Force Majeure

by WiseKensai

Terrance anxiously twisted his wedding band on his finger, feeling the silicone of his duty ring grate against his chapped skin. Weren’t these LHOSTs supposed to be free of such literal irritations? Come to think of it, was he married? He couldn’t remember what his spouse looked like. What resurrection was he on now? Terrance had lost count ages ago. At least his geist was the same, but if it wasn’t, would he know?

No matter. Duty called. Terrance stopped fidgeting with his wedding? band and flicked his fingers, a gesture his comlog recognized and dutifully obeyed, flashing a new case file onto his datapad. Now that the Combined Army was setting up shop on HueOS, there was just an absolute deluge of new cases landing in his inbox. Most, of course, were related to parking violations. For some reason Morats thought their Hungries life forms could be “parked” like a REM or passenger vehicle, when of course that was simply ridiculous.

The situation was simply deteriorating past his ability to control it, especially in the staff parking areas of the Averroes Hospital Campus. Yara Haddad herself had been in his office glaring down at him silently while her companion read off a very formal and very angry sounding complaint from the Haqqislamite leadership in system.

Terrence sighed heavily. This new case report was no different, yet another Morat “parking violation” on the Averroes Campus. Yara had of course made her point when she had turned to leave, her coat “accidentally” falling open to reveal a very illegal and very dangerous viral pistol in a waist holder. The only reason he hadn’t arrested her on the spot was the same reason he couldn’t just shoot the damned Hungries the Morats were leaving everywhere–diplomatic immunity.

In any case, the message was clear: if O-12 parking enforcement didn’t handle this, the Hassassins would handle it for them. A tiny blue flower blossomed in the periphery of Terrance’s vision, projected into the augmented reality datasphere by his geist. His display, for lack of a better word, glitched? That wasn’t supposed to happen. 

Before he could think about it too hard (and hurt himself), Terrance was interrupted. “Dispatch to all units,” a voice boomed from his comlog’s external speakers. “We have an active incident in Sector 2 of the Averroes Campus. Any available O-12 personnel to respond immediately with riot control gear to capture and contain xenoforms.” Terrance tapped his comlog and marked himself as responding to the call and rushed out the door of his office, forgetting to sign out of his desk datapad where a small blue flower now winked innocuous and serene in the corner.

Terrance got off his sidebot motorcycle in front of a pressure door that had been… clawed? that was the only appropriate word… that had been clawed open. Hands that didn’t feel like his unlimbered his Riotstopper, repeated resurrections making it impossible for him to fully believe that this body was his own. As the authorization patches in his engineered LHOST palms synced with the grips of the weapon, a End User License Agreement (EULA) cheerily popped up in his vision.

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This End-User License Agreement (hereinafter, “Agreement”) creates a legally binding Agreement between you, as an end user of our services (hereinafter, “End User”), and O-12. You will be referred to through second-person pronouns such as “your” and “yours.” We, O-12,  will be referred to with pronouns such as “us,” “our,” and “ours.” Collectively, you and O-12 may be referred to as the “Parties” and individually as “Party.”

This license governs the use of all of our Riotstopper products, hereinafter “products”), specifically the M-182 general dispersion Riotstopper currently in your hands. By accessing, wielding, or otherwise using our Products, you agree to be bound by this Agreement in its entirety. If you do not agree, you must cease use of the Product immediately.

When you lawfully access the Product, whether through purchase, issue, or other lawful means, we grant you, subject to all of the terms and conditions of this Agreement, a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited, revocable personal license to to use the Product (“License”). This License extends to the use of documentation, data, or information developed by O-12, and other materials that may assist in your use of the Product. This License may not be transferred to third parties without express, lawful, written permission from O-12 and this license terminates upon your cessation of use of the Product.

This License does not grant you the right to consume the Riot Foam produced by the product, as it is unequivocally inedible. Any enticing aroma, sensations related to hunger, or other attractiveness of the Riot Foam is purely coincidental. Do NOT eat the Riot Foam.

FORCE MAJEURE: O-12 is not liable for any failure to perform due to causes beyond its reasonable control including, but not limited to, acts of ALEPH, acts of civil authorities, acts of military authorities, riots, embargoes, acts of nature and natural disasters, and other acts which may be due to unforeseen circumstances.

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Terrance wiggled the barrel of the Riotstopper around furiously until his comlog interpreted the wiggling as the appropriate gesture to dismiss the EULA agreement from his vision. He had made the mistake of taking his hand off the grip of his weapon to make the gesture to dismiss the message, and when he returned his hand to the grip it has just popped up again. Infuriating. While he couldn’t convince his superiors of this, Terrace believed the stupid EULA popping up again was the cause of resurrection #9 in the earliest days of his career.

Of course, he had to be careful that he didn’t wiggle the Riotstopper around too furiously, as that would register as reckless endangerment of any nearby civilians. At the moment,, he didn’t see any and his geist didn’t detect any, but who knew what the data logs would show. He briefly considered firing the Riotstopper at his own feet to put an end to this whole ordeal. While he’d never hear the end of it in the cafeteria, it wasn’t like any O-12 officers had ever been fired for incompetence before, so at least he’d keep his job.

With a quick glance at his local map display, Terrance saw that there was a small squad of Bluecoats en route to his position, but they were at least 10 minutes away. Just before he settled in to wait, he heard a faint human? scream emanating from the tunnel beyond the clawed (definitely clawed) open pressure door. Well, the whole point of Riotstoppers existing was so that officers of the law could shoot first and ask questions later, so Terrance charged forward into the blackness of the tunnel, Riotstopper leading the way.

As he rounded the first corner, soft red emergency lights winked on, casting strange and confusing shadows on the walls of the maintenance tunnel he found himself in. Another scream… left at the next junction? Left. He jogged past a huge link of chain just lying in the maintenance tunnel, and another massive claw mark gouged into the floor, much too large to be from one of the Hungries.

Terrance pushed deeper into the labyrinthe maintenance tunnels, his map display turning into a confusing mess of blue and red lines superimposed atop one another, as his geist wasn’t quite able to determine if he was in a maintenance tunnel or the actual corridors of the hospital complex that the tunnels served. He’d have to get the Lambdas to look at that later. The screams were getting louder and more frequent now, stabbing into his ears to punctuate the hammering of his heart as Terrance broke into a sprint.

He rounded the last corner… had that last scream turned into a wet gurgle? That wasn’t good. He looked up at the ceiling as something registered in his peripheral vision, scuttling towards him rapidly. Terrance was no dummy, he knew to look up for threats! Of course, this meant he wasn’t looking down, at the gaping shaft below him, and his foot found an open drop into the bowels of HueOS’s maintenance systems.

Terrance’s geist flashed an imminent death warning up for him, as if he didn’t already know that the landing at the bottom of this shaft would turn him into a wet sack of meat and shattered bones. Thinking quickly, he fired his Riotstopper on maximum dispersion, creating a net of rapidly hardening Riot Foam in front of him to arrest his fall.

He opened his mouth to shout in victory at his clever and quick thinking, and then immediately had his mouth and nose filled with rapidly expanding and solidifying foam as his safety net enveloped him. Unfortunately, he was still conscious as the foam popped his jaw out of socket from the force of expansion. Mercifully, however, he was already dead by the time the EULA violation emails began to flood his inbox. You aren’t, after all, supposed to eat the foam.