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This short story was written for an online university course I'm study about science fiction. It is inspired by the cyberpunk genre. As such, expect occasional vulgarity and dark undertones.
+cookie if you can find the 3-4 pop/literary references within the story.
+cookie if you can find the 3-4 pop/literary references within the story.
Through the slits of the blinds, Lee saw the myriad of ant-like pedestrians passing below. Almost all of them had a device to their ears. He thought it a miracle that anyone could have a phone conversation while traffic roared next to them, and magnetic rails sped above them.
Inside the office, Lee was alone. There was nothing but empty chairs, and decorative plants too green and symmetrical to be of nature’s design. The glass table in front of Lee was eerily pristine. A lone holopad sat atop it, grey and lifeless.
Lee recalled the newspersons, pundits and hopeful scientists of his childhood. With the advent of each new up-and-coming technology, there’d be predictions of ‘unforeseen paradigm shifts to our society’. And there was – for the people that could afford a quantum computer, A.I.-programmed house servant, or a life-saving printed kidney. Everyone else was too busy climbing the socioeconomic ladder for a piece of the fortune to notice any ‘paradigm shifts’. For all that has changed throughout the decades, only our fucking love of money has remained stagnant, thought Lee.
Suddenly, the holopad flashes to life. Above it floats the projection of a middle-aged man’s face. The room was at once tinged in a sickly green light, as its source began speaking.
“Hi, Randolph Voight, assistant corporate security manager. We at Eckleburg-Nomura are glad to have been able to --“
“Cut the crap and tell me why I’m here.” Lee never had the patience for formalities. The sterility of the office did not help to soothe his mood.
In an instant, Voight’s holographic projection lost its smile. “Very well. Roughly 7 hours ago, at 1:49 A.M., a division of our research and development department ran into an… issue.”
A smirk spread across Lee’s face. “Let me guess. The Artificial In—“
“—telligence and Robotics division, yes,” finished Voight. “The team was experimenting with memory-assisted methods of synthetic emotional development on a modified G-127 locomotive unit.”
Lee had understood enough of what was said. “Memory implantation. Not exactly legal, is it?”
The hollow image of Voight chuckled. “Which is why we hired a Liquidator, instead of calling the cops. We thought an A.I.-controlled entity with heightened emotional intelligence and learning capabilities would be a tre–“ –a stutter in the projection– “–ndous asset. Needless to say, the reason you’re here is that it didn’t work out as planned.”
“And now you want me to liquidate this faulty asset of yours,” Lee remarked. “Send me all of its details – model number, manufacturer, unit architecture. I want the incident report too.”
Voight contrived a half-smile. “We’ll provide all the information necessary for you to optimally perform your job. If there’s anything else, you have our contact details. Thank you for doing business with EN Incorporated,” were the final words before his projection sunk into nothingness.
Lee had finished talking to a machine; now it was time to hunt one. He didn’t enjoy his profession, but he was good at it – and money is money.
***
Floor N, underground. The elevator doors parted with the sound of a ding. Lee stepped out, his specialised anti-mechatronic rifle raised high and glued to his Kevlar-clad shoulder.
The hallway before him was tiled a sterile grey, with steel plates and labyrinthine wires covering the walls. A sea of broken glass covered the floor, no doubt fallen from the broken ceiling lights. Half are completely out, the other half stuttering with uncomfortable regularity. The elevator doors silently slid to a close, as Lee walked onwards.
Eleven injured, four in a critical state. The entire RND department evacuated, with all non-emergency power cut from it. Lee had the details of the incident report intimately memorised. So far, everything he was seeing matched its description.
Something far off in the distance released a low, mechanical growl. Immediately, the Liquidator attempted to suppress his instincts. He could hear his pulse steadily gain in tempo, the heads-up-display of his visor confirming such. His skin crawled with apprehension, amplified by the floor’s discomforting coldness.
The corridors seemed to become more and more dimly lit with each turn of the corner. Lee must have passed a dozen doors whose automatic locks all shone a piercing red, before he finally stopped. Green.
Right hand firmly gripped to his rifle, he swiftly pulled the door open and entered the room. It was almost pitch black, save for the presence of some flickering lights and electrical sparks. Lee turned on his shoulder-mounted LED torch, creating an arc of light in front of him. As he surveyed the room, only a mess of laboratory and mechanical equipment could be made out. Relief began to settle in, until a distinct silhouette was spotted.
Slowly, Lee advanced toward it, increasingly aware of each step taken. The closer he came, the greater his certainty of what the silhouette was: a woman’s corpse, morbidly lying amidst a wreckage of smashed circuitry. The tiles around her were stained a deep red, as was the attire which betrayed her former maintenance position. Lee was devoid of surprise that corporate would fail to disclose the death of some no-name janitor, let alone care enough to retrieve the body. He searched for an ID card, and found it: María Velasco.
As Lee continued to inspect the body, another violent growl resonates from directly behind. Its proximity was unmistakeable. At that moment, Lee only knew fear, and reflex. A split second passes, before he found himself turned around and having fired his rifle. The round was deafening, though its impact was even louder, releasing a devastating electromagnetic pulse on whatever material it had just hit. All flickering ceased in a large radius around the target.
Alright, get a grip. EMP completely fried it. Approach the target, check for damage. It took considerable force for Lee’s mind to unfreeze his body. He began to move towards the target, the aim of his rifle unflinchingly maintained. As he drew closer, his torchlight illuminated more and more of the machine, until the entirety of its monstrous mass was revealed.
There it was. A hulking pile of metallic plating and dangling optical fibre, with five mechanical limbs connected to it. The sixth was severed by the EMP round, leaving behind a malformed stump and outflying sparks. Two of the limbs could be roughly categorised as arms, the others appearing to function as legs. A blackened, smoking hole in its torso lay just below an Eckleburg-Nomura logo, indicating where it was hit. At one point, it may have resembled a G-127. But now, it was a horrid, dying thing, entangled in a mess of wires and metal. Lee felt equal parts disgust and pity. The latter was strange to him.
It’s a robot. Finish it, so you can collect your cheque. It lacked anything that resembled a head, so the torso would have to suffice. Lee aimed his rifle directly at the machine, and prepared his trigger finger for–
“H-h-help me… please.” The string of words had a characteristically mechanical timbre. But to Lee, its tone was disturbingly animate. Must just be hearing things, he rationalised.
“I-I’m so af-fraid.” There was no mistaking it. He could feel the pain in its voice. Not the sort emulated by your operating system, and definitely not the typical G-127 unit voiceset. This was the sort you hear from a lost child, or a mother in labour. Against all that his experience has taught him, Lee lowered his gun.
You’re hired for liquidation, not conversation. Don’t. Every part of his mind compelled him not to engage. Don’t.
“What are you?” Lee could not think of one conceivably good outcome to come out of asking this question. But he asked it.
“I’m s-sorry, I do not, uhh… entender,” replied the thing, in confusion. Lee had understood more than enough.
“What’s your name?”
“M-m“ –Lee already knew the rest before it came out– “aria.”
This must be a joke. A sick fucking joke. Voight said memories were implanted. Just memories. Lee stood there, unable to move as a tidal wave of thoughts swelled within him. He knew corporate would be selective with the information they gave him, but this was fourteen layers of fucked. Memory implantation was illegal for a reason. That reason would be tenfold for an entire person’s mind.
“Maria, what happened here?”
“I was working m-my normal shift, I-I clean this r-room when los empresarios - th-they offer pay me to… to…” Maria struggled to find the right description. “So I go to sleep. Then I-I wake up, I wake up to so much… pain—“ she trails off into what can only be described as muffled tears.
“Maria, that body over there…” Lee pointed towards the other Maria.
“When I wake up, I s-saw her. She scream at me, ‘diablo, diablo’! S-she won’t stop, everyone in uniform, staring at me not st-topping her! So I stop her myself!” Maria continued to incomprehensibly yell, coming to a rage-fuelled crescendo. Then, as quickly as she was incensed, she returned to sadness and regret.
Once Lee finally managed to accept the absurdity of the situation, he was trying desperately to not empathise with her - to remain impartial to his job. The woman killed herself. Or she killed someone else. What am I even talking about? ‘She’ is an ‘it’, isn’t she?
Maria tried to move herself, to no avail. With her little remaining strength, she pleaded, “Please, I have two boys, Samuel, Eduardo.” Lee had no response, no thought capable of redress. “P-please, j-just…just--“.
The last of Maria evaporated as her body sunk. There it sat, grey and lifeless. All Lee could do was silently stare, taunted by flickers of green light at the edge of his eyes; his only thought was whether he had just killed the last vestige of someone’s soul.
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