Plissken tells me they have five small brains. One at the base of the neck and then in each appendage. Only way to stop em is complete, total and swift dismemberment.
I say, “This is the worst zoo.”
Jade says, “It’s worse than the worst zoo. The air here is wrong.”
Plissken says, “It is prehistoric, actually. The megaparasite seems to be surrounding itself with an atmosphere it prefers. One more agreeable to its biology.”
I say, “It’s terraforming.”
“Correct.”
“Well that ain’t good.” Bad enough the monsters have turned into all kinds of psychotic creatures. Now they’re destroying what humans and animals breathe. Replace it with a nightmare-friendly cocktail. “How long would it take to replace the planet’s atmosphere with whatever this is?”
“Well, ‘this’ is a primordial combination of methane and ammonia with scattered traces of oxygen, hydrogen and helium. It is very unkind to human lungs. The chances of this walking city converting the planet to that atmosphere are null.”
“Good news.”
“Certainly. The bad news is that with enough of these megaparasites, as you call them, it would be quite easy. Since the parasite skews toward evolutionary trends, it stands to reason that since more megaparasites are emerging, then more megaparasites will be terraforming.”
Jade says, “Maybe I don’t have it quite as bad as I thought.” To me: “Sucks for you, lung-haver.”
DeVille says, “Your mother has lungs too.”
“Eh. You’re the one who stuck me inside a big fucking robot.”
“It was the only way to save you, Jade.”
I say, “Hey, you guys are gonna have to settle this shit some other time.” Think. “DeVille, is there any way you can re-arm the gunship with bunker busters or something? We gotta crack this bitch open so we can get inside.”
“I used my heavy ordnance already. That’s the problem. Nobody’s making any more bombs or missiles for me. I can probably scrounge up some relics. Hellfires. That’s it.”
I miss the tank. “We need a goddamn jackhammer or a—”
“Wait, now I’ve got an idea.”
“Great. Let’s hear it.”
“I’m not going to tell you. You’ll try to talk me out of it. Just hold tight. I’m Oscar Mike.”
The pale pinkos congregate up the street. About a dozen of em. They’re definitely blind, but they can tell there’s something on their precious megaparasite that shouldn’t be.
Smart money’s on avoiding any more attention until we’re ready to go hard.
But what fun is that?
Plissken says, “I do not think they will bother with us unless we damage the host.”
Which’s pretty funny, all things considered.
The great fighter of infected has come to infect the parasite. How delightful.
I shoulder the impact rifle. Look downrange at the pinkos. They get close enough together, I can aim for one and hit the whole bunch. Just make em pop.
Plissken says, “Do not fire. Are you a moron? You are a moron. But do not open fire. DeVille is bringing us a tool that will actually help. Contain yourself, moron.”
I chuckle. “How well have I restrained myself in the past?”
Plissken sighs.
I say, “All right. What’s DeVille bringing... Ah, shit.” I key the radio. “DeVille, do not fly that chopper into the city. You’re gonna get knocked outta the sky.”
Plissken says, “I’m not sure how you thought she was going to deliver something to us otherwise.”
DeVille says, “Would you all pipe down so I can focus? I’m dropping your present in from about a kilometer up so I can avoid those goddamn tentacles. Little bit tricky.”
Here’s another woman you’re gonna get killed. Congrats.
Shut up. She knows what she’s doing.
DeVille says, “Package away. Impact in about fifteen seconds.”
I say, “Badass Flygirl. Now get the hell outta here. We’ll see you on the ground.”
“You sure as hell—wait... There’s something here.”
I stare at the sky. Jade tracks DeVille and the package. I’m trying to watch two blips as they diverge. But the objects themselves are hidden behind dirty clouds. “What’s there, DeVille. Can’t see anything down here.”
I watch DeVille’s package drop. It’s close. Should land up the street a bit. Hopefully right on top of the pinkos.
DeVille’s indicator hasn’t moved. I say, “Big Daddy to Flygirl. What’s going on up there? You gotta bail.”
The package streaks toward the ground. A big silver pill. It lands like a bomb. Dead center of the group of pinkos. The concussion explodes em. Turns em into wet ropes of gore.
The city screams. I hope the package’s impact was a hornet sting.
DeVille says, “It’s beautiful. Light and huge.”
Her designator disappears.
I try to reach her over the radio. “Flygirl? What the fuck’s happening? Where are you?”
Jade says, “Mom, answer us. Mom?”
Plissken says, “Her gunship lost power. There’s no way to communicate with her at the current time.”
I say, “Track her descent for fuck’s sake then.”
“I’m trying to, jackass. The readings are bizarre. It is possible she’s using autorotation to slow the fall. She can steer the gunship without power that way. A talented pilot could accomplish as much.”
Jack’s voice echoes in my head: Fight now, cry later.
Gotta finish this so we can rescue DeVille. Flygirl. Jessica.
I jog to the silver pill. Rip open the side panel so I can get to the prize inside.
And man, what a prize.
I pull out an enormous industrial chainsaw. Reads Husqvarna XL450 on the side. The blade’s three feet wide. Twelve feet long. The shredder’s designed to chew through concrete and pretty much anything else at construction sites.
It’s got an autostart. No need to yank a pull-cord. Soon as I press the trigger, the saw roars. “Plissken, find me an artery. We’re gonna do a little surgery.”
Plissken maps the megaparasite as best he can. Which is not at all. He says, “We’re walking on biological chaos. I cannot decipher a roadmap for us. There’s no right way to go.”
But we figure the brain’s gotta be at the center-most part of the organism. The heart of the city, so to speak. If it’s anything we can recognize as a brain, anyway.
Which begs another question.
This’s a megaparasite. The infection on a way bigger scale. Could that mean the parasite itself is bigger here? Could an individual Sub Specie Deus parasite get to be the size of a hand or a dog or a person? This thing’s version of white blood cells are taller than most basketball players.
We walk up the cracked streets. Flesh bulges under the asphalt. When I stomp, goo spurts out. If I had the energy, I’d just run around like an asshole slamming my feet until the whole place was pulp.
I giggle a little.
Jade says to me, “You don’t give a shit about my mom.”
“Where’d that come from? You’re in my head. You know I do.”
“You wanna have sex with her. And you have some grudging respect for her. An appreciation. I don’t know if that means you care. You could walk away from this whole thing and never need to see her again.”
“The fuck is it with all you people right now? We can powwow when this goddamn thing is dead.”
A swarm of pinkos watch us from the side of a building bloated with the megaparasite. Fifteen. All of em with red triangles over their heads on the display so I can track their weird taffy movements.
There’s nothing organic for em to smell. No exposed flesh. We’re all either robots or encased in metal. So I dunno how they find pre
y. Maybe they sense movement.
Like, y’know, right now.
They pounce.
Lovelace hammers em with 20mm rounds from her arms. They burst. She jukes to avoid a pinko that jumps from the top of a five-story building. It lands next to her. Dwarfs her in size.
She swings her arms up to open fire on it. The pinko’s too quick. It spreads out like a sheet. Envelopes her. I can see her robotic frame struggling under its flesh.
I hear something sizzle.
Plissken rushes to her side. His saws cut through the infected flesh draped over his child.
I punch at one. Connect. But the squiggly freak absorbs the hit and curls around me.
It’s more annoying than anything else.
Except holy shit they excrete some kind of acid.
CARBYNE1: 12%.
Jade shouts: “Get it off. Get it off get it off.”
I use the chainsaw as a razor. Shave three of the pinkos away from Alpha’s armor with the XL450. I cut apart their bodies. Watch their limp pink appendages hit the ground.
Turing uses his lightsabers to do the same. We become barbers from hell.
Shave and a haircut, two bits.
I swing the chainsaw in a wide arc. The tool’s teeth catch the three remaining pinkos. The amoebic assholes try to wrap themselves around it—with hilarious results... Hilarious to me, anyway. They speed up to cartoonish velocities along the blade. Whip around so fast, and with so much tissue damage, that their limbs go spitting and sputtering off in every direction.
They end up goop.
I cackle a little.
Jade says, “Shut up. Lovelace...”
I turn my gaze to a smoking heap on the ground shrouded by a dead pinko. I see gnarled metal. I see fragile robotic fingers twitch. Flex. Tense and relax.
Lovelace’s emote screen is burned away. But it doesn’t take a fuckin genius to realize she’s in terrible pain.
Her left side is mostly gone. An arm. Both legs. They’re just not there. They’ve melted away. Smooth nubs of steel and armor in their place.
Plissken says, “Lovelace is screaming. I can hear it. I can see it in her datastream. She does not want to die.”
I walk to him. “What do you want me to do?” Never euthanized a robot before. I’d rather not start, either. “Can we save her hard drives or something? Save her personality? The digital version of her?” I have no goddamn idea what I’m talking about.
Plissken bobs over his dying child.
Turing kneels next to Lovelace. He stares at her.
Lovelace reaches a feeble, shattered hand out to him.
He takes it in his own. Glances to Plissken. To me.
I wanna cry.
Jade says, “I can take care of her.”
She shuts off her external speakers. Tells me inside the cockpit: “I may have already lost my mom today on account of your gross fucking negligence. I’m not letting another woman die.”
“I thought you said Lovelace hadn’t decided on a sex yet.”
“She did. When we got outside the garage. Said it only took her a few days with you to realize men were arrogant idiots.”
None of this makes me feel better.
Jade says, “It’s not supposed to. On the other hand, I was screwing with you out of spite. Lovelace decided to be female because she likes Catarina.”
“That’s a bit better.”
“Yeah. I bet it is. Now help me save her. Pick the poor robot up and put her on our back. Same way you did with the rifle. I’ll handle the rest.”
I stoop near Lovelace’s crippled form.
Turing lets go of his sister’s hand. He and Plissken move to cover our flanks.
I curl my enormous hands around Lovelace. Scoop her up delicately. I cradle her like a baby. Like an old man dying. Like Athena. Like Momma Bear’s corpse.
I shift her over my shoulders. Alpha’s magnets kick on. They hold her in place.
Cables slither out along Alpha’s spine. They guide themselves to interface ports at the base of Lovelace’s neck. Holograms in the cockpit show the damage Lovelace has sustained. It’s amazing she’s still moving. No armor left. Three percent functionality. Her reactors are almost shot. Close enough to meltdown we should maybe worry.
I watch Jade pull over petabyte after petabyte of data.
This is Lovelace. Code so complex I’ll never understand it.
Her programming. Experiences. Thoughts. Personality. Who she is stripped down to the numbers.
A notification pops up in the cockpit: TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Jade says, “Ugh. Getting crowded in here. I’m isolating her to one of my spare internal drives. No offense, Lovelace.”
I say, “That’s it? We’re good?”
“In the sense that Lovelace’s new home is one of my hard drives, yeah. Wouldn’t really call that ‘good,’ though.”
“Fair point.” I say to Plissken: “What are the chances you’ve found a route to this thing’s brain?”
“As I said, this creature makes no sense. I would suggest, strangely enough, brute strength. Your style, if I am not mistaken.” He waits a moment. “Turing and I would like to destroy this fucking monster.”
I nod. Turn to the office building the pinkos were perched on. A five-story filing cabinet made of concrete and glass. Safe to assume they were protecting something.
I can see the megaparasite throb inside the structure. A dark red stem that leads to a grotesque meat-flower on the roof. Its petals flop around and slap together with a wretched wet noise Alpha can’t help but register.
My fists punch handholds into the concrete. I climb. I break out sections of the dead city building so Turing can follow if he wants. But the bot’s already doing his own thing on another corner. Metal dude’s so nimble he can just vault from one perch to another.
Doesn’t take us long to get to the top.
The meat-flower’s petals snap shut when it senses us. The whole these-things-might-be-full-of-acid deal makes us wary of touching it. So I don’t plan to. I rev the chainsaw. Walk right up to the motherfucker.
The petals peel themselves back when I get close.
There’s a figure standing inside. A stark white naked...
Fuck me.
It’s Momma Bear. The shape of her. Rooted there between the petals of the meat-flower. Her white legs meld with the monster itself. She opens her eyes. They ain’t grey anymore. They’re a deep, awful red.
She says, “Poppa Bear.” Smiles. Throws her arms out.
I put the chainsaw down. Stare at her. At her face. Her skinny arms. Her little breasts. The flat belly that should’ve been the home for my child.
If we’d just had some time.
I know Jade can see what’s going on in my brain. I know that’s why she’s keeping her mouth shut. I know that’s why Plissken’s quiet too.
To see Momma Bear. To see here now. Like this.
It ain’t her.
I fuckin know.
I scream. Bring both fists up above my head.
Momma Bear cries out. She raises her hands in front of her face. “Don’t, Poppa Bear. Please don’t do it.”
I bring both heavy fists down on the white fraud that wants to call itself Momma Bear. Its face crumples. Its head. Neck. Chest. A fountain of red erupts around me.
The meat-flower’s petals slap at me. Try to envelope me. I rip at them. Tear them apart. I throw the leaking appendages off the roof of the building.
I’m an angry ape.
I still hear the fraud crying in my head.
So I grab the chainsaw. Drive the machine’s teeth down into the wound I’ve made in the megaparasite. The XL450 chews and chews and chews. I roar with it. We both roar until there’s no noise at all except the weird wet ambient noises of the infected city.
Oh, Poppa Bear. What are we gonna do with you?
I say, “This parasite’s ruined even my memories of her. Fuckin co-opted it. Stole her image. Somehow. Stole it from my head.” I turn to Plissken and Turing. “So are we gonna kill this thing or what?”
I look into the bloody hole I’ve made.
Ah, it’s symbolic, see. Clearly, the bloody hole represents a vagina and you are experiencing some kind of anti-birth. Or it’s simple penetration. Yes, yes, you are trying to “fuck” the infection in some way.
Oh, man, shut up.
Plissken says, “I’ll go first. Widen the hole.” The blades on his sides spin up. “And I’ll enjoy inflicting as much damage as possible on the way down.”
He dives in. Geysers of blood get thrown up behind him. He says over the radio, “I’m starting to understand why you enjoy this so much.”
I say, “Why do you think I enjoy it?”
“I think you learned to. Let me just say that it may be a good thing that we haven’t had to integrate ourselves into any kind of society yet.”
What would you do then?
Turing walks to my side. He touches Lovelace’s broken body for a tender second. Looks at it. He steps in front of me. Reaches a hand out. Shake? I offer him my own. We nod to each other.
He steps back. Jumps. Dives headfirst into the bleeding tunnel with his lightsabers out.
I crack my neck—”All right”—and follow him.
23. Kill City
It’s not liked being birthed at all. More like being shitted out.
The gore canal farts. Shudders. I spill out into a tartarean vein. A large cave in a vast network where the walls pulse and puke and pound.
They glow, too. A deep, evil red with sprinklings of purple and blue.
Alpha’s floodlights beam over the insanity.
Plissken says, “I confess that, in reality, we are quite lucky the megaparasite’s internal structure is not coated in the same acidic compound as its version of white blood cells.”
A Man and His Robot Page 21