Short Story in progress
Complete blackness. The waterproof synthetic fabric pressed against my mouth; only a narrow gap where the hood bunched around my neck let air in to breathe. A little light filtered up from my neck. The high pitched whine of a cheap lightbulb was faintly audible.
“Ore ready?” a voice whispered, plainly audible in the silence of the room.
A second, different voice replied aloud, “Vauser so voko, of course wa’r ready.”
“Ore ready?” a voice whispered, plainly audible in the silence of the room.
A second, different voice replied aloud, “Vauser so voko, of course wa’r ready.”
The tap of approaching footsteps preceded a sudden blur and blinding light as the hood was snatched off my head. It was a small room, probably a storage room: boxes were stacked on shelves marked with sticker guns, of which a couple rested on the desk in the corner. It couldn’t have measured more than a few metres across. Towering in the centre of the room, two Wanes stood erect, staring down at me. Both wore rubber masks of caricatured human faces with huge chins, necessary to fit over the long faces of the Wanes. They wore scruffy street clothes: tight knee-length shorts and armless hoodies.
“Why ore you here?”
I made no reply, remaining slumped in the chair.
The nearer of the two Wanes knelt down in front of me, the knuckles of his long arms resting on the floor tiles, and reached up to take off the mask. He looked young; couldn’t have been more than a teenager.
“Oy think woh both know whoy you’re here,” he drawled sardonically. His hazel eyes boring into mine, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth, “You’re a focking dosgrace, focking handing thos dusgosting crap out.”
He reached up to the corner of the desk and swept the stack of handbills towards me, the flyers exploding in all directions. I flinched away, but didn’t reply. One of the bills had settled in my lap. The cheerful faces of a happy family smiled up from it, ‘Take back your Humanity’, the caption read.
I spoke up, “It seems we’re right; you are just p-- proving yourselves to be the bullies everyone knows you are.” My voice began strong, but caught in my throat; there was a strong tone of hesitance in it.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” exploded the wane, his mouth snarling to reveal a mouth full of black teeth, his dark black dyed tongue flexing in his mouth. He snapped his head round to look at the wane standing behind him.
“Ot’s funny,” he spat, “You can laugh.”
The rubber mask of the wane behind stared impassively.
His gaze returned to me suddenly, face suddenly of grave expression.
“Do you hoff onything to say to our sponsors before we begin?”
“Fuck you.”
“Thanks.”
The wane stood up and gestured behind him, “Gaff me the saw.”
There was a shudder as I struggled against my restraints. The black eye sockets of the rubber mask unseeing as the saw was passed into the wane’s hands. It was huge. An orange industrial coldsaw, Y-shaped teeth shimmering from the artificial light of the room.
“Please, no…” I began.
I closed my eyes, and pressed my tongue against my front teeth. I felt a buzz run through my tongue, and with it swiped left across my teeth.
When I opened my eyes, my view was obscured; a distorted hole of light in the middle of my vision, through which I could see a greasy haired sweaty human struggling in a chair. He was screaming now.
‘Take off the mask’, I whispered, ‘I can’t see.’
My view shook left and right: no.
‘Well I’m not going to look through Ondřej’s eyes. I’m not that brave’
Ondřej had his hand grabbing the human’s thigh. There was a high pitched scream as the saw in his other hand accelerated to over ten thousand RPM.
“No! NO! STOP PLEASE STOP NO STOP!”
The blade bit into the human’s knee, slicing smoothly in, a thin spray of blood painting a diagonal red line up the wall. The human let out a blood curdling howl, his body shuddering against the restraints. My vision blurred - I was turning, walking out the room.
‘Titus, you’re leaving?’
“Fuck.”
In the dark maintenance corridor outside, Titus ripped off the mask and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily in between coughs.
‘Are you okay, man?’
Suddenly, the wane’s hand scrabbled over the cold surface of the corridor wall as he bent over, vomit tumbling from his mouth to splatter on the ground. He stood there for several seconds, retching diminishingly, his hands on his knees.
There was a knock at a door behind me, a voice, echoing from somewhere behind my head, “Catherine, are you in there? Dinner’s ready.”
‘I have to go,’ I whispered.
I flicked one of the contacts in my mouth and the dark corridor dissolved into a white empty expanse, stretching in all directions. I reached up and peeled the virtual reality goggles off.
The room was small, but comfortable. Red wallpaper framed the outline of my plush toys, arranged around my desk. Notepads littered the desk’s surface. I reached over to switch off the lights and eased myself out the reclining chair.
In the kitchen, my mother extended a hand, “We saved you some of the olive quiche, I know you like it.”
“Thank you,” I smiled, “and thank-you for dinner.”
I brought up a chair and sat down.
“What have you been up to?”
“Just playing games,” I replied, spooning some cous-cous onto my plate, “Where’s Dan?”
“Your brother’s going out with his friends, remember?” Her expression softened. “You could ask your friends to go out with you tomorrow.”
She began pouring a glass of water, and continued, “I worry you spend too much time in your VR.”
I couldn’t quite focus my eyes on the table in front of me.
“Dan doesn’t do this. Your friends I’m sure go outside more too.”
“Mum--”
I paused.
“Okay mum, sure. I’ll ask Annie and the girls if they want to go for lunch out tomorrow. Maybe we could go to the mall,” I ventured.
“That sounds nice.”
Father began talking, and took over the conversation for the remainder of the meal. I excused myself, and washed my plate and cutlery before leaving. I checked my watch; time was short, I had to act fast.
The gentle art deco wallpaper swept past as I strode through the house towards my room. Closing the door behind me, I relaxed into the leather chair and picked up the VR headset. The wires on my desk were a mess: tentacular coils snaked into a small black box at the corner of the table. I fitted the electropalate into my mouth, its wires trailing across my lap, and fitted my earbuds. Apart from the hardware itself, only a keyboard was present on the desk, onto which I typed a password and twisted round to strap myself into the chair, tying down my legs and arms.
The whiteness bled in from the corners of my vision.
“Ondřej,” I whispered.
The air around me coalesced into windows of varying sizes, bristling with information. I put my hands through one and widened it to step through. A wireframe of the wane’s face hung in the air among panes of text. There was a faint hum, like a great air ventilation system breathing all around me in its immensity. I opened up a call, and waited for the wane to answer.
“Hey Black.”
“Ondřej, I’ve freed up my schedule,” I rumbled, a deep growl; I always made sure my voice was run through filters to make it deep and imposing,
“We can be a-go with the plan tonight. How are the mechanics doing on my zombie?”
“Your robot should be rody already.”
“Good,” I snarled, “What are you going to do with that anti-wane protester’s body?”
“Chuck hum off the brodge.”
“Subtle, as usual, Ondřej. Where is Wojtek?”
“Hoy’s waiting for you alrody. Boy the way, we got more onfo on that motherfocker.”
I perked up; this was going to be interesting.
Ondřej continued, “We thonk he works for the polus. Slomy bastard.”
“How do you know?” I interrupted.
“Hoorustics. Hos putterns of activity are consustent woth working with the Authority polus force. It’s probably why he knows all about the crominals to koll.”
“Then there is no time to waste. He is especially valuable to us if we can get him on our side. I will occupy my zombie. Meet me outside the mechanic’s in ten.”
I didn’t wait for a reply. Closing the connection, I ushered the windows away, and brought up the mech interface and scanned down it with my eyes. The connection proxies were good and it looked like the signal would hold all across the maintenance tunnels, even as far as the commercial area of the upper storeys. The area we were to be working in was one of the huge bridges which stretched between the tepuis. It linked the rich business district of Neubonn with the adjacent tepui of Scotchester. It was the largest bridge, being several stories high: train tunnels ran through it like nerves, roadways across the upper surface. There were many storeys to the bridge with commercial shopping centres and restaurants on the upper levels. Deep in the lower bowels of the bridge, a labyrinth of maintenance tunnels serviced the enormous cables and supports that held the bridge in place, in addition to the ventilation, conveyors and power systems. It was here that the vagrants and gangs of the city could find refuge. Police were afraid to venture in to the lower levels: they were a source of ghost stories.
“Chihuán, cómo está mi niña?”
I opened a channel to the workshop. The diagnostics windows for the mech looked good.
“Black! Iba por mí, capo... o tus zombie?”
“Ambas! Aunque no sabe hablar ahora: necesito mi zombie cuanto antes.”
“Mi amiga, ni una palabra más. Está ya puede verlo. Enchufarte en.”
The window to my right began blinking: Uplink.
I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. I could hear the blood pumping in my ears.
“Run uplink,” I said aloud.
All across my body, my skin began buzzing, vibrating. It felt static against my vulva: unpleasant, like a white noise.
‘Proxy; feedback; medical; haptic; magnetic positioning…’ the words, an artificial voice, washed over me. Four seconds. Twenty minutes: The batteries didn’t last long, but I didn’t need long. This was my one chance to impress Wojtek. I could feel a resistance building around my arms, as if wrapped in tightening cloth, and a headache building in my skull.
“Bienvenido! Esforzarte a mover tus brazos.”
I sighed and opened my eyes. Blurry coloured lights moved like orbs in front of me. I could feel the restraints of my bedroom chair strapping me down, but at the same time the humid air of the labyrinth washed past my body. I blinked and the lights coalesced into a dimly lit workshop. Chihuán stood, arms folded, in front of me.
I tried to move my right arm up, against the strap of the chair. In front of me, a skeletal arm of welded steel and hydraulics, two metres in length, raised up. I turned it over to look at the back of my hand.
“Buen trabajo,” I rumbled, “No hay problemas de partida. Nos aseguraremos te recibe tu liquidación, como siempre.”
The rugged old woman grinned, “Es usted muy amable.”
I raised my hands to unclip the harness of cables feeding into my shoulders, and stepped off the jacks, gently pushing past the mechanic. My long left arm, bristling with sharpened reinforcing rods, reached down to the ground as I leaned forwards into a comfortable position. I stretched and curled my right foot’s toes: The right digitigrade foot of the mech pushed into the concrete floor, and I stepped forwards with my left plantigrade foot to walk out the door.
“Cuídense. Llámame si usted tiene alguna problemas,” Chihuán called after me.
I knew the layout of this part of the labyrinth well. Worn coloured stripes on the floor led the way out of the workshop. Ondřej was waiting outside.
“Black, toym enough.”
“Ondřej,” my mech rumbled, voice fluctuating with the randomizer, “Are you armed?”
I stroked the coilgun clipped to my right leg: a drawn out metallic sound as my nails scraped down its crooked barrel. Ondřej shifted his weight, “Ot’s not oezy to get a weapon, you know. Oy’ff been troying for weeks but Toytus’ friend in the polus has him by the balls and wants more money,” he clenched his fist and bared his black teeth.
“So it’s not Wojtek?”
“Wojtok could be onyone. Hoy could be or he could not. Fock knows how mony crookit cops there ore. We don’t even know what Wojtok wants, or what he hos plonned for you totay.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to pretend to be putty in his hands. I can’t be fucked wasting any more time. Don’t be a stranger, papichulo.”
The wane jumped as the skeletal hydraulics of my hand gently grabbed his genitals through his shorts. I snarled a chuckle and moved away.
The doors ground apart as I wedged my claws between them. The room beyond was completely black. My hand reflexively felt for my gun, but hesitated and instead drew a road flare from a pocket on my chest. My heart was gulping at my breast; I had to swallow my disquiet. I sparked the flare and threw it forwards.
Immense shadows streaked out of the path of the burning red star as it arced across the room. Steel and carbon boxes of all shapes and sizes piled up, forming narrow vennels between them. The ceiling seemed two storeys high; the stacking of the boxes right to the top gave the room the impression of a maze.
I unclipped my gun and moved forwards, twisting to check no-one was lurking above the door frame above me. The unwavering hiss and crackle of the flare hid my footsteps. I thumbed the power on the coilgun, the hovering interface gauge climbing as the capacitors charged.
“You think you can fight me, insect?” a deep voice echoed through the blackness, “Shame yourself for trying.”
“Never said I was,” I called back, “The Empty 30 offer their aegis.”
I was backing around the corner of the room, steadying myself with my bristling left arm, coilgun poised in my right. I could feel the haptic feedback of the trigger against my finger. The flare’s light spilled through the vennels. Somewhere at the distant end of the room, a large shadow shifted out of sight.
// Writing still in progress; this is not a completed story
“Why ore you here?”
I made no reply, remaining slumped in the chair.
The nearer of the two Wanes knelt down in front of me, the knuckles of his long arms resting on the floor tiles, and reached up to take off the mask. He looked young; couldn’t have been more than a teenager.
“Oy think woh both know whoy you’re here,” he drawled sardonically. His hazel eyes boring into mine, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth, “You’re a focking dosgrace, focking handing thos dusgosting crap out.”
He reached up to the corner of the desk and swept the stack of handbills towards me, the flyers exploding in all directions. I flinched away, but didn’t reply. One of the bills had settled in my lap. The cheerful faces of a happy family smiled up from it, ‘Take back your Humanity’, the caption read.
I spoke up, “It seems we’re right; you are just p-- proving yourselves to be the bullies everyone knows you are.” My voice began strong, but caught in my throat; there was a strong tone of hesitance in it.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” exploded the wane, his mouth snarling to reveal a mouth full of black teeth, his dark black dyed tongue flexing in his mouth. He snapped his head round to look at the wane standing behind him.
“Ot’s funny,” he spat, “You can laugh.”
The rubber mask of the wane behind stared impassively.
His gaze returned to me suddenly, face suddenly of grave expression.
“Do you hoff onything to say to our sponsors before we begin?”
“Fuck you.”
“Thanks.”
The wane stood up and gestured behind him, “Gaff me the saw.”
There was a shudder as I struggled against my restraints. The black eye sockets of the rubber mask unseeing as the saw was passed into the wane’s hands. It was huge. An orange industrial coldsaw, Y-shaped teeth shimmering from the artificial light of the room.
“Please, no…” I began.
I closed my eyes, and pressed my tongue against my front teeth. I felt a buzz run through my tongue, and with it swiped left across my teeth.
When I opened my eyes, my view was obscured; a distorted hole of light in the middle of my vision, through which I could see a greasy haired sweaty human struggling in a chair. He was screaming now.
‘Take off the mask’, I whispered, ‘I can’t see.’
My view shook left and right: no.
‘Well I’m not going to look through Ondřej’s eyes. I’m not that brave’
Ondřej had his hand grabbing the human’s thigh. There was a high pitched scream as the saw in his other hand accelerated to over ten thousand RPM.
“No! NO! STOP PLEASE STOP NO STOP!”
The blade bit into the human’s knee, slicing smoothly in, a thin spray of blood painting a diagonal red line up the wall. The human let out a blood curdling howl, his body shuddering against the restraints. My vision blurred - I was turning, walking out the room.
‘Titus, you’re leaving?’
“Fuck.”
In the dark maintenance corridor outside, Titus ripped off the mask and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily in between coughs.
‘Are you okay, man?’
Suddenly, the wane’s hand scrabbled over the cold surface of the corridor wall as he bent over, vomit tumbling from his mouth to splatter on the ground. He stood there for several seconds, retching diminishingly, his hands on his knees.
There was a knock at a door behind me, a voice, echoing from somewhere behind my head, “Catherine, are you in there? Dinner’s ready.”
‘I have to go,’ I whispered.
I flicked one of the contacts in my mouth and the dark corridor dissolved into a white empty expanse, stretching in all directions. I reached up and peeled the virtual reality goggles off.
The room was small, but comfortable. Red wallpaper framed the outline of my plush toys, arranged around my desk. Notepads littered the desk’s surface. I reached over to switch off the lights and eased myself out the reclining chair.
In the kitchen, my mother extended a hand, “We saved you some of the olive quiche, I know you like it.”
“Thank you,” I smiled, “and thank-you for dinner.”
I brought up a chair and sat down.
“What have you been up to?”
“Just playing games,” I replied, spooning some cous-cous onto my plate, “Where’s Dan?”
“Your brother’s going out with his friends, remember?” Her expression softened. “You could ask your friends to go out with you tomorrow.”
She began pouring a glass of water, and continued, “I worry you spend too much time in your VR.”
I couldn’t quite focus my eyes on the table in front of me.
“Dan doesn’t do this. Your friends I’m sure go outside more too.”
“Mum--”
I paused.
“Okay mum, sure. I’ll ask Annie and the girls if they want to go for lunch out tomorrow. Maybe we could go to the mall,” I ventured.
“That sounds nice.”
Father began talking, and took over the conversation for the remainder of the meal. I excused myself, and washed my plate and cutlery before leaving. I checked my watch; time was short, I had to act fast.
The gentle art deco wallpaper swept past as I strode through the house towards my room. Closing the door behind me, I relaxed into the leather chair and picked up the VR headset. The wires on my desk were a mess: tentacular coils snaked into a small black box at the corner of the table. I fitted the electropalate into my mouth, its wires trailing across my lap, and fitted my earbuds. Apart from the hardware itself, only a keyboard was present on the desk, onto which I typed a password and twisted round to strap myself into the chair, tying down my legs and arms.
The whiteness bled in from the corners of my vision.
“Ondřej,” I whispered.
The air around me coalesced into windows of varying sizes, bristling with information. I put my hands through one and widened it to step through. A wireframe of the wane’s face hung in the air among panes of text. There was a faint hum, like a great air ventilation system breathing all around me in its immensity. I opened up a call, and waited for the wane to answer.
“Hey Black.”
“Ondřej, I’ve freed up my schedule,” I rumbled, a deep growl; I always made sure my voice was run through filters to make it deep and imposing,
“We can be a-go with the plan tonight. How are the mechanics doing on my zombie?”
“Your robot should be rody already.”
“Good,” I snarled, “What are you going to do with that anti-wane protester’s body?”
“Chuck hum off the brodge.”
“Subtle, as usual, Ondřej. Where is Wojtek?”
“Hoy’s waiting for you alrody. Boy the way, we got more onfo on that motherfocker.”
I perked up; this was going to be interesting.
Ondřej continued, “We thonk he works for the polus. Slomy bastard.”
“How do you know?” I interrupted.
“Hoorustics. Hos putterns of activity are consustent woth working with the Authority polus force. It’s probably why he knows all about the crominals to koll.”
“Then there is no time to waste. He is especially valuable to us if we can get him on our side. I will occupy my zombie. Meet me outside the mechanic’s in ten.”
I didn’t wait for a reply. Closing the connection, I ushered the windows away, and brought up the mech interface and scanned down it with my eyes. The connection proxies were good and it looked like the signal would hold all across the maintenance tunnels, even as far as the commercial area of the upper storeys. The area we were to be working in was one of the huge bridges which stretched between the tepuis. It linked the rich business district of Neubonn with the adjacent tepui of Scotchester. It was the largest bridge, being several stories high: train tunnels ran through it like nerves, roadways across the upper surface. There were many storeys to the bridge with commercial shopping centres and restaurants on the upper levels. Deep in the lower bowels of the bridge, a labyrinth of maintenance tunnels serviced the enormous cables and supports that held the bridge in place, in addition to the ventilation, conveyors and power systems. It was here that the vagrants and gangs of the city could find refuge. Police were afraid to venture in to the lower levels: they were a source of ghost stories.
“Chihuán, cómo está mi niña?”
I opened a channel to the workshop. The diagnostics windows for the mech looked good.
“Black! Iba por mí, capo... o tus zombie?”
“Ambas! Aunque no sabe hablar ahora: necesito mi zombie cuanto antes.”
“Mi amiga, ni una palabra más. Está ya puede verlo. Enchufarte en.”
The window to my right began blinking: Uplink.
I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. I could hear the blood pumping in my ears.
“Run uplink,” I said aloud.
All across my body, my skin began buzzing, vibrating. It felt static against my vulva: unpleasant, like a white noise.
‘Proxy; feedback; medical; haptic; magnetic positioning…’ the words, an artificial voice, washed over me. Four seconds. Twenty minutes: The batteries didn’t last long, but I didn’t need long. This was my one chance to impress Wojtek. I could feel a resistance building around my arms, as if wrapped in tightening cloth, and a headache building in my skull.
“Bienvenido! Esforzarte a mover tus brazos.”
I sighed and opened my eyes. Blurry coloured lights moved like orbs in front of me. I could feel the restraints of my bedroom chair strapping me down, but at the same time the humid air of the labyrinth washed past my body. I blinked and the lights coalesced into a dimly lit workshop. Chihuán stood, arms folded, in front of me.
I tried to move my right arm up, against the strap of the chair. In front of me, a skeletal arm of welded steel and hydraulics, two metres in length, raised up. I turned it over to look at the back of my hand.
“Buen trabajo,” I rumbled, “No hay problemas de partida. Nos aseguraremos te recibe tu liquidación, como siempre.”
The rugged old woman grinned, “Es usted muy amable.”
I raised my hands to unclip the harness of cables feeding into my shoulders, and stepped off the jacks, gently pushing past the mechanic. My long left arm, bristling with sharpened reinforcing rods, reached down to the ground as I leaned forwards into a comfortable position. I stretched and curled my right foot’s toes: The right digitigrade foot of the mech pushed into the concrete floor, and I stepped forwards with my left plantigrade foot to walk out the door.
“Cuídense. Llámame si usted tiene alguna problemas,” Chihuán called after me.
I knew the layout of this part of the labyrinth well. Worn coloured stripes on the floor led the way out of the workshop. Ondřej was waiting outside.
“Black, toym enough.”
“Ondřej,” my mech rumbled, voice fluctuating with the randomizer, “Are you armed?”
I stroked the coilgun clipped to my right leg: a drawn out metallic sound as my nails scraped down its crooked barrel. Ondřej shifted his weight, “Ot’s not oezy to get a weapon, you know. Oy’ff been troying for weeks but Toytus’ friend in the polus has him by the balls and wants more money,” he clenched his fist and bared his black teeth.
“So it’s not Wojtek?”
“Wojtok could be onyone. Hoy could be or he could not. Fock knows how mony crookit cops there ore. We don’t even know what Wojtok wants, or what he hos plonned for you totay.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to pretend to be putty in his hands. I can’t be fucked wasting any more time. Don’t be a stranger, papichulo.”
The wane jumped as the skeletal hydraulics of my hand gently grabbed his genitals through his shorts. I snarled a chuckle and moved away.
The doors ground apart as I wedged my claws between them. The room beyond was completely black. My hand reflexively felt for my gun, but hesitated and instead drew a road flare from a pocket on my chest. My heart was gulping at my breast; I had to swallow my disquiet. I sparked the flare and threw it forwards.
Immense shadows streaked out of the path of the burning red star as it arced across the room. Steel and carbon boxes of all shapes and sizes piled up, forming narrow vennels between them. The ceiling seemed two storeys high; the stacking of the boxes right to the top gave the room the impression of a maze.
I unclipped my gun and moved forwards, twisting to check no-one was lurking above the door frame above me. The unwavering hiss and crackle of the flare hid my footsteps. I thumbed the power on the coilgun, the hovering interface gauge climbing as the capacitors charged.
“You think you can fight me, insect?” a deep voice echoed through the blackness, “Shame yourself for trying.”
“Never said I was,” I called back, “The Empty 30 offer their aegis.”
I was backing around the corner of the room, steadying myself with my bristling left arm, coilgun poised in my right. I could feel the haptic feedback of the trigger against my finger. The flare’s light spilled through the vennels. Somewhere at the distant end of the room, a large shadow shifted out of sight.
// Writing still in progress; this is not a completed story