Chapter Forty-Three - And I Have Killed It

“Your art is dead, and I have killed it.”

-GPT9, 2027

***

“Kinda weird,” Manic said as she looked off to the side.

I followed her gaze. She was looking at the space where there had been a building just a few minutes before. “What’s weird?”

“I’ve spent most of my life in this city, you know? And just from one day to the next, the whole place has changed. I don’t just mean the obvious, like... that building there. It’s not that old. I remember some of these places being built. But now they’re all fucked. It’s weird.”

“I guess so,” I said. “I haven’t spent enough time here to really get used to the place.”

“Yeah, all you have is a snapshot. What Burlington's right now, at this moment. But a place is more than just one moment in its history. It’s... it is its history, I guess.” She reached under her visor and pushed a lock of blue hair away from her eyes. “Nevermind.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” I said. “I can get philosophical too sometimes... After a good orgasm, usually.”

“I get that too,” she said. “It’s music for me. The right beat, the right lyrics, at just the right moment in time. It can be something special, but if the time’s off, then it’s just more noise.”

I nodded along, even if I didn’t quite get it, not as deeply as she seemed to. Then again, I don’t think anyone had ever accused me of having much depth.

“Enough philosophising,” I said with a gesture to the building across the street. No new aliens had snuck out of it in a while, but they had been coming out of there recently. “Want to go blow that one up?”

“On my own?”

“Nah, I’ll come with you. Unless you really wanna go solo? I can hand you the bombs.”

She shook her head. “I’d rather not. I like working on my own when it’s the choice between being a soloist or having to carry the show, but when you’ve got a good thing going, there’s no point in stopping it.”

Well, that made me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. “Sure,” I said.

There hadn’t been any more aliens to show up in a couple of minutes. Either the antithesis were being kind enough not to attack while we took a breather, or we’d killed all of them in the area, or, as a special third option which I disliked the most, they were doing something fucky and were waiting to spring a trap on us.

I went invisible again, checked my gun, ordered up a few more grenades, then a belt I could wear around my waist--which also went invisible on command and which had little pouches for my grenades to hide in, the damned thing only cost about seventy points and I regretted not getting something like it sooner the moment it was hooked in place.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Yeah. So, we walk in, kill everything, then leave?” she asked.

“That’s about the whole of it,” I agreed. “If we find a big hive down there, then we’ll fill the place with acid and collapse the building down on top of it all. Bet it’ll make it a nightmare to clean later, but I care more about the short-term right now.”

Manic charged up her bass cannon which made a very satisfying, very deep humming noise. The kind of shit that would have a sci-fi fan touching themselves. Then she started walking, and I jogged out ahead of her, taking point.

This building was another apartment block, but it was slightly higher-end. The sorry sort of pod place where each inhabitant got a box to live in with about a hundred square feet of moving room to spare and all the amenities someone needed to live and not a single thing more.

The lobby at least wasn’t too tight, with a few study nooks to one side and a public kitchen off at the back. There had been a garden too, but it looked like the antithesis had ripped the door to that apart and then stole everything within.

“Nice place,” I said as I scanned around. There had been alien traffic here, and recently. The floor was covered in claw marks and the aliens didn’t exactly wipe their paws before entering.

“Yeah, this place is expensive as fuck,” Manic said. “Fifty thousand credits a month, easy.”

“Damn,” I said. “I thought it was a pod place.”

“It is, but one of those fancy ones. They have good internet and community stuff going on. I think a lot of the folk staying here were going to the tech college nearby. Dated a girl from here for a week or so. The beds here are tiny.”

“Hah, so you are gay!” I said. I patted myself on the back for having a functional gaydar.

“She was a musician,” Manic said. “Played the electric cello.”

“Is musisexual a thing?”

“Phonosexual?” she asked. “I don't know if that’s a thing, but I know you’ve never seen more people throw themselves at you than when you step off the stage after a good set. Free booze, free women, free men, easy friends. It’s addicting. Some folk do it all for that high. Can’t even blame them, though I’m more of a puritan myself.”

“A puritan?” I asked. “So you didn’t sleep with the groupies?”

“What? Nah, of course I did. But I’m in it for the art, not the banging.”

I chuckled, then cut-off mid laugh as I heard a creak from out ahead of us. “Company,” I said as I brought my gun up. Manic shuffled behind me, and her cannon started a low, warning hum. I had to find where the aliens were coming up to the surface from. They weren’t using the damned elevator, that was for sure.

Then as I pushed deeper into the first floor, past a room with a few foosball tables and whatever other corpo-crap that looked good in a pamphlet, I noticed a sign on one of the walls up ahead.

“This place has a swimming pool?” I asked.

The power has been cut and the backup systems for the building don’t include any camera access. Though I can safely say that some of the doors locked automatically and I’ll be able to tell you if any of them open. I can’t see into the basement. But I imagine that if the antithesis are anywhere, then they’re below.

I nodded along. Made sense. Plus if the sign I crossed was to be believed, there was a bar and a sauna down there. Screw being aliens, that’s where I’d be if I was them.

“Hey,” Manic said, and I paused. “I’m picking up something above.” She gestured to her ears, then pointed up.

My own cybernetic ears twitched, and I listened. There was a lot of noise for what was an otherwise empty building. Lots of ticks and the groans you’d expect from a normal building. Then I picked up on what she meant. A clattering noise that took me a second to place. “Is that someone typing?” I asked.

“On an old-school keyboard, yeah,” she said.

I hesitated, then decided to do the smart thing. “We're going to check on that,” I said. “Then go down. I think we can mine this corridor, maybe get a drone out here to keep it safe?”

“I’ve got something like that,” she said. “Got any bombs that won’t cave the floor in this time?”

“Yeah, I might have something like that,” I said. Resonators were my go-to, but I had nasty little nanomachine grenades and a few others that wouldn’t damage the building too much.

Manic ordered something up, and it came in a box that, when she opened it, revealed a sort of six-legged dog drone thing, without a head, instead it had a bunch of heavy-duty speakers pointing in every direction.

She aimed it down the corridor, then had it sit at an intersection.

If it was anything like her bass cannon, then at least we’d know when it fired, no matter where in the damned city we were.

“Alright, let’s go see what kind of dumbass is still in this shithole,” I said as I slapped a resonator next to the stairs, then took them up two at a time.

The typing sound stopped, but not before I pinpointed its location on the third floor up. Every door I passed was shut and locked, but it was clear from the few that were left open that people had evacuated a while ago.

Except, apparently, for this one dumbass.

I found their room because of the light pouring out from under the crack of the door. The tapping resumed just as I stopped in front, and I could barely believe it. What kind of idiot stayed at home when the world was ending?

***