The Race

By Alberto Catellani

In a galaxy where fabricators are common, where death is a myth, and in which countless space-faring aliens have met and joined together only the lucky ones survive. With technology capable of solving everything, of fighting off anything, of granting everyone's wishes, what is there left to do but explore the universe? 
Defend it from itself, and its inhabitants. 

Anastasia's father dies, and her strange uncle comes pick her up the next morning. He is Captain Francis Drake, of the Sinful Way, leader of a merry crew of aliens who travel the far reaches of space and risk their lives, their limbs, and their free will...in order to be the garbage collectors the universe needs.

When technological singularities are so common they don't even make the news, and all civilizations are technologically advanced, what one defines as 'Garbage' radically shifts into dangerous territory. Still, it's not like Anastasia's worried too much. She can always go back home when she's tired of seeing the universe, no?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alberto Catellani
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386375494

Alberto Catellani

Alberto Catellani was born on the 9 of March from the country that brought forth the greatest of inventions: the Road. We are talking of Italy, and he was born on a dark and stormy night at 3 in the morning. From a bright and early age, he wanted to write and once he found his grandfather's old typing machine, write he did. What he wrote back then is best left forgotten to the annals of time. Still, he keeps writing on. Known on the Internet as Shadenight123, and outside of it as someone with fifteen years plus of experience as a Dungeon Master capable of actually finishing the campaigns he starts, he has enjoyed a Classical Schooling, moved on to the beer-filled lands of Germany, and is currently attempting a Master level degree with, hopefully, a Ph.D afterwards. And in the meantime, he keeps on writing. Writing brings happiness, to himself and to those who enjoy his books and that, more than anything, is what truly makes him willing to write more and more. If you work at something you enjoy doing, after all, it will be as if you haven't been working at all.

Book preview

Dedication

To my readers old and new,

Whom I believe are my dearest friends,

and most sincere acquaintances,

you are all named, and you are all known.

But most importantly,

You are all cherished by me,

So, do not go where my words cannot reach you,

For I would be the saddest of them all,

To never again hear or read your thoughts,

My family away from family,

My friends in flesh or binary strings.

Preface

It all began in November . It should have stayed in November, but I am a slow writer, and as the idea formed, it kept on growing until it finally came out fully fledged. I could have written something fantasy. I could have written something noir, or thriller-like.

Instead I didn’t, and I wrote this.

It feels like a coming of age story, but it’s not, I assure you.

It feels like a hard-sci-fi story, but there’s no Calcs here, I assure you.

There’s no passionate love, and no honor lost. This isn’t a story which has a purpose, or a message. Or is it? No, it isn’t.

I’m not pretentious enough to claim this is a heavy story filled with symbolic meanings and symbolisms. It’s not.

This is the kind of space-flick they’d publish in installments in the fifties, and then closed with a hastily written ending once something better came along.

This could be a half-finished story, but trust me, it’s better this way. If you don’t leave the reader wanting for more, then you’re writing stuff in installments wrong.

Also, I’ll say it again, it was nice writing something different, yet not so incredibly different. There’s nothing to be pretentious about in this story; there’s no cunning plan, no secret ploy, no back stabbings to be...it’s a simple, easy, ironically obvious thing.

You just need to have a laugh when you find out the twist.

And if I can get you to laugh, then my mission is over.

Also, since I started this in November 2017, and now it’s January 2018, a...three-monthly installment series would be nice?

Who knows...

Who knows what the future holds...

...and what it lets slip from its buttery fingers.

Index

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Prologue

It all began with a message

The Captain’s eyes squinted to make sense of the wriggles in front of him. His hair cut short, hidden beneath a white hat with a black trim, the serious expression only belatedly making sense to the rest of the crew. Normally, the Captain wouldn’t as much as thin his lips, or narrow his eyes, for anything less than an absolute catastrophe.

Considering their line of work, an absolute catastrophe meant a hull breach of some sorts while facing a bioengineered plague from some remote outpost of the galaxy.

In this circumstance, the silence that hung on the command deck was becoming a deafening loud warning signal that began to hiss its way through the back of their brains, their tails, and their tentacles.

There was a shimmering set of incomprehensible hieroglyphs hanging in the air in front of the floating console, which floated a short distance from the man’s bearded face. The robust form of the man seemed to nearly collapse on itself, his fingers drumming incessantly on the armrests of his seat as the words translated quickly.

Sir? his weapon officer called, the rainbow-haired Penrose turning her crystalline head towards him, glinting rocks floating across a core of pulsing, soothing lights. We are currently engaging.

She did her best to politely point out the fact that their ship stood neck-deep in an engagement with enemy forces, planetary guardians on bio-organic ships flinging highly electrified acidic streams in their direction.

Maddie, leave the Captain alone! I’ve got this! a tall, lanky lizard with dark scales twitched its tail, the tip of it grappling with a set of levers while his long fingers twisted and twirled across a set of buttons and tiny switches. His bulbous eyes moved sharply in all directions.

If you had this, Son of John, we would not be evading attacks from the border control, we would have already slipped past them, a third voice growled from the opposite side of the deck, multiple tentacles reaching out to redirect holographic spheres and a multitude of pulsing lights. Primary fabricators have been thrown offline on a secondary grid. Emergency ones are repairing main hull’s damage.

Your sass is unappreciated right now, Son of Robert. Johnson slammed both of his claws on a set of delicate looking handbrakes. He pushed them down as his clawed feet made a grinding noise against the metallic surface of the deck. The acceleration shook briefly the circular area of command.

I am merely stating the obvious, Robertson dryly quipped. A bundle of tentacles pushed towards the main form, a more knotted ensemble of tentacles, a few glittering lights cast by his console. The acid is breaching through the inner hull—

Power the Tachyon Crafter, the captain spoke, sharply interrupting them both. The parasites’ infestation requires the cleansing of the planet.

Tachyon crafter brought online, a crimson orb said. It floated down from the ceiling of the ship, pulsing briefly with a set of reddish lights.

The silence on the commanding deck lasted a few seconds, a few rumbling tremors echoing in the otherwise quiet room. Unleashed and given mass, the orb said with an air of finality.

In front of them, a set of rays of green light briefly burst upon the planet, which cracked apart in a matter of seconds. Planet destroyed. The crimson orb confirmed it, and then began to float back into the ceiling of the ship.

Craft multiphase torpedoes, the captain said next, the orb stilling midway through its disappearance act. Heart-seeking, he added as if it were an afterthought.

The main screen of the commanding deck shone briefly with all the colors of the visible light spectrum, ghastly showing ovoid shapes flying through the emptiness of space at incredible speeds.

The twisting, twitching monstrosities made of flesh and pulsing organs that were the guardians of the planet burst, struck on the flanks. The torpedoes detonated without a single sound or noise.

In space, death came quietly.

So, Captain, Maddie spoke, turning a set of rocks floating around her main glowing body to look at the human in question. What was the message all about?

The Captain took a deep, unsettling breath.

My brother died.

There was silence for a brief instant.

So...just bring him back? Maddie replied, nonchalantly looking at Robertson with a couple of pebbles, Aren’t the people of Earth stored inside servers? Just bring his data back up?

That is normally the case, Robertson replied, his tentacles carefully bringing all the pulsing lights back into a stable, and otherwise identical, state of fluctuation.

My brother wasn’t uploaded, the Captain said. He...never wanted to get his body in stasis.

Ah, Johnson said, his scaly body twitching right and left as his head bowed down in sympathy. My condolences for your loss, Captain.

He chose his life, the Captain pointed an index finger at a set of squiggly lines that nobody on his crew could understand, He even wrote in the old tongue rather than in binary.

With a deflated sigh, the man stood to his full height from the command armchair. Recover anything of worth from the planet’s broken crust, vaporize everything biological and then set a course for the third planet of the Sol System.

He grimly twitched his fingers through the air, digital bubbles forming as he wrote messages at the speed of thought. His funeral is going to be fun.

There was no mirth in the man’s voice.

Chapter One

The blood of the covenant

The dreary sky threatened rain. There was a breeze which picked up somewhere in the middle of the proceedings. She could never understand why the dead had to be smiling in the photos. She wouldn’t be smiling at her own funeral. He wouldn’t be smiling.

He had never been much of a father; he had bumbled his way through the entire parenting thing with a hand stuck in an oven, or a head slammed against a cupboard. Still, he had tried and that had been enough for her.

She pressed her fingers against her black gown, staring down at the dewy grass while the priest droned on. She was the only one present. There was no one else; she had no one on her mother’s side, least of all her mother, and no one was on her father’s side.

There were two quiet figures behind her, the Social Services’ representatives, and nothing more. She wondered if one of them would hand over a teddy bear like they used to do with shocked children after road accidents before the advent of the Avatar program and the Stasis chambers.

The priest finished with his droning, the man in charge of pushing a button did so, and the coffin burrowed in the wet ground on its own.

There were barely any crosses in the large patch of green grass called a cemetery. Death was a thing that only those willing to partake in it ever accepted. Her father had left her because he had never been willing to spend five minutes of his time uploading himself into the Central Cortex.

She clenched her fingers tighter, her teeth bit down on her lower lip with strength. She could taste the sweet iron-like substance that was her blood, and as her eyes threatened to cry, she held the tears back.

She was a grown-up girl. There was a soft pit-pattering echoing in her ears. It had begun to rain. Anastasia, raindrops are the tears of God for the sins of mankind. She remembered his words. Her father’s kind smile bludgeoned through her memories like a vicious hammer. She didn’t want to cry.

She had to be a grown-up girl now.

School would start soon. She’d go to university, learn how to paint, become a renowned artist and singer. She had a rich, near-infinite lifespan ahead of her.

We can give you a few more minutes if you’d like, Miss Drake, the woman of the duo spoke. She was wearing a black suit, which was proper for a funeral setting, but bright rainbow-colored hair which twisted and twitched in all directions.

The colors were noticeably dimmer than they could have been, but she did not power them down.

The man was surly and quiet, dark-skinned, and broad-shouldered. He looked more like a bodyguard for some important presidential candidate than a member of the Social Services.

Anastasia Drake shook her head at the offer. She didn’t see the point in staying there any longer. She mustered the first step towards the small white car, the logo of the Social Services on the sides of it. It was a curled up happy dog, waggling its tail and lolling its tongue.

It felt cheesy to as much as look at it, and the smell in the back of the car was even worse. It smelled of cheap candy, rotten sugar, and wet dog fur. There was a hint of cigarette smoke too, and the rattling engine made Anastasia feel even less at ease than before.

She stood cramped in the back of the car, pressed against the backrest. The cemetery soon disappeared below her vision, the flying vehicle soon reaching a more trafficked air-space, and from there the aerial highways that easily connected the entire world.

We’re given to believe you have not been uploaded either, is that correct? the woman made conversation while the man simply drove. The service is provided free of charge to all willing adults by the World’s Government—

I know, Anastasia whispered. Just...will it hurt?

It is a painless procedure, the woman said. The neural scanner will synthetically recreate your brain patterns, and craft a copy of your neurons with all of their connections. The memories will be written down to the last possible second of life, and while the body is kept in stasis, the avatar will be woken once it’s been properly processed.

Anastasia swallowed. And I’ll feel everything as if I’d never done the procedure?

Yes, the woman nodded. A personal fabricator will be tasked with recreating your body should it fail, and as long as you remember to upload your memories back into your main body, then your new avatar will hold that information. Also, modifications are acceptable within limits, as the woman spoke, her hair moved and began to brilliantly flash with countless colors. You can truly create a unique version of yourself if you so wish.

Why would someone...choose to not be uploaded? Anastasia asked, but the woman didn’t answer. Rather, she made a few sounds as if trying to come up with a good enough reason that also wasn’t offensive.

She didn’t need to hear the usual drivel, but still, she wanted to hear it all the same. Usually, only criminals or religious people refused Uploading. Her father had always said it was the latter reason, but she had never seen him pray much. He had never been the paranoid sort, but even so...

Some people just choose not to, the woman said in the end. It is their choice, and we must respect it.

Even if they leave orphans like me in the wake of their selfishness? Anastasia remarked, her voice a bit sharper than what she would have liked.

Even then, the woman said sadly, A human’s free will is unquestionable.

Anastasia said nothing else. The trip was quiet until the car came to a halt upon a concrete landing pad in the outskirts of the main city. The large grey villa was rectangular, but the iron bars at the windows of all the floors gave the feeling of a prison, rather than a simple processing center for unlucky orphans.

It was an important cultural villa in the past, the woman said. She was trying to make conversation, understanding her worries with ease. Since there are so few cases of...your circumstances, this was found an acceptable compromise.

The entrance hall was cold. Broken heaters riddled the corners, hastily pouring out steam from their coils and yet fighting a losing battle. There was a definite stylistic choice for the marble, but Anastasia found it tacky.

Old, rotten paintings who had failed the test of time against humidity were moss-infested parchments, impossible to repair, and yet not worth the effort to destroy either. They were simply a relic of times long past.

Once Uploaded, you’ll have full access to the Augmented Reality version of this place, the woman said with a smile. Things like the original state of the paintings, the way the palace was...it’s quite breathtaking in my vision, and then— she brought a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening slightly. Oh! I can’t believe I forgot. You haven’t even been Integrated; you can’t see our names, can you?

Anastasia shook her head imperceptibly. No, I...I can’t. She swallowed her feelings of inferiority. Even without the Uploading procedure, integrating miniature nanomachines within a human’s body still allowed for many things, like creating a two-way bridge communication with nearby electronic tools. Perceiving Augmented reality could happen through the nanites, though one couldn’t physically interact with it.

Her father’s religious issues precluded her even that, and so...there she was, disconnected from everything even remotely technological. Large, old video screens had been her only companions through most of her life, the warm glow of