Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  Balot lifted her still-extended left hand above her head and toward the lights.

  She felt the threads again, thin, unbreakable.

  Quite spontaneously she pinched the threads between her fingers. An image of plucking floated into her mind.

  The world was plunged into darkness in an instant. All the lights had gone out. The electricity hadn’t been cut. Rather, the switches had all gone off simultaneously.

  Balot opened her eyes wide in the darkness, remaining absolutely still.

  In the darkness she could sense the threads that extended from her body even more vividly than before.

  She plucked at the strings again. A blinding light flooded her eyes. All the lights were back on.

  She let go of the threads, and this time took the mass of extending strings and stroked them gently.

  It was like a kaleidoscope. A flick of her wrist and anything in sight could be changed in a million ways.

  She changed the temperature on the air conditioning. The dial moved, and the tubes fixed to her hands and feet came loose on their own. After a while she didn’t need to check the threads anymore. Without even having to move her hands, using willpower alone, she realized that she could operate any electronic device without touching it.

  I’ve gone mad. So she thought. I’m in a strange dream. And I’m causing the madness myself. The very definition of a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.

  The fact that she existed was proof that she had gone mad. When she opened her eyes she had become a different creature. Or, strictly speaking, her outer layer of skin had become a different creature. And that creature was powerful. With an as-yet-unknown, but very definite, power. Like one who, bitten by a vampire, awakes thirsty, aware for the first time of the new self that they have been bequeathed.

  And, then…

  Balot discovered an old portable radio in the corner of the room. As if it were the only thing in the room that was not under the control of Balot’s consciousness.

  As she lifted her hand toward the radio she noticed a slight resistance from it. Balot gave a little scowl, and just then the radio started giving off a noise.

  An ear-splitting sound rent the room. A grating sound, as if a large crowd of people had all decided to claw at chalkboards.

  Balot searched for music in the air. She realized that her senses could extend beyond the confines of the room.

  Outside a multitude of radio waves were overflowing in a complex tangle of dissonance.

  She plucked one of the radio waves, ran it through her body—her skin—and connected the music up with the radio.

  The light on the radio started flickering, surprised, and in an instant began broadcasting Midnight Broadway. Balot ensnared the volume control, bringing it to just the right level.

  She rested her head back in the easy chair, concentrated on the jolly music, and all of a sudden she felt like crying. But no tears came. There was a gaping hole inside her chest, and everything inside it was all dried out.

  As the black woman on the radio—with her husky voice and distinctive accent—came to the end of her song, Balot noticed a presence outside the room. Someone was coming. She could even tell that they had stopped outside, pausing. One man. The electronic waves in the air gave her a clear idea not just of his shape but even his looks.

  The door opened.

  “Looks like somebody’s awake.”

  That instant Balot turned off all the lights and stopped the radio, as if by reflex.

  The man stepped on a pedal at the entrance to the room. The wheels on Balot’s easy chair gradually started moving away from the door. Balot waited in the corner, achingly still, where the man couldn’t reach her.

  “Uh…”

  The man cleared his throat and said, “Well, let’s start with introductions. I’m Dr. Easter. I’m in charge of repairing you… uh…or rather I should say I’m the physician in charge. Call me… Doctor, Doc, Duck—as in quack—as you like, really. Basically, I’m, uh, remunerated by the city authorities for keeping you alive, making sure your life is improved… So, erm, that’s the way it is.”

  Balot kept her breathing shallow, watching to make sure that the man didn’t enter any farther into the room.

  The Doctor gave another dry cough and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. The thin film of numbers and displays that were up on his Tech Glasses had disappeared, and they now looked like normal spectacles.

  “Hey, take it easy. This is our little hideaway, our shell, or one of them, anyway. Used to be a morgue, you know, but it was abandoned after the neighborhood objected. This very room was used for autopsies, so it’s a perfect setup for surgery. Go down the corridor and there’s a huge room set up to store eight hundred corpses. Amazing, huh? Eight hundred bodies, all free for me to tinker with as I please—it’s a dream come true. But then there was an earthquake in the area, the circuits went down, total blackout for about forty-eight hours. That’s when the good citizens started getting a bit edgy about the smell…and that’s when we came in, buying this place up as an office-slash-factory and made it into our apartment.”

  The Doctor paused at this moment. He seemed a little out of breath.

  “So, uh…it’d be great if we could have some light back, maybe?”

  His tone of voice seemed to imply that he’d explained enough for now, that she really should be convinced that everything was going to be all right.

  As it was, the only phrase that really registered with Balot was hideaway. Our shell.

  That was what convinced Balot. It was as though the rest of the explanation were irrelevant. She had once been in danger but was now in a safe place. In the end, those were the two pertinent facts.

  Balot turned the lights on bit by bit. She also turned the radio back on at a low volume.

  The Doctor threw the radio an odd glance before pulling up a chair next to Balot’s easy chair and sitting down on it.

  “We, uh, took the liberty of dressing you in a change of clothes. Hope you don’t mind. Your old outfit was a pile of ash, anyhow.”

  Exactly, thought Balot. It burst into flame in an instant. Like the cellophane wrapper on a cigarette carton. It would have melted, lost its shape, and all that would have been left clinging would have been an ugly black lump. And the same goes for me.

  “Now, uh, open up!”

  The Doctor now had in his hand the penlight that had been clipped to his breast pocket. He gestured for Balot to open her mouth. She followed his orders. The Doctor’s Tech Glasses started flickering as he looked down her throat, and the layer of numbers and symbols came up again. Eventually the Doctor furrowed his brow and said:

  “Nah…no good, just as I thought. The tissue’s all peeled away.”

  That was the moment that Balot remembered something was amiss in her throat. Up until now she’d been too distracted by her new senses, and she had completely failed to notice what she’d lost…

  “Can you speak at all?” asked the Doctor. Balot’s mouth stayed open, silent and gaping, while the Doctor turned the penlight off and returned it to its position on his chest.

  “Your eardrums and your sense of smell were fairly easy to regenerate. But vocal cords are a bit more complicated, and as they were badly damaged it’s a bit harder to get them stable again. Well, uh, we’ll work something out eventually, no worries.”

  It was as if he were talking about a broken appliance for which he couldn’t order any replacement parts.

  Balot tried exhaling. Some breath wheezed out, but no voice.

  Her throat was like a cavity in a desiccated old tree.

  “And how’s the skin? Any aches or itches?”

  She gazed absentmindedly at the Doctor and slowly shook her head. The things she had gained, the things she had lost. She tried to reconcile the two, but couldn’t.

  “Impressive things, women. Quick at knowing your own bodies. It’s less than two weeks since the operation, too.”

  The Doctor was full o
f admiration. He was referring to the incident with the lights, earlier. The music from the radio as well. The Doctor knew she hadn’t touched either of them.

  “Snarc. A kind of electronic stimulation. That’s the name of your choice, the power you selected in order to survive,” the Doctor informed her.

  “Presently about 98 percent of your body’s surface is, uh, wrapped in Lightite, synthetic skin. That’s what they call it when it’s not skin tissue donated by other people. It’s not originally human skin, something—”

  The Doctor cut himself off. As Balot cocked her head to one side, the Doctor held a finger up as if to make it clear that now this is the important bit, and said, “Regenerative metal fibers—that’s what the outer layer of your body is now composed of. They were invented in order to try and understand what it would be like to experience the void of outer space…and that’s now been surgically transplanted onto you. These metal fibers have three important properties. Number one, they are accelerators—they sharpen all your body’s senses. The second, a sort of omnidirectional sensory perception using electronic waves. Allows you to feel everything in the area, sense all its dimensions. In your current state you could get through life quite comfortably without ever opening your eyes.”

  Balot nodded her head—she’d just experienced what he described for herself, and now she was having it confirmed properly. Furthermore, the Doctor went on to explain thoroughly what else she could expect to experience, using words unknown to her.

  “And number three is the ability to manipulate electricity. Your skin is formed of outputs, electronic interfaces. Right now you’re a living remote control for pretty much any piece of electronic equipment.”

  At this point the Doctor pushed his glasses up a little with his fingers, clearing the lines that ran across the lenses.

  “So, you wondering how you came by this newfangled body of yours?”

  An extremely direct question. Again Balot nodded, docile.

  “While you were in your coma, we took the liberty of having a little Q&A with your consciousness using a set of questions prescribed by the city authorities. In other words, an inquiry of your psyche. Do you want to live, that sort of thing. You have the right to do so, will you exercise that right, was one of the questions we asked.”

  Balot suddenly remembered the dream she’d experienced. A dream about a choice. She had selected something then. But what exactly was it?

  “Mardock Scramble Oh Nine,” said the Doctor.

  As if that answered everything.

  “Emergency laws promulgated by Mardock City, designed to preserve human life. Within them, number 09—that’s Oh Nine—gives special dispensation to use technology otherwise forbidden by law. Like when an ambulance is allowed to run a red light when lives are at stake. And this is my specialty.”

  Balot was gripped by the Doctor’s words, not even nodding now. Choice—right. She felt the two words spinning around like hands on a clock, then snapping into position together. A magic moment. Magic that would transport Balot to a different place. In the interior workings of choice and right a number of complicated cogs spun together. The Doctor was one of those cogs.

  “The boundaries of your consciousness chose 09. So, based on this choice, I made use of a certain operation that your unconscious mind requested.”

  The Doctor turned and smiled—a little nervously, now—at Balot, who remained still.

  “So, uh, the question, now that you’re awake, is whether your conscious self makes the same choice of 09, as expected. But, well, before we come to that, let’s talk a little about where this technology came from.”

  As he said this the Doctor fiddled with the monitor on his Tech Glasses, aimlessly switching them on and off.

  His actions were unsettling. The reason for this would soon become clear: the Doctor was about to talk about himself, not just explain Balot’s predicament.

  “Many years ago, I was involved right at the heart of our space program. It was a case of pretty much anything goes, whatever we needed. The government spared no expense. This was because space exploration was the cornerstone of our strategy against the enemy across the sea, the Continent—our space program kept the balance of power and resources in our favor. In other words, I was one of the last of the war generation, and at the same time I was one of the first of the postwar generation, after everything turned topsy-turvy.”

  Balot showed no sign of interest. War stories were irrelevant to her, and she’d never had a soldier as a client. Also, it was something that she’d learned at work. Not to do anything. Let them talk, wait until the other person says everything that needed to be said.

  “I suppose you’d call it the flow of time. Seven years after the war ended, I was stripped of my doctorate. Well, not only that, I was also held responsible for experiments on live human subjects and was almost thrown in jail. It was kind of the fashion at that time to play the blame game, throw about accusations of the odd war crime here and there. And I was dragged into that game. And, uh, the thing that saved me is our old friend, Scramble 09. We have to prove our usefulness as specialists responsible for overseeing 09 cases. For example, I don’t know, saving your life. And if we don’t do so, our fate is to be disposed of from this world—that’s how it goes.”

  At this point the Doctor grinned and pointed at Balot.

  “So, for example, the skin you’re wearing—we invented it, and it was one of the inventions banned at the end of the war. And, uh, if you accept it, we can then submit it to the Broilerhouse—the Ministry of Justice—as part of your Life Preservation Program.”

  Balot tilted her head. She was alive here and now, and she wondered why they needed a program to preserve her life, to protect her.

  “There are people who will try to kill you the moment they learn that you’re still alive. The reason I gave you this technology wasn’t just to bring you back from the brink of death. It was also to give you enough strength to freely defend yourself afterward.”

  In other words, Balot’s crisis was the Doctor’s salvation.

  The Doctor was the sort who was very good at tying loose ends together, making virtue out of necessity. Some of her clients had been like that. There was a job he needed to take care of, and someone like Balot needed to be engineered, so why not link the two together? Needs must, a client would tell Balot as he embraced her. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, but if you had to break eggs then why not cook them sunny-side up?

  But, of course, there was a flip side to sunny-side up—dark, blackened. There were plenty of eggs that could be broken in this world. And this city broke many of them, too many.

  “The reason you get to live on for is up to you. If you want revenge, get revenge. If you want to start your life over, you’re free to do as you like. We’ve got plenty of money…or perhaps I should say we’re going to make it. But that’s after you’ve cooperated with us. Do you think you understand?”

  She understood well. And that was what a nod was for at times like this. Then the other person would tell you what they wanted from you.

  Balot lowered her eyes and gave a small nod.

  Breathing an obvious sigh of relief, the Doctor:

  “We’re PIs—private investigators, or rather special investigators, specializing in Scramble 09s. On request we solve unofficial cases, acting as Trustees, taking responsibility for Concerned Parties—that’s victims such as you—and making sure that things move smoothly and fairly. In return we’re rewarded by the Broilerhouse, with money and a warranty of our usefulness. It’s even possible that, as a result of this case, the technology that I’ve given you will be made legal.”

  Balot considered this, keeping her eyes downcast. And when had the Doctor started referring to himself as we? It was I up until a moment ago, wasn’t it?

  And that word, case, again. The sharp cog spinning around in the space between choice and right. All she’d done was make a choice. But what on earth had she chosen? Sure, the Doctor h
ad explained how Balot’s strange abilities worked. But what was their purpose?

  What on earth should I do now? As she was thinking this—

  “So, what we want you to do is this. First, go to the Broilerhouse and request that you—as the Concerned Party in this case—be given the opportunity to solve it. Next, nominate us as Trustees, as we’ve been in charge of the case so far.”

  –Case?

  A sudden voice. The Doctor was visibly taken aback.

  Balot too was taken by surprise. She’d done it completely unconsciously.

  –Whose case?

  A voice like static. It was coming from the portable radio. Or, more accurately, Balot was interfering with the speakers, snarcing them, changing the sound into words.

  Strangely, though, it was as if the radio were doing the work for her.

  As if the radio sensed what she wanted to say and offered to say the words itself.

  The Doctor slowly turned his eyes back from the radio toward Balot and spoke.

  “Shell-Septinos.”

  The moment she heard the words Balot’s heart started pounding. She was able to sense the physical changes that her emotions were causing and could measure them as precisely as clockwork.

  “He’s the man we’re after. He perpetrated the crime. We’re the ones who deal with it. Having said that, although he’s bad enough, he’s just a pawn himself, being used and manipulated.”

  –In what way ?

  “Shell’s working for a certain large corporation. OctoberCorp—you know it, of course?”

  And of course she did. All of the casinos that Shell managed were connected to the enterprise one way or another. OctoberCorp, the giant conglomerate with its roots in the pleasure industries, now firmly in control behind the scenes of many of the city’s media outlets.

  “This corporation is our nemesis, as it were.”

  –…nemesis?

  “There are cases other than Scramble 09 in which permission is given to use forbidden science. OctoberCorp, you see, was founded by people who worked in the same laboratory I used to work in.”