Free Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson

travel permits removed for six months." The vitriol
with which she delivered this was stinging. They sat openmouthed and
then started as, one by one, their personal organisers all began to ring,
pip, and sing shrilly at maximum volume to confirm the bad news.
    She decided not to walk on the beach or hang around for the grisly
aftermath. She'd had it with that place, and anyway, stay much longer
and who knew what she might do, or think? She might start
screaming or crying or trying to kill someone who probably didn't
deserve it just because things hadn't worked out for her, because Max
was dead and gone, Zal was lost, because she hurt and the world had
moved on without her and become a place she could never be at home
in and there was no going back.
    For the benefit of the kids still trying to curse her and hit her with
loose stones she rode out of the parking lot backwards and gave them
the finger as well before taking the freeway to her date with the dust
sheets of abandonment. All the way she held her breath and kept her
mouth shut. Her chest felt like it was going to burst, but she had to
keep everything in. She felt nuclear, atomic, like her rage would
destroy the world, or worse, that it wouldn't. It wouldn't do anything, just explode and then trickle away and there'd be nothing left. If there
was nothing, what would she do then? What would she be?

    The bike tires screamed on the asphalt. She fishtailed wildly. The
speedometer reached its limit and the battering of the air froze her face
and shoulders. There was a point somewhere on the highway when a
stone or something caught the tires. She felt the bike judder faintly,
and then it was airborne. It skimmed the ground for seventeen metres
and struck a concrete abutment where two lanes divided. She was
thrown free of it, but not far. Beige slabs flew up to meet her.

    Lila got to her feet without knowing where she was or what was happening. The clear memories and miss-nothing processing of her
machine body wasn't able to penetrate the daze that slamming headfirst into a solid bridge support had brought upon her. She had the
vaguest of notions about what had just happened, but it seemed no
more than imaginary. Somewhere behind her traffic was stopped,
people were talking, exclaiming, but she only saw the concrete wall
she had hit and the pattern of cracks she'd made in it that matched
the pattern of lines she felt in herself. She moved cautiously, in case
she fell apart.
    To her surprise she could see things she'd never noticed before.
There was a river crossing here, for instance, right where the roads
crossed. In fact, the underneath road was the river and the over road
was a covered wooden bridge. She was standing on a small bank beside
it, and there was a boat not far away from her coming against the flow
of the strange grey liquid that lay deep and current ridden beneath the
fragile surface of the ordinary Otopian day. Standing in the boat was a
person dressed in robes, using a long pole to skillfully press the craft
through the least difficult water. It was hard work but they kept at it
patiently and as they came level with her, as she finished noticing all this, they let the boat turn about in the current and beach itself on the
end of the sandy shelf where she was standing.

    "Don't move," said the figure. Their voice had no sound, only the
imaginary quality of her accident, but it was quite certain.
    She wished to know where this was and with the same certainty
she got her answer.
    "This is Last Water, always and everywhere. If you move you will
cross it and not return."
    An idea came to her. "This is Thanatopia?"
    "It has no name, but you call it that. Be still. Others are watching."
    Lila considered this. The grey water reflected almost no light at all,
but it moved vigorously. Above it the concrete highway, its cars and
people were slowed almost to a standstill. "Others?"
    "From this place most things can be seen. I