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?"




More information about the racc mailing list