No Rest 4 Wicked Botniks Chapter 18

Isaac Shinseki #8: The Nightmare

NO REST 4 WICKED BOTNIKS

CHAPTER 18

Isaac Shinseki #8:

The Nightmare

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It was a dream, but not a digital dream in Zero’s Machina. No cyber-sweeties or Joan Saffron lookalikes. No Mary Okinawa constructs to keep him company. No android lovers playing with their Zero codes to tune in to intimate human frequencies. And none of the lovely legion of Larkin Lake avatars that other slippers used when he gave them a good tussle on a REMscape bed.

On such nights Isaac would be cloaked himself, often in the sinfully dark and beautiful skin of Dwight the Night Thompson. Poor Dwight, called a stray thought.

Instead, during this dream, Isaac was just himself. Isaac had wanted one night of actual, genuine sleep, a single night’s rest disconnected from all the tech. Sober Zees, as his community called them. Every punk and otaku needed them once in a while, even the most hardcore of slippers and slicers... or you would end up dead.

And he was getting sleep cheap, at a dang bargain rate. No pops or drops or smokes or drinks to carry him lightly away. No Pharma-Corp or OTC products and no illegal street treats to make it all better. Just pure overwhelming exhaustion and the shapes and images it could produce.

Be careful what you wish for, Ike, Cassie’s voice called from somewhere in the darkness.

In one way, the dream was a little like the awkward but sensual experiences he pursued in the Slipstream, because Isaac stood naked as the day he was born. He was still just a 24 year old 5’-7” half-Japanese half-Filipino guy weighing in at barely 130 pounds wet. Everything about him was boring and normal. His skin was its usual hue, his eyes were their regular shape and color, his muscles were underdeveloped like normal, and his manhood was…well, not nearly so impressive as Dwight’s.

There was one major, important difference between this Dream Isaac and Waking Isaac, at least Subconscious Isaac desperately hoped…

Instead of having sex with beautiful women in the digital space of the Machina, Isaac just stood there by himself in the dark.

And he was on fire.

Isaac was burning, burning alive. His skin exuded flames while it bubbled, boiled, and blackened. Then his short dark hair suddenly became a torch and—

Without warning, Isaac was back in his room with Cassie. Somehow she was on fire too, her beautiful green dress beginning to match her fiery Irish hair. She regarded him like a beautiful but melting wax doll and asked him Why are you such a dummy, Ike?

His slicing and modding equipment was burning along with everything else. His whole operation, his lair, his new home. And there was a smoky haze that made it all hard to see.

Through that haze came Russians and Natives toting guns and knives and other less savory devices. Front and center walking hand in prim hand with sadistic smiles painted on their faces were Harry the Professor and Fyodor the Butcher. They were coming to take their time in killing him.

Behind the consuming walls of inferno, behind the haze of men and weapons, last of all, came the slow, creeping, metallic march of all the botniks he’d ever modded. Their eyes were dead and blazing, and they wore the same creepy smiles as Harry and Fyodor, each and every stupid robot murder-thug.

And they were all, all of them, humans and botniks alike, guided by a Shadowy Figure above. He was just a two-dimensional silhouette on the flame-lit ceiling. He had no real face, but he manipulated everyone and everything with chains and collars of black smog. Even Isaac was chained too, jerked about this way and that by a choker of smoke guided by the Shadow on the ceiling.

So Isaac stared into the Shadow’s faceless head, to see if he could identify him. And then there were eyes there where none had been before. They were just twin flames, burning scarlet and crimson, orange and yellow, blue and white and deadly bright.

He did not know the Shadow Man. Isaac tried to speak to him, but his mouth was sealed into a fleshy, lipless fence over his teeth, and no words came out.

Isaac was becoming a black husk anyway, and he was beginning to look not so different from the Shadow. Maybe they were friends after all...

The Shadow Figure looked at Isaac, and his smoky mouth broke into a feverish, maniacal grin of absolute Hellfire. Then it opened its raging maw of darkness, destruction, and death, and with flaming tongue cried out, “EEP EEP EEP EEP EEP EEP EEEEEEEEEP!”

Isaac’s eyes flashed open. His agonized scream, at least, was real. He thrashed and hit his head and kept screaming. In that moment, the scream was the only thing he believed, the only thing he trusted.

END OF CHAPTER 18

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