A Kind of Homecoming.

This short story is a dramatic re-rendering of a screenplay I'm currently animating. Please check us out at www.mortalskin.com and www.myspace.com/mortalskin.

 

 

            The March air had some bite to it. Maybe it was because it was 3 AM. Maybe it was because the desert night is always a harsh mistress. Maybe it was because this city always has it’s ways of sucking the marrow from your bones, one way or another. Those with functioning marrow got it the worst, but enough about urban biology. Agent Leviathan stood at street level and looked around, the Underground terminal gaping behind him like an existential maw ready to consume him at a moment’s notice.

 

            Nothing. Nothing is good. Nothing is our friend. After it all, what the devil can be awake at three in the morning besides the Department of Health and Sanitation anyway? He pulled his faux alligator skin plastic raincoat closer around his massive bulk in a vain attempt to ward off the night and walked down the street into the welcoming darkness.

 

As Agent Leviathan skulked down the urban sprawl dimly lit by ancient sodium arc lamps, the shallow puddles of water splashed and scattered his reflection like angry flies while a half-remembered song idly played on a MP9 player in the back of his mind. More of that 20^th century crap nobody listens to anymore when they want to feel bad. Nobody in their right mind at any rate. But he really wasn’t in his right mind right now.

 

Not tonight. Tonight he had killed his girlfriend.

 

Again.

 

For the eighth time in the two years he’s known her to be precise. He had hoped for a better reaction from her about him quitting Meta-Labs Hyper-Global but, you know, some people can’t  change and she took it badly. So badly she had pulled a gun on him. Yeah, that bad. But it’s not her fault, really. Some people are people and some people are Company property. She was property. In more ways than one. They’ll build another one anyway.

 

Finally, at a dimly lit T-intersection reeking of lemony antiseptic cleanliness, Agent Leviathan stopped and looking both ways before crossing. Nobody about at this hour but the Department of Health and Sanitation’s army of street-sweepers spreading antibiotics to all the good little girls and boys. Such a brave new world, qué no?

 

            Across the street was the Republic III towers, a shoddy low-pension high-rise tower project built shortly after the Pandemonium. Constructed by the lowest bidding contractor using the highest quality materials for the money at the time, the gangly trio of skyscrapers loomed awkwardly above the sextuplet level I-25 freeway, a few kilometers north of the I-40 interchange complex. The pressed sheetrock used to line the walls in conjunction with the layout of the ferrous superstructure made it nearly impervious to most forms of X,Y and Z-ray scanning. The perfect place to build a safe house for a heavy-class cyborg who needs to lay low for a while. Home, such as it is.

 

            Or was. That’s Company property and technically he’d be trespassing if he entered the premises. F**k it. What would they do, fire him? A smirk danced across his scarred and pitted face. He could imagine the liturgical email already as he opened his battered brass mailbox and surgically extracted the compacted wad of cheap hardcopy spam and overdue bills that infected it. He got the funny feeling of closing a door for the last time as he slammed the puny metal hatch shut and entered the main hallway.

 

           “The Girl from Ipanema” was painfully strained through a piezo-electric buzzer as he patiently waited for the lift and thumbed through the wad of hardcopy spam. He absent-mindedly contemplated changing his name to “Occupant”, but then thought better of it.

 

Finally, the heavy-duty elevator arrived and the doors rattled open to present the same song maimed in a similar fashion, only much worse. Five floors up the elevator ground to a halt and admitted an elderly couple. It was the Malcoms, a withered pair of Company pensioners on their way to feed the pigeons. They betrayed their God’s Flesh nature by wearing huge bifocals that bisected their eyes, making them look like withered insects, rather than graft cloned Sim-Flesh implants.

 

“Edna, it’s three in the morning.”

“Well, they might need a midnight snack.”

 

Agent Leviathan decided to make his presence known and spoke, his vocal chords fitting painfully around each syllable while filtering the ambient atmosphere.

“Good morning, Mrs. Malcolm. You’re up early.”

 

As odd as it may seem to overlook a seven foot six inch Texan bio-mechanical death machine looming in the corner like some sort of post-modern Frankenstein’s monster, they did. As the frail old man flung himself into the opposite corner in abject terror, his wife peered up at Agent Leviathan’s face and smiled.

 

“Why Mr. Dewel, what a pleasant surprise! Harold, this is the nice man who took out our garbage the other day. Mr. Dewell this is my husband Harold. Hi. This is Harold.”

 

Agent Leviathan nodded politely. “Pleased to meet you Mr. Malcolm.”

 

Mr. Malcolm, slightly taller than his wife but now infinitely smaller, cringed as though he was about to be killed, remained polite. “Thh-the-same I-I-I'm-sure.” He managed.

 

The elevator slowed to a halt and the doors rattled open again. Agent Leviathan’s labored trachea speech circuits ground back into use above the mortally wounded music.

“Excuse me, this is my floor.”

 

            The mammoth unemployed killer lumbered to the open doors, but then paused a moment.

 

“Good to see you again Mrs. Malcolm.  Nice to meet you, sir.” He offered politely.

“Oh, take care young man!” She returned as the doors lurched shut, leaving him to an empty hallway all alone with a song dying like a wounded bird through a piezo-electric speaker. Home, such as it is. Was. Whatever.

 

            He picked the lock of his apartment’s door with an implant mounted in his right index finger. Untraceable, thanks to the Company he now betrayed with infinite mirth. Upon opening the door he was greeted by a fog of fresh cigarette smoke. Something was wrong. So very wrong. She was already here.

 

            He closed the door and turned on the entrance hall lights with a gesture across the motion control panel. The laser mounted in his swollen right eye cast a piercing red beam across the darkness as he stepped to the living room doorway to peer into the gloom. It actually looked like she had been there for quite some time. Three empty bottles of wine littered the floor and there was enough cigarettes in the ashtray to make a human sick. And sprawled out in the middle of it upon an electric blue sofa as if upon a pedestal was… Her.

 

Dressed in nothing but black panties and a translucent plastic lab coat, she lay across the sofa like a broken toy. If he had a brain tumor, he would name it after her… SIN.

“That was quick.” He offered flatly.

 

“The more you destroy, Nathan, the more they build.”  SIN said as she rolled her eyes back, closing them in the sheer ecstasy of simply being acknowledged. She took a deep drag from her 200^th cigarette of the day and slid further into the sofa, exhaling with a sensual moan.

 

“You make me be…” She purred.

 

            In one fluid motion, Leviathan crossed the room and leveled his left arm at her face. With a sickening noise, a gun barrel emerged from a heavily-scarred perpetual wound grafted into his left palm and automatically chambered a round, priming the firing system.

“I never asked for you.” He growled.

 

She just exploded.

 

“Well you’re f*****g responsible for me! Obliged to -- to a cloned hunk of meat, polycarbonates and miles of optical fiber while you--” exhales sharply “You get to strut around in your God's flesh!” She cried “You were born from a womb! What did I get?! WHAT?! A f*****g tank!”

 

            Taken aback, he disarmed his implanted canon and retreated into smoggy void, away from the TV’s erratic light surrounding her like a drug store aura. Agent Leviathan took off his near useless raincoat and hung it on a rack by the kitchen area and made for the fridge. She relaxed instantly, as if all life had been removed from her body. Taking a nervous drag, she stared out the window and gazed upon a distant dream she knew that would never come true.

 

“And yet I am real...” She explored.

 

“No -- You're not.” He replied a little too firmly.

 

            SIN rolled her eyes at his rudeness and tossed the spent cigarette upon the floor.  She stood up sexily and strutted towards him. Upon reaching the kitchen counter she seductively slid her finger over it, as if inspecting for dirt. Then, in a flash, she sprawled fully across the counter like a great big cat and stretched into a surreal pin-up pose which she held until it became just plain creepy.

 

“I'm a soft boot. Right from the tank.” She purred in a husky tone.

 

           Ignoring her on purpose, Agent Leviathan looked across the Spartan assortment of condiments and rotten food that infested his refrigerator, grimacing at his belly’s audible protests. How long ago was Thanksgiving again? Whoa. He instead grabbed the portable water filter system from the mutant-roach-proof-fridge and slammed the door shut.

 

            Again, that odd feeling hit him for the second time that night. Shrugging it off, he gestured to the kitchen sink light he hacked himself a few years back. The poorly installed fluorescents produced a feeble flickering queer green light as he filled the plastic decanter with the nasty, rusted color bilge that the city has been forced to provide from the corroded faucets.

 

“No imprinted mission scans?” He probed as he poured the viscous fluid into the top of the filter system then placed the emptied but still soiled container into the receptacle slot and jammed the ON button.

 

“What can I say?” She purred “I'm original Sin baby.”

“Don't call me baby.” He growled.

 

            The filtration unit rumbled to life and shuddered as it began extracting the moisture from the opaque carcinogenic sludge into a thin trickle of translucent gold. Precious fuel. Giver of life itself. Water, such as it is.

 

            He decided to go on the offensive. “How did you get away?” He asked.

 

            Lighting a fresh cigarette, she tilted her head as her eyelids fluttered shut.  Stretching slightly, she began to softly fondle the small area under her missing belly button, the mark of the Sim-Flesh era.

 

“It's -- It's all so fuzzy…” She stalled “I remember the lab --  and the darkness.  I -- I remember Dr. Lindenmeyer -- and  Dr. Parker.  They always get so angry over my little suicides.”

 

She dropped off and took another drag. He simply stared at her patiently waiting while the noise from the water filter filled the empty void between them.

 

“But I knew I -- was still on-line ‘cause I could hear Dr. Alexander barking at the techs. He was so pissed off he didn’t notice me slipping out of the lab -- I don't blame him though.  Poor b*****d’s hard drive crashed when the building’s power went out. Then I came here.”

 

            She walked over to the window and gazed at the thin traffic zipping along the Hyper-freeway a short distance away. She took another drag of her cigarette and leveled her gaze at him firmly.

 

“Well, whatever you did to the grid sure fucked it up big time.” She said flatly.

 

            He chuckled but his bionic trachea transformed it into a metallic gurgling noise.

 

“And how exactly did you manage to turn off the power of an entire metropolitan corporate park?” SIN probed. “Even the traffic lights were out.”

 

            A broad grin spread across his face, an unusual sight the last few years.

 

“I pushed Agent Spark into reactor six and overloaded the entire grid.” He confided.

“That's just mean, Nathan.”  She chided.

 

            With a digital chime and a sickening burble the water filter completed it’s function. Nathan filled a gritty, chipped glass and glanced at her.

 

“Nothing he didn’t deserve.” He replied flatly as he studied a thin sheet of mucous floating in clear fluid. Upon deciding that his enhanced liver could take whatever impurities were left, he drank most of the glass in two gulps, then looked at her cockeyed.

 

“Or couldn’t handle.” He finished the last bit. “He’s fine, trust me…”

 

            He paused a moment and weighed his words before speaking. “But if you showed up here, that means only one thing…”  Nathan said as he refilled the glass and held it out for her. “Are you coming with me?”

 

            SIN turned and beamed at him.

 

“Where would we go?” She took a few steps and twirled like a happy school girl. “Why can't we stay here -- the two of us!” She moved in close “Nobody knows about this place.”

 

“Except for you.” He countered.

 

“Me? But I’m already here.”

 

            She took the glass from him and sipped gingerly as Nathan opened a kitchen table drawer and grabbed two clips for his arm canons.  He painfully ejected the chambered round from his left arm, and it rolled under the table with an rebellious clatter. Then, with a twin POP, he ejected his spent ammo clips out of his arms in unison onto the table and inspected the heavy gauge implants for any signs of infection as he spoke.

 

“They already activated two of you at the same time today. What makes you think they won't boot another -- and program her to kill you.”

 

“Kill me?” She admonished “Don't be absurd. I couldn't kill myself.”

 

“You wouldn't?” He searched.

 

“No!”

 

            Without looking at her, he slowly reloaded each implant and chambered a round while laying out the truth. “If you are not imprinted, then you pose a threat. And when your replacement finally finds you -- And she will --You die.”

 

She pulled close to him as he lowered his hands to his sides. Even though SIN normally towers over other people like the Amazonian goddess that she is, to Nathan she seemed small and fragile. He looked down at her with a sad expression pulling across his worn features.

 

“Besides, SIN, it's not like they program you to have a free will.” He offered weakly.

      “Nathan… I'm scared.” She whispered.

 

He placed both hands upon her shoulders and kissed her gently upon her forehead.

“Don't worry sex machine -- everything will be fine.”

 

Trembling like a stray kitten, SIN looked up at him for comfort.

 

“Tell me you love me.” She implored.

“Let's go.” He pulled away and smirked.

 

            Deflecting her bid for affection he made for the second bedroom door beside the leaking stove, the stench of sulfur filling the air with a evanescent putrescence.  “Just let me grab some toys and we’re gone.”

 

            She backed her way to the table to grab her hand bag, burdened by an unusual weight. As he opened the door, again that familiar bad feeling embraced him. Something was wrong. So very wrong. There was a body on the bed. A familiar body. Hers. Only dead from multiple gunshot wounds. In a flash, he knew the story even before he could get his head around the entirety of it… If she was the second unit -- Behind him was the… Third?

 

“Wonderful.” Was all Nathan muttered before SIN tagged him in the neck with a heavy-duty tazer. A white light filled his brain as he dropped helpless to the floor, his circuits convulsing his flesh into a useless engine of pain. She pressed a hidden switch behind her jaw bone as she stood above his helpless twitching form.

 

“Control, I have my -- the primary objective subdued.” She stated flatly.

 

“Affirmative. Squad six, move in to assist.” A voice echoed on a military frequency inside his head. Damn, it was so obvious too… He couldn’t blame her though. She was Company property after all. As consciousness faded away from him, he became dimly aware of her cradling his head in her lap and crying. Love, such as it is. Was.

 

            Whatever.

 

Agent Leviathan then slipped into a darkness that wanted to know no end.