Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

“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?”

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.

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…

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 hundreds 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.