Shoreline of Infinity 8½ EIBF Edition, page 14
“It’s not on, Andy, ah’m tellin ye,” Johnny McEwan roared out of his window, “Ah’m on the phone tae the cooncil first thing. As if it’s no bad enough UHRRRR”
Johnny threw his hands to his ears, but Andy knew from experience that nothing short of industrial grade ear muffs could block out this new noise: a long metallic shriek like a thousand rusty brakes. As the old man fell to his knees groaning, Andy pointed at an imaginary watch.
“Ah ken, Mr. McEwan, ah ken,” he shouted, “Ah’m just away tae tell him. It’s past a joke, this.”
By the time Andy had turned the corner onto the high street, the noise had stopped, lingering only in the high arches of the town walls, like a trapped bird trying to get out. D-CON, who had never shown the slightest bit of interest in it before, was crouched down next to the 1514 Memorial, scanning its inscription raptly. Darkness once again had settled.
“Like butter widnae melt, eh,” Andy said, “Whit’s the game here then, pal? Whit’s wae aw the noise?”
D-CON looked down at Andy with an immoderate start, as if only just noticing him.
“WHY ANDREW, I WAS…”
“Shh! Shh!” Andy whispered, the concrete shifting tectonically beneath his feet. The robot started again.
“APOLOGIES, ANDREW. WHAT NOISE?”
Andy screwed up his face.
“What noise? You got selective super-hearing all of a sudden? You’re at it, big man. Ah’ve telt ye wance, ah’ve telt a hunner times – when it gets dark, folk are tryin to sleep.”
“ANDREW, I CANNOT SLEEP.”
“Name o God… Whit, you want me to sing you a lullaby?”
“I…”
“Ah’m jokin,” Andy said hastily, “Ah ken whit you mean. But look, if you’re no able tae sleep at night, can you no just dae whit everybody else does an watch the telly or somethin? Get any channel ye like wae aw that gear stickin oot yer heid. Ah mean… och, here we go.”
A Volvo driving the wrong direction up the one-way street came to a sudden halt across the road. After a moment’s struggle, a fat man with unkempt hair and a provost’s chain over his nightgown wrangled his way out from under the steering-wheel and waddled over towards them. The backs of his slippers made a soft padding noise on the tarmac.
“Right, Andy! Whit’s going on here? Giein ye any problems, is he?”
“Naw, Davie, it’s just…”
“This is no good enough, Andy. It’s needing nipped in the bud, like. Bloody robot getting the run of the place. Honest tae God.”
Davie squinted in D-CON’s direction. There were marks on either side of his nose where his glasses normally sat. He shook his head.
“Nae wunner his name’s C-CON. C-CON, is it! It’s enough tae seeken onybody. Ah’m telling ye, Andy…”
“His name’s D-CON,” Andy said, “Like Deacon Blue.”
“Ah’m tellin ye, Andy,” Davie continued, “Folk’ve just aboot had enough o this. D’ye have any idea how much it’s costing us tae keep him?”
“Well, he’s solar-powered, Davie, so…”
“Solar power!” Davie spat, “In Hawick? That’s a joke! He’s suckin this toon dry. An as for…”
“IF I FLEW INTO THE SUN,” the robot interrupted, “I COULD RECHARGE TO FULL CAPACITY WITHOUT…”
“Aye, that’ll be shining bright!” Davie veered slowly round, lifting up his eyes rather than his head. “Efter aw the money we’ve spent, we’re just gonnae let ye fly away! D’ye think ma heid buttons up the back or sowt? Fly away, he says!”
Davie shook his head again, as if it was the only point of articulation his body had. His arms were folded so high across his chest that his chin was almost resting on them, and he was breathing heavily. Andy cleared his throat.
“Look, Davie,” he said, “We cannae have it both ways. If we want tae keep him to ourselves, that’s fair enough, but somebody’s got to foot the bill. That’s just economics.”
“Oh aye?” Davie said without looking at him, “Get that aff your da, did ye? Dead smart, your da. Dunno how he’s only working in a chippy.”
With one last glower at D-CON, Davie turned on his heel and walked back across the road. Andy, whose cheeks had become a lipstick pink, looked up at the robot and smiled awkwardly. He always forgot that D-CON did not have emotive facial expressions or, for that matter, emotions.
The provost’s car coughed and spluttered back into life. Like the provost himself, it had been serving in its official capacity for as long as Andy could remember. With much uncomfortable to-ing and fro-ing, Davie squeezed an arm between his bulk and the door and jerkily rolled down the window.
“Oh, aye, and while ah remember,” he said, “Where are we at wae they comet things?”
The robot stared up into the sky.
“REPORT. NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS OBSERVED. QUANTITY: THREE. VELOCITY: 110 KILOMETRES PER SECOND. TIME OF IMPACT: 4.2 DAYS. CURRENT VISIBILITY FROM EARTH: ZERO. EXPECTED SURVIVAL RATE WITHIN IMPACT ZONE: ZERO. EXPECTED IMPACT ZONE: GALASHIELS.”
Davie nodded in satisfaction.
“Right, that’s a Wednesday then, eh? Ah’ll let the bus drivers ken.”
“Davie, d’ye no think…”
“Not a chance! Forget it!” Davie said, “Where were they when we were the wans aboot tae get smashed intae bits? Couldnae look the other way quick enough then! For aw they kent oor goose was cooked, an they never even lifted a finger. They didnae ken it wisnae a comet.” He stared at D-CON bitterly, and shook his head. “Ah’ll tell ye whit, though, ah wish it had’ve been.”
After a few growls, the provost’s car lurched off into the beginnings of the morning. Wisps of red had started to gather round the edges of the rooftops, and the unfathomable dark of the sky was about to break. As D-CON stood there, still gazing into the remnants of the night, Andy stared up at him.
“A hunner an ten kilometres a second? That’s gey fast even for a comet, is it no?”
“IT IS.”
Andy puffed his cheeks out thoughtfully.
“Jeez oh. Ah could see the point if it wis heading the ither wey. Ah’ve broke the sound barrier masel gittin oot o Galashiels.” He smiled for a moment at the robot’s unreflecting face, then let it drop. “Ach, no that Hawick’s much better. But it’s hame, eh? Ye ken everybody.”
He paused as if conscious of having said the wrong thing, but D-CON showed no sign of having noticed. Andy let his hand rest on the monument’s pedestal, tracing its inscription. It was too dark to read, and written in Latin, but he knew it off by heart. From out of the depths it emerges, beautiful.
“Do… do ye never get hamesick yersel, sometimes?”
“NO. ALL THINGS MUST FIND A PURPOSE, AND I HAVE FOUND MINE ON EARTH. I SHALL BE AT HOME HERE, BEFORE LONG.”
Andy instinctively patted the robot on its leg, somewhere about its knee. The metal was light and soft to the touch, like aluminium, and strangely warm.
“Ah went tae New York, wance,” he said, “Thought aboot Hawick the hale time. Couple o hours on a plane an it felt like the ends o the earth. Ach, but the sights, man! Ken the Statue of Liberty?”
D-CON lifted up its arm, and its hand was blue with light.
“FROM HER BEACON-HAND GLOWS WORLD-WIDE WELCOME…”
Andy smiled up into the lantern. Its beam was bright enough to shine the stars, but no-one else had chosen to see it. He shook his head.
“Never you mind, pal. You’re daein alright. It’s them buggers just need tae get used tae ye. But they’ll get there, D-CON.”
“B-CON.”
“Eh?”
“MY NAME IS B-CON.”
As Andy followed the robot’s stare into the now starlit sky, a bat, suddenly visible against the gleam, fluttered past, and the air took on the pungent taste of lead. Never before had he witnessed skies so full of life, a horizon that brimmed with anything but streetlights and the cracks between curtains. Now, above the spire, three dots of light were developing slowly against the black, a perfect triangle that shimmered in the sky and hung there. He watched them coming, as if a fresh constellation was jostling into the order of things, a spearhead advancing through the aging cosmos.
He understood.
Beneath his palm, Andy felt the robot humming gently – happily, even. The stars were dying, and the news of some unfamiliar galaxy was finally reaching Earth.
Thomas Clark is a poet and writer from the Scottish Borders. His first poetry collection, Intae the Snaw, was published by Gatehouse Press in 2015. He is poet-in-residence at Selkirk Football Club and Scots co-editor at Bella Caledonia. He blogs at www.thomasjclark.co.uk
First published in Shoreline of Infinity 5
3.8 Missions
Katie Gray
Art: Dave Alexander
The wind screamed in and out the remains of buildings. It tugged at his clothes, whistled through the holes punched in his helmet for the strap, rattled his ear drums. There’d be a lull in the fighting, if he’d timed this right, but he could hear cracks of missiles in the distance. And there were mines, and sizzling pools left by chemical weapons, and the iSoldiers.
He skittered down a rubbly slope and checked his scope. The signal was a blip and fading. Lock on. Point two clicks, north-north-east. His scope fritzed and he shook it, cursing. The static cleared. He looked up.
The iSoldier was standing over him, a towering figure silhouetted against the burnt-orange smog. The flickering light from a nearby fire danced in its armour, black and gold. He couldn’t tell if it was one of theirs. It was armed. Wrist gun. If he bolted it would shoot him dead.
Procedure. He rooted his feet to the ground and held up his wrist to show off his insignia. “Identify.”
Like a panther, the iSoldier leapt from the wall. Snap. Its wrist-gun retracted. Reaching out, he touched its chestplate. “Identify.”
A buzzing. “Niner-niner-triple-three-delta.”
“Right,” he said, almost relaxing. “As you were.”
Its hand shot out, grabbing his vest, knocking all the air out of his lungs. He cried out, gabbling nonsense like, “Friend!” and “On your side!” and “Reds, see? Reds!”
It tugged aside the strap of his vest to get a visual reading of his rank insignia. Private Carter, Tracey. F-Tech.
Thump. He dropped to the ground like a discarded sack. In a single leap, the iSoldier bounded over the wall.
“Wanker,” Tracey said aloud. It didn’t make him feel any better. He adjusted the straps of his vest and levered himself upright.
He checked his scope. Point two klicks. Signal still fuzzy.
He ducked between barbed wire and broken masonry into the chewed-up remains of what had been a car park. He crouched, scanning the open space.
There. A pair of metallic legs spilling out from behind the skeleton of a car. He picked his way over, staying low, and stared at what was left of the iSoldier he’d been sent to patch up.
The legs – just the legs, and a spray of still-hissing fluid. For a happy moment he thought that was all that was left, that the rest of the iSoldier was being ground to dust in the belly of a Beast.
But maybe ten metres further he saw the arms and torso, wires and nerve-enhancements spilling out like tentacles. It was like a broken toy, a rag doll torn in half and left in the dirt.
“Well,” he said, “That’s going to take some fixing.”
Crouching to inspect the legs, he saw the tail end of the spinal cord, white bones visible within the dense circuitry. The only thing left to do was call salvage.
His scope clicked. Signal online. He spat a curse. Now he had to check its neural functioning.
The torso was motionless, ragged, but procedure was procedure. He crawled to it. “Identify.”
No response. He put his hand on its chestplate.
“Identify, soldier.”
Nothing. Sometimes skin contact helped, when the sensors weren’t at optimum. He stripped off his glove, but jerked back. The armour was searing hot.
Groping at his belt, he unhooked his probe and forced the helmet open. The face beneath was pale and screwed up, the sound of its panting high and dull in the murky air.
“Identify! Hey!” He patted at the side of its skull. “Status report.”
Its eyes opened. “What?” Its voice was an echo of itself, electronics and human vocal cords.
“Identify.”
“I don’t understand.” The electronic voice was flat. The human voice was thick with pain.
Tracey should have realised, then, what had happened. “Identify yourself.” Nothing. He detached his scope and held it over the iSoldier’s eye, trying for a retinal scan. “Hold still.”
976-555- λ.
Oh, no. Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Saints in heaven, no. He closed his eyes, swallowed, his throat clasping, dry. It didn’t matter, it couldn’t matter. The iSoldier didn’t even remember.
“I can’t feel my legs.” Tracey looked down at it hazily, thinking the status report command had kicked in at last and wondering why it wasn’t following procedure. “Why can’t I feel my legs?”
One last time. “Identify.”
“What?” The iSoldier made a noise like it was trying to clear its throat. It was confused by the crackly echo.
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Private McCray. Eight-oh-oh-niner-fifty.”
Tracy almost threw up. Right there, on top of the iSoldier. This couldn’t be real. His brain was helpfully scrolling through all the reasons why this shouldn’t be possible, all the safeguards in place to ensure iSoldiers never did this, ever.
“Why can’t I,” said the iSoldier, “What –” It shuddered, and screamed – half staticky roar of electronics, half animal pain.
Tracey covered his ears.
He’d scrapped iSoldiers before. He ought to call salvage, the iSoldier was a tattered mess of fractured spine and chewed-up neural circuits. All he had to do was make the call.
The ever-present rumbling was growing louder. As he dithered, the iSoldier’s static-riddled cries were drowned out by the screeeeech of bladed wheels chewing through concrete.
“Oh, God!”
The Beast loomed, a misty, disjointed shadow in the fog. He could hear its jaws clashing.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
Was it Red or Blue? It didn’t matter. It didn’t care, he didn’t care. He was on his feet, ready to run like hell for base, when hot metal closed around his ankle. The iSoldier’s hand. It couldn’t have seen the Beast, but could hear it, feel it shaking the ground.
“Don’t leave me here, you can’t leave me here–”
“You’re scrap iron!” He didn’t know if the iSoldier heard him over the pulsing roar of oncoming blades but its brown eyes stared up at him, jerking back and forth in their sockets, alive.
It was the eyes that did it.
Tracey heaved the iSoldier across the tarmac, towards the wreck of the nearest building. It was dead weight, so hot he could feel the heat radiating through his gloves. It was screaming. He thought it was screaming at the Beast but it was screaming at itself. He’d lifted its shoulders and it was looking down at its body, looking at the mass of cables trailing from its severed abdomen, at the void where its legs had been, and its chest plate was vibrating with its screams.
The Beast was almost on them, churning a path through the city, flames and smoke belching out of its grilled mouth. It ate. It gorged itself on rubble and concrete and steel and toxic goo. Tightening his grip, Tracey staggered fast as he could for shelter.
The ground rocked, cracks opened up in the hellish force of its approach, and he fell.
He tumbled down a rubbly slope into the black emptiness that had once been the basement. Gravel and dust fell around him and he curled in on himself, covering his airways. The stink of the fumes, the agonising roar in his lungs, the heat, the dampness of the concrete, the noise. It was so loud it wasn’t even sound, it was pure, vile sensation pounding at his eardrums, incessant.
When it quieted, he found with dull surprise that he was still alive. He took deep breaths, sobbing in relief, coughing up mouthfuls of dust. He opened his eyes. The Beast hadn’t crushed the wall completely. Here and there shafts of sunlight branched through. He might be able to dig himself out.
He heard the iSoldier, still screaming at the top of its lungs. Tracey checked his scope. It was flickery, but functional. Two Red blips, Blues all around them. iSoldiers from the belly of the Beast. If they’d picked up Tracey’s signal they’d have come for him already. Sooner or later they’d hear the noise.
He dragged himself over to the iSoldier, wincing as the concrete scraping his raw knees. “Shut up,” he gritted out. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.” He banged on its armour. “You need to be quiet! They’ll hear you!”
“Oh, God,” said the iSoldier. “Fuck, fuck, my legs, where are my legs?” It made choked gulping sounds, forcing air back into its failing lungs.
“Will you shut up?”
It said, “I can’t,” and, “Sorry,” and, “Hurts.” Tracey clawed at the back of its neck, holding his probe between his teeth as he tried to find the right spot to – yes – open it up, exposing the cluster of wires at the top of its spine. “What are you doing?”
The wires were half-fused, a tangled mess of still-cooling slag. There was only one thing to do.
“I’m sorry.” He jammed in his probe, right up against the first joint of its spine. “This’ll only hurt a lot.” He thumbed the button.
It screamed, a jagged wail of electronics, arms flexing madly. Somewhere in the mass of trailing cables below its waist something sparked.
And it was done, and the iSoldier was gasping, harsh mechanical sobs falling from its lips. Heat pulsed off its shell. “Oh, God. What did you do to me?”
