Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  A surge of empathy welled up inside him.

  The despair of the girl that Shell had loved was scattered around the world. The girl understood why Shell felt such empathy with her pain. She understood why Shell had accepted her for who she was.

  Shell also understood what the girl had understood. It was a vicious circle. Empathy begat empathy. The girl couldn’t cope with it. It was the very thing she had run away from—

  “Flashbacks—”

  In the end, the girl realized that she was right back where she started. In the same place she had run away from—

  –Why me?

  Balot was frozen still, the answer finally staring her in the face.

  Here was the inappropriate material that the Doctor had warned about. Image after image exploded into Balot’s mind.

  –Balot, don’t respond to any of these! They have nothing at all to do with your own past…

  This was it. Inside the rotten core of Shell’s memory—that pustulent, scabrous yolk—he was forced to have sexual intercourse with his own mother. It started around the time Shell hit puberty and carried on right up to the time just before he turned twenty, when, finally, unable to bear it any longer, Shell fixed the brakes in his mother’s car so that she would die and it would look like an accident and he would finally be free of her.

  This was the reason Shell felt his deep surge of empathy toward all the girls he had ever killed.

  It was the despair of the first girl that he had ever loved with all his heart.

  This was the plain and simple answer to Balot’s question.

  The answer to Why me?

  ≡

  Balot imagined that she had screamed out loud.

  In fact, her mouth had been clamped tightly shut, and all she had done was sit bolt upright and open her eyes wide.

  When she came to her senses, she noticed the Doctor looking over at her, bleary eyed.

  “Twenty-three hours…that’s how much time has passed since you first lay down there,” the Doctor said weakly. Bags had formed under his eyes. Balot imagined she probably had similar shadows underneath her own eyes. Then Balot checked that she had heard what she had just heard for herself, and stared at the Doctor as if she were looking to him for confirmation. Suddenly she was assaulted by a terrible chill. She felt like she was about to be sucked into the corrupted whirls of memories once again.

  “Focus on your breathing, Balot. One step at a time, shallow breaths. Easy does it…” Oeufcoque said. But Balot’s mouth, clamped tightly shut as it was, showed no sign of wanting to open. Her jaws were locked tightly together, and she displayed the classic symptoms of heavy shock.

  Balot shifted her body. She leaned forward in her easy chair and opened her mouth.

  Before she had time to stop herself, to even realize what was going on, she plastered the floor with the contents of her stomach.

  Her throat might have lost the power of speech, but just when she wanted it the least she found it was perfectly capable of making a series of unearthly retching sounds.

  Sour liquid filled her nostrils and mouth, and the pain and discomfort caused tears to well up in her eyes.

  The Doctor jumped up to comfort her, putting one hand on her back and thrusting out a towel with the other.

  –I’m so sorry.

  Balot just about managed to vocalize the words before grabbing the towel and burying her face in it. She was crying silently now. Everything was so unpleasant, so frustrating, so sad.

  –I’ve made the floor all dirty…

  The moment she said the words the corrupted memories started coming back to her again, triggered by the word dirty. I’m going to make you clean. That’s my job. Into a Blue Diamond. That’s the answer. I’m going to make you clean. Clean you up.

  “Try not to panic. You’ll settle down soon enough. You’re just a bit frazzled from all your labors,” said the Doctor’s voice, nearby. Suddenly, she realized that something was being injected into her arm. “Tranquilizers and sleeping pills. You’ll be asleep in no time. You’ve done well, really well. Take it easy now. You won’t have any more nightmares. Oeufcoque will be here right next to you. Won’t you, Oeufcoque?”

  Oeufcoque was wrapped around her tightly as her bodysuit, and he said something in response.

  Right here—or something like that. As Balot’s awareness grew dimmer, she thought she saw the face of the girl who was killed by despair. She wondered what it was exactly that girl had wanted from Shell.

  Probably the same as me, Balot thought. The same sort of answer as the one I wanted. A simple answer. Why me? Because I love you. The girl had probably thought all that mattered was to be loved. And, as a result, she ended up burnt out.

  Balot slowly closed her eyes. She felt all her sorrows dissipate. The other person’s memories were no more—they had disappeared, silently—and Balot began to regain her confidence and started to believe for certain that she was now the only one.

  Balot felt her whole body aching for the being that now wrapped her up in a warm cocoon, and she fell asleep.

  ≡

  When Balot woke again, she was a little surprised to find herself in bed wearing pajamas. She sensed that her pajama top was connected to her pants, and then realized that they were in fact Oeufcoque. There was an intravenous drip in her arm. Careful not to dislodge the tubing, Balot hugged her pajamas tightly, wrapping her arms around her knees. She stayed like that for a while, not thinking, just crying.

  Oeufcoque stayed with her, silently keeping her company.

  When finally she got out of bed and headed into the dining room, she found that the various contraptions had all been tidied away.

  The Doctor had just finished sending his latest email to the DA, and he spun around to greet Balot with the words, “We have a date for the trial.”

  And so it came to pass that, one week after she had obtained the chips from the casino, Balot found herself standing in front of the Broilerhouse again.

  In order to climb her own stairway to heaven. The symbol of this city. Mardock.

  Chapter 12

  NAVIGATION

  01

  “Why am I here?” Shell repeated the words to himself over and over, muttering in a state of near delirium.

  Boiled watched with steely eyes as Shell sat there on the bench, head in his hands. The two of them were the only ones currently in the Broilerhouse waiting room. Shell removed his Chameleon Sunglasses. Holding the deep violet sunglasses in his hand, he turned to Boiled, his voice a pitiful mess of self-recrimination. He should have worked it out long ago.

  “If only I’d told you everything right from the beginning, none of this would have happened… I was a fool to imagine that it would be easy to kill the girl.”

  Boiled sat there. He didn’t make a sound; his expression remained constant. He didn’t nod and he didn’t shake his head.

  “I can change. I can become anyone you want me to be. I can clean up any dirt. I’ll make the best of any situation. So, please, just get me out of here,” Shell continued.

  Boiled crossed his legs and met Shell’s gaze. Still he said nothing.

  “I’m frightened, Boiled, and I have absolutely no idea what it is that frightens me so. That’s the worst part of it.” Shell sounded as if he were about to burst, his innards ready to spill out of him at any moment.

  “I’ll make everything disappear,” Boiled replied, his voice soft.

  Shell’s eyes, so full of pain and distress, opened up ever so slightly.

  “It’s time to talk to your lawyers,” Boiled continued and started to rise, when Shell clamped his hand on Boiled’s arm.

  “I’m begging you… Help me… Help me become a different person again.”

  Boiled nodded.

  ≡

  “So it was a matricide, after all…” the Doctor said. His face was calm, almost respectful. “That must have been the root of all his deviant behavior. Despite losing his memories—no, because he’s lost his memories
—he was left with no other way to control his emotions, to keep his urges in check.”

  –Why?

  Balot snarced the words through the choker on her neck, Oeufcoque.

  “Imagine that you’re experiencing constant feelings of terrible fear and anger and have absolutely no idea how to deal with those emotions—you have no idea what will help you calm down. Then you’ll get a sense of what it is to be Shell. Wouldn’t you do whatever you could to try and stop the terrifying feelings that are gnawing away at your mind? Sure, you’d be fine so long as you could find a way to successfully sublimate those feelings—in your professional and social ambitions, maybe—but what happens when you’re no longer able to sublimate the urges? Self-restraint goes out the window.”

  “And as Shell grew used to the whole process, he became inured to it and started to believe that what he was doing was entirely normal,” added Oeufcoque, now taking the shape of a geometric pattern inside the crystal pendant on the choker. “It was probably a self-defense mechanism against his memory loss. He was afraid of the spirit of his dead mother coming back to haunt him, but even stronger than that was the feeling that he was responsible for the girls’ deaths, that their sacrifice was all his fault.”

  –Because his first lover died, I think.

  Balot found herself contributing to the conversation.

  –The girl that Shell really did love. It was a real shock to him to find out that she had an abusive past, similar to his. A shock to discover that they might have chosen one another because of their similar histories.

  Balot felt a pang of sadness in her chest. Sure, she felt uncomfortable and irritated too, but the feeling of sorrow was winning out over all other emotions. She hadn’t imagined for a moment that Shell had lived through experiences similar to her own. On the contrary, Shell had always looked for such girls in order to convert them into that which was beautiful to him—Blue Diamonds, money, the stairway to success.

  I’m going to make you clean. I’m going to clean you up. When Shell had first yelled this out, it was as a lonely soul, but also as a kindred spirit. Burnt out and wanting others to join him.

  “Empathy, eh? Well, people do indeed actively seek out people like themselves—birds of a feather…” the Doctor murmured. Then he coughed, conscious that the mood had been brought down somewhat. “Anyhow, all the memories we copied from the chips have already been submitted to the Broilerhouse as evidence. All we have to do now is wait for the DA to start moving, and then we hit them with a chronological simulation of Shell’s memories. It’ll be just like fingerprinting him. Our aim for today’s trial is to get official recognition that this will serve as proof of Shell’s crimes.”

  –What’s my role in all this?

  “You’re here as a preemptive gag, as it were, to stop Shell from speaking too much and trying to deny everything. Don’t worry, this trial won’t be anything like the last one. The only person who needs to worry is Shell—he may have been laughing last time, but he’s certainly not going to see the funny side of this one. Not only will his past be dragged up for all to see and judge, he won’t even remember it for himself.”

  –Not even the memory of killing his own mother?

  “He was only about eighteen years old at the time, and we know that he killed his mother in cold blood, with half an eye toward her life insurance policy. He systematically cut the brake pads. The whole incident would have thrown his moral perspective askew, and the stress from that would have been enormous. And then there were his sexual relations with his mother…”

  The Doctor trailed off at this point, searching for a new, slightly more comfortable, tangent. “Also, Shell’s mother was, in her own right, no stranger to the law. We ran a search on the old records at the DA’s office and discovered that she’d been arrested for insurance fraud, and not just once either. Furthermore, her husband was dead, and she was even suspected of murdering him in order to get her hands on his insurance, although nothing was ever proven. There’s every chance that Shell knew all about this and decided to do the same thing for himself. The mother had assaulted him, effectively, and what better way for Shell to repay his misadventure of birth than with her death by misadventure?”

  The Doctor laughed in a somewhat forced manner at his own somewhat forced joke. Balot didn’t respond.

  “You might want to work on that one, Doc,” said Oeufcoque, speaking for Balot as well.

  The Doctor shrugged. “I’m just trying to get in the mood. Shell’s past may be somewhat useful as concrete evidence in the courtroom, but more importantly, it’s going to pique the curiosity of the jury. The more detailed and salacious the better, even if it does come in the form of a bad pun, as you so helpfully pointed out, thank you, Oeufcoque. The DA is certainly delighted with this new turn of events, anyway. He’s now confident that we’ll nail the case.”

  The Doctor’s voice was steeped in cynicism, just as the whole situation was steeped in irony—indeed, there was no greater irony for Balot. At the previous trial, she’d found herself on the receiving end of the most thorough and gut-wrenching attack imaginable, all on account of her own history. As a result, she was forced to repudiate her past, cut it off and cast it away, or else her heart would have died from the pain.

  And now Shell would find himself in exactly the same position. The difference was that Shell had already repudiated his past and cast it away. All he had left was lingering trauma.

  “This is not about revenge, Doctor. Tell the DA to make sure he sticks to the relevant facts and doesn’t waste any time on unnecessary distractions,” Oeufcoque said, again seemingly speaking for Balot by proxy. “We’ve already filed papers for the next case, the one that this all leads to. Let’s make sure we don’t lose sight of the biggest fish of all.”

  “Sure, sure. I know full well that it’s not our job to fan the flames of curiosity for the jurors and the media—they’re perfectly capable of doing that for themselves.”

  –Thank you.

  “Having said that, there are no guarantees, I’m afraid,” the Doctor continued, somewhat apologetically now. “The counsel for the defense is quite a lawyer. I wouldn’t put it past Shell to stir up the hornets’ nest either. If that happens, it’ll be hard for me to hold the DA back from laying it on thick…”

  Then the Doctor’s tone changed abruptly, and he turned to look at Balot, his eyes sincere. “It’s just—well, this is only a theory, but hear me out. You can shave away the memory, but the shape of the memory still remains. All you need to do is apply emphasis—stress—to the outlines of that memory, and everything in your mind is thrown up in the air. Your moral compass goes haywire. What better proof do we need than the living example of Shell to show firsthand the sort of damage to society that’s being caused by OctoberCorp’s irresponsible, gung-ho technology?”

  –Do you think Shell would stop killing people if he had his memories returned to him?

  Balot asked the question out of a simple desire to know the answer.

  Oeufcoque fielded this one. “Well, there’s absolutely no doubt that Shell’s missing memories are exacerbating his urges. If all his memories were to be returned to him then his desire to rape and murder would certainly diminish, possibly even fade away completely. But Shell wouldn’t want this for himself.”

  –Well, I wouldn’t want his past either.

  After she spoke, Balot hung her head in contemplation. The Doctor and Oeufcoque left her in peace for a moment. After a suitable pause Oeufcoque continued gently, “The past is nothing more than a fossil. To think that the past always has to determine the future is to doom yourself into becoming no more than a fossil yourself. Shell made the wrong choice, that’s all.”

  –Wrong choice?

  “At the very least, we can say that he didn’t endure, didn’t resist, unlike you. He just thought to console himself with the sacrifices of others.

  Balot thought about this for a while, then touched Oeufcoque.

  –It was you two wh
o saved me. Thank you.

  The Doctor threw his arms up in the air and grinned, a twinkle in his eye. “I hope you got that on tape, Oeufcoque! There’s the proof of our usefulness for the Broilerhouse! What better words of validation could there be for Mardock Scramble 09?”

  “Doc, you know as well as I do that there’s no way I’d do such a thing without Balot’s permission.”

  “Hmmph. Shame…”

  Balot laughed in spite of herself.

  The atmosphere in the room—so heavily laden with the pressure of having all their lives so inextricably linked—lifted, just a little.

  ≡

  The trial began half an hour later.

  As ever, the proceedings moved along at a sluggish pace, but at least Shell’s lawyer could see which way the wind was blowing, and he put up no more than token, ineffectual resistance. Rather than fighting the case, the defense attorney seemed almost to withdraw from the scene, looking for an escape route that would—as much as possible—allow him to keep both his dignity and career intact. As a result, Shell’s memories were shielded from the worst excesses of scurrilous gossip that usually came with the public dissection of juicy secrets—though Shell didn’t seem the least bit grateful that, in this respect at least, he had escaped the worst.

  The trial was over by 16:45, four hours after it had begun.

  Shell was taken to prison.

  02

  There was a sudden ping—a message had arrived.

  The Doctor looked suspiciously at his PDA after fishing it out of his jacket pocket.

  They were in the middle of an early dinner at one of the fancy restaurants in the neighborhood of the Broilerhouse.

  It was the sort of place lawyers went to celebrate a victory or victims went to celebrate after being awarded a windfall compensation. Balot, the Doctor, and Oeufcoque were celebrating there too, although it wasn’t so much in order to enjoy a gourmet meal as to take a much-needed pause before the case was finally wrapped up. A pause to mark the end of one chapter in Balot’s life, to celebrate all she had achieved and to prepare her to embark upon a new chapter. Oeufcoque and the Doctor felt she needed a little treat.