Nastily Strange Stories Home

RTFM Daarfy and Os were crouched in the alleyway, hidden in the shadows, glancing up and down the street, searching for possible obstructions to their plan. Daarfy was impatient; it was his plan, he couldn't see any reason why they just couldn't go right ahead and do it. "Come on come on come ON, they're jus' sittin' there, no micro-filament, no induction fields, nuthin', it's like she wants us to git in there and grab 'em. So for what we waitin' for?" Os wasn't so sure. "There must be something there, I mean, she makes a viking bundle out of that operation, no way is she going to have her wares sitting there in the open... there must be something we can't see. Like maybe someone covering the store from the other side of the street, like with a gun maybe." Daarfy was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. "Maybe." he murmured. "But we gotta do this anyway. Otherwise, it's back to the State Correction Centre. We gotta show that we can make it on our own. That means ready. That means cash. So if we don't do it now, we'll never get a better chance. When I count three, right?" Os took a deep breath, paling slightly, then nodded. "Okay... one... two..." (Os crouched down in the position held by a sprinter at the start of a race) "THREE!" He darted out of the alleyway (three feet of rigid plastic pipe filled with sand swinging in his right hand), ran towards the brightly-lit storefront of `Hani's XPWare (Experiential Software)', swung the pipe out, shattering the old glass window and setting off alarms. He capered and danced there for a moment, standing up on his toes, laughing at the sudden buzz of confusion in the store which resulted from the knocking over of the window-rack of XP modules; as soon as it looked like an organised attempt at chasing him was ready, he took off. Glancing behind him, he saw Hani, a frail old chinese woman, and Benjo, her enforcer, about a block behind him. He held one arm to his chest, as if he had taken something, and kept running, leaping over the fallen pylons that crossed the street at irregular intervals, darting from one pool of light to another, giving Daarfy as much time as he needed to clear out the store. When he was sure that Hani and Benjo were no longer following him, he started to circle back to the rendezvous he and Daarfy had arranged. He cautiously approached the broken door which hung in the frame of the old office on the third floor of the abandoned building. He made sure that his footsteps could be heard from a long way off, and rapped on the door five times. A voice hissed from within. "Ossy?" "Yeah... what did you get?" The door moved aside, revealing Daarfy's crooked grin. "Come on in, man, take a look!" Daarfy had arranged the evening's haul into three neat piles; a bunch of wrinkled plastic ComonCurensy notes and oblong coins, about three by ten to the minus ninth CCI worth; very good takings for one evening. There were five current model XP players, one of them obviously broken, the others in working (and saleable) order. There were three XPWare cards, with catalogues and plot precis written on one side in neat black Anglic letters, the other side glittering rainbow colours. Daarfy picked one up, examined it. Neither he nor Os could read. He picked up one of the XP players, examined it. Os noticed that his left arm was smeared with blood. "What happened a you?" Daarfy glanced down at his arm, made a small sneering expression and said, "Benjo got back before she did. I hadda kill him." Os was shocked. "You WHAT?" Daarfy continued to examine the XP player. "Look, he didn't feel nuthin', it was real quick, I shoved him into the microfilament at the back of the store, he came apart like sliced bread." There was an embarrassed pause. They had never found cause to kill anyone before, and Os began to re-evaluate the cost of what they'd done. Watching Daarfy fiddle with the XP player, he said nervously, "You going to try one of those?" "Hey, why not? Gotta have some fun, sometime." Os picked up the second card, trying to remember what he had been taught in school about reading... all he could remember was, that letter that looked like a sort of triangle had something to do with apples. Not that he'd ever seen a real apple. The card also had a pictogram, a stylised outline of two people entwined in a carnal embrace. He smirked. "I think I know what this one is... still, dont'cha think we should find someone who can read, get them to finger these before we use 'em?" Daarfy snarled, "Nah! I mean, what's the worst that can happen? You have a bad dream. Big viking deal." He sat down at the remains of a secretary's desk, blowing the dust off, clearing a space for the XP player. He plugged the player's lead into the socket behind his ear, slotted the card into the player and touched the play stud. He sighed, closed his eyes and sat back in the chair. Os watched him, ready to unplug him if he should show any signs of freaking out. Daarfy trembled a bit; he sighed and at one point, his body jolted slightly as if it were remembering being punched; apart from this, it was all smooth. After three minutes, it cut out, and Daarfy sagged back in the chair, exhaling loudly. "Jesus," he whispered, "Jeee-sus. You know those guys who climb down cliffs on ropes, what's it called?" "Absailing?" "Yeah, that's it... this was one of them, only, like, he was a professional, he went so viking fast, it was, like, he knew what he was doing, and, I mean, he was right into it..." Daarfy's face was pale, with a sheen of sweat on his forehead under the bioluminescants. Os glanced at the stack of XP players on the floor, picked one of them up. It was a flat oblong, about a centimetre thick, the size of a paperback book. It had a slot in one end that received XPWare cards, and a socket in the other end that the sensory lead plugged into. There were five contacts on the front; `Play', `Stop', `Repeat'; and two counter-buttons to set the number of repeats and the intensity of the sensations. There was a liquid-crystal status display. There was a door set into the base that opened to reveal a Lithium-Kaelite battery, good for about six years' continuous play. Os went over into the corner, sat down and placed the player on the floor next to him. He fished the sensory lead from his shirt pocket, stroked the bump behind his ear, which opened like a flower, revealing the wet socket which accepted the male end of the sensory lead. He plugged the other end into the player, slotted the card and hesitated briefly before hitting the `Play' contact - He was on a busy street in Basel, sitting at a table outside a cafe, sipping cappucino. He was surprised to find that he was wearing an exquisitely-tailored white linen suit, comfortable shoes and, to his chagrin, a fedora, which he snatched off and skimmed across the street. He glanced about, looking for the ever-present Militia. There didn't seem to be any in the vicinity. He breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly, he was joined at his table by a girl, about his age, wearing a shimmering, golden metallic dress. Her hair was shaved back at the sides in a nostalgically `punk' fashion; her ears were surgically pointed, her eyes cerulean blue, no whites. She said something in German, and he found himself swept up in the control of the XPWare, replying in German, with no idea of what he was saying. They conversed for a few minutes in this fashion, she occasionally smiling, then taking his hand and squeezing it as they stood and walked across the road into one of those huge arcology-style hotels that extended for two hundred storeys into the air and three hundred below ground. They went straight to the elevators, rode to the twenty-third floor and located their room. Daarfy cast a bemused glance at Os as he sat in the corner, his arms and legs twitching as the poorly-insulated lead behind his ear allowed a few dim echoes of his internally-represented movements to appear on the surface. He picked up the third XPWare card, puzzled for a few seconds over the text on the back, which read:   WARNUNG! Erotisches-Todlich Erfahrung! WARNUNG! AVERTISSIMENT! Erotique-Mortel Eprouver! AVERTISSIMENT! WARNING! Erotic-Death Experience! WARNING! The skull-and-crossbones, he supposed, meant that it had been pirated from GlobalNet, as most of the XPWare available on the street was. He shrugged, slotted the card and pressed `Play'. Meanwhile: Os was lying on his back in the middle of the biggest bed that he'd ever seen; the girl was crouched over him, naked, humming something over and over in a husky voice. He felt his mouth form words and speak them without understanding what he said, and then she kissed him. He felt a touch of volition return then; he struggled against the rigid parameters of the XPWare, grabbed her shoulders and tried to shout, "Who are you?" The words emerged as if he was drowning in honey; thick, slurred and distant. The XPWare- simulated girl paused for a moment, then resumed her prerecorded eroticism. He stopped struggling and waited for the end of the recording... Os came out of it five minutes later, sweating and gasping. He blinked his eyes, shook his head as if he were trying to wake up and leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, exhaling raggedly. Whoever had edited that XPWare had accentuated most of the erotic sensations and all of the painful ones; he still felt phantom sensations twitching down his back and around his throat. His eyes opened in shock as Daarfy screamed. He was tied to a rack, arms and legs outspread, stretched painfully to their limits. The stench of burning flesh was in his nostrils; his view was filled with the angry glow of a red-hot poker. Two beautiful blonde girls, naked except for black executioner's hoods stood on either side of the rack. One of them held a small black box with wires leading from it to somewhere below his view. She grinned and turned a dial on the box, and he was convulsed with agony, arching his back and rising off the rack, falling back with a thump when she turned the dial back. The other girl spoke: "Tell us The Word." The XPWare wouldn't let him respond; even if he knew The Word, he couldn't tell them. Again: "Tell us The Word." Os crawled over to where Daarfy sat, leaning back so far in the secretary's chair that he was about to fall over backwards. He shrieked again through tightly-clenched teeth, his arms and legs quivering spasmodically; Os grabbed the player and stabbed repeatedly at the `Stop' contact, which didn't seem to be working. He recalled that some models, when set for a single play, wouldn't stop unless you ripped the battery out. "You're being a very naughty boy, Clement." One of the hooded girls murmured in his ear, pinching the lobe between her fingernails. The other had placed his testicles in the jaws of a long-handled clamp and was slowly closing them in halting steps, sending jolts of agony through his abdomen. He felt as if he would vomit, but the XPWare wouldn't let him. He felt a warm, wet pop, a fresh jolt of pain, and moments later, a second pop as the jaws closed completely. "Tell us The Word", they murmured in unison. He could only whimper. One of the girls shook her head reproachfully and produced an unusual sort of clamp; a halved metal sphere about the size of a tennis ball. He screamed again as she forced it into his mouth and began turning the screw, the two halves slowly separating, pushing his jaw down. "Tell us The Word." Daarfy was jerking to the left uncontrollably, as if he were trying to avoid something that was about to dive on him, making a horrible whimpering sound through his rigidly clamped jaw. Os turned the player over, fingers scrabbling at the tiny screw that held the battery-compartment closed, abandoning this and smashing the player against the corner of the desk repeatedly. At the fifth blow, the player cracked open, the card's read-heads whirring like an over-revved engine. As the player and its volition-cutout circuitry died, Daarfy regained control of his body. And screamed, mouth open as far as it would go, the shrill sound dissolving into a gurgle and a choking noise deep in his throat, tongue protruding slightly, eyes bulging. The rigid pose that the XPWare had forced his body into snapped like a twig, and he fell back into the chair, dead. Moral: Read The Fucking Manual.

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