Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn (11 page)

‘Some one else’s hand?’ Ellie curled her lips.

‘It’s not ‘someone’’s hand, Ellie,’ said Mother. ‘These are just vat-grown bodies. No minds, no consciousness. They are not ‘someone’; they’re just a suite of replacement parts.’

‘But…I’ll have a mismatched hand, won’t I?’

Jez nodded. ‘That’s a point. She doesn’t want you to attach some big hairy man’s hand to the end of her arm!’

Mother’s cartoon avatar cocked a brow. ‘We have male and female cadavers, Jez.’ Her eyes swivelled back to Ellie. ‘The skin tone may differ slightly though. You really have quite a pale colour, Ellie.’

She wondered if having a different coloured hand would be a problem for her. She’d probably get used to it, but…there was another thought…

Won
’
t that make me easier to identify?

As things stood she was average looking, unremarkable in appearance and she was finally beginning to think of that as a blessing. Whereas Jez turned heads in any room, Ellie seemed to slip by unnoticed. Being on the run, as they were her
being wholly unremarkable was a
good
thing. Anything about her that stood out, a noticeably different coloured hand for example, wasn’t going to help.

‘What’s the third option?’

Mother smiled. ‘Well, of course, my dear, we could just regrow your own hand in-’

‘Huh? You mean? Oh, God, I…I don’t want to go inside one of those bowls of-’

Mother sighed patiently. ‘You won’t have to go into a fabrication pod. We will take some stem cells from you and grow it in an incubator. Then we’ll have it surgically attached as we would with option two.’

‘So….’ Ellie looked at her stump. ‘It’ll be like it was.’

‘Exactly.’

‘That’s the option I want then.’

‘It will take a while to grow the hand from cells, though. We could fabricate it, that would be much quicker, but it might not be exactly right.’

‘I guess I can wait.’ She sighed. ‘We’re stuck here for six weeks, right?’

‘Five weeks and two days now.’ Mother corrected. ‘You were in the pod for four days. There was some internal bleeding abrasions and bruising to your internal organs, three clean breaks and a number of hairline fractures to your-’

‘How long will it take to grow me a new hand?’

‘A week, Ellie. I will make sure your hand is my top priority.’

‘A week?’ She looked at her stump again. ‘Well…I guess we’re not going anywhere any time soon, are we?’

A week without a left hand?
She decided she could cope with that. Perhaps it would even be educational; to live in the shoes of someone handicapped for a while. It might even be good karma-trip for her….to learn to appreciate what she had; a healthy body unplagued by genetic mutations. She recalled a docu-videe she’d watched on the toob once, about poor people who had mis-growths and tumours caused by insufficient radiation shielding on some of the early-stage worlds.

‘Gross-i-o freakos!!’ Ted had guffawed. Dad had told him not to be so bloody rude. That they were all so very lucky to be able-bodied and unaffected that way.

‘Okay, I can cope with that.’

‘Thank you for being so understanding, Ellie,’ said Mother. ‘On behalf of the company, and Shelby and Graham, I really am very sorry for what happened to you. And I will look into what went wrong with Jez’s creature design.’

Jez finished helping Ellie back into her clothes and they left the infirmary. Ellie wanted to find Shelby. There was something she wanted to discuss with him. She’d been sedated for four days. It might already be too late.

*

‘What?’ Shelby’s apologetic demeanour vanished in a heartbeat. A moment ago he’d been repeating Mother’s ‘official’ apology on behalf of the company. But now he was simply bemused.

‘I said…I don’t want my creatures recycled.’

The world had been left untouched since the emergency override several days ago. Pheromones had flooded into the atmosphere and knocked out all of the fabricated creatures. They were, in effect, sleeping and would do so until Shelby and Gray got round to clearing up the aftermath of the battle.

‘Please. I don’t want my creatures recycled,’ she pleaded. ‘My bears…please…don’t mash them up into that gloop.’

‘Why?’

‘They….they were so brave. They don’t deserve to be minced up into biomass and thrown back into your vats.’

‘They’re not real bears, Ellie!’ said Jez. ‘They’re just, like, toys.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘They had some intelligence. At least my ones did. They could think for themselves and-’

‘It is
artificial
intelligence, Ellie,’ said Shelby. ‘Organic, rather than digital, yes. But still artificial. Like Frasier, here. He may sound smart, but he’s basically a set of AI modules embedded in an organic neural network. Isn’t that right, Frasier?’

The chimpanzee looked at him. ‘You can be so charming, Master Shelby.’

‘I don’t care! They were brave. I want them to live.’

Jez put an arm around her narrow shoulders. ‘Oh, you are such a mooshy sentimental chik. I guess that’s why I love you so-o-o much.’

Ellie shook her arm off.

‘We do need to tidy up World Three. More to the point, we need to recycle the creatures…especially those scorpion-like creatures of yours, Jez. Those need to be analysed by Mother to see what went wrong.’

‘Oh, sure, you can scrap those crazy things. But not her bears. Let my Ellie keep her creatures. That’s the least you can do for her.’

‘To do what with them, exactly?’

‘To let them live,’ replied Ellie.

Shelby sighed. Ellie could see he wasn’t particularly keen on the idea. She imagined the idea of World Three being occupied for no profitable reason, being messed up by un-policed teddy bears wandering around, irked his OCD obsession for squaring things away.

‘For how long?’

She shrugged. ‘For a while?’

Shelby tutted. ‘You think you’re doing them a kindness, hmmm? Letting them live?’

‘They deserve it.’

‘So you want to let them live in that world, in that castle for a while?’

She nodded.

‘You understand they will grow used to the idea of living. Their basic intelligence will begin to develop. They will forge friendships, memories, perhaps even genuine emotions….and what then? When it finally comes time to clean out that world, Ellie, and recycle those fabricants? Hmmm? Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘At least they’ll have had some fun. Lived
some
life of their own.’

‘And recycling…
death
…might begin to mean something to them also.’ Shelby shook his head. ‘Something for them to fear.’

‘So? Isn’t that what we all fear? We all die in the end, right?’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Better to have had something and then lose it…than never have had that something?’ She looked up at Jez. ‘Right?’

Jez nodded. 'She’s right. Let 'em live a little.’

Shelby tugged on his lip thoughtfully. ‘If you two abolutely insist…but, I warn you, they will have to be recycled eventually. This isn’t meant to be a zoo.’

‘How about until that supply shuttle arrives?’ said Ellie.

Shelby sighed. ‘Ridiculous….but all right.'

‘Yay!’ Jez raised her left hand to high-five Ellie’s. ‘Oh…uh, sorry.’

‘And the other creatures,’ Shelby continued, ‘Graham and I will dispose of those.’

‘Good,’ said Ellie. ‘They were horrible.’

‘The large one that attacked you, we’ll have a look at that one though.’ He shook his head. ‘It really shouldn’t have behaved that way. I can’t see how it passed through quality control without something being flagged up.’

Ellie nodded. ‘It nearly killed me.’

‘It might have been an accident?’ said Jez. ‘Or maybe it got confused or something?’

‘There should be absolutely no confusion. Every fabricated creature is designed to know, to absolutely one-hundred-percent-know, whether it is interacting with another fabricant or a human client. Something went wrong. That’s a serious health and safety matter we need to look into.’

‘Was it
my
fault?’ asked Jez. ‘Did I do something wrong with the design?’

‘The design software shouldn’t have passed it on for production. Either the design software is faulty, or something went wrong in the fabrication process.’ He looked at Ellie. ‘During the wargame, did any other creature act threateningly towards you?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think so. It was just that scorpion.’

He shrugged. ‘Then perhaps it was a one off. Maybe it’s chemical receptors were confused or damaged in the combat somehow.’ He frowned, losing interest
in talking with the girls any longer, now deep in thought about the problem. ‘For some reason…it didn’t recognise her as a human.’

‘Yeah, it happens to her all the time,’ said Jez.

Ellie rolled her eyes and Jez provided her own laughter as Shelby turned and walked away, still tugging thoughtfully at his lip, Frasier accompanying him up the path leading to the control tower.

They watched them go, then Ellie sat up on the sun couch. ‘I guess you’ll be heading back to Gray’s weird world now?’

‘Nope. I’m sticking with you El’.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Oh, don’t thank me. I’m staying ‘cause I feel fregging guilty about your hand. Cause you’ll need some help. Cause I’m your friend. Cause I’ve been neglecting you recently. All that kinda stuff.’ She sat down on the end of the couch. ‘And because Gray seems to be…in a total fregging shitty mood right now.’

‘Why?’

‘I dunno. Maybe he feels like it was his fault too. I suppose he should’ve checked over my creatures first. I think he’s really embarrassed about this whole thing. I haven’t spoken to him in days.’

They sat in silence for a while, watching the jimps tending the gardens and a flock of bird-like things swooping around the real oak tree in the distance.

‘Jez?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you think…?’

‘What?’

‘Do you think…there is something
different
about me?’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No.’

‘Well duh, of course there’s something different about you!’

‘I mean…sort of…I dunno, not quite right. Not quite human-’

‘Duh! You’re the most human person I’ve ever met! That’s what’s so different about you. You’ve got an energy about you…a get-up-and-go-ness that I love about you. That’s what I fell in love with when we first met; the fact that you were thinking of the stars, wanted to get the fregg out of that crap-hole domed city.’

‘I’m not like my folks really though, am I? They-’

‘I loved your family too! They were….’ Jez quickly bit her lip and puffed her cheeks, ‘they
are
adorable. Particularly Ted. He’s such a…a…total little clown.’

‘I really hope they’re okay. Do you think there’s a way I could try and contact them? Let them know I’m still alive?’

Jez shook her head quickly. ‘No! No…that’s not a good idea, El’.’

Ellie looked up at her. 'Surely-'

‘The…the Administration, Ellie, I’m sure they’ll be snooping on everyone right now. Listening in on communications. You ring home and they’ll track your call somehow.’ She nodded. ‘Oh…and also, that might draw the Administration’s attention to
them
. Put them in danger. No, that’s probably the last thing you should do right now.’

Ellie figured she was probably right. Until they found a way out of this system they were sitting ducks. Just like back at that abandoned colonial outpost, hiding in that store locker, they'd been trapped. Out there a net had been cast across the entire system. Bit by bit the Administration would be reeling that net in and eventually she and Jez were going to land in their laps, flapping and flopping like fish on the deck of a boat.

We have to get out of here. We have to leave
…
before they come and check this place out
.

‘Ellie?’

‘Hmm…’

‘Something I’ve been kinda thinking about, a bit.’

‘What?’

Jez’s lips mewed to the side like she probing the back of her mouth with her tongue. ‘What if….that scorpion attack
wasn
’
t
an accident?’

‘Huh? What makes you say that?’

‘Stupid.’

‘No…go on. Why did you just say that?’

‘Maybe I’m catching my paranoia from you, but…?’

‘But?’

‘Something Gray said to me. Before the wargame.’

‘What?’

Jez looked away from her guiltily. ‘He asked me to stay on here.’

‘When the shuttle comes?’

She nodded.

‘What did you say?’

‘No, of course. I told him where you go, I go. That we were The Inseparable Twins; SexBitch and WonderGirl.’

‘What did he say to that?’

‘He said this place was, like, the perfect world. The perfect playground. That I could be a God of my own world here. I’d never need for anything again. Thinking about it…it was sort of a bit of a don’t-leave-me-baby speech.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘We kinda rowed a bit as well. I told him that we’re a team and I was definitely leaving with you.’

‘How did he take that?’

‘I think we was pretty hurt. I guess. You know Gray, he acts all cool and laid back. But I think that really, really stung him.’

They looked at each other. A disturbing, unspoken thought, hovering between them. ‘Are you saying you think he…?’

Jez shook her head. ‘I don’t know…’ She chewed on her thumb nail. ‘It’s not like I actually really know him, is it? Not really.’

‘But you think he could have..?’

‘Tweaked my creature design?’ She managed the tiniest nod. ‘It’s possible. I got a shitty feeling he might be the
possessive
type.’

Ellie felt the skin on her arms goose bump. She’d just about managed to put that creepy discovery on the mezzanine decke behind her, and been ready to
accept that either Shelby or Gray had assembled those things in a momentary outburst of sentimentalism.

‘Ellie…do you wanna show me that room?’

‘The creepy shrine place?’

‘Uh-huh’

‘Okay.’

‘And one other thing. Did you mention it to Shelby yet?’

Ellie shook her head. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do.’

‘You reckon we should? If it's
Gray
we're worrying about now…?’