Thursday, 4/18/2216, Part 1

 ‘This might be the start of my terrorist arc’ I think, saving it to a text file. This might not end well for me, but it would be great for the memoir.

It was 3:06pm on a workday and I was back at Battleground Bar. Not that I had actually skipped, I took a sick day. If ChingWei was upset he didn’t say so, just told me to rest up. I told him I was sorry and would be back tomorrow. To live outside the law you must be honest.

Grygor only nodded at me as I walked in. All the cheerfulness was gone now. This might look like a midday gathering of the unemployed, but it was a war council. Maria and Olive looked grim, as did two people I hadn’t met before who Ontivia introduced as Max and Angelo.

“Thank you Kriss.” Maria said, solemnly reaching down and grabbing my hand. I felt her hard prosthesis on my wrist and tried not to be too creeped out. “You’re taking heroic action and we all appreciate it, even if society doesn’t.”

Tyse, on the other hand, was unflappable. He raised a beer when I walked in and yelled “Welcome to the party, here’s where it really gets fun.” I smiled briefly at that before remembering to be serious.

Ontivia and I sat down at a table in the corner. She had given me the rough outline of what I needed to do last night. I needed to get them an empty chassis from the Camden Plant so they can demonstrate that they’re designed to explode, so that they can prove these martian sabotage attacks are false flags and clear their name. The hope was that more information would leak that could stop the war… somehow… I wasn’t clear on the details. I decided to ask again.

“So what’s the actual goal here?”

“Well, ultimately it’s to stop the war.” Seeing the doubt that must have flashed across my face, she continued, “I know, I know. Exposing this won’t be the thing that does it, but it can be a start. We need to build a movement, and that won’t be easy. War creates jobs and that’s always very popular with likely voters. We need to bring new people in and a story like this can do that.”

“Ok…” I believed that much. It had created a new job for me, and if I was a voter I would remember that. I wouldn’t tell her that though. I hadn’t told anyone about the offer, not even ChingWei. My stomach churned so violently when I thought about telling him that I had to sit down.

Main menu, select body, select stomach, run diagnostic? Select yes.

Status: good.

Ok. It was just the anxiety then. Main menu, select neural network, select pre-loadouts, scroll to ‘calm’, select yes.

Ontivia put a hand on my shoulder.

“I know it’s scary,” she said, misunderstanding slightly. “But I really appreciate your decision to help. They’ve been killing us Kriss, that’s the main thing we need to stop.”

“Yeah, I know.” I mumbled. I agreed to help, I just wanted to know that this actually would. “Won’t they just lie and kill you anyway?”

“Well, that’s true. Even if they’re all in on it, which they might be, it’s in their interest to blame it on a small group of people.” Ontivia had tried to explain. “What we need is for the Big 4+1 to turn on their politicians, or else the small group of people will be us.”

Before I could ask more questions, Grygor walked up to our table.

“C’mon y’all. It’s time.”

“You gonna take the job?” Seitaro messaged me as Grygor shepherded us into a back room. Why now?

“Yes, I just need time to sort out my affairs.” I reply.

“Sounds like you bullshitting.”

“No, I’m not, it’s just my boss is such a sweet guy, and he’s the only friend of my dad’s that I still know, and it’s so busy right now, but I will though I will be ready.” I said, bullshitting.

“Heard.”

I wondered if Seitaro knew about all this.

I walked to the far corner of the dark room and sat down next to Ontivia. Select main menu, select body, select eyes, select brightness, plus plus plus plus. She looked over and smiled. I hadn’t fully thought through all the ramifications of what happened, but I didn’t want to. Anyway, I wasn’t doing this for her, I was doing it for my dad. I hope so at least.

“Everyone sit down and make sure your NACs are set to purge this,” Grygor said. He was looking around me in what I assume was a very polite way of directing the comment my way without being too obvious. I appreciated that. I was definitely the weakest link after all.

Once we were all seated, Maria stood in front of us and began explaining the plan.

“We’re gonna blow the lid off this thing. Kriss has given us visual data but it won’t be enough. If we send that out they’ll suspend him immediately, and we don’t want that,” she winked at me. “We need physical evidence so Tyse, Max, and I are going to Camden. Kriss will do his best to help but it may be impossible to get a completed piece out for us. If it can’t be done, well, they want to say we hit trucks? Ok then, we will hit one.”

“Anything to turn public sentiment.” Max grumbled sarcastically, which made Tyse laugh. I had been thinking the same thing, if this goes wrong it’ll just confirm the worst to the public. Maria, however, just ignored him and continued.

“Angelo has been documenting all the saboteur incidents. Angelo?”

He stood up. “So, when they broadcast the footage the serial numbers and codes are always obscured, but through the work of a few people in the field we’ve managed to establish the origins of the weapons at several of the sites. It’s not just Caliber, we have documented arms from Sphinx and Standard too, but since we have Kriss, Caliber is the focus.” He turned to look at me, “It’s an honor to meet you by the way.”

“Nice to meet you too,” I mumbled. So embarrassing! Angelo sat back down and our attention returned to Maria.

“We have our network, but outside of that the media isn’t very friendly right now.” She said, gold fangs glistening in the low light. “Once we have the information, we need to deliver it to a sympathetic group who also have media connections.”

This was sounding pretty crazy to me. On the one hand if it panned out it could save them globally, and it would be cool to be a part of that, definitely the coolest thing I’ve ever done. Seitaro would probably be conflicted at first but if I told him after the fact he would be so jealous that I finally did something he couldn’t. On a million other hands though, this had so much potential to end terribly.

“This might not go well for us,” Maria said, seeming to sense my apprehension, “but the missiles are flying and millions will die. We have to try something.”

“Here here.” Grygor said, standing up. As my attention shifted to him I couldn’t help but notice all the joy I had seen from him the other night was gone. He looked smaller, serious, and incredibly sad.

“We can’t prove the war is a false flag, but we can get the ball rolling by proving that the sabotage attacks are, and that’s a start,” He said as he turned to look at me, “and I’m sorry Kriss, we’re gonna have to lean pretty heavily on you for that. Anything you can get your hands on in terms of documentation, so shipping and order flow, that kinda thing.”

A chill ran through my body leaving goosebumps in its wake. Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to risk my shit life with a possible bright new future for the chance at being a badass terrorist freedom fighter? Did I really want to have lots of friends who have top tier human interactions and respect me and my father’s legacy? Would I really do the absolute barest minimum for it?

“I don’t have access to the orders and shipping history, but I know who does.”