Detritus: Death on Earth: nanonovel1.2: Ghos†3d

Detritus: Death on Earth

A Ghos†Grrl Nano-novel - nanonovel 1.2 - Ghos†3d

By Brooke S. Haley
Images generated by ChatGPT unless otherwise labeled

She focused in on the barely discernible patterns in the image she viewed through her voggles. The image had layers and the first thousand overlapping layers were meant to look like ones and zeros, but the binary code was something of a ruse. The different colors of the numerical strands were a tapestry; one whose patterns could be discerned when magnified.

As she drew the image closer and then pushed back she saw the pattern she was looking for in the apparent fold of the mountains lower East-facing slope.

The rock she drew closer to her was made of overlapping strands of gray digits, and she focused on the darkest spot and pulled the image closer.

Nanova paused and listened intently to the non-virtual world. She was still crouched down behind the discarded waste unit, using her hands to manipulate the image in front of her. Distant footsteps echoed mutely from somewhere on the other side of the Godtree. Nanova slowly breathed in, pulling the air through her mask, and held her breath for three counts before exhaling to the off-beat rhythm of her heart. The breathing exercise was critical to GhotstGrrl's success. Her awareness of space, her ability to anticipate moves before they happen, made her skill seemingly prescient. Nanova found that most things were highly predictable. Often when she watched the Lower Reach, its people embarrassed her. They were clumsy, dropping or breaking things needlessly because they were mindlessly moving through their space

The footsteps began to fade as the wearer moved away from the center of the residential space. Nanova refocused her eyes while keeping her ears trained on her surroundings. The numbers creating the rock image surrounded her, as large as her skateboard, they were granulated and not easy to see between, however she pulled the columns closer, counting until she reached the one she knew it should be. As she pulled she stuck her hands between two vertical layers and almost gasped. She knew immediate she had found X.

Ghostgrrl did not always refer to herself as such, it was a moniker that stuck after she had been moving supposedly unseen between the upper and lower reaches for years. She would leave half-hidden, treasures like fruit, paper, books. Things Minorans kept in the lowest reach had never seen. They could read because that was required for the work, but they were never allowed to hold something in their hand to read. Nanova didn't want to alert anyone to her presence; she would come during one of the sleep hours and leave the gift where it wasn't obvious, but wouldn't go unnoticed, like under shoes or blankets she knew would be retrieved by their owners. She realized that she had been noticed when she saw the graffiti--illegal if you were caught, but TheG bots didn't bother.

GHOSTGRRL WECU

Ghostgrrl we see you... and she understood. She was only 8 revolutions old.

Detritus

Godtree in Detritus
Image generated from chatgpt

Minorans on Detritus
Image generated from openart.ai

X marks the spot. 16 revolutions Nanova would have giggled if she had known how to do such a thing. Joy was not an emotion she was familiar with to the giggling degree; however, she did feel a warm glow similar to the sensation of watching an unsuspecting receiver discover her carefully placed gift. She knew the feeling from watching kindness between Minorans. She saw it in both the Upper and Lower Reaches, though the landscapes and people were vastly different.

Nanova's almost-joy was marked with sadness; if only her friend could be here to see this. Thera was an old Minoran who, out of sight, had guided Nanova to freedom and left presents and clues for her. Without Thera, Nanova would likely have surrendered herself to the fate of TheG.

Taking a deep breath, she held on to the virtual cylindrical object and pulled it toward her. The numbers moved away and Nanova "stood" (in reality, she was crouched and ready to move) in a hallway of sorts. The walls were a brown substance Nanova only saw in VR: wood. A beautiful maple, the natural patterns made beautiful brown waves across the surface. The waves, however, suddenly and subtly, moved and the wood seemed to come alive.

Nanova expected this but was still in awe of the effect. It was an ai frame within an ai frame. The movement was similar to the virtual rivers that flowed down the mountain toward the South West slope. It was slow, and unpatterned, but clearly inviting.

Nanova couldn't risk speaking, so she stretched her hand to the maple-lined wall and lightly touched one of the moving waves. The waves stopped instantly and a prompt emerged on the wall. Nanova grinned from under her mask. She was actually here.

Out of reverie, Nanova heard wheels spinning and clenched her fist. She was so close! But she couldn't risk discovery and her hesitation lasted a half-second to ponder the object of her virtual search. She was already moving her feet toward her planned exit, lifting her voggles to expose bright gold eyes. As with all Minorans, Nanova's eyes were larger and had extremely large pupils to make up for the lack of light. Unlike the rest, her eyes could adjust between light and dark instantly, and she possessed remarkable depth perception. She didn't need to see her own eyes to know she was different; no one else lived in crawl spaces, nooks, tunnels, under stairs, in vents, or abandoned units, or the old sections of Detritus, long abandoned.

As she scanned for the source of the sound, she heard another and saw instantly there were two Minorans, lower reachers, coming to clear the area. Detritus was filled with debris, but since the whole of the Lower Reach was built to clean the Upper Reach, the Low got swept and tidied occasionally, as well.

She knew most Minorans in the Low would not call TheG if they saw her, but Thera had warned from afar that no one could be trusted. It was a lesson that scared her as she was a very young witness to terrifying brutalities. She took another calming breath to steady her heart rate. This trick she learned in a book about "Monks." Over the years of practice she could keep from letting her heart race in moments of fear or panic... or love.

From here she had no option. The area behind her hiding place was open, the concealment gone when approached from either side. Nanova slid her voggles back on and booted her frame up expertly. Her AI was a friendly and warm bot. The avatar she gave it was of a cat named Alice, another thing gleaned and rewoven from books Thera had given her or that she had procured in one of her missions. The cat moved in front of her from its curled up position, lifting its head as she typed in mid air. The sensors/receptors on her fingers allowing her to speak silently to the cat in their shared language. The cat disappeared and her command had been sent. In a nano-second an alarm was ringing close by, away from Nanova. Her unknowing intruders startled at the sound and turned, running toward it, abandoning their empty car momentarily. Ghostgrrl was already moving, surveying the space and staying low, against the wall, until she reached her vent. Within two more second she was inside, having used her magnets to open and lock it behind her. The vent was large enough that she had room to sit up and crawl, the top of the shaft about 3 inches above her head. Many revolutions ago, She and Alice made the A1R ventilation shaft appear inoperable to TheG, and turned it into her own personal migration space. She knew not to occupy any one space within the vents. She only required 20 minute sleep increments every 16 hours, so she lived everywhere and nowhere. She never needed more than what she carried on her, that and her skateboard. Strapped to her back, it was only usable in the abandoned Detritus spaces where sound could echo and the only ears who heard it for a hundred miles, were hers.

Nanova walked for an approximate mile and then lowered herself to a seated position in the darkened vent, her back straight. She closed her large, bright eyes, and fell into a deep sleep.

Suddenly, she opened her eyes, alert to an unfamiliar sound. The "clang!" she heard was close, too close to have been outside the vent. Instantly, she was crouched, smelling, looking, listening, feeling for the source. She breathed and sensed movement from back where she entered. She made her way toward the artificial light beyond the vent. She had been wrong, the clang was from outside the vent, but just. Someone was out there, and they appeared to be trying the edges of the vent. She could just make out a shape darkening the vent when she heard a voice say, "Hey, is that you, Ghostgrrl?" and stopped with a sharp intake of breath. She had never heard her name out loud before and she had no way to know if they were there to take her, and torture her to death, or not.

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