Season 04 - Episode 14

‘simple words please’

Ga is busy which means she's also happy.

The various obstacles that had held her up for so long are finally being overcome. She has a workable plan again and is enjoying putting it in place. The people the kid discovered above; the people the idiot stumbled into below and The Resistance movement on her doorstep. They all have their parts to play and she has plenty to do.

GovCo are stepping up their oppression, shamelessly and brutally robbing more and more of the population of what little they have left under the guise of seeking out Church sleeper cells. Seeing them run rampant through The Levels unchallenged irks Ga but for now The Resistance is doing a good enough job of slowing them down.

Besides, she has bigger things to think about. She's lost track of the idiot, down in the deepest depths, but he seems to have a habit of landing on his feet so she's not too worried. She's just working on a plan to find him again when the GovCo raid begins.

The tangled black masses of EnFo patrols march across her monitors, coming ever closer until they're in the corridor outside. As she watches them begin to kick in the doors, Ga yawns and reaches out her hand. The carrier drone scuttles across the desk and into place. She takes up her cup, sipping idly and scratching herself as she watches it all unfold.

One by one the EnFo's burst into a room, drag the occupants out to kneel in the corridor and then ransack each place in turn. Depending what is found inside, those kneeling in the corridor are either shoved back inside and left to clean up the mess or else shot in the head.

The homes of the dead are then sealed up, to be picked clean later by other GovCo staff. Ostensibly, execution is the punishment for possession of Church propaganda or contraband. In fact, Ga knows, the dead are simply those who owned something worth taking.

The EnFo's have reached her neighbour now and she hears them through the wall, crashing in, dragging everyone out, wrecking the place. Ga's so used to watching everything on the monitors that it feels surreal to be able to actually hear in real life what she's watching.

Apparently her neighbour has nothing worth stealing and so is allowed to return to the ruins of their life. The EnFo's move on to Ga's opposite neighbour, the room directly across the corridor. Again, after much violence and destruction, this family is also spared.

Then the EnFo's drag everyone out of the room on the other side of Ga, once more giving her a real life soundtrack to match the grainy black and white pictures. This time something of value is apparently found because Ga hears three single gunshots before the EnFo's move on down the corridor and away from her.

Shaking her head sadly, Ga returns her cup to the carrier drone and turns away from the monitors, focusing her attention on the machine instead. It's time to solve the mystery.

“Right then you,” she says, heaving herself in her wheely chair over to the workbench on which the machine sits. “We've plenty of drones for now so you're getting fully dismantled. I'm going to find out how you're doing what you're doing if it's the last thing I do.”

She sits for a moment but then realises she is waiting for a response and chastises herself. Taking up a boltdriver she sets about removing the machine's casing. As she makes contact with the machine however, a flash of sparks gives Ga a small shock so that she drops the boltdriver to the floor.

“Ow!” she cries, sucking her fingers. “What the...?”

A subtle little sound comes from the monitors, announcing the arrival of a message. Ga glances over but then turns to stone. The message is from her own computer, as if she has sent it to herself. It consists of just three, simple words.

“PLEASE. MOTHER. DON'T.”

Ga turns back to stare at the machine, her huge hand with its perfectly painted nails, floating up to cover her perfectly painted mouth. She sits and stares at the metal box with its little red light for a long time, trying to think but finding no way past this impossible thing.

As she stares and stares and stares at the machine, the monitors flicker on behind her. One screen in particular shows a skinny young boy being dragged through a hole in a wall by an angry looking man in strangely embroidered clothes.

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