by Heide Goody
“Go ponies!” I cried, and sent them forward to stomp on the bots with their hoofs, but their powerful blows glanced off. The bots were heavily armoured. A pony fell, stunned.
I waved a Jaffle swarm forward. “Tackle these suckers from the inside!”
Tiny insects inserted themselves between the metal plates of the bots. Within moments, all movement ceased. More insects piled inside, heaving the bots apart from within. Pieces of metal pinged across the pathways as the bots exploded.
“Great work team!” I yelled.
The Empties cleaning up Jaffle Park were absorbed into the group
Ahead was Jaffle Tech’s office. I could see people pressed against the windows on every floor. Was Paulette watching? Was Levi?
A group of security guards with face protection, riot shields and plippers ran towards us. They charged in formation, shields held together to form a wedge shape to penetrate the group.
“Brace yourselves!” I shouted.
Sure, the plippers wouldn’t work on many of the Empties but they were using them to take down the larger creatures in our mob. I still didn’t know what would happen if one of the invisible beams connected with my Jaffle Port. I knew instinctively they were coming straight for me. If I went down, that would be it. Game over. Operation Sunrise.
And then the wedge of attackers crumbled. Through the diffused gaze of the Jaffle swarms I saw it fall apart from the inside. Security guards tumbled away like bowling pins. The centre could not hold. Through it all ran one guard, plipping his colleagues. He swivelled and plipped those still upright before zapping the last straggler.
My crowd washed around him until he was before me. He lifted his visor.
“Levi!” I shrieked, hugging him.
“This is most irregular,” he said, “but it’s good to see you’re raising hell again Alice.”
He threw aside his helmet as we pressed on to the front doors of Jaffle Tech.
“I have no idea how you did it,” Levis shouted over the thunder of our march. “Or even what it is you’re doing, but it’s amazing, yabetcha. What’s next?”
I stared at the Jaffle building. “We need to get inside and stop them.”
“I assumed you came for your beau.”
“Beau?”
“That Helberg feller. Held in the building on terrorism charges. He’s one of them three percenters, so I don’t think they’ve taken to him too kindly.”
“Come on gang, into the building!” I shouted. At that moment steel security shutters clanged down across all of the visible doors and windows.
The group stopped, washed up against the doors like surf on a rocky shore. They were waiting to know what happened next. We needed to get into the building, but it looked like a fortress.
“What now?” said Levi.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The ground was shaking. Levi and I felt it at the same time. We both looked down and at each other in confusion.
He glanced back the way we’d come. “Oh, poop,” he said, with quietly intense feeling.
The animals from the zoo had taken a little while to catch up, but they were here now. Five elephants thundered across Jaffle Park, trumpeting loudly to announce their arrival.
“Scatter!” I yelled. Our mob parted, reassembling behind the elephants. Gently I steered the colossal animals against the shutters around Jaffle’s main reception. There was the sound of steel being forced out of shape, followed by the shattering of glass.
We marched inside.
***
Chapter 40 – 24 minutes until Operation Sunrise
In the lobby, the elephants continued to wreck things, as if they’d got a taste for it. They used their trunks to throw the enormous plant pots against the internal walls. It was interesting to see the walls giving up before the plant pots.
“Wiggler? Is that you?” I marvelled. The piglets from the piglet orchestra strolled into the reception area. Wherever they’d been, they’d finally caught up with the Empties, dogs, cats, horses, elephants, insects, birds and kangaroos. Not forgetting the llama. “It’s good to have you on board,” I said.
“Alice, isn’t it?” asked the receptionist frostily. “You’re not wearing your uniforms. The dress code is very important. We only get one chance to make a first impression. So, who’s your manager? I’ll need to know so I may report you for breaching the dress code.”
I was momentarily lost for words. The state of extreme alarm, the smashing down of the shutters, followed by the demolition of the entire front of the building by five elephants – along with the mass incursion of hundreds of Empties and animals – hadn’t been enough to shake her from the regular routine of getting on my case. Or perhaps it was the last refuge of a mind refusing to accept what was going on. Dust and debris were falling onto her immaculate hair, but she didn’t even flinch.
“Paulette,” I said. “Although it’s possible she’s got bigger problems. I’m just going to—”
I stopped. At the edges of the lobby area, peering around corners or from the relative safety of upper stairwells, were Jaffle employees. Those too curious to flee or those whose brains had been dialled down so low their instinct for self-preservation hadn’t kicked in. I realised, with great joy, that Hattie was among them.
The group parted to let me move through. I clapped her on the shoulder, and gave her a mental hug as well. I hoped, somewhere deep down, she knew it was me. She held a broom in her hand.
“Still cleaning, huh?” I said.
“What’s going on?” said a nearby Jaffle employee. The look she gave me was somewhere between terror and hope.
“Well, Brandine,” I said. “We’ve come to stop Operation Sunrise.”
“The software rollout?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re an evil.”
“Are they?”
“Yes, and we’ve got to stand up to the Man.”
“What man?”
“The Man,” I said. “Where are they holding Helberg?”
“Who?”
“Basement two,” Levi told me.
“Right, we’ll go and get him.” I hesitated, considering the time. We had twenty-three minutes until the software update. We needed to get to Rufus, or Henderson, or whoever had control of the rollout. And we had to get to Rufus’s big red button. But I also needed Helberg, and not just for personal reasons.
“We need to split up,” I said. “Levi, you’re going to show me the way to Helberg. I want—”
What I wanted was someone else to take the lead with the rest of the group. I reached out to see which of our minds might be strong enough. There was one that stood out as being smart and wilful.
“Wiggler?”
Pigs were intelligent creatures. Perhaps this piglet was the most intelligent of those here.
I concentrated on passing control to Wiggler, with the solemn instruction this was not a free-for-all wrecking spree (those elephants might need reining in), but rather a strategic operation to seize control of the building, floor by floor. Remarkably, Wiggler seemed to get the message. Moments later the elephants removed the door to the stairs. The group flowed upwards like a single organism.
“How do you do that?” asked Levi. “Is it magic?”
“What’s magic?” I said.
Levi and I went for the elevators. I pressed basement two and the doors closed. “Did you know bacon comes from pigs?” I said.
“I did know that,” he said.
“Hmmm.”
When the elevator doors re-opened we were in a quiet, clinical space, decorated in white with stainless steel highlights. Well it would have been quiet if it wasn’t for Helberg’s hollering.
“You have no right to do this to me! Get away from me with your data-whoring soul-sucking crapola, you filthy bastards!”
“I’m sure there’s never no call for that kind of language,” said Levi.
It took no time to track Helberg’s vo
ice. Just around a corner the room opened out into a lab space. Helberg was in the middle, strapped to a reclining metal chair. Two technicians leaned over him with things that may have been medical, designed to scan his vital signs; or they might have been instruments of torture, to burn or flay the flesh from his body. He was thrashing and resisting as if burning or flaying was on the agenda.
The technicians looked up.
Too late it occurred to me the technicians might have plippers. Even as the thought formed, Levi stepped forward and plipped them himself. They folded to the floor.
“Helberg!” I shouted, and hurried to release him from the restraints. Maybe giving him a big smooshy kiss on the cheek hindered the freeing of his bonds, but I couldn’t help myself.
“You’re back?” he said.
“I’m back,” I grinned.
“And you have your own mind?” he asked, suspicious. He sat up, rubbed his wrist and pointed at Levi. “What’s he doing here? He’s a Jaffle guy.”
“He’s helping,” I said firmly. “This is Levi. He keeps mice. Keeps them safe.”
“That’s relevant?”
“I think so,” I said. “We need him. There are just sixteen minutes to stop them rolling out this software update.”
Helberg nodded. “I know, I know.” He sidestepped me and clicked his fingers at Levi. “My jacket!”
Helberg shrugged the jacket on over his coveralls and felt in its pockets. He pulled out his homemade plipper. A couple of the soldered wires had come loose and he forced them back into place.
“Just what we need: another plipper,” I said. “There’s plenty of them around.”
“Come on, we need to move!” Levi was insistent.
“It’s not just a plipper,” said Helberg.
He pointed it at a technician, who was sitting on the floor, head lolling. Helberg pressed the button and the technician’s head came up. He looked around.
“Oh, I think I had a funny turn. What’s going on?”
Levi plipped him again. The technician slumped once more.
“Wow, you made an unplipper,” I said.
“It’s not just an unplipper either,” said Helberg. “It’s a plipper, unplipper, and everything in between. I worked it up from the device you brought me. As I told you, the plipper works on accessing a port and altering the access levels—”
“Is it possible this conversation can happen while we’re moving?” said Levi.
“I don’t see why not,” said Helberg.
“Good!” Levi herded us out.
“Inherent in the plipper code is the security key for the Jaffle software,” Helberg continued as we walked. “Theoretically a plipper can unlock and relock any access rights.”
“I understand,” I said.
“And once the upgrade is— How long we got?”
“Fourteen minutes.”
“Right. Once the upgrade is rolled out, it will be a double encryption system: keys passed from both ends. But for the next fourteen minutes, the plipper code allows me to use this device to reset any Jaffle Port.”
“You’ve got a magic wand that will work for the next fourteen minutes,” said Levi. “Gotcha.”
“They made sure they told me about the changes in protocols while I was strapped to their table. Honestly, for people who aren’t actually villains they sure like to gloat like supervillains. Now if we can use the plipper code to distribute a message to all Empties in the next fourteen minutes…”
“I knew you had a plan,” I grinned.
We reached the elevators. An alarming banging sound was vibrating the metal. I wondered if someone had put an elephant in one of the elevators, or whether they were simply destroying them. I reached out with my mind and found an elephant joyfully pounding the elevator doors to make the car inoperable. I took my mental hat off to Wiggler.
“We’ll take the stairs,” I said. “The rest of the group is up there.”
“What group?” asked Helberg, falling into step beside me.
“My animal army. Turns out I can connect with other people using their Jaffle Ports.”
Helberg looked confused. “Surely you’ve always been able to do that? Ever since the first Jaffle Ports, they’ve been used for communication.”
We reached the ground floor. The place was deserted apart from Hattie, who had found a broom and was quietly tidying the place. Even as a not quite Empty, cleaning was in her DNA. She swept around the reception area, making piles of broken glass and shattered security bots.
“You can put the broom down now,” I said and took her by the hand. I drew her up the stairs with us.
On the second floor we found a Jaffle swarm keeping wandering and potentially rebellious employees back.
“Let me show you what I mean,” I said to Helberg.
I held out my hand. The swarm flew apart, then re-joined and hovered briefly in the shape of a smiling face.
“That’s mighty unnerving, Alice,” said Levi.
I dispersed the swarm back to the rest of the group. Helberg was making noises like someone who’d bitten into a bulb of garlic.
“You did that?” he spluttered eventually.
“Yes,” I said.
“That swarm, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“You said people. So you really mean anything with a Jaffle Port? At the same time?”
“Yep.”
“In the past, they’d have burned you at the stake for that.”
“Who?” Are you talking about the Man again?”
Helberg was still agog. “So, how? Did you get some sort of weird upgrade?”
“No,” I said. “I just sat under a tree and thought about it. The whale helped me.”
“The whale. Tree. Right. To an ordinary person that might all sound like complete nonsense.”
We’d caught up with the rest of the mob.
“There’s an alpaca on the stairs,” said Helberg numbly.
“Where?” I said.
He pointed. “Next to the kangaroos.”
“I thought that was a llama,” I said.
“I think llamas are bigger,” said Levi. “And alpacas have more curved ears…”
As the two men debated the differences between llamas and alpacas, I absorbed some of the mob’s updates. “The exec floor is the next one up. Everything’s in lockdown since the alarms went off and there’s a sealed door across the stairs. The space is too narrow for the elephants, so we can’t bash it in.
“Elephants. Right.” said Helberg, nodding like I hadn’t just said something crazy.
“Maybe I could get the eagles to carry me up,” I pondered.
“I don’t think they’d be able to carry your weight.”
“I might have an idea,” said Levi, looking up at the ceiling space.
“Go on,” I said.
“You know the mice. One of the reasons they thrive in this building is they can move freely through the entire space, via the wiring conduits. They bypass every single piece of security.
“Mice don’t have Jaffle Ports,” I pointed out.
“No, we’d need another animal that could fit through the conduits,” said Levi.
Wiggler appeared at my feet, his big glistening eyes looking up at me.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“He’s a mite bigger than a mouse,” said Levi. “But I really think this could work if your porky friend is biddable.”
I crouched to explain the plan to Wiggler. “Through that panel, along the ducts and round to the other side and open the door.”
He snorted. I had no idea if he’d understood a word. Levi pulled away an access grille in the wall and Wiggler trotted through. Maybe he did understand. The rest of the piggy-wig orchestra followed.
“Does it need all of you?” I called after them. A series of oinks echoed back.
“Bacon comes from pigs,” I told Helberg.
“It … does,” he agreed, slowly coming round from his general state of shock.
She rocked on her heels. “Oh my goodness!” she said, putting a hand to her head. “I feel quite discombobulated! Why are we all here in the stairwell?”
She paused and thought for a moment. If my experience was anything to go by, she was working her way through a head full of memories which felt like they belonged to someone else.
“She’s back to normal,” I said to Helberg.
Hattie turned slowly and looked at Levi. “You beautiful man!” She clasped his head between her hands and pulled him to her, planting a huge kiss on his lips. She made an appreciative noise and dived back for another kiss.
“Did you put her back to how she was before, or onto a fully functioning level?”
“Fully functioning,” he said. “Seems right.”
“Ah.”
I could see Hattie was dealing with the same onslaught of new experiences I had been through weeks before. And quite thoroughly.
“Hattie!” I pulled at her arm. “Hattie, we need to focus on stopping the rollout.”
She smoothed down her coveralls, giving a small cough as she stepped away from Levi. He looked mildly shocked, but also just a little bit pleased with himself. His little moustache positively bristled with pride.
“You can go back to – um, that, afterwards,” I told her.
“But he’s so…”
“He probably is.”
“And his arms…”
“I know.”
There was a frenzied scrabbling above our heads and we all looked up.
“Sounds as though Wiggler and company are on the right tracks,” I said.
“Nine minutes,” commented Helberg, as he went about randomly unplipping the Empties among us.
The scrabbling continued. It zig-zagged across the ceiling and dipped down the walls. It climbed again, accompanied by an excited grunting sound. The grunting amplified as the scrabbling moved around every point of the compass. Our heads tracked it, as if we were all joined by string. Eventually there was a change in tone and the clatter receded .
“I guess they’ve gone,” I said.