Battlestar Suburbia

by Chris McCrudden

  ‘And what’s this going to achieve?’ he asked.

  He then rounded on Pam. ‘You know what Janice wanted as well as I do. She wanted Kelly out of the way and safe.’

  Pam dimmed her headlights. ‘She did, but that was before we knew how big all this was going to get. Now come on, we need to get out of here. The fuzz’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘We need to slow them down,’ said Darren.

  ‘That was never part of the plan,’ snapped Kelly. ‘Down there,’ she said, pointing into a narrow alley that led out of the Ama Zone.

  Darren paused. Part of him wanted to run, but after this the police would throw everything they had at hunting them down. No stereotypical fat Segway cops this time. They’d send in the helicopters, the armoured cars, the submarines, their best drones. There was no way they could outrun them. But they might, as today’s evidence suggested, be able to outwit them.

  Drones, he thought. He looked at the wreckage around him. The shattered components, the prone machines and the shops full of luscious, unguarded consumer goods.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, running back to where they’d originally entered the Ama Zone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Kelly. ‘We don’t have time for this.’

  Darren squinted at the electrified net that fenced the district off from its neighbours.

  ‘The radio’s saying they’re ninety seconds from the scene,’ said Pam. ‘Darren!’

  Darren held one finger in the air and made a sound at the back of his throat like he was gargling tar. His eyes rolled, and he hoiked a huge spitball through the air to land on the electrified mesh. His aim was still perfect. Those years in the playground had not been wasted.

  He listened for the sizzling. There was none. Good. Just as he thought, the shock had deactivated the net with the rest of the street.

  Darren jumped and pulled the net down after him. It tied him into a tangle as it fell, so for the next few seconds he resembled a ball of Christmas lights out for a jog. In the gloom in front of him, he heard the hum and chitter of drones. He was definitely ready to leave now.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he said, as he passed both Kelly and Pam on his way into the alley.

  The sound from the other side of the downed netting intensified, as thousands of drones realised someone had just declared the biggest trolley dash in history. For an agonising moment they sat there, where the net had been, a wall of flickering LEDs and corroded metal, unwilling or unable to believe their luck.

  Then they took the bait.

  As Darren ran through the alleyways that threaded deep into Singulopolis he couldn’t hear his feet, nor those of Kelly and Pam as they followed. Instead the air was full of that first bite of cereal in the morning, except much louder. It was the crunch of a hundred thousand drones forcing their way up the supply chain, one stolen part at a time.

  He shivered, and kept on running.

  Chapter 20

  Darren knew they were in a different district when the sound of robot death was replaced by that of Angry Birds chirping in the distance. It was a pleasant sound, lilting and musical, until you stopped to listen to the words.

  ‘What-are-you-saying-bytch-I’m-a-nice-guy-you-don’t-deserve-me-I-hope-you-get-raped.’

  They were in the darkest and dumbest of all Singulopolis’s neighbourhoods: Gamergate.

  It was very dark there, street lamps being generally discouraged. The only source of illumination was discreet LED strips announcing this building was an amusement arcade and that a casino. Every third or fourth building would be unlit, but this didn’t mean it was empty. Their signs were made of ‘black light’, invisible to all but machines whose vision operated in the highest parts of the ultraviolet spectrum. And they declared to interested observers that these were high-end fondle parlours: places where high-rolling machines could get themselves the kind of personal attention only lots of money could buy.

  Before she’d shown her hand as an engineer of considerable skill, Darren had assumed this was Kelly’s natural habitat. Her whole persona – the fibre-optic-fur coat, the outrageous confidence – made you believe she was one of those humans who handled touchscreens all day and kept her mouth shut at night. Maybe she had been too, once upon a time. She seemed familiar with the seediest parts of town. But Kelly, Darren knew by now, thrived on letting other people’s assumptions lead them in the wrong direction.

  She turned into a side street so dark that Darren felt like something had sucked his eyes out of his face. He groped along damp concrete until Pam, who was ahead of him, turned up her lamp-eyes, casting the silhouette of a horned devil in the process. Doubt crept into Darren. Who was this Pam anyway? Some thing they’d magicked up from a dumb circuit board who claimed to be on their side, but how stupid did a human have to be to trust a robot?

  His fingers brushed the drone in his pocket, which he suddenly wished offered a more robust form of protection. What could a sky-rat do, other than maybe give his enemies a nasty virus?

  He caught up with Kelly and Pam outside a fire door at the end of the alley. Kelly put her ear on it and knocked gently.

  ‘It’s locked from the inside,’ she whispered.

  ‘Can you break in?’ asked Darren.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Kelly. ‘These places make banks look free and easy.’

  ‘Can we get in round the front?’ said Pam.

  Kelly shook her head. ‘They keep face scans of the police wanted list behind the front desk. Security would melt us both down for head cheese in a heartbeat.’

  ‘But not me,’ said Pam. She straightened up and strode back on to the street. Darren and Kelly followed at a distance, watching as she paused at the corner to readjust her posture again. It was the same stride she’d used to sashay through the Ama Zone. She ditched her good-natured slouch, raised her handle-horns and activated the kick stands embedded in both heels to improvise a pair of machine stilettoes. A quick burst of her engine later, she barged in through the fondle parlour’s front door in a cloud of expensive exhaust fumes.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said, ‘I wonder if you can help me.’

  Darren and Kelly hid behind the door and watched Pam try her rich-bytch act out on the security guard, who had the criminal-in-drag look of a machine downplaying its menace. That ice-cream-maker dome was fooling no one, thought Darren: underneath it were the unmistakable workings of a gun.

  ‘You see,’ added Pam, leaning over the desk, ‘it’s a little embarrassing. I think my husband is in there.’

  The gun clicked, warning Pam it was loaded. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give out any details of our clients, ma’am.’

  ‘That’s alright,’ said Pam, ‘I already know all the sordid details.’ Her eye-beams narrowed. ‘I mean, it’s pretty clear he’s in there getting fingered.’

  ‘This is a private leisure facility for executive business machines,’ answered the guard flatly. ‘Our staff are trained to the highest levels of customer care.’

  ‘They’re a bunch of tarts,’ snarled Pam, ‘and my husband’s in there spending good maintenance money on them. Now let me through.’

  ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave, madam.’

  ‘Or what?’

  The guard unfolded from its chair. As Darren had suspected, the ice-cream-maker carapace hid a full magazine of ammunition.

  ‘You can’t shoot me. My husband would be furious,’ said Pam.

  ‘He doesn’t care. He’s up there having himself some fun.’

  She flashed her headlights in triumph. ‘So he is in there. I knew it. I demand you let me through.’

  Pam tried to barge the barriers into the parlour. Her new body had a mean turn of speed, but the guard’s reflexes were battle-hardened. It grabbed her by the shoulder, whereupon she kicked her scorned-wife act into fifth gear.

  ‘How dare you lay hands on me,’ she said. ‘My husband’s an important machine.’

  ‘I ain’t got no time for executive toys,’ replied th
e guard. It kept a firm grip on Pam and started to walk her back to the door.

  But she had one trick left in her handbag. She made to wriggle out of the guard’s grip. It reacted by lifting Pam clear into the air by her arms. But that still left Pam in an ideal position to plant her kickstand in her captor’s trigger.

  It fired a slug straight into the wall. The kickback threw Pam to the other side of the reception desk. The guard, smoking with fury, launched himself at Pam, who shielded her face theatrically, saying, ‘I just needed to know.’ That stopped it just long enough for her to feel along the back wall for the fire alarm, and smash it.

  A siren rang out, and the sealed door that separated the parlour from reception burst open. Out poured expensive machines in various states of disassembly; and humans wearing skimpy underwear and carrying bottles of WD40.

  Pam got to her feet and mouthed ‘go’ and Kelly dragged Darren back round to the now-open fire escape. The corridor – there seemed to have been a lot of narrow spaces in Darren’s life lately – was softly lit and smelled of posh lubricant. Emergency lights and the fire alarm notwithstanding, it was clearly an environment devoted to the kind of extreme relaxation that only rich inorganisms who have never done a proper day’s work in their lives can enjoy. Darren squinted into a room, bare apart from a product-demonstration table large enough for three or four full-size machines to stretch out on, side by side.

  ‘That’s where they do the group-tests,’ whispered Kelly. ‘They lie down on there and a couple of humans compare their spec sheets and recommended retail prices.’

  Darren may have been a fugitive, but this blatant inversion of human–machine power structures was difficult to stomach. He twisted his face.

  ‘I know. Kinky buggers. You should see the things they make you do with a power lead. Along here, I think.’

  They turned a corner into another plush, anonymous corridor, lined with four doors and the maintenance equipment abandoned when the fire alarm went off. Three of the doors led to open, empty rooms, while the fourth was shut with a ‘do not disturb’ sign flashing above it. Kelly pressed a finger to her lips and picked up a brush left leaning by the wall.

  ‘Is there anyone in there?’ she said in her best, unobtrusive human voice (the fire alarm had stopped by now, which meant they could stop shouting over the noise of it). ‘Only we’ve orders to evacuate.’

  The door swung open, revealing a bright, spacious interior decked out as a photography studio. Inside, a camera – a pricey-looking but self-consciously retro model with prominent, thick-rimmed lenses – framed the scene in front of him with his hands, a beret draped artfully over his settings dial. Just looking at him made Darren’s fists itch.

  The camera was concentrating on a pair of women, clad in cut-down overalls, posing in the far corner of the studio. Their eyes were obscured behind dark magnifying lenses, and their bodies held impossibly balletic poses thanks to the metal-wire exoskeletons they were strapped into.

  ‘Sensational, girls!’ said the camera as he snapped. ‘Now just one more for the stills and then we can get started…’ He grinned, and Darren looked on in horror as a tiny tripod screw poked its way out of the camera at what on a human would be crotch height. ‘…on the machine-on-girl action.’

  Kelly elbowed her way past Darren, her eye fixed on the left-most woman. Behind the exoskeleton she was slim and pale with red hair. ‘Paula?’ she called.

  The redhead flipped round in surprise, breaking gaze with the camera lens. He retracted his tripod and turned to Kelly, flashlight winking in annoyance.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said.

  Kelly, caught by surprise, raised her broom to strike, but Darren got in quicker.

  ‘Fire warden, sir,’ he called from the door. ‘Haven’t you heard the alarm? We’re evacuating the building.’

  The camera panned round, shutters narrowing. ‘Where’s your badge?’

  Darren dropped his voice and drew closer to the camera. ‘I don’t wish to alarm you, sir, but there’s been an electrical fire downstairs. We’ve already lost an MP3 player. I must insist you leave.’

  ‘But…’ the camera gestured at his models, ‘it’s taken me ages to get them into that pose.’

  Kelly shooed the camera back towards the door with her brush. ‘Fat lot of good that will do you with a melted light meter.’

  ‘Please, sir,’ said Darren.

  ‘Well, if I must. But I insist on getting your details first.’

  As his shutter blades converged, it was Kelly’s turn to react. She pulled the beret down over the camera’s face like a pretentious lens cap and spun him round by the shoulders. Next, she pressed the service flap on his back, which opened with the well-oiled ease of a machine that spent most of its leisure time in whorehouses. One touch of his power button, and the camera fell comatose to the floor.

  At this, the girl on the right – the one who was not Paula – called out: ‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing? I’ve got an hour left on the clock with him.’

  ‘Give it a rest,’ winced Paula on the left, ‘I’m surprised you can still feel your legs when they’re splayed like that.’

  ‘Sleazy little so-and-so, wasn’t he?’ said Kelly to the room in general. ‘What was he planning to do with that screw?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Paula. She reached round her back with what little movement she had left in her free hand and undid a catch. Her legs fell back into their natural positions and she sighed in relief. ‘He gets us to screw him into a tripod over there and we take a few selfies. He’s harmless, really. I think his ancestors must have been fashion photographers and he misses the human contact.’

  ‘He pays well, too,’ said the other woman, who had undone her own exoskeleton and was easing out a cramp in her calf muscles. She was dark-haired, about eighteen, making her younger than Paula. Darren tried his best not to stare at how little she was wearing and look her in the face. She was heavily made-up, the cosmetics valiantly trying to conceal her residual glumness.

  ‘So, is there really a fire or are you just having us on?’ she asked.

  Paula looked at Kelly knowingly. ‘I think we’re okay,’ she said, ‘but give yourself an hour off, Lou-Lou.’

  ‘I’d rather have had the money, thanks,’ said Lou-Lou. She noticed Darren and scowled. ‘I didn’t know we had a busboy. Piss off while I get changed, will you? Don’t look at what you can’t afford.’

  Kelly motioned for Darren to join her and Paula. Lou-Lou, now abandoned as the centre of attention, shrugged and put on a terry-towelling boiler suit from a peg in the corner of the room.

  Up close, Paula’s skin was covered in fine red lines where the exoskeleton had cut into her skin. She gave Kelly a quick squeeze on her shoulder and Darren a look that said ‘if this is your new boyfriend, you’ve lowered your standards’. ‘Now,’ she said, low enough for Lou-Lou not to overhear, ‘will you tell me what the hell you’re doing here? I thought you were on the run.’

  ‘I am.’

  Darren glowered at Kelly.

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t think you can hide out here,’ said Paula, ‘we get so many senior police cars in here that most nights it’s busier than their HQ.’

  ‘Really?’ said Darren.

  ‘Yes, they’re violent buggers. Like nothing better than driving round the stunt-track at 300 mph and then inflating their airbags in your face.’

  ‘I was hoping you could help us out with some information,’ said Kelly. ‘Is there anywhere we could go?’

  ‘There’s the dressing room back along the corridor.’

  ‘Will… she be there?’ asked Kelly, gesturing at Lou-Lou.

  ‘She’s the intern, so she goes where I damn well tell her.’ Paula raised her voice. ‘Lou-Lou, love, why don’t you nip along the corridor and help Maggie change that Bugatti’s oil? It’s got a gippy tripod under the bonnet and she could do with a second pair of hands.’

  Lou-Lou
rolled her eyes. ‘But this overall’s clean on. Can’t I switch him back on and finish the shoot?’ She started towards the prone camera. ‘Come on, I’ve done him before – I promise I won’t break his zoom like last time.’

  Lou-Lou was enthusiastic, but Paula was quicker on the uptake. She grabbed her intern by the straps of her overall and span her towards the door. ‘You’ve had quite enough of selfies for today, my girl. Now piss off, or I’ll have you on duty putting butter knives in the toasters.’

  The last vestige of good nature drained from Lou-Lou’s face. She glared at Darren and Kelly and left.

  ‘Well, she’s ambitious, I’ll give her that,’ said Paula.

  ‘What’s going to happen when she finds out it’s deserted out there?’ asked Darren, who felt like he wasn’t contributing enough to the conversation.

  ‘She’ll find some mischief to occupy herself with. Now then,’ said Paula, pointing at the camera on the floor, ‘will someone help me get him up?’

  Darren took one end of the blacked-out camera and Paula the other. Together they carried him to the tripod. Fashioned from black polycarbon and chrome, it was a piece of equipment that had as much to do with professional photography as a silk negligee has to getting a good night’s sleep. Paula put on a latex glove concealed in her bra and teased out the camera’s now limp tripod screw, rolling it between her fingers a few times to force the thread out.

  ‘Righto,’ she said and, taking their respective ends again, Darren and Paula lifted the camera into the tripod and spun him round until he was firmly screwed into the right hole. When Darren and Kelly were out of the way again, Paula pressed his power switch.

  ‘Hello, honey,’ she whispered into his microphone, ‘you were having so much fun you blacked out.’

  ‘Did I?’ Still booting up, the camera’s voice came through faintly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Power surge, I think,’ said Paula, whose hand crept round the camera’s control panel to find the gallery function. She took advantage of his disorientation to flick through his last few photos and delete the one fuzzy picture he’d managed to take of Darren and Kelly.