by Andy Remic
When I set off for the Mall Tour in the Battle Jeep I was in very good humour and my mood had lifted and not even the prospect of Snow returning from her tortures and murders in Middle–Asia could dampen my spirit.
*
I hated Mall Tours. Malls were giant, vast shopping precincts where peps did their shopping and spent their coin and I found them tedious, horrible places but at least they played groovy groovy MM for the benefit of pep shoppers and I could tap into this MM and use it for my own calming benefits; always good when on tour with a trigger–happy trigger.
With my SMKK in hand I patrolled the set course designated in zones by Z; I occasionally passed other Ds and we nodded greetings, very formal and stiff as was our status when in the presence of supposedly superior peps, the dirty bastards.
An hour passed and I patrolled on in a slight daze because the MM was a beautiful piece, Mozart, Flute Concerto No 2 in D Major, a calm, uplifting section of music that GOV often played in shopping malls to control the injecto pep loons and instil peace and calm and so the shoppers seemed to float around me and there was no rushing or pushing or bustle and everybody was tranquil and everything was quiet and peaceful and I was actually beginning to enjoy the Mall Tour until I heard the BOOM and knew that noise as a shotgun blast. Hot bastard. Just all I needed when I was beginning to relax with the GOV MM narco.
Kicking in, I ran towards the sound and converged with three other Ds; we checked our weapons as we approached the bank building and our eyes clicked, scanning the area where peps were running suddenly wild and mad and screaming for cover; there was another BOOM from inside the bank and the Justice D on my left hissed, ‘Bank raid!’ and I nodded wondering how low his IQ must be to have to verbalise the obvious, and we three split, converging on the bank’s heavy door blind–side, so as not to be spied through the panes of Battle Glass.
I eased forward, and with the other Justice SIMs we entered the bank’s thick–carpeted foyer and paused; it was deserted, the carpet rich and soft fine under our harsh boots, and we were soon joined by another three SIMs and we split into three groups under bright incandescent strip lighting; me and my partner took the lift, stepping inside the alloy–lined vehicle and punching up for Floor Two; the other Justice units were pounding the two flights of stairs to cut off any raider’s attempted bank abortion.
The lift hissed, moved up, stopped. The alloy doors slid open and a BOOM spat right before us with smoke and my SIM partner took the full blast in his face and his helmet was ripped open and apart and his blood drenched me in a sudden smash wave. Even as I was gasping with blood in my mouth my SMKK roared loud and metal and a man – a pep! – was blown skywards by the force of my bullets and I grabbed my Justice companion as a shield and eased him down to the ground before me, hiding behind his torn corpse. The pep’s body hit the ground with a dull flailing slap, and all was sudden cold silence under white light. I crouched there, my eyes scanning the bank room. Many peps were lying flat on their bellies with hands on heads and I spied the other two bank raiders with shotguns and they were holding hostages by the hair and their eyes locked with mine and bullets suddenly screamed from the right and a raider and the hostage were cut almost in two by powerful bullet hail and they hit the ground squirming with guts spilling out and the hostage was cold dead and dead meat, and the final raider was there and he was screaming orders and the hostage he held was screaming and she was a beautiful woman and I pushed my dead SIM shield aside and stepped forward out of the lift confines and gave a glance to my right and saw the SIM looking sick and ill and obviously in deep dreg for killing a pep hostage and I heard boots on the stairs and yet more SIMs appeared on my left and three of us advanced on the final pep raider who screamed, ‘Keep still or I’ll blow her fukking head off!’ and all was panic and us SIMs held our arms wide and smiled kindly in gestures of reassurance but we still moved forward and he was backing away but we kept moving and he was looking from one to the other and rising panic was in his face and he was sweating heavily and we smiled but we had no sympathy and we still held guns and he shouted, ‘I’ll do it, I swear I’ll do it!’ and his voice had risen in high panic and his sweat was dripping free and he backed into a rope rail used to divide queues of customers and he twitched, jumping nervous like, his head jerking back and my arm came up smoothly and delivered a single bullet which took the raider in the mouth and smashed his teeth and embedded them deep in his brain. For a moment he spewed blood in great gushes, like vomit after too many babby kebabbys, and then he toppled like a sack of shit and hit the thick plush carpet and lay still and the hostage ran forward, screaming hysterically and her shrill voice was the only voice in the tomb silence that followed.
I grabbed her arms, stroked her long hair and attempted to calm her; the other Justice Ds rounded up the three dead raiders and the hostage corpse and used comms to report the incident. The woman was crying against my chest armour, her tears flowing down my breast plate and making the black damp. I looked down onto her hair and her grip was incredibly strong on my arms and I was pinned and it felt suddenly strange – it had been a long time since I had been so close to a woman without killing her, and images of Snow flashed into my mind but I savagely banished them because she had betrayed me once and I would not forgive her.
Sirens wailed and several Battle SIMs entered the bank followed by politicians and reporters; cameras flashed and clicked and the woman was helped away by medics to be sedated and reporters swarmed around me and invaded my personal space and I could smell their sweat piss stink and bad breath and they were forcing questions and shouting ‘What happened?’ and ‘You saved her life?’ and ‘Will you tell us your story?’ and I merely shrugged and said, ‘I was doing my job’ and I pressed the barrel of my SMKK against a reporter’s teeth and he pissed his pants and they all suddenly realised they wanted to be somewhere else and that I was in fukking dreg bad mood and they left me alone, then.
I had a sour taste in my mouth. I had saved the woman, yes, but the calm of groovy groovy MM had gone now and I was shaking a little, devoid of narco, so I gave myself a short injecto of adrenaline and left the scene giving my code to the Battle SIMs on guard and resumed my Mall Tour; and from my patrol I watched them take away the trigger–happy SIM who had gunned down the hostage by accident. They wire–clamped his hands together and hobbled him with injecto–bolts, kerchunk, kerchunk, like that, his teeth gritted in pain and shame and cheeks flushed red, then they put him in the back of a Prisoner Truk and roared off, tyres squealing on the mall tiles. He would have to go to trial for violating LAW and would probably be exterminated. I also watched them put the dead Justice D in the back of a medic van and he was covered with a blanket so the press couldn’t photograph his exploded, shattered, bullet raped face and once over I would have had no emotion, I would have been oblivious to this dead comrade who had merely been unfortunate in his positioning – but instead I felt quite sad.
I was not sad concerning his death, I was sad because if it had been me, who would look after Emmy? Who would look after my fine cat? My pet?
I finished the rest of the tour without event, and the mall was quite deserted because the violence in the bank had shaken up the peps: but then the bastards led sheltered lives and relied on us SIMs for protection from the problems they had created themselves – like the dregs, and Entropy. It was all a farce, a society filled with hypocrisy and unfortunately I was caught in the middle of it all and there was nothing I could do except swallow it like acid.
*
I parked the Battle Jeep and locked it. I trudged wearily up the stairs to my apartment and let myself in, switching on the light and looking for dead mice before I walked over the floor.
Emmy padded in from the kitchen and slipped out of my apartment door and I let her go; she had to have her freedom and the risk of her not coming back was a risk I would have to take – after all, I did not own her, she was my companion now and I was sure she would return.
I removed my armo
ur and had a hot shower and cursed myself for not picking up mandrake from Sullivan; I resigned myself to grey cold and sat on my settee and switched on TV and closed my eyes and rubbed at my temples. I had an hour before Leviticus 20 in the dregs.
After a while as the TV babbled and Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman in his jester’s outfit pranced about within the confines of a gameshow, making jokes at the expense of SIMs and their supposed ‘inferiority’ and ‘dumb–ass stupidity’ and pulling silly faces that would no–doubt make pep children laugh but not me because I despised his silver face and silver eyes and Jolly Joker was less human than a SIM if you asked me, the silly joker TV host bastard.
Then I heard a scratching at the door and Emmy was there and this boosted my mood spirit and she came in rubbing her tail on the doorframe, and I sat back down with Jolly Joker saying: ‘How many SIMs does it take to mow the lawn? Five hundred – one to mow the lawn, and four hundred and ninety–nine just to work out how to switch on the lawn mower (bu–bum!) ho ho ho!’
I growled, but Emmy jumped on my knee then and I lay back my head and she settled down walking around in little circles like she does and she sat there and looked up at me and I stroked her back and head and ears, and she purred and stared at me and she was smiling, I swear it, her mouth was smiling and I suddenly realised I was perfectly calm – and Emmy had calmed me as much as, no, more than the groovy groovy MM entering my veins and this gave me a shock, because Emmy wasn’t narco and yet she had given me the simple pleasure of her company and I realised I must be getting softy soft in my old age.
Jolly Joker finished his dreg gameshow, and some lucky winner got a tour of the dregs from the back of an armoured vehicle! Well, that is some really crap prize if you ask me but also fine with me because the peps don’t know the reality of the world wasteland side over the dregs and it would no–doubt do them good like a hard fukking slap to have their eyes open to the problems on their own doorstep that they created.
Jolly Joker thankfully disappeared, his grinning silver face fading to a dot; then came Kate Jess reporting on the War which was entering new stages – or so she claimed as she stood against a backdrop of mud and twisted steel pointing skywards with her large microphone and dazzling good looks. The scene shifted and I watched in perfect calm as I stroked Emmy and music started to blast from the TV and it was Tchaikovsky MM intended on provoking excitement and adventure and being used as propaganda to promote the War effort and recruit both SIMs and peps alike; men were charging up hillsides covered by heavy machine gun fire and HTanks were landing troops on beaches in swirls of chaos where their boots sank down in sand and their rifles screamed but they were smiling! I think not, having had my own experiences of war back during Entropy but I suppose the GOV needed to get new and willing recruit meat from somewhere and Kate Jess was doing all she could to promote and sell the War in a positive spin.
The MM rose to a pinnacle of excitement and then white digits – a comm number – flashed across the screen and there was a little picture of a wavering flag and the TV went blank. I realised, for once, that the MM had had very little real effect on me and I rubbed Emmy’s ears and realised that it was she who had had such an effect; it was she who was calming me by her presence and this cheered me and I did not have the shakes forced on by lack of injecto.
I was loathe to leave my apartment for the Leviticus 20 tour, but I am a SIM and very obedient and I took my Battle Jeep in and saw Sullivan and he gave me a few doses of mandrake to keep me happy because he knew I was a mandrake–loon and that’s just the way I was.
I headed over the wire on a reb hunt in the darkness.
The night was busy; like a rotten apple full of maggots.
I killed many.
*
Later: I had a dream, or rather, a dream in two Acts; the first was my usual nightmare, I dreamt of the blank–faced V2.0 Battle Es with their roaring guns and hard muscle and my mother was dead on the floor with her blood soaking the carpet and their voices, dark, metallic, droning: ‘This is your purification, this is your freedom from umbilication’ and I felt the guilt, I remembered the guilt because it was my fault they had slaughtered her because I knew the consequences, I should have left her but she was so old and frail and I wanted to look after her – and then I was regressing in a flashing of fluttering grey shades and I was at the moment of my birth and she was screaming in pain and yet she was beautiful in that pain of glorious childbirth and I felt revulsion and I wished that she had never given birth to me, that I had never existed: abortion would have been welcome, either pre–birth or post–birth it wouldn’t have mattered not to me and at least it would have saved her life and I remember sharing her pain and my own screams from the dark tunnel into the light and the following pain of the op on my eyes and the trouble a baby has with alloy mech eyes and my screams long into the night as they hurt hurt hurt... this merged with groovy groovy MM in my dreams and so it was false MM and not true and could not react with the chemicals in my veins and I wished for abortion and I wished for a musical abortion of mind and soul and body... her name came to me, a name I had not uttered for so long and it was Vesna and I remembered the name and it filled my soul with peace and for some reason Emmy was in my dream, and it was as if the two were the same, and my mother’s spirit was contacting me through my feline visitor and this made me Whole, made me feel real again, and my flood of emotions were incredibly great and I wept tears, great rolling tears that ran down my cheeks and flooded State and drowned all the GOV bastards in thick tear fluid and the fluid was blood and the GOV and the peps and SIMs all died. The genocide was intentional, because we were all fukking corrupt and I had had enough. It was time to end it. Time to right the wrong. Time to make a stand. Time to end it all.
I awoke.
*
I lay for a long time thinking about the dream. And then, naked and curious, I padded to my swivel chair and powered up TEK–Q. It was morning, about 11, and it was raining heavy outside in musical pitter–patter filled with soot tox.
‘Yo there buddy budd, how’s it going?’ chirruped the happy TEK.
‘I feel strange,’ said I. ‘I want to ask you some questions.’
‘Shoot away, matey watey,’ bubbled TEK.
‘How good is your database? On my background and history. For example, on my mother? And on Snow?’
There was a pause, and then TEK said, ‘I have extensive files. But some have limited access: such as the Snow info. I think this is because she worked for GOV on high–class military ops. But your mother? I know a little. I know you were forced into severing your umbilicate and the Battle Es had to kill her to set you free and give you your purification.’
‘Do you agree?’ said I. ‘In it being an act of freedom? Of purification?’
‘What’s brought all this on, buddy?’ said TEK–Q. His voice seemed strange, and I realised that it was suspicious now. His tone was given away by his careful choice of words and their masked tones.
‘I had a dream, that’s all,’ said I. ‘I remembered my mother, remembered her name. I could remember her giving birth to me. And the Es killing her.’
‘That’s not good, buddy budd,’ said TEK, faking his bubbly voice. ‘Retro–thought should be suppressed in a SIM; you know that. The Battle Es did their job and that was that. Now, you are here to do your job. You must pull yourself together and stop talking gibberish smush – you’re beginning to sound like a pep ha ha ha!’ TEK sniggered, but this little in–joke sounded false to my ears. I think he was torn between his programming and his AI developed loyalty to me, as friend, and as comrade. I decided no longer to trust him – after all, he was linked to all GOV compu equip at State Central. And that could only be bad shit.
‘OK,’ said I. ‘No worries. I am chilled. Down to business. Give me the code for today’s Niobium; I’m going to strip it down, check the contacts and all for damage.’
‘You should let Sullivan do that, buddy budd.’
‘No. I am awake
now, I’ll do it myself.’
‘You’re a stubborn mule, Justice D. If I weren’t so fond of you I’d have to report you to the GOV at State Central! Ha ha. Ho ho.’
I smiled softly. ‘Oh yes?’ I said.
‘Only joking, D. Don’t get touchy, buddy.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman,’ said I. ‘That would, of course, indicate a fault in your AI development and core sub–routines; then it would be I reporting you to GOV at State Central for dismantilication.’
‘Ha ha,’ said TEK–Q, voice level.
‘OK. Switching you off,’ said I, smiling at the coldness in TEK’s laughter. I had obviously hit a sore point electric bad nerve with him and he would sulk about it all day.
‘Off–lining buddy,’ said TEK–Q and the screen went blank. I got up from the chair and went back to my bedroom and pulled on a robe. It was cold and I peered out from my apartment window. Far below the Battle Jeep was being pounded by rain, its dull green and brown camouflage hull scratched and buckled from a long life in War and Battle.
‘You are like me,’ I whispered. ‘You’ve seen too much of life – too much of death.’
And turning, I went about making myself some high–carbo breakfast with beans and eggy eggs.
*
It was early afternoon. Emmy was out, despite the rain, and I had my Niobium pack in bits and was beginning to regret my decision to strip it down... some of the bolts were a delicate alloy with a nasty tendency to strip thread if you were not careful. I cleaned the contacts and checked for internal rupturing of the spinal pack structure.
All was silent in my apartment, peaceful, and I could hear the rain on my window and MM from other distant apartments. This was good. The way life should be.