Technoserf

By Leigh Kimmel

The Madrian Empire rules worlds as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. When the Madrians conquered Roby's homeworld, they brought him to this godforsaken lump of a world, to toil at their will.

Now the Gate has failed, leaving them without communications or transport to the rest of the Empire. When Roby identifies the problem, he's offered a chance to fix it.

Roby now faces a quandry. Even if he can repair the damage, should he? Will he be better off reunited with the masters' metropole? Or will he only complicate a difficult life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Starship Cat Press
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215633830

Book preview

The Gate failed half a minute before Roby's turn through. The worker immediately before him had just entered the aperture when eye-wrenching blackness gave way to dull gray plate. Half a body, neatly sliced from head to foot, peeled away to fall at Roby's toes. There was no blood, for the failing field had cauterized the flesh.

Roby looked from the half-corpse to the dead Gate. Behind him his fellow workers whispered among themselves in speculation. There could be no mistaking their fear, never mind it was based upon all the wrong reasons. Although they possessed unmodified consciousness and sensorium, a necessity for the quantum devices with which they worked, they were individuals of limited curiosity who never looked beyond the immediate surrounds of their workplace and dormitory levels to the world upon which all of it was located. Little more than a tide-locked cosmic cinder, useful for the vast amount of energy coming from its sun, the planet could support life only because of its Gate connections to more verdant worlds which provided the necessary organics and volatiles.

Supervisors moved in, swinging the discipline wands which delivered a painful shock but did no lasting harm. Silence, all of you. It is not for the likes of you to question the works of the Lords Exalted.

Stupid, but the bottom tier of the Madrian Empire's managerial forms were not famous for their intellectual capacity. Having to supervise workers whose duties required a functional understanding of quantum mechanics served only to make these sorts all the more touchy about the prerogatives of rank.

Roby opened his implanted link to access the Madrian computer net, including the levels that weren't supposed to be accessible to the likes of him. He hid a smile of amusement to know the supervisors, so alert for the first hint of subversive talk, did not even check whether their charges might be establishing far more dangerous connections on the net.

If he had hoped to gain solid information from the managerial channels, it proved sadly disappointing. They were in as much disarray as the bottom-feeder supervisors who were smacking Roby's fellow workers to a silence more fraught with restless energy than the previous chatter. Not surprising, when one considered that the highest-ranking managerial form actually present on this nameless planet of a nameless sun was at best middle-level, depending upon Gate-borne