“It’s the ships which house the Beacons which are large,” Flanagan says. “The Beacons are, well, infinitesimal. You have a Quantum Beacon in your brain, Lena. That’s how you know so much. You are our only link to Earth.”

“You can’t ask me to kill my own son,” I whisper.

“Lena, you have to. It “s the only way.”

He’s right, I know. Lena, be careful.

Tinbrain, be quiet. I have need of you. Consider this an order. What is your order, Lena? Lena?

Help me go to war.

Lena

My remote computer goes to work. It is networked with every other computer on Earth and on the Dyson Jewels. It can access any workplace, any factory.

My computer accesses the mainframe computer on a space factory in orbit near Venus. It issues it with a series of specifications and instructions. Moulding presses are created and hot bioplastic is poured in. Humanoid shapes are created, and modified, and sculpted. Robotic brains are built and installed, tailor-made to be operated by human minds.

The robots are strong, and can breathe in airless space. And their armoured carcasses have only a few weak points that can be damaged by explosive bullets or laser blasts.

On my instructions, my tinbrain remote computer moulds the robots to exactly resemble their human counterparts. The vats create a robot Lena, and a robot Flanagan.

When the robots have been created their cyberbrains are switched on. The sensory input from eyes and ears and nostrils is digitised and sent to the Quantum Beacon in my brain. I am able to process it – and I see what Robot Lena sees. Then, by tensing my muscles or moving any other part of me in my simulator frame, I am able to send digitised instructions on how to move to Robot Lena, and these instructions travel back by the same route.

Just as we did on Cambria, we are able to possess and operate the Doppelganger Robots despite many light-years of physical distance. The difference this time is that the Quantum Beacon is in my head.

I did not dare tell Flanagan of this power of mine. I had no idea he had guessed.

The sly bastard…

Flanagan’s plan has another dimension. He learned, from what I did on Cambria in the menage a trois with the Doppelganger Robots, that I have the ability to split my consciousness. So Flanagan is linked into my mind via a neural connection; and I am able to filter the signals from the Flanagan Robot and pass them through to him. And, in the same way, I am able to transmit his body movements to his robot replica.

Our minds are merged; and with me as the vessel, we are able to move the two robots on Earth.

My computer gives instructions for the two robots to be discarded from the factory near Venus. We are picked up on a conveyor belt, and ejected into space.

And we fly, exhilaratingly, through the empyrean. We don’t need suits… we feel like birds that have got lost and have flown up into Heaven. We wheel and roll and soar around Venus, then accelerate towards the ball of Earth.

It’s a longish journey, but it leaves me rapt with awe. The Dyson Jewels are like the globes on an ancient planetary model writ large; their diamond surfaces shine in celebration of the glory that is humanity. The Angel bathes its eerie light on everything, and Earth itself seems richer and bluer and greener than ever before.

I have a long long moment of sublimity.

Then I glance at Flanagan, with his grizzled hair and fierce eyes. At my instructions, the beard has gone. He looks younger somehow. And his body is stretched out, arms ahead, rocket pack on his back. He is the very image of the ageing Superman returning from a trip to the stars.

And for the first time in centuries, I feel clean. I feel purged.

I have lived too long with guilt and regret and despair. But now, suddenly, exhilaratingly, my past has been flung open for me. And I can see what really happened to me in the long course of my life. I can see my strengths, my virtues, my triumphs. But I can also see my weaknesses, my blind spots, my terrible errors of judgement. I see it all – but in a detached, calm way, as if I am looking at myself from a long way away.

I see my tendency to grandiosity, my habit of inflating my own importance. I see, in truth, that my role as “President” of Humanity was less important than I have claimed. I was a figurehead, a rallying cry. I did help; but I never achieved as much as I would have liked.

Everything has fallen into perspective. I’ve had an amazingly varied life; that’s the most extraordinary thing about me. I am also a great populariser of scientific ideas; that’s a major accomplishment in itself. I am proud at what I’ve done. I have no need to be a goddess. You’re very wise.

Shut up! You’re to blame. With your flattering and your ego-stroking. You helped make me into the monster I became. That’s how you programmed me.

Well nyaah nyaah, call yourself a computer superbrain!

I can see now, with painful clarity, how I began to lose my mind while in power. All those long nights strapped to a cyberhelmet, living and breathing the lives of the citizens of Hope. Followed by all those long long days, the endless meetings, the ceaseless decisions, with stress and anxiety my constant companions. After a hundred or so years of this, I was tired and drained and sleep-deprived almost all of the time. I suspect I was delusional and paranoid for most of my final years in office. No wonder I murdered poor old Cavendish. She deserved it.

What? I said, she deserved it. Don’t beat yourself up.

She was a good woman, and I was insane. She was a wicked woman, and a bitch, and besides, what’s done is done. Forgive yourself, Lena, it’s time, and you deserve absolution.

What’s this, more of the ego-massage subroutine? This is me, Lena. Not everything I say is the result of my programming. You’re a good woman, I’m proud to have you as my friend.

I am humbled at the words from my remote computer. But I am also genuinely confused; are his words merely another result of my devious programming? Or has my computer evolved a personality and an independent sentience? It’s me! I told you! Are you dumb or what?

Thank you, I mouth, to the remote computer in my head.

“Penny for your thoughts,” says the robot Flanagan over the intercom.

“I was just discussing with myself what an extraordinary and wonderful individual I am.”

“You really are full of shit, you old shrew.”

“Ah, go put a sock in it, greybeard.”

We carry on our long flight through space until we reach Earth’s atmosphere.

Then we plunge downwards.

We burn. But these bodies are amazingly robust. Propelled by jetpacks, but without any kind of spacesuit, we soar through Earth’s air until we emerge, blazing like comets, into the day sky above Europe.

Below, I can see the Alps. We fly lower. And lower still.

We swoop low over England, in a county not far from where I was born.

I am home.

Flanagan amp; Lena

This is disgusting. The neural connection puts me right inside the torrent that is Lena’s brain. I can feel her every opinion, her every prejudice. I wallow and splash in her self-satisfaction and smugness. This fucking bitch is such a fucking bitch!

Shut the fuck up, Flanagan.

Your mind is a cesspit!

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