Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn (3 page)

She wanted to tell Mother everything. To confide in her. Ridiculous really. If this same AI had had a bland, standard customer-services voice and the avatar had been a simple corporate logo, she wouldn’t be considering sharing her secrets with it. She desperately needed to talk to
someone
though.

‘Could you connect me to Jez?’

‘She’s over in World Two right now with Graham, I believe.’

‘I know. I haven’t seen her in days. I’d like to speak with her.’

Mother smiled. ‘Of course, my dear. One moment.’

Her avatar disappeared and was replaced with a rotating call-waiting icon. Ellie listened to the soft chime of the ringing tone. Finally, after a dozen rings, the icon disappeared and she saw Jez settling down on a seat in a luxurious fur-lined bathrobe.

‘Hey there, stranger!’ said Jez. She waggled a hand at her.

‘Hullo…uh, are you
busy
?’

Jez smirked and cocked a brow. ‘Five minutes ago I was.’

‘Can you talk right now?’

She shrugged. ‘Guess so. I need to rest him or he'll break.’

Ellie smiled.

'So, my dearest darling cube-chik, how’s your gloop-army brewing up?’

Shelby and Gray’s idea of 'fun' had been to arrange one of their war games in World Three The girls had been set the challenge of designing and fabricating their own little armies of gene products to hurl at each other in an orgy of mindless violence. Not exactly Ellie’s definition of fun, but Jez had leapt on the idea.

‘Mine's doing okay, I guess.’

Jez narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you trying to squeeze out of me some clues on what I’m brewing? Cause if you are….tough boots, girl. My lips are zip-sealed!’

‘No. I wasn't actually. That would be cheating, right?’

‘Uh-huh. And you know how Shelby feels about cheating, right?’

‘I just wanted to talk to you about…something.’

‘About what?’

She could say…but she didn't want to say right now, not over the comms. Gray might be listening in out of shot. ‘Just fancy some some girl talk.’

Jez shrugged. ‘I could do with some juicy chik-chat. Gray’s great at dork-talk…but he’s totally crud at doing girl-goss.’ A thought suddenly occurred to her. She leant forward and lowered her voice. ‘Don’t tell me you and Shelby-?’

‘NO!’ Ellie knew what she was getting at. ‘What? Shelby? No! Definitely not!’

‘Awww…’ she pouted. ‘Boring!’

‘No, I’m not boring. I’m just not a sex-addicted troll like you.’

‘Oh, puh-lease. I just have a high drive. I need to scratch the itch. I need my daily sha-’

‘Anyway, Jez? Can we meet?’

Jez pursed her lips. ‘Sure! You want to come over to Gray’s world?’

She didn’t fancy that. The place was done up like The Underworld. It felt like the inside of some insane monk's mind.

‘How about in the CandyBliss gardens over here?’

‘Righty-right. It’s a date. An hour?’

‘An hour.’

*

Ellie was busy stroking the bristly stem of a strawberry-flavoured CandyBliss bulb when Jez finally arrived, huffing and puffing from her walk up the sloping meadow towards the plaza.

‘Hah! I caught you!’

Ellie let go of the stem. It twanged backwards like a flag pole. She stepped back quickly as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. ‘I’m just sniffing the pollen.’

Jez flopped down onto a garden bench. ‘Sorry, I’m late, El’…’

‘Oh, I don't need to know all the shlukky details.’

Jez grinned at her. ‘So…how’re you getting on here in SleepyTown with Mr Charisma?’

‘I like it here. It’s beautiful. And peaceful.’

‘Yup. True. How’s Shelbs?’

She really hadn’t interacted all that much with him in the last twenty-four hours, not since she’d made that discovery down on the service decks. She’d met him in the gardens for breakfast - the morning routine that seemed to have established itself here. He’d updated her on the fabrication progress of her army of furry little critters. Apparently they were about ninety percent complete. He’d told her that World Three was now being reconfigured for their big battle and if she wanted, he’d take her down later to watch the machinery assembling the terrain.

She’d been non-committal about that. Said 'maybe later'. She didn't want to be dragged off down one of those long service tunnels to be all alone with him. Not until she'd had a chance to talk to Jez about what what she'd discovered. Maybe Jez would put her straight, tell her she was being silly. Being paranoid.

‘So, you ready to play ‘war’ against me an’ Gray?’

Ellie really didn't want to do this now. The idea of sending her little creations out to die for mere entertainment was beginning to feel appalling. It had sounded like a cool idea a week ago. But now she could see her little furry creatures floating in their fabrication pods, curled into foetal positions, eyes clasped tightly shut, little paws twitching and stretching as their simple minds dreamed their dreams…the notion was beginning to feel unnecessarily cruel.

‘Can’t wait to show you
my
monsters,’ said Jez.

Ellie couldn’t begin to imagine what horrific grotesques she’d come up with.

‘Jez…I need to talk to you about something.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I found something.’

‘What?’

‘On the service deck.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘You remember when we first arrived and were dropped off in that hanger?’

Jez’s lips curled. ‘Oh, that grubby dark place. Hee-yuk.’

‘I was exploring and I found….’ Ellie paused. You had to do that with Jez, tease her curiosity, or her attention tended to wander off. Usually back onto herself.

'What?'

'This…secret room.'

‘A secret room?’ She sat forward. ‘What was in it?’

‘Things…personal things, belonging to the others. The rest of the crew.’

‘You mean the ones that died?’

‘Yeah. They were laid out all carefully. Someone must have gathered them up and put them there after they died.’

She looked disappointed. ‘Oh, well…that’s nice, I guess.’

‘No. It didn’t feel like something
nice
. It looked more like…like a trophy room.’

'Trophy room?'

'Yes! Remember that shlocky horror videe you forced me to watch?'

Jez frowned for a moment, then suddenly curled her lips. ‘Oooh, kinda creepy then?’

‘Very. It's…worrying me a bit.'

'You mean like, someone-murdered-them-all-and-that's-their-gloating-room, kinda worried?'

'Well, yeah, that but….'

‘What did Shelbs say about it?’

‘I haven’t told him yet.’

‘Why not?’

Ellie looked around quickly. 'What if it's
his
trophy room?' She was joking. Kind of. It was only the two of them near the bed of CandyBliss plants. Across the gardens she could see one of the jimps tending to some flowerbeds, too far away to hear them. All the same she huddled closer and lowered her voice. ‘I…look, seriously, there’s something, I can’t figure out what it is…but there’s something that worries me about what happened to the others.’

‘It was an accident, right?’ Jeez shrugged. ‘Shelby said it was an accident?’

‘Yeah, he did
say
that….but…’

Jez frowned and cocked her head. Then suddenly she laughed. ‘What? You seriously reckon
he
murdered them all?
Shelby
?’ The idea
did
sound preposterous, blurted out loud like that,

Ellie turned to look at her. ‘I’m…well…no, I’m not saying that…but, we don’t know anything about him. Or Gray. They’re just two men we met a few days ago.’

Two men, who
’
ve been alone on this abandoned theme park for just over a decade
.

Jez nodded. 'True. They are both a bit odd-job, I’ll agree with you there, Ellie, particularly Shelby-’

‘And Gray.'

Jez raised her brows. ‘Huh? Gray's not as
weird
as Shelby!’

‘His world? His creatures? It’s all kinda
dark
and
weird
don’t you think?’

She laughed again. ‘What?! Then…you're saying you think
Gray
murdered everyone?!’

‘No! I’m not. I…I don’t know. I’m not saying that…I’m just kind of worried that we’re marooned here with two people who might have gone…’ she was trying to find the right word and ended up with something that sounded pretty lame. ‘…
peculiar
.’

Jez chuckled. ‘Oh, they’re
peculiar
, all right. Both of them. Which, Ellie-girl, makes a nice fregging change from the regular dick-sticks in New Haven who’ve only got one thing on their minds and speak in monkey grunts.’

She twisted round to face her and grabbed both her shoulders. For once quite serious.

‘Listen, Ellie, I get it. I know you’re worried about what’s going on out there in the system. There are
bad
people out there looking for you. You
and
me…and we’ve already been through some crazy shit together. I know we’re not out of whatever fix, this is, but,' she narrowed her eyes, squeezed her.

'…relax. Look around you, silly. We’re totally safe here. No one knows we’re here.
No one!
’

That didn’t sound entirely reassuring to Ellie.

‘You and me, we just got to lie low here for a while. Let things die down. Maybe the Administration will think we managed to escape the system and the system quarantine will loosen up again. Huh?’

‘I guess.’

‘And look, maybe those personal things you found? I mean…it's not weird stuff is it? Gross stuff? Tips of fingers! Organs?'

'No…no, no. Just ID tags, one or two personal possessions. Private things.'

Jez cocked her head. 'Right. So, maybe Gray or Shelby put those possessions down there as a kind of
respect
thing? To ‘honour fallen comrades’ type of deal?’

Ellie nodded. Perhaps. The room had been dark and creepy and it was quite possible she’d let her imagination run away with her.

‘You know what?’ said Jez. ‘I kinda like the idea that maybe Shelby or Gray just took those personal things down there to, I don’t know, make a special ‘memory place’ for them.’

She let go of Ellie’s shoulders and sat back. The bench creaked. ‘That’s kinda nice.’ She smiled. ‘Awww. To think one of them, or both of them has a nice soft,
squishy
, side to them.’

She meant ‘sentimental’. Ellie doubted Jez had ever spoken that word, or even knew how to spell it. It wasn’t her kind of vocabulary.

‘Maybe.’

‘Look, Ellie…if either of them were weirdos, or pervos, or murderers, don’t you think we’d know that by now?’ She smiled. ‘As far as I can see, Shelby would be quite happy for us to leave him to his animals and battles at the earliest convenience. And Gray?’ She shrugged. ‘He’s just a laid-back techie who likes to party a little. He’s totally harmless.’ Jez shrugged. ‘And apparently a bit of a softy too…if that room was his idea. I might just ask him about it.’

‘No. Don’t.’

‘Why not?’

The room had been unmarked. Hidden away. Clearly, it was meant to be a private, if not a secret, place.

‘Maybe you’re right. It’s a special memorial. Somewhere to remember absent colleagues. So…they might be really, really, annoyed with me if they knew I’d just blundered on in there? Right?’

Jez pursed her lips, giving it a moment’s thought. ‘I suppose.’

‘So, can you
not
tell either of them I found it then?’

'S'pose.'

'No. Please….promise. Promise me you won't go asking Gray about it. I think he doesn't like me that much already.'

'Oh,' she waggled her hand, 'he thinks you're alright.
Crazy
about me though.'

'Oh right, let's make this all about you, again.'

Jez laughed. 'Look, limp-chik….I won't mention it. Promise.'

‘But let’s also not forget it’s there.’

Jez looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘Because we don’t
really
know them, Jez. Not really.’

We
’
re alone. We
’
re entirely at their mercy
…
they
’
ve been isolated for ten years in a mini-universe in which they have God-like powers
…
to create, to destroy, to kill even; to do as they wish
. She wanted to say all those things to Jez, but instead she hunched her shoulders.

‘I guess I just got too nosey.’ She turned to her friend. ‘Anyway, we can't get too attached to this place, okay?’

‘This has got to be the coolest place to hide in the system!’

‘To
hide
…yes. For now. But we can’t stay here forever.’

Jez rolled her eyes as she considered that, then eventually nodded. 'well obviously, not
forever
.'

‘We’ll only be truly safe once we’re out of this system. Until then…we’re still in a box. A big system-sized box, yes…but still trapped.’

CHAPTER 5

World Three looked like a set of building blocks, like a vast child’s play set. She watched the gradually developing landscape from the doorway of the biome. In some places the ground was nearing completion and the blocks, uniformly grey and featureless, were being overlaid with more natural-looking undulations of soil. The place was alive with twitching movement. Everywhere she looked she could see hundreds, no…
thousands
, of machines with fine, spider-like legs, scuttling across the landscape. One hurried past her, almost stepping on the toe of her boot.

‘Eek!’ She stepped backwards.

‘Oh, good grief,’ sighed Shelby. ‘Don’t be such a girl. They’re quite harmless.’

‘They look like robot spiders!’

‘They’re Micro-Fabricators. We have about ten thousand of these units. All of them coordinated by the World Designer Application.’

‘Mother?’

‘She monitors the software, but the WDA is an autonomous application.’

Ellie watched as the spider hesitated where her foot had been planted. At the top of a small pale plastic cylindrical body - about nine inches high and half as many in diameter - a small lens glinted as it swivelled round towards her, looked her up and down, then apparently unimpressed by what it saw, carried on about its work.

She watched it scuttle across the ground towards an area that was yet to be covered. It hopped into a shallow square hole and began to eject a thick gel from the bottom of the cylinder, like toothpaste from a tube, it reminded her of a spider laying out webbing.