Ellie Quin - 04 - Ellie Quin in WonderLand (11 page)

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PondBlob

Oh good grief. I bet your bedcube has pictures of fluffy animals all over it. I bet your favourite headpad story is Fifty Grey Shades of LuvvyLove. I bet you wear glitter face gloss and dress in pink all the time :-/

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CheerLeader879

Why don't you leave Hugz alone? Oh I know why, you haven't got any friends so you spend your time stalking Omni for easy targets. Did mumma not breastfeed you as a baby? Is that what this…a cry for help?

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(((Bartlaub5))))

No, it's a cry from someone trying not to vom all over his holo-suite. Seriously, Hugz is the kind of Schmaltzkitten that should be kept away from the digistream. 'Specially after one glass of cherrybabee.

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Matttttttttt

Why is there so much hostility here? On my planet, if people behaved this way to each other they'd be issued a medication order. Some of you people come across as pathological haters.

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ndjrkckekrkfk

Which [offensive word deleted] planet is that? HippyDippy-Love-World?

CHAPTER 14

'Okay, I'm not gonna lie, Ellie, girl…I'm a bit nervous of what the fregg we're going to find inside,' said Jez.

'Well
you
accepted his invitation.' Ellie looked up at the large entrance to World Two. 'And I suppose it would be rude for us not to at least say hi.'

Gray's invitation to come and take a look at his biome the other night had been somewhat casual and offhand; not exactly backed up subsequently with a formal invitation. Since then neither Jez nor Ellie had seen Gray again. He'd casually got up after they'd finished several rounds of an odd-flavoured liqueur Frasier had served and excused himself with a theatrical bow. He'd said he was heading back to his place to 'party with his play-things'. They'd watched him saunter away into the darkness with the flip-flap of his sandals receding as he made his way down the hill.

It had taken every last ounce of willpower Jez had and a determination not to look too grabby, for her not to jump up and chase after him. She realised she had a bad case of the hots for him. Not the usual wham-bam and see ya 'round type, Gray was interesting in a way most knuckle-dragging grunters from New Haven weren't; able to produce whole sentences with nouns, verbs and everything. Enigmatic even..

…
And fregg he's so hawt
…

Maybe it was because he was a brainiac (presumably so, after all, he was a genetics programmer) and seemed happy to hide that intelligence away behind throw away, flippant remarks and a floppy fringe of blonde hair. In contrast to that gimp, Shelby who seemed determined to make them aware, constantly, that his IQ dwarfed theirs and that he was benevolently tolerating their company and prepared to offer up seeds of wisdom as a charitable act.

Or maybe it was simply that Gray
wasn't
panting after her. That's what Jez was used to after all; males tripping over each other to buy her Spartans, eager to blurt out their well rehearsed off-the-cuff opening snag-lines. In contrast, Gray seemed friendly, welcoming even…and just a little aloof.

Perhaps even…
unattainable
.

'Do you think he's guppy?' she'd asked Ellie the other day.

He didn't seem like a
same-sexer
. The ones she'd come across in New Haven all seemed to behave and dress quite differently to Gray.

'Maybe you're just not his type, Jez?'

That had failed to compute for her. She was
any
man's type.

The next day Jez had nagged Shelby to contact Gray and ask whether the invitation for them to go visit his world was still open. It had taken Gray twenty-four hours to reply. When he did he'd looked tired and apologised for his tardy reply. He'd explained he'd been busy tidying up World Three and resetting it back to its default matrix.

'Yeah…sure, why not? Come on over whenever you want,' he'd messaged.

Hardly the
gushing
invitation that Jez was used to getting.

'Today?'

'Make it tomorrow? I just gotta, y'know, finish supervising the clear up in here. There's dead and rotting sugar beanies and chocco chops everywhere.' He'd grinned at Jez.

Now Jez was standing beside Ellie and looking at the closed hatch to World Two. Gray's world. For the first time that she could ever remember….she was actually feeling butterflies in her belly.

'You're acting so…
not yourself
, Jez.'

'What?!' Jez looked down at her. 'Not myself? What do you mean?'

Ellie couldn't help a smile. 'Like someone on a first date. Nervous.'

'Nervous?' Jez shook her head and tutted.

'You really like him don't you?'

'Pfft. S'pose he's an all right looking meat-stick.'

'All right?' Ellie chuckled. 'You're totally ga-ga for him.'

Jez blew a noisy raspberry at that. It echoed around them and down the long passageway. 'I don't do 'ga-ga', for anyone'!' She huffed at the idea.

'Uh-huh.' Ellie nodded at the computer panel beside the door. 'Mother's' cartoon face was waiting patiently for them, blinking every now and then. The cartoon changed back to an animation of her knitting a scarf: her 'wait' mode. 'So? Ready to go in then?'

Jez nodded firmly. 'Of course I am!'

'Mother?'

The screen replaced the animation with one of her leaning forward and smiling patiently. 'Hello, Ellie.'

'Would you let Graham know that we're here?'

'Of course, dear. One moment….one moment…'

Ellie looked at her. 'I wonder what kind of world Gray lives in?'

'I imagine something with a long golden beach. Or maybe, I dunno….an Old Earth forest or something really relaxing and chillsy.' Jez shrugged. 'We'll find out soon enough.' She curled her lip at a thought. 'I hope it's not all
sophistik
. All yawn-yawn classic art 'n stuff. Him being a brain-gene designer type an' all.'

Ellie smiled warmly at her friend. This was the first time she'd
ever
seen her look edgy and uncomfortable.

She's not so bullet proof after all
.

Mother's face blinked. She smiled again. 'Gray told me to say 'welcome to his kingdom'.'

They heard locking bolts slide and a soft mechanical hum as the hatch to World Two slowly rolled to one side and came to a rest with a noisy
clang
. Both girls' jaws dropped.

'Fregging hell!' Jez uttered under her breath.

Ellie nodded.
Hell
…that's kind of exactly what it looked like. The sky dome projected a rolling turmoil of dark brooding clouds that parted here and there to reveal glimpses of a blood red sky. Thunder rumbled restlessly occasionally pierced by a sharp clap and boom that echoed above a constant mournful moaning wind.

The metal lip of the entrance led onto a small platform of dark basaltic rock ribbed with razor edges and spine-like protrusions. They stepped cautiously forward onto it and found themselves staring down over the edge of the rocky platform onto what looked to Ellie to be a lake of pale pinky grey sludge that seemed to be bubbling like a vast cauldron of porridge. A narrow iron walkway extended from the rocky platform across the lake to an island in the middle; a gothic monstrosity of dark spires and battlements with what looked like the hunched forms of gargoyles perched on the top of bell-towers and minarets. It was hard to tell at this distance whether the island was the deliberate architecture of some twisted medieval mind, or the natural spikes, arches and other suggestive and accidental formations caused by the erosion of wind and rain.

Ellie checked herself with a thought.
Nothing in here is accidental. It's all by design
.

'OhMyGod!' Jez shrieked above the moaning wind and the deep booming thunder from above. 'This is soooo fregging drool!!!' She stepped forward onto the raised iron walkway, beckoning at Ellie to follow her. 'Come on!'

Their boots clanked noisily as they made their way along the iron walkway. Ellie grasped the handrails on either side of her as it seemed to rock and sway slightly under their weight. She looked down at the mottled pinkish grey lake of churning slurry below them, hoping that this less than stable bridge was designed to take the weight of more than one person at a time and wasn't about to give way and dump them into that slurry below.

Gray actually made this world? This is what he chooses to live in?

'This is like some sort of psycho's theme park!' Jez shouted excitedly over her shoulder.

Ellie nodded. That was
exactly
what it looked like. The lake bubbled and fidgeted beneath them and she looked down through the gaps between the iron
slats at the churning grey sea below. She narrowed her eyes and looked more closely. It wasn't porridge, or slurry. It was…

'Jez!'

She turned round. 'What?'

'Look!' Ellie leaned carefully to one side, down over the railing at the lake. 'Look…it's full of worms…or maggots or something!'

Jez followed her gaze and curled her lips in response. 'That's pretty grossio!'

Ellie watched the churning movement more closely and realised it was more disturbing than that; not worms, but a melting pot of human body parts. Torsos, pelvises, arms and legs, faces and whole heads joined together in a pallid soup of welded together flesh, gristle and bone. The movement wasn't a liquid bubbling away, but an incessant writhing. Moreover, the moaning wasn't the sound of wind racing through cracks, rock spires and caverns, producing some unintended haunting noise; it wasn't even some spooky environmental ambient soundtrack being played through hidden speakers somewhere, it was coming from below, from the lake, from thousands of malformed and twisted mouths; wide toothless, gummy orifices crying together in an endless pitiful chorus of torment.

'Okay,' Jez nodded slowly. 'I guess that
is
pretty creepy.'

Ellie looked at her. 'You really want to go and see more of this?'

For a moment Jez didn't look entirely certain that she did. But then she, shrugged her second thoughts away. 'C'mon, it's no worse than a scary holo flicker. I mean…it's all fake stuff.' She grabbed her hand. 'I guess it's probably just a guy thing. Guys like gross stuff. Right?'

A guy thing?
Ellie looked down at the seething mass of tortured faces. Dark sockets where eyes should be, mouths opening and snapping shut; here and there arms and hands stretched upwards, seemingly imploring her to come down and rescue them. Or perhaps join them.

Seriously. A guy thing?

Jez laughed nervously. 'C'mon its no worse than some of them shooty-killy hologames the boys play in the arcades. It's all just
special effex
, Ellie. Just like back in Dantes.'

'It's a nightmare.'

Jez laughed again. 'Don't be such a wussy-pussy.'

'No.' Ellie shook her head. 'He's not right in the head. Not if….if he's coming up with this kind of-'

'You really have no idea about men, do you? Jez turned to her. 'Look, if they're not figuring out how to get inside your spandux smallies, or how to over-clock some tech toy, they're dreaming up gross crud like this.'

Ellie saw movement down at the far end of the walk way. It was Gray. He had emerged from the darkness of the forbidding archway leading up into his gothic
castle. He stood at the far end wearing shorts and a bright flowery shirt looking like some tourist on Pacifica. He was beckoning them to hurry on over.

'He's over there,' said Ellie. Jez turned and spotted him. She waved and smiled then turned back to her. 'C'mon, El', don't be such a gloomy grump. You really going to let me walk into some weird hunk's psycho palace all on my own?'

'I don't like it.' For a fleeting moment she was reminded of those awful photographs she'd discovered in the inter-system mail crate. 'Jez…I've got a bad feeling about him.'

Jez rolled her eyes. 'You go back, then.'

'Just be careful, okay?'

'Okay…mom.' Jez squeezed her hand. 'I'll be back in time for dinner.' She winked. 'Unless
he
gets lucky.'

CHAPTER 15

'And this is where we develop the products in their fabrication pods,' said Shelby.

He led Ellie into an enormous hangar-like space. Rows of what appeared to her to be giant goldfish bowls, seven feet in diameter and softly glowing in a foggy pond-water green. Row after row of them. Hundreds in all. At the top of each was a large 'cap' with a nest of tubes and cables emerging from it. The tubes and cables snaked up towards the vast chamber's low ceiling and joined others emerging from the other bowls. So many, crisscrossing each other in thick braids that the ceiling appeared to be nothing more than an inverted bowl of dark grey and dust-covered spaghetti.

Ellie knew a little about the genetic process. Her mother had explained to her that babies came from a giant lab somewhere. 'So how long do your creatures grow in those bowls?'

'
Grow
? A commonly made mistake, right there,' interrupted Shelby. He sighed with the testy impatience of a fool's tutor. 'But don't berate yourself too much over it. Most people unfamiliar with the science make the same mistake. You see, we don't
grow
products from stem cells or foetuses. Not here. Our products are
fabricated
. Our products are far more, hmmm,' he was looking for a word, '…
adventurous
…than any natural growth cycle would be able to facilitate.'

He led the way further into the large chamber. They wandered down between two rows of the large glowing green bowls. She could see they were all full of the foggy liquid with flotsam of gross-looking organic debris floating around inside like shreds of tissue paper.

'These are organic fabricators. The required raw material to fabricate a product is supplied via those tubes above. If you look closely you'll see deployment nozzles inside the bowl that - to use a layman's term -
squirt out
and manipulate the biomass solution.' He looked at her. 'I don't suppose you're a student of twenty-first century industrial history?'