Skyline Severant (The Consilience War Book 3) Page 15

  Kazmer threw an arm around his girlfriend's waist, and she leaned back into him, preening. His first action had been to abuse his police badge to bring synthetic alcohol on board a transport craft. They'd been imbibing it liberally on the three-hour journey from Ceres to Titan, and they were already stupidly drunk.

  The tunnels had an eerie methane-hued glow. The freezing temperatures of Titan were banished by an ingenious induction heating system, powered by Saturn's magnetosphere, and the wintery colony was becoming, ludicrously, a party destination.

  All around were young people, laughing, flirting, causing trouble. It was a place of extended adolescence, nightmares like work and responsibility banished a million miles away.

  “Here's what I'm going to do,” Andrei told his arm candy. “I'm going to set up a distillery, in the Selene prison. I'll have hamster wheels set up, and with all the prisoners running furiously. Underneath will be a gutter system, and as sweat drips off them it's going to fill a huge bucket. Add some yeast, and there you go. Alcoholic sweat.”

  She cackled, makeup smeared from aggressive kissing. “You're disgusting!”

  “And then I'm going to sit in my magistrate's chair, and I'll get them to bring me a mug. Then I'll sit back, drinking their sweat, and hearing the overseer crack the whip below. I'll get so fucking hammered.”

  “That's gross. Stop talking about it.”

  “Hey, what else to I have to do when I make Superintendent?” he said. He accidentally hip-checked an elderly businessman walking in the opposite direction, towards the starport. He apologized profusely. “Sorry!”

  “Well, you're going to be working,” she said. “I hate to break it to you, but being a cop involves a little bit of work. Or so I'm told.”

  “I will be working! That's the brilliant part, it'll make the toxicology lab redundant. All of the compounds the crooks put in their bodies will end up in the sweat-flavoured beer, and I’ll just be able to taste it.”

  “Fucking ew!”

  “I'll take a sip, and I'll go 'hey, prisoner 2415 is using super-methadone.' Think of all the money my department will save. I’ll be the star player.”

  She shoved him. “I’m serious. I’m nauseous already. You didn’t fucking roofie my drink, did you?”

  “Roofies? What do you take me for?” he looked hurt. “I do it the old-fashioned way, with a rag soaked in chloroform.”

  Giggling, they left the tunnel and exited out into a wider bubble air. In the shade of the oppressive orange outside there was a series of streets, and aluminum framed buildings.

  Bars. Taverns. Adventure.

  They attacked the town like it had personally done them many wrongs.

  After they'd been thrown out of the third bar, Andrei's girlfriend was bored, and wanted entertainment. Andrei took a piss behind a storefront, and decided to find something.

  This town would either amuse them, or burn to the ground trying.

  There was a tall building at the far end of the street. The sign out of the front proclaimed it the EXPERIENCE EMPORIUM. The name enticed them in through the age-yellowed door. Right now, they were all about experiences.

  The interior of the shop – if it was a shop – was curiously bare, oddly sparse. No product stands or brochures. None of the garish hologram advertisements that danced or sang, no drones that tried to finger wrestle you or guess your weight in exchange for pocket change.

  Just a counter, and beyond it, a woman.

  They giggled and staggered to the front.

  “We need an experience!” his girlfriend proclaimed, so drunk she caught sight of her own reflection in the polished Formica countertop and didn't even have the dignity to wince.

  “Are you sure that's a good idea?” the woman smiled, standing up from her seat. “Perhaps you'd better come back when you're a bit more...sober.”

  “Hey, don't talk yourself out a sale,” Andrei said. “Seriously, what is this place? What do you do here?”

  “Have you heard of capsule memories?” the woman said. “They're the latest craze. Get the most exciting experiences you've never had, put inside your head!”

  “You're kidding me. Is this something to do with that new Black Shift thing?”

  “You ask a lot of questions. Wouldn't you like to try one?”

  Of course they did. They were young, and stupid, and leaped at a lot of things without looking.

  The woman gave a brief, performative lecture on how it worked. Whole-brain scans could be digitized, and through trial and error, edited away until single experiences remained. You could have memories of jumping off a thousand-foot canyon on Mars put into your brain, while remaining safely in your armchair. Or memories of playing with caring, loving parents – a rarity in today's world, when children were seldom raised by less than eight parents, none of which had much attachment to their offspring.

  Best of all, the memories were selective, and would not interfere with any existing parts of your personality or disposition. They might sometimes override an existing memory you had, but that often happened with memories obtained the normal way, too.

  She escorted to a room in the back, a red chamber lined by gently swishing curtains. They sat down in leather chairs, and were promptly charged ruinous amounts of money.

  In other circumstances Kazmer might have been pissed off that the woman was stinging him for more than half of his twenty thousand ducat sign-on bonus, but this was interesting.

  She brought out a catalog of memories for them to peruse. They could have any number of them put in their heads.

  Kazmer spent the next hour skydiving while sitting in his chair. His girlfriend spent a memorable fifteen minutes inside the mouth of a toothless hypopotamous, being flung to and fro by a pink tongue the size of a large dog. The memories were so strong and vivid that as soon as they entered your head via the headsets, it was as if you were experiencing them.

  After five memories, they were spellbound and having the time of their lives.

  After ten, the constant injections of adrenaline were losing their charm. After fifteen, they were bored, and rapidly sobering.

  The woman plied them with water, while they planned their next experience.

  “Ugh, these two pages are stuck together,” his girlfriend was thumbing the catalog. “I hope nobody splooged over them. Let's see, we can go over the Niagara Falls on Terrus in a barrel...”

  “Snore.”

  “...Swim with sharks...”

  “Sounds delightfully boring.

  “...Put a live spider inside our mouths...”

  “Where do they get these memories? Jesus.”

  ...Or jump into a volcano in a polonium thermal suit...”

  “I've actually done that in real life, and it sucks. The goggles get a burn layer over them in about two seconds, and then you spend the rest of the time wading around waving your arms in complete darkness. What else is there?”

  “Nothing,” she threw the book down, annoyed.

  Instantly, the woman was at their sides. “You two have been very cooperative and pleasant customers. I certainly wouldn't want the night to end.”

  Kazmer instantly caught on. “There are more, aren't there? Ones that aren't in the catalog?”

  “Of course not.” the woman said. “Such a ridiculous notion. Why would there be any more?”

  “Yeah, I bet there's stuff you don't show the normies.”

  “You're wrong. What you've seen in that book is my full list of memories! No more exist!”

  Andrei and his girlfriend shared a mischievous glance.

  Then he transferred another ten thousand ducats into her bank account.

  “Well...” the woman nibbled a ruby-red lip. “I might perhaps be able to cough up one or two from the storage room. I must warn you that most of the truly strong experiences are still in the book...”

  Expressionless, Andrei transferred ten thousand ducats more.

  The woman gave him an odd expression, and then vanished into a dimly-li
t cavern at the back.

  His entire bonus was gone. Squandered, on short-lived mental thrill rides. But he knew that if he left now, he would regret wasting so much money. But if there were more experiences, ones that were off-limits, he might still find something that truly thrilled him.

  When the woman returned, not even the encroaching hangover could stop his excitement.

  She had stacks of headsets in her hands. “So, obviously, this is happening, and you two never saw these.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And even if you did see them, you certainly didn't put them on your heads.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “And the Experience Emporium absolves itself of all responsibility...”

  “Just tell us what they are, or I’ll give you a new memory of getting punched in the face,” he said. His girlfriend cackled again, drunkenly. It sounded like a broken squeezebox.

  She held up one headset. “This is a memory of having a penis,” she held up another, “this is a memory of having a vagina.”

  “Okay.”

  Another one gleamed in the near-dark. “This is one of taking various drugs.”

  “Which drugs?”

  “All of them. Marijuana. Cocaine. Morphine. Krokodil. Every single substance humanity has ever synthesized. You won't get a habit, don't worry.”

  “Jesus, what a ripoff. That’s the whole point.”

  She held up another one. “This is a memory of getting fucked by a horse.”

  “Woah.”

  “This is a memory of having sex while having your limbs amputated.”

  “I didn't realise that was a thing.”

  “This is a memory of having a HIV-positive male ejaculate into your rectum. Yes, I know it's curable now, but it wasn't when the memory was recorded.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m always up for a trip down memory lane.”

  “This is a memory of having your baby die of SIDS.”

  “That's terrible!” his girlfriend squalled. “Who the hell wouldn't want a memory like that? Aren't they supposed to be happy memories?”

  Andrei kind of got it, despite his drunkenness.

  You didn't want experiences because they were fun, you wanted them because they were experiences. You wanted to broaden your horizon, see some of the lowest lows as well as the highest highs.

  People watched scary movies, and listened to dissonant, discordant music. It was a psychological version of eating chilli peppers, or slashing your wrists. The exciting rush of pain, and knowing that a neurological frontier had been crossed. Happiness was a puddle an inch deep. Pain was an ocean that could drown an elephant. Only in experiencing suffering did you really grow, and unfold like a blighted flower.

  Andrei wanted that.

  Wanted to become a neuronaut. An explorer of the depths inside his corpus callosum.

  “So...what else is there?” he asked. His girlfriend had checked out of the conversation, and was now gagging softly. She seemed to be scoping out the room for places to vomit.

  “How would you like a memory of what it's like to commit a murder?” she held up a dust-covered headset.

  “Who am I murdering, and why?”

  “The memory was recorded from the experiences of a sadistic serial killer. Someone who used to rape and butcher young women, and dissolve their bodies in vats of acid. The only thing that was left of them were their hands, floating at the top of the barrel. When he was caught, he was offered a lighter sentence if he agreed to medical testing. A bidding process began, and Emil Gokla of the Black Shift Project won it. He then scanned every cubic nanometer of the killer's head, and documented the memory for posterity. If I'm recalling my history correctly, this was the earliest case of Black Shift being used to scan a whole brain.”

  “Fascinating,” Andrei said. “So how did it end up here, in this shitty store?”

  “Watch your mouth, or I'll give you the 'sucking a clown's dick for two hours' memory. For your information, I have a deal in place with the Black Shift corporation. As a non-profit, they have to be careful in how much cash they raise through direct means. I wire them a percentage of my profits, and in exchange they give me some...interesting memories.”

  “I want it,” he said. “I want this memory.”

  “Are you sure? This one is...very strong. I've played it for two people so far, and both of them say they regret it.”

  If there had even been a few points less of blood alcohol content percolating through his system, he might have said no. But he was just drunk enough to throw himself into the abyss.

  “Hit me.”

  The headset slid over his head, as so many had over the course of this long night. His girlfriend watched, transfixed by this moment as she hadn't been by any of her own experiences.

  At first, Kazmer's expression was the same mocking, unimpressed one that he'd given all of the memories in the store. But gradually, his eyes widened, as if he was being inducted into an entirely new philosophy.

  As if he'd thought a candle was bright, and was now having his face plunged into the surface of the sun.

  His girlfriend tried to guess what was happening behind those wide-open eyes, that face with every masseter muscle awed into slackness. There was no way of knowing.

  Gradually, the mouth opened, and string of saliva unspooled from his lower lip, gathering on the lapel of his Solar Arm Constabulary uniform.

  He had stopped blinking. For functional purposes, he had almost stopped existing.

  Finally, he ripped the headset off his head,and shook it. He'd been shotgunning synthetic alcohol all evening, and none of it had put as much wear and tear on him as that memory visibly had.

  “Take that headset and burn it,” he told her, his voice a bloodless whisper. “Whatever you do, don't let anyone listen to it.”

  “You came for an experience,” she said. “And I have provided.”

  His girlfriend waited for some explanation, some adumbration of what had happened beyond the veil. She waited well past the point when she knew no explanation was forthcoming, or perhaps possible.

  His eyes were wide, and horrified. He panted as if he’d just run a marathon.

  In politics, there is such thing as an Overton window. The list of options that the public is willing to accept as reasonable. A political party might be perceived as extreme for deviating slightly from the norm, when true extremeness is unthinkably off the charts.

  There is an Overton window of morality. Kindness is giving a few ducats to charity. Cruelty is kicking a stray dog. But none of these are really kindness or cruelty on an absolute scale. On a ranking of all the kind or cruel actions possible, neither of these would even register.

  And his girlfriend knew that cruelty extends far, far further than kindess did. Perhaps infinitely further.

  Whatever Kazmer had experienced, whatever memory was now clutching on to his head like a crab behind that vacant expression, it had taken him as far towards that infinity as man could ever go.

  We shouldn't have done this, she thought, but didn't say out loud.

  Andrei was his own man, and had made his own choices.

  As did the psychopathic killer who now lived in his mind.

  The rest of their evening was subdued. Partly because of the hangover, partly because of other reasons.

  They staggered past the dimly-lit taverns, heading back towards the spaceport. With luck they'd make the next outbound craft headed for the Asteroid belt, and would be back on Ceres in four or so hours. They could sleep on the craft.

  Except that when she looked into her boyfriend's eyes, she wondered if he would ever truly sleep again.

  As they entered the tunnel, a drunken lout threw his arm around her shoulder, and tried to involve her in the refrain of some awful song that was slurred to unrecognizability.

  She groaned and tried to throw his arm off her.

  She never got the chance.

  Andrei Kazmer launched himself at the man, moving like an uncoiling nes
t of springs.

  A fist pounded into the unlucky party boy's face. Then another. Then a third. There was a sickening crunch as teeth snapped off at the gumline.

  The drunken man threw up his hands, hands that didn't even come close to stopping the awful velocity of the hammering fists. Andrei Kazmer was a one man whirlwind, demolishing him to a bloody pulp.

  In the end, his girlfriend threw her arms around his waist, and dragged him back. “Andy, easy...Andy...it's okay...I'm fine.”

  He whirled on her, full of violence and energy about to lash out in her direction. Her heart froze as she imagined the fist about to cave in her face.

  But he didn't punch her. The hand that would have thrown that fist stayed slack.

  The main had staggered backwards, and was leaning on a guard rail for support. The other hand was pressed against his face, a face that was raining blood like a Biblical plague. “Wot the fock?” his voice mumbed, as if the worst part of all of it was the shock. “Wot the fock?”

  “Let's go,” she grabbed his hand and started pulling him towards the spaceport. They barely made it before their Dravidian left.

  There were no witnesses.

  In the months that followed, the Experience Emporium was raided. It's proprietor, Isolde Gokla, was charged and found guilty of breaching massive swathes of the Solar Arm Constitution.

  Inserting memories outside the remit of a Black Shift license? Illegal.

  Inserting memories that had belonged to a different person? Illegal.

  Inserting memoires without first blanking the subject’s head, to avoid dangerous schizophrenic cross-clashes of personality? Illegal.

  It was considered curious that she'd possessed so much elaborate Black Shift equipment, given that it was a challenging technical problem that the world's best neuroscientists had only just cracked.

  It was also interesting that she had the same surname as one of the world's best neuroscientists. Rumors spread that she was Emil Gokla's daughter, or his granddaughter, or some other complicated limb far off on his family tree.