I touch him, he orgasms.
“Flanagan, I love you.”
“So you said,” he replies, coolly.
I touch him, he orgasms.
“Flanagan, I love you,” I tell him, in tones of honey mixed with bile.
“I fucking love you too!” he screams. And orgasms again, and again, and again.
I roll off him. He’s lying of course. But mission accomplished; I’ve bent him to my will.
I get up and dress.
“You can stay a while if you like,” he murmurs. His bare chest is ripped raw where I scratched him with my nails.
I leave.
Flanagan
The citizens of Kornbluth welcome us as their saviours. They have a parade that spans several hundred miles, with banners reading “Freedom!” and “A New Start!” It’s highly flattering.
I know that all across the Universe similar scenes must be taking place. But I long to know for certain. Like Brandon, I miss the Universal Web. I miss the community of humankind.
The Kornbluthians stage the greatest street party ever known. All across the planet, bands play and people dance. Huge video screens project the images of what is happening in other cities, as we dance in the main square of Gladiatorville.
These people are strangers to me. This is not my home. I long to go back to Cambria.
“Homesick, Cap’n?” Kalen asks.
“Yeah. You too?”
“I’m over it. I’m planning to roam a little. Travel from star to star. Maybe take some seeds and frozen sperm, see what happens.”
“You’re going to find and settle your own planet?”
“Me and Harry.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
“You’re miscegenating?”
“Is that what they call it in your neck of the woods?”
“I’m pleased for you.”
“Good luck in Cambria.”
“I’m not going to Cambria.”
“Where then?”
I pause.
“Earth.”
Lena
The Captain has briefed his crew, and they are ranged before me, confronting me.
“I can’t do it,” I tell them.
“You must,” says Kalen.
“You have to,” says Brandon.
“Please, for me,” says Flanagan.
“Just do it, bitch,” says Jamie.
“I don’t see the need. You’ve saved humanity.”
“You know what will happen on Earth.”
“I don’t know for certain.”
I’m lying. I do know. At the moment, Earth is a paradise; all its people are free, sustained by the slave labour on other planets.
But once Earth is isolated again… What will the Corporation do then?
“They’ll fuck it up,” says Jamie.
“It’ll be, yeah,” says Brandon.
“Shit,” adds Jamie.
“Real shit,” Brandon adds.
“It’s true,” Kalen chips in.
“Human nature.”
“What a bummer.”
“Some people need someone to oppress. It’s the way of the Universe. Unless…”
“It’ll take a brave person. Someone, you know…”
“Heroic. A heroine. You could be…”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snarl. But the flattery does its job.
Because I know exactly what my son will do. He will not surrender his power, he will not in any way compromise. Instead, he will authorise a new war. He will build starships to go back out into space and rebuild Beacons. And if necessary, he will enslave half of Earth humanity in order to do that.
And so, if we do not act, then in forty or fifty years the Corporation’s warships will reach the edges of inhabited space. Within two hundred years they will be at Kornbluth. And this time, they will be unbeatable. Slavery will return. We will, once again, be two human races: the Have Everythings, and the Trodden Underfoots.
I know what must be done.
We have to kill the Cheo. We have to destroy the Corporation. We have to conquer Earth.
“It can’t be done. All the Beacons are destroyed,” I tell them. “There’s no way for us to connect with Earth, or to mind-travel there, without a Quantum Beacon.”
“There is a way.”
“The Beacons are all destroyed!” I shout at him.
“All but one.”
With waves of horror, I realise that all along Flanagan has known of my secret power and status.
“You,” Flanagan says.
“Me?”
“You. You are a Beacon.”
He has figured it out. Every other member of the pirate crew has a brain microchip with a roaming facility which connects it to the nearest remote computer – whether it’s on the pirate ship, on the nearest planet, or even on one of the interstellar-space-travelling computers which can be found from time to time.
But I am unique in that I have exclusive and individual use of one computer, which I can access instantaneously wherever I am. And that computer is on Earth. This was my parting gift from my son, the Cheo: a brain implant that allows me instant access to everything that is happening or has happened anywhere in the inhabited Universe, via a massively powerful remote computer on Earth.
And, of course, such a connection is possible because the microchip implant includes a Quantum Beacon.
“Everyone assumes the Beacons must be large,” Flanagan says, calmly.
“Not so,” says Jamie.
“They’re small. Itsy.”
“Bitsy.”
“Quantum-sized small!”
