Vending Machine Lunch (19 page)

He was on the
verge of the darkness now. The slightly illuminated object was in
the shape of a vest. Or maybe it was armour. Johnston couldn’t
tell. He reached his hand out to touch it.

Bang.

Johnston was
plunged into darkness, the hypnotic pulsing louder than ever. He
retracted his hand, squinting hard in front of him. Nothing was
there. The glowing had stopped.

There was a
crash from behind him. Johnston spun around, startled and afraid.
Sweat was beginning to form on his upper lip. Narrowing his eyes,
he tightened his grip on his emergency weapon, keenly aware that he
only had two shots left. Any more than two possessed and he was
screwed. Now he knew that breaking their leg was the best way of
getting away, aim wouldn’t be much of a problem.

A second crash,
this time to the right. It made Johnston jump out of his skin,
causing him to fire his weapon. He cursed. Only two more bullets
left. He didn’t give a crap what Josh said, in his mind they were
bullets. Shells were small oddly shaped sculptures to be viewed in
a museum.

Johnston found
himself wondering if Tree World had any shells on display when he
realised that he was still in deep trouble. It was pitch black and
something was around him causing crashes. His mind wandering again,
Johnston wondered what was actually crashing as the entire corridor
was solid metal when there was a third crash from behind him.

Leaping away
from the crash in pure fright, Johnston found himself hurriedly
attempting to reload is emergency weapon. His shells slid in after
threatening to drop to the floor. Johnston aimed at the blackness
where the last crash had come from. The pulse was killing his head,
making him feel a large wave of nausea. Oh, how he desired a stick
of rolled tobacco.

Bang.

The dim red
lights sprang to life. In front of him was a hulk of a beast, that
distinctly resembled the human body. Except it was about three feet
taller. Its skin was translucent, more translucent than that of the
possessed, Johnston could see every part of its body to every
sickening detail. Gigantic bear-like claws replaced hands and its
head appeared not to have any features but a large, cavernous,
screaming mouth.

The thing
shrieked at Johnston, who was too terrified to move. Before his
brain could even register or acknowledge the creature’s existence,
it had pounced it him, sending razor sharp claws slicing through
Johnston’s flesh.

Out of sheer
fright again, Johnston fired. He was lucky. The shells blasted
straight through the creature’s gut, sending intestines flying
behind the creature. The creature stood for a moment, just as
bewildered as Johnston was, before falling backwards.

There was a
pause as Johnston stared at the dead creature in the red light. The
bassy pulse was still continuing, however, it wasn’t hypnotic or
attractive anymore. It was just annoying.

He bent down
and inspected the creature closely. Its translucent skin was very
leathery, nothing like he’d seen before. He gazed with fascination
at what he guessed was a human, a fellow employee, genetically
mutated by the suspected resonance buffer overflow or cascade. Or
whatever you wanted to call it.

Throwing the
now useless emergency weapon to the ground, Johnston recouped his
nerves and climbed up the gap between the stairs and the walkway
under the metal mesh floor. His thoughts turned from optimism to
regret just as quick as they’d turned from fear to optimism.

There were
certain things today that would haunt him to the grave.

They would
haunt him to the grave.

They would.
Haunt. Him. To. The. Grave.

The back door
slid open, hydraulics operating smoothly for once. Johnston was
immediately faced by three gun barrels. In the centre was Jacob,
looking as smug as ever. Beside him, two uniformed nobodies.

“Oh shoot.”

“Perhaps the
wrong choice of words Johnston,” smirked Jacob, fixating his aim
upon Johnston’s forehead, “Did you really think you could fool us
by leaving the back way?”

“For a moment
there, yeah, I did,” coughed Johnston, pulling out his rolled
tobacco.

The grip on
their triggers tightened as they feared Johnston was pulling out a
weapon.

“Calm down
losers. I’m just having a smoke,” he lit his tobacco, feeling a
warm sensation of relief flow in his veins. He couldn’t care less
if he died now, “So what is this? The apparent Ninety-Nine?”

“So you’ve
heard of us?” grinned Jacob, “That saves a lot of pointless
explaining I guess.”

“Yeah, I was
sort of hoping you weren’t a member,” spat Johnston, coughing
slightly, “But you appear to be, much to my disappointment. I
suppose that explains your incisive big-headedness. So what’s the
story then? Was tonight the sole purpose of the facility all along?
You may as well tell me, your secret is safe with a dead man.”

“Maybe it was,
maybe it wasn’t. I’m afraid there is only so much we can tell dead
men.”

“It’s a good
job I can make my own conclusions then isn’t it,” said Johnston,
puffing on his cigarette, “Dwindling resources, a losing war and a
leader unwilling to give up his power. I’m not the only one
laughing at the government’s God damn mistakes. After all, when
there is only one candidate, there is only one-”

“-choice,”
interrupted Jacob.

“I’m guessing
this is something to do with Union City. To help in the war we are
so desperately losing. A military weapon, convert all your soldiers
into them freaks in there and set them loose upon the poor souls in
Union.”

“And what are
‘them freaks?’”

“They are… the
Requiem,” said Johnston, remembering what Josh had said.

“Good name. We
might use that.”

“I want
royalties. I’ve patented that word.”

Jacob ignored
him, “Good effort, but you’re completely wrong. Tell me Johnston,
have you ever heard of the story of Copland?”

“No,” said a
rather confused and bewildered Johnston.

“Ever been to
the wasteland?”

“Not me. Full
of mutants isn’t it? I don’t want to be contaminated. That aside,
it isn’t as if we can go there anyway-”

“Good. Shoot
him.”

Jacob strode
away and Johnston was shot on the spot. His rolled tobacco was put
out by his own blood, as it trickled from the hole in his head and
spread across the ground.

Five minutes
later, the Deimos facility overheated and exploded.

I’d Get Up If I Knew I’d Fell.

James had furiously
made his way down to his father’s quarters again. He was angry. So
damn cross. Crosser than he had ever been ever. How could his
father just ruin the city under his rule, and not show any care for
what he had done? His audacity stung James. It hurt.

His father was
more machine than human. In his eagerness to win the war against
Union, he had created a damaged and polluted dystopian city. Even
if he did feel up to the challenge of turning the city around, he
knew it was impossible and the inane plan from his father was
simply nonsensical.

Filled with
rage that his entire life had been a stupid, rubbishy plan, James
landed a heavy fist upon one of the many CRT monitors that
surrounded his father’s resting place. The glass cracked, sparks
emitted from the back of the boxy unit. A bang and a short, sharp
electric shock hit James. He cried in pain before standing there
watching smoke creep out of the unit.

He had been
angry before, but never this angry. All his life he had been angry
at the fact that his father had hid the outdoor land from him. Now
he was angry he hadn’t. Furious.

“James...”

James spun
around. It was his father. He had seen him punch the CRT.

“What?”

“Look, I’m
sorry,” he said, “I-I really am?”

“Really?”
snapped James, “Or are you just saying that?”

“Well, yeah,
okay I am just saying it,” said his father, “Our opinions differ,
not sure how, you are supposedly an exact clone of me. Can’t you
see what I’m giving you? It’s my empire! Sure, it’s a bit shabby at
the moment, I sort of ruined it by my own rashness and failure to
foresee events that would turn the tables, well, I say turn the
tables, Elision were sort of always winning somehow, damned Copland
was too clever for me.”

“What
happened!? Tell me exactly what happened! Tell me how you created
this pigsty of a city!”

“It was all
Union,” replied his father, “The war had been going on for some
time, many a battle was taking place in the wasteland. Union began
developing a weapon. We had spies over in Union, but thanks to the
subway being filled in and travel restricted, it was rather hard to
receive intelligence back. We had only three words, The Copland
Project. However in the end, it became very clear what Copland was.
A super processing machine. It was able to give intelligent
opinions on strategic moves that were to be played during the war,
calculating their risk and success ratings, blah blah blah,
etcetera. On its launch and for a few years after, it played a role
as the advisor to Union’s council, which is essentially what they
call a government.

“However over
time it was becoming clear that Copland was integrating itself more
and more with Union, becoming much more than just an advisor.
Public CRTs that gave Union’s public access to Copland emerged, as
did ID cards so Copland could recognise the user. All very advanced
stuff. Many companies were offered what was called an Integration
Kit, allowing their services to be made available through Copland.
With the use of the CRT screens, or Terminals as they called them
over there, any citizen of Union could insert their ID card into
Copland and gain access to news, their monetary transactions,
personal data, advertisements, order something from a shop, that
sort of thing.”

“Sounds like a
good idea,” said James, rubbing his throbbing fist, “But what has
this got to do with you ruining Elision?”

“I’m getting to
that bit!” snapped his father, “And you say it was a good idea?
Everyone thought so. No-one saw that their lives were slowly
becoming more and more dependent on Copland’s services. It wasn’t
long before Copland knew everything about everyone in Union and
pretty much took control of Union’s council. The amusing thing is,
such an outcome was considered and to see the risk of Copland
gaining control over Union, the fools at their council ran the
question through Copland. Copland obviously reported that the
chance of it gaining control over Union was unlikely.

“Copland saw
that the war wasn’t going anywhere fast. It worked out it was to be
a constant stalemate. Now that Union was intelligently stronger
than us, it had to work out how to make Union physically stronger.
Its solution was now that it had control over Union was to simply
take over Union. That was when we got a load of electronics experts
to try and hack into Copland. With all of Union’s data in one
place, it seemed simple. Copland was very secure it seemed. But we
continued anyway, getting my electronics experts to try and design
a way of infecting Copland with some sort of electronic disease
that would make it insecure without it realising.

“Meanwhile,
Copland began creating its own race. Developing physically perfect
bodies and then integrating them with electronics to make them
intelligently perfect. We didn’t know this at the time, it was done
in such an efficient way that even the citizens of Union didn’t
know. Copland quietly passed a law making it compulsory for
recommended vitamins to be in all the foodstuffs of Union. In these
vitamins, was also a compound that made humans infertile. The
citizens of Union quietly slipped into in-existence whilst the
androids took over. Once Union was stronger than Elision, Copland
could win.”

“So that’s how
everyone became undead?” said a very confused James, after a brief
silence.

“Oh, no. You
see, we were our own worst enemy,” continued his father in a rather
monotonous fashion, as though he was getting increasingly bored of
the conversation, “Copland knew it could win the war, but it wasn’t
happening fast enough for it. Somehow, the machine became impatient
and devised another strategy that shot two Requiem with one bullet
in effect. You see, Copland couldn’t keep up with the demand of
artificial human tissue needed to repair its damaged citizens. It
needed a way to replace parts in a quick and easy manner.

“Meanwhile we
were busy trying to force our way into Copland’s memory banks.
Copland knew this, but we didn’t know Copland knew. One evening, we
managed to infiltrate Copland. Less than a second of electronic
defence failure and we managed to take a good look at what was
stored within Copland. We grabbed a file that described a secret
project known as ‘5261 Eureka.’ How to create enormously
destructive weapons, using something called resonance.

“Anyway, I knew
that instant we had to copy the plan, but do it quicker. We built
two facilities. One to run all of the pre-production trials that
had been described in the file that we called Phobos. A second to
skip a few pre-production trials that we thought weren't necessary
so we could be the first to use the technology, called Deimos. If
it succeeded not only the war, but alone the economic benefits
would have been astounding. We proceeded with both Phobos and
Deimos and fell right into Copland’s trap.

“Using
resonance on the matter of life, the Deimos facility went into
melt-down, and spread a virus that reanimated dead tissue. The
result was the Requiem. The Requiem spread and killed everyone over
the course of a month. A few survivors remain, but in the end,
Copland won the war before I’d even known there was a major
pandemic occurring. I’d have gotten up if I’d have known I’d
fallen. Of course, none of us knew that Copland had deliberately
let us in and fed us a file that contained instructions on how to
create an unstoppable disease. We’d been tricked. 5261 Eureka was a
hoax. A Trojan.