Revenge of the Living Ted

by Barry Hutchison

  “Now, you will both follow me,” Ursine said. Something wicked glinted in his eyes as he gestured to the door. “I’m about to blow your tiny minds.”

  Vernon let out a little whimper. “What?!”

  “It’s a figure of speech,” Lisa Marie assured him. She turned away and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I hope.”

  Lisa Marie and Vernon stood on a high metal walkway up near the ceiling, gazing down into what seemed to be an enormous factory. Vernon was gripping the railing so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

  “It’s… It’s…” Lisa Marie began, but she stopped there. Despite her love of big words, she couldn’t think of one that would even start to describe what was going on below.

  “High!” Vernon squeaked. “It’s very high!”

  Lisa Marie tutted but couldn’t really argue. It was definitely high.

  Below them several vast machines, manned by an army of bears, filled the factory floor.

  They whirred and chugged and clunked as they worked to turn stacks of stuffing and fur into teddy bears. Lots of teddy bears. More teddy bears than Lisa Marie could even guess at, let alone count.

  Like the two bears standing on the walkway behind them – Cuddlyplump and Mr Fluffton – the teddies down on the factory floor were larger than normal. They were a little over half of Lisa Marie’s height and around three times the size of Bearvis.

  A series of conveyor belts linked all the machines together. The raw materials for the bears were lowered on to three different belts at the start – one for stuffing, one for fur and a third for the eyes and plastic noses. They trundled through the network of machines, before feeding into the largest one at the end.

  When the conveyor belt carried them out of that final machine, the bears were complete. They sat limp and motionless, their glassy eyes gazing blindly ahead.

  Occasionally, a light on the machine would flash red and the conveyor belt would pause for a second. When it started up again, there was always a gap where a bear should have been.

  “Those are the Duds,” Ursine explained. “I have very strict quality control standards. Any bear that isn’t exactly right gets rejected by the machine and dropped down the chute.”

  Lisa Marie hugged Bearvis. “What happens to them then?”

  Ursine hesitated. “Do you know, I’m not really sure? They just gather dust, I suppose.”

  He gestured down at his factory. “So, what do you think?”

  “I think I’d like to get d-down,” Vernon squeaked.

  “I think that’s a lot of teddy bears,” said Lisa Marie.

  Ursine grunted. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do? I thought you were supposed to be clever.” He nodded to Vernon. “Well, not so much him.”

  “Hey!”

  “But you, girl. I had high hopes for you. Don’t let me down,” Ursine said. He stepped closer until he loomed over her. “I’m not asking what you can see, I’m asking what do you think?”

  Lisa Marie held Ursine’s gaze. This wasn’t easy, because all that hair made finding his eyes tricky and he was a bit scary to look at. She wasn’t going to show him she was afraid, though.

  “I think you’re creating an army,” she said. Without looking, she pointed to a series of truck-sized plastic tubs just beyond the final machine. “You have a substantial number of bears down there, which I assume you plan to bring to life. And, based on the fact you kidnapped us, I’m guessing you’re not a very nice person, so I doubt you’re planning to use them for anything good.”

  Ursine placed a hand on his chest and gasped, pretending to take offence. His smirk gave him away, though, and he nodded at Lisa Marie to continue.

  “This place must have cost a lot of money to put together, so I think you must be quite rich.”

  “I’m fabulously rich,” Ursine said.

  “Which means you aren’t planning to use the bears to rob people. You don’t want money.”

  Ursine raised his hairy eyebrows. “So…?”

  Lisa Marie clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “So, if I had to guess…”

  “You do.”

  “I’d say you want power. You’re planning to take over the world.”

  “Yes!” Ursine cheered. “I knew you were a smart one! I knew you’d figure it out! Bravo, girl, bravo!”

  “I knew all that!” Vernon said. “Totally knew that’s what was happening.”

  Lisa Marie knew that wasn’t true and that Vernon was only trying to sound clever. She felt quite pleased with herself for managing to work everything out.

  Well, almost everything.

  “Why do you need us?” she wondered. “Why not wipe our memories too?”

  “All in good time,” Ursine said. He tilted his head back so he was looking at the ceiling. “Down,” he commanded. He and the teddies all grabbed hold of the railing, so Lisa Marie quickly did the same.

  Vernon screamed as the walkway plunged towards the distant factory floor. He gripped the railing so hard the whiteness of his knuckles spread through his hand and up past his elbows.

  He was still screaming when the walkway jerked to a stop just a few centimetres above the factory’s concrete floor. Part of the railing swung open like a gate and Ursine motioned for Lisa Marie to go through.

  “Shall we?”

  Before Lisa Marie could move, one of Ursine’s teddy bear accomplices – the slightly shorter of the two, whose fur was a lighter shade of brown than the other – gave her a shove from behind.

  “Now now, Mr Fluffton,” said Ursine. “Not so rough with our guest, please.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Mr Fluffton replied. His voice was surprisingly gruff, like a gangster from an old movie.

  The other bear pushed Vernon through the gate next, making him stumble and fall. Ursine didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

  “Hey! Guest, remember?” Vernon protested.

  “Shut up, kid,” snarled the darker-furred Cuddlyplump. He punched a clenched paw into the opposite palm in a way that was eighty per cent threatening, twenty per cent just too cute for words.

  Lisa Marie helped Vernon up and they stood close together as Ursine and his hench-bears stepped down from the walkway. Ursine’s walking stick clacked on the concrete as he led the way across the factory floor.

  “This way. There’s something else I want to show you.”

  Lisa Marie glanced down at Bearvis under her arm. His eyes stared blankly at the rows of towering machines as they passed between them. Lisa Marie wished, not for the first time, that he would spring to life like he had the night before.

  The factory was much noisier down here and the teddy bears it was producing loomed even larger up-close. The machine that was putting their faces on had arranged the features into angry scowls. They were probably supposed to look scary, but Lisa Marie found them adorable.

  There was a large screen fixed to one of the walls. The angle had made it impossible to see from up on the walkway, but now it was hard to miss. A single black eye stared out from the screen, sweeping left and right as if on the lookout for trouble.

  Lisa Marie felt a shiver travel the length of her spine. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “That’s Mummy Bear,” said Ursine. “She’s an artificial intelligence who keeps an eye on things around here.”

  “Mummy Bear?” Vernon snorted. “Why do you call her that?”

  “Because she makes sure the machines run just right,” said Ursine. He saw the blank look on Vernon’s face. “You know. Not too hot, not too cold. Just right? Like Mummy Bear’s porridge in the story.”

  Vernon continued to stare blankly. “What story?”

  “Goldilocks,” Lisa Marie explained. She turned to Ursine. “But it was Baby Bear’s porridge that was ‘just right’.”

  Ursine’s thick eyebrows met in a frown. “Was it? Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” Lisa Marie said.

  “Oh,” said Ursine. He tapped his foot for a few moments. “Well, p
robably too late to change it now.”

  “Probably not worth the bother, no,” Lisa Marie agreed. Besides, she was much more interested in something Ursine had said a moment ago. “Mummy Bear is an artificial intelligence?”

  “Oh yes. AI is something I’ve always been fascinated by.” He seemed to swell, becoming more animated. “In fact, that’s one of the things about your adventure last night that really excited me. All those bears coming to life, their personalities shaped by the clothes they wore. That was a form of artificial intelligence in itself.”

  He fished inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. It had been crammed into a case that looked like a large rubber teddy bear’s head. Ursine’s hairy finger jabbed clumsily at the screen.

  “You’ll like this. Check it out. I was able to harness the brainwaves of one of the more interesting teddies and recreate it artificially.”

  Vernon looked from Ursine to Lisa Marie. He clearly had absolutely no idea what was going on and hoped someone was about to explain it all in a slow voice.

  Lisa Marie tapped her chin as she thought about all this. “I suppose it makes sense. I mean, the bears didn’t have brains, as such, so their intelligence had to be artificial rather than organic.”

  “I agree,” said Vernon, doing his best to look like he was keeping up. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

  “Artificial and yet this one was fully capable of independent thought!” said Ursine.

  “Exactly,” Vernon said, nodding. “Yep. I agree.”

  “Most of them simply followed orders, but this one was something special,” Ursine said, holding up his phone. An animated mouth moved on the screen. Combined with the teddy-head phone case, it looked like an actual teddy bear was talking to them.

  “Where am I?” a voice growled from the phone’s speaker. “What have you done?”

  Lisa Marie’s blood ran cold. “Oh no. Not him.”

  “Did those meatbag kids do this to me? I’ll rip them apart. I’ll tear their arms off!”

  “Grizz!” Vernon whispered.

  “Turn it off,” Lisa Marie urged. “He’s dangerous!”

  “Yes, I know. Dangerous, but fascinating,” Ursine said.

  Grizz’s voice became an angry hiss. “I hear you, girl! I can hear you. I don’t know where you are, but I’ll find you. You hear me? I’ll find—”

  Ursine clicked the sleep button on the phone and the device became silent and dark. “He is an excitable one, isn’t he?”

  “You have to delete it. Right now,” said Lisa Marie.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. He’s much too interesting for that,” replied Ursine. “Besides, his entire personality is trapped in here. See?”

  He tapped the phone screen and held it up to show Lisa Marie. Nothing happened.

  “It’s blank,” Lisa Marie said.

  “Hmm? Oh.”

  Ursine’s podgy finger tapped the screen again. He waited a moment, then prodded it again. “That’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “The software must have crashed or something. It’s not responding.” Shrugging, he shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Never mind. On with the tour!” He grinned at them through his beard. “You won’t believe what I’ve got next door!”

  What Ursine had next door was tanks. A lot of tanks, in fact, all with cannon-like gun turrets on their roofs. They were smaller than she’d imagined tanks to be – just the right size for a single teddy bear driver.

  And there weren’t just tanks. There were miniature jeeps, little motorcyles, and even a squadron of toddler-sized fighter jets. They were assembled in rows in front of a huge roll-up door, ready to move out.

  There were two small windows by the door, one on either side. Lisa Marie saw part of a familiar church roof rising into view at the corner of one of them, and realized they must be on the hillside overlooking their town.

  But that was impossible. There were no buildings on the hillside. Unless…

  “It’s a bunker,” said Ursine, as if reading her mind. “We’re in a bunker built into the hill itself. Clever, isn’t it?” He stroked his thick beard. “Well, it’s more than that, really. It’s a whole underground complex. This entire hill is one big building.”

  Lisa Marie, who had been worrying about the artificial Grizz on Ursine’s phone, decided she should probably worry about all this new information for a while, instead.

  “You’re really building an army,” she said.

  “I am!” Ursine crowed, puffing out his broad chest.

  “You do realize this is insane, don’t you?”

  Ursine’s face changed in an instant. For a kidnapper, he’d seemed quite friendly so far, but now his features twisted into a furious scowl as he turned on Lisa Marie.

  “Insane? Insane? This isn’t insanity, it’s genius!” His big hands grabbed Lisa Marie by the shoulders. His eyes bulged as he roared at her. “I’m not crazy, OK? I’m not crazy!”

  “Hey, get your hands off my sister!” said Vernon, but Cuddlyplump and Mr Fluffton blocked his path before he could step in.

  “Do you know how many wars are going on out in the world today? Right now?” Ursine demanded. “Do you know how many crimes are being committed?”

  “Like kidnapping?” Vernon asked. Ursine’s hench-bears both growled at him.

  “My army can stop all that,” Ursine continued. “It can bring order to the chaos. I don’t want to rule the world, Lisa Marie. Not really. I want to save it, whether it wants to be saved or not.”

  “What does that mean?” Vernon asked.

  Lisa Marie swallowed. “It means he’s going to use his bears to take control of everywhere. They’ll force everyone to do everything he says.”

  “I’m doing it for their own good,” Ursine insisted. He released his grip and his angry scowl was replaced by a smile. “And I want you to help me.”

  “You what?” said Vernon.

  Lisa Marie frowned. “I’ll echo that ‘You what?’ and raise you a ‘Huh?’”

  “You impressed me, girl. The way you stopped those bears last night. The way you…” His nostrils flared like he’d just smelled a particularly potent guff. “…saved the day. I’d like you to help me. I’d like you to help me save the world.”

  Lisa Marie’s eyes widened, but before she could reply she was distracted by several of the bin-lorry-sized tubs trundling in through the door. They were all connected together like a train but nobody appeared to be driving.

  Ursine checked his watch. “Aha. Just in time. Kindly observe.”

  He gestured over to where the tubs were rolling to a stop. As they watched, a robotic arm descended from the ceiling. There was a device attached to it that reminded Lisa Marie of the Stuff-U-Lator machine Grizz had used to turn Drake into a teddy bear, only it was much smaller and less home-made looking.

  A light shone from the end of it, bathing the insides of the first tub in a pale blue glow. Lisa Marie held her breath, waiting for something to happen.

  Nothing did.

  Vernon snorted. “Oh, very impressive,” he said, slowly clapping his hands. Mr Fluffton and Cuddlyplump both snarled at him, showing off some worryingly pointy teeth.

  “Look. There!” Lisa Marie whispered.

  A paw had emerged from inside the tub. It thudded clumsily against the plastic rim, then flailed around for a moment, as if the person on the other end was trying to figure out how it worked.

  A head appeared next, rising up into view in a way that was cute and terrifying in roughly equal amounts. The angry-yet-adorable eyes scanned the room, then locked on the group of humans.

  “This is a bad idea,” Lisa Marie fretted. “You need to stop this.”

  “Nonsense. They’re all under my control,” Ursine said.

  “That’s what Josh thought. The shopkeeper. Then Grizz told the bears to blast him into microscopic pieces. He thought he could control them, but he couldn’t.”

  Ursine smirked. “Yes. Poor fel
low. But it gave me an idea, you see? All these teddies have been fitted with a control chip. Mummy Bear can connect wirelessly and control them remotely. Isn’t that right, Mummy?”

  “Affirmative,” chimed a voice from nowhere in particular. It crackled a little, like the speaker it was playing through was damaged. “Mummy Bear will ensure their behaviour is just right.”

  “Are you all right, Mummy Bear?” Ursine asked.

  There was a lengthy pause before the voice replied. “F-fine. Thank you.”

  Vernon looked confused. This wasn’t a new thing – he had looked confused pretty much from the moment they’d woken up – but he looked more confused now than he had done previously.

  “So … what? They’re not really alive? They’re robots?”

  “No. They’re as alive as you or I,” said Ursine. “But the control chips will make sure they don’t misbehave.”

  More heads and paws and the occasional furry bottom had appeared above the rim of the first tub. One or two teddies tumbled out over the edge while the robotic arm moved on to the second tub and fired up its life-giving light.

  As soon as the teddy bears were back on their feet, they snapped to attention, fired off a series of salutes that Lisa Marie couldn’t help but find cute, then marched over to a door marked ‘Weapons and Equipment’.

  “Well, that doesn’t bode well,” muttered Vernon as they watched the teddies vanish inside.

  Ursine spun on his heels to face the children. “Well, Lisa Marie? Have you made a decision?”

  Lisa Marie blinked. “About what?”

  “About standing by my side, of course! About helping me save the world.”

  “Why?” Lisa Marie asked.

  Ursine frowned. “Why what?”

  “Why do you want us to help?”

  Ursine hesitated. “Well, I mean…” He sighed. “Look, if you must know, being a genius is rather … lonely.”

  Lisa Marie blinked. “Lonely?”

  “Yes! It’s all very well being super intelligent, but if you don’t have anyone of a similar intellect to talk to it gets so boring!”