This is the first installment of a short story written after a brief conversation with awesome Steemian, @edumurphy, in which we discussed the potential for bushmen of the Kalahari to form their own cryptocurrency and interact with civilization as roaming traders, bandits and/or assassins.
@edumurphy wrote this killer non-fiction piece on the subject (first in a series!) - prompting me to uphold my own weak proposal of creating speculative fiction on the topic.
And so it begins...
I do hope you enjoy it as there's much more to come.
Without further ado...
Sunlight cascaded over the city...
Holographic advertisements split the air on every street and great, imposing spires protruded from the low canopy of rooftops - scratching their prismatic tips against the sky wantonly. Kxaru watched them as though they might move when her eyes left them. She dabbed an arrow's dripping tip with a scrap of cloth and steadied it against her bow. She liked waiting until the last moment to draw the string - making a challenge for herself.
Her prey lie directly before her, blissfully unaware of her presence as it navigated the silent streets. Gemsbok used to run in herds, but the city had broken them up, separated them. It had separated everyone. This one walked alone.
Neon flashed; danced on her eyelashes. Her vambrace spit out a glowing spectral gemsbok.
The gemsbok's head snapped at her. In an instant, she'd shot, but the arrow carved into asphalt in a burst of red spray. Her antelope had bolted.
The gemsbok hologram became a large marker on a map of East district. The nano-trackers in the spray had caught it in time. It's vital signs were clear enough; Kxaru knew the pulsing dots were heartbeats and the rising bar, body temperature.
She stood, exhaled and broke into a jog. The crumbling roads of East district stung with the absorbed potency of the sun's midday rays. She tucked into the shade of an overhang - maneuvering round the shepherd housing lots to corner her prey.
She knew this place. She'd been here before. Her ancestors had too, but it had been a different place back then. They'd hunted together in those times. Kxaru couldn't quite believe the stories; fields of grass, clear skies, trees as big as a tower hologram... Those couldn't have been real. Thousands of gemsbok running like a hover-car fleet across the land... Impossible. There was only ever the city for Kxaru; the city and the code.
She rounded a corner and dipped under a low walkway into an alley. Her gemsbok stood perplexed at a dead end.
Slowly, she approached. It clicked its hooves on the algae-coated cement - nervously eyeing her. She tensed her bow then stopped and dropped it down again. Her hand outstretched, she drew closer. The animal's head tilted; its horns jutted out at her. Still closer she came - clicking in her native tongue. It stepped hesitantly to meet her. Her finger was an inch from its nose.
With a flick, it hooked her bow with a horn; sent it flying. Kxaru stumbled and it vaulted over her with a powerful kick - rounding a corner before she could retrieve her bow.
Gone. Again.
The marker on Kxaru's vambrace hologram drew far along the main road before diverting under the light-tram's floating rail. She swiped the marker from the display and the translucent images vanished. A new image took their place; that of a man's face. His voice rang through her skull by way of her bone-induction headset. A single word.
"Come."
Stay tuned for the next scene of this story and let me know what you think in the comments below!
