Free Another Life by Peter Anghelides Page B

a female wrestler?’
    ‘Female? What, with these shoulders?’ Owen flexed them for effect.
    ‘Yes,’ replied Toshiko. ‘Take a look – you have nice tits of your own.’ She gave him a little wave and melted away into nothing.
    Owen jutted his chin down awkwardly. The helmet wouldn’t let him bend that far. So he gestured towards the far side of the barber-shop, and positioned himself in front of the wall-mounted mirror to get a full-length view.
    Well, from the reflection, it was undeniable. Glendower Broadsword was broad, tall, golden-haired and very good-looking. And for the first time it was apparent that, within that stout leather jerkin, she possessed a very impressive pair of breasts.
    Once he’d got the hang of flying, Owen was able to zoom around to several locations he remembered from his previous visits to Second Reality . Only now he was totally immersed in the world, and the images and sounds that surrounded him were almost overwhelming. He spent time on a beach, swinging on a tyre suspended from nothing. A giant eye, called Harold, floated unblinking next to him and together they watched the sun set orange over the sea horizon, before baby turtles fought their way across the sand into the surf.
    He visited a slum area adjacent to a bright commercial district, where gun battles raged. Grubby dispossessed zombies stared blankly at their reflections in the smoked glass of passing stretch limos, before succumbing to a vigilante attack. Indifferent law enforcement officers looked on from the corner. Owen watched the same zombie consumed by flame twice before he moved on. The commercial district was a Chicago-inspired cityscape. The streets were covered in stylised flower motifs like giant asterisks, and the trams chattered their way down the hills to the sound of ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol.
    He watched a tennis match played on top of a skyscraper. Andy Murray was losing the first set to an unnamed and unranked hippopotamus who had startling white tennis shorts and a savage backhand. Owen eventually moved on in disappointment when he spotted that Murray’s repeated inability to read the hippo’s limited repertoire of passing shots was evidence that they were playing the same four games over and over again.
    Owen also recognised several characters from his previous visits. A tavern owner called Jeremy Cross. Molly, a schoolgirl on a tricycle. Belle and Alexei, twin explorers in pith helmets, who appeared from a caravan in the desert. It was like seeing cartoon characters brought to life as living people. A pirate called Cap’n Ian Sharkchum leapt at him from some overhanging trees in the shadows of a London park, trying to unseat him from a horse he’d borrowed from the Coldstream Guards. He managed to shake Sharkchum off. When the Cap’n had tried the same thing from the same tree on two further occasions, Owen got bored and decided to experiment with mortality.
    He’d located a Russian roulette game in an abandoned snooker hall. He took one of the four seats around a dusty blue pool table, and surveyed the other players. Their faces were lit by the reflected illumination of the shaded strip light overhead. Opposite, Brad Kominsky was a GI, his tight khaki T-shirt half-covered by the empty bandolier across his chest. Brenda Simone looked like a fortune teller, wreathed in the smoke from her fat cigar. And seated next to Owen was Walter Pendulum, a barrel-chested man in a tuxedo but with the head of a giraffe. Walter seemed very impressed with Owen, and batted his long eyelashes suggestively. As a cruel distraction, Owen pointed to the double-action revolver on the table. The gun they would each be using in turn.
    They placed their initial bets, notes fluttering down on the blue baize. Owen could feel his heart starting to race. What was it about putting a virtual revolver to his character’s head that could cause such anxiety? When he picked up the weapon, he knew. In the greater realism of