As pervasive as the tanks were, they were never more so than in the room Macbeth floated that very moment. On the furthest walls were the various pieces of equipment, operated by drudges or unattended. But there, in the center of the bombed and ruined room, was where Macbeth spent most of his time. Surrounding his chair on either side were row upon row of the glowing orange tanks. Vestiges of human beings clung to a hopeless sort of life within them; halves of torsos, spinal columns, all attached to brains.
This was where he kept minds. Interesting minds of the dead.
In every sense of the phrase, Utropollus was now a gate between life and death; a place that had been torn apart from the inside, and the void thus created refilled by a twisted sort of machine life.
Here the barrier between life and dead meant nothing; both were simply commodities that Macbeth traded in.
He stopped at one of the tanks. Inside was the shredded torso of what once had been an adult male; a spinal column was visible, leading up through partially exposed ribs to a fractured skull. Within, the perfect memory of machines had faithfully reconstructed whatever small parts of the man’s brain they had destroyed.
Macbeth smiled, and dissolved into the memories therein, the implant in his neck guiding him through the twisted labyrinths of thought down into chemical memory.
The memories were those of Warden Vexim, of the Plato District Minimum Security Extended Residence Prison Hospital.
<i>Warden Vexim stared down from the observation deck at the pitiful, scarred form of Macbeth, where the droids worked on him. He felt something distinctly, and at first he wasn’t sure what it was. Then he realized. It was pity.
He glanced over at the doctor. This particular doctor – a well-built, impressive man – had dealt with Macbeth’s case since he had come to them almost a year before. His name was Dorot, and he was there to oversee the operation, though in truth his role was little more than passively watching the droids do their work.
“How long before the implant takes effect?” Vexim asked. “I mean, until it is usable.”
“Two, three weeks. Less if the bacta treatments take hold. It’s being implanted at the base of the brain stem, where the nerves can heal themselves quickest.”
“May we proceed with the cauterizing of the wound, doctor?” One of the droids chirped.
“Yes, you may proceed,” Dorot replied. “It will probably take Macbeth at least a week to fully understand how to operate the implant. But once he is able to, he will be able to operate any computer with ease and efficiency.”
…the memories jaunted ahead in time…
Now Warden Vexim stood before a crowd. Next to him was Macbeth, sitting pathetically in his wheelchair with a computer screen on his lap. Several feet away, a group of small droids – about as high as a person’s waist – fettered about, performing menial tasks. “Observe, as the patient interfaces with the machine as if it were his own body. He is able to communicate with almost any computer on almost any frequency. Only three weeks ago, this man was utterly helpless; now, he is all but self-sufficient.”
He recited lines he had no business reciting, fed from a prompter with little understanding of any of the medical science before him. “The brilliance of the implant is the use of nanotechnology.
“The word implant is a misnomer. It is not one implant, but a construct composed of thousands of individual parts. Tiny robots – nanites – replicate and replicate themselves at the base of his brain stem, interacting with the nerves he uses to interface with machines.
“Whereas traditional mechanical implants require expert training to use, occupy the majority of a person’s thought processes and can take years to fully master, the nanites in the Utropollus Government’s Phoenix Project are able to alter themselves, replicate and work independently, filling any role required of them. In other words, if a patient has difficulty mastering a particular aspect of the implant, the implant adjusts itself almost instantaneously.”
…and again, through time…
Vexim watched as Macbeth sat silently in his chair, the computer on his lap buzzing as he operated the droids just beyond him with expert efficiency. They were adding a new wing to the hospital.
“Careful, there, with the binary load lifter –” Vexim began, but was instantly silenced as the load lifter corrected its course. He was certain he saw Macbeth’s glowering eyes cast themselves over his way contemptuously, but bit his tongue.
One did not, after all, abuse such a useful resource as Macbeth had become. His ability to control mass numbers of droids allowed him to assist in all manner of complex work around the prison, from construction duty, to secretarial and organizational work.
A familiar voice called out to him, and he turned to see Doctor Dorot. “Hello there, doctor,” he said genially. “Lovely day.”
“Yes,” Dorot agreed absent mindedly. The doctor was eying Macbeth gloweringly, suspicion playing across his face. “Do you always allow patients to wander after curfew?”
“He’s assisting in the construction of the new wing,” Vexim said. “Didn’t you read the memo?”
“I did,” Dorot replied. “I’ve just noticed you’ve been giving Venn Macbeth quite a long leash lately.
Vexim shrugged. “Has he given me reason not to?”
It was Dorot’s turn to shrug.
“The Prison is under funded,” Vexim continued. “Our droids are older than my grandfather’s grandfather – any way that I can speed up progress, I’ll make use of. What about this has you so concerned?”
“Nothing.”
Vexim shook his head. It wasn’t like Dorot to be nervous, about anything, and he had chosen a spectacularly foolish thing over which to take up the habit. One paraplegic in the courtyard was hardly a threat to anyone…</i>
Macbeth laughed out loud at the last thought, drifting back into his own mind at will. His chair slowly drifted forward through the two rows of orange tanks, coming to another of his favorite selections from among the maddened dead.
<i>Doctor Dorot quickened his pace as he heard another set of footsteps. It was a nervous reaction, one which he knew was very common. Nervousness inspires a sort of paranoia, where even when one is fully within one’s rights in what one is doing, they perceive that somehow they are on the verge of being caught.
Dorot stepped into the Prison’s security center, a small, dull room full of holographic feeds and old, unused camera equipment. Nurse Anasthella entered behind him, locking the door as she did so.
“So what’s this all about, anyway?” She asked innocently, pressing herself up against Dorot. He brushed her away and continued to examine the computer panels.
“Not <i>that</i>, of that much I’m sure,” Dorot said. He found the panel he was looking for and began hitting several buttons.
“Then what?” Anasthella asked.
Dorot found the feed he was looking for. “Look at that,” he said.
What he was referring to was a holographic feed. It depicted a man in a wheelchair, sitting in front of a computer. Anasthella looked at the feed, then at Dorot, then at the feed again. “It’s… nice,” she said. “Was that it? Can I go now?”
“Don’t look at him,” Dorot chided impatiently. “Look at the machines in front of him. The assistant droids we licensed him. Look what they’re doing.”
The four droids appeared to be working on something small and delicate, the particulars of their project obscured by their diminutive metallic forms. Every so often, one of them would drift away from the rest, dip behind Macbeth and examine something on his neck. Then the droid would examine something on his computer, then return to the others.
“What? I don’t understand.”
Dorot rushed to another terminal, punching up a set of security logs. “Look at this,” he said. “Macbeth has been spending hours in various computer labs. Every waking second he’s not doing something for Vexim, and even some of the seconds he is. No one ever watches him anymore, so he’s just been drifting around, working on whatever it is he’s working on.”
“So,” Anasthella said, “what does this mean? He’s doing something he shouldn’t be?”
“Of course he is,” Dorot snapped, picking up a datapad. “And look at this. Vexim won’t listen to me, so I watched and waited for a week, until Macbeth forgot to clean one of the terminals he was working on. This is what I found.”
He thrust the datapad at Anasthella. She looked at it dubiously.
“It’s a series of diagrams and scientific notes,” Dorot explained furiously, “detailing every micrometer of the nanites which make up Macbeth’s implant.”
Anasthella looked up at him. “He’s building them?”
“He’s building them, and modifying them, in an uncontrolled environment. The ones in his neck couldn’t possibly operate in the real world. But given how much time he’s spent, he could have made changes. This technology is dangerous, dangerous beyond anything – ”
“I get it,” Anasthella said. “So why are you showing me all of this?”
“I need to know that I can trust you.”
“Of course,” she said, giggling excitedly.
Dorot pressed on, obviously irritated. “I need you to go speak to Macbeth – pretend you don’t know what he’s doing. Stall him. Keep him there. I’m going to get Vexim.”</i>
Macbeth pulled away again, laughing as he reemerged into reality. He proceeded to the next of the dead, plunging once again into their memories.
<i>Nurse Anasthella rushed down the hallway, her tremendous cleavage bouncing up and down and drawing excited stares from young doctors interning at the Prison Hospital. She, of course, delighted in the attention. Her mind was on anything but what was about to occur.
She slipped into the computer lab that Macbeth occupied silently, hoping to surprise him. His attention was fixed on the computer in front of him and the robots working so ponderously just beyond.
“Hello, Anasthella,” Macbeth’s said, his voice surprisingly clear for that second. Anasthella nearly jumped ten feet straight into the air.
“Oh, hello Macbeth,” she said gaily, overcoming her surprise quickly. “You sound different, today.”
“…I’m… not surprised,” Macbeth replied. He still struggled for breath slightly, she noticed.
She searched her vapid mind for conversation topics. “I heard you were working on a musical piece for the next mass,” she said finally. “That your droids are going to perform it as a band.”
“…you know,” he said, “I’ve… waited a long time to tell you… just what I think… of your fu</i><i>cking Mercerism, and… your forgotten god.”
“I’m sorry?” She said.
“…you should be.”
Macbeth’s chair turned, and for a moment she look into his eyes, noting for the first time their cold, dead luster. Then the droids in the center of the room cleared away, and a tiny, buzzing cloud arose from the ground.
It flashed forward, leaping towards her. The little bugs bit into her face, burrowed into her skin and surged up her nose.
In a second, she was dead.</i>
The surreal carnival festivities continued, as Macbeth once again came to in the real world, moving back to the beginning and casting his mind into the memories of Warden Vexim, once again.
<i>“He’s been spending hours,” Dorot said to him, “doing nothing but sitting in these computer labs, his droids toiling endlessly, extracting information from his implant about the nanite technology.”
Vexim took a deep breath, nodding in greeting to a pretty blonde woman as they passed her. He saw her around sometimes, even recalled talking to her. Samantha Koortyn, that was her name. She was ferrying the new technology.
Macbeth’s technology.
“This is hard to believe,” Vexim said. “Macbeth’s been doing good work for us. He’s a big success story – not to mention how welcome we are to have dodged any flack for that incident at Clevinger with Warden Anselm.”
“Believe it or not, you’re about to find out. Anasthella is stalling him right now.”
Vexim sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t rock the boat like this. It’s not like you.”
The two proceeded out into the courtyard. An aide came flying out of one of the buildings across from them – from the new section Macbeth had built. “Sir! Sir, you have to come quickly, there’s been some sort of –”
And that was when Vexim noticed it. A black cloud, just in the sky, slowly descending towards the courtyard.
In split second later, another black cloud emerged from the door behind the aide. For a moment it was almost surreal – how could a cloud be on the ground, or moving so quickly? But as the cloud broke into sections, each wisp pursuing one of the prisoners or guards in the courtyard, Vexim began to understand.
“Run!” Shouted Dorot. One of the miniature clouds swallowed the aide whole, surrounding him and burrowing inside, killing him in seconds. Guards fired their weapons to no avail.
Shooting clouds was, of course, impossible.
Another of the clouds took Dorot, slamming him into the ground as it buried itself into him viciously, nanites squirming into every orifice and burrowing into his skin. Vexim panicked, fleeing.
There was an explosion in the building beyond. For a moment the warden saw vague forms emerging from the fire, viciously assaulting those who yet survived.
Then the cloud from the sky descended upon the courtyard, and he, too, died.</i>
And on to another, Macbeth moved.
<i>Thom Wyat sat in his office blissfully, three hundred floors up in the headquarters of the Vexan corporation, sipping a mild drink and watching the holonet. He was sure there was some sort of work he was supposed to be doing. But those who helped Senator Tallon M’krah found themselves quickly elevated to positions which freed them from such menial concerns.
He flipped the channel lazily. Outside, the day was becoming hazy. In the distance he saw flashes of lightning.
Wonderful, he thought.
Thom spent several more minutes absent mindedly watching the holonet, until he looked out his window again. This time, he spilled his drink.
The flashes of lightning had become blood red chutes of cinder and flame, as a mob of some sort poured through the streets, semiautomatic weapons blazing. Other skyscrapers were silhouettes on a crimson sky, great blasts of artillery echoing far in the distance. Smoke and ash filled the city streets, and blood smeared the pavement.
And the clouds. The clouds had descended upon it all, permeating everything from the sky to the earth, great black walls of murder. A building crumbled in the distance.
The mob, the flames, the smoke, the ash and the clouds formed an ever expanding wall, thousands of feet below. And for ten whole minutes, Thom Wyat could do nothing but watch as they slowly approached his building, until nothing but the great black clouds were visible ahead, and only flame could be seen down below.
Then the wave of carnage began to swallow his building. The ground rumbled and shook. Then the glass walls of his office shattered, the black clouds finally pressed bare against the face of the building as the mob fought its way up from below.
Shards flew, slicing his skin, and the cold air soured the wounds bitterly. Swarms of the black things – whatever they were – rushed in, crashing through the door behind him and into the offices beyond. Screams could be heard.
And, in the chaos of it all, as Thom Wyat fell to his knees, the buzzing sounds around him coalesced into a voice, which spoke to him.
In confusion and terror Thom stared up into the inky blackness of the buzzing cloud, wondering what he could have done to deserve this.
Then the identity of the speaker occurred to him, and he understood. Then he died.</i>
Macbeth languished in the vindictive pleasure of Thom Wyat’s pain for a moment before he moved on.
<i>For Tallon M’krah, there was no surprise. He lived among what would be one of the last districts to be destroyed. He had watched the news coverage, sketchy as it was, for hours. In the distance, explosions had echoed for hours. Air traffic was utterly jammed, and most of those who tried to flee were mysteriously shot down.
Tallon M’krah knew what to expect. Like Thom Wyat, he sat, slowly sipping a drink as the end came. “All of my work,” he said. “All of my pain, toil and,” he swallowed the rest of the bitter concoction, “sacrifice.”
He watched the wave of destruction swallow his district, and then his building. The voice that spoke, just as death took him, was unknown to him.</i>
Another.
<i> – Alisha Teritol Macbeth huddled in her kitchen, holding her children as the sound of bombs shook plaster from their ceilings. The children cried bitterly, and so did she. It had been hours since the first strikes. Nobody fully understood what was happening.
Her mother had gone out for bread and never come back. Above their heads, their windows shattered. Smoke and flame filled their apartment, followed by wisps of black cloud.
She heard a voice, too – ”</i>
And another.
<i> – Shevil and Torkle, sobbing in the office they shared, bitterly bemoaned their planet’s security forces. Where, when someone needed defense, were the defenders? “We gave our lives to this place,” Shevil said.
“And look how it repaid us.”
The building shook beneath them and their windows shattered. A voice spoke to them, before the floor collapsed and –”</i>
And another.
<i> – Elha Varrithane, of the Isellington, West Isia Varrithanes, sat cold and alone as the nanites took her. Vacantly, as a dark, foul voice muttered something to her, she wondered where her brother, Banks Varrithane, was – </i>
Interesting minds.
Macbeth could drown in the cosmic irony of it all, in the sweet serendipity of his revenge, of the universal justice delivered by the cleansing fire his machines embodied. Through the implant in his neck, he felt the throbbing non-life of his self-replicating machines all around him, encompassing the entire world, chewing upon the last remains of the people he had hated so.
The voices of his family and friends replayed in his mind again and again. They made him smile and cry simultaneously, evoking a well of emotions that he had no time for.
There was a part of him that longed to see the faces of his children again, who wished to whatever god that might exist he could undo their slaughter, or perhaps simply kill himself to end his wickedness.
But in that body of flesh, as upon the face of Utropollus Major, there now beat the cold, bitter heart of a machine.
Unlike the terror exacted on Utropollus, it wasn’t a physical change; beyond those in his neck, still replicating themselves, there were no nanites in Macbeth’s body. He was still flesh and blood.
Vacantly, he wondered if it had simply always been this way. That machine heart throbbed in his chest, in his mind and in his soul, forged from his pain.
And for every death, for every act of brutality that the little part of him that was human still abhorred, that part of him delighted.
Every time he watched his family die, it drowned him in euphoria.
And against the torrent of that euphoria, Macbeth slowly felt the human part of him shrink away, until he couldn’t even feel it anymore. All that echoed in his mind was the delight of the simple statement, delivered to each of the dead in the room in the same buzzing metallic approximation of his voice.
It was the little statement each of them had heard before they had died. And it was this:
<i>“I just wanted you to know, before you died, that it was me.”</i>
Macbeth laughed again, his chair lazily gliding away.
He had other dead to attend to.
