Red and the Wasps

Why you should be interested in Red5:


Upon his escape from "Sphere", some sort of hive-city where humans are harvested, Red5 trekked West, to Grand Junction, Colorado. I don't have a fix on where Sphere is located, but Red had never seen snow before. Granted, this guy comes from a post-apocalyptic version of the US. Colorado may be the only place that gets snow.

So, this guy, and apparently most humans, are implanted with cybernetics to make them more efficient workers, and to keep them alive after they've been harvested. Harvested for what, I have no friggen clue.

Anyway, Red5 makes his way out to Colorado. He holes up in this high rise condo and finds some sort of outlet to jack into, cause of course he has some sort of data feed plug grafted into his body. Anyway, turns out Red has been reading all these snippets of "history" from the present day and shortly after. Near as I can tell, history as we know it has been wiped from any digital archive. So the only thing left for him to read is the garbage of the internet. Red learns everything about the ancient past, our present, through game reviews, fan fiction, 4chan, bad bad stuff.

So Red figures out a way, through bizarre technology, mysticism or the grace of God, to contact the past in hopes that he can alter the future. So, he takes a shot and establishes a connection to this blog, which in hindsight, was a fruitful endeavor. It was difficult, physically painful and has produced no results other than for me to have e-mailed him instructions on hydroponics and tips for farming in poor soil.

After being emotionally devastated by finding out his entire view of history and religion has been wrong, he asks me for advice. I tell him to find a nice, sheltered place to stay; explore his new digs a little.

He goes on a little adventure up a few flights of stares. He finds lots of rooms, most cleared out, but some abandoned in a hurry. There isn't a whole lot of useful stuff, but some of the clothing, bedding and preserved goods could be useful. Heartened, he continues up. A couple floors more and he opens the door to the stairwell to find a change of scenery. Instead of old, expensive carpeting, everything looks like a cave.

Red5, remembering some ill chosen words from his new friend, Robbery Joe, he goes to explore. He turns a corner and sees a yellow head with tweedling mandibles, antennae and segmented eyes throwing back his own reflection. Startled, he screams and throws his arms up in defense. In doing so, he activates his implanted soldering iron. The heat and brief contact are enough to pierce the wasp's eye and splatter gunk all over Red.

The wasp starts shrieking and rolling over and over in place. Red's fascinated and horror struck. He doesn't notice the musky smell filling the cavelike chamber. The other wasps notice though. Instantly, wasps are chewing at each other, stinging, bursting though the strange paper walls that make up their nest. Red, lost in the maze of tunnles jukes, turns, rips through walls of his own until finally he makes it to a glass wall; a ceiling to floor window. He charges it, raises his massive, cybernetic arms and rams it, over and over into the shatterproof glass, spiderwebbing it.

As the clicking and bug-screaming wash over him from behing, he turns. The wasps, maddened by the chemical released by their injured hive-mate, swarm over Red. Each is the size of a German Shepard. Red, backed against the window, is lanced several times, many are just surface wounds but one sticks into his belly and feels like it punctures something important.

With each new wasp comes a shockwave of pain. With Red, and the wasps, pressed against it, the window finally shatters from the intense weight. Together, in one buzzing, roiling ball they topple through. Red's decent is slows by the flapping wings of an exceptionally lard insect who has him speared through the meat on his thigh.

Displaying inhuman presence of mind, Red grabs the wasp's sting with both hands and leans back ward, keeping the barb in place, but also forcing the mutant beast toward the ground.

No one knew the wasps could spit up acidic juices when frightened.

Red5 caught about a coffee cup full in the face. It wasn't enough to melt his eyes or dissolve his bone, but he's got some nasty scaring. It was too much for Red. He let go to cover his face. The stinger slid out of his thigh.

Through sheer luck, rather than level headedness, Red performed a midair sommersalt and landed on the back of another buzzing insect, struggling to right itself. By this time he was close enough to the ground to crush the insect beneath him when they both slammed into the ground.

And they kept coming.

He ran a couple blocks into an abandoned house, abandoned for twenty years or more and set the place ablaze. He waited in the house until the wasps stopped coming. Yeah, he set a house on fire, and then waited inside. He only waited a matter of minutes, but still, you do that.

As soon as it was safe he left the house and crawled into another. He plugged himself into the houses atomic feed, which of course, is still working. From there, the nanomachines did most of the work healing his body.

Red5 should be your hero.

-Joe