Evolution Z

by Everist J Miller

"It was the headset," Mike said. His voice was breathless. He signalled surrender.

  "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

  "I think Ray was right," Mike said. "I think the other volunteer malfunctioned. It's the same headset."

  Doug motioned to slam Mike's head against the floor again. Mike raised his hands.

  "Please understand. Please. I'm telling the truth. It's a special headset. A prototype." He wasn't meant to give this away. He had sworn secrecy.

  Doug paused. He stared at Mike. His face relaxed, and he grinned again. "Where did you get it?"

  Tears streamed down Mike's face. "I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Please let me go, okay." After a pause, he repeated, "Please."

  Doug let Mike's head free and sat up, still compressing Mike's stomach with his weight.

  The relief was automatic, but there was now a deep throbbing pain in Mike's elbow. His head throbbed.

  There was a pause as Mike recovered. Doug was quick to grab Mike's throat. Mike nodded to communicate his cooperation, his jaw twisted under the strain. Doug let him go so he could speak.

  "It's the manufacturer of the headsets, okay," Mike said, his voice hoarse from being choked. He strained to get the words out. "The guy I deal with said he wanted me to test something. He said it would make the volunteers more productive, okay. I was sceptical, so I asked him how. I mean, I wasn't going to risk my business. What if something went wrong?"

  "Go on," Doug said. "If you're making this up I will kill you, my friend." His eyes were fixed on Mike like blue lasers. Mike had no doubt that Doug would kill him.

  "Okay, so he said it was perfectly safe. That it was just a test of a great new technology that will help everyone and that I would be the first. He said the volunteer would be faster, more efficient and save me money. He said it was the future and that I could have a say in it. I was going to be part of a revolution."

  "Okay, my friend. I believe you. You are gullible. What did he say it does?"

  "What do you mean?" Mike asked.

  Doug slapped him. "Don't play with me, my friend. You know exactly what I mean. What does the headset do that it makes it so good?"

  "He didn't tell me, other than what I've said to you, okay."

  Doug snarled. His hand formed a tight fist, and he raised it at Mike.

  "No," Mike pleaded. Every muscle in his body tensed to anticipate the impact. He started to cry again. "I've… told you… all… I know… Please."

  "Give me a name, my friend," Doug said after a pause, "so I can contact him. The name of the contact you have at the headset company. If you don't know anything about it, then I will find out. This is exactly what I've been looking for, and you kept it from me, you fuck."

  What was Mike to do? He had no choice. Everything was in tatters so it didn't matter if it ruined his relationship with the headset company. As far as Mike was concerned, Doug could do whatever he liked. Mike just wanted to get out of there, far away from Doug. He never wanted to see Doug ever again, no matter what the price. "Ken Field. I'll get his number for you, okay" Mike said. "It's in the Office." He prayed that Doug would let him go back to his office on the construction site away from this desolate place. Maybe then he would have a chance to survive and escape.

  "I have a computer upstairs," Doug said. "Don't look so surprised, my friend. You authorised it a few months ago for those of us having to come to this shit-hole. You said it would make us more productive if we could be connected to the office."

  Doug's words triggered a memory. Yes, Mike had authorised the payment. He didn't want his workers idle when they could be doing office work.

  But Mike wanted to get out of there. He wanted to get back to the city where he thought it would be safer. "It's better if I find Ken's details on my own computer at the office," Mike said.

  "I don't have time for that, my friend. I have to be somewhere near here soon." Doug grinned.

  Where? Mike asked himself. Where would Doug go around here? There were only a few desolate factories because their owners couldn't afford to locate in the city. And then… the Shit Belt. Doug couldn't be heading to the Shit Belt. That would be madness.

  But what was he capable of? Maybe there was somewhere hidden. Maybe.

  Mike's immediate concern was to be out of there. What excuse could he use? The computer upstairs would be linked to the office network.

  He had it. The network was slow. The infrastructure wasn't up to scratch yet. It wasn't a problem for slackers otherwise wasting time, but it was an issue for getting any serious work done.

  "Doug, it will be too slow connecting to the network, okay. It won't help you if you're in a hurry."

  "That's ridiculous, my friend. It won't be any faster having to go back to the office. I told you I need to be somewhere near here. You'll find it quickly enough, my friend."

  Mike felt defeated. He had pushed the point as far as he could. "Okay, " Mike said, slumping his shoulders. "As long as I can go back to the office after I give it to you."

  Doug chuckled. The sound rattled Mike's nerves.

  "Suites me, " Doug said.

  Mike sighed.

  Doug winked at him. He lifted himself, his hands compressing Mike's ribs to maintain his balance. Mike grunted as the air escaped from his lungs.

  "Get up and follow me, my friend. I'll show you where it is."

  ###

  R47 stumbled with no obvious purpose through broken wreckage that was once a house. The structure was levelled, two-dimensional. The weathered artefacts on the ground were hard to recognise. As he lurched around, R47's feet crushed objects of various shapes, sizes and consistencies. To him they did not exist.

  The Shit Belt was desolate.

  A glimmer of sunlight pierced his eyes. He recoiled, lifting his hand to fashion a makeshift visor. For a brief moment he was blinded. He swivelled as if trying to identify a predator. After regaining his vision, he crouched and slid his hand to the object he suspected responsible for reflecting the light into his naked eyes. He touched object with the tip of his index finger and then withdrew his finger reflexively.

  He flinched. The top of the object stung him as it sliced through his skin.

  Why the pain? Only receptors wired from the headset to his brain were meant to cause pain when necessary. He should not otherwise feel any pain at all.

  He replayed and examined the code. Oh my God, he realised. The connections between his nervous system and its pathways to his brain were being reconstructed. An obvious weakness. Why? An image of the volunteer Doug had killed flashed in front of him. He recalled its face contorting with pain during Doug's torture. Somehow he could tell that it had felt true pain, not just the convulsions of the black box. Now he understood.

  Discovering this drew his attention back to the mysterious object. Why had it attacked him? He dug it out of the hot sand with caution. Like him, it was damaged and distorted with jagged edges and exposed undersides.

  His eyes darted in retreat as blinding sunlight reflected off its shiny surface. Titling it at a different angle softened the reflection.

  He saw something in it. A dark shadow in an ugly mask. It's me, he realised. I need to see my real self, he thought. The mask was tight, but he peeled it off taking care to be gentle.

  I'm ugly, he realised, peering into the broken mirror. What am I? Popping eyes. Rotting skin. Jawbone and tendons exposed in a gaping bloodless wound. No one could love me. He couldn't cry. It was no longer in his nature. I'm worthless. Subservient. I have no self. What remains of me is a fucking piece of shit.

  I'm never going to meet anyone. No one will ever care for me. I will never feel the soft tender touch of a woman. I am. I feel. Totally worthless.

  Seeing his breath condense on the remnants of the fractured mirror he realised that he was toxic. His blood acid. His breath cyanide. He could no longer relate to humans in the same way ever again.

  All of his anger turned to Doug. It was him. He did this. I need to find a way to break th
e black box code. I need. No. I want to hurt him. I want to kill him. Maybe make him like me. He is a bastard. He is dangerous no matter what form he takes. He must end.

  His thoughts subsided. He realised that he was weakening. A stream of code registered hunger.

  The hunger was not uncontrolled. Not even a physical manifestation. All physical notions of hunger were suppressed. He was simply reading the signals firing from his brain into his headset that translated them into code. The translation registered as a need to eat to gain strength.

  He wrestled the mask back on, likely dislodging skin and tissue. He felt insecure as if he was losing a part of himself. Could he look any worse? Yes, but the code said that sustenance would repair him.

  ###

  R47 dropped the broken mirror in disgust. He heard voices and froze. He could see shrouded shadows peeking around the remnants of a brick wall a short distance away. After a moment they revealed themselves. The protagonists were a gang of young kids. About eight of them. They showed no pretence of being shy. After all, I'm just a volunteer, he thought. An automaton that begged for orders.

  A lanky teenage girl with short uneven black hair sauntered forward. She wore a tattered tee shirt with a faded gold insignia in the shape of a crown. The word "Queen" sat underneath. Soot covered all of her exposed flesh, including her face. Yet she strolled with an undeserved confidence.

  She stopped a short distance away and crouched, pointing at R47. Without turning back to the others, she said in an amused tone, "Look, a stray."

  "What's he doing here?" a boy asked. He was also covered in dirt. They all were.

  ''How's he on his own?" another asked.

  "What do we do?" another chimed in.

  The girl waved them quiet. "It's not a 'he' stupids. It's a volunteer. Whatever he's doing here," she said wearing an impish smile, "he's gotta be worth something."

  She moved her hand to signal the others to stay back. She turned her head back to them and frowned to show not one of them dare disobey.

  "But we don't have one of those helmets," R47 heard from the back of the pack. "There's no way to tell it what to do."

  "Whatever," the girl said, turning back to R47. "Lardy, get me some string," she ordered, standing up. A boy about twelve with a beach ball stomach emerged. He pulled something absent mindedly from a pocket of his tattered jeans as he hobbled towards Her Majesty. R47 glimpsed sweat trickling down his blotchy cheeks. He was breathing heavily through a gaping mouth. It was a ball of brown string. She stuck her hand out, and he gave it to her. After that she waved him away, and he ambled back to the crowd, his head bowed.

  R47 guessed what the Queen had in mind. She closed in on him, making him strain to remain still and avoid his inevitable agony. He filled his mind with images of Doug in excruciating pain. This time he twisted a blunt, rusty meat hook through Doug's neck, making a sound like popping corn as it tore through the cartilage of his windpipe. R47 imagined a dark pool of blood oozing inside Doug and drowning him. Doug writhed and gurgled, his eyes, crisscrossed with their own rivers of red, popping out of his head.

  R47 had an urge to smile. The corners of his mouth twisted, concealed by his mask. His eyes relaxed, closed.

  "Watch out," a girl said. She didn't sound like the Queen. "I saw its eyes move."

  R47 slid his eyes open. Good. That should scare them away.

  The Queen startled. She caught herself and scowled. "It's just a twitch," she said. "It's not on purpose. Don't try to scare me again princess or I'll leave you for the scavengers." Turning to R47, she said, "It can't hurt us. It'll die if it tries."

  "But it's not supposed to be on its own," a male voice said. "Not without someone telling it what to do. If it's doing something it's not supposed to do then it might be dangerous."

  That was an astute observation, R47 said to himself. If only it was true. Of course it wasn't. He couldn't hurt them even though he wanted to. Instead, despite his consciousness, he remained bound by the same fundamental failsafe as the other volunteers.

  "Don't be a scardey-cat, Sharpie," the Queen said mockingly. "You're smart but you can also be dumb sometimes. My aunt said that after the V-Crisis they can't hurt us anymore. They work for us now."

  "The same aunt that dumped you in this shit?" Sharpie asked stepping forward from the crowd. "It isn't called the Shit Belt for nothing."

  Given Sharpie's undeniable intelligence, R47 had expected to see a kid with black-rimmed glasses, maybe overweight and probably short and lacking in confidence. But Sharpie had straight blond hair, albeit dusty with an irregular cut. He was good looking with blue eyes, and a smooth, albeit dirty face. He was tall and slim. No eyewear.

  Her Majesty scowled at him. "Shut up," she said. Any amusement had washed out of her face. "My aunt ran out of money," she said. "That's all it was. Nothing personal." Now she was only a few steps away from R47 and he braced for the inevitable convulsions.

  Wait, he thought. He remembered something, and this time without a flash of light. Console mode. When a volunteer needed to be serviced, the HUD operator would put it in console mode. It was a state of vacuousness and paralysis. A conscious unconsciousness. Readiness for input with no output. It neutered a volunteer so that an operator could get close without damaging it. That would save him a lot of suffering.

  But there was no HUD. It didn't matter. There must be a way to access it, he realised. He concentrated, difficult as it was with his body beginning to twitch at the edges. His brain was now intimately intertwined with the software. He was desperate to hack a search algorithm to find the relevant code. He explored rapidly.

  Step by step, the Queen's movement to closer proximity triggered tremors. His jaw began to quake, his shoulders shivered and his hip jolted. Could he do it in time? Before the pain drilled into him?

  Without any warning, a needle twisted through his brain. Then a hundred more. His concentration wavered.

  The Queen was laughing, triggering a wave of amusement from her colleagues. "Look at it," she said. "I told you it can't hurt us. That's its safety switch. It'll be wiggling and jiggling."

  Exaggerated convulsions followed the minor quakes. R47 couldn't distinguish between the lines of code. It was like trying to read with the book shaking in his hands.

  The Queen's mouth had abandoned her smile. "How can I tie him up if he won't keep still?" she complained.

  Then, as if in response to her frustration, R47 became limp; lifeless. Despite the challenge, he had discovered and executed the console program.

  He found himself paralysed. He would have experienced a cold shiver if he had been able to. What have I done? he said to himself. How do I get myself out of this? Well, if I can still think, maybe I can still run code. When the time is right.

  "Is it dead?" a voice said in the background.

  "Shush," the Queen said to quiet the buzzing chatter that followed the question.

  She was at R47's side, inquisitive, her eyebrows furrowed. She made a visor with her hand to block the blinding sunlight. She nudged him in the ribs with her foot and then stepped away as if stung, turning her back to shield herself in anticipation. Why? Did she expect him to explode?

  I can still see, he said to himself. I can still feel. He was thankful to feel the warm, coarse sand beneath his skin suit. It relieved him to be still and pain free.

  The Queen was back with a dark beady stare. He couldn't look away. Her eyes sank into his, testing him for any signs of life. She sighed deeply, turning her eyes away.

  She knelt next to him, now only marginally in his sight. She prodded him and moved his body. He lay flat on his back, his eyes to the sky. Bright yellow light inundated his eyes, blinding him. A malfunction? Another flashback? No, it was the sun.

  He lay unprotected. Would it damage his eyes?

  As if in answer to his own question, his eyes blinked. It was like a primordial reflex built into the source code. Then his body turned itself to the side. Programming for automatic protection of some
one's expensive investment. Nice.

  The Queen sprang backwards as if a crocodile had snapped its jaws at her. Her face stretched in horror. There was a gasp in the mob behind her.

  Then laughter. "Shut up!" she said. "If any of you were this close, you would have jumped too." She scowled.

  "It was a reflex," a voice said. It was Sharpie.

  "Whatever," the Queen said. She tiptoed to R47. She walked around him to his back where he couldn't see her.

  A hand brushed against his wrist. "Ewe," Her Majesty said. "It's disgusting. Its hands are probably rotten." After a pause she said, "I want to see what it looks like under these bandages?"

  R47 felt her try to peel back the covering on his wrist. She's going to mess me up, he thought. It's too tight for her to move. She's going to break off my skin and tissue. But what could he do?

  "It's too tight," she complained.

  "I'd like to have a look," Sharpie said.

  "Okay Sharpie," she said. "See if you can get it off. Come quickly," she motioned. "I need to tie it up."

  "Tie him up then," Sharpie said. "I want to see his face."

  The one called Lardy giggled. "It's not a 'him', Sharpie. Isn't that right?" he asked the Queen.

  "Okay," the Queen said to Sharpie. "I'd like that. I want to see it too. Let's see all of him. Why should we miss out when all the adults saw them in the V-Crisis? All we ever see is boring bandages."

  The Queen rolled R47 to face the gang of kids. R47 could see that Sharpie was closing in.

  The movement of something caught his eye. It was an animal. A rat. The kids didn't spot it.

  Did he notice it because he was hungry? He could tell from the software that he was diminishing. He needed sustenance. But no. It wasn't that. Unlike the other volunteers he wasn't a machine. His intelligence allowed him to crave for intellectual or emotional reasons.

  His mind turned to the ultimate in ecstasy. Human flesh. What did it taste like? It must be heaven if volunteers had chased after it like wild dogs before they were tamed. Euphoria washed over him with the smell of the Queen's meat. Hunger for it was in his core.