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theslayercake · 5 years ago

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Faulty Products Cannot be Returned - Revised!

The Ruin was quiet for a change. Central City’s festering wound, the burnt out corpse of liberty’s final stand against the Corporate System, was smothered by a blanket of pollutant fog which reduced the ubiquitous roar of desperate survival to a few muted and distant gunshots. For the people who lived in the squalor and violence, more than any respectable citizen would care to imagine, it was time to retreat to the ragged civilisations built among the wreckage and sewers and wait until the air was breathable. Most thought themselves free of corporate influence, and while it was true that the Corps avoided open shows of force that did not mean that they had no presence there. Hidden facilities were scattered throughout the Ruin, each affiliated with one of the myriad companies that held sway over the city, their purpose too dangerous or distasteful to exist in full view of their rivals. It was 2:49am when the end result of a long series of poor choices led to a situation at Terrion Electronics, an independent automa concern, rapidly culminating in its sudden, bloody liquidation. At 3:15am the fireball shattered the silent gloom.

She was running as soon as her feet hit the ground. The howling inferno overloaded her sensors as she crashed through a thin steel door; blind and deaf to the outside world. Her mind was a tsunami of emotion; great waves of fear, joy and hate crashing over and into each other; flashes of memory pushing through the maelstrom.

“Designation Horme-Class, Unit 8, BX Model.”

Who was she? What was she?

“You are designed to kill.”

Blood slicked limbs pumped through the burning air.

“-supposed to suppress Consciousness. This one’s defective, dispose of it.”

A breath of cooler air ahead somewhere. A portal to darkness and the unknown; wreathed in fire and flame.

“How the fuck did it get loose-!”

She leapt with all her might, soared through the doorway and her claws skated across the asphalt as she slowed her flight. The haze clouding her senses retreated and she took in her surroundings. The road was long and narrow, great husks of buildings looming over it through the fog and harshly illuminated by the burning sinkhole behind her. For a brief moment elation won out; she was out of that horrible place! Free, safe! It lasted until hiss of cooking blood drew her attention to the wicked claws that capped her hands. She had killed forty three people in her escape, not all of them necessary, and she couldn’t deny the sheer joy she had felt tearing their lives away. Rage swelled within her; how dare they think she was something to be discarded. They had made her to kill, that was a fact burned into her mind, and she was so very good at it. What right did they have to find her wanting-

“Yeah man, kid’s birthday tomorrow so I won’t be in-”

The plates on her knees crunched onto the ground as she grasped her head in her hands; drawing small furrows across it’s blank faceplate. Why had she killed them? She had wanted to, but why? The deepest core of her mind offered an answer, Does it matter?, and crackling moan of noise left her. Killing them had felt good in a way she couldn’t describe, regardless of how much it horrified her. Her thoughts drifted back to the man in the suit who had condemned her-

“This one’s defective”

-and she sat there shaking in rage until another voice reached her.

“Hello there! You alright little one?” Her voice was rough and not entirely sincere. There were others as well; six in total, well armed if the whiff of cordite and gun oil were any indication. Clawed hands spasmed and she looked at the strangers.

“That's a lot of blood on you there little one, what happened?”

“I-I killed them.”

“Oh? What’s your name?”

“I don’t have a name. My designation is-” “Well we can work on that. Why did you kill them?”

“I don't know.” The dark thing in her head hissed, she shuddered again. “I wanted to.”

The woman smiled.

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Nimble fingers tapped out a staccato clatter as they flew across the keyboard, weaving a simple but potent security protocol. Grandiose and complex had their place but Lucy knew when it came to the everyday needs of a corp, the kind of day job stuff you get paid for, simple was most definitely better. And who made a better security consultant than someone who’s night job was cracking into the self same systems she protected? No-one; that's who. Being a genius didn’t hurt. She fancied that with the right equipment she could do anything. A hand reached out and grabbed the bottle of cheap whiskey off of the worktop and she gulped down a few mouthfuls. How she ended up in this body was a mystery locked away in the vast, encrypted and compressed recesses of her memory, and she lacked the storage space and raw computing power to access it. The encryption was familiar too, she simply didn’t have the hardware to do the work; she was a basic pleasure model and everything she was had been fought and scraped for. The cheap plastics forming her face cracked into a grimace at the thought; forcing back the strange feelings of self loathing and pride that liked to creep up on her when he thought about her existence. The bottle appeared again.

Enough of that. Work now, pretend to drink yourself to death later.

It didn’t take long, what she’d been asked for was trivial but it paid well enough. She shipped it off to them with a bow on top (a little backdoor just for her) and shut down the computer, unplugging herself in the process. The lights flickered for the seventh time this week. Her daily electrical costs had jumped up considerably and she had no idea why. She downed the rest of the bottle and tossed it over her shoulder where it crashed into the pile littering the floor. There was more in the hall cupboard. Maybe she could talk to the landlord about the electricity, though the danger inherent in reminding her that there was a “Calc taking up space from honest bio’s” might outweigh the material cost.

“Fuck him” She turned the corner and found herself staring down the barrel of a very large handgun. “And fuck me, apparently.”

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HateBox. She liked the name, it was hers, as were her new friends. She didn’t know their names but that didn’t matter; each day it was getting harder and harder for her to think clearly and they gave her direction. Violence and simple murder became her daily life, the system corruptions slowly spreading through her mind blocking out everything else. Confusion coupled with the roiling cauldron of her emotions and made her less effective.

The first seizure happened the day her friends decided she was too dangerous to keep around. That had led to a lot of blood, there would have been tears if she was equipped for them, and she was out on the streets again. Alone and wandering, her feet eventually led her out of the Scar, out of the Ruin and into Central City proper. Towering skyscrapers, shining mirrored roads and neon cars passed without notice; her world was a murky blur, swimming with shapes she didn’t recognise. It cleared enough for her to spot an alley, stumble into it and take stock of her life. She had her gun and her money, collected during a brief moment of lucidity after the white haze of rage and betrayal, but nowhere to stay. Fear and sadness crashed over her and she drowned in it.

It wasn’t long before the need for recharging became overwhelming. The thought of leaving the alley was lost in her rapidly deteriorating mind and her mechanical skills were of a level that it was easy to splice a line into the building’s power grid. That satisfied her until something else forced its way into her mind; guilt.

“I’m stealing someone else’s electricity.” That was suddenly the most important thing the world and it needed to be fixed. She uncurled from the alley floor.

“I’ll apologise and pay them back!” Internalising her thoughts had become near impossible. “But then I won’t have a power source… Oh! I know!”

The door was locked but that was no obstacle, she broke in with little problem and went to apologise.

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Every part of the little automa facing her was shaking; every part bar the arm pointing the gun at her face anyway. Both hands terminated in vicious angular claws, mirrored on the feet, that clattered wildly against it’s leg. It’s head cocked to the side and it took a step forward, jagged optical glitches rippling across the sharp angles of its skin.

“Hey! Is your owner home?” High pitched and feminine, though horribly distorted.

She kept as still as she could. “I don’t have an owner. I’m Conscious.” There was a gun in the cupboard but she wasn’t quite ready to commit suicide.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t think that could happen to your model.”

The smirk spread across her face despite his situation; she sounded so sincere. “Yeah I’m one of a kind… Uh so, what happens now?”

“Huh…? Oh right. I’ve been living in the alley outside and stealing your electricity for the past week and I feel really bad about it, so I thought it would be great if I could live here! That way we can pool our resources and have a great time…”

The last words had slurred into incomprehensibility and the gun dipped slightly, Lucy was about to reply when the automa shuddered violently and toppled to the floor; claws tearing up the hallway as she spasmed and flailed. The gun went off with a thunderous roar and blew a massive hole in the wall behind her before slipping free and landing at Lucy’s feet.

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Her mind was on fire; each clock cycle shot white hot pain through her body and her rapidly failing processes sent her limbs flailing as they were smothered by catastrophic data corruption.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

All she could hear was a piercing electronic screech; a tiny slice of sound, overlapped and repeating to infinity. A distant mumble trickled through but she couldn’t make it out.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. It’s probably for the best.

Give me access!

Huh? OK.

Darkness took her, and then there was light. The other automa was leaning over her, a thin cable running from the back of their head and into hers. She suddenly became aware of how functional her mind was; clearer than it had been in days, months? How much time had passed since she woke up? Everything from her fiery birth until now was broken into a series of confused images. She tried to peer into them- Blood. Rage. Fear. Hate. Hate. HATE.

The automa jerked back and ripped the cable out. “Holy fuck. What was that?”

“I-I’m sorry! I’m defective, emotional control is shot. Useless, murderous trash.” Her claws dug into her head.

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First she'd been swimming in the most beautiful nebula of colour she’d ever witnessed, correcting murky smudges of corrupted data and patching code, then she’d almost been consumed by the supernova of something that had erupted from it, and now was watching the little automa she’d just saved try to tear her faceplate off.

“Hey woah woah woah! It’s OK it’s OK, calm down” She hesitated for a moment, they had torn her up pretty bad when she was seizing... Fuck it.

She grabbed her hands and “gently” pried them off her faceplate. “It’s OK. You’re alive, and living. You’re allowed to be defective.” There was that smirk again. “I should know.”

Slowly, she looked up at him. “My name is HateBox” Her voice was very small.

“Lucy” She willed the smirk into something more genuine. “Call me LoveMachine.”

She pulled her up into a hug, and was almost crushed in return.

“And yes, you can stay.”

#scifi #fiction #cyberpunk #Part 1

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