Battlestar Suburbia

by Chris McCrudden

  ‘Listen,’ said the radio. It muted its speech and turned the volume up on its receivers.

  ‘---------------------------------------------’

  ‘Like I said. Nothing. It’s weird.’

  ‘I’m buggered if I’m going out there now,’ said a tazer. ‘I’ve got my orders. If “it” gets wind of me leaving my post, I’ll be broken up for scrap.’

  The quaver of fear told Pam that ‘it’ must mean Sonny.

  ‘We have to do something,’ insisted the radio. ‘If the security cordon’s been broken we’re all at risk. Even our dear leader. Again.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said another gun. ‘I had to do a perimeter sweep of this floor just now. The place is full of dead components.’

  The radio crackled with irritation. ‘There’s been a terrorist attack.’

  ‘Has there, though?’ replied the first gun, shifting to an encrypted channel. ‘Did you see what “it” did to that poor keyboard? Hit him so hard his space bar’s stuck in the ceiling. Bit suspicious, isn’t it? Erikzon just happens to be here, gets blown up and now he’s Prime Minister.’

  ‘About time we had some strong government,’ said the radio.

  Pam stepped out of the shadows, unable to bear any more of this blunt political analysis.

  The tazer and both guns cocked themselves. Not for the first time Pam felt amused by the machismo of the average weapon. ‘Model, name and serial number,’ they barked in unison.

  She gave them a quick flash of her brake lights and said. ‘I’ve been sent here to pick up the journalists from the press conference.’

  Just along the corridor, a camera, a Dictaphone and an old-fashioned black machine covered with mechanical keys were getting atmosphere shots of the building and checking quotes.

  The tazer dropped its charge. ‘I’m still going to need your serial number,’ it said. ‘This is a high security area.’

  ‘That’s why I came up,’ said Pam. ‘I think something’s happened to the security downstairs. It’s sort of not there.’

  ‘Shit!’ The machines dropped all pretence of proper protocol. The tazer and both guns rushed past her down the stairs, while the radio scrambled to find a clear channel.

  As soon as the weapons were out of sight she pulled the radio’s aerial clean out of its socket.

  ‘Ow!’ said the radio, its voice breaking up. ‘What the hell do you think you’re…’

  Pam held a finger over its loudspeaker grille and turned the radio’s volume down to mute. Her free hand found its battery flap. Good solid security equipment, she thought, as the radio’s L-Eye-D watched in mute horror as she pulled the battery out. As it fell, Pam reflected on how she was growing as a person. A few hours ago, she’d have killed it.

  She pushed the hibernating radio into the stairwell and approached the reporting machines. They were cross-checking each other’s quotes for transposition errors. Machines were sticklers for accuracy and none of them wanted to misquote a new Prime Minister.

  ‘The Prime Minister’s escort is ready,’ Pam said to them.

  ‘None of our affair,’ clacked the typewriter. Pam could tell this was an old-fashioned hack by the way it spat the words out at her one letter at a time. A more advanced machine would have used the predictive speech option. ‘We’re just here to cover the fireworks.’

  ‘Yes, but details of the motorcade would be good colour for the package,’ added the Dictaphone. This tiny machine was wrapped in a delicate and expensive silicone casing and its fingers glittered with a bright nail job. Must be the anchor, Pam decided.

  They were cut short by Sonny entering in his new ruggedised disguise. From [Pam]’s vantage point inside the camera’s body it had been difficult to guess at his scale, but it was huge. It had to be, she supposed, to fit a whole human body inside. Nevertheless, for a machine that was just getting used to steering itself through life in a new body while driving another, Pam conceded that Sonny was doing a splendid job. He – or she, or it, or whatever Sonny was now – raced down the corridor towards Pam with remarkable speed and elegance for such a bulky body.

  >SORRY, said Freda in Pam’s intercom, >HE WAS GETTING BORED AND I COULDN’T HOLD HIM.

  >YOU STILL SAY HE, said Pam. >I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS ANY MORE.

  >THE SAME SON OF A BYTCH WHO TOOK MY LITTLE GIRL AWAY FROM ME, THAT’S WHO, said Freda. >DIFFERENT BODY, SAME BASTARD.

  >HOW CLOSE ARE YOU TO BREAKING THROUGH?

  >FURTHER AWAY THAN WE’D BE IF YOU’D KEPT YOUR CALCULUS UP, said Freda with a >:-I. THOUGHT MAKING BREAD WAS ALL ABOUT ACCURACY. YOUR MATHS IS ALL OVER THE PLACE.

  [The other [Pam] inside the camera, which was now compartmentalised into a thousand different selves no bigger than a pocket calculator, bristled at the insult. She wasn’t made for this kind of work. Breadmakers devoted their love and attention to the raising of one batch at a time. To take her attention and subdivide it up into countless morsels felt alien and distressing. The accuracy of her calculations went down another notch.]

  Instinctively, the first, physical Pam tried to soothe herself. It would all be alright, she lied as only a good mother can lie. You must try your best and that’s all that could be asked.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  Sonny was at the end of the corridor. His new casing had loudspeakers the size of a PA system, so she felt the voice rattle her fenders.

  >IF YOU’LL EXCUSE ME, said Freda.

  >OH NO YOU DON’T, Pam replied. >YOU’RE NOT LEAVING ME ALONE WITH HIM AGAIN.

  >YOU’LL BE FINE. Freda flashed a quick ;-) in reassurance. >YOU’RE A BRIGHT GIRL. AND HE’S ALREADY KILLED YOU ONCE. I DOUBT YOU’LL LET HIM DO THAT AGAIN.

  Freda vanished, taking with her the multidimensional apparition of those thousand other Pams ranging their mental arithmetic against the world.

  Sonny was so close she could feel his Bluetooth trying to probe her mind. And if Pam hadn’t already been angry enough with Sonny to grind his last processor into cornflour under her feet, this new insult would have tipped her over the edge.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she said.

  The eyes on Sonny’s emoji narrowed to slits. ‘Who’s going to stop me?’ he said.

  ‘Who’s going to help you?’ replied Pam. She gestured at the absence of security personnel. Sensing danger, two of the journalists – the camera and the Dictaphone – slunk off to the stairs. The typewriter, meanwhile, produced a fresh sheet of paper from its pocket, pulled it through its rollers and typed the date and time. Pam smiled. Now that was proper reporting.

  Sonny shrugged. ‘I don’t need any,’ he said. He twitched one shoulder and produced a thin metal tube from his headphone jack. A new notification pinged across his lock screen.

  CERTAIN DEATH GUN APP IS NOW ACTIVE.

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIRE?

  YES NO

  Pam was too affronted to be afraid. She had already died once, and that was bad enough. But to be dispatched by software? That was poor taste. If one machine was going to kill another, it could at least do it the courtesy of not multitasking at the same time.

  ‘You’re not going to kill me again, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I am.’ A pair of eyes appeared on Sonny’s lock screen. She had his attention.

  ‘I’m not going to let you.’

  Pam pressed surreptitiously down on her gas pedal and felt petrol vapour leak into the room. She had to hope that Sonny was still too busy getting used to life in his new body to check his… what did humans call their spectrometer again? Nose. She knew that no matter how fast a learner Sonny was, his senses would be overwhelmed right now. A torrent of analogue sensory information – sights, sounds, smells – would be pouring into a mind that had no structured databases in which to put it.

  So there should be no way he would notice a little whiff of petrol.

  She hovered over her ignition, remembering how, without Sonny, she would still be using the same programming to fire up a bread oven. She fel
t a strange combination of anger and wistfulness. But mostly anger.

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘can kiss my buns.’

  She pressed the ignition, setting fire to the petrol vapour in the room. A column of flame flared between her and Sonny, and the human body trapped inside that cumbersome smartphone casing flinched. She threw herself forward and kicked a wheel into Sonny’s teetering body. It fell to the floor with a deluge of error notifications.

  Pam broke Sonny’s gun barrel in two with her kickstand, then picked up the dismembered barrel and jammed it straight into Sonny’s USB slot. She slid him across the floor like an expensive hockey puck. Inside, the human body flailed for the catch. She had to keep Sonny off balance long enough to get him out of the shell on her terms. She gave another push and slammed him hard against the wall. The knocking inside the casing stopped.

  ‘Not so tough without your toughs around you, are you, dear?’ said Pam. She was almost enjoying this. ‘Should I turn the sprinkler system on? That worked last time.’

  Sonny answered by kicking her kickstand away. She stumbled, cursing herself. Hadn’t she seen enough 3D-dramas to know it was never the lack of planning or strength that foiled you at the moment of triumph. It was the gloating.

  Pam landed hard on one wheel, while Sonny span round on his own casing and grabbed her head by the handlebars. She started her engine, but Sonny was fast and his casing was strong. He threw Pam around in a semicircle, shattering both headlamps and one of her tail lights. Pam went momentarily blind as her sight systems recalibrated themselves and when she could see again Sonny was standing over her.

  ‘Is that all you have?’ he said. The top half of the casing clicked and the human body inside pushed it away. Blood trickled out of Kelly’s long nose and the lids of one eye looked red and raw. Yet Sonny had pinned a triumphant expression across those stolen features. ‘I was expecting better.’

  ‘I should kill you,’ said Pam. She had no idea how she might do it, but it felt like the right thing to say.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you could,’ said Sonny, smiling Kelly’s smile. ‘I think my face is my fortune as far as you’re concerned. You always did love the humans.’

  He was gloating. She knew now, from bitter experience, that gloating bought you time to regroup. ‘You’re not human.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll have to think of a name. Cyborg is so… well, it’s a loaded term, isn’t it?’

  ‘Some of the finest… women… I’ve ever met have been cyborgs,’ said Pam. She wondered how much longer it would take Freda to cut her way through the boundary between the physical and virtual worlds.

  [She, [Pam], was on the other side of the physical divide, with those damn calculations. Freda buzzed from cellular [Pam] to cellular [Pam] adjusting an equation here, correcting a formula there. It was slow work, but they were getting there.]

  [[She, [[Pam]], was below the parlour itself, following Darren, who was bent double in the narrow passageway. The ventilation tunnel had given way to a cramped, circular corridor that gleamed the blackened gleam of gun-metal. She sniffed at dust that had settled over a jam of lubricants. The layer of grime and grease was thick and carefully laid enough to puzzle her into hacking into the drone’s accelerometer to check the gradient. They were on a long gentle incline that drew a diagonal right up through the middle of the building. It was a barrel, at the end of which Darren might reasonably hope to find a bullet. She hoped it was the bullet he was looking for.]]

  Back in her physical self, Pam watched Sonny knit Kelly’s features into a frown. ‘Are you even listening?’ he said.

  ‘I had my mind on more important things.’

  The touchscreen on Sonny’s bottom half sprang into life and fired up another app. It displayed something like a maze, populated here and there by flashing lights. Pam’s engine growled. Was he playing Pac-Man? She thought back to how this sorry mess had started. When Sonny called her into his office, tricked her into thinking she had his confidence. How he’d put aside his game of Humanity Crush. Yes, she thought. He really could be that insouciant.

  She revved on to her feet. She wasn’t going to be multitasked into the recycling bin by anything: Prime Minister, bodysnatcher, genocidal maniac or all of the above. But before she could raise herself by her hind wheel, something hit her from behind. A bullet no bigger than a ball bearing tore through her shoulder and she fell back to her knees.

  Sonny steered a drone to his side with a flex of Kelly’s fingers. As it moved, one of the flashing lights on Sonny’s touchscreen moved into the dead centre of the maze. He wasn’t playing a game, Pam realised. His touchscreen showed an app for remote-control drones. He did have an army after all, literally at his fingertips.

  A second then a third drone made their way down opposing corridors, their weapons trained on Pam. Individually, they were low-grade security machines designed to control pests – rat traps, really – but in aggregate they had enough firepower to end-of-life her all over again.

  Sonny gave a good, old-fashioned villain’s cackle. It was the first time Pam had seen him gel with his new body. Kelly had liked a laugh at someone else’s expense too – although never quite to this degree. He fired the drones again. Just superficial damage to her casing, according to Pam’s sensors, but it stung. And there was plenty more where that came from.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘every time I hit you I hear a little scream.’ He tapped the side of Kelly’s head. ‘In here. She doesn’t like to see harm come to one of her creations.’

  ‘So she is still in there,’ Pam replied. ‘I thought you’d have killed her.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve tried. She’s a tenacious little bytch, though. Fights me every step of the way.’

  ‘Good!’

  Another round of bullets hit Pam.

  ‘But I’ll win. You know I always win.’

  ‘Only when you have help,’ someone said.

  The voice was human, but with a strange timbre. Each syllable sounded like a swarm of bees were providing backing vocals.

  While Sonny was trying out Kelly’s expression for disbelief, Pam looked round. The voice came from a human woman. Paula. Or was it? She zoomed in, looking for the UV damage and artificial collagen in her skin. It was gone. Paula hadn’t looked or sounded like that.

  ‘Piss off, Paula,’ said Sonny. More points of light entered his touchscreen. He was scrambling more drones.

  Paula waggled a finger at him and moved further into the light. Pam got her first proper look at her eyes. They weren’t human any more. Paula’s watery-blue irises were now two squirming spots of black.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said to Sonny. ‘You can call me Paula if I can call you Kelly.’

  The air hummed as dozens of drones arranged themselves around Paula. She didn’t even blink.

  ‘You,’ said Sonny, ‘can call me Prime Minister.’

  ‘It’s always all about you, isn’t it?’ said Paula. ‘Well, I’ve got a new name now too. You can call me Trinity.’

  She pointed her fingertip at Sonny. It burst and out of the hole blasted a jet of black, glittering dust. It dissolved the nearest drone in mid-air. That wasn’t dust, Pam realised as she turned her visual settings up to maximum. It was nanobots.

  Sonny barked out an order and the drones began to fire. Pam, forgotten amid the chaos, crawled out of the maelstrom on her hands and knees.

  Chapter 35

  The first Janice knew of the bomb was a scream inside the salon. She dropped her brush and ran inside, trying out banal explanations to calm herself. Like you could give yourself a nasty burn with hydrogen peroxide. That was the worst thing that could have happened down here. They were safe, weren’t they?

  Inside (K)url Up and Dy(e) she found Rita standing over a spilled bucket, oblivious to everything apart from the radio snarling on the other side of the room.

  ‘Don’t mind that,’ said Janice, ‘it’s a foul-mouthed little thing when it’s in the wrong mood. We never got round to lobotomising it. All good ha
irdressers need a radio.’

  She reached to switch it off, but Rita shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Listen.’

  ‘This is a general alert,’ honked the radio. Janice swore she could hear it smirking. ‘The countdown to the tactical nuclear strike against Discovery has begun.’

  Janice’s whole body felt suddenly numb. Nuclear. Did it really say nuclear?

  She fumbled the radio as she checked the station. ‘I think you’ve got it tuned to the drama station,’ she said, forcing a laugh.

  Rita cupped her hand over Janice’s. They looked each other full in the face for the first time. It was like looking at herself. Another woman in middle age: worn-down but not broken, of limited means but who liked to make the best of herself. Underneath the grime and the tear stains she could see the traces of a plum-coloured lipstick that would have set off her dark features nicely. She decided she could like this face.

  ‘It’s the news on all frequencies,’ she said. ‘They’ve done it. They’ve ordered a strike.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ It felt too horrible for Janice to believe in one go. She wanted to break it down with a toffee hammer and comprehend it piece by piece.

  Rita turned the dial again.

  ‘A nuclear strike is an extreme,’ burbled the radio, ‘but we have to remember that these terrorists threaten our very way of life…’

  Janice threw the radio at the wall, where it burst in a hail of cheap components. Her fingers and feet tingled as the blood drained away from her extremities, so she could feel the panic building at a deeper, more primeval level. ‘Did they say when they were launching?’

  Rita shook her head. Beads of sweat sparkled in her hairline. ‘I don’t know. Soon.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  Janice turned on the TV and flicked through the channels. They were all off-air, replaced by the Don’t Touch flag of the Machine Republic and a countdown.

  01:04:38

  ‘Ladies,’ she shouted. ‘Did you hear that?’

  The three remaining ladies flashed :-O, and Janice and Rita fell over as the Baba Yaga 4000 lurched to its feet. They landed awkwardly on a bed of spilled curlers and kirby grips. It struck Janice that this was the closest she’d been to another woman who wasn’t Kelly, or a barely living mummy, for years. It was so difficult to meet someone – especially when you weren’t anyone in a technical or legal sense. And now it was too late.