Ablaze Spring 2024

of storage device, part of the old gel armor Series II which helped to record data -- both biometric and otherwise. Since this bead was old, she was concerned about trying to extract data from it as they were notoriously unreliable. She recalled they had hair-thin tendrils which came from within, connecting to the gel armor suit architecture and acting to relay the data recorded. Series II suits were now nearly ancient, museum pieces and fully obsolete. The troops complained about them, saying they were susceptible to cyber-attack, weather and poor comms, among other concerns. She served back when Series II suits appeared, so she did have some basic under - standing of them. After finding some old manuals, she got a quick refresher. The bureaucrat’s tendency to hold on to old documents had again proved useful. After considerable experimenting and improvising with available materials, she got the mem-bead to extend its tendrils and recovered what data she could. There wasn’t very much, likely due to the bead’s age, her inexperience and crude equipment. Then she hid the mem-bead away and went about deciphering what it yielded. The first file she could mostly understand was short, yet alarming…

[Audio File-01] Nobody sleeps here…awful, detestable sounds haunt the night. One minute quiet then you hear drums then distant screams and always a faint thump- ing/droning, like behind the greenish wall there hides a massive factory in the jungle. We hear crying from about 50 meters away for two hours one night until Wabbah, our grenadier, decided to fire a rifle grenade. After the explosion it was quiet a long while, almost started to re - lax, then a disembodied human-sounding voice began howling and whimpering again. Wabbah was never the same, as he had come unhinged and the next day just stared, rarely spoke thereafter until one night he just walked straight into the dark green wall of foliage and never came back.

Checking old sources informed her this particular mem-bead likely came from a team leader suit, which meant the user enjoyed more of a tech /

126

Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator