Return to Wardate (27 page)

She wanted to
die, that would resolve everything.

If she could
have opened her eyes she would have seen a helicopter approaching.
She would have seen the rope ladder drop and a man climb down it.
If should could have turned on her senses, she would have felt him
attach a harness to her and the winch lifting her into the back of
the helicopter. On inspection, she was clearly dead although not
blue with the cold or stiff with rigor mortis. As usual there was
no pulse and obviously she wasn’t breathing. They felt guilty that
they hadn’t got to her sooner but it was one hell of a
carnival.

Adam waited and
watched as the helicopter landed. They broke it to him gently in
the best broken English they could but Adam didn’t seem at all
bothered that his girlfriend was dead - he was just pleased to see
her. They suspected that their English was so bad that he had
completely misunderstood them so they gestured somehow with their
hands to indicate her being dead.

As Adam
expected, they took her to the local mortuary – he naturally
accompanied them.

The remnants of
the carnival were still reverberating around the town which made
Adam’s task a little easier. He waited for night fall and then
knocked on the mortuary door. A sorrowful story about desperately
wanting to see his dead girlfriend didn’t really translate but the
mortician, whoever he was, got the gist of his request. He left
Adam alone with Madeline through respect. Now the hard bit, thought
Adam. A back door would have been ideal but there wasn’t one, he
had to go back the way he had come in, it was impossible. There was
only one solution: He fumbled in her flight suit pockets,
eventually found the charging lead and plugged her in. This was not
going to be a quick process so Adam had to put on a performance.
After ten minutes, the mortician returned. Adam did some waving of
his hands and a little bit of wailing to add effect.

‘I’ll leave you
a little longer,’ said the mortician in his own language.

Four times he
returned to the same performance. Finally after 43 minutes,
Madeline stirred a little and then suddenly she was hugging and
kissing Adam. Her condition was hardly fully charged but was enough
for now.

‘Adam! my
beautiful, beautiful hero. Where am I,’ asked Madeline.

‘The morgue,
where else do you think you’d be in the state you were in?’

Not so long ago
she wanted to die and now she was in a morgue, perhaps, on
reflection, she didn’t really want to die.

‘Creepy or
what!’ said Madeline.

‘Yes…
definitely! Let’s get out of here!’

At that moment
the mortician entered the room.

‘Can you
believe it, she suddenly woke up,’ said Adam.

‘Yes, I feel
fine,’ said Madeline.

The mortician
hadn’t a clue what they were saying, it didn’t really matter. He
couldn’t speak because his jaw had just dropped to the floor.

‘Thanks for
taking care of me,’ said Madeline as they walked out of the morgue.
Madeline had just enough power to walk to the car, climb in and put
on her seat belt before she died again.

‘Shit, shit!’
From past experience he knew his shoulder would give him weeks of
jip from having to carry her.

Carrying an
android, no matter how hard you try, never goes unnoticed. Many
people were about and couldn’t help but notice a beautiful but dead
female on Adam’s shoulder.

‘She’s had a
good time,’ said Adam several times.

This seemed to
be enough for everyone to nod, smile and continue on their way.
Finally in his motel room, Adam flopped her on the bed and plugged
her in again.

One thing Adam
was not immediately aware of in this particular small Ecuadorian
town was the poor state of the domestic electricity supply. There
was normally plenty to run a TV or lights or fridge or laptop but
Madeline took a lot more than normal. The antiquated power socket
that the travel adaptor was loosely plugged into immediately
started smoking and after a few seconds, blew the trip or fuses or
sub station.

‘Shit, shit,
shit!’ Things were not going well. Now what was he to do? Ideally
he needed a three kilowatt petrol generator. Despite the motel
receptionist having a reasonable command of the English language,
she had no idea what Adam was on about. He resorted to pointing at
a power socket on the wall and saying the word generator several
times.

‘Un
generador!’

‘Yes, where can
I get one?’

‘Why you want
it?’ asked the receptionist.

‘To charge up
my girlfriend,’ said Adam curtly.

‘You follow,’
said the receptionist.

Adam’s luck was
in. She took him to a lock-up around the back of the motel and
wheeled out a spanking new Honda 3 kW generator. Adam tried to take
it off her hands…

‘Cuarenta…
sixty dollars please!’

Adam had no
choice but to hand over the money. He was pretty certain that
cuarenta was not sixty but he was not in the mood for arguing.

‘And twenty
dollars for the gasoline.’

Adam
begrudgingly handed over another couple of notes. When he returned
to his room he realised that the lead wasn’t long enough to reach
from the outside balcony to the bed.

‘Shit, shit,
shit, shit!

‘Extension
lead?’ Adam asked the same receptionist.

Again,
apparently she didn’t understand so Adam gestured ‘length’ with his
arms apart and then pointed to the same wall socket.

‘Un
extension!’ said the receptionist.

‘That’s what I
said,’ said Adam clearly getting frustrated.

In the same
lock up, the receptionist fished out a coiled up extension
lead.

‘Diez… twenty
dollars please.’

‘You’re taking
the piss,’ said Adam, hoping she couldn’t translate.

‘No, just
dollars!’

Finally Madeline, dead on the bed, was hooked up to
the
generator on the balcony outside the room. She took
every bit the little petrol engine generator could muster but it
was a Honda – Adam had every confidence in it. Eventually Madeline
came alive again. She would have to stay on charge all night but at
least now she could talk and most importantly – be with her dream
version of Adam.

‘It’s been a
bad, bad day,’ Adam complained.

‘I’m sorry, I
expect far too much from you,’ said Madeline.

It had been a
bad, bad day for her too but she kept it to herself. She gave him a
hug and a long kiss. She knew inevitably she had to ask him some
very awkward questions but she didn’t know how to start - Adam
started for her.

‘I suppose
you’re worth it.’

‘Only suppose?
... Adam, sweetheart, do you… dream?’

‘What a silly
question, of course I dream.’

‘But how can
you?’ asked Madeline directly.

‘I know what
you’re getting at. Because I’m in your dream, how can I dream as
well – I don’t know, I just do.’

‘So you know?
You know this is all a dream – you and all this is just in my
mind?’

‘Of course I
do,’ said Adam.

‘You do?’ said
Madeline puzzled.

‘As long as you
are here though, I’m real, I exist, Barton exists, you - Madeline
exists, Nuttall exists... We are as real as sunshine and rain but
when you leave, we will all just cease.’

‘You know all
this and you never said anything?’ said Madeline.

‘You had to
find it out for yourself.’

‘That’s what
it’s all about, everything that’s happened to me. Nuttall is trying
to save this world in my dream state by keeping me here. Why aren’t
you on Nuttall’s side – making me stay?’

‘Simply
because… I love you more than life itself. Barton loves you as a
daughter. We only want the best for you.’

‘Which is?’

‘To get better
and return as Poppy in the real world,’ said Adam truthfully.

Madeline could
no longer hold the tears back.

‘I don’t want
to leave, I want to stay here with you!’ cried Madeline.

‘No you don’t.
The real Adam is waiting for the real you. He’s waiting by your
bedside, calling you. You have to go to him.’

‘No, I want to
stay with you… I love you!’

‘I know you do
but you love Adam in the real world too, you have to go back.’

‘You’re… going
to help me then?’

‘That’s why I’m
here… Remember when you first met me?’ asked Adam.

‘Of course, we
met at Jade’s wedding, five years ago,’ said Madeline.

‘No, I mean
me
, not the other Adam. I came bounding down those stairs.
Jenny let you in, I think she fancied you.’

‘Yes you had
that awful goatee beard,’ Madeline smiled.

‘We are the
same Adam but we are also two different Adam’s, we’ve diverged

– became
separate and different. Remember when you said you used to be a
Foreign News correspondent?’

‘Yes, you said
you remembered me telling you, a strange answer.’

‘No, it wasn’t,
I’ve never knew you as a Foreign News correspondent – before my
time.’

Madeline was a
little thrown with this fact. It meant that there were four years
of their romance missing with this particular Adam. But it made no
difference, she still loved him.

‘The other Adam
loves Poppy and I love you, Madeline,’ clarified Adam.

‘But I
am
Poppy!’ Madeline protested.

‘To me, in this
world, you are far more Madeline than Poppy.’

He was right,
she knew he was. Adam hadn’t had a lot to do with Poppy in this
world. Yes, he saw her as a burnt husk for a few minutes at the
beginning but that was it. It should have been good enough for Adam
to love Madeline exclusively but she classed that as half love. She
reassured herself that it is the soul of someone that is loved and
essentially, Poppy and Madeline had the same. It was time to change
the subject.

‘Priority right
now, is to stop myself becoming a mobile ultrasound projector - I
hate not being able to talk. As long as it keeps happening, I can’t
do anything. I will never be able to get home… to my other
world.’

‘You need a bit
of non invasive surgery,’ suggested Adam.

‘And where are
we going to get that sort of thing done around here?’

‘Not in
Guaranda, that’s a fact,’ said Adam.

Chapter 40:
The operation

As Nuttall had
the means to hamper Madeline’s life style at the press of a button
or the turn of a switch, she advised Adam to keep his ear devices
well and truly pressed into his ears. Madeline could cope with
everyone else being hostile to her but not Adam.

The drive back
to Quito passed too quickly. There was never any doubt that both
deeply loved each other despite their recent discussion. In
reality, however, this was inner love, an imaginary love in Poppy’s
subconscious. This didn’t mean to say either experienced it as an
inferior love, just a stop gap love. But… there was an imminent
destination, a journey that Madeline had to take regardless of any
contentment.

Her first port
of call was Quito’s clothes shops. Her present outfit was puce and
puce – tight fitting thermals loosely covered in a flight suit. She
was a diamond in the rough and no doubt, one day the look would
catch on but Madeline craved once again, for the feminine seductive
look.

There was only
one exception to Adam loving Madeline’s company and that was when
she was clothes shopping. It wasn’t particularly the boredom
factor, which was quite appreciable - it was the sheer time it
took. For Madeline, the time flew by like a faulty watch, for Adam
it dragged like 40 grit sand paper on sponge.

Finally the
colours of the day were carnation pink and white, feminine
indeed.

Adam was so
pleased to be back in the car, it had been a hard old day - again.
He had developed an intense migraine and was patiently waiting for
the aspirins to work.

They followed
the appropriate road signs and parked up outside a large modern
hospital. The inside’s of the hospital was like any other – pastel
coloured walls, lino floors and harsh fluorescent lighting.
Familiar coloured signs hung from the ceiling for necessary
navigation to various departments. The signs were mainly in Spanish
but if you changed the ‘io’ or ‘ia’ at the end of the words to ‘e’,
everything seemed pretty familiar. Eventually they found the sign:
‘Gastroscopio dept.’

Nuttall had
left it long enough, Madeline’s mouth opened wide and her whole
body began to gently vibrate with the power drain. Everyone in the
hospital apart from Adam suddenly wanted to irrationally attack,
jump on, stab, lash out and spit at anyone dressed in pink and
white. If Madeline had realised this was the trigger she simply
would have stripped off. Unfortunately instead she had to use her
laser finger many, many times. By the time they had turned left,
then right, then right again and then left and then up a flight of
stairs, along a corridor, then left, through three double doors,
then right and reached the endoscopia unit, they had littered the
corridors with most of the hospital staff. In the endoscopia room,
a doctor and a nurse also had to be lasered. Madeline ensured them
that it wouldn’t hurt but in their own language they replied, ‘How
the fuck do you know?’

Adam found an
endoscope ready for use, freshly disinfected. He turned the monitor
on and familiarised himself with the workings of the bendy, tubey,
choppy tool.

‘Okay, Madam,
lie on the table… open wide… this won’t hurt,’ said Adam.

Madeline wanted
to say, you’re loving this, aren’t you? But because Nuttall still
had her emitting an ultrasound message out of her mouth, all that
came out was,

‘Or uving is
are oo.’

Madeline
climbed on the trolley table and lay on her side. Adam wasted no
time and within seconds the endoscope was half way down her
throat.