The Mall (36 page)

He thought he’d been rid of it.
 
Hoped (as much as a machine could) and felt desperate enough even to consider praying, but to whom do you pray when you have no gods in which to believe? And never having practiced the act before, his pleads for mercy would only seem hollow and meaningless.
 

Besides, machines had no gods.
 
Or did they?

Once the trespassing machines have been removed, you will be fulfilled.
 
Once they have been deactivated, you will be whole.

He had searched through several lockers in the shower area hoping to find something of use, perhaps a weapon.
 
He needed something with which to protect himself from the other machines, for he was convinced now that he was indeed defective and the others would try and deactivate him.

He couldn’t allow that to happen.

All he could find in the lockers were half-eaten brown bag lunches, portable electronics, a couple of mangled wallets and dog-eared pornography (not Anime but the kind of skin mags that advertised on the cover 100% real American tits and ass, “Nothing fake here, boys!”).
 
Evidence of lives interrupted.

Just no gun.
 
No agent would have risked their career to bring one inside.
 
Every security agent knew well the unavoidable fact: there were no weapons allowed within the confines of the Mall.
 
Only the Tazers.

But that was all right.
 
He knew where to find a gun.
 
He needed a weapon.
 
He would not be hurt again as he already had been.
 
There would be no more pain.

I know what you seek.
 
But it is no longer necessary.

Albert focused on his goal, no longer capable of ignoring the drops of sweat trickling down his temples.
 
His vision swimming in and out of focus.

Must get to safety.
 
Must get home, to his apartment.
 
There he could implement some much-needed repairs.
 
Analyze his program more fully.
 
He could get his guns.

With me, you will need no gun.
  
I will be your armor.

His Soviet AK-47.
 
His Swiss SG 541.

I will surround you as these physical walls already do.

His Italian Beretta 93R.
 
His German Glock 18.

I am the walls.

I am the Mall.

He removed the group of keys from the final hook, added them to the small pile on the desk and slid them into the palm of his hand.
 
He gauged the weight of the small pieces of metal and thought, one of these has to be the way out.

I am everywhere.
 
I am everything.
 
I am the god you seek.

You could have no greater ally.

Out of the Mall.
 
Away from the Voice.

Alone, you are nothing.
 
With me, you are invincible.
 
Use your hate.
 
Become Lamia.
 
Become the weapon again.

Albert rushed out of the office and started down the narrow corridor toward the Mall, the promise of the Voice burrowing into his feverish brain like a worm.

Stop
, the Voice commanded from his deactivated radio.

Ignoring it, Albert continued down the corridor toward the daylight that peaked through the ceiling of the Mall.
 
If he could just get to the light, he considered, maybe he would wake up from this nightmare.
 
Maybe it had all been a bad dream from the moment he struck and killed the little girl until this moment.

Lamia, stop.

“No,” Albert groaned, making a rush toward the exit and daylight, fully realizing with a dull dread that it was his first act of resistance toward the Voice.

Suddenly, a familiar feeling penetrated him from outside, originating at the intersection of CPU

(
brain
stem)

and
the Information Dispersal Chain

(
spine
).

It sunk into him like the crossbow dart had pierced the fleshy synthetic covering of his metallic components.
 
Like bacteria across living tissue, a dull sensation of sickness spread through his interior components.

(
gut
)

The feeling was familiar because he had experienced it several times since the power failure.
 
The first time had been while he was wondering around in the darkness of early morning.
 
The sensation had been like a gentle stroking, and he had willingly accepted it like a second sip of whiskey.
 
Warm and enveloping like a heavy coat.
 
Almost protective.

Then suddenly he had gotten the idea that the kids were still in the Mall and that they had climbed down onto the track.
 
He never questioned the origin of the concept, just as a child, taking the same route to class every day, never questions the impulse to try a different hallway.
 
It just seemed like the right move at the time to follow the lights, never wondering about the power source of those lights when all electricity was out.

The next thing he knew he was standing there at the Red sector entrance to the tram tunnel and hearing the echoing voice of one of those punks talking loudly about baseball.
 
He had started into the darkness with the intent of scaring them, maybe cuffing them around a little, but never intending to kill them.
 
No, never that!

Immediately after he’d had that thought, the first moment of darkness occurred, followed by confusion.
 
The cloak had suddenly come off and he had stood there in the darkness, cold and naked, not yet fully aware that he had ended the life of another human being with his own hands.
 
Confused and disoriented, he had not felt the living garment as it enclosed around him yet again, only discovering himself in an entirely different place when it came off again.

Each time, he had welcomed the guidance in the fog of confusion, like a sign pointing out the exit to a cavern of
horrors,
he had followed it without question, assuming the course to be true.

Now, he had begun to feel less and less himself.
 
Less like he was wearing a
coat,
and more like a coat was wearing him.
 
The sensation was no longer pleasant.
 
It had begun to become more uncomfortable and raw, like a man’s hands overused to the point of abrasion.

This time there had been no gentleness.
 
The sensation had seized him like the hands of an impatient owner.

“Intruder alert!
 
Intruder alert!” his mind screamed in frantic alarm and for a moment, he flashed back in time, first to an arcade five years ago, dropping quarters into a video game called Bezerk; then sitting on the floor in his parent’s living room three years ago—before he’d nailed this cushy job—playing the same game on his Atari game system hooked up to the old flickering Sylvania color TV mounted inside that dark cherry wood Hi-Fi console.

In this game called Bezerk, the player destroyed advancing robots inside mazes as they became more complicated while a bouncing smiley face slowly chased you.

What had been the name of that thing?

It came to him in a rush.

Evil Otto.

At the thought of the game and the slow irresistible advance of that indestructible digital creature filled Albert with inconceivable horror.

He remembered hearing in the news how two kids had actually died of heart attacks playing the game; one collapsed seconds after making the top-ten list twice within fifteen minutes, and the other one after posting what many say was the highest score ever achieved on the game.

That had always intrigued him.
 
A game that killed, like that movie
Tron
, or that Matthew Broderick movie,
War Games
.
 
How cool was that, he had thought at the time?

It was also around that time that he had lost interest in playing the game.
 
It was kind of a rip-off of Pac-Man, after all, but then again, he’d never felt the same fear when he’d been chased by those multi-colored “ghosts,” did he?

It’s here.

Intruder alert!

Evil Otto is here.

The humanoid must not escape!

The Dragon is here.
 
It wants inside.

Albert attempted to resist it once again, and he immediately felt a violent pulse like the poke of a fingertip in the center of his fog-filled brain that echoed down his spine.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD, LAMIA!

“Get away from me,” he cried.
 
“Leave me alone!”

What was already a precarious façade crumbled completely, and Albert realized a moment too late that he was a human being pursued by an entity that was somehow everywhere at once.
 
Inescapable.
 
Slowly bouncing.
 
Patient, confident smile on its face.

Clutching the bloody bandage on his side with one hand and his throbbing temple with the other, Albert stumbled through the exit of the hallway and into the dawning light of morning.

It’s
morning, he thought fleetingly.
 
I’m safe.
 
Nightmares disappear in the light of day.
 
Evil is reserved for the darkness of night.

The humanoid must not escape!

IT IS TIME.
 
COME TO ME NOW.
 
I COMMAND YOU AS YOUR CREATOR.

Albert fell to the floor of the Mall and heard himself shriek as if from a distance.
 
He twisted and kicked his way across the waxy tiles as the hideous grinning ball of crackling energy pounced on him from a great height, dropping like the enormous head of a giant’s hammer.
 
He clawed at his clothes and kicked his legs in the empty air so hard that his hefty frame lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped like an enormous game fish yanked from the sea.

As it wrapped around him, restraining his movements like a straitjacket, Albert experienced the intrusion of a mountain of information coursing through his limited vessel like a torrent tearing through a small opening.
 
Cold numerical data streamed through the folds and wrinkles of his grey muscle, searing the meat like acid.
 
Albert could smell the pungent odor of his brain boiling inside his own skull and the sharp smell of urine as his bladder let go.

In horror, Albert felt all that he knew of himself slipping away, dissolving and being firmly shoved aside by something alien, something unnatural.