Aaron Nyman's First Stand

Kelly Howard stared into her TV screen. The two electrodes attached
to her temples twitched and pulsed as the electrical charge gradually
increased. Swirling mists and twirling speckles enveloped her. At first
slowly, then at great speed, she felt herself being pulled into the
thirty-two inch, wide-screen.

Amazed at how much technology had had progressed since the early
Playstation machines, she held her breath and prepared for a "Virtual
Reality experience unrivalled anywhere else in the know universe". She
laughed at Ahmed's proposed advertising slogan. Surely, the universe
was so vast a place that the only bit really known to man was Earth?
And even that was so much of a mystery that her own race was destroying
it!

She found herself on a busy London road. The bus queue in which she
stood was relatively short-two old ladies, a drunk, and a pickpocket
who was at that very moment dipping into the handbag of the lady at the
head of the queue.

Was this Platform one: the first kill?

Reaching into her own pocket, Kelly had a surprise: she had NO pocket.
She looked down: gone were the jeans, the sweat-shirt and the trainers.
She was dressed in jungle fatigues and some stylish, black Nike combat
boots. Around her midriff was a belt, and from it hung an
American-style nightstick.

She guessed that she must also be armed with a gun. She patted herself
down to find it. Sure enough, there it was in a shoulder holster, under
her army jacket. Her memories of previous situations dictated that she
should conserve ammunition in the early stages. She would have to use
the stick.

Dropping back to the building line, Kelly unclipped the weapon from her
belt. Silently and stealthily, she ran up behind the dishevelled dipper
and swung the nightstick down onto his head. She heard a sickening and
realistic crunch as the stick made contact. With no other sound, the
scruffy, white youth dropped onto his knees. Kelly swung her right foot
to his chin, causing him to fall backwards onto the pavement.

Blood flowed onto the granite slabs: dark red, non-arterial bleeding.
Kelly was amazed at the realistic picture quality. Not a trace of
pixelation to be seen.

Not so impressive was the hysterical over reaction of the two old
ladies: one was screaming uncontrollably, the other went into a dead
faint. The drunk, on the other hand, bent down and frisked the
motionless body of the dipper. Was this the second kill, or a red
herring? Kelly decided on the latter; he was too easy a target. But if
she ignored him, he might turn against her&;#8230;

Her break came in the shape of a big red Route Master double-decker. It
was old, real old; the type with an open rear platform. Kelly dived on
board and did the conductor's job of "ding-dinging" the bell-the signal
for the driver to pull away.

Kelly experienced a lurching sensation as the bus accelerated. It
crossed her mind that the sensors on her stomach were much improved
from the original version of two years ago. These really gave the
feeling of motion.

Having recovered from the movement, Kelly climbed the stairs to the
upper deck. It was empty, save for a black guy with a Walkman headset.
The impossibly loud, tinny sound of second-hand music escaped to the
outside world. She pitied his hearing momentarily, but then remembered
that this was not for real.

But hell: it was realistic. Right now she could see clear signs of
blood on the toecap of her right Nike. It still looked wet, as it
would, so recently after such an attack.

She sat near to the front of the deck, and angled herself so that she
could keep an eye on her fellow passenger as well as watching out the
front windows for the next obstacle. She eyed the dude with the
headset: was he the next? He looked harmless enough. He wasn't even
paying any attention to her. I'll put him on the back burner, she
thought. The worst he can do is deafen me!

A cough from behind startled her into action.

She leapt up. How the hell had she managed not to see the guy in that
seat? He must have been on the floor, lying in wait. But why didn't he
attack her? There he was, looking for all the world like a harmless
junkie: pale, wasted, eyes semi-closed. He must be the target; there's
no other reason for his being here.

The nightstick swung into action, seemingly of its own accord. One
swift blow to the temple meant lights out for junkie-man.

There was a yelp from behind. She turned. The black guy was vaulting
over the back of his seat and making for the stairs. At the same time,
the flat-capped head of the conductor was appearing from below. Now she
was potentially trapped and, God, did she ever need to go for a
pee!

She decided to play the next move and then put the game on hold. A
coffee would also be good.

Ammunition would be at a premium, but with two successful kills she
knew she had bonus points. Quite how many rounds that added up to she
had no idea, but the stick would be ineffectual on two opponents.

Kelly drew the weapon-some kind of automatic pistol, is seemed-and took
aim at the black guy. She knew now that he had been placed as an
obstacle rather than a fighter, but expedience was required.

Kelly pulled the trigger, releasing one round. The noise was immense,
and the recoil sent her hand into the air. Hell, she hadn't expected
anything so powerful as that! She was very pleased to see that she had,
in spite of the kick-back, hit her target. He fell, face down, at the
top of the stairs. The rear of his head was missing.

The conductor stopped dead at the top of the stairs. His face was
pale-green, almost. Kelly aimed again and pulled the trigger. This time
she was prepared for the recoil; her hand and arm raised with it in
orderly fashion. For a few fleeting seconds, the conductor remained
there, blocking the way. The face that had been green was no longer
there: a red and ivory coloured mess of ripped flesh and splintered
bone replaced it. Then it dropped away. Amazingly, Kelly could smell
the cordite of the discharged rounds: a wholly new experience for a VR
simulation.

Then there came a dreadful lurching, sickening sensation as the bus
jerked to a halt. Kelly was thrown to the floor with the force of it.
She recovered quickly and leapt down the stairs, landing on the slumped
body of the lifeless conductor. The feeling, as she stepped off of him,
was incredibly realistic. Kelly didn't know the technology existed to
give such an accurate feeling in the feet and legs; she could even feel
the warmth of fresh blood oozing through the fabric of her combat
pants.

Her next problem was waiting for her: all of the passengers were in a
state of panic. They were in the process of picking themselves off the
floor and screaming. Many had injuries to their faces and were covered
in blood. It was a real gore-fest: Ahmed, the designer, had excelled
himself for realism.

Kelly held her gun aloft and yelled for silence: it came immediately.
That was too easy, she thought to herself. No one is supposed to be
that compliant. There must be a twist here somewhere. She decided to
address the passengers to see if a taunt would flush out her next
foe.

'You guys want to play ball?" she yelled. No one answered. She pointed
the gun out before her and slowly scanned it across her line of vision.
'Come on: one of you is the next. Who's it to be?'

There was a low whimper from behind a fat old man who stood in the
centre aisle. The old man's nose was bleeding severely and at first she
thought it was he who had made the noise. She listened again. The only
noise now was the sound of London traffic rushing past the bus.

Over the shoulder of the old man, Kelly could see the driver of the
bus, framed in the internal window that separated the cab from the
passenger compartment. The driver was looking in at her, a terrified
expression on his face. She pointed the weapon at him and yelled, 'Stay
in the cab. Do ya hear me?'

He nodded franticly.

Now Kelly could hear the whimper again. She pointed the gun at the fat
man. 'Move aside, pig-gut.'

He practically fell onto a vacant seat. This revealed a small girl. She
was blond, pale, and very pretty. Her hair was shoulder-length. She was
dressed in a fairy outfit, complete with cardboard wings. Was this the
next one?

Kelly wasn't too sure. The layout was too much like "Angel Zone 6"-last
years big game. There, a goblin disguised as a boy dressed as a goblin,
had blown her away before she'd had a chance to assess the risk.

But hell: there was just no originality, no matter how well designed
the games were these days. She let loose with a double shot.

The girl went down. So did the black woman behind her.

One of the rounds had passed straight through the target and into the
woman. Now that was a new twist. Surely there must be a malfunction in
the software? Or maybe it was a new way of the player losing some
points.

On the spur of the moment, before any of the bus crowd could get
hysterical again, Kelly shouted, 'Everyone off the bus. NOW.'

Nothing happened for a few lingering seconds. Then the fat old man, now
weeping and sobbing uncontrollably, managed to say, 'Y-you've killed my
granddaughter. You've shot my granddaughter.' He started to rise from
his seat. She hadn't noticed before quite how tall he was.

'So what? It's a game, fatso,' she snarled.

The fat man came towards her. The combined effect of the bleeding nose
and the crying was creating a snotty and bloody mess on the entire
lower half of his face. With almost every sob came a bubble from either
his nose or mouth. 'You're a sick bitch,' he sobbed. 'A sick
bitch.'

'And you're a red herring. Get off the bus. Everyone: get of the
bus.'

It didn't take long. Now she was left with the four. The driver was
still in his cab, looking over his shoulder at her, looking shocked,
and very, very scared.

'Drive on!' yelled Kelly.

The bus didn't immediately move, so she called out again: 'Drive on!'
As if he were an automaton, the driver did as commanded.

Knowing she was safe for the moment, Kelly sat down on a seat near to
the body of the little 'fairy girl'. Something nagged at her. Something
wasn't quite right. She looked closely at the image in front of her.
The girl's body was still oozing blood. Not only that, but there was a
strange odour, like nothing Kelly had smelled before: a sort of burnt
meat and sewage smell.

Something else was strange as well. There was no score on the
display.

Kelly was used to VR games that kept a running tally of kills and point
losses on the top right of the line of peripheral vision. She had made
six kills, one of them an error. She should be in credit, but where was
the score?

She looked closely at the pistol, which she still held in her hand. It
felt the right weight to be a real weapon, and the balance was
excellent. She raised the barrel to her nose and sniffed. There was the
very strong smell of cordite.

Something dawned on her. She reached up to her face to feel for the
VR-Specs that she had donned at the start of the game.

They weren't there.

Kelly felt her pulse quicken to an incredible pace in that short second
that she touched her cheek: six victims, worst of all, one was a child.
They couldn't be real, could they?

She was overcome by a dizzy, sick feeling. She did not know what to
believe: had she just killed four innocent people, or was this the most
horrific virtual reality game ever created. When she had agreed to test
it for her friend Ahmed, he had warned her of the realism, but surely
this was going too far?

Just how long she sat like that, staring straight ahead of her, she
didn't know. She was dragged out of her malaise by an extraordinary
scene a few hundred yards ahead of the bus.

She saw it first through the unfocused eyes of a person in shock, but
she managed to pull herself together enough to actually look out of the
window at the front of the bus. There, completely straddling the road
ahead, was a gigantic black beetle.

Nyman: it had to be Nyman.

And Nyman meant sabotage.

How could she have been so stupid? Throughout all of her VR experience,
it always came back to Aaron Nyman: half man, half beetle, and one hell
of a lover. It mattered not that he was ugly, creepy and, well, insect
like. No. What mattered was money: hard cash. The stuff of life-the
reason for the game.

She rang the bell of the bus, hoping to God it would stop before that
awful crushing sound would be heard. Of course, the driver couldn't see
what she could see ahead. He could probably see the cars, the people,
the tarmac, but he sure as hell couldn't see the giant Beetleman waving
at the bus.

It stopped. Kelly stepped down from the rear platform and waited at the
roadside.

Where was Beetleman?

'Kelly.'

It came from behind. She turned, longingly.

'Kelly, up here.'

There was a lamppost to her right. She looked up and saw the small,
black, shiny body of Aaron Nyman in beetle form. He spoke again. She
was reminded of the old black and white movie of The Fly; the tiny
creature calling "Help me" at the end of it. 'Don't make it obvious,
Kelly'

'Why so small, Aaron?'

'Hey, it's for your own safety. How stupid would you feel if you
thought the world and his wife could see you speaking to a twenty-five
foot insect in the middle of Maida Vale?'

'You've got a point, Aaron. But tell me: am I really mad?'

'Huh. What's mad? Sitting in front of a VR simulator is mad; working
for MI5 is madder. You do both, so I guess you are!'

Then she remembered what Ahmed had told her: "It's like real life, but
better. I think it might be too real. It could be dangerous." She could
see where he was coming from with that. 'Then Ahmed is right?'

'Ahmed could never be right about anything. But you are totally off
your trolley. But, hey, I need to eat. You'd be good with
ketchup.'

'Don't get any ideas, Nyman. Am I the only one who can see you?'

The Beetleman scuttled down the lamppost to pavement level. Slowly,
remarkably, his shape started to alter. The black, crusty shell of the
body gradually became pink; human limbs replaced the thin, black ones,
and he grew. Ultimately, Aaron Nyman stood at a little over six feet.
He was dark-skinned, exotic, and muscular. 'At the moment, Kelly, you
are the only one. But when Ahmed sells the program to the bigwigs and
it really takes off, then see me grow.'

Kelly thought awhile, then said: 'So where does "virtual" end, and
"reality" begin?' It was a question to which she thought she already
knew the answer. She hoped she was wrong.

'In my game, Kelly, everything is real. You put on those electrodes,
the suit and the goggles, and the reality begins. If you think this is
a game, then you've got a real problem, girlie.' He stopped and cocked
his handsome head to one side, listening. 'Sirens,' he said. 'The fuzz
is on the case. Good luck, Kelly. You've proved a what a success the
game will be.' Nyman started to transform back to his Beetleman
guise.

Kelly felt a tight knot in her gut. She held out the automatic pistol,
aimed at him, and fired. The round ricocheted off the pavement.

'Don't be stupid, Kelly. I'm in your head. Look around: who else can
see me? No one. I'm in your head, girlie-and in your heart.'

Then he was gone.

The siren grew louder. Blue flashing lights appeared in the distance
and she could hear the sound of strained car engines as the police
approached.

Kelly turned to look at the bus. The driver had disappeared from his
seat and was nowhere to be seen. The engine was quiet. On board, she
knew, were four corpses-one of them a little girl of about seven years.
I'm in your head, girlie, Nyman had told her. She knew what she had to
do.

A Vauxhall hatchback with police markings screeched to a halt about
twenty yards away. Two officers in flack-jackets and baseball caps
leapt out and pointed rifles at her. 'Put your weapon on the pavement,'
shouted one of the officers.

She just stood there, putting off the inevitable.

'Put your weapon on the pavement, take four paces back, and kneel on
the ground with your hands behind your head.'

Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned the barrel around to face her. She
raised the gun to her mouth.

'I repeat: Put the weapon on the pavement, and-NO!'

She pulled the trigger. For Kelly, it went very dark.