Ectopia (10 page)

1.00

They took this voicecard from me. Took everything. Fuck em.

Was I in there one day? Two days? Three? Fuck knows.

It's morning. I'm out. I'm running.

 

I'm in a forest. It's still standing. No-one really wants the lumber I guess. Who needs wood? Who needs to make things? Who needs to burn up heat in this weather? The trees have no leaves but the deadwood gives shade.

I've moved twice. Crawled away from my own vomit twice. Their drugs make me throw up. Or knowing what they've done makes me sick to die. I bet that's it. My body's trying to chuck up what they've done. I've checked myself. There's no new cuts, no lesions. A couple of tiny pinpricks, one on my stomach and one on my side. That's it.

Maybe they're lying. You can't change a body with a pin.

 

Fucking insects. Mozzies. I've just smashed one on my scalp. It's body stuck to my skin with my blood. I scratched it off and now my head's bleeding. I've opened up a wound. Blood's running round my ear.

What is it they've done? They fixed my head, they said. What was it? What've they done?

- Go back.

- Who's that? Who said that?

- Go back to when you entered Cromozone. Step by step. Remember. Step by step. That's how to do it.

- Who the fuck are you? What kind of voice is that?

- What do you think, Steven? Think. Think for yourself.

- Deep like a man's, soft like a woman's. Are you some woman or what?

- I'm a voice. Your voice. Assigned to you.

- Where the fuck are you?

- You're running, Steven. I hear the twigs breaking underfoot. Yo
u're barefoot. I feel your pain. It hurts. Stop. Stop yourself.

- Can you see me?

- No. We see nothing. We track you but we can't see you. Our choice.

- You hear me but can't see me?

- We hear you. When you want us to.

- Where the fuck are you?

- Don't shout, Steven. There's no need.

- You're fucking shouting. Shut up. Shut up.

- There. Is that better?

- What have you done?

- Adjusted the volume. Is that fine now? … Steven? Talk to me, Steven.

- You're in my head. That's right isn't it? You're a voice inside my head. Fuck. What am I on?

- Don't worry Steven.

- Shut up. Shut the fuck up. I don't want this. Voices inside my head. I don't want this. How long? How long before the stuff wears off? How long before they go away?

- It's no drug, Steven. It's not madness. It's a receiver. An implant. We've fitted a receiver inside your head. Call us. We're here whenever you need us.

- Call you?

- Whenever you need us. Your voicecard's a transmitter. It beams your voice to us, and receives an imprint of our conversations. Press playback to review what we've said. This is enough for now, Steven. We're stopping transmission. Go back. Retrace your steps from when you entered Cromozone. You'll understand everything in time. We'll be listening. We can help. Steven. Steven! Stop it! Stop it!

 

- I'm sorry Steven. We don't like to do that. We transmitted a high frequency to paralyze your nervous system for a moment. What were you doing? We caught sensation from your fingernails. You're opening wounds. Digging out the receiver. Don't think of it, Steven. The receiver's linked to your brain. Damage would be irreversible. You won't be worth our saving. Here. This tone will soothe you… Relax, Steven. Relax. Understand what's happening. You'll live with it. You'll learn to live with it.

 

- You slept. That's good Steven. We didn't want to wake you. This is being imprinted direct to your voicecard. We want you to understand something. You are not alone, but this does not mean you are not independent. It's vital to us that you are free, Steven. Use this voicecard when you need someone to listen, when you need understanding. Unless you use this voicecard we will hear nothing. We will only transmit to your head when neurotransmitters alert us that your body is in danger. Without your questions we have no answers for you. Aside from your use of this card you will not notice our existence. Your life is your own, Steven. It is not ours. We only hope you use it well.

- Go back, Steven. Back to your first steps in Cromozone. You'll understand. Piece by piece you'll understand. You need to understand.

 

Thanks for the knife, you fuckers. You think you get to read everything I write? Not so easy. I've carved you a message in the trees. A secret message. It says everything I think about you and what you've done. It's sliced into the bark. Download that if you can.

You think I talk my secrets into voicecard? Fuck you. This is no secret. It's just my life. Just a story. A short fucking story. No-one steals days out of my story. I'm getting em back. Getting em back so I can use em. You think you know my future? You think you've implanted it? Stupid fuckers. You're dying. You're passouts. I'm not your future. The young are not your future. There is no fucking future.

We're now.

You stupid fucking breeders. Don't you get it? It's over. Now's now and then it's gone and then that's it.

This is it.

 

They gave me a chicken. They called it chicken but it was fucking big. More like a hen. Pimples in the skin where feathers should have been, legs and wings tucked close to its body, head chopped off. It's a special project, they said. I'm the first man in ten years to get to eat chicken in the outside world. The first man to eat a chicken that didn't crawl out of an egg. Eat it, they said – It's cooked. It'll make you strong.

It made me throw up.

We made a chicken, they boasted, like I cared – From out of nothing we made a bird. Think what we can do with you. You can trust us.

The bird was one special project, and I'm another. I asked the bird what it knew about trust. Dead, headless and cooked it couldn't say much. Study a corpse and the findings aren't good. Run while you can the corpse said, while you've still got feet and your legs aren't pinned to your sides. Running's good. Trust in that.

I scooped a hole in the earth and wiped the vomit into it. Added the chicken's flesh and bones and covered it up. That's the best I could do for a grave for the bird.

I think it's all gone. Think its meat's all out of me.

Anything else they've stuck inside me, that's coming out too. If it kills me to do it, then it kills me. At least I'll die natural.

 

What's so fucking natural?

I can't tell my story any more. It's his story. Steven's story, Bender's story. I'm not me I'm some weird fucked over alien thing they've twisted out of shape. Steven went in to Cromozone but he never came out. Something else came out. It's not Steven and it's not me. I'm not this, I'm not me, I'm Steven, I was Steven. I've got to get back. I've got to tell it as it is, as it was. As it fucking is.

 

Steven was sixteen turned seventeen. He was a runner. He was me. He ran with his Mom's blue case in hand. He kicked up dust and left the town behind him.

I know what he was like. I was inside him then. Not some fucking freakish shouting implant. Me and only me.

This is his story. Steven's story.

1.01

The next machine that gives me orders, I'll call it Dad.

- Do this, do that, do it this way or that, do it now, it'll say.

- Fuck off Dad, I'll tell it.

I'll turn and run, I'll lie on my back, I'll do whatever the fuck I want to do but I won't do what it says.

- Stand on the yellow cross, the machine said.

- Fuck off Dad, Steven should have said.

Me and Steven share the same Dad. Dad's a bastard. The machine was an ugly speaker on top of a thin pole so it even looked a bit like Dad. It didn't listen, just gave orders, just like Dad.

Steven looked down at the asphalt that covered the dust in front of Cromozone's main gate. The yellow cross was a step away from the brick wall of Cromozone's reception point. Steven wore his whiteflash black trackers, the same I'm wearing now. Vent holes round the base, a suction system in the sole to pump out sweat, great for steady spurts into long distance. Shoes like that, they run you way off-camera. You don't turn seventeen and do what a squeezebrain like Dad tells you. You don't wear whiteflash trackers and stand em on a cross in front of a wall.

But that's what Steven did.

Perhaps some high pitch tone comes out of those speakers, some brain numbing silent squeal that turns you into a stupid fuck. Perhaps that's why he stared into the visor on the wall as the screen came back and the lens came out. It focused on his sightwaves and stalked up to his right eye. You use your eyes for seeing Steven, you assbrain. Screw your eye shut and you had a chance.

Instead you stood, you young prick, stiff as death, staring into the black as the lens eyeballed you.

Sorry to be pissed at you. You had a lot in you. I was hoping for more, that's all. I'll let it go.

Just like you did.

A barrier of steel bars rose behind you and to your sides, a cage with the dull-bright sky of dust-and-sun for a ceiling. The cage reached full height and locked into place. No retreat from that point. None of the friends who hadn't come with you and couldn't give a damn, none of teensquad's prime and distant assault and support team, not a single fucker could drag you back or stand by your side.

Seconds passed. Heat gathered. No wind blew. Sweat streamed down Steven's arm and collected where his hand clutched the handle of his Mom's scabby suitcase. He was little boy fucking lost.

Stupid fucker. I've no patience with him.

The brick wall of the entry point surrounded a black plate steel door. That black plate door breathed open at the top and slid down. It stopped level with the dust of the ground.

Beyond it was a steel box. The cool of chilled metal breezed out and touched your skin. You stepped forward. You stepped inside. You let the elevator suck you in.

They had you then Steven. They had us.

Two steps inside the box you faced a steel wall and turned around. The plate door was already rising from the floor. Outside was patterned by the steel bars of the cage. Your last sight of Steven's world was the smudge of sky, squeezed to nothing as the door drew closed at the top and sealed you in.

You thought it was an elevator and looked for the control buttons, like you'd been in an elevator loads of times before, like statesquad was always whisking you up and down to important meetings. The box was dayglo lit by lights paneled in the ceiling. The walls were burnished steel. You saw no buttons. You saw no glidepads to run your hands across. You had no control.

The light was tinged red from behind you. You turned and found a message projected in thin red letters against the wall.

Present package opcode SG17/5HP3

The code was statespeak for Mom's blue suitcase. A slice of wall drew back, twice the width and height of the case. You looked inside. Beyond the steel of your box's wall, beyond a layer of brick, was a small steel container. You reached the suitcase up and slid it forward. The hatch closed. Fair enough, you thought. They've got to play safe. They've got to screen the case before they let you walk it to your Mom.

Dumb fuck. Statesquad doesn't operate to let dipstick sons deliver crap to mummy's arms. Did they bother to even open the case, do you think, or did they incinerate it there and then? You carried a suitcase, Steven. But you were the delivery.

Nothing clicked. Nothing shuddered. Nothing on the outside registered the elevator dropping down the shaft. Just the feel of your heart squeezing itself up through your throat.

 

The elevator stopped and the door slid back. Steven stepped out.

Stupid fuck.

He'd seen nothing. He could have waited. Waited till they ejected him and sucked in someone else.

Why go back? Why remember all this?

Memory's crap. Follow the memory step by step every fuck of the way and where's it get me? Sitting here in the woods, talking to voicecard, Steven gone so I'll never get him back. Memory screws me to a lie.

Their lie.

I've got to change it. I can't tell this story and end up here.

 

Steven stepped from the elevator and a message flashed on the opposite wall.

Decontamination Zone.

The elevator doors closed. They vanished. You turned and found flat panels behind you, in front, to the sides. Lights were embedded in the ceiling, behind Perspex panels. The floor was cement. It was light blue but not sky blue. Blue like grey is blue. You were stuck in a blue grey box.

First things first, you looked for the lens. You sad fuck. Here in the woods I know better but I did the same when I was you. Looked for the camera. Life's snapped off when no-one's watching. Doing nothing's something when it's watched. Stare at a lens and you're staring some fuckhead in the face. With a camera to stare at you could have stuck it out.

Instead you had the screen. Decontamination Zone flashed across it, red letters on blue.

The first word, the first lie.

Don't change the lies. Don't make up new ones. Lies altered Steven and turned him into you. Find the lies that hurt him. Work em out.

With nothing to stare at Steven stared at the screen. Decontamination Zone. So what was contaminated Steven? Not you. Don't forget that. You're clean. Whatever they did to you, you started clean.

The screen's a lie.

They don't want to decontaminate you. There's nothing to decontaminate. It's the opposite.

Contamination's coming.

 

- Decontamination Zone. Remove all clothing before proceeding.

Steven looked for the voice. It repeated itself. He traced the sound to perforations in the ceiling beside the light panel. The voice was deep like a man's and soft like a woman's.

- Remove your clothes, Steven. Leave them on the floor. They will be cleaned and returned to you. You're about to enter Cromozone at hygiene clearance level nine. A new outfit is through the door. Remove your clothes.

Steven looked around for the door. The room was sealed.

- Decontamination Zone. Remove all clothing before proceeding.

It was a recording. The line ran into itself as it kept repeating.

- Decontamination Zone. Remove all clothing before proceeding decontamination Zone. Remove all clothing before proceeding decontamination …

He stuck it for a few minutes, then pulled his shirt over his head. Pushed off his whiteflashes. Pushed down his shorts and stepped out of em. He might as well have peeled off his skin.

The recording stopped. A paneled wall slid open, just wide enough to enter sideways.

- Step through the door, Steven, and into the shower, the voice lied.

Fuck that voice. It can't speak without lying. I hate that voice.

 

You skinny freak, Steven. More muscle, more flab, less lean, you wouldn't have got through the gap. Your stomach pressed against the panel even so. That poor stomach.

So what happened?

Here's where I begin to lose it.

You had to snatch your body through as the panels closed. No way back and no way out.

It was dark. Black. You were in a cubicle, its walls shaped like the closeness of a coffin. No way to move your arms, shuffle your feet, flex your knees. All you could do was spring up on your toes and you did. You sprung. No scope for liftoff, your head never touched a ceiling, but you lifted yourself as hot water pooled around your ankles. It whipped around like you were a spindle, your toes jammed in a plughole, round and round the water rising, jetting round your kneecaps, pushing against your balls, racing round your chest and splashing over your shoulders. You'd be spinning if the walls didn't hold you in place, falling if your knees had room to buckle.

Two minutes to drowning. Your life didn't flash before you. Your life? A lightning jag of boredom. Fuck that. Fuck memories. Now's all there is. All there'll ever be.

Now was a scream.

You opened your mouth. Water went in, sticky water with a film to it that coated your tongue, a hot jet pumping all around your head, a stream slashing down on your scalp, but no scream came out. It was inside your head, high pitched like all your senses scattering, a blade of noise that scoured your skull and left it white like light.

The water stopped. It must have done. It licked back down round your body and out through the floor. Jets of hot air blew the water from your skin. Lights came on, a door opened, and you stood there. Not still. Shaking. You stood shaking and crying as hands pulled you out. Gloved hands that smelt of gel.

The voice was there.

- You're alright, Steven. You're alright.

All that voice does is lie. The lights were bright. You saw nothing but light as they lay you on a trolley. Your limbs were shaking as they strapped em down. A needle pricked your arm. Panic slid away like blood down a drain. You were empty. You were gone.

So much for you, Steven.

 

- I'm a doctor. Dr Lester Drake. You call me Lester.

He leaned over the body that used to be Steven. They'd done their stuff with it. Fuck knows what it is now. It's me. It's Bender. I'll call the body Bender.

Bender twisted to the side to get away. He twisted to the side but his body held still.

- You ever been in a car, Steven? You know about safety belts? That's what these straps are. They're not constraints. You're wearing them for your own safety. Any sudden movement like the one you just made, and they tighten. They bind your upper arms and thighs to the bed. We don't want you falling. We don't want you running. Not till you know where you are. Stay still for a minute, Steven. Loosen your muscles. Then the straps will relax. I'll be able to release you.

It was something like that that he said. Pretty much like that. People fill me with their voices till they're bursting out my mouth. I sound like em sometimes but I'm not being em. I'm just letting em out, letting em loose, letting em escape. Lester Drake filled me with his I-know-better docshit. His words are stuck inside me. He thinks I needed what he said, he thinks his words explain me, but that's shit. They just foul me up. I've got to let em out.

Bender closed his eyes.

- Have you got any questions, Steven?

No questions. Bender was looking for the moment he was in before waking. That moment was a place of calm, of dappled light, of soft green and reflecting water.

He searched and caught some sense of it. His muscles eased. The straps relaxed their grip.

- You're free now, Steven. I've released you.

Bender knew better. The middle-aged black man with the buzz cut, heavy muscles beneath the clinging white of his doctor's kit, dark brown eyes that sucked you in, was lying. He was spouting docshit. Free for Bender wasn't opening his eyes, sitting up, taking part. Free wasn't stepping from an elevator into a decontamination zone into a bath chamber into straps. Bender was free to lie still without constraints and close his eyes. That was the only freedom going.

He took it.

- I'll leave you, Steven. Sit up when you're ready. Take your time. You'll feel unsteady at first.

A door breathed open then closed. Bender presumed he was alone. He moved his hands to his chest and slid em down his body. He felt the outline of his shape, felt the dips around his bones, but the skin wasn't his own.

It was time to open his eyes.

The skin he was feeling was a bodysuit in black. The bodysuit was sleeveless, cut in a vee around his neck and shaped round his body and thighs to end as shorts below his kneecaps.

Bender felt the line between clothing and flesh and felt no join. He sat up and looked at his feet. They felt naked. He flexed his toes. Nothing pressed against em but it looked like he wore shoes, black shoes that were hooked around his heels and molded over the arches.

He rubbed his hands over his face. The door sucked open and Doc Drake walked back in.

- Looking for stubble? the doctor asked.

Steven would have bumfluff, not stubble, but yes doc, yes.

- You're testing how long you've been here by your growth of beard? Right on, Steven. You're a bright kid. We shaved you. Shaved you while you were sleeping. We've sealed the hairs away if you want to inspect them. Try feeling your head though.

Bender touched his fingers to his scalp.

- Your hair's growing back. Just a touch. Just enough to take away the gloss. You've been here three days.

- That's docshit. I'm not hungry. After three days I'd be starving.

- Your body ate what we fed it. You've been functioning in the physical world. Your mind was elsewhere, disassociated from your body. That's all.

Bender slid from the bed and stood up. He looked down at the ground. It was plastic but veined like marble. That's what his eyes told him.

His feet said something different. He was standing on sponge.

- We've been busy, Steven. Those shoes are a new device. Their soles communicate with the mainframe computer. Your body's been programmed. We've watched you closely over these past months. We know you. You're a runner. You're other things too, but you're a runner. A good one, but not faultless. You use your height to lean in against the angle of your instep. Those shoes are remolding your feet. They adjust your physique with every step. In your world you were good enough, Steven, but what a lousy world that was. Things have changed. You've got to be the best.