SYNDICATES IC: The Future will be a Better Place Tomorrow

Utopia

The sound of gunshots echoed through the bustling Utopia night. On top of one of the gigantic flat-topped sky scrapers stood a short man wearing a black lab coat. In his hand was a laser pistol, which he had leveled towards a tall, French-looking woman who stood on the edge of the building.

"End of the line, Milene." the man said stoically. The woman smiled at Nocturne, as she was not nervous one bit, despite the 100 story fall that awaited her if he pulled the trigger. Milene wasn't worried, though, because she still had some tricks up her sleeve. One stupid Agent wasn't going to stop her.

She fought Nocturne out of her mind once more with a blast from her neurochip. He cocked his head to one side, fascinated with the persistence of his adversary. Even at gunpoint, she showed no fear.

"any last words, madam?" he asked her.

"oui," she replied, smirking "Va te faire foutre!" She leaned back and fell off of the side of the building, going into a head first dive towards the pavement. Nocturne looked down from the building as her arms shimmered and became silver bird-like wings. She pulled out of the dive and up into the sky.

"God d*mmit!" Nocturne cursed. He attempted to hack into her wings and cause them to morph back, but to no avail. These Fusee firewalls were really good.

---

Our dimension, the STC

Agent Myre was sitting in his room in the STC like he normally did on his off days, watching TV and playing Spore (some old human game where you got to create your own race of creatures). He was watching Casino Royale and one of his heroes, James Bond, while simultaneously commandeering a pirate crew on the computer. He clicked on the Karthla empire that he had made on the computer

"Yu really quabbed up an inserv!" the alien said

"Oh, babba labba squee." Myre laughed. he thought it was funny that Will Wright had included Lizandi into his game. It gave it a more... real touch.

About five minutes and ten planet busters later, Myre left his room and walked down the glass walkway to the mess hall to get some food. He looked at the stars up above and below him, and smiled. He loved space.

Exo was running down the maze of acrylic halls, it had both good news and bad news, the good news being that the Krasden Gang had showed up at the space station, screaming for blood. Evidently, if you crack a cipher code that they use for communication about smuggling goods, then tell everyone how to use it on your twitter page, -Exo's had a lot of followers, and not all of them were friends and family- you get a very angry bunch of gangsters invading your base of operations and trying to mount your head on a pike. Apparently.

It rounded a corner, just as the first bullet was fired from the group in pursuit, as had been the pattern so far. It had managed to stay almost an entire tubes length ahead of them, after all, it had plenty of practice. But the problem was in the 'almost'. For about 3 seconds, they would be in the same length of tube as Exo and could get in a relatively clear shot before it vanished around another corner. The halls may or may not have been designed specifically for this kind of scenario with the walls curving around in a tube for a maximum ricochet probability. Okay, yes, they were, but only because this kind of thing was almost a weekly occurrence and one must take precautions in such circumstances.

As it rounded another corner, a bullet missing its head by a feet and bouncing off the wall, leaving a silver scratch mark behind and going who knows where, Exo nearly plowed into Myre who was, evidently, in a good mood because he was observing the star scape above, below and pretty much completely surrounding them. As it passed him it grabbed his sleeve and started dragging him behind it. "Myre, I have some bad news, the new weapon we were testing is ready and they want us to do one last glitch check on it and I already ran most of the mathematics for it, and it only has a 30% chance of catastrophically exploding. But they still want us to test it one more time anyway before we release it onto the market." The sound of the pursuing mob echoed behind them, and as they gradually got closer you could start to make out what colorful language they were directing towards Exo and all its friends and everything they thought it would value. "And, I have some good news to! I cracked that code the Krasden were using, and posted it on twitter. Apparently they aren't to happy about the rating it got." Exo added almost as a side note.

"Well," Myre said flatly "there goes my day." He cracked his neck as he ran, turning on his trusty AI Athena.

"Athena!" he said "close tube door Zulu 14!"

"On it Myre!" Athena replied. Just as Myre and Exo ran through it, a curved wall of bulletproof glass slowly descended in front of the Krasdan attackers, Several bullets bounced off of the curve and hit the gand back, killing one of them.

"That should hold them for a moment!" He called out to Exo "Get to the weapons lab. It's time to test those new weapons out!"

"Ugh." Exo moaned, rolling its eyes, hating everyone who took the 'safety first' approach to everything. It rounded one last corner and they were charging into the weapons testing lab. Exo skidded to a halt, a few inches before one of the glass tables that Millia had insisted on using. Otherwise she would quit, despite the fact that the glass tables were broken of a regular basis didn't seem to matter to her. And at the moment, Exo really was hoping she would quit or that Sralov would fire her form the position of Vice President of NER. So what if she was James's fiancée, she was still a complete and total pot head.

It looked around the room and the many shelves of vials and beakers, tissue cultures and new weapons and wanted to scream. ALL of it, had been 'refurbished' by Millia. And ALL of it, had been changed so that it was 'safe' and PINK. The glass shelves were tinted pink, the walls, which were normally white and speckled with scorch marks of various kinds were repainted like a sunset in a mental hospital. And its Alkili metal pellet gun which it had made the grave mistake of leaving on the counter, had the plastic bubble containing the ammunition painted pink and purple.

At this point, if Exo had any hair, it would have ripped it out. Instead, it balled its fists, and stormed past a tall female alien with pale skin and two long tenticles instead of hair, dressed in what anyone else would call a 'attractive' military outfit that only reminded Exo of James's fiancee. It would be having a 'talk' with him about his pot headed girlfriends behavior soon. At gunpoint.

Myre ran into the lab and wanted to vomit.

"why the CENSORED is the weapons lab PINK?" He ran over to his shredder rifle, which was now covered in pink paneling. Electo laughed, and picked up a large, gun that looked like a rocket launcher which was also painted pink.

"Stop f***ing around Electo!" he yelled at his former partner "We've got company!" Athena closed the bulletproof glass sliding doors to the lab closed and sealed shut just as the gangsters rounded the corner. They fired at the glass, but to no avail. Electo turned around and smirked when she saw the gangsters.

"what did you do this time, Exo?'

(for now, let's assume that both Myre and Exo have been overdosed with the amnesiac and both can remember her).

Exo gave her a long suffering look and stated flatly, "I made a twitter post. And this is the hate party." Then something occurred to it, and it asked incredulously, "How come you automatically assume it was me? It could have been Myre too." It removed its newly repainted gun from the pink glass table and angrily started to scratch the paint off, there was no way, it was going to been seen in public with a pink gun. It would rather die and go sit on a cloud all day forever. No, that wasn't quite true, but it was close.

It stalked over to the weapon they were supposed to be testing, and was horrified to find that it to, had pink paneling. It turned around and yelled at everyone in the lab, which was basically around 20 other scientists in the middle of ether scraping pink off their property or descretly pouring carbonic acid on the pink glass, "Okay everyone! If you see James's fiancée, you have my permission to shoot her on sight."

"Exo," Electo began "you're the only person I know who has a Twitter page on which they put enemy movements on". The gangsters were still firing at the glass door, and the ricocheting bullets were slowly picking the gangsters off.

"So, where are the new weapons?" Myre asked Exo "And can we test them on those stupid gangsters?"


---

back in the Syndicate dimension

Milene swooped down into an alley, where she hid from Nocturne. Her mental firewall would hold Nocturne off for a bit, but he'd eventually hack it. She ran to the end of the alley, where her motorcycle (which was painted like the French flag). The motorcycle started up when it noticed her presence, and she climbed on and drove onto the busy street.

"New weapon. Singular. Its a quantum spectrometer maser, and can fire burst of Hawking radiation at targets such as those gangsters of a battle ship. Basically, if the blast doesn't kill you, the radiation almost defiantly will. Or, the new paint job." It added distastefully, walking over to the large, canon like gun and swinging it around to face the doors that the gangsters were still opening fire upon. Exo's hand hovered above the fire button momentarily as it asked, "Ready to test fire?"

Myre kicked a panel in the wall and a gold-colored scoped New Jabban assault rifle which Millia hadn't gotten her hands on. He took the rifle, held it at hip level, and hid behind the wall. Electo grabbed her Antimatter blaster (looks like a small bazooka) and his behind the opposite wall.

"ready!" they both yelled.

"Right." Exo said, pressing the button. The gun started up normally, sparking with electricity along the midsection which was made of what looked like a glass cylinder filled with molecular hydrogen. As the electricity activated the hydrogen atoms they began to decay, emitting trillions of radioactive subatomic particles ranging from your typical photon to antimatter particles. Basically creating subatomic spaghetti. Now, when Exo had said that there was 30% chance of it catastrophically exploding, what that was tantamount to was the small chance that they created a mini big bang. Of course, if it had actually said that there was a 30% probability of that happening, Myre probably would have destroyed its new gun with a sledge hammer. Well, unless it told him that by in doing so he would probably die of radiation poisoning.

The subatomic particles were forced into a polyspectrum reflective tube where they collided with each other, making even smaller subatomic particles which collided with each other. Some stuck together and made some very large unun-somethingorother particles that were bombarded by more tiny particles that were only a few yactometers across. Basically, somewhere along the way down the barrel, what us physicists call the 'God particle' was inadvertently created and smashed into a wall of about 3000 photons 234 antimatter particles, 3 charm quarks, 586 top quarks and about two million other assorted particles.

The result of this bombardment was a massive explosion that was large enough to engulf all of STC and kill everyone inside. Fortunately for this plot line, the resulting explosion was so large that it ripped a hole in the already perforated space surrounding the space station that was a direct result of several such explosions on earlier occasions, and was sucked into it along with everything within the direct vicinity of the gun.

in the syndicate universe

A large explosion blasted a huge section of a parking complex into nonexistence and about 5 seconds after the explosion, a large portion of the lab including about 20 pink tables, several shelves decked with lab equipment now precariously balanced on the pink shelves went into a spontaneous state of existence in the center of the black spot created by the mini Big Bang that could probably bee seen from space it you looked really hard.

Myre woke up in a large crater that was once a parking complex. He shifted, sighed, and rolled out of the way of a falling hovercar. The car smashed to the ground where Myre had been seconds before and exploded in a wave of superheated hydrogen. He stood up, feeling rather shaky and weak, and looked around at his surroundings. Through the black spot, he could see the towering glass spacescrapers of Utopia. The sky was full of scrambling hovercars as they flew away from the black hole. Electo also rose from where she was laying on the ground and grabbed her pink antimatter cannon. She staggered over to where Myre was, and passed out on his shoulder. Myre looked around for Exo, who was nowhere to be found, or perhaps he was just too dizzy to see his compadre. he wasn't sure. But taking a nap felt like a really good thing to do now so he swayed and collapsed into the dust, Electo landing next to him.

---

The explosion threw Milene off of her motorcycle. She flew through the air and crashed through the glass front window of an Apple Store, taking out a case of IPad 26s. She found herself laying on a table of Macbooks, a crowd of panicking people running all around her to escape the explosion. She was barely noticed, and, after taking a moment to recuperate, went back to her motorcycle to investigate this strange explosion.

Exo who had been partially buried under now smashed lab shelves and a cascade equipment and experiments regained consciousness rather abruptly as a small beaker of liquid nitroglycerine was crushed under a chunk of the flying car and exploded dumping more junk on top of it. "Holy mother of God!" Exo exclaimed, hurriedly standing up, sending a small pile of random charred objects clattering to the ground. It staggered a few paces, narrowly avoiding a box of smashed test tubes that had spilled glass allover the ground.

It looked around, straight faced, apparently unfazed by the fact that it had A: just created a mini Big Bang, B: survived, C: apparently been teleported to another planet, possibly universe. It blinked, tilting its head to the side looking at the glass sky scrapers from a different angle.

"Hm... HAHHAHAHAHHA! I MADE A MINI-BIG BANG! HAHAHAH! BEAT THAT ALBERT! JAMES! AND EVERYONE ELSE!" It pumped its fist and kicked the box of test tubes across the a 20 foot section of the gigantic black hole in the ground. It then looked around for Myre and Electo, saw that they were both passed out on the ground, ran over to them, giggling the entire time like a very small demented child and shook them both awake, "Myre! Electo! It worked! I HAVE RECREATED THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE! HAHAHA!" It yelled, the fact that both Myre and Electo probably felt like they had just been dropped off the back of a train into a dumpster didn't occur to it in its overly elated state.

"Exo..." Myre groggily said, sitting up "when i get the energy to get back up, I am going to break your @$$ into so many pieces that it will take twenty years and a pair of needle-nosed pliers to put it back together!" Electo sat up, still woozy, and tried to get up, but fell to the ground again, still dizzy.


Milene pulled her motorcycle as close as she could to the wreckage and got off of her bike. her arms transformed into twin backhoes, which she used to shovel the rubble out of her way. She was close to Myre, Electo, and Exo when...

"a pink shelf?" she audibly yelled with a heavy French accent.

The Secret Base...

Inside one of the secret labs of the evil Syndicate, Lurin laid on a large metal bed that was tilted up in the air. Large electric tubes ran into his neck and his red eyes were black. Then suddenly they sparked on and he rebooted. The tubes detached from his neck as the bed tilted to a vertical angle and Lurin stepped off.

An electronic voice buzzed out from his metallic head. "Reboot successful" he said. He wore a large black suit with a tie, even robots could dress nicely.

He stepped over to a large mirror that only made himself feel even more depressed and desensitized.

Eris, who was sitting at her desk, painting her nails pink, saw Lurin get up from his table. She quickly blew on her nails to dry them, and opened the glass doors, smirking slightly. Time to mess with the new guy.

She walked over to the metal table and sat down in a steel chair next to it, crossing her left leg over her right. She put on her best 'I'm an idiot blonde chick' look and began to twirl her hair with a pen in a stupid manner.

"Welcome to Saybre-tech," she said "I'm Eris, pleased to meet you".

"It wasn't my idea!" Exo hollered at the new voice, swaying slightly on its feet. Just now noticing the large bloody cut across it forehead as it for some unknown reason attempted some sort of drunk looking salute and noticed that A: its head hurt when it touched it and that B: its hand now had blue blood on it. "Huh." It muttered, looking at the blood on its hand curiously, like it was an entirely new concept to it.

Myre slowly got to his feet, using Electo to pull himself up like a drunken man. He wobbled some on his feet, and finally steadied himself on a piece of flying car.

"You said the weapon could fail, not teleport us somewhere else!" he yelled "where are we anyways?"

"Vous etes sur la Terre". Milene stepped out from a clearing, a scoped rifle in her hand. She pointed it at Exo, who seemed like the biggest threat in the area. "Qui etes-vous et pourquoi devrais-je pas vous tirer dessus?"

Exo giggled, "No Qui etes voe et purqooi devris ja passs vos tireer desusss!" It had absolutely no idea what it had just said and for some reason didn't care. Although it was vaguely aware that it might have something to due with the blood on its hand, even though it couldn't remember why or how it got there. It frowned, confused... why was the ground spinning slightly when it moved its head? It did so again to see if the result would be any different and suddenly lost all feeling in its legs and the next thing it knew it was flat on its back staring at the sky wondering what was so exiting that it had been yelling about a few seconds ago.

Had Exo not fallen down, Milene probably would have turned him into Swiss cheese. Luckily, Exo fainted and Electo knew French.

"Je suis desole!" she cried out to the Agent "Mon ami ne parle pas francais!"

"Qui diable etes-vous?" Milene replied.

"Je m'appelle-"

"Will you guys please speak English!" Myre interrupted. Milene turned towards the secret agent and pointed her gun at it.

"Okay," she began in a heavy French accent "Who the CENSORED are you and why did you just crash into the middle of a major city?"

"I don't know!" Myre put his hands up into the air "Ask the Frog!" Milene walked over to Exo and nudged it with the tip of her gun. "

"Is it alive?" she said slowly.

"Yeah... just concussed probably..." Exo said deliriously, the French woman’s face swimming in front of its eyes which were dilated into tiny slits and seemed to underline its statement. Then something occurred to it, hadn’t it just been yelling about recreating the creation of the universe? Then it remembered, that yes it had in fact done that. It raised its left arm in a drunken looking gesture and said as a psychotic grin spread across its face, “I recreated the creation of the universe!! Myre! Electo! French lady! I made a mini Big Bang! Take that Millia… stupid pink… wait… wasn’t my gun uh… pink to?” It paused, removing its pellet gun from its holster and holding it above its face, examining the now scratched pink and purple paint. “Ohhh yes. It is pink. I hate pink.”

"Lurin" said the robotic man. His emotions were dry. Through his eyes he saw a world painted red with a black crosshair printed over his vision that moved all around and scanned various objects as they came into view.

"Where are my superiors?" he asked, assuming he had superiors.