Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Statue of Liberty’s head finally detached and splashed into what was the former New York harbour last week. The Statue after many decades of neglect throughout Mother Nature’s Revenge and the Return without proper maintenance has been slowly disintegrating. The iron endoskeleton has been oxidizing to the point where its structural integrity couldn’t support the copper sheets that gave the Statue of Liberty her once familiar shape.

It was only a matter of time, one engineer had stated earlier this year when commenting on the sixth anniversary of her right arm suddenly breaking off and killing 38 tourists while approaching Staten Island. It has been predicted that her left arm could break off just within the next two years. Surveyors are now trying to estimate where the arm will fall in order to take the necessary precautions.

Although fundraising efforts have been made in the past to go towards restoring the statue, the "Save Our Lady" Foundation founder, Joshua Lincoln was found guilty nine years ago for embezzling trust. He still is currently serving the remainder of his sentence on Venlu Island.

The Statue of Liberty was erected on Staten Island in 1886 to commemorate the former United States’ centennial anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from Britain. Designed by Frédéric Bartholdi, it was presented as a gift to the nation from former France. She would have been 394 years old.

- 30 -

The Fall, Part One

It was fall, and the air had turned colder per usual in the Freezone southwest of the Valux Corporate Arcology. That mixing with the retreating sun made for a chilling bite in the air. Terintal dropped to one knee, his breath coming out labored and rasping. It formed a mist before his mouth in the cool air. Lifting one hand from the dusty ground, he reached up to gingerly touch the worn and bloodied bandages over his stomach. They were wet, and had soaked through some time ago. Much more of this and he would not make it.

With a grimace he stood and looked around, trying to get his bearings. The eyesight his Elim ancestors had bestowed upon him helped him navigate despite the growing darkness. The cloud cover hanging low overhead meant that it would be a dark night, so not only did he need to change his bandage, but he also had to start making some sort of shelter for the night. There were limits to his enhanced vision. While he could see well in lower light levels, pure darkness was still beyond the limits of his sight.

He approached a set of ruins. Probably a small home long ago, now nothing more than a pair of opposite corners of a burned out building. It would shelter him from the wind at least, and give him some solid cover to hide in. He eased down and peeled off his blood soaked shirt, laying it across his legs. He found one of the sleeves was a bit less dirty than the rest and tore it free, making a make shift bandage. Peeling the tape and gauze of the original bandage from his stomach, he hissed as the wound and the bandage refused to be freed for a moment. Finally the old bandage came off. He applied the bit of shirt cloth and then reattached the original bandage in an attempt to keep the new one in place.

Slipping the one limbed shirt back on he sighed and leaned his head back, trying to plan his next steps. A few moments later soft echoing sounds from far off in the distance barely registered in the still night. Terintal pulled himself up and turned gingerly around. He peeked through the long gone window, only a the lower third of the frame was even in tact.

Several people were fanned out, torches in one hand, various weaponry in the other. Large dogs strained against large rope or chain leashes. The dogs were on Terintal’s scent. He cursed silently to himself, wondering at the luck of his trail crossing this band of hunting Remnants.

——–

Fifty miles east, ten miles north, and fifty feet up, the Kestrel LLS shuttle skimmed the rugged terrain that used to be the foothills of the rockies. The Prowler LX attached beneath it, jostling now and then due to the rough nature of the flight. Aboard the Prowler a squad of bio-engineered combat soldiers were strapped into their harnesses. Their armor bristled with pockets and weaponry. They each had a standard issue CDEM 32 pistol were strapped to their right thigh, and a CDEM F3000 assault rifle gripped in their hands.

One man stood and talked while the rest listened. Unlike all the others, Sgt Moss was not bio-engineered for combat. He was built for leadership. He strode confidently amongst the combat soldiers, growling out reminders to the orders each had already memorized. “Our target is very dangerous! He is wanted for multiple crimes against within the Arcology.” In this case all that matter though is that they were the Company’s employers. A contract was a contract and it really did not matter how many crimes their target had committed, or against whom.

The Company was not in it for the morality. Justice had nothing to do with their contract. It was all about money for the Company’s human executives.

Sgt Moss continued, while striding up and down the aisle, “We know that he is an Evolutionary Wielder of some power. We will not be caught off guard by his wielding! If he resists, you are authorized to use all necessary force! If he attacks, you are authorized to use whatever force is necessary to bring him down.”

“The plan is simple. Deploy the Prowler and dismount. Stan will scan the surrounding area, locate the target, and we will engage.”

Stan, or Squad Tactical AI Network, was the squads AI comm soldier. His implanted scanner systems were hard wired to the squads communication gear. As an AI, Stan could stay with the squad and protect himself, all while gathering streams of data about the surrounding area and distributing it to the appropriate squad members.

Over the comm system the pilot’s voice cut in, “Drop zone in five minutes.”

Sgt Moss chuckled, grabbed a hold of one of the hand hold loops and growled, “You heard the lady. Drop in five! Be ready to deploy!” Each of the soldiers went through their last minute checks, verifying their weapons were ready, etc. Sgt Moss grumbled, “And somebody wake up Hicks!”

——–

Drigzin slid easily through the rocky terrain. His cloak was nearly silent as it extended behind him. The tough slick cloth prevented it from snagging on any underbrush or sharp rock. Its warmth enveloped him whenever he stopped, reminding him of the security of the Sanctuarium. It was far to the north, months away in the time of his travels.

Like all of his Necrosi brothers and sisters, Drigzin was encouraged to explore the world and discover its secrets on his own. Each week he made a simple recording of his learnings, and transmitted it home through the Net.

His last transmission had detailed his run in with a strange mutant rat colony. It was only through luck and speed that he had survived the encounter. He treasured the new scars though, their aches reminding him of the thrill of the battle and intensity of his escape. He even decided upon a new piercing he would get to further remind him of the encounter. First his wounds had to heal though, and he had to find one of the local settlements so he could find someone with the right hardware.

His goggles rode high on his forehead, since the sun had fallen below the Rocky Mountains to the west of him. He was earplugs dangled from his collar. Out here, he wanted to hear everything, and see everything, experience all of it in its fullest. Once he found humans he usually utilized the protective gear to minimize their loud sounds and bright lights. It was enough to overwhelm him.

So it was that he easily detected the small band of Remnants and their dog companions. He followed them, slipping in his ear plugs as he got closer. If a fight broke out, he did not want to be deafened by his own pistols. The Remnants were tracking someone, and Drigzin was curious to see what would happen when they caught up with whoever, or whatever, they were tracking.

Bleeding and torn, Phillip-310 was perched precariously in the highest branches of what could be called a tree only through excessive generosity.  Its old and dessicated limbs hadn’t seen a leaf in a generation and every time Phillip had to resettle his weight the whole thing creaked ominously and threatened to collapse beneath him.  It was by no means an ideal place to be, but then again his alternatives weren’t numerous or savory.  In reality his choices boiled down to only two - remain in the tree or take his chances with the dogs circling below.

Phillip both hated and feared dogs like no other creature on earth.  At first he hadn’t been sure why, but his Drill Instructor knew his fears very well and put words to them easily;

"Dogs are your enemies Troopers!" the grey haired, bull necked ogre bellowed at the platoon one day, "they can hear you coming no matter how little sound you make, they can track you by smell alone, they are usually faster than you are and they hunt in groups.  But the most despicable thing about a dog is that it will fight for the enemy and even die for them!  If you encounter dogs expect no mercy and give none except a quick death!  Hoo-ah!?"

"Hoo-ah." Phillip muttered to himself as it began to rain.  It was good rain, fat and cool.  He tilted his head up, opened his mouth and drank from heaven, forgetting his predicament for a moment.  As he drank, the water washed his wounds and he winced a little, but it was nothing.  Pain was good.  It meant you were alive and alert.  That’s what his Drill Instructor said.  He said a lot of things, and any normal man might not be able to remember them all, but Phillip-310 was no normal man.  Phillip-310 was bio-engineered.  Birthed in a lab from a genetic template that had been fine-tuned like a race car, he was created for one purpose and one purpose only – to be a ghost.

His Drill Instructor, the genechanics who fashioned him out of protein and amino acid mush – everyone – called it the MotherCorp.  The proper name of his creators was the GeneCom International Consortium.  Somewhere along the line a corporate sloganeer had decided that the Consortium was “The mother who took pride in all their success”.  From that idea came the abbreviation ‘MotherCorp’ and it stuck.  Of course, not every employee of GeneCom spoke that abbreviation with reverence, but everyone who came in contact with Phillip-310 in his formative years did.

Everything was for the MotherCorp.  You trained to be her best.  You undertook every mission for her.  You accepted every wound in her name.  You laid every victory as an offering at her feet.  She was every reason to live - every reason to die.  There was nothing else.  Phillip had absorbed it all instinctively.  If GeneCom was his Mother, then the indoctrination he was bombarded with every day along with his training was her milk.  Like all hungry little boys, he lapped it all up – sucked it into his very pores.  The MotherCorp was everything.

Except now the MotherCorp was gone and he was bleeding, torn and stuck up in a tree.  And oh yeah…the dogs.  They were wild, only one step removed from wolves.  The pure breeds of the past had long ago been fed into a melting pot that took away all the traits mankind had striven to isolate and accentuate throughout four thousand years of animal husbandry.  Now the only pure-bred in the canis family was canis lupus – the wolf.  Everything else was a mongrel, with only the odd trace here and there of proud and segregated genetic lineage.  Spotted, blotchy things with hungry eyes and mangy coats, they were pure rapaciousness made flesh.

Of course since they were dogs they had detected him long before he was aware of their presence.  By the time he knew something was wrong they had already singled him out as a target and begun to close in.  He counted them as quickly as they appeared and by the time his count hit eight he knew he couldn’t stand his ground.  Half a dozen he could have taken on, but many more than that and his chances of being brought to the ground increased exponentially.  Once they had him down it was only a matter of time before one of them went for his throat - and then the probability of his survival took a serious nosedive.

So Phillip summoned every ounce of vat-grown strength in his legs and ran.  Even though running was bad tactics and antithetical to his general mission he had no choice.  It was run or die.

That was twelve hours ago.  He had kept up a sprinter’s pace for half a day.  His carefully augmented vision allowed him to run all night long without stumbling or colliding with anything.  His enhanced lungs rammed oxygen into his muscles at a measured pace without spasm or constriction.  His muscles had their lactic acid shunted away by internal mechanisms only genechanics understood but that served to keep his legs from cramping up.  The chemicals released as part of a runner’s high were modified slightly so that not only did they begin to secrete sooner but their pain-killing and mildly euphoric properties didn’t dull Phillip’s judgment.  His heart worked at an almost laconic rate of sixty beats per minute – but that rate was increasing.  As the sun began to creep up over the horizon the bio-engineered soldier realized he couldn’t keep up this pace much longer.  Even the most exceptional Cobble could maintain a sprint at top speed for at best ten minutes.  He had exceeded that by a factor of seventy-two.  Even though he couldn’t feel it yet he knew his body was beginning to break down.  If he didn’t rest soon he could do himself permanent harm.

Unfortunately dogs were made for running too, and most of the ones who’d begun the chase were still hounding him only a few yards behind.  When Phillip began to slow that distance was eaten up and by the time he spotted the lonely dead tree in the middle of a grassy field he had already been bitten several times around the legs and ankles.

Any Cobble would have dropped dead long ago.  Even if his heart hadn’t popped like a grape, his legs would have seized up when his substandard lungs began to fail and his muscles started burning glucose instead of oxygen.  And even if those things hadn’t happened the poor creature would have been too exhausted to climb a tree after such an ordeal.  Indeed the sudden cessation of heavy activity without a subsequent ‘cool-down’ period could very well have led the Cobble to cardiac arrest.  One way or another the dogs would have feasted by now.

But he would be no meal if he had anything to say about it.  So he ran when it was time to run, climbed when it was time to climb and whilst in the tree he played a complicated game of exerting some muscle groups while relaxing others so none would cramp up.  He wished he had the tree’s geometry on his side, but the dead branches were laid out in such a way that he had to work to stay in them.  One slip and he would fall to the waiting jaws below.

But even as he worked so very hard to stay alive, there was a small voice inside his head reminding him that he had no reason to do so.  The MotherCorp was gone.  His reason for everything was gone.  A few days ago he woke up all alone.  No Tac-Comm, no orders, no mission.  Nothing.  Static on the comm. channels, static on the dedicated secure data feeds – nothing but static and silence.  Any other trooper might have simply dug in and waited for orders.  He wasn’t any other trooper.

Phillip-310 was recon.  Long range recon.  His job was to cover vast distances alone and with little backup.  He was to catalogue everything he saw – particularly as it pertained to the enemies of the MotherCorp – distill that raw data down and transmit the important parts of it to Tactical Command.  Part of his job was asking questions and getting answers from any source available to him.  Normally in the field that simply meant his eyes and ears.  Recon’s task was to scout the enemy and most of the time the enemy was astonishingly easy to learn about.  But sometimes he needed help and he knew where to go to get it.

The year was 2280 and after a couple of centuries of turmoil and anarchy, information was now once again the by-product of humanity’s collective respiration.  Cobbles were sloppy about intel.  Everything they did they broadcast.  It took Phillip no time at all to learn what had happened – though he didn’t fully understand what it all meant.

The news-feeds had called it a ‘hostile takeover’.  They had shown holo of a burned out corporate headquarters, smoke rising from twisted metals and melted polymers, bodies strewn everywhere.  Phillip made a wry face.  It was all very sloppy.  He had been taught that when he had to kill, it was to be neat and clean wherever possible.  These Cobbles looked like they had been opened up like paint cans and splashed all over everything.  The utter lack of technique left him in mild disgust.

As he was watching, the coverage changed to mark what had happened to Tac-Comm and the rest of the MotherCorp’s Security Arm.  It looked like they were harder to kill.  They went down swinging, taking as many of the enemy with them as they could.  Military analysts appeared between panoramic views of battlefield carnage to remark on how swift and brutal the whole thing had been.  Phillip wondered why the feed outlets would employ individuals who clearly knew so little about war to speak with authority on it.  Had they asked him or his Drill Instructor they would know that all war was brutal and swift.

It took him all of fifteen minutes to learn that he had been cast adrift.  There was no one left to give him orders.  There never would be again.

And as Phillip - 310 clung to his tree in the rain that realization came crashing down on him in waves.  With each wave came a cold dread that settled in the pit of his stomach and reached out to his mind and heart with slick tendrils of despair.  One simple, unanswerable question hammered away at him over and over – what was he to do now?  No one had ever prepared him for that question.  It was always expected that he would perish and the MotherCorp would live on.  It was an immutable fact the same way that grass was green and the sun was yellow.  He had no standing orders for this sort of thing.  Beyond survival he had no purpose.

For the first time he admired the blithe existences of the Cobbles.  He had been told that many of them go through their entire lives in a freeform drift, trying to match up their slap-dash talents and skill sets with the demands of purposes clearly outside their abilities.  The Cobbles were innately suited to nothing but respiration and procreation.  They weren’t born with a purpose, they strove to meet one.  He couldn’t imagine what that must be like, yet now he could (and did) envy it.  The Cobbles didn’t need any reason to be.  He did.

The dogs were patient.  They lay on the ground near his tree and watched him carefully.  Some with their tongues lolling out, others with heads rested on front paws.  They knew sooner or later he would have to come down.  They were prepared to wait.  Phillip wished he’d had some ammo for his weapons.  Just one full magazine in his pistol could have ended this problem long ago.  Unfortunately the dogs had jumped him while he was heading for a supply cache, so not only did he not have any ammunition but no water, food or medical supplies either.

For two more days the standoff continued.  Hunger was beginning to gnaw away at Phillip and his stomach was rumbling so loudly that it made the dogs’ ears perk up.  That wasn’t what was worrying him though.  His chief worry was lack of water.  He had drunk up as much of the rain as he could but it hadn’t rained in a day and a half and his thirst was going to be a problem if he couldn’t find water in another day or so.  He decided that come nightfall he would make another break for it, head south and try to find a populated area.  He was in the southern portion of what had once been the old American state of South Carolina.  If he pushed hard, he could make it to Farthington – a city built on what was once Atlanta in Georgia – in a couple of days.  The MotherCorp maintained digicaches of Trust for their long range recon operatives in a lot of major and not so major cities.  Farthington was one of them.  If he could get there, he could regroup and resupply – then go on to deal with more weighty matters at his leisure.

But first he would have to shake those damn dogs somehow.

We here at MSL heartily encourage you to show us the fruits of your creative talent, but realizing that in any large group there will be differing opinions as to what is and is not acceptable for public display, we feel it necessary to establish a few ground rules (much as we have done with the Use Terms of the Forums in general).  Those ground rules are as follows:

1)  All written work (ie: poetry, short stories etc.) must be submitted in English.  This is not meant to offend our many valued and loyal fans throughout the world whose first language isn’t English, but our first language here at MSL is English and in order to be able to police submissions, we must be able to read them.

2)  It is permitted to store your submission elsewhere and link to it here, so long as no other use terms are violated.  Linked submissions are subject to the examination just like any other post and if found in contravention of the rules, will be dealt with in the same manner.

3)  Your submissions (including artwork) have to be what the ESRB (the North American video game rating system) would call "Teen" or milder.  What does that mean?  Well it means that violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, some blood and so forth are permitted, but it specifically excludes:

    -  Long, drawn out or graphic scenes of violence
    -  Explicit sexuality, erotica or full frontal nudity of any kind
    -  Profane language of any kind
    -  Bigoted or racist remarks against any real world identifiable group

4)  While comment and critique are a natural part of the process of creation, it must all be done politely and with respect.  Those who abuse members of our community who are trying to show us what they have done risk having their material removed from the Community Contributions Forums.  They also risk being banned from the site.  So please, be gentle.

5)  While there is nothing new under the sun, outright plagiarism (taking credit for someone’s work not your own) or violation of intellectual property will NOT be tolerated.

6)  No piece of work will be placed upon the Community Contributions Forums with the intent of using the Forums as an auction block.  This isn’t E-Bay, and you shouldn’t be making money from MSL’s IP to begin with.

We will begin with these rules and reserve the right to make additions to them at any time as needed so you should check back periodically to make sure you’re up to date.

Those who violate these rules will have the offending work pulled from the Community Contributions Forums and will receive a warning.  Three such warnings will see them banned from the Community Contributions Forums and if necessary, from the Alpha Omega Forums entirely.  It is important to remember that MSL reserves the right to remove any post for any reason at its sole discretion, and in all such cases our decisions are binding and final.

Thank you for your understanding and co-operation.

Now go and enjoy yourselves!

MSL

MSL has always encouraged you - our excellent community - to not only enjoy Alpha Omega as an RPG, but to use it as a springboard to unleash your creative potential.  To that end we have encouraged you to dream up your own…well…EVERYTHING - from creatures and equipment, to stories filled with exciting new characters and locations set in the Alpha Omega world.

Now it is time to show us what you’ve got! 

Here is how it will work:

In order to provide the most immersive experience possible we will separate contributions into two categories.

The first category will focus on contributions which relate to the mechanics of the game - new weapons, creatures, vehicles, equipment and so forth. Works in this category will be featured on the New World Science and Engineering Commission site: <!—m—>http://www.nwsecom.com<!—m—>.

The second category will consist of fan fiction, art, character write-ups and home made adventures!  That group will make its home here on the Community Contribution Forum on our Message Boards.

We have received a lot of interest from the community and are looking forward to making it easier for members of the AO Community to share their ideas for all to see and enjoy, so we hope you’ll feel free to contribute both to the NWSEC site and the Community Contribution Forum.

In both cases, it’s your space friends.  It will be what you make it.

We cannot wait to see what that will be!

MSL