Ellie Quin - 04 - Ellie Quin in WonderLand

by Alex Scarrow

  He turned on his heels. That was his only course of action.

  God, guide me to you. Show me the way….

  *

  'No doubt about it, sir…he's just eyeballed us.'

  Deacon turned to Hollander. 'You sure?'

  'Pretty certain. Two sudden direction changes in a minute. He's onto us for sure.'

  Deacon cursed under his breath. If this man was Awoken then they were dealing with an unknown quantity. He might try and make a run for it, equally he might be wearing a vest and be perfectly willing to make his way back towards the more crowded thoroughfare they'd been shuffling along moments ago and detonate it right there. God knows how many citizens he'd take down with him.

  'Sir?' The officer was waiting for orders.

  Dammit. What's he up to? Where's he going?

  He'd wanted to know where the young man was leading them. He was almost certain he'd have taken them to his cell's safe house. Hollander was right, the young man was now looking around anxiously, looking up at the plaza, presumably for an escape route, or worse…the best possible place to blow himself up.

  The prudent course of action would be to give the go-ahead for Hollander's men to take him down. But….

  Dammit, I NEED him alive.

  This man could be his only lead to finding the girl. This young man was most probably just an Awoken 'foot soldier'. But he was the next link in the chain, leading to a cell leader, a teacher; someone who might know what the girl's true purpose was.

  'Sir, he's moving back. Towards us. What are your orders?'

  He was. He was coming towards Deacon and the others and moving quickly with a clear resolve. A decision, whatever the hell it was, quite definitely made.

  'Can your men shoot to incapacitate him, not kill him?'

  'I can't guarantee that, sir.'

  Getting close. He was twenty yards from them. Deacon began to back away, dragging Leonard with him. Twenty yards? If he was wearing a vest they were already inside the blast perimeter.

  The young man was walking faster now. Almost jogging. Ten yards from Deacon, and their eyes met for the briefest moment.

  I'm out of time.

  'All right…do it! DO IT!'

  Hollander uttered a quick, clipped command. A second later a single shot rang out. As its echo reverberated off and returned from the underside of the plaza above, everyone in its shadow simultaneously dropped to the ground.

  Except the young man. He remained standing, staring down, wide-eyed at the gaping hole in his stomach.

  'Watch his hands! Watch his hands!' hissed Hollander into his hidden mic.

  'Big bang coming!' gasped Leonard. Deacon instinctively reached out and pulled the lad behind him, shielding him from the imminent blast.

  The lightly bearded young man, remained perfectly still, his rounded eyes locked on the only other people in the market place still on their feet; a dozen soldiers with guns drawn, and Deacon and Leonard.

  'HANDS IN THE AIR!' barked the officer. The young man's gaze slowly settled on Deacon.

  Deacon shook his head. Don't do it, man. Don't do it.

  The young man lurched forward one step; a pitiful staggering attempt to make a run for it. Before Deacon could shout out a command to hold fire, the soldiers were emptying their guns into his flailing body.

  OMNIPEDIA:

  [Human Universe open source digital encyclopaedia]

  Article: Top Five Recreational Worlds

  Recreational Worlds have become something of a fashion in the last couple of centuries. As terraforming techniques have become increasingly refined and accelerated they have allowed world designers or terrengineers to create bespoke environments that cater for all manner of tastes and requirements. As any terrengineer will confirm, the smaller the world, the easier and faster the job. Consequently some of the most exotic terraformed worlds have been the smallest. The following is a list of the five most exotic worlds in Human Space, as voted for by customers of HollieWorld Vacations.

  1) Spin (59 mile planetary diameter, Priam System. Day cycle: 0.5 hours. Grav: 0.7) Exclusive resort in which the days and night race past in just fifteen minutes! The rotating starscape at night is said to induce a sense of vertigo for some guests.

  2) StormFront (1300 mile planetary diameter, Weyland System. Day cycle: 34 hours. Grav: 1.45) Permanent high winds and stormy seas. An extreme weather system designed for adventurous holidaymakers after a hardcore old school experience!

  3) Gas City (200-220 mile planetary diameter, Mandela System. Day cycle: 31 hours. Grav: 0.05) A gas planet with extremely low gravity and a vast free floating holiday resort. Ideal for atmo' glider enthusiasts, sky jumpers as well as low-gee therapy trans-meditation fans.

  4) DistrictWorld (790 mile planetary diameter, Gliese System. Day cycle: 89 hours. Grav: 1.3) A historical preservation where a mixture of human and genetically engineered actors live lifestyles that accurately recreate varied periods from Old Earth's colourful pre-colonial war history.

  5) Fantastica (10 miles planetary diameter, Betelgeuse System. Day cycle: static. Grav: 0.89) An artificial planet made from a base structure of carbo polyresin and populated by genetically engineered creatures from fantasy stories. Every few years the world is reconfigured and repopulated to fit a popular fantasy theme.

  Article Sponsored by: HollieWorld Vacations: Book your next vacation here!

  User Comment > AmyBaskin

  This article is rubbish. I was hoping for an educational and entertaining piece about some of the more interesting locations in the universe. Instead I get a short cut-n-past puff piece from a travel company who want their link up on Omni.

  User Comment > JezterBazz

  My Karellian partner and I used HollieWorld for a vacation recently. A three system jump to a lovely wildlife preserve planet. Lovely walks and beautiful sunsets. I saw my first hovertrant. Amazing. A great life-changing vacation.

  User Comment > 1453(((Jon)))3541

  Why jump three systems when you can visit every known world in SpaceJockey3: Kill or Be Killed? Itz the trooviest holo simulator out there. Totally for real. I seen more worlds than anyone.

  User Comment > WillTheQuill

  Because, you tarded sim-sucker, the difference is, travelling somewhere means doing it FOR REAL. Sitting in your holo-con, and plugging in protein feeders and pissing into a bag…is NOT travelling. It is what it is…a sad little life lived inside a small plastix bubble, while a fake reality is projected onto your retinas.

  User Comment >{level90NoobKilla}

  Big Zzzzz at Will the dill. You sound like a complete [offensive word deleted] to me. I bet you wear a strap on [offensive word deleted] and check yaself out in a mirror.

  CHAPTER 19

  ‘Hey, Hufty, it's me again. You won't believe what I'm going to be doing this morning…I'm, like, designing my very own mini-world. It's incredible! We're in this totally cool place called WonderLand. It's like a holiday place for really, really rich people. Only, it never properly opened because things went bottom-up in this system, what with the Celestion disaster and stuff. So, its just me and Jez here and a couple of techie guys who keep WonderLand ticking over.

  'So, it's this place where they've got a load of these mini-worlds, and you can make them look exactly how you want. You want an arctic place with all that ice and snow stuff?….no problem. You want mountains and forests? Easy-pleasy. (Forests - by the way, that's a place with loads of 'trees', like you see in those old flickers?) You even want an island in the middle of your own mini ocean. Done! If you can imagine it, the technol' stuff they've got here can make it happen. Today I'm going to have a go at designing my own world. And Shelby, (he's one of those tech-guys), is going to show me how to use the design software.'

  *

  'Oh, dear,' Shelby sighed and raised his eyes heavenward. 'It's like explaining French impressionism to a blind person.'

  'I know. I get it. I'm just a stupid girl.'

  Shelby gave her a sympathetic a
nd winsome smile. 'You are a girl, unfortunately, there's no getting away from that. But you're being a little hard on yourself. You're not stupid…just a little bit slow.'

  'Oh, lovely. Thank you so much.'

  'Let me explain it again,' he said leaning over the large holo-display design surface. 'But this time let's have some nice shiny pictures to help, shall we?'

  He wafted his hand over a hovering icon and then across the design table surface a glowing wireframe grid appeared. 'Now, this is your default geometry mesh. A flat grid. Each square of the grid you can see is faintly divided with a diagonal line into two triangles. Each triangle is called…a polygon.' He looked at her. 'With me so far?'

  Ellie sighed. 'I'm not that stupid.'

  'The polygon is our basic building block. In other words we are expressing the geometry of our world….forming the shape…by pulling these polygons around. So…why don't you have a go.' He gestured at her to lean over the glowing display and manipulate the grid with her hands. 'Go on…it's just a case of touching the polygons that you want, then raising or lowering your hand to make it rise into a hill or depress it into a trough.'

  Ellie nodded. She reached out across the grid and 'touched' a polygon. It glowed red to indicate it had been selected. She then raised her hand and the red polygon rose with it, dragging up all the neighbouring triangles to form a rounded mound in the middle of the grid. She selected another and lowered her hand creating a smooth round crater.

  'Marvellous. Now…you can also do a pinching action with your fingers to scale down the size of the selected polygon, or spread your hand to expand it.'

  She tried that. Her hill and crater widened.

  'Very good. You can also work on a number of polygons at the same time.' He reached across the grid, touched a dozen different triangles randomly across the grid, then raised his hand slowly. A number of small hills began to rise up out of the flat surface.

  'Wow!' Ellie chuckled. 'That's so cool.'

  'This is just basic, lesson-one modelling. You can also extrude polygons, punch holes through them, sub-divide them manually or tesselate them…' Shelby stopped himself. 'Your eyes are beginning to glaze over. Anyway, the first tutorial will be for you to manipulate this grid into a pleasing geometric arrangement. Perhaps some simple hills and valleys. Then, when you've done that, I'll show you how you assign material designations to the geometry. Hmmm?'

  'Uh?'

  That long-suffering sigh from him again. And God help me, no…not that patronising I'm-talking-to-a-child smile once more.

  He smiled.

  'I will show you how to tell the computer what you want your geometry to be made of. Like painting a piece of pottery that you've just finished making. Or icing a cake you've just finished baking.'

  'Ah, I see. I think.'

  'And then you can add all the fiddly fun stuff like flora and fauna, assign the environmental settings and so on.' Shelby smiled. 'I like that bit. The fiddly bits. The details.' He nodded. 'Because as my mother once said, the devil is always in the details.'

  He stepped back from the design surface. 'All yours. Let's see what you can come up with.'

  She finished her simple design later on in the afternoon and after Shelby had looked it over briefly, and muttered something about girls being girls, he passed the design over to Mother to initialise the fabrication process.

  Eighteen hours later, after a sleepless night of excited anticipation and after Frasier had served her and Shelby a breakfast of freshly grown fruit and real coffee down on the sun-warmed piazza, Mother informed Shelby that the fabrication process was finally complete.

  Now, they were standing beside the large closed hatchway to World1. Ellie was fidgeting impatiently for the damned hatch to open. But Shelby explained the world needed to finish re-pressurising and the nano-fabricating machinery needed to withdraw from the biome first.

  'Nearly done,' he said consulting the readout on a screen by the entrance. 'I must admit, it's always a somewhat exhilarating moment waiting to get the first glimpse of a creation that's been sitting in your mind.' He said deadpan. 'Are we excited?'

  She grinned. 'Well, duh! Of course I am!'

  Mother's cartoon face appeared on the screen by the entrance. 'Your world is now ready to enter, Shelby and Ellie.' Her smile was all cookies and crochet. 'Have a lovely time inside.'

  Ellie heard the dull whir of servo motors engaging and the hiss of atmospheres equalising as the hatch began to slide slowly sideways. With a loud clunk the hatch opened and Ellie squealed with delight, hopping on the spot. She turned to Shelby. 'I made that!'

  'Yes you did.' He nodded. Then he dampened the moment by adding, 'In truth you only specified that. Mother actually made it for you.'

  She took a step over the lip of the entrance and a dozen more into her world;

  Crud, this feels so real!

  She was now standing on the side of a snow-capped mountain. The snow itself was real, properly fabricated genuine granules of ice that crunched beneath their feet. She took in the artificial view of the mountain range, the pine covered valley below, the distant snow-tipped peaks, the crisp blue sky above. Shelby joined her and they shuddered together as an ice cold wind whipped at and buffeted them both. The temperature was cold, just a degree or two above freezing, but not as cold as it would be for real in a place like this, Mother had informed her.

  Ellie's choice…she wanted it to be cold enough to feel realistic, but not make it unbearably so.

  All the same, Shelby was already hugging himself. 'Sh-should have made it w-warmer!' he cried above the rumble of a fresh wind.

  She was beginning to shiver too but she smiled and shook her head. 'No, this is perfect! Just like a real place!'

  He made a face. A quick approving nod. 'Well…g-good job. But I'm s-stepping back out again before I die of h-hypothermia.'

  She watched him trudge back across the snow and step back into the open doorway. Then once again took in the craggy peaks. The rising sun defining razor sharp geometry, glowing pink on the virgin snow and leaving deep purple in shadows.

  I made this.

  For a moment she felt she understood how God-like a vast sandpit 'toy' like one of these biomes, could make you feel; to have the power to create worlds on a whim, to populate them with whatever creatures you could imagine…then, on another whim, delete it all and make another.

  She could imagine how that could seriously mess with your head.

  CHAPTER 20

  'So, Graham, what's this idea that's so great you couldn't just message me about it?'

  Gray laughed. 'Hey, Shelbs! No 'hey Gray, how's it going my ol' buddy? Been far too long, man?'

  Shelby looked at him deadpan. 'I saw you a week ago. That's more than we normally see of each other.'

  'I'm just messing with you, man.'

  'Well don't. You know your version of humour confuses me.'

  They were meeting in the central biome's water gardens. A cloistered enclosure of decorative fountains, ponds and colourful flowerbeds.

  Ellie waved at Jez. 'I haven't seen you in days either. What have you been up to?'

  Jez unlooped her arm from Gray's, crossed the space between them and hugged Ellie. 'Oh, just havin' a ball!' She grinned. 'Like, literally. Gray's got this big ballroom in his castle. All glowy candles and archways and fussy painty old world crud on the ceiling. Totally froobie. We held a freako's ball.'

  Gray overheard her. 'Freaks from history, Ellie. The mysterious and monstrous. A Danse Macabre.'

  'You ever heard of things called vampires?' asked Jez.

  Ellie shook her head.

  'Apparently, they were, like, this huge thing in the twenty-first century. Vampires and the other ones….zommies?'

  'Zombies,' corrected Gray.

  'Yeah, them.' She laughed. 'Oh-My-Fregg, apparently they practically took over Old Earth back whenever. Every flicker was about them and vampires running around munching on people!' Jez looked back at Gray. 'So it was his ide
a to have a zombie and vampire orchestra playing weird old music while we, like, danced on a floor full of freakos.'

  Shelby looked disapprovingly at them. 'Graham, I hope you weren't breaking the ninety percent protocol?'

  'Dude…c'mon,' he splayed his hands disarmingly. 'Of course not.'

  'What's that?' asked Ellie. 'The ninety percent thing?'

  'Health and safety protocol,' replied Shelby. 'This facility is governed by guidelines on recreational genetic engineering. None of our creations are allowed to look a hundred percent human.'

  'Why not?'

  'Well, obviously, so guests don't wind up killing each other by accident,' said Gray. 'Think about it…this place was set up so the rich n' famous could indulge their wildest fantasies. Which of course is almost certainly gonna involve killing and maiming stuff. You know what rich people are like.'

  'Indeed.' Shelby shrugged. 'Such is the nature of people. So…we're not allowed to generate products that would look completely human.'

  'But we can get pretty close,' Gray grinned. 'Mother will block a design that gets too close anyway. So…it's all, you know, cool.'

  'Anyway, Ellie,' Jez was gagging to carry on. 'Gray had me all dressed up in this ball gown! You should've seen me! This big dress thing with loads of frilly stuff and this waist thing I had to lace up well tight so my joobies got pushed up together and-!'

  'You looked amazing,' said Gray.

  Ellie nodded. 'That sounds great.'

  'Fregg, it was so incredo!'

  Ellie reached for Jez's arm and tugged her away gently. 'Let's go check out the fish, have you seen the fish here?'

  'Uh? Fish? No.'

  'C'mon. You'll like them. They actually smile.'

  Shelby watched the girls as they wandered, arm in arm over towards the nearest pond. 'So, what's this big idea of yours, Graham?'

  'A war game.'

  'A war game? We only recently had one. Have you cleaned up and reset the world by the way?'

  'Yeeesss.' Gray sighed. 'Jesus, what are you? My mom?'