Toxicity (43 page)

Greenstar created you?

Unknowingly, yes.

And... do they know of you?

They suspect, I believe. They are
suspicious that something not indigenous to Amaranth exists, but they can find
no evidence. And that is because they examine single samples without stepping
back and looking at the bigger picture. The Whole, as it were.

So you’re keeping me alive?

Yes.

Why?

You are a killer, Horace The
Dentist. A human-created android killer. I find that incredibly sweet and
ironic. Amusing, even, to use an approximation of the concept of humour as
deployed by humans. I fear, however, they would not think of my intentions as
amusing.

You have not answered my
question.

Every organism that lives desires
life, is that not so?

Every man or woman I’ve
assassinated has tried their utmost to survive, so yes, on the whole, you are
correct. You have obviously kept me alive for a reason, and I can only assume
it is something to do with Greenstar...

Yes. I have two tasks.

Horace laughed then.
I am a
wreck. I am on the verge of death. Look, I am bound by a steel winch rope,
wound about me so tight I can’t even move my fingers...
but even as he
spoke, fronds of seaweed floated towards the cable, and Horace sensed heat and
watched as the steel turned to jelly, and slowly disintegrated, and floated
away.

My toxicity is strong,
said the voice.

Horace flexed his hands, but he
was weak. He peered down at the gaping wound in his chest. The barbed spear
which had skewered him like a fish had also disintegrated and melted away. But
now there was a fist-sized hole through his chest.

He laughed.

If you can repair that, I’ll do
whatever you ask.

Don’t you want to know first?

I am an assassin. An Anarchy
Android torture kill model. I work for money.
Horace’s eyes went hard.
If
you save my life, I’ll do whatever you require of me. Whatever it takes.

So be it. But it will hurt. And
to survive, you will have to... absorb me.

Absorb the toxicity?

You will become as one with the
toxic waste of my being.

Do it,
said Horace.

~ * ~

HE
FLOATED FOR what seemed an eternity. Every atom in his body burned as if with
fever, as if with fire, as if with acid, as if with radiation. Horace felt
himself bubbling away into nothing. Horace felt himself vomit every molecule of
his body out into the ocean. Horace felt like he floated in a warm bath, his
eyes closed, everything perfect around him as slowly his strength returned and
his wounds healed and he became one with the tox. Mankind had created a toxic
nightmare. Now, the tox was creating a man.

~ * ~

AS
HORACE FLOATED, he saw the beginning of the Quad-Gal, for he shared atoms with
that bright fiery explosion of matter. He witnessed the birth of humanity. He
witnessed the birth of the android. He witnessed the birth of toxicity. He
witnessed their joining. And he heard singing, and it was a beautiful singing,
the singing of children, and he realised they had been born of the toxic waste
and he was not alone, he would have a hundred thousand brothers and sisters....

They are the children of the
deep,
said
Toxicity.

They are the product of waste
given life again.

Maybe there is a God. Maybe He
saw fit to bring us back. To introduce Balance. To reintroduce Order.

What do you want me to do?
asked Horace.

You will help bring down
Greenstar. The Company. And then you will help to destroy me.

Why?

Because Amaranth needs to be free
again. It needs to be clean again. The ECO terrorists are right, but they
cannot do it alone. They seek to purify the planet - and I, the toxic waste
they seek to remove - I will help them do this.

And your children? The singing
children?

We shall see...
said the voice.

~ * ~

STRENGTH
FLOODED HORACE. He felt every cell being rebuilt from the inside out. All
wounds were healed. His heart stopped beating because he no longer needed a
heart. He found his skin changing colour, shifting through a million different
hues until it almost returned to his natural state. Like toxic waste, he no
longer needed oxygen to breathe, no longer needed food to eat or water to drink
- he could just use the fuel that was the energy of his own existence.

Horace walked under the Biohazard
Ocean on the tops of mountains, and revelled in his newfound body. In his
brain, the KillChip was burned free and sent screaming into a silicon abyss.

What humans do not realise,
said Toxicity,
is that every
computer chip is a slice of life. Many elements may sustain life, and as you
know, carbon and silicon are two of the major building blocks. Computer chips
live, only in a different way from how humans imagine. The KillChip had to go.
It would have stopped you doing that which you must do. It would have acted as
inhibitor.

As Horace grew strong, he felt a
great weight lift from his mind. No longer did he feel anger or hatred or
pettiness or greed. Money had no value. Life, he realised, in a total reversal
of what he had been;
life
was what mattered more than anything. Life,
not death. Saving, not killing. Rescue, not annihilation.

But sometimes you must kill in
order to save.

Sometimes, you must murder in
order to rescue.

Sometimes, you must annihilate in
order to bring about birth...

Let me show you my children,
said the voice.

Horace swam deep down under the
Biohazard Ocean, powering down, revelling in his new strength. Every muscle
felt ready to burst with energy and power.
This is what superheroes must
feel like,
he reasoned.
Except none of them are made from... crap.
Poison. Waste. Superradiation Man! The Biohazard Avenger! The Recycling Waste
Machine Warrior!

He swam down the mountain,
through rocky crags and down rounded chimneys. Bubbles rose from here and
there, and through the poorly-lit gloom, Horace started to make out other
mountains... there, a massive stack of tyres, millions and millions of
abandoned tyres dumped and left to rot and slowly disintegrate. Through slick
pools of oil he swam, to see towers of fused glass - smashed and melded
bottles
- each tower bigger than a hundred-storey skyscraper. There were mountains
of toxic chemical barrels under the ocean, their yellow TOXIC symbols still
just visible through glowing green seaweed and parasitic barnacles.

The gods only know what shellfish
have developed down here. Lobsters with high IQs? Mussels with muscles? Cockles
with cocks?
He
would have laughed, except he realised he should in all reality be dead.
Maybe
this is just a dream? A nightmare? Maybe this is the last dying remnants of my
brain discharging, shutting down, sending me spinning into the abyss, the
void... all I need now is darkness and oblivion.

But darkness and oblivion did not
come.

There. My children.

And Horace looked down on glowing
pods made from toxic, living, deviated seaweed, tiny lifebubbles folded over to
form egg-shaped capsules. And within each capsule Horace could see a child, a
glowing child of great beauty, and they sang and their songs had no words, only
sorrowful, mournful notes that conjured images of a great planet, a great world
brought low by the scourge of humanity...

They are beautiful.

My psi-children. They can see the
different paths of the future.

Incredible!

They have read you, Horace. Seen
your paths. In one path, you bring about the destruction of Greenstar. You send
the Giant Company wailing and screaming into the Void. This, they have seen,
Horace. And when Greenstar scientists captured one of my children and tortured
out her thoughts, they, too, knew of this future. That’s why they decided to
retire you, Horace. That’s why Vasta had you speared and dumped here...

Horace swam through endless
mountains of junk, powering ahead, staring around him in wonder.
How can
this be? I thought Greenstar were a recycling company?
And yet he laughed,
for he knew they were a sham. He’d been a part of the process to cover up their
evil.

It’s all about money, and it’s
all about lirridium. They recycle those products that are profitable to
recycle; that can be turned into fuel and sold on. But if it’s useless, then it
gets dumped. Greenstar make political noises about the good they’re doing for
the planet of Amaranth, but everybody knows they are liars. Everybody on
Amaranth. Everybody in Manna. Everybody in Quad-Gal. Everybody knows, but
nobody does anything. It’s the same as it’s always been... money talks, and
everyone turns a blind eye. People and aliens from other planets don’t care as
long as it isn’t outside their own front door. They make the right cooing
noises, but don’t truly do anything; because it isn’t their problem. As long as
the lirridium is flowing freely and Shuttles can zip across Manna, then
everybody is happy and Greenstar can do what the hell they like.

You said you want me to destroy
you?

Yes.

How?

You destroy both me and Greenstar
with one vicious blow. At the Greenstar Factory Hub, they have not just the
fuel processing plants for lirridium; they also have the Central Manna Depot.
Nobody really, truly understands how large it is. In the past thirty years it
has grown and grown and grown, burrowing down into the bedrock of the planet,
deeper than any ocean. Greenstar’s lirridium output makes up one entire third
of Manna’s space travel fuel requirements. What they’ve also done, very
cleverly, is merge their lirridium output with the seas and oceans of this
world... already polluted, they have fed pipes under every kilometre of sea,
the Biohazard Ocean, the Lake of Corrosion, The Sea of Heavy Metal; the Faeces
Sea... all are
loaded
with a water-lirridium blend. Right now, Horace, you are swimming through
this lirridium blend. It means if times are tough and there is a sudden demand
- for example, in times of war - then Greenstar can call on their hidden
surplus within moments.

You want me to ignite it,
thought Horace in a moment of
primal instinct.

Yes.

That will ignite the whole
planet?

A cleansing by fire. You will
destroy Greenstar totally. You will remove my toxic deviation. And yes, you
will kill many; but many will survive to rebuild again. Horace, it will be a
Biblical Fire. A Holy Tire. To wipe away the poison. To kill the toxicity.

How will I do this?

Travel to the Greenstar Factory
Hub. The Core of the Processing Plant. Others will have been integral in the
planting of explosives.

What then?

They cannot do this without you.
You are a cog in the machine. You are a part of the Whole. I can explain it no
more...