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CHARLIE'S OBSESSION

When the matter of the beastie-baiting first came to my attention I thought it was a joke.

It was middle of an agonizing summer, temperatures outside the arcology reaching spikes of 60ºC and some new epidemy was spreading like the wildfires that were ravaging most of France. It was a season of dying.

Inside the London Arcology it was a gloomy, gray day, and the constant hum of the powerful environmental processor units kept the temperature just slightly chill. I arrived at my desk to find a magazine waiting for me, sent from the main office, it was cheaply made, with bleeding colors, low quality photos, and terrible writing. It stood in contrast to the electronic lab reports that were stored in my tablet. I put the magazine aside and decided to focus on the real work, whatever it was, it could wait.

As it turned out, the magazine was more important than anything in my tablet, my bosses called me to the top floors just a few minutes after I had settled down.

When I arrived at the top floors, the windows were closed, the temperature set to an almost freezing cold, and the lights dimmed. Jason Forge was propped on his chair, a burning cigarette between his fingers; he looked unquiet, miserable, and in a foul mood.

"Sir, you asked to see me?"

"Charlie, right?" He asked nonchalantly, sitting back. "Have you read the magazine we left on your table?"

"Sorry, sir. The main sequences for the new plant specimens arrived today and I thought it would be better to review those first."

He nodded wearily. "Forget about all other research, as far as I'm concerned, from now on you have only one project."

"Sir?" I was taken back by his words.

"Beastie-baiting," Jason spoke the word carefully. "What do you know about it?"

"Biohackers modifying Rottweilers to see them fight to the death," I replied. "It's disgusting."

"Disgusting," he repeated the word with a long drag of his cigarette. "Our analysis says that it will be a big hit sooner or later, the crowds love it, and the investors are excited about the prospects of the profits we could make out of it."

"Profits? More than we could make with the Demeter Project?"

"Your little project will take two, maybe three decades before it gives us any real profit. Beastie-baiting is getting popular now and we know that some other corporations have been looking into it. The way this is going, I wouldn't be surprised to see Ut/Ah and G-United making an appearance soon."

So far genetic research in this country has been kept in the hands of very few medical corporations and strictly overseen by the government's ethicists, but more and more biohackers were starting to appear. Beastie-baiting was just the more recent phenomenon, not long ago a ring of biohackers was busted for making viral hallucinogenic. Trouble is, they'd actually created a shared hallucination and suddenly there were dozens of corporate interests wanting to put their hands on their research, meanwhile the Government and the Pope's thugs were doing their best to burn it all out.

Another new product of this budding genetic revolution was a designer parasite that was promised to increase the size of a man's cock. I was stumped about how people seemed to fall for the same old promises.

The only reason this seed of innovation hadn't blossomed completely yet was the enormous level of technology and expertise necessary to do it. Still, these kids now were creating monsters. Suppose they were allowed to keep going, maybe even receiving some discreet support along the way, what could they make?

The corporations would be playing safe as they always did. Doing their risk assessment analysis and plotting probable profits. Shareholders are really easy to frighten; the minimal sign of weakness or problem can send them running in the blink of an eye, bankrupting a company in the process.

"Someone made a move yet?" I asked him.

"No," he took another long drag and smashed the cigarette against the ashtray next to his chair. "From now on you will be working alone on this project, all your ties to the company will be cut, and as your severance pay you will receive command of a small genetic laboratory we have acquired recently. You will have a line of credit and a dozen indentured researchers under you. Design a champion for us."

Easy, I thought, those were kids playing around with hacked genomes and second-hand wetware, they had nothing of the resources and expertise I had at my disposal.

Going forward, I downloaded to my tablet all that I could about the sport. For the next two days I did very little but learn how it was played and who played it.

My new laboratory was considerably smaller than the one I used to work, but it had been equipped for a single purpose, everything was still wrapped and sealed, smelling like ascetic cleaning agents. I put the indentured workers to set everything up while I begun to organize my small office.

I wasn't about to play around, I knew very well that if this failed the bosses would want their money back and deny any involvement as I would be forced to declare bankruptcy. If I succeeded, I could be sure it would be arranged for me to go back working under him. There wasn't a chance in hell that I would let some biohackers working on their garages, with gear cobbled together from spare parts, to win.

The first thing I learned was how disorganized this whole thing was. There were barely any rules to follow besides the ban on non-organic elements and the bipedal form. I quickly took notice of the evolution in designs since the most primitive modified dogs to the three meters tall beasties they had now. For a long time, there seemed to be a preference towards endurance fighters, creatures covered in carapace and with multiple redundant systems, that could last for hours on the ring, but these days it seemed most teams were shifting to a strong opening and trick fighters. No small part of that was because the audience preferred short, fast fights than slow slugging matches that could take hours.

The media people were still trying to play catch up with the events, a few places were already recording and streaming the fights, but it seemed that a lot of it happened completely off the grid, in makeshift stadiums and spread through dark web forums. The Pope's condemnation of Affinity meant that no official media channel was willing to be the first to bring it forward, so the videos were shared only in secret. That was my first purchase, I bought copies of every fight I could find for the last year.

The new age of brutality, I thought, not for the first time as I watched the fights.

There was, however, clearly more than just the locals involved. In each fight you could see lots of nice dark suits around and there were a couple of obvious corporate representatives amidst the crowd.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were already using the fights as a testbed for some new technologies, a way to circumvent the usually troublesome and expensive requirements imposed by the new prime minister.

Now, that got my attention.

Well, it was beginning to sound more and more interesting. I could outdo these minor, backwards teams there with just a bit of work, but I could also impress some of the people in suits nosing around, or at least their backers.

For six months I labored to design and create what would be the most impressive beastie to ever walk on the arena. A PR representative named it "Apocalypse" and they even had prototype toys and merchandise ready by the time we got our first fight. I didn't care about the name, the beastie weighted almost a ton, mostly synthetic, high-density muscles, face like an African lion chiseled out of stone, hands that ended in vicious, barbed claws.

To control it all they brought in someone from the PMC division and soon enough we had our first match against a small local team. I watched it all from the security of my apartment, the video being streamed directly into my high definition wall-screen. It had been a long time since I'd done anything out of the corporate enclave.

We pulled our first victory in less than five minutes. A dreadfully barbaric business that ended with the opponent having his heart pulled out of his ribcage and the crowd cheering like mad.

For me it was nothing but a long list of data and stats to be compiled and analyzed the next morning. My bosses seemed satisfied with the result.

"Okay, you have permission to move up," Jason told me during our next monthly reunion. "They want to see you go up against some bigger competition."

I was cursed by my own success, and couldn't help but feel an inward anguish that this would be the rest of my life.

It was easy to find our next match, it seemed our last fight had attracted some attention and some rumors were going around about our affiliations and backers. They couldn't exactly ban us from fighting, but if they could destroy us inside the arena, they could prove they were better than anything a corporation could design, maybe even attract some sponsorship.

This I didn't much care for. I barely cared to watch the fight, I was told it had been a really nice fight, the crowd was finally warming up to our team. By the end it looked like they were going to have to strip the remains of the other beastie from walls.

It was a mess. At least, I was confident that it would have been enough to convince my superiors I should be moved to another project, whoever they weren't satisfied yet.

"I shouldn't be losing my time with this, sir!" I protested. "I already proved my design is superior to any other beastie!"

"That not has been determined yet," Jason looked straight at me and dismissed me.

It was really hard to keep that calm-and-steady routine going when all I wanted was to burst out of there and scream at everyone in my way. When I arrived at my office, I called my team and demanded they find the biggest motherfucker out there and arrange a fight. I would prove to them that no one would defeat my creation, and then I could go back to doing something useful.