The Opoponax Invasion

by John Brosnan

Genres: Humor & Satire; Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

It's 2248, and in a society so electronically wired-up that everyone is obliged to be imprinted with their own personal circuitry, it takes a pretty sharp operator to beat the system. Joster Rack is such an operator. He is a unique and special kind of thief: an electronic chameleon who can penetrate and manipulate any computer going. For years he has been just one step ahead of the all-powerful corporations whose empire stretches from Earth to the moons of Jupiter and back - but now they are finally closing in on him. For Joster has made a serious mistake: in pulling off his most audacious heist yet, he has revealed an Achilles heel. But even worse, he has unwittingly sparked off the most terrifying threat the human race has ever had to face - The Opoponax Invasion.

Release date: December 21, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 288

Sample

‘Have you ever been a woman before, Mr Pryce?’ the Body-Chop med-tech asked.

Pryce only half heard the question, being preoccupied with examining his new body in the recuperation room’s full-length holo ‘mirror’. ‘Pardon?’ he asked distractedly.

The med-tech repeated the question as she closed the lid of the cylindrical recuperation unit.

‘No,’ he told her. ‘Never. Why do you ask?’ He was pleased with the job the Body Chop had done on him. The woman he could see in the holo screen was slim, neat … compact. The same applied to her face. Neat features. She wasn’t unattractive but there was nothing about her that would draw undue attention. There was nothing flashy about her. He himself would not have looked twice at her if he’d encountered her on a street or a beach. He turned around and peered over his shoulder. Neat bottom as well.

The woman med-tech, her arms folded, watched him as he admired himself. ‘Because you will no doubt experience some emotional difficulties while you adjust to your new self. You’re not just wearing a woman’s body, Mr Pryce. You are a woman now. You have a woman’s brain and that brain is being saturated with a woman’s hormones. You will no longer think as a man.’

He laughed. ‘Bullshit. I’m still the same.’ He tapped his head. ‘In here I’m still me. Michael Vincent Pryce.’

‘You may think you are, but gradually you’ll come to realize you’re not. For example, you were a heterosexual male. How are you responding sexually to the body you can see before you?’

‘Well … I wouldn’t kick it out of bed,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Seriously, how do you feel?’

He stared at himself. ‘It’s a perfectly normal, youngish, desirable female body.’

‘But do you desire it?’

‘No,’ he finally admitted. ‘I don’t.’ Then he laughed again. ‘Guess it proves I’m not a lesbian.’ He grinned suggestively at the severe-faced tech, the unspoken question being, Are you? She didn’t smile back. ‘Sorry,’ he said and went over to the couch where new clothes had been laid out for him. He began to dress.

Then he said, frowning, ‘I’m not going to suffer from any messy female physical things, am I? You know, like periods and so on?’

‘Of course not. There is a sub-dermal synthetic hormone implant on your left forearm. It lasts for a year. Apart from preventing menstruation it also renders you infertile.’

‘That’s good to know, though I won’t be needing the second part of the service,’ he said with a laugh. ‘This is going to be one very celibate young woman. And please, though I appreciate your advice, my present female condition is only temporary. I won’t be a woman long enough for any problems to arise.’

‘So you believe,’ said the med-tech doubtfully, ‘but you should still be aware that you will definitely experience emotional confusion during the period of your adjustment to your new body …’ She paused, then said, ‘And in your … profession that might be dangerous for you.’

He finished pulling on a T-shirt and looked at her. ‘And what would my profession be?’

‘Your bionantech aroused a lot of interest here when we started working on you. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before.’

‘You tried to analyse it, of course?’ he asked as he pulled on a pair of tights covered in black and white checks.

‘Of course. And then we discovered it was changing its basic structure. Constantly, and apparently at random, on an atomic level, yet retaining its overall integrity as a system. So then we began to speculate about you. We think you’re “him”. Personally, I thought you were a myth.’

‘Who is “him”?’

‘You know. The Ghost. The Ghost in the Machine. Are you him?’

‘I’m Michael Vincent Pryce. Freelance irrigation systems expert.’ He put on a white synthetic satin blouse with balloon sleeves.

‘You were,’ she pointed out. ‘Now you’re Marion Van Hacker. A public relations officer for the Hydra Communications Corporation. We ran another identity check on you while you were in recuperation. There is no trace of Michael Vincent Pryce on any of the Corporation computer files that we have access to. He’s vanished, including his bank account.’

He smiled at her as he put on a skirt made of black synthetic leather. ‘But the important thing for you and your colleagues is that the money I transferred from his account is still real, correct?’

‘Yes. The twenty thousand yen is still in our account. I don’t see how it can be but it is. I guess it’s all down to your unique bionantech. How did you come by it?’

‘I did someone a big favour once. He gave it to me as a reward. And you’re right – it is unique. My benefactor never made a similar system before he died.’ He sat on the couch and pulled on a pair of knee-high black synthetic leather boots.

‘That’s all you’re going to tell me about it?’ the med-tech asked.

‘That’s all.’

‘So are you the Ghost?’

He went back to the holo screen to adjust his new clothes. ‘The Ghost? The so-called scourge of the Corporations? The mystery man rumoured to be number one on IRC’s “most wanted” list? No, I’m afraid he is probably just a myth, as you said he was. An invention of the media. They thought the public wanted a hero figure so they created one.’ He smiled. ‘A Robin Hood for the modern age. Though from all the stories I’ve heard about the Ghost he doesn’t go around spreading his ill-gotten gains to the underfunded. He keeps it all to himself.’ He went back to the couch and investigated the contents of a large shoulder-bag that lay upon it. He nodded with satisfaction. ‘Yes, everything that I asked for is here. Very good.’ He draped the bag over his shoulder and smiled at her. ‘I’m ready to leave now … unless you have any more womanly advice for me?’

‘No.’

‘Then let’s settle up the remainder of the fee …’

‘One last thing,’ said the tech. ‘As you predicted, the scanner detected a genetic irregularity in a cell in the cornea of your left eye. The computer’s prognosis was a major aberration in the cell’s DNA and suggested the cell was possibly in a pre-cancerous mode. But as per your strict instructions we left it untouched.’

‘I certainly hope so.’

‘I don’t suppose you will enlighten us as to what it is?’

‘No. And you should think yourself fortunate that I don’t. Now, I really must be going.’

In the reception suite the tech and other members of the Body-Chop staff, including the manageress, watched with interest as he put the tip of his right forefinger to the terminal receptor plate. He subvocalized his instruction for 20,000 yen from the account of Marion Van Hacker, account number 85719759347193576684-088846, to be transferred to the account of the Singapore branch of Body Chop Incorporated. There were murmurs of surprise and wonder from the staff when they saw the transaction confirmed on the terminal screen.

‘Amazing,’ said the manageress. ‘You are the Ghost, aren’t you?’

‘As I told your med-tech, the Ghost is a myth,’ he said and smiled.

‘Don’t worry. We promise one hundred per cent confidentiality.’

His smile vanished. He knew, better than anyone, that they could promise no such thing. He walked quickly to the door. ‘Goodbye all, and thank you for everything.’

As the door slid shut behind him he felt a twinge of guilt over what would surely happen to the Body-Chop staff but he quickly suppressed it. Practice, after all, makes perfect.

The Body Chop was located on the forty-seventh floor of a Singapore subscraper. He caught an elevator to the surface and then travelled by monotrain from Singapore across the Strait of Malacca to Sumatra, his destination being the Clarke Elevator Terminal at Lubuksikaping. From there he caught the Elevator up to the Indo-Transit Station in synchronous orbit some 35,000 miles above the terminal. There he booked into a hotel while he waited for the next shuttle flight to Habitat K6BTL, also known as ‘Purgatory’. That wouldn’t be until the following day.

Alone in his hotel room he spent some time inspecting his new self, this time in an ordinary mirror which, unlike the holo ‘mirror’, reversed his features, though he didn’t notice any real difference. His facial features were apparently perfectly symmetrical. As for his body, he had adjusted remarkably quickly to its changes: to the mild novelty of having breasts and the more drastic change of having a vagina instead of penis and testicles. He was surprised that the lack of the latter hadn’t been more traumatic for him. He was unsure of the psychological significance of this …

Travelling as a woman had been interesting; he’d noticed many subtle differences. First, he’d been aware of how men looked at him now. It wasn’t anything overt – he had, of course, taken deliberate care not to be physically striking as a woman – but it was definitely there. An automatic response from them, in fact, in the way they briefly appraised her sexually. And he’d slowly become aware of the subtle difference in the way he now regarded men. Naturally, he’d always been able to tell a good-looking man apart from a skeed but that had been on an objective level.

Now, interestingly enough, he was also beginning to appreciate, and evaluate, men on a sexual level. He’d even felt vaguely sexually attracted to three men he’d been travelling with on the Elevator. This development worried him a little as he hadn’t really anticipated it. He could see now what the Body-Chop tech meant in her warning to him. What if he lost control of his new set of female emotions at a crucial stage of his scheme … ?

But the enforced wait on the Station was his chief source of concern for the moment. He didn’t know just how far behind him his pursuers were. But everything would be all right once he reached Purgatory. It would give him a breathing-space while he put the finishing touches to the next step of his plan. And how appropriate that Purgatory would be his hiding-place, considering the identity of one of his most regular pursuers.

Philip Craner knew there was something very wrong with his life but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He sometimes believed that the fault was with him. He just couldn’t emotionally engage with anything, and that included his wife and two children. And his job. He was a salesman. He travelled around the department stores of Perth, Western Australia, pushing lines of haberdashery to the buyers in the haberdashery departments. It was a very boring job and he had no idea how he’d ended up in it. He was sure that once upon a time he’d had much more ambitious aspirations, but like so much in his past they had grown very fuzzy in his mind. Remembering anything was hard work these days. It had occurred to him yesterday that he couldn’t even remember the first time he’d met his wife, Daphne. Was it at some party? A barbecue? At work? No, he couldn’t remember. The past was all just too vague.

But it wasn’t just him. It was everything and everyone around him. Daphne was distant too; always frowning and preoccupied. He would ask her – apathetically, true – what was wrong but she could never say. And the children: uncommunicative and dull. In fact, he realized, they hardly spoke at all. And the people he worked with, the buyers he had to deal with every day in the shops, what a dull lot they were.

On top of everything else he was plagued with feelings of déjà vu. Every day he had flashes where it seemed that everything he was experiencing he’d experienced all before only a short time in the past. OK, it was true he worked by a pretty set routine but these flashes occurred at home and in the pub as well …

Like the one he was having right now as he was getting out of his FJ Holden with his sample case. He was in Hay Street and heading for the entrance to the big department store called Foys. He hadn’t paid a visit to the store for a couple of weeks, he was certain, but it seemed like only yesterday he had done exactly the same thing. Yes, as he paused, brushing bush-flies from his face, by the newspaper kiosk to buy a copy of the Daily News, he felt positive he’d done the same thing only yesterday. And yes, he even recognized the headline on the paper: KENNEDY GIVES RUSSIANS ULTIMATUM OVER CUBA! He looked at the date on the paper. The seventh of January, 1958. That seemed familiar too.

I’m being ridiculous, he told himself as he entered the air-conditioned coolness of the shop. If I keep on this way I’ll go mad. Maybe all I need is a good long holiday.

He went up the escalator to the haberdashery department on the first floor. He spotted Miss Dickson, the buyer, sitting at her desk. She saw him and rose to her feet. She was a thin, plain woman in her mid-thirties. She looked concerned. As she approached the counter Philip suddenly knew what she was going to say, and what he would say to her. It would be ‘Hello, Mr Craner. Isn’t it dreadful about this missile business? Mr Hargreaves from Lingerie said in the cafeteria at lunch today that this might start the Third World War … ’

Miss Dickson reached the counter. ‘Hello, Mr Craner. Terribly hot day, isn’t it? And isn’t it dreadful about this Cuban missile crisis? Mr Hargreaves from Lingerie said in the cafeteria today that …’

Well, not exactly the same but close enough. I definitely need a holiday, Philip told himself miserably as Miss Dickson continued to follow the script more or less faithfully.

*

Sebastian Chimes entered the boardroom of the Shinito Corporation in Sydney, Australia. The four top Shinito executives sitting around the vast oak table quickly stood and bowed towards him. ‘Welcome to Shinito headquarters, Mr Chimes,’ said Kondo Izumi, the chief executive, ‘and thank you for responding to our invitation so swiftly. Please sit down.’

An aide ushered Chimes to a chair. Chimes sat. In contrast to the conservative gun-metal grey business suits worn by the four executives, Chimes’s clothes could only be described as … unconventional. He wore a tall top hat, black, a tight-fitting Victorian frock coat, black, a waistcoat, silver, tight Victorian trousers, black, ankle-boots, black, and spats, silver. He also carried a wooden cane with a round silver knob on top. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking man. His endocrine system had been subtly modified in order for him to be able to concentrate all his energies on his job. He had no sexual desires and was capable of being totally unemotional in the execution of his duties. His only sensory luxury was food. He was a gourmet with a prodigious appetite but, thanks to his modified endocrine system, never put on an ounce of weight. Sebastian Chimes was the top investigator for IRC, the Interplanetary Revenue Corporation. In essence he was the most efficient and ruthless tax-collector who had ever existed.

‘Anything that involves the Glitch automatically receives my full attention,’ said Chimes. His voice was deep but nasal. He sat there, slightly hunched forward and leaning on his cane, with both of his long-fingered hands clasped over its silver knob.

‘The “Glitch”?’ asked Izumi, puzzled.

‘It’s the term we use for the Ghost at IRC,’ said Chimes. ‘You have new information about him?’

‘We believe so,’ said Izumi. ‘Someone penetrated security at our bio-research space habitat, Takata, and stole something that is literally priceless. From the way he easily manipulated every computer system he encountered we could only conclude it was the Ghost.’

‘I see,’ said Chimes. ‘And what exactly is this priceless item that he stole?’

The four executives exchanged uneasy glances. Then Izumi said, ‘I’m afraid that we cannot divulge that information. Not at this stage, at least.’

Chimes gave a slight shrug of his thin shoulders. ‘That is your prerogative, of course, although it would have been helpful to know. As it came from Takata I can only presume it is some genegineered product on which you are anxious to establish copyright.’

Izumi cleared his throat. ‘No, it is much more important than that.’

‘Really? Then why has the Shinito Corporation not informed IRC of its possession of this extremely valuable … item?’

‘Uh, when we say it is invaluable,’ said Izumi hurriedly, ‘we are referring to its potential once it has been developed. Of course at that point we would have followed correct procedure in relation to keeping IRC fully informed.’

‘Of course,’ murmured Chimes. He glanced idly around the boardroom. The oak-panelled walls were hung with photographs showing Mount Fuji in different seasons of the year. One wall was made entirely of glass. Cirrus clouds drifted by. He looked at the four executives. One of them wasn’t Japanese, but though obviously occidental the man had had facial modification, including the creation of epicanthic folds in the inner corners of his eyes, in order to appear Japanese. It wasn’t an attempt on the executive’s part to become a real Japanese, which was strictly forbidden by Corporation law, but simply an honourable gesture of respect towards his beloved Japanese company. Chimes knew that the executive had also adopted a Japanese name for the same reason. Previously called Daniel Urich, he was now known as Araki Hyuga. Chimes said, ‘Then let us drop the subject and talk of the Ghost himself. Do you have any idea of his present whereabouts?’

‘We think so,’ said Izumi.

Sebastian Chimes leaned slightly further forward on his cane. The nostrils of his long nose flared. ‘I have been leading the hunt for this man for over three years now. He has so far been the only blemish on my successful career. It would mean a lot to me to finally get my hands on him.’

‘We realize that, Mr Chimes.’

‘I must admit, however, to being somewhat surprised that you have succeeded in tracking down the Ghost while all my efforts, and those of IRC, have failed.’

‘Well, we haven’t exactly pinpointed his exact whereabouts,’ said Hyuga, ‘but we are fairly confident we know his general location.’

‘Which is?’ asked Chimes.

‘The Interplanetary Revenue Corporation’s very own habitat, K6BTL,’ said Izumi.

Chimes’s eyes widened slightly with surprise. ‘He’s in Purgatory? Are you sure?’

‘We have good reason to believe so. He is masquerading as a tourist, we believe. A woman tourist.’

‘He’s disguised as a woman?’

‘No. He is a woman.’

‘I see. A Body-Chop job. And how did you come by this piece of information?’

‘We tracked him to a Body Chop in Singapore. The staff were arrested under the Corporation Emergency Law and subjected to intense interrogation. They told of a male customer who possessed unique bionantech. It had to be the Ghost … ‘

Chimes leaned forward excitedly. ‘You’re saying these people had the opportunity to analyse the Ghost’s bionantech?’

‘They had the opportunity,’ said Araki Hyuga then added regretfully, ‘but failed to unravel its secrets. It constantly changes its structure, they told us … and we know they are telling the truth. We are at a loss to explain its origins.’

‘So am I,’ sighed Chimes. ‘So how did you manage to track him to that particular Body Chop, and from there to Purgatory?’

‘When we realized we were dealing with the Ghost we adopted different, if rather old-fashioned and very expensive, tactics,’ explained another of the executives. Chimes knew him to be Shimpei Murakami. ‘We employed the services of Yakuza Inc. We had a good physical description of the Ghost, from the female Chief Security Officer on Takata whom he had seduced so … ’

Chimes held up a hand to halt his flow. ‘Forgive the digression, sir, bu. . .