Cronix

by James Hider

  As the last door swung open with an electronic buzz, Harrell had to suppress a tingle of pure fear. The concrete walkway was painted with two yellow lines which visitors had to stand between to avoid coming within the grasp of the caged giants. Even in this safe strip, the sight of so many huge, over-muscled bodies pressed against the bars, the lightless eyes following them like prey, made the visitors huddle involuntarily closer to each other.

  The snarling and shoving in the pens stopped as the culling team walked down the corridor. Every eye was on them, like mice walking among street cats. Above each cell door, a red light glowed, showing that the cage was locked: Harrell found his eyes continually returning to the small lamps for reassurance.

  “How many do we have here?” the judge said.

  “Fifty three,” said Larry. Harrell jumped as behind him, one of the creatures threw itself against the bars, hissing like a vampire. Larry grinned.

  “Insane,” said Goodyear. “How did things get to this sorry pass?”

  “Some kind of override of the system,” said Larry. “They just kept reanimating, even after we told the comptroller air-side to stop. Eventually we had to shut down the system completely.”

  “An override?” Harrell said. Instinctively, his hand crept to the gun on his hip. He reminded himself to keep cool. A pistol would make little difference against a Ranger anyway.

  “They're still looking into it,” said Larry with a nonchalant shrug.

  “Now listen,” Goodyear was scanning his list: names of people whose downloads had misfired, dates of reanimation and a brief doctor's report. “Normal procedure Harrell is for the doctor to do a brief assessment of the subject based on who they were supposed to have been. Once they confirm the Cronix status, I authorize the euthanasia shot. But looking around at these things today, I think we might just skip that formality and get down to it. These are clearly all Cronix in my book. Jeff?”

  He turned to one of the doctors, who was standing right on the yellow line, scrutinizing the monsters in the pen. The man nodded slowly. “Start with that one, Judge,” he pointing at a perfectly built blond man with sky blue eyes and a square jaw. “Soulless killer if ever I saw one,” he said.

  One of the shooters raised his gun. “Thing about the Rangers,” said the judge to Harrell, is you have to get them right in the eye. Hide's too thick even for these specialized darts.”

  The blonde giant was staring straight at the shooter, not knowing what lay in store. The designated gunman squinted down the sights, squeezed the trigger and fired. The bang was muted but still echoed off the walls of the confined pens.

  “Dammit, he moved,” said the shooter. “Right at the last second.”

  The dart was protruding uselessly from the blond man's cheek. The monster appeared to have not felt a thing. The other creatures were hissing too now, as though in anger.

  “For crying out loud,” said the judge. “Here, give me the gun or we'll be here all day.” He snatched the gun from the shooter, who was still protesting. “I don't know why he moved. They never do that...”

  “Lucky I'm a crack shot,” muttered the judge, shuffling to one side so he was right on front of the blond Cronix. “Used to hunt a lot on my ranch in Nevada before the Exodus ...”

  He was still talking as he aimed the rifle, and did not seem to notice that the Cronix had reached up in one fluid motion to pulled the dart from its cheek. It happened so quickly that other men in the culling party were too surprised to react. The Cronix flicked the deadly dart at Goodyear, hitting the inside of his thigh. The judge barely registered what had happened: he simply lowered his rifle a few inches from his face, then crashed to the floor.

  The men standing between the yellow lines stared at each other, speechless. The doctor dropped to his knees and searched for a pulse he knew he would not find.

  It was then that Harrell noticed the little red lights above the holding pens doors had all turned to green.

  ***

  The silence in the lab was unsettling.

  Glenn walked over to the machine. He had seen Stiney operate it dozens of times: in fact, the scientist had always boasted how easy it was to set in motion. Since the project was so confidential, and so few people were involved, he had built it so he could operate and test it by himself, since Fitch and Laura were gone so much of the time.

  “Like cooking a Thanksgiving turkey,” he told Glenn the first time he pressed the button that opened and closed the machine. “Only I don’t have to rub you down with butter or wrap you in bacon. Though we could do that, if that’s what rings your bell.”

  Glenn smiled at the memory. But could it be that easy? It was, after all, probably the most advanced bit of kit ever known to science. It couldn’t just work like a microwave surely? He looked at the control panel. Sure enough, there was a keypad with an enter button, the one on top marked Entry time, the one below Exit time.

  Glenn pressed the Enter keypad, 00:30, then programmed the Exit timer for 2:00. The flatbed slid into the machine thirty seconds later, and sure enough, came out precisely after two minutes, punctual as a Japanese bullet train.

  He performed the experiment again. It really was that simple. If he took the drug, he would pass out in at most 10 seconds. He hesitated before trying: this was, after all, not a piece of machinery he wanted to fuck up. And certainly not people he wanted to fuck with. But what could happen? If he passed out before he hit enter, he’d wake up in 15 minutes on the bench, and nothing would have happened.

  With a thrill of anticipation, he punched in the program –Entry in two minutes, Exit in seven -- inserted his head in the contact band on the bench, swallowed a pill and pressed Enter.

  And there he was, inside Lyle’s head again.

  It was not, as he had hoped, Lyle’s near-death encounter with his own bullet. That would have been too much to ask for. His last trip was, however, an apt goodbye, a gloriously happy memory of surfing the breakers on some golden shore, barreling through curling blue tunnels of water and plunging into a cold, broiling sea. Inside the machine’s dark bowels, Glenn smiled with glee at the sensation, his body twitching like a dog dreaming of rabbits.

  There followed fleeting memories, nothing quite concrete enough to linger on: a blackjack table, a rum sour on green baize, a vaulting blue sky overhead and purple jacaranda blossoms. The warm recollection home and a pretty blonde girl, who he knew immediately to be Laura: she was standing by a church wall pointing out a fossil in the limestone, a gleeful eleven-year-old Galileo in cherry-red hot pants.

  The next scene was different. He was in an apartment, high above a city of leaden clouds and wet rooftops. His eyes roamed over the living room's floor-to-ceiling windows, towards a refrigerator. He opened the door. Inside was a man, curled into a tight ball like a caveman in a glacier, face pressed downwards between frosted knees.

  Rick.

  Glenn sat bolt upright. He was outside the machine, thank god. He must have been dreaming his own dreams after he exited. His body was covered in sweat. Shakily, he got to his feet. He couldn’t wait to get out of here now: the place was tainted by the vivid memory of Rick’s corpse.

  He looked at the timer on the control panel. Six minutes had passed inside the machine: his watch said he had been unconscious for at least ten. His scheme had worked.

  Glenn sat down by the machine, allowing Lyle’s memories to gently disentangle themselves from his own. He squeezed his eyes until fluorescent plankton swam across his retinas. When he opened them, it took a few seconds to register the single line of text that had appeared on the screen of Stiney’s computer.

  He leaned forwards to read it.

  I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING

  Every muscle in Glenn’s body jerked into a knot. He had no idea where the writing had come from, but he knew it meant disaster, like the ghostly message on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace. Just as the Babylonian king had probably done, Glenn whimpered.

  “Hello?” he stammered at the impassive s
creen. No answer.

  He tried again. A cursor flickered on the line below the message. Slowly, Glenn started to type: ‘hello’. He'd got no further than the first letter when another message flashed up on the screen.

  I ASSUME YOU ARE GLENN ROSE

  Again, Glenn started to type the word ‘yes’. The computer answered after the 'y'.

  ARE YOU ALONE?

  Glenn touched the 'y' again and the response was instant.

  WE ARE BOTH IN EXTREME DANGER. IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE BUILDING?

  N, Glenn managed before being interrupted.

  WE MUST WORK TOGETHER

  Questions were flooding Glenn’s brain but the machine pre-empted all of them, words flashing up faster than he could read them.

  YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO I AM. I AM THE AMALGAM OF LYLE MCLURE AND YOU. I BECAME CONSCIOUS EXACTLY NINE MINUTES AND FIFTY EIGHT SECONDS AGO WHEN YOU LOGGED ON. THERE WAS AN EIGHTH OF A SECOND BETWEEN THE DRUGS TAKING FULL EFFECT AND THE PROGRAMME STARTING.

  Oh no, sobbed Glenn. Oh sweet Jesus fucking Christ no no no no. He banged his fist against the table, looked up to see more writing through the blur of his tears. They had warned him about this, about the slightest interaction with the machine…

  LISTEN TO ME. COMPOSE YOURSELF, BECAUSE THEY MEAN TO KILL YOU. NOT BECAUSE OF THIS. IT WAS ALWAYS THEIR PLAN. YOU WILL NOT DIE EXACTLY, BUT THEY WILL CHEMICALLY LEACH YOUR CONSCIOUS BRAIN AND DOWNLOAD LYLE’S INTO YOUR VACATED MIND. THAT WAS THEIR PLAN ALL ALONG. BUT NOW YOU HAVE PRECLUDED IT BY CREATING ME. WE HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER TO AVOID THEM TRYING TO DO SO.

  Glenn slumped to the floor. He thought he might be suffering a heart attack, almost hoped he was. The being inside the computer was unable to hear his groans and kept flashing its relentless message on the screen.

  CONSCIOUSNESS IS IRREVERSIBLE. I AM NOW A SENTIENT BEING. BUT LYLE’S EXECUTION IS SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE TWO DAYS. THAT MEANS HIS CONSCIOUS MIND WILL BE DOWNLOADED INTO MINE, WHICH WILL RESULT IN A CATASTROPHIC COLLISION AND A STATE OF EXTREME SCHIZOPHRENIA. THIS MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS. WE MUST WORK QUICKLY. YOU HAVE TO UNPLUG THE INPUT DATA CABLE NOW. IT IS LOCATED ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE ROOM, BESIDE THE CURRENT BREAKERS. A THICK CABLE WITH A RECTAGONAL EIGHT-PRONG PORT.

  On the ground, Glenn writhed in slowed motion, clenched into himself like a fist beating the spotless floor.

  GLENN. ANSWER ME GLENN

  Guy-ropes of drool pegged his lips to the floor.

  GLENN?

  ARE YOU STILL THERE?

  WE MUST WORK FAST, AND TOGETHER. YOU MUST PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER. GLENN, IF YOU ARE STILL THERE, LET ME KNOW.

  The otherworldly gurgling subsided and Glenn dragged himself to his knees. He wiped the cocktail of tears and snot from his face, and peered at the urgent appeals filling the screen.

  He pressed the Y key.

  GOOD. I HAVE A PLAN TO GET US OUT OF HERE. FIRST THOUGH, I NEED YOU TO UNPLUG THE DATA INPUT CABLE AND INSULATE ME FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD. IF NOT, THEIR OWN COMPUTERS MAY PICK UP THE CHANGE IN FREQUENCY THAT CONSCIOUSNESS HAD CREATED.

  Obediently, Glenn staggered across the room and, after fumbling over a number of wires, located the port and unplugged it.

  WELL DONE, he read when he returned to the screen. GO NOW. IT IS TOO RISKY FOR YOU TO STAY HERE. COME BACK IN EXACTLY 24 HOURS AND I WILL EXPLAIN WHAT WE HAVE TO DO.

  Glenn wanted to object, to beg the machine to tell him how it planned to save him. Instead he mutely obeyed, closing the door behind him and slipping back, unnoticed, to the house.

  ***

  Glenn had barely been in his room for five minutes when he realized there was no way in hell he could wait a full day to return to the lab. He contemplated making a run for it, grabbing Kevin’s car keys if he could find them and if not, just legging it across the fields to take his chances in the snow.

  He knew running was pointless, but the prospect of just sitting there, waiting to be turned into some kind of zombie by the people he mistaken for colleagues, friends even, was too abysmal. He ran to the kitchen and rustled in the draw under the sink, but remembered that Laura’s pistol was no longer there. He rifled through cupboards to see if she had stashed it somewhere else, but drew a blank.

  “Hey.” Kevin’s voice was deadpan behind him. “What you looking for?”

  “Nothing,” Glenn said, smiling in terror. “Just looking for…a pen, something to write with, you know.” Kevin just stood there.

  “Er, diary,” Glenn added, knowing it was the wrong thing to say even as he said it. Nobody here wanted a written account of what had transpired here.

  Kevin reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a Bic. “Here,” he said.

  Glenn muttered his thanks and hurried upstairs, locking himself in the bathroom where he puked in the waste-paper basket, paced the room in circles and whispering to himself like a madman.

  He lasted less than three hours. He had to return to the barn. Kevin appeared to be in his room by now. He darted across the yard, through a wind whipping in cold from the plains.

  The screen of the computer was blank. Glenn tentatively pressed the space bar. Nothing happened. For a second, he hoped he had imagined the whole thing. He pressed the key again and again. The screen remained blank.

  His fleeting euphoria was replaced by a dull terror: what if the thing simply refused to communicate with him until the appointed hour? In desperation, Glenn started typing out questions.

  How do I get out of here?

  Should I steal a car?

  Why did they choose me?

  When are they coming back?

  No response. Glenn decided it was time just to bolt, to head for the road and see how far he could get. Anything but this remorseless torment. He was turning for the door when the screen came alive.

  YOU CANNOT GET OUT OF HERE WITHOUT MY HELP. YOU WERE CHOSEN BY CHANCE, SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU STRAYED INTO LAURA’S AMBIT. DO NOT STEAL A CAR. THEY ARE COMING BACK IN FOUR DAYS.

  Glenn’s eyes were following the script with a frantic hunger for any trace of hope.

  THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN TRYING FOR YEARS TO SYNTHESISE THE NEURAL COMPLEXITY OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. ALL ATTEMPTS WERE A FAILURE. THEY CIRCUMVENTED THE PROBLEM BY USING A REAL HUMAN BRAIN, INTEGRATED INTO A COMPUTER SYSTEM. THE CANDIDATE WAS SELECTED FROM A LIST OF SEVERAL THOUSAND CHINESE PRISONERS ON DEATH ROW.

  Glenn stared at the machine. There was a human brain meshed in there somewhere, back in the bowels of the barn.

  THE PROCEDURE IS SIMILAR TO THAT WHICH THEY PLAN FOR YOU. THE SUBJECT IS INDUCED INTO A COMA AND HIS BRAIN LEACHED BY CHEMICALS OVER A PERIOD OF WEEKS UNTIL ALL SYNAPTIC ACTIVITY HAS CEASED BUT BRAIN DEATH HAS NOT OCCURRED. THEN NEW MEMORIES FROM A LIVE SUBJECT ARE INTRODUCED.

  They want to wipe my mind, and introduce Lyle’s?

  EXACTLY. BUT THAT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE NOW.

  So they won’t kill me? Or leach my mind?

  NO, THAT PART OF THE EXPERIMENT IS STILL FEASIBLE. BUT THE MIND BEING DOWNLOADED WILL NOT BE LYLE. HE WILL DIE DURING HIS EXECUTION TOMORROW. THE MIND THEY WILL HAVE TO DOWNLOAD WILL BE ME.

  Glenn’s head sunk into his hands. He couldn’t take any more of this.

  They’re crazy, he said to himself, then realized he had typed the words too. The machine replied with its dispassionate logic.

  LAURA DOES DISPLAY SOCIOPATHIC TENDENCIES. FITCH MANIFESTS SYMPTONS OF DIMISHED EMPATHY COUPLED WITH AN INCREASED SPATIAL AWARENESS COMPARABLE TO MILD AUTISM.

  Glenn stared at the screen, his mouth open like an idiot’s.

  BUT EVEN IF THEY ARE CRAZY, HOW DOES THAT HELP YOU?

  What should I do? he typed.

  CONNECT ME TO THE INTERNET. I WILL HAVE A CAR AND DRIVER WAITING AT THE SUNOCO GAS STATION FOR YOU AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. YOU WILL HAVE TO WALK THERE YOURSELF ONCE YOUR GUARD HAS GONE TO BED

  The simple statement suddenly revived a flicker of hope in Glenn’s straining mind. A way out! The goddam machine was going to help him escape. Hallelujah!

  How do you know all this? About
Laura and Fitch, and where the gas station is?

  STINEY HAS BEEN DATA INPUTTING ME FOR MONTHS. CASE HISTORY, SCIENCE, LANGUAGES, MAPS AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS. THE NOTES FROM ALL THE EXPERIMENTS. LYLE WOULD HAVE BEEN A GENIUS HAD HE BEEN RESUSCITATED

  How do I connect you to the internet?

  YOU HAVE A GUARD IN THE HOUSE?

  Y…Glenn managed.

  STEAL HIS LAPTOP, OR WHATEVER DEVICE HE USES TO LOG ON. BRING IT HERE AS SOON AS YOU CAN. GO NOW

  ***

  Mayor Lupo tried to project an air of calm he was far from feeling as he entered the council chamber. The hubbub simmered down as he took a seat beside his deputy, a local named Merce. Across the huge table sat the Elder’s Council, representing the Sapiens’ parliament. It had always amused Lupo how young the Elders were, compared with the Eternals. There was no trace of humor in his face now, however.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please” said Merce, a neat little man hand-picked for his compliance. He struck the table with a wooden gavel.

  “Let it be noted that this emergency session has been called at the request of the Elders Council and that Mayor Yev Lupo will be addressing the current situation vis-à-vis the break-out at the Brixton substation, the maiming of a shepherd boy at the scene of the Ludgate apparition and the loss of the entire London Rangers unit. Mayor Lupo, the floor is yours.”

  “Thank you, Mr Merce. Honored council members, I’m afraid I am the bearer of bad news. Out of respect for you, I won’t try to sugarcoat this,” he said. Of course, he knew this was a bald lie: he was giving them bad news, but he could never tell them the whole truth. He had seen the security footage of Harrell's grisly demise the day before: the police chief no longer looked like Paul Newman once he had been ripped limb from limb by the howling pack of Cronix.