In the grey industrial depths of the city, in a drab corner of a forgotten warehouse, something not completely human stirred.
Kein blinked. His soaring high was starting to fade, the ecstasy in his arm mellowing to a throbbing pulse that he knew would soon bring the pain again. He flexed the new hand, still marvelling at the chrome skin. He could feel the power the surgical procedure had given him flowing through the limb into the rest of his body. As he admired his glistening prize, he caught his reflection in the silvery palm, bringing him up short.
A tangle of matted wires hung out of the crown of his head, each one leading to a gently sparking end. One eye burned like a white hot inferno whilst the other stared back, blackened and dead. The skin was a patchwork of bright metal, dull plastic and greying flesh. His nose had been replaced with a metallic pressure valve and every tungsten tooth in his mouth had a tan ceramic neighbour. His augmented jaw could bite clean through metal but his stomach could not yet process it. Maybe that would be the next purification he should undergo. He smiled and sparked his teeth together producing a grinding sound. In Kein's head it played like a melody, a siren song of change and escape.
The hand had been surgically attached three days ago but the transplant buzz was already beginning to wear off. When the Reverend had explained his purpose to him all those months ago, the pleasure had lasted for weeks at a time. Changing small parts, something no-one would notice, a patch of skin on his flank, a toe. The knowledge that he had changed and no-one could see it was heaven to him, keeping him warm and contented for a month or two before he had to change again.
Now it was only a matter of days before he needed the fix and hiding it had become more and more difficult, until he didn't care anymore. He'd proudly display his latest modification, the sharp thrill of secret knowledge changing to the sledgehammer blow of confrontation. Walking down the street now, people would stare at him in disgust or avert their gaze. Some would hurl abuse at this self made monster.
He was too important to care about those people now for he was the Messiah. Hadn't his God told him so?
But change cost money and with each procedure becoming more and more extreme, the cost was rising sharply. Kein was out of cash but he needed the next fix, the next change, and he knew somewhere that always had money...
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I had decided not to mention the neural nets at Carterhouse to anyone. Looking back, I realise it was the one decision that could have prevented the terrible events that were to overshadow the entire population several months later. But when it comes to hindsight we all have perfect vision. I made what I thought was the right call at the time.
I thought the computers linked to the mind of every man who'd been at that school posed no threat, provided none of the people wearing the nets saw that one single page in one of the most obscure books ever published. In order not to destroy the reputation of some of the most important people in society I kept quiet.
I can be really, really stupid sometimes.
But that was yet to come. I'd left my wife early this morning sleeping the sleep of an untroubled conscience, a luxury some of us will never know again. I walked the old familiar streets for a few hours feeling the city warming and waking to the caress of the new sun. I met Remy, in a pleasant cafe I knew in the deep recesses of Stepney.
The cafe owner owed me a favour or two from my time tabbing the beat, back when people still got attacked for the colour of their skin. Jules Montague hadn't been in the country long enough to know that a gang of white pond scum rarely want to know the time when they ask for it. The glitter of his gold watch when he reflexively moved his sleeve was all the motivation they needed to attack.
I was walking my beat solo and happened across the four of them standing over the prone Jules. Three of them were using his head like a football the other was going through the suitcase he'd carried all the way from the airport. They turned their attention from the stricken man to the lone copper and grinning, came for me. There are two ways to deal with this.
The law says "Talk to them, talk at them, try to reason with them, calm the situation down.".
The gut says "Fuck 'em. They need to be taught they can't get away with this.".
Four on one were bad odds. They never had a chance.
The first pulled out a small knife that glinted in his hand. A definite mistake. My expanding baton took it out of his grip on the downstroke and snapped his head back on the return. As he collapsed his mate flew at me, leg extended, to try and kick me to the ground. A quick sidestep and a dropped shoulder into his exposed groin had him clutching at his valuables on the ground, crying incoherently.
The other two approached more cautiously, fanning out so I had to step carefully over their fallen comrades. I waited for either one of them to make a move. The shorter one gave in first and threw a punch, I dodged, grabbed his hand and used his own weight to force him to the floor, feeling the bones in his wrist snap and break beneath my gloves.
The fourth turned to run just as Jules flung out an arm and sent him sprawling to the pavement.
I'd put two of them in hospital and the other two in the station and Jules had never forgotten.
He opened a cafe just around he corner from where he'd been 'welcomed' into the neighbourhood, and it was my routine to stop in when I was having a slow morning.
Jules strolled to our table, his dark weather-beaten face broken only by a giant beaming smile.
"There ya go Jim," he said, dropping off a bagel for me and a full breakfast for Remy. "On the house."
I matched his smile with my own. This was a little dance we did for the sake of propriety.
"Can't accept it Jules, that's bribery."
"Bribery? Pah! Can't have you two fighting the forces of darkness on empty stomachs, it wouldn't be right."
He beamed again and swung back to behind the counter, both of us knowing full well I'd leave exact change plus tip on the side plate on my way out.
I was feeling quite at peace with the world and Remy was sitting opposite me waving a fork full of greasy pig products and pontificating on one of his favourite subjects, history.
" ...and that was the point at which they said 'No more' and confined us to Earth until we learn to grow up. Now we have to notify them of every satellite we launch otherwise it just gets vaporised as soon as it hits the ionosphere."
I had heard this story many time before.
Not very long ago man had commanded the solar system, sending ships and men out to Mars and Jupiter. One of our deep range probes had attracted the attention of a race we knew as the Isturi. These beings of pure energy had come to our small cluster of planets and found a semi-evolved race still fighting petty wars, harbouring animalistic instincts and generally behaving like spoilt children.
They were several eons ahead of our technology and light years ahead of us evolutionarily, having moved beyond the need for actual physical form. They appeared as objects of incandescent light too powerful to actually look at.
The Isturis' horror at our bestial savagery soon turned into stewardship. They informed humanity that we would not be allowed to leave the planet until we were worthy of the honour. Once we satisfy them that we will cause no further harm to ourselves or others, we'll be let loose upon the galaxy. They refer to this state of being as Enlightenment. It's hard to argue with beings that can destroy entire cities with a single thought. It was just lucky that they're a peaceful race and didn't decide we were entirely beyond redemption.
Remy was halfway through his second sausage and his theory on why we'd never achieve the Isturi's arbitrary criteria for becoming enlightened when my phone rang.
"Prophet."
"Jim, Its Alan."
My direct supervisor and conduit to the boss.
"Hi Alan, what's up?"
"Drop whatever you're doing and get over to the hospital. We've got another one of your cases, I'll meet you there. Don't take all day, the situation's getting worse."
The phone went dead.
By 'your cases', Alan meant the unusual, strange or just plain bizarre workload I often found myself saddled with. I seemed to be getting a reputation for handling the things no-one else wanted to touch with a barge pole. The more strange stuff I dealt with, the more came my way. It was a feedback loop of oddness that also meant I was really allowed a lot of leeway to handle the heap of crap my own way. The brass generally didn't want to know too much about the freaky problems themselves or how I'd solved them.
"Time to go," I said, slurping what was left of my strong tea.
Remy crammed as much food as he could into his mouth, I dropped twenty bucks on the table and the two of us piled into the car and headed out onto the crowded streets. Jules shot us a wave knowing we would have good reason for leaving abruptly.
London had changed a lot over the years. The occupation and eventual blossoming of England into the 53rd state of America had introduced many changes. Some were good, some were bad but the traffic around London's gnarled streets and alleys would never change. I had heard rumours that initially after the occupation there was a plan to stamp the grid system onto the city in the same way you'd brand a cattle, but the plan never came to fruition. My theory was somebody up high worked out that if you took away the residents main source of complaint they'd soon find something else to bitch about.
As we flashed through USS Constitution Square with the sirens wailing, I was able to cut through most of the traffic. When you had the blues and twos going most drivers would find at least a little extra room to get out of the way. I'd pounded these pavements for so long I knew more about these streets than the cabbies did. Even though the gridlock was pretty bad we eventually wound our way through the stationary traffic and into the London Free Hospital to be met by a heaving mob of people.
Utilizing my police drivers training and a couple of decades of experience, I abandoned the car half on the kerb and we started to push our way through the protesters. I tried to make sense of what they were chanting but it was only once I'd made it through the baying crowd I could see their banners read "Human Rights!" and "Cast out the machine!".
"Just our luck to get caught up in a Ludd demonstration," muttered Remy in my ear.
The Ludds were the latest incarnation of the anti-machine lobby that were convinced we could all go back to subsistence farming and knitting our own yoghurt. Morons. Why they were protesting in front of a hospital I had no idea. Maybe they thought a nice herbal poultice and a round of meditation could cure cancer and all these machines were keeping good honest witch doctors out of work. In their view humanity was being sidelined by technology and the Ludd called for humanity not to be eclipsed by its own creations.
We reached the ring of uniformed officers keeping the baying crowd from destroying the front entrance. Remy grabbed the nearest one, showed his badge and said, "What's all this about?!"
In spite of the pressure of the crowd the uniform grinned. It wasn't often that he knew more than ranking officers. "The DI will fill you in," he shouted over the noise, "He's in the casualty ward."
Alan, or DI Roberts as his ID badge said, was waiting for us at the entrance to the bays. A tall man with a freshly ironed air about him, he was standing in front of one of the privacy curtains for the beds. There was an awful smell emanating from somewhere, even more so than usual for hospitals. A filthy metallic smell.
"Jim, I see you met your welcoming committee out front."
"Alan, what the hell is going on?"
Without further ado DI Roberts whipped the curtain away to reveal a dark mess of machine and body parts. It was as if a car had crashed through a slaughterhouse and was merged by some horrid force into a welded mass of meat and metal. It was only when the head turned towards us that I realised it was or had been human. Fighting back my revulsion I stepped forward.
"My name's Jim Prophet, son," I said, mainly to disguise the noise of Remy being violently sick behind me. "Who did this to you?"
Eyes with no human feeling in them fixed mine while his lips pulled back in what I took to be a smile of pleasure or a rictus of pain displaying rows of uneven metal and ceramic teeth.
"I did this to myself."
I'd heard some stories in my time, but Keins was probably the oddest.
He'd been born normally like you or I but always felt there was something wrong, something clearly alien about himself.
He was told that the alienation he was feeling was all part of growing up, but he knew differently. He couldn't relate to people, to their experiences and he knew that they considered him strange. Drugs hadn't helped. They'd made him much much worse. All that paranoia had boiled over into violence and he'd received a court order to clean up or go to jail.
As part of his rehab Kein started going to a church and ended up a regular at a chapel on Yelena Street called "The Temple of the Transformed Man." The priest there had shown him the simple truth he had been missing for all those years. Improving a small part of oneself every day brought one got closer to God.
To my mind Kein had misunderstood the part about improving yourself. He'd taken it literally and started replacing perfectly decent parts of his body with machine counterparts in an effort to be more holy.
Desperate for cash to pay for another alteration he'd been caught trying to rob a convenience store. Kein had been shot twice before he'd thrown the owner through a solid wall. His augmented strength and the reinforced concrete meant the human basic owner didn't really have a chance.
Tears of pure black ran over Keins mottled cheeks, wiped away by a hand of silver metal, "I didn't want to kill anyone! I just needed the money to change! I just tried to get him out of the way."
The mob outside knew that the shopkeeper had been killed by something other than human and were using it as a platform to incite violence. We always fear that which we don't understand. We put any name to it that we want, racism, fascism, sexism, it all boils down to loathing that which we can't comprehend.
I left the cubicle feeling sick to my stomach but not at the appearance of the being that had used to be a man. A very wise man once said "Religious conviction is the only thing that that can make good men perform evil deeds." Kein clearly had some psychological flaw where he saw everything in need of improvement and change.
Remy, also looking a little green around the gills, was standing in the corner waiting for me. I gave him the short version and we headed out to Yelena Street to see the priest who had started this whole business.
On the way out I grabbed the nearest doctor who was still trying to avoid looking at the half man, half machine, cluttering up his neat clean emergency room.
"Make sure he sees a psychiatrist."
The young man smirked.
"Actually, I was thinking of calling a mechanic."
I'd spent a fair amount of time around doctors and their trademark black humour which they called a 'coping mechanism'. I called it puerile schoolboy wit masked as something deeper.
"Funny. He's suffering from Surgical Addiction and Body Dysmorphic Syndrome."
He shot me a look that spoke a thousand medical volumes.
"Look them up." I said turning on my heel and striding towards the exit.
Remy had the decency of waiting until we were past the entrance and the riled up mob, before asking me what I was on about.
"He's suffering from a mental disease where he sees the flesh as flawed and wants to replace every part of it to make himself more holy."
"More holy?"
"Yep," I replied, "We're going to church."
The frontage of the temple was nondescript and dully painted, only a notice board proclaiming it the 'Temple of the Transformed Man' let you know it wasn't an office building. As we walked into the entrance of the church the small windows let in angled shafts of light that barely penetrated the darkness. There was a heavy smell in the air like burning oil and incense. A background hum droned from every corner which sounded like static, and I realised it was a thousand recorded voices chanting a litany of praises, a mechanised Tibetan prayer wheel eternally cycling. Remy looked around.
"Hello?" he shouted, his voice carrying strangely in the unformed darkness.
The hall lights flashed on, dazzling us, as a clear sharp voice rang out.
"Welcome, stranger! You have come seeking the truth."
The church was deeper than it looked from outside. Dark red carpets led to the pews and then onto an altar of a burnished metal shining in the artificially bright light. A hologram of an android, carefully featureless, shimmered into life in front of us.
"In a manner of speaking," I began,"My name's DI Prophet and this is DI Bouchalant. We're looking for whomever's in charge here."
The lights dimmed slightly, a door to the left of the altar sprang open and the voice called out, "Please step through into my chambers."
We walked into a small spartan space containing nothing but a table and chairs, where a hooded figure was sitting at the table with his face hidden from view. The same metallic voice, now much quieter, asked us to sit.
"My name is Father Xerces. You'll have to excuse my robe gentlemen, but I'm afraid my appearance can be too much for some people."
A single red dot shone out from under the hood but that was all that was visible beneath the dark lip of his robe.
"We're police officers sir. We're used to that kind of thing."
"That's kind, but I'll remain in the shadows if I may. I was in an industrial accident that destroyed the left side of my body and most of my face. I couldn't afford the bills for vat grown replacements so they bolted metal and untarnishable alloys to my skin and bones. In doing so they healed my body and cleansed my soul. I became complete for the first time in my life. In short, I saw God. And this church is my way of worship. Drawing new sheep into the fold."
"So are you the transformed man that this temple is built to?"
He chuckled. A deeply unsettling metallic sound.
"No. I'm not that egotistical. I'm merely trying to show people that transformation can have a wonderful affect on a person. Changing things about yourself that are faulty or bad can lead to enlightenment."
"Enlightenment through mutilation?"
"It's not strictly the physical I am referring to. If you have a bad defect in your psyche wouldn't you try to change it? But yes I believe that the flesh can be tempted. I believe the flesh is weak. Modifying parts of yourself that cause you to sin can only be a good thing if it leads to no further sin."
I'd thought Kein had misunderstood the preaching of this maniac. It turned out he'd been absolutely correct. Xerces wasn't interested in changing attitudes or moral practices, he was talking about gross physical changes, like the one he had been through. It was a total shock, that made me incredulous.
"Do you know a Mr Kein?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Mr Kein, he attends your church here. He's charged with murder."
"Murder? We are peaceful people officer, we just believe in improving ourselves beyond the transience of the flesh. If Mr Kein has committed a crime I am very sorry for it but it has nothing to do with myself or my church."
"He was robbing a store to raise money for another mutilation...".
He interrupted, "It's not a mutilation if it's a sacrament! 'If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away! It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into hell.' Matthew 5:29."
I didn't feel like telling him that more people had died because of that book than he could ever hope to save.
"Whilst your rights to believe whatever you want are constitutionally protected, when your particular religious viewpoint harms innocents."
"A murder is always a tragedy. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything. I'm afraid Kein may have an unbalanced mind..."
"May?"
"...but the implication that his unfortunate crime had anything to do with the church or myself is totally incorrect. We are merely practising our peaceful religion as is our right enshrined in law. The law you gentlemen are sworn to uphold. There's no incitement to violence against non-believers in our creed."
He stood up with a heavy creaking sound. I could see his bare right leg was normal human flesh wearing only a sandal but his left was a tangle of wires and a copperish metal.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave now."
The red probing light in his hood had increased in intensity, glaring as if angry although his artificial voice remained measured and calm.
"If we have any further questions Father..."
"Then I will be right here. I have nothing to hide."
"Except your face," I thought, uncharitably.
The lamps had been turned off in the main body of the church. We, as the unenlightened and lacking augmented vision, clearly did not see the light. We staggered out of the oily darkness into the blessed air of the city proper.
I turned to Remy.
"We'll have to come back to see if his peaceful rhetoric changes for a more receptive audience."
He lit one of those foul French cigarettes he was unable to shake and nodded at me.
Remy and I would stand out a mile at one of these meetings but luckily I knew someone who was perfect for fitting in with a machine-loving crowd, or Modders as the Ludds would call them.
"No. No. No. No. No. Not as a favour, not as an assignment, not even as an order, Jim. I simply won't do it."
Delyth was initially reluctant to go undercover to the service. After I explained to her the nature of the query she soon warmed up to the idea. She was intrigued how humans could take technology and turn it into a religion with its own rituals, services and offerings.
That night we returned to the temple, Delyth and I walked into together. She had a halo of tarnished metal floating above her head on repulsors and an artfully decorated dragon tattoo stretched across her bare shoulders and over the left side of her face. I had my own fake facial markings, that of a new Zealand tribe from many centuries before. She assured me that if Father Xerces got another look at me, I'd be unrecognisable from the scruffy detective he met this morning. Black bars and talons covered my cheeks and a large stylised eagle seemed to have settled across my forehead.
Delyth had stencilled the designs on herself using an ink that she assured me would wash off with alcohol. When she'd finished my design she stepped back to take a long look.
"You look..."
"Great? Amazing?" I finished, only half joking.
"Different. In a good way." She smiled and our eyes met and glanced away.
Her wardrobe provided the long leather coats that enveloped the rest of our bodies and completed the look. Who knows what kind of modifications they may be hiding?
We went in alone. Remy was waiting on his own around the corner in a borrowed taxi in case we needed to beat a hasty retreat but I didn't want a van full of officers waiting. Number one this wasn't a bust, we simply didn't have enough for a warrant. This was an information gathering exercise. And number two, if one of these worshippers had a short-wave radio implanted in his skull, he might have picked up chatter from the van itself and tipped our hand.
Hundreds of 'Modders' filed into the church which was lit bright against the dark night, giving it a respectability and impressiveness that it lacked in daylight. The congregation was full of weirdoes but plenty of normal folks were chatting away to the people with bits of metal sticking out of their necks. In our own weird way, we blended right in. The lights dimmed as we took our pew and the service itself began.
I'm not religious but I have attended my share of services. For some their faith lends them a sense of place, poise and purpose. It's a constant source of strength and they seem the taller and the prouder for it. In contrast though a lot of people seemed to attend that particular brand of Christianity where you leave your thinking, self-determination and dignity at the door. Unless they're crying, wailing, and beating their breast they don't feel they're being sufficiently sincere enough.
This service was definitely the latter of the two.
I don't think many traditional Catholic priests are greeted with rapturous applause, but Xerces was as he strode across the stage, robe still very much in place. He stopped at the lectern and threw back his hood in a dramatic gesture. The applause rose into a near orgasmic frenzy of cheering.
His face and body were covered in the burnished copper. Where the flesh was still visible it was partially hidden behind the multicoloured wires powering the machine part of him. A metal mask unevenly split his face in two and where the right side was fair skinned and blond haired the left gazed out of a deep red lens, pulling focus on the crowd. His entire mouth was covered by the mask and from the grill holes at the front he began to preach.
"My brothers and sisters, I stand here before you transformed from the wretched sinner I once was! I have changed in spirit as I have changed in body. I could have cursed God for destroyed my weak flesh, but I praised him for fortifying me with metal and fire! The body is not a temple! It's a monument to imperfection!"
He was alive, he was igniting the passions and the feelings of the freaks and the weirdoes, the underclass. They responded with whoops and yells. Arms, human and otherwise were raised aloft.
However inflammatory it was, it wasn't illegal. It wasn't incitement. We couldn't arrest him for talking passionately about his religion.
The basic tenet was as he had explained to Remy and myself, the flesh is weak and corruptible in a way metal could never be. The major errors of the world could be attributed to human weakness not the failure of our machines.
Just then there was a shattering of glass and a rock sailed through the air, landing in the crowd. Remy shouted in the earpiece I'd forgotten I was wearing, "Jim! The Ludds are here!"
Before I could react the wooden doors crashed open as the main body of the Ludds came piling through. They met the first line of Modders and started laying about them with stakes and clubs. They were a ravening horde buoyed up by their righteous anger. These weren't the placard waving protestors hoping to cause a change. These were the arm and the boot of people who felt so threatened they had to lay about the source of the threat with fist and club.
I should have announced I was a police officer. I should have tried to calm the situation down. But they wouldn't have taken me seriously. They would have wrapped a club around my tattooed face.
I moved into the aisle and intercepted the Ludd leading the charge. He ignored my outstretched arm, his face a mask of unleashed fury and I knew he would pound me into the ground given the chance, my facial tattoos marking me as 'alien', as 'that which is to be destroyed'. I ducked under his initial blow and swung back into his solar plexus knocking him cold.
A white light exploded on the left side of my face and I fell heavily. As I rose again I saw Delyth had taken the club that had hit me and was striking back with white-hot anger.
After that it got really bad.
I can remember punching a Ludd and him collapsing into the knave, whacking his head on the wooden pew. I remember feeling a bond of companionship with the modders fighting along side me, a wave of feeling that makes me sick now to think of it. I lost the thing that makes policemen good: control. I was working more on animal instinct than human thought and right beside me, trading blows and punches, was Delyth. Her position as a tech obviously hadn't completely erased her training, as she drop-kicked another Ludd out of contention and into unconsciousness.
In the middle of the chaos Xerces was laying about him with a stave, his red eye gleaming as he spouted exhortations and encouragements to his flock in a most unpriestly like manner. Its the first time I've seen the clergy urging on violence but for him the Ludds represented all the hate and intolerance of their kind. He was paying it back in spades.
A shout went up and Xerces turned just as a thrown half-brick came arching through the air and caught him clean on the metal side of his face.
There was a resounding bang as the metallic mask flew off, exposing what should have been the hideous scarring and augmental electronics it was meant to hide. Except, there were no scars. There were no electronics. The mask hid nothing except perfect skin and another pale blue eye to match its twin.
Xerces had no damage at all. He was a first stage human, as he had been the day he was born.
He spluttered as the room fell silent all gazing at their leader, the man who told them all the wonders of changing. Of altering their bodies to be closer to his. Closer to the divine.
"It's a miracle!" Xerces shouted in his now very human, very nervous voice "I've been cured...." He hadn't even finished the sentence before the first Modder fist impacted on him. In an instant all the freaks and weirdoes turned on him. The ones he'd encouraged. The ones he'd lied to. They thought he'd been leading by example, but they been duped and they were in the mood for revenge.
I used the confusion to make a move to the back door, dragging Delyth behind me. Amid the crowd Xerces gave an all too human scream that was suddenly ended.
We made it past the swarming Ludds to the car, Remy was already gunning the engine and we squealed away from the scene. I looked behind us and saw the church erupt in flames, lighting the night in every direction. Whether it was set by the Ludds or the betrayed Modders I'll never know.
Remy was so shaken he started talking in his native tongue.
"Vous les branleurs qu'anglais sont fous, je jamais devriez avoir la maison gauche!"
"What?" said Delyth, still shaking from the adrenaline.
"He said we're all crazy and he should have stayed at home." I translated absent-mindedly, lost in my own thoughts.
"I'm inclined to agree with him."
We were silent as Remy drove us homeward, knowing we couldn't tell anyone what had happened in there. It had been an unauthorized operation and as it had all gone south it could become very awkward to explain. Especially as I still had Luddite blood on my knuckles.
Remy dropped us off at Delyths apartment and sped away into the night without a further word.
I walked Delyth up to her place, I wasn't sure quite why.
She unlocked her front door and turned to me.
"You don't have to go home you know," she said, her face betraying the tangled emotions beneath the surface.
"Jennifer will be waiting for me," I said simply, the neutral nature of the statement speaking more than words ever could.
"We could have died in there tonight," she said looking straight at me, seeing right through me, "I would never want to end my life thinking 'What if?'."
Before I could respond she turned and walked through her door, leaving it ajar. An invitation, a welcome, a temptation.
I followed her into to her apartment on autopilot, not really knowing what was going to happen next.
I can be really, really stupid sometimes.
