Denis and Josie were lovers. Not that they actually made love. Not any more.
They hadn't made love for the last four years; neither of them had been capable of it. Denis was into Bliss, and Josie was a Game head.
Denis huddled in the shop doorway, tugging the remnants of his plastic mackintosh around his knees for warmth, his hangdog eyes searching the busy Mimian street for a 'roll'. Even though it was cold, he was sweating. His stomach had bunched itself into a fist and was trying to punch its way out of his body. He hadn't eaten for two days; his last meal had been a slice of pizza he'd stolen off a drunken astro. But it was a different kind of hunger that was gnawing at him now. He took out a long-empty polythene bag, and licked pathetically at its already well-licked insides. Denis had a second-class degree in Biochemistry. Though, if you asked him now, he probably couldn't even spell 'Biochemistry'.
Josie was sitting by his side, laughing. She'd been laughing for nearly an hour.
Her long, once-blonde hair was matted into a series of whips which lashed at her pale, grimy face as she tossed her head, giggling idiotically. Of the two, she was the really smart one. Josie had a first-class degree in Pure Mathematics.
Only, right now she couldn't even have counted her legs.
They'd met at the New Zodiac Festival six years earlier, when the Earth's polar star had changed and the entire zodiac had to be realigned. Everybody shifted one star sign forward.
Josie had moved from Libra to Scorpio, and Denis had changed from Sagittarius to Capricorn. It was a turning point in both their lives: they both felt so much happier with their new star signs and, along with the other five thousand or - so space beatniks who'd gathered for the four-day festival in the Sea of Tranquillity, they'd taken many, many drugs, and talked about how profoundly the shifting constellations had changed them, and how maybe The Druids were the only dudes who'd ever really got it right.
Now they were on their way to Neptune, for Pluto's solstice, when Pluto took over from Neptune as the outermost planet of the solar system. They'd been travelling for five years, and so far they'd only managed to bum their way up to Saturn. Still, they weren't in a particular hurry - the solstice wasn't going to happen for another fifty years.
So Denis scanned the street for a roll while Josie sat beside him, laughing.
Across her brow gleamed the metal band of a Game head. Underneath it, needle-thin electrodes punctured the skull and burrowed into her frontal lobes and hypothalamus.
The Game started out actually as a game. It was intended to be the zenith of computer game technology. Tiny computer chips in the electrodes transmitted signals directly to the brain. No screens, no joysticks - you were really there, wherever you wanted to be. Inside your head, your fantasies were fulfilled. The Game had been marketed as 'Better Than Life'. It was only a month after its release that people realised it was addictive. 'Better Than Life' was withdrawn from the market, but illicit electronic labs began to make copies.
It was the ultimate hallucinogen, with only one real major drawback.
It killed you.
Once you entered 'Better Than Life', once you put on the headband and the needles wormed into your mind, it was almost impossible to get out.
This was partly because you weren't even aware you were in 'Better Than Life' in the first place. The Game protected itself, hid itself from your memory. Your conscious mind was totally subverted, while your body slowly withered and died.
At first, well-meaning friends tried to rescue Game heads by yanking the headset out of the skull, but this always resulted in instant death from shock. The only way out of the Game was to want to leave it. But no one ever wanted to leave.
Most Game heads, unable to look after themselves, died very quickly. But Josie had Denis. And Denis at least shared his food with her, and kept her alive. When Josie first bought the headset from a South African Game dealer on Callisto, she'd urged Denis to get a set too. She wanted to try 'multiusing', when two or more headsets were connected together, so the users could share the same fantasy.
But Denis was into Bliss.
Bliss was a unique designer drug. Unique for two reasons. The first was that you could get addicted to Bliss just by looking at it. Which made it very hard for the police to carry out drug busts. The second was its effect. It made you believe you were God. It made you feel as if you were all-seeing, all-knowing, eternal and omnipotent. Which was laughable, really, because when you were on Bliss you couldn't even lace your shoes. The Bliss high lasted fifteen minutes; after coming down, the resulting depression lasted twenty-five years. Few people could live with it, so they had to take another belt.
Denis took off his boot, unrolled a second polythene bag, which contained a teaspoonful of the soil-coloured substance, and toyed with it pensively. He always saved a final belt for when he needed to roll someone for money. Which is what he was going to do right now.
***
Lister should have known better. He'd been on Mimas long enough to know not to turn round when he heard the voice. He should have put his head down and run.
But he didn't. And by the time he worked out what was happening, it was too late.
'Stop, My Son!' the voice bellowed, and Lister twisted to see the Bliss freak in the plastic mackintosh swaggering towards him in a Mysterious Way 'Dost Thou knoweth Who I am?'
Lister's eyes darted from side to side, looking for an exit, but the Bliss freak edged him into a doorway, and there was nowhere to go.
'Dost Thou knoweth who I am?' he repeated.
Yes, thought Lister, you're a smegging Blissfreak.
'Yes,' he said aloud, 'You're God, right?'
Denis beamed and nodded sagely. The Mortal had recognised Him. Not everybody did.
'That's right. I am God. And I have cometh to thee for a mighty purpose. I need some of your mortal Money.'
Lister nodded. 'Look, I'm completely strapped, man. I've got absolutely nothing on me. Not a bean.'
The Bliss freak sighed heavily, trying to contain His Wrath. 'Would you like Me to call down a mighty plague, and lay waste this entire world?'
'No.' Lister shook his head.
'Would you like to be turned into a pillar of salt?'
'No.' Lister shook his head again.
'Then give Me some money.'
'Look, I've told you. I'm broke.'
The Bliss freak stuck his right hand into the pocket of his ragged raincoat.
'I've got something in here that can hurt you.
Lister eyed him up and down. He wasn't that big, actually. And what did he have in his raincoat pocket that could hurt him? A lightning bolt? He decided to stand his ground.
'I don't believe you,' he said, smiling pleasantly.
The Bliss freak took his hand out of his pocket and showed Lister what he had in there that could hurt him.
It was his fist.
He swung it round, hitting Lister on the side of his face. The punch had no strength, but it took Lister by surprise. He banged his head against the edge of the door frame, and went down.
When he came to, barely thirty seconds later, his fifty three dollarpounds had gone, and so had God.
