Ladybird Chapter 4, Scene 3

Annamaria Coulter awoke in a Double-King sized bed with silk curtains flowing gently from poles of 100% salsawood.

It was very tasteful, elegant. She could see her own face in the glistening wooden frame, and there was a mirror set into the other end. She did not know what sort of person liked to go to sleep looking at themselves in a mirror, but it was not her. She pulled down her eyelids, opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue, pulled up her–

Her turtleneck was gone, along with her lab coat and skirt. In their place was a silk negligee down to the knees, red as her hair and with thin straps, insubstantial save for the frills on them. It was semi-translucent and Coulter did not want to wear it. She clawed around the bedside, pulling the sheets up over her, face red and burning.

“Calm down Annamaria, calm down.” She said to herself, teeth grit. She pulled the bundle over her like a coat.

Of course, she had fallen unconscious, so it was only natural she would awaken in a strange place. Nobody fell unconscious and remained precisely where they were before. She put on a calm but disgruntled face as she surveyed the quarters. There was no wallpaper, instead the 100% salsawood interior and the pearl-tiled floors gave an sense of decadent, exhibitionist luxury.

Beside the bed was a stout but extravagant drawer, delicately carved with curved flourishes of pearl upon its ceramic exterior, which menaced with crystalline spikes. Atop this drawer was a picture of a curvaceous woman with light peach skin in a rather insubstantial two-piece swim suit. She flashed a smile, a winked eye and a V for victory at the camera. She had her strawberry pink hair up in a bun and her body shimmered in the photograph, quite subtly wet.

“I’m at a historical landmark!” Coulter concluded. She must have ended up at the Rabbit Hole Mansion. Soon hundreds of women in see-through linens would dive through the window, eager camera men following after them.

Though, given she had never seen the Rabbit Hole Mansion except in scale models in her history courses, she was only guessing.

Her genetically-engineered body was highly resistant to pain. As soon as she stood up, Coulter felt nothing of the previous day’s aches. The romp against Ladybird had given her quite a few bruises, burns and gashes that were no longer present. The mirror and the negligee made sure she noticed that much. She had her bed sheets around her. She cast suspicious, squinting looks all around the room. If anybody saw her without her lab coat, how would they know she was a doctor?

Coulter heard succession of footsteps from the behind the wall. She whipped around and lunged back into bed, upturning everything she could find, reaching and opening every drawer, searching for her gun. She reached into a draw, seized the first object she could find and turned around.

A woman entered then entered room. “I brought you breakfast, Miss!”

Coulter pointed a bundle of tampons at her. There was a moment of silence.

“This could have gone better.” Coulter admitted.

The woman was the same one in the swimsuit picture. She was just a bit shorter than Coulter, just off five feet and eight inches. Her wavy hair was a lovely and exotic shade of strawberry pink, worn loose over her shoulders. Dressed much more modestly in a sweater and jeans, the woman had a tray with an omelet, a vase with some roses, a small salad and a pair of french toasts. She pursed her red-coated lips and adjusted her eyeglasses, sighing to herself.

“I’m sorry, I must have scared you. But your other clothes were wet, so you would have gotten a cold. That won’t do, I mean, you probably have more villainy to commit don’t you?” The woman said.

“Yes.” Coulter replied, without thinking. When she began to think, she raised her hands and shouted, “No! I’m just an ordinary Adhanian woman burglar! Please go report me to the local authorities.”

“You had a lab coat and your features are very Ameran despite your skin color.” The woman replied, a foxy, mischievous look replacing her formerly innocent expression. “And why would I report you to those,” The woman seemed to struggle with herself, her tongue clicking but no coherent sounds being emitted, until she said, “Those pigs!”

“Pigs?” Coulter asked. “Your laws are enforced by pigs?”

The woman covered her mouth, giggling uncontrollably. Coulter flinched as the woman approached, sitting on the side of the bed and setting down the tray on Coulter’s lap. “My name is Amanda Gilead.” She reached out a hand, which Coulter shook with the tips of her fingers. “What’s your name?”

“Jane Eyre.”

Amanda closed her eyes and smiled. “Now now, don’t lie.” She wagged her index finger at Coulter.

Coulter sighed. “Annamaria Hymen Coulter.”

“You shouldn’t keep lying.”

“That’s my name! My actual name!”

“Oh.” Amanda raised her hand to her cheek and stared straight at Coulter’s face. “Your middle name is Hymen?”

* * *

Her middle name was indeed Hymen.

Coulter took a piece of the omelet on her fork and held it to her eyes. Flecks of basil, tiny pieces of tomato and peppers, and just the slightest touch of cheese helped fill its interior. When bit, there was a hint of heat, the presence of hot sauce. She took another bite, this time along with a refreshing sample of lettuce and carrot from the salad. The sweet dressing was a bold pairing with the omelet.

“How is it?” Amanda asked.

“Acceptable.” Coulter replied.

Inside, however, she was giddy. How could a machine’s precise measurements of all the ingredients be defeated in taste by something this frivolous woman made? She was at once angry that the future could not produce a better omelet with its technological superiority, but also immersed in the pleasure of a home-cooked omelet. Her composure nearly broke when she tasted the french toast, and for a second paused, staring into the wall, and seeing a house on a small hill where a mother doted upon her child with a careful pinch of powdered sugar over fresh-baked bread.

“I’m glad,” Amanda said. She was able to tell, quite easily, that Coulter was pleased. She had dealt with enough people who kept their emotions just beneath the surface to understand that much. “So, Annamaria–”

“Doctor Coulter!” Coulter said, “Call me Dr. Coulter!”

Amanda wagged her finger again. “Nuh uh. I’m calling you Annamaria. What is your line of work aside from villainy?”

“You answer my questions first, and I still deny that I am a villain.” Coulter thrust her hand forward, finger pointing directly at Amanda’s nose. “Are you a sick twisted pervert?”

“Pervert?” Amanda gasped, face flushing.

“You undressed me, put me in this, and you have a mirror over the bed. You pose barely-clothed for photographs.”

“I used to be a swim suit model. My photo books sold very well.” Amanda said, her voice barely audible. Her head began to shrink into her shoulders and she embraced herself.

Coulter looked around the room. “I can see that much. So you are a frivolous pervert!”

“I never posed nude! Well, I did, but in angles where you couldn’t see anything indecent!” Amanda protested. “Besides, I stopped doing that! I never felt very comfortable about it. I just did it because people liked it and because.” Amanda paused.

“Because what?” Coulter demanded, finger pointing ever accusingly.

Amanda bit her lip and closed her eyes. “Because I wanted to be indecent and bad!”

“Bad?” Coulter raised an eyebrow. “You think that’s bad?”

“Well, compared to you it probably isn’t. You leveled a city block!” Amanda said, spreading her arms out like an excited child.

“I deny doing that! I call my lawyer! His name is James T. Filliwinks. And he isn’t born yet. Urk.”

About halfway through that sentence, Coulter had begun to realize the futility of it all.

“So what do you do for money now?” Coulter asked.

“I invest. I got really lucky and made loads of money off of that Boondoggle search engine when it boomed. Now I’m a major shareholder and I don’t even know anything about search engines! Or anything about the internet but putting little text messages on Chirper and watching videos and stuff.”

“Chirper?”

Amanda’s face glowed. “Chirper is really fun, you should try it. You write little 140 letter messages that everyone can see! They’re called Chirps. Like a bird! I should make you a Chirper account!”

Coulter was baffled by the implications of this technology and wondered why they had nothing of the sort in the future.

“Alright then, your turn to answer.” Amanda quite suddenly dropped forward, arms around Coulter. “What do you do?”

Breathing in the scent of Sexy Raspberry #2, Coulter replied, “My previous employment had me researching ways to literally waste money. If the research itself wasted money, all the better.”

* * *

Coulter’s escape pod floated pleasantly in a corner of Amanda’s pool. Were it not for the hedges, the pod would have been visible from across the garden, even beyond the high fences. The high fences and hedges also prevented people from seeing Coulter wearing her lab coat over the negligee, buttoned as it was.

The pod was a fourth of the size of the pool, and something had to be figured out to remove it. Amanda waved away Annamaria’s worries. “The papparazzi don’t consider me very important anymore.” She said, looking around instinctively, “They’re all hung up on Rolazin Shrub and London Briston.”

“You say that almost longingly.” Coulter said off-handedly. She was still focusing on how to move the pod without having to call a robot out of her gum ball machine, which was set inconspicuously in a corner of the kitchen by Amanda. How Amanda managed to get the gumball machine out of the pod, Annamaria didn’t know. In her hands, the chunk of verdite glowed intermittently.

“Well, I sort of miss the spotlight and my previous admirers a bit. Except my lousy husband.”

“How lousy are we talking about here?”

“We met at a bar. We had a bar fight. Him and me that is. He punched me.”

“Ah. Pray tell, what is wrong with your damnable head?”

“I just like bad boys!” Amanda said, “It’s my weakness!” She laid down on a reclining chair beneath a large umbrella. “But he was just a damn loser. We’re divorced and I’m trading up soon enough.” She eyed Coulter as she said this, but Coulter didn’t notice.

“Splendid. Very happy for you,” Coulter muttered.

“Want to look at the rest of the mansion? It has 18 rooms, an entertainment center, four offices, ten bathrooms, one of which is a bath/spa, and the other is a master bathroom, five hallways, two kitchens, three sitting rooms–”

“Does it have a basement?” Annamaria asked.

Amanda nodded. “But why do you want to see that of all things?”

“My work involves hardware which needs space to be in, as well as privacy.” Coulter said.

“Oh right, your mad scientist hide-out!” Amanda said, smiling like a happy cat.

“No! I continue to deny that, stop bringing it up.”

Amanda led Coulter into the kitchen, across a hall and towards the foyer, where grand doors of tabascowood with gilded lining looked down upon an indoor fountain. A stone carving of a pair of mermaids holding arms suggestively greeted visitors, water jetting up in arcs over their heads that formed a bizarre liquid heart-shape. Amanda pointed to a small sliding door on the visible side of the staircase set into the foyer wall. Coulter crouched, slid the panel and found a good bit of headroom hidden there.

“Why is this arranged this way? I have to crouch so I can stand inside here?”

“I don’t know, my architects downloaded the plans from the internet.”

Inside the alcove, a cramped staircase led down into lightless depths. Coulter’s verdite crystal lit the way with its eerie green blinking, but it was all but impossible to see more than a yard or so in front of them, and the stair was rather deep down. Amanda shivered and remained close behind Coulter. Even she had never ventured down to this basement and she owned the house. She was feeling claustrophobic just trying to stretch her arms – she would hit always hit a wall or the ceiling.

“How far down does this go?” Coulter asked.

“I’m not sure. I didn’t want a basement, but the internet plans said it was needed for stability.”

“I still can’t believe you would trust anything from the internet.”

Eventually they began walking at a slightly less steep angle. Then Coulter thought she had genuinely found a floor, and helped Amanda down from the stairs. The two continued forward, the Verdite held before them, down a long tunnel. The walls were smooth, black, as though made of obsidian. Coulter ran her hand across the wall, feeling a few subtle lines and grooves along it that vaguely reminded her of the surface of a piece of computer silicon.

At the end of the tunnel they found a steel hole in the wall about the size of a fist, accompanied by a few odd symbols.

“Witchcraft!” Amanda shouted in disgust.

Coulter knelt, raising the verdite to illuminate the port. “This can’t be right. This is the symbol for verdite.”

“Verdite?” Amanda asked.

“This rock,” Coulter said, raising the stone behind her back, “It is the greatest source of fuel known to man. Future man.”

She stood, held her breath and placed the crystal into the port. She waited.

Glowing green lines ran across the walls and ceiling. The port began to glow.

Amanda grabbed hold of Coulter again, spooked by the sudden light show and what felt like the beginnings of an earthquake. The tunnel shook and rocked, throwing both women off their feet and against a wall. The walls started to incline outward like an unfolding box. From the floor, Coulter saw dim lights shining down at them, and hundreds of LEDs along the walls. But the walls had unfolded, where was she now? She looked hazily around. Everything had stopped shaking but her back hurt some.

She sat, and Amanda grabbed hold of her waist, furtively making her own examination of the room with one open eye.

The once cramped tunnel walls were entirely gone, now making up a black floor in what looked like a massive, dimly lit hangar. Coulter saw catwalks above, lit by weak hanging ceiling lamps, along which were large monitors with pictures of gray, disarrayed static. The walls seemed like massive computer server racks, a thousand LEDs across each. Every so often there was another wall slot that could accept a verdite rock. This place was eerily reminiscent of back home.

Home.

Coulter stood, Amanda clinging to her legs – as soon as she outstretched, a floor panel opened, and a mechanical arm returned her verdite stone back to her.

The largest monitor in the room suddenly came to life before them, illuminating much of the room in front of Coulter and Amanda. Coulter picked Amanda by her hands and pulled her harshly up to a stand.

The monitor flashed a gold C/S symbol and words: Verdite stone analyzed and accepted. Welcome, Doctor Coulter.

Her features worked their way to a broad grin. “Amanda?” Coulter said.

“Yes?” Amanda replied, casting meek looks around the room.

“I am Doctor Annamaria Hymen Coulter, the most brilliant scientist from my time. I have traveled to your time to change the world with my genius. And apparently,” She raised the verdite rock to Amanda’s eyes to illuminate her face with its delicate green glow, “I am in familiar territory here.”