Fork in the (Space) Highway
I really don't know how we got here, old chum - you, me, and this bottle of Overlord opiate. I keep thinking there were those points where I could have done something else, and everything would have been different. Better, worse, I dunno...
And maybe you do, Orac, but you're not going to tell me, are you?
I'm getting used to this place, the old Presidential Palace. At first I hated it - too big, too shiny, too Alpha, too... too empty. Just me and you and the servants, and once I got rid of the mutoids - they gave me the horrors, wasn't their fault I know, but they always did - there weren't many servants left. And most of the people in the military were dead after the war, and all of what used to be the High Council are dead, thanks to those who held the job before us.
And as for the old crew - Blake and Avon, Jenna and Cally - I dunno if they'd want to know me now, even if we could find them.
Would you still look for them, Orac? Yes, if I told you to. But I don't know that I should, maybe we should let sleeping rebels lie. Everyone thinks Blake is dead, and none of the others are remembered, just like I told you to arrange... if they're alive, they're probably safe. And I'm safe from whatever they might want from me.
Can't say I like it here, I don't like being alone any more than I did. Now I'm the President and I own a ship can take me anywhere in the galaxy, but there's nowhere else to go. So I'll have another drink.
~oOo~
How did we get here, then? Oh, I know when it all started - back on the Liberator, that last day of the Great War... yes, that was your idea, wasn't it? Call it Great and once we control the records, make sure we get all the credit... what? No, I'm not complaining. It worked, didn't it?
But anyway, there we were, the Heroes to be of the Great Andromedan War and at the time all we wanted to do was get out before the ship died and we died with it. Me, I would have been first in the lifepods - I was going, even as Avon was yelling that he was surprised I was still there - when the ship lurched and he and Cally both got hit by falling metal, knocked cold.
Damn, that was scary. There we were, me, you and the two of them unconscious. Jenna and Blake had already gone, Cally said, so there was nothing to do but bundle them both into a pod - only one, bit of a tight fit but I didn't think she'd mind and he was going to be mad anyway - and send them off. Then I grabbed you, grabbed the last working pod and got the hell out of there. I know Avon meant to take you himself, as much his as the Liberator was supposed to be... and knowing him, he probably still wants to kill me for messing up whatever he had planned.
Might have been for the best, d'you think? He could have handled that business on Sarran, the Mellanbys and Her Self-Appointed Imperialness, the new President and still Supreme Commander, Servalan.
Dayna Mellanby still blames me for that business, wherever she is - and you'd better locate her if I'm ever going to really leave this palace. I'm serious, Orac, I keep thinking she's behind every faux-oakwood tree and every marbleine column. Hardly fair, is it? It wasn't our fault Hal Mellanby was killed, we were just passing through, it was just our usual wonderful luck that Servalan was too.
Servalan.
There she was on Sarran, large as viscast life and seven hundred times as terrifying. She joined the Federation battle fleet at the last - safe - minute, wanting to claim the credit and be seen as the Hero of the Invasion, just like a good politician always does. But it all went as bad as a helium core imploding and there she was, stranded on Sarran with her silk dress, high heels, empty gun and snake-slippery scariness, and looking to slither her way onto the Liberator.
She wanted me to hand the ship over. You heard her, she didn't put it that way, clever silky-tongued monster that she was. She just tried to talk me into 'sharing', and went on about power and wealth and all those things she wanted and thought I would too. And just between you and me and this bottle, Orac, I'll admit I might have fallen for it, if she'd tried just a little harder, hadn't made it quite how stupid and soft she thought I was. It might have worked if it'd been Avon, don't you think?
No?
Hardly matters though, does it? Not after she killed Mellanby - pity that, I rather liked him, a lot more than I liked those pretty, poisonous daughters of his - and Dayna killed her and was going to kill me, if you hadn't teleported us back to the Liberator first.
Avon's Liberator, I guess, after that convenient little bargain he and Blake made. But Avon wasn't there, and I was. And so was that Death Squad.
But that was all right, dead Death Squads don't really scare me as much as live ones. Hey, wasn't it a good thing I told you to tell Zen to kill any intruders? I did wonder afterwards - it might have been the others coming back - but by then it was too late, and it all worked out.
~oOo~
We did try to find them though, didn't we? You're a witness. Of course, you're a computer too, and everyone knows how computers lie... sorry, but it's true. I've been on the wrong side of a legal computer with over-interpretative wires of justice too often to trust any of you.
Anyway, we went looking for Blake first - your idea, wasn't it? Oh no, it was mine, you wanted to go looking for Avon because he pampers your precious tarriel cells better than I can. But I said Blake, because I had this feeling Avon might be a little annoyed over the whole sending-him-off-with-Cally-instead-of-you business, and Avon's little annoyances tend to be fatal except when Blake's there to stop him. So we ignored the Federation falling apart around us, and kept out of the way of the power struggles and civil wars and rebel uprisings, and start looking.
Only we didn't find Blake.
And we didn't find Jenna.
And by the time we turned to Avon and Cally, all you could discover was that they'd taken over a Chengan hospital ship just after the whole mess began, and ditched the crew on a backwater planet; they'd been seen on Obsidian before it blew up, and Auron before - something happened, no one's sure what - and near Kairos about the time of the harvest there. Seems they'd also been looking for Blake and Jenna and... and me, but weren't looking any more.
That hurt, you know? All right, I hadn't been looking for them, but I had reasons, well one reason, a dark, nasty, shoot-first-and-listen-to-excuses-later one.
But by then the Federation was in pieces, big, ugly, battling pieces, and I still wonder sometimes if you had more to do with that than you've told me. Did Blake leave you orders to screw the Federation if he couldn't?
Did Avon leave you instructions to mess up any powers that might stop him from getting rich and powerful a second time?
Or did you decide to get even for Ensor all on your own, now there's only me to get in your way?
Do I want to know?
At least no one was after Blake and his people anymore, well no one strong enough to do anything if they found us. And I was tired of being alone on this huge great ship; I wanted other people around, maybe other ex-crims from the old days, or maybe the folk I met on Space and Freedom City - if they were still alive, not something that you could guarantee even before the war made things livelier, or deadlier, or - where was I? Oh yeah, thinking I'd visit those places, have fun, meet people who might be interested in what you and I and Zen could offer them...
~oOo~
It was the rebels I ended up contacting, because Space City was a ghost station, even the Terra Nostra had packed up and run, and on Freedom City they hadn't forgotten the brilliant way Avon and I busted their casino - what? Oh yes, yes, you did it too Orac, you most of all. But they weren't about to recognise you, were they? They had holopictures of me with a price I'd be willing to give me up for...
So it was the rebels. Blake's cause. Pretty damn funny if you ask me - you're not asking? I'm not surprised - because of all Blake's crew, I would have to be the one you'd least expect to keep on with the cause when there was nothing in it for me.
Oh, you agree? That makes a change, usually you're all too ready to argue with me, aren't you? Like you did about contacting the rebels. I wanted to keep looking for Blake - or for Avalon - or a hundred others I'm sure Blake mentioned but I needed you to remember. You refused to come up with any of them except Sula Chesku.
What was wrong with that? In case you've forgotten - and yes, I know you can't forget anything, like the overtarrieled brain-in-a-box you are - once Servalan was officially dead, Sula Chesku was the new President's wife. And for a whole three hours - but who's counting? - Sula Chesku was the next President after him.
'Was', you say? It's only because of us that it's 'was', isn't it? We arrived in the middle of her little rebel-backed palace coup. We saw her kill him, her own husband even if he was Servalan's lackey. We took the credit from the rebels for locating and - what did you call it, Orac? - eliminating him, we took the credit from what was left of the Federation forces for eliminating her, we stopped her people from seeing who really killed her.
And I still think it was him, Orac.
Yes, I know you don't.
Yes, I know the planet hopper you identified wasn't the hospital ship he and Cally are still - well, that they seem to be using. But they could have more than one, and we both saw the palace security tapes. It wasn't that dark, I saw them both. And I dunno, he looked... he didn't look happy, did he? Maybe I should have looked for them, maybe with the Liberator - like he wanted. Maybe together we could have found Blake and Jenna, but at least we would have been together, and they'd be here too. We could take turns being President, and let you do all the work, just like you do now.
No good wondering, though, we can't change what happened, and I don't think he'd be too pleased to see me after I've had his ship and his computer all this time.
Blake might, though - now that the Earth rebels are in power, and you and I and Zen got them over that final hurdle in the final collapse after Chesku and Sula's deaths, and you made me take the credit because there was no way a computer was going to take power.
Even a super-brain like you, Orac. Me, I'll let you run the rebellion and the Federation - they're pretty much one and the same now, since you took over both sides' computers - and just be happy to sit in the background and be as rich as that famous President Croesus. Yours is the glory, Orac, I just want the money, the drink and a bodyguard of three hundred virgins in red fur instead of the three hundred red-furred virgopoids the Rebel Council insisted on...
Shouldn't complain, though. It's not a bad life being President of what's left of the Federation - not that that's very much - and Overlord of the Rebel Alliance - not that that's very allied - and rich and decadent and more powerful than anyone else in the galaxy. Not that that's all that powerful, when you think about it, and I try not to. Not a bad life, if you like it quiet. And empty. And rather... cold, like the diamond floors in every room, like the marbleine statues of Vila's Seven in the hallways, like the tinny rattle in your voice when you say you're working.
~oOo~
I really don't know how we got here, though I suspect you do. Or even if it's where I - we - ought to be. Everything could have been so different...
But better? Worse? Who knows?
Cheers, Orac old chum...
-the end-