Episode 13: Sascha Martin's Great Ungoo Part Three

When we last observed our heroes four (with Asha there were five), they’d escaped the clotting residue of Landfill and were live within a far-off, other universe that’s infinite and small, which of course might overlap with ours, and not be far at all.

And they were just agog (not Aggie though), and quivering to hear how the exo-girl could make their gobbled Landfill reappear.

But our time ran out before the details tumbled from her head.

Now we’re back inside that universe, and here’s what Asha said:

‘Well, I can’t just paste in Landfill back where Landfill used to be, ‘cause your homes would all be floating on a snotty, clotty sea.

‘So the goo will have to disappear.

‘The sea must go away.

‘Is that possible?’ said Sasha.

Then he hurried on to say, ‘But do you know what changed the goo, and stopped it eating any more?’

‘I’d assume,’ said Asha, thinking, ‘that it reached the special floor.’

Sasha stared, or rather gaped, and moved his mouth without a sound, caught his breath and went to speak again, but didn’t, and he frowned.

‘What I cloned,’ said Asha, ‘had to be restricted to the crust, ‘cause avoiding all that lava in the mantle was a must.

‘So I had to mark the margins with a layer that’s inert, which, apparently, has something that your goo could not convert.’

‘It stopped it dead! It stopped it eating,’ Sasha said. ‘So how’s it made? What’s the formula?’

‘Not certain I remember, I’m afraid. It was just to mark the edge of what I’d cloned, beneath your home, when I copied all that rubbish and confined it in the dome.’

‘So the heritage of Landfill …’ Luca said. ’It’s not all goo?’

‘No, I saved it when I cloned it, and it’s right in front of you.’

‘But the underground?’

‘It’s safe and sound, a pudding in its sheath.’

‘Where?’ said Luca.

Asha flipped the dome, and showed them underneath.

‘Ugh, disgusting!’ Mary Alice made a face and turned away, but the boys were so inspired by the layers of decay.

‘We must put it back!’ said Sasha. ‘But the only rub would be, how to go about disposing of the snotty yellow sea?’

‘Oh, it’s easy,’ Asha told him. ‘It’s delimited, defined. I can lift it free and move it to a place I have in mind.’

‘Well, I hope the place has atmosphere, and life-supporting air for the people on the snot, and all the animals and …’

‘There!’ said Asha, pointing to a screen that showed a snotty yellow bowl rising slowly from a semi-sphere of emptiness (a hole), and drifting higher, till it vanished in a bank of heavy cloud, which was riven then by thunderbolts of lightning, and a loud, a very noisome crunch occurred that made a rumble at their feet.

‘No more snotty sea, said Asha. I’ve disposed of it, complete.’

‘But,’ said Sasha, ‘I’d have thought a snotty sea was hard to hide.’

‘Not for someone with a universe. I have one. Look outside.’

Out they went, the boys and Mary Alice. Aggie stayed behind, being busy with an exo book that exo-cised her mind.

But the three who looked were staggered by the sight beyond the door, of a structure that was standing where it hadn’t been before: the very bowl they’d watched ascending to the clouds with all its brew.

It was so much more impressive in the flesh, or in the goo, for its base lay on the plateau in the distance, far away, and the sides rose up and loomed so high above they seemed to sway.

‘So you see, the sea is done,’ said Aisha. ‘Now we plan your trip.’

And she turned and led the little party back inside the ship, where Aggie didn’t seem aware that they’d been out or where they’d been, as they took their seats around her with the snow dome in between.

‘Reinstalling,’ Aisha said, ‘can happen two ways. Option one, I can send you back already in the dome. That’s rather fun. The advantage is that you’ll be sitting comfortably at home when I reposition Landfill and release it from the dome.

‘Or we do the disindoming first, and this is option two. Then I open up a portal and you simply wander through.’

‘Option one for me,’ said Mary Alice. ‘Dome me up, and first. I can freshen up, and no one has to see me at my worst. When the masses reappear, then, I’ll be free of all this cack, and I’ll radiantly welcome all the snotty people back.’

‘Well, that’s not for me,’ said Luca. ‘I’d be stuck in there with you.’

‘Ha! You’re not invited, Luca. Better go with option two.’

‘Well,’ said Sasha, ‘we should stay and see the others safely home. That’s … unless it might be easier to add them to the dome?’

‘No, it’s … fiddly,’ said Aisha. ‘We can leave them till the last. I can wipe their memories, though, ‘cause do they really need the past?’

‘Wipe their memories? Yes! It’s perfect!’ Mary Alice said with glee. ‘Then they’ll never know they ever saw a less than polished me.’

‘And they won’t know who you are,’ said Luca. ‘Nobody will care.’

‘Oh my God!’ said Mary Alice. ‘Aisha, leave the memories there.’

Then she faltered.

‘Is it … safe, though? Does it hurt?’

‘No. Not a lot.’

‘Oh.’ And Mary Alice fiddled with her glamouring of snot. ‘I just wish I had a friend to ask, like Philomena Cunk, ‘cause there has to be a level of discomfort, being shrunk.’

‘There’s no shrinking! I have said this. You’ll just teleport in there.’

‘Teleport?’ said Mary Alice. ‘Teleport exactly … where? The boys’ toilets? God, the library? In the ground, with all the muck? All that ancient rotting garbage Landfills stand upon? Oh, yuck!’

Asha drew herself up tall, and looked offended. ‘Please don’t speak. This technology is mature. I invented it last week. And it lets you land precisely where you want, inside your home. Or perhaps you have another place in mind, inside the dome?’

‘No, my bedroom, I should think,’ said Mary Alice in reply. ‘With my ensuite, all my bath salts and my dressing table, my …’

‘Aggie,’ Sasha interrupted. ‘Are you going to the dome? Or, perhaps you’d like to wait with us till Landfill’s back at home?’

Aggie may have heard the question, but her brain did not engage, ‘cause she barely even grunted as she turned another page.

‘It’s just you then!’ Asha leapt upon a startled Mary A, grabbed the girl and set her on her feet, and bundled her away.

Through the ship they went, past works of many futures, all retired, and behind them skipped the boys, who meant to witness what transpired.

As she stumbles through the exo-wreck, an exoverse from here, exo-Mary Alice fades from view, her exo-fate unclear.

In the squalid desperation of her dark, post-fashion state, she expects to test untested exotech at any rate.

Is her lot to be restored to all her glory, or mislaid?

To be dressed, or stripped to atoms, and the bits of which they’re made.

Ah, the episode is over, and the silence doesn’t speak.

What becomes of Mary Alice?

That’s a story for next week.