Kzine Issue 14

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  Unnamed Talbot.

  And he remembered. Everything.

  “Detective Talbot! I urge you to-”

  Jake ripped the SI from his ear and tossed it towards the shock team. He pulled his shocker and fired at the two men in front, who fell to the floor in spasms.

  The other two, unsure what to do, just stood there waiting for guidance from their SI’s. Jake did not have to wait; he stunned them both. His mind was crystal clear now.

  “Assistance is required!” said the attendant robot.

  Rumbling, the commissioner’s heavily armed shock team burst into the Origin. They did not have shockers though; they carried gas-powered, body-piercing weapons.

  “Stop!” the lead yelled. “Use shocker no! Arrest!”

  Jake was sure that they would kill him if he did not comply. He dropped his shocker and put his hands up. The lead sent two men to grab Jake, while he and his remaining partner kept their weapons trained on him.

  Think damn it, think! I can’t be arrested now; they’ll never trust me again! That’s it! That’s my advantage! I can think!

  “Be careful with the babies, men! Are you all crazy? What’s gotten into those heads of yours? Why, you’re acting like a herd of primitives! You should be ashamed of yourselves! You’re obviously greatly imbalanced! I’ll be forced to report you to the commissioner!” Jake screamed.

  The shock team was stunned, but not because of Jake’s shocker, which lay on the floor next to him. They heard him and became confused. Nobody in Techno District spoke like that. It was as if the voice had come from an SI, but the words were very strange.

  And that was the split second Jake needed.

  He elbowed one man on the face, got behind the other and put him in a chokehold.

  The team lead fired. The gas explosion that pushed the bullet out of the metal weapon startled even the chemically balanced babies, and filled the room with a foul stink.

  Not letting go of his improvised shield, Jake got down and picked up his shocker. The other man pulled the trigger, but Jake’s shield—dead now—protected him all the same.

  He shocked him. Then, as the lead stood there, frozen, he pushed the body onto him and fired his shocker once more. Jake knew that the SI’s would have transmitted everything to the station, perhaps even to the Council. There was not a minute to waste.

  * * *

  The commissioner ran out of pills and ordered an extra dose delivered to his office. Sitting across from his desk was newly promoted Detective Rossen.

  “Disappeared! Two babies! Shocker dead! Shockers naked all! Talbot gone! Must solve! Fast!”

  “Detective Rossen,” the SI said, “The commissioner says that two babies have been kidnapped from-” Rossen’s SI was interrupted by the station’s general SI.

  “Attention all units! Attention all units! Ten more kidnappings have been reported. The suspects wore police uniforms. The Council has ordered a district-wide lockdown. Everybody is reminded to take their pills, remain calm, and await further instructions from their social interface.”

  THIS NARROW ESCAPE

  by Betty Rocksteady

  I pretended to sleep for as long as I could, but my husband was persistent. He pushed against me and murmured in my ear, “Come on.” Work was only hours away, but he would not be sated by reason. I would never get back to sleep if I refused him, I would be up for hours, worried about his feelings being hurt. I turned to him. He pushed his mouth against mine, rough and mean, and pulled me on top of him.

  He felt different. Luke was a large man, but his body felt angular beneath mine. My thighs looked thick as tree trunks on either side of his hips. When I settled on to him, my legs fell awkwardly from the sides of the mattress and splayed across the floor. As I moved my body, my head brushed against the ceiling.

  Afterwards he was snoring in moments, but I lay awake, disturbed.

  * * *

  Luke waited for breakfast, his face buried in the newspaper. He ignored me while I rushed around, manic in my attempt to cook and get ready at the same time. The day outside was cloudy and gray. I wished it were warm enough to open a window. The kitchen felt stale. Faded yellow walls loomed closer than they had before.

  I handed Luke his bacon and eggs and sat down with my own. I had to balance myself carefully on my chair, the sides of my slender hips spilling over the seat. He put his newspaper aside to dig in, and I noticed again how much smaller he seemed. His shoulders had once rivalled that of a linebacker but now they were diminutive, almost feminine.

  The windowsill, usually a comfortable distance away, pressed painfully into my side. I ate slowly, my elbow banging into the wall with each movement. “Are you losing weight?” I blurted out. My real thoughts were too insane.

  He barely glanced up at me and rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so. Maybe you’re gaining some.”

  I didn’t speak again through breakfast. I was hurt, and it was too much effort to talk to him in the morning.

  * * *

  Work passed in a pleasant blur. Weekdays always went by so fast. I was caught up in conversation with some of the girls in the office, and ended up leaving a bit late. Luke would not be happy. He didn’t like that I worked at all, but financially it had become necessary. I dreaded the day he got a raise and decided I didn’t need to work anymore. Then I would have to be my husband’s substitute mother again, keeping the house in order according to his ever-changing preferences.

  My mood worsened again when I saw the cars wedged in our driveway. Company, and I hadn’t been there to greet them. Luke wouldn’t be pleased at all.

  My living room was packed with men who looked like Luke; dark suits poorly cut, hair parted to the left, the same half smile that didn’t quite reach their eyes. I squeezed through the doorway. Hallway walls clenched against my shoulders. I smiled warily. Luke removed himself from the crowd and pulled me aside. His motions were easy and graceful as he danced between the crowds of furniture and people that seemed to invade all available space in my home.

  “Where were you?” he hissed.

  “I had to work a little late, I didn’t know we were having company.”

  “I left a message, you were supposed to have things ready. I invited some of the guys back for drinks. God, you’re useless sometimes. Get some snacks ready, maybe we can still salvage this.”

  I went to the kitchen, side-stepping through the narrow doorway. Since I had been gone, the kitchen had grown smaller, more of a hallway than a room. The fridge and other furniture adjusted to fit. The table and chairs jostled rudely against me as I struggled to prepare something for the men to eat. I had to keep my arms near my sides in order to avoid banging against the walls. Finally, the snacks were ready. As I left the kitchen, it compressed again with a hiccup and squeezed me out. I nearly spilled my tray of goodies as Luke sighed in exasperation, but I righted myself and managed to keep things together.

  I served Luke and his friends, bumping into slender angled shoulders. Conversation stopped as I struggled through the room, smile frozen on my face. It was no use. They watched me silently, their eyes unreadable. A heavy blanket of judgement settled on my shoulders. Between the shrunken walls and the quiet men, there was no room for me. I tried to imitate a gracious hostess, a lovely wife, but once the food was served, the walls closed in and squeezed me out. I didn’t mind. My back ached from stooping over

  I excused myself to the bathroom. No one noticed, not even Luke. I dug in a drawer for a tape measure and wrapped it around my thighs, my hips, my bust. No change. It wasn’t me.

  * * *

  I woke the next morning, barely able to breathe, panic rising in my chest. The room surrounded me like a coffin, the ceiling and walls inches away from my body. My limbs flailed, slamming against the walls, leaving ugly bruises. I closed my eyes and counted breaths. When finally I calmed down, I began the difficult process of getting dressed. It was impossible to stand upright. I hunkered down in a squat to lift my shirt over my head and lay flat
to pull my pants over my hips.

  I crawled through halls like air ducts to the kitchen, where Luke sat, looking comfortable and serene, awaiting his breakfast. “Doesn’t something seem strange to you?” I gasped.

  “You always find a problem with everything, don’t you?” He was perfectly at home in our compressed kitchen. The hateful look in his eyes was too much for me. Instead of trying to find a way to cook on the ridiculous rail-thin stove, I slithered through the hallway like a snake. I went to work with an empty stomach.

  * * *

  Work passed in a pleasant blur. Too fast. People smiled at me. People thought I was clever. People complimented me. I was good at my job, and I was appreciated. And then the day was over. It was time to drive home and face another evening with my husband.

  At first I thought my house was gone, that it had disappeared into thin air. I got out of the car and surveyed the yard. When I tilted my head just right, I saw that it wasn’t gone at all. It was just very thin. Two-dimensional.

  I could open the door and squeeze myself inside. I could spend another evening watching television with my husband in our cramped living room, listening to his passive aggressive complaints. That was my duty. I was his wife. I reached for the doorknob, but my wedding ring snagged against the house and tore away a thin strip of siding. I crumbled it in a ball and tossed it over my shoulder, like a piece of garbage. The next piece I tore off quicker, until I was frenzied. I tore it to shreds.

  * * *

  My hotel room is expansive. The pillows are plush. The bed is huge, large enough for me to stretch out like a starfish.

  THE BLIND ROOM

  by Goran Sedlar

  The uniform was the color of an old wound.

  It must’ve been in and out of washing machines so many times its numbers and letters had long faded out. But even without readable declaration there was no mistake about the garment being government property; it was one size too big for Gabriel’s shoulders.

  Nothing fits in this country, his mentor would say.

  Gabriel glanced at the shining numbers on his watch. One minute until 12:00.

  Any moment now.

  The waiting room was narrow and cold, the kind of cold you feel when you find yourself alone in a subway. Neon lamps buzzed and flickered like angry spirits, the tiles on the floor were dirty tombs of footsteps. The room was stacked with the bad karma of countless good people.

  What was with this widescreen mirror? Maybe he was being watched in spite of everything he had been told?

  Gabriel perused his face for black spots and patches of beard his razor had missed.

  No, no. The mirror was here to cut the endless hours of waiting by giving him something to obsess about.

  Since Gabriel’s name had been picked there’d been nothing but waiting; waiting for a date to be set, for the appeals to be rejected, for his psychical to clear.

  Waiting is the only commodity this country has enough to export.

  12:01. It should’ve started already.

  Just as he was about to make a face, the lamps went out and silent, and suddenly he was alone in the dark.

  Everything runs late in this country.

  His eyes barely adjusted when the backup lights kicked in, and the room was aglow again. A lazy and misty glare only a chemical reaction can produce. His watch was dead; proof all artificial electricity had been drained from the room. For the next sixty minutes, he was going to be the loneliest man in the world.

  But he would not be alone.

  Gabriel turned toward the metal door of the Blind Room as it slowly squeaked an opening; no power keeping it locked anymore.

  Its gaping mouth leading inside a smaller room.

  Inside a darker room.

  Here and now he felt not only the wrong man for the job but hardly a man at all. Where are you, Gabriel? What are you doing? He pictured his mentor finger gun with his hand and saying: “We are not men, we are living ideals. We are born; we go into the world, and we infect it.”

  Gabriel went into the room, hoping his courage was infectious.

  The Blind Room was clean. Too clean for Gabriel’s imagination. He had imagined a dungeon machine-gunned with drops of blood and smelling like an open abdomen. This was just another room.

  Albeit a room with an inmate suspended from the ceiling. The convict had his hands tied way above his head, forcing his limp body to swing erect as his feet dragged on the floor.

  But his eyes, oh, his goddamn eyes.

  In this country, security is an offspring of cruelty.

  The inmate’s freakish eyes stole the show, two bloody balls stuck in a perpetual stare. There were no eyelids; they must’ve been surgically removed when they prepped him for the final hour. Even a possibility of him closing his eyes at any point would be considered a grant of unmerited compassion.

  Gabriel cringed, imagining the pain in his eyeballs. But the inmate wasn’t suffering. By the look of his anxious face, he was scared but not in agony.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” said Gabriel.

  What he really meant to say was “I’m not afraid of you.” He had been thoroughly debriefed before he was declared fit for the Blind Room, so he knew what to expect. The drug they had used to paralyze the inmate’s limbs (but didn’t rob him of consciousness or dull his pain receptors) made him as harmless as a fly.

  The inmate’s orange clo…

  Inmate? Convict? You need something more personal than that, Gabriel.

  They are us, and we could’ve ended up like them. That’s why we have to save them. That’s why we’re living ideals.

  The name tag on the prison uniform said: “Rapist Murderer”.

  R. M.

  Arm.

  Yes, that’ll do. A word that turned the hanging animal into a human being.

  “My name is Gabriel,” he said to Arm, “but I’m not sure I was supposed to introduce myself.”

  There he was again, just a bumbling slave to his nervousness.

  Arm stared at him with those googly eyes like some deep sea fish seduced by a light source. He said nothing, but the chain that shackled his wrists creaked soothingly under his weight.

  The room was oval, too small to breathe freely but large enough not to hamper sadistic creativity. The walls were covered in nylon and the red lights from the ceiling were caught in the web of the plastic like blood flies. Fixed around the wall was a long metal shelf stocked like a giant tool belt.

  … A black oily auger for puncturing skulls. A sharp, shiny knife with more teeth than a shark. A sand paper for ripping scabs and opening wounds. A hammer, a needle, a big black dildo. A set of toothpicks for peculiar bursts of inspiration…

  This country is suffocating on merchandise.

  Among all these instruments of pain was the paper folder.

  There was no point in opening it. Gabriel knew Arm wasn’t in here for winning any humanitarian awards. He understood how terrible must’ve been the actions that have secured him this punishment. He didn’t need to have the police photos of the crime scenes, and Arm’s mutilated victims imprinted on his mind.

  He also knew by heart the pledge that was somewhere in that folder, serving as a final reminder of what he was expected to do in here (just in case he were to become too overwhelmed).

  We, the people, find you guilty of crimes perpetrated against the citizens of this country and declare that your violent actions nullify your human rights. Let the just hand of Gabriel Syme act as an executioner and deliver whatever vengeance he finds righteous and appropriate, in the name of the victims, in the name of the grieving families and in the name of the people.

  You never forget the pledge. And the government sure as hell gave their best to make sure of that; it was on web pages, in movies, even in tax reports. The words more or less the same, only the name would change. Sometimes it was a stranger, sometimes a member of your family, there was even one time when the message popped up on his computer screen flashing “by the just hand of Lucy
Smith” just at the time Gabriel was dating one Lucy, with a said generic last name.

  Seeds of doubt and fear are what makes this country get away with ugliness.

  Arm’s lidless eyes must’ve been itching furiously, there was not a teardrop between them. The brown irises, of what could’ve been a beautiful face, trembled like junkies.

  From the morbid offering of torture devices, Gabriel picked up something that in another room would be nothing other than a pizza cutter. Here, with all the eyes of the world deliberately not looking in, it was a harbinger of terrible pain. As the round blade glistened in the faint red light, Gabriel heard Arm’s body changing its swinging rhythm.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Gabriel, “but I don’t believe in all this.”

  He used the cutter on the sleeve of his red uniform and undid it in one long swipe. He stuffed the tatters in an empty bucket under the shelf and poured over it an acidic solution, which was stocked among the rest of torture devices as an optional dissolvent of skin and muscle. Using a wooden handle of a small axe, he stirred the contents of the bucket with a grace of a zealous chef.

  Give a man some paint and he’ll color the world.

  Gabriel removed the upper half of his remaining uniform to show a white t-shirt with a drawing of a large number six on it.

  “Are you thirsty?” asked Gabriel, and ripped open a pack of bandages from the shelf. He soaked them in a water barrel and pressed them on dry and cracked lips of the hanging man.

  “I don’t want to set you free,” he said, “in fact I think you deserve to rot in jail for the rest of your life, but the group I represent, we…”

  The protester paused searching for words to express his well-researched empathy.

  Human beings are this country’s livestock.

  “… we don’t even treat animals like this anymore, how can we people?”