++

This is the last chapter of this serial.

Told you it would be short.

Going through the chapters again, I feel that it’s probably one of the more accessible things I’ve done; quite a fast pace, picaresque in the Candide style, confused MC confronted with various sides of left wing theory that doesn’t go too deep into the weeds.

Did the satire work?

I don’t know. I originally wrote this in 2015, so the Hong Kong stuff is obviously a little dated, and the essentialists I presented in the novel have now split into factions [from the US perspective], with some joining the Bernie Sanders wing cos AOC and the squad is there. Of course, the cynic in me thinks it’s cos they don’t believe the DSA left can win anymore, which makes it an easy pick [most of these people are PMC/privately educated, so their class interests cannot allow them to veer left in the European sense]. Still, the core of the original Id-pol theory is solid, if you factor in class/poverty level/ZIP code.

Tankies?

Feels like i’ve left them out a bit. Probably cos they’re already too ridiculous to satirise.

My representation of Tehran?

A complete façade. Hong Kong with an Iranian bank logo.

As with the other 2 serials I’ve done – Fritz Lang’s Destiny and Void Galaxia – I’ll give it another edit at some point and release it as a free PDF novel. Not sure when that’ll be, I still have to do Void Galaxia and that’s over 200,000 words.

Next up: a spiritual sequel to Planet Rasputin meshed with autofiction and a stab at an Anarcho-Communist version of the year 2273. Should be around the same length as Planet Rap, 170,000 words, maybe a bit longer if I get inspired. Give me a week or two to mentally recover and I’ll start putting it up.

But first, the final chapter of Sonic Death Bot…

++

The island was about one hundredth the size of Cuba and mostly deserted in the rural areas.

Noble flew over the landscape/ terrain, scanning for Cubans, and found nothing but rogue Japanese until, that is, she passed over a beach ostracised from the rest and picked up a different signal.

She landed and looked around for human sludge.

There were none visible, so she

sat on a dry part of the sand and waited

and waited

and waited

for three hours

until a shadow appeared on the tide and a familiar, non-Cuban voice asked if she had anything to say for herself.

Noble looked back once then stared down at an abandoned shell. ‘Not to you.’

‘That’s disappointing.’

‘Where’s Miriam?’

‘Who?’

‘The Cuban woman.’

‘Ah, that. She’s not coming.’

‘Dead?’

The wind sailed through, covering a cough that may have functioned as a yes, no, have a guess, fuck you.

‘Did you write the e-mail?’

‘Very lonely beach you’ve discovered here, Noblendo.’

‘I didn’t discover it.’

‘No one to talk to. Just sand. Fish. Empty shells. The toothless Japanese crab-fisher I passed five minutes ago. And, no, I did not murder him.’

Noble scooped up some dry sand, failed to clump it together, threw it at the sea anyway. ‘Did you write the e-mail? Yes or no?’

‘Obviously, yes.’

‘Why?’

There was a clicking noise and faint green light followed by a retelling of a famous Japanese legend:

Two swordsmen, the greatest of their time, duelling on this same beach.

‘Do you know how it went?’ asked Frank, leaning into Noble’s ear.

‘No.’

‘The better of the men won in two moves.’

Noble shrugged.

‘Two fucking moves.’

Noble was tired but shrugged again anyway.

‘God, you’re tedious,’ said the tailored Nazi, adding a long drawn-out sigh directly into Noble’s ear hole, possibly disingenuous.

‘I’m tired.’

‘Get up and fight, commie.’

‘Did that already.’

‘Show some guts, some-…what?

‘And won twice.’

‘Won? No, no, no, you’re very confused. I let you hit me the second time cos I had the bigger victory. And the first time…no score draw, you hoodwinked me, pulled a gun arm manoeuvre. This time it’s real, on my terms. No sucker punches on freezing cold balconies…’

‘I don’t care.’

‘…no balconies full stop. Care? Ha, funny robot.’

‘I have no desire to fight you.’

‘No one cares what you desire, commie. Get up.’

‘I’m going to help people instead. Read up on left wing theory half the day, help people the other half. Help them…’

‘Stop yapping, get up.’

‘…locally. On an ant-like level.’

‘Get up and attack me.’

‘No country framework to poison the well.’

‘Up!’

Noble scooped up more dry sand, this time throwing it backwards into the passing wind.

‘Up or I’ll beat you from above…’

‘No.’

‘…with my bare metal fists.’

Noble shrugged, as visible as she could make it, even though, inside somewhere, part of her did want to rip the Nazi’s head off and piss on its trachea. But that part was easily quelled. Mostly cos the enemy had the high ground and would probably do the same to her if she tried anything.

‘Fucking fraud coward commie bastard. Get up. Get the fuck up.’

‘I will not.’

The voice turned into a feral growl then dissipated, replaced by Japanese wind. Noble listened for the noise of the trigger being pulled. It didn’t happen. Instead, a syringe landed by her feet, half of it luminous green.

‘This is not a rivalry, you’re incapable of it. Too weak, like all commies. Finished at the first corner. You make me sick. Your weak fucking face, weak fucking body language. Look at the sea, weakling. Lose yourself in your little baby dreams. Then end yourself. And, no, that is not re-animation fluid.’

Noble let the voice fade out a second time, then followed Frank’s advice and looked out at the sea, at a slowly-progressing fishing boat. She waited for it to do something, to represent something, to relate to her situation or general life experience in some way, but it didn’t, it just kept on chugging along the horizon, casually slaughtering fish.

An hour later, Noble kicked away the syringe and turned around.

It would’ve been funny if the de-territorialised Nazi had waited an hour for her just to pivot, so he could look her in the eyes when he pulled the trigger, but he clearly didn’t see it that way as the beach was void.

The only thing that proved he was ever there, apart from the syringe being pulled away by the tide, was a paper note stuck on a nearby rock.

Noble picked it up, laughed at the primary school level hand-writing and read:

‘If you’re too cowardly for the syringe, I’ll find another way. A miserable way. Worse than an oubliette. Remember: I’m better than you, Commie bastard.’

‘Commie bitch,’ Noble corrected, dropping the note on the wet part of the sand and igniting her boots.

If she were lucky, she could get back in time to meet her other exchange, Fala, and learn more Urdu

something basic like

I’ve never seen a Pakistani sci-fi movie before, are they any good?

Or maybe another line, a hundred per cent more simplified:

Can I fuck you?

Noble closed her eyes, blocking out the grinning syringe [with eyes and lips], the backdrop laughter of Frank and Miriam and all the others.

No, too fast.

Kiss, not fuck.

Can I kiss you?

That was better.

Can I-

++

Chance wasn’t usually a kind thing to Noble, not even close as it usually meant right wing tat and bus shelter death struggles, but on this day, during the solo flight back to Hong Kong, she was lucky enough to come across the smoking wreck of the ban yeh[1] metal Nazi who’d lured her to an island in the middle of nowhere to do what? Antagonise her?

She swooped down toward the smoke signals pluming up into the sky and hid behind a very tiny castle on an impossibly picturesque mountain.

Was this Taiwan?

The Taiwanese Alps?

Half an hour from Japan, it must be.

Scanning ahead, Noble found the right wing wretch lying on his back, trying to crawl away from some blank-faced sheep.

There were a lot of them, the sheep, more than was normal, all meandering pointlessly and infantile like republican protesters.

Noble looked around and saw a sign promoting the castle:

‘Sheep Castle.’

Possible interpretations: it was either a castle made for sheep, made by sheep or infested with sheep, hopefully the second one as animals always seemed to get looked down upon. But if they were capable of constructing castles…

The left wing bot stepped out from the castle steps and walked ponderously towards the ideological mess.

I could help him, she thought. Show him I’m the better bot. The compassionate bot.

Or I could roll him off the mountain.

She examined some of the sheep for stray opinions, and only found one interested enough to stare at her.

He/she stared for a long time, a long, long time.

Sheep were supposed to be nervous creatures yet

this one clearly wasn’t

which meant

not an actual sheep?

She loaded up her gun arm and aimed at the rogue animal’s head.

It stared a little more, thoughts nebulous, then slowly went back to staring someplace else.

Noble kept her arm on half-power and edged forward.

Frank and his injured wreck of a body had managed half an inch of slope, but stopped crawling when he heard her intentional heavy breathing behind him.

‘You malfuncti0ned me…’

‘Nope.’

‘You w00l malfunti0n me in 10 sec0nd.’

‘You’re speech circuits are damaged.’

‘5 sec0nd.’

Noble glanced back at the potentially fake sheep, saw it chewing grass, re-focused on Frank and tried to think of a good reason not to be a moral person.

‘Cunt m0ve…’ said the novelty Nazi, trying to crawl forward again.

‘What did you call me?’

‘Most of us l0ve Mexicans food.’

‘Sorry?’

‘0ur culturr is better wit same colour f0ce, like Japon an swedi. We d0nt hay anyb0d ee, we jut d0nt want live inda…in the s0me plate wit black.’

Noble bent down and looked into the Frank’s eyes. His pupils were almost gone, and the iris seemed to be pulsing out a surprising shade of pale green instead of the usual pitch black.

‘Hell me…’ he spat out, jagged.

Noble jumped a little, but didn’t make any move to hell or help.

‘I spea kuh Span tish…’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I use tuh bee lib rall.’

‘What?’

‘F00t sp0t 7.’

Frank raised his right hand 5cm off the ground, stretched out blood-slashed fingers…then clearly thought better of it. Left wing aura was dangerous. Hate was the way out of this.

The decaying bot hated hard for another forty odd seconds then made a whirring noise and expired.

Noble thought about burial, but there was no shovel and the sheep wouldn’t have one, so she stood back up, ignited her amazing rocket boots and left the pitiful fucker to be picked up by whoever came to cut the grass.

Up in the sky, the view of the Taiwanese Alps was better than Lake Bled, unbearably cloudless.

She looked down again, seeing the body of Frank as a tiny dot surrounded by a hundred woolly dots.

‘At least you didn’t die in a ditch,’ she muttered, letting out some spit with the words. ‘Or a car park.’

A memory popped up in her head, an old one. A violent one. A Slovene one.

‘Ha.’ She paused, laughing to herself, imagining Miriam laughing too. ‘A fucking car park.’

---

[1] Morrissey in the video for Suedehead