Emily Taylor - The Apprentice Read online

   

  3.

  ‘Ready?’ asked Zeus.

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ replied Emily, wondering what she needed to be ready for this time.

  Zeus clicked his fingers.

  Zimp!

  Quicker than you could bat an eyelid, they arrived.

  They were in the cockpit of one of the moons. Out of the clear dome window Emily had a spectacular view of Camillo. It looked beautiful with its blue sea, green grasslands and forest set against the black background of space. Looking down, she could see the spot where they’d been sitting on the bluff, the grove of bananas and mangos trees and the long golden beach. The moon orbited around to the dark side and, once Emily’s eyes had adjusted, she could retrace her steps back up the stream to the grassy meadow where she’d arrived. Overhead, Jupiter and the stars competed to be the brightness jewel in the sky and towering high over the mountains on the far side of the prairie a thunderstorm grumbled and growled angrily, flashes of lightning arcing earthwards from its cauliflower head.

  This is my asteroid, thought Emily, pride welling up inside of her.

  ‘Hello Emily and welcome,’ said a deep rumbling voice from behind her.

  Emily jumped in surprise. Turning around, she came face to face with the sentry slug. Its round white face took up the whole of the back wall of the cockpit; a black vertical line dividing it in two, with a large eye on each side; alert, intelligent and smiling.

  ‘My name is Castor. You’re in a mark three sentry moon, SM3 for short. It’s specially designed for use by sentry slugs, in fact individually tailored. This one is equipped with plasma photons, laser cannons and a triple stage thermal lance in addition to all the usual armaments.’

  ‘It’s beautiful up here,’ said Emily, ‘but you must get lonely and really bored.’

  ‘Lonely! Bored! I’m a sentry slug! What has Zeus told you about us?’ he asked with a chortle.

  ‘He said your job is too boring for a robot to do.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Castor. ‘A robot would go crazy. What would he do all day?’

  ‘And what do you do all day?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Watch!’ he said, giving Emily a wink with his big black eye. ‘Sentries are the voyeurs of the Universe. There’s not much we don’t see, and we never forget anything! Turn around.’

  Looking away from him, Emily turned around to see that the dome window had turned into hundreds of flickering screens. There were images of sheep under the almond trees on the asteroid below; views of life on the surface of neighbouring asteroids; pictures of what looked like the inside of a huge factory; live CCTV footage from high streets and banks on Earth; reality TV shows; football; Arabic soap operas; kids TV; music videos and Star Wars action scenes.

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ said Castor.

  The screen went clear and Emily and Zeus were thrown to the floor as the craft lurched violently to port and upwards. Cannons roared and lasers sprung into action, sending beams of light tracing across the sky as the guns tracked left following a target in towards Camillo. It exploded in a ball of fire and the moon slewed hard to the right, hitting another target on the first shot. Similar fire came from the other moon, which was just visible above Camillo’s curved horizon.

  ‘Nice shot, Pollux!’ exclaimed Castor, as a red beam of light shot out of the other moon, hitting its target and sending it spinning down onto the prairie in a ball of fire.

  ‘What are those things?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Slimeballs,’ said Castor. ‘Pollux, the other sentry slug, bought the last one down with lasers only. It’ll be toasted to perfection. We’ll take turns to feast tonight. With the phasers they tend to explode and atomise.’

  ‘Why don’t you like them?’

  ‘I do like them. They’re delicious! The only thing I like more is fresh lettuce.’

  ‘No. No what do you have against them? Why are you blasting them from the sky?’

  ‘More like, what do they have against us?’ said Castor. ‘If a slimeball landed on Camillo, it would devour all organic matter in a day. They’re voracious.’

  ‘But where do they come from?’

  ‘Pluto, it all stems back to the troubles.’

  ‘What troubles?’

  ‘I’ll fill you in later,’ said Zeus. ‘It is a long and twisted tale that even I have trouble unravelling.’

  ‘So, how do you watch all the screens at once?’ asked Emily. ‘How do you see anything with so much going on at once?’

  ‘Slimeball down on your side, Castor!’ Pollux’s voice sounded urgent.

  The screen zoomed in to show a huge blue ball of slime with slanty blue eyes and sharp teeth, rampaging through the forest devouring everything in its path and leaving a trail of glowing slime in its wake.

  Pow, Pow, Pow, Kachoom!

  Castor fired a quick blast with the phaser to stop him then roasted him with the laser. ‘Thanks Pollux, he’s yours.’

  ‘I hate those ones,’ said Castor, talking to me again. ‘We’ve had a few like that lately. They’re either invisible or teleporting to get past us.’

  ‘The screens?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Yes. I watch them all. We watch them all. We monitor all communications at all times. All radio waves, all cameras. We look out the window too. It’s still the best way to see what is going on!’

  ‘We?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Yes, we. All sentry slugs are linked up. Between us we build up a picture of what is going on through all the information we can gather. We visualise. I’ll show you.’

  The view on the screen zoomed out from the smoking remnants of the slimeball to show Camillo then further out until the asteroid shrunk to a ping-pong ball floating in space. It panned around and zoomed in on another asteroid until Emily could see large dinosaurs feeding on ferns as they waded through a prehistoric swamp.

  ‘Wow!’ she exclaimed.

  The screen zoomed out again, then in on a large asteroid, in, in, in through the outer crust to a hollow inside where there were several smaller asteroids with scaffolding and cranes around them.

  ‘That’s the factory,’ said Zeus proudly.

  ‘What about Earth?’ asked Emily. ‘Can I see my parents? They live at 13 Va.....’

  ‘13 Vauxhall Crescent, Sheffield, England,’ said Castor finishing off Emily’s sentence, as the screen passed through the factory asteroid, flew across to Earth, then zoomed in on England, going down through the cloud to reveal a sea of roofs, then in through the roof of Emily’s house and into a bedroom. Her mum was reading a bedtime story to Danny and Julie. She looked very pregnant. A crackle of interference and snatches of radio talk came through on the cockpit speaker then Emily heard her mum’s voice. The story came through as clear as if she was standing there, transporting her back to when she was little.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘High resonance radar,’ said Castor, but Emily wasn’t really listening.

  The view zoomed out again. ‘Your dad lost his car keys three months ago while swinging Danny around in the park.’ said Castor. ‘Here they are now, under the driver’s seat of a yellow mini-minor where young Jimmy Smith put them and forgot about them after finding them in the park.’ The screen zoomed in to show the keys amongst old sweet wrappers and mouldy half eaten apples.

  Wiping the tears from her eyes, Emily asked, ‘How do you do it? I have trouble watching one TV and keeping track of what is happening.’

  ‘We’re big and yellow and brainy. We’re all brain and all linked up, like a huge super computer. Since humans invented radio and TV it has become a lot of fun watching Earth. We love the reality shows and place bets on the soccer. We love games, Sudoku, chess, backgammon and computer games. The killer Sudoku your dad did at coffee break this morning was formulated by a sentry slug and if you ever play online gaming, you’re probably up against one of us.

  ‘And we love comedy. Billy Connelly with all his F-words is my favourite. And gossip-
’

  ‘It must get cramped living all squished up in a moon,’ said Emily. You must enjoy stretching your legs when you get down on Camillo.’

  ‘Stretch our legs!’ chortled Castor. ‘You are funny.’

  An image of a sentry slug flicked up on the screen. His white face was showing, but his yellow bits were blurred out. He was busy munching his way through a field of lettuces. ‘Farmer Brown from Arkansas is not going to be very happy in the morning. He’ll be mad for an hour or two but will cheer up when he checks his Internet banking and finds a small error in his favour!

  ‘We like dark and damp, and we’re very sensitive about our yellow bits. We don’t like anyone to see our yellow bits. We take turns or have relief sentries come in so we can get down on the wet grass. We slide about; we mate. There’s nothing quite like sliding up against another slippery, slimy slug, yellow on yellow,’ he said with a wicked glint in his eye.

  ‘But how do you do that without anyone seeing the yellow bits you’re so sensitive about?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Well,’ continued Castor. ‘If you looked through all of the data on the sentry slug network, you would not find a single bit of slug yellow, not one little byte.’

  ‘Yet you can probably bring up an image of me having a sneaky poo in the desert three months ago,’ said Emily indignantly.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Castor, flipping through pooing images.

  ‘Stop! Never mind, you don’t have to show me,’ said Emily. ‘I was just making a point.’

  ‘We must be going,’ said Zeus, putting his hand on Emily’s shoulder.

  ‘It was lovely to meet you,’ said Emily. ‘Can I visit again sometime?’

  ‘Of course, drop by anytime,’ said Castor. ‘We’ll have a game of backgammon; I hear you’re pretty good.’

  Once back on top of the bluff, Emily said, ‘I’m not so sure I like having my every action recorded.’

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ said Zeus. ‘It’s no different to life on Earth now. You’re constantly being watched by CCTV and satellite imaging, and every phone call and click on a keyboard is being monitored and the content analysed. You never know who has information on you and what they’re doing with it.

  ‘Sentry slugs are discreet, loyal and moral. They protect you and are mighty handy when you lose something. You’ll get to know Castor and Pollux well. They’re good fun. I advise you to plant lots of lettuces when you get your garden going!’

  Zimp!

  He disappeared.