Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

And as a result of this ruthlessly applied policy of population control, there was never a question of there not being enough wealth to go around. Those who are chosen to live will have all they can desire. And the only requirement of Citizenship is to work a certain number of hours a year operating a Doppelganger Robot in order to keep the wheels of human culture turning.

Some, of course, become DRs out of the sheer joy of it. Because on a perfect world, surrounded by beauty and grandeur, it’s a welcome relief to travel (virtually speaking) to a hellhole planet and confront alien monsters and rape and murder and pillage one’s own kind.

Peter called it his societal safety valve; and I do take his point. But part of me was never comfortable with the hidden implications of Peter’s form of human civilisation.

But what, I asked myself, was the alternative? A return to the bad old days of premature death, ageing, disease, poverty, starvation and injustice?

That would be absurd. This way has to be better. It has to be.

So I declined to think any further of the implications of Peter’s policies. I chose to remember the good times, and not to obsess about the murder, genocide, rape, humiliation, degradation and oppression of entire planets of human beings on hundreds, nay thousands, of planets in the human zone of habitation. Yes, bad things happen, but sometimes it’s best not to brood upon them. That was my view at that time. Perhaps I was… No.

No.

No looking back. No self-recrimination. I do not allow myself that luxury. Forward, I must always look forward.

And so I travelled through space. I saw things that are far beyond your wildest dreams. I wrote some more concerti. And, as I travelled, I had instantaneous email and vidphone contact with all my friends, from every stage of my life.

But sometimes I went years without hearing from or seeing anyone. I listened to music. I began to write, and am still writing, my memoirs. I replayed the memories I have on microchip from every year of my life since implants were invented.

I was quite content, to be honest. I sailed my yacht into the far recesses of the human-inhabited galaxy, to the region of Illyria and Kornbluth. I was aware that a mere twenty light-years away was the looming space-distorting monstrosity of Debatable Space; but I felt no fear. I sailed, and I sailed… and…

I lose myself in the long soaring arc of the plunging bucking near-light-speed stellar-wind-battered flight, my eyes drinking in the spectral glows and searing sunlight while my sensors calibrate velocity, acceleration, heat and cosmic radiation, I surf from visuals to instruments and back and both until I feel the bucking of stellar wind, no, that’s repetitious, delete the words “stellar” and “wind”, it’s now “the bucking of pulsing photons” on my fins and sail and feel the burning of the hot yellow dwarf sun on my cheeks Lena, we have company.

Here we go. The final battle. The culmination of all our efforts. Lena, are you afraid?

Of course not. Are you? Yes.

How can you be? You’re a machine. Afraid! You’re a liar! Not as big a liar as you are.

True. I am terrified. I cannot sleep, or relax. For the first time in many years I… I actually give a fuck. So what exactly are you afraid of? Death?

Oh no. I’ve faced that too many times. Not death.

Life.

“Are we ready?”

“I’m ready, Cap’n.”

“I’m ready too, Cap’n.”

“I’m ready, Flanagan.”

“Cap’n, I need to wee.”

I make a face at Jamie. Cheerfully, he pees into absorbent space underpants. I give the order to attack.

“Attack.”

I am weary of war. I have no zest for this battle. But this is, let’s face it, what we’re here for.

The attack begins. I perceive it numbly, through a haze of exhaustion. We have reached that stage where our bodies can move themselves, without conscious thought.

Brandon flies our ship through intercepting missile fire. We lob antimatter bombs into the atmosphere of Kornbluth, and the robot defence systems ignore them; the defence of human life is not on their list of priorities. But the missiles are on a curving orbit. They soar down through the atmosphere, then back up again and reach escape velocity on the other side of the planet. Just as we launch our attack on the Quantum Beacon the missiles arrive from nowhere in the space behind our enemies. Bang! Bangbangbang bang

Bang.

The double flanking is powerfully effective. Our ships fight well. The defensive forces facing us are light, most of the Cheo’s warships were obliterated by us in the space battle, and new ones have not yet been built.

Even so, a bitter fight ensues. But finally we breach the force fields and let loose a cluster of nanobombs that burrow into the hull of the Beacon’s ship and eat the fissile material which is used to send the quantised signals through space. The Beacon is neutralised, though not destroyed. We have almost won. All we have to do is follow up the attack.

“Okay we’re moving in.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Prepare to board.”

“Preparing to board.”

The ship lurches forward. I take a deep breath. Then slowly exhale. I allow my thoughts to settle, and an eerie calm descends upon me.

For a second I allow myself to hope…

Then the ship stops, with shocking abruptness. I almost tumble from my seat. I look at Brandon, who has stalled our vessel with such astonishing clumsiness. His face is pale, he is listening to a message in his inner earpiece.

“What?” I bark at him.

“Cap’n… News from Cambria.” He can hardly speak the words.

I am filled with foreboding.

“Can’t it fucking well wait?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Doppelganger Robots have reasserted control. A backup Quantum Beacon has been employed.”

“ What!!!” screams Jamie.

“Backup? Fucking backup?”

I shoot a fierce look at Lena. “What is this? Did you know about this?” She looks fearful, I believe she didn’t know.

“After all we have done, all we have sacrificed,” Jamie murmurs, bitterly.

Lena’s brow furrows. She appears to be listening to something. Then, finally, she tells us, “I’m sorry.”

All eyes burn her with hate.

“I didn’t know, I swear!” she tells us, in broken tones. “Peter must have encrypted the information, my remote computer knew nothing. But now… I have the information now.” Her eyes are glazed, as her remote computer explains it to her: “There was a second Beacon on the Cambrian system, hidden inside an asteroid. This has now been activated.” Her tones are tinged in guilt. She blames herself, for not guessing this, for not interrogating her own mind in search of Peter’s secret strategies.

“What about the Kornbluth Beacon?” I ask. “Does that have a twin?”

Her brow furrows again. Then she tells me, in the flat tones of someone repeating by rote, “Yes. Our first assault has neutralised the Beacon, but messages are still being transmitted to Earth. There must therefore be a second Beacon already on-line. Its location is not available to my remote computer.”

“What a total fucking waste of all our fucking lives!” says Brandon.

Lena continues:

“Doppelganger Robots are being mass-produced again on Cambria. A bombing strike has been launched on the citizens of Cardiff. Casualties are high. The air in the underground caverns is thick with burning flesh. Within two days, Cambria will be a slave planet once more. “

A cold silence lingers.

All eyes are on me. I realise I am crying. I feel ashamed. I can see in my mind’s eye the citizens of my home planet being burned and slaughtered, as brutal punishment for daring to defy the Cheo’s empire. And this is my fault. Millions will die. And this is my fault. The survivors will be tortured and brutalised beyond all measure. And this is my fault.