Chapter 5 - Believe me now, I'd only lie to you.
This name is from Haven - Say Something. A very nice song. Do forgive the badness of this notes section because it is very late when I've finished this. But there are notes!
1/ yes, I know that there's a lack of Edward in this chapter as well, but if it helps, it is ABOUT him, even if he doesn't appear (other than as Johnny Price, which will get explained later)
2/ Johnny reveals his past and most of the plot at the same time. Oh dear...
3/ He also makes a reference to one version of Frankenstein that I read when I was 11. It was a script for a theatre, and wasn't that scary.
4/ I didn't exactly get the relationship between Homer and Ysabelle right, but they were like this because they were very tired. Or at least that's my excuse.
**********
Last lesson of the day was Physics, and Jane suspected that the teacher didn't even try to make it interesting. Jane fidgeted, trying to make time go faster. She stared at the clock. Ten more minutes. The teacher droned on, the classroom heating up like an oven, making her feel like an oven ready turkey. She found her eyelids dropping. The dream she had last night kept repeating in her mind, and she found herself doodling the girl in her dream. She made a quick sketch of her body, little more than a pencil skeleton, but she soon began to pen in the bandages around her arms, and penned in the face. It looked a little different than in her dream. The expression was of hopeless goodwill, mixed with a little shyness. She felt as if she had introduced herself to the character for the first time.
She ignored her thought, and turned back a page in her rough book. There were more doodles of Edward on the lined pages, some about his hair, the way it stuck up, while others were about the pouting small lips, which were almost black in colour. But many, so many were of his eyes. The brown eyes with so much more depth and dare she say it, expression than any she had ever seen before in her life. Even this poor reproduction of them made her want to see them again. It was almost as if each time she saw him, it made it harder to leave him because each time she left him, she wanted to make sure he was really real, not some dream send to torture her.
She looked up at the clock. Nine minutes. She sighed, and looked around at the class. They all looked half asleep, fully asleep in a few cases, all ready to pack up and go. Jane sighed, and tried to interest herself in what the teacher was saying.
'So when a hydrogen atom expels an electron from the nucleus.....' bored. So bored. Nothing he could say could interest her. She fidgeted again, the clock seeming to slow down just to make the wait longer for her. She looked at her bag, seeing the supplies she had brought this time. She had brought the ingredients to make cookies because she wasn't sure if Edwards father had anything if he was....suddenly cold fear dropped down her spine.
She had turned on the machine. Edward had told her that his father hadn't woken up. She knew about sleep (having done so in previous Physics' lessons), and you didn't sleep for that long unless you were sleeping beauty. She felt herself grow cold as she realised that he wasn't alive. He wouldn't be coming for him, and he would be alone. Jane wasn't sure if he understood what death was. Maybe that's why he had said he was asleep...
No, it couldn't be, it shouldn't be true! But the more Jane thought about it, the more it seemed to be so. Why would anyone leave someone without hands on their own if they were responsible? Why wouldn't they return, why, if they had loved them, would they leave and never come back? Unless it was the eternal journey, she thought to herself darkly. Jane mentally slapped herself and thought, ~ no, don't panic. Maybe Edwards father will be back, maybe he won't, but remember, you're the only one who knows he alive, and therefore you have to go back, make sure he's okay~
~He's old enough to look after himself, ~ snapped a voice in her head.
~Maybe he is~ replied the other voice curtly, ~ but he should have been taken here ages ago.~
~Are you stupid?~ retorted another voice in her head which was different to the others, ~ Look at you! You're normal, but you're a reject. Edward wouldn't last five minutes..~
~He did before. ~ Said one of the other voices.
~Yes, and look what happened to him~ sneered the voice, ~ chased out by the very people who were supposed to look after him. Face facts Jane, but even you know that it'll just happened again, just like before.~
~But. But....~ Jane had no answer. She didn't know what to do. She knew she had to do something about Edward, but then she wanted to help him, not get him shot at or chased out of town. In other words she wanted to help him rather than hurt him, even if it was unintentionally.
She looked at the clock. Seven minutes. She wrung her hands nervously, her stomach twisting. When would that dratted bell go! She just wanted to get out of here as fast as possible. Her gaze fixed on the small clock in the corner, grubby and old, the big hand almost falling off. Each second dragged out perpetuity, like it was tired out. The clock seemed as tired as she felt; ticking away slowly, like it was too old to tick away fast like the younger clocks at the school. She knew that they had left the old clock in here because the teacher knew that the pupils spent most of the lesson looking at it rather than listening to the teacher.
'......And so Gamma rays are electromagnetic transverse waves......' continued the teacher in a voice that would have irked even the most science minded person who ever existed.
The clock, she thought, hoping it would be an escape. Five minutes. Jane picked up her pencil and holding it between her thumb and forefinger vibrated it as she thought of how she could spend four minutes before the bell went. She stared up at the teacher as she remembered that he would probably give her homework that night. Sighing loudly she fidgeted in her seat again and hoped that time would move as fast as it seemed to when she had visited Edward. Time seemed to slip through her fingers as if it were water, disappearing forever; making her wish it was back again. But like all good things, it only came once, no matter how much she wanted it back.......wait, she'd only met him twice! She sounded like she had known him for ages, but it had only been two times, even if the first was a night alone with him. It still astonished her to think that because she felt like she had known him forever. Although she did think that she sounded like a romantic fool, it was like she had known him forever, knew him exactly, but before she hadn't had a name or a picture to put the story to. And then it stood in front of her. Everything started to make sense.
Running her hand through her hair, Jane looked back up at the clock. Just one more minute to go. The seconds ticked by faster, like a sprinter who could see the end of the track. 3.....2.......1.........BBRRINNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!!!!!!
Jane shoved her books in her bag and pushing through the crowds, ran. She ran right out of the gates of the school, leaving behind everyone and everything, and reduced her speed to a brisk walk, occasionally punctuated with bursts of speed, her mind more willing to get there than her body. Finally, reaching the top of the mountain she walked into the garden, admiring the inane beauty. She smiled to herself as she saw that it had been pruned today. But as her thoughts went to the garden, they also went to the gardener, and her heart sunk. How on earth could she explain this to him? Why should she explain it to him? Why did SHE have to do it? She wasn't any good with that stuff.
Listening to the clanking of machinery from inside the house, she sighed. She wasn't sure if she should go in or not, being the bearer of bad news. She stood at the door, pondering this for a full ten seconds before she threw her caution to the wind, throwing it open.......
*****
.......Carrying a tray of cookies and a pot of hot chocolate. The drawing room in Johnny's house was not typically, suburban, but otherwise quiet nice if you ignored all the android and mechanical parts adorning virtually every flat surface, including the floor. Homer and Ysabelle sat on the sofa, looking a little uncomfortable as the two of them swept nuts and bolts off the terracotta couch. Homer put a hand under the seat, and pulled out a metal shinbone. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it with an expression that dangled precariously between being impressed and being rather disturbed. Instead, he just looked confused. Johnny put the tray on the table, (pushing off a metal hand) and grabbed the metal bone out of Homer's unresisting hands.
'I wondered where that had gone...' he remarked, and tucked it into the armchair he sat on. He lent forward, giving them each a mismatched cup, and rose as he poured out a cup of the steaming hot coco for Ysabelle, seating himself again to pour one out for Homer. Ysabelle smiled at him, and took a sip. Johnny himself reached for a man shaped cookie, taking a small plate and a napkin, allowing the centre fold to remain. He bit one of the arms off first, while Ysabelle looked at the plate of cookies.
'Oh, please have one.....' said Johnny.
'No,' Ysabelle laughed, ' We can't, we have to look after our bodies....'
'Yis, Go on,' said Homer, 'as my bodies practically worn out I have to keep an eye on it, but you're young. The Doctor can't expect you not to live a little before you get older.'
Ysabelle gave him a look in search of his approval. Homer flashed her a crooked grin, and she smiled with relief before taking a cookie, and eating it gratefully. Johnny smiled. Then, speaking with her mouth full Ysabelle said, 'I can't believe you're feeding us at, like, two in the morning, but may I ask you a question?'
'Sure,' said Johnny, sitting back.
'Well, I've been listening to your voice, and although at first listening I would say it was middle class English, I can pick up a hint of American. Now, I know it's from the south, and that its near the Bible belt, but where did you come from before you came to England?'
Johnny sat up, and with a grin said to Homer, 'is she always this smart?'
Homer raised an eyebrow and remarked, 'pretty much, yes.'
Johnny looked at the floor, and wringing his hands together said, 'I was raised in America, yes, by my adoptive father. An inventor, would you believe? We got on well until I got hormones and we had a big bust up. I left home when I was eighteen, went to England, hoping for career options like working for Austin Martins. Dad said I should become an inventor like him, but I was young, headstrong. I did get a job at Austin Martins, but I quit ten years ago, became an inventor, like my old man. But I never let him know about that. He still wrote letters to me, trying to get me to return.....'
'But back to business,' said Homer, putting his cup on the table, 'you sent for us, and obviously those above us have a reason to send us out. What I heard is that you can get us information about androids and AI that we haven't got. But I also know that everything has a price, especially information. '
'....That leads me back to the letters.' said Johnny, pushing a lock of the long black hair out of his face,' I don't know most of the information you want, but my father, my father before he died send me a series of letter telling me about a.....a.....machine he built. He never referred to it as a machine, but as Edward and He. My father said he wanted me to come back and work on it with him, but like the fool I am, I didn't go back. He says that the machine has an independent imaginative brain. But I know that it wasn't finished. He wrote me the last letter fifteen years ago, in 1988. He says he just had to fit the hands, and it would be finished. After that letter, they stopped coming. '
Homer and Ysabelle looked each other nervously in the eye, and Homer said, 'so is this a wild goose chase.......'
'No!' said Johnny, his deep brown eyes full of panic, 'No, I have the address of the old house, all you need to do is go there and find it in the house, and take it back here. After a little bit off research I can probably completely make AIDA for you.'
Ysabelle, taking another sip of piping hot coco said, 'so we get this machine and then go home. Seems okay to me.....'
They both turned to look at Johnny, who at this moment was staring at the floor. Homer glared at him, his hazel eyes boring into Johnny's neck. 'This isn't going to be easy, is it? There's something you've not told us, isn't there?'
Johnny looked up, slightly ashamed, and sighed. Then, looking away he said, 'I don't know. It's just something inside is telling me that my father didn't have the good sense to turn the thing off between work. It might be walking around somewhere.'
'I know,' said Homer, 'we'll get contacted later tonight about where it is, but there's something else, isn't there?'
Johnny closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, 'probably, but I really don't know what it is. Maybe it's just the letters. It's not nice to think that someone loves a machine more than they love you.'
Homer took another sip of coco while Ysabelle sat, her mind thinking about something. Then, nervously she said, 'you're going to meet the apple of your fathers' eyes, aren't you? I think I know what you mean.'
Homer, unaware of what Ysabelle had just said, asked, 'Johnny, where's AIDA?'
'She's in the next room,' he said, standing up, 'I'll show you there if you like.' The two men stood up, leaving Ysabelle on her own.
As Johnny led Homer to one of the spare bedrooms, he gave him a cautious glance and coughing nervously said, 'I shouldn't pry, but y'know Ysabelle, is she your....daughter.......'
Homer looked at him blankly for a second, and then realising what he meant laughed and chuckled, 'No, of course not! We're not related in any way! No, we just work together, but I keep an eye on her. She arrived at the organisation under slightly suspicious circumstances, and she told me how she got there. She trusts me, that's about it really.'
Johnny looked Sideways, but smiled a brittle smile and swung open the door. Homer looked in, and gasped with amazement, muttering, 'AIDA......AIDA.' Then, before he shut the door, he asked, 'I suppose you can find somewhere for Ysabelle to sleep tonight?'
Johnny nodded. 'She's got another spare room.'
Homer gave the smallest of small nods and called down the stairs, 'YSABELLE! ONCE YOU'RE DONE, GO TO BED!' and then, closing the door with a small squeak, retreated inside.
**********
Go on, review me. Do your worst.
(please r and r me, just to see if I'm doing this right.)
This name is from Haven - Say Something. A very nice song. Do forgive the badness of this notes section because it is very late when I've finished this. But there are notes!
1/ yes, I know that there's a lack of Edward in this chapter as well, but if it helps, it is ABOUT him, even if he doesn't appear (other than as Johnny Price, which will get explained later)
2/ Johnny reveals his past and most of the plot at the same time. Oh dear...
3/ He also makes a reference to one version of Frankenstein that I read when I was 11. It was a script for a theatre, and wasn't that scary.
4/ I didn't exactly get the relationship between Homer and Ysabelle right, but they were like this because they were very tired. Or at least that's my excuse.
**********
Last lesson of the day was Physics, and Jane suspected that the teacher didn't even try to make it interesting. Jane fidgeted, trying to make time go faster. She stared at the clock. Ten more minutes. The teacher droned on, the classroom heating up like an oven, making her feel like an oven ready turkey. She found her eyelids dropping. The dream she had last night kept repeating in her mind, and she found herself doodling the girl in her dream. She made a quick sketch of her body, little more than a pencil skeleton, but she soon began to pen in the bandages around her arms, and penned in the face. It looked a little different than in her dream. The expression was of hopeless goodwill, mixed with a little shyness. She felt as if she had introduced herself to the character for the first time.
She ignored her thought, and turned back a page in her rough book. There were more doodles of Edward on the lined pages, some about his hair, the way it stuck up, while others were about the pouting small lips, which were almost black in colour. But many, so many were of his eyes. The brown eyes with so much more depth and dare she say it, expression than any she had ever seen before in her life. Even this poor reproduction of them made her want to see them again. It was almost as if each time she saw him, it made it harder to leave him because each time she left him, she wanted to make sure he was really real, not some dream send to torture her.
She looked up at the clock. Nine minutes. She sighed, and looked around at the class. They all looked half asleep, fully asleep in a few cases, all ready to pack up and go. Jane sighed, and tried to interest herself in what the teacher was saying.
'So when a hydrogen atom expels an electron from the nucleus.....' bored. So bored. Nothing he could say could interest her. She fidgeted again, the clock seeming to slow down just to make the wait longer for her. She looked at her bag, seeing the supplies she had brought this time. She had brought the ingredients to make cookies because she wasn't sure if Edwards father had anything if he was....suddenly cold fear dropped down her spine.
She had turned on the machine. Edward had told her that his father hadn't woken up. She knew about sleep (having done so in previous Physics' lessons), and you didn't sleep for that long unless you were sleeping beauty. She felt herself grow cold as she realised that he wasn't alive. He wouldn't be coming for him, and he would be alone. Jane wasn't sure if he understood what death was. Maybe that's why he had said he was asleep...
No, it couldn't be, it shouldn't be true! But the more Jane thought about it, the more it seemed to be so. Why would anyone leave someone without hands on their own if they were responsible? Why wouldn't they return, why, if they had loved them, would they leave and never come back? Unless it was the eternal journey, she thought to herself darkly. Jane mentally slapped herself and thought, ~ no, don't panic. Maybe Edwards father will be back, maybe he won't, but remember, you're the only one who knows he alive, and therefore you have to go back, make sure he's okay~
~He's old enough to look after himself, ~ snapped a voice in her head.
~Maybe he is~ replied the other voice curtly, ~ but he should have been taken here ages ago.~
~Are you stupid?~ retorted another voice in her head which was different to the others, ~ Look at you! You're normal, but you're a reject. Edward wouldn't last five minutes..~
~He did before. ~ Said one of the other voices.
~Yes, and look what happened to him~ sneered the voice, ~ chased out by the very people who were supposed to look after him. Face facts Jane, but even you know that it'll just happened again, just like before.~
~But. But....~ Jane had no answer. She didn't know what to do. She knew she had to do something about Edward, but then she wanted to help him, not get him shot at or chased out of town. In other words she wanted to help him rather than hurt him, even if it was unintentionally.
She looked at the clock. Seven minutes. She wrung her hands nervously, her stomach twisting. When would that dratted bell go! She just wanted to get out of here as fast as possible. Her gaze fixed on the small clock in the corner, grubby and old, the big hand almost falling off. Each second dragged out perpetuity, like it was tired out. The clock seemed as tired as she felt; ticking away slowly, like it was too old to tick away fast like the younger clocks at the school. She knew that they had left the old clock in here because the teacher knew that the pupils spent most of the lesson looking at it rather than listening to the teacher.
'......And so Gamma rays are electromagnetic transverse waves......' continued the teacher in a voice that would have irked even the most science minded person who ever existed.
The clock, she thought, hoping it would be an escape. Five minutes. Jane picked up her pencil and holding it between her thumb and forefinger vibrated it as she thought of how she could spend four minutes before the bell went. She stared up at the teacher as she remembered that he would probably give her homework that night. Sighing loudly she fidgeted in her seat again and hoped that time would move as fast as it seemed to when she had visited Edward. Time seemed to slip through her fingers as if it were water, disappearing forever; making her wish it was back again. But like all good things, it only came once, no matter how much she wanted it back.......wait, she'd only met him twice! She sounded like she had known him for ages, but it had only been two times, even if the first was a night alone with him. It still astonished her to think that because she felt like she had known him forever. Although she did think that she sounded like a romantic fool, it was like she had known him forever, knew him exactly, but before she hadn't had a name or a picture to put the story to. And then it stood in front of her. Everything started to make sense.
Running her hand through her hair, Jane looked back up at the clock. Just one more minute to go. The seconds ticked by faster, like a sprinter who could see the end of the track. 3.....2.......1.........BBRRINNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!!!!!!
Jane shoved her books in her bag and pushing through the crowds, ran. She ran right out of the gates of the school, leaving behind everyone and everything, and reduced her speed to a brisk walk, occasionally punctuated with bursts of speed, her mind more willing to get there than her body. Finally, reaching the top of the mountain she walked into the garden, admiring the inane beauty. She smiled to herself as she saw that it had been pruned today. But as her thoughts went to the garden, they also went to the gardener, and her heart sunk. How on earth could she explain this to him? Why should she explain it to him? Why did SHE have to do it? She wasn't any good with that stuff.
Listening to the clanking of machinery from inside the house, she sighed. She wasn't sure if she should go in or not, being the bearer of bad news. She stood at the door, pondering this for a full ten seconds before she threw her caution to the wind, throwing it open.......
*****
.......Carrying a tray of cookies and a pot of hot chocolate. The drawing room in Johnny's house was not typically, suburban, but otherwise quiet nice if you ignored all the android and mechanical parts adorning virtually every flat surface, including the floor. Homer and Ysabelle sat on the sofa, looking a little uncomfortable as the two of them swept nuts and bolts off the terracotta couch. Homer put a hand under the seat, and pulled out a metal shinbone. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it with an expression that dangled precariously between being impressed and being rather disturbed. Instead, he just looked confused. Johnny put the tray on the table, (pushing off a metal hand) and grabbed the metal bone out of Homer's unresisting hands.
'I wondered where that had gone...' he remarked, and tucked it into the armchair he sat on. He lent forward, giving them each a mismatched cup, and rose as he poured out a cup of the steaming hot coco for Ysabelle, seating himself again to pour one out for Homer. Ysabelle smiled at him, and took a sip. Johnny himself reached for a man shaped cookie, taking a small plate and a napkin, allowing the centre fold to remain. He bit one of the arms off first, while Ysabelle looked at the plate of cookies.
'Oh, please have one.....' said Johnny.
'No,' Ysabelle laughed, ' We can't, we have to look after our bodies....'
'Yis, Go on,' said Homer, 'as my bodies practically worn out I have to keep an eye on it, but you're young. The Doctor can't expect you not to live a little before you get older.'
Ysabelle gave him a look in search of his approval. Homer flashed her a crooked grin, and she smiled with relief before taking a cookie, and eating it gratefully. Johnny smiled. Then, speaking with her mouth full Ysabelle said, 'I can't believe you're feeding us at, like, two in the morning, but may I ask you a question?'
'Sure,' said Johnny, sitting back.
'Well, I've been listening to your voice, and although at first listening I would say it was middle class English, I can pick up a hint of American. Now, I know it's from the south, and that its near the Bible belt, but where did you come from before you came to England?'
Johnny sat up, and with a grin said to Homer, 'is she always this smart?'
Homer raised an eyebrow and remarked, 'pretty much, yes.'
Johnny looked at the floor, and wringing his hands together said, 'I was raised in America, yes, by my adoptive father. An inventor, would you believe? We got on well until I got hormones and we had a big bust up. I left home when I was eighteen, went to England, hoping for career options like working for Austin Martins. Dad said I should become an inventor like him, but I was young, headstrong. I did get a job at Austin Martins, but I quit ten years ago, became an inventor, like my old man. But I never let him know about that. He still wrote letters to me, trying to get me to return.....'
'But back to business,' said Homer, putting his cup on the table, 'you sent for us, and obviously those above us have a reason to send us out. What I heard is that you can get us information about androids and AI that we haven't got. But I also know that everything has a price, especially information. '
'....That leads me back to the letters.' said Johnny, pushing a lock of the long black hair out of his face,' I don't know most of the information you want, but my father, my father before he died send me a series of letter telling me about a.....a.....machine he built. He never referred to it as a machine, but as Edward and He. My father said he wanted me to come back and work on it with him, but like the fool I am, I didn't go back. He says that the machine has an independent imaginative brain. But I know that it wasn't finished. He wrote me the last letter fifteen years ago, in 1988. He says he just had to fit the hands, and it would be finished. After that letter, they stopped coming. '
Homer and Ysabelle looked each other nervously in the eye, and Homer said, 'so is this a wild goose chase.......'
'No!' said Johnny, his deep brown eyes full of panic, 'No, I have the address of the old house, all you need to do is go there and find it in the house, and take it back here. After a little bit off research I can probably completely make AIDA for you.'
Ysabelle, taking another sip of piping hot coco said, 'so we get this machine and then go home. Seems okay to me.....'
They both turned to look at Johnny, who at this moment was staring at the floor. Homer glared at him, his hazel eyes boring into Johnny's neck. 'This isn't going to be easy, is it? There's something you've not told us, isn't there?'
Johnny looked up, slightly ashamed, and sighed. Then, looking away he said, 'I don't know. It's just something inside is telling me that my father didn't have the good sense to turn the thing off between work. It might be walking around somewhere.'
'I know,' said Homer, 'we'll get contacted later tonight about where it is, but there's something else, isn't there?'
Johnny closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, 'probably, but I really don't know what it is. Maybe it's just the letters. It's not nice to think that someone loves a machine more than they love you.'
Homer took another sip of coco while Ysabelle sat, her mind thinking about something. Then, nervously she said, 'you're going to meet the apple of your fathers' eyes, aren't you? I think I know what you mean.'
Homer, unaware of what Ysabelle had just said, asked, 'Johnny, where's AIDA?'
'She's in the next room,' he said, standing up, 'I'll show you there if you like.' The two men stood up, leaving Ysabelle on her own.
As Johnny led Homer to one of the spare bedrooms, he gave him a cautious glance and coughing nervously said, 'I shouldn't pry, but y'know Ysabelle, is she your....daughter.......'
Homer looked at him blankly for a second, and then realising what he meant laughed and chuckled, 'No, of course not! We're not related in any way! No, we just work together, but I keep an eye on her. She arrived at the organisation under slightly suspicious circumstances, and she told me how she got there. She trusts me, that's about it really.'
Johnny looked Sideways, but smiled a brittle smile and swung open the door. Homer looked in, and gasped with amazement, muttering, 'AIDA......AIDA.' Then, before he shut the door, he asked, 'I suppose you can find somewhere for Ysabelle to sleep tonight?'
Johnny nodded. 'She's got another spare room.'
Homer gave the smallest of small nods and called down the stairs, 'YSABELLE! ONCE YOU'RE DONE, GO TO BED!' and then, closing the door with a small squeak, retreated inside.
**********
Go on, review me. Do your worst.
(please r and r me, just to see if I'm doing this right.)