Debatable Space by Philip Palmer

Author:Philip Palmer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780316018920
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2008-01-06T05:00:00+00:00

Flanagan

“Where the fuck is Lena?”

Lena

What can I say? It was fun for a while. But then I got bored.

For Flanagan, this is a glorious cause. The liberation of his home planet. What could be grander or more important! And for a while, I joined in happily with his precious mission.

Burn, shoot, run, duck, block, laser blast in face, die, reborn. Burn, shoot, run, duck, block… And so it went on. I lived, killed, died, lived, killed, died . . .

Then suddenly, I got swamped with depression and ennui. So I ran away.

And now here I am, in the restaurant district of the underground world. People crowd the streets, sitting, watching their video phone coverage of the planetwide bloodbath. The first battle was captured in close-up on camera-bots. Now, Kalen is downloading satellite film of the war and rerouting it via the mobile phone systems. So the outlines are fuzzy, but the basic idea is clear; DRs are dying all over the world. And so the people wait, and watch, and when they are unlucky, they are massacred.

No one stirs as I walk down the street. No one looks at me, though all are aware I am there. I am redhaired, flamboyant, slender rather than busty. But six and a half feet tall and with hands that could crack walnuts. I am hot for myself, savouring my own body.

I see a young man in the crowd. He is kneeling, but his face looks tense. “Stand,” I tell him. He breaks ranks; he stands. He looks at me. Eyes full of fear.

“You will do everything I say,” I tell him.

He nods, numbly.

“Anything I say.” He nods again.

Too easy. Too like rape. I walk on and leave him there, steeped in his self-hate and self-betrayal.

Two DRs block my path. I make my move. They reach for their blaster guns, alerted by my air of “otherness’. But instead of shooting them, I reach for their minds.

Twenty times already Kalen has flipped me into another DR’s body. I am getting a knack for it. And my remote computer still functions, I still have an instant grasp of any fact or sensory input I require, at a moment’s notice. So I order my computer to echo Kalen’s flip function. I enter the brains of the DRs. I possess them.

They drop their guns. They look at me.

I look at them.

I look at them.

I look at them.

I am inhabiting three DR bodies at the same time. It takes great focus, but I’ve learned over the years how to multi-task instinctively. I can play chess and also type. I can read, and simultaneously text. I can even read, text, cut my toenails, and watch TV, all at the same time, without any loss of focus in any of the activities.

And now, I am three people, all at once. I am the First Lena, the redhaired slender beautiful female who was my body when I walked past the humans. I am Guy Lena, a black-skinned leanly muscled giant with a face that would have melted the heart of Michelangelo.

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