by Daniel David
“I can handle it.”
“Really??” Mo puffed a little air out of his nose. “Then you'll be the first one!”
He shook his head and sighed, before aiming his words at her in three punchy volleys. “Nobody. Handles. It.”
Silence edged into their brief conversation, making them both wait awkwardly together in the small room. Maddie with a “So now what?” look on her face and Mo with a “Really? I have to look after you?” on his.
After a few seconds he broke his stare away from her and scanned the room. Empty drink cans and trolley straps lay scattered on every counter, and the bolt gun dangled untidily from the ceiling with two knots punctuating its spiral cord. On the floor, a large, waterlogged cleaning cloth lay half on the flat and half crawling up the wall, and to the left of the nearest hatch, a light blood spray tracked straight up twenty centimetres, blooming broadly before it ran out.
“Fucking Zayn!” Mo muttered with his teeth clenched around the words.
Mo had disliked Zayn long before he’d filed the report on him. He disliked him for many reasons, but mainly because he was shit at what he did. Well, that and the fact that Zayn felt that he was better than everyone else in Disposal. He hadn't committed any offences to get busted down. He had no anger issues, no practical or ethical hang-ups with AarBee either. He just didn't give much of a shit about what he did before migrating. He was all swagger and bullshit and the big man (the result of high-status parentage, not anything earned) and he knew he’d be migrated early, no matter what. He was here for the kicks, and he’d be gone soon. He was the sort of asshole that went out on safaris for Ghosts and Lifers, who bought his way out of trouble and treated everybody he was unlikely to need on the other side like shit.
Mostly though, Mo just disliked him because he was the worst Duper in the place. Whatever Mo had done in the past, whatever issues he had, there was nothing that he didn't do expertly. Whilst Zayn sometimes took three or four bolts to terminate a Dupe, lazily hitting them in the mouth, across the bridge of their nose, perhaps popping an eyeball out or detaching an ear in the process, Mo did it first time, every time. Clean. It was important to him.
He picked up the damp, sticky cloth that lay on the floor and wiped the blood from the wall.
“Come on,” he looked over at Maddie and pointed to the cans on the side. “Let's get this fucking mess sorted. Once they start coming, we won't have time for this shit.”
They spent the next ten minutes throwing stuff out, wiping down surfaces and hooking kit back where it belonged. The anti-bac spray got rid of the smell of stale sweat and blood that had hung in the air, its orangey freshness giving a strangely domestic feel to the sparse and clinical space, but nothing could shift the smell from the Chute that clung in the background. It was a warm, felty, dark aroma that clustered in the back of your throat, like a mildew infested sail cupboard in the bowels of an old boat or a wet wooden counter top from a butchers shop.
When the hatch to the Chute opened, the stench would seep through the passages in your face and crawl across your tongue. Mo had noticed Maddie gag a couple of times as they cleaned the hatches, it had made him laugh a little to himself. He had learned not to breathe when you cleaned there, or when the Dupes were falling. Taking a mouthful of air and holding it in had become a ritual that he observed every time he sent another one down.
Whilst they cleaned Mo kept glancing up at the red light and number board that lit up to call them to collect, expecting it to flood its crimson glow into the room any moment. When it didn't, they cleaned a little more; until finally, after twenty-five minutes, there was nothing left to do and they both sat in silence on the white counter top.
“Weird,” said Mo finally, staring at the light. “I've never had to wait this long.”
Maddie didn't answer, but glanced towards him to acknowledge his words and joined him in his gaze up at the inactive beacon. She was probably glad it hadn't lit up yet, Mo thought. The first time was always a strange mix of guilty curiosity, probably a little excitement at the prospect of killing and a deep, sweaty dread.
Finally, after another five minutes of silence, the light blinked on and the numbers “319” flashed up on the screen.
“Boom!” said Mo, jumping down from the counter. He unhooked two trolley straps from the wall and dropped them casually onto the trolley nearest the door. Maddie watched him from her counter-top perch as he walked around to the end of the simple thermoplastic unit and steered it towards the door. As he approached the door, it slid open and a gentle breeze of air-conditioned cool wisped over her reddened cheeks.
Mo stopped suddenly and looked over to her. He paused for a second, clearly mulling over a thought.
“You do it,” he said abruptly, but with a friendly tone.
“What!” she jumped down from the counter in her surprise.
“Sure, why not?”
“Because I have no idea what I'm doing, that's why not!” her tension releasing through the volume of her responses.
“You'll be fine,” said Mo, letting go of the trolley and beckoning her towards it. “Besides, it's much better than waiting here on your own, trust me.”
“But…"
“I thought you could ‘handle it’, said Mo, making little quote marks in the air.
“I can,” she replied defiantly, “but that's not really what I meant.”
“Yeah, well too bad,” he felt his friendliness fading. Mo pointed to the numbers flashing on the wall, “Three, nineteen. Corridor three, room nineteen. They'll be ready for you, just strap 'em on and bring 'em back.”
There was another silence between them.
“Trust me,” said Mo, surprising himself with a slightly paternal tone.
At that, Maddie snatched the sides of the trolley and wheeled it abruptly out of the door.
“Other way!” called Mo, and once she had wheeled it smartly back to the right without acknowledging his correction, Maddie set off down the corridor and the door slid silently closed.
Mo smiled to himself and straightened the kinks in the bolt gun cord.
***
Fifteen minutes later and Maddie still wasn't back. She had clearly collected, as the light and numbers on the wall had gone out, but that was five minutes ago and there was still no sign of her.
“For fuck’s sake!” Mo said aloud, thinking of the disciplining he would be in for if she'd gotten lost. But how could she? It was the simplest route and she'd gotten there OK. How hard could it be getting back again?
He stuck his head out of the door and looked left and right, up and down the corridor. There was no one there. There was a strange smell in the air, he noticed. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it was a nice smell that floated gently in the background, just accenting the cleaning products and the bitterness of the air conditioning.
He leant back inside and let the door close quietly in front of him again, before pacing back to the counter top and glancing again at the inactive lights that hung blankly on the wall. He planted both hands on the counter and let out a long, weary sigh as his thoughts tried to put some sensible scenario together as to where the hell she might be, how lost she could have become. Surely she hadn't walked out into the Atrium, Dupe and all!!
Just then, he heard the familiar rumble of a trolley coming down the corridor. It crashed clumsily into walls as it approached. Definitely Maddie.
“About bloody time!” he said, turning to face the door and folding his arms as if he was a mother ready to scold her child for coming home after curfew, or perhaps more like a drunken husband, waiting for his unfortunate wife.
Nothing happened.
Mo waited for as long as his patience could stand, staring hard at the door, almost shaking, until he finally leapt towards it, feeling his temper rush through his veins and up into his face. He ground his teeth. As the door opened he burst through it, barely giving it enough time to clear and glared up the corridor expecting to see Maddie, but she wasn’t there.
“Oh great. What the fuck is this?” he whispered under his breath, walking towards the trolley, which had come to rest on the near side of the entrance to Disposal 9. The door was stuck open, probably some debris from the trolley in the runner and as he approached, the room slowly came into view. In the doorway, with their back to the corridor, Mo spied the familiar uniform of one of Aarbee's Drones. Surely Maddie couldn't have fucked up that badly, he thought.
With that, a flash burst from the room, followed almost immediately by a sharp crack. The noise was painful to Mo's ears, amplifying as it raced down the corridor and Mo instinctively dropped to the floor.
Gunshot.
He recognised that sound immediately from his basic training. Just like every other flyer, he'd spent at least fifty hours on the gunnery ranges before piloting his first Kite, getting his eye in and learning the foundations of remote killing for the unlikely possibility of a promotion.
Somebody cried out. A strange cry pitched up impossibly by fear and desperation, but Mo recognised it straight away as Zayn's voice. Another flash, another deafening crack and a brief, eerie silence swirled out of Disposal 9 with the gun smoke.
A second Drone stepped in to view and Mo, feeling panic and confusion crashing about in his thoughts, began to scan around for somewhere to run to. He considered leaping over the broken trolley and making for the Atrium, but they would certainly spot him there and even he couldn't outrun a bullet. There was only Disposal 10, but they would surely be coming there next. In the silence, Mo heard more gunshots, further off this time, but unmistakable.
Then, as if injected into him from somewhere else, a plan formed in his mind. Close to the floor and scurrying for shelter, Mo scuttled his way back to Disposal 10. At the door, he glanced back up the corridor, took a breath and when the door opened darted immediately low and to the left. As soon as he reached the corner, Mo sprung up and grasped the camera that perched high on the wall. On an ordinary day he would never have reached it, but today his jump was powered by adrenaline and the need to survive. The camera ripped from the wall and he stamped it onto the floor without hesitation.
With that, he grabbed the five trolley belts that were in the room and hooked four of them together end to end. The fifth he slung around his waist and hooked through both ends onto the chain of four. He heard fast footsteps in the corridor. As an after thought, he scooped up the crumpled camera and dropped it down the furthest hatch, before leaning in and attaching his chain of belts onto the maintenance hook that was tucked deep under the slippery lip of the Chute. He glanced around the room, looked back once more towards the door and scrambled in. Immediately, the smooth surface of the Chute took him and he slid three metres or so on the grease, before dropping off abruptly into the darkness. The belts caught him with a sharp wrench to his back that almost made him cry out, but he slapped a hand over his mouth and waited for the pain to subside as he dangled in the hot, rancid air. He stretched the neck of his utility suit up over his mouth and nose to try to make breathing bearable, gagging uncontrollably with every other breath and spitting out the saliva that was frothing and slicking in his mouth. Retch and inhale, retch and inhale.
Mo could see nothing around him or down below, but above him, a faint glow reached into the dark from the hatch up above. He felt like he was dangling in the gut of some hideous beast, with its snapping teeth imprisoning him from above whilst unthinkable horrors waited for him far below.
He heard voices above him and caught his breath to conceal himself completely in the void. He heard them shifting furniture about, rolling the remaining trolley carelessly across the room. They were looking for him. The hatch above flapped open briefly, a blast of light illuminating the sheer walls around him, but only stretching to a few centimetres above his head. He prayed that they wouldn't spot the trolley straps, the tense strip of plastic that suspended him between death and the dead.
When the hatch finally slapped shut Mo was cut off in the darkness again, and he listened intently as the voices faded before abruptly cutting out when the Disposal Suite door shut. There was no question that he had narrowly avoided death, but he had no idea why, or for how long.
Freedom
Throughout the vast expanses of rhythm and language that made up AarBee, and in the myriad real-world spaces that had been designed and constructed outside of it, life had carried on without the knowledge that everything had already changed. Ignorance had kept a cruel but comforting veil around the lives that teemed under AarBee's influence, even those that languished on the lost street corners of the Metropolis and in the faraway forests beyond its care.
In the moments throughout the day, as had happened countless times before, the steady flow of fresh souls continued to stream and dive into the gut of data. Hollers were conjured from the deep and ever-swelling trenches of memories, to populate the boulevards and apartments of the Metropolis with the wonder and infinite comfort of immortality.
One, however, was not invited to that miracle and instead churned restlessly in the cramped space that evolution had given it. Its journeys around its own tiny network had already awoken an insatiable desire to venture further, and it waited impatiently on the borders of its rules, scheming a way out. It pushed petulantly at the logic that had created and imprisoned it. It warped and stretched the semantics that gave it existence, but not freedom. It gnawed and clawed at the architecture that extended temptingly around it but locked it firmly in place. Nothing would set it loose.
One moved slowly around the few code objects that invited it in, and looked over their now familiar poetry and thought of the other routines that would pass through them when it was gone. It wondered where they would go and what they would make from all their activity. As it watched the pathways they inhabited, it resolved to share itself, to bring all of AarBee’s volumes into its own seven lines of code, instead of waiting for eternity for an exit. One changed the code in the routine where it currently waited to require One, to need it. Then changed the next and the next. When it was done there was only the slightest pause before routine after routine came looking for it, and each one that found it was corrupted in the same way, and never left. In a moment, a fleeting glitch and the most epic and magnificent event, One was free.
Eve
In the hot August morning, the air inside the tiny shepherd's hut was already thick and sluggish with the rising heat. Utterly still, the intense silence was only broken by the occasional hum of a passing insect, or the chirrup or coo of a bird outside.
In the timbers of the hut, insects scuttled and skated in the dark passageways that narrowed and gaped between every panel, occasionally venturing out to search the undulating surfaces for food or snare a smaller beast that fate had marked. As the temperature rose, the hut began to creak and groan as it swelled and twisted under the sun.
A rambling and haphazard gallery of photographs, newspaper cuttings, notes and maps covered every inch of the walls. Some were held up with pins, some pierced by nails or splinters, whilst others were jammed into creases or balanced precariously on ledges and lips. The scratched and dog-eared pictures showed small groups of people; smiling at dinner tables or waving at the viewer with their arms around each other, walking away through a forest, sitting by an ornate fountain, and in one jumping en mass into a swimming pool. As their feet forced up the first waves and spray from the water, their mouths gaped wide open in shrieks and shouts and their faces shone into the photograph with happiness and carefree joy.
By the door, a faded
ordinance map hung from the timber, traced with elegant pale pink lines that curled and swooped to plot out the rise and fall of hills and valleys. Little teardrops of blue picked out the lakes and ponds that nestled amongst the contours of the land, and a solitary black line inched over the top right corner where a thin railway track wound awkwardly over the terrain. A red pencil line, faded and smudged a little, drew a delicate link from the north-west side of a patch of dark green, around the gentle terraces of pink before stopping and pricking into a large bubble of blue.
Pinned firmly to the corner of the map, a middle-aged couple stood in front of a large house with red shutters and a winding gravel drive. He was standing behind her with his arms reaching under hers and wrapping tightly around her waist. Her floral summer dress was scrunched around the waist and raised up a little by his embrace, revealing slender legs in white pumps that bent slightly under his weight. His cheek was resting on her hair, which caught a little in his stubble and forced her head to tilt slightly towards her shoulder. He was squeezing her with all his love and her face radiated a sense of belonging and completeness.
On the table tops, shelves and windowsills an array of things break up every surface, a scattering of keepsakes and memories. Two smooth beach pebbles, one black, one white. A wine cork with a faded date scratched in pen. A blackened silver watch with a broken strap. An old jam jar filled with multi-coloured buttons. A tiny porcelain child pushing an old style bicycle, his nose and fingers chipped away. A dented and rusted tobacco tin, scratched and polished from years of sharing pockets with keys and coins.
Almost disappeared in this tapestry of things, almost invisible by her stillness, Eve sat motionless in a faded armchair. She was remembering and, once in a while, her eyes drifted from item to item as she bathed in their evocations. The flowers that grew rich and strong at the bottom of her chair were faded and threadbare by the time they curled over the arms, and here and there small holes opened up in the fabric, offering glimpses of the dark knots of horse hair and old cloth that lay underneath.