Z14 (30 page)

“I don’t really care what you’re up to, you mad twat,” I said. I knew the dismissive tone and words would rile him, badly. “What I care about, or rather what part of me is telling me I should care about, is what poor bastards these brains used to belong to.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them, Zee,” said Chester. “They’re all still alive. We’re all together. Although naturally I’m in charge.”

“But who are they?”

I was slowly creeping further into the room, dragging myself a mere half an inch at a time. I was scanning the room for any final threats, but apart from a normal-sized steel door in the far wall, and the various bits of the brain network, the room was empty.

“This explains what the Wardens were doing from the moment they arrived here, then,” said Doctor Melon.

“Ah, Doctor Melon,” said Chester. “Welcome to you, too. You’re right, doctor, the Wardens were building this for me. It’s why I only sent them after Zee here when it was clear the stubborn bastard wasn’t going to fuck off.” A bit of Chester’s cool vanished momentarily, just then.

“Now, now, Chesty,” I said. “Don’t get your brain strands in a twist.”

I gave up on inching forward surreptitiously, and just dragged myself straight over to the nearest brain, which was one of the main group of over a thousand.

Chester definitely looked a little concerned at my advance.

“Don’t tell me you really don’t want to know what’s going on here,” he said.

“I do!” said Melon.

“Chesty,” I said. “What you get up to in the privacy of your own secret tunnel is no concern of mine. This is better than that dwarf porn I found on your computer, at least.”

Chester wasn’t going to give up on telling me all about his scheme though. I gave him half an audio channel while I assessed the brain network, taking it all in. It really was an intriguing sight.

“As you know, my family have had access to the alien vessel beyond that doorway over there for generations, now,” he said. “We’ve been trying to crack its secrets the whole time. It wasn’t until Doctor Melon arrived in orbit and merrily colluded with me for a while, that we made real breakthroughs in understanding some of what the Kon Ramar have been trying to do and how they have been doing it. Even better though was understanding how to start to control the Wardens.”

“Ah, yes,” said Melon. “I did say, Zed, that I stopped talking to him when I realised he was insane.”

“Shortly after I used the computer here to learn of what the aliens could do with a linked network of human brains; a young, ambitious, prospective Overlord suggested a merger of his gang and my company. It gave me a fantastic idea, so I decided to merge his brain with mine. Then, I expanded that merger programme to encompass all the brains you see here today. Say hello to some of the Boram Bay Overlords, Zee.”

“Hi guys,” I said obligingly.

“But the real genius of my plan is that I shall convince the Kon Ramar, when they finally come down here that I have achieved what they were after, that I am their god, inhabiting this physical vessel, this expanded consciousness.”

I laughed. “That’s just bonkers, Chester. They’ll never believe that, despite how insane Melon claims they are. But, even if they did, so what? What the fuck does that achieve?”

“Zee, were you at the back of the line when they were installing central processing units?” said Chester. “Why would I give up the chance to become the living god of an ancient space empire, who also happen to be in complete dominance of the human race?”

“Okay, good point,” I said. “What makes you think it will work?”

“Their arrogance,” said Melon.

Chester nodded, which set a weird ripple through many of the fleshy strands connecting his brain to the five others – which seemed to be acting as nodes of some sort for the network. “Melon’s right. I’ve falsified records in the ship’s database to show a long history of experimentation by myself and the three Wardens you somehow defeated. All the evidence will point to one, still living, still whole host body being part of the network being the key component that makes the brain construct suitable to receive at least a small part of the essence of their god.”

I took a moment before I could say something that didn’t sound like a bemused human spluttering. “But why would incorporate
yourself
into the network as part of the ploy?”

“Because of the power, Zee,” said Chester, clenching and shaking a fist. “My brain has the capabilities, knowledge and memories of these thousand and more people. I know all they know, and can think faster even than you. And, I can never die – I just need fresh brains added to the mix from time to time.

“It’s a drug, Zee,” he continued. “Every brain added, absorbed and consumed is a rush of discovery and enlightenment, and of increasing my overall power.

“Zee, I’m about to tap the human mind’s hidden powers: Telekinesis, maybe even mind-reading.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Can you read electronic minds?” I pushed my arm against the ground, rearing my broken torso up, off the floor, and as I went up and came down again, I lifted my fist off the floor and slammed it with all my might into the brain I had crawled up to. It crumpled with a squelch.

Chester winced in pain, but it didn’t trouble him for long.

“You just killed Davinda Lornax, former head of a small gang of cut-throats from Jolly Meadows,” said Chester with a grin. “Pleased with yourself? Go on, kill another brain. You’ll still be at it when the Kon Ramar come in here and their god commands them to kill you.”

“This is truly astonishing,” said Melon. “Zed, can’t we reason with Mister Boram, here. Perhaps between us we can persuade the Kon Ramar to end their experiments on humanity, and we can all work together on the amazing discoveries that lie ahea – ”

The squelch of me smooshing up another brain interrupted him.

“No,” I said. This sick fuck dies, his experiment ends, and then we fuck over the Kon Ramar too. They wanted to do this to my son!” The last words became almost a scream. Get a grip! Too right; I went and gripped another brain, and gripped and gripped until it all but burst between my fingers.

I was having little effect, though. “Ah, your son Zee, yes, I know all about that,” said Chester.

I glared at Melon. “Wasn’t me,” he said.

“No, Zee, the computer here knows all about your son,” said Chester, with a triumphant smile. “It knows all about you too.”

“Talk,” I said.

“Your son and the twenty million were never revived from stasis when they arrived on Iceholme,” said Chester.

“We know that,” said Melon. “And then they were wiped out in a power failure.”

“No, they weren’t,” said Chester.

What? I thought.

“What?” said Melon.

“Your son is alive, Zee.”

“Impossible,” said Melon.

“Not at all,” said Chester. “The aliens lied. They were just keeping those twenty million who were still frozen in reserve, ready to form a new colony elsewhere one day, once a suitable experimental planet had been terraformed.”

I was expecting one of those emotional overload episodes to hit me. That expectation may explain why I felt so calm – for all the sense that made. But, no, no barrage of emotions was going off in my head. The human side of me was just stunned into silence, even as the machine in me accepted the inherent wisdom in holding back supplies – of anything – in reserve.

“Zee?” said Chester. “Your son is alive. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? He didn’t die centuries ago. In fact, he is exactly as he was the day you left him.”

“The day they took him from me,” I said. I splattered the next brain in the network without really realising I had done it.

“Oh, stop taking it out on my ex-employees,” said Chester. “Join with me, and we’ll fuck the Kon Ramar up. They enjoy messing with us, but, we can literally play god with them, now.”

I performed the best shrug that I could in my physical state, and then I crawled towards one of the five node brains, closer to Chester. He suddenly looked very worried. I could see in his eyes that apart from words he had nothing left. His powerful Warden guards had failed to kill a limping, one-armed cripple, and here I was, unopposed, ready to thwart his plans. But, did I want to? What good was my son being lost to me light years away, somewhere on a planet I couldn’t reach? What good was I to him, in this state, or, even if I could somehow be repaired? Who wanted a former cyborg assassin, created by aliens for a daddy? A crystal clear memory file played itself in my head: The red-rimmed eyes of my son as he stared, beseechingly at me as we were dragged apart.
“No, Daddy, come back!”

Yeah, I wanted to thwart his plans, alright.

“Thanks for the info Chester. It’s nice to know he’s alive. I hope someone thaws him out and gives him a big hug one day.” I crawled around and pushed and scooped the five node brains into a huddle in front of me. Hitting each of these brains would cut him off from a fifth of the mass of other brains. I sent a private network message to Melon to see if he agreed with my theory. He said that he very reluctantly concurred. I lined myself up on one of them and got ready to strike.

Chester seemed paralysed. He may have been thinking of going for a weapon, or rushing at me, but whatever he did, he’d not have time to stop me.

“Wait,” he said.

 
Splat.

“No!”

Splat.

“You.”

Splat.

“Fucking.”

Splat.

“Cun – ”

Splat.

With the last brain squished under my fist, Chester’s eyes rolled up into his head, his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the floor, spilling his brain out of his open skull, ripping it free from his spinal column and killing him instantly.

I don’t remember the last time I laughed so much.

I had Doctor Harold Melon to thank for that.

“Oh, Zed,” said Melon, chiding. “You really shouldn’t have done that. We could have learned so much from this experiment.”

“Careful, Doc, you’re starting to sound like these Kon Ramar guys.”

“Never! It’s just that, since there’s a living, working brain-construct right here…”

“Melon, I may be piece-by-piece catching up with you in some kind of extreme cyborg slimming contest, but I still have a fist, and you still have a very vulnerable looking head.”

“Don’t be so tetchy, Zed.”

I dragged myself over to Chester’s spilled-out brain and punched it as hard as I could from the side, so it flew off into a wall, where it split open like, well, a melon. The good doctor took the hint, although making sure Chester was gone had been my main aim.

“Would the Kon Ramar have fallen for Boram’s plan?” I said. It seemed highly unlikely.

“Oh goodness me, no,” said Melon. “They’re insane and arrogant, not stupid.” Melon laughed.

Just then I heard two sets of footsteps, jogging at a steady pace. They were coming from the tunnel where I’d fought the Wardens. Before I could turn my body around on the floor to look, Melon piped up again.

“Oh,” he said. “I must have over-estimated the sleeping gas recovery period. Hello gentlemen.”

I turned. Clumsily.

“Oh, Zed,” said a grey-faced, shaky-looking Kam. “You’ve really let yourself go, mate.” He shook his head, unable to hide how appalled he was at the state of me, despite his joking. “You should really take better care of yourself. What would your cyber-mum say?”

“Zee, buddy,” said a groggy Lothar. “Care to tell me why you left me giving Kam a goodnight cuddle, tucked up under some filthy old tarpaulin? And why did you leave the hacked off head of one of my best soldiers eyeballing me when I woke up?”

Melon was muttering to himself, “…and so I could have mis-translated the notes about the duration of the…” he said.

“Hey, I saved your arses,” I said. “No, wait, I saved your brains. Although clearly there wasn’t much worth saving.”

“…once the subjects were removed from an area where they would be breathing the gas…” said Melon quietly.

Lothar and Kam looked blankly at me. They of course had no way of knowing about events above ground. Part of me wanted to shudder at what was probably still going on out there. Millions of humans just lying around unconscious, whilst fully Kon Ramar controlled Wardens and floating trash-cans robbed them of their brains. Weird. Weird, shitty and wrong. There had to be a way to stop it, I mean we
were
right next door to some sort of fucking command ship.