Theme Planet (41 page)

“Accompany you to see the
original SA34000RAH, you say?” mused Amba. Then she gave a nod. “Yes, I’d love
to accompany you. It’s been a long and lonely journey to get here,” she said. “What’s
your name?”

The old man grinned. “You can
call me Bob,” he said, and held out his hand.

“Amba.”

“A pretty name. But then, you’re
a pretty young thing. Not like some of these monstrous over-fed pigs of
tourists, eh girl?”

“I try to stay in shape,” smiled
Amba, and they set off on the long trek across rocky ground, following narrow
trails on a steep uphill towards the Monolith Ride Museum.

~ * ~

A
drone hovered
by the entrance. It
was a small cube, an early derivation of the PopBot machines which had recently
been flooding the Quad-Gal with their rudimentary AI and, some would say,
acerbic wit and nasty sense of humour. This drone had a face made up of lights,
which flickered into different “expressions” on the face of the black cube. It
was making a buzzing sound as Amba and Bob approached, Bob’s walking sticks
clacking on the rocky ground like an extra set of feet.

“Yeah?” said the drone, face
flickering into an array of white lights which, Amba assumed, was a snarl.

“Hello there, good sir!” beamed
Bob, ever the optimist. “We’ve come a long way from Theme Planet Adventure
Central, all the way through the Caves of Hades and the Secret Tunnel, emerging
here to discover this, our wonderful reward!”

“Bog off,” said the drone.

“What?”

“I see lots of your sort,”
warbled the machine, its voice high-pitched and tinny. “Bloody sun-tanned
wrinkled adventurers, think ‘cos you’ve done a bit of trekkin’, you’ve
conquered the world or something!”

“Er...” said Bob, unsure of how
to take this.

Amba stepped forward, glancing up
at the huge portcullis. Inside, she could see long smooth halls of marble,
suits of armour, fast-food burger stands. “What’s your name, squib?” she said.

“I am known as Drone,” said the
drone, quite haughtily.

“Do you always address visitors
with insults?”

“I do what the fuck I like,” said
the drone.

Amba shrugged. “You are very
rude.”

“Well, you’ll just have to wake
up in the morning and think, ‘Gosh, he was very rude,’ won’t you, love?”

Amba moved in close and dropped
her voice. “Or I could take Bob’s walking stick and beat you around this castle
entrance hall,” she said.

“A-ha-ha-ha,” said Drone,
woodenly.

“A-ha-ha-ha,” grinned Amba,
reaching back to take one of Bob’s sticks. It was quite a hefty lump of wood,
and she weighed it thoughtfully. “It’s got quite a swing to it, this stick.”
She squinted at Drone. “And I see your casing is of cheap Taiwajapapean
construction. Like a radio alarm clock. Like a ggg carry case. Like a
burger
carton.
Should crack pretty well, I would think. Might even spill your
digital guts out onto this fine marble.”

“No need to get violent,” said
Drone. “I was only trying to help. “

“By insulting us?”

“That’s just my little way,” a
smile lit up on his cube face.

“So we can come in?” said Amba.

“Oh, yes. I was never going to
stop you. I just find it personally satisfying to insult visitors who come here
thinking they’ve conquered the fucking world. Or something. It’s all part of the
service. “

Amba turned to Bob, and shook her
head as if to say,
cheap fucking Taiwajapapean AI circuitry,
but Bob was
standing, face deadly serious, pointing a gun at her face. Amba breathed out
slowly, and allowed her body to relax. She picked out the tiny sounds of the
drone’s movements behind her, tracking him, as she analysed the muscles of Bob’s
face, and the look in his eyes.

“You’re good,” said Bob. “But you
didn’t fool us.”

“Good?”

“You’re an android. Androids are
prohibited on Theme Planet.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“Nice try,” whined the drone, “but
I have android-spotting technology built into my
cheap fucking Taiwajapapean
AI circuitry
.” It registered with Amba that this
machine
could read
her mind, at least on some superficial level. “Yes, I can,” continued Drone.
His voice wasn’t as high and nasal any more. And the look in Bob’s eyes said
the wiry old man was licensed to kill...

Amba felt the change in air
density, and ducked as Drone slammed towards the back of her skull. She felt
the tiny machine skim her head, and it was moving so fast it couldn’t halt its
impact with –

Bob.

The drone hit him square on the
nose, and carried on. His face imploded like a collapsing star, folding in on
itself like fluid, which it had surely become. Drone exploded from the back of
Bob’s head in a shower of brain and skull debris, which pattered down onto the
ground; it whirled in an arc as Bob’s limp body slapped the tiles. Blood fell
like rain, pattering to an abrupt halt.

“Did you read this?”

The FRIEND was out, pointing at
the hovering machine. Its facial lights flickered off. No point pretending to
be nice and pleasing the tourists anymore, was there?

“How did you do that?”

Amba smiled. “My little secret.”

Our little secret,
corrected Zi.

I suppose you have your uses,
said Amba, and narrowed her
eyes.

~ * ~

This
is impossible this cannot be happening I have the ability to monitor all
androids and this bitch is certainly an android. [malfunction]. Look. Bob is
dead. Bob and I worked together for a long time, a very long time, years and
years spotting androids for [malfunction], Scanning. Scanning. Scanning. What
is this strange firewall that stands before me? Where has her mind gone? This
is an impossibility! We have a mind-to-mind circuit and I...

~ * ~

There
was a
blam.
The FRIEND kicked in
Amba’s hand, and the drone exploded, shattering into a million tiny black
pieces that flew out in random directions. Fragments of the drone’s core hit
the ground, fizzing and sparking.

Good riddance,
said Zi.

“Hmm,” said Amba, and turned,
scanning the Monolith Ride Museum. The noise of the FRIEND had reverberated off
the walls, but now only an eerie silence rushed in; like a room filling with
cyanide gas.

Do you think he’s here?

Napper?

Yes. Terry “Smoothface” Napper,
Head of Monolith Secret Police. You realise he’s going to be as slippery as an
electric eel in a vat of grease, don’t you?

So where are his soldiers? His
guards?

You tell me.

I thought you were the great AI,
with all the fucking answers? Like that bastard drone... the ability to read
electronic minds. Ha! No wonder we’re never going to make it in the universe;
no wonder we’ll never find God. Androids are a doomed species. Androids are a
doomed fucking race.

Zi said nothing, and Amba headed
away from the corpse of Bob - who, she suspected, was also an android. After
all - it takes one to know one, and every android was an expert in spotting
their own kind; they had that certain
aroma.
Supposedly.

Except...

Except that didn’t always happen,
did it? How many times had Amba been unable to spot an android and nearly died
as a result? Five? Ten? Probably nearer to twenty times. But she always
succeeded in the end. Because she was an Anarchy Model. And Anarchy Models never,
ever stopped.

~ * ~

Dex fired the
Makarov,
and a bullet hit the huge, slathering, and wholly unconvincing rubbery monster
between the eyes. It gasped, looked at him as if it had just discovered him up
to no good with its mother, then fell on its side and started quivering. Dex
frowned, ejected the clip, and reloaded the pistol. He rested a cautious hand
on his SMKK; he didn’t want to use the machine gun down in the tunnels and
caves, but it had been tempting. Damn tempting. When the purple and green-spotted
rubbery monsters came wobbling out of the darkness, growling and moaning, Dex
knew,
knew
it was part of the “whole experience,” knew it was one of
Theme Planet’s “little games,” their little “themed areas,” but deep down
something had gone
click
and Dex didn’t even trust dodgy rubber reality
any longer. Reality had twisted, turned, and spun around like a Chaos Cube. He
certainly didn’t trust purple and green monsters that went “grwwwww” and
extended claws to him as if about to try and rip out his throat. He’d shot the
first one between the eyes, and continued in the same manner throughout his
meanderings through the labyrinth of The Caves of Hades.

Now, he could see a deep, rich
blue daylight up ahead. It had to be evening. Dex trudged up the tunnel, wary,
waiting for some Grand Beast, some End Level Boss, who would no doubt be ten
times harder than the other guys and have special vulnerable spots where it
was, well, vulnerable. Dex patted a grenade in his pocket. He’d soon take care
of that...

Dex emerged on a cliff-top. It
was that time of the evening when the sun is just a fiery half-disc glimpsed
over the curvature of the ocean. The sea sparkled in an incredible panorama as
a breeze of salt and ocean ruffled Dex’s hair and he took a deep breath; and
for once, almost felt normal.

He shook his head in disbelief.

“What a crock of shit. When will
the ‘fun’ ever end?”

He glanced around, wary of SIMs,
guards, soldiers, the police, or whatever the hell else Monolith Corporation,
or the Provax Government, or the Earth Oblivion Government - hell, even the
flora and fauna - wanted to throw at him. In a rare moment, Dexter Colls
realised that he now trusted nobody. Not a single living creature on this whole
damn planet! Not one fucking atom. And that was, ultimately, a very sad place
to be.

Totally alone, feeling inhuman.

Dex dropped to one knee, not
wanting to cast a silhouette against the horizon, and surveyed the landscape
down below the cliffs. There were rolling valleys and several forests crammed
onto The Lost Island, as if scattered by the hand of God. Dex shifted his eyes
left, drawn to a magnificent building - it was a huge castle, a medieval
fortress of some kind - he’d seen the filmys - only scarred by Theme Planet’s
usual tacky tat.

He made out the neon letters of
the Monolith Ride Museum. Jim said Katrina and the girls were being held on The
Lost Island; and whilst Dex knew he had a lot of ground to cover, a lot to
explore, one possibility was this castle - because a castle had
dungeons,
and dungeons were a traditional holding cell for prisoners. Maybe too obvious?
Dex didn’t care. It was a possibility. Either the dungeons or the penthouse
suite; that was where ail power-hungry egomaniacs hid out. And if nothing else,
there’d be somebody there he could torture for information. He gave a sickly
smile. Things were on a downward spiral now...

He pocketed the Makarov, and
pulled the strap on the SMKK tight, so the machine gun wouldn’t flap, and
flicked off the safety switch. He looked around.
I don’t trust this place.
It smells funny. Smells of... aliens. An alien world. An alien dream. An
alien... Theme Planet. Well, they certainly knew how to take my dream away;
certainly understood how to make my world collapse. And now they want rid of
me, dead, fired off into space and lost in an eternity of cold hydrogen. Well,
I’ll show them. I’ll show them exactly what I can do.