The Blackwater Files: The man who couldn't die
A short story involving nanobots, immortality and soviet Russia
The Second Soviet movement had been going strong for thirty years. It had started with Vladimir. It would end with Vladimir. That was, of course, assuming Vladimir Konstantin would, eventually, pass away. Most of Russia didn’t believe so. Not when sixteen children died a month to keep him up and running the country.
Vlad the mortal. That was what the people called him, to spite him - when he wasn’t watching. Nikola watched as Vladimir stood up from his chair, his feet tapping the floor as he walked through the gilt doorways until he was in The Room. The dictator flicked a switch. Punched a button. ‘What is it this week, Mr Nikola?’
‘Two suicides, a devout, and an autistic.” replied Nikola. “Don’t worry, we will, of course, be only converting brain cells from the first three.”
Vladimir nodded his head. Nikola twisted the final knob, and his dictator let out a terrible scream as the nanobots consumed him. Vladimir wouldn’t be able to form even a singular thought as agony swept through his rapidly dissolving nerve cells. The pain would be like a tsunami, leaving no rubble - or in this case, flesh - in its wake. Then, at the end, there would be no pain at all.
Nikola watched as his overlord’s body was carried away as beautiful dust, leaving only a floating brain carried by the nanobots. He would have thought to shut down all the tiny machines then and there, if his brain chip had allowed him to have such a thought.
It was genius, really, how those chips had been utilised by his ruler. Vlad the mortal had distributed them all over the world, with the only catch being that it was impossible for anyone, once they had a chip, to oppose Russia or attempt to injure the countries glorious benefactor. Most people got them anyway; the only thing anyone old enough to ‘vote’ cared about was integrity nowadays- regardless of whether the integral person was evil or not.
The four, dead bodies on the ground dissolved, and his overlord began to reform.
They sat in a golden Bugatti, the seats crocodile leather imported from Australia. Nikola did not look like he enjoyed the luxury; his back was as straight as if he had replaced his spine with a long metal ruler. Vladimir certainly enjoyed it. He would have had an expensive cigar clamped between his teeth if they weren’t likely to drastically decrease his life expectancy.
“Where are we going, glorious ruler?” asked Nikola.
Vladimir Konstantin rolled eyes at the idiocy of his servant. “Where do you think, servant? Surely someone of your genius could figure it out.”
“I’m afraid you don’t pay me enough, overlord.”
Vlad bellowed with laughter. “Maybe you don’t deserve a pay rise, Nikola. Guess, or I will snap your puny neck like a twig.”
Fear showed in Nikola’s eyes. He knew to take Vladimir seriously, even when he seemed like he was joking.
“Are you getting the Elysium treatment, your glorious?” Nikola guessed. The company had received much interest from Vladimir of late.
“Correct, Nikola. You exceeded my expectations.”
“I expect I do that every day, your glorious.”
Vladimir grinned like a Cheshire Cat- or perhaps a shark. Probably somewhere in-between. It was always such with Russia’s undead dictator.
“Certainly, he shall come with me. Nikola is my most trusted servant. He would never betray me.” If only because of the brain chip implanted in his skull, Vladimir thought.
Nikola did not seem very enthusiastic about this proclamation from his master. He was suffering from both jet-lag and a hangover. Although his servant tried to keep it hidden, Vladimir knew of Nikola’s secretive alcoholism. He had consumed at least two six packs of beer all by himself on the plane trip. Vladimir didn’t approve of liquor; it was yet another thing to lower the numbers of his obsession, life expectancy.
“I’m so sorry, sir, but I’m afraid he cannot come in. You cannot come in either. You do not fit the requirements of a patient.” Who was this person to argue with the glorious ruler of all of Russia? Vladimir vaguely recalled her name as Eleanor.
“I have paid to be here. I’m very aware that he cannot come with us. But you will let me in, or I will bomb your country.” A hollow threat, of course, but it wasn’t like she recognised him.
“What…” she looked confused; perhaps she didn’t quite know what a ‘bomb’ was; but she passed for him as he opened the door and strode into the doctors room.
The conversation between Vladimir and the doctor passed quickly. He did not fit the requirements of a patient, but he was a very important billionaire dictator who had paid well to test the Elysium™ product. If the test went well, he would return in a few decades to purchase immortality. He would pay extremely well. The Undertow might shock him. Blah, blah, blah.
The needle was injected, Vladimir cried out. Everything dissolved into blackness.
The elevator was gold.
Vladimir had not expected that. He had been dictator for thirty years, but he always thought of his childhood the most- the time when he was lived outside a soup kitchen, and didn’t check his life expectancy as part of a morning routine, and didn’t have the means to own gold.
He didn’t recognise the music coming out of the speakers. Another surprise. He searched his memory for the tune. It was an unearthly, echoing chorus of voices, with almost no recognisable tune. Was it one of the songs the old women used to sing as they made soup? Perhaps his mother had sung it to him when he was born. That would explain why his conscious mind had forgotten it.
Whatever it was, it sounded old. The singers sang in Russian. Vladimir couldn’t for the life of him recognise it.
The elevator continued going down, down, down. Vladimir began to feel cold dread clawing at his insides. The unrecognised song came to an end, and repeated. It was on a loop.
He prepared himself for the lobby.
The elevators golden doors slid open without a sound. He had expected new music, but the elevator music kept playing in the new room- the lobby. He was not expecting the room. The wall ahead of him was was covered in clocks of all sizes, and a tick, tock pervaded the very air, clashing horribly with the hundred voices of the elevator music. The whole lobby gave the air of a dystopian rabbit hole to wonderland. Or maybe that was just a silly dream.
Every clock showed ten o’clock, AM. That was correct, in any case. He turned to the right wall. It was scrawled over with a thousand colours of graffiti, looking like the old berlin wall, stony, yet full of painted emotion. One slogan caught his eye.
Ты всего лишь смертный. You are but a mortal. Or, you are just a mortal. Either way, it meant the same thing.
He turned back to the clocks. The surface opposite him displayed Eleven o’clock, AM. Had that been the time? He glanced toward the left wall, which revealed that the so-called wall in fact had more doors than plaster.
Twelve o’clock, AM.
Now that couldn’t be right, Vladimir thought. Then he remembered this was his mind. Of course it was possible.
He blinked. One o’clock, PM.
Now he became aware of a strange feeling in his stomach. Was it… Fear?
He blinked again. Two o’clock, PM.
Now the strange feeling was consuming him. In the reflection of the hundred clocks, he saw his face was white.
Three o’clock, PM.
He hadn’t blinked.
Four o’clock, PM.
He was frozen to the floor now, a stone statue.
Five o’clock.
Six o’clock.
Seven.
Eight.
9
The hands of the hundred clocks were spinning, faster and faster. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tic, toc, tic, tic, tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-
Whirrrrrrr
Vladimir ran.
A door on the left wall swung open. Hundreds and hundreds of children filled the room. Sitting on tables. Lying on the floor, their heads turned to face each other. One was at a piano, another hanging from a chandelier.
The children were all dead. He recognised them all. They were the ones he had slaughtered. He had pilfered their cells from their bodies. They were suicides, the youths who had wanted to die. They were the children who had brains that didn’t work the same as everyone else’s. They were the ones who had been born with their bodies all wrong. They were the devout ones, the children willing to die for their country.
Vladimir recognised the elevator song. It was the Russian national anthem.
He shut the doors. He would never be able to save the children he had ordered killed. Did he need to live so much that others needed to die?
The clocks were still whirring. So he ran to another door. Shoved it open.
The room was almost completely empty. Inside were only three things.
There was a table. A scrap of wallpaper, depicting, for some reason, bunny rabbits.
The third thing was a knife. It was more horrible than the bodies in the previous room. But maybe, at the same time, it was wonderland.
He grabbed the knife. Held it to his chest.
The voices of the many were in his ears. The voices of Russia. They were not clanging and begging now. They were noble and proud.
Vladimir dropped the knife. Then, he woke up.
Love the ticking clock action sequence. And the wonderlandian musings. I am sure its nothing too
I had no idea where this was going, but I kept reading and holy cow. Well done! Fascinated by your take on the state of world affairs c.2050! I also enjoyed that, in this case, it appears Elysium has brought about some good in the world.