The Pterodactyl's Egg

by Annie Besant

  Sam looked at his sister through half-closed eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Pipi,’ he said finally.

  Priya flashed him a look. ‘It’s all your fault, puppy face,’ she said, sticking her tongue out.

  However, Sam was in no mood to joke. ‘I should never have brought that egg home.’

  She smacked his head playfully. ‘Stop being a drama queen.’ Then, she laughed. ‘I think we already have one.’

  They both turned to their mother, who was still haranguing the camera, and burst out giggling. After a while, with Mom now sitting in a corner and trying to calm herself through meditation, Sam asked, ‘Pipi, what do you think they did with Biscuit?’

  Priya, who was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees and rocking, shrugged. ‘I don’t know, platypus.’ She stopped and looked around; they were in a room so clean it sparkled. A solitary bunk bed was attached to one wall, opposite which were a sink and a toilet.

  Sam gazed at his sister thoughtfully. He had never seen her as happy as when she had been taking care of Biscuit. Sam didn’t know the right words yet, so he settled for the words ‘carefree’ and ‘playful’. She had poked fun, laughed, played tricks and had even hugged him. He had been reminded of when they were children and he would tag along wherever she went.

  In those days, she had carried him and cuddled him. Then, something happened; she became withdrawn, preferring to spend time with her friends who came home. She had ignored him as much as possible in front of others; it was only when her friends weren’t looking that she had smiled at him or pulled his hair.

  What hurt Sam the most was that she had banned him from her room. When he had finally been allowed to enter, thanks to Biscuit, he was puzzled to see that her room didn’t look anything like the room in which they had played so many games.

  Sam vividly remembered how her clothes and books and toys formed little messy nests all over the room. The walls were plastered with posters of the Powerpuff girls and Hannah Montana. Photographs taken on their various vacations graced every available space.

  Now, though, her room resembled a museum. Priya had developed an interest in collecting old things, and you could now find fragile wooden stools, small metal trunks, broken sculptures, and damaged books alongside her personal belongings. The Powerpuff girls and Hannah Montana had been discarded for female rock singers, and the family pictures had been traded in for pictures of her friends striking various poses with fingers held out in peace.

  Then, there was the boy.

  Priya always seemed to be smiling at him in the corridor or stealing glances at him whenever he went walking in the park. A few times, Priya had dragged Sam to the park on the pretext of playing and then left him alone when the boy had come along.

  ‘Are you missing the boy?’ Sam asked now.

  ‘What boy?’ Priya replied, not meeting his eyes.

  ‘The boy you are always looking at,’ he replied.

  Priya shot her mother a quick glance, but Mom was lost to the world. ‘I’m not always looking at him.’

  Sam stuck his tongue out, ‘You are too.’

  ‘Am not!’

  ‘You are!’

  Priya stopped herself from retorting and looked away again. ‘I don’t think he likes me,’ she said quietly.

  Sam was puzzled, but Priya continued. ‘He said I was a dictionary of useless information yesterday.’

  Sam blinked, ‘But, Pipi you are an encyclopaedia of useless information.’

  Priya rolled her eyes, ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are, I don’t know anyone smarter than you.’

  Priya shrugged. ‘But no one likes smart girls, not even their parents,’ she said, her voice pitched low. Then, in a more teasing tone, she added, ‘Even boys don’t like smart girls.’

  ‘That’s not true. I like smart girls.’

  ‘Really? As if you have liked anyone.’

  Sam considered this. He wondered if he should tell his sister his secret. They were close in some ways and far apart in others.

  ‘I have a classmate called Aparna. She can do fractions with her eyes closed. I like her. A lot.’

  Priya giggled. ‘You like her because you’re a very nice boy.’

  Sam chewed his fingernail. ‘Then you should find a nice boy to like too,’ he said.

  Priya looked away from her little brother, she was suddenly feeling too confused.

  14

  Settling Scores

  Dr POX watched them on her monitor. They had spent years trying to figure out the best condition for the eggs to hatch in. Millions of dollars had been spent on incubating equipment that could modulate heat and light to a fraction of a degree. And all it had taken was a sandpit in a playground and a cheeky nine-year-old to get the egg to hatch. Dr POX ground her teeth. She would need her fillings checked later, but right now she was so angry she could sharpen a hundred pencils.

  A soft knock sounded on the door.

  ‘Enter,’ she barked.

  BENO was pushed into the room ahead of two burly soldiers dressed in fatigues.

  Dr POX looked at her as if she were a slimy piece of mould at the bottom of a pond.

  BENO looked Dr POX straight in the eyes. She was exhausted to the point of death, and starving – two things she had never experienced in all the years she had been doing Dr POX’s dirty work.

  ‘What have you done to me?’ she spat at the woman behind the desk.

  Dr POX nodded to the two soldiers imprisoning BENO. They pushed her roughly onto a chair and left the room. Dr POX sat on the edge of the table and folded her arms.

  ‘Did you know you were my first experiment?’ Dr POX asked quietly.

  BENO shook her head, the effort bringing on a wave of dizziness.

  ‘I was quite fond of you,’ Dr POX continued gently, as if talking to a child. ‘I had written the programme myself – a programme to turn weak humans into the world’s greatest soldiers.’

  BENO lifted her chin with effort and looked Dr POX squarely in the eye. ‘I am one of your greatest soldiers.’

  Dr POX laughed then, long and loud. When she stopped laughing, she shook her head sadly. ‘You were, BENO. You were.’

  A strange truth began to dawn on BENO. ‘The programming … it’s not working, is it?’

  Dr POX smiled cruelly. ‘Oh, it’s working all right, just not on you. From the very beginning, your mind has resisted the deep reconditioning I had envisioned. It was as if it had a secret of its own, a secret that helped it resist me.’

  ‘I’m not the zombie you wanted, so what?’ BENO snapped.

  Dr POX pushed away from the table and began pacing the room. ‘I command and require rock-solid control over my experiments,’ she said finally, ‘which is why the first thing I do is wipe out every memory of a past life.’

  BENO let this sink in. She knew about the programmes and the experiments, but the washing away of her past life had never affected her until now.

  ‘I personally oversee the procedure, pulling every thought and memory out of the brain’s storage.’ She paused, as if explaining a scientific theory. ‘Did you know that memories are what make us human? If we didn’t have memories of the past, we wouldn’t have a map to the future. They are the DNA of everything we think and feel, and what we think and feel in turn dictates what we do, which is why it’s so important to destroy them.’

  When Dr POX chuckled, BENO felt something kindle within herself – red hot anger.

  ‘But you have become a threat, BENO; a threat to my experiments, to my results and, most of all, a threat to me. I can’t let the people funding this research know that I have failed with you. And you do know what I do with things that threaten me, don’t you?’

  BENO nodded, quickly beginning to assess her surroundings. ‘What are you going to do with them?’ she asked, pointing her chin at the monitor.

  Dr POX shrugged. ‘Kill them or feed them to the pterodactyl, I suppose.’

  ‘Why don’t you just let them go?’ BENO suggested
, while her mind spun a plan.

  ‘Why should I?’ Dr POX asked thoughtfully. ‘Humans are a plague to this planet. It’s best to eliminate them.’

  ‘You are human too,’ BENO countered.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Dr POX asked, laughing lightly. She was circling BENO like a vulture.

  Alarm bells went off in BENO’s head. She lurched for the letter opener on the table even as Dr POX brought her hand down in a karate chop.

  BENO whirled around and slashed, cutting Dr POX’s arm. They both stared at the open flesh and, to BENO’s horror, the wound began to knit itself together.

  Dr POX smirked and kicked BENO in the stomach. BENO went flying into the wall, hitting it hard enough to crack the plaster.

  A few days ago, the impact would have done nothing to BENO. She would have simply got up, dusted herself off and got back into the fight. But now, she lay on the floor, gasping for breath. She half expected her ribs to be cracked.

  BENO’s brokenness seemed to anger Dr POX. ‘What a failure you are,’ she hissed, striding towards BENO and lifting her from the rubble with one hand. She threw her at the door. BENO went head first into the wood. She groaned; that was going to hurt for days.

  BENO felt her resolve hardening into iron. She had lost her memories to this madwoman; she was not going to lose her life. Adrenaline gave her strength and she shook her head to clear the pain, as Dr POX came thundering down to deliver the final blow. BENO flipped to her feet.

  Then, Dr POX made a fatal mistake.

  ‘Since you’re going to die anyway, I might as well tell you. Do you know which of your memories I most enjoyed destroying?’ She paused dramatically. ‘A memory of you with your parents; it was such a happy memory,’ she sighed. ‘A memory worth a picture frame.’ She bore into BENO with bright, insane eyes. ‘Which is why it had to be destroyed.’

  BENO remembered her dreams in a rush, the warmth and laughter that had surrounded her. She snarled and pounced like a mountain lion. Dr POX, taken back by the suddenness of the attack, went crashing.

  They wrestled and rolled among the debris. Dr POX gained the upper hand and sat heavily on BENO’s stomach. Before she could do anything, though, a sharp blow sent her reeling to the floor. The last thing Dr POX saw before she lost consciousness was Mom’s face.

  15

  Wonder Mom

  Mom took a heaving breath. Her hands began to shake as she dropped the heavy paperweight. That was the only thing she had found that was heavy enough.

  ‘What awful taste in paperweights,’ Mom mumbled, eyeing the bust of Aristotle lying on its side on the floor.

  BENO sat up gasping. ‘Th-thank you,’ she said, the words feeling unfamiliar in her mouth.

  Mom shrugged. ‘The kids reminded me that you were our only way out of here.’ Her face hardened. ‘Or I would have used the paperweight on you too.’

  BENO acknowledged the warning, her eyes straying to the paperweight.

  Sam and Priya, who were huddling by the door, came running. ‘Mom!’ Priya gasped. ‘You were awesome.’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Sam, punching the air. ‘Like Spiderman.’

  ‘Like Wonder Woman,’ Priya interjected.

  ‘Wonder Woman!’ Mom exclaimed, her children’s excitement infecting her. ‘She is at least seventy years old.’

  ‘But she still rocks, Mom,’ Priya said, hugging her mother tight.

  BENO cleared her throat. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Mom said, waving her hand. ‘A soldier came to escort us here. He was walking ahead of us and I incapacitated him.’

  ‘Incapacitated him?’ BENO repeated.

  Mom nodded, as if incapacitating people was something she did every day. ‘He underestimated us.’

  ‘Yeah, my mom was awesome,’ Sam said, almost vibrating with excitement.

  Mom shrugged. ‘Just something I learnt in my self-defence class …’ Mom shook her finger but laughed. She quickly sobered. ‘We came down the corridor and heard the fight in this room. So we decided to investigate.’

  BENO nodded. ‘I think we should get out of here,’ she said, looking around.

  ‘But Biscuit, what about Biscuit?’ Sam asked anxiously.

  ‘We’ll get Biscuit too,’ BENO interjected before Mom could say anything.

  BENO found one of Dr POX’s scarves behind the door and tied her to a chair. She then stuffed her mouth with tissue and taped her mouth shut.

  ‘You are in the business of tying people to chairs, is it?’ Mom asked sarcastically.

  BENO considered this. She inclined her head and responded: ‘Not just to chairs, ma’am.’

  They proceeded to the door cautiously, and BENO peeped out, motioning the others to stay behind her.

  ‘Do you know where Biscuit is?’ Sam whispered.

  ‘Keep quiet, Sam,’ Priya admonished him.

  BENO turned back and nodded. ‘I need you to stay very close to me,’ she said, lowering her voice.

  When she was satisfied that they had understood, she stepped out into the corridor and began to walk briskly. The others followed her.

  They ran into a soldier who came at them with his weapons raised. BENO tackled him, only to be thrown back into the wall. Frustration at being tossed around like a doll began to get the better of BENO. Mom rushed into the battle and, after some serious punching, kicking and hair-pulling, they were able to knock the soldier unconscious.

  BENO stood, rubbing her ribs. She had a decision to make. The desire to live a normal life was strong in her, but inexplicably she was beginning to feel a responsibility towards the family caught in this mess.

  She looked at them now, weary and bedraggled. Her throat closed and she felt choked as she remembered Dr POX’s taunts about the memories of her family. ‘What drove me to this? What made me agree to her programming?’ she asked herself bitterly, looking at her hands.

  ‘Are you going to stand there all day looking at your nails?’ Mom asked, trying to keep her voice light in spite of shaking from head to toe like a leaf.

  BENO hardened her resolve. ‘I’m going to get you out of here, I promise. And that crea – I mean Biscuit too.’

  Mom smiled wearily. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But first, there is something I have to do. Follow me and stay close.’

  BENO led them through a series of corridors, knowing just when to duck into a nook and when to stay in the shadows and away from the cameras. During one such stop, she whispered to Mom, ‘I don’t know how long Dr POX will be knocked out. You have to do exactly as I say when we get to where we are going.’

  Mom was silent, but BENO could see that she understood.

  They finally reached a room which looked like something out a science fiction comic. There were rows and rows of knobs and dials. A bed in the middle of the room was hooked up to an IV drip with clear liquid in it, and screens and monitors of various sizes.

  BENO guided them to a row of monitors with keyboards. She quickly explained the programming sequence to Mom while Priya and Sam listened curiously.

  ‘Understood?’ BENO asked.

  Mom nodded.

  BENO quickly climbed into the bed and grabbed the IV. She plunged the needle into her vein and lay back. Mom initiated the sequence according to BENO’s instructions, her fingers trembling on the keys.

  The screens around the bed flickered to life and a 3D image of BENO’s brain came up. There were red dots over some areas of the brain and green dots over others that were slowly slipping into red. On BENO’s signal, Mom keyed in the final sequence and hit enter. A series of beeps sounded, the sound colliding with the siren that began blaring loud and clear.

  16

  Letting Go

  Soldiers burst into the room and Mom screamed, diving to protect Priya and Sam. They surrounded the family, ready to take them into custody when the last screen hooked to BENO announced, ‘Programming Complete.’

  ‘Uh oh,’ said a soldier as BENO descended on them like an avenging ang
el.

  Five minutes later, they were standing amongst the smashed remains of the room.

  ‘Wow,’ squeaked Sam. BENO signalled to them to follow her and kept moving.

  Priya caught up with BENO. ‘That machine – that machine did something to you,’ she said, gasping as BENO pushed them to run faster.

  ‘Stay close,’ was all BENO said.

  Soldiers came their way, but BENO dispatched them as easily as if they were mosquitoes.

  Priya heard Sam whispering, ‘Wow!’ and ‘Just like Neo,’ a few times. The family stayed close to each other, each of them now beginning to believe that BENO could save them after all.

  They entered another part of the building that was marked by steel grills on all the doors. BENO stopped outside one marked ‘Reptiles’ and charged in.

  The room was silent; occasionally, an incubator would hiss as it released gas. Each incubator held an egg. At the far end of the room was a glass cage that extended from ceiling to floor.

  Priya and Sam spotted Biscuit sitting on a bar that stretched across the cage. They ran to the glass and banged on it.

  Biscuit lifted its head. Recognizing its visitors, it began chattering and flapping its wings.

  ‘Biscuit, Biscuit,’ Priya and Sam shouted, still banging on the glass.

  BENO strode past them and punched a touchpad on the wall. A small door opened in the cage. Priya and Sam rushed in, not heeding their mother’s cries.

  They alternately hugged and petted Biscuit.

  ‘Let’s go,’ BENO commanded.

  Priya and Sam led Biscuit out of the cage. The pterodactyl whooped loudly and flapped its wings as if to fly.

  The motley group followed BENO out of the room and down the corridor. Priya and Sam kept urging Biscuit to keep up with them by cajoling and pulling and pushing.

  The soldiers kept coming in waves, but BENO fought them off with the speed and skill of a well oiled machine. To Sam’s delight, an excited Biscuit helped by launching itself at anyone who came close to the family.

  Finally, they were out of the building. The research centre was surrounded by lush coconut trees and somewhere a gull cried. A peaceful setting hiding the sinister research project.