The body was splayed on the helipad, limbs spread out as if animals had been pulling at them, a halo of deep red blood beneath his head, a dead face contorted in ancient fear. A sacrifice, a ritual, a signaling device broadcasting an ancient kind of evil, some deep knowledge in the back of his mind tried to tell him, he felt the sting of it like a warning shot.
The air surrounding the body was heavy, as if some force up above and down below was pulling it in both directions.
He could feel his head tearing apart, a migraine running through the pathways of his brain, spreading fast as he knelt down to inspect the corpse. Dried up blood in its ears, no eyes. No apparent wound, he gloved up and felt the back of the head, no wound, no trauma, only the ridged scarring from the myriad of implants required for work on off-planet rigs. He got up slowly, trying to avoid the dizzying spell of high plastics, the migraine and his low blood pressure.
Waiting outside the borders of the helipad stood one of the two technicians on call, the other was hauling a pod from the elevator. Torber Landsem walked up to them. He’s dead, that guy, he said.
Yeah, we figured.
Get your suits and the pod, there’s some sort of device emitting a field of noise, it’s like gravity pulling you up and down. Ruined my day.
We can feel it already, it’s tugging at us. Can’t you tell? Could you see anything, is it internal or external?
Nothing external as far as I could tell, maybe underneath his clothes. The usual implants for a drone jockey, it’s a strange one. Let me know what you find.
***
He de-gloved, walking down the stairs towards the elevator. This was one of the last remaining working oil rigs. Towed in for maintenance in the harbor of the ruins of the town that headquartered the remnants of the Norwegian oil industry. They said it was too sudden, it happened too fast, but everyone knew that was bullshit, everyone had known this would happen for decades, but no one had the guts to do anything about it, and then it was too late. The industry died and the town died with it, now there were a handful of oil rigs in the North Sea, spitting up pitiful amounts of oil for a vanishing industry and nearly non-existent returns. The workers on the rigs were few, everything was automated, just a few guys to keep an eye on things. 150 years earlier an oil rig had collapsed and sunk to the bottom of the fjord right where this one was standing, it had been empty, also towed in for maintenance. The old elevator coughed him out at the bottom of the rig, he got on the boat he had been brought over with, a party apparatchik had commandeered it from a local boating enthusiast. It was old, made for romping around in the fjord, maybe throwing out a line, if there had been any fish to catch. They docked next to the overgrown, disused football stadium in the bay. He hadn’t remembered to check the dead guy’s body for any ID, shit. The headache and the air had made him want to get out of there as quickly as possible. The migraine was dissipating slowly, but he could feel the joint pain of the high plastics levels in the air take hold, walking to the train station became a struggle, he felt clogged up, his vision was blurring, his mouth dried up, a whine in his ears, like metal scraping against metal. He barely caught the train going back into town. Dumped down in a seat amongst commuters, a handful of them spread throughout the car. He took out a bottle and a syringe from the inner pocket of his black shell jacket, extracted the proper amount of bacterial solution, let the syringe penetrate his lower arm. They worked fast, his vision steadied, he could move again. He felt twenty years younger. He had felt like eighty, but was only forty, so there was some bad math or a bad body hiding in that equation.
He got back to the party offices, they were spread around town, but his division was located in an old bank building, right by the old cathedral. Torber was part of the investigative division of the party, not law enforcement per se, but he did perform roughly the same duties as a police officer would. At some point during the reform years police departments had been folded in under the larger party umbrella, much of the public bureaucracy was already a part of it, so why not extend it to law enforcement? There weren’t many murders, because there weren’t many people left to kill around here. Many had moved away after it was clear that there was no plan B for the region, that it was a lost cause after the oil industry collapsed, the depopulation process had been surprisingly fast. Most of the people left worked in the party bureaucracy, the farmers in the outskirts stayed on, some industry and some maintenance still existed, but the population was reduced to a point where many of the city center’s buildings were empty. It could not sustain what it once was any longer. It was as if the tectonic plates had shifted, cracking loose the piece of land the city inhabited, separating it from the rest of the country, the rest of the world, floating in a sea of its own despair and misery. It hadn’t always been like this, empty and overgrown. There was a time, you could see it in the newspaper’s archives down the street if you wanted to, during the disaster that was known at the time as the neoliberal turn, that wealth in the city was unparalleled. All the cliches: beautiful people, champagne, cocaine and diamonds and gold were abundant. Then the blood had washed in and caught it all, taken it back to sea. Now you were lucky to get your hands on cheap amphetamines or bathtub nootropics, the only diamonds were synthetic. If they weren’t already scavenged from the workshops, you could find some among the old oil drills in abandoned industrial lots.
***
The technicians called him, they had sealed the body in the pod, letting the little autopsy bots work on it. He asked them about the device that had given him a migraine.
Yeses, itit’s somesomewherere in the bodyody, they said. He could hear the other technician’s exasperated voice in the background, doubling up the voice of the one he was talking to. It had an eerie effect, but that was their annoying little personality quirk, two people so in tune they acted as one, synced by their implants.
Hey, can you tell your friend to shut up? It’s hard enough understanding you when I only hear one voice.
Sure, sure. He says to shut up. Yeah. You know what he’s like. Just keep watching the screen. So what do you want to know?
Did you find any ID on him? Or anything that could identify him at all?
Yes, we found his party accreditation, it was in his pocket. I’m surprised you didn’t fish it out yourself.
Yeah. Send me his info and I’ll let you get back to work.
He hung up and waited for a message to tick in on his phone.
The dead man’s name was Kåre Krüger, his party accreditation sold him as a drone operator mainly working off-planet with construction, but licensed to work in extraction as well. He was born on a farm a scenic hour long ride from town, the fields of the farm looking out at the cold violence of the North Sea. He replied to the message with a thanks and a curt send me the autopsy report as soon as you have it ready. It probably wouldn’t take long, the guys didn’t have much on their plate. Nothing happened here. Thank god for make-work programs for people with strange hobbies, he thought.
***
His old EV was coasting down the old road, pale asphalt, autopilot turned off. He liked to be in control although it was usually considered unsafe, but he only met a handful of cars as soon as he got a little ways away from downtown. The North Sea on his right hand side, fields filled with crops on the left. He turned and drove down a side road to a small farmstead. He didn’t have to ring the door bell, the young man was on his way out of the farm house before the car stopped.
I had an inspection last week, what the fuck. My numbers are on point, you know that. He yelled at Torber. In the kitchen window he could see an old man made up of spare parts, peering out at the scene.
Sorry to scare you, man. I’m not here for an inspection, wrong department. He showed him his party accreditation.
Your brother is dead, I’m afraid. Killed, most likely. Certainly looks like it. I’m charged with finding out why and who. Hopefully I’ll get it done soon, but you know how it is these days, not much gets accomplished around here. Except you know, what you guys do. He looked around at the fields, full of green. Delivering the message always made him nervous, rambling.
I’m sorry, what? He died? He was here just yesterday, shooting the shit, he stopped drinking years ago, so he didn’t stay the night. He was shipping off on a new job in a week’s time.
What job? He was killed on Forsete, the oil rig. He was registered there for a job, open contract.
He was going on leave for two months, a construction job up above. He was sought after, you know.
What did he do, exactly?
Everything, but he was a master jockey, I’ve seen him train for jobs all the time, he’d come out here and use the big open fields as his sim-scape. The drones could barely keep up with him. He could’ve become a supervisor, but he loved the grunt work, coord stuff. He was going up to build a ferry, a transport for a mining company to ship out workers to some moon or asteroid. It was a short gig, then he’d go back to his contract on Forsete. He liked being out on the rig in the North Sea, it was like a holiday for him. He’d always imagine himself at sea when we were kids, helping out our parents in the fields here, knowing that across the road, the world was waiting.
He let him talk about his brother, eyes glittering. It gave him an impression of who he was, that could be useful. He didn’t mind spending time out here either, the air felt clean or rather, cleaner. The sound of the ocean, the wind, it all felt like he belonged there, somehow, some pastoral fantasy, an epigenetic memory dragged up from his subconscious mind, his family had probably worked fields like this not far from here two or three centuries ago. He told the brother about how Krüger had died, the device, the bleeding ears on the helipad.
Who would do that to your brother, do you have any idea? Anything that might help?
No, he wasn’t really a guy who would get into trouble. And I don’t think he had a secret life hidden from me either. I mean, he might’ve. He worked, he helped me on the farm here every so often. He had some friends, they hung out at this café in the city. He liked weird music and went to shows.
***
On his drive back he called up the technicians, they were in their lab in the old vault.
You got anything?
We’reWe’re notot dodonene yetet. Shut up! He doesn’t like it when we do that. The doubled voice stopped.
Did you ID the device? What was it?
It doesn’t have any branding, but we know what it is, yeah. It looks like a home-brewed disruptor, it emits sound waves in sub tone patterns that mess with your head. It was put into him after his death. They even closed him up afterwards.
Where was it?
The stomach area, but not inside his stomach. In the abdomen.
You cut open his head yet, get a look at what made those ears bleed?
We assume it was the disruptor, when you got to the body the battery was winding down, it must’ve been much stronger.
You said it was put into him after he died?
Yes, I did say that. First it killed him, then whoever did it cut him open and put the murder weapon inside his body. It’s not hard to understand. But it is hard to do, the killer must have been wearing protective gear of some kind if they were close to it, which we must assume that they were. There might be remote control capabilities too.
***
The café was almost empty. He ordered a sandwich with some flavored nutritional paste smeared onto it, a piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato, and he got a bottle of soda to go with it. The bread was made from real flour, he could tell by the texture.
Hey, he motioned at the waitress. Got a second?
He pulled up his phone and showed her a photo of Krüger. You know this guy?
Yeah, he’s a friend. He comes in here all the time. Why do you ask?
He’s dead, murdered. Sorry for your loss. Can you tell me anything about him, anything strange happen lately, his behavior off, something like that?
The waitress was shocked, wide-eyed. She sat down and looked at him.
No, or wait. He didn’t actually come in the past few days, even though he was off work. He’d be here periodically. He was on rigs or on jobs off-planet most of the time. He would join us for shows at this warehouse sometimes.
Sorry to bother you. The sandwich was great. Haven’t had real bread in a long time.
She smiled at him, a smile that faded quickly and got up.
***
He went to Krüger’s small apartment, his living space that he kept for shore leave and time between jobs. It was nearly empty. Barely furnished, a bed, a couch, a chair and a table. A tea kitchen and not much else. It was in one of those retrofitted buildings, where bigger apartments had been turned into smaller apartments during the boom times, when rent was high and young people barely could find a place to live. It overlooked the harbor, the view was still pretty. He found a box of discs, old fashioned CDs and a handheld player. A flier for a show, it was last night. He searched up the venue, a DIY venue at the edge of town. Except for a pub or two downtown that offered guitar playing troubadours still, a century old tradition in the area, most live music was dead by now, but there was at least someone trying to keep a scene going. He admired it, but the music was awful. He’d put on one of the discs, all of them anonymous, with titles scribbled in sharpie directly on the CDs, no visual markers or covers. It started out soft, with skittering drums, click-clacking like a huge insect running on a corrugated tin roof, then a low bass tone came in, a machine gun muffled by concrete walls. The drums sped up and got louder, arrhythmical, without structure, while the bass was pounding in his chest. A screeching synth, like a death whistle passed through a decades old receiver. He turned it off, pocketed the flier and left the apartment.
***
There was another show at the venue tonight, he was lucky.
On his way he texted the techs, Send me photos of the disruptor, clean off the blood first.
When he got them, it was of something that looked like a jet black drop of water, a faint seam revealed how it was welded shut. It was around the size of a tennis ball.
The venue was in a section of an old, huge warehouse. He walked in the door with some people that were dressed just like him, carrying equipment, tonal processors, digital drum machines, old computers. He felt his joints slowly starting to ache again. It was time for another shot. I’ll just grit my teeth and get through this, then I’ll get myself fixed, he thought as he surveyed the big room he found himself in.
Hey, he called out in the direction of a few people that might look as if they were in charge of something. You guys got a second?
Fuck man, another inspection, you guys came to see us yesterday. Everything’s up to code.
Not an inspection. Asking about a murder. He pulled up his party accreditation.
Oh, I know you. I’ve seen you around the cafeteria. I’m in communications.
Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find an apparatchik in an underground music venue, they were encouraged to have hobbies, a life outside of work. He rarely engaged in that behavior.
I don’t remember you, he answered. Sorry. I’m bad with faces, he lied. He pulled up his phone again, showing them the photo of Krüger.
You know this guy? Found a flier in his apartment for a show here last night. I assume he came to the show and someone here was the last to see him alive. He pulled the flier up from his pocket too, as if to remind them of the lineup.
Sure thing, he came to shows here sometimes. He’d always cop some of our shit, he was generous like that.
Do you know anything about disruptors? He was found with one sewn into his abdomen, still running when the body was found.
Oh fuck. You serious? That’s harsh. Like, people build that kind of shit here all the time, it’s part of the practice. Everyone has a few pieces of homemade gear, either new developments or bootlegs of old equipment.
The other guy was nodding along. Yeah, we make instruments, wave-gens and all that. Disruptors too, but it has to be really powerful to kill someone. Ours might make you a bit uncomfortable, make you feel like you’re going to piss yourself or give you traces of a headache.
That’s legal?
Yeah, sort of. Grey area.
He swiped to the photos of the disruptor. Does it look familiar to you? Anyone you know build gear like this?
It kind of looks like. The apparatchik looked over at the other guy. Right?
The other guy nodded, yeah. It’s Kyrre’s. For sure. He’s the only one encasing his stuff in that material. It has to be. He’s kind of a show-off.
Where can I find him? He’ll be here tonight, right?
Yeah. You think he, you think he did it?
If not, he knows who did, I bet. How well do you know him?
Not well, he’s doing really weird shit, exciting shit. All his stuff is made to disorient and dissociate you, like you’re in a barrel tumbling down a hill. Krüger loved his music, got all his CDs. He’d even record bootlegs.
You don’t mind if I stay until the show starts?
No, no, for sure.
Torber walked out to his car, stuck a needle full of bacteria in his arm and felt his joints unfurl and loosen.
***
He stayed at the venue, through the sound checks, seeing people affiliated with the scene starting to show up early to commiserate. He didn’t get many looks, his black shell jacket was perfectly in line with the look of the people frequenting this place. He’d placed a call to party headquarters. There were patrol cars stationed close to every exit of the warehouse. They were all happy to have something to do. He sat in a far corner, watching the scene. At one point, the apparatchik came up to him and showed him a photo of Kyrre on his phone. A straight laced young man. Thick mustache, slicked back black hair. A black shell jacket similar to his and khakis. A laptop screen beaming at his face, several small devices daisy chained to a bigger box connected to the laptop and a small mixing board, something that could be mistaken for a guitar hanging from some sort of waist strap.
It was one of the most uncomfortable shows I’ve been to, it was pretty great, said the apparatchik.
Torber nodded, memorized the face. He wasn’t really that bad at faces, but made an extra effort to keep up the little lie he’d told earlier. He waved the guy back, snapped a photo of the photo with his phone and sent it to the people guarding the exits, this is the guy we’re looking for. The first act starts, no sign of him yet. A bellowing organ sound is played in a Shepard tone, an auditory illusion of a sound forever rising in pitch. A chain of effects is applied through a home-brewed device, similar to the one that killed Krüger. The deep rumbling sound of the organ starts transforming as several layers of distortion and echo start twisting it and pushing it to its limits, producing a sustained, piercing scream. A scream that could cut you open and take a look inside before slicing up your organs, a sound that burns away all the air in the room, a sound that is seemingly never-ending, always rising, always screaming.
***
The guy appears. Torber walks up to him, grabs him by the elbow, you gotta come with me. He sees the expression on his face, blank. He runs, Torber follows. He’s fast. The shot’s effect from earlier in the day is waning, seizing up. Fuck. It’s dark too, should’ve taken that nootropic cocktail that weird punk was offering up. He trips, hears the fast footsteps of his target disappear, feels his face meet a concrete floor, his hands barely catching him. Scraping against that hard, worn concrete with all its imperfections, a door opens and closes. He gets up, stumbles towards the exit. There he is, on the ground, a knee digging into his back, cuffed, crying, looking at something in front of him, there’s nothing there except the night. He’s saying something, sotto voce, Torber can’t make it out. He gets closer, and hears him say, please don’t take me yet. I tried to give you what you wanted, please let me go further down, please let me see the webs beneath the world. He notices Torber and screams at him, spit flying everywhere, you live like a flock of sheep, you live in denial. Changed from a pitiful little man to a vengeful demon in a split second.
Yeah. Sure, man. We’ll talk later.
Take him to a holding cell, make sure he can’t off himself or anything. I’ll talk to him tomorrow morning. Thanks guys, well done.
He walks back to his car, another shot, the plastics have been bad so far this year, he’s breathing dust. He goes back into the venue and accepts the nootropic cocktail from that weird punk, sits down in his corner and listens to the music, lets it rip through his guts, lets the sounds burrow into his bones, cracking them open to let the marrow seep out. Then he drives home with static in his eyes and he sleeps for exactly six hours.
***
This was how it went, mostly, a day of meandering around, asking a few questions and whoever did the crime would suddenly appear, it was like he had been endowed with a special power, because he wasn’t really a talented investigator. He let too much slip every time he interviewed people, gave them too many opportunities to lie or fuck it up for him. But he still got his perpetrators, every time. It probably helped that nothing ever happened in this town, especially anything as serious as some strange killer murdering a very normal drone jockey. People revealed themselves, they could never really hide what they did, especially in a small place like this. The party apparatus helped, but a sense of desperation helped more.
He’s in a conference room, across the table there sits the killer. A man named Kyrre, by all means a normal guy, too. A cursory glance at his file, some calls made to family and employers, nothing weird. Didn’t talk much they said, but who does these days?
Tell me about the night you killed him. He offered up the story, no interruptions, except for a request for a glass of water.
He came up to me and got my new CD. I thanked him for being such a loyal customer. I followed him out after. We talked for a while. He told me he had to stop by his oil rig the next morning, work, I don’t remember. I asked him if I could see it. In return I would show him a sneak peek of my new project. I said I’d play it for him on the helipad of the oil rig, it would sound great there. When we got there he showed me around. Then we stopped at the helipad, I said, go stand in the middle of it. I put on my soundproofing headphones, and in my backpack I had the protective suit. I said to him, I just have to get the gear ready. I pulled the suit on, turned on the disruptor on a countdown and threw it across the floor, rolling it down towards him, then it started rumbling, I could feel it in my guts, in my brain. Luckily I was far enough away and had managed to pull enough of the suit on before it started playing. I could see him seize up, his limbs stiffening then melting, falling down like a sack of bones, blood pouring out from his ears. I even think his eyes popped. After ten minutes it turned off. I went over to him, cut him open, a small cut in the abdomen. Put the disruptor on a timer again and quickly sewed him up. How did his guts look, they must’ve been gravy, right?
Torber had seen the photos, they had indeed looked like gravy.
Okay, so why did you do it? It’s just as important to us to know why you did it as knowing you did it.
Why? Why not, maybe. Something flashed in his eyes, a mania.
Maybe it was me doing it, or maybe something else instructing me, giving me a reason, giving me an incentive.
Okay, let’s go down that path, sure. Something told you to do it. Elaborate.
Of course not. Of course not. His eyes were normal again. There wasn’t some ancient entity controlling me, instructing me to kill for it. No ancient gods, deep spirits. Nothing of the sort, trust me. I don’t even do drugs. It was part of my next project, it got out of hand. A statement of sorts, like artists do. We push boundaries, I pushed beyond life this time. I made a man goop, dead with the sounds of my machine. You can take life away with sound, next time I might create it. Their eyes shifted again.
Sparkling black eyes like the water drop disruptor.
I understand it better now, life. I see it more clearly. I can see the depths, who they were, who we are. It’s eating us from inside, making our joints creak, making our stomachs heavy, our throats thick with mucus. It’s eating us, replacing us, making itself out of us. I welcome them, they will live.
Sure, man. Torber got up, went out into the hallway. Just process him and make him ready for transfer to the institution. He’s lost it, but he confessed. It’s all recorded.
I’ll sort out the paperwork.
— morten ht is a writer from the oil coast of Norway. He writes and makes music and is one half of art/music project Wetware Solutions. In his day job he teaches language and literature.