Romero moved forward, placing a
hand on Amba’s shoulder, and she stepped back. Romero moved closer, eyes fixed
on Dexter, whose heart had accelerated, was thundering like a deviated, twisted
train charging through his ears and breast.
He did indeed recognise Romero.
How could he not?
They had the same face...
Slowly, Dexter released a breath.
Pain drum-rolled through his heart, stabbed him in the skull. “What is this
shit?” he said slowly, voice a drawl, eyes flickering from Amba to Romero and
back again. “You’re in charge of Earth’s Oblivion Government, right? How could
we possibly be brothers? This is a con. A trick. Who comes next? My sister?”
“What’s happening here, Dexter -
well, this has been a long,
long
time in the planning - by minds much
greater than ours. Yes, I control Oblivion and the Ministers of Joy. But you” -
he stepped closer, taking Dex’s face in his hands - “you, my faithful brother,
you were the pivotal implant. You were key to getting us inside SARAH, getting
the FRIEND to her core. Dexter. Congratulations. You have brought down the
Theme Planet.”
“Not yet, I haven’t,” he growled.
“Listen to SARAH scream, it is
the most beautiful music in the Quad-Gal,” smiled Romero, face lifting,
turning, eyes staring at the high darkness as he appreciated the constant,
keening wail of torture and agony and devolution... he glanced back to Dexter’s
face. “You did your job well, brother. Despite all the problems, the deviations,
the fuck-ups. Katrina and the girls aided you perfectly - were faultless in
conducting your progress. You are the finest of tools; you just have to be
controlled in the right manner.” He sighed. “Anyway. What matters is we got
here in the end.”
“Fuck you,” said Dexter, leaning
closer with a snarl, with a swirling rage in his eyes and on his face like a
savage tattoo; Romero’s hands fell away.
“You have a glittering career
ahead of you,” said Romero, smiling easily, relaxed.
“I want no career from you.”
“When your memories return, you
will realise our brotherly love, our sense of...
family
is the strongest
chain in the whole of the Four Galaxies! We will drink together, we will whore
together, and you will quickly forget this pettiness. Forget your time with
your fake wife Katrina, and your fake fucking pointless children. You don’t
need all that baggage, Dexter. You need to come back to me, to Oblivion! Your
Minister’s Throne is cold and it’s been that way far too long, my brother.”
“I am not,” snarled Dex, eyes
glowing, “your
brother.”
He knocked Romero’s hands aside, and Romero
took a step back, head to one side, his smile failing from his face. Behind
him, Amba pulled out her own FRIEND, Zi, and pointed it at Dex.
“Don’t even go down this route,
Dexter. You’re an android, yes, but Amba here will blow a hole in you so wide I
could climb through it. And I know what you’re thinking, that you’ve been
misled, a wriggling pointless pawn in a bigger game and all that other bullshit
- and that might be how you
feel
now, but it’s not right, because this
whole thing is something
you agreed.
You’re an Earth Minister, for the
love of God. We could never force you down this path! You chose it, Dexter.
Brother.
You
chose
to have a temporary memory block. You chose to spend years
married to Katrina, to have your engineered children - yes,
you were allowed that
privilege
- because it was decided that only
that
could get you past the fucking provax guarding SARAH.”
“No,” said Dex, “this is all
wrong, this is all lies and bullshit!”
“We tried to release you, to give
you back your memories - of before, of your life as a Minister of Joy on Earth.
Then
you’d realise this was your mission, your long-term plan. To start
the invasion. Not just to cripple Monolith and Theme Planet and
SARAH,
no, but to
take
her - the most incredible, awesome, wonderful living
alien - and to turn her to our War Effort! To our new Empire!”
“I thought you were trying to
destroy her?”
Romero laughed. “Destroy her? She’s
the most devastating and advanced biological weapon ever to evolve. Above, our
bombers and missiles are destroying the
humans
who are polluting her; we
are cleaning out the detritus, removing the wart, lancing the boil, cutting out
the cancer with fire. No weapons we have up there can destroy SARAH - she
covers the entire planet; it would take interstellar HALO strikes to do it. We
don’t want that, Dexter. We want
her.
You’ve seen her hatching theme
rides and theme CARs and shit, yes? She can so easily give birth to anything we
instruct... tanks and bombs and missiles, cyborgs, HALO jets, SLAM fighters - fuck,
Dexter, if we give her enough
raw materials
she can birth Warships and
Cruisers and Destroyers!”
“Raw materials?”
“She
consumes
planets,
Dexter. Don’t you see? She takes their surface materials and reconstitutes them
on a molecular level, all the time imbuing them with a part of herself, a
controlling part of her soul. Anybody who controlled SARAH, well...”
“They’d conquer the Four
Galaxies,” said Dexter, slowly.
“You’re catching on fast,
brother. Drop her into any environment and watch her spread, watch her conquer,
watch her reconstitute everything in her path... now, we just need to know her
secrets. Of transportation. Of design. Of control.”
“The FRIEND,” said Dex, wearily. “It’s
torturing her?”
“Oh, yes,” said Romero darkly. “Showing
her who is boss. Showing her who is in control.”
Dex transferred his gaze to Amba.
She was watching him with bright eyes, FRIEND held steady. “I thought we had
something, Amba. I thought we had... a connection. Something special. If not
love, then... understanding. We’re the same, Amba, and I have a curious feeling
we’re destined to be together. One day.”
“Dexter,” said Romero, “when you
come back to Oblivion, you can take whatever you want. You want Amba warming
your bed and sucking your cock? That can be arranged. Even though we are
androids, there is a
hierarchy
to observe. And you, my Brother, are
right at the top.”
Dex licked his lips. He looked at
Katrina. He looked at the still body of Toffee. He listened to the screams of
SARAH. And his face went hard. No matter what he had been, he knew what he was
now,
knew how he felt
now,
and understood that he had transcended material
considerations. He had empathy; he had understanding. He knew he had a soul,
and no matter whether you were born human or engineered, it wasn’t about your
creation, your beginnings, it was about what you
were,
deep down inside.
“Your warmongering, your
invasion, your torture, your murder - it’s evil, Romero. It’s just plain wrong.
I wish no part in it. In fact, I’d rather fucking
die
than be related to
you, and this fucking abomination you call an existence.”
Romero’s face was grim.
“You’d rather die?”
“I’d rather die,” said Dex, and
spat in Romero’s face. “So stop fucking whining and do it, before I rip out
your throat with my teeth and chew on your diseased fucking spine.”
The corner of Romero’s eye
twitched. He lifted his hand a few inches, a subtle signal, then dropped it
again. In a croak, he said, “Kill him.”
“With pleasure,” whispered Amba.
~ * ~
A
thousand Big Belly Bombers droned over the Savage Mountains of South Kardoom,
and General Kome, in the lead bomber, leaned forward, eyes gleaming in
anticipation as they approached the jewel in the crown of Theme Planet’s ride
extravaganzas, the newest ride and current highlight of mass TV and filmy
advertising campaigns: Mayhem. The biggest rollercoaster ever built. The
wildest rollercoaster ever built. It started on the edge of the atmosphere, and
dropped vertically for five kilometres before hitting its first spin and roll -
which went on for another five. It was said, at one point, the rollercoaster
entered
another dimension
via a transferable modular singularity. That
marketing fact was a closely guarded secret.
“Ahhhh,” said General Kome, “I do
so enjoy flying happily into an unguarded soon-to-be-warzone where we have
guaranteed intelligence that the pointless and soon-to-be spineless victims
have no real firepower with which to retaliate; I do so love attacking an
innocent people and culture, and blowing them all the way to the arsehole of
Hell. And, if the truth be known, Theme Planet, and Monolith Corporation, with
all its wealth and acumen, with all its reserves and technology, well, they
deserve everything I fucking throw at them for leaving such a ripe and wealthy
jackpot unguarded, just there, a honey globule waiting to be picked.” He rubbed
his hands together and lit a fat cigar. “I’m going to give this SARAH a proper
going over. Stick it to her from behind, so to speak. Teach her who’s the boss,
who’s the daddy, who’s the overlord, and who is ultimately going to be holding
her new leash.”
At ground level, the earth had
begun to tremble. The air became chaotic, a riot, and was filled with grease.
Clouds broiled through the sky, which darkened as if anticipating a violent
thunderstorm. The mountains, now scrolling past to General Rome’s right, began
to vibrate, and the large military man frowned, chewing his cigar with
prejudice.
“Peterson, any seismic or
volcanic activity detected?”
Petersen, a small neat man,
lifted his finger, scanning the binary reports. “No, sir. Er. Sir, there’s
something else...”
“Go on?”
“There’s... some kind of
activity. The computers are showing... ah.”
“Showing what, idiot?” snapped
General Kome, voice the bark of a Rottweiler.
“Ah. According to the scanners,
sir, the
entire
surface area beneath us is moving.”
“Moving? An earthquake?”
“Negative, sir. No earthquake.”
“What do you mean, then, moving?
Speak sense! Decode it, man, decode it! “
“It appears to be just -
expanding,
sir.”
“That’s impossible. Over what
size area?”
“As far as the scanners detect.”
“Which is?”
“Ten thousand square klicks, sir.”
“You mean to tell me ten thousand
square fucking kilometres of the
ground
is expanding?”
“Affirmative, General Kome.”
Kome stared at the wobbling
mountains to his right, and the glittering ocean to his left which, he noted,
had become extremely choppy (this was an understatement; the waves were riding
ten metres high). He rubbed his stubbled chin and chewed on his cigar. “What I
suggest,” he said, but didn’t get much further, because at that point something
big
did move in his
peripheral vision, and as he turned his head to focus, his mouth dropped open
and the cigar toppled to the console, spilling a trail of random ash.
“Holy Mother of Mary,” said
Peterson, eyes wide, hands trembling on air-scanners. “I’ve never seen anything
quite like...
that...”
Kome grabbed the comm, hit
Send
to all bombers, and screamed, “Evasive
action, evasive action!”
But he was too late.
~ * ~
Dex stared down
the
barrel of the FRIEND and he knew he was dead. He’d had Zi in his head; he knew
what she could do. Had detected her... amorality? After all, she was nothing
more than a KillChip. An AI designed to torture and murder for its masters.
Ha-ha.
Like us,
thought Dex, wondering what death would be like. Would there be a
Heaven? With glowing winged android angels?
Yeah, right, motherfucker.