Debatable Space Read Free Page A

slurp the green bogies.
    But on the other hand… maybe I’m just too good for her.
    I prefer that. I’m too good for her!
    Nyaaahhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brandon
    “I… have… a… complaint,” she says.
    “Take it up with the Captain,” I tell her.
    “I… can’t… .… .… .… .… .… .… .… .… . . . … .… .… . . . .
     … .… . .”
    I die of boredom waiting for her to finish her sentence.
    “.… .… .… .… .… . eat.”
    “I’ll inject you.”
    I take out a compressed-air syringe. Connect it up to a food vial. She is looking at me with weary eyes.
    “B… .… . . r… .… . . a… .… . . a.”
    “Brandon,” I say, ending her interminable attempt at speaking my name.
    She looks at me. Her eyes are pools of sorrow. She radiates vulnerability, passion, grace, beauty, she is a woman a man could
     happily die for.
    “You made your bed, lie in it,” I tell her curtly. I inject the food.
    Her look curdles into one of pure hate. Speaking is too tiring for her, so she just uses the resources of her penetrating
     stare.
    “M… y… .… . . f… .… . . a… .… . . th…”
    “I don’t want to hear about your father.”
    I leave.
    Behind me, I hear a stifled, semi-comatose sob. I feel a pang of pity for her.
Flanagan
    My dream was to be a musician. I studied Spanish guitar, electric guitar, jazz guitar, fusion-techno guitar, keyboards, composition.
     After I escaped from my home planet of Cambria, and I’d got my head free of all the shit that happened there, I spent twenty
     years working on my music. I composed, I played, I mastered new instruments, I worked seven days a week, getting ready for
     my launch on galactic television. I lived and breathed music.
    Blues, boogie-woogie, reggae, hip-hop, techno, garage, Cuban fusion, bluegrass, flamenco soul and electro-soul, numusic, Jig
     Jag, gospel – I was the acknowledged master of all the revered historical musical styles. Modern styles held little appeal
     for me, I was the king of retro. But I was filled with an exhilarating sense that, by some magical process, I was creating
     my own musical synthesis. I was combining style with content, soul and rhythmic energy, and I wrote lyrics that cut and shredded
     the listener with their passion and which oozed and dripped and slimed sarcasm and attitude. My combo was called Flanagan’s
     Band, and we were going places.
    Then my wife and children were wiped out by an asteroid strike.
    We were living at the time on the planet Pixar, one of the “Free Worlds”. It was a warm, pleasant planet with gorgeous lakes
     and no seas. Pixar had two moons, and was subject to terrific tidal forces that caused regular flooding. But we all lived
     in houses that converted easily from outdoor to underwater living. And there was something about the air… it was oxygen-rich,
     low in impurities, and the act of breathing it in made you feel
good
.
    Then the asteroid hit us. It was an astonishing, epic catastrophe, which for the inhabitants of Pixar was totally unexpected
     and beyond our wildest imaginings. It led to the extinction of millions of species and the end of civilisation on the planet.
     The atmosphere leached temporarily into space, volcanos erupted, entire continents ripped into segments, and the resulting
     earthquakes spewed up the planetary depths on to the surface.
    I was off-planet at the time, doing a gig on a space station in orbit around Pixar’s sun. But my wife Janet, and my son Adam,
     and my daughters Claire and Adelaide were all on the planet. They were, I guess, obliterated within the first ten minutes.
     I can only hope they didn’t know what was happening to them.
    And when I heard the news, I literally couldn’t believe it. I became almost psychotic in my scepticism, convinced the Universe
     was playing a practical joke on me. Then I replayed the vid footage and I wept. An entire world died… and all of my family
     died with them!
    After this