Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

Jack.

Hermione.

Silver.

Garnet.

Hilary.

Roger.

Lustre.

Ji.

Ajax.

Baldur.

Mystery.

Jane, Sheena, Magic, Leaf, Phoenix, Edna, Sharion, Jayn, Shiva, Persephone, Garth, Rob, Will, Diane, Apollo, Catherine, Jon, Letitia, Leo, Dawn, Sunset, Raphael, Zayna, Cosmos, Rob Junior, Ashanti, Amor, Tara, Helios, Jenny, Rosanne.

And Roberta.

After 215 seconds have elapsed, I disconnect my oxygen cylinder. I take off my helmet.

I breathe in a huge lungful of deep space.

I watch Alliea die. I have already seen my beloved friend Hera blown to shreds. And when I see Alliea kill herself, I rage at the waste of a talented warrior, though I respect her choice. However, I am Grendel, leader of the pirate pack. I have vowed never to die peacefully.

My leg is blown off by a rocket blast, but the suit self-seals and I battle on. I am a huge, flying one-legged killing beast. I battle on. And on. I see limbs floating freely, weightless and shorn, both human and robot. I see streams of blood that form red comets in the still emptiness of space. The speed of the warriors fighting in this battle is so extraordinarily fast that we resemble molecules in motion in a murky liquid.

The flashing lights are laser beams. Shock waves rock us to and fro, but we continue moving, bobbing, flicking, surging. I kill many many DRs, and I savour each one, for each is a precious, and a cherishable victory. My radio is silent for the most part, but I have programmed my earpiece to play a solitary drumbeat as I fight. DUM dum-dum-dum-dum, DUM, dum-dum-dum-dum, DUM. It calms me, and it gives my body an inner rhythm, as I whirl and veer like lightning trapped in a jar.

And so, and thus, I fight.

It is some time before I realise I am dead. I wonder… where am I?

I am on the bridge, with Harry, who is in a howling rage, and Jamie, who is the cybergeek god incarnate.

I drafted this battle plan, to Flanagan’s brief. And on my computer screen I can feel the war unfolding. Ambushes and boobytraps are carefully seeded, like twists in a detective novel. But most of all, we rely on the sheer fighting power of our rocket-propelled warriors flying outside the ships. They are like wasps that bring an elephant to its knees, and chew its bones.

“Brandon?”

The Captain is speaking to me. I realise that, for three long seconds, my heart has stopped beating. I gulp, force myself to breathe again.

“Alliea is dead,” I tell him. He stares at me blankly.

Alby

The rules of my ssspecies tell me I cannot intervene in any way in this combat. We are a paccccifist, nonwarrior life form. We do not fight, it is alien to usss, imposssssible to our nature. We cannot fight. Ever!

I watch as ten Corporation warshipssss close in on the Captain’s ship. I worry that they will be able to destroy Flanagan before his crew notice this new threat.

Sssso I ssssupernova. The nova becomes focussssed into a ssssingle flare. I lunge and plunge and ssssoar and sssspike, ripping through the enemy warships like a ssssun turned javelin.

It issss gloriousssssssssssss!

Flanagan

“Shit, what was that?” I ask.

Jamie checks his computers. The debris of enemy warships litters our path.

“Not sure, Cap’n. Spontaneous combustion?” he hazards.

The shattered warships are burning up, they are actually melting in deep space. I make a guess.

“Thank you Alby,” I murmur to myself.

Flanagan

Lena is in her room. I go and visit her. She is actually asleep.

I gently kiss her cheek and she awakes. “Oh, you,” she murmurs. Then her eyes flash open. “It’s over?”

“It’s over.”

“We’ve lost.”

“We’ve won.”

“How many survivors?”

“Very few. Perhaps, three ships in all. Maybe a hundred pirates still alive. Plus our own ship.”

Her face is ashen. I’m surprised. I didn’t think she would have cared that much.

“A hundred left,” she says, “out of eleven million, and that’s a victory?”

“Well, we killed all of them.”

“I’m sorry for sleeping.”

“There’s nothing you could have done.”

“I want to sleep a bit more.”

Lena lies down. Her eyes close. Within seconds, she is asleep again. I look at her with jealousy. I yearn to sleep. To switch off. To have a brief respite from guilt.

But that cannot be.

The battle issss won. Flanagan’ssss ship and hisss asssault fleet of three vessselsss hass esscaped and ssset off towardssss Kornbluth.

But I linger.

I should not have played a role in the combat. That isss not the way of my people. We do not take sssides in the warssss between men. But I like Flanagan. I consssider him a friend. He hasss taught me much.

Succhh a sssstrange sssspecies. Yet endlesssly fasssscinating and varied. I ssssee them, metaphorically sssspeaking, asss an animal with razzzzor handsss which ripss out itsss own eyesss. Such is the human raccce.

And, sssstrangesssst of all, each human entity is indisssolubly sssseparate. They reproducccce ssslowly and painfully. They have no capacccity for genuinely abssstract thought that worksss at the level of pure meaning without the aid of numberssss or sssymbolssss. And they are, believe it or not, tool buildersssss.

I musssse, for a while, at the infinite folly and entertaining variety of humankind.

Then I feel a flicker of wearinesss, and I die.

Sssoon after, my new ssself is reborn, and consssidersss the ssstack of available memoriesss and intentionsss of the now dead and exxtinguished “Alby”. It decidesss to continue the charade of being a single, continuousss, consssistent perssssonality. I become “Alby” oncccce again.

I glory in the ssssight before me. The humansss’ amazzzingly recklessss compressssed-ssspace bomb hasss wreaked appalling havoc. But it hassss left in its wake a shimmering glowing hazzzze of glory. It isss a light richer than light itsssself. For a being such assss myssself, composed entirely of light and flame, it is the nearesssst I will ever come to experiencing a vision of God. This light-hazzzze is quite sublime.

I drift clossser. I ssssee that the hazzzze is made of tiny particlesss. Ssssmall vibrating loopsss that hover and danccce in space. Some of the loopssss vanish then rematerialisssse. Some merge and form larger loopsss, then exxpand, then contract.

The energy of the dancing loops issss extraordinary. I wonder what will happen if they were to continue to exist in their pressssent sssstate and ssssize. For I know that these vibrating loops are singing in space. Their musssic, their ressssonancccce, issss the esssssence of reality itsssself.

I marvel at the sssight. Who elssse hass ever ssseen such a thing?

For these loopsss are the entity we call. Human scccientistsss called them “ssssuperssssymmetrical ssstrings”. They are, of courssse, the fundamental indisssssolubles of which all matter isss comprissssed – they are the origin and the parent of electronsss, photonssss, muonssss, quarks, neutrinossss and every other physical manifessstation of matter in its tiniesssst formsss.

The are the ssssmallest objectssss posssssible in the universe. For humans, they are a theorised reality, too small to be ssseen or detected with their instrumentsss. Because of coursse all human ssssubatomic detecting instrumentssss rely on the interaction of particlessss; and there issss no particle ssssmall enough to interact with the ssssmallest object possssible.

And yet, thessse tiny particless are now as large as firefliess. They sswim through space, large enough to see, ssssolid enough to touch. This is a conssssequence of an esssssential part of their curious and immutable nature – ssssuperstrings will expand when sssubjected to high energies. They can double or triple in size; or grow by a hundredfold. They can even become macrosssscopic.