Theme Planet

by Andy Remic

  Maybe, said Amba. It no longer matters. I have a job to do. I have to anger Romero, anger Oblivion - get them here. Get them to come after me.

  Do you have the words? said Zi.

  Oh, yes, said Amba.

  She started to climb. The wall of jagged rock reared above her, too high to see the top. Amba set her mouth in a tight line, focused her concentration, and climbed, hands finding tiny nooks and cracks, agile boots digging in, finding wedges, searching out ledges. And Amba moved upwards, and the air cooled and caressed her, and wafted her hair about her forehead. As she climbed, Amba thought of Dex. Thought of his long hard search for his family; for his wife, who had then betrayed him; for his children. Beautiful children. I could have those children, Amba realised, remembering her own daughter who had been taken from her all those years ago. Yes. We would have our own ready-made family. It would not matter if we were engineered to have no kids; we would already have some. It would be perfect. I could replace Katrina. And obviously, because she’s been a bad person, and I could be a good person if I tried hard, I am sure we would all get on perfectly.

  Dexter. Dexter Colls. So noble and courageous.

  I think I really am in love with him...

  She climbed, and paused for a while, resting her pain-riddled fingers and toes. She glanced back, and jumped a little when she realised how high up she was. To slip and fall now, from this great height - then, Anarchy Android or no, she would be squashed like a bug in the mangled wreckage of old rollercoaster CARs far below.

  The CARs spread off as far as Amba could see - and her eyesight was perfect.

  Bizarrely, the way they’d been arranged, the colours seemed to paint a smile.

  Ironic.

  Amba turned back, and continued to climb. She had a long way to go.

  ~ * ~

  Amba perched on a narrow lip of rock, a ridgeline of dinosaur scales, and looked out across the vast, black, rocky desert. She could see camps out there, and with a frown she realised what - or who - the figures were, gathered around their small fires beside Truks and HJeeps.

  They were SIMs. Hundreds of SIMs.

  “Wonderful,” she muttered.

  You think they are waiting for you?

  I think they’re guarding the TBAP. If that’s the case, then SARAH was telling the truth, in that this whole place is infested with Oblivion spies. Romero has obviously been planning his invasion for quite some time.

  I think it’s safe to say, Amba my sweet, that for as long as you have breathed God’s sweet air, for as long as you’ve carried out assassinations, then each and every act has been geared in some way towards achieving this moment.

  That bastard, snapped Amba.

  Her eyes followed the dark paths through the wilderness. Far ahead, a glittering grail on the horizon, stood a stark black building bristling with a thousand masts, antennas and SuperQ dishes - able to broadcast pretty much across the entirety of the Four Galaxies. It was an incredible and incredibly expensive piece of technology, owned by none other than Theme Planet, and Monolith.

  Maybe that’s what Romero is really after, said Zi.

  You think ?

  Monolith refused to license the design. It would make a great military tool - for, say, controlling a War Fleet as it conquered every planet it could get within pissing distance of. Yes?

  Possibly. Probably. What concerns me more now is the protection. They obviously don’t want anybody near the thing...

  Or to destroy it, pointed out Zi.

  Let’s give that bastard Romero something to think about.

  Amba stood, and flexed, and began the hazardous climb down. It took a long time. A long time. But Amba did not mind. She was on a mission and her mind was set. She was saving the day, instead of destroying it. She was trying to help something, instead of kill it. And that made her happy. Made her feel cleansed. More human.

  She landed in a crouch, in the dust, and moved forward swiftly, FRIEND in hand, eyes alert, senses screaming for anything - anything - that may point out a sniper or covert enemy...

  “HEY. HEY YOU! THE WOMAN WITH THE GUN! THE HUMAN NEEDS TO PUT THE GUN DOWN. THE HUMAN NEEDS TO STAND STILL! OR I WILL PULP THE HUMAN! OR I AM NOT BATTLE SIM KNOWN AS GRUMMER...”

  Amba, who had frozen, turned and her eyes picked out the hazy patch of a CovertShield blanket. She smiled easily, and fired her FRIEND - blowing a hole through the SIM big enough for her to squeeze her head through.

  The SIM was slammed backwards, body parts pouring out through the huge hole like a bucket of animal slop. The corpse hit the ground with a slap, and Amba ran as alarms squealed through the darkness, and suddenly everything became panic. Amba ran swiftly, and heard guns discharging and the pings of flattened bullets bouncing off rock. She slammed past a SIM and blew his head off. Another lurched into her way, loading his SMKK machine gun, and Amba shot away his legs so he collapsed, gurning, onto his face. She leapt his dust-paddling corpse, then dodged left and right, zigzagging through the wasteland of SIMs, and approached a machine gun nest, which opened fire with the whine of the dreaded mini-gun. Amba sprinted up the right hand wall, speed and momentum carrying her on, and with a blam put a FRIEND round through the operator’s skull top. She landed with a thud in the nest, grabbed the minigun with a grunt, and turned it on the shocked, camp of SIMs who were still holding bowls of oxtail soup, many with spoons halfway to their mouths, eyes fixed on her as their conversation faltered into shocked silence, with just one stray voice whining, “I don’t see how much damage one little lady can make...” before a cough made him drop his spoon in his soup and glance up.

  “Let me show you,” said Amba, sweetly, and unleashed the minigun on the hundred or so SIMs. Flesh and limbs exploded outwards, and the SIMs dropped their soup bowls and lunged for weapons. Hot metal screamed and scythed, and oxtail soup slopped up faces and armour plating as bowls exploded in showers of powder, and SIM skulls were drilled with spinning bullets. They went down in a wave, like a cornfield under a sweeping storm, until the silence was massive and Amba dropped the glowing minigun with a clatter.

  She picked her way speedily through the field of corpses, and broke into a run once more through the outcroppings of rock, past startled mechanics and engineers, FRIEND booming occasionally to clear her a path towards the Theme Planet Advertising Broadcast Station.

  It didn’t seem such a long way, as there was so much killing to be done.

  Eventually, drenched in blood, and panting a little -which was unlike Amba - the Anarchy Android reached the high fence and scrambled up it like a monkey, vaulting over its twenty-foot-high summit, carefully avoiding the organic AI body-invading razor wires, and landing in a crouch, FRIEND by her cheek.

  Nine hundred and ninety eight, said Zi.

  What?

  That’s how many SIMs you just killed.

  Oh, said Amba, and felt a twitch of remorse. But then, this was what she was built for. This was why she was created. She pictured Dex in her mind, and chewed her lower lip for a moment. He wouldn’t have approved. He would have gone for the stealthy option. Covert infiltration. But then, in justification, this was to save the whole planet...

  Stop worrying, said Zi. You’re becoming more human by the bloody hour. At this rate, we’ll be lucky to get the mission done.

  Oh, we’ll get it done all right, said Amba, and then privately, because that’s the only way I’ll end up with Dexter, and with his girls, and with our new pre-packed family unit.

  She smiled, recognising the absurdity of her dream.

  Amba stood, and moved down a narrow glittering path.

  Behind you! cried Zi, but Amba was already moving, spinning, crouching, and the FRIEND kicked in her fist and massacred the two approaching SIMs before they could fire a single round from SMKKs.

  A thousand, said Zi.

  I like round numbers.

  ~ * ~

  The Theme Planet Advertising Broadcast Station was a testament to advanced technology. It was a hive of dig
ital action. It was filled from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with the highest-grade components ever devised, and created to an alien specification that even Monolith did not understand. Amba picked her way through narrow corridors between huge blocks of glittering, sparkling machinery. Sometimes modules buzzed and clicked, sometimes the machines stayed silent, inert. But she got the feeling they were working; working damn hard.

  Amba, covered in SIM gore, positively dripping blood and bone shards onto the alloy tiles, moved through the gloom of alien technology.

  Staircases wound upwards, and with her FRIEND primed, Amba hunted down the control room. It took a while, since the layout of the TPABS was illogical, with corridors cutting back on each other, oddly laid out angles and ridges, and stairs that sometimes went sideways so that, after only a few minutes, Amba was utterly disorientated.

  It was Zi who finally guided Amba to the control suite. Peering inside, expecting enemies and big guns, Amba simply found herself alone at the broadcasting console. It looked simplistic, but as she scrolled through the controls on the screen, she realised it had an inner depth that allowed trillions of broadcast permutations.

  Amba flicked through the million or so channels currently being broadcast across the Four Galaxies Major Streams and realised, with a grin, that she could hijack each and every one of them.

  “What a powerful piece of equipment,” she murmured.

  You better believe it... this thing can beam an image into every TV, filmy lounge, mental kickpack port, ggg interface and brainscreen across trillions of klicks; whatever you send out on this, it’ll fuck Romero good and send his Ministers of Joy scampering for their resignation cards. And it’ll show everybody what an underhand bunch of scum-sucking warmongering empire-building back-stabbers the Earth lot really are!

  Amba hit a series of screen buttons, scrolled through various controls, and set the wide field broadcast spectrums; then she did a very naughty thing, and ran the main Theme Planet advert across all channels, phasing out over a million transmissions and effectively hijacking the entire Quad-Gal’s information network.

  The filmy began its play. It ran thus:

  AUDIO [deep male voice]:

  The Monolith Corporation™ in association with Earth’s Oblivion Government presents,

  A Theme Planet™ Production!

  VIDEO [close up]:

  A man dressed in colourless, shapeless clothing. This man is a bland and colourless human. He is bowed with age, face wrinkled and worn by the ravages of time. The dude is defeated and... queuing... what he is queuing for is not quite clear, but the old bro is queuing and the queue is a long one; a very long one - [camera pulls back/ smooth tracking shot]. The queue is an incredible and horizon-bending vast and terrible queue! A queue to make you sick! A queue to make you slit your wrists!

  VIDEO [close-up]:

  Watery blue eyes surrounded by wrinkles convey an inner message of emptiness, frustration and despair. CUT TO: The old man’s feet shuffling forward a step, then pulling back again to show thousands and thousands of people shuffling forward... all by a single step.

  AUDIO - A deep and throaty sigh:

  Are you tired of your life? Your existence? Your age, dude, your fucking age?

  Are you disgruntled with an eternity of pointless queuing?

  Like you get in every damn theme park ever created, bro?

  VIDEO [close-up]:

  A nod. Resignation. Disillusionment.

  AUDIO:

  Are you tired of your... molecules?

  VIDEO:

  The eyebrows lift, questioning. That old face is now full of dawning wonder, and suddenly filled with intelligence and inspiration and hope. Hope! Open, in fact, to the suggestion of a new and incredibly life-changing experience!

  AUDIO:

  Well dude, there’s no need to be.

  VIDEO:

  Suddenly, this world-weary example of humanity’s disintegration is disassembled, beamed through the glowing atmosphere of Theme Planet™ - and reassembled with a look of total orgasm. The old man’s face is filled with new youth. Vitality. Eagerness. Energy, baby, fucking energy! He looks horny as hell.

  AUDIO [sung, accompanied by happy jolly music]:

  It’s better than drugs!

  It’s better than sex!

  It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s neat...

  If you haven’t been sick, you soon will be!

  Zip through a thousand light years on... The Molecule Machine™!

  VIDEO:

  Molecules swirling to form an old man’s young smile.

  LETTERING IN FLAMES:

  Brought to you by Theme Planet™

  The Theme Planet Advertising Broadcast Station (ggg)

  and The Monolith Corporation©

  As it was running, Amba hit a few scrolls and a camera fizzed down from the ceiling and fastened its black eyes on her. Once the TP ad rolled to an explosive end, and the tinkling music and final dialogue fizzed out of existence, the Quad-Gal’s information highway was filled with Amba’s face, against a simple black backdrop. Amba could almost hear fifty trillion angry gasps, and huffs of annoyance, and spilled coffees and dribbled kukunga burgers. But more importantly, she could sense fifty trillion fingers, suckers, tentacles, blocks, hooks and babbages reaching for the remote control... or nearest alien equivalent.

  So she spoke quickly...

  “My name is Amba Miskalov. I am an Anarchy Android, built and controlled by Earth’s Oblivion Government. I am broadcasting from Theme Planet on behalf of its creators - creators who are about to be annihilated. Even now, a War Fleet of Earth origin is bound on a course of destruction and murder, of invasion and massacre, of empire-building and genocide. I appeal to you, the good people and aliens of the Quad-Gal, to intervene in this atrocity. I appeal to every government of every planet to send Warships to halt Earth’s evil machinations. For, and trust me when I say this, we Anarchy Androids walk amongst you, torturing you, murdering you, and we are sent out daily by Cardinal Romero, Commander-in-Chief of Earth’s Oblivion Government.”

  She cut the transmission, and caught a red blinking light to her right. She reached out and picked up a small ECube.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” screamed Romero.

  “Hello? To whom am I speaking?”

  “Amba, oh, you back-stabbing fucking bitch, you are so, so, so dead when I get my hands on your pretty little throat. Kome! Not there, over there! Listen, Miskalov, you get back on that powerful piece of alien technological shit and you fucking retract those words you just spoke... do you understand what you’re doing? Do you, bitch?”

  “Fucking up your clever plans of, oooh, the last twenty years?”

  “You have so much to answer for,” said Romero, his voice heavy as lead.

  “As do you, my sweet.”

  “Do you understand what SARAH actually is? What she - it - is capable of?”

  SMKK rounds blasted and screamed in the tower below her, and Amba leapt from the couch and lifted her FRIEND. Into the ECube she spat, “No, but I understand you, Romero, I understand you made me how I am -well, fuck you, now this is my time, time to be human, time to be a woman!”

  The lead SIM poked his SMKK round the door, and Amba blew his head clean through the wall of the TPABS. Showers of sparks cascaded, lightning shrieked through the chamber and stairwell, and more SMKK bullets thundered from the darkness as Amba crouched, and bullets ate the screen behind her, and the whole flashing groaning world seemed to descend into...

  Anarchy.

  ~ * ~

  The Central War Fleet Command Vehicle, DeathX, had its command centre and control deck at the core of its massive, donut-like body. But what it seemed to lack in aesthetics (it was spherical, in order to best drop in and out of wormholes) it made up for in weaponry. It was an awesome ship. Awesome, in terms of its technology, built for the dealing of death. For invasion and genocide. For aggression and warmongering. For down-and-dirty, simple, raw firepower...

/>   Romero sat, alone, on the control deck. The lights had been dimmed so that he was illuminated only by the flicker of screens and information. His chin was on his fist, his features dark and thunderous as he brooded. To his left were at least a thousand messages of “Retreat and Desist” from a thousand different planets and governments; and more were pouring in. If he didn’t act fast, didn’t attack fast, then this act of aggression would have an unanticipated, sudden bloody battle on its hands, as Quad-Gal clustergangs homed in on his location and started giving him a bloody nose - something he could deal with, but he wanted to concentrate on taking Theme Planet first. And Amba had screwed it all up. Destroyed his continuity.

  Damn her!

  A door slid open, and General Kome strode along the metal walkway. Nobody else would dare enter, probably down to Romero’s screams of, “Get the fuck out! Everybody get the fuck out now and if a single motherfucker comes back in I’ll personally blow that motherfucker’s head off! “