Nothing is inflammable, p.21
Nothing Is Inflammable, page 21
This isn’t right. Out of sync. Idiot! Idiot! They shout.
This isn’t right. Help us! I turn or am pushed, or both.
I see EXIT, above a door with a horizontal bar across it. EXIT, it says. Pushed again.
I turn back to the conveyor belt and take the next piece. This is what I do. Leave it! Help us!
The door says EXIT.
I push the bar and run.
There is a pattern to everything.
1, 5, 9, 13, 17.
Every other consecutive odd number. The next would be 21. Then 25.
10, 16, 23, 31, 40, 32, 25, 19, 26.
The numbers rising along a bell curve, starting at 6, rising by one and peaking at nine then falling again by one until they hit 6 once more. The next would be 34. Then 43.
34, 456, 654, 23, 0, 1, 1, 45.
There will be a pattern in there too, whether you are aware of it or not. The universe does not need your permission to sustain order.
These patterns are everywhere.
And yet I am finding it increasingly hard to find them.
I run from the factory, run from the hooded figures and their van, back towards the squat. I count my footsteps, each swing of my arms. Across a plateau of demolished housing, through gangs of children huddled amongst satellite trash and I lose my count, the numbers fragmenting like a nail bomb I’ve stepped on. This secret terrorist device steals the patterns from me and I almost lose my way, finding myself amongst the narrow corridors that run between the network of old chemist labs neighboring the squat. I recognize them only via the jagged tag art that has marked their reclamation by pirate radio broadcasters and aerosol punks which I have looked out onto over the past few weeks.
I use the more recognizable pieces to navigate through to the alley which leads towards the building where we squat and that is when I hear her voice. I stop, the rates of bodily systems ballooning within me, utterly out of control and so dysfunctional, but beyond them I listen and yes, I hear her voice.
Meaghan.
Her voice, but not lucid and distinctly described words—slurred verbs, groans. Like I have heard before, each night just as the area’s power grid surges in response to the infestation of night clubs and strip joints business hours commencing, three thousand miles of neon signage causing the squat’s bulbs to flicker and almost die. It lasts for forty minutes.
There is movement and I go towards it, around the back of a lab and away from the squat. Back through the low, grotty maze and brightly colored skate scenes, stopping when I hear and glimpse movement.
Meaghan.
My mouth opens to vocalize the word but doesn’t get that far.
It is not Meaghan but a man.
I can see in the reflections of puddles on the ground ahead of me a light coming from one of the other buildings and in that reflection, figures. The man has come around from the other side of the building and opens the door and for a brief instant the groans get louder. Still Meaghan’s voice. Door closes.
I edge closer, now able to keep a hold of the digits as I count my steps.
And now I can see a van parked across the way and I know I have seen that van before.
Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fift . . .
Now at the window, smeared with grease and partially covered by spray paint but with movement and light inside.
Meaghan.
On the bare floor in the bare room with harsh light pouring onto her. Three shelves lining the length of the rear wall, stacked full of glass containers and flasks, each labeled on brown paper with their chemical contents. A free-standing sink swathed in crusted mould, an elongated tap with a plastic cap over its opening.
And a hospital gurney shoved to one side, almost hidden in the shadows.
One two three four men around Meaghan. On her knees. One behind her, one directly in front. Two on either side, her arms outreached to them. Another one underneath her I realize. Five. Naked. All naked.
Moving like a disjointed mechanism.
Flesh-covered machinery.
Fucking Meaghan.
Group-fucking her with exactly the same rhythm as we use and the other man, the one I followed to the shack, enters the room and begins to remove his clothing. Everything but the plastic mask. That is last.
Tumble from the emergency exit of the factory just as a siren begins to sound and I don’t know whether it’s triggered by my opening the door or whether it’s to summon medical help for the injured worker.
Stagger through a meshwork of hot pipes doused in slimy condensation where everything smells of burnt metal and alkaline. I know the cold dead streets that lead me back to the squat, know how to avoid the main walkways but as I cross the parking lot a vehicle moves out of its slot at the corner of my vision.
I push my hands into my pockets and quicken my pace, weaving through the stationary cars and trucks but it’s following me. I begin to run and look back as I leave the parking lot, see a black, unmarked van crawling along on the far side. The sliding door that takes up one entire side is wide open and there are a number of figures inside. One steps out as I stand staring at them, desperate for breath.
His face is distorted by the plastic mask he wears.
This time I don’t look back when I run.
And I run.
I run to the squat and loose my numbers in a nail bomb of confusion and spiraling panic and before I can get to the security of the building I hear Meaghan and I see Meaghan and she is naked and surrounded by three men.
Four men.
Five men.
Joined by one more as he removes everything but his mask.
Cheating on me.
Without thinking I slam a fist against the window and the Verio’s look at me, so does Meaghan. I see her mouthing the words . . . oh shit.
It seems this night was built for running.
I awaken and water is tipped into my mouth.
I awaken to the sting of an injection in my upper arm.
I awaken and am vaguely aware of being paralyzed, a flat surgical light bearing down on me, blinding me. There is the sensation of cutting without the damage indicators that would normally accompany it. I wonder if I have a wiring problem or if I have been brought to the Engineers for repairs.
Recall error.
I awaken and someone speaks to me in soft, low tones. Lynch the landlord. Our knees are there to help us to jump higher, not to have us bow down. Freedom is the purest form of energy in the universe and there is no way to inhibit it. Oppression is merely an illusion—you can’t cage somebody. Your bars—these microchips, these pneumatics—don’t exist. All we are doing is destroying the illusion that you have no self-control. You aren’t a Verio.
I awaken and at first I think my leg is on fire, and my stomach. I look down and find myself swathed in dirty bandages. I am aware of figures around me, four masculine and one feminine. 10cc's a voice says, then I am asleep again.
Soon my conscious moments begin to sustain themselves over longer and longer periods of time and I watch my captors coming and going. They tell me they want to free me and yet they tie me to the gurney. Their faces are distorted by translucent plastic masks, turning their features to a watery putty.
Don’t worry, you’ll be as human as we can possibly make you.
And I consider, what makes them think I would want to be human?
Why would I want to be human?
I find it more and more difficult to run, my limbs burning, my chest feeling as if someone has shoved a hot rod through it. I hear the screech of tires as some or all of my captors bundle into it and chase me, Meaghan probably with them.
I stick to the smallest passageways, to zones polluted with trash and piping that the van couldn’t possibly fit through and emerge onto the walkway that leads down towards the docks. I can see fat, heavy tug boats docked into the loading bays and scarred fork lift trucks feeding them cartons and boxes like drugs. Great balled nets of suffocating fish are suspended from poles next to the boats.
I’ve lost the van for now. All I have is a displaced agony that flares when I think of Meaghan. Meaghan, my bullet in the head. I begin to see her in my memories of my time of incarceration and can’t tell if I am rewriting things or seeing them as they actually are. I see her standing by my side, holding my hand as one of the others fiddles with the exposed circuitry in my forearm. And wiping blood and sweat from me. And watching me carefully from the shadows, a cracked test tube between her fingers, the outline of her Mohican like the visualization of a heart attack.
I don’t know where I’m going! This is so inefficient, I have no route, I am wasting energy, there is no structure.
Then headlights are suddenly upon me and the van thuds over the old tram tracks that line the docks, swinging around to face me. The rear tires burn out and take off past the tugs and the tattooed workers, their protective oxygen masks throwing little spikes of memory at me as I pass them—their distorted faces, their handheld oxyacetylene torches. Up ahead a narrow bridge sprouts from the chunks of concrete that make up the loading bays and into the dark sea mists but there is something not quite right about it.
Behind me, the van clatters across the tram tracks, battering its undercarriage and showering sparks around it. The side door is open and shouts are coming from inside but they are lost to the winds rushing through me.
I jump over a small railing that runs alongside me, putting it between myself and my kidnappers and I am on the path that leads towards the bridge. Up and along, my boots hammering against the corrugated metal beneath my feet, leaping over another fence and a sudden rush of pain in my legs as I land. When I stand, more pain and I think I have done something to it.
The van screeches to a halt beside me, lining itself up with the access road to the bridge.
I turn and scramble to my feet, gritting my teeth at the pain that travels up my leg with each step, I can’t run as fast, can’t run.
“Wait!” The first discernable word from the van. I think it’s Meaghan’s voice.
The bridge seems unfinished, exposed pieces of scaffold and internal structures emerging from between the concrete moldings. Curved iron rods like the vertebrae of some twisted spinal column, flapping pieces of plastic sheeting and dead hazard lights. Battered construction signs.
The van starts after me again and I don’t even know where this bridge leads to but that doesn’t matter because when you’ve got nowhere to go each place is as good as the next. Then I see why the structure looked odd as I had run towards it—it really was unfinished.
Up ahead, the tarmac and metal walkways suddenly stopped dead, ribs of wrought iron poking out a few extra yards ahead but nothing more. Just the blackness of a sheer drop into the poisoned waters below. I came to a sudden halt a few feet from the edge and through the mists I could see a twin structure, as well unfinished and no doubt intended to meet with this one over the bay. There is a hundred meter gap between them.
Behind me the van grinds to a halt, skidding around so that it faces me side-on.
Nowhere to go.
I back up another couple of paces towards the edge.
“Stop!”
Unmistakably Meghan as she scrambles from the van.
Every muscle in my body burns, aches. My head is warping.
I begin to count the rivets beneath my feet.
“This isn’t what you think!” she shouts. Two of the masked men flank her.
“What did you do to me?!”
“Let me explain!”
Another bolt of pain shoots through my leg but it is nothing compared to that I feel upon seeing her. “I trusted you. But you were there . . . I remember now.”
“I know,” she says. “but please . . . let me explain.”
“You helped them do this to me. I don’t want to be fucking human! I never asked for this.”
“But you did! You did ask for it! That’s the whole point!”
“No! Fuck you! Fuck the factory! Fuck Punktown! Leave me alone!”
A strong gust of wind rocked me where I stood and I felt my heel rolling against one of the exposed splints of iron.
“God damn it I’m getting tired of this! I can’t do this anymore!”
“Do what anymore?” I ask.
Meaghan takes a breath and motions to one of the men beside her. He steps forward and for a second I think he is going to come for me but he holds up his arms to show that he is no threat.
“Take it off,” I hear Meaghan say, but only just audible above the winds.
The man reaches back and unclips the band that holds his mask on.
He takes it off and then I lose any and all numbers I have ever possessed.
“What . . . ?”
The man let his mask drop to the ground—this man with my own face.
The others emerged from the van, all of them there, each holding their masks in their hands and each with my own face.
“Meaghan . . . ”
My head feels weighted, my neck sloppy and weak.
“It’s okay,” she says, stepping towards me. Only a foot or two away now. Her piercings glitter in the yellow fog lights. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.”
“Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me.”
“I won’t.” And she reaches out and touches my arm.
“What are you doing?”
“Only what you ask. What you always ask—to be human.”
“I keep telling you, I don’t.”
“I know. It’s part of the pattern. You don’t know what you want.”
“Meaghan . . . ”
“You asked me to help you become human, to lose your Verio status. Every time you ask me and every time it doesn’t work because I don’t think it’s really what you want and every time we have to start again with a new clone. Six times already we’ve done this, for fuck’s sake.”
“Who are those men? Why do they look like me?”
“I told you already—they’re part of the same batch you came from. Each time we try and each time we fail.”
“I kidnapped myself?”
“In a manner of speaking. And I have no doubt we’ll do it again—because that is the pattern. That is the routine.”
“The routine.”
“It’s what we do. I don’t know why the fuck we have to go through it again and again but we do. We just do.”
The routine. My thoughts begin to fall back into place. There was an order. There always is an order if you just look deep enough.
“Are you going to operate on me again?”
“There’s no point. It won’t work. That’s what I’m telling you—it’ll fail. It always fails. But we keep trying.”
“Because that is the routine.”
“Exactly.”
“Why do you help me, Meaghan?”
She shrugs. “I guess even humans can find comfort in repetition.”
I look back at the men gathered behind her, my fellow batch-members. Our botched attempts at humanity—or humanity’s botched attempts at machines.
“I don’t trust you,” I tell her. “I don’t believe you.”
“You never do,” she says.
She reached out towards me with one hand, offering it palm up. Instinctively I backed off, onto the metal rod that all was that kept me from the black waters a hundred meters below.
“Don’t . . . ” she says.
I look down, my head still spinning, watching the lyrical pattern of the foam on the water.
And I step off.
Step One: Retrieve subject from workplace.
Step Two: Remove majority of non-human, Verio functions and devices from subject.
Step Three: Allow subject to engage with its own uncertainty and indecision and escape mid-procedure.
Step Four: Track subject to breaker’s yard and socialize.
Step Five: Integrate into human environment and test procedure’s success.
Step Six: Attempt to recover subject after procedure’s failure determined. Prevent any attempts at destruction or suicide.
Step Seven: Repeat steps one through seven.
“Here,” she says and hands me a mask.
I stare at it, this plastic configuration of my own face, then at the others with me, my brothers. I pull it on and we get out of the van.
“Good luck,” she says.
We all know where we are going, our paces match, our breathing in sync. We all turn back in unison to look at Meaghan as she slides the door to the van shut and we all reach the back entrance to the factory at the same moment.
The timing is perfect of course, as the end of shift siren sounds. We use our tools and bypass the simple locking mechanism, enter a long tunnel with strip lighting illuminating its length.
It looks like the air vents in a pyramid.
We follow the predetermined route, heading through doorways, down slimmer tunnels, through wider ones until we reach a long corridor lined with dark, leaking pipes and sodium bulbs. The light is staggered all the way along. We step into one of the many doorways that line the passageway and close the door behind us. It is a storage cupboard and we each begin the count.
We can hear him coming but it is the count that we listen to.
1297 . . . 1298 . . . 1299 . . . 1300 . . . 1301 . . . 1302
And then we open the door silently and there he is up ahead. He stops after a few paces, hearing our soft-soled footsteps and says, without turning.
“100-VC-755, bloc 5. 109098883.”
He thinks we were one of his supervisors because that is the pattern.
And we grab him suddenly and something drops from his tool belt, clatters to the ground, echoes the length of the corridor like a murderous scream.
In the struggle he turns and looks up and I stare right back down at him, my face reflected back at me just as it is when we fuck Meaghan and all he sees are a set of masked men looming over him.
Only there are seven this time.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
