Soulbraider: A Saga of Future Past

By John Cash Filippe

Dr. Michael Sterling suffers from extreme social anxiety which he combats by using a Dot. A symbiotic robot that he controls from his Condo in Sacramento, California. Due to the unrest of the non-gifted side of humanity he is forced to step out from behind his beloved Dot and into the real world.

This change begins the destruction of his career, with him not being able to function in public without his anxiety showing. His last chance to save himself and his career; cancer research, but what he finds is so much more.

The Soul.

When found he sees the soul for what it is, a part of the body, like the heart or lungs, and learns that cancer is hiding on the skin of the soul, so he builds Soultracer to map and block cancer from returning to the body. Effectively curing cancer after it is put into a remissive state.

Fame, wealth, and fortune follow, but in a society that is plagued with overpopulation, starvation, homelessness, did he do society a favor? Or prolong the suffering of humanity.

His answer, Soulbraider.

Being gifted like her father, several years later Dr. Sue Sterling works as a champion of the Soulbraider project to "braid" the souls of the dying to the souls of the living to preserve a soul line. What she finds is that the secret purpose of Soulbraider.

Population control.

Her father explains how he proved the soul moves forward from person to person and that it isn't generated at birth, Soulbraiding is creating miscarriages and still births in the future thus reducing population.

At first horrified, but eventually brought to the understanding that this is the most humane way to slow the birthrate, she goes along with the plan. Fully consumed with guilt and curiosity, she conducts her own monstrous experiments where she finds that her father is wrong.

Souls move backward in time, not forward.

Rebuilding Soulbraider to attach to the soul to the one body part it never attached to, the mind, Sue sets in motion her first step into following her soul into the past so she can try to fix overpopulation before it begins.

Her two twin teenagers find out about what has happened and end up destroying Sue's version of the Soulbraider, but not before they are both are braided and forever entangled to the fate of the Souls passage backward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350904598

Book preview

PART 1

Chapter 1 - Michael Sterling - Ode to a Dot

The operating room shook violently. Michael wouldn’t have noticed anything except for the tiny amounts of dust that fell from the ceiling.

‘Was that an earthquake?’ He thought as he began grafting the artery in place in his patient's heart. Ignoring distractions while doing a delicate operation like Coronary Revascularization was necessary. It was a difficult surgery, but with his grafting tools he could finish in under the allotted thirty minutes. Fortunately, when working through his Dot outside interference didn’t affect him that much.

The symbiotic robot that he used for surgery, well hell, everything, he knew as Maestro. The industry standard name for it was Dot, this was because of the two identifying LED rings on the forehead with a square in the middle. The outer ring for the owner and the inner ring for the driver, the square for a security combination of the two. Yet for Michael this symbiotic existence was his only way to interact with society.

Michael Sterling was diagnosed with extreme Social Anxiety, to the point of not being able to function in crowds without a great deal of preparation. With Maestro though, he could interact with a filter between him and the real world, so his anxiety was a thing of the past.

He drew the grafting tool around the large artery to start the build. His hands were as steady as ever. Working through Maestro was like wearing a second skin, except this skin was confident and fearless. Building this artery in under thirty minutes would be a breeze, he thought as he started drawing the tool back and forth to create the new pathway.

Another violent shake sent dust sprinkling down from the ceiling.

What was that? Michael/Maestro turned towards his human nurse annoyed.

For the first time he noticed that she looked frightened. Her eyes darted around the room and settled on the small window in the door, as if she could gather information from its twenty-centimeter frame.

I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t an earthquake. This came out in a quivering voice.

Michael gave an indifferent grunt, continued to ignore the sounds, and focused on the work. He was too far in to stop now, so the mystery of the shaking room would have to wait. He looked down at the bloody artery and noticed that it was leaking a bit. He adjusted the clamp, which caused more blood to flow out from the released vein.

Suction, please

The nurse tore her eyes from the window in the door and started to apply suction to the area.

Sorry Dr. Sterling.

It’s okay. Let’s get through this, whatever is happening outside will figure itself out.

She nodded and continued to move the suction tool around.

Michael ran the grafting tool up and down the area where the artery was synthetically being built against the other severed piece of the artery. He felt time beating against him whenever he did this type of surgery. As soon as the cut is made the clock starts ticking, and disruptions could mess up the timeline. He didn’t like just finishing, he liked finishing with a perfect rebuild and time to spare. It was his signature.

Michael heard the first loud crash as if it were right next to him. He turned Maestro’s head just in time to see a second crash rip the door to the operating room from its hinges spraying debris in several directions. The nurse covered the exposed area on the patient as best she could, while gaping at the man that just ripped the door from its hinges. The man was average height, with dark hair and the lightly dark skin that was inherent to most people. His clothes were torn and a bit ragged from obvious tearing and damage. What Michael zeroed in on were the two red circles and square in the center of the man’s forehead. It was someone operating a Dot, an extremely strong Dot.

Some Dots were made for industrial or military/enforcement use, with reinforced joints and enhanced servomotors to make them more than human. That didn’t matter as much though, even a human without super strength or abilities can cause mass damage, but this one was the latter.

The man zeroed in on Michael/Maestro and ran towards him screaming, DEATH TO THE GIFTED! at the top of his lungs.

Michael/Maestro was lifted into the air and thrown across the room. He still held the grafting tool as Maestro slammed into the far wall. The man tried to throw the patient aside but stopped. Michael assumed that it was the failsafe that wouldn’t allow a Dot to harm a human. This idiot running a Dot was going to kill his patient.

Maestro was unresponsive except for the ability to see through his eyes, and that was getting increasingly difficult. Michael struggled to turn Maestro’s head. Out of the corner of Maestro’s unmoving eyes, he could partially see the Dot jump six feet in the air and punch into the ceiling grid, ripping it down and dropping it on Michael’s nurse who was laying her body over the patient, and then it ran out the door screaming its insane slogan. DEATH TO THE GIFTED!

He could see his condo coming into focus as he started losing the connection to Maestro. He could hear the voices from the hospital fading as Michael tried to re-establish his link. His feed cut off completely and he was left standing in his condo staring at the holoscreen in front of his eyes.

He started to type in the air swearing loudly. Dammit! Come on Maestro, reestablish! Michael wished that he had a Dot built for strength, or speed, or some athletic ability, but he never saw the point. He was a surgeon and he never needed Maestro to function that way. Being Creative and Motor-Skilled was enough for him and his Dot could do exactly what he could. He didn’t think he would ever need access to a third genetic gift or add a strength enhancement.

After what seemed to Michael like an eternity, the reboot process started in front of his Augmented Reality contacts. The blue flashing words in front of his eyes repeating over and over.

Establishing connection....

Establishing connection....

Establishing connection....

Connection accepted.

Michael was back in Maestro and was able to move again. He quickly stood up and carefully pulled the ceiling grid off his patient. His nurse climbed out from underneath the tangle of ceiling debris looking dazed. She had a large gash down the side of her face, and a flap of scalp seemed to be hanging off the side of her head. She didn’t seem to be aware of this and that was fine for now, they had to save the patient.

What just hap... She started to mumble out when Michael cut her off.

Help me with him. He pointed to the patient.

Uh, okay. She swayed her way towards the operating table.

Michael could tell she was in no shape to assist him, but he had no option, she would have to do. Find my instruments and start sterilizing as best you can, please.

He kept his voice calm. Much calmer than he felt. This was a disaster. He thought to himself, ‘What the hell was that about? What just happened? Why did it happen? And why did it happen here? Did the guy know the patient? Did he know me? And what did he mean death to the gifted?’ These questions poured in through his mind as he cleared the debris as best he could from the opening in the man’s chest.

The clamps held. At least one good thing happened amid this chaos. Then he checked the patient's pulse. Weak, but still alive. He saw that he had dropped his grafting tool where he had slammed into the wall. He darted around the table and grabbed it from the floor. He reached into his lab coat pocket, grabbed his sterilizing wand, and ran it over the grafting tool to clean it.

Nurse. No response.

Nurse! Still no response.

Michael yelled, Betty!

She stopped picking things up from the ground, swaying a little as she did so, and looked up at Maestro/Michael. Doctor.

Come here, I need your help with debridement of the area around the arteries. Do you have any forceps?

She looked at the instruments in her hands. I think so. Just a second. She dumped the retrieved equipment into a tray she had righted and shook her head as if to clear some cobwebs, the flap of scalp flipping around as she did. She scanned the tangle of instruments and pulled out the forceps.

Okay, Betty, I am going to start pulling as much debris as possible out from the open area, will you find me some saline so we can irrigate the area. We are running out of time so please hurry.

Maestro/Michael turned towards his patient and gazed at the open wound. ‘What a wasteful, stupid, ridiculous mess!’ He started pulling pieces of ceiling tile out of the patient's chest as fast as possible. The nurse rushed to the other side of the patient with a large bottle of saline. She looked questioningly at Maestro/Michael. He nodded his agreement. She started irrigating while he suctioned the area. He noticed that she was still unsteady, but nothing could be done about that now.

He began scanning the artery and saw that it was torn when he was thrown. He would need to cut away the synthetic build and start over. He looked at the tray and scanned around for his laser scalpel. There it was. He grabbed the tool and ran his sterilizing wand over it. He cut away the torn synthetic artery. Once done he began again, and much faster than was safe. ‘It may not be my best work, but dammit he is going to live.’

When he was done, he released the clamps and checked the artery for leaks. ‘No bleeding, heart is pumping, and the blood is flowing, all good signs.’ He began to close the chest after removing the spreader with his suture wand. He looked at the clock and sighed with relief. Still two minutes under the limit. He should be okay assuming my quick artery graft holds.

He turned to Betty, Get yourself checked out, your head is injured.

She reached up and touched the flap of skin as if noticing it for the first time. She tried to smooth it back into place, but she realized it was a lost cause. She settled on holding the torn skin to the side of her head.

Please ask another nurse to monitor the patient’s progress while you get stitches. He reached over and pulled her head gently towards him to look at her wound.

I’m sure there are plenty of other injuries outside of this room, but I need to take a quick minute, I’ll be right back. And like that Maestro went still.

Michael was back in his condo, where he flopped into his chair. He rubbed at his temples, trying to put together what had just happened over the last thirty minutes. Michael looked at his Trill wall, Vid screen. A video display popped up on a large blank wall.

Show me current news.

Then an announcer came on describing a riot in downtown Sacramento that had started on the east coast in Philadelphia.

Today marks the third day of Dot led altercations plaguing our nation. All of this started with a protest for equal treatment regardless of genetics that occurred in Philadelphia and has now become chaotic; with many of the protestors using Dot’s to cause extreme property damage. The image on the screen became the Philadelphia police chief.

What was supposed to be a peaceful march became something completely different. Hacked Heavy Construction Dots, and privately owned Power Dots, even regular everyday Dots have been ripping the city apart. The man, Michael assumed was the chief of police, tried to look confident, but he came across as exhausted.

One of the reporters shouted, Chief Johnson, they have reported several deaths. Aren’t the Dots designed with fail safes so they can’t hurt people?

They are. That doesn’t stop them from tearing down a wall on top of a person or throwing a vehicle with a person inside of it against a wall. I have lost seven officers in the last three days because of indirect violence. These Dots are dangerous and should be outlawed. I hear it is the same story all over the country tonight. Many of my colleagues are reporting the same type of casualties everywhere.

Another reporter shouted, What are they protesting?

He looked down at the podium, They say they want equal rights with the genetically gifted. He shook his head, I don’t know how this will help them get it.

He frowned and looked at the cameras, unfortunately, some people are just angry, and they want to see something burn.

Michael looked at his screen, Off and the wall went blank.

His hand began to shake, and his breathing became labored. He felt the sweat beading in his numb palms. ‘Not now.’ He thought. ‘I don’t have time for a panic attack. I have to get back to the hospital, people need me.’ Michael stood up, headed to the pantry, and grabbed a water off the cooling plate. He began to roll the cool surface across his forehead, then between his palms. He opened the bottle and drank the entire bottle in one long gulp, feeling the icy water push down his throat almost to the point of being painful. He needed the distraction that came from the pain to clear his mind and let him refocus.

People are idiots. Time to go help some idiots. Then he logged back into Maestro.

Chapter 2 – The End

He felt tired. Right down to his bones. The last three months had been chaos at the hospital. He stared at the freshly repaired doors and walls that had been totaled in the riots. Management refused to call it a riot, but dammit, that is what it was. Almost losing a patient because someone ripped a door off your operating room should classify as a riot. Maybe management should classify it as a demonstration of how stupid people can be.

He had worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week for three solid months since the incident in the operating room. First so he could help the wounded and set up temporary facilities in the building. Next help with designing the repairs to the rooms. Management saw an opportunity to make some fixes and they were taking them. ‘Never miss a chance to exploit the insurance company,’ he thought wryly. Then overseeing the deconstruction and removal of all the temporary facilities.

He noticed Maestro was low on power, so he walked him to the charging bay. Maestro was okay after the attack. Some basic cosmetic fixes were needed, but Michael had become interested in some strength modifications after that last event. He logged out of Maestro for lunch and thought, ‘Both of us are getting lunch today.’

When he logged back an hour later, there was a note on Maestro’s face. Sometimes when you were logged out of your Dot people would stick notes on them so when you returned you would see them. This annoyed Michael, they could just message him, but if it were something important, they probably would have.

He peeled the note from his eye and looked at it. It was from Dr. Reynolds.

Dr. Jefferson Reynolds went to school with Michael. They were lab partners back during their days at Stanford. Michael couldn’t consider him a friend, but an acquaintance fit the relationship. They had met once in real life when Michael had to come into the university to get fitted for his school issued Dot. That is a great deal more face time than anyone else at the hospital ever had. His interview and hiring were done completely through his Dot. To this day, he has never physically stepped into the hospital that pays his salary.

On the note Jefferson had scrawled in his horrible handwriting, ‘Michael, when you get a chance, come see me. Not important, but it could cause us some trouble down the road.’

Michael stepped out of the charging bay and looked around. The patient load was light today, and so were the cases. The first time in months. He looked at his time piece that was an LED readout on Maestro’s left arm, ‘I have time.’ he thought, so he turned and walked towards Dr. Reynolds’ office.

He knocked on the door. It was newly replaced, apparently the demonstrator that tore apart the operating room had knocked in his door as well. When the door swung open, he saw that the room was different. Much of the décor that used to hang on the walls was gone. Even his personal effects seemed to have changed. He had salvaged a couple religious items that were located against the wall. A cross, a bible on a bookshelf and so on. Michael knew that Dr. Reynolds had a religious background and was still quite a believer. He internally shook his head, to each his own.

Dr. Reynolds, or rather, Dr. Reynolds’ Dot sat behind a newly created Trill desk. That meant he had a Trill floor put into the new office so he could create whatever space he wanted now with the gravity fields that Trill provided.

Trill was created fifty plus years ago to control gravity. This fortunate accident spawned from trying to create a new type of instant wireless communication that used the gravitational force to connect wirelessly to everything and everyone. Almost overnight, the gray interface substance had become the building block of society. Beyond instant communication with anyone or anything, it could split and manipulate gravity so objects could float or be pushed in one direction or the other. This became the foundation of every building and bottom of every vehicle, so they never had to touch the ground. It created frictionless movement in the case of vehicles and the shifting fields could push them with minimal electricity. Over the years the uses for Trill evolved into creating objects by manipulating gravitational fields. Which is what Michael was looking at now. A Trill rendered desk that couldn’t be seen unless viewed through Augmented Reality, which of course was built directly into a Dot’s ocular nerves. A person had to wear special glasses or contact lenses to see the built products.

I guess your office didn’t do that well.

Jefferson smiled, It didn’t, but the repair has definitely been an upgrade. Isn’t Trill great.

My house is completely lined with Trill. I don’t know what I would do without it. Michael admitted.

Really, that must have been costly. Jefferson continued to smile at his colleague.

It was. I needed it to create a clear connection between myself and Maestro.

Makes sense. Jefferson nodded and didn’t say anything more.

Michael/Maestro looked blankly at him and waited. He wasn’t much for light, ice breaker conversation. He just never knew how to start. Every time he did, he came across blunt and flippant. Silence was his friend, and while in his Dot he could be silent forever without any form of anxiety or stress.

After what seemed like an awkward amount of time, Jefferson finally piped in. Not even curious why I asked you to come see me?

I am. I figured you would tell me eventually or I would go back to work. Michael thought to himself, ‘did I sound like a jerk saying that?’ Then he decided to leave it and see how Jefferson responded before making an excuse.

Jefferson smiled broadly, That is why I like you, Michael. Your curiosity is rooted in science and facts. You don’t interest yourself in the trivialities of feelings or rumors. Something I have always admired about you. He stood up from behind his desk and went to the one wall with Trill on it. Bring up the vid of the new Dot bill.

On the screen there was a room of people talking about the bill circulating to outlaw the use of Dot’s.

Michael frowned, I’ve seen some of this. I’m sure it is just another bill that is going to fail. Dots are too large a part of our society.

Jefferson frowned, So was slavery in the 19th century, and they illegalized that overnight.

It took a war. Michael began to feel some doubt creep in. Could they possibly outlaw Dots? That didn’t seem possible to him. Almost unthinkable. Then of course he was sure that the people who owned slaves had felt the same way.

The screen continued to show people ranting, and video clips of the demonstration.

Isn’t that kind of what just happened? A revolution of the non-Gifted.

After a few seconds of silent thought, Jefferson added. A lot of analysts are predicting that we are going to lose our Dots.

The screen showed a one-sided vote as people seemed to rally behind the make Dots illegal campaign. The most compelling piece of evidence that they presented on the screen was the death toll from the demonstrations, just north of ten thousand. One senator complained that the demonstrations would have been peaceful if we hadn’t armed the demonstrators with robots.

A group of Dot activists were yelling on the vid screen how Dot’s are only as dangerous as the users. Dots didn’t do this, people did! Why do we all have to suffer because of a few people’s bad choices?

The arguments continued about how Dots were just too dangerous for everyday people to own. How only the police and the military should have this type of equipment. Michael remembered that this was the argument for activists who tried to make guns illegal. They never succeeded, but the regulations became so strict that gun ownership became rare. Would they do something like that to the Dot? From the looks of it they were going to disarm the population before it became as hard to remove them as it is to remove guns.

What will we do if this goes through? I’ve never done surgery in person, hell, I’ve never even met with a patient in person. Jefferson looked morosely at Michael. Michael had never seen Jefferson so worried. Did he have a condition similar to his? He had never bothered to ask, but right now Jefferson’s condition was the last thing on Michael’s mind. He was starting to feel the realization seeping in that he might lose Maestro.

Jefferson looked worried, Michael could see it all over his face, but that didn’t even touch the mounting tension that he was feeling right at this moment. His hand began to shake, and so did Maestro’s. He felt cold and numb, he had never had a panic attack in his Dot, and he wasn’t about to now. He quickly logged out leaving Maestro standing in the middle of the floor of Dr. Reynolds’ office.

Michael fell onto his couch, trying to get comfortable and failing. He couldn’t get enough air. He tried taking deep breaths, but it didn’t help. He put his cupped hands over his mouth and tried to breathe like that. Total fail.

He sat up and with a shaky hand typed the return home command on Maestro so he would make his way back to the house. He was done with work for the day, and possibly forever.

Chapter 3 – The Fall of a Dot

The vote went the way that the analysts and Jefferson had predicted. Michael tried to take in the news. One year, and all Dots would be illegal. They were calling this the transition period. For Michael it was a countdown to the end of his everything. People are idiots. How could they take a miracle like the Dot and destroy it for their petty protests? Everyone knew that it wasn’t the Gifted and non-Gifted, it was population, period. They can’t get jobs because there is a surplus of people, and if an employer has a choice between someone with Gifts and someone without Gifts, they will choose the Gifted every time. Yet they protest something that can’t be solved without sterilization of the population. He was sure they would protest that as well.

Tears of disgust and stress rained down the sides of his face when March 23rd, 2337, finally came and he had to abandon Maestro. He refused to scrap him, that would be like killing an old friend. Michael bought a nice storage locker where he could leave Maestro until the world came back to its senses, but honestly, he didn’t hold out much hope. He could feel his heart sink when he signed the lease and then closed Maestro into that cold, black space.

Michael just sat on the ground in front of the door. He wanted to open it and look at Maestro one more time. He would be there if he opened the door. That was the beauty of Maestro no matter what Michael did Maestro was always there. He stood and brushed the lock with his hand, ‘damn he wanted to open the door.’ He finally pulled his hand away, fully turned his back on the door, and purposefully walked away. The effort that it took not to run back to that storage bay and open it up just to wrap his arms around him one more time was nothing short of heroic.

Michael walked and walked. It was as if he was a new amputee. He could still feel the connection between him and Maestro, though Maestro was now gone.

He arrived in a vehicle, but he just left it behind. He wanted to... no, needed to walk. So, he walked, trying to avoid the crowded streets as best he could. He could feel the press of the people around him, and it was suffocating, but it was nothing less than he deserved. Maestro was gone and it was his fault that he was so dependent on him.

He tried to turn down a street, but people were everywhere. He went to the next street, still packed with people, and the overwhelming smell of body odor. Something he was going to have to get used to, but it was hard. The following