IGMS Issue 46 Read online

  The day after I awoke in the infirmary, Lucic visited me. He brought with him a warm smile.

  If I had been able to control the metal fingers he had given me, I would have stabbed them into his eyes, plucked them out and worn them like rings.

  "You are alive," he said, "but you must eat and drink, or you will not stay that way."

  Overhead, dirigible props thrummed the air, as they headed toward the front. I did not think it possible, but the stench of gangrenous flesh was stronger in the infirmary than in the trenches.

  Lucic delicately probed the tender skin on my hip and made a note on a chart.

  In the bed next to me, another soldier wheezed. His left lung had been replaced with a bellow that protruded from his back, to the side of a segmented metal spine, like a centipede. My stomach threatened to revolt with every dry rasp of his breath.

  "You should have let me die," I said.

  "Death is not the answer."

  "Except when the question is do I want death or to live like this?"

  "You are the same man you were yesterday and the day before that."

  I didn't want to be that man either.

  I looked away from him, thinking that maybe he would leave if I ignored him, but all around me were half-men and glassy stares. I squeezed my eyes shut. I was surrounded by abominations.

  "Your legs do not make you human," he said. "I have seen many with legs whose humanity I would question."

  The words did nothing to soothe me.

  Lucic visited every day, but I did not speak to him again. The night I was cleared to return to the front, I slipped in among the bodies piled in the dead-wagon and was dumped with them into an open, mass grave. The flies and squirming maggots nearly drove me mad, but I finally managed to free myself from the tangle of bodies, crawl over the lip of the hole, and escape into the night.

  "Perhaps Paget should serve," Lucic says.

  I shake my head. I cannot ask anyone else to serve the General -- two-to-one the server doesn't survive the course.

  My tray loaded, I take a moment to calm my breathing. The attaché raises his pistol like a trophy. "Nothing funny, half-man," he warns.

  I bounce my wires and ratchet up into the dark, tray in hand. Once among the rafters, I hear gunfire and bombs in a nearby quadrant of the city. I wonder if anyone will try to rescue the Governor.

  I drop through the dark toward the tables below, picking up speed as I go. The wires thrum.

  "-- only to restore order to the chaos," the General is saying as I come in over the top of the table and stop several meters from him.

  The Governor's frown looks like it has hardened onto his face.

  "If I need do it with a gun," says the General, "then so be it."

  Balancing the tray with my metal hand, I place the General's plate on the table with my other. I lift the cover.

  The steam makes my mouth water.

  I have never seen a work of art, but the presentation on the plate is how I imagine it would look.

  "Escabèche de colombe with bone marrow croquette and fairy ring mushrooms," I say.

  The General eyes the food arrayed across the plate. I doubt he has ever seen such a fine meal. He snaps his fingers.

  Two soldiers seize the Governor's wife and drag her chair around next to the General's. The Governor starts to rise, but a soldier-boy thrusts the muzzle of his rifle into his face until he sits again.

  "There is no reason to hurt anyone," the Governor says. "You have me. Let the others go."

  His wife's face is the color of a hardboiled egg. The Governor should know this isn't about killing, right here right now. This is about the General asserting his power.

  "I trust no one," the General says, "especially my enemies." He cuts a piece of meat and dredges it through the sauce. He holds it up to the Governor's wife's lips.

  She clamps her mouth closed. Her smudged lipstick and eyeliner give her the aura of a soldier-boy, and for a moment I flash back to the General strutting before me while Michel writhes on the ground with a hole in his stomach.

  The General smears the food across her lips. The sauce runs down her chin.

  The Governor tries to rise and gets his temple opened with a rifle butt.

  "This isn't necessary," he says. His red blood streams from under his hand, down the side of his face and onto his grey shirt. "If you do not trust yours, then take mine."

  "What makes you think your life is worth any more than mine?"

  The General grabs the woman's ear and tugs it. When she opens her mouth, he shoves the food in. "Swallow it or I'll kill you where you sit," he says, pushing the fork tines against her throat until the skin dimples inward from the pressure.

  I want to tell her the food is safe, but I am afraid. For now, I have been forgotten.

  The Governor's wife sobs as she chews and swallows the escabèche.

  Satisfied, the General pulls the plate closer and begins to shovel the food into his mouth. He eats like he fights, gouging away ragged chunks of meat. He spears a mushroom onto the fork tines and appraises it like a head on a pike before grinding it between his teeth. All the while he grunts around each mouthful.

  I find it difficult to watch. If Lucic ever were to ask, I would never tell him about the General's assault on the meal. Lucic deserves better.

  I am not stopped from bouncing my wire and rising into the night. As I drop toward the kitchen, I see a flash of orange in the darkness near the back of the cathedral, and, for the briefest moment, the faces of the attaché and another soldier-boy shine. I alter my course and stop several meters above them, still wrapped in night.

  "-- outflanked us and are moving this way," says the soldier-boy.

  The attaché makes a guttural sound. A cigarette tip flares orange, then is passed from one to the other. The sweet smoke makes my mouth water -- chamomile, because tobacco disappeared long ago.

  "We can't get enough on them. They'll be here soon."

  "How soon?"

  The soldier-boy drags on the cigarette. Its glow outlines his gaunt face. "Twenty minutes, maybe less," he says.

  "Slow their advance --"

  "We can't --"

  "Find a way. I'll inform the General that it's time to leave."

  The soldier-boy offers the cigarette back to the attaché who waves it away. He puts it back between his lips as the attaché slips into the night.

  I do not even think about it; my military training takes over, and I drop behind the soldier-boy. He notices me at the last moment, but not before I am able to cover his mouth with my flesh hand and twist his head violently with the other. His neck pops. I bounce my wire, and we rise up toward the rafters.

  I tie the body into the rigging and hang there for a moment collecting my breath.

  My flesh hand shakes. I have killed dozens of men, with bullets and bayonet and once with a rock. Why is this one any different?

  Tracers incise the night sky and leave afterimages on my retinas. Lost in the smoke, dirigibles thrum, a constant symphony to the unfolding battle. Not far away, muzzles flash like fireflies. The fighting is close.

  If we can keep the General occupied, then maybe our soldiers can get here. Maybe there is -- I shake my head. Hope is something that died long before my humanity. I will not come out of this alive, but if I can take the General with me . . . That is my goal.

  My hands have settled, so I drop into the kitchen to find Lucic.

  Lucic is busy plating the dessert, and I cannot bring myself to interrupt him while he skillfully shapes the custard. Once he has finished, I open my mouth to speak, but before I can say anything, the attaché orders us to the dining area. Lucic protests, but a pistol leveled at his face silences him.

  "Help me," I say, extending my arm.

  Lucic gives me a quizzical look, but takes my arm. Without my legs, I am a slave to the wires, which makes movement along the ground difficult. Lucic takes my arm and pulls me alongside him as the kitchen staff is herded toward the dinin
g area.

  "Tell me, Lucic," I whisper. "When you found me, how did you know?"

  "That you had not given up?"

  "Yes. How did you know?"

  "A man who had given up would have gone back to the front." Or up into the rafters. He doesn't say this, but I see it in his eyes when they glance upwards into the night.

  "Help is near," I say. "If we can delay . . ."

  Lucic arches an eyebrow.

  The General's men have lined up everyone, face to the wall and are prepared to shoot them in the back. A woman sobs and one of the Governor's sycophants mutters about his worth to the General as a prisoner of war.

  "You." The attaché points at Lucic with his pistol. "Come with me."

  Lucic does not release my arm as he follows the attaché. The Governor's wife is led past us, toward the execution line. I look back at her, as she fades into the night like it is smoke, and I wonder if she knows.

  At the table, the Governor struggles against two soldier-boys, until a rifle muzzle to his gut bends him over.

  The General snaps a round into the chamber of his pistol. He fixes us with cold eyes. "My compliments to the chef," he says. The way his eyes narrow, the compliment signifies no favor from what is about to happen.

  "The meal is not over, General. You cannot judge --"

  The attaché cracks Lucic's skull with his pistol.

  Lucic crumples to the ground, clutching at the bloody gash above his right eye. Without thinking, I reach toward the attaché, but I stop when he swings the pistol barrel around to me. I see in his eyes that my life means nothing. I raise my hands, uncertain if it will matter.

  I jump at the rattle of machine guns. Only after I realize they are distant can I draw a breath to speak. "How can we save humanity if we act like animals?" Instinctively I flinch, expecting a bullet. When it doesn't come I open my eyes.

  The General fills my vision. If I could have, I would have stepped back.

  "We are no threat to you," I say. My words are barely audible. "You can leave here with the Governor and probably put an end to the killing, for now. Why kill everyone?"

  "To wipe away the ugly," the General says.

  My hands shake. Somehow I do not piss myself.

  "This is no way to make the world less ugly," I say.

  "And this little restaurant is?"

  Lucic groans from a spot on the floor that should have been next to my feet.

  The Governor stares up at me from his knees. His head moves a fraction to either side, as if imploring me not to risk any more.

  "The Café Renaissance," I say, "is a place where even the ugly in the world is capable of becoming something unexpected and beautiful, if given the chance. The Café Renaissance is hope."

  "All that from a meal?" The General laughs. It is an awful sound like the barking of a mangy animal echoing through a culvert. "Perhaps the cook is right."

  Out of the corner of my eye, the attaché's mouth opens to protest.

  "The final course is prepared," I say before the attaché can speak. "It will take only a moment to retrieve it."

  "Bring it to me, then. And quickly; my patience is small."

  I do not hesitate.

  I bounce my wires and rocket to the kitchen. I barely slow as I drop to the counter where Lucic had been working; the wires tug at the bolts fixed into my metal hip as I rapidly decelerate.

  The custard has been plated, but the dessert is unfinished. My eyes scour the counter: a small bowl of crystallized honey, a few springs of glittery mint, a bottle of sauce, remnants of previous courses, utensils.

  I may be a product of Lucic's magic, but I do not possess his talent to finish this work. Then my eyes land on the bone shears, and I grin with inspiration.

  The General sits on the edge of the table, casually cradling his pistol in his crossed arms. If I did not know better, I would never have suspected he was about to order the deaths of nearly fifty people. I put the plate on the table next to him.

  Lucic looks up from the ground, one eye wide, the other bloodied and swollen shut.

  "Get on with it, half-man," says the General. He doesn't even look at me.

  "Egg custard surprise with sweet honey globes and sugared mint," I say. I lift the lid.

  The attaché gasps, but I force my eyes to stay on the General's face. Everything else around me disappears. The world goes quiet as if the sound has fallen between the stretching seconds.

  The General looks down. His brow crinkles. The plate is a jumble of custard and sauce adorned with golden spheres of honey. In the middle of it all stands a neatly snipped metal finger. The General's eyes widen.

  Time snaps forward in a rush of sound and motion.

  Machine guns erupt in the darkness.

  The General's head snaps up.

  I throw the metal plate cover at the attaché who stands transfixed by the dessert. I lunge forward, seizing the General in a bear hug that pins his arms between our bodies. The rapeller spins and yanks us up into the darkness.

  Bullets whistle by. In the strobe of muzzle flashes, people scramble for cover. Lucic is on his feet, wrestling with the attaché for control of his pistol. Paget, and several other waiters lined up against the wall, bounce their wires and fly upward. Soldier-boys wearing the City's colors storm in over the rubble of the north wall exchanging fire with the General's men.

  With the General's added weight, the rapeller cannot hold us aloft. We slow, high above the tables, pivot in the harness, and begin to drop.

  As we start back toward the ground, I try to release the General, but he grabs me around my neck, and it's all I can do to stop him from crushing my windpipe. Paget whizzes by, nearly colliding with us as we tumble groundward. We reach the end of the wires. With a snap, the bolts in my hips rip free, and I crash atop the General.

  For a second, we lie stunned; then the General rolls to his knees and raises his pistol, which by some miracle he has not dropped. Marc-Andre swings out of the dark, but the General puts a bullet into his head, and his limp body continues on, leaking an arc of red blood.

  I roll across the floor and under a table. My metal hand is mangled to the point of uselessness; I can't bend the twisted fingers.

  The General empties his pistol cartridge, replaces it in a single smooth motion, and continues to kill. In the confusion, he has lost track of me, and he does not notice me on the ground near his feet.

  The Governor moves in a crouch toward the General. A table knife gleams in his hand. His bravery is admirable but stupid.

  The General turns, but before his pistol can come around, I slash at his ankles with my ragged fingers. The sharp metal cuts easily through his skin and underlying tendons. The wound causes the General's shot to miss the Governor's heart; instead the bullet clips the Governor's shoulder. I slash a second time, cutting deeply into his calves.

  The General tumbles to the ground, clutching at his legs.

  I grab a handful of his shirt in my flesh hand and pull myself onto his chest. He tries to roll away, but the weight of my body is enough to pin him. I push the sharp points of my fingers against his neck.

  "Call them off," I say.

  The General grimaces, and I realized it is his best attempt at a smile.

  "Call them off or they'll all die."

  "They are soldiers," he says. "They are parts of the machine, interchangeable and disposable." He closes his eyes when my fingers draw droplets of blood. What do I care about the General or his men? Their deaths would be a blessing.

  Yet, I cannot drive my metal fingers into his neck.

  The killing has to stop somewhere. Someone needs to be brave enough to make it stop.

  "You took my legs, but I won't let you take my humanity."

  That night, the City's army turned back the General's forces. Without their leader, they retreated to the east.

  The City's military leaders pushed to pursue and destroy them, but the Governor, deciding there had been enough killing, called them back.
/>   While not everyone who had been in the Café Renaissance that night lived to see it, the City survived.

  Dawn comes, cutting the smoke and ash with shafts of yellow light. I sit with Lucic in the wreckage of the Café.

  The dead, half-man and whole men, have been borne away together. For a time, the survivors had lingered, exchanging comfort. With help from the Governor's wife, Paget extracted a bullet from the arm of one of the sycophants while the others watched. Eventually, they trickle away in groups of two or three. The Governor is the last to leave, and only after extracting a promise from me that I would come later that day to discuss a proposition. "It is time for things to change," he says, as he carefully shakes the remnants of my metal hand.

  I sit in the silence for a while, and I realize then just how quiet it is. Until that moment, I had not noticed that the war, for now at least, is over. I pinch my arm. The pain surprises me.

  Lucic has finally located my legs in all the mess, and together we carefully slot them into my pelvis. "Now what?" I ask.

  "I can fix your hand," Lucic says. "If you want."

  "That's not what I mean," I say, "but I would like that."

  Lucic finishes attaching the bands on my legs before looking up at me. "I think it is time for me to move on," he says. "I hear Avignon needs a restaurant."

  "But the café --"

  "It is yours, Bolduc."

  I cannot find the right words, so I shake my head and say, "No. The Café Renaissance cannot survive without you."

  "That is as well," Lucic says. "I don't think you need it anymore."

  At the Picture Show: Extended Cut

  by Chris Bellamy

  * * *

  Imitation of self

  As depictions of A.I. get more and more familiar, they may be getting more personal, too

  For about as long as there has been science fiction at the movies, the presence of artificial life, in one form or another, has practically been a constant. From rudimentary depictions of robotics (humanoid and otherwise) to more advanced interpretations of the future of consciousness, the concept has been a resilient one, and a defining staple of genre classics for going on a century.