Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

“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.