Chapter Forty-Five - Uncanny

“The Uncanny Valley is a primitive warning system. It tells you that something is wrong, incorrect, or fake.

It often triggers on mannequins and dolls and even some forms of art. Interestingly, it is something that you can grow accustomed to. Most people aren’t going to be fearful of a person with facial augmentations, for example.

The antithesis almost always triggers an uncanny-valley response in people who see them in the flesh for the first time.

We don’t know why.”

--Soma Psychologica, 2049

***

I looked at Jennifer who stood rather awkwardly next to a mop and bucket and next to a floor-cleaning robot-charging station. She was bent to the side a little to avoid brushing her head against the shelves of cleaning products at about forehead height. “Comfy?” I asked.

“I have been in more constricting positions before,” the sex bot confirmed.

That was good enough for me. “Alright. You, uh, stay in here and stay quiet. I’m sure the smell of cleaning stuff will keep the aliens at bay,” I said with a gesture to the floor behind me. It was covered in about thirty alien’s worth of shredded flesh and several dozen litres of blood.

I couldn’t get a good whiff of the air--probably for the best--with my mask on, but I imagined it was quite pungent. Fortunately, Jennifer didn’t have olfactory glands. Or I hoped for her sake that she didn’t.

“Right... stay safe,” I said before clicking the door shut and turning around.

Manic had a foot atop a model three’s head and was rolling it from side to side as if inspecting it. “Never really got a good look at these guys,” she said as I walked over.

“Really?” I asked.

“I mean, I’ve seen them on TV and in warnings and the like, but seeing one in person’s different. Like listening to a recording and being at the show, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Doesn’t help that most of the signs for these guys are cartoony.”

The model three was an ugly bastard, even missing a couple of limbs and flopped onto the ground like a sack of potatoes, it still managed to be kind of scary in a sort of primal... wrong way. There was something about a lot of the antithesis that didn’t click with my monkey brain.

I think it might have been some sort of uncanny-valley effect. It had flesh that looked clearly plant-like, but not, and the proportions were just entirely wrong. Things from Earth had... maybe not a common blueprint, but most animals followed a more or less similar look when it came to their proportions, and the antithesis didn’t. The head was too flat, the mouth with its three hinges was off, and... yeah, it wasn’t right.

“We’ve got to rig the place to blow,” I said. “I’d like to get that done with, then we can head back to the city. It’s getting to be late, and I want to be back before it starts getting dark.”

“Scared of the dark?”

“Huh? No? I’m a stealth specialist, and I’m cat-themed, do you think I’d be afraid of the dark? Nah, just don’t want to be caught out in the open at night. Plus, when shit goes wrong, in my experience, it always tends to go wrong in the worst way around morning, noon, and just as the sun’s setting.”

“Mm,” Manic said. She cracked her neck left and right, then stood a little straighter. “Let’s get going then.”

I lead the way again. We’d cleared out the aliens coming from the basement until all that was left of them were these bodies splattered across the floor, but I imagined there would be more once we got down.

The basement access was just another stairwell past a smashed door marked ‘Employees Only.’ The antithesis hadn’t destroyed the entire floor to get down this time, which was nice. It meant we got to use stairs.

Less fun was the model four that came hurtling down from above, tentacles already lashing out towards me.

I threw myself back and onto the floor, my laser pointer coming up at the same time even as I squeezed the trigger.

The alien fell onto a barrage of lead that tore apart its tentacles and bit into its main body. Puffs of gas escaped it, but that didn’t stop its fall.

Then Manic fired and the alien’s entire body was rammed across the stairwell and into the far wall where it crashed with a wallop.

I stared at the ceiling some more, checked the corners for more ambushers, then groaned and rolled onto my front to stand. “Thanks,” I said.

“Where the hell did that come from?” Manic asked.

“Ceiling. Forgot to check my corners,” I admitted. “They’re quiet when they wanna be. Hey, you’re wearing a gas mask, right?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Good. Those ones give off this gas that’ll make you paranoid. Freaky fucks,” I said. I checked my gun, noting that I’d chewed through the last of my ammo. “Myalis, reload.”

While my gun reloaded, I moved in a little slower, head on a swivel as I checked every shadow for another ambusher. Unlike the last building I’d hit, where the aliens never noticed me, this time we’d gone in loud. They knew we were coming.

“Fucking tentacles,” Manic said.

“Nah,” I replied. “I don’t think they’d actually go all hentai on you. I mean, they might, but it’s not sexual.”

“Oh, great, that’ll make it feel so much better,” Manic said.

I snorted. “Just shoot them first,” I advised.

“I think they’re the model I like the least, and that’s saying something. The bad-touch model.”

I had to agree, but more because they were a little too close to my own fighting style than because of the tentacles. I spotted another one of them hanging off the ceiling halfway down the flight of stairs and around two corners. “Cute,” I said as I took my time to aim and then triple-tapped it in the chest.

It crashed to the ground, then I put another pair of rounds into its side just to be safe. I stepped over the corpse and continued on down the stairs until they ended at a doorway that was surprisingly still in place.

There was a window at head-height, and the door was left ajar. From the looks of it, something had kicked it in and in the battle between the door and its frame, the door won. I leaned against the wall on the far side of the door and peeked through while activating all the low-light gizmos on my helmet.

The basement had the aforementioned pool in it down the end of a wide corridor and behind a pair of broken glass doors. There were changing rooms to the sides, and the corridor forked off to the right. I couldn’t see what was down that way from my angle.

“A god-damn pool,” I muttered. “We should get a pool.”

You have one.

“The inflatable kiddie pool doesn’t count,” I said.

I wanted a proper pool, like rich people had. Maybe hanging off the side of our home, with one of those glass bottoms and a big deck? I didn’t like swimming... or know how to swim well, but I did love the idea of Lucy in swimsuits.

“Is it clear?” Manic asked.

I jumped, pushed aside my daydreams, then glanced down the passage again. There were stains on the ground and several doors were broken in, but no big signs of alien life. “Yeah,” I said as I opened the door slowly. I glanced up, then checked the corners as best I could. “We’re clear.

“Then where the hell did all the aliens come from?” Manic asked.

The corridors were pretty wide, so it wouldn’t be too hard for any of the bigger ones to get past, I figured. Judging from the marks left behind, it looked like they mostly went towards the pool.

“That way, at a guess,” I said as I pointed forwards. “Give me a sec, I’m gonna start planting bombs right now.”

I ordered up a number of good old explosives, and also a few of those acid-mist sprayers. It was worth the cost, I figured, to melt everything behind us. It would make it that much less likely that the antithesis would survive and regrow down here.

We checked down the long corridor to the right, but it seemed to lead off towards more community rooms. They had a mini-theater, and a VR-sports room. Fancy, unnecessary shit that I bet rarely got used.

Manic and I checked every room in the corridor leading up to the pool, and we found a few model fours waiting around for us in there.

For all their size and stealthiness, they weren’t much of a threat when we were expecting them.

Then, at last, we reached the pool.

It had been drained of water. Not by a hole or anything, but by the massive bulbous hive growing out of the far end of it, with long tendrils reaching into the water and greedily sucking it up to feed the sacs hanging off the rest of the hive.

“Well, there it is,” I said.

***