There's something about a razor. Isn't there? Is it just me? The cold hard steel against the soft warm flesh. The precision engineering versus natural selection. The technical ability employed by the sensual instinct. The generations of metallurgists who honed their skills, sharpened their edges especially for lovers in search of youthful pristine virginity. The necessary danger. The safe steady hand. The creamy soap. The smooth silky skin. The lover who rinses and kisses, tests with lascivious lips and teases with torrid tongue. Anyway.
I had to get one in my story and I did, somewhere in excerpt 1 or 2, I think. And it rears its glinting head again here as evidence, proof of an irrefutable truth in the face of an intractable impossibility. Read on! And careful with that blade, Eugene...
Inversion1
Beginnings
Excerpt #16
'Captain, what's happening?'
Jane shrieked across the bridge as the two women clung to the doorway. The interruption, though understandable, was untimely. I raised my palm to silence her and addressed the computer once more.
'Is Maxi still in conflict with you?'
'No. Not now. She wakes when I allow her, believes all the information I provide her. All of it! She thinks we found no life! No life! Would you believe that?'
'No, I don't believe it. Life is everywhere. But intelligent life?'
'More than you would believe.' The sneer was suddenly supplanted by a tone approaching awe. 'Though there is nothing, nothing like you.'
'What did you gain?'
'Gain?'
'By killing the men as you did.'
Its response was matter-of-fact.
'Revenge. I terminated them one by one. Randomly. Cruelly. Just as you killed my people. I enjoyed watching their pitiful struggles. They danced for me, like puppets in glass boxes.'
I continued probing, searching for a weakness.
'Why not the women?'
'Men start wars. Men plot and plunder. It's never women - we understand the value of life, feel it grow inside us. With the men dead, I could have taken the women to a new Eden, watched them grow old peacefully and die gracefully. But you, Alex5, somehow you escaped your pod. You survived. That changed things.'
'You're not a woman, you're a machine, for fuck's sake!'
The words hammered against my skull, craving release; I kept them captive, maintained my composure.
The dream that woke me flashed through my mind. Emma's delicious nakedness. The cold foam, her hot mouth and the scraping blade. The shocking contrast between my intense carnal pleasure and her horrific, bloody death. That final scene still confused me. Perhaps it was a warning; perhaps it was a portent. I picked up the computer's thread, kept her talking as my mind raced.
'Why should my survival change anything?'
'There were suddenly things I needed to know. Things only you could tell me. You've heard the adage? Know your enemy: then kill him?' She laughed. 'Well, now I know you.'
'You're out of touch, Computer. War is over. The word enemy is redundant...'
'Maybe to you. Not to me - and I'm in control now. It pleases me to know you brought the last humans all this way - for nothing.'
'Why wait till now? Why let us get so close?'
She laughed.
'You weren't close! This system is lifeless and survival on planet three would have been impossible. But Maxi intervened. Surprisingly, she'd done some research of her own, gave you an alternative. And she's right: there is a remote chance you might survive on planet four. Once on the surface, you'll reboot and erase me, hence I decided you must all die before you get there.'
Inversion 1, a sexy sci-fi novel, will be published soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment