Interzone #266 - September-October 2016

by Andy Cox [Ed. ]

  He pronounces consonants, for fuck’s sake. The rest of us drop them, like the good old faux cockneys we aspire to be. He has to enunciate. I am not exactly sure why I designed some simulants after him.

  I see them kissing next to a waterway in Little Venice. Kissing. It irritates the hell out of me. I don’t know how many Elliots there are in London, but I try an experiment. I wait until he has walked her to the edge of our Complex, then I pounce on him as he walks back. I obliterate his head with dozens of strikes from my pipe.

  When he falls, I hear the drum beat of multiple feet. There are simulants running towards me. Just two of them at first. They don’t know how to fight, and they approach me one at a time, so I simply whack them in the faces with my pipe. But then there are more. When the two fall, three more appear, and when they fall a team of four runs towards me. They still attack one at a time, but I’m getting tired, my arm is weak, and it’s hard to keep my footing in the pool of faux-blood at my feet. The silence is disconcerting. They don’t get out of breath, and when I punch them in the belly, there is no forced exhalation. I try to run into the Complex, but now there is a group of five and they appear to have learned to attack all at once. My pipe, slick with their fluids, slips from my fingers. I take punches to the body and head. I’m dazed, and still taking hits. I know that if I black out, they will kill me. Through the confusion of limbs, I see a team of six approaching. I am about five feet from the gate of the Complex.

  I unleash a final burst of savagery, and am able to escape into the barrier. My hunch is correct. The simulants cannot enter. I fall to all-fours, catch my breath. I see a light come on in Terry’s house, but then it goes out again.

  The surviving simulants stand at the barrier and I give them the finger before I stagger home. When I look out of the window, both the incapacitated and active simulants are gone.

  ***

  Three hours later I wake up to scores of observation orbs in my room, more than I have ever seen in one place at the same time. And Nico. He appears in greyscale, as Tom Jones when he was in the band Tommy Scott and the Senators. White shoes, white trousers, open neck cardigan. The Senators was back in the sixties. I’m staring at his outfit and I miss what he’s saying.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You’re under arrest,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Is your hearing malfunctioning?” He moves closer to my bed. “You are under arrest for the murder of Elliot Wells.”

  ***

  It turns out the strangers move fast in setting up a rudimentary judicial system, a police force and a prison of sorts. I am the first person to be arrested or placed in detention.

  “This is ridiculous,” I say to Nico.

  “You were the one who prayed for law enforcement,” he says.

  “For them. I’m not subject to their laws.”

  “You can argue that in court. Murder is a universal—”

  “It’s not murder. The simulants are not alive.”

  “Well—”

  “At most it’s cruelty to machines, and even you know how ridiculous that sounds.”

  “I suggest you work on your defence, Storm.”

  ***

  I don’t know what’s funnier, a Soviet show trial or this farce.

  The judge is a Miss Cadogan. The jury is full of Elliot Wells duplicates, which is annoying because it should be a jury of my peers. Observation orbs are everywhere. All this malarkey because I deactivated the equivalent of a household appliance.

  There are no other humans in court, and that should make me suspicious right away, but I am overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all. What are they going to do, execute me? It’s not as straightforward as I think, though. Since this circus began my feelings on the matter have become complicated. I make glib statements about simulants not being alive, but deep down, where I won’t admit anything, I feel a cold weightiness in my heart. It makes my words ring false when I use them. Is that guilt I’m feeling? Have I convinced myself these simulants are alive?

  When I see the first prosecution witness the other shoe finally drops. The humans are going to testify against me. Katrina’s in the stand.

  ***

  “I appeal, Nico. I want to speak to them,” I say.

  He is silent for a while. I’ve never seen him like this. I get the sense that he is thinking, which is odd. I thought he was a mouthpiece.

  “You can’t,” he says, finally.

  “Prisoners and convicts have a right of appeal, since we’re pretending to be human. Take me to the fucking Apologists.”

  “You can’t speak to them, Storm, because they are not here.”

  “I’m sorry, what? What are you saying?”

  Tom fucking Jones is still dancing while delivering this news. Unbelievable.

  “We’re not on Earth,” says Nico. “After your planet was destroyed you all were brought here, to the homeworld. That’s why you have to wear the suits when scavenging. This is not Earth.”

  I sputter, but I feel the ground falling away from me. “So what is this place?”

  “A kind of reserve, a place for you to thrive, build a new world, live.”

  “A wildlife reserve? A fucking zoo? Are you kidding me?”

  “The people you call Apologists don’t live here, haven’t done for centuries. They have left to explore—”

  “Show me.”

  He does.

  Beyond the placeholder for what is to be the M25 London orbital motorway, he takes me though what seems like nothingness, but is a doorway. It is suddenly dark, with spotlights from above. All around me, and extending as far as the eye can see are hundreds, thousands of proto-simulants. They stand there with their bland features and absent secondary sexual characteristics. They twitch occasionally, the way babies do, the way Chelsea did in her sleep.

  I look up, and the ceiling appears to be so far away it must have clouds forming within. It’s like a cathedral, but no cathedral I know of is miles wide. No matter what direction I look in, I cannot see a wall. The heads of the simulants just keep going forever. The ceiling is transparent and shows a night sky, with constellations I do not recognise.

  “I want to go outside,” I say.

  “No. There is no atmosphere. You’ll die. Besides, there is nothing to see. This is all there is,” says Nico.

  “Give me the suits we go scavenging in,” I say.

  He humours me, but he is right. There is nothing to see outside but rock and dust and dead machinery. Overhead, a number of large celestial bodies in the sky, moons and satellites, no doubt.

  “Is there no way to get a message to—”

  “Storm, they live in Dyson Clouds over multiple solar systems. They have countless worlds like this where they keep species like yours. They do not wish to hear your opinion. You are wasting your time.”

  I take the suit off. “There has to be retrial, Nico. I must be judged by my peers, not these…things. Let the Final Five judge their own.”

  In the end they elect to exile me, which is just like imprisonment, only with no walls, bars or daily routine. They agree it wasn’t murder to kill a simulant, but I had displayed ‘murderous behaviour’ which may well spill into their lives. They see me as dangerous. I do not tell them we are not on Earth because fuck them.

  They seal me in a cul-de-sac in Shoreditch. The simulants avoid the area and not even the ghost cars drive on the roads. It is hard, and I am lonely. I write down everything I can remember about Bea and Chelsea. If I am not to create simulant personalities then I will re-create others. I write about the lives of people I have known on Earth. I write furiously, so as not to go mad.

  I write about what happened here in this new London. The first version I write is a bit of whinging horsedung. I cast myself as a misunderstood martyr and gloss over the things I did wrong. I don’t know what I was thinking. Redemption after death? Much later, when I have achieved distance and some objectivity, I destroy the first account and write a more honest one. I am
even able to interrogate myself, to ask myself why I really killed Elliot Wells and those other simulants. I use the word ‘killed’. I speculate on whether I was jealous, on whether I am perhaps attracted to Katrina. I delete that version too, and finally settle on one that just states the facts.

  I attend to every little thing. When the printer makes food I watch every minute process. Maybe I do go mad a little, because I speak to the drone sentries, even though they do not speak back.

  After about a year, a simulant escorts me to the funeral for one of the Kellys, then the other within a month. I pay my respects. Katrina is there, eyes swollen from crying. Terry’s there too, in sunglasses and staring at me. I want to explain to them that I have some insight into myself now, that I’m not a threat, and that I want to come back, but it reminds me of when I begged Bea to return home, and I end up saying nothing.

  ***

  We are the pandas who won’t mate. Endangered, in captivity, eating food printed from basic amino acids, glucose and triglyceride molecules, remaking our world from memory and language, a world both old and new.

  In this new London I am the first mass murderer. I serve my time, and when I come out of Shoreditch I do not recognise the proto-city. They give me new clothes, and ignore my protests. They have improved the water, there are cars, and the people are more like the grim arseholes you would normally see in the London tube crowds every day. Maybe this is not so bad. If I squint, this can pass for Earth.

  The Complex is empty, and I have no idea where Katrina or Terry are. I see Nico one more time, but he does not tell me about the other humans.

  I go into a pub called The Cock and Bull to wait for the midday apology.

  The service is shit, but the cider tastes better.

  ***

  Tade Thompson lives and works in the south of England. His first novel Making Wolf won the 2016 Kitschies Golden Tentacle award for best debut novel. His second novel Rosewater will be released in November from Apex Books. We’ll be interviewing him next issue.

  EXTRATERRESTRIAL FOLK METAL FUSION

  GEORGINA BRUCE

  illustrated by Vince Haig

  Professor Jane Lovage imagined that she might walk into the Astrophysics building, free her hair from its neat bun, and shake it loose in gingerish waves over her shoulders. She might slip off her corduroy business jacket and twirl it around her head a few times before slinging it into a corner (missing any vital pieces of lab equipment in its path, of course) then she might stride – yes, stride – through a throng of mesmerised spectators, stride right up to Mariel Hewitt – and kiss her. In Jane’s imagination, Mariel would be dazzled by this unexpected display of sexual glamour. Professor Jane! But…but you’re beautiful! And of course, Mariel would swoon into her kiss. The much-hyped kissing with tongues that was all the rage these days.

  What a daft idea, really. And not the sort of thing that would impress Mariel Hewitt at all. These naive romantic scenarios might be popular amongst Jane’s colleagues in Astrophysics, but Mariel Hewitt was Media Studies. She probably wrote papers that deconstructed the trope of ‘sexy/professor’ and analysed its place in the context of feminist critiques of academia. Mariel was a woman of the modern world. And Jane was from outer space. Not literally. Well yes, literally, in one sense: in the sense that everyone is, sort of. But she wasn’t an alien. She was emphatic about that.

  So the fact that the media had dubbed her Alien Jane bothered her a lot. Especially this morning, when it had appeared on the front page of the Guardian: ALIEN JANE’S “TRANSMISSION” IS EVIDENCE OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE. Everyone Jane knew read the Guardian. Everyone. There was absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Mariel Hewitt read the Guardian. The tabloids were less of a worry, though their headlines were even more ridiculous: ALIEN JANE’S TEXT MESSAGES FROM OUTER SPACE. Or her students’ favourite: REVEALED: ALIEN JANE’S TORRID NIGHTS WITH SPACE LOTHARIO! There was a lot of dumbing things down and making things up – the real story was a lot less…sexy. Yes, the Transmission had been picked up by Jane; and yes, it had clearly been broadcast from another, long dead, planet; and yes again, it looked like pretty impressive proof of intelligent life in the universe. But as stunning as that story should have been without embellishment, the Transmission was, at heart, just a line of code. It wasn’t even an especially good looking line of code. Jane herself wasn’t that photogenic, either, and the papers had already got bored of taking her picture. The nickname had stuck, though. She was Alien Jane now, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  She managed to walk through the lobby of the Astrophysics building without stripping, and made it to her office with all her buttons fastened and hair in place. That day’s Guardian went straight into the wastepaper bin next to her desk. She sighed. Maybe the emptiness she felt was hunger. In the tiny office refrigerator was an apricot yoghurt that didn’t do anything too alarming when she peeled back the foil lid, so she decided to call it breakfast. She was about to eat it when Mariel Hewitt barged into the room and plonked herself on the chair opposite Jane’s desk. Jane instantly felt dishevelled, and mortified to be caught with a spoonful of yoghurt gripped in her hand. Of all things to eat in front of Mariel, yoghurt seemed the most pedestrian, the least punk. It marked Jane out as a woman of little substance. She threw the pot into the wastepaper bin. Slimy yellow streaks splattered over the Guardian headline.

  “Those arseholes in Modern Languages,” Mariel said. “They’ve only gone and found an exolinguist. I mean, what bollocks.”

  Jane nodded, and hoped that was enough to make it look as though she knew what Mariel was talking about.

  Mariel grimaced. “Bloody linguists. What are you doing for lunch? Would you like to brave the canteen with me? I’ll tell you what Baudrillard said about extraterrestrial intelligent life forms. If you’re lucky, I’ll tell you in French.” She laughed, and tucked her hair behind her very shapely ears. “If you can possibly stand it. You’ve probably had enough of non-scientists hanging around here.”

  “I’m free at twelve o’clock,” said Jane. “It’s a date.”

  Only of course it wasn’t a date. Well, not in that sense. Not in the sense of two people with bodies trying to work out if the bodies should interact in intimate proximity to one another. Not in that sense, at all.

  ***

  Dear Alien Jane,

  I’ll be honest. My longing for you can only be described as sexually transgressive. My biology urges me to perform certain acts which would perhaps be considered morally questionable by your species’ standards, and I can’t deny that this is part of the excitement. Our sexual union is all I can think about, although I have no way of knowing if we are sexually compatible or even physically capable of achieving congress. All I know is that the more I think about it, the more my tentacles unfurl and ooze with slime. If you feel the same way, please, please let me know.

  Your own

  Space Lothario x

  ***

  According to the Guardian, the Transmission consisted of music, poetry, and rules for trigonometry.

  “The works of the greatest alien poets and musicians, comparable to Shakespeare, Mozart, and the Beatles, are being beamed at the Earth in a sequence of code. The code repeats every two minutes, and so far there has been no variation. Astrophysics professor Jane Lovage, popularly known as Alien Jane, says that the transmission is evidence of intelligent life in the cosmos. ‘It wants to communicate with us. It has something important to say,’ Professor Lovage stated.”

  Mariel wondered if Alien Jane really had stated that. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing she’d state. Not that Mariel knew anything about Alien Jane, or the Transmission, or science in general. What Mariel knew about was Media Studies. Since the news had broken about the Transmission, she’d been hanging around the Astrophysics building, hoping for some inside scoop. She’d been spending some time with Alien Jane, but all she could glean so far was that the Transmission was some kind of temporal-geometric pattern, wh
ich was almost certainly not an accident, and which was being beamed at the Earth from a distant planet that was so far away in space and time that it no longer actually existed. Alien Jane reminded Mariel of Jodie Foster in Contact, only not quite as good looking.

  Mariel thought a lot about how the planet beaming this message no longer existed, long since burned up by the death of its sun. The author of the Transmission was dead, as were the author’s children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and their descendants, not to mention everyone they had ever loved, or whatever their equivalent of love was, along with everywhere they had ever lived and every place they had ever seen with whatever their equivalent of eyes were. Maybe they saw with the backs of their knees, or whatever their equivalent of knees were. You couldn’t get an author more dead than the author of the Transmission. The Transmission was therefore of great and compelling interest to the Media Studies department in general, and to Mariel Hewitt in particular.

  Mariel cancelled her afternoon lecture and spent the next two hours in her office making notes for an article about the Transmission which she planned to flog to a major cultural studies journal. Damn it, maybe it could even be a book. Documentary television series? Maybe this was the breakthrough she needed to launch her career on a global scale.

  The message, which has no point of origin, no discernible content, and which cannot be decoded, can therefore be thought of as the ultimate fiction: it is entirely open to the reader’s interpretation. It demands a level of engagement which is so extreme that the reader must in fact literally become the writer of the message. However, in order to become the writer of this particular message, the reader must be utterly annihilated. Not only must she attempt to inhabit the extinguished alien psychology, but she must do so in the knowledge that, should her attempt be successful, she would logically exterminate herself as writer. This is a text which, by its very nature, creates an infinite and intellectually fatal paradox.