Last Human by Doug Naylor

Author:Doug Naylor [Naylor, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780140143881
Google: O02OAQAACAAJ
Amazon: 0007105657
Publisher: Penguin Books; Penguin Group
Published: 1995-11-30T15:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 2

A dolorous rain sprinkled its melancholia over the strip of low-life peon which stretched into an infinity of billboards, movie houses and restaurants, as his shambling frame picked its way through the crowds. For the fifth time in as many minutes a speeding vehicle sluiced through a puddle of stinking rainwater and soaked him from the top of his sunburnt head to the bottom of his ill-fitting shoes. The hyena screeches of laughing passers-by spiralled into the night as he dripped past them, navigating his way through the minefield of garbage.

Cyberhell reminded Lister of 12th Street on Triton, with its ravaged sea of mournful faces and its choking air; it was like living inside the mouth of a senile dog after it had smoked a pack of Turkish cigarettes.

His mind went back twenty-nine weeks, to the night of the campfire in the desert, when his other self had burnt off his bonds and laid him out with a piece of desert rock. He'd come round to discover he was being buried alive as Starbug landed in a neighbouring dune basin. His other self had thrown a last spadeful of dirt over his struggling frame and run to the peak of the dune, twirling a jacket over his head. The craft touched down, took his other self on board and was gone in a belch of dust. For three hours he shivered under a blanket of sand until a buggy full of Cyberguards drove past later that morning.

He explained the situation. He was not Lister the inmate, he was from an alternative reality. He hadn't done anything wrong if you didn't count ringleading the break-out and helping half the inmates to escape from the penal colony, semi-destroying the complex and single-handedly setting out to destroy the system of justice that controlled the entire asteroid belt. If you didn't count any of that they had nothing on him. Sadly for Lister, they did count that. All of it. They shipped him to Arranguu 12 for trial, where he defended himself, and several weeks later, due to the incompetence of his legal team, he was sentenced to eighteen years hard thought in Cyberia, which, unhappily for him, they'd finished rebuilding.

So Lister had returned to Cyberia - this time on a dilapidated class three transport ship as a prisoner of the Gelf State.

He began to serve his sentence plagued by the thought that his other self had replaced him on board Starbug, knowing they were heading for the Omni-zone so they could return to their own Universe. In all likelihood he'd never see any of them again. His other self had stolen his girlfriend, his crew and his life.

He'd settled into hell as best he could, he'd cleaned and tidied his apartment, re-tailored his clothes and gone looking for work. But everything about this whole landscape was designed to sap his spirits, everything he saw, everything he smelt, everything he heard. On every block there seemed to be a Kochanski lookalike wrapped around some beefy sailor type.

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