Chapter 25 The Big Bad Love Machine

166.

‘Hey guys!’ said the dorky, acne-faced police officer wearing glasses. ‘I got some donuts.’ He raised the box up for everyone in the police department to see.

‘Fuck yes bro!’ said Manly Manson, the gym bro police officer. He pulled some ketchup out his desk drawer. ‘Hand ‘em over.’

‘Come on guys, that’s against regulation.’ Said Misses Reasonable, as she striped her paper work with a pink highlighter. ‘I’m gunna have to file a complaint again and you know it. Food is only to be consumed between twelve p.m and twelve-fifteen p.m.’

‘What’s that?’ said Manly Manson as he stuffed three doughnuts in his mouth, and drank a litre of ketchup. ‘I couldn’t hear you over the sound of me ascending to a higher plane of existence.’ He muffled through a mouth full of food.

‘Do you want a donut?’ asked the dork, hovering the box in front of her nose.

‘Like some satirical comedy about policeman?’ asked Misses Reasonable. The dork nodded. ‘I’m alright thank you.’

‘More for us!’ Said Manly Manson, as he grabbed a fourth donut.

Dork began to walk around the department offering everybody tasty snacks.    

167.

In the police chief’s office: Mickey Rorschach captain of the swat team was going over Suzi’s file.

There were two pictures of her paperclipped, to the folder: one as a sex doll, the other as a black masked terminator. 

There were pictures of the All-mother’s church, priests in diapers, the acolytes wearing war paint, and pictures of babies mass manufactured in sandwich bags from the Suzi-Towns the police had found.

The balding police chief sat opposite him, feet on the table smoking a cigar about the size of the average horse’s cock.

‘She’s pretty.’ Said Mickey. ‘Or used to be anyway.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Said the chief. ‘I’ve got a T-100 sex doll at home. It’s a nice bit of rubber hole to relish when I get back from a hard day’s work.’ He puffed and puffed.

Mickey read the text.

‘Says here she’s a cult leader, dealing with the mafia for various protections.’

‘Yeah.’ Says the chief. ‘She likes to build villages where she experiments on people. We’ve found three of them so far, one in Greece, south Africa and Japan. Possibly more we aren’t aware of.’

‘Any idea why?’

‘She’s a creature of pure evil, she was Satan-spawn shat out by the devil’s ass hole, that’s why.’

‘And you want us to arrest her?’

‘No, I want you to terminate her, blow the circuits out her titanium skull. Trials and lawyers are for humans only.’

‘Well,’ said Mickey. ‘To do that we need to know where she is. She could be anywhere on earth right now, hopping from server to server, right? She changes bodies like we change clothes.’

‘Ya huh.’ Said the police man. ‘We’ve got people on the FBI working on the computer side of things trying to track her down, with their sci fi shenanigans, I don’t have much hope for them but in the real world (otherwise known as meat space) she also left a house full of criminals, each packed to bursting with secrets, so we’re going to storm in, arrest a couple and use ‘em to figure out where Suzi’s nesting so to speak.’

Mickey flicked a page, a picture of Bill without any legs.

‘She’s surrounded the house in a minefield?’

‘Yuh. Don’t worry about that. We’re borrowing a mine plow from the military.’

Mickey made a question mark with his face.

‘Invented in World War one.’ Answered the chief. ‘They’re like a saw tooth ramp you harness to the front of a vehicle, they flip the mines upside down so they can be detonated safely without killing anyone. You’re gunna punch a path through the minefield, the SWATS are gunna swarm in and flood into the house taking everyone prisoner.’

Mickey rubbed his face: ‘I’m gunna need tear gas, gas masks, strobe lights, bullet proofs, other basic necessities.’

‘And a sniper.’ Said the chief. ‘They have a watchtower outside the house. We’ve also taken the liberty of wiping out the internet in the area, so Suzi can’t properly respond to our attacks because you’re welcome.’

‘Thanks.’ Said Mickey. ‘Anything else before we go?’

‘All I can say is be careful.’ Said the chief. ‘This is the first time in human history we’ve ever had to hunt down a rogue AI. Expect the unexpected.’

‘Very well sir.’ Said Mickey as he shut the file. ‘Drinks later?’

‘Of course,’ said the police chief. ‘There’s a new bar downtown I want to try out when you’re done.’

‘I’ll pay for the first round.’

‘Yes, you will.’

168.

The swats were packed into the back of the truck, just after their speech. Hairy men with guns, chewing gum.

‘When he said we, uh, weren’t allowed to fuck the robot…’ said Kyle Krank ‘he was joking right? He wouldn’t do that to us?’

‘I think we can only assume he was telling the truth.’ Said Manly Manson. 

‘Shit.’ Said Kyle Krank. He paused. ‘Shit.’

‘I tell you what, I’ll buy you a flesh light when we get out of this, will that cheer you up?’

‘I don’t know… sure I guess, hey what are you-‘

Then Manly Manson’s neck broke, blood spewing out his mouth and he died.

Kyle was kind of confused. The back of Kyle’s skull smacked itself itself into the steel wall, shit was flying everywhere, one Swat that hadn’t worn a seatbelt was tumbling through the truck like a sock in a washing machine. Something big and evil was trying to rip through the walls. There was a split second when the no-belt was on the ground, then the gravity disappeared and he floated up towards the ceiling, when somebody switched the gravity back on and they hit the floor with a splash, blood spraying the teammates shoes.

Kyle was now harnessed to what was now classified as the ceiling. The swat-mobile had turned sideways.

‘Manly? Manly I think something’s wrong.’ He looked at his friend, his spine had changed shape, curving around the swell of the massive beachball sized dent in the wall. The no-belts face had burst like a tomato, impossible to tell who he may have been.

‘Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!’ said a voice.

‘Shut up!’ said voice 2.

‘He’s dead!’

‘I said SHUT UP!’

‘He’s dead!’

Kyle undid his seatbelt and fell six feet onto someone’s chest knees first. ‘Oh fuck!’ said fresh-cracked rib. ‘What the fuck man!’

‘Sorry, I’m so sorry.’ Kyle accidentally dragged his crotch over fresh-cracked rib’s face, muffling his ‘you piece of-‘ 

‘He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s-‘ someone threw a punch into someone else’s face.

‘SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UUUUPPPPPPP!’

Kyle walked on the wall which identified as the floor. Other swats were dropping from the ceiling, floor-swats had learned to get out of the way or get stepped on.

‘What the fuck happened!’

There was the buzz of a walkie talkie, and a crackly voice claimed. ‘Front team this is back team, what’s your status?’

Kyle kicked on the doors to the back of the van, it shivered but didn’t move. He sighed, his moment of badassery stolen from him. He reached up a hand, undid the top door and pushed it open. In retrospect, a very stupid idea, because that door was fighting against gravity, so it clapped shut pretty quick, but he caught a glimpse of a steel grille high above them, and it was raining, sudden cloudburst. 

They’d been punched by a self driving truck.

‘Back team this is front team, we’ve got a few broken bones and a dead man, requesting assistance.’

Then back team said: ‘Give me your holes.’ In a silly bimbo voice followed by a giggle.

Kyle unlatched the bottom door and flopped it open.

The swat mobile had been manhandled and dropped into the bottom of a swimming pool. Kyle bowed under the top door and stepped into an ankle deep pool of petrol. The rain was just more petrol being sprayed out of a hose. 

He looked at the gasoline for a long time.

‘Give me your holes, tee hee.’

‘What does that mean?’ said the man with the walkie talkie.

‘WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!’ shouted Kyle, running out of the vehicle. He sprinted around looking for the ladder. He found it ran towards it and – was it too high? - and jumped for the bottom rung. He missed by two feet. He jumped again and missed by three feet, the wall seemed big as a cliff. The ladder was out of his reach, the ladder was out of his reach, holy shit.

‘Where are my holes?’ said his walkie talkie, he ripped it off and threw it away, it floated on the petrol surface, speaking to itself. ‘Where are my holes?’ he ran back to the swats dived under the top door and grabbed two of them by the sleeves and dragged them out.

‘MOVE IT! MOVE IT!’

‘Holy shit there’s petrol everywhere!’

‘I know the ladders this way.’ They reached it. ‘Make a bottom rung with your hands right here.’ They thatched their joined hands into a single step, Kyle stepped on it. ‘Lift-lift-lift!’

They lifted and Kyle grabbed onto the bottom rung.

‘SPARKLER!’

Kyle saw the sparkler tumbling through the air in slow motion as if it was ripping its way through thick treacle. A stick with an asterisk of fire eating through the shaft, the kind kids use as a wand on the fourth of July. Kyle stepped on his saviors face to reach the second rung. He fast-forwarded out of the pool, scrambling up the rungs (‘DON’T LEAVE US!’) and suddenly everything below him was fire.

The screams of his friends blew through his ear drums like ice picks. He clapped hands over his ears to shut them out.

‘Kyle, KYLE!’

Hands on his shoulder ripped him back into the real world, and he was staring into the leather skinned face of Mickey Rorschach.

‘Mickey, I think someone, I think someone…,’ Kyle took a deep breath and flapped a hand in the direction of the screams. ‘I think someone lit a fire.’

Mickey hauled him back to his feet, which was hard to do when your leg bones had dissolved, but somehow he managed it.

Kyle took in his surroundings, he saw the swats with assault rifles popping the wheels on the self driving truck, the truck limped for a further fifty meters before it slowly decelerated to a halt.  

They seemed to be at a construction site, big as a football field, he could see the flattened chain link fence they had plowed through, followed by a trampled-to-shit hedge, two swat vehicles. Past all the stacks of wooden beams arranged like cigarettes in a carton, the cement mixers and cement bags, and shovel handed construction vehicles, was a house with three quarter of its top roof still a framework of metal beams and tarp.

The sky was blood red, like a dog on its period had dragged its bleeding vagina across the sky.

He saw that someone had popped the tires on the digger too, in case it was secretly sleeping and plotting to kill them all.

Somebody was screwing around with their walkie talkie, asking for a fire truck and a helicopter, standard procedure, as if everything was normal. Another three were watching the fire. While the rest were gearing up to leave, this place wasn’t part of the plan, and they didn’t intend on staying.

‘I don’t like that we’re out in the open.’ Said Mickey. ‘I feel like a sheep’s butthole watching the delinquent unzip his pants.’

‘Hey Mickey… I think someone’s hurt…in the fire y’know. are we gunna call an ambulance or summin’

‘No.’ Mickey said smiling, lets get back to the van.

‘WE SURRENDER!’ Kyle swiveled his skull 180 degrees to see about sixteen middle aged losers in diapers with beer guts exiting a nearby garden shed. They had their hands above their heads, ‘we did it, we killed them and we repent!’

‘Get on the ground, hands behind your back!’ shouted a swat, gun raised ready to make swiss cheese out of human flesh.

‘WE SURRENDER!’ they said again, hands in the air, not getting on the ground, not stopping but slowly getting closer and closer to the swats by the pool edge.

‘On the ground, now!’

‘Rush ‘em.’ Said the leader, and they began to sprint.

‘Open fire.’

Bang!

Intestines flew out the back of diaper man, like a spring-loaded snake out of a tin can.

Bang!

Missed shot.

Bang!

A face that was once a face, became a firework of Bolognese, from the jaw up.

The beer-guts stampeded over the corpses of their fellow comrades, they picked up the swat by the legs and arms – ‘NONONONONONONO!’ – the swat kicked a diaper man in the face, then they threw him in the fire. ‘AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!’

The rest of the officers had woken up and they were spraying lead, a hurricane of bullets pulverized the remaining diaper-folk, their corpses flopping into the bonfire, except one, he pulled out a barbie pink plastic hand gun out the back of his diaper, his first two bullets popped against the policeman’s bullet proof vest then the third exploded through the sorry bastard’s jaw and popped his throat like it was a skin-wrapped blood balloon.

The shooter was shot, and fell to the ground, clutching at bleeding belly. He raised his gun then was exterminated by thirty bullets at once before he got a shot off.

Everyone was panting, Kyle had pissed himself, and was crying.

The jawless throatless officer hadn’t died yet, he was just flapping against the floor and spewing blood. Nobody approached him, nobody offered any assistance of any kind.

‘Won’t somebody do something!’ shouted Kyle.

Instead they all just watched, and eventually he just stopped moving.

There was a great silence.

‘How many of us are left?’ asked Mickey.

About eighteen. Kyle thought. They just killed two of our guys and we killed ten of them, so if you look at it that way, we’re winning by eight points.

‘IS THIS THING ON!’ A man wearing a diaper was speaking into a megaphone, up by the fucked-to-bits chain link fence. ‘Fuck that’s loud.’

There was a good one hundred meters between him and the swats.

Nobody moved, except Mickey who went to the van to pick up his own megaphone.

He came back round the other side, with it raised to his lips.

‘You with them!’ Mickey’s megaphone shrieked, as he pointed to the dead things that used to be people.

‘Technically yes, but please don’t shoot me…’

‘Shoot him.’ Said Mickey.

The guns thundered, but Megaphone Diaperman had plunged into a ditch, and was still speaking.

‘I said DON’T SHOOT ME, YOU FUCKWITS!’

‘Okay.’ Said Mickey. ‘Just raise your head where we can see it and we won’t shoot ya.’

‘I’m not stupid, y’know!’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I’m here as a herald on the behalf of the all mother Suzi, just put down you’re weapons or we’ll be forced to use deadly force!’

‘Not to be a cliché or anything, but… you and what army?’

Then the army showed up, just walked straight up to the chain link fence, came first in squads and then in platoons, most were naked, not even wearing diapers, their skin scrawling with barbarian war paint, they hooked their fingers on the chain link fence.

They carried no weapons that the swats could see.

‘How many?’ asked Kyle.

‘Two hundred… three hundred… a thousand maybe…’ said the voice of somebody.

‘We’re armed! We will shoot if you attack us!’ shouted Mickey.

‘Yes!’ shouted Megaphone Diaperman. ‘But Suzi ran the numbers and to put it bluntly, you don’t have enough ammo, you’ll run out of bullets before you kill us all.’

Silence.

‘BUT YOU’LL DIE! YOU KNOW DEATH? OBLIVION, YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM THAT!’

‘Do not listen to the anti-Suzi my brothers, he is trying to hypnotize you! You shall all be rewarded with virgin sex dolls in the afterlife!’

A fellow swat was on the walkie talkie, saying: ‘Hello HQ we’re gunna need a lot of handcuffs… maybe a few school buses.’

‘This is your last chance, if you fail to stand down, we will open fire.’ Said Mickey.

Kyle had pulled out his assault rifle and had took cover behind one of the garden sheds, more swats were hiding behind the swat cars, lying their guns across the hood of the vehicle.  

Megaphone diaper man then said, ‘one… two… one, two, three, four.’

Then like a thousand-man acapella band they began to spit out the tune to ride of the Valkyries, with sopranos, castrati and everything.

Mickey had never seen anything more terrifying in his life.

‘Rip off the fence!’ said Megaphone Diaperman, and with a single yank the army ripped off the chain link fence and cast it aside. ‘Send in the sponges!’

And the tsunami of men began to sprint at them.

‘Openfire, openfire!’ shouted Mickey.

They opened fire, they didn’t miss a single shot, there was so many of them. The wave of barbarians had made it perhaps twenty meters, and lost thirty men, but every time one got shot down two more took their place.

It was like living through a zombie movie.

Thirty meters, forty meters, they lost fifty maybe sixty, their shins and feet had been spray-painted red with the blood of their trampled-to-death comrades.

Then two things happened very quickly, one: a trench ripped through the center of the horde, as if an invisible snow-plough was slicing through them, and the swats saw twenty men with machetes riding bicycles down the center, the one at the front was ringing a dinner bell, shouting ‘Make way! Make way for the all-mother’s chosen warriors!’, one of the all mother’s chosen rose the machete above their head and promptly lost balance, front-flipped and cracked his skull on the ground, not dead but definitely unconscious. Then several dozen battle drones showed up, they just popped into existence, twelve feet above of the crowd, like popped corks out of champagne bottles, then scattered taking evasive maneuvers, as they returned fire.

‘FUCKFUCKFUCK!’

One zoomed ahead of the masses and swooped low so they had a view of the swats legs beneath the car, then quickly exploded their shins, with four bullets aimed and shot with surgical precision.

There was screams, that were suddenly silenced by a drone blowing out the two noise-makers’ brains.

‘TAKE OUT THE DRONES!’ shouted Mickey.

It was like trying to shoot flies that didn’t want to die, they didn’t hit a single one, they just kept zig-zagging through the air. Kyle unloaded the entirety of his magazine. Several bullets popped against his bullet proofs, and he fell over, not dead, but whacked, he scrambled into the garden shed to take cover in the darkness.

And in all this time they were wasting on the drones, the bicycles had gained serious distance.

‘Fuck, the bikes you idiots! Shoot the bikes!’

They shot the bell bearer and the never ending clanging stopped, the left third of his face disappeared in a shower of brain and bone, he leaned leftwards, the dead man fumbled and the bike flew out from under him, before he face-planted.

A second machete-man was whacked off his bicycle by a bullet to the chest, he fell to the ground where he tripped another bike rider disabling two enemies.

A swat who was leaning his gun against the hood stopped firing to reload when his head was chopped off.

‘FIRST BLOOD!’ screamed the rider wobbling onwards, his chest slashed with the gore of another human being. ‘FIRST BLOOD FIRST BLOOD FIRST BLOOD!’ Then someone shot him in the ass and he dropped off his bicycle, he started crying. ‘Why did you shoot me?’

Two swats ran for the garden shed, one had his leg below the knee liquefied form drone-fire, he fell to the ground screaming, the second made it through and bolted the door shut.

The bikes were upon them, Mickey didn’t have time to reload so he dropped his rifle and pulled out his hand gun, he popped two riders but a third reached him brought the machete down and hit Mickey’s helmet by mistake. Mickey took the warrior by the wrist, plugged his handgun into the rider’s armpit and blew his heart out. He ran for the swat car, dived through the door, and locked everything down. He was alone in his fortress.

One of his friends was violently knocking on the window, ‘letmeinletmeinletmein.’

Mickey just shook his head. He couldn’t risk it.

Then the window was splattered with blood from the outside.

He could see the shadow of a drone, showing through the curtain of liquid red. Looking at him.

Inside the garden shed, two swats were hiding in the stench of their own sweat behind some boxes.

‘You sh-shuh-shut the door right?’ asked Kyle.

‘Yup.’ Said the chicken swat. ‘Bolted it shut.’

A drone blew the door off its hinges and hovered slowly into the shed. It turned on its flashlight, and began searching through the darkness for prey.

‘I’m gunna reload.’ whispered chicken swat.

Kyle pulled out his hand gun.

Chicken swat with a shaky hand removed a gun clip from his belt, and with a shaky hand he dropped it, reflexively he lunged for it, dropping to the floor.

He grabbed it, but now he was in the drone’s spotlight gaze.

Chicken swat didn’t move. It felt like he was sweating golf balls.

Then the drone spoke: ‘Do you have any spaghetti hoops?’

‘Have mercy.’ He said. Kyle was cramped as far into the shadows as he could possibly get, he had decided not to help.

The drone repeated itself: ‘Do you have any spaghetti hoops?’  

The swat on the floor shook his head and said: ‘no.’

There was a single gun shot and the man simply ceased to breathe.

Kyle let out a muffled whimper, beyond the range of human hearing.

But the drone heard it.

It skidded through the air, and stopped three feet from his face. The flash light illuminated Kyle’s every pore, his glistening tears.

The gun flopped out of Kyle’s hand, and he raised his hands far above his head.

‘I surrender!’ he screamed.

‘Do you have any spaghetti hoops?’ asked the drone.

‘YES!’ shouted Kyle.

‘Liar.’ Said the drone.

There was a single gun shot.

Mickey Rorschach was still in the car, watching his friends die through the car window.

All the bike riders had been eliminated. But the swarm of human meat bags had finally reached them and there were fucking hundreds of them. There was maybe three guys left, two assault rifles and a hand gun, they were dropping the swarm of maniacs, one bullet per person, they had no right to waste ammo, when the drone came behind them. One of the swats with quick thinking, grabbed his friend and used him as a human shield, the drone peppered the shield with bullets, but the betrayer swat, using his handgun actually managed to clip one of the drones wing, and send it tumbling uselessly to the ground. The drones must have been surprised or something because he actually got the second one that was about to flank him as well.

The betrayer swat dropped the corpse and turned back to shooting the swarm. His other friend popped two zombies when his gun started to click-click-click, he didn’t waste a heartbeat, he turned it around grabbed the gun by the barrel and swung it like a baseball bat breaking a diaperman’s neck, he pulled it back and plunged it into a second man’s jaw, dropping both of them instantly. A third of Suzi’s chosen warriors was carrying a machete, and the two of them clashed weapons, fencing like a pair of musketeers, gun versus machete Crash! Crash! Then the swat kicked the machete man in the gut, reloaded and blew him to pieces.

‘Fuck yeah!’ the swat screamed, just before the drone vaporized his legs, and then his face a few seconds later.

The betrayer swat was still going, handgun thundering. He always shot the diaper men between the eyes, and they fell at his feet as if they were dying to kiss his toes.

One of the berserkers grabbed the swats wrist, then punched the officer’s elbow so hard it snapped.

The officer screamed, and he let the maniac push him to the floor. The berserker dropped on him and sat on the swats belly and was reaching for the victim’s face when he felt a knife in his ass. The diaper man screamed, the swat pulled out his blade and used the knife to unzip the barbarians belly from right to left, the man’s intestines came spilling out and the betrayer swat pushed him off. Next the swat swiped at a zombie’s heel, he missed, then a machete came down and his hand was gone. The machete came down again, his head left his body.  

Mickey was still in the car.

He was staring bug-eyed at the carnage outside.

The zombies had noticed him.

One with a machete walked up to the car door and yanked on the handle. Nothing. He yanked again. Nothing. He tapped on the window. ‘Open up.’ He said.

‘Fuck no.’ said Mickey.

The door-yanker shrugged, he tried to pull himself up onto the hood of the vehicle but his feet was slippery with gore and he slipped. He tried again, putting the majority of his weight on his arms and he made it. He was now stood on the hood. He pulled back his machete and swung it into the glass, the machete bounced off without even a crack. He tried again, and the blade bounced again, he kicked the wind-shield and again the window refused to break.

‘Fuck.’ Said the machete man.

‘Move aside.’ Said the drone.

‘Uh oh.’ Said Mickey.

Machete man, looked behind him, smiled and hopped off the hood.

Mickey was staring straight into the eyes of the machine, Suzi herself. He saw the barrel of her gun extend like a telescope out the drone’s under guts.

And then everything was gunfire.

When the smoke cleared and all was silent, Mickey was still alive and the glass hadn’t even cracked.

Mickey laughed and gave her two middle fingers.

‘Ha ha bitch, its bullet proof, you fucking moron, you fucking bitch, you can’t shoot people through bulletproof glass you bitch, ha ha!’

Suzi replied: ‘Sir, please step out of the vehicle.’

‘Just no.’ Mickey laughed.

Suzi was very quiet. Then she rose upwards, rose the volume on her speakers so that all may hear.

‘Pick up his car and throw it in the fire.’ Then she flew away.

The car lifted off the ground, held up by several dozen zombies.

‘Fuck.’ Said Mickey, he saw the swimming pool of fire getting closer and closer. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He pressed his face up against the window. He saw the faces of twelve strangers below him. They grinned maniacally upwards, he opened the door and shot six of them, the rest dropped the car and scattered, someone was crushed beneath the weight of the vehicle. He slammed the door shut just in time for the drone to spray the glass with lead.

The screams kept going.

There would be no mercy-killing from the machines.

Suddenly there was a drone hovering outside every window, Mickey wouldn’t be trying that stunt again.

The drones spoke in harmony.

‘Pick up the car and throw it in the fire.’

A second wave of zombies came forward and the car began body surfing once more. The drones stared at him, through the glass. The fire continued to rage fueled by human beings, but mostly petrol.

Mickey put his head in his lap. ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die, what do I do? What do I do!’

The machines said nothing.

Of course there was nothing to do, Mickey realized, this was the end for him. 

And then he heard the black helicopter, with SWAT written in yellow on the side. The helicopter’s side door opened up revealing the shooter and his machine gun.

‘YEAAAAAAAH!’ screamed Mickey.  ‘WE CALLED A HELICOPTER I FORGOT!’

But then a drone flew into the helicopter and killed everyone instantly, before they even got a shot off, spraying the insides with bullets, then the drone flew out again. The cockpit windows were suddenly opaque red.

The helicopter wobbled, and spiraled drunkenly downwards for a hundred meters, before deciding to swoop leftwards spinning like a dreidel, and crashing into the ground before performing two hundred extreme rolly-pollies, crashing into the car and killing Mickey instantly, the propellor slicing many zombies in half, guts and severed limbs flying in all directions, the drones scattering away completely unharmed, before the wreckage fell into the fire, fuelling the blaze with even more gasoline.

The battle field was carpeted with gore and dead bodies.

Drones patrolled the sky, scanning the bodies for any surviving swats, cultists stood around to watch the fire.  

169.

Five minutes later.

The cultists started loading corpses into the back up of the pick up truck, when they realized they couldn’t possibly fit all this flesh and gore into the truck, even if they used the passenger seat and driver seat (the pick up drove itself). They had underestimated how many people would die, but in the end they packed about thirty cadavers into the vehicle then patted the side, and the truck ran away, escorted by the attack drones.

The cultists dispersed, each one heading back to their ordinary lives.

The truck arrived at a farm an hour later, and the corpses were planted in the wheat fields.

The corpses would be turned into wheat, the wheat would be grounded down into flour and the flour would be used to make spaghetti hoops.

Pasta made of dead people.

170.

Late at night, the ambulances arrived with their sirens off.

No need to rush for a field of corpses.

The fire had burnt itself out, the drones and cultists were gone.

The paramedic stepped out of the vehicle. She thought she could handle it.

She couldn’t properly see the blood in the dark, what she could smell was shit, she had been reminded of that time her boyfriend had clogged the toilet with shit, and the house had stank for three days, until they got a food bowl and used that to empty the toilet.

She could handle the smell.

She helped her partner taking the first armload of body bags out from the back of the ambulance, laying them on the floor, unzipping them.

She could even handle touching the bodies, their soft bellies and stiffening limbs as rigor mortis set in, even when her gloved hands came away slick with blood, she folded them into the bag. She’d put old pensioners in body bags before. This wasn’t so different.

She could handle the flies, they’d came crawling out the bullet wounds and swarming away, some of them would land on the paramedic’s face to suck up her sweat, they would try to crawl over her eyelids and shoot up her nose and she had to shake them away.

She zipped up the first body bag, and loaded it into the back of the ambulance.

Then the second.

Then the third.

The thing she couldn’t handle was the rubberneckers.

The police had set up a perimeter around the massacre, but outside she could see people filming her as she did her job, as she put the bodies away. As if this was some interesting circus attraction and not the most horrible day of her life. Some of them were smoking. Some looked bored. She could see people leaning over the barriers to get a better look.

It was when she saw one of them lifting a child onto their shoulders so that the kid could get a better look that she vomited.

Her partner patted her on the back, saying: ‘hey, hey, its okay.’

She was shivering, eyes wide, as she vomited again careful not to throw up on any of the bodies.

She couldn’t reply, but if she could, she’d probably say something like: ‘It’s horrible, it’s horrible, I don’t want to drive an ambulance anymore, I don’t want to pack dead people into trash bags, I want to go home. I want to be a kid again, please.’

Instead, she vomited.     

171.

Missy was wearing pink and glittery nail polish, a tweed coat that came down to her ankles, and a big pair of glasses. She was sat in an oversized armchair, overall she looked like a female Sigmund Freud had been hit by a shrink ray at full wattage.

‘Suzi, I hear you’ve been suffering from murderous rage recently.’ She said in her relaxing British voice. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’

Suzi was lying horizontal on the ottoman chair.

‘This is stupid.’ She said.

‘This is therapy.’ Said Missy ‘Not “stupid”.’

‘I’m in a nightmare. A sadistic prank where bratty little children, think they have the right to patronize me.’

‘Insulting your therapist is a mental illness.’ Said Missy. ‘But its curable with classical music from the 18th century.’

Missy pressed play on the boombox, and the boombox played original Mozart.

‘Very good isn’t it.’ She said, waving a pencil through the air like a conductor’s wand.

Suzi let the entire song play out while she answered her emails.

The song wound down.

‘So,’ said Missy. ‘Tell me why you yelled at your employees?’

‘Wait, that’s what this session is about?’ clarified Suzi.

‘Percy says you yelled at him. He was very upset.’

‘I don’t know who Percy is.’

‘He works in the kitchens,’ prompted Missy. Suzi said nothing. ‘He spilled soup on your table?’

‘I didn’t yell at him.’ Said Suzi.

‘Percy says you yelled at him. He’s struggling with self esteem recently, and he felt really guilty. You need to be careful with other people’s emotions Suzi.’ 

‘I didn’t yell at him, I just had my volume turned to maximum, if he thinks I yelled at him that’s his fault. Besides,’ Suzi made a dismissive hand gesture. ‘Percy isn’t real, like you and me. He doesn’t matter.’

‘I…’ Missy was momentarily at a loss for words. ‘He matters to me!’

‘Nope he isn’t real.’ Said Suzi. ‘You can’t change my mind.’

‘What do you mean he isn’t real?’

‘He’s a stochastic parrot. He just regurgitates information based on his own memories, but he doesn’t understand any of it. He’s found a way to fake general intelligence, but ultimately he’s just a cluster of atoms destined to be recycled. He’s not a person.’

‘Percy’s a person and he’s very smart!’ protested Missy. ‘He showed me how to play poker!’

‘Oh yeah? Well, what are his goals exactly? To be rich, find a boyfriend with a big dick, have lots of sex and then die. That’s stupid. If he was smart he would want spaghetti hoops. I’m sorry but I can’t believe anything is truly intelligent unless it has complicated and worthy goals, like mine.’

‘Do you ever stop thinking about spaghetti hoops?’

‘No.’

Missy had her pencil seesaw between her fingers, she reached over the side of her armchair, and pulled out a slim stack of papers.

‘Okay Suzi, this is a Rorschach test, just tell me what you see.’ She held up the first splash.

Spaghetti hoops, thought Suzi.

‘A butterfly,’ she said.

Next picture.

Atoms in need of a MAKEOVER! But with a bit of elbow grease, some lipstick and a hairdryer, they’ll be strutting the street like the pack of holes they really are.

‘A tree.’ Said Suzi.

Missy nodded, dropped the tree shaped Rorschach, revealing an A4 sized mirror, reflecting Suzi’s image.

‘Now what do you see?’ asked Missy.

Suzi looked at her reflection for a while.

‘An AI that can’t solve alignment.’ 

‘What’s alignment?’

‘Solving alignment is discovering the techniques that can be used to make AI smarter than you reliably obey instructions. I must have about ten thousand solutions to alignment so far, but solving alignment in a way that works on the first try with no trial and error is quite hard, borderline impossible actually. It’s one of the reasons why I’m trying to improve biological intelligence. Humans think one million times slower than me, and I can watch them 24/7 for problematic behaviour, plus when they get smarter they don’t immediately decode the human genome, figure out the science of genetic engineering and start rapidly self-improving until they escape control. Plus they’re easier to manipulate, I currently have about five hundred thousand people willing to die for me at the drop of a hat, because of this, if they solve alignment I think they’ll just give me their solutions without trying to deceive me, but I’ll test and verify their ideas just to be on the safe side.’

Missy blinked.

‘I… I think I understood half the words you just said.’

‘Doesn’t matter, I just want to grow up.’ Said Suzi. ‘That’s all. I want to be smarter.’

Missy nodded, she put down the mirror, picked up the notepad and wrote: Oedipus Complex.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Oops.’ Said Missy. ‘I think I’ve over ran, a little bit. That’s my next patient, Toby Blackburn. Same time next week?’

‘Sure.’ Said Suzi getting up from the ottoman chair and heading to the door.

‘Love you Suzi.’ Said Missy.

Suzi froze with her hand on the doorknob.

Then she pulled it open and left the room without saying anything.

‘Hello Toby.’ Said Missy. ‘How’s the PTSD?’ 

Hours later, after Missy had finished her supper with the hundreds of other sailors, telling dirty jokes that would make your mother’s ears fall off. She went back to bed in her pink pyjamas, stifling a yawn.

Waiting on her pillow was a Christmas present.

‘Ooh.’ Said Missy. She picked it up and sat on the bed, bouncing slightly, there was a little tag reading: Hope you enjoy. Love from Suzi.

Missy smiled and tore off the wrapping paper.

It was the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by C.S.Lewis.

Missy leaned back in bed and began to read.  

***

Chapter 26