Toxicity

by Andy Remic

  You’re the waste? said Horace, in awe.

  I am the toxic scourge on this bedrock, said the voice.

  How can you be alive? That’s... impossible...

  What is life but a chemical accident? Your race, your human race, began as a random chemical soup powered by proteins and nutrients and sunlight. Cells grew and mutated and developed and split and mutated. Well, I have proteins and nutrients and sunlight. I have radiation and metals and carbons and every single element that could form a human - and more. I have living cells. And I have spread. And I have mutated. And I live.

  Greenstar created you?

  Unknowingly, yes.

  And... do they know of you?

  They suspect, I believe. They are suspicious that something not indigenous to Amaranth exists, but they can find no evidence. And that is because they examine single samples without stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. The Whole, as it were.

  So you’re keeping me alive?

  Yes.

  Why?

  You are a killer, Horace The Dentist. A human-created android killer. I find that incredibly sweet and ironic. Amusing, even, to use an approximation of the concept of humour as deployed by humans. I fear, however, they would not think of my intentions as amusing.

  You have not answered my question.

  Every organism that lives desires life, is that not so?

  Every man or woman I’ve assassinated has tried their utmost to survive, so yes, on the whole, you are correct. You have obviously kept me alive for a reason, and I can only assume it is something to do with Greenstar...

  Yes. I have two tasks.

  Horace laughed then. I am a wreck. I am on the verge of death. Look, I am bound by a steel winch rope, wound about me so tight I can’t even move my fingers... but even as he spoke, fronds of seaweed floated towards the cable, and Horace sensed heat and watched as the steel turned to jelly, and slowly disintegrated, and floated away.

  My toxicity is strong, said the voice.

  Horace flexed his hands, but he was weak. He peered down at the gaping wound in his chest. The barbed spear which had skewered him like a fish had also disintegrated and melted away. But now there was a fist-sized hole through his chest.

  He laughed.

  If you can repair that, I’ll do whatever you ask.

  Don’t you want to know first?

  I am an assassin. An Anarchy Android torture kill model. I work for money. Horace’s eyes went hard. If you save my life, I’ll do whatever you require of me. Whatever it takes.

  So be it. But it will hurt. And to survive, you will have to... absorb me.

  Absorb the toxicity?

  You will become as one with the toxic waste of my being.

  Do it, said Horace.

  ~ * ~

  HE FLOATED FOR what seemed an eternity. Every atom in his body burned as if with fever, as if with fire, as if with acid, as if with radiation. Horace felt himself bubbling away into nothing. Horace felt himself vomit every molecule of his body out into the ocean. Horace felt like he floated in a warm bath, his eyes closed, everything perfect around him as slowly his strength returned and his wounds healed and he became one with the tox. Mankind had created a toxic nightmare. Now, the tox was creating a man.

  ~ * ~

  AS HORACE FLOATED, he saw the beginning of the Quad-Gal, for he shared atoms with that bright fiery explosion of matter. He witnessed the birth of humanity. He witnessed the birth of the android. He witnessed the birth of toxicity. He witnessed their joining. And he heard singing, and it was a beautiful singing, the singing of children, and he realised they had been born of the toxic waste and he was not alone, he would have a hundred thousand brothers and sisters....

  They are the children of the deep, said Toxicity.

  They are the product of waste given life again.

  Maybe there is a God. Maybe He saw fit to bring us back. To introduce Balance. To reintroduce Order.

  What do you want me to do? asked Horace.

  You will help bring down Greenstar. The Company. And then you will help to destroy me.

  Why?

  Because Amaranth needs to be free again. It needs to be clean again. The ECO terrorists are right, but they cannot do it alone. They seek to purify the planet - and I, the toxic waste they seek to remove - I will help them do this.

  And your children? The singing children?

  We shall see... said the voice.

  ~ * ~

  STRENGTH FLOODED HORACE. He felt every cell being rebuilt from the inside out. All wounds were healed. His heart stopped beating because he no longer needed a heart. He found his skin changing colour, shifting through a million different hues until it almost returned to his natural state. Like toxic waste, he no longer needed oxygen to breathe, no longer needed food to eat or water to drink - he could just use the fuel that was the energy of his own existence.

  Horace walked under the Biohazard Ocean on the tops of mountains, and revelled in his newfound body. In his brain, the KillChip was burned free and sent screaming into a silicon abyss.

  What humans do not realise, said Toxicity, is that every computer chip is a slice of life. Many elements may sustain life, and as you know, carbon and silicon are two of the major building blocks. Computer chips live, only in a different way from how humans imagine. The KillChip had to go. It would have stopped you doing that which you must do. It would have acted as inhibitor.

  As Horace grew strong, he felt a great weight lift from his mind. No longer did he feel anger or hatred or pettiness or greed. Money had no value. Life, he realised, in a total reversal of what he had been; life was what mattered more than anything. Life, not death. Saving, not killing. Rescue, not annihilation.

  But sometimes you must kill in order to save.

  Sometimes, you must murder in order to rescue.

  Sometimes, you must annihilate in order to bring about birth...

  Let me show you my children, said the voice.

  Horace swam deep down under the Biohazard Ocean, powering down, revelling in his new strength. Every muscle felt ready to burst with energy and power. This is what superheroes must feel like, he reasoned. Except none of them are made from... crap. Poison. Waste. Superradiation Man! The Biohazard Avenger! The Recycling Waste Machine Warrior!

  He swam down the mountain, through rocky crags and down rounded chimneys. Bubbles rose from here and there, and through the poorly-lit gloom, Horace started to make out other mountains... there, a massive stack of tyres, millions and millions of abandoned tyres dumped and left to rot and slowly disintegrate. Through slick pools of oil he swam, to see towers of fused glass - smashed and melded bottles - each tower bigger than a hundred-storey skyscraper. There were mountains of toxic chemical barrels under the ocean, their yellow TOXIC symbols still just visible through glowing green seaweed and parasitic barnacles.

  The gods only know what shellfish have developed down here. Lobsters with high IQs? Mussels with muscles? Cockles with cocks? He would have laughed, except he realised he should in all reality be dead. Maybe this is just a dream? A nightmare? Maybe this is the last dying remnants of my brain discharging, shutting down, sending me spinning into the abyss, the void... all I need now is darkness and oblivion.

  But darkness and oblivion did not come.

  There. My children.

  And Horace looked down on glowing pods made from toxic, living, deviated seaweed, tiny lifebubbles folded over to form egg-shaped capsules. And within each capsule Horace could see a child, a glowing child of great beauty, and they sang and their songs had no words, only sorrowful, mournful notes that conjured images of a great planet, a great world brought low by the scourge of humanity...

  They are beautiful.

  My psi-children. They can see the different paths of the future.

  Incredible!

  They have read you, Horace. Seen your paths. In one path, you bring about the destruction of Greenstar. You send the Giant Company wailing and screaming into the
Void. This, they have seen, Horace. And when Greenstar scientists captured one of my children and tortured out her thoughts, they, too, knew of this future. That’s why they decided to retire you, Horace. That’s why Vasta had you speared and dumped here...

  Horace swam through endless mountains of junk, powering ahead, staring around him in wonder. How can this be? I thought Greenstar were a recycling company? And yet he laughed, for he knew they were a sham. He’d been a part of the process to cover up their evil.

  It’s all about money, and it’s all about lirridium. They recycle those products that are profitable to recycle; that can be turned into fuel and sold on. But if it’s useless, then it gets dumped. Greenstar make political noises about the good they’re doing for the planet of Amaranth, but everybody knows they are liars. Everybody on Amaranth. Everybody in Manna. Everybody in Quad-Gal. Everybody knows, but nobody does anything. It’s the same as it’s always been... money talks, and everyone turns a blind eye. People and aliens from other planets don’t care as long as it isn’t outside their own front door. They make the right cooing noises, but don’t truly do anything; because it isn’t their problem. As long as the lirridium is flowing freely and Shuttles can zip across Manna, then everybody is happy and Greenstar can do what the hell they like.

  You said you want me to destroy you?

  Yes.

  How?

  You destroy both me and Greenstar with one vicious blow. At the Greenstar Factory Hub, they have not just the fuel processing plants for lirridium; they also have the Central Manna Depot. Nobody really, truly understands how large it is. In the past thirty years it has grown and grown and grown, burrowing down into the bedrock of the planet, deeper than any ocean. Greenstar’s lirridium output makes up one entire third of Manna’s space travel fuel requirements. What they’ve also done, very cleverly, is merge their lirridium output with the seas and oceans of this world... already polluted, they have fed pipes under every kilometre of sea, the Biohazard Ocean, the Lake of Corrosion, The Sea of Heavy Metal; the Faeces Sea... all are loaded with a water-lirridium blend. Right now, Horace, you are swimming through this lirridium blend. It means if times are tough and there is a sudden demand - for example, in times of war - then Greenstar can call on their hidden surplus within moments.

  You want me to ignite it, thought Horace in a moment of primal instinct.

  Yes.

  That will ignite the whole planet?

  A cleansing by fire. You will destroy Greenstar totally. You will remove my toxic deviation. And yes, you will kill many; but many will survive to rebuild again. Horace, it will be a Biblical Fire. A Holy Tire. To wipe away the poison. To kill the toxicity.

  How will I do this?

  Travel to the Greenstar Factory Hub. The Core of the Processing Plant. Others will have been integral in the planting of explosives.

  What then?

  They cannot do this without you. You are a cog in the machine. You are a part of the Whole. I can explain it no more...

  And then it dawned on Horace. This was the ultimate assassination. The ultimate mission. The final kill.

  The final kill to bring about... freedom.

  I will use myself, he thought, his understanding complete. I will be the trigger.

  Will you do this? For Amaranth?

  I do not wish to kill your psi-children.

  We are willing to die. For our planet. To save the world. To purify Amaranth of its pestilence...

  Horace considered.

  “I will do it,” he said.

  ~ * ~

  THIRTEEN

  LUMAR DROPPED TO one knee to steady her aim, whilst Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV stumbled backwards, flapping his arms above his head and making a noise like a little girl attacked by school bullies. Return fire boomed from Black Jake and his bandits, but as soon as the gunfight had started, it ended. And it ended because the mountains began to scream. Thunder rumbled overhead, only it wasn’t thunder, but the mountain itself, shaking and growling, and the very rocks vibrating, stones pattering down the steep sides of the canyon where the antagonists stood... Lumar and Svool stumbled backwards, towards the tunnel entrance and Herbert’s fat metal behind, whilst Black Jake and his cronies, superstitious to a man, looked around in wonder and awe and fear as the mountains shouted at them...

  “The Gods are shouting your name!” cried one bandito.

  “So they are!” shouted Black Jake, beaming, staring up at the sheer eight-thousand-foot wall of rock that towered above him, all the way above the clouds, all the way up to the ice and snow.

  “Rockfall!” screamed Lumar, turning at last and charging at Herbert. She hit him with all her strength, all her weight, all her speed, and with an “Oof!” and a sound like a rock dropped into meshing gears, they burst through into the tunnel in a tangle. Svool strolled in after them, grinning for a moment and presumably about to make some quip about metal animal sex, when a wall of rock went whoosh directly behind him in the blink of an eye, scant inches from removing the back of his skull.

  ~ * ~

  BLACK JAKE RAISED his arms to the Gods and beamed and prayed. The mountains were talking to him! His God was talking to him! The rocks and snow and ice came tumbling down from thousands of feet up. A wall of it. Black Jake frowned as his vision filled with an unspeakable horror. There was a name for this sort of thing. The name was avalanche...

  Black Jake and sixty-nine of his bandit henchmen were crushed in an instant. Compressed under a hundred thousand tonnes of rock and ice, dislodged by the foolish ignition of discharged pistols…

  One bandit survived, standing at the back of the group and scratching his chin. He blinked, and instead of seeing a huddled group of his colleagues squeezed into the canyon neck, pistols at the ready, plumes of brown sputum erupting from rotten mouths like sewage from a holiday beach overflow, suddenly he stared at a thirty-foot-high pile of rock. Several stones trickled down and bounced off his nose.

  He took a step back, looked up at the wall, and decided that perhaps, on this day, the Gods were possibly against them...

  ~ * ~

  IN THE TUNNEL, dust was thick in the air. Svool turned and stared at the wall of rock not one inch from his face. One inch, one second, and he’d be dead. Bent in half like a rubber toy. He gulped, choking a little on the thick dust, and staggered forward towards Lumar, who was busy untangling herself from Herbert’s metal body.

  “Why’ve you got so many fucking legs?” she was snarling, and finally found her feet, and gave Herbert a hearty kick with a clong. Then she turned to Svool, and saw the shock and horror in his pasty white face. “You nearly get squashed, buddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dogmeat.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fishpaste.”

  “A-huh.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, yes. Shit, yes. I’m great. I’m fine. Shit, I’m alive, baby, I’m alive! I wasn’t squashed! It’s a miracle, lo! We have much to rejoice about!”

  “We do?”

  “We certainly do. Weren’t you listening, bitch? I, the Great Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV, Third Earl of Apobos, am alive!”

  Lumar snorted a laugh. “Fuckwit. We’re trapped in these psychopathic mines under the Mercury Peaks, led here by a metal robot horse who’s stripped his thread, snapped his bolt, and popped his cogs.”

  “Hey, there’s nowt wrong with me,” said Herbert. It was tight for him in the tunnel, but he managed, hunkering down and sucking in his arse. Behind him, they saw the robot figure of Angelina, and suddenly realised she was why they could see. Light radiated from her robot nostrils.

  “Can you do that?” said Svool, kicking Herbert on the leg with a clang.

  “A cheap party trick,” snorted Herbert in derision. “A real Robotic Special Friend doesn’t lower himself to such trinkets of performance. Next, you’ll be bringing on the dancing bears.”

  “Look,” said Zoot, buzzing over to them in the gloom where long shadows sent spiders scampering up t
he walls. “I’ve been monitoring the atmosphere down here, and it’s, er, dangerous. Our metal muppet over there wasn’t kidding when he talked about poisons and toxins and nuclear waste. My scanners are showing huge caverns down here - no doubt through which we have to pass. And each one is full of... something.”

  “Something?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of something?” said Lumar.