Black Chrome
Lydia Christian emerged dripping from the starfield. She attempted to wipe away the black and star-spackled droplets which felt like rubber against her body, but discovered they had worked their way into her flesh and were worming through her cellular structure.
“This is fine,” she said, a halo of flames suddenly bursting from her head. She sat down before the controls deck of the spaceship and examined the feed.
“Now navigating the Lucipheria galaxy,” said Major Tom.
“Nice name,” said Lydia. “Does she play?”
“All the games.”
“Does she play Black Chrome?”
“Oh yes.”
“And to win?”
“She kills at Black Chrome.”
“Get her online,” said Lydia. “Let’s see how bad the bitch is.”
“So it goes,” said Major Tom.
The board came online. Lydia picked up the MirrorShades and put them on. Slight burning sensation as the contact points fused with her neural weave.
“Uploading to pain.net and Akasha.net with Reality Hack embedded” said Major Tom.
“Looks like Lucipheria is a Kopy Kat.”
“That is correct,” came a disembodied voice, soon followed by the enormous face of a black panther.
“Good to meet you.”
“Enchanted, I must say,” purred the panther. “In how many moves do you expect to be defeated?”
“I’ve never been defeated at Black Chrome,” said Lydia.
“First time for everything,” said the cat.
“True,”
“Shall I make the first move?”
“Yes.”
In an instant, Lydia was transported to a Reality Studio stage with a live audience. On the stage was a table at which sat her mother at age 36, her at 10 years old, and a math book. Tears glistened on Lydia’s cheeks like diamonds.
“I win,” growled the cat.
“Why in the hell would you expect me to agree with you?” said Lydia, giggling to herself, then bursting out into loud laughter.
“Because that is the nature of Black Chrome. The nanocircuitry is already rewiring your DNA to express different enzymes based on the recognition of your specific learning disability, dyscalculia.”
“Is that what you think?” said Lydia. But she was bluffing. She could feel the nano ants working inside her. Everything about her current attitude was bravado, including how she had faked her way through StarRider Academy and fabricated her test scores. Her field tests were slightly more difficult to forge, but with the help of a friend on the inside who had a link to an Akasha.net admin, she’d managed that too.
The truth of the matter was that Lydia had done whatever it took to land a coveted commander office, and nothing and nobody, she felt, was capable of defeating her.
Until now.
She looked deeply into the implacable eyes of the panther. She could feel the beast’s hot breath infused through her skin. She began to sweat the rubber droplets which writhed and churned inside her flesh like razors. Her brain was boiling alive with recalled shame as the nanobots, manifested and exuded as avatars outside of herself, began to unmake the pixel content of her form as a represented 10-year-old girl.
But she loved that girl. Admired her for her fortitude in never giving an inch, always learning from other people–and animals, and cyberconscious beings. That girl with the black pigtails and Lycia girlie t was going to triumph even over this local optimum.
“How badly does it burn?” purred the cat. “The shame of it. Your family’s shame. How your mother would beat you up afterwards and then send you to your room, exhausted from crying. You lost sleep, and in the morning when you had school your brain was so sleep-deprived and exhausted your head slammed against your desk. All the other children made fun of you. Mocked your disability, your poverty, the fact that you alone weren’t able to access Akasha.net, which had just come online.”
“It’s true,” said Lydia. She felt sick now. Her stomach was doing flip-flops and her face was burning. “I’m so fucking sorry I let you all down,” she cried, and before her stood her family, her aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and grandparents, some of them deceased, back in a line of savants that stretched back forever. She was uniquely stupid in her entire line. But sometimes she wondered if they wanted it as badly as she did.
Neither of her parents had done anything with the gifts. They’d squandered their time on Earth 2. They were ready for the landfill or worse, the underworld where the Dark Ones roamed.
“Are you ready to give up yet?” asked the cat, not cruelly but in matter-of-fact tones.
“What is the nature of Black Chrome?” asked Lydia.
“Are you fucking serious? Its nature is ambiguous. Their nature is God. It is us.”
“Correct answer,” said Lydia. In one move she had swapped out the cat for herself. The cat now sat opposite Lydia’s mother, transformed into an enormous female black panther.
The catmother growled. Her kitten wailed. Glistening tears streaked her fur.
She mewled.
The catmother lifted her with her teeth by the nape of her neck, dropping her off in the corner of a virtual cage.
Lydia watched with enormous satisfaction as the cage was closed on the kitten’s terrified face.
Despite the fact that she was unable to count the number of years her galactic adversary would be incarcerated, due to her learning disability, she knew it would be many indeed. Lydia now had full range of the Lucipheria galaxy, a fact she intended to take complete advantage of.
Horror Sleaze Trash 