The Escapist | Page 5

ever been to. Even the notice boards had identically-sized notes pinned to them in perfect grid arrays, with no missing spots. I wondered if you had to wait for a vacancy to put up a note, and couldn't take one down until a replacement was found. Trying my best to walk in perfectly equal steps so as not to break the Nexus-7 symmetry, I followed Chucky's chubby form through the pristine hallways. He was taking me to meet the head of patient care. As I walked about the facility observing the staff I began to realise that everyone here was overweight in some way or another. Everyone had been genetically and surgically in perfect shape inside the Moon resorts I'd visited before, particularly in the leisure developments around the new space port. The permanent lunar residents not so intent on making an exhibition of themselves obviously let the very low gravity do its work. Here they could get heavier without a negative effect on mobility. Some of them were so rotund you could have used them as wheels on their own lunar transportation vehicles. I'd never realised before that the Moon was a regular haven for the mass disadvantaged, but I supposed it all made sense.
After introducing myself to Nexus-7's chief medical consultant, I explained my need to use a VR rig to analyse the effects of memory loss. My research, I argued, was part of a very important piece of psychological research into aphasia - my official cover, created for me by COSI. Without needing to go into too much detail, I was escorted to the main ward. My guide was a portly but passable nurse called Sophie. I set the equipment up in an empty private room and Sophie brought in a few of the memory-loss patients in succession. Each one was different inside. I recorded the sessions on the Philips T1000's hard storage to look at later if I needed to refresh my own memory. None of these minds were as bare as von Kühnert's. Their mental passageways were not so well-defined, either. Many of the brains I explored had corridors that narrowed so as to be impassable, while others cut off and brought you back in impossible loops that were different each time you traversed them. This pointed to continuing neural subsidence.
Sophie the nurse seemed very interested in what I was doing. She said she was hoping to be a genetico-neurologist and was doing her internship here as part of a course at the Moon's Institute of Biotechnology, which was considered by many to be a refuge for dumb rich kids. I hinted that I would be perfectly happy to discuss my work with her after I'd finished my tests. That didn't take long, as I was finding my research very inconclusive, and I didn't really care that much anyway. Once the equipment was packed away I had no trouble in removing all of Sophie's clothes. Nurses always managed to live up to their reputation, at least when I was around. It was as she was riding me, in obvious ecstasy while I lay beneath her making gentle ironic thrusts, that Chucky burst in with a rapid fire handgun. I laughed out loud. He looked like an angry beach ball. With an enormous shove of my arms I launched Sophie from my lap towards him, just as she was reaching a pinnacle of joy. Chucky released a barrage of shots, all of which ripped through Sophie's body and missed me entirely. At least she died happy. Her parents wouldn't have to pay her exorbitant university fees anymore, either. They might even thank me. Chucky fell backwards from the momentum of Sophie's corpse flying toward him in the low gravity, giving me plenty of time to pull my gun, which was loaded with explosive shells, from under my nearby shirt. I blew off his right arm, the one which held his weapon. He screamed as the blood pumped out of him in spumes. I walked over to where he now lay on the ground, both my gun and my still full erection jutting out menacingly. I wondered which was the most scary to him. The notion of making him talk under the threat of perverse sexual acts danced amusingly across my mind to be discarded very rapidly. From time to time my wicked imagination revolted even myself. I pointed the gun at his head and dragged the tangled mass of him and the nurse into the room, then re-closed the door.
"Ahhhh, please don't kill me", blubbered Chucky, holding up his remaining hand as if it could provide some kind of protection.
"I may not kill you", I answered, lying. "But it would help if you tell me why COSI is trying to kill me before I permanently rid