Dear reader, today I publish my first short-story under creative commons licence (CC-BY-SA 3.0). I hope u enjoy a little bit reading it. It was made as a birthday gift for a good friend. If you want to copy, paste, work on it, feel free, thats what it is made for, all i wanted to do is writing it.
Strawberry One By Frank Pott, published under CC-BY-SA 3.0, 1.400 Words
Strawberry One.
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Son, there are a lot stories about the old world. The most are told more times u can stand them, but let me tell you a story which is never told before. It is the story of a woman.
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It were the old days where the MechaWorriers still were as mechanical partisans deep in the woods. Son, I guess u know the MechaWorriers. These old rusty maschines you can see today in the “Museums of ancience society”. But in these old days, they were mighty and powerful, heavy support-maschines. Some were just for fighting, other were carriers or constructing maschines, and some were made for tech-support. But just a few, the most valiant, were allowed to ride the Data-Rocketeers.
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Son, the woman I am talking about was one of these brave people. She started in the age of 17 as a rookie, self-employing by constructing her own MechaBot. It was made of rubbish metal, hard steal-titanium mixes and electrical components you could find in chip-libraries and tool-houses. I heard that the heart of her MechaBot was one of these heavy hydrogene-cells used by EcoCars in the ancience society. It needed hours and hours to plan, construct and welding these MechaBot. She coded the interface by her own, backing everything in she needed. A calender and organizer, the communication-interface, aiming-AI and last but not least the configuration of arms, legs, briefly the fullbodycontroll and some gimmics like near field communication hacker software.
After all, she published the code under creative commons licence. Son, that wasn´t common at these time, stupid people thought about ideas as property not knowing that property is an illusion. But she did, and a lot of other rookies could use here expieriences and software, creating own code and better programs.
Sadly she never will appear in the history-books, and I don´t think that a documentation about her life will join our histo-backups in the online-libraries but her first uses of the MechaBot were rollicking.
My Son, like your playing with reality-devices, MechaBot-races were part of the same youth-culture and a big fun. She wasn´t too bad, the high number of reclaimed upgrade kits sponsored by chip-libraries and toolhouses shows it.
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One of these upgrade kits was polluted with hacked resistance software, which transmitted the “Manifest of liberating the World” to her screen. She read it all bright-eyed and decided to join the resistance in the woods fighting for a more equal and liberated world. Wasn´t easy, in these days to reach them, because they didn´t use the later sucessfull data-rockets and the MechaWorrier-Net (MW-N).
But I guess the first days with her MechaBot looking for the resistence were surely totaly amazing. She crawled through the woods, looking for the resistance and solving some trainings which were offered in the eathernet for resistance-rookies. After a while she was magged by the Counter-Resistance-Squads (CRS)and needed to flee. But Son, she was a clever woman, the CRS wasn´t fast enough to get her MechaBot, and when they were close, she found a lot of traps and tricks to escape.
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She was the first who invented the data-rockets, the technics u know as Data-Explosion or data-impulse. She found out with her MechaBot, that it would be the best to find the resistance by destroying infrastructure of the CRS and signing it in the information-ether. When she attacked an outpost in the woods she started her first data-rocket.
Red, blue, purple, green, yellow. The Data-Rocket busted in hundreds of colours, sending out an information-impulse and spited in the world: “Hello world. Strawberry One is on the run, try to get me.”
Maybe not the most professional thing u ever heared, but It was the first message. Later she added the positiv song “Their is a great big beautiful tomorrow” to her data-rocket signal to tease the CRS. After that first data-rocket, other MechaWarriors started to sign their actions too. A network growed up.
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As u may remember it where the days where communication was much more eruptive than today. Hell, our permanent-wireless time wasn´t invented and even it was very dangerous.
The Counter-Resistance-Squads tried to catch the MechaWorriers partisans, build a lot of traps, but Strawberry One started to become a data-sailor. She sailed with their MechaBot from outpost to outpost, destroyed as much CRS-infrastructure she could and set up data-rockets.
After a while the resistance contacted her to establish the “Data-Rocketeer Squad” the legendary DRS-#1. She became the first female data-rocketeer and got new upgrade kits for her MechaBot which became now an offical MechaWorrier.
Additional Rocket-slots and data-booster made Strawberry One the first selfcreated Data-Rocketeer-MechaWorrier. You know Son, self-construction and self-coding is still a rule at the data-departments today.
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In 2029, some years before u were born Son, their should be a big offensive against the CRS. As a young Boy I was part of the “Infrastructure and Supply-Department”. I was a Buffalo Supply-Driver and we were responsible to bring big electro-kits for the ground-control.
I maneuvered my big supply-truck with uncle Joyce through the woods, following the data-trail to the meeting place, an old theme park. It was just a question of time till they will attack us. Uncle Joyce and I were nervous, driving all the equipment at our truck.
Suddendly the ground in front of the truck burst, dust and metall, bitumen and timber blowed across our view. A CRS-Tank run across the street, shooting big missles at us. Uncle Joyce and I pull hard around the truck, trying not to knock the truck over. Dirt, sweat, tears and mud whirl the air.
Boom, another big explosion happend. The fireball embrace the CRS-tank. Green and blue small explosions melted the tank piece by piece. First the big curb chains, than the steel conduit and at least the driver´s cab with the rollover-protection. Joyce communication-radar freaked out, so many data´s comming from that explosions.
When the truck stopped spinning around, we pause for a moment. Sweat ran like rivers down my neck. Joyce prayed to god, that when the cole-smoke will go, the enemy will not attack us like the CRS-tank. Son, may u remember, that the CRS wasn´t the only enemy in this times, other Clans fought each other as well.
With a sound of breaking metal a shadow escaped the smoke. Brown sprayed metal. A wild beating blue-heavy-hydrogen-cell spend a bright light to the glade. A carbon-glass-cabin sheened in the moonlight. Slowly the maschine came closer.
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“Cccrrhhhrcce. Strawberry One, Data-Rocketeer-Squadleader here. I am your scout to the meeting point at the theme park. I will come closer to check if ure truck is high damaged, my MechaWarrior will now enter ure computer systems. Don´t be aware.”
Joyce and I were totaly scarred. The big glas carboned MechaWarrior came closer, surrounded us like a raptor. Our interface freaked out again, a hugh impact of data screewed him up.
Joyce and I stared at each other. “Joyce, I guess I never will reach my target with the truck. We can´t reach it, its busted, and now someone is tacking over our systems.”
The glas-carbon came closer and we both, Joyce and me could take a look inside the MechaWorrier-cabin.
She was amazing, wild purple hair, glowing like flames arround her head. One-side undercutted. Her Helmet couldnt hold back them and in her face the brassy googles with an aiming-interface covered the eyes.
In her mouth-corner surrounded by strawberry-red and vanilla-flavoured lips she hold a cigarett.
She was proud, knowing that she was a data-rocketeer.
And son, she leaned down to me and said: “Hey boys, everyone has to do his tasks as well as possible. It may doesn´t look much, but I swear as long as I can, I shoot rockets in the air to protect you and our mission.”
Son, that was the day, I met your mom.