Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  Her chest clenched in dread thinking about this. The body that had survived so far by meeting the needs of others: Was this to be its fate? Was she to be used as a thing right until the end?

  “Die, you bastard. Die.”

  She was shouting now, as if by reflex. She clung to the window, tried to watch the AirCar as it sped away, but soon lost sight of it and was left only with her own translucent reflection.

  “You’re a shit. You’re nothing but shit. I hope you die, you shit!”

  And now she was directing an angry tirade at the man somewhere beyond the window: foolish, trash. As if she were singing. Then she inhaled, choked on the acrid air. Tears welled up. Her head went hazy. Her hands were yanking at the door as if her life depended on it. A lingering memory of the man was still burning deep inside her body.

  Foolish, trash, ash, cash.

  The little ditty spun around in her head. That’s all I am. Was there a version of myself who thought that? she wondered for an instant and looked out, but only a sad reflection stared back at her. Even now her hands continued to grapple with the door handle.

  Josh, fish, gash, hash.

  A wave of despair assaulted her, and the part of her that had up to that point remained hidden behind the thin layer of skin suddenly emerged.

  “No! Help me, please!”

  At that moment the pressure inside the car suddenly dropped, and a high-pitched buzz sounded. Something, somewhere, caught fire.

  Flash.

  The pain lasted only an instant. A terrible roar and an explosion assaulted her, and her vision was flooded with a blinding white light.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  That was the last sound the girl was ever to voice.

  In the next instant the driver’s seat was blown backwards by the force of the blast, slamming her body against the rear seat before the raging flames flared up and everything became a single mass of fire.

  ≡

  “Are you in pain, Mr. Shell?” the man in the driver’s seat asked of the man now sprawled in the front passenger seat.

  “Just stressed.” The man—Shell—took his hand off his forehead and moved it to his breast pocket. He pulled out the flask of scotch and the bottle of pills he kept inside his suit. He took a swig of scotch, put two of the pills in his mouth, and then followed with another gulp of the whiskey, as though forcing down something bitter.

  “Heroic Pills, are they?” the driver muttered. Shell nodded and sighed a deep sigh. His Chameleon Sunglasses were now glinting a deep blue, almost the color of lead.

  “When I was a child I had A-10 surgery on my brain,” Shell said. “When my stress levels rise above a certain level, my brain automatically switches to a state of euphoria. It was one of the Social Welfare Department’s crime prevention schemes they tried out in the slums. But when I was in my teens they discovered a flaw and halted the scheme.”

  Shell looked at the driver, who nodded as if to say I’m listening.

  “There’s a chance your brain goes haywire. Back when I was a kid, a friend went blind the moment his stress levels rose. The part of his brain that controlled his vision was destroyed in the chemical reaction that induces happiness. In my case, my memory goes in a bad way. So, these pills are the backup plan. Absolute perfection. Take these and there’s no stress, no side effects. Right?”

  “Well, at least you know how to deal with misfortune. That’s what allowed you to hire me,” said the driver. These weren’t words of consolation. His tone was devoid of sympathy. His pale, glassy skin seemed strange on a man so solidly built. His hair was closely cropped and mostly gray. Shell thought of him as a revolver.

  “Exactly right, Boiled. It means that I can cope with this little ritual. And, step by step, I’m able to climb the road to glory in Mardock City.”

  Shell laughed. He had a simple faith in the man sitting next to him. Even better, the drugs were kicking in. He glanced at the side mirror, noticing again how much contrast there was in the way the two of them looked. His own dark skin, long black hair. A feeling of satisfaction was spreading throughout his body—satisfaction that he was able to hire such a keen professional, get him to do the driving…

  It gave him confidence that his plans, his scheme for life, were all working out.

  “And every time I take another step toward glory I gain another beautiful Blue Diamond.” Shell gazed at his glittering rings as happiness flooded his senses.

  Boiled interrupted Shell’s euphoria. “I’m concerned about something.” Shell shrugged his shoulders.

  “What?”

  “Back there in the park I noticed a car that was…incongruous.”

  “Incongruous?”

  “There’s a big baseball game at the dome at seven tonight. It’s strange that a car with tires would be in this park.”

  “What’ve tires and baseball got to do with each other, Boiled?”

  “Electromagnetic waves are blocked within the park to keep it a quiet zone, right? Their car wouldn’t be able to pick up a radio signal. What do you think people of that class would be doing skulking in the shadows of the boathouse during a time they should be enjoying themselves?”

  Shell smiled a thin smile and shook his head. “Whatever. There’s no proof of what I did today. No memory. And even if there is any trouble, you’ll take care of it for me, Boiled. Trouble is your business, after all.”

  04

  The girl was already unconscious from the impact of the blast before the flames enveloped her body.

  This meant her lungs avoided the worst of the fiery smoke—in other words, she avoided, by the narrowest of margins, dying of smoke inhalation. Even so, when she finally awoke in a dim haze the cells in her mouth had been burnt through, and she was barely being kept alive by a tube that was shoved down her throat to her respiratory organs, forcing her lungs to breathe to an automated rhythm.

  A voice abruptly leapt into her still-indistinct consciousness. “She’s still alive, Doctor! The girl, Rune-Balot, she’s alive!”

  A voice as if the speaker were rejoicing from the bottom of his heart. And then, in time, a different, more leisurely voice:

  “She’ll be okay for now, Oeufcoque—her whole body’s enveloped in the protective foam. Even so, this is horrific. She’s burnt to a crisp. Her skin’s lost, and her sense of taste and smell could go too…”

  “The poor thing. Do you think she’ll resent us for rescuing her, Doc?”

  “Well, humans—females in particular—are such illogical creatures. They start to lose the will to live and hate the world the moment something affects their sense of worth. We’ll just have to try and reason with her.”

  “Will she choose the path of Scramble 09, do you think? Or will she give up on life?”

  “Probably best not to let her know the latter option exists.”

  The girl—Balot—felt nothing of the world, but just then she saw a curious thing emerge.

  The one called the Doctor: a tall, lanky man. Splotchy hair, Tech Glasses, a reddish-brown half-coat that covered a colorful patchwork of a doctor’s gown, with syringes, portable microscopes and all sorts of other contraptions hanging from the chest and waist. It was as if the lead singer in a psychedelic band had suddenly decided to say Look at me, I’m a doctor now. And then—

  Even more bizarre than that. A golden mouse perched on the Doctor’s shoulder.

  “Anyway, look after her, will you—she could turn out to be a new buddy.”

  “Yup, though at the moment she’s more body than buddy.”

  The golden mouse just looked at Balot, completely ignoring the Doctor’s reply.

  The mouse’s dim red eyes seemed to contain hidden depths, as if he were a mature, older man. The tiny pants that he was wearing as if to cover up a bulging belly—held in place by a tiny pair of suspenders hanging off his shoulders—seemed hilarious to the girl.

  Sharp, focused golden whiskers. And she could see in his solemn face a gentleness that she’d never enc
ountered before.

  Their eyes met unexpectedly. A clear expression of concern flickered across the golden mouse’s face.

  “She’s conscious. She looked at me.”

  “Well, she’s drugged to the hilt with morphine, and with these burns she’s not in a state to take in anything at the moment. Anyway, you’re going to be partners, right? You should at least be prepared for her to see you.”

  “Generally speaking women aren’t too keen on mice…” The golden mouse’s eyes were a little downcast. The Doctor stroked his little back as if to say There, there.

  Balot tried to move herself in order to see them better, but could barely lift a finger and just lay there shaking. She realized in some faint way that she was ensconced in a large capsule. She felt a strange sense of security, floating, surrounded by foam, steeped in liquid, in an egg-shaped portable pod designed for intensive care. Her whole body, scorched through, in fetal position, barely able to lift a finger—floated in that bulky egg.

  Shell…

  The word drifted through her mind, suddenly with different feelings, associations…

  And she dozed off the moment she closed her eyes, losing consciousness again.

  While Balot lay half dreaming, the Doctor and the mouse held a curious conversation.

  “Memory loss?” The mouse’s querulous voice chirped up. The Doctor’s voice answered. Balot opened her eyelids a crack and looked out through the solution she was suspended in to see the back of the Doctor’s head, covered in its tie-dyed hair.

  “Yup, that’s my guess, based on the stress and pleasure levels that you sensed coming from him. The side effects of his A-10 surgery. Whenever it feels under stress, part of the brain selectively destroys the gestalt. A sort of suicide of the memory, so to speak. That’s Shell’s dirty little secret.”

  “Suicide of the memory…”

  “And it looks like it was triggered by the murder of the girl. There’s some connection. Each time he kills a girl, he probably forgets that he’s done so, but then finds another similar girl and kills again. A sort of ritual. Let’s see, something like those ancient Eastern religions that wouldn’t recognize the existence of a widow.”

  “What?”

  “Widows had to be immolated along with their dead husbands. There were cases when the woman objected and had to be doused with gasoline and burnt to death. I think this is similar to that.”

  It appeared that the Doctor was now driving. From the back seat where Balot was placed she could see the mouse perched on his shoulder nodding along to the conversation.

  “So, Doc, the death wish I could smell from the man was his memories committing suicide? And the girl was dragged along as part of a ritual designed for stress relief?”

  “That fits with everything we know. We’ve never psycho-analyzed Shell directly, so we can’t know for sure in detail. But knowing that you’re about to lose your memories—that’d be incredibly stressful. Part of your mind is going to go. Maybe it’s not surprising he wants to drag someone along for the ride. He probably sees it as romantic in his own way, killing a little girl along with his memory.”

  That man will die too.

  This was the one fact that registered in Balot’s hazy state of consciousness. My Shell. The man that gave me—a Teen Harlot from the slums—an identity, even if only for a moment. The man that was trying to rise to the top in this city—what a pathetic way for him to die. She felt pity, which then changed into an intoxicating thought: I’ll die with him. Her sort-of compassion.

  If there were ever a moment when her compassion for others could redeem her then this was it.

  “It’s hardly decent to try and explain away his actions as romantic…”

  Balot’s feelings were shattered in an instant by the mouse’s words.

  “Death is a solitary thing. It’s not as if someone else’s death is somehow going to add value to your own, or even give solace to your own life.”

  Balot unconsciously tried to remove the oxygen mask attached to her mouth. She wanted to say something to the mouse. But she couldn’t even lift a finger.

  In her muddy consciousness, conflicting feelings of indignation and gratitude toward the mouse were swirling around together.

  “Yup, I’m with you there. And in any case, cleaning up after his romantic notions ain’t half racking up the expenses. There’s lots of upkeep now, Oeufcoque: you, and the girl.”

  Balot heard the Doctor grumbling just as she was on the verge of collapsing back into unconsciousness.

  Many times Balot’s consciousness floated back into the real world before plunging back down into the depths of sleep. Each time Balot began to fade, she was assailed by incredible anxiety, only to be rescued by a curious sense of relief. That relief could come in the form of the mouse’s voice, or the Doctor’s. The prospect of death was steadily fading away. Reality was coming back into focus, and she would now have to live.

  Make your choice.

  Someone spoke in a dream. It wasn’t an order. Rather, it was closer to a question.

  The choice to choose your path—the choice of existence. You have that right.

  Balot was dreaming. She was floating in the darkness, and another version of herself was gradually swooping down on her from above. And her other self asked:

  Make your choice—or would you be better off dead?

  Her other self collapsed in a tangled heap, right on top of her.

  She remembered the noise from the glitter of the city.

  I’d be better off dead—the magic spell that made the heart feel lighter. The words closed in on her, hideously familiar. Beyond the noise was a life full of sadness. I want you to die with me—the doll burnt along with the body at a cremation. That was the last need. And she had obeyed.

  But—

  Why me?

  The question surfaced like a bubble in the melange of her consciousness.

  There was no answer. When you realized this, truly understood that there was no answer to the question of why me, all that was left was death. Yes. That was the choice. Whether to live. Why me? Why should I live? Such a person as me. The choice: one of two possibilities.

  She felt that no one would say yes for her. The burden carried by a person who had never experienced unconditional love. You were either crushed by that burden, or you lived in order to search for that answer: yes. To search for the answer to the question Why me?

  Balot’s heart was ripped to pieces, scattered, and sunk beneath the waves.

  At length, the thing that she had been protecting—hidden away in her shell—started to rise up slowly from the ruins of her heart.

  I don’t want to die…

  The moment her heart—protected in its shell till the very end, not yet boiled to death—murmured these words in the faintest of whispers…

  …that became Balot’s choice.

  05

  Josh, crush.

  Balot suddenly realized that the little ditty was spinning around in her head again.

  Dish, wash, brush, mash.

  The awakening happened in an instant. As if the dream state she had experienced had never been.

  Gosh!

  Balot opened her eyes amid an eerie calm.

  An ultraviolet lamp flickered in one corner of the ceiling. Reflective mirrors were fixed above her and arms extended from the bed. It was as if she were on an operating table.

  She felt something moving on her back. The bed undulated slowly from left to right in order to prevent bedsores. When Balot moved her body to get up, the bed automatically rose with her, gently supporting her upper body.

  At the same time the lower half of the bed started to fall, so she could now bend her legs.

  The bed had become an easy chair. Almost like a cradle.

  Her focus now moved from the ceiling to the room itself—she was in a huge hall filled with a number of machines. One of the contraptions was beating a pulse along with Balot’s heartbeat, and all the cords sprouting from the devi
ces and tubes ran along to the bed, some of which were also attached to her head or arms. Balot looked around the room, listening to the soothing rhythm of the machines pulsing in harmony, working just for her benefit.

  The room was windowless, and disinfectant tiles covered the surfaces of the walls.

  The dry air was suffused with a feeling of quiet madness.

  And then, all of a sudden, the realization—I am alive.

  She ran her hands across her body. A movement to confirm her own existence.

  She wasn’t naked but wore a thin hospital gown made of insulating material. Protruding from the gown were her arms and legs, spotlessly clean. Her skin was almost uncomfortably smooth.

  Her hair was full of life, as if it had only just sprung up. Cut cleanly, just above shoulder-length, it was now much shorter than it had been before.

  She stretched her left arm out and slowly caressed the limb from her elbow to her wrist with her right hand.

  It felt like the white of a boiled egg, and—very faintly—there was a sort of spark.

  Electricity?

  There was no other way of describing it. Millions of little currents of electricity flowed down the surface of her skin.

  Not only that, they were in the shape of a complicated circuit. As if woven into an exquisite fiber.

  She felt the threads of the fiber stretching out toward the air, one by one, like a spider’s web, and that instant Balot understood why she felt so calm.

  She felt no insecurity about the room she was in whatsoever. In other words she recognized every little corner of the room, intimately.

  Normally, because there were blind spots where she couldn’t see, she would have a sense of apprehension. But now, because Balot knew the air that touched the skin, she could also feel all the objects that the air was touching.

  Even without looking, I know precisely the shapes of the things that are there.

  This was because of the millions of threads, invisible to the eye, extending from her body. And all those threads were connected to the machines in the room. Or rather coiled around them. And the bed, the light fixtures, the thermostat, the blood pressure meter—the threads had burrowed their way in everywhere.