White and Other Tales of Ruin

He looked down at Honey, a wrinkled mask of herself. He would resurrect her now, and for a while they’d be safe. For a while. But he wanted them to live, to go out together, think together, be together forever. He’d already resigned himself to having to leave the city.

Never once did he let failure enter his mind.

Honey would live again. Nothing else was possible.

He left her on the bench as he went to find what he needed.

Ironically for a scientist, the Baker had been something of a Luddite. His science was his own, so personal and unique to him that in Tom’s eyes it had seemed almost magical. He’d not even had a net point in the laboratory, and even fifteen years ago that must have inconvenienced him so much. Tom only hoped that the scientist’s illicit charging unit still functioned after so long. Of all the illegal units he had seen and heard of this was the only one that didn’t eventually kill its user. The others — sold on street corners and in darkened corners of clubs — worked for a time, but they fused and cauterised their users’ insides, driving them insane, psychotic or both. The irony was that it was a buzz the artificials could not give up… hence the buzzed wandering the streets, artificial equivalents of the human drug addicts. They even looked the same. But the black bags beneath a buzzed’s eyes were caused by burnt blood.

He’d need a lead to connect himself to Honey for the proxy resurrection, and one to plug her into the charging unit. The Baker had kept all his connectors in an old cupboard at the rear of the room, and they were still there now. Tom pulled out a great knot of leads, cables and wires, a tangled web home to many real spiders. He wondered whether they’d become more entangled with time, because at first glance he had no idea how he’d ever be able to part them. But they seemed twisted by design, and in a matter of minutes he’d extracted the two cables he required. He replaced the rest and closed the cupboard door. Strange how neatness was so comforting.

Tom carefully lifted Honey and carried her into the back room, the comfortable place where he and the Baker had used to sit for hours on end talking, discussing, philosophising. The Baker had never been subtle. He’d told Tom that philosophising with what was essentially a robot had been one of the greatest pleasures of his life. Tom smiled now as he thought of some of those conversations, pleased that he’d have a few hours to recollect them in full. He felt in need of some of the Baker’s wisdom.

He took one armchair and placed Honey in the other. The charging unit was built into Honey’s chair. The Baker had done that so that Tom could sit and recharge whilst still conversing. Hungry as he had been to experiment and create, it was the gleaning of knowledge that had been the old man’s greatest love. And he’d told Tom that their relationship was unique in all of history — the more they talked and argued and discussed, the more they knew. It was as if their words reacted in some weird psycho-chemical way, causing truth itself to leak into this room and find a home in their minds.

Tom plugged Honey into the charger and set it to start bleeding power in an hour’s time. Then he connected himself to Honey with the proxy cable, sat back and closed his eyes.

He accessed the net. It took several seconds to find the correct resurrection sites, and he grouped them divisionally so that they could be manipulated in order of importance. He only hoped that Honey had suffered no hidden alterations at the hands of Hot Chocolate Bob. If she had… something other than Honey may result from this.

And if that happened, Tom would destroy her and then himself.

He looked around the room, still swimming in wonderful, safe memories. There were worse places to die.

Honey twitched once as the flow of information began. Then she began to undulate slowly, steaming, a bubbling sound coming from within her pale folds. An eyeball oozed from one socket, rolled across her face and then was hauled back in by a tightening of the optic nerve.

Tom did not want to see. So he half-stood, shifted his armchair and sat back down, staring into the laboratory as he acted as a conduit for Honey’s resurrection.

He reckoned on six hours.

By that time, perhaps the gophers would have finished the pre-programmed task they were executing.

The cabinet rattled and beeped, Honey stank and bubbled, and Tom decided to close his eyes and let memories of the Baker give comfort.

Tom never truly slept. He could turn down and shut off many of his normal functions — and for him that was akin to sleep — but his dreams were sunken thoughts, consciousness on a reduced level, and here randomness crept in.

Dreams were memories as well, and sometimes memories of dreams. That’s why Tom spent six hours thinking of Honey.

Because he was certain he had dreamed of her before.

There were no defined memories in his mind, nothing definitely her, but the whole sense of her was there. It was something he had lived with for a long, long time, a presence in his mind living in shadows, existing in places not yet seen or known or understood. Every thought he had about her now — the way she moved her head, spoke, smiled or frowned — was familiar to Tom. Even the way she’d acted when he had first seen her yesterday, the sex, the smell of her as they’d rutted on the bed… all known.

Hidden, but known.

He wondered briefly if the Baker had been aware of her, but that was crazy. Tom would have known. And the Baker would never have been so cruel as to give him love, only for him to experience it with a sister.

No… plain crazy.

He surfaced from these sunken thoughts from time to time and found everything to be the same. The light had dimmed somewhat and Tom realised that it was night outside, but the gophers were still busying themselves, and Honey still sighed and bubbled behind him.

Maybe the familiarity was a product of the virus the Baker had programmed and injected into Tom mere days before dying. “I’m giving you love,” he’d said, “and one day I pray you may find it.”

For those long years it had always been inside him. And when he had set eyes on Honey, she was everything that love was meant to be.

“Tom?”

Tom drifted back to the surface of his mind. Someone was calling him. Perhaps it was the Baker, because the sounds had stopped from the laboratory, and something was ready.

“Tom… don’t say you’ve gone, not after all this.”

He stood from the chair and spun around, and there was Honey. She was curled into the chair, knees drawn up and feet tucked under her behind, as if hunkered down for an evening with a book and a bottle of wine. But she still looked… wrong. Her skin was tinged blue, her eyes dry and harsh-looking, her hair lank and greasy. She could not move, and her flesh lay in folds around her midriff, pooled on the armchair about her thighs. Her eyelids looked thick and heavy. Her breasts sagged down to her waist, nipples pointing earthward.

“You’re alive!” Tom said. She smiled weakly and he moved to her side, reaching out to touch her forehead. It was slick and too cool.

“I feel unfinished,” Honey said.

Tom made sure the lead still joined them to the buzz unit, closing his eyes to ensure that the net connection was still there. Then he sat on the arm of the chair and put one arm around her shoulders, drawing her to him like a doll, kissing the top of her head even though it dismayed him to do so. “But you’re awake now,” he said, “and I’ll stay here with you until you’re ready.”

“Where are we?” she asked weakly, and he told her.

“Stay quiet and get some rest,” Tom said, “you’ve got a way to go yet.”

“Fuck quiet!” Her voice was low, but full of life. “We’ve got a lot of getting-to-know-each-other to do, you and I. Tell me about you. Tell me… tell me what it’s going to be like for us, and where we’re going to go. Tell me how happy we’ll be when we get there.”

So Tom sat there, holding Honey’s shadow as her resurrection was completed, and he told her the things she wanted to hear. Curiously enough, they were all the things he wanted too.

They left at midnight. Honey held onto Tom’s arm as she walked across the laboratory, looking down at her