Slaughtermatic Read Free Page B

got to talking about carrion, absence as therapy and the fact that not a single vitamin had ever been visually identified. The Kid described his ability to mentally unwind people like spiral-peeled apples and see them as skanking, swing-armed skeletons. ‘One thing you’ll say for skeletons,’ Corey said brightly. ‘They’ll always give you a smile.’ There are two ways of bringing someone around to your way of thinking - softly, or hardly.
    ‘ Danny says crime’s one of many methods justice may select,’ the Kid quoted. ‘But I don’t think I believe in justice d’you, miss?’
    ‘ Far as I can in somethin’ I never saw - so break it to me, you guys givin’ up or what?’
    ‘ You think we’re in Jones’s fuzz machine, Danny?’ asked the Kid, uneasy at Dante’s suspicion that they weren’t real crooks. ‘Still in them old -fashioned roller wheels?’
    Dante gazed up from his book. ‘Chances are this heist ain’t been accomplished, Kid, just portrayed, like electoral hype.’
    The Kid was nonplussed at his accomplice’s apparent apathy - this wasn’t the Dante he knew. The Dante he knew would spring into action so fast he’d leave his aura behind. Was this hanging around part of the plan? ‘What about intent, Danny?’
    ‘ Sure I guess we got that,’ Dante conceded, though he was on shaky ground. There was a name for those with intent to crime who subsequently enacted it in a simulation - crap.
    In fact VR was held in such contempt that many states ran hive jails in which prisoners were permanently hooked into a sim crime environment to play out their rage until decrepitude or drooling madness. Physically the prison was a coffin-stack bunker where inmates were drip-fed nutrients and urban fantasy.
    It was a source of mirth throughout the SSA that the virtual environment, called the Mall, was modeled on Beerlight. This had led Beerlight itself to reject plans for a VR clench, opting instead for a re-offenders’ trashpile and a standard clench for first-timers. The petty clench was based on the old panopticon model, despite complaints from tower guards that every single prisoner would stare at them.
    ‘ Maybe we been arrested already, Danny. Wired up in one of them funny places.’
    ‘ We’ll find out at midnight,’ said Dante absently. He knew the Mall ran the same twenty-four hours on a loop and that there was a burst of static at the reset. Anyone killed was resurrected. Anything damaged was restored. Like a kids’ game.
    ‘ What about her ?’ whispered the Kid, pointing at Corey.
    Dante said nothing. If this was Jones’s simulation, she was no less a puppet than the toys in the warehouse - effectively, she was Jones.
    None of it really accounted for the weirdness - since he worked the vault he’d been weaker, spread thin, in two minds about the whole match. He thought of Rumpelstiltskin, the real version where he tears himself down the middle, and found he preferred the PC mix in which the little bastard just runs away. What would Gamete have said?
     
    ‘ Gotta realize, Benny,’ Blince rumbled, slapping a new magazine into the gun, ‘value’s based on rarity, demand and ease o’ replacement.’ He resumed firing into the panicked crowd. People dropped as predictably as ninepins. ‘This gun’s my pride and joy.’
    He was referring to a Colt Demograph with a nine-inch barrel, which he’d fetched from the squad car as the bank employees began to emerge. It could be set for age, colour and wage bracket. Blince had wanted to work in Vegas until he discovered he’d only be allowed to shoot blacks. He liked to throw it wide open. ‘Why ain’t they keepin’ still, Benny?’
    ‘ Guess it’s what they call civil unrest, Chief.’
    ‘ This ain’t civil unrest, Benny, it’s civil goddamn insomnia. Pull back. Take out the whole goddamn street.’
    Everyone reversed up Deal and a Gates gun was trundled forward, steaming like a diesel truck. Denizens froze in its spotlight. Then