by Blade, CG
“Your pain is exquisite dear. Ohhhh…It fuels our processor core and feeds your deepest sexual desires. Would you like your music files my love?” The raspy voice in her mind was soothing and calm.
“Why yes Lav that would be nice.” She strained to crack the discs in her neck moving her head violently around as each one popped in succession like a zipper. She flexed her joints cracking the knuckles on her fingers one at a time. Every step she made was a loud distorted fractured link in the broken chain that was a demented human form. Discomfort and misery were now her masters and there was no turning back from their binding grip.
“Music files up now.”
“Thank you Lav.” She began methodically singing a dark, century old song aloud that was playing inside her own ears. Standing in dark orange and golden 895 degree Fahrenheit swirling pahoehoe lava pools she opened her palm slurping a melting red Skittle into her mouth courtesy of her long forked tongue. Chewing madly on the sweet candy Crimson took in the bright sunshine reflecting off the sea and surrounding volcanic rocks. She suddenly stopped moving becoming very still as her ears picked up a loud ‘POP’ and a whistle. Whining sounds began bouncing off the crater walls from beyond the caldera summit.
Sunday October 11th, 2076
PRESENT DAY
“I mean that’s a fine choice but I really want one of those burgers again. Those are to die for!”
“Yes Miss Dace, anything else?”
“No thanks Dot that will do it and please call me Petra. You and Ralph are geniuses Dot, geniuses.” There were seven silver trays full of empty plates and crumb covered napkins strewn about Petra and her hospital room tables. Partially covered by a blue hospital gown she was leaning up against pillows stacked behind her head. The usual wiring ran to harmonizing medical equipment monitoring her vitals.
“This one is going to kill me Ralph.” Dot said as she entered the worn-out swinging doors of the kitchen. “They should have left her in the tank Dot; she’s eating us out of our pantry!” Ralph aimed the large knife he was holding like a lumberjack at a throwing competition landing it handle side up with tremendous force. The tip of it stuck in a large wooden cutting board on the steel table in front of him. The two chefs had been working nonstop for the past eight hours. The Med Lab’s kitchen was abuzz again as Petra had them cooking up Twinkie Stew, Twinkie Casserole and fried Twinkie burgers mixed with peanut butter and fried bananas. As the staff served Petra her fructose infused meals, Emily began to take Petra’s vitals and give her a check-up.
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t understand the question Emily.”
“How do you feel? Petra this is not a test. C’mon now just tell me how you feel.”
“Are you sick Emily?”
“No why?”
“Because you’re running a little bit hot today Emily. You’re 103.33 degrees to be exact.” Emily was standing in front of Petra’s bed with scrubs on holding a stylus pen reading her chart off a virtual clipboard. Reading glasses were hanging on the tip of her nose. She became still.
“So what’s that got to do with anything?”
“The most basic human instinct is survival. You Pseudosynths seem to possess the same qualities. Survival of the fittest or in your case the best built and I am not talking about your gorgeous figure. What have we learned over the past couple of months here at the lab Emily or should I say Crimson or Dreama? I still can’t figure out which one of you is in charge now and who I am actually talking to.”
“What the hell are you talking about Petra?” This was unexpected. Everyone in the control room watching and listening to this conversation suddenly froze. Jackie and Amanda’s eyes rolled slowly from each other and back to Petra as she started to grill Emily who was now very still and lifeless. Jerry Valerga, one of Ray Nelson’s new engineers handpicked from his programming staff at Rayson Industries, stood wide-eyed and silent, as did everyone in the control room. Everyone had stopped working.
“When did you and Dreama make the switch? After the AL Shifa hospital incident I surmise?”
“I—I don’t…”
“You didn’t know about the new thermal upgrade Jackie did last May with the jacchrbyte microchip packet did you? Well you actually looked shocked Emily. You did great Jackie this works just fine.”
“Actually it was Amanda who wrote your thermal code programming but it was my idea for the enhanced vision years ago but thanks all the same.” Jackie was leaning over the mic looking through the control room glass shaking her head in disgust. Her usual blue reading glasses swung on their chain from around her neck as she stared at the drama that was unfolding in front of her.
“So you or whomever, decided to make a new Emily to take the place of Dreama when she blew apart? Maybe you were here from the beginning when Jim asked you to help during the collider crisis. When did you and Dreama meet each other? What were you planning to do steal our secrets, take our assets? Tell me Emily, did you fall in love with Cobalt? Was that it?”
“Fuck you Petra!”
“I should probably laugh but the context and her attitude is so negative and condescending.”
“You are correct Ter you should not be laughing right now.” Petra slowly shook her head turning to look at the techs and doctors looking back at her through the glass. She rubbed her left forefinger over her right one with lips pouting. “Why does every Pseudosynth have a potty mouth? Is it a requirement to go to ‘The Jack Rebney School of Anger Management’ when you become a replacement?”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
“Jackie we really need to reprogram Ter’s humor code. I don’t mind a little comedy every now and then but this, really.”
“Uh—okay Petra we can fix that. Sorry.”
“Who’s Jack Rebney?” Amanda softly asked Jackie out of the corner of her mouth.
“The Winnebago Man I’ll tell you later. It was way before your time Amanda”
“Oh okay Jackie.” Amanda quietly and secretly pulled her Vidset out of her lab coat looking through files. The crystal screen cast an electric blue shadow over her beautiful face.
“This is how it’s going to go down Emily. I am going to drag you somewhere where you cannot hurt anyone with your hot, corrosive crimson liquid and I am going to end your programming. Is that clear?”
“Petra can’t we just talk about this? Don’t do anything rash.”
“Why don’t you start with where all the money went? The money you stole from the American people with your ridiculous scheme to microchip everyone into submission. What were you planning on doing replacing everyone? Where are the rest of your replacement offspring hiding Emily?” Petra was covertly signaling to the techs attending to her in the room to exit through the contamination chamber with her head nods. They quickly backed up and eased out of the room warily watching Emily as they exited. “You can’t end your own programming or self-obliterate can you?”
“No I can’t.” Emily replied now lifeless and robotic in her motions and language, her eyes glazed over and cloudy. “It is not in my sub-programming sequence.”
“I don’t have emotions Emily or whoever is controlling you now. I am unbiased and cannot be bought or persuaded. I see everything in beautiful vivid thermal color yet the world is black and white to me. There is only right and wrong.” Petra eyed Emily like a cop staring at a perp in an interrogation room. “When did you arrive here at the facility?”
“I was always here,” Emily said brazenly and proudly. “We changed the Tesla results during the microchip scanning you did earlier in the year. We made sure we had all the information we needed. This is not the end. The best is yet to come. Your nation and your world as you know it is coming to an end and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Jackie slammed her fist down on the table in front of her as everyone around her and all of the Vidscreens and equipment attached to the table jumped a little. She was furious and shaking. “I can’t believe we were fooled again! Son of a— I knew there so
mething up with that power spike.”
Unbeknownst to anyone, including Emily, in a matter of one fraction of a microsecond Petra picked up a silver food tray covered with Twinkie crumbs and slung it like a Frisbee at Emily. It ended her programming sequence by slicing off her synthetic head above her shoulders. The corner of the food tray became wedged in the wall with a loud bong as Emily’s body fell limp to the ground with a dull thud and the virtual clipboard hit the ground shattering into several pieces. Her head was sitting upright on the tray five feet off the floor looking back at Petra. Corrosive red liquid sprayed everywhere as Petra calmly sat in bed with her beautiful swirling Cobalt armor now activated protecting her skin, and face from the deadly substance.
“That’s no way to get a head in life.” Petra said shaking her head slowly.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha…”
Petra turned to look at Jackie and slowly shook her head not happy with her choice of humorous programming selections over the summer.
“Okay, I know, I got it Petra. Sorry.”
“Jackie do we have a contingency plan in place for enhanced thermal imaging in the facility?”
“We have been working on it for a while now. We have reworked all of the hardware and software in the facility to accommodate the new technology and cameras. We started with the front elevators and entrance thinking this would keep us safe. The bad part about all of this is Emily has never left the facility and they knew where we were installing the cameras and when we were doing it.”
“Well it’s a good thing you did my thermal upgrade when you decided to do it. I wonder how much information they actually did steal.”
“Dammit when is this going to end?” Jackie pulled her reading glasses off her neck breaking the chain in the process and threw them down on the table in front of her “I will have our techs go through our Blade Drives and core processor, start the encryption process, and see what was stolen.” Jackie was shaking, visibly upset. She was pulling on her face hard pushing her hair back with her fingers.
“I promise you we will get to the bottom of this Jackie. She was transmitting to somewhere; we just have to find out where that somewhere was.”
“What the…What did we miss?” Dr. Norman Sanders walked into the control room with Ray Nelson close behind. Each of them were holding steaming hot cups of coffee in one hand and hot cinnamon buns wrapped in napkins in the other. The smell of baked goods quickly filled the air. The two of them were staring wide eyed at the control room’s glass barrier separating them from the syrupy opaque red liquid spattered throughout Petra’s recovery room. Petra confidently walked over to Emily’s decapitated head and shut her eyes off from the rest of the world by pulling her polymer eyelids down. The lips were still trying to move slowly losing momentum as the liquid leaked over the edge of the silver platter dripping onto the floor. Small circular pools of crimson were creating beautiful patterns on the white tile below.
“Where in the hell is the real Emily?” Jerry asked staring at Petra who was now coming out of the contamination chamber and into the confused control room. She was changing from her Cobalt armor into her officer dress blues. Petra’s Captain Insignias were shining brightly from the soft blue lights above. Two double silver bars sat upon each of her shoulders as well as her cap.
“We don’t even know if she’s still alive,” Petra said slowly staring back assessing everyone in the room. She was scanning the occupants like a watchful sentry with her new thermal imaging.
“Do we all check out, are we all human in here?” Jackie asked her
“Yes you are all human.”
“Good. I have a meeting tomorrow at the White House and I want you there with me. Norman doesn’t do politics so he’s going to stay here and look after the other subjects and monitor Jim’s progress.” Sanders shook his head and rolled his eyes as if to say screw that.
“Okay. When will Jim be finished with training in his tank?”
“We think by the end of the month. He’s coming along nicely so far and there have been no complications after his latest surgery.”
Ray Nelson waited patiently for Jackie to finish before approaching Petra. “I never had the chance to properly thank you personally for helping me in Nevada. Thank you Capitan Dace” He held his hand out to shake hers. She felt a warm embrace and smile from someone she had never really met yet.
“You’re welcome Ray but it would be nice to know where your daughter is right now.”
“I think we all need to know the answer to that question and the answer to the other question—why all of this and this deception?” Ray nodded at Emily’s synthetic head sitting atop the silver food tray, “When you get back from your visit to the White House I’ve got something to show you that I think you will like.” Jerry nodded his head in agreement with Nelson, as did everyone else in the room.
Petra could not step through the next logical sequence in someone else’s demented upcoming programming schedule. Where on planet Earth was the real Emily and quite possibly the unreal Dreama?
In the back of the control room, Amanda was alone in her chair huddled over her Vidset laughing uncontrollably at the century old ITube videos of Jack Rebney’s rants. Tears were rolling down her cheeks lit only by her small crystal screen. “I’ve got a piece of shit brain today…Goddammit!” Dressed formally with a tan shirt and tie, Jack’s hands flew up in the air standing next to a beige Winnebago in the hot midday sun. The outtakes from a Winnebago commercial shot in Iowa in July of 1989 were the stuff of comedic legends.
“Amanda will you do me a kindness and not watch that right now!” Jackie yelled from across the room but she was beginning to smile and finally burst into laughter, reminded of the video by Amanda’s roaring hysteria. Everyone in the room quickly caught the virus of The Winnebago Man’s hilarious outtakes and within seconds, they were all snorting and giggling aloud. No one was immune to the comedy except for Petra who remained stoic wondering why filthy humor was so funny when the reality around them was so dire.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha—ha…ha…ha…..ha………ha…………ha!”
“Give it a rest Ter.”
“Yes Petra.”
Chapter 3
ABOMINABLE
“This is our best listing right now and it doesn’t even go on the market until tomorrow Miss—?”
“Borden, Lizzie Borden.”
“Boy that name sure sounds familiar Miss Borden—huh well anyways it’s a steal especially in today’s market.” The charming and slender Hawaiian real estate agent in a blue floral print dress was showing a valuable piece of property to a perspective buyer in the city of Honaunau on the west side of the Kilauea summit on the big island of Hawaii. The warm eighty-degree fall breeze and afternoon sun was shining in through the numerous towering windows and the living room skylight above. Their words echoed through the furnished three-story 5,000 square foot home jutting out against the lush red dirt landscape. Towering palm trees and beautifully manicured lawns and gardens were included with the property’s five-acre lot.
“How much did you say it was?”
“At 2.5 million it’s a steal.”
“You know what Miss Kukani I’ll take it!”
“That’s great! How much do you want to put down on it Miss Borden?” an excited Miss Kukani began to look down quickly scribbling some notes on her Vidset with a stylus.
“Nothing—we’re just going to take a little off the top—for free!”
“What—what do you mean?”
A horizontal stream of red liquid sprayed forcefully through the air and landed on the white walls of the room as Leila Kukani’s beautiful tanned head slid off her shoulders with a thwack and rolled onto the white pile carpet under her feet. Her body slumped and fell limp to the floor covering the dense carpet with rhythmic pulses of squirting hot lifeblood and fragments of skin and bone.
“This is why you always bring two people to a house showing!” Emily stated scolding Leila while she wiped the blood off her faded cutof
f jean shorts and white tank top with a towel. A mist of iron smell filled the room.
“You mean we could have had a threesome?” Dreama asked with pouting lips and eyebrows scrunched down like a child.
“Eye on the prize dear, eye on the prize.”
“You do know there are no basements in Hawaii right?”
“That doesn’t matter we’ll just set up shop in the garage. It fits two! Now here are her keys. Go and stash her car somewhere and take the real-estate sign down.” Emily dangled Leila’s car keys in front of Dreama’s face until she snatched them from her fingers.
“Our Emily went off line yesterday. Here is the last video transmission” Emily stood watching the Vidset Dreama was holding up in front of her face as Petra closed her eyelids for the last time. “That fucking bitch she won’t be a problem for long! Did you send the chip?”
“Yes, just like you said straight to the big house.”
“Good. Well Dreama, this mess is going to be hell to clean up! Now look at this beautiful white carpet, it’s ruined.” Emily was staring at the headless body lying on top of her blood covered feet. The warm liquid was squeezing out from between her tanned toes as she curled them, enjoying the sensual feeling.
“It’s okay I don’t mind!” Dreama was standing behind the now motionless body resting on top of its own head on the carpeted floor. She was holding a rubber coated bloody steel axe handle in her left hand. The crimson covered blade of the axe was resting on her shoulder as she sucked the spattered blood spots from her fingertips. Savoring the taste of the sticky iron content, she closed her eyes tilting her head back. A blood covered Emily was watching her with growing affection, licking her own lips slowly in anticipation. The price tag was still dangling from the axe handle as they started to wrestle each other to the floor.
Monday October 12th 9:00 AM
“This room sure looks different sir.” Petra told President Roger Harrison removing her officer’s cap as a sign of respect, tucking it under her arm. The crimson colored carpet Long had previously installed had been ripped out and replaced with a recognizable blue one and the seal of the President of the United States was again the center of the room. A single wooden Crucifix hung on the wall next to the President’s Resolute desk.