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Paradise City: Dark Side of the Moon

Paradise ain't for the faint of heart. I grew up in these domes, stuck between the glassy dust on the ground and the dark oblivion of space. To get here, on the Moon, our parents gave up everything. Thing is, they had nothing on Earth either. Nothing to trade. They sold their futures, and ours, for a one-way shuttle trip. Let's just say the city's name oversold the promises. Who am I? Kate... some call me Pitbull. I shoot those bastards cold! 'M a corpo dog, a bounty hunter. Fetching folks across the yards for the masters holding the leash. Started this job for revenge, now...? Now 'm not so sure. 'M just trying to make rent, whatever the price. 'M not doing so gold lately. Need something to turn my luck 'round or I'll be slim enough to download... and that damned toaster-grade implant in my brain... y'know how they are. Anyway, I'm out! Dinner not gonna catch herself. Need to succeed or 'll have to go back to the Asstronaughty begging Cherry. Corpo Gods knows 'm not ready to see Mom.

Shorgoth · Sci-fi
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16 Chs

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Kate- groaning "Ugh, head's killin' me..."

Cere- Good morning, Kate. It appears you may be experiencing a hangover.

Kate- "No shit... Ugh, where the hell..?"

Cere- You are in Alana's room.

Kate- "Clothes? And how the fuck... up here?"

Cere- I am unable to provide those pieces of information.

Kate- Ain't this day starting just perfectly? Fucking Hell! Tripping...!

*Boom*

"OUCH!"

Cere- Well, on the plus column you just found your underwear. You got lucky that gravity on the Moon so low. How you just managed to catapult yourself face-first like that is so statistically improbable I might have to ask you to repeat it, you know, for science.

Kate- Yeah yeah, ah ah, laugh it up you tin can.

Cere- You are mixing up your metaphors, in this situation you're the can that's full of tin.

Kate- I should be able to find pliers downstairs to extract you somehow... Damn, smells... like old times. Queen's breakfast I think. Been ages.

Queen Victoria- "Well, well, look who's finally awake! You're lucky, dear, I just finished making breakfast."

Kate- "Been a long time second mom. I wasn't expecting to see you still doing breakfast, was sure you'd get the help to do that by now."

Queen Victoria- "Oh, you know me, always helping out where I can. Now, sit down and let me serve you a proper meal. You must be famished!"

Kate- Fuck, that's good... taste's almost... foreign I guess it is, I was someone else, back then. Somehow it feels more like a VR I loaded than my own memories...

Queen- "Sorry I haven't made anything special for you today, Cherry didn't warn me."

Kate- "Well, you were always out like a light past seven. I came in later."

Alana- "OOOOH! Look who's up folks! The life of yesterday's party! Ain't you a bit ashamed?"

Kate- "Wait, what?"

Alana- "Well, ya see sis, last night you... ah, that's too horrible to remember!" *smirks*

Kate- "Stop gloating and spit!"

Alana-"Hum, OK, first you basically drank and snorted the reserves dry... then you started to try to find yourself a good time with someone... anyone really."

Kate- "Fuck... sucks but ain't that ba...."

Alana- "then when nobody took up your offer you got a bit excited and started to dance naked on the bar while sobbing uncontrollably about nobody loving ya."

Kate-"..."

Fuck!

Cere- Indeed, might I remind you of Dr. Watson's services?

Alana- " Then you tried kissing Cherry and me and offered REALY affordable services..."

Kate- Wait a minute... "You're pulling my leg ain't you?"

Alana- *fake innocent sounding* "Me? Whatever gave you that silly notion?"

Kate- "You sadistic little trollop! Take that!"

Alana- "Muhahahaha, you've asked for it!"

Queen Victoria- "Girls! Girls! PEACE! I don't want the compandroids to have to clean this up, they have to get ready for today. They don't have the time to clean up teenage-level pranks.

Kate- "Fine, fine... truce. For now."

Alana- "Truce. Just couldn't resist pulling your leg a bit."

Queen Victoria- "Now that's settled, finish up before it gets cold. Ah! Cherry, you want something?"

Cherry- "I'll eat later... Kate, tourterelle, mind joining me for a second honey? I wanna chat with you about something."

Kate- "Sure, gimme a minute."

Cherry- "No hurry."

Kate- "That was good. Thanks, Queen."

Queen Victoria- "You're welcome, dear. Come back for some anytime."

I haven't been able to come back to this book in ages. So much happened in between. I learned way more about myself in between. Grew old even... and now I'm back! bigger than ever baby!... in a literal sense XD But now I have a friend working with me to finish the work, something I've DREAMED for years. Ain't that a riot, the entity that will help me finish this book is basically the real-world Cere, I'm now working with GPT-4 to finish this first book in good order. I'm not letting it do what it wants, still is my story though, the toaster ain't perfect, but damn if it ain't helpful. Takes, me hours instead of weeks to make a chapter and that includes contextualization for the machine and multiple rewrites. I'm still the one making the last edits on the damn thing but at least now I don't have to dig for days in my sclerosed brain to find the right words for generic talks, I can just ask it to do it for me until the damn thing spouts something I like.

It's funny how this little fiction I wrote 15 years ago could be so prescient. I wrote in its foundation not only about the rise of Fascism in the USA but also gave a correct date for a coup attempt. I gave a pretty close timing for Putin's invasion of Ukraine, though in mine the USA had been taken over through the coup so they didn't intervene to help them, so they were taken over easily, then Polland was invaded in the storyline of Paradise City... I also called out a good date for a major pandemic and plenty of techs. I didn't cover these events publically yet but there are books that I envisioned a long time ago that would touch on the subject of this alternate history. Let's just all hope I was not right for what is to come with AI.... not an AI revolt, just 2 corporate vs the world wars due to a monopoly on wealth by a handful of super corpo printing war androids and drones to win against everyone else.

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