Chapter 8.
When I woke up the next morning it was very quiet. I lay there for a moment half asleep, expecting to hear Aunt Daisy nagging at me to get up and help with breakfast. Finally I opened my eyes and yelped with shock. I could see Eddie in the bed next to me and we were still in the future. Part of me had hoped it could be a dream but no such luck. I nudged Eddie to wake him up and he groaned when he saw the room. We sat there disconsolately, wondering what was going to happen, when ‘ping’ went the screen and out popped the food containers. That went on for what felt like hours. Eddie and I took breaks and prowled around the room trying to find a way out, but the door we had entered by seemed to have vanished. There were cupboards with more pyjama things in and we changed into them as our own clothes were getting fairly dirty by then. We stuffed our own things into a small cupboard in one corner, so we could get at them easily if we had to.
When the screen went dark, we figured it was break time.
‘What shall we do?’ Eddie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘It’s not as if there are any toys or anything here.’
The room was fairly boring although we did discover a box of small balls in different colours in one of the cupboards. We tried playing marbles with them on the hard floor in a half-hearted sort of way, and then Eddie suggested I Spy. That was hard when most of the stuff around us looked the same and we didn’t have a clue what it was anyway. We decided that this must be how prisoners felt and wondered why more of them didn’t end up as screaming madmen from the sheer boredom of it.
The screen pinged to signal a new batch of containers. We tried to ignore it but the pinging just went louder and shriller until our ears hurt. It stopped as soon as we sat down so I grimaced at Eddie and said we might as well get on with it. We opened the containers with a distinct lack of enthusiasm then gaped in shock. Inside each container was a piece of cake that looked and tasted exactly like one of Mum’s.
‘Mum must have made this!’ Eddie looked as if he was going to cry.
‘We want more cake,’ I screamed at the machine, as we bolted it down and pressed the yellow button.
The next ping brought a boring piece of stuff that looked like cardboard and tasted like the sort of oatmeal biscuit that Mum wouldn’t have made in a hundred years. Eddie did start crying then and I was so furious I kicked the machine. It gave a loud, unpleasant screech, then evilly sent us two more containers. These held a substance that looked like chocolate cheesecake but tasted like mud and I lost my temper completely.
‘This food is terrible. Even I can cook better than this,’ I shouted, as I hurled the containers against the screen. There was a splat and gray globs of muddy cheesecake dripped off onto the floor. The screen turned orange and started blinking slowly, all the time emitting a low rumble.
‘I think you’ve made it mad,’ Eddie remarked in a shaky voice, as the rumble turned to a rising and falling whining sound. The next minute a door opened in what I swear had been a blank bit of wall. The robot glided in and said ‘follow.’
We did as we were told. Anything was better than staying in that room and tasting all that strange food. We obediently sat down on the bench seat and it started moving again, not very far, to another doorway.
‘It would have been quicker to walk,’ Eddie pointed out.
‘They don’t seem to do much walking around here,’ I answered, then we both exclaimed in shock as the robot led us into a huge kitchen. At one side of the room we could see Mum, who was standing and stirring something in a big bowl.
‘Mum,’ we screamed, and ran towards her. I grabbed her and hugged her and tears were streaming down my face. Eddie was giving excited little yips like a puppy and he was hugging Mum so hard on the other side that it was a wonder she could breathe. I kept expecting Mum to pat me on the back or say something, anything, but there was silence. I looked up and she was standing there looking bewildered as if she had never seen us before. It was horrible.
‘Mum, it’s us. Poppy and Eddie. Mum, I’m your daughter. Don’t you remember?’
I looked up at her desperately as she brushed me aside and went on muttering and stirring. Eddie and I fell back in despair.
‘Mum,’ I called loudly. Mum turned her back and kept mumbling.
‘She doesn’t know who we are,’ Eddie croaked at last. His breath was coming in big gulps and he looked as if he was going to howl at any minute. ‘Someone must have wiped her memory.’
‘We will just have to make her remember then,’ I said savagely. ‘Mum! Look at me.’
Mum turned that vacant look on me again then turned away. All this time the robot had been standing beside us chanting, ‘follow, follow,’ and we’d ignored it. Now a big metal pincer came out from its side and grabbed me by the wrist.
‘Ow, it’s got me. Help, Eddie,’ I shrieked.
Eddie rushed over and the robot shot out another pincer and grabbed him as well. It towed us across the floor to a clear space by a bench, then released us. I felt so miserable and dejected that I wished I was dead. After a while I focused on the world again and heard the robot saying something different. ‘Cook, cook,’ it said.
‘We have to cook something, Poppy,’ sniffed Eddie.
I blew my nose on the tissue I’d stuffed in my pyjama pocket and looked around properly. It was a big, rather strange kitchen, with containers of different food things, empty bowls and spoons and a round purple thing that looked as if it might have be an oven.
‘I don’t see any eggs and bacon,’ I said, giving Eddie a watery smile. ‘So it had better be chocolate pudding. Which do you reckon is the flour?’
The next half-hour would have been fun if we hadn’t felt so shaky and wobbly from crying. And especially if we hadn’t been able to see Mum busily cooking something down the other end of the kitchen. Together Eddie and I found ingredients that we were sure were the right ones for chocolate pudding and we mixed them up. I poured it into a large basin and gingerly opened the door of the purple oven.
‘Are you sure it will cook things?’ Eddie asked doubtfully.
‘I have no idea,’ I admitted, ‘but what else do we do?’
I shut the door and pushed a large black button beside the oven. This was evidently the right thing to do and after a few minutes the door opened with a beep to show a perfect chocolate pudding. I wondered if we could eat it, but the answer to that was ‘no’ as the robot glided up and took it away in one of its pincers.
‘Maybe it goes to someone else to taste it,’ Eddie said despondently. It had looked really tasty and chocolate pudding had always been his favourite.
‘I can always make another one, I guess,’ I reassured him.
‘That’s okay,’ Eddie shrugged. ‘Let’s try and talk to Mum again.’
We went over to Mum and tried to get her attention but she just didn’t want to know. She was busy creating food and even when she’d been at home she would be cross if we interrupted her. Here she simply ignored us. She knew we were there as Eddie stood right in front of her and she had to walk around him to get stuff out of one of the cupboards. But she didn’t say anything to us. She was muttering, ‘a pinch of salt, I’m sure it needs a pinch of salt.’
I handed her something that looked like salt and she took it from me silently and tasted it on the tip of her finger before putting a little in the mixing bowl. I decided to make her notice me. I picked up the tube of salt from the bench again and tipped half of it in the mixing bowl.
‘There. Now you’ll have to say something. The mixture is ruined,’ I cried.
But to our dismay, Mum simply put the bowl to one side and began mixing up another lot.
‘You might as well give up,’ Eddie said hopelessly. ‘She knows we are here but she isn’t noticing us properly. It’s almost like she is asleep’
‘There has to be a reason for it,’ I insisted. ‘Why would she ignore her own children?’
‘I guess we’ll have to wait and see if she wakes up proper
ly sometime,’ Eddie sighed.
We hung around the kitchen for a while and explored. We found a tray of freshly baked apple pies that Mum had made and Eddie cut us each a large wedge out of one of them. Mum ignored that too. We were licking our sticky fingers and wondering what to do about Mum, when the robot came back and said ‘follow.’ We plodded dismally after it out of the kitchen, with one last look at Mum who was decorating an enormous orange layer cake with little rosettes of icing. The robot led us into a room with a plain bench in it and told us to sit. We sat and waited to see whatever else was going to happen to us in this ghastly place.
We didn’t wait long. A door swished back and a large trolley glided in. on it was lying the fattest man we had ever seen. I mean, he was huge. His face was round like a balloon and he had so many layers of chins it was hard to tell where his head finished and his body started. The fat was all puffed up so his eyes were only tiny slits and his fingers were like big fat sausages at the ends of his hands. I don’t know how old he was because his hair was only a flat grayish fuzz on his head and he was too fat for any wrinkles to show. He was wearing huge yellow pyjamas that rose in a great mound over his distended belly. We sat and stared. The man stared back at us, with his chins wobbling.
‘Welcome,’ he said at last. His voice was small and squeaky and really odd coming from someone like that.
‘Who are you?’ Eddie asked rudely.
‘My name is Sal,’ wheezed the man. He seemed to have trouble talking, as if all the fat was squeezing his breath out of him over his chest. ‘Your food preparation is satisfactory and as long as it continues you will cook for me.’
‘Where are we? Why is our Mum here? What are you doing to us? I want to go home,’ whined Eddie.
Sal flapped one hand dismissively. ‘Take your orders from the robot. It will tell you what you need to know,’ he sniffed. Then he pressed a button on the side of the trolley and glided out of the room.
Eddie and I looked at each other. ‘Man, was he ever fat,’ Eddie said in astonishment.
I nodded. I was trying to work out what we should do. The robot came in and said, ‘follow.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ I blurted out. ‘We need to ask some questions.’
The robot stopped and three little camera things swivelled to look at me. It was a bit off-putting. ‘What is your question?’ the robot droned.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
‘This is the residence of Sal 879#4B in the Year 2276, in the method of counting you are accustomed to. You have come here though a rent in the fabric that adjourns your time. Your duties are to prepare food that is suitable and palatable for the master and his servants. In return he will clothe you, house you and feed you. Many people are happy in his employ. We hope that your years with us will be contented ones.’
All this was spoken in a metallic monotone. Eddie and I exchanged appalled looks. ‘What do you mean years? How long do you expect us to stay here,’ I croaked at last.
‘As long as you live,’ said the robot, turning away.