Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  Medium was frozen to the spot in fear and anger.

  –I thought I might try and experience pain again—it’s been a while. But it’s not very nice, after all, is it? I just snarced the pain away, to be honest.

  Medium gave a piercing cry. He punched again. The skin peeled off Tweedledee’s arm, and more blood came forth.

  “Such pretty fingers. Beautiful fingers. Tastes good too. That taste of special blood.” Medium laughed cruelly. He punched the boy again and raised his knife.

  Suddenly, Tweedledee was free. He tried to work out why he had suddenly been released from the grip of the man in front of him, and then he found the answer.

  His right arm that had been in Medium’s grip had been severed from his elbow down.

  It was no longer attached to him. It was in Medium’s hand.

  The wound was cauterized, bloodless.

  Tweedledee’s throat suddenly wobbled. “Ah…” he said.

  Tweedledee’s eyes widened—surprised at the fact that he had just spoken.

  Medium stepped forward again. Giggling, he kissed the severed arm and tossed it aside.

  His blade came up again. Tweedledee lifted his left arm reflexively to protect himself, and the blade cut through his wrist like so much wax, causing his hand to go flying through the air.

  “Now we’re talking… I’m liking your new look,” Medium said, baring his teeth and laughing.

  “Ah…ah…” Tweedledee gasped. “My voice…breathing…it’s been a while.”

  Opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish, he looked straight at Medium and, incredibly, smiled. His face was swollen and bloodied, and both his hands had been severed from his body. Still, he never stopped smiling. Sweetly, innocently.

  Indeed it was Medium who stopped smiling. “What the hell are you…?” He stood rooted to the spot as if he had suddenly been overcome by fear.

  –Security’s been activated, I’m afraid. Nothing I can do now.

  Medium was startled as yet another sound echoed through the back of his mind.

  Suddenly a number of shadows surrounded Medium. Hurriedly he readied his knife. When he recognized the shadows, though, his heart sank.

  Silhouettes of what looked like large fish—spinning around him.

  Medium looked up at the sky with bloodshot eyes. He gave a short grunt of surprise. His eyes were pinned open by the sight of giant sharks flying through the air.

  –Over here, please, everyone, called Tweedledee, raising his severed arms to the skies.

  –Security’s given permission, so you can just go ahead and eat this guy.

  Tweedledee turned casually to look at Medium from underneath his swollen, battered eyelids.

  “What the…” Medium was in shock. And that was the moment. One of the sharks circling the skies turned downward to face him. Then, with unbelievable speed, it plunged toward Medium. He didn’t even have time to react.

  The shark’s jaws gaped open, revealing a mouth full of raw redness, and Medium saw that it was packed full of layers and layers of sharp teeth.

  A cry of despair escaped from Medium’s lips. A cry that seemed to be squeezed out of his whole body.

  Medium raised his left arm reflexively to protect his head, and it was this that the shark bit into.

  The next moment, Medium’s whole body was lifted into the air.

  “Aaaargh!” Medium shrieked. The flesh on his arm was being shredded noisily, Medium’s own body weight pulling him down against the teeth. The pain was unbearable. Completely disorientated now, he swung his knife wildly at the shark, and there was an explosion of sparks and noise.

  The magnetized blade didn’t reach the shark but instead was repelled in midair amid a blaze of sparks and lightning.

  “Agh! It hurts, it hurts…aarrgh…”

  Half-crazed now, he waved his arm around like a madman, but then another shark’s teeth took hold of his knife-wielding arm. Medium’s body was spread in a Y-shape, and he was lifted through the air in a giant arc, no more than a meat puppet.

  His legs flailed in the air, and two more sharks bit into each of them. He was now splayed like an X, ready to be ripped to pieces. His flesh was cut to ribbons, almost as if he’d been run through a giant sewing machine, and there were loud ripping noises as the sharks tore the meat from the man’s bones.

  Medium cried out, piercing and shrill. His lungs and throat screamed automatically, so intense was the pain of being ripped to pieces. He lost all control of his body, and urine started dribbling from his crotch.

  Then Medium’s voice stopped. He was so overwhelmed by fear that he could no longer make a sound.

  A number of other sharks approached, prodding his crotch with their snouts. They seemed drawn to the smell of his urine.

  Before long, one of them bit into his crotch. Medium could only cry out in a pathetic whimper. Then, as if that was the signal to go, the sharks all piled into the area between his legs, teeth bared.

  Medium’s unearthly screams echoed throughout Paradise.

  ≡

  “You poor thing. What a violent visitor you had to put up with, Tweedledee,” Faceman said, staring into space. “Head straight on over to First Aid and have them fix you up. Your arms should be better in two or three days. There’s a good boy. Let’s just check that there were no other victims. We’re fine over at this end.”

  Faceman then turned his attention back to that which was right in front of him: Boiled.

  In turn Boiled tried to guess what Faceman’s words had meant—all the while with his gun pointed firmly at the Professor’s face. His own expression was blank and inorganic, as if his face were competing with the muzzle of the gun to see which could come across as more inhuman.

  Faceman looked him up and down for a good while, then sighed deeply. “Violence comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes.”

  That was the moment a piercing scream ripped through the calm of the white birch forest.

  First there was the scream. Then, a sharp silver object. It fell in an arc, but was repelled by Faceman and Boiled’s PGF and ended up thudding into a nearby tree stump.

  Boiled glanced toward it. A knife. The one Medium used. Its blade was shot to pieces, with magnetized sparks flying off it.

  The screams came closer and arrived like a storm.

  Faceman was still looking at Boiled, and at that moment something fell from the sky and nearly onto Boiled’s head.

  Red droplets.

  A handful dripped down on the grass here and there. Then, all of a sudden, redness fell like rain.

  Boiled and Faceman were in the midst of a sudden vermilion shower. Blood and flesh rained down from the heavens.

  The cries grew closer. They were now almost overhead. The white birch trees were streaked with red. Thousands of unidentifiable pieces of crunched-up flesh and bone rained down, catching on the leaves, drawing down the branches with their weight.

  The surroundings were now painted a vivid white and red, and a suffocating smell of blood filled Boiled’s nose. Faceman, of course, had a nose but no lungs.

  Only the areas immediately surrounding Faceman and Boiled remained clear.

  Beyond their invisible domes were the fleeting shadows of the giant fish, cutting through the red and white.

  “The Cherubim—guardian angels of Paradise. They’re particularly obedient to Tweedledee’s orders.” Faceman’s eyes narrowed, and he looked up at the school of sharks flying around overhead. “They have installed in them a type of PseudoGravitational Float slightly different from yours. They swim in a sea of magnetic fields. And that same sea will render all your weapons and defenses completely powerless.”

  Faceman continued in his matter-of-fact tone. “They won’t trouble us, though. Their sensory fields are programmed with a system that limits their perception of potential targets. In other words, the only things they’re able to comprehend are those who we decide are enemies who’ve invaded from the outside.”

  At that moment, th
e cries—from the one who had been designated as such an enemy—testified to a fear such as had never been experienced before. Then the voice changed again, into a high-pitched whimper that called out Boiled’s name. A pitiful voice. A voice of one who, faced with a certain and terrible death, desperately tried to inflict a lasting impression on those still alive to hear.

  Boiled, though, wouldn’t even look up. He simply stared at Faceman, gun still pointed right at him, as if he were waiting for the Professor’s next move.

  Faceman sighed again, shaking his head. “By the way, do you know why it is that sharks attack people?” he asked in a tone of voice that seemed to rebuke Boiled for his unwaveringly hostile posture. “In a peaceful swimming spot, for example. Or a beach famous for its gentle waves? Do you know why they suddenly bare their teeth at humans?”

  Boiled didn’t answer.

  “This question was a puzzle for many years. The sharks aren’t usually hungry at the time of their attacks, and sharks as a species don’t show any territorial tendencies—they’re not generally bothered by anyone encroaching on their space. There are exceptions, of course—some of the documented attacks on people are due to hunger, or out of aggression. But no more than a few percent of all cases. After all, sharks haven’t evolved to attack any unidentified object when hungry or angry—they wouldn’t survive, in the long run. So why, then? Are human beings such an easy prey for sharks? Fish are a much easier prey than humans, who are many times the size of the fishes that constitute the average prey for a shark.”

  The screams overhead started to die out. The sound of red rainfall lessened, and Faceman continued speaking as if he were revealing a juicy secret. “For a long time there was a big question as to why sharks attacked humans when it was apparently neither necessary nor useful for them to do so—but the answer was actually staring us in the face. So simple, in fact, that no one was able to work it out.”

  The cries overhead stopped completely, ending abruptly mid-scream. Medium had evidently given up the ghost. Faceman looked up at the sharks as they greedily feasted on the clumps of flesh and bone that no longer resembled any remotely human shape.

  “They attack people out of curiosity,” he said. “They turn their teeth on humans just as humans in turn have an impulse to peer at an unknown object or reach out and touch something that takes their interest. It just so happens that the shark’s most developed instruments are their teeth, their sense of smell, and their sense of taste. They just want to know what these things that are floating about the beach are. To know and to taste—metaphorically and literally. The shark is able to sniff out a single drop of blood in the ocean from a distance of many kilometers—why shouldn’t it be driven by the desire to know, to taste what it has just smelled?”

  Faceman gave Boiled a look to say that he was now about to speak more seriously than ever. “Shall I tell you what the true nature of violence is, Boiled? It’s curiosity. That’s what’s lurking in the shadows, behind almost every single act of violence anywhere. To know everything of your target and to exercise your own strength and will. To taste everything that there is to taste about oneself. Whatever your motive is for fighting—the feeling of victory, a sense of duty, to compensate for feelings of helplessness, as a road to self-actualization, or due to abnormal character traits—the true nature, the essence of violence remains the same.”

  It was as if he were patiently explaining to Boiled why exactly it was that Boiled was pointing the gun at him.

  “There’s no impulse in this world more violent than curiosity. And, paradoxically, it’s none other than curiosity that drives people, and animals, on to live. Those who understand this fact—and strive to resist it—they’re the ones who are worthy of the name human.”

  Faceman finished speaking and stared at Boiled more closely than ever. “Boiled, my friend, do you really understand where your curiosity—your interests—are taking you in life?”

  “The only thing that interests me these days is annihilation.” Boiled’s voice was dignified and solemn.

  Without warning, he lowered his gun. At the same time the electromagnetic field surrounding his body started to fade away. “I sense someone employing powerful electronic interference somewhere in this facility.” Boiled raised his other hand into the air as he spoke.

  Faceman realized that the regenerative metal fibers in Boiled’s hand were responding to a powerful snarc coming from somewhere else in the facility.

  “I will now proceed to search for the person who’s causing this electronic interference. Any attempt to obstruct me will be penalized under the law,” said Boiled.

  “Ah, but you do realize that the punishment doesn’t always fit the crime?” Faceman answered in a way that seemed designed to poke fun at Boiled. “What’s more, you do realize that if you try and move from this spot right now, the Cherubim will bring the down the full force of Paradise’s punishment on you.”

  “They can try.” Boiled spun around.

  As soon as Boiled started to walk away, one of the sharks circling the skies responded.

  Boiled didn’t even look up at the shark that was now plunging down toward him with flashing teeth.

  Vicious sparks erupted as the shark slammed into the PseudoGravitational Float wall that surrounded Boiled’s body, deflecting the shark completely. Even so, the shark stayed hovering above him, mouth still open, inching closer to Boiled by generating a PseudoGravitational Float of its own.

  “My consciousness-threshold figure, with the magnetic devices implanted in me, is above 95 percent.” Boiled looked back at Faceman.

  Faceman opened his eyes in surprise. “When you were in Paradise, the figure wasn’t even 60 percent. Are you saying that life in the pathologically disturbed society of the outside world made the machinery in your body meld with your flesh to such an extent that—”

  “I’m no longer your creation. I’m a monster, a creature fallen from Paradise.” As he spoke, he pointed his gun at the shark above him.

  The shark’s teeth grated against the magnetic wall, making a keening sound.

  Or rather—the wall emanating from Boiled was stopping the shark from closing its mouth and getting away.

  Boiled casually placed his gun-wielding arm inside the shark’s mouth.

  At a stroke the shark’s PGF wall was ruptured, and the muzzle of Boiled’s gun roared to life.

  There was an explosion. The single shot—bolstered by Boiled’s PGF—was all it took to rip the shark apart from the inside, causing it to splatter like a burst water balloon.

  Boiled’s revolver was more like a tank gun than a pistol—certainly, it was just as powerful.

  If someone like Balot had tried to fire it, her hand would probably have been ripped off by the recoil.

  Boiled was able to wield such an impressive weapon not just because of his physical strength but also because he could use his PseudoGravitational Float to support it.

  The other sharks were now swimming around quickly in the sky, on the alert for Boiled.

  The atmosphere was pregnant with greed and deadly rage—and teeth.

  “When did the sharks ask you to give them the ability to fly through the air?” Boiled asked, his dark eyes fixed on the swarm of sharks above him.

  “One three-dimensional space seems to be as good as another for sharks. Water or air, it’s all the same to them. In much the same way as one place is as good as another as a battlefield for you.”

  Another soft rainfall came from above their heads. The rain was no longer red. Cleaning equipment was in operation to wash the blood away.

  The outlines of the sharks could still be seen speeding their way through the rain. Then, with terrifying speed, they flew at Boiled, a mass of teeth and artificial gravity: toward his head, his front, his back, his flanks.

  Boiled moved. He took a step forward, readying his gun in front of him.

  The noise that ensued could no longer be described as simple gunfire; it was a series of explosions. The s
hark that charged at Boiled head-on had its head blown into tiny fragments, with the rest of its body careening into a white birch tree behind Boiled’s back, the shark’s internal organs splattering across the clearing, giving off the stench of ammonia.

  One by one the sharks were crushed by the force of Boiled’s bullets—or, in the case of those who did make it as far as his PGF field, by the force of impact as they slammed into his invisible shield, tumbling over to the ground, unable to move.

  The keen smell of ammonia and shark blood pervaded the air, and the surrounding trees were now repainted anew in a bright red even more vivid than before.

  Boiled sidestepped quickly from left to right, and one by one, with lethal accuracy, shot down the bundles of flying teeth as they approached him.

  Before long there were ten or so sharks blown out of the sky and heaped on the floor. The remaining dozen or so sharks were now circling overhead at a safe distance, perplexed.

  Boiled just stood there wordlessly in a sea of shark blood, staring at Faceman.

  Not a single drop of the shark blood stained his body.

  His eyes showed an utter lack of interest in continuing his conversation with Faceman.

  All he was thinking about was how to smash the thick PGF field—one far beyond that of the sharks—that surrounded Faceman’s cage.

  “So you choose conflict right to the bitter end, do you? Whether it’s quarrels with OctoberCorp or Trustees on Mardock Scramble 09 cases trying to prove their usefulness, it seems that all everyone on the outside does is fight. It’s as if you want to give the lawmakers yet another excuse to ban our technology, serve it up on a plate for them,” Faceman said.

  Faceman pointed to Boiled’s gun with his chin. “That’s the gun that Oeufcoque used to turn into, isn’t it? An object whose only usefulness is as a tool of destruction. It’s also the empty shell of Oeufcoque—the carapace that he molted, if you will. And that’s all you have now as a substitute for a soul—a substitute for Oeufcoque.”