by Daniel David
Mo lifted the hatch a fraction and dropped his cheek onto the smooth surface of the Chute to peer underneath. Sweat pooled around his nostrils and tear ducts, stinging as it blotted across the surface of his eye. He blinked hard and rubbed it out with the back of his hand. From his strange viewpoint, peeking out at a sharp angle from the counter top across to the far corner of the room, Mo could see nothing apart from the headrest of a chair and the bolt gun hanging motionless from the ceiling. Nothing moved. He opened the hatch a little wider, but his view still didn't improve. He would have to stick his head right out if he wanted a clear view around all four corners of the space.
He dropped the hatch again gently and then, with his heart pounding in his throat, pushed his head straight out into the room. He looked left and right quickly as he went through and brought his arms down swiftly onto the counter in a kind of comical pounce. He figured that once he was visible he might as well go all the way, as retreating was not an option and surprise – at least – was on his side.
He was alone. The trolley in the room was left untidily in the middle of the space, but other than that, everything was as he'd left it. The air felt fresh and clean in his mouth and lungs compared to the thick and oily oxygen in the Chute, and for a moment he crouched in the stillness whilst it cleansed and cooled his insides.
He wriggled out of the Chute and swung his legs around to plant his feet on the floor. AarBee would have sensed him moving already, so he had no time to waste. He rifled in the storage cupboard under the counter and retrieved the large alloy spanner used to strip down the bolt gun, it wasn't much, but it was the only weapon he had and would at least be useful up close. Gripping it firmly in his fist, he made for the door which slid quietly open as he approached it.
In the corridor nothing had changed and nothing moved. The broken trolley was exactly where it had been when he was last here, bits of it still scattered across the otherwise pristine floor. It felt like life had paused, a glitch in time waiting to be reset once fate had decided which future he would have. He moved quietly but quickly up to where it rested and peered in through the still-jammed-open door of Disposal 9. On the far wall, close to the ground, dark blood exploded violently upwards, not thinning out until at least waist height. There was a matching pool on the floor that smeared slightly towards the middle of the room, but no body. Mo glanced suspiciously around the rest of the space before quietly moving on, forcing himself to be part of the stillness.
Just beyond the sharp bend in the corridor, before the cluster of Disposals 5 to 8, there was another bloody trace. Much less this time, what looked like a hand print next to a small puddle no bigger than an apple, but again nobody. There was an eerie silence and Mo could smell the blood and gun smoke still hanging in the air. He edged further along on the opposite wall to the Disposal Suites, not wanting to trigger any doors for fear of what, or who, might be on the other side.
Each time he came upon a camera, he smashed it swiftly with his wrench. He knew AarBee could track him anyway, but at least with some cameras gone he might be a little less visible once the bots were out.
After the next bend and another camera, Mo reached the first of the Sync rooms. He was amazed that he'd gotten this far without hearing Drones coming towards him. It didn't make much sense, but then again the lack of bodies and the whole of the last few hours was a complete head-wreck. It was weirdly close to one of his recurring nightmares, slipping and sliding down the grease soaked corridors of Echo Farm, trying to run from something but always falling, as the bodies of all those he'd bolted in the last two years lay strewn around every doorway and patch of ground.
Mo let the Sync Room door slide open and dashed in with his wrench held high above his head, but there was no one to fight. Blood was everywhere, on the Dupe trolley and up every wall. Trailing back towards the door he'd come in from he could see a couple of wheel tracks that printed rhythmic red dashes away from a large, glistening pool.
After tugging open a few drawers, Mo found the stems he was looking for and – without stopping to think about it – unwrapped one, before jamming it into the proud blue vein that tracked across the back of his hand. He spasmed from the pain and gripped the sticky trolley with his other hand to settle himself. These things came with an anaesthetic on the other end, but there wasn't the time. Stem inserted, he clicked the small blue button on the top of it and soon his blood – sparkling from the bots like a mineralised mountain stream – began to drip onto the floor.
It took five minutes for the blue light to go out, the longest five minutes of his life, watching the door that led out to the Atrium and listening hard for footsteps. There was still nothing. Maybe they weren't after him after all? Mo thought. Either way, he was clean now, so he would be a lot harder to find, providing he could avoid the cameras.
He crept out of the far door and headed down the wide and bright corridor towards the Atrium. He passed a couple more cameras, but was now so puzzled as to why nobody had come for him that although he ducked instinctively passed them, he left them intact. As the walls grew wider and wider his footsteps began to echo slightly until he finally emerged into the vastness of the arrival Atrium. Furniture was turned over, jackets and shoes were scattered about, and bullet holes tracked across walls and shattered windows, clustering in a frenzy around door frames and pillars where people, perhaps successfully, perhaps not, had tried to shelter from the violent spray.
The warm night-time air was drifting through the main entrance in pine-scented waves that made the tall and elegant ornamental sunblinds yawn away from the glass and clatter back every few seconds. One of the blinds lay in an untidy heap at the foot of the great glass entrance, twisted and knotted as if it had wrestled with a wild animal before giving up and collapsing into a dejected tangle on the floor. The glass pulsated slightly, darkening and lightening in great sweeping waves as the climate control tried to make sense of the cracks that spindled here and there across the great sheets.
As Mo looked around the room it occurred to him that there were no Hollers. Evidence of the struggles of flesh and blood were all around him, but where had the Hollers gone?
At the reception counter, all of the terminals were switched off and the call screens were blank, but the lights around the room were working as normal, and the doors and camera systems were clearly running.
Just then, the faintest sound caught his ear, dancing delicately past on the breeze that was the only sign that time was still flowing. He couldn't make it out, but he edged slowly towards the darkness that waited outside the building, desperate now to make sense of the moment, or at least find someone else to share in his confusion.
At the entrance he crouched down as low as he could, his instincts encouraging him to be small and silent. In the distance, at the far end of the boulevard, where the Vactrains endlessly shuttled in with their cargo of excited migrants, and out again with the lighter load of hushed loved ones, he could see bright lights and figures moving about. The lights cast long shadows from the pine trees and hydrangea bushes that lined the smooth white pathway, and Mo moved cautiously closer through the dark patches to get a clear view of the activity in the terminal.
As he edged nearer, his heart creeping back into his chest, he could see the figures were Drones. They were moving slowly and awkwardly around the concourse, he could see a few more inside the train moving at a similar pace, scanning the ground with narrow white beams of light from their helmet torches. He peered hard into the dark to see what they were scanning, and as his eyes adjusted he began to make out the twisted angles, curves and textures of bodies. Hundreds of them, almost completely covering the floor of the concourse and the perfect, clipped grass that stretched back towards him.
In a far corner of the terminal, a small group stood huddled in the glare of the lights. They were almost all children. He couldn't make them out clearly enough to be sure, but judging by their size compared to the three Drones that stood around them, the oldest couldn't have been
more than ten.
As the Drones scanned spectre-like through the corpses, Mo saw a hand rise slowly from the shadows as the thin torchlights converged on it with an unforgiving glare. There was no sound, but the arm, hand and fingers snaked and writhed a short dance of pleading and helplessness, before the crack of a Drones gun jerked it sharply back into the dark and the little group of children let out a collective squeal.
Mo buried himself tighter into the cover of the small trees and bushes and looked back towards the children in the terminal. Poor bastards. He wasn't about to save them, but he did feel sorry for them, all that death washing around their feet with whoever it was each had come to wave off into AarBee, lying somewhere in the dirt nearby. Besides, there was no way he could get anywhere near them without being spotted and if he did, the number of Drones combing through the bodies meant it would be impossible to get them even a few steps beyond the lights.
As he stared at them, transfixed and helpless, something whizzed passed his ear, quickly followed by another two, then countless more, zipping around him in invisible fizzings that exploded in the leaves and branches overhead. Thinly stretched beams of light fidgeted urgently around the bushes and trees before intertwining and picking him out of the dark. He slammed himself hard onto the ground as another two bullets flew overhead, before wriggling quickly to the next bush. He glanced up briefly and could see at least half a dozen Drones running in his direction. The bush behind him danced and shook as they fired mercilessly at where he'd been. He crawled to the next. Another glance up and he knew he would have to move much faster if he was to get anywhere safe before they arrived.
He crawled to one more bush and then with his focus only on the tall sheets of glass and gleaming white walls up ahead, bolted towards the Atrium. He was halfway there before the lights picked him out again and the bullets only began to get close to him as he made his last few strides into the temporary safety of the building. Once inside, he made straight for the corridor he had come from, not bothering to duck now, just going for speed. He had a head start and he knew that once he was in the corridors, with the cameras out and no bots in his blood, his pursuers would have to split up and slow down to search for him. Mo, however, knew exactly where he was going and sped through Sync rooms and corridors back to Disposal 10.
When he burst back into the room Mo felt a strange sense of coming home. He'd never felt this before in these spaces. Normally he would enter the room with only a habitual glare at the clock to mark the start of another shift, perhaps kicking the furniture roughly out of the way or lobbing his shift bag unceremoniously to the far corner counter. But today, today the room was like a secluded hideaway he could scurry back to, a plastic and anti-bac burrow that for now felt familiar and safe.
Mo planted his hands on the counter and dropped his head, dragging air into his chest and waiting for the panic of adrenalin to ebb. He thought again of the children, tiny figures clustering like puppies and surrounded by a knotted and twisted blanket of death. Then he thought of the boy, drifting away from him in slow motion, his perfect smile fading to helpless confusion as the dark swallowed him.
The distant pop of gunfire lifted him out of his memories and back into his current situation. He reached into the cupboard under the worktop and pulled out his shift bag, took a few gulps from the water bottle he kept there, before refilling it at the tap and shoving it back inside. He scanned the inside but there was no food. He reached back under the counter and pulled out Maddie's bag. Inside was a water bottle and two nutrition bars. He reached in and grabbed them and was about to transfer both into his bag when he paused, he stared at them intently for a few moments, before chucking one of them back into her bag and bundling it under the counter. What if she was still alive somewhere? What if she came looking for them, a silent figure seeking out mouthfuls of survival? He had to leave one.
Mo slung his bag across his chest, shifting it slightly to sit better on the muscles in his shoulders. After hooking the trolley straps back around his waist he glanced slowly around the room, taking in the distinctive light, the stillness, the kit waiting clean and ready for its next body. He felt like he was saying goodbye, like life was poised on the cusp of some monumental shift. Just briefly, he caught a fleeting memory of the excitement he had felt on his first day at Prime/Code, a feeling that a glorious and heroic future was about to unfold before him. It was a sensation that had come to him only a few times before and only in his younger life, but he felt it again now. He indulged it for a moment, feeling it tingle under his skin and when it passed, turned calmly towards the hatch and smiled at his predicament, before climbing silently back into his dark and airless sanctuary.
Sarah Goes to the Farm
The Vac was cool and clean, a gleaming probe gliding effortlessly through the tubes that traced arteries above, below and around the Metropolis and out to Echo Farm. Sarah and Zoe sat next to each other, silently holding hands and watching their reflections in the glass opposite. Sarah's thumb rocked gently backwards and forwards over the young skin on Zoe's hand, and every now and then they smiled at their reflections or glanced left and right towards each other.
The compartment was quiet for a weekday morning, with only a small group of passengers sharing their journey. A young girl opposite was talking to a group of Hollers that sat like tiny dolls on her lap, behind her a smart man in a utility suit was swiping through reports and shifting numbers. On some mornings every carriage would be buzzing with Hollers of all shapes and sizes, clustered around every traveller. But not this morning.
Far down the compartment, a woman sat awkwardly across two seats, her young child fast asleep over her lap and shoulder. His stick thin legs dangled down from his mother's clutches and swung rhythmically back and forth with the movement of the train. Sarah studied his face, perfectly shut down and expressionless as he slept. She thought how astonishingly beautiful his tiny face looked, made so utterly content and pure that she couldn't think of anything more perfect. She felt how much she wanted to go to him and plant a tender kiss on his forehead, to share everything he had. She remembered when Zoe would sit across her just like that, a tiny weight pushing down with gentle warmth on her breast and stomach. She squeezed her hand a little and Zoe responded by resting her head softly on her shoulder.
A young Asian guy sat silently a few benches further away, intently watching his fingers as they twitched and tapped against his thumb, as if they were counting through an endless equation, whilst occasionally pushing his tortoiseshell glasses back against his brow. Sarah didn't take him for a Holler at first, but as she studied him absentmindedly, his dark utility suit changed to a smart white shirt with a black tie in a gentle wave of transformation. He had short, jet black hair that writhed and twisted maggot-like, tightening into taught knots on his head before gradually sharpening into neat spikes that he disappeared every now and then with a sweep of his hand. She wondered why he was travelling so silently on his own. Hollers never did, they only ever came to interact with someone physical, and she felt her forehead crease a little as she pondered his story. He looked lost in dark thoughts, brooding in silence at his fingertips and every now and then shooting sharp glances randomly towards the roof, the carriage walls and other passengers with awkward, disconnected jolts.
After a couple more stops the train shot out of the darkness of the tunnel and into the glaring sunlight of the day. The change always made Sarah's ears pop and she felt a little adrenalin rush with the speed of the landscape that now raced by. She clenched her teeth a couple of times, feeling the grinding at the back of her mouth and yawned her mouth wide open to clear the pressure that had dulled her hearing with the wrap of the tunnel. When it finally cleared, the hiss of the air conditioning jumped back into her ears and she wondered why she hadn't noticed it before.
The sleeping boy had also been disturbed by the sudden return of the day and now sat up on his mother's lap, lazily steering his half awake eyes around the carriage. His gaze bumped in to
Sarah’s and he let it rest with her for a while, unbothered by their meeting. After a few moments she threw him a smile, which he received gratefully and sent one back, wide and bashful, before burying his head in his mother's shoulder.
The young Asian guy had disappeared now, perhaps just to the next carriage, perhaps to appear on some device somewhere else, or maybe to explore somewhere altogether different. She wondered what that must feel like, to be so free to move and change however and whenever you wanted, to exist in any number of places at once, to flit at will between the worlds of eternity and mortality. After thirty years of guessing, she would know in less than an hour.
11.00am
When they arrived at Echo Farm, the doors hissed open and they stepped down onto the dark slate pathway that led up through beautifully manicured gardens towards an imposing white thermoplastic building. The grass had been cut earlier in the morning and the air was still heavy with the rich and earthy scent of the summer. Stray blades of grass were scattered around the edges of the path and a couple of blackbirds were taking advantage of the abundance of bugs and worms that had been tricked to the surface or caught in the open.
As they walked slowly away from the train, Sarah continuously panned her head from side to side, trying to take in all the sights and smells she could, one last time. The day was bright now and the sun glared onto her skin with a continuous searing heat. It made her sweat a little and she felt her skin prickle and her clothes move stubbornly against her limbs. In the distance, over the tops of the evergreen trees that bordered the ever so green lawn, she could see the peaks and ridges of the outland hills that looked bleached and bare by comparison.
As her gaze swept left to right she paused once or twice as the doors at the end of the path grew ever closer. The tall glass panels augmented her view with an almost perfect reflection of her and Zoe, but with a slight ripple from the heat and the imperfection of the surface. She noticed that they hadn’t spoken for the whole journey, though they were still holding hands.