Chapter 3 - Of Rulers and Revolutionaries and Just Plain Crazy People
The home was simple and plain, just a small place with a lab twice it’s size beside it. The enormous forest and garden around it wasn’t at all simple or plain.
“So this is how the better half live,” Rem said sourly.
“Significantly less than a half,” the Inspector said beside him, its voice almost human.
“I don’t want statistics. I just want answers. Staring with: why me?”
“You apprehended the suspect and inadvertently caused several deaths.”
“Ah. So this is punishment?”
“If you like. Also an experience. My apologies, an adventure.”
“An adventure. Great.” Rem sighed, walking up to the door. “Questioning people who are worth more than I ever want to imagine and who make death weapons -“
“And other things beneficial to the Corpocracy and the world at large.”
“Right, and them too, about their son and why he killed people isn’t my idea of fun, or even sane. Let’s get this over with.”
“As you wish,” the android said, walking up the door. “I have taken the liberty of letting them know we have arrived.”
Rem sighed and walked up to the door, finding himself standing in a living area a few moments later. He reached for the weapon he’d been forbidden to bring to find nothing there, and his scalp itched where he’d secreted a particularly nasty gas.
“Good evening,” a woman said politely from the far side of the room. The room was white and sparse, consisting of furniture arranged elegantly and a few pieces of sculpture. It seemed to be out of a vid movie rather than real life but the woman sat on one of the chairs and nodded to another. “Frank couldn’t make it. He’s working. You know how it is.”
Rem nodded, suppressing the urge to ask if she did. “What about the Inspector? And how did I get in here?”
“Oh, a teleporter. We never use the door. They’re old fashioned, you know. And your friend is outside. Better for everyone. Though the room is equipped to deal with problems, it’s always a bother to clean up afterwards. You’d be amazed how many people try and get us to divulge secrets and the like, dear.”
“Well, you can add me to that list. Rem Jones, Police. I need to know about your son, Vaerlie of Frank and Vaerlie Incorporated.”
“Well, he’s not here right now. Unless he did something wrong? He always does on his thirtieth birthday.”
“Wait, always?”
“For the past six years, at least. He rarely plans to; something just happens. One of those little quirks, I guess!”
“Why is he celebrating his thirtieth birthday more than once?” Rem said slowly.
“Oh, because we set him to that age, when we made him.”
“Made him?”
“Well, you know: the whole incubation, planning, testing. All of that. Birth is another term I’m not fond of. It makes it sound so - so primitive, don’t you think?”
“I try not to. What’s happened on the other years?”
“Oh, he would do something silly like try and get drunk. Last year he killed himself, which was probably a cry for attention or something, but since he didn’t save his memory prior to the event we’ll never know why he did it. He’s quite thoughtless that way. You’d think with genes like ours, genes we specifically selected, he’d at least he a little less emotional.”
“Your son killed a cyborg in the old town, ma’am. Tore it into pieces, and then assaulted and killed several officers during what was to be a routine examination for weapons and the like.”
“Oh, dear. Do you know why he did that?”
“I’m here to ask you, ma’am.”
“Why would I know? I’m only his mother.”
Rem laughed politely. Vaerlie stared at him blanked. “Ah. I thought you were making a joke.”
“I don’t do those. Waste of perfectly valuable time, if people don’t know what you’re saying or why you’re saying it. All we have are words. At present, of course. We mean to change that in the future. Telepathy by nanite, if it can be properly built.”
“And you don’t know why your son panicked why?”
“We’re finished with him,” she said firmly. “We made him, did the experiments. We have no need or use for more data, or to know anything else. His life is his own. Any obligation we may have assumed while engineering him has long since been absolved. Have I made myself clear?”
“No, you haven’t. He is your son!”
“You act like that means something important. Listen, little police man bothering me, we made him. We experimented. We mostly succeeded in our goals, and we finished our project.”
“So you don’t know why or how your son killed a cyborg, or why he reacted to a table and -“
“I have told you all I plan to, and all I know. You may go now.”
Rem found himself standing back outside.
“I trust the meeting went well?” the Inspector said.
“No. No, it didn’t. But I don’t think they know anything, and that has them really angry. I’m going to have to get clearance and check Stephen’s records.”
“Why?”
“With a mother like that, it would be a miracle if he’s only gone out and slaughtered people just this once.”
G paced two steps to the left and frowned, looking at the crater, then frowned. “Interesting. Someone killed Anderson and survived the experience. Most unusual. Hendrick was killed by a man, or at least something shaped like one. Probably fast. Anderson, I am not sure about.” He frowned. “Telemetry readings are all off scale, and someone jammed the area near the end of whatever occurred, so I have no idea where the survivor went.”
He turned, a tall imposing figure in black, and smiled. The girl who was standing at the edge of the light shining from his hand froze. “You.”
She edged forward nervously. She could have passed for human, except for the meshcloth over his entire body that left only blue eyes exposed to regard the word. Under it she trembled almost constantly.
“What happened here?”
She shook her head.
“I need to know.”
The trembling worsened, the girl finally pulling a glove off of one hand, which spasmed in the air as if a separate creature from her body. Tears welled up in her eyes, but a scream was reduced to an anguished whimper as she crouched down, hand touching the ground.
“Here.” Her voice was tight, hard, controlled, ad not wholly her own. “He was here. Anderson, winning against a rich brat who was more of a challenge than excepted. Fast; faster than humans should be. Something else came, something that shocks the rich one, kills Anderson. I can’t see it.”
The girl looked up, confused, shaking. “I can’t. There’s - nothing there. Or something too alien. I can’t touch it. I can’t touch it in the past. I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“You know I’ll need more than that.”
“I can’t, G. I just - I don’t see anything. I don’t - there’s a wall.” She scrambled to her feet, struggling to get the glove back on. His hand reached out, almost casually, gripping her arm.
“Are you certain?”
“I --“
“Are you certain, You?” His hand squeezed.
Images flared into her mind and she whimpered. “Yes! I’m sorry, G. I can’t -- I --.”
His hand released her abruptly. “Very well.” He stood. “Go home, and clean yourself up.”
You sniffed, make an apologetic noise, and practically ran away from the scene.
G ignored her, frowning at the ground, then began to set up System relays of information. The killer might not return, but he was being paid more than enough to ensure that this Stephen character was brought in, or died. He found himself looking forward to death; he’d never killed a corporation before, and this one was obviously adept at defending himself against common threats. He did not intend to be a common threat.
The whispers are without voices in the bodiless place, neither land nor space. Spiders spin ethereal webs between the webs of System, hiding and making their own place until they trail invisible threads aflame with cold desires, needing only a framework, a world order built in the firing of neurons lighting storms without clouds. Coming from nowhere, only to return to nowhere empty of all of things save the bitterness of defeat and the helpless non-existent tears of anger.
Sorrow moved from mind to mind, a hot burning shame coalescing into anger. You shuddered away from it, feeling what was being born again, trying to remember what G would do if he found out about the whispers, if he found out about the plans, if he knew what she really was.
You entered her rooms, slowly relaxing as the door sealed and the rest of the universe was away from her. The whispers fell silent into the still peace that filled her for a brief moment. She stripped quickly, shamed by her own bodily wastes, and stumbled into the shower tall, scorching herself clean of the world and running her hands over her trembling body until no images came to her mind.
The many-headed dragon was in it anyway, stronger for having been denied, demanding to know what she had seen and why, and promising rewards for service and the flame under it punishment for failure. The trembling had reduced itself to a nervous jitter she couldn’t stop, her Sign. for those who noticed, that she was marked as not entirely human. The brand of a psychic.
The dragon asked again, and she could not refuse the gestalt she was part of, not in this. She opened her mind and the one image rushed out, of claws and teeth and a white fur. The dragon, for she was now a scale of it, a piece of it, was silent, baffled. Something new, or something very old. The dragon was angry, but calm as well, and the calmness counselled finding allies and making them, and how the darkness could be turned to light.
You crumpled to the floor at the dragon released her, whispers roaring through her mind in a terrible wind, promising things and wants and desires and, deep in her soul, something half-dead came alive, hungry and desperate. The whispers faded after a time, no matter how hard she tried to hear them, and left her lying alone. Minutes of silence passed and then she wept, as she always did after the Whispering, struggling to reconcile the terribly gift of hope with the world as she knew it.
The Whispering went around the boy sitting by himself in a small unadorned room. He was perhaps seven years old, all told, and just sitting by himself on the floor. He listened, head cocked to one side, his eyes wide with a sudden jolt of fear that eased away into a cold smile.
“Well.” He laughed, a soft and happy sound. “Sometimes we see things, and sometimes we are seen by things. I have seen you, clearer than starlight, in dreams I remember only upon waking in fear. My death, dreamed into the world. My death, if the future is not changed. But all things change. To know the future is to change it.
“There is nothing anywhere that tells us anything. The wind dies before it is born. But there is neither birth nor death. Only change. Only destruction. And pain, of course, dream monster, dear enemy. You will know pain and my future will be bright and clear and painfully.”
The Whispering went last to the sources, old and decaying, held together by will and tubes and quiet prayers, the only prayer that is ever truly heartfelt: “Not yet.”
(This is worrying.)
(All new developments are. A weapon, then? Against us?)
(We cannot see it. New. Or old. Or discovered again. A monster?)
(All men are monsters,) the fourth voice said, cold with spite.
(Even so.) (Even so.) (Even so.)
(They are.)
(Everyone is a monster. All of us. All of us. All. Even we. Monsters dwell withoun our heads; we are not exempt from this.)
(I just had a poo.)
(It is clearly obvious that this is nothing more than a secret weapon developed by the rich to eradicate those of us who pose a threat to them.)
(Not me! I just work here.)
(I was referring to the rest of us.)
(But not me! I’m with Not me! on this. I don’t want to get hurt.)
(Everyone gets hurts.)
(I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!)
(Then you should have never been born. Are you quite finished?)
(The sex was good.)
(Silence! Only contribute if you have something useful to say.)
(There are seventy three varieties of natural peach left on the coast.)
(That is not useful. Well. Not right now.)
(We need a plan.)
(We need a committee to decide we need a plan.)
(I look good in white.)
(We need action. Decisive, permanent action! Death! Maiming!)
(Some of us need to stop being pompous. It’s something new. We can wait. We have all the time that ever was.)
(So does everyone else. Time is only in our heads.)
(Time is a concept. We must abolish concepts. Anything we cling to destroys us.)
(And kill lawyers. And lawyerbots. And people who smile too much.)
(Cling to everything and there is nothing that can be destroyed.)
(Whatever could be?)
(And nice people.)
(Then it is decided that nothing is decided?)
(We will wait. We can always act. We cannot always wait after we have acted.)
(We carry each other. There is no other way to be. All we have is each other, in the end. All loss is too great to be borne alone.)
(That was agreement, then. We wait.)
(We wait.) (We wait.) (We wait.)
(I waited too long. I peed myself, too.)
(Shut up.)
“Interesting.” The man sitting at the desk stood, his smile quick and insincere. “Very interesting. I assume no other Listener caught this?”
“No sir.”
“And you’re positive this is the one you saw running from Hendrick?”
The Listener nodded, staring around nervously. “Can I go? Please? Go now?”
“Not yet.”
“But there is nothing to Listen to here,” the creature whined. “It’s all empty.”
“I like to be alone with my thoughts,” Lance Christensen said quietly. “Though I often wonder if they like to be alone with me. Tell me, did you always want to be a Listener?”
“No one wants to. It’s the price for a crime I did.”
“I’ve often wondered what crime could mandate such a punishment. Paying attention when you shouldn’t?”
“Something like that.” The Listener shifted position, flesh and plasteel grinding together, cameras on this flesh only giving static. “Please. I can’t stay here. It hurts to be here. I brought the - the Listening to you, because you let me rest in the room. When I need to. I don’t anymore.”
“Ah. Well, more’s the pity.”
“Sir?”
“You see,” Lance said, “and I can’t have anyone else know about this. Not yet. This Stephen Inc. has a new kind of weapon. I have need of a weapon to discourage several auditors from looking into my expense account.”
“Lance, you shouldn’t be telling me this! I’m a Listener! Even without tech, our memories are perfect.”
“I know. Tell me, Listener 234D, have you ever wanted to be someone you’re not? I always wanted to work for the Corpocracy. Always. I’ve never understood the appeal for another life, or a different one than the one I’ve lived.”
“Christensen --“
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.” A pale blue glow lit the floor under the listener, whose body spasmed and fell over. Lance sat back in his desk and pressed part of it. A short, bald man drifted into the room, half floating.
“Lackey, remove this. Brain overload, it seems. Throw it out with the trash.”
“Mr. Christensen, the technology in this is worth --“
“Consider it a donation to the poor, then, and add it to my tax deductibles.” Lance waited until the body had been removed and steepled his hands, staring into space. He’d done so much for the Corpocracy, but very little for himself. Doing something for himself didn’t make sense; everything was done for the greater good. He knew his superiors would understand that, eventually.
He just needed time for that eventuality to arise, and that meant removing threats. That they were threats to him wasn’t truly relevant. He was a tool of the Corpocracy. A threat to a part was a threat to the whole. And a weapon no one understood was a weapon that could be used in the service of his masters.
What his masters might have desired didn’t bother Lance at all. He’d long since began giving them what they needed instead, and all governments need weapons. He replayed the conversation slowly, then brought System back up and began to call in favours.
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