Automatic Assassin

by Marc Horne

  Part of Quirg was bumped free of the immersion within the simulation. She had gone too far in her manipulations. She was in FanFic territory now. This would never hold up in a court of law. But it didn’t have to. It just had to convince Counselor Boyle and then she would be rewarded by a night in a dank interspecies dungeon of her choice. So she swigged a quick glass of margarita and by the time the cold tingling in her nipples had faded, she was back in the simulation.

  He kicked open the glass door, which opened reflexively, iris-style and made him fall arse over tit. But back to his feet he got and headed up to the deck. When he got to the deck he saw an empty ocean as far as the eye could see. A sensation floated up from below his perceptions: a perception filter. [Fantastic! Lower levels were emerging!] The perception filter made the emptiness even emptier: made it clear that there was nothing but ocean on this entire planet, and that it was in a very empty part of space and that no one ever came here either.

  He was almost disappointed that no one was on the yacht, and that he found no bombs when he scanned. Had he been forgotten already? He slumped down on a bench and looked up at the sky, full of orange peel streaks.

  He looked up through a polymer canopy at the limp sails and the droopy flag that still bore his crest. His family crest and the crest of his rebel army. A crest known by all across the galaxy.

  “Fuck!” shouted Quirg and jumped out of the lounger and then out of the cranium, jiggling with panicked sprinting.

  After she left the sim ran on. The clouds jumped around a little. A black spider descended from the sky, with little flashes of white fire at its feet.