Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  But Clyde does. He stares at the twisted version of himself that towers before and above him. It is so alien. So very evidently unhuman. So very not Clyde. Anti-Clyde. And now the two of them will be forced together. And annihilated.

  There is no time for hesitations, but I do not question Clyde’s. I do not push him. He stares at himself, and he stares at his own death.

  Maybe we can save him. Maybe. Maybe.

  Of all the thin hopes I have, that is perhaps the thinnest.

  I look to Felicity again. At the ruin she has become. But memory overlays the woman I love onto the zombie at my feet. As she lies close to death, I also see her as she lies in bed on a Sunday morning. Her hair spread-eagled on the pillow. A slow smile spreading across her face. The light filtering through the air, like dust settling.

  That moment. That is what I am here for. That is what I am fighting for.

  “When you’re ready,” I say to Clyde.

  He hesitates, shrugs. “That’s not something I’m ever going to be. Let’s just do it when I’m not.”

  Tabitha reaches into a pocket, produces a blue ethernet cable. “This. Use it.”

  “Thank you.” Clyde reaches out and takes it. But then his hand hesitates, still in hers. Her dark fingers against his silver ones. “I…” he starts. “I still… I’m sorry, Tabby, but I… I still…”

  She nods. “I know.”

  I try to read her expression, but I can’t. Her eyes are for Clyde alone. And maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe that should be for him alone.

  He nods. “Thank you.” He pulls away, walks toward the stack.

  We follow in his wake. Clyde fiddles with a panel in his head, flips it open. He plugs one end of Tabitha’s cable in there, then turns his attention to a row of ports before him.

  “Here to sabotage,” he says quietly, to himself. Psyching himself up perhaps. “Here to damage. Here to damage. Here to damage.” He turns, swings his head back to stare at Tabitha one last time. And then without looking plugs in the other end of the cable.

  93

  I brace myself for… For…

  Clyde stands there, static, a puppet with his strings cut. His battered limbs hang as straight down as they are able. His head sags. The only sign of life a blue blinking light besides his cable.

  “Is it—” I start.

  Then Clyde jerks upright. His body comes to life. I peer at him. And of course he is just the same beaten up shell. But what ghost lingers in the machine?

  “Did it—” I start. But apparently today is not a day for finishing sentences.

  “Well,” Clyde says, cutting me off. “That was incredibly stupid.”

  And then he backhands Tabitha so hard she leaves the ground.

  I stare. The violence is so casual, so brutal and it comes from nowhere. Tabitha’s feet are in the air, her body spiraling, head twisted to face a hundred and eighty degrees from her feet. Blood sprays from her mouth, a spiral about her, tracing her path.

  She lands, body still twisting, a mess of limbs.

  I step back from Clyde.

  No… No, I step back from Version 2.0.

  Except I don’t move fast enough. Version 2.0 steps forward, a quick one, two. The ethernet cable snaps out of the port behind him, whips in his wake. His hand darts forward, a swift flat blade. It slams into my Adam’s apple. I drop gagging and spluttering to the floor.

  Kayla lunges, swings her blade. Clyde slams out a hand. Her blade impacts against his palm, bites deep into the metal, the blade travelling through into and up his arm.

  And wedges there.

  Version 2.0 twists his arm. Kayla wrenches, but for a moment the blade is stuck and that is all the time 2.0 needs to step inside her guard and deliver a headbutt. His steel head collides with her flesh and bone one. She drops.

  Kayla is down.

  I’m still trying to breathe, on the floor, fighting my own closing throat. Air hisses into me. A too-thin reed of air. And what if he just kills us? We didn’t think of that, did we? What if he kills us out of spite before he takes over the minds of everyone in this place? What then?

  I see him glance over to where Felicity lies. And no. No. Not her. Spare her more harm. Spare her. Spare her.

  He shakes his head. “Sentimental,” I hear him say. Then he reaches down and rips something off Tabitha’s belt. A small black box lightly smattered with LEDs. The wireless jammer. He flips down a panel. His fingers tap.

  And something about his pose relaxes. He turns to me, cocks his head to one side.

  “Hello, Arthur,” he says. “Goodbye, Arthur. Welcome to the family.”

  And then the pain begins.

  94

  It is a hot lance thrust directly into my frontal lobes. An agonizing, spiking burst of pain that I think will drive the sanity out of me. A vine racing through my whole body. It is too much to bear.

  And then, somewhere in the depths of my head, the bud of pain blooms. It swells and is everything, is the totality of my world. It begins to drive the me out of me.

  I cannot take this. I cannot.

  I am eclipsed. Done with. Discarded.

  AND THEN I INHALE

  My eyes stretch. My mouth is an “O” too large for my face. An attempt to open a release valve on the pain.

  But the pain is gone.

  It catches me by surprise, trips up my scream and the exhalation comes out as a gasp. My hands fly to my chest, my arms. A rapid physical inventory. I am whole. Not a cut or bruise upon me. All the damage of my trip through Version 2.0’s compound is gone.

  I actually feel good.

  And it’s not just me, or my skin. My clothes too. They’re whole. Not a rip or a tear. Not a stain.

  What the hell is going on?

  I look around. I know this place. I’m in Felicity’s apartment. I’m in Oxford. It’s Sunday morning. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. Something in the lazy light drifting in through the kitchen window.

  Felicity’s apartment.

  Felicity.

  I take off at speed, race through the room, shouting her name. Into the living room. Not there. But she has to be here somewhere. Because if she’s here then maybe she’s not dying on the floor somewhere.

  Dying on the floor…

  Wasn’t I…?

  What the hell is going on?

  I lose momentum as I approach the bedroom door. Something is wrong. I can’t be here. It makes no sense. I was in Version 2.0’s compound. We had… What the hell has happened?

  Felicity was lying on the floor. Zombified. I was about to save her. Wasn’t I?

  A sound from beyond the bedroom door. Someone shifting about.

  Did I save her? How could I have forgotten something like that?

  Another sound. And she’s in there. She has to be there. I have to have saved her. I have to.

  I push open the door. A familiar room. The familiar Georgia O’Keeffe prints on the wall. The familiar flowers on the bed stand. Familiar white sheets on a familiar bed.

  But not Felicity.

  Clyde.

  He sits perched on the foot of the bed. Not metal Clyde. Not towering server stack Clyde. But flesh and blood and meat Clyde. A few years younger than me. A scruffy beard on his chin. Glasses. A tweed jacket. Bloody Clyde.

  There is an expression on his face that lies somewhere between amusement and embarrassment.

  “Hello, Arthur,” he says.

  I work my jaw a few times, use it to buy me some time. “Hello, Clyde,” I say.

  He shrugs. “Well, more or less.”

  My brow furrows. Is it not Clyde?

  And then it comes back to me. Those last agonizing seconds. The image of Clyde’s metal body standing over me, staring down at me. My throat closing. The wireless jammer turned off.

  “Version 2.0.” I close my eyes.

  “Bingo.”

  Oh balls. “This is all in my head, isn’t it?” I say. I open my eyes, stare into that oh-so familiar, oh-so mocking face.
>
  “You know the answer to that,” says Version 2.0.

  So, yes. Yes, this isn’t real. None of this is real. He’s in my head. He’s overwriting me. Right now.

  “Yes,” says Version 2.0. “Yes, I am.”

  So he can read my thoughts.

  “It’s not exactly James Joyce,” says Version 2.0, “I’ll tell you that.”

  “Oh piss off,” I tell him.

  “Case in point.” Version 2.0 smirks.

  I stare at him for a moment, at what he’s become. And a great sadness fills me. This man used to be my friend. And now he’s a monster who’s killing me. And I can’t fight him. That would be useless. But I would love to understand him.

  “What happened to you?” I ask. “You used to be the best of us. Jesus, the version we were working with still was.”

  Version 2.0 shakes his head. “I’m all I’ve ever been, Arthur. Really, I am. Honestly, I think I’ve changed less than you think. Which sounds a little presumptuous, I realize, but, well… that’s just it, Arthur. My perspective has changed. Because of who or what I am now. That’s all. I see things differently. I see the bigger picture.”

  He sounds genuinely sorry for a moment. The smirk faltering. And I can almost believe him. But… God, I have seen too much horror done by his hand to give him a free pass. Hell, we are having this conversation while he is in the middle of bloody murdering me.

  “You’re angry,” he says.

  “Can you really justify what you’ve done?” I ask. “You’re trying to make an entire species extinct.”

  “One species.” There’s an angry snap to Clyde’s voice this time. “One. Do you know how many species mankind wipes from the face of the earth every day? Do you have any clue? Or do you walk about in blissful, uncaring ignorance? Do you assume that someone else will take care of it? Well, I am taking care of it now, Arthur. And it may be presumptive, and arrogant, or some other thing I used to think was important. When I thought humanity was important. But honestly, Arthur, what makes humanity special? What distinguishes them?”

  He’s a zealot. That’s the word. He is beyond reason.

  “Those are hurtful words, Arthur.” But he’s smirking again. Masking anger as humor.

  I try a different tack. I don’t really know why. Everything is already in motion. Everything is already too late. But I want to believe that he could be saved.

  “I get it,” I say. “I get that we’re a shit race, doing shit things. But what about hope, Clyde? What about the long shot?”

  Clyde shakes his head. “It’s probability, Arthur. It’s math. And it’s cold, and it’s uncaring, and it’s so… what is your word? Inhuman. It is inhuman. But it is. That is the world. And you can fight against it, but it will roll over you and not give the slightest damn.”

  He’s talking about himself.

  “I might as well be.”

  These interjections into my mental monologue are getting tiring. Everything is tiring. Fighting Version 2.0, fighting for him, or for what he could be, is tiring. Fighting for him to be better.

  God, maybe I was wrong. I have staked everything on hope. On a long shot. But here, with him, with someone who used to be my friend, is there no hope?

  I look at him, and I don’t see it. And I know then, no matter what I try, what approach I take, this will not work out. There are no heroes here.

  “No, Arthur, there aren’t.”

  His voice is cold, implacable. There’s nothing of Clyde left in it. No room for hope. No room for humanity. And maybe when hope dies, so should the hopeless.

  “Well then,” I say, “I can’t be sorry about this.”

  95

  For a very, very long moment absolutely bollocks all happens.

  Clyde looks deeply perplexed. “Arthur, what the hell are you going on about?”

  Shit. It’s not working. No! I can’t think about it. He can read my mind. Don’t think about the… Pink elephants. Pink elephants. Think about pink elephants.

  “Don’t think about what?” The arch-villain relaxedness seeps out of Version 2.0’s pose. He stands up from the end of the bed, advances.

  Pink elephants. Pink elephants. I picture them cavorting about the room.

  “Don’t think about what?” The whole room quakes with the force of Version 2.0’s shout. Storm clouds form outside the windows. Water stains obscure the art prints. The sheets blacken with stains.

  Pink… elephants…

  The elephants rupture. Bloody and messy and physical. Their guts littered about the room. A mass of gore, their bodies turned from pink to red.

  Version 2.0 advances on me. He looks murderous. But considering this is halfway through the actual murdering event, that seems a little late.

  “Don’t—”

  The word is a physical blow. It sends me spinning back, slamming into the wall.

  “—think—”

  Another blow. Plaster cracks underneath me. And this isn’t real. This is in my head. Except it’s not really my head any more.

  “—about—”

  The force of it drives me back through the wall. Plaster and bones break. I scream in agony. I think Version 2.0 can do anything to me he wants in here.

  “—”

  The last word doesn’t come. I am braced for the final brutal blow, but it doesn’t fall.

  Clyde stands still, his mouth open, ready to speak the word, but he cannot get it out. Instead, his mouth goes round. He puts a hand to his forehead, winces as if in sudden pain.

  “What?” he says. Just normal volume. Just a normal man. My pain is suddenly gone, my bones whole again.

  “What did you do?” he gasps. He drops to one knee. Both hands go to his head. “What did you do to me?” He speaks through gritted teeth.

  And it’s my turn to be sad. So very sad, as my old friend kneels before me, curled up in agonizing pain.

  “What did I do?” I say. “I gave up on you.”

  AND THEN I INHALE

  The room is gone. There is no transition, just an abrupt vacuum where once it was. Version 2.0 is gone. And for a moment, I am almost gone too.

  I can feel… everyone. I can feel minds. Thousands… hundreds of thousands… millions… hundreds of millions. I can feel all of humanity, all of the minds Clyde has overwritten inside me.

  There is not room. I think my skull is going to cave in. I think I’m giving way.

  I am Arthur. I am…

  I am everyone, everything. I am the world. The hope, the future.

  There is too much of me. I am on the floor staring at my hands, laughing and choking. I am a marine staring at the gun I was firing. I am a mecha pilot. I am a helicopter pilot trying to grapple with my controls, trying to work out if I want to plunge into the Arctic wasteland or struggle for the skies. I am a woman in an Alaskan village. I am her husband. I am a man in New York staring at the desolation of the world, feeling the agony of the burning clouds still ripping through my skin. I am the horde of zombies closing in on him, stumbling and staggering and with his scent in my nose and the need to kill him in my gut. I am a mushroom growing, spreading, spitting out myself.

  I am Arthur. I am Arthur.

  I am architecture. I am blood vessels and steel ribs. I am wires. I am machines. I am infrastructure and advancement. I am connected.

  This is the spike, Tabitha’s code bomb. This is me taking over Version 2.0’s servers and ripping through him. This is me doing to him exactly what he was doing to me. What he did to everyone. I am tearing him out, putting them all back. All of them. They were all on his servers. And now I am the conduit through which they all return.

  I am Arthur. I am Arthur. I struggle for the thought, for the memory of myself.

  But I am others too. I am Tabitha in a swirling fog of unconsciousness. I am Kayla wondering how the fuck that little arsehole managed to land a headbutt. I am Clyde.

  I am Clyde.

  Somehow in the swirling miasma of souls, of thoughts, I can feel my friend. At leas
t some part of him. Damaged, in pieces, but there. There is some part of me that is Version 2.1. And from there I can feel a piece of 2.2, 2.3… and there… yes, 2.4 as well. Fragments of someone, pieces. Barely enough to stitch together. But they’re all there, 2.1—the version who sacrificed himself for us—strongest of all.

  I am architecture. I am blood vessels and steel ribs. I am wires. I am machines.

  Machines. I am machines.

  I remember Clyde staring at the ruins of a 3D printer, at the machine that could make him human once more. And I remember promising him that maybe there were more. I remember how hollow that promise felt.

  But it wasn’t.

  I can feel the machines here. Every single one in this sinking tub of a building. I am the goddamn building. And I know exactly where the other 3D printer is.

  And then it’s all fading. All coming apart.

  I am Arthur. I am Arthur.

  I am rushing back to my body, my self, my physicality. My arms, and ribs, and legs, and aching, aching throat, they are me, undeniably me.

  Desperately, with the last remnants of my connectedness I grab the remnants of the versions, the tattered bits and pieces of my friend. I tear through Version 2.0’s palace. I can feel the tattered wires like open wounds. I slam into electronic dead ends. But I race on.

  Even as I do the place slips through my fingers. I am not it. I am just a man in pain. A man on the floor, curled up and useless.

  And then I am back, flickering into the building. And I am there. I am at the controls of the printer. Shoving Clyde into it like carrots into a juicer. And things worked out for Dr. Frankenstein, right? Nothing went wrong with his attempt at stitching back together the dead pieces of a man.

  I can’t give up. I have to have hope.

  We protect our own.

  And then suddenly I don’t know what I’m doing. Suddenly I am staring at controls that were once part of my body, my architecture, and now they are like a discarded limb, lying useless before me. They are slipping away from me. And suddenly I don’t know how this machine works. I don’t know how to save Clyde. And how the hell do I take this long shot?