The Escapist | Page 5

they kept the dust out of the colonies there was just another miracle of contemporary

science. The Nexus-7 rest colony for human vegetables was in a league of its own,
however. It felt like the most ordered place I'd 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,