by I C Johnson / Alasdair Stuart / James Bacon / Paul Kane / Marie O'Regan
Through these meetings I realised that the cyborg class had not made its mark on history. Little had changed by the time of the Mars project.
#
They were relaxing in Chanya’s quarters. Rheia had discovered that Chanya enjoyed having her spine stroked. She traced the vertebrae through Chanya’s skin. What was the sensation like for Chanya? Rheia’s own spine was locked in metal casing. A strip of internal bracing ran along her back, but it could not be detected from the outside and was less flexible.
The comparison caused an unpleasant recollection. Shortly after her activation, Rheia’s supervisors had taken her through one of the Company’s ground installations. Hanging from gantries had been the old, worn-out components of Company technology. Engines. Pumps. Diffusion plants... These occupied space in her imagination. Her mind saw rafters hung with butchered machinery. Ribs of metal in decay. Forms locked in rust. Wasted opportunities for reconstruction. She had thought: I am like that. I am a mechanism. To be used and discarded. To be alone.
Rheia paused in her ministrations, resting her hands flat on Chanya’s back.
I am not alone now.
Chanya’s monitor was on. It showed a news transmission from Earth. Solar activity had made reception unreliable, but now it was clear.
The World Government was being castigated over the Mars project. Rheia and Chanya watched with interest. This was why they were here — as part of the attempt by the Terran biosystem to reproduce itself on Mars. Terraformation had been in progress for fifty years, preparing the way for colonisation by thousands of Earth species, including Homo sapiens. Company freighters had made more than a dozen runs like this, ferrying machinery, materials, and, on every trip, four million tons of topsoil.
Lately there had been accusations that the project was not on course, that the terraformers had made miscalculations. Media representatives from all the major corporations were present to question the government: “Can the Minister really claim that the cost is any longer justified? Would it not be better to cut our losses?”
The Minister was defensive and defiant. “A project as complex and long-term as this is more than a piece of accounting. It is a step forward for humankind!”
“We were promised a breathable atmosphere by now!”
Rheia returned her attentions to Chanya. The woman’s mouth had relaxed into sulkly sensuousness.
“Chanya, when Mars is terraformed, we could live there together.”
Chanya stirred. It was a while before she replied.
“What about the Company?”
“We could apply to be posted there.”
“If we were discreet,” Chanya murmured vaguely, looking at the screen where the Minister's discomfort was becoming more obvious. “Perhaps you could be my assistant or something. A servant, maybe.”
Rheia did not stop her hands moving. “Yes. We could pretend. I could be your servant, as far as everyone else was concerned. It would be fun.”
Chanya waved at the monitor, flicking it off. She turned, eyes hot, breathing heavily. “Yes. Yes, it would be.”
She pulled Rheia down onto the sheets with her.
Before sleep took her, Rheia felt assurance return.
#
FILENAME: A Dream
In the dream it was noon, and I walked among the terraced gardens on the lower slopes of Olympos Mons. The air was powerful with fragrance. Breezes carried the sound of thaw rushing from the heights to water the many valleys.
Lost among common jasmine, I found flowers unlike any I’d seen before, just coming into bloom. I woke before I could scent them, and remembered that there aren’t yet gardens on Mars.
#
To make her initial move on Chanya it had been necessary for Rheia to build up her nerve. Now she was building it up for something else. She chose a time when she had sated Chanya and the woman was lying back in her arms, drowsy and cradled by Rheia’s body.
Rheia put her face near Chanya’s and murmured: “Do you remember what we said about Mars? Maybe we won’t have to wait so long. There must be others like us. Or there will be. Other perverts.”
Rheia felt Chanya stiffen. Had she brought up the subject too soon? Had she used the wrong words? She didn’t always understand the nuances of her vocabulary.
She rested her hands upon Chanya's belly lightly. “When we get back to HQ.... let’s tell people about us.”
“Tell people what about us?” Instantly alert, Chanya pushed herself away from the cyborg. The woman’s eyes were wide.
“Well, that we are...”
Chanya opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“We're emancipated now. There will be more humans and cyborgs falling in love. It will happen a lot.”
“It will not happen a lot,” Chanya said firmly. She climbed off the bed and gathered her uniform from the floor. “I don’t know what you can be thinking of. Society hasn't really changed.” She quickly pulled on her things, went over to the door, paused, straightening her tabard. “You’re not to tell. Not anyone. It wouldn’t be understood.”
Chanya left without waiting for an answer. Rheia’s reassurance, and all hope, departed with her.
#
As the freighter entered planetary orbit, they saw what the Minister had not imparted to the private news services. Mars was engulfed in a planet-wide storm.
In the early days of terraforming, such storms had been a climatic feature of the planet. Mars’s atmospheric pressure had only been seven millibars in those days. Tailored bacteria, releasing oxygen and carbon dioxide, had thickened the atmosphere since then. But the storms should have stopped.
Encrypted messages from the surface outpost confirmed that the freighter’s cargo could not be offloaded till the storm abated. Chanya was unofficially informed that the predicted ionisation layer wasn't in place yet either. Mars was nowhere near becoming habitable.
#
In the observation room, Rheia stood looking up at the monitor image of Mars. Clouds the colour of dark rust swirled over it. She switched to satellite close-ups of the troposphere and saw flashes of atmospheric lightning. The storm formations were intriguing, but she could make notes on them later...
There was a sound behind her. Turning, she saw that Chanya had entered the room. The woman’s mouth had reverted to a straight line. She held a small gun in her right hand. She was pointing it at Rheia.
Rheia met the woman’s eyes.
“What have you got there, Chanya?” Her voice was neutral.
“Every Ship’s Inspector has one, in case a cyborg has to be disposed of.” Rheia didn't respond. “Sorry about this, but I can’t let people know. I cannot.”
“That easy?”
Chanya shrugged and pulled a face.
Rheia put her hands behind her back. “Being... attracted to me... surprised you.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re not a person. You’re a thing. You’re just here to make sure we get a faster turn-around at the end of each run. You were assembled. The only real part of you was grown from a stem cell, you don’t even know whose. You never had parents. You never grew up.
“You don’t even have a cunt.”
Rheia did not break her gaze. “You don’t understand. We’ve been emancipated.”
“A lot of nonsense, if you ask me.”
“It will be murder.”
“No one will investigate. I’m your superior. You’re just another part of the ship. So much so that you aren’t cleared to go onworld even if we could land. Anyway, it’s not murder. No one ever called throwing away an old sex aid ‘murder.’”
Chanya pressed the gun’s stud.
There was a faint buzzing, but nothing else happened.
#
I take the gun from Chanya. “I knew about the gun, so I took precautions after our quarrel.” I unlock the weapon smartly, showing Chanyar the empty power chamber. “You see? I removed the energy cell. Perhaps being emancipated has made me think for myself.
“But
perhaps you still don't understand what that means.”
#
FILENAME: Second Entry
These, my personal files, are buried among the work files that are part of my cranial enhancement. Only I can retrieve them.
My name is Rheia. I’m not so different from you. I have tried to explain why to myself. I will try to explain why now.
Like you, I have emotions. Emotions which you tried to suppress in CyTech. You tried to use me as a tool. As a mechanism.
But you are no less mechanisms than I am. You are simply the mechanisms that use and discard each other.
I can explain this now because I have discovered that I can be hurt when I am betrayed. Just as you can be hurt.
And, like some of you — like you, Chanya — I am a pervert.
But there is a way in which I am different from you.
I am smarter than you.
#
I turn my back on Chanya and what she represents and direct my gaze to Mars. Foresight comes to me with the certainty of a vision. The Mars project will fail. The planet will never be more than half-prepared for human colonisation.
But it will be all right for cyborgs. We don't have the same narrow and delicate requirements as humans. Even if the ionosphere never forms, we’ll still be protected from the ultraviolet by our machine bodies. The future Martian civilisation will be a cyborg civilisation.
The cyborg class could only have been produced for one reason. There are no longer enough intelligent humans to run Earth’s increasingly technical economy. And the global worldview has presented humanity with too fatuous, too flattering an image of itself to do the obvious thing and restrict reproduction to the brightest. The species is breeding itself into imbecility.
Cyborgs are different. Our minds are grown from the top point nought one percent. All female, of course. And they can be cloned again.
Something else I foresee. Cyborgs have a need. I, Rheia, have discovered that. There will have to be some human women on Mars, sheltered from the harsh Martian climate. Humans for us to use.
For us to touch.
Warm metal against warm flesh.
Reviews
1408 reviewed by Alasdair Stuart
The Mammoth Book of Best War Comics reviewed by James Bacon
1408
Starring: John Cusack, Samuel L Jackson, Mary McCormack and Jasmine Jessica Anthony
Directed by: Mikael Håfström
Mike Enslin (Cusack) is a professional cynic. The author of a best selling series of paranormal travel guides, Mike has made his living debunking ghost stories and in doing so, giving valuable publicity to the places that host them. Single and bitter, he’s picked a fight with the world and from what he can tell, he’s winning.
Then he gets a postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York. It reads simply; don’t enter 1408. Mike does some research and discovers that room 1408 has been subject to over twenty murders and suicides. Intrigued, he pushes further and eventually finds himself, against the wishes of hotel manager Mr Olin (Jackson) staying overnight. But this time, he’s in way over his head.
1408 is an unusually restrained piece of horror, favouring psychological and surreal shocks over gore. From the moment Mike gets the postcard, there’s a gradual but definite ramping of tension as it becomes clear, to everyone but him, that this is a very, very bad place to be. Håfström’s decision to lock the action down into 1408 for most of the final hour, as well as his constantly roving camera gives a real feeling of unease, a real sense of voyeurism as we watch Mike Enslin slowly dig himself deeper and deeper into something which, if it isn’t hell, is a very good approximation of it.
The best horror, the most terrifying horror is mundane by nature and the script plays off this beautifully, even giving Cusack a chance to speak some of the original story, including a fantastic monologue
about how fundamentally frightening hotel rooms are, into his tape recorder. However, the script really comes into its own with the room itself. 1408 is played as a definite personality with a very, very nasty sense of humour. Items as mundane as the telephone, the paintings on the walls and the window are used as weapons against Mike and the film’s biggest scares come from this subversion of the mundane into something infinitely more disturbing. Trust me, after this, you’ll never look at a fire exit map or a radio alarm clock in the same way again.
Matters are helped immensely by a top drawer cast. Cusack is an effortlessly good actor, a man who at this stage of his career can turn in great performances seemingly without trying. His hangdog, world weary Mike is great fun, a man who is both peppery enough to be dislikable and smart enough to realise, very early, exactly how much trouble he’s in. The script relies almost entirely on Cusack and he carries the film utterly, his gradually distintegrating sanity making for some distinctly stark, and in one case flat out terrifying moments. The supporting cast are equally impressive with Anthony doing good work as Mike’s daughter, McCormack’s typically naturalistic, impressive performance as his wife and Jackson almost stealing the show as Mr Olin. It’s an incredibly restrained turn from a man known for histrionics and it pays dividends. The scene between Cusack and Jackson crackles with electricity as two extremely smart men verbally spar with one another and the smarter, for once, loses. Urbane, darkly humourous and honestly terrified, Olin is the first real indicator of how much trouble Mike is in. He doesn’t listen, we do and it only ramps the tension further. 1408 isn’t perfect, there are a couple of cheap
scares (Cusack’s long-term friend, ex-world kickboxing champion Benny ‘The Jet’ Urquidez turns up as a hammer wielding maniac for no reason, it seems, other than to have a hammer wielding maniac in the film) and the ending may fall flat for some. For most however, 1408 is a hotel room that you’ll check out of, but remember for a long, long time. A classy piece of horror, and a rare treat.
The Mammoth Book of Best War Comics
Edited by David Kendall
Robinson. Pb 514pp £12.99 July 2007
The C format of this book surprised me, as I reckoned it would be the Comic book size when I first heard of its publication, but then this collection is no way a mediocre product and the pleasant surprise was sustained throughout the read. At over five hundred pages of some of the best war comics ever produced this is not just fantastic value but also an inspired selection by David Kendall.
War comics have been around as long as Super Heroes and the whole genre has had cyclical success over the years. In recent times Garth Ennis has been reigniting interest in this genre, but even he admits to loving comics such as Battle from 1970’s and 80’s Britain.
The collection goes out of its way to try and capture a broad church of war stories from the classic digest sized story with two panels per page, two of which are fully reprinted therein, to a story from the very collectable Blazing Combat anthology.
There is something in her from all the eras of comics, covering a variety of wars all falling in the 20th century. Impressively stories which one would not expect, like the first episode of Charleys War by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun is cleverly put in, and despite being only one episode of a tale that spanned hundreds of comics, this is its own nod to such a great war comic and really lends a level of inspiration to the choices. Of course Charleys War is a seminal war comic and highly influential on many of today’s writers, but it’s a brave and admirable move to put the first four pages in all the same.
It feels like Mr Kendall is not just paying lip service to an unsuspecting public who lap up The Best of this and best of that, but like a mammoth comrade, Steve Jones, he has gone out of his way to find and source some great works such as The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman, by Raymond Briggs, which aptly demonstrates like many of the stories the utter pointlessness of war and is a gentle reminder that although the Falkland’s may have been twenty five years ago, war is still something very serious and that it deserves more contemplation than that which our political leaders give it.
Two Sam Glanzman drawn stories from early sixties, over sixty pages are printed in full colour, and provide fine examples of his work for Combat and Air War Stories, a veteran of World War II, its obvious that Glanzman not only knows his hardware but also the face of war.
Impressively there are a number of longer stories, that might have not featured in a page conscious collection, but which add another level of depth. An example of this is Nakazawa’s I Saw it, an autobiographical account of Hiroshima from a young boys eyes, growing up afterwards and dealing with the legacy of slow nuclear death. Some of the shorter pieces are quite surprising in their anti-war message. Darko Macan and Edvin Biukovic a pair of Croatians write stories about world war two that sits nicely nest to an Archie Goodwin contempory from 1966.
There is a feeling that the Editor has gone out of his way to offer new as well as the old, and the two Russian authored stories, one by Alexey Malakhow and another by Askold Akishin, despite being very different are an unusual find and shows Kendall to be a true scout out hunting down what one can rightly say is the Best War Comics one could hope for.
The Slug Master*
An Interview with Shaun Hutson
by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan
Shaun Hutson is a bestselling author of horror fiction – titles such as Erebus, Nemesis, Hell To Pay and Twisted Souls – and has written novels under nine different pseudonyms. He lives and writes in Buckinghamshire with his wife and daughter and two pairs of Michelle Pfeiffer’s shoes. His latest book, Unmarked Graves, is out now in hardback from Orbit (http://www.orbitbooks.net).
Paul Kane: Is it true that it was reading the books of Guy N. Smith that indirectly made you have a go at doing horror novels?
Shaun Hutson: Indirectly, because I read one of his books when I was eighteen and thought, “Christ, if he’s getting paid to write stuff like that I’ll have a go myself” Ah, the innocence of youth, eh? It sometimes worries me now when my own readers say “I read one of your books and decided I wanted to write…” I think, shit, is it for the same reasons I started…? Around the same time, I also saw the film Cross of Iron, directed by Sam Peckinpah and I really wanted to write something like that. I went on to write about fifteen war novels, every one of them with a nod towards Cross of Iron in it…