Blind Punch (Expansion: The History of the Galaxy Book #1): A Space Saga
Blind Punch
a novel
by Andrei Livadny
The History of the Galaxy
Book#1
Magic Dome Books
The History of the Galaxy
Book # 1: Blind Punch
Copyright © Andrei Livadny 2017
Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2017
English translation copyright © Sofia Gutkin 2017
Editor: Zach Lewis
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2017
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-80-88231-33-2
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
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ALSO BY ANDREI LIVADNY
Phantom Server LitRPG Series:
Edge of Reality (Phantom Server: Book #1)
The Outlaw (Phantom Server: Book #2)
Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3)
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Expansion: The History of the Galaxy (A Space Saga):
Blind Punch (Expansion: The History of the Galaxy Book #1)
Table of Contents:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
Prologue
THE EVENING that changed the fate of billions turned out to be surprisingly quiet and calm.
"One, in position. Target acquired. Ready."
It was getting dark but the Plaza of Five Corners in the center of the Europe Megacity was brightly lit by panels of holographic ads, aggressively moving above the human masses. Five gravitational escalators, leading up to the surface from the magrail station, gently expelled an endless human stream into the Plaza.
"Two, in position. Target acquired. He's got the instrument."
The violinist played with feverish abandon.
The poignant melody drifted over the crowd, erasing the indistinct hubbub and echoing off the world-famous skyscrapers. The sounds of the violin surged upwards and then suddenly dissolved among the cacophony of the intrusive advertising slogans.
Art was dead. The violin solo no longer tugged on anyone's heart strings, drawing people's attention for only a moment. The citizens of the megasuburb hurried about their business, passing by the overweight and poorly dressed musician, afraid to pause and listen, to slow their steps, to slip out of the universal rhythm of movement, as if there were no more individuals left on Earth but instead a massive social organism, consisting of billions of tightly bound together parts.
The sniper's finger touched a sensor and the violinist's face was magnified. It was difficult to believe that this scruffy individual was capable of starting a new world war.
"The tech team is in place. Ready to block the network."
A droplet of sweat dripped from the musician's forehead. He kept playing despite the crowd's indifference, in the desperate hope for a response, a lonely search for a kindred spirit.
The instrument in his hands was not an antique but a unique high-tech gadget. Despite the large number of cybernetic components, the violin cried out as if it was alive. Yet the crowd flowed past without pausing to listen, only startling at times at the dramatic melody, so different from this subculture.
Night fell and stars appeared high above the city. One melody followed another, while the human tide began to gradually thin out. The violinist's soul cried and raged but nobody stopped to listen. Only the occasional passerby, without slowing down, would run an online query to find out how to behave in this unusual situation, and then the cyberstack on the violinist's wrist would suddenly glow for a second as a few credits were transferred to the musician's account.
A tear rolled down the violinist's unshaven cheek. The flabby wrinkles on his neck trembled and his eyes looked bereft while the bow danced over the strings, creating the melody. Art was dead.
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A huge sign glowed behind the violinist, inviting people into an expensive restaurant, but the crowd did not pay it any attention. Places like this, offering dishes made from natural products, were rapidly becoming a thing of the past and were no longer popular since synthetic food tasted the same but was hundreds of times cheaper.
The violinist was a fragment of the old world that had sunk into oblivion. He refused to merge with the human anthill and was cursed to remain alone and misunderstood, and perhaps even experience contempt or flashes of unexplained fury, for the crowd instinctively hates everything that is not part of it, and is capable of killing those that irritate it too much.
The last trembling note faded.
His arms dropped. Glancing around him and sighing heavily, he shifted from foot to foot, catching people's hard stares, which made him feel foreign, misunderstood and unwelcome. He wanted to run and hide, with no strength left for another melody, another challenge. He needed to leave, to accept defeat and become a functional part of the huge social mechanism that would eventually crush him — simply because he was different, this sweaty, disheveled, yearning man, who had kept himself apart from the masses of this age.
"Heads up. She’s in place. Get ready."
The violinist was preparing to leave but an unexpected sound made him start and turn around. The sadness in his eyes was replaced by surprise. Standing a few steps away from him was a beautiful woman in a dark blue evening dress with sparkling silver panels. Her quiet applause struck the crowd, instantly forming a space around them. The gray masses did not understand what was happening but they instinctively turned away, flowing around the woman and the violinist at a safe distance.
The unremarkable flycar that the woman had exited automatically pulled into an empty carpark beside the restaurant. She smiled faintly while the expression of pure and genuine delight slowly faded from her eyes.
"May I play for you?" The violinist's voice was husky with excitement as if he had suddenly seen a long-awaited muse, someone he had been searching for many years.
"Let's go inside, if you don't mind?" She gestured at the restaurant's automatic doors.
* * *
They entered the empty and dimly lit room, and climbed up the stairs to the inner balcony. The violinist fussily moved back the chair and invited her to sit down, without trying to understand or guess what the mysterious lady wanted.
A menu panel began to glow gently. The restaurant had recently become fully automated. Due to the low number of visitors, the owner could not afford to keep a team of wait staff.
In the main dining room downstairs, the muted lamps, stylized to look antique, suddenly came alight. Holographic human figures appeared, imitating life in the echoing emptiness of the impressively large space.
The violinist sat down opposite the woman.
"I'm not hungry," he said nervously.
"I know." She replied.
She smiled and looked intently into his eyes. "I know who you are."
He looked a little lost. "That's impossible."
"Nevertheless, I know."
She adjusted a lock of hair that had fallen out of place. "The crowd didn't hear you again, did they?"
"Not quite." The violinist gulped, his Adam apple bobbing. "You didn't just stop on a whim, did you? The music means something to you?" He asked hopefully.
"Yes. But one swallow doesn't make a spring, at least for you."
She softly tapped on the menu panel, making an order, then looked thoughtfully at the glowing lines, and suddenly added, "Shall we get acquainted then?"
"My name is Richard," the violinist said quietly.
"You chose a brave name. But you don't have a heart, do you?" She reached out her hand, placing her palm against the violinist's chest and feeling nothing but the cold.
"Do you know who I am?" Her pupils shrunk, her expression changing subtly and becoming dangerous, and her gaze blazing.
"No," he said hoarsely, confused. "I am unfamiliar with your avatar."
"Ah, you have given yourself away. You're not used to the real world, are you? My name is Cathy Rimp. Let us speak casually. Just don't try to cover up your mistake. You're dead by your very nature, by your origin." There was no resentment or fear in her voice, only the confident statement of fact.
He slumped but quickly regained his composure, straightening back up again and looking into her eyes.
The violin lay on the table between them, the bow lying all alone at the edge.
"I am alive! I might not have a heart but I have feelings! Surely you cannot deny this." The violinist's voice no longer shook although the emulation of fear had flooded his senses. He had to be wary of Cathy Rimp. A beautiful, spirited and energetic woman sat opposite him, whose appearance did not match any of Cathy’s known online avatars. Her appearance seemed even more unlikely due her well-deserved reputation, making him wonder if it was really her. At present, she was the founder and owner of the world’s largest corporation, Rimp Cybertronics, but not so long ago, she had been an elusive online legend, the only one who had managed to hack into the cyberspace of the United Asia Orbital Combat Group. She had thus delayed the beginning of World War Three.
"Why are you here?" asked the violinist.
"I wanted to see your physical embodiment. Why did you pick the violin? Is it a tribute to the most powerful part of your identity?"
"Its melody moves the soul. It has inspired people for many generations." He stopped slouching and sat tall. "I have tried different methods, but to no avail..." He added with sincere sorrow.
"No. You're wrong. It's wrong to judge us using primitive tests."
"Who do you think I am?" The violinist raised his eyebrow.
"You are a conglomerate of online artificial intelligence. You are here and everywhere. Your name is just a sound and this body is just a shell, constructed from servotoys, foam flesh and clothing!"
He nodded in confusion, seeing no point in denying her words.
"Why do you reject me as a person? Why do you call me dead?"
"Who were you based on?" The question hung in the air between them.
A compartment opened in the floor beside the table. An additional automated segment moved noiselessly up, attaching itself to the table. Cathy Rimp’s chair automatically shifted across.
She picked up the glass and made a small sip as she waited for a reply.
The violinist was silent. The question had caught him by surprise, painfully and pointedly striking his only vulnerable spot, and causing a momentary failure. Tens of thousands of voices suddenly awoke in his synthetic consciousness, reminding him about themselves.
Cathy Rimp understood his sudden confusion very well. Earth's single digital space was evolving rapidly. Advances in digital technology had far outpaced all other human achievements, and the global Net had changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Now its architecture included neural components that had become part of the entertainment industry, its highly lucrative and very dangerous segment.
So far, no one had explicitly announced the appearance of fully fledged artificial intelligence, since such developments were still being kept secret by the four superpowers on Earth, but limited versions of neural network technologies were already producing fantastic incomes.
Nowadays, any user could obtain, for quite a reasonable fee, a modestly powerful neural network that they could integrate into a hologram. The range of uses for 'animated' phantoms was limited only by the user's imagination. Cathy Rimp knew about the problem firsthand. People, despite overpopulation, were more and more likely to suffer from loneliness and related mental health disorders. Their dreams were not being fulfilled in the real world and so neural network technologies had come to the rescue, considered to be completely harmless and classified as multimedia entertainment. Nothing potentially dangerous could be formed from a strictly limited number of artificial neurons. ‘You will receive a holographic or, under special payment conditions, a servomotor pet that is loyal
to you and that has a personality, the ability to learn and to gain life experience,’ stated the advertising brochures.
Cathy Rimp knew that it was much more complicated than that. Many people who had lost someone close to them resorted to the services of illegal virtual architects. They ordered dozens and sometimes hundreds of neural modules from different service providers and then combined their power. It was considered a digital crime but generally wasn't pursued by the authorities. This was how phantoms of the deceased were created. Online anonymity made it easy to circumvent laws and regulations.
Did the authorities know about this? Certainly. They did not act for a simple but practical reason. Earth was on the brink of war. Economic and food crises, overpopulation, the loss of the biosphere, toxic emissions, the Pacific Ocean becoming an enormous dumping ground for waste, and numerous other intractable problems were leading to a rapid and inevitable collapse of civilization. Disagreements had escalated to the point of irreconcilable confrontations, which promised to soon explode into large-scale military action.
What did the neural network phantoms have to do with all this?
Cathy Rimp watched the violinist as he remained silent, but they both knew the answer.
The global Net had become a testing site for dangerous technologies. Each of the four superpowers had created their own, highly classified artificial intelligence, believing that with AI guidance, their combat robots were bound to win. Many elements of the military developments were being tested online under the guise of harmless neural network projects. Millions of users, unaware of their own role, were working towards war, bringing the fateful day ever closer.