WANNA SCORE?
Of course it all started back in the old days. People would wake up and look out their window or in their mirrors and say "Holy fuck. Where the hell did my life go? What happened to the world I grew up in? It’s gone and the one that took its place is obsessed with pierced pubescent navels and superficial TeeVee violence and I don’t fit in here."
And on and on about being meant for a better, simpler time and not being able to keep up with the pace of modern life. So, of course, these people got really depressed and either self destructed or went to their obliging neighbourhood pill pusher (before they were known as Karma Readjustment Specialists) and got a prescription that helped them become fully fledged members of Progress. By this I mean they wore the same vacuous smiles everyone else did, limited their aspirations to six inches in front of their feet and that nasty depression was washed away by the soothing, soul-destroying mundanity of their new lives. These proud citizens didn’t really mind because it’s a lot easier to ignore everything going to hell when the drugs take off that third dimension off your personality.
Of course, there was the third option where you took a long, hard look at yourself and the world around you, decided to get the fuck over it and did your colouring in wherever the fuck you wanted, not just inside the lines.
But that was too hard for most people and the pharmaceutical subsiduaries were happy to offer well being in a bottle.
And business boomed. Why struggle? Why feel down? Why feel anxious? Relief was just a throat contraction away. Your insurance wouldn’t touch your policy with a ten-foot pole but that was a small price to pay. For awhile, there were even rumours of the pharmaceutical subsiduaries having a hand in the Mort shatter trade. Get your customers giving themselves green teeth and stomachs and then have all the long time users trying to get straight popping your other product just to get by. These nasty rumours were quashed quite quickly.
The whole thing was giving some bright sparks a few ideas though. If we can facilitate a level headed well being in someone for a profit, what about other emotions? Recreational drugs were fine but a pain in the ass to sell in those more image-conscious areas. Officials were more expensive for starters. These bright-sparks were thinking something else anyway. Something a little more subtle. And that’s where mood drugs came from, kids. Slayer bless biochemical manipulation.
Relationship or marriage failing? Take a few enhancers before bedtime and you and your partner would be like a couple of honeymooners all over again. It would be like that old magic had never left.
On the other hand, take a few emotional suppressors and that ex or that crush that you know just isn’t going to work out is history. No lingering angst for the dumpee and no scary stalker syndrome for the dumper. Everybody wins.
Enthusiasm, confidence, hate, love, the whole emotional spectrum. The fad became a trend which became a routine. There were a few tragedies and a couple of hundred thousand deaths along the way but that’s cool. Take a few guiltkillers and you’ll be right as rain. After all, who needs a silly thing like guilt anyway?
OPIATE OF THE MASSES
"For fuck’s sake! Someone hose out these cages!"
Doctor Belle J. Wilson felt his heart beat a little faster under the integral pocket protector of his labcoat. His hindbrain throbbed aggressively under the chemical prodding of the UV-Executive he’d taken on his three-minute meal break. He’d taken such a long break because he’d forgotten to refill his prescription of efficiency enhancers. The head researcher of Seraphim Opiate Biochemicals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Karma, forgetting to take his pills, he would have laughed if it hadn’t been for the red rage sparking through his skull.
Around him, lab workers in white jumpsuits scurried out of his way. Their own worker-grade fixes, submission drugs fed to them in their food, sent them scurrying from Wilson’s path. Electrons buzzing around a nucleus of rage. Once the date rapist’s weapon of choice, now in use in workplaces all over Uptown.
High-pressure hoses were brought to bear on the long lines of cages running in aisles through the lab. The test subjects reacted according to the product that had pumped into their bodies. Some gnashed and grabbed the bars of their tiny cages, too angry to protect themselves from the blasts of scared workers. Eyeballs popped and spilt their yokes into the drains, lost amongst the excreta. Others sat despondently as the stinging spray lashed them, uncaring as blood beaded on naked flesh. The lucky ones moaned and begged for more, lost in endorphin overload, pumping their hips against the torrent. The sensation of their flaunted genitalia abrading under the pressure just made them beg for more.
Wilson grinned savagely, riding the urge to seize a hose and blast away this wailing mass of refuse. Downtowners made excellent guinea pigs and even better entertainment. Then he felt the need to hose down his entire staff with a satisfying hail of lead. A sleek, black Power Reaper bucking in his hands. He almost came at the thought and craved a plate of raw, bloody meat.
He was so wrapped up in his rush he didn’t notice the anomaly in his workers. One worker’s white suit deviated from the company standard, a baggy one piece plastic overall with hood, goggles and respirator, emblazoned on the back the SOB logo in flowing golden script. This figures’ suit was white but of a bizarre cut. A black sculpted mouthpiece enclosed the bottom half of its face, while a gleaming chrome visor hid its eyes. The straight bladed sword strapped across its back was most definitely not company issue.
The figure walked casually down the centre of Wilson’s aisle. Water beaded on the intruder’s visor, trickling into the contours of its mouthpiece. On either side of the figure, oblivious lab workers continued their cleansing.
When Wilson, lost in gleeful visions of slaughter, collided with someone. His anger peaked.
"You’re fucking fired, you’re fucking dead, you’re fucking historeeeeeeeeekkkghgh…"
The hand that closed over Wilson’s windpipe felt like a vice. Some part of the doctor’s mind, struggling under the heaving anger of the UV-Executive tried to remind him he’d been the victim of a degenerative birth disorder and was only two feet tall. With very fragile bones. The rest of Wilson’s mind shouted it down.
"You’ve got a real anger management problem there, Doc," the Itto-ryu grated.
"Kill this fucker!" he screeched to his staff, dangling in the Itto-Ryu’s grip.
The closest worker turned the hose on the intruder. Casually the Itto-Ryu swung Wilson in the path of the jet.
"STOP! YOU FUCKING PRICK! STOP IT!"
The worker submissively lowered the hose, leaving Wilson soaked in antiseptic solution and sobbing over his shattered pelvis. The other workers hesitated, thoughts clouded by years of chemical conditioning.
The Itto-Ryu walked over to a panel at the end of the aisle and examined it for a second. The lab had fallen silent except for the dripping of water and the odd caged growl. Wilson had lapsed in shock.
The Itto-Ryu’s free hand drifted over the panel’s buttons. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm wailed.
"Eeenie, meenie, minee…" the Itto-Ryu sung.
The workers watched him cautiously, still unsure what to do.
"Mo!"
When the Itto-Ryu hit a button, the cages sprung open. Things stood utterly still in a state of almost Zen-like perfection, a moment of mass epiphany, a second of workplace satori.
"Oh dear," one of the labworkers whispered.
"MMMMMAAAAARRRGGHHHHH!"
Test subjects dosed on lethal levels of uppers, aggressors, hate pills, artificial road rage and synthesised PMS burst from their cages with a terrifying wail. The use of the water jets only seemed to piss them off.
The Itto-Ryu carried Wilson towards the lab’s enclosed office as the slaughter commenced.
A tall, blonde woman threw herself in their way. Her hair was slick with blood and antiseptic. Her pupils were bloodshot and her teeth ground together.
"Killyoucheatingprickgoingtofuckingkillyouunfaithfulcocksucker!"
The Itto-Ryu punched her in the lower stomach with his free hand. There was a sound like an axe chopping wood and the test subject collapsed on the floor vomiting.
"Hate being famous," the Itto-Ryu told the doctor as he kicked open the door to the office.
Wilson groaned as the Itto-Ryu lay him across the large desk. From here he could see the lab through pain-bleared eyes. There was a lot of red out there. He could care less, he really needed a fix.
He watched the Itto-Ryu start to tamper with the office’s standard-issue vid and comm systems. There was soon a tangle of spliced fibreoptics coiled on the floor.
"Do me a favour, Doc," the intruder grunted as it trimmed wires. "Hit the priority alarm for me would you?"
"Neerrgh," Wilson groaned, pain washing over him in waves.
The Itto-Ryu looked over its shoulder and Wilson could have sworn it was smiling.
"Be a good boy and old Uncle Shadow’ll give you some shit."
The office and the lab outside were bathed in a flashing red light. A klaxon groaned, drowning out the diminishing screams of the lab workers.
The Itto-Ryu loomed over Wilson, the red light of the priority alert making it looked as though it was covered in gore. The doctor’s eyes focused on a tiny bubble derm in the Itto-Ryu's fingers.
"Good li’l junkie," the Itto-Ryu crooned and placed the derm against Wilson’s inner arm. Almost instantly, the pain from Wilson’s shattered body was replaced by a comfortable euphoria. His vision focused and thoughts emerged, left behind by the receding pain like shells on a beach.
"You’re that terrorist everyone’s been talking about on the news. You’re the White Shadow."
"Guilty as charged," the Itto-Ryu answered as it taped an eyeball sized black sphere to the inside of the office window. A strand of grey fibreoptic connected it to the mess by the comms board.
"You’ll be the Red Smear soon. That priority alarm summons the company rep. Seraphim’s going to tear you a new one."
The doctor chuckled, fearless and buoyed on endorphins.
"Yeah, I’m shaking in my tabi boots."
The doctor was about to reply when a golden light washed through the windows of the office. A voice, bass heavy and angry, reverberated off Wilson’s bones.
"ADVANCE, BASE ASSASSIN AND FACE THY DOOM!"
The Itto-Ryu’s visor blazed as it stepped towards the door of the office.
"That’s my cue."
Seraphim was a SOB Sponsored Contract Killer. Chosen from an elite screening program, fitted with the latest Nuke Tendon enhancements and Karmaments, he was an icon of Progress and a protector of his company. The other powerful corporations boasted similar assets and the CK’s often clashed during violent takeover bids and corporate cross-promotional actions, let alone scheduled Circuit matches. Handsome, powerful and deadly, Seraphim was one of the most state of the art Karma enhanced humans that money could buy.
He flexed his great foil-flesh wings as he hovered over the remnants of the company’s premiere testing laboratory. Primarily for show, his wings hid the anti-grav module that sat on his back. Its energy emissions produced the golden glow that illuminated the laboratory and the savages who had slaughtered the loyal employees of SOB.
One growled and shouted at him, waving a red fist at the angelic presence out of reach. Seraphim decided that this was a sufficiently aggressive action and opened fire with the gold-plated MAL cannon he called ‘Judgement".
HEAP ammunition reduced the test subject to a fine red mist as Seraphim turned Judgement on the rest of the unclean host. Screams and explosions tore through the lab as the angelic warrior systematically roved down each aisle. Seraphim noticed several loyal employees cut down in the carnage but knew they would want to be sacrificed for the glory of the company. Besides he couldn’t be bothered switching on the auto-aiming software built into Judgement.
A pair of naked test subjects were the last targets. They had sat in the corner of the lab, moaning with every fresh shockwave and fire burst, experimental versions of Personal Interest still singing through their systems. Seraphim hovered above them, untouched by the slaughter he had wrought. Judgement’s electronics whined as he finally switched on the aiming programs. He knew the intruder was still in here somewhere, the one who had killed those nice people at Shiver Securities last week, the one know as the…
"WHITE SHADOW! I CALL YOU OUT! BASE VILL…"
"Just shut the fuck up, you sad religic cash-in."
Seraphim turned, Judegement’s laser sights homing in on the white-clad figure that stood on top of a sundered cage. Flame flickered behind it, slightly blurring its infrared signature.
"WHAT SAYEST THOU, DOG? DARE YOU SPEAK TO…"
"You fucking heard me, ringcream. Now stop talking so loud, you’ll wake your mother."
"MY…MOTHER?"
"Yeah, she likes a nap after I’ve fucked her in the ass."
Judgement bucked in Seraphim’s hand as the warrior emptied the rest of the clip at the Itto-Ryu. Flame exploded where the Itto-Ryu had been standing. Seraphim’s optic chip and shortened synapses allowed him to track the White Shadow’s movement. He gaped between microseconds. In five years as a Contract Killer, he had seen some incredible feats of physical ability. What he saw now stunned him.
The HEAP rounds ripped towards their target, homing lasers strobing. As the first bullet screamed towards it, the White Shadow had leapt and landed on the marble sized projectile. Impossibly, the Itto-Ryu used it as a stepping stone to the next bullet as the first one exploded impotently on the far wall. The White Shadow leapt along the stream of bullets projecting from Judgement, its targeting software fouled by the speed of its target.
The Itto-Ryu landed nimbly on Judgement’s barrel and fired a barrage of punches into Seraphim’s face. The warrior’s head snapped back and his skin mashed against strengthened bone but his neck held under the assault.
"Guns are for fags."
The White Shadow spat into his face and leapt off the empty cannon.
Growling, Seraphim dropped Judgement, letting it fall amongst the blackened corpses of its victims. From his belt he drew Wrath, an eight-foot Claymore. The chromed titanium sword gleamed and buzzed as he swooped after the Itto-Ryu.
The White Shadow landed running on a bank of computer consoles and sprinted along them, the angel in his wake. Wrath cleaved easily through the consoles and Seraphim dragged it towards his quarry, sparks cascading in his wake.
The consoles ended at a wall, which the Itto-Ryu ran up, seeming to ignore gravity. Seraphim tore his sword free of the consoles and slashed at the White Shadow. The Itto-Ryu rolled and leapt along the wall as Wrath flashed in his wake. With a final surge, Seraphim bore down on the Itto-Ryu, spinning about in a series of arcing slashes.
The White Shadow twisted and tumbled through the web of death that the angel sought to catch him in. Wrath passed above and below him before he leapt free, landing lightly on the floor of the lab.
Seraphim gave a cry of rage and turned again to face his grounded foe. Behind him, the wall of the laboratory fell apart in great slices of clean-cut concrete. The wind from outside blew in, stirring smoke and setting Seraphim’s wings chiming.
A section of the White Shadow’s sleeve parted, revealing black armour-cloth beneath. Seraphim saw this and grinned.
"BEHOLD! YOUR END IS AT HAND!"
"Why? Because you cut a piece of fucking cloth? Fuck me, what do you do for an encore? Sew the buttons back on your jammies?"
"YOU…TALK BIG…FOR…A LITTLE…GUY."
"Oh, if I bleed you, am I not a prick? Get your ass down here so I can kick it, birdboy."
The White Shadow slid his sword from its sheath and pointed it at Seraphim. The angelic warrior smiled and descended to the floor. Just before his feet touched the ground, Seraphim flexed the powerful muscles that controlled his wings. The great glittering sheets of skin shifted musically and sent the smoke about the laboratory toward the Itto-Ryu in a great cloud. Seraphim surged through the smoke, Wrath extended to spit his foe.
"DIE!"
The smoke swirled violently as he charged through it, though his blade only slid in the floor. A knife through butter. He caught a flash of white out of the corner of his eye and deflected the slash just above the ornate crosspiece of his blade. Before he could counter, the Shadow was gone back into the smoke.
"Dumbfuck. You think this visor’s for show?" The Itto-Ryu’s voice grated from somewhere in the cloud. Seraphim’s optic chip couldn’t detect a signature.
"I can see your heartbeat, your signature, I can even see that you have no dick. Haw."
Seraphim snarled and struck at where he thought the voice had been. Wrath cut a crescent through the smoke particles but nothing else.
Screening programs commonly practiced a modernised version of castration to stimulate increased hormonal growth in their subjects. It was something Seraphim was a little sensitive about. The company had forbid him from doing anything about it. Tears stung Seraphim’s eyes. He told himself it was just the smoke.
"Advance and…I MEAN ADVANCE AND FIGHT FAIRLY!"
Smoke billowed as a cold, mechanical chuckle answered him.
"Fair? You mean take on a two hundred kilo, top-of-the-line killing machine armed with an oversized Claymore? Take on Seraphim, the guy with over four thousand recorded kills, twenty of them fellow Contract Killers? The one who single-handedly wiped out the Deliverance Separatist Army back in 883? The one who slaughtered half of Suburbia EDZ West because the citizens staged a mass boycott of your company’s products?"
The smoke drifted slightly and the White Shadow suddenly appeared, like a hidden picture in an optical puzzle.
"Girlfriend, I thought you’d never ask."
Seraphim exploded at his foe halfway through the ‘s’ in ‘ask’.
He favoured a frontal lunge, something that seldom failed him. Wrath struck forward, powered by its wielder’s enhanced muscles. The Itto-Ryu rolled forward, Wrath passing over his shoulder and he came up in a proposal stance. His own sword slashed up between Seraphim’s legs. The angel knelt in turn, angling Wrath to take the cut on the bottom third of the blade. The Itto-Ryu folded around the downward cut, rolling to the side and darting in to impale Seraphim’s skull. Seraphim hastily swept upwards, raising his arms and turning his body towards his foe in the last microseconds of ‘s’.
The White Shadow coiled away and sliced at Seraphim again. In the opening fractions of ‘k’ Seraphim had to drop the resolution of his optic chip all the way down to wireframe to keep track of his foe. He duelled desperately with a neon-green phantom that seemed to be everywhere at once during the middle of ‘k’. As the Itto-Ryu finished speaking he saw his chance and brought his sword down on the head of his foe, cleaving through the blur of the Shadow’s strikes.
A clean pain pierced his heart and when he gasped, he choked on blood. The Itto-Ryu had lunged low, sliding under Wrath’s almost invisible shadow. The assassin’s sword had lanced through the fractional space between Seraphim’s hands and Wrath’s crosspiece and into his heart. The eight-foot blade toppled away from its hilt as the Itto-Ryu withdrew. Seraphim felt his world grey out as his body began to shut itself down. He would survive, the Itto-Ryu had only cleaved…
A second pain took him through the chest again.
"Almost forgot that secondary heart," the White Shadow said and whipped his own vibro blade from the angel.
"I HATE YOU," Seraphim burbled as he died.
"Fair call."
"What are you doing?"
"Going to give you another shot, Doc."
Wilson had been tied into his office chair with fibreoptics. His hit was starting to wear off and pain crinkled in his pelvis. The company’s anti-interrogation chip would block out most of the pain but it wouldn’t be the same. Across from him, the Itto-Ryu had turned the sphere taped to the window about. Now it pointed its single liquid metal eye at him. He vaguely recalled it as some kind of recorder. The Itto-Ryu held another derm bubble in his hand and Wilson had a feeling it wasn’t a nice one.
What worried him the most was the company rep, Seraphim. His corpse floated just under the roof of the laboratory. His wings were curled and pinned to create a crude circle about his body. A long, silvery blade stuck out of his stomach, pointing at the night sky visible through the sundered wall. A snake of fibreoptic trailed up to caress the angel as it lay in its shroud of golden light.
"Like it?" The Itto-Ryu asked. "Couldn’t get a decent signal from these crappy commsets you keep here. I needed a satellite dish and I sure as hell couldn’t bring one in here."
"Why?"
"I need a little airtime and your pal out there will boost this signal enough for me to hit the orbital networks. We’re going planetwide, Doc."
"You’ll never…"
"Doc, please. It’s a little late for cliches. The SOB forces are shitting their pants because I just iced their pinup boy. They’ll be haggling over the price of dropship bombardment with Head Office even as we speak."
"Dropship bombardment?"
"Yeah. Life’s a bitch, isn’t it? Still, I’m gonna give you a chance to be a star before a few hundred space-launched projectiles turn this place into a crater."
Wilson was speechless, only able to stare at the gleaming derm in the Itto-Ryu’s hand.
"Smile, Doc. This shit will fuck you up."
A few minutes later, the White Shadow left the office and strolled across the devastated lab. He still had plenty of time. Getting out was always a lot easier than getting in. The double barrel transmission was timed to go in two hundred thirty seconds. The satellite bombardment would start seventy seconds from now. He had no reason to doubt this. His sources were infallible.
As he was leaving, he came across the two surviving test subjects. A man and woman, eyes glassy with pleasure, lost in a constant flood of ecstasy. He paused by them as they stood to cheek to cheek, enjoying the feel of each other’s skin. He briefly pondered warning them about the impending orbital strike. He considered the survival chances of two escaped SOB subjects.
"Nah, this is the happiest you sorry bastards will ever be."
Their eyes tracked him by the sound of his voice. They both smiled in pleasure at his grating tones. He chuckled and removed his faceplate. He blew a soft stream of air over their faces.
They groaned and fainted in pleasure. The Shadow chuckled and replaced his mask.
"Boo-yah. Whose got cross-gender appeal?"
He left the lab, leaving Seraphim to stare at the clouds. The clouds, they promised a new rain.
Grey figures sheltered from torrential rain, eyes transfixed on the slow-motion dance that played in the window. One dancer they all knew, some had lusted after him, others worshipped him. All had feared him.
The angel’s partner only a few of them recognised. They felt a thrill burn through their everyday stupor. Their eyes gleamed hungrily. This would be something to watch, indeed.
Burton Fisk and the rest of SOB’s board of directors watched the pirate transmission that squalled into being on their monitors. A devout man, Fisk had been pleased at the price he’d manage to purchase a dropship bombardment for. The pleasure evaporated from this Slayer-fearing man.
"Senti Fucking Slayer! Who the hell is that?!"
His board of directors looked at the screen, goggle-eyed.
"That would appear to be the er, White Shadow. Mister Fisk, sir," one of the executives managed to say.
"You people told me that this was a fucking hostile takeover from Darknight! That bombing the fucking hell out of our main lab was a good ass-deifying option!"
"Er, that’s asset denying, sir. It seemed the only sensible option. We thought only another Contract Killer could take out Seraph…"
"Shut the fuck up! Get me Head Office on the horn. I want that bombardment stopped ASAP!"
A director with slightly more initiative that the rest looked up from her Oyster. She shook her head.
"No can do, sir. We’ve signed off on the bombardment."
"PRECEPTOR MOTHERFUCKING TEETH! I’VE JUST PAID A FORTUNE TO HAVE MY OWN FUCKING LAB BOMBED!"
"This’ll play hell with our stock profit margins," a junior director said three seconds before Fisk killed him.
Eyes watch the dance end. Some of them are crying at Seraphim’s demise. Someone actually cheers. The pictures jumps and shows a small, pale man staring out of the television. The watchers resume their vigil, curiosity worming its way through them.
"Now that I’ve got you sorry fuckers attention with the obligatory bit of violence, I want you to listen to me."
The voice grates at them and more than one person frowns. They don’t like loud voices.
"The sorry bastard on your TV screens is Doctor Belle Juniper Wilson. He’s one of the guys who makes the shit you people pump into your bodies every day. You know what I’m talking about. Anti-depressants, downers to stop you being too up and the levellers you use to recalibrate your personalities. You sorry fucks let some pill maker take all those bad feelings away and let you be all happy. Why? Because a happy person is a docile and productive person."
More people gather around the screens, drawn by the crowd. Sheep to sheep.
The shellshocked man is replaced by a pair of coloured graphics, side by side. Watching medical professionals identify them as neurographs. Brain photos. The voice grates on.
"The picture on the left is the standard brain of a ninth century citizen. The one on the right is the brain of a first century stormer. A dumb stormer. These drugs are re-writing you at a genetic level. There’s something to pass on to the kids. Wake the fucking hell up!"
The shellshocked man replaces the neurographs. His lips are moving but the grating voice overrides whatever he’s saying.
"I can’t remember the last time I walked down the street and saw a single genuine emotion. People, even your tears are artificial. So now I’m going to show the results of an interesting little experiment. My assistant in this is Doctor Wilson and I’ve injected him with a chemical none of you sorry bastards have ever heard of. It’s completely killed the drugs in his system. The active ones, the residue, the whole thing. Flush ain’t got nothing on it. He’s got some minor anti-torture chips in his head somewhere that seems to cutting out pain but he’s basically having genuine emotions for the first time in years. Let’s ask him how he feels.
"Yo, Doc! How the fuck you feeling?"
The man gapes and looks blankly. His lips move.
"I…I…I…"
"Anything to say to all the viewers out there?"
"I…I…"
"And there you have it. This fucker’s been popping feelings so long he’s forgotten what it’s like to be human. When did that happen to you? When did those pills that made your life so much easier eat your goddamn souls?"
The voice stops and a door is heard closing. The crowd watches Wilson as he stutters his way through another few seconds. He looks confused. Genuinely confused.
"I…I…I"
The screen judders and shakes. Somewhere, a distant explosion shakes the stuttering man and his office. Sparks flash in the background. A flash reduces the picture to a blazing white field. Wilson can still be heard, barely.
"I…feel…"
WE APOLOGISE FOR INTERRUPTION OF BROADCAST. REGULAR TRANSMISSION WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE