data onto the group's clandestine remembrance disk. As he drove, he spoke into the voice computer, and it recorded his thoughts:
The Zinggong states were created to be a fantasyland for the Asians. The western states are a "Wild West" fantasy, where Duplicants, programmed by advanced computer chip technology, and perfected by the latest genetic engineering, duplicate the famous outlaws of American history; they put on carefully orchestrated gunfights and showdowns all over the west and the Asian visitors enjoy the excitement every day.
The regal tourists stay in the numerous hotels and country inns, outfitted with saloons and other buildings from the 1800s, and then they roam the streets with their cameras to take pictures of the various confrontations between the "Stars of the Wild West." Billy the Kid Duplicant roams in the Montana Zinggong, Jesse James and his gang in Arizona, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are the top gunslinger Duplicants in California. Wherever the foreign tourists travel, there are Duplicants who cater to their musical and fictitious fantasies of what the American West was supposed to be. Of course, the reality is never duplicated; the "cowboy era," for example, lasted for only a couple of decades but to this new world it was all-inclusive and ever-present. Anyone dressing "out of character" is subject to arrest, and anyone not playing into the fantasy is also in violation of business rules.
The remaining states are used for the creation and duplication of new Duplicants and the laborers who maintain them. These states also serve as the territories for homes used by the overflow of Pan-Asian population, who live in luxury with both human and Duplicant servants catering to their every need. As had been the case back at the turn of the millennium in China, population was strictly enforced, and no human can procreate outside the state of Virginia, which is used as the site for reproduction. This is the only pleasure these humans ever have, as they are able to mate and reproduce their numbers in controlled breeding compounds, which consist of row upon row of air-conditioned, communal barracks made of recycled computer parts. It gives one the intense feeling of fornicating inside a data processor.
Today, we have discovered there are other revolutionaries at work. Four Duplicants have been murdered, and the pressure to find the perpetrators is mounting fast. If we can discover these murderers before others do, then perhaps we can get them to join with us in our attempt to overthrow the Zinggong and its government.
As he drove out of the PATS tunnel into Old Town, Julien turned off the recorder and slipped it into his jumper pocket. He wore an all blue, air-cushioned uniform, that had air-conditioning throughout and had a perpetual smorgasbord of digital music available to "take the edge off" on a stressful day. Julien was a dark, medium-built man, with a human age of 35, but his genetic programming card said he would live to be 150 if he kept on a daily regimen of special diet foods, regular check-ups and genetic tweaking done by the government. He was French by birth, but his parents sold him to the Pan-Asians in 2827, when he was ten, after the Asians had successfully invaded Paris. He was sent to Zinggong to be trained in police work. As a detective and crime solver, he was an important part of the system. The Pan-Asian programmers had yet to figure a way to replicate the human skills of metaphorical thinking and criminal investigative technique. Julien knew, however, that as soon as they did, his job would no longer be protected. And, if they discovered he was the leader of the Mnemonics, he would be arrested and quickly executed. Death, thought Julien, would be much better than the desolate life he was living.
Old Town San Diego was the location where the most recent Duplicant murder had taken place. Julien knew it well, as it was his first duty station out of the police academy. Wyatt Earp was the murdered Duplicant. He was the sheriff who kept "law and order" out of an office next to the Holy Moses Saloon. Just like the old western movies, Wyatt's job was to confront any gunslingers or outlaws who caused problems in his town. Even though Julien knew these Duplicants were not human, they were so close to being so that he often debated in his mind about the manner of their construction. Certainly, they could do only that which was programmed inside their computer brains, but how were humans any different? Hadn't humanity become just as "programmable" during the latter days of the twenty-fourth century? In fact, the Pan-Asian scientists had been able to wrest power from the Humanists because they could not control their human citizens.
The Duplicants became an answer to unionism, socialism and many other corrupting influences that weakened the military control over the masses. When these Asian scientists were able to prove to the leaders of other countries that Duplicants were the answer to problems of democratic activism, the resulting implementation of Duplicant labor and efficiency sowed the seeds of the West's demise. Soon, Duplicants were running the communities and controlling the masses with their perfected weapons and intelligence. Nothing human could confront a fully armed Duplicant and come out victorious. This was why Julien was so intrigued by the murder of Wyatt Earp and the others. He wanted to meet the human who had invented a way to overcome the Duplicant control. Once his Mnemonics were able to learn the secret to disabling Duplicants, they could begin the revolution in earnest.
Copyright © 2007 by Efraim Zimbalist Graves . All rights reserved unless specified otherwise above.
--That's the first 40% of the story. To read the rest of the story for $.75, please click below, thanks!
(Once you've paid for it you can re-read it any time.)
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