This story appears in Keith Brooke's collection Memesis:
A world where islands of rock float on a molten sea, a man whose son flies high while he can only watch, a seaside town held together by the belief of its inhabitants. Eight stories about strange changes and the strangely changed, each with a new afterword by the author of Publishers Weekly starred novels Genetopia and The Accord.
Available from:
...amazon.com (Kindle format, $3.44)
...amazon.co.uk
(Kindle format, £2.18)
The Art of Self-abuse
a short story
by Keith Brooke
Foreword
I tend to shy away from a lot of the tropes
most people associate with science fiction, aliens and time travel being
the big two that I've barely touched on. I'm not entirely sure why this
should be, although I have a few vague ideas.
In the case of aliens, I think it's something
to do with my own reaction to so many fictional aliens: they just seem
to be either too like us or too silly to believe. (That might, of course,
also be my reaction to real aliens as well as fictional ones, but I
haven't had the opportunity to test that yet.) I'll be putting myself
to the test soon, though: my next adult novel (after Genetopia,
which is due from Pyr in February 2006) will be stuffed to the gills
with aliens.
Time travel? It's probably simply that I never
really had an idea for a time travel story that grabbed me -- my stories
tend to stick to the kind of time that travels forwards at the usual
pace. But then, a few years ago, this idea popped up in my mind and
it really took hold. Since I wrote it, the story has stayed with me
and it's one that readers often mention if they happen to remember a
particular one of my stories.
If the magazine Science Fiction Age
had survived one more issue this story would have appeared there...
As it turned out, the story ended up in Strange Pleasures 2,
edited by John Grant and Dave Hutchinson, an anthology series that really
deserves more attention than it has had.

The Art of Self-abuse
Where do I end and you begin? We are each an island of consciousness,
a self-aware node in the social matrix. Fuzzy boundaries between us,
that is all.
It is a question for the philosophers, perhaps. Am I a philosopher,
then? Can someone who is incomplete also be a philosopher? I ask too
many questions. Like any design flaw, that can easily be put right.
I sit alone, my elbows resting on a Formica table-top, its surface
filigreed with fine cracks -- too fine for you to see, I would hazard.
Before me: a moulded white polystyrene container, three-quarters filled
with dark 'coffee'. I use the term advisedly, with caution -- just as
I sip, occasionally, at the beverage. With caution. It is hot, at least.
I chose my table for its view. The street is busy, grimy, the people
confrontational and hostile. The mores of the age: in an overcrowded
world on the brink of collapse personal space acquires disproportionate
significance. You have far worse to concern you, if only you knew.
I sit and stare at the people and the slowly crawling traffic. I know
not what I am looking for, but I have every confidence that I will recognise
it.
I pick up the cup, my grip carefully controlled. I am powerful. I
must be careful.
Fibre optics run from the biode hub in my left forearm to the siliconeural
net interwoven into the substance of my brain. It is the best that money
will be able to buy. When I am home, my memories -- every thought, every
experience and sensation, every fear and emotion -- are automatically
offloaded into the community's archives. I've been reloaded seven times,
as a result of biological breakdown or accident.
I have eyes, of course: two, just like you. Only better than yours,
enhanced for a wider spectrum. I can kick up the sensitivity at night,
partially opaque my corneas in bright sunlight. I can pick up the signals
from proxies wherever I go -- get a bird's eye view of myself walking
down the high street, see round corners before I get there. I could
see through your eyes, if I wanted, if you wanted to let me.
That remote camera -- over there, on the edge of that building: you
probably only see it as a bird -- is it part of me, then? That mechanical
eye that I can access with a brief mental impulse? No? Are the two eyes
sitting in sockets at the front of my reinforced skull a part of me?
Naturally, you would say yes. But you don't know that these are the
second (left) and third (right) replacements. Vat-grown, vision boosted
by a biode seeded into the retina of each.
You might have gathered by now that I am suffering quite a severe
case of existential angst. I'm down. Blue (I could be, quite literally,
if I chose).
The year is 1984. I don't belong here.

It happens a short time later, out in the street.
I walk with my head up. Perhaps it is my manner that unsettles those
around me, the smile on my face as I revel in the physicality of this
age.
So many people, each with a purpose! So busy, so self-important. As
if your day-to-day concerns have the slightest significance.
People bump into me repeatedly as I refuse to partake of the intercourse
of the street, the impregnability of personal space. Perhaps you see
that I am enjoying myself, perhaps that is why I disturb you.
But then you -- you -- pass by in an open-topped car and everything
changes.
You look so comfortable, leaning back in the passenger seat, the breeze
pushing collar-length chestnut hair away from your face. At one with
your world. At peace. The girl who drives your car clearly adores you
-- I can taste it on the air, the pheromones, the sex. I hope you enjoy
her. She could almost have been made to be enjoyed, I think.
It is you, I realise. You who gives my existence purpose.
There is a sheet draped across the back of the car. Big letters daubed
in black paint on the white. You are publicising something then. That
explains the noise of your car, the nasal honking sound it makes that
is over and above the normal sound of its engine: your young assistant
is making extra noise -- some kind of horn -- to draw attention to you,
to make people read the banner draped across your car.
I stare at the letters. Writing. I have practised your script -- I
am nothing if not well prepared -- but at this angle, on a moving vehicle,
it all looks strange.
Why should 'miners' wish to 'strike' the 'universe'? It puzzles me.
You are gone. I am left with the memory from which to piece together
meaning. It is all I have.

The posters explain all. You were not intending to strike
the universe, after all. The Socialist Workers' Students' Society is
holding a rally at the university to support the striking miners.
The terms puzzle me. A miner is some kind of manual labourer but I
do not know what is striking about them and why there should be either
a meeting or a race to support them.
Language acquisition is a continuous process for me, even now. I had
thought I was doing so well.
I learnt the basics of your language quite easily. The meat-silicon
fuck of a brain I have is good for such things. It processes sound and
visual information, identifying patterns, constructing the native grammar,
analysing the cues and rhythms of speech. At first I faltered, but soon
I picked up enough from common terms, gestures and context to fumble
my way along. Now, I can process new terms and constructions in real
time so that those around me will not spot anything abnormal in my communicative
abilities.
My makers made me well. And when I was broken, they made me even better.
They made me with a purpose, of course.
I want you. So badly do I want you.

It seems that you are greatly in demand at the moment. Here,
at the university, it appears that you are something of a figurehead.
I should have expected that, of course. If there is trouble you will
be at its centre.
I made my way here on foot, a walk of some twenty-five minutes, the
route memorised from a two-dimensional map in the city centre. I could
have used a bus, a two-tiered vehicle with promotional images on its
outer skin that belches smut into the air and provides transport for
the poorer sections of your society.
But I would only use such a contraption if I could operate it myself
and the driver objected when I broached this possibility. I spared him,
despite his invective. I have no wish to draw undue attention to myself,
just yet.
Walking is better, in any case. I am strong, I am in control.
And so, too, are you.
They adore you, just as the girl who drove your car adored you. There
is a crowd exceeding 200 in number at the rally, waiting to hear you
speak, each with an intensity that is almost sexual in nature. Is this
rally to be some kind of orgy, perhaps? I have known such things, I
think.
As we wait, there is chanting from some parts of the crowd -- mainly
those carrying placards bearing the white on red masthead of the Socialist
Workers.
The favourites are, "The workers united, will never be defeated" --
sadly lacking in scansion -- and the more heartfelt, "Maggie Maggie
Maggie, out out out." After a time, I join in with these chants, sensing
the bonding effect of the communal singing.
And now a man with a megaphone talks above the noise, telling us of
unity and solidarity, of jackbooted fascist filth, of working class
values and capitalist plots. He is a miner, I gather. The rally is for
this man and his kind. He seems rather angry. I do not understand.
But you, you are different.
You take the megaphone from the angry miner and you do nothing. Your
silence says more than the previous speaker's words. You play it like
a musical instrument, stretch the moment so that it feels right, then
begins to get uncomfortable, and finally you speak.
"My friends," you say. I like that. Friends. From anyone else it would
have sounded cheap. I do not believe that these people are your friends.
You probably do not even know a lot of them.
"We are privileged," you continue. "We are spoilt. We can stay here
in our ivory towers--" I see neither ivory nor towers "--and forget
that the world outside exists. Or we can make use of our position of
privilege to fight for a society that is equal and fair.
"Friends." Again, that word, that intimacy! "Here in the coalfields
we are at the heart of a class war. I put it to you that if you are
not a part of the solution then you are a part of the problem. The time
has come to choose sides, to stand shoulder to shoulder with our comrades
and fight the fascist oppressors!"
I understand little of what you say, but I feel the power of your
words. You want to fight, cause trouble. I should have known.
Afterwards, an unwashed woman rattles a bucket at me. "Support the
miners," she says. The bucket is full of coins.
I stare at her. "I want to fight," I say.
She steps back, smiles awkwardly. "The vans are that-a-way," she says
before moving on, rattling her bucket.

Squeezed into a mini-van, so tightly-packed someone has
to force the doors to close from the outside. Here there is no such
thing as personal space. I breathe the odour of your kind, analyse the
chemicals. Tobacco, alcohol and other contaminants are mixed in with
the smells of stale sweat and shit.
I had hoped to share transport with you. We could have gone in your
open-topped car. I would have worked out how to drive the thing quite
quickly, I am sure.
Not to worry. I will locate you later. We are all heading to the battleground,
I have been assured of that.
The fascist filth stop us at the point where a lane from our road
tries to feed onto a larger road that is divided into two opposing streams
of traffic.
Our driver argues with them through his open window, but I can see
that they are not amenable to persuasion. We are not to be allowed onto
the large road. These men, with their car marked POLICE, do not want
us to join the battle.
"Do we have weapons?" I ask of the man squashed intimately between
me and the window.
He laughs. "Too fucking right," he says. "We should take them right
here, eh?"
We find an alternative route, through narrow lanes flanked by untidy
stone walls. After a time we stop, abandon the van and walk across the
fields.
One of my friends carries a petrol can and another carries a rucksack
full of clanking bottles. We could make those into crude firebombs,
I think, but that has probably occurred to them already.
Before long I can hear the chanting, the roaring of the crowd, the
continual blare of sirens. I walk faster, leaving my new friends behind.
I scramble down a heather-matted bank, the battlefield spread out
before me. There is some kind of industrial installation there: towers,
buildings and lorries huddled together between heaps of black rubble.
The installation is surrounded by high chainlink fence. This site is
valuable, I suspect. This must be what they fight over.
Its entrance is shielded by white vans, marked with the same POLICE
insignia as the car that had blocked our way earlier. Fanned out around
the entrance and the vans is a double line of dark-uniformed men, cowering
behind transparent shields.
Gathered nearby are more vans, more policemen, some even on horses.
It is like a scene from a medieval battle. Why do they not appear to
have any guns, I wonder?
A short way up the main road to the installation there is an angry
crowd, the source of most of the noise. They shout and chant, gesturing
at the gathered fascist filth, occasionally throwing stones at them.
I feel vaguely disappointed. I had expected far better of you. I think
you need some help. And that would allow me to get close to you.

It is easy to forget yourself down here. The crowd surges
around me, angry voices clamouring in my ears, rattling around my skull.
I am repeatedly pushed and jostled. It is exciting.
Recognising my state of increasing arousal, I block some of my neurochemical
pathways, damp down the adrenalin rush.
I stand solid. Those who jostle me now rebound as if from a tree,
a statue. I do not yield to these creatures. They have no significance.
It is good to be calm.
I look around, calibrating my vision both for breadth of field and
pattern recognition. You are the pattern I seek, my friend: the boyish
contours of your face, the flowing chestnut hair. I know you are here,
you see: I can taste you on the air. Your olfactory signature is written
across the smell of the crowd, faint but unique.
I see you. Twenty metres away, no more. You are with the other man
who spoke at the rally, the miner. Heads together, trying to hear each
other against the din. Hands gesture, point. You are plotting, planning
your campaign.
I move towards you, ducking my head as a red-faced man hurls a stone
at the ranked shields of the fascist filth. I hesitate, eyeing the man,
weighing up cost and benefit. He turns away, hasn't noticed that his
missile had passed within centimetres of my impact-resistant skull.
I let it pass. Cost and benefit.
I can feel the excitement growing as I approach you. A surge too powerful
to resist.
You are still unaware, only metres from me.
The crowd dynamic is changing, the noise more frenzied, the surges
and flows redirected. Something is happening, then. I look around and
in that moment I see that the filth are advancing now and that you have
slipped away into the crowd with your miner friend.
The oppressors, behind their plastic shields, are hollering and whooping
at us, trying to intimidate, trying to bolster their own spirits. They
must be very scared.
More stones are being directed at them now. A fence post hurled like
a javelin flies over my head and strikes a shield, knocking one of the
uniformed men off balance.
Firebombs. Someone has filled the bottles with petrol, stuffed the
necks with rags and ignited them. They fly through the air almost apologetically,
but when they strike the ground they erupt in liquid flame, spreading
under the shields, up their plastic surfaces.
There is a concrete post in the ground nearby. A man is pulling at
it but it won't shift. I knock him aside with the back of my hand, seize
the post and pull. It breaks at ground level -- I am very strong indeed,
have I mentioned that? -- and I raise it above my head.
I am getting excited again.
The filth are close now. I am confused. I see your face, even though
you are no longer here. I need to break something. Inflict pain. I raise
the post high and swing it down.
These shields may deflect stones and firebombs, but against more serious
weaponry they are useless. One blow knocks it out of your -- no, his
-- hands. The second blow... well, the second time, he has nothing to
protect him, does he?

It was a mistake. Stupid. I forgot my purpose, why I am
here. I became too excited. Such flaws should have been designed out
of me long ago.
I allowed them to beat me when they got me to a cell. I deserved it
for my stupidity. I still deserve it, for their beating did not hurt
-- I simply ignored the pain. My body repairs itself as I fill endless
hours in my cell, sometimes alone, sometimes shared with other combatants
who have been captured by the fascist filth.
The man in the interview room introduces himself as a doctor. "I have
been asked to talk to you, so that I can make a report to the Magistrates'
Court," he says. "I need to know a little more about you, Mr Magee."
That is the name I have given them: Mr Out Magee. It amuses me, if not
them. They think I must be from another country.
I tell him about myself. That entertains me, too. I have nothing to
lose, after all.
"I am a killing machine, a vampire come from the far future. I am
a genetic hunter-gatherer, exploiting the resources of the pasts to
satisfy the genetic famine of my future. We need variety. Adaptability.
We need the diversity that is so abundant in the primitive depths of
our various pasts."
He humours me. "Do you have no guilt?" he asks. "No sense of responsibility?"
"No," I tell him. "That was left out at some stage. I am blank, without
a conscience. It would be surplus to requirements, after all."
And it is meaningless, too. Responsibility for -- to -- what?
He looks at me attentively. He feels superior.
"You are not even my predecessors," I continue, enjoying myself, I
think. "You are not my ancestors. In your own pathetic understanding,
you are aware of the future as a multiplicity of alternatives, of options,
choices to be made. But the arrow of time works in both directions.
Just as timelines diverge towards the future -- each branch governed
by dichotomy, decision upon decision upon decision -- so they diverge
as you look into the past. Our own timeline is there, our own ancestry,
written in the histories. But each line, heading back into the past
is another dichotomy, another branch. There is a chaotic flowering of
alternative pasts, a fractal history.
"The past is a foreign country. Many foreign countries. I am visiting
one now."
Still, he looks attentive, sympathetic. Violence is tempting, but
would be counter-productive, I suspect.
"You mean nothing to me," I explain to him instead. "You are irrelevant.
You are just meat, raw materials for a greater age." I smile now. "I,"
I tell him, "I am a miner."
"And how long have you felt this way?"
He thinks I am deluded, but I can prove that I am not. If I choose
to.

They treat me like a fool, albeit a dangerous fool. It is
their mistake that they do not believe me.
There is to be some kind of hearing, a court. For this to happen they
must transport me in a van. I have told them that I am strong -- really,
very strong -- but they merely humour me. They do not believe that I
broke that concrete post with my bare hands, for instance. They should
know better.
I sit in the back of the van, my wrists bound together by a metal
bracelet device. A policeman sits across from me, eyes never leaving
my face. He is one of the ones who beat me upon my arrival.
He looks surprised when I wrench the bracelets apart, the chain between
them fracturing with a sharp crack. He probably hasn't seen anyone do
that before. I feel no compunction about knocking him unconscious with
a back-handed blow.
I brace myself against the side of the van and kick the back door
open.
The van is going faster than I had anticipated and I hit the ground
in a spinning, flailing heap. Immediately, brakes squeal as the van
skids to a halt.
They will blame faulty workmanship, I suspect, for both the bracelets
and the door.
I catch myself, clamber to my feet, and run.

I do not have much time here, I suspect. I have hurt two
of the fascist filth, perhaps quite badly. Such things do not matter,
but they are of concern to the filth, themselves. They probably think
I am deranged, that I am a danger to the public. They are right, I suppose,
although my derangement is a consequence of my nature and I am only
a danger if you obstruct me.
Every one of my actions is defensible, when seen in those terms.
The university is the obvious place to go. You spoke at a rally there,
you might be a student or a teacher.
It is growing dark when I get there. The square where you spoke to
the crowd is deserted. I should find someone, ask questions. I am familiar
enough with this setting not to arouse suspicion.
But there is a reluctance within me, another design flaw, perhaps.
I long for my barren future, for a time when something might actually
matter to me.
I linger in the shadows, watching as people walk by, sometimes alone,
sometimes in boisterous groups. I walk the paths, bordered with shrubbery
and trees, leading between concrete buildings, some lit, others in darkness.
You have betrayed yourself. You have written your scent signature
on the night air. You have been here recently, must still be nearby.
I am close, my friend, my target, my prey. So close.
A row of lavishly lit windows, smoky within. Music and voices belch
into the night with every opening and closing of the doors. Inside,
people sit around tables, or stand at counters drinking brown liquid
from glass receptacles. Some lean over green-topped tables, striking
balls with sticks. Others thrust at brightly lit machines, slapping
at them and pulling levers, turning away to exclaim or laugh. They appear
to be enjoying themselves. It must be a participatory thing, its meaning
and value lost to mere spectators.
You are in there, my friend.
I stand in the darkness and look in, scanning the faces until I see
you, standing at a long counter where they sell the drinks. You are
laughing and talking. You must be enjoying yourself, too.
I may be short of time, but I know when to be patient. I wait.
I understand now that I've come here to kill you, for whatever reason.
I am your nemesis. I will extinguish your life and then be snatched
back to my future by those who watch. You do not have long now.
Eventually, you leave, accompanied by two of your companions.
I follow. Your body heat shines strongly in the darkness, a beacon
to guide me.
You three head into one of the buildings and I follow. Up a flight
of stairs, and then along a corridor lined with red doors. This must
be some kind of dormitory building for students, I think.
I follow your trail at a distance.
There is a number on the door. 134. Your signature is all over it.
Your companions have gone on along this corridor, but even though I
did not see, I know that you have stopped here, that 134 is your room.
I touch the handle, still marginally warmed by your touch.
I enjoy this part.
I ease the handle and it turns. You haven't locked it yet, so soon
after your return.
I push it gently before me and walk in to the room.
The gun is unexpected.
I have not seen its like before. It has a compact stock with a long,
fat muzzle. That's a silencing device, I realise: fitted to deaden the
noise. The gauge of the muzzle is about seven millimetres.
I will probably not feel a thing.
I look from the gun to your face. Your expression is unreadable.
"You've been here before," you tell me.
I stretch my perception of time to its extreme, slow everything down
so that I can react as quickly as possible. But there is a limit: my
body relies on the firing of neurones, the passing of signals from eye
to brain to motor system. Electricity and biochemistry are the fundamentals
of my being, as they are of yours.
I see the muscles twitch in your hand, the tightening of your trigger
finger. The flight of your bullet is too fast, even for my heightened
reactions.
I was right. I did not have much time left in this place.

I walk the streets, trying to orientate myself. It always
throws me, I think, the shock of the new. Or rather, the shock of the
old.
I let myself be jostled by the crowd, smiling in reply to their curses.
I should watch where I am going, they tell me. The physicality of this
bustling age is invigorating.
I do not know how long I have been walking through these streets.
I have been learning your social syntax, letting the rules of your world
soak into my consciousness.
I am looking for something, I know. I have been sent here with a purpose.
It will become apparent. Eventually my reason for being will find
me.
I walk. And learn how to be normal.
The year is 1984. I do not belong here.

Information is everything here, in a world at this level
of development. They usually call the stage that you are entering the
Information Age.
It nearly always comes before the Crash.
I know who you are, now. I have information about you. The name you
use is Gary Cromwell and you are the Vice-President of the local Students'
Union. Nice touch that: you can abuse the power and spend the Union's
funds without any of the responsibility of the presidency. You are a
troublemaker, you stir things up. You are a thrill-seeker. You are,
in the vernacular, one selfish sonofabitch.
I want you, Gary. You are mine.
Or you will be soon.

You like to drink. You make regular use of the Students'
Union Bar.
I watch you there, Gary. It's easy to stand outside and look in. I
have the measure of you, my friend. I know you as if you were my own
brother.

I follow you to your room. Number 134. Your scent signature
is all over this corridor, focused on the door.
I rest my hand on the doorknob -- still warm from your touch. I twist
but it does not yield. A little more pressure and the lock pops. I blame
the workmanship.
The gun... the gun is unexpected.
Its single black pupil stares at me. You are using a silencer. You
are well-prepared.
I will probably not feel a thing.
I look from the gun to your face. Is that compassion in your eyes?
"You've been here before," you tell me.
I stretch my perception of time to its limit, slow everything down
so that I can react as quickly as possible.
I see the muscles twitch in your hand, the tightening of your trigger
finger. There is a faint puff of smoke from the silenced muzzle, a flash
of metal as the bullet emerges.
I am very strong -- have I mentioned that? I am fast, too.
My right hand swings across, swats the bullet from the air. In the
same movement I knock the pistol from your hand.
That is not compassion on your face now. It is fear.
I smile. "You should be proud," I tell him. "Honoured by our attentions.
You have been chosen, Gary. You are valuable to us. You will be making
a contribution to my future. You are the one person from this age who
has any significance."
Your attitude puzzles me. That is a flaw, I suspect. One that should
have been designed out. The fear was only transient. Now you are angry,
defiant.
"That's what you think, is it, my friend?"
I like that: fighting for your life and you still call me 'friend'.
"It is the truth."
"It's your understanding," you say. "It's what they've written into
your head."
You handle this situation well. With those few words you reveal that
you are not an innocent target, that you actually have some understanding
of the situation. With your words you undermine me, make me question
my purpose. Sometimes the less obvious weapons are the more powerful.
I step closer to you. Your scent is so strong to my heightened senses.
I am getting excited.
"And what is your understanding, friend Gary?"
"You're a toy, an entertainment." Your words disappoint me: I had
hoped for more subtlety, a better fight. But... your attitude. Your
tone is apologetic. You pity me. You are full of surprises, my friend.
"You've been here before," you tell me again.
I have already suspected as much. I remain silent.
"Twice. Both times I killed you. But you came back. You don't have
to do it, though. You could stay here like me. Break out of the system."
"Why would I do that?"
"They're in your head," you say. "Riding in your mind, feeding on
your experiences. They have a name for it here. Snuff movies. They want
to watch you killing me. You're a living, historical snuff movie, my
friend. That's all you are."
"No," I say. "That's not true. You have been chosen. I come from a
future where diversity has been squandered. You and your kind will replenish
our stock."
"My kind?" you ask. "I'm just like you, except I saw through it all,
decided I didn't want to be used any more. I'm your predecessor: an
early version of you. I know the hunger you have for meaning: there
is meaning here, in this age, when we can make a difference. I know
what it's like, my friend: you are me, we're kin. We are each other."
"I don't believe you."
In your eyes: the pity has hardened, become contempt.
"In this age I matter," you say. "You... you're just a tool. You have
no significance."
That does it. I am important.
I reach for your neck, a fast, direct movement.
But you, too, are fast. Your right arm swings, deflects my strike.
Surprised, I stagger under my own momentum. You push and I smash into
the wall, through the wall. A man screeches, leaping from his
bed. I choke on the plaster dust, roll over.
You have gone, of course.

Outside it has started to rain and the dust runs in rivulets
down my face.
I heard the sirens, but it was just one more alien noise to me. They
had no significance. The flashing blue lights meant nothing to me, either,
although I should have sensed the danger.
I resist when they seize me, but I have been weakened, I realise.
It is not just rain and wet plaster dust running down my face, it is
blood, too.

They are scared of me. They keep me locked up alone in a
cell. Whenever I emerge I wear thick metal bracelets around my wrists
and ankles that even I cannot break. They call me Mr Out Magee, for
some reason.
It is easy to lose track of time here. They have moved me around:
I have been in four prisons already. They are trying to disorientate
me, I think. Or they do not know how to handle me.
I have spoken to doctors, and in front of public hearings where my
supposed crimes have been discussed. They say I have attacked policemen.
I argue in my defence that I have scarcely had the opportunity, but
given the chance... That amuses me, at least.
I do not think they will let me out of this place -- or places like
it -- for some time. They think I am dangerous. The opportunity will
arise, I am sure, but they are being very careful.
I wonder about you, Gary, my friend. About your words. You clearly
believed them.
Perhaps it is true that I have been misled. Perhaps I was sent to
punish you, Gary.
Your strength and speed of reaction surprised me, you see. It makes
me think that perhaps there is an element of truth in your words: that
you, too, are not of this time, this place. Are you one of us, Gary?
Are you some kind of renegade? Are you, as you claim, a rogue version
of me? Is that why I must kill you?
That changes nothing. If what you say is true I am a killing machine,
tracking down one of my kind gone rogue. Does that knowledge change
me in any way? I think not: my mission is within me, it is central to
my being. I do not possess the design flaw that would allow me to deviate:
I have been made too well this time.

You couldn't resist, could you, Gary? You had to come and
make sure that I have been secured.
Have you come merely to gloat? Or, perhaps, have you come to kill
me again, fearful that I might still escape and track you down?
Foolish of you, Gary, my friend, my brother.
I was expecting another doctor, another investigator of psychopathy.
We are in the special interview room. I am bound up in a wire-reinforced
straitjacket, tied by tethers to the padded bench where I have been
forced to sit.
You stand across the room from me and study my features. Is that pity
again, in your eyes, or contempt?
"You'll be here a long, long time, my friend," you tell me. "No more
stalking innocent people. No more beating policemen with concrete blocks.
You could help yourself by talking about it. Let us inside your mind."
I have been preparing for this moment. I am strong, you see. Very
strong.
They know that, of course. Hence the reinforced straitjacket, the
constraints.
You think that I am being sullen, refusing to talk.
But no, if you observe closely, you will see the workings of the muscles
in my jaw. I have to swallow the blood so that you do not guess my plan.
I watch you, as you pace the room. I gauge the distances, the angles,
the required trajectory. I will only get one chance.
I curl my tongue, forming a rough cylinder. I position the tooth carefully
and take a deep breath.
I spit.
I am very strong -- did I mention that?
You are looking right at me and my aim is good. The tooth hits you
in the right eye. There is a popping sound, a spurt of clear liquid.
Then a duller crack as the tooth emerges from the back of your head
and embeds itself in the wall.
You weren't expecting that.

I do not think they will let me out of this place -- or
places like it -- for some time. They know how dangerous I am, even
if they do not truly understand my nature.
I think that I have been abandoned here, in this age. In vain, I wait
for them to snatch me back to my future but the summons never comes.
I think I must have broken the rules somehow.
I must resign myself to my fate. I will die here of old age.

It is 2012 and I have finally come to realise that I belong
here as much as I will ever belong anywhere.
Which is ironic, as I do not have long left. Your Information Age
was not a long one. Your Crash will probably not take long, either.
Your world is warming and your seas are dying and you were too selfish
and short-sighted to do anything about it. You deserve your fate.
A fate I share: soon I will die from the disease of your age. I have
cancer. A primary in the oesophagus, with secondaries in the liver,
lymphatic system and large bowel.
It will be a messy way to die.
I do not have long now.

It always throws me, I think, the shock of the new. Or rather,
the shock of the old.
I am walking through some kind of shanty town, an endless sprawl of
lean-tos and shacks, protected from an angry ocean by a barrier of bulldozed
earth. Dogs bark and children cry and I tip my face up to the violent
sky, let the invigorating rain run down my features. I feel released
and I don't know why.
I do not know how long I have been walking like this. I have been
learning the rules of your world, acclimatising.
I am looking for something, I know. I have been sent here with a purpose.
It will become apparent. Eventually my reason for being will find
me.
I walk. And learn how to be normal.
The year is 2024. I do not belong here.

© Keith Brooke 2003, 2005.
This story was first published in Strange Pleasures 2, edited
by John Grant and Dave Hutchinson (Wildside Press) and is reprinted in the author's collection Memesis (infinity plus ebooks).
Memesis is available from:
...amazon.com (Kindle format, $3.44)
...amazon.co.uk
(Kindle format, £2.18)

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