I have lived many lives, largely uninterrupted by my duties.Īn observer might call these lives empty, but between systems, often decades at a time, they are all I have.īy my count, the year is 2432-though I may well be wrong, as we travel faster than the speed of light. I immerse myself in virtual environments so flawlessly rendered I forget they are fiction. My ship, small though it is, has several lifetimes’ worth of entertainment files. I possess no unique or useful knowledge, only memories. I value it, though what value it has is measured in a mere handful of molecules. I am no one’s employee, but I prefer not to use the word slave. The terms are ridiculous, for Louca and I are not paid.
She is categorically insane-a fact that, my employer insists, makes her uniquely suited to the job of protector.Įmployer. Hopefully, her capacity for violence will never be tested. Louca’s duty is to dream violent dreams, to defend and deliver her payload. I follow Louca from a distance of one hundred thousand kilometers, never any closer, and report anything unusual. Still, I arrange nothing-I have no power over the situation. It is my one accomplishment, making men marginally less alone. Now, because of Louca and I, it is the rule that souls must be sold in pairs. Before the events of this story, only the luckiest souls were bought in pairs or groups, a rare occurrence. Surely Louca feels it she goes crazier and crazier in such close proximity to ghosts. Even without physical bodies, men become lonely. My employer used to goad me on these points: “Is it not wonderful to know your people are put to such good use? Imagine how happy it must make them!”īut I know the truth. Sometimes they are used to attract customers to the buyer’s business. Nearly everything is hidden from me, and Louca sees nothing. They are quite expensive, I am told, but I have no understanding of the means of exchange. For three centuries we have hauled the disembodied souls of Earth-each stored in a projection cube-from star to star to be sold. She dreams of flying, which is appropriate. More often, she wears the bodies of flying animals. Very rarely, she is human, and never the same person twice. Technically, her body is a black, whale-shaped ship one hundred meters long, but her avatars take the forms of anything she imagines. She is the second human possessing a body. Her name means crazy-an appropriate name. Louca is the one I am forced to follow and observe. On more than one occasion she has run her hands over the ghostly contours of my body. Over the years it has become difficult to remember what my face looked like, and thus my features are only approximately human, my head bare. Outside the walls of my ship, I am in form a faintly translucent white specter, strong and powerfully built-an artist’s anatomical model. I am one of two humans still inhabiting a physical form, diminished though it is.
Originally, this was the extent of my plan: To serve myself. On that day I would either die or buy myself a measure of freedom. I did not know when and where, nor did I know what would trigger it. I had studied his weaknesses and come to believe myself capable of the act. You see, I had decided to murder my employer. Hurling myself against the diamond-hard walls of my small ship, the point of the weapon hardened. Between star systems I gathered and focused my particles into a triangle, a sharp shape. I had been practicing turning myself into a knife.
0 kommentar(er)
