Shine (26 page)

So we made them. Got in hock with the best Japanese robotics specialists and tooled up a slew of different incarnations of Metallica. Each robot was a lifesize, hyper-realistic replica of a given member of the band at a specific point in their career. After processing thousands of hours of concert footage, motion capture sofware enabled these robots to behave with staggering realism. They moved like people. They sounded like people. They sweated and exhaled. Unless you got close enough to look right into their eyes, there was no way at all to tell that you were not looking at the real thing.

We commissioned enough robots to cover every market on the planet, and sent them out on tour. They were insanely successful. The real Metallica did well out of it and within months we were licensing the concept to other touring acts. The money was pumping in faster than we could account it. But at the same time, mindful of what had happened with Ghoul Group, we were thinking ahead. To the next big thing.

That was when I'd had my one original idea.

I'd been on another flight, bored out of my mind, watching some news item about robots being used to dismantle some Russian nuclear plant that had gone meltdown last century. These robots were Godzilla-sized machines, but the thing that struck me was that more or less humanoid in shape. They were being worked by specialist engineers from half way round the world, engineers who would zip into telepresence rigs and actually feel like they were wearing the robots; actually feel as if the reactor they were taking apart was the size of a doll's house.

It wasn't the reactor I cared about, of course. It was the robots. I'd had a flash, a mental image. We were already doing Robot Metallica. What was to stop us doing Giant Robot Metallica?

By the time I'd landed, I'd tracked down the company that made the demolition machines. By the time I'd checked in to my hotel and ordered room service, I'd established that they could, in principle, build them to order and incorporate the kind of animatronic realism we were already using with the lifesize robots. There was, essentially, no engineering barrier to us creating a twenty metre or thirty metre high James Hetfield or Lars Ulrich. We had the technology.

Next morning, shivering with excitement, I put the idea to Jake. I figured it for an easy sell. He'd see the essential genius in it. He'd recognise the need to move beyond our existing business model.

But Jake wasn't buying.

I've often wondered why he didn't go for it.Was it not enough of a swerve for him, too much a case of simply scaling up what we were already doing? Was he shrewd enough to see the potential for disaster, should our robots malfunction and go beserk? Was it simply that it was my idea, not his?

I don't know. Even now, after everying else that's happened--Derek and all the rest--I can't figure it out. All I can be sure of is that I knew then that it was curtains for Morbid Management. If Jake wasn't going to back me the one time I'd had an idea of my own, I couldn't keep on working with him.

So I'd split. Set up my own company. Continued negotiations with the giant demolition robot manufacturers and--somewhat sneakily, I admit--secured the rights from Metallica to all larger-than-life robotic reenactment activities.

OK, so it hadn't ended well. But the idea'd been sound. And stadiums can always be rebuilt.

"You still there, buddy?"

"Yeah, I'm still here." I'd given Jake enough time to think I'd hung up on him. Let the bastard sweat a little, why not. Over the roar of the scramjet's ballistic re-entry profile I said: "We're gonna lose comms in a few moments. Why don't you tell me what this is all about."

"Not over the phone. But here's the deal." And he gave me an address, an industrial unit on the edge of Helsinki. "You're flying into Copenhagen, buddy. Take the 'lev, you can be in Helsinki by evening."

"You have to give me more than that."

"Like you to meet the future of rock and roll, Fox. Little friend of mine by the name of Derek. You're going to like each other."

The bastard had me, of course.

It was winter in Helsinki so evening came down cold and early. From the maglev I took a car straight out into the industrial sticks, a dismal warren of slab-sided warehouses and low-rise office units. Security lights blazed over fenced-off loading areas and nearly empty car parks, the asphalt still slick and reflective from afternoon rain. Beyond the immediate line of warehouses, walking cranes stomped around the docks, picking up and discarding shipping containers like they were coloured building blocks. Giant robots. I didn't need to be reminded about giant fucking robots, not when I was expecting an Interpol arrest warrant to be declared in my name at any moment. But at least they wouldn't come looking here too quickly, I thought. On the edge of Helsinki, with even the car now departed on some other errand, I felt like the last man alive, wandering the airless boulevards of some huge abandoned moonbase.

The unit Jake had told me to go to was locked from the road, with a heavy duty barrier slid across the entrance. Through the fence, it looked semi-abandoned: weeds licking at its base, no lights on in the few visible windows, some of the security lights around it broken or switched off. Maybe I'd been set up. It wouldn't be like Jake, but time had passed and I still wasn't ready to place absolute, unconditional trust in my old partner. All the same, if Jake did want to get back at me for something, stranding me in a bleak industrial development was a very elaborate way of going about it.

I pressed the intercom buzzer in the panel next to the barrier. I was half expecting no one to answer it and, if they did, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to explain my presence. But the voice that crackled through the grille was familiar and unfazed.

"Glad you could make it, buddy. Stroll on inside and take a seat. I'll be down in a minute. I can't wait to show Derek off to you."

"I hope Derek's worth the journey."

The barrier slid back. I walked across the damp concrete of the loading area to the service entrance. Now that I paid proper attention, the place wasn't as derelict as I'd assumed. Cameras tracked me, moving stealthily under their rain hoods. I ascended a step, pushed against a door--which opened easily--and found myself entering some kind of lobby or waiting room. Beyond a fire door, a dimly illuminated corridor led away into the depths of the building. No lights on in the annex, save for the red eye of a coffee machine burbling away next to a small table and a set of chairs. I poured a cup, spooned in creamer and sat down. As my vision adjusted to the gloom, I made out some of the glossy brochures lying on the table. Most of them were for Gladius Biomech. I'd heard of the firm and recognised their swordfish logo. Most of what they did creeped me out. Once you started messing with genetics, the world was your walking, talking, tap-dancing oyster. I stroked one of the moving images and watched a cat sitting on a high chair and eating its dinner with a knife and fork, holding the cutlery in little furry human-like hands, while the family dined around it.
Now your pet can share in your mealtimes--hygenically!

The firedoor swung open. I put down the brochure hastily, as ashamed as if I'd been caught leafing through hardcore porn. Jake stood silhouted in the dim lights of the corridor, kneelength leather jacket, hair still down to his collar.

I put on my best laconic, deadpan voice. "So I guess we're going into the pet business."

"Not quite," Jake answered. "Although there may be merchandising options in that direction at some point. For now, though, it's still rock and roll all the way." He gestured back at the door he'd come through. "You want to meet Derek?"

I tipped the coffee dregs into the wastebin. "Guess we don't want to keep him waiting."

"Don't worry about him. He's not going anywhere."

I followed Jake into the corridor. He had changed a bit in the two years since we'd split the firm, but not by much. The hair was a little grayer, maybe not as thick as it used to be. Jake still had the soul patch under his lip and the carefully tended stubble on his cheeks. Still wore snakeskin cowboy boots without any measurable irony.

"So what's this all about?"

"What I said. A new business opportunity. Time to put Morbid Management back on the road. Question is, are we ready to take things to the next level?"

I smiled. "We. Like it's a done deal already."

"It will be when you see Derek."

We'd reached a side-door: sheet metal with no window in it. Jake pressed his hand against a reader, submitted to an iris scan, then pushed open the door. Hard light spilled through the widening gap.

"You keep this locked, but I'm able to walk in through the front door? Who are you worried about breaking in?"

"It's not about anyone breaking in," Jake said.

We were in a room large enough to hold a dozen semi-trucks. Striplights ran the length of the low, white-tiled ceiling. There were no windows, and most of the wall space was taken up with grey metal cabinets and what appeared to be industrial-size freezer units. There were many free-standing cabinets and cupboards, with benches laid out in long rows. The benches held computers and glassware and neat, toylike robotic things. Centrifuges whirred, ovens and chromatographs clicked and beeped. I watched a mechanical arm dip a pipette into a rack of test tubes, sampling or dosing each in quick sequence. The swordfish logo on the side of the robot was for Gladius Biomech.

"Either you're richer than I think," I said, "or there's some kind of deal going on here."

"Gladius front the equipment and expertise," Jake said. "It's a risk for them, obviously. But they're banking on a high capital return."

"You're running a biotech lab on your own?"

"Buddy, I can barely work out a bar tip. You were always the one with the head for figures. Every few days, someone from Gladius stops by to make sure it's all running to plan. But it doesn't take much tinkering. Stuff's mostly automated. Which is cool, because the fewer people know about this, the better."

"Guess I'm one of them now. Want to show me what this is actually all about, or am I meant to figure it out on my own?"

"Over here," Jake said, strolling over to one of the free-standing cabinets. It was a white cube about the size of a domestic washing machine, and had a similar looking control panel on the front. But it wasn't a washing machine, obviously. Jake entered a keypad code then slid back the lid. "Go on," he said, inviting me closer. "Take a look."

I peered into the cabinet, figuring it was some kind of incubator. Blue, UV-tinged lights ran around the inside of the rim. I could feel the warmth coming off it. Straw and dirt were packed around the floor, and there was a clutch of eggs in the middle. They were big eggs, almost football sized, and one of them was quivering gently.

"Looks like we've got a hatcher coming through," Jake said. "Reason I had to be here, actually. System alerts me when one of those babies gets ready to pop. They need to be hand-reared for a few days, until they can stand on their feet and forage for themselves."

"Until
what
can stand on their feet and forage for themselves?"

"Baby dinosaurs, buddy. What else?" Jake slid the cover back on the incubator, then locked it with a touch on the keypad. "T-Rexes, actually. You ever eaten Rex?"

"Kind of out of my price range."

"Well, take it from me, you're not missing much. Pretty much everything tastes the same once you've added steak sauce, anyway."

"So we're diversifying into dinosaur foodstuffs. Is that what you dragged me out here to see?"

"Not exactly." Jake moved to the next cabinet along--it was the same kind of white incubator--and keyed open the lid. He unhooked a floral-patterned oven glove from the side of the cabinet and slipped it on his right hand, then dipped into the blue-lit interior. I heard a squeak and a scuffling sound and watched as Jake came out with a baby dinosaur in his hand, clutched gently in the oven glove. It was about the size of a plastic bath toy, the same kind of day-glo green, but it was very definitely alive. It squirmed in the glove, trying to escape. The tail whipped back and forth. The huge hind legs thrashed at air. The little forelimbs scrabbled uselessly against the the oven glove's thumb. The head, with its tiny pin-sized teeth already budding through, tried to bite into the glove. The eyes were wide and white-rimmed and charmingly belligerent.

"Already got some fight in it, as you can see," Jake said, using his ungloved hand to stroke the top of the Rex's head. "And those teeth'll give you a nasty cut even now. Couple of weeks, they'll have your finger off."

"Nice. But I'm still sort of missing the point here. And why is that thing so
green
?"

"Tweaked the pigmentation a bit, that's all. Made it luminous, too. Real things are kind of drab. Not so hot for merchandising."

"Merchandising what?"

"Jesus, Fox. Take a look at the forelimbs. Maybe it'll clue you in."

I took a look at the forelimbs and felt a shiver of I wasn't exactly sure what. Not quite revulsion, not quite awe. Something that came in at right angles to both.

"I'm no expert on dinosaurs," I said slowly. "Even less on Rexes. But are those things
meant
to have four fingers and a thumb?"

"Not the way nature intended. But then, nature wasn't thinking ahead." Jake stroked the dinosaur's head again. It seemed to be calming gradually. "Gladius tell me it's pretty simple stuff. There are these things called
Hox
genes which show up in pretty much everything, from fruit flies to monkeys. They're like a big bank of switches that control limb development, right out to the number of digits on the end. We just flipped a few of those switches, and got us dinosaurs with human hands."

The hands were like exquisite little plastic extrudings, moulded in the same biohazard green as the rest of the T-Rex. They even had tiny little fingernails.

"OK, that's a pretty neat trick," I said. "If a little on the creepy side. But I'm still not quite seeing the
point
."

"The point, buddy, is that without little fingers and thumbs it's kind of difficult to play rock guitar."