by Scott Reeves
But that was ridiculous, he told himself. He had crawled this far through the maze of ducts, wriggling forward like the human worm that he was. He wriggled around in the ducts every day and hadn’t gotten stuck yet. He reminded himself of that constantly, and thus managed to calm himself down.
He needed to be calm to get an erection, so he could masturbate while watching the pretty young girl get righteously plowed by her young boyfriend. That’s exactly what he was doing right then. It was difficult. The thin metal walls of the duct were so close that he had to be careful not to bang his hand against them while stroking himself. That wouldn’t be good. The noise might alert the girl, and he didn’t want that.
He liked to watch her. He’d been watching her for weeks now, and she always put on a good show. She was a hellacious fuck, and he could only imagine what it must be like to be on the receiving end of all that youthful energy. No, he didn’t want to alert her to his presence until he was ready. Maybe another few days, maybe another few weeks. When the time was right, he would take her to his special place where she would join his other young lovers.
Now, he was content to merely stare out into her bedroom through the bars of the ventilation grille, stroking himself, drinking in her beauty. The bracelet on his right wrist jangled as he pumped his hand. It was a memento from one of his first girls, about ten years back. It was engraved on the inside band, To Mira on her sweet 16th, Love Daddy.
He wished he could have recorded their tryst, but he had taken off his Net interface before entering the duct system, just in case someone might try to track him. He didn’t want Mac or anyone else at his work getting wise to his extracurricular activities.
The boy and the girl were just finishing up. She rolled away from the boy and sat on the bed as she pulled on her panties.
Bin came then, staring at her beautiful young body. His semen spurted out onto the duct wall to the left of the grille, joining the crusted remnants of his previous emissions, several weeks’ worth.
When he was done, he rolled onto his back, the air duct creaking slightly at his movement, and sighed. He idly listened to the soft chatter of the young couple as he relaxed in the afterglow of his pleasure.
When the boy and the girl left the room, he continued lying there, relaxing. The light from her bedroom shone in through the grille, the bars casting a line of shadows across his face. He heard a skittering sound in the darkness forward of his head. Maybe a rat hurrying along, or maybe another voyeur crawling around on his own perverted business. Rat or fellow voyeur, it didn’t matter. Bin’s apartment was in the direction of his feet, not his head, so he would never meet whatever was making the distant skittering noise.
After he’d been lying there for a few minutes, he heard a muffled scream. It was coming from beyond the girl’s bedroom door. She was screaming in terror.
Edoard Dogon
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
4:45 PM Planetary Standard Time
Ten seconds after he had stepped onto the pad, Shermit Jordal still had not rematerialized on the transmat receiving pad.
Inwardly panicking but outwardly calm for the sake of the holo cameras, Ed went over and stood above Chris Donu’s console. “What’s the delay, Chris?” he asked, bending over Chris’s readouts.
They both saw the anomalies on the display, and both looked over at the reporters. Neither said a word, keeping their faces straight as the seconds ticked away. Ed’s mind was racing. The matter stream through the newly-opened subspace channel was showing a strange fragmentation like nothing he’d ever seen before. The stream represented not just Shermit Jordal, but billions of people all over the planet beaming about their business.
“Fuck,” Ed whispered. He felt a bead of sweat pop out on his forehead and go rolling down toward his eyes.
He straightened.
“It’s been a minute already,” a brave reporter pointed out, breaking the silence. “What’s the delay? Where’s CEO Jordal?”
“Fuck,” Ed whispered again. He didn’t know who he would rather be at that moment: Sherm, perhaps lost in the matter stream forever, or himself, who was going to have to deal with the inevitable hell that was going to come from this day. He cleared his throat to make a statement.
But before he could speak, he heard the telltale hum of the transmat kicking on.
“We’re receiving,” Chris Donu said unnecessarily.
An alarm on Chris’s console went off. “Infected biological matter,” he reported.
What? Sherm’s entry scan had been clean, else the computer wouldn’t have let him be dematerialized. How could he get an infection during transmission? Subspace was empty. “Override reception,” Ed barked out, not to Chris, but to Mac, the planetary AI who was monitoring the event. The command was really unnecessary, since Mac should have already been on top of the situation, automatically shutting off reception faster than a human could react.
But Mac was strangely silent, and Chris didn’t react quickly enough to hit the reception kill switch before it was too late to abort.
Sherm materialized on the transmat pad. He swayed on the pad, gazing into the room with glassy, vacant eyes. His breath came in rapid, heaving gasps. Those eyes were frightening. All the prissiness, all the backstabbing ambition of Shermit Jordal, was gone.
“Sherm?” Ed asked. “Are you all right, Sherm?”
A feral look came into Sherm’s eyes. He crouched, bared his teeth and hissed at the people in the room. Ed thought the man looked like nothing so much as a vicious cornered animal. There was an absence about this thing, an absence of Sherm. This thing that was Sherm and yet wasn’t radiated wrongness, and an overpowering sense of menace.
Then Sherm leapt from the pad, an incredibly high leap that carried him over the front row of control consoles. The technicians nearby scrambled back as Sherm came down on Chris Donu, knocking the lead technician from his chair and falling on him like a ravenous beast. He sank his teeth into Chris’s throat.
Taken off guard and scared that he might be next, Ed scrambled backward and narrowly avoided being showered by a sudden fountain of blood that spouted from Chris’s neck.
Everyone in the room stood stock still, shocked and transfixed with horror as Sherm, or the infected thing that had once been Sherm, ripped hungrily at Chris Donu’s throat, yanking out strings of muscle and artery that he slurped down like spaghetti. Chris twitched and screamed a long steady scream that slowly died out as the life left his body. Sherm continued to feast.
Some brave technician who still had the steadiness of thought to act ran to a nearby storage locker. The locker was stenciled with the words, “Don’t fear your coworkers. This office is armed to prevent workplace violence. An armed workplace is a safe workplace.” Beside the words was the image of a big, handsome man with a strong jaw who looked capable of handling anything: the comforting, ever-present, public face of Mac, the planetary AI. Ed had always thought the “armed workplace” policy was ridiculous, since the guns could just as easily be used to commit workplace violence as to defend against it. But public policies were rarely rational.
The brave technician opened the locker and pulled out a laser pistol, which he aimed at Sherm and squeezed off a quick blast of focused light.
The beam vaporized Sherm’s right arm. Even as the limb was exploding into a shower of fine ash, the crazed Sherm turned and leapt upon the brave technician, gouging out the man’s eyes before biting savagely into the side of his head.
As soon as Sherm fell upon the brave and hapless technician, the laser pistol was flung from the man’s grip and went sliding across the floor, skidding to a halt at Ed’s feet. As if to make up for the earlier cowardice with which he had leapt away from Chris Donu, Ed knelt and retrieved the pistol. He cranked the power switch up to full and then, rather than firing a quick, ineffective blast like that of the technician, he bathed Sherm in a continuous beam that threatened to overheat the pistol.
Even then, Sherm didn’t quietly and
quickly vaporize. He tossed the hapless technician aside and whirled, fastening ravenous eyes upon Ed.
By now, of course, the control room had pretty much cleared, most of those present having fled into the corridor that led to the supposed safety of the Hub’s lobby. When Sherm headed in Ed’s direction, struggling forward against the power of the laser beam like a man fighting the raging current of a might river, seemingly very little affected by what would have instantly vaporized an ordinary human, Ed thought that perhaps it was time to toss the pistol aside and join them out there.
But just then the pistol had its desired effect. Sherm, or rather, the thing that Sherm had become, exploded in a shower of powdery black ash and blood that rained down around Ed.
He dropped the pistol and sank to his knees, his skin dusty with the remains of his one-time office nemesis.
It took him a moment to realize that screams were drifting into the control room from the direction of the lobby, which apparently was proving not to be the safe haven the others had assumed it would be.
Andy Watson
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
4:45 PM Planetary Standard Time
As soon as he stepped off the transmat pad and onto the rooftop spaceport, Andy was assaulted by a crowd of people all clamoring for his attention. Some begged for money, others offered him various services or products. A few thought he might be a friend or relative they’d been expecting to arrive on one of the ships, but backed off when they realized he wasn’t who they were looking for.
One particularly aggressive man stepped forward, picked up Andy’s suitcase in one hand without asking and yanked Andy through the crowd with the other hand, pushing his way between the gawkers and the hawkers until finally he and Andy were in a relatively quiet, uncrowded spot where they could talk.
Over their heads, the Belfast’s engines cycled up through the auditory spectrum as the cruiser prepared to rise back into space.
“You need a guide, buddy?” the aggressive man asked. He was short, pudgy, with a very butch haircut and a Net interface blinking conspicuously on the side of his neck. He had a very street-wise look about him. I’m a man who knows the lay of the land and the way things are, his posture seemed to say. I can get you whatever you need.
Over the short man’s shoulder, Andy saw a robocop go striding past. The machine man rose several heads taller than the crowd, his unblinking gaze sweeping methodically from side to side, ever vigilant for criminal activity. The gun turrets on his shoulder swung in perfect synchrony with his gaze. His metal carapace gleamed brightly in the fading sunlight. His legs hissed pneumatically and shook the ground as he clopped along.
Andy gawked up at the intimidating man-machine. There were no such beings on his home planet. Until that moment, he had only seen them in images. In person, they were much more frightening than a mere image could convey. There was something quite unnatural about them. Something supernaturally spooky. That the surrounding crowd seemed to pay the robocops no mind said a great deal about how ingrained the beings were into local life.
“I said, you need a guide, buddy,” the short man said again, reclaiming Andy’s attention. It was no longer a question but a belligerent statement of fact, almost some sort of a value judgment upon Andy.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Andy said politely. “But I haven’t got enough spare money for any sort of assistance.”
The man ignored Andy’s protest. “You’ll need a hotel. I can book you a hotel.” He slapped the interface on the side of his neck, and his eyes scanned a readout that only he could see. “There’s a room in the Carlton, just three floors down. Pretty cheap, too. Perfect for you, eh, buddy? My name’s Bart Johnston.” The man’s eyes focused once again on Andy.
Above them, the Belfast began rising, climbing toward the stars that were visible through the thin atmosphere.
“Honestly, I appreciate the help, sir,” Andy said. “But I really can’t…”
The man gave a strangled gasp and clutched the interface on his neck. His eyes bugged out, and then he collapsed to the ground, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“Hey!” Andy said, alarmed. He knelt beside the man and felt for a pulse, but there was none. A stream of blood began leaking from the man’s nose and ears.
Andy became aware of screams from every direction. He looked up, startled from his concern for the fallen Bart.
All around him, people had collapsed, clutching at their necks and bleeding just like Bart. Others who were still standing were being set upon by men and women who growled savagely while clawing, ripping, and biting at anyone they could get their hands on. A child raced past Andy, screaming, pursued by a woman frothing at the mouth and screeching like an animal.
The enormous crowd on the rooftop spaceport, which Andy had upon arrival found to be wondrous and awe-inspiring, had degenerated into a chaotic mob of blood and violence.
A sudden whine like an incoming mortar pulled his attention to the sky. The Belfast, which had made it a few miles into the sky, was now descending in a lumbering arc toward the rooftops, obviously out of control. It struck about three miles away, exploding in a violent orange fireball. It took four skyscrapers with it. The skyscrapers, 10 miles tall and virtually self-contained cities, crumbled beneath the impact, exploding in a shower of metal and concrete. Two just went straight down in a roiling cloud of debris, leaving gaping holes in the sea of rooftops. The third toppled sideways and smashed into a neighboring skyscraper, and then both imploded.
Andy’s rooftop spaceport itself shook as a blast wave from the crash rolled across the immediate vicinity.
Between the crash of the starcruiser and the psychotic people attacking anything that moved on the spaceport, Andy didn’t know where to direct his attention next.
A slavering, bloodthirsty man loomed from the chaos, going straight for Andy’s throat, and solved his indecision. Andy picked up his suitcase and swung it at the man. Packed with everything he owned to begin his new life on Caldor, the suitcase was heavy. It struck the enraged man and sent him reeling to the side, where he disappeared among the mob.
Andy crouched, partially sheltered behind his big suitcase, and considered his options. He could stand around trying to figure out what was happening, what had caused all this. Or he could seek safety. The latter seemed like the best course of action, so he cast about for an escape route.
The first place he looked was to the transmat pads. He himself was used to the old-fashioned method of traveling by foot or electric ground cars. But from his study of Caldor before he’d arrived, he knew that the main method of transportation was matter transmission.
However, as he looked at the transmat pads scattered across the rooftop spaceport, he noted that the people who materialized on the pads immediately leapt into the crowd, attacking anyone who didn’t share their inexplicable rage and bloodlust. So escape by transmat wasn’t an option. Obviously there was some sort of major malfunction with the transmat system, of a type he had never read about.
Still crouching behind the suitcase, he continued searching.
While he did so, the large cylindrical starship hovering a few hundred feet above the center of the skyscraper abruptly shot into the sky, inertia be damned. One instant it was hovering, and then in a matter of seconds it had dwindled as if flung away by some unseen force to a mere speck high in the sky. A second after that, it exploded in a bright orange cloud, sending smoky streamers of flaming debris shooting out to all sides.
Of the three remaining cruisers, one began drifting eastward, picking up speed as it went, and was eventually lost in the haze of distance. The second did likewise, but in the opposite direction, and rather than disappearing in the haze of distance, it arced downward as it accelerated, until it scraped along the skyscrapers below it, leaving a wake of death and destruction before finally exploding into a ball of fire.
The bow of the remaining cruiser slowly tilted downward until it gently bumped against the concrete o
f the spaceport, whereupon many of the psychopathic people began bounding up its hull like a swarm of ants.
All of this had taken place in a matter of seconds, horrifying seconds. Andy was distracted from the spectacle by a woman who rushed at him from the mob, gnashing her teeth and swiping at him with hands clenched into claws. If her face hadn’t been so twisted with rage, she would have been very attractive. Long black hair, beautiful blue eyes. She had a red crucifix tattooed on her forehead, marking her as a Christian, and that made him feel kinship with her. There were so few Christians in the galaxy that it was nice to see another on Caldor. Meeting her was literally like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Caldor was mostly a godless world. He had come here on a mission to spread the good word.
He jumped up and screamed back at her, beating his chest like a madman, thinking that might warn her off. All the psychos he’d seen only seemed to attack anyone who didn’t act completely insane and angry.
But his ploy didn’t faze the woman. She continued rushing at him.
Then he did something he’d never done before: he hit a woman. He slammed his hand palm-out into her beautiful face. Her face crumpled inward and her head twisted to the side. Her neck snapped with a loud crack as her body collapsed to the ground.
He looked down at her lifeless body and started to sob. He’d killed someone! God forgive him, his first few minutes on Caldor and he had just killed a woman!
He picked up his suitcase and ran. Just ran.
Malfred Gil
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 12
4:47 PM Planetary Standard Time
Mal stepped off the transmat pad and into the wide corridor.
He smiled deeply. He imagined that he could still feel Samala’s tight snatch wrapped around his dick. He thought about calling Windy Galtrow and beaming over to her place. He liked to have snatch wrapped around his dick. It felt unnatural having it tucked away in his pants all by its lonesome self. Windy, she was a kindred spirit. She said her snatch felt unnatural without a dick in it. Didn’t matter whose dick. His, her dad’s, her brothers’, her teacher’s, any of her classmates—as long as her snatch was empty, any old dick would do.