| #210: Untold Tales of Hell’s Bathroom: Reform School Girl (Part One) Things You Need to Know to Read This Story: 1. Recently Laurie (Lisette) Leyton and Visionary’s robot sidekick Fleabot have been taking an interest in Gloria, a troubled street-girl from Hell’s Bathroom. Fleabot has created a robotic cat – Catbot - to be her companion. 2. The Lair Legion are the Parodyverse’s premiere superheroes, and are described in some detail in Who's Who in the Parodyverse. 3. Some unpleasant things are described in the narrative, so don’t read it if you’re squeamish. Previous Untold Tales stories and lots more at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Gloria didn’t have friends. But if she had friends, Yasmin would be one of them. They’d grown up on the same block, played truant from the same school, even lost their virginities to the same boy. It was just Jasmin’s bad luck that when the cops had busted in to the Street Razor’s squat under the brick arches of the Ninth Street railway viaduct Gloria hadn’t been too stoned to run and Jasmin had been too busy giggling to drag up her jeans. Fourteen months custodial in juvenile detention. Jasmin was lucky she’d been young enough to avoid mandatory minimum sentencing. Gloria’s life had taken some strange turns since then, not least of which was being given a robot cat by an android flea who hung out with the Lair Legion; but nothing had happened that wouldn’t have been better without Yasmin around. So Gloria was surprised when she came out from seeing Lisette at the Zero Street Mission and saw Yasmin walking along the rubble-strewn street. “Yas! Yas!” Gloria called, lifting a finger to the Toyota that screeched to a halt when she dived across the road after her old buddy. Catbot followed at a more leisurely pace, hopping up on the hood of the stopped vehicle and staring through the windshield at the angry driver. “What, you’ve never seen a blue robotic cat before?” the android demanded. “Watch your speed, bub. I clocked you at forty-seven there.” Yasmin didn’t turn, but Gloria caught up with her at the corner by the burned out laundrette. “Yas! It’s me. When the hell did you get back?” Yasmin turned round and Gloria took an involuntary step backwards. Yasmin looked to have aged fifteen years, her plump face now sallow and saggy, her skin pale and lifeless, those eyes that once sparkled with devilment now dead in sunken sockets. “Yas?” “Yes,” agreed the changed girl. If she was glad to see her childhood companion she gave no sign of it. “Yas, what’s wrong? What happened to you?” Yasmin’s body language was changed too. Her confident strut was gone. Now she moved in a slow, broken shuffle. “Happened?” She looked Gloria in the eyes for the first time. “I got caught.” Gloria tried to cover her horror. “But you… Ah, never mind. You’re out now. We got a lot to talk about. Why didn’t you look me up?” Yasmin slowly shook her head. “I don’t associate with unreformed and undisciplined elements,” she answered. “I am now cured of my antisocial tendencies.” “What? What the f*&% are you talking about, Yas?” The pale girl on the corner looked desolate for a moment, and then her face became a slack mask again. “I am cured. They cured me. One day you will be cured too.” She glanced away, seeming as uncomfortable at the meeting as Gloria now was. “I have to go now and continue seeking productive work to contribute to society.” “Are you stoned or what?” Gloria demanded. “Illegal drugs are forbidden,” Yasmin warned her. “Those who transgress the laws of society deserve everything they get.” And she shuffled off down the street. “Well that was just plain weird,” Catbot commented. He’d slipped up behind Gloria as the girl had been talking. Gloria found she was shivering. “What did they do to her? She wasn’t even talking like herself. Yas has never said ‘transgressed’ in her whole life!” “I dunno,” Catbot replied. “They say the big house changes a person.” “She was in juvenile reform,” Gloria pointed out. “Okay, you hear some horror stories, Z-movie prison flick stuff, but…” She came to a decision. “We’re following her. Let’s see where she goes.” Catbot shrugged. “Okay. Beats watching Agrah in the Afternoon.” The old convent down Benevolence Street had been closed for a few years. There had been some kind of scandal, and one day the place was just boarded up and abandoned. For a while the local kids had broken in and used it as a make-out site, but after a while stories got round that the place was haunted. Sometimes junkies had slipped in to fix themselves up. But urban legend had it that not everybody who crept inside the grim old shell came back out again. Now the Little Sisters of Discipline Convent and Refuge was under new management. The site had been refurbished, the grafittied walls painted a dull off-white. All the religious iconography was gone, even the carvings around the main doorway. The modifications were modern, cheap, clinical, and secure. The windows of the residence had always been barred. Now the Final Chance Reform House was open for business. In its dormitories a hundred and eighty youths aged twelve to eighteen served out the last of their custodial sentences under the scrupulous care of Dr Drummond Crowe and his specially trained staff. “And so far the results are very encouraging,” Dr Crowe explained to his guests as they completed a tour of the installation. “The reoffending rate is very low, and 89% of our cases go on to achieve employment by the time they leave our care.” “But most of those jobs are at minimum wage with very little opportunity for advancement,” Lee Bookman pointed out. The Librarian did his homework. “Sanitation, heavy labouring, fast food, factory assembly lines…” “They’re being productive,” Dr Crowe insisted. “These young people are the dregs of our society. No education. No marketable skills. No future. But we have given them the opportunity of doing productive work to contribute to society.” “Your reoffending rate is very low indeed,” Al B. Harper admitted, looking over the pamphlet Crowe had offered him. “In fact it’s amazing. Only three violent crimes out of, what, four hundred clients so far?” “We’re very proud of that,” the programme manager admitted. “Factor in the successes of the other sites in Europe where we’ve been running the program longer and you’ll see we have a radical breakthrough in social reform.” Al B. wasn’t satisfied. “Perhaps you could clarify the actual nature of the process by which these youngsters are so transformed?” Dr Crowe chuckled. “I trust a man of your brilliance isn’t one of those left-wing bleeding hearts that objects to firm methods and proper discipline?” “Your budget does include a substantial element for medical supplies,” Lee Bookman noted. “That’s because we’re licensed by the Governor’s office as a medical and surgical facility,” Crowe answered. “That’s the breakthrough. We’ve discovered why so many young people are antisocial.” “Because they’re trapped in poverty and ignorance by an unfair system, denied the chance to learn and use their imagination and skills to become the remarkable people they have the potential to be?” suggested the Librarian. Dr Crowe snorted. “Hormones,” he replied. “Chemical imbalances. Genetic defects.” “Genetic?” Al B. frowned. “DNA failure,” Crowe confided. “I’m afraid the exact findings and our corrective procedures are still classified, but as you can see the results speak for themselves.” “Are you suggesting that you might use… what, surgery, biogenetic manipulation, to ‘correct’ the young people in your charge?” Al B. Harper objected. “The convicted criminals in my charge,” Drummond Crowe corrected him. “Addicts, thieves, rapists, sodomites, disobedient transgressors of the laws of society. And here we correct their faults and send them out as productive citizens who will not offend again.” “What you’re suggesting sounds remarkably like the Nazi eugenics programme,” the Librarian warned Crowe. “Substitute the acronym ‘DNA’ for their word ‘blood’ and you’ve got an exact match.” “Liberal claptrap!” retorted Crowe. “Science is science, no matter who pioneered it!” “Science is…” began Al B., then caught his temper. “Science is about understanding truths and making the world better through them, Doctor Crowe. Science is about throwing light into dark places, and learning to see the patterns of the universe in all their glory and wonder. It is not about cutting helpless destitutes to make them mind-slaves to conform to some fascist definition of society!” Dr Crowe reached for the intercom. “Dr Harper and Mr Bookman will be leaving now,” he announced to his security staff. “They’ve taken up enough of my valuable time. Please provide them with copies of the various licenses and permissions under which we operate as they go.” “It’s a bad place.” Gloria nodded and continued to watch the front door of the Final Chance House. “So are the Lair Legion going to shut it down or what?” “They can’t,” Catbot told her again. “It’s not breaking any laws. Well, no legal laws anyway. The ethical ones are well snapped.” “What’s the use of superheroes if they can’t fight for the helpless?” Gloria demanded. “The Governor signed papers to make this place some kind of special facility,” Catbot reported. “Al B. Harper and the Librarian checked it out, and they turned their findings over to Lisa. She has special reasons not to like what they’re doing in there.” “What?” the troubled teenager demanded. “Lisa was brought up behind those walls by the Little Sisters of Discipline. She was the one who shut them down.” Gloria respected that. “I’m still going in.” “It’s a bad place,” Catbot repeated. “And that’s why I’m going. Yas is in there. Who knows what they’re doing to her? Maybe they’re abusing her. You saw her. She looked half-dead, about forty instead of sixteen. Drugs maybe, or electric shocks or something. I can’t just leave her.” Catbot licked his blue fur. “Why not?” Gloria swallowed hard. “Because I left her once before. When the squat was raided. I ran. She didn’t. I left her, and she got busted, and she went away, and now…” “Now she’s like she is?” the robot cat suggested. “And I might have got her out of there, if I hadn’t been such a selfish punked-up junkie.” “And you might have been caught and be shuffling along right there beside her.” Gloria considered this. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But I have to find out what’s going on inside that place. Find out what they’re doing. Find out stuff that can shut them down. So I’m going.” “Okay.” “I’m not frightened,” she lied. “Okay. I’m a cat. What do I care? It’s not like you ever feed me.” “I’m supposed to feed you? You’re a robot!”! “You could still try.” Gloria somehow found the strange argument grounded her enough to take the final steps across the road. “If I’m not back tomorrow…” she told Catbot. But the android feline was gone. “I heard you went to see the governor,” De Brown Streak said as Lisa fumed back into the Lair Mansion. “The Governor can kiss my ass,” answered the first lady of the Lair Legion, hurling her briefcase at Flapjack and storming towards Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s office. “In fact he tried to, and now he’s going to need surgery to get my whip handle removed. And I liked that whip.” “So you didn’t reach agreement about this stuff going on at the old convent,” DBS suggested. Lisa had already barged into Mumphrey’s office and slammed the door. “Best ta get outta her way when she’s ticked,” Trickshot advised the Legion’s newest probationer. “Means she’ll be up ta something cunning an’ cruel. She’s about to happen ta someone.” “We won’t be able to do anything,” Josh Clement accused. “Not if this Crowe guy is legit. He can stomp all over people, violate their basic rights, but if he’s got the right paperwork this Legion won’t do a thing to stop him!” “Yeah, pawns of the Man, that’s us,” the irritating archer shrugged. “Course, if I wuz a rule-breakin’ mutate speedster with a mad on at the world and no respect fer law and order when there’s no justice behind them, here’s whut I’d be doin…” Gloria’s first nasty shock came right through the front door, when she saw the metal posts mounted on each side of the entrance: metal detectors. Under cover of a cough she spat out the razor blade she’d hidden beneath her tongue and dropped it quietly to the ground while the youth in front of her was being patted down. It meant she was going in completely unarmed. The search was otherwise perfunctory, and Gloria was surprised. The guards were young and male, not much older than herself, and she’d expected their hands to at least wander as they frisked her. Instead it was all business, conducted silently and with bored familiarity. The security people had that same hollow expression Yasmin had worn. A couple of them had old tattoos half-erased with acid blotches, and partly-healed scabs where face rings had been removed. It was half past seven now so many of the inmates were returning from their day’s employment. Apart from the perfunctory search there was no other ID check, so Gloria just followed the others into the gloomy interior of the former convent. They all trudged into the main hall where a trestle was set up and more of their fellows were doling out food. Dinner consisted of a bowlful of grey slops. It smelled of chemicals. Gloria made sure she didn’t taste it. Everyone else ate at long benches in the dining commons. There was no conversation, no noise at all except the clinking of spoons. The walls were covered in motivational slogans like “Obedience is success,” and “Conform and prosper.” “The Stepford reform school,” Gloria muttered to herself. She couldn’t see Yasmin, so when some of the girls got up and left the hall she followed them. She tried to match their shambling gait, shoulders slumped, eyes unfocussed. They walked along institutional green corridors stripped of all decoration, then up a flight of iron stairs to an upper floor dormitory. The sign said “Female Correctees Only.” The warders here were female, and again they seemed drawn from the ranks of former inmates. They tended to run to fat, and they shared a common aversion to washed hair, make-up, or conversation. Gloria’s heart pounded as each girl was seized as they entered the dorm, searched again, then given a coded pass on a plastic wrist tag. It was too late to run. Gloria let herself be handled and banded. Nobody asked who she was. Nobody cared. The wrist tag identified her as being in blue group tonight, due for process at 20.50. Gloria followed the other inmates as they passed through the next door and she clung onto the remains of her courage. She blamed Catbot for not talking her out of this. She blamed Lisette for setting a bad example. Gloria didn’t feel like a hero now. She felt like a teenage girl in dire trouble, surrounded by soulless people who would hurt her when they caught her. She wondered what it would take to drain the life from her eyes. The girls were heading towards the showers. They peeled off their clothes and dropped them in large plastic baskets, then trudged towards a communal washroom. Gloria noticed the tracery of pale lines on some of her companions’ bodies. Cuts, perhaps? Or were those the marks of discipline? She reluctantly shed her own clothes, discarding them in the pile. As she went into the showers – the freezing cold showers, naturally – she had a bizarre and disturbing flashback of some old documentary about the Nazi atrocities at their concentration camps. Everybody showered wordlessly. The water smelled of cleaning fluids. Gloria noticed that there were cameras in the corner of the shower room, as there were in every room in the Reform House. She wondered who was getting a cheap thrill watching her bathe. At the other side the girls dried off with thin cheap towels, which were then stacked in another plastic basket. Beyond that a girl no older than twelve handed out disposable waxed paper overalls that doubled as night attire. “Blue group report to Instruction Room Two,” a voice boomed over the speaker. It repeated the instruction again with exactly the same inflection. Half a dozen of the girls with Gloria turned and shuffled off down another of the dark corridors. Gloria had to make a decision. Did she follow and continue being a good little zombie, or was this the time to try and get out? How long could her deception last? How long before something happened to her? A sharp pain spasmed through her body and sent her tumbling to the floor. She groped in agony at her buttock where the electric shock had begun, then realised someone was standing over her. One of the wardens was staring at her, still holding the cattle prod that had knocked her down. “You heard the Voice,” the warden told her. “Blue group report to Instruction Room Two.” Gloria nodded madly and scrambled away before the guard could prod her again. Her backside and thighs felt as if they’d been burned, but movement was better than another taste of discipline. She hurried after the rest of the blue group girls. Deeper into the Reform House. Continued... Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
| #210: Untold Tales of Hell’s Bathroom: Reform School Girl (Part Two) “You did what?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton demanded of De Brown Streak. “I arrested her,” answered the young mutate rights activist defiantly. “For jaywalking. We can arrest people in the LL for breaking the law, right?” “We can detain perpetrators under section four of the Superhuman Powers Act of 1941, as amended in 1945 and 1963, and supplemented by the 1998 Waltz Accords,” Hatman admitted, glaring at DBS, “but subject to judicial review and… This isn’t what it’s supposed to be about, Clement!” “Whut, we just let jaywalkers get right away with it cause they’re not tryin’ ta take over the planet?” Trickshot snorted. “If I caught the Hooded Hood jaywalking you can bet I’d be bringin’ him in.” “You’d be toast,” Hatman told him. “And this isn’t the Hooded Hood.” “No, this is Yasmin Calhoun,” Josh Clement told them. “Right now she’s on the Final Chance Reform Programme down in Hell’s Bathroom. Maybe you’ve heard of her?” “That girl Lisette and Fleabot wanted us to look out for?” Sir Mumphrey noted. “The one Miss Waltz went to see the Governor about.” “And you arrested her!” Hatman accused De Brown Streak. “Hmph,” said Mumphrey. “Novel.” He didn’t seem too annoyed. Trickshot looked the girl up and down. She’d been pretty once, but her face was flaccid and withered now, her hair tangled in lank ropes. “Well since she’s here we can at least check she’s okay, right? Maybe have Al B. point a frammistat at her or somethin’, then git her to Grace O’Mercy for a bit of a check-up?” “That’d be okay, I guess,” agreed Hatman. And Yasmin spoke for the first time, her voice cracked with terror: “Please don’t hurt me!” It was a fifty-five minute propaganda documentary on how to behave, projected full-wall in living Technicolor. It wasn’t a very complex training video. The message was simple, and repeated at least once every minute: Do As You Are Told. “This is Mandy,” the narrator told the watching girls. “Mandy was an antisocial element, lying, disobeying, thieving, and fornicating. She did not contribute productively. She did not uphold the social order. She was not productive.” Gloria realised everyone here was watching the screen with rapt attention. Then she realised that the cameras in the room were watching the girls to check they were watching the movie. She hastily shifted her eyes back to the images. “This is Mandy at the time of her arrest for shoplifting. She was disrespectful to authority and unrepentant despite seeking to deprive others of their lawful financial incentives and having worked to undermine the economic foundations of our ordered society. So Mandy had to learn: Do As You Are Told.” “Am I in hell?” Gloria wondered as the crude morality play flickered before her. The next few minutes of documentary confirmed it, as Mandy was remanded to the Final Chance programme and arrived at Final Chance House. Gloria watched as the girl was ‘processed’, which in Mandy’s case involved being strapped down and having her head shaved, then a week of sensory deprivation, then a combination of beatings and fasts. “I have to get this tape,” Gloria reasoned. “It’s all the evidence of human rights violations I’ll ever need.” Then Mandy was started on the hormone therapy, to quell her “raging lusts”. When that was deemed inefficient, a minor clitoral operation permanently curbed her sexual desires. A few days later some deep-target intracranial keyhole surgery dealt with her other non-conformist tendencies. Gloria wanted to be sick. She tried to feign the bland attention of her classmates. How many of them had little red scabs under the short hair on their temples? How many had been strapped down and sterilised so they wouldn’t further pollute the gene pool? “Now Mandy is a productive member of society,” the narrator explained. “She had been granted a job at a garment factory where she labours in exchange for wages that provide her with the means of supporting herself. She does productive work to benefit society. She is cured. She has learned: Do As You Are Told.” Then the same programme was replayed again, three times, each time with increased volume, before the girls were sent back to their dormitory to sleep. Gloria wanted to see Final Chance House razed to the ground. “A very nasty cocktail of chemicals in her bloodstream,” Al B. Harper concluded, looking up from his spectral analyser. “She’s on drugs?” Lisa asked doubtfully. “Not the way you mean,” the Legion’s scientific advisor answered. “This is as chilling a set of neural inhibitors as I’ve ever come across. And the CAT scan is also detecting signs of surgical cranial intrusion.” “In English, man,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton demanded irritably. His didn’t like the way Yasmin cowered when anyone came towards her with a medical instrument. “She’s been operated on to make her more tractable,” Al B. glowered. “She’s been effectively lobotomised. But much more skilfully than the crude stuff they did in mental asylums decades ago. Oh yes. This is very high-tech stuff, precise, advanced, brilliant in it’s own way.” He glared at his readings and gritted his teeth. “Somebody has to pay for this.” “But I bet if we got to Crowe he’ll show us a complete set of legal papers demonstrating that she consented to these procedures,” Lisa noted. “Look, I don’t care if he’s got the President’s personal approval on a sloppy Christmas card,” De Brown Streak snarled. “This guy is evil and what he’s doing has to be stopped.” “Within the law,” added Hatman, but the capped crusader was also white with anger. “But we’re going to need some first hand evidence, not the forensic stuff we have so far.” “We send in an agent?” Trickshot suggested. “Think Dancer could pass fer seventeen maybe?” “I think Asil could,” suggested Lisa. “And maybe we send her in with a bit of Shoggoth in her pocket?” “Because that worked so well last time,” noted Hatman. “Don’t like the idea of sending Miss Ashling into a place like that,” Mumphrey admitted. “Do you like the idea of anyone being in there at all?” De Brown Streak demanded. Dormitory lights out was at midnight. Gloria hung back, worrying about the moment when there was one bed too few to give her away, but there were actually three free beds come curfew. She escaped from the horrors of the motivational film and tried to settle on the mattressless bed in the disturbing dark. Then the Voice began again, that same monotonous lecturing voice, whispering in the darkness, all night, every night. Conform. Conform. Conform. Gloria tried to shut it out, but an unbidden thought came into her mind: Maybe this is what I deserve. Those who transgress the laws of society deserve everything they get. “I have to get out of here,” she told herself. It was dark now, so the cameras shouldn’t pick her up. She padded away from her bed, her bare feet chilled by the linoleum floor. She felt naked and vulnerable in her cheap paper gown. It had already torn at the armpits where she was sweating. Somewhere one of the girls was sobbing quietly and deeply. The main door was locked, but the hall to the bathroom was clear. Gloria groped into the darkened toilet block. The only windows were high and narrow and barred. She toyed with the idea of starting a fire alarm, but she had a nasty feeling there might be procedures in place to deal with that kind of disobedience. She decided the best way out might be to head upwards. From the top of the toilet cubicle she could reach the suspended ceiling. She pushed aside one of the polystyrene tiles and tested her weight on the aluminium frame that the tiles sat on. It creaked but held her, so she pulled herself up into the roof space. There was a three foot gap between the clinical white false roof and the old cracked original ceiling with its crumbling plaster decorations. Gloria worked her way across the metal framework, being careful not to put pressure on the flimsy tiles between the grid. As she had hoped, the new partition wall didn’t extend above the false ceiling. All she had to do was to work her way over the division, then drop through another tile into the hallway beyond. A sense of freedom came over her as she fell into the darkened landing. Now to get the movie tape. She’d already worked out earlier where the projection room had to be. She found the door and was unsurprised that it was locked. She grabbed a chair from down the hall and used it to squirm back up into the roof-space and so climbed across and down into the projection booth. There were dozens of DVDs lined up, each with a case number. There was a showing schedule. Gloria bundled a dozen or so of the discs into a camera case that came with a shoulder strap and hauled it over her neck. Then she saw the TV monitors. In the projection room were a dozen screens showing the training area theatre where she’d sat earlier. But they also showed the bathrooms, and the stairwell, and the dormitories where the girls were sleeping. And the cameras in the dormitories were infra-red. Gloria could see the outlines of the inmates with brilliant clarity. “Oh crap!” she breathed. Was this the only place those feeds went? It didn’t seem likely. She pulled herself up onto the control table and dragged herself back to the ceiling. She didn’t bother replacing the tile this time. She was running for her life. She scrambled over the partition and lowered herself through a different tile. She didn’t want to drop on the chair she’d used before. As she landed the lights came on and she saw she was surrounded. “You,” Dr Drummond Crowe told her, “Have been a Bad Girl.” “The paperwork won’t be a problem,” the Librarian assured the Lair Legion. “and if Asil is able to get us a back-door feed into Crowe’s computers I can check through every shred of material in there for something that shows he’s violated the parameters of his permissions.” “Isn’t anybody bothered that he was able to get permissions to cut open little girls and mess with their brains in the first place?” demanded Josh Clement. “Tomorrow’s argument,” Trickshot interrupted. “Right now there’s what, couple hundred kids in living hell in that bozo’s laboratory?” “Three thousand two hundred and forty-six currently in the programme across North America alone,” supplied the Librarian. “We have to shut this down,” Hatman appealed. “Lisa?” “If Asil can get in and get some evidence we have grounds to act. Especially if Crowe’s using Technopolitian technology as Al suspects. That moves it near enough to our jurisdiction that we…” “Hey, hold it,” Trickshot called. “We’re getting a message from Fleabot. Something about an e-mail he’s just got?” “Keep back,” Gloria told the guards who surrounded her with their shock sticks. She was out of options. She had stark visions of the training tape bearing her name, showing her screaming on the discipline frame, bleeding under the surgery. “You’re not one of our inmates,” Dr Crowe observed with a severe frown. He didn’t like things to be out of place. “That means we have no reason to be so gentle with you as we are with the others..” “You’re a bloody Nazi torturer!” Gloria accused him. “No. The Nazis made some interesting breakthroughs, and so did the Soviets, but my programme is as far beyond them as a space shuttle is beyond a mule cart. My work will shape a new society, where order and conformity rule over all.” “By turning kids into zombies?” “By instilling discipline to the erring and transforming them into useful if humble cogs in the machine of progress.” Crowe looked down at the cowering girl. “You hardly think my work could have progressed this far if this wasn’t approved at the very highest levels, do you?” Gloria couldn’t think of anything clever to say. Those merciless passionless eyes bored into her. “F*&% you!” she spat at Crowe. “Beat her,” the head of Final Chance House told his wardens. “Hard. Break things.” The glass skylight far above shattered and Catbot dropped onto Dr Crowe’s head, titanium steel claws fully extended. “Catbot!” Gloria gasped. “What…?” “I got bored,” the robot feline told her as Crowe tried to detach the android from his face. “So I thought I’d drop in. You might want to run.” Gloria ducked under the nearest guards and pelted for the stairs. It was a few moments before the warders could decide between helping their commander and chasing the escapee. They had no orders. In the end they ran after Gloria. “I’ve over-ridden the computer locks,” Catbot said as Crowe hurled him away and bounced him off the wall. He landed on his feet and rolled over the edge of the parapet to drop to the floor a story below. “You came back for me!” Gloria panted as she ran. “You still haven’t fed me.” They ran ahead of the warders. A siren began to sound, and more of the grey-uniformed orderlies appeared to block the front door. These carried combat weapons. “Uh oh,” said Catbot. Gloria had thought for a moment that she was going to get out. “Thanks for trying,” she said to the robot. The front doors flew off their hinges and clobbered the guards from behind. Hatman strode through the debris, exchanging his Hurricanes hat for his Steelers cap. “We have reason to believe that an act of trespass is in progress,” he announced to Dr Crowe. “We got an e-mail to that effect.” The administrator’s torn face was a mask of blood. “We already have her in custody,” he screeched, pointing down at Gloria and Catbot. “Nah,” De Brown Streak replied, blurring over to stand by Gloria. “I’m arresting her. I can do that stuff now.” Gloria was about to object when Catbot brushed against her and growled. “You did this?” Gloria asked the cat. “Nah. I just e-mailed my old buddy Fleabot to tall him what I was doing. I must have forgotten that he was tied to the Lair Legion. Damn.” “Take these as evidence of my crimes,” Gloria told DBS, pressing the bag of DVDs into the runner’s hands. “I stole them.” “They are the property of this institution and will be returned forthwith!” demanded Crowe. “They’re evidence,” Hatman responded. “You’ll get them back after we’ve had a chance to duly log and inspect them, Dr Crowe.” “And while we’re here,” added Lisa maliciously, “We’d better check that the rest of your charges are secure and safe. Don’t you think?” “Closed down. The whole programme,” Catbot assured Gloria. “You don’t seem very happy.” “I’m glad that horrible place is finished,” the girl answered him. “I hope they throw Crowe into a cell somewhere with three huge bikers who haven’t seen a girl for twenty years. But it still won’t bring Yas back, will it? Or all the other people they ‘cured’.” “Sir Mumphrey has made arrangements for Yasmin to be properly looked after for the rest of her life,” Catbot replied. “There’s not much else can be done.” “But society approved this programme,” Gloria persisted. “They were so scared of my generation that they resorted to surgery to keep us under control. I’m not saying we don’t have some mad bastards who need locking up for life, but… Crap, I don’t want to live in this kind of world.” “On the whole though,” Catbot told her, “I’d say it was better than the alternatives.” “The Final Chance Programme is irredeemably mired in liberal knee-jerk protests, father,” Pelopia, Disciple of Logos reported at her daily briefing. “The press has been alerted by Waltz and her cronies. Crowe has failed completely.” “No matter,” answered the Word of Order, the champion of Order in a chaotic world. “Proceed onto phase three. One day our triumph will be inevitable.” Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |