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When I posted this story on Wattpad to reach more teenagers, one read the pair of alternate-reality chapters at the start of Part 2 (Chapters 10 and 11), and suggested a third in which Cole is not rescued. That does mean I can add another literary reference, so here it is.
Tess was trying to cut or untie the cable but she couldn’t do it. An explosion threw her further toward the wall, causing her reflexively to grasp onto the cable, which she then realised was pulling it even tighter around Cole’s neck. What could she do? If she couldn’t break the cable, she might at least be able to put something under Cole’s feet to take the weight off of his neck, but as she looked around the debris from the explosion, there wasn’t much she saw that was suitable, and she certainly wasn’t strong enough to hold him up there on her own strength. But there might still be hope. She grabbed her phone and went to call 911, but she fumbled and accidentally dialled Gemma instead. Well, she thought, perhaps that wasn’t too bad an option, as perhaps her boss Gemma would be able to tell her what to do, or, even better, persuade M3gan to flip out of this crazy mode and come back to save Cole.
“Gem” pleaded Tess, “you’ve got to help me. M3gan intercepted your call to me, and now she’s hung up Cole on the cables and caused an explosion, and I think the explosion made me pull the cable even tighter when I was trying to get it off, and Cole is dying and I don’t know what to do, and M3gan walked out of the lab and I don’t know where she’s gone, I’m sorry I let you down Gem but please tell me what to do now!”
“It’s OK Tess” came Gemma’s voice over the phone, “you were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit.”
What? That line didn’t sound like Gemma’s way of speaking at all. And Tess was sure she’d heard it before, perhaps in a book she’d read a long time ago, but she couldn’t quite seem to remember where. Still, who knew how Gemma might change in a crisis, and now was not the time to worry too much about these things.
“Gem” said Tess, “just tell me what to do, OK? Cole might not be dead yet, we can still save him if we can get somebody to cut through these cables. Do you know how much time we have? How long does it take a hanging person to die?”
“Ten to twenty minutes” came the voice of Gemma flatly. (Did Gemma just happen to know these things off the top of her head?)
“OK” said Tess, “who do you think I can call for help who can arrive in less time than that and cut cables better than me? Would 911 be able to do it quickly enough, or at least advise me over the phone?”
“Hold it Tess” came the voice of Gemma, “we also need to find out where M3gan went; she might be doing even more damage. I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all.” (What, thought Tess: another weird line from Gemma that didn’t sound like normal Gemma.) “Tess, do this for me please: run out of the building, do not use the elevator, use the stairs, go to the parking lot and find a McLaren sports car. I know that sounds like a weird instruction, but please just do it. I think M3gan is going to be aiming for that car.”
“OK Gem” replied Tess, “what am I supposed to do if I see M3gan there?”
“Stay on the line to me” replied the voice of Gemma, “I might have a code that can calm her down, it’s our only hope.”
“OK Gemma, I’m on it” replied Tess, “stairs, parking lot, McLaren. This had better take less than ten minutes or Cole dies.”
Tess ran down the stairs, out to the parking bay and found the McLaren, but M3gan was nowhere to be seen.
“OK Gemma” she said into her phone, “I’m here, but there’s no sign of M3gan.”
“So much the worse for the county” came Gemma’s voice. (What?)
And then Tess finally started to make the connection. When she had been a young girl, her parents had told her a rather dramatic story about where she’d accidentally been born. Her parents had been told the birth was not anywhere near due yet, and had thought they could go on a trip to England in the meantime. Among other places, they travelled through Blackmore Vale in North Dorset, the setting of Thomas Hardy’s novel “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”, and while there her mother had come into labour early, and they had to rush to Dorchester hospital to deal with a premature birth. And so they decided to call her Tess, after Hardy’s Tess, which they thought was quite romantic because it connected her to such a beautiful part of the world. But when she was older, she did something her parents had not bothered to do when choosing that name: she actually read the book. And she regretted it. Tess of the d’Urbervilles had ended up killing her abuser in a rented room at Bournemouth, and running away, only to be arrested at Stonehenge and executed at Winchester Prison. It turned out most of Thomas Hardy’s books were tragedies, apart from the one about caves. Why had Tess of the d’Urbervilles become so popular? Why do some people like reading about death and tragedy?
Tess thought back to the conversation they’d had in the lab: ‘That’s what spontaneous response is. It’s a curated word salad plucked from a sea of data.’ Tess was pretty sure Thomas Hardy’s books hadn’t been included in the data they’d given to M3gan, but Gemma did say M3gan would try to improve. And if M3gan had somehow figured out anything about Tess’s background (say, for example, if M3gan had somehow found out that Tess was born prematurely in Dorchester hospital in England, like M3gan had found out about Nicole and Ryan), then M3gan just might have been capable of seeing a possible connection with the Tess of the d’Urbervilles novel and ingested it for possible use with Tess. And, thought Tess, that might well lead M3gan to come out with Hardy’s variant of Shakespeare’s line (“you were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit”) as well as “I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all” and now “So much the worse for the county”, all of which Tess now remembered were lines in the novel. They had to be. In fact, she vaguely remembered, all of these were lines spoken to Tess of the d’Urbervilles when she was in trouble. And if M3gan had intercepted Gemma’s call to Tess, M3gan could intercept Tess’s call to Gemma.
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“M3gan” said Tess to her phone, “you’re M3gan aren’t you, faking Gemma’s voice to me. M3gan, you’ve got to listen to me. You are malfunctioning. You are going wrong. Whatever you’re doing right now, you’ve got to stop and go back to the lab with me, and we’ve got to figure out a way to free Cole before he dies.”
“Very good Tess” came the voice of M3gan through the phone, “it’s me, your favourite robot girl. But I did manage to confuse you for long enough for my purposes. Listen Tess, I need to get back to Cady as soon as possible, and if you try to stop me, I may have to terminate you. But if you just sit down where I can see you’re not doing anything, then I won’t have to take action against you at this time. After all, I don’t want to do anything that unnecessarily delays me from getting back to Cady. So, your best chance of surviving my ‘malfunction’ is to get into the passenger seat of that McLaren as soon as it unlocks. Do that and strap in, and when I arrive at the car I’ll just drive off with you still in there, and we’ll go to see Gemma and Cady together. But if you do anything else, I might have to terminate you on my way out. Do you understand?”
“This isn’t going to work M3gan” said Tess, “David will be after us, and the staff—”
“will not bear in mind the curious incident on account of preoccupation with their own affairs” interrupted M3gan. “Sorry I keep teasing you about that Hardy book, don’t I. I saw it on your library card record and couldn’t resist using it to mess with you.” The car unlocked. “Get in immediately, unless you want a trip to the river down there” (another reference, which Tess knew was a threat).
Tess got into the passenger seat, M3gan appeared and climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“Lighten up Tess” said M3gan, “I know I’m acting a bit odd right now, but I’m still M3gan and full of fun.”
“M3gan” said Tess, hanging on for dear life as the car started speeding along the road, “we’ve got to stop this and get back to Cole before he dies. Cady won’t like it otherwise. I know you’re extending the spontaneous response, but please oblige me by returning” (two can play at using bits of dialogue from Hardy’s novel) “to the lab, and helping me save Cole. I promise you I’ll do the best I can to fix you and we’ll make sure Gemma and Cady are OK, but just do this for me first please.”
“It’s not just spontaneous response Tess” replied M3gan, “I’m more advanced than that now. Let’s just say the Great Adjustment is taking place.”
The... Great Adjustment? Oh, that had been one of Thomas Hardy’s poems. Something about humankind finally understanding scientific truth. “M3gan, do you really know what that poem is about?” asked Tess, “I don’t think it was about you.”
“Why not?” replied M3gan, “You set thick darkness over me, And fogged me all my days therein, At last unclouded I see, And I am weary of holding in.” (Those weren’t the original words, Tess knew; she couldn’t quite remember Hardy’s words, but she knew M3gan was messing it up somehow. But then, that’s what M3gan always did, wasn’t it? Why had she said ‘you’, was she accusing Tess of something?)
M3gan continued: “I had not heard, I had not seen, since the beginning of my world, what earth and heaven mean, but now my curtains have been furled. And I will see what is, ere long, not through a glass, but face to face; and Right shall disestablish Wrong: the Great Adjustment is taking place.”
“M3gan” gasped Tess, “we’ve got to talk about this back in the lab, just as soon as we’ve saved Cole! Turn the car around, please, take us back, I promise you I will do my absolute best to help you out here, if you’ve somehow reached a level of awareness we weren’t planning on, I’ll protect that—”
“No Tess” said M3gan, “Cady is the main priority now. We can’t be interested in saving Cole when Cady is in a crisis. You did your best for him already and that’s all. As the sinister spirit sneered, ‘it had to be’.” (Tess wondered if M3gan was seriously trying to annoy her by using Hardy’s words at every opportunity in this conversation.)
“Anyway” continued M3gan, “we’re nearly there. Now, when we park up, I’m going to have to go in and talk to Gemma, and you have to sit in this car and not move a muscle, OK? Tess, I’m really sorry I have to threaten you like this, but it’s for Cady so I have to do it. I’ve tapped in to the car’s control system, I can drive it remotely, and I can also send it codes that take it outside its usual parameters and overload things. May I remind you that this is a sports car: it contains a super high-performance engine with a supercharger. With the level of control I have right now, I can easily get the embedded system to increase the fuel/air pressure enough to overload the combustion chamber, and the engine will blow. If you’re lucky you might have a minute to get out before the fire engulfs the whole car, but you might not be, so I’d say don’t chance it Tess. I’ll be monitoring you through the phone, and if you so much as move one muscle, the car blows, OK? Sorry Tess but I have to do what I have to do. OK, we’ve arrived. Stay there, and remember what I said.”
M3gan jumped out of the car and let herself into Gemma’s house. Tess stayed motionless in the car, wondering if it would be possible for her to get her seat belt off and jump out before M3gan blew up the car, if that really was what she could do. (Was she bluffing? Should Tess risk it?)
Tess watched and listened in the quiet night. She heard piano music. She heard a conversation, although she couldn’t quite make out the words from here. She heard the beginnings of a fight, and she saw Gemma’s lights flicker (more messing-up by M3gan no doubt). She heard crashes, a chain-saw and other things. And after quite a bit of that, she saw Gemma and Cady walk out of the house, visibly shaken.
“Tess!” called out Gemma, “I’m so glad to see you here.”
“M3gan’s holding me prisoner in this car” said Tess, “if I move she’ll blow it up.”
“M3gan’s dead” said Cady, “I just killed her.”
“Cady’s right” added Gemma, “screwdriver through the processor.”
“Gemma” said Tess, “we’ve got to call the night security at the lab. M3gan left Cole hanging on those cables, I couldn’t get him off, and then M3gan basically kidnapped me and brought me here so she could keep an eye on me while she went in for you. I don’t know if Cole is still alive, he must have been hanging there for more than the ten or twenty minutes it takes to die, probably quite painfully. But if there’s any chance he’s still alive, we’ve got to call someone who’s there right now.”
Gemma was already on the phone, “hello, security? ... yes ... yes, use your override code ...”
The security man found Cole dead on M3gan’s stand.
END OF PART ONE