Ellie Quin Episode 4: Ellie Quin in WonderLand (The Ellie Quin Series) Read online

  Ellie Quin in

  WonderLand

  (Episode 4 in the Ellie

  Quin Series)

  By

  Alex Scarrow

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.

  © Alex Scarrow, 2014

  @AlexScarrow

  © Cover Image and Design Alex Scarrow, 2014

  [A Digi-Media fragment – ‘News Broadcast – New Haven Digi-9’]:

  ‘…fourth day of riots in the Industrial/Port sector of New Haven following the announcement by The Administration of a system-wide lockdown. It is not yet clear what the nature of the emergency is and city officials have petitioned The Administration for more information.’

  ‘There have, however, been rumours of a virulent strain of H0N1, otherwise known as 'the melting disease' among the influx of refugees from the failed world of Celestion. Although the city authorities have not confirmed the rumour, neither have they denied it. One thing for certain is that the system-wide quarantine will inevitably mean a shortfall on various out-system commodities and essential supplies. But, perhaps more seriously, a longterm impact on the trade economy of Harpers Reach. Analysts expect the biggest impact will be felt by system haulage companies and space port ancillary services.’

  ‘In entertainment news; Betsy Boomalackah, singsong queen and digi-diva has announced the colour of her new gene-implant skin pigment to coincide with the release of her new digitrack ‘I’m Going Giddy-zing-dong Green For You.’ It’s….yellow.’

  [End of audio fragment]:

  CONTENTS

  OMNIPEDIA

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  OMNIPEDIA

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  OMNIPEDIA

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  OMNIPEDIA

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  OMNIPEDIA

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  OMNIPEDIA:

  [Human Universe open source digital encyclopaedia]

  Article: ‘The Legend of Ellie Quin’

  The above media clip, retrieved from recently discovered digital storage archives on Liberty, was taken from New Haven’s primary digistream news channel.

  Some experts on the Legend of Ellie Quin and many of the more conspiracy- prone fans of this legendary figure – ‘Quinologists’ – have speculated that this broadcast was made only days after Ellie Quin managed to evade capture by The Administration and escape from her home world, Harpers Reach. That the quarantine, imposed allegedly to contain a ‘viral outbreak’ was The Administration’s heavy-handed attempt to prevent Ellie from leaving the system via Gateway.

  With information scarce and little to work with other than hearsay and rumour, and questionable accounts by those Quinologists who’d wish to write a more dramatic account of her early years, it is difficult for a historian to be certain of what is true and what is false. It is fair to assume that the mass movement of people from Celestion (Celestion – See Article: Top Ten Terraforming Disasters) may have resulted in a number of outbreaks of very unpleasant pathogens. However, outbreaks of this kind could quite easily have been contained with mere planetary quarantines.

  It is tempting to believe The Administration was already so alarmed by the potential of this one girl to destabilise their hold on Human Space that they were prepared to lockdown an entire system; nine colonised planets, thirty-one orbital installations, nineteen non-planetary settlements, thirteen and half billion people…all of that, to get their hands on one girl.

  User Comment > Anonymous

  My gee-mah use to have old digis of Betsy Boomalackah. She was hawt. Until she decided to go green. Then she looked like she was constantly ready to vomit.

  User Comment > Liz T-Pup111

  I Itsa-hoax. Ellie Quin NEVER EXISTED!!! WHEN WILL YOU STUPID PEEPLE REELIZE???

  User Comment > GoldenNexus

  Woah. Someone needs to lay off the stym-chocs for a while.

  User Comment > Random DittoBoy

  There wuz plagues and stuff released back then by those Reborner terrorists. I know that cause i reddit on this Omnipedo somewhere.

  User Comment > Anonymous

  Do you believe everything you read here Dittoboy? Moron.

  To read more of 34,567,984 User Comments? – Register with Omnipedia Here

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘Hufty, it’s me, Ellie. What if I told you that right now, I’m looking out of an observation blister at the big ol’ black universe? You wouldn’t believe me, would you? It’s true though. I’m sitting here on a stool, sipping a hot synthi choccaslop and watching the freight ship’s auto-barges ferrying containers of stuff backwards and forwards down to the planet below. We’ve been aboard now for a couple of months, I think. (Crud. It’s so easy to lose track of that sort of thing).’

  ‘This ship does the nine-world loop around the system, dropping off, picking up at every planet. It’s mostly automated, so the ship only has a small crew. Eight of them. Mostly big, grubby men like Aaron. They’re really nice though. They’ve looked after me and Jez. Gave us our own cabin and everything.’

  'Oh, and Jez? She’s totally all right now. There was one of those BigBoy Medi-Bot booths on board. One of the scarier looking older models; all robot limbs holding horrid looking scalpels and tweezers. It looked like a giant metal spider dangling above her in the booth. Jez was screaming she didn’t want to go inside the booth with that thing – until someone sedated her and she finally shut up.’

  It fixed her up though. Printed out a full itinerary of what it had done. There was a bullet went right through her stomach and out the back. BigBoy said the stomach lining was ripped wide open and she was spewing out acid inside. The bullet also passed out right next to her spinal column. Another half an inch and chances are she’d never have been able to walk again. BigBoy said she was really lucky to be alive.’ She sighed. ‘BigBoy also said she has very high saturated fat levels and needs to lay off all the crap takeaway food.’

  Ellie paused her voice dairy for a moment and watched the complicated orbital ballet of automated barges as they worked in a ceaseless convoy that descended down through the planet’s atmosphere, appearing like shuffling black dots against the ochre coloured landscape below. From this distance they reminded her of worker ants carrying foraged scraps of food to their nest.

  She recalled her parting view of Harpers Reach, a clay-red orb with only the shrinking polar ice cap as a notable feature. Now it was little more than the size of a star, vaguely pinkish in colour and on the far side of this system.

  Everything I’ve ever known is back there.

  Her family, her home. The agridomes. Those mean-spirited tubweeds. Aaron Goodman and his pride-and-joy shuttle, Lisa. New Haven with all of its sallow skinned inhabitants, ditto-head deadbeats living out their lives beneath a plastic domed sky.

  But there was something els
e she’d left behind at that world’s other city. A stranger…an old man. They'd spoken briefly, hurriedly. He'd told her his name. There hadn't been much time. His name was Mason. Edward Mason. And there'd been that bizarre digital message disc he’d pressed into her hand.

  ‘You’re special Ellie, so very special. You are the only way humanity is going to survive. So…you have to stay alive.

  You have to travel Ellie. You have to run. And you’ll have to be so very careful. The Administration know everything about you and they’ll do anything to find you and to kill you.’

  Ellie had listened to the digital message, now loaded onto her audio diary. Listened to it a dozen times or more.

  ‘The Administration’s bloodhounds will never give up on you, Ellie. You must travel. You must. The only advice I can give you is to seek the worlds in our universe that are torn and troubled…and my God, Ellie, there are so many out there. Human Space is falling apart. But you wouldn’t believe that from what you see on the toob, eh?’

  ‘Fly Ellie, fly away as fast and as far as you can. And stay alive as long as you can. God, I wish there was more I could do to help you.’

  For some reason Ellie had decided not to tell Jez about the message. She didn’t yet understand what the old man expected of her. It was clear she was some kind of threat to The Administration, a threat so big, that apparently this whole solar system, of one star, nine planets and Gateway, had been quarantined from the rest of Human Space. It seemed they wanted to find her so-o-o very badly.

  How the crud am I a threat to anyone?

  Last time she looked at herself she had no super powers. She was just a whippet-thin, twenty year old girl, with knock-knobbly knees and a face as plain and forgettable as a bowl of un-programmed protein paste. So very unlike Jez, who seemed to make male heads turn wherever she went.

  ‘Ahoy my dearest darling cabin-chik!’

  Speak of the devil.

  Jez slapped Ellie’s shoulder affectionately, perched herself on the creaking stool beside her and relieved Ellie of her steaming plastic cup of synthi choccaslop.

  'You doing your stupid diary thing again?'

  Ellie tucked the recorder back into a pocket before Jez could grab it and play back what she'd been recording. 'Yes. And it's not stupid. It helps me think things through.'

  'That's your problem.' Jez glanced sideways at her. 'You think about things way-y-y too much.' She grinned. 'We did it…we escaped crudds-ville. What's to think about?'

  'What's to think about?' Ellie shook her head. Sometimes Jez was just too skin-thin carefree and frustratingly shallow. 'Aren't you worried about what's going to happen to us? Aren't you curious about who was chasing us back there? Who shot and nearly killed you?' She sighed. 'Don't you ever think beyond, like, the next five minutes?'

  Jez raised a perfectly sculpted brow. 'Well to be honest I'm more totally fregged-off with who shot at me than curious about them.' She placed a hand on her belly. 'I'm gonna scar there for sure. That's not a good look.'

  'And what about the rumours? System quarantine? You heard the news. Right?'

  'Uh, not really.'

  Stupid question. Jez watched the quizzies, sopa-drams, muso-vids and children's cartoons. That was pretty much it.

  'I'm worried. This 'quarantine'. It started on Harpers Reach the day we escaped. Doesn't that seem-?'

  'Probably a virulent form of space herpes.'

  'Jez?' She looked at her friend. 'Doesn't that strike you as odd? A coincidence?'

  She pursed her lips for a moment, giving that some thought. 'It is creepy-coincidental.'

  'Maybe…' Ellie continued, 'maybe the whole thing's a cover story?'

  Jez stared silently at Ellie. 'You mean….a….a…about us?'

  Ellie nodded. 'A conspiracy. The Administration. They're after me. Maybe they've come up with this story to stop anyone leaving the Seventh Veil?'

  Jez's jaw slowly dropped, her eyes widened. For a moment Ellie thought Jez was going to burst out laughing. Instead she lowered her voice. 'You saying…they've locked down a whole solar system?! Just to get their hands on you?'

  Ellie nodded.

  'You're actually being serious, aren't you?'

  She bit her lip. 'I think so.'

  Jez slurped from the plastic cup. To be truthful, the escape from Harpers Reach had ended up being a bit of a blur for her. The last thing she could recall clearly was what Aaron had told her. In confidence. She knew something that Ellie didn't. Something truly horrific; that Ellie's parents, her brother and sister had been butchered by those men hunting her. That's what their friend Aaron had discovered when he'd dropped in on the Quin's farm by chance. And that was the secret she and Aaron now shared - something Ellie didn't need to know. Something she couldn't ever know.

  It would break her into a million jagged pieces.

  Someone clearly wanted her badly. But…seriously…The Administration? The actual government? And seriously, locking down a whole system in order to find her?

  Jez felt the hair on the nape of her neck slowly rise. She realised they were totally fregged if it was The Administration. Where the hell could they run? Up until now she'd half convinced herself that it might be just a bunch of crims. They'd raided Ellie's home, murdered an innocent family and were looking to cover their tracks. That, or at a reach, a bunch of those freggin' Reborn terrorists looking to make a name for themselves and get into the newsies, to spread their utterly twisted message.

  But…The Administration?

  'Jez? What do you think?'

  For Ellie's sake she decided to make light of it. 'Dunno, chick. Maybe it is what it is. Some pervo's done naughties with the wrong type of alien species and there's a nasty sex-lurgy going round.'

  CHAPTER 2

  Deacon sat down on the worn gel couch and silently regarded the man standing in front of him. Large and muscular, long sandy-coloured hair tied back in a scraggy ponytail, and several weeks’ worth of beard on his face.

  Deacon was reminded of the frontiersmen of Old Earth, the French trappers, coereur de bois, wild men who'd lived in the wilderness of the yet to be mapped, tamed and named nation of America.

  This man looked dishevelled and tired. He’d been roughing it out in the wilderness of this mud planet for several months. Living within the confines of this grubby vessel. An old surface shuttle - the type that one could see on any number of rudely colonised worlds, snub-nosed and inelegant, but eminently hardy and practical.

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat, Mr Goodman?’ said Deacon.

  Aaron Goodman shrugged, then settled himself on a stool.

  Deacon nodded appreciatively as he looked around the shuttle's cargo hold.

  ‘I must say, I do admire your entrepreneurial spirit. You managed to turn this old freight space into something that looks almost appealing.’

  The rust and grime encrusted hold had been scrubbed and painted a hygenic-looking white. And where storage racks had once lined the bulkhead, stood a modest kitchenette and a FoodSmart. Beside it, a long section of the carbo-steel hull had been cut out and replaced with a panoramic viewing window of plastex.

  ‘It appears that you've transformed your rust-bucket shuttle into a comfortable little tour cruiser.’ Deacon steepled fingers beneath his chin. ‘I'm impressed by your ability to adapt to shifting economic conditions. One minute a freight pilot, the next, a tour operator. I really do admire that initiative.’

  Aaron Goodman continued to stare at him blankly.

  ‘So few people seem to have that can-do spirit about them.’ Deacon sighed. ‘Take the majority of people living in New Haven…they’re like mindless cattle, aren’t they? Happy to live rather pointless and empty lives. Sitting in their habicubes watching the toob all day long. Growing fat on synthi snacks and chemical gunk. But you, Mr Goodman…’ he leant forward. ‘You, sir, have rather more, I think. A true colonial spirit. You're the kind of person we need more of in Human Space. I salute you.’

  ‘I’m touched,�
�� Aaron replied dryly. ‘I might even cry.’

  Deacon nodded appreciatively at the man's hutzpah.

  ‘I find most of humanity disappoints me, Mr Goodman, disgusts me even. I often wonder why The Administration even bothers to maintain order and stability across our thirteen hundred worlds. The billions of brain-dead cretins out there…’ Deacon shook his head. ‘The bright, garish fashions they wear, that awful tinny noise they like to call music, the moronic crap they watch every hour of every day…God help me, is that what humanity has become?’

  ‘S’pose that’s why I chose to work as a shuttle pilot,’ muttered Aaron. ‘To get away from all that.’

  ‘And I really don’t blame you, my friend. It is a universe full of fat, dull- witted plebs. So few of us around…real people like you and I.’

  'Don't group me with you,' snapped Aaron. 'I'm not a goddamn murderer!'

  Deacon looked away from him. 'As needs must.' He shrugged. ‘Government has a duty to protect the unwashed masses from themselves, from fanatics, from terrorists seeking to destabilise things. Even if the unwashed barely deserve that.’

  'Her family weren't fucking terrorists!'

  'Oh? You knew them well, did you?'

  Aaron didn't reply.

  'I thought not. Perhaps it might surprise you to know that Ellie's parents had Rebornist sympathies. I believe they might have been a sleeper cell.'

  'Damn you!' Aaron shook his head. 'No! They were just oxygen farmers!'

  'That was their cover.'

  'And their children? You telling me they were terrorists too?'

  'Sleeper agents, Mr Goodman. Living life as normally as possible. Most probably believing they would never be called upon to become active. It doesn't surprise me they applied to have children.'

  'You're full of shit.'

  'Really?' Deacon sat forward. 'Since when have Rebornist terrorists ever looked like anything other than normal people? Thats how they look, Mr Goodman. Just like the regular old couple in the habicube next door. Right up until the point where they're on a skyhound packed with morning commuters and they cry out that their Prophet is Coming, and detonate a jacket bomb.'