B-spine Read online

  “Here the B-pup is euthanized. Its head and viscera are removed and reprocessed for feed because they’re no longer needed. Its sternum is split and the ribs spread apart, leaving a working skeleton, muscle set and circulatory system ready for reconnection.” One time, Elisabeth remembered working a double shift at this bay. She’d removed one hundred and thirty heads. She shut her eyes as she walked through the spray wall.

  Crash The Pad gaped as workers drilled and fixed pins and cables and sterilized electronics pods. They ducked arterial sprays as sure, swift modifications were made.

  “B-spined livedrives produce twice the power because they’ve got twice the muscles. That’s why every unit starts off as twins. The living A-pup is inserted into the B-pup’s spread body cavity and the two spines are clamped together with titanium pins between each set of vertebra. Mechanical linkages connect matching limbs so they move as one while grafts, Kevlar weave and recovered tendons bind muscles into single bulks. Recovered vascularity patches the B-muscles into the A-pup’s circulatory system and the B-pup lives again, kind of.”

  Air-powered bone saws whined and threw out pink arcs of marrow spray. Workers sweated behind their surgical masks as they sewed and pinned and drilled.

  “Finally, the M4 copyrighted neural patch splits the nerve impulses as they leave the A-pups’ brain. In effect, it parallel-processes impulses through the A and the B-spine so both connected limbs move together.

  “Then it’s just a case of putting everything back together. The remaining skin is stitched together and stapled and another B-spined wetware unit rolls off the assembly line. Chopping mall time – thirty seven minutes, first anesthetic to final suture.

  “Wetware officially becomes a livedrive when it’s fitted into a box and has a drive assembly added. Limbs connect to driveshafts through gearing. Pipes connect to food and waste tanks, external water pipes connect for heating. It’s just plumbing from here.”

  She scratched her nose through the paper mask. “And there you have it. Now let’s get out.”

  Crash The Pad stripped their wet, splattered paper suits off, washed their faces and emerged pale-faced into the cafeteria where Elisabeth was already standing in line. Hemblen tried to get them to huddle and start thinking tactically, to break down the spaces into fields of fire for when they stormed Bostov pharms. He was wasting his time.

  “You know what’s really freaking me about that?” said Jaime Calderon. “We’ve just walked the whole production line and seen how many units? You… hey! Yo, Charlene!”

  Their company guide hurried over gratefully. “This pharm produces three hundred units daily from a total biostock of over twenty thousand pre-operatives,” she droned, happy to be finally asked something.

  “Twenty thousand units,” repeated Calderon. “We saw twenty thousand animals in those pens and know what? I still don’t know what they were. Cows? Pigs? Antelope? Come on Charlene, help me out here.”

  Charlene gulped. “They’re D6 Massimovers. That’s a combined heat and power unit.”

  “Right…” said Calderon. “But that wasn’t the question.”

  Charlene’s cheeks flushed. “Then I don’t know either. No one’s ever wanted to know before.”

  Elisabeth reached the far end of the food line with a loaded tray and turned around. “You lot not eating?” she shouted at her squad.

  “You’re hungry?” Hemblen shouted back. “After seeing all that?”

  Elisabeth gave the biggest grin and picked a chunk of stew off her plate. “Oh for sure,” she said, chewing with her mouth open. “Working here for three years sucked big time but it did have one major benefit. Fresh meat for free, every single day.”

  Wednesday 12 March

  01:11 am

  MAIN GATE SECURITY’S thrown up a sandbagged bunker out front since Kirsty last visited the Meat4 Power pharm on Keaton. She sees figures hunkered down, pointing riot shotguns at her while she stands still enough for them to check out her uniform. She looks down and there’s a plastic baton round by her foot, one end scuffed where it bounced off the ground. She looks around at the forecourt littered by banners and scorched where Pepp-Air canisters have fizzed and spluttered. Crumpled placards read ’Livedrive Rights’, a trampled fabric strips spell ’Machines Have Feelings Too.’ She’s wondering if she picked the wrong day to carry an unlicensed concealed weapon when they wave her over. As she trips through riot garbage, the Jericho pistol inside her jacket feels lumpy and obvious.

  “Weren’t you a bit heavy on the crowd dispersal?” she asks a guard, his gas mask pulled up onto his forehead while he checks her ID on Slate. He looks as nervous and pale as she feels and she prays he doesn’t frisk her.

  “You wouldn’t think so if you’d been here six hours ago,” says the guard. “First time they charged us, my shift manager took three feet of steel rebar through the stomach. Second time they charged, it seemed the smart move to shoot back first.”

  “These livedrive rights idiots are usually such a quiet bunch too,” she says and he hawks and spits on the ground.

  “Yeah and they never usually use snipers neither. Livedrive rights? you’re shittin’ me. The whole fucken thing was a Bostov front, no doubt about it. They’ve been pulling stunts like this for weeks now, ever since that whole takeover thing blew up.”

  He waves her over to the lobby, its armored glass starred and buckled. She gives her name and waits again and wonders if she’s got the balls to pull the gun on Bishop. She wants to pistol whip him to the ground and call him a lying bastard. She wants to make him feel like she felt when Georgy grabbed her. Most of all, she wants not to be there. She fidgets and decides she should transfer the pistol into her rucksack and just then, the receptionist says she should go on up.

  The elevator’s slow, the livedrive in the basement stretching muscles stiff from hours of inactivity. Alone in the elevator, she feels the reassuring weight of the hired pistol in her hand and considers striding out in furious, tight-lipped attack mode. But her hands are trembling and she stuffs the gun back into her backpack and it’s just as well because when she steps out, it’s a total stranger not Bishop who’s standing alone in a darkened office that’s just rows and rows of empty desks and switched-off consoles. He looks ready to retire but tall and trim in a well-cut business suit. He also looks about as nervous as she feels.

  “Officer Powell,” he nods, beads of sweat glistening on his high forehead in the dim red glow of the exit lights. “I’m glad that you negotiate gate security. I was worried that they might be a little… um… trigger happy.”

  “If I was facing those meat-is-murder nutjobs, I’d be trigger happy too,” she says, glancing up and down the dark, empty office space. “I thought Bishop would be here.”

  “Bishop?” he says, uncertainly.

  “The guy from the club,” she says. “That little scumfuck Georgy told me to come here and I kind of assumed I’d be meeting him.”

  The old man winces at the profanity. “I’m afraid I don’t know either of those people. Meat4 Power is a very large company, Officer.”

  “So?”

  “So inefficiencies arise when attempting to deal with any matter person to person. The accepted solution is to assign available personnel in a best-fit capacity.”

  She looks around again. “You’re saying Bishop isn’t here?” He nods. “And that you are the best-fit to this situation?”

  “I was only briefed about this meeting a few hours ago,” he says, “but I believe I can handle this matter professionally.”

  “Well, the last Meat4 Power employee sent to talk with me was a thrilltat addict,” she says. “An asshole too. Being more professional than him’s no stretch.”

  He looks uncomfortably as he points across the office. “Now please, for your piece of mind, if you could follow me…”

  The deadroom is the only closed-off space in the open plan office, instantly recognizable by its thick door and the way it the sways fractionally when she steps inside.
The whole room is suspended on wires within the outer walls. Free-mounted, the deadroom won’t dissipate the vibrations of conversation. There are no windows to train cameras or laser microphones on. The thickly-insulated walls are wrapped in copper mesh to prevent transmissions. What gets said in a deadroom stays in a deadroom. In an electronic age, they’re the simple, straightforward solution to business confidentiality.

  There are six clear plastic chairs set around a circular perspex table and she chooses the one at the far side that faces the door. She puts her rucksack next to her where she can grab the gun. She places Slate face-up on the table. The man eyes it suspiciously. “It’s off,” she explains.

  “Perhaps if you left it outside…” he says.

  “Think again,” she says. “C’mon, it’s off, so talk to me.”

  He clears his throat. “Officer Powell, I only found out about you an hour ago…”

  “…you said that already.”

  He blinks sweat back as it falls into his eyes. “So given your current situation, I do understand your hostility. Which is why I thought this deadroom would give you a feeling of security.” He tries to smile but it looks pained and weak on his pale face.

  “It’s a Meat4 Power deadroom in an M4 building,” she says. “For all I know, you could have the whole place wired for sound and pictures.”

  He looks hurt. “I assure you it isn’t.”

  “All the same, I’ll stay hostile.” The old man blushes and blinks and she wonders how he felt when they called him up an hour ago and told him his Meat4 Power pension was riding on pressuring a Fed.

  He coughs again. “This much has been explained to me. Early yesterday, you witnessed a commercially-sensitive Meat4 Power clean-up operation. Although no alarms had been raised and although you hadn’t been detailed to enter the building, you did so and then conducted a series of unauthorized interviews that are now indelibly etched into your Slate unit.”

  She nods. “That’s about right.”

  He coughs and his throat sounds dry. “I’m… umm… I’m confused as to why you did this. Do you mind explaining?”

  “Truthfully?” she shrugs. “Some PD on your perimeter were rude to me.”

  “Rude?”

  “Yeah, rude. I hate that. I was all for walking away from the perimeter until they told me to get lost. I hate that too… being told what to do.”

  The old man stares at her for a long time before shaking his head. “You’ve angered the corporation that runs Toronto because some cops were rude to you? Isn’t that a little juvenile?”

  She holds up her hands. “You asked and I answered,” she says. “Of course, if I’d have known you were going to set Georgy straight on me, I’d have done things differently. Like I need this stress.”

  He nods over-eagerly. “It’s also put me in a difficult situation.”

  “And like I care about your problems,” she says and she stares straight at him until he reddens and looks away. He coughs and slides his fingers down his silk tie. “Officer Powell, I’ve been with Meat4 Power all of my working life. In that time, it has pioneered untold advances in priodiversity and cryobiology. It has invented the B-spine procedure, a power-to-volume wetware efficiency that’s yet to be bettered. Meat4 Power almost single-handedly saved this country from its current energy crisis…”

  “…and that lets you behave however you want?”

  “Meat4 Power employs one in five people in the Toronto Hub, a city that we built…”

  “…and you control the media and the PD and the employment and I’m nothing in the face of your power. Yeah, I get it, I’m not dumb, which is why I’m trying to play along. And I realize you’re not happy that I took the interviews but even if I wanted to overlook what I saw, I can’t wipe Slate clean. I came here for biopsy samples and security visuals so I can finish off my case. Give them to me and call Georgy off and I’ll be more than happy to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Nothing…” He looks so pale that she expects him to faint any moment. He swallows and tries again. “I’ve been told to tell you that there has been an unavoidable delay in delivering these items. Nothing will be forthcoming for at least two more days.”

  “That’s no good to me,” she says. “I can stall for one shift, maybe two, by switching off Slate’s uplink to FedNet. Any longer and my supervisor will start taking long, hard looks at every case I file. Delaying will draw attention to this case and that’s the last thing either of us want. I have to file today.”

  “That isn’t up to me,” he gulps, “I’m the messenger.”

  “That little bastard Georgy said the same thing.”

  “As I said, I don’t know who you mean.”

  “So go get Bishop. Let me talk to him instead.”

  “Again, I don’t know who Bishop is but I’m sure he would say the same thing. You must wait for a few more days.”

  “And if I do, will I get everything? Arclights security footage?”

  He nods. “Relevant sections of the footage.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “I can’t negotiate, Officer Powell.”

  “What about the burned BigBov?”

  He nods again. “A cold-stored unit will be available to study.”

  She tries to stop herself saying it. Tries really hard. “But it won’t be the BigBov from Arclights will it?”

  He blinks sweat from his eyes. “It will be the one that you sample for your report.”

  “But it won’t be the actual one, will it? Why is that? Did non-standard wetware kill the people in that club?”

  He looks close to tears. “You need to stop this now.”

  “Why do I need to stop? Tell me. Just so I know.”

  “Just so you know?” The old man wipes his forehead. “You need to comply because if you don’t, they’re going to grind you up.”

  Kirsty thinks it’s a strange choice of words. “Grind?”

  “I told you I was briefed and that’s what they said. Either you delay for a few more days or you and your family will be mulched into a container of out-dated wetware. The container will then be shipped off-Hub to be plowed into a cornfield at the far end of the Great Lakes. And that, young lady, is why I implore you to do what I ask.”

  She stares at this polite old man sitting there gray and trembling. She searches for a comeback line but nothing springs to mind.

  “Like I even begin to understand how big business works,” she says, picking up Slate and stuffing it back into her ruck. “One more day, one more week, whatever. You all know I can’t do anything other than play along. Don’t see why you’ve got to be such bastards about it though…”

  She stands and he stands and she sees a stiffness in his knees and a wilt to his shoulders and his fine suit all rumpled. He looks older than he did at the elevator. “I think you’re making the sensible decision, Officer Powell.”

  “Well, I think so too, Mr…?”

  He extends a hand. “It’s Jarrow, Arnold Jarrow.”

  She nods, doesn’t shake and hooks up her ruck as she walks out, leaving him standing there with a hand of friendship stuck out still. A sad, bullied man standing in a swaying room.

  Wednesday 12 March

  03:07 am

  THREE IN THE morning and the only people on this street are the ones maintaining it. Construction crews have work carriages streaked with road paint and tar and hooked up to an idling Tramtrax. The air smells of hot asphalt and echoes to hammering as Kirsty takes a break. She sips fish-filtered water as they lever a worn-out track out of the road and replace it. Kirsty looks past them as, across the street, the construction monkey works above them.

  Apart from a Bostov-branded day-glo harness, it looks just like a regular monkey, cute and sleek and nimble. Kirsty knows that it’s product all the same, just one more livedrive thumping through its billion heartbeat life cycle.

  It looks like a monkey but it doesn’t act like an animal. There’s no spark, no curiosity. It sits quietly while the handler f
ixes a cable drum to its harness, only reacting to his laser pointer as he traces a red dot up the wall and along an overhead comms line spanning the street. Dutifully, the monkey scampers up and over, twisting round and round the comms line so the trailing cable winds tight.

  The monkey watches the handler, Kirsty watches the monkey and, from the end of the street, Georgy watches Kirsty. She thinks of Georgy with his thrilltat in his back – simian fetal tissue spliced into his nerve endings. She thinks she’d like to order Georgy around with a laser pointer. She thinks if Georgy got his hands on this monkey, he’d probably send it into her apartment clutching a grenade while she slept.

  She’s got a whole shift to get through and the meeting with Jarrow has left her sick to the stomach. She can live – just about – with the bad taste of Meat4 Power bossing her around. Eight months from now when she’s served out her contract with Federal Environmental and is marketing her fish-filters, who’ll care whether she followed procedure or not?

  But Georgy’s too much to bear. He lurks in his cheap leather clothes and expensive headphones and the thrilltat mesodorphines flooding his senses make him too hard to predict. She thought the gun would make her feel better but as soon as he showed up, she started hanging round the work crew. Chewing her lip, she walks up to a cable access paybooth, feeds loose change, and dials.

  It’s the middle of the night, so Tim naturally picks up on the second ring. He’s in her apartment, same as usual.

  “Seriously, you must sleep some time,” she says.

  His smiling face fills the vandalized screen. “Problem sorted?”

  “Kinda,” she shrugs, “but it needs another nudge. Do you think you can forward me to the Reverend?”

  “Why? You need me to back you up?” He picks Grandmaster Flash off his lap and chaks-chaks the pump action.

  “I need the Reverend, Tim.”

  The screen blanks out while he dials through. She peeks over to Georgy, lounging against street lighting at the far end of the block until a familiar fat face blinks onto the screen.