can start eating. But I heal quickly, and then I savour the melty blood texture of the prime sirloin steak and the rich, haunting flavours of truffle and wild oyster in the sauce. I play Bach’s sonata in G Minor for violin in my inner ear as I eat, and I slosh the wine back generously – three bottles, a bottle more than I normally allow myself. By the end of the meal, I am so drunk my vision swims, and I start to think about vomiting. Then my cerebral filters kick in and I am semi-sober. Just nicely pissed.
After that, I eat creme brulee with dried apricots washed down with Turcoman brandy and petits fours and some of those lovely slithery chocolates that are bioengineered to ooze off the plate and down the table leg to freedom if you don’t eat them swiftly and ruthlessly enough. So, of course, I do – none escape!
And I think about the flame beasts, and their strange solitary lives. And their remorseless fascination with the insanities of the human race. Alby’s species have achieved stasis, and peace; and because of that, their spirits have withered. They have atrophied into cosmic voyeurs, reliant on the human race to live the lives that they themselves are unable to live. For all the many faults of the human race, at least we have not reached that drab state: of being alive, but not knowing whether it is worth it.
But since their discovery of mankind, the flame beasts have had a new lease of life. Their culture has flourished and been inspired. They have copied our art forms, and studied our ways in intense detail. And, above all, they have become addicted to our television dramas, and our political crises and wars. We have helped turn a species of superminds into avid watchers of reality TV.
But the truth is that we, the human race, are their show.
I mull about all this, and I find myself wondering: now that Earth has been liberated, what will happen with the flame beasts? Will they lose interest in us, now that tyranny and oppression have been eradicated? Will we lose their patronage, and their blessing?
I think a little more. Alby always baffled me, and frightened me. But now, with leisure, and endless access to the memories of our time together, I am starting to make sense of him. I realise he had a droll sense of humour, and a sharp understanding of Flanagan’s hidden strategy. And I realise, too, that he played a much greater part in the final climax than Flanagan himself ever realised.
For I saw a light flickering on the day in Parliament. I thought it was a firefly. But in London? In daylight? Then the Cheo burned before our eyes, despite his force fields, despite his body armour. It would take the light of a thousand stars to burn through those defences; but it happened.
That light was Alby. He was with us, all along, watching.
That’s a very scary notion, at first thought.
But at second thought, it is even scarier.
And now, over the course of ten slow and thought-heavy years, it has become the scariest thought ever. Because I realise that, in order to be present on Earth during our final battle, Alby must possess the power to travel faster than light – to move instantaneously through space. But since nothing can travel faster than light, this means that Alby must somehow be able to manipulate quantum states.
Which means he doesn’t need a Beacon; his species are naturally quantised, able to slip through the cracks in reality.
Which means…
… or so I now suspect, basing my opinion on the very strict mathematical rules which determine “quantum action at a distance”.. .
… the flame beasts must have become quantum-entangled at a very early stage in the existence of the Universe. In other words: there must have been a time in the pre-expanding Universe when all the flame beasts existed as a single finite bundle.
And so, I further theorise, at the very moment of the birth of the original Singularity which spawned the Universe, the first sentient flame beast was created. And then after the Big Bang, the flame beasts were scattered to every sector of the expanding cosmos.
And now, countless hundreds of millions of years later, the flame beasts are still interconnected at a fundamental quantum level. They can go anywhere; they can die in one part of the Universe, and be reborn instantly somewhere else.
Just think what this actually means! The flame beasts are not just a very very old species. They were, if I’m right, the first. They aren’t gods – far from it – they were generated by the same process of emergent self- organisation which created every other animate and non-animate entity. But at the dawn of the Universe they were that dawn.
“And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.” And that light was intelligent.
I am awed, and humbled. The flame beasts have lived so long that they have seen everything there is to see. And they inhabit or have inhabited every single conceivable part of the Universe.
And yet, their greatest pleasure is watching our TV shows?
Suddenly, I’m not so awed, not nearly so humbled.
Oh boy.
They’ve lied to us, too. For all this time, the flame beasts have pretended that they are confined to a single star. In fact, they exist everywhere. They are the conquerors of the Universe. And if they so chose, we would be their slave race.
But what would be the point? Would we, the human race, make slaves out of ants, or beetles, or ladybirds? That is the only reason we are still free; because we are so insignificant.
But the flame beasts do enjoy us. They savour our violence, our unreliability. They love to see us murder, torture, rape and maim. That, and our television soap operas, gives them their kicks.
I remember the wild nights of passion I spent with Flanagan, the light flickering above our bunk. The light flickering. Who would have thought that flame beasts could be so damned perverted?
I shudder. And I wonder what the rest of humanity would do if they knew what I knew? Would they sink into despair? Would it shatter the self-confidence of the human race?
Best not to take that chance.
And so, if you’re agreed, my loyal computer, this must always be our secret. Agreed.
Have you always known all this? Of course.
Damn. You really are a fucking know all. I hate you sometimes. So I have observed.
I try to teach myself blues guitar. But I find it too annoyingly easy. Base chord for four bars, up four chords for two bars, up one chord for two bars, back to base chord for four bars. Christ! This is music for idiots.
So instead, I practise my scales, I harden my fingertips with keratin cream, and within a year I am able to play fairly accomplished flamenco guitar. I find the rhythms captivating and haunting, and I feel affinity for the spirit of duende which is the essence of this style.
I record hours of material, then I play it back to myself as I strip naked and slowly dress myself in crotch- hugging knickers and a vividly red Spanish dress that leaves a large portion of my amble bosom bare, and then I dance and stamp my way through a flamenco dance routine.
Then I dress myself as a toreador, in tight trousers and a sharp picador blade, and I prowl across the room as I replay a 3D hologram of myself flamenco-dancing to the sound of myself playing acoustic guitar, and the air is shredded by the whish-whish-whish of my blade as my feet stamp and my fingers strum.
Then that palls. I hurl the guitar out into space and I try to learn chess. I find it very annoying, and I start to devise better rules. Instead of all those pawns, for instance, I create a whole series of pieces with clearly defined functions and rules of play – the Thief, the Whore, the Boss, the Bully, the Victim, and so on. Then I invent new rules for the King and Queen so that their powers wax and wane according to how well they are ruling their respective realm.
This proves to be a delightful challenge, and I resolve to patent my new game by transmitting the details via the Universal Web to the Galactic Patent Office. Then I recall I cannot do such a thing, because ever since the Beacons were all destroyed, the Universal Web is no more, and the Galactic Patent Office is now defunct.
I could of course use my remote computer to contact the Earth Patent Office from my location in deep space, hence betraying the secret that I am the custodian of the last surviving Quantum Beacon… but that would expose me to danger and/or the loss of my remote computer link. So I shan’t do that.
So I end up feeling very vexed and frustrated indeed. I content myself with creating a new type of pastry, that continues to rise as you are eating the pie.
And my yacht continues to sail, deeper and deeper into uncharted space, etc. etc. etc. And I remember my
