The Circus of Machinations

by Chris Ward

  Lena had been gone for nine hours. There had been no word from her, but she had assured him she would only be in touch if she had news. Andrev didn’t know if the likelihood of their signal being intercepted was a genuine threat or simple paranoia, but she had felt the risk was enough. Andrev felt like a monkey tricked into a cage by a fox which had then run off with the key.

  ‘Bulb’s gone,’ he shouted out to his secretary, but when no answer came, he sighed again then went to a utility closet in the corner and found a replacement. However, changing the bulb made no difference.

  He was just about to throw the thing across the room when he noticed his secretary standing in the doorway. ‘Should I call an electrician?’ she asked.

  ‘That would be a good idea. Everything’s starting to fall apart.’

  His secretary gave him a smile that was supposed to be reassuring, and went out to make some phone calls.

  At the window, Andrev looked down at the snowy street. A handful of cars had gathered there, some with their lights still blazing. He could hear the commotion already, some of the richer townsfolk barging into the council offices, demanding to know what had happened to their televisions. It was actually a relief that most of the town was so poverty stricken that the sudden severance of broadcasts had gone largely unnoticed.

  ‘Like a sinking ship with just the rats left,’ he muttered. ‘Why am I wasting my time trying to save it?’

  ‘Sir?’ came his secretary’s voice. ‘An electrician will come the day after tomorrow. That’s the earliest I could find one available, I’m afraid. Um, there are quite a few people downstairs now. They’re demanding you talk to them.’

  ‘What about Security?’

  ‘Chief Voltaire said they can’t hold them off much longer without shooting people. Perhaps you should speak to them, sir.’

  ‘Fine.’

  He headed for the stairs as she went back to her desk. What could he tell them? He knew nothing, and apart from sending Lena off to collect more information, he’d done nothing. The best place for these people right now was their homes.

  ‘Andrev! What’s going on?’

  The man at the front of the group of a dozen or so was Karl Ostinov, foreman at GTA Mining Industries, and at his shoulder was Jan Markovich, the head of the town’s only bank. Behind them was a motley assortment of business owners and local investors. Andrev groaned inwardly. He could have predicted the capitalist bloodsuckers would be the first to get upset. After all, they had the most to lose.

  ‘There’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know,’ Andrev said. ‘You’ve seen the same news reports as I have.’

  ‘Except now they’ve all stopped.’ Markovich said. ‘Was that your doing, you swine? You never got my vote, you swindling bastard.’

  ‘Your insults won’t help anything,’ Andrev said. ‘All I can tell you is that I no longer have access to television broadcasts either. The whole region is undergoing some sort of blackout.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘Forty men died in that drone attack,’ someone near the back shouted. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Look, there’s nothing I can do. I’m waiting for further information.’

  ‘Waiting till the whole town gets bombed off the earth?’

  A scuffle broke out in the middle of the group as someone tried to push his way to the front. Andrev took a step back as his two security guards stepped forward. To his left, Security Chief Voltaire had unclipped his gun holster.

  ‘It’s getting late. I suggest you return to your homes,’ Andrev said. ‘I’ll do a public address at lunchtime tomorrow to share what information I have. Until then it would be advisable to maintain public order.’

  ‘You useless piece of—’

  A fist came flying out of nowhere. Andrev ducked sideways, unsure exactly who had thrown it. Chief Voltaire, a monster of a man at six-seven and a hundred and twenty kilograms, batted the would-be attacker away with ease, pushing him back into the crowd.

  Rickard Ustinov, head of the town’s largest insurance company.

  Voltaire reached for his gun.

  ‘No!’ Andrev shouted, putting two hands on his security chief’s arm. ‘This is over,’ he shouted at the crowd. ‘Go back to your homes. I’m placing an official curfew in place, as of right now.’

  The threat of the gun had subdued them, and with a few mutters and half-hearted insults they withdrew. Voltaire and his colleague secured the front entrance as the cars pulled away, some skidding in the snow in a last display of disobedience.

  Andrev stared after the disappearing lights. This was just the start, he knew. They would be back, and they would want answers. What would he tell them tomorrow? How long could he keep putting off a decision?

  It was getting late. The thought of Petra’s warm body appealed to him. He needed to forget about all this, but there was only so long he could close his eyes. Sooner or later he would have to stand up and be the town’s mayor, or get his family on a train heading east and become a nobody.

  It wasn’t much of a choice.

  The robot was back. Kurou tried to open his eyes as it bumped down the steps using a series of extendable levers and wheels the inventor had installed. As it reached the bottom its engine fizzed and died, the robot slumping forward, even its auxiliaries exhausted. After sending him a message that the inventor had showed up at last, it had taken a couple of hours to get back through the heavy snow. Kurou would worry about whether it was repairable tomorrow. He would see if he made it through the night first.

  He reached for the bag the robot had dragged with it and brushed ice off the outside, holding the zipper close to the fire until the ice had thawed enough for it to open. As soon as he could pull it back, he dumped the contents out on the ground and rifled through them, gasping with relief as he came upon a little bottle of tablets.

  The fever that had come on strong in the afternoon left him too weak to read the label properly, so he would have to trust the inventor. Without a second thought, he popped the cap and swallowed three tablets.

  A few food items also lay among the bag’s contents. There were some tins and dried foodstuffs, as well as a few vegetables and even a tub of vitamin tablets. It had been so long since Kurou had eaten anything with Vitamin C that his teeth felt loose in his mouth. He chewed down a couple, then began to worry that the sudden influx of health food would make him sick.

  As the minutes ticked by and nothing happened, he stared into the flames, a drowsiness coming over him. Would he wake up again or was this it?

  The young inventor, whoever he was, had saved him. If he was still alive tomorrow, Kurou promised himself that he would at least consider doing something nice in return.

  Lena dozed in the back seat as the aide drove hard along the northern highway in the direction of Moscow. The road was built for the larger tyres of trucks, with the potholes concealed by the snow treacherous for smaller vehicles, but their car was military-grade, one of the few well-maintained vehicles that the council owned. In the back, among their supplies, were a couple of hundred litres of spare bio-fuel. In the event that they found no fuelling stations still operational, they had enough for about three thousand kilometres, fifteen hundred out and the same back. It wasn’t far in Siberia, but it would be enough for them to find out what was really going on.

  They had seen nothing so far to give them concern. They had passed through a couple of sleepy mining towns where they had found enough shops open to get food and drink. No one had looked at them strangely, or offered any news.

  Lena wasn’t sure whether to be happy about that or not. Tucked inside her shirt was her secret service-issued pistol, with a couple of magazines of extra rounds. The thought of using it again made her lick her lips. The popping sound as a bullet penetrated through enemy clothing into flesh was as addictive and delicious as anything she’d ever known. She had been too long out of service, working a nothing position as a lower ranked councillor in
a nothing little town. The thought of getting back into action made her skin tingle with excitement, even if it might end up costing her life.

  With each turn of the highway, each rise and fall of the hills, each time a small town came into view, Lena found herself praying for something—anything—that suggested they might be getting close to a combat situation.

  Oh, for the chance to shoot down a couple of enemies again … Lena could barely contain her excitement.

  8

  A war of information

  Victor was desperate to get over to the old café to see if there had been any response from the stranger, but the snow had closed in again overnight and he had no time before his scheduled work for the day. Even as he made his way across town to the car parts factory he rubbed the bleariness out of his eyes, having stayed up late working in his basement. His thoughts were all asunder after seeing the light up by the entrance to the secret place, and the only way to combat the swirling thoughts going through his head was to busy himself with his ongoing projects.

  What if a war really did come to the town? He’d have to give up everything. The thought of abandoning his life’s work made him feel sick. For years he had been working on his dream, pushing everything else aside to put in the hours down in his basement that he hoped would one day bring colour and excitement back to the drab, grey wastes of Siberia.

  Over the course of the morning and into the afternoon, as he worked away at fixing the factory’s computer system problems, he caught snippets of conversation from the workers passing him by. The threat of more drone strikes was the main topic, with other concerns about the apparent television and radio blackout that had swept the town. No one seemed to be talking much about the internet, but it had been banned outside of government offices for years, and the threat of locators had kept the casual user from trying to break the rules. Victor had a computer powerful enough to access it, but he used it sparingly for the same reason, and only ever through a firewall that blocked his location. There was always someone monitoring you.

  He stayed late at the factory, hoping to get into a position where he could finish up by the end of the following day, after which he had to visit City Hall to fix up some electrics for the mayor. He hadn’t wanted to take the job, but you couldn’t refuse City Hall. Even in a town with such a meagre police force, there was always a cell waiting for those who outwardly refused anything for the government.

  His work went well, and he finished for the day at five o’clock, heading straight for the abandoned café. He had brought extra clothing with him to protect against the evening cold, but luckily the snow had stopped again, and city ploughs had been clearing the streets all afternoon. He made quick progress, but even so it was near full dark by the time the squat structure rose out of the gloom, a vague silhouette against the dark grey sky.

  He pulled a torch from his pocket and went inside, not wanting to use the light until he was out of sight of the road. To his disappointment there was no new note. Victor tried not to panic as he looked down at the empty table top. Had the medicines been strong enough? What if the stranger had died overnight?

  Disappointed, he was just about to leave when he heard a whirring sound coming from outside. He dropped down behind a stack of chairs and peered through a space offering a view of the doorway as something pushed its way inside.

  His eyes widened as his own little surveillance robot appeared, rolling through the entrance on its caterpillar tracks. It went up to the table, and a little box opened on its side for a robotic arm to extend out, dropping a piece of paper down on the table top.

  Victor’s heart leapt. He wanted to jump up and hail the robot, but at the same time he had designed it for surveillance; it would be recording everything that it saw and heard, and storing the information in its memory banks. If he alerted it to his presence the stranger would find out Victor was hiding here. If he wanted to discover the stranger’s hiding place he only had to follow the robot, but he would have to be careful.

  It stopped for a few seconds and then turned and went back outside. As soon as it was gone, Victor climbed out of his hiding place and went over to the table. Aware that he could easily follow the robot’s tracks, he stopped for a few seconds to check the note in his torchlight:

  Thank you, sire. I owe you my life. Next, I need a needle, and thread. Thank you, kindly.

  A wide smile spread across Victor’s face, especially the way the stranger had addressed him again using an old-fashioned word usually reserved for a Tsar. It was quaint. Perhaps they would become great friends once they finally met face to face.

  Remembering the robot, he hurried back out into the snow. The road had been ploughed but its tracks were still easy to follow, a line of caterpillar tread marks heading back towards the town.

  Then, fifty yards further on, they suddenly veered left, into the snow piled up along the side of the road. Victor frowned, then nodded. Of course. The robot was designed for surveillance, and the stranger had programmed it to observe the café from a distance, hidden out of sight.

  Would it recognise him? If the stranger knew he was hoping to follow the robot, would he change his plans?

  Victor carried on walking. The robot wouldn’t return to its new master’s den until it needed to bring something. He could bring a needle and thread later tonight if the snow stayed away, although it would be brutally cold, and he didn’t like the idea of hiding out. Perhaps he should wait until tomorrow. Finish up at the factory as quick as he could, then hide out in the café until the robot came back.

  Yes, that would do it.

  Victor smiled again as he headed off back towards the town. He was so excited about meeting the stranger that he was practically tingling with anticipation.

  The fever had broken overnight, and when Kurou pulled back the blankets he saw the wound had lost some of its violence, the sharp reds of the infected area dulled and stabilized. His haphazard attempt at closing it up had failed, the crude stitches broken open, but he had plenty of the antibiotics left so if he didn’t aggravate it he still had time.

  Much to his pleasure, the robot’s batteries had charged up again overnight. He opened the front casing and made a few quick adjustments to its circuitry, implanting some bypasses of unnecessary processes so that its battery life could be extended, then he sent it out into the snow with another note, a simple request this time.

  With the robot gone, he took another dose of the pills and then opened a can of processed fruit the inventor had left him. After living off human meat and whatever he could pick from the town’s trash for as long as he could remember, the taste of pineapple and mango, however much it had been processed, was like taking a drug. He plucked out each small piece with a tiny fork, examined it for a few seconds, then popped it into his mouth and rolled it across his tongue a few times before chewing and swallowing it down.

  He had once controlled a fortune worth billions of dollars. He had travelled the world and been master of a scientific portfolio greater than any in the world. He had built robots and biotechnologically enhanced animals and humans that no one else could even begin to comprehend. He had mastered his field, as close to a God on earth as there had ever been.

  Yet here he was, entranced by the taste of pineapple.

  Feeling better, he pulled across the bag that the inventor had left for him and picked through its contents. The most interesting item was a little digital radio. During the years of his self-imposed exile, Kurou had cut himself adrift from events in the outside world. He switched it on, flicking through the channels in search of a signal, but at first he found nothing but static, or obvious silences where broadcasts should have been.

  Someone or something was blocking the airwaves, but it was an easy wall to get around if one had the skills. He opened the casing with a screwdriver and spent half an hour readjusting the settings on the internal computer display. The tiny, internal monitor screen had enough power to access the internet, but Kurou purposely stayed away, afra
id of who might be listening. Instead, he used a few universal commands to access the central coding of the device, an intricate program perhaps written by the inventor. It showed a high level of skill, but there was skill, and then there was skill. Kurou had never had an apprentice, but if he ever chose to take one, the inventor showed potential. It would be best, he thought, to tread carefully around the young man.

  After an hour of recoding the settings and updating the access permits to allow the transmitter to permeate the external firewall that was blocking out the region, Kurou closed up the casing again and began to search again for signals.

  The first was in a language he hadn’t heard for many years, but that brought back pangs of nostalgia for those few memories of his childhood not soured: Chinese:

  Refugee levels becoming unsustainable.

  It was on a loop, a recorded message. He listened to it for a few seconds, then abandoned it, searching for more information.

  This time he found a live broadcast. The language was Baltic, not one he knew well. From the few crossover words of Russian that he could pick out, he managed to understand a few short phrases:

  …moving east … air control compromised … last known position … talks … ceasefire abandonment … options … battalions under attack … surrender…

  Interesting. Kurou rubbed his chin, picking at a scab, and changed the frequency again.

  This time, another language he knew well. English:

  Reports are coming in that a hacker hive has been discovered and eliminated in southwestern Belgium, near Bruges. Until further notice the Web remains offline in most of northern Europe while other hives are flushed out and destroyed. Radio contact has been reestablished with the supposed lost battalion near the Ukraine-Romania border, although initial reports are that—the report died in a hail of fuzz and static—we will now return to scheduled programming. Have you heard that you should be putting away your perennials for the coming winter season? Prune back to one third of the plant’s original size, remove from the pot and hang upside down in a cool, dry place. Then, come spring, the plants will be ready to be re-fucking fucking fuck you and die ignore everything you hear the hackers are in control—