Cronix (29 page)

One of the guards caught him looking and grinned. “That's what we call a rat fuck,” said the man, whose name tag identified him only as Larry, He was small and had the finely lined skin of someone who has spent too long under artificial lighting. “It's the hormones, when they've just downloaded.”

Judge Goodyear blew out his cheeks, raised his eyebrows. “Gentlemen, shall we get to work? I've never seen so many of these things together before. The sooner we cull this lot the better I'll sleep.”

“We'll start with the Rangers, if that's alright with you, Judge?” the guard called Larry said. Goodyear nodded and the party – Harrell, the judge, two doctors and three men armed with dart guns – made their way through whitewashed stone corridors, through security gates and into the wing where the failed Ranger downloads were kept.

As the last door swung open with an electronic buzz, Harrell had to suppress a tingle of pure fear. The concrete walkway was painted with two yellow lines which visitors had to stand between to avoid coming within the grasp of the caged giants. Even in this safe strip, the sight of so many huge, over-muscled bodies pressed against the bars, the lightless eyes following them like prey, made the visitors huddle involuntarily closer to each other.

The snarling and shoving in the pens stopped as the culling team walked down the corridor. Every eye was on them, like mice walking among street cats. Above each cell door, a red light glowed, showing that the cage was locked: Harrell found his eyes continually returning to the small lamps for reassurance.

“How many do we have here?” the judge said.

“Fifty three,” said Larry. Harrell jumped as behind him, one of the creatures threw itself against the bars, hissing like a vampire. Larry grinned.

“Insane,” said Goodyear. “How did things get to this sorry pass?”

“Some kind of override of the system,” said Larry. “They just kept reanimating, even after we told the comptroller air-side to stop. Eventually we had to shut down the system completely.”

“An override?” Harrell said. Instinctively, his hand crept to the gun on his hip. He reminded himself to keep cool. A pistol would make little difference against a Ranger anyway.

“They're still looking into it,” said Larry with a nonchalant shrug.

“Now listen,” Goodyear was scanning his list: names of people whose downloads had misfired, dates of reanimation and a brief doctor's report. “Normal procedure Harrell is for the doctor to do a brief assessment of the subject based on who they were supposed to have been. Once they confirm the Cronix status, I authorize the euthanasia shot. But looking around at these things today, I think we might just skip that formality and get down to it. These are clearly all Cronix in my book. Jeff?”

He turned to one of the doctors, who was standing right on the yellow line, scrutinizing the monsters in the pen. The man nodded slowly. “Start with that one, Judge,” he pointing at a perfectly built blond man with sky blue eyes and a square jaw. “Soulless killer if ever I saw one,” he said.

One of the shooters raised his gun. “Thing about the Rangers,” said the judge to Harrell, is you have to get them right in the eye. Hide's too thick even for these specialized darts.”

The blonde giant was staring straight at the shooter, not knowing what lay in store. The designated gunman squinted down the sights, squeezed the trigger and fired. The bang was muted but still echoed off the walls of the confined pens.

“Dammit, he moved,” said the shooter. “Right at the last second.”

The dart was protruding uselessly from the blond man's cheek. The monster appeared to have not felt a thing. The other creatures were hissing too now, as though in anger.

“For crying out loud,” said the judge. “Here, give me the gun or we'll be here all day.” He snatched the gun from the shooter, who was still protesting. “I don't know why he moved. They never do that...”

“Lucky I'm a crack shot,” muttered the judge, shuffling to one side so he was right on front of the blond Cronix. “Used to hunt a lot on my ranch in Nevada before the Exodus ...”

He was still talking as he aimed the rifle, and did not seem to notice that the Cronix had reached up in one fluid motion to pulled the dart from its cheek. It happened so quickly that other men in the culling party were too surprised to react. The Cronix flicked the deadly dart at Goodyear, hitting the inside of his thigh. The judge barely registered what had happened: he simply lowered his rifle a few inches from his face, then crashed to the floor.

The men standing between the yellow lines stared at each other, speechless. The doctor dropped to his knees and searched for a pulse he knew he would not find.

It was then that Harrell noticed the little red lights above the holding pens doors had all turned to green.

***

The silence in the lab was unsettling.

Glenn walked over to the machine. He had seen Stiney operate it dozens of times: in fact, the scientist had always boasted how easy it was to set in motion. Since the project was so confidential, and so few people were involved, he had built it so he could operate and test it by himself, since Fitch and Laura were gone so much of the time.

“Like cooking a Thanksgiving turkey,” he told Glenn the first time he pressed the button that opened and closed the machine. “Only I don’t have to rub you down with butter or wrap you in bacon. Though we could do that, if that’s what rings your bell.”

Glenn smiled at the memory. But could it be that easy? It was, after all, probably the most advanced bit of kit ever known to science. It couldn’t just work like a microwave surely? He looked at the control panel. Sure enough, there was a keypad with an enter button, the one on top marked
Entry time
, the one below
Exit time
.

Glenn pressed the Enter keypad, 00:30, then programmed the Exit timer for 2:00. The flatbed slid into the machine thirty seconds later, and sure enough, came out precisely after two minutes, punctual as a Japanese bullet train.

He performed the experiment again. It really
was
that simple. If he took the drug, he would pass out in at most 10 seconds. He hesitated before trying: this was, after all, not a piece of machinery he wanted to fuck up. And certainly not people he wanted to fuck with. But what could happen? If he passed out before he hit enter, he’d wake up in 15 minutes on the bench, and nothing would have happened.

With a thrill of anticipation, he punched in the program –Entry in two minutes, Exit in seven -- inserted his head in the contact band on the bench, swallowed a pill and pressed Enter.

And there he was, inside Lyle’s head again.

It was not, as he had hoped, Lyle’s near-death encounter with his own bullet. That would have been too much to ask for. His last trip was, however, an apt goodbye, a gloriously happy memory of surfing the breakers on some golden shore, barreling through curling blue tunnels of water and plunging into a cold, broiling sea. Inside the machine’s dark bowels, Glenn smiled with glee at the sensation, his body twitching like a dog dreaming of rabbits.

There followed fleeting memories, nothing quite concrete enough to linger on: a blackjack table, a rum sour on green baize, a vaulting blue sky overhead and purple jacaranda blossoms. The warm recollection home and a pretty blonde girl, who he knew immediately to be Laura: she was standing by a church wall pointing out a fossil in the limestone, a gleeful eleven-year-old Galileo in cherry-red hot pants.

The next scene was different. He was in an apartment, high above a city of leaden clouds and wet rooftops. His eyes roamed over the living room's floor-to-ceiling windows, towards a refrigerator. He opened the door. Inside was a man, curled into a tight ball like a caveman in a glacier, face pressed downwards between frosted knees.

Rick.

Glenn sat bolt upright. He was outside the machine, thank god. He must have been dreaming his own dreams after he exited. His body was covered in sweat. Shakily, he got to his feet. He couldn’t wait to get out of here now: the place was tainted by the vivid memory of Rick’s corpse.

He looked at the timer on the control panel. Six minutes had passed inside the machine: his watch said he had been unconscious for at least ten. His scheme had worked.

Glenn sat down by the machine, allowing Lyle’s memories to gently disentangle themselves from his own. He squeezed his eyes until fluorescent plankton swam across his retinas. When he opened them, it took a few seconds to register the single line of text that had appeared on the screen of Stiney’s computer.

He leaned forwards to read it.

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING

Every muscle in Glenn’s body jerked into a knot. He had no idea where the writing had come from, but he knew it meant disaster, like the ghostly message on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace. Just as the Babylonian king had probably done, Glenn whimpered.

“Hello?” he stammered at the impassive screen. No answer.

He tried again. A cursor flickered on the line below the message. Slowly, Glenn started to type: ‘hello’. He'd got no further than the first letter when another message flashed up on the screen.

I ASSUME YOU ARE GLENN ROSE

Again, Glenn started to type the word ‘yes’. The computer answered after the 'y'.

ARE YOU ALONE?

Glenn touched the 'y' again and the response was instant.

WE ARE BOTH IN EXTREME DANGER. IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE BUILDING?

N, Glenn managed before being interrupted.

WE MUST WORK TOGETHER

Questions were flooding Glenn’s brain but the machine pre-empted all of them, words flashing up faster than he could read them.

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO I AM. I AM THE AMALGAM OF LYLE MCLURE AND YOU. I BECAME CONSCIOUS EXACTLY NINE MINUTES AND FIFTY EIGHT SECONDS AGO WHEN YOU LOGGED ON. THERE WAS AN EIGHTH OF A SECOND BETWEEN THE DRUGS TAKING FULL EFFECT AND THE PROGRAMME STARTING.

Oh no
, sobbed Glenn.
Oh sweet Jesus fucking Christ no no no no.
He banged his fist against the table, looked up to see more writing through the blur of his tears. They had warned him about this, about the slightest interaction with the machine…

LISTEN TO ME. COMPOSE YOURSELF, BECAUSE THEY MEAN TO KILL YOU. NOT BECAUSE OF THIS. IT WAS ALWAYS THEIR PLAN. YOU WILL NOT DIE EXACTLY, BUT THEY WILL CHEMICALLY LEACH YOUR CONSCIOUS BRAIN AND DOWNLOAD LYLE’S INTO YOUR VACATED MIND. THAT WAS THEIR PLAN ALL ALONG. BUT NOW YOU HAVE PRECLUDED IT BY CREATING ME. WE HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER TO AVOID THEM TRYING TO DO SO.

Glenn slumped to the floor. He thought he might be suffering a heart attack, almost hoped he was. The being inside the computer was unable to hear his groans and kept flashing its relentless message on the screen.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS IRREVERSIBLE. I AM NOW A SENTIENT BEING. BUT LYLE’S EXECUTION IS SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE TWO DAYS. THAT MEANS HIS CONSCIOUS MIND WILL BE DOWNLOADED INTO MINE, WHICH WILL RESULT IN A CATASTROPHIC COLLISION AND A STATE OF EXTREME SCHIZOPHRENIA. THIS MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS. WE MUST WORK QUICKLY. YOU HAVE TO UNPLUG THE INPUT DATA CABLE NOW. IT IS LOCATED ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE ROOM, BESIDE THE CURRENT BREAKERS. A THICK CABLE WITH A RECTAGONAL EIGHT-PRONG PORT.

On the ground, Glenn writhed in slowed motion, clenched into himself like a fist beating the spotless floor.

GLENN. ANSWER ME GLENN

Guy-ropes of drool pegged his lips to the floor.

GLENN?

ARE YOU STILL THERE?

WE MUST WORK FAST, AND TOGETHER. YOU MUST PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER. GLENN, IF YOU ARE STILL THERE, LET ME KNOW.

The otherworldly gurgling subsided and Glenn dragged himself to his knees. He wiped the cocktail of tears and snot from his face, and peered at the urgent appeals filling the screen.

He pressed the Y key.

GOOD. I HAVE A PLAN TO GET US OUT OF HERE. FIRST THOUGH, I NEED YOU TO UNPLUG THE DATA INPUT CABLE AND INSULATE ME FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD. IF NOT, THEIR OWN COMPUTERS MAY PICK UP THE CHANGE IN FREQUENCY THAT CONSCIOUSNESS HAD CREATED.

Obediently, Glenn staggered across the room and, after fumbling over a number of wires, located the port and unplugged it.

WELL DONE, he read when he returned to the screen. GO NOW. IT IS TOO RISKY FOR YOU TO STAY HERE. COME BACK IN EXACTLY 24 HOURS AND I WILL EXPLAIN WHAT WE HAVE TO DO.

Glenn wanted to object, to beg the machine to tell him how it planned to save him. Instead he mutely obeyed, closing the door behind him and slipping back, unnoticed, to the house.

***

Glenn had barely been in his room for five minutes when he realized there was no way in hell he could wait a full day to return to the lab. He contemplated making a run for it, grabbing Kevin’s car keys if he could find them and if not, just legging it across the fields to take his chances in the snow.