"Boots on the Ground" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by author Jeff C. Carter. It was first published in Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity by Broken Eye Books in January 2016.[1]
Synopsis[]
In the near future, a revolutionary technology which allows the user to "pilot" another person's body through use of connected neural networks is utilised by the USA's Central Intelligence Agency to combat terrorism in the mountain wildernesses of Afghanistan.
As fortune would have it, the latest "Remotely Piloted Civilian" is betrayed by a rival tribe during the course of his mission, and is sold out to a shadowy group which inhabits the caves beneath the rocky terrain. As the group prepares the poor unfortunate for sacrifice, the pilot witnesses the object of the group's worship - a colossal entity half-buried in a rock face - and is driven insane, tearing out his own eyes before embarking upon a murderous spree and, ultimately, dying at the hands of military police.
The story ends with the project's director demanding that Afghanistan be flooded with RPCs in an effort to discover how the group "hacked" his precious software, and to track down the mysterious object of their veneration…
Mythos Connections[]
The group which abduct the RPC are named as the Abd-Al-Hazred, which the CIA translate as "The Servants of the Great Lord." Near the story's conclusion, they are heard to chant "N’yarlathotep rabb thal’a Nazara!" which the computer translates as Arabic, meaning "Look upon the face of {non-standard/named entity: Nyar lath otep}.
Publication History [1][]
- Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity (2016)
- Strange Aeon: 2020: Lovecraftian Tales (2020)
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Title: "Boots on the Ground" at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database