t sehrsa h hpe te e d l

The Dead Regime: The Shepherds Tale

by Adam Ingle

We are all cogs in a broken machine. We are all corpses in a dead regime.

The Physicists Diary Day 0 We borrowed a fermion. I dont know where from, and I dont know how. It cant have been from here because it was in the same space as another fermion with the same state which is impossible. It was there, and then it was gone. The others say it was just a glitch, an anomaly. They were too busy celebrating the other discovery. The problem is that if that was a glitch, so was their triumph. You cant dismiss one result of an experiment as a glitch while another from the same experiment is proof. Day 1 I think we fucked upreally, really bad. That fermion we saw in the collider results had to be from somewhere else. I feel stupid even writing itwhen I say somewhere else I think I mean another dimension. Even more stupid, I think that universe wants it back. I know, I knowIm anthropomorphizing. Universes dont have feelings, goals, or desires. But they do have rules and I think we broke another universes rules. And then I think our universe tried to abide by its own rules and got rid of that fermion that we stole and popped it somewhere else. And yes, I mean yet another dimension. Now I think universes are playing hot potato with that fermion and shits overlapping bleeding through. At first it was just ghosts of sorts. I swore I saw someone in the control room after the party, but when I went to check it was nothing. I figured it was just too much champagne. Then things started going missing; coffee cups, pencils, paperslittle things. I thought people were fucking with me because of the fermion thing. Now Rashid is missing. Theyre saying he must have gotten drunk and drove off somewhere, but he wasnt drinking and his car is still in the parking lot. Things arent only missing though; things are popping up. I saw another ghost on the way home. Not a personfuck I cant believe Im actually putting this down. This is going to be the proof of my insanity when they try to commit me. I saw a dinosaur just outside the lab. Like a Jurassic Park, living, breathing, god damn dinosaur. It was angry, maybe confused, standing in the middle of the road. I grazed it as I passed by, trying to swerve around its giant Brontosaurus looking foot. The second my car touched it, it was gone. Like the collision with something from this dimension sent it back to its dimension. I told my wife I hit a deer when she asked about the car. I know how fucking crazy this is. Day 3 Rashid is still missing. Its an official incident, police report and all. Other people are starting notice things. Angeline said her coffee was fine one second, and then in between sips it was just vile ooze. She got sick shortly after and was sent home. She didnt come back today. Lani said he swore he saw a pirate ship crest over the trees out in the woods outside his office and then dip back down, disappearing. Someone else said it was probably a hot air balloon and he just shrugged. Day 9 Theyre officially referring to it as The Flux now; a dimensional flux. Its all centered on the lab, but its spreading and its incontrovertible now. An entire neighborhood, about 100 houses, a few kilometers

from the lab disappeared. Its all marshland, like it was 40 years ago before anyone started developing the area. The people and all their stuff are justgone. Things are becoming permanent. Instead of flickering in and out of existence, theyre coming or going and staying. Its on the news now. Monuments to things that have never happened appearing in Geneva. A section of the Tunnel de Vernier just disappeared in the middle of rush hour traffic, causing an enormous pile up. And who knows where the people in that missing section went. At the edges of the missing section are cleanly sliced halves of cars and people. Now theres a military enforced quarantine in a 10km radius around the lab. I told my wife to take the kids to her mothers in Lyon, but its only 100km away so I told her to be prepared to leave; the continent if necessary. If we dont have it contained in a week... Day 16 Weve given up. We have no idea how we caused it and even less of an idea how to fix it. Were evacuating tomorrow and nuking the area as a last ditch effort. Its gotten crazy out there. They cant guarantee our safety. Not just from the riots and those who want us dead, but from all the random shit that comes and goes. I told the wife to runget out of Europe however she had to. She said she already had. She didnt even say I love you when she hung up. Day 17 The evacuation was a lie. They corralled us into one of the labs for a pre-evacuation briefing but locked the doors and barricaded the place. We got out of the lab and found they had welded and cemented doors and windows shut. We watched an intern escape from an air duct. Scrawny little thing; Tina I think her name was. She rolled out of the ductwork and onto the ground, took a couple unsteady steps, and then her head exploded. About 15 seconds later we heard the crack of a gunshot. Lani gasped as he did the math and said That was a 3-mile shot. They consider us part of the problem and we arent getting out alive. On the upside well get to watch our own deaths on TV before we go. The news anchors say we may be tainted with inter-dimensional residue. I dont even know what the fuck that means. Theyre nuking the facility in just under an hour.

Chapter 1 - The Shepherd Aldrin pulled the joystick sharply back and to his left causing his Armour to swiftly swing its flail from right to left, its spiked ball slamming into the glass of his opponents cockpit. One of the spikes penetrated the window and caught fast. Aldrin jerked the joystick back and both Armours shuddered in protest. He could see the other pilot looking at him from his cockpit with a sudden smile. It had been the slip he had been waiting for. Not wasting a moment, the pincer of the enemy Armours right arm clamped hard on Aldrins flail-arm and then he kicked hard into the chest of Aldrins Armour. The flail didnt rip off as the other pilot had clearly hoped, but it had taken a large chunk of the armor plating and pierced several hoses and ripped wires. The two robots jerked backwards as the pincers grip slipped and Aldrins flail finally pulled free from the cockpit glass. They both struggled to keep their Armour upright, their robots splashing around in the swampy mud like two drunks. His flail-arm hung down to the side and didnt respond to the joystick; it was out of commission and beyond the abilities of the automated repair systems. Aldrin was pretty sure he had damaged his opponents gun-arm earlier in the struggle, since he hadnt used it since they first grappled, but there was nothing visibly wrong so his automated systems could have it up and running at any moment. The two opponents circled around like Greco-Roman wrestlers, looking for a weakness in the others stance. Both of their Armours were filthy, caked in mud and swamp ooze, which could make grappling slippery. The sun was setting and they both tried to force the other to face its blinding rays. It only took a fraction of a second for their polychromatic shields to switch on, but it was just enough to get the advantage. If it werent for his rules of engagement Aldrin would have just shot the guy an hour ago and been done with it. But he was the shepherd, not the executioner so their dance continued. The sun was beginning to drip below the tree line and any advantage was disappearing. The darkness would make bringing both the man and the Armour in a lot harder. Aldrin sent the pilot of the other Armour a message giving him one last chance to turn himself in. There was no reply, but he saw the pilot flip him off a few moments later. Aldrin sighed, but suddenly came to attention when he heard a distinctive clicking. He reacted instinctively and rushed in towards the other Armour. He had heard the click and then a whirring noise; the sound of a Gatling gun spinning up. The other pilot saw that his chances were slipping away and was risking permanently damaging his gun-arm in exchange for getting away. Aldrin crashed into the other Armour as his opponent leveled his gun-arm at his cockpit and they both tumbled to the ground. There was a shriek of metal on metal and then a deep thud as they hit the muddy swamp floor, Aldrins Armour lying on top of the defector. The Gatling gun hit full speed and shot off to Aldrins side into the mud with a sick, wet, thumping sound. Aldrin tried to get his armor to push back up onto its feet, but only having one operational arm combined with the thick film of mud and swamp scum covering both of them just caused him to slip back down. The glass of both cockpits slammed together causing them both to spider and crack a little, but neither broke. His opponent began to slam his pincer-arm into Aldrins side. It wasnt doing any major damage, but he couldnt just let him pummel him unchecked. Aldrin didnt have very many options and again sighed. He dug his gun-arm down into the mud and into the side of his opponents Armour and began to spin the cylinder up to speed. Mud sprayed everywhere as it reached maximum spin and the ready light on his weapons system blinked on. The other pilot knew what was coming and flipped Aldrin off angrily, mouthing fuck you to

him. Aldrin pulled the trigger on the joystick and unloaded a few hundred rounds. It took less than a second. The inside of the cockpit in front of him was full of human confetti, the glass hazed over with blood spatter. He was supposed to be the shepherd, not the executioner. This was something he often told himself. It was a mantra as much as a reminder. So often it was easier just to kill than to bring back alive. He had one of the best records, but he wasnt suicidal. He wasnt willing to die over a rule of engagement. Still, he was the shepherd. That was his job; to retrieve lost lambs. Just because those lambs were weaponized, armored, bipedal robots of war shouldnt change anything. But those robots had humans in them, and wayward humans werent always lost. Sometimes they were traitors, and sometimes theyd rather die than come back alive. The dead man below him had indeed been a traitor. He had defected to join the insurrection, so death was what he deserved. Thats when Aldrin was called in. He was the best tracker in the sector and had never failed to bring his man back in. Technically he still hadnt failed, he just hadnt brought him in alive. At some point Aldrin would have to go down and fish out something to prove he had gotten his target. The meat soup that filled the cockpit would make it hard to find the traitors ID chip. The sun was well below the tree line now, and it would be full dark very shortly. If he wanted proof it was now or never, and then hed be on his way back to base. Weve got a lead on Malik, blared the radio. It sounded like Angus, the Scottish comms officer. I need to come in for repairs and drop off a tag, said Aldrin. Negative. Hes in your sector and hes moving out fast towards the mountains where well lose him again, said Angus. Negative your negative. I need repairs. Im a one-armed gunman at the moment, said Aldrin. Well send a fresh Armour to intercept. This is a confirmed siting and hes alone, said Angus. Fine, upload the coordinates. And make sure its a flail-arm, said Aldrin. Malik was one of those campfire stories the veterans told the new recruits. He was a cautionary tale to keep them in line. He was a traitor. The traitor. And he was a ghost. Aldrin had been in basic with Malik. Im just here for the Armour training. First chance I get, Im out of here, Malik had said. He hadnt even tried to hide his sympathy for the enemy, but no one could believe that someone would really join the army and go through the rigors of basic just to get the training he couldnt get with the insurrection. The rebels were well organized, but not necessarily well trained. They had armchair strategists and generals; leaders and soldiers that had trained entirely on video games and simulators. But Malik was brilliant and eager. The higher ups saw the rough, raw talent and sought to turn him into a diamond their diamond. Malik excelled at everything and he had the charisma of a con man. He formed a squad of special tactics pilots, with the blessings of the generals at the top, and they pushed the limits of what a small, well-honed group of ace-pilots could do. He graduated basic at the

top of his class and was given official command of his special squad. True to his word, Malik deserted his post on his first assignment anywhere near the enemy and he took his entourage of pilots and Armours with him. It had been an especially painful and embarrassing loss. Aldrin had never tried to track Malik before; it had just never been in the cards. There was always someone else who was closer to the last known location. He had read over the reports of previous trackers looking for missed opportunities, but he rarely found any. There were trails and traces that other trackers had missed, but most of them eventually ended up with the same conclusion. There were a few what-ifs where Aldrin might have gotten there quicker and maybe had fresher tracks or even intercepted Malik, but there were never any obvious failures. Regardless, Aldrin liked to think that if he had been given the assignment Malik would have been caught long ago, but he also secretly feared that Malik would be his first failure. The fear of failure was a minor one compared to the others he had faced in his tracking career. If Aldrin had learned anything on this job it was that of constantly facing his fears. He would find out if his fear was well founded soon enough. He entered the coordinates to the intercept with his new Armour and tried to get some sleep. Sleeping in walking Armour wasnt the most restful, so it only took the soft blip of his radar to wake him. He was coming up on the rendezvous. Aldrin checked the distance, and then checked it again. He was only a few kilometers out and no one had raised his comms. It was standard procedure to go through all the typical identifications and confirmations before intercepting another Armour. The radar signature was friendly, and usually that was enough for most, but given the fact that he dealt with traitors and was often near or behind enemy lines that wasnt enough for Aldrin. He sent an initial packet to the other Armour and it pinged back, but all that confirmed was that it was there and online. Tracker Aldrin to Colonial Armour 1217, please identify. Aldrin waited a minute but there was no reply. He halted his Armour a kilometer out and signaled HQ. Tracker Aldrin to HQ. Again there was no reply. Aldrin ran a quick self-test on his communications system and everything came back in working order. He sent a ping to HQ, but the packet never returned. He sent another ping to the nearby Armour and it replied. Something, or someone, was interfering with his longrange communication. Aldrin fired a flare in the direction of the other Armour and waited. There was no response and no other blips on his radar so Aldrin cautiously advanced. He steered his way through some overgrowth and came out into one of the few relatively flat clearings in the swamp that wasnt a bottomless pit of muck and ooze and saw the other Armour standing upright with its back to him. Although not bottomless, the swampy mud was above the other Armours feet. He could tell there were deeper spots from the way some of the rotting, half sunken trees were substantially shorter and more submerged than others. At the very least it would be several feet over Aldrins in the more shallow spots. He checked the surrounds of the clearing but the brush was low enough that any hiding Armour, even powered off and invisible to his radar, would be instantly obvious. Cautiously he circled around the dormant Armour until he was face to face with it and could see in the cockpit. It took him a moment, but Aldrin realized that there was a vaguely familiar face staring back at him from the cockpit. The smiling

face was Maliks. He was so taken back by this that it took another few seconds to register that Malik was messing with an remote control, and not the controls of the Armour he was in. Behind him Aldrin could hear, even inside his Armour, the sucking sound of something being pulled out of the mud. His radar suddenly came alive with the rapid pinging off an Armour immediately behind him. He didnt have to see to know that the next sound was the whirring of its Gatling gun coming up to speed. Instinctively Aldrin swung his Armour around, spinning at its torso but not turning its feet, to swing his useless flail-arm at the gun. The spinning motion was enough to swing out the dead arm and it collided with the Armour just as the spinning cylinder hit speed and began shooting out rounds. Although a few got by, the useless arm took the brunt of the damage. His flail-arm was chewed to pieces by the barrage of bullets, but the collision was enough to knock the firing Armour off balance. He wouldnt be able to get his own gun up to speed fast enough to do him any good, so he used it as a fist and punched the Armour. Already off balance, the remote controlled Armour toppled over as it sprayed bullets into the air. He finally heard the sound of the gun on the Armour that Malik was piloting begin to speed up as well. Aldrin was in an awkward position. His torso was turned to face the fallen Armour, but his legs were still facing Malik. He intended to pull back from Malik, but instead collided with him. This put him too close for Malik to shoot, but also to close to turn around and face Malik. The two struggled awkwardly until finally Malik backed up to give them both space to maneuver. Aldrin turned around while stepping to the side in an attempt to circle around Malik so that he didnt immediately shoot him to pieces. They both kept their guns idling at full speed, just waiting for a momentary advantage where they could shoot without being shot. Although Malik was by far the superior strategist, Aldrin had been hunting strays a long time and had been in many one-on-one showdowns like this, making them a nearly even match. They circled each other continuously, occasionally trying to fake out the other. After several minutes of feints by both opponents, Malik made a quick dash forward and began firing rounds. Aldrin turned his lame arm forward as he tried to sidestep the barrage, the flail-arm again taking most of the damage. This time the bullets had torn through the struts in the arm and his flail and a sizable chunk of his arm, almost to the elbow, fell and sunk into the mud. His repair systems sealed off the severed hoses so he didnt lose all his hydraulic fluid, but there appeared to be a short in the electrical that was causing the system to repeatedly lose the arm. This kept throwing the balancing system off, making the Armour stagger uncontrollably. Malik was quick to spot problem and charged in. Aldrin switched the balancing system off and took control of all the motor skills manually. It was difficult to control balance and movement at the same time, but he no longer had a flail to work with so it would be much easier than normal. It would also allow him to maneuver the Armour more intricately than normal. As a result, Aldrin was able to jump to the side rather gracefully and let Malik charge on through. Aldrin quickly recovered from the jump and made a charge of his own towards Malik, who was still turning to face Aldrin. Aldrin crouched as he ran and slammed the Armours shoulder into Maliks torso, causing Malik to teeter backwards briefly. Aldrin slipped his gun arm in between Maliks legs and then quickly stood up. Aldrin had intended to lift Malik up and over in a sort of robotic body slam. Unfortunately for Aldrin, Armour wasnt designed for actual wrestling. Neither the hydraulic lifts in his legs nor his remaining arm were strong enough to support their combined weight, not to mention lift

and toss Malik. Aldrin found himself stuck in a low crouch directly in front of Malik. He tried to pull his gun arm out from between Maliks legs, but Malik slid his Armours legs together and closed around Aldrins arm. Aldrin looked up and saw Malik staring down at him with a grim face. This wasnt personal, it wasnt fun, it wasnt even business. To Malik it was just survival. Im sorry Tracker Aldrin, he heard Malik say over his comms. It was the only thing he had said during the entire struggle. Aldrin struggled to wiggle his arm free but it wouldnt budge. He pulled the ejection lever but it just buzzed negatively. He was leaning towards Maliks Armour; ejecting would just splatter him on Maliks cockpit. Aldrin tried to stand up and pull away; hoping to rip his gun-arm off, but he didnt have enough strength or leverage. He heard Maliks chain gun spinning and looked up. The spinning chain gun loomed over him, angled down into his cockpit. He closed his eyes and heard the first rounds fire. Suddenly he felt tingly and there was a thunderous sound of wrenching metal and it felt as if his Armour was having convulsions and then everything was quiet and still. It was all wrong for being shot to death. Aldrin opened his eyes and was blinded by a brilliant whiteness. The light faded, as did the tingling sensation, and then everything went dark. He must be dead. There was nothing but total darkness, but he could hear the sound of an engine close by. Not his engine - his engine was silent. In addition to the engine he could also hear breathing. He thought at first it was his own, and though he was surprised to find that he was indeed breathing it wasnt his that he heard. The sound was coming from outside the cockpit. He closed his eyes, which were useless in the darkness, and tried to take in his surroundings with his other senses. He could feel a slight vibration that seemed in sync with the engines sound. He could also feel cold, outside air presumably blowing in through the bullet holes in the glass of the cockpit. He could smell the stale air of the cockpit, but also something faint underneath that - something rotten. It smelled like blood and rotting meat, or It was death. It was the smell of something that had died and it wasnt him. Thoughts raced through his mind. Was he still alive? How? If he was alive, what was dead? Was it Malik? Again, how? Why was it cold outside? Even after dark the swamp was warm and humid. Questions mounted but no answers presented themselves. Aldrins questioning came to a halt when he heard a monstrous roar from outside his Armour. The noise brought up an instinctual fear from deep inside his primitive mind. Despite the fact that there were several inches of steel and glass between him and the noise, his id knew it was a danger. Then he heard whatever was out there sniff his scent through one of the bullet holes and those inches of steel and glass werent enough. The creature roared again, sounding like a monster from a horror movie, and began clawing at the glass. Small slivers of glass around the bullet holes rained down into the cockpit. Aldrin could see tiny glints of light on the falling glass and realized that there was the faintest of light far in the distance. It looked like sunrise was coming wherever he was. The faint light gave the hint of an outline around the creature outside the cockpit and his brain struggled to make sense of it. He saw the body of an impossibly large man, but the head was disproportionately large and elongated into a snout. The head was far too big for the mans body and it seemed to cause him some issues balancing. His reach was also shorter than his head was long and he had to turn to the side to lean in and scramble at

the glass. If the creature didnt some caveman run-for-your-life mechanism it might almost be comical. It was like watching a T-Rex struggling with some completely commonplace activity; like shaving or painting a house. Thats when it clicked and any hint of humor evaporated. The head on the man outside was exactly what he imagined a T-Rexs would look like. As if to confirm his fears, the creature roared again and it no longer made him think of a movie monster. It was real, and it wanted to eat him. Aldrin franticly hit buttons on the Armours console, wishing the robot to come to life. No matter how hard he hit them nothing happened in response. He pulled the ejection lever and it hissed briefly but then sputtered. Something had been severed and it no long had enough pressure to do its job. The monster outside seemed to be feeding off Aldrins panic and was becoming enraged, or excited, or a little of both. It began digging with renewed fervor while snorting through another hole, inhaling Aldrins fear. Aldrins flailing and panic driven button mashing stopped abruptly when he heard the telltale sound of glass breaking. The raptor man, manosaur, or whatever it was stopped as well. It had put its weight against the glass to help pull at the bullet hole it had been working on and stressed an existing crack. The creature realized this and began punching furiously at the crack. At first the glass withstood the assault, but slowly the crack began to spider web and crack along new fault lines until chunks began to fall away. Finally enough came away to where the creature could get his hand in and he began grabbing at Aldrin but missing by inches. Aldrin jumped up, standing on the arms of his chair, and leaned back as far as he could in the cockpit. Standing up, Aldrin could see past the creature and in the growing light of sunrise take in his surroundings better than before. His fear abated briefly as the perplexity of it all shook him. His Armour was standing in the middle of an endless plain of snow covered hills. Far in the distance he could see trees, but they had to be miles away. A single hill rose more prominently than the others, but it was far from being anything more than just a big hill. The only other thing that stuck out, aside from a large man with a dinosaur head, was the fact that the manosaur was standing on the roof of the engine car of a freight train. The train was jutting out from the torso of his Armour, just below the cockpit. This explained the wrenching and shaking during the flash of light. Aldrin wondered where it came from and how it got driven through his Armour. Whatever had happened as Malik shot him had transported him to snowy tundra several time-zones ahead, jammed a train through his Armour, and plopped a hungry lizard-man trying to eat him on top of it all. Aldrins mind snapped. He sat down and began sobbing uncontrollably. If he wasnt already dead, he wanted to be. Aldrin howled and screamed at the creature on the other side of the glass. He then pulled the service pistol from its holster beneath the chair and fired away. He nearly emptied the clip, having accomplished nothing but splintering the glass even more, ricocheting a couple bullets back at him, and perforated both of his ear drums. The creature stopped his attempt to break in and tilted his head like a confused dog. The creature took several steps backwards along the roof of the train and squatted down on his haunches; just waiting. Aldrin popped the clip out of his pistol and found it empty. He pulled the slide back a little and saw that there was one bullet left in the chamber. He looked down at the bullet and then back at the creature. Fuck you, lizard-man! he screamed, and then stuck the gun into his mouth and quickly pulled the trigger.