Mardock Scramble

Flashbacks. Memories of sounds, light, pain. Memories of anger, pleasure, conversations. These emotions cut across the scene, gradually coming back to life, and the motives and intentions of the feeler started to form distinct, tangible shapes.

“I’m going to make it all clean. Everything that is dirty, I’m going to clean.”

No. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t kill her. Not the first girl. She was already dead. Why? I’m going to make you clean. I’m going to clean you up. The whole world weeps for you. My whole world weeps for you.

Balot’s eyes overflowed with tears.

“A Blue Diamond. That’s the way to do it.”

Shell’s love was not enough. The girl died of despair. The girl had looked to Shell for salvation, she had wanted real love, but in the end she died in a state of delirium. A pathetic death. Shell was plunged into a despair of his own. Despairing at the girl’s death. Despairing at the reason behind the girl’s death.

The first one that Shell killed wasn’t the girl. It was the person who had hurt the girl so, driven her to suicidal despair. The girl’s father.

“The first one I killed—”

–We’re past the point of no return now. We’ll just have to guide Balot through to the bitter end.

The girl made Shell remember all the despair that he had once forgotten. A surge of empathy welled up inside him. “Don’t you worry, my little one. I’ll look after you. I know all about it. How much you’ve suffered.”

Stress. It’s what destroys my memories.

No, that’s wrong. The first one that Shell killed wasn’t the girl’s father.

Suddenly Balot was assaulted by flashbacks. They were inside the vast emptiness of Shell’s lost memories. Something crying out even now from the darkness.

“Why me? ”

The despair that Shell should have forgotten all about was the sparkle in the facets of the Blue Diamonds. They scintillated, radiant.

There was a hubbub all around. Balot suddenly realized where she was—at a Show, watching Shell under the spotlight.

At first Balot thought she had come back to the beginning of his memories, but then she realized that she was holding his rings in both her hands. All with Blue Diamonds set in platinum. This was Balot’s job—to look after Shell’s jewelry. One of her jobs.

One of the diamonds is conspicuous, brighter than the rest, and the man calls this one Fat Mama, because, as he says, “I called in a favor from an acquaintance who works in processing to have my dead mother’s ashes turned into a diamond.”

–We’ve reached it! Finally, we’re at the source of Shell’s trauma!

That’s right. The first one Shell killed. Shell’s own mother.

A surge of empathy welled up inside him.

The despair of the girl that Shell had loved was scattered around the world. The girl understood why Shell felt such empathy with her pain. She understood why Shell had accepted her for who she was.

Shell also understood what the girl had understood. It was a vicious circle. Empathy begat empathy. The girl couldn’t cope with it. It was the very thing she had run away from—

“Flashbacks—”

In the end, the girl realized that she was right back where she started. In the same place she had run away from—

–Why me?

Balot was frozen still, the answer finally staring her in the face.

Here was the inappropriate material that the Doctor had warned about. Image after image exploded into Balot’s mind.

–Balot, don’t respond to any of these! They have nothing at all to do with your own past…

This was it. Inside the rotten core of Shell’s memory—that pustulent, scabrous yolk—he was forced to have sexual intercourse with his own mother. It started around the time Shell hit puberty and carried on right up to the time just before he turned twenty, when, finally, unable to bear it any longer, Shell fixed the brakes in his mother’s car so that she would die and it would look like an accident and he would finally be free of her.

This was the reason Shell felt his deep surge of empathy toward all the girls he had ever killed.

It was the despair of the first girl that he had ever loved with all his heart.

This was the plain and simple answer to Balot’s question.

The answer to Why me?

≡

Balot imagined that she had screamed out loud.

In fact, her mouth had been clamped tightly shut, and all she had done was sit bolt upright and open her eyes wide.

When she came to her senses, she noticed the Doctor looking over at her, bleary eyed.