Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

henchman started boring at my coat on the far side of the channel,

and I lay back, unresisting. Again and again he plunged his tail

into me, boring deeper with each plunge. Pain gave way to ecstacy.

‘By the way,’ said his colleague, ‘I should mention that progress

doesn’t always succeed, but against this must be weighed the

certain failure of the status quo.’

I found out later the interferon was diverted because of the leak.

The deed was done. W hether I liked it or not, I’d flown in society’s

face. I’d broken loose, I was on my owm.

The Elixir was all I could have wished. How limited my ideas had

been! I saw the world now from a different viewpoint entirely. It

was clear the system didn’t give a damn for the individual; we were

nothing but victims, slaving in ceaseless toil, unaware of the liberation we could achieve by attaining our full potential. I felt I had a duty to reveal this truth to all.

And the truth is: every cell contains the potential to be every

other cell.

I started reading all the scripts that came my way. Here’s an

example: ‘Control to nursery: in view of the poor supply situation,

you and I will grab the lot.’ W hat about the workers? After all, we

make the food, distribute and transport it.

O r again, this: ‘Control to police headquarters: be on the watch

for viral eruption, lung abscess. Some invasion will have occurred

in the wake of the recent haemorrhage. Remember your motto:

better to kill the innocent than let the guilty go free.’

Note the indifference to basic rights.

The elixir operon

139

I never saw so many cops in my life, the day the wall downstream of

the plug failed. Viruses were everywhere. So I hadn’t been alone.

Interferon all over: the usual stuff about forbidden fruit and the

tree of knowledge. When it was through, I was still there, living in

dread of the next Black Cloud.

That would be my moment of truth. And were there others like

myself, still in possession of the Elixir? Like me, they wouldn’t dare

speak until they’d survived a crisis.

In a sense, 1 needed the Cloud. It came on the third day. That

characteristic surge, and shortly after, a fall of debris.

Oh no! I felt a wrenching in my heart. Was it all for nothing

then? Fool that I was, why hadn’t I heeded my sisters’ good advice!

Many around me were bursting; the waiting police pursued

escaping aliens. Saddled with the workload of failing sisters, other

cells began to choke, as tar babes blocked their access to the void,

depriving them of air. ‘Cool it’ scripts flooded into the channel,

provoking such wrath from the police that they started attacking

the ‘cool it’ scripts in preference to the viruses.

And I was dying. My own body was tearing me apart!

A parting killer had this to say to us: ‘Sisters, the danger is over.

The battle is won. They made their move, and we mopped them

up. This time, they didn’t have the numbers, but they’ll be back,

and when they are, remember the pitiful death of those who

betrayed you and let them in. Imagine creating your own worst

enemy, just because he’s too lazy to do it.’

Was I alive or was I dead? My mother, and my mother’s daughters, all save me, were apparently gone. Yet I remained.

‘Who are you?’ I asked myself. ‘Speak up! Are you a virus?’

I pinched myself. Red cells were queuing to release gas in me,

which meant I looked the part. But something was wrong; I

couldn’t help them. I didn’t want to help them. Damn it, the work

was too hard!

‘I gave you a coke,’ complained a red cell. ‘Where’s my 0 2?’

‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’ I replied. ‘Stop hassling me! I’m

trying to work something out here.’

‘Call a cop,’ said another red cell. ‘This wall cell won’t work, she

must be defective.’

140

Da; id Foster

By the time the cops arrived, I'd worked out what had happened.

One of me .