The Causal Angel (Jean Le Flambeur) - Plot & Excerpts
It is a gnawing anxiety that mingles with the faint tickle of motion in my stomach that the interface Realm translates the ship’s slow dive into, a chilly sense of someone looking over my shoulder.It could be some echo of my past self, preserved in the ship’s neural interface. The pilot’s Realm is a floating platform in a cavernous chamber with crystalline walls that provide a fish-eye view of the giant planet’s churning ochre depths. I sit on a velvet-cushioned chair at a control keyboard that looks like the bastard offspring of three pipe organs and a typewriter – it even has pedals. But it is all a shorthand for mental commands. As I brush the keys, the ship’s cool presence enfolds my mind, snug like a well-worn glove. Who knows what fossilised feedback loops were triggered by my touch and now resonate in my brain?Or it could be the ship’s avatar Carabas, a glass-eyed mechanical cat in a flamboyant hat and boots. When I last encountered it on Mars, in my old memory palace, it tried to gut me and turn me into a wax figure.
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