“I thought you were the best,”
she said.
“We are,” said the Minister
through his mask. Blood was pouring down his leg, and his heavy coat was soaked
like a sponge.
“You’re not good enough,” she
said, eyes narrowed, and shot him between the eyes. The gunshot echoed through
the circuit forest, reverberating from silicon trees. Amba looked left, and
right, and allowed the Minister to collapse.
More came, like shadows through
the darkness, and Amba ran. Gunshots followed her, kicking sparks from the
trees to her left and right. She sprinted, keeping low. A Minister surged in
front of her, teeth bared garishly in his black metal face mask. She shot him
through the teeth, and as he lay, kicking on the ground, his mouth a sodden
black hole, she put a second round between his eyes and took his gun.
She crept, keeping low, making no
sound. Weak light gleamed from carbon tree trunks.
What kind of weird place
is this?
she asked, but there was no reply. Zi had gone, and Amba felt a
bitter, wrenching hurt.
How could she do that to me? How could she betray
me?
And the answer was simple, a clarity realised after a thousand lies and
a million damn excuses.
Because Zi
could.
She heard the Minister too late,
and the gun cracked and a bullet smashed through her shoulder, worming down
into her chest. Amba felt nothing. She flipped sideways, rolling with the
considerable force of the impact and using its momentum to roll and come up
running, blood squirting from her shoulder. She dodged right as more bullets
chased her, and made out the sounds of three Ministers in pursuit.
She sprinted, arms pumping, blood
flowing down her chest and between her breasts, tickling her like the tongue of
a lover she’d never have. Who could love the android? Amba felt a dark empty
space in her soul.
The Ministers pursued her, hard
and fast. Despite their big frames and heavy coats, they moved swiftly, huge
grey ghosts in the gloom. Amba suddenly leapt, catching a low tree branch and
hauling herself up. The tree was huge, and she scrambled up through the
branches. The Ministers followed, climbing confidently, guns still firing.
Bullets whined around Amba. She felt a twinge of doubt, and then blanked all
thoughts from her mind.
Fuck it. When I die, I die. Death is just an end to
pain and suffering. When it happens - then so be it.
She was high now, and still
climbing fast. The carbon and silicon branches were thinning out, and felt
greasy under her hands. She had gained a considerable lead on the Ministers,
being more lithe and flexible. Now, she stood on a branch and looked out across
the circuit-based forest - like standing on the inside of a computer, lost in a
maze of components. The motherboard stretched away, seemingly forever.
I feel like I am lost inside my
own mind, she realised.
I could die here.
She started to laugh, and for the
first time in her life discovered genuine humour. It raced through her like a
drug, like a poison, and she welcomed it, and spread her arms like a dove, and
dropped from the high branch, diving, both arms ahead of her, both guns ahead
of her, bullets blasting as she barrelled towards the Ministers. The highest
climber was looking up, mask upturned to her, and two rounds smashed into him,
one through each cheek, disintegrating his face and the brain beyond even as
Amba screamed past his limp, toppling body. The other two were shooting at her,
and she could see spurts of fire from gun barrels as she twisted, started to
spin, her own guns still howling and the Minister’s bullets already behind her
as her own bullets ate another face, and shoulders, and spinal column, and the
third android flashed towards her and her arms smashed out, she hit him with an
audible
crack
and they both plummeted through the trees.
From ground level, there came a
torrent of snapping branches, a patter of disintegrating treefall, and a deep
leaden
thud.
The undergrowth, made up of components as it was, showered
like soil around a meteor crater.
Stillness descended.
Slowly, Amba extricated herself
from the crushed Minister. His spine and neck were both broken, and his eyes
watched her forlornly from behind the mask. Amba lifted one gun and, with a
snarl, put a bullet through his nose.
“I am disappointed,” said a calm,
cool voice.
Amba whirled, both guns up.
Cardinal Romero was unarmed.
“I don’t know why. You’ve misled
me from the start. From inception. For
decades,
Romero, fucking
decades!”
“I
own
you,” said Romero,
softly, tapping a finger to his lips. He stood motionless, no guards, no SIMs,
no Ministers. Alone, unarmed, and an idea trickled through Amba’s skull, and it
was a Bad Thought and she wasn’t used to such ideas.
“You betrayed me,” said Amba.
“No, you betrayed yourself. You
went off-task. You started to use your own initiative. I don’t want you to
think, Amba. You’re just my dumb bitch, my coma whore, and you do what the fuck
you are told. You follow instructions. You kill who we tell you, and when we
tell you. You just use your little bit of ingenuity to get the job done.”
“So I’m like a machine? An
automaton? Hah! Why not use a robot, then, Romero? Why even bother with me?”
Romero laughed. “Have you heard
yourself? You’re an android, Amba. Created. Engineered. Property. And yeah, I
can see the signs, you might think you’re human; what was it? You kill the
wrong child? Drive over a puppy? Have some soppy pregnant bitch beg you for
life? Whatever, you think you have gleaned a taste for
humanity.
Well, I’m
here to tell you you’re wrong, Amba. You are a created thing. A human machine.
Controlled.”
“They’re all human machines!”
snapped Amba, voice low, guns unwavering on their target. One twitch, one
blink
in the wrong place and she’d waste him. And she knew - knew she could. She had
the strength, the tenacity, and the will. Now, she had the will. And he knew
it. “There’s no difference between android and human. You say I’m property?
Controlled? Like an electric sheep? Well open your eyes, Romero, because you’ve
just described the majority of
human beings.
There is no shame in being
an android. At least we strive to improve ourselves; to seek the impossible
dream. Such an irony, then, that the dream we strive to achieve doesn’t even belong
to the host, the creator, the
superior
.”
“I can see it in you,” said
Romero, softly.
“What?”
“The change. The difference. What
are you going to tell me, sweet Amba? That you’ve found love?” His voice was
mocking, and Amba bit her lip, eyes narrowing, brain whirring like a well-oiled
machine. “Who is he? Which hunk of man flesh have you allowed inside your cunt,
and inside your skull? Who skull-fucked my perfect little android, hey?”
Romero stepped forward, brushing
aside the guns, and he took her and he held her tight. She tensed for a moment,
then lowered her head to his chest, and felt tears on her cheeks, and all
thoughts of death and violence and torture were gone, dust blown on the wind.
Her hate evaporated. And she realised - this was what humanity felt like. It
was the ability to forgive. The ability to
forget.
She did not want to
kill Romero. As she had said; he’d been there since inception. She wanted to
walk away, and find Dex, and start again. Without the pain.
“Who is he?” whispered Romero in
her ear, words tickling her, dark eyes glittering.
“Dexter Colls,” said Amba,
simply.
“And you love him?”
“I think I do.”
“But you are both androids,” said
Romero.
“Yes. But I think we can become
so much more. Like newborn babies, learning how to live; how to survive. Nobody
is as cruel as a child. We are like that. Like children. We must find a new
path through the world.”
“What qualifies you to do this?”
“We have empathy. And love. We
had a connection -of souls. I felt it. I felt the Greater Power. I felt... God.”
Romero pulled back, and cupped
her face in his hands. He held her tightly.
“You have a job to do,” he said.
“I can no longer do that,
Cardinal Romero. I don’t have it in me.”
“And what if I say ‘no’?”
“Then you say ‘no.’ Your instructions
have little to do with the way I
feel.
You cannot make me go on. I’d
rather die.”
“I do not wish to threaten you.”
“Then don’t. Just let me go. I
will find Dex. We will disappear.”
“Have you forgotten our mission?
About Oblivion? About the plans for Earth’s new vast Empire?”
“Then use
your own
humanity to see past that,” said Amba, staring into Romero’s eyes. “If there’s
one good thing you do in this life, one compromise you can make, one act of
love and life and honesty and caring, make it this. Let me go. Let me find Dex.
You owe me that much.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you fucker. Go on. Make the
right decision, for the first time in your life.”
“Why would I do that,” said
Romero slowly, licking his lips, “when I’m just an android like you?”
Amba froze. In the splinter of an
atom she saw her incredible danger, but then Romero squeezed her head at twin
pressure points, and the world spun around like it was a merry-go-round, and
the circuit forest flickered black and white, and Amba felt nausea swamp her
and something cold like liquid nitrogen flood down through her, from the tip of
her brain through her chest and abdomen, through her groin and legs until it
tickled her toes.
And Amba saw the world clearly
once again.
“What did you do to me?”
Romero stood back. “I reset you.
It’s a failsafe.”
“Good.”
“You have a mission to complete.”
“I do?”
“Yes. This man.” He held out a
picture. “Dexter Colls.”
“You wish me to kill him?”
“Yes.”
“I will kill him.”
Amba started forward, but Romero
checked her advance. “Wait. You’ll need this.”
Amba took the FRIEND, and held
the weapon in a familiar way. She gave a nod. “Thank you.”
Hi sweetie,
said Zi.
It’s so good to be
back...
~ * ~
Dex moved slowly
down a narrow corridor, Makarov in hand, eyes
narrowed. Nothing had changed, but he almost...
sensed
he was there. At
SARAH’s core. Her heart. The core of Monolith. The heart of the Theme Planet.
The corridor was glossy black,
floor and ceiling almost soft under his fingers, queasily organic. Dex reached
a portal and stepped through, warily, into a big space. It was a factory floor,
filled with a million machines for the creation of Theme Planet’s wonders.
There were giant spirals of glass and liquid metal that pulsed softly,
shimmering in the subdued light. There were vast cubes, which juddered
occasionally, each the size of a house, with flickering scatters of coloured
lights cascading randomly across different faces. There were conveyor belts
with gleaming ride CARs, all brand new and waiting to be put into commission.
There were stacks of hot dog stands with mechanical legs, a hundred stands
high, waiting patiently to fill the bellies of Theme Planet’s adventure
denizens.
Dex moved forward into the factory,
Makarov in fist, face grim, eyes alert. The whole place was quiet, not like the
roaring factories he’d visited back on Earth. The place
did
have an
almost subsonic
hum,
an undercurrent of sound, of energy, of activity,
something Dex might associate with an insect hive. There was a lot of activity
going on here, Dex could feel it in his bones. But most of it was sectioned
away, out of sight.