Return to Wardate

by Bill Cornwell

  Five hours later and with almost no warning, the Perspex roof slid open, the jet flew upside down and Madeline literally fell out. |Ejector seats were, after all, very expensive - this was a much cheaper option.

  This was the third time she had been dropped or thrown out of a speeding jet plane and for an almost indestructible android it was becoming run-of-the-mill. Exactly where she was going to land – fall - drop was a complete mystery, the only clue for now was a large mountain far below her. It was a gently landing mainly because she fell in soft snow. She quickly discarded her chute and then removed her flight suit. It was cold, not Antarctica cold but considering the closeness to the equator it certainly wasn’t what she expected so she put her flight suit back on.

  ‘Landed then?’ said Nuttall through her internal audio.

  ‘Where the hell am I?’

  ‘Near Mount Chimborazo.’

  ‘Mount what?’

  ‘Chimborazo - the highest point on Earth.’

  ‘I thought that was Everest?’

  ‘No, Earth’s an oblate spheroid, the equator bulges.’

  ‘Earth has eight haemorrhoids and four bulges?’

  The connection was breaking up.

  ‘Never mind, just make your way to the summit – can’t miss it!’

  ‘Why? What do I do up there? Fly a kite?’ Madeline had every right to ask these questions even though she knew she wasn’t going to get a just reply.

  Despite the extreme adeptness of the pilot, she had landed a good four miles from the summit. This was not four miles of gentle meandering pathway but four miles horizontally and three miles vertically over ice, snow and rock shale. She was in no hurry so explosive motion was not engaged. The views were staggering, she enjoyed the stroll. She wondered what she could possibly do that surpassed everything else, at the highest point one Earth – if indeed it was. She still maintained that Mount Everest was higher. Surely she would have heard of Mount Chimborazo if it was the highest mountain - she would have been taught it at school.

  Slowly and gradually as she climbed, the sky became brighter, the snow therefore became brighter; her optics were finding it difficult to cope with the glare. Sunglasses were never thought necessary for an android, besides, hiding her gorgeous eyes would be such a waste.

  Finally after two hours, the clouds parted and the summit came clearly into view, only a mile or so now but this was mostly vertical. Her power reserves were holding up surprisingly well, mainly because she hadn’t used explosive motion. A good lesson had been learnt here – use less power and get more MPG.

  She sat for a while and soaked up the view, it was the ultimate in meditation, still, silent and euphoric. It was a while she had felt like this, it was almost as if she was on drugs – natures own drugs and more addictive than live itself.

  She raced the final stretch, she was eager to get to the summit – what was there? What awaited her? What vast eternal plan was Nuttall up to?

  The sky was extraordinarily bright, too bright to directly look at so she looked down. She was truly on top of the world, higher than any other human being – but she wasn’t human, she would let that small detail pass. She braved a glance at the sky, it was overly bright. She was convinced she could see faces in the brightness – more than faces, shapes of people leaning towards her - their white clothes blending in with the brightness of the sky. The people were beckoning her, she felt herself being drawn to them. It was a place not like any other place she had ever been, glorious, exhilarating and tangibly joyous. And then it started.

  Her mouth opened as it had done before: at fort Knox immediately before the gold heists and at the Great American Ballpark. An ultrasound sound blasted out from within her with the output power of a ‘Guns and Roses’ concert - many magnitudes more powerful than ever before. The immense power drain affected her whole system interfering with all her senses. Despite the sound being well beyond her hearing range, she could hear harmonics of the message: POPPY COCK… POPPY COCK… POPPY COCK….

  It was her name, no one else’s. The powerful inaudible sound had a dramatic effect. The ultrasound bounced off the brilliant white sky and radiated out and down in all directions. Virtually everyone in the world heard it, they all stopped what they were doing, stopped driving, stood still in the streets, woke up from their dreams, left their desks, stopped shopping, drinking, making love, playing football and looked up at the sky. The only ones to escape the calling were people who were at least 1000 feet below sea level - they either had to be in a submarine or near the Dead Sea. All over the world people stood like statues and began to chant in unison – POPPY COCK in their own tongue. Poppy Cock happened to be the same - Poppy Cock, in many other languages but there were exceptions: Poppy Hanh in German, Poppy Cazzo in Italian, Inso GeeBa in Chinese, Hash Hash Gorgika in Turkish and…

  Mark Titoo in Russian.

  They beckoned, they called to her, they wouldn’t let her go. It was mass manipulation; their righteousness drew on her soul and demanded it to stay in their world. Within seconds the sky began to darken, no longer was it dazzlingly bright but becoming dreary and grey. The figures in white faded away along with their faces. Clouds formed and it began to snow heavily. Her mouth continued to emit the sound and the wind began to blow.

  Now the sky was black, all the brightness dimmed and her only opportunity had gone with it. In an instant she realised everything there was to realise.

  The mystery of the name; Mark Titoo was now fully explained. Nuttall hinted at a cock up with the translation with the horn pointing towards Britain. The people of Britain had been subliminally conditioned with the Russian translation of Poppy Cock by mistake. The correct name was sent to America - Madeline heard it - her name, the word ‘poppycock’ at the end of the American message but the penny never dropped.

  The Russian translation of Poppy Cock was Mark Titoo (Maк пeтyx)

  For one brief moment, she had seen the light, she had seen a way home to Ward 8 - Back to the world where she was Poppy Cock, not Madeline Bull - A world where she was not permanently in a tank but experiencing the world with all her senses.

  The message concealed in the ultrasound sound had compelled everyone on Earth to call her back. Everyone had chanted Poppy Cock in all their languages, from all their lands. They could not let her go and so the white, brilliant light faded to grey. Nuttall’s intricate plan had worked a treat and prevented her only hope of awakening.

  She wept, she screamed and then settled into a stupor.

  ‘You evil bastard, Nuttall. You’ll pay for this,’ said Madeline solemnly.

  ‘Bastard maybe but not evil - you’ve got it all wrong…

  This world and everything in it is in the vast expanse of your mind – in your subconscious. It would cease to exist without you. We had to come up with a scheme that would prevent you from leaving and going back to Ward 8. We knew the time would eventually come for you to waken - we came up with a method of keeping you in here and keeping our world intact,’ Nuttall explained.

  Reality dawned, everything was patently clear in an instant. Madeline was in her own dream world – a reverie – a coma. She couldn’t argue with his morals, he was saving his world from extinction. If she did leave it behind, would she be committing genocide on an unprecedented scale. Adam would perish, Barton would perish, even the US President would dissolve away. But surely no one could hold her to account for abandoning a dream. She had another Adam in the real world but that was not the issue, she deeply loved the Adam in this world. He had saved her twice and even though he didn’t know it, he was about to save her again.

  Hypothermia didn’t happen to androids but other things did. She had used nearly all her power reserves up and with not a single power socket built into the mountain side she was going to run out of power very soon. She sat on a ledge and quietly spoke to Barton.

  ‘Ask Adam if he will fetch me, please.’

  Chapter 39: A Honda generator

  This was certainly a tall
order for Adam. At the moment he was somewhere in Worcester. Ecuador was a long, long way away. He had used up a lot of his savings in getting around the globe to save Madeline but she was worth every penny he had. He would never hesitate, not for an instant, galloping, sometimes recklessly, to her rescue. As we know, he liked to think he was her knight in shining armour.

  Within 24 hours, Adam was coming into land at Quito airport situated on a plateau nestling between the mountains. It had been a long and expensive flight but he was now used to such inconveniences. He hired a car and drove the hundred or so miles to Guaranda. It was not particularly a good time for Adam to arrive in town as a carnival had been raving for many days. A mountain rescue helicopter was available but due to the celebrations, no pilots were at present sober enough to fly. Adam had no choice but to find a hotel and enjoy the spectacle. There was no particular emergency as he knew Madeline would have merely shut down awaiting a charge. No doubt Poppy would be working her way through several television box sets or browsing the internet looking for clothes and shoes. Barton was always close by if she wanted to talk to someone – surely she wouldn’t mind if just for once Adam let his hair down a bit and joined in with the festivities.

  For Madeline or more so Poppy now, this wasn’t the case at all. Her subconscious had revealed the hard truth - everything about her was not reality but an imaginary world. An imaginary world that was as real as reality itself. She couldn’t refute the awful logic – never before had she thought that wakening from a dream world could be classed as mass murder or worse - genocide. There was no denying it, she liked her new life as a super being android. She was becoming infamous or famous, no one was really sure which it was and she had everything although actually she had nothing. Did she want to wake from this world? Did she want to leave this particular Adam here? She had a ‘like a Dad’ Barton, did she want to loose him too?

  She couldn’t bring herself to watch a movie or a box set or even turn on her entertainment system, she was too troubled. No longer could she look at the view from the top of the mountain or listen to the wind and rain because contact had broken and she was now just floating in her tank as Poppy.

  She wanted to die, that would resolve everything.

  If she could have opened her eyes she would have seen a helicopter approaching. She would have seen the rope ladder drop and a man climb down it. If should could have turned on her senses, she would have felt him attach a harness to her and the winch lifting her into the back of the helicopter. On inspection, she was clearly dead although not blue with the cold or stiff with rigor mortis. As usual there was no pulse and obviously she wasn’t breathing. They felt guilty that they hadn’t got to her sooner but it was one hell of a carnival.

  Adam waited and watched as the helicopter landed. They broke it to him gently in the best broken English they could but Adam didn’t seem at all bothered that his girlfriend was dead - he was just pleased to see her. They suspected that their English was so bad that he had completely misunderstood them so they gestured somehow with their hands to indicate her being dead.

  As Adam expected, they took her to the local mortuary – he naturally accompanied them.

  The remnants of the carnival were still reverberating around the town which made Adam’s task a little easier. He waited for night fall and then knocked on the mortuary door. A sorrowful story about desperately wanting to see his dead girlfriend didn’t really translate but the mortician, whoever he was, got the gist of his request. He left Adam alone with Madeline through respect. Now the hard bit, thought Adam. A back door would have been ideal but there wasn’t one, he had to go back the way he had come in, it was impossible. There was only one solution: He fumbled in her flight suit pockets, eventually found the charging lead and plugged her in. This was not going to be a quick process so Adam had to put on a performance. After ten minutes, the mortician returned. Adam did some waving of his hands and a little bit of wailing to add effect.

  ‘I’ll leave you a little longer,’ said the mortician in his own language.

  Four times he returned to the same performance. Finally after 43 minutes, Madeline stirred a little and then suddenly she was hugging and kissing Adam. Her condition was hardly fully charged but was enough for now.

  ‘Adam! my beautiful, beautiful hero. Where am I,’ asked Madeline.

  ‘The morgue, where else do you think you’d be in the state you were in?’

  Not so long ago she wanted to die and now she was in a morgue, perhaps, on reflection, she didn’t really want to die.

  ‘Creepy or what!’ said Madeline.

  ‘Yes… definitely! Let’s get out of here!’

  At that moment the mortician entered the room.

  ‘Can you believe it, she suddenly woke up,’ said Adam.

  ‘Yes, I feel fine,’ said Madeline.

  The mortician hadn’t a clue what they were saying, it didn’t really matter. He couldn’t speak because his jaw had just dropped to the floor.

  ‘Thanks for taking care of me,’ said Madeline as they walked out of the morgue. Madeline had just enough power to walk to the car, climb in and put on her seat belt before she died again.

  ‘Shit, shit!’ From past experience he knew his shoulder would give him weeks of jip from having to carry her.

  Carrying an android, no matter how hard you try, never goes unnoticed. Many people were about and couldn’t help but notice a beautiful but dead female on Adam’s shoulder.

  ‘She’s had a good time,’ said Adam several times.

  This seemed to be enough for everyone to nod, smile and continue on their way. Finally in his motel room, Adam flopped her on the bed and plugged her in again.

  One thing Adam was not immediately aware of in this particular small Ecuadorian town was the poor state of the domestic electricity supply. There was normally plenty to run a TV or lights or fridge or laptop but Madeline took a lot more than normal. The antiquated power socket that the travel adaptor was loosely plugged into immediately started smoking and after a few seconds, blew the trip or fuses or sub station.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Things were not going well. Now what was he to do? Ideally he needed a three kilowatt petrol generator. Despite the motel receptionist having a reasonable command of the English language, she had no idea what Adam was on about. He resorted to pointing at a power socket on the wall and saying the word generator several times.

  ‘Un generador!’

  ‘Yes, where can I get one?’

  ‘Why you want it?’ asked the receptionist.

  ‘To charge up my girlfriend,’ said Adam curtly.

  ‘You follow,’ said the receptionist.

  Adam’s luck was in. She took him to a lock-up around the back of the motel and wheeled out a spanking new Honda 3 kW generator. Adam tried to take it off her hands…

  ‘Cuarenta… sixty dollars please!’

  Adam had no choice but to hand over the money. He was pretty certain that cuarenta was not sixty but he was not in the mood for arguing.

  ‘And twenty dollars for the gasoline.’

  Adam begrudgingly handed over another couple of notes. When he returned to his room he realised that the lead wasn’t long enough to reach from the outside balcony to the bed.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit!

  ‘Extension lead?’ Adam asked the same receptionist.

  Again, apparently she didn’t understand so Adam gestured ‘length’ with his arms apart and then pointed to the same wall socket.

  ‘Un extension!’ said the receptionist.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ said Adam clearly getting frustrated.

  In the same lock up, the receptionist fished out a coiled up extension lead.

  ‘Diez… twenty dollars please.’

  ‘You’re taking the piss,’ said Adam, hoping she couldn’t translate.

  ‘No, just dollars!’

  Finally Madeline, dead on the bed, was hooked up to the generator on the balcony outside the room. She took every bit the
little petrol engine generator could muster but it was a Honda – Adam had every confidence in it. Eventually Madeline came alive again. She would have to stay on charge all night but at least now she could talk and most importantly – be with her dream version of Adam.

  ‘It’s been a bad, bad day,’ Adam complained.

  ‘I’m sorry, I expect far too much from you,’ said Madeline.

  It had been a bad, bad day for her too but she kept it to herself. She gave him a hug and a long kiss. She knew inevitably she had to ask him some very awkward questions but she didn’t know how to start - Adam started for her.

  ‘I suppose you’re worth it.’

  ‘Only suppose? ... Adam, sweetheart, do you… dream?’

  ‘What a silly question, of course I dream.’

  ‘But how can you?’ asked Madeline directly.

  ‘I know what you’re getting at. Because I’m in your dream, how can I dream as well – I don’t know, I just do.’

  ‘So you know? You know this is all a dream – you and all this is just in my mind?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Adam.

  ‘You do?’ said Madeline puzzled.

  ‘As long as you are here though, I’m real, I exist, Barton exists, you - Madeline exists, Nuttall exists... We are as real as sunshine and rain but when you leave, we will all just cease.’

  ‘You know all this and you never said anything?’ said Madeline.

  ‘You had to find it out for yourself.’