Debatable Space

by Philip Palmer

  “This is our only weapon. We withdraw our servitude. We refuse to be slaves. We will die, rather than be slaves. Keep your eyes on this screen. Die proud.”

  Yeah, what a really great plan. Everyone dies.

  Harry

  This is so humiliating. Everyone else has a great bod, and I’m stuck in this fucking geek physique. I have pimples. My knees knock. I have a nervous twitch.

  This is the battle of a lifetime, and it’s being filmed. They’ll be releasing DVs of this for centuries to come. And I look like a prat. And I’ve got a nervous twitch!

  I want to growl with rage, but I can’t even do that. It comes out as… nerdy whine.

  Arrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaagh!

  Lena

  “Good speech, Flanagan,” I say.

  “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “Your projection was good too.”

  “Was I charismatic?”

  “I think you got the point across.”

  “I guess I’m pretty damn gorgeous, aren’t I?”

  I look at him. Despite myself, I feel a swamp of pleasure in my groin.

  “It’s not real. You’re a phoney, a cliche hunk. Ersatz.”

  “Yeah, but you’re hot for me.”

  “I could be, in other circumstances. Like, er.” I’ve lost it. Flanagan DR beams at me. Arrogant bastard.

  I point at the horizon. Enemy forces are clustering.

  “We’ve got no chance, you know. Why don’t we just run away?”

  “Keep your voice down. We’re on camera.”

  I glare arrogantly at the camera. Flanagan looks imperious.

  All around the world, on his say-so, people die.

  Brandon

  “Take your position, Brandon.”

  “Aye aye, Cap’n,” I say.

  All hell breaks loose.

  The DR army has encircled the hill. Gun ’copters fly above us and missiles rain down. But hidden in the trees, operated by Alliea, we have an automated ack-ack machine that laser-spots all incoming missiles and creates an impervious shield above our heads. Alliea’s job is to run from location to location with the ack-ack machine so they cannot ever target where the missiles are coming from.

  On the top of the hill, we stare down at the huge army assembled against us…

  And then we charge them. They aren’t expecting this. The DR soldiers are heavily armed of course and have clear super-perspex shields to protect them against enemy fire. But on this planet, no one ever fights one on one. No one duels. No one, in fact, ever actually fights. For a hundred years the DR oppressors have presided over a planet full of sheep.

  Now, six wolves have entered the fray.

  We fight in pairs, Harry is by my side, in his preposterous geek body. We have laser guns and grenades, and as we sprint down the hill we hurl grenades like children tossing water bombs on a sunny summer’s day.

  The first rank of Doppelganger Robots explode. We use the laser guns to blow off heads, but all the while we keep rolling and ducking and weaving and using our shields to block laser blasts. You need to get the right angle to deflect the light blast; there’s a knack to it. The enemy DRs have no such knack. They hold their shields in front of their faces and we blast straight through and blow out their cybernetic brains.

  Then we’re through the first rank and the DRs are clustered round us like stooks in a wheat field. They really have no idea. We crouch down low, and slice hamstrings with our short-bladed swords taken from the training armoury. Our blades penetrate eyes, gouge out brains, lop off limbs. The DRs are phenomenally strong, but so are we. They are phenomenally fast, but so are we. And they are incompetent fighters, graceless, stupid, inexperienced. And we are a pirate crew.

  We are unstoppable. We rip the heart out of the enemy’s army, then we stand triumphant. Alliea, meanwhile, is still raining missiles on the disorganised ground troops. The gun ’copters are whirling around in confusion, till one crunches into another and both plunge to earth.

  Then a laser gun hits me in the head. I just have time to register the leering triumphant face of my killer before I … become her.

  The DR who killed me is a blonde white-skinned female with an exaggeratedly muscular upper torso and a shaven head. She’s a Dyke DR without a doubt, but I’m not complaining. And now, through her eyes, I get to watch myself die; I see the head of my Brandon DR body explode in a hail of artificially grown blood and brain.

  Then the new “Brandon Dyke DR” resumes the battle. My fellow soldiers assume I’m still on their side, and are stunned when I turn my guns on them and start killing them with lethal laser sweeps. And as I kill, I sing:

  “I can’t get no-o, sat-is-faction. I can’t get no-o, sati-is-faction. I can’t get no-o, sat-is-faction.” No doubt there are other verses of this bluesy dirge available, but I stick to singing the memorable first line, over and over, with exaggerated lipsynch.

  I aim a laser at a DR – and just in time, I notice his lips are moving: “I can’t get no-o, sat-is-faction. I can’t get no-o, sat-is-faction.” I don’t recognise the body, but I realise instantly this is one of my team. The laser beam goes to the side; an enemy DR vanishes in light and splattered flesh.

  The DRs should have body armour, of course, like human soldiers do. But they are so inherently strong that it makes them complacent. No human has ever challenged them, or fought them. They have been all-powerful gods of their world for all these years.

  And now we’re making cybernetic mincemeat out of them.

  The battle continues. After a while, it becomes a massacre. I change bodies four times, until I finally do a head count and realise there are five DRs left.

  Only Lena has her original body intact. I feel a shiver of respect. The rest of us have been killed and killed again. But each time the killer blow was struck, Kalen at her control pad switched our connection point from one DR to another. Flanagan has software that allows us to override an existing DR user – we can, in effect, kick the fucker’s mind out and send it back to Earth.

  And by this means, we hope to conquer an entire planet. There are six of us; but we have unlimited “lives”. Each time we die, we are reincarnated seconds later, in the body of a neighbouring DR.

  This, we feel, narrows the odds.

  At the bottom of the hill, we rejoin Alliea. She has suffered badly in the defence of the hill, despite the ack-ack computer’s sterling work. One arm has been blown off her. She is blind in one eye. Blood oozes from the stump of her left leg, and she is using a sword as a crutch.

  “Just a flesh wound,” she mumbles, and we all dutifully laugh.

  “Let’s get out of here,” says Flanagan.

  Alliea

  We are part of a vast DR patrol sweeping through the underground regions, in the city known as Cardiff. From her control panel, Kalen had flipped us into six new DR bodies. We have different bodies, different weapons, but we have no way of telling who is really who beneath the DR frame.

  And so, blindly marching with our fellow DR warriors, we find ourselves confronted by a mass rebellion of slaves. Acting on Flanagan’s advice, the citizens of Cardiff have sat themselves down on the streets, gazing at the battle being enacted on their video phones. As we approach and bark orders at them, the Cambrians refuse to move, and ignore orders barked at them by the increasingly hysterical DR officers.

  Eventually the commanding officer loses patience. “Fire at will!” he screams, and I long to raise my plasma gun and blow his head off. But I’m too far away, I can’t get a clean shot, and I don’t know who is friend and who is foe.

  Blindly following orders, the DRs raise their combat pulse guns and fire into the seated crowds of passive protests. No one moves. A hail of pulse bursts rips apart limbs and shredded flesh. Dozens die within seconds.

  But no one cries out. The crowd is still and fearless, the dying people swallow their death rattles. More pulse bursts are fired. Hundreds die now. Blood washes under the haunches and arses of the seated multitude. No
one complains, or screams, or even glances up.

  The massacre continues, as we desperately try to tell friend from foe so that we can coordinate our counterattack. I see a man’s head shouting wildly, and eventually identify his words: “ There is a house in New Orleans.” He is singing, not shouting.

  I move closer. I memorise the features of his DR body; black hair, a pony tail, black tunic, bare arms, a dragon tattoo. “ They call the Rising Sun,” I sing out, and he turns and sees me. He winks. He scans me up and down, memorising my features. “Lena?” he mouths at me. “Alliea”, I mouth back. “Hot,” he mouths at me.

  We move together, walking shoulder to shoulder. “Love me tender, love me do,” someone sings. But who? We can’t see.

  “IT’S BEEN THE RUIN OF MANY A POOR GIRL!!” I scream and the DRs around me look blank. So I turn my gun on them and blow off five heads.

  “AND ME, O GOD, FOR ONE!” screams Flanagan DR, as I duck and roll out of the way of a laser blast. Flanagan too fires.

  “I HATE THESE FUCKING SONGS!” a DR screams at me, and just in time I avert the laser beam.

  “Brandon?”

  “Yes!!!!” I memorise his appearance. He fires his rocket launcher at me and blows up the DR bodies behind.

  “… satisfaction. And I try, and I try and I try and try!” sings a bloodied limbless corpse on the ground. Then a DR nearby jerks and stands differently. “I can’t get no, dah dah dum”, she sings. One of us. Lena or Harry, can’t tell which.

  And so the counterattack begins… it’s another remorseless, pitched, bloody battle. I long for the short swords, the elegance and beauty of their blades. But we have to use guns and fists and feet. It is awkward clumsy fighting. I have my head blown off at least seven times. But each time Kalen is there with the pickup, and I start again with a new body.

  When the bloodbath is over, six of us stand intact and bleeding. We turn and look.

  The streets of Cardiff are strewn with corpses, as the sun sets. The light of a hundred thousand video phones flickers, eerie and sad.

  But a few hundred Cambrians remain alive, picking themselves off the ground, soaked in blood and brain. They stand, in a series of staggering waves, and they stare at us.

  And when all the survivors are on their feet, they bow, low, and respectful. We raise our fists in triumph. They cheer.

  Kalen flips us out, and the DR bodies crumple to the ground, inert, mindless, dead.

  Flanagan

  “Where the fuck is Lena?”

  Lena

  What can I say? It was fun for a while. But then I got bored.

  For Flanagan, this is a glorious cause. The liberation of his home planet. What could be grander or more important! And for a while, I joined in happily with his precious mission.

  Burn, shoot, run, duck, block, laser blast in face, die, reborn. Burn, shoot, run, duck, block… And so it went on. I lived, killed, died, lived, killed, died…

  Then suddenly, I got swamped with depression and ennui. So I ran away.

  And now here I am, in the restaurant district of the underground world. People crowd the streets, sitting, watching their video phone coverage of the planetwide bloodbath. The first battle was captured in close-up on camera-bots. Now, Kalen is downloading satellite film of the war and rerouting it via the mobile phone systems. So the outlines are fuzzy, but the basic idea is clear; DRs are dying all over the world. And so the people wait, and watch, and when they are unlucky, they are massacred.

  No one stirs as I walk down the street. No one looks at me, though all are aware I am there. I am redhaired, flamboyant, slender rather than busty. But six and a half feet tall and with hands that could crack walnuts. I am hot for myself, savouring my own body.

  I see a young man in the crowd. He is kneeling, but his face looks tense. “Stand,” I tell him. He breaks ranks; he stands. He looks at me. Eyes full of fear.

  “You will do everything I say,” I tell him.

  He nods, numbly.

  “ Anything I say.” He nods again.

  Too easy. Too like rape. I walk on and leave him there, steeped in his self-hate and self-betrayal.

  Two DRs block my path. I make my move. They reach for their blaster guns, alerted by my air of “otherness’. But instead of shooting them, I reach for their minds.

  Twenty times already Kalen has flipped me into another DR’s body. I am getting a knack for it. And my remote computer still functions, I still have an instant grasp of any fact or sensory input I require, at a moment’s notice. So I order my computer to echo Kalen’s flip function. I enter the brains of the DRs. I possess them.

  They drop their guns. They look at me.

  I look at them.

  I look at them.

  I look at them.

  I am inhabiting three DR bodies at the same time. It takes great focus, but I’ve learned over the years how to multi-task instinctively. I can play chess and also type. I can read, and simultaneously text. I can even read, text, cut my toenails, and watch TV, all at the same time, without any loss of focus in any of the activities.

  And now, I am three people, all at once. I am the First Lena, the redhaired slender beautiful female who was my body when I walked past the humans. I am Guy Lena, a black-skinned leanly muscled giant with a face that would have melted the heart of Michelangelo. And I am Dream Girl Lena, an impossible beauty with an oval face and taut, powerful muscles.

  First Lena smiles at Guy Lena, Guy Lena is aroused, Dream Girl Lena looks at the other two and feels a surge of joy.

  We walk into an empty mansion. The rooms are deserted. The human staff are on the streets; and DRs who live there are in combat. We have the place to ourselves.

  We strip naked. I strip, and I watch myself strip, and I watch myself strip. I stroke my cock, I touch my breasts, I touch my breasts, I watch myself touch my breasts, I watch myself stroke my cock. I go on my knees, I stand and kiss Guy Lena on the cheeks, I feel his manhood in my mouth, I feel her mouth on my manhood, my tongue touches my tongue, my hand my tongue my cock my cunt my cunt my body my body my body I fuck me me fucks I we fuck.

  Flanagan

  “Where are we now?”

  “This is Pentre Ifan. My home town.”

  “Time to kick-”

  Brandon dies.

  I die.

  I change eyes. A DR is staring at me crazily. “Ass!” it says, completing the sentence.

  “You got it,” I tell it, and the DR that is Brandon nods, reassured. I find my gun.

  We start killing.

  Kalen

  I’m tired. I’m frightened we will lose.

  This the hardest job, sitting at the computer screen, flipping minds into bodies. I have too many facts to accommodate. I’m tired, I can’t eat, I’ve pissed and shat myself because I’m afraid to lose focus for even a moment. We made a mistake, we should have had two people at the computer. This is the hardest job. Those bastards have it easy.

  Bastards!

  I watch as Brandon dies. I flip him.

  Bastards!

  Flanagan dies. I flip him.

  Bastards!

  Lena, curse her rotten fucking soul, is having sex with two astonishingly gorgeous DRs. I’m attuned to her mind, so I can see everything she sees. But somehow, her images blur. She seems to be seeing from different eyes. And she’s bloody well having sex! I can’t believe that whore. All the same it’s…

  Alliea dies. I flip her.

  Harry dies. I flip him.

  Harry dies again. I flip him.

  Harry dies again. Careless fucking fool. I ought to let him… I flip him.

  Jamie dies. I flip him.

  Flanagan dies. I…

  Flanagan

  I see a joyful scene.

  The streets are paved with bodies, once again. Blood trickles and pools and we stamp on dead human flesh as we make our way down the boulevard. But at the end of the street, a dozen DRs are vacantly standing. Their guns hang limply by their sides. At their feet are hundre
ds of human beings, calmly waiting for death. But death does not come.

  The human intelligences controlling the DRs are crumbling. They cannot cope with the idea that an entire planet of human beings can stand against them. They are stressed, and fazed, and totally fucked up by the endless self-sacrifice and heroism they are encountering.

  That aspect of my plan, the part I always doubted, is actually working. The spirit of the human population of Cambria has collectively defied the robot oppression. Their sacrifice has bought us time, has sapped the enemy spirit, has undermined their confidence and self-belief.

  These killer robots are not, in fact, all-powerful gods. They are inhabited by the minds of spoiled and pampered Earth system dwellers. They are millionaires, sybarites, they have swimming pools in their houses and second homes in the Asteroid Belt. They are white-collar workers, but such is the endless wealth of the Earth system that few of them need to work more than ten or eleven hours a week. The rest of the time they can devote to self-indulgence, and mandatory DR duties.

  These fucking gutless softies have ruled my planet for over a century. But at the first sign of opposition, they are crumbling. We easily massacre the DRs at the end of the street. Before long, DRs start committing suicide in front of us – blowing off their own heads in order to send their minds back to the comfort and total security of the Earth system.

  It takes us forty-two hours to conquer the entire planet.

  Brandon

  Three DRs appear in front of me and sing, “I can’t get no satisfaction” in beautiful three-part harmony. I’m freaked. I know who Harry, Alliea, Jamie and Flanagan are. Lena is the only one of us unaccounted for. So which of the DRs is the real Lena?

  “Who are you?” asks one of the DRs.