White and Other Tales of Ruin

Honey, for one. What diseases could she have? What malfunctions waiting to happen, tumours biding their time, rots working away at her joints and flesh?

“I love her,” Tom said, shaking his head to dispel the negative thoughts. And he said it again, because he liked the sound and feel of the word in his mouth.

The Baker had given him the virus of love fifteen years before. A clumsily written and input programme, Tom had actually felt it take root inside his head, spreading electron-tentacles, feelings its way into his artificial cortex and brain-stem … and then vanishing as it sought to establish itself fully. He’d never thought it would have taken so long. The Baker — Tom had never even known his real name, great friends though they were — would have been a happy man today.

He spent the next hour sitting at his window and looking out over the city. He hadn’t found anywhere to flee to, but he was sure that they’d find a good place, a safe place. He had no idea of what to do if Hot Chocolate Bob confronted them in their escape, but he was confident that they could slip away unseen. The thought that Honey would have changed her mind — or, worse, had been playing with him all along — came once, and once only. He killed it. He chased it down into the pits of his mind, drowning it in other, more established forms of hopelessness and fear.

Totally unprepared, lightened by a love he had never been designed to feel, Tom set out just before noon to rescue the plastic bitch that had stolen his heart.

The change in the streets was as breathtaking as ever. Last night they had been flooded with people in black, a tide of leather and metal and mutilation with one single, enveloping thought: pleasure. It was as if that flow of people was a solitary organism, pushing through between buildings and parks and walls, penetrating the city to plant its thoughts and intentions, leaving the pale residue of hopelessness behind as dawn drove it away.

By morning, the streets belonged to the workers. People thronged the pavements and cars coughed their way along roads, filled with people heading for work. Thousands flocked east towards the factories — those who could not afford monorail or tube tickets — with many more filtering into office buildings or sweatshops built in deep, cavernous basements. Steam hissed from manholes and there was the intermittent thud of accumulated gases burning off in the sewers. Something flew by just over Tom’s head, and he saw the trailing heat-stick of a policeman. The platform dipped and bobbed before accelerating away and disappearing down a side street, aiming to ruin someone’s day.

Tom tried to keep himself to himself, which wasn’t difficult. He was an artificial, and with so many people opting for body chopping he was camouflaged by normality. And he was dressed in the uniform of a factory worker, even though he did not work: the Baker had seen to it that he had enough money to want for nothing. So he blended in, becoming one of a crowd. A crowd that shed curiosity like water from oil.

It was not a long walk to the area of the city where Honey worked. Shops and offices gave way to boarded-up buildings and plain-fronted stores, many of them selling counterfeit produce and dealing drugs, or worse. Tom knew of several places down here where an artificial could buy a black market charge, and he began to see a few of them around. The worst of the buzzed people could barely walk, let alone see and talk. They screamed; there was always screaming. Illegal charges were like fake foodstuffs: they’d feel and taste the same, but eventually they tortured the body and polluted the mind, leading to a slow death.

The gangs were here as well. Some were all human, like the Draggers, renowned for tying perceived enemies to their cars with sharpened chains and driving at speed through the city. In turn there were the artificials’ gangs, who rarely named themselves because identity was something they shunned. Rebellion was their cause, their drug, and most of them chose to get buzzed even if they could afford legitimate charges. The Draggers fought for money and turf and women and drugs. The artificials rebelled against creation. Such differences ensured that they rarely fought each other.

The gangs that did

fight each other were the mixed ones. But daylight was their enemy, the night’s exertions drained their energies, and for now Tom felt safe.

Three human Draggers hung around by a gambling emporium. They looked tired and drawn, pale from whatever they had taken the previous night, and they didn’t even look as Tom passed by. He caught a whiff of drugs bleeding from their pores. Blessed with the gift of love and loving, how could these people demean themselves so?

But love and loving … that was something he had now! He looked up out of the concrete canyon and grinned at the hazy sun.

A burst of laughter brought him back.