Version 43

by Philip Palmer

  And there I stood, bitterly cold in my humaniform body, a single dot in a world of white. Then I saw the shadows on the ice; then the shadows became solid. A flock of Quantum Warriors surrounded me. They had followed me somehow – did teleportation leave a trail? Or was the smear of improbability they had coated me with like a spoor that could be tracked?

  I raised my plasma gun and began to fire at the Warriors, but I knew there was no point.

  Then every atom in my body was ripped into its component fundamental particles, and I died.

  THE COP

  Version 47

  I awoke; and was reborn.

  There was no databird to reboot me. My only memories were those I had possessed when I downloaded two weeks previously. But according to the system I had so carefully set up, the death of one Cop still automatically triggered the rebirth of the next.

  And there were now thousands of Cops in Lawless City, dormant and concealed in various locations. And each Cop was housed in a rebirthing pod, and each pod was loaded with a memory chip which stored all my downloaded data and mission log memories, filtered of all extraneous emotional content to keep my purpose pure.

  They could keep killing me; I would keep being reborn; it would be a long slow game of attrition.

  THE COP

  Version 48

  Version 49

  Version 50

  Version 51

  Version 52

  Version 53

  Version 54

  I died, and was reborn; and died and was reborn; and died, and was reborn.

  In the course of each brief life, I fought my fight against the anciens, undeterred and unafraid.

  But all the while, as I walked and as I fought and as I conspired to defeat my enemy, I dreamed a series of incessant waking dreams:

  The silver-haired man was hunting me, and it was my father. And my father laughed, and caught me, his son, and ate my flesh, and spat it out in disgust, and dribbled saliva and red meat down his chin.

  The Sheriff looked reproachfully at me, his face bloodied and ripped, and died.

  My father became my mother, who was also my lover, and she ravished me and scratched my skin with her sharp nails, and then her flesh decayed and worms crawled through her skin into my skin.

  The Sheriff looked reproachfully at me, his face bloodied and ripped, his arm-stump gushing blood, and he died.

  Aretha smiled at me, and stroked my face with a soft hand, then spat in my face. And then she called me names, vile names, swear-words, and evil-sounding words I had never heard before. “You were human once, but now you are just machine,” she said mockingly, and I was full of rage.

  The Sheriff looked reproachfully at me, miraculously still alive, a head without a body, surviving on hate alone.

  I was at a funeral. There was a funeral procession. The bodies of Aretha’s children had finally been found, after a second earthquake had spat up its load of dead bodies. Twelve corpses were identified, including Aretha’s sister, and Aretha’s two children. All were too long dead to be revivable.

  And there I could see her; Aretha, dressed all in black. And there was Macawley too. A sprinkling of cops added to the scant community of mourners. There were twelve coffins, two of them child-sized. Then Aretha saw me lurking and stared at me, and she recognised me.

  “You,” she mouthed, and I knew that she knew that I had caused all the strangeness that had led to the deaths of her beloved girls.

  I fled, and as I ran tears fell down my cheeks. I remembered the look of hate on Aretha’s face, and I was consumed with contempt for myself.

  What had I done! In pursuit of my mission, I had devastated all these people’s lives, and allowed the veil of reality to become cracked.

  Eventually, I stopped running, and started walking. I was two blocks away from my apartment when I was killed by a meteorite that fell out of the sky and landed on my head.

  The improbability of it smote me almost as powerfully as did the large and very dense meteorite, which crushed my skull, smashed my limbs and burned my clothes and my flesh. This bizarre disaster was, of course, just another consequence of my bitter war with the anciens.

  And, as I lay dying, I thought: this part is not a dream. The funeral actually happened, I really did weep. I really did burn with love for this woman who I have so utterly betrayed. And I really have been, however bathetic and absurd it might seem, struck and killed by a falling star.

  But I was reassured by the knowledge that once I died, and was reborn, my new self would know none of this. And so all the grief and pain and love I felt in that terrible-lovely-bitter-sweet moment in the graveyard will be lost

  Forever.

  THE COP

  Version 55

  When the alien armada arrived, it came almost as a relief.

  I had died and been reborn so many times that I was feeling trapped and nauseous.

  I knew, in theory, that it was only a matter of time before the anciens began to panic. For though they could survive for months or years by stealing food and drink and using violence to acquire new properties and facilities, they could not rejuve, and they could not acquire new organs. And thus, eventually, they would start to get older; and, more eventually still, they would cease to be immortal.

  So I was convinced that my strategy would succeed. But even so, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could cope with all the horror.

  Then suddenly, a million stars appeared in the sky above us. The stars were moving closer.

  I checked the radio telescope readings via the RoboGaia network, and it confirmed that a million vessels had entered a close orbit around Belladonna, after materialising out of hyperspace. The vessels corresponded to no make of spaceship known to me, and were clearly alien.

  I walked through the streets, staring up in awe. Parents stood with their children, pointing at the plethora of stars in the daytime sky. I heard a babble of words around me:

  “—another damned trick—”

  “—seen this before, it’s just a—”

  “—is this meant to fucking scare—”

  “—oh my God I think it’s real!”

  It was real alright. I was the one who had faked the last alien armada, so I should know.

  I accessed the Belladonna Computer, and took a visual sighting via our satellite telescopes. And I saw vast swarms of metal, as the alien spaceships encircled our globe.

  And so I bundled all the available MI channels together into a single super-channel, and transmitted a signal to the alien fleet, using every known language in the Universe.

  My message said: “We are lovers of peace, but be aware that our planet is very heavily protected. What are your intentions?”

  I received a reply in Earth-English: “We intend to kill you all. Surrender or fight, it matters not, you will all die in six hours from this moment.”

  A million stars in the sky; a million hostile spacecraft; and aliens who spoke English. I pondered the bizarreness of it all.

  “Do not dare attack us!” I replied, calmly. “We are human, our powers are awesome and terrifying.”

  “We have destroyed fifty of your planets. You will be the fifty-first,” came the reply. “Oh, and fuck you.”

  I recognised the accent: Pohlian. The aliens spoke with a Pohlian accent! They must have acquired their knowledge of Earth-English from a Pohlian native.

  I was still standing on the sidewalk looking up at the sky, but I was also looking at the stars through my planet’s hundred and fifty optical and radio telescopes, while also studying the alien fleet via hundreds of satellite cameras. So when I looked at the stars in the sky, I saw the stars, but I was also among the stars.

  And thus I saw, from a hundred different angles, the alien craft with their eerie golden hulls, as they gathered in a shape like a crab’s claw in what I took to be an attack formation.

  “What can we do?” said a man standing next to me, helplessly.

  I glanced at him, and registered his distr
ess, and his fear. And at the same moment, I saw the radar signature of the stars in the sky, and I saw the close-up menace of each alien ship, and I saw the overall vastness of the alien fleet, and I thought about what I could do to prevent this monstrous invading force from destroying the planet.

  And then I grinned.

  For I could do plenty.

  Aretha was with Hernandez in the flying car when the alien armada appeared. They landed and stared up at the sky, and were appalled.

  “More shit,” said Hernandez.

  “Maybe different shit?” said Aretha, hopefully.

  Despair filled them both.

  Then a call came through on their MI: attempted murder in progress. Aretha revved up the patrol-car motor.

  “You taking that?” said Hernandez scornfully.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?” taunted Hernandez.

  “Why? What are you on about?” Aretha countered.

  “It’s all fucked up, Aretha. Who gives a fuck if some civilians get killed or raped, huh? Let’s just find a corner and screw each other till the world ends.”

  “We’re taking the call,” said Aretha stubbornly.

  Unseen by her, my dragonflies were filming the exchange, and the images and words were fed directly into my cybernetic circuits.

  I approved of Aretha’s attitude; a police officer should never neglect his or her duty, no matter what the circumstances.

  Hernandez, though, I decided, after making a thorough appraisal of his character, was indubitably a first-class prick.

  “Is this the end of the world?”

  “I don’t know hon.”

  “Can we stay here?”

  “You want to just stay here? Hmm? That’s fine sweetheart; I love you, you know that? You want me to cuddle you?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s all I – oh what the fuck – I’m so bad, what can I – I’m gasping for – Christ, just fuck me again huh, first? Maybe a couple of times, even? Then cuddle me, then we wait for the end of the world.”

  “Cuddle, fuck, end of world?”

  “No! Don’t you fucking listen, pinbrain! Fuck, cuddle, then end of world.”

  “You got it, cat-lady.”

  The dragonflies filmed, and I watched, not voyeuristically, but with a sense of tenderness, at the sight of Macawley and Jonjo, two young people lost in love. Hell, I liked this guy.

  I will try my damnedest, Macawley, I thought, to save you and the man you love, and this entire world.

  As Aretha drove to the scene of a major incident – the beating-up of a teenage girl – and as Macawley made passionate love to her boyfriend Jonjo, who, I decided, was pretty much worthy of her – and as parents across the city told their children that “there was nothing to worry about” and “everything would be okay,” knowing none of these things were true – as all these things, and many more, were happening, I began to execute my complex plan.

  First, I used the Belladonna Computer to order a planet-wide Lockdown.

  This meant that over the course of the next few hours, the original biodomes of Belladonna would be raised into place, and every citizen on the planet would be ordered to retreat under their hardglass shelter. These biodomes were built to withstand winds, asteroids, bomb blasts – more or less anything that a hostile planet could throw at them.

  Over the years, of course, Bompasso had spread beyond the confines of the original biodome. Thus, many citizens now had to abandon their homes in order to huddle under the shelter of the dome. But I sent robots into all these areas broadcasting messages of doom and gloom, and inviting every single Bompassan to find refuge beneath the impregnable hardglass biodome.

  And, meanwhile, in Belladonna’s fifty other cities and in her sprawling residential developments including Abilene, Gloriana, Smith and Touchdown, the biodomes were also being raised. At the same time, the ranches were all evacuated, except for the six largest spreads, which had their own domes.

  Doppelganger Robots were taken out of storage to supervise the mass exodus. I assumed the anciens were safe in burrows within the original Bompasso boundaries, but that didn’t concern me too much.

  The evacuation took, in total, five and a half hours: there was still half an hour to go before the aliens’ deadline. It was a massive project, and there were sundry screwups and setbacks, but it all went more or less according to plan. The biodomes were raised, and all the citizens of Bompasso and its environs sheltered under the impregnable hardglass.

  I was impressed at the discipline and self-control that had been demonstrated by the evacuees, and the total absence of looting and panic.

  And I was, by now, feeling pretty damned relaxed. I sauntered into a bar, and ordered a whisky, and didn’t drink it: because my mind was elsewhere.

  For as I sat at the bar, I was also viewing the alien armada via multiple space cameras.

  And I was looking up at the sky through my radio telescopes and optical telescopes.

  And I was inhabiting all the bodies of all the DRs on the planet.

  And I was keeping an eye on Macawley, and Aretha, via my dragonflies.

  And then, via the Belladonna Computer, I gave the order for the missiles to be launched.

  “—if this will work—”

  “—at least someone has a fucking plan—”

  “I love you daddy—”

  “You’ll be safe now, I—”

  “I remember the day we first came to this planet. We—”

  “—we’ve had invasions before but never—”

  “—at least we know what to expect this—”

  “—a whisky, large, I don’t expect to pay—”

  “Once upon a time, there was a land far away and—”

  “—how should I know what—”

  “—someone is controlling this. Defending us. Is it the Computer? We just don’t – whoever it is up there, out there – thank you! Just—”

  A billion people spoke, or didn’t speak, or cowered, or hugged, or hid, or got drunk, or waited.

  And I saw them all. Even though the major part of my consciousness was dealing with the defence of the planet, I still took time to see and hear each of them, briefly, barely a trillionth of a second for each person. For in the event that my strategy failed, I wanted to say farewell.

  I saw Aretha, of course. She was alone now, back in her apartment, having ditched that klutz Hernandez. She was looking beautiful in a skimpy red T-shirt that left her midriff bare, and a billowing blue skirt, and no shoes, squatting in a leather armchair, drinking expensive red wine, and calmly reading a book. It was a history of spacefaring civilisation since the early twenty-first century; she was on page three.

  Good for you girl, I thought.

  And Macawley was still with her boyfriend Jonjo. (Still! After six hours in bed!) They were naked under the sheets, their bodies entwined, drowsy, kissing each other with tiny kisses, whispering filthy words at each other. She’d taken some mild recreational drugs and it was making her giggly, and euphoric.

  Good for you, girl, I thought. Just sit it out. Leave this one to me.

  And, meanwhile, with the major part of my consciousness, I waged total war.

  First, ten thousand missiles ripped out of silos in the earth, flew through the atmosphere, into the troposphere, then exploded before they reached space.

  Then each exploding warhead released billions of tiny silvered leaves, which were magnetised and hence buoyant in near-vacuum, and which hovered in the troposphere forming an impermeable reflective surface around the globe.

  As a result, in the streets of Belladonna, and all around the world, it went dark, and the artificial lights came on. But there were no stars. It was not night. There was no Chaos to fear.

  And then I sent a signal to the computers which controlled the solar panels orbiting Belladonna’s sun. And I switched on every floating panel – thousands of them, like a gossamer web encircling the system’s sun – and I turned the dial up to maximum. And thus as the sun burn
ed and spewed out vast amounts of energy, a significant fraction – but still a vast amount! – of this energy was captured by these huge absorbent panels, and turned into transmittable beam energy, and all that energy was focused into a single tight ray of solar power that

  Was beamed straight towards Belladonna.

  For twelve minutes nothing happened; for that was the time it took for the pulsed energy beams from the solar panels to reach Earth orbit.

  When they did arrive the beams had spread out slightly through space, like a flashlight beam in a darkened cellar. And then: the entire alien armada was bathed in solar energy.

  As I had expected, the forcefields of the armada were a formidable protective shield, and aside from glowing slightly, the ships were unharmed.

  There were now fifteen minutes remaining before the aliens’ deadline. I wondered if they would observe their own timeline, or would feel provoked enough to cheat.

  And still, the energy rays continued to irradiate the entire alien fleet.

  These days, I knew, space warfare is largely a matter of algorithms. Ever more powerful energy beams are countered by ever more more powerful protective forcefields. But every energy-neutralising forcefield devised can be counter-countered, if you attack it in the right way. It’s a case of trial and error: finding the weak spot in the defensive system by running through literally billions of energy permutations.

  Or, alternatively, you could do what I was doing: keep hitting the nail with a very large hammer.

  For, like every inhabited human planet, Belladonna orbited a nuclear reactor of quite astonishing power. This sun’s heat was strong enough to incubate life, heat the deserts, warm the seas, and provided enough energy to create an entire fertile, complex biosphere.