Lila stood up and pushed the time machine towards the loving couple, Emmet with tears in his eyes and Jasper playing only a fascimile of life in his dehydrated and starved state.
Her past self, even without the knowledge of the two men's arrival, would still have all the necessary medical equipment to provide the two of them with, and she wouldn't exactly be upset by their presence, even if she would at least put on an act of complaint and annoyance at first.
Making sure that the time machine was, in fact, physically touching Emmet and Jasper both, moving one of Jasper's arms - which had curled inwards into his body - to press down onto the top of the time machine, his fingers lightly curled over the front edge of the devise as the back of the metal casing was firmly pressed into Emmets legs, scrunching up the fabric of his trousers as it did so.
The two of them looked as if they could belong to a painting, and with a heavy heart, Lila let herself step back,
Lila's eyes were wide and defiant when a firearm was directly aimed at the pupils of her eyes, the image of the deep, dark, black passage of the gun directly being imprinted on her retinas. She smirked. Behind her, the bright light of the time machine exploded, just as planned and right on time. She did not move as all the others in front of her were forced to momentarily turn away or had their eyes overwhelmed with the sheer brightness and power of the shine. Jasper had once detailed his experience with one of the corpss's of the Empire, the body having scavenged off from one of the battefields where a helicopter had malfunctioned and had fallen into a forest, years before he had even gone to live with his aunt. There had been a single soldier inside and his body had quickly enough been whisked away to be dissected and examined, with all the technology thoroughly analysed for their function and weaknesses. The shaded visor on the helmets was
"MY GREETINGS TO THE LADY WITH THE TIME MACHINE," a bland, toneless voice rang out echoing around the corridor and straight into Lila's incredulous mind. "WE INVITE YOU TO COME OUT FROM HIDING AND JOIN US UPSTAIRS WHERE WE WILL SPEAK IN PRIVACY ABOUT THE SITUATION AT HAND. WE PROMISE THAT NO HARM WILL COME TO YOU." Lila silently scoffed when she heard te magic phrase tacked onto the end, and instantly did not believe that the people, who transplanted human flesh cooking devices into the backs of their prisoners, would not hurt her and would not attempt to hack into her body with a meat cleaver to quarter her if she immediately came out. "I AM THE TRANSLATOR AI THAT ALLOWS US TO COMMUNICATE. IF ENGLISH 21ST CENTURY IS NOT THE LANGUAGE THAT YOU UNDERSTAND, THEN OTHER LANGUAGES MAY BE USED. WE UNDERSTAND THAT ENGLISH IS NOT THE MOST POPULAR LANGUAGE ON THE PLANET, BUT WE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IT IS AN INTERNATIONAL STANDAR
The voice of the AI did not deign to answer Lila's unspoken question - the provocative statement apparently being either too inappropriate or not nearly important enough to warrant a proper response or answer. Silence reigned throughout the halls for a longer than expected amount of time, and Lila had to raise an eyebrow at it; even if she had been been trying to get a rise out of the people upstairs, and the individual who was working with the translator, she actually hadn't been expecting some sort of prolonger period of silence. When there was the first indication of sound and a response, instead of the AI's bland one, without the natural undulations in pitch and volume and stresses that came with the vernacular and emotion of normal human speech patterns, an actual person replied to Lila - with all the features that proved to be just as she had been hoping for. It sounded rather tired and exasperated, all at on
The office was just as dull as Lila had imagined. There was a grey ceiling hanging above her head, with grey lights embedded within it. Their particular colouring and shade, unfortunately, were not grey by dirt or grime or build up, but seemed to have been deliberately set to that particular dreary setting, leaving all sorts of strange and twisting half shadows to roam around the office, moving far more animatedly over desks and chairs and computers and other furniture far more animatedly than their caster's seemed to be capable of. It was almost beautiful. Almost. It was another obvious enough cost saving measure that made this place even more miserable to be in. There were desks arranged all around the room, their fronts all facing into the centre with each desk seemingly being a different workstation, each containing a different task to be completed, and a single emp
The grey man held an expressionless face, and a screen materialised in front of him, obscuring the view that Lila had only managed to hold for a few moments. She could feel herself putting on a pout of disappointment as she leaned over to the side to try and see around the screen, moving back to stand up straight when she found that she couldn't, shrugging anyway after the attempt, not particularly caring anyway. In that moment, she was thankful for all those pre programmed expressions that she had trained her body to make. She hated herself. Almost demurely, the man's eyes turned down to look at the writing on the hologram, the flat image of it glowing another shade of grey, admittedly lighter than the rest of the room, looking a little darker than just an off white. Lila held back a scoff, instead narrowing her eyes, as she eyed that colour.
"Motherfucker!" "Son of a bitch, you piece of fucking shit!" "You... you... I will decapitate you with a butter knife! I will pull your entrails up your throat and strangle you with them! I will burn you alive and make your remains into a pie!” "I'm going to poison you with the cyanide I keep in my kitchen, and then beat you blind and dead with a rounders bat, before I have your eyes stabbed out with a fork and then shoved back into the same holes I took them from backwards!" "I am going to tie you up with a Portuguese Man of War to a chair made of spikes! I will break every bone in your body and shove electrical wires into your ears! I will take out your eyes with a fork and feed them to you! I will coat all my knives in acid and stick them in your body where it hurts the most, and then, when you're writhing in agony, when your begging for your death, I will make you choke on sea water and t
Lila gasped in a new breath, almost choking on the volume of air on her dry, dry throat.She gave a low, pained, breathy chuckle for a moment, before keeling over into a bout of grim laughter, before it quickly disintergrated into a bout of coughs that never seemed to end, going on and on to the point that Lila felt that she was about to vomit up blood or begin to choke on air, drowning on dry land.Eventually, the coughing fit subsided and she looked up at the grey man and the screen in front of her, still bearing that heinous bitch's image."Did you know that Jasper came up with a plan to blow up your floating city, your flying fortress? He refined it alone later and came up with a simplified plan that would hypothetically get the whole thing blown up without the reactor on it going critical. It didn't even involve him leaving this place. Hah! It only involved with him writing a single message, informing whoever it rec
Emmet clung on to Jasper, unable to tear his eyes away from the man in his arms; his body so still and lifeless, the glimmering, flickering flame of light that was the steady, miniscule rise and fall of his chest - his wispy, thin breath - being the only sign of some sort of consciousness and hope in that moment.Muttering all that he could, comforting Jasper with words of encouragement and promises of safety, Emmet did all that he could, whilst still holding the other in his arms and supporting his head with his free hand, to bestow some sort of joy and contentment, soothing his worries and fears and replacing them with a steady stream of love.Nothing existed outside of Jasper, and each slight flicker of his eyelids, like the flames of candles in the wind, made little ripples of hope well up in Emmet, as his tears continuously fell down onto Jasper's parched and dry skin. He so wanted the other to wake up so Emmet could kiss him senseless.
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi