by Tim Lebbon
There was a bed with grubby grey sheets, on which the subject would lie.
“You first,” Honey said. “You’re the important one. Tom.” She paused and looked into his eyes. “This might change everything. Everything.”
“The Baker always told me that change is good. It’s how we evolve.”
“Do artificials evolve?”
Tom merely shrugged. He thought of the chopped people he’d seen back there, and those who lived on the streets. He thought of himself, what he was, as an abstract idea rather than a familiar. And he supposed that evolution was a track that nothing could really escape.
He lay on the bed and let Honey hook him up. He resisted the temptation to open a route to the net himself, instead allowing the buzz unit to do so, a violent, painful connection that caused him to wince and tense his limbs. He felt the charge begin to leak in, and it was like drinking piss instead of fresh water. He was invaded rather than energised. But as with all buzz units, it was an exchange rather than a one-way feed. Some of him was leaking out as well, dregs of his essence drifting against the tide like a backflow against his pumping heart … and this is what they intended.
As the first rush of outside images smashed into Tom’s senses, he closed his eyes and let fate carry him along.
Within seconds he knew why they became addicted.
A clean charge went one way. A buzzed charge was a vampiric symbiosis, demanding something of the user’s essence in return. And once given — or taken — that shred of memory, experience or thought remained in the net, floating like a miniscule fish egg in a vast ocean. Waiting for someone else to enter and sweep it up.
Tom’s veins and synapses tingled with the stolen charge, and at the same time his senses came under assault. He smelled rose and rust, tasted pussy and spice, felt a feather touch his eyelid and a weight crush his foot, saw a man on a barren hillside and a girl crucified on barbed wire, heard the soft pop of lips opening by his ear and the roar of a crowd. He gasped and thrashed on the bed, but something was holding him down. He opened his eyes to see Honey sitting astride his hips. She was smiling at him, and there were old lead connectors pasted to her temples and thrust into the slit beneath her breast.
This was a dual effort, a doubling-up. Tom had heard how dangerous this was, and a few times he’d seen artificials who had tried it. They were lost. Not hurt or damaged, but vacant. Missing. Gone somewhere else.
He closed his eyes and tried to buck her off, but the flow of input to his brain crippled him.
“Shhhhh,” a voice said, and he saw Hot Chocolate Bob shafting someone from behind, taking out his prick and coming on her back, his victim’s skin sizzling as the sweet blue acid spurted from his chopped cock and balls. The pimp laughed but he was somewhere else now, somewhere darker and more intimate. He offered Tom a drink and smiled kindly, dropping a gold ring into the glass just before Tom saw Honey’s hand take it.
Tom struggled to open his eyes and there was Honey. She was smiling still, even though her eyes were closed, and he found a free second to wonder which of his memories she was experiencing.
He was pulled back in as his muscles rippled with renewed energy. And there was the Chinaman performing his puppet dance, each finger alive, every twitch of his hand communicating a desperate passion, a morbid misery. Silence then, and blackness, before the dark was filled with the muffled crashing of music from a long way off, seeping between floorboards and through walls, setting him moving to the rough beat.
“Shhhhhh,” the voice said again, and Tom opened his eyes. The room was moving around him, the table tilting, the ceiling fluid and pocked with hundreds more memories yet to be seen. The only stillness in the room was Honey. She had loosened her clothing and tried to make herself naked. Dried blood speckled her breasts and stomach from her neck wound, and as her hand delved inside Tom’s trousers and found his prick he went under again.
The room had velvet lined walls and stank of stale sex. There was a naked fat man between his legs — Honey’s legs, because it was her past history he was seeing and living in snippets — and his hand worked at her slit. He kept glancing up as if his rough assault was pleasuring her, and Tom heard Honey sigh and groan, felt her shifting her hips to maintain the illusion—
—and he opened his eyes and she was feeding him inside her, sinking down onto him and gasping out loud as the penetration matched some hidden memory leaked from his mind. She rose and fell, and Tom could see his wet length revealed and swallowed again like scraps of memory, never the whole picture. He snapped back again, eyes forced closed, and there was another room in that stinking whorehouse, two men at him this time, abusing Honey’s body as if payment meant ownership, if only for a time. One of them fucked her, the other burnt her stomach with hot ash from a cigarette, and she writhed in fake ecstasy.
Tom shook his head to kill the memory and she was dancing on her own … and, finding respite, he felt himself penetrating her and being penetrated at the same time, two minds in one.
He hoped she was feeling the same.
Honey rode him, pressing down on his chest to steady herself, and Tom kept his eyes open for as long as he could. Her smile was constant, whatever fragments of his past she was living, and that had to be good. He pushed back, trying to stay deep inside in case he lost her. But she was in control. And inside their minds, finding each other in an impossible sea of a million strangers’ memories, she let him feel how she felt, guiding him in and thrusting himself up.
And in that sex, blooming and bursting like an endless orgasm, something strange and unknown in Honey’s mind … something very much like love.
Tom sat up and shouted, finding the strength in himself — strength of mind, of body, of purpose and soul — to snap off the connectors, plucking them from Honey’s body as well, throwing them at the sizzling machine beside them.
They were leaking sweat from their pores and tears from their eyes.
“Holy fuck!” Tom said.
“Did you feel it?” she gasped. “Did you feel it go? Did you feel it leave? It’s out there now, waiting for millions people to come along and snap it up.”
“It’ll get lost, it—“
“Love can’t get lost,” Honey said. “Not even if it takes forever.” She kissed him hard and heaved herself up and down violently. She was hot around him, and he didn’t once think about the thousands of other men who had been there, the scum and the sad, the pathetic and the cruel. They made love on the dirty mattress, and when they had come they stayed that way, stroking and giggling and kissing as if it was the first time for them both.
She was a dream. Tom had dreamed of her once, but after their joint buzzing he could not know whether it was decades or minutes ago. Maybe it was when the Baker was giving him the virus, or perhaps it was just now. That did not upset him. In fact, he quite liked it. She was a timeless dream, and she was fleeing the city with him.
“Where can we go?” she said.
“The hills? Maybe north? Anywhere away from Hot Chocolate Bob.”
“He won’t live forever. Bastards like that have enemies.”
They walked on quietly until they felt the cool kiss of fresh air on their skins, tasted it in their mouths. They struggled through a gap in the wall, barely wide enough to crawl through, emerging minutes later from a maintenance pipe on the riverbank. The river flowed into the city. It was so huge, wide and sluggish that its gravity seemed to pull them with the flow, urging them back, back home.
“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” Honey said, looking at the lights behind them.
“I’ve never been anywhere else,” Tom said.
“It’ll be fun. We can discover things.” She looked at him and smiled a mischievous smile. “And Tom, do I know some things about you!”
“Shall we go?” he said, heading off along the course of the river.
“Not forever,” she said. “We’ll come back one day. Not forever, Tom.”
He nodded. They’d come back because
he owed that to the Baker.
They’d return to see what they had done.
* * *
Story Notes
I love to read story notes, learning writers’ inspirations, the thought processes that led to certain ideas or themes being explored. In fact, if you’re anything like me, you’re reading these before you read the stories! So the first thing I have to say is: be warned — Here There Be Spoilers!
I’ve talked about these tales in chronological order, without actually being sure which order they’ll take in the collection. And here’s another warning ... I’m often unsure where a story came from, and why, even when I’m working on it. Writing these notes was like looking through a window at myself, back into the past when these novellas were being written. Sometimes it’s sunny and clear and the view is unimpeded, but on occasion it’s raining, water’s running down the glass and the view is obscured. And sometimes, there’s little memory of the inspiration at all. The window’s frosted up and I’m little more than a shadow moving beyond.
It’s almost six years since the first of these novellas was written, and their original inspirations may well have misted away in the fog of time. But for me a story is a living, breathing thing, and in time the root of its creation becomes less important that what it represents as a whole.
But there are always details ... the things that make the world go around ... and I’m sure I’ll remember something.
From Bad Flesh
Faith in the Flesh — Razorblade Press 1998
Writing this novella six years ago was the most intense writing experience of my life. I’ve yet to match it. I sat down one Thursday evening, stared at the thin blank screen of my Olivetti Jetwriter 900 electronic typewriter, and wondered what to write. It’s a wonderful thing that blank screen, the virgin paper, the empty notebook ... wonderful, but always daunting. From then until now, I’m thinking How do I start? What do I write? Can I really cover this with anything worthwhile? And that first line is always the killer. I usually know if a story’s going to work for me from the first line on (and I mean writing here, not reading!) Sounds strange ... but I can imagine painters knowing with their first brushstroke whether their new work is going to be something special.
So I sat there staring at the screen: I had files full of ideas and notes, and there were a couple of short stories I was working on. But I decided to let the mood take me. That first line ‘Della is the only person I still listen to.’ appeared ... and I was away.
I took the next day off work, and wrote all day and on into the evening. By midday Saturday I had a 23,000 word novella finished in first draft.
As to where it came from ... I’d been on holiday to Zakynthos, a small island off Greece, a couple of years before, and that’s the inspiration for the location. The disease, Della, the quest for a cure ... don’t know. They just ... came.
I believe this was the first story in which I mentioned the Ruin, an ambiguous, nasty fate that has befallen society. It’s used again in many of my stories, novellas and novels, and indeed all the novellas in this volume are intentionally, or could be set in this ruined world. A world where bad things are happening, and where there are worse things to come.
The First Law
Faith in the Flesh — Razorblade Press, 1998
This is a story I’d been wanting to write for a while, and it could be seen as one of my first forays into the Humankind versus Nature theme. This is something that still fascinates me, the idea that we have tried to disassociate ourselves from nature and, in the process, damaged our relationship with it. Damaged beyond repair? Who’s to say. I guess we’ll know in a hundred years or so.
In “The First Law,” my unfortunate sailors find themselves in a place where humanity is already shunned. They think they’re survivors, but they’re little more than parasites. And the island, their Nemesis, is determined to exterminate them one by one. I enjoyed working on the relationships between the men, providing that internal conflict as well as the threat from without. It’s pretty grim and downbeat, so I’m told ... but from where I view the story, there’s a definite note of hope and even triumph at the end.
Of course, if you’re reading the story from the island’s point of view, it’s a virtual comedy!
This was also released as an excellently produced audio book from Elmtree.
White
White (chapbook) — MOT Press 1999
I’d always wanted to write a siege story. In “The First Law” the men were under a form of siege — although they were mobile, there was no escape from the outside forces pressing in.
With “White” I wanted to create a real sense of claustrophobia, confusion and fear.
This originally started life as a science fiction novella, with a first line that went something like “Dave Smith was the first human being to die on another planet.” The siege would have- been set up there, the creatures purely alien instead of the more supernatural “things” the whites seem to be in the finished novella. But somehow I just couldn’t get it to work. That first line didn’t inspire me, the idea didn’t sit right, and I put it aside to let the ideas brew.
And when I translated it to Cornwall, everything fell into place.
I had great fun writing this. It became more claustrophobic and intense as I went along, and setting it in a snowbound house added that bit of frisson I was looking for. The main character is under siege from the folks in the house as well as the creatures outside, and I hope that makes it something much more than simply a “stalk and slash” novella. Indeed, quite a few people seemed to like it. It was reprinted in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, as well as being nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and winning the British Fantasy Award.
A complaint I had from a few readers was “So, what the hell were the whites?” My answer then and now is, I don’t really know. An author under complete control is not allowing for the story to take over. My people in the mansion didn’t know what the whites were, so why should the reader?
Hell, why should I?
Read it for yourself. Decide for yourself. And if you think you know, please drop me a line.
The Origin of Truth
Scifi.com, 2000
This is another story that came pretty much unbidden and unplanned. The idea that nanotechnology could run away with itself had been with me for quite some time, and whilst I wasn’t altogether clued up on the science, the images and ideas it conjured were astounding.
I think it’s my first truly science-fictional story, in that the science is researched and, hopefully, the premise is at least possible, if not (one hopes) probable. It’s perhaps one of the grimmest stories I’ve ever written in that there really is little hope for survival from line one, but when the “receiver of knowledge” idea crept in I did see a glimmer of light, the idea that knowledge is available to us all if we’d only be more receptive to it. Knowledge and capability. It’s a pity that humans seem to fight more than forge ahead.
I had huge fun writing this. It was a real challenge because of the mix and blending of ideas, but that complexity made it very satisfying to work on.
And research ... yes, I did research. It’s not usually my strong point, but when I submitted this to Ellen Datlow for consideration for Scifi.com, her first response was ... prove it. So I spent some time reading up on nanotechnology, merrily surfing the net, and I ended up presenting a report on the science behind the story. Ellen seemed happy with it, and it was fun to do.
If a little scary ...
Hell
Original to this collection
How many times have you read a newspaper or watched the TV news and thought: “Wow, I’m glad I don’t live there.” I live in a country — Great Britain — where our changeable weather is rarely deadly, civil unrest is usually restricted to drunken gang-fights on a Saturday night, and the scariest wildlife is a vaguely poisonous adder. Even our spiders aren’t that big, and our crime rate, though
climbing, is positively pacifistic compared to some countries.
I’m lucky. I think I know that. I see news items about terrible floods in Bangladesh, famines in Africa, wars and plagues and conflicts I cannot comprehend ... and I think myself lucky that my family doesn’t live somewhere like that. What the hell have I got to complain about?
Of course, sometimes I do complain. Don’t we all? But what if I could be made to see the people worse off than me, feel their agonies, hear their pain? Would it make me feel any better?
That’s what “Hell” is. A place of nightmares where people are taken to be convinced that they really haven’t got it so bad.
Like Nolan. His daughter has run off with a religious sect, his wife is dead and he’s plunging into depression. Hell finds him (you don’t find it!) and takes him on a journey ... during which he sees his daughter crucified on barbed wire.
With “Hell” I wanted to write something fast-paced, full of adventure, a chase story with other layers to it. I hope you enjoy it.
Hope you have fun.
Hope you don’t recognise anyone.
Mannequin Man and the Plastic Bitch
Original to this collection
Now here’s a strange one, I’m sure you’ll agree.
“Where do you get your ideas from” is the question I hate the most, because a lot of the time I just don’t have an answer. My favourite reply is “No idea,” but that tends to piss most people off, they think it’s flippant and dismissive ... even though, mostly, it’s true. Maybe they’re expecting me to reveal a Source — a book, a website, alien intervention, a plane of consciousness — while in truth, every idea comes from somewhere different and unique, and usually mysterious to me.