by Dave Stone
They built up entire internal mythologies about how they were contacting Higher Beings, achieving a new spiritual state, accessing some superior human potential as if whatever substance they had taken was some kind of sacrament.
The reality then, as now, was that you were simply plugging new instructions into the workings of the memoplex inside the ganglionic sponge that rode the meat machine of your body.
Sela didn't go in for any of that stomm. She simply removed a gauntlet and put a finger on the body's head - the bare minimum necessary to make galvanistic contact - and went inside.
Interlude: Cerebral Break
In the ZipCoTM corporate hab-block in Sector Nine, Employee Number RD0227-774R Juna Rae enters her sleep-capsule. A small woman, she is naturally inclined to plumpness, radiating a sense of solemn, childlike simplicity of which she is completely unaware.
It is not that she is unintelligent or uneducated. She has merely spent the entire twenty-seven years of her life within the corporate structure. It's safer in here than the Mega-City outside.
She has never gone hungry; she has never eaten too much. Every meal she has ever eaten has been nutritionally tailored to her precise physical requirements and served to an optimally devised schedule.
She has never suffered from more than minor illness. She has been inoculated from birth against all major diseases with which she is liable to come into contact, and the process is repeated every six months. She has a natural resistance to the hepatitis B vaccine so she will never, ever be allowed to come into contact with this particular virus.
Neuro-scanning shows that she is one of that small minority poised precisely between homo and heterosexuality, and who would require recreational facilities distinct from and more complex than the norms of either, were this not deemed far too resource-wasteful to supply. She has therefore been hormonally and subliminally conditioned from birth to tip the balance in a direction chosen more or less at random; in this case towards heterosexuality.
There is no sense of coercion about this, merely gentle guidance. For twenty-seven years Juno Rae has been guided gently through schooling and employment precisely suited to her aptitudes, and which have not caused unnecessary distress by stretching her in any way at all.
Corporate psychologists the whole world over agree that employees must have an outlet through which to express themselves. Juno collects reproduction beer mats, when she remembers, because her therapist told her to. She gets them pristine from the printers in presentation packs.
Juno has a therapist because her behaviour occasionally lapses into a pattern - that, if left unchecked, might tend towards the suicidal.
Not the attention-seeking act of jumping out at someone with a couple of carefully slashed wrists and shouting "Look what I've done," but the simple act of going home and locking the door and switching it all off.
There is nothing she needs. There is nothing she wants. She cannot imagine any other life.
This morning, however, she seems restless, distracted, toying with the food her capsule has placed thoughtfully before her; then dropps it uneaten into the waste slot. The capsule control chip makes a note to factor this nutrient deficiency into the next two meals, and alerts subsidiary systems that emotional counselling may be needed at some later time.
Absently, Juno discards clothing, which will be collected by drones when she sleeps for dissolution and re-synthesis.
For a while she uses her MAX IV - human in form, gestated from the gene codes of long-extinct chimpanzees and quite mindless, supplied by ZipCo[tm] for safe and pleasurable recreation - before tiring of it and shoving it away. It wanders off to its compartment where it will be scrubbed and disinfected and shot with insulin to shock it into dormancy.
RD-0227-774R Juno Rae drifts into a fitful sleep.
There is a marked degree of rapid eye movement. The capsule control stores this for use in the eventuality that counselling might ultimately be needed, in the life she lived during the time that she... woke...
She woke up.
Little Juna woke up.
For a long time little Juna lay immobile, absolutely still. It was in the room with her, something in the room with her, waiting for her to move.
Just one move.
Eventually, her breathing slowed. The hammering in her chest went away. She forced herself to turn over in the warm bed. Nothing happened.
Outside it was raining.
In the next room of the apartment, her father and her mother were sleeping. They would be angry if she woke them; their annual ZipCo[tm] aptitude tests were the next day and they needed to sleep. But the dream memory of the clockwork monkey-man hung huge and dark and ragged in her head. And she needed them.
No. No, this is wrong. This isn't me, I'm not six, I'm...
The thought slid away from her. Feet rasping on hard and scratchy flooring, she went to the door and tentatively slid it open.
Her mother and father lay on the bed, stringy shreds of skin trailing to the shattered window. The blood saturating the bed was purple and glistening in the cold pale light from outside.
A peeled thing hung on a fleshy cord from a hole in her mother.
He looked up.
At her.
He looked up at her.
Her father sat up, slithering through his own warm blood, a hideous concern in his eyes. He climbed off the bed and lurched towards her, his ragged feet making soft, wet sucking sounds. He took hold of her with broken swollen fingers and pulled her to him.
"So nice," he said, bubble-flecks of blood and mucus spattering against her face. "So nice..."
His mouth opened wide - and kept on opening. The sound of wet silk tearing. His skin split and fell away from him like a snake's slough to reveal the blazing, pulsing, swirling thing inside.
And then she was somewhere...
...else...
I KNOW YOU THE CLOCKWORK MONKEY SAID IT (TELESCOPIC RAZORS FLASHING THROUGH MY SOFT RED YELLOW RED YELLOW BURNING HOT AND WHITE AND IT HURTS AND SOMEBODY DIED HYPODERMIC JAWS RETRACTING WITH A CLASH FROM ITS WET THROAT) NO SHE SCREAMED AND TUMBLING (FIRST HE WILL EAT MY HEAD AND CHEW MY TEETH AND SPIT THEM OUT IN BLACK AND WHITE AND RED AND YELLOW RED YELLOW AND I SAW IT OPEN BUT I CAN'T) YOU WALK AND TALK AND I WIND YOU UP SAID THE MONKEY (SPINNING AND SPINNING AND I'M TAKING NO NOTICE BUT I'M LITTLE AND ALIVE AND I) HEADFIRST
Blank.
(A limp and skeletal body hanging atrophied from a head more than six feet across, hanging by a thread of vertebrae and cartilage. Viscous green-grey fluid hanging in ropes from the holes of its eyes and its mouth, slick with mucus.)
It was her face.
That didn't fool her. It was really the clockwork monkey inside.
Its clotted mouth worked. Whom do you love?
Splitting sliver pulse the slither and slip of it, it-
BURN!
Ropes of viscid drool hanging from a loose, soft mouth, teeth like knives extending from their sockets and closer now and fast! Slitted eyes burning hot and close, its bubbling flesh, bursting flesh like boiling fat and clotted hair; it...
Ate.
Her.
It ate her up. Anaesthetic acid injected in her head. Lacerating and cauterising memories and identity and oh so very painless.
I get out of bed and I was and I dress and I go I go go go I went to school. I went to, I must have gone to school my father and my brother and my sister and my and my mother and my child; everything I was and everything I ever will be will be.
Nothing left now. Nothing left.
The space between the stars.
"Hello, Juna," said a voice in the darkness.
It was a friendly voice. It was a voice to which you could imagine telling anything. "Forgive the lack of lighting, please. The cocktail of medication you're currently on dilates the pupils and over-sensitizes the retinas to the point where any lighting, even so much as a candle, if we had such a thing, would burn out any number of rods and cones, and physically blind you.
/> "Likewise, please don't try to move your head. Your vertebrae are calcified and friable - you'll wrench your neck like a green stick if you try to move, if not snap it like a twig altogether. The restraining pads are there for your protection.
"You no doubt have questions. That's perfectly natural. And I'm the man with the answers, yes indeed. You can call me Doctor Bob.
"The plain fact is, Juno, you're in... call it a mental facility, existing in a state of coma, effectively.
"You suffered deep psychic trauma as a small child, when you witnessed the death of your family - your mother, father and small baby brother - during Earth's Resurrection War with the dead-raiser Sabbat. They died, quite horribly as it happens, and then started to move again before your eyes. And they attacked you. They would have killed you, little girl that you were, had not Sabbat quite coincidentally died before they could and his controlling influence fled them.
"Now, the interesting thing - the really interesting thing - about that, is that your nascent psionic talents, the Magic Bullet in your brain, allowed you to see what was happening in a depth of terms simply unavailable to an ordinary human being. That is to say, you didn't just see what was happening, you saw what it meant on some quite profound and fundamental existential levels.
"Your mind and identity couldn't cope. You retreated, as I say, into a state of catatonia. Into a false-memory construct, built up over the years from overheard scraps, so that you believe your true life to be that of a woman your true biological age, living in a corporate hab-block hive, whose dreams are punctuated by horrifying and quite visceral nightmares.
"Have you never stopped to wonder why that corporate-hive life of yours is so utterly smothering and safe? It's because that's what you want it to be. Well, I'm here to tell you, Juna, that you'll never find a life like that in the real world - and certainly not in Mega-City One. It's the horror and the nightmares that are real.
"We've brought you out of the coma, as I say, with a cocktail of reagents - methamphetamine and lithium, for the most part. The combination is, I'm afraid to say, lethal with prolonged use - but never fear. You'll last well enough, for long enough.
"There's going to be some light now. Several million candles' worth, I'm sorry to say. I really am. Ah, well, when your eyes are fried from the inside, who knows what wonders you might see with new eyes inside the mind..."
Act II: Trial and Error
"On Justice:
...Then Cesare Gonzaga remarked, 'Well, I don't know what virtues appropriate for a ruler can spring from temperance, if temperance, as you say, removes all the emotions from one's mind. This might be fitting in a hermit or a monk, but I can hardly think that it is becoming for a prince, who is magnanimous, liberal 'and valiant in arms, whatever the provocation, to never display anger or hatred or indeed kindliness or scorn or lust or any emotion at all. For how could he otherwise exert any authority either over his people or his troops?'
Signor Ottaviano replied, 'I did not say temperance completely removes or uproots the emotions from a man's soul, nor would it be well for it to do so, since there are good elements even in the emotions. But what it does do is make what is perverse and opposed to the right conduct in the emotions responsive to reason. So it is not right, in order to remove conflicts, to extirpate the emotions altogether, for this would be like trying to suppress drunkenness by legislating against the use of wine, or forbidding men to run since when they do men sometimes fall over.
'You are well aware that when a man is breaking in a horse, he does not stop it from running and jumping, but ensures that it does so at the right time and at the command of the rider. So, when they are modified by temperance, the emotions are conducive to virtue. Just as wrath strengthens fortitude, hatred against wicked men strengthens justice, and the other emotions strengthen other kinds of virtue. And if they were killed altogether this would leave the reason weak and languid, so that it would be ineffectual, like the captain of a ship that is becalmed after the winds have dropped.
'So do not be surprised, Cesare, if I said temperance is the source of many other virtues, for when a man's soul is attuned to this harmony, reason makes it readily receptive to true fortitude, which in turn makes it intrepid and unassailable, and immune to human suffering. And this is just as true of justice, the true friend of modesty and goodness, and the queen of all the virtues, because Justice teaches us to do what should be done and eschew what is wrong. Thus Justice is wholly perfect, since the other virtues perform their work through her, and she benefits both the just man and others as well. And without Justice, as it is said, Jove himself could not govern his kingdom well. These virtues are also followed by magnanimity, which enhances them all, though it cannot exist alone since anyone lacking the virtues cannot be magnanimous. And for their guide, the virtues have prudence, which consists of a certain quality of Judgement in making the right decisions.
'The other links in this happy chain of virtues are liberality, munificence, the desire of honour, gentleness, charm, affability and many other qualities there is not time to name. But if our courtier behaves as we have suggested, he will discover these flourishing in the soul of his prince, and every day blossoming there more delightful flowers and fruits than there are in all the lovely gardens on earth. He himself will know great contentment, when he reminds himself that he gave his prince not what fools give, namely, gifts such as gold and silver, vases and garments (of which the prince has too many already and the giver only too few), but what is doubtless the greatest and rarest of all human virtues: the manner and method of good government. This alone would be enough to make men happy and return to earth the golden age which is said to have existed, once, when Saturn ruled.'"
- Baldesar Castiglione
The Book of the Courtier
Backflash: 07:14:2124
"Yes, this looks like the end, folks - there's no way the Sliceman is gonna be getting up from that smacking from Hammerhead. It looks like a... Hello, what's this?
"This is amazing, sports fans! With the last of his dying strength, Sliceman has triggered his trademark power-blades into overdrive, reducing Hammerhead to a bloody pulp! We end this cycle of the Killing Zone with a simultaneous double-kill!
"Well, there's nothing left to do but clear the bodies away and prepare for an all new cycle of the Zone - and do we have something special lined up for you! Do we? Yes we do. Bookmark your download-boards and prepare yourself for what is truly gonna be the Killing Zone event of a lifetime!"
In his lair beneath the Sector Nine Resyk plant, Efil Drago San turned from the monitor with a smirk.
"Ah, me," he said. "The rich, thick panoply that is life. An extremely spectacular bloody death, indeed. Tell me, computer, what are our figures like at the moment?"
The computer was in fact an ArViD, which stood for Artificial Virally-Induced Destabilisation - a means of producing cheap, disposable Artificial Intelligences by way of pseudo-viral spores eating through a block of biogel to produce the equivalent of synapses.
The combination of a short life span and of basically being a diseased lump of mechanically-reclaimed quasi-meat tended to make these Artificial Intelligences somewhat unstable at the best of times. Drago San's computer was currently suffering from a variety of schizophrenic dementia.
This was useful in that one of its split personalities was sufficiently rabid as to serve as a Commentator out in the Killing Zone, while others were suitable for administration.
When it spoke, its voice was as mild and clipped as any major domo:
"Gambling revenues remain constant, sir," it said, "though extrapolated viewing figures are slightly down. That always happens towards the end of a cycle."
"Ah, yes," said Efil Drago San. "The Little Old Lady Factor."
"I beg your pardon, sir?" the computer asked politely.
"People tend to pick favourites," Efil Drago San explained. "The little old lady demographic in particular. The old biddies pick a fighter to follow, and when he dies
they simply tune out. That isn't offset by an actual sense of occasion when the cycle ends - the last fighter standing, in the Killing Zone, is just the last one left alive. And then we shoot him."
He became thoughtful. "I should tweak things a little, possibly."
"Make the end of the cycle an occasion?" The ARViD-processes might have given the computer a short shelf-life and made it effectively insane, but they also allowed it to push the envelope so far as intuitive thinking was concerned. It could make actual suggestions, which was a big deal in terms of computer technology. "Have the last survivor actually win something?"
Drago San grinned. "I was thinking more along the lines of something to wipe out the whole little old lady demographic entirely," he said. "Much more fun. In any case, when this current cycle of the Killing Zone ends, when will we be ready to initiate the new?"
"Almost immediately," the computer said. "The new crop of fighters is implanted and prepped and ready to go. We had some pretty good material to work with this time - thanks to that windfall we had, courtesy of the Justice Department."
A week before, a squad of Judges from the Undercover Division,commonly known as the Wally Squad, had targeted the Killing Zone and attempted to infiltrate Drago San's lair.
They were currently being... modified, in preparation for a closer look at the Killing Zone than anyone with an attachment to their sanity, and not to mention their limbs, could wish.
"One can always rely on the Judges," said Efil Drago San happily. "And speaking of which, how are their investigations proceeding now? Any new offensive that might be of concern?"
"It's all over the Mega-City newscasts," said the computer. "You really should keep up with the news, sir."
"I never watch the news, computer," said Efil Drago San. "I prefer to make it. So what are the Mega-City newscasts saying?"
