Novahead - Steve Aylett

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- someone had just discharged a Bohr gun through the wall. A Bohr worked via quantum entanglement, using the particles of the loaded bullet to activate those of its entangled partner in the victim. The loaded bullet was ejected after the operation, as re-firing would only re-install the same quantum bullet in the same impact position.

      Jose was up and at the metal wall of the garage door, drawing the Calico while at the same time activating what looked like a counterwave belt studded with vortex coils - the Bohr gun wouldn’t harm him. A rectangle of light appeared at his side - an inset door had opened in the riser and Jose was instantly brawling with someone in front of it. The light flickered like a bulb battered and pinged by moths. I slipped the bloody left strap with my thinned left hand, releasing the right strap and attending to the leg fastenings as the small door fell closed and subfire flared in the gloom, smashing a fusebox. There was some ballistic commotion outside, the fusillade shifting gears back and forth in the signature syntax of the brotherhood. Apparently they were falling over themselves to shoot each other, or perhaps one other person who was unarmed. Jose threw his assailant aside and escaped through the small door. The gunfire changed register as the new element joined.

      I staggered through tintacks and obtainium - the frayed view between my eyelashes revealed a woman with mustard-yellow hair, eyes the dead green of visa paper and a mouth that could tear out the sacred heart of Jesus. I confirmed the presence of a nose only much later. She was toting a Bohr 5.56mm rifle and slung under her purple leather coat was a hardshell shotgun, at a minimum. She’d probably weigh no more than 80 pounds drenched in blood. ‘Lux Murphy - FBI.’

      ‘Good - I need drugs.’

      The garage door was lifting like a curtain before a stage.

      5 VERSUS

      We stood before the swelling rectangle until the door grated into place above us. All I could see at first was a collision of dustclouds, and then the dim skeletons of cars. Shell-track was underlining lengths of air as someone begot bullets into the atmosphere. In fact the shifting time-values attested to a galore of factions. Whether a bullet is a particle or a wave depends on your observation - head-on or as a bystander. Some of the slugs were pinging around in here.

      We ran into the fanfare of gunfire, past a crushed yellow cab that lay on its roof. It had cracked like an egg but hadn’t been stripped yet. We scrambled into an old crater, testament to the end of a bomb-zombie whose final act had trenched the street. Weeds now fringed the suicide’s ground zero and I peered over this into the airborne dust.

      I could tell that aside from a few preliminary outrages the battle hadn’t really kicked off. These public quarrels involving the brotherhood were open to everyone. Jose was somewhere, I could hear his Calico. There were also some kids who had probably been out playing real murder ARGs. Bullets were the only vitamin source they ever ingested and they’d react to injuries like a sugar high. For good measure a rogue sentient gunhead sprinted and rattled about like a toy crane, propelled by impulses that synchronised with the skirmish by dumb coincidence.

      Prowler light-bars were pulsing in the smoke. The brotherhood - active ignorance in its cleanest form. It was many years since they had felt the need to give a motive for an arrest. Like the behaviour of their suspects, it was assumed to be instinctive and innate. After all the recent collapses the cops had found themselves strangely denuded. They had proved too backward to be employable for manual labour; were declared too careless and forgetful to plant seeds and too aggressive even to stand sentry. So there was an unspoken agreement that they should carry on as before, supervising the carnage at large.

      They hit one of the kids and the pieces of her hung apart, flopping wet to the sidewalk. The smoke cleared a little and there he was, in eye-popping 3D: Chief Blince, the man primarily responsible for depicting law enforcement in Beerlight city. Seniority by sheer biomass. His philosophy was the most complete fossil of its kind ever found. I could have sworn I saw a gravitational tide around him, the hidden physics of hypocrisy, its sickly scaffolding shoring up his bulk. He raised a bullhorn. ‘I’m having a lotta fun over here, nearly more than I can handle. Sure you don’t wanna join me? Even the coldest among you gotta feel tempted. Use of deadly force is authorised, as usual. Nuns, bargain-hunters, unbiased observers - I’ve damaged them all.’ He talked a little more but that was the gist of it. The ballistic charm escalated, echoes slapping back between the stale, half-eaten buildings.

      The Fed girl rolled over, handing me a rifle whose architecture was densely ornamented with crazy golden scrollwork and other ceremonial lavishness. I wasn’t new to exotic ordnance but I’d never seen anything like it. It looked like a gun built by Aztecs. The body was zoom-flake pineapple gold upholstered in burgundy leather round the stock and fore-end.

      ‘You want me to...’

      ‘You’re ready to do more than that.’

      I’d dismissed it as a coffee table gun but under all the translucent tortoiseshell it looked to be a rail cannon, its barrel the width of a toilet-paper tube. I test-fired a single shot that left the flared bellmouth with no more sound than a snapping icicle. Such experiments always aroused opposition or the pretence of it in the hope of profit, and I could see the cops perking up. Through the telescopic sight I watched them dart this way and that amid their roadblock, under a sky ulcerated with clouds. I knew at last where we were - I could see behind them the bruise-blue silhouette of Olympus Dump. I pressed the firing stud on repeat-fire, the volley sounding like the flurring of a tight deck of cards. Later I learned the gun was smartened, the rails charged with contrary accelerant powered by the victim’s preference to live. That so many of the shots smacked the dirt well short of the blockade was due more to the cops’ despair than my rusty aim. But enough hit home, stitching armour and popping cherry lights. Glass exploded into a surf of jumping pearls. Three cops went down, two by ricochet, I think. Many evinced surprise, though they would have been baffled if their gunfire were not reciprocated.

      Recoil is like hearing your own accent. I hadn’t fired a gun in seven years and it felt like someone had punched me in the shoulder. I’d forgotten, it was a real workout.

      Guns started snapping off all over, unexacting but lively. Jose came out of nowhere, trotting to a crouching halt behind the crinkled snout of the flipped cab. He wasn’t our ally but of course he was versus the cops so he was happy to hunker nearby on our right but at a slight angle. The ARG kids were on our left behind a fallen gun shop billboard, also at a slight angle that satisfied their independence. Ideally a complete circle would allow for everyone. Without the cops, our three emplacements could close to a triangle. The crappiest arrangement would be a square. Why? I pictured a conflict fractal, the same patterns repeated at every scale.

      The girl Murphy had switched to a Kratos triage rifle, blasting monochrome judex ammo that hit quite low in the overall composition. A grenade went off and the debris sprayed forward. The little pop-spanner lost its head and stood still, motivations forgotten. A kid skidded forty feet before rolling loosely to rest, and the cops had a field day emptying bullets into the already lifeless and boring body.

      These shots and explosions inevitably seemed mere frivolities to those not involved in our dispute, and several passers-by stopped to corrugate their foreheads in our direction. One in particular also held up a dog, its frowning face next to his own doubling the sentiment of puzzled disapproval. It was a great bit of work and I started laughing. But when I shouted at the Fed girl to look at the dog I found I was pointing at empty air, the passers-by having satisfied their curiosity and moved on. My voice petered out even as I vouched for the dog’s dependability. I couldn’t blame Murphy for her look of disbelief.

      ‘Give yourselves up,’ bellowed Blince through the loudhailer, ‘if you dare.’ I could tell he was barely paying attention. Rather than moving upward in his career he was swelling without any special direction. ‘I conquered my fear of betrayal, so can you. Surrender at the nearest and dearest opportunity and we’ll extend you every courtesy, up to and including arbitrary blame and exquisite violence.’

      ‘Hardly a novel danger,’ I shouted. I was getting into the swing of things. Someone else asked what securities they were offering by way of guarantee. This was met with the traditional

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