Vending Machine Lunch

by Roadbloc

  But Johnston’s audience had left him, either passed out or gone to a better place. Furious, Johnston beat his fist on the floor, causing Josh’s spilled blood to splatter up his arms. For the second time he was angry with himself. Why had he been such an idiot? Every choice he had made had gone wrong, and he was angry at his lack of the super power known as hindsight.

  He forced himself up, grabbed his emergency weapon and exited the Communications Offices via a second door, opposite to the one he entered. Immediately spooked by the dark corridor that faced him, Johnston checked his shells. Four left. Johnston slid down the dark metallic corridor as quietly as he could. All he had to do was reach the end, take a left, then up the stairs to the back entrance. Then he could quietly slip out and hope to God no-one notices him leave the exterior grounds. Confidence and assumption to authority was all he needed. And luck that no possessed were down the corridor.

  Johnston gave a sickening half laugh, half sob as he walked quickly, almost running, as he thought about Josh. He had had no shells for his emergency weapon. Josh couldn’t have shot him even if he wanted to.

  He turned the corner. The steps and the metallic hydraulic slide door were in front of him, illuminated brilliantly by white lights. Johnston squinted at the sight ahead of him. It all looked a bit out of place from the red and the blackness of everything else, the white light pieced his eyes and stood out as something alien.

  Johnston ran towards the stairs, just to have the floor underneath him collapse. The metal mesh panels fell about six feet, Johnston with them. With a crash they landed, Johnston rather painfully on his side, on a solid metal walkway.

  Confused and even more hurt than he already was, Johnston coughed loudly, picked up his emergency weapon and looked around. Thoughts attacked his tired brain on what the hell was going on. Why had the floor collapsed? Why was there a second walkway underneath? How was he going to get back up?

  When he realised that the stairs were just about climbing distance with a jump and a fair amount of effort, Johnston concluded that none of the questions invading his mind mattered in the grand scheme of events, and made his way to where he was going to climb back up.

  Then he saw where the walkway lead.

  The walkway began a few meters behind him, however, when right under the illuminated steps to the exit, it bent off to the left. Johnston stared down the walkway with a possessive, obsessive curiosity. It was dimly lit by small red lights on the skirting sheets before fading into darkness. It seemed to invoke a certain curiosity inside him. Cautiously, he took a step down it.

  He could hear something. A distant bassy pulse, pumping at a high rate. It had almost a hypnotic feel, drawing Johnston closer in, egging him on into the depths of mystery; the unknown. He crept closer and closer to the mysterious darkness that continued pulling him in. He forgot about his pains. He forgot about the gravity of the reality he was in. All that mattered was what was at the end of this corridor. He had a burning curiosity and it had to fulfilled.

  Squinting his eyes, Johnston tried to make out what an object was, just after the darkness began. It appeared to be glowing ever so slightly, moving up and down. Or spinning. Johnston couldn’t tell. It looked levitated off the ground, although Johnston was sure that was just the darkness and the red light playing tricks on his eyes.

  He was on the verge of the darkness now. The slightly illuminated object was in the shape of a vest. Or maybe it was armour. Johnston couldn’t tell. He reached his hand out to touch it.

  Bang.

  Johnston was plunged into darkness, the hypnotic pulsing louder than ever. He retracted his hand, squinting hard in front of him. Nothing was there. The glowing had stopped.

  There was a crash from behind him. Johnston spun around, startled and afraid. Sweat was beginning to form on his upper lip. Narrowing his eyes, he tightened his grip on his emergency weapon, keenly aware that he only had two shots left. Any more than two possessed and he was screwed. Now he knew that breaking their leg was the best way of getting away, aim wouldn’t be much of a problem.

  A second crash, this time to the right. It made Johnston jump out of his skin, causing him to fire his weapon. He cursed. Only two more bullets left. He didn’t give a crap what Josh said, in his mind they were bullets. Shells were small oddly shaped sculptures to be viewed in a museum.

  Johnston found himself wondering if Tree World had any shells on display when he realised that he was still in deep trouble. It was pitch black and something was around him causing crashes. His mind wandering again, Johnston wondered what was actually crashing as the entire corridor was solid metal when there was a third crash from behind him.

  Leaping away from the crash in pure fright, Johnston found himself hurriedly attempting to reload is emergency weapon. His shells slid in after threatening to drop to the floor. Johnston aimed at the blackness where the last crash had come from. The pulse was killing his head, making him feel a large wave of nausea. Oh, how he desired a stick of rolled tobacco.

  Bang.

  The dim red lights sprang to life. In front of him was a hulk of a beast, that distinctly resembled the human body. Except it was about three feet taller. Its skin was translucent, more translucent than that of the possessed, Johnston could see every part of its body to every sickening detail. Gigantic bear-like claws replaced hands and its head appeared not to have any features but a large, cavernous, screaming mouth.

  The thing shrieked at Johnston, who was too terrified to move. Before his brain could even register or acknowledge the creature’s existence, it had pounced it him, sending razor sharp claws slicing through Johnston’s flesh.

  Out of sheer fright again, Johnston fired. He was lucky. The shells blasted straight through the creature’s gut, sending intestines flying behind the creature. The creature stood for a moment, just as bewildered as Johnston was, before falling backwards.

  There was a pause as Johnston stared at the dead creature in the red light. The bassy pulse was still continuing, however, it wasn’t hypnotic or attractive anymore. It was just annoying.

  He bent down and inspected the creature closely. Its translucent skin was very leathery, nothing like he’d seen before. He gazed with fascination at what he guessed was a human, a fellow employee, genetically mutated by the suspected resonance buffer overflow or cascade. Or whatever you wanted to call it.

  Throwing the now useless emergency weapon to the ground, Johnston recouped his nerves and climbed up the gap between the stairs and the walkway under the metal mesh floor. His thoughts turned from optimism to regret just as quick as they’d turned from fear to optimism.

  There were certain things today that would haunt him to the grave.

  They would haunt him to the grave.

  They would. Haunt. Him. To. The. Grave.

  The back door slid open, hydraulics operating smoothly for once. Johnston was immediately faced by three gun barrels. In the centre was Jacob, looking as smug as ever. Beside him, two uniformed nobodies.

  “Oh shoot.”

  “Perhaps the wrong choice of words Johnston,” smirked Jacob, fixating his aim upon Johnston’s forehead, “Did you really think you could fool us by leaving the back way?”

  “For a moment there, yeah, I did,” coughed Johnston, pulling out his rolled tobacco.

  The grip on their triggers tightened as they feared Johnston was pulling out a weapon.

  “Calm down losers. I’m just having a smoke,” he lit his tobacco, feeling a warm sensation of relief flow in his veins. He couldn’t care less if he died now, “So what is this? The apparent Ninety-Nine?”

  “So you’ve heard of us?” grinned Jacob, “That saves a lot of pointless explaining I guess.”

  “Yeah, I was sort of hoping you weren’t a member,” spat Johnston, coughing slightly, “But you appear to be, much to my disappointment. I suppose that explains your incisive big-headedness. So what’s the story then? Was tonight the sole purpose of the facility all along? You may as well tell me, your s
ecret is safe with a dead man.”

  “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I’m afraid there is only so much we can tell dead men.”

  “It’s a good job I can make my own conclusions then isn’t it,” said Johnston, puffing on his cigarette, “Dwindling resources, a losing war and a leader unwilling to give up his power. I’m not the only one laughing at the government’s God damn mistakes. After all, when there is only one candidate, there is only one-”

  “-choice,” interrupted Jacob.

  “I’m guessing this is something to do with Union City. To help in the war we are so desperately losing. A military weapon, convert all your soldiers into them freaks in there and set them loose upon the poor souls in Union.”

  “And what are ‘them freaks?’”

  “They are… the Requiem,” said Johnston, remembering what Josh had said.

  “Good name. We might use that.”

  “I want royalties. I’ve patented that word.”

  Jacob ignored him, “Good effort, but you’re completely wrong. Tell me Johnston, have you ever heard of the story of Copland?”

  “No,” said a rather confused and bewildered Johnston.

  “Ever been to the wasteland?”

  “Not me. Full of mutants isn’t it? I don’t want to be contaminated. That aside, it isn’t as if we can go there anyway-”

  “Good. Shoot him.”

  Jacob strode away and Johnston was shot on the spot. His rolled tobacco was put out by his own blood, as it trickled from the hole in his head and spread across the ground.

  Five minutes later, the Deimos facility overheated and exploded.

  I’d Get Up If I Knew I’d Fell.

  James had furiously made his way down to his father’s quarters again. He was angry. So damn cross. Crosser than he had ever been ever. How could his father just ruin the city under his rule, and not show any care for what he had done? His audacity stung James. It hurt.

  His father was more machine than human. In his eagerness to win the war against Union, he had created a damaged and polluted dystopian city. Even if he did feel up to the challenge of turning the city around, he knew it was impossible and the inane plan from his father was simply nonsensical.

  Filled with rage that his entire life had been a stupid, rubbishy plan, James landed a heavy fist upon one of the many CRT monitors that surrounded his father’s resting place. The glass cracked, sparks emitted from the back of the boxy unit. A bang and a short, sharp electric shock hit James. He cried in pain before standing there watching smoke creep out of the unit.

  He had been angry before, but never this angry. All his life he had been angry at the fact that his father had hid the outdoor land from him. Now he was angry he hadn’t. Furious.

  “James...”

  James spun around. It was his father. He had seen him punch the CRT.

  “What?”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, “I-I really am?”

  “Really?” snapped James, “Or are you just saying that?”

  “Well, yeah, okay I am just saying it,” said his father, “Our opinions differ, not sure how, you are supposedly an exact clone of me. Can’t you see what I’m giving you? It’s my empire! Sure, it’s a bit shabby at the moment, I sort of ruined it by my own rashness and failure to foresee events that would turn the tables, well, I say turn the tables, Elision were sort of always winning somehow, damned Copland was too clever for me.”

  “What happened!? Tell me exactly what happened! Tell me how you created this pigsty of a city!”

  “It was all Union,” replied his father, “The war had been going on for some time, many a battle was taking place in the wasteland. Union began developing a weapon. We had spies over in Union, but thanks to the subway being filled in and travel restricted, it was rather hard to receive intelligence back. We had only three words, The Copland Project. However in the end, it became very clear what Copland was. A super processing machine. It was able to give intelligent opinions on strategic moves that were to be played during the war, calculating their risk and success ratings, blah blah blah, etcetera. On its launch and for a few years after, it played a role as the advisor to Union’s council, which is essentially what they call a government.

  “However over time it was becoming clear that Copland was integrating itself more and more with Union, becoming much more than just an advisor. Public CRTs that gave Union’s public access to Copland emerged, as did ID cards so Copland could recognise the user. All very advanced stuff. Many companies were offered what was called an Integration Kit, allowing their services to be made available through Copland. With the use of the CRT screens, or Terminals as they called them over there, any citizen of Union could insert their ID card into Copland and gain access to news, their monetary transactions, personal data, advertisements, order something from a shop, that sort of thing.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” said James, rubbing his throbbing fist, “But what has this got to do with you ruining Elision?”

  “I’m getting to that bit!” snapped his father, “And you say it was a good idea? Everyone thought so. No-one saw that their lives were slowly becoming more and more dependent on Copland’s services. It wasn’t long before Copland knew everything about everyone in Union and pretty much took control of Union’s council. The amusing thing is, such an outcome was considered and to see the risk of Copland gaining control over Union, the fools at their council ran the question through Copland. Copland obviously reported that the chance of it gaining control over Union was unlikely.

  “Copland saw that the war wasn’t going anywhere fast. It worked out it was to be a constant stalemate. Now that Union was intelligently stronger than us, it had to work out how to make Union physically stronger. Its solution was now that it had control over Union was to simply take over Union. That was when we got a load of electronics experts to try and hack into Copland. With all of Union’s data in one place, it seemed simple. Copland was very secure it seemed. But we continued anyway, getting my electronics experts to try and design a way of infecting Copland with some sort of electronic disease that would make it insecure without it realising.

  “Meanwhile, Copland began creating its own race. Developing physically perfect bodies and then integrating them with electronics to make them intelligently perfect. We didn’t know this at the time, it was done in such an efficient way that even the citizens of Union didn’t know. Copland quietly passed a law making it compulsory for recommended vitamins to be in all the foodstuffs of Union. In these vitamins, was also a compound that made humans infertile. The citizens of Union quietly slipped into in-existence whilst the androids took over. Once Union was stronger than Elision, Copland could win.”

  “So that’s how everyone became undead?” said a very confused James, after a brief silence.

  “Oh, no. You see, we were our own worst enemy,” continued his father in a rather monotonous fashion, as though he was getting increasingly bored of the conversation, “Copland knew it could win the war, but it wasn’t happening fast enough for it. Somehow, the machine became impatient and devised another strategy that shot two Requiem with one bullet in effect. You see, Copland couldn’t keep up with the demand of artificial human tissue needed to repair its damaged citizens. It needed a way to replace parts in a quick and easy manner.

  “Meanwhile we were busy trying to force our way into Copland’s memory banks. Copland knew this, but we didn’t know Copland knew. One evening, we managed to infiltrate Copland. Less than a second of electronic defence failure and we managed to take a good look at what was stored within Copland. We grabbed a file that described a secret project known as ‘5261 Eureka.’ How to create enormously destructive weapons, using something called resonance.

  “Anyway, I knew that instant we had to copy the plan, but do it quicker. We built two facilities. One to run all of the pre-production trials that had been described in the file that we called Phobos. A second to skip a few pre-production trials that we thought weren't nece
ssary so we could be the first to use the technology, called Deimos. If it succeeded not only the war, but alone the economic benefits would have been astounding. We proceeded with both Phobos and Deimos and fell right into Copland’s trap.

  “Using resonance on the matter of life, the Deimos facility went into melt-down, and spread a virus that reanimated dead tissue. The result was the Requiem. The Requiem spread and killed everyone over the course of a month. A few survivors remain, but in the end, Copland won the war before I’d even known there was a major pandemic occurring. I’d have gotten up if I’d have known I’d fallen. Of course, none of us knew that Copland had deliberately let us in and fed us a file that contained instructions on how to create an unstoppable disease. We’d been tricked. 5261 Eureka was a hoax. A Trojan.

  “And now Copland has its spare parts factory. Elision City. It’s just one massive vending machine, and hell, the majority of the few survivors now see it as lunch. Union didn’t win the war. Copland did. If Union, Copland’s creators had no chance, what chance did we have?”

  There was a silence as James was mentally catching up with the brief history on how his father ruined the land.

  “How do you know all of this?” he asked, after a large pause, “How do you know that this... Copland machine tricked you into making Deimos and Phobos?”

  His father shifted uncomfortably, “As you can imagine, I’ve had a lot of time to investigate things. It seems we didn’t just unknowingly pull the trigger whilst the weapon was aimed at our head, but we were also helped to pull the trigger. After finally accepting that we had lost the war, I began trying to find out how it had happened. I assumed it was our own fault, my poor and obnoxious leadership, the public were always protesting, the neo-terrorists blowing stuff up. One phrase kept on cropping up throughout history. ‘The Ninety-Nine.’ And guess when this phrase first began...”

  “When Copland first began being as advisor to Union’s council?”

  “Exactly,” said his father, “With more research in old records of press and conspiracy files I discovered that some of the public had heard of the Ninety-Nine as well, many thinking it to be our secret Enforcer unit. I never set up such a thing, and after a quick browse of the House of Speakers minutes, I found that such a thing was never set up, but occasionally referred to. Unfortunately, because of the way I organised the House of Speakers, there was a lot of bias to my ideas. I thought it would be a great way to get stuff passed quickly without the red tape and all that boring nonsense.