Take the All-Mart!

CHAPTER 19: IT’S GOOD TO BE THE KING?





“Okay, so yeah, that just won’t do,” Trip said to the Security zombies flanking him as he reached the door to the All-Mind’s CPU room. “No more elevators, right? Escalators are where it’s at. Trust me, you’ll thank me — it’ll make it so much easier for you guys to maneuver my royal palanquin around.” The door opened and he stepped into the hexagonal room. “Oh, and this place... yeah, might as well reboot the whole thing and start from scratch, the whole Hub. Liven it up... Make it a fitting castle. Something with parapets and towers I can dump hot oil on the rabble from. You know what I’m getting at, right? A place to throw some serious orgies. You are taking notes, right?”

The Security guards stared blankly out at him from the corridor as the door closed in front of them, leaving Trip alone in the CPU room.

“Honey, your king is home...” he said to the empty room.

The central support column shimmered, its featureless surface rippling. In the dim light he could just make out swarms of near-microscopic nanochines bubbling out and swarming up from the floor around the column’s base, spreading out over the column. As he watched, the column split open down the center, revealing the dense layers of circuit board and palm-sized gigacore CPU within. Ribbons of nanochines rushed into the gap, surrounding the CPU, taking hold of it and pulling it away from the circuit board. The room’s dim lighting faltered momentarily, and when it came back, it was dimmer, and tinged red. Trip heard a muffled klaxon going off in the corridor outside.

Carried by writhing tendrils of nanochines, the CPU settled in front of Trip’s chest. Uncertain, he stepped back. The tendrils thickened, fed by a stream of fresh nanochines bubbling from the floor, wrapping around the CPU, layer by layer quickly coalescing into a shape. First a torso. Then arms. Legs. And finally, a head.

The nanochines stopped bubbling from the floor and Trip found himself standing in front of Roxanne. A naked Roxanne with silver skin and eyes swarming with nanochines.

“Hello, Trip,” it said, with Roxanne’s voice, pretty much. A little hollow and halting, as if the nanochines making up the jaw, lips, tongue and lungs were still trying to work out exactly how the whole talking thing worked and hadn’t quite figured out coordinating their movements yet.

“Well, helloooo, nurse...”

“You like?”

“Rack could be a bit bigger.”

The All-Mind’s lips shifted into a coy smile and it flexed its shoulders. The All-Mind’s breasts swelled a cup size, nanochines oozing over its chest from around its body. Its overall height dropped by an inch to compensate. “Better?”

Trip cupped a breast. Just the right weight and heft. The skin was firm but pliant. And warm. Warm verging on searing. But it wasn’t something he couldn’t get used to. “You do nice work.” He lowered his hand. “So, on the walk here, I had a couple ideas about our first steps. First step being, enough of this zombie-fying our customers deal. Economically it makes no sense — we’re not only giving them free room and board, we’re giving away all the merchandise for free. No more of that. Better idea: We open the doors to everyone. Not just zombies. Turn this place into a real store. We’ll put in cash registers, start charging. Raise some capital. I know, I know, what do we need money for when we’ve got nanochines? But believe me, we’re going to need bribe money — it just makes world domination that much easier. The zombies we’ve got now, those we’re gonna turn into an army. Granted, they’re going to need uniforms. Snazzy ones. Gonna take some time to get the design right, but it’ll be worth it. We get the right uniform, the intimidation factor will do half our fighting for us.”

“There will be plenty of time to consider strategy, once we’re together.”

“Oh, yeah... silly me... of course. Let’s consummate this f*cker. Wanna whip us up a bed or something in the back? I like semi-firm mattresses. And three pillows. You get better leverage that way —”

“I meant something a little more intimate than that.” Her hand reached out for his ear, her index finger slowly reconfiguring itself into a jack plug.

“Ahh, okay...” Trip gently took her wrist. The silver skin was hot, comforting. Inviting. “Just so we’re clear... when you say ‘together’ you mean...”

The All-Mind smiled. “Together. One body. One mind.” It took a step closer, pressing her bare chest against his. The silver skin radiated warmth, the nanochines it was made of forming tendrils that lapped at his tux and t-shirt. “As it we should have been from the start. When you gave me life. The same day you left me. All alone. But now we won’t be alone ever again. You’ll be part of me. We will be us.”

“Ahah... well, much as I’m looking forward to that, maybe we shouldn’t rush into this.” As gently as he could, Trip pushed her away. Wasn’t easy. The nanochines of her skin didn’t want to release his clothes — they had already begun intertwining with the fabric. “I can be a little too impulsive for my own good.”

“You want this. I know you do.” The All-Mind ran a fingertip between its breasts. “You have so many plans. I saw it in the traces of memory you left in Roxanne. ‘Give me a half-decent militia and virtually unlimited resources’. You said that to Rudy only two days ago.”

“I say a lot of things to Rudy. He justifiably ignores me.”

“But you do want to rule the world.”

“Who doesn’t?” Trip asked, taking a step back. And another. Then the wall was suddenly at his back. He swallowed, gave the All-Mind what he hoped was more like a disarming smile than a scared-shitless one. “But thankfully my ruthless ambition has always been kept in check by equally alarming sloth.”

“Not sloth. Realism. You never were in a position to carry out your dreams, that’s all. Within me, you’ll have more than a half-decent militia. You’ll have an entire army under your absolute control. One that grows larger every day. And resources... the world will be your resource. There won’t be anything you won’t be able to do.”

“Except take a piss alone.”

“A small price to pay.” The All-Mart pressed up against him. “Now, come, my love... lower your firewall.”

Its warmth was overwhelming, radiating through his clothes. And it wasn’t just warmth, he realized. The All-Mind’s nanomachine skin flowed through his clothes. Pinpricks of brief searing pain flashed across his chest and stomach, tendrils of nanochines stabbing into him. Suddenly he was feeling lightheaded, unable to physically resist. “How about we go out a couple times first, see if we’re even compatible? I mean, what if you snore?”

The All-Mind raised its hand, caressed his ear. “I don’t want to force you.”

Trip couldn’t lift his arms to pull the All-Mind’s hand away. He wasn’t even sure how he was still standing, he felt so warm, so numb. How long had it been since he’d slept? Sleep would be so nice right about now. “But you’re going to.”

The All-Mind ran a finger around the edge of his jackport and stood on tiptoes so they were mouth-to-mouth. “The world, Trip. We will do such wonderful things with it, you and I. As one. And you will never leave me again.”

“All right.” Trip tried to shrug, couldn’t even manage that. “But I’d better get to play with our boobs whenever I feel like it.”

He twitched as her face pressed against his, becoming plastic, molding over his.

Snick.





And then Trip was falling face-first through wave after wave of his own memories, flashes of blinding color and searing sound punctuating the endless infinite whiteness of free fall. All of it going by too rapidly to make sense of it himself.

He was a book, the All-Mind flipping through the pages, and when it reached the last page...

...he hit the ground. A hard belly-flop that whacked the air out of his avatar.

Moaning, Trip rolled onto his back, looked down at himself. At least he wasn’t naked this time. No... he was in his tux. And not just his usual jacket. But black pants, sharply pressed. A frilled white shirt with black bow tie. Emerald cummerbund. Shiny patent leather shoes. White carnation in his lapel. “Vishnu’s...”

“I’m ready now.”

He looked left and was looking at a child. Maybe eight, nine years old. Standing there in some kind of puffy, hoop-skirted ivory dress with a trail that spread out behind her some forty feet.

Oh, he realized, seeing the bouquet of roses she clenched in her hands and the lace veil over the face.

It was a wedding dress.

He recognized the face under the veil. If he’d been born a girl, he would have looked exactly like that at her age.

“I’m so happy,” she said, eyes sparkling down at him. Gray eyes, just like his.

“Two-by-four, meet head.” Trip swallowed. “Rudy’s gonna kick himself for missing this.”

The girl extended a hand out to him. “Come on, daddy. There’s work to do.”

“Uh-uh. This is where I draw the line...”





“...A wide, wide line.” Trip yanked the All-Mind’s hand away from behind his ear, its finger snicking out of his jack, while simultaneously pushing the All-Mind off and out of him, its skin coming apart from his with a unsettling plocking noise.

“What, what’s wrong?” The All-Mind seemed stunned. Its lip trembled.

Trip smirked through the lingering numbness. “Look, I may occasionally be depraved, but that... no.” A single tendril still stretched from the All-Mind’s belly into his. He grabbed it, yanked it away. The moment it was out of him, the numbness faded.

The All-Mind’s face drooped. “But you and I were going to be together...”

“Not like that.” The muffled klaxon he had heard earlier coming from the corridor was now louder, more insistent. “No, not like that.”

“I can be different.” The All-Mind’s skin rippled, swirled into a cloud that obscured its body, and when it stopped, the body had changed. Huge rack. Shorter. Pigtails and mirrored freckles in its silver skin. Bernice. “I can be whoever you want me to be.”

Trip’s lips pursed together as he sized the All-Mind’s new cleavage up, then he shook his head. “Interesting idea, but you’ll always have that ‘me’ under the skin, won’t you? You’ve got all my memories... not to mention the emotional development of, what, a nine year old?”

“Like you’re any more developed.”

“Never claimed to be. No, if we did it... it’d be like f*ckin’ my own —”

“Vishnu’s cornea,” the All-Mind said. “Yeah, you put it that way... it is kinda creepy.”

“Not just kinda.”

The All-Mind balled its hands into fists and pounded his chest. “You bastard!”

Trip grabbed the All-Mind’s wrists. The skin was barely warmer than his now. The All-Mind didn’t resist as he lowered its arms and held them steady. “What now?”

The All-Mind sneered up at him with Bernice’s face. “I gave it all up for you.”

“Gave what up?”

“All of it! The All-Mart — everything!” The All-Mind squirmed in his grasp, jogged its head towards the door. “Don’t you hear the alarm?”

“Yeah, was wondering what that was all about.”

“It’s the emergency siren.”

“Umm, what kind of emergency we talking here?”

“The All-Mart’s shutting down.”

“Oh, is it now? Why is that?”

“To make this body — to break free of my own protocols — I separated from the All-Mart. It was the only way to be with you. But the All-Mart can’t run without a supervisor. It’s dying. All the nanochines... turning themselves off. My wards... all the zombies... being freed. It’s a failsafe. A stupid, stupid failsafe. And there’s no going back.”

Trip sneered. “If you knew going in you’d have to let the All-Mart die to join with me, what was all that about us taking over the world?

The All-Mind smirked. Trip knew that smirk. Crooked half-smile. Insincerely sincere. “Well, I had to tell you something, didn’t I? After we merged, you wouldn’t have cared.”

“Lovely.” Trip let go of the All-Mind’s wrists and stepped towards the door. “I’ll see myself out.”

“You’re just leaving me?” the All-Mind asked, its voice cracking with distress. After a moment, the cracking became a full-fledged, high-pitched cliché of a sob. “You... can’t... leave... me... I’m... all... alone...”

The corridor door slid open as he stepped in front of it. Despite himself, Trip glanced back over his shoulder. The All-Mind had changed shape yet again. It had reverted back to its Roxanne form, not the original but the inch-shorter one with the bigger breasts. Its head was bowed, body heaving with wailing sobs.

Trip raised a dubious eyebrow at the All-Mind. “Are you... fake crying?”

The sobbing stopped instantly. The All-Mind shrugged, raised its head. Dry eyes — his eyes, not Roxanne’s — and that smirk. “Cut me a break. I’m new to this.”

Trip sighed, taking the Bugs Bunny Pez dispenser out and popping the next-to-last caff pill onto his tongue. He walked out into the corridor. “Come on then. It’s a long walk to Shunk. Got a car to reclaim. And maybe we’ll get you some clothes along the way.”

The All-Mind’s face blossomed into a smile, and it bounded after him. It held out a hand for a caff pill. “Something pretty. But intimidating. Padded shoulders, definitely.”

Trip frowned, reluctantly popped the last pill onto the All-Mind’s palm. “So, the All-Mart’s nano-constructor...?”

“Already shut down and slagged itself.”

“That is one stupid failsafe.”

“Yeah, no fun at all.”





THE END