Theme Planet (30 page)

“So... Gods, you must be three
hundred years old?”

“Oh, yes. Give or take a decade.”

“And you’ve been on Theme Planet
that whole time?”

“I’ve been in this compound that
whole time, and it’s something I’m not very thankful for. Just between you and
me - and this is
just
between you and me, you understand, because I
trust you, as a fellow android - well, the last few decades, I’ve started to
feel just a little stifled.”

“Stifled?”

“Yes, There’s only so many
centuries you can spend staring at the same grey walls.”

“I totally agree.”

They made their way up more
stairways, and it was getting warmer the more they advanced. At one point they
came to a huge window - what was, effectively, a window in the mountain,
actually
set
into the rock. They were near the summit, and the window
was a viewing platform that showed several loops and curves from a ride,
spiralling off down the side of the mountain.

“What’re those?” asked Amba
innocently.

“Why, that’s the very famous
ride, you should have heard of the famous ride, it’s called
Military Experience #7 - The FireIce
High-Security Military Installation Facility Funtime Ride.”
He looked at
her, then, with a frown. “Cheesh! You really have been locked up somewhere,
little lady, haven’t you? I thought
I
was the one who’d not had very
much experience in the world. Although, admittedly, I’ve only had a few hundred
years on the planet.”

“What’s your job, Jonno?”

“I’m the Cleaner,” said Jonno,
with a beaming smile.

“The Cleaner? I assume you mean
you’ve
cleaned
this facility for the last three hundred years?”

“Yes. I’ve done a good job, don’t
you think?”

Amba tried hard to keep the pity
from her eyes. “Yes, Jonno. A very good job. But... don’t you get lonely
sometimes? Or frustrated? I mean, other schmucks make the mess, encourage the
kipple, and you tidy it all up in a never-ending cycle of banality?”

Jonno considered this. “No,” he
said. And smiled kindly. “I am an android of simple pleasures.”

Amba gave a nod, glancing out
over the vista beyond. Distantly, tracks curved and looped through the
sunshine, rails gleaming metallic, CARs of many bright and varied colours
trundling and flying, happy punters waving their arms in glee.
Oh, to be so
happy!

“Which way is it?”

“This way,” said Jonno, moving
forward. “Oh, incidentally, I forgot to ask your name. How rude of me. How
inconsiderate. I am definitely being a bad friend; I am sure Lady Goo Goo would
spank my bottom for my lack of manners. She’s like that, you know, a very happy
person, very into her work, always in her study like a good little student,
head in a book or on the ggg doing something important all the time, and
not
playing Solitaire, ha-ha-ha.”

“Important? Weapons, maybe?
Technology?”

“She researches.”

“Researches what?”

“Oh, you know, just researches.”

“Well she must research
something.”

“Well, sometimes I hear noises.
Coming from her study. Lots of blips and blops.”

“Are the blips and blops part of
the research?”

“They could be.”

“Is she researching anything
important?”

“Oh!”
wailed Jonno, “yes! Of course!
By its very nature, research must be important because you’re finding out
stuff, looking up stuff, coming up with theories on stuff. Oh, yes, all research
must be important. Or else...” - he paused, eyes shining, looking off distantly
into the ether -
”why
do research? I’m not bright enough to do it. With
me, I’m just a simple soul. What you see is what you get.”

“Yes.” Amba formed a tight smile.

“Go on, then. What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Your name.” Jonno rolled his
eyes, as if Amba were being particularly dumb.

She smiled. It was a genuine
smile. She kind of liked Jonno, in the same way one instinctively likes a
puppy; only Amba didn’t. She could never quite see the cute side. She sighed.
For a change, she accepted the temporary hand of friendship. It felt very
strange, especially after an opening of raw combat... “It’s... Amba. Amba
Miskalov.” She saw no reason to lie. Jonno would be dead in under five minutes,
happy puppy or no.

“That’s a nice name. I’m glad you’re
here. I’m glad I made a new friend.”

He moved forward, leading Amba
through another grey alloy corridor which sloped upwards towards a patch of
sunlight. Amba followed, removing the FRIEND from close to her chest and
holding it low down by her thigh, modestly concealed.

“Me too,” smiled Amba, cradling
the small, black gun.

~ * ~

Jonno took Amba
to
the door, delivering assassin to victim with sickening simplicity and ineptitude.
If Monolith had been kind and allowed this particular early android an element
of education, or freedom, or contact, he might well have possessed the internal
mechanisms needed to recognise the danger in Amba. But his blind trust, like a
dog in its master, would lead to his downfall; his bloody execution. And Amba
felt no compassion, she did not care, she had no empathy; after all, she was an
Anarchy Android. Detonation. Torture. Annihilation. All in a day’s work, before
tea and biscuits.

Only...

She thought back to the young
girl.

The white house.

The pale, blue door and the
horrors that hid behind it...

Amba shivered.

Jonno grinned back over his
shoulder at Amba, as if sharing some secret joke, some
intimacy,
and
Amba tensed fast and hard, readying herself for combat, slaughter, execution,
for this could all be a ruse and she wasn’t so naive that she trusted somebody,
anybody, especially another android she’d simply met in the damn corridor of a
High Security Military Facility... Cleaner or not.

He could be a Murder Model.

He could be an Anarchy Model...

Amba gave a tight, wry smile, and
made sure the FRIEND was constantly between herself and Jonno.

Jonno finished punching a huge
stream of digits into the digital lock, and he pushed the door open, a thick
steel portal which swung wide with the ponderous mass of a bank vault entrance.
Beyond, Amba could see dark trees.

“After you!” beamed Jonno,
stepping to one side.

“Oh, no, no, no,” said Amba,
voice low, “after you, really, I really do insist.”

She felt her senses stepping up
in her head, as if driven by motors. Her very body became
tuned
, like a
delicate instrument, and the world seemed to slow down. Colours had more
colour, more intensity, she could smell a wealth of flora and fauna beyond the
entrance, she could taste flowers and pollen in the air, Jonno’s stale sweat,
his strange, metallic, almost
insect-like
vibe became more pronounced
and when he moved it was with exaggerated movements, dance-like, almost in slow
motion, and leaving blurred trails with every gesture.

“Hellooo-oooo,” he called,
stepping through the portal and Amba was following close, using his body as an
organic shield, absorbing the atmosphere with tuned-up speed, taking in every
minute detail. There were towering trees in the chamber, huge trunks soaring
off into the distance where sunlight streamed from high above. Plants grew to
knee-height all around, ferns and flowers which shifted gently in some obscure
breeze. Insects hummed and buzzed. It was like a forest, a
real
forest,
inside the mountain.

Jonno led Amba down a well-trod
path, and stopped by a clearing in the internal woodland. Sunshine glittered
from damp palm fronds. Amba was sucked in by the tropical essence, felt herself
believe
they were in a jungle somewhere, some alien forest, some esoteric
Other World.

In the clearing there was a desk,
a huge ornate redwood edifice, varnished to a deep glossy shine. On the desk
was a six-screen computer terminal with extra air-accessories, and in a leather
chair sat an old woman. She was very tall and thin and bony, even when sitting,
and her skin was pale and fragile, wrinkled beyond anything Amba had ever seen.
After all, with the VATs and the QG Cosmetica Syndicate, one of the most
affluent, powerful and influential of galaxy-wide corporations, they had pretty
much eradicated old age - or at least the
appearance
of old age.
“Why
Grow Old!”
proclaimed the marketing slogans with blatant disregard for
correct punctuation.
“Why Wrinkle and Prune!”
spat aggressive marketing
splats marketed 24/7 on all available channels.
“Let the Cosmetica Syndicate
help you beat those ageing blues... We make the Old New, we make the Crone
Beautiful, our simple course of phenuclearaxiate injections make the Dead
Alive! Only a simple remortgage required!! @ggg.iwanttobeyoungagain.ggg.”
Across Earth it was all the rage, and no end of wrinkled old grannies had
queued with vapid grins and drooling spittle to have their faces “Tucked and
Fucked,” as the media started to call it. QG Cosmetica did indeed make the Old
New, and certainly made the Crone Beautiful, but only, and this was the crucial
bit, only on the
outside.
Inside, these newly-regenerated beauties were
still the mumbling senile grumpy gits they had been when consigned to Humanity’s
Great Natural Garbage Heap. It led to many an interesting interaction,
throughout Earth’s nightclubs, and in shagpiles afterwards, when young and
virulent Alpha Males realised they’d just enjoyed and pleasured somebody’s
Great-Great-Grandmother. The Quack Clinics filled up fast with a whole range of
new and invented mental disorders.

Amba stared at Lady Goo Goo. Goo
Goo was old, and made no attempt to disguise the fact. Her one concession to
oddness was her bright pink hair, which sat atop her ancient skull like an
explosion of candy floss.

“You’re here,” said Goo Goo,
looking past and ignoring Jonno, and fixing ancient, almost
reptilian
eyes on Amba. Those eyes sparkled with a lazy intelligence and Amba was
immediately on her guard, scanning her surroundings, trusting her instincts.
Goo Goo might have looked like a decrepit clown, but there was something very
dangerous about this woman; this Researcher into Ride Organics and Alien
Testing.

“Yes,” said Amba. She saw no
sense in extending the conversation.

Jonno was looking suddenly confused,
and took a step back from Amba. He could read something strange in the air, a
set of emotions to which he was unused. His gaze was moving quickly, from Goo
Goo to Amba and back again.

“Have I done wrong?” he asked,
suddenly.

“No, Jonno,” said Goo Goo with a
smile. “You weren’t to know.”

Amba’s senses were screaming.
There was something terribly
twisted
here, something out of tune, out of
key with the whole fucking
universe.
Lady Goo Goo was, to all intents
and purposes, a sitting duck, a lazy target, but in Amba’s experience it was
never that simple, never that easy, and a sitting duck was rarely a sitting
duck - not at the level Amba was involved in.

“Romero sent you,” said Lady Goo
Goo.

Amba said nothing. She took a
step closer, looking up and around. She scanned for concealed weapons, she was
a damn
expert
at concealed weapons, but Goo Goo was clean. Amba lifted
the FRIEND and heard Jonno gasp, but he was off to one side, sensed,
experienced, unworthy of consideration; irrelevant. The danger lay straight
ahead -very real.