Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin by Alex Scarrow
Authors: Alex Scarrow
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goes into it, but I’ll tell you this for nothing…I spat in it, so did the food-order chef, and several of the other girls in the back kitchen. Enjoy.’
Jez emerged from New Hampshire running as fast as she could. By her calculation she was going to have to make up some time for the next delivery to the Law Marshal’s precinct building.
Relieved to see it still resting against the wall, she jumped astride the d-ped and pushed the joystick down.
Nothing happened.
She tried again, but the thruster didn’t even offer its trademark throaty cough. She turned round in her saddle to give the damned thing a well-deserved slap, only to find the propulsion unit was gone. ‘Ahh, what the fuggin-shizt! I don’t believe it!
Somebody had lifted it.
She looked around for the marshal she’d spoken to earlier. Nowhere to be seen of course. She checked her saddle display again. She still had five minutes left on the next order and twelve on the final one.
If she missed on both of those Noah would chew her out big time. Thrusters were cheap enough, but losing a big order to the local Law Marshal precinct - and those boys in there really enjoyed their fast food - would mean losing a lot of repeat business.
She had no choice.
‘I …I…I…UGHH!!!!’ Jez growled with frustration, smacking her fist against the wall several times, climbed off, went round the back and detached the warm-box. Then she unclipped the saddle display. Carrying the box under one arm and holding the display in her other hand, she jogged across the plaza towards the ramp she had come up only minutes earlier, and began to make her way down to street level.
She reached the street with only four minutes left on the next order and carried on jogging as best she could between the milling pedestrians, anxiously glancing at the display every few seconds.
The Law Marshal building was only two or three hundred yards down the street on the right. As she weaved in and out of the crowd, she caught the occasional glance of the rotating blue holographic display between the flitting aircars and rumbling skyhounds descending down to street level to drop off and pick up.
She looked down once more at the display…
three minutes.
And then all of a sudden, she was flat on her face, the warm-box skittering across the plastimac pavement, kicked around accidentally several times by the passing forest of legs.
‘Oh for f-….what now?!’ Jez howled with frustration.
She looked around to see what she had tripped over. It was a construction jimp. It cowered guiltily on the ground surrounded by a ring of marking tape clearly warning passersby of ‘maintenance work in progress’. It watched her warily, its two all-black eyes nervously darting one way then the other in a face with no nose and a slit for a mouth. Above its eyes, on the forehead, Jez could see the manufacturer’s logo ‘GenIndo’ in a dark blue pigment that stood out crisply from the jimp’s pale corn-yellow skin tone.
Jez angrily made a move towards the creature, raising one leg to deliver a swift, hard kick. As she did so, it curled its four arms around its head and curled into a vaguely foetal position. Jez hesitated. She knew Ellie felt sorry for these pathetic automatons. She hated the way people in the city casually lashed out at them for little or no reason, often just for laughs. Ellie said she thought that was because people like to kick at something they considered to be lower down the pecking order than their selves; jimps fulfilled that role nicely. Jez lowered her foot to the floor. Maybe Crazy-Ellie was right. Maybe these poor little freaks had a tough enough time as it was, without her adding to it.
Jez nodded at the creature, and muttered a chastened ‘sorry’ before dusting herself off and retrieving the warm-box that had been kicked to the side of the street. She cast one more glance back at the creature. It had resumed its task of digging an access hole in the ground to some
Jez emerged from New Hampshire running as fast as she could. By her calculation she was going to have to make up some time for the next delivery to the Law Marshal’s precinct building.
Relieved to see it still resting against the wall, she jumped astride the d-ped and pushed the joystick down.
Nothing happened.
She tried again, but the thruster didn’t even offer its trademark throaty cough. She turned round in her saddle to give the damned thing a well-deserved slap, only to find the propulsion unit was gone. ‘Ahh, what the fuggin-shizt! I don’t believe it!
Somebody had lifted it.
She looked around for the marshal she’d spoken to earlier. Nowhere to be seen of course. She checked her saddle display again. She still had five minutes left on the next order and twelve on the final one.
If she missed on both of those Noah would chew her out big time. Thrusters were cheap enough, but losing a big order to the local Law Marshal precinct - and those boys in there really enjoyed their fast food - would mean losing a lot of repeat business.
She had no choice.
‘I …I…I…UGHH!!!!’ Jez growled with frustration, smacking her fist against the wall several times, climbed off, went round the back and detached the warm-box. Then she unclipped the saddle display. Carrying the box under one arm and holding the display in her other hand, she jogged across the plaza towards the ramp she had come up only minutes earlier, and began to make her way down to street level.
She reached the street with only four minutes left on the next order and carried on jogging as best she could between the milling pedestrians, anxiously glancing at the display every few seconds.
The Law Marshal building was only two or three hundred yards down the street on the right. As she weaved in and out of the crowd, she caught the occasional glance of the rotating blue holographic display between the flitting aircars and rumbling skyhounds descending down to street level to drop off and pick up.
She looked down once more at the display…
three minutes.
And then all of a sudden, she was flat on her face, the warm-box skittering across the plastimac pavement, kicked around accidentally several times by the passing forest of legs.
‘Oh for f-….what now?!’ Jez howled with frustration.
She looked around to see what she had tripped over. It was a construction jimp. It cowered guiltily on the ground surrounded by a ring of marking tape clearly warning passersby of ‘maintenance work in progress’. It watched her warily, its two all-black eyes nervously darting one way then the other in a face with no nose and a slit for a mouth. Above its eyes, on the forehead, Jez could see the manufacturer’s logo ‘GenIndo’ in a dark blue pigment that stood out crisply from the jimp’s pale corn-yellow skin tone.
Jez angrily made a move towards the creature, raising one leg to deliver a swift, hard kick. As she did so, it curled its four arms around its head and curled into a vaguely foetal position. Jez hesitated. She knew Ellie felt sorry for these pathetic automatons. She hated the way people in the city casually lashed out at them for little or no reason, often just for laughs. Ellie said she thought that was because people like to kick at something they considered to be lower down the pecking order than their selves; jimps fulfilled that role nicely. Jez lowered her foot to the floor. Maybe Crazy-Ellie was right. Maybe these poor little freaks had a tough enough time as it was, without her adding to it.
Jez nodded at the creature, and muttered a chastened ‘sorry’ before dusting herself off and retrieving the warm-box that had been kicked to the side of the street. She cast one more glance back at the creature. It had resumed its task of digging an access hole in the ground to some
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