EP118: The Veteran
Published by SFEley on 9 Aug 2007 at 9:05 pm.
5 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
By Neal Asher.
Read by Stephen Eley.
Seated on a bollard, the man contemplatively removed his pipe, as if to tamp it down or relight it. Instead, he placed it stem down in the top pocket of his shirt, then reached up and pressed his fingers against his cheekbone and forehead. His face came away from his hairline, round behind his ears, down to a point just above his Adam’s apple. The inside of his mouth and much of his sinus were also part of the prosthesis, so only bare eyeballs in the upper jut of his skull remained ‚Äì the rest being the black spikes and plates of bio-interfaces.
Cheel gaped. From another pocket, the man took some sort of tool and began to probe inside the back of his detached face. He put the prosthesis in his lap, then took up his pipe and placed it in his throat sphincter. Smoke bled from between the interface plates of his cheeks. His bare eyeballs swivelled towards Cheel then back down to the adjustments he was making. She suddenly realised who this must be. Here was the veteran who worked on the ferry. Here was one of the few survivors from a brutal war between factions of dense-tech humans. Not understanding what was impelling her, she walked out on the jetty and approached him.
Rated PG. Contains slight profanity and high-tech violence.
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macevangelist on 12 Aug 2007 at 5:29 pm: 1
Perfect pick Stephen. Neal is a great guy, we fought hooligans once in Greenwich together.
Martin R on 15 Aug 2007 at 1:30 am: 2
Naah. “Gangster’s moll steals his loot. She’s saved from his cronies by Superman. The gangster suddenly also gets super powers. A ferry sinks. The super-gangster decides to let his ex-moll live. The end.”
Mitch on 19 Aug 2007 at 9:17 pm: 3
I like this one. I didn’t understand what the author was getting at in the tech & battle descriptions - then it hit me - it’s “hard tech”. It’s can’t be understood by us mortals.
I’d like to have heard this story from the angle of the veteran.
Logan on 20 Aug 2007 at 10:59 pm: 4
I spent the summer listening to Escape Pod stories. Now, I commonly recommend certain stories to friends and family if I think they might like the subject, the humor, or the reading.
I would recommend this story to anyone who is into hard tech, along with EP95, “Blink, don’t blink.” However, I doubt that any of my friends or family would recommend the story to me. There isn’t anything fatally wrong with the story, it just didn’t capture my interest.
Dave (aka Nev the Deranged) on 22 Aug 2007 at 6:31 pm: 5
I like the line (which I will paraphrase because my memory is terrible), “Now that I could kill you easily, I’m even more certain that it isn’t what I want to do.” Does absolute power always corrupt? Or does being able to do anything you want make it easier to figure out what that is? If I am some day gifted with inscrutable alien technology, I’ll get back to you on that.