Glow, p.25
Glow, page 25
Yellow shrugged. “They’re dumbass machines like y– I mean, they’re not humans. I don’t see how they’d be smart enough to actually make Glow.”
Jett ran some searches on the data he snatched from the server. Amongst the various communication transcripts, several familiar words leapt out at him: Xell Vollarer. Free-Meridian. And the Star-River.
“I mean this is incredible,” Yellow rambled-on, lost inside his own world. “The scandal. Can you imagine if this news got out… Wait. Wait. Think how much cash we could extort from the Sisters by threatening to…”
Jett stared at the time-ordered information fragments. One was right at the top, only a few hours earlier. “I have the Star-River. Heading for the Free-Meridian.” He smashed the Scylla head with a fist, startling Yellow into silence. “Free-Meridian, it’s a place. Somebody must know where it is.”
“Oh,” said Yellow, easing back out of Jett’s reach. “Forgot to tell you. I asked around. Free-Meridian’s a bunch of losers out in the old GFC warehouse complex on Transit Mountain. They smuggle stuff and do special ‘technical’ favors for the drug gangs in Coriolis City.”
Jett’s hand snatched out like a viper, whipping Yellow into the air and pressing him up to his face. “You forgot to tell me?”
“Easy big guy,” Yellow choked. “I only just learned this while you were out hunting Scyllas.”
Jett dropped Yellow in a crashing heap. He lay there mumbling, “Gee, thanks, Yellow, here have some cash for working so hard…”
“I will go to this Free-Meridian now.” Jett raged.
“Why yes, you should go there immediately,” Yellow said, easing into an upright position. “I have more useful tidbits for you. I expect you’ll not want to pay me for those either?”
Jett kicked Thorne’s desk through a wall and grabbed at Yellow as he struggled to get away. “Tell me.”
“Sure, sure. Fair enough.” Yellow batted Jett’s skeletal hand from his throat. “Free-Meridian’s run by a guy called Reeva. Nasty, angry shit. You should get on great together. I’ll show you where the old GFC warehouse is too. Then maybe you’ll give me the codes to Thorne’s computer?”
Jett’s fist twitched as he struggled with not smashing Yellow across the walls. It was so much easier to just destroy, to spread the darkness that he felt inside. “You’ll get what you deserve when I get what I need,” he said slowly, fighting to control each word and projecting it into Yellow’s bulbous head.
“Fine,” Yellow said. “I’ll pack you lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“You know, food. Grub. Snacks?”
“I don’t eat.”
“So, not biological after all. Maybe a new type of robot based on biological principles but without the need for carbon-based sustenance…”
Jett gathered his goshguns and morphed into his revenant disguise.
“Cool!” Yellow cooed, as Jett tucked the guns inside another one of Yellow’s spare cloaks. “Don’t you want the details? You know, the Free-Meridian’s location, Reeva’s shoe size?”
“Send me them. Use your Inner-I,” Jett said, and left for Transit Mountain.
Rex followed the bearded man into the warehouse. His eyes scanned the building, taking in the star-spangled blue flag and the bulky security gates. They passed through into a cavernous internal space partitioned by concrete walls into a warren of tunnels. On past windows with sniper platforms and shutters, blast doors, defensive trenches; corrugated metal ceiling, tinfoil-lined walls and hoops of chicken wire draped across entrances and vents. The whole building was a giant Faraday cage designed for electronic privacy – a fortress for paranoid minds.
Winding tunnels took them to the heart of the building, a room full of restraining chairs and computer terminals hooked into medical monitors on wheeled dollies. Heavy winching mechanisms hung from overhead gantries. Cell doors lined the room’s longest edge, each with a crisscross of bars over their tiny window openings. Forlorn faces stared out through some of the bars. None dared utter a sound.
Rex knew this place on a deep, emotional level. The hell from his dreams minus surgeons peering over face masks. Instead, he saw just men in jeans and army fatigues.
An angular, wiry man with shiny black hair strode from a side office straight toward Rex. His gnarled face lit with some twisted delight.
One-eyed man! Rex stared at the single good eye, bright, malicious red. The other was just sewn-over pink flesh. His long nose curled down and his pointed chin turned up. A finger’s width longer and they would have met like the handle of a fleshy jug.
“He knows me!” One-eyed man said. “You can see he knows me.” He gently patted Rex’s cheek with a trembling hand as if he was somehow precious. “Recognize your old friend Reeva, do you?”
Rex half nodded half shook his head. A familiar face, yes, but he didn’t know who he was or why he was here.
“Good, good,” Reeva said, still patting his cheek while his eye leered into each of Rex’s. “I should get my money now then.” He turned to Sister-Eleven.
“Not yet,” she said, stepping silently to Rex’s side. “The process didn’t work.”
“Didn’t work. How can it not fuckin’ work? He’s here, isn’t he?”
“He’s not who he’s supposed to be.”
Reeva laughed. “Oh! Oh really? Well, who’s he supposed to be? Herbert Fucking Einstein, the Queen of Sheba? Who is he then?” His hands shook violently; Rex recognized the danger. An Amp addict, unstable and violent.
Sister-Eleven just shook her head. “It doesn’t matter who he thinks he is. He’s not who he’s supposed to be.”
Reeva’s hand cracked across Rex’s cheek, busting his lip and spraying blood over Sister-Eleven. “Who are you?”
“Rex,” he blurted, “just Rex.”
“Rex?” Reeva waved his hands like a showman. A chorus of chuckles echoed around the room as Reeva looked around in feigned bewilderment. The room was silently busy now, people creeping in to hang from balconies and cluster in corners, cigarettes dangling from lips, guns slung over their shoulders. “He’s Rex.” Reeva laughed wildly, “Just fucking Rex.” His hands wheeled in great expansive gestures, encouraging the peals of laughter that rolled around the room.
“My dog’s called Rex,” someone shouted as the laughter made another circuit.
“Pull up a chair, Rex,” Reeva said. “Let’s have a nice little chat.” A metal chair was thrust into the back of Rex’s legs and he sat down. Cuffs snapped shut pinning his arms and legs to the frame as Reeva pulled up an identical chair and sat opposite. He lit up a cigarette, inhaled, and blew a draft of acrid Amp smoke into Rex’s face.
“There’s no need for any of this.” Sister-Eleven stepped in between them. “Rex’s Glow network is unusually cohesive but only weakly linked to his biological substrate which is in very poor condition. He has strange views about who he is and where he came from. We need Cyc to untangle these connections, so we can move on with the project.”
Reeva looked around as if Sister-Eleven was some annoying wasp buzzing his ears. “Cohesive substrates? Projects? Will someone get this whining bitch-machine away from me!” Four armed men prodded Sister-Eleven away with long-barreled guns.
“I don’t give a fuck about your projects,” Reeva snapped. “I want my money.” He pushed his face into Rex’s. “Let me tell you a little story. See if it triggers any memories in here.” He rapped Rex’s head with his knuckles. “We received a little package containing a crystal, some Glow, and some very neat and – if I may say so – precisely written instructions. Like the good, honest businesspeople that we are, we followed those instructions, surgically implanting the crystal inside your noggin like they asked.” He prodded a thumb at Sister-Eleven. “But you know what? Before we got to administer the Glow, our resident idiot-addict, Xell, popped it himself.” Reeva let out a hysterical laugh. “He’s an oily cunt is that Xell. Resourceful too. But something snapped in him. Next thing we know he’s breaking back in here and rescuing you, shooting three of my men in the process.” His eye flashed danger. “What do you think of that, Rexy boy?”
“I – I woke up in an alley next to Xell. He’s dead. Stabbed himself in the head. He tied us together, so the Glow moved into me. I remember bits about being Xell. He thinks the world’s going to end.”
Reeva thoughtfully stubbed ash on the chair arm next to Rex’s wrist. “I see the problem then, Rexy boy. The Sister’s persona that’s supposed to be dominant, just isn’t. Instead we’re all stuck talking to a useless turd that doesn’t know nothing. If you just acquired the common decency to fuck off and die, and let this other chappy through, then we’d all be a lot better off now, wouldn’t we Rexy boy?” Reeva looked over to Sister-Eleven for confirmation, who remained stone still.
“So…” Reeva’s grin grew enormous. “Are you just going to sit there and die or do you need me to give you a helping hand?” He cracked his knuckles and eased a fist back past his ear, bunching his wiry, Amp-strained muscles.
Rex threw Sister-Eleven a stare. He wanted her to feel his hatred. If it was even possible for a mindless machine to feel anything. Stupid, stupid Rex, trusting machines. Did they really believe their divine being, their Future-Lord, resided inside a dose of Glow, inside his pathetic head? Tears of frustration flowed down his cheeks. He bunched his muscles, testing the cuffs, but they were solid like everything and everyone else around him. “No,” he choked on his words. “I think you are going to have to help me.”
The gleam in Reeva’s eye flashed brighter but Sister-Eleven’s voice kept his fist from striking. “That won’t help, Reeva. You’ll just corrupt the merchandise.”
Reeva let the fist drop and leaned close to Rex’s ear. “You see the shit I have to put up with Rexy boy?”
Rex nodded, cringing for the death punch.
“They fuck up and somehow it’s all my fault. I have to fix it!”
“I’m sorry,” Rex said, through more tears.
“You’re sorry? I know you are, but the problem is you don’t even really remember who you’re supposed to be. If you can’t even remember him, how can you magically become him?”
“I’ll try,” Rex said.
“You’ll try? You’ll fucking try?” Rex almost saw the smoke coming from Reeva as he grew larger in the chair, muscles and veins rippling like snakes. “You know what I really hate the most of all things, Rex?”
Rex’s face bent and contorted as he tried to make an answer appear. “Bad people?”
Laughter chorused around the room. Reeva slapped his thigh in amusement. “Bad people! Yes, I hate bad people, but even more than that, I hate fucking liars.” His mirth vanished, and a violent anger balled his fist to strike. “I think you’re holding out on us. I think you are that person who you’re supposed to be, but for some fucking reason, probably just to stop me getting paid, you are pretending to be some idiot called Rex.”
“I am Rex.” He whispered, not really caring anymore what would happen to him.
“Fucking liar!” The fist came, backed by enough Amped muscle to shatter his neck and skull. But Rex didn’t blink, he just stared down the knuckles as they crashed toward the bridge of his nose.
The strike never came.
Sister-Eleven caught Reeva’s fist inches from his face. The two wrestled for control of the arm as a ring of troops closed in around them, guns jabbing at the Sister. “Enough of this, Reeva. I bought him here to see Cyc. He’ll unravel this mess. I’ll get what I want, and you’ll get paid. I’ll even pay extra for your trouble.” She looked around her, suddenly tall and menacing. “Or would you all prefer to just die?”
Reeva’s gunmen eased away, eyes twitching as their minds flipped between fear and extra pay.
“But I really want to hit him,” Reeva spat the words, lurching forward so his nose touched Rex’s. “It’s his face. You ever see something cute and cuddly and you just want to punch the shit out of it?”
“No,” Sister-Eleven said in her calm, even voice. “You shouldn’t smoke Amp and expect to get anything useful done.”
“Oh yes, Your Highness. Your mighty robot overlord-ness, anything you say Your Majesty.” Reeva raged from the chair and began pacing. Every few moments he faked a deep, elaborate bow at Sister-Eleven, mumbled something obscene, and slowly worked his anger back down to a manageable level.
A swarthy looking man stepped-up and matched Reeva’s stride. His beady black eyes peered out through a neatly trimmed beard that obscured most of his face. He laid a comforting hand on Reeva’s shoulder making him jolt like an electrocution. “Calm down boss. Let the Cyc have a go, and if that doesn’t work we’ll do the extraction manually and put the stuff in another volunteer or maybe into Cyc himself. We’ll get it, Reeve, you know we will.”
Reeva nodded, a sly smile erasing his rage. “Okay. Okay, I have a plan. We’ll let Cyc have him.” He nodded as if he’d just had a great idea. “If that doesn’t work then we do the manual extraction.”
“Yeah,” the bearded man grinned. “Nice and slow, feet first.”
Rex looked Sister-Eleven in the face, trying to detect sympathy or empathy, some sign of humanity. He saw nothing, just a blank, white face and impassive lines.
Reeva cracked his neck and shoulders. His tension visibly draining away. He walked calmly back to Rex, who flinched into the chair. Reeva reached in and, with a single hand around Rex’s throat, lifted him and the chair off the ground so their faces met. “I want my payment.”
He dropped Rex and walked away. The chair bounced and flipped, but Sister-Eleven caught his head before it struck the hard ground. Other hands grabbed him, freeing the cuffs, hauling him away through corridors to a set of huge barred double doors. Men with electric cattle-prods opened the doors, eyeing the inside fearfully before thrusting Rex through the opening.
A chant of “Cyc! Cyc! Cyc…” broke out accompanied by hand claps and foot stomps. Rex barely got to stand in the doorway before a powerful boot in the rear sent him sprawling across the floor. A flash glance of something cowering in the other corner left him with no desire to see more. He crumpled into a heap, wrapped his arms and legs into a solid bundle and focused on falling into darkness and dying, in damnation.
The doors slammed closed and a tingle of electricity moved across his spine like a swarm of tiny bees prickling his body. He felt breath and heard a raspy obstructed respiration.
Then a laugh, a warped laugh on the edge of insanity. Warm, fetid air hit Rex’s ear as someone leaned in close and whispered. “Hello Felix.”
CHAPTER 30
Cyc
Like the hands of an electronic rapist, the bee swarm turned solid, mauling, caressing Rex’s body. “Get away from me!” he yelped, slapping at the imaginary assailant. He rolled to his feet and blundered into the soft padding of the cell wall.
His cell mate was a huge, naked man. Past the mountain of bulbous pink flesh, Rex saw he was inside a small arena with padded walls made of mattresses strung in place by netting. Higher up, the walls became windows. Faces pressed up against the glass and watched as if witnessing some gladiatorial spectacle. He even saw Sister-Eleven standing up front, her face a blank of crackling static.
Rex forced his eyes back to his assailant, an unnaturally hairy man, or perhaps some hybrid of man and ape. “Who… what…” he stuttered.
“I’m Cyc,” the ape-man said, and coiled a friendly arm around Rex’s cowering shoulder. “Felix not at home today?” Cyc spoke with a smooth educated voice.
“I’m Rex. Who’s Felix?”
Cyc spoke quietly into his ear. “The monkeys don’t know who Felix is either. Your friend Sister-Eleven does. Felix Siger, one of the inventors of the nova device. You remember being him, right?”
Rex rocked back and forth, tearing at his hair. “No, no. Not Felix. I’m Rex. Felix is dead and in damnation where he should be… like he deserves!”
Cyc looked intrigued. “How exciting! Did Felix become Rex or has Rex taken over and replaced him?”
Rex lashed out, pushing Cyc away. The big ape rolled playfully backward and came right back to face Rex. “Reeva wants me to go digging for treasure, to find someone special hidden in the somanetic drug substrates of your mind.” Like music, Cyc’s voice kept changing, warbling up and down in pitch, flipping accents and emphases. His skin shimmered and moved as if his body were liquid. Hairs poked out and retreated like the spines of a sea anemone, and his face shifted between various simian forms all while maintaining the same expression of polite interest.
“What are you?” Rex asked.
“Cyc, Cyc, the one and only Cyc.” He shouted out his name and waved hands at the audience until the name chants became boos. “Rex, you ever wonder what happens if you stuff a person so full of Glow they nearly explode?”
Rex shook his head.
He proudly angled his thumbs to point to himself. “Me. One of the Sisters’ little science projects. Convolution incarnate.The road to the Future-Lord. A storage vessel, stockpiling Glow. Maybe an ultra-lich, a man who can rip the thoughts and connections from a Glow network or rewrite them to his own prescription. But you can just call me Cyc if you like.”
Rex stared as Cyc’s body writhed and contorted as if his muscles and sinews had lives of their own, mimicking and parodying faces and features that grinned and leered through his skin. Even his head changed shape, grinding into a Neanderthal slope before leaping upright through the intellectual look and on to Frankenstein’s monster. “Careful, Rex, you might be next!”
“Get on with it, Cyc,” Reeva yelled from his viewing box. His voice blaring across the arena’s speakers.
Cyc’s face glowed red, horns burrowed out of his forehead and his voice turned to gravel and rocks. He leapt to his feet and knuckle-walked around Rex, who rolled back into the corner throwing a defensive arm across his face. “I don’t exist. Not really, just an emergent phenomenon they call me, not stable at all. Do you exist, Rex? Are you… real?”
A barbed hand reached for Rex’s throat but stopped short at Reeva’s voice. “If you kill him, Cyc, I swear I’ll put you in the pain rig for a year. Ten years!” Fear flickered across the devilish face and the red features subsided back to a hairy gray. “I’d better be good, Felix. Last time I fried someone’s head they hooked my balls to the high-voltage for a month and left me there.”
