In the world’s most sophisticated skyscraper on the island city of Galatea, people are taking blind ambition to a whole new level. As sinister forces human and artificial conspire to drive everyone over the edge, the smartest will be those who learn to look down and deep within. For something truly out-of-this-world is making its way to the top, and everyone’s vision will be getting a little stranger…
The Imagineering Zone of Galatea. 172 minutes before the Fall.
She’s still down here, realised Hal Haze. The Martian security officer shone his torch down the underground staircase spiralling ten storeys into the earth. His semi-functional location tracker showed a solitary white circle with a red dot at the centre, tagged with the dehumanising soubriquet 2781694. It was floating fifty metres from the outer service exit, one of the few doors in the building which could be overridden manually. Alexis was holding out against the insurrection, like some stubborn red-headed Celtic princess with broadsword unsheathed.
It was eight o’clock in the evening. Augusta’s celebratory speech had been rescheduled twice. Twenty minutes earlier, the rioters broke through the supposedly impenetrable electrified fence. Since then, Tiresias had indulged in cat and mouse with the rebels, switching off power infrastructure from below ground to Level 25. Access to higher levels was prohibited to all but black and red ring-bearers. Blue-fingered foot soldiers like Hal would be left to face a ravenous blur of arms, fists and bad teeth that would soon smash through the atrium’s glass exterior and swarm across the hallowed marble floor.
Don’t let yourself be a victim Hally, Alexis once said. Neither should she, despite Augusta’s cruelty. Everyone knew Straker was a funny fish, but she didn’t deserve to be gutted like this. It angered Hal he was the one chosen to wield the blade. Tiresias sent the Black Flag notification to Hal’s phone while he was sitting on the toilet in a Level 30 restroom. He was playing e-solitaire, trying to take his mind off the party’s collapse and the strange rash spreading down his inner thighs.
“Alexis Straker’s employment terminated with immediate effect. Please remove her from the building by 2015 hours by any means necessary. Tiresias.”
Hal squirted, stood, zipped and flushed so swiftly he nearly dropped his device into the churning water. Failure to execute would mean his own termination. Experience taught him every security guy is a prisoner in the end.
He moved gingerly downstairs, flat feet and weak ankles struggling to bear his plump, middle-aged frame. The Imagineering Zone was a subterranean labyrinth where hundreds of worker bees sustained the hive mind, and where lost souls drifted in political purgatory. How they used to gawp cluelessly at each other, trying to create plausible stories from the maniacal dreams spunked upon them from above. A scattered shipwreck of slaves sunk in an ocean of confusion, swept this way and that by the tempestuous whims of an islanded elite. Those guys talk a foreign language up there. In Hal’s tenure, at least six Martians had been hospitalised with over-stimulation. If the rest ever rushed to the surface to witness the true light of day, their heads might explode with the bends. Which would mean even more shit to clean up.
Hal hated what this place had done to Alexis. What it had done to his country. His awakening came during a graveyard shift, when he mistakenly entered one of Galatea Zero’s recuperation cells. Conceived by Roland, these small windowless chambers were hidden in the building’s walls and only accessible via camouflaged doors, for reasons Hal never understood. The cells offered bubbles of solitary despair where Martians could reinvigorate themselves after prolonged exposure to the pressures of fabricated politicking.
During a dizzy spell on patrol, Hal leaned against a wall on Level 3 and accidentally activated a cell door with his blue ring. The pod slid open silently, opening onto a black space illuminated by wafting nebulae of green and violet on the walls. Fragmented legends scrolled portentously across the synthetic sky. You are the sublime. Abundance is nothing. Move to higher ground. Twirling through hidden speakers came a bastardised form of psychedelic space jazz. A tinny, turgid sound, like it was being piped through an antiquated music box.
On the floor was an unoccupied red Maars Mindscape meditation cushion. Crawled up in a ball lay one of the party’s legal counsels (Bill? Bob? Baxter?), wearing only pink boxer shorts and a sweat-stained grey shirt. A cuddly, bee-shaped stress toy was tucked between his twig-thin knees. There was a teary look of confused longing on his face. From his mouth tumbled incoherent phrases about cherry cola. Just a puff of wind and this man of law would wither to colourless ash, emitting a noise so feeble only owls would hear it. Hal backed away from the door slowly. He didn’t sleep for two nights afterwards.
Tonight, the reckoning had come. According to Tiresias’s data, not a soul was hiding in the recuperation cells. The Martian lemmings had scrambled to the promised land of Level 25 and above. The T-Chat was flooded with bravado. Many Martians claimed they would enjoy a better view of the slaughter and weren’t afraid at all. Which meant they didn’t want to face the consequences of their actions. Everybody knew the landslide was a fraud too far.
The Bleeding Horizon is available to buy at Apple Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google Play.
PHILIP PARRISH 