The Many Deaths of Joe Buckley Read Online Free

building is empty, but for ourselves.”
    Buckley swallowed. He was dead, as dead as if he’d already stopped breathing. What to do? He was still shuddering; his testicles seemed to be burrowing into his belly. The piss on his thighs was cooling, making him shudder all the more.
    Hurt him, said a still, quiet voice in his mind. He remembered a line of poetry he’d always liked a lot. From Bob Dylan—no, it was Dylan Thomas.

    Do not go gentle into that good night,
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    The hand holding the blade was next to his cheek. Joe snapped his head around like a snake or a snapping turtle and bit the hand. Hard.
    Ducos roared with rage and pain. Buckley ignored everything except sinking his teeth into that hated hand. Ducos tried to pull the hand away but it was impossible. Then he grabbed Joe by the hair and lifted him, chair and all, and slammed his head against the edge of the table. The skinny madman’s strength was incredible.
    Joe was dazed by the impact. Finally, his jaws loosened enough and Michel ripped his hand away. Buckley saw the knife fall to the floor.
    Get the knife! Get the knife!
    The chair was off-balance anyway. He managed to tip it over and fall next to the knife. There came then the greatest sensation of triumph Joe had ever felt in his life. He managed to clamp the hilt of the knife in his teeth. Try cutting me now, you son of a bitch!
    He never felt the slender cord sliding around his neck. Never felt it at all, even when the garrote tightened in the madman’s grip. The knife was everything.

Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett:
    The first line of this story is “Whoa, Porky.”
    It’s centuries after man has reached interstellar space and Windows still doesn’t work right. When Joe Buckley dies in the alien attack on a colony world, the operating system doesn’t know what to do till it’s rescued by Porky, a riding pig, and a pig thief named Sam.
    Of course, the authors didn’t know that when Gorg Huff sent Paula Goodlett a file with that first line in it, and nothing else. But the story developed, and they’re pretty happy with it. (That was back in the old days, before they discovered Google docs and Skype.)
    When Gorg and Paula needed a victim, who else would they turn to besides Joe Buckley? If you hang around Baen’s Bar very much, that’s just the natural progression of things.
    They do like to think that their death of Joe Buckley was pretty distinctive.

From the Badlands
    from Jim Baen’s Universe , Volume 2, Number 3
    GORG HUFF AND PAULA GOODLETT
    This decreased the possibility that Mr. Buckley was still alive to the negligible category, which called up the will protocols. The standard will question, “What should I do in case of your death?” had been answered by Mr. Buckley thusly: “Do whatever the fuck you want. I won’t care.” The AI pondered that response in relation to the present situation.
    No known relatives of Mr. Buckley had been on planet at the time that contact with the planetary grid was lost. If there was a government, Mr. Buckley’s property would return to it, but there was a high probability that the colony government no longer existed. Besides which, Joseph Buckley did not trust governments.
    The AI considered. It was to do what it wanted. So what did it want? After due consideration it determined that it wanted to be owned. Without an owner it had no purpose.
    Further examination of the law text provided a synopsis of squatters’ rights. Oddly enough, the intruder was, at that very moment, squatting behind a bush.
    * * *
    Sam frowned. “What’s with the food? There’s never any bread.”
    “I am sorry, but all the flour went bad centuries ago. Mr. Buckley had a vegetable garden for relaxation. He also grew potatoes and several nut trees. However, the homestead was not designed to be truly self-supporting.”
    Sam nodded. “Makes sense. The valley ain’t really big enough for a real farm. What are you feeding