Debatable Space

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.