Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  “Still—her organic data, at least, will be of some use.”

  “Even that’s completely unquantifiable at the moment,” replied Faceman.

  “Are you using FES?”

  Faceman nodded. “Functional Electronic Stimulus treatment is being applied to her whole body. The original plan was to program her nervous system electronically in order to cure her of paralysis in her limbs, but…”

  “So why is that unquantifiable?”

  “Her skin tissue is already in the process of assimilating with her cerebellum. Of course, you could say that it’s the skin tissue that is influencing the brain, rather than the other way around.”

  “Her skin is controlling her brain? Is such a thing even possible?”

  “Human beings are, fundamentally speaking, holistic entities. Such a thing is certainly possible. It’s safe to say that Rune-Balot is no longer human, but rather a creature formed by synthesis of human being and metal fibers. The fibers develop autonomously, in accordance with the spatial senses of her cerebellum, automatically creating hundreds of millions of electric patterns that allow her to apply optimal stimuli to her muscles and internal organs. In other words, the skin operates the brain, which in turn manipulates the rest of her body to her will: a state of affairs that we’ve never seen before.”

  “Why didn’t that happen with my fibers?” asked Boiled.

  “The only possible explanation I can think of is that the girl is a singularity. Dr. Easter did program a certain level of combat data into the structure of the metal fibers beforehand, but that only goes so far—she’s long since outgrown that, and her abilities have developed to the point that the original data is completely redundant. No one other than this particular girl is capable of such a thing. Exactly the same as, for example, how you’re the only one who was able to develop your PGF to the extent that you did.”

  “And how can I deal with her?” asked Boiled.

  “Deal with—?” Faceman stopped and nodded, as if to say It stands to reason. “We’re residents of Paradise. We don’t share the same moralizing notions that the outside world has regarding war, weapons, and related technology. We don’t consider them to be evil in and of themselves, and we don’t consider the girl to be a threat in and of herself. But perhaps you feel that opposing the existence of creatures such as this girl gives you some sort of purpose in life, a raison d’être?”

  Boiled’s face revealed that not only could he not answer this question, he was looking for an answer to it himself.

  “What is conflict and killing to you, Boiled? A means to an end or an end in itself?” It was the first time that Faceman had called him by his name since he’d arrived.

  But Boiled wouldn’t answer.

  “Is it your desire to kill that’s become your main driving force? Didn’t you entrust yourself to Paradise in order to toughen you up, body and mind, ready for outer space? Isn’t it rather miserable that the outcome of all that is a boundless killing machine?”

  “The killer instinct in me is just that—instinct,” Boiled said. “It’s neither a means to an end nor an end in itself. The reasons behind my involvement in Paradise don’t concern you; they didn’t back in the day, and they don’t now. More importantly, the person who has the right—and duty—to ask questions is not you, it’s me.” Boiled’s tone was defiant. He continued: “And my third question is this. What are Oeufcoque and the others trying to find out about Shell?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve already seen the official petition to the Broilerhouse. There’s a good chance that the Doctor and Oeufcoque are conducting their own private investigation on Shell.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to divulge that—not to one whose only means of self-actualization is through killing.”

  “What are you saying?” said Boiled.

  “I’m saying that giving you the information you want would be paramount to condoning murder. Ask me again once you’ve recovered your sense of value for human life.”

  All the expression disappeared from Boiled’s face. As inhuman as his face was normally, this was one step further, hideously, oppressively blank.

  “So who’s going to show me the value of life? The people whose bodies were mangled behind closed doors in the name of science?”

  Faceman dodged the question. “I’m not talking about the value of life. I’m talking about your own personal values.”

  Boiled leaned forward. “I know all about the many lives that Paradise has snuffed out. How other soldiers came here, what happened to them, and how they ended up dying.”

  “So you’re trying to say that our aim is to murder people? Like some sort of concentration camp? That’s a foolish way to look at what goes on here, and you know it. Of course there are some researchers here who treat their subjects as objects. But they are human beings too, and they have arrived at their own personal, sophisticated value systems, their own conceptions of the value of human life. Without this, you wouldn’t last long as a researcher here—it’d be too tough on the mind.”

  “False value systems. Totally contrived.”

  “Of course they’re contrived—what other sort of value system is there? Or are you saying that there’s a physical, tangible object called a ‘value’ lying around somewhere, just waiting to be discovered so that everyone can see what the truth is?”

  “My heart died in this so-called Paradise. I can no longer feel that there’s any such thing as value to life.”

  “That’s because the fear of death has been removed from you. The army—and you—wanted it so. To give a soldier a sense of immortality. There were many steps to this procedure, and you’re the only one ever to follow it through to the end, voluntarily or otherwise.”

  “I’ve also forgotten sorrow and anger.”

  “At the time, our consciousness-threshold examination techniques weren’t yet perfect…”

  “I’ve even been robbed of my ability to sleep.”

  “Asomniatic Activity—the highest-priority research target we were given, designed to strengthen military personnel. You know very well that it used to be a matter of course for amphetamines to be prescribed to help soldiers stand up to the trials and tribulations of war—was that any better? If you remember, at the point you came to this facility, you were utterly dependent on stimulants—total addiction. All we did was try and save you, and countless other soldiers, from such a fate.”

  “Save me, you say?”

  “That’s right. Save you. I felt so then, and I still feel I was right. I have a lot of time for people who accept their burden and take what life throws at them.”

  “Are you saying, Professor, that you’ll be able to teach me again whether life has any value?” asked Boiled, an unusually dignified and serious tone to the words spilling forth from his lips, even for him. “Does life have any value?”

  But Faceman shook his head. He smiled placidly and continued. “That question is folly—you have it all upside down. Value is not something that just exists. It’s a concept, a construct. And when people neglect their duty to construct their own valuation of life, they revert back to being no more than beasts. After all, what is society if not a peculiarly human invention that allows people to conceptualize and propagate their own belief systems?”

  Boiled remained silent, his eyes dark.

  Faceman continued in his quiet voice. “It’s been observed on numerous occasions that the act of killing other members of one’s species is not limited to human beings—it’s a trait observable in all animals. The reason that animals are furnished with the ability to kill is so that they can kill. For animals, the impetus to kill is always there, constantly at the ready. That’s their system of self-perpetuation, you see. Their system is pure and simple, just like human society.”

  “Are you calling me an animal?”

  “All human beings are animals, of course. But you, having lost your sense of values, are trying to fill that gaping hole wit
h a particular set of instincts—that’s why you’re an animal. When animals cannibalize each other or persecute outsiders or create outcasts or commit suicide, or patricide, or infanticide, or fratricide—all these apparently abnormal acts are nothing more than a regression to a base animal instinct, when you think about it. Animals learn from their environment and their circumstances and pass their learned behaviors on to their children, who inherit what they can from their parents. But when environments and circumstances change so that they appear to contradict what we have learned—well, that’s when learning goes out the window, and animal instinct kicks in to produce these behaviors that we call ‘abnormal.’ Whenever there’s an outbreak of killing within a species, this is usually the primary factor.”

  “Are you saying that it’s abnormal for me to have a gun?” Boiled asked.

  Suddenly, Faceman’s eyes narrowed, and he threw the question back at Boiled. “So, when I said ‘abnormal,’ you immediately associated the word with your gun, did you?”

  Boiled didn’t answer.

  Faceman smiled and continued. “Abnormal behavior could be, for example, the ill-treatment of other members of your own species. There are some animals, for example, which, for various reasons, toy with weaker beings before killing them. Even their own children. There are some cases where they rape their own children repeatedly, or eat their children. Besides that, there are countless cases in which animals engage in group suicide, or end up eating each other or killing their own parents.”

  Faceman uttered this entire speech with his usual, apparently disinterested, tone. Boiled stood and listened without emotion.

  “Let me give you another example. In the savannas of a protected nature reserve, when the numbers in a herd of herbivores grow beyond a certain level, the herd engages in conduct that can only be described as provocative. Namely, they find a carnivore and deliberately pass close by, encouraging the carnivore to chase them. When, eventually, one of the herd falls by the wayside at the end of the chase and falls victim to the predator, the others in the herd stop and watch as their fellow gets ripped to pieces. Scientists have analyzed brain wave patterns that, in these situations, indicate that the surviving herd members are not just excited, but also enjoying the spectacle.”

  It was as if Faceman was methodically retrieving the data stored in his mind, selecting the best piece of information to impart next. “And what about the lowly insect that’s organized into the most regimented sort of society. Take the bee—in every hive, there’s always a particular bee that isn’t assigned any role. It isn’t allowed to do anything, and it just gets ignored by the other bees and dies. The existence of such a pitiful creature is usually explained as being a necessary measure to keep the population fluctuating, but essentially what’s happening is that the majority are finding an outlet for stress by creating an outcast. It’s a type of amusement. Then, there are the activities that are supposedly unique to human beings—take war, for example. Your former line of work.”

  Boiled said nothing. He stared at Faceman, a dark glint brimming up in his eyes.

  “You think that human beings are the only animals to wage war? Think again. It’s actually fair to say that pretty much any animal with a herd instinct will wage war one way or another. From insects to herbivores—all living creatures wage war. Ants, for example, will attack a rival anthill and raid its food supplies. They even occupy the other’s territory, enslaving the surviving ants. This sort of action is an exceedingly common animal impulse, in fact. So, you see how it is? Human beings are a long way from escaping their animal instincts, as I’m sure you understand clearly. In which case, what exactly is the difference between man and animal?”

  Faceman took a breath here to better enunciate his next phrase. “The creation of values,” he said. “On one hand, animals have come up with all sorts of reasons—besides simple predation—to kill each other. On the other hand, over time human beings have come up with a notion of valuing life and death. It’s not that life has any value in and of itself. It’s that human beings have come up with a notion of value and applied that in various ways to the idea of life. In doing so, man started to resist total domination by his baser instincts and managed to give birth to a society overwhelmingly stronger and more complex than any other, surpassing all other creatures and ascending the pinnacle of life on earth as master of all he surveys.”

  Here, Faceman opened his eyes wide and tilted his head, that is, his whole self, forward. “What is the definition of a human being? It’s based on whether a creature understands the concept of a value system. Human infants are very much like animals in that they don’t understand the idea of values, but then they study them, and in doing so arrive at their own sense of self-worth, as well as the value of other objects, recognizing the value of other people, and in learning how to heighten their own sense of values they finally begin to participate in society as a human being. Although, on the other hand, there is a certain type of person who seems to have found his niche in society without a fully developed value system—and they exist as little more than animals.”

  Then Faceman grinned mischievously, although Boiled didn’t respond. “Oeufcoque knows what values are,” Faceman said, his eyes gentle and narrow, but in a tone of voice clearly designed to elicit a response from Boiled. But it did not work.

  “Originally he was just selected as a Living Unit because a mouse’s metabolic system seemed extremely compatible with what we were trying to achieve, and he happened to be selected as that mouse. But as he had his intelligence amplified, he gained a personality. He understood the concept of values, and so he changed from just another lab animal to a creature called Oeufcoque. Oeufcoque made a conscious effort to amass his own value system and tried to recognize value in others. He did this because he recognized that this was the main reason human society has managed to develop to the extent that it has. Surmounting crisis after crisis, human will has always striven to rebuild society anew, to develop it to the highest level possible. The reason Oeufcoque has elected to concern himself with all of society’s ills is precisely because he recognized and understood all of this.”

  The Professor continued in earnest. “You’re the exact opposite—the very definition of folly. Even as you try to erode your own sense of values, regressing back into an animal state, you still desperately cling to human society. If you’re looking for the opportunity to kill, pure and simple, then why not head to a jungle in a nature reserve and kill all the animals and fish—bugs and germs, even—that you want? There’s no reason that you have to be around humans.”

  Boiled responded for the first time, almost as a reflex reaction. “I was a soldier. I defended one set of lives and I studied warcraft in order to fight more effectively against another set of lives. It’s an existence designed for a high level of defense and attack. Even now, I protect lives even as I take them.”

  “Is that the thing you’re most proud of in your life? What a bundle of contradictions human beings are. On one occasion they will devise a killing machine called an army in order to better defend themselves. At other times they’ll go on a looting spree as a means to increase prosperity—even though doing so makes their victims think of them in turn as a collective object worth attacking in the future, rather than one worth cherishing. And these are your values, are they?”

  “What would a person who has deliberately isolated himself in a manufactured paradise know of society’s values?” asked Boiled.

  “It’s precisely because we understand society’s values that we founded Paradise here. This is my challenge to my own values.”

  “I always challenge my own values,” said Boiled.

  Faceman opened his eyes, seemingly impressed. “Indeed? So, what are you, then?”

  “In order to defend one set of values, humans have to annihilate opposing sets of values. I’m a being created specifically to bring about that annihilation. If it’s humans who make values, it’s also humans who break them.”

&n
bsp; Faceman sighed a small sigh. “What a profound thought—and yet so helpless at the same time. Is this your compensation for your own sense of helplessness? Having had your own emotions denied you, with all the highs and lows that this entails, you seek to bring about nihilism in all living beings?”

  “This place you call Paradise was built on the back of people’s broken values. You’re the ones who know all about toying with nihilism,” replied Boiled.

  “Values come and values go. We’ve thrown out sacred cows in the past, and I’m sure we will again in the future. But as long as we remain fixed on our aim of creation, new values emerge from the detritus of the old. This is most definitely not nihilism.”

  “How is this facility—which treats human beings as objects—how is it in a position to evaluate anything?”

  “If we’ve treated people as objects, it’s because our observational techniques are subject to our current limited physical and mental consciousnesses. We’re still inexperienced. In the grand scheme of things, we’re still at an embryonic stage, or at most eggs in a basket. That’s why we value Oeufcoque so highly—the Golden Egg, able to sniff out the odor of souls.” Faceman stopped speaking and stared at Boiled. “And you, aren’t you the same, Rusty Gun? I recognize all too well that it takes the full extent of your considerable willpower to suppress your killer instincts. But that’s not enough—at the moment, you’re still just a human-shaped weapon. How do you ever hope to regain your soul?”

  Boiled stood silent a moment. “I kill in order to protect my client’s rights and interests. I don’t kill for any other reason.”

  “Human beings strive to become gods and are ever frustrated in their efforts. You try and regain your emotions—the missing ingredient to make you an omnipotent god—through using your killer instincts to try and steal them back. But that path won’t lead you anywhere other than down your own road to ruin. The proudest warriors and hunters in history come across as modest and humble in comparison to you.”