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  The Biomass Revolution

  ( The Tisaian Chronicles - 1 )

  Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  What would you do if you lived in a world where your every move was scrutinized by your own personal artificial intelligence—a world where everything is regulated, from power usage to relationships—a world where everything you thought you knew turned out to be a lie?

  Welcome to Tisaia—The last hub of modern civilization in a world left scorched by the nuclear fires of the Biomass Wars. Surrounded by a fortress of steel walls and protected by a fierce and loyal Council of Royal Knights, Tisaia seems relatively safe to the average State worker and citizen. A plentiful supply of Biomass powers the cities and food is abundant, but security has come at a terrible cost. The State will do anything to protect its resources, even if it means suppressing the rights of its citizens and deporting immigrants into the Wasteland—a virtual death sentence.

  Spurious Timur is one of the State workers helping keep the wheels of prosperity turning in Tisaia. As he starts to explore Tisaia and question his own worth, he realizes there may be more to his subsistence than he thought. When he meets and falls for co-worker Lana Padilla, he begins to understand he may hold the key to restoring Tisaia to a just and free State.

  However, restoring Tisaia will come at a cost; both to Spurious and those he cares about, because in Tisaia nothing is ever what it seems. And as more of his past begins to surface, he is faced with the ultimate decision—on which side of the revolution should he fight?

  Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  THE BIOMASS REVOLUTION

  To my parents who have always believed in me, supported me and loved me unconditionally.

  I love you both more than you know.

  “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.”

  ~Bertrand Russell

  PROLOGUE:

  Time: 7:14 a.m. January 10, 2071

  Location: The Dead Forest. Tisaia

  Darkness always made Evandish uneasy. Even after spending most of his adult life scouting the tunnels for the resistance, he never became accustomed to it. He heard some of the younger scouts refer to the tunnels as their homes, but for him they were a place to hide, a place to survive.

  Decades had passed since the nuclear fires rained down on the cities in the old world. The fires had consumed everything in their path; it was only by chance he’d survived, seeking refuge with his family in a subway station. The heat, darkness and fear of those first few days would never leave him, seared in his memory like a brand on his skin. There were other memories too, some so vivid they would still slip effortlessly into his mind at arbitrary times.

  He recalled the first several months after the bombs dropped. Combing the catacombs of tunnels, looking for shelter and food with his family and the other survivors. Waiting for help his parents said would inevitably come.

  The military will mobilize, they said. The Red Cross too, maybe even other countries would send help. As the months slowly passed, the survivors perished one by one. Help never came. Their food supplies dwindled. The remaining survivors became desperate, their last strands of dignity gone.

  No child should remember their parents’ last moments the way he was forced to. His mother’s eyes, wild with fear, peeking out from behind his father’s back. His father waving a burning torch as three men, covered in dirt, ash and blood, devoid of their humanity approached them. Words were needless to reveal their intentions; the desperation in their eyes gave it away. They wanted what little food his family had left. The can of peaches, a liter of water and a half jar of peanut butter. It was all his parents’ lives ended up being worth. In the end, a single meal became worth a life.

  A tear streaked down his face as he tried to shake the memories, the sharp cold of morning finally wiping them out of his fatigued mind. His eyes instantly searched for the garish fire that had kept him warm through the night. The warmth was gone; the light which had cast a vivid glow over his camp had disappeared. His eyes came to rest on the vanishing coals.

  He shivered as an indiscriminate blast of frozen wind whipped against his face. The soldier threw his coat around his shoulders and hovered over the dying embers—blowing on them to revive them. He had been in the dead forest for over three days now, scouting out the trolley tracks. His mission was to sabotage the resupply line of the Biomass trolleys traveling to refuel the great city of Lunia.

  The ash gray tint of the dead forest had already taken its toll on him. Being a scout he grew to know loneliness; to accept it, embrace it. And normally he would jump at the chance to spend time above ground, out of the darkness of the tunnels. But the forest reminded him of what the world had once been. Unlike many of the younger soldiers born after the bombs dropped, Evandish could remember life before the war, before the destruction. He could recall the bright green leaves sprouting off the limbs of trees reaching towards the vibrant crystal blue skies. He could remember the changing seasons and the rainbow of colors in the fall, when the green leaves would turn to red before the first snow fell.

  Another flare of wind grazed his bare skin, bringing him back to the harsh reality of his world. He peered up at the never ending hazy sky, rays of sunlight desperately trying to peek through the thick poisoned clouds. He turned to see the skeletons of trees, long absent of the leaves now turned to ash on the ground below.

  The snort of his horse finally distracted him. Evandish turned to make sure Ralli was okay, satisfied to see she was nibbling on some oats he had thrown down for her in the snow.

  “How are you doing, girl?” he asked, patting her mane as she ate. They had been together for a year now, scouting the tracks on missions above ground. She was one of the last of her kind, captured by the resistance at the beginning of the war. The world was not a place for beasts anymore. She was a reminder of the innocence lost in decades of war and blood.

  He turned his attention back to the fire, blowing slowly into the red ashes. Within minutes the coals glowed orange and he rushed to his knapsack for some kindling.

  Ralli watched him kneel and scatter the small twigs onto the flames, before losing interest and turning back to her oats. In the distance, Evandish could hear a faint sound emerging over the intermittent wind. Ralli heard it too, her ears perking up as she sensed danger.

  The wind picked up again, draining out the faint sound. He shrugged and diverted his attention back to the flames, his mind preoccupied with the warmth of the fire on his bare hands. Less than an hour of exposure was all it took to get frost bite, something he had no way of treating once it set in.

  For a second the wind lapsed again and the mechanical groan of a train emerged in the distance. His head instantly shot up, forgetting the warmth of the flames on his hands.

  “Oh no,” he said, quickly stomping on the fire.

  He stiffened as the treacherous scream of a Biomass train broke through the howling wind.

  “There isn’t supposed to be a train for another day,” he said, his voice raised but calm. He didn’t want to alert Ralli anymore than she already was.

  He turned, watching as she paced back and forth nervously, pulling at the rope tied to the dead bark of an old oak tree. She could sense the danger.

  Evandish searched desperately for an escape route, jumping from the tracks a few yards away to the trail leading from their camp into the forest.

  Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.

  The soldier hopped to his feet, ignoring the smoke rising from the ashes. If there were Knights on the train, their infrared equipment had already picked up his location.

  Quickly, he scrambled to gather his belongings, tucking them into a small pack on Ralli’s back. For a
moment he caught her gaze, recognizing the undeniable fear in her dark brown eyes.

  The sound of the train cut through the thick wind as he rushed to untie her from the tree. Within seconds they were racing through the frozen branches of the forest, tearing through snow covered bushes and over fallen logs. The lifeless branches snapped under the weight of her hooves as they continued through the graveyard of dead trees.

  A cloud of breath exploded from her open mouth as she lumbered on through the forest, her hooves following a path not used for decades. Evandish kicked her convincingly in the ribs to keep her going. The train, which Evandish could now see out of the corner of his eye, was racing towards him, quickly gaining in speed.

  The path lay on the edge of the dead forest, following the tracks for another quarter mile before diverting into a valley. They had no choice but to follow it as the forest was too dense to navigate. Their only chance of escape was to make it to the valley, away from the reaches of the Knights’ machine guns.

  The horn of the train rang out again, causing Ralli to snort another cloud of breath into the air. His heartbeat, elevated, pounded on his ribcage as if it were trying to escape its white jail cell. It knew what his brain was trying to deny—within moments, the train would be on top of them.

  “Almost there! Come on girl!” he yelled, kicking her in the ribs again. “A few more seconds and we’re there!”

  He turned quickly to see the sleek metal train, the flaming torch symbol of Tisaia inscribed in vibrant red on the side. As he suspected, on the top of the engine rested a crow’s nest manned by two Knights. He watched the cool blue glow from their night vision goggles staring down on him.

  The image sent a shiver down his back and he turned back to the path, kicking Ralli again. “Come on!” he yelled, fear growing in his deep voice.

  He tried desperately to hold onto her reins, his frozen hands shaking violently, Ralli galloping faster beneath him.

  “Crack! Crack! Crack!”

  The gunfire tore through the silence of the dead forest, ringing in Evandishs’ ears. Ralli panted on, undeterred, the muscles in her old legs holding strong.

  “Faster Ralli!” Evandish shouted over the barrage of machine gun fire. He watched the bullets tear by them, peppering the frozen ground and sending chunks of snow and earth raining down.

  Ralli raced in and out of the spray and for a split second, everything slowed down. A bullet whizzed past Evandish’s ear. He yanked on her reins, his eyes fixated on the path, hope slowly building inside him. They were almost to the safety of the valley. But Ralli’s legs were old and strained. She was not as fast as she had once been and was no match for the speed of the train.

  Evandish was foolish to have hope, learning over the years that there was no room for it in Tisaia. He cowered in fear, gripping the reigns tightly as the train bellowed down on top of them at the last minute. And before Evandish knew it he was in the air, fumbling for the reigns, Ralli tumbling beneath him. He watched helplessly as the bullets tore into her beautiful dark skin, her eyes wild with fear. They hit the ground simultaneously, arms and legs flailing powerlessly about.

  The two companions came to a stop at the crossroads of the trails, their bodies broken and silent. The train hammered on, its horn blaring through the cold wind. Evandish caught one last glimpse of the Knights who turned their focus back on the tracks, ignoring him like nothing had happened, the cold blue glow from their goggles fading in the distance. His gaze fell upon Ralli, who was lying lifelessly to his side, before he too closed his eyes for the last time—a look of horror frozen on his face.

  Chapter 1: The Past Unveiled

  “Reality is only an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

  ~Albert Einstein

  Time: 10:14 a.m. January 19, 2071

  Location: Sector of Governmental Services. Lunia, Tisaia

  It was mid-morning and Spurious Timur sat in his cubicle, staring at his goldfish, Archie. Slowly the small fish fluttered his fins and swam about the bowl. Sporadically, he peered through the glass with interest at the outside world, a place so large the small fish could never comprehend its complexity. And yet, the goldfish stared back at him, his gills puffing in and out, as if he was trying to understand what lay beyond his glass walls.

  Ironically, Spurious lived primarily in a space equivalent to that of Archie’s. The only difference was the young man was surrounded by four white walls connected to form a cubicle, where he worked 10 hours a day, 60 hours a week.

  Archie darted towards the surface of his glass home as Spurious reached over and dropped a pinch of food in the water. He smiled, watching his fish peck aggressively at the small morsels.

  “So that’s what you wanted. No wonder you were staring at me. I bet you were pretty hungry,” Spurious whispered, too quietly for other pods to hear.

  Forgetting his small friend, he turned and faced his blue screen, slouching in his plush chair. The scent of bleach and paper prompted him to sneeze. The odor was something he had never gotten used to, even after his five years of working in the same place. There were always service workers in their ocean blue uniforms, cleaning the work spaces with bleach in hope of preventing germs from spreading.

  The smell never ceased to remind him of his first day at SGS. He could still remember the floors of windowless rooms with artificial light and the stuffy tunnels below the building—their twisted pipes lining the thick concrete walls like synthetic veins. And he certainly would never forget the first time he entered his office, sitting down only to see the web of ventilation above like bars on a holding cell. It was then he knew his cubicle wasn’t a work station—it was a prison.

  The clock struck 10:15 a.m. and Remus, a service worker, showed up with his small cordless vacuum cleaner.

  “Good morning Spurious,” he smiled, pushing his tiny vacuum into Spurious’ workstation.

  “Do you mind if I vacuum in here right now?”

  Spurious didn’t need to look up to see the crooked grin painted across Remus’ face. It was the same grin he saw every morning, a grin that repeated itself day after day like everything else. He simply nodded and motioned Remus into his cubicle.

  Remus, like many of the other service workers, was developmentally disabled. In fact, most of the service workers employed at his office suffered from some condition preventing them from obtaining other work. Their attitudes, however, did not reflect their miserable jobs.

  The only thing Remus and Spurious seemed to have in common was their unique family stories. Both of their parents were killed by a bomb during the early years of the Biomass Revolution. And every day Spurious saw the young service worker’s crooked grin he was reminded of it.

  “All done, Spurious; you have a good day now, you hear?”

  “You too Remus, see you tomorrow.”

  Spurious watched Remus drag his vacuum down the hall towards the paper stations. He stopped to replace the disappearing stacks of yellowed paper with more stacks, reminding Spurious of his aging childhood book that survived the wars.

  “Good morning Remus,” chirped Zaria, a secretary that worked just down the hall from Spurious.

  “Well hey there, Zaria, how are you doing? Did you watch the last fight at the dome? I heard the Samoan warrior put on a great show,” Remus said, putting a stack of papers back onto the table.

  “No. I couldn’t make it, but I have heard a few people discussing his victory this morning. I overheard he has won the past four fights and if he wins the next one, he will gain his freedom. Is that true?”

  “Get back to work, Remus! Don’t bother other employees,” shouted his supervisor, Mr. Sturm.

  Remus looked back down at the carpet and pushed his vacuum cleaner out of Zaria’s office, acknowledging his supervisor’s request with a simple nod.

  Sturm followed Remus and the other service workers everywhere, hunting them with a clipboard and checking off the tasks they performed with the same methodical stroke of his pen.

  Spu
rious never heard anyone call him by his first name, and all of the service workers referred to him specifically as Mr. Sturm. Some days he wondered if Sturm wanted them to suffer.

  The slow tick from a nearby clock echoed in his ear, reminding him of how structured his life had become. Having lived his entire life in Tisaia, Spurious knew nothing else. The world beyond the great steel walls was as foreign to him now as it was when he was a child. Like other State workers, he only knew what the State taught him and what he saw with his own eyes.

  He could remember only a few things about his childhood. He knew his father was a factory worker in one of the first Biomass factories. His mother was a boarding school teacher for immigrant children before the State had passed Law 99 in 2051. The law deemed any immigrant taken in through the gates of Tisaia in the last decade to be an illegal citizen. The result was deportation back into the Wastelands—a virtual death sentence. A Justice committee was established and a squad of Royal Knights was dispatched throughout Tisaia to find all illegal immigrants and transport them to the camps to process them for deportation. After Law 99 his mother had been out of work.

  Spurious frowned, reminded that he could scarcely remember his parents faces. It wasn’t the only thing he had forgotten. It seemed he could not recall what it was like to be happy; his purpose was only to provide administrative support to his superiors. Over the years he had come to accept his fate, but deep down he had always wished there was something more to his life.

  Spurious swiped at his holographic blue screen to transfer data from a file he had received to a spreadsheet. As he finished up his report, the crystal blue screen began to pulsate, indicating he had a new message. He swiped the screen with his index finger to unlock the incoming message, watching the blue background fade and a white screen emerge. “Sound,” he commanded.