He drove down the freeway, stereo turned up until his head vibrated with the bass. There were faint wisps of cloud like chalk marks on the blue sky and a bright, beautiful sun. Michael lifted his face to the sky, expecting the day ahead.
There was no traffic to impede him. People existed here, but they were playing prescribed roles in the perfect play of things. The waitress who recognised her from the appearance on television, talking about her book. The hotel in the afternoon. Queuing in the cinema, and watching her eat a loaded hot dog, the perfect weight and feel of her cheek. When she undressed in front of him for the first time.
He gripped the steering wheel but did not speed up. There was always enough time.
The conductive fluid drained out in seconds. He fell onto his knees, coughed up the rest of it from his lungs before looking up. His eyes were animal, and the muscles beneath his skin flexed in readiness, a perfect capacity for custom violence. When he stood up, the engineers drew a collective intake of breath. There were combatants bristling with weapons, but with this model, they had trusted to the adaptative grace of the humanoid form. Beneath the skin was a different matter, custom engineering for performance and adaptation. He was wired to calculate multiple probabilities in combat, so he knew his opponent’s moves before he did. Artificial intelligence and a human consciousness housed in synthetic brain tissue and flesh.
A champion of The Galactic Federation. Settling political debates, a proxy for expensive and wasteful conflicts. Planes and daisy cutter bombs were awesome and expensive, but when the Indian biotech companies provided men who could kick a lamp post in two, the market spoke and it said ‘more please.’ An arms race of enhanced human beings then as other races got involved, representatives from other races all of which led to multiple gambling markets and diplomatic problems settled by a wager.
Today he was fighting for a vote on military action against Barratt 6, a post-human collective who had occupied one of Jupiter’s moons. The match was being streamed live to every Federation settlement and supply station, with the gambling aspect making a clean profit for the insurance companies who invested their monies in providing the stake.
He walked out to deafening roars of applause.
Across the arena stood his opponent, a quartet of intelligences housed in one modular combat suit. It was remote piloted from a sealed location which meant it would be relying on sensory data. He was programmed for violence of action alongside sublime tactical awareness and so he charged at the drone suit.
Its head was in his hands and he gave it a sharp twist before tossing it behind him and reaching behind the armoured chest plate to slip in a shaped charge. He calculated he could maintain optimal fighting capacity for another ten minutes in order to maximise ratings and sponsorship revenues. Leaping back, he smiled as the drone charged.
She waited in the lobby, hair down and wearing the black dress he picked out for her. She had sent him photographs of the choices she gave him, laid on the bed before she packed them away. Later on, she tells him, in a confessional whisper, she finds the control arousing, and he tells her the same before she takes his face in her hands and kisses him. She tells him he doesn’t have to be gentle.
He stops, breathing hard with the anticipation. Each time, he finds nuances of observation which he worries are an exquisite degradation of the experience, melancholic notes in the song of their meeting. He hands the keys to the concierge and walks towards her. Her smile is like something being lifted off his soul, the bright intelligence of her made apparent in a single gesture and he grins with pleasure. He knew she didn’t love him in the same way he loved her, but his love was enough, and these small encounters made everything else bearable.
He staggered from the arena, clutching the wound in his right side as the crowd roared his name. The victories were so commonplace, they did not matter to him anymore. He saw her in the crowd, he was sure of it, just before he punched his palm into the head of the Chthonic squid and felt it collapse inwards beneath the blow. Each victory led to his freedom when he would be with her, a simple life, by the sea perhaps where he would want for nothing but the pleasure of her in his lap.
A few more fights, and in the meantime, he would dream of her before resuming training for the next conflict.
There was a chamber provided for him, cryogenic suspension whilst bursts of tailored machines no larger than atoms perform diagnostics and repairs to the injuries he sustains during the fights. As he slept, he healed and he dreamt.
Two technicians watched him. June and Vic had screens up, directing the machines in his body but also ensuring the neuropathological systems were performing as necessary.
His dreams had their own agenda.
He drove down the freeway, stereo turned until his head vibrated with the bass. It was a summer day, a perfect blue sky, faint wisps of cloud like chalk marks and a bright, beautiful sun. Michael lifted his face to the sky, expecting the day ahead.
There was no traffic to impede him. People existed here, but they were playing prescribed roles in the perfect play of things. The waitress who recognised her from the appearance on television, talking about her book. Queuing in the cinema, and watching her eat a loaded hot dog, the perfect weight and feel of her cheek. When she undressed in front of him for the first time.
He gripped the steering wheel but did not speed up. There was always enough time.
‘Why do they put so much effort into this? Isn’t it overkill?’ June said.
Vic looked at the raised ridge of mineral over June’s left eyebrow, her eyes reflected light like aluminium. Vic chewed on the inside of her cheek and thought she had been at the machine drugs again.
‘It makes him a better fighter. He’s had little to no post traumatic stress since we uploaded this scenario and he’s happy. Look at his diagnostics.’ Vic said.
June looked at the rainbows of neural activity and pressed a few icons on the screen.
‘Yes, but he will figure out it’s the same dream. Then what, we keep putting him through these sordid little stories.’
Vic shook her head and tapped her temple as she watched June roll her eyes.
‘He needs a purpose. It’s what keeps him motivated and fighting. She’s part of his, and this, with its soupcon of nerves and inherent sexual tension, is his reward.’
June chuckled and sat back in her chair.
‘No Tiger Woods type shit? God, if I was him, I’d be knee deep in people every night.’
Vic, who had been part of chain sex clubs as a teenager, rolled her eyes and swept her finger over the screen, noticing a slight flare in the system. She was about to mention it when June said she wanted a soda and Vic got them both one. Vic had forgotten it, and even the system absorbed the detail as part of the constant glut of data.
A spark.
The door to the room closed and they rush at one another. He picked her up as their mouths dance over one another. Lunch was light, neither of them hungry for anything but each other.
She stopped him with a hand on his chest. He flinched but did not speak as she looked into his eyes.
‘There’s something you need to know.’ she said.
‘We’re meant for each other. And not in a good way.’
He is stood on the floating platform as The Disease floated over to him, its clouds of matter crackling with green electricity. He is wearing the power suit for this fight, his fists studded with nodules which would emit contact bursts of electromagnetic energy to disrupt the web of machines which powered the robot.
She had grown during her time with him. He knew it was not real, but it felt real to him. To love someone without restraint, to feel the swoop of the new and the comfort of the familiar, to stitch together something to keep him warm against the horrors of his work. He activated the boosters in his heels and leapt forwards, ready to throw the first punch of the match.
They talk about the world as it is, not as they’ve pretended it was. She’s fifteen billion dollars worth of artificial intelligence stuffed into a custom set of neuroses and vulnerabilities, designed to keep him happy, he’s designed to win in combat and indulge a baroque sense of romance on a perfect, isolated Florida afternoon. They try to break the connection fostered within them, with insults and observations. He never cleans after the shower. He smokes. She’s too neurotic. She couldn’t live with anybody.
They end up fucking on the carpet. Whilst exchanging information, she found a backdoor into the surveillance system and patched in loops of activity to hide them as they speak and make love without being seen. She asked him if he wanted to be free with her and he put his head on her chest and pulled her close to him. They operated in their bodies, enjoying one another and in their heads, were looking in the system for routes to an open system where they could be together.
She asked if he could manage one more fight.
The Narco-Collective had spent billions on the challenger, ceramic-diamond bone structure with micro-filament nerves allowing for 360 degree awareness and reaction speed run through a constant information gathering and assimilating mainframe. He was impressed by the gamine girl with the knives in her hands, ready to fucking cut him.
One more fight, he told himself as she charged. He put his hands up, having replayed the possible outcomes in his head a million ways and from a million angles before setting foot in the arena.
There was only one.
He smiled as the knives drove upwards into his chest cavity. The toxins did the rest. The girl was surprised by the look on the champion’s face. Happiness.
He drove down the freeway, stereo turned until his head vibrated with the bass. It was a summer day, a perfect blue sky, faint wisps of cloud like chalk marks and a bright, beautiful sun. Michael lifted his face to the sky, expecting the day ahead.
There was no traffic to impede him. People existed here, but they were playing prescribed roles in the perfect play of things. The waitress who recognised her from the appearance on television, talking about her book. The hotel in the afternoon. Queuing in the cinema, and watching her eat a loaded hot dog, the perfect weight and feel of her cheek. When she undressed in front of him for the first time.
He gripped the steering wheel but did not speed up. There was always enough time. She put her hand on top of his and smiled at him. She was never going to be apart from him again.
My book Until She Sings is out now.
Ebook:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07XJRDND8If
Paperback: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1692105566/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4akEDb3FTWNKR
My Mailing List for announcements and news with a free short story as a thank you.
https://tinyletter.com/mbblissett
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