Sasha sat in the crèche, a sprawl of connectors snaking from her shorn head to an outlet in the wall. She wore mirrorglass lenses swarming with halogen text. It was a code read-out of the future, specifically that of the SecResCorp Inc. grounds. The spatial-temporal dimensions belonged to an agent in deep cover. The identity of the field agent, codename Janus, was deeply classified. The length and breadth of experience in space-time within his proximity was fed backwards through time.
It was a power of godlike proportions. A complete three dimensional data capture of a single spatial-temporal slice unfolded in her mind. It was a security complex. The higher aboves wanted an article from the desk of office space 24D in Complex HAZK8. These slices of space-time could be put in a containment field, the electromagnetic equivalent of an ol’ mason jar, and using this method Sasha was able to investigate all the possibilities to ensure maximum survivability rate. In rapid fire she undertook several scenarios. Virtually, she experienced each iteration, died and lived through each failure and success until the options towards the best possible course consolidated. Ghosts of pain tingled where limbs were scorched off, slashes gashed, internal punctures ruptured. She finished these sessions feeling like a patchwork woman.
She was an artist, dancer, philosophizer, warrior, architect, general, and a woman. Sasha applied herself to her bloody art with finesse, rough-hewed when necessary, and ultimately outputted a scenario that yielded an 100% success rate. She downloaded a copy onto a datachip. She grinned with satisfaction and swept the nodes from her skull. She had even accounted for Johnny Kester. Sasha headed for the mess hall, jiggling the datachip in a hand.
Johnny Kester was a pilot, and relatively new with the company. It would be his first time working with Sasha. His specialty was the Cricket, a small thopter, capable of flying with payloads under a thousand kilos. Any heavier, it would still fly short distances, hopping long parabolas from point to point. Johnny was supposedly the best. He probably was, Sasha surmised. The superiors never half-arsed on help and resources when it came to Sasha. She found him just leaving the mess hall. He stopped when he saw her.
“It’s just like a dance.” She pirouetted, tossing the chip to Johnny who caught it with the reflexes expected of a pilot. She grabbed him by the coat and slammed him against the wall. “Don’t fuck it up.” With slackjaw amazement he watched her ass recede down the hall.
Final Scenario:
She always felt alive in free fall. Clouds rushed past her. When she was a little girl she dreamed of angels, little plump baby cherubims flitting among the downy clouds. She would frolic with them, leaping from puff to puff, and they would have snowball wars. Snowballs like small comets shedding chlorofluorocarbons and ice in the thin cold reaches. She remembered catching God square in the face, his smile of shock. The wind tore the chuckle from her lips.
Ka-chump! Firing downwards the marshmallow canister, she tucked her knees and straightened into a dive. The canister impacted and exploded in a rapidly expanding bubble of translucent gelatin. She punched through and the gel absorbed her mass velocity, bulging, spreading it along its circumference. She tumbled slowly, turning to land in a crouch. She could see small impacts bursting small bubbles in the gel. They were shooting. Wait, wait, wait. The gel destructured and foamed to the ground. She slid, her guns haloing. In a smell of carbine smoke, she had dispatched an entire squad.
The layout burned bright in her mind as she unerringly traversed labyrinthe corridors, squeezing off bursts of her rifle with heavily rehearsed rote. She fired at empty doorways and danced past falling corpses whose rolling eyes showed they didn’t know they were dead. Running, wild and fast like in the green fields of her childhood where butterflies kept pace in a squall of grasshoppers and crickets, her trigger fingers blazed tracers of bullets thin and deadly. She dashed into a stairwell, shedding a mine as she ran steadily upstairs.
A miniature rocket launcher did the job, punching the door inward into a flurry of burning splinters. She ran into the smoke with her eyes closed, her trained legs flawlessly navigating every obstacle. At the desk, she stopped, knelt, and looked at the framed picture. The frame was brightly coloured, as if painted by a child’s hand. The picture showed a little girl with a beaming smile, tongue sticking through the gap where her baby teeth had fallen out. So the higher ups had a heart. Usually it was money or damaging information. Sasha brushed an unexpected tear from her eye, and grabbed the picture.
The thopter whirred into her line of vision. “Right on time. Not too bad of a chap, after all,” she said as she placed her foot on the edge of the roof and threw herself into eternity.
After the mission she took him in the locker room and fucked him until the cartoon sunshine of a thousand megatons filled her body with incandescent ecstasy. She dressed and left him in a gasping heap, smiling cruelly as she pushed out the locker room.
