The Odyssey Effect: Dawn of the Artificials

By Phillip G. Cargile

Back info

In the year 2127 on a planet one hundred thousand light years away a race of artificial human’s labor to supply Earth with the miracle ore Dycornum. Then an anomalous quirk occurred in the maturation process and sentient artificials were born. Now free from the supercomputer that governed their every thought, they followed their natural inclination and came to Earth to be a part of humanities utopian society.

Detective Dexter Ruyac, like everyone else on Earth, envisioned the artificals as advertised by the government to be drones – biological machines; so far removed from mankind they did not even have souls. He was startled to discover that the anomaly of a sentient artificial he had found was just one of many. One presidential official of the global government the World Court deemed them as an industrial accident and a threat to the social order of Earth; knowledge of these intelligent artificials should not reach the public. This officer of the Court formed a black operation group of cybernetic hunter killers to eliminate them. Dexter’s social pledge as a policeman to protect and serve has extended to these immigrants of mankind from across the stars but he is running out of time to find them first.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646547135

Book preview

Chapter One

Murder—an offense more profound than just the slaughter of one man by another, this was a dose of reality that humanity had come no further than those primitives that looked across the creek of the primeval forest and wanted the other primitive man’s fish or his mate or whatever the hell cavemen killed each other for.

Protect and Serve, those words were etched in gold across the top of Detective Dexter Ruyac’s platinum badge. Police officers were still needed in society in 2127. People still wanted to kill one another and commit crimes against the state. An insane quirk of humanity’s behavior to kill one another one threatened to end the existence of humanity in the past decades with the Colony War and Tech War. Not even the promise of the new world government for a utopian planet would change the nature of humankind. A soft beeping followed the voice of the car’s computer.

We are nearing the outskirts of New Chicago, descending to one thousand feet, and reducing air speed to ninety kilometers per hour.

As a soldier during the Colonial Alliance War, he was charged with the duty of stopping the mining alliance’s blockade of vital ore to Earth. Earth won the war, and for a while, people seemed to have lost their desire to hate one another. That didn’t last long but did give Dexter his next career incentive by serving his world as a policeman. The New Chicago special investigative unit was the department and city where he was assigned after the academy. Protect the people from themselves, this was the preaching of the purpose of government and law from day one. To do so would be a lifetime commitment for the government as well as those who had taken up the charge of police officers.

Once again, the female voice of the car’s computer spoke.

Incoming call from Captain Norman Peachtree.

Dexter took his attention off the forward view of the air car to consider his dress—collarless shirt and casual pants. But he’d been on vacation for two weeks; that was the uniform of the day. Vanity mirror—those words generated an image of him from head to shoulder. Those brown eyes of a thirty-seven-year-old black man looked back; they were his mother’s eyes, his father would say. The rest of the genes were his father’s, a 5'10" black male with dense muscles kept that way from working the family business as a construction worker. His short hair was still the regulated length for supervisor-grade detective. The two weeks of beard growth was part of the vacation look, also a look his ex-wife enjoyed once. Even still, he straightened in a military fashion of sitting at attention and faced the dashboard, where the image of his supervisor would appear.

Go ahead, Dexter said.

A holographic image of a face of a man in his early fifties appeared above the dashboard.

Dex, how was your time off? Did you take care of your business?

Yes, sir, this time it’s taken care of. Dexter matched his supervisor with an unflinching expression. Ready to get back to work.

There was a pause, Peachtree absorbing what his subordinate had said. Then it was followed by Peachtree’s slight nod. The business he asked about was Dexter’s visit with his children and possibly mending some fences with his ex-wife. One out of two was the best a divorced father of two could hope for.

Good, Peachtree said. Good enough, that was what Peachtree meant—good enough for Dexter to go back to working with all his focus on the job and no distractions from personal things. Dexter now trusted that his supervisor would ask no more questions unless he saw distracted behavior, and he’d give no more distracted behavior now that he had resolved his issue. I have a crime scene at a multiplex apartment building in Rogers Park. I’m sending the address to your navigation computer in your car. It was just discovered about an hour ago. I have already notified your team, so they will meet you there. It’s an off-world employee. That has your name all over it, Dex. I knew you were inbound, so I’m putting it in your case file.

Dexter scowled in thought of all the possibilities of the motivation for murder. Employees of off-world companies or the citizens of off-world colonies carried the greatest possibility of skullduggery. A disconnection from Mother Earth was the social psychological answer.

No problem, sir, Dexter said. Be right there.

Thanks, Dex. Peachtree’s image disappeared.

Execute new destination, Dexter spoke into the air. The car’s computer responded upon receiving the orders. Through the unobstructed windshield, New Chicago’s skyline was a mix of old last-century buildings and sleek modern structures built from the age of Reconstruction. The Plaza of City Commerce was a conglomeration of governmental and private companies.

He carefully peeked out of the passenger-side window to Lake Michigan. Just then, the air car decelerated; at the same time, the car’s computer chimed in the reason: Reducing speed to enter city traffic. Dexter was not prepared for the change of speed and felt a gripping tug in the pit of his stomach. The inertial dampers that would accommodate the average driver were not enough for him to discount the sensation of mobility. Living on board the war ship Thor’s Hammer for fourteen years created that level of sensitivity to motion.

In an effort to diminish the ill-at-ease sensation, Dexter concentrated on the skyline of Chicago that ebbed from the distance.

Dozens of multiplex buildings shouldered one another in a pristine presentation of humanity’s resilient desire to survive and prosper in the face of adversity.

A stream of personal and commercial air vehicles flowed through those glittering towers, carrying people and cargo throughout the city. A cover of haze caused by the morning’s rain squall loomed above the lake. The teal-green water was white capped with the turbulence of the winds. Satellites in orbit radiated electromagnetic energy to dissipate the cloud cover and calm Lake Michigan. In seconds, the haze cleared, and the water smoothed to a placid. Like the majority of Earth cities, New Chicago was now restored to a livable community. The age of Reconstruction designated New as a precursor to the original name in further restoration of what the Alliance planet bombs had done to the cities about the globe.

The ill-at-ease sensation of the car’s air speed faded into the recesses of his mind with his concentration on the personal watercraft powered by the whims of the air, clean air made that way by the oxygen factories that were built about the globe. When he’d left his home of Canada for the war in space, pleasure craft of this sort were restricted from the polluted waters. The mining Alliance spacecraft mounted their attacks on the moon and Mars colonies, in an attempt to stop Earth’s construction of warships to suppress their rebellion. Then the attack from the Alliance focused on Mother Earth next. That Alliance starship that was destroyed in space lit up the sky over Canada, with the nuclear fire of its engines erupting from the Earth-force defense ship that prevented its bombing run on that region of Earth. Too close to home, the war was on his doorstep, and he had no choice but to answer the call to duty.

ETA on destination, Dexter asked.

The computer promptly answered, Ten minutes, twenty-three seconds. Traffic delay from demolition of sector four of Lake Shore Boulevard.

Shit, city construction. How much longer is that gonna take? Dexter asked rhetorically; however, the artificial intelligence picked up on the request for information then answered.

New Chicago construction is estimated for completion in early 2130. Global reconstruction completion estimation, per the Global Core of Engineers, will be completed in 2150.

Show me, Dexter ordered. In that second, the AI responded with a holographic display of Earth. Multicolor sections of blue, red, and green displayed the various sections and designations of the Reconstruction phase, then the computer began defining each section. This world had change in the last decade to a planet that he did not recognize from his return from the war in space. Dexter concentrated on the red sections of the globe, where the computer designated them with a regional code rather than the more popular slang term the Bad Lands. These swatches of land were the hardest hit by colonial bombardment and were still undergoing the redevelopment process of reconstruction.

Flying over them, he compared them with those lifeless planets he’d stood upon. Ironically, the solution to repair these ruined swatches of land came from one of those lifeless worlds. Those areas were seeded with a mineral found on a planet in the Vega system—a living rocklike material that thrived on carbon dioxides. Introduced to the landscape of these radioactive areas, it resulted in a twofold effect. Within months, there was a dramatic increase of the purification of the Earth’s air, along with the sprouting of a weird living swampland that could be contained but not eradicated. After this, the experiment upon the material was used in the Terra farming on a global level to restore the green lands; the results were a reincarnation of the world’s forests.

This was Earth, a place like no other he had seen in space. He stood upon worlds with a splendor of odd and amazing diversity of gaseous surfaces with spectrums of colors not comparable to anything he’d seen on Earth. But poison, hostile; worlds that only would kill humans from Earth who came to its surface, those worlds were no place for humans, space he had concluded was an environment best left for automated machines.

We have arrived at destination. The computer spoke, as it navigated the car in an orbit of the roof parking lot, scanning for a parking space. Dexter peered out to the collection of police vehicles corralled on the roof of the twelve-story apartment building. The car slowly maneuvered into a parking space between a police patrol vehicle; the computer then shut down the engine and opened the driver’s side door.

We are parked, Detective Ruyac.

Dexter was met by a uniformed officer who directed him to the ninth floor. At the entrance of the apartment, his team’s second detective, Thad Ephondof, waited. At the age of thirty-one, he was six years junior to Dexter and on New Chicago’s police force, only two years being assigned to Dexter’s team.

How did the trip go, boss? Thad’s gray eyes flashed in a face that Dexter consider to be more boy next door than cop. Red hair framed a pail face that seemed to be forged in that look that showed how happy he was to be here. From day one, it never went anywhere; neither did his inexhaustible enthusiasm to perform his duty.

Dexter took in Thad’s neatly pressed suit, shirt, and tie. Every time he saw him, Thad had a fresh haircut and a shave.

That will change in bout ten years, bub, Dexter muttered those words only to himself, not wanting to give such a comment of negativity out loud.

It went. Dexter looked toward the center of the activity, avoiding the probing beam Thad would automatically fire into his soul or into any member of the team. Thad’s primary function was the team’s psychoanalysis—profiling victims and perpetrators—but like most team members with this specialty, he couldn’t restrict it to just that duty. Dexter suspected he analyzed the feelings of his wife and kids and anyone else in his life with the same level of scrutiny. Those deep feelings Dexter harbored were much too personal to share with anyone in any fashion. A conversation about the cold evidence of a murder would be more palatable than a conversation about his feelings regarding his ex-wife. Dexter strolled across the room, leaving Thad. As he got closer to the center of activity, the pungent smell of death assaulted his lungs. He breathed involuntarily despite his disdain.

Dexter stopped to stand before his second detective, Gail Hawthorn, the team’s forensic specialist. He watched as she worked in coordination with the holographic image of the body of a man lying on the floor and her own physical examination of the body.

What have we got here? Dexter said.

Gail glanced up to her lead detective with an irritated frown that faded away into deep dimples of each cheek. Those large doll-like brown eyes gave her supervisors an up-and-down look, then she came to her feet. Both hands went over both sides of her short curly black hair as she took a moment to disengage from her duty to give him her full attention. She replaced a small scanning device in a pocket along the arsenal of micro instruments and examination devices of her half-utility, half-businesslike uniform pocket.

On the floor, a man lay dead on his back in the position he had fallen, arms and legs frozen in that pose. Dexter curled his lips then looked down to the body on the floor; the first reaction was held in submission. Disgust twisted his gut and demanded him to turn away from the thick crimson bloodstain pooling around the lifeless body from the horrible wound at the chest. No longer was this a person; these flesh remains were part of an investigation to bring another member of society to justice. He thought of a corpse as evidence rather than a human being. Dehumanizing a victim kept him focused on the scene, a skill he had acquired during the war. A soldier on the battlefield could not allow his feelings to come into play with the sight of dead comrades, nor could an officer of the law feel remorse for a victim. Any of those emotions brought into play would keep him from doing his job. How many times had he had to use that mindset to control those emotions? That body below him was superimposed in his mind with the memory of other bodies. The lower gravity and the deactivation of their gravity boots animated them to drift ever so slowly in an eerie ballet.

War was never limited to soldiers; colonists would fall prey to the Alliance, who attacked and boarded any ship in their territory. Dexter’s duty extended to board those derelicts from the Alliance ship raids. The Earth crew they had left behind had been tortured by the Alliance soldiers with brutal methods, showing that they had no respect for anyone who was not under their own flag. Dexter wrenched his mind from those thoughts to the present moment. He went down on his haunches before Gail to look over the body.

From the information on his identification card, he is John Gerison, twenty-nine-years old, single stab wound to the heart and broken neck, Gail said. Next to that image appeared a coded script of information she had been trained to read was projected from the computerized crime kit on the floor.

She took his head in her gloved hand then slightly rotated it, Demonstrating the unnaturally elasticity of the victim’s neck.

I don’t need a scan to confirm his neck was broken. Look at that. She pointed to the bruising about the neck. Manually broken. From the pouch on her hip, she pulled a small scanning device and held it over the body. The digital image of a head up to the neck appeared on a holographic display. Beside it was a coded script of information. Yep, his neck was broken, pretty clean snap, like a dried-up twig.

A broken neck and stabbed in the heart? Dexter’s attention concentrated on the chest wound. The killer really wanted to make sure this guy was dead.

These hand impressions on his neck and the doorknob are extremely defined, Gail said. He must have had one hell of a grip. Gail demonstrated how he was strangled.

Dexter watched Gail’s sense of sight and touch be verified by an image scan of the insides projected a few inches above the body. She held up the scanner, then the image tightened on the neck to display a holographic close-up of the broken neck.

Just a normal handprint. I’m not getting any fingerprints, but there are enough epithelia for a DNA match.

What are those marks on his face? Dexter said.

Burns—from my preliminary examination, from an electric shock. Gail opened up the man’s shirt; a network of burns were on the corpse’s body, like those on his face. Seems like they’re all over his body.

Dexter’s attention was redirected with Thad going to stand on the other side of the body.

I haven’t found anything unusual in his apartment, Thad said. Thad read from the handheld computer in his palm. "I checked his accounts. There was nothing more than a few hundred credits. Gerison is an employee of Aton, a division of Life Pro. Found some books: quantum physics, DNA mapping, global history. Books, not data cards." Thad shrugged.

Most people on the off-world colonies have them rather than data cards. Paper books don’t take up power from the ship or station power plants, Dexter explained.

Found this. Thad held up a crystal blue-and-green orb.

What the hell is that? Dexter said. Dexter took it and turned it over in his hand.

Earth, Thad said. It was sitting on Gerison’s desk.

So? Dexter tossed it back to Thad.

A lot of moon and Mars miners and off-world colonists have these. Thad balanced the globe in his hand as he consulted the palm computer. Gerison transferred from Mars to New California then here.

Dexter came to his feet to begin his review of the room—an overturned sofa, a coffee table smashed. This man had fought whoever had broken into his home. Dexter pushed over a pillow then stopped when he saw a sparkling gray rock underneath a pillow.

Gail knelt on one knee, aiming a scanner at the sparkling rock.

Unrefined dycornum, Gail said, a souvenir from his mining assignment. She came up with it in her gloved hand.

Dexter recoiled from her presentation to him.

Isn’t that shit radioactive?

No, this is its raw form even, when its it processed it turns into something like a crystallized battery. It’s not harmful at that stage either. It is the process of turning it into a reactive fuel that’s dangerous. If done here on Earth the planet would be devastated with radioactive clouds; that’s why it’s done off planet. Gail held the rock in her palm. This is roughly a quarter of a kilogram. You know Dex, this is enough to power a reconstruction model home for about a month.

Dexter glared at the black rock. Dycornum, this was the ultimate reason Earth went to war with the Colony Alliance. The precious powerful fuel that would supply the world with enough energy to forge the utopian dream of mankind. Log it in evidence. Dexter said then turned to Thad. What have you got? There was no forced entry. The door was locked from the outside. But the window is busted wide open, Thad said.

Dexter strolled to the window and stood; he looked at the floor and the shards of glass then came to stand with his back to the window. All the glass is on the inside. Thad waited for him to expound upon whatever thought was in his mind. The perp came in through the window. That’s why the door was still locked. Dexter pushed back the fluttering curtains and looked out onto the small balcony. There was nothing left of the glass doors but ragged shards held in a bent frame. Dexter stepped through the ragged frame. His attention went down then up to the top of the building. Unable to see what he was looking for, Dexter placed his back against the railing and arched over it.

Dex, what the hell. Thad reached out and took hold of Dexter’s forearm.

Dexter brushed his hand away then came up straight.

I’ve jumped off lunar rock faces higher than this, Dexter said.

Yeah, but that was in zero gravity, the laws are different here on Earth.

I’m going downstairs, Dexter said.

Thad followed Dexter downstairs then outside the building. In the rear of the apartment complex Dexter began a random search until he stopped with the sight of something on the ground.

Look at this. Thad came and matched Dexter’s attention toward the impression on the ground.

They look like footprints, pretty deep ones, Thad said.

Dexter knelt, looking at the prints; he then looked up to the apartment building.

You are suggesting this guy jumped from the apartment building. That’s nine stories, Dex, Thad said.

Dexter tapped the phone piece in his ear twice, activating his team’s communications link.

Yeah, Dex,

Gail, get your kit and get down here. We are in the back of the building, Dexter said.

Dexter came up straight and made his way back to the building, still scanning the ground. He glanced up again to the apartment building then made his way back to the footprints. As he scanned the ground, he found more footprints and began to follow them with Thad trailing behind.

They came to a spot right here, Dexter said. He went farther into the thicket then came back to the first set he discovered. Look up there. Dexter pointed to the line of trees. Broken branches. Dexter paused, allowing all the information to fall into a scenario he played out in his mind.

What have we got? Gail jogged over to the two. She stood waiting for her question to be answered by Dexter.

Something came down low to a hover just over there, some sort of aerial craft. It moved in closer to the victim’s apartment, and the killer came in through the window. Afterwards, he jumped down. Dexter pointed to the ground, following the tracks back to the green space. Then went that way to get picked up.

Jumped, Gail said. She looked to the window then turned her attention back to Dexter.

Dexter did not reply; his attention still went from the footprints to the building as if either or both of those inanimate objects would fill in the gaps of his vision.

Check the footprints, Dexter said.

He waited while she meticulously examined the two-foot prints using technology and her own skill of deduction.

The perp was about 190 pounds. This impression was pretty deep, she said. The impact from the print made indications that he might have landed with the force of his body from one hundred feet, Gail said as an ominous look grew on her face; she came back to stand up, searching the ground for any other evidence on the ground.

What does that mean? Thad asked.

Perp landed; from a jump out of the window right here, Dexter answered. Get back to the office. Pull everything on this vic’s—family, friends, friends’ wives. He pissed somebody off. Let’s find out who. Dexter turned and began to walk away. Three hours. I’m going to get something to eat, shower, and change. Meet you back in the squad room, Dexter said.

Chapter Two

The streets of New Chicago were alive with a diverse population of the world, as most cities of Earth had been appropriated in the last decade. Populations were moved for the sake of safety from those lands that had been radioactive from the Tech War; in the next decades, the Terra farming project would restore those sections of the globe to a paradise. In that time, these transferees would have put down roots with families and jobs; these sheltered cites would be their homes, adding to the alternative motive of the World Court. Diversification by relocation—change the face of those once called neighboring countries to the faces of one country.

Dexter gave his attention to the discolored bricks and stained mortar, the paint that had been kissed by the fire of fusion bombs from the Alliance spaceships. Those who survived washed away the soot rather than painting it over. This was the original past—something that could not be so easily burned away or frightened out of humans.

Much of New Chicago’s cities and streets remained in their original materials of brick and mortar; remodeled preserving the original interior as well as the exterior, then presented as nostalgic.

Dexter left the stream of human traffic to a small pizzeria and found a seat at the outside dining area. This restaurant was one that had survived the cataclysm of the Tech War as well as the war with the colony Alliance.

The Tech War ended the reign of Earth by individual rulers and gave birth to the global government, the World Court, with the death of billions. The World Court was composed of twenty-five presidential governing heads called judges, two hundred senate members, and several thousand other heads of state, who ran everything from economic industry to global-health matters. The new world government’s sovereignty was challenged several decades later by the colonial mining Alliance. Those off-world mining organizations were established for the purpose of supplying Earth with ores and new sources of energy. The galactic conflict in the Vesta star system between Earth and a population of mining colonists was born from the colonists’ desire to govern themselves. The World Court denied that demand; in response, the colonists beat their plowshares into swords and threatened to lay waste to Earth if their demands were not meant. The final solution to bomb the colonists’ home world ended the war with an unconditional surrender and the death of two million colonists.

What did it all change? Fourteen years after the Alliance War, people still killed one another for as many reasons as there were methods despite what governmental structure was in place.

Dexter turned his attention to