MICK FARREN is a product of St. Martin's
School of Art, Phun City, IT, Nasty Tales
and an Old Bailey obscenity trial. He now
writes full-time and has had four previous
novels published. The Neural Atrocity is
the final instalment in a brilliant Science
Fantasy trilogy.
Also by Mick Farren
in Mayflower Books
THE TEXTS OF FESTIVAL
THE QUEST OF THE DNA COWBOYS
SYNAPTIC MANHUNT
The Neural Atrocity
Mick Farren
Mayflower
Granada Publishing Limited
First published in 1977 by Mayflower Books Ltd
Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF
A Mayflower Original
Copyright © Mick Farren 1977
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd
Bungay, Suffolk
Set in Linotype Plantin
This book is sold subject to the condition that it
shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
This book is published at a net price and is
supplied subject to the Publishers Association
Standard Conditions of Sale registered under
the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956.
CYN 256 felt one of those tiny surges from the wild, unruly, faraway depths of his mind. He didn't have a name for the small bursts of feeling. He had heard the word rebellion, but he scarcely knew what it meant. The only positive analysis he had of his situation was that somewhere, beneath all the layers of orderly conditioning, was a dark sub-mind that refused to be controlled.
He had no real knowledge of this area. A few clues floated up into his consciousness like the occasional bubbles in a stagnant pool that burst with a tiny whiff of strange, volatile gas. They told him that somewhere there was a part of him that wasn't totally adjusted. It wouldn't accept the life that limited him to his work cubicle, his sleep cubicle, and the bright curved corridor that he walked twice a day from one to the other.
It was on these walks that the disturbing thought came more frequently. As he paced the familiar route from, in this instance, work to sleep, he glanced covertly at the fellow operatives walking beside him. He wondered if they too suffered these small but nagging disturbances. If they did, they showed no signs of it. It wasn't a subject that he could discuss at the fantasy session. If he was alone in his attitudes he would be treated as a malfunction. That was the thing he was most afraid of.
He walked on along the corridor, looking fixedly at the grey metallic floor with its slight downward curve. He was careful not to let his pace vary from that of the other operatives around him. He knew the Computer monitored the behaviour of all its human operatives. It was quick to act on a deviation from the norm. This too made him afraid.
He was acutely aware that this fear itself was by far his most serious deviation. He knew that once such thoughts become detectable he would be removed for immediate therapy. Therapy was something else he feared. What made this whole thought process even more disturbing was that he knew it went against the very core of his conditioning. For as long as he could remember he had loved the Computer. It was all powerful, all knowing and all caring. The never failing monitoring was the ultimate source of personal safety and comfort. The small black shiny sensors that studded the corridors at regular intervals, and unfalteringly watched over the human operatives from the ceiling of each cubicle, were his guards and protectors. The sensors were the technological expression of the Computer's love for him.
The therapy unit was the greatest manifestation of that love. All his life it had been the ultimate point of solace. Once in therapy all pain and abnormality would be gently washed away. In therapy he would be cleansed, all the pain and troubles removed from his mind and body, totally forgotten.
And yet he was afraid. He knew the fear only occupied a small section of his brain. Most of him still functioned in the same way as always. The tiny part that had changed, however, was enough to make him reject therapy and deceive the sensors. He knew that in so doing, he was setting himself apart from the Computer's merciful love, but the found he was unable to help himself.
CYN 256 came to the door of his sleep cubicle. His number was printed on the grey steel door in bold black letters. Although all the doors that lined the corridor were identical, he didn't need to check the number. He stopped automatically and, without thought, pressed the stud. The door silently slid open and he stepped inside.
The interior of the little cubicle was a soft pale blue. It was a restful contrast to the hard grey of the corridor. The sleep cubicles of C-class operatives provided no luxuries and excess space. There was a narrow bunk, a small bench, a sanitation unit, and a small strip of floor that was just big enough to turn round in. He opened the dispenser on the wall and, as always, there was the evening food tray. He removed the tray from the recess in the wall and set it down carefully on the table top next to the styrofoam box that contained his standard set of personal possessions. He was proud of the multi-faceted lumps of coloured plastic. They were the nonfunctional objects that the Computer, in its grace and wisdom, allowed its operatives to keep for their pleasure.
CYN 256 picked up the five pills from the food tray. He washed them down with a mouthful of liquid from the beaker, and began to munch mechanically on the thick, brownish grey wafer. When he'd finished the food he dropped the tray and empty containers into the disposal vent. He pulled off his shapeless yellow coverall and stuffed it in after them. There would be a fresh coverall in the dispenser after he had slept.
Naked, he settled on the bunk in a cross-legged squat. He knew he had only a short space of time to think before the sleep gas was released into the cubicle. There was no way to resist the gas. Once it came, the next thing he would know would be waking for another work period.
He tried to think his way towards an analysis of the disturbances in his mind. It was hard. He had so little information. He was a C-class. The C-class work function was carried out on an instinctive level below that of conscious thought. Printouts came into his work cubicle from the feeder, he read them and punched out other sets of figures on his console. He had no rational idea of why he did it.
He even knew very little about his environment. He knew that beneath him, four levels down, were the living circuits of the Computer in their own world of absolute cold, moving imperceptibly in the atmosphere of liquid nitrogen. The cold circuitry that CYN 256 always somehow imagined to be a place of green silence was the heart of the vast, metal walled sphere that housed the various sections that made up the entirety of the Computer.
The next levels out from the core housed the electronic and mechanical parts of the Computer. Beyond them were the three human levels. First there was the A-class, the elite who performed complex rational exercises, next came the B-class, who guarded, maintained and repaired all functions of the Computer, and finally, next to the outer shell, were the C-class levels. The C-class provided unthinking link functions. Of all the Computer's operatives, they were the most expendable.
Far back in its history the Computer had taken over the humans who had created it. It had rechannelled their energies, eradicated the parts of their makeup that it considered superfluous and integrated them into its own construction.
CYN 256 knew nothing of this. He only had the dimmest idea of the construction of the sphere. He knew the C-class level was immediately beneath the outer shell. He had no idea that this was a 30 cm skin of spun thermo plastic and steel, with its own remote control weapons system for protection.
He had little idea, either, of what was beyond the outer shell. He knew there were other things. He had a vague idea of the complex of stuff plants that supplied the rest of what existed with its material goods. He knew that the Computer controlled the stuff plants, coordinating the monstrous logistics of production and ordering. But he had no conception of what that rest of existence was.
For the first time ever, his lack of knowledge caused him pain. He had no data to apply to his problem. He knew no precedents and had nothing to relate it to. He had to struggle to stop his body revealing the frustration. The only thing that stood out in his mind were the figures.
It had happened some ten work periods previously. He had been in his work cubicle, scanning the printouts and instinctively hitting the keys on his console, when his eye had stopped at a single line of figures. He had broken out in a sweat, and something had knotted in his stomach. He didn't know how or why, but there seemed to be something terribly wrong with them. He had to make a considerable effort to go on punching out the corresponding figure. It had all felt so out of place. It was after that his disturbances had started.
CYN 256 felt helpless. It was inconceivable that the Computer had made an error. It had to be he, and yet he didn't feel defective. He could think of no reason why he should react strangely to a set of figures. That thought took him full circle. If it was the figures that had affected him, then the error must be in the Computer, and it was inconceivable that the Computer could make an error.
Before he could go any further, there was a soft hissing sound. The sleep gas was being pumped into the room. CYN 256 lay down and prepared for unconsciousness.
A.A. Catto paced one of the high terraces of the ziggurat. It was a restless, stiff legged pacing. She bounced slightly on the balls of her feet, giving off waves of impatient energy. Every few steps she would clench her fists, digging her silver nails into the palms of her hands. She still looked about fourteen years old with a slim, hardly developed body. For a long period she had maintained the appearance of a twelve year old, but then, for a while, she had stopped using the growth retarder, and her body had matured slightly.
It was only her face that gave away the fact that she had seen and done far more than any fourteen year old. The large eyes had a cold liquidity that seemed capable of anything. Her mouth, too, had a fullness that was at the same time cruel and sensual.
She halted and snapped her fingers at Lame Nancy.
'Cheroot.'
Nancy silently handed A.A. Catto a thin black cheroot and then lit it for her. Nancy had been standing quietly by while A.A. Catto performed her caged animal pacing. Nancy was almost as thin as A.A. Catto, but she looked her natural age. Her hair was bleached white and cropped very close to her head. She wore a white, skin tight, one piece fighting suit. A.A. Catto was dressed in exactly the same garment, except that hers was black with a discreet gold trim. Nancy's left leg was withered. It was supported by a black steel brace decorated with damascened curlicue patterns.
Nancy had been a successful madame in the city of Litz until she joined A.A. Catto's headlong band wagon. Now she was A.A. Catto's confidante, companion, lover and servant. She was consort to A.A. Catto's absolute ruler.
A.A. Catto exhaled sharply.
'Why does it have to take so long?'
Nancy shrugged.
'Preparations always take time.'
A.A. Catto stared across the broad valley that was domin...
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