Evolution Z

by Everist J Miller

  "I see," the man said. "A prototype. That is very interesting, my friend."

  Cynthia took a deep breath, then composed herself. "Now you see why we can't give you the specifications. Our terms don't cover prototypes."

  "They also don't cover experimenting on your customers," the man retorted. "Maybe I will call the police after all."

  There was an awkward pause in the conversation. Marcia shuddered at the thought of being summarily executed. She had heard that sometimes they shot conspirators on the spot. But not them, she thought. They would torture them for information about the prototype headset and the experiments.

  "Ok," Cynthia said. "Call the police." She paused. "You will be implicated and you will die too."

  "There's no evidence to implicate me, my friend," the man chuckled.

  "Well you have the headset and I'm assuming the volunteer it's attached to. That's evidence enough," Cynthia said.

  "Very good, my friend. What do you suggest we do?"

  "We meet up," Cynthia said, "and you return our prototype."

  Marcia gasped. Meet up? With that maniac? He sounded like a serial killer, cold and unfeeling. She wanted to scream. Cynthia was digging a deeper hole for all of them. Who gave her the right?

  "I know you have others," the man said in a low voice.

  Cynthia hit the mute button. "Does he?" She barked at Ken. He shrugged. "Answer the fucking question!" Cynthia shouted. There was a deep tension in the room as if precious seconds were counting down.

  "I didn't deal with him," Ken squealed. "I always spoke with Mike Beeson."

  "Don't be stupid," Cynthia said. "He can only know what your contact knows - this Mike. Did Mike know?"

  "I…," Ken stuttered. "I may have mentioned it. I mean… It was a sales pitch. I-"

  Cynthia waived for him to be quiet. Her eyes were vacant for a moment. She took a deep breath. She pressed the un-mute button. She was gentler with it this time. "How about we meet up with you? We'll bring another prototype with us. We can use it to fix yours."

  Marcia gasped. She would not be part of this. The man was clearly dangerous, and she needed to find Andrew. It was enough.

  "We will bring one of our technicians with us," Cynthia continued. She glanced at Marcia. "Our technician will operate the volunteer you have with one of our HUDs."

  "Good, my friend," the man said. "I need someone to do that for me."

  Not me, Marcia thought. A bolt of panic struck her. She ran to the entrance. As she approached it, an arm heavy as lead wrapped around her waist. She resisted, straining to maintain her momentum. Without warning, her feet were off the ground and she swayed above it like a pendulum. "Let go!" She screamed. A hand cupped her mouth.

  She was carried out of the room.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  R47 LAY MOTIONLESS in console mode, his hands and feet bound and linked, forcing him into a foetal position. He had missed his so-called opportunity to escape because the ability to exact violence was still missing from his repertoire. He craved to inflict pain and torture on Doug, the kids - on anyone, maybe even for sexual pleasure. So much was the strength of the desire.

  Queenie had ordered a couple of beefcakes to carry him by the shoulders and feet to an unknown destination.

  It was no use trying to resist - he couldn't - so he listened into their conversations while he thought about what to do.

  "He'll be there," Queenie said to Sharpie. They were strolling together at the front of the pack. R47 tried to get a glimpse of their faces as he bobbed up and down in the hands of the gorillas.

  "He'd better have some food," Sharpie said. "He's held out on us before."

  Who were they talking about? R47 asked himself. He wanted to be violent. To kill them all. Was it instinct? Had he gone mad? Was it characteristic of all volunteers? At least in console mode he could feel aggression as opposed to just thinking it. Maybe it was just in his mind. He didn't know whether he should feel anything.

  Shock hit him. Is this real? he thought. Is anything real? After becoming a volunteer he couldn't be sure. As if on queue, a mirage appeared to blur the world around him. It was a heat haze caused by an approaching vehicle, he realised. A car here? In the Shit Belt?

  "I told ya he would come," Queenie said to Sharpie. R47 discerned a nervous excitement in her voice.

  R47's captors dropped him to the ground. He landed half sideways facing the two leaders. They could have treated him in a gentler way. Then again, he could take his time killing them to gorge on each layer of their excruciating pain. Their screams and groans would amplify his pleasure as would their panic and begging. Volunteers of the past would eat flesh with torture being a mere consequence. R47 was hungry but he could slow it down. He had willpower and choice.

  The group stopped walking.

  "Let's hope he's interested in our unusual offering," said Sharpie.

  Offering? R47 asked himself. What offering?

  "It's gotta be worth something," Queenie said. She glanced at R47 with a cheerful grin. Now he knew what the offering was. It was him. Still, an offering? Like a sacrifice to some god?

  "Yeah, but it's not like a person," Sharpie said pointing to R47.

  "So?" Queenie asked "Maybe he's worth more.".

  "Volunteers can get you into a lot of trouble," Sharpie said.

  Queenie put her index finger to her lips. There were laboured breathing noises approaching them. The sounds of a heavy unfit individual. He or she (R47 suspected a man) approached from behind R47, his glazed over eyes unable to see who it was.

  There was an amused, breathless laugh. Something familiar about it.

  "You have done well, my friend," a voice said. R47 would have felt a chill if he had experienced any sensation. The voice was familiar. It was Doug. I'm finished, R47 thought.

  "I came here to ask if you had seen anything unusual," Doug said, "but you have done better than that. You have found exactly what I was looking for."

  "Then we'll get paid-" Queenie began.

  Doug interrupted. "Let me look at him first," he said. R47 heard the heavy breathing approach him.

  R47 felt a slight movement of air as a leg stepped over him and then another. Doug was now in plain sight. Sweat swam down from Doug's head into R47's face. It repulsed R47 but he couldn't wipe it away.

  "Wait a minute," Doug said. "How did you do this?"

  "Do what?" Queenie asked.

  "I will give you one chance," Doug said. "If you don't tell me the truth, you will get no food this time." After a pause, he said, "And I might not come to you ever again." He grinned. "There are plenty of desperate kids out here," he continued, moving his eyes to the horizon. "Now, my friend," Doug said to Queenie, "How did you put him into console mode?"

  Doug wasn't a complete oaf. He wasn't as skilled as R47 in engineering, and he was damned lazy when it came to servicing volunteers, but R47 recalled that Doug had been trained to service them. Great. Now R47 was lying exposed in console mode and unable to defend himself.

  Queenie frowned. There was silence for a moment.

  "We don't know what that is," Sharpie said. Queenie nodded.

  "So you have a voice," Doug said to Sharpie. "Doesn't she speak for all of you anymore?"

  Queenie frowned at Sharpie, but she remained silent.

  "You have exactly one minute to answer, my friend," Doug said to Queenie.

  Turning back to Doug, Queenie said, "I dunno what con-sol mo-de is." But as if clued enough to know why he asked she said, "If you mean, why is he still, he did that by himself."

  "Where is your HUD?" Doug asked.

  "H-U-D?" Queenie repeated.

  Doug eyed her, searching for weakness. He knelt down and turned to stare into R47's eyes. "You're not so clever after all," Doug said to him. "You've made yourself helpless, my friend." Then he added, speaking to the desolate surrounds, ''Maybe I don't need their help after all."

  R47 felt like a checked King in a chess game. A piece that was easily rendered im
mobile. He feared falling into Doug's custody more than anything. As Ray, privileged enough to have a television of sorts, he had watched movies in which a detained prisoner was knocked unconscious and then awoke with hands and feet bound - completely vulnerable and subsequently tortured. He was terrified of ever falling prey to the same circumstances - being rendered naked and vulnerable, hands and feet unable to protect him.

  Doug was more than capable of torture. He would likely get off on it. What could R47 do?

  Doug walked out of sight. R47 heard the familiar sound of a car door opening a few moments later. He heard it close after a minute or two. Breathless sounds approached again. Doug crept into R47's vision. This time he was wearing his hard-hat with a built in HUD.

  "Yes, my friend," Doug said. "You are definitely in console mode. That makes things easier. Right, my friend? Good." He sniggered.

  Now's the time to act, R47 realised. The plan had been building in his mind to short out and burn the black box chip in the physical world. He was at one with the headset. He could feel the electrical currents within and around it. He could create and direct an electric charge using capacitors in the headset and shoot it at the black box in his headset.

  He couldn't break the encryption in the black box chip, but he could sense its surrounds; every vein that fed it. He concentrated, using the code from his brain to the software in the headset, travelling to registers, then to transistors, and to electrons. The charge was building. Once created, he could just push it in the right direction.

  "So what do we get?" Queenie asked Doug.

  "I'm checking his health," Doug said, "to see what he's worth."

  R47 observed Doug staring at him in the HUD. Don't let him see what I'm doing, R47 pleaded to an unknown entity. But how could Doug know? The HUD wasn't that sensitive. Not enough to discern changes in current or voltage. But R47 had never tested it. Not in his former life as a technician. He knew he had to act quickly.

  Then the spotlight on him went out. Doug had turned off the HUD, but he was still acting as if it was on.

  "He is not in good condition," Doug said to Queenie, moving his head from side to side and concentrating as if squeezing vision through a monocle. "Look at the damage here", Doug said. "And there," he pointed at R47's torso.

  "I don't see it," Queenie said.

  "You don't have a HUD," Doug snapped, tapping his hard-hat with his hand. His focus remained on R47.

  "What's it worth?" Queenie asked. "What'll you give us for it?"

  "I've got a bag of rice," Doug said.

  "Meat," Queenie said.

  Doug chuckled, "He's got a better chance of getting meat than you have, my friend," he said pointing at R47.

  "Then he stays with us," Queenie said. "I mean it stays with us," she corrected, defiance in her voice.

  Queenie must have sensed R47's worth to Doug. She was rough around the edges but smart. R47 did not underestimate her. She would drive a hard bargain, and that suited him. He needed time to release himself to be free to exact violence on Doug and maybe on all of humanity. It felt right that he should rip them apart and bathe in their senseless pain. So right that it scared him. Doug was a special case. He yearned to hear Doug scream.

  "Little Mary," Doug said. "What are you going to do, my friend?"

  Queenie looked at him. She furrowed her brow and squinted. She didn't seem to understand what Doug meant.

  "You see," Doug said. "You need to be ready to follow through with any threat that you make to me."

  "He's ours," Queenie said.

  "Nothing is yours," Doug said with a wave of his hand. "You are no one. You are nowhere. No one cares about you. You live," he pointed to the dust, "in the Shit Belt. To humanity, you don't exist. You are lucky that I barter with you at all. You need me," he said. After a pause, he repeated, "You need me, my friend. I feed you."

  "But we have something you want," Queenie said. The simplicity of her response emanated from the naivety of a child. After all, it was no answer to the challenge that she had no rights, no existence. R47 was impressed. When he was human, he had never stood up to Doug.

  "You don't understand," Doug said in a low voice. "You have nothing, my little friend. He doesn't belong to you. I can take him if I want."

  Queenie dipped her head to signal to the others, and they moved forward and congregate behind her.

  Doug sniggered. "Like I said, my friend," he said to Queenie. "You had better be prepared to follow through with your threats."

  Doug turned his head to R47. R47 noticed Doug's HUD turn on without warning. He was at once pulsated with signals to exit console mode. To stand up and run to Doug's car. He resisted. He was too close to generating the electric charge he needed, and it was easy to redirect the signals from the HUD in console mode, not being distracted by any black box interference.

  Doug clenched his fists in frustration.

  "I tell you what," Queenie said to Doug. "You give me that thing," she said pointing at the HUD, "and," then pointing to R47, "show me what's wrong with it. I want to see for myself."

  "You will not understand, my friend," Doug said. "You will not know what to look for."

  "Then show me," Queenie said.

  Doug turned to Queenie and said, "If I show you, my friend, then you will take the rice?"

  R47 was caught between concentrating on generating the charge and perplexing over Doug's intention. He was making up a story about R47's flaws. The truth was that R47 was in good condition. There was nothing wrong with him. How could Doug convince Queenie otherwise and what could he possibly show her?

  How could the HUD convince her to back down from her bargaining position? Why would she back down? From what R47 could glean, he was the most valuable thing they had ever offered Doug.

  The behaviour of both was confusing. Each must have had a plan to avoid a direct confrontation. It was likely that Queenie knew Doug was lying and thought she could prove it. But what was Doug up to?

  ###

  R47, still lying motionless, linked in with Doug's HUD. He observed Doug scatter many false positives in the HUD's view showing damage at various locations around R47's body. Falsifying damage had always been for training. Doug highlighted the fabricated flaws with alarm-red flashing lights that should have only been used after an apprentice had completed a simulation. Any red light amounted to failure.

  Despite his bluster, even the bully Doug didn't want to get into a physical fight with the kids, R47 thought. There were too many of them. He was going to trick them instead. R47 had wished that Doug would fail; that he, R47, could stay with the brats, break the black box and murder them. All of them. He could see now that Doug was on the path to manufacturing success. How he wished he could rip the flesh off that bastard, chunk by oozing chunk. It would get him off if that were still possible.

  Doug offered his hard-hat to the Queen. She grabbed it with an impish grin and placed it on her head. It sank below her ears and she turned her head from side to side, disoriented. Sharpie rearranged it at an angle so that her eyes were visible, the back of her head not. On her, it looked like a fireman's hat. She shook him off. "I can do it myself," she snapped.

  All of a sudden she stepped back and swirled as if on the cusp of fainting. R47 recalled his first encounter with a HUD and how he felt nauseated getting used to the three-dimensional image sitting as a gloss on the real world.

  "Wow," Queenie said, her voice wavering. "Colours. I see so many colours." She motioned to touch something invisible. R47 could see through her eyes. Now I'm getting to know you, he said to himself. He wondered whether he could speak to her through the HUD; link up with her mind. But he deferred. Better not get found out, he cautioned.

  "Don't," Doug said to her. "Don't press anything. Just look, my friend. Observe the damage so that we can complete our transaction. I have other things I need to do."

  Their voices faded into the background. R47 felt a spark he hoped would give birth to an electric charge that he could fire
at the black box chip. Almost there.

  He felt a sudden warmth of excitement. Soon I get to do whatever I want. First, I'll slaughter the kids. I'll savour Doug; take it slow with him. Rip out every finger nail, every toe nail by the roots. Then fun-

  Wait. R47 registered that Queenie had touched something. "Oops," she said.

  There was an alert. A stealthy program slithered its way into R47's headset. He struggled to resist. How could she have done that? A ridiculous coincidence.

  The program queried his hack to build an electric charge. Shit. He had to get it done in haste to avoid his intentions being discovered. He ramped it up, hoping to reach a point of no return.

  The program spoke to him like an echo in his head. "Halt," it said. That made R47 determined to hurry with his plan. As if sensing his defiance the invading program nudged him. An image flashed in front of him. It was like he, not the Queen, was wearing the HUD. Was he dreaming?

  He saw a black pit where his face had previously existed as if it had imploded.

  I don't know how she's doing it, R47 said to himself, but that bitch is trying to stop me. He knew that it was impossible; that Queenie had no technical knowledge, but he couldn't shake his suspicion. He was so close to succeeding, he had become paranoid almost to the point of psychosis.

  He strained. It was like flicking a cigarette lighter almost out of fuel. There was a spark, but the charge refused to ignite.

  The intruder slapped him. What? He felt a sting on his cheek but that was impossible. It was only a computer program. The headset, he realised, could inflict pain.

  It spoke to him. "Stop," it said. "Continuing is fatal." He pushed on stubbornly. The program screamed at him. It insisted that if an electric charge reached the black box, R47 would die.

  No, he said to himself. You can't stop me. He felt a sudden euphoria on the birth of a stream of electrons. It was the point of no return. Nothing could stop him. The charge had ignited.

  He felt the diagnostic program take its final gasps. "It's too late," it said. "We're both going to die".