MISC: The Girl Who Saved the World
George Phillies
phillies at 4liberty.net
Fri Oct 23 19:47:44 PDT 2015
I am going to restart this, with pieces in digestible shorter segments.
Hopefully I will not need the services of Password Lord to submit.
Password Lord had the mysterious power that allows him to type in the
UID and password to overcome firewalls, open files. etc.
Err, can't most people type in their UID and password?
Yes, but they needed to known what the password was. Password Lord does
not need to be told what password to type. He simply *knows*.
Title: The Girl Who Saved the World.
Text copyright © 2015 George Phillies
Meet Eclipse.
She's pretty, hardworking, bright, self-reliant, good with tools. She’s
everything a twelve-year old girl should be. She also flies, reads
minds, and is not afraid of necessary violence.
Now she’s procured the Key to Paradise. And everyone in the world will
be happy to kill her to get their hands on it.
Chapter One
Kniaz Kang's Shanghai Marco Polo
North Cosmopolis, Washington
January 10, 2018
The sign in the parking lot announced: Kniaz Kang's Shanghai Marco Polo.
Featuring the finest in Chinese, Italian, and Russian Cuisine. Invented
Here -- General Tso's Pizza! Invented Here -- Il Professore's Dessert
Pizza! It was 7:30 in the morning. The sun barely glowed over the South
Cosmopolis horizon, even at a restaurant atop a hill. Inside, Kniaz Kang
himself -- a man who was not a prince and whose name was not actually
Kang -- supervised the morning help in readying his restaurant for
another day. The front windows were filled with his regulars, early
risers and High School students from Atomic Tech down the street, all
enjoying his superb breakfasts. After all, hash, egg rolls, borscht,
and pizza were in large part based on chopping many things very finely,
a skill that his employees denied was a gift.
In the morning he served High School students, and some of their
teachers, though not in the same room. The isolated corner window was
always reserved for the Gang of Three or So. Teranike publically
denied being what Kang knew she was, namely a Polarian from Otherearth
stranded when her empire closed the WorldGate. She had taken a room
upstairs, did heavy physical work for the Restaurant with no complaint
or sign of fatigue, and did not emphasize what she had in her suitcases.
Dorothy Elizabeth Schumacher was North Cosmopolis's best-known public
persona. She had not planned to be public. However, when the agent of
the League of Terran Justice walked up to the front entrance of her High
School, started screaming "Down with Private Education", and started
shooting up student automobiles, she did what any persona should. In
her case, it was put up her force field, run directly in front of the
agent thus taking some dozens of rounds square in the chest, and flying
-- literally -- tackle the loon into a wall. She was unhurt. The loon
was in a prison hospital. Dorothy confessed to being the known persona
Silk, until then most noted for having rescued dogs, small children, and
a moose from various not-quite frozen ponds.
It was not until the next Summer that the Greater Cosmopolis Séance and
Channeling Society put her on the national news. The Society had
decided to channel the greatest motion picture actor in the history of
Oregon. They expected to speak to Stanford Smith, who had made more
than 200 westerns and gone on to be Grand Trademaster of All Leviorkian.
The Society's survivors were not quite clear on what went wrong. They
obtained a physical materialization, not the expected disembodied voice.
The materialization was a two hundred yard tall reptile with
radioactive flame breath. It flattened the first three persona teams
that tried to stop it. Then Silk appeared on the scene. Only if you
looked very carefully, Kang recalled, would you observe that she was now
wearing a force field bracer. Any number of people noticed that she was
now armed not with her usual Ruggels 0.50 pistol but with a Krell
disruptor pistol. The flame breath had no effect on her. Her first
shot took down the creature, who reverted into the Society's Occult
Master. Asked why she hadn't mentioned having the extremely rare and
powerful Krell weapon, she said that she hadn't had it. The now very
ex-boyfriend had lent it to her. He now had it back. They’d agreed,
when they broke up, that they would forget each other. A mentalist had
ensured that she had no remaining memories of him. No one else had known
that she had had a boyfriend, not even her parents, so questions about
him remained unanswered.
The usual third at her table was the seventh-grade boy who, if pressed,
claimed he was Silk's heroic side-kick, there to protect her from truly
dangerous villains. He had his trusty slingshot for that. He confessed
that he never carried his slingshot. Someone could get hurt. Today he
was missing in action.
Kang got no farther in reviewing his customers when the doors slammed
in. Running through them at top speed was Kang's number-two man, Wang,
the Imperturbable.
"Lord Kang! Lord Kang!" Wang shouted in Mandarin. "The Sun! The Sun!
There is a central eclipse!"
Kang tapped the computer screen above his chopping block. Headlines
scrolled across the screen. There was much news, but the astral omen
was not yet reported. He tapped the screen again. The All-Continent
News Network was usually fast off the start. There was the "Special News
Bulletin" warning. The text alternated every few seconds between orange
lettering on a blue field and violet lettering on a yellow field, colors
reserved for the most serious emergencies. A half dozen split-screens
came up. "First seen ten minutes ago in London...Observers in Athens
heard celestial trumpets...Moscow reports the sky has turned imperial
purple...We now join reporter Vera Durand. Where are you, Vera?"
"This is Vera Durand." The reporter's voice was sharp and clear. Behind
her were jagged rocks and a smooth marble terrace. At the center of the
terrace was a staircase, leading down. "I am now broadcasting from
Atlanticea. The sounds you hear behind me are the waves of the
Atlantic. Atlanticea has just been raised from the ocean by the power
of the Holy Namestone. Not one hour ago, a figure appeared above the
entrance to the Great Maze and announced she would be contesting
possession of the Namestone. The island promptly rose to greet her.
She, or perhaps he, has already entered the Maze. All-Channel
broadcasting of the contest by the Namestone itself will begin momentarily."
"Vera, who is the challenger?" network lead announcer Richard Markovian
asked.
"We don't know, Richard," Durand answered calmly, "The Namestone has
said nothing. There were rumors that the League of Nations Elite Strike
Team was going to try, very soon, to recover the Namestone, but the
solitary figure who entered the Maze is not a League Operative. The
Namestone translocated us here after she entered. I had no interview
with her. I don't know why the Maze deemed her -- assuming 'her' is
correct -- qualified to challenge."
Kang returned to his chopping, interrupted by instructions to his
assistants. "Benito, just keep making pizza shells. We're going to
have a huge business today. Nikolai, that cabbage was a bit mature;
steam it an extra ten minutes. Wang, lower the sports view screens.
Almost everyone will want to watch. Oh, there's the announcement,
Governor Molnar is cancelling public school sessions; 'After all, the
kids will be paying absolutely no attention'. Schools stay open so
children have a place to be if parents are working. Vito? Put that
announcement up on the Big Sign." Kang looked over his cash register.
"Ah, Miss Schumacher. The usual breakfast, the usual tab. You didn't
know about this in advance?" Kang asked. "Or are you the next challenger?"
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