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

'Population-leverage is our Big Blunt Hammer, but the marines, they're our
expensive
surgical tool, Deacon. We can't afford to deploy them everywhere.'

She settled back in the plastex chair and lightly stroked the back of her manicured hand with the other. ‘We can win a waiting game if the status quo is maintained, but not a galaxy-wide
crusade
. We can tolerate Rebornists for the time being. But this radical faction of theirs, these
Awoken
are attracting increasing numbers of followers.'

'I'm well aware of that, Councillor.'

'I wonder if you really are. You don't have the big picture. You have no idea how thinly stretched our assets are. Putting 'boots on the ground' is becoming something of a luxury we can ill afford.'

He watched her as she traced a finger across her well-defined knuckles and down into the valleys between them.

'If Mason’s creature is something those terrorists can use…perhaps, as you suggest, Deacon, as a genetically engineered prophet, that will certainly boost the numbers of those fanatics….we’re going to be in for a whole lot of fucking trouble.’

Deacon twitched in his chair. The language was uncharacteristic of her. It didn't sound vulgar, it sounded dangerous.

‘You assured me, when we spoke back on Liberty, when I first briefed you, that you would sort this problem out
quickly
and
quietly
.’

‘That was before I found out that the Awoken were involved too.’

She nodded. 'Hindsight…if we'd known it was more than Mason, then we could quite simply have
glassed
this entire planet from orbit and be done.'

'Indeed.'

‘Well…now we both have a fair understanding the scope of this problem and you have
all
the resources we can spare…' she leant forward, her head over the table, a long tress of her dark red hair spilling like lava onto its scuffed surface.

'…I want you to turn this system upside down Deacon. Tear it to fucking pieces if you have to…but
find her
!’

‘I will. Like I said, with the quarantine, she's bottled up.’

‘And…you say you have acquired some samples of her DNA, I presume we can unwrap them and work out what nasty surprises Mason has installed in her?'

‘My experts tell me there are several significant portions of her genome that can’t be decoded. Mason's done a very good job of encrypting her…
purpose
.'

'For God's sake…if any old precinct lab technicians can soft-simulate what a person's face looks like from a drop of blood, why can't we-'

'The encryption is foolproof. We can't simulate it, Councillor.'

'I'd really like to know…' her voice went from ice cool to an angry snarl 'what kind of ticking bomb we're
fucking dealing with
!' She balled a fist and banged it down on the table. Her cup jiggled in its saucer and spilled a drop of tea. She looked down at it. Angry. Angry with herself for letting her composure slip momentarily.

‘I do have a suggestion, Councillor.’

She tilted her head. ‘Yes?’

‘We could recreate her. See what she turns into.’

OMNIPEDIA:

[Human Universe open source digital encyclopedia]

Article: Cosmetic Gene Therapy: The Eternal fight against Mother Time!

Ever since the beginning of civilisation, humans have sought to turn back or halt the natural processes of ageing. In ancient Pre-Colonial times, a civilisation known as the Egyptinians used to colour their faces with paints that contained poisonous chemicals that caused their noses to rot and fall off. A famous landmark sculpture called the ‘Spinx’ [fact-challenge pending: user> Garriott3554] that existed before it was destroyed in the Second Nuclear War, depicted this widespread disfigurement.

In the twenty-first century, a widespread beauty treatment was to inject silicate gels under the skin to even-out bumps and creases. The practice became so common among the rich and famous that their faces became mobile rigid masks of hardening gel beneath the skin, permanently locked into an expression of startled surprise.

Over the next few centuries, until the major wars and the colonial era, beauty treatments and anti-ageing therapies used more sophisticated stem-cell technology and finally genetic ‘surrogating’. For those few who could afford it, complete surrogate clones were kept on ice; perfect facsimiles grown in vats and kept sedated and unconscious, ready to be harvested for replacement parts.

These days, the technology of beauty and age-reversal has become a very niche industry favoured by only the extremely rich and powerful. One of the most well-known users of extreme beauty and anti-ageing gene therapy is [article redacted by order of Administration Dept (Cultural Maintenance): 23:11:93]

User Comment > CohenShmoen411

This article is ancient!!! Look at the date! It’s over two hundred years out of date!!! Does anyone ever bother to clean out Omni?!

User Comment
>
ToftyLovesMufty

More to the point, Cohen…there’s an example of the Administration’s censorship right there! I did a history course on the Administration-Era, and the person this article is referring to (before it was deleted!) was one of the ruling council members.

User Comment > CohenShmoen411

I know! They were complete fascists. You should read this article on the Old System concentration-camp planets. It’s quite horrific. Particularly some of the vid-images. They were truly barbaric.

User Comment > Anonymous

*****myLove, my froobyGroovy Love**** buy it: here!!!!

User Comment > CarlCohen23

MyGod. For anyone who’s interested. I think CohenShmoen was my great-great grandfather. I was looking up my ancestors trying to track their comments on Omni. It’s incredible to find something he posted here…like it was just yesterday! Weird, it’s like he’s alive somewhere out there, right now.

User Comment > XXX-bloodlineSearch-XXX

Want to track your ancestors back to Administration-era, or Pre-Colonial times? Come try us out. We charge credits by results only.

User Comment > [[[[aaaaaaaaaaadvice?]]]]]]]

Want to know how to get rich quick? Ten reds per tip. Guaranteed success!!!

User Comment > Anonymous

Talk about out of date! Even this last (non-spam) user comment above is ancient! (if you query-gesture the user name, the comment above was posted THREE hundred years ago!!!) Seriously. The archives REALLY need cleaning up.

CHAPTER 7

‘Ladies, gentlemen…and genetically fabricated chimpanzee, are you ready to be amazed and aghast?!’

Jez tucked her fingers into her mouth and wolf-whistled. ‘Get on with it!’ she heckled good-naturedly.

Gray ignored her. ’Beyond these doors lies a magical kingdom. A world of possibilities and wonder…’

He was standing in front of the closed bulkhead to World Three like some travelling showman before an audience of straw-chewing hicks. Shelby stood beside him, arms crossed and eye-lids fluttering with irritation.

‘Behind these carbosteel doors lies a world beyond your imagination. A place where…’

‘Oh, good grief.’ Shelby turned to the coms panel. ‘Mother? Open the bulkhead doors please.’

‘Certainly, Shelby.’ Mother’s beady eyes shifted to Gray. ‘Were you showing off again, my dear?’

Gray shook his head and huffed. ‘Just adding some drama to things.’

Motors either side of the bulkhead doors hummed and a moment later they parted revealing a slither of bright light that lanced out into the gloomy passageway. Ellie and Jez shielded their eyes from the glare as the doors cranked slowly to the sides.

‘Behold!’ bellowed Gray, ‘The Magical Kingdom of….
Fantastika
!’

Shelby looked at him. ‘Fantastika? Really?’

'Hey, bud…I just, you know, came up with it.' Gray wrinkled his nose. ‘Gotta give the place a name, right?’

Ellie squinted back at the sunlight pouring out, her eyes beginning to adjust to the brightness. The last time she’d seen it had been three days ago. The army of mini arachnid-like fabricators had just about finished laying the underlying geometry blocks. Since then Shelby had repeatedly denied her any more peeks
into the biome. Both men agreed on this, they wanted it to be a surprise for the girls.

‘Oh-my-God!’ gasped Jez. She stepped forward past both men, over the lip of the doorway and into the world. ‘Oh-my-fregging-God!’

Ellie and Frazier followed her in. The warm, brilliantly-lit sky was still too bright to look directly up at. Instead Ellie aimed her gaze down at the ground. She was standing on grass. But not grass that could possibly exist in any real world. It was orange, a perky and cartoon-world bright, unnatural orange, every fine blade looked as soft and tender as the feathers of a freshly hatched chick. She stooped down and ran her fingers through it. To her surprise, each blade she brushed shuddered under her fingers.

She let her gaze drift upwards. The grass stretched out before her, a gently sloping tangerine carpet, punctuated here and there with clusters of tall purple plant stems that drooped under the weight of heavy melon-sized bulbs. Her eyes were drawn to some nearby decorative rock formations, blue-green jagged spires that tapered to a point and were dusted white to look like miniature mountain snowcaps.

The air seemed to be teaming with movement and life. Nearby what appeared to be soap bubbles floated several feet above the ground. As they drifted closer she could see they weren’t bubbles, but simple life forms.

‘Those are based on sky anemones,’ called out Gray. He came over to stand beside her. ‘Like the ones they have on Lostromo.’

Ellie shook her head. She’d not heard of Sky Anemones, or even Lostromo.

‘Don’t you ever watch nature videes?’

‘Not really.’

‘The 'bubbles' contain hundreds of small spores. They float around and eventually pop when they bump into something and deposit their spores. Which, if they find moisture, grow and become more anemones.’ He stepped forward and jabbed at one. It burst and a small cloud of particles floated in lazy spirals down towards the ground.

‘Drool, huh?’

She smiled. Gray was beginning to pick up Jez’s idioms. ‘Very drool.’

Shelby and Frazier joined them and for a moment they all watched Jez as she, noticing how the grass was reacting to her feet, had dropped down to the ground and started rolling around. ‘This is fregging awesome!!!’

‘We used a basic high-fantasy design template,’ said Shelby. ‘Although Graham insisted on customising it; he adding this stupid orange grass for example.’

‘I call it Love Grass.' He hunched his shoulders immodestly. 'It’s my design,’ said Gray. ‘Like it?’

Ellie nodded. ‘It’s kinda fun, I guess.’

‘It’s idiotic, is what it is.’

Gray looked at Shelby. ’You really have no poetry in your soul, do you, buddy?’

‘I have no soul,’ he replied. ‘Nor do you. Nor does anyone for that matter. It is a mythical construct. Anyway…there’s a war to be fought, we should introduce our two generals to the battlefield and their respective armies.’ He sighed. ‘Although I use the terms ‘generals’ and ‘armies’ loosely.’

Shelby led the way forward, past Jez still lolling on the ground like a labrador rolling in freshly-discovered muck. ‘Come on you…get up. You’re worse than a dog.’

Jez sat up. ’What’s a dog?’

*

‘Those two constructions are your defensive
redoubts
,’ said Shelby. He looked at Jez. ‘Or home base, if you don’t know what the word ‘redoubt’ means.’

They were standing roughly in the middle of a gentle valley half a mile wide. At the top of each slope, on either side of them, stood a small castle. One was a salmon pink, the other a pastel blue.

‘Ellie, you will be playing the red side, Jez you are the blue.’

‘So what do we do then? We going to trash each other’s castles?’ asked Jez impatiently.

‘No. The objective of this wargame is to capture and return to your castle…a tactical
totem
.’

Ellie looked around. She was expecting a flag or a banner, after all that’s what Shelby had called this template; a ‘capture the flag’ scenario. She could only see clusters of those tall drooping melon-head plants, the shoulder-high mini-alpine mountain rock formations…and…

…
surely not?
…
That's the
'
totem'
?

A large green and orange ball.

Shelby noticed her looking at it. ‘Yes…that giant peach.’ He sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Another of Graham’s ideas, the peach…not mine.’

‘I did some research on Old Earth fairy tales,’ said Gray. ‘There was a very famous one called Jane and The Giant Peach, I think. Seemed like a neat idea. Big-ass peach.’

‘Anyway,’ Shelby continued, ‘the army that can transport that ball back to its castle is the winner. That, is essentially it.’

‘Where are our armies?’ asked Ellie.

‘They’re waiting for you up in your castles,’ replied Gray.

‘I will take Ellie to meet her's,’ said Shelby. ‘You take Jez. Shall we say one hour to let them meet their troops, plan and prepare before we sound the starting klaxon?’

Gray nodded. ‘One hour.’

‘And no creaping out before! No sneak-getting the high ground! No cheating Graham, all right? I'm serious. I'm sick and tired of you-’

'Relax.' Gray shrugged and grinned. ‘Shelbs…it’s just a game, man. Just a bit of fun for the girls.’

‘No…I’m serious. It is
not
a proper game if people
cheat
. It's pointless chaos. When people start cheating it simply becomes a complete waste of everyone’s time.’

‘Relax. No sneaking out, I promise.’

Shelby turned away and led Ellie up the slope towards her pink castle. ‘The last war game we played, he smuggled in some reinforcements.
Cheating
, it really makes a mockery of the whole damned thing.’

They picked their way up the hill and nearing the top of the slope Ellie turned and looked back at the world. The ground seemed to glow like a rolling blanket of lava under the warm glow of the sun. The craggy razor peaks of the miniature mountains cast clearly defined geometric purple tinted shadows while clouds of bubble-creatures drifted lazily on the breeze. The world even
smelled
inviting.
The air seemed to have citrusy tang to it, as if someone close by was juicing oranges.