Abaddonian Dream Read online

  In his pomp he had fairly hated the criminals he pursued. He’d been driven by a sense of righteousness as he’d worked to bring them down. And yet now he had the disturbing sense that he missed them. What did it say about him that he needed other people to get hurt to have a sense of self-worth? I thought I hated the itch, but really I enjoyed the scratching.

  As he stared out at the megastructures, each one a marvel of modern engineering, he couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. The world was changing so rapidly and he was being left behind, like one of the thousands of condemned buildings out in the Reserves just waiting to be bulldozed. He knew it was the alcohol that was making him feel this way - the six bottles of champagne that Toskan had ordered - but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

  Deep down he knew this was no way to live; a man without purpose, making up stupid, petty games to kill time while chemically blunting his mind. He wondered if this was all he would ever have, if this was all he would ever be. He wondered whether he should just jack it all in, jump before he was pushed, and take the next liner bound for Abaddon.

  Chapter 2

  Hammell was really paying for that dry day. A steady stream of regulation hangovers were easier to cope with than individual heavy ones, he knew from experience. Last night he’d been too ready to drink, too eagerly awaiting that first sip, and so he had gone, in a word, nuts. Champagne hangovers were bad ones too. Hammell knew the types well enough: Wine of any kind meant a sore head that wouldn’t get better even with pills, with champagne the worst of them. Beer meant a bloated, nauseous feeling. Mixed spirits meant a rollercoaster through sickness, lethargy and aching like he’d been poisoned. Whisky was the softest and easiest to cope with, luckily enough for him.

  In spite of the way he was feeling, he still made it to the office on time for his shift to start. He prided himself on never being late due to alcohol, no matter how much he’d consumed, though he cared less about the state he arrived in.

  The only real silver lining of the whole Providence thing was that he could sleep in the cupboard during work hours. As long as he was physically here, nobody much cared what he was doing. Of course, without Providence he wouldn’t have needed to drink so much, but that was a dangerous, spiralling road to go down, especially when the room was already spinning.

  Leaning out the door of the cupboard, he collared the nearest android - a high ranking civilian admin model known as a whitetip. He sent it to get him a coffee. As he waited, he sat down on the sofa and looked around at his office. Police H.Q. was a particularly nice building in a particularly nice part of the city, but the cupboard was a shithole. Tucked away in a distant part of the sixth floor, he and Toskan had been relegated to this dirty, cramped little office so they could vanish quietly without causing too much trouble. The state of the place was, in truth, their fault. Neither man was overly concerned with tidiness or cleanliness and the cleaning robots had forgotten they existed. The cupboard had been left to fester, and they hadn’t cared enough to do anything about it. In fact, it had become something of a competition - who would crack first from the squalor?

  When the hot, life-saving nectar arrived, Hammell sipped it and then kicked off his shoes, stretching out on the tiny, stained sofa. Clocking on times were staggered now so that every shift could be covered using fewer I.A.s, meaning he had two solid hours until Toskan arrived… If the older man even made it today - he’d been in almost as bad a state as Hammell.

  It wasn’t so bad feeling this bad, Hammell decided. Sleeping through the working day made it pass a whole lot faster. He closed his eyes as an alert came in. Ignoring the beep, he allowed his mind to drift away towards peaceful, restorative sleep. But the alert was persistent - it even went off directly in his implant, firing into his head like a thought coming from outside, jerking him rudely back to reality. That’s just not cricket, he thought. Direct firing was generally discouraged, only to be used in emergencies due to how invasive it felt. Annoyed, he mentally opened the alert and saw that someone was requesting the presence of an I.A. at a crime scene.

  “You’re kidding me,” Hammell said as he figured out a way to sit up. He thrust the palms of his hands into eyes as his head swum. Today of all days.

  As Hammell struggled to recall how his shoelaces worked, there came a knock at the door. “I’m fucking going!” he barked.

  The door opened and Commissioner Yun’s giant frame appeared, his face beetroot red - possibly from the coffee burn yesterday, or possibly not. “I.A. Hammell,” Yun said. “You’ve been summoned.”

  “I’m going,” Hammell said in a less abrasive tone.

  Under Yun’s watchful gaze, he staggered to his feet and stumbled into Toskan’s desk. “I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t been watching,” he said as he collected his coat from the rack and headed for the lift, checking the alert as he went. The crime sounded brutal - far too brutal for these days.

  Careful what you wish for, his brain told him.

  The guard at the checkpoint stopped Hammell’s car and made him wait as it scanned him through the open window. It was an older model; clearly first or second generation, made when soft robotics had still been considered important. It had once been white but now was a patchy yellow-brown, stained by the dust in the near-constant rain, making it resemble an old pillow without the case. Its non-threatening face, happy demeanour and soft, huggable foam body were somewhat at odds with its new calling as a security guard. Then again it was guarding a border to nothing.

  Hammell wondered whether the checkpoint could have been erected as a response to this alert. It would’ve been a lightning fast reaction, but that was hardly unusual these days. Whatever the reason, it seemed there weren’t even enough real jobs for androids anymore, which was a worrying thought.

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently as the thick, blocky head peered in at him, coming so close that he could read the designation on its forehead: HUBE-117. He could actually hear the motors of its eyes as they focused on him - definitely a model nearing the end of its useful life. Not the only one, his brain chipped in cheerfully. “Thanks for that,” he said aloud.

  “Pardon me?” Hube asked.

  “Nothing,” Hammell said.

  The android had obviously pinged his ID; now it was scanning his face and palm print. All of this just to cross a checkpoint which couldn’t even have been here a few days ago - a checkpoint which led to a glorified nature reserve.

  “Is this going to take long?” Hammell asked as he leaned away from the android’s intrusive head, noticing that its fake mouth was fixed in a barely detectable half-smile that was probably supposed to be disarming but which he found mildly frightening. Who walks around with a permanent smile? he asked himself. Only crazy people.

  “No, I.A. Hammell,” the android replied brightly, thereby indicating that it had in fact already identified him.

  “It already has,” Hammell muttered as the android ducked out again.

  He quickly closed the window to keep out the hot, thick air and turned up the air conditioning. No additional cold air came out, but the fans made a louder noise which made him feel better. At least they were trying.

  The android was probably only being thorough because of the nature of the alert. It also no doubt wasn’t used to seeing an I.A. in the field, let alone one driving himself, let alone one in a beaten up old car. But however justified its actions, Hammell wasn’t in the mood to countenance them. He’d knocked back enough pills to stock a small pharmacy, but the champagne hangover was staying true to type and his head was still thumping. The alcohol killers were probably making him feel worse, but he didn’t want to risk losing his licence and getting fired if some jobsworth android picked up on the alcohol emanating from his pores and breath. They were always looking for reasons and he was determined not to give them any.

  His mind began to wander onto thoughts of how to destroy a first gen android by hand and his implant began to provide him with helpful
tips from the networks. The problem would be getting through the foam to reach the mechanical parts …

  “You are cleared for entry,” the android declared suddenly, interrupting Hammell’s rapidly darkening thoughts.

  “I’m not landing a fucking spaceship,” Hammell said as he started the engine.

  “No,” the android replied all too literally. “You are in a car.”

  Hube sent out some kind of signal to open the creaking gate before waving him off in manner too enthusiastic for a security guard. Hammell did not return the gesture.

  As he entered the desolation of the Reserves, his mind turned to the matter at hand. He wondered if it really could be as bad as the alert had implied. Things like that just didn’t happen anymore. It surely must have been a mistake or a prank. But who was left in the department who would make such a joke? Only Hammell himself or Toskan, but his partner wouldn’t be organized enough at this time of the morning, especially after last night.

  He drove slowly, giving Providence as much time as possible, but the alert remained stubbornly red as his lonely car made its way along a disused four lane motorway. Should have bet Toskan on this one, he thought. He headed down a litter-lined slip road and made his way into a ghost town, a light mist adding to the unnatural, surreal feeling. The streets out here were already returning to nature, even before the wrecking balls, bulldozers and multicranes of the Restoration had arrived to tear everything down. Weeds were the dominant life form, though the odd enterprising tree was also finding its way up through the cracks. Twenty years from now this place would be a forest. All that would be left would be a few stones here and there and the odd overgrown foundation - relics of a dead civilisation.

  Following the instructions displayed on the windscreen, he was directed over ever more crumbling roads. As he passed empty building after empty building, he began to wonder what anyone had even been doing out here.

  He stopped his car when he spotted the rubber ring emerging through the haze: Basic model blocky androids known as boxbots linked into a chain to guard the scene, even though there was no-one to guard against. He took a final sip of his cold coffee and blasted his mouth with another dose of alcohol killer spray. After a moment’s thought, he gave his whole body a quick burst – he was fairly sure it didn’t work that way, but it couldn’t hurt.

  Stepping out of his car, the jungle-like heat hit him like a slap in the face - so hard that he almost vomited. It was like he’d opened an oven door - an oven with the humidity of an indoor swimming pool. He felt his pores open in a wave across his body and the sweat began to flow. His car and its air conditioning were even older than the checkpoint android, but just a couple of degrees and a fan were a godsend in these conditions. It was always like this and yet Hammell had never got used to it. Even in winter, the blanket of cloud overhead kept the heat and moisture in, creating a hot seasonless fug that lingered over the city. On days like today it was unbearable.

  His heart rate increased as he slammed the car door and began walking towards the rubbers, feeling the sweat patch growing at the small of his back. He hadn’t been to a crime scene in years, let alone one as gruesome as this would be - if it was real. Feeling out of practice, he recalled the very first time he’d ever approached a crime scene, making a mental note to act the same way: Pretend you know everything. React to nothing.

  Dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief, he pushed his way through the chunky ring of androids. They allowed him to pass, having been pre-warned of his approach by Hube. It always unnerved him, that - the fact that androids could talk to each other without anyone knowing. People couldn’t do that. Direct brain-to-brain linking had never caught on; it required a clarity of thought that was difficult for the jumbled human mind. Accidental thought projection was too common. Many a man had had his face slapped in a bar without having said a word. Androids though possessed the necessary clarity and could therefore communicate remotely, secretly, even over long distances. It made Hammell wonder what else they might be saying...

  He stepped into the alleyway and surveyed the scene. If it was a joke, it was an elaborate one. An ancient fire engine blocked the far end of the alley, squashed into the pavement like a small red tanker run aground. Its container had exploded, the foam reaching an impressive height up the tightly enclosed walls. Its sides were punctured with holes as big as footballs: bullet holes - shocking enough on their own nowadays, even without everything else the alert said was here.

  The narrow gap between the buildings was abuzz with forensics androids going about their business. Stein was with them, doing his best to make it clear he didn’t want to be. The lanky lab boss was fully encased in a double-layered bright yellow hazmat suit, even though there was nothing dangerous on site. If there had been, then the neighbourhood wardens loitering around the peripherals not doing much, as was their way, would have been kicked out.

  Hammell scanned the ground between the androids for the body, but no body could he see; just two blue overturned plastic barrels which had spilled out a liquid of some kind onto the asphalt.

  “So," Hammell said, adopting his most authoritative tone as he addressed no-one in particular, "who’s going to tell me what…” He stopped suddenly as he spotted something in the liquid: A bone. His iEye zoomed in and he made out several shiny shapes, including what appeared to be an eye socket in a beaten-in skull. “...is going on? Is that a man?”

  “It was, I.A. Hammell,” one of the forensics androids said from the ground, where it was photographing every inch of pavement with a massive resolution eye-camera wider than its head.

  “Well, thank goodness you were here to tell me,” Hammell said. “I was just about to offer him tea and biscuits.”

  A shaken looking neighbourhood warden, who had been throwing up quietly on the sidelines, picked his way over, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve as he came. “Interpol Agent E. John Hammell?” the warden asked as androids moved smoothly out of his path.

  Hammell nodded, the sight and very idea of vomiting enough to make his stomach do a backflip.

  “I’m Porter,” the man continued as he extended his hand. “Warden Porter. I… I’m the one who called you in.”

  Hammell stared at the outstretched hand before taking it. To his relief he found that it was dry. “So you’re the bastard who ruined my nap.”

  “I… I… Sorry?” the warden stuttered.

  “Nothing,” Hammell said. “Want to tell me why I’m here?”

  “The victim,” Porter said. “He’s still alive.”

  “I’m not so sure he is,” Hammell said, glancing back at the skull in the bloody puddle. “I’m no doctor, but…”

  The warden pointed to an ambulance parked near the alley entrance. “The other one.”

  Hammell raised his eyebrows. “There are two.”

  The warden nodded as he glanced down at the big plastic barrel. “I didn’t see that one at first. He was too... ”

  “Dissolved?” Hammell offered.

  “Something like that,” Porter said. “The other one was… better. Mostly.”

  Hammell looked the warden up and down. He was young, probably not long in the service. He probably couldn’t even remember a time before Providence. His face was pale and tinted green. He wasn’t used to seeing sights like this – but who was these days? Maybe this will teach him something about the ghoulish, voyeuristic tendencies of his profession.

  “They took everything,” Porter said, sounding shaken. “Everything. He didn’t even have the brains left to crawl out of the acid.”

  “Why did you call an I.A.?” Hammell asked.

  “Because… Because you’re an I.A.,” the warden said and Hammell stared without blinking to let him that was not an answer.

  “You don’t know what happened here, do you?” the warden said and Hammell began to get impatient.

  “I thought you were telling me.”

  A triumphant look appeared on the warden’s face and his voice dropped
to a conspiratorial whisper. “That’s right. There was hardly any information on the alert. That’s because…” he paused for effect and looked up and down as if someone might want to overhear. “…Providence doesn’t have any. The network failed!”

  Hammell stared blankly. “How do you mean, failed?”

  “Providence. It failed. All of it.”

  “All of it?” Hammell asked.

  “All of it,” the warden confirmed.

  “Cameras, satellites, surveillors, beacon trackers, pingers, face scanners…?”

  “Yes,” the warden said. “All of it.”

  “The megaAI?”

  “I… I don’t know how else to say it,” the warden said, clearly embarrassed. “All of it. All parts. All of them. Yes.”

  His interest mildly piqued, Hammell dodged his way through the android gauntlet, skipping over the liquefied corpse. He reached out towards the downed fire engine, putting his hand through one of the huge bullet holes.

  “You are contaminating evidence,” a nearby android said. “Do not touch anything.”

  Hammell withdrew his hand without mentioning the fact that he hadn’t touched anything but air, or otherwise acknowledging the android. “Because of the Reserves,” he said thoughtfully.

  The warden had followed him, but he seemed not to know if he should have, or if a response was expected of him. “I… I suppose so,” the kid ventured.

  Hammell looked around again with a newly critical eye. The streets here were too old, too poorly lit, too narrow. That was part of why this satellite town had found itself on the wrong side of the fence: It was too difficult to monitor out here. And since nobody was supposed to be here anyway, Providence’s presence was minimal. The all-seeing network might actually struggle with this one, Hammell thought with a growing sense of interest.

  Before the flicker of excitement could grow too big, he extinguished it with a cold splash of realism. “It’s probably just a black spot,” he said. “The megaAI will catch up when it’s tracked the people coming in and out.” Providence had after all been very successful in the past with drug dealers who had tried using the Reserves for their nefarious trade; this would be no different.