Levelling a Novella: a dark mind-bending sci-fi horror Page 5

  Curious, Addison decided to ask Five. They hadn’t really spoken since their altercation, but of all of his captors, he seemed most amenable. He certainly wasn’t going to Four. So one evening after trials, before the levellers disappeared to wherever it was they disappeared to, Addison made his move.

  Heading out of the court, he caught sight of Five disappearing down a ramp pushing, of all things, what looked like a wheelbarrow.

  “Five, wait,” he called, sprinting round a corner after him. “I have a que––”

  He screeched to a halt. It wasn’t Five, but Two. The prosecutor stood blocking the balcony, a foreboding smile spreading across his face.

  “Mr. Moore,” he beamed. “Expecting someone else?”

  “I just assumed...” Addison said, backing away. “The lower levels, the wheelbarrow, I thought it was...”

  “We all pull our weight in the institute.”

  The wheelbarrow was full of strange mechanical components. Some were rudimentary, things you’d find under a kitchen sink, but others were ferociously complicated: intricately intertwining structures of metal, stone and glass.

  “Five is supposed to be delivering these replacement parts,” Two continued. “But he is indisposed. In his absence the task should go to Four, but she has her own mission and as Three is occupied, the honour has fallen to me.”

  “The hierarchy,” Addison said unthinkingly.

  “You are well informed,” Two replied, eyebrows raised. “You and Five have developed quite the rapport, no?”

  Addison felt on the spot, like he was dumping Five in it.

  “Whatever you were going to ask him, ask me.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Addison stammered.

  “I insist.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Do I have to summon the paladin?”

  Addison blanched. Two had him cornered.

  “I was just going to ask about the recent returnees.”

  “What about them?”

  Addison’s insides clenched. Mind racing, he tried to find a way of phrasing his question that wouldn’t get him into trouble.

  “To do my job,” he began, “to keep the returnees compliant I mean, I need to know them. And of late, they’ve just seemed a little…”

  “Spit it out, Mr. Moore.”

  “Small fry. Guilty of less severe crimes.”

  Two smiled. “Guilt is guilt.”

  “But shouldn’t we try more people like that Ross guy?” Addison pressed. “The ones who did more damage?”

  “Small actions add up. Little crimes contribute to big ones.”

  Two sighed, turning to the dimming institute.

  “In my view, everyone from your era is culpable. But One wishes the trials to be done to the letter of the law, as is tradition. After all, tradition is all that separates us from the beasts. Not that there are any beasts left…”

  Addison said nothing and Two turned back to him. “To answer your question, yes there is a reason. You are aware that our archive access is restricted? That they are damaged?”

  “I heard.”

  “There are millions of samples in the lower levels, a myriad of potential defendants, but we have access to only a few hundred. Most frustrating. That is the purpose of these parts, to restore access to other samples. But until then...”

  “You did the heavyweights first,” Addison said, realisation dawning. “The guiltiest?”

  “Guilt is guilt,” Two winked. “But some are more guilty than others.”

  Addison laughed, then immediately felt ashamed. He knew about Stockholm Syndrome, he shouldn’t be enabling his captors. Absentmindedly, his fingers went to the base of his neck, scratching at the metal protruding from his skin.

  “You know,” Two said, noticing the movement. “That device does much more than interpret speech.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering, the leveller gestured over the balcony. They were halfway up the pyramid. On the far side Four was stomping down a ramp followed by the drone.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “What?” Addison replied. “Four?”

  “No, the space. All around.”

  “I don’t follow...”

  Two stretched out a hand, reaching for Addison’s interpreter. He flinched back, memories of the vision room fresh in his mind, but Two was insistent.

  “Do not resist,” he warned.

  Addison closed his eyes, trying not to panic. He felt Two’s fingers, surprisingly nimble, grasp the device on his neck. But when he turned, the motion was much less savage than before.

  “Open,” Two commanded.

  Addison did as instructed, then gasped.

  “Oh my god…”

  The pyramid had bloomed into life.

  Before, it had been a grey, barren place, but now it was a living, breathing, thriving jungle. Addison’s vision was all green: trees, plants, vines and fauna clinging to every surface, lush, verdant and utterly alive. A tropical waterfall cascaded down from the upper levels, illuminated by a beam of sunlight that split the water into shimmering rainbows. From the canopy came the sound of a thousand animals: birds, beasts and insects screeching and singing to one another. Addison saw a sudden flash of colour as a parrot streaked out of the canopy to soar under the waterfall, its red wingtips brushing the rainbow spray.

  “I can smell it!” Addison marvelled, reaching out to touch the nearest plant. “And feel it!”

  “It is not real, of course,” Two replied. “But the interpreter can represent the world any way you choose. This is how I choose, as things were.”

  “It’s... beautiful.”

  “I am told the world was indeed very beautiful.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That is quite irrelevant.”

  Addison coughed awkwardly. “How does it...?”

  “We all have our own views,” Two replied, tapping his head. “Five’s is similar to mine, Four’s is quite...dark, and I believe One chooses no augmentation at all. But of all views, I felt this would be most fitting for you.”

  “But why?” Addison said, suspicion edging out his awe. “What do you want in return for showing me this?”

  Two smiled and picked up his wheelbarrow.

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “As I said, we currently only have access to one archive,” Two replied, heading down what was now a tree-lined grove, artificially-generated monkeys scampering out of his path. “And we’re halfway through. Even you should get to enjoy what little time is left.”

  “What happens when you run out?”

  “You don’t want that to happen.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because when we have worked through everyone else” he called, disappearing into rustling leaves. “The only person left to try will be you.”

  – Chapter 4 –

  Taka

  Addison lost himself for hours in his new jungle paradise. He picked his way along tree-lined holloways, clambered up ramps strewn with bracken and windthrow, battled across balconies overgrown with moss-covered vines and wandered through clearings wreathed in iridescent steam and dancing fireflies. It was exquisite, breathtaking, and for the first time since his levelling he felt something other than horror or enervating mindlessness. It was, simply put, a very good day.

  But like most good days, it ended with the real world calling. As he waded out of a tropical pool teeming with quick-darting fish and shimmering amphibians, Addison heard an all-too-familiar buzzing. The mantis drone was lurking in the trees, flaring its carapace in impatience.

  “Oh, piss off,” he grumbled, squelching out of the water. “I’m coming.”

  Addison was late for his final appointment of the day. He arrived in the vision chair room with just enough time to scan the new returnee’s bio. According to the tablet the man was Taka Everett, and he was unusual in being both older and younger than Addison. Born fifteen yea
rs later but sampled when he was in his late thirties, the man was a decade older in appearance yet wouldn’t even have been alive when Addison was skulking around behind bike sheds.

  At first, Taka seemed like every other returnee. His rap sheet covered all the greatest hits – overtravel, overconsumption, inaction – but once the vision chair released him all similarities ended. Even as Addison filled him in, Taka ran the gauntlet of emotions quicker than anyone he’d worked with. He ascended through denial, rage and despair to the closest approximation of acceptance Addison had seen in a returnee. But it was what he did next that was truly surprising.

  “Are you okay?” Taka asked, staring up at him from the floor.

  Addison blinked. He’d been preparing one of his go-to lies, whatever mistruth was needed to make the man as compliant as possible, and the question caught him off guard.

  “Okay?” he replied, taken aback. “Me?”

  “Yes, you,” the man said, wiping vat fluid from his brow. “Addison, right?”

  “Yes...”

  “Well Addison, I was wondering how you were?”

  He stared at the freshly-levelled man. Taka was handsome, with dark eyes and short hair cropped close to his scalp. But it was his expression that was most unusual. Despite everything, Taka looked almost calm.

  “Me?” Addison repeated, still on the back foot. “You just woke up on a dying planet, a clone, on trial, and you’re asking if I’m okay?”

  Taka grinned. He did so with his entire face, skin crumpling and folding in a very pleasing way. It was the first real smile Addison had seen since he’d arrived (no other returnee had smiled and the levellers’ expressions were of course interpreter-generated), and something did a flip in the pit of his stomach.

  Just a clone.

  “Baby steps,” Taka replied, still grinning. “Can’t process the heavy stuff yet, but I know unhappy when I see it.”

  “I’m fine,” Addison said.

  “You’re not one of them, are you? Those grey-faced waxworks I woke up to? You’re from…?”

  “The past? Like you? Yeah, they brought me back a few weeks ago. I was the first.”

  “So you had no-one with you?”

  “The levellers were there.”

  “Not really what I meant.”

  Despite the chill of the vision room Addison suddenly felt warm. This wasn’t helped when Taka grabbed the vision chair and pulled himself to his feet. As he did the metal blanket fell away revealing a lean, muscled torso.

  “There are clothes in your room,” Addison said, trying not to stare.

  But Taka wasn’t listening.

  “Shit!” he exclaimed, twirling on the spot. “My tattoos!”

  “What tattoos?”

  “Exactly!”

  Taka turned to one side then the other, revealing an entirely pristine body. “Blank canvas,” he said. “Guess their, whatdyoumacall it, levelling, is good for memories but sucks at tats.”

  The sheer silliness of the comment made Addison laugh out loud.

  Just a clone just a clone just a clone.

  “You had lots?” he asked, marvelling at the novelty of smalltalk. “Of tattoos?

  “All over,” Taka replied. “Mainly to annoy my parents. They hate tattoos. Hated, I mean.”

  “Any favourites?”

  “Plenty. They all meant something in their own way. Places, people, memories, tapestry of life and all that. That said, I also had this great big trashy skull thing right here…”

  Taka gestured at his side, showing more rippling muscle. Addison said nothing, but he must have said it very loudly as Taka hiked the sheet up and moved to the mistwall.

  “This a window?” he asked, rapping it with his knuckles.

  “Wall,” Addison replied, trying to slow his racing heart. “I’ve only seen outside once, apart from in the vision chair.”

  “You were in that thing too?”

  “We all were.”

  “And what a lovely sight that was.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Taka’s expression darkened.

  “It’s true isn’t it, what it showed me?”

  Addison nodded, and the returnee winced and ran his fingers over his stubbled scalp. “I’d hoped it might not be, that I might just be overreacting. But that chair did something, didn’t it? I didn’t just see all those things, I believed them.”

  “That doesn’t happen to everyone,” Addison said. “A lot of people deny it, or get angry, or go mad.”

  Taka looked lost for a moment then clapped his hands, making Addison jump.

  “Still, no use worrying!” he cried. “Now tell me, what’s this about a trial?”

  Addison couldn’t put his finger on it. Perhaps it was because the man was from a later era than him, modern and uninhibited in ways he didn’t understand, or maybe it was just his personality, but Taka was different. It was a cliché, and quite redundant given the circumstances, but he seemed so much more alive than the other returnees, vibrant and real where the others were vague and insubstantial. The other returnees were all interchangeable, sorted into Addison’s four categories – screamers, pleaders, deniers or ragers – but Taka was something new.

  “...Addison?”

  “Sorry, what?” he said, dragging himself back.

  Taka was looking at him quizzically.

  “Addison,” he repeated. “Isn’t that a girls’ name?”

  “It can be both,” Addison replied, a little testily, unsure if he was being teased or taunted. “My parents named me before the girl’s variant got popular. They weren’t happy about it.”

  Taka’s tongue poked the inside of his cheek.

  “I take it your folks weren’t the most… forward-thinking?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Something we have in common.”

  Taka grinned and Addison’s stomach lurched again.

  “So anyway,” the returnee said. “Trial?”

  Taka was still smiling that same dazzling smile, and for a moment it nearly tipped Addison into madness. The expression was so natural, so disarming, he almost threw caution to the wind and told Taka everything. He wanted to grab him by the wrists, scream the truth, yell at for Taka to run, hide, fight, anything to get away from the levellers.

  But then, of course, he didn’t.

  With a dull, inescapable clarity, Addison saw that helping this man would be his undoing. Even if Taka did escape (which he couldn’t), the levellers would know he’d helped. Then it would be him in the witness stand, screaming as the mantis drone turned his blood to steam. No, it was too dangerous.

  So instead, Addison did what he always did.

  He lied.

  “It’s not that bad, really,” he said, feeling something irreparable inside him break. “They just want you to be accountable. Best to indulge them, play along.”

  There was a subtle change in Taka’s expression, a minute shift in features. Addison knew instinctively the man understood he wasn’t being told the truth.

  “Glad to hear it!” Taka cried, clapping his hands again. “Now, you said something about clothes?”

  He smiled as he said it, but it wasn’t the same smile. It didn’t spread over his face in the same way, lighting him up from the inside. The smile was a performance, another lie, exactly like the one he’d just been told.

  “This way,” Addison beckoned, dying a little with every step. “It’ll be over soon.”

  * * *

  At his trial, Taka surprised Addison yet again.

  “How do you plead?” Two called from the floor.

  It was the final session of the day. Addison hadn’t spoken to Taka since last night, when the man had requested a tablet before locking himself in his cellsuite. Throughout the opening remarks, he’d stood like a soldier at parade rest, answering only when called upon, but otherwise silent as the levellers read him a litany of his ancient sins.

  “Your plea, Mr. Everett?” Two repeated.

  Taka cleare
d his throat and stepped forward.

  “Guilty.”

  Addison’s head whipped up. A murmur went through the levellers. On the stand, Taka was gazing down not in defiance, but with something closer to serenity.

  “Mr. Everett,” Judge One said. “Care to repeat that?”

  “Guilty,” Taka said, more firmly this time.

  “To be clear, you plead guilty to…?”

  “To the charges. Complicity, overconsumption, overtravel, inaction: all of it. Yes, I killed the planet.”

  Addison was on his feet. Nobody had pleaded guilty in all his time in the institute. He’d become so numb the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. And yet here was Taka, upending weeks of convention. Addison was seized by the sudden notion that if the plea were different, maybe the punishment would be too. Perhaps this was the trick, the secret way out hidden in plain sight all along. Maybe pleading guilty was how you avoided execution. Maybe Taka was going to live...

  Addison’s optimism lasted all of four seconds.

  “Then you are found guilty,” Judge One said, bringing down his gavel. “We thank you for your honesty and your efficiency. The sentence for your crimes is death.”

  Taka didn’t even flinch.

  “I just have one thing to say,” he said, voice wavering only slightly. “If I may?”

  The judge paused, then gestured at the court. “Please…”

  Taka cleared his throat again.

  “I’ve been reading about the past,” he began, as Addison looked on helplessly. “On that tablet of yours. Everything that happened, all that death.”

  With every word Taka seemed to find new strength, his voice growing louder and more confident.

  “We all knew what was going on,” he continued. “Back in my time, we all knew. The things I’m accused of weren’t crimes then, but that’s the excuse people always use after the fact to justify war, destruction, oppression. Times were different, it’s just the way things were, people didn’t know better. Except we did know better. I knew better. And I did nothing.”

  Taka waved a hand at the courtroom and the assembled levellers. “So if this place is where I atone, then so be it.”

  You can’t, Addison mouthed.