Floozman in Space

by Bertrand Cayzac

Part I

The Zodiac of Her Spirit II

part 2

End of the revolutions of love

The CosmiGirls address Jenny with the wary concern that one has for someone who is dying but who unexpectedly looks up, takes on a rosy complexion, and strikes up a merry conversation at the edge of the black abyss opening before her.

When Millicent is questioned by way of the service channel, the stimuli shield confirms that she relinquished control over her mistress’s body at the moment when Jenny’s attention to life crossed the critical threshold: the unreal voice calling to Janatone is indeed that of the president of Cosmitix.

“Are you here, Jenny?” asks Militrissa, a new CosmiGirl.

“Yes,” replies Jenny, “I’m here...” And then she remains silent, staring, her arms resting on her broad thighs. “I am also there,” she says a moment later. And again: “I am Janatone.”

How Jenny has arrived at that conclusion, the stimuli shield cannot say. Jenny’s abrupt return to consciousness has been decidedly far from tidy. The events of the night may have caused a reincarnation in which Jenny has lost her bearings. And who knows to what heights of the superworld Jenny’s consciousness could have flown?

Then in a single motion, Jenny stands up. She has seen the presidential web burning with unfiltered alerts as Scarlett O’Hara saw the sky of Atlanta tinged with purple on the eve of battle. She reads immediately signals of trespass to her person and the disappearance of a first-class Artificial Uterus in the bio-controlled sector.

Everything is reported. Jenny’s companions are eager to bridge the gap between them and her. They tell her feverlshly everything she might have missed. “You are pregnant, Jenny, pregnant by Janatone. The stolen AU contains a mutant! It’s a viable one whose genome is being analyzed. It is your child. And Janatone has fled with the mutant. She has run away with a commando squad of insurgents, and she has taken the child with her.”

Millicent breaks in directly on the web. “She was with us, but I could not hold her back. She stole a march on us.”

Jenny jumps up, startled. “Janatone? The genome? I’ll get it... I have had it, every time... But she... she will exit Being! Jenny closes her eyes, and her great body stiffens. Then she shouts, “I, too! I want out! I want it all!”

“What will Janatone exit from, Jenny?” ask the CosmiGirls.

“Yes, I can see you... It’s amazing you are so... But this can’t be true... I’ve already been there, and there is no time, no space... There is ME... And in me there’s no form or perception... Come back, come back, I love you... I called you back, I called everything back and yes I sent her — and him, my compassionate self, and all that money.”

The Cosmigirls exchange glances, then a high-pitched scream makes them jump high in the gravity-free hospital bubble:

“Hush... THE CART! I hear the cart!”

“What cart, Jenny? the CosmiGirls ask, still patient and half-convinced that the Cosmitix president is transferring some memories of her mysterious Earth childhood into the ineffable dimensions of the high superworld.

“THE CART OF DEATH! It’s my turn.” Jenny looks about rapidly, like a stalker of old but without ground to stand on.

This is enough for Winaretta. “Hold on Jenny, I’m coming!”

“NO! This is the pole, the limit. I can hear it. It’s my turn to become... and not to become... forever... NO!” Jenny looks for words and then begins to talk to herself without any transition. “You got what you deserve, my poor girl! Stay at the table! Mind your manners...”

“To become what, Jenny?” the CosmiGirls persist, while Winaretta is settling herself in a powerful psycho-pump.

“NO!” Then, turning inward, Jenny says, “Translate, Millicent.”

Millicent serves her purpose in a monotone. “One cannot say no, because one becomes ‘no.’ And one cannot remain ONE, because it starts again; one is not absolutely one. But one approaches ‘one’ close enough as to make no difference. And then one breaks through, and it starts all over again. No, I don’t want to become... to become...

“Become what?” asks Millicent. “I don’t think this is what Jenny wants to say.” The stimuli shield hesitates. “But what does she mean...?” Millicent finally mutters, “To become God.” Millicent’s embarrassment makes the CosmiGirls smile.

At these words, Jenny begins shaking to her bones.

“Don’t get excited,” say the medical palotins, who are ready to put an end to Jenny’s delirium. But Jenny shoots such a dark look at them that their decision-engines immediately sputter to a halt.

Millicent, the stimulus shield, won’t give up. “Well, she means a G-spot. I mean, a singularity that represents the idea of God in some kind of complex plane...”

Jenny turns the same dark look on all present and says in her true voice, “I shall return!” Then she faints.

* * *

Jenny’s journeys in the superworld conclude

Millicent’s memory eruptions enfold the Comex meeting. The time they take is determined by the multiple movements composing it: Europa’s rotations, the dance of the Galilean satellites around Jupiter, an almost complete turn of the giant planet around the Sun. Somewhere inside its orbital ellipse, a cargo ship rendezvous with planet Earth, which the star veils and reveals twelve times to the spaceship’s captors. This vessel is the one that brings Janatone back to her homeland, where she is believed dead.

In the palace gardens, the waterfalls have vanished, and water lilies have covered the ponds. They blossom, they fade then blossom anew. Clouds of frog eggs see the light and spawn generations of black tadpoles who live, reproduce in beauty and then die.

Pearl-colored mists incessantly thicken and thin under the dome. Sometimes, on paths by the shores, CosmiGirls amble in silence, by twos and threes. Their minds are elsewhere.

Jenny does not leave her golden apartments anymore. And all the while, the pyschopumps are turning, turning without stopping. But none of the cyborgs need this fire anymore to reach the superworld. Their soul has found the way.

Meanwhile, for almost twelve Earth years, Jenny’s spirit has not come back. Several times it has cruised by the mental lighthouse piously tended by Millicent, but it took Janatone’s being reported alive on Earth for Jenny to return dockside at last.

And now that Comex has begun holding its decisive meeting, Jenny is struggling to cross back over the border of the superworld. She speaks to Millicent in a clear voice. She has changed: where has she been? What happened while they were all being measured by the instruments of time?

“Waldenpond!” the stimuli-shield calls, interpreting its mistress’s will. Millicent activates the memory of Jenny’s wrath in order to amplify the signal. Janatone has run away with the superhuman baby. The only one ever conceived! Janatone has betrayed you!

Jenny clenches her fists. “She is alive! I want her, and I want the baby. We can’t underestimate her technology. She has weapons.” Jenny’s strongly build body can easily adopt ancient aggressive postures. They are somewhat awkward but they are nonetheless accurate, as far as the directors can tell.

Jenny-Millicent holds a silence, then straightens. The immediate web is waiting. She opens her arms slightly, and her eyes are half shut. Observers fear what kinds of fluids may seep through her long, shivering eyelashes.

Jay Beeh gives a very nice nod: precise, undisputable, military. His gesture terminates so neatly Jenny-Millicent’s address that some observers doubt his full compliance.

Schtroumpf takes the lead right away. “Action: unlock a budgetary line. / Owner: Surof. / Date: immediately.”

With these words, Stuart Surof’s double thought skips four beats. It agrees and does not agree.

“Yes, yes, it’s the right decision,” chant the directors and all the upper middle-management cyber palotins.

“Action: find and secure the Artificial Uterus. / Owner: me. / Date: before the end of the year.”

Me?! wonders Millicent, who is getting a little heated.

Jay Beeh interrupts with a tone of authority. “This action will be discussed later with Special Services, if you don’t mind.”

Millicent is dumbfounded. What could she do without Special Services’ support anyway? She really controls only the palace. But hasn’t the executive director just blatantly contradicted Jenny, the Cosmitix president? What does it mean? What would Jenny say?

“Okay. I want to meet them as soon as possible after this meeting,” says Millicent, to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

“Yes, yes, right decision.” The action plan writes itself before their eyes, in big, imperative letters.

To be continued...