Bedlam

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘I know how busy you are. That’s why I stepped in on your behalf. But it doesn’t make it easy for me to argue that you’re swamped and need more staff if they can point to a copy of Quake on your hard drive and make out you’ve been frittering away valuable time. You know Stanford have a bee in their bonnet about this stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember the induction briefing. You won’t get anywhere with this company if you sit there playing games,’ he mimicked, doing an admittedly awful attempt at Neurosphere CEO Phil Scruton’s accent.

  ‘I know you think it’s trivial, but if they decide to play rough, it gives them grounds to fire you on the spot.’

  ‘Yeah, and what a disaster that would be. Imagine having to leave all this.’

  It was supposed to be a defiant parting retort but Ross felt like it only served to emphasise that Zac was the grown-up and he was just some daft wee boy throwing a tantrum. Zac underlined this further by grabbing a far more resonant last word, verbally abandoning the lube in favour of going in dry.

  ‘Careful what you wish for. It’s not the best time to be surfing the jobs market.’

  The inescapable truth of this hit Ross as he wandered off with his tail undeniably between his legs. What the hell else was he going to do? He had bailed on his medical career to take this job, the frustrated hacker and tinkerer in him inspired by what more he might achieve here than as a consultant on the wards. He had invested years of work at Neurosphere, and for all he hated the building and half the folk in it, deep down he knew he’d rather put up with that than walk away and leave his work unfinished, his ideas unexplored. And they knew that too.

  ‘Of course they take your work seriously, Ross: that’s the part that makes you an idiot.’

  Finally he got what Carol was saying. They had seen him coming miles off: a driven geek who would chew through the piece-work for them all day, then push the boundaries for them in his spare time. But despite him belatedly catching on to this, the really sad truth was that it only proved he needed them more than they needed him.

  He slouched reluctantly towards the reception area where the vending machines stood. The ‘cappuccino’ on offer tasted like someone had strained hot water through oven scrapings and then spat on it to provide the frothy finish, but he needed the caffeine. Unfortunately, when he got there, he found his path blocked by a three-headed gorgon: Angela the mistress of the server pen, Tracy the production-line robotics guru and Denise from marketing, united by shared disdain the moment he came into view.

  He knew they’d been talking about him. Tracy was dating Carol’s sister Beth, so the news of the weekend’s developments would have had her fit to burst. It wasn’t just that they went silent the moment he appeared, which could have simply meant that their gossip wasn’t for other people’s ears: it was Denise’s pitiful attempt to cover what they had been talking about by pretending to resume a conversation about what was going on in Eastenders and The X Factor.

  He didn’t imagine he had been painted sympathetically in Beth’s acount, and it was unlikely any of this troika would be playing geek’s advocate. They kept up their pretence of TV catch-up, a performance even less convincing than that of the actors on the soap and even less endearing than the suicides-in-waiting on the talent show. Ross helped himself to the caffeine equivalent of a shared needle – it didn’t matter how horrific the delivery system, he just needed the drug – then walked away.

  They barely waited until he was back out of sight to recommence, and certainly not until he was out of earshot.

  ‘You’d have to say it’s for the best,’ Denise opined. ‘I mean, he’s not going to change, and if he can’t see what’s right in front of him, how interested is he?’

  Christ, women just loved being elliptical like that, didn’t they? Making out things should be obvious to you, stubbornly refusing to tell you what was bothering them on the grounds that you should know: then they got doubly huffy because you couldn’t work it out.

  Denise was right, though. Carol was better off on her own. Indeed, Carol would probably argue that the trick would be telling the difference, as she had seen so little of him of late anyway.

  ‘Your head is always stuck in that computer,’ she had complained. ‘Sometimes I think if you could just live inside that thing you’d be in heaven.’

  ‘It’s amazing,’ observed Tracy. ‘Beth says Carol thinks he’s the smartest guy in the world, but what does it matter that he can see patterns in folk’s brainwaves if he can’t make out what’s staring him right in the face?’

  Well, sorry ladies, but this was one occasion where he did see what was right in front of him. He’d certainly cracked the code on that one and he hadn’t needed to analyse any brainwaves to do it. Carol had decided he was for the bin weeks back, so there was nothing he could have changed about himself over the weekend that would have altered that.

  This understanding made him feel just a little better, so he toasted the moment, albeit only with a mouthful of lukewarm crappucino as he made his way down the corridor.

  ‘So,’ he heard Angela ask, ‘is she going to keep it?’

  Setting ‘Coffee spray’ = TRUE

  Baby’s First Ray-Gun

  Ross started a little at the next shuddering boom from the enormous artillery device, as he’d been a little too distracted to notice the preceding inrush. He could hear the lesser explosions more clearly here, as well as a high keening sound almost lost in the greater din.

  Five of the advancing six-strong squad raised their weapons in outraged response to the sight in the corridor, but Ross saw a glimmer of hope that there was an exception: they were awaiting their command from the squad leader. They were members of a super-advanced civilisation, he assured himself, and you didn’t advance that far by giving in to instinctive savagery, but by conquering it. Kamnor was proof of that: as a senior officer encountering a lowly grunt in dereliction of his duties, he had been understanding of the extenuating circumstances, even in this time of battle. They would take him into custody and hold him until they could reasonably investigate whatever charges were laid against him, possibly identifying a hitherto unseen threat from victims of the virus.

  There was a very, very long half-second of silence in the corridor, its stillness emphasising the violence of the sounds outside. The keening sounded like it was getting louder, but was still drowned among the shuddering percussions that were rupturing the very air with power and rage.

  ‘Kill that traitorous sluice-rag,’ the squad leader ordered, his tone indicating outraged incredulity that they had even needed a command.

  Some kind of subconscious emergency mechanism intended to shield him from the coming horror prompted Ross to reflect instead upon the leader’s oddly PG-rated choice of invective. Perhaps it would sound more insulting – or at least coarser – once he got his proper native memory back and was better able to appreciate the cultural mores that underpinned it. Then he was snapped back into the moment and understood that such insight was about to be precluded by the complications ensuing from five devastating energy weapons.

  Not that it was much of a consolation, but his spike chose this moment to retract itself, an analogy for impotence if ever he saw one.

  Before they could fire, however, the keening became suddenly louder and through the window Ross saw it announce its source as a flaming fuselage and wing-stub. It was hurtling towards the earth so fast that it had crashed through the corridor before he could even look embarrassingly desperate by shouting ‘look out’. They wouldn’t have seen it anyway: they hadn’t reached the window yet, and they would have undoubtedly ignored his warning as a transparent and pointless attempt to distract them.

  They were obliterated instantly, the cylindrical spacecraft section smashing through one wall and then the next like a piston. Ross turned away, which was as much as he could manage by way of evasive manoeuvres, shielding his face from the blast wave and the resulting heat. He could feel shrapnel pepper his legs, arms and back, biting in
to the armour and in one place finding skin, just beneath his left shoulder blade. He felt searing heat and the sharpest of pains, but an exploratory hand discovered that nothing was embedded: the piece had just gouged a deep gash that appeared to have been instantly cauterised by the heat. Either that or it was a symptom of the leathery and suspiciously dead-looking condition of his new skin.

  The pain reminded him of the time he’d been body-surfing on holiday in Portugal and a breaking wave had tossed a jelly-fish between the board and his bare chest: the sting that keeps on stinging. But then maybe that never happened; not to him anyway.

  At least the pain told him he could still feel, that he wasn’t all machine. Then he looked through the hole in the wall at what was going on outside and decided he’d been a bit hasty in counting his blessings, given that there was an awful lot of hurt out there just waiting to be felt.

  Amid the smouldering crash debris just beyond the wall, he could see a row of escape pods that must have failed to eject during the fuselage’s final descent. As he peered deeper into the smoke, he could see that there were others that had landed intact. Troops were emerging from them, albeit many were staggering drunkenly for a few yards and then collapsing. Those who remained upright were quickly mustering, scanning their surroundings and readying weapons.

  He had no idea which side he was on, but he was aware they would be suffering no such existential dilemmas if they encountered someone looking like he did. He had no choice but to play the hand he’d been dealt. He had to find Rapier squad.

  As he walked towards the still-glowing hole in the wall, he noticed a blaster pistol at his feet. It must have been a sidearm carried by one of the dead troops, sent skittering clear by the impact. He picked it up and examined it, deciding to try it out and make sure he knew how to use it now rather than when he was facing some amped-up roid-raging space marine.

  There was no safety catch and no trick to firing it. You just pulled the trigger and it sent a short, controlled and, frankly, rubbish blast of energy towards its target. It didn’t even make a very impressive noise, just this embarrassingly squeaky sound like a car ignition failing to turn.

  All those years of devouring sci-fi shows, fantasising about futuristic firepower: now he had finally got his first ray-gun and it was pants. It reminded him of the first time he ever got to feel a girl’s breast: Melanie Sangster had finally removed her protectively positioned elbow from her left tit only for him to find it indistinguishable from any other part of her upper body through the bra, blouse and Arran sweater she was wearing. Then, as now, what really piqued his sense of disappointment was the acute awareness that the real goods were there to be had somewhere.

  How could he have this reaction unless those memories were his and unless he was shaped by them? This wasn’t just background detail; this was who he was, surely. Unless his disappointment was born of being a cyborg trooper, used to far more impressive killware, and the virus meant that his mind couldn’t help but supply points of reference from its false cache.

  Kamnor had said fighting the enemy would help bring back his real self, but he didn’t fancy fighting off an angry wasp with this little tadger of a gun.

  As he picked his way through the wreckage of the corridor, he spied something more imposing. It was a long and sturdy rifle, humming with latent energy, blue diodes pulsing on its stock and an ammo display reading max. When he bent down to lift it, he found that it was still gripped in a severed flesh-and-metal arm, and no amount of effort could prise it from its owner’s proverbial cold dead fingers. He tried hefting it along with the arm, but could barely move the latter as it weighed so much. He found another one, its come-and-get-me diodes blinking from among the tangle of twisted steel. This one wasn’t gripped, but it wasn’t going anywhere either, having become welded to its owner’s chest in the crash.

  Lumpen bum-nuggets. They were lying there dead but he couldn’t take their weapons. And why did this frustration feel familiar?

  Bottom line was that Kamnor was right again: he had to find his unit. That was the answer. They would have proper weapons. They were called Rapier squad, after all, not Chinese burn squad or twirled-up dishtowel squad.

  Ross ventured cautiously through the twisted gash in the corridor and on to the arid ground beyond: his first steps on the surface of another planet or his first steps towards recovering his true identity. He wasn’t sure which was the more intimidating. The former would leave him lost in space with no answer to his predicament, while the latter was just as big a step into the unknown. What if the ‘real’ him was a complete arsehole? Some sadistic killing machine that lived for atrocity, a convicted psychopath fitted out like this and made to serve in the military as an expedient form of punishment? What if he was a quivering shitebag of a conscript who was just as scared and unaccustomed as he felt now?

  No, that couldn’t be right. Something inside him had felt oddly positive about this place. Warm, even, and that was an emotion that ruled out both of the above.

  He ran for the cover of a broken wing embedded in the dust, constantly surprised by how natural his movement felt. He still had no sense of being burdened by the weight of all this metal, which was confusing given that he hadn’t been able to lift that poor dead bugger’s arm.

  He scurried between rocks and wreckage, looking out for movement at ground level, and listening carefully for any keening sounds from above. He could hear cries in the distance, but his view was obscured by smoke beyond a distance of about thirty metres. Shouldn’t he have infrared vision or something? Evidently it didn’t come as standard. Maybe it was fate’s cruel punishment for his obstinate resistance of car ownership and for taking the piss out of people who wanked on about the spec of their ride: now that he was part machine, he had been rendered the cyborg equivalent of a Nissan Micra.

  Even without enhanced vision (‘We offer it as part of the SE package, along with an mp3 CD stereo, Bluetooth hands-free, target-lock and a half-decent gun’), he was able to see a grey-clad human figure crouching for cover about twenty yards in front, and realised with surprise and not a little concern that he had the drop on the guy. It was more by luck than practised stealth – indeed entirely by luck rather than practised anything – but he had managed to come around behind this invading soldier, who was squatting behind a row of scorched jump-seats. Ross had the target firmly in his sights, but even as he raised his pistol he knew he couldn’t bring himself to shoot.

  He had his back to Ross, scanning the landscape, doing the same thing as he had just been: searching for his unit and scoping for enemies. As the soldier turned his head, Ross could see his face beneath the helmet. He looked about twenty-two and terrified. He knew the soldier would exhibit no such empathy were the roles reversed, but that didn’t change how he felt, virus-implanted memories or not.

  He knew about the phenomenon of non-firing combatants; and in particular how it was firing combatants who ought to be described as the phenomenon, given that they accounted for less than twenty per cent of the men who had fought in World War Two.

  For these men, it was a matter neither of honour nor of cowardice, but for Ross it was a bit of both. He couldn’t kill a guy he’d never met and who’d done nothing to him, but equally he was less than convinced his pishy gun would get the job done anyway. He had images of it serving much the same function as a clown’s horn: making a comedy noise and proving effective only at drawing attention to its source.

  Ross stayed where he was until the soldier decided it was safe to move on. He watched him disappear into the fog and gave him a few minutes’ start before proceeding himself.

  From what he saw once he had passed beyond the curtain of smoke, the poor kid probably didn’t get far. Kamnor had said Rapier squad was engaged in a ‘mopping-up’ operation, but it was one that seemed dedicated to liberally spreading organic matter about the place rather than cleaning it away.

  The gigantic cock and balls that constituted the artillery defence weapon was continuing
to piss all over the landing force, and Rapier squad, it turned out, had been tasked with rounding up and finishing off any survivors. In some cases it was a mercy, horribly burned figures crawling from landing pods in a state of mortal agony, given the coup de grâce beneath the purple alien sky. But for the most part it looked like butchery, with dazed, disoriented and frequently unarmed marines being mown down with laser fire. Nobody was being vaporised either, or simply falling down dead from absorbing energy blasts like on Star Trek or Agnes’s favourite, Blake’s 7. These beams were tearing off arms, legs and heads like they were airborne saw blades. If this sight was supposed to help trigger the return of his real memories, then it was the first thing Kamnor had got wrong.

  The late lieutenant’s take on squad sergeant Gortoss was, unfortunately, on the money. Ross first encountered him using his arm-spike to impale a marine who had already lost his legs in his crash-landing and was trying to crawl to safety with his arms.

  ‘Like bloody cockroaches,’ he said, his voice several thousand decibels to the north of the Brian Blessed register. ‘Cut off a couple of limbs and they just keep scuttling.’

  He was the size of Kamnor, albeit with a greater proportion of flesh on display, though whereas it had looked like Kamnor’s augmentations were designed with specific purposes in mind, Gortoss’s appeared to have been carried out by someone having a tilt at the Turner Prize. Ross could have sworn there was even a steam iron in there somewhere, which had presumably been embedded after being used to blister extensive areas of Gortoss’s remaining skin.

  As with the cowering marine, Ross had happened upon him all of a sudden, having come over the brow of a crater. Unlike the marine, however, Gortoss gave him no option to withdraw unseen.

  ‘Recruit! Where in a swamp-slug’s suppurating ring-piece have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I had already decided to cite you for desertion. Your punishment was to have your own guts syphoned out through a liquefaction tube and then fed back down your throat. I was going to carry it out myself. I was really looking forward to that,’ he added, sounding genuinely hurt. ‘But then you have to show up and ruin it. Bloody new recruits they keep sending me. You’re my punishment, that’s what you are.’