Mardock Scramble

The Doctor didn’t seem too bothered about it. Rather his attention kept drifting back to the contents of the fish tank.

“Don’t worry about that. You’ve changed your mind about attending the trial, so that changes everything at their end too,” the Doctor said, holding the box under his arm nonchalantly while touching the fish tank with his other hand.

“There are still a few tests I need to run on these babies. When you stop and think about it, it’s quite a task, after all. Trying to completely regenerate something that was still in middevelopment in the first place. It’s not like you’d want to make do with a cheap substitute or anything.”

Balot frowned. She had no idea what the Doctor was going on about.

“What exactly are you up to, Doc?” asked Oeufcoque, sensing Balot’s confusion.

“What do you mean, ‘what’? I’m looking at ways of getting Balot’s voice working again, of course!”

Now Balot’s mouth gaped open. She remembered the Doctor’s words from earlier.

Now we’ve just got to get on with things the best we can, make ourselves useful. That was definitely what the Doctor had said. And she hadn’t taken the words in properly, not at first. But now, all of a sudden, a wave of emotion rose up inside her, as if escaping through a hidden crack. I’ve met them at last—that was how she felt about the odd pair, man and mouse. She realized that her heart had never dared let her feel this way before, ever, so afraid she was of being betrayed.

“Oh. And, thank you, Balot. For the suit. I accept it gratefully. I’ll have to keep quiet about it in my report to the Broilerhouse, though, as it might be interpreted as a bribe from the Concerned Party. But I like this sort of gesture now and then. Reminds me of back when I was a civilian…” The Doctor trailed off.

Balot bowed with a flourish. She wanted to thank Oeufcoque and the Doctor. But no voice came out of her throat, so, instead, she grabbed the Doctor’s box away from him and planted a kiss on it.

Oeufcoque was thrown from her shoulder by the sudden movement. He landed skillfully on the desk.

The Doctor was now holding the box, which had been thrust back into his arms by Balot. She did a quick turnabout and ran out of the room, with the Doctor still staring at her. The door slammed shut with a bang.

The Doctor stared at the door before turning to look at Oeufcoque. “What was that about?” he asked the mouse.

“I don’t know. It looked like she was overjoyed for a moment, but then she was gripped by contradicting emotions—shame and fear. Oh dear. She may be starting to have her doubts as to our usefulness.”

“Are you sure about that? Look at this,” the Doctor said, hoisting the box around toward Oeufcoque to flaunt the poppy-red kiss mark.

“That’s a human trait, isn’t it, Doctor? We can interpret that as a sign of gratitude?”

“Exactly, Oeufcoque. Do you know what? I think she quite likes us.”

The next moment Oeufcoque and the Doctor were up, jumping for joy like a pair of children.

Balot returned to her assigned quarters and locked the door securely.

Both the electric lock and the chain. Then she took out the day’s purchases and lined them up on her desk.

She picked up the Eject Poster and stuck it on the wall.

Resting on the bed, holding her knees to her body, she snarced the projector on and chose some pictures of fossils.

She stared into the air, watching pictures of hundreds of different spiral shells appear and disappear. She tried to fade out of consciousness, project herself into the blank space, just like she always used to.

She couldn’t do it. And she couldn’t stop crying.

It was as if all the day’s events had crept up on her and exploded all at once. As if they’d piled up bit by bit into a mountain before collapsing in a landslide.

She’d run away from the misery of not being able to speak when she wanted to, but before long she started wondering whether this had really been necessary, whether it wasn’t an over-reaction. The thought of this made her tears fall even harder.

She stayed in that position for a long time, but eventually she rose back up, her breathing now sounding like a cold winter wind. She took the lipstick out of her jacket pocket and wrote in big letters on the wall where the endless shells were appearing and disappearing with dizzying speed:

THEY ARE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

Then, right below that:

YOU HAVE NOBODY, NOWHERE.

And then again:

THEY ARE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

Crying without being able to make a sound was tougher than she’d imagined. Almost all the air in her body seemed to want to escape through the void that was her mouth. Her insides were as hard as steel.

Balot endured. Just as she had endured everything up to now. Pushing her whole body to its limits.

But unlike the previous occasions, she didn’t need to kill herself this time. This much she was sure of.