by Andy Remic
As vast as a mountain, perhaps.
But that’s impossible...
Nothing’s impossible on Theme Planet, said Zi. They’re planetary engineers. The provax have machines that can scoop up a shoreline, lay down a beach, build a mountain range, carve out an ocean; so the literature reads. Theme Planet is a totally created thing. Theme Planet is a construct, a built, grown, sculpted theme park. Literally, a Theme Planet.
Amba continued to climb, towards the ice, towards the spirals above. They glittered, from unknown light sources, glowing red in places from the distant glow below, but also sparkling as if shafts of sunlight were striking from far above. Shafts of sunlight? But they were inside the mountain?
Amba rested for a moment, her muscles burning with fatigue, fingers numb from clinging to the vast wall of rock. She’d reached a fissure in the wall, and readying herself for a leap of faith, breathed deeply, smoothly, and jumped... thudding into a rocky flank, bouncing a little, hands clamping tightly into cracks, as the world and the drop flashed through her head and spiralled off below, like a dropped filmy camera.
Nice, said Zi.
Of course, said Amba to her dark demon, her dark angel, her dark twisted sister. It’s Firelce Mountain. A juxtaposition of elements. Indeed, an impossibility of elements, the ice surviving the fire. Wonder what trickery they used?
Who gives a fuck, said Zi. Get climbing. You need to get the killing done.
Amba bit back a bitter retort. Although she hated Zi for many reasons, and questioned the dark spirit’s very existence with regularity, she had to admit it - Zi was focused and deadly. Even if she was a figment of Amba’s tortured imagination.
Up she climbed, muscles screaming, toes burning inside her boots. And as she came close to the first twisted spiral of ice she fancied she heard a distant, echoing scream. She frowned. A scream? Down here? Another climber?
She climbed further.
More screams echoed, and Amba paused, panting, resting. She glanced below, and still the glow was a constant, the drifts of smoke from below spinning up towards her on eddies of hot air.
More screams.
She looked up sharply, at the thick spiral of twisted angling above her. Screams?
Something flashed through the spiral of ice, a flicker of speed, and through the ice wall Amba spied people in ride CARS, hands in the air, faces images of blurred happiness as they zoomed through cables of ice, zoomed through the mountain interior.
Shit! It’s a Theme Planet ride!
What did you expect? said Zi, stoically.
Not a fucking ride! Not inside a mountain! Not inside a fucking military installation!
Hey, if Monolith can make money, Amba, they’ll make money. If they can provide excitement and adventure in any way possible, they will endeavour to do so. Believe me, if Monolith could sell sugared shit, they’d package it and flog it on market stalls right across Theme Planet’s bazaars.
Yeah, but here?
Amba climbed up over the ice spiral, bitterly cold beneath her aching hands. She stood for a moment, balanced above infinity. At one point, a carriage zipped under her boots, and it was a long snake of happy faces and screaming maws, hands wiggling in the air.
“For God’s sake,” snarled Amba.
You don’t have a god. You’re an android.
Yeah, fucker, thanks for reminding me of that.
Amba upped her game, increased her speed. There had to be an access hatch somewhere, and as the spirals and bridges of ice appeared with more regularity inside the vast hollowed-out mountain, increased until they crisscrossed the sky and screams and gurgles of pleasure filled Amba’s ears, so, all of a sudden she came across -
A ladder.
Hmm. Good and bad. A ladder meant easier egress from the cavern, further up and out into the military complex itself. However, it also meant the possibility of men with guns... not that men with guns bothered Amba, but she recognised she couldn’t take on the whole world in a game of slaughter. Although she would cheerfully try...
She stopped at the ladder’s bottom rung, grasped its cool, slick metal. It was by a small Fire Port, and looking down Amba could see the criss-crossing ride tubes now, woven into the fabric of the mountain itself, entangled within crystal and ice, whether natural or created. She could hear the rumble of distant wheels. More CARs shot through the spinning tunnels, and down into the bowels of the mountain.
Amba glanced at the Fire Port. It was an emergency measure, in case any of the rides below caught. fire. Presumably, it would rain down to extinguish flames in the event of an emergency.
Amba gave a short, neat smile. A plan formed in her mind. She pulled free her FRIEND, glanced down at the criss-crossing rides, and focused. She aimed the FRIEND.
I don’t think this is a good idea, Amba.
Diversions are always a good idea, Zi...
She mentally selected a function, and fired; The FRIEND gave a meaty whump and the nearest enclosed spiral of ice tubing exploded into a million glittering sections of ice. There were screams as steel tracks twisted and bent under the power of the blast, and ice tumbled away towards the void, towards the red glow, towards oblivion.
There came the thunder of wheels, the screams of excited riders which suddenly notched up an octave as they realised the track ahead had disappeared... There were wails of brakes on the track, there were showers of sparks, more screams of panic and terror. The lead CAR shunted from the tube and went over the edge, falling, dragging the next CAR, and the next CAR, until six CARs were dangling like a string of metal sausages. Steel and alloy groaned, and the CARs finally came to a halt, dangling, swinging, screams and wails echoing and reverberating around the huge cavern as the people aboard waved their arms in the air for a different reason.
“Wonderful,” whispered Amba, and turned the FRIEND on the other enclosed tracks. She began to fire indiscriminately, the FRIEND shaking in her hand in an extraordinarily modest way. But what it produced was something more than normal, something more than military. Ice and crystal flew about, scattering like snowflakes into distant darkness, into the glowing depths, and Amba took out three, five, ten of the internal tracks of this bizarre Theme Planet ride, through not just the bowels of a mountain, but through the supposedly highly restricted Monolith-owned Firelce Mountain High-Security Military Facility.
Shit, she thought. If I’d realised this I would have just hitched a ride! I had to come in the back door. The hard way!
More CARs emerged, people screamed, chaos rioted through the riders. More dangling sausages swayed over The Pit, and the air was filled with deep metallic clangs and booms, the sounds of tortured machinery; the sounds of tortured tourists.
Amba narrowed her eyes, and turned a tiny dial on the edge of the FRIEND. “What we need now is more drama” she whispered, and fired the weapon. A sheet of fire roared from the tiny black FRIEND, and set a huge section of track alight. Flames roared up towards Amba, but she was already climbing as the whole cavern started to fill with black smoke. More people screamed. It was rapidly becoming the soundtrack to the mission...
Amba made good speed up the ladder, boots clattering on alloy rungs.
Below, an inferno raged.
That was morally reprehensible, said Zi. Somewhat smugly.
Nobody died...
Many may die. You are dangling their lives by a thread, if you’ll excuse the obvious parallel; and you are showing a distinct lack of humanity.
That’s because I’m a fucking android, snarled Amba to her own personal demon, and Zi took that as a cue to depart.
~ * ~
Amba reached the access door, leapt through, but it was clear. Audible alarms, fire alarms, were sounding now, and this was good. Up here, the corridors were neat and square and alloy. She ran through the sterile environment, ignoring lifts and shuttles until she located a stairwell. She glanced back; a lift was opening, disgorging a platoon of SIMs and regular soldiers, all heavily armoured and carrying automatic weapons. The
y split up, heading in different directions. Amba glanced up the stairs, and started to climb, FRIEND held before her.
She kicked through another door into the astonished path of three provax carrying machine guns. Her arm snapped out, and the first provax was punched back with a hole in his skull, the second sent spinning sideways with a bullet in his ear, and the third backed away, hands coming up fast in sudden supplication. Amba shot him in the throat, and stood over him whilst he scrabbled at the wound, kicking around and leaving marks on the floor with his flailing boots. She crouched by him, looking up and down the corridor, then put another bullet in his head, and he lay still, milky blood bubbling on his lips.
Amba was hit in the back by a shotgun, the blast picking her up and accelerating her down the corridor with a boom, where she bounced from a railing and spun out, arms and legs flailing, and hit the floor hard. She lay still.
The android, for it was an android - she could smell him now, all of a sudden, like bad garbage; smell his fake stench, smell the distinctive metallic aroma which humans couldn’t detect, but androids could, oh, yes, they could smell it like a rancid fish in a locked-down room. He moved closer, padding softly. Amba lay, bent and broken, head on the floor, one leg twisted up against the wall, blood pooling from her back where the shotgun had rioted through her flesh.
You missed him...
Shit, you think I don’t know that?
Want me to take care of him for you? Amba could almost sense the pleading.
Oh, no. This fucker’s mine...
He stopped. His boot reached out and prodded her face, once, twice. On the third prod she sunk her teeth straight through the leather of his boot, and straight through the toes within, severing them cleanly - or as clean as a bite can be. The android screamed, discharging the shotgun into the roof panels, which buckled and clattered down, clanging and wobbling. Amba grabbed his leg in both hands and twisted viciously, breaking the bone at the knee. But he was advanced, and he didn’t scream again; he’d cut off the pain receptors, dropping back into android mode, instead of fake human. He punched down, the blow catching Amba on the cheek, as she punched up, feeling his testicles compress under her knuckles.
The android staggered back, supporting himself against the wall as his useless leg flopped free, and Amba rolled smoothly to her feet.
“What generation are you?” he said.
Amba leapt, punching straight, straight, right hook, left uppercut; he blocked the blows, returned several punches of his own, but Amba took them on her forearms, stepping back a little.
“Stop! I didn’t realise you were one of us...”
Amba didn’t speak, just stared, and kept her fists raised.
Sensing the advantage, the hiatus, the break in combat rhythm, the android spoke quickly, “We can help each other! I can get you out of here, I can...”
“Can you get me up to see Lady Goo Goo?”
“The researcher? You mean the woman, right? Ride Organics? That sort of thing?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I can get you up there...”
Amba lowered her fists, stepped forward, dropped to her knees before him and held out her hand.
“What?”
“Shotgun. We’ll use it as a splint. You’re not walking anywhere like that.”
“You don’t know what I want, yet,” said the android, looking up and down the corridor, nervous now.
“Of course I do. You want to be more human.”
His mouth flapped a little, then he grinned. “Despite the broken leg, I like you, little lady. You have spirit. I’m Jonno.”
Amba’s face went hard. “I don’t need to know. Take me to Goo Goo.”
~ * ~
Limping hard, Jonno took Amba through a maze of corridors. He was talking all the time, not as if he were nervous, but as if he didn’t get out much; as if he’d spent a decade in solitary confinement. Which, being an android, was a possibility. They came to several junctions, and at the tenth, Amba froze. There was a T52 AI Automatic Sentry. It buzzed and whirred, heavy calibre barrels tracking them.
“Aah, that’s okay. This gun’s called Bob. Say ‘Hi,’ Bob.”
“Hello,” said Bob, in a metallic, robotic voice.
“They’re bad news,” said Amba, mouth dry, brain sour. “I’ve seen them take out a fucking battalion.”
“Ah, yes, I see. Well, only if you get on the wrong side of one. That’s why there’s not many personnel up here. Because of the T52s, and the fires down below. Ride fires. Did you hear about the ride explosions that took off, just a few minutes ago? An amazing coincidence. I know we’ve got keep it all hush-hush from the media, because if stuff like this got out, then we’d all be losing our jobs,” he laughed weakly, “but you’re a fellow android, so I know it’s okay to trust you. Come on, Bob!” He whacked the lethal gun on its flat head as they strode past, and the AI T52 gave a buzz - presumably of enjoyment and metal camaraderie.
“They’re not so bad, once you get to know them.”
Amba followed Jonno down the next alloy corridor. “What do you mean, not so bad? They kill absolutely anything and everything that moves. Including each other. They were banned on Earth.”
Jonno stopped, mouth dropping in awe. “What, you’ve been to Earth?” he said in wonderment. “Cradle of all humanity? The place that made humans bloody human? You are so honoured! So... experienced! I could learn a lot from you... I can see my trust was not misplaced, and when you’ve spoken to Lady Goo Goo, then we can really get down to the business of making me more human!”
“Of course,” said Amba, smoothly. “Jonno?”
“Yeah?”
“How long have you been here?”
“I’m Generation Five.”
“So... Gods, you must be three hundred years old?”
“Oh, yes. Give or take a decade.”
“And you’ve been on Theme Planet that whole time?”
“I’ve been in this compound that whole time, and it’s something I’m not very thankful for. Just between you and me - and this is just between you and me, you understand, because I trust you, as a fellow android - well, the last few decades, I’ve started to feel just a little stifled.”
“Stifled?”
“Yes, There’s only so many centuries you can spend staring at the same grey walls.”
“I totally agree.”
They made their way up more stairways, and it was getting warmer the more they advanced. At one point they came to a huge window - what was, effectively, a window in the mountain, actually set into the rock. They were near the summit, and the window was a viewing platform that showed several loops and curves from a ride, spiralling off down the side of the mountain.
“What’re those?” asked Amba innocently.
“Why, that’s the very famous ride, you should have heard of the famous ride, it’s called Military Experience #7 - The FireIce High-Security Military Installation Facility Funtime Ride.” He looked at her, then, with a frown. “Cheesh! You really have been locked up somewhere, little lady, haven’t you? I thought I was the one who’d not had very much experience in the world. Although, admittedly, I’ve only had a few hundred years on the planet.”
“What’s your job, Jonno?”
“I’m the Cleaner,” said Jonno, with a beaming smile.
“The Cleaner? I assume you mean you’ve cleaned this facility for the last three hundred years?”
“Yes. I’ve done a good job, don’t you think?”
Amba tried hard to keep the pity from her eyes. “Yes, Jonno. A very good job. But... don’t you get lonely sometimes? Or frustrated? I mean, other schmucks make the mess, encourage the kipple, and you tidy it all up in a never-ending cycle of banality?”
Jonno considered this. “No,” he said. And smiled kindly. “I am an android of simple pleasures.”
Amba gave a nod, glancing out over the vista beyond. Distantly, tracks curved and looped through the sunshine, rails gleaming metallic, CARs of many bri
ght and varied colours trundling and flying, happy punters waving their arms in glee. Oh, to be so happy!
“Which way is it?”
“This way,” said Jonno, moving forward. “Oh, incidentally, I forgot to ask your name. How rude of me. How inconsiderate. I am definitely being a bad friend; I am sure Lady Goo Goo would spank my bottom for my lack of manners. She’s like that, you know, a very happy person, very into her work, always in her study like a good little student, head in a book or on the ggg doing something important all the time, and not playing Solitaire, ha-ha-ha.”
“Important? Weapons, maybe? Technology?”