by Alex Lamb
Will glared at them as they trotted past. He couldn’t imagine wanting to live out life as a horse. So why had that happened here? Why hadn’t his duplicates simply produced biorobots for that kind of work? His conviction that whatever these people were, they were not really Will Monet returned with a vengeance.
The Radical Hill District, when he found it, was a part of town where the helical towers thinned out. Some original landform hidden beneath the habitat layers had created a ridge on the surface. Across that rise, several dozen narrow tubes ran in parallel lines, producing the effect of terraced streets with views across the rest of the city. Map in hand, Will climbed the rise and set about looking for the Old Slam Bar. Beyond the helical spires behind him, he could make out a dark, pink-tinted sea under a cold afternoon sky.
Campari Street turned out to be a mangled caricature of an arty neighbourhood, complete with galleries full of bad paintings. Open-fronted bars with ceramic tables spilled onto a wooden causeway that smelled of something like beer. Clones in berets and black sweaters smoked actual cigarettes and chatted while dogs with upsettingly human eyes looked on.
The Old Slam Bar was an ill-kempt establishment halfway along the row, where a utilitarian wooden fronting shielded a dimly lit tunnel-interior. Will pushed back the door and stepped inside. The tube walls had been scraped down to their black silicate matrix, leaving only a single strip of living tissue on the ceiling. The few sickly strands of biolantern that hung from it delivered a desultory light to the arched space beneath.
Paintings lined the curving walls in styles mimicking propaganda posters from Earth’s history, bearing slogans like ‘Fuck Balance’ and ‘We Are All Cancer’. In them, the faces of famous dictators had been swapped with his own. Will regarded himself dressed as Hitler, Kerg and Sanchez, and felt uneasy. It wasn’t just the anger that oozed out of the place that worried him, but also its transparency. A bar full of political radicals felt like a terrible place to hide a resistance movement. He wondered if Elsa had known what she was talking about after all.
The smattering of customers stared at him with hooded, resentful eyes. Some looked as baseline as himself. Others had extreme body modifications, with heads covered in spikes or the faces of rats. One had arms ending in pincers and wore a hood to hide its face.
Will ignored them and walked over to the bar at the back to take a seat. Eyes followed him. The bartender was bald and twice as wide as he was. But for the full-body tattoos, he bore a marked resemblance to Ira Baron.
‘Whisky,’ said Will. It looked like that kind of place.
The Ira-faced clone behind the bar poured a shot from an unmarked bottle and slapped it down in front of him.
‘How much?’ said Will, pulling notes from his pocket.
‘You believe in that shit?’ said the bartender, gesturing at his wad.
‘Actually, no,’ said Will.
‘Then keep it,’ he said. ‘Everything’s on the house here. And if you don’t like that, you can fuck off.’
‘Suits me,’ said Will and took a sip from his glass.
The stuff was rough – even rougher than he’d expected. He coughed. What did they put in it, hydraulic fluid?
The bartender smiled. ‘Want a top-up?’
‘If that’s what it takes,’ said Will bluntly. He slid the glass back across the counter. The bartender paused at those words and glanced across the room at someone behind Will. A murmur of ambient conversation resumed.
‘Does a Mr Brown work here?’ said Will as the tension in the room eased off a little.
‘Maybe,’ said almost-Ira. ‘Who wants to know?’
Somewhere in that moment, Will’s patience for the metropolis of borrowed clichés exhausted itself. Forty years, ten billion clones and this was really the best he could do?
‘Jason,’ he growled. ‘Who d’you fucking think?’
Ira’s face stiffened. ‘Nice to meet you, Jason,’ he said. ‘Here’s how it works. You shut up and listen to the poetry while we check the street. If you’ve brought any heat with you, you’re out of here. Understand?’
‘Loud and clear,’ said Will.
The bartender took his glass and tossed the contents down the sink. He refilled it from another bottle. While the next shot still wasn’t good, at least it wasn’t going to kill him. Ira then slid Will a cold, appraising look and disappeared into a back room.
Will stayed put as instructed. He nursed his glass while one of the clones got up from a table and made his way to a black-painted stage at the end of the bar. He had baseline features with a goatee and thick-lensed spectacles. He looked like a budget Trotsky.
The poet-clone cleared his throat and scanned the room.
‘This is called “My Condition”,’ he said. ‘I’m sick. You’re sick. We’re all sick. And I scream: what’s wrong with me? Nothing that you can see with eyes inside or out. I want for nothing that’s dear to me. Or so I’m told. But this I doubt.
‘Food, shelter, fantasy, equality. A death that’s only ever voluntary. But yet I shout: what’s the fucking point? Where’s my fucking purpose?
‘To keep the Nems at bay, you say. So each time they come we blow them away. But how does that help me today? When there’s no fucking point. No reason to stay. Alive.
‘So what do I do? I mine hate. I squirm. I twist. To make myself unique. To make myself a freak. A poet. A parody. A puppet. Listen to me, Balance. This poet demands his string be cut. Just one tweak. Snip. Boom. And I’m out of here.’
The poet strode off the stage and returned to his seat amid a storm of finger-clicking and pincer-clacking from the audience. Will found the experience oddly comforting. His poetic skills apparently hadn’t come on much in the last forty years, but something in the man’s frustration lent him hope. He obviously wasn’t the only one in the room who felt that Snakepit had become a madhouse.
A second beatnik climbed to the stage, but by then, Ira was back.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’ He raised the counter at one end and ushered Will through.
‘Where are we going?’ said Will.
‘Shut up,’ said Ira.
He led Will to a small room built against the curve of the tube, with one sloping wall that rose to become the ceiling. A single strand of weakly pulsing biolantern lent the room an ugly submarine glow. At a small table with two chairs sat a clone with red hair and scars on his cheeks. He wore a T-shirt and a black jacket made of some kind of soft leather.
‘Are you Mr Brown?’ said Will.
‘Sit,’ said the clone. ‘Tell us your story, Jason. Leave nothing out.’
Will felt another tide of impatience wash over him. He fought it down – he had nothing to gain by fighting. He sat, pressed his hands flat against the table and described everything that had happened to him since first waking up.
When he got to the part about the library, Red’s expression grew sour.
‘That was stupid,’ he said.
‘Apparently,’ said Will tersely. He paused to collect himself and explained the rest. ‘Was Elsa right?’ he asked when he was done. ‘Can you help?’
Red examined his fingers, apparently uninterested in replying. Desperate frustration coursed up through Will again. This time, it wouldn’t be denied.
‘Well, can you?’ Will shouted. He rose to his feet. ‘Can you?’ His fists shook.
If Red said no, Will had exactly zero idea of where to go next. Outside this little room, all was madness. His future was a blank wall of soundless fog.
‘Yes, we can help,’ said Red quietly. ‘Helping Glitches is what we do. And you’re on the level, I can tell – you have the same empty-headed panic as the rest of them. I’d get bored of seeing it if I didn’t know that feeling myself. Sit down, Will. I’m thinking through the details, that’s all.’
Will slumped uncertainly back into his chair.
Red examined him through lazy eyes. ‘You were lucky,’ he said. ‘Luckier than most. You met this Elsa. You made it to us
, despite taking unnecessary risks. But don’t let your escape today convince you that you’re safe. Balance is weak in this town precisely because there’s a resistance presence. We refuse him and that reduces his power. Every icon of anger in this place bolsters our strength and gives us room to manoeuvre. But don’t for a moment imagine it’s the same everywhere. Outside Mettaburg, things are very different. We’ll point you at a hostel where you can stay the night. They won’t ask questions but remember to bring cash – there’s a stand on the corner if you need it. In the meantime, speak to no one. If you have to, use the nick Elsa gave you. Come back to the bar tomorrow morning and Mr Brown will see you.’
‘You’re not Brown?’ said Will.
Red smirked. ‘Do I look like a Brown? You’ll know him when you see him. Now get some rest. You’re among friends, Will. We’ll do what we can. That means support, cover, information, a job—’
‘What about a way offworld?’
‘I’ll leave that to Brown. He’ll explain. Meanwhile, enjoy the poetry. Be seeing you.’ Red scraped back his chair and let himself out.
Will sagged and rubbed his eyes. He’d made it. He wasn’t any closer to escaping the insanity of Snakepit, but at least his isolation was at an end. Now he had somewhere to go and the promise of answers. Under the circumstances, that was enough.
4.2: MARK
On their second morning out of port, Mark rose and made his way along the gently rolling deck in search of breakfast. Beyond the immaculate white railings, the sea oozed like azure glue under a sky full of harsh, metallic sunlight. Seagulls wheeled and screamed in tight, monotonous circles. That was an improvement, at least. Yesterday the waves had been all but motionless while the gulls jerked about like damaged transit pods.
Mark was not a fan of modern virts. Outside the Gulliver, direct ship-linking had become a thing of the past. Modern military environments were shadow-mediated and heavily modularised. You didn’t see a shared illusion so much as a personal interpretation of a collectively sanctioned one. The software they ran on was constantly evolving to combat threats, which made them stiff and riddled with flaws. There was always lag. Some piece of the world you weren’t looking at straight on was always slithering or jumping. The only seamless immersives left were the ones he ran on his own.
That was the cost of everyone aboard being half-roboteer. You could trust your own shadow, but put two of them together and you apparently needed a disinfectant layer – just like the gloves the Galateans were so keen on wearing. Frankly, the tech had been better when people with interfaces like his were rare and marginalised.
Mark didn’t relish the choice of setting, either. In their infinite wisdom, the Galatean Fleet designers had confined them to a luxury yacht designed by a modernist maniac. The cabins were full of cold air and sharp angles to antagonise any seeded Phote convert. The chairs were hard and not subject to edit requests.
Apparently, environments that felt like vessels provided stronger social binding for long voyages, which meant that only specialised environments were free from the confines of the yacht metaphor. Maybe that suited ordinary folks with vanilla shadows, but for Mark, who’d been immersing since birth, it was like trying to work with one hand trapped behind his back. Still, if that was what they had, he was determined to make the best of it.
He found the others on deck at the rear of the boat, eating croissants and gazing out at the clumsily rendered ocean. All but Ann – she’d been on duty ever since they’d left. She apparently no longer needed sleep.
‘Mind if I join you?’ said Mark.
‘Go for it,’ said Palla around a mouthful of pastry.
Ira gestured at the free seat beside him.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Ira said as Mark sat down. ‘I guess you’re used to all this, but it’s as if we’re actually on an old-fashioned sea-ship. It’s so much deeper than a standard immersive vid. I was just telling Judj – I can taste the damned coffee. I can feel each slat of this chair. It’s amazing, and not what starships used to be like, that’s for sure.’
Mark had opinions about the chair slats. ‘This is nothing,’ he said. ‘Come and visit me on the Gulliver some time where our virt sits behind a Vartian security shield. You want coffee? I’ll give you real coffee.’
‘Real virtual coffee?’ said Ira with half a smile.
‘There is no real coffee any more,’ said Mark. ‘Physical or otherwise. Mine at least tastes decent.’
He frowned at the cup their synthetic waiter was filling. Objective sustenance made its way into their bodies via drips in their arms, but collective food rituals held psychological value, apparently, so the Fleet enforced them via simulated hunger. Mark wouldn’t have minded if he’d been allowed to program the chef.
As he watched the others eat he felt a sudden overwhelming desire to compensate for that first, disastrous briefing. He hadn’t been able to settle afterwards. Instead of sharing with the team what a tremendous opportunity they had, they got bogged down in the dangers. But if they only focused on the negatives, what chance did they have of ever getting past them? He wanted to squeeze his vision of hope into them so that it kindled.
‘While we’re all here, I’d like to apologise for the other day,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do a great job at that briefing.’
Clath looked up at him. ‘I thought it was fine,’ she said sunnily. ‘A bit unusual, maybe, but we covered the material, didn’t we?’
‘Thanks,’ said Mark, ‘but I could have done a lot better, I think.’ He glanced around at the crew. ‘I have a question for all of you, if you don’t mind?’
Palla eyed him curiously. ‘Shoot,’ she said.
‘How many of you think we’re going to live through this?’
Quiet descended. The shrill cries of the artificial gulls were suddenly noticeable.
‘I’m serious,’ said Mark. ‘I’d like to know. If you’re okay with talking about it. And if you aren’t, I’ll shut up and never mention it again.’
‘I think we’re toast,’ said Judj, still chewing. He grinned. ‘But that’s okay. I volunteered, remember? I knew what was coming.’ He took another bite.
‘I’m confident that we’ll ace our initial military objective,’ said Palla. ‘Beyond that, I have no idea.’
Mark nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ He noticed his old mentor staring out to sea, as if trying to avoid looking at the rest of them. ‘Ira, how about you?’
‘Me?’ said Ira. He paused. ‘I’m always wary of making assumptions about Phote activity, whether lives are attached to the outcomes or not. The buggers keep changing. When we started this fight, they were just simple swarming machines, not much smarter than your average domesticbot. Then in a matter of weeks we were faced with a hive-mind. And now there are all these hints of autonomous, compartmentalised intelligence. I don’t think anyone expected the Photes to become so sophisticated. We thought they’d always be parodies of humans, not evolve into some sinister alternative.’
Palla frowned. ‘That’s not an answer, Grandad,’ she said. ‘Are you being evasive? Answer the nice man’s question, why don’t you? Do you think you’ll live through the mission or not?’
She winked at Mark. He fought down a stab of annoyance.
‘We’re living right now,’ said Ira. ‘That’s what’s important.’
‘But are you afraid?’ Palla urged.
Ira laughed. ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘No. Not at all.’
She scowled at him.
Mark pushed the conversation onwards before she could grill Ira further. He could tell she wanted to.
‘What about you, Clath?’
‘I think the Zone is a solvable scientific problem,’ she replied. ‘And I can’t honestly believe the Photes will chase us past it – they’re creatures of habit and expediency. So if we can get that far, then yes, I expect to live. The mission is entirely doable. That’s why I’m here.’
Mark smiled broadly. He loved that answer. He might not have his wife with him, but t
his optimistic, intelligent woman was a potential alternative ally. He’d been too busy resenting her the other day to notice – an irrational mistake.
‘What about the blockade around Snakepit that Ann mentioned?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you think there’ll be one?’
‘No,’ said Clath breezily. ‘They’ll have opted for passive containment. They blockade worlds that have ships leaving. Snakepit doesn’t. I mean, do we see them blockading biosphere worlds? No. Even though we know the Photes like to control them.’
‘Agreed,’ said Mark.
‘So you think we can make it, too?’ said Palla with a dry smile.
‘Absolutely,’ said Mark.
‘Why?’
‘Because I agree with Clath’s assessment. It’s my hope that for the most part, this mission will actually be boring. We’re more likely to get caught up in trajectory issues at the far gate than face down an armada at Snakepit.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Palla. ‘Though I like the thought of getting to Snakepit even more.’ She balanced her chin on a fist and watched him across the table. ‘My turn for a question: what do you think we’ll find when we get there?’
Mark gazed back at her and wondered if he’d wrongly assessed Palla. She looked genuinely interested in what he had to say.
‘Well, we know Will stopped the Photes from retaking their home, and that whatever change he made is still in effect. We also know that Snakepit is incredibly powerful, which is why the Photes want it. Which suggests to me that if Will were still alive, we’d know. He’d have smashed the Photes and come home. Either that or we’d be able to see traces of his fights through our remote telescope arrays – they’ve been covering the point on the local shell closest to Snakepit for decades. So, I expect to find the place much as we left it. Maybe protected by robots. Maybe with a toxic biosphere. Certainly no Will. What I’d like to do is end this whole chapter of human history and put the ghost of Will Monet to rest at last.’
He wanted that for himself as much as everyone else, though he didn’t say it. Will’s last request to him – to keep others safe – had rung in his head every day since they’d parted ways. It was a promise Mark knew he’d never fulfilled. Instead, the whole damned species had just kept on growing ever more endangered.
