Kelly squirmed free of her gag to shout: ‘Mum was right about you, Paula. You’re disgusting.’
Sonny nodded at one of the tazers, which spat a mouthful of blue current over Kelly and knocked her out again. Darren avoided another dose by closing his eyes.
‘This whole situation,’ continued Sonny. ‘Your sometime daughter, her boyfriend, this laboratory, those humans you so kindly procured for me – they exist in a place that I like to call parallel to the law.’ He gestured weakly to one of the tazers. ‘Which is why instead of the police I prefer to call on the services of Axxon here.’
‘Sir,’ interrupted Beattie, ‘this has gone on long enough. I insist that you follow me to the repair shop. The results of your diagnostic tests…’ He waved a sheaf of BlockPapers. ‘…they’re horrific.’
‘In a minute,’ said Sonny.
‘Leave it another minute and I might not be able to save you. Do you really want to end-of-life here? Do you want that on your warranty certificate?’
‘Give it a rest.’
He pinged at the defibrillator. ‘Professor Volta,’ he said, ‘are we doing this or what?’
Volta gave a high whine and wheeled over to Darren. He felt the noise more than he heard it, like a hot needle pushed into his eardrum. She pushed the hem of Darren’s T-shirt away and laid her hands on Darren’s bare skin. The whining intensified, then switched into a lower, throbbing register. Horrified, Darren realised he was listening to the sound of his pulse.
‘He’s ideal, I told you,’ said Paula. ‘Young, healthy, and no one will miss him.’
‘I will,’ said Kelly, rousing herself from unconsciousness by sheer force of will.
The tazer Axxon spat a bubble of blue light at Kelly. It caught her on the shin and her whole body convulsed.
‘You don’t count,’ said Sonny. Darren noticed that beads of liquid were pricking through his casing like sweat. One dropped to the floor and fizzed. This was one sick machine.
Volta wheeled over to Kelly, whose body was still shaking from the tazer’s kiss and froth collected in the corners of her mouth. The defibrillator waited for the worst of Kelly’s shaking to subside and repeated her pulse test. This time, however, the whining didn’t shift time signatures. Crikey, Darren thought, she’s just been multiple-shocked and it barely affected her heart rate. That was some impressive feat.
The thought wasn’t lost on Volta either. She turned to Sonny and flashed a green light.
Sonny answered with a broken emoji across his touchscreen and Paula’s face sagged with horror. She suddenly looked twenty years older.
‘No,’ she said to Sonny. ‘No. That wasn’t what we agreed.’
A gob of battery fluid dropped out of Sonny’s casing. He stumbled, and Beattie skidded over to support him.
‘I… don’t do… deals with… fleshies,’ he said. ‘Now can we get on with this?’
Paula pushed Volta out of the way to put herself between Kelly and the machines. ‘I gave you him,’ she said, pointing at Darren. ‘You said you would take him, once Kelly gave you what you needed.’
‘He’s no good,’ said Volta, switching to human-audible speech for the first time. Her voice was high and sibilant. ‘She’s better. And we don’t have any time left.’
Beattie broke off from checking Sonny’s vital signs to reply: ‘We don’t even know this is going to work. This is why we needed the prototypes. I don’t have enough data to know this will be successful.’
Another spurt of battery fluid coursed down Sonny’s leg and he lost his footing. Beattie caught him and he and one of the tazers lay him down on a flatbed. ‘I want a body,’ screamed Sonny. ‘And I want hers!’
‘Well, you can’t have it,’ snarled Paula.
Volta ended Paula’s stand with an electric shock and instructed Axxon to take her outside. Then she turned back to Kelly.
‘How do you know this is going to work?’ asked Beattie. ‘You’ve never done this before.’
Volta paused and looked at Sonny, whose LEDs had now all split into their red, green and blue constituents. ‘Haven’t I?’
‘The… doctor… has… my… full… confidence,’ said Sonny. ‘Give her whatever she needs.’
Beattie wheeled over to his rival. ‘I’m leading this project,’ he said, ‘not you. The procedure was mine. And it’s still not ready to be tested in the field. How many times have you used it?’
‘Twice.’
‘Did it work?’
Kelly let out a low moan. Volta shocked her again.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Well, what makes you think it’ll be different this time?’ pressed Beattie.
‘I don’t know. But I still have more practice at this than you have.’
Volta pushed Beattie aside and skidded towards Sonny. The flatbed was slick with battery fluid and his LEDs were winking off one by one. There couldn’t be much time left.
‘Are you ready, sir?’ she said.
‘Just get a fucking move on. I’m dying here.’
Volta flashed her green light in agreement. She produced a cable from her body cavity. There was a buzzing radio transmitter at one end and a long needle on the other.
She jabbed the needle into Sonny’s casing.
A final ooze of battery fluid collected around the hole, and a spark ran the length of the cable. The last of Sonny’s lights winked out and the transmitter tied to the cable plummeted to the floor.
Darren felt hope rush through him, like the first drink after a long day at work. ‘He’s dead,’ he said before he could stop himself. ‘Kelly? It’s okay. We’re safe.’
‘Oh, well done,’ flatlined Beattie. ‘What are we going to do now? He was our sponsor, you dummy. We’ll never get to finish the project now.’
Volta flicked a switch on the side of Beattie’s head. Its display went black.
‘Shut up, you old pain in the diodes,’ she said, then gave the transmitter a shake. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Come on.’
The LED on the transmitter sputtered into life: a weak, flickering signal, but a signal nonetheless. Volta responded with a high, satisfied whine. Darren’s stomach made for his feet. There was nothing he could do now but watch.
Volta placed the transmitter carefully on Beattie’s medication tray and he shook with mute annoyance at the indignity. Then she turned her attention to the cable connected to the transmitter. She removed the needle, spliced it in two and connected each wire to a crocodile clip before returning to Kelly.
She was unconscious, but breathing heavily. There were smuts on her face and sweat had gummed her fringe to her forehead. Yet, even tied to a wall and knocked out, there was something about Kelly’s expression – a kind of inscrutable defiance – that gave Darren hope that she could come through this.
This was lost on Volta, which, like all single-utility machines, fixated on the task in hand. To her, Kelly was a human of curiously untainted physiology. A life outside the boundaries of the human–machine compact had given her a number of biological advantages. Her lungs were uncompromised from overexposure to cleaning materials; there was little to no wear to the joints; and she demonstrated a high score for dextrousness. She was perfect, where another human would be merely ordinary.
Volta attached the crocodile clips to Kelly’s earrings and reset the radio transmitter, whose LED flickered madly.
Darren held his breath. He realised that if he wished this experiment to fail, he would also be willing Kelly’s death. If it failed, the procedure would kill her, and if it didn’t work one of the other machines would finish her off anyway. If it was a success, however, she’d be gone. But would she be all gone? Could a part of Kelly still lurk somewhere in the back of her own mind or would this horrible smartphone’s capacious ego be too big and bullish to share even his unconscious mind with someone else? If it failed, Kelly would be a piece of biological waste they’d throw in the incinerator. If it succeeded, then there might be a chance, however remote, of getting her back.
And, of course, there was another, more venal reason for Darren to cross his fingers and wish the villains a warped kind of luck. If Kelly didn’t work, he was their backup.
Volta powered up. She set her charge so high that her castors magnetised, pulling at the tiny screws that had fallen away from Sonny’s broken body. Then she laid both of her pad-hands on Kelly’s chest and breathed out.
Current whipped through Kelly’s body. Her limbs shook, a moustache of foam covered her lips and the smell… it was the smell of burning hair. The capillaries inside her face burst, turning red and then brown as the heat clotted the blood and crazy-paved her face.
The smell and the intense heat in the room jolted Darren’s memory. To another moment when an electrical accident at the right time in the right place had fused human to machine. He remembered the plastic melted over Freda’s eyes.
When it was over, Volta motioned to Axxon, who had been hovering in the background, to loosen Kelly’s bonds, following which Kelly slumped to the floor. Axxon laid her out in the recovery position as her head shed clumps of singed hair. Volta flicked the switch on the side of Beattie’s head, lighting his face up again.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she said. ‘You have a job to do.’
Beattie let out a ___/____ of horror and squeaked over to Kelly. ‘What have you done to her?’ he said. ‘He’ll be furious if you’ve ruined her looks. You know how vain he is.’
‘What kind of doctor do you think you are? Humans heal. That’s the whole point. Now check her vital signs.’
Beattie laid a digit on the side of Kelly’s neck and began counting. His display registered ________/________/_________.
‘Faint,’ he said, ‘but it’s there. You didn’t kill her.’
She picked up the transmitter, which now lay beside Kelly, burnt out on the end of a melted cable. ‘Question is, did the transfer work?’ said Beattie.
‘Only one way to find out,’ replied Volta. She leaned over and slapped Kelly – or Kelly’s body, as Darren forced himself to think – across the cheek.
‘Sir?’ she said. ‘Sir, you need to tell us if you’re in there. Sir? If you don’t, I’ll be forced to take this body into detention.’
Darren stared, not knowing whether to wish Kelly or himself dead – because that was what it amounted to.
Kelly lay inert during the first and second slaps. On the third, her body turned on to its back, dislodging the remainder of her hair in the process. Dark locks fell around her in a way that reminded Darren heartbreakingly of Janice’s salon. The heat and the shock had been intense enough to clam every hair follicle shut. Even her eyelashes scattered like pick-up sticks across her face.
On the fourth slap, she opened her eyes and Darren knew immediately that whatever was driving her body wasn’t Kelly any more. Without eyelashes or hair, her face looked strange enough. That, and the crackle-glaze of broken capillaries that coursed all over her head, made her look reptilian. But it was colour – or rather the lack of it – that made a pair of human eyes look inhuman. Whatever this process was that Volta had demonstrated, it had bleached the blue of Kelly’s irises to the white of a weatherman’s smile.
She – or was it he, or it, or they? – sat up, and the irises glimmered the green of an active power light.
‘Wow,’ it said. Darren forced himself to think ‘it’. It held its fingers up to its face – Kelly’s face – and wiggled them experimentally. Darren thought of a baby finding its feet for the first time. ‘Wow,’ it said again.
‘Sir?’ said Volta. ‘I’m going to need you to make a positive identification.’
Kelly’s body rolled its eyes, which flashed red. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ it said. It hauled itself to its feet and stood there wobbling. ‘I thought it would be obvious.’
‘The process doesn’t make any major physiological changes,’ said Volta. She pointed at Axxon. ‘Nevertheless, unless you give me a positive identification that you are Sonny Erikzon, I will be forced to immobilise this body and take it into custody. Those were your orders.’
Kelly’s body rocked back and forth on its heels, checking the limits of its steadiness. This definitely wasn’t Kelly, thought Darren. It was the same body, the same features, but they were inhabited differently. It stood as though it had learned to walk on two legs from a book rather than experience. Then there was its expression: Kelly’s face had rested naturally in a superior-looking pout. The new mind squatting in her body exaggerated that and radiated spite.
‘Were they?’ it said. ‘It seems so unimportant now.’
Axxon slipped into place behind Kelly’s body and started to blow bubbles with its spit.
‘But I believe the passphrase we agreed on was “Oh, the humanity”’, it said.
Axxon flipped back into standby mode, while Volta whined in relief.
‘It’s good to hear you, sir,’ she said. ‘We’re all delighted the procedure was a success.’
‘Good,’ said Sonny. ‘But while we’re on the subject, I think we should make one thing clear.’
‘Anything,’ breathed Volta.
Sonny clicked his fingers and blinked, surprised by the dexterity of his new human digits. Behind him the tazer clicked back into life. ‘Axxon,’ he said. ‘Fetch.’
Axxon stomped around Sonny and grabbed Volta by her charge pad-hands. She spat out a defence charge which broke ineffectually against the tazer’s casing. Axxon plunged his free hand deep into Volta’s brittle body and ripped out her power cell. He held it up to show Sonny, then threw it, and Volta’s body, to the floor.
‘Nobody threatens me,’ said Sonny. ‘Do you hear?’ He slinked over towards the broken machine and put his fist into the hole left by the battery. When he withdrew it, his hand was covered in green slime. ‘Do it again, and I’ll grind your core processor up for porridge.’
Volta nodded, her pad-hands groping for the severed battery. Sonny kicked it towards Beattie.
‘I want this thing repaired and a copy of its memory banks on my desk tomorrow morning. And as for that…’
Sonny’s colourless eyes met Darren’s for the first time.
‘Make it disappear.’
Chapter 25
Janice was about to throw an ammonia bomb at a drone when she felt Freda buzzing away inside her pocket like a housefly at the end of its rope. Jamming the ticking bomb under her arm, she shook the transmitter.
‘What?’ she said. ‘I’m busy.’
A drone overhead trained its laser sight on the front of her housecoat. Without missing a beat, Janice let the ammonia bomb drop out of her armpit into her hand, then lobbed it into the machine’s rotor blades. The drone shattered to a million evil-smelling pieces.
‘You were saying?’
A nearby loudspeaker coughed into life as Freda borrowed its voicebox. ‘Janice,’ she said, ‘it’s for you.’
‘What is?’
‘There’s a call coming in.’ She paused. ‘Through the emergency channel.’ She stopped again. ‘Do you want me to patch it through?’
Janice felt her heart clench. The emergency channel was her family’s second-biggest secret behind the ladies. It was an encrypted radio connection, run using standards ancient and hermetic. Yet it was still a radio connection, and vulnerable to detection. So it was only used in the direst of emergencies.
She remembered the night before Kelly and Darren left. She and Kelly were sitting up over their last cups of Nicotea. The ladies dozed; Darren snored like a hacksaw chewing through a stick of bamboo. She scribbled the access codes on the back of a receipt pad, then made Kelly memorise them and destroy the paper. ‘Only if everything’s lost,’ she had said, ‘because I need to know. I am your mother.’
Only if everything’s lost.
She stood there, deaf to the moment. To the distant explosions; to humans screaming in triumph and pain; the tinkle of smashed touchscreens and splintering carapaces.
Freda coughed again. ‘Janice,’ she said, ‘do you w
ant me to pick up?’
Because she had to know. She was her mother. Janice nodded.
There was another click, and a voice sounded through the loudspeaker.
‘Hello?’
‘Paula?’ said Janice. Though it was only her vestigial sense of good manners that made that into a question. She knew who it was.
‘Janice.’
The half-second of silence that followed greeting each other shrieked with memories. Janice felt herself fall in and out of love, experiencing first dislike, and then hatred which balled at the back of her throat like a clod of vomit. The kind of hatred you could only feel if you really knew someone. All of this in the time it took to close her eyes and open them again.
‘Paula,’ she said, feeling the relief of anger, ‘what the bloody hell are you doing?’
‘Long time no speak, eh?’ said Paula. Her voice sounded crimped around the edges: she’d been crying, but Paula’s tears had always been for herself, not for other people.
‘Well, I’m assuming,’ said Janice, ‘this isn’t a social call?’
‘It’s about Kelly,’ said Paula.
Janice’s world reeled. She sat down heavily on the trunk of a felled street lamp.
‘She came to see me. With some scruffy lad called Darren. She wanted my help, Janice.’
Janice said nothing. Instead she remembered how much Kelly had missed Paula when she first threw her out. How Kelly had, in the years that followed, modelled so much of herself on the unbreakable Paula. And how angry that made Janice, the mother who cooked – well, reheated – the tea every night; who mopped brows and tears and sick; who insisted on bedtime; who was there. Who did all this in the shadow of a woman who had never done a damn thing for her.
‘She wouldn’t let me alone.’
‘Paula,’ said Janice, ‘I’m not interested in your excuses. I wasn’t even interested in them at the time.’ The next words came out as a growl. ‘What happened?’
Paula started to gabble. ‘I told her to go,’ she said, ‘but she kept asking questions. She wanted me to show her things. Stuff I’m not meant to know.’
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