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‘
Hate USA,
Despise North American’s. Mark Titoo.’
The message then
repeated in other languages, probably Polish, Welsh and then Urdu.
The loop then repeated. Below each slider were two LCD displays:
the first, direction and the second, elevation. Some sliders had
the same direction but different elevations. The sixth slider -
English – shared the same direction as the eighth slider which
produced Spanish through the monitor. Clearly a lot of thought had
gone in to the arrangement of the horns to cover virtually all the
earth’s surface and transmit the appropriate language. From the
fourteenth slider, an English message came through the monitor
again but this time America English. The message was different this
time.

‘
You have no
friends, you are pathetic. Poppy Cock.’

Madeline was
stunned and shocked; she immediately pushed herself away from the
console. Why was her alias name on the end of the American message?
Then she unfavourably realised that poppycock also meant rubbish or
garbage. She moved back to the console.

Of course there
was an off switch, there usually is - a large red button just below
the count down timer. Eventually, after Madeline had a little play
with the other controls, she pressed it.

Chapter 32:
Warhead on its way

That was it
then. The transmitters were off. The anti-American brainwashing was
over, mission accomplished – if only the top brass American’s in
the Situation room knew this.

‘President Sir,
we can’t afford to wait any longer, the fleet will be at our door
in two days. One melted icecap is better than World War III.’ said
the defence Secretary.

‘Bring me the
brief case,’ said the President.

He positioned
himself at a table with the opened brief case before him. Part of
it was hinged upwards containing the device for his retinal scan.
This moment was never meant to happen. It was always a last resort
to use the briefcase, the mere presence of it was uncomfortable and
wholly disturbing. The circuitry in the briefcase accepted the
President’s retinal scan. All that was left was to program in the
target and the job was done.

‘Missile
launched Sir!’ shouted an officer called Spratt.

‘God help us
all,’ said the President.

The nuclear
missile would take just under fifty minutes to complete the three
thousand mile journey. There was little doubt that it would be
effective. The Antarctica base would be wiped off the face of the
earth along with Madeline who had absolutely no idea that it was on
its way.

By now the
whole world had completely recovered from the anti-USA brainwashing
signal. This had many effects, above all, complete astonishment at
what was about to happen – the invasion. The whole fleet of war
ships cut their engines and dropped anchor, awaiting further
instructions. What the hell were they doing? They liked… no, loved
the Americans. They loved fast food, the Internet, Ebay, Face Book
and their iphones, ipads and ipods. They loved the Simpsons, Star
Trek and Friends. It was a wonderful country with Disney world, Las
Vegas and New York New York. Were they mad attacking dear beautiful
America?? The TV news channels deeply analysed their states of
minds with countless psychoanalysts, physiatrists and
physiotherapists. It was pointless, no one could explain their
previous hatred. The Americans also now felt good about themselves,
once again they felt superior, confident and self righteous. The
world was back to how it used to be but with far more love and
happiness about.

There was a
mystery however. Many non-American nations had now detected a
missile heading southwards, apparently on route towards Antarctica.
Several leaders attempted to ring the American President to ask
what they were doing but he was too busy watching the nuclear
missile.

Barton saw the
news reports in the back of his shop in Buxton. It was a regular
thing to watch the news instead of Madeline’s eye view.

‘
Madeline, I
don’t want to panic you but there appears to be a nuclear warhead
heading in your direction.’

‘What? You’re
kidding? Haven’t they noticed that the ultrasound has stopped?’

‘
Obviously
not – too busy watching the missile.’

‘They said they
wouldn’t bomb the base because of melting the icecap… how
long?’

‘
I would
estimate about twenty minutes at the most.’

As she couldn’t
contact the Situation room, there was only one way out of this –
she had to complete the mission – she had to blow up the fuel
tanks. She searched her little rucksack for the explosives – they
weren’t there. There was only one place they could possibly be, in
the snow outside. Hopefully she had enough charge – 29%, it would
have to do.

She zipped up
her skin tight thermal suit up to her neck and put her thermal cap
on. Obviously androids don’t feel the cold but Poppy did.
Physiologically the cold passed through the air waves and straight
into her tank. The immediate temperature drop from inside to
outside, was a mere 90 degrees, her frame creaked with the sudden
contraction. She thought about the sudden temperature drop cracking
her beautiful artificial skin, wrinkle it even, which would make
her look old. An aging android was something that had she had never
considered before. She assumed that Madeline Bull would just never
age – she would have the Dorian Grey complex. Herself, Poppy, would
of course steadily age in the tank but of course this process would
always be conveniently hidden. She had noticed Adam develop a few
grey hairs and wrinkles around his eyes over the past year. Whether
it was stress or just general aging, Adam was clearly moving on as
nature intended – Madeline was not. The upshot of this train of
thought - Perhaps it would be a good thing to age just a little
bit.

The cold and
stress of the situation was making her thoughts ramble.

The snow was
drifting considerably in the strong harsh winds. Ideally she needed
a sniffer dog to find the explosives but all she had was a broom
handle she happened to find near the doorway. After five minutes of
prodding, she finally hit something solid two foot down. She dug
with her hand and there they were – two small Mars bar sized
explosive devices.

‘How long
now?’

‘
Ten
minutes, I reckon,
’ said Barton.

One of the
explosive devices was placed under the first fuel tank and set to
two minute. The second bar of explosive she placed under the other
fuel tank and set to one minute. With hindsight these times were a
little tight. She had now less than one minute to get out of the
blast range. Normally this would not be a problem but explosive
motion wouldn’t engage.

‘Barton!’ she
yelled, ‘I can’t engage explosive motion.’

‘
Your hands
must be too cold for the sensors to work.’

There was
nothing else for it, she had to run as fast as she could, which in
the deep soft snow wasn’t very fast at all. Ten seconds to go and
she was only thirty metres from either tank. Five seconds and she
was thirty five metres away.

‘
Bury
yourself in the snow,’
shouted Barton.

She just had
enough time to leap into the snow and shuffle in before the first
blast and then immediately the second blast tore into the white
frozen ground.

For such small
amounts of explosive, the blasts were off the scale. There was a
simple reason for this; the fuel tanks were filled with pure
alcohol which impressively played their part in the explosion. The
blasts flattened the base buildings and created two enormous
craters where the tanks used to be. Madeline was not particularly
injured but the explosions had ripped the thermal suit off her
back. If she was human she’d certainly be dead now, joining the
four oversexed, inebriated men that used to inhabit the base.
Fortunately she wasn’t human but with a bare back in minus 70
degrees, her energy reserves would very soon be depleted again.

The blast could
be seen from space, perhaps from the moon but not yet by the
occupants of the Situation room – and now there was only four
minutes before impact.

In fact it was
only when the missile was two minutes from target that someone
decided to glance at ground zero.

‘What the…? The
base has gone Sir!’

‘Make sense
Spratt! What do you mean, the base has gone?’

‘Blown up sir!
Madeline must have been successful – exploded the fuel tanks.’

‘Send the DAL
code!’ shouted the defence secretary.

‘It’s passed
the apogee Sir, it’s in the atmosphere!’

‘Just do
it!’

Madeline lay in
the snow and watched the missile explode several miles above her.
Her optics momentarily overexposed with the flash. A few seconds
later her hearing overloaded with the boom.

Chapter 33: A
load of lies

Madeline was an
android so her situation would have to keep. Things had to be done:
Alliances to be healed and war ships to be recalled. The world had
been shaken up and a war to end all wars had nearly started.
Eventually the one who had actually saved the world from this
catastrophe would, of course, be attended to but surely she
wouldn’t mind hanging on for a short while, after all, it’s not as
if she had a soul or anything…

Bastards! She
thought as she worked her way through the entire Prisoner Cell
Block H box set.

Actually, to
some extent, the weather hampered a rescue. With gales and
unusually low temperatures, an air landing was out of the question
– poor Madeline. It was three days before the winds had subsided
and a specially adapted helicopter landed near to the destroyed
base. Madeline was now buried under two feet of snow and as her
power reserves had expired nearly three days ago, she couldn’t make
herself known to her rescuers. Fortunately one of the rescuers
found the broom handle. It had survived the blasts proving that you
can’t beat nature’s own materials for strength and durability. They
had no idea where she was so they started out at ground zero and
worked outwards. As the rescue team only amounted to three it took
several hours before they reached the thirty metre mark. Naturally
they didn’t find her and continued right on to about a hundred
metres. They almost gave up at this point but after a few
sandwiches and a few hot cocoas back at the helicopter they decided
to try again. This time someone had an idea of using a metal
detector. This was much more effective than the wooden broom handle
and after only another two hours, they found her. She was frozen
but not stiff or blue because she was made of strange metals and
plastics – certainly not flesh. She was, of course, dead, no heart
beat and not breathing but this didn’t seem to bother the rescue
team. Within minutes, the helicopter was back in the air, now with
a valuable but dead cargo. They had instructions:

‘We have to
plug her in!’ yelled one of the rescuers above the engine
noise.

‘Plug her in
what?!’ yelled the other rescuer.

‘The mains
inverter!’

‘And the other
end?!’

‘Hang on…’ he
read the instructions, ‘In her naval!’

‘You’ve got to
be joking!’

But he wasn’t,
this was indeed something that one day they would tell their
grandchildren – how they rescued the one who saved the planet and
then plugged her into the mains.

It took an hour
and a half before her system rebooted and her heating system warmed
her up to optimum operating temperature. Now she wasn’t dead, just
snoring. This time Madeline refused to wake up until she had
finished watching a particular episode of Cell Block H. The
helicopter was only a few minutes off landing before she sprung to
life and demanded a mirror.

‘You didn’t
warm me up too quickly!?’ she panicked.

‘No, don’t
think so,’ said the rescuer.

‘Err… good,’
she examined her face in a small rectangular mirror. There didn’t
seem to be any wrinkles worth talking about. She hadn’t aged! She
took the little jamming device out of her pocket - the little green
light had gone out.

‘You haven’t
got an A23 battery, have you?’ she asked.

‘No, don’t know
what one of those is,’ said the rescuer.

‘My Adam does,’
she said quietly. ‘Well don’t say anything or let me see anything
of a sensitive nature. I’m bugged – in fact it might be a good idea
to put a bag over my head.’

‘Will do
miss.’

As it happened,
she was being taken directly to the Situation room of the White
House. All but the President were still there, now looking tired
and unlike Madeline, definitely older. She was escorted in, still
with a bag over her head.

‘Can someone
please get me an A23 battery so I can take this stupid bag off my
head!’ shouted Madeline angrily.

Eventually some
junior clerk returned from a hardware shop with a small 12 volt
battery. The same clerk fitted the jamming device with the battery.
Finally the green light came on.

‘Is it set on
sweep,’ asked Madeline impatiently.

‘Yes,’ said the
junior clerk.’

‘Thank God for
that,’ said Madeline as she removed the bag from her head.

‘Job well
done,’ said the vice President.

‘Didn’t rush
then?’ Madeline discretely pointed out her tardy rescue.

‘We couldn’t
come any sooner, the storm prevented any landing,’ said a
General.

‘Have you got
in touch with the British government? Have they arrested Nuttall
yet?’

‘Capesdown hall
you said.’

‘Yes, Capesdown
hall,’

‘Apparently
it’s an old folk’s home. No technology what-so-ever and certainly
no Nuttall.’

‘Did they
search the right Capesdown Hall?’ said Madeline frustratedly.