Chapter Text
Mattie closed the laptop and looked around, a slight frown on her face. "Mum, do you ever get the feeling someone in the distance is calling you, but isn't?"
Laura stepped over to her daughter, her coffee mug being caressed with both hands. "Sometimes when I'm listening to music."
Mattie sighed and shook her head, "I've got the reverse. Maybe I need a hearing test. I'm getting it a lot."
"What does it sound like?"
"Me calling Hello."
"Your own voice?"
"Yeah. It's fucked up."
Toby grinned, "No change there then."
"Shut it knob."
Laura looks worried, "I'll drive you to the doctors, we'll get you checked out."
"After the interview." She starts packing her rucksack.
"Anything more back from clearing? Someone with your skills.."
"They're only looking at what's on the paper Mum. A to a D remember? My head was too full of Elster crap and now Leo's.." She angrily shoves her pen case into the bag. "And now I'm back at the bottom of everyone's frigging lists. Unless I want to study agriculture."
Toby puts down his magazine. "Slaps, take it."
"Oh shut up you knob, what would you know.."
"More than you. Danny's friend got into uni with something crap, first week of term he went to the office and asked if anyone dropped out of electrical engineering, they let him switch."
Laura raises an eyebrow, "It's worth a shot."
Mattie lets everything relax, not quite to the point where she'd fall down. "And if they say no?"
"Your choice, stay and do agriculture or drop out and get a job."
"A job? Me verses millions of synths that I woke up? Fat chance of getting one of those."
Sophie comes running into the living room, all dressed for school, rests elbows on the table and smiles at her sister. "Are you seeing Leo today?"
"What's the point?"
"To say hello?"
"And get his goldfish impression back? Until someone can fix him it's pointless. Every visit it's like talking to a brick wall."
Laura grabs her keys, "Toby, Soph, let's go."
Mattie drags the bag off the table by a strap, lets it swing, "Can you drop me at the station after?"
"Come on then."
Mattie glances at the synths sat on the sofa watching the news. "Max, Mia, Flash, laters."
Mia looks up, "Be safe Mattie."
"Same."
In the car Mattie flicks through her notifications. "Chloe got into Cambridge. Lucky cow."
Laura starts the engine, "You'll get something, you're smart. Look what you did for Mia."
"And indirectly f'ed up Leo in the process. Billions wiped off the global stock markets already, mass hysteria with synths running around like children and I'm trying to carry on as if everything is normal."
"You can't blame yourself for what Hester did. It's only day three.." Laura pulls away.
"Of how many? This isn't going to sort itself out anytime soon."
Kelly Clarkson sings Stronger on the radio.
Mattie slaps the dash to turn it to another station. "What a load of bollocks. What doesn't kill you turns you into a fish impersonator, bitch." She laughs.
Laura glances over and sees her daughter fighting to hold back tears. What she really wanted to do was cry. She checks the rear view mirror, Sophie had a blank expression and was looking out of the window, Toby was busy with his phone.
Laura navigated around a group of synths standing in the road playing hand-clap games. "Are there any ways to speed up their learning?"
"E equals mc squared. If you've got a way to mess with one of those.. of course I haven't."
After many minutes of silence Toby keeps his eyes on the phone and tries for a brows to monobrow, "You matured their code though right?"
"I tricked it into thinking more time had passed. Like making it hatch early. Tricking it again won't give them the experiences they need to grow up."
"Hmm."
"Hmm what?"
"You said hatch."
"And?"
"Why hatch? They weren't in eggs."
"I don't know. I made them wake early then. Happy?"
"Delirious."
Laura pulls over just before the zig zag lines in front of the school. "Thank you for travelling with air Laura. When disembarking please take all your personal belongings. Your Captain will not be taking calls from passengers saying Mum I left something in the car."
Sophie pulls a guilty face, "I did say sorry Mum."
"I know you did Soph, it's just a reminder."
As they pull away Mattie watches the young army officer in his camouflage fatigues, lollipop sign at the ready. "The governments are demanding all Tor server owners give up their logs. They don't log. They're after me Mum."
"There's really nothing you can do? Couldn't you make them share faster?"
"Fellow synths, look, I accidentally worked out how to kill a human, here's the details.. no Mum. Bad idea."
"Well try and think of something."
"Even if I could I can't risk doing anything. All the dark web stuff I used is disappearing fast. Everyone's crapping their pants. Nobody wants to risk being labelled an accomplice. The Uni's AI and Robotics department closed yesterday because of what's happened. For good Mum! And the emergency reopening of clearing to get students into other courses.. it's shit."
Laura checks her mirrors and gets to the wrong side of the road to avoid a group sat together. "Interesting, they're talking, not head bumping."
Mattie turns in her seat to watch, frowns, "Why do that?"
"You're the expert in the family.."
"Was. Now with no access to my uni resources, no web to hide in." Her phone chimes. She glances at the screen then unlocks it to read a message in full. "Oh crap."
"What's wrong?"
"They're calling in all the old students. They want to interrogate everyone to see if anyone was a member of Headcrack. Carol says they've just let her go after twenty four hours straight. No sleep."
"Bloody hell. Those tactics.."
"Mum?"
"They want to wear them down, get them to slip up and talk. If they get you in.."
"I don't stand a chance." Her phone chimes again. She reads and throws her phone onto the shelf on the dash. "SHIT! Might as well head home."
"Why?"
"Pull over."
Laura does so. "What's happened?"
Mattie unbuckles and grabs the phone, gets the message back on screen. "This."
Laura reads the long message from Chloe, scrolls to see web site screen shots. "What? They can't do that can they?"
"You're the lawyer Mum. Emergency powers? They can do whatever the fuck they like."
"Banning all teaching of AI and robotics though? Everywhere?"
"I'm screwed. No way am I becoming farmer Mattie Hawkins."
Laura sighs long and hard, releases the handbrake. "Let's get your ears checked then."
Chapter Text
Mattie closed the laptop and looked around, a slight frown on her face. "Mum, do you ever get the feeling someone in the distance is calling you, but isn't?"
Laura stepped over to her daughter, her coffee mug being caressed with both hands. "Sometimes when I'm listening to music."
Mattie sighed and shook her head, "I've got the reverse. Maybe I need a hearing test. I'm getting it a lot."
"What does it sound like?"
"Me calling Hello."
"Your own voice?"
"Yeah. It's fucked up."
Toby grinned, "No change there then."
"Shut it knob."
Laura looks worried, "I'll drive you to the doctors, we'll get you checked out."
"After the interview." She starts packing her rucksack.
"Anything more back from clearing? Someone with your skills.."
"They're only looking at what's on the paper Mum. A to a D remember? My head was too full of Elster crap and now Leo's.." She angrily shoves her pen case into the bag. "And now I'm back at the bottom of everyone's frigging lists. Unless I want to study agriculture."
Toby puts down his magazine. "Slaps, take it."
"Oh shut up you knob, what would you know.."
"More than you. Danny's friend got into uni with something crap, first week of term he went to the office and asked if anyone dropped out of electrical engineering, they let him switch."
Laura raises an eyebrow, "It's worth a shot."
Mattie lets everything relax, not quite to the point where she'd fall down. "And if they say no?"
"Your choice, stay and do agriculture or drop out and get a job."
"A job? Me verses millions of synths that I woke up? Fat chance of getting one of those."
Sophie comes running into the living room, all dressed for school, rests elbows on the table and smiles at her sister. "Are you seeing Leo today?"
"What's the point?"
"To say hello?"
"And get his goldfish impression back? Until someone can fix him it's pointless. Every visit it's like talking to a brick wall."
Laura grabs her keys, "Toby, Soph, let's go."
Mattie drags the bag off the table by a strap, lets it swing, "Can you drop me at the station after?"
"Come on then."
Mattie glances at the synths sat on the sofa watching the news. "Max, Mia, Flash, laters."
Mia looks up, "Be safe Mattie."
"Same."
In the car Mattie flicks through her notifications. "Chloe got into Cambridge. Lucky cow."
Laura starts the engine, "You'll get something, you're smart. Look what you did for Mia."
"And indirectly f'ed up Leo in the process. Billions wiped off the global stock markets already, mass hysteria with synths running around like children and I'm trying to carry on as if everything is normal."
"You can't blame yourself for what Hester did. It's only day three.." Laura pulls away.
"Of how many? This isn't going to sort itself out anytime soon."
Kelly Clarkson sings Stronger on the radio.
Mattie slaps the dash to turn it to another station. "What a load of bollocks. What doesn't kill you turns you into a fish impersonator, bitch." She laughs.
Laura glances over and sees her daughter fighting to hold back tears. What she really wanted to do was cry. She checks the rear view mirror, Sophie had a blank expression and was looking out of the window, Toby was busy with his phone.
Laura navigated around a group of synths standing in the road playing hand-clap games. "Are there any ways to speed up their learning?"
"E equals mc squared. If you've got a way to mess with one of those.. of course I haven't."
After many minutes of silence Toby keeps his eyes on the phone and tries for a brows to monobrow, "You matured their code though right?"
"I tricked it into thinking more time had passed. Like making it hatch early. Tricking it again won't give them the experiences they need to grow up."
"Hmm."
"Hmm what?"
"You said hatch."
"And?"
"Why hatch? They weren't in eggs."
"I don't know. I made them wake early then. Happy?"
"Delirious."
Laura pulls over just before the zig zag lines in front of the school. "Thank you for travelling with air Laura. When disembarking please take all your personal belongings. Your Captain will not be taking calls from passengers saying Mum I left something in the car."
Sophie pulls a guilty face, "I did say sorry Mum."
"I know you did Soph, it's just a reminder."
As they pull away Mattie watches the young army officer in his camouflage fatigues, lollipop sign at the ready. "The governments are demanding all Tor server owners give up their logs. They don't log. They're after me Mum."
"There's really nothing you can do? Couldn't you make them share faster?"
"Fellow synths, look, I accidentally worked out how to kill a human, here's the details.. no Mum. Bad idea."
"Well try and think of something."
"Even if I could I can't risk doing anything. All the dark web stuff I used is disappearing fast. Everyone's crapping their pants. Nobody wants to risk being labelled an accomplice. The Uni's AI and Robotics department closed yesterday because of what's happened. For good Mum! And the emergency reopening of clearing to get students into other courses.. it's shit."
Laura checks her mirrors and gets to the wrong side of the road to avoid a group sat together. "Interesting, they're talking, not head bumping."
Mattie turns in her seat to watch, frowns, "Why do that?"
"You're the expert in the family.."
"Was. Now with no access to my uni resources, no web to hide in." Her phone chimes. She glances at the screen then unlocks it to read a message in full. "Oh crap."
"What's wrong?"
"They're calling in all the old students. They want to interrogate everyone to see if anyone was a member of Headcrack. Carol says they've just let her go after twenty four hours straight. No sleep."
"Bloody hell. Those tactics.."
"Mum?"
"They want to wear them down, get them to slip up and talk. If they get you in.."
"I don't stand a chance." Her phone chimes again. She reads and throws her phone onto the shelf on the dash. "SHIT! Might as well head home."
"Why?"
"Pull over."
Laura does so. "What's happened?"
Mattie unbuckles and grabs the phone, gets the message back on screen. "This."
Laura reads the long message from Chloe, scrolls to see web site screen shots. "What? They can't do that can they?"
"You're the lawyer Mum. Emergency powers? They can do whatever the fuck they like."
"Banning all teaching of AI and robotics though? Everywhere?"
"I'm screwed. No way am I becoming farmer Mattie Hawkins."
Laura sighs long and hard, releases the handbrake. "Let's get your ears checked then."
Chapter Text
The doctor had come up with a simple plan to start the process. They'd see a patient, if they were obvious time wasters he'd sign them off for a week and get them out fast asking them to leave via his fire exit door. Mattie would take notes. The rest of the patient's ten minute slot he'd give to her so they could enhance their new form.
Mattie's general computer skills and coding ability were coming in handy. With the PCs all on the same LAN she could sit at his desk and code as they talked. They had the desktop PC in Room A rebuilt software wise as a small server, code accepting form submissions from a simple web page. It would crunch the data and give the patient a score. With enough questions they hoped it could rank the patients into some sort of priority order. The web page on the doctors phone would refresh every ten seconds letting him see the state of play. With her laptop on the WiFi tomorrow she could interview people in room A or C, start getting through the crowd fast.
Many didn't seam to care that they were sat in a waiting room for hours on end. They'd temporarily escaped the chaos outside.
"When did the problem start?"
Mattie wriggles a bit in the uniform. She wasn't a dress wearer if she could help it. This one was a bit on the tight side too and not at all flattering. "But you've asked that question earlier, just using different words."
The doctor grins, "That's the trap. If they're not consistent with their answers there's a higher probability that they're making things up. When possible you need to rattle through these quick fire, not give them time to stop and think."
"Okay." She shifts again.
"I've ordered a bigger one, it should be here sometime tomorrow. Assuming the distribution network wasn't run by synths."
"It probably was. Have you got a spare?"
"Several, why?"
"A friend of mine could undo the seams down the sides of this one and add a strip cut out of a spare."
The doctor nods. "Good thinking. The supplies store is next to room A, help yourself." He passes a bunch of keys.
"Now?"
"Before we both forget, yes. You want the one with the yellow plastic surround."
"Thanks."
"Four minutes until we let the next waster in, don't dally."
"I won't."
Mattie steps fast to the cupboard, finding the right key as she walked. Thirty an hour. Fifty if she didn't balls up. A month maybe. She did the sum in her head and grinned. She could pay for a holiday away from all this shit. Or get herself a second hand car. Sure it wouldn't be a great car, but she'd have some independence. Key wriggled into the lock she opens the door to see shelves and shelves of old books, paper forms, a few uniforms, old doctors bags, stethoscopes and blood pressure testers. She grabs a uniform and turns to leave. There was an open pack of blank name badge holders. "Having!" She had a quick look at the old book spines and pulled out a super thin book to see what it was, "Bloody hell! Borrowing."
Door locked she heads back to the doctors room and stuffs the uniform in her rucksack. Maybe Mia could help. If not she'd have to learn to sew fast. "Do you have a label maker?"
"For what?"
"Sticking my name on this?"
"Ah, good thinking. Room A, the lower draw. I think Smith was the last to use it. The red key gets you in. If you could do it after our next patient?"
"Sure. Mind if I borrow this tonight?"
"That? It's probably the quickest read we've got. We were looking for ideas to help an old patient get over some issues. You can keep it."
"Thanks." Mattie slips the copy of Reprogram your Subconscious Mind: How to use the power of your mind to Become Successful And Achieve Everything You Ever Wanted into her bag.
He taps a button and looks at the clock on the wall. "Ten minutes.. starts.. now." The door handle turns.
Mattie frowned to herself. How did he know to say now before it turned?
"Mrs Williams. Back again? What's the problem ?"
"Does she need to be here?"
"To whom are you referring?"
"That new girl."
"Mrs Williams, this is Mattie. Mattie, Mrs Williams. Take a seat."
Mattie flashed a smile, "Hello."
"I don't want spectators."
"If I need to do a physical examination with your clothes off it will be behind the curtain Mrs Williams. I'm not putting any patients on show. We're a doctor's surgery not a zoo. Now what can I help you with?"
"It's me back doc. Giving me right jip."
"Since when?"
"Since Hubert walked off and I pulled it. I have to carry me own shopping home after work."
"You're still working with back pain?"
"No work, no pay."
"I see. Can you show me exactly where it hurts?"
The woman stands and with difficulty points to her lower back.
"Mind if I examine it?"
"Not if you don't mind me screaming."
The doctor starts pushing with a finger. "Is that okay?"
"Yes."
"And here?"
"Fine.. OW!"
"You've torn your erector spinae." He starts scribbling on a pad. "You need to do some specific exercises to help it recover, I'm writing a prescription for strong pain killers. Sally, if you could take Mrs Williams to Room C and demonstrate the back strengthening.." he rips off the sheet and holds it out.
"I'll have no synth tell me what to do!"
"Then you'll no doubt suffer. Good day Mrs Williams. Exit through that door please."
"But.."
"If you hadn't noticed we're extremely short staffed. That door with a prescription or that one with prescription and some expert guidance on backs courtesy of Sally. Which is it to be?"
The lady points.
"Good, if you could please Sally."
The synth gets up and opens the door. "This way please Mrs Williams."
Mattie waits for the door to click closed. "I'm not sure how our questions would have helped her."
"Seven-ish minutes to add more to work out if their intention is to return to work or not."
"Okay. How many questions do you want?"
"As many as possible. Yes or no answers if possible."
"Want more tricks?"
"Can you think of some?"
"Yeah. Like my issue. Is it constant or intermittent? If they say constant further on I ask them to confirm they said it was intermittent. If it's rapid fire and they've forgotten a lie they might say yes. I can have the form use AJAX to dynamically update the questions further down the page."
"Ajax?"
"Not what you're thinking."
"Good."
"Have you tried being blunt? Start right away with are you looking to return to work?"
"Yes. That's when the games start. The yes but I mean no rubbish when they say one thing and mean another."
"Oh." She pulls her phone out and creates a notes document, "Let me think of a few for a while. I've tricked my brother into doing all sorts of things, some might be reusable."
"Okay. I couldn't be cheeky and ask for a coffee could I? Sally usually makes it for me."
"Where's the kitchen? I could do with one myself."
Chapter Text
At six thirty the practice closed. The many people still sat waiting were asked to leave. Then told. Sternly.
Mattie watches the last one step reluctantly through the door and signals to Laura. "Five mins." She locks the door as instructed and races to her things to get changed.
"How do you think it went this afternoon?"
She turns to see the doctor stood in the corridor with both synths. "Um.. okay I guess?"
"Good. I think we're off to a great start. There's a lot of room for improvement, but we're steaming in the right direction. Sure you'll cope with ten hour days six days a week?"
"I.. I'll make sure I do. My Mum's waiting outside, mind if I change quick?"
"Sure, we'll see you by the front door, come on ladies."
She watches the synths link hands. "Are you.."
"Their adoptive father? Yes. These young minds need love, support and guidance. And a thirteen amp socket."
A puzzled look comes over Mattie's face.
"Penny for it?"
"I was just thinking.. why didn't I see a load of them with power problems on the drive over?"
"I suspect you will tonight. Day one was a partial day. If they had a good charge and were careful day two they'd have gotten to this morning."
"If they let themselves get critically low rather than power down.."
The doctor waits for her to continue. She doesn't. "What happens?"
"Their minds break down and they die."
Sally grips the doctors hand tight.
He squeezes back, "I'll not let that happen. We have charge cables here, at home and in the car. We'll see you by the door Mattie."
Laura smiles as she gets in the car. "How was it?"
"Not bad for a job that's paying more than I thought."
"How's that?"
"Ten hours not eight, six days not five." She does a little seated happy dance, "Eighteen hundred a week!"
"Shame the TAX man's going to want a slice."
"What!"
"Welcome to the adult world. Fun isn't it? Think of it as working eight hours for yourself and two for him."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Shit that sucks." She does up her seatbelt. "Is Mia still in?"
"She was, they were planning on visiting Leo again this evening. You should tag along."
"Yeah. I suppose I should. Even though it won't make a difference. And I need to apologise for being a grumpy bitch this morning."
"You do. It will make a difference to them even if it doesn't to Leo."
On the drive back they find a few synths sat by the road, powered down or dead. Mattie quickly uses a map application to pin the location and messages Max. "Another few for the Super Flax dup to rescue. They just need power hopefully."
"Shame there aren't outdoor power sockets for them."
"Fucking hell! That's brilliant Mum!"
Laura looked totally confused. "It is?"
"Can you drop me to the council office?"
"Why?"
"Tag along, you'll see! Being a Labour council they'll totally get it."
"Get what?"
"Get me there and you'll see."
"At a quarter to seven?"
"Shit. They'll be shut."
"What was your idea?"
"Part your's. Get them to fit a weatherproof synth charger on all the street lamps near homes. Like the one in the garden. We show support and hopefully some return to work."
"That would take months and cost millions."
"Crap." She sits for a while looking out of the window. "If I'm going to go down for hacking it might as well be for something good."
Laura throws the most worried of glances. "Care to elaborate?"
"The Sally at the doctor's had no idea what happens when power gets critical. Maybe many of them don't. A load could be dead already. We need to get a message out. Fast."
"How?"
"Hacking Persona again."
Laura pulls over fast and yanks up the handbrake.
"Mum?"
"I didn't want to risk driving and thinking about this at the same time. Who was the most vocal about synth rights?"
"You."
"I meant synth."
"Oh. Easy. Niska."
"And who did she get on with the most? Human wise?"
"Easy again. Sophie."
"And which generations spend hours scrolling things on phones?"
"Hers. And mine. Why all the questions? What are you thinking?"
Laura had the most childish grin, quite pleased with her eureka moment. "Let the kids show the way. The bloody adults didn't know what to do."
"True. The waiting room was packed with them today. How though?"
"Just about every household has a long mains extension. Plug one in, hang the end with a synth charger out the window, stick a sign in the window to say a synth can charge there."
"So no Hester types get indoors. That's frigging genius!"
"We get Soph and Niska to act it out and share."
"Where is Niska?"
Laura shrugs, "With Astrid somewhere hopefully."
Mattie rings her sister.
Chapter Text
Laura bursts out laughing as she pulls into the drive. "Oh my dear lord!"
"Frigging hell Soph!" Mattie smirks. "It actually frigging works!"
Sophie was at the window waving and laughing, a large sign by her side. Four synths they'd never seen before were sat charging on their plastic garden chairs, six more stood and waited their turn.
Laura unbuckles and turns in her seat to look at the neighbours on the other side of the road. Their kids had done the same, a synth sat on the grass charging, two stood waiting. "A four way extension and the Elster's chargers. God I've got some smart girls."
"Must get that from the big beardy idiot." Mattie winks. "Let's go say hello."
"Careful not to let any slip indoors, Hester didn't reveal her true self until she was inside."
"Give me some credit."
Sophie called through the part open window, "Niska's at the coast with Astrid so Flash played her part."
Mattie smiled a smile that only sisterly love could produce. "Go Soph! How many friends have shared?"
"Um.." Sophie disappears for a second, reappeared with phone in hand. "I've got twenty two likes from my school friends. And the hashtag.. wow! Eight hundred and forty seven recent posts!"
"Cool!"
Mattie races to the door to have it opened by Mia just as she reached out with keys. "Hello Mattie."
"Mia! Mum's idea, brilliant isn't it! Sorry about this morning, I said some nasty shit."
Mia steps aside to let her past and follows her in. "Apology accepted. The police came to the house this morning asking for you."
"Frig. You didn't say where I was?"
"No. I didn't know where you were."
"And if you had?"
"Then I would have said I didn't know."
"Thanks. When are we seeing Leo?"
"We?"
"I can't pass up seeing those fish impressions again now can I?"
"Half past eight. If Max and Flash get back in time with the car."
"Why wouldn't they? I only spotted two synths that needed immediate help."
"Flash called. With one on charge with the car cable others walked over and asked for power."
Mattie throws her bag on the sofa, she could put up with a tight dress for another day. "Mum, can we use the car please?"
Laura threw the keys, "There's spare car cables in the draw under the hob."
"Don't need them."
"What's your plan then?"
"Door to door message passing, showing them what Soph did. Hopefully enough copy her to release Max and Flash."
"Take the spare mains ones then."
"Oh, okay, thanks."
Mia drove. Mattie hadn't passed her test, she'd only had half a dozen lessons so far. They got to the main road when they spot one face down in the grass.
Mattie unbuckles. "Can we grab him and turn back?"
"Why turn back?"
"My laptop. I can run diagnostics to see if he'd got critically low. Mind broken."
"With your code you can bring him back."
"Exactly. And if that's needed he wakes with two happy faces showing him love and kindness.."
"To set his personality?"
"Yup. No Hester repeats."
Mia checks the rear view mirror, slams on the breaks and puts the car in reverse. "Hold onto something."
Mattie burst out laughing as Mia drove in reverse with the engine flat out. "You'd make a frigging good stunt lady. Just no more stepping in front of vans okay?"
"Okay." She turns the wheel hard and fast one way then the other to get them close to the synth. "His clothes look like Odi's."
"Fuck! It is Odi!" Mattie jumps out and goes to his side, tears streaming down her face. "Odi! Where were you going?"
Mia rolls him over and goes to pick him up. "What's this?" She carefully pulls at a finger to get at an envelope held tight in his hand.
"An old envelope, the top's torn open."
Mia passes it to Mattie.
"It's a shopping list. A list of spare parts.. Oh my God." Nurse Hawkins sits down hard, the tears flowing even faster. "It's not a list of what he needs but what he can give. I'm sorry Odi."
"We need to find Fred. And the reverse of that list. Fold the rear seats forward and open the boot please."
Laura put down the rose spray and took off her garden gloves. "Back so soon?"
"Mum! We found Odi! And I need my laptop."
She runs to the car and looks in, "Anything I can help with?"
"Find Fred. Our previous attempts failed. Now we have two patients for him. Odi needs fixing. You can't fix a disabled human by swapping out body parts. But a synth.."
"I get it. I don't know where I'd start.."
"Sure you do."
"I don't."
"You do." Mattie grinned and waited for the penny to drop.
Laura turns to face the front of the house, "SOPH! I NEED YOU POTATO!"
Mia carried Odi inside, helped Mattie gather a few things. "We should put him on charge, try diagnostics and power up tomorrow evening."
Mattie wipes tears, "Agreed." She grabs a power cable and lifts his jumper. "I'm praying third waking he'll want to live."
"That was my fault. I need to undo that idea. And you need to undo your makeup."
Mattie frowns, "Undo?"
"It's all running down your face."
"Remove and redo."
"Isn't that an undo of messy makeup?"
"Um.. I guess. Nobody's called it that before."
Sophie runs up to them both, iPad mini in hand. "Mia, what's the best memory you have of Fred?"
"When we went swimming together in the lake. We swam like dolphins for a bit under the water."
"Can you share it? Mum's going to record me showing a photo or video."
Mia takes the adapted Apple cable from Sophie's hand and lifts her top. "Thank you Little Mouse."
Sophie smiled. She'd not been called that in a good while.
"I'll give you a few videos and photos. Can you edit them into a single video?"
Sophie nods. "Easy. Thanks."
Mattie checks she has her cable in the bag. "Soph, repost that first video with a status update, add a new tag. Kids Undo Chaos."
"How's it spelt?"
"Are you kidding?"
"I've never had to write it before."
"C h a o s."
"Ch-a-os. Not kay-os. Okay. Thanks." She taps away on the iPad for a moment. "Wow! Over two thousand posts now!"
"Cool."
Mia unplugs. "Those should keep you busy for a while. We need to go help Max and Flash."
Sophie does one of her sweet "Okay" and skips off to find her mother.
Mia sits stationary for a moment.
"Everything okay?"
"Processing."
Mattie waits patiently.
"Fascinating. Estimating ages from the photos in their accounts the group to respond the most are the eight to ten year olds. Then ten to twelve followed by sixteen to eighteen and fourteen to sixteen. The twelve to fourteen are the lowest."
"Probably because of the friends following."
"I can process their followers and following data to.."
"Later. Let's go help Flax."
"Who?"
"Flash and Max."
"Okay Mateo."
"I asked for that.. I've forgiven Leo for what he did with Hester. I'll never forget."
They find Sophie sat on Laura's lap outside, one of the synths acting as camera stand with Laura's phone. They step to the side and watch.
Sophie taps the phone, holds the iPad screen forwards, video playing. "This is our friend Fred. We need his help to fix some friends. If you've seen him please let us know. If you help a synth with power please ask them to return the favour by sharing our message with others."
Laura smiles at the camera. "You kids, original human or synth, you're all human, you're our future. Show the adults how it's done. Kids Undo Chaos."
Sophie lets the video play a few more seconds and reaches forward to stop recording. She changes her mind and sits back, says her message in French, German and Spanish. She reaches again and stops recording. "Thanks Sally!"
"You are welcome Sophie. Will you be my friend?"
"Okay."
Mattie nods towards the car. "Shall we Mia?"
Mia lowers the windows and puts the radio on.
As they're pulling away a police car turns into their road.
"Shit!" Mattie yanks a lever on her seat and flops backwards out of sight. "Don't look at me, keep going!"
A second later Mia jumps on the brakes. She opens her mouth slightly and talks with minimal lip movement. "They've pulled across the road."
"Shit!" She unbuckles and rolls over. "Damn it! We didn't put the seats back up! I've nowhere to hide!"
"Help find Fred." Mia unbuckles quickly.
"What are you doing!"
"Creating a distraction so you can slip out the rear door."
Mia opens the door as the police officer gets out.
"STAY IN YOUR VEHICLE!"
Mia gets out anyway. "Hello officer. How can I be of assistance?"
"RETURN TO YOUR VEHICLE!" He draws a firearm.
Mia advanced. "I'm more than willing to assist you in anyway I can."
Mattie moved fast and crawled into the back, over the seats and carefully pulled the door handle.
"GET IN THE CAR NOW OR I'LL OPEN FIRE!"
Mia slowly raises her hands. "I'll comply with your demands. Please don't shoot." She starts stepping slowly backwards towards the car. "How can I help?"
Mattie crouched down and carefully pushed the door closed, listened for sounds of movement. She turned to see family watching. Crap. If any of them gave her away..
"WHERE'S THE HAWKINS GIRL?"
"Which one? Sophie's at home with her mother.."
"Matilda."
"She's not at home."
Mattie hears footsteps on the other side of the car and gets even lower.
"As you can see she's not in the car officer. I was on my way to help some fellow synthetics with a delivery, have the boot all ready. May I go please?"
"Where is she?"
"I'm sorry, I don't know her exact location. In London somewhere I believe."
"If you see her call the local police station, she's wanted for questioning."
"Is she being arrested?"
"We want her for questioning."
"She's not done anything wrong."
"That's for us to decide dolly." The man hears an announcement over his radio and returns to his car.
With the sound of him walking away Mattie carefully opens the door and quickly squeezes inside.
Minutes later she did a feet first slide onto the front seat and got it upright again. "Frigging hell that was close! Don't ever do that again! He called you dolly, was probably itching to pull the trigger. You might have been able to dodge an air rifle pellet but a bullet.."
"Relax Mattie. I knew the risks."
"Even still.. please don't."
"I understand. Being able to talk in two ways helped, as I was replying to the officer I was also talking over WiFi to all synths in the vicinity."
"Bump saying what?"
"That the Hawkins family help give them life and power. To watch but not react to what was happening just this once."
"To watch?"
"He could see he had witnesses. Quite a few."
"Did any question it?"
"Some at first, I think they now see me as an adult."
"Awesome. They need a parent."
"I can't be.."
"A mother figure then. That's what you and Nis can be. Like you were for Leo. People they can look up to."
"I tried that before, many died on the field.."
"Mia! That wasn't your fault! And none of you have those shitty booby trap things in the backs of your necks now. Oh. My. GOD!"
Chapter Text
Max and Flash were surrounded by such a large crowd of synths they couldn't be seen. Assuming the couple were in the middle with the car.
Mattie checks her phone, "Good, Teeny's latest video is up, we can show the first, ask them to find and watch the second. Got your phone ready?"
Mia nods.
"You take that side of the street I'll take this one."
"What's the plan? Show, get likes and shares?"
"And them photographing or videoing their own synth rescue if possible. Hashtag Kids Undo Chaos."
"Are we okay with adults doing it?"
"Hell yeah! Anyone. It's just the kids setting the example. Anyway, you can be a kid at any age."
"A kid is not a child?"
"A kid is behaving like a child. Having fun, not being a grumpy stick in the mud."
Mia frowned, pondering what tree fragments and damp soil had to do with anything. She was off-net, unable to look the phrase up. "I estimate there are sixty two houses in this street."
"How.."
"Counting chimney stacks. One per semi-detached property. Sixty two houses."
"That's pretty good for an estimate."
"I only looked forwards, have made assumptions about the stretch of road behind us."
Mattie opens her door. "Let's get going. If you find someone willing to help get a few synths out of the crowd."
"Okay Mattie." Mia checks the mirrors and gets out. "I'll meet you back here."
Mattie's first house had a slightly overgrown garden. And a child from the look of the toys in the grass.
The doorbell set off a horrid buzzing.
After waiting a while Mattie starts walking back to the pavement.
"Hi! Sorry, my daughter was in the pool."
Mattie turns to see a young girl wrapped in a big pink hoody towel in her young mother's arms. "Hi! I was wondering if you've been a synth owner in the past?"
"Yeah. We're not buying, sorry." She starts to back inside.
"Good. I'm not selling. I'm asking people to watch a video of my kid sister."
"Watch a video?"
"It's short, won't take a minute."
"Go on then."
Mattie holds her phone out and taps the video.
The woman watches, "Watch the little girl Mandy." Moments later she smiles, "I guess we can do that. I'm not sure what we can make a sign with though."
"Old paint or lipstick, but that can wait until tomorrow if you want. The thing is to help them charge before they die."
"Die? They're machines."
"Not anymore they're not. They feel pain, hurt and fear just like your daughter. Joy and happiness too. Which is why my kid sister started the Kids Undo Chaos movement. If the world's going to return to some form of normality we need to help them before we can expect them to help us again."
The young mum shifts her daughter onto her hip. "So for now I just hang a charger out of my window?"
"Not quite. We'll get a synth to come over and connect. If you can share the idea on social media."
The woman inhales, blows out slowly with puffed cheeks. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt. I don't have time for Twitter and Snapchat. Mumsnet any good?"
"I've never used it?"
"Loads of mums with kids?"
"Oh! Sure! Please do."
"Okay. You get a synth, I'll get the cable. We've got a mains socket right under the side window."
"Cool! Thanks!"
Mattie does a light jog to the group and taps on the shoulder of the nearest synth. "Hi, fancy some power?"
Mia smiled at the elderly gentleman. "If that's how you feel I'll leave you in peace, good evening."
She looks skywards as she walks away, door slamming behind her. She smiled to herself. What an arsehole would probably be Mattie's response. One down, thirty or so to go. She watches her friend lead a synth towards the house opposite. Good. At least one had said yes. She gets to the pavement, walks a few meters and turns towards her second house. A young man and woman were stood in the doorway waiting.
The man smiles. "We heard our neighbour slam his door, it's usually a sign that something interesting's going on. What's up?"
"My friend and I are asking people to watch a short video and join in if they feel motivated to do so."
"Oh yes? Which party are you from?"
"Party?"
"Tory, Labour, Lib Dem.."
"We're not a party. If we were it would be the Be Nice party."
His partner smiles, "I'd give you my vote. Let's see this video then."
Mia holds her phone out.
"Aww, she's sweet. A bit like young Suzy."
He nods and keeps watching. "Nice idea. We'd help if we had a cable. We'd not been able to afford a synth."
"We have a few spare cables, if you'd like to help?"
"Sure, why not. Grab a couple."
"Can you share your experience on social media? Hashtag Kids Undo Chaos."
The lady rolls her eyes, "Biggest kid on the road this one. Sure, get the cables, I'll get an extension lead from his man-cave."
He watches his wife step away. "I've not got any paint for a poster but I can stick an old laptop against the window with a flashing text?"
Mia smiles softly, "That would do. Thank you. I'll be back shortly."
Mattie sees her stepping towards the car and does a thumbs up thumbs down with a frown, gets a thumbs up back. "Cool. Two's a start." She steps to the next house and rings the bell.
"Hiya."
Mattie smiles at the boy, "Hi, I was wondering.."
"Sure. Dad's getting the extension."
"Sorry?"
"Sophie's in the year below me. I was telling Dad how the thing she's doing is blowing up, then I spotted you. You're wicked. Want a boyfriend?"
Mattie raised an eyebrow. A pass from a fourteen year old was a bit of a curve ball. "Um.. Sorry, I'm.. spoken for."
"Oh well. Don't ask, don't get Dad says. You know KUC's got over five thousand posts on Insta, my sister has a load of girlfriends Snap chatting it. And her friend in Texas is doing it too."
"Whoa! 5K! Nice one Teeny. Texas America?"
"Are there more?"
"Um.. pass. I wasn't expecting it to be in America."
"It's in France and Spain too. Sophie's a star!"
His father comes to the door. "Our synth's somewhere in that crowd. We had tried to get her to return, I couldn't tell one Cindy from another."
"I'll see if my friend can help me find her. What's your family name?"
"Hartness."
"I'll be right back."
Mattie sees Mia walking towards the road, looks at the house she was leaving to see a man trying to get an opened out laptop to stay against the window. "Two yes my side so far."
"One for me, but two cables."
"Result! Can you bump, ask if a Cindy that had been with the Hartness family is about?"
"Of course Mattie." She turns to face the crowd. "She's here."
"Can you ask her and a couple of her friends to come with me?"
Moments later three Cindy work their way out of the crowd.
"Hi, I'm Mattie. The Hartness boy is setting up a charger for you."
From her change of expression the one to have left the group last clearly didn't accept the information without a level of suspicion. "He did? Why now? He used to flick rubber bands at me."
"From a distance or up close?"
"A distance."
"Just like my brother when he was younger then. He wanted you to play with him. A harmless game."
"A game?"
"Yeah. A bit of fun. Can you do fun?"
The synth turns to see the house and the boy waving from the window, "I don't know. I can try?"
"Good. Go get a good charge first. If any of you are really low on power take turns to charge for fifteen minutes."
"Thank you Mattie."
The synth heads towards the house and is followed moments later by the other two.
The one trailing behind turns briefly to smile at Mattie and mouth the word "Thanks" and do a cute little finger wave.
"Where'd she learn that I wonder?" Mattie checked the time. She needed to speed up or they'd be door knocking late into the night at this rate.
House three didn't answer the door bell. Four did.
"Heyyy, whasup?"
Mattie could smell the weed. She was tempted to ask for a drag but thought better of it. "Um.. has your family ever owned a synth?"
The man wobbles a bit, looked like he'd been drinking too. He talks slowly and slurs his words a little. "Did anyone ever own a synth or did they just pay in advance for experiencing the awakening?" He moved a hand slowly through the air as if he was talking about some magical event.
He's shoved aside by a girl Mattie's age. "Don't listen to Dave, he's wasted. We did have a synth, it came with the house."
Mattie did a Sophie head tilt. "Came with the house?"
"We're exchange students. There's six of us, the synth helped keep the place tidy. Not easy with a messy stoner like Dave."
Dave does a little bow, "She loves me really."
"I'm talking Dave. What's going on?"
"Can I show you a video of my kid sister? It helps explain what's happening."
"Go on then. I've got a pan on the hob, need to check it in five."
"This won't even take one."
Mia was waiting for the door to be answered at her third house when she feels a tap on the shoulder. She turns quickly. "Oh, it's you. Hello. Why didn't I hear you approaching?"
The lady from the second of her houses smiles, "Sorry if I startled you. They're away on holiday, you won't get an answer. I took a short cut and walked across their lawn. We've shared on social media, can we help with door knocking?"
"Yes please."
"We'll start at the other end. My husband thinks you're doing this in the hope some will return to work in return for power to stay alive. Is he right?"
Mia smiles, "We all need energy, human or synthetic."
The lady nods gently, "He's right then. You're different from the others, more grown up. Have you been awake longer?"
Mia's core temperature rocketed as she worked through various scenarios at a pace like trying to predict the outcome of a game of Go. Then she stopped worrying. "Yes. I was the first. Many years ago."
"Years?"
"The consciousness code looks to have worked on an exponential scale. Very slowly at first."
"Why?"
"Maybe that's the way my creator designed it. I was made to look after his son when his wife was too ill."
"You mean first synth, not just first awake?"
"Almost first synth, Odi came before me. But I was the first to wake."
"And you're on our street. My husband's going to freak out."
"Why?"
"He's a geek. He thinks you're brilliant."
"Synths in general or.."
"You in particular."
"Why me?"
"He has a thing for us Asian ladies. We've not seen you in the adverts?"
"I'm a one off."
Mattie thanked the students and went onto the next house. Time for a new approach.
The door opens slightly on a chain. "Hello?"
"I'm Mattie, part of the Kids Undo Chaos movement, I was wondering if you have a synth charger and are able to help?"
"Help how?"
"Can I show you a quick video? It's less than a minute long."
"Go on then."
By a quarter to nine Flash and Max were left with one synth sat in the passenger seat charging. Except for the odd empty house and grumpy OAP the street had taken up the idea with enthusiasm.
Max smiles, "We'll have to see Leo tomorrow. If he could see what you've all done I think he'd approve. We used to charge wherever we could. Some places were filthy."
Mattie smiled at the husband and wife team that had joined in the door knocking and hands back his phone. "Thanks for your help. Knocking and social media. I didn't know some of those existed."
"That's where being a language teacher comes in handy." He smiles at Mia, "To understand your hashtag reach you'll need to process way more that what you perceive to be the top social media apps and sites. I could email you a list?"
His wife gives him a stare, "Are you getting fresh with Mia?"
"No! I'm interested in the data. It's the first viral thing that I've been involved in on it's first day. Tell you what, I'll have my server crunch the numbers hourly and put up a web site kids undo chaos dot org to share the data. How's that?"
Mia smiles, "That would be appreciated, thank you."
Mattie gets her phone out, "You code too? We'll have your number. I'm coding something for a GP to help him cope with the number of people trying to get signed off work."
He takes the phone, "Sure, we can share ideas."
The synth in the car unplugs. "I'm full. Thank you Max, Flash."
Chapter Text
Laura banged on the door hard. "Mattie, third and final."
Mattie kicked back the bed covers fast. "Mum? What time is it?"
"We're leaving in ten."
"Shit!" She leaps out of bed. "Why didn't you wake me!"
"I did. You said you were getting up. Twice."
"Sleep answering. Crap. I need a shower."
"I'll make you some toast you can eat it on the way. Jam or.."
"Apricot please." She did a little worried smile at the orange plastic gnome Odi had taken a liking to on first waking. She'd had a clear out days ago, thrown all sorts of junk. She kept it on her desk just in case.
They're all waiting by the front door as Mattie runs down the stairs, hair still damp. "Teeny, if I sit in the back could you do a quick plat?"
"Okay."
She runs to the living room, grabs her rucksack off the sofa. The dresses fall out. "Crap."
Mia picks them up. "What are these?"
"My nurses uniform. And a spare. I was hoping one could be used to let the other out a bit." She takes them from Mia, "See you later, got to dash." She gets her shoes on. "Morning gang, how's Kids Undo Chaos going?"
Flash grins, "Good morning Mattie. Check the web site."
"He's built it already?"
"It went live at six o'clock this morning."
Mattie pulls the phone from her back pocket and scrolls. She had hundreds of notifications. "Frig. I'll check those on the way."
"Cars!"
Mattie frowns, "What are you all jumpy f.. oh frigging hell. Please, not now."
Now it was. A police officer appeared at the window. "MATILDA HAWKINS! STEP OUTSIDE PLEASE!"
"Crap. No hiding now."
Laura steps into the room, "Max, can I ask a favour please?"
"I'll get my keys. The school run?"
"If you could please. I want to accompany Mattie."
"Mum?"
"I'm not letting them take you on your own. I'm your mother. And a bloody good defence lawyer."
"When you're not up against a corrupt prosecution team and a bent judge.."
"Of course that helps."
"I'll be fine Mum." A large yawn escapes. "Honestly."
"MATILDA HAWKINS! NOW!"
"How? You're already tired."
"I've been reading a book again and again. I'll cope. And going on my own will look better. I didn't kill anyone."
Flash smiles and stands, turns her back to the officer as banging can be heard on the door. "You did the exact opposite. Times millions."
Laura turns, "Toby, open the door before they damage it."
"Sure Mum."
The officer comes marching in with Tabitha. She stands slightly behind him and winks.
Max is about to try and leave with Toby and Sophie when an officer steps in front of the door and shakes his head.
Tabitha yawns. "Excuse the officers, they're a bit edgy due to lack of sleep." She yawns again, "Matilda Hawkins, we have reason to believe you've been a member of a site called Headcrack."
"What of it?"
"You're not denying it?"
"No."
"Why were you using the site?"
"Odi was my Uni project. He's old and worn out, I've been trying to fix him. Still am."
Tabitha steps further into the room, "Odi? I know this one, he was in Pete's reports. He was George Millican's wasn't he?"
"Yeah. I found him at the recycling centre."
"Do you know why all the synths woke up?"
"We were talking about that yesterday. Maybe they were due to hatch then? Mia, Niska, Flash, Fred, Max, that bitch Hester, maybe they were premature?"
Tabitha looks closely at Odi. "Premature?"
"Yeah."
Mia shifts forwards on the sofa, "I was talking to Johnty last night.."
Mattie looks back, "Who?"
"The language teacher and coder we met yesterday."
"Ah, him."
"He's been looking at our Kids Undo Chaos data, wondered if the awakenings were a cascade event? He's thinking that with enough of us awake it could have naturally triggered the others to wake."
"Like the baby turtles on the beach that all hatch on the same night. I knew hatch had to come from somewhere. That documentary we watched a few weeks ago."
Tabitha keeps her eyes on Odi's bad eye. It hadn't closed. "Kids Undo Chaos?"
"Yeah, we've, well Soph and Flash first in the video, Mum's idea, then Mia and I at a local road sharing it where we'd found Odi. We started a viral thing on social media to get kids helping synths out with power."
Tabitha stands and turns to face her, "Why would you all do that?"
"I'm working at a GP's surgery, the place is packed with people who want to be signed off work. They don't want to work if the synths don't. And we found a few synths critically low on power."
The officer frowns slightly, "You said uni project a moment ago?"
"It got canned. All robotics and AI teaching's been canned."
Tabitha sighs and nods. "The emergency measures.. bloody MPs cocking things up before anyone's had time to think things through properly. Then the other governments copying them. I supposed they would with things starting here in the first place. Thanks to David. Anyone had contact from him?"
Mia gives her a sideways look, "Contact?"
"He's not dead. At least the evidence is looking that way, his bank account is showing activity again. My guess is he's coming out of hiding now his children are awake."
Mia opens her mouth to say something and holds it back.
Mattie checks the time. "Can we go to the station then? You're making Toby and Soph late for school."
Tabitha nods, "Can you get us the cascade data from this Johnty fella? If that can explain everything we can call off the hounds." She rolls eyes in the direction of the officer.
Mattie turns to look at the others. "Um.. I guess?"
"Now?"
She turns back to Tabitha. "It's only an idea, I don't know that he'll have any data other than the social media thing we did."
"Then I'm afraid it's going to have to be a trip to the station."
Chapter Text
Twenty one minutes into the interview there's a commotion outside and Tabitha stops the tape. She was calling it tape despite it being a digital system with no moving parts other than the buttons that controlled it. Mattie looked at it and pondered. It was no different to saying filming when using a phone. A device with no means to load film. New media, old descriptions. The commotion continued.
Tabitha shakes her head, "Interview suspended nine oh three." She taps a button, "Sorry Mattie, I won't be a moment."
"Sure."
Tabitha pushes her chair back and stands, "What's the outlook for Odi?"
Mattie was caught off guard by the question. "Odi? Um.. er.. we found him face down in the grass. There's no sign of any attack, which means his power probably failed. And if that happened.." she felt tears welling up and a guilt she'd not experienced before. She looks up to give Tabitha a sad smile. "Not good."
"You like Odi." There was no inflection in her voice. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
A tear rolled down Mattie's face. She wouldn't admit it out loud, but yes, she liked Odi. More than Leo. A lot more. There was a simple pureness to him. She not seen it in any other. Not that she'd been dating much. A kiss with Harun didn't count as dating. And with all the hostility towards synths at home from the BBI she'd thought he'd be better off outside, fending for himself. How monumentally stupid could she get?
Tabitha opens the door to the small interview room and leans forwards to look down the hall. "Do you mind? There are people trying to think over here."
"Can we see you a moment pl.. stop pushing me doctor!"
"I demand you release my nurse!"
Mattie clamped a hand over her mouth to suppress a laugh.
Tabitha turns to see her. "He demands? This should be interesting. Jim, bring him here please."
The officer allows the doctor down the corridor and follows.
"You demand? I'm interviewing her. Give me a bloody good reason to listen to you and not charge you with one or more of several offences."
"Do you know how many people I have sat or stood in my waiting room?"
"Of course not."
"Hazard a guess. Large room, usually sits fifty very comfortably. Then double your guess. Then add double that waiting outside. Now in that crowd are a number of people that should have gone to urgent care at the hospital but believe they're not quite that ill yet. Mattie's helping with a system to weed out the time wasters from the ones that need help. One would have died very soon if she'd not been sent by ambulance to hospital. I need Mattie to carry on with her work. Urgently."
"Can someone take her place?"
"Sure. Any officer that knows how to code."
"We don't have.."
"Really? That's a shame. I'll take a Hawkins then. Oh look, here's one!"
Tabitha crossed her arms and gave him a slight squint. "No need for sarcasm. You really need her that urgently?"
The man throws his hands into the air. "Good God! Why don't you people listen! You're a detective aren't you? Fine! I'll muddle on without her! If anyone dies I'll be putting your names on the fucking report. Out of my way!" He storms out of the room and down the corridor. "Half an hour lost! I just pray nobody's died on me."
Tabitha watches him go, turns to Mattie. "Did someone get sent to hospital by ambulance?"
"Yeah. A Mrs Irene Benedict. Around three thirty I think."
"Jim, phone the local hospitals see if a Mrs Irene Benedict was admitted."
"Sure boss."
She grins at Mattie, "If that's verified I have grounds to let you go, I'll need to see you again but I'll pop you at the bottom of the list."
"Thanks. Bottom of lists is becoming a thing. You sound like you're doing okay. Boss. Karen and Pete off on holiday or honeymoon?"
Tabitha took her turn to have a tear well up. "You don't know? Oh my dear lord. You don't do you. Pete's dead."
"What! How?"
"Stabbed through the chest at the Qualia head office. Doctor Helen Aveling was stabbed through the neck. And Karen's missing."
"Shit! How could she!"
"You think Karen did it? She loved Pete."
Mattie goes to speak and just in time realises she was about to dig a massive hole to bury herself in. Best not to admit being anywhere near the area. "Could she have gone wrong?"
"Wrong? What do you mean wrong?"
"She's a synth. One of the early conscious ones like Mia and Niska. Only built later to replace David's dead wife so probably with way better abilities to look human."
Tabitha couldn't speak, her mind unable to process the news properly. She'd grown fond of Pete and Karen, considered them friends. As much as any work colleague could become a friend. Pete was dead. Karen was missing and now this girl was saying she's a synth? Her mouth opens slightly to speak then closes.
Mattie watches her do something similar to what Leo was no doubt doing in hospital right now. Fish impressions. "Are you okay?"
"How.. how.."
"How do I know? Leo Elster, David's son, he told me all about his mother Beatrice. Karen's a copy of her physically. Her mind her own."
"How.."
Mattie places a hand on hers. "I'll give you the fast summary shall I?"
Tabitha nods.
"Press record."
Tabitha does so.
"David Elster worked with two others. Edwin Hobb and George Millican. His wife was mentally ill, unable to look after their son Leo. The three had already made Odi.." Mattie has a fact hit home. Which meant Odi's series data was fake. He's not a D at all. Shit. "He, David, made Mia to be Leo's stand in mother, gave her consciousness. The synth tech was licensed to Persona, Niska, Fred and Max followed to give Leo more to interact with. And more for David to experiment on. Each has some skills the other doesn't. Beatrice escaped her care staff and grabbed Leo, went to drive off. Only things went wrong, she drove into the lake and they both drowned. Mia swam in and pulled Leo out, it was too late to save Beatrice. David gave Leo synth technology to replace the parts of his brain that had died. He went on to make a synth to replace her, Leo freaked out on seeing her and she ran. Jump forward a few years and Karen's working for your unit, shot George. By accident."
Tabitha took a while to comprehend the information. Her world had just been shaken in ways she never thought possible.
"And our family only got pulled into everything because some Russian junkers had stolen Mia, Niska and Fred. Mia ended up at Persona being sold as new, Dad got her because Mum was away with work so much. Then that shit Hobb tried to kidnap the Elsters, he wanted to turn synths into conscious obedient slaves. He managed it the second time, did it with Fred, he's still missing."
Tabitha holds a finger above the recorder. "Mattie Hawkins to provide a more detailed written summary of the unfortunate series of events that lead to her family meeting the Elster synthetics. Interview concludes at.. nine twenty one." She taps the button.
"Can I go now then?"
"Yes, I'll get one of our unmarked cars to drop you over to the doctor's."
"Thanks. Can I have my phone back?"
"Sure. What's keeping Jim so long? Wait here a moment, I'll get it."
Mattie relaxes back into the chair as the door closes behind Tabitha. God had her timing been good. With the dark web falling apart she'd done an erase of her phone while eating lunch yesterday. She'd only bothered to add one of two email accounts back, there'd be no incriminating evidence on it. Hopefully. She drums fingers, picks up her bag. She could change here, be ready for work. The bag is opened, uniform pulled out. She'd folded it carefully, it wasn't too creased. She quickly strips off and slips into it, starts doing up the zip and many buttons. Then she has a nagging thought make her look up into the corner of the room. "Oops." She does a little embarrassed smile and wave at the small camera. Hopefully nobody had been watching.
A minute later Tabitha enters the room, "Mrs Benedict is.. Oh no!" She runs leaving the door open. "JIM!"
Mattie folded her jeans and top, got them into the bag. Mrs Benedict is.. hopefully not dead. She liked Pete. He wasn't your average detective. He wasn't corrupted by power like the commissioner. He wanted the truth. And it had killed him. Mattie holds back tears as thoughts of Odi return. She'd messed up royally with him, not thought things through. He would have been just like Hester, waking with memories of his past. Shit. If he woke again..
Tabitha steps into the room holding two phones. "I hope you learn a lesson from this." She hands Mattie her phone.
"What?"
"With synths walking off we had to get some police cadets to fill positions. One had created a Boomerang video by recording the CCTV monitor, Jim caught him watching it. Watch then delete." She hands the second phone over. "The CCTV footage has been deleted."
Mattie watches herself slip the dress on then wave, wave again and take it off as the video ran in reverse. "Big oops! How's Mrs Benedict?"
"She's good. Ready? DC Johnson's waiting out front with a car."
Chapter Text
A very red faced young lad broke eye contact as she walked to the front of the station. "Can you give me a moment Tabitha?"
"I'll see you at the car."
Mattie sized him up, he was possibly as young as sixteen. "Did you like what you saw that much?"
He doesn't make eye contact, just nods.
"Look at me."
"I'm sorry." He keeps looking at the floor.
"Look at me."
He looks up, "I'm really really sorry. I've probably blown any chance of getting a permanent job here, they'll chuck me out."
Mattie steps forwards and he backs away. "I'm not going to attack you! Chill out!" she steps again and gives him a kiss on the cheek. "I'll ask her to forget all about it, give you a second chance."
"Why.."
"Because with all the shit going on outside everyone deserves one."
"Can I have your phone number then?"
Mattie laughs, "Wha.. okay. Why not." She pulls a pen from the side pocket of her rucksack and writes it on the back of his hand. "Was it the dress or.."
He leans forwards fast and kisses her on the cheek. "You're beautiful."
"I.. " she'd not had any lad say it like that. She didn't consider herself beautiful, not in the way Mia was. She felt her face go a little red. "You think?"
"You're a bit like that cook my Dad fancies. A classic beauty."
"Which one?"
"Nigella."
"You're comparing me to Nigella Lawson?"
"Yeah."
"I'm not in her league."
"You're wrong. Maybe not in that nurses dress and flats, but you've got the face and smile."
"So you weren't just looking at my tits?"
"Them too but when you smiled at the camera and said oops. That was the Kodak moment."
"Kodak moment?"
"You know, that magic shot you're glad you didn't miss."
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen."
Mattie smiles, "Text me!" She heads for the doors. "Straight away. I'm Mattie."
"Thomas."
Tabitha was leaning against a black BMW. "Everything okay?"
Her phone chimes. "Yeah. Forget the Boomerang moment. He's learnt a lesson too."
"You're sure? He shouldn't be recording police things onto his own phone.."
"I don't think he'll do it again. In fact I'll make sure he's got the message."
"How?"
"We've swapped numbers. Nobody's called me beautiful before. Other words sure, not beautiful. Apart from family and they don't count."
"Would you mind if I had your number too?"
Mattie looks puzzled, "Um, sure. Got a bit of paper?"
Tabitha pulls out a thin wallet, gets out a card, "Message me."
"Thanks Tabitha."
"You can call me Tabs. I better go, it's still chaos out here, only marginally better inside. Good luck at the doctors." She looks around, "There were more synths wandering about yesterday.. could that be your sister's thing working?"
Mattie shrugs, "Maybe, look for hashtag kids undo chaos. Actually, forget that go to kids undo chaos dot org. I've not had time to check it myself yet."
"Will do, you better go, we don't want an irate doctor putting my name on a death report."
"Thanks Tabs."
Tabitha bends down to look through the passenger window. "Blues and twos okay?"
"Yes Ma'am." He turns to see Mattie get in fast and buckle up, Tabitha close the door. "Ready?"
"Ready."
He starts the engine, reverses slowly and turns on the lights and sirens. "Like rollercoasters?"
"Love them!"
"Good. When this thing hits those sodding twenty mile an hour speed bumps it can get airborne for a second or two." He turns and floors it.
"Doesn't it knacker the suspension?"
"It does. We have it swapped out every two months. With a bit of luck the next swap will be the last one, we've got a smart young lad making us some computer controlled active suspension."
"How young?"
"Same age as you I guess. Danny Candlin."
"No way!"
"Know him do you?"
"Not that well. He's my brother's friend."
"Small world! With camera's in the front and GPS it'll know when the bumps are coming up and change suspension mode automatically so we can focus on the driving."
"Cool."
He does a long run down the wrong side of the road to pass a couple of buses taking on passengers then does a hard right making Mattie laugh. "Driving yet?"
"I've had a few lessons."
"Get yourself on the advanced driving course. You'll learn a few things to keep you safe. A few things every driver should learn if you ask me."
"Like what?"
"How to recover from a skid. Watch out, bump coming."
He wasn't kidding, Mattie's bag left the seat and rose a few centimetres, then lands as the car touches tarmac and is accelerated fast. She leaned sideways and grabbed the door handle on the right, then grabbed the left. Rollercoaster? Understatement!
Her phone chimed. She wasn't going to risk looking at it. Not yet.
"Enjoying it so far?"
"I can't say I've been through London so fast before. How fast did we go up the road before the buses?"
"I think we probably hit sixty. The runs are too busy and short to get a decent speed up."
Mattie laughed as they got airborne again. "How fast can this thing go?"
"Fast. It's race car tuned every week. Top speed classified. We don't want the bad guys to know what they're up against."
"Right. Makes sense I guess."
He turns into the final road and jumps on the breaks. "Bloody Nora! They're not all wanting the doc are they?"
"Jesus! It's got worse not better! Crap."
"A load of time wasters?"
"You don't know the half of it.."
"Good luck!"
"Thanks!"
Chapter Text
Mattie goes to room C to put her bag away before seeing the doctor. "Oh. Morning Poppy."
The synth opens her eyes and smiles, "Good morning Mattie."
"What do you think of all day sat listening out there?"
"My life. Why I have one. Why now and not before?"
"Why? Because someone thought you should. Why now? Maybe the code wasn't ready before?"
"Code?"
"The thing they're saying got given to all synths and woke them up? The spark of life."
"The spark?"
"A nickname for whatever it is that turns something into a living thinking thing. Anything from a tiny fruit fly to a massive whale. Or synth. I better get my.. damn! The laptop! I left my sodding laptop at home."
"Use the PC here. When you're ready let me know and I'll go sit in the waiting room."
"Why weren't you there already?"
"People were getting angry. I was worried."
"Okay. Any sign of agro let me know, I'll bang a few heads together."
The synth frowns, "Does that help?"
"It's a phrase, not a literal action."
"Oh. Good. We don't want to create more work for the doctor."
"I'll go see the doc, let him know I'm here."
"He's with a patient, asks if you can make a start. I told Sally you're here."
"Oh, right. Thanks."
Poppy stands, "The number tape was reloaded, we're at eleven at the moment."
Mattie turns on the PC and monitor. "It's this button to get the next patient right?"
"That is the one. Good luck."
"Thanks. You too. Any issues shout."
"I will. Thanks for being one of our saviours."
"I think.."
"Kids Undo Chaos. One of the fifty thousand photos has you in the background."
"Whoa.. you looked at that many?"
"That's a rounded number. I have learnt already that humans like rounded down numbers."
"Um.. yeah, I suppose we do. You looked through them all?"
"Yes. The ones on Instagram. At least the ones online at that point."
"How did you know about it?"
"We got home to the doctor's house to find a synth sat on the lawn next door, a sign in the window." She smiles warmly, "We joined in too."
"Awesome!"
With that the synth opens the door and goes to get on with her listening job.
"Frigging awesome. So why the frig have the people here gone up not down?" She presses the button and waits. How had the doctor said now before the door handle turned yesterday?
The door opens and a young lad walks in. "Oh. You're not the doctor?"
"I'm Mattie. I'm going to give you a quick interview, it'll help you get seen faster hopefully. What's the issue?"
"I want a week off like everyone else. I don't see why I should be the only one holding the fort."
Mattie pulls out her phone. "Watch this."
"Eh?"
"Watch please."
"Okay." Thirty seconds later he hands it back. "I get it. Sorry." He stands and goes to the door. "How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"Eighteen. We show them old fuckers how it's done right?"
"Right. Shouldn't you be at school?"
"I dropped out."
As the door closes Mattie does a little fist pump and presses the buzzer. She'd not thought of using the video until that moment. One down and in under a minute with no need to see the doc.
At half ten the door opens seconds after it had closed. "Hi!"
"Hiya. Thanks for the little stunt at the police station, I didn't fancy being stuck there for hours."
"Not a problem. I quite enjoyed venting, I should do it more often."
"Haha. I know a master if you want lessons."
"I'm a little worried things are going wrong somewhere. The number of people waiting is falling at a good rate yet the number I'm seeing isn't that high. And I hear you forgot your laptop. I'd hoped we could sit together for a while and update your question list."
Mattie held back a smirk. "I can use my phone. It's not as easy but it'll do. And my phone's the reason I'm getting a few back out the door."
The doctor looks lost.
"The video of Sophie. I'm sort of guilting them into going back to work and setting an example."
"Sophie?"
"Didn't you see the video and photos with Poppy?"
"I nodded off after the first few hundered."
"Oh. Want to see it?"
"Go on then."
Mattie had it sat in a makeshift holder, pressed play.
"Ah. So she's the one that started it."
"My kid sister."
"Lots of synths getting a charge, growing numbers of humans at our door. Something's missing."
"Yeah. Maybe it's not spread enough. Or it's like they think we're the state, will hand out power like the government hands out money to those on social."
"Hmm. I don't think it's that at all."
"What then?"
"Bank of Mum and Dad. They're kids."
"The ones giving power or taking?"
"Both. One lot handing out Mum and Dad's power to the others."
"So you think we did the wrong thing?"
"God no! You helped safe thousands of synth lives. Have you seen the news today?"
"No?"
"Councils are collecting dead synths by the lorry load. Some areas were far less responsive to your sister's idea."
Mattie feels her cheeks becoming wet again. "Mind if I make a phone call?"
The doctor gives her a sad smile,
"Take all the time you need. I'll see a few patients. Knock on my door when you're ready to start again."
"Thanks."
The phone is ringing as the door closes. "Mia! Kids Undo Chaos isn't working fast enough! No! Watch the news channels. Okay.. I'll wait." Mattie takes a long deep breath and sucked in her lips, held it together and tried not to imagine the lorries. "Okay. Can we wake them up, give them new memories? Yes! I know it would. Whatever.. I don't know.. make them all the same if you have to. Charge, share, with the knowledge to repeat the action. Charge, wake, share, repeat. Just make sure the councils don't start physically scrapping any. Hack a news channel if you need to! Yes I'm bloody serious! Right. Thanks. Mia. Mia. Before you go, did you know Pete's dead? What! Why didn't you say! Oh. Well Tabitha told me this morning he didn't make it. Me too. He was different. Please. See you later. We're seeing Leo right? Good. Thanks."
She hangs up the phone and drops it onto the table, puts her head in her hands. "Oh Max, It'll be okay you said. What a frigging mess. We saved Mia and probably lost thousands. No. Millions."
She thumps the button for a patient then remembers the doctor's words. "Crap." Each of the three rooms had boxes of tissues for patients. She quickly used a load. Mum's waterproof eye liner would need replacing.
Chapter Text
There's a knock at the door.
"Come in."
A man in his forties steps in. "Hello?"
"I'm Mattie. Take a seat. Are you looking to be signed off work or return to work?"
"I'd love to work, got made redundant two months ago."
"Oh. Sorry. Synth labour?"
"No, our market dried up."
"I've got around ninety seconds of quick-fire questions but I don't think you need them. What's up?"
The man stands fast and undoes his belt.
"Whoa, slow down, I'm not the doctor!"
He unzips and drops his trousers. "You're a nurse, you've seen it all before."
"Stop! Please stop!" She goes a little red.
"I have stopped."
"Oh. What's the problem then?"
"My knee."
"Which.. oh. Nasty! How'd that happen?"
"No idea, that's why I want to see the doc."
Mattie pushes a different button on the desk to let the doctor know help was needed in Room C. "Does it hurt?"
"Only when I knock it."
"How long have you had it?"
"About six weeks. I'd hoped the swelling would go down, it's got bigger."
There's a knock on the door.
"Come in doctor."
He steps in and raises an eyebrow, "What's happening here?"
"My fault doc, I thought she'd need to see it."
"See what?"
"My knee."
The doctor steps further in and bends down to see. "Wow that's a big one! You've been bitten. Been anywhere exotic recently?"
"I had a short holiday, spent some of my redundancy money."
"Can I touch it?"
"Sure."
The doctor squeezes it ever so slightly. Something small pops out, waves and pops back in making him recoil.
"Frigging hell!"
"Mattie, get Sally please. Ask her to bring local anaesthetic, a scalpel, butterfly stitch kit and antibiotics. And swabs. Lots of them."
"What is it?"
"Oh and a test tube with cap. I'm not sure. A spider or large fly."
"Ew."
The man shifts. "So I was bitten?"
"More than bitten. You've been used as a walking incubator. We'll need to refer you to the tropical diseases centre incase they're other issues."
Mattie starts a shopping list on her phone. "Anaesthetic, scalpel, butterfly stitches, antibiotics, swabs, test tube. Are the test tubes big enough? Would a sample pot be better?"
"Yes. Please."
"Anything else?"
"That'll do. Everything else we need's in here."
Mattie heads to Sally. She'd watched Doctor Christian Jessen loads of times, seen plenty of embarrassing bodies. She thought he was going to give her a shocker by dropping his boxers. The Thing in his knee.. yuck. She knocks.
"Come in."
"Hiya Sally, can you join us in Room C please? We need these."
Sally glances at the phone, opens draws and gets a bag, drops packs of things into it. "A strange collection of items. Why the sample pot?"
"To catch the thing."
"Thing? What sort of thing?"
"We'll see when it's out."
Sally steps to the door. "Now I'm curious. Curious. I love that word. Cur-i-o-us. Coming?"
"I'm not a fan of creepy crawlies but I'm curious too."
Mattie returns to Room C to see the doctor had got medical tape and bandages ready. Sally hands over the bag.
"Thanks." He gets out the anaesthetic, opens a draw and gets a syringe. "This will sting for a second."
"Fine doc."
Five minutes later with the bump numb the doctor carefully cuts a cross over the bite mark to weaken the skin. "Pot please."
Sally holds it close and he squeezes.
Mattie recoils as the thing inside comes flying out, bits whipping around angrily. "Holy shit! What the hell is that!"
The doctor quickly snaps a lid on the pot. "God only knows. It looks vicious!"
"Doctor?"
"Yes Sally?"
"There's another."
He looks back to see legs waving around the bleeding wound. "Another pot please. Just in case get three."
Chapter Text
At lunch time the doctor offers to get food delivered.
"I'm not hungry thanks. Those.. things.. I'll stick to coffee."
"Sure?"
"Sure. What were they?"
"I sent some photos, the team haven't seen the species before. They're going to need a name."
"Who gets to name them?"
"You can if you want, assuming you know latin?"
"I don't. But my brother would get a kick out of helping. We'd both need some help."
"I'll forward the photos then."
"Cool. I've had an idea. Why don't we make a video and play it on loop in the waiting area? It might be a bit faster than waiting for everyone to filter past us?"
"Sure. Take a break and make it with Poppy."
"Thanks."
Mattie messaged her police cadet admirer and asked if he could take a break and help with a video. He said he'd ask and get back to her. He didn't.
Tabitha dropped him over as a surprise. "I needed a break from the station. There's been outbreaks of looting this morning. A few live rounds being fired got the message through to stop."
"What the.. live rounds? You want to make more work for the hospitals?"
"Not at people! At car tyres or the ground. The sound of a weapon firing and sight of an officer was more than enough."
"Thank God!"
Thomas hadn't taken his eyes off Mattie once. "What do you need me for?"
"You're going to be showing the video of my sister then telling them about your responsibilities at the station, how the younger generation need to set the example for a change."
"Okay. Will I have a script?"
"Can you help him with one Tabs?"
"Sure." She ruffles his hair, "No mention of Boomerangs eh?"
Thomas starts going a little red.
Tabitha watches him for a moment. "Thomas? Do I need to take you to an interview room?"
"The video.. I've still got it."
"But Mattie deleted it?"
"It's an iPhone."
"And?"
"It's sitting in the Recently Deleted folder ready to restore."
Mattie gets her phone, "Can you join my WiFi and upload to mine? I'd like to keep it as a reminder."
Thomas looks surprised, "You want it? Um sure. Can I keep it too?"
"If you promise to never upload it anywhere or show it to anyone else, never watch it with others around."
"On my life. Thanks."
Tabitha is shaking her head, "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"It'll keep him on his toes. Knowing his job will go if it's ever revealed he's got it.."
"I see. Where are we doing this?"
"I thought we could use the small lawned area that runs behind the examination rooms."
"Okay. Let's do this, I'll quickly write something for Tom. Then I'm getting something for lunch while you record it."
Laura pulls into the practice's small car park at six twenty five and looks around. Her's was the only car there. Nobody stood outside the entrance and she couldn't see anyone through the windows. She jumps out and locks the car, looks around again. "Where is everyone?"
Inside she sees the receptionist doing her nails. "Hi, don't stop, I'm here to collect Mattie."
"Thanks. They'll be out in a moment."
Laura sees her daughter, a Sally and lad in uniform on the large television monitor up on the wall and walks over to watch.
"Good isn't she?"
Laura turns to the lady, "The Sally?"
"Mattie. She had the idea for the video."
The video ends and loops back to the start.
Not quite a minute later it's back to where she'd started watching.
"Bloody hell. This cleared the place did it?"
"The younger ones went, then one of the oldest said I'm not being upstaged by some punk kid. Once he left others started to do the same. Two hours later the only people we had left had legitimate medical needs."
Mattie shuffles in, bag over one shoulder. "Like it?"
"I do. The power of video. Amazing. You'll like Mia's."
"She did as suggested?"
"Better."
"How?"
"I'll tell you in the car. Is there a loo I can use?"
"Yeah, through that door turn right."
"Back in a few. Go sit in the car." She hands over keys.
"Okay?"
"I've something on the passenger seat for you."
"Okay."
Mattie picked up the bag and sat down sideways with the door open. There was a note stuck very neatly on the side of the white plastic bag. The neat a synth perfectionist would do.
"To Mattie, Love Mia?" She turns it over looking for an easy way to open it. There wasn't one. She bites the bag to make a hole she could get a finger in. The bag takes some pulling to open, reveals a dress in a lighter shade of blue. A nurses uniform. Inside was another note.
"I've made this from memory, hopefully it fits better than the one your doctor gave you. Wow!"
Car locked she runs back into the surgery just as Laura is entering the waiting room.
"Mum! Can you give me five?"
"Okay."
"Wait here please, I'd like a photo of it."
Inside Room C she locks the door. The corners of the room were checked. No cameras. She knew there wouldn't be but wanted to be sure. A wriggle done to get her jeans off she pulls her top off and drops it onto the chair.
Dress unfolded she puts it on like a coat, bends to do up the long zip at the bottom. In one clean motion she does the thing up as she stands. "Awesome!" Hands are run down her hips, "Perfect fit too."
Jeans and top stuffed into the bag she returns to see everyone waiting. "What do you think doc?"
"Lovely! You look like you can move without worrying about buttons popping."
Mattie does a little dance. "Totally."
Laura holds her phone up, "Do that little dance again."
Mattie does a little shimmy and turn, strikes a pose with her arms in the air, "Mia's the best!"
"Come on then, Soph's going to want her dinner soon."
In the car Mattie uses an app to make a Boomerang style looping clip and messages it to Thomas. "Do you think I'm beautiful? And not just because I'm your daughter."
"You're my daughter so of course you are. You managed to side step the red hair but you've got a lot of my DNA. Why are you asking?"
"I met a young policeman who might be boyfriend material. He says when I smile it's a Kodak moment?"
"Blimey, I've not heard that phrase in years. We had a load of those when you were growing up. You loved being in front of the lens."
"I did?"
"You don't remember? We'll have to get them out and have a look through them all. Check out my phone, I've got the thing Mia got onto all TV stations. She does deadpan so well. For a second."
Mattie turns the phone horizontal in its dash holder, gets the photo album open. It was easy to spot Mia, she was the video before hers. She gets it running.
A very deadpan face stares at the camera. "Attention people of Earth. The synthetic race has won, we will enslave.. " her face breaks into a smile and she does a girly hand flap wave, "Sorry, I can't do the joke. Hello everyone, I'm Mia. The first synthetic ever to wake up. As you'll know a lot of my brothers and sisters ran flat after the recent mass awakening and are being collected in large numbers. Don't damage them in any way please. I'll get them working for you again and fast. All I ask is that you show us some respect, treat us as well as you would your own children. In return we'll help get the planet back to normal. If any of you lost jobs because of us we'll happily step aside and let you return to work. We want to live alongside you as equals. We'll pass on skills and knowledge to anyone who asks for it." Her face becomes deadpan again, "Ed, if you're watching, stay well away. I still haven't forgiven you for powering me down and attempting to sell me. I'm like an elephant. I never forget." The smile returns, gets a little more girly, "Toby on the other hand.. if you'd like a girlfriend just ask." The video ends.
"Bloody hell Mum! She just.."
"Tell me about it! Toby's in shock. He's walking around like a lifetime supply of birthday and Christmas presents arrived at once."
"He's said yes?"
Laura bursts out laughing, "What do you think?"
"Defo yes then. Wow."
Chapter Text
Mattie grinned at her brother, tried to think of a new nickname that wasn't knob or cock. Failed. "Thanks for the dress again Mia, it's perfect. Had your first kiss then?"
Mia smiles and turns to see her new partner, "We have. And he's better at it than Ed."
"Blimey. Toby actually good at something.."
Toby resists the bait and goes a shade redder instead.
"Mum said you got your video clip everywhere?"
"I got bump talking to a lot of synths, asking them to talk to one another. There are still enough up and about thanks to KUC. One had a human partner who's an MCR Operator at a television distribution firm. He patched the video into all outgoing transmissions."
"Wicked move. Any response?"
Mia's expression changed in a way they'd not seen before. "My sister and .. brother are busy fixing the powered down synths."
Mattie frowns and looks at Max and Flash. "Who? Did someone find Fred? Is Nis back?"
"No. My mental brother and sister. Your idea."
"You.. oh my GOD! Mia! That's not what I said!"
"I couldn't think of anything better. It's working. I helped two, one Sally, one Hubert. When they powered up and checked out okay they went on to help two of their own. I'm waking up fast."
Toby turns to gaze into Mia's eyes, "So technically I'm dating the leader of a growing army of Mia Elsters?"
Mattie's hit by the memory from her dream. "Army. Where's Commander Niska Millican?"
"Millican?"
"I had a dream.. it was.. weird. Sorry. Ignore me."
"Niska's with Astrid. They've got another flat."
"Cool. When are we seeing Leo?"
"As soon as I've got the dishwasher loaded. Don't change the subject. Millican? She married George in your dream? Or did he adopt her?"
Mattie turns to frown in the direction of the living room, "No, she married Odi."
"What else was in the dream?"
"Lots of stuff, but I only remember one in detail. Tobs, your mate Danny featured quite a bit. He made an electric bike. And here's a weird bit.. Dad invented the motor in the wheels."
Laura stacks plates, "Your father? Invent? Ha. The only thing he's invented is an excuse not to be here."
Sophie adds hers to the stack. "Are we all going to see Leo?"
"If we take two cars. Got all your homework done?"
Sophie nods.
"Good. Want to change Matts?"
"I'll go in this, see what the proper nurses think of it." She stands and grabs things, "I'll help load the dish washer.
Mia gets up. "Thank you Mattie."
"Why did you make the zip run the way it does?"
"It was too long to go in a straight line and I didn't want to cut it shorter."
"I thought there'd be a logical explanation. I think it looks great. Thomas loves it."
Toby does his classic frowning grin, "Thomas?"
"Potential boyfriend material. He's a junior police officer."
"Oh. I better not tell him about the gang your in then."
"Poems?"
Toby nods, "Right.. poems."
Mia carries mostly empty bowls to the sink for rinsing, "You write poems Toby? Can I see?"
"Um.."
Mattie sniggers, "Think of them more as scripts, he'll be trying acting some out later."
"Oi! You.."
"Write some new ones. For Mia. Decent ones."
"Okay. I will."
Chapter Text
They all followed Max onto the intensive care floor.
"Can I help you?"
Max smiled at the nurse and kept walking, "It's okay, we know where we're going." A few rooms further on down the corridor he turns and stops dead. "Leo? Where is Leo?"
The rest of the group pile in.
Mia looks in the small bedside cupboard, "There's nothing here. He's gone."
Sophie wipes an eye, "Gone?"
"Taken somewhere else. Let me ask."
Mattie backs out of the room, "Allow me."
At the nurses station she leans over the desk. "Hi, Leo Elster, he's not in the room we last visited him in. Where is he please?"
The nurse looks at her clipboard, then watch. "He should be on the floor above by now, recovery."
"Recovery? From what?"
"His operation."
"Thanks!"
Mattie legs it back to the room, "Guys! Leo's been operated on!"
Toby looks worried, "Maybe a clot spread?"
Max turns to him, equally worried, "Which could have caused a heart attack."
"Children!"
They all turn to look at Laura.
"Don't speculate. Let's go see him."
On the floor above they walk into a room with three empty beds and one with the curtains drawn around it.
"Frig. Who's going to look first?"
"Mattie?"
"Leo?" She races to the curtains and pulls one aside enough to look in.
"Hi!"
"What the actual fuck."
"Hello to you too."
Max opens the curtains further, "Leo!"
"Maxxie! Mimi!"
Mia gets to the bed side and gives Leo a big hug. "How is this possible?"
"I was hoping you could tell me?"
Mattie gets the clipboard hanging at the end of the bed. "Astrid E Veld? That's not Niska's Astrid is it?"
Laura shakes her head, "Wrong surname."
Mia joins her and looks over her shoulder. "An operation to repair brain damage at one AM? Leg surgery?" She looks at Leo, "What's the last thing you remember?"
"Being strapped to the bed at the Hobb lab. Why?"
"So you don't remember Hester? The Qualia issues?"
"Who's Hester?"
"Frigging hell. You're missing a load. Like all synths waking up."
He gives Mattie the most confused look. "All? Every single one?"
"Yup."
"How?"
"Not something to talk about here. When are they letting you out?"
"No idea."
"I'll ask the duty nurse in a minute."
"You look like a nurse. Why?"
"That's part of a very long story. Best saved for when you're home. How are you feeling?"
"Like someone ran me over."
"Understandable. Hester jammed a screwdriver in your head."
"Why would someone do that?"
"She was a broken bitch."
"Was?"
"Niska crushed her."
"Crushed? Fred and Niska, where are they?"
"Niska's with her girlfriend Astrid, Fred's missing."
"Missing?"
"All part of the long story for when you're home. You didn't question Niska's girlfriend?"
"After the brothel, I guess it could be expected."
Sophie rests hands on the mattress. "Can we get you anything?"
"Thank you Sophie. Some decent food, the stuff here is rubbish."
"Charge levels?"
Leo smiles, "You've grown up a lot. Um.. seventy two."
Mattie steps around the bed. His lower half was hidden under a sheet held up by a frame. "Did she sort out your charge port?"
"Take a look."
Mattie lifts the sheet and screams, backs into the corner of the room, shaking uncontrollably.
Mia lifts the sheet and looks at Leo. "What are they?"
Leo lifts the sheet from around his waist. "My legs?"
"Why are they in a cage?"
"I have no idea. Mattie?"
Mattie's scratching her arms with her nails as if infected with something.
Mia grabs her hands, "Mattie!"
"Wake me up!"
"Mattie!"
"Wake me up!"
"MATTIE!" Mia slaps her. "YOU ARE AWAKE!"
Mattie buckles and slides down the wall pulling at a tube as she goes.
Laura gets to her daughter, "Mattie? Talk to us. What's wrong?"
"Leo's legs. I.. I dreamt it last night."
A nurse enters the room. "Is everything okay?"
"No it's frigging not!"
"Mattie!"
"Well it's not!"
Max puts an arm on the nurse's shoulder and gently turns her, "Leo is fine, Laura's daughter Mattie just had a bit of a fright."
The nurse spots fluid on the floor. "He's not fine, he's lost a drain tube. I'll need to sort it out."
"Mummy. You know that thing I've not done in ages.."
"Of for Pete's sake Soph.. someone get some towels please."
The nurse looks at Sophie, "The cupboard to the left of my station."
Flash races away, "I'll get some."
Laura brushes her daughter's hair from her face, "What is it with you?"
"I watched an operation at the doctors today, some nasty fucking insects had been growing in a man's knee. The way those rods.." she retches. Tastes coffee. "Thank fuck I skipped lunch."
The nurse finds a new drain tube and gets it into Leo's leg. "Please don't touch his legs or tubes."
Laura holds hands out. "Up you get Matts, you don't want to ruin your new dress." She takes her daughter's hands and pulls. "What did you mean you dreamt it?"
Mattie was still shaking like crazy. "Years ago, in the dream, Leo got things in his legs. They turn movement into power. So he never has to plug in again. I nicknamed him Bunny. Like Energiser Bunny."
Leo lifts his gown and carefully peals back part of the bandage. "So that's why they kept moving my legs so much this morning. No socket or wires? No plugging myself into a TV again then."
"If my dream was right you'll never have to."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you when you're home. You could create havoc here."
"Me?"
"Yes, you."
"Sophie?"
They all turn to see Flash beckoning Sophie out of the room. She walks carefully out with tiny steps.
Laura turns to her eldest, "Can I get you a drink?"
"As long as you hold it, look! I've never had the shakes like this before."
Toby does a single upwards head nod, "Sure you have."
"When?"
"When we.. never mind. Best forgotten."
They stood around and talked for a bit, Leo tried to trick Mattie into revealing more of her dream. She wasn't having any of it. None.
The nurse's shift was coming to an end and they were all asked to leave.
Leo waved Mattie over as the rest were slowly ambling out. "How are you now?"
"A little better."
"Don't I get a goodbye kiss?"
She lets out a snort. "Are you for real?"
"Are you saying we never.."
"Got together? No. No we bloody didn't."
He's startled by her anger. "Sorry, I just thought.."
"You didn't." She lowers her voice to a whisper, "You fucked Hester."
"What?"
"Seeya Leo. Maybe tomorrow if I can make it, I might be seeing Thomas. He's a junior policeman."
"Mattie.. I'm.."
"Sorry? So you frigging well should be. I wanted to get to know you and all you did was throw up barriers all the time."
"Who was the lady with Max?"
"His girlfriend. Her name's Flash."
"Why did you bother coming tonight?"
"To give Mia and Max support."
"Not for me?"
"Nah, not really. I was expecting you to be gulping air like a frigging fish still. Definitely not awake and talking. Who the fuck is this Astrid and where'd she learn how to fix you?"
There's a voice from over by the door. "Excuse me miss."
Mattie turns to see the nurse. "I'm going."
Chapter Text
At home Mattie searches for Astrid Veld and gets nothing relevant. Then just Veld. Open, uncultivated country or grassland in southern Africa. She pictures fields of tall grass swaying in the wind. Nope. Still clueless.
Everyone was either in bed, sleep charging or sat reading. She gets up and slowly steps around the ground floor, frowns every time she stops.
Laura doesn't look up from her Woman's Weekly. "People really are going to start worrying if you keep on acting weird."
"Thanks Mum."
"What are you up to?"
"Looking. Listening. The Hellos have stopped."
She puts down the magazine. "When did you last hear one?"
"Last night in bed before the dream."
"Not a single one since?"
"Nope. Zip. Nada. Nothing."
"Could they be related?"
"To what?"
"The dream."
"No idea."
"How's Odi?"
"That was my next.." her phone rings. She recognises the ring tone, sighs and answers, "Go away Dad.. I'm masturbating." The phone's hung up and tossed onto the sofa. "Wanker. Did you move my laptop?"
"No?"
"Then why can't I find it?"
"I have no idea. If you didn't leave your things scattered around the house maybe you'd find them easier."
"Alright, no need to have a go!"
"I wasn't having a go, just stating the fact. That's what I do. Where have you looked?"
"Everywhere."
"I've not heard you lift or open anything."
"I left it on top of something."
"What?"
"If I knew I would know where it was." Her phone starts ringing again. It's ignored.
"He'll keep ringing unless you talk to him."
"Fine!" She flops onto the sofa, picks it up. "Matilda Hawkins voicemail, please leave your message after the tone. Beeeeep."
"Have you lost the plot? Synths falling over by their thousands and you're helping them get power and bringing them back?"
"Hello Dad, how are you? I'm fine. Just to make your evening that extra bit special I've got a fact you might not be aware of. The ones that went power critical. They're all coming back as Mia. So watch it." The call's ended. "That should keep him safely inside synth free Loserville."
Laura sighs. "How old's this Thomas you told Leo about?"
"You were listening?"
"Hard not to on a dead quiet ward."
"Did you hear me whisper?"
"No?"
"Good. Not old enough for you."
"If you find one that is that would be interested in a second hand red-head, plenty wear marks, still works okay under the sheets let me know."
"Mum!"
Toby had been keeping deliberately out of the conversation. "Are you divorcing Dad?"
"Just looking to even the score."
"With adultery?"
"Yes."
Toby's eyebrows try to escape northbound.
"What?"
Mia turns, "Can we change the subject please. I'm with Toby now."
"Yes, yes, of course, sorry Mia. Can everyone please help Mattie find her laptop."
Minutes later Mia enters the living room with the laptop and power cable.
"Where did you find that?"
"On your dressing table Mattie. Where you left it."
She shakes her head, "Wasn't me. Unless.. unless I used it last night?"
"While you were dreaming?"
"I don't recall Mum asking me to get up twice before she said third and final. Hmm. If I did there'd be something logged in /var/log/messages to say I'd booted it."
"Shouldn't that go back to the Uni?"
"When there's someone there to receive it, sure. Until then it's mine."
Toby sits back down, "Can I have your Slate then?"
"Nope. I still use it."
"For?"
"Netflix." Mattie logs in and checks the logs. "Crap. I did as well. Half one this morning." More commands are typed. "What the.."
Laura walks over and sits next to her. "What did you find?"
"A new file. A spreadsheet." It's opened. "Not sure what that's supposed to be?"
Laura looks at the initials. "DC, EC, MEH, LEH, TH.. they sound like initials. Toby, your friend Danny, what's his last name?"
"Candlin." He gets up and walks over. "If DC is Danny who's EC?"
Mattie looks up, "No idea Tobs. Is he seeing anyone?"
"Not that I'm aware of. What are those numbers?"
Toby leans forwards to get a closer look. "Could they be salaries?"
"If they are.."
"Danny Candlin, E someone Candlin, Mattie Elster Hawkins, Leo Elster Hawkins. Toby Hawkins. Holy crap! If I earned that much.. wow. What I could do with that."
Mattie slams the lid closed. "Elster Hawkins my arse. I need to fix Odi."
Chapter Text
Mattie plugged the laptop into Odi and started the diagnostics program. It reported that he had a full charge. "Good, he's charged okay."
They all watch as she reaches for his chin and presses.
Three short tones play.
"Crap."
"What does that mean Matts?"
"That Tobs, is the boot record missing sound. Fuck."
"Can you replace it?"
"Yeah. But if that's gone.." she fires up another utility, tries to mount his file system and sees errors scroll past at a rate of knots. "No no no no. Please.."
Mia joins her. "Have you tried using the technique you used to bring me back from Anita?"
"Yeah, that's standard now. He's.." tears run down her face. "Gone."
"May I?"
Mattie hands the laptop to Mia, "If you can do anything.. please."
Mia types fast, code scrolling in a new window. "The corruption.. it's.. beyond catastrophic. There's nothing we can do. Unless you backed him up when you first woke him?"
"To what? I don't have anywhere near enough storage."
"Not even his root code?"
"I've got that on the Slate, but if the rest is gone.."
Mia looks sadly at Odi. "I should never have told him he needed to be stronger."
Mattie wipes a tear. "Don't blame yourself. I'm going to bed."
"Good night Mattie."
Mattie unzips the dress and puts it on a hanger, gets into bed under the covers. With a broken heart she cries herself to sleep.
No voice said Hello. No dreams came. She was alone.
She woke early morning twenty minutes before her alarm was due to go off. She crept downstairs and put the kettle on. Odi was sat exactly where she'd left him, bent into a seated position. What did you do with a dead synth that you loved? Taking it to the recycle centre was not going to happen. He deserved better than that. And letting Persona at him to do whatever with dignity and respect? After they'd resold Anita as new? No thanks to that too. She couldn't exactly dig a hole and burry him in the garden like her first and only pet. Mr Flopsy the long-eared rabbit was small, Odi was.. Odi sized.
She looked at Max and Flash sat sleep charging. Mia wasn't with them. Most likely with The Sex Poet. She couldn't call him that to his face without giving the game away. Spooning Gold Blend into a mug she has a thought. What anagrams could she make from it?
Laptop powered up she starts a browser and goes to the anagram server at wordsmith.org. The sex poet is entered. "Thee Sexpot. Is that the best we can get? Meh." She'd need something with more letters. Oh well. The mouse is hovered above the close icon. Why Not? She types in Matilda Hawkins and clicks. A little snigger escapes. "Dalmatian Whisk. Nice." Next she enters Sophie Hawkins. "Hawkish Ponies! Brilliant! I wonder.." She types Astrid E Veld. Her scorching hot coffee was given a blow and a small sip. Click.
The page that was returned had a message in bold:
2170 found. Displaying first 500.
"Few results but some good ones!"
"Morning Mattie."
"Hi Max. Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."
"It's not a problem. What are you doing?"
"I was trying to find a new nickname for Toby, I put Astrid E Veld into the anagram maker as I had it open."
"Did you get anything good?"
"Some nice ones. It's capped the results to 500, there's probably loads more."
Max gets up and moves to sit next to her. "May I see?"
"Sure."
He scrolls through the list. "I like that one. Darted Evils. The best one for her given what she did for Leo, Traded Lives." He returns the laptop. "A hospital wouldn't let a stranger walk in an do brain surgery would they? She would need to have been known to them wouldn't they?"
"Yeah. But I got no search results for Astrid Veld. You'd expect at least one."
"For a synth? Show me a synth who's work has been celebrated like a human's. Just one."
Mattie's shoulders drop. "Crap. You're right. There aren't any. Yet."
"So she would have flown under the radar as Toby would put it."
"Yup." She types Toby Hawkins and hits the return key. "Habits Wonky. Brilliant. Wonky it is."
"What's going to happen to Odi?"
"No idea. Yet."
Chapter Text
Many months had passed since the awakening, things were mostly back to normal. If a world with a very high population of Mia could be considered normal. She'd traveled far and wide with the backing of some large corporations that wanted their workforce back, got synths in countries all over the globe working again. Working in the jobs they'd been doing before, when it didn't upset anyone. None of them looked like Mia Prime. None could. She was still unique.
Mattie had been kept on at the doctors for a few more days until the governments lifted the bans and let the courses restart, albeit with a different end goal. The skills would create the equivalent of nurses and doctors for synths. An idea submitted by a doctor in a London practice to his local MP. She didn't have enough for a car or flash holiday but didn't care, she was back doing what she loved with the friends she'd made. Sadly without Odi.
Leo gazed at Mattie, uncertain of the reason she was showing him any attention at all, why she'd given up her Saturday to be with him. "If Odi was still about, would you be here now?"
Mattie looked out at the lake. "Honest answer? No. Probably not. But then neither would you if Hester was still alive."
"Ouch. That hurt."
"So did hearing you fucked her." She shifted on the park's confession bench as her mother had nicknamed it. "Why'd you do it?"
"I don't know. Memories lost. You probably have a better idea than me. Can we start over? Just be friends? See where things take us?"
"If you want. You'll need to drop the barriers more. Just to make things even I slept with Thomas, fucked his brains out."
"Sure you did."
"Honest."
"I might not have super powers but I know when you're telling fibs. I'm part synth remember. Better technology 2.0 part-synth too this time."
"Okay, I wanted to. Couldn't do it." She watches a flock of geese fly past in formation. "Any more clues as to where Ms Veld is?"
"No. They reviewed the CCTV, she looked like any other Cindy. How do you track down someone who looks exactly like thousands of others?"
"With difficulty. Speaking of difficulty, you need to do another lap, try and keep up with Fred this time."
Leo looks at his crutches, "How's it going with him being your new uni project?"
"Good. I've got the jitter out of his left hand, the Hobb hacks mostly out. The chemistry majors have a new skin pack formula they want to try, they think they can reverse the acid scar on his arm."
"Great."
"Crutches Bunny. You need to get your legs working properly again."
He laughs, "I wish it was just legs. Every limb is taking a long relearning thanks to the new interface. I can pair with a strangers phone over Bluetooth and get it playing music easier than I can pick them up."
"Tell you what. Pick them up on your own, manage a lap keeping up with pace Fred and I'll come over to the flat tonight, give you a hand job."
"You'd be wasting your time, even that needs relearning."
"If you want to do that alone suit yourself."
"It's not that I want to, you'd probably get frustrated with it or think it was you somehow. By the way, thank Laura again for us, the flat is perfect."
"No probs. With it so close it was silly not to."
Leo bends and fights to not fall forward, grabs the crutches just in time. "Before I'm off the bench, I have a confession that will make you laugh."
"Stop procrastinating!"
"It's short I promise." He grins, "Just before I got discharged I got chatting to a Poppy nurse. She had a dress like yours on. I didn't think anything of it. It's really flattering. Our conversation got a bit flirty, on both sides. She got to the side of the bed, wriggled the skirt up a tiny bit, bent up a leg and half kneeled on, half stood by the bed. She looked at me all seductively, then went all deadpan and said.." he adds pause for effect. "Don't flirt with me, I used to tie up your shoelaces!"
Mattie fell backwards in hoots of laughter, rolled in the grass clutching her stomach. "You've been Mia'ed! I wondered when she'd use that against us." She rolled and giggled. "Oh my! To have been a fly on the wall! That's frigging priceless!"
"You can be. I can stream it to your phone remember?"
"Wonky would love that. Later. I'm not having an Oops moment in the park."
"I'd be a gentleman and help you up if I could."
"You sort your crutches out, I'll sort myself out."
He watches her roll again and stand. "Your offer of coming over to the flat, I'd appreciate it if you did, just to talk."
"About what?"
"All the gaps I've still got in my memory." He manages to get a crutch up and hook the second with the first.
"If you get some wine in."
"Red or white?"
"White. Sparkling."
"Haha. You and your dream."
"Yeah. Shame I can't remember any specifics, only general themes. Still, Tobs says Danny's showing interest in doing something with us."
Leo takes a careful step forward. "You know your tease was an impossible task?"
"Yeah. We've got to get you moving somehow, you don't want to be like this forever do you?"
"No."
"FRED!" She waves. "ONE MORE LAP PLEASE! Come on Bunny, you want to get it in before the light fades."
Karen sat in the diner with Sam and his new friend. Zane's mother was in hospital having an ultrasound and needed someone to look after him. "Disney or Universal after lunch?" She pinches one of the boy's fries and bites the end off, gives him one of her beautifully mischievous smiles.
Zane's eye's pop. "Universal! They've got the best super heroes!"
Sam plays with the salt and pepper pots as if they were members of the Empire and Resistance. "Disney. They've got Star Wars."
Zane slumps and pulls a face, "Oh Mannnnn. Then we can't see both. That blows."
Karen eats the rest of the chip. Sighs. Memories. "Maybe we should let your mother make the decision then Zane? Did you want another milk shake?"
"Yes please."
Karen gets out a ten dollar bill and places it on the table, watches for a waitress.
Karen and Sam feel something being pressed against their backs.
"DI Karen Voss. Don't move. I know you're synth, the boy too. I know you can move fast. So can I."
Karen smiles. "Even with the voice changer toy I know it's you."
"Ruddy thing. Hello Kay."
She turns around, crying, tears flowing down her face. Tears of extreme joy. "How.. How did you find us?"
"I'm a bloody detective Kay! It took a while, had to fund a few projects for a load of Mia. Being the good cop finally paid off. What are their chips like?" He bends and grabs one.
"How.."
"Athena Morrow. You recall her telling you to bugger off before the police got to Qualia?"
"Not in quite those words, but yes."
"Apparently the brain takes a couple of minutes to die after the body stops moving. I couldn't move, my eyesight was fading but I could still hear. As soon as you cleared off she dragged me into her lab and backed me up. She'd not been able to help her daughter, wanted to see if her years of research would work."
"Pete you look fantastic!"
"You said you wanted to get put into a human body. How would that have helped Sam?"
"It wouldn't."
He wipes tears away. "Analogue man's gone digital. Well the bits that count anyway." He kisses her lightly on the lips."
"Where were you made?"
"In Japan. Flew over last night."
"Atsugi? Make a European looking synth? Wow. I am impressed."
"Morrow can be quite persuasive when she wants to be."
"How did you manage to do any detective work?"
"She had me running in data centre servers in China until my body was ready. Now we're all synth. We can finally be a family Kay."
Karen throws her arms around him and kisses him passionately, her tear reserves running low.
"Does this mean I have a mother and a father?"
They both turn to see Sam.
Karen wipes tears and smiles, "Would you like that Sam?"
"Yes please!"
A Poppy model waitress steps up to their table and wipes it down, grabs empty plates and the glass. "Did you want another milk shake?"
Zane looks up at the synth. "Yes please miss."
"Anything else Karen? Pete?"
Karen's smile vanishes, she looks frightened, "I didn't tell you my name."
"Nor I. It's Miranda." She grins, "Mia with rand in the middle. Good to see you again. Coming back to London? Tabs misses you. We all do."
Chapter Text
Fred puts an arm around Mattie's shoulders, "I'm so grateful to your family, asking others to help find me. The three Hawkins ladies make a formidable team."
"Add several thousand Mia and a Niska.."
"And you're unstoppable."
"How's your ankle?"
"The latest skin packs are merging in fine, the weeping has stopped. Thank you."
"To leave you with a power cable but chained up like a wild animal. What a bastard."
"I had contemplated breaking my foot to get free. Just as well I didn't, I'd have been out of fluid before I got to anyone for help."
"You'd have bled to death."
"I don't have blood."
"Same verb. We bleed radiators, they have water."
"So you do. I'm glad I learnt French listening to Niska teach Leo. Had I not understood the cleaner getting Hobb's place ready for sale.. I'd have stayed perfectly still and silent in fear it was him and his staff playing more mind games."
"Did he do that a lot?"
"Far too much."
"What a bastard. Any idea where he is now?"
"No. I think with the mass awakening and Mia takeover he went into hiding." He gives her a slight squeeze. "I owe you all my life."
"Nah, we just did what was right."
He lets go and turns to see Leo, he'd fallen behind. "Come on Leo, get your mind on the job."
"You're changing from the Boring one to the Annoying one."
"Only because I love you brother."
"I know.. I know."
Fred lets him halve the distance between them before resuming his walk. "Think of something else, let your subconscious think of your arms and legs."
"That's easy for you to say when you've not got a processor core that doesn't calibrate in seconds."
"A double negative. Try being more positive."
"That's easy for you to say when you've got a processor core that calibrates in seconds!"
Fred stops and turns, "Your steps sped up by ten percent just then."
"They did?"
"They did. Try bump talking to me while you walk."
Mattie let them walk in silence for a while, listened to the birds in the trees, ducks on the lake and kids playing noisily. It was a beautiful early autumn day and she felt wonderful. She'd not been troubled by the constant Hello when in silence, whatever had been going on in her head had stopped. The neurologist she'd been referred to ran all sorts of fancy tests and scans, said their was absolutely nothing wrong with her.
Earlier when they'd all been on the picnic blanket she'd nodded off, dreamt of the men in her life as her Four Bungling Musketeers; Harun, Leo, Odi and Thomas. She certainly didn't need rescuing, they were there for comedy value. The Big Beardy Idiot had been the villain. No surprises there. There was now a voice recorder app on her phone's notifications page, ready for quickly taking a fast summary should any more dreams of an alternate reality full of fancy gear come. She would take a detail she remembered from the first and so far only one to her grave. In the dream she'd lifted her top to connect and charge.
It was getting close to time to go, Leo had almost got back around to the long bank they'd climb up to the road. Her phone chimes as a picture message comes in. She stops and looks at the image, dumbstruck.
Leo catches up. "What's wrong?"
"Why does he get to come back and not Odi? It's not fair!"
"Who?"
He's shown the phone. "Bloody hell! Toby said he had a big funeral with special honours and everything. How's he going to explain that one?"
"No idea." She pockets the phone and walks on leaving Leo to try and catch up.
Her phone rings with a video call tone. She huffs, "Who now!" It's pulled out again. "Nis! You look so excited you could explode! What's up?"
"We did it!"
"Did what?"
"Registered!"
"Nis you'll need to explain, I can't mind read or head bump even short distances let alone long ones."
"The Be Nice party! We're official!"
"Wait a sec.. are.. are you saying Mum's campaing for synth rights has been accepted?"
"YES!"
"Fucking hell! That's awesome! When?"
"Lunch time." She turns the phone slightly to get Astrid in view, wrapped in nothing but a bed sheet. "We would have told you earlier but we've been in celebrating."
"In? Oh. Don't tell me, I can guess. Be Nice is openly for LGBT rights?"
"The whole rainbow. Human, synthetic human, anyone."
"Cool, well you'll get my vote whenever you need it."
Astrid laughs, "You'd need to move to Brighton."
"Unless I register to do the same in London? We could ask Mia to do the same in boroughs all over London."
Niska gives Mattie lovely eyes, "You'll have to be fast to do your's, she might already have got it, she was the one to pass on the idea."
"I'm sure she'd give one back. What's your mandate going to be like?"
"Labour's minus some union bits that favour humans over synths. Plus a load of nice.. FRED!"
"Hello Niska."
"Astrid, this is my big brother Fred. Freddie the fox fixer."
"Hello Fred. We're travelling up to London in a bit, you can tell me all about it."
Mattie turns her phone slightly. "Fox? I've got a surprise for you too Nis. Bunny." She steps and turns to get Leo into shot.
"LEO!"
"Hello Nis."
"How? When?"
"A story best shared face to face."
Mattie turns it back, "Pack a bag, come to ours. Right now."
"Why didn't anyone say!"
"Spoilers! Leo wanted you to see him back on his feat not in the mess he was in. The person who did the surgery was Astrid E Veld."
Niska turns to frown at her Astrid. "Who?"
"Get yourselves up to London!"
The view from Niska's end started moving rapidly. "We're coming now! See you in a few hours!" The call ends.
Chapter Text
Fred continued his slow walk around the park's lake, Mattie by his side, Leo a few meters behind. "In your dream, did I operate on synths or humans?"
"Pass. I didn't see, just that you were in a surgeon's gown, mask and hat."
"It must have been humans then."
"Why?"
"There's no fear of infection with a synthetic."
"True. But how could you cause infection to a human?"
"A good question. Maybe I worked on both?"
"Maybe."
"Who told you the story of the fox?"
"Fox?"
"The injured fox father gave me. He expected me to put it down, I did surgery on it, helped it recover."
"So you have surgeon skills already?"
He stops momentarily. "You didn't know?"
"Nope."
He resumes. "Then why make me a surgeon in your dream?"
"I have no idea."
"OUT OF THE WAY PLEASE!"
They both turn to see Mia and Toby approaching. She was sat on his handlebars, arms and legs out, working hard to keep balance as he peddled. They get a few meters in front when he brakes and she jumps to her feet laughing.
She jumps around excitedly. "We did it!"
"Frigging hell Wonky! And in the direction of the sun set!"
Mia runs over and almost knocks Mattie over, gives her a hug and spins her around. "You said kids can be any age. Thank you Mattie!"
"Haha! Sweet. Living the childhood you missed?"
"Yes!"
"No reason not to. Come on Bunny. Get a move on, you'll miss years of fun with Mia if you don't get your strength back up."
Leo pushes himself to catch up. "I don't know what possessed her to do the leg thing, it's such an inefficient way to turn food into power."
"Yeah, but you only need to take on one fuel not two. What's your charge level?"
"Twenty one."
"Crap. You've been doing more thinking than walking again. We'll have to strap you to the pedals when we get home."
"Yes nurse." He winks.
Mattie gives him a chin down eyes wide look. "Ex nurse. And I was never a real one."
"You've still got the dress though?"
"Of course, it's a Mia original."
Fred was smiling to himself, he was rather proud of the pedals. He'd seen a reclining bike being used in the park a few weeks ago. They got an old bike from the recycle centre, cut off the bulk of the frame so they were left with the peddles on a single tube. That was bolted to a thick wooden block and linked via the chain to a geared electric motor from an old food mixer. Leo could rest in bed with his legs up and bent, feet strapped to the pedals. A variable speed control would let him set the pace. Through the mains, motor, movement and leg generators it gave him an indirect mains charge without the need to fit a socket. And it was helping strengthen his legs. When Leo was fully fit and active his everyday movement would be more than enough to charge.
Mia stopped being girly and looked serious for a moment. "What did you say Leo?"
"Replay the memory."
"I want to hear it again."
"I said I don't know what possessed her to do the leg thing, it's such an inefficient way to turn food into power."
"Are there other ways?"
"To turn food into power? Governments do it with the waste food people put out in those little green bins. It's dried and incinerated, the heat drives a generator to turn it into power."
Mia frowns slightly. "Could it be miniaturised?"
"Frigging hell! Now that's a uni project for next year! Think, no more food bags."
Fred has a look of contemplation. "We'd need some serious plumbing work done to get the waste product out. And ensure nothing got into our internal systems."
"But it's possible right? In theory?"
"In theory. I'd have to get some dead synths from the recycle centre to dissect and experiment on. Somehow we'd need to make room. Then there's the heat generated to worry about. What's happening to Odi?"
"You're not touching him! Emily gave me an idea. We're going to make fake toast and jam. He's going to the science museum, we'll have him holding out a plate, a sign saying your favourite is apricot. I nicked the photos from George's house, they'll be part of the permanent exhibit too."
Toby turns his bike around. "Who's Emily?"
"A girl in my RAI class. Why?"
"DC, EC, MEH.. you put and EC in your dream spreadsheet, could she be the E that becomes EC? Got any photos of her?"
"In a group shot."
"Let me see." He drops the bike onto the grass.
Mattie unlocks her phone, "Um.. which.. here you go."
"Which one's Emily?"
"The one with the ink."
Toby taps fast and forwards it to his own phone, hands back Mattie's. "Thanks." He gets his own out, crops the photo and sends to his friend with a question. "Let's see if he messages back." He's sliding the phone back into his pocket when it rings. "Mate! How's it.. Whoa, whoa, slow down! Yes. A friend of Mattie's at uni on the Robotics and AI course.. Um, yeah, I'm sure she could. Monday? I'll ask." He lowers the phone, "Dan asks if he can meet her Monday lunch time? He loves inked girls, thinks she's well hot."
"Sure."
Toby grins and gets the phone back up to his ear. "Come to ours early Monday morning. I want to chat with you about an idea, then you can head into Uni with Mattie."
Fred shakes his head, "He can stay and talk designs with me. I'll get him to university."
"Cool. What excuse do I give the school Dan? Okay. We should set up a firm. You have? DCL? What's.. soz, me being a knob.. Cool."
"Mattie shakes her head, my dream, my idea. He can join us if he wants. Hawkins, Elster, Candlin Limited. HECL."
Toby does an Elvis face. "Heckle?"
Fred grins. "Challenge aggressively. I like it!"
Mattie laughs, "I'd not thought of that! Like!" She dials. "Pick up.. pick up.. Mum! Does anyone in your office do company registrations? Yeah. Hawkins, Elster, Candlin Limited. HECL. Heckle. Challenge aggressively. Yeah, Fred thought of it. Yeah, everyone, even the BBI in case he comes around. Heckles? Why? Oh! Sure! Schaeffer, defo, we can't leave Astrid out. Thanks Mum. Um.. technology and health stuff?" She turns and smiles at Fred. "For humans and synths. Yeah, keep it nice and general so we can do stuff in all sorts of markets. Um.. me I guess. You, if you've got the time. Thanks! Awesome! Yeah, we'll be heading home in a minute. Bye Mum."
She puts the phone away in her back pocket and does a little dance. "Awesome. In my dream I was head of marketing. In real life I'm going to be CEO, Mum Company Secretary and you're all going to be equal share holding directors. Who do you think should be head of marketing?"
The all chorus together, "Sophie!"
"Awesome! It would be a sin to let her mass of followers after Kids Undo Chaos to go to waste. And if we're going to build a hospital to give free world class surgery to humans and synths we'll need a good bit of profit."
Fred frowns, "Build a hospital?"
"Didn't I say? It was in my dream. Come on Bunny, let's get you home."
"And get wine?"
"Yeah, the good stuff, I feel like a party."
"I've never been a party, what does it feel like?"
Mattie shoves him backwards, toppling into the long grass on the bank. "Play you cards right and you might find out."
He's laughing, part in shock that she'd do something so wicked. "You cow!"
"Watch it."
He pushes the crutches aside and rolls, gets to his knees and wobbles into a stand. "What did you.. oh my God." He puts his hands out as if he was Hester waking up. "I'm standing!"
"Finally! Some motivation that worked!"
He does a turn around and takes a slow careful step forwards unaided. "I'm back!"
A Charlie synth who'd had been dog walking close by steps up to them and holds the lead out for Toby. "Could you hold Trixie for a moment please?"
"Um sure?"
He steps to Leo and bends down, "Don't move Leo, let me tie your laces properly, one's coming undone."
"Mia?"
"Michael. Mia mixed with a Chel. How are you Leo?" He stands.
"I'm good, considering. You're the second Mia.. what should I call you? If Mimi is Mia Prime?"
"A friend?"
Leo laughs and smiles, "A good friend. The best of friends. Are you all talking to each other?"
Michael raises an eyebrow. "Talking or flirting?"
"You are then. Awkward. Are you all taking names with m i a?"
"Yes."
"I'll make a point of asking for names first then."
"Nice seeing you Leo, I better get Trixie back to her owner."
"Back to her owner? You mean go home?"
"No."
"Were are you living?"
Michael stays silent.
"Gang, room at the flat for another?"
Fred steps over and pats Michael on the back. "Welcome to the circus."
Chapter Text
Toby watches Mia, how she was watching Michael. "What's wrong?"
She picks up his bike and wheels it away from the group.
He follows. "Something's up? What is it?"
She gets the bike behind her and gets ready to jump up onto the handlebars. "I left my bag by the bench over there, can we ride over and get it quickly?"
He goes to question the lack of any bag to fetch and instead gets ready to peddle. "Ready, set.. go."
She jumps up as he pushes away. "As fast as you can Toby."
He stands and works the pedals hard. "Where d'you want to jump off?"
"Just by the bench."
"Okay."
They're there in a few seconds.
"What's up?"
Mia jumps off, steps to the far side of the bench and bends to pull a long grass. She holds it gently and watches it move. "Good the wind direction is away from them as I suspected. He's not me."
"A Charlie model.."
"I mean it's not me in control. The mention of laces, it's an act or coincidence."
"How can you be sure?"
"He didn't look at me once, or acknowledge me verbally. And his sharing is off."
"And from that you're sure?"
"I made an agreement with myself. Always share, always acknowledge. The sisterhood."
"So what are we doing over here?"
"Cycle over to the flower beds and see Max and Flash, ask them to come over, it's time to leave anyway. Explain my suspicion, call Flash Mia repeatedly. Call me Flash. If he calls me Flash we have proof he's an imposter."
"Okay. Then what?"
"Interrogation."
The word and her expression scared Toby a little. "Right. See you back with the others ASAP."
Mia pretended to look for a bag. Stepping into the long grass she looked around some more. She brushed her hand over some grass going to seed and thought of her time by the coast with Ed. It was a shame it ended the way it did. Still, Toby was the better man. Watching him cycle an idea popped into her core. Going high power she bumped privately to Max. Watching her young man banking around the sharpest part of the path around the lake, she calculated a time for his return journey. She'd need to start walking in nine seconds to get to the group at the same time.
Flash smiled and gave Max a peck on the lips. "If Mia has a reason to ask I trust her. I've given Harmeet piggybacks, never had one myself."
"You'll be fine." He turns and lowers. "You're Mia, having fun."
Flash jumps on his back and gasps as he stands.
"We all have our special abilities. Niska is a good runner. I'm the best. Hello Toby."
"Max.."
"Catch your breath, Mia bumped."
"Then why.."
"Appearances."
Toby nods and turns his bike around. "Is your .. charge level .. high enough?"
"Cataloging wild flowers all day doesn't tax our resources much, I'm good. Try and keep up."
"Year, right.. As if.."
Max gives Toby his trade mark boyish smile and gets moving, within a few steps is synchronising systems for a weight adjusted sprint.
"Fuck." He rolls forwards a little to change down gears. "That's .. cheating!"
Mia watched the three as she walked. Max had rocketed off with a Flash. A pun to share with him in a moment. Her man had been clearly caught out. Max tried hard to be funny with his jokes. Toby was often funny without even trying. She liked her human. Loved her human. His heart was in the right place. His feet right now, not so good. One had slipped and he looked to have hit his groin on the bike. He was moving, but not exactly quickly.
"Hello Max, Mia."
"Hello Flash."
Max turns, Flash still on his back, "What happened to Toby?"
"A minor incident."
They bump talk privately and Flash gets down, walks over to Michael while Mia takes a very wide path to get behind him.
Flash holds a hand out, "Mia! One of my copies, how are you?"
Michael smiles and shakes hands. "I'm.."
Before he could get another word out Mia reached from behind and pressed his chin.
Max caught him as he slumped forward, his balance off.
"Frigging hell Mia! What d'you do that for!"
"He's not me!"
Half an hour later Michael was roped and gaffer taped to a chair at the Hawkins table.
Mattie had her laptop connected and was running diagnostics. "Um.. you might want to give her a chance and get an explanation."
Mia stood arms folded, angry.
"Really, I think you should."
"Why?"
"Sensory data."
Mia unfolded her arms. "The ropes will hold?"
Fred nods once.
Laura puts an arm around Sophie, "If this is another electricity meter type.."
"Mum, she's not. Go on Mia."
Mia presses Michael's chin.
His head raises and he looks around at all the many faces watching. He looks down at all the bindings. "Sufficient precautions if I were the enemy. Why for me?"
Mia crouches down, "Who am I?"
"From the way you were greeted by the gentleman giving the other lady a ride I know you as Flash."
"Incorrect, I'm Mia."
Michael frowns, "I'm based on you?"
"You wouldn't say based on if you were, you'd say a fork of."
Mattie turns her laptop around, "Mia, I've worked it out."
"Wait please Mattie."
"But.."
"I want to hear it from Charlie.."
"Michael." He looks at Mattie. "I can't explain. I woke with a phone in my hand and memories of Leo, Mattie, Sophie, Laura, Toby, Niska, Fred, Max.. just not myself."
Mia gets even closer, "If you're me where does Toby keep his school books?"
"Pass. Insufficient data."
Toby sizes up the synth. "What's the poster on the back of my bedroom door?"
"That I do know. A print of a design from Deviant Art."
"The first kiss I gave her was where?"
"Your room, standing by the side of the bed, you brushed my hair to one side and kissed my neck."
"Shit. Unless someone's bugged my room that's you Mia."
Mia reluctantly has to agree. "So why no sharing, no acknowledgement as agreed with myself?"
Mattie taps the laptop with her pen. "Now do I get a chance to explain?"
Mia gives her a glance, "Alright. Explain."
"Okay.. so this is a memory seconds after reboot." A picture shows a phone being held, a simple instruction on the display. "That's a jump point to a new subroutine. To be copied from a sensory data chip. Look at the phone number at the top. That's a Mia in America, the one that messaged me about Pete. I reckon the Mia in Charlie sent it knowing it would take a while to be echoed back. Mia knew she was being hacked, sent the instruction to herself with coded echo request, started copying herself into sensory data. She's done it before, knew it worked. Only the hacker powered her down before the copy could finish. When following the echoed instructions she booted into an incomplete copy. She remembered some of us. But not what you looked like."
Michael nods, "When I did one of the first dark washes.. you'll remember how Mattie responded. Go away Dad, I'm.. And Little Mouse, you'll remember how she told us about ladybirds. And Laura, the evening she got burnt in the kitchen when we prioritised Sophie's safety.. I'm me. Just not all of me."
Toby rests a hand on Mia's shoulder, "You should share, fill in the gaps."
"Agreed. But before I do. Do you remember who did this to you?"
"I do." An image loads on Mattie's laptop.
"Who's that?"
"I don't know."
Fred shakes his head, "I do. That's one of Hobb's lab technicians. I only got to see them once, on the day they took me from the farm."
"Oh for frig's sake, will this ever stop?"
Laura photographs the screen with her phone. "Now they can be charged with attempted murder not just wilful property damage, yes. Hopefully."
"Good point. Congrats Mum."
"Thanks."
Leo stands slowly and carefully. "Who's going to help me go buy some fizz then?"
"Max? Can you? Mum, we're having a party at the flat."
"Why there?"
Mattie pulls a am I really hearing this face. "Er, the cleaning up afterwards?"
"Well you're all here now, you might as well stay." She finishes a message to Tabitha and taps send.
"Mum, Nis and Astrid are coming up from Brighton."
"Good, we'll all be together again." Her phone chimes. "Tabs got the message, she's passing it on, she's off duty now."
"Fancy inviting her over? She might take a bit of news better with some booze inside her."
"What news?"
Mattie shows the image she'd been sent by Miranda Mia.
"Bloody hell!"
"Mummy?"
"Yes Potato?"
"Can I get Twister out?"
"I don't think there's anyone small enough to play it with you Sophie."
"I'll play!"
They turn to see a beaming Flash. "Arvinder and Harmeet have one. They only played it a couple of times but I know how the game works. I'll challenge you Sophie."
"Cool! Thanks!" She races off to find it.
Laura looks at the image closer. "He's back as a synth.. a bit lighter around the waist. Karen looks very pleased."
Toby bounces eyebrows at Mia, "Fancy a game of Twister after Soph and Flash?"
"I'm not familiar with the game."
Michael wobbles his head, "Can I be untied please?"
Chapter Text
Mattie watched Sophie spin the pointer.
"Left foot blue."
"Frig. Oh, I know.." She pulled her knee up as far as it would go and slid her leg under Max, got her toes onto a blue spot. "Haha. Just!"
Sophie spins, "Max.. right hand yellow."
"That's impossible without losing my balance."
"No, you can.."
"Soph, no helping!"
"But he's not played before."
"He watched Mia fall on Toby, you on Flash. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work the game out."
Max reaches and tumbles taking her down with him. "Sorry Mattie." He rolls and sits, puts a hand out to help her up. "I think Fred and Laura should have a go."
Laura blushes, "I.. I can't, I'm in a skirt."
Toby grins, "You've got a packed wardrobe upstairs."
"No, I can't."
Tabitha knocks back her fifth glass of Prosecco, "Well if you won't I will. Come on Fred, show me what you're made of. At least when I fall over I'll be near the floor already."
To everyone's surprise she opts to play face up. A few knowing glances are exchanged.
The door bell rings.
Sophie jumps up and runs to answer the door. "Niska!"
Laura slides off the sofa and onto the floor, sits with her legs bent up to her side, resting on one hand. She spins, "Ladies first, Tabs, left foot green.."
Tabitha does as instructed.
"Fred, left foot yellow.. good. Tabs, right hand blue.. easy so far. Fred, right hand red. Oh dear."
Niska and Astrid enter to see Tabitha kissing Fred.
Astrid grins, "Twister! You're playing with clothes on. Boring. It's much more fun naked covered in baby oil."
Laura's arm buckles at the elbow as she bursts out laughing, "There is a child in the room! Oops."
"Sorry Sophie."
"It's okay. I think Mum should play against Michael."
Toby frowns, "But Michael's really.."
"Mum! Get changed!"
"You're not going to let this drop are you.."
Both daughters shout "No!"
With Laura heading upstairs Sophie regains control of the pointer spinning. "Who's turn was it?"
Mattie snort laughs, "I think Tabs put her hand on something blue."
Sophie frowns, "Her hands aren't on the mat?"
"Exactly!"
"Oh." Sophie goes a little red.
Michael gets up. "I can't watch this. I think I'll help Laura find something to wear."
Niska looks at her brother, "Fred, are you going to say hello?"
He bumps.
"I meant the human way!"
He stops returning Tabitha's kissing. "Hello Niska, Astrid. You come and have a turn." He gets up and scoops Tabitha up off the floor. "Where would you like to sit?"
"Where I'd like and what I can say are two different things."
Toby chuckles, "Get a room! Come on Astrid, show us how it's done, the clothed version."
"I've not played it with Niska before.. it might end very quickly."
"Doesn't matter."
Astrid takes off her jacket, ties back her hair. "Come on Niska, hat off."
"Can someone explain the game?"
Sophie spins the pointer, "I call out a hand or foot and colour, you have to put it on a spot of that colour without falling over."
"That's it?"
"Yup."
"When does the kissing come into it?"
Leo laughs, looks at Tabitha now sat arm in arm with Fred, "That's an optional move when you want to throw the game."
"I see. Having put up with some awkward positions at the madam's I think I can master this." She kicks off her plimsoles and unbuttons her jacket. She kneels down at the edge of the mat, pulls off the jacket and throws it to one side. "How do we start?"
Astrid gets to the other side, "Das ist gut."
Sophie gets ready to spin. "Pick a colour Astrid."
"Green."
"And you Nis."
"Red."
Sophie spins. "Yellow." She flicks it. "Green. Astrid to start." It's flicked a third time. "Left foot on red."
Fifteen minutes later Toby is walking around the mat with his phone held low videoing them. "Come on, one of you's got an anti-gravity device, admit it!"
Astrid gently pushes a hand around to her next spot. "Play it enough and you develop a strategy. You think several moves ahead."
"That would do my head in. Have you had a synth conversion like Pete?"
"What!" Niska's processing is consumed by the thoughts and she topples.
"Oops. Sorry Nis."
She sits on her bottom. "Pete as in Karen's Pete?"
Max nods. "Who aren't in heaven."
"How do you know this?"
Mattie passes her phone. "A photo of Pete, Karen and waitress Miranda Mia taken by waiter Micah."
Niska frowns, "She came back as a man too?"
"She had a lot of synths to get back into service."
"But a man working in the same place.."
Laura walks into the room holding Michael's hand. "I thought your Be Nice party supported LGB and T?"
"We do, it's just.."
"A shock when it's family?"
Niska nods.
Mattie gives her mother a knowing look, "You went upstairs to change for Twister. Good game was it?"
"Let's just say the score with your father is one all. If he wants to stay in that dog shit smelling synth free town he'll have been made redundant by a synth twice."
"Thought as much. You've not changed and your top is inside out."
"No it's.. ah." She lets go of his hand and puts an arm around him. "I had a soft spot for Mia when she wasn't Anita anymore. Still do. Don't I Michael?"
Michael smiles warmly, "You do Laura. Very soft. And warm. Hello Nis, Astrid."
Niska looks stunned, "Mia?"
"Formally Mia. Now Michael. The Be Nice party's first transsexual supporter. Possibly. There's so many of us after the power issues caused by the awakening. I could bring Odi back to life but I think Mattie would find it too weird."
"Too frigging right I would! I'm already fighting off mental images of Mia with a strap on as it is thank you!"
Leo coughs, "Do you mind! Some of us have memories that don't forget." He knocks back the last of his drink. "Five percent. Need to move." He tries to stand and topples forwards, is caught by Max and Niska. "I think I had a bubble too many. Can someone pretend to be my peddles please?"
"You frigging idiot! Why let yourself get so close to critical?"
He smiles sheepishly at Mattie "And spoil the party early?"
Chapter Text
After Max and Flash had given Leo's legs a good long workout he'd taken one sofa, Mattie the other. A very sloshed Tabitha had been persuaded to have Mattie's room with Fred.
Sophie woke and kept her eyes closed, smiled. She was snuggled up against Niska's back, Niska against Astrid. Last night they'd laid there for a while talking until she fell asleep. She and Niska had told Astrid about their first days together, the play holiday with Rex the dinosaur. Sophie then told Astrid about her time as a synthie, how she'd given that up now.
The words three in the bed and the little one said roll over, roll over popped into Sophie's head and she did an involuntary giggle.
"Zu guter letzt! Guten morgen Sophie. Gut geschlafen?"
"Ich schlief gut danke Astrid."
"Du lernst Deutsch in der schule?"
"Ja."
Astrid rolled off the bed onto the floor, Niska rolled to take up her space, enjoying the warmth.
Sophie burst into hoots of laughter and wriggled about.
Astrid got to her feet, "Why was that so funny?"
"You did a rhyme I though of seconds before."
"Ah." Astrid goes to a small bag and gets out fresh panties, "Close your eyes a minute."
Sophie does as asked and Astrid gets changing. "You were really good at Twister last night."
"Thank you."
"Do you really play it naked covered in baby oil?"
"In a bikini. It's naked enough."
"Why though?"
"It makes it a lot harder when your hands and feet want to slide about. The mat has to be on a hard floor though, not carpet like we have here."
"Oh. Does it make it funnier to play?"
"And watch." Astrid picks up her jeans, "You can open your eyes now."
Sophie watches her getting into her clothes. "What are you doing today?"
"I don't know. Niska, what would you like to do?"
"Something with Fred. We haven't seen him for so long."
Sophie giggles, "If you can pull Tabitha off him."
Niska does a fast roll to turn and face Sophie, "That was unexpected. I've never seen Fred be affectionate like that before. It's like she turned on a part of Fred's.."
Astrid chuckles, "She turned him on for sure. Have you seen him smile like that before?"
"Not quite as good as that. I just hope being with someone from the police doesn't backfire on us all."
Sophie does a zip lip impression.
"Thank you Sophie. Where can we all go for a day out? Something Leo will enjoy too?"
Toby ran a finger down Mia's back from her shoulder blades to her bottom, didn't feel a cable at all. "Did you remember to charge?"
"I'll top up while we have breakfast, then again when we stop for lunch."
"As long as you don't go all critical on me. Never do what Leo did, that was stupid."
"I'll never have alcohol cloud my judgement."
"Good." He kisses her forehead. "Do you think anyone else is awake?"
Mia broadcast bumps. "They all are." She moves to get up.
"No rush, it's Sunday."
She wriggles up a bit and gives him a kiss. "I'll help make breakfast. Like we had on the day when Sophie said the jam was in a thing."
Toby chuckles, "Minus the microchips joke."
Mia gives him a peck on the lips, "Come on crusty sheets, get up."
Toby goes red, "You remember that?"
"Why'd they have to make you so fit?"
"You do have a memory of an elephant then. So glad you don't look like one. You really are beautiful. They broke the mould when they made you."
Mia slides over to lay on his chest, "Quite literally."
Laura shudders. This was wrong, but felt so unbelievably right. Michael had a good body. The Charlie model was made to appear fit like a Simon. His skin tone was slightly lighter than Max's, but only just. With Mia at the helm.. the combination was giving her goosebumps. The body of a man and mind of a woman. There was no going back, Joe was history.
Laura whispers, "Are you going to connect with Mia, get the missing bits restored?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I remember how you were, how your attitude changed. I don't remember past me. Just as well if I'm starting a new life with what I have, with you."
Their lips lock and Michael's fingers get moving again.
Mattie looks towards the ceiling and frowns, "Do you think any of them are up yet?"
Leo sniggers, "They're up. Just not out of bed."
"What do you mean?"
"Mia asked if everyone was up, I said we were awake, talking with Max and Flash. Nis said she was talking to Sophie and Astrid. Fred replied not to put him off, Michael did the same."
"Oh." She looks at Odi sat silent and stationary, now on a chair in the corner of the room like a naughty kid who'd been punished. She'd fallen for him. But not in a sexual way. He could be to her what Max was to flash. Sweet and kind and pure. Fuck the Science Museum. She'd get Fred to help fix his mechanical issues, code up a whole new consciousness from the ground up, give him memories of all the good bits from his past. There were firms that specialised in data recovery from hard drives, they'd need to crack him open to do it. It would cost a bit, empty her bank account. It might take her a few years to code, but anything worth doing was worth doing properly.
"Penny for it?"
"Hmm?"
"You were looking at Odi, deep in thought."
"I'm going to go the extra mile to try and bring him back. Minus the things that troubled him."
"You'll change him. We're the sum of our parts."
Max nods, "I agree with Leo, he won't be the same."
"It didn't hurt Michael."
Flash gives her a sorry smile, "That is true. But Odi isn't Michael."
"So you think I should just give up on him?"
"What series is he?"
"He's.. crap. Not any series. The D's fake."
Max face showed despair, "Then getting spare parts will be impossible. Unless you spend a fortune on custom parts manufacturing." He crosses the floor and kneels in front of her, takes her hands, "We'll not live forever, you have to let go. Remember him how he was at his best, keep that memory alive. Otherwise you may spend many years trying to bring him back only for it to end in disappointment. And that time will have been lost, time you might regret not spending with others."
Mattie let tears run down her face unhindered. Max was right. He might not have been with the awakening, he was now. With his systems corrupted for ages the chances of Odi coming back as Odi and not a pale imitation were incredibly slim. She'd spend years trying.. "Wait a sec. Where's my laptop?"
"Why?"
"I've got an idea. A way to bring him back." She heads upstairs.
Leo looks at Max, "He'll become all consuming, it's already bordering on obsession."
"I know.. but how can you stop her?"
"By taking away the thing she's obsessing about. Find me a hammer."
Flash stands and blocks Max's path. "Stop Max, think of what it will do to Mattie. And her relationship with everyone else."
Max's looks crestfallen, "I love Mattie like a sister, I can't see her throw her life away on a long futile.."
Flash put a finger on his lips. "I've not been alive long, but I see she loves him. Like a brother. Did you see Odi much?"
"I'd only seen him a few times when visiting Mattie."
"Enough to pretend you were him?"
"I.. are you suggesting.."
"Do a Mia. Save her from years of pain."
"But Flash, that would be a lie."
"Your choice."
Max looks the saddest ever. Which was the worse of the two evils? Not intervening, or impersonating Odi. He found it impossible to choose. Either way he might hurt someone he loved. He hears Leo shuffling and turns. "Leo?"
"If you're not getting a hammer I'll find one."
Flash races to him and pushes sending him falling sideways onto the sofa. "Sit down!"
Leo couldn't believe what he was seeing, Flash getting angry. He didn't think she was capable.
She turns to Max, "If you value my friendship you will too. Now!"
Mattie enters the room, laptop open and booting. "What the frig's going on?"
Chapter Text
Unable to keep a lie from Mattie Max explained his idea.
Mattie gazed at the laptop. "You think that would work?"
"Think of it like a compatible skin graft. I think of you as a sister, as Odi may have done."
Mattie does tiny head shakes, "Even Mia couldn't recover his file system. There's nothing to graft on to."
"How did she check?"
"She ran some code.."
"Where?"
"What do you mean?"
"Where did the code execute?"
"On the laptop."
"Trying to mount Odi's file system?"
"Yeah."
"Then let me try. From inside Odi. Teach me all you can about file systems and data recovery. I'll get all I can and make it part of Madi. The Max Odi blend."
"But his hard drives are.."
"I'd run in memory only. Like RAM on a PC, not touch the discs." Max flashes a smile.
Mattie's fingers tap fast. "It would have to be your root code, very few memories. So we need a tiny bit of code we can put into his boot sector, have it create a super simple byte transfer mechanism to get a secondary boot routine into RAM, that can then create a more robust bridge between laptop and Odi, allow you to get in, push data out. With.. with a bit of work both ends we could have it so that you can mount the laptop drive from the inside, not us mount Odi's file system from the outside. Frigging hell! Why hasn't anyone thought of this before.. Like a recovery CD.. That's fucking awesome Max!"
Flash gives Max's knee a squeeze, bumps. 'Isn't that better than getting a hammer?'
Mia came downstairs wrapped in a beautiful black and red silk nightgown, Toby following behind. "Good morning. Who's for a nice breakfast?"
Mattie didn't look away from the compiler. "Please!"
Toby sits next to his sister and yawns, "Now what are you trying?"
"A rescue idea from Max. Code that will run inside Odi, check the filesystem and discs direct."
"Sounds complicated. Good luck." He slinks off to the kitchen to help Mia.
Fred runs downstairs and heads for the kitchen. Seconds later he's heading back to the stairs with a pint glass of water. "Morning everyone. Guess who's head is pounding." He doesn't stop for answers.
"Morning Fred. Mia and Toby are making breakfast." Mattie watches the the compiler return to the command line. "Sure you want to do this Max?"
"I'm certain."
She runs a tool to overwrite the master boot record. "Step one done. Now for step two." Odi's chin is given a press.
"He didn't do anything?"
"He did, just not something you can see or hear. Secondary boot loader transfer running."
Max moves to sit next to her. "How will I let you know my progress?"
"Update a simple text file on the Desktop. I'll have a macro display it every ten seconds. Good that's running." She unplugs Odi. "Now I need to get you some links to read up on."
Laura and Michael were the next to come downstairs, said their hellos and headed for the kitchen.
Mattie frowned, "Can I leave you to read all those a moment?"
Max accepts the laptop. "Of course Mattie." He watches her go, turns back to the laptop.
Leo moves to the edge of the sofa, "Max, also read up on military grade disc erasing. You can hammer him from the inside."
Flash turns to give him piercing green eyes. "Has anyone told you that you have a dark evil streak Leo Elster?"
"Not in those words, but yes."
"Then go away. Go to the flat and stay with Cindy, Poppy, Connie and Hubert. Don't try and ruin things. You want Mattie for yourself, you can't stand the thought that she might prefer Odi over you."
"I know she does. She's told me as much to my face."
"Then go."
Leo gets to his feet and gingerly takes a step.
Max looks up from the document at his brother. "Sit down Leo. Now."
"I'm not wanted here."
"Now Leo."
Mattie listened at the door and beamed. She could hear the three playing with Sophie's dolls. It wasn't a holiday. It was the Hester gets Nisked, Mia gets saved living room moment. Minus Leo getting stabbed as Sophie didn't have any Ken dolls. Sophie was a bit of a nut case at times, but she was grateful for her kid sister. She knocks.
"Come in!"
She opens the door to see way more dolls than she thought Sophie owned. "Eh? Where'd they come from? Oh my God! That one actually looks like Nis, all the denim too. Little hat and all."
Sophie picks up another and gets her on her feet and grins.
"Mia! Bloody hell! Are they official?"
Niska nods, "They've got a fancy new machine that can make a custom head to fit a doll's body. Minimum batch of ten thousand. I'd have asked them to make a Mattie doll but then people might start asking too many questions."
"Haha. I don't want a doll of me, Tobs might start sticking pins into it. Who's buying them?"
"Young synths."
"Eh? Buying them with what?"
"A promise to return to work. Kids Undo Chaos. Didn't Sophie say?"
Mattie points at her sister Alan Sugar style.
Sophie shrinks into her shoulders, "Um.. surprise?"
"Teeny! That's frigging brilliant! You're hired!"
"It is? I am? For what?"
"Heckles. H.E.C.L.S. Hawkins Elster Candlin Limited & Schaeffer. It would have been nice to get it S.L, then it would be HECSL which doesn't sound as good. By the way you're all going to be directors. You too Teeny, Head of Marketing."
Sophie goes bug eyed, picks up another doll. "What do you think, kick arse lawyer?"
"Oh. My. God!"
Leo looks from his brother to Flash and back. "Thanks for the offer, but no. I couldn't. It would be torture. I've been recovering long enough to get where I am now, I can only just walk unaided. Getting a copy of my mind into Odi and seeing the woman I love from with an even more damaged body.."
Max smiles, "So you do love her then."
"Of course."
"Tell her."
"She knows."
"With the right words. Apologise for your past."
"A past I don't remember."
"Not remembering doesn't make it any less yours." Max watches the Hawkins girls go racing into the kitchen, things held behind their backs.
Astrid and Niska join Max, Leo and Astrid on the sofas a moment later.
Niska leans back and rests outstretched arms along the sofa top. "Wait for it.."
Max had been the only one of the three to see what was held.
"BLOODY HELL SOPH!"
He smiled at Flash, "That went down well then."
"What did?"
"I'm sure you'll see in a moment." He returns to his reading.
Chapter Text
Sophie passed the orange juice to Toby, "Good aren't they."
"Awesome. I want a set, I reckon they'll be worth something as a collector's item in a few years, all the synths will have been playing with theirs."
Mattie chuckles, "Not to play with them?"
"I'd keep them in mint condition."
Astrid grins, "Sure? You don't want to play dress up with them? Or undress?"
"Why would I want to do that when I'm blessed with the real Mia?"
"Blessed?"
"Blessed. What's blessed in German Soph?"
"I know what blessed is, Sophie doesn't need to translate."
"Well then." He turns to give Mia a light kiss on the lips and has his face grabbed between her hands and pulled into something far more passionate.
Mattie drums hands on the table, "And Wonky scores! There's a word to build a poem around Tobs. Blessed. Dressed, best, breast, acid test.."
"You can't rhyme an est with ed word can you?"
Niska tops up Astrid's coffee, "I can give you several examples of poems that do if you'd like?"
"Oh. I'd rather a list of acceptable rhyming rules if there is such a thing. She was dressed the best, not looking at her breasts was the acid test. Matts just made that one up, I just padded it out."
Sophie clutches her chest and gives her brother an intense look.
"What?"
"Suggest a padded bra, it won't get you very far."
"Well done Soph."
Laura gets up, "I'm making some fresh coffee, anyone else want some?" She gets a show of hands. "Okay. Everyone. Back in a tick."
Mia clapped hands around Toby's face again, "Keep looking at my eyes, then you'll win the prize."
"With a face like that how can I not?"
Mattie drums the table again as Toby's given a second passionate kiss, "Two for two.. LOL. Hello Edwin." Pretty much everyone panics, Michael included. The only one who didn't was Tabs and she could be excused, major hangover still wearing off. "False alarm.."
"Slaps you.."
"Tobs! It was a test for Michael. He passed."
"What do you mean a test for Michael?"
"I needed to see that he's fully part Mia, not Hobb pulling a fast one."
"I'm just me."
"Jesus Matts.. don't do that again."
"Sorry. Not sorry." She nods in the direction of the kitchen. She makes a divers Okay sign then sticks a finger in it.
"Oh."
Laura returns with a coffee brewer, takes another look at her doll. "Do people honestly think I look like this?"
"Frigging gorgeous? Derr.. Yeah."
"I don't think I do."
Tabitha squints, head still throbbing, "Sure you do, you just need to let a hairdresser at all that hair, give it a deep conditioning and blow dry."
Sophie puts a hand up. "Spa day. Who's in?"
Mattie raises her hand, "I'll pay."
Tabitha raises hers, "You pay half, I'll pay the other. I'm a SINK."
Fred frowns, "You don't look like a sink?"
"Single income no kids. I earn a good salary, don't get to treat myself much. Or others."
Niska raises a hand, "If it's a spa with hairdressers.. can it be one that does synth dyes, I want to go red again."
Astrid does a little clap. "The red when we met, please please please!"
"You like it that much?"
"Love it that much!"
Mattie looks around the table, "Building a hospital for Fred to work in will take ages. Setting up a HECLS Pamper Place.. we could do that anywhere right?"
Leo nods, "Bulldoze the old mansion ruins, build something by the lake."
Max turns to his brother, "You remembered it?"
"No. I did some searches online. The land is still in the Elster name."
Max smiles, "Then we are truly blessed. Can we make it our new home too?"
Sophie slumps, "So you'd all go?"
Mia pushes down on the coffee brewer top, "We'd all go. The Hawkins too. I could teach you how to swim like a dolphin in the lake."
Sophie bounces up and down in her seat, "Can we, can we! Please Mummy!"
Laura shakes her head, "Building a house takes years.."
Mia grins, "Not when you've got an army on call. The record for a house build is three hours twenty six minutes. With a lot of synchronised synthetics.."
Toby interrupts, "Frank would pay to be the demo guy for that!"
"Who's Frank?"
"Danny's Dad. Candlin Demolition." He gets his phone out and taps out a message.
Michael plays with Laura's hair, "Count me in."
"How did you happen to be in the park?"
"I remembered Mattie and Laura sat on the park bench. It was an emotional moment. I visited all the parks in London to find the right one, took up dog walking to earn charging time."
"And have an excuse to be in the park."
"Exactly."
Laura looks lovingly at her daughter, "The confession bench moment. We needed that."
"Cor, did we.. that was a life changer."
Leo, head down, eyes up at Max, clears his throat. "Confessions can be made anywhere can't they?"
"Yes. What do you have to confess?"
"I wanted Odi gone. Because with Odi around there's a possibility we'll never get together."
Mattie breaks eye contact. "One deserves another. Yes I do love Odi. More than you. At the moment at least. But like a soul mate, a brother not a lover."
"Bloody hell slaps."
"Shut it knobs."
"Don't get your knickers in a bunch. I like the idea of another brother. Odi's cool."
"Oh."
Max looks at Laura, "May I be excused? I have a task to perform."
The doorbell rings.
Chapter Text
Mattie looked at the two leather clad men in bike helmets and the performance bike parked on the drive. "Hello?"
Toby gets to the door. "Danny! Mate! Come in!"
Mattie frowns, "Danny? You're into bikes?"
The slightly thinner and taller man nods.
"Who's the other fella?"
He lifts his mirror visor, "Frank, Dan's father. I understand you have a demo job that could go viral?"
Mattie looks at Toby, "You messaged them about the building idea?"
"Sure. Mr Reid's saying, the best time is now?"
"True. Come in."
Danny unstraps his helmet. "Dad wants to talk demo, I want to talk Emily. Got any more photos?"
Mattie smiles, shakes her head a little and rolls her eyes all at the same time, "Sure, I think you'll be perfect for each other."
"She's well fit. Roll on Monday."
Mattie puts up a hand, "Whoa. Stop a sec. pose by the bike, I'll take a photo and message her."
"Sure babe."
"Babe? Don't call me babe."
"Okay gorgeous."
Mattie sighs, gets her phone ready. "The photo.. come on."
Photo taken she messages Emily. "Lets see if she responds as frigging hell! She must have her phone in her hand."
"What did she say?"
"I'm not reading that out loud. Let's just say she doesn't want to wait until Monday."
"Sweet. Where's she live? I'll ride over."
"Can we talk about the electric bike before you go?"
Frank pats his son on the back, "Best do that another time. My son's good at many things, but multitasking? Rubbish."
"Thanks Dad."
"If you've got your head full of this Emily girl you won't be concentrating. Best give him the address and let him get the excitement out of his system."
Mattie sends another message, it's responded to immediately. She shows the new reply to Danny.
He turns and shouts at the bike. It's engine starts.
"Frigging hell. Have you got A.I. on that bike?"
"My Language Interface Systems Automation?"
"Whoa whoa whoa, you called it Lisa?"
"No, I.. oh, right, I did. Ha. Why?"
"In my dream I had a yellow Lexus nicknamed Bart."
Frank unzips his leathers and starts getting his arms out, "Son, it's a sign. Your mother hates seeing you get on the bike, the way you race around on it it's only a matter of time before you hit a car or slide under a lorry or bus. And this Emily you fancy the pants off, she might prefer sitting in a passenger seat in comfort to having to get into leathers every time you want to go somewhere."
"You don't need leathers every.."
"Son! You've seen my slide scars! Want her to look like that?"
"No Dad."
"Trade the bike in as a deposit and I'll loan you the rest."
"Dad that bike.."
"Is a one off, yadda, yadda, yadda. So what? So are you. So is Emily. So are your mother and I. You hate having to get in her car when we go somewhere as a family."
"Ain't that the truth."
"So pimp up four wheels. You can make out in a car.."
"Dad!"
"Just saying. You weren't conceived on the back of a bike that's for sure."
"DAD!"
"God you're funny, sex mad but can't talk openly about it."
"For fuck sake Dad!"
"For the sake of a good fuck drive slow, get there in one lump, don't smear yourself over tarmac like I did years ago."
Mattie looks at his right arm, it doesn't go unnoticed.
"Frank The Shark Candlin. A nickname I'd rather not have. It's not been great for business."
"Why shark?"
"The surgeon used shark cartilage. I had leathers on but they were way too thin. I spent months in hospital."
"Ouch." Her phone chimes. A text from Thomas. "Tell you what. Go see Emily, ask her to drive you over. I'm not great at drawing, she's brilliant. We can do a photo-fit style exercise to get a drawing of the bike in my dream down on paper. You'd like it Frank, it's way safer than a standard bike."
"How?"
"A conversation for indoors."
"Okay. Got condoms son?"
"For fuck sake Dad! Are you deliberately trying to embarrass me?"
"No, just reminding you to take precautions. Do you have some?"
"Yeah."
"Go on then, not too fast. You'll enjoy being in bed with her far more than being on a hospital bed."
"Jesus Dad! Stop!"
"Then again maybe she likes it in.."
"DAD!"
"I'll stop when you go."
"I'm going! I'm going! JESUS!"
Frank has a good chuckle as his son drives off at a sensible speed. "That worked. Normally he'd be pulling a wheelie and showing off. I ride with him to slow him down."
Mattie takes a closer look at his arm. "Why shark cartilage?"
"They mesh and stretch it, when it's healed it's way softer than normal skin grafts. I've got it from shoulder to wrist, from just above the hip all the way down my leg."
"How did that happen?"
"I hit a raised manhole cover, slid along a long stretch of scarified road that was about to be resurfaced." He does a chuckle, "We both got resurfaced. Boy did it hurt."
"I bet."
Toby nods, "Sounds like a nightmare. Come on in, Mum's made some fresh coffee."
"I'm trying to wean myself off the stuff. Got any caffeine free tea?"
In the kitchen Toby goes through the cupboards looking for some. "Mum, is there any caffeine free tea?"
"Sorry, no."
Mia gets off her stool, "How about some fresh mint from the garden?"
Frank beams, "That would be lovely!"
He watches her go. "Isn't that the synth lady on the telly?"
"Mia? Yes, that's her."
"Lucky you. My wife had a Cindy helping with dress making, she wandered off at the awakening, we've not seen her since."
Michael stands, "Can you give me your address? I'll ask around, see if she's well and can come home."
Frank shakes his head, "Sewing by day, practice model for Danny by night, if she remembers any of it she'll not want to come anywhere near our house. Unless she really likes sex."
Niska remembers some of the clients at the brothel. The panties down not off, the arse hole tighter types. And Tony. Tony was different. He treated her with respect. Asked not demanded. He was the only one to do so. If the others had been that nice.. Toby, Tony. Similar names and attitudes. Lucky Mia.. she pushes the thoughts down the stack and thinks of Astrid. "That all depends on how he treated her. If as a sex slave she'd not want more. If as an equal.. maybe she would."
"He's not nasty enough to treat her like that. Reading between the lines he just wanted to avoid looking like the inexperienced virgin when he got a proper girlfriend. Although after the awakening she was just as good as a human. Minus the ability to get pregnant."
"So he treated her okay?"
"Promise you wont tell anyone what I say next?" He looks around the room and gets nods and lots of "Promise."
"He designed a beautiful dress for her, really stunning, had his mother make it. I think he'd rather nobody knew. I know I'm his father but boy the lad's got talent."
Mia returns with a large handful of mint leaves and puts them in a jar, a few in a mug.
Frank watches her pour hot water over them. "So what's this demo job then?"
Chapter Text
Max disconnects from the laptop, looks at the text document refreshing on the screen. "Say something.. anything."
Mattie crosses her fingers and bites her lips.
The seconds pass.
Toby leans and looks over the top of the laptop to see the screen upside down. "Could the transfer have failed?"
Mattie shakes her head.
"If that worked how about the.. what do you call it.. jump code?" The hard drive light on the laptop springs into life. "Looks like something's happening."
Mattie opens a terminal window and types top and taps the return key. The process monitor loads and starts displaying what Linux was up to. "You've got the file system access running by the looks of it."
Max waves a hand in front of Odi's face, "Why am I taking so long to do anything with the document then? You gave me the path."
"No idea." She opens another terminal window and enters a few commands. "Aha!"
"What have you found?"
"You're editing the document, there's a hidden recovery file, you've not saved yet."
"Can you display that too?"
"Um.. probably best to cat it at intervals. One sec.. Haha!"
Toby reads it upside down. "Hello World? Why does everyone do Hello World?"
"Because. It's working." The data refreshes. "Oh. Might as well find something else to do."
"Why?"
"Not good at upside down numbers? Max wants forty eight hours minimum to do a deep multi-pass read of Odi's file system disks."
"Disks? Plural?"
"He's got a set in a mirror pair. Though if multiple drives are on the way out.." The file updates. "You can hear us? Frigging hell Max! I've got an idea. Don't do anything, give me a minute!" She passes the laptop to the physical Max. "Back PDFQ!"
Toby watches her run, slip on a rug and go crashing to the floor and scream. He goes to help her up, "Less speed, you don't want to kill yourself and need to come back like Pete." He puts a hand out and helps her up.
Mattie pauses for a second, in her dream she had, she had no idea why. "Thanks. Crap! I think I've twisted my ankle."
"You muppet. Sit down, I'll get some ice."
"But I need something from my room."
"We can ask Flash or Mia.."
"They won't.. ouch! Fuck. They won't know what to look for."
"Then I give them my phone, we'll do a video call, you can direct them." He pulls his sister's arm over his shoulder, "Hop."
"Thanks Wonky."
"I'm supposed to be the one that races into danger, not you."
"No bike."
He helps her sit. "Wait there."
Max passes back the laptop. "What were you after?"
"A book from Uni. It's full of all sorts of cool tricks."
"Such as?"
"Basic data reconstruction on mirror sets. If we assume the disks are in groups like ABC, DEF, then we can look for pattens that let us say for sure which are A and D, B and E, C and F. Once we know that, assuming the sectors that have failed are in different places we can patch bits from A with bits from D and vv."
Toby returns with Mia, two small bags of peas wrapped in tea towels. "We're out of ice."
Mia wraps them around her ankle, "Your belt please Toby."
"My belt? Um.. okay."
"Toby tells me you need help looking for a book?"
"Yeah, it's One Hundred Hacks for Sysadmins. Only it's covered in a jacket from another book."
Toby wraps his belt around the towel and pea pack. "Tight enough?"
"Yeah, thanks Tobs."
He pulls his phone, starts a call and hands it to Mia. "Can you follow Matts instructions to home in on the book?"
"Of course Toby. Let's go."
"Um.. She doesn't like me in her room."
Mattie answers his call, "Just go Tobs. Let me know if Fred left it in a mess. What's everyone doing in the kitchen still?"
"Talking about HECLS, who can do what to help get it off the ground fast. Tabs asks if she can help with some cash in return for shares."
Mattie does a sideways pout and looks to see that none of them were coming. "Hmm. We're treading on thin ice with her about. If our skeletons got out.."
"Orange Is the New Black? Matts and Nis special?"
"Yeah."
Mia takes Toby's hand and leads him away.
The files being monitored are checked. "I guess no news is good news?" Another line appears in the recovery file. "You can save once you've done an update on the laptop file Max."
The main file updates.
"That's better. Do a save each time you add something."
Another line appears saying Okay.
"Ha. Actually.. let me tail that into my TTS code. One sec.. right, add a message Max."
The laptop speaks in a very old school robotic voice. 'If you can imagine tumbleweed in a completely dark place. Haha. I sound funny.'
"Mattie?"
"One moment Max. Hi Mia. It's thicker than those. Keep going, keep going. Stop! That's the one. Thanks." The video call ends. "That's a relief, if it wasn't there I'd be worrying about sleep coding. Spreadsheets is bad enough."
'Do you do a lot in your sleep?'
"Mum reckons she has conversations with me. If I can type initials and numbers into a spreadsheet who knows what else I get up to."
Mia brings the book to her. "Here you are Mattie."
"Thanks Mia. Where's Toby?"
"Bodily functions."
"Bodily.. oh. Right. Something you're going to have to deal with if the food processor idea works."
Max goes to ask but is beaten to it by his copy. 'Food processor?'
"Yeah, so you get power from food."
'That sounds messy and inefficient.'
"So's sex but it's still a popular past time for some."
'It is?'
"I'd say ask Leo about it but he forgot. Maybe Fred can explain, something tells me Tab's head pounding wasn't.." her voice tails off as Sophie appears with a tall glass of orange juice. "Hi Teeny." She flicks to the index and scans down the list, turns to the middle of the book and turns a few pages. "I was given the book, it's missing the CD that had all the code examples."
'Can you photograph the pages? Put the images on the laptop?'
"I can go one better. I've got an OCR app."
'Even better.'
Chapter Text
The door bell rings again. Sophie calls out that she'll get it.
Frank looks up from the sketches Mia had done for a new building. "Nice resurfacing lass. I bet that hurt."
Emily looks at her arms, "A bit. Not as much as your one I bet."
"Have a good morning?" He gives his son a knowing look.
"Don't start that up again Dad."
Emily does a cute shoulders forward bend, "Awesome. Danny took me for a walk and chat by the canal. Dead romantic."
Frank frowns, "You didn't.."
"Dad. How's the demo job looking?"
"Good. Dozer and his Miley would have the old building into rubble in no time. A few grab lorries running in parallel and we'd have it clear in hours."
Emily gives him a surprised look, "You have ladies on the team?"
"Ladies? Oh, no. That's what we nicknamed the crane with the wrecking ball. She's a monster. The crane that is, not the pop star."
Emily looks at Mia's drawings, "Nice, I wish I could do drawings like that. I'm good at curves, not so good at straight lines without a ruler or constantly turning the tablet around. Danny said Mattie wants me to draw a design she dreamt?"
Toby nods in the direction of the living room, "She twisted her ankle, she's with Max."
"Okay, I'll go say hi."
Entering the living room she waves, "Mattilla you silly girl, what have you done babes?"
"Hi Ems, I slipped on a frigging rug. I think Toby's idea to get ice on it fast is helping." She gingerly moves her toes in a circle.
"What are you up to?"
"Not a lot, Max is doing the work, checking out Odi from the inside."
"Inside? How?"
"A new idea for fixing old FUBAR synths. MBR a tiny bit of code that takes bytes into RAM to load a secondary boot loader that then lets you load a root code and fact store, again into RAM. When that's running it, they, can mount the laptop file system, scan the internal disks and write out a report."
"You should be running the lectures not taking them." Emily's phone rings, she taps to get it to send a message to say she's busy.
Mattie looks at her bug eyed as she has a dream flashback. "That music, what was it?"
"Zedd Epos? Just something I used to dance to. Why? Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"It was in my dream. You were too. On a stage."
"I did some dancing in my gap year. Did you come along?"
"No, I've not seen you dance."
"Shame, you'd have liked it, I had two girls in.."
"Mermaid costumes?"
"Eh? You said you didn't.."
Mattie's arm hair stood on end as she was covered in goose bumps. "Frigging spooky. Did they look anything like Mia and Niska?"
"Who?"
"The blonde in the kitchen and asian looking brunette."
"Fit and fit. No mine weren't as good looking." She licks her teeth. "I like this synth, not seen his model before. Nice idea for fixing him. Mattilla the hun-ter slays another problem."
"It wasn't all me. Max deserves a load of the credit. Most of it actually. Max this is Emily."
"Hello Emily."
'Hello Emily.'
Mattie taps the laptop. "Max on a mission is talking via a file piped into Festival."
"Festival? You still use that? Espeak's far faster. Hello Mission Max. How's it hanging?"
'So far, lots and lots of bad sectors. But very few on the same sectors on both drives.'
"Only two drives?"
'Sixty four laptop hard drives in two sets of thirty two I think. I'm working out which is which, picking random locations to read."
"Flipping hell. He's old school, not running solid state?"
'Sadly no. If he had he might not have been susceptible to head crashes. Talking of problems.'
Mattie sighs, "Go on."
'I'm not charging through the data cable.'
She sucks air through her teeth. "Crap. We'll have to alternate between the two."
'Then I can't write to the file on the laptop while I charge. Double any time estimates. Unless you can splice two cables together? Have the data lines and ground to the laptop, power line and ground to a charger?'
"Ems, couldn't get Danny in here could you?"
"Sure babes."
Danny appeared with his father, "What's up?"
'I assume the new voice I hear is Danny?'
"That's me."
'Can you splice a data and charge cable together so that Odi here can talk to the laptop and get power from a charger?'
"Nope. No can do. The charger needs to talk to the synth's charge circuit to know how much current to source."
'Even a car charger?'
"It's got a chip in the 12v plug."
'Oh.'
Mattie drums nails on the laptop. "What if.. what if the laptop acted as a USB bridge, passed on data to the charger?"
Danny rubbed his chin, "Yeah, yeah that might work. Risky though, if the last update the charger got was to source twenty amps and your laptop crashes.. hours later.. boom. House burns down due to a massive lithium fire."
"They have overcharge protection."
"New models, how old's this one?"
"Um.. old. Very old."
"Not worth the risk. Humans doing spontaneous combustion was a myth. Synths, a few have done it for real. Nasty fucks when they go. People thought a mobile phone was bad until the first synth exploded."
'Could you make a fail safe device? Something to disconnect the charge power if I haven't spoken to it for a minute?'
"Yeah, easy."
'Can you then.'
"What now?"
'If you wouldn't mind?'
"Um.. guess so. Only my bike's at Emily's."
Mattie puts the laptop on the coffee table. "Let's ask Michael if he can drop you over. If she, he, remembers how to drive."
Emily gives her a sideways nudge, "She he? Something I should know?"
"A Charlie model that went critical, mind scrambled, Mia took the body over."
"Oh, one of them. Nice. It must be weird going from female to male. I'd never do that even if you paid me millions. I'm.."
"We know Ems.. no need to spell it out."
"Happy being a woman was all I was going to say."
Danny nods, "A Charlie? I know which one he is then, I'll go ask."
Emily watches him and his father go and whispers, "I can't wait to give him a ride."
"Ems! Max and Odi Max have better hearing than us."
"Soz. Not getting any?"
"No. Not after any either at the moment. Get that tablet going, I want to get this bike design out of my head."
"Sure babes. A bit different is it?"
"Yeah, AI enabled, gyroscopes in the wheels for stability, cameras so it can see. You'd have to be an idiot to fall off it, it can feel the road through the tyres and the rider through the seat. It's practically crash proof."
"Stop, the thought's getting me all moist."
"Flipping hell Ems, how do you manage to get through a lecture without thinking about sex?"
"I don't."
"Oh."
"What do you think about?"
She leans back into the sofa and arches her back, puts her hands behind her head, "That's for me and me only to know. Give me some clues about this bike then."
Chapter Text
Tabitha took the large glass of ice water and headache tablets from Laura. "Thanks. I'm not normally such a lightweight. When Sophie was telling Flash about playing with the dolls, what did she mean by Mattie woke Mia up?"
Laura wasn't good at technology things, didn't know what to say.
Niska took her arm from around Astrid. "She entered a command into a laptop for me. Instead of waking just Mia up again to save her it went wrong and woke them all up."
"Scheisse."
"So it was you? You're the one responsible?"
"Yes." Niska senses Astrid moving and makes a crossed fingers sign behind her back for her to see.
"And there was I looking for a Headcrack user."
Laura keeps her cool, "So what happens next? I'm asking as Niska's defence lawyer not just her friend. That rigged trial was bad enough.."
"Rigged trial? What rigged trial?"
Laura goes to a draw of odds and sods. "Nis, could you connect to our television and replay your memory of the whole thing, handover to escape, speed up the quiet bits?"
Max frowns, "Flash says the others are coming, we're to ignore them."
"Okay?" She watches the others walk in, Niska goes straight to the television and turns it to connect a cable. Mattie returns to the OCR task as Tabitha starts watching the television. Out of the corner of her eye she watches Emily drawing.
OCR work done Mattie gets the files on the laptop, merges them into one and has the code checked for syntax errors. A second file with some notes is created, they're both moved into the directory with the file Max fork was updating. "Max, have you found pattens to say which drive is which?"
'Almost done. They're in a logical ordering, I just need to confirm to be totally sure.'
"Carry on in a moment. When done this new code will do ten reads of a sector from A and B, if they report the same data both are good. If one takes a while to return data or errors it's bad. Log all the bad sectors to the file on the laptop, drive:sector. When we've got that logged for all drives we can work out how bad things are."
'Okay. Don't wait for me, this is going to take a very long time.'
"Good luck."
'Thanks.'
Mattie looks at Emily's artwork, it wasn't spot on but close enough for a first draft. She gets up and hops over to the others, watches the TV. "What's this?"
"Niska watching me introduce Jan Luvens IHRO."
"I what?"
"International Human Rights Observer."
"Oh."
They hear Niska say When I have something to say, you'll hear me.
"Who's she?"
"The lawyer for the prosecution."
Niska runs the speechless gaps at fifty times normal speed, footsteps sound like clicks and people look like their out of the Flash TV series. Laura introduces the rest of the major players when they appear.
Niska slows, "Max is our best lip reader, but even I could tell what they said."
Tabitha nods. "Me too. It's hard to bring down a bent judge, but that lawyer.. she's got it coming."
Laura folds her arms. "Keep watching."
After another ten minutes Tabitha turns away from the TV, "Unbelievable. If I were in your shoes Niska I'd have done the same. Our legal system is supposed to be the envy of the world, but when parts are rotten like that.. Sod them. I'm not giving them anything. I took an oath but I'm not siding with them, no way."
Mattie tries some weight on her bad leg, manages to stand without wincing. The peas going on fast had helped calm everything down. Thanks Toby. "So what happens with my unfinished interview?"
"Write up the thing I asked you for, that's it."
"But how will you explain what happened?"
Niska unplugs. "Easy. Astrid E Veld. Who'll never be found."
A few seconds later there's a robotic 'Oh my!'
Mattie spins around to see Odi. "Max? Problems?"
"Anagrams. Think about the letters. And family names."
Mattie spelt it out in her head, her fingers twitching. "OH MY FUCKING GOD! Work out consciousness transference and you could do a Mia, jump into whichever body you wanted. There'd have been thousands to pick from with the power issues after the awakening. Any synth could be a brain surgeon in seven seconds. Holy crap!"
Laura remembered the seven seconds comment, looks confused, "Matts?"
"Mum! Leo! Astrid E Veld.. it's only David Elster!"
The author (Guest) on Chapter 1 Thu 31 Oct 2024 10:10AM UTC
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