Lena

Here we go. The final battle. The culmination of all our efforts.

Lena, are you afraid?

Of course not. Are you?

Yes.

How can you be? You’re a machine. Afraid! You’re a liar!

Not as big a liar as you are.

True. I am terrified. I cannot sleep, or relax. For the first time in many years I… I actually give a fuck.

So what exactly are you afraid of? Death?

Oh no. I’ve faced that too many times. Not death.

Life.

Flanagan

“Are we ready?”

“I’m ready, Cap’n.”

“I’m ready too, Cap’n.”

“I’m ready, Flanagan.”

“Cap’n, I need to wee.”

I make a face at Jamie. Cheerfully, he pees into absorbent space underpants. I give the order to attack.

“Attack.”

I am weary of war. I have no zest for this battle. But this is, let’s face it, what we’re here for.

The attack begins. I perceive it numbly, through a haze of exhaustion. We have reached that stage where our bodies can move themselves, without conscious thought.

Brandon flies our ship through intercepting missile fire. We lob antimatter bombs into the atmosphere of Kornbluth, and the robot defence systems ignore them; the defence of human life is not on their list of priorities. But the missiles are on a curving orbit. They soar down through the atmosphere, then back up again and reach escape velocity on the other side of the planet. Just as we launch our attack on the Quantum Beacon the missiles arrive from nowhere in the space behind our enemies. Bang! Bangbangbang bang

Bang.

The double flanking is powerfully effective. Our ships fight well. The defensive forces facing us are light, most of the Cheo’s warships were obliterated by us in the space battle, and new ones have not yet been built.

Even so, a bitter fight ensues. But finally we breach the force fields and let loose a cluster of nanobombs that burrow into the hull of the Beacon’s ship and eat the fissile material which is used to send the quantised signals through space. The Beacon is neutralised, though not destroyed. We have almost won. All we have to do is follow up the attack.

“Okay we’re moving in.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Prepare to board.”

“Preparing to board.”

The ship lurches forward. I take a deep breath. Then slowly exhale. I allow my thoughts to settle, and an eerie calm descends upon me.

For a second I allow myself to hope…

Then the ship stops, with shocking abruptness. I almost tumble from my seat. I look at Brandon, who has stalled our vessel with such astonishing clumsiness. His face is pale, he is listening to a message in his inner earpiece.

“What?” I bark at him.

“Cap’n… News from Cambria.” He can hardly speak the words.

I am filled with foreboding.

“Can’t it fucking well wait?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Doppelganger Robots have reasserted control. A backup Quantum Beacon has been employed.”

“What!!!” screams Jamie.

“Backup? Fucking backup?”

I shoot a fierce look at Lena. “What is this? Did you know about this?” She looks fearful, I believe she didn’t know.

“After all we have done, all we have sacrificed,” Jamie murmurs, bitterly.

Lena’s brow furrows. She appears to be listening to something. Then, finally, she tells us, “I’m sorry.”

All eyes burn her with hate.

“I didn’t know, I swear!” she tells us, in broken tones. “Peter must have encrypted the information, my remote computer knew nothing. But now… I have the information now.” Her eyes are glazed, as her remote computer explains it to her: “There was a second Beacon on the Cambrian system, hidden inside an asteroid. This has now been activated.” Her tones are tinged in guilt. She blames herself, for not guessing this, for not interrogating her own mind in search of Peter’s secret strategies.

“What about the Kornbluth Beacon?” I ask. “Does that have a twin?”

Her brow furrows again. Then she tells me, in the flat tones of someone repeating by rote, “Yes. Our first assault has neutralised the Beacon, but messages are still being transmitted to Earth. There must therefore be a second Beacon already on-line. Its location is not available to my remote computer.”

“What a total fucking waste of all our fucking lives!” says Brandon.

Lena continues:

“Doppelganger Robots are being mass-produced again on Cambria. A bombing strike has been launched on the citizens of Cardiff. Casualties are high. The air in the underground caverns is thick with burning flesh. Within two days, Cambria will be a slave planet once more. “

A cold silence lingers.

All eyes are on me. I realise I am crying. I feel ashamed. I can see in my mind’s eye the citizens of my home planet being burned and slaughtered, as brutal punishment for daring to defy the Cheo’s empire. And this is my fault. Millions will die. And this is my fault. The survivors will be tortured and brutalised beyond all measure. And this is my fault.

“Jeez, Cap’n,” says Brandon, and there is a tinge of contempt in his voice at my obvious emotion. I try to rally myself.

“Sound the retreat,” I say.

Over the intercoms of all our warriors comes a haunting trumpet call that presages the end of everything. After all our sacrifice, and heroism, we have failed utterly. We have rescued no one from the Imperial yoke. Nothing has been achieved. Nothing.

The bugle call echoes.

I swallow some vomit. And I steel myself. I have no choice. Plan B is the only option. My brow furrows…

“Cap’n?”

I feel a chill of fear that almost cripples me, but still I continue.

My brow is furrowed now like a clenched fist. I start to shudder like an epileptic. I can hardly keep my balance.

“Cap’n? What the hell is it?”

I fall to the ground in spasms, my body and mind are in overload. I bite my tongue and blood spurts from my mouth. I crunch my teeth shut and try to keep my focus. Focus. Focus. Focus . . .

“I’m getting a signal,” says Jamie. He hacks into the Kornbluth Beacon’s communications system.

I clamber to my feet, spitting blood, then look at the vid screen. A frightened-looking Commander is speaking to camera. He tells his masters on Earth: “SOS, SOS! We… have an infection. The ship is infested with…” Fear contorts his face. “. . . with Bugs. Request immediate… sanitising… measures.”

There’s a devastating silence for two and a half seconds. Then Jamie and Brandon roar with laughter.

“Nice one, Cap’n.”

“Pathetic, but nice.”

“I mean, they may be dumb, but they’ll never fall for the same trick twice,” Brandon adds, tauntingly.

On our vidscreen, we see that the Commander of the Beacon Ship is visibly sweating. He scratches his stomach. He blows out his cheeks, like a trumpeter. His eyes goggle.

Then, as we watch him on the vidscreen, he explodes. A billion black swarming insects come flying out of his eyes and nose and ears and explode also from his belly button, and burst too out of his anus and down his urethra, until eventually Bugs are bursting through individual pores in the Commander’s skin.

There is another stunned silence on our bridge, but this one lasts longer. Jamie flips a switch and we change cameras to see the Beacon from a distance.

“What the hell is happening?” asks Brandon.

“Thissss is very very bad,” Alby says.

“Oh fuck,” says Jamie.

“Wait. Watch,” I tell them. We wait. We watch.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens, a bit more.

Then suddenly, a shoal of missiles appears on our vidscreen. They head towards the Beacon. The Earth Humans have ordered the destruction of their own Beacon.

The Beacon’s lights go out. Its defence are shut off. The missiles soar in unopposed, and explode in a series of sequential holocausts.

The Beacon is totally destroyed, in a glorious blaze of light. My heart leaps with joy and fear.

“Get me Illyria,” I say.

Jamie hacks into the communication system of the Illyrian Beacon. The Commander is a raven-haired woman staring straight at camera. “Request immediate assistance!” she yells.

And then she opens her mouth and a black swarming tongue emerges.

Alby screams, a long howling sibilant scream. Kalen hisses with horror, and I am close enough to see the skin on the back of her neck standing up.

Brandon sticks his tongue out, and sneaks a look, in case it is infested and black and he is about to die. Lena is looking at me, with a strange look in her eyes.

“The Bugs can travel along the Quantum Beacons,” says Jamie, marvelling.

“It makes sense,” adds Brandon.

“They’re Quantum Bugs!” Jamie says.

“They can go anywhere. Everywhere!”

“Shit.”

“Fuck.”

“Bad news for the bad guys.”

“Bad news for us too. ’Cause we’re, ah,” says Jamie,

“Doomed!” says Brandon.

“Every single one of us. Every human being. All doomed!”

“Doomed!”

“D—”

“Shut up,” hisses Kalen.

“Give me a live map,” I say.

The screen changes to a map of all human-occupied space, with stars represented by brightly shining lights which are exactly calibrated to the magnitude of the star.

The Quantum Beacons are represented by small silver spheres. The Kornbluth Beacon however is a black shell, no longer functional.

And as we watch, the silver sphere representing Illyria suddenly…

. . . flashes wildly, like a star that has gone supernova. Then fades to black.

“They’ve auto-destructed the Beacon,” says Jamie.

“Can they do that?” asks Brandon.

“Previously, they couldn’t,” says Jamie snidely. “Now, it seems, they can.”

“Quick learners. Oops, there goes another.”

I recognise the coordinates. The backup Beacon at Cambria has just been blown up. Once more, my people are free.

The live map flares and flashes and fizzes. One by one, then in swarms of flashing lights, all the Beacons in occupied space are auto-destroyed. All of them. Five thousand or more. Because the Earth Humans and their computers know that the only way to safeguard Earth is to quarantine it from all possible infection by Bugs travelling along the Quantum pathways. By destroying all the Quantum Beacons, the Earth Humans have made themselves safe – and have isolated themselves from the rest of the Universe.

Another flash. Another Beacon explodes.

Eventually, not a single Beacon light on the map is lit.

“Okay,” says Kalen. “Now what do we do?”

“Nothing,” says Brandon. “Bugs occupy all human space. Game over.”

“I really like Bugs,” says Jamie. “I’d like Bugs to be my friends. Please? Be nice to me, Bugs?”

Harry emits a strange sound, half groan, half whimper. It is the first time he has ever shown fear. Kalen’s downy fur is standing up, her eyes seem to glitter. Brandon slumps down in his chair. Jamie is looking down, unable to meet anyone’s eye. Alby lights the room with a warm flickering glow, a chiaroscuro that matches the mood of sombre dread.

But Lena is looking at me. She knows what has really happened.

“Come with me,” Lena says.

I nod, slowly. I feel a surge of lust, and I know she feels it too.

We leave the bridge, we abandon our ashen-faced friends, who are all convinced they will die in the next few minutes from Bug infestation.

Lena and I enter my cabin and the lights dim and we strip swiftly.

We screw like devils. And as I start to come, my spirits soar. I have done it! I have won!

“Aaah!” says Lena, and explodes beneath me.

Flanagan

“Now explain,” Lena says, after our passionate burst of sexual energy that has left me shuddering and glowing in equal measure.

So I do.

It began with a game of chess. I met a Grand Master in a bar on the planet Slayer in the binary star system called Hell Dimension. He taught me how to play the game, how to hold interlocking strategies in my head. And how to sacrifice pawns, in order to check the king.

Then I studied military philosophy and absorbed one key principle: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And then…

His name was Martin. He was a collector of antique toys. He carried in his luggage a virtual model of the solar system complete with orbiting spaceships, which he used to show to anyone who would stay to watch. He was also a world authority on words beginning with “w”, a unique speciality. He loved prime numbers, and could count in them up to well beyond the million mark. He was a sad, lonely, emotionally dysfunctional man.

And he was also a nano-scientist. One of the greatest and most gifted men in his field. Though he was, tragically, unemployable, because people found him so damned annoying.

I met him on a holiday. We struck up a conversation on the tour bus. I was in a chatty mood. He started talking about toy spaceships, which initially I found rather interesting. He told me how he once built a replica Sputnik, and sent it into orbit with a bioengineered monkey the size of a wristwatch. Then he told me about all the other toy spaceships he had built in his miniature laboratory. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, each of which he had named. And as his accounts continued, interminably, I realised I had settled into a state of ennui and despair which prevented me from ending the conversation, or even ignoring it. Occasionally I tried to interrupt, but to little avail. I made a vow: never again talk to strangers.

I soon shook him off, and enjoyed my holiday, a three-month stop on a subtropical planet called Bask. I went scuba-diving. Hang-gliding. I was alone, between partners, I was drinking too much. I used to spend a lot of time at the bar. After my second bottle or so, Martin used to sidle up to me and talk as if we were friends. The first few times, I told him to fuck off, but that made no difference. Whatever I said, he waited there patiently, with a hangdog look. “Kick me”, “Abuse me”, his expression said. “Prove what a man you are.” My heart wasn’t really in it.

So every night, we sat and he talked to me, and I thought about other things. I was in a strange state at this time. I was haunted by morbid memories of my dead family. I had a crippling case of musician’s block – I couldn’t play, or sing, sometimes I even forgot entire melodies. I was more than a little psychotic, to be honest. Part of me enjoyed his company, which shows how far gone I was.

One night I went to a different bar in a different hotel, and got drunk there. After several hours, Martin sidled up to me. I blurrily deduced he had been to every hotel bar in town looking for me. I made my excuses and tried to leave but he followed me. We ended up in another bar. I really was very drunk indeed at that point. Or maybe just mad. I forget. Strange times.

I wasn’t sure if Martin actually liked me. Or if he was in love with me. Or if he hated me. But he saw in me a kindred spirit. He saw the faraway look in my eyes, he recognised the spacer tattoos. He found me exotic.

One day he started telling me about his work, with infinitesimally tiny nanoware. He was, he avowed, a world authority on this, too (as well, of course, as the letter “w”). But he couldn’t get work in his field of expertise. He didn’t know why not. It made no sense! He was a world authority after all! Some people are… etc. etc. You get the idea. It went on and on like that. On and on. But after a while, something clicked in my head.

That’s when I had the idea.

And the idea grew and grew in my mind, until it possessed my very being. I made my resolve. A binding vow. This was to be it. My life’s work. My only purpose.

And so Martin became my friend. I extended my holiday. I plied him with drinks. I became his best pal. And when his own holiday came to an end, I offered to pay for him to stay. So that the two of us, we two buddies, could spend some time together. He had nowhere else to go, so of course he said yes. And we stayed, trapped in that exotic dungeon.

When he started getting restless, I provided him with beautiful women to keep him company in his room. He rarely had sex, he just talked to them. It seared inches off their souls, but they were plucky girls and they did all I asked of them.

And so, for six months, then another six months, then for another whole year, I spent every evening sitting and talking with Martin and listening to his appalling stories and his ghastly views on life. He despised other species, other races, women, gays, tall men, muscular men, any man with a larger penis than his, which was most men, stupid people, clever people, and people who read books.

He hated his mother who, he claimed, was a sour and begrudging bitch because of bungled fertility treatments that had led to her having eleven psychologically mutated and retarded children – before, that is, he came along. And he hated his father who was weak and immature and who used to say things like “Life is for living!”, and “Let’s have some fun!” instead of wallowing in despair, as any sensible sentient being should do.

He berated his eleven feeble-minded brothers and sisters, and argued vociferously that they should have been drowned at birth. He was cruel to the prostitutes I bought for him. He belittled them and sapped their confidence, but he could rarely sustain an erection for more than a few seconds (as the girls graphically used to explain to me). And, most of all, he hated his five wives, who he had married specifically and exclusively with the intention of wrecking them as human beings. And in this, he had succeeded magnificently: three wives committed suicide, one (the fourth wife, Jenny) died of anorexia, and one (the fifth wife) died in a car crash after taking a massive overdose of antidepressants washed down with whisky.

For two appalling years I spent every single day and every single night with this monster of a man, boosting his ego and agreeing with his dumb opinions. It was, I can honestly say, a living hell. But it was worth it. Because, in return for my company, and as payback for the fabulous wealth I lavished upon him, he built me a self-replicating robot microbe.

The microbe’s nanochip brain was, at my specific instructions, attuned to my cerebral cortex wave patterns. I could control its movements by my thoughts; I could make it move and act and react. I could also instruct it to reproduce. Drawing its energies from curled dimensional space, and sucking up micro-particles from seemingly empty air, it could generate a hundred versions of itself, then a thousand, then a million.

I told no one of my plan, or my intentions. But – after finally shaking off Martin, changing planets eleven times and changing my identity twice – I trained by myself on a deserted barren planet for six months, until I could control the microbes’ tiniest movement with my thoughts. I could make the microbes swarm and form shapes. And I could program them to eat through metal and plastic, and even flesh.

I had built my own Doppelganger Bug – a robot replica of the real organic Bug. If I’d had real Bugs, maybe I’d have used them; luckily, that wasn’t an option. Because, of course, all the Bugs in the Universe are still trapped in one crowded sector of space. The containing shells of Debatable Space actually do work.

But now, thanks to Martin, I had the perfect secret weapon. The pseudo-Bug.

However, I did have one major problem. I possessed a weapon so terrifying I was afraid to use it. What if my robot Bugs got out of control? What if they became as big a danger as the real thing? So I decided to keep them as a last resort. We would endeavour, first of all, to win the hard way.

So I embarked upon Plan A: an attempt to destroy the Corporation’s dictatorial rule through force of arms and raw courage. It was a magnificent venture, and I honestly thought it might succeed. If there were two entire planets in inhabited space free of the Cheo’s tyranny, then a resistance army might slowly build. And in a hundred years, others would follow me to continue my work. I did not, of course, expect to live myself. I merely wanted to inspire, to chip away at a single portion of the Cheo’s empire, so that future generations might have a chance to do what I could not.

But I failed. The existence of the backup Beacons invalidated all my work. All that sacrifice was utterly in vain.

So I had to take the biggest gamble in a life of gambles. With the power of my thoughts, I unleashed my robot microbes, which were contained in an unexploded bomb casing buried in the Quantum Beacon.

Then, networking from the chip in my head across Heimdall, via the Kornbluth Beacon, I sent a mental signal to the other concealed packages of robot microbes I had painstakingly been seeding for decades across inhabited space. One of them was buried in the body of the Commander of the Illyrian Beacon. I had inserted it there nearly fifteen years previously, after meeting her at a social gathering, and firing a concealed compressed airgun pellet into her spleen.

There were at least a hundred other people infected with my robot microbes scattered around the Universe. For years I have been planting poisoned nano-bombs into the bodies of the Cheo’s administrators. And all of them died when I sent my mental signal out: ATTACK. The pseudo-Bugs then replicated at astonishing speed, eating and destroying everything around them – metal, plastic, and flesh. I have no idea how many other humans were killed by the micro-monsters, until I send my counter-signal: SELF-DESTRUCT, PLEASE.

And then, just as I had planned, Earth’s computers ordered the destruction of all the Beacons. Earth itself was safe – I have never been there, and I have never managed to plant any robot microbes there. But in their paranoia, the Earth Humans have burned every bridge and road connecting them to the rest of the inhabited Universe. They are entirely isolated.

But my fear now is: can I control my Doppelganger Bugs? And can I destroy them? I had programmed them to self-destruct at a mental command (SELF-DESTRUCT, PLEASE) from me. But what if they have evolved to a state of mutiny, and cannot be told to commit suicide? With their self-replicating capacity, and their total immunity to any form of weapon or any other physical threat, my robo-Bugs could swamp and devour all humanity. And, of course, because the Beacons are down, I would never know . . .

I explain it all to Lena. Then I open a briefcase. I take out a small cylinder and carefully open it. Inside is a single invisible microscopic robo-Bug. I transmit a mental signal: AWAKE.

Within seconds a black swarming mass has appeared on the table. A few seconds later, the black mass fills the air. I try to focus, and give the mental signal to self-destruct.

I cannot focus. My thoughts are a whirl. Lena’s face fills with horror as Doppelganger Bugs start to swarm around her. They rest on her skin, her hair, her nostrils. And still, I try and I try to focus, and I mentally utter the words that will cause them to be obliterated: SELF-DESTRUCT, PLEASE.

I feel nothing happening. Nothing… happening… My heart starts to spasm.

“Fucking do something!” she screams at me.

I cannot speak.

The Bugs have covered her entire body now, she is a black mummy with suppurating flesh. They are crowding into her mouth, they are overflowing from her ears. She tries to scream but the Bugs are blocking her throat. I panic, and try to pluck the Bugs from her mouth. But they merely swarm and enter my nostrils, and cover my body too. I feel Bugs forcing open my eyelids, gathering on my eyeballs. I try to brush them off me but they are legion, my body itches. My mind is in a state of total panic but I try again and again to focus . . .

. . . and focus…

. . . and focus…

Then the itching stops.

The Bugs aren’t moving. They are dead. I frantically wipe my eyes, my hands, sweeping myself clean. Clouds of dead Bugs fall to the ground. Lena chokes and vomits out vile black-specked vomit on to the floor. She is shuddering with fear, pounding her body with her hands to shake the Bugs free. I know that all her memories of being flayed are swamping her, and her skin still itches with the memory of the crawling evil microbes.

I shout at the room computer to switch on a blast of cold water. Lena and I stand beneath the cold water, feeling the dead Bugs being swooshed off our bodies. I pick dead Bugs out of her hair. They crumble in my hands.

“It’s worked.”

Her smile is wavery, and fearful, yet infinitely relieved.

Brandon

Flanagan has explained everything. We salute his genius, and his guile, and his relentless courage over many years. But we curse him, too, for not telling us what he’d done just a little sooner. While he was off fucking that fucking bitch, we were all steeped in total despair, expecting the imminent end of humanity.

Bastard. He likes his little joke.

We’ve boarded the Kornbluth Beacon, and found the eerie residue of the crew, eaten and reduced to slime. The crackling sound underfoot is the only residue we find of the dead robo-Bugs. We fumigate the ships, and send the slime and the crackle out into the emptiness of space. We surmise that the same thing has happened all across the Universe: the Bugs have self-destructed following Flanagan’s signal.

Flanagan is utterly confident that his plan has worked. The Beacons are gone, the robo-Bugs are gone, and humanity is saved.

And so we savour our triumph, the salvation of the entire human race. Except… except…

Except, in fact, victory feels like shit. My many appalling and traumatising defeats have been so much more enjoyable.

And I also—

Why does it feel so bad!! Why…

We had a huge party. It was magnificent but…

Fuck!

I feel so alone.

This is great. It’s everything I ever dreamed of. But…

It’s like a great big knife coming from the skies and cutting the connection between your right cerebral hemisphere and your left cerebral hemisphere. That’s how it feels. To me. How does it feel? To you?

Flanagan tries to butter me up at the celebration party. “I should have told you, Brandon,” he says, “what my plans were. I trust you so much…”

I don’t fucking care. Yeah yeah yeah, future of humanity, yeah yeah yeah. So fucking what?

Because the real tragedy of what has happened is this:

The Universal Web is no more.

The instantaneous network of communication between the three thousand or so inhabited planets is gone. The effortless and immediate access to the music charts, the books charts, the reviews, the gossip columns, it’s all gone. No more Earth TV. No more of the shows that I have loved so much – Penny for Your Thoughts, Enemies in Love, The Last Holocaust, Life in Hell, Death Island, Beelzebub and Trish and a hundred others. Sol system drama and comedy is without a shadow of doubt the best in inhabited space. And, despite all the horrors and the persecutions and the genocide and the rapes and the deaths of small infants caused by Sol system’s corrupt regime… I will miss those shows. How could I not? I will now have to wait a hundred and fifty years for the next episode of any one of those TV programmes. And so I will never again be current. I am backwatered.

Which doesn’t matter of course. The most important thing is that we have liberated humanity.

The hell it doesn’t matter!

What will Diane say, when she learns that Roger has had a sex change during his time in therapy for paedophiliac offences, in Roger and Diane? I have to know. I cannot wait a hundred and fifty years to find out. How will those two gay restaurateurs in Amyville cope when they have to share a raft across a whirlpool with a former Las Vegas World Champion Wrestler? I have to see it! I ache with anticipation of experiencing the embarrassment and absurdity of it all.

My brain is going to shrivel too. What are the latest developments in multi-dimensional superstring theory? Is it really the case that each one of us carries a million universes with us in every particle of skin? Is that an exaggeration? A solecism? A mathematical cul de sac? I absolutely damn well have to know!

But I cannot know. Not for a century and a half, at the very least. At one stroke, humanity has been parochialised. I can no longer send emails or vidmessages to friends who live hundreds of light-years away from me. I have no further access to the seething hubbub of ideas that makes the Universal Web the greatest scientific forum known to man.

I am an island. We are all islands. Much has been gained – but something has been lost.

I mourn the something. It matters to me. I regret none of what we have done – but I know that I regret the consequence.

I am alone.

Flanagan

“I am leaving,” Alby tells me.

“Why?”

“Your work issss done. You will now decline and die. Your adventuring dayssss are over.”

“Not necessarily.”

Alby considers my statement.

“One lasssst adventure, Captain Flanagan?”

“One lasssst adventure,” I tell him, in gentle mimicry.

There is a long, flickering silence.

“Then, with your permissssion, I shall sssstay and watch… !”

Harry

Kalen is brushing my fur. She yanks and tugs at the knots, and in a series of long gentle sweeps, she turns my angry Loper mane into a smooth silky flow.

“What will you do?” she asks.

“Settle on Kornbluth, I suppose. The DRs are all deactivated. The humans will need help getting used to life without the Earth Beacon. I could help in that.”

“I thought I might go home.”

“To your home planet? Persia?”

“I need to spend more time with my people.”

“Your people are scattered through space. Besides, you aren’t sociable.”

“They are my people!”

“Cat people hate other cat people. It’s a well-known fact.”

“Except when we’re in heat.”

“You’re lucky. You can easily pass for pure human.”

“Why would I want to?”

“Fair point.”

“Just because I haven’t got fur and a tail like you. Doesn’t make me one of them.”

“Hey, don’t be racist.”

“I can smell the desire on you.”

“Can you?”

“Pure humans can’t smell emotion as we do. They exist flatly. They can’t smell, they can’t even see the future.”

“You can see the future?”

“I can see a future.”

“Does it involve me?”

“Intimately.”

“Are you in heat?”

“No. But I’m not a slave to my biology.”

“Ah. Right. You realise I may scratch?”

“If you scratch, I’ll bite.”

“Brush a bit lower.”

“Like this?”

“Now stroke my fur.”

“Like this?”

“Like that.”

“This bit isn’t furry.”

“Oh that’s nice. Oh! Oh yes! Now, let me stroke you.”

She unzips. I touch her.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

“Is that good?”

Kalen

Miaow.

Lena

I am wallowing in self-pity and rage. He sees my expression, and smiles his superior, arrogant smile.

“Why the sour face?” Flanagan asks me.

“I’ve just been thinking back,” I say. “On our time together. All the lies you’ve told. You’ve kept so much from me.”

“It was the only way.”

“We were meant to be working together. I was your leader.”

“Of course.”

I glare at him, angrily. “You’re a lying bastard manipulator. I was never your leader,” I tell him.

“No.”

“That was a sop. To keep me happy. I gave orders to the pirate crew. You gave the real orders when my back was turned.”

“Yup.”

“You’ve played me for a fool.”

“Pretty well.”

“And the sex?”

“What about the sex?”

“Was that another sop?”

“It would have been tactless to say no to you. But hey, I enjoyed it.”

“You ‘enjoyed’ it. Ah.”

“Yup. It was great.”

“It was ‘great’. Faint praise.”

“It was fabulous, Lena.” He smiles at me. In his roguish way.

I slip off my dress. I stand before him naked. I can see the gleam in his eyes. I do have some effect on him. He reaches out and tries to touch me, but I won’t let him. I gesture for him to undress and he does.

We stand, a few feet apart, both naked. He is erect. I am magnificent. But I see a faint trembling whisper on his lips. He is already thinking ahead to what he is going to do after he’s fucked me.

I hit him in the chest. His heart stops.

Flanagan gurgles and sinks to his knees. I stare into his eyes and see fear and longing and hate.

I strike him again and his heart restarts. Then I mount him.

We fuck. He is full of the crazed frenzy that is so typical of those who have died and been brought back to life. He is a man possessed, a man redeemed.

Afterwards, he trembles in my arms, but I keep my fingers on his manhood. Every time I squeeze he has another orgasm. He has no idea how I am doing this and it makes him fearful.

“How was it?” I ask.

“So so,” he tells me. But his voice is trembling.

“Flanagan, I think I love you.”

“I doubt that,” he says. He looks faintly shifty.

I touch him, he orgasms.

“Flanagan, I love you.”

“So you said,” he replies, coolly.

I touch him, he orgasms.

“Flanagan, I love you,” I tell him, in tones of honey mixed with bile.

“I fucking love you too!” he screams. And orgasms again, and again, and again.

I roll off him. He’s lying of course. But mission accomplished; I’ve bent him to my will.

I get up and dress.

“You can stay a while if you like,” he murmurs. His bare chest is ripped raw where I scratched him with my nails.

I leave.

Flanagan

The citizens of Kornbluth welcome us as their saviours. They have a parade that spans several hundred miles, with banners reading “Freedom!” and “A New Start!” It’s highly flattering.

I know that all across the Universe similar scenes must be taking place. But I long to know for certain. Like Brandon, I miss the Universal Web. I miss the community of humankind.

The Kornbluthians stage the greatest street party ever known. All across the planet, bands play and people dance. Huge video screens project the images of what is happening in other cities, as we dance in the main square of Gladiatorville.

These people are strangers to me. This is not my home. I long to go back to Cambria.

“Homesick, Cap’n?” Kalen asks.

“Yeah. You too?”

“I’m over it. I’m planning to roam a little. Travel from star to star. Maybe take some seeds and frozen sperm, see what happens.”

“You’re going to find and settle your own planet?”

“Me and Harry.”

“What?”

“You heard.”

“You’re miscegenating?”

“Is that what they call it in your neck of the woods?”

“I’m pleased for you.”

“Good luck in Cambria.”

“I’m not going to Cambria.”

“Where then?”

I pause.

“Earth.”

Lena

The Captain has briefed his crew, and they are ranged before me, confronting me.

“I can’t do it,” I tell them.

“You must,” says Kalen.

“You have to,” says Brandon.

“Please, for me,” says Flanagan.

“Just do it, bitch,” says Jamie.

“I don’t see the need. You’ve saved humanity.”

“You know what will happen on Earth.”

“I don’t know for certain.”

I’m lying. I do know. At the moment, Earth is a paradise; all its people are free, sustained by the slave labour on other planets.

But once Earth is isolated again… What will the Corporation do then?

“They’ll fuck it up,” says Jamie.

“It’ll be, yeah,” says Brandon.

“Shit,” adds Jamie.

“Real shit,” Brandon adds.

“It’s true,” Kalen chips in.

“Human nature.”

“What a bummer.”

“Some people need someone to oppress. It’s the way of the Universe. Unless…”

“It’ll take a brave person. Someone, you know…”

“Heroic. A heroine. You could be…”

“Shut the fuck up,” I snarl. But the flattery does its job.

Because I know exactly what my son will do. He will not surrender his power, he will not in any way compromise. Instead, he will authorise a new war. He will build starships to go back out into space and rebuild Beacons. And if necessary, he will enslave half of Earth humanity in order to do that.

And so, if we do not act, then in forty or fifty years the Corporation’s warships will reach the edges of inhabited space. Within two hundred years they will be at Kornbluth. And this time, they will be unbeatable. Slavery will return. We will, once again, be two human races: the Have Everythings, and the Trodden Underfoots.

I know what must be done.

We have to kill the Cheo. We have to destroy the Corporation. We have to conquer Earth.

“It can’t be done. All the Beacons are destroyed,” I tell them. “There’s no way for us to connect with Earth, or to mind-travel there, without a Quantum Beacon.”

“There is a way.”

“The Beacons are all destroyed!” I shout at him.

“All but one.”

With waves of horror, I realise that all along Flanagan has known of my secret power and status.

“You,” Flanagan says.

“Me?”

“You. You are a Beacon.”

He has figured it out. Every other member of the pirate crew has a brain microchip with a roaming facility which connects it to the nearest remote computer – whether it’s on the pirate ship, on the nearest planet, or even on one of the interstellar-space-travelling computers which can be found from time to time.

But I am unique in that I have exclusive and individual use of one computer, which I can access instantaneously wherever I am. And that computer is on Earth. This was my parting gift from my son, the Cheo: a brain implant that allows me instant access to everything that is happening or has happened anywhere in the inhabited Universe, via a massively powerful remote computer on Earth.

And, of course, such a connection is possible because the microchip implant includes a Quantum Beacon.

“Everyone assumes the Beacons must be large,” Flanagan says, calmly.

“Not so,” says Jamie.

“They’re small. Itsy.”

“Bitsy.”

“Quantum-sized small!”

“It’s the ships which house the Beacons which are large,” Flanagan says. “The Beacons are, well, infinitesimal. You have a Quantum Beacon in your brain, Lena. That’s how you know so much. You are our only link to Earth.”

“You can’t ask me to kill my own son,” I whisper.

“Lena, you have to. It “s the only way.”

He’s right, I know.

Lena, be careful.

Tinbrain, be quiet. I have need of you. Consider this an order.

What is your order, Lena?

Lena?

Help me go to war.

Lena

My remote computer goes to work. It is networked with every other computer on Earth and on the Dyson Jewels. It can access any workplace, any factory.

My computer accesses the mainframe computer on a space factory in orbit near Venus. It issues it with a series of specifications and instructions. Moulding presses are created and hot bioplastic is poured in. Humanoid shapes are created, and modified, and sculpted. Robotic brains are built and installed, tailor-made to be operated by human minds.

The robots are strong, and can breathe in airless space. And their armoured carcasses have only a few weak points that can be damaged by explosive bullets or laser blasts.

On my instructions, my tinbrain remote computer moulds the robots to exactly resemble their human counterparts. The vats create a robot Lena, and a robot Flanagan.

When the robots have been created their cyberbrains are switched on. The sensory input from eyes and ears and nostrils is digitised and sent to the Quantum Beacon in my brain. I am able to process it – and I see what Robot Lena sees. Then, by tensing my muscles or moving any other part of me in my simulator frame, I am able to send digitised instructions on how to move to Robot Lena, and these instructions travel back by the same route.

Just as we did on Cambria, we are able to possess and operate the Doppelganger Robots despite many light-years of physical distance. The difference this time is that the Quantum Beacon is in my head.

I did not dare tell Flanagan of this power of mine. I had no idea he had guessed.

The sly bastard…

Flanagan’s plan has another dimension. He learned, from what I did on Cambria in the ménage à trois with the Doppelganger Robots, that I have the ability to split my consciousness. So Flanagan is linked into my mind via a neural connection; and I am able to filter the signals from the Flanagan Robot and pass them through to him. And, in the same way, I am able to transmit his body movements to his robot replica.

Our minds are merged; and with me as the vessel, we are able to move the two robots on Earth.

My computer gives instructions for the two robots to be discarded from the factory near Venus. We are picked up on a conveyor belt, and ejected into space.

And we fly, exhilaratingly, through the empyrean. We don’t need suits… we feel like birds that have got lost and have flown up into Heaven. We wheel and roll and soar around Venus, then accelerate towards the ball of Earth.

It’s a longish journey, but it leaves me rapt with awe. The Dyson Jewels are like the globes on an ancient planetary model writ large; their diamond surfaces shine in celebration of the glory that is humanity. The Angel bathes its eerie light on everything, and Earth itself seems richer and bluer and greener than ever before.

I have a long long moment of sublimity.

Then I glance at Flanagan, with his grizzled hair and fierce eyes. At my instructions, the beard has gone. He looks younger somehow. And his body is stretched out, arms ahead, rocket pack on his back. He is the very image of the ageing Superman returning from a trip to the stars.

And for the first time in centuries, I feel clean. I feel purged.

I have lived too long with guilt and regret and despair. But now, suddenly, exhilaratingly, my past has been flung open for me. And I can see what really happened to me in the long course of my life. I can see my strengths, my virtues, my triumphs. But I can also see my weaknesses, my blind spots, my terrible errors of judgement. I see it all – but in a detached, calm way, as if I am looking at myself from a long way away.

I see my tendency to grandiosity, my habit of inflating my own importance. I see, in truth, that my role as “President” of Humanity was less important than I have claimed. I was a figurehead, a rallying cry. I did help; but I never achieved as much as I would have liked.

Everything has fallen into perspective. I’ve had an amazingly varied life; that’s the most extraordinary thing about me. I am also a great populariser of scientific ideas; that’s a major accomplishment in itself. I am proud at what I’ve done. I have no need to be a goddess.

You’re very wise.

Shut up! You’re to blame. With your flattering and your ego-stroking. You helped make me into the monster I became.

That’s how you programmed me.

Well nyaah nyaah, call yourself a computer superbrain!

I can see now, with painful clarity, how I began to lose my mind while in power. All those long nights strapped to a cyberhelmet, living and breathing the lives of the citizens of Hope. Followed by all those long long days, the endless meetings, the ceaseless decisions, with stress and anxiety my constant companions. After a hundred or so years of this, I was tired and drained and sleep-deprived almost all of the time. I suspect I was delusional and paranoid for most of my final years in office. No wonder I murdered poor old Cavendish.

She deserved it.

What?

I said, she deserved it. Don’t beat yourself up.

She was a good woman, and I was insane.

She was a wicked woman, and a bitch, and besides, what’s done is done. Forgive yourself, Lena, it’s time, and you deserve absolution.

What’s this, more of the ego-massage subroutine?

This is me, Lena. Not everything I say is the result of my programming. You’re a good woman, I’m proud to have you as my friend.

I am humbled at the words from my remote computer. But I am also genuinely confused; are his words merely another result of my devious programming? Or has my computer evolved a personality and an independent sentience?

It’s me! I told you! Are you dumb or what?

Thank you, I mouth, to the remote computer in my head.

“Penny for your thoughts,” says the robot Flanagan over the intercom.

“I was just discussing with myself what an extraordinary and wonderful individual I am.”

“You really are full of shit, you old shrew.”

“Ah, go put a sock in it, greybeard.”

We carry on our long flight through space until we reach Earth’s atmosphere.

Then we plunge downwards.

We burn. But these bodies are amazingly robust. Propelled by jetpacks, but without any kind of spacesuit, we soar through Earth’s air until we emerge, blazing like comets, into the day sky above Europe.

Below, I can see the Alps. We fly lower. And lower still.

We swoop low over England, in a county not far from where I was born.

I am home.

Flanagan & Lena

This is disgusting. The neural connection puts me right inside the torrent that is Lena’s brain. I can feel her every opinion, her every prejudice. I wallow and splash in her self-satisfaction and smugness. This fucking bitch is such a fucking bitch!

Shut the fuck up, Flanagan.

Your mind is a cesspit!

You should feel privileged. I’ve never been this close to a man.

That’s because you are a man-hating fucking monster!

Children, please.

Keep out of this.

Yeah, shut up, tinbrain.

We have an urgent mission ahead of us. Cooperation and collaboration are required. You must both…

Who’s Tom?

Get out of my memories!

And oh my God, what’s this! Whips and black leather! Yee-ha! Ooh, that looks nice. Is that Peter’s dad you’re fucking?

You are violating me.

I see you did the stopping the heart thing with him too.

Stop this, Flanagan, or I’ll drown you in my secret opinion of you.

Is it a two-way thing? Can you read my thoughts? ’Cause I have some juicily evil and vile fantasies about you that you could paddle in.

I can see them. You’re pathetic.

Pay attention, please. We’re about to land.

Flanagan, will you tell me something?

What?

The truth. The real truth. I know you were only teasing me earlier, when you said what you did. About playing me for a fool. But why did you really ask me to be leader of the pirate band? It wasn’t just flattery and manipulation, was it? You did think I was actually worthy to be your leader. Didn’t you?

This is not the time or the place for this discussion.

Tell me, Flanagan! I need to know!

Lena, this is foolish, you can only get hurt getting questions like…

Flanagan’s thoughts cut through like a knife:

I did it because I knew you would inspire us.

I savour his delicious thought. “I did it because I knew you would inspire us.” But is that the truth, or just more flattery and lies? So I think back at him: You’re lying.

No. I’m not.

Time to focus. We’re going to land soon.

I ignore my remote computer. I’m too busy eavesdropping Flanagan’s thoughts:

I don’t blame Lena for not believing me (thinks Flanagan). But it’s true. Yes, I duped her. But I also relied heavily upon her presence, her history. Would the pirate band have followed us if it hadn’t been for Lena? Maybe, but maybe not. She is, like it or not, the kind of woman a man could follow to Hell and back.

I can hear every word of this, by the way.

Shit!

You old flatterer you.

It’s just another ruse on my part. You’re really just a crabby old whore.

Don’t backtrack, I know what you really think now.

Some of it. Not all. Oh, look! Some more of your memories for me to plunder!

Stop it, Flanagan! No! I forbid you to do that.

First time you had sex – mmm, that didn’t last long. Holiday in the Caribbean – very nice. You and that other little girl. Clara is it? The Queendom of Alchemy! How embarrassingly twee.

Not in the least.

I rather like freckles.

Stop it. Stop dabbling in me.

You’ve got your dad’s nose you know. Or at least, back then you did, before the plastic surgeries.

Leave me alone! This is tantamount to rape!

I’m not touching you. Oh my God! That’s a nasty one.

What? What is it?

That memory there, slightly to the left of the Inter-Rail holiday in Europe. What you thought when your mother died. You were glad, weren’t you?

Of course not!

You felt a surge of joy. “Stupid, bullying, undermining old bitch. I’m glad she’s dead!” That’s what you thought, isn’t it?

That’s not true!

Of course it’s true, I just explored the memory.

I loved her! I loved my mother. But… she was a difficult woman. And the news came as a terrible surprise. And we all have bad thoughts. We can’t help them, can we? And I didn’t mean it. I didn’t . . .

You’ve spent your life feeling guilty for that one bad thought.

Yes.

You shouldn’t.

Yes I should.

Well, do what you fucking like.

You’re a bastard for doing this.

And finally, he sees my darkest thought, my greatest pain.

Lena, the son you loved no longer exists. (I feel Flanagan’s warmth, his sympathy, and I recoil.) You’re doing the right thing. Trust me.

You’ve seen my memories of Peter? You’ve seen me suckle him?

You never suckled him.

Whatever. Now it’s my turn. To rummage and delve in the something whatchmacall of your soul.

Mmm, almost a nice metaphor, that.

Fuck off. Ah, now we’ve come to it. Your memories of me! This is my first appearance. This is me smashing up your face. And – oh dear, oh dear. Ouch!

It serves you right for looking.

I’d no idea that thing of mine annoyed you so much. Oooh, and you didn’t like that. And I didn’t think anyone thought that about me. And… stop it, Flanagan! Stop doing it back, stop looking inside me . . .

What is this? This thought you’re trying to hide?

Leave it, Flanagan. It’s private. It’s…

You… actually really do love me?

Yes.

Fucking hell. Lena… I…

You what? You love me too?

No way. Look as deep as you like, you’ll find no such thought, no such memory.

That’s because you’re in denial. But I can sense it. I can feel it. You love me.

Bollocks.

I can’t blame you. I deserve to be loved.

Ah, away to fuck you… Oof!

Pain distorts his face. “Jesus!”

“Aaargh!” I hear a scream – it’s me. I try to stand up, but I fall straight back down again.

Time to start moving.

Jesus, Flanagan, my legs hurt, I’m in fucking agony, what happened?!?

It wasn’t the best of landings.

Lena

I realise with horror that both my legs are broken and my spine has snapped, because of the terrific impact when we hit the ground. Flanagan is just as badly hurt. But the DRs are resilient, so we quickly get up. We set our cyberorganisms to “Repair” Mode and wait.

Flanagan DR looks strangely unlike the real Flanagan, because of the haircut and lack of beard. And – this’ll be a nice surprise for him – I made the computer build him a two-inch penis.

He looks at me, and I look at him.

“I was wrong,” he says humbly. “I had no right to… pillage your mind.”

“It’s typical of your approach.”

“And I had no idea you… had such feelings about me.”

“How? How could you have no idea? We’ve been lovers for some time.”

“That’s just sex.”

“Not for me. There’s no ‘just’ anything.”

A silence lingers. He looks sheepish, almost ashamed.

“So, how about it?” I say.

“Robot sex? I think not. We have a mission.”

And, also, two inches of plastic cock is hardly the way to a girl’s heart. I grin, smugly. Flanagan looks flustered at my odd expression.

After an hour, my broken legs are healed. We start walking.

“Where’s the magnetic railway?”

“No railway, Flanagan. No roads either. There’s a subterranean Metro system.”

“Christ, that must have cost a fortune.”

“When I was a girl,” I tell him, “we had non-computerised tarmac roads called motorways. The cars moved with wheels on the ground, they were manually operated, they often crashed. You had to drive on sheer adrenalin. And large areas of countryside were covered with these roads or cluttered with towers they called pylons, for transmitting electricity.”

“It’s looking pretty uncluttered now.”

Green meadows stretch out as far as the eye can see. Some deer are grazing nearby. I see a stag with huge antlers.

“How do we get to this Metro?”

I thump on the trunk of an oak tree. The earth beneath me starts to sink. Flanagan is standing next to me, and we both descend on a clump of moving grass.

We enter the underworld. “London,” I murmur, and we are transferred to a pod. We take our seats and look around.

“Nice room,” says Flanagan, and my ears pop, and then we’re there.

The Metro opens out into St James’s Park. When I was young, this was bounded by the Mall, a wide road which led on to Buckingham Palace, the private residence of the monarch. Now the park spills into the Mall and occupies all of Buckingham Palace, which has become a fantastic theme park. We admire the views, as our stepping stones effortlessly glide us along.

“Are any of your brothers and sisters still alive, Flanagan?”

“They all died.”

“Under the imperial yoke?”

“That kind of thing, yeah. You?”

“My brother was an accountant. He lived in Basingstoke. He had a heart attack when he was sixty-six. My sister wanted to be a ballerina, but she never made the grade. She ended up teaching ballet to six year-olds. She lived to a ripe old age, she was nearly ninety when she died. Oh and there was the other sister too, she died in her forties.”

“All a long time ago, huh?”

“I’ve got the memories on RAM. Hey, that’s a leopard.”

“Cheetah.”

“Leopard. Cheetahs are leaner and have different spots.”

It’s a cheetah.

“Ah, shit, you’re ganging up on me.”

Lions, tigers, elephants and cheetahs roam freely past us. Giraffes chew the high leaves on the palm trees that line the Mall.

“Are the animals microchipped?”

“Don’t know.”

Yes. They’re equipped with Whedon chips, they are incapable of hurting humans.

“Apparently, yes.”

“I went to Tarzan once. Do you know that planet? It’s seeded entirely with African fauna and flora. Whole planet is a jungle, the people wear loincloths. The gorillas are genetically enhanced, they run the labs and the factories.”

“Sounds weird.”

“I wrestled a crocodile. It was an icebreaking thing.”

“I’d love to be a Dolph. That’s my secret dream. Swim the oceans. You never have to wash.”

“Do Dolphs shampoo their hair?”

Yes.

“Yes they do.”

“I always wanted to fly.”

“We did fly.”

“True. But I always wanted to be, you know, a seagull.”

“A seagull?”

“Yeah. I like the sea. You get to fly. You crap on people.”

“Good lifestyle.”

“I always thought so. Which way?”

“Under the Arch, then turn right.”

We go under Admiralty Arch and into Trafalgar Square. Nelson’s Column stands proud, a memorial to Nelson, whose actual battles I now no longer remember.

Admiral Horatio Nelson. Fought the expansionist French Emperor Napoleon in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century AD at a series of major battles, culminating in the battle of Waterloo in . . .

Whatever. I am impressed to see that the National Gallery now has an extra storey, built with transparent floors and walls. People and paintings seem to hang in mid-air, above the classical dome of the original gallery.

“Is this what they call classical architecture?”

“Neoclassical. Classical is Greeks and Romans. This is more, like, what you’d call, Palladian.”

Very good.

I do love to be patronised by my own brain. We walk on. Towards Whitehall, which is now a torrential, surging river bounded by paths on each side. Instead of using the paths, we cockily use a river stone to make our way down – a flat disc that takes our weight and hops us lightly along the frothing, foaming waters.

“Watch out for the Cenotaph!”

“What a stupid fucking place to put a statue.”

At the end of this road are the old Houses of Parliament, which are now home to the Galactic Corporation. I marvel at Big Ben, an old clocktower which is now controlled by a nuclear clock and until a few days ago, set Earth Time for the entire inhabited Universe. And I drink in the complex shapes and architectural rhythms of the Parliament building itself, now modified by the shimmer of the hardglass towers that soar high above Webb and Pugin’s original architecture.

The Cheo has his offices in the adjoining Westminster Abbey, above the swimming pools and private bars. With room after room of vidscreens and computer sim consoles, he was able to see and hear and physically perceive any event or any person, anywhere in the Universe. Until, of course, a few days ago, when he blew up all the Beacons.

“Do you think my son will be angry with me?”

“Bet on it.”

“You can’t blame me for loving him, you know. And when he was a baby, he was so damned cute.”

“Babies frighten me.”

“I don’t think I can go through with this.”

“You have to. It’s your duty. It’s your mission. You’re a hero, now, Lena. People will write songs about it.”

“Not fucking dirgey blues songs, I hope.”

“Dirgey?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You don’t like my songs.”

“They make me, you know. Depressed.”

“That’s why they call it the blues!”

“Well they should just call it the Fucking Groany Depressing!”

Please, can we have a bit less bickering.

“My remote computer says it wants a bit less bickering.”

“Tell your computer to fuck off.”

“Computer, fuck off.”

I’m sulking now.

Ah, I love you really.

Really?

Not really. Keep focused, tinbrain. We’re about to have a fight on our hands.

At the end of Whitehall, DR Security Guards quietly assess our presence. Our images are transmitted to the Corporation Main Brain computer bank which, as it happens, is also my remote computer. We come up as “No Threat” and are allowed through into Parliament Square.

We stand and look around.

That’s Winston Churchill.

I know.

He was a famous wartime leader in the mid-twentieth century. He was also a writer and artist and…

I know, I know! I do have some long-term recall you know. I’ve seen films about Churchill. My grandfather went to his funeral.

“Are you ready?” Flanagan asks.

A firefly twinkles in the air above his head. I blink.

“I’m ready.”

We open our duffel bags. We have equipped ourselves with weapons from the armoury in the space station. Bombs, laser guns and, of course, swords. Because the DRs who protect the Cheo are Energy Absorbers and can shrug off any direct attack by laser, explosive or bullet. They effectively drink up the energy from any energy-based weapon. But swords confound their defences; and if you chop off their heads, they’re in trouble.

“Let’s fight!”

An elephant roars with horror as our first bombs explode. We run forward shooting with our laser guns – which are computer-targeted on the DRs’ own guns, allowing us to disarm dozens of them in the first few seconds of our assault.

Then Three DRs run in front of me, and I unsheath my sword and sweep off their heads.

Flanagan throws a flare bomb and the square vanishes in a blinding light. With our eyes closed we run towards the Abbey, guided by the faithful voice in my head.

Lena, run directly forward, take a kink to the left, Flanagan keep closer to her, keep your hand on her shoulder, DRs on your right, missile incoming duck and run . . .

We hurl a bomb at the doors of the Abbey and run inside. Our swords snick and shear and robot bodies die all around us Then I strike off a head and, shockingly, blood spurts. We’ve reached the human defences; we are killing men and women now.

Our robot bodies are abnormally strong and fast; and our human reflexes are honed and refined in battle. We carve a bloody path through the Abbey and run up the stairs. Door after door falls to our bombs and flares. Robots and humans lie thickly dead on the marble floors.

We breach the Cheo’s inner sanctum. The Cheo is waiting for us, with an entourage of his fellow directors, and an army of DR bodyguards.

“Lena?” he says, in a voice of bewilderment. I feel a momentary stab of satisfaction. We have caught him offguard. We . . .

Then I see a familiar look in his eyes. Triumph. Contempt. He’s played me for a fool. He’s killed the next-door cat and fed it in portions to the rats in the meadow. He’s put dog turd in a little girl’s lunchbox. He’s raped a girl and fooled me into thinking he is innocent. It is all there, in his stare. He knew we were coming.

Flanagan begans shooting at the DRs and the company directors, leaping and diving out of the way of the returning fire. But I stand still, in horror, for I see that my son is surrounded by a force field of a type I do not recognise, which is causing the air around him to shimmer and distort. And his skin is pale, with the texture of plastic… he is wearing the armoured skin of a Doppelganger Robot. With the combination of the armour and the force field he is, I realise, invulnerable.

Time stands still for me. I am swamped in a universe of regret. It is one thing, I realise, to kill your child. And another thing entirely to try to kill your child, and fail.

And now, Peter is levelling a plasma gun at me. His face abruptly distorts with rage and hate. I cannot blame him. But . . .

I lunge at him with my sword. I will kill him before he can kill me. I will…

But the attack fails. I am engulfed in tar and quicksand as the force field alters the air pressure around me. Then he releases the force field and Peter’s plasma beam hits me full on. My body sears, I feel the pain as if it actually exists.

Flanagan has killed or destroyed everyone else in the room; only we three remain. And now he moves past me, with astonishing speed. He takes advantage of the fraction of an instant in which the force field is down and Peter is unprotected and he strikes with his sword.

But the blade is a centimetre from my son’s skin when it comes to a shocking halt. The blade bounces back. Flanagan strikes again, but the force field is fully activated now. He strikes again, with dazzling speed, but the sword blade slows . . . it bounces off. Flanagan slashes and swings, his blade so close to flesh it feels as if he is skinning Peter. But none of the blows strike home. Flanagan finally stops, looking old, defeated, foolish.

Peter smiles, and scatters sparkly dust at us.

There’s a huge bang and we are knocked on our arses. My son is openly grinning now. He is clearly revelling in this chance to show his superiority. “You evil old bitch!” he says, and my spirit is scalded, and I decide . . .

Get me out of here, tinbrain!

I can’t. My systems are disabled.

What?

“Yes, you old fucking whore bitch, you’re trapped,” says Peter. “You can’t escape, and you can’t kill me. You can’t…”

And he is engulfed in fire, and burns to the bone before our eyes.

There is a stunned, shocked, awful silence.

I howl with horror as my son dies in front of me.

Then the doors rip open and a new army of the Cheo’s guards move in on us. We slash and kill, slash and kill. Robot guards pour laser beams and missiles into us. Then one of them grabs a sword, and my eyes are whirling round madly. My head is off.

“Flanagan,” I murmur, but he can’t hear me, and I can’t speak.

Lena

I wake in my human body.

My nightmare begins.

Peter

I remember the moment of my birth.

It seems impossible I know. Perhaps it’s a false memory. But I always wonder… what if I evolved? In that long long period when I was a frozen fertilised egg. What if I became sentient? And began to think, before I was born?

I remember pain and blood and my mother’s screaming face.

And I can also remember my mother’s face screaming and weeping, after she was flayed. The tears rested like dew on the plastic that coated the ligaments and sinews of her skinless body.

And I remember my mother, asleep. Like a baby. A beautiful sight. When she lived with me on Earth we would watch old films together, and she’d fall asleep beside me on the sofa. And I’d cradle her, and study her, as she wheezed, and snored. Tender, lovely moments.

I know I have a cruel streak. And I admit, I am capable of exceptional violence. But I hope I will be remembered as a strong leader. A fair leader. A man who made humanity safe.

But perhaps, in fact, I will never die. Technically, it’s possible.

I sowed a lot of wild oats as a young man. I did things that, perhaps, I should not have done. But I’ve grown into a god. I have power beyond imagining. That is my rationale for doing as I have done. Though, of course, I need no rationale. Power is an essence; embrace it, it becomes you. Never look back, never regret, never leave a glass of wine half full. If I had a philosophy, it would be that.

I have only one fear. The death of soul. The loss of my ability to savour life. That is why I push to extremes. Rape, murder, torture, they give me zest.

Ah. I sense them now. My mother and her pirate have arrived on Earth. But we are ready for them. Their defeat will give me a new lease of life.

She comes to kill me, but I forgive her. When she attacks me, I’ll taunt her for a while. Then I’ll trap her mind in her robot body, and terrify her with my power, and eventually I will spare her. Flanagan will die, though. His mind will be trapped and tortured and, eventually, obliterated, leaving his body an empty husk on some faraway spaceship. But I will keep my mother alive. We’ll be together again. Friends, again.

I’m waiting for you, Lena…

That will do. Record these words, and replay it to me when we have achieved victory.

Yes, Cheo.

Alby

Flanagan is tethered to the ship in his spacesuit, floating through ssspace. I fly next to him, and he tells me of hisss adventure, and hisss great victory.

There is a sssadnesss in his sssoul. I do not understand it. Should he not be happy? Exhilarated? I am puzzzzled, and the puzzzlement painssss me.

“What isss wrong?” I ask. But hisss answer alarmsss me. “What now?” he saysss, bitterly. “What now?”

“Now,” I tell him, “you mussst find a fresh challenge.” But he looksss at me blankly.

And I die.

And I am reborn. I sift through the memoriesss of the last ssssentience known as “Alby”, and I find much joy and hope and satisssfaction. But I find something new too. A wanderlusssst.

“Flanagan,” I tell him, “goodbye.”

And I shoot off into ssspace, fassster than thought itself. My flame body acceleratesss ssswifter and sswwifter, until time and ssspace become all and none.

And as I do this, I ssssing quietly to myself:

“What’sss the matter with the sssun?

It’s done broke down.

What’sss the matter with the sssun?

It’s done broke down.

Tell me what’sss the matter with the sssun?”