The Fifth Correction

by Robert Wingfield

  “Ah, that one.”

  “Everyone else knows that it is a ruse to reduce the population and cull a load of the more useless members of society. This saves the bother of resorting to the usual methods of long-term euthanasia, such as kebab shops and overpriced lager. That said, I happened to be passing the shoe store and they had a collection of the most gorgeous footwear on offer. I couldn’t leave it, could I?”

  “And you spent our entire funding on shoes?”

  “No of course not,” said Kara scathingly. “What do you think I am? They had handbags, besides.”

  “That’s all right then,” said the Magus. “Had you considered, though, how we are going to continue working on a cure without any finance?”

  “I’ll think of something,” said Kara. “What’s going on down there?” She turned the security monitor round so that the Magus could see the Reception area on the screen.

  “Seem to be a load of people in uniforms, brandishing large guns. Have we been invaded by doku-rights protesters?” The Magus looked guiltily at the pile of test hides.

  “Perhaps they’re after some other company,” suggested Kara hopefully.

  “Unlikely; we are the only ones in this building.”

  The intercom buzzed.

  “I think we’re about to find out,” said Kara.

  The Magus nodded and answered. “Hello?”

  “Hi guys,” said the receptionist.

  “What’s going on?”

  “A bit; these dudes are from the Electric Police. They seem to think you have invented some sort of perpetual source of energy that will make the whole of the power industry irrelevant. Just a mo…” She broke off to talk to one of the invaders for a few moments and then reconnected. “They say that it is totally unfair, and if your discovery gets into public hands, they will have to give up all their perks from drastically overcharging the needy public.” She nodded to the man. “And they say that you should hand over the blueprints, for destruction.”

  “But most of the information is in my head,” said the Magus smugly.

  “They are aware of this,” replied the receptionist. “That is why you should hand over yourselves for destruction. They have a portable crusher here.”

  “Ah.” The Magus looked hopefully at Kara.

  “Is there a back way out?” she asked.

  “The only way is through Reception. Health and Safety hasn’t been invented here yet.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t be, what with the dung mines, arse-biscuit grinders and all,” shrugged Kara. “They’ve got us fair and square then. We’ve got no money, no cure and now we are losing our lives. It was good while it lasted.”

  “I have to let them in,” said the receptionist. “They are the Law. They have the ‘Official Donkey’ with them.”

  “I always thought the Law was an ass,” said the Magus, “But they’ve got masks on. Can’t you prevent them coming in because their faces are covered?”

  “They have the correct equipment.” She turned her camera so that the Magus could see the police wrapping towels around their heads.

  “Bugger.”

  “I’m buzzing them through.”

  The intercom gave a high-pitched howl and then cut out.

  Tour Guides

  Bott in a Back Passage

  Love in a Woodpile

  S

  caly shot a worried glance at the carnage of blood, body-parts and personal communication devices smeared across the runway. “You really shouldn’t have done that, Bott.”

  “No problem,” said the bio-mechanical man, “The pick-up point is right over here. As long as our transport is on time we can get away.”

  “But what if they call out the military?”

  “By the time they get here, after all the inevitable paperwork to mobilise the troops, we will have long departed.”

  “I suppose so. I’ll send the code to get our extraction team to pick us up.” Scaly waved his transmitter in the air. “Oh.”

  “Problems?” Bott looked uneasily around the deserted airstrip.

  “I can’t get a signal here.”

  “I told you that you should have gone with the other network, but you chose ‘T-Airborne-Gin-Phone 2’ because you get free minutes…”

  “I know.” Scaly growled. “A mistake. Don’t rub it in.”

  “I need to,” said Bott, “It keeps my hands lovely and soft.”

  “Let’s try over here. At least these bushes will hide us.” The quadrillipod set himself down, and the tufts of grass almost concealed his body.

  “Yes, these sickly bushes will be shelter from everything other than somebody looking for us,” said Bott sarcastically. “You are a natural at keeping low, but I’m a bit more conspicuous. Now hurry up and get us out of here. I suppose I’d better join you in what cover we do have.” He lay on the ground with a wheezing, creaking and crackling, and scanned the open space between them and the terminal building. “I think the paperwork is done.”

  “Already?” Scaly fiddled with the transmitter. “If I can apply the cliché of reversing the polarity... Yes, got it.” He listened intently to the message. “Ah.”

  “Trouble?”

  A mortar bomb exploded some distance to their right.

  “They can’t land because of the ‘no interference’ rule. The native people would notice, and that would cause them to develop much faster that they should, and eventually annihilate themselves in an orgy of destruction.” Another mortar bomb exploded, on their left this time. “The extraction team say that they wouldn’t want that on their conscience.”

  “They’re not worried about our deaths then? No interference rule, pah. They’re scared to land.” A bomb exploded in front of them, showering them with mud, pebbles and bits of journalist.

  “I think we should surrender,” said Scaly, starting to get up. A bomb exploded behind them. “How does it work in this place?”

  “Same as anywhere else; you have to put your hands up.”

  “That is going to be difficult,” said Scaly.

  * * *

  “We will have to confiscate your weapon,” said the judge.

  “Of course, Your Nobility,” said the barrister that Bott had paid to defend them. “My client fully understands how it could become hazardous again and apologises for the unfortunate incident where his employers mistakenly provided it instead of a camera. He also promises to get the designers to relocate the shutter button to take pictures further away from the ‘Kill everything horribly’ control.

  “You can keep the pictures of course,” said the judge. “I find that your charitable actions on behalf of greatly deformed and disabled people such as yourselves most gallant, and will recommend a large donation from public funds for your inconvenience.”

  “My client is most grateful,” said the barrister.

  Bott nodded enthusiastically.

  “Your pet must be kept on a lead in future, though, and I expect you to clear up any mess it makes.” Scaly bit his labrum and managed to maintain the pretence. These primitives could not understand, and it had been with difficulty he had surrendered. Fortunately his exoskeleton had been able to resist the continuous hail of bullets directed at them, until the animal-rights people came to stop the attack. Bott had not been so lucky, but they had missed all the vital parts and after apologising, had managed to patch him up using aluminium plates from old computer cases, and pop-rivets. He creaked a bit more when he walked, but the annoying crackling had gone now that the plastic parts had all been shot away.

  “My client will be happy to comply. He regrets that he was not aware of rules regarding tame animals.” The barrister bowed obsequiously.

  “You may go,” said the judge. “Next.”

  Bott and Scaly stood up and were led in to a room at the back of the court.

  “You will have to wait,” said the barrister. “The man who opens the doors is on his tea-break. I’ll leave you her
e and get on to my next case.” Bott thanked their brief and then Scaly offered a tarsal claw or twenty. The barrister gave up shaking hands after a while. “Please sit down,” he said. “You’ll need to when you see my bill.”

  “Nice chap,” said Bott as the barrister departed. “I suppose we wait here and work out how we are going to pay. Ah, door’s open now.”

  A uniformed soldier entered, leading a sad-looking man, gagged and shackled hand and foot and dressed in sack-cloth with arrows daubed on it.

  “Hardened criminal?” asked Scaly, as the soldier sat beside him, leaving his captive hanging by a hook from the wall.

  “Yes,” he replied. “He was driving two miles an hour over the speed limit. It could be ‘life’ for him.”

  “A speeding offence; what in Sapristi do they do with real criminals here?”

  “Can’t really catch them,” said the man, “and even if we could, they might fight back and hurt us, so we don’t bother; much easier to pick up harmless citizens and then punish them; it keeps the detention system going and the money rolling in to fund the traffic controllers.”

  “So you have prisons full of speeding offenders?”

  “And tax evaders, dodgy website designers, lying members of parliament, bitcoin manufacturers and old folks guilty of driving their mobility scooters on motorways.”

  “So no really dangerous criminals then?”

  “I suppose not. It’s deemed too risky to tackle them, although we have captured some who were too stupid to evade our inquiries. Now where did I leave the shackles key to let my charge loose for court?”

  “So tell me, how you find real lawbreakers?” Scaly pressed.

  “They usually leave clues,” said the man, extracting the missing key from one of his numerous pockets, “like selfies of the corpse on Twitface, with the murderer sitting beside it, holding the weapon and doing a thumb’s up. We employ a lot of geeks because they will work for virtually nothing other than a licence to multi-user Hyperwars.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, some interactive computer game where you explore this huge open space and work out ways of removing the clothing from the avatars. Anyway, I only do this in my spare time; I’m a landscape rubbish distributer by trade.”

  “So do you have any real police? I’ve not seen any.”

  “Not many; they are too expensive, and spend all their time filling out forms on the rare occasions they do catch the felons. Our policing mostly works via spy cameras and automatic prosecution systems, which is what this guy’s doing here.” He waved a hand at his struggling prisoner.

  “So you use the geeks for...?”

  “Trawling through the Twitface pictures to identify such guilty people.”

  “And then you go and arrest the criminals?”

  “My Phoist, no: much too dangerous. We then do a post on their Twitface page telling them to report to the nearest prison, because we know who they are.”

  “And this works?” Bott shook his head, and a small screw rattled across the lino floor.

  “Almost always,” said the man, standing up to undo the restraints on his prisoner. “Those sort of people will always give themselves up. They are easier to guard anyway, because again they aren’t bright enough to work out how the doors open.”

  “Prisons full of retards and innocents then?”

  “Shhh,” said the guard, looking around furtively, “If that got into the media we would have some awkward explaining to do.”

  “I’m sure you would,” said Bott. “By the way, are you going after that guy you were guarding; he has hoofed it through the door marked ‘Escape’.”

  “Damn,” said the guard. “I should have been watching.”

  “I expect you can still catch him.”

  “On the run, a dangerous criminal can be well... dangerous. I’ll send him an email asking him to give himself up again.

  “He’s right outside. I can see him through the bars; he’s having a fag. You can still catch him.”

  The guard looked scared. “If I cornered him, he might react like a wild hexacat.”

  “And lick you?”

  “I believe their saliva has hallucinogenic properties.”

  “Fine, we will say ciao, leaving you to explain to the judge what happened. You might even get put in jail yourself for negligence.”

  “Good point. The door marked ‘Escape’, you say?”

  * * *

  “That was pointless,” said Scaly as they slipped along the back streets towards the waterside.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” replied his taller companion. “It gave us a chance to see how ridiculous the law is in this place. Thank Oilflig it couldn’t happen on any planet with sensible legislators.”

  “What, creating pointless laws so that you can pick on the meeker members of society to fund your pointless government doing pointless things that their sponsors tell them to do?”

  “Someone has to have influence,” said Bott. “You can’t have people thinking for themselves. And from what I was reading in the three days it took us to get seen by the judge, the spineless individuals in control don’t have minds of their own.”

  “That would be the ‘Daily Outrage’ you were reading then?”

  “A fine newspaper, with balanced analysis and insightful viewpoints.”

  “I think it is fortunate we employed a barrister to defend us,” said Scaly. “I could have done it, but they apparently don’t allow pets as defence council.”

  “An oversight,” said Bott. “Now why are we sneaking down this dodgy-looking backstreet?”

  “I don’t like it either,” said Scaly, “but we have to keep clear of the security cameras. As we learnt, everything you do is potentially a crime here, and the automatic systems have no leeway programmed in. We are unaware we are breaking a law until they send us an email to arrest us. I don’t want to have to go through all that again. By the way, did you hand your gun in?”

  “No.” Bott grinned. “A man came to ask me for it, so I got it out and pointed it at him. He changed his mind, said that he would sign his paper to say that it was locked in the police evidence room, and then he ran away.”

  “Won’t they notice when they come to check?”

  “I asked. It seems that so many of the contents go missing, one more item won’t make any difference.”

  “Good. Oh dear.” Scaly went down on all hundreds and skittered up the side of a warehouse. A small gang of people, who were not traffic offenders, was blocking the alleyway.

  “What?” Bott blinked into the darkness. “Oh, hi guys. What can I do for you?”

  A spokesman stepped forward, waving a large metal bar. “Give us your money and unlocked smartphones without ‘Minecraft’ on them, and we might let you through with minimal violence.”

  “Nah,” said Bott. He un-holstered his gun and imitated the thug’s bar movements.

  “Not allowed to carry firearms,” said the mugger firmly. “That is most definitely against the law.”

  “Isn’t it against the law to attempt to rob tourists?” Bott said.

  “Oh, sorry. Are you a tourist? Why didn’t you say?” The man dropped the metal with a clatter that echoed around the narrow passageway. “We saw you come out of the courtroom and thought you might be one of those speeders who put everyone’s life at risk and deserve to spend time where they can’t harm anyone. You are in luck. We happen to be a gang, er squad, of tourist guides at your service. We can show you the city, take you into places the lonely fear to tread and give you a full insight into our wonderful heritage. What do you say?”

  “We haven’t really got the time,” said Scaly from the wall behind the thug’s head.

  “Whoa!” The mugger hadn’t noticed the quadrillipod above him. He shuddered but recovered quickly. “We even do an animal-related tour,” he said hopefully. He stepped quickly away from the grinning myriapod. “And please don’t wave those gonopods at me
.”

  “Sorry,” said Scaly, “It’s been a long time… Nice to meet someone who really knows the appendages of an arthropod though. Anyway, we can’t afford the time to go on a tour at the moment. We have to find a way to SCT Island.”

  “We can do you a special deal, and there is a great pile of rotting wood for you personally to investigate; we call it the ‘parliament building’.”

  “Oh go on then,” said Scaly. “I’m famished. Can you find us a decomposing fence, a burger and a tin of WD40 for Bott here?”

  “No problem. Come on guys; nothing to be afraid of, these people are tourists and are going to let us show them round.”

  The thugs cowering at the end of the alley came forward, quietly stuffing flick-knives and bike-chains into their jeans.

  “Great,” said one of the lads. “We haven’t had tourists here for ages.”

  “Not live ones,” said another.

  * * *

  Four hours later, Bott and Scaly were standing on the quayside, scanning the collection of vessels bobbing quietly against the dock.

  “Hah,” said Bott. “You thought we were going to be double-crossed by those tour guides, robbed and murdered, didn’t you? But instead, we have, and for a very reasonable price, had a marvellous excursion around the environs, good food and good company, and are now ready for anything.”

  “I enjoyed it,” said Scaly.

  “Yes, who’d have thought you’d have found another quadrillipod in the parliament ruins.”

  “She was lovely,” said Scaly, “And very accommodating. My gonopods are still tingling. No wonder our guide wasn’t that bothered when we met him. He and the babe seemed to be old acquaintances. Did you see that look she gave him?”

  “It’s a weird planet this,” agreed Bott, “but how do we get transport to that island where the target lives?”

  “According to our guides, it is normal to help ourselves. What about that one?” He pointed with a couple of dozen legs.

  “No, I don’t like the colour.”