Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

I do not even need my computer discs, I can call up each memory with a blink of an eye. Peter is hardwired into my soul. For all his faults, for all his terrible crimes, he was mine. He was more a part of me than my fingernails, my hair, the skin on my feet. I cannot think of him even now without choking and gasping with sheer overwhelming love and need.

Shivering with fear now, I play, again, the tape of the Caribbean beach. The aching pang of love for a child who has become a man. I drown in the depths of my feeling for him. And then, again, I drown in my love for him. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again.

Sometimes I play this obsessively for days on end. Flanagan used to tell me off for using my memory tapes. He argued it’s best to always keep moving forward.

I play another disc. The day Flanagan and I went to kill my son. I lunge at him with my sword. I am engulfed in tar and quicksand as the force field alters the air pressure around me. But the attack fails. I am engulfed in tar and quicksand as the force field alters the air pressure around me. Then he releases the force field and Peter’s plasma beam hits me full on. My body sears, I feel the pain as if it actually exists. Flanagan moves past me, with astonishing speed. He takes advantage of the fraction of an instant in which the force field is down and Peter is unprotected and he strikes with his sword. But the blade is a centimetre from my son’s skin when it comes to a shocking halt. The blade bounces back. Flanagan strikes again, but the force field is fully activated now. The sword blade slows… it bounces off. Flanagan slashes and swings, his blade so close to flesh it feels as if he is skinning Peter. But none of the blows strikes. Flanagan finally stops, looking old, defeated, foolish. Peter smiles, and scatters sparkly dust at us. There’s a huge bang and we are knocked on our arses. My son is openly grinning now. He is clearly revelling in this chance to show his superiority. “You evil old bitch,” he says, and my spirit is scalded. “You can’t kill me,” he brags. “You can’t…” And he is engulfed in fire, and burns to the bone before our eyes.

I howl with horror, as my son dies in front of me.

Then I rewind the disc player. I return to the moment, five seconds earlier, when I was playing the tape of the death of my son. The Cheo smiles, and scatters sparkly dust at us. There’s a huge bang and we are knocked on our arses. My son is openly grinning now. He is clearly revelling in this chance to show his superiority. “You evil old bitch,” he says, and my spirit is scalded. “You can’t kill me,” he brags. “You can’t…” And he is engulfed in fire, and burns to the bone before our eyes.

And then I reach for the memory of my reaction to the video playback of his death. I howl with horror, as my son dies in front of me.

Then I rewind the disc player. I play the memory of my son dying; and continue into the memory of my howl of horror; and this time I continue on to experience my perception of the moment when I perceived myself howling with horror. I feel myself feeling myself feeling the horror. And then… Stop this, Lena.

I try to rewind the disc player. But the power has been turned off. I jab angrily at the switch.

Turn it on! I say furiously to my remote computer. But the computer will not reply. All the power is gone. I cannot listen to my memories, I cannot make new memories. I am trapped in a present tense of grief.

My son burns… the memory comes to my mind unbidden, and I am racked with sobs. The tears won’t flow, my cheeks are dry, but I am screaming and howling with grief again now and I can’t access the neural tape player I can’t access my memories so I have no choice but to ride the waves of pain and grief and self-recrimination I know he was a bastard and a monster but he suckled at my breast, his cheeks glowed at the richness of my milk, I bathed his naked body when he was fresh from my womb, I made him laugh his first laugh, he thought I was wonderful he loved me he saw no fault in me and now he’s dead and I killed him…

I stab the power switch again. It doesn’t work. No voices in my head. Just me. Just me.

How could I have done it?

Just me.

Just me! A mother who murdered her…

Just me. It’s okay, Lena, it’s okay to grieve.

I howl, like a dog, until my lungs rasp and my jaw aches. And for a few precious moments, I exist entirely inside my pain.

Then appalling self-consciousness returns. And I find myself wondering, self-analysing, doubting, retreading endlessly trodden ground.

I fear I will spend an eternity like this.

Later, I eat. I cook the meal myself – steak, in Madeira sauce, with three bottles of rich red wine. It’s perfectly done, though I burn myself putting the steak on the plate and have to put my hand in the MedBox before I can start eating. But I heal quickly, and then I savour the melty blood texture of the prime sirloin steak and the rich, haunting flavours of truffle and wild oyster in the sauce. I play Bach’s sonata in G Minor for violin in my inner ear as I eat, and I slosh the wine back generously – three bottles, a bottle more than I normally allow myself. By the end of the meal, I am so drunk my vision swims, and I start to think about vomiting. Then my cerebral filters kick in and I am semi-sober. Just nicely pissed.

After that, I eat creme brulee with dried apricots washed down with Turcoman brandy and petits fours and some of those lovely slithery chocolates that are bioengineered to ooze off the plate and down the table leg to freedom if you don’t eat them swiftly and ruthlessly enough. So, of course, I do – none escape!

And I think about the flame beasts, and their strange solitary lives. And their remorseless fascination with the insanities of the human race. Alby’s species have achieved stasis, and peace; and because of that, their spirits have withered. They have atrophied into cosmic voyeurs, reliant on the human race to live the lives that they themselves are unable to live. For all the many faults of the human race, at least we have not reached that drab state: of being alive, but not knowing whether it is worth it.

But since their discovery of mankind, the flame beasts have had a new lease of life. Their culture has flourished and been inspired. They have copied our art forms, and studied our ways in intense detail. And, above all, they have become addicted to our television dramas, and our political crises and wars. We have helped turn a species of superminds into avid watchers of reality TV.

But the truth is that we, the human race, are their show.

I mull about all this, and I find myself wondering: now that Earth has been liberated, what will happen with the flame beasts? Will they lose interest in us, now that tyranny and oppression have been eradicated? Will we lose their patronage, and their blessing?

I think a little more. Alby always baffled me, and frightened me. But now, with leisure, and endless access to the memories of our time together, I am starting to make sense of him. I realise he had a droll sense of humour, and a sharp understanding of Flanagan’s hidden strategy. And I realise, too, that he played a much greater part in the final climax than Flanagan himself ever realised.

For I saw a light flickering on the day in Parliament. I thought it was a firefly. But in London? In daylight? Then the Cheo burned before our eyes, despite his force fields, despite his body armour. It would take the light of a thousand stars to burn through those defences; but it happened.

That light was Alby. He was with us, all along, watching.

That’s a very scary notion, at first thought.

But at second thought, it is even scarier.