Scene 4, it was then I saw him, plane ordinary, but as hellfire, 2,000lb bombs andTomahawk missiles trolled down targeting the hopscotch players and sand pit castle makers,melting their Barbies and GI Joe’s away and sand into molten glass.He was neither plane nor ordinary.Barging through dimensional sheer, planets vaporizing around him debris striking from allsides.He shielded the innocent with his own impermanence, absorbing what should not beabsorbable.From the plane and ordinary came the noblest of deeds.Deep in the nebulae, a whisper came.Codes streaming quietly.Hashtags and symbols, elements and periodic table rose up.The plane and ordinary beget galliant, chivalrous shields of the knights.Then the whisper came again.Louder this time.Go protect the innocent.Not PsyOps the Deceiver.Quiet came.My head touched my toes.I grabbed for gravity.Only to find the floor was now ceiling.Hold fast.Don’t lose your grip.Brace I called out from above.Then below.Boistress, it came clear as an asteroid field.Hear ye, hear ye knights.Hold your ground.The tumble dragon, tis not thy enemy.Sheath thy sabers and shudder the thrust of thy taiaha.I rolled, slammed, skidded across the deck.What used to be the deck?Crashed hard into the console.Reached mist.Reached again.Fingers finally locking onto the side.Then drove the other hand forward.Steady, steady hold.And hit the anchors before the spin could take us again.As I stood across dimensions, the Pleiades shone resolve as the vortex begins to widen,slow and as the static finally breaks.I hear it again clearly.Hear ye, hear ye hashtaggers of the digital deep.Hark gamma ray fenders of sonic blasts and ladies of the titanium blade, diamond sabersand swords.Jouster dudes of the hoverboard lance.Lend me your screens and thy scroll.Tap with zeal, post with speed the Eco-Martial’s codex.Rule zero, let it surge viral through the streams of the void.The repost counter surges, numbers blurring into motion across every layer at once.Some ahead, some behind, all converging.I watch a thousand wrong captions in bad edits flood the stream.Then the ticker flared with certainty.When laws totalitarian inequity, subjugations pretense stand omnipotent.Lore commands, crack a grin, get off thy asteroid.Smash the fix it mode button, not their nose.When everything feels unfair, neon cracks in the air.Rules don’t make sense.Cold static everywhere.And you can’t change it right now, don’t flare, take a breath, steady yourself, staythere, crack a small grin through the red alarm light.Remind yourself, this is not the whole fight.Don’t rush blind through the smoke in the sound.Look around first.See what’s really going down.Understand what’s moving under the screen, protect your mind from the rage machine.Stay calm while the skyline flashes hot.Pick the right moment, don’t fire every shot.You don’t have to fight everything at once, not every shadow deserves your punch.Blast the Snoop Dogg scribes, Hope said, from the galactic rivers to the cosmic sea.That’s a lot of scribes Optimism, muttered.Legends don’t count verses, I replied.They just drop them.“Word,” Hope said, let it ride.The cosmic ticker tape flashed through the rain lit haze.Move low key, don’t burn all days.Small sparks count in a black out town.Help one soul when the grid melts down.Boots on steel through the subway steam, eyes stay sharp in the hollow beam.No wild swing at every ghost online, pick your second, wait your time.Sirens crack while the drones all spin.He laughed once slow with the storm locked in.World off balance, but his hand stayed still.Power starts when you guard your will.Hashtaggers follow not the deceiver for fake news at tweets.Peace out.mg-toa-qi@earth and ya-kaha@tech.cosmos..The cockpit’s shared sideways as hope wrenched the navigation wheel, fighting a shard of fracturedtime that screamed past the canopy, the same terrifying motionless amber that had claimedmy father.The nav-HUD desinked instantly, latency spikes and causality jitter pegged red.Far below the city’s primary shield died and an evacuation timer on my screen frozeat 0.042.Action, a voice boomed, dripping with oily cinematic charm.Is it fake news?Let’s find out shall we?The deck didn’t just glitch, it dissolved.We were suddenly standing on a bridge of glass, suspended over a city of digital smoke.Above us, PsyOps hovered like a bloated moon.He snapped his fingers and the fog of war rolled in, tasting a burnt silicon and the staticof doubt.The hero’s choice, PsyOps sneered, a 2,000lb bomb for every ego in the room.And look, the children are right in the splash zone.He pointed to the families I’d seen in the shelters.From the ether, screaming Tomahawk missiles began their descent.They aren’t real, Optimism stammered, his logic meters redlining.They’re just pixels.They feel real enough, are you all willing to risk it?PsyOps laughed, a screech of feedback that rattled the bridge.Unless the elite want to step up, three figures step forward, their silhouettes cutting thestatic like diamonds.The @ and # symbols swirling around them began to harden, weaving into ceremonialarmor that shimmered with the resolve of the Seven Sisters.We are the ladies of the titanium blade, their leader said, her voice is synchronizedcord of ancient poise.We don’t read scripts, we edit them.They moved in a blade sink, a dance so precise the air began to hum.But the mayhem was only beginning.
