by Ian Whates
“I wasn’t dressed like a man, I was a man.”
“Well...are you a man now?”
“No, I’m a woman today.”
“But not always?”
“I like to keep my gender options open.”
Arnold was silent for a minute, then he said, “Do you –”
“Change the subject, man. Move on.”
Under the knife.
She kept reminding herself of her own name.
Jane Castle. Jane, the First. The first of ten.
They amputated her left arm and fitted a recoilless rocket launcher. She could not feel it yet. The orthopaedic enhancement necessitated an alloy reinforcement of much of her spine, the hip joint, both acetabula, neck of the femur, her knee joints.
Jane Castle. Jane, The First.
They were doing her brain now, fitting a long, thin, flexible control electrode which looked like a tiny Cat O’ Nine Tails because it had to access different parts of the cortex and deeper grey matter. The parietal structures for position sense and targeting, the frontal lobe for voluntary firing, the thalamus for sensory feedback, the reticular activating system so that the system would boot up and shut down with Castle’s sleep-wake cycles.
She was awake in the theatre, and she knew her cranium was open while masked men and women poked around.
She remembered Una, the sensitive girl from Galloway with the soothing light brown eyes. She was there for a different program, but a fellow volunteer and she dubbed Castle Jane the First. Una was the last, but she didn’t get a nickname. She gave Castle chocolate-covered peanuts as they stood in line. Her parents had come all the way from Scotland to wish her luck.
Castle, under the knife, smelled bacon.
“Um...” she said.
“What is it?” said the anaesthetist.
“I can smell breakfast food.”
Flurry of activity, and the smell stopped. At another time she smelled fried onions. After this they put her to sleep, and when she woke the equipment was all there.
“You became a cyborg,” said Arnold.
“You keep using that term. The war office was fond of hyperbole. We were just people with posh, weaponised prostheses, that’s all.”
Castle really wanted to see Una. She wondered if she could give this Arnold guy the slip. When he handed her coffee she willed her hand not to shake, but it still trembled.
“You’d think,” said Arnold, “they would at least give you a robot arm after your service.”
“They offered. I declined. I don’t want any machinery in my body after...”
Arnold looked like a softie, no muscle definition anywhere. Castle remembered the briefing. He had spent the war in a bunker in Norfolk with his rich parents or whatnot.
“Why are you here, Ms Castle? What injuries do you have?”
...Neurological damage to posterior columns-medial lemniscus pathway leading to altered vibration sense. Non-epileptic seizures. Irregular fine tremor. Chronic insomnia...
Castle waved the stump of her right arm at Arnold. It still moved independently, but it was withered and her humerus reached a length of ten centimetres. The distance described by the tip of her stump was half of the circumference of a circle.
2πr divided by 2=πr=3.142 x 10= 31.42 cm.
“There’s also a bit missing from my frontal lobe, but it’s a small chunk and I barely miss it.” Castle said.
“How did that come to be necessary?” Arnold was smooth. He didn’t bring out a notebook or his computer. There was a glint to his right eye that suggested he might be recording remotely via a contact lens arrangement. He’d need good luck with that because no transmission could leave the facility.
“I was ‘marginally effective’ in two battles. The vibration of firing the explosives damaged my nerves, which caused me to shake, which affected the accuracy of my targeting. I was stood down after Woolwich.” She felt a familiar flash of humiliation, guilt and shame, but she tamped it down the way the cognitive therapists had taught her.
“I’m sorry,” said Arnold.
“No, you’re not. I’m a story to you.”
“Are you bitter?”
“The war is over. We won. Why would I be bitter?”
“What about them?” Arnold jerked his chin in the direction of the other occupants of the day room.
Castle considered. Should she point him to Dale Collins, blind with zero light perception and dementia pugilistica? To Renard with his quadriplegia? Anabelle with her failed immune system? Johannes? Sara? Should she show him Tendai’s tumours?
“Well there’s Bennet, who had bladed weapons on his arms and anti-personnel gas tanks in his chest cavity. He came out of the service with a delightful condition called icthyosis aquisita.”
“What kind of gas?” asked Arnold.
“Classified. I have no idea what it was, but it fucked up Bennet and for a while we thought it killed the enemy. Bennet chalked one hundred kills, but then we found that the gas just sent them into hibernation. They rose again. The brass would send him into massed enemy, hoping he would cause chaos with the cutting and the gas.”
Arnold smiled. “Cutting farts.”
“I can tell you’re the soul of wit. You must be a writer. The blades never did work well. He severed his own radial artery once when the extension mechanism failed. Almost bled to death.”
Castle was only half-listening. She thought of a droplet of spit that flew out of Arnold’s mouth while he spoke. She wondered if she could calculate the path.
There are different kinds of trajectory calculation. You can take only gravity into consideration. Or, you can take gravity and air friction and propulsive forces into consideration.
You want to take into account the launch velocity, v, the initial height of the projectile, the angle of launch, the gravitational constant (g=9.8), and the horizontal distance, d.
The time, t, taken for a projectile to achieve trajectory is calculated by the formula d/v cos θ
Castle once tried to calculate the necessary initial velocity for a distance, d, of infinity, ∞, but it was too difficult, and she had to lie down afterwards.
She had never bothered with calculations, physics, algebra or trigonometry until the program involved her with rocket launchers. Now it was a left over tic from her orientation training and post-conflict debriefing. She could not, or would not, stop.
Bennet was on the sofa, flaking so much it looked as if there was an indoor snowstorm around him. Arnold went and sat next to him and tried to make conversation. Bennet looked up at Castle, who just watched.
“You are interrupting my cartoons,” said Bennet. The hostility from him was moist, tropical.
Castle never saw Una again before combat. When she deployed, she didn’t even really see the enemy. In what the historians later called The Battle of Woolwich, regular troops lay broken and dead in untidy piles, some minus appendages. She saw a wave of vomit-green rise towards her and she discharged the weapon twice in one second.
It was not recoilless, and Castle’s body broke too fast for her to even register the pain.
The creatures moved incredibly fast. Castle had been warned of this, but nothing could have prepared her for how quickly they engulfed her rocket launcher. She screamed her rage and pain as the glistening thing wound round its prize, leaving her spurting arterial blood, and she knew she was going to die in this mud. Unspent ordnance detonated and she was flung away, broken, bleeding, waiting for death.
But it was not to be, because there was the cavalry with the gentlest two eyes Castle had ever seen. She may have even attempted to smile with her broken face.
Then fearful darkness as Una deployed her weapon, reminding Castle of the single most repeated warning.
If you can see it, you’re too close.
“Why did you volunteer?”
“To serve my country, my planet.”
“Bullshit. You could have joined regular troops. Why volunteer to get experimented on?”
> Castle shrugged.
War.
They came, we fought, we won.
There was more to it than that.
They came. We first fought with the weapons that we dared to use and we lost.
Then we used thermonuclear weapons and lost.
We opened the silos of the truly experimental weapons, the doomsday scenarios and the gateways to hell. We still lost.
We discovered Familiars by mistake and finally won.
There was more.
They came.
They burst into the sky, riding on lightning. Whether they were aliens or transdimensional beings has never been clarified.
They wanted war and death, and we gave it to them. They killed.
They were formless, shadows, with no vessels for our weapons to target. It was easy for them. They could sense our intent before we could take action. We aimed, pulled triggers and removed fail-safes, but they were no longer there.
They slipped in and out of reality with the ease of plucking a hangnail. They did not cluster, but they would kill in waves, like a tsunami of mist.
Some of them died. They had intermittent mass with intervals of irregular periodicity. They were only sometimes solid, but most of the time wispy like a Dartmoor mist.
The demons had come for us and we had no flaming sword.
Again.
They came, we fought.
Speed was the key. We devised cyborgs. They died about half an hour slower than regular troops. Still too slow to react, still too large a lag time. All we had left was the speed of thought.
Implants were placed in operators brains, linked to drones and turret bots and skycannon along with other devices too horrible to remember without insanity.
We fought.
We won.
A flicker of movement was enough to trigger fire. They had no appetite for this warfare, and they fled. Scouts were sent through the portals to find homeworlds or bases. They never returned with the needed information.
We did not press the matter. We had a world to rebuild and decontaminate from the horror of our engines of war.
We won.
“Do you cyborgs feel cast out from heaven?” asked Arnold. “Ten falling angels?”
Everything you cast out describes a parabola. If the initial velocity is high enough, and the angle is correct, you may even think the object is no longer coming down. Everything comes down, though. Sooner or later.
“We aren’t cyborgs anymore, mate. And what makes you think a soldier’s life is heaven?”
As they walked, the distance between them varied between ten and twenty-five centimetres. Castle planned to calculate the median distance later, just before bedtime.
“What are your feelings about the invaders?” asked Arnold.
Castle chuckled. “You know, they had pets? We always talk about them as if it was one homogenous alien mass, but there were different races and there were beasts, ravenous things that moved on two and four legs. They ate flesh. I hated the pets the most.”
“I know this, Castle. I was there.”
“Then you know my feelings about them.”
On the way to the recreational area they had wandered to Una’s room, or Castle steered them there subconsciously. Her plan had been to take Arnold to the sports facilities, but she felt that tug, that need to see Una once a day. She was ambivalent about going in, but felt that she needed to, even if it was just for a second or two. What would the harm be?
“This next person has no modifications,” said Castle. “At least none that are visible.”
Arnold’s body language changed, as if everything before now was preamble. Something bothered Castle about him, something he had said. I was there. She supposed this was true, even if he was in a Norfolk bunker.
Una Bates sat in an adjustable seat staring off into space. Una had been the controller of the final Familiar. She had a few tubes going into and coming out of her, adding nutrients and draining waste. She would not eat or drink. She did nothing. They kept her muscle tone with TENS machines, and turned her frequently. Even with this, there was wasting of the muscles and no movement except saccadic eyes tracking phantoms. They said she saw the ghost of the aliens she had killed. Castle no longer found the eyes gentle.
Una’s name was spoken of with hushed tones. She was a hero, perhaps the only hero of the war.
“It’s not really appropriate for her to be here,” said Castle. “She isn’t a cyborg. No machine parts.”
“Except the electrode implanted in her brain,” said Arnold. “Which she would have used to communicate with her Familiar.”
“Yeah, except that.” Castle was worried about Arnold. The glint in his eye seemed brighter. Was he still trying to send photos somewhere? “There is no point being here. She cannot answer questions.”
“I’m going to try all the same,” said Arnold. He stumbled in front of her.
“Err...we’re not supposed to be in her room,” said Castle. There was something really odd about this writer. Now that she thought about it Castle didn’t think his movements were all that normal anymore. They had a punch-drunk lack of fluidity.
“Una Bates? Can you hear me?” Arnold waved his hands in front of her face.
“No, she can’t fucking hear you, stupid. Have you not read the press briefing? Can we leave now?” Castle was irritated with him, but more so with herself for bringing him in. She wanted to leave, so she stood by the door, but the journalist could not or would not take a hint.
“Una, I know you can hear me. I know you. I know you well. You know how well I know you? I know you kissed your best friend’s boyfriend when you were fifteen. I know the pin number for your first bank card. I know when you joined the Territorial Army. I know you have a Sri Lanka-shaped scar on your left elbow.”
Oh, shit. What is he doing?
“Arnold? What are you doing?”
“This does not concern you, Castle.”
“Get out now,” said Castle. She moved towards him, but he punched her in the face, right on her nose. She reacted to the pain and surprise by ignoring them and counter attacking, but her instinctive left jab fell short by a missing forearm, and Arnold doubled her over with a kick to the midsection. She fell to her knees and activated her personal alarm, which she had never used before.
Arnold started to strip off his clothes. There was a deep red line starting from the root of his neck, bisecting his chest and splitting his abdomen in half. With a sound like the opening of an umbrella, this line suddenly yawned from the middle into an opening. He looked like a frog on a cork board, dissected. All his internal organs spilled out and covered Bates. Before long smoke began to rise and the plastic tubes melted first, then skin. The smell of burning, decaying vegetables and faeces filled the air.
“What is it, Castle?” said the superintendent over the communicator.
“Arnold is eating Una.”
“What?”
“He extruded a digestive system and he’s snacking on her right now, sir. I don’t think he’s a journalist.”
“Stop him.”
“With what? I have no weapons. Send a response team!”
“Already done, but your orders are to neutralise him, soldier. Improvise. Use whatever is at hand. Help’s on the way.”
Castle felt a tremor coming on. This was her fault.
Arnold seemed to have entered some kind of feeding trance. His eyes were fixed straight ahead and his lips moved slightly. Some of his fingers twitched, but most of the movement was in his guts. There was a wave of motion in the intestines, originating from Una, moving towards Arnold. Una remained serene.
Castle grabbed a handful of the digestive organs and screamed. It burnt like fire, like acid. Of course. It was covered in alien digestive juices.
With her damaged hand Castle balled a fist and punched Arnold in the face.
No effect.
I’m sorry, Una.
Una gave off a sucking sound as one of her lungs imploded. Castl
e kicked at Arnold’s legs, but they did not buckle. She heard a rumble from behind her, and broke away, sure that this sound was from the boots of the response team. Best to be as far away from their target as possible. They poured into view, black-helmeted and trigger-happy. They did not wait, but started to fire bullets into Arnold. Castle curled into what she hoped was a very small ball. There were six soldiers with automatic rifles. Arnold’s body rocked with the force of each hit, but he did not let go of Una. A tendril erupted from his open trunk, and it became a tentacle which whipped at the nearest helmet. Even Castle could hear the screams. It wrapped around the chest of the first soldier and swung in a short arc towards the others, knocking them over.
Castle wondered at the power in the swing. The force of impact would be centripetal. Assuming the length of the tentacle as two metres, the man weighing seventy kilograms, the tangential velocity...then she stopped herself. What the fuck am I doing? She picked up one of the rifles that fell close to her. It was warm. She rose to a crouch and fired not at Arnold, but at his bowels. She saw the wounds form in the guts and the leakage of fluid, and what might be a pain response in Arnold, but she could not be sure. The damage was too little and that tentacle still killed the response team soldiers. The room reeked of cordite and a sulphurous gut smell from Arnold’s innards. Castle could still hear the rumble. Were more soldiers coming?
This was not the rumble of boots against floor. It was progressively louder and the whole chamber had started to vibrate. Castle screamed, but the chamber shaking drowned out her voice. Earthquake?
As the last of the soldiers died cracks appeared on the floor. At first Castle thought Arnold had called in reinforcements because three thick tentacles burst through the concrete floor, but hey were soon joined by two more, which was when she realised that they weren’t tentacles.
They were digits. Digits on a hand, mechanical, screeching with each complex movement. Castle knew what it was, what it meant, and she unfurled herself and scrambled over the corpses of the response team, out of the crumbling chamber. She dropped the rifle because it would be no help. The walls caved in almost at once, and debris fell on Castle.
The forearm of an iron giant slowly emerged from the earth. The hand reached around what used to be Arnold East, and squeezed. Bones cracked, rigid form collapsed, and he ceased to be. Rivulets of red blood ran between the alloy fingers. A shoulder appeared, then a second arm broke free and stripped the alien intestines off Una. Wotan house began to fall apart from the stresses, so Castle ran away.