Saving the Cyber Soaps, Mike Morris [story books to read TXT] 📗

The front door looked like every suburban door from every suburban soap opera I’d ever played, except it was chipped and battered, not like the shiny painted doors in all the fairytale sets down below, but with a lick of paint it could have been used in ‘Suburban Secrets,” and I felt an unexpected pang of nostalgia.
The man extracted a black lozenge from his grimy coat, and the door slid smoothly to one side. “Designed it myself,” he told me. “I was an inventor before the Angels came. Still am, for that matter.” He grinned at my amazement. “You Moles think you have a monopoly on brains?” He gestured me inside, still grinning. “You’ve probably heard of me. Dr Desmond Payne.” I hadn’t, but I mumbled something that seemed to satisfy him.
He followed me into the house, still carrying the bloody dog. The place looked like the quarters of some executive down below. Not as plush as Dees place, but pretty respectable. There was something missing, though, that I couldn’t place. Then it hit me. “You don’t have TV.”
He threw the carcass down onto a big stone hearth, unloaded the rifle and hung it over the fireplace. Casually, he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a holstered pistol. He snorted. “I’m not a Moron, or a Mole.” I could hear the capitalization. Morons were city dwellers, we were the Moles, and there wasn’t much difference between us. “You want to eat?” he asked. I shook my head, feeling sick. “You will,” he said. The filthy kitchen had an electric stove that worked, so he was getting power from somewhere. I watched as he wolfed down chunks of the half-cooked dog. He put some stinging stuff on my swollen arm, “just a scratch,” he said, dismissively. That night he locked me in what must have once been a study. The windows were bricked up, and it smelt musty and unused with something else, unpleasant, lurking underneath. “You can stay here until I decide what to do with you,” he told me with a faint grin. There’s a light, and a toilet.” He fed me on thick canned soup and bottled beer, occasionally trying to tempt me with his ‘fresh meat.’ I couldn’t hear anything from inside the study, and I was going crazy with frustration. After a few days the thick door rattled open and he gestured me out with his gun.
The house was unchanged. The bloody remains of the dog lay in front of the fireplace, big chunks of flesh surgically cut from the body. I faced him across the room. “Look, I pleaded, I’m no threat to you. Just let me go, I’m no use to you. He looked at me silently, grinning. “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” I told him, “and I don’t care.”
“I told you before, I’m an inventor,” he said. “Name’s Dr Payne.” He looked at me slyly. “Want to see my real place.” He waved me towards a narrow door. “I soundproofed the basement years ago.” I went. I didn’t seem to have a lot of choice.

CHAPTER 6 – Death of a Bartender
The good doctor had extended the basement. As an immortal, he had plenty of time, but this place was the work of a monomaniac. It was a cross between a mad scientist’s laboratory and a set from ‘Manhattan Millionaires’. One wall was a bank of video screens. Soaps and Sitcoms shouted at each other. Politicians and Porn Stars gestured and writhed opposite each other in an obscene dance. Ancient black-and-white movies flickered opposite Hollywood musicals. Long-dead actors and performers shrieked at each other across the pale wall, and cables snaked away into dark corners.
“White noise,” he said. “Relaxes me while I create.” His workspace was like the bridge of a soap opera spaceship. His captain’s chair was a dial-studded throne, and his computer setup was as good as any owned by Big Dee or her competitors. A free-standing rack held paraphernalia I hadn’t seen since we threw out virtual reality as being too sophisticated for the Topsiders, and a large-screen terminal spat out quotes for what was left of the stock exchange, occasionally displaying trend analyses and graphs. Five printers on a metal rack chattered like clucking hens.
“Let’s have a drink,” he said, gesturing with his gun, and we sat on red plush stools facing an oak and mirrors bar with old-fashioned beer pulls and neon plastic beer mats. His bartender was a disappointment at first. At the touch of a button it unfolded from under the bar, a network of wires and rods with a pair of surprisingly lifelike hands. I asked it for a bourbon and beer back, and it looked at me with its blank, plastic face and eerily human eyes and poured like an expert. I knocked back the booze, and it slid another drink in front of me, a tin spider, with almost human hands and head. I looked around the basement in amazement. One corner was a fully equipped gymnasium; another was filled with a huge ornate bed.
“Jesus,” was all I could think of to say. I gulped down the second shot of bourbon, and another appeared in the humanlike hands. I grabbed it and raised it to my mouth, but this time I turned slightly and tipped the drink on the floor. It was an old acting trick and I was an old actor. I didn’t need to be drunk now. The thing in front of me kept feeding me booze, and I acted relaxed, then drunk, and finally glassy-eyed. “Why didn’t the star travelers take you,” I slurred. “Man, you’re a genius.” I was only half acting.
Doctor Payne looked at me thoughtfully. “There was a little problem,” he said slowly. “You sure you haven’t heard of me?” Then I remembered him and suddenly I was more sober than I’d been in years. Only a lifetime of acting kept me from showing my fear. The aptly named Dr Payne was a serial killer, specializing in human experiments. His lifelong ambition had been the creation of a cyborg, and his methods were, to say the least, unconventional. He always shot his victims, crippling or killing. The ones he had killed for their body parts were the lucky ones. Their limbs had been attached to his electronic creations. Others were not so lucky. Pieces of them were replaced by prosthetics, until they died or went mad. His hand rested casually on the gun in his belt. The bartender flicked me another drink, and I suddenly realized why it’s hands looked so real.
A tiny piece of my mind kept my face expressionless. I wanted to throw myself at his feet and blubber for mercy. Years of training kept me looking drunk and stupid. And a little spark of anger started my mind working again. An ‘extra’ he’d called me, the oldest, longest-serving soap star in Dee’s organization. I fed the oversized ego that had kept me upstairs and away from Dee for all these years. Who did he think he was, the little bastard? I was the hero of a dozen soap operas, and what was he? Quickly, I shied away from that particular line of thought.
I had to come up with the performance of a lifetime. In acting, timing and positioning are everything, and my life depended on both being perfect. “Hey, ol’ buddy,” I cried, holding on to the widest, most innocent hick grin in my repertoire. I know you. Sure, I know you. You’re a genius, man.” He was still leaning against the bar, looking at me thoughtfully, but there was a hint of puzzlement and mild amusement in his china blue eyes. Good. The longer I kept him amused, the longer I stayed healthy. “Lemme see,” I slurred. I staggered drunkenly, trying to get near him. “Wait a minute,” I’ve almost got it.” I leaned towards him owlishly, gaining a few more inches. Then I allowed a mask of frozen horror to transfix my face, and he relaxed for a moment, knowing he had me rigid with fear.
I was on him, hard, fuelled by terror. It was no use. Even as I grabbed him, his hand was free and the gun was in it. Time slowed, and I watched as the gun swung towards my head, the barrel looking as big as a cannon. ‘At least it’ll be quick,’ I thought.
The bottle bounced off Dr Payne’s head. There wasn’t much force behind it, just enough to cut his scalp and cause him to drop the gun in surprise. And the lifelike hands grabbed his throat and hung on like a vise, cutting off his air as blood trickled slowly down his face. It was as if all of the thing’s strength was concentrated in those white hands. The doctor thrashed and choked as it held his neck. Liquid was dripping from the side of one of its eyes, but it wouldn’t let go. I watched in horror as he choked in front of me and the unbroken bottle gurgled bourbon over my shoes. It held him a long time after he was still, then the hands slowly let go and the doctor and the bartender slid to the floor.
I finally managed to move. I walked round the bar and the bartender was crumpled on the floor. Fluid was leaking from under the plastic face, and the hands were twitching. As I watched, they finally became still.
I buried the bartender in the overgrown back garden, and piled some bricks on his grave. Whoever he had been, he had saved my life, and whatever human was left of him deserved a burial. I dragged the doctor into the street and left him there. The wild dogs would dispose of him. I rounded up a backpack and stowed some clothes, ammunition, home-made jerky, canned food, and some of the doctor’s stolen booze in it. I opened the door to his refrigerator so the fresh meat would spoil, and I locked all the doors. I got out into the street, then went resignedly back to the dirty kitchen and found a serviceable can-opener. Then I started out towards the distant Chicago skyline.

CHAPTER 7 – The City of Ruined Spires
It was noon when I reached a populated area, a wet late winter day in the inner suburbs. Blocks of forlorn semi-detached houses stretched into the distance. These had been the houses of hard-working blue-collar workers and low-level clerks. They had been neat and clean and tidy once, but according to my briefing, the working population, and what passed for the upper crust lived near the center of the city, where basic amenities like transportation, power and policing were almost reliable. The ragged groups of citizens watching me suspiciously as I walked through their neighborhood were edge dwellers, marginal to the economy, clinging to the city’s outskirts for whatever tattered remnants of livelihood they could eke out. Cables snaked untidily between houses, disappearing into overgrown yards, reappearing again to climb old telephone poles and vault across potholed streets. There seemed to be a lot of small generators in various states of repair, and some communal vegetable gardens, and after a while I passed through a business area with a couple of open air food stalls, an ancient saloon leaning drunkenly in the middle of a burned out block of ruins, and a hardware store.
I was getting tired, and on impulse I turned into the hardware store, which looked clean and inviting, despite the heavy bars on the windows. As I pushed open the door it fell off its hinges with a crash, and I realized I had made a mistake.
The owner was standing behind the counter, pointing a shotgun at me. The shotgun appeared to be surgically attached to his