Levelling a Novella: a dark mind-bending sci-fi horror Read online

  But then, impossibly, Addison saw a reprieve. In the shadow of nuclear winter, he saw survivors band together. A shining era of scientific development ushered in advances like the levelling process, intrasolar travel and a myriad other wonders. He saw the temperature even off, extinct species levelled and reintroduced, trees sprouting again, and for one glorious moment the widening gyre seemed to contract...

  But it was all a lie.

  The mortal blow had been struck years before, and this false dawn changed nothing. As the planet warmed beyond repair, humanity finally lost hope. The last wars were the bloodiest, fought with terrible weapons that obliterated what remained. Addison saw the sky boil and cloud over forever, oceans poisoned black, plant and animal life extinguished, and millions exterminated by diseases engineered to kill in horrifically creative ways.

  Finally, Addison saw the present: scattered survivors clinging on, desperate and doomed. He saw the levellers seal off their institute, preparing for the end, only to realise their technology offered a way to eke out some accountability. They could bring people back to face a reckoning: those who caused the damage back when it could have been averted. If there couldn’t be life, at least there would be justice.

  And finally, Addison saw himself. He saw the levellers retrieving his sample, growing his body in a vat, reintegrating his consciousness in a vast laboratory of terrible, glittering machinery. He was the first of hundreds, thousands, to be levelled, made to pay for what they had done – and not done – back when doing could have made a difference.

  Addison’s vision swirled.

  The images were ending.

  He felt himself stretched, his consciousness squeezed back down towards the chair. He howled into the void, pleading for it not to be true, but also knowing in his bones, in the deepest level of his soul, that it was. Everything the chair had shown him was real.

  And Addison saw the awful, mind-searing truth.

  The planet was dead and soon, again, so too would he.

  He awoke, slumped and sodden in the vision chair

  “We didn’t know,” he cried, hot tears staining his vision. “We didn’t know!”

  Two and Four gazed down at him, unmoved.

  “Yes, you did,” Two said. “You all did. Now, clean yourself up. Trials commence at dawn.”

  * * *

  Four threw Addison head-first through the door.

  “Your cellsuite,” she said, silhouetted against grey-white light. “Here you have food, clothes, amenities. More comfort than you deserve. Rest up, you have a big day tomorrow.”

  The door hissed closed behind her.

  Addison lay where she’d thrown him, a crumpled heap fading in and out of consciousness. Feverish dreams plagued him. In one, images of a burning world played on loop. In another, long-dead friends pleaded for a salvation that would never come. In the last, Addison fled through the pyramid pursued by a rising tide. Black waves pounded at his heels, crashing onto the ramps, forcing him up towards that terrible light. It swelled, filling his entire vision, and a pounding sounded within, beckoning him onwards...

  Addison awoke with a start.

  Bolting upright, he immediately cried out. His body was on fire, the lingering effects of the drone’s taser. Grimacing, he dragged himself upright and looked around. The cellsuite was surprisingly plush, a large bed and even an ensuite, but everything was bolted down. In fact, save the non-descript grey clothes he now wore, there were no portable objects of any kind. Nothing to use as a weapon.

  Gingerly, he stood, stretched and padded over to the locked door, then yelped when it slid open.

  “Not locked,” he whispered, heart pounding.

  Immediately suspicious, Addison risked a look outside. He was on a balcony two-thirds up the institute, a long corridor dotted with identical cellsuite doors. It was also deserted. In fact, the entire institute was deserted, the vast pyramid still and silent. For a moment, he thought he heard a distant pounding in the walls, but as he focussed the sound vanished.

  “Testing me, Four?” he muttered. “Is this a trick?”

  If the leveller was lying in wait, she was well hidden. Nothing moved anywhere in the empty space. Above, the grey-white light shone dimmer than he remembered, perhaps simulating moonlight, while below levels of balconies plunged into darkness. In the face of such thundering silence, Addison was seized by a sudden recklessness.

  “Four!” he yelled, voice echoing across the void. “I’m out!”

  He flinched, expecting a taser blast, but nothing came. The echoes died away, replaced by a thick-blanketing hush. Unsettled, Addison began to pad along the balcony. He spiralled down to the level below and came out by a large archway. He recognised the court vestibule from earlier, and as he walked up the ornate doors swung open.

  Inside, devoid of people, the court really did feel like a film set. Only a crater on a bench and a lingering odour in the air told Addison his memories were real. Increasingly unnerved, he hurried out and down another ramp. Heading along identical balconies, along corridor after corridor, he found nothing but misty-grey lifelessness. Everything was still, sterile, dead.

  Just as he was about to panic, Addison rounded a corner to find a strange doorway. Beyond, the semi-translucent material he’d started to think of as ‘mistwall’ pulsed eerily, casting strange shapes on a glass partition that cut the room in half. Faint memories stirred – slumbering machinery glinting in darkness – and Addison knew instinctively this was the levelling apparatus, the archives and machinery his captors had used to spin him back to life.

  Appalled and enthralled, he walked over and pressed his nose up against the glass. He could just make out shadows, hulking monstrosities lurking in the gloom. To his right, staggered footwells were etched into the mistwall, a ladder snaking up to an access point cut into the partition some thirty feet overhead. He felt a sudden urge to clamber up and lose himself amongst the dark machines that had birthed him.

  There was a sudden noise.

  “Addison!”

  He whirled around to an all-too-familiar buzzing. Addison flinched, knowing this time the pain would come. Only it didn’t. After an age, he glanced up to see Five frowning down at him, the mantis drone hovering behind.

  “Are you well?” Five asked plainly.

  Addison was still too shocked to speak.

  “Are you in good physical condition?”

  “I’m fine,” he managed. “Considering...”

  They regarded each other. The leveller seemed uncertain where to start, but when it became clear he wasn’t going to use the drone, Addison relaxed a little.

  “Where are the others?” he asked, straightening up.

  “My colleagues are… resting. Preparing for trial.”

  There was a stiffness to Five’s movements. He was limping and his face was even greyer than usual. The drone however was fully activated, its blue pincers trained on Addison.

  “Walk with me.” Five said, turning away.

  Addison glanced at the levelling machinery, shivered, then hurried after.

  “I am here to explain your duties,” the leveller continued as they walked back into the institute. “Defendants will be levelled overnight, trials will be held during the day. You will act as interpreter.”

  “Help you kill people, you mean?”

  The drone flared and Addison immediately regretted the sarcasm.

  “Tomorrow there will be two defendants,” Five continued, ignoring the outburst and coming to a halt on a balcony. “Four the day after, then as many as we can handle. At night you are free to do as you wish.”

  “So I’m not a prisoner?”

  Five stared into the void, eyes gleaming as if he could see something Addison could not.

  “We are all prisoners.”

  “But I’ve just been wandering around.”

  “Planetary collapse is expected within months, perhaps weeks. The institute is sealed, there is no escape. Locking you up would not change that.”
r />   Addison was gripped by that same recklessness.

  “Then what’s to stop me just throwing myself off a balcony?”

  His heart was pounding, his pulse thundering in his ears. It was clear now this was happening. He wasn’t hallucinating, wasn’t having a breakdown. What doubts hadn’t been zapped out by the drone the vision chair had scoured away. But there was a purity to that realisation, a clarity. It left him two options: do as he was told, or do something drastic. And Addison was feeling increasingly drastic.

  “Attempt to harm yourself and you will be stopped,” Five sighed, finally turning to look at him. “The interpreter is embedded in your nervous system and is designed to protect the host. I am told the pain is worse than our paladin’s sting.”

  Addison had only been half-serious, but now the option had been taken away he felt cornered.

  “What is this thing?” he asked, scratching at the device in his neck.

  “An old world marvel. And alas, malfunctioning. Its verbal and non-verbal components allow you to understand my speech and body language. If however I switch it off…”

  As Five’s hand swept over Addison’s neck, a startling transformation occurred. Five went from human-looking to a waxwork figure, his face turning slack and expressionless. When he spoke there was a lag between the words and his lips moving, like a badly dubbed television show, and the words sounded strange, like an archaic English dialect.

  “This is the truth,” the leveller said, gesturing bizarrely. “Me, as I truly am.”

  Addison was appalled. Backing away, he grasped for something to say.

  “What are you doing with your hands?” he blurted. “It’s like you’re dancing.”

  Five grimaced, and it took Addison a full five seconds to realise he was smiling.

  “As I told you,” the leveller replied in his strange accent. “Communication is more than speech. Gestures, movements, body language: these vary across cultures almost as much as vocabulary. You see dancing, but to me you seem almost comically stilted.”

  The leveller waved his hand and the old Five returned. “That is how the defendants see us, and us them. This is why you must interpret.”

  He turned back to the balcony, visibly tiring now.

  “We have a few minutes,” he said. “Do you have questions?”

  “This isn’t a trick? I’m not going to get hurt?”

  “Why would I hurt you?”

  Addison glanced at the hovering drone and Five’s face fell. He waved his hand, and it shot off over the balcony, shrinking to a tiny dot in the upper levels.

  “Please,” Five said. “I do not have long.”

  Addison grasped for something to say.

  “Your names,” he began. “Why numbers?”

  “Our designations denote hierarchy.”

  “Yeah, but why...?”

  “Consider our situation,” Five replied. “The world is dead, resources dwindling. Fighting over what remains kills most of the survivors, so hierarchy restores order. One gets first pick or first decision, then so on and so forth down the ladder.”

  “So you’re bottom of the pile?”

  Five smiled sadly.

  “Once I was Two, One’s right-hand man, but I fell from favour. Hierarchies shift, but after the recent debacle I fear I’ll end my days as the lowest caste.”

  Addison let this sink in.

  “The debacle,” he said, speaking slowly. “You mean the audition. Me figuring everything out?”

  “What else?”

  “You really thought I’d fall for that?”

  “I had hoped.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense!” Addison said. “If you can give me those memories, why not just make me think I was an interpreter? Why go to all that trouble?”

  “To spare your suffering.”

  “Believe me, I suffered.”

  “We all suffer. But replacing all your memories simply would not have worked. False memories are unreliable. They become vague, shadowy, the subject knows they are fake. In fact, I can prove it! Think, what do you remember before the waiting room?”

  Examining his thoughts, Addison was surprised to find Five was right. The casting call, his journey to the audition: the memories were oddly dreamlike, flimsy and insubstantial.

  “I remember giving blood,” he frowned. “At a clinic.”

  Five nodded. “The last memory encoded in your sample would of course have been of it being taken. Once separated from the source, no new memories are retained.”

  “So everything after was fake?”

  “You were picked for your compatibility and your linguistic background, but when I discovered you were an actor I thought it elegant. I could have you do a trial, thinking it no more than a performance, then wipe you and start again. I persuaded the judge that it would be more efficient, and quicker, than simply torturing someone into acquiescence.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There has been so much suffering, Addison, so much pain and torment. These trials are necessary, just, but I thought if I could do one good thing, spare one person the horrors of reality, then it would––”

  Five stopped suddenly, clutching his side in pain. Instinctively Addison moved to help, but Five waved him away. He seemed embarrassed, ashamed by his condition, so Addison tried to change the subject.

  “What’s up there?” he asked, eyes drawn to movement, the drone hovering in the upper levels.

  “Our chambers,” Five grimaced, steadying himself. “The court and cellsuites are in the mid-levels, the archives and machinery in the lowers.”

  Addison’s next question was interrupted by a sudden pounding in the walls.

  “What is that?” he whispered. “I heard it before.”

  “That,” Five replied, with a grim smile. “Is Three.”

  The pounding faded, replaced by stillness. Addison suddenly felt very small.

  “It’s a storm,” Five explained. “But no regular storm. Humanity unleashed terrible things in its final days, things that endure even now. Three is our guardian, manning the institute’s defences, our last line of defence. She cannot leave her post, even for a second, for it would spell doom.”

  Addison shivered.

  “This really is the end,” he breathed. “Of everything.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Then why are you doing this!” he cried, rounding on the leveller. “The trials? What is the point?”

  “The point?”

  “Why take revenge? The past is buried, let it be!”

  Five looked back impassively.

  “The past is never buried, you are a walking testament. We live with the consequences every day, with what your people failed to do and what those who came after did to each other because of it.”

  “Then put them on trial! They did this, not us!”

  “They reacted. You caused. There is no comparison.”

  Addison threw his hands up in despair.

  “It’s just so cruel!”

  “What is cruel,” Five snapped, angry now. “Is entire generations living nice, comfortable lives at the expense of the next. What is cruel is billions dying because of thoughtless, long-dead fools. What is cruel is witnessing the end of all things and being absolutely, utterly powerless to stop it.”

  “I––”

  “No!” he shouted, eyes flashing. “Why did you deserve to live in peace while we die in horror? Why did you get to die oblivious to the consequences of your actions? No, if there cannot be life there will be justice.”

  “This isn’t justice,” Addison whispered, echoing his words from the courtroom. “This is vengeance.”

  Five shook his head in disgust. “What would you know of justice? You were spoilt, privileged children.”

  “At least we didn’t blame the past for our present! We looked forward, not back.”

  “Spoken like someone who has known only privilege.”

  “We’d never blame people from the past like
this.”

  Five laughed. “The descendants of slavery might disagree.”

  Addison’s voice caught in his throat. Grimacing, Five turned to limp off up the nearest ramp. He was moving painfully slowly now, almost on the verge of collapse. Addison wondered if this was the same of every leveller – a weakness, a condition, something to exploit – then immediately felt guilty. Of all the mysterious evils in this place, Five seemed a lesser one.

  Which of course was a mystery in itself.

  “Why are you helping me?” Addison called, speaking to Five’s receding back. “Why tell me all this?”

  The leveller didn’t even stop.

  “Guilt,” he replied.

  “I thought I was the guilty one?”

  “We are all guilty of something,” the leveller called, hobbling around a corner. “And a guilty conscience makes us do many a thing we regret.”

  “Like the audition? Like bringing me back?”

  But Five was gone, and once again Addison was alone.

  – Chapter 3 –

  Points of View

  The second trial was even worse than the first.

  Stood in the interpreter’s stand, Addison watched as the defendant – a chief operating officer of some oil company he’d never even heard of – openly wept. The man seemed shell-shocked, overwhelmed, and he sat for the duration of the trial with tears streaming down his face. He spoke only twice, to confirm his name and acknowledge the evidence against him, and Addison wondered if the vision chair had damaged him somehow, broken the man’s mind beyond repair.

  In the end, it made little difference.

  “Levellers!” the judge cried, hand in the air. “Justice!”

  As the drone pounced, Addison closed his eyes and covered his ears. But he couldn’t do anything about the smell, which stole through the air, thick and invasive. When it was over, the muffled screams dying down, Addison felt sick. Stumbling into the aisle, he hurried for the double doors.

  “Returnee!” Four barked, her pistol drawn. “Halt!”

  Addison froze, waves of nausea sweeping over him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to leave,” Addison gasped, chest heaving.