Narcotropolis: a fragment
This unfinished story will probably never be finished. It started out as an idea for a “dark science fiction” series, ripping off all manner of sources.
If anyone wants to throw large sums of money into putting this thing on screen (yeah, right), let me know.
Darkness gives way to tiny lights.
Not that it gives way all that far; just enough to reveal shape, distance, generalities. Rows of things, gleam of frost.
The things in rows look like carcasses in plastic bags, hanging on hooks from racks in the ceiling. From the floor, tubes and pipes and wires of many sorts wind up into ports and plugs in the ‘front’ of the baggy, upside down, all too human shapes; high-tech viscera in a frozen slaughterhouse. Presumably pumps are whirring and electronics hum and bleep. Not that one can hear; there is no atmosphere to carry sound to ears.
When atmosphere does arrive, it arrives in silence, too – a soundless bellow of fog from a hundred vents, racing down the racks, setting some contents swaying. At first, anyway. As the pressure rises, the sound becomes more audible, a life giving roaring. A roaring that swells and suddenly cuts out. Heating elements cut in, long hot glows, attempting to keep the newly released atmosphere from freezing to walls, racks, floors.
Now a new sound is heard: Crack of ice, shriek of unwilling hinges. Someone has opened an airlock.
The heavily swathed figure crunches ice beneath its boots as it pulls the cover off a terminal, starts it up. Its breath steams in the cold. Well below zero, even with the heaters going.
The figure interrogates the terminal. Shifts feet to prevent freezing to the floor. Watches a series of numbers – rack X, unit Y – parade past. Some are marked as warnings – some repairs needed. One is marked as crashed. The unit’s contents are truly dead; not suspended in icy sleep like the others.
The figure snaps on a torch, shuts down and covers up the terminal, then starts its rounds. Mostly T-junctions cracking or coming loose; nothing that can’t be fixed with a little sealant or a spanner. Plugs degrading or coming loose; stick 'em back in their sockets, replacing said sockets if necessary.
One unit has a wire that’s actually come away from the plug. The figure swears softly, prises the plug out. The dead guy can provide a spare; won’t need one any more, will he?
The dead man’s bag feels hard inside; the suspension fluid has frozen. His tissues will be frozen beyond repair too – including his brain. But for now, the figure just pulls out plugs and pipes and closes switches and valves. The carcass swings slightly in the rack, shaking off frost.
The figure leaves briefly with its plunder, opens up the terminal again. Queries show everything nominal except for the dead guy; he’ll have to be removed.
But the guy’s a literal ice block: the suspension fluid is a solid mass that’s just too damn big to get through the airlock. And too bulky for one person to shift. Reinforcements are needed.
Shut down and cover up. The figure closes the airlock door behind her, goes to an intercom. “This is Tertius. I need some help with an ice block in freezer bay 35.”
In the ready room, two men hear the message. One is known as Primus, the other Quintus, or just Quin. There are three other inhabitants on board, but Secundus, Quadricus and Sextus are away doing other work.
Quin frowns. “That’s the fourth one we’ve had in that particular bay. Everywhere else, it’s either none, or one or two.”
Primus nods and addresses the intercom. “Hey Tert. Which rack’s this one on?”
“Same as the last two,” comes the reply, “Rack 23. Suspension glop’s frozen up.”
The two men look at each other, then Quin too addresses the intercom. “OK, I’m coming. Shall I bring a hammer?”
Quin shuffles down the corridors and ladderways to Human Storage Compartment 35. Not that it’s hard to find. Virtually every alternate destination is marked as a “No Go” zone. Warning lights. Coloured popups indicating locked and sealed doors. Besides, Tertius’ waiting impatiently outside the bay lock itself.
Quin is sweating. He’s dressed heavily, like Tertius. Also, he’s holding a big sledge. And a saw. Dead people don’t care if they have to be removed in pieces.
“Right, where’s the popsicle?”
“The what?” Tertius asks in confusion.
“Popsicle. It’s a frozen confection that humans eat.”
Tertius digests this information with a small “Oh”. Then: “C'mon.”
The freezer bay is now fairly noisy. Rattling, clunking, and then a mix of hammering and cracking sounds. Like someone shattering a large block of ice. This is then followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged; the whunk of an airlock door being shut. The throb of fans filling high pressure tanks. The whistling of gas being pumped away. Fading fast.
Then the heaters and lights go out. Darkness and silence return.
The crew of the Narcotropolis look human. They are soft-skinned, mammals, bilateral symmetry, sparse body hair save for patches in the armpits, genitals and the top of the head (and about the face for the males). They breathe oxygen, consume liquid and solid animal and vegetable matter, and excrete both liquid and solid wastes. From a biological viewpoint, perfectly human.
From a genetic viewpoint, there are radical differences. For one, the codes for ageing and death have been replaced with instructions to build peculiar cell structures throughout the body, producing and storing quantities of a powerful substance to be released explosively after ten years of existence. The substance is worthy of note; after ten years of build up there is enough stored to kill the being instantly.
These organic time bombs, more than anything, say clone.
Clones do not lead happy, or even long, lives. They are not deemed to be humans; thus, no human rights, whatever pressure groups may say. One may use them as one pleases.
With the rise of genetically engineered human clones, new vistas were opened in the realms of scientific research, warfare, and entertainment. Snuff movies and other obscenities re-entered the adult marketplace declaring that “No Humans were Harmed in the Making…” and nobody cared. Entire battalions of specially force-grown and trained suicide troops blew each other to bloody meat on the world’s battlefields – and in one-on-one combats before live audiences. The Roman circus had returned.
Not only humans, but animals were cloned too. In one amusing incident, a prestigious horse racing event was thrown into chaos when it was found that almost the entire entry group was cloned from one famous racehorse, albeit with slight changes in conformation and colour.
Humanity did not attempt to clone its perceived best and brightest, but did avail itself of genetic engineering – despite the doom-mongering of some holdouts – in the belief that somehow the human condition would be improved.
This was a mistake.
Whether HSF-3 was a “superbug” (antibiotic-resistant bacterium), or a virus like AIDS or Ebola, or some other agent, was unimportant in the face of its effectiveness in killing.
HSF-3 stood for “Human Systemic Failure type 3” – fancy talk meaning that it attacked every part of the human body. Records showed that two similar ailments had arisen before, hence the 3. But they weren’t as effective as this one.
HSF-3 arose in the middle of the Allied African Tribelands, and from there propagated through the global transport system the way nerve gas does through a building’s air conditioning. Some say HSF-3 was a mutation of the South American HSF-1 or 2, but it does not matter now.
The genetic tinkering with man’s own DNA was biting hard. Such “engineering” often took the form of splicing in a prefabricated segment. As a result, an awful lot of people not only had the same desired traits, but also the same susceptibilities.
The AAT’s population, pre-HSF-3, was three billion. Barely five years later, just over thirty million remained.
The inevitable panic was inflamed by the dreadful uniqueness of each sufferer’s demise. Some people literally keeled over, stone dead. Others languished for weeks. In some the brain or other internal organs were utterly destroyed; one man was found sitting on the toilet with his liquefied organs filling the bowl. He’d called his doctor about a house call, suspecting diarrhoea.
They were the lucky ones. Some bled to death as their skin sloughed away; others suffocated when their lungs collapsed. Many went mad, more were claimed when the disease attacked their blood.
It was as though HSF-3 had a sick sense of humour. An apparently healthy priest went to christen a baby – the flesh of his fingers began to swell, then burst, spreading up his arm and over his body. The shock carried him off, as well as the great-grandmother of the unfortunate child.
Something had to be done.
The concept of a space-borne ark began to catch on. Separate from the plague-ridden Earth, the ark, it was thought, could harbour the chosen few until the disease ran its course. But then the question remained: What would happen once the refugees returned?
It was eventually decided that the ark ship would be the first truly interstellar voyage to another star: one with known planets, that was known to exist, and could offer a safe haven. It was a mighty project worthy of humankind; sending what could be the last remaining humans to shelter around a different star.
There were only a couple of problems. One was that the star in question was a hundred light years away. The other was that even with the most powerful drive systems imaginable the voyage would take nearly four hundred years.
The design of the ark was full of compromises. Different companies from different nations built sections that inevitably had to be jerry-rigged together. Since nobody wished to spend the rest of their lives on board the ship, and the concept of cloning human beings themselves was unthinkable, massive cryogenic suspension facilities had to be developed quickly. The fusion engines were of different types and ratings, yet had to work together.
The ship taking shape could not be described as elegant, nor a pinnacle of mankind’s achievement. The Narcotropolis – albeit not named – could only be described as a race’s desperate attempt to cheat death.
If there were once clean lines designed, you couldn’t see them now beneath the wealth of cobbled together modules, piping, anti-asteroid missiles and the ugly mass of the engines. Just about the only thing clean about the ship was the front impact shielding, making the Narcotropolis look like a jellyfish God designed after taking far too many hallucinogens and studying Cubism.
But this Cubist jellyfish still needed a crew.
It was universally decided that clones would serve as crew under the guidance of the ship’s AI. After all, no human crew would survive the journey (and again, the thought of cloning genuine human beings was automatically discarded.)
He’s only mad because it’s all Mary Shelley’s fault.
Real science doesn’t involve sitting about in swim trunks (usually).
