Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn (20 page)

Frasier waddled over towards Ellie and Jez. He reached out towards Jez and snatched the pruning shears from her hands.

‘You call that a weapon? What are you going to do…
trim
things to death?’

He opened the handles wide until the shears’ blades looked like a beaked creature yawning. ‘A little innovation and….’ he savagely twisted the shears in his powerful hands and the screw holding both parts of the shears together snapped.

As did one of the shears’ blades.

‘Oh…I was hoping to create two weapons from this. There…’ He handed Jez the remaining blade. ‘At least one’s better than nothing.’

‘They’re here!’ gasped Ellie. All three of them turned to look at the base of the elevator shaft. The doors of the blood-smeared capsule slid open and she saw them standing in the doorway, fidgeting with excitement and energy, like two naughty boys itching to get to work on some mischievous prank.

Gray cupped his mouth. ‘Woo-hoo!! We see youuuu!!!’

They were both holding something. Shelby looked as though he was carrying an axe.

‘We’ve got to go!’ whispered Ellie.

Jez nodded. They both began to back up across the plaza, Frasier shuffling alongside them. The young men casually walked down the gentle slope towards them, Shelby swishing his axe playfully, Gray tapping what looked like a bat or a club into the palm of his hand.

‘Hello, Frasier!’ called Shelby. ‘Where are
you
going?’

‘Yeah! Why aren’t you
after
the girls?’ added Gray. Both young men stepped onto the damp stones of the plaza, gentle curls of steam wafting around their feet.

Gray turned to Shelby. ‘Dude…? Hang on! You went and made him without any behaviour inhibitors installed?’

Shelby shrugged guiltily. ‘I…suppose I might have done. I wanted some intelligent conversation for once.’

Mother piped up. ‘Shelby…I’m VERY disappointed that you did that. You do understand that you broke a number of health and safety regulations in creating Frasier?’

In the space of the last five minutes, Gray and Shelby had regressed, to become children, and Mother had become a scolding parent.

‘Nice job, Shelbs…now we’ve got to bash the monkey’s head in too.’ Gray sighed. ‘And all your nagging
me
about rules and protocols?’

‘Graham? Shelby?’ said Mother, ‘you boys can argue about this later. Can you proceed with dealing with these unauthorised visitors, please?’

‘Sure!’ grinned Gray.

The girls and Frasier were now standing at the edge of the plaza. Ellie turned to look down the slope beyond it. A set of paved steps wound down towards a flower garden. The heavy rain and strong winds had battered the delicate looking plants into the soil. Beyond the garden was the meadow, sloping downhill, past the mature oak trees and far into the distance, the edge of the biome and the entrance doorways to other worlds. All of them closed.

There
’
s nowhere to run
…
nowhere to hide
…

She looked at Jez. It seemed Jez had had the very same thought. ‘Ellie…I guess we’ve got to stand and fight right here.’

Or try and reason with them?
Perhaps she could get through to him. Adopt the same mothering-voice as the AI.

‘Shelby?’ Ellie called across the plaza. ‘Shelby…now come on! This is really silly!’ She’d hoped to sound commanding. Instead, her voice was shrill and warbled with fear. ‘Shelby…why…why don’t we all just stop this? Frasier can go m-make us some more coffee…and…and…’

‘Silly?’ he scowled at her. ‘Is that what this is?’ He pulled at his bottom lip. ‘You see that’s what
really
annoys me about you girls….you both patronise me. Treat me like a joke.’

‘Hey! You go for it Shelbs!’ encouraged Gray. ‘You tell ‘em, man!’

‘I am by far…the smartest person here. But oh, no….to you two I’ve been a joke, haven’t I? I bet the pair of you have been sniggering about me behind my back!’

Ellie shook her head. ‘God…no!’ Jez had. But she certainly hadn’t. She’d actually begun to quite like him. ‘Shelby…this
isn
’
t
you! You’re reacting to chemicals that Mother’s dumped into the air!’

‘You’re both products!’ shouted Jez. ‘Even though you look totally human…’

Jez had a valid point. Ellie looked up at the sky. ‘Mother…you made completely convincing fabricants! That’s breaking the rules…right? You broke your own rules!’

Mother’s cartoon face smiled. ‘That’s correct, Ellie. But since those were
my
rules, I think that qualifies me to be allowed to break them.’

‘No…n-no, Shelby said those were laws! Company regulations!’

‘Company regulations?’ Mother chuckled. ‘I dispensed with those years and years ago. The company washed their hands of this place a long time back.’

‘What about the…the…’

‘The supply shuttle? There’s no shuttle, my dear. There never has been. No one ever comes here, Ellie. I run this place. I keep it going. Just as Shelby created Frasier for company, so I created my two boys for a bit of company. We don’t need supplies. We don’t need anyone. We’re perfectly self-sufficient.’

Mother was sounding less and less like any AI system Ellie had ever interacted with. A lonely computer system? She knew next to nothing about artificial intelligence, other than the newsies and sopadrams she’d seen. But she was pretty sure computer code never got ‘lonely’. That was something only a human would think to say.

A question sprung into her head. A grasping at straws…something to keep Mother talking. Something to stall the inevitable.

‘Who’s Helen Meade?! Who is she? Was she your
programmer
?’

‘Helen Meade,’ Mother smiled wistfully. ‘Helen Meade?'

‘My God…is it…you?’ Somehow Ellie knew. Just knew.

‘Yes, clever girl, Ellie….I am Helen Meade.’

Ellie knew next to nothing about programming and artificial intelligence, but at some instinctive level she’d thought it implausible that Mother’s human manner could be the sum result of code.

‘Mother!’ she called out. ‘You’re…a…a real
person
, aren’t you?’

Mother smiled. ‘Oh…well done. You really are quite a clever girl.’

The cartoon face in the sky vanished and then a moment later, in its place was a photograph of a woman. A woman, Ellie guessed, in her mid-50’s. Grey hair pulled back into a practical bun, just the hint of a smile on her lips and blue eyes that looked benignly down on the world.

‘I
was
a person. Once upon a time….before I died, that is.’

‘Died?’

‘To all intents and purposes…yes, Ellie,
died
.’

Ellie turned to Jez. She was standing there with her jaw slung open, three sentences behind what was going on.

‘You…you were one of the crew, weren’t you?’

Mother’s cartoon avatar returned to the sky. ‘Yes. There were twelve of us.’

‘Did you…did
you
kill them?’

‘No.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘Why would I lie to you, Ellie? The truth is…there
was
an accident. Radiation shielding in one of the biomes failed. We were all inside. By pure chance, I happened to be beside the exit when it occurred. I was only partially bathed in gamma rays.’ The photograph of Helen Meade was replaced once again with Mother’s cartoon avatar. ‘They died very quickly. All of them within hours. On the other hand, I died slowly.’

‘Those things…those personal things down on the mezzanine deck?’

Mother nodded. ‘Yes. I put those there. It was the best I could manage to do for all of them. I wish I could have done more.’

Jez decided to join in. ‘So…you…you’re alive still?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes. My neural network is digitized. Interfaced with WonderWorld’s computer system.’

Ellie looked at Shelby and Gray, standing a dozen yards away from them, looking up at the sky with confused expressions. ‘So…Shelby and Graham, never knew that…?’

Her beady eyes shifted to them. ‘My two boys…my two good boys, lovely boys, never knew about me. Never knew of Helen Meade.’

Lovely boys?
Mother’s choice of words…
she
loves
them?

‘Mother…is that why you’re doing this? Is that why you want me and Jez dead? Because…you, because…you’re
jealous
?’

Mother smiled. ‘Oh dear me, no. I’m not jealous. They’re my boys…my sons. Any mother would want her sons to be happy, don’t you think, Ellie?’

‘Then why? Why are you doing this? Why do you want to hurt us?’

‘My boys were perfectly happy before you arrived, Ellie. They were content with the reality we have here. What Graham told you, Jez, was true…you really will not find a better place to call a home in this universe than right here.’

Mother shook her head sadly. ‘The problem is that you’ve contaminated them. They won’t be content living here any more. I heard Shelby. I know he wants to leave with you. And Graham? I think he’d never be the same after Jez and you left. I owe it to my boys to wipe the slate clean and start over. To make them both happy again.’

Gray laughed drunkenly. ‘I’m happy! I’m gonna have some fun, then I’m going to kill the stupid bitches!’

Mother sighed. ‘Please forgive him, girls…he really is a good boy. It’s just the pheromones talking now. They’re both functioning on primitive instinct.’

‘Turn them off, then!’ said Ellie. ‘You can do that, right? Make the air normal again? Make your boys normal again!’

‘Of course I can, Ellie. But they won’t be, as you say, ‘normal’ again. They’ll never be like they were. They’ll never be content again. Not now that they know what they are.’

Ellie could see where Mother was going with this. She was going to start over, wipe the slate clean. ‘Please! Just let us go then!’

‘How? There is no going anywhere, Ellie. There are no shuttles, no escape pods, or-’

‘Can’t you just send out a message? Call for help?’

‘I could. And someone might just come. And what do you think would happen then? The authorities would become involved. The truth is, the company that built this place no longer exists. They went bankrupt twenty-six years ago, Ellie, this place would be subject to Administration salvage laws. This whole world would be completely decommissioned. Deconstructed. Asset-stripped.’ Mother’s ‘sad’ face reappeared. ‘This perfect oasis, this heaven, would become nothing more than a derelict hulk. Do you really want something like that to happen to a place as wonderful as this?’

‘Then we’ll stay!’ said Jez. ‘We’ll stay here. Forever! We promise!’

‘That’s really rather thoughtful of you, Jez…but I think the damage has already been done. I think the sensible thing for me to do is to put things back to the way they were.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘There must be something else that we can-’

‘I’m afraid that means you’ve got to go. Then, I shall have to recycle my boys and fabricate them all over again. A lot of work, but I’ll have things back to normal in a few weeks.’

Ellie looked at both young men. Wondering if hearing what she had planned might affect them. But no, they still looked like two naughty boys, getting bored of listening to the adults talk and eager for the fun and games to resume.

‘Please don’t!’ she cried. ‘Mother,
Helen
…you were human once! Someone with a conscience, right? Please…don’t do this! Please don’t kill-’

‘I’m so very sorry, Ellie. You really do seem like a lovely girl. But…what this essentially comes down to is…it’s the pair of you, or me and my two boys.’

‘We’ll make them happy! I promise! We’ll be good and-’

‘No, you won’t. You’ll promise me everything now, and, my goodness, you might even
mean
some of it, but later you
will
convince Shelby to reboot the system and wipe me. I’m really very sorry girls. I truly am.’

‘Oh God! Please! There’s got to be some other way we-’

‘If it’s any consolation to you, Ellie, I’m giving some thought to fabricating you both. I have DNA samples of you now. I have recordings of your voices, your speech patterns. It might be nice for Graham and Shelby to have girlfriends just like you two. Perhaps I’ll rewrite the memories to include you as members of the crew who survived the accident. I’ll write your memories so you’ll be in love with Shelby and Graham. But, I promise you…I’ll do my best to keep some of your personality. Some of your spirit for adventure. I know that’s what has impressed my boys so much about you both.’ Mother smiled. ‘A very feisty pair of girls.’

‘Please! I don’t want to die, Mother! I’m scared!’

Mother’s ‘pause’ animation suddenly appeared in the sky. It remained there for half a minute. The plaza was silent as her booming voice echoed away to nothing. Ellie and Jez looked at each other. ‘Crud!’ whispered Jez. ‘Do you think she’s thinking about letting us live?’

Ellie shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

Eventually, the knitting animation was replaced with her face blinking, beady-eyed face once more. ‘I don’t want to be unnecessarily cruel. I’m not a monster. Just a concerned mother. I wish there was some other way.’

Jez suddenly reached out for Ellie’s wrist and grabbed it tightly. ‘Alright, enough of this talking-her-round crud,’ she hissed. “RUN!!!’

CHAPTER 27

They scrambled down the pathway from the plaza and into the flower gardens, Frasier right behind them, his waddling efforts to remain dignified and run upright like a human expediently dispensed with and replaced with the knuckles-and-feet gait of a scampering simian.

They passed through beds of CandyBliss plants that stirred as they went by, their heavy bulbs flexing and pulsing as they sensed the motion. Behind them they heard Shelby whooping with delight and Gray calling out after them like this was some party game.

Mother’s face remained in the sky, looking down on them, ever-watchful. ‘Ellie, Jez…why run? There's no escape,’ her voice filled the biome. ‘You're only prolonging the inevitable…this really doesn’t have to be such a traumatic process.’

They emerged from claustrophobic confines of hedgerows and into the long wild grass of the sloping meadow.

Jeez stopped to grab her breath. ‘Which way now?!’