by Andy Remic
‘So be it,’ said I, but I was deep sad in reality, sad that he could not understand my trigger and my reasons and just think of his own petty future. And I realised that nobody would understand, nobody would ever understand. The pressure, the build–up. The love I had for Emmy. The mocking of wankers like Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman on TV and the farce that second-hand SIM existence had become: we were used, abused, we protected weak peps and yet they were ‘superior’; they were the Master Race. We SIMs were just underlings. Inferior. Pathetic. Expected to take our shit and enjoy our shit, even though we carried SMKK machine guns. We were not even allowed to have mothers – purification, they called it. Purification from umbilication. If we did not kill our mothers, then State would enforce the LAW and do it for us. And that was considered weak.
It was all wrong. All bad. All twisted.
‘Report,’ said Sullivan, and listed my injuries into a recorder. Then: ‘I am re–setting his shoulder and ankle. Administering anaesthetic now.’ The recorder clicked off and Sullivan stepped back – and stood, head to one side, watching me.
I smiled grimly as I realised what he was doing.
There would be no anaesthetic.
He moved forward with the Battle Es, and they pinned me down and Sullivan took hold of my shoulder and began to manoeuvre the broken bone into place; the pain was so intense it transcended pain and bright colours hammered before my eyes and the world swung into focus, into colourful focus which this time did not fade. And I laughed, I laughed out loud as Sullivan’s powerful hands took hold of my broken ankle and wrenched it into place and it no–longer mattered, couldn’t they fukking see? I laughed, laughed and drooled and giggled and spat, and it didn’t matter, because pain was in the mind, pain was electro–impulse process and I was strong now, I was Hate–filled and strong and I could take fukking anything they threw at me.
It was over.
They wheeled me back to my cell on a trolley, for I had lost consciousness for a while; my arm was in a sling, my ankle strapped real tight and my finger strapped tight with nice white surgical tape. Strangely, I did not hate Sullivan for his petty vengeance. Because there would be more pain, I knew, before it was all over. I had killed, what? Ten? Twenty SIMs? Thirty? I had lost count. And the pep deaths were many, all those crushed under the Truk, but now I saw peps were inferior and they didn’t count on my personal tally. They were just bugs.
‘A time for peace,’ said I.
‘Quiet,’ snarled a Battle E, and smashed a fist into my face and I could taste blood. They stopped the trolley. Keys rattled.
‘A time for war,’ said I.
‘Quiet, bastard,’ hissed the Battle E, and again his gauntletted fist hammered my face and stars shone black.
I laughed out loud, and could hear the SIMs cursing me and their eyes clicking and I knew; they thought I was insane.
The door swung open. They wheeled me in, lifted me, threw me onto the hardwood bench. They retreated with care, watching with frightened eyes.
The door slammed shut. The key rattled hurriedly in the lock.
‘And a time to Hate,’ I whispered, and curled up into a ball and felt sleep take me in its dark black fist and crush the light from my mind and very soul.
*
Two days I waited. But the time was good. I began to heal. The pain settled. And despite lack of anaesthetic, Sullivan had done his job well; my shoulder could move, if in a somewhat limited range, and my ankle could take minimum weight providing it was kept strapped up real tight.
They came for me again, with a trolley because of my ankle I think. I allowed them to lift me onto it, feigning weakness and not showing my regaining strength. They’d see that soon enough.
They clamped heavy cuffs around my wrists and wheeled me to the Justice Court and I could feel a tension in the air.
So, I thought. This is it.
Sentencing. Justice. LAW.
What a farce. What a pitiful charade.
I was to die.
The Battle Es knew it, the Judge would know it, and the bastard Jury would know it. So why the game?
Yes, I thought. It would be televised. It would be a warning, to other SIMs, to other menial SIMs with thoughts of rebellion and violence and disorder...
The heavy oak doors swung open revealing a steel courtroom; cameras flashed in my mech eyes, clicking in mockery, and I was wheeled in, past reporters and a fukking audience... there were many peps and SIMs present, it was as crowded as crowded can be, and they wheeled my to a stand where I was helped limping and broken up into the box.
I grasped the rail tight, and made myself sway slightly. Then I looked down onto the sea of faces and I spat at them, and a silence suddenly descended.
‘I’ll kill you all!’ I screamed.
The silence was total and I smiled, and laughed out loud. Then I turned and looked at the Judge: and I froze on the spot and I could hear them wheeling in the big cameras for TV and this was impossible, this was a farce, and my eyes clicked softly as I gazed upon the powdered wig at the central judge stand. Below sat the clerks of the court, their robes black. But the judge: his robes were green and blue and yellow. And his face: his face was a mockery of this trial, and he was smiling and grinning because he always smiled and grinned because he was Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman and he was to be my judge in this trial, and I remembered my talk with TEK–Q, my words hot in my suddenly fevered brain: ‘Jolly Joker is fukking dreg. He is waste. His banality offends me and if I ever meet him I’ll take my SMKK and shove the barrel down his fukking...’ and I stared into his silver face and he grinned at me and he knew me, and the recognition was there – but we had never met. I remembered my thoughts, from back at my apartment, so sure back then before all this trouble and grievance. I had known, known about our meeting and I had known our meeting would be unpleasant and there was a time to hate and there was a time for war and it was here, it was now, and Jolly Joker epitomised everything pep I despised and my heart rate increased significantly.
I coughed heavy. I swayed again, and a Battle E supported my elbow to stop me falling. I leaned heavy on the rail bolted into wood.
‘You have been brought before this court,’ boomed Jolly Joker, his eyes glittering in that silver face, ‘on a most serious matter! Our reports show that you have killed some thirty–seven SIMs in direct and non–direct ways, and the very important deaths of some eighty-five peps has occurred, including three baby peps who were crushed under your Battle Truk wheels. You have forced a Leviticus 20 situation. You have disobeyed LAW. You have broken LAW. You must be punished under LAW.’
‘You break LAW by your very existence,’ I growled.
Cameras flashed. A reporter chuckled.
The corner of Jolly Joker’s mouth twitched, and then he suddenly laughed out loud. ‘This court will decide your degree of guilt during today’s proceedings. Your previous good conduct under GOV out in the dregs will not be of any aid whatsoever. Your past status as honourable Entropy Vet and your bravery shown during Entropy War will not be of any aid whatsoever. Your existence is questionable. We will proceed, ho ho ho!’ and he hit his little silver hammer and the farce began. It took a full day.
Witnesses were wheeled in, they gibbered on the stand for a while, barristers bantered across oak and it was all a farce and I listened to little of it. I think Jolly Joker listened to little of it as well. I watched him, watched his silver face. And he watched me with his clicking mech eyes. And I realised that he was a very dangerous man, a very dangerous man high up in GOV. GOV would never allow a TV presenter and joker to act as judge on such a serious case. Not unless he was a very important person in the scheme of pep GOV rule. And the GOV controlled TV networks. Fukk, the GOV controlled everything!
Who was Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman?
Who was he, really?
The last witness wheeled into the circus charade was Snow. She walked to the stand without looking at me, and gave her evidence in an ice-chilled impassive voi
ce. I stared at her all the while, at her cold eyes and blond hair. She was wearing a silver suit, and dark blue boots. I smiled then. Smiled at the colours.
She spoke of our fight. She explained my capture, and my beating into oblivion. And she spoke of Emmy, and her shipment to Cantrell’s laboratory for HRG testing. When she had finished, she gave me a quick look. But her eyes were unreadable. Her eyes were always unreadable. They were machine eyes.
She left the chamber and my gaze lingered on the door through which she had exited.
Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman’s words brought me back to earth with a hard slap, and his voice was grave and grey: ‘You will be stripped of your armour and it will be destroyed under Termination Clause 64G, ho ho ho! Your name will be erased from the History Logs under Termination Clause 64G, hee hee hee! Your rank and status as Entropy Veteran will be erased from all History Logs under Termination Clause 64G, ha ha ha! I hereby sentence you to violent death under Termination Clause 64G. You will be led away from this place and kept in confinement for seven days in order to ponder the errors of your deviant mind under Termination Clause 64G. You will be executed via high voltage electrocution under Termination Clause 64G. Former–Justice D SIM shitbag, your sentence has been passed. Ho. Ho. Ho. Do you feel regret for all the things you have done?’
‘I will never feel regret,’ said I, and started to cough heavily and I doubled over, whimpering in agony, and the Battle E was behind me and his voice soothing and trying to help me back to my feet and I was up, my elbow smashed back into his eyes with extreme violence, and he was falling even as I took the SMKK from his hands – I vaulted the wood rim of the stand as a bullet skimmed my shoulder with a zim, and I landed on the hardwood desks of the court clerks and in a crouch, sprinted forward, my thumb shifting the safety lever on the weapon and I leapt once more as bullets roared and one skimmed my hip.
Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman was before me and he was smiling from the centre of that silver face, and I leapt, kicking that face of mockery with heavy force and heavy boot and he toppled backwards from the Judge’s seat and I jumped down from his desk, my boots leaving deep scratches that marred the beautiful wood, and I landed with one boot on Jolly Joker’s throat and his hands clamped my boot but I was too heavy and he was choking, struggling, thrashing, and it had all happened so fast.
Our eyes locked, and there was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to scream in his fukking face about SIM and pep status and the harm he was doing to the twisted races in GOV State. I wanted to force the barrel of the SMKK into his mouth and make him choke but I had not the time, no fukking time! and so I pulled hard on the trigger and emptied ten bullets into Jolly Joker’s silver face and his skull smashed open and screaming into oblivion and his brains pulped and merged with the carpet and that bastard smile was gone now, and his silver face was nothing more than a wide, bone–rimmed hole. I smiled. Breathed deep on cordite.
‘Now that’s fukking justice,’ said I.
– as the bullets took me high in the back and flung me violent across the courtroom to smash into wooden panelling which cracked under impact; I tumbled down to the ground on my broken shoulder with steel cuffs rattling metal in my ears and with blood on my teeth, but I was laughing as the lights went out.
*
Pain is a strange creature. It is a physical warning, a brain screaming anguish at some foolish action or accident. And when pain has been a constant in your life for so long, it becomes the norm, it ceases to be pain and when the pain finally ends the soothing calm is a welcome bliss of normality. Sullivan injected mandrake, I could see his shaking hands and the injecto compart and they became the focus of my attention. His hands were brown, speckled with several small liver spots, and he wore a silver ring with an oval blue stone set in a gold casing.
Colour. I relished the thought. I could see in colour...
And then the mandrake took me and a few gentle chords of groovy groovy MM filled my mind and were smashed violently aside by the mandrake upsurge and, as usual, purple was the first colour to brighten my brain and mind and thoughts and I reached out to the colours which spun around my fingers like silk web and it was beautiful and colourful and dazzling and I sank once more into the colours and allowed them to carry me and enter my throat and flow into my veins and body and heart and soul but suddenly a discordant note struck my being and the colours shimmered, faded, turned to grey and black and white and I screamed but the scream was non–physical, was in my head, and the grey swirls were choking me, wrapping my throat and internal organs and squeezing slow and painful and I could feel Sullivan operating, removing bullets from my back and I sank into a deep grey well and the smooth grey walls flowed past, and I fell deeper, and deeper, away from the colour and towards the grey of grave and war and death and the tomb.
*
I opened my eyes. I was back in my cell. It was dark. ‘Do you ever grieve in the darkness? Do you ever feel sorry for the lives you take?’ whispered Mission’s voice in my mind. And my own words, clear and bright: ‘Once I might have cried, but these mech eyes cannot produce tears. I fear the world is mad. Once I would have grieved. Once I would have felt sorrow. But these are harsh times, Mission, and death is a harsh reality.’
I groaned, and pushed myself into a sitting position and fire erupted across my back. Sweat was heavy stinking on my skin, and I was death cold and shivering. I swung my legs from the hardwood bunk and sat there for a while, fighting nausea and the need to puke heavy.
I laughed.
I was alive, but I could not understand why. I was fukking alive, they had removed the bullets and I was alive. I pictured Jolly Joker’s annoying silver face, and remembered the hole rimmed with bone fangs oozing smoke. That face would never piss me off with its verbal dreg ever again; never again! Never would it deride SIM existence.
There was a flicker of light from the corner of the cell.
My eyes, clicking, closed on the light and it formed a square. It was TV and it hummed softly, then went grey and for a moment I froze: grey!
Had colour been once more denied me? But then I saw a flicker of green light from the compu op console. I relaxed.
‘How’s it going, buddy budd?’ came a voice.
‘TEK–Q?’ said I.
‘Sure is, buddy. You feeling bad?’
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘There is much pain. But what are you doing here?’
‘Compu–link,’ said TEK–Q. ‘I’ll be honest, Justice D, they patched me through to perform an analysis. The question on everybody’s lips is ‘why’? Why did you do it? Why did you rebel? Why did you fight?’
‘Fukk them all,’ I growled.
‘You are SIM, buddy,’ said TEK. ‘Your biologics are different, your chemistry is deviant. Your actions are non-conformist, and that, my friend, GOV does not like.’
‘Good,’ laughed I. ‘GOV are a farce. I mock them. I shit on their collective faces.’
‘You should not speak so,’ admonished TEK sourly.
‘Why not?’ said I. ‘I am to be executed, at the whim of Jolly Joker the Jolly Jokeman. What more can they do to me? Torture me? I am in grievous pain. Kill me? I am to die already. I have reached bottom, TEK. Do you not find it ironic? A Justice D SIM, dedicated to LAW and Leviticus 20 punishment tours – actually choosing to disobey LAW? It makes me think ho ho ho,’ and I laughed then, and for a few moments TEK–Q was silent.
‘It was bad,’ said TEK.
‘I agree,’ I laughed, then started to cough heavy with phlegm. I scratched at my head, then leant back against the wall with my back burning fire.
‘I am speaking of your actions in court,’ said TEK. ‘You killed Jolly Jokeman. That was not good. The media have picked up on you, Justice D. The media are going crazy: you are making front page news and the peps are going ape–shit crazy. There is fear. They wonder what it takes to make a SIM snap; you are crazy, Justice.’
‘I am not crazy,’ I hissed. ‘Madness is far from my mind. But now I hate.
And now I feel the need for war. Joker was a mocking farce of what GOV has become: his life was his crime, his death a simple execution. I do not need to justify the act. The rest...’ I sighed. ‘Listen, I like you, TEK. You need to analyse me? Go ahead, ask your questions and I will answer them. But I tell you this: there is a time, a time when the SIMs – and it is SIMs that hold real power in this State – they will rise and slaughter the peps. It is only a matter of time. There is bad feeling, TEK–Q. We fought your fukking wars, we were filled with bullets during Entropy and we got no thanks; only a small pension and a letter of commendation worth pukespit. We protect your peps from scum and rebs wasteland side over the wire; and then we are mocked and humiliated by those whom we protect. It’s just wrong.’
‘Why the cat?’ said TEK.
‘She was my pet, and my friend. I loved that cat. Nobody – not GOV, not pep, not SIM, was going to take her away. She was my eyes. She gave me colour, TEK. She bestowed upon me a gift... Cantrell is wrong. I am telling you now, and you pass this message to the fukking pep media because this animal destruction is wrong. Canker is a farce. If HRG does exist then it does not stem from animals, but from ourselves. TEK, this whole world has gone wrong.’
‘How do you know?’ mocked TEK. ‘You think you’re a top scientist now, eh buddy budd? You think to take on the greatest genetic minds across the continent and State? I think my diagnosis will have to be madness.’
‘So be it,’ said I.
‘Your execution will be carried out,’ said TEK, his tinny voice now soft. ‘You will die within the next four days.’
‘I have resigned myself,’ said I. ‘All fight is gone. I am calm. I am settled. I have achieved something of worth merely by slaying dreg fukk Jolly Joker. Tell that to your media friends, let them write stories on my reasons: Joker was non–worth, just as you are non–worth. But I. I am worth. And the more SIMs who think such as I, the more SIMs will commit serious grievance against peps and GOV. And it will get worse, TEK. I promise you. It will get much worse. The poison will come. It will fill us all and the poison will be our downfall.’