by Andy Remic
“I seem to be getting away with it so far,” said Jenny. She gave a tight smile.
“If you destroy this facility, hundreds more will spring up to take its place.”
Jenny gave a mocking laugh. “Well, if that’s the case, why are you sitting there like your pants are full of ants? No. This place is special, and you fucking know it. I don’t know what you and the Shamans have been up to - never trust a fucking machine is my motto - but you’re not doing it on my watch. Not whilst there’s still breath in my twitching, bullet-riddled body.”
“Think about it.” Mr Candle’s voice was soft. “Think about what your father created. What he built up, with me as his right hand man. This is Old Tom’s dream, child. Don’t you see that? And half of it is yours. Come, stop this nonsense, take my hand, we can do this thing together - we can make Greenstar Recycling Company truly great!”
“But you don’t recycle,” snarled Jenny, “you fucking pollute, you take the waste, remove what you need and dump the rest of the shit, and everybody on the planet suffers. The world suffers! Can’t you see the destruction you’ve wrought? Can’t you see the nightmare you’ve created?”
“Nightmare?” Mr Candle looked genuinely hurt. “We have created an Eden, child. We have created a world where, once we vacate, and move on to the next planet in the Chain, everybody can begin again... they will start with a fresh palette, a blank canvas on which to paint the broad strokes of a new civilisation...”
“You are dreaming,” said Jenny, shaking her head. “How can you be so twisted? So fucking deviant?”
Her head snapped right. “Where is she? The bitch?”
Renazzi Lode hit her around the midriff, one hand punching Jenny in the cunt, the other slamming the SMKK skywards. Bullets screamed, tearing a new arsehole in the ceiling. Jenny gasped, staggering from the chair and back, and Renazzi followed her, her squat, powerful form pushing down and raining down punches onto Jenny’s face. The blows came so fast that Jenny didn’t know what hit her, and when Renazzi Lode finally stood, knuckles dripping blood, Jenny’s face was unrecognisable. Her nose and one cheekbone was broken, her lips smashed, her teeth shattered.
But Jenny was laughing. Laughing through the snot and the blood.
“What’s so fucking funny, bitch?” said the Director.
“You.” Jenny’s words were garbled, forced through swollen lips. “You’re not human, are you? You’re a fucking android... no human moves that fast. No soldier I ever met.”
Mr Candle gave a great sigh, and Jenny’s eyes turned on him.
“And you! You as well!”
“All of Greenstar,” said Mr Candle, giving a narrow smile. “No empathy, you see? We don’t care how many shitty worthless humans we abuse. Put down. Exterminate. You’re just rancid, raw meat. Something rotten to be put out with the garbage.”
Jenny and Mr Candle stared at one another for a long time. “That’s why father turned against you. You didn’t see it. He was human. He cared.”
“No,” said Mr Candle, shaking his head briefly. “He was an Anarchy Android - just like the rest of us. And you, my sweet little child, are an anomaly.”
The words sank in. Jenny frowned, and leaning to one side, spat out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth.
“Androids can’t have children.”
“This is so.”
“So if Old Tom was an android...”
“He did the impossible.”
“He learned to care.”
“Maybe.”
“So what now?”
Mr Candle shrugged. “You had every opportunity, Jenny. Every opportunity.” He made a gesture to Renazzi Lode, and turned away.
“No!” hissed Jenny, and rolled fast. Renazzi’s knee landed, slamming the floor, cracking the boards. Her hand slapped out, hitting Jenny in the throat, and she scrabbled back, choking, her own hands squeezing her throat which, had she been an inch closer, would have been crushed.
Renazzi Lode stood, as Jenny shuffled backwards until her back hit the wall. Jenny rubbed at her windpipe, making choking sounds, her eyes crazy with pain, and watched Renazzi Lode approach her. The android knelt, grabbed her jacket, and picked her up, kicking and struggling, and pulled her close, and stared directly into her eyes.
“Now you die, half-breed,” she said.
Her finger came back, aimed directly at Jenny’s eye, and the soft mortal brain within.
Outside, just as the sun sank - and Jenny turned thirty - there came a heavy, bass boom.
Fire flared up, igniting the darkness.
Mr Candle stared through the tinted glass.
“No,” he whispered, eyes growing wide.
“Yes,” snarled Jenny through her broken face.
“It’s... impossible,” said Candle.
“Nothing is impossible,” said Jenny.
“Kill her,” he said.
~ * ~
HORACE FELT THE proximity of the lirridium centre, the core, the HighJ, and it all came together in the heart of his mind, the centre of his being, in a beautiful Whole. The pressure built, built, built, and it wasn’t just the lirridium starship fuel - although there were many billions of gallons of it, stored in the tunnels and lakes and cities and pipes circling the cities and continents of Amaranth... it was the toxic pollutants, it was the psi-children, it was the liquidised forms of the children’s souls, for they were a connection to the planet, they were part of the world, an extension of a consciousness that went beyond human comprehension. Horace felt himself become a part of something Huge. Something Galactic. And the Something could see the Shamans of Manna, see their machine logic and machine planning and machine focus. They were not organic. They were not human. They were not alien. They were... machine. And as such, they could never understand the great Cycle of Life.
Horace was an android. Created. Engineered.
He had learned the true meaning of understanding. Of empathy. Of learning. Of caring. Of love.
Are you ready? said Amaranth.
I am ready.
You are willing to die?
To set you free? Of course. I would do anything.
Thank you.
~ * ~
HORACE SWELLED TO the point of explosion. And ignited. And as he burned, he screamed, but it was not a scream of pain or angst, but a scream of joy. He launched into the laboratory and the shockwave of his toxic explosion pressured the HighJ into detonation... the laboratory was vaporised in the blink of an eye. But more. The entire level of the Greenstar Factory was vaporised. Then... more. The ground floors, their supporting struts and the lower fifteen subterranean levels were vaporised, then ripped upwards, taking out the rest of the factory. Fire screamed and moaned, spat and roared, and the detonation shook the entire planet and ignited the lirridium streams down, down, down through and under the River Tox. Under the land. Under the oceans. Under the mountains.
~ * ~
THE GREENSTAR FACTORY Hub, core of the Greenstar Recycling Company’s operations in the entire Manna Galaxy Bubble, burned. Green fire roared five kilometres into the sky. A cloud of black smoke poured into a mushroom the size of the continent. More explosions were triggered along the lirridium streams as, one by one by one, the lakes and rivers detonated, ignited, screamed with bright green fire, and from a vantage point in the dark deep reaches of space, the planet of Amaranth seemed to glow - at least for a moment - as brightly as the star which gave it life.
No part of Amaranth went untouched.
From the holiday resorts of Meltflesh City, from the jungles by the Sea of Heavy Metal, from the Mercury Peaks, the Cholera Mountains and the Yellow Virus Peaks, all the way to the Lake of Corrosion, the Faeces Teeth, Strychnine Nine, the Cobalt Funmines, the city of Bilirubin, the Asbestos Forest and the Nuke Peaks... all were ravaged by fire; all consumed in a lirridium furnace; all cleansed by the purity of the intense, raging flames.
The Greenstar Factory Hub toppled, exploded, and burned, and slowly sank - sank into the pit of its ow
n devising, sank down, down, down into the soil and mud and rock of Amaranth, which reclaimed the deviation, reclaimed the aberration as a lost child of its own; welcomed, back into a bosom of slaughter and murder and desolation, the Greenstar Factory Hub, which sank for an eternity beneath the Land.
Down.
To where Amaranth waited patiently.
The inferno raged for a thousand days.
And when it was done, it was done.
~ * ~
EPILOGUE
“WE’RE GOING TO die!” screamed Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV, Third Earl of Apobos, Genius, Sexual Athlete, Bon Viveur, and now bona fide Action Hero. The chopper whined, powering high above the raging inferno that spread across the vast tectonic plates of Amaranth.
Explosions roared. The air was filled with gas and toxins more dangerous than the gas and toxins that plagued the surface. Thick black mushroom clouds filled the skies. Explosions rioted across the globe. Below, the landscape was a tormented, writhing inferno. Below, Amaranth had descended into Chaos and Hell...
Lumar leaned close, and with gritted teeth, said, “Look at it this way. Better up here than on the ground, mate.”
Svool nodded dumbly. Down there were the camera crew. Or what remained of them. They hadn’t seen the wall of fire coming. Svool and Lumar had, and screamed and ran for it, leaping aboard the spinning, whining, accelerating chopper which had leapt into the air, avoiding the hundred-foot wall of charging green fire by scant inches. Everything down there had been vaporised.
“Still. We can look on the bright side now,” said Lumar, wearily.
“Which was?”
“The broadcast went out. To the whole of Manna. They saw what Greenstar had done. They heard your poem on the eco-horrors of this abused, tortured and massacred world.”
There was a long pause, against a backdrop of hammering rotors and further, distant explosions. Outside, night had turned into day.
The pilot leaned back. “We have a base over the mountains to the east, just outside Pukebelly City. Underground bunkers, that sort of thing. Lots of military hardware. It’s the safest place I can think of. They’ll probably send a Shuttle for you. Probably.” He didn’t sound very convinced, or convincing.
Svool shuffled close to Lumar, on the bench in the back of the chopper. She looked at him. He looked at her. Slowly, he put his arm around her shoulder. She carried on looking at him.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“My poem.”
“Which one?”
“This one. The new one. The eco one. The eco one that’s just gone out to the whole of Manna; indeed, no doubt, the whole of the Quad-Galaxy, by the time the news and the filmys get hold of the footage.”
“You want the honest truth?”
“Yes.”
“It was crap.”
“Oh.”
“In a nice way.”
“Oh.”
“You got the message across. Suitably aided and abetted by the Greenstar Factory blowing up in the background during the final stanza. That was quite an amazing feat of timing. Incredible.”
“Well.” Svool puffed out his chest. “I... thank you for your honesty.”
“My pleasure.”
“And I want to ask you something.”
“Go on, Svoolzard.” She tilted her head. He loved it when she did that.
“Will you marry me?”
Lumar turned and stared out at the raging fires below. More military choppers had joined them, perhaps twenty in all, and their squadron, carrying dirt- and smoke-smeared refugees, thumped through the poisonous, toxic skies of a burning Amaranth.
“Yes,” she said, turning back. “On one condition.”
“Anything!”
“We get married... here.”
“Here?” choked Svool.
“Yes. They’re going to need a lot of help. Rebuilding. Purifying. Detoxifying.”
“And you...” he shuddered as he considered the implications, “you want us to become aid workers?”
“Yes. For the Greater Good. And all that.”
“For the Greater Good,” echoed Svool, through gritted teeth.
“You could write a poem about it.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m done with poetry.”
“Really?” Her voice was just a little too bright.
“Yes. I think I’ll... yes. I’ll write a novel about our experiences here, instead!”
Lumar fixed him with a steady stare. Then she smiled, and took his hand, squeezing it gently. “Do you think anybody would believe you?”
Svool shrugged. “It no longer matters. We did our part in bringing down the Greenstar Corporation. And looking at that inferno, I’ll be amazed if anybody survived. Amazed beyond comprehension!”
“Yeah. Well.” Lumar turned away again, gazing out into the smoke and the chaos. “Sometimes, you’d be surprised what a cockroach can survive.”
“I have some good news!” shouted the pilot, turning back to them again. “You have some friends. Some survivors! They made it back to Base Camp. They’re waiting for you there.”
“Friends?” said Svool, frowning.
“Yes. A... a Mr Zoot, a Miss Angelina, and a... a Mr Herbert. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Aww, shit,” groaned Svool.
And Lumar’s pretty laughter pealed out across the raging, toxic fire.
~ * ~
NEWS ITEM KX33657824# 65678ggg
It was a moving and eloquent speech and poetry recital by the missing, and now presumed dead, Master Poet Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV, Third Earl of Apobos. Against a backdrop of chaos and fire and mayhem, Svoolzard told us of the world of Amaranth - commonly known as Toxicity throughout Manna - a world used, abused and polluted by the Greenstar Recycling Company in their quest for accelerated wealth. It is indeed a beautiful planet, destroyed by greed and lust and power. Svoolzard, who was recently married to Lumar L’anarr of the alien kroona species, despite death threats, had vowed to stop Greenstar continuing trade after what the still operating recycling giant has called “an industrial accident on a planetary scale.” Lumar L’anarr’s Bride of Honour was her sister, Dajenga L’anarr, who wore a quite fetching outfit of green silk and lace, and carried a bouquet of tanga tanga greena flowers...
~ * ~
MR CANDLE TURNED to Renazzi Lode. His face was carved from granite, and his eyes were dark and unreadable. His face was a terrible mask, still bearing the irreparable burn scars from the genetic milk tank in which he’d spent the best part of the last three months.
Outside, fusion motors hummed, and the orbital shifted slightly, keeping in line with the remains of the Greenstar Factory Hub far, far below on the planet of Amaranth. The aircon hissed. After the fire, Mr Candle liked it cool. They all liked it cool.
“Report?”
“80% of all surplus lirridium stock destroyed. All factories destroyed. The share prices plummeted, obviously, but we had various canny brokers who almost seemed to sense the crash coming and sold billions of shares. When we cash in the surviving lirridium supplies, we will still have massive cash reserves. And the Manna Core Bank has guaranteed us a practically unlimited line of credit. After all” - she smiled - “we were their best ever customer.”
“Good. Sowerby? Give me some good news. Tell me you’ve found a suitable destination where we can put in a successful bid. I am sick of wasting time. I am ready for the launch. Greenstar II Recycling Company! Recycling Your Crap into the Starship Fuel of the Future! LirridiumII: A New Fuel for a New Space Age!” He gave a long, low chuckle.
Sowerby Trent nodded, barbed wire hair bobbing. “My team have located a suitably disused and already 50% toxic world. It has a breathable atmosphere - just - but I am sure we can get it at a fair price.”
“Good. Are there inhabitants?”
“Just a few hundred billion, but we’ll offer them the usual relocation packages. And if they don’t
vacate?”
Her eyes went hard. “Well. Fuck ‘em. We’ll do what we always do. You know we always win.”
“Any other foreseeable problems?”
“Just one. This planet has great historical context. Apparently, it is, and I quote from the History Guild: ‘The Cradle of Humanity.’”