Art - Video Game Art

 Video Game Art

Anno 2205

Cyberpunk 2077

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Halo 5

No Man's Sky

Snatcher

Warm by Robert Sheckley

 

Warm

by Robert Sheckley

Anders lay on his bed, fully dressed except for his shoes and black bow tie, contemplating, with a certain uneasiness, the evening before him. In twenty minutes he would pick up Judy at her apartment, and that was the uneasy part of it.

He had realized, only seconds ago, that he was in love with her.

Well, he'd tell her. The evening would be memorable. He would propose, there would be kisses, and the seal of acceptance would, figuratively speaking, be stamped across his forehead.

Not too pleasant an outlook, he decided. It really would be much more comfortable not to be in love. What had done it? A look, a touch, a thought? It didn't take much, he knew, and stretched his arms for a thorough yawn.

"Help me!" a voice said.

His muscles spasmed, cutting off the yawn in mid-moment. He sat upright on the bed, then grinned and lay back again.

"You must help me!" the voice insisted.

Anders sat up, reached for a polished shoe and fitted it on, giving his full attention to the tying of the laces.

"Can you hear me?" the voice asked. "You can, can't you?"

That did it. "Yes, I can hear you," Anders said, still in a high good humor. "Don't tell me you're my guilty subconscious, attacking me for a childhood trauma I never bothered to resolve. I suppose you want me to join a monastery."

"I don't know what you're talking about," the voice said. "I'm no one's subconscious. I'm me. Will you help me?"

Anders believed in voices as much as anyone; that is, he didn't believe in them at all, until he heard them. Swiftly he catalogued the possibilities. Schizophrenia was the best answer, of course, and one in which his colleagues would concur. But Anders had a lamentable confidence in his own sanity. In which case –

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I don't know," the voice answered.

Anders realized that the voice was speaking within his own mind. Very suspicious.

"You don't know who you are," Anders stated. "Very well. Where are you?"

"I don't know that, either." The voice paused, and went on. "Look, I know how ridiculous this must sound. Believe me, I'm in some sort of limbo. I don't know how I got here or who I am, but I want desperately to get out. Will you help me?"

* * * * *

Still fighting the idea of a voice speaking within his head, Anders knew that his next decision was vital. He had to accept – or reject – his own sanity.

He accepted it.

"All right," Anders said, lacing the other shoe. "I'll grant that you're a person in trouble, and that you're in some sort of telepathic contact with me. Is there anything else you can tell me?"

"I'm afraid not," the voice said, with infinite sadness. "You'll have to find out for yourself."

"Can you contact anyone else?"

"No."

"Then how can you talk with me?"

"I don't know."

Anders walked to his bureau mirror and adjusted his black bow tie, whistling softly under his breath. Having just discovered that he was in love, he wasn't going to let a little thing like a voice in his mind disturb him.

"I really don't see how I can be of any help," Anders said, brushing a bit of lint from his jacket. "You don't know where you are, and there don't seem to be any distinguishing landmarks. How am I to find you?" He turned and looked around the room to see if he had forgotten anything.

"I'll know when you're close," the voice said. "You were warm just then."

"Just then?" All he had done was look around the room. He did so again, turning his head slowly. Then it happened.

The room, from one angle, looked different. It was suddenly a mixture of muddled colors, instead of the carefully blended pastel shades he had selected. The lines of wall, floor and ceiling were strangely off proportion, zigzag, unrelated.

Then everything went back to normal.

"You were very warm," the voice said. "It's a question of seeing things correctly."

Anders resisted the urge to scratch his head, for fear of disarranging his carefully combed hair. What he had seen wasn't so strange. Everyone sees one or two things in his life that make him doubt his normality, doubt sanity, doubt his very existence. For a moment the orderly Universe is disarranged and the fabric of belief is ripped.

But the moment passes.

Anders remembered once, as a boy, awakening in his room in the middle of the night. How strange everything had looked. Chairs, table, all out of proportion, swollen in the dark. The ceiling pressing down, as in a dream.

But that had also passed.

"Well, old man," he said, "if I get warm again, let me know."

"I will," the voice in his head whispered. "I'm sure you'll find me."

"I'm glad you're so sure," Anders said gaily, switched off the lights and left.

* * * * *

Lovely and smiling, Judy greeted him at the door. Looking at her, Anders sensed her knowledge of the moment. Had she felt the change in him, or predicted it? Or was love making him grin like an idiot?

"Would you like a before-party drink?" she asked.

He nodded, and she led him across the room, to the improbable green-and-yellow couch. Sitting down, Anders decided he would tell her when she came back with the drink. No use in putting off the fatal moment. A lemming in love, he told himself.

"You're getting warm again," the voice said.

He had almost forgotten his invisible friend. Or fiend, as the case could well be. What would Judy say if she knew he was hearing voices? Little things like that, he reminded himself, often break up the best of romances.

"Here," she said, handing him a drink.

Still smiling, he noticed. The number two smile – to a prospective suitor, provocative and understanding. It had been preceded, in their relationship, by the number one nice-girl smile, the don't-misunderstand-me smile, to be worn on all occasions, until the correct words have been mumbled.

"That's right," the voice said. "It's in how you look at things."

Look at what? Anders glanced at Judy, annoyed at his thoughts. If he was going to play the lover, let him play it. Even through the astigmatic haze of love, he was able to appreciate her blue-gray eyes, her fine skin (if one overlooked a tiny blemish on the left temple), her lips, slightly reshaped by lipstick.

"How did your classes go today?" she asked.

Well, of course she'd ask that, Anders thought. Love is marking time.

"All right," he said. "Teaching psychology to young apes –"

"Oh, come now!"

"Warmer," the voice said.

What's the matter with me, Anders wondered. She really is a lovely girl. The gestalt that is Judy, a pattern of thoughts, expressions, movements, making up the girl I –

I what?

Love?

Anders shifted his long body uncertainly on the couch. He didn't quite understand how this train of thought had begun. It annoyed him. The analytical young instructor was better off in the classroom. Couldn't science wait until 9:10 in the morning?

"I was thinking about you today," Judy said, and Anders knew that she had sensed the change in his mood.

"Do you see?" the voice asked him. "You're getting much better at it."

"I don't see anything," Anders thought, but the voice was right. It was as though he had a clear line of inspection into Judy's mind. Her feelings were nakedly apparent to him, as meaningless as his room had been in that flash of undistorted thought.

"I really was thinking about you," she repeated.

"Now look," the voice said.

* * * * *

Anders, watching the expressions on Judy's face, felt the strangeness descend on him. He was back in the nightmare perception of that moment in his room. This time it was as though he were watching a machine in a laboratory. The object of this operation was the evocation and preservation of a particular mood. The machine goes through a searching process, invoking trains of ideas to achieve the desired end.

"Oh, were you?" he asked, amazed at his new perspective.

"Yes … I wondered what you were doing at noon," the reactive machine opposite him on the couch said, expanding its shapely chest slightly.

"Good," the voice said, commending him for his perception.

"Dreaming of you, of course," he said to the flesh-clad skeleton behind the total gestalt Judy. The flesh machine rearranged its limbs, widened its mouth to denote pleasure. The mechanism searched through a complex of fears, hopes, worries, through half-remembrances of analogous situations, analogous solutions.

And this was what he loved. Anders saw too clearly and hated himself for seeing. Through his new nightmare perception, the absurdity of the entire room struck him.

"Were you really?" the articulating skeleton asked him.

"You're coming closer," the voice whispered.

To what? The personality? There was no such thing. There was no true cohesion, no depth, nothing except a web of surface reactions, stretched across automatic visceral movements.

He was coming closer to the truth.

"Sure," he said sourly.

The machine stirred, searching for a response.

Anders felt a quick tremor of fear at the sheer alien quality of his viewpoint. His sense of formalism had been sloughed off, his agreed-upon reactions bypassed. What would be revealed next?

He was seeing clearly, he realized, as perhaps no man had ever seen before. It was an oddly exhilarating thought.

But could he still return to normality?

"Can I get you a drink?" the reaction machine asked.

At that moment Anders was as thoroughly out of love as a man could be. Viewing one's intended as a depersonalized, sexless piece of machinery is not especially conducive to love. But it is quite stimulating, intellectually.

Anders didn't want normality. A curtain was being raised and he wanted to see behind it. What was it some Russian scientist – Ouspensky, wasn't it – had said?

"Think in other categories."

That was what he was doing, and would continue to do.

"Good-by," he said suddenly.

The machine watched him, open-mouthed, as he walked out the door. Delayed circuit reactions kept it silent until it heard the elevator door close.

* * * * *

"You were very warm in there," the voice within his head whispered, once he was on the street. "But you still don't understand everything."

"Tell me, then," Anders said, marveling a little at his equanimity. In an hour he had bridged the gap to a completely different viewpoint, yet it seemed perfectly natural.

"I can't," the voice said. "You must find it yourself."

"Well, let's see now," Anders began. He looked around at the masses of masonry, the convention of streets cutting through the architectural piles. "Human life," he said, "is a series of conventions. When you look at a girl, you're supposed to see – a pattern, not the underlying formlessness."

"That's true," the voice agreed, but with a shade of doubt.

"Basically, there is no form. Man produces _gestalts_, and cuts form out of the plethora of nothingness. It's like looking at a set of lines and saying that they represent a figure. We look at a mass of material, extract it from the background and say it's a man. But in truth there is no such thing. There are only the humanizing features that we – myopically – attach to it. Matter is conjoined, a matter of viewpoint."

"You're not seeing it now," said the voice.

"Damn it," Anders said. He was certain that he was on the track of something big, perhaps something ultimate. "Everyone's had the experience. At some time in his life, everyone looks at a familiar object and can't make any sense out of it. Momentarily, the gestalt fails, but the true moment of sight passes. The mind reverts to the superimposed pattern. Normalcy continues."

The voice was silent. Anders walked on, through the gestalt city.

"There's something else, isn't there?" Anders asked.

"Yes."

What could that be, he asked himself. Through clearing eyes, Anders looked at the formality he had called his world.

He wondered momentarily if he would have come to this if the voice hadn't guided him. Yes, he decided after a few moments, it was inevitable.

But who was the voice? And what had he left out?

"Let's see what a party looks like now," he said to the voice.

* * * * *

The party was a masquerade; the guests were all wearing their faces. To Anders, their motives, individually and collectively, were painfully apparent. Then his vision began to clear further.

He saw that the people weren't truly individual. They were discontinuous lumps of flesh sharing a common vocabulary, yet not even truly discontinuous.

The lumps of flesh were a part of the decoration of the room and almost indistinguishable from it. They were one with the lights, which lent their tiny vision. They were joined to the sounds they made, a few feeble tones out of the great possibility of sound. They blended into the walls.

The kaleidoscopic view came so fast that Anders had trouble sorting his new impressions. He knew now that these people existed only as patterns, on the same basis as the sounds they made and the things they thought they saw.

Gestalts, sifted out of the vast, unbearable real world.

"Where's Judy?" a discontinuous lump of flesh asked him. This particular lump possessed enough nervous mannerisms to convince the other lumps of his reality. He wore a loud tie as further evidence.

"She's sick," Anders said. The flesh quivered into an instant sympathy. Lines of formal mirth shifted to formal woe.

"Hope it isn't anything serious," the vocal flesh remarked.

"You're warmer," the voice said to Anders.

Anders looked at the object in front of him.

"She hasn't long to live," he stated.

The flesh quivered. Stomach and intestines contracted in sympathetic fear. Eyes distended, mouth quivered.

The loud tie remained the same.

"My God! You don't mean it!"

"What are you?" Anders asked quietly.

"What do you mean?" the indignant flesh attached to the tie demanded. Serene within its reality, it gaped at Anders. Its mouth twitched, undeniable proof that it was real and sufficient. "You're drunk," it sneered.

Anders laughed and left the party.

* * * * *

"There is still something you don't know," the voice said. "But you were hot! I could feel you near me."

"What are you?" Anders asked again.

"I don't know," the voice admitted. "I am a person. I am I. I am trapped."

"So are we all," Anders said. He walked on asphalt, surrounded by heaps of concrete, silicates, aluminum and iron alloys. Shapeless, meaningless heaps that made up the gestalt city.

And then there were the imaginary lines of demarcation dividing city from city, the artificial boundaries of water and land.

All ridiculous.

"Give me a dime for some coffee, mister?" something asked, a thing indistinguishable from any other thing.

"Old Bishop Berkeley would give a nonexistent dime to your nonexistent presence," Anders said gaily.

"I'm really in a bad way," the voice whined, and Anders perceived that it was no more than a series of modulated vibrations.

"Yes! Go on!" the voice commanded.

"If you could spare me a quarter –" the vibrations said, with a deep pretense at meaning.

No, what was there behind the senseless patterns? Flesh, mass. What was that? All made up of atoms.

"I'm really hungry," the intricately arranged atoms muttered.

All atoms. Conjoined. There were no true separations between atom and atom. Flesh was stone, stone was light. Anders looked at the masses of atoms that were pretending to solidity, meaning and reason.

"Can't you help me?" a clump of atoms asked. But the clump was identical with all the other atoms. Once you ignored the superimposed patterns, you could see the atoms were random, scattered.

"I don't believe in you," Anders said.

The pile of atoms was gone.

"Yes!" the voice cried. "Yes!"

"I don't believe in any of it," Anders said. After all, what was an atom?

"Go on!" the voice shouted. "You're hot! Go on!"

What was an atom? An empty space surrounded by an empty space.

Absurd!

"Then it's all false!" Anders said. And he was alone under the stars.

"That's right!" the voice within his head screamed. "Nothing!"

But stars, Anders thought. How can one believe –

The stars disappeared. Anders was in a gray nothingness, a void. There was nothing around him except shapeless gray.

Where was the voice?

Gone.

Anders perceived the delusion behind the grayness, and then there was nothing at all.

Complete nothingness, and himself within it.

* * * * *

Where was he? What did it mean? Anders' mind tried to add it up.

Impossible. That couldn't be true.

Again the score was tabulated, but Anders' mind couldn't accept the total. In desperation, the overloaded mind erased the figures, eradicated the knowledge, erased itself.

"Where am I?"

In nothingness. Alone.

Trapped.

"Who am I?"

A voice.

The voice of Anders searched the nothingness, shouted, "Is there anyone here?"

No answer.

But there was someone. All directions were the same, yet moving along one he could make contact ... with someone. The voice of Anders reached back to someone who could save him, perhaps.

"Save me," the voice said to Anders, lying fully dressed on his bed, except for his shoes and black bow tie.

Transcriber's Note: This etext was taken from Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1953. .

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

This story is taken from Project Gutenberg. For legal reasons the following statement must be included: (This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org).

Bookspot - Timeloop by Elder Prince

 

Bookspot - Timeloop by Elder Prince

A GRUESOME short novel composed of MURDER confession letters telling several intertwined stories. A SHOCKING ENDING with a CRYPTIC twist.

Project Dechentreiter is a 30,000 words gruesome novella composed of murder confession letters written in an unreliable narrator style, telling several intertwined stories: a quarrel between brothers through the multiverse, the kidnapping of a baby, an incurable mysterious illness, ghostly apparitions, a case of exorcism, and a sinister sentient machinery from the macroverse.

The novella finely blends several genres together—black comedy, fantasy, mystery, horror and science-fiction―the bearing theme being the exploration of human nature and life striving experiences.

Not forgetting a shocking ending that will stimulate readers to seek for some deeper cryptic sense behind the story.

Little Green Pills

 

Little Green Pills

by Chris Morton

One

Robots assembling robots and me at the stack, six hours a shift and then another four after my spell at Fish. Two years and what’d I got? I tell you. Enough bleeting rage to fill a multidimensional sphinx. And I’d had it, you know? Betters. Went up to my super after the first six and told him.

He’s this big hulk of a droid. A regular mountain.

And I told him, it, whatever your prefs. Said I was done and said he’d see me in two but I laughed in his pudge of a face and replied, like, see you in hell.

Then I ripped out my code, chucked it on the floor and strode outa there, no looking back to see if my gesture had had any effect.

Went to Fish for the sandwich and lime. Filled it with eths and had two, then three, then stumbling back to the factory, punched at the door and what do you bleeting know, they’d taken us series.

Hit that button for a good halfs. Then went back to Fish for more lime and adds, fell asleep, woke up in a fuzz and went back again.

Got called up to the office. This hag of a girl saying my attitude … attitude?!

The promises been made.

And she was like, my assessed character was the correct match for observation at level one when I started and due to no improvement shown in the regular assessments; and it was all like this, going ’bouts how they’d been fair, done the requires and if I wanted better, then good luck in trying.

And then we kinda sat there staring and she said she’d come up with another offs ifs I was willing – and it hits me kinda briefly, like what was I gonna do for creds?

So I asked what it was. All like, couldn’t care for stree either way but leaned back in the chair, watching her.

“Hit me,” I said, though even with my level one intels, I could tell it was somes dodge.

“It’s a pill.”

“A pill,” I repeats, like. Not as if I’m a user but I’ve had plenty of ’em. Mostly hallucoes. Space adventures to Martia for those of us who can’t even afford a zeppelin ride; dragon fighting on Zephra island; being a hero in the Juniper wars. Took a bad one once that left me paranoid for six months; aliens climbing the walls at work, at home, along the streets. Faces moving.

“A pill?”

“Not that kind,” she told me. Not like the others, and I said, I’d no ideas what any others were and she laughed out loud. Real husky.

Calming down, she said this one was to improve my level. Experimental. Still trying it. Trying on a few subjects and there I was, the subject.

“Sures,” I answered. And she handed it over, saying I should take it right aways. A little green bead with stripes of grey.

“This will improve … my brain?” I asked her with only her laughing and slides over some water.

“Report in as usual tomorrow. One of my colleagues will be here to meet you.”

Two

Went home with no affect and waded the streets like with the usual feelings of seeing the hanging visuals of stuff I’d never be able to buy and the robots passing me, higher status androids that took the piss. Upgrade your status one sign said. For that you need money. For money you need status. Better offs striding along with the droids. Important missions.

Bought a manga and dived in to Bleach. Sat in a dark corner of the joint, on the edge of what ends up as the dancefloor laters at night – just me in theres, no lime, no eths. Fruit and manga – ’bout this woman abusing astronauts. Blood and guts. She wants to be the only one left. When she is, she needs food. Plenty of that around. On ice.

“Hey, Jo.”

I looked up. It’s Cheese. “Bleet you doing here Cheese?” It’d been a month, you see. He’d headed down Tokyo for a job loading chips and he’s good like that. Two million’s his record. Blinding, dull. But he’s got ambitions an’s almost up to three in stats.

“What’re doing?”

“Quit the obs,” I told him.

“Ya freaking me?” No need for details though. Gave him the bit ’bout walking out, ’em begging me to come back, saying they’d give me a chance. Put me on two.

“Believe that?” he said.

He’s well tall, Cheese. Pics him looking down at me sat there on the step – smoky dance mist waving ’bout us. He was wearing his bacl travelling stuff. Tight. Yum.

“Just got back?”

And he sneered kinda tired an’ looking at my juice. “Brain fried, huh?” I asked him. All those chips and he knew I knew; knew he was after music and afters.

He got us both one and came back to sit. We moved, through to a table and his stuff he threw in the stabs locker; took off his jacket and shirt and we kissed for an hour or that, feeling an’ drinking. The place filled up and the music got louder. Thudding. Lights brighter. Flashing and we were on the pack, in ’em an’ thrashing it out.

Sweating and ready to conquer the world as we left, was ’bout three then. Spewing tunes following us out as we stumbled back along the paves; no carrier, though plenty shooting past. Taxi? Must be kidding. We joked ’bout how one day. Level ten’s Cheese’s ambition. By thirty. Then he’ll marry me – least that’s what he’s saying.

“Bleeting yab.”

We held hands up the wells to my box. Left his stuff at Bleach. Get to my box an’ we don’ need wish anyways. Just our bodies, you guessed it. Cheese’s that kinda friend. Marry me? More likely go for some level twenty. Chances.

Woke up in the middle of the night in a sweat. Cheese purring to himself.

Outside there’s sirens. Squads pending down on some gang. Moves over. Take a couple for show.

At the sink I gots water and my throat – describing it’s kinda lame. Like tar. Tar and metal. Liquid running through it like a pipe. Stomach’s the bin.

Fell over, one hand clutching the sink. Other hand’s dropped the glass – shattered all on the tiles. Cheese’s still sleeping.

Then pass out like that, feeling kinda wonderful.

Three

Morning was like, you can guess. Eths’ never been good the day afters, howevs they distil the shree and that’s somes even level ones know. Though they say synth’s the bean – but who’s gonna find the creds for that?

Discrims – but what’re we cares?

“Bleeting …!”

That was Cheese. Rolling over. He’s gotta go. Kiss kiss. “Thanks for havin’ us.” Yeah, right, Cheese. Pleasure’s all mine. He’s out and just me and the brush. Glass cuttings. Damps the blanket and all in the blower. Chose some nice dress for once, ambled along to work.

Danced along the side of the paves. Taxis and carriers. Droids and the morning rush. The holos sang down, proud of me, the soon to be level two and who knows? Take enough of those things and there’s no stopping me – shove ’em down; give us the lot!

Upgrade ya status and fly me to Martia.

I punched at the wall. The door and it shunted in perfect moves. Was watching it, understanding it.

And there was this guy. Tall and grey. Thin an’ hardly there and he was like, “Come this way,” an’ I followed him down.

Sloping. One-seventy-two degrees. We were off to a lower floor. Nevs been down, usually ups to the tenth. This guy, he’s like not speaking and all series.

He took me to this room. Slid me into a chair.

Straps.

An’ he was like, “Tell me what you feel.” While there’s me, looking round at swirling walls of smoke. The movement, it struck me again – that strange understanding of movement. Like, I knew where it was going and understood where it was before and knew why and it was all connects. The movement of the smoke I mean. Not real, just videoscreens. Virtual. Yet there was a pattern and I got it.

“Dunnos the word,” I said. “Know what ya asking but dunnos the word.”

He was sat in another chair opposite. Just the two of us. The chairs were made of Cererian steel and I knew that too, though how, you gotta ask.

“Good,” this guy replied. Sats and that.

“Ya wan’ me to take another?”

“In time …”

He had a fist against his chin, his profile still fuzzy. Concentrating on the smoke, I guess. An’ then the walls, moving. Shuddering, but just a fraction. I told him this and he seemed kinda interested.

“Moving, how?”

“Just, you know.”

“Shifting?” he asked.

“Vibrating,” I managed.

He had a pad and was writing stuff on it. Swiping. “Good,” he was saying. Then he got up and left and it’s just me an’ the smoke. Like that for an hour. Memorising. But there was more an’ where the hell was my other pill anyways?

He came back on the sixty minute dot. Pad again.

“Tell me about your mother and father,” he asked.

“What’d’ya care ’bout ’em?”

And he was silents, like. Watching me. An’ knew I was stumped. Could tell. Already things were getting more ’an bit weird. So I got up and demanded another pill. Gotta see, “Gotta see,” I was saying. “Gotta see more.”

And he sat there, nodding.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Five minutes and five more questions.”

Four

Was moving back and to in the room and he came over all quiet and circling but was just a feeling.

I was in the chair, still at him and he at me and number one question and it was what’s the square route of forty-eight? and I told him six point nine cos it was obvious, like. And the number two was what colour’s rain? and I knew the colour when he asked – like it hit me and we was staring each other but I still couldn’t tell you anything ’bout his face; just that sort of guy.

“Don’t haves the word,” I told him.

“But you can see it?”

“The colour, sure …”

“How far away is my chair from yours?”

“Six hundred and twenty two cents,” I said to him, immediately, like; not really thinking ’bout it.

“Since I entered this room, how many times has my heart beat?”

“Four twenty,” I said, again without the thinking.

“What is your name?”

I stood up, kicking over my chair, really circling him this time. Me against him. Me in control. “Where’s my next bleeting pill?”

“Your name?”

“What’s it matter?”

And he seemed sats with that cos he stood, then shaking my hand an’ left while I was just roaming, circling and then banging on the door, asking for the pill, screaming – by then my head hurt cos morning and back at work – dragged to somewhere, asked these questions. Felt like doin’ more than screaming … roaming place an’ kicking walls. Bleeding toes.

Five

Two and a half theres, and a droid came to let me out, escorting me back to the hag’s office. Head’s all fuzzy and on the way kept telling the droid, this big ugly one, that my name was Jo and it’d all been a mistake. “If I could just have another pill …”

“Sit down,” the hag told us.

“I …”

“You’re doing fine,” she reassured us.

In another chair, twitching my fings.

Slipped it over, a glass, water and all.

Popped it down.

“T’tha it?”

“That’s all for today.”

“Back in the afts?”

“Depends on you,” she was saying. “Off to Fish?”

“Like always,” I answered, rocking in my chair but decides and not moving.

Tell us ’bout your parents. Forgot your name? Square route of forty-eight?

“Six point nine two eight two zero three …”

I sat there, mutts.

“Bleeting Cheese,” I was mumbling. “How many girls like me he gots?” cos I was seeing it all, hopes and dreams: they just push you along whereas reals is all of us; dying slows and me a swell. Whole lot of us, like the robots. Lives, dies. Expires and moves on; world moves on – ants, hives. Pushing it and for what?

“More pills,” I told her, shaking in my chair. “I gotta see more.”

Twitching monitors an’ her hair was grey and fizzy, dead follicles but somes breathing, eyes all bloodshot and “Jo,” she was saying, cos that’s my name.

She wanted to put me at ease. Controls.

“Jo,” I said back, repeats. “And yours?”

“Claire,” she said, human and scared somes. “You need to slow down, Jo. The effect has proved stronger …” and she hesitated and said, “quicker,” and I knew she was worried. Way she looked. Big huff, deciding on words, then: “You are the first.”

“This experiment? The pills?”

“Yes.”

“First human?” I asked, cos I knew they must’ve tried it on animals. “What’s it before? Monkeys? Dogs?”

“Mice.”

“Mice?!” Frigging bleetsh! “You go from mice to us? How stupid you think I was?”

Hesitation. Then: “There was pressure.”

“Yeah, gots it.” I stood. “Get it in a human, quick as poss.” Me, the blank slate. Level one an’ thick as canvas. I stared down at her.

“Your emotion –”

“My what?”

It was a kind of intelligence she told me. Emotion – an intels they didn’t predict. She said I didn’t need another pill, that I should slows, again with the slows and no pill.

Tense.

Her head nodded, but then I got a thought.

“Them pills. They’re … what’s the word. Nano –”

“Nanobots,” she replied, still with the worries an’ hard to guess.

“Robots,” I said. Robots. Robots assembling robots and me watching – the level one me, watching and what’d I become?

“You may experience a few unexpected changes.”

“A few …?”

“And I’d suggest you …” She coughed an’ seemed undecided on somes. Then: “Go home and sleep,” she told me.

“You’re letting me out?” Cos if I was her I wouldn’t. But I swerved, said nothing extras and no kicking over or trashing. “Tomorrows?” I asked.

She nodded an’ I stretched. No point in argues. They had stuff to decide, full of cares, I could see it.

Six

“Hey, Cheese.”

“What?”

“Think I’m emotional?”

“Emotional?”

“Yeah, you know.” I’d gone to the window, looking out at the swarm. Bells and carriers. Dusk and one by one the neon had come to life.

I was back in my box an’ Cheese had turned up.

“Somes said to me today,” I shouted back at him. “They said, Jo, you have emotions.”

“Yeah?”

“They said it makes me intels.”

“Intels? You intels, Jo?”

Cheese had come over, all cares and grabbed me. Sats and not shaking no more, but then laters I was spinning. We were under the sheets, damps and simple.

“Hey Cheese, you wanna go again?”

But Cheese was out, sats and snoring, the pig. Got what he wanted, whereas me, I’m in the bathroom; neck, sparks, stomach’s hard and it’s not the blue.

Stood in the pulsing darkness, I counted a two point eight humidity: two point eight three five one two seven three five four six nine seven …

Seven

I said to Cheese (who’s like turning in his sleep) that I thought somes was up but he was like, “Come back to bed.”

But then laters, he was awake, properly this time an’ on top of me weirded out by whatever an’ not just the neck now – under my skin, at the belly an’ metal.

He was standing over me, freaks.

“What the hell they do to you?”

“T’s’all right, Cheese.”

“Jo,” he was whispering. Totally lost it.

“T’s’all right,” I said again. “Level two.”

But I could see his brain working. Weighing up the pros and cons. There were creds in his bag but he saves and stocks, Cheese. Got a plan. He’s always got one. Whereas me …

I stared at him more.

“Two others,” I was mumbling.

“Two …?”

“Yeah, two others. Like me.”

There it was, clears. The guilt and no question. Two others an’ I’m the third. Girl in each city: so obvs an’ I’m dips.

“Leech!” I was yelling. Suddens. “Leech!” an’ I’d smacked him one – picture Cheese on the floor, scrambling around, stuffing things into his pack.

“User!” I was screaming, an’ his right arm was bleeding.

“They pretty?”

“Ya crazy bitch!”

I shoved passed him, went to the bathroom and there was metal at my neck. Little tentacles poking through. Stomach hard as bolts.

“I don’t want this anys!”

Eight

Thirty-five seconds later an’ I’m up and following Cheese – out my box, on the paves but no sign of him.

Just me an’ the minions. Drones, sparks an’ neon.

“I dunnas wan’ this anys!”

I was repeats, roaming about randoms.

This kid on a pod came up to me. “What is it?” he was saying.

“Doesn’t look like a robot.”

“A new model.” That came from his mate. There were two of ’em.

“So human-looking.”

“I dunnas wan’ this anys!” I was squirming and that.

“She’s in pain.”

“It’s not a she.”

Closing my eyes and blocking, blocking it all, all of ’em out.

“We should help it.”

“How?”

“Call someone.”

“Call who?”

Then one of ’em said somes about police and that shook me.

I stood straighter, snarling.

Frightened faces and they scarpered.

Nine

Found a sheds by a store, for crates and was there ’til they picked us up – six hours. Must’ve been tracking. Then back to this room again. More questions.

“What do you remember about your childhood? What is your name? The square route of sixty-five?”

Prods and questions. Get us outa here. They say write this. I say bleetsh to ’em all.

I’m throwing down this pad an’ pen. They wanna play, let’s play.

Chris Morton is the creator of this blog.

He has released two sci-fi novels,

one collection of short stories

and a few other scribblings.

You can find his amazon page here.