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I shiver, once.... For a split second,
I'm no longer just watching the Tallies...
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I'm one of them.
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I'm all right, Captain...
Been holding my breath.
A little light-headed...
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No effects from the gas... I think I'm gonna be okay.
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Good to hear.
How's the sniper?
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Lieutenant Miller...
Follow me....
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Miller, what's your status?
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I don't remember surrendering.
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Listen - I don't know how you slipped through our perimeter, but we're evacuating the
combat
zone
in
a
few
minutes.
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You can run behind me, or I'll carry you again.
You got about sixty seconds to....
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You're a prisoner of war now.
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Your rights under the Geneva Convention will be read to you when we return to base.
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That's okay. I don't remember asking
you.
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Here. You look like you haven't eaten in a while. This'll boost your energy.
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Delirious. Possibly wounded. Needs medical attention.
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Okay Miller, we've got a signal lock on your helmet.
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Woo yeah! Killer Miller,
The Stone Cold "C"!
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Roger copy.
Spectacle activated.
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You should be able to see through every active bot in a one klick radius.
Shuffled survey, radial sweep.
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Use voice command to focus on your current position.
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Roger that. I'm looking at myself. All systems go.
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It's freaky... Like seeing yourself as a character in a third person shooter.
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I think you mean first person shooter, lieutenant.
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All right, Miller. Scope out to aerial. You'll see
your position with two escape routes, one in red, one in blue.
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Roger that. Which one do I take?
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Whichever one we can
secure first.
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In fact... I've got a real good feeling about this.
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Don't get too happy, Lieutenant. You've got over 100 Tallies swarming on your position.
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We're fighting an enemy who doesn't even wear helmets.... Isn't that weird?
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Uh... never really gave it much thought, Miller.
Stand by.
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Heads up, Lieutenant.
We got another situation developing.
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What are they doing, Lieutenant? |
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Oh jesus... Lieutenant...
who is this
woman?
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Uh... Captain Markov? You read me? |
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All right. Time to get to the bottom of
this. |
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ID device, serial: hotel bravo sierra 874132-niner-651-
niner-0305 zulu alpha. //Hut!* |
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This was to be her final night. Her night
of glory. |
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We didn't bring her this far so that you could take that away from her. |
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Her eyes and ears. Her army. Her
family. |
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How many of you in this "family?" |
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Talking. Girls' voices, sounds like... |
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Dunno, Captain. I thought she
was just a crazy BMO* who'd straggled into
the combat zone... But now I'm picking up serious JDFR** here... |
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You shouldn't have interfered.... |
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Five hundred? A thousand? |
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Significantly more than you can cope with,
Lieutenant. |
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I want to be her.
It's not enough just to look at her...
I have to pull out...
And at that moment, an invisible sun emerges...
engulfing
me, suffusing me,
with its warmth...
Her eyes are lenses... focusing the sunlight into a solar
beam which pierces through me....
ignite....
then...
i'm burning
up....
oh god..
Suddenly I understand why she's a celebrity...
her
gaze causes an achingly
sweet spot in my stomach to glow white hot...
have to escape her gaze....
The
developers of SpiderNet had foreseen the possibility of charismatic
terrorists forming cults of personality --the so-called "Ché Guevara
Effect" --
and they'd built safeguards into the system to prevent just
this very thing from occurring....
Somehow, outside the scope of Greater SpiderNet Awareness...
she'd gathered a massive audience unto
herself...
Which,
normally, they did.
She was
a new kind of celebrity, famous yet invisible...
But,
for those safeguards to work, the terrorist-celebrities had to match
certain "danger" profiles, while their audiences had
to behave in stereotypical, mathematically predictable ways.
A dark
star.
But this was a unique event.
She shouldn't have been able to do this.
A
conspiratorial audience, who hadn't
generated the usual heat and light of fanfare...
i
close my naked
eye, and look into the Spectacle....
Good
thing I had the situation under control.
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Roger Captain,
I'm there.
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Lieutenant: five hundred gold snitches have peeled
off
the
perimeter swarm and are heading your way. |
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We don't know who's controlling them, so let's assume bad.
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Most likely. It would be damn hard for any civvies to
spoof military AI
like this....
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But if it is an enemy hack, they might be trying to signal your
location to
the Tallies. |
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Victory! We is accomplishment your rifle found!*
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They're connected to the sniper somehow...
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