ILLUSTRATION:
One guy says to the other, “my dad is getting a Seeker™ eye put in”.
The other guy unloads. “Yeah, I used to have two mechanical. I got so strong in my 20s, I even got in the ring, but the eyes eventually went out of service. After I updated it 30 or 40 times they raised the fees way too high, I was broke. Then they weren’t even making the mechanical ones anymore. I was lucky I got the connection in the first place – I knew a cousin with DeHub blood who helped me out.
My sister is in the bot corps, she went broke too. She had the Year Three Seeker implant and she took off for like 6 months to follow the paths in the lenses. She got healthy all right, and she said she went to Sedona to “find” her spiritual self, but they raised the fees on her too, so she “found” herself broke. Next you know, she’s supervising call bots in Tahoe.
She negotiated a 7-day work week just to get the implant fully operational one day a week. I mean, they played us man, once you get the eye, they can raise the rates anytime they want. Especially if it’s an implant, you’re committed for life.
Anyways, what’s your dad’s plan?”
“He’s getting it in exchange for an RM tour. He re-enlisted…”
“Right, it’s one way to go. But have you ever thought about the Elevena eye instead?”
“It’s tempting, but if I break my contracts I doubt those those women would help me, and I wouldn’t be able to see my dad. I’m holding on till the company has an update coming out, it’s supposed to be the next big Twosday.”
– – –
Chapter One
MY MOM AND THE DUKE:
My mother was hooked up in the Duke’s world for a long time.
She believed in him long before the currency and fame.
Starting from when she was a teenager, she answered an ad for digital designer. She was renting a basement studio in Detroit doing tech gigs. The Duke was looking to hire outside of official channels. He had the production company and the campaign staff but when he actually won the 2154 election, he now had staff from every state agency reporting to him, trying to get in good with him. He trusted them the least. Every cult and co-housing pod in the state was also lobbying the new Minnesota “outsider” governor for zoning changes, mining rights, tax abatements, contracts, handouts or pardons. And the DeHubertons were gunning for his head, smarting from the election loss.
In the middle of all that, they tested out this 18-year-old kid who was doing some local reporting, comms and design work. They hired her for steady entry-level work until after about six months, they called her in for an in person meeting and she met the Duke, his chief-of-staff Siella and the insider staff. They asked her if she could work on stuff that was a little more critical, and non-public, swearing her to secrecy. But it was all a bigger test. Everything also had to be destroyed, so mom’s photographic memory became a major plus and she was brought into the social circle of the Duke’s bright, idealistic young staff.
Mom didn’t get involved in the campaign stuff or the counter protests, or any of the optics stuff. One project was designing a dashboard to see live visualizations of sales tax receipts in real-time, so the staff could track “ submarines”, or transactions made by an undercover purchaser to expose fraud, skimming and money laundering.
But the Duke wasn’t exactly doing things by the books himself. Not by a long shot.
He once sat with my mom at a bank of monitors, remotely cutting breaks to businesses in poor neighborhoods using the “tax holiday” button – to spark economic activity, he said. What if he got caught, mom asked. He could always say it was a glitch, but not to worry, he assured her. As it turned out, it was all a series of loyalty tests, and mom was onboard to help, not old enough to drink yet, she was already deep into the inner workings of state government. As she learned later from a career agency staffer, the previous administration had been secretly overcharging those same zip codes for years in “rounding up” scams.
Then they tried her out on other types of jobs. Transporting physical records without knowing what they were, then finding out they were records for scores of incarcerated teens. She never told a soul but they were secretly expunging documents to give them a clean slate on release. Mom then had to track their movements, ensuring they stayed out of trouble, which they almost all did. The secret sauce was a network of prison guards, all connected to trusted partner orgs who vouched for the character of the kids.
But this wasn’t the craziest thing The Duke was doing. Mom had stories.
After a while, she was overseeing “enforcement investigations” which followed up on signals from radio chips in firearms that went off. They had her screening the audio, surveillance tapes and official reports, asking her to make judgment calls on very sensitive, potentially criminal activities, anytime shots were fired. The purpose was to brief the Duke and his legal team so they could get ahead of the news, and to double check the job law enforcement was doing.
She regaled me with stories about every type of human drama, and so many close calls.
For example, a retired judge shot his grown daughter early one morning and tried to get the responding patrol to write it up as a suicide. Mom ran the footage over to The Duke in real time, he stalled the relay to for just a few minutes while looking up which cops got the call. When he saw the responding cops were moonlighting for SentryNet, a subsidiary of the DeHuberton shell corp Amerizon, he told mom to reroute the live pistol feed and both bodycams to DOJ in realtime and keep a separate copy locally.
It was also less-than-legal that the governor was recording from the bodycams before the patrolmen actually activated them. But he knew these cops were chosen for the call because they were as dirty as a pig sty in a coal mine, as was the judge. Before the cops arrived, you could hear the judge laying down the pistol and pushing his daughter’s body down a flight of stairs.
Then the judge starts sobbing over her body, loudly trying to revive her as the squad car pulls up. The cops enter and immediately recognizing the cops, the judge knocks off the play-acting. They stand above the body for a few minutes negotiating a cute little quid-pro-quo to make sure this is written up as a suicide with the judge heartbroken and bereft.
As this point the Duke is noticing the cops never checked to see if the girl is alive, so he has mom send over an ambulance.
The cops go out and spend another minute in the squad car refreshing their digicoin wallets and finally, they drive a quarter-mile out of the compound just to turn around and re-enter as they officially activate the body cams. This time, they burst in and check the bloody corpse, declaring it lifeless and call for a BRT, or body removal team.
They cops then move towards the judge, who, ready for his big scene is flailing around maniacally and claiming life is no longer worth living, yada yada. This is when the ambulance pulls up and EMTs rush in to find the girl very much alive. It took over a year to prosecute, but the cops finally flipped when a reporter received audio of the conspiracy under the “suggestion” it was furnished by one of the two, looking for a deal. In fact it was neither, but they both agreed to cut deals ratting on the other, and took down the judge in the process on the tampering and conspiracy charges. But by then his daughter had already testified about the shooting, among other crimes she witnessed. She ended up with the entire estate.
Just one in a thousand stories my mother could never tell a soul.
2160 – After six years with the “outside” team, almost two years into the Duke’s reelection, they finally read her in to an even more hush-hush project, heading up the creation of fake lottery winners. It was pretty involved. She had to fabricate identities for them, backdating entire decoy histories in case reporters, or oppo-researchers started digging. It had to look real. They had to have active timelines, tons of stills and videos, and they had to be convincing, not AI-detectable. It required a lot of coding, editing and the most tedious part, field filming to feed “true” footage to RAF, her top secret ‘amalgamation, randomization and foolproofing’ software bot.
The drawings were the most clever part. Following a tradition dating back to the 1970s, the numbers were chosen by drawing plastic balls from a hopper into a vacuum tube, live on all channels in real-time. The Duke staged it. It was rigged every time, to choose combinations no one had actually picked. And his methods changed to evade detection. At first it was simply doctoring the feed but then he used magnetized coatings on the balls and perhaps some other tricks no one knew. Then he finally made even better use of the drawing ceremony, personally overseeing the drawing live on-air to “guarantee authenticity and security” as he signed off with the signature tag line to voters: “The Duke here coming at ya. See this week’s updates on MI-EYE and please volunteer with your local civic corps, today and everyday”.
Mom maintained a steady output, updating content for thousands of “ghost winners” for years and years, never telling a soul. She could see how often reporters actually sniffed around, and usually it tailed off but mercifully for mom, the state eventually would mandate public anonymity for all winners. But there were still partisan officials bird-dogging the program, particularly those on oversight committees, always digging around for anything to use as fodder against the Duke while they were relegated to the legislative minority.
When it all blew up in 2173, I was finishing school. I remember the court dates and mom’s meetings with the assistant DA at our house. Mom was clearly involved in the conspiracy to defraud the state with direct knowledge of fake lottery winners – if not a co-conspirator, a key witness. But the Duke’s legal team negotiated immunity for her. So all mom had to do was tell them the truth – every last detail, and she could walk.
The Duke took full responsibility.
Mom’s story, in fact became quite valuable as the scandal rocked the nation. Accused of embezzling billions from the lottery program, the Duke had actually diverted the money into high-yield compound-interest savings plans, each sub-account registered to name or estate of the original lottery ticket buyer, numbering in the hundreds of thousands annually, and ranging in value from a few dollars to over a million.
Instead of throwing away money gambling, the Duke was surreptitiously investing it off-the-books and planned to reveal the surprise in 2174 on the twentieth anniversary of the program in which the $19 billion collected in lottery sales in 2154 alone had grown to $77.39 billion ready for distribution.
Reporters located Michelle “Minnie” San Rosa, now 77 years old, who had spent $40 per week on lottery tickets in 2154, hoping her “ship would come in”. After learning she would be due $596,960 under the Duke’s secret savings scheme, she was asked if she felt cheated or if she supported the idea. Minnie, along with an overwhelming majority over 94% of lottery ticket-buying respondents glowingly supported the Duke and couldn’t wait for their money, which was being held up in court.
This unprecedented scandal caused major consternation in the legislature, with lawmakers deeply divided over how to proceed. A vocal majority wanted the money released, less regular income tax withheld where applicable. But another faction believed the billions should be remanded by the state. An investigation was launched into the finances – if the Duke was squirreling away all the ticket money how were the public schools being funded?
The Duke’s sleight-of-hand in moving the money around was a mystery. This is where mom’s testimony was crucial. She explained that one out of every five of her “ghost winners” would actually receive a state payout through fabricated accounts. The money was then funneled into a sprawling network of well-collateralized small businesses overseen by trusted orgs including religious institutions, neighborhood revitalization collectives and a Korean-American business council where it returned 100% of principal along with a reliable 13-38% profit, depending on the year. Those that didn’t repay the loans were backstopped by The Duke himself who was personally worth over $5 billion. But The Duke’s whole point was that small businesses could thrive if a “state bank” was there to absorb the ebbs and flows of market volatility, providing stability for sustainable business practices. This drove Wall Street crazy, especially as the DeHubertons increasingly boycotted the states who resisted LifePlan.
The 2100s were marked by ever-increasing consolidation as entire industries folded into the hands of a tiny few tech giants who used outsized influence to crush competitors, extort suppliers and buy off elected officials for decades. The Duke promised to reverse this, in a state with a storied working class history, he signed into law an official small business aid program that represented a fraction of the actual lending going on through his backchannel network. Neither the borrowers not their fiscal watchdog sponsors knew they weren’t into the official program, until the arrests. But The Duke and his defenders always pointed to their results, arguing the backchannel programs were not only better for the taxpayer, they plunged a dagger into the heart of business-as-usual corruption that was engrained in American culture.
The Duke also loathed gambling, saying privately that lotteries were pure theft, even worse than other forms of gambling because it feeds off the desperation and hopelessness of the poor, selling promises of opulent wealth to induce fantasy-thinking, often using deceptive advertising on it’s own citizens, peddling false hope to the masses while extracting billions in to benefit one single winner with a jackpot so irresponsibly large it completely upends the winner’s life, and statistics show, not all for the good. Why, he argued, do they not choose ten times more winners, or a hundred? Who wants our taxpaying voters government-bred to not only covet obscene wealth, but to act oblivious to the impossible mathematical odds a lucky winner faces? When he suggested “ethical tweaks” to conference leaders in Lansing, they were shot down quickly.
So The Duke took it upon himself to prove the point, an affront to “the way things have always been”. Very few were read in to the plot, only a handful in the administration and a few outsiders like mom to craft the cover stories. The program almost made it to the end date.
Not sure how the feds found out. The team was air tight. At first mom guessed DeHuberton quamputers had something to do with it as they spider public records in real time, their bots could have found some clues in a cross-checking routine we didn’t factor for. But later on, mom wondered aloud whether The Duke didn’t blow it all open himself in some kind of gut-wrenching blackmail or extortion exchange. She wasn’t supposed to probe the issue – such knowledge could jeopardize her prosecution deal which let her completely avoid jail time.
The bad news for mom was that she was out of work, and burning through savings, laying low for about 18 months as the Duke’s prosecution and conviction played out. Then one day she gets a call from Siella, who asked mom to come aboard a new venture. They were filling positions for the Duke’s new private company, specializing in “asset management, advisory, and risk management solutions”. Mom was on the short list for capable, trustworthy senior advisors.
Along with the Duke’s daughter Pritchard, mom became part of the currency team, which didn’t know at the time they would blow up global finance.
It didn’t happen overnight. It took about four years while the Duke was stewing in Saginaw state prison, but everything was set up for a launch on February 22, 2177.
As soon as the Duke’s “trust-coin” went live, it shocked the markets. Trading had to be stopped on every exchange. As the newly minted Duke currency surged, the USD tanked just like a seesaw. Other currencies fell as well, with some quickly applying for “bridge” status easing real-time interchange. Across the continent, downloads of the APIs surged as businesses started to accept the currency.
Large institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds were pissed they couldn’t get their hands on volume, having to go through secondary markets for the coin because priority was given to low income households, by design.
Priority was also granted to the Minnesota state lottery account holders. They were automatically invested, able to withdraw small payments regularly, depending on the size of their accounts. Funny enough, the most frequent, it was the worst lottery addicts who ended up with significantly more access to the coin as the value skyrocketed. They were now really well off, thought their draws were restricted by weekly limits depending on their answers in “withdrawal interviews” conducted by teller bots.
The timing was perfect for the coin – Americans knew The Duke well, as did the world. A top pro wrestler for decades, then pivoting to beloved governor of Minnesota, fighting for the little guy, for ethics and standing tall against the DeHubertons. But after the arrest, he could no longer run for national office.
When mom hit year five in the new venture, The Duke asked her to join Duke Safety corps. Personally.
She was invited to a reception with a dozen from her department. They caught up with the Duke over breakfast and then were shown a presentation explaining the roles and responsibilities, as non-uniformed agents for a different kind of lifestyle as a rapid responder and as a sentry force watching local DeHuberton-related infiltration in a territory that expanded far beyond the midwest.
For years, resistance groups run had been expanding, mostly growing out of “local aid” cults but without any brain-link hardware. Mom was excited and took little me along to a training to get my buy-in. I was all for it, though I perhaps didn’t realize how much she would be away.
NEXT: Mom joins the corps
=-=-=-=-
MOM JOINS THE CORPS
2174 – So mom got an Elevision eye at age 38 and got real built, lost 45 pounds and left all the desk work behind. She said she was also going to look for my dad.
Interviewer: Do you want to talk about your dad?
I haven’t seen my father in person in six years.
His name is Starburton, we just holo-chat.
When I was about three, he was summoned away. His student loans had been sold, and were immediately due “on call” which meant he had to go into servitude. The early LifePlan subscriptions were tanking all over southern states. There were no veterinary services, no sewer or maintenance personnel when there was constant flooding, and he also had to get licenses to go to China to fire unionized workers one by one, every single day for weeks. He hated all three jobs and never had any free time. Never. Weekends and holidays were non-taxed, and he couldn’t afford not to earn it to get out of financial jail quicker.
ILLUSTRATION: An Elevena eye cult sprung up, made up of enhancees living in thick manmade woods restoring rivers in West Virginia. The biggest was in McDowell County, regrown into thick forest, all kept undeveloped in year round. They were key example of inter-gen control of eye technology as a learned cultural trait. This made certain physical objects either “scarce or sacred”, when paired with mental ability to trigger particle reaction at will.
Some approach it through science but the more common are those who access it in spiritual belief or ritual. The power to regulate skin temperature or body regulation were among the common use cases but extensive research was ongoing for other uses and especially those introducing novel micro-elements to speed the process by literal quantum leaps, hence need for the eye which directs users to nano-exchanges, giving anyone with the eye access to discover all manner of phenomena.
Q: All born into the cult get the eyes. Need name of the cult?
THE DUKE’S ORIGINS
“The Duke”, aka Erno Dukes, was an early bloomer, born Erno Scorlini Duca on December 22, 2112, an important day in history. He honed considerable athletic prowess and fighting skills in land and air skirmishes in his native South Dakota, first as a tagalong with his older brothers’ opposition cult and later as an iconic real-life battler and media influencer who rallied generations of resisters.
2120: South Dakota won it’s third “air rights” lawsuit against WalCo who claimed BlueGov states could no longer charge them interstate commerce fees for passing through their airspace. This created a privateer rush, drawing airbike enthusiasts from all corners.
EARLY LIFE: Particularly when it snowed heavily, the brothers led a gang of youthful raiders to go after the DeHuberton’s shipping lines, using avalanches to ambush and derail unmanned airtrain containers. Dressed in “ragman” costumes, they concealed their identities to thwart surveillance drones and airbuoys. The older kids taught the younger kids and the Duke started very young.
ILLUSTRATION: Young Duke saving all but a few kids from the swarm of weaponized drones, that began to follow the shipments.
THE DUKES PARENTS: The story of The Duke’s parents helps explain what embued him with such heroism. His father Vito Scorlini and mother Haven Amarilla Duca were inventors of a line of flying scooters during a time of intense competition among airborne vehicle manufacturers. In those years flying scooters were military only and the DeHuberton designs were not only unreliable, they were booby-trapped. USGOV contracts were lucrative and then as soon as the civilian restriction was lifted, the industry took off with Duke’s family poised for rapid growth.
The couple’s small DucaVita company all but cornered the Atlantic Coast market thanks to Onyx MC, a customer-led club which grew into a cultural movement over 45 years with a devoted generational following. Onyx and DucaVita were like Harley-Davidson to the Hells Angels in terms of tribalist brand loyalty, but the MC also subscribed to a rigid neo-illuminati ethical code as self-reliant resistance cults grew rapidly. In the early 2100s, biker gangs took to the skies. Onyx MC was founded in LeRay, New York near the Canada border exclusively using DucaVita airbikes because they were reliable and did not have USGOV/FAA tracking technology built-in, registering on radar as blind blips.
Mama and Papa Duke struggled with safety concerns, surviving assassination attempts after filing to enforce USGOV patents that divided the DucaVita company into worker-led spinoffs like Duke-LeRay who made military grade flyers. Diversification was necessary after a DeHuberton-backed division of USGOV prosecutors charged an Onyx resistance posse with national terrorism which by association resulted in a proposed ban on DucaVitas.
The irony was biting, as DOJ itself was splitting into camps, an internal battle between company loyalists and “do-gooder” USGOV agents. Turf wars led to hoarding and concealment of intel and resources, from weapons fulfillment down to paper clips. Neither side was transparent or accountable to the White House. The Presidency was also splitting down the middle as states and territories dug in to binary positions. There was little room for equivocation as the two sides consolidated support both in and outside the government.
LATE TEENS/EARLY TWENTIES:
The Duke fought the bike gangs throughout his teens and 20s in his own air cavalry, trading custom designed flyers across borders for weapons, power cells and back up, both human and bot. In those years flying scooters were military only.
HIRED GUNS:
The skies eventually were overrun by black-hat cults and company loyalists brigades which evolved from a century old motorcycle gang Satans Shamans founded in California way back in 1968 and gaining affiliates worldwide flying scooters in the 2080s using Sham666 as a commonly recognized fuselage marking. Associated with organized crime for generations, the Shamans threw in with the company, riding weaponized TuffDart or Triton models. They were now the tip of the spear, operating illegally and visibly as a distraction and to exhaust USGOV resources, either conquering, infiltrating or paying off state and local law enforcement to establish contraband syndicates and protection rackets across the US-Canadian border from sea to sea. They didn’t hassle LifePlan subscribers, but anyone else was fair game for piracy.
The Duke didn’t appreciate this, but had to stay close to home to protect his family and the sled factory. One day in 2130 he had a visit from FAA agents at the factory compound in White Owl, SC.
DUKE: You must be up a creek if you’re coming back here.
FAA AGENT ROTH ZERNER: I have an offer, Erno. How’s mom and dad?
DUKE: Alive. Hiding. Ma probably has a bead on you right now. So tell us, Why now would we want anything from you?
AGENT ZEE: Something you never had before. Legitimacy.
DUKE: Fah! As if USGOV’s seal of approval matters anymore? We got your guys joining us every day. Gordion and Motown are on a raid right now. You know what? Even your ex, Zee, she’s wearing our patch now. And they say FAA have not paid them for six months.
AGENT ZEE: All true. You can tell them to check for a wire Friday, there were some arrests this week so payroll was recovered. I know better than anyone how the agency is dying. But we can still do something for your MC…
As long as UN air maps are online, they are enforceable. Here’s the offer. You police the air licenses, you get badges that will ghost you in the EITS system. Or it could also spoof you – FAA, DHS, USAM, whatever you want it to say, you’re deputized air marshals. No one flies FAA alleys unless you say so. You can do checkpoints, interceptions, or….
DUKE: Nope, not under FAA rules of engagement. We need…
AGENT ZEE: Immunity. I know, you got it. You’d be under international jurisdiction and my prosecutorial discretion as long as all incidents are booked on EITS in real-time.
DUKE: Ahh, the eye in the sky.
AGENT ZEE: Your badges will ping on the footage and every USG skybuoy, even in restricted air. This will swipe you through anywhere you want to go. You will own the skies, Duke.
DUKE: I got it, you’re desperate. You offer us license-to-kill if we mop up your mess. And you want us to wear your monkey suits? You want samples from my guys so you can map and bio-scan them, right?
AGENT ZEE: No Duke, that’s the beauty. It’s “plainclothes”. Wear your colors or even decoy patches, the only thing that matters is the evidence of the trespass and any crimes, documented on the stream. I mean sure, any of your guys that check clean are welcome to wear the flag and get a paycheck…
DUKE: The red, white and blue bullseye? Nice try Zee. Now it’s making sense. So the old “citizen arrest” protocols are…
AGENT ZEE: …they are superseded if you have FAA badges. Show ’em or not, I don’t care, but yeah it still falls under UNROE engagement rules, yeah.
DUKE: I’m starting to listen. Come inside and say hi to ma, my sad, sad friend. And tell me, how long before FAA is over and done?
AGENT ZEE: We’re funded right now. We have bots building bots at scale. I might even get a greenlight to order some of your light military grade flyers if…
DUKE: No, sorry they are sold out.
AGENT ZEE: …anyway…we are still a thing. I’m now one of four deputy directors chugging along. Yes the human touch is missing, we are way short on staff. Obviously. It’s why I’m here, Duke. We are farming it out, and we trust you because DucaVita has a history, the Secretary has fond memories of his Onyx MC days and mama Duke. That was in your favor. But you know everyone looks up to you Duke, the world is looking for a hero and there are none around. But yeah, we are still running till the midterm election at least and then it depends.
DUKE: Until the octopus comes for your division…or the whole agency.
AGENT ZEE: Yes, until I have to come back crawling to you. But we have some time, we are embracing privateers and we hope the good guys like you can make a comeback.
DUKE: That’s always the story, right? The good guys and the bad guys, shooting each other out of the clouds for generations.
Feuding for years with the alt boy flyer gangs, the Duke wanted to try a new approach. The airbiker demo overlapped heavily with the wrestling phenomemon. The arena shows were major corporate moneymaking events with no competition in sight.:
2136 – Duke’s big debut came in the 2136 BattleCon wrestling exposition. He was managed by Quince Seagirt, veteran manager of luminary professionals like Jay “Dr. Murder” Keylock and others who came from skybiking gangs and were well-known to the Duke’s family and OnyxMC. Seagirt had to call in big favors to get the 24-year old Duke onto a high-profile card, made easier when clips of Duke pummeling two opponents at once in a street fight went viral.
Duke won his first bout in storybook fashion, instantly becoming a problem for Quince, the promoters…and within 24 hours, the entire sport. It started typically with prescribed moves and choreography for three rounds, when something changed. His opponent, Antom Armenian, a local favorite was supposed to win in the 4th round. He whispered in Duke’s ear, but didn’t like something Duke whispered back. He started arguing loudly, petitioning the ref and his manager to do something or he would rip the Duke’s face off on camera. Duke ate it up, waving his arms to energize the rumbling, uncertain crowd.
Antom’s face was flushed red as Duke assumed a defensive stance. Antom charged, he grappled, he swung, he punched. It was all to no avail as Duke connected with repeated haymakers and round kicks. Quince flung himself from the corner to stop the fight, hanging off Duke like a rag doll as Duke dropped Antom in a bloody heap. The whistle was blowing furiously as the referee waved and shouted, trying to disqualify Duke for “contractual infractions”. But it was too late…
Duke was an instant sensation, turning the crowd who he led in a chant of “no more fake matches” and “Fuck Amerizon”, referring to the DeHuberton-linked streaming servince. Quince was apoplectic, wondering if he’d make it home alive, but his visor started blowing up with offers, rich offers. The league was fuming, but also saw dollar signs in this telegenic, bombastic new talent. After an “emergency meeting” they scheduled high-profile matches that would indeed raise Duke’s stature, but bring him nowhere near a title match. Their original plan was to let him “expose the fakeness of wrestling” by fighting declining stars who would be humiliated as showboaters who couldn’t win a real fight. They fully expected Duke to demand a title match eventually, but the suggestion to “take care of him when the time comes” drew nods from the fight moguls assembled.
The Duke won his matches as expected, but would soon start challenging champs outside the league broadcasts. He took it to the fans directly in public appearances and cyberfiber drops. The league called another emergency meeting, this time run by the four bosses of the merchandising, media and ticketing/insurance syndicates who worked hand-in-hand with Amerizon to underwrite billion-dollar events and stream high-demand matches to rabid fans in dozens of RedGov states and cities.
Over the next two years the string-pullers behind Ultimate Wrestling Federation and World Wrestling League would come to realize what a cash cow the Duke was. Instead of scheming to assassinate him, they gave in completely, letting this fan favorite “wrestle” unscripted. They stalled as long as they could before granting Duke a title match against the then-champion, Saigon Killer. Duke bested the champ in one of the most-watched streamcasts ever, taking the title and with it, the largest purse ever. Duke remained the undefeated champ for three more years until the League had enough and finally did try to assassinate him in a Nashville hotel.
2146 – The Duke took sweet revenge by defecting to an upstart competitor called Triumphant. Also, a few of the “executive directors” who ordered the Nashville hit disappeared or met a grisly fate at the hands of skyrider gangs. Duke fought another five years, increasing his ownership stake in Triumphant with each win. The Duke amassed a fortune, but the new league struggled to reach audiences after being blackballed by Amerizon. Duke became even more determined, airdropping free viewing devices into RedGov states and publicly challenged Montegue DeHuberton to a fight, the same banking exec accused of the 2143 “rug pull” that saw catastrophic losses in financial markets as the DeHubertons consolidated dozens of global currencies, leading to widespread claims they had “stolen my life savings”, hoodwinked the USGOV and bankrupted almost every small regional lenders.
DUKE CHALLENGES MONTEGUE DEHUBERTON TO DEATHMATCH PIT-FIGHT:
DUKE MARRIES…A DEHUBERTON?
=-=-=-
TEN PAGER
PAGE ONE
1. Large montage of THE DUKE in a stealth-battle suit with night vision, shooting and fighting well-armed high tech bots. He has emerged from a secret tunnel into a control room with large maps of North America on big screens. Drones are flying around zapping each other. Floating ominously above, shaking a mechanical fist is HERESFORD DEHUBERTON, 150 years old with his shriveled wrinkly face set into a robot exo-skeleton host frame. His other gnarled hand controls a futuristic wire harness that converts his finger movements into keyboard commands. Bloody goons lay around slain along with busted up combat robots. Other possible characters for the montage: THE DRONESMITH, THEE MINK (in silhouette?), ATEISHA BIVENS, LORENZO “RENZO” SCORLINI, random combat bots.
NARR: It wasn’t just because they killed his brother…
NARR: It was because they killed everyone and anyone…
2. Small panel – Duke blasts two goons from a narrow tunnel. Drones hover behind him.
DRONESMITH (not visible): Two around left corner…
FX: SHKIW, SHKIW!
DRONESMITH: [straddle panel gutter] …and a big 906 on the right…this means you’re in the belly of the beast
3. Small panel – Duke blasts a huge combat bot’s power supply, parts fly everywhere with impact.
FX: K’CHWW
DUKE: You gonna seal the tunnel behind me?
DRONESMITH: Copy – 10 seconds to detonate…
PAGE TWO (5 stacked horizontal panels)
1. Explosion at left caving in the tunnel. Debris and smoke all about. Duke bracing for impact, leaning right, reloading ammo as more drones fly towards a heavily fortified door at right.
FX: K’VOW
DUKE: This is it, Dronesmith…the last barrier before the inner chamber
DRONESMITH: Get ready to fire, that door is coming off. Reading two security bots inside and a faint heat signature.
DUKE: That’s him…
2. Shot of a creepy inner chamber with tech and data monitors lining the walls. The door is blasted off by two C4 impact drones, debris flying everywhere as Duke dramatically lunges forward shooting with two hands and blasting apart two security bots. At extreme right in foreground is half the face of HERESFORD DEHUBERTON looking left with beady wrinkled eyes. Two more drones hover ahead.
FX: GRACKT!
FX: Skeew! Skeew!
DRONESMITH: Positive ID on Heresford DeHuberton, age 151. Not seen publicly in 57 years…!
3. Looking over Dukes shoulder as he points a blaster at wrinkly old Heresford, part human and part machine, embedded into a high-tech wheelchair with medical tubes and wires everywhere. He is way back in a deep perspective shot, looking small and vulnerable in his robo-chair as the drones encircle him.
HERESFORD: So…someone finally breaches my inner sanctum…impressive, but you’ll never get out alive.
DUKE: You killed my brother, it’s your turn now.
4. Close up shot of the Duke, knitting his brows in anger as he levels his blaster towards the camera.
HERESFORD: Your brother? Another nobody? A speck of dirt standing in the way of our progress…
DUKE: We were a happy family…I actually enjoyed my life. Till you sent in the U-1Ws to kill us.
5. Duke blasts his head into bloody and liquified fragments at close range.
HERESFORD: U1s were loss prevention…you must have been supply chain thieves. Pests! I’m sorry I didn’t wipe out your whole….
FX: SPLAFF
DUKE: This is the world now, the world YOU made…
PAGE THREE
Alex’s extra page here?
PAGE FOUR
1. Large tableau panel with apparitions of Duke’s face at top left and a younger Heresford looking sinister at top right. In the center a triangle formation arrangement of 5 sad, frowning figures each with captions: a worker, a child, a pregnant woman, a senior and a scientist, looking away in shame. At bottom center, the top of the head (eyes and forehead) of a squinting, grim law enforcer (cop/military look) close-up in shadowy tones.
DUKE…a world of slavery, death and blackmail.
CAPTION: Living under LifePlan means economical slavery for workers…
CAPTION: …it means rampant child abduction, generations of mass traumatization.
CAPTION: …it means forced impregnation, infanticide and eugenics.
CAPTION: …a world of elder abuse and systematic “pay to live” longevity blackmail.
CAPTION: …scientists imprisoned in labs, forced to pervert nature, commit all manner of atrocities
CAPTION: …and law enforcers once proud soldiers, cops and emergency responders, all forced into a corporate loyalty pledge.
2. Young Duke on a South Dakota hillside, looking slim and lean, with his big brother scruffing his hair aside their airbikes, and others flying around behind them.
CAPTION: I was a carefree kid, you know…tagging along on air patrols with my brothers. Life was simple above the cliffs of the South Dakota badlands.
BROTHER: Ready, squirt? There is an unmanned airtrain 20 miles away…
YOUNG DUKE: Thought you’d never ask!
3. “American Gothic” style image of Duke’s father Vito Scorlini in dirty overalls holding a forked wrench-like tool and mother Haven Amarilla Duca, standing proudly in front of their DucaVita airbike factory hangar with the DucaVita bat logo painted atop. Bottom of panel shows a newspaper clipping.
CAPTION: Mom and dad were still in the early days, growing the airbike company with ultracompact q-resin engines – me and my brothers were happy to test-drive the products on our nightly raids
NEWSPAPER CLIP HEADLINE: NANOFUEL BRICK PATENT POWERS SD FLYCYCLE STARTUP
PAGE FIVE
1. In “Brady Bunch” boxes, we see Renzo, Dronesmith, Aticia and Thee Mink wearing headsets and operating joysticks and input screens.
ATISHA: Atisha breaking in here guys. You should know a coordinated Twosday attack on DeHub strongholds just went down. Billions in damage, 20 different states, North Cali came out big.
DUKE: Which MC’s?
ATISHA: Says Lyrics MC, Galaxy MC and a bunch of unmanned AnonMC
DUKE: That’s the göst riders, they bought 5K of last year’s IceBridge model with half of them subs. We can boost their battery algos from the station, give them all at least a 2X charge.
RENZO: Just told Duggins at central station. Those were the ones with retina control? They’re already synced in the shielded monitor bay.
DUKE: Probably fun watching that. Jester, pull highlights. If we survive this we’ll watch.
THEE MINK: You’re gonna survive as long as you will it, muhabz – you have survival qDNA
DRONESMITH: Dronesmith here, they trashed a lot of of LifePlan infrastructure. Even set off an M81 at a mecha hangar. RM is engaging, snatching up hostages in neutral zones, figures.
DUKE: I remember when I was a kid I was scared shit, but I did my runs just like everybody else in the family. If you don’t go, you’re a liability.
2. Flashback scene of young Duke on a skycycle in formation with others, firing a e-spear gun as they raid cargo drones.
DRONESMITH: How old were you Duke?
DUKE: Ten, but I didn’t start real mayhem till I was about 15 and then of course that’s when…
THEE MINK: We know -don’t say it, muhabz.
RENZO: Yeah we relive it every day…
3. Show cargo falling out of the drone skytrain cars as the skycycle rider brothers blow them offcourse. Distant explosion in background.
THEE MINK: Mind on the mission, they will probably be responding live to the, so find time to fry their combot dashboards.
ROBOT FONT: Airtrain disrupted by sky pirates. Cargo seizure in sector E96.
4. Show Heresford DeHuberton when he was only about 110 years old (less tubes and wires connected), reacting to seeing the 4 Scorlini brothers and two older cousins attack his airtrain.
HERESFORD: These local upstarts again…the fast flyers. Jensing, why didn’t we follow them home last time?
ROBOT FONT: Scout units tailed them on 6 July. Signal jammers and C4.1 used to destroy six units. No more data available. SensorCams vandalized across length of state.
PAGE SIX (smaller panels at top, big panel below)
1. The brothers are approaching another airtrain shipment but see the combots on skybikes escorting the airtrain.
DUKE’S MIDDLE BROTHER: Ready boys?
DUKE: Look, they have an escort this time…combots on FB11’s. We can outrun them.
YOUNG RENZO: We might have to, they have explosive rounds.
ROBO FONT: FAA Lawless Lane local self-enforcement policy last updated 65 weeks ago, engagement threat high.
HERESFORD: Yes, the FAA went begging to the locals and these filthy hill-creatures were too dumb to stay put.
2. Duke’s oldest brother SPYROS SCORLINI thrusts forward with a double barrel e-weapon. ANother brother NIKLOS SCORLINI falls in behind in formation.
SPYROS: I’m going forward, not backwards. Let’s stress test their shielding first, but even if we bail we have to stop that train.
NIKLOS: Agree! They have to know those trains can never get through. Fly bats!
3. The brothers attack the robot brigade, shots flying both ways. They huddle low behind the cowl shielding – their airbikes are designed to take some hits but the shielding shatters and falls away. The FB11’s just fall apart when blasted.
SPYROS: Renzo can you light up the first car?
RENZO: Fly bats!
NIKLOS: We can NEVER let go!
LARGE LETTERS: NEVER LET GO
ROBO FONT: Engaging six airbikes with riders, fire incoming. Lead unit down.
4. We see the action on Heresford’s wraparound videoscreen, over his shoulder. His gnarled fingers move the controllers, zooming in on Spyros with target graphics.
HERESFORD: They all look related. This one…he is their leader, their hero.
5. A guided round launches from the combot’s eye in a blast of trailing flame.
HERESFORD: This isn’t going to be like the last time. The new guided rounds will not miss. They will end this.
PAGE SEVEN
1. Grand panel of SPYROS’ death, turned black and charred in a fireball burst, the bike blast apart into bits with the airtrain cars in the background all crashing into the lead car which is exploding in a burst.
FX: CHA-KROOM
2. Reaction shot of brothers faces, lined up from front to back all shocked with weapons smoking.
RENZO: We will never forget that moment – after that, everything went red. Duke laid into the escort detachment till his ammo was out..
ROBO FONT: Three units hit. Non-responsive. Four, five units non-responsive.
3. Real time Duke enraged, kicking open door to another war room, spraying fire with his drones flying in. We can partially see a 130-year old sentient DeHuberton patriarch guy in a large seat with built-in screens and instrument consoles, turning to see what the fuss is.
RENZO: Duke took that train down – he kamikazied his bike into the convoy, after setting the C4.1 charges for impact.
ROBO FONT: All units non-responsive.
HERESFORD: That can’t be it. I launched more guided rounds…status! Status!
ROBO FONT: Status unknown, visuals lost. Nearest sensorcam flyers enroute, ETA 27 minutes.
HERESFORD: God damn it! Who are these punks!?
4. Duke shoots the old DeHuberton’s face out, in a bloody, fluidy mess. Two workers scramble for cover, one protection robot starts to deploy it’s rifle turrets. The drones fire to take out cameras and alarm systems.
RENZO: We all went nuts, took out the whole botsquad, the airtrain and every little drone around. But that’s when reality started to sink in….Spyros was gone. He was our rock, he was our glue. Duke took it the hardest…
FX: PK’KOW
PAGE EIGHT
1. Duke spins, pointing his weapon but is distracted when he sees something that makes his eyes arch and jaw drop.
RENZO: …he never got over it, never. He would fly into a rage anytime you bring it up.
DUKE: Oh NO!!
DRONESMITH: What’s up Duke, did you stop? Two metal signatures closing in, six o’clock!
2. We now see Duke froze because he ran into a flock of Dehuberton children! Four or five kids with an alarmed nanny, screaming. Silhouettes of com-bots approach in the distance.
DUKE: Kids! I don’t want to see kids! I’m on a goddammed KILLING SPREE here! I don’t need this.
KIDS: EEE!
3. Duke talks as he is set upon by a barrage- most shots miss him, but a few are absorbed by his shielded vest. The children are herded away, scurrying in fear as they stare wide-eyed at The Duke.
DUKE: Remember me kids, my name is The Duke.
DUKE: Remember I didn’t kill y… SHIT! FUCK!
FX: SKHOW! CHKWW!
4. Duke scrambling on defense, ducking behind a large monitor which is getting shot up by two robots. Duke swings his gun behind his back to free his hands as a third robot shoots down a Duke drone.
DRONESMITH: Third bogie approaching Duke, that’s a lot of firepower. Don’t get cornered, they’re surrounding you.
DUKE: Friggin kids almost got me incinerated. He who hesitates…
FX: IZZIKOW~!
DUKE: Jesus!
PAGE NINE
1. Duke avoiding more blasts by lunging into close proximity inside the field of fire, reaching for a robot with a radar antenna on it’s head as the others cross streams as it gets tight in the space. Fireblasts continue above as drones fight.
DUKE: A Honeywell H-One! My only play is to get in close between them!
FX: BA’VAMCH!
ON RADIO: Should we call in The Mink?
2. Duke swinging a robot by the antenna, swinging so hard it got completely horizontal, towards the other robots. The robots are firing wildly now and drones are blowing eachother apart in background.
DUKE: Hold on, I think I got this…
FX: SWOOOOSH
3. Splash panel of the impact as Duke swings the robot into the other two robots who get busted up bad, firing wildly.
FX: B’KROWW
DUKE: I saved myself! For now…MotherFUCK these clankers.
4. Shot of Dronesmith in the interior of his hidden control pod, taking off his headset, looking over his shoulder at the small tinted window, discovering on radar he is compromised!
ATISHA: Another alert coming in…data quads outside Seattle went up in smoke, the grid is out, whole city is dark. That’s a big one….
FX: BEEEEP BEEEEP
DRONESMITH: No! They got my position! Damn q-bots must’ve got lucky…I need to send up some defense quick. I–
5. Dronesmith dies, riddled by drones – as his last act, he tries to press a special button surrounded by striped warning tape, but doesn’t reach it.
FX: SKASSH! SKVIT! VIT! VIT!
DRONESMITH: They’re on top of me! I’m hit! I’m — *
PAGE TEN
1. Duke is entering a new room with the smoking ruins of the previous room behind him. Duke is on high alert navigating the metal doorways with drones flying aside him and alarms blaring.
Duke: Smitty?!! Dronesmith? You there?
Aisha: Dronesmith is down…
Renzo: Agh, say it isn’t so!
The Mink: This means he won’t be able to set the reset button… this means…
The Duke: It means it’s only 15 minutes until the distraction launches!
Big title across page: “Unleashing the distraction”
2: Small panel of some sand rustling with a shape protruding from the ground.
Aticia: I’m checking the HQ vicinity, not seeing any of our people in the area.
DUKE: Jester, send out warning on cyber fiber only Twosday channel 96.
DUKE: Use hashtag HQNow.
3: Giant shot of the disruptor or the distraction emerged from its sandy, crumbly hiding hole in the shadow of the big city and in the distance the DeHuberton HQ tower.
Duke: Give a 10 minute warning and tell them to get choke points on all adjacent sidestreet and lay hidden. Do not engage reinforcements till they pass, then engage from rear.
4. Close-up shot of the cockpit in the distraction mechanism. It’s clearly the Duke manning the controls, but a 3D wax automaton.
PAGE ELEVEN:
1. Back in the tunnels, Duke turns a corner and faces a whole bunch of robots and an old deHuberton matron who has a gun to the head of….the little sister of the mink. Duke recoils, stopping in his tracks.
MATRON: So if you’re who I think you are, you’ll be interested to meet Satara, who didn’t know that you were fucking her older sister as you came to murder her whole family.
DUKE: they have Satara.
THEE MINK: Habdul Abdullaa!
2. The distraction is coming through the canyon of skyscrapers toward the DeHuberton HQ tower in the most Central downtown location of the big city. There are security vehicles on the ground flashing lights and motorcycles engaging in firefights around the sidestreets. The Duke is seen in the cockpit with his arm in the air defiant. As usual, many drones fly around.
LOUDSPEAKER: This is the Duke and the time is nigh! Time to take on the fight! This is the Duke, telling you, everybody, it’s time to take on the fight!!
FX: boom boom boom Ba tomb,
FX: Ch’kow, ch’koww
CAPTION: And this is Vetrini coming live from WVCR with live pictures of what appears to be a frontal attack on DeHuberton HQ in Western Square. It looks like a 10-story automaton with the Duke at the controls serving up heavy fire to the façade of the fortified tower. Return fire reported as the shielding buckles. Security units engaging ground and air, now encountering Shanghai attacks from biker cults continuing more of the multi-site, multi-city resistance attacks of the day.
Stay tuned right here folks not sure what’s coming next, but the automaton is approaching fast. This is going to be all out DESTRUCTO-MADNESS.