The warships sail closer and closer to the sun. At this distance, we cannot see the hull, even with our visors on full magnification. But I imagine a sizzling and a burning as the metal Icaruses soar closer to the sun’s yellow- fresh burning rays. Yellow-fresh makes no sense.
I imagine a sizzling and a burning as the metal Icaruses soar closer to the sun’s flickering incandescent rays. Better.
Thank you. Log it, print it. The two warships spit harpoons into the sun’s chromosphere, and through into the photosphere. Ultrasound cameras then transmit the image of the Hell that exists in the heart of the sun itself, which is projected onto a filament screen that hangs high above our spacecraft. On this cinema screen in space we watch the milking of the sun.
The harpoons fly through space, then inflate into vast luminous balloons and plunge into the sun’s heart. The balloons disintegrate in the heat until all that is left is the core of the harpoon, a silver capsule shaped like a flying bullet moving at near-light speed, too fast to burn. These capsules hurtle through the convective zone into the core, ripping through the supergranulated bubbles of gas which swirl blindly within this sun.
Then the capsules emerge, in the blink of an eye or less, on the other side of the sun, rich in stored energy. We can chart their progress, on a computer simulation, as they make a series of impossibly swift orbits of the planetary system, until finally they slow down enough to achieve a stable orbit. Then, at precisely the moment they are slow enough to be visible, they slowly fan open. Like butterflies, that circumnavigate the globe in an instant too brief to measure, then slowly flap a wing.
And then, a series of invisible pulses, the capsules begin to transmit the energy trapped in their superdense cores into the space power station that orbits the barren planet.
The energy is then bounced down to the planet itself, where it is captured and retransmitted to the lattices and the oxygenators. The intricate and brilliant terraforming web springs slowly into life. Heat is sucked out of the atmosphere. Blazing fires liberate and unfreeze the oxygen lakes. A billion sensors fine-tune each instant of the process, as liquid hydrogen boils and becomes hydrogen vapour and as oxygen gas slowly trickles out and joins the witch’s brew.
And then the sun flares. Like a rebellious fire that resents the prodding of a poker, it has been jarred and jostled into a cataclysmic self-disruption. Vast billows of flame balloon out from the chromosphere and turn the inky black sky into a glittering kaleidoscope of light and burning space debris. A frozen comet flares and shoots its burning tail in front of us before vanishing into microns. Chunks of burning sun are spat out with the power of a billion exploding fusion bombs and turn night into day, space into sun. Even through our suits, we burn in the heat of the solar explosion.
Then the flares dim. With each passing second more and more energy is stolen. Fires break out on the planet below us. Like sparkles on sun-touched water, the fire flickers on the planet below us. The sun flares again – we exult. The flare retreats. The sun is wounded now, its pride is damaged by the human-made tools which sucked the heat from its fires.
The process will take nine months, then the planet will be habitable. Such is progress. My heart soars. I am proud to be alive, and proud, too, to be human. What gods we are! Beware, Lena, of the dangers of hubris.
Oh shut up. Who programmed you to be so snide? You did.
Ah.
Flanagan
The Pirates’ Hall. It’s the greatest building on Captain Morgan’s Planet: a huge room with sheer brick walls and a glass roof looking up to the night sky and the double stars of the Helicon system.
The hall is shaped like a coliseum, a perfect cylinder with superb acoustics and cambered floors, which mean that those in the centre tables can be clearly seen and heard by those half a mile away near the walls.
We are at Centre Table – Lena, Harry, Alliea, Brandon, Kalen, Jamie and myself. Alby skulks around mysteriously, occasionally flowing away and reappearing as a pattern of circular lights on the glass ceiling. It’s a curious thing with Alby; normally he’s so much one of the gang, that I forget how different he really is. For Alby, socialising is bizarre; friendship is peculiar, though a welcome discovery; and it seems to him entirely natural and ordinary to move everywhere at light speed. And so, like a will-o’-the-wisp, he is here there and everywhere. No gossip eludes him; no table is a stranger to him. He even nuzzles under tables and warms the boots of huge hairy warriors.
Grendel is my host. He is a former pirate captain who is now the elected leader of the pirate haven, Captain Morgan’s Planet. He manages a team of the most gifted prostitutes in the human universe – men, women, transsexuals, duo-sexuals, castrati, Dolphs, Lopers, and more. But he’s not a pimp, in the classic sense of the word. He’s an agent, personal trainer, inspirer and motivator. These whores will cut a punter’s heart out for transgressing the binding sex contract in even the smallest particular. So, if you like it rough, you can have it rough. But if you cause an iota more pain than you have bargained for, you will die.
It adds, people say, a spice to the prostitute-punter relationship. But these whores are the best. They are the masters and mistresses of the art of love.
The planet itself is a cornucopia of hot spas and torrential waterfalls. A favourite game is to shoot the rapids from Hispanaiola to Lisbonville, then physically crawl the ten miles from the river to the hospital in order to receive limb and organ grafts. Many die, but here, life is cheap. The pirates who end up here have fought and slain and been tortured and seen their families horribly killed. Many enter a fatalistic state where death is sought in a million random ways. It all makes for a certain wildness, in a corner of inhabited space where there are no soldiers, no law officers, no Doppelganger Robots, and no rules.
Grendel and I go way back. We once fought a duel which lasted for six weeks of grisly, eye-gouging, biting and kicking hand-to-hand combat. By the end neither of us had a functioning limb, and we were reducing to biting each other’s throats. But, hey, we survived, and we’ve been friends ever since. One day I must ask him what we fought about; I made a computer note of it somewhere, but the actual memory is long gone.
Grendel bangs the Centre Table with his beer tankard, which is a two-pint glass carved out of pure 21-carat diamond. The diamond facets sparkle in the light of the overhanging candlebulbs. A hush descends over the hall. Grendel nods to me.
“A song.”
I pick up my guitar. I lightly strum it. I have tuned the instrument to play acoustic guitar with an automatic harmonic and a fluid accompaniment of harp and wah-wah guitar and drums. When I strum the strings, a band plays. If I change my touch, the guitar sound morphs into a powerful saxophone.
I play one of my favourite songs from the Golden Age of blues and rap. I begin with a soft, lyrical, beautiful chorus. My voice soars up, harsh but pure, until the words bounce lightly against the glass roof that bares to us the glittering stars.
“I never thought that I would see,” I sing,
“Such beauty and such tragedy
And foolish fucked up blazin’ wasted lives,
And un’xpected sublimity
I never thought that I would see
So much of life, and of the genius of our universe.”
A heartrending moan is ripped from the entrails of the guitar, and I move into the rap section:
“She was a two-bit crack whore, and she was working the streets
He was a psychopath and she thought he was sweet.
And she played his games, and then she asked to be paid,
And he called her a ho, and he left her for dead.
I was her sorry ass man, her oreo boy,
I was no brotha from the hood, I had my PhD.
And she played me and she lied to me and treated me mean
And so I told her, you a chicken head, I ain’t seein’ you again.
And then I saw her dead, at the hos-pi-tal.
