by Theo Cage
“Yes, we don’t want to attract any more attention than we have to,” commented Zerzy.
“Too bad; It’s a blast,” yelled Toshi.
Zerzy turned towards one of her laptops, the high-level security case with the 4K screen. She knelt, tapped a few keys. Toshi kept laying down fire.
“Toshi. My alarm went off. Something’s coming.”
“Let it. I’m ready.”
“I told you before, it’s big.” she pronounced it in her Russian accent as “beek”.
“Can you read the source?”
“Everywhere.”
“There is no such thing as everywhere.”
“It keeps changing location. By the second.”
“Cool.”
“Look.” Zerzy pointed at the video wall. The distant sky was growing darker, sinister clouds boiling above their heads.
“Is that your code? Those spicy clouds?”
Toshi tapped at his wrist controller. Looked up. Jabbed at the pad again.
“Why would I do clouds?” he answered, his voice constricted.
“That’s not part of your program? Then how—”
“This is fucked up. Someone is manipulating my code,” raged Toshi.
Zerzy watched, enrapt. Toshi was brilliant, creating a program that turned the abstract Internet into a world you could see on a video screen. But somebody else had already found his code and modded the graphics. In minutes.
“This is not good,” whispered the Japanese programmer, turning in circles. The clouds were growing darker, expanding purple bruises, explosions of orange light buried deep inside. They were rolling in fast.
“Lightning,” muttered Wey.
“A storm is coming,” added Zerzy.
“It’s not just a storm. Look.”
At the edge of a forest of billboards, a shape emerged: a creature with a monstrous head, fangs, claws. It was plowing towards Toshi, smashing aside buildings and billboards, turning them into kindling. A roar filled the room.
“Holy shit,” said Wey. “It’s Godzilla.”
“Is this a joke?” yelled Toshi. He spun and raised his machine gun at the monster. Someone was fucking with him. Because he was Japanese, they picked a classic movie monster? A kaiju? Fuck them.
Zerzy looked from the screen to Toshi who was crouched, his arms wrapped around an invisible weapon.
“Can your suit be hacked?” yelled Wey.
Toshi was intent on the creature, an Internet presence manifest as a fifty-foot fictional movie monster. He fired into the dark shape. The creature roared, then swung his arm at Toshi, a massive dark shape exploding across the screen. Toshi cried out and fell backwards against a row of server boxes.
His left arm was bent at an awkward angle. “Damn, it broke my arm,” he yelled.
“What?” screamed Wey, running towards his hacking partner. “How—”
“The suit,” groaned Toshi. “Disconnect my suit.” The beast was above Toshi on the screen now. It raised one giant foot, claws curled down from the toes. It stomped down hard, a nightmarish blur of energy and mass. Toshi spasmed. One arm curled up, striking his face. He yelled something in Japanese. “He’s killing me. Stop him.”
手铐
HANDCUFFS
Quinjang Prison
MING TUK WAS 25 YEARS OLD, a guard at the prison for less than a year. He had grown up in the rice paddies of Shenyang province, working beside his parents since he was four. An only child.
One day he ran away, escaping the relentless labor of farm life, and found himself sleeping rough in the streets of Guangzhou for weeks. He was picked up by the local police and sentenced to two years in a labor camp for vagrancy.
A guard at Quinjang took pity on him and enrolled him in a local school for prison employees. He was a model employee: followed the rules, respected his superiors, could quote Mao Tsung word for word.
A power alarm began claxoning in the guard’s quarters at 9:27AM and Ming was instructed to assist in the location of the power outage. This was a common occurrence: sewer rats climbed up into utility zones and chewed through cables. That’s what Ming was on the hunt for: an electrical box or power junction secreted in a staff room or management office. He was galloping down a hallway to a staff lunchroom in the dark when he noticed the MRI sign. He had no idea what the initials stood for, but he was curious. He shone his emergency flashlight at the door and tested the lock. The door opened easily. The room was dark but featured a rare prison luxury: emergency lighting on one wall. A strange white machine stood in the center of a white tiled floor. Several lifeless monitors were mounted above a row of desks with computers and keyboards. There was more technology in this one room than Ming had seen in the entire prison; maybe in his life on this planet.
Off to the side was a strange sight: an upended hospital bed with a body splayed underneath. The body was garbed in hospital greens, obviously a doctor, a person of impossibly high ranking in Ming’s limited universe. He ran over, saw the face, a death mask, the eyes staring up at him. He hesitated, unsure of the protocol in this situation. He thought of running to find a supervisor, but that might be the wrong choice. He should confirm the death: that is what a superior would ask first. “Is he dead? Are you certain you ‘sha bi.’” You waste of breath.
Ming knelt, his stomach flipping over. He had seen death before: prisoners who had wasted away from malnutrition or succumbed to torture or beatings. But this was not a lowly murderer or traitor. This was most likely a party member, not as high-ranking as the Warden, but important in every possible way.
Ming knew he must not make any mistakes. He reached over to place his fingers on the doctor’s neck, to check for a pulse, when a filthy hand grabbed his wrist and twisted hard, turning him over on his side. His flashlight skittered across the floor, casting frightening shadows on the wall. Then he felt a fist crash into his nose and then another blow slamming into his neck. He rolled over, the room turning white. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. It was like he had been stunned speechless. He tried to yell. He gasped once or twice then a hand tightened on his neck.
“You speak English?” said a voice, an American accent.
“Little. Some.”
“You know what kill means?”
“Yes. End life.”
“If you say one word or make a sound, I will kill you.”
“No sound. No sound.”
“You have a handcuff key?” Ming said nothing. Turning over a key to a prisoner was a most serious offence. There was a section in the prison that housed the worst offender: traitors, dissidents, zealots. They lived short lives and then their organs were hauled away in cooler boxes. Ming did not want to go there. He was young, an ideal candidate, he would not last more than a few weeks before they volunteered his body.
“No. No key,” he said, his voice shaking.
“Then take this one and undo my feet. If you make a sound, I will snap your neck. Crack. Like that.”
The man under the hospital bed, not the doctor, but a crazed murderer, squeezed his throat when he made the sound. Ming understood what he was trying to say. This prisoner stunk of unwashed clothes and excrement. He was from the lower cells. From Bin section. Murders and rapists.
The guard took the tiny key and strained to see the murderer’s feet in the dim light. They were as black as the foul bread they served to the prisoners every evening. Ming reached up and squeezed one of the feet, pushed up the pant leg and inserted the key into the miniscule lock. The foot cuff opened. He felt the murderer pat his back and he shrank back from the touch.
“Good boy. Now the other one.”
Ming turned, having no intention of releasing the last leg from the manacles. That meant he would probably die today, his mother and father never knowing what had become of him after all of these years. For the first time he could remember he missed them, missed the little farmhouse, his mother’s cooking, the stinking pigs rooting in the yard.
“Can’t do.’
�
��Yes, you can.”
“No! Great dishonor.” Then he felt the forearm tighten on his throat, the air cut off. He struggled for a long moment, twisted back and forth, felt himself slipping into a great darkness.
When he came to, he was handcuffed to the upturned gurney, both hands and one leg, the corner of the bed linen stuffed into his mouth and tied around his face.
All the room emergency lights were turned off and the flashlight was gone.
黑暗
D A R K N E S S
Quinjang Prison
THE PRISON WAS STILL WITHOUT POWER. Whatever needed to be done to restore the interior lights, wasn’t working. Maybe it was the communist mindset at work, a community will that served no one very well in times of panic and stress. Or maybe the electrical system was below standards and corrupted by the party system: cheap components and shortcuts taken to line some party members pockets. Rice didn’t know, but he appreciated how the darkness in the tunnels was making his escape easier.
Rice was still wearing his prison garb, but it was covered with a coat. He had pulled off the young guard’s jacket before manacling him to the gurney. It was at least two sizes too large, but Rice didn’t think that would draw any attention. Quinjang was as far as you can get from caring about fashion.
He held the flashlight out in front of him as he navigated the maze, aiming the light into the eyes of anyone approaching, temporarily blinding them. So far, he had only confronted two guards in the hallway, both without flashlights who rubbed their eyes and quickly moved on. Rice got the impression that power outages were common. The noisy alarms had shut down a few minutes after the lights went out and there was a strange inky silence in the complex. The ever-present drone of human suffering had been temporarily silenced.
No power meant no security cameras. As long as the electricity remained off and he avoided an aggressive team of guards, Rice had a free pass. He continued to move in the direction he believed was west, only because they had brought him to the MRI from the other direction. He had no interest in going back to the solitary confinement cells or anywhere near them. Sometimes you had an instinct about a building or a city, a sense where entrances and egress were located, what area was central, the most populated. It was also easy to be fooled: what you thought was a friendly park could turn out to be a killing field. But he had no choice but to follow his instincts.
Rice pushed on, through hallway after hallway, past more community cells, dozens of haunted eyes catching the beam of his flashlight. Sooner or later the lights would come back on, gates would lock, he would be recognized as a prisoner and would soon be back in his barbaric cell.
He sped up, pushing forward, his bare feet rubbed raw by the roughly troweled cement flooring.
接吻
T H E K I S S
THE TALL RUSSIAN HACKER with the shock of platinum blond hair was standing astride the skinny Japanese programmer, her hands on her hips.
“Get up,” she shouted.
Toshi picked himself up off the floor, dazed by the destruction. He thought he had broken his arm but that was just his virtual reality self he saw with the arm bent at an impossible angle. When he was knocked back by the monster in Wasteland, it felt like he was child being tossed into the air. He had landed on his computer desk, which collapsed, sending two Alienware monster gaming computers crashing to the ground.
One desktop PC was mineral oil cooled and the super slick liquid was now everywhere on the floor. Toshi slipped trying to turn. There were bits of broken plastic and aluminum spread across the room, the sad remains of his beloved gaming computer.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You were showing off, again. This is no game. This is contract for big money. And now we have anozzer beek problem.”
“You mean this?” He pointed to the junk on the floor.
“No, you have attracted some beek player. You notice he rewrote your software?”
“Huh? Impossible.”
“Not impossible. He coded his way right into your baby game and beat you up in the process.”
“I’m fine. I’ll get him back.”
Zerzy shook her fists at him. “You will not get back! You are not playing a first-person shooter. I shut you down.”
“Bullshit!” This outburst drew Wey’s mother into the room. She stood at the entry into the kitchen, her small hands on her bubble hips.
“I pulled your plug, Toshi,” said Zerzy. “He was almost on us. He’s close. You can’t use that VR program and the stupid suit anymore.”
“No one pulls the plug on me.”
Zerzy growled and leapt on him, knocking him over. She grabbed him by the neck, bounced his head off the mineral oil-stained carpet. Two times. Two satisfying thunks. She smiled, showing feral teeth.
“Hey!” he yelled, feeling the back of his bruised skull.
“Don’t talk.” She leaned in, her nose almost touching his. She was frightening at close distances, and she knew it. Her eyes were bloodshot, veins throbbing blue in her forehead against pale skin. She shook him the way a predator tosses prey.
“They will kill you,” she muttered through clenched teeth.
“Who?”
“The Red Dragon! They learn about this? You are already dead. And I need you.” He stared up at her, frozen. Then she kissed him hard on the mouth. Really hard. Toshi felt he was lucky she didn’t break a tooth. It was like being head butted. Surprisingly violent.
Zerzy got up, but before she did, she wiped her oily hands on his fancy haptic jumpsuit.
“Clean this up. You use that fancy program again? I will kill you myself.”
Toshi rolled over on his side and wiped his hand on his thigh. What was that? Was that a kiss? If it was, the Russian had weaponized it. He never felt more humiliated.
Wey entered the room with a new laptop under his arm. He paused in mid step, stared at Toshi on the floor, then looked over at the Russian girl, her face bright red. There was something in the air. Something more than a recent battle with a scary movie monster. Something he didn’t like.
The room was full of Zerzy’s scent, like a blond bomb had exploded, and he had missed it.
“What did I miss,” he asked.
“You miss nothing,” answered Zerzy, terse, not inviting more questions.
“Okay, I got a new laptop out of storage for the Japanese coder lying on the floor. Alienware, as requested. You can put away the mineral oil, Toshi. Surprise! This one is air cooled.”
Toshi pushed himself up on his knees and began picking up the shattered fragments of his beautiful hand-built gaming computer. “Air cooled is for wimps,” he growled, under his breath.
恐怖
H O R R O R
Quinjang Prison
RICE HAD SEEN HIS SHARE OF HORRORS. On the battlefield. Behind enemy lines. What he was experiencing now was more likely to give him PTSD. Every corner he turned gave him renewed despair for the human condition.
The prison had several dark purposes. Primary was to remove dissidents and political activists from the streets and villages, which the ancient building accomplished with a kind of ruthless efficiency, jamming men into impossibly crowded conditions. Some of the chambers Rice saw were so crowded, prisoners could only sleep standing up. The men he could see were all uniformly skin and bones, gaunt faces, hollow eyes. The stink was intolerable.
Rice passed barred rooms by the dozens, the smell of death signaling each new shock, concrete floors that hadn’t been cleaned for years, ceilings dripping with the sticky condensation of prisoner’s hopeless exhalations.
Then there were the torture rooms: dozens of them filled with every abominable device a deranged human could dream of. Most were thankfully empty of guards or prisoners, likely a function of the time of day, more than anything else. Rice saw tin jerry cans filled with water clearly used to torment occupants, ancient batteries and electrical cables, leather straps, suspension devices, rods, clubs, hammers, saws, crude dental tools laid out o
n crudely constructed handmade shelves.
Rice wanted to bomb the entire facility to rubble.
And then, there were the operating rooms. The site of the first one caused Rice to stop in his tracks. A scratched plastic window in a door looked in on a white painted tunnel, fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling by chains. The equipment was crude, rusty, as if purchased surplus. As in the torture chambers, scalpels and chest dividers were scattered about small tables and shelves.
This was one of the operating rooms at the center of the prison’s organ harvesting program—each human part going to the highest bidder. Where did all the money go? Certainly not to food or maintenance of the prison itself. Most likely into the pockets of the senior managers and party apparatchiks.
Rice continued, until he came to a major junction in the hallway system, the hallway’s tiled floors going forward, the walls painted. He could hear the rumble of voices ahead, but he couldn’t tell from which hallway the noise was originating. The voices were angry, harsh. There were plaintiff pleas mixed among the yelling. Rice guessed prisoners had escaped from their cells and were taking their frustration out on the remaining guards. That meant when a riot broke out, the guard’s only choice was to flee to the safety of the surrounding countryside.
As he turned the corner, he came face to face with an older man in the standard green guard uniform, his hat gone, his jacket torn. There was terror in his eyes. Rice guessed he narrowly escaped being beaten to death by prisoners lacking the strength to put up a reasonable fight against his size and weight. Rice stared at him, felt the anger well up. Was he a torturer? Maybe someone who carried the coolers of organs to the transport vans. Or was he like his jailer, a bitter human being who found purpose in causing endless agony, delivered daily like the rotting food.
Rice grabbed the man by the collar and threw him up against the wall, feeling the guard’s skull bounce off the concrete blocks. Who was worse? The supervisors or these weakling supplicants doing their bidding? How do they go home at night to their families?
