Chip Inside

Cort woke with a start.  He was sure that something had woken him, but the room seemed quiet and dark now.  He lay perfectly still – quite easy as he was still restrained by the semi-intelligent nylon bands – and listened carefully.  He closed his eyes after a couple of seconds; even though there wasn’t much to see in the gloom it helped him concentrate.  For a few moments there was nothing and then… something.  Something faint, on the edge of hearing.  Ah, something trying to match his own breathing.  Cort held his breath and listened harder.  Sure enough, someone breathed softly and slowly, exactly when he would have breathed himself.  There was someone in the room with him.

He allowed himself to start breathing again, aware that complete silence would be a give-away as much as if he started shouting, and twisted slightly as though trying to turn over in his sleep.  The bands tightened, but it was more of a warning squeeze than aggressive, and as they did so he stretched his arm until it reached his toes.  He’d discovered this trick while playing backgammon with Bad Kitty, as it meant he could throw the dice himself.  Curiously, after he’d done that he’d stopped unaccountably losing in the end-game every game.

With his hand at his feet he had enough flex in his arm now to reach the emergency button on the headboard of his bed, so he walked his fingers gently up the covers until he got there and reached up to press it.  It clicked very faintly as he depressed it, and then – nothing.

“You’re awake then, Cort?”  The voice was warm and friendly, even slightly familiar, and for several moments Cort thought that it was the Doctor back from the dead for a fourth attempt.  He tensed, and the bands squeezed back like a strait-jacket.  “Don’t you remember me?”

“Doctor?”  Cort shook his head even as he said it, remembering that the Doctor was dead and that he, Mr. Stretch, was in lock-down while his sentient mucus was checked-out.  “No.  Bad Kitty?”

“Getting warmer,” said the voice.  “Are you always this slow to wake up properly?”

“Yes, sort of now,” said Cort.  “Chip.  Chip Inside.  I haven’t seen you in years.  What are you doing in my room?”

“Well, it’s not really your room, is it?” said Chip.  He sounded amused, and pleased that Cort had finally identified him.  “This is one of the general rooms of Surgery 2.  They’ve got you in here in case more of that mucus turns up and they need to stop you producing more of it.”  There was an odd note in his voice, and Cort easily deduced what was meant by ‘stop.’

“As in, Terminate with Extreme Prejudice?”

“You’ve got the slang down, daddio,” said Chip.  “It’s hard to believe you’re in a retirement home.”

“It’s hard to believe you’re pretending to be normal and holding down a government job!  With a pension!”

“Yeah.  Yeah, that’s not so cool, but, well, there is the matter of the pension.  It’s tracked as well, it’s a good one.  And the work is interesting a lot of the time.”

“Anything you can talk about?”

“What do you think?”

Cort laughed, a slightly gaspy noise as the nylon bands weren’t sure what to make of the chest movements and kept gripping.

“So why are you in my room?” he said.  “Are you the committee for bringing bad news?”

“Not exactly,” said Chip.  “I’m here discretely, on other business.  Your mucus is fascinating stuff, but it looks like a one-off, one of those little oddities somehow connected with our mutations and super-powers.  It’s not about to eat London, if that’s what you’re scared of.  No, I’m here instead on behalf of Sylvestra.”

“I’m too old for a job,” said Cort.  He laughed a little again.  “I can’t even imagine what she could have in mind.”

“Not much of a job, really,” said Chip.  “But important in its own way.  And if you agree we think we can get Bad Kitty to pitch in too.”

“Oh I see, that’s it is it?  You really want Little Miss Hairball and I’m just the easiest way to get to her.”

“No.  Really no, Cort.  I want you, and if we get Bad Kitty as well then that’s a bonus, a little bit of icing.  But you’re the cake, Cort.  All of it.”

“I’d be shaking my head if these restraints let me,” said Cort.  “I don’t believe you for a minute, but let’s pretend I do.  What do you want me to do?”

“Watch.”

“Watch what?  Bad Kitty undressing?  Her burlesque days are long gone, Chip!”

“I should hope so!” Chip sounded a little alarmed at the thought of an elderly lady with too much hair dressed in a tightly-laced corset and thigh-high heeled boots.  “We want you to watch for visitors to Fizz.”

Cort stayed silent for several seconds thinking about that.  When he spoke again there was a note of fear in his voice.

“Fizz isn’t allowed visitors.”

“I know.  But we think she’s going to get them, and we need someone on the inside, someone who can let us know if that happens.  That’s all, Cort, nothing else.  Just keep the embargo on Fizz Mission the way it’s supposed to be.”

“Sure,” said Cort.  “Of course I will.  You know, sometimes I wonder just how lonely she must be in there, you know?”

“She barely knows,” said Chip.  “The drugs they have her on mean she sees one day where the rest of us see sixty.  She doesn’t have enough time to feel lonely before something happens to distract her.”

“I see,” said Cort.  “Could be a blessing, really.”

“I hope so,” said Chip.  “Will you watch her then?  Let us know if anyone tries to visit her.”

“Sure thing,” said Cort.  “When do I get out of these straps then?”

“Tomorrow,” said Chip.  “Better to go through standard protocol really.  Thanks, Cort.  Sylvestra will be grateful for this.”

“No problem,” said Cort.  “Fizz is a sweet girl really.”

Fizz Mission

She was Fizz Mission, abandoned at a young age by the nuns who had been to take her in and bring her up as one of them.  She had only dim memories of them: shadowy black and white people, vaguely conical in shape, moving silently around large, echoing spaces.  Geometric symbols adorned the walls, and for the last six months she was there she had entertained the idea that she was being raised by mathematicians.  Invisible mathematicians, mostly.  There has been murmured words, which she later learned were prayers, and later still learned were the prayers of desperate people, who perhaps should have been more cautious around a child they feared.  There were long polished floors, and hard, high-backed chairs.  There had been hours of sitting still and being silent.  And there had been a vegetable garden.
They took her out to the vegetable garden to punish her, telling her that the eyes of God were everywhere, but it was an imposition to ask him to see inside buildings and through walls.  So she was beaten outside, usually pressed face-first against a rough-barked tree by a calloused, strong hand, and she was told the whole time that God was observing her punishment.  If there was anything unjust, a woman's voice said, then God would surely intervene, and if He chose not to, then there as no wrong done in his eyes.
When she was three, old enough to know what was happening, two of the nuns dressed more heavily than she'd seen any of them dress before; robes over robes over thin metal sheets beaten into curves that approximated the human form over padding and thin blouses.  Then, attired as rather bulky, unattractive women, they'd taken her out from the nunnery, walked for half a day to a pleasant cliff-top where a river ran along a stony bed and then leapt off and out, a rainbow-laden waterfall to a valley below.  Birds called to one another and swooped and sang in the air, and insects chittered and chattered as they busied themselves about their business.  The nuns pointed out the birds, showed her with infinite care how to draw back leaves and grasses to see the insects, and marvelled with her at the infinite variety of God's Kingdom.  Then they took her to the cliff edge to see the rainbows hanging the in the spray from the waterfall, each took a hand, and swung her back and forth three times.  At the peak of the third swing they let go, and she flew out into the air, off and away from the cliff, and fell to the valley below.
The world seemed to tumble around her as she flew, the air growing cold as it rushed past her ever faster, and the birds cries of astonishment turned to drawn out screams as the sound dopplered away.  When the tumbling stopped she was head down, and the trees and grasses and rocks of the valley were growing larger and closer by the second.  She closed her eyes, tensed her whole body, and screamed.

*

"Fizz?" The voice was thin, and it tasted white.  She swallowed, not entirely pleased with the flavour.

"Fizz, open your eyes please?"  She shrugged, wondering if she was being held again – wait, why did she think again? – and opened her eyes.  She could move freely.  Above her was a suspended ceiling, with those funny acoustic ceiling tiles that deadened noise so that large offices could be open-plan without confusing everyone with unending echoes.  There was a fluorescent light tube a little way away from her eyes, turned on.  Of course.

"Fizz, where do you think you are?"

She thought about that; she could remember falling to the ground again, screaming into the light, but... but that wasn't here, was it?  This was an office of some kind.  This was... this was the office of the psychiatristic Moore, wasn't it?

"I'm here with you, Dr. Moore," she said.  Her voice was warm, but it never tasted of anything.  She didn't know why.  "You're psychiatring me, aren't you?  As you do every Monday and Thursday, business permitting."

"I'm providing you with a safe space where you may talk freely," said Dr. Moore, his voice quavering slightly on the sibilants.  "As your boss wants, as you know."

"Then are we done for today?"  Fizz sat up; the office around her was small, cluttered, and beige.  The walls were beige, the desk was tan, the blotter on the desk was beige, and the pens on the blotter were muddy brown.  Even the paper, squared neatly with the edge of the desk, was an off-yellow colour.  Dr. Moore seemed to live in a sepia world.

"We got no further than last time," said Dr. Moore.  There was a tapping noise, perhaps a pen against a pad of paper.  "We need to be more productive.  It would help if you could remember why the nuns wanted to get rid of you."

"Yes," said Fizz, memories stirring in the back of her mind, but none coming forwards.  "That is odd, isn't it?"

"Murderous nuns usually make the news," said Dr. Moore.  He sighed.  "Unless they were all killed of course."

There was a pause, a momentary silence while Fizz's memories coiled in the darkness of her mind like snakes settling down again to sleep.  "Killed?" she asked, sure that Dr. Moore wouldn't wake the snakes now.

"There's a possibility," said Dr. Moore, his voice fainter still, "that someone, or something, killed the nuns shortly after they thought they'd killed you."

"The ones who threw me off...?"

"All of them."