Kzine Issue 2 Read online

  KZINE MAGAZINE

  Issue 2

  edited by Graeme Hurry

  Kzine Issue 2 © February 2012 by Kimota Publishing

  cover © Dave Windett, 2012

  copyright of individual stories is retained by the authors

  The Other Brain © Robert Neilson, 2012

  Sandcastles In The Sun © Keith Laufenberg, 2012

  An Unwilling Avatar © Billy Wong, 2012

  Remote Control © Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, 2012

  Lizards © Walter Campbell, 2012

  Time Out © Richard Pannbacker, 2012

  The Stench © WP Johnson, 2012

  The Squeeze Man © Caroline Dunford, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written pemission of the copyright holder. For editorial content this is Graeme Hurry, for stories it is the author and for artwork it is the artist.

  EDITORIAL

  by Graeme Hurry

  This second issue of Kzine contains an unhealthy mixture of genres including Fantasy, Crime, SF and Horror. This time I had a long internal conflict as to whether to force all stories into the same format and national spelling regime or allow each story to be expressed as the author intended. I have decided on the latter. The mixture of American and English spellings I feel is a character of the story voice. I can only apologise if you are not of the same opinion.

  The stories are limited to some quite wide genres; Fantasy, Horror, Crime and Science Fiction. Hopefully this mix of stories and even the hybridisation between the genres within stories resonates with the readership.

  THE OTHER BRAIN

  by Robert Neilson

  The body lay unmoving in the centre of the priceless Persian rug. Even before she switched on the light Dr Susan Calzone knew that her husband was dead; snuffed out like a blind match seller on a freeway. The murdering bastards. Why did they have to mutilate his body so thoroughly? Why now? Why here? That rug was irreplaceable.

  But rugs and stains were the least of her problems. She cursed the day she’d married Tony. Her friends had all advised her against it. Anyone with half a brain, positronic or otherwise, could have forseen disaster. What had an eminent roboticist and a mob-backed Hollywood producer got in common? It had been a true attraction of opposites.

  Tony had been fascinated by her intellect and desired her as a prestigious object to be hung on his arm, to be shown off to his associates like expensive jewellry. Tony De Milo’s wife had brains which, by association, meant that Tony must have also, else why would she have married him?

  Susan had fallen for his Mediterranean looks, impossibly perfect teeth and an expanse of chest hair that could have hidden a division of Gurkhas. Why did women allow hormones to have a say in such an important decision? And why had she allowed her hormones to affect her judgement when he asked her to invest her money in his current movie project?

  No, that was being unfair to herself. It had been an extremely good business proposition, and still could be. If Tony were alive. Without him, the project, and every cent she had in the world, was history. With that in mind, her next move was obvious. Get rid of the body. Only the murderers knew he was dead and they weren’t going to say anything.

  Disposing of the remains of her dead husband was simple, compared to her next task. There were certain public appearances that Tony just had to make. She considered disguising herself to look like him. Tony had been one of the finest make-up artists in Hollywood before he moved up into management and it had given him infinite pleasure to teach her the tricks of the trade. Susan had picked it up so quickly and so well that in the end Tony had huffily claimed she could teach him. To her husband, intellect was fine in its place but capability in a woman was like tits on a bull.

  Disguising her voice to sound like his could be achieved with electronic help which merely left the eight inch disparity in their heights. And high heels just wasn’t going to be convincing. This would take considerably more thought and she did her best thinking in bed. She mixed herself a Martini and reached for her little black book.

  The answer when it came to her was so simple that she almost dismissed it. Why use Tony’s specialty to recreate him, why not her own? She would build a robot double. Sure, she would be working at the very cutting edge of robotics, but if she couldn’t do it, who the hell could? Her own lab in the basement was stocked with most of what she would need in terms of technology, though there were one or two items that American Robots Inc could have helped with. She wished that when she had resigned from the company she had not been so graphic in her description of the surgical procedures her former boss should employ in order to insert a positronic brain where the sun don’t shine. That was a bridge that had been burned in style.

  Never a woman to worry over circumstances she no longer controlled, Dr Susan Calzone announced that her husband, Tony De Milo, had been called away to Europe on business and set to work building his replacement. She reckoned it would be a couple of months before anyone smelled a rat and instituted an investigation into his whereabouts; two months in which she would have to transform one of the low-grade domestic robots which ran the house into… Into what? She hardly dared speak the word, even though no-one could possibly hear. It had taken the public years to accept humanoid robots even in their current obviously metallic form. What would happen if her android were to be unmasked? Would there be a future for robotics at all?

  The justification for her risk was the current state of the industry. In the three years she had been inactive there had not been a single step forward made, not so much as the beginnings of a shuffle. The survival of robotics depended on the survival of Susan Calzone and if Tony’s deal fell through not only would she be broke but she would also inherit the debts he had accrued in getting the project started in the first place. Nobody defaulted on the people who had financed her husband and lived.

  Altering a domestic robot so that it resembled her husband was the easy part of her task and achieved within a fortnight. That left her six weeks to reprogram its delicate positronic brain so that it thought and acted like him also. For that she was going to need help. Trustworthy help. Not that there was anything anyone could teach her about the workings of the positronic brain. No, what she needed was advice on the workings of Hollywood. She had known after a week of marriage to Tony that if she lived to be a hundred she would still never understand movie people. When Tony spoke to them it was like he was using a foreign language. But who could she trust? Tony was the only Hollywood person she really knew, apart from Bill and Ted and Constantine, but ex-lovers could be such a pain. They’d been fine as dalliance but now that Tony was gone they might actually expect some sort of commitment from her.

  When it came to cases there was really only one choice: Tony’s secretary, Millie Friedmont. He’d been banging her for years and Millie would probably miss the stupid bastard more than she herself would. And considering Millie’s unswerving devotion to her boss she probably deserved to know the truth anyway.

  Millie looked like the generic Hollywood bubble-headed bimbo: legs that went on for ever, oceans of blonde hair, teeth that could make you snow-blind and breasts that had cost twenty-five thousand dollars in surgery. Each. But beneath her unfortunate appearance lurked a mind as sharp as a pimp’s suit. And it held more of what Tony knew than Tony’s ever had.

  When Susan gave her the low-down, Millie was immediately aware of the k
nock-on effect her boss’s death would have on the movie they had in pre-production. The star, whose contract had more escape clauses than an arms limitation treaty, would withdraw. Which meant the director was out. Which meant the backers would take a powder. Which meant the up-front capitalization was lost. Which meant some very nasty people would come looking for Tony’s heirs to make restitution for his debt to them. And when they came looking, innocent bystander status would mean nothing. If you worked for Tony, you had a piece of their money. They would accept a piece of you in return. Nothing personal, it just wouldn’t do for people to get the idea they were a soft touch. As a matter of self-preservation Millie knew she had only two choices: get out of Hollywood, preferably out of the country, or help Susan. And she liked Hollywood. What the hell, she figured, if things didn’t work out she could always sell out the Calzone bitch to the mob.

  So Susan and Millie put their heads together and molded the robot lookalike’s positronic pathways into a facsimilie of Tony’s thought processes. It wasn’t perfect, the laws of robotics would not permit that, but it was a damn fine effort, Susan thought.

  “Final test,” Millie said, as they stood in the basement lab admiring the new Tony.

  Susan didn’t even hear; she was too caught up in watching the robot strut about the room in exactly the jumpy, impatient manner Tony had used whenever she brought him down here. That wasn’t something she had specifically programmed into him, which delighted her. It was, she considered, proof positive that the machine could act independently of them with real hope of success.

  Millie took the robot Tony by the hand and led him towards the stairs.

  “Where are you taking him?” Susan asked.

  “I’m the Hollywood expert, right?” Millie said.

  “Right.”

  “If he’s gonna fool anyone there’s a few specialized tests that’ll have to be done. And for that we’ll need privacy.”

  Susan shrugged. She still had work to do and if Tony Mark II was anything like the original she’d be better off with him out of the way. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll be here if you need me.”

  Millie grinned. “I think we’ll be okay on our own.”

  The tests Millie planned self-aborted almost before they’d begun. What was Susan Calzone trying to pull. The first time he went out of the house he would be unmasked as a fake. And a crappy fake at that.

  She stormed into the basement lab, shoving her hair back from her face. “What kind of jerks do you think you’re dealing with?” she fumed.

  Susan looked up from her work, confused. “I’m sorry?”

  “He’s not finished.”

  “Not finished? How?”

  “There’s parts missing,” Millie said.

  Susan was dumbfounded. Tony Mark II was her most perfect creation, the nearest thing to human a robot could be. “Parts?” she echoed emptily.

  “Parts,” Millie yelled, her face flushed with anger. “Parts. Part.” A pause. “He’s got no dick.”

  “But robots don’t have…” she pronounced the word with distaste, “… dicks.”

  “This one better. You know Tony. Everyone knows Tony. If he’s not banging every starlet on the lot and half the secretaries… ”

  The truth of Millie’s statement was unavoidable. Susan had ignored her husband’s reputation while he was alive in order to preserve their marriage but there was no reason to continue now.

  “You’d better get building,” Millie said. “Tony can’t stay incognito much longer.”

  Susan gave the problem some thought. Hydraulically operated, that should present no problems. It would need to be connected to the positronic brain. Easy enough. Programming the sex drive might have been a problem in a different subject, but Tony’s motto had been ’any port in a storm’. And the storm was always blowing.

  A week saw Tony II’s new apparatus designed, built and fitted. Millie was suitably impressed when he proudly displayed it to her.

  She whistled, admiring the workmanship. “A perfect match,” she said to Susan. “You got a photographic memory, or what?”

  Susun ignored the remark. “Is he ready for his public now?”

  A broad smile animated Millie’s bimbo features. “He’ll have to be road tested first.”

  Susan’s grin topped it. “That’s already taken care of. And if I might say, he passed with flying colours.”

  Millie arranged power breakfasts, business lunches and endless meetings over cocktails and dinner for the new Tony. He pressed the right flesh, kissed the correct cheeks (and asses) and generally made a good impression on everyone he dealt with. But Millie was still unhappy with his performance.

  “It’s just not Tony,” she told Susan. “Not completely. Oh, he’s good enough to fool them for a while but if anybody has repeated meetings with him, frankly they’re going to notice.”

  “So what is it, Millie?” Susan said. “What have we done wrong?”

  “I can’t put my finger on it. He’s just different. More focused or channeled or something. Less easily distracted.”

  “Girls?” Susan asked.

  “No, that’s not it. When he sees a good looking chick, he goes after her and beds her.”

  “So he’s one hundred percent in that area?”

  Millie shook her head. “Not a hundred, no. I can’t identify exactly what’s different but it’s enough to give us away.”

  “But it could be having an effect on his performance. If the Mark II’s deviation from the Tony norm is that small, it could be that the… the dick’s not operating quite properly.”

  “So what do we do?” Millie said.

  “I’ll have to accompany you to your next few meetings and observe him in operation in the field.”

  Millie checked her wristwatch. “No time like the present. We’ve got Smallberg and a bunch of Rambling executives in half an hour.”

  Susan’s cover was that she was a journalist doing a piece on Tony. She sat off to one side of the boardroom where Tony’s presentation to Rambling was made, watching his every move. Afterwards Smallberg and his crew were taken to dinner at Tony’s favourite Italian restaurant and Susan sat alone, observing her creation. At the end of the night, Tony II winked at her, placed a proprietorial arm around the shoulders of a Smallberg starlet and left for points unknown.

  But Susan had the data she needed. It was fortunate she was a trained psychologist, otherwise it could easily have slipped her notice. She retreated to her laboratory to make preparation for Tony II’s final addition. Millie arrived a half hour behind her.

  “Well?” her ally demanded. “I can tell by the activity in here that you got the answer tonight.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever closely observed men in general or Tony in particular and how they react to women in social situations.”

  “Cut the crap, Susan, and get to the point,” Millie demanded.

  “You watch a man at a party or whatever and when he sees a pretty girl, what happens?” Susan asked.

  “His eyes follow her,” Millie answered.

  “Nothing more?”

  “He mentally undresses her?” Millie speculated.

  “He wonders what it would be like to go to bed with her.”

  “Yeah,” Millie agreed. “And… ?”

  Susan’s cheeks reddened. “And ping,” she said. “His dick reacts.”

  “So?”

  “So Tony’s doesn’t.”

  “But it works. I’ve… I’ve seen it.”

  “Sure it works,” Susan said. “But only when Tony wants it to.”

  The look on Millie’s face said Eureka! “No mind of it’s own.”

  “Exactly. So I’m building a separate positronic brain for Tony Mark II’s dick.”

  “Brilliant,” Millie said in honest admiration. “True genius.”

  The alterations to the robot were quickly made and immediately it began to act exactly like Tony. More Tony than Tony himself, Millie remarked. The deal came together, possibly bette
r than it would have under the control of the original Tony, and the mob loan was paid off. Everyone was saved. Everyone was happy.

  Then Tony announced he was leaving. Hollywood was too small for him. And so were Susan and Millie. He was going to a town more suited to his needs and a business that would more appreciate his talents.

  “Goodbye girls,” he said. “It’s been great. But my country needs me. Washington here I come. And by the way, Susan, the divorce papers are with my lawyer. You’ll have them by the end of the day.”

  Dr Susan Calzone, ace roboticist and Hollywood wife, was speechless. Robots never acted in such cavalier fashion. But she knew that there was no-one to blame but herself. She had taken her most perfect creation, the most wonderful artefact ever shaped by human hand, and turned it into a monster.

  One thing to be grateful for, she thought, was that Mark II was so perfectly Tony and therefore had absolutely no aptitude toward engineering or its allied disciplines. Because if he ever learned how to disconnect that second brain not even the presidency would be beyond his grasp. Susan shuddred at the thought of Tony with his finger on the nuclear button.

  SANDCASTLES IN THE SUN

  by Keith G. Laufenberg

  - 1 -

  Know uh I’m sayin’

  Slang is the vengeance of the anonymous masses for the linguistic thralldom imposed on them by the educated classes.—Mario Pei (1901-1978). Linguist Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.—Carl Sandberg (1878-1967). In Minstrel of America: Carl Sandberg,” New York Times, 13 February 1959

  Anthony ‘Ant’ Carpone is my assistant—well, loosely speaking—he’s, basically, the only helper I got. My name is Julius “J.D.” Dickens and I’m a private detective—yeah—but usually I just do small jobs, I mean—by that—safe jobs, see, small—in my business—translates into safe and that’s usually what I’m called on to do. You know, things like tracking down a teenage runaway, who ends up—90% of the time—at her boyfriend’s house, the usual husband or wife accusing the other of infidelity; it’s easy—believe me—and safe, you just snap pictures and then turn them over to the accusing party or the accusing party’s lawyer. Then there’s things like snapping pictures of supposedly injured workers collecting worker’s compensation benefits, employed people collecting unemployment benefits, people cashing in on phony insurance claims—from regular workings stiffs to doctors—and then there’s the insurance companies themselves denying claims they know are legitimate—along with so much other B.S. small things—ad infinitum—and, look, before you condemn me for doing this kind of work just let me say that—in defense of myself—I know and readily admit that I’m no better than any of those that I’m investigating—I mean—after all—I’m just a human being—just like them. The thing is, see, I was a cop for almost two decades, man. Yeah and I should have got at least some kind of pension but I don’t—yeah—the captain, he made sure of that. See, me and the captain didn’t—shall I say—exactly see eye-to-eye, in point of fact, and that’s the reason I’m not sitting on a beach-towel in some small Caribbean town right now—no—not that we didn’t see eye-to-eye, but that the captain’s eyes—well—they were both black and blue the next day—the next day after me and him got into it and it came to blows—a fistfight—and the captain, well he just wasn’t up to it and so I lost my pension because I was better at throwing hands than kissing ass—yeah—the story of my life, so to speak. So, you can see why I’m still sneaking around snapping pictures of people doing things that I would probably be doing myself, if I was in their shoes, which—who knows—may even be the case someday; because, let’s face it, it’s a tough life—all around—for all of us.