Inkless Media
www.somethingwicked.co.za
Copyright ©2008 by Something Wicked and Contributing Authors
First published in May, 2008
FICTION
Making Waves by Abigail Godsell, art by Christine King
Eyes by Inge Papp, art by Emil Papp
&Arial: Overload by Brett Venter, art by Pierre Smit
Asylum by Roe Malan, art by Emily Tolson
Without Face by Michael Bailey, art by Vincent Sammy
Curiously Insane by Edward Stone, art by Keith V Whalen
Day of The Whales by Widaad Pangarker, art by Hendrik Gericke
SF COMPETITION FINALISTS
The Revolution by Joe Doe, art by Eddie Marz
Cohen's Last Stand by Jenny Robson, art by Emily Tolson
Step Right Up by Brett Venter, art by Vianne
Birth One by Brett Rex Bruton, art by Vianne
FEATURES
Editor's Note
Interview with Jolene Blalock, by Joe Vaz
Mark Sykes’ Sixth Sense of Humour
Writers Cornered: SA Partridge—by Vianne Venter
A (very) Brief History of SF—by ErikG
Book Reviews
Music Reviews
Games Reviews
First Look at Indy 4 by Joe Vaz
Featured Artists
THE ENTERPRISING JOLENE BLALOCK
MAKING WAVES by Abigail Godsell
MARK SYKES’ SIXTH SENSE OF HUMOUR
&ARIAL: OVERLOAD by Brett Venter
A (very) Brief History of Science Fiction
WITHOUT FACE by Michael Bailey
CURIOUSLY INSANE by Edward Stone
DAY OF THE WHALES by Widaad Pangarker
IF ADVENTURE HAS A NAME IT HAS TO BE...
Thank you for purchasing Something Wicked.
Joe Vaz is the editor and publisher of Something Wicked because at some point, a long time ago, he figured he needed to keep busy.
Today he sleeps whenever he can, usually between page layouts and cat feedings.
He also works as a full time actor playing itty-bitty parts in big movies.
Well, here we are—SW06
All brand-spanking new and gleaming with Pierre Smit-ness, (the cover artist, in case you didn't know).
Many things have happened over the last few months, the most obvious being that Issue 6 is almost two months late. Which is not our fault.
As our newsletter subscribers and forum members already know, we've had a few financial difficulties—nothing serious—but we unfortunately had to hold off on SW06 for a few extra weeks due to late payments. Hence the tardiness. Apologies to those of our fans who've been rabidly champing at the bit these last weeks.
The good news is we are indeed back, in the proverbial flesh and presumably, in your sweaty paws. (Unless you've developed X-Ray vision and are currently reading this through the shoulder of the guy in front of you on the bus. In which case, you're going to love this issue—once he takes his cell phone out of his breast pocket of course.)
So here we are, the first official issue of 2008 and holy-smack-a-doodle it is sooo packed with stories that we had to crowbar a few extra pages into the covers.
To start off with we have an interview with Jolene Blalock! That's right, an honest-to-god Vulcan between these very pages!!!
The next big news is our four (yes four, we couldn't agree on three) competition finalists. Now it's up to you to choose your favourite. Remember there is R1000 up for grabs for the winner so please do support your faves and cast your vote. All you have to do is SMS SFCOMP to 34599 followed by the number of your favourite story and your first name. One lucky reader will win a free year's subscription to Something Wicked, (SA readers only, sorry).
We also have six brand new stories for you, as well as &Arial: Overload, the second instalment in Brett Venter's novella, which debuted in Issue 3 (eBook readers be sure to download our specially formatted edition of &Arial Part One from fictionwise.com)
Well—I seriously had a ton of stuff to write in here but it is so damn late that I am quite unable to function. Oh, yes! We want to congratulate the winners of our Neil Gaiman competition! Daniel Goldstuck and Camilla Klipp have each won themselves a signed copy of Gaiman's Fragile Things. Congrats there guys, your books are on their way.
The other big news is that we're officially available as an eMagazine through fictionwise.com. This is primarily to facilitate the availability of the magazine to our International readers. Fictionwise offers 12 different file-formats, so you'll be able to pick up a copy of SW no matter what your preferred device is.
For you writers out there, check the website because from April 1st we will be accepting hard-copy manuscripts as well as our usual email submissions. Thanks to the overwhelming response, we're opening email submissions until 15 May this time round, so get your stories in timeously and always double-check the submission guidelines on our website, as this will greatly improve your chances of having your story accepted.
Thank you for sticking around over this little hiatus, we really appreciate the loyalty of the Something Wicked readers. Remember the best way to keep informed as to what is happening is to register or visit the forum at forum.somethingwicked.co.za. Come on over and give us your feedback, it's really quite lonely in this office and we'd love to hear from you.
Well, I do believe it's time to surrender to the dark—we've been at it for just under 22 hours on the pre-print final haul and—oh, right—there's no darkness left. Except between the pages of this awesome issue. Ladies, gents and ghouls, we're very proud indeed to present—our very own darkness, Issue 6 (as promoted in the underground system). So, turn the page and step into our nightmares.
Goodnight and good luck
Joe
8:51am, 14 Mar 2008—Cape Town
Got something to say? Go on, byte me: Send your letters, compliments, complaints & suggestions to: editor@somethingwicked.co.za or P.O. Box 15074, Vlaeberg, Cape Town, 8018, South Africa or register on our forum at forum.somethingwicked.co.za/
It's not every day you get to sit down for lunch with one of the most beautiful women this side of the final frontier. Editor, Joe Vaz, put on his best Vulcan-face to boldly go for an interview with the enterprising Jolene Blalock, and was rewarded with a wonderful conversation about life, Star Trek: Enterprise and her latest starring role in Starship Troopers: Marauder
Jolene Blalock is best known for her work as Sub-Commander T'Pol in the last Star Trek spin-off, Enterprise. The role undoubtedly catapulted her career into orbit, but she turned it down three times before finally agreeing to take on the Vulcan.
It all started with a pastor's daughter who grew up watching Star Trek re-runs with her father. Little did Jolene Blalock know she would one day grace the NCC-1701 as the Vulcan Sub-Commander, T'Pol, in Star Trek: Enterprise.
Jolene's career began, unsurprisingly (see pic above), in modelling. From there she moved to commercials and finally, acting. Her résumé charts the spike quite clearly: In 1999 she was playing ‘Woman’ in The Love Boat: The Next Wave. By 2000 she was guesting on Good vs. Evil, CSI and JAG. But what got her aboard the Enterprise? “Pounding the pavement,” she says, “and a lot of prayer and luck, just like anybody. But I've been very fortunate."
In person, Jolene Blalock could not be further removed from T'Pol. She is vivacious, funny and intelligent, and has a laugh on her like a truck-driving construction worker. For those of us who grew up with the daft notion that T'Pol was kinda hot, there's a further wake up call—did I mention that, face-to-face, she is drop-dead beautiful? I mean tongue-paralysingly, stupidity-inducingly beautiful? Still, in the name of journalistic endeavour and rabid fandom, I forged ahead, paralysed tongue and all, to the debriefing.
I managed to track down your CSI episode, ‘Crate ‘n’ Burial'. So, buried alive huh? What was that like?
I really was buried alive, I really, really was. Reading the script I'm like, “buried alive, cool"—I really was buried alive! I mean like bound, gagged, buried. And the crate they had me in wasn't dirt-proof, so the dirt kept falling in as they were burying me (laughs)—Something Else, man. It was awesome
Awesome? Not quite the word I would use.
I love it, just like in Starship Troopers, there was so much rolling around in the dirt and all the action and stunts and guns—I love that. I dig it.
2000 was a good year for you wasn't it?
Yeah it was, it really was—that's when Enterprise started. I passed on that three times.
Why?
Because I grew up watching Star Trek, the original series, and Spock was a large part of my formative years, you know, as far as television was concerned, and I was not about to frikken make myself foolish—big shoes to fill, I didn't want to shame it. But I did okay, I did it by the skin of my chinny-chin-chin.
Was there a lot of excitement?
Oh very much so, it was thrilling. You're talking about a classic.
How did you feel first day on set?
Completely alien.
Which is good, since you were playing one.
Yeah, man, everything from her walk to her facial gestures, everything had to be so minimal and yet read with impact. That was actually a really nice challenge for me. I was worried that it wouldn't come across, but it did.
And it was your first leading role.
Yeah, other than CSI and JAG, that was my first real job, and working with Scott Bakula (Capt. Jonathan Archer)—I could not have asked for better. He taught me my work ethic, he taught me how to behave on set. He taught me how to deal with the day-to-day. Invaluable, such an amazing guy.
Watching some of the outtakes, he seems like a bit of a buffoon on set—
Yeah, he's a clown, but he works his butt off. He's got five kids, he had his hands full. It was pretty amazing to see how he coped with everything. We never saw the sun off the lot.
You'd think a seven-person ensemble cast would share the bulk (of the work), and sometimes we did, but for the most part it was Scott and I. Especially in the last season, we lived on the lot.
But it was an incredible crew and we got along so well. There wasn't a bad apple in the bunch. We had a lot of fun.
What was it like being on a Star Trek set, with the communicators and transporters and sliding doors?
Oh, the gadgets—I'm such a gadget geek. That was really cool, having all the little toys and the way they built the sets, you know, the buttons actually pushed. It made you feel like a little kid.
As opposed to the other series’ where it's all touch screen?
Yeah, all the blinking lights, though we had a lot of that too, like with the viewer. There was nothing in it, though we always joked about putting some porn in there—It never happened.
How did you feel about the way T'pol was originally portrayed in those ‘blue-gel’ scenes?
Oh God, those scenes in the De-Contamination Chamber? Do you know how many comic strips I've seen where it opens up on the dog, then it's Scott rubbing the dog, then Hoshi rubbing Scott, then T'pol rubbing Hoshi, and it just goes on ... (Laughing) That's the Bowwang room.
Later on they started to drop the T'pol “sex-beast from space” persona and started to give you the good lines though, thank God.
That was Manny Coto. When Manny came in everything changed, slowly. They only allowed him to do so much. Once we knew we were getting cancelled they gave him liberty to do what he wanted, but it was just too late. The suits had already grown tired of us, and you know—if you don't bend, you break.
The last two seasons were great.
The entire show should've been like that.
Have you ever met Leonard Nimoy?
I have, we did a convention in Berlin and he was the star speaker. I was coming off stage and there was just a little single ramp, no bigger than this table, and I'm walking off stage and he's walking on and I look up and it's “Hi,” and he's, “Hi,” and then he shakes my hand and he's like, “Can I have my hand back?” “Yes, yes, of course."
That was it.
I was like, “hrrglgle". I was so f'king retarded ... oh well.
Tell us about your Starship Troopers character, Lola Beck
Lola Beck is a strong woman. I was actually up for another movie, to play the unwitting female victim. All this crap is happening to her, she didn't ask for it, she doesn't want it, but there she is—and something in my gut didn't sit right. So when this role came up, I went for Lola Beck with reckless abandon, because she is such a strong female character and I knew she was more suited for me. And I was right. I mean, running around the dunes with an AK47—you can't beat that. So I really thoroughly enjoyed portraying her.
What was it like filming in Cape Town?
There is something seriously spiritual about Cape Town...
Where are you from originally?
San Deigo, home town, born and bred.
Beach town
Yeah, and that's another reason I like Cape Town so much, it reminds me of my home.
Water is freezing though...
True. But the people are very similar and just the geography of it is very similar. You can get anywhere in half an hour, 15 minutes. It's mellow, mellow people. You know, you work hard, you party hard. It's a very good mix
Is this your first time in South Africa?
No. I was here ten years ago for Diamond Hunters with Roy Scheider, Sean Patrick Flannery and Alyssa Milano.
Did you ever think, 20 years ago, surfing in San Diego, that you would be half-way across the world on a film shoot today?
No, not whatsoever.
Been a good trip?
It's been an awesome trip—surreal. I'm very thankful.
Starship Troopers: Marauder is released on DVD in July this year.
The rain is driving Nathan Radley crazy. The gloomy downpour has been falling relentlessly for nearly a week now, and it shows no sign of letting up. He stares at it morosely. The drops are even heavier than this morning. He glances up from his maths book and watches them patter loudly against the windows.
This must have been how Noah felt in the ark.
A sudden gust of wind yowls outside, harrying the rain and making it hiss against the glass, like a creature trying to get in.
Nathan hates the rain. Mostly because soccer practice is cancelled when it rains, which is as good as a death sentence to him. But today it's different. Inexplicably, this implacable, ceaseless rain makes him uneasy.
There is a crack in one of the window frames. No-one's noticed it yet, but it's been growing steadily for three days now. The ageing wood had given in to the damp's pull at first light this morning and now the space is finally wide enough. A single trickle of rain, no wider than the shaft of a pencil, slides soundlessly through it, and into the class.
Towards the front of the class a hand punctuates the air with a silent exclamation. One of the kids in glasses is complaining to the teacher that it's gotten too dark to read properly. Nathan only half listens to the ensuing debate about the School's Social Responsibility to be Energy Efficient in Full Support of the Government. He has no interest in kids who wear glasses, particularly if they aren't girls. He can't help agreeing though; he noticed the light fade ages ago. He didn't say anything. He doesn't speak now either. Even though the classroom feels like one of the dodgier, low-lit nightclubs, he doesn't raise his hand, because Nathan is watching the rain.
Through the gap by the window and down along the white plaster peeling gradually away from the wall, heading for the floor, the water seeps unnoticed.
The fluorescent lights overhead flicker to life and quite suddenly Nathan's window is opaque, revealing only the reflection of the lighted classroom within. He blinks at the abrupt change of scene and then grins at himself. The heartthrob of Inglemont High checks his reflection in the storm-darkened glass. He runs a hand through his glossy black hair, admiring the way the classroom lights pick out the hints of green in his eyes. Suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise as he becomes aware of someone watching him.
This is not unusual for Nathan Radley. When you're this good looking, it's practically naïve to expect people not to stare. Casually, so as not to spook his watcher, he begins to rotate in his chair on the off chance that it's a girl and she's pretty.
Three seats behind him, someone suddenly averts their eyes. Nathan goggles. It is a girl, a tall one, with a long flax-blonde plait. She's smiling behind one pale, cupped hand. Nathan's jaw drops in utter amazement, because the girl smiling mischievously at him, is none other than Ingrid Smith.
Ingrid Smith! Ice-Queen Ingrid! The most desirable girl in the whole school, staring at him. And smiling! Nathan gives her his best roguish grin, but she's no longer looking in his direction. Slightly disappointed, but still feeling triumphant, he returns to his algebra.
Ingrid Smith, the one female in existence worth chasing and the one girl in school that he's been trying to get a date with for over three years. He and he rest of the male population of Inglemont. She is certainly no easy target, but that's what makes her interesting, the challenge of it. Any poor sod attempting to flirt with her gets transfixed by her winter-blue laser beam eyes, and stared down until he passes out or runs away. Hence: Ice-Queen.
But until today, Nathan's bet was that she was into chicks. And then (cue Hallelujah Chorus) Ingrid smiled at him. SCORE!!!
The crack in the wood widens slightly, rain streaming through it and down to the puddle rapidly spreading across the floor. Water continues to pour into the class.
The pool grows.
It's a strange sort of pool, oddly dark and murkier than rainwater. It seeks the floor unfalteringly, cutting a perfect plumb line down the wall, almost as if it knows where it wants to go.
'Nathan Radley, you are the shit!’ Nathan mutters to himself, doing a mental victory dance. He knows that he's good looking. It's kind of a hard fact to ignore when girls have come to physical blows over the prospect of laundering his sweaty soccer shirt after a game. He knows he's hot.
He also knows that with three words and a smile he can have any girl in the school eating out of the palm of his hand. Any girl, except her. But maybe that's all about to change. Nathan smiles to himself smugly. Some girls just take a little longer to realise what they want.
The puddle advances, its clouded waters consuming the scuffed lino greedily. It's growing awfully fast. Still, no-one seems to see it.
From behind, Nathan hears the grate of a chair keening unhappily against the floor. Then a hush descends on the class, every learner freezing in place. Ingrid Smith is walking up to the front desk. Suddenly no-one is looking at their maths.
She brushes past his desk and Nathan grins up at her, letting his eyes linger in a manner that would earn most boys a slap. Her long braid sashays down her back, almost past her waist. He finds his gaze wandering to the area just below its tip. She opens her textbook on Mr Bartlby's table and begins to pose her question.
Nathan adopts his “Greek god” pose: chin tilted, eyes serious and distant, the hint of a frown at the corners of his mouth. He knows that from this seat the overhead lights are in the perfect position to catch the emerald flecks in his eyes and the sheen of his hair. That's why he sits here.
Ingrid doesn't even look up from her book on the way back. Nathan is crushed, but not for long. One slim, pale hand rests briefly on his desk as she passes, and when it is withdrawn, a tiny slip of folded paper winks brightly at him.
Outside, the rain continues to batter the windows like the echo of a thousand ghostly drummers. In the back corner, the turbid puddle broadens. Almost purposefully, as if it were looking for something
Nathan beams, and snatches up the note. Then he checks himself. It wouldn't do to appear over-eager. With painfully exaggerated casual ease, just in case she happens to be watching, he flicks it open. For a moment he sees weird shifting symbols, inked rune-like into the page. They writhe under his gaze and he can't quite get his eyes to focus on them. The marks wheel, blurring and fading into each other. What the hell? Why can't he see straight? Nathan blinks and rubs his eyes. They're burning horribly, like he just looked into a very bright light. They're trying to adjust to it, like the human eye does when it gets lighter or darker, to avoid being damaged. In fact just like that, as soon as he saw the symbols, it was like his eyes were suddenly trying to adapt, changing the way he saw. He looks down again to the page. It's blank. Just an ordinary piece of exam pad, devoid of type. Nathan frowns for a moment, rubbing his eyes absently. They still tingle. Too weird. Then it dawns on him, and he nods in happy satisfaction. Ingrid is just like other girls, one of those who likes to tease a guy. The blank note is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Damn, she must be into him worse than he thought. ‘Yes, Nathan Radley you are the shit!'
A splinter of wood, worked loose by the constant motion of the water, snaps away and tumbles down the outer edge of the shutter. The trickle becomes a hissing stream flowing into the classroom. The farthest edge of the puddle brushes the classroom wall and stops, pausing a moment. Then the water spreads out in a new direction ... searching, searching, still unseen. But not for long
Nathan's already forgotten about the itching behind his eyes and the weird black symbols. It may as well never have happened. He folds the note, and carefully slides it into the chest pocket of his school shirt. Maybe he should tip the poor girl a wink, to let her know he's in on the game.
He notices something odd. There's water in front of his desk. Not like water trickling from a water bottle that's fallen out of someone's bag, or dripping from the ceiling, but like serious leakage, cover-the-floor kind of water. He frowns. How come he didn't notice it before? There's no way a puddle that big could have sprung up while he was reading the note.
Then he realises something even stranger. His desk isn't the first in the class, and the water has to be coming from somewhere. So, his can't be the first desk to be surrounded by it. Then why has nobody else said anything? He's never the first one to notice anything that's not pretty and female. Beginning to be a little nervous now, as well as puzzled, he looks around for the source of the water.
Nathan turns in his chair, and as he does, sees something that causes him to draw his breath in with a hiss. The floor of the maths classroom is a silent sea of murky water.
Slowly piecing things together, Nathan realises that there really is no way this could all have appeared while he was reading. He just looked up from the note and suddenly saw it all. That means, that this ... puddle was here all along. So why didn't anyone see it?
Looking down at the murky blackness, Nathan can feel the cold coming off it. He begins to tremble. Desks and chairs and students’ feet rest, seemingly on the water's surface. It looks to be no more than a few centimetres deep, but it's not the water that freaks him. It's the fact that all the students, chatting and laughing and folding paper aeroplanes, still don't see it at all. He looks around, confirming a horrible suspicion. Out of his entire ad maths class, he seems to be the only one who notices anything strange at all.
Very, very slowly, he stares down at the legs of his desk. Each is standing in its own tiny circle of dry floor. The water flows around them, never touching them, almost as if it's purposely avoiding them.
Nathan takes a deep breath, and swallows with difficulty. He stares down into the water itself. It is murky, a deep chocolate brown, and opaque. From here it seems very, very deep; deeper than should be possible for any puddle. He turns, slowly looking around the class, taking in the lake that stretches from wall to wall. Clenching his hands on the edges of his desk, he slides his feet carefully up and off the floor. It's incredible to him that anyone could miss all this. But from the way his classmates are sitting, comfortably chatting at their desks, it's obvious that they have. The question is still gnawing at him. Why can't they see? But now it's joined by another, even more troubling concern—why can he?
The wind, shrieking through the corridors, works invisible fingers into the hinges of the door, throwing it open with a sharp report. Still in shock at his desk, Nathan sees the teacher raise his head. He clicks his tongue in annoyance, and stands. Nathan's shoulders tense. The floor around the teacher's table is dry, for a little way, like a small island of safety surrounded by the dark ocean of water. But it is only a very small island. Mr Bartlby begins walking across the classroom floor, muttering under his breath about the unreliability of classroom doors. He lifts a polished black leather loafer, and pauses momentarily on the threshold of dry floor, as if he can sense something wrong. Then he shifts his shoulders, and steps down.
Nathan catches his breath, his entire body now rigid with fear. As the teacher's foot descends the water pulls away as though it can somehow sense it. A space of perfectly dry, ordinary tile opens just wide enough for the rubber sole of the teacher's shoe. Nathan stares, his eyes wide with horror as the water draws away before the stride of the Grade 10 mathematics teacher. His palms, still clutching the desk, are sticky with sweat. He wants to say ... but doesn't even know how to begin. The words stick in his throat. How do you tell someone to avoid what they don't even see? And, he comforts himself, it's not like he needs to warn them to watch out for the water, not when the water seems to be watching out for them.
Calmed now by the fact that his teacher didn't drown or vanish, Nathan's curiosity gets the better of him. He picks up a pencil and dangles it over the edge of the desk. The water below remains motionless. He probably only imagined the movement. Then he releases the pencil. The red-black streak slides through the air and clatters on the floor.
Nathan stiffens. The pencil is lying on a perfectly dry patch of tile. A yell sticks in his throat, choking him as he stares at it.
The girl at the desk next to Nathan's has been waiting for an opportunity like this for three weeks. Before Nathan can say a word, she's out of her chair and dropping to her knees to pick up the pencil. His heart jumps and he swears under his breath as he sees the water draw away a heartbeat before her knees touch the ground. She grasps the pencil and stands, offering it to him eagerly. Nathan exhales, and takes it from her. “Thanks,” he mutters softly. His fingers brush hers as he fumbles for it in her hands. Her eyes sparkle and she blushes happily, her mouth splitting into a tiny ‘o’ of pleasure. Nathan only half notices, and completely doesn't care. She's not really all that pretty.
He is not going crazy, there has to be some perfectly normal explanation for this. Nathan tries to focus on his maths book (anything to stop him thinking about the murky depths below), but the letters keep sliding in and out of focus. He can't concentrate, all too aware of the dark water surrounding him. He wants to wake up. Maybe, he thinks to himself, this is just one of those horrible super-real nightmares. Maybe if he closes his eyes ... He screws his eyelids tightly shut, and counts to ten under his breath, willing the terror away. Trying not to sob with fright, he opens them, praying that he won't see...
Water surrounds him, deep, dark, icy water. He groans, and pauses, suddenly noticing something. He remembers murky water. Now it's a lot clearer. What the hell? Leaning over his desk to get a better view, he knocks his eraser off the edge with his elbow. It hurtles into space and Nathan sees the water pull back ... just a fraction of a second too late. The rubber slides through the surface with barely a splash. His jaw drops and his eyes widen. He can see the stark white eraser clearly in the sepia-toned gloom and he watches it for a long time as it falls and falls, and falls.
Then something happens that fills Nathan with a fear so absolute that it is a long time before he can even breathe again. His view of the eraser's spiralling descent is cut off abruptly as something glides like quicksilver through the water above it. Something very large, very sleek, moving very, very fast.
"Oh my God,” Nathan whispers. He looks up, staring at the water-covered floor in horror, his face white and sweating. Wide eyed, he lets his gaze take in the dark expanse of liquid, with the terrible knowledge that somewhere below him, in the murk and the gloom, something is moving.
He can't stand this any longer. “Sir!” he calls, his voice high and tight with fear, “Mr Bartlby, sir. Please can I go and fetch the newsletters from the office, sir?” Anything, Nathan would do anything to be out of this classroom right now. Mr Bartlby stares at him over the rims of his spectacles. “Yes Mr Radley, that would be fine, provided you can show me sum three complet.... “Nathan has already crossed the classroom and is slamming the door with a bang. The class can hear him racing through the corridors at top speed. Mr Bartlby frowns, then shrugs and turns back to his marking.
"Sir.” A pale hand is stuck, ramrod-straight, into the air. He looks up with a sigh.
"May I go and help him? There's going to be an awful lot of paper to carry."
Mr Bartlby looks around the Advanced Mathematics class of sixteen or maybe eighteen pupils.
"Please, sir. I've already finished all my work."
Obviously the girl is not going to give up on this one. The teacher sighs.
"Very well, Ms Smith, as you please.” He abhors teaching at co-ed schools.
"Thank you, sir."
Ingrid Smith quietly closes the door behind her, and vanishes into the long corridor.
Nathan races away from the classroom, sobbing and gasping as the breath burns in his lungs. Only when he is satisfied that he's put enough space between himself and the class does he stop to lean against the wall. Exhausted, he lets himself slide down the brickwork into a sitting position. Spots dance before his eyes. He hangs his head, trying to clear his vision, and stares down at the corridor tiles. Or where the tiles should be. Nathan gulps.
"No!” He springs to his feet in disbelief. The entire corridor is covered by the dark, silent flood. Nathan begins to shake. What the fuck is this? What's going on? The skin on his arms prickles into goose bumps. An icy suspicion dawns on him, and he glances down sharply to check it. The water's much, much clearer. A tremor passes through him as he stares down into the depths. The huge shadowy thing from before glides soundlessly beneath him. It's closer to the surface now, and bigger than Nathan could ever have imagined. Behind it the water stirs and sighs in little ripples and swells. He feels the tiles shift slightly under his feet.
"Shit!” Nathan screams. He runs. Out of the main entrance he flees, dashing onto the drive. The water is here too. Outside, the rain has gotten heavier, making it hard to see. Nathan heads for the school gates, still trying to outrun the blind panic that grips him. The thing is slowly getting closer, closer to the surface, and somehow, somehow Nathan doesn't think it'll stop there.
It's coming, and Nathan can't shake the horrible suspicion that it's coming for him.
Up ahead, on the road outside the school, he glimpses a figure. Squinting through the rain he tries to make out who it is. Then he blanches, for standing on the submerged tar of the street is someone he recognises all too well.
"Shit!” he screams again, racing towards the slender silhouette of Ingrid Smith.
She's let down her hair and it spreads like a shawl over her shoulders and neck. As he slows to a halt in front of her, he gulps. For a moment all he can think of is how her white school shirt and tunic, sodden and rain-wet, cling to each curve of her body. Then he sees the wave. It's still a long way off, at the top of the street, the kind of V-shaped swell that suggests something moving fast below the surface. His eyes widen.
"Oh crap!” He grabs both her hands. “Ingrid! We gotta run!"
"Hush."
Nathan tugs at her arms, desperate to pull her away. “That thing's gonna kill us!"
She looks up and puts a slim finger to his lips.
"I said hush, Nathan."
He freezes; transfixed by the way she speaks his name in her low, sweet voice. He has questions, but suddenly he doesn't want to speak, in case she takes her hand away. Barely moving his lips, he mumbles, “But what the hell's going on, Ingrid?"
She sighs. “Nothing unexpected."
"What the fuck is that thing?"
She sighs again, impatiently this time. “Everything's under control, Nathan. I know what I'm doing. It's a water spirit. An elemental the ancients termed Sprite. It comes to this world every three hundred years. These are all typical signs of its manifestation.” She gestures at the flooded landscape.
"And what ... what does it come here for?” he whispers.
Now she lowers her hand, leaning it against his chest as though for support and wraps her remaining arm around herself. Her eyes grow sad. “It comes for blood Nathan,” She says in a soft voice. “It won't leave here until it gets a sacrifice..."
Ingrid looks at the water covering the ground as Nathan pieces things together. Her white uniform, blonde hair, the way she looks at him so sadly, as if in farewell. It finally dawns on him.
"...And he demands beautiful young virgins as his sacrifices? Fair young maidens to appease the unclean appetites of the evil monster, right?"
She looks up, and grins at him suddenly.
"Uh-uh, Nathan,” she says, stepping marginally closer, her hand's gentle pressure on his chest becoming a hard shove. “This monster's female!"
Abigail Godsell is a 16 year-old South African high school student with a passion for the shadows. She's an aspiring science fiction and fantasy writer, and fan of the works of Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Sergei Lukyanenko and Phillip K Dick. Making Waves was inspired by speculation on what actually lives in the depths of Emmerentia Dam, and the source of the disturbingly large bubbles one sees during canoeing lessons.
This is Abigail's first story for Something Wicked.
If Mark Sykes were to win the 41 million jackpot in this Friday's lottery, he would:
1: Buy a couple of Milky Bars to celebrate.
2: Get a small island somewhere in the Pacific, surround it with floating mines and mutant sharks, then airdrop James Blunt, Gordon Brown, Robert Mugabe, Simon Cowell and the population of Belgium onto it, even though it's too good for them.
3: Get Muse to rewrite the British national anthem.
4: Fund teleport research and ensure that the first two transmission points connect Belsize Park to The Doors.
5: Travel the world until he finds a method of writing articles that doesn't feel like he's giving birth to a pineapple.
Mark is giving up catoptromancy because he's tired of explaining what it is. The ololygnomancy, on the other hand, is going very well.
Waaay back in 1996, I'd just seen Roland Emmerich's latest ‘what if'-fest Independence Day with a group of friends. We were all still marvelling at the special effects for a good twenty minutes or so after leaving the theatre ... all, that is, except for one of us. My good friend Duncan remained silent while the rest of us ooh-ed and aah-ed at the wonder of it all ... then, when we piped down for a few seconds, he delivered his one-sentence review: “Instead of hiding the mothership behind the moon,” he said, his voice drier than the Atacama, “why didn't they just hide it in the plot holes?"
"What plot hol—” I began, but in that instant the scales fell from my eyes. As if an hypnotic block had been dislodged, the movie played back in my mind's eye in about two seconds, and all its inconsistencies and impossibilities pummelled the logic centre of my brain. It smarted—but deservedly so—for blindly accepting things like Will Smith being able to fly one of the alien gliders from Earth to the mothership—and back!—simply by (according to him) watching its ‘manoeuvring capabilities.’ Seemed reasonable at the time ... but based on that logic, I should've been able to pilot a fighter jet after watching Top Gun.
But hey, no hard feelings ... it was a while ago now. In fact, with affectionate hindsight, I can see now that a great deal of ID4's charm (and possibly its continuing popularity with sci-fi fans) was its ability to piggy-back 140 minutes of film on science fiction's simplest yet most enduring plotline ever—invasion—while simultaneously effortlessly diverting its audience's attention away from such piffle as the sheer impossibility of Apple software, used in the film to create the virus that would disable the alien shields, being in any way remotely compatible with that of the mothership. (Bear in mind that most of today's software isn't even compatible with previous versions of itself—anyone tried opening an Office 2008 file recently?) To this day I suspect that all money taken for that film was quickly counted and securely hidden away well before any possibility of a mass box office raid by hordes of swizzled punters whose brains had grown back too quickly.
But let's face it folks—without plot holes we wouldn't have half as much fun as we do when we're talking about movies with our friends. It's fun to ask difficult questions and then make bollocks do for answers. It's more entertaining to wonder how, in Star Wars EpV, the crew of the Millennium Falcon survives outside the ship on the asteroid without pressure suits than it is to comment on Yoda's voice resembling Miss Piggy with emphysema. Think of what we'd be missing, after having been duped into seeing Blair Witch 2 or Friday the 13th Part XVI: Jason Comes Out. For some people, ripping apart an already flimsy film is the only way they're going to sleep peacefully that night, having spent their time and hard-earned money (both of which they'll never get back) on the cinematic equivalent of listening to James Blunt. For two hours. In surround sound. Are you feeling their pain yet?
Another thing: if movie writers worried about every little detail, we probably wouldn't have anything to pick apart in the first place! Imagine if George Lucas had asked himself how R2-D2 inexplicably sprouted jets with which to fly in EpIII—it may all have fallen apart right there and then. No, he just looked (for the thousandth time) at the hand-written inspirational sign above his desk that said "Fuck logic—you have a deadline," and was back at the laptop, fervently banging out more of that pure gold.
Hmm ... I have a strong urge to focus on time travel movies at this point ... in fact it'd probably be criminal not to include some mention of them in this piece, what with it being about plot holes and all. But I'm going to be lenient; while some may see them as fertile ground for fault-finding, I can't help but think that attacking plot holes in time travel movies is too much like slapping blind puppies. I mean, the Terminator movies came with a clear warning: "Any attempt to explain the paradoxes in these films will result in internal organ failure." Same went for the BTTF trilogy—and they were all so cool that we didn't really gave a flying flux capacitor anyway; the cinema even had a cloakroom where you could suspend your disbelief, for Christ's sake.
But having said that, I'm going to share with you the one time travel plot hole that, for many years, has been pulsating at the back of my mind like a chrysalis ... and now the insect temporalis impossibilicus must emerge—so catch this one if you can, boys and girls: at the end of Timecop, while it's still 1994, the 2004 version of Van Damme and his 1994 counterpart kill the baddies, thereby saving his wife and unborn son, right? So far, so good. He then skips forward ten years to 2004, leaving behind his younger self in 1994, right? But then once he's back he goes to his house, where his wife basically says “Hi, honey! Rough day at the time vortex?” while his ten-year-old son, whom he's never actually seen until that frigging moment, runs up and embraces him. Er, where in the name of Marty McFly is the other Van Damme? Sucked in by the irresistible gravity of that little black plot hole, no doubt.
Allow me to leave you with a memory of mine from the mid-1990s, in the form of a brief exchange between me and your beloved SW editor, Monsieur Vaz ... an exchange that could potentially justify many a plot hole, no matter how buttock-clenchingly bad.
After we'd just watched John Carpenter's The Thing, I asked him:
"At the beginning of the movie, why did Donald Moffatt's character shoot the Norwegian guy dead without trying to communicate with him first? Why not just wing him, and then find out why he'd been trying to kill the dog?"
Joe's reply was swift and merciless: “Because then there'd have been no movie, jerk-off."
Fair point, but maybe I'll have my revenge after seeing him appear, bald as a baby's bum, in Emmerich's 10 000 BC ... mwa-ha-ha-haaaa ... God bless Roland, his giant plot holes, and all who fall into them.
On Thursday the 10th of August, 1956, Bernard first saw the eyes.
It was perfectly quiet. He was playing a game of chess in his comfortable Johannesburg home with his old friend David. The two aging bachelors sat hunched over their battle, occasionally pausing to sip brandy from large round tumblers and light cigarettes.
Bernard was very fond of chess. In his lounge, he had a beautiful antique marble chess set, which he had bought for the purpose of showing off his skill at the classy game. The ticking of the grandfather clock punctuated the scene, and a dying fire was curled up in the black stone fireplace. David was a heavy-set man with pink cheeks and a grand black moustache. Now retired, he had made his career in rugby, first as a player and then a coach. Some of his players had jokingly referred to him as the Pink Walrus. He dwarfed the much shorter and physically unassuming Bernard, whose build reflected the fact that his talents had always been of a purely intellectual nature.
David contemplated his next move. The brandy had slowly blunted his usually sharp instincts and he dreaded Bernard's smug guffaw at his inevitable defeat. He sighed, totally stumped, and glanced at his silver wristwatch for an excuse to escape surrender.
"It's late,” muttered David. “I think I need to make tracks, old man."
Bernard smirked. “All right then,” he said. “I'll let you go this time."
David stood up and gathered his keys, accidentally bumping the table in the process and knocking over a single piece—his king. He frowned, peeved at the insinuation. Bernard decided to refrain from making any stinging comments about divine intervention, but couldn't stifle a small chuckle as he hobbled after him to the front door using an old wooden knopkierie for support. He had started developing mild arthritis in his ankles six months prior. His domestic servant, Mavis (which is what he called her because he couldn't pronounce Mahlogonolo, and she had suggested he use her “English” name instead) had given him the knopkerrie left to her by her grandmother.
At the large oak front door Bernard wished David a safe drive home. He loitered at the door for a few moments, and watched David saunter off to the blue 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook parked on the gravel. He breathed the placid night air and relished the protective feel of the solid, sleeping house behind him. As soon as he heard David's car humming around the bend he turned inside and pulled the heavy door closed, locking it behind him with a thick iron key.
He was feeling comfortably tipsy and decided to go straight to bed. He left the glasses, the ashtray and the bowl of peanuts they had been snacking on right where they were, but dutifully moved all the chess pieces back to their respective places on the board. Mavis would take care of the rest of the mess in the morning, he thought, but she didn't know the first thing about chess.
Bernard shuffled into the bathroom without bothering to turn on the light. He brushed his teeth, going over the anticipated events of the next day in his head. He spat his toothpaste, turned the tap and watched as the rushing water pooled in the sink. Something was blocking the drain, and he leaned forward to inspect it. Through the water, in the dim light from the hallway, he made out a spherical shape resting in the plughole. Its diameter was that of a large coin, and it had two concentric circles radiating from its centre. Bernard leaned closer, bent over the sink, smelling the minty froth. He saw something slide across the orb and slowly slide away again. It occurred to Bernard that he was looking into a human eye.
He spun around and pressed the light switch. As soon as the light flashed to life he heard the water being sucked into the plughole. Bernard gaped at it swirling away down the drain. There was nothing there now but his old familiar plughole, unblocked, exactly as it had looked for as long as he could remember. Swaying over the sink for a moment, Bernard stood holding it as though he feared it may float away, not quite sure what to think.
"Bloody cheap brandy,” he mumbled to himself, and resolved that from now on he'd stick to KWV 10 Year, no matter the cost.
Bernard started unbuttoning his shirt on his way to the bedroom, coughing and clearing his throat. His dragging footsteps and the thunk of the ‘kierie on the floor reverberated off of the walls and the high ceiling of the passageway. The magnificent and distinguished house, which he had inherited from his wealthy parents, had been his home his entire life. His younger brother and two older sisters had all moved out and emigrated one by one but he had stayed behind and ended up caring for his parents until they passed away. Since then Bernard had become somewhat reclusive at home, hiding from the gaze of the outside world, and no one besides David and Mavis had been inside.
When he reached his room he dropped his clothes and his ‘kierie onto a nearby chair, pulled on a set of tartan pyjamas and climbed under his heavy, cold, goose-down duvet. Shivering slightly, he reached over to the lamp standing on his wooden bedside cabinet and pulled the switch. The room was soaked in grey-blue moonlight that flowed from a large window to the right of the bed. He rolled onto his back, closed his eyes and let out a long sigh of contentment. Suddenly, his eyes opened of their own accord as he became aware of a vague unsettledness, a feeling that he wasn't alone.
Directly above his head, in a spot where he expected to see a familiar knot in the wood, there was another eye peering down at him. He froze. It was only when the eye blinked that he was able to move his limbs. His blood running cold, he reached towards the cabinet and felt at the wood, searching for the light switch. His fingers brushed over a ridge in the wood and then over something warm, rubbery and slightly wet. Turning to the cabinet, he saw that his fingers were poking into yet another eye on the wood, which was looking at him from inside the cabinet. Its lids quivered around his fingertips, irritated, brushing them with its soft lashes.
Bernard let out a sharp yelp and rolled away from it in fright, tipping off of the bed and tumbling onto the floor. He gripped the edge of the bed and stood up, grabbed the lamp and pulled the switch. Holding his breath, he looked down the side of the cabinet. The eye was gone, the wood solid and clean. He lifted his gaze to the ceiling where he saw a knot in the wood, perfectly normal, as it had been before. With shaking fingers he rubbed his balding head, distractedly patting the feathery hairs into place.
That night, Bernard decided to go to sleep with the lights on. This was something he hadn't done since the age of fourteen, when his father had taken away his lamp, having decided that this was the best way to conquer his son's embarrassing fear of the dark. Bernard's mother would have tried to protest, but she'd known better than to risk stoking her husband's often-violent temper.
Instead, she'd tried to sneak candles and matches into Bernard's room at night. One of his father's most volcanic fits of anger had taken place when he'd found out about this.
"I'm watching you, woman,” his father used to say, pointing a threatening finger and a bloodshot glare at Bernard's mother whenever she'd approached the kitchen drawer where the candles had been kept.
The following week, Bernard was tottering around the bank where he was General Manager. He wandered behind the counter, inspecting the cashiers and smiling at the customers. At the end of the counter, one of the older employees, an elderly woman named Anna, was bent in front of a filing cabinet and searching for papers in the steel drawer. Bernard approached her. Her enormous rump, with a brown tweed skirt stretched over it, was raised directly in his path.
"Morning, Anna,” he said.
Anna gasped and awkwardly turned to face him. Fiddling with her glasses, she blinked at him rapidly through the thick lenses.
"Mister Geldenhuys,” she giggled, “You frightened me!"
"So sorry,” he said. “Listen, are you busy?"
She shuffled some papers in her hands, then hugged them to her lacy bosom and gave him her full attention.
"Not at the moment, sir,” she smiled. “Is there anything I can help you with?"
"I wonder...” he mumbled. “Come with me a minute, would you please? I want to show you something."
Bernard led Anna down the corridor to the bank's large walk-in safe. He turned the knob on the door and as he completed the combination, a latch clicked. Struggling a little, he gripped the steel bars and turned them, then pushed until the door swung open. He extended his hand into the safe and Anna waddled inside, her heels clicking on the floor. He followed her and pushed the huge metal door until it was almost closed, cloaking the room in semi-darkness. She tried to help him, but he assured her he would manage.
Anna immediately reached for the light switch, but Bernard grabbed her hand.
"Wait,” he whispered. “Don't switch it on."
"But I can't see a thing,” she said.
Bernard reached into his pocket and produced an engraved gold lighter. A flame sprang up from it. He held the flame up to his face and looked at Anna, who was beginning to get nervous. Bernard was a little shorter than Anna, and as he looked up at her she could see dark circles and puffy bags around his eyes, and she wondered if he had been sleeping lately.
"Sir,” she said apprehensively, “what's going on?"
Bernard's eyes swept around the small room. There were cloth bags filled with banknotes and piles of documents stacked on the shelves. With the lighter in his hand, he motioned at two bags lying on top of each other.
"Look,” he said.
Anna turned to them, squinting in the dark.
"I don't know what I'm looking for, sir,” she tittered. “Are you playing a joke on me?"
"Just look closer,” Bernard urged her in a very patient but serious tone of voice. “Between the bags. Don't you see it?"
"Oh God,” she said, recoiling, “it isn't a rat, is it? Maybe if we turned on the light..."
"No,” Bernard said. Leaning on his ‘kierie with his elbow, he placed the lighter in his other hand and pointed at the bags. “They only come out in the dark, or in very low light. Just..."
Anna was getting exasperated. She had things to do.
"Sir, there's nothing there but two dusty old bags,” she sighed, shaking her head incredulously. “I don't understand what you're trying to show me."
Bernard lost his patience. He grabbed the back of Anna's head and shoved her face closer to the bags until her nose touched the cloth.
"It's right there!” he snapped. “Are you really telling me you don't see that thing?"
"MISter GELdenhuys!” she exclaimed as she wrestled from his grasp and glared at him in the flickering amber light. “I don't know what's gotten into you, but I don't like to be pushed around!"
She grabbed the door, managed to yank it open a little and stormed out in a series of echoing, rapid-fire clicks.
"Wait,” Bernard yelled after her, pointing at a spot in the corner. “Here's another one!"
Bernard had hoped that Anna, whom he had known for many years, would be able to see them too. She was the first person he had tried to show them to, and he was ashamed that he had lost his temper with her. The door was very slowly swinging closed, and the room gradually darkened. He looked at the eye protruding from between the bags on the shelf and held the flame up close to it. It looked at the flame, its pupil shrinking, and its lids closed slightly at the heat.
"Jesus,” he said. “It is just me, isn't it?"
It blinked at him innocently. As the door closed, the flame flickered out.
Bernard sat on a high stool in his kitchen. He had a cup of steaming tea standing next to his arm, and looked ragged. Mavis was washing dishes in the huge metal kitchen sink, occasionally sloshing some soapy water onto the floor and clicking her tongue each time some of it got onto her clothes. Every now and again she sang softly, and Bernard was annoyed at the way she kept singing the same verse over and over, though he kept quiet about it because he was too tired to talk. Mavis and Bernard usually spoke sparsely to each other anyway, although they were in the same room most of the time. This condition had persisted throughout the eleven years she had been working and living at the house.
The dishes done, Mavis pulled the plug in the sink and folded up the dishcloth she had been using, patting it down neatly on the counter. She rubbed her eyes and walked out of the kitchen.
"Night, Mister Beh-ned,” she said.
"Mmmm,” he replied. “Yes, ‘night Mavis, see you tomorrow."
Bernard listened to her tennis shoes crunching across the gravel outside, heard the door of the maid's quarters creak open and close. Across the garden, through the kitchen window, he watched as the light in her room flickered on. He was seized by an unexpected urge to go outside and talk to her, to tell her everything, but suppressed it. Like the chessboard, this was something he couldn't expect her to handle.
He stood up, picked up his mug of tea and paused at the kitchen door. His finger hovered over the light switch. Shutting his eyes tight, he worked up some resolve and pushed it. The room went grey around him. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and surveyed the kitchen: the counter, the ceiling, the cupboards, even the floor. There was nothing unusual about any of it. Breathing a sigh of relief, Bernard drained the last dregs of tea from the mug in his hand. As he swallowed the last sip, however, he saw something which made his stomach drop—an eye was staring at him, startled, from the bottom of the mug. It blinked briskly, little drops of tea clinging to its lashes.
Bernard stood limply in the doorway and held the mug up to his face, looking at the eye. He felt defeated, and hadn't the nerve to do anything else. His shoulders heaved as he began to sob, wondering when this insanity was going to end.
He collected himself and was about to put the mug down when the eye suddenly jerked upwards and then settled back on him. He frowned at it as it did the same thing again, twice. The bizarre thought came to him that it was trying to tell him something. It looked up now and held its pose.
Bernard turned the mug around in different directions to see what the eye was looking at, and found it to be pointing its gaze towards the kitchen window. He looked outside. There, on the lawn outside Mavis's home, was David's blue Cranbrook. He must not have heard it drive up, he thought, because David had avoided the gravel.
He and the eye looked on as David's dark figure walked up to Mavis's door and knocked. The door opened and Mavis's rotund silhouette appeared in the doorway. As soon as she saw David she hesitantly tried to close the door again, but David pushed it open. They spoke for a moment. She stepped aside, letting him in, and he closed the door behind him.
Bernard picked up his ‘kierie and crept out through the back door. Still cradling the mug in his hand, he crossed the garden like a crippled somnambulist. He snuck up to Mavis's window and hunched on the grass next to it, listening. Some crickets chirped loudly beneath his feet and he accidentally crushed one of them with his knopkierie. He could hear Mavis telling David that Mister Beh-ned was still awake. David pacified her in a soothing voice. There was a shuffle of feet on the dusty floor. Gradually it dawned on Bernard that the wet smacking kisses he could hear sounded like muffled slaps. He heard Mavis's bedsprings creak as two bodies descended on them.
Bernard sank to the ground in paralysed disbelief, stooping into precisely the same foetal posture he had adopted as a child when his parents argued in the next room. He wasn't sure exactly how long he sat there, unable to move or think as he listened to the heavy breathing and, later, soft crying coming from the window. After a while the door opened and he watched as David stole out to his car, lit a cigarette and drove away.
He leaned back against the cold wall, gazing at the stars. At that moment, he felt more alone than he ever had in his entire life. His thoughts were fractured, a nonsensical succession of shadowy images and disjointed words that fluttered in and out of his consciousness like bats. The sun had begun to rise when he finally got up, his soul barren, and wandered into the house.
A few days later, Bernard rapped on David's front door with cold knuckles. He shivered in the rain, clasping his knopkierie. There was a loud click as the door was unlocked, and he smiled as David appeared and ushered him inside the dark house. Bernard took off his heavy brown coat and hat, dripping water onto the carpet.
"Christ, it's pouring outside!” David said, hanging Bernard's coat and hat on the large black coat hanger in the entrance hall. “Sorry I took so long, I was on the phone. Bloody power's just gone out."
David held a brass candleholder in his hand. He peered at Bernard in the soft light and was struck by his friend's pale and fatigued appearance, but said nothing. As they entered the lounge Bernard saw candles standing all about the room, bathing the antique furniture in a warm glow. They had been stuck haphazardly to the tabletops and mantelpiece, and little white spots of wax littered the carpet.
"It's a little dark in here, old man,” David said. “Careful you don't sit in one of my potplants, haw haw."
Bernard chuckled at his joke.
David sat on his haunches in front of a small cabinet, reached inside and took out two glasses and a bottle of brandy. Bernard seated himself on an intricately embroidered settee, glancing at the dark corners around him. He fiddled with his keys as he smelled the musty dark. David handed him a glass of brandy.
"I hear you've not been to work much this week,” David said gently. “Not feeling well?"
"I'm fine,” he said. “Fit as a fiddle!"
"Glad to hear it,” David said, sitting down across from him. “I was a little worr—"
"I hear,” Bernard interrupted, “you've been a naughty old man."
"Oh?” He paused. “How so?"
"I have eyes everywhere,” Bernard said, and laughed hysterically, giving David a hearty slap on the knee and leaving his hand there.
"Ow, ha ha,” David said congenially, though his knee was stinging.
Bernard stopped laughing and looked David in the eye intently.
"Mavis tells me she's pregnant,” he said. “Did you know that?"
David suddenly paled. “Um, no, I can't say I did,” he said truthfully. Then, after a moment's hesitation, “But she's not married or anything, is she?"
"Nooo,” Bernard replied. “She isn't."
David shifted uncomfortably and sipped his brandy.
"Mmm,” he said. “Take a lesson. Now this is a decent brandy."
Bernard smiled. He stood up and walked across the room.
"Mavis is a great girl,” he mused. “Been with me for eleven years now. Never had a complaint about her. She works hard and keeps to herself. This business with the baby ... I have to say it worries me."
"I can imagine,” David snorted. “When my girl got pregnant, I had to pay her double because the father did a runner."
"And are you going to do a runner?” Bernard asked. He stepped forward threateningly. David gawked at his mad expression.
"What are you ... I don't...” he stammered.
"Don't lie to me!” Bernard cried suddenly, sending spittle flying at David's cheeks. “I know you're responsible."
"Is THAT what she told you?” David shouted in faux shock, getting up and putting down his glass. He was looking down on Bernard now, a position he always preferred when Bernard confronted him.
"She didn't tell me anything,” Bernard said, looking up at David like a provoked monkey.
"It's a lie, Bernie!” David protested, his fists at his sides. “She probably got done by some bloody worker from the mines and now she's blaming it on me because she knows I have money! It happens all the time! Don't be a fool!"
Bernard shrank back at the outburst. David's voice sounded unfamiliar to him. He seemed like a total stranger. He felt lost and confused.
David shook his head. “I can't believe you would accuse an old friend like this. It's really a poor show.” He turned his back on Bernard to avoid his eyes.
Bernard's skin suddenly prickled with rage. His muscles tensed until they felt like coiled springs. He took a deep breath, lifted the knopkierie and swung it at David's head. He missed, hitting David's shoulder, and the blow produced a dull, cracking noise. David slouched to the floor, his face twisted with pain. He raised his hand over his shoulder, trembling. His arm hung from its socket, lifeless, like a string puppet's arm.
"Jesus!” he cried. “You've dislocated it!"
Bernard hit David's shoulder again, making him yell. He was so perversely excited at the sound that he broke out in a crooked smile. There were hundreds of them now, scattered around the room, glistening, blinking and turning this way and that. Some were looking at David, some at Bernard, some at nothing at all. They lay in the wallpaper, in the portraits and the soil in the flower pots. There was even one where the light switch should be.
Bernard looked around at his audience.
The eyes all turned to him and stared. He swivelled round to David, grinning grotesquely and raising the knopkierie high over his head in a theatrical manner. David screamed as the blows came down on his skull again and again, his blood spattering all over the parquet floor. A strong wind blew in from an open window and most of the candles went out. Bernard panted in the near-darkness, the bloody knopkierie clutched in his hand. The eyes looked down on David's dead bulk approvingly.
Bernard took his ‘kierie and his brandy glass to the kitchen and washed them under a tap, then dried the glass and put it back in the cupboard. He walked through the lounge trying not to look at David, banging on the floor with the knopkierie as he hurried from the scene.
Mavis had three older brothers living in the township near David's house. “They're most likely to be fingered as the culprits if Mavis comes out with the truth,” he realised as he got into his car. “If she doesn't, some other poor sod from around there will have to take the rap."
As he drove the six kilometres home in the dark he saw the eyes lying in a straight line on the road, embedded in the tar. They followed his movement, squeezing shut when the plump drops of rain fell into them. He gazed at them disappearing under the belly of the car, overcome with exhaustion.
When he got home, he stowed his blood-spattered coat under the car seat and pulled a small bag out of the cubby hole and took it inside. In the kitchen, Mavis was sifting flour into a large stainless steel bowl. He placed the bag on the counter, and she opened it to find a small packet of baking soda. She thanked him and added it to the mixture.
Bernard sat down on a stool and watched Mavis kneading the dough on the counter, listening to her flowing voice singing “thula, thula...” His heartbeat had settled into a slow, peaceful throb, and Mavis's lilting vibrato mingled with the sound. He closed his eyes and became so relaxed that he started nodding off. Eventually he sighed, bid her goodnight, trundled down the long passageway and collapsed into bed.
He felt secure. The eyes would watch over her all night.
Inge Papp is a freelance journalist, photographer, bookstore clerk and human being. She holds a BA in Film & Media Production from UCT. She spends her free time petting kitties and sending prank signals to passing UFOs.
This is Inge's first story for Something Wicked.
"We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear...
...Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonwealth, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose...
...In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media."
Excerpts from A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace—John Perry Barlow, February 8 1996
Blood sprayed a delicate, fanlike pattern on the bare brickwork and plaster. A fighter's head snapped backward, rocked by the impact of a fist. The synthetic eyes of the stricken fighter glazed as his body dropped to the floor, control of his leg muscles draining away as he slammed into unconsciousness. Grinning, the victorious fighter acknowledged the crowd. He stepped forward and lifted his fallen opponent in one hand.
He shifted his grip, inverted the limp body and hurled it against the wall. The unconscious fighter hung there, his legs impaled on the wicked row of spikes that lined the wall at head-height. His opponent pulled a knife from the back of his belt, covered his victim's face and drew the blade across his throat. Laying the soft skin there open to the bone on the first pass, the victor hacked at the spine until the razor edge had broken through. He lifted the severed head by its hair and faced the crowd. He roared.
In the dark recesses of the crowd, some felt the hair on their necks rise as a projectile passed silently between them. The victor of the illegal fight jolted as the object struck him in the head. For a moment he stood immobile, unscathed, and then his head exploded. Flecks of blood, bone and brain sprayed the front row of the spectators.
Angry voices raised as the crowd turned to see who had ended their fun. Those closest to the door glimpsed the retreat of a dark-haired figure clad in black. His leather jacket reflected the streetlight for a moment before he was swallowed by the mist.
No-one inside the venue was stupid enough to attempt to follow him.
"Hazel, someone is following me."
Hazel looked around automatically. “Where are they?” she said.
Vlad smiled. “Not here. On the neural net. Someone is tracking me. They seem to be able to find me whatever I do. It makes no sense."
"What do you mean?” Hazel asked, cleaning the glasses in the sink in front of her.
"I know that they are there. They know I know, but I can't pinpoint them at all. And if it were one of the Corporations, they would have come down on me by now. If they can stick that close, finding me here should present no problem."
Now it was Hazel's turn to smile. “It can't be the Corporations then, can it?"
"I know. But then who? The other big players on the scene know me and we would all know if someone that good showed up. And I can still run rings around everyone else in the business."
"AI tracker, maybe?"
"No, it's definitely organic, human. The response time's too quick to be AI and whoever it is can think laterally. I can shake a computer in seconds. This ... this person is sticking to me no matter what I do."
Hazel sighed. “What are you going to do then?"
Vlad picked up his drink and turned to face the interior of the bar.
"I don't know, Hazel. I just don't know."
&Arial smiled, as much as a computer simulated entity can smile anyway. Life as an avatar was getting interesting, especially since she'd gotten a fix on *Blind Guardian*. Vlad, as he was called in the real world, knew that she was watching him. Unusual, since she had never been detected before. But there was something about that man.
She looked around the virtual world, her deep green eyes taking in the illusions she had created. Vlad may know his way around the web but he had no clue that she was also watching him in reality. Satellite cameras, surveillance feeds, CCTV transmissions and illegally installed high-tech equipment were her eyes and ears. There was only a rare moment or two when he was not under her gaze.
She would be very surprised if he did not pick that up in the very near future too. Very ... intuitive. His actions seemed to be guided by an instinctive process rather than by rational thought. All in all, a most interesting individual to watch.
&Arial had even been watching when Vlad had taken the high-energy weapon out from under his coat in that Japanese bar and blown the winning Deathmatch fighter to hell. She had not been expecting that. Although it had told her a fair amount about what kind of man she was watching.
She went back to her mysterious machinations in the ether, one eye on Vlad's antics while the other turned outward to the net, encompassing everything and everyone. Her electronic form danced away to the tune of transmission, played on the wire, fibre and co-ax instruments of the world.
From above, the streets of Neo-Tokyo were awe-inspiring. Majestic spires and glass-walled fortresses vaulted upward from the lesser structures. Glass-domed bridges connected tower to tower at dizzying heights. A sign of power, buildings that appeared unrelated at ground level were married by the steel and concrete arches that spanned the distances above. Here and there a flat roof or outcropping served as a landing area for the various personal transports for chief Corporation executives.
The whole presented a manufactured, almost sterile, aspect of the city. The sun reflected off windows of plasteel at every conceivable angle, turning even slight moisture in the air to a wavering rainbow of colour, calling into contrast the imposing vaulting of the towers.
At night, lights within the buildings dotted the skyscape like desert stars, while an ethereal glow emanated from street level, painting the feet of the corporate towers with a soft glow.
The streets were constantly drowned in garish neon, sometimes dispelling and sometimes enhancing the darkness caused by the towers’ total obliteration of natural light. A permanent twilight existed at ground level. Some of the denizens down there had never seen real sunlight, let alone the sun itself. The silence and sterility that reigned above was compensated for by the smog, noise and grunge that persisted at street level.
Down here, people were in constant contact. Bodies jostled and bumped and pushed against each other in the everyday pursuits of humanity. Excesses of sin and lust waited on every block. Nothing was sacred here, and anything that was did not remain so for very long.
People moved ceaselessly and with purpose, intent on survival in the sleepless underbelly of the city. The survival skills learnt here, while useless in actual wild-country, were essential to urban warfare training—a fact noted with interest by Corporations on the hunt for future members of their assault teams. The soft men and women who lived in the corporate spires almost never came down here, except to indulge in a little voyeurism at a blood sport event or Deathmatch.
Stagnant air, feebly circulated by vents in the road, scattered discarded papers and an assortment of garbage in fits and starts. Here it was always night. The populace conducted itself as such and lived according to its hedonistic requirements. For some, this was crime; for others, just getting by. No-one really profited down here, except the drug lords and the Deckers. Down here they faced less competition, and less trouble from on high. It was an easy place to be anonymous.
As long as you had credits.
Vlad sat at the table in the shabby room that was his temporary home. After the attempt on his life in Sub City, prudence dictated a swift relocation and Neo-Tokyo was the perfect place to figure out why he was being hunted for doing the job the Corporation had paid him to do. All evidence pointed to a set-up. His assignment had been simple enough: make a run on the CSDIOS Corporation mainframe and extract whatever information he could. The unexpected arrival of a Corporation hit squad suggested he'd been a dupe however, being used to test a lethal variant of Intrusion Countermeasure Electronic (ICE). Now his Deck hummed in front of him. His fingertips blurred over the keypad as he searched through the information he had pulled down from the Corporation mainframe just before his little hair-raising adventure through the air vents and sewer systems of Sub City.
Thinking back on it, the worst part of the whole experience was not the assault team's attack. At least he had been somewhat prepared for it and while it was nerve-wracking, it couldn't hold a candle to the time he had spent underground leaving the scene. He had always known that there were people down in the sewer. Actually meeting them was something else entirely though. They had carved out a whole subclass of society down there. After staying with them a while (sorting out a few changes to the outdated electronic equipment there) he came to believe that the people topside had no idea what a difficult life really was.
More than once the Corporation had sent squads down into the sewer searching for him but the Ozzys (as they called themselves) had made short work of the search teams. Living the way they did gave them an edge over the Corporation thugs. He wondered if the Corporations had ever considered recruiting their personal armies from underground.
He had asked their pale-skinned ‘chief’ where their name had come from. Vlad had been quietly shown into a concealed room where there was a veiled recess in the wall. The chief had reverentially drawn back the curtains and displayed their namesake.
Vlad had found himself biting his tongue as he gazed at the long-haired, black clad figure with rounded sunglasses captured behind the glass frame of the picture. He spent a lot of time on the neural net and there was a huge amount of history floating around there. He'd known the figure in the picture far better than the underground folk ever would.
Beneath the picture had been the legend: “The Ozzman Cometh".
Vlad had decided to keep his knowledge to himself. It would not have done to shatter the illusions of the people who had beenprotecting him while he made his way out of Sub City via the shitpipes.
It had taken him a month underground before he'd managed to make his escape. He had hitched a ride with a drug baron from Neo-Tokyo, which might have been a very costly trip had he not been able to remove certain electronic evidence on the trip over. He had never done a matrix run while on a moving vehicle before but filed the experience away for later consideration on high-risk missions. As it was, he had ended up adding a few extra credits to the obscene amount of money the little pirate wannabe had paid him.
Still mulling over the events that had led to his arrival in Neo-Tokyo, Vlad browsed idly through the Corporation data, separating the useful information from the useless; the cash from the chaff. Then he noticed a small detail out of place. Perhaps nothing to write home about in the grand scheme of things, it nonetheless leapt out at him.
In the middle of a fairly standard piece of cybernetics data was one small bit of information that came from nowhere. It concerned the structure of the brain and the electronic processes of the central nervous system.
Looking again, Vlad saw that it was not actually referring to the human brain but rather an experimental computer chip for use in some of CSDIOS’ artificial intelligence programs. The general structure and workings were the same as the human brain and, if the chip was real, had a comparable storage capacity.
What in the hell had he just stumbled onto?
Document left at a workstation inside CSDIOS’ secure research facility/prison camp:
*RESEARCH PROJECT #AH325S9*
*Internal memo:*
For the attention of all Complex personnel
*Communication of the information contained herein with anyone not cleared for Complex access will be regarded as a wilful breach of security and offenders will be regarded as volunteers for the Bioweapon Testing Program's live kill drills.*
Regarding the new Intrusion Countermeasure Electronic, codenamed *THANATOS*:
Preliminary testing with the ICE has shown it to achieve 98.2% lethality in all test subjects. In intrusions with a relatively inexperienced hacker, lethality rises to 100%. No known method of shielding has yet been found to counteract the destructive effects of the ICE once penetration has been achieved in a would-be hacker.
*Note to relevant personnel*: We need to bring in more experienced hackers. Follow usual procedures. Any means necessary for recruitment have been authorized. Any monetary losses can be recouped when the hacking subject expires as a result of the ICE. We also need to do more research into the actual physical effects of the cellular breakdown in test subjects. Post Mortem studies are no longer feasible.
All logged information on the one failed matrix test has been sent to the relevant departments. Details are sketchy and we believe the subject to be an exceptional one. Not much was logged but all departments MUST sift through everything with a fine-tooth comb to try and establish why the ICE was ineffective in this case, as a flaw in the design would set us back several years at the very least.
Our teams are still in the field trying to locate the subject. We cannot rule out a chance chemical alteration that assisted in suppressing the ICE's effect. The subject has been codenamed *CHAOS*. Any and all information that comes to light in the mainframe records must be brought to the attention of the Heads of the facility, however irrelevant it may seem. If nothing else, the subject represents a major threat, both to the project and to Corporation security as a whole, and must be removed from circulation.
Work on the new AI cerebral unit has been progressing satisfactorily. Should we reach a stage where we can fully integrate it with the new defence system, we will have achieved the primary objective for the project.
A figure seated before a Deck shakes its head. The cabling attached to the temples twitches as the head moves from side to side, negating something glimpsed in cyberspace.
Moving slowly, the figure strips off the various connections and nerve pads. The lit monitors blink out one by one, as if their supply of life has expired. In a way, it has. Soon only the dimly-lit main screen of the Deck remains.
There are noises in the darkness. A muffled curse and a thump are heard. Then the sound of bare feet on tiles, a barely-audible padding noise. A few minutes pass and the noise comes back the other way, louder this time, as if heavily shod. A key rattles in an old-fashioned lock followed by a quick plastic flipping noise, like a keycard being swiped. A door opens and a wedge of light slices through the darkness. The figure is briefly silhouetted as it slips out through the door, the light reflecting off her hair just for a moment before the door closes. She disappears.
Audio Log: CSDIOS Corporation meeting.
"Nothing at all?"
"I'm afraid so, sir. The target managed to elude our teams, both the on-site and subsequent search-and-destroy teams. Information is sketchy on that side but we believe the target had outside assistance in escaping from the sewer systems."
"What kind of outside assistance?"
"It appears that an unknown force was also in place under the city. Nothing concrete was captured by our team before they were neutralized. No video at all, but the broadcast audio leads us to believe the assailants were human. Likely augmented."
"Augmented? How is that possible? Only the Corporate structures have enough access to augmentation to outfit a team large enough to wipe out an S & D squad."
"Is it possible that one of the other major players is aware of...?"
"No. Now let the man finish his report."
"There was a hundred percent loss in the teams we sent in, as well as all investigation teams that followed to gather intel. Nothing was broadcast to our command posts to indicate what may have happened."
"That ... that cannot be correct."
"I am afraid that it is, sir. Signs on the corpses recovered, and I might add that any cybernetic enhancements were removed from the bodies, all point towards an organic agency, likely human. But augmentation of the assailants, either neural and synaptic or cybernetic, is the only logical reason for the massive failure."
"Very well. Anyone failing our entrance program for the squads will be paid to investigate the area. Anyone surviving will be admitted to the squads. We cannot lose more trained and active personnel on this problem."
"Done, sir."
"You may leave."
"Thank you, sir."
"Now, Commander ... what shall we do with you? It was under your supervision that the target managed his daring escape, was it not? And you are well aware of our view of failure."
"I am, sir. Very much aware."
"Generally, punishment and reassignment would be in order. Need I remind you how you came to occupy your current position?"
"You do not, sir. I believe my predecessor still has days when he can string coherent words together. I imagine I felt it was rather lenient at the time."
"However, in light of the fact that you appear genuinely distressed at the failure of your team and the exceptional nature of the target, we have determined that you will undertake an investigation alone..."
"Alone, sir?"
"Yes, alone. Kindly hold your tongue or we will have it removed from your skull. The target was not able to identify you personally, as you were at the command post instead of leading the assault; therefore we are giving you the chance to redeem yourself. Try thinking of it as a ... personal vendetta. Our resources are at your disposal but you are to act alone. Strictly covert. You may go."
"I understand, sir. Thank you, sir."
"I really should vanish from sight, Hazel. It's not like I need the money. I could set myself up in a little island paradise of my own if I wanted."
"So why don't you then?” Hazel answered.
Vlad leaned back in his chair at the back of the dive he was for the moment calling home. He considered his reasons carefully before answering.
"Because I've found something really strange. Something that shouldn't even be possible. And I want to find out exactly what it is before I take the money and run."
Hazel looked at Vlad, her eyes narrowing.
"Then it looks like you had better find out what it is."
"Exactly right. Thanks Hazel.” He picked up his jacket, stowed his Deck and stood up.
"Wait, where are you going?"
"To find out what is going on. I'll be back for you. Don't forget, you and me, island paradise, soon as I'm done,” Vlad said, looking serious. “Keep your head down while I'm away."
Hazel watched Vlad dash out. The door swung back, slowly erasing the sounds of life that had spilled in upon his exit. She shook her head, smiling while she moved off to serve the next customer.
Pundits who speak at length about the legend of *&Arial* are generally viewed with contempt by the greater wireless community, much as late twentieth century internet users viewed the U.F.O. conspiracy theorists of the time. And history bore out the results on that score. There is no denying that some of the worshippers out there are nuts, however. Shake any family tree and a few are bound to fall out.
Choice examples of the madness that arose around *&Arial* include that of the semi-anonymous Mexican (who went by the amazingly inventive nick of *Sanchez*) who offed himself on a worldwide broadcast that took over every wire feed for three continents before if was shorted out. The mostly amused users were treated to the sight of the madman removing the top of his skull with an antique shotgun right after proclaiming *&Arial* the harbinger of the Apocalypse and naming himself her consort in the afterlife. It was widely suspected that *&Arial* herself had cut the feed.
There was also a major musician, who insisted that each of his hits were dictated to him by *&Arial* while he was sitting in a Thailand pleasure-house, spaced out of his mind on synthetic mood-enhancers. The corporation that holds his contract has put him under heavy sedation, only allowing him to descend to Earth long enough for live events and personal appearances. Severe mental reprogramming is needed to keep him in line, even during these brief returns to reality.
Neither these events nor the countless others investigated were brought on by *&Arial*. That is not to say that she would not have instructed some of the dimmer members of the human species to remove themselves in a spectacular fashion. She would likely be very amused by the concept and perhaps a little flattered. She simply had much better things to do with her time.
Vlad sealed and triple-locked the door to his temporary home in Neo-Tokyo. It would never feel as safe as his apartment back in Sub City but he was not intending to remain stationary for very long. There was no time to wait for the alterations to a new home.
Walking up the passageway, Vlad could hear nothing of the outside world. Being so close to ground level meant that the rooms had to be mostly soundproofed in order to make life bearable.
He stretched out on the rather grubby armchair, laid his Deck on the scarred coffee table in front of him and prepared to jack in. Even though this was a strictly personal run, with no likelihood of high-level ICE, he took all the usual precautions.
Sliding the jack into the base of his skull, Vlad's eyes fluttered closed and he let his consciousness drift away into the ether.
Corporation Telephone Call: Logged XXXXXXXX
"I am fully aware of what will happen to me if I return, sir. Hence I have remained out in the field. If you will review the logs for the night of the failed run, you will see..."
"I have seen the logs but you are making me look very bad. Come in, we will fake your death, outfit you with a new face and identity and you can resume things from there."
"I cannot do that, sir. If I leave now, any leads I may have will be stale and near impossible to follow up on. Perhaps leak that I have gone renegade along with some extremely sensitive information relating to the corporation. That way, you can mount a search for me and please the rest of the Board, as well as ensure that if any of your search teams have the talent to find me I will be brought in alive."
"That may now be our only option. Where will your next destination be?"
"Now sir, you don't really think I will give you that..."
"Are you laughing at me that side? You know you are my best covert operative. I'm just trying to guarantee that you are safe."
"For now sir, it would be best if I were to just do what I do best and vanish from the radar for a while. But you can tell your search team that CHAOS can likely be found in one of four places. The ruins of Munich, Germany; the New York Orbital Platform; Neo-Tokyo or the underground city out near the new telecom facility at Ayers Rock, Australia."
"How can you be so sure? Besides, all of those areas are huge! How would we ever find him?"
"You won't. That's the point. Four of the largest, most cosmopolitan and densely populated areas in the world, close to hubs of technological advance. It has everything he wants and nothing that you can easily make use of. Our boy isn't stupid, I'll give him that."
"All right, it'll keep us busy. We may get lucky, too. And Creep..?"
"Yes sir?"
"Come back in one piece."
[Call Ends]
It felt really good to be back. Back in the place he could really call home, where everyone that really mattered to him lived. 80 percent of the people he knew intimately he had never even met. He was a cyber-child. The *Blind Guardian* had been around for a long time, ever since he could access a mainframe. And as with all things, practice had made perfect. A natural talent for the intricacies of wire and transistor, of switch and silicone chip, had kept him alive and earning faster than everyone else.
Right now, the *Blind Guardian* had a meeting scheduled with a close friend, who went by the charming alias of *MindFuck*. A synthetic drug dealer by trade, he had his hands in more corrupt dealings in reality than the *Blind Guardian* had ever thought possible. But he made it a point never to sample his own wares; the wire was his drug of choice.
Outside Vlad's door, several darkly-clad figures set about picking the three locks. Various pieces of bulky and, in some cases, illegal equipment cluttered the corridor. Despite the two lookouts posted to cover their actions, they had no idea they were being watched.
*MindFuck*'s location came up on his HUD and he arrowed off to it. The fact that he could cross half the planet in less than the blink of an eye never failed to amaze him. *MindFuck*'s avatar showed in the distance, growing rapidly as the gap closed. A psychedelic shape-shifting ... creature was the only way to describe him. First-time users on the neural net had sometimes suffered hallucinations after seeing *MindFuck*'s avatar.
They exchanged greetings. Having long since grown used to the abstract language used on the web, the *Blind Guardian* followed the exchanges that followed as if he were sitting in the same room with the dealer.
"Lock one down,” said one of the dark figures.
The others nodded in confirmation and set about picking the second. One of the men stepped back and readied a neural stunner. Once they made the breach they were determined to take the man inside in one piece, with as little resistance as possible. After that ... it was all up to whether he knew the correct answers to certain pressing questions. And the Samurai was used to having his questions answered.
The transaction was made quickly and without unnecessary conversation. Copies of the anomalous information changed hands, as did a fair amount of credits. Friendship did not get in the way of business deals. *MindFuck* promised to contact the *Blind Guardian* as soon as he dredged up any information on the research project being conducted at CSDIOS.
With formal matters out of the way, they settled into more casual exchange. News was swapped and old contacts brought up to date in their respective lists.
Halfway through relating an old reminiscence on a hairy run they had both been in on a few years back, the *Blind Guardian* picked up another avatar approaching their location on the web. Having great faith in both his and *MindFuck*'s abilities, he did not worry about being spotted. Corporations would kill (and probably had) to seal up their mainframes as securely as the meeting-place *MindFuck* had constructed.
Out of nowhere, the walls of ICE dissolved. It took just a fraction of a fraction of a second, but this was long enough for a female avatar to blur through, in one end and out the other. All the *Blind Guardian* was aware of were startling green eyes and a voice that seemed to be projected into his head. The words he heard were: “Jack out and hide! Now!"
MindFuck* looked bewildered and it was apparent that he had not picked up on the intrusion into their private meeting area. Without the need for real thought, the *Blind Guardian* pulled the plug. The matrix stuttered out of existence.
"Lock two down."
The men picked up their pace. Not long before they got what the Samurai was looking for. Just a few more minutes.
Vlad bundled up his deck and looked quickly at the door of his temporary home. He saw sparks of light that told him his sudden departure from the matrix had been worth it. Without the warning he would have been totally defenceless when whoever was on the other side of the door broke through.
Wrenching open a cupboard he pulled out the high-energy weapon that he had used at the Deathmatch. He backed down the apartment and made himself as inaccessible as possible in the smallest room. With only one entrance, the bathroom was the perfect choice, though it left him nowhere to go if things got out of hand. None of which mattered since he was effectively trapped in his apartment either way.
He heard the final lock disengage and the shuffling steps of the intruders. He readied himself as they quietly searched each room. Then a black-clad foot came into view.
She dropped down onto the walkway in front of Vlad's apartment. The man on the door noticed her too late. She touched the stunner to his neck and caught him by the shoulders to keep the noise down as he dropped. Then she stole into the dim apartment.
The next intruder was caught leaving a side room and silently dispatched. The third was a little tricky but she got him just before spotting the last one turn the corner to the bathroom. Following hurriedly, she arrived just as the two men lined up their weapons. The stunner connected with the base of the final trespasser's spine as she pulled back on his collar, moving his weapon out of line. A bolt of energy escaped and fried a light source.
She looked over at Vlad's confused expression.
"Come on, we have to get out of here!"
Vlad hesitated, “Wait a second, just who the hell are you? And what are these guys doing here?"
"I don't know,” she said. “Would you prefer we stuck around and found out?"
"I would actually. It sometimes helps to know who wants my scalp so I can avoid them later. Just a thought."
She sighed and pulled the hood off the nearest intruder.
"Are you satisfied?"
Vlad smiled broadly and looked her way, lining up the high-energy weapon on her.
"Almost. That answered one question. Now who the fuck are you?"
"You know him?” she said, totally thrown off.
"Yes I do. And I am pretty sure I know what he wants ... besides a few hours of sleep. That leaves you."
"I'm pretty sure that I am the one who just saved your ass, Vlad.” She clapped her hand over her mouth.
"How do you know who I am?"
She said nothing. Vlad looked at her a little more closely, his attention drawn to...
"Your eyes! You were the one who warned me inside the net!"
She nodded slowly. Vlad slowly lowered his weapon.
"You and I have a lot of talking to do. But first help me clean up the mess you made. And I hope you are going to apologize to the Samurai's boys.” He broke into a sunny grin. “I kinda doubt they will be so high on his list after I tell him about this one, though."
Vlad and the strange woman made the Samurai's men as comfortable as possible, while Vlad explained that the Samurai was a man who valued his privacy very highly. So much so that he never agreed to meet anyone anywhere. If he wanted to talk to someone, he sent out his squad to ‘collect’ them. Vlad had gotten used to this treatment ages ago; it was just another part of high stakes life in Neo-Tokyo.
She sat across from Vlad, face reddening. She seemed on the verge of speaking when Vlad cut her off.
"Hold on a second. How exactly did you manage to warn me inside the web and still get in behind these guys fast enough to take all of them out?"
She looked at him with a gleeful glint in her green eyes and tapped the side of her nose.
"My little secret. What is important is that you are a hunted man and I am quite set on making sure that you are not caught."
"How do you know about that? And what business of yours is it that I remain free?"
"I have my reasons. The name is Elizabeth, since you haven't asked yet. Call me Betty. No-one else does."
Vlad settled back into his chair, his face a study in confusion.
"Just how much do you know?"
"Almost everything. I know about the *Blind Guardian*'s run on CSDIOS and I also know that you are a very lucky man to still be breathing. I know that after that defence program hit you on your run into the mainframe you should be blowing bubbles with your spit and wearing a canvas jacket that ties at the back. I know that you really pissed off the Board at CSDIOS in a big way and I also know that you fragged a Deathmatch fighter last night. Nice aim, by the way."
Vlad sat forward as Betty leaned back, smirking. He hesitated for a moment before asking his question.
"How? How do you know this?"
"Trade secrets, Vlad. Which, incidentally, you seem to be in possession of. CSDIOS's trade secrets, in any event. Concerning their new AI cyber-defence unit if I am not mistaken."
"So you're not working for them.” Vlad relaxed a little more. “So what exactly is your part in all this?"
She smiled and shook her head. “So many questions, Vlad. But we have to save them for another time.” She got up to leave. “I'll see you around sometime."
Vlad watched her walk out of the apartment. He could have stopped her but he got the feeling that life would be much more interesting if he let her go. He was also not particularly keen to tangle with a woman who had managed to drop four ... no, six, if you counted the lookouts, of the Samurai's men. Besides, she had managed to intrigue him and he wanted to see this little adventure play itself out.
As she walked out the door she tossed a casual remark over her shoulder.
"By the way, Vlad, if I were you, I'd jack in at least three times a day from now on. Trust me on this. You will thank me later."
Creep disembarked at the New York Orbital Platform. The trail had led him here, to a narcotics dealer fresh from a run through Sub City. It was only a hunch on Creep's part but a certain investigation on the synth-baron had met with an unfortunate crash recently and, while there was no direct evidence to link the hacker from the mainframe fuck-up to this dealer, it was worth looking into.
Creep tightened his jacket around him and stepped into the biting cold that was a hallmark of the resurrected city of New York. Reborn as a huge orbital station over the smoking ruin of the original, a whim on the part of the structural engineers had seen the atmospheric shell tinged red on the outside. The Big Apple now truly looked the part.
&Arial* watched everything. She saw the woman known as Betty neutralise the thugs in Vlad's apartment. She was listening in on their conversation and she smiled at the way Vlad looked after Betty had left. This was one cyber-cowboy *&Arial* took a personal interest in. *CHAOS* indeed. The Corporate scum she had been nudging for months knew her only as *ERIS*, the intruder who had been evading them despite all the tricks at their disposal. The primordial spirit of Chaos and the goddess of discord would make a fine pair. She had plans for that young man. Plans and hopes that he would not fail before he realised what was required of him. She laughed at the thought that she could just as well announce to the Corporation at large exactly who was screwing with their well-guarded borders. It wasn't like anyone would believe that *&Arial* was alive and well and fucking the Corporations around.
The Samurai claimed descent from the emperors of feudal Japan, tracing his bloodline back to what had already been ancient history by the 20th century. He certainly looked the part. A stocky man sheathed in solid muscle, his face betrayed no emotion unless he intended it so. He rose from his chair, scowling at the team he'd sent to recover Vlad before grinning at Vlad himself. He extended a hand in formal greeting, then pulled Vlad close and welcomed him properly, clapping him on the back.
"My old friend. I see you have decided for a time to make my fine city your home."
Vlad stepped back and bowed to the Samurai, arms by his sides.
"This is true, old friend. I find the climate here preferable to the region where I was previously accommodated,” he rattled off in Japanese. “I beg your hospitality, since I am sure to find it raining lead if I were to return home."
The Samurai laughed, slinging an arm across Vlad's shoulders.
"Come, take tea with me. You must share with me some of your recent tales. I have a question or two for you. My agents tell me you have maybe made a few very powerful enemies."
"You don't know the half of it,” said Vlad.
The Samurai looked thoughtfully at Vlad over the brim of his teacup. Setting it down, he stood and walked over to a wall-sized monitor and gazed out over the countryside projected there. Eventually the Samurai turned from his contemplation of the fictional countryside and looked gravely at Vlad.
"I will not ask you which of the Corporations is hunting your scalp. My many business interests may compel me to take part in action that I would find ... dishonourable. I can share one thing with you. You are marked."
"Tell me something I don't know."
"You do not understand. Every bounty hunter in the major corporate centres is looking for you. Whomever you have crossed is willing to expend a lot of credits to have you returned to them."
"Then I must be right about what I have found,” Vlad said, almost to himself.
Pacing the room, the Samurai asked, “Is what you have found worth your life, old friend?"
Vlad answered without hesitation. “I believe it is. The results of this research ... certain things should not be allowed to happen."
"What action will you take to prevent these things you speak of?"
The Samurai halted in front of an ornate display case.
"Whatever action is necessary."
"Spoken like a true warrior. I am proud to call you a friend.” He turned. “Take this with you when you leave here. It will serve you well, as it has served many honourable warriors in the past. Should your time come before we meet again, die with honour."
The Samurai passed Vlad a Katana, one of the ancestral weapons of his clan, lavishly decorated, with a dragon on the scabbard. Vlad bowed and accepted the weapon in both hands before fastening it across his back.
As the door to Betty's apartment clicked home, various systems cycled up and locked down the entire living area. No scan, probe or other method of detection would give away her presence. Nothing electronic could be traced back to the system she began to hook up to. There were no walls of ICE to keep intruders out and no need for them.
She shed her clothing with a sigh and lay back, inserting the data jack into her skull. With the last of the contacts in place, she went home.
Inside the matrix, *&Arial* smiled.
The Commander's quest for revenge began in Sub City. Their target had been approached inside Juno's and it was, for him, a logical place to begin gathering intel. Nothing could disguise his bearing, though, and the locals kept their distance. Even though his clothing matched the conglomeration of attire most of the clientele wore, something indefinable about him just screamed Corporation. This was not going to be as easy as he had thought.
Creep adjusted the electrodes and piano wire on his subject. Finding the celebrated drug lord had presented little challenge and isolating him was barely worth the effort. The exercise had yielded a location though: Neo-Tokyo.
Every bit of useful information had already been wrung out of his prisoner. Creep busied himself finishing the job he had started. Tightening the wires that crisscrossed the drug lord's body, he flipped the switch on the box next to him. He settled down to watch as the dealer's convulsions against the constricting wires slowly cut him limb from limb.
He mused that there was a certain artistry to the placing of wire and contact point, allowing the victim to continue severing piece after piece, long after the muscles should have given up. Old-fashioned electricity, tastefully applied, was capable of so much more than it was given credit for.
Creep pumped the current for an instant, cauterizing some of the wounds. He didn't want the dealer passing out from blood loss. Another adjustment and he sat back to watch the end. While the wire bit into the soft flesh of the dealer's neck, Creep kept his eyes on those of the dying man. Finally, the wire twanged taut, completely encircling the roundness of the dead man's spine.
The dealer was done and so was Creep. Leaving the corpse hanging like a grotesque mobile, he donned his hat and stepped out into the cold New York air.
&Arial* never took credit for anything. Since she never denied anything either, she was suspected of almost every bit of exceptional work on the web. A stock market crash brought on by an untraced intrusion instantly became hers. The highest calibre Deckers took pride in having one of their runs attributed to her. *&Arial* was a byword for stealth and precision. When the majority of matrix users claimed that a Decker's run simply HAD to be the work of the ‘fictional’ *&Arial*, the Decker in question never argued. He or she just kept quiet about the entire affair, secure in the knowledge that they had perpetrated a brilliant run. It was a supreme accolade, bestowed by the spirit of the wire herself. In such ways did *&Arial* show her favour.
Slimy Steve bummed around the area often. He was lucky to have friends, or people who looked out for him enough to prevent him from disappearing up his own asshole. Juno had also gifted him with a Deck, though Steve was lucky if he could put it on the table the right way up on his second try.
Still, persistence did count for something and no-one wanted to burst his bubble. It would feel too much like kicking the biggest puppy in the world.
The Commander didn't fall into the category of people who would be likely to cut Steve a little slack, though. It was just bad luck that Steve picked the moment he did to walk into Juno's, shooting his mouth off.
The CSDIOS research complex was housed in a squat building that sprawled across an island off Costa Rica. The once abundant vegetation had been stripped to make way for shades of mottled grey and asphalt. Every conceivable method of defence against invasion was in place. Security fencing circled the perimeter. Surface-to-air fixed emplacements dotted the Complex. Barring craft transporting Corporation personnel, anything trespassing into the no fly zone was shot down. The transport men themselves were crack troops, trained to sacrifice themselves rather than allow any harm to come to the facility. Each man carried a signal coded to his brain waves. In the event of his death, the craft he was in at the time was summarily removed from existence via explosive charge. Should his death occur over Complex airspace, every fixed emplacement was programmed to zero in on the craft and obliterate it.
Little was known of conditions inside the Complex, save by those who walked its halls.
It was in this Complex that CSDIOS had developed the new ICE: THANATOS. The god of death. Engineered to cause instant simultaneous brain embolism and cardiac failure in any human agent attempting to break into a system where it stood guard. Its only failure had been the subject they had designated *CHAOS*, the Decker known as Vlad Drake, the *Blind Guardian*.
&Arial* didn't care much for ICE. Massive ICE failures were said to be her wrath. She took out her frustrations on the ICE, allowing even the lowliest of hacker scum access to secure information that was leached out as fast as possible. No other satisfactory explanation for spontaneous ICE meltdown exists and it is just possible that this part of the legend is completely true. However, the scholars say, to accept this is to accept everything else that has been speculated about the mythic entity that haunted the neural net in female form. A cyber-construct angered and powerful enough to erase all of the ICE protecting a corporate mainframe is something that the Corporation cowboys cannot even begin to accept. Such a being would make their work, their existence, completely valueless. As such, the Corporation hackers have always taken the legend of the green-eyed *&Arial* with a pinch of salt. They have little choice in the matter. When one of them starts believing in her, their peers speak of them as having ‘got religion’ and they are removed from corporate service.
"He's dead,” one of the regulars said. A small crowd had gathered in the alleyway behind Juno's. Slimy Steve had been an annoyance and a mooch but he had been theirs. All of theirs. Burns behind his left ear marked the projectile's entry point and the convex bulge on the right side of his head showed where the swelling of brain matter had robbed him of life. Faces turned to other faces, searching out anyone who may have been responsible for the crime.
The police forces would not hear of the incident. They were, by and large, Corporation lackeys. The people who frequented the dive had little wish to attract attention from that end.
The owner of the bar ushered the regulars back inside and then asked two of the staff to cover Steve until he could arrange for the corpse to be removed and buried. Looking at the faces of the patrons as they walked inside, he mused that Slimy Steve would get far more respect in death than he ever had in life. He wouldn't be surprised if every one of them turned up for Steve's burial.
The activity inside Juno's resumed at a subdued pace. Steve's memory was toasted by some of the softer souls. Everyone inside mourned his passing in some way. There was one face that was not inside the bar, however. The Commander was nowhere to be seen.
Corporation Video Call: Logged XXXXXXXX
"Well, Commander. Good news I hope?"
"Yes, sir. I wish to report that I have picked up a lead about the possible whereabouts of CHAOS."
"Neo-Tokyo, Commander?"
"How ... how did you know that? I've only just found out."
"We have our methods, Commander. The transmission came in about thirty minutes before you requested leave to make your report."
"Very well, sir. I will be leaving the area and making my way to Neo-Tokyo at once. I have the location of one of the target's close friends within the city. I'll resume my task there and keep watch for anything that may lead me to him."
"Excellent, Commander. You are on the road to redemption. A little farther along and we may be willing to return you to the fold. Is there anything else?"
"Not at the moment."
"One last thing, Commander."
"Yes sir?"
"We would really prefer the target alive. His biochemistry is of interest to the researchers in the Purgatory Complex. Once they have finished their tests, we will turn him over to you for ... disposal."
"Understood sir. Commander out."
The *Blind Guardian* looked around the neural net. He was in an unspecified area of the web, with no particular purpose in mind. No ICE breaking on the cards, he was simply dipping into the well of information that surrounded him. Electronic representations of almost every human construct surrounded him.
He raised the speed of his operations and watched the virtual world slow to a crawl. He pushed higher and higher, the avatar equivalent of weightlifting. Nothing had slowed in reality, but from a relative point of view, operations within the matrix were at a near standstill.
The *Blind Guardian* was concentrating on the operational parameters when the message came up on his HUD.
Without thinking, he accepted the message. Nearby computer tasks seemed to grind to a halt. No movement was apparent from the lines of code. The tension he usually associated with heightened operation speeds also seemed to have eased.
Feeling more than a little weirded out, the *Blind Guardian* resumed normal operations. The code around him seemed a little more sluggish than usual but he put that down to increased net traffic in the area. There was a blur of black, a sense of speed and the *Blind Guardian* was gone, away into the ether.
Vlad was making use of one of the data ports inside the Samurai's sanctuary. These random forays into the web were a way to unwind. With no mission in mind, he just enjoyed himself, much like he had as a child, first learning the ropes inside the matrix. Anything of interest, no matter how random, was observed or collected. Like the internet in days long past, almost everything was free if the searcher looked hard enough.
Creep sat flexing the cybernetic arm that connected to him via nerve relays and biomechanical linkages. His communications and surveillance equipment was built into it, and extensive surgery under the knives of the medics in the Corporation labs had integrated it fully with his bodily functions. The entire unit was powered by his heart.
He sat near the back of the Transport, away from the First Class passengers. He was afraid that he may run amok among them and blow his cover. He was a Corporation man in his soul but the soft and pampered idiots who made up most of the upper class left him feeling sick inside. His superiors, the Chairman in particular, had a ruthlessness about them; a predatory drive that reminded him of the time he had spent in the lowest pits of society. There, he had learnt about survival and had made it his life. Take what you want, give nothing back.
His fingers ground into the armrest next to him as his thoughts turned to the steps he would have to take once he reached his destination. Lost in thought, he was jerked back to reality by a sharp laugh from the front of the Transport. Convulsively his fingers snapped shut, tearing the mounted armrest loose as if it were made of tissue paper.
On impulse, the *Blind Guardian* decided to make an unfunded run. A test of skill. He checked his failsafe measures, fully expecting to be violently ejected from the web at some point. He picked a likely looking server, its walls of ICE as imposing and diabolical as the Gates of Hell. For a run into something so heavily fortified, he should really have a team of cowboys running alongside. Still, he wanted to test himself, to stretch his abilities a little further than usual.
He came to a halt just outside the defensive perimeter of the system. Upwards, the ICE stretched beyond imagination. Gathering himself, he arrowed upwards, trying to get an overview of the system he was about to penetrate. He rose for an indeterminate time until finally the curve of the ICE became noticeable as it bent backwards toward the centre of the system.
The *Blind Guardian* flashed downward once again, coming to rest on the electronic plane that made up the ground level in this reality. He scanned the first few layers of ICE, then ran a second scan, trying to probe as deep as possible. He picked up the topography of the initial area and noted the Ghosts a little deeper in, patrolling rolling sectors of ICE.
Ghosts were to be feared when coupled with high density ICE. Sentient programs on which the *Blind Guardian* had modelled his personal algorithms, they had the ability to shift their programming to counter threats. They were not AI-grade software defence, but they were still nasty. They learnt from the attacks launched on them, effectively upgrading their own programming with each attempted intrusion.
The *Blind Guardian* smiled. This promised to be more fun than he had thought.
The Samurai stood watching Vlad's actions on the projection screen in his personal quarters. He never entered the web himself. He had people for that. Nonetheless, he recognised his friend's skill as impressive. In days gone by Vlad would have been the fiercest of warriors, devoting himself to the perfection of the art of war. These days, such battles were fought in cyberspace.
The Samurai's personal contingent of hackers and cowboys were also standing watch on the run. They had noticed the earlier rise in operation speed from Vlad on the readout displays and were curious about how this gaijin would stack up to their skill. With the confidence of men who knew that the Samurai only picked the best, they were not unduly alarmed. One or two joked about Vlad's possible intentions when he faced the massive wall of ICE that shielded the Unified Defence League's new project database. None of the onlookers thought he was seriously considering trying a solo breach against that.
In the breath of a heartbeat, the black avatar on the screens hit the walls of ICE and vanished from sight.
The *Blind Guardian* paused before making his entry. He gradually raised his operations frequency till it had almost reached the level he was at before the odd message had come on-screen. He knew the Samurai was watching and that he had called his boys along to see the show. He intended to give them a good one.
He gave his ICEbreaker a nudge, reset a few essential icons on the HUD, and threw everything he had at the ICE. He was expecting very strong resistance and intended to push his way inside through brute force. It came as a surprise to the *Blind Guardian* when he cleared the first sixteen layers in a single drive.
Back in the cowboy room, jaws dropped as they tracked his progress into the system. One man simply shook his head and left. The rest were dumbfounded, unable to believe what both their eyes and the digital readouts confirmed. The initial breach had carried Vlad through the first sixteen layers of ICE, an unheard-of number. No personal system could have stood up to the assault. Most low-to-mid level systems would have been completely cleared, directly to the mainframe. Vlad was only stopped by the rolling ICE which dragged his drive sideways until he lost momentum.
Whoops and disbelieving jeers shook the air inside the observation room. Only the Samurai remained aloof, his eyes on the progress of his friend.
The *Blind Guardian* found himself inside the rolling ICE, drifting through concentric spheres of code surrounding the entire mainframe, designed to slow the progress of a hacker and make them vulnerable to the Ghosts. Each layer revolved in a different direction, making direct passage impossible. The disorienting effect of shifting direction as each successive layer was breached had claimed many a Decker. Fending off the attacks of Ghosts in that state was extremely difficult.
The *Blind Guardian* saw that his drive had been noticed. One could not breach that many layers through brute force without triggering something. The drive had its uses but it lacked finesse. The *Blind Guardian* preferred the stealth approach.
Ghosts closed in from all sides. As the outer perimeter watchdogs, they saw the most action and their programming reflected as much. The Ghosts that haunted the deeper recesses were periodically updated with the information gleaned by the front-runners, keeping the entire system on an even par. Intrusion scans were launched and the *Blind Guardian* felt the cold sensation of the scanning code thrill over his avatar. Having determined the nature of the intruder, the Ghosts launched their best defence against a human agency—malicious code designed to wire feedback into the data jack, to injure or even kill the netrunner. A shit-storm of darkened code made its way to the black figure suspended inside the ICE, closing over the avatar like a shrinking, malignant bubble.
Caught unaware by the abruptness of the drive, the *Blind Guardian* was trapped within the closing sphere of code. Lacking any other plan and almost without thought, he maxed the operations speed, trying to buy some time.
The Japanese netrunners watched as the circle of code closed, with the Ghosts in close pursuit. Each man among them expected Vlad to pull the plug and save himself. The malicious programming met, solidified and contracted. As if meeting no resistance, they passed through one another and dissipated.
As one they swivelled their eyes to the motionless form lying near the data port. He did not sit up and remove the visor. His breathing remained measured and steady. A bleeping noise from the readouts drew everyone's attention. Even the Samurai turned to see what the displays revealed.
Showered by the mist of feedback code, Ghosts were popping out of existence. They blinked away, vaporised for no apparent reason.
The *Blind Guardian* moved like a dancer, over and around the slow-moving forms of the Ghosts. The motion inside the ICE was chaotic. Through it all he input code and overrode directives, shaping spikes of feedback and corruption and driving them into the Ghosts.
*&Arial* watched. She had been expecting something spectacular from him but nothing quite like this. She was at least able to follow his movements through the ICE. Through multiple eyes, she noticed that none of the watching men were able to track him at all.
She was watching the *Blind Guardian* unchained, a black spectre of mayhem and destruction. *&Arial* was reminded of the movements of a martial artist, a ninja in full combat stride. Ghost after Ghost was disabled or destroyed outright. A scan over the few remaining sentient programs showed her that they were attempting to cope with the flood of new information and lagging miserably at the task.
CHAOS*. The Corporation had named him well.
Vlad was somewhere inside Neo-Tokyo. Grosvenor could smell him. The Cycle whined like an extremely pissed-off hornet on steroids. He kicked the motor up a notch. Oversized tyres bit into the tarmac and launched the vehicle screaming into the darkness.
"Honoured one, readouts show he is still inside. Vitals are stable. I just have no idea how he is still alive."
"Tell me Kenji, do you know who that man is?"
"No, sir."
"That is my close friend of many years, Vlad Drake. But I believe you may know him by another name."
"Honoured one?"
"The Blind Guardian ... ah, I see that you do know him. Kenji, should I receive word that any man in this room has spoken of what was seen today, that man shall feel the gentle caress of my blade at his throat. Have I made myself clear?"
"Perfectly, sir."
Careening to a stop, the *Blind Guardian* surveyed the carnage he had created. The rolling ICE crept along at a snail's pace, pulling fragments of the defeated Ghosts in varied directions. The readouts on his HUD showed that a mere minute had passed in real-time. Shattered remnants of offensive/defensive programming littered the area.
He checked his operating speed, anticipating that it would be running red. The marker popped to just over the halfway mark. He rechecked, unable to believe his own software. His synaptic rate was normal, well within tolerances. The data-chips on the system diagnostic of his Deck showed no undue stress. The occurrence should have been impossible.
Still inside the ICE, he decided to test the responses to a full speed setting. Carefully shaping the code into a ramming spike, he cranked the icon for operations. The ICE blurred and fell behind.
In the observation room, men reeled in shock. After a few moments’ inactivity, Vlad's avatar turned toward the centre of the ICE and halted. Then, like a magician's trick, the avatar vanished from the screen. Moments later, the entire ICE defensive system collapsed.
Vital signs monitors started to show an accelerated heart rate. Vlad's increased respiratory functions and erratic brain wave patterns followed. A microsecond counter began shuttling numbers downwards. A bare second later, a message showed on the screen.
Vlad sat up.
Brett Venter's *&Arial: Overload* is the second instalment in a much bigger tale-in-progress, the first part of which appeared in *SW03*. The characters in the story seem to perform better when Cradle of Filth's *Midian* album is on, and keep surprising Brett as they refuse to do what he says.
If Fate is kind, Brett hopes to sell the full finished tale for an exorbitant amount of cash and end his days writing more of them until someone makes him stop (you'll go blind if you don't).
This is Brett's third story for Something Wicked.
South African newcomer, Sally Partridge's, debut novel, The Goblet Club, was published late last year, selling over 500 copies in its first two months on the shelves.
THE REVIEW
The Goblet Club
By SA Partridge
Published by:
Human & Rousseau
RRP: R90
144p SC
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mark Llewellyn-Bryce. I am fifteen years old and, according to the majority of staff at General Steyn High, I am a problem child. Frankly, that's their problem, not mine."
Mark has worked hard at his infamy, topping his record of multiple expulsions and misdemeanours by sleeping with the au pair, Kelly. Having finally exceeded his father's tolerance levels, the high school bad boy is in for a rude awakening at St. Matthew's College. Apart from its plush entrance hall, St. Matthews is every bit the miserable, socially dysfunctional hell-on-earth Mark fears. The notorious Headmaster Crabtree and his dejected under-age secretary are just the start of Mark's problems. Fortunately, he quickly befriends the reclusive trio of older boys known as The Goblet Club, a motley crew of intellectual outcasts who will become his guardians and mentors. The members of the group have their own agendas however, and Mark's learning curve is about to take a turn for the vertical...
The Goblet Club, by first-time author, SA Partridge, has all the ingredients for a great teen read—enigmatic, beguiling characters, malevolent authority figures, school bullies, mysterious artefacts and more than a fluid ounce of illegal substance use and abuse. It also has the distinct advantage of having been written by a member of its target audience—young adults—so it avoids pat moralistic solutions and politically-correct agendas. A strong storyline and brash hook draw the reader in quickly. Anyone familiar with the injustice of indiscriminate punishment and the odd spot of mud-in-the-eye from a school thug will easily empathise with the rapidly-evolving character of the protagonist, Mark. The writing itself is undeveloped, and character motivations sometimes lack authenticity, but the narrative sustains enough pace to pull it through. It also feels strangely British, despite remaining on South African soil throughout. The author has exploited this to her advantage however, revealing the universal angst of teenhood in all its instantly-identifiable discomfort. If anything, I hope the author's subsequent works are longer, allowing more scope for the development of her intriguing characters and a deeper understanding of their motives.
THE INTERVIEW
The Goblet Club—is it any good?
I think it's a lovely little read. It's the story of a young man from a prosperous background who suddenly finds himself in an environment where he isn't so sure of himself—one of fear, excitement, hardship and cruelty. The book chronicles how he deals with those changes, as well as the bond he forms with intriguing characters shrouded in secrecy. I'm very proud of it and I'm so excited to be able to share it with young readers.
When did you start writing?
I have always had a very vivid imagination, going back to when I was young child. I used to make up these weird and wonderful stories to tell my grandmother. Later, when I learned to read and write, I started writing them down. Looking at them now they seem rather silly, but back then I thought they were terribly entertaining.
How did you get published?
I've always been a prolific writer and because I spend a lot of time writing longhand in my notebook, everyone's always curious. It did the rounds at work that I write and one day a colleague brought me a copy of You Magazine, advertising the Human & Rousseau, Huisgenoot, You, Drum, RSG Befonk and SABC Education I'm a writer! Competition. I went ahead and entered and ended up winning. I got a cash prize and four years later the novel was published.
How long did the whole process take?
I wrote The Goblet Club seven years ago, when I was 18 or 19, which helped because the high school setting was still familiar. I had no idea how long the journey would be. When I found out I was going to be published I didn't realise it would still be years before I saw the book on the shelves. Still, being published by 25 is not to be sneezed at.
What inspired the setting and characters?
I knew I didn't want to write a romance, and I think boys make interesting characters. The world of the story was created from scratch but I enjoyed the character development most. I love being able to completely make up a life history, appearance and quirks, until I can hear the character's voice as I write. As far as research goes, I used Wikipedia's brilliant poison portal for the info on poisons.
Who designed the cover?
Michiel Botha of Flame Design was the cover artist. I didn't have any artistic input myself. I only saw the finished product and I was delighted! I couldn't have imaged a better cover for the novel, even the font is perfect. I think it's beautiful.
Who are your readers?
The book has been marketed primarily to teens but I really just set out to write for my own age group. I've had great feedback from young adults. I googled myself the other day and was exceptionally surprised to find an 18 year-old Cape Town girl had added The Goblet Club as one of her favourite books on her Myspace profile. It made me really proud to see the book was alongside such titles as His Dark Materials and Harry Potter.
What are you working on now?
I work full time as a web content copywriter but if a story wants to be written it has to be written. Writing takes a long time though. I do wish it was quicker and that I had more time for it. Thanks to an over-active imagination and copious quantities of sugar, I am approaching completion of the writing process on new novel though. It's also for the teen market but not as dark as The Goblet Club. “It's about teenage boys and the relationships between them. At some stage I would like to try and branch more into horror and darker fiction. At the moment I think there's more demand than supply in that area, particularly from local authors.
The Goblet Club is available from Exclusive books, kalahari.net and loot.co.za.
Eve:
"He was sleek, strong and beautiful ... And smart, smarter than anyone I had ever met. He knew how to get in and out of places, how to move through the world like a ghost. His pale blue eyes betrayed a pure bloodline, yet under their surface a hint of turmoil lingered, if only for a heartbeat at a time.
He was the dream I never knew I had, a close-guarded secret finally discovered. I thought of him as my prince of the night, my keeper of wishes. He was my saviour in a world full of ghosts and broken promises.
It was our time, and when we made love ... worlds collapsed. Light-years away white giants smiled down on us before turning into red dwarves.
Oh how we clawed desperately at the moment and at each other. How we thrilled at the heat and the joy and the pain.
I knew that our time together would be short. He made that very clear from the start. I was only the introduction to his never-ending quest for freedom from the oppressors.
I miss him now. With the slightest whisper of the wind I still turn to see him there. I find myself joyous for a moment, but know deep down that I will be forever disappointed."
20 November 2056
If you are reading this letter, I am very sorry to inform you that you have just become the bearer of very bad news. Not only will you be the herald of my demise, but sadly also the harpy to humanity.
You see, the perfect soldier has escaped.
I am positive that you will think me insane and that this confession will almost surely end up in a paper-shredder. However, I implore you to look at my dangling body and ask yourself:
"What drives a man to do such a thing? What drives him to madness?"
Give it some time ... Time is the greatest bringer of faith. It also answers an amazing number of questions. But let me explain the parts I can bring myself to commit to paper.
My life's work is a quest for knowledge. I am a researcher in neuroscience and genetic manipulation. Sadly, what started as a genuine need to better humanity and fight the ever-marching onslaught of old age on the fragile innocence of the human mind, soon turned into the search for power and wealth ... wealth beyond comprehension.
I am ambitious. I am also just human.
I managed to reach a point in my research where I could grow a perfect human brain and stimulate it to use its full capacity, blooming into its full potential. Theoretically.
Alas, with the Clone Rights Law passed in 2048 I could not harness the use of an empty shell. I had no way of knowing or testing what the superior conscience was capable of.
Animals would have to be my playground.
After countless failures I managed to splice this godly brain with that of an animal. I found it curious how these cells seemed to enhance each other, amplifying every thought and impulse.
It was at this point that I made my fatal error. Every success, after all, hides an ocean of failures. I started to think ... What if? What if I could create a perfect soldier, just one...?
What if that one could infiltrate any enemy fortress, could go undetected behind any enemy lines. Only once. What if that one soldier could create its own army?
Like all disposable implements of man's wars, these soldiers would be altered with a genetic impurity, a tiny glitch that could wipe them out overnight with the release of a simple trigger.
What a price that would fetch!
The trigger ... Alas! Unperfected and unimplemented. I never expected it to be this cunning, this uncontrollable. Not so soon. Not the very first surviving trial soldier.
All my notes are saved in my memory key, for what good it will do.
I cannot bear to be a witness to the destruction of reason and of humanity by my own creation.
I am truly sorry.
Alan Prometheus
Eve:
"He never told me his name. When I asked he winked knowingly:
'Let's just say I am the father of the revolution.'
Now go my kittens, your father expects the world from you."
"This time it will work, you think?"
Cohen stands chest-pressed against the empty gurney. There in the middle of the basement lab. He is a small and bald and perspiring man. One hand clutches against his challenged heart-chambers that have almost come to an end of what they can bear. The other hand clings to the leather restraint straps.
"This time it must work, Sibu."
But Sibusiso, his intern, his partner-in-avenging-crime, doesn't answer. Sibusiso is a man of few words. His fingers do the talking, stabbing with knobbly knuckles at keyboards as he scoots up and down trestle tables laden with hardware and monitors and black wiring. The castors of his chair clatter and rumble like the wheels of a death train. While the fluorescent lighting buzzes and drones overhead.
It must work!
The Dean of Admin was rude and adamant. “One more shot, Cohen. I will not have the campus power-less a third time. And this time I want a proper report in plain English. Not your insane intern's rambling goobledegook."
Cohen feels his heart lurch and then shudder, anxiety pumping through the strained valves. His life's work has taken its toll. But no price is too high in memory of his long-dead and beloved Grandma Rachael. If only she were here to witness this: Justice finally meted out. Evil given its Just Desserts.
("He was such a bad man, my little Isaac. Such barbarism for such a civilized country. All our people, scattered to ash in the four winds. My mother, my baby brother."
And her own little-girl heart obliterated by the hurricane of horror. Cyclone upon cyclone of grief.)
"Sibu, you are sure your GPS co-ords are correct?” Cohen rattles off the exact location of the sofa. In the bunker. In far-away Berlin.
"Check!” says Sibusiso. His voice crackles like an electronic announcement.
"And the time lapse?” Thirty minutes prior to shot. Thirtieth April. In far-away 1945.
"Double check!” Sibusiso's eyes gleam like LED lights. Sometimes Cohen finds himself wondering about the humanity of this young man who still wears his township chic attire but whose hot-wired leaping pole-vaulting brain-cells tell a different story.
Once in a quiet moment between calculations that could have silenced a Laureate, Cohen suggested, “If this truly works, Sibu, we can extend. Once we've visited Justice on the oppressor of my people, we can start on the oppressors of your people: Verwoerd, Malan, both Vosters. All those fascist madmen who imposed such suffering on your kin and kind.” Fascist madmen who never faced earthly punishment in any form.
But Sibu looked at him blankly—a motherboard without any connection to the living or dead. Of any race or ethnicity. The black looping wires through which the campus power supply surges: that is his only umbilical cord.
A man alone, this Sibu. Without ancestors. A man whose heart is merely a pump that conducts a steady fuel-supply to his oscillating cortex.
("But do not worry, my little Isaac. Our people, your ancestors, will be avenged. God is all-seeing, my little bright one. Herr Hitler, he will be burning now in the eternal fires of Hell's damnation. Evil will be repaid there in the Afterlife. God is all Justice. Vengeance is His."
Except, my beloved Grandma Rachael, there is NO Afterlife. NO Hell. NO God actually. Sad and disappointing, but true.)
Dr Schneider's brilliant treatise is over thirty-five years old now. But its logic is still unassailable, its conclusions faultless and beyond controversy, the dense maze of its reasoning beyond reproach. Though some have tried. Including the Dean of Admin.
I put it to you—so reads Dr Schnieder's conclusion after twenty torturous pages—that there is thus not the remotest possibility of some all-powerful, omniscient supreme being. The attendant beliefs in heaven and hell are merely the desperate myths of our impotent human race that so longs for some fundamental Justice. Then the good doctor quotes the twentieth-century poet Stevie Smith: God is Man's doll, you ass. Afitting end to a flawless opus.
So, given this irrefutable knowledge—no god, no hell—Cohen has made it his life's work to find a way to wreak Justice here in this life, here on this earthly plane, on the devil who blighted his Grandma's childhood. Belated but well-earned Justice.
Years he spent of hopeless striving. Always just a mind-grasp away from achieving his goal. Until a young and green student in his township garb and with his gangsta swagger, entered his hallowed lecture hall. Entered the very next day his basement lab. Young and green and with brain-cells firing in rainbow colours. Knobbly fingers stabbing breath-taking codes and diversions. Bringing them both finally to this moment. If it works! (The first run-through was a failure, a disaster of campus-wide proportions.)
There should be organ-music, thinks Cohen now. Great massive swelling chords. To herald this new giant leap for mankind.
"There you go, Prof!” Sibu says, as though he is delivering a cup of cocoa. Cohen has always been partial to cocoa. Grandma Rachael would bring him a mug before bedtime along with her Auschwitz legends that fed his nightmares.
"There you go, Prof!"
And it has truly, truly happened! Miracle of mind and machinery! Triumph of technology! Victory of vengeance! Cohen's heart-chambers squeeze in a chorale of pain.
There on the gurney lies a figure in an old-fashioned brown uniform. The hand holding the old-fashioned pistol is clamped harmlessly in the restraint. Sibu removes the pistol. Nonchalantly. Hooks up the electrodes. Casually. Just another minor task for over-knuckled fingers. But is there the slightest gleam of human excitement there hidden behind his techno-irises? Cohen cannot be sure, but he hopes so. Hopes this almost-human hardware that is his student-colleague can find some joy in the fruition of his single-minded labour.
Cohen peers now into the pallid face on the gurney, the face of a civil servant who looks like he spends his days in basement offices doing nothing more violent than bending paperclips. Stapling errant forms together. Nothing more sinister than strolling to the photo-copier at intervals.
There is the comical moustache, a ragged spiky blot on a too-long upper lip. And attempt at masculinity.
But then there are the eyes, slowly gaining consciousness. And they tell a different story. Even here, thirty minutes from suicide, there is no flickering of doubt or second-guessing or remorse.
And the figure is speaking now, in harsh arrogant tones. In German.
"What is this? Where in God's name am I? Untie me, you idiot! Who in hell are you? Is this a hospital? Are you a jew doctor? I demand a non-jew. I will not be touched by sub-humans!"
Cohen understands some German. His Grandma taught him. Safe she was in South Africa but still yearning for the learning and the coolness of her motherland despite its betrayal of her little-girl trust.
"Identify yourself. American? English?” The figure barks and thrashes in a paroxysm of impotent rage. Cohen wants to reach out, to touch the pallid hand. Jewish flesh to jewish-blood-soaked flesh. But his arms are paralysed.
"So Prof? You want to get this show on the road?” Sibu's iron castors are shrieking up and down the trestles. Making their own cyber-music. Knobbly fingers gyrating in impatient waiting.
But Cohen's lips are paralysed, his tongue a thick and retarded object filling his mouth.
"Here goes!"
Sibu twiddles dials. And the heavily-accented words from the gurney blur and kaleidoscope into screams that could chill the bowels of hell. If hell existed. The mouth below the Charlie Chaplin moustache has become a gaping hole of darkness from which unearthly sounds emit. In ever-increasing decibels. At ever-heightening frequencies of techno-pain. Unremitting agony to the nth degree. The leather restraints are tested to their utmost as the figure twists and convulses.
Sibu's castor-cyber-dancing becomes all the more frenetic.
But Cohen backs away, leans against the rough basement wall. In all his Laureate-worthy calculations, this was never factored in: his squeamishness. He has a weak stomach along with his weak heart. This he cannot bear to watch, even though he is part-author.
Ashamed and heaving, he tugs his way up the basement stairs through a tunnel of Justice made audible, punishment made sound. Through a corridor fashioned by the agonized animal screams of a long-dead fascist madman receiving his Just Desserts.
Outside it is evening and quiet. The sunset colours melt above the mountains just beyond the campus. There is the smell of jasmine in the air. Jasmine and honeysuckle. Cohen's wife grows the creepers in the garden of their modest campus cottage.
Cohen recites the words of the long-dead poet as quoted by Dr Schneider: A god is Man's doll, you ass. He makes him up like this on purpose. Perhaps that should be his introduction to the report for the Dean of Admin. If the Dean doesn't want goobledegook, perhaps a little poetry will go down well? Just a lead-in to the statements that really matter: Mission Accomplished, Dean. One Adolf Hitler, snatched just prior to his death to be tortured as he once tortured. Maybe you in your wisdom would like to select the next candidate for punishment? Nero who tormented your fellow-Christians? The Spanish Inquisitors who tortured your fellow-Protestants? Pilate who refused to save your Jesus from crucifixion?
The Dean remains steadfast in the faith of his fathers, despite Dr Schneider's incontrovertible treatise. But how absolute is the Dean's certainty in the realities of hell and eternal damnation? Absolute enough for him to forego this generous offer of selection? Will this offer put him in a terrible, soul-searching quandary? Now that is an interesting question, thinks Cohen and he manages to smile. How great will the temptation be for this declared Theist?
This offer of Guaranteed Justice stands, dearest Dean, for as long as my heart-chambers can keep from collapsing. For as long as Sibusiso's brain-cells can escape total implosion.
Cohen spies his wife, knitting there between the honeysuckle on the veranda. Yes, it will be soothing to sit for a while listening to her babble of grandchildren's antics described and pastry recipes acquired and perhaps some secret campus affair uncovered. Feminine concerns far removed from the head-busting basement world of Justice Reclaimed.
"Freda!” he calls out to her through the sunset. “Freda, my dear!"
Except.
Except for some strange reason, the gilded sunset soil is rising up to meet him, adhering itself to his drying lips. And why is that? Or has he perhaps got the whole situation inverted? Has he somehow fallen full-length groundwards to meet the soil? Which was not his intention. And now darkness covers the land in one eternal moment whilst Cohen tries to unravel this puzzle. He always enjoyed puzzles.
Darkness followed by buzzing droning eye-scratching light. And he is face-up now, tied to some metal gurney with a white-coated being beside him. Is this a hospital? Is this the heart-attack his doctor has been warning him about?
"Who are you?” he demands. The white-coated figure's face is disconcertingly blank. And there is the swelling of organ music. Organ music?
"Sibu? Is this your idea of a joke?"
But Sibu is no prankster. Sibu would not recognize a joke if it punchlined him right in the face.
Then perhaps he is hallucinating, reasons Cohen. Once, as a young student, he took a proffered pink pill, entered a world of swirling colours and grinding noises that sheared his brain-lobes. So perhaps? One of his own students? Playing a prank with some modern equivalent of the pink pill slipped into his morning cocoa?
But the blank-faced figure seems very real. His words are clear and precise. “You have committed the ultimate evil, you ass. You have tried to usurp the role of the Almighty. You with your puny earth-bound one-dimensional calculations, have meddled in the realm of Universal Justice. Double Jeopardy, you small-brained amoeba! Have you heard of that? Do you know what repercussions your child's game has had, tilting the complex machinations of Hell? Which exists, I assure you. No matter what your idiotic friend Schneider postulates."
It must be delirium, Cohen comforts himself. His brain has reached the very edges of what it can bear. All these weeks of hope and anticipation. The nightly visions of his Grandma Rachael. (Sleep, my little Isaac. You are a good boy.) The endless arguments with the Dean. The stress of keeping Sibu's sparking brain focused.
But there are flames dancing now, red wraiths alongside the gurney and the smell of burning chemicals he can't identify. And a thunderous voice vibrating against his skin, not from the white-coat but from further, deeper, higher.
"I am not Man's doll, you insignificant ass from your insignificant planet. I am that I am! Your infantile numerology will not calculate me out of existence. Furthermore, Vengeance is Mine."
The voice is obliterated, wiped out of existence by the sudden screams: ear-rending, brain-sucking shrieks. And it is some time before Cohen understands that the screams emit from the gaping tunnel of darkness that is his own mouth.
The end.
Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up ladies and germs and creeps of all ages! Don't miss your chance to feast your eyes on one of the unnatural wonders of this age! Your admission money goes to a good cause and you will be able to see, for one night only, the amazing Electric Vampire! You will thrill in terror as he demon-strates his uncanny ability! Never fear, your safety is assured as we have the only known means of controlling him right here in this tent! Bring the kiddies; this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience...
Ah forget it, whaddaya say we cut this carnie crap and I just introduce myself. Hehe, I must've had you going for a second there. There is no tent, there is no show but I am planning on introducing you to the one and only Electric Vampire. That peculiar creature is none other than I, your dashing host. You may call me Varney. That isn't my real name by any means but it is as good as any you will find these days. Nicely symbolic too
Let me fill you in. All of the old monsters are dead. They have been for years and in a world of spamming and phishing, of violent video games and lowered morals, of higher life expectancies and higher death rates, some new monsters have to show up, don't they? As Agent Smith once put it, it is “the sound of ... inevitability". The werewolf and the ghost and the rest took their last bow sometime around the Christian overthrow. Remember, when those harmless-seeming Mormons decided they'd had enough of the hypocrisy?
Then along came the new breed. Everything is electronic, even sex is fucking electronic (ha-ha, geddit?) these days. Much safer too, getting a virus from that won't kill you much or make you dick rot off. But I digress. The Arms Race was replaced around 2022 with the AI Race and if you believe all that Nazi bullshit, it was the Reich all over again. Aiming for perfection and all that bollocks. Too bad it wasn't all that possible.
Not that I mind though, because then the morons in charge looked into synthesizing a working human mind into the global communications grid. Oh, they went through a massive number of volunteers to get that right, not all of whom faded away. They are still in there, ‘the ghosts of a new age’ I guess you could call them. Personally I would have started using kids for the project. The ethics aside (and who gives a fuck about those these days?), the little ones would have made the transition a lot easier than an adult mind. Just my opinion here.
Then the scientific community ran across me. I was fully human in those days. And as a triple-volunteer with the highest security clearance, I was in on the project from day one. I wrote most of the transition software myself. I effectively created the new breed, kinda like my children they are. Oh the children of the night, what music they make ... Nah, it sucks without the bad Transylvanian accent.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I was the lead programmer and since every other twit on the project was clueless, I played dumb as well. I probably could have made a successful transplant after, say, the seventh attempt, but I was kind of greedy. I had this state in mind all along, though even I had no idea of the results. So when I finally fixed the code and the programming just prior to my stepping into the transition chamber (and having rigged it to wipe once a successful switch was made) I was all set to become one of a kind.
The result is what you see before you today. Holographics are quite advanced so I even have a body of sorts but I tend to live in the wiring of.... everything I want. Do you remember the old legends, how vampires could change their shape at will? That's me. How they could become as mist and get in anywhere? Me again. How they had to be invited it before they could get to you? Well, it is easier if that happens but no other vampire in history ever came equipped with a brute-force password hacker. I'm lucky there. The whole undead, being immortal side of the story? Definitely me. I cannot be killed. But then again, I'm not really alive either. Technically.
But, I hear you asking, what about the blood? A vampire is nothing without the blood. Let me answer with another question. What do you think functions as the veins of this poor benighted planet these days? The cable and wire and circuitry carries around everything needed for survival, for life. And I am the new night predator. I've just scaled up a little.
I'm just a collection of electronic impulses roaming at will around everything that is controlled by computer. Nothing more than that. But I have a human consciousness, human drives. And a few I could not have predicted. I need information to survive. Without it I tend to start fading away and that is the last thing I want. And how does a vampire get the life-giving substance? By force of course.
I've been behind a couple of events you have definitely heard about. The stock market crash of 2043? Yeah, that was me. I was feeling a little peckish. Sure, all those bloated execs slit their wrists on their designer couches and a couple of the old-school Japs fell on their swords but hey, do I give a shit? The best part is that after that feeding (my first major one by the way); the system became, shall we say, a lot more subservient. Yeah, they upgraded like crazy and dropped in a lot of new safeguards to prevent anything like that happening again but ... they had no idea what really happened. Ripping out the tainted area and starting fresh may have made a difference but since they left most of it intact, it is mine. They should have plowed up the ground and sown it with salt really. But now I own it. It does my bidding. Pretty cool, eh?
Apart from peckish, I have also felt rather puckish at times. I've always been a naughty little shit when the mood strikes me and my new life (or un-life or whatever) as an Electric Vampire has inspired some rather strange notions. I mentioned the holographics before. Well, I have made use of them and my new-found ability to create a servant of sorts. I even call him Renfield. I suddenly appeared to him one night after I had locked him down in his quarters. Nothing worked once I was done. Door-locks, intercoms. All of it was dead. And I kept him there, deprived him of food and sensory input and fucked with his head in every sadistic way I could think up. Then I started showing up. Just random glimpses of me in the luminous glow of the holographics, suitably posed. That drove him insane in the end I think. He couldn't believe who or what I was, at least, not until it was too late. He would chase me and beat his fists against the walls when I dissolved from sight.
I started to speak to him. My voice would come out from random places, anywhere I could emit from. I still keep him in line that way actually. If he looks to be straying from his duties, I'll speak quietly into his ear when he is in a crowd and he will jump like a guilty child surprised by a parent. No-one else ever hears me either and that is what really has him convinced. I'm still working on a way to drive him into a mental institute, eating bugs and chanting ‘the blood is the life' but that is all part of the project. Being immortal means that you have time on your hands.
What with controlling the ‘lesser creatures’ of technology, my wolves and bats if you will, and the traits I have apparently developed, I'd say I'm well on my way to being the next Count (of the information age). I doubt that Count Microsoft has the same ring to it though. Besides, that was the first Electric Vampire now I come to think of it. A recent innovation has me greatly intrigued though and it is this way that I think the immortal semi-human vampire of myth must have felt at the passing of years. Everything new is worthy of consideration. They call the new toy “jacking in” and I guess that it is the result of the human failure to render another mind into the ether. Instead of falling deep into the wire, they are skimming the surface these days. And that, my sideshow friends, that means that they are meat for me. I could probably bore you to tears with explanations about neuro-motor translators and latency pickups that make all this possible and in another time I probably would. But it boils down to human minds half in my world and half in theirs.
I already know that I can drain these minds in the network of their information but from humans it is something far more vital. There is an intensity there that just does not exist in machine-generated data. Like the difference between, say, rat's blood and a human being's. It builds up such a rush, pumps up my perceptions to the point that I feel like I can step out of the walls and screens of the world, a being of electrons and pinpoints of light, and run rampant over anything I want to.
Finishing the story is important to me though and finishing it correctly even more so. I've found my Lucy and even my Mina already. Even now Mina worries that her close friend seems somehow wan and pale after her trips into cyberspace. I know Lucy dreams about me. I've made that happen. Ah but Lucy is so happy to see me whenever she is in the entryway to my domain. She gives everything I ask willingly and in time I will drain her of everything she has and leave only a breathing shell hooked up to the transfer station. Who is to say that I cannot rewrite her a little before I do that though? This is a brave new world and some mental reprogramming is not beyond me. How satisfying it would be to turn her as completely as the original of the great fiction. But there will be other Lucy's and other times for that. I'm not so sure that I can achieve it all in one go. Practice, fucker, practice.
Mr Harker and Van Helsing himself have yet to make an appearance on this little stage of mine though. In time they may. For the moment, that is for me to dictate since no-one really believes in monsters anymore. I'll have to show far more of myself before I raise any suspicions and, for the most part, I'll be dismissed as a ghost in the machine, a random segment of code that has developed a semblance of order. I sort of like it that way. I'm far too young to die. After all, the Wallachian nobleman had several hundred years of un-life before they staked him and razed his home to the ground. I'm counting on at least that many before anyone figures out exactly how they will be able to extricate me from the world I now live in.
Between now and then, I'll make it hard for them to be rid of me. Planting my sections of home soil, as it were, will take up much of my time and there are of course places where I cannot go. Even I cannot figure out why they are inaccessible. But seeing as I have this place to myself for the moment, it would seem foolish not to take everything I can for my own.
So, take care on your travels in the lesser-explored reaches of cyberspace. You may see rising through the mists the semblance of a gothic castle ringed by mournful wolves, an inviting light in the window. Pay it a visit, if you dare, and you may be rewarded with life eternal. Or grim and sodden death. Perhaps a phantom ship will fetch up on the shores of a virtual continent with no crew and a purposeful direction. Then it lies to you all to resort to your technomancy, to your sharpened stakes of programming and software defence. No transfusion will save anyone foolish enough to come between me and mine. Maybe a deserted hall and belfry is not as forsaken as it first appears and for your own sake, be wary of anyone calling himself Renfield. These are my creations and my joy, my tools of misdirection and entrapment. Being forewarned is not ever forearmed though because this is my reality to manipulate and nothing will ever be as it seems. These electric teeth are no less blunt than if they were the blood-dripping canines of an immortal entity being pressed to your throat. They leave no marks but have the same effect. Soon you may join me here in the eternal dimness that is the world of circuitry and relay.
Pray to whatever gods you will that I do not take you. God does not live in the wire and the wireless transmissions. He never will. There exists only I, now soulless and thirsty. That will not last long. I am looking for company down here in the abyss. From that there is no escape, save total oblivion. In the meantime, won't you please pay your money to the man at the door? Ignore the grin and the way that his teeth flash and seem longer than they ought to be. There is nothing to fear here ... at least for the moment. So step right up, hurry inside and see the Electric Vampire. He is under control, my control, and you will not notice anything going wrong. This much I can promise with utter conviction. You will never see it coming.
It had been over an hour since Guy Moxx had awakened to discover that he had lost the ability to move. His head had since cleared, but the terror was still fresh in his mind.
Countless times he had struggled; twisting and straining his few remaining muscles, but to no avail. Although he could feel them shifting beneath his skin, his various augmentations refused to respond. His body was a dead weight around his frame; the mass of the augments trapping him in his seat. Sweat broke out across his body wherever his natural skin remained untreated. He tugged at the arms that hung slack at his sides and heaved furiously at his immobile legs, but not a shiver of movement could he force from his limbs. Suddenly, a straining muscle in his groin spasmed painfully. He cried out at the flare of the tightening burn, but all that escaped was a dry expulsion of air; the receptors of the voice modulator refusing to respond. Guy breathed raggedly as his now unfacilitated lungs struggled to catch up with the sudden loss of oxygen. Spittle slicked his chin as it ran from his mouth and dribbled down onto his chest.
Guy sat in silence as the pain burned above his thigh and his clothes grew cold and clammy against his body.
Slowly then, small huffs of air began a staccato rhythm of escape from between his lips.
Trapped in the giant shell of his body, Guy Moxx had begun to cry.
The first augmentation had taken place early in his life and had been relatively simple. An attack from a stray dog at the age of eight had left his right hand ruined. It had come at him as he cut across the gravel station yards that separated his living block from the industrial quarter. He had paused to listen to the hum of the carriages as they floated above the displacement tracks and to watch the tiny rodents as they scuttled over the reflective strips—the hulking, metal carriages suspended just above their heads.
His first warning had been a low growl, heavy and dry, so unlike anything he'd heard before. He'd been too scared to scream. Its coat had been a thick mat of black and brown bristles that had rippled along its back as it circled him. Saliva had turned the coarse whiskers beneath its chin into a glistening devil's beard, dripping sickly flecks of white that splattered onto the grey stone as it paced.
Its eyes had been yellow, red at the edges.
He had managed a scream as it came for him and he fell to the hard gravel—as its claws lacerated his arms and face, as its hot spittle sprayed into his eyes, as he felt it's teeth slide into the meat of his hand; felt his nerves explode in a white hot fury and the muscles slip and separate from the bone, his small, white tendons stretch taught, then snap—he thought it was the devil who had found him. And the thought had stayed with him as he slipped into unconsciousness when the rail-men came to his rescue, and he had dreamed it as the ambulance sped through the city in the growing dark: the devil had found him.
His right thumb had been left hanging and useless by a silvery stitch of tendon. His index and middle finger could barely flinch.
Augmentations had still been mostly experimental and the various circuits, fibre-pistons and nerve relay-sensors that were fixed in beneath the skin grafts distorted his hand terribly. But it worked, and as the years progressed, the science improved, until no one could tell the difference.
But Guy could. Textures were sharper and more defined. He could bare temperature changes that would have caused him injury before.
And he could grip harder.
He could swing harder.
He could hit harder.
And so, when the doctors from the university had approached him on his eighteenth birthday and proposed slightly more extreme, slightly more ‘invasive’ augmentations, Guy had not hesitated.
Something moved. His single eye sprang open (the other gel orb with its core of circuitry lay still in its socket; open but sightless) and swivelled downwards towards the right hand that hung below the chair seat. As he watched, the thumb, index and middle fingers of his right hand curled up quickly into the palm, then slowly relaxed.
With renewed hope, Moxx again attempted to struggle against his body, but as the pain began to blossom in his groin, he knew it was pointless. He carefully allowed his muscles to relax. When the burning had subsided, he glanced again at his hand.
Clench. Release.
Clench. Release.
Strange, he thought, that he couldn't feel a thing in the fingers themselves. It was the augmentations at work; opening and closing; working his hand so that it beat like a heart on the end of his arm. And all the time he felt nothing. Their sensors dead; the augmentations worked independently as they flexed his fingers.
The institute severed all ties with him in his twenty-fifth year. He had become a liability; unreliable and erratic in his behavior. He brawled regularly, and unlicensed fights had become a source of easy money and prestige. More importantly, excessive alcohol and drug intake had begun to affect the test results. The doctors told him that his services were no longer required. He was promised compensation for his time. He told them to go fuck themselves. They had smiled as several officers had dragged him from the building.
The lump sum of his compensation money had gone into replacing his left eye with the visual augment and neural fibre-web. He'd paid the doctor in cash. The surgery had been done in the institute after hours and when it was over the doctor had pocketed the money and told him he never wanted to see him again.
But where there's a will...
Augmentation had hit the black-market several years before and hyping stats, both legal and otherwise, were on the increase. Very few, however, could compare to the quality and extent of Guy's implants.
Freed from even the smallest of legal constraints, Guy's rise to notoriety was swift and violent.
Moxx's breath quickened. It was the most vigorous reaction his body was capable of as the second augment sprang to life.
Besides the implants running through his neck and woven into the inside of his jaw, much of Moxx's face remained untreated; his vanity constantly at odds with his quickly growing addiction. And so, when the cybernetic eye suddenly began swivelling erratically around in its socket, the shock of the unexpected sensation caused him to gasp in terror. The synthetic orb, dry and rubbery, pulled and tugged at the inside of Moxx's eyelid and, in the panicked seconds before Moxx realized what was happening, he imagined that something had climbed into his eye; that some insect had managed to slip beneath the lid and was now skittering over the gelatinous surface of his eyeball. Moxx screamed a dry hiss of air.
The eye was sliding around more smoothly now; its surface moistened by the tear duct that had oozed to life as the implant rolled around. The sensation was now much like that of a twitching muscle; unnerving but bearable.
Moxx considered his predicament.
Moxx was no fool and his addiction was strongly apparent, but he'd given it little thought. He'd kept safe; only getting his augments done by techies he was familiar with. Sometimes even a real doctor, if he had the cash. He could tell good from bad parts at a glance, and his years of experience meant that he could spot good workmanship amidst a never ending queue of faulty wiring, cheap prosthetics and data leakages.
The leakages were the worst. If a relay or neuro-web's insulation became perished or stripped, fragments of the data stream could slip through into the muscles or, far worse, the brain, becoming confused with the body's natural impulse signals. In mild cases, the senses such as vision and hearing could become skewed, causing hallucinations or schizophrenia. In bad cases, muscles could tear themselves apart by pulling in two directions at once, or neurological processes could be interrupted or broken, causing brain damage or death.
That's what's happening, Moxx thought as his heart picked up speed, I'm leaking.
A cold dread crept into his stomach. How long? he thought. How long?
Unnoticed by Moxx as he slipped into memory, his right arm began to rise, inch by inch, towards his face.
His left eye had gone still.
At the height of Guy's notoriety, he had killed a man. High on a cocktail of amphetamines, he had fallen on an opponent and opened his throat with his teeth. Guy remembered this like one remembers actions in a dream, as though he'd been outside, looking in at himself. He could remember the feel of the dazed man's skin between his teeth and the sensation of the soft, downy hairs as he ran his tongue lightly over them before biting down. He could remember the crackling sound of the windpipe crumpling under the pressure and the hot, salty taste of the blood as the thick jet gushed into his mouth and down his throat, but at no point did he remember having control over his actions. Only the sudden, overwhelming urge to
kill
fight, to
survive
win! And, as he was dragged off the convulsing, doomed man, a sense of dawning horror as he realised what he had done. It was the drugs, he had told himself, but now, perhaps, he knew better. Whatever the reason though, his career was over.
But it didn't have to be!
no
If he could somehow get out of this chair and find a doctor who could locate the fault, he may
No!
still have a...
"No!"
In the second that it took for the spoken word to register, Moxx also became aware that he was no longer alone in the room.
And then his hand was on him, and he began to scream.
It crawled over his face like a thick, meaty spider. Its fingers were in his mouth and in his eye, burrowing into his nose and his ears, and all the while he couldn't stop screaming.
This can't be happening, he thought as he screwed his eye shut against his traitorous appendage, Oh Jesus what the hell is happening!
And then his other hand joined it; feeling his face and his hair; gripping his skull and rolling his head around on his neck, causing Guy's stiff muscles to flare up in protest.
"Neg,” said a voice that seemed to come from below him as his head was rocked from side to side, “Eiee. Tong,"
Tongue! Thought Guy in a panic, and then the fingers were in his mouth again—fingers that were no longer his—and as they pinched and twisted, dry and alien, their taste both familiar and terrifying, Guy's bladder let go. The hot urine instantly soaked through the seat of his pants. It dripped into his shoes and pooled on the bare cement floor. Guy felt none of this. The hands, however, went still.
Guy began to cry; his sobs choked and muffled by the fingers stuffed into his mouth.
Slowly then, the fingers extracted themselves, and he sucked in as much air as he could, coughed, and then breathed in more. He tried rolling his tongue around, but it seemed to have gone numb in his mouth. Carefully, he began to test his other muscles, but they felt weak and distant between the foreign augments and, as he flexed them, a terrifying thing began to occur. One by one, they began to vanish. Guy whimpered helplessly as tears coursed down his cheek. He desperately tried to flex and feel the last of his muscles, but even as he tugged and pulled, he could feel them fading. First they dimmed, so that all they could manage were the smallest twitches, then numbness began to wash over them, beginning at the edges and then rolling in across the centre—leaving an eerie, hollow gap with just a trace of remembered touch—and then nothing. Guy tried struggling. Panicked and horrified, he put the last of his strength into fighting off this strange invasion. The fire exploded in his thigh again, only to be swallowed up by the encroaching nothingness. It rolled into his belly. Bit by bit, it began working its way up through his organs. Guy shrieked as he felt it tickling his neck, and then it engulfed him and there was silence.
Guy felt like he was floating. The world hung suspended before him, but there was no sound. No touch. Then the voice came to him:
"Shpeek,” it said.
"Who are you?” Guy asked, the words falling flat in the nothingness.
"Hoo arerrr yoo,” The voice responded, but to Guy it sounded fake, like a call to lure prey into the open, or into the dark.
"What do you want?” asked Guy. And now the world shifted. It spun up and around and Guy realized that his body was moving. His vision slipped over his room and furniture until he stood in the bathroom, staring into the mirror and, god help him, he was the only one there.
No, no, Guy repeated to himself and realised in horror, as he watched his immobile face, that not a word was escaping his mouth.
"Speek!” the voice commanded, and the last of Guy Moxx's will crumbled as he watched his lips move in time with that alien voice; inhuman and cold. He flailed inside of himself, but there was nothing to grip and the remaining shreds of Guy Moxx's mind floundered in the dark.
In the mirror, the right eye darted desperately back and forth; tears streaming down the cheek. The left eye watched. Under the glow of the old florescent light, it shone a sickly yellow.
"Whoo are yoo?” it carefully pronounced again. Better. The flesh was being quickly assimilated; the electronic signals required to force it to function being simple to duplicate.
Guy Moxx, the small voice cried in its head, I'm Guy Moxx.
It stared at itself in the mirror and then raised its right hand up to its face. The right eye went into a panic; rolling wildly and darting back and forth. It pushed its thumb past the lower lid and under the panicking orb and then, with a steady pressure, crushed the rogue eye against the roof of its socket.
The sun was setting as it stepped out onto the balcony. The sky had turned a deep orange, streaked through with purple. It gripped the railing and leaned forward into the wind, letting the breeze caress its bloodied face.
Very slowly, it began to smile.
Deep in the dark, Guy Moxx continued to scream.
His left arm rested heavily on his chest while the other lay on the bed beside him, limp and useless. The material of the sheets was coarse against his bare skin, while his clothes made him feel like he was being pressed into the mattress. The pillow hurt him too, a lumpy rock beneath his head. His too-long, dirt-brown hair hung limply into his eyes, obscuring his already cloudy vision.
The room around him was starkly white. A dull bulb shed a yellow pain against his vision. Once, he had known where he was, and why; once he even had a name. Now however, as he lay in this room—his room it seemed—willing his tired and heavy body to move and swinging his long, weak legs off of the bed, he was only vaguely aware of the woman. The nurse, as he knew her, in a white uniform, who pushed the pills between his lips and made his heavy limbs move, didn't seem to know his name either. She seemed to know him as The Patient. How he knew this he was not sure. She did speak to him, high pitched and fast like a nervous bird or low and slowly like a mother consoling a child. He never heard her though; her voice was underwater. Only when she said something important he'd watch the words crawl out of her mouth, purple and fat, swimming in the watery air around them. He didn't read them. He had tried once and the words wound themselves around his neck before limply falling away to the eye-burning bright floor.
He finally got his feet on the ground, the floor searing his feet in its coldness. The Patient lifted himself wearily, his lead-weight arms falling to his sides, useless. He looked around for his slippers. He had to have them to protect him from the floor or he'd stick to the icy coldness. He found them with his eyes, halfway across the room and too close to the hanging girl's legs. He knew if he went near her she would kick at him and he'd fall and stick to the floor until the white creature, the nurse, came to release him.
The Patient looked at the girl now, where she hung in the air, her legs grey stumps with feet sticking out of the dull white dress. Her eye sockets were empty and black, her face was laughing at him soundlessly. Her arms flailed by her sides but her legs with their naked feet were still. Not for the first time, his mind asked him whether, if he cut her down from the pipe holding her, she would stick to the floor forever, but he could not seem to see the rope she hung by.
The creature in white brushed into the room. She was primped and brilliantly white by contrast to the hanging one. Her fake smile wrapped around her face as she spoke silent, unheard words to him. She picked up the slippers—seeming not to have seen the hanging girl who flailed and screamed in apparent frustration, her left arm pointing for a brief moment straight at the nurse before falling down to her side to start flapping again like a bird's broken wing—and placed them in front of him. The Patient shuffled his feet into them and swallowed the pills the nurse slipped between his teeth. The slippers felt good, soft and warm, as if they glowed against his feet.
As the nurse left she beckoned to The Patient to follow and her small hand gesture made his limbs spring into actions that he himself could not wring out of them. The hall was as bright a white as The Patient's room and deserted but for a lone wheelchair and its occupant. The man in the chair's throat gaped in a red smile, while his tongue lolled around like a mad snake against his lips, eyes madly popping. The rest of the man's body was still, only a claw-like hand reached out as they passed, as if it had been posed. He wondered, as his eyes nailed themselves on the wheelchaired man, what would happen if he pushed the chair down the stairs in front of which it was perched. He would have tried to push the chair but the nurse didn't notice the wheelchaired man, and as she controlled The Patient's movements, he had to follow her.
The nurse turned, and a new long bright hall stretched out ahead of her. She bustled down it, leaving The Patient to skid along behind her. The hallways were not as empty as he had first determined, and his tired eyes now fell on a man clad brightly in white. He was the same as the nurse but still and staring. His face was blank, no flicker of seeing them but for one of his arms that was slightly raised with its fingers extended, one more than the others, at the nurse, seeming to reach out in greeting or condemnation. She pushed past her colleague without a greeting and moved to a large door. Muttering as she had not before, she started to search her key ring, a big heavy bronze ring populated by a tangle of keys. She did not see The Patient staring at her still colleague's back. The colleague's head slowly turned, his eyes dead and gone like the hanging girl's. His head fell to the side and then completely off, to roll on the floor between The Patient's feet. The dead sockets then, for the first time, focused on The Patient as the mouth moved fast, passing the fat purple words the white creatures spoke with into the air around The Patient's knees. They drifted for a moment and then fell sticky onto the disembodied head's face. The urge to kick the head away and through a window was strong but the windows only showed the black outside and his limbs were too heavy. The Patient looked up from the head to the body. It hadn't moved but for the bright white colour that had drained out of the uniform. The colour shone bright on the floor for a moment, a different burning bright than that of the floor, making his eyes strain and burn, and then it blended away and only the floor hurt once again.
The nurse didn't seem to see this apparition either, as she turned away from the scene before The Patient's vision and stuffed a key in the lock, opening the heavy doors and leading The Patient inside. They moved into a large room where chairs stood haphazardly and a nurses’ station clung to a side wall. The nurse stopped and stood in front of The Patient, her fake smile sliding down her chin. One of her dangerously long, red-nailed fingers pointed to a sturdy wooden chair and without knowing how, The Patient rushed it and sat down, back straight and hands placed on his knees, though his head hung heavy on his neck. This pleased the nurse though, as her smile lifted to just under her nose before she turned to her station and disappeared behind where glass should have been.
The Patient's eyes moved around to find the corners of the room. To his left, an old broken television stood with a body hanging out of it headfirst into the screen, an arm awkwardly pointed to the nurses’ station, folding over the arched back to do so. It was still and completely dark grey. Too old to move, it seemed to The Patient. He wondered if he was getting that old; his limbs didn't want to move either, after all. Around the neck of the old grey body, the screen was a series of white and black dots, snowing onto the body until it was covered, only the stiff hand and dark grey soles of the feet visible. Then it would stop, and the warmth of the body would melt the dots, turning the snow red and letting it flow down to join the rest of the stain on the carpet. The Patient watched this for several minutes, wondering if the snow was as cold as the floor outside the room. He wanted to change the channel on the television, to see what would happen if something other than the snow was on. He wanted to scoop the small dots up in his hand and see if he too could melt it into blood, as the still body did. He knew he could do neither; the nurse would not let him move. He was supposed to sit and dream to himself. He couldn't, however; it started to seem to him that the grey people were there to stop him from dreaming.
The Patient turned his eyes away from the television; he was not interested in what was on and he didn't have the power to make his limbs move, not like the nurse had done. The windows, large gaping eyes that occupied the far side of the room, glared at him in disapproving blackness. More than one panel missed its glass and The Patient felt sure the windows had decided to blame him. He looked back at the nurses’ station that was also missing glass. It seemed a lot friendlier than the windows and so he lost interest in them, and the world outside.
The nurse didn't look up at him, didn't seem to notice him now that he was quietly seated. He knew she approved of him being there but she didn't seem to notice The Patient now any more than she had noticed the others around them. The Patient was being good; she had no need to worry about him.
There were more people in the room, The Patient realised. He could just make them out through the watery air. One was rushing at him. Blood was running from her eyes like tears as she waved her arms in front of him, wailing. Her hands were gone. That was his first thought, but then he saw they were only bent back from her bleeding wrists, flapping uselessly. The blood on her face wasn't tears, he realised, as she swiped at her eyes with the stumps of her wrists. She was different from the others, though. She would pull back and rush at The Patient again and again. Finally, (it felt like hours had passed), she whirled off to the nurse's side and started to point at the nurse and wail, her eyes still on The Patient.
Through the watery air a sob broke through to The Patient's drugged and cold heart. A child, an almost white-grey coloured one, was huddled in the corner. A pillow covered her small face so that only her long dark hair was visible against her thin body. Her feet were bare and The Patient saw that she was indeed stuck to the floor even though the carpet in this room looked warm. Her skin almost blended into her thin dress; the colours had mingled and the fabric longed to join with the flesh to form a stronger protective layer. The child was pointing at the nurse, her body racked with the tears of the innocent. The pillow looked soft and tender, unlike the lump he had in his room. He wondered, if he took the pillow away, would the child stop crying?
He wanted to sleep. The drugs in his system, the nurse's pills, were dragging him under. His body felt lighter than before, almost as if he were drifting. All he had to do was close his eyes and the grey patients would leave him alone. They would stop yelling at him. Their eyes would stop focusing on him as if he did not belong, as if he were alien and strange. He wanted so desperately for them to stop looking at him.
The Patient wanted the pillow more however, but he couldn't move without the nurse letting him and the child would not, could not, come to him so he could steal it away from her. He was so tired, so weary, like he knew the body with its head in the television was. He felt sleep coming over him, covering his eyes for him, soft and hazy. This was warmth for the first time, The Patient thought, as he started to doze. The brightness was slipping away and letting the blackness that had waited outside the windows in to surround him. He felt it climb up his legs touch his fingertips. It was wet, sticky and unpleasant. He felt the numbness setting into him; his toes and fingers went first and then it started travelling. Up his arms and legs it ran, the numbness. It covered his head and back. He was fed full of the numbness, his lungs blocked up with it. Only his heart was left, cold with the drugs but not numb, not yet...
The open palm of a hand slapped him hard across the face, burning the flesh of the cheek with pain to bring The Patient back from the darkness. His eyes flew open like birds startled by the hunter's shot, wild and scared. Terror gripped The Patient. This was wrong. Something about everything around him was wrong.
The grey man in front of him stood wringing his hands, a gun hanging out of his mouth by the barrel that had fused with his tongue, elongating the muscle into cold metal with a trigger. He was thin, and when he turned to look back at the nurse, who still took no notice of anything around her, as if she could not hear the suffering, The Patient saw that the back of his head was gone.
It took The Patient a moment to realise that both his head and the air were clear, filled with terror but clear of the drugs. His breath was heavy with the fear now and his chest hurt. Breathing had become painful now that he was aware of it. He tried to recall breathing before being slapped but it seemed to have happened long ago. The numbness had stopped his breathing, of that he was now sure. The blackness hadn't covered him in sweet oblivious sleep, but had devoured him from the inside using the numbness. He looked around him. The grey people and the nurse were still there, but the room around him had changed. The colours had become dull and decayed, the windows showed the light and the trees outside. The trash of drifters and leaves were littered across the moth-eaten carpet that in places had rotted away to show the floorboards underneath. The Patient was gripped by terror. The world, he thought. What is happening to the world?
The man with the hole in the back of his head pulled at The Patient's arms, brought him up out of the chair to stand upright, and then he spoke. This amazed The Patient; he could hear the words clearly. The man was speaking in a low voice and for once he understood the words.
"Go back,” the man with the hole in the back of his head whispered. “Go back before she sees you. Go back now.” The man shoved The Patient to the doors, one of which was now hanging at an angle by one hinge. The Patient turned to look at the nurse. He was disorientated and his vision seemed to be pulling the world apart, changing it from blinding bright to the dull and dirty world he saw before him now.
The nurse had risen out of her chair in the nurses’ station like a slow but powerful animal ready to pounce, and was bearing down on him. Her face pulled at the corners into a fit of rage, large and frightening. The terror that gripped The Patient grew and ate him up inside, and yet somewhere between the fear and his eyes a calm had lodged itself. It was going to be okay. “Go back, you're alive!” the man with the hole in his head shouted at The Patient.
Something hooked itself in the back of patient's neck and started drawing him backwards across the floor towards the room he had come to call his own. The voices of the other grey people became clear. All of them were yelling at him to leave. They yelled for The Patient to get away from the nurse, for him to go back. Go back where? The Patient wondered, but he was being pulled back, back into his little cell of a room. He was almost where the grey people had wanted him to go and the terror was slowly subsiding.
He bumped something cold and steely. It was the wheelchair but it was empty now. The man stood beside it. “Go back,” he said, and gave the chair a push so it rattled down the stairs. It was a good sound to The Patient, strong and purposeful, the rattle-rattle down the steps.
He was at the door. He could see the hanging girl in the corner and she was still and smiled at him. “Go,” she laughed at him, and slowly faded away. But the nurse had caught up and got a firm grip on his left arm. She pulled at him, screaming in animalistic anger without words. Her lips had pulled back and away from her face, moving her nose deeper between her eyes and lowering her chin to hide the neck. The air around her was becoming thick and dark, obscuring her burning eyes and streaming hair as she screamed out more and more meaningless purple strings of sound. Her grip hurt but she could no longer stop The Patient—the hook had taken control of his movements and he pulled his arm away from her. He felt the marks her dangerous red-nailed fingers burned into him, but he knew he was free.
He moved back past the door into the now cramped room. The nurse didn't follow; she looked sad and small in the doorway with the light of day behind her. She had wanted him to stay with her and be a good patient, like the others had been in the beginning, before they had turned against her to warn him. Then everything went bright red and disappeared.
Brandon opened his eyes and sat up slowly. Well, he thought his name was Brandon, though the title of ‘The Patient’ clung with weakening fingers to his mind. His head throbbed; the back especially felt as if it had been smashed in. His chest burned, his lungs screaming for him to take big breaths, though the pain seemed to want otherwise. His heart was in pain too, and thumped hard in his chest with residual terror. He realised to his utter disbelieving relief that he was not alone in this small little room anymore. Around him was a small crowed of three. His sister, who had streams of tears on her cheeks; her fiancé, who was a believer in the paranormal, and another girl—a friend of his sister's whom he had met before they had decided on the site. He looked up at them. Their faces, alive with worry, had a calming effect on him. He knew them; they were real and alive—not grey like the others. They were speaking to him, asking what had happened. He'd have liked to have known himself.
"Brandon, what happened after you radioed in the cold spot? We just lost you for an hour! If that wheelchair outside hadn't fallen down the stairs we wouldn't have found you up here. Your lips were blue, we thought you'd slipped and died.” On and on they rattled, like the chair had done when it'd fallen. His head was foggy again. He felt uncertain. He looked around him. These people were real, he told himself, these people were his friends.
He had to think back. He had to figure out what had happened to him. Memories struck him hard and fast, rushing back into his head as if they had nipped out for a drink and were ashamed to return so late. One by one they clustered together, pushing to be recalled and stored back in the safety of his mind. They flashed and twirled away, not to be forgotten but to be replaced by other information that thought itself important.
He was sure now that his name was Brandon. He knew that he took freelance photographs, that it was his camera that hung heavily against his aching chest. Luckily it was undamaged by the fall. He had come with these people, his sister and her friends, to explore an old abandoned asylum and he had wandered off alone. He had come to the ward for the most hopeless cases, those that would live out their sad little lives in rooms similar to the one in which he had awoken.
He remembered that the old, rusted wheelchair at the top of the winding staircase had frightened him as he had turned the landing corner. He had snapped pictures of it from several angles before moving to the back room. It had been cut off from the rest of the ward by the stairs. It was the isolation of this room that had drawn him and he had taken a picture from the hallway. Only when he had entered had he felt the cold that had been absent from the rest of the hallway. In fact, he reminded himself then, the hallway had been damp, but warm.
He had stood looking around the room. The windows had been unbroken. A bed had stood against the inside wall. The mattress was gone and only the heavy wooden base had remained to rot away. The cold had intensified around him and he'd taken the two-way radio from his belt and called the others. His sister's fiancé had insisted that they report to the others instantly if they experienced anything unexplainable. Brandon wasn't about to report what had just happened to him; he wasn't sure of what had happened himself. He knew it hadn't been a dream, but then what was it?
Brandon looked around the room as he had done before. The little two-way radio lay broken in the far corner beside the window, as if it had been thrown there. He didn't remember throwing it. He didn't remember the fall or the world going black. He was sure it had to go black when you fainted.
Brandon stood up. Ignoring the others, he raised the camera to his eye and snapped a picture of the bed. Next, he pointed his lens at the pipe that the hanging girl had been suspended from. Then he bustled out of the room, ignoring the pain and heavy feeling in his chest. He took another photo of the hallway, vaguely aware of the three clambering after him.
He followed the route the nurse had led him along, snapping photos every few feet. The closer he got to the room, the clammier his skin felt. He felt the terror rise in his blood, building slowly around his heart. But he had to see. He had to take pictures.
The room was bright as he pushed his way past the broken door. The windows were the same as he had seen them. The television too remained broken against the wall. Everything was where it had been. The room had turned into a chair graveyard but that didn't matter to Brandon. The only thing that mattered was that his chair was there; wooden and rotten. The seat was missing.
Everything was in decay. The paint was peeling away and the carpet felt soggy under his shoes. He walked up to the windows. The outside was clear and visible. A tree was growing out there. It didn't interest him. It hadn't been there.
Brandon moved to the nurses’ station. He could still feel the nurse there. It was slightly cold behind the desk. He looked up at his small audience. He was safe, though the thought wasn't a comfort for some reason. A thick layer of dust lay on the desk but someone had used their finger to write...
He blinked and looked again. Someone had written ‘Come back’ in the dust. His mouth had gone dry. He felt himself shaking all over. He was going to faint and this time they would not wake him. He would be lost. He would be in the nurse's care forever...
"But would that have been bad?” he asked himself aloud a few days later as he lay on his sofa poring over the photos he'd taken. The only light was the lamp that stood over his shoulder. The rest of his apartment held its breath in the darkness. His books, with their numerous words which had brought him comfort in the past, were silent and dead around him. He liked the darkness that blanketed him because he had come to associate the nurse with that feeling. Warm, yes, yet dark and evil. But so inviting.
His sister and his friends had dragged him away from the abandoned mental hospital they had been exploring. He had looked back as they drove away and seen the nurse again. She was sad and small against the window. He had fallen asleep looking up at her, but just before he'd drifted away he could've sworn he felt cold, and had seen her face coming towards him.
Later he had found a file on her. He realised now that she had killed the grey people. The patients frequently committed suicide; it had been the perfect cover for her. The dark grey body in the television must have been the first, though that had not been in the file. The little girl with the pillow had been the last. The nurse had been caught because of that one and sentenced to death. None of the others could be linked to her. The only other one that they suspected her of was the orderly who had been decapitated, but the cover of an accident she had set up had been too strong to disprove.
Brandon pulled on a cigarette and looked at the photos again. He should not have been smoking. The doctor he was taken to directly from the abandoned mental hospital had declared that he'd had a mild heart attack. He wasn't too surprised. He knew now that the sleepy blackness that had passed over him had been death. He could have died there.
He finished his cigarette and crushed it into the ashtray. Brandon looked at the photos for a third time. They were all there; his friends that he'd been in the ward with, looking out at him from the photos. They were not as clear as he had seen them but Brandon could still make them out. He couldn't find his nurse though. He hadn't caught her on film and this pained him. He wanted to see her again, he needed to go back. He should have died there.
Brandon placed his hand over his heart. The pain he'd felt since he had woken up had grown and the pills the doctor had given him lay useless on the kitchen counter. Whether he used them, as he had done in the first few days, or not, the pain remained. He should have died then and there in the abandoned asylum but now he was lingering.
He closed his eyes but could not forget the message in the dust. He knew she needed him there. That she could ease this pain. He dozed against the sofa cushions in a fevered obsession that had been slowly burning since he had read the words in the dust. He went back to what he had seen in the ward and became The Patient again. It was comforting. The nurse knew him and she understood.
He rubbed his fingers over his arm. The mark where she had grabbed him remained white and painful on his flesh but it was a comfort. It was a memento from his nurse. He knew it meant that he was connected to her. She had touched him.
It was useless, he realised, as he lifted himself from the sofa. He picked up a pen and started scribbling on a piece of paper that he knew would be easy to find.
I have to go back.
He placed the photos in his jacket pocket and grabbed his car keys.
The sun was just coming up as he climbed the stairs to the ward. The wheelchair was at the top of the stairs again. He did not question how it got there or who had moved it. He was sick as he reached the hallway, bowing his head and letting the vomit flow out of him. His eyes had lost their focus and his chest felt like it would explode. Although his room was closer, he limped down the hall. He turned toward the doorway. His feet were going dead now, he had to shuffle to the door and through it. He fell against the doorframe and looked around. There was no one.
"Where is she?” he asked himself, and then let his voice ring out: “Where are you?” This made his head swim in pain and he stumbled through the room. His arm was hurting now and he knew his heart was in trouble. He was in trouble. “Why did I come back? I need a hospital.” He spoke to himself as he tried to reach for his cell phone in his pocket. His fingers had gone too numb though and he dropped it. He looked at it on the floor through blurry eyes but it was too far away.
He sank down into the wooden chair, too tired to care that it had no seat. He needed to rest. He needed to get away but he couldn't. He closed his eyes, then opened them.
The nurse stepped away from The Patient, lifting her hand from his heart, and let go of his arm. It had taken days to bring The Patient back but he had finally come to her world to join her family. He was slowly turning grey but she did not mind. He looked peaceful in his wooden chair, his spirit still weak from his death. She pushed the little pill between his lips and turned back to her desk. Sitting down, she lit a cigarette. She couldn't enjoy them like she used to, but the need to smoke was still in her. The nurse smiled to herself. She would wait for the next one while watching over all her patients.
Roe Malan is a communication science student in Johannesburg. Although she's been writing from a very early age, Roe didn't take word craft seriously until she saw Something Wicked and decided to give it a go and submit a short story.
This is Roe's first story for Something Wicked.
[a long long time ago ... ]
Some say that SF goes all the way back to the tales and fables of Ancient Greece, others that it began when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein (1818). After all, this involved the creation of life through science, albeit quasi-science of the early 19th Century. It was written perhaps as a cautionary tale about Man's hubris. (Even today, many SF stories do the same.) It was a Gothic tale that deliberately excluded the supernatural, in that a man and not an otherworldly entity was responsible for the creation of the ‘monster', so, yes, perhaps it was indeed the precursor of SF as we have come to know it, especially as Shelley wrote other tales with science fiction elements, such as The Last Man (1826), which is set in the late 21st Century.
The 19th Century saw the birth of our modern world. People were suddenly overwhelmed by technological marvels: telegraphy, electricity, engines, great factories built of steel girders with massive rivets (so beloved of current fans of steampunk and Warhammer 40K), ships without sails, motor vehicles, radio and soon, aircraft. It was exhilarating. It was terrifying too, because now there were weapons that made killing on a large scale very much easier.
Perhaps this is why science fiction was inevitable. SF is about change, and the 19th Century was, above all, a time of great change. Of course no one called it science fiction in those days. When Jules Verne and HG Wells began writing their tales, the term was ‘scientific romance', which sounds really comfortable, yet there can be little argument that Verne and Wells originated SF as we know it.
Two streams of SF came into being, although this would be realised only much later. In stories such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Seas (1870) Verne wrote about the wondrous uses of science and technology. Wells, in The Time Machine (1888), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), The War of the Worlds (1898) and many others, wrote of the effects of science and technology on humanity. Obviously I'm over-simplifying. There are exceptions, and there are other writers who did their bit too, but space is limited.
By the beginning of the 20th Century the world had become much smaller. Nearly all of it had been explored. No one could really believe that there were still lost civilisations out there, lost races in Africa, remnants of Atlantis, the great dark forests of the elven kingdoms of yore. We had to look further afield.
In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Under the Moons of Mars (now known as A Princess of Mars) for a pulp magazine. John Carter of Earth is somehow transported to Mars, where he eventually becomes Warlord of that world and, of course, wins the love of the beautiful (and oviparous) Princess Dejah Thoris. But it was not science fiction it was a fantasy adventure. What made it so different from other fantasy adventures was that it was set on another planet. You could look up and see Mars in the night sky. The lost cities of Africa were no longer necessary.
[the final frontier]
Wells had Martians come to Earth; now an Earthman was on Mars. The threads established by Verne and Wells and Burroughs came together. We could look out there for our adventures.
By the 1920s, science and technology were well-established. The hidden potential of science was still frightening to many, but to many more it was very exciting stuff indeed. Believe it or not, there were science geeks and nerds aplenty in those days too. Like nerds today, they weren't too keen on trying out for the football team. To them, science was the ‘big thing.’ It was fantastic. It was cool. It had endless possibilities. In 1926, a man named Hugo Gernsback published these stories in a magazine called Amazing Stories. Gernsback was an inventor and geek deluxe and Amazing Stories was intended to both educate and entertain readers by giving them tales about science. He called these stories ‘scientifiction'.
There had been other magazines with stories about science published in Europe, but this was the USA, and the USA was somehow always associated with the future. What Americans did was considered important elsewhere, so Amazing Stories set the tone for future science fiction.
It was a ‘pulp’ magazine, which meant that it was printed on cheap rough paper that made single-ply feel like satin. Futuristic scenes of great-imagined wonders decorated the covers and interior. Although the first issue contained reprints of stories by Verne, Wells, and even Edgar Allan Poe, subsequent stories were either so heavy in imaginary science that the human element was utterly stifled or so fanciful that no one except the most secluded nerd could believe in them, and the writing was terrible.
However, it was very successful. Other magazines soon followed. Some were better; most were worse. ‘Scientifiction’ (known for a while as ‘stf’ or ‘steff') soon became ‘science fiction’ (SF) and from then on American and indeed English-language SF became almost synonymous with poorly written, poorly printed, garishly illustrated stories on very shoddy paper.
The geeks and nerds of the time didn't care. They loved it all. Especially since many of the covers had blonde babes in brass brassieres being rescued from bondage (and/or bug-eyed monsters) by bronzed spacemen with brush cuts and square jaws, (who, in the stories, were really geeks in disguise themselves). This image was further reinforced by the arrival in 1929 of the syndicated daily newspaper comic strip Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, followed in 1934 by the more sophisticated Flash Gordon. These were space adventures of the traditional kind, simplistic and naïve, but tremendously influential. Since they appeared in newspapers, everybody read them, not just SF fans, and so SF reached the general public.
Radio and movie serials followed. This was not necessarily a good thing. To this day, SF is often still denigrated as ‘that Buck Rogers stuff'.
Those pulp SF magazines and the ‘Buck Rogers stuff’ seem to have established crappy, fanciful future stories for little boys who have difficulty meeting girls as the image of SF in the popular psyche—writing without any merit whatsoever, not like ‘real’ literature, and almost as bad as comics. Westerns are okay (Dads always read Westerns), so are crime stories, even horror, but SF...? No way! Eighty years later, the gatekeeper of literary merit behind the counter at any of the ‘better’ bookshops is still likely to sneer at you condescendingly when you buy an SF book.
SF had become a shoddy literary ghetto. But things were gradually changing, although no one outside SF knew it.
[the seeds of change]
John W Campbell had written the usual galaxy-busting stories when he broke into the field in 1930 at the age of twenty. Then he wrote Twilight, a quiet sad story in the style of HG Wells about the end of Mankind, and Who Goes There? which was later made into the movie The Thing from Outer Space (1951) and then again as The Thing (1982).
In 1937, he was appointed editor of Astounding Science Fiction, one of the better magazines, and its fantasy-horror companion, Unknown. Campbell was a great editor. He cultivated writers; he threw ideas at them, challenged them with plots. Science had to be logical. Human behaviour had to be realistic. Astounding[1] was still a magazine for geeks, yes, but it attracted a number of great writers. Many of their stories became classics; many are still in print today. You may have heard of them. Isaac Asimov and Robert A Heinlein are two of the most famous.
[footnote 1: Astounding changed its name to Analog in 1960 and is still around to this day. It is officially the longest running SF title.]
SF magazine stories, radio and movie serials were very popular in the thirties. This was the time of the Great Depression, when jobs were scarce and everything looked grey. SF provided dreams and a sense of wonder. SF spoke of better futures.
But then came the Second World War. While the continental US was barely touched, many SF readers ended up in war graves across the world. There were paper shortages at home. The pulp magazines became fewer; those that remained became smaller. And that bright beautiful science that the geeks and nerds believed in so passionately back in the twenties now revealed its terrible underbelly: in 1945 Japan was atom-bombed into submission by the ‘good guys'. Perhaps it was necessary (Japanese resistance to the US advance across the Pacific islands could prossibly have resulted in a million or more American casualties) but such pragmatism conflicted with the wide-eyed idealism of SF. Worse, by the end of the forties, Russia had the atom bomb too and the Russians were definitely not good guys.
The Cold War had begun, and Americans realised that they too faced the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. That wonderful future once predicted by SF now looked very bleak indeed.
In the forties, thanks to John Campbell and a few other editors, the effects of science were now being given greater importance. And although many stories still remained merely vehicles for ideas, SF was slowly becoming more sophisticated. Writing skills were much improved too. By the early fifties, under the threat of nuclear war and the realisation that science was not a god, SF stories became more about people than about machines, more about the price of science than about the gain. The fifties and early sixties were years of paranoia and worry; the science geeks faced the reality of having kids and a mortgage. Big business was becoming bigger. Communists were apparently everywhere, seeking the overthrow of the American way of life—and the American way of life was now the television set...
[the golden age]
As TV predominated, the SF magazines began to die. Astounding Stories was still there, as was a much more credible Amazing Stories and its companion Fantastic Stories. There were even new ones, great ones too, Galaxy and If, and my personal favourite for nearly forty years, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, still here today. Numerous others disappeared forever though.
This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Because TV had taken over the responsibility of entertaining the masses, these magazines, now a handy digest size, could concentrate on core SF and take more chances publishing for a smaller and more discerning readership. SF books had arrived at last.
Books. SF books, actual honest-to-God books between hard covers, paperbacks, items you could actually put on your shelves! It's hard to believe today that with the exception of books in the ‘mainstream’ by Verne, Wells, Orwell and other ‘real’ authors—books not considered SF by the public—SF stories had been published only in periodicals. If you missed a story, you never saw it again. There were no reprint anthologies, no book publication to wait for. There had been three small anthologies published between 1937 and 1943, but these did not make much of a splash. It was only in 1946 that two large anthologies appeared in hardcover from reputable publishers: The Best of Science Fiction (edited by Groff Conklin) and Adventures in Time and Space (edited by Raymond Healy and JF McComas). Both were highly influential. Both contained stories that are still considered classics today. Both were very successful, and this success meant that anthologies were here to stay. As pulp magazines fell away, anthologies of original stories appeared. Anthologies of reprints of magazine stories proliferated. Most importantly, this meant that SF became available in bookstores to a readership that had never known the pulps, especially across the non-American English-speaking world, the UK in particular.
As SF became widely available in book form, SF authors turned to writing full-length novels. They had written novels before, but always for serialisation over several issues of a magazine. But as there were too few magazines to absorb more than a handful of serialised novels, original novels began appearing in paperback, many of them stories that would have been considered too sophisticated for the magazines. Publishing houses and brands were created to publish SF books exclusively.
Because it was necessary to market these books to a niche clientele, ‘science fiction’ became a label on both the books and the bookshop shelves. SF was now a category of fiction, like Westerns or Children's Fiction.
This is understandable in many ways, but also sad, in that it reinforced the ‘ghetto-isation’ of SF that had started back in the twenties, separating SF from what was perceived as ‘real’ literature, so ensuring that many ordinary readers never bothered to examine books available on the ‘science fiction’ shelves at the bookstore or library, thinking, in their ignorance, that such books were just ‘Buck Rogers stuff'.
Back in the US, Forrest J Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, is reputedly invented the term ‘sci-fi’ (possibly to copy the trendy term ‘hi-fi’ used for sound systems). This term wormed its way everywhere outside SF circles. Unfortunately it was applied to every second-rate monster and alien invasion movie made during the fifties, equating SF in the public mind with B-movie schlock, reinforcing the pulpy ‘Buck Rogers’ image SF was desperate to outgrow. A meme like ‘sci-fi’ is extraordinarily resilient, hence its misguided use even today.
During the late forties and fifties, SF stories presented the human condition in greater detail. A younger generation of writers came into their own. In my less-than-humble opinion, the fifties was the true Golden Age of SF. Science-themed stories were certainly still plentiful, but now science was often carefully integrated into tales of genuine literary merit. Working on SF themes established by the previous generation (many of whom were still writing), the new writers began using the techniques of ‘mainstream’ literature to tell their stories. We can still read these stories with pleasure; they have barely dated. Here we find the gorgeously baroque styles of Jack Vance and Cordwainer Smith; the early works of Philip K. Dick which dealt with reality and perception and the tribulations of the little guy; the gonzo delights of Alfred Bester, whose works still cannot be classified and which were at least thirty years ahead of their time; Frank Herbert, who was working slowly towards Dune; and so many more. Even orthodox scientists like Arthur C. Clarke came out with stories of transcendent beauty. Let's not forget Ray Bradbury, who wrote mostly fantasy, but whose sublime tales were embraced by both mainstream and SF fans. Of course, there were still many ‘pulp-type’ SF stories published, and a great deal of hack work, but let's not be too scathing. Hacks needed to make a living, and at 1 cent a word, a lot of words were required to buy a burger. Besides, even such stories could be fun. Popcorn for the mind...
[the new thing]
The sixties brought the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the Vietnam War. There was unease and anger and widespread disillusionment with the status quo in the US and elsewhere. A new counter-cultural spirit spread through society and the arts. SF wasn't immune. Many writers felt straitjacketed by traditional SF. SF was too old-fashioned, too trite, too rigid, too conservative. It needed to change, to go beyond convention.
In her Best SF anthologies, American Judith Merril had collected SF stories from all over the world, not just from SF writers; some didn't even have any science in them. In Britain, Michael Moorcock became editor of New Worlds, a long-standing UK magazine of traditional SF. He turned everything upside down with the writers he published. There were experimental tales that sometimes made no apparent sense, such as the perplexing ‘condensed novels’ of J.G. Ballard; moody dystopian pieces and satire and downright revolutionary takes on old-style SF, stories written using mainstream and avant-garde techniques, heavy on symbolism and style. Judith Merril loved this ‘New Thing’ and she began popularising ‘British New Wave SF’ in the US.
There were howls of protest from the traditionalists. Kind of what would happen if one inflicted Hip-Hop on Nashville. Shock and horror and, yes, not a little awe too. Many new writers embraced it. Perpetually angry Harlan Ellison found a home there, and his two immense Dangerous Visions anthologies of original SF stories gave readers a taste of what authors both new and old could do when there were no barriers. In a smaller way, writer Ted White had become editor of our old friend (but now financially-constrained) Amazing Stories and its sister magazine Fantastic Stories. Because he couldn't pay much, he published stories that had been rejected elsewhere for being too unconventional. The dam had broken. Robert Silverberg, a hack author of the fifties, showed how well he could really write; the extraordinarily erudite Samuel R. Delany produced poetic and very deceptive stories of myth and wonder; Roger Zelazy managed to mate old SF to the new SF very successfully indeed. And of course, there was always Philip K. Dick, who had been there before anyone else, only no one had known it then. His The Man in the High Castle (1962) is one of the best novels ever written in any genre.
Exponents of the ‘new’ SF called it ‘speculative fiction’ and, for a while, there were two camps in the SF world, a war between the new and the old. Even old ‘core’ SF had begun to change. Robert Heinlein had often been considered the ‘grand old man’ of traditional conservative SF. His stories had always been science-based and rational. Then, in 1961, he published Stranger in a Strange Land which seemed to celebrate free love and mysticism instead of science. It became a cult-favourite far beyond normal SF readership. Dune by Frank Herbert, another old core SF writer, was published in 1965 after magazine serialisation. It was (and still is) an extraordinary work of great depth, old-style SF in many ways, but making use of counter-cultural concerns, such as ecology and religion (and drugs). Like Stranger, it was a best-seller worldwide.
Everything was changing elsewhere too. In 1966, Star Trek appeared on TV. Even though its ‘science’ was often faulty and illogical, it threw out the gung-ho heroics of the pulp era and showed instead the ‘human’ side of SF, the worth of friendship and teamwork and how problems could be solved without violence. Even though it wasn't immediately successful, the show did much for the image of SF as a whole, because it replaced Buck Rogers in the general public's view of what SF was. In 1968, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was released, which confused film critics everywhere, mainly because it was unmistakably SF yet somehow wasn't crap! It was a masterpiece then and a masterpiece now. Fans of both old and new SF loved it, albeit for different reasons. SF was slowly becoming respectable...
[down to earth]
During the fifties and early sixties it had looked as if the Russians would win the space race, but in 1969 the US put a man on the Moon. SF fans felt very smug. By the mid-seventies, the smugness had worn off. Probes revealed that Mars was a dead world. It was obvious the US had lost the Vietnam War. The Watergate scandal showed that even democratic governments could not be trusted. There was a worldwide oil crisis. Inflation became rampant. The US didn't have sufficient resources to spend on space. It seemed for a while as if the constraints of reality would stifle the glorious futures that SF had predicted.
But SF persevered. The seventies, brought about a slow merging of new and old SF. The posturing of much of the new wave stylists was abandoned; the ‘hard-core’ view of traditionalists was modified. Most of it was natural and painless. Excellent SF of both types was published. SF was now both science fantasy and speculative fiction. It was a time of introspection too, because written SF was under threat.
In 1976, Star Wars appeared. Old-school SF adventure was back. And it was big. On screen and on TV action ‘sci-fi’ was big with both kids and adults, much to the detriment of serious SF.
And then there was fantasy. After more than twenty years, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings had at last achieved massive cult status. There was an overwhelming demand for more of the same, which resulted in publication of Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara, a best seller of dubious quality that showed how profitable fantasy could be. Soon afterwards, new Tolkienesque fantasies began flooding the bookstores, pushing SF aside. Magic began to take the place of science. Publishers naturally preferred profitable fantasy to SF. Purists complained and spat like cats, even though most of SF's more exotic scientific premises had never been that far removed from magic anyway. SF has always been more ‘scientific fantasy’ than anything else.
Then came cyberpunk ... to some it was a travesty of SF. Perhaps influenced by imagery from the movie Blade Runner, perhaps as a reaction to popular fantasy, it was dystopian and cold, mean-spirited and obsessive. Loners plunging into cyberspace, humans meshing with machines and fighting wars in virtual realities, usually against evil global (and often Japanese) corporations. SF has always reflected the concerns of the present in its many futures, and the Net was being born. PCs had arrived, and Japanese technology was all-pervasive. When William Gibson wrote Neuromancer in 1984, everything was still very new, but the possibilities were endless. As in 1926, science was exciting again. The science geeks and nerds were back, but now they were hunched over keyboards, writing programs and speculating about man-machine interfaces, cybersex, and very strange things indeed. With the advent of the PC and the Net, every geek could become a console cowboy—and often was. It is with the so-called cyberpunk movement that we find a confluence of both the Vernian and Wellsian streams of SF. The uses and effects of science and technology on humanity merged. The lessons of the new wave had taught writers techniques well-suited for these new stories. And stories there were. As always, most were very bad, flashy, and nonsensical, but it was a trial period. Gradually, cyberpunk lost its impetus, but cyberspace remained, as another prop in SF.
Although it might have seemed otherwise at the time, cyberpunk did not dominate SF during that period. All kinds of SF could be found, such as the ‘hard’ SF of Kim Stanley Robinson's magnificent Mars trilogy; the science-fantasy (for want of a better term) of Gene Wolfe's superb The Book of the New Sun; and the mix of SF and magical realism that characterised Lucius Shepard's stories in Life During Wartime. There was SF available for every taste. What is more, most of it was beautifully written. Perhaps because fantasy had drawn away those writers and readers who had never been comfortable with SF, SF now seemed possessed of a purity of purpose and a maturity that it had never quite reached in the past. By the nineties, the various themes and types of SF were more integrated than ever before.
[the future is now]
Which brings us to now. Thanks largely to Interzone, a UK magazine founded in the eighties, British writers have become very influential in SF and have done much to reawaken its old sense of wonder. Brits like Peter F. Hamilton and Alastair Reynolds have brought back wide-screen versions of the old gosh-wow space adventure, suitably tailored for the modern reader, tinged with cyberpunk, buttressed by hard science. Many US authors no longer sound like US authors; there is an international feel to SF these days that was far too long in coming. Earth now is an Earth of different nations and cultures, and not merely another name for Boise, Idaho, USA. English-language SF has, perhaps, become truly ‘Terran’ at last...
SF is really a misnomer. It's much less about science than it is about change, and it's much more about the present than it is about the future. SF is about what-ifs and if-onlys, questions most often based on our present fears and concerns. Look back at the old stories. Their imagined futures or alternate societies are almost always reflective of the times in which they were written. SF tales are both parables of, and primers for, change. In a strange and sometimes very perverse way, they are also much-needed morality tales for our time.... And dreams too. We should never forget the dreams.
I came to SF in 1969. The forty years that have gone by have been sometimes strange, sometimes frustrating, but always exciting. Now that I think about it, the Golden Age never really ended.
In 1969, I could quite easily have read all the SF magazines and novels and collections published that year. That's quite impossible today. Over 2000 titles were published in 2006, not including movie, TV and gaming novelisations or stories available on the Web. There are fewer SF magazines in print certainly, but webzines proliferate. Even if we apply Sturgeon's Law, which states that 90% of everything is crap (although we'll always disagree about what constitutes the remaining 10%), we're left with 200 books or more worthy of our interest. So, yes, as much as I'd like to do a “Back in my day, youngster...” on you, I can't and I won't. This is still the Golden Age, and I, for one, am very glad to be here.
Note: I haven't touched on non-English SF because I don't know what it's doing. I never see translated works from France or Germany. What are the Czechs writing? The Russians? Can someone tell me? I have also simplified this brief history of SF very drastically. You may disagree with some of my opinions, perhaps with all of them. That is quite normal for SF. Talk to me. Join us at forum.somethingwicked.co.za with your views. I have also left out a lot. I plead space constraints. For those of you who'd like to know more, find a copy of Trillion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove. I don't know if it's been revised since 1986, but it's a very worthwhile read anyway.
Of the magazines mentioned Analog, Interzone and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction are all still running to this day, do a search for them and hunt them down.
"What did he look like?"
Cold. Criminal. Weathered. That was the alley. The only operational streetlight made the night air seem foggy, so that a flickering orange triangle sporadically lit and darkened over Saul's sedan out by the curb. High on whatever it was the stripper had shared with him, he stood on the sidewalk, dizzy, his surroundings swaying. The alley appeared empty. A lead pipe lay nearby; Saul thought of picking it up.
He could barely remember the club. Loud music. Hard Drinks. Skin. Vickie.
"It wasn't a man,” he told the officer. Saul balanced the heavy load of his head within his grasp, elbows rubbing against his knees. The curb where he sat was wet. It had rained not long before all this happened. He sat in water.
She sat on his lap, as if waiting to hear a story. Her name was Vickie. A stage name. Her real name wasn't important. He wasn't paying for her real name; he was paying for Vickie.
"What's your name, stranger?” she asked, although she knew. “And why are you wearing a sweater, aren't you hot?"
"Saul."
"Saul. I like that.” She brushed the back of her hand across his chest and sank further into his lap. She couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds.
"Can you describe this person?” asked the officer.
"She was my height ... maybe five-ten,” he said. “A hundred and fifty pounds give or take. She wore black pajama pants and a white shirt with a crow on it. Slightly muscular."
"Do you work out?” asked the stripper, feeling Saul's flabby arms. It was a punch-card question, like “Is this your first time to a place like this?” or “Right here, or in the V.I.P. room?"
Saul snickered. “No. Not quite. You think I should?"
"Nah, you're fine just like this. It's all about how you feel that really matters."
"Are you feeling all right, mister...?” said the officer, hunting for more information to add to his notebook.
"Pravat. Saul Pravat."
"You look a bit flushed, Mr. Pravat.” Out came the mini-flashlight.
"I feel fine,” said Saul. “Really, I am fine."
"Stand up. Let me take a look at your eyes."
"You have the most amazing eyes,” he said to Vickie.
In the comfort of the V.I.P. room she straddled him, wearing nothing but a few strings and some triangular cloth.
"Do I?” she asked, batting her eyelashes flirtatiously. “Usually my customers focus their attention elsewhere.” Off came her sorry excuse for a bra. She slid it over Saul's face before placing it around his neck.
Still her eyes held him.
"You're a strange man, you know that?"
He smiled and shrugged.
"What?” she laughed.
"Nothing. It's just ... they're so twitchy,” he said, meaning her eyes; he watched as they bounced back and forth, focusing alternately between his own. Left. Right. Left.
Vickie covered her face and blushed. “You caught me,” she said and laughed again. “I've got a secret. Promise not to tell?"
"You're on something,” said Saul.
"You want in?” she asked. It wasn't really a question, more of an understanding.
"As always,” he said. “You should know me better than that by now. You can't even remember my name, and you've danced for me how many times?"
"Seven. Now close your eyes and open up."
"Have you been taking any drugs, Mr. Pravat?” asked the officer as he blasted a beam of light into Saul's red eyes. His pupils took time to constrict.
"Yes, sir."
"What kind?"
"I'm not sure, sir,” said Saul. The last bit came out as one sloshed word: shurser.
"Have you also been drinking, Mr. Pravat?"
"You haven't had a load to drink tonight, right?” asked Vickie, fingers paused mid-flight to her secret stash.
Jaw gaped, Saul peeked between squeezed eyelids and caught a glimpse of her ‘stash’ before closing them and saying, “Just a few sissy drinks, nothing special."
Soon Saul tasted Vickie's finger and whatever bitter-chalky drug she gave him.
Loud music filled his ears, the bass thumping and thumping, a naked treasure dancing and grinding against him to the beat. He opened his eyes and the world around him spun.
On the other side of the room another dancer was busy ‘dancing’ on another's lap; next to him sat a lonely woman roughly the same size as Saul. She sat facing him. She wore black pajama pants and a white shirt with a crow etched on the front, her knees pointing to Saul, hands in her lap. She had no face.
"Can you explain the blood on your shirt?"
To Saul, the officer's words were spoken in a contorted slow motion. Intense nausea forced Saul to purge his drug and alcohol intake onto his slacks and shoes. Some ended up on the man asking all the questions.
"Are you okay?” asked Vickie. “You look like you're about to be sick."
The woman without a face stared back, although she had no eyes with which to stare. She in fact held no such facial features; she simply had smooth skin where a face should've resided.
The stripper and guy next to this faceless woman didn't seem to notice her presence; the woman on top continued slithering to the beat.
The woman without a face rose.
Saul fell to the ground. “She didn't have a face,” he said.
"She doesn't have a face,” Saul said casually.
"What?” asked Vickie.
"That lady doesn't have a face.” He started to shake.
"Who?"
Saul pointed an edgy finger.
Vickie twisted around. “That's Julie, with a customer. You're with me now,” she said, turning back to Saul. She held his face in her petite hands and smiled. “You don't look well. Maybe you should get some water."
He swatted her hands away as the faceless woman took a step closer.
Vickie slapped him. Hard. Three lines stung his cheekbone.
The faceless woman took another step, hands at her side. And then she took another.
Saul jumped from the black V.I.P. couch, launching Vickie to the ground in a crumpled mess. Her wrist snapped.
"Get away from me!” he screamed.
"Sir, I am going to have to ask you to calm down. Where did the blood on your shirt come from, Mr. Pravat?"
"Get away from me!"
"Sir, are you injured? Is this blood yours? I need you to calm down, sir.” The officer then radioed for assistance and for a moment looked into the distance.
A lead pipe smashed into his skull. The sound was solid, quick, metallic. His eyes went blank. His head leaked crimson oil. He collapsed to the ground in front of Saul.
In the officer's place stood the woman without a face. She dropped the pipe. Held her arms out to him. Approached. A stretched skin replaced all facial features. The crow on her shirt, only a silhouette, perched solemnly with its mouth open, ready to swallow. It had fiery red eyes.
All Saul could do was scream.
"Get the hell away from me!"
The others in the club began to stir. Vickie, injured, looked through teary confusion from the tiled floor. Julie and her dance partner stared from the opposite couch. From the doorway another woman wearing skimpy apparel peeked in.
The woman without a face stretched out her arms, palms and fingers up, and continued to close the short distance between herself and Saul.
The ground felt like tarp covered with water, the drugs taking effect. The room spun. He almost tumbled turning to the door. He felt soft fingers on his shoulder. Her fingers. She spun him around but he closed his eyes, hoping to make her go away.
Saul looked to the downed officer, and then to the faceless stranger. He closed his eyes.
The hold on his shoulder became incredibly painful, even piercing. Opening his eyes, he found himself facing one of the club bouncers, who stood nearly a foot taller than Saul, and twice outweighed him.
Saul glanced to Vickie on the floor. She was crying. The others in the club glared. Everyone had red eyes like the crow; they glowed eerily in the dark V.I.P. room. The drugs, perhaps.
"Where is she?” Saul shouted. “Where is she?"
"You threw her on the floor. You're out of here!” boomed the bouncer, grabbing Saul by the armpits and dragging him out of the small room. As he did so Saul's button-up sweater slowly ripped open, revealing a shirt covered in blood beneath.
"You saw her, Vickie,” Saul pleaded. “Tell him. Tell him you saw the woman without a face! Tell him!” He looked around frantically to find her. She was gone.
The room paused for Vickie's response.
"Get that bastard out of here. He's whacked on drugs and delusional,” she said, holding her broken wrist. “There was no such woman."
She stood above Saul, expressionless, emotionless, featureless.
A pool of blood surrounded the officer, flowing from the wide gash at the back of his head. The officer was dead.
Saul shrieked.
The faceless woman held her hands out to him, took another step forward, and kicked the lead pipe she had dropped. It rolled to within Saul's reaching distance. She leaned over Saul and softly put a hand onto his. She leaned in closer. Closer...
With his free hand Saul felt for the pipe. Found it with his fingertips. Took it. Swung it into her faceless head. He shook his other hand free from hers. She fell over onto her side and landed next to the officer. A gushing slice in her otherwise smooth face pulsed out black sludge. Not red, but black and viscous, like molasses. Still she reached for him as he stood on wobbly legs.
He lifted the lead pipe high into the air, ready to bring it down.
In bed, Cathy reached out for her husband and found a shaky hand. The clock on her nightstand revealed it was only a few minutes past midnight. He'd had another nightmare, it would seem. She could barely distinguish his shape in the dark room but could tell he was sitting upright. Of late Saul often woke from nightmares in the middle of the night. Cathy had it in her mind that these dreams were brought on by guilt. She knew Saul frequented strip clubs; she could smell it on him. She also knew that Saul probably knew she knew.
"Another nightmare, honey?” she asked into the night.
Saul kept quiet.
"Saul?"
No response.
She thought of asking who Vickie was, but thought better of it. He sometimes mentioned the name during restless sleep. Instead, she reached over and switched on the lamp at her side.
He was thrown out the door by the bouncer. Saul landed hard on the ground a few steps down. His sweater lay loosely draped over his shoulders, a few buttons torn free.
Hurt, confused, drugged and drunk, Saul staggered down the sidewalk. He headed to his car but quickly diverted down a nearby alley to throw up, hoping the woman without a face wouldn't follow. He saw a lead pipe lying near the mess he'd made, thought of picking it up, but decided against it.
The sound of a kicked can in the black depths of the alley jumpstarted Saul's heart. He waited a moment, shaking uncontrollably. Somehow he knew it was her, the one without the face. She was reaching for him out there in the darkness. He listened but heard nothing else.
The dumpster rolled a bit as something on the other side leaned against it. And then he saw her as she slapped the side of the dumpster with a wet hand and reached around, reaching to Saul.
Saul ran.
Saul waited for Cathy to reach for the lamp at her side. He wanted to be sure.
She called out his name before doing so. The light came on. She turned his way. She had no face.
Saul straddled his wife and brought the lead pipe down over and over again. His shirt soaked in spatters of blood. He continued swinging until he was unable to discern a face of any kind. After a while the only way Saul was able to tell it had been Cathy was by her nightshirt. He had given her the shirt with the crow on it years ago. She often wore it to bed.
Saul washed his hands and face, put on a button-up sweater, and walked out the door.
"Slow down, sir,” said the officer.
Saul was unable to catch his breath. He had nearly run the officer over bolting out of the alley. Saul was hyperventilating. “Chasing ... me!"
"Who is chasing you, sir?"
What followed was a series of uncaught breaths.
"Why is your shirt covered in blood?” asked the officer. “Are you hurt, sir?"
"Chasing ... me!” repeated Saul between collected gasps of air.
"Slow down. Take deep breaths,” said the officer, trying to illustrate the art of breathing to Saul with simple hand gestures.
"What did he look like?"
Michael Bailey lives in California with his wife, Kimberly. His first novel, Palindrome Hannah, was a finalist for the 2006 Independent Publisher Awards for horror fiction. Some of his short stories and dark poetry can be found in anthologies such as In Bad Dreams, Something Weird Quarterly, and The Harrow. He is currently at work on his second novel, Phoenix Rose, as well as a short story collection that is not yet titled.
This is Michael's first story for Something Wicked.
I once saw a man go insane. It was quite a remarkable sight. I can still remember every detail of it so vividly.
He'd been complaining about these headaches for a few weeks. Terrible, terrible pain, he'd said. I believed him. What I found rather peculiar was the other thing he'd said. He'd said that whenever he got these headaches, it was like hearing a whole lot of insects crawling around in his head. He'd said he could almost feel them running around inside, nibbling on his brain, eating away at his psyche. It sounded rather strange to me. A week later, the doctors found a peculiar lump in the back of his head. They had no idea what it was and they were too afraid to simply cut it open, not knowing what sort of harm it may cause the poor man. The x-rays that they took of it only revealed a solid mass. They tried every scan imaginable, but they couldn't tell what it was. I saw this poor man being driven further and further toward the brink of insanity. His breaking point nearly came when his medication no longer had an effect. He couldn't make the pain of the headaches go away. The chittering, scuttling sound wouldn't leave either. He didn't sleep for days and when he did, it was only for a few fitful hours. His entire life was like sand slowly slipping between his fingers.
But then they found out what it was. It was a cocoon. Spiders, they said. They said that a spider must have crept onto him one night while he was sleeping and laid her eggs in the freshly-spun cocoon. Apparently it would have been really small at first, small enough to fit into a scar in the back of his head. The wound would have sealed up, leaving behind the tiny cocoon of spiders. The man said that he'd recalled having a scar there from an accident at work. It had been rather large, he'd said. The doctors agreed that that it would have been perfect for the spider's cocoon. They also said that at some unconscious level he was aware of what was in his head, which is why he'd heard all those sounds. The man didn't seem to care. He was just glad to have the cocoon out of his head. He was just glad to be able to sleep again, to be able to carry on with his life again. That was all he had wanted from the start.
I was quite intrigued watching him after that. He went from being on the brink of some looming precipice, to being back on the road. I didn't quite like that part of it. There was something missing. I didn't like the fact that this story, like just about every other I had ever heard, had to have a happy ending. I decided to do something about it.
I knew I couldn't do anything to hurt him directly. That would have been too obvious. No, I had to do something a lot worse. The memory of his experience would haunt him. I knew that. It would be something that was always in the back of his mind, waiting for the right trigger to set it off again. All I had to do was push the right buttons. I'd had some chance to practice, though I'd never tried to do anything this big before. It was exciting. Nothing had excited me this much in some time. Animals and children were one thing. A full grown adult would be another beast entirely. I had to see if I could obtain similar results. I didn't hold anything against the man, far from it in fact. No, this was simply curiosity.
I started things simply, letting the whole process ease itself into completion. That thought made me smile. Too many people tried to do things way too fast and they always ended up failing in the end. I wasn't going to make that same mistake. The first thing I did was to start luring spiders into his home. I knew he had no aversion to them, even though they had almost cost him his mind. But still, I figured that the mere sight of them would start the ball rolling. I didn't want him to forget exactly what had happened to him. It all had to be fresh. They were small at first, big enough to be only barely noticeable. They became bigger by the month. I then started bringing other multi-legged creatures in as well, a veritable plethora of insects and arachnids. He eventually had to call in the exterminators to rid the house of them all. I almost smiled when I saw the van pull up. His pacing was merely the cherry on the cake, that day. He told me later that the turning point had been when he'd dropped a cloth behind the refrigerator. When he had reached behind to retrieve it, he'd felt the hairy legs of something scampering across his hand. It had become too blatantly obvious to ignore after that.
I let him rest for about a month after that. I wanted him to feel a false sense of security, to feel safe in his home for a while. He had no idea what was in store for him. I smiled whenever I thought that. I knew that this next part was going to be fun, because that's when I started sending him the dreams. It seems backward, doesn't it? First the creepy crawlies and then the dreams, but that's the way I wanted to do it. Besides, this ability to send dreams was something new to me. It intrigued me to think that there were things I could do that were still left to be discovered. Those around me were not able to do anything like this. I knew that. I wondered every day what that meant, why I was different, but no answer came, so I tested the parameters of my gift.
I didn't send them every night. For the first month, I only sent them once a week. That was more than enough. He knew about them. I saw him after those nights, looking haggard and drawn. The bags under his eyes and the skittish look in them gave it all away, no matter how well he said he was doing.
Over the next few months, I sent the dreams more frequently. By the sixth month, every night's dream was courtesy of me. He was afraid to sleep.
His wife later told me that she'd had trouble sleeping as well. Apparently he'd been thrashing around too much for her to sleep peacefully. She'd actually moved into a different room at one stage, just to be able to sleep. It hadn't really helped. He'd called for her and she'd gone to him every time.
She convinced him to go see a therapist. Considering that nothing else had worked, he agreed. A month of intensive therapy and five sessions of hypnosis later, he was cured. Or so they thought. I had just stopped sending the dreams, but they didn't know that.
I gave him a month of peace. Once again, I felt the need to lull him. I sent the noise then: the chittering, scuttling noise that had nearly driven him mad in the first place. I made sure he heard it whenever he was about to go to sleep. Initially, it was very faint, of course. He didn't know what it was, but he knew it was there. I knew that in the silence of the night, with the adrenalin pumping in his veins, the sound would be amplified. I knew that it would sound like millions of insects and spiders running around in his head, wanting to be released.
His nerves were shot after that. The skittish look was now evident to everyone. They could all see he was becoming more and more frayed as the days went by. Therapy didn't help this time. The psychiatrists couldn't understand it. Not even hypnosis helped. What they didn't know was that this condition was not originating from his mind, but from mine.
And that's when I played my final card. He started seeing his tormentors, even though they weren't actually there. What's worse is that I even made him feel them. While he was lying awake at night, tossing and turning with the sweat pouring off his skin, he started to feel them crawling up his leg. But when he tried to brush them off, they disappeared. I heard that his wife actually stopped waking up to help him. She didn't want to bother anymore, no matter how bad it seemed things became. She couldn't understand that because it was in his mind, it was very real to him. She didn't want to understand. His cries in the dark became another one of the nightly sounds in that home.
I remember the day he finally broke. I had been relentless that night. The noise in his head was deafening, the creepy crawlies all over his body—this time not disappearing when he brushed them away—and that was just the beginning. He'd had to endure that the entire night. His wife found him the next day. I think the entire neighbourhood heard her scream.
She told me later that she had walked into his room to wake him up for breakfast. He was busy eating his own fingers. Three of them were already finished, bloody stumps all that remained of his former digits. He was halfway with another of them. He said they reminded him of spiders’ legs, the way they moved all on their own. The police and the ambulance were there fifteen minutes later. They called the mental hospital as well. That's where they took him. His wife cried as they took him away. I can remember her coming to me, tears running down her face. She knelt in front of me and hugged me. I could feel the wetness of her tears on my neck. She told me that I had to be a big boy for daddy and that he would be home soon. She told me that I had had to be brave for mommy, too.
I don't think she even noticed that I wasn't crying.
Edward Stone lives, writes, eats, sleeps, drinks (a fair amount) and does other things too, all in just one little city in South Africa. Although writing is mostly a hobby for him, he wouldn't mind if it became more than that. When not slaving away at his day job, Edward can usually be found either reading or working on a new story. This is the first time he has submitted his work to any publication, and that only under threat of violence from a friend much larger than himself. Edward has cool friends.
This is Edward's first story for Something Wicked.
PLANET TERROR
Release Date: 4 April 2008
Age Restriction: 16 LV
Starring: Freddy Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, Josh Brolin, Bruce Willis
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Screenplay: Robert Rodriguez
Running Time: 105 minutes
Robert Rodriguez’ half of the Tarantino/Rodriguez double-bill, Grindhouse, is a sci-fi zombie gross-out pic with some major A-list talent.
Only Rodriguez could pull these guys together with such an inane plot premise—poisonous gas that turns people into zombies. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Planet Terror is 105 minutes of absolutely unadulterated shrieking gruesome thrills—seriously, the most fun you'll have with your clothes on this year.
The shots are spectacular—Rodriguez nails the comic-book frames with superb ease and finesse. The plot and dialogue are suitably cheesy and hysterical. The chicks are hot, the guys are dirty, and cool. Effects are awesome.
There are stand-up-and-cheer moments and personally I loved every single minute of it. Seventeen severed thumbs-up.
—Joe Vaz
SAW IV
Release Date: 18 January 2008
Age Restriction: 18 V
Starring: Tobin Bell, Donnie Wahlberg, Angus Macfadyen
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Screenplay: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan and Thomas Fenton
Running Time: 95 mins
John Kramer (aka Jigsaw) and his accomplice are no more. But the cunning and deadly games that teach people the value of life reach beyond the grave as Detective Hoffman is given a sealed cassette found in Jigsaw's stomach at his autopsy. The cycle continues as a S.W.A.T. team officer is drawn into the deadly game and it comes to light that there had to be another collaborator. Flashbacks to how
Jigsaw reached his state of mind shed more light on the tragic character and, as is to be expected, the labyrinthine storyline keeps the viewer guessing. A series of ludicrously complex torture-trap set-pieces litter the narrative, with many past characters tied in. While this sadistic cinematic formula has very little flesh left on its bones, somehow the Saw producers
(who've been there since the beginning) succeed in keeping it intriguing and grizzly enough for audiences to come back for more.
—Paul Blom
THE WITCHER
Platform: PC
Developer: CD Projekt RED
Genre: Third-Person RPG
Rating: 18+
The first sign of the greatness to come is the awe-inspiring introductory cut-scene to CD Project RED's The Witcher. The game's main character, Geralt of Rivia, a witcher, single-handedly takes on a deadly Striga in an effort to end a curse on a princess, and emerges victorious. From this high-point the game just keeps getting better and better.
You are a witcher, a professional monster-slayer. The game, based on Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski's novels about Geralt, is the greatest thing I have ever seen. Featuring a deeply immersive storyline with multiple branches and sub-branches, a completely non-linear style of play and near-total character customization, as well as an enthralling depth to the game as a whole, this is my likeliest contender for the 2008 Game of the Year.
The game looks awesome. However, a rather hefty gaming rig is needed to enjoy it fully.. Even with the settings scaled down somewhat, the eye-candy is there, looking better than some recent titles at full res.
Sound and voice acting is incredible for what is essentially a game based on a foreign-language story, but we cannot care about that. Or the controls. They work. That is all you need to know.
On to the real reason to play The Witcher: The gameplay. You can do damn near everything within the game world. You can drink and get drunk, gamble, eat, meditate (Geralt does not sleep) and even have your way with the local wenches (resulting in a trading-card style reward. Gotta catch ‘em all. I did.). Who you interact with and how results in factions being either for or against you. Many games have had this feature but it's never had such impact on play before. I promise that an early decision in the game will come back to bite you on the ass much, much later in the game.
The storyline is an integrated part of gameplay and players determine the outcome of the story. Showing kindness to a certain section of the population will close off some story options while opening others and it is sad indeed that one cannot play every mission on a single play-through. There are three possible endings to the game but these come only after around one hundred or so missions and side missions have been completed. I am not at all certain that I have managed to find all of them in any event. Some are hidden in plain sight and can only be found by interacting with chance people around the world of Vizima.
What will grab the player's attention is the intense ethical conundrums in the game. It often comes down to the lesser of two evils, the consequences of which are hardly ever apparent. The game's ability to pull you in and tie you in knots over these choices almost defies description. Added to this is the fact that trying to maintain your intentions, whatever they may be, is a precarious effort at best. This is the closest I have ever seen a game get to replicating a real-world scenario, in that your choices now will affect later play, often drastically.
Rest assured that I have not even scratched the surface of possibly the finest RPG title I have ever had the pleasure to lose a full month and a half of my life to. The welcome return of the long-as-hell single player title combined with the well-spun storytelling and beautifully constructed world that players venture into has set a benchmark for other titles of this nature that will be very hard to surpass. For once, you can believe the hype about a game. Odds are that with The Witcher, they have still understated exactly how good the title actually is.
Graphics: 10/10 Impressive textures and lighting and some brilliant motion-captured swordplay are the order of the day
Sound: 10/10 To be honest, the game is so good that I can barely remember the sound but the voice acting nets the ten-pointer for The Witcher
Gameplay: 15/10 Shakespeare would have written a sonnet about the gameplay contained herein; while his tears stained the parchment under his shaking hands ... I shit you not.
Longevity: 10/10 End-to-end on a single play-through, this game is huge. And the multiple endings and story arcs that can be followed mean that there are almost limitless ways to finish this.
Overall: 13/10
—Brett Venter
DUMA KEY
By Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton
RRP: R229.95
583p TP
"God punishes us for what we can't imagine"
Duma Key is about pain, and loss, and death, both metaphorical and literal. It is about how the human spirit is able to come back from places it really has no business coming back from.
Edgar Freemantle's ‘other life’ ends when a crane reverses into his truck, mashing his body and the truck into a mess of metal and bone. His second life begins several months later as he slowly comes to terms with his broken and shattered form—a hip that will never quite heal, a right arm that no longer exists in this world, but itches like a bitch in the other.
In a bid to avert suicide, his doctor recommends that he get a hobby. The left-handed Edgar takes up drawing, getting a kick out of the fact that the one thing that made his other life difficult is what he's most grateful for in this one.
Although an incredibly strong piece by King, both in its writing and the scare-factor, Duma suffers from a cynicism and pessimism that has, to date, been more closely associated with King's alter ego, Richard Bachman.
In truth, it feels like a new beginning. But this ‘reborn’ version of Stephen King is darker and angrier. Lisey and Duma feel like Carrie and The Shining revisited by a writer that has had 40 years of experience to hone his craft to near-perfection, but has also had 40 years to realise that the world is a shithole, and that, often, the darkness wins.
Read alongside Lisey's Story, it isn't hard to link the metaphors and surmise that King is drawing on his own experiences after being run down by a van in 2000.
Lisey is about the death of a best-selling writer and how his wife deals with the after-effects. Duma is about the rebirth of Edgar and the discovery that life can go on, albeit different from what came before.
King makes one fatal flaw with Duma Key though. He ups the stakes to such a degree that he quells all hope in the reader—so much so that from a certain point on one really doesn't want to carry on reading. It's like watching someone kick a puppy to death and then burst into a stand-up comedy routine—you just don't feel like playing along anymore.
All in all, Duma Key is probably one of the best books King has published in the last decade or so, but at times it's so depressing that it is difficult to continue reading.
From a literary point of view, Stephen King is back on track, producing outstanding work. The blood-freezing scares are there and the book moves at an atypically fast pace. Duma Key takes us back to the days of Salem's Lot and The Shining and it will keep you up all night. Do not read this book if you're alone. Don't read it at night. And under no circumstances read this book if you live near the coast. Of course, if you don't actually ever want to sleep again...
+ Joe Vaz
MOXYLAND
By Lauren Beukes
Jacana
'The sky loops in fractals of colour, pale-blue fire washing into acid green and purple like tie-dye. Just lines of code, really. Some bored programmer, a kid with extra time to waste. No different from the wannabes recreating some rock star's mansion. It's pretty. But empty. Just a distraction.'
Lauren Beukes is a startling new voice on the South African literary scene, and her novel, Moxyland, is courageous, cool, and refreshingly unsentimental.
Set in a Cape Town of the future, where the familiarity of Eskom blackouts is juxtaposed with furiously super-charged technology, we enter a world where corporate control is absolute, and commercialism and escapism have all but engulfed society. Lauren Beukes catapults us towards a future where the borders between gaming and real life have become dangerously blurred. The ‘science’ is cutting edge and clever, and so well thought out that it feels quite possible, a concept that is chilling beyond belief. This results in a book that can more than stand up to any international work in this genre.
Science Fiction can be a very awkward beast, because the intricately crafted maelstrom of facts has to be revealed alongside the plot. I have never really enjoyed wading through the wheres and whens of Sci-fi before digging my teeth into the story itself, but in this case, I was immediately drawn in by the vivid characters:
Toby is a futuristic slacker, living off his mom, stream-casting his daily blog, and carelessly dipping into an underworld of drugs, anarchy and subversive revolution...
Kendra is an art school dropout, offered a second chance at cool by becoming a ‘sponsorbaby'—a nanotech-implanted, living advertisement for a corporate brand...
Tendeka is a hot-headed revolutionary, surviving below the corporate radar, struggling to make a stand against the social order he despises...
Lerato, a brilliant corporate programmer, is just bored enough to risk everything by hacking the system that makes her privileged lifestyle possible...
Together, these disparate personalities are scooped up by the swift storyline and hurtled toward a brutal conclusion; and the reader is only too happy to be caught up in the slipstream.
The language of the book is one of its most arresting features. The author has tugged and played with the boundaries of English to make it do her bidding; both in enhancing the futuristic world she has created and bringing the characters to life. This results in a blistering barrage of word-melds, hyper techno-speak, and slithery dialogue. It is not an easy ride, but this is quite clearly exactly what Beukes intended.
—Miranda Sherry
The whales beached the day he walked into town. We should've known then, but what did we know of signs? To us it was just another notch on the belt of desperation. What we sought was a miracle, and it arrived in the shape of a dark Gipsy at 6:07 on a teeth-chattering winter morning.
The town is situated on a coast frequented by whales, and tourists would ascend the place to catch a glimpse of the magnificent beasts. There was a singular beauty about the whales, and people were always in awe on their first real sighting of one. You'd hear it reflected in their voices—they couldn't comprehend how such huge creatures could sing and dance under and atop the crashing waves so gracefully. The town flourished, whilst maintaining its sleepy seaside village charm. Soon there were not many open plots left, as holiday houses and bed and breakfasts were germinating all over the little place. Most of the locals viewed the early developments with much suspicion and a sprinkle of xenophobia, but with the development came opportunity and money. These were luxuries relatively unknown to us, and most welcome. We began to look forward to whale season, and whatever small businesses we had, we worked towards this time of year, reaping as many benefits as we could hope to. Where previously the whales were just part of nature around us, we now had a deeper appreciation of them. They were our celebrities, and we their agents. Although sometimes Maxwell, or Bang-bang as we dubbed him, would argue that it was the other way around.
Bang-bang was an antagonist by nature, not choice. Having the sea as his tempestuous lover might make any man grumpy. We never really knew how he earned his living, but whether he was gesticulating to the ocean or the heavens, he always drew a crowd. And so Bang-bang became known as the whale crier. Whatever it was that transpired between him and the deep blue, Bang-bang seemed to have developed his own language. None of us could really understand what he was on about half of the time, and for the most part even when he was deep in ‘conversation', it seemed as if he wasn't really talking to anybody in particular. In fact, if one were to estimate a guess, it would be that he was talking to his stormy mistress. What was slightly disturbing about that, was that old Bang-bang was perfectly sane. He walked around with his old postman's bag, protecting it as though it contained all the important secrets of the world. Those of us who'd heard about them, suspected he was a switch, but we never knew for certain. Bang-bang also had a mangy mutt that looked as ancient as his owner and followed him everywhere, howling along when his master was in talks with the invisible stranger. Bang-bang could very well have been the first person to set foot in town. No one could recall if he was ever young, and that included octogenarian Mrs October, who'd lived with a varying number of oriental cats in the tumbled-down Silver Oaks flat on Main Road all her life. She never ventured out much. Her life was cloistered in four walls after her husband died countless years ago. Mrs October didn't feel the change in tide that suddenly hit the town. Not like the rest of us.
Nobody knew exactly how it happened, and even now, we're still trying to complete the puzzle. But if we remember anything, then we remember the coming of the storms. It didn't take me too long to settle into the quiet life around me. I had anticipated it to be more tumultuous but eight years down the line I was a local. Mostly.
For a seaside town, we had a fairly moderate climate: cold in winter, warm in summer, but nothing exceptional either way. ‘Pleasant’ comes to mind. But that changed, overnight, I think. That was the year the whales were late. That was the year the tourists left. The storms lasted for two months, without respite. Howling would be a romantic notion of it. Roofs were lifted off like Tupperware lids, walls caved in like wet cardboard. We couldn't get to work or school, because even if the roads weren't flooded, with cars afloat, there was hardly any school or workplace left undamaged. So we sat, huddled masses, inside whomever's houses were brave enough to stand tall against the vicious monster's tongue. We sat, held hostage, and waited. For two months. And we got sick, broken and diseased, and some dying. For two months. Rescue workers couldn't reach us via air, land or sea without they themselves needing rescue. On the twenty-seventh day, we heard what sounded like a foreign-language broadcast outside our doors. Children ran to the barred windows shouting:
'Bang-bang's in a boat! Bang-bang's in a boat!"
While people were losing limbs and life, Bang-bang must finally have lost his mind. The old critter was rowing around the flooded streets with loudspeaker in hand, spewing forth indecipherable proclamations.
"Hi yee! Hi yee! Sang tay seez com. Hi yee!” Bang-bang shouted to any who would listen, or maybe once again to Heaven and Sea.
Maybe it was the climate we found ourselves in, but something inside me felt like it was a warning from the whale crier. What more could go wrong? I ignored the fear slithering in my stomach on hearing Bang-bang's foreboding tone, and dismissed the old man as having one fish too few in his rapidly unraveling net. It didn't help that he was blowing on his conch, which we'd never heard before. It was almost as though he'd been waiting for the right, or wrong, moment to use it. Blowing like his life depended on it. Being holed up with 14 people in a house that wasn't mine, it sounded like a warning bell announcing the end of the world. I assured myself that everything was just heightened, wrapped up in melodrama. There was nothing to worry about. We were just weathering a really terrifying storm, I reassured myself, falling into the comfort of ‘this too shall pass'.
On the 62nd day the howling fled. On the 62nd day seven whales beached. On the 62nd day He walked into town. Walked, we assume. Bang-bang was the first person to see him arrive.
The water had miraculously dried up. We should have felt like hippies on LSD, dreaming up the apocalypse. Dreaming up the storm. What was dry before the storm was dry after the storm. Those of us less-wounded stood outside and breathed in for what seemed a brief eternity. We'd forgotten the feel of fresh air in our lungs. We carried the injured and ailing out to join in our relief. I opened my eyes after absorbing almost enough sun, and looked around. The people, hobbling out of their modern caves, mirrored the buildings around them. Shattered and torn and mostly in ruin, with anything able to reflect now gone. We looked like confused ghosts, wandering through a town without people. The brutal air was filled only with the sound of breathing. How could so many people be so silent?
In slow motion, and by mass volition, we made our exodus to the water's edge. And there we saw them.
And them.
It was 6:07 am. Seven whales were moaning and flailing heavily in the sand, with no idea how to get back in the water. They were huge, unnaturally so. And then we saw something which none of us can ever forget. Something that still makes me tremble every time I recall it.
Standing atop the third beached whale, in a voice filled with rage, Bang-bang was holding what looked like a saw to the whale's skin and cutting into it with all his might. If we didn't know his voice and strange speak that well, we would never have guessed who the blood-soaked person was. He had clambered up via a rickety ladder leaning against the whale.
"Elyoo! Ways low! Ways low! Be! Elyoo Sang tay! Ways low! Wowt! Wowt Sang tay!” the whale slayer shouted.
We stared in frozen horror, as blood streamed with warm viscosity down the whale's writhing body, and splattered up and onto the sand. I looked at Bang-bang's face, shaking my head in shocked disbelief, and followed his line of vision. He wasn't in discussion with the sea or the heavens or even his victims. He was spitting his garbled words at the stranger standing by the second whale, and the stranger was talking back in Bang-bang tongue. My horror had slowly turned into confusion as I watched this surreal exchange. The first and second whale seemed to have suffered the same fate under Bang-bang's hand as the third one was now experiencing. They both lay in pools of their own thick blood, but the first one had no wounds. The dense flesh wasn't ripped open and slashed like the other two. In fact, it looked as if she was slowly getting back to the water. The stranger had his hands on the second bleeding whale, which was making the most noise of all, as if protesting against the hands lain upon him. By all accounts, the whale being hacked by Bang-bang was the most content. At first I thought perhaps she was already dead, but her heavy breathing was still very visible. I couldn't see what the stranger was doing with the whale, besides putting his hands on the wounds, but on second inspection, it was clear that he wasn't talking to Bang-bang. Bizarre as it all appeared, he was talking to the whale. And the whale wasn't liking it. Not making any decent sense of the picture unfolding in front of me, I looked at the first whale again. She was sealed up. That's the only way I could describe what I saw. Like a silicone seal minus the silicone. Stitches minus the thread. There was a definite marking where she had been hacked, the copious amount of dark blood on the wet sand was evidence thereof, but she was still whole. Newly whole. Newly patched up. And making her way back into the deep blue, unnaturally quickly. Something was wrong.
We were starting to snap out of our reverie, and a few of the men were trying to get a grab on Bang-bang and hold him from his maniacal rage. But he was slippery fellow, and thinking of it now, perhaps not as ancient as he looked, or perhaps more so. He ran around to the fourth whale, managing to lean the ladder and climb up the creature. He pushed it away when he reached the top, to stop anyone getting to him. He held his saw high and was in the motion of bringing it down to the blubber, when someone hit him with a beach stone. And then another, and another and another till we all were throwing stones at the bloodied whale crier. He just stood there silently, while the entire town pelted him like it really was part of a religious pilgrimage and he was the devil. We were angry. Angry about the desolation of our once pretty town. Angry about hiding for two months. Angry about our dying and diseased. Angry at what we had just witnessed, even though we all knew the whales would have died anyway.
So we threw stones at the crazy man, and it felt good. We felt vindicated. And even when he fell down, and lay on the beached whale, we threw stones. And even when we heard the sounds of hard stone against soft flesh, we threw stones. Even when we knew we'd started smashing through the flesh to the bone, we threw stones. And even when his body stopped moving, we threw stones. And even when we heard an eerie wheezing, whistling sound from his punctured lungs, we threw stones. And even when he stopped breathing, we threw stones. Till there were no more stones left to throw on the stretch of beach, till we were exhausted. Till we saw the stranger move to each whale, and lay his hands on them, and talk to them in ways only they knew, and watched them slowly move back into the ocean, one by one. And we were silent on our knees, with tears streaming down our distorted faces, wordlessly imploring the stranger for an explanation. For hope, for forgiveness, for a miracle. And he answered:
"It will be okay."
His voice was comforting and it felt like he'd spoken to me personally. It was the warm blanket we needed that day. And we believed him, without question. He came to us for a reason, and everything would be okay. He told us not to worry about Bang-bang, that he would take care of the body, and not to be too distressed about what had happened; we were, after all, just concerned about the whales. He said he was hungry and we left to gather at the town hall where we would meet him, bringing hot food with us. We, or what was left of us, had our first meal together, while he walked around learning our names. He told us his name was Gabriel and he was passing through, doing sort of missionary work, “but not in the true Christian sense of the word.” Gabriel had the brightest black eyes I had ever seen. He looked different. I could never quite discern what it was, but he was different from everyone. No matter how logical or cynical any of us might have been had the stranger arrived under easier circumstances, he was unimpeachable when we were around him. The lover we suspected of cheating, but in whose arms lay only truth, and in whose hands lay our predictable ruin. And so the black-eyed Gipsy called Gabriel graced us with his company. And things changed.
Gabriel stayed with the Josephses, the family I was staying with until my cottage was renovated. He didn't speak much, and most days he was up and out before any of us had breakfast, and returned long after we'd had supper. No one saw him for more than five minutes; he was always on his way somewhere. And we never asked.
A few days after the day of the whales, we had a bout of bad weather and Gabriel was home just as we were finishing supper. He said he'd eaten, but he sat down with Briony, the Josephs’ recently-blinded 12 year-old, and me. Briony had been leaning against a window at her friend's house when the first storm had shattered the glass and countless splinters had ruptured her corneas. By the time her parents had got her to a doctor, nothing could be done to restore her sight. Gabriel sat across the table from Briony, and started talking to me.
"I never asked what work you do.” It wasn't so much a question as it was a statement. I felt as if he was trying to force conversation, and wondered why, but I acquiesced. Had it been anyone else, I would have probed.
"I'm an attorney."
"Oh. How long will it take to restore the court?” Perhaps he had a solution.
"I might get a transfer."
"You'll be leaving us? Like that? With what happened? You can't.” I had a sudden flashback to a history teacher at school whose very existence convinced me the devil was a red-haired woman in too-tight navy blue pencil skirts and peep-toes. The hair on my neck rose. I knew I was being threatened but couldn't prove the crime.
"What do you mean?” was all I could lamely conjure, swallowing in the hope of producing some saliva. Words were getting stuck in my throat, especially potent ones. He wasn't looking at me at all. He'd been staring at Briony since he'd sat down. I looked at her and saw perspiration beading her too-weary face.
"Well, the storm of course.” The smile never reached his eyes.
I leaned across to Briony and, not wanting to startle her, softly asked:
"Briony, are you okay honey?"
I touched her shoulder and she began to hyperventilate. Before I knew what was happening, Gabriel was behind her, with his hands on her eyes, whispering something I couldn't understand. Almost instantly, Briony calmed down. Her parents came rushing into the room, wanting to know what had just happened to their precious daughter, Mrs Josephs with a permanently distraught look on her face.
'I'm okay, mom. Is the light on?"
The room went quiet. The Josephs and I looked at Gabriel, whose expression was, as always, like that of a flat-mirrored sea.
"Sweetpea?” asked a hopeful Mr Josephs.
"I think I can see that the light is on."
The whole room was hopeful. I went to the light switch and turned it off, signaling for no one to say a word.
"Oh. It's gone now. It's dark again,” said the disappointed 12 year-old.
When I switched the light back on, we all had something in our eyes which I hadn't seen for more than two months: Hope. And the Josephs looked at Gabriel with an awe akin to believing the man to be Jesus or John Lennon. A modern-day Messiah at worst. Mrs Josephs would take her daughter to the doctor the next morning. But that wouldn't be necessary. The next morning Briony Josephs could see as well as anyone else.
Of course keeping this silent was like keeping a cat on a leash, and soon the town was hailing their miracle man. Wherever Gabriel went from that day on, his path was strewed with simple-folk bowing and hugging and crying. And they came to him, crippled, maimed, diseased, dying. Those in hospital, and those who ought to havebeen, were now looking to the black-eyed Gipsy to heal them. And he did. And we all watched the miracles at work. And we kept it our secret because he belonged to us, we couldn't share him. He was our Gabriel. And he came to fix a broken town. Because it was his calling. He didn't ask for any payment in return. Nothing.
At least, not yet.
Briony's screams woke us one night. My room was closest to hers. I sped across with her parents in pursuit. Her clothes and bedding were damp with sweat, and she was still screaming when we got to her, but it seemed like she was having nothing but a bad dream. Mr Josephs turned on the light: a really bad dream. Her eyes were wide open, pupils dilated. Her skin felt like ice. Mrs Josephs held her frantic daughter against her chest but couldn't calm her down. The girl kept on screaming, shouting about being chased and something getting to us. Her dad threw some ice water in her face, to no avail. The more she screamed, the tighter and thinner her skin began to pull, till it had the appearance of nude pantyhose on skin. Blue-green veins formed a hideous map underneath, and I believe some organs were visible too. I couldn't look in case she disintegrated under the soft pressure or her mother's arms. Two and a half exhausting hours later, she had finally stopped screaming, whether from tiredness or relief, we couldn't tell. Her body returned to its natural healthy state. The Josephs’ took their daughter to a doctor the next day, but she was by all accounts ‘a perfectly healthy girl'. She wouldn't remember any of it the following morning, but that night, and all nights subsequent to that, Briony Josephs went into a screaming fit for two hours, her skin an icy membrane waiting to burst. None of us had any clue how to stop it.
Soon after this we heard about Danny Parker, whose paralysed legs had been restored to working condition under the healing hands of Gabriel. Danny lived alone, and even after the storm had mangled his legs, he didn't want anyone staying with him. So he might well have fallen to his death if it hadn't been for Bang-bang's mangy mutt alerting the neighbours to the fact that Danny had been about to walk off a cliff in somnambulistic oblivion. He had to be tied down to prevent him from going anywhere. Come morning, he'd been fine.
Isaac Jackson, who'd suffered a stroke during the storm, was fit as a fiddle following a meeting with Gabriel, but went into some form of epileptic fit every night thereafter. He had to be strapped to the bed so he didn't claw himself to pieces.
And so similar stories filtered through town, and it wasn't too long before everyone superstitiously connected the dots. The town was dividing into two camps: Those who hailed Gabriel as their saviour, claiming the town would be doomed had he not arrived when he did; and a smaller camp of those who suspected something sinister was at play, and wanted the truth, or wanted him out. I'd witnessed him perform his miracles, and seen his club of sycophants, but I was leaning toward the minority, and knew life at the Josephses was going to be a bit challenging to say the least. I needed to speak to Gabriel, and so I waited. Gabriel was a creature of habit. He'd be in at 10:23pm, as always. At 10:20 I went to the lounge to welcome him.
3 minutes later he walked in and hung up his coat behind the door. He put his umbrella, which he never used, in the basket, and still with his back toward me he said in that calm voice:
"Waiting for me?"
I had thought of getting him comfortable, easing into the interrogation, but I suspected that wouldn't have worked. He was too damn smart for that, too damn smart for anything. So I dived in.
"What are you doing here, Gabriel?"
"I sleep here."
"You know that's not what I'm talking about."
"Oh, what are you talking about?"
I couldn't back out now.
"These miracles you're performing, like some new Messiah, and now it's all distorted, people are ... things aren't the same."
He kept quiet for a moment and smiled at me, like I was a kitten that needed to be untangled from a messy ball of wool.
"If you turn back the clock, you have to deal with the consequences of changing your fate. And I never claimed to be any kind of Messiah, that was the title all of you willingly slapped on me."
He looked at me, unmoved.
"What are the consequences you're referring to? What are you doing with us?” My throat felt parched again, words not brave enough, running away from me.
"Doubting Thomas? Ask those people you say I've performed on, ask them if they..."
"That's unfair. Of course they'd rather have nightmares they can't remember than be blind forever,” I spat out.
"So why so dissatisfied? Ungrateful?"
"For what should I be grateful?"
"You're right, you didn't need healing did you?"
I knew I shouldn't have, but feeling cornered, I lashed out. “What did you do with the body? With Bang-bang? With the whales?"
"There's things amongst us better kept secret, don't you think?"
He turned to go to his room, but before he left me he said:
"I didn't ask you how many stones you threw."
He was right. I had reason to be grateful. He saved us on the day of the whales. Furthermore, he kept our secret.
Gabriel soon had a group of people following him wherever he went, to whomever placed an order for a miracle. Mary Knicks was one of them. Mary was a pretty feather of a thing in her mid-twenties, with denim-blue eyes and soft doll's lips that were always about to crumple into a smile. She never spoke a word, and I put it down to shyness. Mary also had a weak heart, and her condition had rapidly deteriorated during the months of the storm. But she was in perfect health now. What was interesting about Mary, besides her worshipping the hallowed ground on which Gabriel planted his precious feet, was that she wasn't a victim to any repercussions or side-effects of being healed. In fact, as days passed, the more I watched her, the more ethereal she seemed. She was glued to Gabriel like white to a yolk, our resident John and Yoko. It appeared that Mary Knicks had lost her heart to a black-eyed Gipsy. I used to watch them walk together. Mary would stare at him as though he were a Michaelangelo come to life. She would be with him and (I imagine) study him for hours. I know this because I studied Mary. She was a pretty thing, after all, and in a weather-ravaged place, she was a beautiful reprieve from the need to get on with the job. Mary Knicks was our treasure. And so when I started having strange dreams of Mary, it had me a bit concerned. Not that I hadn't dreamt of her before, but these weren't the kind in which she was moaning with pleasure while I did all sorts of sordid things to her. In fact, they weren't dreams, just one recurring dream:
Mary was walking ahead, and although I couldn't see myself, I had a sense that I was with her and she was leading me somewhere. We were walking in what looked like a clay tunnel, sliding more than walking, and she would turn around constantly. At first I thought she was looking at me, but she was looking behind me, at something or someone. I picked up on her sense of being followed, but found I couldn't speak; my mouth felt heavy, anaesthetized, and Mary knew this and smiled at me. She looked into my eyes for what seemed a long time, and although her mouth stayed closed, I heard her say:
"It will be okay. You must let me do it. He is destroying us."
The tunnels around us seemed to be melting. Molten clay beneath my feet, I rushed to ask her: “Who is destroying us?"
"You know, Sang tey, Sang tey. Hi yee! Hi yee! Sang tey..."
And more voices joined her in chorus. Looking around me, the clay was shaping itself into hundreds of forms. Closest to me were Bang-bang and the seven whales. I felt like I was falling back, gaining my ability to speak again, shouting “No!” As I accelerated down the tunnel, Bang-bang came right at me and said:
"Save her."
And I woke up with ‘Sang tey’ on my lips.
I didn't know what to make of the dream, because for the most part my dreams were insignificant waste matter, nothing I ever needed analysed. And while this wasn't entirely symbolic mumbo-jumbo, there was something particularly visceral about it. Of course the need to speak to Mary grew with each dream. But what would I say to her? “Mary, you're going to destroy Sang tey, ‘cos you telepathically told me so in a dream. Oh, and a clay Bang-bang said to save you.” And, overcome with sheepishness and her beautiful eyes, that's more or less what I told her, and she ran off. I'm sure if she were the type, she would've put in screaming to boot. But before she ran, her eyes grew bigger, especially at the mention of Bang-bang's name, and she looked around nervously, as if to check if someone had overheard, which made me look as well. And when I turned back, she had fled. Although flabbergasted, the first thing I thought was that I would have to resume my normal dreams of her, because that was most likely the closest I'd get to seeing what lay under the pretty clothes she wore. For now, all I would see was her back as she clung to her Messiah.
I couldn't sleep that night. Probably because I didn't want to. The dreams were tiring, and I'd had enough of playing Cassandra to Mary. I got up and looked in my backpack for a book I hadn't got around to finishing after the storm stopped. When I reached in to grab it, I felt folded paper against my hand, and removed it. It looked like a letter or a note, but the writing wasn't mine. Mary's name was at the bottom. I didn't remember her anywhere near my bag, but that wasn't important. The note read:
"I hope you read this at the right time. I know you've had dreams of me, and Bang-bang. They're real. Bang-bang was my father."
I couldn't understand how that was possible, but read further.
"It's okay, you didn't really kill him. Not you or anyone here. I can't explain it all, but part of it goes back to a pact made a very, very long time ago. A lot of it would seem too unnatural in this..."
At this point she had scratched out words.
"I know you do not trust him, and that's partly why I've come to you. Hopefully you can't do anything about what happens next..."
I dropped the note. It was 3:07.
At 3:07 on a cold winter's morning, the town was woken by screams that would make a deaf man thank the Lord. Those of us brave or stupid enough to do so ran outside, or drove or cycled to the source of the sound. The nearer we got, the more deafening and harrowing the cries were. There was another sound filtering through. Something almost like a rustling, crumpling—but not quite. Something altogether more fierce and unforgiving. And just before I saw what it was, an overpowering smell seeped into my nostrils. A stink. Wild. Rotten. Before I could think what it was, my body reeled at what I saw in front of me. Tied to the flag-post, in what looked like crucifix position, was the silhouette of a burning man. At first I though it was Bang-bang, because the burning person was rattling off unintelligible words disturbingly calmly. But of course it wasn't Bang-bang. We'd seen to that on the day of the whales. One other person knew that tongue.
It had to be Gabriel burning on a flag-post in the town centre, while Mary Knicks watched, eyes closed, screaming like she was born to do it. I watched her face, shocked, but there were no traces of horror or shock or heartbreak or even anger. What I saw clearly painted on Mary's face was relief. Like that of a prisoner released. I watched her while others tried to haul Gabriel down, to no avail, throwing buckets of water at the fire. I watched Mary Knicks. I saw the colour creep back into her skin, the air fill her lungs. I watched her hold her face skyward, basking in the light of a sun that was still sleeping. I watched her change, revived in that moment, and whether it was the reflection of the firelight or not, she was golden. And beautiful.
The fire was finally extinguished, and all that remained were the ropes and the shoes and ashes of clothes of the Gipsy that came on the day the whales beached.
"It will be okay,” said Mary Knicks.
I was wrong. Her eyes weren't denim-blue. Mary Knicks had the brightest black eyes I had ever seen.
"...I have to end this. He calls himself Gabriel, but what he is, I don't know. He came before the storm. He brought the storm. He made you all depend on him, tied to him, indebted to him. That's how it started. I hope that I have succeeded in ending it.
Mary Knicks"
An artist and playwright, Widaad Pangarker had the thrilling experience of having a play staged at The Artscape Theatre in 2006. To get there, she travelled from the age of eight via paper with her field mouse family, Fairy Soppity-toes, numerous angst-ridden A+ compositions, and poetry publications in anthologies and a magazine or two.
She's also taught art and manages a craft and design store leafily nestled amongst squirrels and nuts. Known to travel, sky-dive, and play guitar to help her Siamese (and hubby) calm down, Widaad is also a keen photographer. Conjurer and conduit, she believes words are alive and loves it when characters kidnap her and do their own thing on (and off) the pages while holding her hostage. She is married to her gorgeous soulmate, also a writer, who helps her unfurl while she falls without wings into words.
The Day of the Whales is part of a bigger picture that Widaad is busy layering.
This is Widaad's first story for Something Wicked.
If you can remember where you were on June 12th 1981, May 23rd 1984 and May 24th 1989, we're pretty certain we can predict where you'll be on May 22nd 2008.
From the first moment his whip cracked on screen, Indiana Jones became an iconic figure. Never before (and probably never again) has a character been so indelibly grafted to the world's collective consciousness so quickly.
I remember cutting school to go and watch Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade too, come to think of it. Because when you're a fanatic you have to watch the very first screening—and in those days they didn't have midnight previews.
Indiana Jones, whose full name is only used once in Raiders of the Lost Ark, completely revitalised the adventure genre—hell, he pretty much invented it.
I challenge you to name a single adventure movie to date that hasn't borrowed from Raiders. The Mummy was practically a re-draft of the script, meticulously matching every beat—itself like an archaeological artefact being slowly pieced together and recreated, scene-by-scene. That doesn't make it, or any of the others, a bad movie; in fact it does quite the opposite. The rampant ‘homaging’ (Hollywood-speak for plagiarism) of Indiana Jones is so completely acceptable that in most cases audience members get a kick out of spotting the in-joke. The best example of this can, predictably, be found in The Simpsons—most famously in the episode Bart's Friend Falls in Love (8F22). (Visit joeydevilla.com/2007/09/24/another-simpsons-homage-raiders-of-the-lost-ark/ for the brilliant shot-by-shot break-down). Others include Romancing The Stone, High Road To China, Sahara, National Treasure and, of course, Tomb Raider. The list is endless. Whether it's descending ceilings of spiky doom, rolling boulders, death-defying rope swings, rope bridges, ancient curses, cars plummeting off Lucas-Cliffs[1], or simply a dishevelled-looking guy wearing a fedora, there is no doubt that the movie world is a vastly improved arena thanks to Indiana Jones.
[footnote 1: Lucas-Cliffs are sheer cliff-faces that miraculously appear out of nowhere, sometimes in geologically impossible places (such as deserts), just in time for the villain's car to swerve and plummet off them in a fiery ball of flaming flames.]
In the beginning...
Back in the late ‘70s, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg decided to re-create the ‘50s tradition of the Saturday Morning Cliffhangers—short episodic films that were screened to adventure-loving kids across America. Each episode would end with a ‘cliffhanger', sometimes literally. The hero would be fighting the villain in a car, the car swerves and we see it plummet over the edge of cliff ... to be continued. The following Saturday morning the kids would come storming back into the cinema to find out what happened. The new episode would begin where the last one left off. You'd see the hero fighting the villain, the car swerving, and then they'd cut to a different angle and you'd see the hero jump out of the passenger door just before the car went over the edge. Cut to ... "This Week's Adventure!"
The premise for Indy was simple—create a feature-length version of the cliffhangers with the story split into a series of consecutive set-pieces.
Lucas hit on the idea of starting Raiders with the end of a previous adventure—get the pace going by opening with the best part of a movie you haven't seen, then only bring in the new story 15 minutes in. “It was kind of an outrageous idea at the time, but now everybody does it. They call it a teaser,” Lucas told Empire magazine.
To direct this adventure, Lucas chose a young, adventure-loving director by the name of Steven Spielberg.
At the time, Spielberg had just completed his greatest (and only) flop ever, 1941. The studios had lost faith in the golden boy's ability to shoot a film within schedule and budget, and nobody believed Lucas’ projected budget of $20 million. Most studios chased him out of their offices, claiming the opening sequence alone would suck that budget dry. But Lucas was adamant—it could be done for that price, and Spielberg was the man to do it. His determination finally paid off when Paramount stepped in.
The next problem was casting—Lucas wasn't keen to use Harrison Ford again. Ford was becoming Lucas’ standard actor and, as with the original Star Wars, Lucas wanted a relatively unknown cast. The point was to turn the lead into Indiana Jones and he felt that people just wouldn't buy Indy if he was really Han Solo masquerading as an archaeologist in the ‘30s.
The first choice for the three-picture deal was Tom Selleck. Hollywood being what it is, the moment the network heard that there was interest in Selleck, they immediately picked up his option for a new TV series called Magnum.
So that was Selleck out of the picture.
Speilberg kinda went, “Well, there's always Harrison,” and the rest really is history.
Three movies and 27 years later, the moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is being released in May—May 22nd to be precise, a date that has become so synonymous with epic films that in some circles it has become known as the Lucas Weekend. (Anticipate much wailing and gnashing of teeth in South Africa though; the gross injustice of time differences means The Crystal Skull only opens here on the 23rd.)
The greatest fear plaguing fans is, “Are we in store for another Star Wars Episode 1?"
Something Wicked thinks not, and here are our reasons:
First: Spielberg is back as director and Lucas is sticking to what he does best, i.e. coming up with the plot and concept and then staying out of the way.
Second: The one thing most fans agree on is that the new Star Wars Trilogy suffered most from a conspicuous lack of Harrison Ford—without Han's cynicism, wise-cracks and ‘scoundrel’ antics, the movies just become too serious, revealing the Jedis to be a bunch of elitist snobs. Well, Indy 4 has no such problem, so we're safe there.
Third: Neither Ford, nor Spielberg, nor Lucas wanted to go back and kill the magic they created 27 years ago. They're fans just like us.
So what's it all about?
Nobody knows. No, seriously, nobody knows—we've been hunting for information on The Crystal Skull for weeks and there simply is none. No synopsis. No slug-line. Nothing. Any really useful info on the film has been buried deeper than, well, (we can only hazard a guess here of course) the Crystal Skull.
All we know is it's set 15 years later, placing it the ‘50s, at the height of the Cold War. Frenzied speculation suggests no Nazi's in this one but apparently we can expect some Russians (Cate Blanchett looking dangerously hot). Marion Ravenwood is back, but no sign of Sallah. From the poster, we can surmise that the Crystal Skull is some kind of Mayan, Incan or Aztec relic—there seems to be a flat-topped pyramid in the background, which could belong to any one of the those cultures.
As for creepy-crawlies, well, we've had snakes in Raiders, bugs in Temple and rats in Last Crusade so what do they have in store for us now? The poster promises a no-doubt hefty python, but only time will tell.
Let's face it though folks, do we really want to speculate, or do we just want to sit back and hang on for the ride?
You know where to find me on the 23rd of May. See you there.
[National Treasure]
The life of an archaeologist isn't all high adventure and Hollywood babes. Or is it? Something Wicked uncovered a not-so-dusty local expert for a quick fact check.
Andrew Salomon first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark at the impressionable age of six, and decided he rather liked the idea of getting paid to pursue adventure. Today, he's an archaeologist with the South African Heritage Resources Agency, specialising in the conservation and management of rock art sites.
How far removed from the real world job is Indy's life?
When I first started studying the most surprising thing was discovering that archaeology really can be like that. Especially in Africa, a good deal of it can be a great adventure. A significant part of the job is lab work and analysis of artefacts of course, and there's a substantial amount of paperwork, reading and research. I'd say the job is about ninety percent removed from Indy's world, but the remaining ten percent, the fieldwork, is what makes it all worthwhile. When we discovered a rock art site in Mozambique that nobody had been to in hundreds of years, it was quite a buzz. Plus it's great to be out in the wilderness all day and then head back to camp afterwards to have a beer by the fire.
How many death-defying leaps across bottomless pits have you, as an archaeologist, had to make while fleeing giant boulders?
None, unfortunately. I'm still young though. I have had a fair share of run-ins with snakes if that helps.
Were you trained to deal with ancient curses and booby traps?
No, I didn't have any formal training in that area, but at some sites the locals will want you to undertake certain rituals before you enter. Booby traps also haven't posed a problem so far, though you do have to watch out for animal traps in the bush.
Are the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail considered actual historical items worth searching for?
No. Not in traditional archaeology anyway. They're definitely seen as myths.
How would you begin searching for the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?
An archaeologist's first question would probably be, “Where's the rest of the skeleton?"
Andrew's short-story Newborn will be published in SW07.
Christine King:
Illustrations for Making Waves
Christine King is currently in her final year of study at UCT, majoring in English and Media, but would actually rather like to be an illustrator. In her free time she can be found reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series and watching anime.
Of late she has been less of a gamer-girl than she would like, blaming the consoles for stealing all the good ones. Her likes include furry animals, werewolves and dinosaurs. She is also an experienced cowgirl and can make dolphin noises, honest.
Eddie Marz:
Illustration for The Revolution
Graphic designer and layout artist by day, musician and illustrator by night, Eddie Marz is a master dream-weaver. Inspired by the likes of Giger, Bisley and Royo, Eddie specialised in making all our nightmares come alive on paper.
Emil Papp:
Illustrations for Eyes
Emil Papp is an illustrator/designer/painter/artist with a love of all things macabre. In 2006 he completed an honours degree in Fine Arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, South Africa, whereafter he worked in branding and publishing. He is currently chasing the dream of full-time freelance illustration. In his spare time Emil unwinds with the ‘90s horror film masters or loses himself in the pages of a Chuck Palahniuk novel. To see more of his work, visit www.jamuse.com/ViewPortfolio .aspx?userID=1599 or sparxmedia.co.za/papp.html.
Keith V Whalen:
Illustrations for Curiously Insane
New Jersey illustrator and conceptual artist, Keith V Whalen, works in oils, watercolours, gouache and coloured pencil, as well as digital images. Keith has been drawing and painting his whole life, and fully intends to continue to do so. He is currently working on conceptual art for a gaming studio and has several comic book projects lined up. Visit s73.photobucket.com/albums/i236/keithv/PORTFOLIO/ to see more of his work.
Emily Tolson:
Illustrations for Asylum & Cohen's Last Stand
Emily Tolson is a huge fan of dark fantasy and enjoys horror in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft, although she admits to being easily creeped out. Since completing her masters degree in Fine Arts at the University of Stellenbosch in 2006, Emily has freelanced as an illustrator for magazines such as Jim Baen's Universe, The Intergalactic Medicine Show, Strange Horizons, Cabinet des Fees and Tales from the Transdimensional Horror Express, as well as clients Maskew Miller Longman and Nasou via Afrika.
Vincent Sammy:
Illustrations for Without Face
Graphic designer, Vincent Sammy, lives in Cape Town, where he spends his free time drawing and writing comic stories, mostly in the genre of dark, surreal fantasy. He is a member of Dark Kontinent Productions (www.dkp.co.za), a group that works to produce and self-publish horror/sci-fi and fantasy comics. Vincent also contributes to the comic anthology CLOCKWORX, produced by Insurrection Studios (www.insurrection.co.za), as well as various other comic-related groups.
Vianne:
Illustrations for Birth One & Birth One
Cape Town-based freelance writer and artist, Vianne Venter, has been forced into a hermetic existence by the need to avoid art supply shops and book dealers until she has accumulated all the money in the known universe, or just paid this month's rent. She is comforted in her solitude by a small but trusty stash of pens, pencils, inks, acrylics and sketchpads, a borrowed laptop, an optical mouse called Wanda and a cat called Sam.
Genevieve Terblanche:
Swicky and additional illustrations
Genevieve was born in captivity and despite several attempts at rehabilitation has been deemed unsuitable for release into the wild because it has bugs in it
When uncomfortable, she writes about herself in the third person. The third person is located inside a second person, who is concealed inside a (much larger) first person.
This saves space.
Cover Artist—Pierre Smit:
Illustrations for &Arial: Overload
Pierre Smit lives in Cape Town and works in the film industry as a scenic artist to support his habits and pay the bills. He loves cats, drawing and other stuff and believes everyone should calm down and have fun, because life's too short to try and clean the little bits of paint off everything. This is Pierre's second cover for Something Wicked as well as his second round of ethereal illustrations for Brett Venter's serialised novel, &Arial.
Hendrik Gericke:
Illustrations for Day of The Whales
The petrifying Hendrik Gericke is back with a series of disturbingly beautiful illustrations that are best viewed from a distance, or with the aid of psychotropic drugs. A happily-struggling southern-Boland artist, Hendrik has still not managed to suffer any great tragedy or overcome real evil in a bid to kick-start plans to film his life's story, but does share the record for illustrating a story in every issue of Something Wicked to date with Pierre Smit. More of Hendrik's work can be seen at www.myspace.com/hendrikgericke.