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 menage a 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 amp; 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 Flanaga
n). 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.
Debatable Space Page 34