Midmedia express – Part 8.

The train came to a stop, jolting him out of his reverie. Gunnar observed across the alley a man staring at him and whispering something to a skeletal thin woman next to him.
Had they recognized him?

He stood up as soon as the doors opened and glanced at his kPhone. He had five earth hours to go. Steeped out and run for the station’s exit. At the exit he stepped into a drone and told the screen to take him to Byram Core.
“Where in Byram Core, sir,” the robotic voice asked.
“Station,” he almost screamed.

The screen didn’t say anything more except flashing a warning about seatbelts. After Gunnar locked his the drone started taking off. Gunnar frowned wondering if it had been a signal. If the robo-dronepilot had reported of him. He thought there was something about that voice. He felt that there was something familiar he couldn’t pinpoint.

“Let me out here,” Gunnar said. The robo-dronepilot didn’t show surprise or any other reaction to his sudden decision and after charging his card the door opened upwards. Gunnar began walking down a narrow road that curved through spare parks. In the edges of Byram Core and he could already feel the privileges of the rich and famous. Perhaps one day he will live her, he thought but let the thought vanish inside his worries.

There was a heavy drone approaching in low orbit. Gunnar kept walking but the track drew closer. He heard a voice from the kPhone in his pocket. It cried, “Watch out!”

Gunnar flung himself into the ditch feeling the cold air of the heavy truck careened millimetres over to where he was walking before. And it didn’t go far. It stopped just meters away and the pilot opening his door started shouting, “There he is! Shoot, T’dizd, shoot!”
Yellow and orange rays clipped leaves from the trees as Gunnar sprinted into the park.

Running like mad he could still hear the driver shouting, “T’dizd, H’srov, go around with the spare. We got him boxed.”
Gunnar checked his kPhone, bright yellow letters on black background, “You are boxed Gunnar, you are fucked!”

Gunnar ran through the park and found himself on a concrete highway with open spaces all around him. One of the killers was trotting through the park just behind him while the truck was heading for the other side of the highway coming fast towards him from the opposite side.

Lights were approaching for another direction. Another drone flying low. Gunnar ran into the highway waving frantically. The drone came to a stop just over him.
“Hurry,” cried a purple woman from inside the drone while lowering it and opening the side door.

Gunnar dived in. The purple woman made a sudden u-turn. A ray hit the windshield. She pushed the stick and flew fast away from the truckers’ fire range.  Gunnar leaned back and shut his eyes tightly. The woman kept focus on her flying and the truckers on her screens. “Lucky Gunnar, plunked again from the jaws of death thanks to a woman. Never underestimate Gunnar’s charm,” the text was flashing on the screen in front of him. The same exactly text appeared on is kPhone.
He didn’t feel lucky.

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Midmedia express – Part 7.

Gunnar stood up miraculously engorged and took another sword from the pile standing on the side of the pit. Then he went over the neck again with his eyes closed.

The god who protects children and fools must have been watching, for the sword slid in like a needle through butter and the Elephine looked startled, stared at him unbelievably and dropped like a deflated balloon.

They paid him ten thousand credits and his collar bone healed in practically no time. More mail including a passionate invitation from an Aorian girl in New Bayou, which he ignored.
And they asked him to appear on another show.

By then he had lost some of his innocence. He was now fully aware that he had almost killed for pocket money. The big loot lay ahead. Now he wanted to be almost killed for something worthwhile.

So he appeared on Steam, sponsored by Fry Skinners. In head helmet, respirator, gravity belt and knife, he slipped into the warm waters of Crosk’s moon with four other contestants, followed by a force field protected crew.

The idea was to find and bring up the treasure the sponsor had hidden there.

Helmet diving isn’t special hazardous. But the sponsor had added some frills for public interest. The area was sown with giant spiderlike clams, Cromos eels and of course several kinds of flesh eater full of teeth giants with many poisonous tentacles and other dangers of the galaxy’s waters.

It was a stirring contest. A lizardoid from Camer II actually found the treasure early in a deep crevice but a Cromos eel found him. Another diver took the treasure from the dying Camerian and a spiderlike clam took him.

The odd pink green water became cloudy dark blue with the blood of the Camerian which rolled well on the streaming services. In the meantime the treasure slipped to the bottom and Gunnar plugged after it popping a glove in the process. Ten meters form the top he had to fight another diver for the treasure.

They feinted back and forth with their knives. The purple creature struck, slashing Gunnar across the chest. But Gunnar with the self-possession of an old contestant dropped his knife and tore the man’s respirator out of his helmet.
That did it.

Gunnar surfaced and presented the treasure at the standing by floating ship. It turned out to be an airtight canister with Fry Skinners hot sauce. ‘The greatest treasure of all’ according to the sponsor’s network message.

That netted Gunnar twenty-two thousands credits in cash and prizes and over a thousand of fan mails and a new proposition from a girl from Glasr, which he seriously considered. He received free hospitalization for his knife slash and a burst eardrum plus injections for poison water infection. But best of all he was invited to appear on the biggest of the streaming shows. Risk.
And that was when the real trouble began.

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Midmedia express – Part 6.

The race was a screaming, burning, exploding nightmare. Gunnar stayed back, letting the early leaders smash themselves up on rocks or with each other. He crept into the third place when a former flat drone in front of him swerve against a psy-drone and the two drones roared into dune and exploded with a big bang.

Gunnar gunned the second place on the last few kilometres. But couldn’t find passing room. An anomalous down curve almost took him but he fought the drone back still holding the third place. Then the lead driver did something with his turbo feed and the drone exploded in the final fifty meters bringing Gunnar to the second place.

He was now thousand credits head. He even received fan mail.
he was invited to appear on Uncanny.

Unlike Object, Uncanny was not a competition-type show. It stressed individual initiative. For the show, Gunnar was knocked out with a non-habit-forming downer. He awoke in the cockpit of an army-feeling drone, flying in auto at ten thousand feet over the desert. Its liquid looked nearly empty and Gunnar had no gravity belt. He was supposed to land the drone.
Of course he had never been inside an army drone before.

He experimented a bit with the controls trying to find something familiar remembering that last week’s participant had woken up in a sandsub and having open the wrong valve had drowned.

Millions of viewers watched spellbound as this average man, a man just like themselves, struggled with the situation just as they would do. Gunnar was one of them. Anything he could do, they could do. He was representative of the people.

Gunnar managed to bring the drone down in some semblance of a landing. He flipped over a few times unable to control the weight, but his seat belt hold. And the engine contrary to expectation didn’t explode.

He staggered out of the ruins with two broken ribs, three thousand credits and the chance, when he healed, to appear on Revolve.

At last, a first class streaming show, Revolve paid ten thousand credits. All you had to do was kill one of those monstrous and full of jaws and teeth Elaphine with a sword. Just like the myths with the space knights.

The fight was held on the forbidden dune planet, since Elephines lived there and hunting was legal and essential for the living.

Gunnar felt confident with all safety people and assistance running around with ready rays. But when all said it was Gunnar on the sand with a sword on his right hand facing a gigantic hungry for human flesh monster all teeth and nails.

Somebody shouted, “go for the eyes.” But Gunnar knew only what the expert when they first arrived in the forbidden planet had told him, “the brain is under the mouth; go for the top of their neck.” And over he went. He actually managed to go after the monster faster that he would have ever thought that he could. The sword bounced off bone and the Elephine tossed him over its head luckily for him avoiding the teeth.

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Midmedia express – Part 5.

“It’s a marvellous opportunity Gunnar. And you are better than anyone else. Nothing you can do, anyone can do. You are average Gunnar. I think the streaming shows will work for you, man.”

Back then Gunnar permitted himself the occasional dream. Streaming shows looked like a sure way to riches for a pleasant young fellow with no particular talents, education or training.
So after that talk he send a mail to a streaming show called Bizarre including a hologram of himself and some links to his social media.
Bizarre was interest in him. The network investigated and found that he was average enough to satisfy the most demanding viewers. His family, parentage and all his friendship in and out of any kind of work the last few earth years were checked. Then he was summoned to New Bayou and interviewed by a Mr Mo’kliz.

Mo’kliz was purple and intense and chewed something synthetic as he talked.
“You’ll do,” he snapped. “But not for Bizarre. You’ll appear on Object. It’s a half-hour show on Pro-eight.”
“Wow!” Said Gunnar.

“Don’t thank me, earthman. There’s a thousand credits if you win or place second and a consolation prize of hundred credits of you lose. But that’s not important.”
“No?”
“Object is a little how. The network uses it as a testing ground. First and second winners on Object move to Uncanny. The prizes are much much higher on Uncanny.”
“I know they are, sir.”

“And if you do well on Uncanny there are the first class streaming shows, like Bizarre with their galaxywide coverage and enormous prizes. And that just the beginning because big time comes after. How far you go is up to you, earthman.”
“I’ll do my best,” Gunnar said.

Mo’kliz stopped chewing for a moment and said almost reverently, “You can do it Gunnar. Just remember. Toy are the people and the people can do anything.”

The way he said it made Gunnar feel momentary sorry for Mr Mo’kliz, who was purple, fat with bad purple skin and wriggled antennas and was obviously not the people.

They shook hands.
then Gunnar signed a paper absolving the network of all responsibility should he lose his life, limbs or reason during the contest.

Then he signed another paper exercising his rights over the newly voted Voluntary Hunt Act. The law requires all those papers and his signature on all of them and it was a mere formality.
Or at least, that’s what they told him.

Three Earth weeks later he appeared in Object.

The show followed the classic form of the drone race. Untrained pilots climbed into powerful Galerian and Thatrian completion drones and raced over a murderous dune course. Gunnar was shaking with fear as he slid his big pro-drone 6, into the wrong speed slot and took off.

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Midmedia express – Part 4.

“It just isn’t worth it.” Mrs Dell last words before closing the glass-door behind him haunted him for a bit.

He walked to the market centre and caught the line-steam to G43F Street, and from there the uptown line-steam to the J5Kth. There he stopped just enough to check the news feed in his kPhone and changed for the aqua-market express.

He glanced at his kPhone timer. He had six and a half Mars hours to go. Odd but he was still in Mars time-schedule.

The aqua-market express roared under the Market Square. Gunnar dozed with the Mrs Dell’s robber husband’s hat pulled over his face. Had he been recognized yet? Had he shaken the shooters? Or the kPhone gang?

Half dreamily he wonder if he had escaped death. Or was he still a zero-gravity ballet performer, moving around because of death’s inefficiency?

“Death is so laggard nowadays,” he thought and sighed. Gunnar, the man who walked for hours after he died and actually commented and posted in his kPhone. He even made some likes and rekPhones before decently buried.

Gunnar’s eyes snapped open. He was sure he had been dreaming something highly unpleasant. H didn’t want to remember what. After slowly checking around he closed his eyes gain and remembered, with mild astonishment, a time when he had been in no trouble.

That must have been two… three years ago? Two. He had been a big pleasant young man working as a streamline driver’s assistant. Gunnar had no talents or special abilities. He was just Gunnar and too modest even to admit that he had dreams.

However the tight-face short streamline diver had the dreams for him. “Why not try for a streaming show, Gunnar? Be an influencer or something. I would if I had your looks and voice. Audiences like nice average guys with nothing much in their lives than their ego and looks. Why not look into it?”

So he had looked at it. His boss, the streamline river’s life partner had explained it further. “You see Gunnar, the public is sick of all these highly trained athletes with their thick flexes, their professional courage and the celebrities with the countless beauty surgeries. Nobody feels for guys like that anymore. Who can identify?” He started, “people want to watch exciting things, sure. But not when some joker is making it his business for thousands of credits a year in addition to the thousands they already have. That’s legally organized con. They want ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”
“I see,” said Gunnar. “But, and here pay extra attention Gunnar,” the streamline river’s life partner looked extra serious. “Six Mars years ago, Gunnar, the Fed Congress passed the Voluntary Hunt Act. Those old senators talked a lot about free will, self-determination and the thrills of hunting at the time. But that’s all crap. You know what the act really means? It means that amateurs can risk their lives and live the ultimate adventure of life and death not just the professionals and their fake psychic sores. In the old days, long before colonization and clean society rubbish, you had to be a professional wrestler or a hockey player if you wanted your brains beaten out legally for credits. Now that opportunity is open for people like us, Gunnar.”

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Midmedia express – Part 3.

Gunnar walked down A6D Street, slouching to minimize his height, staggering slightly from the exertion and dizzy from the fall, the lack of food and sleep.

“Hey you!” Gunnar turned. A middle-aged woman was sitting on the steps of a glass-front house frowning at him.
“You are Gunnar, aren’t you? The one they try to kill?” Gunnar started to walk away.
“Come inside here, Gunnar,” the woman said.

Gunnar took out of his pocket his kPhone. Now new comments, no new likes. Perhaps it was a trap all together. But Gunnar knew that there is a chance that there were out o the kPhone bubble, people he could depend upon their generosity and good-heartedness despite likes. And for a minute he felt that he was their champion. He was their representative, a projection of themselves, an average guy in trouble.
Without them he was lost. With them, nothing could harm him.
Trust in the people, his grandmother had told him. They will never let you down.

He followed the woman through the glass door and into her parlour. She told him to sit down and left the room, returning almost immediately with a plate of fish stew. The smell betrayed the fish.

He was hungry, much more than he thought he was so he started eating with big spoonfuls of stew. She stood watching him while he ate; as one would watch alien fish in an aquarium eat rats and snakes or whatever it is alien fish eat.

Two children came out of the kitchen and stared at him. Gunnar checked out of habit. Still no comments. Then three men came out of the bedroom and focused their kPhones on him. There was a big screen on the far wall and while gulping the stew, Gunnar saw himself eating on the screen and under him a red flashing text saying: “Gunnar found settler at good Samaritan Mrs Dell’s apartment.” Followed with at least a hundred likes.

“You better hurry,” Mrs Dell said. “I don’t want rays and blood in my apartment.”
“Yes ma’am,” Gunnar said. “I’m almost finished, ma’am.”

One of the children asked, “Aren’t they going to kill him?”
“Shut up,” said Mrs Dell.

Somebody had written: “you better run mate,” the same guy as before. “They are coming, they found your smell!” Likes overflowed the message.

Gunnar hadn’t realized that he smelled. He sniffed but nothing really cam except the smell of fish from the stew. Perhaps they were dog-sifters or something like that.
Gunnar hated dog-shifters. “I think I can fix that,” Mrs Dell said and she run to the bedroom. Second later she came out with a strange shape can, she sprayed him and she gave him a brown jacket and a gray slouch hat.
“My husband’s stuff,” she said. “He was a robber. No particular smells.”
“A disguise,” somebody, obviously one of the three men had comment on the screen.
“Idiots,” Gunnar said loud. “Why don’t you add the address?” he definitely sounded angry. However one of the men smiled and started typing.
“Now, get out of here,” Mrs Dell screamed.
“Thanks, ma’am.” Gunnar said before exit the glass door.

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Midmedia express – Part 2.

No thumbs up. Gunnar sworn inside him listening another hard hit on the door. Surely somebody would help him. He pulled his tiny kPhone from his pocket. The picture of the ceiling with the hole was a bit blurred but he didn’t bother to adjust it. There was eight likes and the text under the likes was clear and precise.

“Terrible spot, dude,” the text was saying. “You are really screwed dude.”
Dude? Gunnar never liked this call. He was not a dude.
More likes and then some more text. “It seemed safe, but it wasn’t dude.” Obviously he same guy. Gunnar was reading fast. The doorbot recognized you and gave the information to the Leaner’s gang.”

The door cracked a bit more under the repeated blows. Gunnar didn’t have time to read anymore so he turned it into audio-reading.
The kPhone made a click sound. The guy was getting likes for Duba’s sake. “Do you feel like a rat in a cage, dude?” Said the artificial voice that read the comments. The sexy female voice was probably not the appropriate one under the circumstances but Gunnar didn’t have time to change it now.

“Dude, running to the roof might have worked if it wasn’t locked,” the voice said. Dude I know, Gunnar thought feeling his anger rising. That’s why I entered this damn room. “Tough luck,” the voice said again and a series of clicks counted the likes the comment took. “No hope for Gunnar,” the voice said.

Gunnar felt the weight of the door falling on top of him. No much longer, he thought. “There is always hope,” a voice from his kPhone said. “Listen man,” Gunnar liked more called man than dude. “I used to live at one of those rooms when I visited town centre and I know them well. The bathroom has got a window, man. It’s been sprayed over, but it is there…”

Gunnar didn’t have time; he pushed the kPhone back to his pocket, located the outlines of the window with his finger tips and kicked. Glass and plastic broke and then the artificial light of the outside poured the tiny bathroom. He cleared the jagged sill and quickly peered down.

Below was a long drop to a concrete e-scooter highway.

From the other room the hinges tore free and he heard the door opening. Quickly Gunnar climbed through the window, hung by his fingertips for a moment and then dropped.

The shock was stunning. Groggily he stood up and the same time a face appeared at the broken bathroom window. Another silver blue sleeved arm emerged and then a shadow face behind a shining silver… whatever they call them now aiming at him.

At that moment a red ray came from the left targeting the shadow face and the sound of an explosion came out of the bathroom. “Hey, Gunnar, you can thank me later.” The sexy female voice said from his pocket. Gunnar looked back at the window and the shadow face and the only thing he saw was smoke. “Run, dude, run.” The voice from his pocket aid again. “You can thank Sarah later dude. Now run.”
Gunnar wasn’t able to hear any more. He was running through the smoke-filled e-scooter highway, past closed doors and laser beams into the open city.

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Midmedia express – Part 1.

Gunnar lifted his head warily above the window sill. He saw the fire escape of the building across and bellow it a narrow alley. There was a weatherbeaten carriage in the alley and three gray recycling cans. As he watched a silver blue sleeved arm moved from behind the furthest can with something hazardously shining in its fist. Gunner ducked down.

Something smashed the window above his head and punctured the ceiling showering him with plaster and glass.

Well, at least now he knew; the alley was guarded just like the door. He lay at full length on the dirty floor staring at the hole in the ceiling and listening to the sounds outside the door. Gunner was a tall man with light brown hair, bloodshot eyes and an empty stomach. The life of fugitive and the fatigue it had brought with it etched deep lines into his face and at the moment fear had touched his features tightening his muscles and nerves.

The results of fear and tense were starling. Gunnar’s face had character now, for it was reshaped by the expectation of death. There was one in the alleys and two outside his door. He was definitely dead.

He moved his legs and something in his mind told him that was a sign that he was still alive. A deep sigh from somewhere deep inside him came to verify but then his mind told him that he was alive only because of death’s inefficiency. Under different circumstances he would have laughed with the self-sarcasm but the fact that death would take care of him in a few minutes drain all fun from it.

He could just see as mirrored on the ceiling death poking holes in his body, artistically dab his clothes with blood and arrange his limbs in some grotesque position that would make him look like a zero-gravity ballet performer. True said, Gunnar hated ballet.

The thought made him bite his lip sharply. He wanted to live. There had to be a way. Gunner would never end as a zero-gravity ballet performer.

He rolled onto his stomach and surveyed the dark room into which his killers had led him in. A perfect three-by-three plastic and glass coffin. It had a door though. Which was watched. And a window that led into an alley which was also watched. It also had a windowless tiny bathroom. That could be good news. A bathroom meant that this was a human room. He almost smiled.

Gunnar crawled to the bathroom and stood up. There was an air-recycler o the ceiling and if he could pull it away and enlarge the hole he could somehow climb into the apartment above…

He heard a muffed sound from the room’s door. The killers were obviously getting impatient. They were breaking down the door. He gave another look at the air-recycler in the ceiling. No use even to consider it. He could never do all this work in time.

He could hear the door slowly crashing every time they struck it. Soon the lock would tear out or the plastic hinges would pull out of the plastic wall, the door would go down and the two shadow faced creatures would enter dusting their jackets. He had no idea if they were suppose to wear jackets or if a broken plastic door leaves dust floating in the air but the scene was working well in his mind. The necessary drama for his audience.
He typed fast his thoughts. Autocorrect would fix the grammar.

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