Theme Planet

by Andy Remic

  She thought about Romero, then. Cardinal Romero. Could picture his tall frame, heavy build, good looking dark features, black hair slicked back. In his hand he carried his Zippo, flicking it open, shut, open, shut, open, shut. He was smiling at her, but the smile was a knowing smile, the smile was a killing smile. There was a click. A memory unlocked in her android brain. I want you to find Terry Napper. He runs the Monolith Secret Police. He knows secrets, many secrets about the Monolith Army being raised by the provax on Theme Planet. I want you to discover those secrets. I want you to torture him, bring him pain like no pain he has ever felt. Make him sing. Sing long and sweet. I want to know every aspect of Theme Planet’s military plans. I want to know its size, and more importantly, I want to know its technology. Can you do this for me, sweet Amba?

  I can do it, General.

  One last thing.

  Yes?

  Be careful. He is guarded, but not as you would understand a person being guarded. Napper is core to the Monolith Movement; he knows too many of their secrets, and they have something very special for him. You understand?

  I don’t think I do.

  You will find out.

  Inevitably.

  She opened her eyes. She was inside a machine. She didn’t know how she had arrived. And her FRIEND had gone. Had it been gas? Or was this a mind-fuck? Her eyes narrowed. Either way, she would have to get through it... because whatever it was, it had identified her as a threat and was working on her.

  She moved, running fast, boots sliding on oil. She flashed through endless corridors of machinery, breaking through a mesh panel and into a cavern of machines. They were vast, and dark, pistons as huge as tower blocks, wheels and spinning cogs a kilometre high and interlinked with more cogs, hundreds of cogs and gears, thousands, and this was the machinery on the underside of the Theme Planet, Amba suddenly knew, and she felt intuitively that she was in some kind of half-world, a second-hand shadow. She had been forced there by the machines. Taken there, against her will, without her knowledge. As an act of quarantine?

  She had to break out. She had to negotiate the maze. Were they watching her? Could they observe her? Was it Napper? It had to be. She was in The Ride Museum, and it was his base of Operations. The core of the Monolith Secret Police - from where every damn tourist who visited Theme Planet was watched, spied upon, monitored, listened to. Their minds were probed. Not a single person who entered Theme Planet had a moment of secrecy, of privacy. The Monolith Secret Police were watching. Studying. Every room of every hotel was rigged with mics and cameras. Every nuance of human interaction, integration, every moment of comedy and fear and sadness; all were studied, all were observed.

  Something went click in Amba’s mind. Romero had triggered a memory. Romero had triggered an allowance. An understanding. For only with understanding could Amba get through this shit, through this alien machine to face Napper. He was cunning, he was evil - but most of all, he was in a position of control. He had her in his grip, and she was now his slave. She had to break the chains. She had to gain her freedom. Before she could kill him.

  Amba stood still, amidst a million whining, clanking, thrumming machines.

  She considered her options.

  Theme Planet had been created to monitor humanity. Why?

  Were the provax so in awe of mankind’s empathy?

  In the same way that androids were in awe of humanity’s ability to care?

  And she realised. Provax and androids... they were the same. Maybe not chemically, biologically, organically - but it was there. In their confusion as to what made humanity human. Truly human. And how, despite this humanity, they were then able to side-step the natural urges and become inhuman.

  Amba frowned. She was nearly there. Clutching at threads of silk whilst balancing on a high wire above a tank of piranhas. Nearly there, but losing her balance, twitching, fighting, trying to achieve clarity...

  Did Monolith wish to destroy humanity?

  Romero had mentioned an army. Military organisation.

  But why?

  Amba frowned again. How could that be? There were a million easier ways to destroy a race than invite it to a pleasure park. No. It had to be something more complex. And she was there for answers. For the answers lay with the Monolith Army. The answers lay with Terry Napper, head of Monolith’s Secret Police.

  She moved, and around her the machinery of Theme Planet moved with her. The rhythms and clanks and whines changed, with every movement of her hand, every footstep, every blink of an eyelash, with every beat of her android heart.

  Amba stopped. She blinked. She coughed. Around her, the machinery seemed to blend, to twist, to move. Huge cogs now seemed to be eyes, watching her. She walked along a wide avenue lined with belching engines. Their rhythms were words, and they sang to her, saying, Leave us leave us leave us, and, save us save us save us. Noises and thumps and screeches of metal on metal hammered through Amba’s mind. She felt her brain cracking, like a spoon through an egg, and she broke into a run, panic like nothing she had ever felt rioting through her body and spirit. This was no simple dream, she was there, had been drawn there, into the heart of the machine, in to the heart of Theme Planet and -

  It was alive.

  It was the SA34000RAH.

  A living, breathing machine.

  SARAH.

  She ran again, brain whirring. She missed her FRIEND. She missed Zi. Damn it, you bitch, why can’t you be here when I need you? Yeah, yeah, I know I moaned, I know I used to slag you off for the random murders and the senseless violence... but we both know I need you. We both know I can’t do this thing without you...

  Something flashed from the darkness, and Amba rolled left, fast. A metal object, long and sleek, snapped past her ear. Amba launched herself forward, crashing into a... a machine, like a miniature version of the machines around her. It was an engine, open and belching, metal parts spinning and clanking, belts thrumming, like a drive engine, shit, like a ride engine. This was one of the ride machines... and here it was... attacking her! There was a snap and a piston broken free, skimming past Amba’s nose. She twitched right, snapped out a right punch, and felt a knuckle crack. She didn’t dent the machine. She didn’t rock it. It groaned, and whined, and she backflipped five times, putting distance between, herself and the oily engine. It staggered towards her, rocking slightly from side to side in time with its pistons. Its legs were short and stumpy, its arms a mass of linkages and rods and drive-belts. It whirred and snapped and droned. Fumes pumped from an exhaust pipe which erupted vertically from its neck, where a human being’s head would have been.

  “What the fuck are you?”

  It charged her, and she leapt left, grabbing hold of a huge cog and clambering up it. She glanced down. Amazingly, the engine thing was following, belching noxious fumes. Chains clattered on its cogs as it pursued her. Amba frowned and climbed further, then leapt onto a massive engine housing. She found a length of tubing, kicked it again, and again, until it split, and hefted the heavy steel tube as the engine climbed up to her level and leapt at her. She took a step back, and watched the engine-creature hit the ledge at her feet and tumble back to the corridor below, landing heavily. Amba narrowed her eyes and jumped down onto it, ramming the metal tube into an engine orifice with all her might. With a high-pitched squeal, the engine bucked, shuddered, and juddered to a halt - like a groundcar breaking down. Black smoke belched from the port, and the whirring belts clattered to a stop.

  She’d killed it. Killed the ride engine!

  Amba climbed off the engine-block creature, makeshift weapon raised, and looked around for more enemies. From somewhere distant she heard a metallic roar, loud and reverberating, which echoed down the corridor and was answered by more metal roars. The ground began to shake, and dust rained down through the oily atmosphere. The quake increased in violence, and Amba staggered over and steadied herself against a hundred-foot high machine, which clanked and moaned and vibrated. The tower-block-sized machine lurch
ed up on battered metal legs, wrenching itself from its steel-and-concrete roots with giant’s screams of violence and more rolling quakes through the machinery room.

  Amba staggered back, eyes wide, face smeared with black oil. Everything was shaking now, the air filled with dust and squirting oil from fractured rubber hoses. Steam hissed and engines growled, a million engines all howling their ride-hatred at the stray bolt in the system, the lost spanner in the works; the bad ghost in the machine. A weak and fragile piece of meat in the deepest pit of hard, spinning metal.

  “Shit,” said Amba, and began to run, arms pumping hard, as behind her bellows and horns blasted from angry ride machinery and all the giant engines in the place seemed to come alive, watching her, calling to her, mocking her.

  The rhythm of the engine voices had subtly changed. They were singing to her once again, metal songs born of iron and steel and oil. Mash-you-mash-you-mash-you, said the machines. Pulp you up, pulp you up, mash you up, fuck you up, faster and faster and faster, like a ground car engine accelerating with gravelly piston grinding voices, pulp you up, mash you up, fuck you up, pulp you up, mash you up, fuck you up...

  Amba sprinted. And the Theme Planet ride machines sprinted after her on stubby legs of steel.

  Behind her, it was as if a tornado smashed through the cavern, as a hundred giant machines came alive, belts and cogs and gears and pistons, whipping belts and giant flywheels, all grinding and pounding. The noise was incredible. A stench of hot oil and melted grease and hot, crushed bearings washed over Amba, spurring her on. As if she needed invitation. Her makeshift weapon was gone, lost, dropped and trampled by the giant screaming machines pursuing her.

  Amba ran hard, harder than she’d ever run.

  Behind her, slowly, the machines started to reel her in...

  She glanced over her shoulder, and gave a little gasp. They were close now, only a few feet away, a wall of grinding, screaming machinery as high and as wide as a Cubescraper. It was a wall, a squirming wall of metal, made from individual units in a million different sizes and configurations.

  But one thing was clear...

  They were out to crush her. Grind her.

  Stamp her into an oily pulp.

  ~ * ~

  It was never going to be so obvious as walking in the front door. What, into a waiting machine gun nest? Into a horde of police armed with SMKKs? Yeah, right. So Dex took another path, around the treacherous cliffs, and as evening passed into night and the glowing neon lights of the Monolith Ride Museum seemed even more gaudy, even more... fake, Dex found himself clamped to a rocky cliff-side, fingers aching, toes clenched, a restless ocean beneath him beckoning with rhythmic hisses, far too like laughter for Dex to relax. Not that he could relax when clamped like an idiot to a rock wall. Climbing was something that other people did; not Dex. He had way too much common sense. Why climb walls of rock? Because they were there to be climbed? What an absolute pile of goat’s bollocks. Dex’s old school friend, William Braggs, had been an avid climber, and Dex remembered the day vividly when William had been just twenty years old, three days before his twenty-first birthday, and he’d fallen from a ridge and landed on his face. The fall hadn’t killed Braggs, but it destroyed his face. Even after a hundred operations, after rebuilding his bones with titanium, after skin grafts and sessions on the doctor’s couch filled with tears and angst, he still looked like part of his face had melted. Finally, two years later, he’d stuck a needle in his arm and succumbed to the fatality of Black Orchid, a designer narcotic of the time.

  Dex had carried the coffin.

  Dex hated carrying coffins. It reminded him way too much of his own mortality.

  A cool breeze ruffled Dex’s hair, and he looked down, and he remembered his old friend, remembered the shock when he’d rushed to the hospital - to see him, cranked up in bed on wires and supports, his face a purple flat blotch. He’d been so high on painkillers at the time he didn’t know what planet he was on, and Dex had stared, and stared, and stared... just as he stared now, in his memories, and glanced down again, and wondered about the sanity of what he was doing.

  For Kat. For Moll. For Toff.

  It had become his mantra; the only thing keeping him sane.

  Dex struggled on, edging around the cliff, waves hissing and cracking beneath him, neon lights glittering on the surging silver ocean. His mouth was dry with fear, and even the SMKK and Makarov gave him little satisfaction; what use were bullets when you were a broken corpse on the rocks below? Maybe I should have gone in the front door. Maybe I should have taken my chances with the guards... shit. Triple shit and blue wanking monkeys.

  On he moved, the Ride Museum rearing above him and merging seamlessly with the rocky cliffs. Dex started to angle his traverse upwards, until it became an ascent, and darkness tumbled down around him like molten velvet and the stars popped out, twinkling with a distant cold malevolence. Such vast spaces. Such coldness. An eternity of emptiness. Not good. Not good.

  Dex edged up, and at one point his boot slipped. His fingers dug in tight, so tight he thought his bones would force their splintered way from his flesh. He felt a fingernail pop off and wanted to scream as agony flooded up his finger, tendons and forearm.

  He glanced down, boot clawing at the rocks like some spastic disco dance, and gritting his teeth hard, jaw muscles clenching, he fought - fought to stay alive.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  He found his footing and pushed himself into the rocks, sweat heavy on his face, making his hair lank. He blinked, as stars flashed before his eyes, and sucked in oxygen like a dying man surfacing from the bottom of a lake.

  “Oh, you son of a bitch!”

  Dex composed himself, and climbed again until he reached the glossy flanks of the Monolith Ride Museum. Twenty feet above him was a vast neon sign, flickering and winking and glittering. He was too close to read what the actual words spelled out, which was probably for the best, for Dex had no desire to clamber over junk advertising. Especially if it was for Fatty Fat Burgers or Fizzy Sperm Cola products...

  Dex was panting, pain piercing his chest and making him wince. His lungs felt like they’d been grated. His leg muscles felt like they’d been stripped from his bones and beaten with a hammer. And his finger-tips... soaked in hydrochloric acid. It was not a good way to feel.

  He calmed his body, looked left and right, checking for cameras or to see if he’d been observed in any way. Then he edged up the smooth wall, fingers finding cracks between huge black blocks, until with a grunt he grabbed the neon sign and lifted himself up onto the bottom leg of an E. Holding tight, he leant back and looked upwards, searching for the lowest window or other entry point. There were “medieval arrow loops” as, no doubt, Theme Planet advertising literature described them, but the ones Dex had seen, even from a distance, could easily fit a man’s body through the cavity - thus negating the whole point of an arrow loop. This wasn’t a castle for defending; this was a castle to please cash-paying tourists. Dex had to keep reminding himself about that, about the nature of Theme Planet.

  Built by morons, visited by idiots! That should be their advertising motto!

  Dex climbed. The wind snapped at him like an annoying dog.

  He climbed more. Sweat dripped from his brow, running into his eyes and stinging him with salt.

  He climbed. His fingers bled. His legs screamed like they were on fire.

  From the top of the E he made it to a P, and climbed the huge vast letter, praying it would take his weight. Which it did; it was big enough to support a hover tank. Dex ascended, and the ocean and the Theme Planet spread out before him in cooling darkness, and he paused in the valley of a V, sat with legs dangling, looking out over the ocean. What I’d give for a smoke, he realised, then pictured Katrina’s stern face chastising him his carnal weaknesses - and he had a lot - and she was frowning in his mind’s eye. He grinned at that, and she spurred him on; gave him strength. He turned, stood, and continued to climb.

  When hi
s fingers found the lip of the “arrow loop,” he was just about ready to give up and dive into the cool, welcoming ocean. At least it would be his friend. At least it would take him in, invite him down, down into an eternal, idle embrace...

  Dex hauled his sorry arse over the edge and slapped down on cool stone flags, worn uneven by the passages of time (nice marketing touch, that). He lay there for a while, not caring who walked past or pointed a gun at his head. He was in no condition to fight. He was in no condition to walk.

  Slowly, his strength returned, seeping into his limbs like honey through waffle cracks. He sat up, cradling his numb, bloodied fingers. He worked them softly, kneading life back into the tortured joints and muscles. Spasms of cramp arced like lightning flashes through his thighs and calves, and Dex spent a good few minutes contorting on the stone floor like a werewolf caught in the throes of some rabid transmogrification. He rubbed at his screaming muscles with screaming fingers, and after a while the pains subsided and Dex was able to stand, leaning heavily against a rough stone wall, panting, tears in his eyes. He stretched his muscles, and took deep breaths, and knew he needed salt to combat the cramps. In fact, now he thought about it, it had been an age since he had eaten or drunk. No wonder he was weak. No wonder he was cramping up.