Return to Wardate

by Bill Cornwell

  Life was suddenly thrust upon her again. Once more she was beautiful again; once more she was restrained, strapped to a table – no change there then, she thought!

  ‘Bye the way, thought you ought to know, you’re in Cheshire, a place called Capesdown hall’, said Barton. ‘We think it’s some kind of government department.’

  Before it had taken weeks to shake off the reality of being in a tank and remotely controlling the Madeline Bull android, now though, the transition only took a few moments - then she was convinced she was inside the head of Madeline. Despite her obvious predicament - pain and discomfort, it was still wonderful. Not, however as wonderful as her dream or whatever it was when she was back as Poppy, paddling in that stream with Adam by her side.

  She thought about that dream, it was so, so real. Everything made sense; Wardate was Ward 8 - the ward she was in, in hospital. Most of the people in her dream were nurses, doctors and patients in the hospital. The names of the people she had to kill, Ray de Part for instance turned out to be a portion of the sign ‘X-ray department’ she could see through the partly opened door. It had to be a dream because in it, her body had fully recovered and was perfect again. Not possible, burns like that don’t heal that well, especially with the severity of her frazzled frame. No, now was reality, surely, Madeline was reality. Yes, she was beautiful and sexy, even more so than her own Poppy body used to be but... it was an artificial world. True, now it took a moderate amount of concentration to even imagine herself as a burnt husk of a human being but that’s what she was. Perhaps this was because her subconscious was in denial. It was, afterall, a thought that was permanently avoided like the plague. Her new Madeline body felt as real as could be, she was Madeline Bull again!

  Madeline looked around as best she could whilst strapped down tightly on an operating table, trolley, whatever it was. She was obviously in an old period building: tall ceilings with elaborate plaster cornicing, a large heavy door with antique polished brass fittings and a large Georgian window complete with the internal shutters. It reminded her too much of her old dentist’s waiting room.

  She was alone in the room. Being inactive for several days, the fascination of what was lying there, had faded somewhat. She was still intact, no arms or legs missing – this was a good thing. Her head hadn’t been shaved and all her clothes were still covering her up, not scattered on the floor – this was also a good thing.

  ‘Hello!’ she shouted.

  It was a weak shout but would improve as time went by.

  ‘Hello! Anyone there!’

  Her voice was getting louder.

  ‘I said... Hello!!’

  Her voice was back with vengeance.

  And then in came a young well dressed man.

  ‘So sorry’, he said sincerely ‘Almost gave up on you. We’ve been out looking for a Prince Charming to give you a kiss and wake you up.’

  ‘Funny ha, ha! So why the restraints then if you’re so sorry’.

  ‘Sorry, I can make you more comfortable if you want... we didn’t want to mislay you. You took quite a bit of finding. Sorry, Names Pike, Neil… So you’re the infamous Madeline Bull.

  ‘Infamous… surely famous?’

  ‘Sorry, yes.’

  Pike took out his mobile phone and called someone.

  ‘It... She’s… activated... awake, sorry.’

  That was it, Pike had said all he was going to say and Madeline certainly wasn’t going to encourage him to continue with his apologetic babble. Within minutes, the door violently flew open and then oozed in, several suited men and women. One of the suited men broke from the crowd, older and meaner looking than the rest.

  ‘Madeline Bull... well, well.’ said the man.

  ‘Yes... I am this person lying here, tied up,’

  ‘Sorry, I’m Nuttall, Brian Nuttall.’

  ‘Good God, why are you all so damn insincerely apologetic!?’

  They had all heard of this amazing feisty android called Madeline Bull and now they were experiencing this remarkable feistiness first hand. They smiled at each other and desperately wanted her autograph but knew it would be completely unprofessional. They wanted to touch and fondle her… again, but now she was awake she might zap them with some secret weapon they didn’t know about. Her fart gas was legendary as was her laser finger but who knows what else she had in her arsenal.

  ‘You’re in safe hands. Our government paid for you so we thought it high time we got to know each other... have a little chat as it were.’

  ‘Go on, I like little chats,’ said Madeline.

  ‘Put simply, you are ours, we built you so we thought it fit that you actually work for us.’

  ‘Who are you then, MI 5 or 6 or something? Do I get an O, O number? More to the point, do I have a choice?’

  ‘Actually MI 7 and no, you don’t’, said Nuttall.

  ‘MI 7? …Never heard of it.’

  ‘Officially MI 7 closed down after the war but unofficially it’s a top secret department that...

  ‘Don’t tell me, does top secret things? Anyway, I thought I worked for a secret government department with Brownsword – before he was exterminated.’

  ‘We work differently here. Naturally, assassination has become your forte but often there are ways of getting results without chopping people up into bits and poisoning them.’

  ‘Lets get cracking then, untie me and give me my first mission.’ Madeline falsely feigned eagerness.

  ‘As I’ve said, we do things differently here,’ said Nuttall

  ‘How differently, exactly?’

  ‘We will show you.’

  Madeline was untied. She did her best to hide the pain as she rose from the table but unavoidably a wince formed across her pretty face. The Madeline automaton had not moved for a long time mainly because the operator, Poppy, had not been conscious. Oil or what ever it was that lubricated Madeline’s moving parts needed to spread and circulate, so her first few step were almost geriatric. If Madeline did decide to run for it, now was not a good time. Surprisingly quickly, however, she became fluid in her movements although bearing the pain remained a challenge for Poppy in her stainless steel tank. And then all her pain stopped and she felt wonderful, agile and in control. This was mainly because Barton had increased the flow of morphine into Poppy’s veins.

  ‘Adam… it’s Barton, where are you?’

  ‘Just gone through passport control.’

  ‘Good. You need to get to Cheshire, something’s going on.’

  ‘…Makes a change, how’s Poppy?

  ‘Remarkable, she really does have the constitution of an ox - apparently Madeline’s in the company of MI 7.’

  ‘Didn’t know there was such a thing - have you told her?’

  ‘She’s just found out from a chap called Nuttall.’

  ‘Nut oil?

  ‘Nuttall!’

  ‘Okay Prof, cool it… Adam to the rescue!’

  Barton pressed the end button on his mobile before he said something he would almost certainly regret. Poppy was indeed remarkable, not by any means indestructible but certainly many would have died many times over going through what Poppy had gone through over the last year. She was, however, still very ill despite controlling an automaton now in the peak of mechanical health.

  Barton had to make a tough decision. He was all too aware of her fragility but it was imperative that she had to be moved to a more secure location. She had been moved before and was almost unaware of it but this time a barrow load of life support equipment was attached to her frail form.

  Her new home had to be completely secret, not even Adam could ever know. Madeline’s greatest weakness was the human being who controlled her and Poppy’s greatest threat was from Madeline’s enemies. There had to be a firewall and Barton knew this.

  Chapter 7: Capesdown Hall

  Apparently there is no such thing as MI 7, at least that’s what they want people to think. Apparently MI 7 is so top secret that even the people who work for MI
7 often doubt it exists. MI 6 is well known for secret agents, secret missions and so on but that’s where the covertness ends. Everybody knows where they are – the big building at the side of the Thames and the names of the ‘secret’ agents are listed in Wickipedia. MI 7, conversely, is so secret that even talking about it is risking this novel being censored.

  The reason they had Madeline was, in the grand scheme of things, relatively straight forward. Madeline Bull was a massive asset to Britain, the British government and British intelligence. Up to now she had stumbled her way through her short existence. To be fair, she had been successful in her vital missions but this had been more by luck than judgement. Despite her invulnerable reputation she was still relatively fragile even after the upgrade she had from the Americans. One armour piercing bullet, grenade or IUD would certainly scatter her high tech contents very effectively. This was not good enough.

  MI 7 thought that Madeline Bull was no more and no less than a very advanced machine, controlled by a nifty bit of computer programming.

  From the start, Brownsword – Turner as he was known then – insisted that no one except for the four scientists and two surgeons knew the truth behind Madeline Bull. Now, Brownsword and two of the scientists were dead leaving only Barton, Alexander and two surgeons. The two surgeons were hypnotised by the very best, most expensive hypnotist in existence to forget all about the Madeline Bull project. If they ever did blab, they were conditioned to instantly and uncontrollably squawk like a chicken for the rest of their lives. Alexander was now incarcerated and condemned as a mad man in solitary confinement. This left only Barton, Adam and Poppy Cock who know the truth behind Madeline Bull – that she uses the essence of Poppy Cock.

  Madeline Bull’s talents had been well noted. Admittedly not always fully approved of but the inescapable facts were that Madeline Bull has the potential to stop conflicts, terrorism and even wars: If they had a weapon such as Madeline Bull in 1939, there was a good chance World War II would not have happened. In 2003, the Iraq war would not have happened. In fact in 2001, Madeline Bull could have searched the caves in Afghanistan herself and saved an awful lot of bloodshed. Putting it simply, Madeline was not being used to her full potential.

  If there was one thing Madeline hated, it was being dissected, dismantled, disassembled, upgraded, tweaked and generally messed with. Up to now, what she had gone through was nothing compared to what she was about to go through.

  It has to be said that everyone was very friendly, amicable and genuinely concerned for her feelings even though they all believed that somewhere inside her there was probably just a processor chip being over-clocked to the maximum.

  Emerging from a lift that had descended a considerable way, a completely different decor greeted her. Gone was the grandeur of the oak panelled walls, herringbone maple floors, the Chippendale furniture and faded oil paintings. Now the coldness of emulsioned breeze blocks and fluorescent ceiling lights filled her vision. To Madeline, this was all too familiar; it was very similar to her original home underneath the prosthetics lab.

  It was only fair that Madeline should know what was going to happen to her, so they told her.

  ‘We are going to upgrade you and make you indestructible,’ said Nuttall.

  ‘Fuck, not again!’ said Madeline.

  And that was that.

  This was the plan: a team of highly talented engineers would replace her entire titanium skeleton with boron nitride. And then when they had done this, install a graphene lattice under her artificial skin. When all that was done, her skin would be completely replaced with an indestructible carbon nanotube material. If she had been human which she obviously wasn’t, this mammoth operation would have been pretty damn painful. However, being an automaton, it probably wouldn’t even tickle.

  The ‘time under the knife’ was used wisely by Madeline; she caught up on several hours of TV soaps, watched dozens of films and completed countless codeword puzzles. Apparently, credit to all of them, they made a superb job. True, the operation took over a week to complete – which was slightly inconvenient but afterall, this was something that couldn’t be rushed. Madeline was surprisingly patient throughout and took almost no interest in what they were doing. As long as there were no scars, she remained jaw droppingly gorgeous and everything still worked perfectly, she really wasn’t bothered. After all, it was a useful time for convalescence which was what Poppy needed – loads of rest and television.

  Something else that’s good about being an android – automaton – whatever, when it’s done, it’s done. No recovery time, no secondary infections, no drains, no MRSA, no stitches to take out, no scars, absolutely nothing.

  ‘Okay, Madeline Bull… you’re now pretty much indestructible. Your skin is now entirely carbon nanotube. All your bones have been replaced with chloro bromine. Your hearing and eyesight have been upgraded and we have taken the liberty of installing a monitoring system, happy?’ said Nuttall just like a real surgeon would.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ said Madeline with indifference, ‘got a mirror?’

  A mirror was produced from somewhere, she examined her face, her hair, eyes and skin; all was exactly the same. She was still gorgeous.

  ‘Well, I don’t feel any different. Okay, so what now?’ she said casually.

  ‘This is the first of three development stages. The next stage is training and the final stage is compliance,’ said Nuttall nonchalantly.

  ‘Compliance? Doesn’t that mean obedience - as in dog? Like to know how you’re going to do that?’

  ‘Quiet easy really,’ said Nuttall as he walked over to a monitor and turned it on.

  ‘Adam!’ screamed Madeline with delight.

  ‘Hi sweetheart,’ a perky reply whimpered through the monitor speaker.

  Three things Adam was not very good at were planning, thinking ahead and playing chess. Ideally, getting Madeline out of a high security building in the depths of the countryside, surrounded by armed police, required some of these skills. Adam decided to go ahead anyway – just break in, find Madeline, untie her (if she was tied up) and leave quietly. Consequently, this procedure failed instantly. He climbed a fence with a big red ‘keep out’ notice fastened to it and the next thing he knew, he was locked in a small comfortable room complete with plush carpet, comfy bed and a large screen TV. He had failed again; he was truly Madeline’s weakness and Nuttall knew this.

  ‘You do anything to my Adam and you’ll see another side of me,’ said Madeline sternly.

  ‘What do you take us for, thugs? Now you’ve seen him, he’s free to go... or stay a while and use our amenities. We have an a la carte restaurant, sauna, Jacuzzi, a fully equipped gym,’ said Nuttall amicably.

  ‘Your point?’

  ‘We can find him and bring him in anytime we want and make life very unpleasant for him but... as I’ve said, we’re not thugs - we just want some means of chaining down a loose cannon.’

  ‘Loose cannon?’

  ‘A feisty android,’ said Nuttall bluntly.

  ‘Oh that,’ said Madeline quietly.

  There would always be a mystery why such an advanced, cutting edge machine - automaton, had been programmed to embrace love and develop a relationship with a human. Surely this was a serious flaw in her programming and clearly a weakness. However, there was nothing that could be done about it. Nuttall and his team of scientists were certainly not qualified to interfere with such advanced piece of AI software – wherever it was situated in her frame. Of course it wasn’t situated in her frame at all because she used Poppy Cock’s intelligence but they didn’t know this.

  ‘Are you alright Sweetheart?’

  ‘Fine, fine, can’t grumble,’ Adam whimpered through the monitor.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Oh, only a few days, a week at the most.’

  ‘I’m so sorry... they’re letting you go now, don’t worry about me, I’m fine – more than fine. Just got some training to do, shouldn’t take long then we’
ll be together.’

  To recap, Madeline has six effective weapons: Her knock out fart gas, two fingers that doubled as a tasar gun, a finger that transformed into a hypodermic needle to administer poisons, another finger that doubled as a powerful laser gun, her explosive motion and finally, the overwhelming benefits of her ‘Aphrodite ratio’ gorgeousness. This was indeed a comprehensive range of combat devices for such a delicate, unassuming, defenceless slip of a girl. However, past results were by sheer luck and cunning more than skilled use of her artillery. Because of her complete lack of fear, feistiness was Madeline’s way, certainly not by old fashioned stuffy discipline. However, in the eyes of the military, this was a serious weakness. Certain high ranking anonymous officials had noticed this inappropriate and irresponsible behaviour. They insisted that the matter of proper disciplinary training must be addressed whether she liked it or not. After all, she did carry a massive responsibility with her unique arsenal.

  Madeline decided to send a text to Adam, hoping that he still had his mobile on him. The text would have been something simple like ‘I love you’, but a serious problem became apparent.

  ‘Okay, what the hell have you done with my mole!?’ screamed Madeline.

  ‘Sorry, mole?’ asked a confused Nuttall.

  ‘The mole on my arm, it was there before you messed - my mouse for controlling all my functions. Without it, I can’t do anything,’ said Madeline sternly.

  The mole acted like a computer mouse, selecting menus in the top of her vision. These menus controlled just about everything including weapons, explosive motion, internet and… texting. Now, with new skin, the mole was gone and perfection was in its place. Nuttall called someone on his mobile phone.