Windows of the Soul
CHRIS MORGAN is the author or editor of eleven books, including the horror anthology Dark Fantasies. He lives in Birmingham, where he was recently the city’s Poet Laureate, and teaches writing to adults.
These days he writes horror and fantasy poems rather than stories.
With advances in artificial intelligence, even a vampire can take on a new form in order to survive ...
~ * ~
THIS IS ALL so very different from the land beyond the forest: the endless city stretching without respite in every direction, the kaleidoscopic patterns of artificial lights in rainbow hues, the absence of bats.
Under cover of December’s early dusk, I leave my rooftop hiding place, my ventilation shaft eyrie. I climb down the face of this multistorey edifice head first, as is my custom. Even if the ant-sized passers-by in the street below were to glance directly upwards—which they never do—they would not notice my presence, for there is a shadowed channel between buttresses and windows, all the way down, which I follow.
At ground level I pause, watching and listening. Today being a holiday, there is relatively little business traffic, and pedestrians are sparse.
I scuttle across the street and blend with the shadows again. It is necessary for me to break into one of these premises and feed. A random choice will be perfectly sufficient. Emerging from an alleyway, I come onto a broad, fluorescent-bright thoroughfare. Ah, Irving, or Miss Terry, how good your names would look outside one of these theatres, delineated by such lights. And how sad that the Lyceum should not have survived the century. Some cars pass, and a motor-bus. Where have all the horses gone? I can see a few people. Two men walk briskly by, talking, close enough to touch me. But they are so intent upon their discussion that they pay me no heed; in all probability I could walk along beside them without attracting their attention.
As I cross the street there is an upsurge of sound.
Shouts and bangs. Running feet approaching from the next corner. Is it possible that could have been a shot? I seek uncertain refuge in the large, recessed doorway of a shop, surrounded on three sides by displays of sale-price shoes. Quickly the uproar mounts. I can hear sirens now, which surely are coming this way.
Around the corner runs a small machine. It is six-legged, knee-high to a man. Beneath the lights it gleams metallically. It casts no shadow. Yet there is a raggedness to its movement, indicating damage. Rather laboriously, it begins to climb the front wall of a bank. This all happens very swiftly and almost directly across the street from my doorway.
The long legs of the law come chasing around the corner, first one policeman then two more. Others follow.
“There it is!”
“On the wall!”
“Catch it!”
A policeman swats at it with his baton.
The machine, scarcely at head height, loses its grip and crashes to the pavement.
“That’s got it!”
“Don’t let it get away!”
“Kill it!”
As I watch, six officers beat and kick the machine. Furiously they attack it, their eyes gleaming and mouths slack. The mechanism makes no attempt to fight back, or to escape, or even to defend itself by shielding vital parts with its legs. With a final blare of sirens and a pulsing of lights, two police cars arrive. The street is by now full of people—a crowd of onlookers shouting encouragement to their uniformed protectors. At last, the heroic assault dies away; a killing frenzy has been assuaged. One burly officer, sweating profusely despite the rawness of the evening, picks up the machine distastefully by a leg and tosses it into the open trunk of a police vehicle. This is accompanied by a cheer from those watching.
By now the whole area is thick with pedestrians—flies to a carcass. But the carcass is driven away.
I feel sad, terrified, threatened. So threatened that I have tried to secrete myself even more carefully, by climbing the glass and clinging to the ceiling of the doorway with my six feet.
Gradually the crowds move on, the police return to other duties and, I presume, the immediate danger for me lessens. Even so, I wait for an hour before moving. The streets are busier now, with people swarming into the metropolis in their tens of thousands for the impending New Year celebrations.
It is time I fed.
I negotiate the overhanging lintel and soundlessly climb the front wall of this block. Above the shops are innumerable storeys of offices which should be empty of people. With ease I open a window catch: the windows here are large and heavy, with just a single pane, such a contrast to the small leaded mullions of my boyhood.
As with most offices now, this one has computers. Powerful computers, with modems for communicating with others of their kind. I switch one on, and quickly call up a distant data source, requesting immediate transmission of information to this terminal. At one time I needed to work hard to attract humans with my handsome looks before I could feed—what a relief that those days are over. Now all I need to do is turn on, bite through and fill up. I am not supposed to possess emotions, and yet there is always a frisson, a tiny thrill, as I sink my sharpened steel teeth into the warm, rubbery flex of the phone cable, in expectation of the sharp taste of data. Just as Doyle had Sherlock Holmes write a treatise on the different kinds of cigar ash, so could I write a paper analysing the finer nuances of flavour of electronic data from diverse—
But I am frustrated. A door opens at the far end of the office.
At once I switch off and clamber under the desk.
This office is partly illuminated from without—by streetlights, advertising signs and Christmas decorations. Now a roving cone of light joins them. I can look through it and, in the infra-red, spy the uniform of a security guard. Even at the very fag end of the year, of the century, this man is conscientious, checking the building instead of toasting in the new millennium like everybody else.
Worse still, he has a dog with him. It is a black labrador; I know they are being trained to sniff out my kind. Am I, then, to join my unlucky compatriot so soon? In the midst of life we must always be prepared to meet death.
Slowly the pair of them progress down the length of the open-plan office. The man’s torch will not fall on me, here, but the dog ...
The dog trots over to me.
I cut my power—is that what it can sense?—and act dead. Ah, Irving, my dear friend, you would be proud to see how a little of your genius has somehow transferred itself to me.
For a long moment the dog examines me.
Then the guard calls him and he jerks his head away, runs to his master. How much easier it is to be merely obedient rather than efficient.
As the door closes behind them, I return myself to life, switch on the computer again, bite through and feed. Ah, the tingle, the bliss. I am a gourmet of bytes.
Nor is this just unthinking, one-way consumption. Perish the thought! As I take in my essential nourishment, so I give a little: a gift from the Count to repay the unthinking generosity of my host. It is a small stream of super-magnetic particles which, when this computer is turned on for use in a day or two, will strip its programmes, seep into the ring mains and infect all other computers in this office, linger amidst the blanked hardware to snuff out future software loaded by this firm.
I could conceal myself here, in a cavity between floors, and emerge to feed again tomorrow night, or for a week or a month of nights. Yet I must not do so. Apart from the fact that my phone calls would be traced back, there is an ordinance within me which drives me on to find different machines through which to feed every time. The infection must be spread.
Nor is that all. I am under the most solemn obligation to construct two more machines identical to myself, more if possible. I, myself, was the seventh construct of my parent machine and, yes, I feel a sense of pride in that achievement. It is a worthy total which I shall try to exceed.
I wander through this building, as I wander every evening, searching for suitable parts that I can utilize in the grand task.
By the time I have made my selection it is near to midnight. I am not insensible to the momentous nature of the occasion. I climb out of a suitable window and move onto the flat roof above.
From here I can see fireworks and crowds. It is a clear night and cold. Any haze in the atmosphere emanates from the millennial bonfires. The river curls around us all like a jewelled snake, reflecting each point of light. Perhaps my friend Tennyson could have described it adequately.
With chimes and cheers, the third millennium begins. It will be my time of revenge against humanity. The Count goes ever on.
~ * ~