Forums · Flickering Red Light
Foreword:
Yeah, damn right there's a foreword. The main reason I've started writing this is because of this board. Thought I was kind of obliged too, y'know. So I started mulling over some ideas, reaping inspiration from a series of different sources of awesomenocity, and this is what I've ended up with.
Enjoy!
____________________
Prologue:
Adam Stone felt the intensifying vibrations of the subway train window against his slumped head. The sixteen year old school boy, dressed shamefully in a bland grey school uniform - courtesy of the private school he?d been forced into - was crumpled motionlessly in the corner of the largely uninhabited carriage.
A creased, brown paper bag was lifted by the cool air that circled Adam?s feet and momentarily piqued his interest. The possessed bag hovered erratically above the carriage?s steel floor. It lifted and somersaulted towards a window pulled fractionally ajar. As the train rushed past a boarding station, the bag was sucked through the window and twisted floatingly passed a ragged man, sitting up in a pile of newspapers. Adam?s eyes followed the path of the discarded rubbish indolently, landing suddenly on a startling sight.
The boy?s face flattened against the window, his eyes searching for a second glimpse of what they were sure they had just witnessed. The train sped on past the station and the iridescent white light faded back down the tunnel?s corner.
---
It was the flickering red light that woke the homeless man. Not the roar of the 10 PM train or the brown paper bag that settled on the ground before him. The bum?s sunken, sallow eyes followed the source of the red light which appeared to be the head of a man staggering past him. He watched in curiosity as the man hobbled on, apparently spectacularly inebriated or violently injured. The flickering red light, which flashed in time every half-second, appeared to be escaping from a matted hole in the man?s head. The hair was darkened and waxed together around it. Most strange of all, was the fact that the stranger seemed to move in time with the light?s flashing, like a series of timed spasms. This most unusual characteristic was made all the more surprising by the man?s fashionably suited attire.
The bum pushed the newspapers off his legs, climbing to his feet unsteadily.
?Aah? Sir!? He called apprehensively to the man who was slowly progressing onwards, a good five metres from the homeless man?s bed of paper, ?Sir!? He repeated, his raspy voice, worn by bottles of gin, unaccustomed to this formal tongue.
Slowly, the suited man turned on the tiled floor. The brown paper bag was stolen away by the end carriage of the 10 PM. The suited man stood before the bum whose eyes were now suddenly wide with fear. He dropped backwards onto the ground, shuffling frantically away from the creature that stood before him. The red light continued to flicker.
Put simply, the suited man was a bloodied mess, His entire lower jaw was missing, replaced by a crimson mess; the skin from his upper lip back to his ears was shredded and rotting. The man?s torso was painted thickly with blood. His glazed, yellow eyes stared blankly into the distance, filled with want. The suit jacket hung scruffily over a white shirt, half caked with dark, dried blood. More dried blood, still, ran from the man?s hairline down the sides of what remained of his face, apparently from the source of the flickering red light. The man?s skin, his hands and facial features, seemed to glow a slight blue in the subway?s bright, artificial light. The flesh was dotted with skinless holes where decomposing meat was showing. The creature stumbled forward in time with the flickering red light, his shoulders throwing his arms around violently, his neck twisting and swaying unnaturally.
The rotting man reached the bum who shook in fear through thick, sweat-drenched clothes. As the red light flashed, the man reached into the jacket pocket of his suit and produced a small, sharp ended, electronic gadget. As the homeless man was reduced to hysterical tears, the creature lifted his arm above his head. The red light flickered once more, and the gadget was thrust into the homeless man?s brain.
____________________
Chapter One:
Professor Joel Rowan crushed the empty paper cup in his hand, dropping the dripping vessel into the nearest bin and hauling himself to his feet. The scientist drearily exited the distinctly drab, largely ill-lit and unnaturally uninhabited cafeteria. His deep pocketed lab coat swung around his ankles as he paced. The professor passed a viewing screen as he journeyed down the straight, dark corridor. He turned and watched the intricate process going on. Complex, mechanic arms lifted, twisted and dropped tiny pieces of the gadgets they were mass producing.
Joel Rowan?s name was fast becoming one of the most heard of in the advanced robotics world. His lab?s progress in the development of the most advanced artificial intelligence impressed the world, most of which had been too busy watching Japan to notice what America was up to. Rowan?s lab was in the process of mass-producing their ?Intel-Cores?, spinning-top-shaped blocks of energy and processing power. The Intel-Cores had the ability to breathe life into a robot; ?life? being intelligence far surpassing that of any human and the unique ability to understand and evaluate any situation. They were truly smart artificial intelligences.
The professor was soon past the viewing windows and, for a moment, the interval between the lights of the corridor shrouded him in darkness. Childlike fear saw him speed up until he was back below the next light. The corridor stretched on past the entire production line. Despite the combined intelligence of a dozen scientists, nobody had realized that putting a cafeteria half a kilometer from the main lab was an uncomfortable pain in the ass.
In the distance, past the protective boundary of two lights, a red light was flickering. The professor felt his heart skip a beat at the sight. Flickering red lights were rarely a good sign in a laboratory, especially when they were the signature of his latest creation, which by no means should have been out and about through the corridors.
As the professor neared the disturbance, it occurred to him to call out. He realized it was most probably his assistant, Banks, carrying an activated core.
?Banks, Banks! Is that you??
No reply. The professor took a final step out of the safety of the light. He felt the welcome of the luminosity behind him dissipate. The red light flickered. In the shadow, the red barely illuminated the corridor. Rowan sensed movement.
?Banks???
Another flash and this time Rowan caught sight of the source of light before him. The light flicked again and his assistant?s possessed carcass had shifted position. The light strobed slowly and each time the creature inched towards Rowan. The professor stared in horror, paralysed by fear. The red light strobed and the zombified creature, moving as if animated by a low frame rate, pulled from a deep pocket an inactivated Intel Core. One more strobe and the Core was activated, a second light began to flicker in time with the first. Together, the two lights flickered once more and the zombie collapsed towards Professor Rowan?s head. A bloodcurdling stream filled the length of the corridor, and then the night was empty but for two red lights, flickering in time.
____________________
Chapter Two:
Six hours later?
Adam was in his usual seat on the train. His initials carved with straight lines into the seat, his bag ? as light as he could make it ? at his feet, his uniform unusually tidy in preparation for the messy state it would have reached by the day?s end, his regulation-length hair was barely damp from a recent shower. As the train approached the station that had last night kept him awake, he sat up, looking to confirm whether it was him or the New York Sub System that had gone crazy.
The station came and passed with underwhelming results. Adam slumped back into his seat disappointed by the sight. The station had looked fairly usual. No homeless guy, no jawless lunatic; just scattered groups of other people unfortunate enough to have to be up at six in the morning. Adam felt his heart skip a beat with the realization that he was both possibly crazy and likely to be considered crazy for smuggling his dad?s gun into his bag for protection. ?Underprivileged? kid, private school, dad?s old gun, tales of zombies in the underground. Yeah, he had a long day ahead of him.
---
It was rare that the President of the United States should be escorted into a conference as early as six in the morning. He wondered what the hell was going on. In the past seven minutes since he had been woken, he had been told nothing of whatever situation merited such a rude awakening. The president sat himself drowsily into a seat opposite the presentation screen. The sudden appearance of a maid at his side surprised him and he gently pulled a cup of coffee from the tray she bore.
Warm cup in hand, the President looked forward to the screen, sharply illuminated by the projector. To the President?s surprise, his Minister for Defense stepped into the projector's light. With a downward gesture, the light was eased and the sharp edged silhouette on the presentation screen desisted.
?First of all,? he began, ?Mr. President I must apologise for waking you this early in the morning.? The President nodded groggily and the Minister continued, getting straight to the point, ?Six hours ago, Joel Rowan was murdered at his facility in New York.? This sudden news, delivered without warning, sobered the political leader slightly, he paused with his lips at the edge of his cup, his eyes unblinkingly on the Minister, ?However, he wasn?t murdered exactly in the, err, traditional sense??
The President placed his cup firmly on the large table before him and carefully watched the white haired man before him, ?The traditional sense??
?Well, that is to say, er, he wasn?t? killed?? Replied the Minister apprehensively, continuing once he was safe the President had nothing to say, ?His corpse became, well, possessed I guess you could say. The, ah, the most technical term we?ve got for it is ?Zombification.??
?The Professor was turned into a zombie? Is this some kind of a joke, Minister??
?I?m afraid not, sir. No joke.? The Minister decided the absurd explanation he?d been given himself was all he had to tell the President, ?Rowan had, as you know, been developing what is so far the world?s most able Artificial Intelligence, mass producing the heart of the project, his ?Intel Cores?. As well as being the central nucleus of the construct, the Intel Core provides the energy required to run the robots utilizing it. It seems that Professor Rowan has had one of these Intel Cores implanted in his head. From there, using timed electrical pulses, the core gains full control of the host body. Unfortunately, this requires the host to be? dead.
?How exactly one of the cores got into Rowan?s head is currently unclear, but his aide, Robert Banks, was found with him.?
?Found with him? What do you mean? How do we know all of this?? The bewildered President seemed only able of answering with questions.
?Six hours ago, NYPD stormed Rowan?s research facility. The place was crawling with dozens more of these cases. The stock of several thousand Cores was gone ? The creatures have been recruiting sir.?
?Recruiting??
?One was found over four and a half kilometers away, took some homeless bum with him. These things were spreading over the city, doubling their forces by the minute. The NYPD shut them down but this thing is far from over.?
?Jesus, zombified corpses running rampant through New York? My presidency?s over.?
The Minister stood silently, watching the President ruffle his hair, mulling over the concept of zombies, his mind almost audibly flicking through the future, from scenario to scenario.
?So they?re all gone, they?ve all been? killed? How?d they manage that??
?Each of the Intel Cores is fitted with a tracking device, as long as they?re activated, we can find each one and shut them down. However?? The Minister began before the President began to assume too much, ?We haven?t completely eliminated the threat, a huge percentage of New Yorkers are currently pacing the halls of the High School across the road from Rowan?s facility. There?ll be students at the school in three hours, no amount of work would have it cleaned up by then. Not to mention the numerous sighting around the city and dozen Missing Persons claims being reported every minute. We can pull a cover over this whole thing, Mr President, but not without loss.?
The President knew this could only be bad, Rowan?s facility had been funded by billions of dollars of U.S Government money. There were zombies in New York, that much couldn?t be changed, the blame would have to be shifted.
?What we propose is this, I promise you won?t like it,? The President nodded and the Minister went on, ?We leave the zombies in the school, we let kids in, we let nobody out. A short while later, we acknowledge it as a terrorist attack and raid the school, cleaning everything out and claiming we never knew anything about it. A small explanation here, a cover-up there and an Eastern-European scapegoat later, we?re out of this shit smelling like roses.?
____________________
Yeah, damn right there's a foreword. The main reason I've started writing this is because of this board. Thought I was kind of obliged too, y'know. So I started mulling over some ideas, reaping inspiration from a series of different sources of awesomenocity, and this is what I've ended up with.
Enjoy!
____________________
Prologue:
Adam Stone felt the intensifying vibrations of the subway train window against his slumped head. The sixteen year old school boy, dressed shamefully in a bland grey school uniform - courtesy of the private school he?d been forced into - was crumpled motionlessly in the corner of the largely uninhabited carriage.
A creased, brown paper bag was lifted by the cool air that circled Adam?s feet and momentarily piqued his interest. The possessed bag hovered erratically above the carriage?s steel floor. It lifted and somersaulted towards a window pulled fractionally ajar. As the train rushed past a boarding station, the bag was sucked through the window and twisted floatingly passed a ragged man, sitting up in a pile of newspapers. Adam?s eyes followed the path of the discarded rubbish indolently, landing suddenly on a startling sight.
The boy?s face flattened against the window, his eyes searching for a second glimpse of what they were sure they had just witnessed. The train sped on past the station and the iridescent white light faded back down the tunnel?s corner.
---
It was the flickering red light that woke the homeless man. Not the roar of the 10 PM train or the brown paper bag that settled on the ground before him. The bum?s sunken, sallow eyes followed the source of the red light which appeared to be the head of a man staggering past him. He watched in curiosity as the man hobbled on, apparently spectacularly inebriated or violently injured. The flickering red light, which flashed in time every half-second, appeared to be escaping from a matted hole in the man?s head. The hair was darkened and waxed together around it. Most strange of all, was the fact that the stranger seemed to move in time with the light?s flashing, like a series of timed spasms. This most unusual characteristic was made all the more surprising by the man?s fashionably suited attire.
The bum pushed the newspapers off his legs, climbing to his feet unsteadily.
?Aah? Sir!? He called apprehensively to the man who was slowly progressing onwards, a good five metres from the homeless man?s bed of paper, ?Sir!? He repeated, his raspy voice, worn by bottles of gin, unaccustomed to this formal tongue.
Slowly, the suited man turned on the tiled floor. The brown paper bag was stolen away by the end carriage of the 10 PM. The suited man stood before the bum whose eyes were now suddenly wide with fear. He dropped backwards onto the ground, shuffling frantically away from the creature that stood before him. The red light continued to flicker.
Put simply, the suited man was a bloodied mess, His entire lower jaw was missing, replaced by a crimson mess; the skin from his upper lip back to his ears was shredded and rotting. The man?s torso was painted thickly with blood. His glazed, yellow eyes stared blankly into the distance, filled with want. The suit jacket hung scruffily over a white shirt, half caked with dark, dried blood. More dried blood, still, ran from the man?s hairline down the sides of what remained of his face, apparently from the source of the flickering red light. The man?s skin, his hands and facial features, seemed to glow a slight blue in the subway?s bright, artificial light. The flesh was dotted with skinless holes where decomposing meat was showing. The creature stumbled forward in time with the flickering red light, his shoulders throwing his arms around violently, his neck twisting and swaying unnaturally.
The rotting man reached the bum who shook in fear through thick, sweat-drenched clothes. As the red light flashed, the man reached into the jacket pocket of his suit and produced a small, sharp ended, electronic gadget. As the homeless man was reduced to hysterical tears, the creature lifted his arm above his head. The red light flickered once more, and the gadget was thrust into the homeless man?s brain.
____________________
Chapter One:
Professor Joel Rowan crushed the empty paper cup in his hand, dropping the dripping vessel into the nearest bin and hauling himself to his feet. The scientist drearily exited the distinctly drab, largely ill-lit and unnaturally uninhabited cafeteria. His deep pocketed lab coat swung around his ankles as he paced. The professor passed a viewing screen as he journeyed down the straight, dark corridor. He turned and watched the intricate process going on. Complex, mechanic arms lifted, twisted and dropped tiny pieces of the gadgets they were mass producing.
Joel Rowan?s name was fast becoming one of the most heard of in the advanced robotics world. His lab?s progress in the development of the most advanced artificial intelligence impressed the world, most of which had been too busy watching Japan to notice what America was up to. Rowan?s lab was in the process of mass-producing their ?Intel-Cores?, spinning-top-shaped blocks of energy and processing power. The Intel-Cores had the ability to breathe life into a robot; ?life? being intelligence far surpassing that of any human and the unique ability to understand and evaluate any situation. They were truly smart artificial intelligences.
The professor was soon past the viewing windows and, for a moment, the interval between the lights of the corridor shrouded him in darkness. Childlike fear saw him speed up until he was back below the next light. The corridor stretched on past the entire production line. Despite the combined intelligence of a dozen scientists, nobody had realized that putting a cafeteria half a kilometer from the main lab was an uncomfortable pain in the ass.
In the distance, past the protective boundary of two lights, a red light was flickering. The professor felt his heart skip a beat at the sight. Flickering red lights were rarely a good sign in a laboratory, especially when they were the signature of his latest creation, which by no means should have been out and about through the corridors.
As the professor neared the disturbance, it occurred to him to call out. He realized it was most probably his assistant, Banks, carrying an activated core.
?Banks, Banks! Is that you??
No reply. The professor took a final step out of the safety of the light. He felt the welcome of the luminosity behind him dissipate. The red light flickered. In the shadow, the red barely illuminated the corridor. Rowan sensed movement.
?Banks???
Another flash and this time Rowan caught sight of the source of light before him. The light flicked again and his assistant?s possessed carcass had shifted position. The light strobed slowly and each time the creature inched towards Rowan. The professor stared in horror, paralysed by fear. The red light strobed and the zombified creature, moving as if animated by a low frame rate, pulled from a deep pocket an inactivated Intel Core. One more strobe and the Core was activated, a second light began to flicker in time with the first. Together, the two lights flickered once more and the zombie collapsed towards Professor Rowan?s head. A bloodcurdling stream filled the length of the corridor, and then the night was empty but for two red lights, flickering in time.
____________________
Chapter Two:
Six hours later?
Adam was in his usual seat on the train. His initials carved with straight lines into the seat, his bag ? as light as he could make it ? at his feet, his uniform unusually tidy in preparation for the messy state it would have reached by the day?s end, his regulation-length hair was barely damp from a recent shower. As the train approached the station that had last night kept him awake, he sat up, looking to confirm whether it was him or the New York Sub System that had gone crazy.
The station came and passed with underwhelming results. Adam slumped back into his seat disappointed by the sight. The station had looked fairly usual. No homeless guy, no jawless lunatic; just scattered groups of other people unfortunate enough to have to be up at six in the morning. Adam felt his heart skip a beat with the realization that he was both possibly crazy and likely to be considered crazy for smuggling his dad?s gun into his bag for protection. ?Underprivileged? kid, private school, dad?s old gun, tales of zombies in the underground. Yeah, he had a long day ahead of him.
---
It was rare that the President of the United States should be escorted into a conference as early as six in the morning. He wondered what the hell was going on. In the past seven minutes since he had been woken, he had been told nothing of whatever situation merited such a rude awakening. The president sat himself drowsily into a seat opposite the presentation screen. The sudden appearance of a maid at his side surprised him and he gently pulled a cup of coffee from the tray she bore.
Warm cup in hand, the President looked forward to the screen, sharply illuminated by the projector. To the President?s surprise, his Minister for Defense stepped into the projector's light. With a downward gesture, the light was eased and the sharp edged silhouette on the presentation screen desisted.
?First of all,? he began, ?Mr. President I must apologise for waking you this early in the morning.? The President nodded groggily and the Minister continued, getting straight to the point, ?Six hours ago, Joel Rowan was murdered at his facility in New York.? This sudden news, delivered without warning, sobered the political leader slightly, he paused with his lips at the edge of his cup, his eyes unblinkingly on the Minister, ?However, he wasn?t murdered exactly in the, err, traditional sense??
The President placed his cup firmly on the large table before him and carefully watched the white haired man before him, ?The traditional sense??
?Well, that is to say, er, he wasn?t? killed?? Replied the Minister apprehensively, continuing once he was safe the President had nothing to say, ?His corpse became, well, possessed I guess you could say. The, ah, the most technical term we?ve got for it is ?Zombification.??
?The Professor was turned into a zombie? Is this some kind of a joke, Minister??
?I?m afraid not, sir. No joke.? The Minister decided the absurd explanation he?d been given himself was all he had to tell the President, ?Rowan had, as you know, been developing what is so far the world?s most able Artificial Intelligence, mass producing the heart of the project, his ?Intel Cores?. As well as being the central nucleus of the construct, the Intel Core provides the energy required to run the robots utilizing it. It seems that Professor Rowan has had one of these Intel Cores implanted in his head. From there, using timed electrical pulses, the core gains full control of the host body. Unfortunately, this requires the host to be? dead.
?How exactly one of the cores got into Rowan?s head is currently unclear, but his aide, Robert Banks, was found with him.?
?Found with him? What do you mean? How do we know all of this?? The bewildered President seemed only able of answering with questions.
?Six hours ago, NYPD stormed Rowan?s research facility. The place was crawling with dozens more of these cases. The stock of several thousand Cores was gone ? The creatures have been recruiting sir.?
?Recruiting??
?One was found over four and a half kilometers away, took some homeless bum with him. These things were spreading over the city, doubling their forces by the minute. The NYPD shut them down but this thing is far from over.?
?Jesus, zombified corpses running rampant through New York? My presidency?s over.?
The Minister stood silently, watching the President ruffle his hair, mulling over the concept of zombies, his mind almost audibly flicking through the future, from scenario to scenario.
?So they?re all gone, they?ve all been? killed? How?d they manage that??
?Each of the Intel Cores is fitted with a tracking device, as long as they?re activated, we can find each one and shut them down. However?? The Minister began before the President began to assume too much, ?We haven?t completely eliminated the threat, a huge percentage of New Yorkers are currently pacing the halls of the High School across the road from Rowan?s facility. There?ll be students at the school in three hours, no amount of work would have it cleaned up by then. Not to mention the numerous sighting around the city and dozen Missing Persons claims being reported every minute. We can pull a cover over this whole thing, Mr President, but not without loss.?
The President knew this could only be bad, Rowan?s facility had been funded by billions of dollars of U.S Government money. There were zombies in New York, that much couldn?t be changed, the blame would have to be shifted.
?What we propose is this, I promise you won?t like it,? The President nodded and the Minister went on, ?We leave the zombies in the school, we let kids in, we let nobody out. A short while later, we acknowledge it as a terrorist attack and raid the school, cleaning everything out and claiming we never knew anything about it. A small explanation here, a cover-up there and an Eastern-European scapegoat later, we?re out of this shit smelling like roses.?
____________________
Woo, Robot Zombies! Sounds like a fun read. The only thing I can really suggest is that you make bigger paragraphs - makes the work look somewhat more professional, though it may not be all that necessary. Like, some of the gaps between interlinked paragraphs seem unnecessary when those paragraphs can read perfectly well as a single, solid paragraph. But yea, like I said, looks like fun.
Erm, I have an Animal Crossing poster next to my head. >_>
Really great job, Weremidget! You are an excellent author. I like your writing style; the story is like a chain reaction. You describe how Adam Stone on a subway enounters a paper bag; how the paper bag encounters a hobo, and how the hobo encounters a ROBOT ZOMBIE.
The description of the ROBOT ZOMBIE was particularly gruesome, it actually made me cringe as I imagined it in my head.
Keep it up! (b^.^)b
Really great job, Weremidget! You are an excellent author. I like your writing style; the story is like a chain reaction. You describe how Adam Stone on a subway enounters a paper bag; how the paper bag encounters a hobo, and how the hobo encounters a ROBOT ZOMBIE.
The description of the ROBOT ZOMBIE was particularly gruesome, it actually made me cringe as I imagined it in my head.
Keep it up! (b^.^)b
thats... amazing. 
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