Mardock Scramble

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I actually have to hope that something bad’s going to happen to the girl.”

“Sure. Mind you, the real question in this situation is whether the girl is going to accept you. A Scramble 09 like you.”

Presently a blip ran across the screen of the Nav and a dark voice echoed all around.

“With humans…some live as objects, and it’s not always the case that they even want free will.”

“Hey, I’m sure she’ll understand just what a good thing you are. Her life’s in danger. That’s where we save her. She’ll witness our usefulness firsthand, right?”

“Even if she does have her life saved, it’s not at all unlikely that she’ll reject us…”

The screen grew ever more blurred.

“Stop being such a mope. Que sera sera, right? Oi! Hey, stop hiding away.” The man banged at the Nav with increasing urgency, and eventually the screen recovered.

“The target’s left the road. He’s faster than I thought.”

The screen showed that the black AirCar had left the freeway and was moving directly toward Central Park.

“It’s here! He’s changed the autopilot’s course. He’s broken the pattern set over the last forty-seven days.”

The man was gleefully getting ready to give the steering wheel a big yank when the voice of the Nav stopped him in his tracks. “Don’t follow straight after him, Doc. We’ll take a detour and intercept him at his likely destination. Keep your distance.”

No sooner said than a number of possible routes came up on the screen, and before long they settled on one of those.

“Why’ve we chosen this road, Oeufcoque?” asked the man as he turned the steering wheel again.

“ ’Cause if nothing happens we’ll be able to head home on this road without having to pass them.”

The man sighed—he should have known it—and responded, “If nothing happens, eh? Oeufcoque, my naive little soft-boiled friend, do you really think we live in such a gentle world? When you think about it, what is there really that divides our little patch of earth from the fires of hell down below?”

?

“Ah, yes, and we’re stopping right there beside the lake.” The man slid both his hands over the girl’s body as he spoke.

“Don’t forget to set the timer for our rest. The password’s the same as before.” The man’s hands were creeping incessantly about the girl’s body as she did as he ordered and set the course for the AirCar with the remote. The hands that never broke into a cold sweat even when a hundred thousand dollars was at stake, that had coolly won many a deal, the gamester’s hands that had caused so much excitement in the Shows—these long, slender fingers had now slid into the girl’s underwear, forced her legs apart, burrowed deeper and deeper (or so she thought), and at the same time the other hand played with the swell of her breasts, squeezing and gently pinching them.

Even as the man explored the girl’s body she was somewhere else—unresisting while silently assisting him with his needs. Her coat had already been taken off, and the fingers moving about deep inside her hot pants were getting wet. Sensing a change in her breaking, he slid his other hand under her shirt and inside her bra. Still the girl silently continued to program the course into the AirCar, and the man took great pleasure in the way she let out the occasional involuntary moan.

“We’ll do it as you’re programming the remote.” The voice from the man, now behind her, commanded, and the girl closed her eyes, obeyed the rules.

As the girl closed her eyes and slipped out of consciousness, the sensation of the man’s hand inside her gradually diminished—all sensations isolated—and it was as if everything in the world were happening on the other side of a thin film.

This was the girl’s talent, and indeed it was a skill that she constantly had the opportunity to polish. Right now she was able to observe even her own reactions and physical responses from a safe place within her heart.

Don’t stay hidden in your shell, someone would say.

Come on out, they would say.

That was the sort of response she’d always had from the myriad of people in her life—social workers, the people from the institute, passing friends, colleagues, employers, owners, clients.

But this city had a different set of needs for the girl’s special talent.

It turned out there were quite a few clients who liked their girls to be dolls.

Clients who got off on the idea of girls who closed off their hearts, girls who acted as though they were asleep or dead.

“Balot…” the man called into the girl’s ear. Just as many clients had called her before.

Balot. The name of that delicacy in which a chick in its egg was boiled alive and eaten straight from the shell.

At first it was a nickname given to her by the mistress of the brothel, half in jest. But the name soon stuck and became her trademark. Just as word quickly spreads of a particularly special dish at a restaurant, the clients came searching her out, and she became popular. No one told her not to stay hidden away in her shell any longer. Instead, that became her job. To continue hiding herself away in a thin husk. A girl—boiled to death in her own shell by the heat of a man’s ardor—a sweet, balmy delicacy was born.

“Good girl. You’re an elegant little doll, like a figure in a painting. Now, open your eyes.” The man spoke in feverish tones. The girl obeyed, meekly. The vision that confronted her when she lifted her eyelids was like a world viewed from the bottom of a lake, shimmering away in the distance.

“Do you remember the rules, Balot? The rules you need to obey if you want to be loved?”

Caught off guard—just as when he had asked her the question in the past—the girl just nodded her head vaguely.

“Do you know what happens to girls who forget the rules?”

The sound of the man’s voice sent a sudden chill through the girl’s heart. She was taken aback. She realized that the glitter of the city had disappeared and that they were now surrounded by the gloomy gray of the park.

Behind the girl the man slowly took his sunglasses off.

“Shell…” The girl spoke as if she were swallowing her own breath. That instant the man’s large body came down on top of hers. The glint at the back of his emerald eyes was different from any sort she’d ever seen before.

“You be obedient, Balot.” The girl stiffened slightly when she heard the sharp tone in his voice, but of course, in the end she did just as the man commanded. The girl meekly serviced the man’s needs, and at the same time the AirCar eventually came to a halt by the large lake in the park, resting still in the air.

02

Central Park was known as the Spot of Spots. It bisected the city, and it was the only place on the circuit where different classes of cars—which were easily identifiable according to where they were coming from and where they were going to—might ever cross paths.

Take the middle-class Cheap Branchers, for example. They migrated into the city in droves, and might drive from their homes in the purpose-built skyscrapers of the coastal district down to the pleasure quarter, but they would never go near the high-class Senorita district in the east, let alone the industrial estates to the south. The slums sprawled out throughout the southern districts, kept in strict isolation from the immaculate streets.

In other words the red convertible wouldn’t be able to park right by the lake just because the black AirCar had done so. That would immediately arouse suspicion. So the convertible picked a riverside spot a few hundred meters away from the path toward the Senorita district the AirCar would later be taking.

The night was thick and moonless. After the convertible killed its engine you could hear even the wind