Shattered Light

The street was deserted and the rain had washed away the grime of the daytime traffic. I looked around nervously from the dark corner that I hid in. If I was caught during curfew I was in trouble. Ordinarily a lab tech for Govsys would be let off with a fine, but if they caught me now with what I had on me that would be it. I would be disappeared only to be heard of in the New Year’s traitor list. I watched Grone’s doorway, across the street, anxiously. The garish red neon light flickered on and off signalling vacancies, it gave the doorway an unearthly look in the shimmering rain. I could hear a rotovat thrumming somewhere over the city and was thankful for the rain to muffle my footsteps in the normally quiet street. I took a deep breath and plucked up enough courage to dash for the doorway. I knew Grone was home but I prayed he would answer quickly. As I pressed the buzzer for his door I felt a cold sweat envelop me. A familiar voice crackled over the intercom,
“Is that you Teigan?”
“Yes, hurry up and let me in.”

I have known Grone for three years. I met him in the Green room of the Govsys lab that I have worked at since I was recruited during my degree years. He was a dirty looking little man who constantly looked unwashed and unshaven. Everyone else I had run into in the lab wore smart suits and cleanly pressed, gleaming white lab coats. Grone wore a crinkled brown checked shirt, half in and half out of his brown corduroys; his lab coat was as dirty and creased as the rest of him. I took an instant liking to him, with his dirty laugh and humour that flew close to the bone of heresy. We shared many a late night drinking session bemoaning the state of our autocratic government and the lack of independence they afforded us.

“You got it Teig?”
I sat down on the sofa with relief and brought out the metal cylinder from under my coat. He looked at it speculatively.
“Doesn’t look like much does it.”
“No but it’s not what it looks like that matters, it’s what it can do.”
We both sat down and stared at the hard light projector in contemplative silence.
We heard about the hard light project in whispers in the Green room three months before. It was rumoured that the top brass where undertaking a series of tests for the Angel Division of Govsys. That always used to make me chuckle, ‘Angel Division’. Angel couldn’t be further from the truth, the extortion and torture division of the government was more accurate, but no one ever said it out loud, not if they wanted to live that was. All we heard about the tests was that they were on ‘hard light’. As a particle physicist I had heard the theories on hard light, that it could create physiological effects in organic matter, but as far as I knew no one had ever tried it, it seemed too impractical and expensive. Grone and I discussed it in his flat during one of our moaning sessions,
“The way I hear it,” he said, “is that they use a harmonic with the hard light and filter the light, shattering it like a prism. Each colour has a different effect when put with the right harmonic. Glenister told me he was there when they tested the orange light.”
“What happened?”
“He could only tell me a little, walls have ears you know. But it sounds amazing. The orange light seems to have an arousal effect. He told me the subject described a honey taste in his mouth initially and the he felt a heat gradually growing through his body. Then the heat started changing to sexual arousal and he got more and more aroused until he was thrashing and groaning. Glenister said the poor guy was thrashing on the floor, cumming again and again, groaning in ecstasy until they finally turned the light off.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad to me, it’d be cheaper to get off to an orange light than watching that fucking government sanctioned shit, Chanel 603, that the Auditors run. It doesn’t sound like the sort of stuff the Angel division go in for either, unless they want to mass produce it and sell it for funding.”
“No but you’re missing the point my friend. Once you’ve been in that light for long enough you’re addicted and the Angel division are controlling the supply. They’re going to make people into sex junkies and they’re going to be the dealers. Once you’re on their hook you’ll belong to them, you’ll do whatever they ask you to do. Spy on your friends, enforce their laws, whatever.”
We spent the rest of the night speculating whether the Angel division would make a play for the ruling Autocracy by using their ‘sex ray’ on them.

So here we were, Grone and I and a hard light projector. I was still wondering how he managed to persuade me to steal it, but I had, at considerable risk to myself. It hadn’t been as hard as I thought, security never searched trusted Govsys lab techs who had priority two clearance or above and I had just attained priority two. It allowed me into the restricted zone unaccompanied and from then it was just a matter of sneaking into the storage unit. People always expect government installations to have wall to wall security, but most operate on keeping people out by the fear of reprisals rather than actually wasting funding on real security. I even had the balls to say goodnight to the security guard at the main entrance.
“See you tomorrow Charlie,” I said, “Let’s hope the Eagles do Ok tonight.” What a chump. He smiled at me and waved goodbye.
It was only after I got home and realised that if I was going to get to Grone’s place I would have to break curfew that I started feeling nervous.

“Did you get the Servo Grone?” I asked. I was still wondering why we were doing this.
“Yeah, he’s in the back room.”
I remembered the first time I had ever seen a Servo. I was twelve and my father was still alive. A group of teenagers were crowded around a fence and were punching and kicking something. I caught sight of something gray under the carnage of blows.
“What is it dad?”
“Leave it, it doesn’t matter,” he said trying to pull me past hurriedly. I glanced back as they finished their beating, the Servo, sat there bloodied and bruised but remained impassive. Its face was the colour of dirty sheep wool and its skin had the texture of dog fur, it was wrinkled like a bull dog. My father told me later, when I was old enough, that the Servo’s where essentially human but had been spliced with various different domesticated animals to create a compliant labour force before the Gene wars. Nobody used them anymore and they had become a bit of a pest. Flock’s of vagrant vermin, was how my father described them. Stupid creatures were only good for eating garbage.

“Where did you get it?” I asked Grone.
“There was a flock of them down by the tip on Sego Street. It wasn’t too hard to get, the stupid fuckers stop running once you grab hold of them, then they follow you like a little lost lamb.”
Grone went to get the Servo whilst I set up the projector. It had a harmonics booster built in so luckily I hadn’t had to steal one of those as well. We had to see if the rumours were true. If the Angel division really had developed a ‘sex ray’ then people needed to know, it had to be stopped. That was how Grone had sold me on the idea anyway, it was my civic duty. Our world may be heavily controlled but the media still afforded us some voice, and if this got out into the public domain the Autocracy would have to shelve it. The trouble was the press would never touch anything like this without proof, and that was why we needed a projector and a Servo to test on.
“Are you sure it will have the same effect on a Servo,” said Grone as he brought it into the room.
“Look there the essentially the same as us, just with a few more genes spliced in.”
“Don’t look much like us.”
“It doesn’t look like a sheep either, and it’s humanoid at the least. It’s probably just as human as an Auditor.”
Grone snorted, the Auditors might have been human a few generations ago but the Gene wars had changed all of that. At least they still looked human though.

I handed Grone a pair of black glasses, he motioned the Servo to the middle of the room facing the projector.
“Get the lights,” I said bending down to the controls. Grone went over to the light switch looking a mixture of excited and scared. The room went dark and I turned on the machine. A green light enveloped the room.
“Green! What the fuck. I thought they were orange, what the hell does green do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I thought it was orange as well. I didn’t know they had developed any other colours.” We both looked at the Servo expectantly.
“Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
We watched the Servo standing compliantly bathed in the green light. A faint buzzing sound gradually grew; it must have been the harmonic. I began to wonder if this had all been some sort of elaborate joke when the Servo began to moan. He doubled over with a look of agony on his face and then his skin seemed to smoke and bubble. I looked at Grone fearfully as the Servo began screaming.
“Get the light Grone, quick.” I reached for the hard light projector and fumbled with the switch as Grone ran for the lights.
We were suddenly bathed in the full spectrum of light and the green buzzing stopped. We looked in stunned silence at the groaning Servo, its sounds reducing to a whimper. Its skin was blistered and bleeding, and as it looked up at us sorrowfully I noticed that its eyes were bloodshot and bleeding.
“Oh god Grone, what have we done.”
“Shit. We have to get rid of this shit.” He babbled nervously, pacing up and down in front of me. “If they find out what we’ve done, what we know, we’re dead. We have to get rid of this shit now.”

We sat there for what seemed like hours. The Servo’s whimpering gradually eased into silence and it went still.
“I think its dead.” I said.
“No one cares about another dead Servo; we can get rid of it on the dump. We can throw that thing away whilst we’re there.”
“Grone, we have to return the projector. When they discover it’s gone they’ll check the security logs and it won’t take long before they’re on to me. And believe me, if it has this effect they’re gonna notice it’s gone.”

That was the longest night of my life. We waited until three in the morning to move the Servo, the rain had started again and it helped camouflage us. Sego street dump was too far to go with a dead weight and a guilty conscience so we dumped it in the alley way behind the street next to Grone's. I went home straight after without another word and spent the night sleeplessly staring at the ceiling expecting the knock on the door at any moment, and wondering how the hell I was going to get the hard light projector back into the storage unit.

The next morning I arrived at the lab with trepidation. The projector felt bulky under my jacket and I was sure it was bulging out clearly enough for everyone to see. I expected to feel a tap on the shoulder at any moment and meet the blank stare of an Angel Division enforcer. Charlie was still on at the front desk, about to finish his shift,
“Catch the result then.”
I looked at him stupidly.
“What?”
“The eagles, I thought you were going to watch it?” He looked at me strangely and I thought I was caught.
“Um, no, I was too tired, did you find out the result?”
“No, that’s why I was asking you.” He laughed and waved me passed shaking his head. I walked on relieved.

Returning the projector was easier than I thought it would be because I had got to work early and there was still no one around when I entered the restricted zone. The rest of the day passed uneventfully and my nervousness gradually eased.

Over the next few months I tried to forget my adventure. I had gone too close to finding myself on the New Years traitor list and it had scared me. I didn’t even spend much time with Grone anymore, our drinking and moaning sessions had lost their appeal. Work went well and one day my boss called me into his office and told me I was doing so well at my job I had earned priority one clearance. He tossed the pass over to me and beamed benignly.
“Go take a look in lab one, your new colleagues are waiting for you.”
I hurried away eager to see the part of the building that so few had ever been allowed into. I opened the door to Lab one and entered. It was a bare room apart from the door at my back. The door shut and I turned to see someone leaving down the corridor. For a moment I thought it looked like Grone, but it couldn’t be, the lab coat was too clean. The viewing panel in the door suddenly went black and then the lights went off in the room. I was plunged into complete darkness.
“Hello? What’s going on? Is this some sort of new boy induction?” There was no answer. I felt for the door handle but couldn’t find it. “This isn’t funny. Can somebody let me out?” I started banging on the door and shouting, hoping that this was some kind of joke or mistake. After a few minutes nothing had happened and I tried listening for a minute, hoping that my new workmates were standing outside the door, smaning at their joke. That was when I noticed the humming sound.
“What’s going on? What’s that noise?” I began to feel an itching over my skin, it grew suddenly, unbearably. I started to itch and couldn’t stop. I itched and itched. In the back of my mind I realised what was happening, and wondered if it was ultraviolet light or infa red light that was to be my unseen executioner.