Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

Home > Other > Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set) > Page 31
Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set) Page 31

by Harmon Cooper


  Why hasn’t she hit me yet? The question is the most relevant thing I’ve thought all day. A Humandroid shouldn’t miss – their aim is impeccable. A Humandroid is a perfect specimen – missing isn’t in Homo machina’s repertoire. This leads me to believe that maybe, just maybe, Yeshi is cognizant of the fact that it is me she’s hunting. Maybe she is being controlled by some outside force, some belligerent thunderstorm ready to rain down on my parade. But how?

  The alley curves left and I curve with it. An elderly woman pushing a cat in a pet stroller gasps as I huff past her. I’m nearly run over by a pair of bicyclists wearing some ridiculous clothing I’d rather not describe here. A Japanese man sees the ensuing madness and bows his head in shame. The urge to pull his little turtlehead out of his shell and wring his neck waxes and wanes inside me. Violence has never been the answer (but it has often been the solution).

  “Save yourselves, assholes!” I scream over my shoulder at all of them, not sure if they understand me or not. Another bullet nearly splinters my ankle. “Yeshi! Stop! Please baby it’s me, Meme! Your Meme!”

  Faster you fool! The alley turns into a two lane road. (Of course, there are no cars in the roads any longer, only bicyclists.) I’m panting hard now, tasting blood in my chest. Heart attack imminent – of this I am certain. Thankfully, Father Fear bequeaths me with a jolt of adrenaline in the ass. I hightail it to the other side of the road, towards a lush park with perfectly manicured foliage.

  It’s hard to keep my legs going, hard to keep my pace up. I turn and try to pinpoint Yeshi by running backwards for a moment. She’s planted on the sidewalk separating the park from the street, trembling fiercely.

  “Baby!” I manage to say.

  She aims the gun at my face and I take one final breath.

  This is it cruel world. This is it dear Reader. The bastards got to me, the bad guys won. I’ll no longer be able to whisper sweet nothings in your ear; I’ll no longer be able to carry on a conversation with the voice inside my head; I’ll no longer be able to make ranty, overt observations; I’ll no longer be able to cyberstalk you. I’ll never get another blow job, I’ll never take another leap of faith, I’ll never find myself in way over my head, I’ll never again take a sweet intoxicating sip of LoathHunAyaTop. Dammit all!

  “Shoot me!” I scream and I fucking mean it. “Do it if that’s what you’re going to do!”

  I take a step closer to her. This is it, and truly, I have nothing to live for aside from the woman standing in front of me. I drop to my knees, making the execution that much easier. “Do it.”

  FORTY-FIVE∞

  “Run.”

  To my surprise, Yeshi lowers her weapon.

  Do I feel tears coming? Impossible! I am Meme – the brains behind the operation, the man behind the curtain, the digital Pope in the Vatican of e-ink, the do to your gooder, the pressure to your peer, the high to your falutin’, the death to your dismemberment, the la to your ment, the interior to your design, the John to your Paul. Even batty wordplay can’t answer the question: why am I crying? Why!?

  One look up at the beautifully troubled Yeshi and I’m reminded why tears are flowing from my ducts powerful enough to put aquatic panic in the hearts of Roman engineers. Her! It’s because of her!

  “What’s happened to you?” I ask through bitter, frightened tears.

  “Please … ” she struggles to speak; her darkened eyes flutter and twitch, as if some hidden demon moves behind the windows into her … soul. Baka desu ka! I reach my hand towards my irresistible killer.

  Yeshi raises the weapon again.

  “I’m ready,” I say, giving her all I have.

  “Meme … ” The look on her face is one of mixed emotions, of confusion and self-betrayal. Humandroids can’t cry but if they could, this would be the face they made. My outstretched hand touches her waist. Her body is warm and pulsating; she appears to be doing everything in her power to keep it from swaying.

  “Data bug … ” she says.

  “What?”

  “Data … bug … ”

  A data bug? The realization stings like a kidney shot. That’s what hit her back at Ogawa-san’s house. She was now directly under the control of MercSecure.

  “Don’t say my name.” I whisper. “They’ll know.”

  “I disabled … ”

  “Disabled what?” I asked through blurred vision. Damn these salty tears!

  “Audio feed. I knew what it was as soon as it hit me. Your secret is safe.”

  “Yeshi, put the gun away. It doesn’t have to end this way. We can do this together. I want … I don’t want to die without you.”

  “Meme … ” Yeshi tosses her weapon aside. With a trembling hand, she takes what looks like a mascara bottle out of her front pocket.

  “Stop! We can do this together!”

  “M-Meme.” Her face twists into a contorted frown as she raises the mascara bottle to her neck.

  “What are you doing!?”

  A discharge erupts from the end of the tiny pink bottle. Her legs go limp and she falls sideways, cracking her head against the sidewalk. Yeshi did it for me. She sacrificed herself for me. My arms wrap around her body and I bring her to my chest. There will be hell to pay.

  The End

  Life is a Beautiful Thing

  ((BOOK THREE))

  Harmon Cooper

  Edited by George C. Hopkins

  ONE∞

  Baghdad, Iraq. Adhamiyah District.

  War had visited the city so many times in the last eighty years that it was hard to tell if there was ever been a time that the place wasn’t a bombed-out, crumbling shithole. The Green Zone, long since abandoned, sat like a syphilitic lesion on the west bank of the Tigris River, which should more accurately be called the Tigris Creek due to global climate change. Portions of the street were still lined with Hesco barriers, the remnants of checkpoints from yesteryear. Cratered buildings were as common as stringy clouds, sewage pipes leaked liquid filth into dust-beaten alleyways. The trunks of palm trees – long since split and splintered by shrapnel – created a barrier between the pock-marked street and the blast-riddled sidewalks.

  A fifty-year-old vehicle whistled through the streets of Al-Mansour, swiveling around an overturned dumpster with a blackened ring on its backside. The driver stuck his head out the window to drive, as the multiple chips and cracks spiderwebbing the windshield rendered it almost opaque.

  Rinchi stood with her PHASR (Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response) in front of the Abu Hanifa Mosque. The mosque loomed above her, painting the ground with a sharp, nipply shadow. One of its minarets was missing, victim of an indifferently targeted mortar round. The pink morning sun sat like a neon bullet wound in the sky, dripping globs of light onto the neo-wasteland as men in full-length robes moved about, not making eye contact with Rinchi, who wore a full burka because of her prominent ta-tas.

  Rinchi: Is he done?

  Clove: Almost.

  She had arrived in Baghdad late last night to work a security detail for a Saudi Royal who was visiting the city. Ironically, Rinchi had met Prince Abdulaziz Ibn Al Omid about six months ago at a RepubCorp dinner party in LA, back when she was still an escort. He was a sweaty sebaceous cyst of a man, with more hair than an orangutan, a man fond of having things thrust inside him. He was even more enamored by the torture of others, a sadist’s sadist. Rinchi and Al Omid had spent a night living out his darkest fantasies, fantasies that would have given Patrick Bateman a raging boner, which was another reason she was wearing a black burka – the Prince still didn’t know she was on his detail.

  Rinchi had speed read the Qur’an twice before leaving LA for the assignment. One of the more confining quotes came to her as she stood guard outside the mosque. Oh Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close around them. That will be better, so that they may be recognized and not harassed. Allah is forgiving, merciful.

  Humans and their tiny little imagi
nations – there truly was nothing like it.

  A car skidded to a halt at the gate in front of the mosque. She immediately readied her weapon. While they weren’t as common as they’d once been, there was still an average of ten car bombings a week in Iraq.

  A man with a strangely shaped face stepped out of the vehicle and approached the entrance to the mosque.

  “Stop,” Rinchi said in Arabic, “and keep your hands where I can see them. Do not come any closer!”

  “Ada’tu tareeqi,” he said, showing his hands as he continued his approach.

  Rinchi raised her weapon. “HALT! STAND STILL OR I WILL FIRE!”

  Rinchi: I’ve got a possible hostile who’s not following instructions.

  Clove: I’ll send Monique.

  “What’s wrong?” the man asked in Arabic. A quick vitals scan showed elevated heartbeat and increased perspiration in his armpits, groin, and palms. His face was wide, his hair dark and full, his shirt hung from his body like that of a scarecrow. His life chip identified him as an Iranian national, Mahmoud Rafsanjani.

  “Keep your hands up!”

  “I am lost,” he said. “Can’t a man be lost in Baghdad?”

  “Not this morning,” Rinchi said as she stunned the man with her PHASR.

  Rinchi flipped the selector from “stun’ to “Lightsaber mode”, and moved the PHASR to the low ready position as she moved to better cover and waited for Monique. She scanned the surrounding area for additional threats as she maintained surveillance on her new Iranian friend and his shitbox vehicle.

  Monique, representative twenty-nine, appeared in the courtyard. She was a Native American woman, dark skinned with pronounced cheekbones. A blue hijab was wrapped around her head, the ends of which were tucked into MercSecure’s black battle garb.

  She cocked an interrogatory eyebrow at Rinchi.

  “He resisted,” Rinchi said with a shrug.

  Monique crouched down in front of the man and effortlessly flipped him on his back. She opened a pouch on her belt and took out a single-lensed Leak, which resembled a jeweler’s loupe.

  “I didn’t see anything when I scanned him,” Rinchi said.

  Monique nodded as she examined the man’s body through her Leak. Her exam complete, she replaced the Leak and retrieved a pair of compound leverage pruning shears. She put her knee on his wrist and positioned the shears.

  “What’s this for?” Rinchi asked.

  Monique amputated his thumb and pointer finger with no more effort than she’d expend to trim his nails. She shifted to his other hand and gave that one the same extreme manicure. She put her knee on his neck and wiped the blood from her shears onto the man’s shirt. He was regaining consciousness and was seconds away from crying out as she moved away.

  “Stun him again?” Rinchi asked, recalling how she had done this very same thing during her hostage rescue mission with Keva.

  Monique frowned and shook her head. “Explosive in his GI tract,” she finally said.

  TWO∞

  Rinchi scanned the Iranian man’s vitals for a second time, seeing biological material in his lower intestine that she had assumed was stool. Whatever it was, it was designed to resemble chyme.

  “I’ve never seen this technology,” she said.

  Monique didn’t say anything.

  “Why cut his fingers off?”

  “Detonators in fingertip sub-Q nano-sensors; no fingers, no detonators.” Monique nodded at the man’s severed fingers, which were already drawing flies.

  “So it’s … exploding shit? Really?” Rinchi asked.

  Monique gave her half a grin.

  The man coughed. His hand muscles twitched as he tried to tap his missing pointer fingers against his absent thumbs. He curled into a ball, nursing the bleeding stumps. “Fuck … ” he kept saying in English. “Fuck … ”

  “What happens now?” Rinchi asked.

  “Watch him.” Monique scanned the rooflines of the buildings surrounding the Abu Hanifa Mosque. The ends of her hijab flapped in the wind as she quickly checked the perimeter. She tensed.

  “What is it?”

  “COVER!”

  Rinchi and Monique split left and right as the Iranian man pulled himself to his feet. Blood dripped from his hands as he took a step closer to the mosque. He fell to his hands and knees, retched, choked, and blew blood, vomit and mucus out his nose and mouth. A long tube of slimy flesh spasmed itself out of his mouth, and gathered itself in a puddle of bodily fluids. The man collapsed on his face, and moaned weakly as he clutched his stomach.

  Rinchi was behind the heavily armored courtesy MRAP that the hotel provided. She leaned out around the front of it just far enough to get her weapon on the Iranian.

  The flesh tube twitched and moved.

  Rinchi: WTF?

  Monique: Mobile explosive; semi-autonomous, remote controlled. It’s orienting itself.

  Rinchi: I can zap it from here.

  Monique: No. Could also be a biochem weapon. You’d be okay, unprotected humans not so much – especially client. Put B-drones up and find the remote operator. I’ll alert Clove.

  Rinchi: Affirmative.

  She pulled a metal container the size of a cigarettes pollute box from under her burka and slid the cover open. A set of bee-sized B-drones – twelve in all – activated when the touch sensor in the box recognized her as an authorized user. The B-drones undocked and jumped into the air, circling Rinchi’s head like a flying crown of thorns as she issued instructions. Once tasked, they twisted away, dividing their search zone into twelve segments.

  Individual video feeds from the B-drones stacked on top of one another in her ocular display. They located the remote operator in less than a minute.

  B-drone4: Target located seventy-two meters SSW of Representative two-one-two’s position.

  B-drone4’s video feed showed a FLIR image of a prone human silhouette under a multi-layer camouflage net on a rooftop overlooking the mosque. He had a spotting scope and a touchscreen tablet, and was surrounded by empty water bottles and food containers.

  Rinchi slaved her PHASR’s targeting system to B-drone4’s feed. The optics displayed a reticle with a blinking red dot at the seven o’clock position. She turned until the red dot was at the twelve o’clock position and elevated the muzzle until the dot was centered.

  Rinchi: Target acquired, confirmed, locked.

  Clove: Kill him. We have the driver – Monique will apprehend.

  The last thing the man saw in his spotting scope was the blinding dazzle of Rinchi’s Lightsaber beam as it blew his head to vapor.

  _∞_

  “That still doesn’t explain why she disappeared.”

  Sauria sat at a gleaming round table next to Antimeria and Lorem Ipsum. An array of rare and expensive foods sufficient to feed an entire African village had been placed on a swiveling platform in the center of the table. The three were at a RepubCorp fundraiser sponsored by NIMA, America’s most powerful PAC and lobbying group.

  Sauria had been thinking about Yeshi’s sudden disappearance from the system for two days now. It made no sense. One moment she was chasing after Carloza, the next she had disabled her video feed and disappeared off the face of the Earth. Something didn’t sit right about all this.

  Antimeria said, “I keep telling you, the important thing is that Meme is dead. It doesn’t matter if some Japanese guy is living his life in Carloza’s body. For that matter, it doesn’t matter what has happened to Yeshi. I thought we were celebrating tonight, both the good work we’re doing for our country and our recent luck. Nelly is in jail, I have Noah and the baby, the divorce papers have been processed through the new 24-hour Divorce Program, Meme’s dead and you have a direct contact in Carloza’s organization. You won. Relax, Sauria.”

  “It feels fishy.” Sauria wore a black Armani suit, blue tie and his antique, authentic, highly collectible, one-of-a-kind Burger King crown to lend him just the right touch of regal dignity. On his lapel was American flag pin with
the word ExEx beneath it. Folds of flesh muffin-topped over his shirt collar, which was already drenched in sweat.

  Lorem said, “The situation is being looked into as we speak. Our Japanese branch has sent a dozen investigators to the field. We’ve already checked most of the video feeds in the area.”

  “That’s the problem,” Sauria said. “I saw those video feeds, they end once they get to the park. That’s it.”

  “The Japanese are weird about having video cameras in parks.” Lorem picked at his bushy eyebrows. He was in a blue suit with a MercSecure lapel pin next to a shiny American flag lapel pin.

  “Why are they so strange about parks?” Sauria took a sip of champagne to calm his nerves. “Cameras should be everywhere! They help stop things like this!”

  The president of the Business Executives for National Security lobbying and consultancy group took the podium. He was a fit man, blue-eyed and with a full head of white hair. He was unbelievably tan, almost the color of a roasted chestnut. He cleared his throat and spoke. “Hello, as many of you know, my name is Connard Branleur, and I’m here today to talk about the Humandroid terrorist threat.”

  A few people whispered in the audience.

  Branleur continued, “Our investigations indicate that there is a network of Techbacks and renegade humans funding and building Humandroids to dismantle the New Global Peace Strategy enacted into law by the FCG in 2080. The NGPS has led to the capture of nearly sixty thousand known and suspected terrorists in the last three years. Of these sixty thousand, nearly three-fourths have been permanently neutralized after information extraction.”

  The audience roared with approval. Antimeria looked over at Sauria and smiled. “See, things are looking up … ”

  There are many factors involved in the implementation of the NGPS’s ten year strategy. In co-operation with the Department of Aggressive Defense, patriotic companies such as MercSecure, Executive Executions and Walliburton’s Special Counter-Terrorism Action Group have been working hand in hand with weapons manufactures like BoeLockheed, Sturm, Ruger and Colt, Raytheon Shack, Remington-RanXerox and Dillon Aero under guidance provided by the FCG, Business Executives for National Security, NIMA, key RepubCorp Party Members and media relations covered by R. Murdoch’s Global News Enhancement Team. Remember ladies and gentlemen, news happens whether we manipulate it or not. It’s better to be in the saddle than under it.”

 

‹ Prev