Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  She felt as calm and composed as she had when she first woke up back at the original hideaway.

  Her body was covered in a figure-hugging black outfit. Made by Oeufcoque. Virtually identical to the one she had worn for target practice. The only difference was that there were now a number of electronic terminals attached to her body, connected by a multitude of cords that spread out from the center of her body in all directions, winding their way back to machinery shoved into a cramped corner of the dining room.

  “It’s not enough for us just to analyze Shell’s memories to prove what he did when,” the Doctor said over the clutter on the table. “In order for it to stand up in court as proof, we need to also replay his thoughts and emotions—we need to establish the process as much as the actual results of his actions. This is a mammoth undertaking, really, and would normally take the best part of half a year, but I’m sure you and Oeufcoque will be able to work it out in less than a day.”

  At this point the Doctor took his eyes off the screen and looked at Balot. “Now, are you really all right with this?”

  Balot slowly lifted her head up from its relaxed position on the easy chair and looked straight at the Doctor.

  –I want to know the answer. Why me? As long as I can get just a little bit closer to the answer, I’ll be satisfied.

  She snarced the electronic voice box built into her suit. The Doctor’s eyes turned to it—to him.

  “Make sure you filter out any material that’s too inappropriate, right, Oeufcoque? Anything too shocking and we’ll end up in violation of the protection of minors law ourselves.”

  “Balot’s plenty sensible and mature about this, Doc. She’s the one who got the chips, after all. If she wants to see what’s inside them, we shouldn’t keep it from her.”

  The Doctor scratched his head when confronted with Oeufcoque’s intractable bluntness. “It’s just that we had a warning from the DA. He told us to make sure we take into consideration the reactions from the Women’s Institute and other educational charities…”

  Still in her prone state, Balot shrugged her shoulders. Why should the WI or the children’s charities care now if she was exposed, secondhand, to sex and violence? They couldn’t have cared less when they were the ones exposing her to it firsthand.

  “It’s precisely because the laws of the land designed to protect minors didn’t protect her that Balot’s here with us today, Doc.” Oeufcoque seemed as unconcerned as Balot by the wrath of the do-gooders. “Besides, this is what Mardock Scramble 09 was made for. Balot wants to know why she was killed. It’s what she needs to do in order to move on and live again. No one trying to obstruct that has any claim on us—this is firmly outside their jurisdiction.”

  The Doctor shrugged. It wasn’t as though he actually cared about the DA’s request, anyway.

  –Don’t worry. I’ll be all right, ’cause Oeufcoque will be with me the whole time.

  Balot smiled, and the Doctor couldn’t help but smile back. “So, even little half-baked Oeufcoque ends up getting cooked in an instant under the spell of the girl.”

  “I’m just trying to do the right thing, based on what we know about her abilities and her feelings.”

  “No need to go all red—I’m only teasing you! Are you blushing, my wishy-washy little friend?” the Doctor interrupted Oeufcoque, who was about to come to a spluttering halt anyway, and then turned toward the monitor. “Now, let’s break some eggs. All set?”

  A piece of machinery in the dining room that looked like a large refrigerator started grinding away.

  It was a machine that the Doctor and Oeufcoque had built together, designed specifically for the purpose of extracting Shell’s memories from the four chips. The idea was that Oeufcoque digested the raw data, processed it, and fed it to Balot, who physicalized the data into a form that could be recorded by the machine.

  Balot snuggled deep into her easy chair and closed her eyes.

  She experienced a different feeling from the time when she’d fixed her fake ID at the café with Oeufcoque, and one also distinct from her swim through the pool of information back at Paradise.

  Her task now was to relive, as much as was possible, the life of another human being, selecting only the most pertinent pieces of information.

  The first thing she heard was a voice. A low speaking voice. The sound swelled, dissonant and echoing all around her head, until it finally burst deep inside her, leaving only silence in its wake.

  Balot’s ears pricked up, and she realized that she was somewhere she had never seen before.

  A second later, she realized that she was standing there.

  She was walking toward someplace. She seemed to be in the pleasure quarter of Mardock City. She came across a girl she had never seen before. A blonde, fourteen or fifteen.

  The girl said something. Balot said something back to the girl.

  For a moment a Blue Diamond sparkled inside the girl’s breast. An image of the rings on the right hand. The index finger on the right hand swelled up, and Balot saw playing cards and cars and drinks.

  What number was this girl? Was she Shell’s first? Memories flooded her head, and Balot realized that the girl in front of her was indeed one that Shell had bought. At that same moment the girl started speaking. Balot couldn’t make out what the girl was saying; there was too much noise, too many other voices. Eventually the distractions subsided, and Balot could discern a number of phrases, snatches of conversation.

  “I don’t want to go back to my father’s house,” the blonde girl said. Her voice was urgent. Balot felt overwhelmed by empathy.

  “Please, don’t make me go back to my father.”

  “Of course not. I’ll protect you, my little one. I’ll take you to a safe place. You’re beautiful. And you’re about to become even more beautiful.” A surge of empathy welled up inside him. Suppressed, over and over, many times. A crystal. The luster of a Blue Diamond. Then a great loss befalls both, all turns to dust. The processing commences.

  The memory faded, and the jewel replaced it. The inevitable ritual that accompanied the death of memory.

  The urge always appeared after a similar event—it was triggered by something. The death of a girl, murder dressed as suicide. Why me? The answer was sinking into the depths. A flashback that was doomed to wander through eternity, unknown and unknowable by anybody.

  –Balot, stay conscious. This is all virtual reality.

  Balot nodded in her own mind and started to strip the first memory of all excess information, peeling away the fat. She realized that more and more information was welling up in its place. Memories of sounds, light, pain. Memories of anger, pleasure, conversations. These emotions cut across the scene and the motives and intentions of the feeler started to form distinct, tangible shapes.

  “Excellent! We’re starting to establish concrete proof of Shell’s emotional state…”

  It was the Doctor, speaking from somewhere. It was the last thing Balot heard from the real world. Instead, fragments of information that had been submerged in the morass of the dark abyss were now bubbling up and assaulting all of Balot’s senses, penetrating through her skin.

  –You need to organize all this information into some kind of system, Balot. At the moment, none of it makes sense. Return to the starting place and try again.

  Suddenly the cityscape of Mardock City unfolded before her eyes again. First office blocks at noon, then the dark shantytowns of the slums, then a casino kiosk, a place to hold business transactions with persons unknown.

  Memories of the sweet rush of success that accompanied the first ride in the AirCar. A number of girls were plucked from the pool of memory and held in front of her, appearing one by one in front of her eyes.

  The girls were standing on a bridge, silent, eyes closed. Wind blowing in from the sea. The shadow underfoot crept and then rushed in, and night fell. Eventually each of the memories fell into place, and the girls opened their eyes.

  The girls all had Blue Diam
onds for eyes. Balot shrieked in surprise.

  One of the girls started walking backward across the bridge, as if she were in a movie and somebody had pressed the rewind button.

  Balot followed after her. When she arrived at the bridge she saw the bright lights of the city on the other side. A casino shone out like a beacon of light, and all around it tall buildings, houses, garages, all engraved with the symbol of OctoberCorp.

  A new image floated up: brain surgery. A young boy on the operating table. The girl that Balot had been chasing was now walking around the table in circles. The girl’s mouth popped open and from it spewed forth the grating sound of a saw against a skull bone. Something was removed, something was transplanted in its place. Of course, the chip inside the brain was also firmly engraved with the ubiquitous OctoberCorp symbol. The reason I chose this casino to hold my Shows? Doesn’t a salmon return upstream in order to spawn?

  “There’s nowhere I want to return home to,” said the girl, over the sound of the cranial saw. “But I wish I had someplace that I wanted to return home to.”

  “Leave it to me. Come home with me.”

  Then the girl died of an overdose.

  That’s a lie, cried the world. A lethal dose of drugs would have been wasted on her. Death by narcotic misadventure? Merely a pretext, a facade for the public. He had just strangled her as she slept. This was the last time he would strangle anyone to death. Too much hassle, too much to tidy up afterwards. His headaches just got worse and worse.

  Stress. He needed something that gave him absolute, total euphoria. Heroic Pills were perfect.

  You walk the path of unhappiness. That’s right. A vision of a large man. Something bad will happen all around you before too long. Trouble. That’s what the man said. If Mardock Scramble 09 is called, I’ll have far greater jurisdiction than any public organization. The ultimate bodyguard.

  –Boiled must have known that the Doctor and I were on Shell’s tail. That’s why he arranged to be in Shell’s employ just before the case started. These memories are from around that time…

  Psychelaundering. In order to understand my business practices, you have to understand me first. Look at these Blue Diamonds. They’re my business credentials. Seven in total. Apparently, six lives have been forfeited so far. I tried to help the girls. I tried to save them. I want to know why I’m so frightened all the time.

  “Why am I so frightened?”

  –Balot, stay focused on your own consciousness! You’re not actually experiencing Shell’s feelings yourself!

  I killed one with a gun, but that wasn’t very satisfying. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Guns are no good. I’ll have to find another method. Memories—even when they’re gone, they still affect my mind. I need to find a way to kill her while keeping my distance. And also be able to recover her remains safely. I’ll trigger an explosion.

  I’ll use the insurance on my AirCar. Pin the blame on the girl. Make out that it was her own fault.

  “Never doubt. It’s the road to ruin.”

  –No, Balot. Those are your own memories. Let’s try and work through this chronologically. Begin once more.

  The third girl was an accident. So called. The brakes were tampered with.

  “A moving car is no good. It confuses my memory. Memories—even when they’re gone, they still affect my mind.”

  He’d fixed the brakes of the car, but as a result he’d been forced to look at the spectacle of her corpse, hideously deformed. She’d been traveling at 120 kilometers an hour. It would have been different had she just turned straight into ash.

  Memories disappeared, but it was always a hassle arranging permits for cremations. Burial was far more common in this city, after all.

  “I’ve thought of all sorts of ways to launder money.”

  I knew all about it. There were voices—two girls. A surge of empathy welled up inside him.

  “Don’t make me see my father again, please. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t force me to see him again.”

  “Don’t you worry, my little one. I’ll look after you. I know all about it. How much you’ve suffered.”

  Stress. It’s what destroys my memories. So why not do it thoroughly? I know how. I’m going to use my stress to obliterate all traces of my memories of you. Everything’s bright red. Stabbing her to death—stupid even by my own standards. Blood everywhere. The cleanup afterward—I want the Blue Diamond. Its sparkle makes everything clean, washes everything away. I must have flipped out. I killed her before I even knew what I was doing.

  The memory breakdown happened right after that. Just at the time I’d failed in an attempt to launder money, but my stress was alleviated and everything was all right again. Business was booming, and my stock was rising. The secret of my success.

  Having said that, it’s not as if I even remember everything that happened back then.

  “In order to understand my business practices, you need to understand me first.”

  –We need to establish whether that memory is a real one. Shell could have been watching a movie or something. We need to know for sure whether it’s actually Shell…

  The first one I killed? To me, each girl is always the first one I killed. My memories disappear, after all.

  Nobody knows, and nobody will ever know. My memories will vanish entirely. I know how to clean myself up. Maybe they’ll trust me to clean their money up too.

  A surge of empathy welled up inside him. The intricate fragments of memories swirled around like cards at a gaming table.

  –Your sense of time is being affected, Balot. It’s already been seven whole hours since we started this operation.

  The first one he killed? The memories—no, the trace remnants, the vestiges of memory—were somehow different with this one. Because she was the first, the original?

  When, exactly? It all kicked off after he’d entered the casino. He’d started to realize his talent at cards. I’d like you to come and watch me at the Show. I know there are years between us, but we’re still a proper couple, real lovers. Even if I lost all my other memories, I’d still like to remember you. I could forget everything else, but not your face. Please.

  The first one I killed was different, I think. I really meant it with her.

  –Your body won’t hold out much longer, Balot! It’s been over ten hours now! Your stamina—

  “There’s something I want to tell you, and I want you to listen, Shell.”

  That’s what the girl said. A surge of empathy welled up inside him. I won’t forget you. It’s my job to make dirty things clean again. My memories disappear. Maybe they’ll trust me to clean their money up too.

  “I don’t want to lie to you. I want you to know the truth.”

  If they trust me to clean up their money, it means that they trust me. Trust me!

  This is where it begins, my Mardock, my stairway to heaven. I’m going to make it clean. I’m going to make everything clean. Like a blue diamond.

  “I was raped by my father.”

  –Balot, stay calm!

  A surge of empathy welled up inside him. He was shocked. And yet his love for the girl remained the same. He loved the girl. But then there was the stress. Flashbacks.

  “I’d rather go to jail than return there. Flashbacks.”

  –That’s you speaking there, Balot! Doctor, we have to stop this. Doctor! Damn, Balot’s snarc is much stronger than I’d ever imagined—

  Flashbacks. Memories of sounds, light, pain. Memories of anger, pleasure, conversations. These emotions cut across the scene, gradually coming back to life, and the motives and intentions of the feeler started to form distinct, tangible shapes.

  “I’m going to make it all clean. Everything that is dirty, I’m going to clean.”

  No. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t kill her. Not the first girl. She was already dead. Why? I’m going to make you clean. I’m going to clean you up. The whole world weeps for you. My whole world weeps for you.

  Balot�
�s eyes overflowed with tears.

  “A Blue Diamond. That’s the way to do it.”

  Shell’s love was not enough. The girl died of despair. The girl had looked to Shell for salvation, she had wanted real love, but in the end she died in a state of delirium. A pathetic death. Shell was plunged into a despair of his own. Despairing at the girl’s death. Despairing at the reason behind the girl’s death.

  The first one that Shell killed wasn’t the girl. It was the person who had hurt the girl so, driven her to suicidal despair. The girl’s father.

  “The first one I killed—”

  –We’re past the point of no return now. We’ll just have to guide Balot through to the bitter end.

  The girl made Shell remember all the despair that he had once forgotten. A surge of empathy welled up inside him. “Don’t you worry, my little one. I’ll look after you. I know all about it. How much you’ve suffered.”

  Stress. It’s what destroys my memories.

  No, that’s wrong. The first one that Shell killed wasn’t the girl’s father.

  Suddenly Balot was assaulted by flashbacks. They were inside the vast emptiness of Shell’s lost memories. Something crying out even now from the darkness.

  “Why me? ”

  The despair that Shell should have forgotten all about was the sparkle in the facets of the Blue Diamonds. They scintillated, radiant.

  There was a hubbub all around. Balot suddenly realized where she was—at a Show, watching Shell under the spotlight.

  At first Balot thought she had come back to the beginning of his memories, but then she realized that she was holding his rings in both her hands. All with Blue Diamonds set in platinum. This was Balot’s job—to look after Shell’s jewelry. One of her jobs.

  One of the diamonds is conspicuous, brighter than the rest, and the man calls this one Fat Mama, because, as he says, “I called in a favor from an acquaintance who works in processing to have my dead mother’s ashes turned into a diamond.”

  –We’ve reached it! Finally, we’re at the source of Shell’s trauma!

  That’s right. The first one Shell killed. Shell’s own mother.