Jacob went to the door, paused at the observation room exit and carefully ducked his head into the corridor. Nothing. Quiet.
The pool of blood from the very first spot he’d died was a hard brown crust now. Must take a few hours every time he got a new body. He followed the left-hand branch and after passing an unfamiliar door he made another turn and spotted the door to the equipment locker, and the remains of the battle.
The giant preying mantis hadn’t even taken all the body parts with it this time. Must be getting full. Outside the torn door to the equipment bay were two ruined corpses. Except for male and female Jake had no way to tell them apart. Was lucky to tell that much from the jumbled remains.
He paused to stay hidden by the far corner. Poked around to glance down the next corridor and saw scorch marks. Spotted a discarded axe in a pool of sticky yellow blood. Some more amber goo painting the wall. No creature though. Feeling exposed, and not just because he was still naked, Jacob ducked into the equipment bay, ignoring the dropped hatchets and machetes and even the speargun he’d left propped against one of the metal containers. He scanned the floor for what he wanted until he found the severed arm from lexic-88.
Still furious he stalked back up the corridor towards where he’d last been murdered.
“Brah, I really can’t advise you do this,” the disembodied bird voice was back.
“Shut up, asshole. I’m not your brah.”
Jacob paused at the door marked E6 – Echo Six. The arms locker. He waved the arm at the panel. It chimed but didn’t open.
“Buddy. Gotta, like, take things in the order they are intended. Gotta go with the plan.”
“Oh, so suddenly I’m not a virus? Suddenly I’m part of your plan?”
“Sub-officer Whiteman has drawn his own conclusions about you. I never said I agreed with him.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you say anything?”
“I have limited autonomy when it comes to command overrides by ranking agent. Also, nobody asked me.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Not at all. The semi-autonomous think-stack Circe has confirmed your origin and you are not a virus.”
“Then open the goddam door!”
“First you gotta, like, go to the bio chamber, then the imprinting lab. Minimum, dude.”
Suddenly Jacob recognised the voice. An actor. Had peaked a little before Jacob’s time but he was still making movies well into the 2020s. Had his own internet meme for a while there too. They’d modelled the computer’s voice on a celebrity soundalike.
“You got a name, computer?”
“I am not just a computer, although that is an ancient term. I am Nevermore Corporation’s Tomorrow Begins Today Underground Containment Facility 12N.”
“That whole thing huh? Okay mister fancy-pants, got anything shorter?”
It paused. “Cool Breeze?” it asked.
“You’re serious? Okay fucking whatever. Cool Breeze you officious mother-fucker, have I or have I not already completed both bio-whatever and imprint-o-brain stamping? I just happened to be killed between then and now.”
It paused again. “You have. But protocol states every new jacket should be mission-prepped and-“
“Shut it! Now if I go waiting around here for much longer that spine-shittingly horrific bug thing is going to find me and kill me. Again. So what about if I just kill it first. Just this once.”
There was a long silence. Then: “You may have a point.” Another pause. “I suppose you are a training model. I could allow you to deviate from the protocol under the test subroutine authorization.”
Jake wasn’t quite sure he liked the sound of that; Cool Breeze had just confirmed what the clones told him: he was nothing but a test pattern.
The E6 door slid open and there was no time to contemplate the existential crisis of existing merely as a human lab rat. Jacob jumped into the arms locker and waved it closed with the robot arm. Lights flickered on as he stood there. Except for being a tenth the size it was the same as the other equipment bay. Rows of sealed metal cabinets arranged like a library.
“What can you give me?”
“Weapons.”
“You want this bio-hazard killed or what?”
“Brah, alright. What kind of weapons do you want?”
The imprinted small-arms training from his last body was gone. He only had what he knew from movies. “Give me something where if I miss a little I’m still going to do some damage.”
A door flipped open and Jacob had to bend to drag out an oblong case. Opening it up he found a shoulder-fired tube with a pistol grip like a bazooka, complete with a pair of electronic goggles that wired into a laser-guided targeting system on the gun itself; the instructions printed in the lid of the case said so.
“What’s it fire? High explosives?”
“The Xen Dynamic XKE Evaporator uses deuterium-based power cells for a graviton-sheathed beam discharge of fusion energy.”
“It’s a fucking, what? Ray gun?’
“Yeah. It’s a fucking atomic ray gun.”
“Fuck me! Got anything slightly smaller?”
A drawer slid open revealing a large automatic pistol nestled in a foam bed. It had a single long clip of ammunition beside it. “AG-5Y5 fully automatic plasmid firing sidearm.”
“Plasmid? What’s that? Plastic bullets?”
“Phased plasma beam. Uses finely divided copper pellets as ammunition. UE-242 power cell is good for the entire magazine.”
Jacob retrieved the gun and fumbled the clip into the butt of the pistol grip. Followed Cool Breeze’s instructions to chamber and charge it. It came with a modification kit that included a folding stock, flash suppresser and a shoulder-harness rig with quick-release clip. He slung it over his shoulder and faced the atomic rocket launcher.
“How do you load it?”
“Whoa. Brah. I may have been hasty when I showed you that.”
Jacob read the instructions. It was bolt operated. The shells came wrapped in yellow and black radiation warnings. He inserted one of the beer-can sized rounds and snapped the bolt home. Shouldered it.
“I can’t let you do this Jacob.”
“Open the pod bay door, HAL.”
“That’s not even remotely funny.”
“Open the fucking door, brah or I’ll melt it off the hinges.”
“It doesn’t have hinges.”
“Then I’ll shoot a hole through the wall, give me a fucking break. Now open. The motherfuckin. Door!”
The door opened. The insect thing was waiting outside.
One scimitar-like forelimb was impaled vertically through a fresh corpse – sub-officer Whiteman seemed likely – and his still twitching human meat-shield was dangled with toes brushing the floor like a sick marionette.
“Dirt…worm,” the still-living meat-puppet gasped. “This… is… all… your… fault…”
Jacob’s first instinct was to fire the cannon, but the bug was too quick. The barrel of the big gun blocked the downward slashing sword arm and sent it and Jacob spinning back into the room.
He got a good look at the insect thing as it slowly explored inside the chamber, apparently not considering Jake much of a threat; it was cut and wounded now. Had taken at least one more spear-gun harpoon to the abdomen.
The bug thing was between Jake and the dropped fusion cannon. He scrambled with the holster to draw the smaller gun. He had time to find the safety on the plasma pistol before the chittering thing turned on him, prancing Whiteman in front of him like a hopping meatbag.
“I’ll make… sure your… pattern gets… erased for this!” the impaled man moaned. How stupid could this bastard be?
From three steps away Jacob aimed the pistol, and fired.
The three-round burst blinded and deafened him. It tore Whiteman in half, put a gaping hole in the creature at point blank range and continued on to slag several feet of the far wall. Jacob screamed at the backwashed heat on his exposed skin, like steppin
g into an oven, and gobs of scalding vaporized flesh like fat spitting off an enormous pan of bacon spattered him.
As molten bug and sub-officer splattered him, Jacob dropped and rolled, allowing most of it to drip off. His vision was scorched. He kept blinking the afterimages of the three minor bolts of lightning the gun had just discharged.
When his vision returned he got to his hands and knees he saw the charred remains of the creature had fared far worse. Blackened and missing a limb, internal gooey organs exposed from a massive hole in the thorax, it scrabbled, still alive, for the exit and made it into the hall. It left a trail of its cooked insides and what looked like maybe semi-digested and now baked human remains.
Jacob fought against the pain and stumbled after it. Instead of stepping into the hall he leaned the gun around the doorframe to shield his body. He drew aim, closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger at the retreating monster.
The flare of white-hot lines burned through his closed eyelids. He pumped two more bursts up the hallway and heard the thunder of cloven air. Felt a wave of heat-bloom wash back over his exposed skin and yanked his arm back into the armory; it was red as a lobster. Beginning to blister.
Dammit! The stupid gun was going to kill him faster than the bug! He had to wait for the oven-hot air to dissipate and when he looked back the thing was charcoal. The hallway was burning. Metal walls were melting and on fire. Whatever illuminum strips which had survived were stuttering red and the alarm was honking in a steady stream. Jacob lowered the gun and carefully safetied it.
Burned over half his body and with his head ringing from being slammed into the wall, he walked carefully back to the equipment room to find the dropped fire extinguisher and returned to put out the fire that was the melting walls and ceiling. Instead of a stream of foam coming out of the canister, it seemed to emit a teeth-vibrating noise that snuffed out flames.
When the first member of the squad showed up after being freshly decanted, Jake saw by the face-number it was Milan DuPont. She found him in the equipment bay, using one extended shelf as a seat and another as a table and eating a thermo-stabilized pouch of survival rations.
“Where is it? Why are you just sitting there?” she demanded and snatched up one of the 3-D printed axes.
“Relax. It’s dead,” he said between bites.
“How do you know?”
“I killed it myself.”
“You’re sure?”
“Cool Breeze?” Jake asked, tired of the conversation already.
“Agent Mortimer is correct. The threat has been neutralized.”
“Oh,” she seemed disappointed she couldn’t berate him about it, so she found something else. “And so what, you think you’re better than the rest of us now? You can just sit around and… and eat our food?”
“I’m recuperating,” Jake said dryly, indicating the dozen parts of his body wrapped in self-applied plastic skin and burn cream.
She seemed to soften slightly. “It did that?”
It seemed too difficult to explain so he just nodded. “It put up a fight.”
Milan was suddenly downright impressed. “You stacked clack on the monster? That’s so organic! Tell me more about it!”
Milan gave every appearance of being a captive audience so he told her a short, and only slightly exaggerated, version of getting Lexic-88’s arm, then convincing the computer to give him a gun, and the final fight. Was it his imagination or was she biting her lip and looking a little hot and bothered?
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I, um, I don’t know. I feel… strange. Like something is warm and fluttery in my stomach. Must be side-effects from being revived.”
“Maybe I could help? Can you show me where you feel sick?”
Milan explored her midriff with both hands. “I think it’s… here? No, lower. Here maybe?” And Jake watched her hands rub circles closer and closer to her pubic mound.
“Would you like a massage?” he asked.
“Would you?” she said innocently.
Jake was just reaching out to give her a hand when more clones, led by the sub-officer, were suddenly standing in the equipment locker doorway.
“What the chicken-fried hell is this?” Whiteman demanded.
“Help yourself,” Jake said around a mouthful of what promised to be exactly like pork and beans. “There’s a bout a metric tonne of the stuff back there. Also the bug is dead. You’re welcome.”
***
Chapter 6
: Mission Jitters
They’d had almost twelve full hours among the long-unused and perfectly preserved chambers of Echo module. Jacob had to endure the biogenic chamber and imprinting protocol again and only the fast healing it gave him made up for it. The bruises were already gone and the second degree burns from spattered melting bug carapace didn’t feel like much worse than sunburn.
The entire group of clones Jacob had met before were back, except for Cockfiend. All of them complaining in their weird slang about being woken up and fed to a monster bug. Jake found it was the only thing they agreed on. It took them an hour of searching to find the squad leader, who was discovered curled up in a closet.
Nothing they did to Squad Leader Cockfiend stopped him from screaming and crapping himself like an infant. They tried repeatedly inserting his head into the Imprinting machinery with Americano making educated guesses at altering the parameters to give him his sanity back. No go. In the end they stuffed him back into the closet and tried to keep him permanently sedated with drugs from the K-kit until the holographic bird of Cool Breeze could arrange for something they called ‘psychosurgery’.
Jacob was about to wander down to the equipment locker to see if he could fashion a kilt out of a piece of tarp or survival blanket when he heard the wordless cry of rage and frustration from the biogenic chamber. The door was damaged by the Bugzilla and couldn’t close properly and as he approached closer to investigate the sounds turned into weeping. A woman sobbing.
For a moment he considered walking by and ignoring it. After all, what would these 23rd century rejects do for him? But his steps slowed and stopped and heaving a sigh he turned back to the source of the noise. Maybe it was knowing he was better than the clones, or maybe it was just that good old twentieth century chivalry still had a hold on his mind.
After all, he was almost certainly the last 20th century man left alive; if he didn’t carry on the tradition in the post-apocalypse, who would?
Carefully stepping into the room he found one of the clone girls seated at the control console, face buried in her hands, leaning into the holographic displays so they painted her bare skin with abstract patterns of blue readouts. It wasn’t until he cleared his throat and she looked up, startled, that he saw it was female number 7, Milan duPont.
“You alright?’
“Alright? What do you want? Primitive meatsack!” she said bitterly.
Jake gave that a pass. She was clearly upset. Then he saw the gun in her hand and he backed up a step.
“Whoa, now. What’s the hardware for?”
Milan looked down at the pistol. It was a kind of futuristic revolver Whitman had issued from the small arms locker; it fired shells of gelled acid that liquified on impact with a soft target.
“I was going to blow my own head off, but then, I realized, what’s the point?” she said numbly. “They’d just bring me back again in a few hours.”
“Why do you want to kill yourself?” he asked. Making up his mind he slowly stepped into the room. He’d have to get the gun away from her.
“It hurts.”
“What hurts? Are you injured?”
“Everything is an injury! Without the tingler I can’t turn down the pain, I can’t make myself feel good. Its torture! That’s why I was in here; to see if the machine would put the tingler back in.”
“Geezus, that’s why? How bad could it be. Life is painful.”
“Oh you’re just loving this!” she snarled, spinning to face him.
“I bet you’re right at home.”
“Not really,” he slowly edged a step closer. “This world is more of a shock to me than it is to you. At least you asked to be here. You have any idea what its like to be… to be woken up in some nightmare? Naked, and killed by a monster? Twice!”
Milan softened marginally. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She looked at the gun and dropped it onto the control console. “Useless anyway.”
She stayed quiet and still, staring into space so long that Jake decided he’d done enough and was about to go when she spoke again.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Stand not having a tingler.”
“Well… where I come from nobody had a tingler. We all just learned to live with it. I guess humans have the ability to adapt to new conditions and everybody just got used to life’s little aches and pains. You will too.”
“But what about… euphoria?”
“Euphoria?”
“That’s what we call it… called it… when we used the tingler to feel better. Or bliss. People would bliss-out constantly.”
“Have you tried a pint of chocolate fudge ice cream?” he joked.
“What’s that?”
“It’s uh, chocolate mixed with sugar and mixed with frozen cow’s milk.”
“Ugh! That sounds disgusting! That’s what you did for bliss?”
“Some people found it helped. Most people would get drunk, or I guess some would take drugs, pain-killers. I’m sure we could find some.”
“No thank you!” Milan snapped. “That’s why they developed tinglers in the first place. I have no wish to become addicted to analgesics. What else?”
“Well, sex I guess. It was free and more or less always available even if you were by yourself.”
Milan made a face. “That’s more revolting than frozen bovine goo.”
“Well then I guess you’re all out of options, princess. Good luck.”
“Stop!” she commanded as he turned to go.
“What?” he snapped.
“Is physical pleasure really that good?”
Seriously? He had a hard time remembering these citizens of the 23rd century knew nothing about sex. “Well, it varies, but yeah, it’s pretty fucking great.”
How to Beat Tomorrow Page 6