by Andy Remic
Am I an android?
A fucking android!
If I’m an android, then...
My life is a lie.
My wife is not my wife.
My children are not my children...
No. No.
That cannot be.
Cannot be possible.
Is not... believable. Ever.
I am Dexter Colls. I have a beautiful family, a wife, children, a good job in London, a brother-in-law who’s getting divorced, a best mate with bad breath, a love of whiskey and old filmys, how the fuck can an android have all that? It’s ridiculous! A lie. A plot of some kind. Stick to the facts, hold on to the truth, because your mind is all you have, the facts are all you can see, trust the evidence before you, trust your own mind and don’t allow it to be twisted; to snap...
The woman sat up.
Dexter blinked.
She smiled.
“You made it,” she said.
~ * ~
CHAPTER ELEVEN
VAGABONDS
“I don’t understand,” said Dex, and confusion was his mistress.
“You’re not expected to understand; just obey.” “Obey?”
“The Ministers of Joy.”
Amba strode naked across the thick carpets, and scooped up the SMKK. Then she turned and smiled at Dex, but it was a hollow smile; a smile without warmth. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Rescuing me?”
“How did I rescue you?”
“You cared,” said Amba, glancing down at some of the torn pieces which remained from Napper. “Or cared enough to question, at least. They had me. The Monolith Mainframe had me. It’s called SARAH. A SA34000RAH. And we have to destroy it.”
“Whoa!” Dex held up his hands. “I came here for my family. To rescue them. Napper said they were here, in this building. In this... Ride Museum.”
Amba laughed, moved back towards him. On a low settee to one side of the room she located her clothes, and began to dress. “This is the Monolith HQ. Their Headquarters. It looks like a castle outside, and the beautiful trick is they even allow tourists access, to gawp like idiots at the history of ride technology - but in reality, this is Monolith’s base of operations.”
“There aren’t any guards,” said Dex, eyes narrowed, staring at Amba, and all the while thinking, this is crazy shit, and this is one crazy woman; but what do I do now, where do I go? I have to find Katrina. Have to find Molly and Toffee. Everything else is rancid shit. Everything else is... irrelevant.
“Not as you would think of them,” said Amba, softly. “But they are here. A whole battalion, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” said Dex, jaw-line tight. “I killed Napper so I could rescue my children; it was nothing to do with you, so don’t get your fucking hopes up. I had no idea you were imprisoned. How could I? You were lying naked on the carpet, like Napper’s prostrate whore.”
“I was imprisoned; my mind was imprisoned. SARAH had me. Was toying with me like a cat toys with a mouse.” She gave a grim smile. “And the cat was just about to rip out my guts with a sharpened claw - and in this world, in this... reality, I would have died. You may not think you were acting in my best interests, but you were. You recognised a fellow tortured soul. You recognised a fellow Anarchy Android.”
Dex stared at her.
“I am not an android,” he said at last, his mouth dry.
“That’s what I used to say,” whispered Amba, moving close to him. He could smell the musk of her skin, the smell of sweat, and energy, and violence. She looked modest, by all accounts, but by God she fired Dex’s blood like an insane injection of heroin straight to the heart.
He coughed. “If I am an android, why do you excite me so much?”
“It’s the way we’re made,” she said, leaning towards him. Her breath was sweet, with just a hint of sweet oil and what was that sound, the click of stepping gears?
Dex shook his head. All in his imagination. Anyway, androids were organic, not mechanical; there would be no oil, no gears, no cogs. Unless there are modifications inside her.
“I am not an android,” snapped Dex.
Amba fired a bullet from the SMKK, at such close range the gun was deafening, the scorch of discharge hot against Dex’s flesh. But he was already moving, twitching to one side, then slamming his arm across to knock the SMKK away, and delivering a front kick that sent Amba sailing backwards ten feet, to land on the carpet and roll and come up in a crouch.
She stood, and walked back towards him, SMKK held loosely to one side. She was grinning, and for the first time Dex detected genuine humour.
“If you were human, you’d be dead now.”
Dex stared down at his hands, and his breathing was shallow, and he felt panic welling in his breast. How had he known she was going to fire? How did he react so quickly? How did he kick her down the fucking room like that? It was the war. The fucking Helix War! It tuned him, like a fine instrument. An instrument of destruction. You spend eight years out in the field, you’re going to get good. Good, or dead.
“You’re wrong,” he said, slowly.
“Accept it, or deny it, it is a fact,” said Amba, and stopped a few feet away. “Why do you think Monolith’s been trying to get rid of you so hard? They weren’t sure, Dexter. They weren’t one hundred percent sure, there was doubt, and they couldn’t just gun down a tourist; so they took your wife and kids and tried to negotiate you off the planet. See what you’d do. How you’d react. But you’re an Anarchy Model. You didn’t play ball. And that pretty much told them what they wanted to know.”
“Why didn’t they just kill me?” Dex’s voice was a hollow tombstone.
“They didn’t want to risk killing another tourist. They’ve had bad press recently after that Sexcoaster Lube Ride crash. And they didn’t want to aggravate Earth; not with rumours of total war hanging in the balance. We are on the brink of an invasion here, Dexter, and Monolith are trying to buy time to complete their army. Their code. Their defence mechanism.”
“Their army?”
“It’s a beautiful thing,” said Amba, and stepped forward, placing a hand on Dexter’s shoulder. “You’ll see. We are here to destroy it. We are here to shut the Theme Planet down.”
“I... I just want my family.”
“They’re not your family, Dexter.”
“Then what the fuck are they?” he growled.
“They’re here to watch you. To make you feel more human. To help you... fit in. To make you behave human; for the purposes of infiltration. To get you past the Theme Planet defences. Only... they tagged you. Somehow. Something you did. Monolith was suspicious.”
“So my kids aren’t real?”
“They’re real enough,” said Amba, words soft and lulling. “They’re human. I think. But they’re not your own flesh and blood, if that’s what you mean. You’re an android. Androids cannot have children.”
“This is insane,” said Dexter.
“It’s insane you won’t accept the facts staring you in the face.”
“I am human,” said Dex, grinding his teeth in stubbornness, and staring at Amba, his eyes blazing hatred and fear. Bright fear.
“If I take you to your wife and children, if you hear it from their mouths, will you believe it then?”
Dex remained silent.
“Will you believe it then?” insisted Amba.
“Why do you care?”
“Because I need your help,” said Amba.
“Why?”
“I cannot do this alone. Monolith, and SARAH, they’re a lot more powerful, a lot more devious, a lot more advanced than I could have ever thought possible. That’s how they caught me. That’s how they tortured me. But now, now I’ve seen inside the machine soul, I understand SARAH. Understand how it operates.”
Dex stayed silent, staring at Amba.
She turned, and moved to a low table. Reaching down, she picked up a small black weapon and placed it against her chest
, and Dex blinked as it seemed to merge into her flesh, leaving something like a birthmark between her breasts.
“Will you help me?” said Amba.
“Take me to my family,” said Dex, through a grimace of bitterness.
~ * ~
Amba led the way, her FRIEND before her, eyes alert, walking in a half crouch, muscles tensed, waiting for the next kill. Dex stumbled after her, mind whirling, thoughts tumbling like planets into a black hole. It just didn’t make sense. How the hell could it make sense? His past life was all a sham? As of when? He still remembered meeting Katrina, in a night club with flashing lights and pounding music. He’d fallen over her, drunk as he was, out with other trainee Police Urban Force dudes the day after graduation. It had been their PUF initiation celebration - and so they’d naturally gotten completely shit-faced. As Dex, after many pints of Blue Monster, stumbled his way around the nightclub in one of those inebriated never-ending search for his vanished “mates” (who, by this time, were probably in the kebab shop, or lying unconscious in the gutter), he tripped over something on the floor and did a mad dance attempting to stay upright, which ended with him hitting the ground arse-first. He dragged himself to his feet, scowling, and turned to shout at the irresponsible person who thought it was a good idea to sit on the ground, legs outstretched, waiting to trap unwary drunken stumblers. The person in question was a beautiful young woman, with a dodgy perm, admittedly, but cutie pie features, a genuinely warm smile and apologetic glowing eyes. Dex felt his heart tumble down through his stomach. “Hello, there,” he said, and within minutes they were dancing, and luckily she was nearly as drunk as he, and so managed to put up with his drooling and slurring, and did not attempt to climb out of the toilet window in an attempt at escape. At least, that was Katrina’s version of events.
And so. Here they were. Now.
Dex remembered the marriage like it was yesterday, Katrina (now, thankfully, without her dodgy perm) in a dazzling white dress floating up the aisle like an angel. She’d been fashionably late, due to her drunken-arse father needing just one more beer, but hell, at least she’d arrived and Dex was just fucking thankful she’d not changed her mind and done a runner to some exotic island with the plumber.
They’d stood, staring at one another, enraptured by the event. They’d said their vows, exchanged rings, and pow! Married. Just like that.
The honeymoon - on a slow, lazy luxury Wedding Cruiser around Jupiter and Saturn - had taken a month, and had left both Dex and Katrina exhausted, and Katrina successfully impregnated. Dex joked that this would be their Star Baby. Which she was. For a while, at least, until she beat the comedy teen stereotype by at least a few years and started wearing black and listening to moody miserable music and generally being a moody miserable pain in the arse.
Dex rolled these events round and round his mind. The births of Molly, then Toffee. He’d been present at both, eyes wide in awe at the wonders of birth, the first stream of piss as the midwife lifted Molly high in the air and gently placed her on the weighing scales. He remembered being handed the scissors to cut Molly’s cord, but was quite simply unable to do it, in the belief that he would cause his newly born Star Baby some kind of injury, or pain. “You silly bugger,” laughed Katrina afterwards, and Dex had to sheepishly admit he was an idiot, but how never, ever would he be able to cause his own child physical pain. How could that all be fake? Invented? Made up? How could it not be fucking real? He’d been there, seen it all, experienced it all, the memories were there bright in his mind like exploding stars. He remembered the touch of baby skin, the smell of the operating theatre, the taste of the hospital vending machine coffee, the feel of his firstborn baby in his arms... how could that not be real? Why would they pull the wool over his eyes for so many, many damned fucking years?
However. Look at the facts.
Why did Monolith want him off Theme Planet so bad?
Why had they taken his family?
Why had Jim first saved him, then tried to kill him?
How had he survived against the SIMs? The police? The military?
How had he fought his way here, to the entertainingly chameleonic Monolith Ride Museum, to find himself in confrontation with Terry Napper, head of Monolith Secret Police, whom he had killed without any effort at all, and against all the odds escaped a body-ripping at the hands of an industrial accelerator?
And finally, Amba. Amba Miskalov. Self-proclaimed Anarchy Android.
She’d known him. Known him. He’d seen it in her eyes. Read it in her facial expression. And just because she was an android, with damped down feelings and emotions, with a killing streak so wide it could accommodate a Military B5 Battle Cruiser, she had no reason to play a game with him, no reason to fuck with his head. And he’d stood against her, avoided her bullet and kicked her down the room. That wasn’t the sort of thing your average man from down the pub could do. It wasn’t even the sort of special ops activity a normal PUF officer was capable of carrying out. Yeah, he could do drug raids and shoot murderers in the back. But military ops? Assassinations? That was why they’d created the androids...
Amba stopped, and Dex stopped behind her.
The corridors had changed now, losing their slightly comedic faux-medieval representation and shifting, subtly at first, into dark, oppressive corridors. Eventually the stone was replaced with steel and alloy, and the worn slabs underfoot became thick mesh grilles. And even though they headed upwards, up dark alloy stairwells, badly lit and filled with swirling ink shadows, the castle seemed infinitely tall. By Dex’s reckoning, they had climbed -what? Ten stories at least. And yet on the exterior, the castle itself was three stories high and filled with neon clutter.
As if reading his thoughts Amba said, her words quiet as she shifted, so her mouth was close to his ear, “The internal dimensions do not mirror the external dimensions. Monolith can play with reality, I think. I saw it, in the mind-games they were playing with me; in the Halls of Engines, where the engines came to life and everything started to twist and turn. We’re in an alien place here, Dex. A totally alien environment. Keep your wits about you, and don’t be afraid to kill.”
Dex said nothing.
“Do you hear me, soldier?”
“I ain’t no soldier.”
“You are now,” said Amba, as gently as she could, and patted his arm.
They moved down a narrow corridor, which suddenly seemed to shift and blend, merging with another corridor that had popped into existence and crossed their path. Amba held up her arm, and stepped forward, peering in both directions down this newly materialised thoroughfare.
“Not good,” said Amba.
“You get the feeling we’re being fucked with?” said Dex.
“All the time,” said Amba. “It’s never easy. Why should it be? If it was easy, they wouldn’t need the likes of us.”
“Will you stop saying that!”
“Why?” said Amba, turning to him. “You need to accept what you are, Dexter. Real fast. Or we’ll both end up dead. And believe me, Zi thinks you’re a liability already; her advice is to put a bullet in your dumbfuck skull and go it alone.”
“Why don’t you, then?” said Dex.
“Because Zi isn’t always right.”
“And when do I get to talk to this delightful Zi?”
“You don’t, Dex. She’s my burden to carry alone.”
~ * ~
They came to a huge cavern, open and wild and dark. An arched metal bridge stretched off into the gloom, rising out of sight. Amba and Dex looked at one another; the cavern was an impossibility, within the already-impossible structure of the castle. The cavern itself was larger than the castle, by at least a factor of ten.
“Where the hell are we?” said Dex.
“The Monolith Ride Museum,” said Amba, smiling to keep any perceived sarcasm from her words. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’d be right. This place is impossible. But if you think about it logically, the whole of Theme Planet is impossib
le. It’s said they used ancient terraforming equipment to build this place; the theme park, the entire damn planet. It was created by a group of machines they found - old, alien machines, alien even to the provax. Who knows what they discovered, creating the Theme Planet? All I understand is that this HQ is beyond the bounds of normal comprehension. It twists space into something malleable. “
“We go forward?”
“Yes. But make sure your SMKK is ready; this has all the hallmarks of a trap.”