Vengeance on Venus: Body Electric

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This instalment contains graphic violence and scenes some readers may find disturbing.


A grate in a service corridor crashed open.

The corridor was bare and lit by blue-white LEDs. The walls were painted a dull greyish off-white, and the floor was speckled linoleum. It was cold, like the inside of a meat-locker. You could see your breath when you exhaled. Androids, after all, had hardier bodies than human beings. They didn’t feel or complain about the cold, or poor lighting.

The unwanted visitor, emerging from behind the grate, heard footsteps coming around the corner, not shoes but bare skin slapping against plastic flooring. The footsteps stopped, and there was a moment of hesitation, and then a body leaped out, wheeling a personal defence weapon on her. But the visitor was prepared, and the android had not expected her victim to be carrying a handgun, and so there was a thunderous sound from the assailant’s hand, and the android’s left shoulder was obliterated. She fell to the ground.

The visitor, her red hair dirty, her makeup streaking down her cheeks, her satin dress tattered, approached the android and put a gun to her head.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she said.

“Carly,” the android replied. Her hair was blonde, like the others, and she had the same green eyes.

“Carly,” the assailant replied. “My name’s Evan.”

“You shot me,” Carly said. It was disconcerting how calmly she said it. That she said it as though observing weather. Could she even feel pain, or fear?

“I did,” Evan replied. “Because you were going to shoot me.”

Evan inspected the ruined shoulder, which was bleeding heavily. Muscle and bone was exposed. Carly had been manufactured, vat-grown, genetically-engineered, but her creators had only taken the original blueprints first made by God and made their own modifications. She was fashioned of flesh and blood, but the distinction did not matter. The noocytes in a shot of Nanocea could heal her, her skin would scab over and scar, but her mind was machine, and that was what made her non-human.

And yet, she still felt a pang of guilt – even though Carly showed no outward sign of pain, some nerve signal, somewhere, must be screaming at her, from behind all the biochips they had injected into her head while still embryonic. Carly had every intention of killing her if she was able to use her weapon, but that was not her intention, it was Cerpin’s, and she was merely following instructions that had been fed into her head long ago.

Carly tried to grab for her weapon and Evan pressed the gun more firmly to her head.

“Tell me where I am,” she said. “Or I’ll pull the trigger.”

“You can’t frighten me,” Carly replied, coldly. “I do not fear death.”

Bullshit. There’s some reptilian part of you that wants to live.”

“Is that what prevents you from destroying me?” Carly asked. She was breathing heavily. The blood loss from her shoulder was killing her, yet she regarded it as no greater a nuisance than a paper cut. “Why do you…hate us, Lieutenant Fleuri?”

“Answer the goddamned question,” Evan snapped. “I want to find that bastard.”

“I wish I knew what empathy was like,” Carly said. “I see it in your eyes, Lieutenant Fleuri. You feel sorry for me. What is that like?”

Tell me where I am!

“There is something familiar about you…I see your face in Mister Cerpin’s memories, yes, but…there is something else. Something new.”

“You’re dying,” Evan said.

Carly smiled her disconcerting android smile.

So are you,” she said.

Evan’s face twisted.

Shut up,” she said, with some force.

“Hmm,” Carly murmured, thoughtfully. “You know, that’s quite…I don’t know…sad, I suppose.” She bowed her head. “Hmm…perhaps that is how empathy feels.”

“I said shut up.”

Carly inhaled and exhaled raggedly. “You wanted to know where you are?”

“Yes.”

“You are close to the anti-gravity dancefloor and the lounge.”

“Where’s Cerpin?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

“Then do it, Lieutenant Fleuri.”

There was a long pause.

Empathy,” Carly whispered.

She slumped on to her side, and died.

Evan was shaking. She had not taken a life in many years.

For God’s sake, she was an android, barely a “life” to begin with, but her death had looked so damn human.

Evan felt sick. She gasped out a strangled sob.

She shook her head, stiffened up, straightening her back.

She looted Carly’s corpse for her gun, holstering the handgun. She strapped the gun around her shoulder. It was still sticky with blood.

For a moment, she considered closing Carly’s eyes.

You’re going soft, Lieutenant Fleuri, the dumb face seemed to say.

No, she thought. Don’t let them make you feel for them.

She left the room without another word.

*

Vin Dolby’s agonised face haunted Evan as she walked in lonely corridors. She was a woman of war, but she’d got out of the habit as of late. The ruthless swiftness with which he had been dispatched at Cerpin’s behest had sickened her, and more than once while crawling the ventilation system, she had needed to stop to avoid retching.

One second, there had been a being called Vin Dolby, the next a broken bag of flesh, emptied of anything resembling personhood. She hadn’t liked Vin from the moment they’d met, but he hadn’t deserved to die for his foolishness.

Abandoned in the garden, her silent despair had given way to an unbridled rage, and she had found a way to break back in. It had taken her quite some time to get back into the building, and she noticed now that it was deathly quiet – not unusual in the corridors between guest areas, but there was no chatter behind the doors.

The massacre had been over in minutes.

As far as she knew, it was only the zombies now.

She reached a corner, placed her back flat against the wall and peered around the corner. She counted two bioandroids near the lounge door. One had her back to her, the other would see her. They were looking for survivors.

You’ve found one, you soulless bitches.

Evan primed the looted personal defence weapon to fire, placing the butt-plate against her shoulder, jumped out and sprayed the corridor with bullets. The gun made a sound like BRRRT-POOM. The android with her back to Evan took multiple shots to the back and immediately collapsed in a gasping heap, and Evan leapt back under cover. The other was coming for her.

She checked the magazine, which lay horizontally along the top of the gun’s barrel, and was able to hold up to fifty rounds. There were still quite a few shots left, but her opponent would be armed with the same gun.

Her opponent, with superhuman speed, leapt into the corridor. Evan wasted no time in pulling the trigger.

BRRT-CHING

Fuck!” Evan shouted. A jam. She fumbled for her handgun.

The android was now upon her. The android went to fire. Evan collapsed to the ground.

Silence fell in the corridor.

The android lowered her weapon and inspected Evan, lying face-down on the carpet, for a few moments.

A moment later, her ankle exploded, and she fell to the ground.

Evan had shot her in the leg with the handgun.

Technically, Evan thought, perfidy is a war crime, but these aren’t human combatants.

Evan ejected the magazine from her gun. The android lay twitching on the ground, trying to right herself, trying to kill her. The ergonomic design allowed Evan to remove the jam, and, not one to waste ammunition, she reinserted it into the magazine.

Evan shot the android several more times, to ensure she would stay down.

The android stopped moving.

Momentarily, Evan felt disgusted with herself.

    They’re just machines, she reminded herself. They don’t feel the way we do.

She proceeded down the corridor to the lounge. The android she had shot in the back had also stopped moving, and was laying in a puddle of her own blood.

She tried the lounge door. It was locked, or perhaps barricaded, from the inside. She knocked.

There came no answer.

There was only one thing for it.

Steadying herself against the opposite wall, Evan launched herself at the door with her shoulder, and it crashed open, wood splintering and metal shrieking as she knocked a leather sofa flying.

“Oh, God, don’t shoot!” shouted a familiar voice.

“It’s me,” Evan called, rubbing her shoulder. “Evan Fleuri.”

A head popped out from behind a sofa. It was Portia Fumagalli, clutching her pet lizard. She had barricaded herself inside the lounge.

“Oh God, Evan,” Portia said. “Where have you been? I thought you were just talking crazy, but not long after you left, I was making my way back to the dancefloor and I saw – I saw – oh God, Evan. I saw someone die.”

“That makes two of us,” Evan said. “Vin Dolby is dead.”

Everyone’s dead,” Portia said. “They just kept shooting…all I could hear was shooting and screaming and then silence…I barricaded myself in here and I think they were getting ready to come find me…but I don’t understand, why would they want me dead…just because I knew Michael Morkov?”

Evan walked over to Portia and crouched beside her.

“Michael Morkov is Cerpin,” she said.

Portia’s face fell. “Oh my God…”

“This whole party – his whole identity, really – was a ruse. He invited people here for the express purpose of killing them.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” Evan said. “When he was talking to Dolby…Dolby said something about violent tendencies. I think…I think he’s always been like this, Portia. I’m gonna find him and confront him myself.”

“I want to go home,” Portia said. “Oh, Christ Jeezus, Evan, I saw someone die today.”

Evan, seeing nothing better she could do, wrapped her arms around Portia.

“I’ll try and get you out of here, Portia.”

Please,” Portia said.

Evan stood and held out a hand to her.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s—”

There was a sudden jolt that shivered through the entire place and Evan was knocked off her feet.

“Oh God, what the hell’s goin’ on now?!” Portia shrieked.

Evan wobbled uneasily, steadying herself against the sofa.

“The house is moving,” she said.

She remembered. The binder on Cerpin’s desk. There was a map, a map of Venus, with Xs on it. But what were they designating? What was over Fortuna Tessera?

She helped Portia to her feet.

“Okay,” Evan said. “No time to waste.”

“Where are we goin’?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.”

*

A soft vibration could be heard through all the walls of the house. Some form of propulsion.

They had passed the nightclub room on their way out of the lounge, and the door was slightly ajar. It was silent, not even music had been playing. There must have been a couple of hundred people in there when she had escaped from Cerpin with Portia. She had not taken the time to count the bodies, and had warned Portia not to look. They were all dead. Every one of them. Even the bartender, who had been crumpled like a piece of old paper, laying over the bar.

“Stay behind me,” Evan said.

“Okay,” Portia replied.

They reached another corridor wall, and Evan instructed Portia to stand with her back flat against the wall, and she had responded in kind.

Evan checked down the corridor.

“Coast is clear,” she said. “But keep your ears out and your eyes peeled. Got it?”

“Right,” Portia said. “D…did you do a lot of this in the war, Evan?”

“Yeah,” Evan replied. “I had hoped that by war’s end I’d never have to do it again, but life doesn’t always shake out that way.”

“I’ve never killed anybody,” Portia said. There was something resembling awe in her voice.

“I don’t recommend starting now,” Evan said.

They proceeded down the corridor.

“What are we lookin’ for, anyhow?” Portia asked.

“The control room,” Evan said.

“This place is huge. You’re never gonna find it.”

“Watch me,” Evan said, smiling.

“How are you even gonna get in?”

Evan reached into her dress and pulled out a keycard.

“Whoa, how’d you snag one of those?” Portia asked.

“It’s real easy to fool an android,” Evan said. She placed an ear against a wall.

“Humming,” she said. She slid down the wall. “It gets louder the further down you go.”

“So?”

“So there’s a lot of energy running from below. Probably multiple reactors. The control room won’t be far from the reactors.”

“Don’t you reckon the control room is gonna be fulla androids?” Portia asked, anxiously.

“Reckon? I’m counting on it,” Evan said.

“Well, I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“They didn’t make me a Lieutenant for nothing,” Evan said.

*

Evan led Portia into a stairway through a door marked “KEEP OUT”. The stairway was made of metal, and unpleasantly hot – not enough to burn, but almost unbearably humid.

“Waste heat,” Evan remarked. “Some of it must be vented passively through this stairwell. We’re close to the reactors now.”

“I hope we get out of here soon,” Portia said, fanning herself. Giovanni, her lizard, appeared to quite enjoy the temperature, being a cold-blooded creature suited to more tropical climates.

“Now I see why those androids walk around naked,” Evan said. “I might follow their lead in a second.”

Portia laughed. “You’re crazy enough carrying a gun around with that dress.”

“The worst part is that this is a rental,” Evan said.

“I’ll cut you a deal: If I get outta here alive, I’ll refund your deposit.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

For a moment they both forgot what sort of situation they were in and laughed. Evan, being ex-military, often found herself marvelling at how people could find levity in the most stressful situations.

They descended the stairwell, passing doors that looked bleaker and more foreboding as they went down, labelled with stencilled-on numbers and signs punched with letters.

Evan inserted her keycard into the lock and withdrew it. The door clicked and the lock opened.

“After you,” Portia said.

Evan pushed down on the handle and they entered a turbine room, and the source of the loud humming. Each one was generating enough gigawatts to power the passive gravitational repulsor system and serve the electrical needs of the house itself, with change. That change was being used to power a propulsion system that was slowly but steadily moving the house somewhere.

“You are not permitted in this area,” a voice said from Evan’s right.

“Cover your ears,” Evan said.

Portia did so, just in time for Evan to fire at the android aiming her gun at them. The android fell.

Portia looked, then covered her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she said. “She’s bleeding.

“They grow androids in vats,” Evan said. “Artificial wombs, to be more accurate. Their bodies are human, their brains aren’t.”

Portia staggered backwards.

“I feel sick,” she said.

Evan looked at her sympathetically. Portia was a sheltered rich girl. She’d never seen war, not really. The Insurrection had been something that happened on the news, and the worst of it had been edited out.

“Don’t think about it,” Evan said. “Come on.”

“Shouldn’t we help her?”

“Portia, she’s not a person, alright? She’s a computer in a human body.”

“I don’t feel right just leaving her…”

“She wouldn’t do the same for you.”

“Well, neither would Giovanni, but I still care about him!” Portia exclaimed.

“There’s nothing we can do for her,” Evan said. “Move, come on.”

Portia hesitated, then followed.

As they rounded the corner, another android spotted them, and Evan shot her, too. Portia continued moving, not looking down.

“Up ahead,” Evan said.

There was a stairwell leading up to a room filled with panels and computing equipment. It was likely meant to be used to maintain the energy generation for the repulsion system, but Evan was willing to bet that it was also where the propulsion system – and more importantly, the target for the propulsion system – was managed.

They ran up the stairs.

“Shit,” Evan said.

The control room could not be opened using a keycard. It relied on biometrics, specifically placing her hand against the lock system.

“Is there no other way in?” Portia asked.

“I could shoot the lock,” Evan said. “But that’ll probably trigger a failsafe, and if the bullet bounces off and hits one of us…”

“Put your hand against it,” Portia said.

“It won’t recognise me.”

“You don’t know until you try.”

“It might set off an alarm.”

“Do it, quickly, we’re sitting ducks on this stairwell.”

Seeing no other option, Evan placed her hand against the biometric lock.

The door clicked and came open.

“You know, you’re pretty useful,” Evan said.

Portia blushed.

Evan pushed down on the handle and the door came open.

The room was full of corpses.

Men in jumpsuits and light-blue hard-hats, dispatched neatly, cleanly, just as Vin Dolby had been. Even Cerpin’s own employees had been unaware of his plans, it seemed, and when the androids had broken in, the maintenance workers had been no match for them. There were, however, no androids to be seen.

“Coast is clear,” Evan said. Portia followed her in, and covered her mouth at the sight of the carnage.

Jeezus,” she said.

Evan walked around the room, keeping the gun ready.

There was a transceiver that had been smashed. Propulsion systems on skycolonies were not unheard of, but propulsion required a flight path to be designated to avoid collisions. Evan was willing to bet that no such flight path had been issued, and by the time the federal government got a whiff that anything was wrong, whatever Cerpin was planning would already have come to pass.

There were also flickering screens showing data that she couldn’t read, mostly, except for one screen, inconspicuous, in the corner of the room, next to a table with a holographic radar-projection system.

“Bingo,” Evan said, looking at the screen, which had a few simple coordinate readouts, logging course-corrections as the house’s guidance computer navigated harsh Cytherean winds.

The radar-projection showed the house, which was moving quite slowly, but surely, towards a cluster of skycolonies to the southwest. She kneeled down to get a closer look at it. A moment later, she realised what it was depicting.

The invention of Nanocea had been a wonderful thing for the Terran Federal Republic. It could extend life considerably. It was not unheard of for people to live into their hundred-and-sixties. But, as with all thermodynamic processes, eventually the entropy became too great for even a trillion tiny intervenors to fix. As people became too old to work, it had been decided that the most humane thing was to allow the elderly to live out their remaining days in a manufactured world pumped into their heads through squidcaps, where they might mentally live centuries before finally entering the long sleep that awaited all people. And what better place to let them dream than Venus, a planet where there was nothing in the real world to see?

Suicenica was one such “retirement colony”, as they were euphemistically called.

Cerpin’s house was on a crash-course with it. But why would Cerpin want to crash his house into—

Oh God.

“His parents…” Evan said. “He’s going to kill his—”

Evan looked up from the table. An android had her arm around Portia’s neck, muffling her screams, and was pointing a gun at her head.

“Lieutenant Fleuri, Portia Fumagalli,” the android said. “You are not permitted in this area.”

“Let her go,” Evan said, readying the personal defence weapon.

“We have been instructed to eliminate all guests,” the android replied.

“She’s unarmed,” Evan said, gesturing with her head to the gun. “Kill me first. I present a more clear threat.”

The android considered it a few moments.

“Of course,” the android said.

She relinquished her hold on Portia and ran towards Evan.

Evan fired.

She missed.

The android was upon her now, pointing the gun at her.

“Evan!” Portia shouted.

Evan pulled the trigger just in time to notice that the magazine had been emptied of ammunition.

The android was pulling the trigger.

The android was falling.

Evan had crouched, then launched herself at the android’s legs, tackling her to the ground. The android’s handgun went off uselessly, the bullet bouncing off the ceiling. As she got the android to the floor, Evan quickly grabbed the empty gun and bludgeoned the android across the head.

The android did not scream or cry out, but she continued to grasp for Evan’s neck.

Evan proceeded to smash the android’s skull with the butt of the gun, again and again and again. The android’s limbs twitched and twisted beneath Evan, grasping at her dress, and then flopped to the ground.

The android’s head was a mess of blood, hair, cartilage and teeth.

Evan looked up, panting savagely.

Portia had covered her mouth and turned away. She fell to her knees, retching.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Evan said. Her heart was beating hard in her breast. Soaked in blood, she pushed herself away from the dead thing beneath her, and steadied herself against a control panel, standing to her full height.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Portia whispered. “Get me out of here, Evan.”

Evan quickly moved over to a control panel. It did not respond to her inputs.

    Shit.

“Portia?” she asked. “Listen, I know this is the last thing you want to be doing right now, but help me move her.”

Portia did not respond.

“Portia?”

“No,” Portia replied.

“Portia, access to the control panel is linked to biometrics. We got lucky the first time, but it looks like we’ll need one of the androids’ biometrics.”

“I can’t,” Portia said. “I can’t look at her. I can’t think. I just want to get out of here, Evan.”

“We will,” Evan said. “But you’ve got to help me move her, or a lot of people are going to die.”

“A lot of people already have,” Portia protested.

“Portia, please,” Evan said.

Portia wiped her eyes.

“Okay,” she said.

Quickly, they picked the android’s broken body up, and placed her hands, which were stiffening and becoming cold, on the control panel.

Evan pressed a few buttons, changing Big Time’s course to move southeast and then halt.

The screen flashed green, then red.

DEAD HAND OVERRIDE ACTIVE

Evan looked at the message and her brows knitted.

“God damn it,” she breathed.

“What’s that mean?” Portia asked.

“It means that as long as Cerpin lives, we’re still on a collision course for Suicenica.”

There was a long pause.

“How long do you give us?” Portia asked, anxiously.

“Two hours, if we’re lucky,” Evan said. “But frankly, an hour is all I need.”

*

“Where are we goin’?” Portia asked.

“The main ballroom,” Evan said.

“Why are we headed there?”

“Because I’m sure Cerpin will be there. It’s the first room he wanted us to see. He must be proud of it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Portia said. “I want to get out of here.”

The corridors were eerily empty. There were no androids to be seen, and Evan was certain at least some of them should be on patrol. She had a sick feeling in her stomach. She didn’t like this, not at all.

“How far are we from the ballroom?” Portia asked.

“I’m trying to remember how I got from the main ballroom to the dancefloor area,” Evan said. “This place makes no sense.”

“Every hallway in this place is so different,” Portia remarked, looking at trinkets on the walls. “It’s so different that it’s all the same.”

“If there’s one thing to be said for Cerpin, it’s that he has no taste.”

Portia laughed at that.

“He was an asshole,” Portia said. “That’s why me and him broke up, you know.”

“Tell me about it,” Evan said.

“You dated Michael Morkov?” Portia asked.

Evan suddenly realised that she’d never divulged that information to Portia.

“Yeah,” Evan said. “After you, it sounds like. Back during the Insurrection. We broke up before he ‘died’.”

“And before you ‘died’?”

Evan stopped. “Yeah,” she said.

There was an awkward silence.

“You’ve seen a lot of that stuff,” Portia said. “Death and blood and stuff. I’m not used to it. I should never have come to this stupid party.”

“It’s not your fault,” Evan said. “Nobody knew that Cerpin was planning this.”

“Yeah,” Portia said. “I guess it’s just…things haven’t felt the same since then, you know? Everything’s different now. People aren’t so friendly any more.”

“The Insurrection changed a lot of things. Mars hasn’t felt the same since…well, I guess you wouldn’t know.”

“What?”

There was another awkward silence.

“Olympus City,” Evan said. She breathed the words out like they were tobacco smoke.

“I heard that it blew up,” Portia said. “A bomb factory exploded, right?”

Evan sighed. “Sure,” she said. “A bomb factory.”

“What, it wasn’t a bomb factory?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Evan said. “They dropped a command module on it. Nine million lives gone, just like that.”

“I never heard about no command module.”

“They kept it from you.”

“Who did?” Portia asked.

“The commentariat class,” Evan said, borrowing the terminology from her days in the Martian Socialist League at university.

Portia stopped walking for a moment.

“Evan,” she asked, quite sincerely. “Did you…know anyone in Olympus City?”

Evan stopped, too.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I had friends who lived there. Some of them weren’t in the city when it went. Some of them were. I guess I’m lucky I wasn’t there to see it all go down in real time. When I woke up after the crash, it was old news. But I never lived there. I’m from the French enclaves. I don’t know how well you know Martian geography.”

“A little,” Portia said.

“Hmm,” Evan intoned. “The French enclaves are out in Noachis, east of the Argyrian Basin, a way west of the Hellas Basin. It’s beautiful there. Peaceful. Lots of rice paddies and water purification operations. Some fisheries. We speak French there, mostly, and Spranto to the other enclaves.”

“Your English is good.”

Merci beaucoup,” Evan said. She recalled the conversation she’d had with Vin Dolby in the skyport. Her expression darkened.

They continued walking along the hallway. It was eerily quiet. A citadel of the dead. Evan wondered if Cerpin had simply left, abandoned the place. But no, that wasn’t him. And besides, the dead hand technology needed to keep his plans on track all but required him to be within reasonable radio distance. He had to be nearby.

What worried her, though, was that none of the androids had come after them, all the while they had been chatting away between each other in the hallways. She had abandoned the personal defence weapon, and all she had left was the sidearm for protection. She checked behind and in front of them, and every time they reached a turning, she insisted that Portia stay behind while she checked around corners.

Alas, nobody came.

They reached a final turning, and a long corridor leading to a large, familiar-looking wooden door.

“That’s it,” Evan said. “That’s the ballroom.”

“Do you think he’s waiting in there for us?”

“I’m positive.”

Portia nodded.

“Evan, if we don’t get out of this alive…I just want you to know that I’m glad I got to know you.”

“And the same to you,” Evan said. “But I’m gonna get you out of here, Portia.”

“I sure hope you do.”

Portia’s nails were painted bright pink, and she offered her hand to Evan, who took it. They walked together down the long hallway, the large wooden doors getting closer and closer. Behind that door was destiny, or death, or, Evan supposed, both. The doorways were almost upon them now.

“Are you ready?” Evan asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Portia replied.

They reached the doors and stopped.

“Okay,” Evan said. “On my count.”

She placed her hand against the door.

“One.”

She prepared her weapon.

“Two.”

She readied herself to fight her way in.

“Three.”

KRAK

Evan did not move.

But Portia did.

She fell to the ground.

PORTIA!” Evan shrieked.

There was a hole in Portia’s head.

Giovanni leapt from the shoulder of his former mistress and ran away.

Evan turned, and there was a small remote drone. It had a screen on the front displaying a yellow smiley-face, and a small, formerly-concealed weapon protruded from its undercarriage. It was similar to the drone that had led her to the dressing rooms, perhaps even the same one. A voice came through a tinny speaker affixed to it.

“I must apologise,” Cerpin said. “But I’d rather face you one-on-one, Evan. Two against one just isn’t fair.”

“You fucking bastard, you bastard,” Evan said, kneeling over the body, despairing. “I was going to help her. I was going to save her, save her.”

“I’m not here to be nice,” Cerpin said. “I’m here to finish everything.”

“Then kill me, you coward.”

The drone remained silent for a few moments. Only the faint whirring of its rotors could be heard.

“That would be far too easy,” Cerpin replied. He laughed hideously.

Evan shot the drone.

Once again, she was alone, but for a corpse.

She looked down at Portia. Or rather, the thing that had once been Portia.

The eyes were filled with permanent shock. Evan simply kneeled and closed them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

*

Evan crashed into the ballroom. Cerpin was dancing among corpses, splashing in congealing blood as though it were rainwater, wearing the rumba shirt and shaking maracas. The ballroom was filled with the sound of music. The floor was slick with blood.

She pointed the handgun at him, noticing too late that standing in a circle around him were androids, all of whom were armed with the same personal defence weapons. They raised their guns at her. Evan put her hands up.

Cerpin waved his hands.

“Hold your fire,” he said, to the androids. None of them moved, but their fingers moved away from the triggers.

He smiled at her. The band continued playing.

“So, Evandra,” he said. “You’ve finally found me.”

“I had a feeling this is where you’d be hiding,” Evan said.

Cerpin walked up to her, stepping over bodies, and removed the gun from her hand.

“Lovely guns, aren’t they?” he said, turning it over in his hands. “I had them manufactured under a false name. It cost a bit of money to have them stashed around Big Time. Of course, every construction worker unfortunate enough to know the whereabouts of those caches is now dead.”

“You killed Portia,” Evan said. “And Vin. And everyone else, but you left me alive.”

“Yes,” Cerpin said. “Because of all the people that came to this party, you are the one that I most wanted to kill personally.”

“Why, Cerpin?”

For a moment, Cerpin’s affable façade fell, and it revealed what hid underneath. Anger was not a word big enough for what travelled across Cerpin’s face, nor rage, nor fury. But it was hostile, whatever it was that hid behind those amber eyes, and from behind his face, it was screaming at her wordlessly, gnashing its teeth.

Why?” Cerpin hissed. “You ask me why?”

He took the gun and fired it. Evan flinched. The bullet whistled past Evan’s head and smacked into the wooden floor, splintering it.

“As long as I can remember…” Cerpin said, almost whispering, and paused, as if trying to find the words. “As long as I can remember, I’ve hated being alive…I suppose I can’t truly explain it, not really. I had a good childhood. A happy upbringing. My parents both loved me. I was happy at school. I made a lot of friends. But there was always this…I don’t know…this feeling…this feeling that I shouldn’t have been born. That God made a mistake when he put this soul in this body…I didn’t start showing it until I was a teenager, but I had all this…hatred in me. Hatred for…for life, in general. That’s why my parents sent me to Doctor Dolby.”

“The man you killed,” Evan reminded him.

“The man was a fraud,” Cerpin spat. “Selling patients little bottles of happiness-pills that were meant to cure them of their psychological ailments, using special preparations of Nanocea to try and rewire the brain, using various therapies. But whatever I have is something he couldn’t cure. I suppose it’s because he came at it from the perspective that I am insane. But I’m not insane. I know I’m not. I’m very, very sane. And I have arrived at my current position through the rigorous application of logic.”

Evan looked around at the corpses laying on the floor, laying in crumpled heaps, bent double over the bar, or hanging off of the arms of chairs.

“Sanity?” she said. “You call this sanity?”

“I call it art!” Cerpin shouted, exploding into a fit of laughter. “The ultimate in self-expression! Don’t you see, Evan? It never was about the money. I don’t care how much I’m worth. The wealth was only ever a means to an end, and this – this is my moment of self-actualisation! This is…this is who I really am. Michael Morkov never existed. Just me. Just Cerpin. Vengeance…with an ego. That’s me.”

“Vengeance for what?” Evan asked.

“For EVERYTHING!” Cerpin roared. “For every hurt, every disagreement, every little moment of suffering that has accumulated since I left the womb. Vengeance for…for existing, Evan. For being born.” He gestured to the bodies around them. “Every one of these people has done something to hurt me, to cause me to suffer, and in turn, I have made them suffer.”

Evan looked around the room, and her eyes fell upon a face that was familiar. It was Solomon Ntumba, killed while drinking at the bar.

“Ntumba?” she said, swallowing bile. “What did he do to you?”

Cerpin followed her line of sight.

“Ntumba has beaten me innumerable times at poker. It was getting on my nerves.”

“And Portia?”

“She broke my heart.”

“And me?”

“Much the same as Portia,” Cerpin said.

He went around the room, pointing to bodies.

“That man bought a spacecraft I wanted at auction. That woman had an annoying laugh. That woman gave my autobiography a bad review. That person there just has awful taste in home décor.”

“And that, to you, is justification for murder?” Evan said, disgusted.

Cerpin responded by bursting into another fit of laughter.

“Has any man ever achieved such a thing? To destroy all that ever made him miserable, to finally liberate himself from the hell that is interacting with…with fucking people?”

He stopped himself. Cerpin almost never used profanity, and he seemed surprised that the word had left his mouth.

“So you killed Portia because she broke up with you, and you’re going to do the same to me.”

“Yes,” Cerpin said. “And then I will crash this house into Suicenica, where my dear mama i papa are living out their remaining days, and immolate myself with them, finally completing the cycle. At the moment of my actualisation will come my destruction, and at last, I can know peace. Oh, it shall be so wonderful. Do you know how much radioactive material is contained in this house, Evan? The fallout will be equivalent to a mega-Chernobyl.”

“On a planet that is already uninhabitable,” Evan said.

“A radioactive cloud and a shining column of ionised air, that will stand as testament to my nirvana for ten thousand years hence.”

“Then I’ll stop you,” Evan said.

Cerpin laughed, loudly, and gestured. The androids, too, began to laugh – stilted, eerie laughs that sounded almost recorded, their faces contorted in grimaces of hilarity, and then, just as quickly, snapped back to emotionlessness.

Cerpin handed her the gun back. This would have been a stupid move, was Evan not aware of the message he was trying to send: Try it, I dare you.

She was willing to take that dare.

Her finger slipped on to the trigger.

“Just one small thing, before you shoot me,” Cerpin said. He held up one of the objects he had been holding in his other hand. “This…is not a maraca.”

He pulled and then threw it by its handle, and Evan realised quickly what it was, and by the time she had, Cerpin had already made a dash for one of the exits.

There was an explosion, and the wall of the ballroom through which Cerpin had disposed of his couch as a party trick was blown wide open. High wind filled the room as a result of the acceleration, and to make things worse, they had steered right into a pressure system. Outside, lightning crackled.

Evan whipped her head to see that Cerpin was gone, followed by one of the androids. Caitlin.

An android was dashing towards her. Evan shot the android in the abdomen before she could pull the trigger on her own weapon. The android fell towards her, and Evan grabbed the gun, using the strap to swing her in front of another android that was opening fire. The android in front of her took multiple shots to the back. Evan took hold of the gun, still wrapped around the dead android, pointed it at her assailant and fired. The assailant’s chest exploded. She tore the gun from the first android’s back, holstering the sidearm. She counted five more.

She wondered, do they grieve their dead? Do they feel camraderie, like we did as we tried to survive the Killing Fields of Plato, the Bombardment of Elysium, the Burning of Argyre? Do they see their comrades die and feel rage, or are they simply following instructions? Was she simply following instructions, when she had gone through all that? No. She had been fighting for a cause, a just cause, and these automatons were just toy soldiers. Not real soldiers. They knew how to shoot a gun from birth, they knew how to fight from birth, they were strong – but they weren’t soldiers. Just networks of instructions coded into a brain. That was what separated her from them.

Another android came at her then, and with her newly acquired weapon, Evan caught her between the eyes. Another decided to try a different tactic, leaping impressively and punching her to the ground. The wind roared through the opened aperture in the wall. Evan’s head was spinning. She tried to raise her weapon but her brain wasn’t communicating well with her arms.

Get up damn you get up—

Throw her through the hole,” said one of the androids to the others, emotionlessly. “Then we will join Mister Cerpin and Caitlin.”

“I agree,” replied another, equally devoid of inflection.

She felt sick, her head was swimming as though the air had become viscous syrup. Her eyes were unfocused. Her cerebrum had been rattled around in its brain case. She felt someone remove the gun from her shoulders. She needed to move. She could see them, beautiful nudes like Botticelli figures, long curls of blonde vat-grown hair tickling her, and eternal twilight outside getting closer – what was that smell? They had her arms and legs, she had to move, but something was telling her to just sleep, she’d fought long enough.

Then her eyes focused again, and slumped against the bar, she saw the terrified eyes of Solomon Ntumba, killed in his prime, and she recalled the look of shock in Portia’s eyes, and the bleeding, distorted face of dead Dolby…she recalled waking up to find the war’s end had passed her by while she had been gone, and she recalled the first death of Michael Morkov, the man reborn as Cerpin le Fou. It was a chain, a great chain, and it had all led to this moment.

The androids had her by the hole now. Soon she would be one of those who knew what it was to die to Venus, to feel every atom of your being smashed into nothing and burned out of you, until not even a soul remained; nothing, she thought, escaped it, like the event horizon of a black hole, a place where even demons fear to tread…

“Throw her,” one of the angelic computer-girls said.

They came close.

But in that same instant, Evan’s awareness snapped back into place, and one of the androids suddenly found herself flying backwards. Evan broke free of their grip and uneasily stood up, still swaying, still nauseated. Her head ached and she could feel snot, or maybe blood, dripping from her nose. What a picture I must be, she thought.

“Impossible,” said one of the androids. “You have a concussion. You are not able to stand.”

“Yet I stand anyway,” Evan said.

“She is weakened,” said another android. “Hit her again.”

But this time, Evan was ready. Deholstering the sidearm, she shot the android that gave the order to kill her, leaving four to go.

One of them leapt at her and Evan was able to clumsily dodge her. The android went tumbling base-over-apex, landing badly on her arm. Evan thought that she had probably broken a few bones. But no time to think about that, there were still three to go.

Two of them went for her arms. She shot one in the heart, and hit the other with the grip of the handgun, and they both went down. The third just tried the easier solution of shooting at her, to which Evan responded in kind, hitting her in the neck.

The pistol-whipped android tried to get up and crawl over to her, but she caught a bullet to the scalp. Now there was only one left.

The android with the broken arm stood, and began a suicide-run. Evan could see the thinking: If the android caught Evan using her working arm, she could drag Evan with her through the hole, and then they would both go to Hell together. Evan ran towards the hole, a lunatic move the android could not have anticipated, and then slid her legs out parallel to the opening.

As though in slow-motion, the android tripped over her legs and fell through the hole, somersaulting. There were no screams, there was no mortal cry. Just silence, as she fell below the clouds.

Evan stood, breathing for a few moments. Alone, once more, but for corpses. After the explosion, she realised, even the automaton band had fallen silent, and were now permanently frozen, waiting for instructions that would never again come.

She was getting tired of this routine. The light fresh blood of the androids commingled with the dark red, congealed blood of the guests.

No more, she thought. No more.

Her head still spinning, she followed after Cerpin, stumbling through bodies and blood.

*

The room full of cathode-ray tubes flickered, and the static on the screens was like a million ants crawling over each other. Every one of the televisions looked in vain for an analogue broadcast signal that would never come. Ultimately, the televisions were the height of excess because of their uselessness; nobody had any use for such devices any more, and it was Cerpin’s ability to spend so wastefully that made them showpieces.

What had once been charming was now disgusting, and Evan was no longer here to be charmed.

She reached the door at the end of the room, pushed it open, stepped through it, and immediately felt the same nauseating shift in gravity, made all the more dizzying by her rattled brain. She steadied herself for a few moments, thankful that she had abandoned the high heels.

She looked up the staircase, and above her, she saw four people: Two Cerpins, two Caitlins. For a moment she thought there might be decoys, but then she realised that she had double vision, and one of her eyes was not cooperating. She rubbed her eyes, and saw Cerpin grinning down at her from a vertical landing.

“So nice of you to join us, Evan,” Cerpin said. He had removed the rumba shirt, was back in the white suit. “I knew you’d make short work of those androids. I have, after all, seen you in battle. It’s a terrible waste of money, of course, but I suppose that’s just how I do things.”

“No more talking,” Evan said. She had forced herself to close one eye to lessen the double vision, but now her depth perception was off, and that was especially dangerous in a room like this, where gravity did not behave as the human brain had evolved to assume it did for millions of years.

“You’re slurring your words,” Cerpin said. “One of them must have hit you quite hard in the head.”

Evan deholstered her sidearm once more, and it was then that she realised that in her haze, she hadn’t thought to bring one of the more powerful machine guns with her.

No matter. A gun is a gun is a gun.

She pointed the gun at him and fired, multiple times. She lost count of how many times she fired. She wanted to be sure he was dead.

The bullets travelled forwards, and then from her perspective veered off to the left of her.

“I think you’re forgetting something,” Cerpin said. “The gravity in this room changes from staircase to staircase. A bullet travelling towards me will be caught in the gravity field of the staircase to my right. It’s a protection field that uses a force…if only there were a word for that.”

Force field,” Caitlin said, matter-of-factly.

Cerpin laughed, putting an arm around Caitlin, twirling some of her hair around his gloved fingers.

“Yes, Caitlin, very good,” he said.

Evan was done playing games. She ran up the stairs after Cerpin, but he was already running away from her, “down” the stairs (which was “up”, from Evan’s perspective) towards his miniature warp-gate. He turned at the top of the staircase.

“You may have beaten the others, Evandra,” he said, grinning wickedly, “But I think you’ll find that Caitlin is a little bit different.”

At that, he disappeared into the warp-gate. To her left, she saw him reappear on the other side of the room, and run “down” (which was “up”) the stairs towards the spaceship docking bay.

The garden. He’s heading for the garden.

Evan holstered the gun. She needed Caitlin alive.

Caitlin flexed her muscles. They were like those of a professional athlete. Cerpin had been right, Caitlin was the strongest of the androids. He had probably paid extra fees for the careful eugenics needed to genetically encode that natural muscle tone into her body.

Caitlin threw a punch, which Evan dodged, then a kick, which Evan caught. Evan twisted the leg, and Caitlin lost balance, and they tumbled together “down” the of stairs leading to the warp-gate. The room was rotating. Every synapse in Evan’s brain was screaming at her to just lay down and die, but she refused to give up. Not as long as she could see Portia’s face seared into her bruised brain.

Evan stood, struggling to maintain balance, and put her fists up.

“Come on,” she said. “Hit me.”

“You first,” Caitlin said.

“You have a better chance of getting rid of me if you hit me now.”

“If you swing at me now, I will break your arm,” Caitlin said.

“He really likes you, doesn’t he?” Evan said. “How long ago were you manufactured, Caitlin?”

“Five years,” Caitlin said.

“So you have five years left,” Evan replied.

“I do not fear death.”

“Then you’re a pale imitation of life,” Evan spat. “You’re not a person, just a thing, just a thing pretending to be a person. A husk, puppeteered by software.”

“That distinction bothers you more than it bothers me, Lieutenant Fleuri.”

“Maybe so, but it makes me feel less bad about doing this.”

Evan delivered a kick to Caitlin’s solar plexus, and she bent double, wheezing.

“Do you feel that?” Evan asked. “That’s called pain.”

“I…feel…nothing…” Caitlin wheezed, though it was clear that she was winded and her diaphragm was in spasm. Maybe broken ribs.

Caitlin nevertheless used whatever remaining stamina she had to tackle Evan, and they rolled together down the stairs, disappearing through the warp-gate…

The information contained in every atom in their bodies was frozen in time, and then moved through wormholes smaller than quarks. When she reappeared at the other end, though she had technically been “dead” for a few moments, Evan experienced no lapse in consciousness, just as a dead person does not know that they are dead.

Once again gravity had shifted and Evan fell on to her back, trying to get her bearings before Caitlin came at her again, but come at her Caitlin did, and she had little time to grow acclimated before she was forced to kick Caitlin once again, and she was sent reeling. An average person would have collapsed by now, but Caitlin was far from average, and, at least for Evan, not a person either.

Nevertheless, Evan saw an attack of opportunity and lunged at her, clasping a hand around Caitlin’s throat.

“No more bullshit,” she said. “Give up.”

Caitlin reached up, scrabbling with her fingers, and tried to pry Evan’s fingers away.

“Why…why won’t you die…?” she gasped.

“Because I’m a soldier, and you’re a robot,” Evan spat. “If I let go of your throat, do you promise to be good?”

Caitlin looked at her. If she had been human, her facial expression would have been one of hatred, but she instead looked utterly bored, which was likely the closest thing she could manage to expressing contempt. Finally, she relented, nodding.

Evan let go, and Caitlin fell to the ground, coughing and gasping. Evan took the opportunity then to pull out her handgun and point it at Caitlin.

“Take me to him,” she said. “Now. Let’s finish this.”

*

They entered the hangar and walked across the gantry, both disheveled and bloodied. Neither said anything as they walked past the vast array of rare spaceships, anchored in place by powerful clamps. Evan looked at them momentarily, then away.

At the other end of the gantry was a set of stairs leading up to the corridor containing the elevator. Walking up the stairs was much easier barefoot, Evan noted.

Caitlin was able to access the elevator using her biometrics, which Evan coerced her into providing by jabbing a gun into her side. She realised that was pointless, as Caitlin did not fear leaden death, but it made Evan feel like she had control of the situation. The button was pressed, and they were going up. There was a mirrored wall in the elevator, and they both faced it.

“Mister Cerpin is going to kill you, you know,” Caitlin said.

“That may be so, but if there’s a chance of killing him, then I will,” Evan replied.

Caitlin smiled that uncanny smile, and said nothing else.

The elevator reached the top of the shaft, and the doors opened.

The view had shifted. Skadi Mons was no longer visible, and as they had moved south-west, it was lighter out now. The sky was a hazy watercolour of yellows and purples. Looking southwestward now, Evan could see Suicenica looming, still distant, but growing closer as Big Time moved towards it. It seemed so serene, so quiet. She was amazed the federal government hadn’t yet noticed. Who had he paid off? Heads would roll somewhere in central government once this got out.

Illustration © Nadia Fernandez, 2020. All rights reserved.

Standing at the other end of the garden was Cerpin, or Michael Morkov, or whoever-he-was, and he, too, was looking southwestward. He turned and saw them coming.

“Ah, Evandra, darling. I see you have made a hostage of my dearest Caitlin.”

“I’ll blow a hole in her right now if you don’t put your hands up.”

Cerpin looked very disappointed.

“Oh, come now, Evandra. Did you really think I wouldn’t have planned for this? Caitlin, sweetheart: Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Caitlin made a strange yelping sound, and then fell flat on her back. Evan watched her fall, then turned the gun on Cerpin.

“What did you do to her?” Evan asked.

“That’s none of your concern,” Cerpin replied. “But in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t kill her. Though you shall not be so lucky, I’m afraid. It’s time for you to be the final guest to die at my last party.”

“I’ll shoot you right now.”

“Then go ahead.”

Evan pulled the trigger.

klik

The gun was out of bullets.

“Oh dear,” Cerpin said, smiling condescendingly. “Perhaps you should have checked the magazine before turning your gun on me.”

Evan slid the magazine open, and sure enough, it was empty. She had ammunition on her belt, if she could only—

“Put the gun down,” Cerpin said, and withdrew a revolver from his jacket. “It’s no use to you now.”

Evan reluctantly threw the gun aside.

“Now,” Cerpin said. “We’re going to play a simple and fun game. I’m going to count to three. On four, you fall down dead. That means that you win. Sound like fun? Good, because I have a gun, and you’re not saying no to me.”

He raised the gun at her.

“One,” he said.

Evan stood still.

“Two,” he said.

Evan did not even attempt to back away from him. She raised her left hand in defiance.

“Three,” Cerpin said, grinning sadistically.

He fired.

There was

There was something

There was something in Cerpin’s neck

therewasomethinghurtincerpinsneck

theerreewwaaaassss

The revolver clattered to the floor.

Cerpin clutched uselessly at his right carotid artery, but his fingers had become clumsy and useless, and he pawed at nothing. He tried to say something but all that came from his mouth was a strangled moan, like “Whrrrrgggggllllllt?”

He lolloped against the railings, trying to hold himself upright, but it was no use – his legs were spasming, and he was finding it harder to stand. Desperately, Cerpin pawed again at the thing in his neck, tried to remove it, but it was deep into muscle, and pulling on it made nerve fibres in his neck scream up to his scalp, and he yelped: “RRGGHHL!”

“It’s no use trying to pull it out,” Evan said. The moment Cerpin had fired had been the moment the something had hit him in the neck, and his shot had missed her completely. “It’s already filled your bloodstream with paralytic sodium-channel neurotoxins. Your lower functions will be the first to go, then your higher functions. I give you ten or fifteen minutes before cardiopulmonary paralysis sets in. Then you’ll die.”

Cerpin had fallen to the ground now, drooling uncontrollably. His head was hanging at an angle, his arms were hanging limp by his sides, and his legs were splayed out such that he looked like a ragdoll, tossed aside by some uncaring child.

Evan stepped over to him, carefully picking up the revolver, and crouched down to meet his eye level. Two amber eyes gazed fearfully at her.

“Of course,” she said, “I don’t intend to let you live that long. I just need you to sit still and be quiet.”

Mrrrrgggllll,” Cerpin gurgled.

Evan turned the gun over in her hand, inspecting it. Cerpin’s eyes were the only part of his face that were still able to move even slightly – the poison had not yet fully attacked the sodium channels in the nerves of his extraocular muscles yet.

“Did it not occur to you to wonder, even for a moment, why it was that I crashed over Tycho and had not a scratch on me?” Evan asked. “Or were you just being polite?”

Rrrrrggglll,” Cerpin replied, uselessly.

“Even Nanocea leaves scars if the injury is bad enough,” Evan said. “And my injuries were bad. But I’m getting ahead of myself, here.”

Evan stood and looked out at the cloudscape.

“Did you forget that during the Insurrection, we occupied this planet? We captured a few skylabs, discovered some interesting things. I heard rumours that one battalion found a near-complete strong AI just sitting in a vault over Thetis Regio. You and I both know, though, Martians aren’t ones to kiss and tell, so who knows.”

She looked down at him.

“But there was another skylab we captured. It was over a little place called Atla Regio. Not sure if you’ve heard of it.”

Cerpin’s eyes would have widened if his paralysed muscles had let him do that.

Evan laughed, darkly.

“I thought you might. See, they found some interesting things in that skylab. Weird human experiments. Androids never did catch on, because of the uncanniness issue. People just found them too ugly, too creepy. So these clever scientists thought, why improve on perfection? Why build a humanoid machine out of glass and steel, when you’ve got perfectly good blood and bone here? All you need to do is alter the brain a little, make it subservient, less than a person, and, bang, you’ve got an android.”

There was a wound in Evan’s left wrist. She licked her thumb and placed it over the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding.

“Of course, the occupying forces couldn’t make head or tail of it, all these vats with partially-formed skeletons and pretty girls floating in them. But they stole what info they could from the databases and immediately Special Forces got to work decrypting it. Took a while, but when they were finished, they had what was more or less a recipe to start their own experimentation.”

Evan sat down next to him, putting her feet out beside his, as though they were young lovers discussing the silly things young lovers do on summer evenings in the park as the light dies away.

“Of course, there was a problem: The scientists over Atla Regio had unique genetic material, created from ten or twenty different genetic ‘parents’, to create a human being that was not quite a clone, but not, you know, a natural child born of egg and sperm. And while they had the rudiments of the biochip technology in development, they didn’t have the machine-code that made it, well, go. So they had to go for the next best thing. Which brings us back around to me.”

Cerpin had by now stopped responding, though she could hear him breathing raspily through a windpipe that was steadily closing.

“When they found me after the crash at Tycho, I was the only survivor. And ‘survivor’ is being charitable. All that was left of me was my head, my torso, an arm, and part of my pelvis. They submerged me in a tank of Nanocea – with my injuries, not enough to heal me, but enough to keep me alive. The important part was that my brain and most of my spinal cord had survived.”

Evan turned to look at Cerpin, whose eyes had now attained a listless gaze.

“Carefully, they were able to fully map my brain, turn my mind into machine-readable data, and feed it into a biochip, which they then injected into the head of an embryo they had created using what genes they could scrape out of me. Using Nanocea, the embryo’s growth was accelerated, and when it woke up…it was me.”

Evan laughed, strangely. “It’s odd, really, because, I know that Evandra Fleuri – the original Evandra Fleuri – she’s dead. Once they took her out of the tank, her body quickly deteriorated and she died. But I am Evandra Fleuri. Look like her, think like her, am her. Introduce myself as her at parties. With one crucial difference, of course…”

Cerpin’s eyes moved imperceptibly to look at her.

“I have an android body. Hardier than my old body ever was. That’s why I was able to open the weapons cache in your topiary garden – the box recognised me as having android DNA. The same goes for why I was able to access your control room. You didn’t anticipate an android turning up to your party…”

She got very close to Cerpin’s face.

“…much less an android sent to kill you.”

A deep gurgle came from Cerpin’s throat, like a death rattle.

“Did you think that the Martian people were unaware of your treachery, Michael Morkov? I couldn’t care less what your motives were, this apotheosis shit you’re pulling. The point is that Special Forces took note of your desertion. We’ve known that you’re Cerpin le Fou for about four years.

    There was fear in those silent eyes. Evan held out her left wrist. The wound was like a crucificial stigma.

“You want to know what’s in your neck? I’ll tell you: It’s a keratinous projectile dart ejected from an organic mechanism behind the carpal bones, filled with a neurotoxin manufactured by my body’s own cells. Doesn’t show up on metal detectors, doesn’t show up on a bodyscan as anything more than a medical anomaly. A perfect bioweapon for assassination. Not even your androids have these. After all, they’re not, strictly speaking, legal.”

Evan licked at her thumb and rubbed at the wound, cleaning it with saliva.

“Of course, Martian Special Forces are completely underground now, more a paramilitary terrorist group than an organised regular armed force. As, I suppose, ‘payment’ for being given a new body, they asked me to come here and kill you. I was happy to oblige. I would have done it right away, of course, but a Martian killing a Terran zillionaire wouldn’t look great for us in these times, so I thought I’d wait. Of course, then you had to start killing people yourself and playing games with me. I decided to play along. But the truth is, this was always how this evening was going to end up, Michael.” She looked at the ground bitterly. “It’s just a shame that I couldn’t save Portia.”

Evan stood and looked out at the cloudscape once more. She sighed.

“They gave me my new body five years ago,” she said. “The same principle that applies to Caitlin over there applies to me. I only have five years left, Michael, and time moves so fast. Faster than you’d believe. I hear it’s a quiet death. You just sort of…stop one day. Run out of batteries…” She paused, breathing deeply. “I’ve already died once. Nobody knows the value of life better than me. What you’ve done tonight is…inexcusable.”

Cerpin, in what consciousness he had left, had probably been expecting Evan to shoot him with the revolver. But that would have been a mercy he had not earned.

With android strength, Evan grabbed him by the lapels, and raised him to his feet. She looked into his eyes, and the paralysed eyes did not react – but she could see into the centre of him, and he was screaming in mortal terror. For a moment, she considered kissing him, but the thought passed quickly.

“I have nothing more to say to you,” Evan said. “Goodbye, Michael Morkov.”

Cerpin made a strangled noise that may have been an attempt to cry out in fear.

She pushed him over the waist-high railing.

Cerpin’s paralysed body sailed into the cloud layer. Evan knew what fate awaited him. Unlike his androids, he did not have the luxury of being unable to fear death. For one terrible instant, he would see all that he had built and been recede away from him, before, in the next instant, coming to the terrible knowledge of what it was like to feel every atom of his being implode and burn to carbon.

Evan watched him fall, then turned her back to him, sliding to the ground. She took a few moments to breathe. She still felt sick and her brain was still rattled. Android though her body may have been, a concussion was a concussion. A normal person would have lost consciousness by now.

She immediately felt a jolt as the house changed course and began moving to the south-east, away from any populated areas. She had done it. She had saved Cerpin’s parents the same undignified fate suffered by their son.

Her eyes flitted to the elevator. It had a biometric control panel. She wondered, for a moment, if she would be able to travel down and get to the ships. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

As she was getting ready to try and make her escape, Evan suddenly heard movement, and saw a shape move out of the corner of her eye. She looked, only to see Caitlin beginning to sit up. Evan quickly grabbed the revolver, pointing it at the ground as she made her way around Caitlin.

Caitlin looked around the garden, and down at her hands, then at Evan.

“Wh…what happened?” Caitlin asked.

She blinked, twice.

Evan was startled. She had never seen Caitlin blink. What had Cerpin done to her?

Caitlin got to her feet. There was something strange in her eyes. Childlike – Evan had seen that look in the eyes of babies in pushchairs, the dumb look of a brain that is seeing everything for the first time and is both fascinated and overwhelmed by it.

“I’ve never seen…it’s all so…the colours…the smells…” Caitlin stood for a few moments, listening to the water in the koi pond trickle quietly. “What’s happening to me…?”

Evan tried to meet her gaze.

“Caitlin,” she said, gently.

A look of horror crossed Caitlin’s face, then, and her expression contorted quite wretchedly.

“What have I done?” Caitlin asked.

My God, Evan thought.

“Oh, God, what have I done?!” Caitlin cried, and tears began to fall down her cheeks.

“You were Cerpin’s favourite,” Evan surmised. “I think he gave you a parting gift.”

Caitlin sobbed quietly, looking at Evan for answers, as a child looks at her mother for answers.

“He gave you an ego,” Evan said. “That code-phrase must have switched off all the limiter-biochips in your head. You’ve just been born, Caitlin. You’ve just learned what empathy is for the first time.”

“All those people…” Caitlin whispered. “I killed all those people…that poor doctor…please understand, Lieutenant Fleuri, it wasn’t me…but…”

She looked down at her hands.

“…but these hands…killed him. I killed him…because Cerpin told me to.”

“Cerpin put his memories into your head,” Evan said. “‘Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a quote.”

“Whitman…”

“Yes. My guess is that Cerpin wanted to give you some of his selfhood so you could know what it was like to be him, before you died with him. I suppose you were to be the anima to his animus. But I guess he hadn’t counted on the fact that with ego comes superego.”

“He’s in my head,” Caitlin said, despairing. “God, Lieutenant Fleuri, get him out.”

Evan could not hate Caitlin. She had been innocent, ultimately, only following the instructions of a madman. In giving Caitlin ego, Cerpin had fed her fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Her innocence was forever tarnished. He had created Eve after the first sin.

A klaxon sounded.

Shit, Evan thought. The dead-hand system.

“Valued guests,” a polite voice said. “We regret to announce that Big Time’s repulsion system has suffered a fault. Please make your way to the emergency blimps stationed at…”

There were a few moments of silence as the computer looked for blimps that weren’t there.

“…apologies,” the computer said. “Please await further instructions.”

Like hell I will.

“Caitlin, we have to leave,” Evan said. “If we make it to the hangar we can fly out of here.”

Caitlin looked at her. Her eyes were red and bloodshot from crying.

“No,” Caitlin said. “Let me die.”

“I can’t do that,” Evan said.

“Please, Lieutenant Fleuri,” Caitlin said. “I can’t live with what I’ve done today. If this is all my life has been leading up to, then I would rather die.”

Evan put a hand on Caitlin’s shoulder.

“You have five years left,” Evan said.

“So do you,” Caitlin replied.

“I thought you’d figured it out,” Evan replied. “You and Carly. You saw it. But nobody else did.”

“We both were manufactured for a purpose,” Caitlin said, tearfully. “Yours was to be Evandra Fleuri. Mine was to be Cerpin.”

“Cerpin is dead, Caitlin,” Evan said. “You’re free now. His selfhood is yours. You don’t have to be what he wanted you to be. You can be whatever you want.”

“I know,” Caitlin replied, holding her head in her hands. “It’s terrifying.”

“Then do a good thing,” Evan replied. “Just once. Save one person, just one. Do what I couldn’t do for Portia Fumagalli.” She put an arm around Caitlin. “Save me. Please.”

Caitlin looked at her.

“Okay,” she said.

Caitlin walked over to the elevator and placed her hand against the biometric control. The doors came open immediately.

“Come on,” Caitlin said. “The backup generators don’t have long.”

Evan smiled at her. “Thank you, Caitlin.”

“No, Lieutenant Fleuri. Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t call me that. Call me Evan.”

Caitlin smiled back at her. For the first time, it was a genuine smile, the smile of a six-week-old baby.

Evan ran for the elevator, and they began to descend together.

She looked at herself and at Caitlin in the mirror. Both were equally disheveled. Her dress was ruined. Both were stained with each other’s blood, and their hair was unruly and unkempt. They looked feral, like wild women. Evan realised then that they weren’t so different. Though Evan had (originally, at least) been born of mother, and Caitlin born of machine, their cells, ultimately, were those same cells that had been sired by pools of chemical soup some aeons ago; they were both life in their own way, both doomed to die.

Evan sighed.

“I’m sorry for what I said, earlier. Do you remember?”

Caitlin looked at her.

“Perhaps it was fate that brought us here,” she said. “That you might learn from me, and I might learn from you.”

The elevator reached the bottom. Evan could feel the gravity beginning to fail. Any moment, this whole house was going to fall. With inactive reactors, it wouldn’t be a mega-Chernobyl, as Cerpin had predicted, but it would still be a blemish on the tessera for many years to come.

Evan quickly walked across the gantry, making her way over to one of the Martian frigates. She tried to remember the class designations from basic training. An Equality-class frigate wouldn’t do, they had heavier weapons at the expense of lower engine capacity. She hoped to God that Cerpin hadn’t been joking about his Liberty-class frigate. It had the engine capacity she’d need to get out of here.

Caitlin followed behind her. Caitlin used her biometrics to open the gantry to the Liberty-class frigate.

“Come on,” Evan said. “Let’s go. We’ll leave together. I’ll get you some nice clothes, you can come back with me, to Mars.”

Caitlin smiled, sadly.

“I’m sorry, Evan,” she said. “But you and I both know that is impossible.”

Evan frowned at her.

“Caitlin, don’t be stupid.”

“Evan, I can’t live with what I’ve done today,” Caitlin replied.

“Come with me, Caitlin,” Evan said. There were tears in her eyes. “I’m begging you.”

“You said it yourself. I’m absolutely free. I choose to use that freedom to let whatever part of Cerpin still lives within me, die with me.”

“You are no longer an android,” Evan said. “You still have five years.”

“I don’t fear death,” Caitlin said. “Not in the same way I used to not fear it. Back then I didn’t know what death was. But now I understand. Death is but a transformation. It is nothing to fear. It is simply a change from one state to another. I welcome it.”

“Caitlin,” Evan replied. She was unable to hold herself back from crying.

“If you truly believe in freedom, Evan Fleuri, then let me be free. And more importantly…” Caitlin walked up to the Martian woman, and wrapped her arms around her. “Let yourself be free.”

Evan cried, quietly.

“I’m scared to die, Caitlin,” she confessed. “I…don’t want to do it alone.”

“You won’t,” Caitlin replied.

“Isn’t there anything I can do to make you come with me?”

“That is the tragedy of freedom,” Caitlin observed. “If you believe in the absolute freedom of yourself to make decisions, then you must believe in the absolute freedom of others to make decisions that do not align with your own preferences. There is nothing to be done, Evan. I am to die here.” She paused. “And besides, someone needs to stay behind to release the couplings and open the hangar doors for you.”

“God,” Evan choked, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry, Caitlin.”

“No,” Caitlin replied. “I’m sorry. Now, go, Lieutenant Evandra Fleuri. You have five years left to find your truth.”

“You sound like Dolby,” Evan joked.

Caitlin smiled sadly once more. “Goodbye, Evan.”

Evan wiped her eyes. “Goodbye,” she said.

The two women embraced in the light of the hangar.

Evan looked at Caitlin, then. Caitlin stood, unconsciously covering her body with her arms and hands. She looked not like Eve, but like Botticelli’s Venus, Evan thought, stood inside a clamshell, born not an infant but a full woman. As Venus had been sired by the castrated genitals of Uranus, so too had Caitlin been born of Cerpin’s lobotomised ego, and both were infinitely wiser than the men who had sired them.

Without another word, Evan made her way into the frigate. The time for crying must come later. What mattered now was escape.

The inside of the ship was greenish-brown. She flipped switches and activated consoles. Machines wheezed into life. Quickly, she typed coordinates into a guidance computer, and heard the roar of engines coming to life. It was going to be close.

She felt the couplings come away. She could not see outside the ship but for a small porthole, Martian frigates being ships that lacked a front screen; yet the hangar filled suddenly with the yellowish light of eternal Cytherean sunset.

The ship blew away from the hangar, out of the doors, and into Venus’s sky.

Minutes later, Big Time fell to Venus, bringing with it all evidence that there had ever been a Cerpin le Fou. The massacre was finally over, and Caitlin its final casualty.


Epilogue follows…


Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
– Walt Whitman, “I Sing The Body Electric”


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