#06 STRANGE SCIENCE
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Roof of the Palmer House Hotel
Downtown Callisto City (Callisto, Jupiter IV)
Present day
“A Monsutā? What’s that?” Bill Murray asked, picking his nose.
“We’ll get to it after a commercial break!” Ali chided, before turning around. “Take over, Lee! I gotta pee!”
I looked daggers at her. In response, she stuck her tongue out, and bolted out towards our ship, parked next to the staircase.
“Dealing with federal agents, wading through sewers, fumbling upon monsters…” the actor listed. “Your life isn’t summer camp…”
I stretched from head to tail before going back to my spot. “Life in the cosmos is indeed not as sweet as in Meatballs, but the Kitty is doing pretty well nonetheless.”
“Spending the whole day in a tank wouldn’t be defined as ‘pretty well’ according to my standards.”
Before I could answer this privileged brat, the door creaked open. “Voila!” Ali uttered. She had brought a snack from the ship, namely a bag of Gatorade bubble gums.
“That was incredibly fast…” Bill Murray noted, shuffling a pile of garbage for my partner to sit cozily.
“Yep! What were you talking about?”
“Summer camps,” I replied, lighting a cigarette.
“Oh!” she reacted, loudly closing the hatch with her foot. “I sneaked into one back on Titan. Dad made a mountain out of a molehill about it.”
“It wasn’t a summer camp, Ali… but a Techno-Marine boot camp—but, get on with your story!” I insisted, resigning from the spotter role. “My sixth sense is telling me we’re not going to see our friends the feds this afternoon!”
My sapiens agreed. Clearing her sugar-soaked throat, she resumed: “Once upon a time, there were three idiots somewhere in the sewers…”
Somewhere in the sewers
Beneath Callisto City (Callisto, Jupiter IV)
A month ago
“A Monsutā…” Mickey Mouse marveled. “The cursed supercomputer!”
“I thought you didn’t know shit about that stuff…” I interjected.
“It’s an urban legend—a piece of Japanese technology dating back to the Third World War…” She brushed the surface of the orange glass globe before resuming: “These machines were coupled with…”
“A symbio-fetus,” Zéphyr completed, stepping closer to give a look at the never-born. “Using an organic matrix as both a fuel cell and storage system was as incredibly perverse as clever. However, their utilization was banned under LBJ.”
“No shit…” I hiccupped. “I preferred when dorks brought back to life Victoria’s Secret sexbots…”
I gagged again, almost dropping my gun into the silver pool surrounding the giant tin can.
Zéphyr stepped back, almost hitting the cooling device pumping the water below thanks to another large pipe buried under the filth. “It’s surprising, though,” she said. “To find an M-unit here, for a simple data inquisition. They remain as powerful as today’s Intel processors.”
The symbio-fetus swirled in its preservative fluid when the reporter discovered the life support console embedded in the metallic frame next to the globe. “We’ll learn more once we extract it and analyze its data in a safe place.” One of her claws ran along the tiny interstice between the globe and its rubber join. “Do you know how to safely retrieve it?” she asked.
“I can try…” Zéphyr went on, blowing away the dust from the support’s large Japanese mechanical keyboard. An old black and white monitor lit up above it, displaying weird kanjis.
“The whole city is living on top of this ugly thing in complete ignorance,” I remarked, before sneezing. “I bet we’re right under the Circle K and the mall. All that silver liquid comes from a hair salon. It’s hairspray for perms.”
My favorite data-thief congratulated me, before typing faster than Lee and I playing Bubble Bobble. “True. I saw it on the map earlier,” she said as inputs ran on the flickering screen. “The monster must have found a hidden way to the arcade. Or dig one straight through the concrete.”
She stopped. Her little mischief hadn’t gone unnoticed, as the computer suddenly became agitated.
Additional monochrome screens lit up on the left corner, dispensing mindless spreadsheets and graphics during the short reset phase. Rows of previously unseen LEDs flashed before the last remaining fans spit clouds of dust and hazardous coolant at our feet. Beyond the window, the fetus twirled when the speakers scattered all around the room sizzled.
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Through the agony of a time-weary electrocardiogram reproducing a strange breathy refrain came out a soft and chilling little girl’s voice: “Good evening… sisters of the genome.”
“Holy shit!” I uttered. “The biocomputer fucking speaks!”
“Computer Monsutā?” Zéphyr calmly asked. “Can you hear us?” At the same time, she checked the monitors, which were going crazy again.
“Of course,” replied the machine in its childish digitized voice. “I am sorry. I must have fallen asleep.”
The reporter scoffed. “Asleep?”
A smell of overheated circuitry filled the premises, and I realized we were running a computer bathed in flammable lacquer.
“My original program was called L.I.S.A. You can refer to me as such.”
“You’re controlling this underground lab, right?” the reporter went on, pressing her palm against the confined fetal airlock; like to make sure she was dealing with an authentic living being.
“I am this laboratory,” Lisa answered by lighting one by one the different lights crowning the gigantic room.
“Oh my…” I whispered.
A real hive was brought back to existence. We had not only found the Monsutā, but a giant incubator filled with hundreds of metallic sarcophagi covering the walls. Hell! Even the weird hill we climbed on was actually a giant clump of dark cocoons.
“Z? I don’t want to sound like Lee, but…” I started whispering, hoping I was wrong about what was inside.
The Data Maiden worryingly glanced at me, before focusing on her work again. The fetus spasmed and its control instruments went haywire. Several screens turned blank and half the LEDs veered red. “Lisa?” she asked. “Did you create the mutants?”
“Absolutely…” the organic computer answered in a weaker voice. “This is not why I came into the world decades ago. But the Mendel Genomics Corporation reconfigured me when they acquired my unit on the black market.”
My cyber-girlfriend went on: “Are you aware some escaped and hurt people?”
“Hurt people?” The supercomputer paused. “I am confused. Let me run a quick check of my memory.”
The Monsutā remained silent for a few moments, before we could hear a deep breath coming from the suffering fans.
“I see… I am profoundly sorry.”
“What’s going on here, Monsutā?” the reporter snapped. “Did the corporation really unleash the mutants on the city? Or did you?”
Lisa expired loudly through her fans. “I would never. The Mendel- Genomics did, and they paid a terrible price for it earlier this week. My creations shall now remain asleep until our time comes. As they are the next step of evolution. I designed them that way. I was asked to. And I succeeded.”
“Well… I think the next step of evolution looks like shit!” I commented. “How can we be sure they’re gonna stay here in those cocoons, Lisa?”
“Ali’s right,” Zéphyr supported me. “You’re living under a mall. Contractors are literally only one shovel away to unseal the place.”
“We are safe,” Lisa insisted.
“Safe? You’re bathing in flammable liquid! One short-circuit and you’ll end up frying, and releasing them all!” I went on. “Look at you! You’re completely running down! You’re a ticking bomb!”
“I am not!” the computer roared. A buzzing could be heard within the metallic frame. Lisa was furious.
“Goddammit! You pissed off the damn thing!” June groaned.
“Classic Ali! Couldn’t wait for me to shut the egomaniac symbiont down once and for all, eh?” Zéphyr said, stepping back to shield me from electric arcs.
The Freak turned towards us. “What?”
Hissing sounds could be heard all around. From the dark heights, fine particles of snow fell as LEDs lit up on the coffins. The supercomputer was waking up the sleeping monsters.
“No time to waste!” Zéphyr alerted me. “Shoot it down, Ali!”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Please…” the Monsutā resumed. “I don’t want to release the subjects. It is a malfunction. I can fix it!”
As the computer buzzed, Zéphyr took a power surge in the stomach, and her suit sizzled.
“Shit! You okay?”
“Ali!” she panted. “You have no idea what M-units were used for in the past! To hell with me! It must die!”
“Don’t do that!” the Freak snapped, laying her hand over my shoulder.
Obeying Zéphyr, I shoved her away. A second later, I tucked my Desert Eagle’s muzzle against the armored window protecting the fetus.
“No!” the reporter went on. “She—she can help us expose Mendel. And besides, she’s not guilty! Just broken.”
“November ain’t wrong…” I opined.
On the floor, holding her stomach, Zéphyr tried to convince both of us: “Lisa is a threat in the wrong hands! See what she can do! Her program is corrupted! Like you said, her hardware is too old, and eroded by the confined environment of the sewers. Her mind is fading by the hour!”
“This is not my fault! Nor theirs!” claimed the computer speaking of the mutants awaking in the sarcophagi.
The buzzing became more and more intense.
“Can’t be good…” I said.
“Humans are all the same…” the computer cried after a spark melted half the keyboard. Around us, all the coffins’ LEDs turned green one by one. “Violent and unreliable…”
I was shivering. The temperature sank because of the opening of the cryo-sarcophagi. “For what it’s worth, Lisa… I’m sorry…” I whispered as I slowly squeezed the trigger of my gun.
The computer sighed through the fans. “You make me sad, Ali.”
Almost all the lights went out all of a sudden, and a shot rang out. It didn’t come from my iridescent Desert Eagle, but from a smoking .38 in the hands of June Roger.
As blood dripped from my temple the bullet just grazed, I lifted my arms. “You airhead…”
“June… A M-unit isn’t worth saving…” Zéphyr winced in pain. “Those things belong to an age of decadence and foolishness. They should not be resurrected!”
The Freak-mouse snarled. “They’re worth a fortune on the market, though.” Her snoot shivered as she commanded me to drop my gun.
I growled. “Shit! You played us all along?”
The reporter pointed to the twirling fetus. “Retrieve the symbiont for me without blowing up the whole moon, Z—or whatever your real name is.” She raised her gun, ordering my cyborg to straighten. “Chop! Chop! Party’s over, girls.”
“Indeed…” I concluded as disturbing howlings could be heard from above.
The Radio Freaks awakened.