Slaughtermatic

by Steve Aylett

Steve Aylett is the author of
LINT
,
The Complete Accomplice, Rebel at the End
of Time
,
Toxicology
,
The Inflatable Volunteer
,
Atom
,
the Tao Te Jinx, The Crime Studio
,
Bigot Hall
,
Shamanspace
,
And Your Point Is?
,
Slaughtermatic
,
Fain the Sorcerer,
Smithereens and Novahead
.

Slaughtermatic
copyright © Steve Aylett 1998

First published by 4Walls 8Windows, 1998

This Kindle edition published in 2011

Steve Aylett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

[email protected]

www.steveaylett.com

“
I think I’m hit.”

-
Baby Face Nelson, hit seventeen times by a .45 calibre Tommy gun

CONTENTS

BEERLIGHT

Part One

THE HOLD-UP

Part Two

THE LOOSE END

Part Three

THE INFERNO

Beerlight was a blown circuit, where to kill a man was less a murder than a mannerism. Every major landmark was a pincushion of snipers. Cop tanks navigated a graffiti-rashed riot of needle bars, oil-scabbed neon and diced rubble. Fragile laws were shattered without effort or intent and the cops considered false arrest a moral duty. Integrity was no more than a fierce dream. Crime was the new and only artform. The authorities portrayed shock and outrage but never described what it was they had been expecting. Anyone trying to adapt was persecuted. One woman had given birth to a bulletproof child. Other denizens were bomb zombies, pocketing grenades and wandering gaunt and vacant for days before winding down and pulling the pin on themselves. There was no beach under the sidewalk.

Yet in dealing with this environment, the one strategy common to all was the assumption that it could be dealt with.

PART ONE

1

DANTE

Dante Cubit pushed into the bank, thinking about A. A. Milne. Why didn’t he ever write
Now We Are Dead
? No foresight, Dante decided. Always think ahead. Under Dante’s full-length coat was an old 10-gauge Winchester, an Uzi machine pistol and a Zero Approach handgun. Against his heart was a thesaurus bound in PVC. He smiled at the entrance guard.

The bank was huge. He’d never been here but knew every inch of the place from rehearsals in a computer simulation - the weirdest part was that it lacked the virtual glow which made everything come on like a precious gem.

At the rear wall he saw the Entropy Kid gnashing painkillers and messing with a euthanasia form. The Kid was almost amphibious with despair, in his orderly way. He’d once studied deterioration in order to have something definite to tell folk when they asked why he was sobbing. Then science discovered that the universe’s shape was a downward spiral and he took it to heart. Five minutes before Dante, he had swanned into the bank like an angel on stabilizers. Inside his jacket was a Kafkacell cannon gun. He gave Dante a covert nod and eyed a slabhead guard who was trying to appear as devoid of emotion as he’d soon become.

Dante approached the customer interface. He’d thought of modulating his voice but since meeting Rosa Control he’d engaged in so much oral sex his accent had changed.

He pulled the machine pistol, talking low. ‘Hands up Grandad, and no sudden moves - it’s a money-or-your-life paradigm.’

‘
Eh?’ said the kind-faced gent behind the glass.

‘
It’s a stick-up, old man.’

‘
Excuse me?’

‘
Okay, gimme a minute here.’ Dante consulted the thesaurus. ‘Okay, we got heist, hold-up, robbery, raid and, er, “demanding money with menaces”.’

‘
Right, got ya. Did you say no sudden moves?’

‘
Correct.’

‘
So you wouldn’t want me to do -
this
?’

‘
Hey, I ain’t kiddin’ -’

‘
Or puff my cheeks out abruptly - like
this
?’

‘
Hey, now don’t be doin’ that -’

‘
I guess we’re on the same wavelength, sir,’ the oldster relented cheerfully. ‘But hey, now when you use the quaint expression “your money or your life”, I reckon you mean my money, or my life and my money.’

‘
What?’

‘
Lemme get this straight, young man - you’re proposing to ventilate me and take the money if I don’t hand it over?’

‘
That’s right, yeah.’

‘
So you’ll either take the money, or both my life and the money?’

‘
Sure, I guess that’s right. Your money, or your life and your money.’

‘
But it ain’t my money.’

‘
What you say?’

‘
Ain’t the bank’s neither - belongs to the customer till the bank invests in a bum deal and crashes, foreclosing on the set-up and leaving the customer without a pot to piss in.’

‘
Ain’t that illegal?’

‘
Sure - till it happens.’

‘
Okay, let’s see if I understand this - the bank uses the customer’s money for investment.’

‘
No it doesn’t - it uses its own money. When d’you ever find your credit balance reduced because the bank manager lent it out or invested it someplace?’

‘
Never. How about that.’

‘
Hey, Danny,’ whispered the Entropy Kid, edging over.

‘
Wait a mo, Kid. So listen, how does the cash newt?’

‘
Think about it,’ said the teller in a tone of gentle encouragement. ‘The only investment cash the bank takes from the customer is payment interest and charges.’

‘
My deposit’s sittin’ pretty?’

‘
Right,’ nodded the teller, delighted with Dante’s progress.

‘
Danny,’ hissed the Kid, pulling at Dante’s sleeve. ‘We got work.’

‘
Listen to this guy, Kid. So what you’re saying,’ Dante asked the teller, ‘is despite the bank using its own money to back up lending and investment, it’s the customer’s cash it draws on when the shit hits the fan.’

‘
Exactly - supported by the myth that banks do business by relending and investing the customer’s funds. They even draw up their books with depositors’ and borrowers’ sums on either side of the balance sheet.’

‘
No shit. You hear this, Kid? No shit.’

‘
Yeah
that’s great Danny,’ the Kid coughed.

‘
I don’t believe it,’ Dante was saying, dazed. ‘My greatgrandaddy
died
in the Depression.’

‘
That’s a
shame
,’ said the teller with real compassion.

A perky, gum-chewing teller strode brightly up to the old guy. ‘Slips to sign, Mr Kraken,’ she said, then saw Dante’s gun and shrieked, dropping everything.

‘
For God’s sake, Corey,’ complained the old guy. The rear guard pulled a gun and the Kid’s Kafkacell went off like a grenade, putting the guard through the wall - a shell the size of a silencer flew against the teller window. The front guard spun with a snub repeater and the Kid blew him into the street in an explosion of glass.

The Kid backed across the marble floor, brandishing the cannon gun twitchily. ‘Keep a cool cortex nobody gets hurt,’ he whispered.

‘
What he say?’ squinted Mr Kraken.

‘
He says keep a cool cortex, nobody’ll get hurt - means everyone, everyone’s cortexes. And that includes the inner matter of the cerebrum itself. The Kid’s got a speech problem but he’s okay. Ain’t that right, Kid?’

‘
Tell ’em to keep off the tills, Danny,’ whispered the Kid.

‘
Yeah, keep off the pills, ladies and gentlemen - it’s a slippery slope and you know it. Kraken, you the head teller, right? Get in back and chip the vault.’

This was fine by Mr Kraken - even lazy flies with no vested interest in anything had participated in the festival of alarm-tripping which Dante’s gun had triggered. The old man chuckled to himself and shuffled along so slowly that palaeontologists were pouring plaster into his tracks. Dante and the Kid put their heads together. ‘Must have been a glacier in a past life, Danny.’

‘
Yeah, lucky we ain’t really after cash - this rate it won’t be worth shit after inflation.’

‘
Denizens at the door, Danny.’

Passers-by were standing on the oblonged guard and peering in through the shattered entrance. Cop sirens were howling. ‘Quit stallin’, old man,’ shouted Dante.’ Gimme the key.’

Dante left the Kid on guard and took the keychip into the vault room.

The vault was on a timelock - when the chip was used without the correct combination the user was thrown twenty minutes into a future in which he or she was already cuffed and surrounded. The computer man Download Jones had hacked a card swiper which was now housed in Dante’s belt buckle - Dante swiped it through, altering the program. He pushed it into the lock, tapped out a random set of numbers and was thrown twenty minutes into the past.

The sirens cut out instantly. Nobody knew he was in the vault room. He had ten minutes before the Entropy Kid entered the bank, and fifteen before he himself did.

Rosa Control had excised the real combination from the manager by threatening to cut off his hand, and because his palmprint was also required, had cut off his hand. Dante thumped the hand against the print panel and tapped in the code - the door clanked. He pushed at it like a stalled car and it slowly swung.

Dante went immediately to a deposit hatch, opening it with a tension wrench and rake pick. Inside was a book bound in PVC. He removed it and placed his ballast thesaurus and the hand in its place, closing the hatch. Leaving the vault and swinging closed the heavy metal door, he sat at the depositors’ table and fired up the volume with a mixture of tense excitement and reverence.