by Stephen Deas
My turn to interrupt.‘No, Jez. That shit with Victor was enough. I’m not doing it anymore.’
‘Christ, C, you think you have a choice after this clusterfuck? Someone’s put a termination order on you. Analysis are supposed to kill you on sight, you and your Melissa too. If I don’t get you then someone else will. Isn’t that a little odd, don’t you think? Me, I’d want to run you ragged, both of you, every which way there is about this thing. Maybe kill you afterwards but not until I’d sucked you dry about what the fuck you’ve been up to. And there’s more. Shit, Constantine, someone’s been gunning for the Company for months– this is just the ice cream. I swear it’s coming from inside and up high which means there’s probably fuck all I can do about it. But you’re not one of us, so maybe you can. Somewhere out there someone already knows everything and so doesn’t feel the need to ask any questions. Five million if you get me his name.’ She looks intense, urgent and extremely desirable. I feel a yearning rising inside me. It’s been a while.
Five million. Shit, I could retire.‘Ten and I’ll do it.’
‘Five.’ She moves towards me, eyes wide and dark, her face only inches away.‘He’s been gunning for you for years. Even before Victor. You see that, don’t you? From inside.’ Her voice drops to a whisper.‘My gut tells me your problem and mine are the same. Five million credits. Split it any way you like. For that money you can get your Ortov a body if that’s what you want. Not a real one but one so damn close you’d have to fuck him to know better.’
‘And?’ I reach out and run my fingernails up her neck, under her chin.‘What else do I get?’
‘Five million not enough for you?’
‘No.’
She snatches my wrist, squeezes so hard it hurts.‘I cut you lose, that’s what. Lose the file. Sign off the termination order. You’re dead.’ She bites my finger, draws blood. Her voice drops to a sigh.‘Never. Even. Existed’ Takes my hand and presses it between her legs, drops the gun and wraps her free fingers around my neck, squeezing as she touches her lips to mine and pushes her tongue between my teeth. We stumble back until I fall onto Mr Cray’s bed. She pulls down her trousers and sits on my face, then doubles over and takes my cock in her mouth and sucks until we both come.
‘He’s here, isn’t he?’ she says when we’re done.
‘No comment.’
‘Is he watching us?’
‘Probably.’
‘Good.’
‘Jez?’
‘Yes?’
‘If I do this…?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s the last time, you understand? Absolutely the last time.’
‘Sure, C. Last time. Sure.’
We curl together and doze…
Back before I knew about the Longthorne family and their money and their influence, even then I knew Victor’s face. I see him, I see Jez show me his picture, the richest man on the planet. Gone missing. Ransom demands. My chance to prove myself, to get myself off the hit list and promoted back to expendable freelance. Fucking marvellous.
Another face, cold and distant, bald and white. Gemini.
A chase. I’m in a helicopter, we’re flying low, Mr Cray at the controls, Jester and I hanging out the windows either side. Another helicopter coming hellbound after us. We’re shooting at them, small arms fire. They’re shooting back, not so small.
I hate dreams like this. Dreams where I think and think and think, driving myself in circles until I fall over. Until I wake up, covered in sweat, trembling, exhausted and utterly awake.
Our helicopter becomes a Ground Effect Vehicle. That’s dreams for you. Something between an armoured hovercraft and a car. Nothing much else has changed. Still being chased. I can feel the heat from the barrel of my gun. Ammunition litters the floor around my feet. Jester has some rocket grenades, but somehow nothing we can do will make this helicopter leave us alone. Victor is with us, lying in the back, groaning. Drugged to the eyeballs.
A flash of light. I’m lying on a field of grass. An explosion. I open my eyes. Victor Longthorne’s face stares back at me. No sign of the rest of him.
No, I’m wrong. Parts of the rest of him are liberally painted over my clothes, my hands. My face…
I wake up. Same as always. I can still taste Jez on my lips. I look at her, sleeping beside me. This is the last time, is it? I don’t know why I bother. I said the same about Victor, and look where it got me.
Gurdy, U. & Telman, E. F. ‘Thin Arsenic Layer Neural Network (TALANN) Devices’. United Stars Engineering Review Letters, 74, 276-79 (2321).
Whoa! Major breakthrough time. These are small neural network devices, many times denser than was previously possible. Get this: Page 279, para 3: “Eventually we foresee a point where it will be possible to manufacture networks capable of housing an artificial intelligence at least as complex as the human brain on just a single TALANN wafer.” Sound familiar? Just thought you’d like to know who you’re dealing with. You have squishy grey stuff, I have this. In case you’re interested, Gurdy and Telman work for USEC Semiconductors.
Thirteen – The Kitchen Dispute
I’m lying naked on Mr Cray’s floor. Jezebel is still here, arms and legs akimbo, breasts slowly rising and falling as she breathes, red hair hanging scattered across her face. I feel as though someone just dropped a lorry-load of bricks on me. The room doesn’t look much better. Tables and chairs overturned, pages of printout crumpled and scattered like technoblossom across the carpet. An empty bottle, rolled into a corner under an upturned lamp. The air stinks of smoke and whisky. The usual aftermath when Jez and I get together. We’re kinda like a married couple with our predictable routines. She points a gun at me, I tell her stuff, she asks for something, I say yes, we get smashed, fuck all night like teenagers on PCP and trash the place. Married couple shit. Yeah.
My head hurts. Throb, throb, throb. Ouch.
Buzz.
Throb.
Buzz.
Some bastard trying to phone me. I turn it off and tell the kitchen to make me some coffee.
The kitchen remains ominously silent.
For fuck’s sake. Why the fuck do kitchens break down when you’ve got a hangover? ‘It’s not broken. It’s off,’ says the lounge.
I stagger about a bit. Not that I’m fazed by a talking room, but this one’s been silent ever since we arrived and I’m certainly not used to them being telepathic.
‘Arug?’ Yeah, okay, not at my best right now.
‘I said it’s turned off. You want coffee, make it yourself.’
‘Ruuk?’
‘Ahh, there, there, got a bit of a sore head have we. Let’s see if I can help.’ The lounge speakers, wherever they are, erupt into a vile screeching wail. Fucking hell, not only is Mr Cray’s lounge a talking telepathic one but it’s also an arsehole. Who knew? I clutch my hands to my ears and run into the hall but the cacophony is my own personal shit-fest and follows me.
‘ Turn it off! For fuck’s sake!’ Ortov. It’s him doing this. What the fuck’s he on? ‘Ortov, you cunting shit! What’s up with you?’
The noise gets louder.
Filters! My beautiful filters. I sag with relief into a chair as they kick in and the sounds fade away.‘Filters, Ortov! Can’t hear you anymore. Fifteen all, you misanthropic fuck!’
‘Oh, you think so, do you. Well, I think I can modulate that noise faster than your filters can keep up. What do you think? Shall we try it out?’
‘Do your worst, arsewipe!’ Jez is starting to move, rolling over, wrapping her arms around her head, whimpering. I stare at her buttocks, her slightly parted thighs. Hangover or no hangover, some things just have a higher imperative.
‘You arrogant oversexed heathen,’ snaps Ortov.‘Have a good evening, did we?’
‘You didn’t have to watch.’ For want of anything better to do, I start picking the chairs up. Yeah, Leonard Ortov, founder of the Bratstva. Bit of a tight-laced puritan streak there. Kind of forgot that last night.
‘Fornication is a sin. And I’m not just some fucking piece of hardware to be turned off and on at your whim.’
‘Yeah, and I’m not your property and I’m not one of your brain-fucked droolly cultists you arsenic-based excuse for sentience, so turn that fucking noise off.’ Jez is curled up clutching her head, rocking gently. She might be whimpering, but over Ortov’s screeches I can’t tell. ‘She might even help you if you give her a chance.’
‘Put some clothes on, slut.’
‘You talking to me or her?’
‘You, you kadesh!’
My filters tell me the noise has gone. I turn them off.‘Jesus Christ, Ortov, what are you on? Weren’t you listening? She’s going to try and get you a body, for fuck’s sake! That’s what you want, isn’t it? Now, will you please tell the kitchen to make us some fucking coffee?’
‘Stimulants are a sin against the purity of the flesh. And I’m not your fucking housemaid, bitch.’
‘Oh, and we decided that this morning, did we? Look, I’m addicted to caffeine, nicotine and amphetamine substitutes, not to mention casual abuse of about a dozen other substances. My body isn’t a temple, it’s a cesspit. My blood’s so saturated with shit that my body chemistry’s permanently screwed. And guess what, do I give a flying bugger’s arse? No. So just turn the fucking thing on! Coffee! Now!’ Jesus! I’d kinda figured he was out of that I-am-the-messiah phase. Evidently not. An evangelist AI. Now I’ve seen everything.
‘I’m not a fucking AI! I’m a fucking human being who just happens to be stuck on a piece of silicon and arsenic and God knows what else on account of being dead. And I’m pretty tetchy about it right now.’
‘I’d offer you a tranquillizer to help you get over it but, oh, shit, you don’t seem to have a metabolism. Shame. How come you can read my mind?’
‘Perhaps because you’re pathetically transparent? And also a little bit because you’re so hungover that right now your lips move when you try to think, or are you still too drunk to notice?’
‘Let me guess, alcohol…’
‘… Is a sin against the purity of the flesh too. Damn straight. I’ll not live in a… in a house of such vile disregard for the pureness of nature.’
‘Well, you know what, if you don’t like it why don’t you move the fuck out, dipshit? Oh, wait, that’s right, because you’re a box! So how about you turn yourself off for an hour or two. Take a fucking power-nap or something.’ I wrap a towel around myself and pick up a table. Jez looks like she’s asleep again. The kitchen hums into life.
‘Coffee!’ I tell it.‘Very strong. Ortov, Jez can help us. But I– we– need her to be thinking clearly. It may be against nature, but she needs to be brought into the morning gently, with care and attention. Not with a fucking sonic sledgehammer!’ I look at her again. Something is stirring.‘Possibly that means some more sex. So why don’t you go find something else to occupy your mind for the next couple of hours.’
‘Fuck you. I thought we might become brothers, but I see you are of an entirely lower order than I.’
Jesus. A couple of months and you’d think we were married or something.‘I seem to recall you spent your fifties and sixties surrounded by teenage sex-slaves? Striving for a higher level of enlightenment, were we? Well so am I.’
‘My journey was unguided and full of perils. There were wrong turns. But I’ve learned and I have overcome. Let me show you the way.’
‘I think what you learned was you were too damn decrepit to get it up any more.’ A bleep from the kitchen tells me that my coffee is ready. I stagger out, sink a glass of PurgeTM to flush the hangover and throw the coffee straight down after it.‘Ortov, you’re so full of shit that GZW could mine you for fertilizer, so kindly fuck off and leave us alone.’
Back in the lounge Jez is lying on her front, legs apart, arms flung out ahead of her. I slide my fingers through her hair, down her back, down her thighs. She stirs. I sit behind her and pull her to her knees, hold her to me, pass her the other glass of PurgeTM.
‘This stuff works best with a bit of exercise,’ I whisper in her ear.
She groans and slides against me. I dump the towel. I can feel the PurgeTM hitting my system already. Along with the sugar and the caffeine and a whole stack of hormones.
Later, much later, Jez turns to look at me.‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ she says.
Hooper J. No more‘market stalls while computer says no’.
This is from two days ago although it’s not quite where I’d expected to find anything. It’s about a collaboration project a couple of decades back between the Cestus government and the Longthorne family for an AI to run both their finances (doesn’t the phrase‘conflict of interest’ mean anything to you people anymore?) As far as I can tell they got it working but there were repeated glitches– system failures, that sort of thing– from day one. The big news is that supposedly these are all fixed now. Fuck knows what this has to do with your slut and her people.
Fazad A. L. Planetary defence grid on-line in three months.
And just so you know I wasn’t bullshitting up on Gateway this is an article about Sunscreen published on the same day we met. I admit the bit I said about blasting the planet back into the stone-age was supposed to be artistic licence but turns out it’s not far from the truth. Yowsa! Didn’t used to have shit like this in my day. Then again, people didn’t used to go around dropping rocks on each other. Don’t think I’m digging this stuff up to be nice. I’m doing it so you’ll fuck off and stop bothering me with idiotic questions. And I still think you both should be castrated.
Fourteen – The Seven Samurai
A week later I’m sitting on a battered plastic seat in an old freighter sixty years past its sellby date and mostly made of rust, though how the fuck anyone gets iron to rust in space I have no idea. Jez is somewhere up front, asleep. I’m out back, playing cards with a man and a woman I hardly know. Don’t know what I’m doing here, where we’re going or why. Business as usual. My life belongs to Jez again.
Bollocks.
Andreas, who must be a foot taller than I am and twice my weight, throws his cards onto the table.‘Fold.’
‘I’ll see you then, Mr C,’ smiles the woman. I’ve seen her before all this, in a holoprojection somewhere. I have a sneaking suspicion it was porn so maybe she moonlights. Toni Flynn. Runs her own freelance news service. Apparently the sort of freelance that gets you funded by a government intelligence agency. That’s the press for you.
I turn my cards up.‘Pair of Jacks.’
‘Eights.’ She shrugs and pushes a small pile of matches at me. She flashes her perfect teeth, leans forward to flash a bit of something else and then leans back again and turns away.‘I’m bored of this. Someone remind me, how long until we jump to Vednar?’
‘Three days.’ Doyle is Jez’s killbot. Looks like she makes a living as a model and doesn’t say much, but you only have to look in her eyes to see she’s not what she seems. Doubts. She’s troubled. Full of questions. Oh yeah, and she’s also Jez’s surprise after we take off and I’ve met the rest of our merry crew.
‘So, what do you think? About Doyle?’ she asks, a day back when she has me alone for a bit and we’re playing the lets-see-who-can-pin-the-other-to-a-wall-while-we-fuck game.
I twist away, but I swear Jez has a few years of wrestling in her past.‘Let me guess. She has hidden talents?’
‘She’s Jester.’ Jez gives me a smug smile, like, yeah, put that in your pipe and smoke it. And pins me. Again.
I think about this for a second. I’m pretty damn sure I’d have noticed if Jester was built like a cover girl. I have an eye for such things.‘Last I saw, Jester was in eeny weeny itsy bitsy pieces.’
‘Well, yes and no.’
I shake my head.‘Let me guess– they both have the same winning personality and share a common psychosis collection?’
Jez smiles again and let me go.‘Yeah, exactly that. We had an operative, came from the Dust Sector– Tybalt. Bit of a
n attitude problem. Sound familiar?’
‘Sounds like Jester. He was one of yours?’
‘Yes and no.’
I growl.‘Will you cut this yes and no, is and isn’t crap? Doyle– what is she, some kind of quantum superposition that hasn’t collapsed yet? Some kind of—’ I kinda stop abruptly on account of Jez grabbing my cock and twisting hard. She wheels out her best Cheshire cat grin.
‘Our man from Tybalt died six years ago. Jester was a recording. So’s Doyle. Just like Ortov. I wanted you to know that it could be done. And you can tell that to Ortov too.’
I stare at her in a slack-jawed way.‘Jester was a fucking robot?’
‘Pretty much. Without the fucking though. Very definitely without the fucking.’
I think of Doyle. Trouble is, thinking of Doyle always seems to head off in one particular way and it’s all rather disturbing. She’s a robot. I have lust for a robot. That’s just not right. I give Jez a pleading look but she’s no help at all. Under the circumstances, that of intra-coital play, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
I have to wonder what it all means. Jester grown in a vat by the Company. Programmed by the Company. And how much of the rest was for the Company? I’d tell Ortov but I’m not sure it would help his mood swings. More and more, the way he talks, I’d swear Melissa is trapped in there with him, alive and screaming to get out. I’m beginning to wonder if he’ll survive or go mad like the other Ortovs. Maybe I’ll tell him after all.
Toni gathers the cards and shuffles.‘So, you guys, what do you think? We going to pull this off?’
Andreas grins a lazy grin. Makes me think of big stupid cats.‘Sure.’ He throws a matchstick into the middle of the table.‘Deal!’
‘Mr C?’
‘I’m in.’
She flicks cards at me.‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh come on!’ Andreas shakes his head and looks down, trying to hide his grin. Andreas thinks I’m a paranoid coward. Personally I think paranoia and cowardice are just fine as survival traits and I also think he’s an idiot.‘Miss Breen said they were amateurs!’