Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn by Alex Scarrow Page A

would do so until Shelby and Gray got round to clearing up the aftermath of the battle.
    ‘Please. I don’t want my creatures recycled,’ she pleaded. ‘My bears…please…don’t mash them up into that gloop.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘They….they were so brave. They don’t deserve to be minced up into biomass and thrown back into your vats.’
    ‘They’re not real bears, Ellie!’ said Jez. ‘They’re just, like, toys.’
    Ellie shook her head. ‘They had some intelligence. At least my ones did. They could think for themselves and-’
    ‘It is
artificial
intelligence, Ellie,’ said Shelby. ‘Organic, rather than digital, yes. But still artificial. Like Frasier, here. He may sound smart, but he’s basically a set of AI modules embedded in an organic neural network. Isn’t that right, Frasier?’
    The chimpanzee looked at him. ‘You can be so charming, Master Shelby.’
    ‘I don’t care! They were brave. I want them to live.’
    Jez put an arm around her narrow shoulders. ‘Oh, you are such a mooshy sentimental chik. I guess that’s why I love you so-o-o much.’
    Ellie shook her arm off.
    ‘We do need to tidy up World Three. More to the point, we need to recycle the creatures…especially those scorpion-like creatures of yours, Jez. Those need to be analysed by Mother to see what went wrong.’
    ‘Oh, sure, you can scrap those crazy things. But not her bears. Let my Ellie keep her creatures. That’s the least you can do for her.’
    ‘To do what with them, exactly?’
    ‘To let them live,’ replied Ellie.
    Shelby sighed. Ellie could see he wasn’t particularly keen on the idea. She imagined the idea of World Three being occupied for no profitable reason, being messed up by un-policed teddy bears wandering around, irked his OCD obsession for squaring things away.
    ‘For how long?’
    She shrugged. ‘For a while?’
    Shelby tutted. ‘You think you’re doing them a kindness, hmmm? Letting them live?’
    ‘They deserve it.’
    ‘So you want to let them live in that world, in that castle for a while?’
    She nodded.
    ‘You understand they will grow used to the idea of living. Their basic intelligence will begin to develop. They will forge friendships, memories, perhaps even genuine emotions….and what then? When it finally comes time to clean out that world, Ellie, and recycle those fabricants? Hmmm? Do you see what I’m saying?’
    ‘At least they’ll have had some fun. Lived
some
life of their own.’
    ‘And recycling…
death
…might begin to mean something to them also.’ Shelby shook his head. ‘Something for them to fear.’
    ‘So? Isn’t that what we all fear? We all die in the end, right?’
    ‘Hmmm.’
    ‘Better to have had something and then lose it…than never have had that something?’ She looked up at Jez. ‘Right?’
    Jez nodded. 'She’s right. Let 'em live a little.’
    Shelby tugged on his lip thoughtfully. ‘If you two abolutely insist…but, I warn you, they will have to be recycled eventually. This isn’t meant to be a zoo.’
    ‘How about until that supply shuttle arrives?’ said Ellie.
    Shelby sighed. ‘Ridiculous….but all right.'
    ‘Yay!’ Jez raised her left hand to high-five Ellie’s. ‘Oh…uh, sorry.’
    ‘And the other creatures,’ Shelby continued, ‘Graham and I will dispose of those.’
    ‘Good,’ said Ellie. ‘They were horrible.’
    ‘The large one that attacked you, we’ll have a look at that one though.’ He shook his head. ‘It really shouldn’t have behaved that way. I can’t see how it passed through quality control without something being flagged up.’
    Ellie nodded. ‘It nearly killed me.’
    ‘It might have been an accident?’ said Jez. ‘Or maybe it got confused or something?’
    ‘There should be absolutely no confusion. Every fabricated creature is designed to know, to absolutely one-hundred-percent-know, whether it is interacting with another fabricant or a human client. Something went wrong. That’s a serious