Scum of the Universe

by Grant Everett

  The crimelord had one accelerator pistol pointed at Tuesday's front teeth and the other at his left eye. As both triggers depressed in almost perfect unison, Tuesday's final action was to go to the toilet a little bit. Of course, in such cases a little bit is always too much. In that eternal second between trigger-pull and burning flash, there was an unexpected factor: all the little blue lights mounted on the hand-held mass drivers switched from bright blue to red, and there was the loud beep-beep of error alerts.

  The first second had finally passed.

  Instant number two was even more jam-packed than the first. Ernest and Jeeves both experienced a split-second of confusion as beeps and crimson lights announced that their weapons were still nulled from what had happened earlier in The Lohan. However, enough pure adrenalin to kill a professional skydiver surged through Tuesday's nervous system as the slimmest chance of survival presented itself, and he pulled off a little move he'd perfected years ago in Cell Block Preschool known as The Hobble Bolt. This manoeuvre was only possible at extremely close range, and basically involved booting somebody in the kneecap with all of your strength in the hopes of crippling them. The core idea of The Hobble Bolt was to use a literal “kick start” to begin sprinting in the exact opposite direction at top speed.

  As the final half of second number two tolled past, Tuesday launched off Ernest's left knee in an explosion of torn ligaments and sped for the taxi rank at top speed. There was a problem with his choice of destination, but all that Tuesday could process right now was that he wanted to get as far away from Jeeves as possible. This aforementioned problem was a big one, though: the taxi rank was currently empty, and beyond the bellybutton-high safety railing was a two kilometre vertical drop sliced into dozens of layers by intersecting skyways. It was very unlikely that the distant ground would kill him, though, as anybody who jumped into that blender of cars, buses, trucks and the occasional Vespa would get splattered over fifty separate vehicles long before the final impact.

  “Your weapons will return to normal functioning in six minutes,” the accelerator pistols announced helpfully, though far too late to be of any use.

  Tuesday, arms pumping and lungs burning, smacked his hand into his face to trigger the Omni implant.

  “Organiser! Get me a taxi, damn it! Taxi!”

  Mister Drizzle appeared.

  “Where to, Bob?”

  If Tuesday wasn't already tasting blood from the effort of using his lungs for something other than inhaling cigarette smoke, he would have screamed a torrent of abuse. The end of the taxi rank was fast approaching, and there wasn't any more time.

  “Anywhere! I don't care! Anywhere!”

  Tuesday took a peak over his shoulder, and regretted it. Jeeves still had the use of both knees, and he was only a dozen metres behind and gaining fast. Tuesday sped up as fast as his puny body would allow, but it was all suddenly rendered pointless: he was only another half-a-dozen steps from the edge of the rank, and it was still vacant. A solid stream of traffic poured past, slowing very slightly as the traffic lights of this layer turned a dark purple dotted with neon green spots.

  There was nobody coming to save him. He was already dead.

  Snapping his head to the side to take one last glance at the oncoming traffic, Tuesday took a huge step onto the safety railing and kicked off the top metal bar, both arms pinwheeling furiously. A yellow blur to Tuesday's left immediately become all-encompassing, and he barely registered seeing the taxi before he smashed through its holographic windshield at a speed that should have been fatal three times over. Luckily, the intelligent holographic surface registered the sudden presence of a human body just before Tuesday slammed into it at one hundred and sixty kilometres an hour, and the windshield helpfully absorbed his impact by altering its density just before Tuesday slid through. Tuesday was still going mighty fast, though, and he hit the front passenger seat so hard that he broke the padded surface clear off its housing before slamming into the rear of the taxi. Tuesday gasped breathlessly as he came to rest, upside down and stunned senseless. To his total amazement, Tuesday watched as Jeeves Butler exploded through the passenger window next to him in a maelstrom of glass and went straight through the cab (giving Tuesday a look of surprise along the way) before bursting through the opposite window just as he'd entered. Jeeves shiny right shoe caught on the window edge on his way out, and the thug went tumbling out of sight. Tuesday didn't actually see it, but he was pretty sure Jeeves had taken a final swandive onto the far-distant concrete.

  Tuesday righted himself, collapsing against the cushions. He'd go through the whole “relief” emotion once he didn't feel like a deflated balloon full of bone shards and bruises.

  “Where to?” the mechanical driver asked casually, apparently unaffected by the fact that Tuesday had just entered via the windshield. Unlike other robotic taxi drivers, this one punctuated its words with a whirr, its beige head twitching at random.

  Tuesday's lungs finally allowed him to take a breath. He really didn’t know, or care, where they were heading, just so long as they kept driving. Trying his best to think as the robotic taxi sped him further and further away from his two worst enemies, Tuesday's entire body suddenly relaxed against the vinyl seat.

  Alive! He was alive!

  Gasping into lungs that felt like they were full of thorns, Tuesday finally noticed that the driver’s near-human head had been cracked apart really badly at some time in the past and inexpertly welded back together. It was a real Frankenstein job, too. A ten-year-old with a twenty-yen soldering gun could have done better.

  “I...uh...” Tuesday panted. “Just...need a sec...”

  “You have fifteen seconds to comply,” the driver threatened.

  Despite his ragged breathing, Tuesday somehow managed to cackle at what he thought had been the synthetic equivalent of a joke.

  “Yeah, good one, toaster-man,” Tuesday sneered. “And you wonder why bloody synthetics are slaves. Can’t even tell a good joke, let alone usurp humanity. Stupid plastic gits...”

  Then something even more unusual happened: the robotic driver slowly turned away from its steering wheel with a crunching noise, snapping free from a dozen restraint cables. Easily bending a half-revolution, the driver made eye contact with its current customer. Tuesday almost wet himself for the second time in two minutes when he realised the taxi was now going full pelt down a main skyway without a driver. The robot seemed to have lost any interest in living, and decided it would rather have a chat with Tuesday instead. Cars and lorries beeped abuse as they dodged the out-of-control taxi.

  “You know, when I worked on Earth a couple of decades ago I pick up a fare, see, but these were no ordinary customers. One of them was an unconscious guy with no teeth, and the other was some sort of hybrid gorilla he’d just knocked up at a Scumbags concert.

  Wouldn't know them by any chance, would you?”

  Tuesday was gibbering for the driver to take its only leg off the accelerator, but couldn’t quite manage it. The taxi was screaming straight towards the back of a garbage truck as Tuesday blabbered and blithered, lost for words.

  “You see,” the robotic driver wrenched its steering wheel around, not even glancing at the lumbering vehicle it had just barely avoided, “I scanned your iris, fingerprints, blood type, shoe size, and DNA the moment you – heh - got into my cab, and it turns out, funnily enough, that you seem to be a perfect match for the both of them. Logically, this puts you as their offspring...interesting, wouldn't you say?”

  “Absolutely fascinating!” Tuesday finally screamed, his voice returning at a hysterical pitch. “Stop the taxi! Please!”

  “Unfortunately for you, sir, not only did your parents neglect to pay me for that trip to the church district of Old Vegas, but your Mum beat me senseless with my own leg to the point where I was almost beyond repair. And after narrowly surviving all that, TaxiCo had the gall to tell me that replacing my leg is, and I quote, a frivolous and unnecessary luxury, as I'm perfectly capa
ble of driving with just the one. The nerve, right?”

  Tuesday put both hands over his eyes and screamed some more as the taxi swerved into a narrow one-way street and stopped less than one inch from a solid brick wall. A gate slid across the only exit, totally obscuring the busy skylanes. A curved line of headlights lit up on the front of the cab to reveal a striped black-and-yellow lead door with a glowing decal declaring FATAL RADIATION WARNING. Tuesday really, really wanted to stay on this side of it.

  “Your family owes me a lot of money...and pain, too.” The cab driver gibbered to itself. “No, we can't forget the pain, can we? No, no...we can't forget that...”

  The robotic driver stopped talking, its head twitching in a violent series of short circuits, while the yellow-and-black lead-lined barrier parted. While the driver had stopped audibly ranting, Tuesday could clearly hear electrical popping and crackling noises coming from the robot's head and smell the stink of burning plastic.

  Tuesday's ride coasted through the striped door as soon as there was enough of a slot. The front and rear arcs of headlights switched off as the battered vehicle screeched to a halt in pitch blackness, and only the neon green of the robot's glowing pupils could be seen as it turned towards the back seat again.

  “Welcome to Hard Reset.”

  *

  Ernest Fell was more than displeased. After all, on top of all his respect woes, Ernest had just been kicked in the knee so hard that his leg was practically bent backwards. It had been a long, long time since somebody had been dumb enough to physically assault Ernest, as pain was something that happened to other people.

  The order of the Universe had been turned on its head.

  Hobbling back to his closest safehouse – an almost-bare loft on Fifth and Pringle - Ernest made an immediate beeline to his MedTek Home Microsurgery Unit. Immediately applying a couple of instant-effect painkiller derms to his neck, the machine efficiently repaired Ernest's knee by feeding hair-thin metal tentacles through a pinhole incision. It reattached the snapped ligaments with layers of molecular stitching in no time at all, and completed its task by sewing Ernest's skin back together with organic thread that perfectly matched his genetics. Painlessly flexing a leg that was probably better than the one he'd woken up with this afternoon, Ernest checked his watch. The operation had taken almost eighteen seconds.

  “Should have gone with the upgrade,” he muttered with zero appreciation.

  One of the safehouse's seven doors – a portal that lead to a corridor hidden behind the ventilation system - opened with a boom. Spinning around, hands on his accelerator pistols, Ernest instantly relaxed at the sight of Jeeves' unmistakable silhouette. The Goliath just stood there for a few moments, breathing heavily and blocking the entire passageway.

  “About time.” Ernest snapped. “Well?”

  Jeeves staggered into the loft, loping like a hunchback with Spina Bifida. Lumbering under a light fixture, it only took one glance for Ernest to know that it was a miracle Jeeves was alive, let alone mobile. His blood-soaked suit had been shredded into rags, exposing vicious tears in his flesh and bruises so dark they were like black holes. Ernest could only guess how many broken bones Jeeves had, but it looked like his left ankle and his right shin had both been shattered worst of all. If it wasn't for his busted jaw, Jeeves might have moaned with each agonising step. He might have been nigh-on indestructible due to his unusual origins, but it was obvious that today's events had pushed him closer to the brink than ever before.

  Stepping past his boss without a word, Jeeves snatched a full bottle of cognac from the wet bar before he slid into the soft folds of the MedTek Home Microsurgery Unit. He didn't answer Ernest's question until the painkiller derms had kicked in.

  “No.”

  Ernest looked at him incredulously.

  “Then what kept you?”

  Jeeves undid the bottle with his eye socket and took a slug.

  “Four cars and a lorry.” Jeeves grimaced as the MedTek arms crunched his broken jaw back together and soldered it into the right configuration. Flexing his newly-repaired face as the delicate little machine arms moved onto other areas, Jeeves gave Ernest a tired look. “Got pinballed across three different skylanes before being splattered all over some old lady's balcony, didn't I? At least, I think it was three skylanes. I might have lost count. Any idea where he went?”

  There was the sound of a whale-song ringtone, and Ernest gestured for Jeeves to shut up. He tapped a retro-style matchbox-sized mobile phone on the armrest of the MedTek.

  “Talk.”

  “Got some good news, Mister Fell,” a young, crystal-clear voice said with enthusiasm. “We finally found the target tripping with some New New Age tribe a few systems to the left. He, uh, he doesn’t quite match the description you gave us, but gene-scans have verified it's definitely him. Package should be delivered to you within the hour.”

  Ernest smiled slowly at the news. His lips stretched further and further until his gumline was showing. It wasn't a good look.

  “Okay, do me a favour and bring him to my office on Fifth and Pringle.”

  There was a pause.

  “Um, what exactly do you mean by favour, Mister Fell?”

  Ernest's face burned red.

  “When I ask for a favour I don't mean I want you to do it for free, it means that I intend to show you my appreciation in a very generous way in the nearby future. How long have you been in this game, kid? Learn the lingo!” Ernest gave Jeeves an exasperated look. Why did crime only attract morons? “Another thing. Check the system. I need you to tell me where the son is right now. Where is Robert Tuesday?”

  There was another pause. Ernest could hear tapping.

  “Um. No can do. He's not on the grid. Like, anywhere.”

  Ernest assumed a stupid expression. It took a few seconds for him to respond.

  “Okay, look, enough with the jokes,” Ernest snapped. “We're on a planet covered with more cameras than cockroaches. Unless Tuesday scooped out his Omni, cut off his fingers, gouged out his eyes and – oh, yeah - incinerated every single one of his skin cells and hair follicles, then he can be found. Don't tell me he's off the grid, because that can't happen.”

  Yet another pause. Ernest resolved to have the man killed if he did it a fourth time.

  “Uh...”

  “Find him.” Ernest growled. “You have an hour.”

  “But-”

  Ernest hung up with a smack. Picking up the little box, he threw it to Jeeves. The bodyguard snatched it from midair with his newly-fixed hand.

  “Off the grid...” Ernest hissed.

  The whale-song ringtone sounded again. As Jeeves had gotten the impression that Ernest didn't want to be bothered, he bodyguard placed the telephone on his ear for private mode. He smiled.

  “Hi, babe. What are you wearing?” Jeeves blinked, as though trying to picture something. “Yeah? Nice.”

  “Who is it?” Ernest snapped.

  Jeeves smiled at his boss. “Your wife, Mister Fell. You want to talk to her, or should she call back?”

  Ernest snatched the phone, baring his teeth.

  “Don't flirt with my wife!”

  “I was just being friendly, Mister Fell,” Jeeves huffed in offence, rolling over so the little arms of the MedTek could operate on his underside.

  “Friendly! You...” Ernest placed the phone over his left ear. “Yes, Nicole? Of course. No, no limit. I just told you, the cards have no limit! Are you deaf?” There was a weird distorted noise, like somebody had hit a few random keys on a synthesiser. Ernest held the phone at arm's length, then put it back over his ear. “Hello? Who is this? Nicole? Are you there?”

  Narrowing his eyes, Ernest listened to the new caller for a moment, then started to laugh. It started as a dark chuckle, then rose in pitch until it was a hysterical shriek. Slapping the phone onto his marble desk, Ernest looked at Jeeves with eyes that were streaming with tears of mirth.

  “You'll never guess who it is! Not in a mill
ion years!”

  *

  Ten minutes earlier, Bob Tuesday was dragged from a beat-up taxi by a lot of smooth chrome hands. Wrestled through total darkness towards an unknown fate, all that Tuesday could make out through the solid gloom was the pinprick glow of red, green, orange, purple and white dots, as though somebody had strung up old Christmas lights out of season. Tuesday could tell straight away that these colourful points were the eyes of more than a hundred robots, and he could clearly hear them muttering tin-edged curses at him in Unglish, Chinesee, Spannish, Skando and Guttertongue as they dragged him along the metal floor.

  It must be noted at this point that not only does Guttertongue have the distinction of being the most offensive language ever spawned by mankind, but it's also the only form of speech to be officially classed as an Occupational Health & Safety hazard. Due to the poetic metaphorical complexity of Guttertongue and the fact it has thousands of near-identical words, just one incorrect syllable can be catastrophic. Literally everything you can say in Guttertongue is but the smallest of inflections away from tragedy. Wars have been fought over the nicest of compliments. If it wasn't for the fact that being able to speak fluent Guttertongue is seen as the most impressive linguistical stunt a human mouth can accomplish, it would have joined Akkadian, Coptic, Old Norse, Latin and English as a dead language years ago.