ASIM_issue_54 (11 page)

Murder himself was eliminated from the investigation immediately, as he was helping the police with their inquiries over another matter.

Insanity interrogated himself, broke down, wrote a full confession that supported all forensic and witness evidence, denied he had written it, crowed about his capacity to commit the perfect crime, spent some time rocking in a corner mumbling about ‘the sound of the tears’, wrote a further confession that accurately detailed the previously unrecorded crimes of all residents of a suburb in Antwerp, claimed he felt much better now, shook each detective’s hand warmly, and ran into a wall. Tests for toxins and drugs were returned negative.

In the aftermath, seven eliminated contestants were invited back, Entitlement showing up
⁷
before the announcement was made. Not that it mattered to her, but she was indeed on the list of replacements. She was out again within the week.

* * *

Day 79

“The entire competition is a scam. They wouldn’t let Booze and Smoking play, either would wipe the floor with half these losers. Fuck forbid they be controversial. Where’s Faggotry? Tree Hugging? And what’s with this Western ideology bullshit? Sexism has a place? It’s just life—there’s a reason for it.”

[
Exit interview, Spite
]

* * *

Day 87: Selection of the final six

“Universe,” they called, as the production team added a scintilla of reverberation. “Step forward.”

All the infinite majesty and glory of untrammelled infinity shuffled slightly upstage. The audience was hushed. The light emptied out of the auditorium. There was a measurable tectonic effect as seven billion people shifted in their seats. “Hello,” it said.

“Hello,” War nodded. He paused. For four aching seconds. Then he said:

“So, this is what you’re doing now?”

There was another second before there was another sound, and that was the intake of breath from one hundred and ten thousand throats—birds above the arena actually dipped measurably due to the change in air pressure. Then there was havoc. Ninety seconds of havoc, during which the Three rose to their feet, one at a time, in no hurry, all the while keeping their eyes on the figure in the centre of the stage, who loosened her garb and let it slip down his rail-thin frame, all the while gazing impassively back. Death’s bottom lip slowly spasmed, firming on one side, now loosening, pursing along its length, then dropping slackly.

Despite the gaze of ten network cameras, ninety-eight thousand phone cameras, and every person in the arena, no-one saw her go.

* * *

Day 92: Finale

Leaderboard:

Obsession 126

Murder    123

Vengeance 111

Scandal   108

Hubris    106

Sunset over the world’s largest salt flat, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. Impossibly beautiful, beautiful enough to dull the sound of the assembled three and a half million people into an unending moan. They had spent five days congregating there, and those in the centre, those who had arrived first and had taken the best vantage points to toilets and food, were not expected to be able to leave until twelve hours after the fringes dispersed.

No sane entity could have survived the last three months unscathed, and none had. Obsession had not been recorded blinking in the last three weeks. Hubris purchased a stable on every
⁸
continent, each with seven horses for the days of the week. All of the horses had, at eye-watering expense and upkeep, undergone lenticular-inset surgery so their flanks displayed his face, and the eyes of that face appeared to constantly follow you.

More than one reputable publication claimed that the entire program was a scam, a way for the Three to concentrate their greatest threats in the same place and then set off an explosive charge. Then in the tragedy and the rubble and under the eyes of the world, they would choose the one who had always been their first choice, a fourth member that would always be subservient to their will, rather than the other way around. The fact that Scandal was one of the finalists played an uncertain part in this theory.

The Three rose from the darkness of the stage, a dark monolith in repose five stories high. The sound of the crowd was a physical thing. Two people in the crowd choked and died, their hearts undone by the vibration alone.

Ignorance won. No-one picked it.

Footnotes:

1
Action figures alone for Pestilence were calculated to turn a profit between US$40 to 60 million, given he had never been heard using the same accent twice, much less seen in the same outfit.
_(back)

2
In the aftermath of these statements, Democracy herself noted that although she yes, alright, did resent the characterisation of being both abused and ancient, she bore no ill will, and she would be definitely participating. Work was work.
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3
That shoulder movement contributed to a social networking war that never quite left the series. There were those who wailed about the slight to Death, there were those who pointed out that Death was not noted to carry any item in the Original Reference and the scythe was associated with the Unnamed later, and those who believed Death was unfairly slighted/honoured/present by implication.
_(back)

4
It was noted that this looked odd on a muscle shirt, but it didn’t stop Versace having a line of them out six days after this episode.
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5
They were: ‘journey’, ‘need’, ‘time to shine’, ‘different person’, ‘rest of my life’, or any reference to the contestants or judges as ‘family’.
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6
Including, but not limited to, the true purpose of the platypus, the best depth in water to eat chocolate, a novella about the sex life of Pope Gregory XV written entirely as a palindrome, and four hundred thousand words on what it feels like to be a trouser cuff (this last essay was swiftly banned in Belarus).
_(back)

7
In trackpants, out of breath, with damp and soapy-smelling hair, and very very visibly
sans
under-garments.
_(back)

8
Yes, every.
_(back)

…Sarah Frost

An impossible black butterfly floats over the wasteland outside my ship. It changes direction with a flurry of beating wings, shedding white sparks into the airless waste. I blink. My eyes take a hundred years to close. The butterfly dances over craters on wings blacker than the void.

Somewhere a million miles away, a red light is blinking.

* * *

I placed my tray on the little extruded table just inside the door to Feng’s Cafeteria. There are only two places to eat out on Siberia Station: the canteen, where the only virtue of the food is in the calories; and Feng’s, where the food is greasy, pricey, and good. I bit into a batter-fried slab of protein drenched in fish flavor, and calculated the best angle from which to attack my pile of waffle-cut fried potatoes.

“May I sit here?”

I looked up into Drake’s smiling face, his kid-blue eyes and artificially perfect teeth set into a face that looked like a lump of pink clay. I knew his rough voice well enough to tell when he was being friendly. I waved him into the seat opposite me.

He sat. A moment later, Feng’s daughter glided over with Drake’s order: fried tofu in noodles with green flecks that were supposed to be onions. (Potatoes, station hydroponics could do. Onions, for some reason, were another story.) Feng’s daughter—Ami, I reminded myself—set Drake’s tray in front of him, then shot me a look that punched through my skull and made the back of my head burn.

When she was gone, I leaned forward and said, “What was that?”

Drake laughed. “She’s just mad because you stole her boyfriend.”

“I did what with who?”

“The party two nights ago, down in Organics? Everyone’s saying you slept with Arens.”

“Merciful God, give me some credit.”

Drake looked up, a mouthful of noodles balanced on his chopsticks. “So you didn’t sleep with him?”

“No!”

“Well, everyone says you did.”

“Everyone’s wrong. I think I’d remember something like that.” I shuddered visibly, hoping he’d realize it wasn’t a compliment.

“Maybe you were drunk?” Drake offered.

“I was too broke to get that drunk,” I said.

“Was?” Drake said. He leaned forward. “You strike it rich without leaving the station?”

I let myself smile. “I’ve got a contract with ASIE. I’m going to Ketzal.”

He frowned, and lifted the places where his eyebrows would be.

* * *

I open my eyes. The butterfly is gone, but for a second I think I can hear its wings beating, like glass chimes.

Then I see the red light of my ship’s master alarm, blinking.

I find my hands tucked against my chest. They look like alien things, a pair of white spiders pinned between my body and my ship’s controls. They move when I ask them to, which is a relief. I find the rest of my body in working order and chase the memories of what happened before I blacked out. Before the butterfly. The screen in front of me shows nothing but a planetoid’s lifeless surface. I shake my head. A hallucination, that’s all. I awaken the ship’s instruments and query them about the alarm.

* * *

“You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone,” Arens said. He was standing between me and the locker. A round man, like someone had taken a miner and wrapped him in fat in preparation for the frier. He wore a ginger goatee and shaved his head because he was going bald—and that was the truth, no matter what stories he made up when he thought women might be listening. I stopped, and stared up at him, one hand on my hip, one hand on the wheeled tote I’d been dragging.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“What you signed up for! The Ketzal run? Damn it, Mira, you don’t have to do that. I have a cousin. He’s going to Bao’s Moon next week. He needs a pilot.”

“Rent was due this week. And I’ve done Bao’s. The money’s crap.”

“I could have covered you! Mira, come on. What are you doing, taking the Ketzal run? It’s a damned star graveyard! I’ve done that run, and …”

“I haven’t.”

“So?”

I glared at him. “It matters. You know it does. You think I don’t hear you guys talking?”

“Mira …”

“Three months ago, when that dirt rat Haru got back from the Ketzal? Remember that? ‘You’re a real spacer now, kid!’ He didn’t see straight for a week, what with all the booze you guys poured into him.”

“You want us to throw you a party?”

“No.” I seethed. “Shut up. Go away. I’m done talking to you.”

“Fine. I warned you. But you know better, don’t you? You’ll come back here empty, and you’ll know I was right.”

I started to drag my tote around him.

“If you come back,” he said.

* * *

My computer informs me that there has been an explosion in the cargo hold. The master alarm keeps pulling my attention away from the other readouts, so I shut it off. My suit is in a compartment behind me. My guts clench, and the air feels thin. The computer tells me that I’m imagining things. My ship,
The Glass Cat
, is spaceworthy. For now.

Error codes pour across my screen. Containment has been breached in the cargo hold. I take a long, deep breath, and ask the computer for shipwide radiation levels.

The cabin is green. I sigh, and thank God for His mercy. The main access corridor is yellow, with a little cross floating beside it. Dangerous, and trending higher.

The cargo hold is off the scale. A deathshead icon blinks at me.

I have some time. First I need to figure out where the hell I am. I tell the computer to get a fix on the brightest stars, see if any of their spectra look familiar. Then I return to the forward viewscreen.

The Glass Cat
sits on a planetoid big enough to be round but not big enough to be more than a number on the charts. The horizon curves visibly in the distance. Silvery supernova remnants hang in the sky like cobwebs. I’m still in the Ketzal, then; I only glance at the readouts to confirm it. I don’t know if I landed my ship before I blacked out, or if
The Cat
’s autopilot got me down. Either way, I have bigger problems now.

Life support checks out, and none of the bulkheads show anything but superficial damage. That’s good, very good. If the drives are working, I’m probably going home. Even if the insystem rockets are fried, I could still risk the stardrive. It’s not the safest thing, especially not here, but it’s better than the other option.

Space is big. The odds that someone will find me are essentially nil. I’m not interested in a slow death by stranding when there’s a chance that my engines might not explode and kill me. Besides, I still think I can salvage my cargo.