system. Nitrogen-dwelling life forms had been identified on the first planet, and the intention was to declare this a protected zone, and colonise the second planet.
Every week Peter would tell me of his adventures. The nitrogen-rich planet was christened Meconium, and the planet to be terraformed was called Chaos. But Peter always referred to them as Shit (the nitrogen planet) and Shittier (their own hydrogen/helium gaseous low-gravity planet).
This planetary system proved to be a cursed place for the human settlers. The nitrogen-dwelling life forms that had been identified on the uninhabited planet of “Shit” proved to be, in fact, the sentient excrement of much larger nitrogen-dwelling life forms, which were able to expel their wastes through space by means of natural rockets. The excrement was then caught in the gravitational pull of its twin planet (Chaos, aka Shittier) before entering its atmosphere. And this planet, of course, is where Peter and his companions were attempting to forge a new society…
These cosmic shit showers contained the embryos for third-phase life forms which were able to inhabit the helium/ hydrogen planet in gaseous form. In effect, this alien beast was a caterpillar, which turned into a pile of steaming turds, which turned into a gaseous butterfly.
Tens of thousands of humans died in those earlier years, fighting these alien beings, technically known as 421 S (N), which Peter referred to as “Shit Buckets”. Peter was appointed Commander of the colony, and he planned and authorised an operation to detonate fusion bombs all over the planet as part of a controlled terraforming operation that would lead, inevitably, to the genocide of the alien monsters.
I argued passionately with him that they should move on, find a fresh planet. Alien life was a precious thing, to be treasured and conserved. And as humans, we have a duty to think beyond our own selfish needs.
Peter wasn’t impressed. It would take another seventy years of travel to reach the nearest potentially terraformable planet. And besides, this was their home now.
Peter encountered fierce opposition from the leader of his new planet; and so he staged a coup, and after some appalling massacres, Peter was elected as new leader.
The aliens were annihilated. And two oxygen-atmosphere low-gravity Earth-habitable planets were created.
For much of this period, Peter gave me a blow-by-blow account of the dangers he faced. But after a few years, Peter vidphoned home less often. We exchanged vid messages at Christmas; and I was vaguely aware that he was becoming quite a powerful figure in his own right. But I was lost in my own concerns.
And then, seventy years later, my subjective time, we met again in space, during my flight from Earth. Peter had a great reputation by then. He was known as an administrator, an innovator, and a democrat. He was leader of the anti-colonial movement which challenged and defied everything I had ever done in the course of my career. But when we met, he was so charming. He flattered me, and told me that I had achieved great work. He never once quizzed me on my bizarre aberration, my murder of a dying old woman.
He could have psychoanalysed me. It was a tempting thing to do. Who was I really killing, when I killed that old bitch Cavendish?
I was pretty sure, by that time, that I was profoundly mentally ill. But I found that, with the use of medication, and the copious use of deception when in the company of psychiatrists and therapists, I could keep it in check. I was content in my lunacy; in retrospect, I think that period of insanity was a necessary phase. It was a bridging period that allowed me to purge demons, and settle into the next century of my life with a new soul and renewed energy.
So much has happened to me in my long long life. The details are still clear, but the overall story seems vague. I did this, then that, then many other things – but why? What was my purpose? What was my journey? Do I have an arc? The truth is: I simply do not know.
But I did love my son. I did. Grant me that. Despite all his sins.
I loved him.
I was lonely on Rebus.
Rebus was an archive planet, which specialised in the collation and dissemination of data on every conceivable subject. We were encyclopaedists on a grand scale. We savoured every decade in human history. We created video time lines which allowed one to sensually experience life in any given period of fully recorded history. You could sit in a virtual-reality helmet and hear the sounds, smell the smell, see the sights of whatever date or place one chose. With a combination of cctv camera footage, smell data banks, live music archives, police camera footage and the data from Mass Observation video diaries, we could recreate the experience of being anywhere on the planet Earth in any day in any year for the past few centuries.
You could watch Death Star live in concert at the Hammersmith Dance Emporium, even though the band themselves died of electroshock overdoses long ago. You could see Karel Mzniv conduct the New York Philharmonic in a concert performance of La Boheme, with Anne Mitchell making her first public performance. You could be one of the crowd in the Trafalgar Square riots of 2222, fired upon by police, whilst also being pelted with acid bombs by anarchist infiltrators.
You could experience the Rage Riots of 2032, which tore apart the city of San Francisco; and you could watch the astonishing end of Karl Mistry, the leader of the cult New Millennium group. You could watch as a mushroom cloud floated above the city of San Francisco, and feel what it was like to fear that the world is about to end.
With our newer virtual chip technology, you could have sex with the most beautiful men or women in the world. You could fornicate with whores from the planet Eros, five at a time; or build your own perfect lover from scratch.
We also had comprehensive pre-historical archives, with raw film and television footage from the twentieth century, and books, magazines and archaeological records from all the preceding centuries. We had a DVD-Rom of life in Ancient Egypt which combined archaeology with sensory reproduction and would allow you to feel what it was like to be a Pharaoh, or participate in every gory stage of the process of mummification.
This was, indeed, Nerd Heaven.
Rebus was led by a collegium of professors with radical views about the power of information. And our wealth came from selling our data and archive techniques. On a regular basis we were visited by merchant ships bearing untold glorious gifts of a kind that we found it difficult to reproduce in our Space Factory – honey, perfumes, vintage wine, carpets, works of modern and ancient art. And in payment for these, we sold facts.
I was welcomed into the community of scholars on Rebus, because of my academic background, and because of the iconic value of my You Are God books. But I quickly learned that I had a clearly defined place and position in this hierarchy of scholars. It wasn’t an especially low place and position but it was rigidly insisted upon. Decisions filtered down from above; bright, vivid, positively expressed suggestions were passed upwards to the senior academics via the Bulletin Board. In fairness these suggestions were always carefully considered and often heeded. But we were ruled, there was no doubt about that.
I found it soul-destroying. I was trapped into being one person, one role, one place in the hierarchy. And though the work was challenging, I felt I was going back in time. I was becoming the person I used to be, the young Lena. Shy, bookish, intense, solitary, lonely. All my colleagues had a dry, ironic sense of humour. None of them feared me. None of them adored me. None of them, frankly, had much respect for my tenure as the most important politician in the Universe.
I did manage an intermittent love affair with the head of the archive, Professor McIvor. He had silky old skin, weary with lines, and a bassoon voice that he could modulate at will. I flattered him artfully and invited him to share in my dreams of greatness. I argued that we should, together, create a Universal Archive that offered a commentary on all human knowledge from Plato to Schwegger. He humoured me for a while.
But nothing ever came of my plan. Because McIvor’s real passion was for the sorting of existing facts. He could arrange knowledge alphabetically, thematically, and chronologically. But he had no new thoughts to offer on anything. His lovemaking too was confident, and based on tried and trusted techniques for stimulation. But he never lost himself in the heat of passion. He never just was.
I felt that every second I spent with McIvor sucked an ounce of passion out of my spirit. He was rarely boring, always courteous; but somehow he managed to create an aura of order and calm that enveloped all those in his presence, like a pillow over one’s mouth.
Most evenings when we were together we sat and read, or played computer games. The physical proximity satisfied a primal need in my body to be near the sound of another person’s breath, to share in the beating of their heart. But to all intents and purposes, we might as well have spent our evenings alone. We dined, and as we dined
