The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  His vision went black for a moment. Regaining his senses, he reached out and touched a random name.

  “You have selected Ladonna Adams,” the voice said. The list disappeared and a profile of a Golden woman popped up, giving every bit of information about her, including her education, her job description, and an entire family tree stretching to the top and bottom of the screen with her in the middle, all with photographs. Every one of them looked the same as every other Gold Furius or Mr. B. had ever seen. The woman was more than two hundred years old.

  “Is this the Celarwil-Dain Brain Trust patient you wish to visit?”

  “Yes.” He coughed. The pool of blood beneath his feet was expanding rapidly.

  The screen disappeared and a drawer opened where it had been, extending toward him. “Please place the breathing assistance device over your nose and mouth.” He took from the drawer a limp bag of smooth fabric with straps that were apparently meant to go around his head. Furius had occasionally seen people wearing these on the streets; B’s memories said it was because the air outside was gritty and toxic. He aligned it with his nose and strapped it on. His exhalation puffed out the fabric away from him, but when he breathed in it had a stiff mesh to keep it from sucking back onto his face. The drawer disappeared and a hole began to expand where it had been, leaving soft, loose edges like a wound.

  “Please step through the opening and onto the pad. Keep all parts of your body inside the circle at all times.”

  He stepped through and onto the glowing circle, dripping blood from the cuff of his pants. The door closed, or healed, behind him. The circle started to move and he tensed, trying to keep his own wounds stable.

  It was dark here but the circle he was standing upon glowed brightly enough to keep the view from being absolutely black. Machinery drifted quickly past, in endless rows on both sides of him, banking bodies sealed in bioplexi coffins and stacked up with no vertical space left between them. He was moving too fast to count them, but after about two minutes his circle came to a stop and then made a sharp right turn. It sped up again and the view was the same: body after body, stacked in rows and columns that stretched into darkness on all sides, as well as above and below him.

  Even through the mask, the rotten air here made Furius sick. He’d already been getting lightheaded from blood loss, and now he could hardly breathe. He had to find a way to get drugs and put himself together. The circle rose up and up, the plastic coffins whizzing by. Finally it slowed to a stop. Slowly one of the boxes slid out, silently gliding by until the entire length was past.

  “The resting chamber interior has been left dark in accordance with typical visitor preference,” the voice said. “The interior can be lit by request. To illuminate the resting chamber, simply say “reveal all now.”

  “Reveal all now,” Furius said. Lights came on inside the coffin, illuminating the woman’s face. He could still see where there had been eyes and nostrils, but it was mostly just a translucent pink sac, draped over a skull apparently just thick enough to support its weight. The plastic tube going into what had been the mouth would have seemed flimsy in another context, but its size and rigidity seemed coarse and brutal here. It appeared to be impaling the sac, nailing it to the surface below, or perhaps to be sucking up the whole mess that was Ladonna Adams. From it, translucent hair-like fibers spread off and connected down through the skull at thousands of points. The lights didn’t extend very far down the coffin, but it appeared most of what had been arms and legs had deteriorated into gelatinous goo.

  There didn’t seem to be any way to open the box. There were tubes and hoses connected to the head end, some of which probably had stuff flowing through them that could heal Furius. Squinting, he looked into the slot that had been opened as the coffin had slid out. The light from the illuminated transparent coffin showed hoses emerging from a great framework of pipes extending sideways and up and down, and behind those pipes, larger ones where some of the hoses connected. Those larger ones at the back appeared to be labeled.

  He was bleeding too much to remain conscious for long. He climbed from the circle up onto the coffin, slipping in his own blood on the smooth surface and nearly falling off the other side. Gripping the edges of the coffin to keep himself stable, he scooted toward the front, then reached over the side toward the tubes coming in at the bottom. There wasn’t enough light to see the tubes clearly, but he could feel them with his hand: There were no connectors of any kind. The tubes had just enough slack for the coffin to slide out to its current position. He had to get to the bigger ones with the hoses if he was going to—

  To what? Drink the stuff? Isn’t that what the saggy bitch is doing through her face hole? Okay. Drink the stuff.

  He could cut the tubes going into the coffin with his click knife, but that would just make it pour down the side. He could reach inside and cut the ones above, but there was no way to know what would be pouring out. At least one of them had to be carrying sewage and other waste. But if he could reach the big pipes at the back, the labeled ones, he’d know which of them he should open. Furius eased himself through the opening and half crawled, half slid across the coffin below.

  It was another plastic box, with another dead—no, not dead, just … not alive—body a hand’s width below him in the dark. He felt around and identified some features of the tubing at the back. Some of the bigger pipes had hatch valves on them like old-fashioned fire hydrants. If they turned, they would be an easy way to access the material inside.

  To each side was a space nearly as wide as the coffins were. He tried to see how many coffins high he was, but the light faded away after only ten or fifteen of them.

  His foot faltered and his leg slipped off. He’d started to black out again. He gritted his teeth and focused on the pipes at the back of the space. One of the hatch valves had a glowing tape seal reading STERILE.

  Probably not sewage, then. That’ll be it.

  He attacked the valve, ripping away the tape and gripping the cap. It wouldn’t budge. He tried again, the flesh of his hand imprinting deeper and deeper from the cap until he was sure he’d tear the bones loose.

  What did he have to assist in the process? Two guns, safely tucked away inside his coat, but they seemed unlikely to help. Anyway, for all he knew they’d set off another barrage of fire from those accursed automatic computer sentry things. He could use the coat itself as a gripping aid, except that he didn’t want to risk taking it off and further tearing his wound. The kilo might work, though. It was packed tightly in plastic.

  Furius snaked a hand into the pocket where the kilo of Pink Shit resided. The pocket was full of a substance the consistency of paint; the bullet that had exited his ribcage had gone through the package, releasing Pink Shit to mix with his pooling blood. There was a good deal of Pink Shit still inside the plastic, though, which had saturated to a paste-like consistency. He pulled out the package and squished it over the cap, gripping again and leaning hard as he turned. The cap loosened and then popped off as the pressurized liquid shot out, and Furius, still gripping the remains of the kilo, snatched a hose to steady himself. Using the plastic and paste to plug the opening, he directed a thin stream of the liquid toward his mouth. The taste was metallic, as if he were drinking oil straight out of a bronze lamp.

  His vision went black again, just for a second. The stream coming out was slickening the surface of the coffin supporting him. Grunting, he pushed the kilo completely into the opening, stopping the flow.

  The stuff he’d swallowed was not helping. Furius collapsed.

  In the Truck

  The driver pulled Kym by her hair until her face was near his crotch. She jerked back. “Don’t fight me, bitch,” he said. “You be nice, you swallow what I got for you, you can walk away. Else I snap your neck and sell you at the next refinery.” Kym nodded, feigning defeat, and slid her hand up his thigh to grip him, bending low. Then she shoved her fist down and her head up, driving the back of her head into his face and his balls
into the seat, snatching the satchel of mon coins and lunging for the door release. She managed to pop the latch but he grabbed at her. She blocked him with the bag and he seized it, trying to pull her back down into the seat. The strap gave way and it tipped, flooding the truck’s compartment with mon chips. The driver dove on them, gathering all the chips together, forgetting her momentarily, and she was able to clear the doorway. The rolling metal thing slammed back down around the truck and her assailant drove off with the chips.

  There would be no return to Dobo Protein Refinery. She was alone. Even the Departed had others like themselves to turn to. How long could anyone survive alone here? She searched her jacket pockets. Nothing there but a rag, a lighter, and her old set of keys to the place she’d shared with Mikk.

  It’s not far. Maybe twenty minutes to walk.

  But Mikk could be there.

  She believed Mikk might actually own the shitty little place. If he’d returned there and she just walked in now, he’d probably beat her, perhaps to death.

  And anywhere else in the Zone, I’m sure to die on my own.

  As she walked, she got angrier. How would she live now, with no job and no money? All of it gone, and by no fault of hers. It was men. Always men, with their violence and their lies and their lust for power. She’d escaped Mikk only to be immediately enslaved by Furius. Even though he hadn’t been as vicious as Mikk, he’d been even crazier.

  Men take your money, your body, and your dignity, leaving you a hollowed out shell. That’s what they want: shells to fill up with their mess.

  And she had been so foolish, believing in that dirty little man’s story about General E.D. In the early days she’d begun a real crusade, telling her friends about the coming revolution, lifting them temporarily out of the hopelessness of their little lives, only to have it all sink back into the muck. Weeks and months had passed with no victory, no war, and not even a single battle.

  Nobody bothered her on the street. She had nothing left for them to take. She reached the building and climbed the stairs with the key in her hand. If Mikk happened to be there, he was about to have the fight of his life. If another tenant had moved in, she’d go straight for the fucker’s eyes. She turned the lock and shoved the door, anticipating but not fearing a violent reaction from the other side.

  She was met only by silence. The light came on when she flipped the switch, revealing the same shitty furniture. Apparently someone was still paying bills. Mikk had kept money hidden in various accounts; one of them could easily have been set up to automatically pay for this place. More likely was what she’d suspected for a while: The original occupant had set up automatic payments, and then Mikk had killed the original occupant. It wouldn’t take much money to pay for a lot of months in a shithole like this. The pimps and dealers Mikk tended to associate with would have more than enough cash to set up that kind of arrangement.

  It was also possible that someone else could have killed Mikk and taken the place for himself. Someone bad enough to pull that off, nasty enough to actually, successfully kill Mikk, might be returning here at any minute.

  Let him come.

  Kym wanted to fight. She realized she was disappointed at not finding Mikk, but really, any random psycho would do. She wanted so badly to strike out that it no longer mattered whether she had a chance of winning. Just bring them on. Better to go out fighting.

  Fuck winning. Maybe she could give back some pain before it was all over.

  She checked the tiny bathroom Mikk had made her keep scrubbed spotless, and the alcove where they’d slept on a rag-stuffed bed.

  These spaces were empty too. She paced around for a minute, ending up standing at the sink. On the floor around her feet was the stain of dried blood and piss, left from when she’d last been here.

  Even Mikk probably would’ve cleaned this up, or at least made somebody else do it.

  Maybe the place had truly been vacant this whole time.

  She opened his cabinet, snatching a bottle of sodje and taking a long drink.

  “Shitty day,” she said aloud, crumpling onto the lumpy vinyl sofa. She found a local news channel and checked the live feed to see if there was any news of the refinery. Instead, she saw the long lines of windowless beetle buildings wedged next to the Central Business district, the ones that housed the various Brain Trusts. A woman was speaking:

  The lone assailant gained entry to the Celarwil-Dain Brain Trust by posing as a visitor. He apparently tainted the nutrient feed with what we’re told may have been a chemical that interfered with signals between the hardwired patients.

  The entire Celarwil-Dain network ceased functioning at 22:09 GMT. The International Council of Exchanges declared Celarwil-Dain defunct at 22:52 GMT, making its collective human resources the newest Lost Populace.

  The assailant died of injuries sustained during—

  Another announcer cut in, a man this time.

  We interrupt with breaking news. There is a situation developing outside the Central Business District. Security alerts have been issued warning of immediate and extreme danger…

  On the screen was an infrared capture of a girl’s scarred face that had been hidden behind a scarf.

  The General! It was her, right there on the screen, though wide-eyed and starved skinny. Another shot from a different camera confirmed it. General Eadie and her strange, skeletal friend the Prophet were outside the CBD fence at this very moment.

  Finally! It’s starting.

  It’s starting!

  Through the screen she opened her contacts list and selected every address in it, forwarding the news clip with a message:

  GENRAL E.D.

  JOIN US

  FITE OR DIE ANY WAY

  ITS WHY YOUR HERE

  She’d told many people about the General, so hopefully some of them would come to serve. Those others who were crazy in the same way as Furius might act on a message like that, if it gave them hope of figuring out what had happened to them, or why.

  Maybe they’d show up at the protest just to try and kill Furius. Whatever the reason, at least she’d be helping the General build a crowd.

  Armed soldiers, at the command of Colonel Kym!

  Undisclosed location

  “Ma’am, I will stake on it whatever reputation I have,” IAi547 said. “I had set facial recognition alerts to pop up if this girl were ever to appear in the news again, and I’m sure that she is trouble. I don’t know what she’s doing, yet, but I know we have to get to the CBD and assist the Organization’s office there, ma’am.”

  IAg226 stared at him. He’d probably broken about a hundred protocols by making this recommendation. As he was such a new Unnamed, this outburst was likely seen as serious misconduct, if not akin to corporate sacrilege, but it had been unavoidable. His duty to the company had dovetailed into his hatred of his former friend Sett and the murdering waitress, compelling him to act.

  Finally, she spoke. “All right. I believe you, 547. Prior life knowledge is of rare utility, and we may as well take advantage of it when we can. Let’s go.”

  His EI received the same message she was sending to his team and three of the other teams under her command.

  Disturbance in the CBD.

  Let’s get over there and see what we can do.

  “Thank you, 226,” he said. She nodded.

  A mass of silent, black-suited bodies headed for the trucks. As they rode, he followed the news through his EI.

  547 shook his head. On many different buildings they passed, usually written in charcoal but occasionally painted or even scratched, were the letters “E.D.” Once they caught his notice, he seemed to see them everywhere.

  He forced his mind back to the news. Li’l Ed was gone. There was only 547, now.

  By the time they arrived in the CBD the situation had escalated. “Head straight for the train station,” IAg226 said over the EI intercom. “The office buildings are being evacuated and they’ll be heading for trains. Commandeer four train cars
exclusively for Organization passengers. Allow no outside interference. Not from security, not from rival Unnamed, not even from Feds. We will hold four train cars at any cost. Use of all weapons is authorized in furtherance of this objective. Any questions?”

  “No, ma’am,” they all answered in unison.

  Amelix Building, CBD

  Never in Dr. Chelsea’s career had the Central Business District been evacuated, or even threatened in any significant way. Until this moment it had been unthinkable that a band of criminals from the Zone might pose such a threat as to necessitate this. Wasn’t this what the guards, fences, and Unnamed were supposed to prevent?

  She glanced around her office, but there was nothing she needed to take with her. All her work was stored in the Amelix worldwide network and accessible via EI. She prepared to file out with her stunned coworkers.

  The Thrall took over.

  She stood at the cage. The G2 Rat Gods were watching everyone leave. It was a direct order from the company: She had to evacuate now. Yet the Rat Gods had pulled her close, and they weren’t letting her go. She willed her feet to move, silently begged her own body to turn and follow the others, but the rapture was too powerful to resist.

  Waves of intense pleasure alternated with agonizing pangs of guilt and doubt as she struggled to obey her conditioned corporate orders.

  Even in Thrall Dr. Chelsea retained her scientific curiosity. She wondered how long her conditioning would hold out against the intoxicating power the animals were pouring into her.

  Not which will win, but how long it will take for them to overpower me.

  The thought shook her concentration. Their hold deepened. Her eyes widened in horror. “No!” she said. She shook her head, but then her neck muscles tightened and her jaw clenched, stilling her. “NO!” she tried to shout through her gritting teeth. Her lips sealed, pushing tightly together.

  Her hand slowly worked the seals and airlocks, releasing the Rat Gods.