'Might change my design again soon. After the war game,' he said. He surveyed his world silently for a moment. 'It was fun, but the whole Prince of The Underworld thing gets kind of old after a while.'
'What will you change it to?'
He stopped massaging her back. 'Well now….what would you like it to be?'
She turned to look over her shoulder at him. 'You'll let me choose?'
He shrugged. 'Sure. Why not?'
She twisted a little further to see his face more clearly. 'Seriously?'
'Of course. I want you to like it here.' His smile was disarming and genuine. And hopeful. She got it. She understood what he was saying, what he was cautiously suggesting.
'You…you want me to stay on, don't you? When that supply shuttle comes you want me to not to get on it with Ellie?'
His mouth twitched at the end, ever so slightly. 'It's just an idea.'
She turned back to look out over the edge of the tub and he resumed caressing her back with hot soapy water. 'I dunno,' she said. 'We made a promise to each other. Ellie and me.'
'What was that?'
Jez bit her lip to slow her mouth down. To stop it flapping carelessly and saying something she shouldn't say. There were a whole bunch of secrets to be kept here. Important secrets. Foremost, that they were on the run from The Administration. For whatever reason they were probably right at the top of the Persons Most Wanted list on the system-wide network. On top of that she knew something Ellie didn't. She knew that Ellie's whole family was dead. Mother, father, brother and sister. Dead. Slaughtered by The Administration. Something she might possibly have to tell her one day.
She'd made a promise to Ellie, and one even more solemn promise to Aaron, that she'd always stick by Ellie, always have her back whatever happened.
Secrets. Big secrets. And she'd better think before flapping her lips to Gray.
'What promise?' pressed Gray.
'We uh…well, we promised each other we were going travel this universe together. To see it all, me and her.'
She heard Gray laughing softly behind her back.
'What's so funny about that?'
'I'm sorry, babe,' he squeezed her shoulder. 'It's just that there isn't that much to see out there. It's mostly half-baked colony worlds like Harpers Reach. Or,' he shrugged, 'over-baked ones in the case of Celestion. That, or your older core worlds like Liberty…horizon to horizon cities stuffed with lazy, fat complacent dullards living on top of each other like battery cattle. You got that, and then you got about a million empty and dead planets that will never support life. Nothing more than round hunks of nothing.
'What were you expecting to see out there? Huh?'
Jez hunched her bare shoulders. Soapy water sloshed against the sides of the tub. 'I dunno. Freaky looking aliens. Weird and spectacular worlds. Loads of shiny spacey stuff. Cool things.'
'The great big exciting universe you see on all those toob shows, eh?'
She had an inkling that he might just be making fun of her. All the same she nodded. 'Yeah, and why not?'
'Trust me. The reality never quite lives up to the dream. The truth is its a largely monotonous and homogenous universe out there, Jez.'
'Homo-whaty-what?'
'The same, wherever you go. As a general rule, and this is something I've learned over the years, reality sucks.'
She pouted her bottom lip like a sulky child. Not that Gray could see that. 'You're making it all sound like total crud.'
'It is. Now, here, in WonderLand on the other hand…' she felt him shift position, the water sloshed gently. 'Here, you can make reality exactly what you want it to be. This world could be an exotic alien homeworld one week, an Old Earth tropical island with silver beaches and perfect surf-able waves the next. Could be a giant marshmallo volcano spewing out a fountain of chocco-sludge surrounded by villages populated by tasty little jello beany men the week after.'
She chuckled at that.
His hand rested on her shoulder and began to caress the curve of her neck. 'You want to see the universe, Jez? You could see it all right here. We could programme all of the best worlds of Human Space in, one after the other….if that's what you wanted. Make 'em as authentic as you want, or as outlandish and fantastic as you want.'
'Sounds fun.'
'It is. That's why I decided to work here. This place is the perfect playground. A synthetic heaven of your choice. We never run out of things here. We'll never need for anything. Most important of all…you'll never be bored.' He paused. 'And that, being bored…I suspect that's the one thing that really frightens you, doesn't it? Being stuck in a rut? Trapped within a tedious life? Jez…you're a bright spark in a dull universe. A free spirit.'
'You make me sound…kinda…shallow.' She hunched her shoulders. 'Okay, so maybe I am, but I'm not that shallow, you know?'
'It's not being shallow to want everything. To have and see it all. I'm guessing that's why you and Ellie ended up out here. What I'm saying is you can do all of that without ever needing to travel.'
She twisted to look at him again. 'You really want me to stay?'
He shrugged casually. 'We'd have some fun. Why not?'
It sounded tempting. But then…
'Maybe I'll talk to Ellie about it.'
'Sure. Hey, she could stay too…if she really wanted.'
Tempting. Really quite tempting. She could talk to her, but Jez suspected Ellie would want to move on from here at the first possible opportunity. Jez had always thought she was the only person out there with enough of an insatiable wanderlust to get offworld and out of this system. But it seemed Ellie, despite her shyness, her reserve, despite her many insecurities, was the real adventurer of the two.
'Speaking of your friend,' said Gray after a while, 'I wonder what kind of creatures she's been dreaming up for the war game?' He chuckled. 'Gonna be highly amusing to see what you two girls can come up with.'
A set of 'rules of engagement' were something Shelby had absolutely insisted upon. Gray had started this thinking it would be kinda fun to sit back and witness what bizarre creations two girls might produce given a totally blank canvas and some nebulous objective: to fight a battle. Shelby, on the other hand, had decided if it was to be a battle, then a clear winner would need to be decided.
So…obviously, there had to be rules.
Both Jez and Ellie were going to be given the same amount of 'biomass' to work from - the raw material from which products were fabricated. The size and design of their combatants and the number they made would be entirely up to them, the only limitation would be the volume of raw material they'd been given, and the fact that the product design had to be entirely their own work. Shelby insisted he and Gray would have only minimum input, other than to show them how to use the design suites.
The battlefield would be randomly selected from a number of preconfigured templates a few days before their battle to allow time for the world to be fabricated.
'Had any thoughts yet?' asked Gray.
Jez nodded slowly. She recalled a particularly exciting 'flashback' episode of Shuttle Stop 12 where the heroic shuttle pilot was dwelling on his military days. He was recounting a particular adventure where he'd crash landed on a planet populated by exotic aliens. While waiting for the military recovery team to inevitably home in on his distress beacon he'd found himself heroically wading into a storyline where he had to save a treetop 'town' full of revoltingly cute little furry hominids - little more than teddy bears with butt-ugly faces.
They were being terrorised by several giant tripodal insect-like monsters with black chitinous carapaces, large jagged claws and mouths full of saw-like, serrated teeth. They spat jets of lava…or was it acid? She couldn't quite remember, but she did recall squeeing with delight as those irritating furry little bastards burst into flames, or dissolved into a puddle of fur and offal uttering pitiful chirruping cries of agony as they did so.
'How big can I make my creatures?' she asked.
A smile s
pread across Gray's lips. 'Pretty big. Why….what're you thinking?'
She twisted round and returned his impish grin. 'You'll see.'
CHAPTER 25
Shelby leant forward until he was all but pressing his thin nose up against the warm plastic sphere of the nearest organic fabricator. Inside, floating in green foggy liquid was a small furry creature with stumpy arms and legs. The fabrication process was nearly complete on this one, most of its form had been assembled, from the head downwards, by a dozen tiny articulated nozzles that spewed tiny curls of a pale paste-like substance. Right now they were knitting the paste together to form the soft pink pads of the creature's feet.
'It looks like…' he frowned, 'like a child's toy. Like,' he turned to her. 'It looks like a teddy bear?'
Ellie nodded. 'I saw something like these on a toob show once. They were really, really cute.'
Shelby put his hands on his hips and looked at her disdainfully. 'I'm not entirely sure you're taking this seriously. See, this is a war game. Your side verses your friend's. You do understand that they'll be fighting each other?'
She nodded.
Shelby looked at the small bear inside the sphere. 'What's it going to fight with? I see nothing at all that looks like an offensive capability.'
She shrugged. 'It's got claws on those paws. And see those teeth?'
He turned to look again then slowly shook his head. 'Claws? Pfft…this thing couldn't claw its way out of a wet paper bag.'
Ellie almost chuckled but stopped herself in time. He looked serious.
'And those teeth? Oh please, those are herbivore teeth! You need big, gnashy, grrrr-like teeth,' said Shelby, bearing his own tidy row of small teeth. 'You need to weaponise this design more.' He stepped back from the glowing goldfish bowl and looked down the nearest row. 'How many of them have you got Mother fabricating?'
'Umm…well…all of them.'
'Your entire biomass budget?'
She nodded. 'Three hundred and twenty-something of them.'
Shelby's face twitched with frustration. 'I'm not letting Graham win,' he hissed under his breath. 'He's not winning this one. He'll be insufferable.'
He flicked his chin absently with the tip of his index finger then turned and headed down the line of fabrication spheres looking in to several of them. He came back up the row towards her again.
'All right…they're not all completed yet. It might not be too late for a final modification to the design, at least, for those at an earlier growth stage.'
'Like what?'
'Bigger claws and teeth!' He looked back at the nearest row of spheres. 'But for those nearly finished?' He shook his head. 'We can't flush them and start over, because that'll mean using more biomass. And you've already used your entire budget.' He shook his head and frowned. 'You'll just have to accept some of your teddy bears are simply going to be cannon fodder. Lambs to slaughter.' He grabbed her hand. 'Come on, we need to hurry up to the design suite before too many more of these are completed!'
An hour later, with Shelby instructing her, Ellie had submitted a last minute modification to the design. Mother acknowledged it could be applied to the approximately forty percent of her little army still at an early fabrication stage. Which of course meant about sixty percent of it was going to be able to do little more than try hugging something to death.
Ellie studied the virtual projection of her modified creature design. Whereas beforehand its little face had looked kindly and innocent; small twinkling all-black eyes above a rabbit-pink nose and small pursed lips, now it looked like some kind of abomination. It's small mouth had been forced permanently open by long barbed and serrated incisors. Its paws, previously tipped with retractable cat-like claws which Ellie had figured already looked pretty nasty, now sported several jagged blades of chitinous material, each of them the size of a dagger. She imagined a hearty swipe from just one of those could easily disembowel someone.
'They kind of look quite scary now,' she said.
Shelby nodded. Satisfied. 'Well, good!'
'Are they safe though?'
'Safe?'
'I mean…what if…what if one of them, or all of them attacked us?'
'Quite impossible. You might as well ask the question, what if an office chair attacked us.'
'Oh, come on, Shelby, I'm not joking. It looks dangerous now.'
'I know you're not joking. I am merely mocking your technical ignorance. It can't attack us, Ellie, because it is designed with a very robust chemical behavioural inhibitor.'
'What's that?'
'Humans emit pheromones. In affect a language spoken as combinations of multicellular eukaryotes.' Shelby rolled his eyes at her as she frowned, confused already. 'Chemicals, Ellie. A language of smells. These smells act as a chemical identifier to all of the products we make. So, for example, any product would know instantly if its interacting with a human being.'
'Now…,' he continued, 'the atmosphere in these worlds is also laced with additional chemical messages that allow us to instantly modify the behaviour of all the products.'
Shelby wafted his hand over the floor projector. 'Mother, can you display the Product Behaviour Interface.'
'Of course, Shelby.'
The projection of the creature was replaced with a floating control screen displaying dozens of attribute descriptors and sliders. 'With this interface I can select any active product in a world, individually, or by category. I can modify its behaviour in any way I want.' He smiled. 'Which is the fun part. For example, I could make a butterfly fall in love with you and follow you everywhere. I can make two products instantly hate each other and fight to the death. I can put all products to sleep, wake them up. I can make them hungry, happy, sad, amorous or playful.'
He turned to look at her, and for a moment his narrow shoulders slumped like a child denied a visit from Santa. 'It's the part of the job that would have been most fun if this installation had ever actually had visitors; to observe what was going on in each world and orchestrate the behaviour of our products to give the guests the best possible vacation experience.'
He casually pushed a few of the sliders, up and down. 'Hmmm. Just like a conductor conducting his orchestra. All of these operations consoles in the tower would have been staffed by 'Entertainment Experience Technicians'. Each one carefully observing our guests and making their rather expensive visit a perfect bespoke experience.'
He sighed. 'Anyway…the short answer to your question is, no. Your creatures are not dangerous to you. But, hopefully, they will be to whatever ridiculous creations your friend has come up with.'
'Is that what you would have been?' asked Ellie. 'An Entertainment Experience Technician?'
He snorted at that. 'Pfft, no! I'm a systems architech, not a mere mood jockey! In fact I was head-hunted when they decided to put this place into hibernation.'
'The others? Were they head-hunted too?'
'Some were brought in, yes. Some were already part of the original construction team. A mixture of originals and noobs.'
'Those were the poor people who died?'
Shelby nodded. 'A shield not properly installed. Not a particularly quick or pleasant way to die.' He waved his hand over the screen and brought up the creature projection again. 'Anyway. Enough of that.' He cocked his head and studied the appalling nightmare teddy in front of them. 'Imagine giving one of those to a little child to sleep with?' He made a hyuk-hyuk sound as he giggled. 'It would shred them to tiny pieces!'
Ellie smiled along with him. But there was something troubling her. Something lodged in the back of her mind that wasn't adding up. Later that evening, as she lay in her bed in one of the villas, staring out through her open bedroom window at the full moon and the bright stars above, and listening to the cheep-cheep of cicadas…it came to her.
Didn't he say they'd been 'sucked out'. That would be a quick way to die…wouldn't it?
CHAPTER 26
Deacon had the entire block cordoned off. Colonial marines, three com
panies of them, had been deployed to clear the riffraff from the surrounding streets and elevated pedestrian plazas. Hover units were blocking any sky traffic from entering the airspace around Amblin Towers. New Haven's local media had all been informed that a cell of Awoken terrorists had been tracked down to this abandoned apartment block and that this particular cell were believed to have been responsible for the viral outbreak that had led to the system-wide quarantine.
The marines had already started their assault, led by that capable young officer, Captain Hollander and the elite first company, moving up the deserted tower floor by floor. In the hovering command craft, a team of support officers were watching holoscreen displays relayed from head cameras inside. The cramped interior of the vehicle buzzed with coms traffic as the troops inside the building relayed information and the officers returned commands with clipped and cool economy.
Leonard sat beside him, eyes wide with excitement. 'It's just like a real war- dram!' he whispered. 'Like a shooter-sim!'
Deacon turned to him. 'It's not a game, Lenny. Those are real people in there. No one respawns when they get shot. They bleed out and die. Try and keep that in mind.'
Leonard nodded, a little shamefully. 'Yes, Deacon.'
*
Captain Hollander emerged from the emergency stairwell. The tower's eighteen elevators were powered down. By the look of them they had been for months. The squatters inside this structure had been forced to use the stairs and the evidence of that, food wrappers and crushed plastic cups, littered the sides. In the corner of one of the exit bays, was a pile of what looked like human faeces and tissue paper; a communal toilet. The entire stairwell wreaked of stale urine.