A Quantum Mythology

by Gavin G. Smith

  Vic motioned with all four hands for Steve to calm himself.

  ‘I’ve never really understood why people think I’d have any interest in what I’ve done to them,’ Scab said.

  Elodie sighed, lay down on the back of one of the sofas and then slithered onto the seat, stretching in a very feline manner. ‘It’s not all to do with you,’ she told Scab. ‘This is for him, its catharsis. Probably the same reason you kill people, blow up buildings, spay AIs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ Scab said after some consideration. ‘You would have more insight into that than me.’ Elodie’s laughter sounded humourless. Scab glanced over at Talia and pointed at Steve. The gesture looked odd to Vic. ‘He knows your secret.’

  ‘Once, when I worked at the Cathedral. It would have been eaten out of me when I escaped,’ Steve said through a mouthful of crustacean. His anger had apparently given away to hunger.

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps not,’ Scab said.

  ‘It’s not quite that simple,’ Elodie said. ‘After all, you worked out the connection between bridge technology and our pre-Loss friend here.’

  Steve looked over at at Talia. She raised her glass to him. He opened his mouth to say something, but instead clasped his head and started to scream, then collapsed onto the carpet. He dragged the lobster down with him. The carpet immediately began reabsorbing the matter of his meal, breaking it down into its constituent carbon molecules. His face convulsed and then locked in a fixed expression. The tone of his voice changed, but he was still screaming.

  Talia looked shocked and then jumped up to help him.

  ‘Wait!’ It was Scab.

  Despite herself, Talia stopped. ‘What for?’ she demanded.

  ‘I want to see this.’

  Talia shook her head and moved over to kneel by Steve.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Elodie said, inspecting her nails. She sounded extremely bored. ‘It’s Church conditioning. He was about to say something he shouldn’t.’ Steve had stopped screaming now. His facial muscles still appeared to be paralysed, but he was making a wheezing, rattling noise. ‘It’s actually a multiple-redundancy system. Steve’s right – an aggressive neunonic process eats most of a bridge tech’s knowledge as soon as they leave the Cathedral, or a Church ship, but the process isn’t total, so they add the conditioning. Any thought of divulging information on bridge technology, they cease talking and are overcome with agony. Attempt to remove the information neurologically and the subject is mindwiped and killed.’

  ‘See, I told you,’ a very hoarse Steve managed as he gripped the edge of the table and pulled himself onto his knees. ‘Please stop touching me,’ he told Talia, who was still trying to help him.

  ‘Why is everyone in the future an arsehole?’ she muttered as she returned to the sofa.

  ‘So he’s of no use?’ Vic asked. ‘I’m so glad we went to all the effort to get him out.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t think you were a great deal of help in my escape,’ Steve croaked as he pulled himself back into his chair. ‘Can I have some more drugs, please?’

  Vic glanced over at Scab, who nodded. Vic ’faced instructions to the ship, and a moment later, he reached down as the primitive hypodermic of narcotics grew through the sofa’s upholstery. He walked over and injected its contents into Steve. A few moments after that, the dolphin’s pained expression dissolved.

  ‘It wasn’t for nothing,’ Scab said as he lit a cigarette. Vic wondered if the cigarette was a Pavlovian response to the drugs he’d just administered to Steve. ‘I have one of the best intrusion specialists in Known Space working for me—’

  ‘No!’ a now blissfully drugged Steve shouted, slurring slightly. Scab frowned at the interruption. ‘You don’t have the best intrusion specialist in Known Space. The Consortium does, because they have all the credit, all the resources and even they couldn’t break it. You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘No—’ Scab started.

  ‘Yes! I was there, I fucking lived through it, thanks to you, you—’ Steve stopped just short of whatever he was about to say. Scab had his own way of conditioning people, Vic thought, though the look of genuine irritation on his partner’s face boded ill for Steve. ‘It’s not going to be something else just because you will it so.’

  ‘It was only one company within the Consortium. One board member,’ Scab said.

  Elodie was paying more attention now, her expression deeply sceptical.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re going to try, and you’re going to cooperate,’ Scab said. Steve opened his mouth to argue. ‘Besides, that’s not all I want you for.’

  ‘Put me in a pool and I can normally do one and half somersaults before I hit the water,’ Steve suggested.

  ‘I need you to make me some Key,’ Scab told Steve. This got Elodie and Vic’s full attention.

  ‘What’s Key?’ Talia asked.

  ‘A hallucinogen so potent it’s actually illegal,’ Vic said. ‘Very difficult and expensive to produce. It’s what he went down for.’ Vic nodded at Steve.

  ‘No, I was heavily protected. The people who could afford it wanted me there. I went down because I’m an ex-Church bridge tech,’ Steve said bitterly. ‘But sure, Scab, why not. I’ll do six impossible things before breakfast.’ Elodie and Vic looked puzzled, Scab was oblivious, but Talia was pleased that she finally understood a reference. ‘And where are we supposed to get the dragons from?’ he demanded sarcastically.

  ‘It’s not a hallucinogen. I’ll find the dragons,’ Scab said.

  Steve just stared at him. ‘Oh, well, if that’s the case, it’s simply a matter of me agreeing to help you, then.’ Steve pretended to give the subject some thought. ‘So, having given it some thought, go and fuck yourself.’

  Talia stifled a laugh.

  ‘I’d raise an eyebrow if I had one,’ Vic commented.

  Scab was watching Steve impassively. Then he looked down. ‘I don’t understand this,’ he began quietly. ‘I have explained what we’re going to be doing. Why do we have to talk about it?’ Scab looked up at Steve with his dead eyes. Only Vic knew him well enough to be aware that violence was now even closer than it usually was with his ‘partner’, and it was normally pretty close.

  Despite his bravado, Steve blanched. Then he appeared to bolster himself. ‘You don’t get it,’ Steve said. ‘You can’t do anything to me any more.’

  Scab was on his feet and heading towards Steve.

  ‘Wait!’ Elodie shouted. Scab ignored her. ‘If you kill him, then we’ve just been wasting our time.’ Scab stopped. Long-term gratification warred with short-term pleasure. He looked calm, but Vic knew his partner was furious. If there was one thing Scab hated, it was being defied. ‘Just give me a moment, please,’ Elodie said turning to Steve. ‘What do you want?’

  Scab turned around to look at Elodie, his expression unreadable. She ignored him.

  ‘Fine,’ Steve said. ‘I want access to whatever this ship can produce in terms of food and drugs. I want neunonics and augments to a specification that I will provide. I’ll need this for the work. I’ll require some equipment, much of it specialised enough that the ship won’t be able to assemble it. I want a cetacean body – again, I’ll provide the specs – which of course means I’ll need a pool and a P-sat with manipulators.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Scab said, ‘but I’ll decide the specs and install a meat-hack backdoor, and yes, you can have the body but you’re not getting the pool so it will be pretty useless, and yes, but I’ll have override,’ Scab told him.

  ‘Then no deal,’ Steve replied and crossed his arms petulantly.

  ‘The ship can’t sustain a pool,’ Scab told him.

  ‘It can, actually,’ Vic said helpfully. ‘It’s in the original template. It’ll need a bit of reconfiguration, and we’ll have to find an external source to feed the carbon reservoirs wh
ilst it’s being reconfigured, but it’s completely doable.’ It was only when he’d finished that it occurred to Vic that Scab would have known all that. Scab was staring at him.

  ‘I think a pool’s a great idea,’ Talia announced, and took another long draw on her smouldering inhalable narcotic.

  ‘You’re a prisoner,’ Scab said, a slight tone of irritation creeping into his voice.

  ‘Fine, then I’m not going to cooperate, either,’ Talia said and crossed her arms.

  ‘I can’t see a lack of cooperation being problematic during vivisection,’ Elodie said. Talia glared at the other woman. ‘Why not the pool?’ she asked Scab.

  ‘Because there’s no need for me to do it,’ Scab said. ‘And I don’t like the smell.’

  ‘The environmental systems will scrub it—’ Vic started.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how good they are, you can always smell it on a ship of this size.’

  ‘What about an immersion?’ Elodie asked.

  ‘I want a pool!’ Talia demanded. Vic caught the look Elodie gave her. He suspected the feline was trying hard not to slap the pre-Loss human.

  ‘I know the difference,’ Steve answered.

  ‘You know what immersion means, right?’ Vic asked.

  ‘I know the difference.’

  ‘From an expeditious perspective, it’s easier to give him what he wants,’ Elodie told Scab. ‘His cooperation will make what I have to do easier.’ Steve laughed at that.

  ‘I thought cats didn’t like water,’ Talia said waspishly. Elodie ignored her.

  ‘I don’t care about his cooperation or making your job easier. Those factors are both irrelevant as long as I get what I want,’ Scab told the feline.

  Talia laughed. ‘You sound like a child,’ the pre-Loss human told him. Scab glanced over at her, now openly irritated, and Vic started to fear for her. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him and he just shook his head, hoping she’d take the hint.

  ‘Okay, let me put it this way.’ Elodie sounded like she was reaching the limits of her patience as well. ‘You are more likely to get what you want if you use your godlike power over all of us and allow this magnanimous concession.’

  Scab gave this some thought. ‘Agreed, but I never want to have another conversation like this again. They’re … difficult.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Steve said.

  Scab’s tumbler pistol was suddenly in his hand. With someone other than Scab, Vic would have taken the gesture to be somewhat melodramatic. From Scab, Vic was pretty sure it was just a coping mechanism to get him through the next few difficult moments.

  ‘That looks like release to me,’ Steve said, nodding at the anachronistic revolver. Scab looked confused until he glanced down. He appeared to be genuinely surprised to find that he was holding the tumbler pistol. ‘I want a suicide solution.’

  Elodie sighed.

  ‘Obviously. Not.’ Scab took his time enunciating the words carefully.

  ‘You’re not going to like any of the things I’ll be doing to you. You’re going to want to die a lot,’ Elodie told him.

  ‘It’s not for you. It’s for when the Church finds you, or an Elite comes knocking on the hull. This is non-negotiable.’

  ‘This isn’t a negotiation!’ Scab suddenly shouted. Elodie looked up sharply. Talia let out a little scream. Vic emitted terror-signifying pheromones. He had never heard Scab shout before. Scab stalked out of the lounge. Vic was pretty sure it was so he wouldn’t kill everyone in it.

  Steve turned to Elodie. ‘We’ll come up with some compromise,’ she told the dolphin.

  ‘Yes, Scab appears to be all about the compromise,’ Steve replied caustically. ‘The prisoners wearing other people’s faces?’

  ‘Nothing to do with us,’ Elodie told him.

  ‘An imprisoned street sect?’ Vic asked.

  ‘That many? In the same place? Bit of a coincidence. I think it was a meat-hack. I think their core personalities were corrupted when they reasserted. Any idea who would do that?’ Steve asked a series of blank expressions. ‘Do you know what the Hungry Nothingness is?’ The expressions remained blank.

  ‘The ship,’ Talia started. ‘It was afraid of something. It was alone because its family had caught madness like a disease.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Elodie demanded. Talia lapsed into sulky silence.

  ‘Talia?’ Vic coaxed gently.

  ‘I don’t know! All right? It … I … we didn’t think like I do now, okay?’

  Vic just nodded. Elodie glanced over at Vic; the feline looked worried. He suspected it had more to do with Scab than the meat-hack on Suburbia.

  Nobody saw Scab for two days. They couldn’t even detect his whereabouts on the ship. They had no idea where they were going as he’d locked everyone out of the navigation systems. All they knew was that they were in Red Space somewhere, though they appeared to be quite a distance from the Church beacons. This was making everyone nervous. Vic theorised that Scab was taking time to calm himself down. He suspected that Scab had sunk into the Basilisk II’s superstructure, feeding himself drugs and living in horrible immersions.

  Then Scab returned, apparently back to his old self. He did not provide an explanation for his disappearance – not that any of them had expected one.

  The lounge disappeared, to be replaced by some deckchairs and sunloungers around a large, deep and very empty swimming pool. They hadn’t dropped back into Real Space to mine matter to fill it yet. Scab’s early reconfiguration felt a little like petty spite.

  Talia was sitting on the carpeted corridor outside Scab’s room, cross-legged on a blanket she’d had assembled. She was smoking a mentholated cigarette. It didn’t matter how many times she’d tried to explain the concept of a mentholated cigarette to the ship, they still didn’t taste right. She’d been there for some time. The white carpet should have shown the evidence of this in stubbed-out cigarettes, but the carpet kept on eating them. Finally Scab walked by.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, looking up at him, her eyes wide, only a little water in them. ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘About what?’ he asked, genuinely confused. Talia wasn’t sure what to say next. He turned to leave, but she grabbed his trouser leg. Suddenly he was standing several steps away, relaxing into a more normal pose, and she no longer had hold of anything. Talia had barely seen him move.

  ‘I mean, we slept together,’ she told him, her voice sounding small. He shook his head, looking for relevance. ‘That means nothing?’

  ‘It’s something I’ve done, I suppose. Why are you crying?’

  ‘I’m not,’ she snapped, wiping away tears. Scab turned to leave. ‘Wait!’ Scab stopped and turned back. ‘Look, I want to do something.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I mean other than just be a prisoner.’

  ‘You are a prisoner.’

  ‘The things in your head.’

  ‘Neunonics.’

  ‘Yes. I want them. I want to be improved, to have … augments.’

  Scab looked at her for a moment, as if he was studying her anew. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ he said. She looked defiant for a moment, but her resolve soon crumbled and she looked down. ‘It could affect whatever’s inside you. I can’t take the risk. If you want to know things, learn skills, then you’ll have to do it the hard way.’

  ‘Like you did?’ she spat. There was a certain assumption on her part that he was little more than a technological horror.

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

  ‘I want to be like you and El—’ Talia started. Scab’s hand shot out and grabbed her around the neck. Squeezing the air out of her, he picked her up and dangled her above the carpeted floor. Stared into her panicked eyes as she clawed at him and fought for breath. He watc
hed her with dead eyes. She felt herself starting to lose consciousness. Then he let go and she collapsed into a sobbing, gasping heap on the floor. Scab walked into his room.

  ‘Well, that was beyond pathetic,’ a voice said from further down the corridor. Talia’s head jerked up at the sound of the voice to see Elodie move out of the shadows. Talia wasn’t sure how she did it but Elodie always appeared to be advancing out of shadow. ‘Looking for short cuts?’

  ‘Y … you … you use them,’ Talia managed between the sobs and gasping for breath.

  ‘To keep up with the competition. But neunonics and augments will only get you so far. My skills are hard earned, and you’re too soft to learn them.’

  ‘Would you—’

  ‘No,’ Elodie said, laughing.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t even like you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Elodie knelt down by Talia and reached out to wipe one of the human girl’s tears away. Then she tasted it.

  ‘You annoy me because you’re weak. Tell me, why are you crying? You’ve been choked and beaten by lovers before, right? Are you angry because you didn’t get what you want, or because your violent bastard of an ex-lover isn’t interested in you any more?’ Talia glared at the feline woman. ‘Do you know why he fucked you?’ she asked, rhetorically. ‘Because he collects experiences in a desperate attempt to feel something.’

  ‘What do you do for him, then?’ Talia demanded angrily.

  ‘Why would I tell you that?’ she asked. Talia spat in her face. Elodie glared at her, genuinely surprised that Talia had the gall to do something like that. Her fingernails grew into claws. ‘Do you know how easy it would be for me to kill you right now?’ she asked, her tone dangerous.