Fic: BETTINA (1/1, all ages)
Sep. 5th, 2023 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisTitle: BETTINA
Characters/Pairing(s): Fourth Doctor
Rating: All ages
Word count: 6,397
Spoilers: None
Summary: The Fourth Doctor must protect a scientist and her invention from the people who want to exploit it. Entry for Big Finish's 2023 Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity.
Author's Notes: Obviously, I didn't win this year's Big Finish story competition – but I still love this story a lot. Many thanks to Platypus for beta work.
The engine technology described in this story is real, but not ready for commercialization yet.
::xposted to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3
Today BETTINA was a seagull, wings curving high above a coastline more quarry rock than beach. Yesterday she'd been a patch of gorse speckled with yellow starbursts; tomorrow, perhaps a fox.
She'd mastered gull grey and white, but flight was new, and sometimes a wingtip dipped where it should have risen. But she remained aloft, and Dr. Diana Ellis, monitoring BETTINA's ocular sensor output, tried not to flinch every time the video lurched down, then up.
Ellis had quartered her monitor display to aggregate different sensor responses into four wiggly flows, the only way to consume BETTINA's thousands of simultaneous streams. In one window, tiny crabs scuttled in the tidepools nestled between granite boulders, where mussel clumps and clusters of barnacle screwheads dotted the edge of each pool. In another, a family – man, woman, ginger-haired toddler in a polka-dot playsuit – lounged on a flat rockface. There was the shoreline, waves foaming across a thin stripe of sand. And there was the cottage she shared with BETTINA, well back from the cliff face bordering the beach, but still visible from a distance. Ellis could just make out the tangle of wild roses lining the pea gravel path to her front door.
"BETTINA," Ellis said, "how's your perimeter?"
"I am clear, Dr. Ellis. If I need to, I can lose myself in a flock where no one will distinguish me from an ordinary bird. Or I can fly out to sea and make a long arc to a farther part of the shore."
"Good. But keep scanning, just in case."
The video grid on Ellis' monitor refreshed. A scramble of granite boulders tucked against the cliff face. The family, the father's head tilted back in laughter as his child shrieked and giggled. The spit jutting from the easternmost edge of the shoreline, where signage marked it too dangerous to enter, but where a pair of teenage boys in trainers were leaping from rock to rock anyway.
And in a shadowed corner, one Ellis had been ignoring until a sudden shift in brightness caught her eye, a blue police box blinked slow and long and settled into focus.
"BETTINA. That blue box. What on earth –"
"I am only now perceiving it, Dr. Ellis. I have run a diagnostic to confirm my sensors are functioning correctly. The box was not there before."
"Radcliffe," Ellis muttered. "Must be another one of her secrets."
"Long-range sensors do not indicate Bexadyne technology. Engaging short-range sensors."
"BETTINA! No! Return home immediately! You don't know what that might be!"
"That is why I am scanning it, Dr. Ellis. Please remain calm. Short-range scan commencing."
BETTINA swooped low, squawked at the child pointing to her, fluttered to a halt atop the box's sloped roof. Ellis held her breath. Even if this wasn't Bexadyne's work, it could still threaten her and BETTINA.
The box's front door creaked, and a man in a floppy hat, a multicoloured scarf looped round his neck, peered outside and up at BETTINA.
"Hello!" he said. "I'm afraid I wasn't expecting visitors today. I'd offer you a jelly baby, but I doubt they're suitable for avian consumption." He squinted at BETTINA as if waiting for her to move, then drew a small metal stick from his coat pocket and squinted at that instead. "Though you're not really a bird, are you?"
It was as if the man and his mysterious box had landed directly on Ellis' chest. Her entire body felt crushed; she was nothing more than a panicked gasping for air. "BETTINA!" she yelled. "Home! Now!"
This time, BETTINA obeyed: three of Ellis' monitor windows pitched sideways, then steadied with a view of the cliff face, then the meadow and scrub brush atop it, and growing ever nearer, the cottage. The fourth window was the blue box, where the man stood outside, one hand shading his eyes as he watched BETTINA shoot off into the distance. BETTINA kept sensors trained on him until she'd soared above the cliff face and all Ellis could see was grass and sky and home.
* * *
Even without her monitor windows shifting black one by one, Ellis knew when BETTINA had returned: the pattering of organo-metallic scales on the rooftop like gentle rain, followed by a series of scrapes as BETTINA shifted her full mesh onto the charging pad hidden below the solar panels. The cottage's network crackled as BETTINA interfaced with frayed cables and antique speakers.
"Safe and sound, Dr. Ellis," she said.
"I'm glad you're back. You're okay? Just need a recharge?"
"The man did not harm me. And I enjoyed flying very much, just as you said I would. When I am fully charged tomorrow, perhaps I should practice being a gull again."
"You should do what makes you happy, BETTINA. Just keep an eye out for that man. Now settle down and rest, yes?"
Ellis turned back to the computer, focussed on the man and the box. It really hadn't been there before; she could replay the video to a point where there was only cliff face, then the shimmering of a rectangular frame, then the solid deep blue with the words "POLICE BOX" painted at the top, not that she believed this strange man and his scarf had ever been part of anything resembling police.
She could see a faint reflection of her face in the darkest parts of the monitor screen. When she'd taken BETTINA and her research from Bexadyne and run, there had been a lot less grey in her close-shaved curls. The stress of hiding from Radcliffe and everyone else she'd ever known revealed itself in silvery stripes across her temples and salt and pepper at the top. It complemented her brown skin, but she wished it hadn't required six months of fear and anxiety.
At least there'd been Aunt Tay's cottage by the seashore. Tay wasn't a blood relative, which is how the cottage's existence must have slipped past Bexadyne's online searches, but Tay was an auntie all the same and had told Ellis about the key hidden beneath the ceramic frog keeping watch on the garden. They had solar power, twenty-year-old smart house technology, and an internet connection, and that plus Tay's ability to hide digital footprints was all Ellis had needed to keep working while she trained her creation to protect herself.
It wasn't Ellis' state-of-the-art Bexadyne lab, and she didn't have her flat's expensive adjustable bed or her professional stove or even her favourite soldering iron. But she did have her second-favourite soldering iron, and chives sprouting purple pompoms beside the ceramic frog, and a sturdy wooden table where she could continue adjusting BETTINA's mesh in the hopes of integrating hygroelectric power cells and at last giving BETTINA true freedom.
Because Radcliffe could still find them. If she did, BETTINA had to be able to get away even if Ellis could not. It was that, or the fail-safe Ellis preferred not to think about.
The house chimed a low-level alert. "Dr. Ellis," BETTINA said, "perimeter warning indicates a nearby traveller of approximately the same dimensions as the man who spoke to me on the beach."
Ellis rushed to the front windows, resting flat against the nearby wall so no one could see her pulling up the edge of the lace curtain to peer outside. They'd been here long enough to know that this sort of warning meant a picnicker gone astray, or a birder in search of a rare find, but there was always that niggling fear that this time it wouldn't be an innocent passer-by. That this time, it would be Radcliffe, or a government minister, or the police, or a man with a weapon and very little conscience.
It was none of those. But it was the man who'd spoken to BETTINA. He wore a floppy brown hat atop a shaggy mop of matching brown curls, a tan coat too warm for a late spring day, and that ridiculous scarf, and he was humming the Spring movement of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as he pushed open the wooden gate at the edge of the property. He was taking his time, sniffing at the wild roses and kneeling to watch honeybees dipping into the pink clouds of clover blossoms.
Faintly, Ellis could hear the man speaking to the bees. "Absolutely marvellous work," he said. "Don't forget that blossom over there; it looks perfectly ripe. Have a wonderful day!"
Surely someone so kind to the local insects couldn't actually be a threat. He hadn't done anything to BETTINA beyond pointing his mysterious stick at her, and from the view BETTINA's rear sensors had provided, he'd simply watched her fly away rather than becoming alarmed or reaching for a weapon.
They'd been so long without a friend, and what if this man were no different from the local travellers? A visitor passing through rather than an opportunist there to abscond with BETTINA and sell her to the highest bidder?
"BETTINA," she whispered, "is he carrying any weapons?"
"No," BETTINA replied, voice tinny through the house audio. "While I cannot fully scan him, the house sensors do not detect any weaponry."
"You're certain?"
"As certain as I can be via house sensors, Dr. Ellis. He did not hurt me when he had every opportunity to do so. And while I cannot match his face to publicly available databases, I believe he does not mean us harm."
Ellis rested quietly against the wall, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. It would be okay, wouldn't it? He wouldn't be one of Radcliffe's toadies, he wouldn't try to wrest BETTINA out of Ellis' hands; the two of them would still be safe together.
The knock came, and Ellis took in a breath before opening it.
"Hello," the man said. "I'm the Doctor, and I'm wondering if I could borrow a cup of sugar? And perhaps discuss the robotic nanomesh I traced to your cottage?"
Ellis sighed and said, "I'll put the kettle on."
* * *
She handed the Doctor a mug of tea and the sugar pot, and took the seat facing the door. The Doctor might be benign, but that didn't mean other possible strangers were.
"Why should I tell you anything, Doctor?" she said. "Other than the fact that you somehow figured out what BETTINA is. I'd like to know more about that little metal stick you used on her."
"The sonic screwdriver," the Doctor said, extracting it from a coat pocket and placing it in front of Ellis. "A little multitool of my own design. It's quite good at detecting things that aren't meant to be detected."
Ellis turned the screwdriver over in her hand. It was no heavier than a fountain pen and frankly looked like a dental instrument. This Doctor had to either be a genius or a lunatic lucky guesser and was possibly both.
"That blue box of yours is a mystery, too," she said. "Care to explain it?"
"Life's full of mysteries, isn't it? It's what makes it worth living."
"Fine," she said, dropping the screwdriver in front of the Doctor with a solid snap. "We'll explore that one later. Tell me where you're from. You're not Bexadyne; I'd have recognised you. Oxford? MIT?"
"Gallifrey. A bit further away. I'm a tinkerer by inclination and a meddler by trade," the Doctor said. "Anyway, I'm more interested in you. Could we perhaps start with your name? And then move on to why your robot is imitating a seagull?"
"Dr. Diana Ellis. And BETTINA isn't a robot; she's an array of biomechanical nanobots in an interlinked mesh. Bio-Engineered Tiny Transforming Interactive Nanomesh Array, to be precise. The sum total of my life's research. She's designed to be a support tool for extraterrestrial scientific research – sample gathering, analysis, even camouflaged protection."
Ellis sipped at her tea, then continued. "She's a seagull because we're hiding from my former employer, a company called Bexadyne. You know it?"
"I'm afraid I don't."
"Autonomous Systems for Amazing Worlds. That was our slogan. Engineering for civilian problems: terrestrial and extraterrestrial travel and exploration. We agreed to work without military money and that's how we liked it."
"The military occasionally has its uses," the Doctor said, words careful and precise, "but in my experience they're sometimes entirely too quick to blow things up when a good conversation would do."
"Exactly! And I never had to worry about BETTINA being used to blow things up until Bexadyne hired a new chief product officer, this woman Helen Radcliffe. A nightmare in an expensive suit. Couldn't stop talking about profitability and how Bexadyne was sitting on millions of unrealised pounds.
"Six months ago, she told me Bexadyne was about to sign a contract with MoD that gave them exclusive access to BETTINA. Absolutely unacceptable, I said. BETTINA's a living scientific instrument – she's the first nanomesh I've developed that's learning and growing on her own. She wants to be helpful not just because her programming tells her to, but because she enjoys it. And Radcliffe wanted to let the government turn her into a weapon. So I wiped my work systems and took BETTINA and ran."
The Doctor leaned back in his chair, raised his chin thoughtfully. "She's a seagull because she's learning to hide. You've been teaching her to survive on her own if she has to."
"She still needs to recharge once a week here, with the solar panels. I'm trying to integrate a hygroelectric engine into her nanomesh so she's self-recharging, but I'm having a hell of a time without my lab equipment."
The Doctor's sudden grin could have powered BETTINA for the day. "Fortunately for you, impossible engineering tasks are my speciality. Hygroelectric power, you say? Very clever approach, perfect for a mesh device – all that surface area to capture humidity and transform it to electricity. Under the right conditions, BETTINA could power herself indefinitely."
"Yes," Ellis said softly. "She could live forever, Doctor. She could be safe wherever she chooses to go. And she wouldn't have to kill anyone."
The Doctor pushed his teacup aside, clearing space on the kitchen table. "Let me see where you're stuck, eh? I've got no other pressing engagements."
"I –" Ellis began, then stopped when the low-level alert chime rang again.
"Incoming video call," BETTINA said. "Dr. Ellis. I must warn you about this caller."
Ellis put down her teacup. Her hands were suddenly shaking too much to hold it steady.
She sucked in a breath, pushed back from the table, and stood tall in front of the Doctor. "Promise me this isn't your doing. You sit in my home and drink my tea and you give me hope and I will not have it be a false one."
"Dr. Ellis," the Doctor said gravely, "if there is one thing I try never, ever to do, it is to give people false hope. I swear to you, I will help you save BETTINA."
Ellis moved to her workstation. She had no reason to trust a stranger, but it had been six months on the run. Six months of inadequate fixes for BETTINA's power cells that would work, sputter, and die. Maybe it was time to trust that when the universe gave her an engineer with a sonic screwdriver and a blue box that could appear and disappear at will, that the universe had a very firm message to send and it was time to listen.
"Please send Radcliffe's call to my monitor, BETTINA," she said.
The display switched on. Radcliffe was perfectly put together, as always: cream silk blouse open at the neck to reveal a thin gold chain with a single diamond; a blonde bob sheared at an angle so acute it could have sliced open a letter. Pale skin and a shade of red lipstick Ellis knew had probably cost as much as the blouse.
"Helen," Ellis said. "I see you found me."
"I have to admit, Diana, you did a very good job covering your tracks. It took us four months to find your bolt-hole and another two months to confirm it was really you and not just a kindly middle-aged spinster indulging her fondness for tea roses and beach plum."
"I put in some peas on Monday, in case you haven't noticed. And the beetroot and carrots are sprouting."
"You're a true credit to the ecosystem." Radcliffe's mouth settled into a straight line running sharp across her face. "But you know that's not why I'm calling."
"The beach plum jam won't be ready until much later in the season, Helen."
A twitch at the edge of Radcliffe's mouth. "Diana," she said. "You don't have to do this. You don't have to keep running."
"If you're still planning on taking BETTINA away, then I do."
"How do you expect Bexadyne to meet its financial obligation to its shareholders? Research has had the run of the place for far too long. We're profitable, but not nearly as much as we could be."
"None of us joined Bexadyne to turn it into a money mill. We joined to do science. To advance exploration and human knowledge."
"Shareholders can't be paid in exploration and human knowledge, Diana. And think how much new equipment MoD funding could buy you and everyone else in Research."
"I'll work with a stone chisel and tablet before I take MoD's money. And the shareholders knew what they were buying into. Shove off, Radcliffe. I'm done with you."
Radcliffe shook her head. Her blonde razor-cut didn't move at all. "You're really not, Diana. Bexadyne has a stake in your work, and now the MoD does, too. Have BETTINA and your notes available when I arrive, and don't bother to run again; eyes everywhere, you know. In the meantime, I'll leave you to your gardening. We'll try not to trample the peas when we arrive."
The video snapped off. Ellis leaned heavily on her desk, head down, breath going in for four seconds, out for five, three times in a row.
She turned to the Doctor. "Well," she said, "now we've got a pressing engagement."
* * *
"House Network," said Ellis, "in two hours, activate TINA, camouflage mode, and activate INA, stealth mode. Divert backup power cells to BETTINA charge station and laboratory equipment."
The Doctor had already moved to double-check door locks and draw the curtains before Ellis had begun her instructions to the house network. She suspected this wasn't the first time he'd had to protect someone from an attack.
He'd switched her lab bench lights on and was pointing his screwdriver at the contents of the glove box Ellis had rigged up out of a clear plastic storage container and a pair of dish gloves. Inside were several of BETTINA's bioengineered scales, each a half-centimetre square and labelled with a dot of ink to identify which code version Ellis had tried, and failed, to use as a seed to propagate the humidity collectors.
"If I had more time, or more equipment, or … anything at all, she'd be safe now," Ellis said softly.
"Balderdash. You've done a tremendous amount with virtually nothing. It's really most impressive. In fact, I think the one with the white dot is quite an excellent start."
"That was my last attempt. The genes understand they need to capture humidity, and the nanomesh array understands that it needs to grow the collectors, but for some reason they won't talk to each other to process electricity. I could debug this with Bexadyne's quantum systems, but all I've got is a solid-state smart home network."
"My dear Dr. Ellis," the Doctor said with a wild grin, "you have me. And I have this." From his coat pocket, he removed a wooden top painted with red stars, blinked at it, put it back, and extracted several other items instead: a grey rock with googly eyes; a spool of copper wire he laid on the table; a waxed paper sack he placed beside the wire; and a green metal box, dented and worn, the size of a pack of playing cards. "Aha!" he cried, holding up the box triumphantly. "There you are, you naughty little thing."
He passed the paper sack to Ellis. "Have a jelly baby while I connect this. In fact, I could use one myself." He plucked a yellow one from the bag, pressed it flat onto the side of the green box, and attached one end of the copper wire to the sticky mess. "How much time do we have?" he asked.
"Radcliffe looked like she was calling me from her office, so four hours at the most. That can't possibly be enough time to finish."
"Four hours? Do you have any idea what I can do in four hours?" The Doctor gestured so wildly that he knocked the wire spool halfway across the floor. "Neither do I. Let's find out."
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Ellis would have told anyone who asked that she had a PhD and thirty years of research experience beyond academia, yet she still didn't have the faintest clue what the Doctor was doing with the green box, the jelly baby, the thicket of copper wire, and the two cream buns Ellis had been saving for pudding that week. Actually, that wasn't strictly true; the Doctor had eaten a bun, so Ellis knew what had happened to that one, but the remaining bun had several wires poking in and out of it now and was producing energy, she assumed, though how was yet to be determined.
Half an hour later, the bun had melted and had to be replaced by a potato. "Should have started with that," the Doctor said. "Waste of a perfectly delicious cream bun."
An hour after that, and Ellis understood. It really was simple: compact power and quantum computing sources to supplement her home network and the decades of knowledge she'd acquired while bioengineering and building the various mesh systems that had ultimately become BETTINA. Where and how the Doctor had acquired that many qubits of computational power was an entirely separate question for which it was clear Ellis was never going to receive an answer beyond "Oh, I travel a great deal, and you never know what sort of souvenir might be useful later."
Ellis didn't want to let hope creep into her heart more than it already had, for fear the crack it would leave when it died would be too much to bear. But they were almost at the point of being able to refine the genome editing sequences she'd devised, after which they could model the sequence transfer time and hygrothermal efficiency of BETTINA's mesh, after which they could transfer the sequence to the ring with the white dot.
Two and a quarter hours to go now. TINA would come online soon to hide the grounds. INA lurked in the hedges, sensors on alert. And BETTINA rested quietly on the roof, waiting for her turn.
* * *
An hour and forty-seven minutes later, the home network chimed to alert Ellis to a caller. Traffic on the motorway must have been light; there was only one person who could be calling, and she was early.
"Radcliffe," Ellis said, trying not to sound distracted by the final code manipulations she was making in the background. The Doctor's miniature quantum system had enabled her to hone her most promising genetic sequences, but even a few more minutes would help.
"Diana, we're having a hard time seeing your cottage. I assume that's deliberate."
"Perhaps if you hadn't come looking for me in the first place, you wouldn't have a problem."
"Your camouflage only works for as long as your mesh's power holds out, Diana. We'll get through eventually."
"Don't assume this is my only defence," Ellis said.
"Don't assume I have only one offence," Radcliffe replied, and her video link ended.
A sharp set of pops, startling as fireworks, and an ozone smell seeped through the doorway. Bright, jagged lines staggered across TINA's mesh. The house network stuttered and crackled.
"Dammit!" Ellis said. "They've got energy weapons. They're overloading TINA."
"How much longer does she have?"
"Maybe ten more minutes if they keep at it."
"Back to work, then. You're nearly done, yes?"
"I can do it in twenty minutes if I have to. Which is ten more minutes than TINA's going to last."
"Dr. Ellis, if there's one thing I'm extremely good at, it's stalling for time. I'll keep Radcliffe occupied while you integrate the code into BETTINA. Tell me, do you have any earplugs?"
"Probably in my cabling drawer. Why?"
"You'll want them while I'm stalling Radcliffe."
* * *
At Ellis' request, BETTINA slithered down the stairs, a shimmering array of silvery squares, and settled gently on the table.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, BETTINA," the Doctor said. "You were quite good at being a seagull, but I must admit I'm even more impressed by your true form. I'm the Doctor, by the way."
"It is good to meet you as well," BETTINA said, voice echoing through the house network. "The house monitors tell me you have been helping Dr. Ellis."
"We've got your hygroelectric power code ready to integrate," Ellis said. "It shouldn't take long."
"TINA integrity at 10–" the house network interrupted, but was cut off by a boom so loud it might as well have been a mortar shell. The metallic ozone scent turned acrid. "TINA integrity at 0%," the house finished.
The Doctor removed a marble from yet another pocket in his coat, attaching it to the green box with another jelly baby. "Best put those earplugs in now."
As Ellis started integrating the new instructions into BETTINA's mesh, the noise began.
It wasn't so much the clanging of an instrument that sounded like an irregular volley of hammers hitting sheet metal; it wasn't the whistling and the chirps and shrieks; it was the low polyphonic rumbling of voices, the way they slipped sideways and edgewise and up and down and through Ellis' muffled hearing that left her woozy and off-kilter. She scrambled for her headphones as an extra sound barrier and breathed a sigh of relief when her inner ear righted itself.
The Doctor, meanwhile, seemed to be singing along, and Ellis felt grateful she couldn't hear that, either.
"VENUSIAN OPERA," the Doctor yelled over the din. "Most people admire the Venusians for their martial arts skills, but they deserve to be known for their musical genius as well. Generally people with only two eardrums need an anti-nausea pill first, but earplugs will do in a pinch. Oh, look, I don't think Radcliffe and her thugs are enjoying it."
Ellis put down her tools long enough to move over to the window, where Radcliffe and two of her men were crouched on the ground, their hands covering their ears. Radcliffe was staring daggers at the front door, and Ellis found herself laughing out loud as she returned to her work with BETTINA.
The video link chimed. "Diana!" Radcliffe shouted. "Stop that awful racket and I swear we can talk about this!"
Ellis tapped the mute button and returned to BETTINA. The code integration interface was delicate work, and she only had one chance to get it right. Her hands were too sweaty to grip the tools, and though she hated that rubber gloves masked the finer surface details she used as guides when performing this kind of operation, she had no choice.
"You're going to be okay, BETTINA. In fact, you're going to be amazing," she whispered. But her hand twitched, and she barely had enough time to let go of the microsoldering tool before it could etch an unwanted circuit connection.
"EXCUSE ME," yelled the Doctor. He tapped Ellis' shoulder to get her attention, and if she hadn't already dropped the microsoldering tool, she'd have done it then. "Something seems to have eaten one of Radcliffe's men, or at least turned him into a very shiny parcel."
"INA," Ellis said, but found she couldn't even hear herself say it. "INA," she repeated, louder. "INTERACTIVE NANOMESH ARRAY. VERY EARLY BETTINA PROTOTYPE. DO YOU THINK YOU COULD TURN DOWN THE OPERA? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OR ME OR FOCUS OR DO ANYTHING AT ALL EVEN IF RADCLIFFE CAN'T EITHER."
"EH? I CAN'T HEAR YOU."
Ellis shoved back her chair, took two steps to her desk, and snatched the marble from its jelly baby cradle. Instantly there was a silence so profound she recognised it only by the sudden absence of vibrations in her body, other than the anxious jitters she'd already had before the Doctor had begun his distraction.
She removed the headphones and earplugs, and took a quick peek through her window curtain: as reported, one of the Bexadyne security men Radcliffe had brought was trying and failing to wriggle his way out of INA's mesh, and both Radcliffe and the other man were still woozy on the ground. There was now a satisfyingly large grass stain on Radcliffe's expensive blouse.
Back to work, then, hoping the Doctor had bought BETTINA enough time.
Her breath caught in her throat as she went to check on BETTINA. The fumbled interface was working, but Ellis could see every scratch, every misaligned, delicate wire that meant only 30% of BETTINA's nanobots understood how to create the microscopic holes that could gather humidity and transform it into power.
"The new code is integrating too slowly," she said. "Radcliffe and her man will be recovered before it's done. And they've got weapons."
"I'll speak with her. I can buy you enough time. I've met more armed bullies than you can shake an Altairian walking stick at, and it never ends well for them."
"I don't have a choice. You won't be here forever. And Radcliffe won't stop. She'll be back with more men, and she'll find me wherever I go." Ellis' voice quivered. "I don't want to destroy BETTINA, but I have to."
"Diana," said the Doctor, gripping Ellis by the shoulders, "I promised you I'd save her, and I keep my word. Ten more minutes is all we need."
Ellis' arms and legs were tingling. Her brain whirled: run, hide, erase, smash. But the Doctor kept his eyes focussed on her, and the kindness in his voice washed over her.
"Faith, Dr. Ellis. Just ten minutes of faith. Then BETTINA will have enough code to run if she has to." He pressed the sonic screwdriver into her hand. "And if you must, this button will release a very targeted magnetic pulse that erases your hard drives. Radcliffe will walk away with nothing except a very bruised ego."
Ellis closed her fingers around the sonic. All the tools to destroy everything she'd ever created, if she had to. She'd added a kill switch to BETTINA as soon as they'd arrived at the cottage, knowing this day might come, and now she could prevent Bexadyne from ever profiting from the raw research as well.
She just had to trust that she would never have to press any of those buttons.
The Doctor threw the front door open wide. "Ms. Radcliffe!" he said. "My name is the Doctor. Dr. Ellis has told me a great deal about you. I'd like to invite you and your companion to leave at your earliest convenience. Now, preferably."
The code deployment indicator inched towards 35%. At 51%, enough of BETTINA's circuits would know what to do, and Ellis wouldn't have to make a horrible choice. Now, there was nothing she could do but quietly wish for a miracle while she listened to Radcliffe through the open door.
"I'm not sure who you are, Doctor," Radcliffe said, her voice shakier than it had been when she and Ellis had last spoken. "But my guard and I aren't going anywhere. You're going to stand aside and let us take Bexadyne's lawful property."
"My dear Ms. Radcliffe, I'm going to do nothing of the sort. You seem to be under the impression that any agreement Dr. Ellis made with her employer is null and void as soon as you decide you can make more money by breaching it."
"She has a duty to the shareholders. And so do I."
"The shareholders knew they were buying into a civilian company. Your greed is irrelevant and frankly quite tiresome. No investment is without risk, Ms. Radcliffe, and there's a word for things that grow forever, until they consume everyone and everything around them: cancer. Now, I'm going to ask you again to leave, or I'll put on side B of that Venusian opera you were so enjoying a few minutes ago."
"Norman," said Radcliffe, "please explain to the Doctor that this is not a negotiation."
Ellis risked a quick look away from the deployment indicator. The remaining guard, still not quite able to stand, was grasping his weapon and wobbling it towards the Doctor.
"Please, Radcliffe, your man will be lucky not to shoot himself by accident. Let this go," the Doctor said.
Again there was the bang and crackle of a lightning bolt being released, and Ellis let out a small shriek even though the weapon was so poorly aimed its beam shot straight over the cottage's roof.
The indicator's progress bar stood at 46%. BETTINA only needed a few more minutes, but the more time that passed, the more likely Radcliffe's guard would recover his aim.
"BETTINA," Ellis said, "can you do it?"
"I am focussing all my energy on code deployment, Dr. Ellis, and must avoid talking to preserve the current rate of speed. But I think I can."
Ellis seated herself at the table, laid her hands on BETTINA's mesh, cool and supple, rippling beneath her fingers. Her touch wouldn't affect the deployment, and if these were the last few minutes she could spend with her creation, she wanted to fully remember them: the metallic scent of BETTINA's scales, their iridescent waves, the precise dimensions that had literally taken Ellis years to perfect.
49%. So close. And Radcliffe yelling, "Give me that!"
"Put down the gun, Radcliffe!" the Doctor said.
"You won't stand in my way, Doctor. No one will. This is your last chance: turn over BETTINA and Dr. Ellis' notes, and I won't have to hurt either one of you."
"You can fire that weapon if you want, Radcliffe, but it won't do you any good if there's no one to threaten, and nothing to gain." The Doctor turned towards Ellis. "Is she ready?" he asked.
51%. At last.
"Goodbye," Ellis whispered, caressing BETTINA one final time. She ripped away the cabling and stood back as the silvery mesh whipped up the stairs and out the open attic window.
Ellis ran to the door, ducking under the Doctor's arm to peer up at the sky. A seagull wheeled overhead, screeched, and sped off towards the shoreline.
Radcliffe was finally standing, and the energy gun was pointed directly at Ellis and the Doctor. There was only one thing left to do at this point, and a sob and a laugh escaped Ellis simultaneously, emotions so sharp she doubled over at first, unable to stop crying and laughing.
When she rose to see Radcliffe's confused face in front of her, Ellis lifted the sonic screwdriver, pressed the button, and winced when she heard whines and clunks from behind her.
"Go home, Helen," she said. "You've lost."
"Give. Me. BETTINA. I won't ask again."
"Ask all you like, but I can't help you. BETTINA left on her own a minute ago. She's self-sufficient now. She can survive indefinitely and hide from you forever."
Radcliffe's eyes widened, and the gun began to lower. "You're lying. And even if you're not, I'll take your notes."
"Which I just destroyed. Permanently."
"I did warn you, Radcliffe," the Doctor said. "No one left to threaten. Nothing to gain. Not for the military, not for the shareholders, and definitely not for you. Go home. I'm sure if you ask nicely, Ellis will ask INA to release your other man."
Radcliffe lowered the gun. "You must have something stored in the cloud, Diana. We'll find it."
"Keep looking if you like," Ellis replied. "You can't find something that doesn't exist. Now, do you want your man back? Because otherwise, I'll keep him as a reflecting ball for the garden."
* * *
The Doctor left not long after Radcliffe and her men. "You should be tremendously proud of yourself," he said. "BETTINA is truly marvellous, and you did everything in your power to ensure she can live a long, free, and happy life."
"I couldn't have done it without you, Doctor."
"Please, no need to thank me. I'll have a word with my ship, though; she's the one who chose this destination, and she deserves a biscuit or two for her trouble."
He tipped his hat to her and disappeared into the night, and Ellis decided not to consider what sort of ship it was that enjoyed biscuits.
* * *
Two days later, the home network awoke Ellis with headlines about a data breach at Bexadyne. "Corporate planning documents reveal off-the-books military investment," the house read. "Bexadyne's research team has quit en masse and hired legal representation to prevent management misuse of and profit from the company's autonomous systems development."
Whatever biscuits the Doctor's ship liked, Ellis felt she was owed another packet.
* * *
When Ellis had taken up gardening at the cottage, she hadn't considered final yard cleanup at the end of the growing season: trellises to dismantle and fold away for spring; the last few weeds to tug from the ground before cold settled in. Still, she enjoyed her time outdoors, with a sea breeze just brisk enough to mean she'd have to put the kettle on when she was done. There'd be tea in time for her tutoring client, a 12-year-old girl whose parents were perplexed by their daughter's interest in robotics, but who were willing to support her nevertheless.
A copse of asters in one corner of the garden was riotously in bloom, a shaggy dome of purple and yellow blossoms. Ellis rested for a moment, arm propped on her rake, to admire this last gasp of summer.
White fluttered at the corner of her eye. Behind the aster, perched on the fence, there was a seagull: a perfect specimen, gleaming white feathers, golden beak, no fear of Ellis.
The gull called to her and flew inside the house through the attic's open window. And Ellis ran to follow.
Characters/Pairing(s): Fourth Doctor
Rating: All ages
Word count: 6,397
Spoilers: None
Summary: The Fourth Doctor must protect a scientist and her invention from the people who want to exploit it. Entry for Big Finish's 2023 Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity.
Author's Notes: Obviously, I didn't win this year's Big Finish story competition – but I still love this story a lot. Many thanks to Platypus for beta work.
The engine technology described in this story is real, but not ready for commercialization yet.
::xposted to
dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3Today BETTINA was a seagull, wings curving high above a coastline more quarry rock than beach. Yesterday she'd been a patch of gorse speckled with yellow starbursts; tomorrow, perhaps a fox.
She'd mastered gull grey and white, but flight was new, and sometimes a wingtip dipped where it should have risen. But she remained aloft, and Dr. Diana Ellis, monitoring BETTINA's ocular sensor output, tried not to flinch every time the video lurched down, then up.
Ellis had quartered her monitor display to aggregate different sensor responses into four wiggly flows, the only way to consume BETTINA's thousands of simultaneous streams. In one window, tiny crabs scuttled in the tidepools nestled between granite boulders, where mussel clumps and clusters of barnacle screwheads dotted the edge of each pool. In another, a family – man, woman, ginger-haired toddler in a polka-dot playsuit – lounged on a flat rockface. There was the shoreline, waves foaming across a thin stripe of sand. And there was the cottage she shared with BETTINA, well back from the cliff face bordering the beach, but still visible from a distance. Ellis could just make out the tangle of wild roses lining the pea gravel path to her front door.
"BETTINA," Ellis said, "how's your perimeter?"
"I am clear, Dr. Ellis. If I need to, I can lose myself in a flock where no one will distinguish me from an ordinary bird. Or I can fly out to sea and make a long arc to a farther part of the shore."
"Good. But keep scanning, just in case."
The video grid on Ellis' monitor refreshed. A scramble of granite boulders tucked against the cliff face. The family, the father's head tilted back in laughter as his child shrieked and giggled. The spit jutting from the easternmost edge of the shoreline, where signage marked it too dangerous to enter, but where a pair of teenage boys in trainers were leaping from rock to rock anyway.
And in a shadowed corner, one Ellis had been ignoring until a sudden shift in brightness caught her eye, a blue police box blinked slow and long and settled into focus.
"BETTINA. That blue box. What on earth –"
"I am only now perceiving it, Dr. Ellis. I have run a diagnostic to confirm my sensors are functioning correctly. The box was not there before."
"Radcliffe," Ellis muttered. "Must be another one of her secrets."
"Long-range sensors do not indicate Bexadyne technology. Engaging short-range sensors."
"BETTINA! No! Return home immediately! You don't know what that might be!"
"That is why I am scanning it, Dr. Ellis. Please remain calm. Short-range scan commencing."
BETTINA swooped low, squawked at the child pointing to her, fluttered to a halt atop the box's sloped roof. Ellis held her breath. Even if this wasn't Bexadyne's work, it could still threaten her and BETTINA.
The box's front door creaked, and a man in a floppy hat, a multicoloured scarf looped round his neck, peered outside and up at BETTINA.
"Hello!" he said. "I'm afraid I wasn't expecting visitors today. I'd offer you a jelly baby, but I doubt they're suitable for avian consumption." He squinted at BETTINA as if waiting for her to move, then drew a small metal stick from his coat pocket and squinted at that instead. "Though you're not really a bird, are you?"
It was as if the man and his mysterious box had landed directly on Ellis' chest. Her entire body felt crushed; she was nothing more than a panicked gasping for air. "BETTINA!" she yelled. "Home! Now!"
This time, BETTINA obeyed: three of Ellis' monitor windows pitched sideways, then steadied with a view of the cliff face, then the meadow and scrub brush atop it, and growing ever nearer, the cottage. The fourth window was the blue box, where the man stood outside, one hand shading his eyes as he watched BETTINA shoot off into the distance. BETTINA kept sensors trained on him until she'd soared above the cliff face and all Ellis could see was grass and sky and home.
Even without her monitor windows shifting black one by one, Ellis knew when BETTINA had returned: the pattering of organo-metallic scales on the rooftop like gentle rain, followed by a series of scrapes as BETTINA shifted her full mesh onto the charging pad hidden below the solar panels. The cottage's network crackled as BETTINA interfaced with frayed cables and antique speakers.
"Safe and sound, Dr. Ellis," she said.
"I'm glad you're back. You're okay? Just need a recharge?"
"The man did not harm me. And I enjoyed flying very much, just as you said I would. When I am fully charged tomorrow, perhaps I should practice being a gull again."
"You should do what makes you happy, BETTINA. Just keep an eye out for that man. Now settle down and rest, yes?"
Ellis turned back to the computer, focussed on the man and the box. It really hadn't been there before; she could replay the video to a point where there was only cliff face, then the shimmering of a rectangular frame, then the solid deep blue with the words "POLICE BOX" painted at the top, not that she believed this strange man and his scarf had ever been part of anything resembling police.
She could see a faint reflection of her face in the darkest parts of the monitor screen. When she'd taken BETTINA and her research from Bexadyne and run, there had been a lot less grey in her close-shaved curls. The stress of hiding from Radcliffe and everyone else she'd ever known revealed itself in silvery stripes across her temples and salt and pepper at the top. It complemented her brown skin, but she wished it hadn't required six months of fear and anxiety.
At least there'd been Aunt Tay's cottage by the seashore. Tay wasn't a blood relative, which is how the cottage's existence must have slipped past Bexadyne's online searches, but Tay was an auntie all the same and had told Ellis about the key hidden beneath the ceramic frog keeping watch on the garden. They had solar power, twenty-year-old smart house technology, and an internet connection, and that plus Tay's ability to hide digital footprints was all Ellis had needed to keep working while she trained her creation to protect herself.
It wasn't Ellis' state-of-the-art Bexadyne lab, and she didn't have her flat's expensive adjustable bed or her professional stove or even her favourite soldering iron. But she did have her second-favourite soldering iron, and chives sprouting purple pompoms beside the ceramic frog, and a sturdy wooden table where she could continue adjusting BETTINA's mesh in the hopes of integrating hygroelectric power cells and at last giving BETTINA true freedom.
Because Radcliffe could still find them. If she did, BETTINA had to be able to get away even if Ellis could not. It was that, or the fail-safe Ellis preferred not to think about.
The house chimed a low-level alert. "Dr. Ellis," BETTINA said, "perimeter warning indicates a nearby traveller of approximately the same dimensions as the man who spoke to me on the beach."
Ellis rushed to the front windows, resting flat against the nearby wall so no one could see her pulling up the edge of the lace curtain to peer outside. They'd been here long enough to know that this sort of warning meant a picnicker gone astray, or a birder in search of a rare find, but there was always that niggling fear that this time it wouldn't be an innocent passer-by. That this time, it would be Radcliffe, or a government minister, or the police, or a man with a weapon and very little conscience.
It was none of those. But it was the man who'd spoken to BETTINA. He wore a floppy brown hat atop a shaggy mop of matching brown curls, a tan coat too warm for a late spring day, and that ridiculous scarf, and he was humming the Spring movement of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as he pushed open the wooden gate at the edge of the property. He was taking his time, sniffing at the wild roses and kneeling to watch honeybees dipping into the pink clouds of clover blossoms.
Faintly, Ellis could hear the man speaking to the bees. "Absolutely marvellous work," he said. "Don't forget that blossom over there; it looks perfectly ripe. Have a wonderful day!"
Surely someone so kind to the local insects couldn't actually be a threat. He hadn't done anything to BETTINA beyond pointing his mysterious stick at her, and from the view BETTINA's rear sensors had provided, he'd simply watched her fly away rather than becoming alarmed or reaching for a weapon.
They'd been so long without a friend, and what if this man were no different from the local travellers? A visitor passing through rather than an opportunist there to abscond with BETTINA and sell her to the highest bidder?
"BETTINA," she whispered, "is he carrying any weapons?"
"No," BETTINA replied, voice tinny through the house audio. "While I cannot fully scan him, the house sensors do not detect any weaponry."
"You're certain?"
"As certain as I can be via house sensors, Dr. Ellis. He did not hurt me when he had every opportunity to do so. And while I cannot match his face to publicly available databases, I believe he does not mean us harm."
Ellis rested quietly against the wall, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. It would be okay, wouldn't it? He wouldn't be one of Radcliffe's toadies, he wouldn't try to wrest BETTINA out of Ellis' hands; the two of them would still be safe together.
The knock came, and Ellis took in a breath before opening it.
"Hello," the man said. "I'm the Doctor, and I'm wondering if I could borrow a cup of sugar? And perhaps discuss the robotic nanomesh I traced to your cottage?"
Ellis sighed and said, "I'll put the kettle on."
She handed the Doctor a mug of tea and the sugar pot, and took the seat facing the door. The Doctor might be benign, but that didn't mean other possible strangers were.
"Why should I tell you anything, Doctor?" she said. "Other than the fact that you somehow figured out what BETTINA is. I'd like to know more about that little metal stick you used on her."
"The sonic screwdriver," the Doctor said, extracting it from a coat pocket and placing it in front of Ellis. "A little multitool of my own design. It's quite good at detecting things that aren't meant to be detected."
Ellis turned the screwdriver over in her hand. It was no heavier than a fountain pen and frankly looked like a dental instrument. This Doctor had to either be a genius or a lunatic lucky guesser and was possibly both.
"That blue box of yours is a mystery, too," she said. "Care to explain it?"
"Life's full of mysteries, isn't it? It's what makes it worth living."
"Fine," she said, dropping the screwdriver in front of the Doctor with a solid snap. "We'll explore that one later. Tell me where you're from. You're not Bexadyne; I'd have recognised you. Oxford? MIT?"
"Gallifrey. A bit further away. I'm a tinkerer by inclination and a meddler by trade," the Doctor said. "Anyway, I'm more interested in you. Could we perhaps start with your name? And then move on to why your robot is imitating a seagull?"
"Dr. Diana Ellis. And BETTINA isn't a robot; she's an array of biomechanical nanobots in an interlinked mesh. Bio-Engineered Tiny Transforming Interactive Nanomesh Array, to be precise. The sum total of my life's research. She's designed to be a support tool for extraterrestrial scientific research – sample gathering, analysis, even camouflaged protection."
Ellis sipped at her tea, then continued. "She's a seagull because we're hiding from my former employer, a company called Bexadyne. You know it?"
"I'm afraid I don't."
"Autonomous Systems for Amazing Worlds. That was our slogan. Engineering for civilian problems: terrestrial and extraterrestrial travel and exploration. We agreed to work without military money and that's how we liked it."
"The military occasionally has its uses," the Doctor said, words careful and precise, "but in my experience they're sometimes entirely too quick to blow things up when a good conversation would do."
"Exactly! And I never had to worry about BETTINA being used to blow things up until Bexadyne hired a new chief product officer, this woman Helen Radcliffe. A nightmare in an expensive suit. Couldn't stop talking about profitability and how Bexadyne was sitting on millions of unrealised pounds.
"Six months ago, she told me Bexadyne was about to sign a contract with MoD that gave them exclusive access to BETTINA. Absolutely unacceptable, I said. BETTINA's a living scientific instrument – she's the first nanomesh I've developed that's learning and growing on her own. She wants to be helpful not just because her programming tells her to, but because she enjoys it. And Radcliffe wanted to let the government turn her into a weapon. So I wiped my work systems and took BETTINA and ran."
The Doctor leaned back in his chair, raised his chin thoughtfully. "She's a seagull because she's learning to hide. You've been teaching her to survive on her own if she has to."
"She still needs to recharge once a week here, with the solar panels. I'm trying to integrate a hygroelectric engine into her nanomesh so she's self-recharging, but I'm having a hell of a time without my lab equipment."
The Doctor's sudden grin could have powered BETTINA for the day. "Fortunately for you, impossible engineering tasks are my speciality. Hygroelectric power, you say? Very clever approach, perfect for a mesh device – all that surface area to capture humidity and transform it to electricity. Under the right conditions, BETTINA could power herself indefinitely."
"Yes," Ellis said softly. "She could live forever, Doctor. She could be safe wherever she chooses to go. And she wouldn't have to kill anyone."
The Doctor pushed his teacup aside, clearing space on the kitchen table. "Let me see where you're stuck, eh? I've got no other pressing engagements."
"I –" Ellis began, then stopped when the low-level alert chime rang again.
"Incoming video call," BETTINA said. "Dr. Ellis. I must warn you about this caller."
Ellis put down her teacup. Her hands were suddenly shaking too much to hold it steady.
She sucked in a breath, pushed back from the table, and stood tall in front of the Doctor. "Promise me this isn't your doing. You sit in my home and drink my tea and you give me hope and I will not have it be a false one."
"Dr. Ellis," the Doctor said gravely, "if there is one thing I try never, ever to do, it is to give people false hope. I swear to you, I will help you save BETTINA."
Ellis moved to her workstation. She had no reason to trust a stranger, but it had been six months on the run. Six months of inadequate fixes for BETTINA's power cells that would work, sputter, and die. Maybe it was time to trust that when the universe gave her an engineer with a sonic screwdriver and a blue box that could appear and disappear at will, that the universe had a very firm message to send and it was time to listen.
"Please send Radcliffe's call to my monitor, BETTINA," she said.
The display switched on. Radcliffe was perfectly put together, as always: cream silk blouse open at the neck to reveal a thin gold chain with a single diamond; a blonde bob sheared at an angle so acute it could have sliced open a letter. Pale skin and a shade of red lipstick Ellis knew had probably cost as much as the blouse.
"Helen," Ellis said. "I see you found me."
"I have to admit, Diana, you did a very good job covering your tracks. It took us four months to find your bolt-hole and another two months to confirm it was really you and not just a kindly middle-aged spinster indulging her fondness for tea roses and beach plum."
"I put in some peas on Monday, in case you haven't noticed. And the beetroot and carrots are sprouting."
"You're a true credit to the ecosystem." Radcliffe's mouth settled into a straight line running sharp across her face. "But you know that's not why I'm calling."
"The beach plum jam won't be ready until much later in the season, Helen."
A twitch at the edge of Radcliffe's mouth. "Diana," she said. "You don't have to do this. You don't have to keep running."
"If you're still planning on taking BETTINA away, then I do."
"How do you expect Bexadyne to meet its financial obligation to its shareholders? Research has had the run of the place for far too long. We're profitable, but not nearly as much as we could be."
"None of us joined Bexadyne to turn it into a money mill. We joined to do science. To advance exploration and human knowledge."
"Shareholders can't be paid in exploration and human knowledge, Diana. And think how much new equipment MoD funding could buy you and everyone else in Research."
"I'll work with a stone chisel and tablet before I take MoD's money. And the shareholders knew what they were buying into. Shove off, Radcliffe. I'm done with you."
Radcliffe shook her head. Her blonde razor-cut didn't move at all. "You're really not, Diana. Bexadyne has a stake in your work, and now the MoD does, too. Have BETTINA and your notes available when I arrive, and don't bother to run again; eyes everywhere, you know. In the meantime, I'll leave you to your gardening. We'll try not to trample the peas when we arrive."
The video snapped off. Ellis leaned heavily on her desk, head down, breath going in for four seconds, out for five, three times in a row.
She turned to the Doctor. "Well," she said, "now we've got a pressing engagement."
"House Network," said Ellis, "in two hours, activate TINA, camouflage mode, and activate INA, stealth mode. Divert backup power cells to BETTINA charge station and laboratory equipment."
The Doctor had already moved to double-check door locks and draw the curtains before Ellis had begun her instructions to the house network. She suspected this wasn't the first time he'd had to protect someone from an attack.
He'd switched her lab bench lights on and was pointing his screwdriver at the contents of the glove box Ellis had rigged up out of a clear plastic storage container and a pair of dish gloves. Inside were several of BETTINA's bioengineered scales, each a half-centimetre square and labelled with a dot of ink to identify which code version Ellis had tried, and failed, to use as a seed to propagate the humidity collectors.
"If I had more time, or more equipment, or … anything at all, she'd be safe now," Ellis said softly.
"Balderdash. You've done a tremendous amount with virtually nothing. It's really most impressive. In fact, I think the one with the white dot is quite an excellent start."
"That was my last attempt. The genes understand they need to capture humidity, and the nanomesh array understands that it needs to grow the collectors, but for some reason they won't talk to each other to process electricity. I could debug this with Bexadyne's quantum systems, but all I've got is a solid-state smart home network."
"My dear Dr. Ellis," the Doctor said with a wild grin, "you have me. And I have this." From his coat pocket, he removed a wooden top painted with red stars, blinked at it, put it back, and extracted several other items instead: a grey rock with googly eyes; a spool of copper wire he laid on the table; a waxed paper sack he placed beside the wire; and a green metal box, dented and worn, the size of a pack of playing cards. "Aha!" he cried, holding up the box triumphantly. "There you are, you naughty little thing."
He passed the paper sack to Ellis. "Have a jelly baby while I connect this. In fact, I could use one myself." He plucked a yellow one from the bag, pressed it flat onto the side of the green box, and attached one end of the copper wire to the sticky mess. "How much time do we have?" he asked.
"Radcliffe looked like she was calling me from her office, so four hours at the most. That can't possibly be enough time to finish."
"Four hours? Do you have any idea what I can do in four hours?" The Doctor gestured so wildly that he knocked the wire spool halfway across the floor. "Neither do I. Let's find out."
Fifteen minutes later, Ellis would have told anyone who asked that she had a PhD and thirty years of research experience beyond academia, yet she still didn't have the faintest clue what the Doctor was doing with the green box, the jelly baby, the thicket of copper wire, and the two cream buns Ellis had been saving for pudding that week. Actually, that wasn't strictly true; the Doctor had eaten a bun, so Ellis knew what had happened to that one, but the remaining bun had several wires poking in and out of it now and was producing energy, she assumed, though how was yet to be determined.
Half an hour later, the bun had melted and had to be replaced by a potato. "Should have started with that," the Doctor said. "Waste of a perfectly delicious cream bun."
An hour after that, and Ellis understood. It really was simple: compact power and quantum computing sources to supplement her home network and the decades of knowledge she'd acquired while bioengineering and building the various mesh systems that had ultimately become BETTINA. Where and how the Doctor had acquired that many qubits of computational power was an entirely separate question for which it was clear Ellis was never going to receive an answer beyond "Oh, I travel a great deal, and you never know what sort of souvenir might be useful later."
Ellis didn't want to let hope creep into her heart more than it already had, for fear the crack it would leave when it died would be too much to bear. But they were almost at the point of being able to refine the genome editing sequences she'd devised, after which they could model the sequence transfer time and hygrothermal efficiency of BETTINA's mesh, after which they could transfer the sequence to the ring with the white dot.
Two and a quarter hours to go now. TINA would come online soon to hide the grounds. INA lurked in the hedges, sensors on alert. And BETTINA rested quietly on the roof, waiting for her turn.
An hour and forty-seven minutes later, the home network chimed to alert Ellis to a caller. Traffic on the motorway must have been light; there was only one person who could be calling, and she was early.
"Radcliffe," Ellis said, trying not to sound distracted by the final code manipulations she was making in the background. The Doctor's miniature quantum system had enabled her to hone her most promising genetic sequences, but even a few more minutes would help.
"Diana, we're having a hard time seeing your cottage. I assume that's deliberate."
"Perhaps if you hadn't come looking for me in the first place, you wouldn't have a problem."
"Your camouflage only works for as long as your mesh's power holds out, Diana. We'll get through eventually."
"Don't assume this is my only defence," Ellis said.
"Don't assume I have only one offence," Radcliffe replied, and her video link ended.
A sharp set of pops, startling as fireworks, and an ozone smell seeped through the doorway. Bright, jagged lines staggered across TINA's mesh. The house network stuttered and crackled.
"Dammit!" Ellis said. "They've got energy weapons. They're overloading TINA."
"How much longer does she have?"
"Maybe ten more minutes if they keep at it."
"Back to work, then. You're nearly done, yes?"
"I can do it in twenty minutes if I have to. Which is ten more minutes than TINA's going to last."
"Dr. Ellis, if there's one thing I'm extremely good at, it's stalling for time. I'll keep Radcliffe occupied while you integrate the code into BETTINA. Tell me, do you have any earplugs?"
"Probably in my cabling drawer. Why?"
"You'll want them while I'm stalling Radcliffe."
At Ellis' request, BETTINA slithered down the stairs, a shimmering array of silvery squares, and settled gently on the table.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, BETTINA," the Doctor said. "You were quite good at being a seagull, but I must admit I'm even more impressed by your true form. I'm the Doctor, by the way."
"It is good to meet you as well," BETTINA said, voice echoing through the house network. "The house monitors tell me you have been helping Dr. Ellis."
"We've got your hygroelectric power code ready to integrate," Ellis said. "It shouldn't take long."
"TINA integrity at 10–" the house network interrupted, but was cut off by a boom so loud it might as well have been a mortar shell. The metallic ozone scent turned acrid. "TINA integrity at 0%," the house finished.
The Doctor removed a marble from yet another pocket in his coat, attaching it to the green box with another jelly baby. "Best put those earplugs in now."
As Ellis started integrating the new instructions into BETTINA's mesh, the noise began.
It wasn't so much the clanging of an instrument that sounded like an irregular volley of hammers hitting sheet metal; it wasn't the whistling and the chirps and shrieks; it was the low polyphonic rumbling of voices, the way they slipped sideways and edgewise and up and down and through Ellis' muffled hearing that left her woozy and off-kilter. She scrambled for her headphones as an extra sound barrier and breathed a sigh of relief when her inner ear righted itself.
The Doctor, meanwhile, seemed to be singing along, and Ellis felt grateful she couldn't hear that, either.
"VENUSIAN OPERA," the Doctor yelled over the din. "Most people admire the Venusians for their martial arts skills, but they deserve to be known for their musical genius as well. Generally people with only two eardrums need an anti-nausea pill first, but earplugs will do in a pinch. Oh, look, I don't think Radcliffe and her thugs are enjoying it."
Ellis put down her tools long enough to move over to the window, where Radcliffe and two of her men were crouched on the ground, their hands covering their ears. Radcliffe was staring daggers at the front door, and Ellis found herself laughing out loud as she returned to her work with BETTINA.
The video link chimed. "Diana!" Radcliffe shouted. "Stop that awful racket and I swear we can talk about this!"
Ellis tapped the mute button and returned to BETTINA. The code integration interface was delicate work, and she only had one chance to get it right. Her hands were too sweaty to grip the tools, and though she hated that rubber gloves masked the finer surface details she used as guides when performing this kind of operation, she had no choice.
"You're going to be okay, BETTINA. In fact, you're going to be amazing," she whispered. But her hand twitched, and she barely had enough time to let go of the microsoldering tool before it could etch an unwanted circuit connection.
"EXCUSE ME," yelled the Doctor. He tapped Ellis' shoulder to get her attention, and if she hadn't already dropped the microsoldering tool, she'd have done it then. "Something seems to have eaten one of Radcliffe's men, or at least turned him into a very shiny parcel."
"INA," Ellis said, but found she couldn't even hear herself say it. "INA," she repeated, louder. "INTERACTIVE NANOMESH ARRAY. VERY EARLY BETTINA PROTOTYPE. DO YOU THINK YOU COULD TURN DOWN THE OPERA? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OR ME OR FOCUS OR DO ANYTHING AT ALL EVEN IF RADCLIFFE CAN'T EITHER."
"EH? I CAN'T HEAR YOU."
Ellis shoved back her chair, took two steps to her desk, and snatched the marble from its jelly baby cradle. Instantly there was a silence so profound she recognised it only by the sudden absence of vibrations in her body, other than the anxious jitters she'd already had before the Doctor had begun his distraction.
She removed the headphones and earplugs, and took a quick peek through her window curtain: as reported, one of the Bexadyne security men Radcliffe had brought was trying and failing to wriggle his way out of INA's mesh, and both Radcliffe and the other man were still woozy on the ground. There was now a satisfyingly large grass stain on Radcliffe's expensive blouse.
Back to work, then, hoping the Doctor had bought BETTINA enough time.
Her breath caught in her throat as she went to check on BETTINA. The fumbled interface was working, but Ellis could see every scratch, every misaligned, delicate wire that meant only 30% of BETTINA's nanobots understood how to create the microscopic holes that could gather humidity and transform it into power.
"The new code is integrating too slowly," she said. "Radcliffe and her man will be recovered before it's done. And they've got weapons."
"I'll speak with her. I can buy you enough time. I've met more armed bullies than you can shake an Altairian walking stick at, and it never ends well for them."
"I don't have a choice. You won't be here forever. And Radcliffe won't stop. She'll be back with more men, and she'll find me wherever I go." Ellis' voice quivered. "I don't want to destroy BETTINA, but I have to."
"Diana," said the Doctor, gripping Ellis by the shoulders, "I promised you I'd save her, and I keep my word. Ten more minutes is all we need."
Ellis' arms and legs were tingling. Her brain whirled: run, hide, erase, smash. But the Doctor kept his eyes focussed on her, and the kindness in his voice washed over her.
"Faith, Dr. Ellis. Just ten minutes of faith. Then BETTINA will have enough code to run if she has to." He pressed the sonic screwdriver into her hand. "And if you must, this button will release a very targeted magnetic pulse that erases your hard drives. Radcliffe will walk away with nothing except a very bruised ego."
Ellis closed her fingers around the sonic. All the tools to destroy everything she'd ever created, if she had to. She'd added a kill switch to BETTINA as soon as they'd arrived at the cottage, knowing this day might come, and now she could prevent Bexadyne from ever profiting from the raw research as well.
She just had to trust that she would never have to press any of those buttons.
The Doctor threw the front door open wide. "Ms. Radcliffe!" he said. "My name is the Doctor. Dr. Ellis has told me a great deal about you. I'd like to invite you and your companion to leave at your earliest convenience. Now, preferably."
The code deployment indicator inched towards 35%. At 51%, enough of BETTINA's circuits would know what to do, and Ellis wouldn't have to make a horrible choice. Now, there was nothing she could do but quietly wish for a miracle while she listened to Radcliffe through the open door.
"I'm not sure who you are, Doctor," Radcliffe said, her voice shakier than it had been when she and Ellis had last spoken. "But my guard and I aren't going anywhere. You're going to stand aside and let us take Bexadyne's lawful property."
"My dear Ms. Radcliffe, I'm going to do nothing of the sort. You seem to be under the impression that any agreement Dr. Ellis made with her employer is null and void as soon as you decide you can make more money by breaching it."
"She has a duty to the shareholders. And so do I."
"The shareholders knew they were buying into a civilian company. Your greed is irrelevant and frankly quite tiresome. No investment is without risk, Ms. Radcliffe, and there's a word for things that grow forever, until they consume everyone and everything around them: cancer. Now, I'm going to ask you again to leave, or I'll put on side B of that Venusian opera you were so enjoying a few minutes ago."
"Norman," said Radcliffe, "please explain to the Doctor that this is not a negotiation."
Ellis risked a quick look away from the deployment indicator. The remaining guard, still not quite able to stand, was grasping his weapon and wobbling it towards the Doctor.
"Please, Radcliffe, your man will be lucky not to shoot himself by accident. Let this go," the Doctor said.
Again there was the bang and crackle of a lightning bolt being released, and Ellis let out a small shriek even though the weapon was so poorly aimed its beam shot straight over the cottage's roof.
The indicator's progress bar stood at 46%. BETTINA only needed a few more minutes, but the more time that passed, the more likely Radcliffe's guard would recover his aim.
"BETTINA," Ellis said, "can you do it?"
"I am focussing all my energy on code deployment, Dr. Ellis, and must avoid talking to preserve the current rate of speed. But I think I can."
Ellis seated herself at the table, laid her hands on BETTINA's mesh, cool and supple, rippling beneath her fingers. Her touch wouldn't affect the deployment, and if these were the last few minutes she could spend with her creation, she wanted to fully remember them: the metallic scent of BETTINA's scales, their iridescent waves, the precise dimensions that had literally taken Ellis years to perfect.
49%. So close. And Radcliffe yelling, "Give me that!"
"Put down the gun, Radcliffe!" the Doctor said.
"You won't stand in my way, Doctor. No one will. This is your last chance: turn over BETTINA and Dr. Ellis' notes, and I won't have to hurt either one of you."
"You can fire that weapon if you want, Radcliffe, but it won't do you any good if there's no one to threaten, and nothing to gain." The Doctor turned towards Ellis. "Is she ready?" he asked.
51%. At last.
"Goodbye," Ellis whispered, caressing BETTINA one final time. She ripped away the cabling and stood back as the silvery mesh whipped up the stairs and out the open attic window.
Ellis ran to the door, ducking under the Doctor's arm to peer up at the sky. A seagull wheeled overhead, screeched, and sped off towards the shoreline.
Radcliffe was finally standing, and the energy gun was pointed directly at Ellis and the Doctor. There was only one thing left to do at this point, and a sob and a laugh escaped Ellis simultaneously, emotions so sharp she doubled over at first, unable to stop crying and laughing.
When she rose to see Radcliffe's confused face in front of her, Ellis lifted the sonic screwdriver, pressed the button, and winced when she heard whines and clunks from behind her.
"Go home, Helen," she said. "You've lost."
"Give. Me. BETTINA. I won't ask again."
"Ask all you like, but I can't help you. BETTINA left on her own a minute ago. She's self-sufficient now. She can survive indefinitely and hide from you forever."
Radcliffe's eyes widened, and the gun began to lower. "You're lying. And even if you're not, I'll take your notes."
"Which I just destroyed. Permanently."
"I did warn you, Radcliffe," the Doctor said. "No one left to threaten. Nothing to gain. Not for the military, not for the shareholders, and definitely not for you. Go home. I'm sure if you ask nicely, Ellis will ask INA to release your other man."
Radcliffe lowered the gun. "You must have something stored in the cloud, Diana. We'll find it."
"Keep looking if you like," Ellis replied. "You can't find something that doesn't exist. Now, do you want your man back? Because otherwise, I'll keep him as a reflecting ball for the garden."
The Doctor left not long after Radcliffe and her men. "You should be tremendously proud of yourself," he said. "BETTINA is truly marvellous, and you did everything in your power to ensure she can live a long, free, and happy life."
"I couldn't have done it without you, Doctor."
"Please, no need to thank me. I'll have a word with my ship, though; she's the one who chose this destination, and she deserves a biscuit or two for her trouble."
He tipped his hat to her and disappeared into the night, and Ellis decided not to consider what sort of ship it was that enjoyed biscuits.
Two days later, the home network awoke Ellis with headlines about a data breach at Bexadyne. "Corporate planning documents reveal off-the-books military investment," the house read. "Bexadyne's research team has quit en masse and hired legal representation to prevent management misuse of and profit from the company's autonomous systems development."
Whatever biscuits the Doctor's ship liked, Ellis felt she was owed another packet.
When Ellis had taken up gardening at the cottage, she hadn't considered final yard cleanup at the end of the growing season: trellises to dismantle and fold away for spring; the last few weeds to tug from the ground before cold settled in. Still, she enjoyed her time outdoors, with a sea breeze just brisk enough to mean she'd have to put the kettle on when she was done. There'd be tea in time for her tutoring client, a 12-year-old girl whose parents were perplexed by their daughter's interest in robotics, but who were willing to support her nevertheless.
A copse of asters in one corner of the garden was riotously in bloom, a shaggy dome of purple and yellow blossoms. Ellis rested for a moment, arm propped on her rake, to admire this last gasp of summer.
White fluttered at the corner of her eye. Behind the aster, perched on the fence, there was a seagull: a perfect specimen, gleaming white feathers, golden beak, no fear of Ellis.
The gull called to her and flew inside the house through the attic's open window. And Ellis ran to follow.
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