The Throwback

By Raymond Towers

M.E. Nottle is a throwback to an earlier age, when men had the guts to speak their mind and stand up for their beliefs. Unfortunately, cancer almost took him. He went into cryo for a century. When he opened his eyes again, his disease was gone but his life was no longer his. His job: to go into dangerous places and die, in a universe nothing like the one he left behind. Rating: HIGH controversy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond Towers
• Release date: Aug 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005620516

Raymond Towers

Raymond Towers is an author of fantasy, horror and science fiction that strays away from the mainstream, plus a little in the way of true paranormal and other genres. He has written and independently published over forty titles, most of them full-length novels and collections, with several more on the way. The author has been a lifelong resident of warm and sunny southern California, a location that pops up frequently in his writing. At the moment, the author is looking for ways to reach new readers all over the world, in addition to pursuing his great love of writing and taking it to the next level.

Book preview

About the cover: The cover image is titled Sci-Fi Man Fiction Science Artwork Futuristic. It was produced by PrettySleepy1 and acquired through Pixabay. You can download this image at the web address link shown below. Fonts used on the cover are from Free Font Library. They are Schilder Grotesk, Cormorant Garamond and Cormorant SC, from top to bottom respectively.

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/sci-fi-man-fiction-science-artwork-3310140/

About this title: M.E. Nottle is a throwback to an earlier age, when men had the guts to speak their mind and stand up for their beliefs. Unfortunately, cancer almost took him. He went into cryo for a century. When he opened his eyes again, his disease was gone but his life was no longer his. His job: to go into dangerous places and die, in a universe nothing like the one he left behind. Rating: HIGH controversy.

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Other e-books by Raymond Towers:

Demonic Murmurs Collection

Roaches In The Attic 0 – Non-Retrieval

Two Bedroom Cottage

Variant Worlds 1 Collection

The Throwback

Raymond Towers

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2021 Raymond Towers

Smashwords Edition, License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All of the characters in this e-book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This e-book contains a HIGH amount of controversial subject matter.

This stories in this e-book were written as three separate, stand-alone episodes. They are collected here in their original formats, with their original chapter headings.

Selected song lyrics are from the following: the albums Gorillaz and Demon Days by Gorillaz, the album Vegas by The Crystal Method. Other song lyrics credited within the stories.

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Table Of Contents

Foreword

Episode 1: The L.R.S.

Episode 2: The U.E.S. Canberra

Prologue

Reborn Again

The Canberra

Fighting Back

Episode 3: The M.S. Paulides

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Resources Used

About The Author

Author Website

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Foreword

Hi, folks.

I’m a writer. I’m not a well-known writer, or a writer that can support myself through the craft... yet, but I’m working at it and I really strive to make my stories and novels better as I toil along. Not too long ago, I discovered the website Drive Thru RPG. I thought, whoa, this is just what I need as I’m here sitting at home and waiting for this whole Covid Virus lockdown to work itself out. I love reading as much as I love writing, and now I had all these resources that capable writers have created in fashioning their role-playing games.

The first things I downloaded were a couple of Noah Patterson’s Micro Chapbook mini-games. These are pretty neat, I thought, and I played them and enjoyed them. I acquired all the science fiction themed Chapbooks, including the Sci-Fi Deluxe Corebook, because I like to immerse myself fully into the creator’s idea of a universe, in much the same way I would if I were reading a novel. That’s how my writing brain works, and I thought, you know, I could use the concept of the Chapbooks as inspiration for a sci-fi short story.

I have written a lot of books at this point, and for my last novel, I went to play with some of the online world-building resources and idea generators that are out there. My thought was that I could write a novel and use the idea generators, and at the same time I would write an article on how other writers could get inspired or prompted into new directions by using novelty tools like these. Well, I finished my novel, the article was basically included in the novel notes, and I have a pretty big list of online generators and dozens of samples ideas I’ve generated through them. For this new sci-fi story I wanted to write, I thought I could use some of those same generators, because the idea fascinates me, and also because some of the story prompts divert me toward new directions I would not have gone into on my own.

At the same time, I browsed through the no cost and low cost role-playing guidebooks on Drive Thru RPG. The purpose for this was for me to find one good game to get into and play solo. I’m the kind of person that has to absorb as much detailed information as possible before I make a final decision, and when I do decide, I will choose one or two games I really like and stick with them, as opposed to buying half a dozen or a dozen games, with complex rules and minute details to remember, that I won’t enjoy as much.

This is when I came across a disclaimer from Wizards Of The Coast and one other ‘anti-fascist’ RPG that I won’t name. This is virtue signaling with the usual buzz words: diversity, inclusion, tolerance, etc. Basically, WOTC and this other company bent the knee. I’ve seen this happen in other industries: movies, brick and mortar publishers, online publishers, pop music, professional sports, comic books, anime and even erotica websites, and now I’m seeing that same sort of group-think in the RPG world as well.

Personally, I’m sick and tired of people telling me how I should think. I’m also sick and tired of censorship and online bullying and ridiculing of those who refuse to bend the knee. That is not the world I want to live in. I think that was the last piece to fall into place, right before I started writing. My character belongs in the world of yesterday, a world that is quickly becoming a memory of the good old times, and he is thrust into the future, to a point where he can look back and contrast the here and now to the when and then. This science fiction story is meant to include a not so subtle social commentary of the goings on of this current era. It is not meant to be a torch of any kind, but the ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’ people will get triggered anyway.

It is what it is.

If you’re interested, you will find information on the online generators I used to flesh this story out at the end of this e-book.

Raymond Towers

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The Throwback

Episode 1: The L.R.S.

And here he is, cavaliers, the man, the myth, the Nottle!

Nottle frowned. He was going to be the curiosity again, the freak everyone came to look at to remind themselves of just how badly things could go wrong when the worst politicians came into power... for an entire century.

Physically, Nottle wasn’t too bad. He was tall and thin, not quite gangly because he always took his vitamin supplements and worked out, back when he was a real human being. His hair was, he thought, beautiful, with its golden-blonde hue, cut short nowadays thanks to his military (forced) occupation, but he could still remember a time when it was longer, when he’d surfed the waves on California’s warm beaches, waves that during his original lifetime had become so polluted the water stung at his skin and caused unsightly rashes. Nottle had small, green eyes and he was permanently incarnated in his mid-thirties, what should have been the prime of his life had his life not been disrupted over a century ago.

Full name. Captain Zayden asked.

You know my name. Nottle replied.

For memory recognition.

Fine. My full name is Masheck Enoch Nottle. I was born in Los Angeles, California on June 5th, 1985. Do you want to know when I died, too?

You didn’t die, Nottle. You went into cryo with terminal cancer. You should be happy they found a cure for you.

I did die back then. I am not the same person I once was.

Nottle had gotten into a number of philosophical arguments with the captain and crew, mostly because he wasn’t one of them. A few of them had been born naturally, in the old-fashioned way where a man got on top of a woman, but most came from laboratories, or like Nottle, they were created through 3D bio-printers. The Nons, or Non-Natural Births, had a lifespan of between fifty and sixty years. They always deteriorated quickly during their mature age because it was easier to create new babies and raise them from scratch than it was to take care of an old fart. Those born the natural way could live up to a healthy one hundred years or so thanks to medical advancements over the last fifty years, when the last of the Big Pharma companies were finally dismantled, and ancient forms of healing were allowed back into the Halls Of Accepted Western Medicine.

Nottle was different because he’d gone into cryo during the early 2020s. He had cancer back then, and it was true that the cancer had been cured, but the cryo treatment had damaged his cells and his original body didn’t live for very long after being revived. What had lived on was his brain, because it was all the rage back then to digitize everything. His complete brain pattern and full body schematics were locked up in an underground vault on Earth, forever mind you, while space-faring corporations like the powerful MICROS could rent him out on the fly, in a manner of speaking. For an exorbitant fee, MICROS could print him out and send him into the line of fire, on dangerous missions where other personnel could not be risked. And so, Nottle could count on people like Captain Zayden reviving him for a short time, every so often, and sending Nottle to his quick and painful next death.

Oh, but you might ask, why wouldn’t MICROS print out some of their permanent staff instead of the old relic in the closet? Well, that was easy enough to answer. Rules and regulations were in place to prevent ‘present’ people from being thrown into the fire, but it was okay to butcher ‘past’ people like Nottle. Those restrictions could be circumvented, because MICROS could entice potential deaders with big bonuses if they took one (death) for the team and agreed to be re-printed later.

What could not be circumvented was the fact that some genius programmer had altered all the software codes in the 3D printers, to prevent ‘present’ people from being used, period. All it took was one well-aimed data burst in the right direction, and you could alter the software long distance to every ship that accepted automatic updates.

That caused ‘past’ people like Nottle to become valuable commodities, because they could truly go where no man (or woman) had gone before. Nottle’s digitized self could be transmitted anywhere and everywhere, for a price. He could be printed out remotely into 3D reincarnation tubes that had the latest software patch integrated into them. And this is why now, Nottle was inside a printer tube, leaning back at a twenty-degree angle, fully naked because the printer could not create clothes for him (it had a hard enough time with fingernails, wrinkles and hair), with the entire ten-person crew of the ship gathered around to stare at him. They were staring politely, but it was still staring if you asked him.

Captain, if you don’t let me out of this tube, Nottle said. I’m going to shit myself and one of you is going to have to clean it up.

Zayden made a face of disgust, partly because Nottle didn’t say ‘poop,’ and partly because he was deliberately being crass. These people of the present, what they lacked the most, in Nottle’s humble opinion, was a sense of humor that could handle the at times crude wit he offered to them. In any case, Nottle was released from the Plasti-Tube like a goat being led out of its old-time corral. Goats of the present, you see, were genetically programmed not to stray too far from their pens. It was built into their genes.

Nottle didn’t check his reflexes like he was supposed to, once he was out of the tube. He simply brushed past the crew and made his way to where he knew the lavatories were found. He relieved his body quickly, because of course there was nothing for him to relieve himself of, but simply making the effort gave Nottle a sense of normality. Next, he took his humi-shower that consisted of cool vapor, because water was always at a premium in space. Nottle returned to the medical lab where the 3D printer was located. It was the best location, actually, in case mending tissue or treating disease were required. The med-bot soon cleared him for work and, since the crew had already gone back to their duties, he walked down the narrow corridor toward the bridge to speak with Zayden. The loose patient gown he wore rustled softly with every step.

Ready for assignment, sir! Nottle announced as he walked in, startling half the crew because they were absorbed in their monitor displays and whatnot.

Give us another couple of minutes. Zayden said. He wasn’t in his captain’s chair that oversaw all the other duty stations, but over by the communications area. We’re trying to hail the station one last time.

One last time, Nottle knew, before he was sent into action. He clasped his hands behind his back and inhaled, surveying the bridge because he had nothing better to do. The captain’s chair was located in the middle, but it could rotate all the way around; he knew this because he’d been spinning on it once, before Zayden had walked in on him and pitched a bitch over it. Systems integrity, for the interior and exterior of the ship, were located on the left, navigation and monitors were up front, and to the right side, the comms and auxiliary systems. No battle station post was included in these non-violent ships of the present.

Zayden leaned over the shoulders of the two ensigns working the right side. It wasn’t the first time Nottle had seen him standing there, and it wasn’t the first time he wondered if maybe the captain was interested in either the brunette, fair-skinned Kase, a woman who seemed to have ancestry from Ireland, or the dark-haired, cinnamon-skinned Sulvan, a man who could have come from India if that country still existed. Zayden was male, of course, but sex on starships was a lot more liberated than comparable situations from back in Nottle’s time.

A person on this particular ship, named the Gleaming Sunbird, could have their favorite partners for intimacy, or they could sign their names to a schedule and have a fast romp with the next available person on the list. Nottle almost wished sex had been that casual back in his time, but really, a highly impersonal list for sex? You get whoever is next and that’s it? That was a routine Nottle could never really get used to.

He also disliked the idea that Non women always came with B-cup breasts, because according to science smaller or larger breasts were considered less than optimal. For him, hooters were the bigger the better. In fact, he’d tried to joke with the crew about that once...

What do you call women with less than 36 Ds?

What?

Bros.

Whatever, Nottle figured. Let them demerit him for his so-called dark humor. He wouldn’t be alive long enough to partake in any of the fun stuff anyway.

The last thing Nottle observed, before the captain left the comm section and walked toward him, was the large MICROS logo emblazoned on the back wall, inside the outline of a medieval acorn-shaped shield. The letters were in bright gold on a royal blue background. Some kind of Illuminati symbol was added to the O, but he didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t the usual ringed Saturn image he was used to, but more of an obscured spiral.

Nottle. Zayden said.

Captain, I have a question. Are you sure that MICROS is not affiliated with the old software company Microsoft?

You’ve asked me that before, and the answer is still the same. No, it is not.

Some crew member had told Nottle once that MICROS was really an acronym.

Militarized

Intensive

Combat

Rescue

Or

Salvage

Who knew if it was true?

You seem distracted, Nottle. Zayden noticed.

Oh, no, I’m good. Nottle replied. I’m ready. Let’s go! What’s the mission?

It’s a FEWZ.

He knew what that stood for.

Fractured

Egghead

With

skillZ (Run Amok)

What kind of FEWZ?

The radically unhinged kind. The captain replied. "Her name and assignment aren’t really that important. What is important is