Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn (16 page)

So, Mason had emptied the floating swirls of ancient thread into the toilet cubicle off his study and flushed them into space. If it really had contained God’s DNA, well…he was getting it back.

‘So? Will you be ready for me tomorrow?’

Mason emerged from his thoughts back to the present and looked at the man sitting on the stool beside him now. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. Near the east entrance, the one leading to the main spaceport is a canteen used by shuttle pilots. It is called Dionysius. Meet me there at nine tomorrow morning.’ The man got up, took his StarBurger meal with him and left the restaurant. Mason watched him cross the busy plaza until he lost sight of him in the bustling crowd.

She
’
s my creation. Not God
’
s
….
mine
.

But they didn’t need to know that. Not that it mattered one bit. Wasn’t faith all about blind belief in the implausible anyway; wish-fulfilment taken to a ridiculous extreme? If they wanted to believe Ellie came from God, that was perfectly fine with him. But the truth was…Ellie came from him.

CHAPTER 22

‘What’s the big deal?’ asked Jez. ‘So Mother got something wrong.’

‘We’re living in a fully automated environment run by an AI system that has become
unreliable
,’ replied Shelby.

Her eyes suddenly rounded. ‘Oh, fregg! You mean like in Death Drone 5? When that space cruiser’s robot crew turned on the passengers and butchered them all?’

Shelby frowned. ‘I’m guessing that’s some appallingly badly made holo-videe.’

Gray shook his head. ‘If she lied to you, Shelbs, that means she is
corrupted
software. She’s potentially dangerous to us all.’

‘She declared a falsehood. She’s certainly corrupted.’

‘But did she
knowingly
declare a falsehood?’ Gray raised his eyebrows. ‘What exactly did she say to you?’

‘That the data archives were purged ten years ago.’

‘Well, that’s complete bullshit,’ said Gray. 'I dip into it all the time.'

‘I have used it a few times as well.’

‘And there’s no way she’d make that mistake, Shelbs. One nano-second reference check…is all it would take to confirm the fact.’

‘Hmmm. Exactly.’

‘That means it was deliberate. Not a mistake. She lied to me.’

Jez frowned. ‘Soo-o-o?’

‘A lie…’ Shelby tugged his bottom lip absently. ‘The system here is an advanced heuristic AI. It’s designed to have soft-edge logic, to appear more human. To have the appearance of an emotional language.’

‘But not actually have emotions?’ Ellie sat forward on her deck chair. ‘Right?’

‘Precisely. But…’

‘But?’ Ellie didn’t want to hear a ‘but’.

‘She
has
been running a long time. I suppose it’s feasible that she’s generated a small library of routines that are analogous to emotions.’

‘It sounds scary,’ said Ellie. She looked down at the stump of hardened pink gel on the end of her wrist and had a chilling thought. ‘What if she’d decided she, you know, didn’t ‘
like
’ me? What if she’s, I don’t know…jealous or something?’

‘OhMyGod!’ gasped Jez. ‘This IS like Death Drone 5!’

‘Let’s not get carried away,’ said Shelby. ‘We are talking about an operating system. That’s all. Not some awful horror movie.’

‘The girls might be right, man.’ Gray stroked his chin. ‘What if Mother’s decided that Ellie…or Jez are a threat?’

‘A threat? A threat to Mother? How exactly?’

Gray shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s worried that you or me, or both of us might decide to leave with the girls when the shuttle comes?’

Shelby frowned for a moment, giving that some consideration. ‘A defensive reaction?’

‘A
preventative
reaction,’ said Gray. ‘WonderWorld needs us. Mother,
needs
us, man.’

Shelby thought about that for a moment. ‘That just sounds ridiculous.’

‘Think about it, Shelbs. What would it mean to her if you and I decided to leave?’

‘It would mean…’

‘A complete shut down. That’s what. You know the regs…and she knows them too. No human oversight on an AI-run environment system this size, means a complete power down.’ Gray stroked his chin. ‘This isn’t about jealousy…this is self-preservation. She’s worried that we’re both gonna leave.’

Shelby nodded slowly. 'Perhaps you're right.'

‘If Mother suspects we’re having second thoughts about her…?’ He looked at the girls. ‘Well, Shelbs, don't make me spell it out in front of the girls, man, she can control the behaviour of every living thing in WonderWorld.’

‘Are you absolutely certain she can’t hear us talking right now?’ asked Ellie.

‘Mother!’ barked Gray. ‘Emergency override, priority-one!’

They waited for a response. Nothing.

‘There.’

‘If Mother can lie…’ said Jez, ‘doesn’t that mean she could pretend to not have heard you?’

Neither young man wanted to answer that and they sat in silence for a while. Finally Ellie spoke again. ‘So what are we going to do?’

Gray and Shelby looked at each other. ‘Well,’ started Shelby, his voice just a little bit quieter now. ‘I suppose the only thing we can do is shut her down. Power down all the systems and do a re-boot. We have the basic system AI in crystal-disc storage the basic system AI. It’s vanilla software.’

‘Vanilla?’

‘That means it’s pretty bloody basic,’ replied Gray. ‘We’ll be okay, but all of the environment systems…all of our personalised settings will be lost. A real pain-in-the-ass…since we’ve got this place running how we like it.’

‘But we’ll be okay, right?’ Ellie looked around. ‘You know, until the shuttle comes?’

‘We will be fine,’ said Shelby.

‘I'm going to ask this…’ cut in Jez. ‘I'm going to ask this because I'm sure we're all thinking it, but no one's saying it.'

‘What?’

‘Are either of you actually thinking of leaving with us?’

The question seemed to catch both young men off guard. There was a long silence. Gray shook his head finally. ‘No. This place is…my home. There’s nothing out there in the black that I want to see. Nothing like here. I’m staying.’ He looked at Jez. 'Your loss, sweetlips.'

‘Then why don’t you just tell Mother that?’ said Ellie. ‘You know? Just
reassure
her? Maybe that’s all we need to do?’

‘I guess I could, but it-’

‘I…well, actually…I’ve given it some thought,’ said Shelby.

The others looked at him. ‘What?’

‘Leaving. Leaving with Ellie…and Jez.’

Gray’s jaw hung open. ‘Seriously, man?!’

‘I said…I’ve
thought
about it. That’s all.’

Gray looked shocked. ‘Why? Why would you ever want to leave this place? There’s everything here, anything you could ever want!’

Shelby looked out at the turquoise water lapping gently at the golden sand. ‘I…I…don’t remember anything but this place. I don’t remember anything
before
this place.’

‘Hey, Shelbs…look, you an’ me, sure we’ve been here a
long time
, man.’

‘I’m quite serious, Graham. I can’t. I’ve been thinking about it. I really can’t.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Tell me Graham…where did you live as a child?’

‘What?’

‘Think about it! When you were, lets say five years old…what planet were you living on at the time?'

He laughed. 'Seriously?'

'I'm serious!'

'Shit, well I was born on…..' he stopped. His mouth hung open. Then all of a sudden he laughed at himself, at his own fuzzy-headed forgetfulness. 'Damn…'

'What are your parents’ names, Graham?’

'Uh…they….were called…' he laughed again. 'Shit…I…’ he waved a hand at the question like it was an annoying bug. 'This is stupid.’

‘One thing, Graham…can you remember
one thing
from your childhood?’

He grinned self consciously. ‘This is stupid waste of time, man. We should be-’

‘Just one thing, Graham. Go on. Just one memory.’

‘Aw, come one, I…all right.’ Gray looked down at his hands, clasped together between his knees. A long silence. ‘My parents were…’ He laughed. ‘Shit, that’s the weirdest damned thing. I can’t remember their names, right now.’ He tried again. ‘All right, no problem. I was born on…’ he frowned as he stared out at the gently lapping turquoise sea.

‘Well?’

He closed his eyes tightly. He opened them again a minute later looked at Shelby with the first hint of growing alarm written on his face. ‘Shelbs, you’re right. I can’t…I can’t come up with
anything
.’

‘I am exactly the same,’ he replied. He offered Gray a tight and joyless smile. ‘I think I get it now.’

‘What are you talkin' about, man?’

‘I think I understand why Mother lied to me.’

‘Why?’ asked Ellie.

He looked at her. ‘I believe she really does consider you, and Jez, to be a very real and tangible threat.’

‘A threat? To her? How?’

‘Not to
her
. To
us
. To myself and Graham.’

‘Why…how the hell are
we
a threat to
you
?’

He looked at Gray. ‘You know what I’m getting at now, don’t you Graham?’

Ellie noticed the expression on his face. The good-natured bafflement was gone. No longer did he look like some casual, unflappable beach bum; no longer that easy smile and and an easy slouching manner. Right now he looked lost.

Gray nodded. Then laughed dismissively. Then choked that off. He closed his eyes, his head dropped and he whispered. ‘
Shit
….you’re right.’

‘What?!’ Jez was looking exasperated. ‘What’s going on with you two idiots?’ She turned to Ellie. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘We’re not real,’ muttered Gray.

‘Huh?’

‘I believe the pair of us may be fabricants,’ Shelby clarified. He sat back in his deck chair and crossed his thin arms as if he was giving himself a comforting hug. ‘I have a suspicion that actually, the
entire
team died. Then Mother made Graham and me to help her keep things running here.’

Jez burst out laughing. ‘C'mon! Seriously? That’s just a bunch of crap-ol-a! Shelby, why would someone make a fabricant that looked like you?' She mushed her lips in apology. 'No offence meant but…you're a dork!' She turned to Gray and playfully thumped his upper arm. 'And you? Seriously? You….a…a…..'

He gazed down at his bare feet. 'He's right, Jez.'

'But…come on,
Gray
? I mean we…you know, we….’ Jez’s mouth closed as she finally caught up with the others. ‘Oh God…you're telling me I slept with a
thing
?’

Ellie reached out to her friend and grasped her hand to shush her. ‘Okay…then…let’s just say for a moment that you two are right? What does that mean?’

‘It means that Shelbs and me are potentially dangerous to you girls,’ answered Gray. ‘If Mother catches wind that we’ve figured her out…’

‘She could control our behaviour,’ finished Shelby.

‘Control your….what are you saying?’

Shelby took a deep breath. ‘Remember? Mother can control the behaviour of
every
fabricant in WonderWorld? Well that may also include Graham and me.’

Gray was still looking down at his bare feet, unable or unwilling to look anyone else in the eye. ‘If she gets the idea that we’ve figured ourselves out…God know’s what she’ll do.’

‘Oh, I suspect she’ll make us kill you both,’ said Shelby. ‘Then I imagine she’ll want to start over. Make a brand new Graham…and a brand new me. Edit our memories, the logs, and neither of us will know anything about your visit. It’ll be like you’d never arrived. Business as usual.’

‘Oh, God,’ whispered Ellie. 'What are we going to do?'

‘Shelby, Gray,' said Jez, 'you guys…you're not going to, you know, kill us right?’

Gray laughed dryly. ‘Pheromones get to call the shots, Jez. Not us.’

‘When we step outside,’ continued Shelby, ‘we will all have to pretend this conversation never happened. We must all act perfectly normally.’

‘Then what?’

‘We have get up to the control tower to reboot Mother.’

CHAPTER 23

Mason looked up through the ceiling observation blister of the spaceship at the south polar underbelly of this godforsaken world; unlike the north, it was bereft of ice or any other discernible feature, just like of the rest of the muddy surface.

The ship’s captain had informed him that they were going to slip away quietly using only the ship’s chemical atmo-burners. A painfully slow progress until they were well and truly clear of Harpers Reach’s outer-field envelope, then they’d engage the system drive. The Colonial Marine cruisers - there were three of them around the planet now - were probably only scanning orbit entries and exits.

Probably
.

The Captain joined him, looking up through the oval window.

‘You are very near the top of our church, I believe, Mr Mason?’

Mason nodded.

‘So? Have you ever met him? The First And The Last?’

Mason nodded again. ‘I met him a couple of times.’

‘Forgive me for asking but…?’

‘What is he like?’

The Captain smiled. ‘Yes. Please…tell me.’

Mason hadn’t thought that much of the man. He was like any other religious zealot, he supposed, deluded by a single-minded belief in his destiny. But, to be fair, there’d been something more to him, certainly a charisma…a brooding intensity. He could see how those deep, unblinking eyes, the deep-timbred Old Testament voice, the unshakable conviction that he was God’s will made flesh, could sway impressionable minds looking for answers, looking for a greater meaning to their existence.

It didn’t take much to consolidate the loyalty of a band of followers, Mason had come to realise that, as he’d taken on the role of Teacher in the abandoned apartment block. Just the right glassy-eyed look and the right old-testament delivery and a message that promised rewards to the faithful few and damnation to the rest. It was a pretty simple and effective formula…and the oldest.

Mason turned to look at the man beside him and knew what he wanted to hear. ‘I saw God in his eyes. I felt his energy…his love.’