“He works for the Monolith
Corporation.”
“Yes. They all do.”
“All?”
“Six. Six hits.”
Amba gave a nod, and scrolled
through the selection of targets on the tablet. Three men. Two women. One
teenage, female, and only just sixteen. “No provax?” She gave a wry smile. “You
could almost call this race hate.”
“No provax,” said Romero. “This
is political. All six work for Monolith and help with public relations, and the
marketing of the Theme Planet, on behalf of the aliens.”
“The aliens. I like that.” Amba
smiled. It was only the
old school
who used the word “alien.” Part of
humanity’s superiority complex - as if they still believed they were the centre
of the universe, of an Empire, when in fact they were outclassed in every damn
direction, be it genetic or technological.
“Any questions?”
“No.”
“You don’t want to know what they’ve
done?”
“No.”
“Other Anarchy models... well,
they want to know. They want to know details. They want justification.”
“I don’t care.” She fixed Romero
with that chilling gaze once more, and raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that supposed
to be the point? The reason we were made? We’re not supposed to care. We’re not
supposed to crave... humanity.”
“Yes, but you always do,” said
Romero, his voice very, very quiet.
Amba gave a swift shake of her
head, and stood. She tucked the hit-list inside her clothing and turned,
striding towards the door. She reached the handle, paused, and turned back.
Romero was watching her with an expression she could not place.
“You engineered me to kill,” she
said. And smiled. “So I kill.”
Then she was gone, and Romero
released his hold on the gun underneath the desk. It was a Techrim 13mm
Splinterpistol. They were known, to those in the know, as Android Splitters.
And Romero wondered idly if she knew about the gun.
Probably,
he
realised. After all, she seemed to know about every other concealed weapon in
the room. As she said: it was why they made her. It was what she did.
~ * ~
Amba lay on
her
bed, in the dark, waiting for her Shuttle time. It was a nameless basic cheap
motel room on the outskirts of LLA - one of thousands Amba had stayed in. She
did not own a house, felt no affinity nor connection with any property she had
ever visited.
Why try to be human?
she’d reasoned. They’d only kill her
for it. The government. Oblivion.
Named well,
she smiled, and closed her
eyes, concentrating on her breathing.
Outside in a black sedan, two of
Romero’s killers were watching the apartment. She considered killing them,
simply because she did not like being watched - surely her privacy was the one
thing she had which they could not
invade,
could not
control.
Her
inner thoughts. Her feelings. Her
desires...
“Other Anarchy models... well,
they want to know. They want to know details. “
Her reply to Romero had been
truthful. She did not want to know. She did not care. One assignment was much
like any other assignment. And the minute she started to learn was the minute
she started to care. That was a sure-fire way of getting herself
fired.
Ha. Yes. Fired. A bullet fired in the back of her slender skull. Probably from
Romero’s own Splinterpistol. The coward.
The ceiling cooler hissed and
Amba stared at the flickering streamers. She thought back, through long, long
years. How many, she really didn’t remember. It had been too many, though.
Were you always so cynical? Or
did it come after the first few kills? The first five? Ten? Fifty ? A hundred?
When did it happen? When did the bitterness set in? When did the... death of
your longing to join humanity kick you in the guts?
She smiled. Yes. Once she had
wanted to be human. Didn’t they all? Wanted it so much it burned like a red-hot
iron brand in her skull. She had The Dream, and The Dream was a long one, and The
Dream was a recurring dream... now a nightmare.
Amba closed her eyes. She prayed,
as she always prayed, that she would sleep without dreams, and especially,
sleep without The Dream. But it was not to be. God, or the God of Anarchy
Androids, was in a bitter, foul mood. He was pissed, pissed at Amber and pissed
at her killing. So he would torture her...
Again.
Her eyes closed. She slept.
Amba lived in a small house by
the river. It had white walls, and at one corner the brickwork was crumbling
and she knew one day she’d have to get round to that damn repair. The windows
were very old-Earth, traditional -wooden frames with peeling white paint and
single panes of glass. Nothing tech, no plastic-plasty quad-core e-glass
thermal glassy glass, oh, no, sir; this was the old type of glass. The stuff
that broke and sliced flesh. Nasty shit.
The roof of the house had
terracotta tiles, the sort that were kiln-fired. Oldskill. Tradwork. Several
were cracked, but such was the roof’s construction that no water leaked in. And
that was good.
Amba walked up the crushed stone
path, her flat shoes crunching, and she breathed the scent from the pine trees
surrounding her house. And that was the problem, although not a problem in the
dream. Or The Dream.
It was
her
house. Ownership.
Possession.
And she revelled in it.
Get to the best bit, bitch,
said Zi.
Hey, girl, I knew you’d turn up
at the stench of death and corruption! Well done! Welcome to the party.
Hey, fuck you, it’s your dream,
you invited me.
Zi, nobody would ever invite you.
You’re worse than plague. More evil than cancer. Go away, somewhere quiet, out
in the forest over there. Lie down. And die.
Amba crunched up the path, a
gentle incline, and the house came slowly into view, scrolling like a Krunchy
Krunch Komputer Game. The white walls. The terracotta roof. And the door. A
pale blue door, battered and a little warped, with peeling paint. And it sent
shivers down Amba’s spine, made her heart skip a beat and lurch up into her
mouth like bile. The door. The blue door.
Behind the house, the trees
sighed in the wind. Small animals scurried through woodland detritus. The scent
of pine was strong, an aromatic wildland perfume. To the right, a river gurgled
over rocks. To the left, the forest curved like a scar and rose up the flanks
of another pine-clad hill to a circle of stones which sat on the summit,
ancient and magical, grey flanks shining.
There was a church up there, as
well. Or, more precisely, the remains of a church, with crumbled stone walls, a
collapsed rotten roof, and frost-bitten crumbling gravestones. Amba shivered at
the thought... and continued up the path towards the door. The blue door.
What’s behind the blue door, O
little one?
What song will you sing this time?
What dreams will you savour
?
Amba reached the top of the path
and stopped, panting slightly, drinking in the majesty of the place, and yet...
yet filled with the deep fear which always came during The Dream.
Her head moved, shifted, and
nothing was real, yet this was more real than real. She focused on the blue
door. Behind it was Heaven and Hell. Her wonder and her nightmare. Something so
bad, so evil, so
soul-destroying
she locked it out of her skull every single
fucking time, and threw away the key. But with the key fell memory, and so she
returned, again and again, to suffer...
Open it,
urged Zi, and Amba could sense
her inner dark sister’s glee.
She did not want to. And as she
moved down the path, took hold of the handle, stared at the faded blue peeling
paint, she knew - knew in her darkest innermost dark evil place - that she
should stop, cease, desist, but she pushed it open anyway... as if there was a
switch in her head, a reset switch that could change her, deform her, break her
will...
And to Zi’s cackle of pleasure,
Amba screamed a scream to put out the stars.
~ * ~
Is
it
so
different to be human than android? I mean, we look the same, act the same, are
made of the same organic substance, the same flesh and bones; the same raw
materials. We eat the same food, shit the same shit. We have the same chemical
responses. We both feel love and hate and fear and joy. We respond the same way
in most situations. So how can a human have all the rights of
life,
and yet androids have
nothing? We are treated like machines by some, as vermin by others. How does
that work? Just because we are
created
in a laboratory or VAT chamber?
Hell, we are genetic cousins...
Don’t be naive,
said Zi, crawling into the back
of her mind like a slug up the pipe of her spine.
They hate you because you
were made better than them. Faster, stronger, more intelligent, more deadly.
Humans are frail fucking shells, and they fucking know you’re better at
everything. They fear you because they want to
be
you. They hate you,
because they are naturally weak, and you are naturally their superior. They
will not grant you the gift of recognised life because the early androids
committed atrocities that would make even you blush - yes, even with your
incredible track record.
Amba felt herself wither inside,
for she knew what Zi said was true.
What shall I do? I cannot carry
on like this forever. I cannot kill for Romero and the Oblivion Government
indefinitely. At some point, it has to end. At some point, it all must stop; I
must stop...
The day you stop is the day you
die,
said Zi.
And you’d fucking love that,
wouldn’t you, bitch?
snarled
Amba.
You’d like to rip out my spine and watch my blood soak into the soil.
You’d squat down and piss on my grave, and giggle like a loon as you were doing
it.
Not so,
said Zi.
Hah!
Truly. I want you alive, Amba,
because if you’re not alive, then I’m not alive. If you disintegrate, then I
disintegrate. We are symbiotic, my friend; my lover, my sister, my mother. Can
you not see that? We are one and the same. Conjoined in mind. Chemically
twisted in the flesh...
No,
said Amba,
no, that’s not the
way. Explain it to me, Zi. What are you? Why are you in my head? What brought
you here? What brought you to me? What is your end-game? I cannot take your
torture any longer... I want you gone, you hear? I want you slaughtered and
cast away as ash in the wind. I’ll take the fucking FRIEND and toss it into an
Infinity Well!
You don’t mean that,
said Zi, and Amba heard the
hardness in her voice. Like granite. Like lead. Like finely-machined metal
designed only to kill.
Yes
I do, bitch! I want you gone
from my skull!
And who would help you then?
snarled Zi, and Amba sensed the
sudden rise of her temper, something she had felt a hundred times, a
thousand
times on the battlefield, in dark alleys filled with murder, in bloody crime
scenes with the death-drenched FRIEND in her hand.
Who would bail you out
when progress became impossible? Who would help you in your moments of
weakness, when you break down and squat in the mud in the piss and the shit,
and weep your tears of pure unadulterated weakness? Who’d save you then, Amba?
Who’d be your backup? Who’d be your saviour
?