Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

But for me, during my stay on Earth, it came to seem strange to live somewhere where everything is beautiful, and wonderful, and perfect. This was a civilisation where there was no poverty, where education was available to all, where the average intelligence was genius level, thanks to superior training and the benefits of brain-chip implants. And it was a civilisation where no one aged, and where beauty was a prerequisite. There were no flat-chested women; there were no small-dicked men. No one died of a stroke, or a heart attack; in fact, by and large, hardly anyone died at all.

And for a long while, it all seemed marvellous. I revelled in my experiences on Earth. I savoured the company. I laughed and got drunk and travelled and helped my son plan his trading strategies.

I revisited Florence, and was able to savour the paintings in the Uffizi without having to endure long queues of babbling foreigners. I went to Venice, and found gleaming hygienic toilets in every bar and hotel. I went to Paris, and was awed by the courtesy of the waiters. I visited New York, and was beguiled by the calm, uncluttered quality of life. I toured the Midwest and drank fantastic cappuccinos, and dined in elegant gourmet ranch restaurants.

I travelled round India and did not see a single beggar. I went to St Petersburg, and discovered fabulous service and cuisine of the highest calibre. I saw no crime or pollution, no overcrowding, no bad manners. Road, rail and air travel was easy and reliable and free. The clothes were beautiful too – and richly varied, and idiosyncratic. And the racial mix was exhilarating.

In short, everything I used to hate about my own planet had been improved; and nothing, so far as quality of life was concerned, had been made worse. What’s more, I was surrounded by pleasant, witty, funny people. Having endured years of desiccated solitude on Rebus, I finally had friends and a social circle.

What could be more wonderful!

And Peter always found time to be with me. We dined together once a week. He introduced me to the best new wines. He told me amazing stories of his adventures on Meconium. I was delighted to find he had acquired a flair as a raconteur. And he was so amazingly nice to me. Eager to please me in every way, in fact. Desperate to please me, if truth be told.

He’d read every article ever written about me. He had databanks of all the memos I’d drafted. He had multiple copies of all my books, though he admitted that he had difficulty reading them. He brought me his girlfriends for my inspection. He asked my advice on his advisers, he showed me the transcripts of his Cabinet meetings. There was much he didn’t burden me with, but I became an invaluable influence on his strategy and person-management.

He loved my stories of psych bombs and mental manipulation. He was amazed at the idea that it’s possible to mould another person’s mind, purely through flattery and ego-boosting techniques.

He was such a needy child. I gave, gave, gave, but I never complained. I was only too pleased to be, at last, the mother of my son.

However, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. I found myself suffering from pleasure surfeit. I was becoming alienated by beautiful architecture and gorgeous clothes. I was fed up of constantly dealing with people with perfect manners, and perfect bodies. I was jaded with perfection.

Instead, I longed for messy, ugly, imperfect, fucked up. I wanted to be on a train that was late, I wanted a waiter to slop coffee in my lap and not apologise. I want to be jostled in the street so I could jostle back and scream, “Fuck you!” I wanted my bins to be not collected for a fortnight, so the foxes could break them open and scatter rubbish everywhere. I wanted my wine to be off so I could spit it out all over my brand-new tablecloth. I wanted my car to break down. I wanted to be constipated. I wanted an excuse to be cranky, irascible, a pain in the arse. I wanted some grit in my oyster. I was becoming, let’s face it, nostalgic for the good old days.

And so, after nearly a century of living a perfect and totally balanced and happy life, I yearned to be lonely and miserable again.

I explained all this to Peter, and he was totally baffled. And then he was upset. Almost hysterical in fact. But I persevered, and eventually he agreed to build me a stellar yacht that was fast enough to take me across the Universe, so I could travel once again.

He was, however, devastated at the thought of losing me. We had grown so close together in my years on Earth. In the course of that glorious century together, he had given me everything I could desire. Love, kindness, respect, wealth, and the best of everything. He even gave me a remote computer implant that was the twin to his own – with access to all the knowledge and wisdom of humankind, and with a flexible and evolving personality.

Yes, I can’t deny it, I savoured being a Goddess. But I had made my mind up.

Peter and I hopped on a jet and dined that night at the best hotel in Rio de Janeiro. The moon was full. The weather was balmy. The band played salsa and rumba. We talked of our pasts, our favourite lovers, our best meals. We savoured the memories we had shared over the last hundred years, in which we had finally come to know each other properly.

But then I said my farewells. Two days later I was flown into orbit, where I joined my purpose-built stellar yacht. I familiarised myself with the controls, and learned how to mould the ship to my own personality. My remote computer receiver/ transmitter chip was initialised. I realised, with some astonishment, that this was many orders of magnitude better than any microchip implant I had ever had before. With a blink of an eye I could conjure up on my retina a star atlas that would guide me through any part of the known Universe. And with a single half-voiced command, I could hear any piece of music, read any book, see any painting or work of architecture, be told any fact, savour any image that had ever existed in the history of humanity. The computer was so powerful that I was awed by its potential. But I programmed it with a personality that was meek and deferential enough to overcome my latent insecurity complex.

And finally, I unfurled the sails, fired the ion drive, and soared elegantly and swiftly out of the Sol system.

As I left, I decided on a whim to fly outside the yacht for a while. So I suited up, left through the airlock, and floated on a tether tied to the hull as I watched my home system recede. Through my ear implants, I listened to the 14th symphony of Pietro Machan. The bell resonances suffused my entire body. I felt as if I had ascended to heaven and was sitting at God’s right hand.

But there was still a dark patch in my heart. Because I knew, of course, that deep down my little boy hadn’t changed at all. I knew by then about the Doppelganger Robots and the slave planets. I knew of the policy that allowed weaker breeds to be edited out of the human race. Because in a world where some can live for ever, then from time to time others will have to be arbitrarily executed. Otherwise, there may come a day where an Earth Human actually has to wait, or even queue, for something that he or she desires.

And that will never be allowed to happen.

As well as the factory euthanasia and mass poisoning of undesirables and sicklies and uglies, it was the policy of all Earth system settlements that all newborn babies should be carefully scrutinised. And any infant which didn’t get the requisite number of ticks on his or her Future Citizen’s Examination (with categories including pre-natal health, birth weight, potential IQ, and parental DNA mix) would be terminated. Abortion was, in fact, a thing of the past; infanticide was now considered to be a much fairer method of quality control.