Read Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn for Free Online Page B

shielded their eyes from the glare as the doors cranked slowly to the sides.
    ‘Behold!’ bellowed Gray, ‘The Magical Kingdom of….
Fantastika
!’
    Shelby looked at him. ‘Fantastika? Really?’
    'Hey, bud…I just, you know, came up with it.' Gray wrinkled his nose. ‘Gotta give the place a name, right?’
    Ellie squinted back at the sunlight pouring out, her eyes beginning to adjust to the brightness. The last time she’d seen it had been three days ago. The army of mini arachnid-like fabricators had just about finished laying the underlying geometry blocks. Since then Shelby had repeatedly denied her any more peeksinto the biome. Both men agreed on this, they wanted it to be a surprise for the girls.
    ‘Oh-my-God!’ gasped Jez. She stepped forward past both men, over the lip of the doorway and into the world. ‘Oh-my-fregging-God!’
    Ellie and Frazier followed her in. The warm, brilliantly-lit sky was still too bright to look directly up at. Instead Ellie aimed her gaze down at the ground. She was standing on grass. But not grass that could possibly exist in any real world. It was orange, a perky and cartoon-world bright, unnatural orange, every fine blade looked as soft and tender as the feathers of a freshly hatched chick. She stooped down and ran her fingers through it. To her surprise, each blade she brushed shuddered under her fingers.
    She let her gaze drift upwards. The grass stretched out before her, a gently sloping tangerine carpet, punctuated here and there with clusters of tall purple plant stems that drooped under the weight of heavy melon-sized bulbs. Her eyes were drawn to some nearby decorative rock formations, blue-green jagged spires that tapered to a point and were dusted white to look like miniature mountain snowcaps.
    The air seemed to be teaming with movement and life. Nearby what appeared to be soap bubbles floated several feet above the ground. As they drifted closer she could see they weren’t bubbles, but simple life forms.
    ‘Those are based on sky anemones,’ called out Gray. He came over to stand beside her. ‘Like the ones they have on Lostromo.’
    Ellie shook her head. She’d not heard of Sky Anemones, or even Lostromo.
    ‘Don’t you ever watch nature videes?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘The 'bubbles' contain hundreds of small spores. They float around and eventually pop when they bump into something and deposit their spores. Which, if they find moisture, grow and become more anemones.’ He stepped forward and jabbed at one. It burst and a small cloud of particles floated in lazy spirals down towards the ground.
    ‘Drool, huh?’
    She smiled. Gray was beginning to pick up Jez’s idioms. ‘Very drool.’
    Shelby and Frazier joined them and for a moment they all watched Jez as she, noticing how the grass was reacting to her feet, had dropped down to the ground and started rolling around. ‘This is fregging awesome!!!’
    ‘We used a basic high-fantasy design template,’ said Shelby. ‘Although Graham insisted on customising it; he adding this stupid orange grass for example.’
    ‘I call it Love Grass.' He hunched his shoulders immodestly. 'It’s my design,’ said Gray. ‘Like it?’
    Ellie nodded. ‘It’s kinda fun, I guess.’
    ‘It’s idiotic, is what it is.’
    Gray looked at Shelby. ’You really have no poetry in your soul, do you, buddy?’
    ‘I have no soul,’ he replied. ‘Nor do you. Nor does anyone for that matter. It is a mythical construct. Anyway…there’s a war to be fought, we should introduce our two generals to the battlefield and their respective armies.’ He sighed. ‘Although I use the terms ‘generals’ and ‘armies’ loosely.’
    Shelby led the way forward, past Jez still lolling on the ground like a labrador rolling in freshly-discovered muck. ‘Come on you…get up. You’re worse than a dog.’
    Jez sat up. ’What’s a dog?’
    *
    ‘Those two constructions are your defensive
redoubts
,’ said Shelby. He looked at Jez.