Sugar and spice…and steel

A flashlight flicked on in the darkness and its beam, filled with floating dust specks, settled on the drawer of a grey filing cabinet. “Dad, come in Dad”, said an eleven-year old girl called Autumn, whispering into the mouthpiece of her microphone headset, “Dad, can you hear me?”. “Code names, if you please, Q”, said her Father, tetchily, “You never know who might be listening. Call me X”. “Will do, Dad”, said Autumn, “I mean, X”. And then, searching the alphabetically arranged drawers of the filing cabinet with her torch beam, she found the drawer marked ‘S-V’ and slid it carefully open while simultaneously talking into her microphone. “I’m inside Dr Brimstows office, thanks to your little anti-security alarm gizmo and now I’m searching his filing cabinet for anything that might connect him with the burglary at the Simpson mansion”, she said. “Good job, Q”, said her father, “Mother would be proud. Now, we know that Andrea Simpson was Dr Brimstow’s patient and that he was treating her with hypnosis for her cigarette addiction. We also know that the burglar who broke into her mansion and stole her priceless antique jewellery collection had to have had the combination to her strong room and her alarm system and since the only other person who knew those combinations was her late millionaire husband then my hunch is that Dr Brimstow got those combinations from Mrs Simpson while he had her under hypnosis”. There was a sound in the hallway outside the office; heavy footsteps on a linoleum tiled floor. Autumn clicked off her torch and, sliding the drawer of the filing cabinet closed, backed away from it towards the open office window. “Dad, dad. There’s someone coming”, she whispered, frantically then, her blue eyes widening, she heard the rattle of a key in the lock of the office door and said, “I think its Doctor Brimstow”. “Keep calm, Autumn”, said her father, “Remember, you’re not like every other eleven year old girl. Try to get a confession out of him and, if things get out of hand…well, you know what to do”. The door of the office creaked wide open and, switching on the overhead fluorescent light, an elderly bearded man stared in surprise at the eleven year old girl, dressed from head to toe in black like a cat burglar, standing with her back against the office window. Then, suddenly, his surprise turned to anger; his eyes glaring wildly and his mouth scowling savagely as he reached into the pocket of a white doctors coat and took out a hypodermic syringe full of a strange transparent liquid. “Who are you? What are you doing here?!”, he yelled, moving towards her with the syringe clutched tightly in his raised right fist, his thumb upon the plunger. Autumn didn’t say anything. “Never mind. This drug will make you talk”, he said, grabbing her by the shoulder. But then, suddenly, she heard her father’s voice again, barking an order, frantically, into her ear. “Go Automatic”, he said, “Now!”. The man in the white coat froze, mid-movement, dropping his syringe from a trembling hand onto his maroon office carpet, his jaw falling with it as he saw the eyes of the little girl light up like a pair of headlights ; her bright blue pupils crackling with tiny veins of blue electricity and then, suddenly, her small hand gripping vice-like upon his shirt front and turning from lightly freckled pink skin and puppy fat into dark grey metal it hoisted him, like the arm of of a fast moving hydraulic crane, high over her blonde, pig-tailed head before hurling him roughly to the floor. “Autumns not like other little girls, Doctor”, said her father’s voice, speaking more loudly now out of her headphones, “I and her late mother built her as part of a government project and, as you can see, she’s quite capable of defending herself”. But then Autumn, looking over at the mans syringe that was now lying on the carpet next to him, remembered what he had said about it’s being able to make her ‘talk’ and, picking it up, she took a sniff upon its contents and her computerized brain did a quick chemical analysis revealing the clear liquid substance to be Sodium Pentathol, more commonly known as ‘truth serum’, then jabbing the syringe into his leg, she depressed its plunger with one of her pink and glitter nail polished thumbs. “I think that Dr Brimstow will be happy to confess everything now”, she said to her father, smiling. But just then, the drowsy, sodium pentathol intoxicated man on the floor started to speak, “I am not Dr Brimstow”, he said, “I’m Eric Burdock. I’m one of Dr Brimstow’s patients. He used my medical files to blackmail me into helping him commit his crime. He sent me to his office to steal evidence”. “Where is Dr Brimstow now?”, asked Autumn, convinced that the man on the floor was telling the truth because his eyes looked vacant and his pupils narrowed. “Waiting in the car outside. Once he destroyed the evidence, he planned to leave the country”, explained the man. From outside the office Autumn heard the screech of tires against asphalt and a car with a nervous Dr Brimstow behind the wheel speeding away. Sticking her head out of the open office window, Autumn peered down at the street below and saw the doctors old Station Wagon hurriedly heading off towards an intersection. There wasn’t time to take the stairs or the elevator , she thought, and now, looking down at the pavement which she judged to be approximately 30 feet below and not factoring in wind or air resistance, she hurriedly calculated the impact velocity of a 75 kilo android girl with a titanium skeleton jumping 30 ft onto a concrete sidewalk and then, judging it to be a safe jump, bent both her legs and sprang forward, agilely leapfrogging out of the second story window and somersaulting before coming to land just beside her Honda CRF motorcycle. Then making the far easier leap onto her dirtbike and kickstarting it with her right foot, she revved the engine once before speeding off after Dr Brimstows car. Quickly and skilfully weaving between moving cars and lorries, she navigated through the heavy traffic and , before long she appeared in Brimstow’s rear view mirror, a look of fierce determination on her eleven year old face; her eyes glowing as they had earlier and sending out small blue sparks of electricity. “Who is that following me?”, Brimstow worried to himself, panicking and also totally dumfounded, “It looks just like a kid”. Perhaps his eyes were just playing tricks on him, he surmised. But then, in the time it took him to turn round and glance over his shoulder, she was right behind him and then, unbelieveably, riding along side the front of his vehicle and leaning over, with all the grace of a prima ballerina, she forcefully yanked up the hood of his car so that it completely obscured his windscreen and, just for good measure, started to rip out his spark plugs one at a time; an action that would have electrocuted any normal person but only caused Brimstows engine to misfire and his car to stall. Desperately he pulled over to the side of the road and then, suddenly, in his peripheral vision, saw his car door torn open and felt a pair of eleven year old hands seize him in an iron grip and drag him from the driver’s seat. It was only a matter of seconds before, yelling and screaming he was bent over his bonnet with his hands cuffed behind his back. “Outstanding work, Autumn”, said her father, speaking through her earphones as he heard his robotic daughter make a citizen’s arrest, “Now aren’t you glad I bought you a motorbike instead of that pony you wanted?” “Yes, daddy”, she said, smiling like an angel.