NEON Lieben Preview Part 1

1/3 Foundation. The Kingdom is in the Crown

Bare feet padded along the grey shore of Ucluelet, British Columbia. All but the bravest locals were long indoors, as raucous waves crashed across the reef. The tang of salt water made the monolith spit on the grass. He sniffed the air, feet pressed against the earth as if waiting for it to pitch and yaw. The disequilibrium of life on the sea sloshed at rung ears. No wave or bend came to the solid ground, nor did he see the dim electric signs wobble in the storm.

'Storm Warning. Please Remain Indoors. Call For Emergency. Storm Warning...'

The script played in sigils Aderastos lived in ignorance of; no context for surf shops, boba tea & coffee cafe's. Neither the few vehicles on the street, tethered to blue glowing stands with battery icons.

'Haven'

Above all signs in ubiquitous scripts, a crown of fluctuant purple and pink neon light. The only recognizable thing in Aderastos’ mind was the crown.

The lights dimmed and flickered. Not even the Mater Machine, that Android Queen Lieben, could keep the storm from battering the Pacific Coast.

Aderastos' body left a trail of seawater back to the Carolina Channel. Serene android NEO-Nurses bustled between patients and visitors. The NEO-Ns remained immune to the tumult of humanity's raised voices and emotional conquests between hospital beds. Chitter chat of the storm, would it close down the pass on Highway 4, was as ignored as the wind.

Vibrational whirrs convalesced on his skin. From the vibration alone, and the lack of petrol fumes, Aderastos knew the auxiliary was a solar and wind powered battery-backup generator. Precisely how he knew such confoundities existed was as questionable as the symbols on the signs. As long as the sun or the wind continued, this place would remain attached to the Hymn Electric.

Bare feet slid on the linoleum floor. As unfamiliar as the beings who caterwauled within the strange nest. It seemed to grow from the Ucluelet soil in a steel beam forest, the foliage vast panes of storm-proof glass. Light strips stung his eyes, blank white light ran the length of every corridor.

He understood little of the languages the beings chittered, nor why they stopped to watch as his chest passed the tops of their heads.

Aderastos knew nothing but the flow of heartbeats, which resounded like a cacophonous orchestra lacking syncopation. NEO-Ns stopped as he entered patient wards. Android senses riled and scanned, while metal and silicone bodies became statues dedicated to the new humanity loved and conquered.

A world of the Mater Machine's design.

The elderly woman smacked dry lips and leaned her head on a thin pillow, eyes milked with cataracts. Was this the doctor? Her heart beat with the disequilibrium of a stumbling fawn. The muscles tied to her bones were as brittle as their stays, feet marred from too many years on retail floors with poor footwear. A woman's shoes were the domain of fashion's agonies, in her day. Beside her headboard, an acrylic screen shone awake at his touch. It rained cerulean light on the woman's fitful face.

Symptoms, blood tests, an fMRI. The asymmetrical heartbeat thu-u-ub-d-um-ubbed in syncope with what he heard.

He cast his eyes to the ward and saw naught but patients asleep, or others craning their necks at the intruder.

Aderastos put his hand on her cheek, frail bird of a creature. She jostled.

"Oh dear, sweet Jesus. Are you here to take me home?" She warbled, pupils wobbled in delirium. Aderastos' eyes closed as he felt for the heartbeat and with a tug, an easy inhalation, strengthened it. Colour swooped into her cheeks. The cloying tang of infection wafted away. Eyes became the clear chestnut of a childhood playing softball in West Vancouver, despite her twisted, birth-dropped left leg.

He turned, gasps shocked her from a pallid recline to sit up in bed.

"Nurse! Nurse!"

As Aderastos laid hands on each person in the room, the NEO-N remained an inanimate object. Patients quaked, squealed, reached.

"What's he doing!?"

"Call Security! Call a Doctor! Someone tweet it!"

"Don't miss me!"

"NEO-N! NEO-N, wake up!"

"Over here! Hey, the web's down."

"Don't leave me."

Each of the confounded beings received the Healer's hand. Heartbeats. Too many heartbeats clattered in his ears; a cacophony unignored. Teeth clanked in his jaw from the damp chill of his sea water soaked jumpsuit. Illumination bands oscillated multiple colours around a closet beside NEO-N recharge cubbies. Inside, scrubs by size. The largest scrub shirt stretched tight across his frame. Trousers snug, if short. Patients he touched rose from their beds, pecked at CIRCLET holocams and tried to call disembodied voices. Words garbled incoherent as the storm shuddered against the CIRCLET network.

Aderastos' silence deafened the charging mass. Patients well enough to leave their beds lined the hall, groped to get closer.

"H-hey! You! Who... where's your bracelet... Lou! Lou I found him! Gawd dangit your Mama fed you like a horse!" A man in identical scrubs chased down the hall after Aderastos. His hale heartbeat and the timbre of his voice sent his chatter down the list of priorities to those whose health fared worse.

Aderastos padded through the hospital in a heady fog. Their hearts thrummed and thudded into his body with the force of river waves cutting into a fledgling canyon. Each thub-dub he heard added to what the behemoth was denied: humanity in all its ailments, and grotesque accidents spread before him.