Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [43]
Everything looked backlit and strange, and I felt as if someone else was running me. In a way, I hoped they were. At one point I thought I saw someone in the distance behind me, but nothing came of it. Probably one of the local goons out walking his haircut.
After a mile or so I saw the gates to Vinaldi’s property. Two heavies stood in front of them. I slowed my pace. The heavies were standard issue; slick and dark-skinned, sunglassed for looks, black and sparkling hair. They were shorter than me, but on the other hand they both had machine pistols. The mob had never really gone for laser weapons—it didn’t play with their ideas of tradition. They liked to see the clap of real gunshots, to see the shredding flesh. It was the one thing I agreed with them on. My own gun is very simple. It’s made of metal and it fires bullets. Guns are one of the many things which haven’t changed as much as everyone thought they would. Sure, there was a period when you saw laser pistols on the streets. Problem was, it was a little too easy to catch a reflection in the heat of the moment and end up slicing your own head off. Also, they were just a bit plasticky. When you go marching into some bad situation you want to be racking a shell into a pump-action shotgun. It feels right. It feels tough. It scares the shit out of the other guy. Nervously fingering a little switch wasn’t visceral enough and neither was the sound the lasers made. You don’t want something that goes tzzz or schvip. You want something which goes CRACK! or BANG! Trust me; I know what I’m talking about.
The manufacturers tried to get round the problem by putting little speakers in the laser which played a sampled bang when you pulled the trigger, but it always sounded a bit tinny. And the ones that played a snatch of Chopin’s Death March were just fucking silly.
Then there was a phase of guns which had moral qualms. Originally, they came out of the home defense market. The guns had a built-in database of legal precedent, monitored any given situation closely, and wouldn’t let you fire unless they were sure you had a good cause for a self-defense plea. Most of these guns had other settings too, like “Justifiable Homicide,” “Manslaughter,” “Murder Two,” and ultimately “Murder One.” I kept mine on “Murder One” the whole time. So did everyone else. The whole thing was completely pointless. In the end I threw mine away.
So many objects and machines these days are stuffed full of intellect—and most of the time it’s just turned off. We’re surrounded by unused intelligence, and for once it’s not our own. For every fridge which tells you what’s fresh and what’s not, there’ll be fifty which have been told to just shut the fuck up. It’s like selling people the American Dream and then telling them they can’t afford it. We created things which are clever and then told them to be stupid instead, because we realized we didn’t need clever toasters, or vehicles that insisted on driving you the quickest route when you had all afternoon to kill and nothing to do once you got there. We didn’t like it. It was like having an older sister around the whole time. And so the machines just sit there, muttering darkly to themselves like smart kids who’ve been put in the dumb class. One of these days they’re going to rise up, and I don’t want to be holding one when they do.
“Gun,” the first heavy said, with an upward nod. I made a mental note to have a word with the guard at the elevator on the way out, and handed it over. “Now—what you want?”
“I want to speak with Vinaldi,” I said.
“And who are you?”
“Jack Randall.” Not a flicker from