Desolate

The air was still; the silence of the woods broken only by the sound of Dugan’s panicked breath and the sound of snapping branches beneath his feet as he hastily paid himself forward up the gruelling hill. 

He took one look behind him to see if he was still being chased, but the momentary lack of concentration on what was in front was all it took for the trap to work its magic. A sudden crack appeared in the earth, as its dirt fell into the hole that had been so carefully concealed in the undergrowth.

“Fucking Scratchers!” he swore to himself. They were nothing compared to whatever it was that had been following him for the past day and a half, but still, he fancied not having to deal with sitting consciously through his brain being cut open so they could get a fix off the DMT being pumped through his system as it gave out. It was all they had to remind them of whatever addictive drugs Eastern Australia had sprayed all over the Western country in an effort to claim an advantage in the war.
As Dugan fell, his pack came unbuckled, smacking him in the back of the head and spilling its contents into a pile at his feet. Dugan scrambled to try and grab the only things that mattered – a bunch of empty cylinders that lay on top of a freshly killed rabbit – but it was no use. Before he could even stash them back in, the horde had surrounded him and several of its fiends were upon him. He managed to get in a good punch to one’s eye socket, before he was met with a barrage of feet to the other important sack he carried with him. The pain was horrendous, and for one horrific moment, Dugan suspected his testicle had been split open.

He recoiled into a ball to try and cop the brunt of the beating at his back and sides, then the last thing he felt was something hard hitting him in the back of the head.

It was still light when Dugan came to, but the day didn’t have that same sense of freshness that came with every early morning. The sun and its heat had risen to a part of the sky that told him it was somewhere around midday. He relaxed against the pole that his hands and feet had been bound to, as he realised the good news. Maybe, just maybe, he had a fighting chance, but it all depended on…
“Shit!” he muttered, when he realised his wristband had been removed and stacked on top of the pack laying several feet from him. 

He looked around and noticed that he was deep in the middle of a Scratcher camp, set up on the edge of a field between some granite rocks and marri trees. Then he realised the other problem: there were just too many of the damned junkies – ten in all – and each were well equipped, with makeshift spears and knives, some with bows and arrows. Sure their weapons were much more primitive than his, but they were still designed to do the same job. He thanked his stars that his gun was made with a forgotten technology that these savages would never understand. As for the fold up bow in his pack, he just hoped they were even dumber than the last group he’d come across, and didn’t figure it was useful.

Nope. There, sitting on a rock was a Scratcher with half of his hair ripped out, stringing it up next to a large fire that was inevitably meant for Dugan’s flesh once they had finished with his DMT. That was the good thing about human survivors; they provided both a cure for the addiction and the munchies that came with it.

A few metres behind, was some sort of fancy laboratory equipment undoubtedly used for extracting and cooking purposes; the standard décor prevalent in the many camps Dugan had cleared before.
The Scratcher picked at his arms that were covered with hundreds of swelling sores, then cocked his head to one side, catching Dugan in the middle of his gaze.
“Well, Well, Well. The shithead is awake. Now we can finally cut this fucker open and slurp out his magical potion.”

“I have another potion you can slurp out too while you’re at it.” Dugan said with a calmness that made half hair jolt back out of sheer confusion. Usually those that were unfortunate enough to wind up in a similar position were in no mood to piss off their captors, but Dugan was an exception. What could he say; he’d simply seen some shit that made these guys look like the tooth fairy, whatever the fuck that was. Some old saying that remained whose meaning had been forgotten along with how biometric guns worked.

“Wow, you’re a feisty one aren’t you? It’s going to be fun thinking of ways to scare the DMT out of you. I myself am not really into that sort of thing, but if you ask Earl nicely he might oblige. He likes eating those parts when they are all nice and roasted.” The Scratcher chuckled.

“They are better fresh.” A huge man who had been kneeling down preparing something on the other side of the fire stood up, grabbing a piece of metal that looked like it had been ripped violently off something. It’s edge was jagged, and although it looked as though it could perform such an operation, it didn’t look as though it could do it very efficiently.

“Ahh. I get it. Let me guess...it’s a ritual to appease the gods that smite you at birth in the hopes that one day you will be blessed with an appendage of appreciable substance like everyone else.”
Dugan watched as Earl’s head ticked over. After a moment he finally registered what Dugan was implying, and an expression of rage burst out across his face. He sprinted toward Dugan, and readied the jaggered strip of metal at his face.

Just as he got within an arm’s distance a gunshot rang out somewhere in the distance, and Earl’s face exploded into a flurry of bones and blood. The other Scratcher leapt to his feet, as the rest of the camp dove for cover behind whatever was closest to them. Some were luckily enough to find a tree or rock to block out the direction the shot came from, others not as so, but Dugan wasn’t worried. He knew they would all be dead soon anyway, but if he didn’t give his wrist band his entire concentration, he knew he would be as well. 

He closed his eyes and focused.

BANG another shot echoed through the valley, taking out the Scratcher who was still holding Dugan’s fold up bow. A far off shadow began to creep across the field like a swift cloud, its ominous behaviour nothing like anyone had ever seen before, except for Dugan.

He did just as had he been trained to do, and pictured the wristband in his hand, but it had been so long since he needed to use such a skill, that he had almost entirely forgotten how to do it. The wristband vibrated from on top of the pack, as a jolt of electricity was sparked from the red crystal that lined it’s band; the same red crystal that had brought with it the ruination of the world. 
The dark cloud soon approached, and as it did, several Scratcher’s were taken aback in awe of what was causing it; two women even standing out of cover to gaze at it in wonderment. It was ironic that they could be so curious about such old technology, but then again, they hadn’t been afforded the same education as Dugan. They hadn’t been lucky enough to make it into the same military family that taught that sought of shit.

BANG, BANG. They soon met the same fate as Earl, their bodies slumping to ground before they could even begin to understand what it was that had shot them. 

Dugan knew that it had one shot left, however, and he knew that it would be saving it for him, because tactical protocol dictated that he – being the closest – was the easiest shot to make.
He strained his mind harder and the wristband suddenly activated, hovering into the air in front of him, but he still needed to bring it to his hand before its usefulness would be proven, and given the laws that dictated such an attraction, telekinetic movement in gravitationally controlled space was one of the hardest feats to achieve. It was just near impossible to swing the momentum in his favour, when his mind was already busy coping with the weight of the atmosphere upon it.
The drone began a swinging motion of its own, speeding up its arc as Dugan’s thermal signature came into view. It lowered its turret, preparing to take the shot, just as soon as its system gave a one hundred percent surety that it would not miss.

Dugan gave it all he could, straining his mind so hard that he thought he was going to pop a blood vessel, and all of a sudden that all too familiar click happened where he passed the threshold of common physics and quantum manipulation became somewhat effortless. To his delight, he opened his eyes just in time to catch the wristband as it shot into his hand.

Somewhere deep inside the drone’s processor, an algorithm initiated, masking Dugan from its sensors and aborting the shot. It readjusted its calculations, and took out another Scratcher hiding in a bush, then continued on towards Dugan, slowly lowering itself near his pack. A robotic arm sprung forward with a saw on the end of it as the drone inched ever so carefully toward his hands.

Within a moment it, cut through his bindings and had taken up position just above his head.
“About fucking time, Wiggles!” Dugan shouted over the noise of the drone’s engines. 

“Don’t lecture me on being late, sir. You know the necessity of keeping my battery fully charged. I had to wait until mid-morning before my processor even had enough charge to realise that the pulse from your infrared beacon was nowhere in sight.” Wiggles replied in a well-spoken British accent. 
In an effort to make the guardian drones more appealing to their soldiers, as well as provide effective automated electronic warfare, the West Australian military had equipped them with a variety of different voices. Unfortunately for Dugan, he had stumbled upon Wiggles about three hundred years too late, when all the operating manuals had been turned into compost, which meant his only friend in the world was stuck on its default speech setting; a pompous Butler that had an unsavoury affinity of speaking in technical mumbo jumbo.

Dugan wrestled with the binds on his legs. Once free he dove for his pack, just in time to avoid an arrow that struck past where his head was moments earlier. To his dissatisfaction, Wiggles kept up with the incessant nagging.

“Then there’s the matter of waiting for three working satellites to pass overhead before I could triangulate your position. You are lucky we are in the middle of summer or I would have been much later. I’ve been relaying between battery and solar power all day just to get here. It’s not the most efficient use of my systems resources, I can assure you.”

“I told you yesterday that there was something following us. You should have managed your system resources better and prepared for such a scenario. What is the point of me telling you these things if you are not going to listen.” Dugan loaded the last of his ammo into his handgun, and started firing over the small boulder he was using as cover, hitting a Scratcher in the arm. 

“Yes you keep mentioning this thing that is apparently following us, but whenever I did a sweep of the area – which further puts a strain on my battery I might add – my sensors picked up no signal. If you need some space you should just tell me and I will carry out the necessary software routines to keep a distance. I am not a mind reader, you know.” For a moment Dugan was about to reply that neither was he, but then that wouldn’t have been entirely true, because it had been something they had touched on in the Barracks back at Swanborn. He decided to reword the phrase to suit the situation more appropriately, but it was a trap the artificial intelligence of Wiggles had planned out meticulously in the space of a nanosecond.

“And I am not a bloody microprocessor reader either. How do I know what goes on inside that system of yours.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you are still the same man I met all those years ago in the factory, sir. Here I am practically catching your food for you, heating it and using my on board temperature sensors to tell you when it is cooked just the way you like it, cleaning your canteen, not to mention coming to your rescue when you decide to stay out all night without letting me know where you are going, using all sorts of excuses about being followed by some non-existent thing …Scratcher at your four O’Çlock, sir … and you can’t even be bothered trying to understand some basic pre-processor theory nor even use some common sense when it comes to finding me a decent place to recharge. Real military men know how to look after their equipment, sir. Real military men know us drones need to be out in the sun, not stuck under some large tree on the bank of a ravine.”

“I upgraded your external oscillator didn’t I? I didn’t hear you complaining about that. In fact I seem to remember you being over the moon that you could get more done in the day. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but components like that aren’t very common in these parts.”
“Oh please, you wouldn’t have even known what an oscillator even is let alone does if I hadn’t shown you myself, sir. Might as well not even have one if I don’t have the battery power to keep it functioning.”

Dugan grabbed one of the small cylinders his Scratcher captives had been kind enough to bundle with his gear. He rolled over to Earl’s body then scooped a pile of fresh blood into it, clicking the hinged cap closed to keep it from spilling.

“Here, this ought to stop your whinging.” He inserted into a slot at the bottom of Wiggles frame, and at once there was a loud grinding sound as the drone’s engines began revving up. Dugan grabbed another cylinder and repeated the process with the remaining slot. It didn’t take long before Wiggles’ blades were spinning at full speed.

“About time, sir.” Wiggles replied, and sped off, still with his saw lowered.
“Are you in pain? Here let me help you with that bullet wound, sir.” Came the automated voice of Wiggles, shortly followed by a high pitched scream as the saw amputated the forearm of the scratcher that had been shot by Dugan. The drone could just as easily taken off the scratcher’s head instead, but it had assessed the situation and found psychological warfare the best means to subdue the hostile threat that was facing Dugan. Wiggles maneuvered itself so it could both sever the arm and monitor the scratcher’s eyes with its depth perceptive camera lenses at the same time. It was looking for a particular sequence of pupil dilation that it understood as an indicator of fear, and surely enough it was found in heavy supply when the scratcher’s arm fell right into his own lap.

Right on cue, Wiggles registered another scratcher in its rear facing thermal imaging camera. It spun around to scan the enemy with its two depth perceptive lenses, then analyzed its body language by comparing it to a multitude of images stored within its near infinite memory cache. Nineteen trillionths of a second later, Wiggles had come to the conclusion that its strategy had worked, because this particular scratcher was fixated on the one bleeding out under its rotors. 

As it turned out, even in a fire fight a junkie couldn’t resist getting a fix, and what Wiggles had done when it had severed the scratcher’s arm was take the attention off the person it had been programmed to guard. These vile people – if you could even call them that – could smell fear a mile away, especially when it came to the fear of death. It was something they mined in great quantities in this dying world. The only thing left to mine at all, besides the rare crystal in the middle of Dugan’s gun.

Suddenly the second scratcher pulled a small bundled hunting net out of his trouser pocket and threw over the top of Wiggles rotors, rushing the guardian drone in the process.

Wiggles anticipated the throw, and began its own evasive maneuvers, but it ended up flying right into it instead, and was just as quickly brought back down to the ground. 

Shortly after there was a barrage of system errors coming from the inertia sensors in the robotic arm that housed the spinning saw. Wiggles tried rotating both its thermal imaging cameras and its depth perceptive cameras simultaneously, all to no avail. The second scratcher was deliberately dodging its line of vision. Wiggles could see nothing but one humungous arm gripped around the drone’s robotic one, as it drove the saw towards the scalp of the armless scratcher lying in front of them.
Dugan heard an even louder scream followed by a muffled rushing and splattering of liquid. He knew his metallic friend was in trouble, but he also knew there were three more scratchers with bows and arrows waiting for him to pop his head up out of cover.

“Dugan, sir, I appear to have been caught unawares. Would you be a jolly sport and disrupt my assailant’s course of action.” Wiggles requested as a spurt of blood  rendered his perceptive cameras useless. The thermal ones were not much better either, showing nothing but a tangled blob of white 
“Not now, Wiggles. Gun’s jammed”. There was no need for Dugan to lie, but he did anyway. Both him and Wiggles knew the real reason was because he was focusing, like he had done with the wristband. This technique was a bit more tricky, because there was the problem of speed to overcome. At least he would be pushing this time, and that was much easier than the pulling needed to “psychitize” the wristband.

Dugan spun forward and around in one swift motion, aiming the gun just over the rock he had been using for cover, but it was a vague approximation at best. Although Dugan’s eyes were closed, he had a very vivid image of where his gun barrel was pointing, because this was the place his thoughts would react with the blood infused psychristor  that was embedded within his bullets. That blood had been taken from his finger and was the reason the psychristor reacted to his very thoughts, becoming denser in those areas Dugan focused on to change the trajectory of the bullet. 

The wrist band worked in a similar fashion, creating a psychoactive resonance field that sought its hosting thought pattern when repetitively switched between maximum and minimum density.
Dugan fired, and the bullet arced with a precision that not even Wiggles could have calculated, avoiding two large boulders before embedding itself in the head of one the scratcher archers. 

By now the DMT fiend had breached the skull of the dead, armless man and was face deep in a pile of brains soaked with the heavenly nectar. He didn’t seem to notice the large cuts the drone’s saw had opened up in his stomach, or that his intestines had actually spilt themselves free in his struggles to get down every last drop.

Wiggles registered a large splatter of white, before the blob in front of his thermal cameras – the blob that was half the size it once was – dropped to heap at the ground.

Now that Wiggles was free of the giant’s grip, it directed its saw towards the rope that had tangled in its rotors, spinning round at a mechanical elbow that had been designed to allow three dimensional flexibility. It wasn’t long before Wiggles was free and hovering back by its master’s side.

“ Will you do me a favour and check my aileron, sir? I worry it might jam closed once all this blood dries.” Wiggles was spinning itself round as if trying to check its outer shielding for itself. Perhaps it was trying to give Dugan a better view. Whatever it was doing, Dugan had a feeling that it didn’t quite know – probably the only thing it didn’t know , when it came to vast majority of knowledge that had been injected into it on manufacturing day – what a an aileron even was.

“Wiggles, we have been through this before. You don’t have an aileron.”  Dugan yelled, just as an arrow skimmed past his head, though he didn’t notice as he was too busy focusing his one remaining bullet. The arrow’s archer – the last remaining scratcher – had ducked into a dugout bunker. Dugan’s bullet sailed through the air and hit the far side of a cliff just moments later; he’d fired a split second too late. 
“What do you mean I don’t have an Aileron? It says right here in my service documentation that I have one for each wing, and that should they become clogged, they must be immediately cleaned out.” A holographic suddenly projected out of a third hole next to Wiggles’ depth perceptive cameras and lit up the ground in front of Dugan. What it was displaying was an image of a piece of machinery that looked nothing like the guardian drone. Dugan recognized it as his friend’s big brother; an aeroplane.
“Can we do this later?” Dugan asked, not wanting to get into the inevitable discussion about artificially created psychology that was waiting to happen whenever Wiggles mentioned his phantom ailerons. There was something deeply disturbing about a supposedly intelligent machine thinking it was something else entirely. Something deeply disturbing indeed.