Star Trek: Bendross

Episode 02 "Flying"

(Summer 2072)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

The Bendross Players

 

Hamilton Ashby dreamed. It was a randomized, confused dream. He was flying again. The plane responding to his every impulse with undreamed of precision. The air slipped over his skin like thick water. A hand here a foot there and he could flip his nose around.

However, he was flying through cyberspace. The consensual mass illusion that represented a world of data on the World Wide Web. Sparkling constructs of pure data and graphics vying to be striking and individualistic hung in virtual space. Their relative positions told Hamilton something about their location in the real world, as well as their relative importance in the great scheme of things. The images they projected to him told him many things about what the creators of each site wanted, believed and wanted him to think.

The basic inconsistency struck Hamilton. Cyberspace and the web were tools of communication. He was here and could see things because it was the basic function of the place to present him with everything connected to the web. Then the big corporations played Clubhouse. They tried to block sensitive data with passwords and complex encryption and automatic ICE programs. They were fighting against the very nature of the medium and apparently didn't realize it.

Hamilton kicked his rudder over and pointed his nose to the highest level of the web. There were the huge constructs of the multinationals, Sanyo, Coke, Microsoft. The big guys were too big for any mere console cowboy to ever hope to hack in a meaningful way. However, there was the layer just below them. The multinats who were not quite the biggest thing that ever happened yet. They waited and maneuvered and fought for the chance to bring Microsoft down and feed on its corpse.

Now there was the Bendross zone. Inside a brightly colored PR construct, if you knew where to look, you could find the black arenas where Bendross didn't want you to go, but unaccountably, put on the net anyway, Perhaps they wanted people in the "field" to be able to access something. Their mistake.

This time Hamilton was not after data to sell. He was not after the grimy little secrets that equaled money. He didn't care. He was flying. He painted the dark area with his radar, and surely enough, ICE programs came screaming back at him through cyberspace.

Hamilton thrashed and struggled on his bunk as his brain replayed an insane cyberspace dogfight that Hamilton had picked just because he could. He was flying again and he was invulnerable. Hamilton had survived Colonel Green's war, and the final nuclear destruction and hundreds of minor skirmishes. Plugged into an F-97 through a hook in his brain, Hamilton had met and defeated every threat to come his way. He was talented, true. His was skilled, true. However, he'd survived the warfare because he *loved to fly* and that was his edge.

Hamilton dreamed of flying his fighter plane through cyber-space and triumphing.

Then the world shattering disaster called reveille happened. Up and out of bed and into his pants and shoes, moving. Right out of the dream, Hamilton's brain would not leave him alone with the pleasant dream images. He recalled how fuel and parts for his plane became scarce. He recalled how the mess halls first ran out of variety and then ran low on food. He recalled how, un-noticed his uniforms had begun to fray. Usually, your CO pointed out when a uniform got too old; you went down to the PX and replaced it. Now the CO said nothing. Hamilton noticed idly that the building where he'd expect the PX to be was burned wreckage. He didn't care too much. He could leap into his plane and fly. Sometimes this function or that didn't work. Hamilton looked at each new malfunction as a challenge. Wasting Eastern Alliance military units was getting too easy and boring anyway.

Then the darkest day of Hamilton's life. The worst thing, ever.

"We're being stood down. The war is over. Go home."

Hamilton found himself standing in a ratty uniform outside the air base, in a world that had gone straight to hell while he wasn't looking. He had a pay voucher and no where to go. His plane was gutted for parts for something else and left to rot on the flight line.

There Hamilton wound up with no idea what to do with himself.

There was no time to pine for his lost love. He had to fall in for more PT and training in how to be a colonist. He went along with it, because that's where he happened to be. However, Hamilton had no real enthusiasm for the job. It wasn't like they would let him on a colony ship anyway. This was just some place to lay low until the heat died down.

[To be Continued]

Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.