Canabalt – A Techno-Thriller

(Inspired by the classic game)

Part 1

The midday sun filtered down through the clouds, giving the sky a uniform gray cast. There was an ominous feel to the air, as a brief tremor shook the buildings. The local landscape consisted of multi-story buildings, some in reasonable shape, others in obvious disrepair, all from an undefined period in history, after brick, but before modern skyscrapers. The place was also seemingly infested with pigeons, their gray plumage causing them to stand out on the ledges where they roosted. The tremors didn't disturb them from their perches.

As another tremor shook the ground, there was the sharp sound of shattering glass, as a figure burst through one of the large windows of one tower, falling outwards and landing on the adjacent rooftop in a controlled roll, before springing to his feet, and smoothly beginning to run. The speed of the figure's passage caused his tie to whip up to one side, as pigeons burst into the air. His run seemed almost effortless, and any listening ears would have heard a reciprocal whine every time his feet struck the ground.

Although outwardly he appeared to be a tall, dusky-skinned male of indeterminate age and build, Steve Forrest was feeling every one of his thirty-six years. An amateur inventor by trade, he'd made a little money participating in various robotics challenges before the war. The machinery he was currently wearing under his black business suit was a product he'd customized, but had arisen from the efforts he and thousands of others had contributed to in the defense of humankind.

As he continued to run, he let his mind drift slightly, recalling some of what had led to his current predicament… After the mamono had come through their dimensional gates in a bid to escape their dying world, their leaders had assumed (incorrectly) that planet Earth would fall to their advance in the same way their old world had.

That assumption had nearly led to their undoing, as the humans of Earth (both male and female) were not only highly resistant to the dark energies that the more magical races possessed, but they were far better equipped to repel the rapacious advances of the more bestial races as well.

After the first towns had been attacked in North America, the US, Canadian, and Mexican armies had mobilized, with the first divisions trading land for time, and establishing containment barriers around the places the gates had appeared.

When the towns in the affected areas, and the very land beneath them had begun to become tainted by dark energy, the US military had responded with the first nuclear deployments on home soil since the prolific testing of the previous century. Fortunately (or unfortunately), they had only needed to do that twice before the invaders had learned not to set up in large numbers and in one place for too long.

The result had been that the monsters changed their techniques, becoming more raiders than invaders, ambushing and dragging away unsuspecting humans into infested forests, underground warrens, and castles that seemed to pop up out of nowhere. North America having a surprisingly low population density in its interior made this a more viable tactic than one would initially assume.

The result of this was that the US military had to refocus its training and efforts on high speed hostage rescue, and deep strike counter raids to extract kidnapped victims, and eliminate high-value targets. Even though the containment tactics of the early war weren't as viable, since the monsters themselves seemed to gravitate towards specific regions and zones where they could use their abilities to the full.

Besides men, women had been kidnapped in numbers as well, despite their far higher resistance to monsterization than women of the mamono's old world. It was later discovered that this was in part for research purposes, the results of which had almost directly led to a cessation in hostilities. It wasn't Steve's field of expertise, but when some of the more intelligent monsters had collaborated with human scientists, one of the driving forces (male offspring) of the entire invasion had been remedied. This was in no small part due to the fact that once the mamono crossed into Earth's dimension, their connection to that world was fully severed, including the bulk of their lewder impulses. This made the initial invaders far smarter, and more cunning than even they themselves had realized at first.

Still, smarter monsters had made the military's rescue missions more difficult, and that was where Steve and his colleagues had been given their moment. When the call had gone out for engineers, roboticists, and mechanics to develop solutions for the human physiological disadvantages when combating monsters, they had answered the call, and one of the products they had created was currently strapped to Steve's body at that very moment.

The Mk IX A.T.L.A.S. (Advanced Tactical Load-bearing Action System) Exoskeleton, built by Armatech Industries, was based around several technologies from Boston Dynamics, coupled with research by Sarcos, and contributions from Raytheon, IBM, and other global partners. While the first products had been barely useful, the introduction of viable, long-life polymer-based electro-myomers, and other exotics into the mix had greatly improved them, granting even a novice operator strength amplification, increased speed, and agility, and a ready platform to attach modular sensors, tools, and weapons to that enabled even raw recruits to stand up to any creature from the mamono side.

Which brought him back to the present day, running for his life (not really, but close enough) across the rooftops of a drab, prototypical cityscape, in a bid to evade the creatures that pursued him and the twenty-five others who had volunteered this season.

This cityscape was in fact the "set" for the local edition of the semimonthly "Pursuit Challenge", one of a series of measure put into place to provide for both humanity, and mamono, in the peacetime stability that had come following the war. The monsters could satisfy their (still present, just nowhere near as all-consuming) desires to pursue and find a mate, and the humans could grant those who were not interested in being pursued, or who wanted a new type of thrill, a venue to experience it. Of course, the fact that it was televised had more than made up for the costs in its construction.

Seen from overhead, the city formed an odd-edged rectangular swath, almost half a mile across, and five miles long, laid out in a standard city grid. The entire cityscape rose out of an otherwise isolated stretch of territory, with rolling hills, and a small town aligned on one of the place's long sides. The town served as a staging area for the contestants, and a place for the humans to size up their pursuers. The only real rules were that lethal force (guns, explosives, poison gas, acid, fire, etc.) was prohibited on the human side, and coercive elements (pollen, nectar, pheromones, hypnosis, etc.) were not permitted by the pursuing monsters.

Once the starting signal went off, the humans had thirty minutes to race into the city, and choose a starting point within a quarter mile of the starting line before they could begin making it the long way through. Once the monsters set off, it was up to them to track down and capture one. The monsters were allowed to team up, but since they tended to single out one man in particular, that only worked until one team member found her man, and the team would then either reorganize, or break apart entirely.

The big twist was that the monsters could enter the course from any point, while the humans had to work their way across. Naturally, they were prohibited from entering within a half mile of the finish line, but it would make getting through without a single monster encounter far trickier than one would initially assume.

The humans were allowed to use any "reasonable" advantage to evade the monsters, and make it to the other side, where they could obtain a "non-pursuit" waiver, allowing the bearer to be free from pursuit out in the real world for a period of at least one year. The $25,000 cash prize didn't hurt either... Most of the men typically opted for vehicles, which could provide some advantages, but carried no small element of risk. Heavy machinery was on the banned list though, after one man had used a military surplus APC to cannonball all the way to the finish line. (Even his fellow contestants had looked at him askance)

To "keep things interesting", as the joint Human-Lillim corporation that had created the course phrased it, the entire environment was considered "destructible", with random tremors sent through the ground, and various buildings that could collapse if triggered in certain ways. That, and other surprises made the pursuit fairer, as even a dismounted human could make a go of it if they could manipulate the terrain to their advantage, between the streets, the rooftops, underground tunnels, and elevated walkways that cris-crossed the area. To top it all off, the time limit for ither catching a mate, or escaping the course, was ten hours.

Steve had equipped his exoskeleton with regeneratively charged compressed gas thrusters, twin grappling lines, climbing pads, and the smaller "speed" myomer packs over the larger "strength" packs. Although he had doubled up on the strand density to compensate, he wasn't quite sure it would be enough. Still, that was where the other components, from the auxiliary cameras in the skeletal helmet that covered his bald head, to the extra sensors and upgraded computers came in…

At the moment, he was running across a rooftop barely half a mile into the course, and debating his choice to make his move right at that moment. If he was being honest, the tremors, while expected, had startled him. Were they starting early? The thirty-minute grace period hadn't even expired yet, and the functions of the course itself were starting to come alive.

There had been a pretty odd bunch of monsters back there… The pursuers this time had been fairly mixed, with a mantis, a hornet, three harpies of different subspecies, including a cockatrice, a couple werewolves, an echidna, two manticores, a quintet of orcs, three goblins, an Arachne, an elf and large mouse team, a couple hellhounds, a kakuen, and a 4-eyed gazer, of all things.

(For obvious reasons, the two teams hadn't met in person, since that would have given the canine monsters a clear advantage, not that the others couldn't track by scent either…)

Still, it was worth noting that the harpies were more likely to spot him on the roofs if he was going flat out (even the cockatrice), but moving slower meant that he could fall victim to an Arachne trap if he took too long. The elf and mouse would be excellent at tracking, not to mention the other canines if he stuck solely to the ground, and the hornet was maneuverable enough to catch him out if he spent too much time climbing. The manticores were a threat no matter what, and the orc pack would likely be using a vehicle. The echidna and the mantis couldn't hope to catch him. The kakuen and the gazer were the biggest wildcards.

Fortunately, his suit was actually a vantablack-enhanced solar collector, so electrical power for all subsystems wasn't an issue, even with the overcast. He wasn't sure about a couple of his fellow competitors, though. One man had brought his motorcycle, and the machine would definitely draw attention. Still, maybe the fellow had a better plan than it seemed, since the echoes of the engine off the canyons of concrete would actually confuse where the machine was actually located…

The other men had almost represented a cross-section of north American manhood, from a couple weedy academic types, to one man who was so muscular, he could have gone toe-to-toe with either of the manticores with no problem. One of the nerdier competitors was using a backpack sensor suite of small drones to surveil his entire surroundings, opting for a stealth approach, while one of the others had opted for camouflage, and a bicycle. He had camouflaged himself as a dumpster.

Steve wished him luck.

One of the other, more enterprising men had built what he called a "roller suit", basically some light armor, but covered in wheels, and equipped with a chest-mounted drive unit. The idea was sound, on its face, anyways… Another had gone full traditional, and was wearing medieval-style plate armor. (manufactured with modern technology, but still…) Then again, he could have been hiding an exoskeleton, like Steve. One of the more "normal" men had just brought his car, and apparently was planning to just blend in with the other empty vehicles randomly scattered around, only moving when no one was looking.

A couple of the more "jock" athletic types had opted to just run straight down the main avenue of the cityscape, or maybe one of the side streets, confident they could cover the five-mile course in under thirty minutes. If they could do it, more power to them, but they would likely be so gassed by the time they reached the half mile "safe zone" where a pursuing monster couldn't enter the course on a direct intercept, that a pursuer from the rear would have more than an adequate chance to catch up.

And that brought him back around to the current situation once again. How exactly did I even end up here? Oh, right, hubris. After the war had ended humanity had worked to impose measures to keep those who were too young, or in specific positions from unwanted pursuit by amorous mamono. One of the agreed-upon measures was that men in "essential" strategic positions, such as military, industrial, or research positions were off limits, and Steve's position as an engineer at the company had kept him exempt. Not that he was even interested, since working on machines was his favorite pastime.

It had all started when the company began scaling back its research division, demobilizing personnel from several departments by offering generous early retirement packages. With the new openings now available, Steve had been angling for either department head, or lead engineer in the company's heavy weapons division, specifically the division where they worked on miniaturizing some of humanity's larger weapons into forms that were man-portable. The current project they were working on in tandem with Saab Bofors Dynamics was to come up with an even lighter edition of the Carl Gustaf that could be easily equipped to a combat exoskeleton while sidestepping most of the penalties incurred by that weapon's massive launch shock.

To that end, the department had been working on an adapted form of the ATLAS Mk IX with integrated shock protection, and enhanced maneuvering capability. Part of that design had included working to reduce the number of operators of the weapon to one, while retaining the rate of fire found in typical use. To wit, that was what had specifically landed Steve in the position he currently found himself. The department's head, a man named Williams, had asked for volunteers in testing the Mk IX in a "real-world" scenario. "Real-world" in this case referring to urban warfare. (Not that there were active hostilities with the bulk of the mamono right now… Still, it never hurt to be prepared, and rogue monsters, or worse, groups of monsters, were still a valid concern)

This was especially true of the more belligerent subspecies, such as baphomet, manticores, minotaurs, hellhounds, and ushi-oni. One thing those types also had in common was their incredibly sturdy bodies, and thus, it took either concentrated small-arms fire, or anti-tank weapons to take one down. Not even a baphomet can shrug off an 84mm anti-tank round to the sternum, the reasoning went. And attaching said 84mm weapon to a system capable of outmaneuvering a belligerent mamono at close range was seen as an essential application.

And so, after volunteering to test the Mk IX variant, and a whirlwind of paperwork, it was that Steve found himself on a rooftop on a thinly disguised hunting show, all to prove to his bosses that the new exoskeleton prototype had what it would take in a real-world scenario. Fortunately, if Steve could make it to the end of the course, it had been arranged that the prize money would still be his, even though he was technically competing on behalf of a corporation, and had no need of the "no pursuit" waiver. As an added bonus, the success would prove that the MK IX was the best exoskeleton on the market, even in the current relative peacetime, and thus far superior to the offerings produced by EuroCorp, PanPacific Defense, and UDF.

On the other hand, if one of the monsters caught him…

Don't think about it.

In the distance, an air raid siren wailed once, and faded out.

Now, it was time to Run.