Cortness Malkine’s projections indicated that she would die within the hour and she found that the prospect was an unhappy one. Yes, she was backed up at her home Orbital, but that backup had been three months, eleven days, sixteen hours, twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds ago. A precious period of lived experience was going to be lost and Cortness felt that her death would be real: that the Cortness who was restored and given a new spacecraft to inhabit would not be her. A philosophical question about whether her back-up was someone else or not had suddenly become of urgent importance.

‘Do you think I’m a different being to my backup?’ she asked her two-person human crew.

‘Shut up AI! We need to think.’ This was the male, who had been rude to her for the last three months and had never once treated Cortness as a sentient being. ‘You believe we can survive impact?’

‘I can eject you shortly before the spacecraft hits the ground. You will almost certainly be alive and unharmed when you reach the planet’s surface.’ Unfortunately, thought Cortness, there was no mechanism for her own survival.

‘And then what?’ This was the female, who had spent most of the journey claiming to be bored and irritated by any of the diversions Cortness had to offer.

‘Then you will have to survive on Grimworld until a rescue mission comes. If it does come. I have been broadcasting our predicament but as you know, there are no high tech civilisations in this region of the galaxy.’

‘Do you know why this planet is called Grimworld?’ muttered the male.

‘I do not. I have no information about this planet other than the co-ordinates you supplied when we began this journey.’

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‘Because it’s a sodding nightmare down there!’ The man slammed his fists on the dead control panel in front of him. ‘Twenty tribes, each more vicious than the next…’

‘Only if you put them in that order,’ the woman said unhelpfully.

The man flushed red in the cheeks. ‘No technology more advanced than electricity. At least, not until you unlock the relevant research. And then there’s the monsters.’

‘This was your idea,’ the woman said. ‘You wanted to come here and solve the Ultima mystery quest.’

‘With. A. Spaceship. Full. Of. Weapons.’ The man hammered down each word. ‘I’m not going down there in just a spacesuit. We’ll be dead inside a week.’

‘Do we have much choice?’ the woman murmured.

‘Yes we do,’ answered the man. ‘AI, are there any planets within range for a mind swap?’

‘There is one. But I must remind you that non-consensual mind swaps are unethical and I cannot facilitate it.’

‘Override your sodding ethics,’ the man growled.

‘I… Oh. I didn’t know you could do that.’

‘Now, find me someone to swap with. Someone who is immensely talented: a genius. I want to be appreciated there and have a celebrated life.’

From what Cortness Malkine could tell, the planet’s inhabitants were still at a hierarchical phase of social planning and perhaps the man did not appreciate that control of wealth mattered more than talent. But furious by being forced to implement an unethical practice, she said nothing other than, ‘are you sure?’

‘Of course. Get on with it before we crash.’

‘What about me?’ asked the woman.

‘You should swap too.’

‘Oh, what a bore. All right, AI, find me a princess.’

‘A princess?’

‘Yes. And preferably on another continent to him.’ She pointed to her companion with bitterness.

‘Be like that, then. I’m better off without you. Come on then AI, get on with it. A major talent, remember, something artistic.’

‘Process underway,’ Cortness Malkine also neglected to inform the man that the ageing process had not been extended by the people of the planet and that his ‘genius’ was reaching the end of the human lifespan for their culture.

‘Hurry up.’ The woman leaned in close to one of the cameras. ‘Get me out of here while you can.’

‘Process underway.’

Not long after the transfers were complete, the spaceship began to shudder as it entered the atmosphere of Grimworld. The temperature soared.

‘Where the hell is this?’ the man was looking around him with an expression that was understandably showing confusion.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Cortness Malkine, ‘deeply sorry. But your mind has been swapped with that of a passenger on a spacecraft that in less than three minutes will be destroyed by impact with the surface of a planet called Grimworld.’

Unexpectedly, the man began laughing. ‘Well, I knew the end was coming but what a finale!’