Gavin Smith - Veteran

‘Hmm? Oh, yes, well, according to the diagnostics I’ve run it appears They are some kind of bio-technological construct. Though it is just possible that They have occurred naturally, or rather They have much more control over how They evolve. That would explain the different castes, the Ninjas and the Berserks.’ This was old news, it had been posited for some time. I couldn’t really see how it would help. ‘The technology is almost like naturally-occurring nanites, only it’s liquid. It’s difficult to say what these aliens are. The race itself could be the individual cells and each bioform may be a colony or even an entire civilisation of Them.’

‘Well that’s very interesting, Vicar, but what does it mean?’ I asked. There was only so long we could stay in the church before Rolleston worked out where we were.

‘I’m not sure,’ he mused. ‘What it does mean is that our intelligence should have had this info years ago.’

‘Shoot to kill?’ I said, meaning the policy of utter eradication whenever we encountered them. Vicar shrugged. Then something occurred to me. ‘With technology like that, why not go viral? They could wipe us out in moments.’

‘I don’t know, perhaps some kind of societal taboo? Perhaps they see it as a form of suicide, but with this information we could certainly do it to them.’

‘If we hand this over then we can end the war?’ I asked.

‘If we hand this over then we provide our masters with the means to end the war,’ he said. He sounded doubtful. But this was a weapon; our masters liked weapons and they also liked victory. ‘And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the Earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword,’ Vicar said as he straightened up to face me.

‘I don’t understand any of that,’ I said.

‘War is loosed upon the land, the second seal is open,’ he replied, talking to me as though I were a particularly dense child. ‘Perhaps the war is the important thing. It’s the taking part that matters after all.’

‘What are you talking about? You mean they wouldn’t use this information?’

Vicar just shrugged.

‘I don’t think we should give them the info,’ Morag burst out. Both of us turned to look at her. She looked frightened, as if she wished she hadn’t spoken. ‘I mean, would it be that easy? To reprogram their bionanites to attack them?’ She seemed to have a much better grasp of what was going on than I did.

‘It depends on how cooperative They’re being,’ said Vicar. ‘I hacked the creature, or rather it gave me entry, and with technology that sophisticated it should have taken me a lot longer. I should have needed to build a whole new set of equipment to translate the alien data and I should have had a tremendous fight on my hands against alien intrusion countermeasures.’ I still wasn’t following and it must have been obvious by the look on my face. There were rumours that certain technology would allow meat hacks through interface plugs, but if it existed then it was blacker than black. ‘All DNA is information, but before it died it made certain information compatible with my systems.’ This still wasn’t making any sense to me. I hated information technology.

‘You downloaded it,’ Morag said, surprising me again. Vicar nodded.

‘That was what the solid-state memory block was for,’ I said, pleased I could finally make a contribution to the conversation. Vicar nodded again.

‘It’s isolated in there. I’ve set up a routine that’s building it an environment.’

‘I want to speak with it,’ I said.

‘Then you talk with the adversary…’ Vicar began.

‘And hear only lies,’ I finished for him.

‘He’s not like that,’ Morag said.

‘You are just a whore, one of his already, and you have been seduced,’ Vicar said, getting back into character. I couldn’t understand why Morag looked so upset. Surely she’d heard crap like this before, and probably worse.

‘Why do you talk like that?’ she asked. Vicar ignored her.

‘Religious mania,’ I answered for him. ‘A lot of hackers get it. They say they see things in the net, the face of God, shit like that. It’s the dislocation of net running, I think. It’s like isolation and they start to hallucinate. Something about it triggers the parts of our brain to do with religion; they all end up like this or madder.’ I left out that Vicar had been on Operation Spiral, an attempt by the UK and US governments to hack Their communications infrastructure.

‘There are things in the net,’ Vicar said quietly and then looked me straight in the eyes, his madness reflected in my black lenses. ‘And I do not believe in God.’ Suddenly his madness looked really sane in a way I could not explain, and this wasn’t the first time either. I remembered the coldness of space and the blood of humans on my hands. Despite the fact that Vicar was just looking into inhuman black lenses I broke eye contact first.

‘So what are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘Preparation,’ he said. I decided it was a waste of time trying to get a straight answer from him.

‘I want to speak to it,’ I repeated. Vicar shrugged. He walked over to the workbench and held up a plug connected to the memory cube. I pulled a rusty folding chair over to the bench and sat down.

‘Take your time,’ Vicar said. ‘Your whore can work off some of your debt to me.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, my voice sounding cold even to myself.

‘I don’t mind,’ Morag said timidly. I looked over at the frightened young girl and then back to Vicar’s leer.

‘I do. Vicar,’ I said. He ignored me. ‘Vicar,’ I said loudly and reached for his arm with my cybernetic right hand, exerting just a little too much pressure. His head snapped round to look at me. Why was I doing this? She was a hooker; what difference did it make to me if she went with Vicar? ‘I appreciate what you’ve done for us, I really do, but if you lay one finger on her I’ll take the laser to your groin. Do you understand me?’ I asked. He glared at me and then turned to Morag.

‘And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death.’ He spat at her. Morag looked like she was about to cry.

‘Pack it in!’ I told him. I looked at Morag stood in the chapel, wearing her working gear. Vicar was still staring at her, intimidating her. Presumably made easier by the fact that she was only wearing a basque, torn fishnets and panties.

‘Have you got any other clothes that Morag could wear?’ I asked him. He turned to look at me, an unpleasant grin on his face.

‘You want her for yourself, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Play the protective routine so you don’t have to pay? Is that it? Cheap bastard.’ I was tempted to hit him but we needed him. I leant in close to him, close enough to smell the gum disease.

‘Clothes,’ I said. Vicar directed Morag to some donated clothes he kept to hand out to his congregation and then plugged me in.

I felt the familiar sense of floating and dislocation, loss of the sense of a physical self. The software he was using was the same as they used for the sense booths, sending information to my brain via my interface plugs to make the virtual environment feel real. It wasn’t like running the net – normally it would be completely safe, there were feedback safeguards in place – but the alien was an unknown. If it was as sophisticated as Vicar said, then perhaps I was in actual danger.