Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  Like a dad. He wasn’t going to buy anything. Just cast a watchful eye over her purchases.

  They found a nearby ATM and used the card to draw out a wad of notes.

  Twenty twenty-dollar bills. The amount Oeufcoque specified. She was worried that this might be too much and wanted to take fewer than ten, but Oeufcoque said that she would be better off having a few nerves to keep her on her toes, so she did as he said.

  She folded the crisp new bills in half and crammed them into her card holder. She put one bill in her jacket pocket and deliberately scrunched it up. As if to say This is all I have.

  She bought a bag from a stall inside the mall using this bill. Seeing the crumpled note the shopkeeper threw in a cheap leather wallet, giving it to her along with her change at no charge.

  Balot meekly obeyed the rules of the street.

  She transferred the bills from her card holder to the wallet in the shadow of a building and put them away in her bag, and now, instead of scrunching up another bill, she captured the movements of all people within a fifteen-meter radius.

  She wore her bag diagonally over her shoulder and then put her jacket on over it in order to protect it from purse snatchers.

  Now all she had to do was think about what she wanted to put in the bag.

  She bought some toiletries and sanitary napkins at the drugstore. She bought some handkerchiefs and hairpins, then wandered aimlessly through the mall. Clothes and shoes, jewelry, electronics, ethnic goods. She examined the handicrafts and souvenirs as she chatted with Oeufcoque about nothing in particular. That frame doesn’t suit the picture, or you could make one of those using my body as a mold, that sort of thing.

  “Aren’t you starting to get hungry?” Oeufcoque asked. He’d been keeping track of Balot’s biorhythm. He had constant tabs on her pulse, and at the same time was checking the surroundings to make sure there was no danger.

  –Can I eat whatever I want?

  “Of course. I was asking for you. I don’t really need much, after all.”

  They had a quick look at a plan of the mall attached to a public telephone, looking for the entries for food and drink stalls, and found a block of open-air food carts. Balot headed in that direction.

  Without having to walk for too long she saw a row of carts linked together all serving colonial food.

  There were white plastic tables and chairs in a courtyard, and Balot went up to the tableware section and took a disposable tray before heading over to some of the stalls. The place was a real salad bowl of races, and anyone working at the stalls could handle a number of different languages. They picked them up naturally in the course of business with various different customers, and were also used to communicating even when they couldn’t understand a word of what the other person was saying.

  Balot took her tray, laden with paper plates full of food, and found a seat.

  Her main dish was a plate of Tick Noodles smothered in red Charlie Sauce. It contained boiled squid and chunky slices of vegetables. She’d also bought a dish of deep-fried fish slices and chilled whole fish on the bone.

  “You’re pretty good at that, aren’t you?”

  Oeufcoque watched with admiration as Balot skillfully used her chopsticks.

  “Chopsticks have always been a mystery to me—I’ve never understood why people go out of their way to turn one piece of cutlery into two smaller pieces.”

  Balot sifted through the fish with her chopsticks. She elegantly separated the bones from the flesh, forming two piles.

  –I was always the best at this. The other girls used to say I was handy.

  She transmitted the words to Oeufcoque electronically as she ate. Well, wasn’t this convenient? She could eat and talk at the same time.

  –I think I’d probably be good at excavating fossils, that sort of thing.

  “Is that something you’re interested in going into in the future?”

  –I’d like to, but maybe I’m saying that because it’s the only thing I can think of that’s at all related to my skills.

  Balot started thinking about the things that had died such a long time ago. Things that had been buried underground for many years, slowly turning to stone. Things long since forgotten. Why did they then have to be dug up again?

  –I don’t really know.

  Oeufcoque changed the subject. “Isn’t it about time for your medication?”

  Balot tidied her tray away and went to the self-service water cooler to take the medicine the Doctor had given her. Skin stabilizers, hair growth agents, medicine to fix her eyelashes, vitamins, calcium tablets. Lots of things she had to take—and she took them all.

  As she swallowed her medicine she thought about the fossils. One fossil in particular. A swirling shell. What were those things called that stayed hidden in their shells except for their moplike hands and feet that they used to crawl along the seabed?

  “Ammonite or something, that sort of thing, wasn’t it?” Oeufcoque answered conscientiously when asked.

  After she’d walked through the mall for a while, she did indeed come across a collection of spirals.

  They were in the form of some computer graphics projected onto the wall of a building. Balot stopped in front of the stall that sold them.

  The shop sold Eject Posters. Small square boxes that, when fitted to a wall, would project images onto the space just below. There were a number of patterns lined up in a row, and there was a memory card that contained over a hundred different pictures of fossils.

  “Why not buy something that takes your fancy? It’d be a pleasant diversion, and the decor in your room is pretty dull,” said Oeufcoque.

  Balot took advantage of his offer. She bought an Eject Poster and a card with the fossils on it, then walked on, eyes on the instruction manual. Computer simulations of live ammonites, nautiluses, trilobites, along with photographs of the fossilized creatures, mixed with other minerals and fossilized into spirals of silver and gold and crystal.

  After a while she put it away in her bag. She was somehow excited.

  –Is it okay if I buy a few things I like?

  “Of course.”

  Balot went to the stationery section of a department store and bought a PDA—the sort a child might use—and six different types of colored markers. And she bought some lipstick that caught her eye in a shop that she happened to pass by. Because she liked its bright poppy red and the design of the case.

  As she went around the department store she felt more and more that she and Oeufcoque were becoming one.

  No matter where they went they were as one. Like the mojo, that protective charm so often sung about in the blues.

  But there was a moment when Oeufcoque resisted.

  “Stop, Balot. I’ll be waiting outside, so…”

  The pendant turned back into the form of a golden mouse with a squelch and jumped straight off Balot’s shoulders. Balot correctly read his path of flight and plucked him up by his suspenders midflight.

  “I’ve already said, haven’t I? That I don’t want to be called a Peeping Tom?”

  He spoke so pitifully that she snarced him, making him turn into an alarm bell. A poppy-red alarm bell. She looked around to check that no one was watching before sticking it on the wall with a fluid movement.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for you, so off you go.”

  He spoke as if to a child who was scared of the dark.

  Balot went into the women’s restroom.

  The toilets were clean and empty. She went into the stall at the very end, loosened her belt, and lowered first her shorts, then tights and underwear, down to her knees, layer by layer.

  Relief and anxiety assaulted her in equal measure as her lower body was freed from its wrapping.

  She sat down on the toilet seat and took some ointment from her jacket pocket. She squirted some bright white hydration cream on her palm and rubbed it on her stomach and thighs. These were the only parts that were still rough, still scabbed.

  As she rub
bed the cream into her skin it started peeling off, like the thin membrane of a boiled egg. She brushed the skin off and rubbed the remaining cream on her shoulders and elbows.

  She sat on the toilet, waiting to pee. She stared absentmindedly at the linoleum wall with not a single piece of graffiti.

  All of a sudden she felt that something was not quite right. As she did her business she thought about why she might be feeling this way.

  Her urine smelled of medicine. A result of the eighteen different pills she had to take every day.

  Not a single one of those was a tranquilizer—the Doctor himself was surprised by this fact.

  Your psyche is incredibly tenacious—the Doctor was full of admiration. But Balot thought that, in all honesty, if medication could make her mind even tougher then so much the better, and she should be taking as much as she could handle.

  Even after she had finished on the toilet, washed herself with the bidet, and flushed all the evidence away, there was still a faint smell of medicine in the air. She fixed her clothes and fastened her belt even tighter than before.

  Then she put her mind to her earlier feeling that something was out of place.

  She soon discovered why—a plastic bubble fixed to the tank that connected the toilet to the flush button. She gave the bubble a wrench and it came off easily, and, shaking it, a tiny fingertip-sized camera emerged.

  Balot expanded her consciousness and interfered with the camera’s magnetic field, snarcing it.

  The two hundred hours of continuous footage stored in the camera’s many microchips was replaced bit by bit by images of the department store’s mascot doll waving into the camera. As if someone wearing the doll costume was looking into the camera and waving for all eternity.

  Balot then put the camera back and took the lipstick from her bag.

  A LITTLE HORROR SHOW

  She wrote on the wall right next to the bubble. And then she added this:

  WARNING

  Balot left the booth. Purely for self-defense, she murmured to herself as she washed her hands.

  But the department store wasn’t about to stop its dirty tricks just because she revealed the existence of a camera. Balot knew this fact all too well. Bribes given to the cleaners and security guards.

  She even knew all about the money paid to the shills, the women who ostentatiously “bought” the most expensive items on display in order to encourage real customers to spend more.

  She knew everything, right down to how much they were paid.

  03

  As she emerged from the toilet, the alarm bell squooged into the shape of a mouse and jumped onto Balot’s shoulder. Without missing a beat he ran to her neck and became a choker complete with crystal pendant.

  “You took your sweet time.”

  –Don’t blame me, blame the Peeping Tom.

  “Look, I…”

  –Not you. There was a camera in the ladies’ room. I just fixed it up a little.

  “Camera?” Oeufcoque thought about this for a while before it clicked. “You mean illegal cameras set up in order to get close-up footage of women’s bodies?”

  –But do you really understand? What that means to me?

  “Well, I think I know how you feel, at least. Right now you’re angry. Very angry. And irritated and also embarrassed. Mortified. That’s what you smell of, anyway.”

  –Smell?

  “Body odor. A mouse like me can read emotions through body odor. Didn’t you know?”

  Balot squeezed the crystal tightly and started prodding it with her fingertips. Violently. And full of grief.

  And then Oeufcoque did indeed understand Balot’s feelings.

  “Oh, sure, sorry. If I’m absolutely honest I can’t tell exactly how you’re feeling. I don’t really have the imagination to comprehend it. I’m not a woman, after all, or even a human.”

  Balot found that her feelings were calmed down somewhat by Oeufcoque’s words.

  –I think you’re kinder than a human, and more humble too.

  Oeufcoque was now attuned to Balot’s change of heart, as if he were sniffing everything up. He noticed the chemicals secreted from her skin, the change in her pulse, and most of all the change in atmosphere.

  “There’s a café just above us. We should be able to get some work done there.”

  The Internet café that Oeufcoque was talking about was on the top floor of the department store.

  They could see the harbor city sprawled out in a mess down below and farther in the distance the thin line of the sea.

  The seats were set a comfortable distance apart, perfect for getting down to some work.

  When the waiter came over to take her order, Balot ordered a cappuccino by pointing at the menu, and then opened up the laptop-style monitor embedded in the table.

  She was about to connect to the net but then she stopped herself.

  –Do you mind if we talk for a while about my new hobby?

  They’d completely forgotten about this since the spy camera incident. Oeufcoque cheerfully agreed.

  Balot took her PDA from her bag and lined up the six colors of markers alongside the instruction booklet for the CG fossils. She chose the yellow and marked one of the words in the heading of the manual.

  Then she snarced the PDA and brought up the word that she had just highlighted. The name of a large spiral-shaped shell. As she read the manual she entered a rough commentary into the PDA, adding her personal impressions. The same color as agate, or If these were still alive I’d like one as a pet, that sort of thing.

  –I’m going to make a dictionary. My own original.

  “Brilliant. When you grow up you could become a linguist, or a poet.”

  –Well, I always wanted to go to school and have a dictionary like everyone else. The sort of school that children like me go to. So this is instead of that. My own self-study classroom.

  “And you could still go to school. As soon as this case is closed we’ll apply for re-enrollment.”

  –Won’t work. You need both your parents’ signatures, Balot replied, bluntly.

  –Children who don’t have any get put in the Welfare Institute. I don’t want to go back there.

  “But aren’t both your parents still alive?”

  –They don’t think of me as a child. Not their child, anyway.

  She informed him of this without stopping her hand that was holding the marker. Wordlessly. As an electronic signal.

  Balot stopped writing only when the young waiter came over to bring her the drink she’d ordered.

  “Is it a report you’re working on, miss? For school?” the waiter asked. Balot nodded ambiguously. The waiter laughed, showing the whites of his teeth. He pointed at the monitor on the table.

  “You can look up almost anything on this thing. This café has access rights to the library, you see. The official time limit is two hours. But if you want an extension, just let me know. I might be able to sneak you one.”

  Balot touched her choker so that the young waiter could understand her next words:

  –Thank you. If I need an extension I’ll be sure to ask.

  The mechanical sound she produced to answer him caused the waiter’s face to stiffen very slightly.

  At least the waiter was a straightforward enough young man. He wasn’t the sort to start thinking in terms of If you took the device on her throat away from her she wouldn’t be able to speak.

  Instead, he inevitably came to a different conclusion. He shrugged his shoulders and stood there somewhat embarrassed, as if he had accidentally offended her in some way.

  Balot put the things that were out on the table back into her bag. The waiter watched this before eventually being called away to attend to another customer. He wasn’t a bad youth. It was just a question of pride. The youth’s, and Balot’s.

  –Let’s get down to some work, said Balot.

  Oeufcoque turned with a squish into a mouse and jumped on top of the table. Checking that the waiter wasn’t
looking his way he made another turn, this time into a plug-in adaptor device for a computer.

  “Try me out.”

  She took a cord from the side of the monitor that up until that moment had been showing a floor plan of the department store, and in a moment the screen went fuzzy.

  Through Oeufcoque’s efforts they connected from the store’s secure net navigation to the much wider-ranging user services of the outside world.

  “Through the Broilerhouse, we’ve managed to suppress your personal information that Shell-Septinos forged. In particular, any attempt to hack into your residential ID is now a serious crime. For access privileges you need thirteen different types of password combined with a physical key—in other words, we’ve made it so that no one has access to your personal data without me.”

  As she watched the screen in front of her being decoded layer by layer, she suddenly remembered the rooms in the hideaway. The room that you could lock from the inside at night.

  There were two locks on it. One was the electronic sort on the door knob, and the Doctor could also open this from the outside. The other was a chain, and this was purely Balot’s. Of course, both Balot and the Doctor knew too well how little use a chain on a door was in this city.

  But this chain is made of a special alloy and a unique textile, the Doctor said. It can’t be broken easily. Definitely not. Because Oeufcoque made it himself. That comforted Balot. A chain that was Made by Oeufcoque. The chain caused the door to close perfectly, with no gaps or cracks.

  “Right, I’m now about to check the entries one by one. Okay?”

  Balot placed her hand on the adaptor. She thought she could feel Oeufcoque’s pulse in her palm.

  –Okay.

  She took a deep breath, then snarced Oeufcoque.

  The truth was unbearable. She hadn’t realized just how much her life had been graffitied over.

  Her birthplace, date of birth, names of her parents, family tree, personal history, address, telephone number, usage records for her cash card, log of her access to the net, questionnaires from department stores and online shops, mailing data, contents of letters to her friends.