Ellie Quin - 04 - Ellie Quin in WonderLand Read Online Free PDF

gloom of the mezzanine decks into the dazzling glow of sunlight.
    'The guest dome,' announced Frasier.
    Both girls gasped excitedly at the view outside as the elevator quickly ascended. Ellie pressed up against the perspex. ‘Oh, my! It’s…so
beautiful!'
    The view took her breath away. As they climbed she could see rolling meadows of flowers and lush green grass leading up to a village on the brow of a hill; picture-postcard villas clustered around a central piazza. Villas with dazzling white-washed walls, warm clay brown terracotta tiled roofs and large windows flanked by shutters painted mint green. Walkways and terraces and courtyards. Paths made of paving stones, weaving through brightly coloured flowerbeds.
    The epitome of luxury and sedate beauty, a perfect façade of an Old Earth summer-baked village bathed in the dazzling light and warmth of an artificial equatorial sun.
    As they rose further she could see this world existed within a gigantic biosphere, approximately a mile in diameter. The sky was made up of hundreds of triangular shaped panels that gradually sloped towards a rounded 'roof' above them. Ellie guessed each of those vast panels must have been a hundred feet on each side.
Most
of them contributed to the almost completely convincing illusion of a salmon pink, sunrise sky. But half a dozen isolated panels hung incongruously in the dawn sky, pitch black and shockingly out of place. She wondered if they were broken, or if that was some deliberate design choice. Staring at them she realised they weren't black panels, they were transparent revealing the ink black void of empty space beyond.
    As they continued their slow ascent she glimpsed through one of them, a long tunnel leading out into the darkness towards what appeared to be another giant sphere.
    ‘This is triple-plus wowsome,’ gasped Jez. ‘I mean, totally, WOW!’
    ‘Is that another sphere I'm seeing out there?’ said Ellie.
    ‘We call these spheres,
biomes
,’ said Frasier. ‘This central biome is the guest accommodation hub. There are others. Those are the various recreational worlds. There are eight in total, although only three were completed before this facility was put on hold.’
    She gazed in awe again at the sky projected from the hundreds of panels; fluffy pink clouds lit warmly from below by the rising sun, drifting lazily. A beautiful and utterly convincing spectacle save for the half a dozen pitch black triangles dotted here and there, hanging in the sky like vast motionless delta-winged craft.
    Frasier noted her staring at them. 'Some of the biome projection panels are yet to be hooked up and programmed. This biome was so very nearly completed before work stopped. Ah…we are approaching the Control Tower.'
    The girls were suddenly robbed of the spectacular view as the elevator ascended through the roof of the central biome and once again they were plunged into darkness.
    ‘And here we are,’ said Frasier. The doors to the elevator hissed open. ‘Systems Control Deck,’ announced the matronly cartoon face beside the door.
    'Thank you, Mother,' replied Frasier.
    The girls stared out at a sprawling circular control room full of holo-displays and consoles. Chest-high cubicles and desks, office chairs and plastic potted plants. The low ceiling reflected the warm glow of sunrise streaming up through the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran all the way around.
    To Ellie's eyes, it looked like this deck had been designed for hundreds of personnel. She imagined, had this theme park been up and running, it would have been a hive of activity; technicians monitoring the world beneath them, tweaking environmental variables and conditions, catering to the whims of themany wealthy and pampered guests down below. But instead it was a still and silent place.
    Yet it looked lived in.
    On a desk nearby she spotted unwashed plates encrusted with the desiccated leftovers of food. She spotted a pair of twisted underpants on the floor and socks