Ghost Devices by Simon Bucher-Jones

Author:Simon Bucher-Jones [Bucher-Jones, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1997-11-27T23:00:00+00:00

INTERLUDE

God:

Subroutine: Prognostic Omnipotence by Divine Emulation,

Bernice (Variant) 57 Running: Start Parameters As Real Time.

Best-Guess Future (+2/-2) 97.7%

Clarence stopped in the narrow ship’s corridor and brushed the metal of the spaceward wall with his sensitive fingers. It gave off a hum that tingled in his fingers. The ship was primitive, but it had been well designed for all that, and, possibly for glandular and biological reasons, the angel felt a twinge of kinship like an anthropologist watching a particularly astute primate.

It knew it was delaying the debriefing deliberately, and it marvelled at the squeamishness it had developed in respect of this task. What was it about feelings? Things had been so much easier when it had been a Ship.

Only animals are squeamish, it said to itself sternly, only icky, lower animals; not me.

Liar, liar, pants on fire, a still small voice said in the back of his head.

With a hand whose biology was a lie he pressed the door sensor of Bernice’s stateroom. The pill container lay empty on the bedside table. She was quite dead. Choked on her own vomit.

Clarence ran his emotions through a lookup table. He realized he felt sad.

‘Oh, God,’ he subvocalized. ‘If possible take this cup away from me.’

‘That’s hopeful,’ Gabriel said encouragingly, ‘this one almost made it to the debriefing.’

‘Unlike emulations one to fifty-six,’ God said.

‘You’re forgetting thirty-three.’

‘I never forget, I’m just not mentioning thirty-three.’

‘I’ve just never known an emulation get at its own underlying code.’

‘I said I wasn’t mentioning it, OK?’

‘Sorry.’

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