SG: Rad #93 (3/3): Donuts?

[Gary]

(continued from part two, preceding...)

                                 ***

     Rumi Moroboshi was unsure exactly what she expected from
Esteban's room.  Certainly a television set, as humans in this part of
the planet were reputed to be unable to get along without them.  And
yes, there it was, on a desk in the corner, though it was off.  Next
to it was a small hammock, of all things, way too small for any human
larger than a toddler.  And near that....
     Near that was what looked to be a pair of bronze-gold-colored
metal pants.  Rumi estimated, based on her own 5'2" height, that they
were nearly four feet tall, and appeared to be standing on their own.
Along the legs, where the hems would have been on a regular pair of
pants, Rumi saw inch-tall metallic ridges that had been fashioned into
curli-cues, c-scrolls, and other oddly rococo patterns.  The pants
were way too big for the teenage boy who appeared to be trying to wear
them.
     "I'm not getting anything," said the boy, who she assumed to be
'Esteban.'  He was not speaking to her, but apparently to a couple
silvery rectangular objects that projected on narrow metal stalks from
the waistband area of the pants.  They emitted a light that, aside
from that thrown by the fluorescent lamp on the desk to her left, was
the only light in the room.  "Try the next vibration."
     Whatever he was talking to evidently tried the next vibration,
because the light from the rectangular things went out.  Esteban
frowned, and pressed a button on one of the rectangles.  Nothing
happened.  He looked up.
     "Er," he said.  "Hi.  Who're you?"
     His voice was almost nothing like Miguel's--sharp and uncertain
and tentative.  Rumi had the immediate suspicion that he spent a lot
of time in this room.
     "I'm Rumiko Moroboshi," she said.  "A friend of Cendra's and her
parents.  We're visiting today."
     Esteban considered this.
     "Miguel said something half an hour ago," he said.  "Must've been
this.  If I'd known you were the... well, just a sec, let me get out
of these."  He started tapping the rectangle he had tapped before, to
no effect.  "A little help, here!"
     Rumi, who was not sure if Esteban was being too forward or too
dense, took a step back.  She did so just as he shot up from the
pants, hit the ceiling, and fell.  A bronze-gold blur swept between
her and the falling boy.  When it passed, she saw him hovering upside
down in the air.
     Not hovering, she corrected herself.  More like hanging.  She
looked up the length of Esteban's gangly, black-shorts-clad body, and
saw what was holding him up.  A small bronze-gold monkey floated
without visible means for doing so, one arm outstretched, fingers
around Esteban's ankle.  It noticed her gaze and essayed a slight wave
with its free hand.
     After it deposited Esteban on the floor, it landed and helped him
up.  He was closer to the light from the desk now, and Rumi realized
he was not only just an inch shorter than her, but was also probably
around her fifteen-Earth-year age.  His light brown skin had a sheen
of perspiration, and Rumi wondered how long he had been working.  He
did not have Miguel's muscles or grace, though there was a definite
dexterity to his movements.  Rumi suspected there had to be, to keep
his arms and legs from getting tangled.
     "I'm Esteban Veracruz."  He stuck out his hand like a gunshot.
     "Rumi," she replied, taking the hand and giving it a couple
shakes before releasing it.  Esteban gestured at the monkey.
     "He doesn't know his name," said Esteban.  "So I call him 'Coco.'
He's got the form of a bonobo.  Don't ask me or him why, 'cuz bonobos
live in Africa, and he's... not from Africa."
     Though Rumi had absorbed a lot of information about Earth, almost
none of it involved monkeys--except, of course, the ones who, through
the wonder of evolution, had gone on to produce airplanes, computers,
string cheese and genocide.  The bonobo before her was barely two feet
tall, even though it... he... was standing human-style on two feet.
He was a slim and unexpectedly graceful creature with long fur, a
curled tail, long legs, narrow shoulders, a wide nose, and an eyebrow
ridge that framed his eyes.  'Coco' tilted his head, curiosity evident
on his expressive face.  Rumi, for her part, was curious as to why
Coco appeared to be made of the same bronze-gold metal as the pants.
     Before she could ask, Coco shrugged and climbed up the metal
pants to the belt area.  He then jumped in.  Rumi saw no subsequent
movement inside the pants to indicate which leg he had slipped into.
     "He was hoping you'd be able to hear him," said Esteban.  "Even
Cendra can't, and she's a telepath."
     "You *can* hear him?" Rumi asked, as she stood.
     "I discovered him," Esteban replied.  Rumi saw that his attention
was back on the rectangular things attached to the pants.  "Him and
Los Pantalones, three years ago.  My inheritance."
     "Los Pantalones?"
     "That's what my Great-grandfather called them.  Don't be too
impressed; it's just Spanish for 'The Pants.'"
     Rumi looked at Los Pantalones, and was startled to see that they
appeared to be entirely filled in with the same bronze-gold metal that
she had thought before was only its shell.
     "I thought I saw Coco dive... in?"
     Coco, before the end of her sentence, poked his head up through
the 'top' of Los Pantalones and looked at the rectangular objects.  He
drew--from where Rumi could not see--two bronze-gold wires, and
plugged them into free slots on the rectangular objects.  Rumi now
observed that the rectangular objects were Earth-technology PDAs of
some kind, though she could not make sense of the geometric symbols
that flashed on the screens.
     "Great-grandfather's diary," said Esteban, "says that Los
Pantalones are made of an unknown element, both much stronger and much
lighter than any metal we know.  Plus, they do this sort of liquid
metal kind of thing, but only for Coco and me.  And probably for
Great-grandfather, too."
     Coco dipped down into Los Pantalones and disappeared from view.
The effect, Rumi thought, was not really liquidy--more like the metal
top she saw was some kind of illusion.  But when Esteban gave the
metal a single rap with his knuckle, it sounded solid.
     "You said you... inherited them?"
     "Yeah," said Esteban.  From the clipped tone of that single
syllable, Rumi knew it was a story she would not be hearing that day.
It was not the kind of story one told to someone one just met.  She
turned her attention to the PDAs.
     "These control it?" she asked.
     "No," Esteban replied.  "I do."  He rapped his hairless chest and
grinned.  This part of him, Rumi thought, was like Miguel; when he
smiled, it was wide and genuine.  "Coco says its not telepathic--I
can't do anything with it when I'm not in them.  It's more like it
taps into my body and becomes an extension of my mind.  At least, when
they're working."
     Coco climbed out of Los Pantalones at that moment, and gave
Esteban a 'thumbs-up' gesture before hovering to the floor.  Rumi
looked at the PDAs again, which now displayed some numbers, along with
rudimentary symbols to hint at whether they measured things such as
temperature, mileage, location, and so on.  They were clearly not an
original part of Los Pantalones, which in turn raised the question of
why they were needed.
     Esteban anticipated the question.  "There was a top half to it.
Great-grandfather said he'd seen it once, though he never found out
where it went after that.  There's a picture of it in his diary."  He
went over to the desk and picked up a sheaf of unbound pages that Rumi
recognized were photocopies.  After shuffling them and putting a few
right-side up, he handed them to Rumi.
     Whether it was due to the mediocre quality of the photocopy, or
decay in the page that had been copied, Rumi could not tell, but the
suit in the picture in the center was hard to discern.  It was an
armored and helmeted suit, that much was clear, and it had a number of
further rococo flourishes in its exterior design that Rumi was
almost sure served no tactical purpose.  Beneath the picture was a
handwritten quote: "The Jewel of the Hidden Empire!"
     "'Hidden Empire?'"
     Esteban shrugged.  "He wrote some stuff about it in there, but
it's like he was writing just to remind himself of some things.  He
turned to Los Pantalones and knocked on the top.  "Coco, how's it
look?"
     Rumi shuffled the page with the picture of the suit to the
bottom.  The next page held an even stranger image: a photograph that
featured a large metallic battleship hovering over a building that
appeared to be the ruins of a temple surrounded by jungle.  What
looked like bolts of lightning connected ship and temple, though it
was unclear which was the aggressor and which the target.  The ship,
like the suit, was replete with rococo flourishes in its design,
though whatever restraint was felt by the suit-makers had clearly not
influenced the ship-makers in the slightest.  Rumi particularly liked
the sweeping c-scrolls and rocaille along its flanks, though she was
not sure they did anything useful as aerodynamics were concerned.
     She did not think that Coco had any rococo flourishes, though she
supposed anything was possible beneath the metallic facade of his fur.
She kind of hoped he did, because otherwise she would have no cause to
utter the otherwise unjustifiable phrase 'Robo-Coco the Rococo
Bonobo.'
     After giving her brain a mental slap, she returned her attention
to the copied photo.  Los Pantalones was visible in it, just above the
battleship, though it and its wearer could not be seen in detail.  It
appeared to be flying in the direction of whatever had taken the
picture.  Smoke trailed from its kneecaps.  Below the photo was an
inscribed date: "18 Mar. 1899.  Palenque."
     The date seemed unlikely, given what sketchy things she knew
about the history of image-recording technology on Earth.  She was
about to ask Esteban about it when an even more perplexing question
occurred to her.
     "Esteban," she said.  "Why are you trusting me with all this?"
     Esteban looked up.  She saw that both his hands were inside the
metal of Los Pantalones.  This time, the metal did seem as liquid,
rolling around his wrists as a thick soup.
     "What do you mean?" he asked.  The uncertain note returned to his
voice.
     There was genuine puzzlement on his face, and Rumi decided to be
careful how she proceeded.  Though having Cendra around to confide in
was nice, it would be nicer still to have a friend her own age.
     "I mean," she said, "this is all some seriously cool stuff.  So
cool that there are Earth humans that would want to take it away from
you if they knew about it."
     "Yeah," said Esteban, as if she was not telling him anything he
did not know, and as if she had not referred to people as 'Earth
humans,' which she had thought would at least raise one of his
eyebrows.  "Tom said not to tell anyone."
     "Tom?"
     "McCavish-Laffalot.  I work part time at this cheap movie studio,
and I told him about it after he talked about the work he did with
armored suits.  He gave me these to hook up to the suit.  That way,
I'll know not to push it so hard next time."
     "And he said not to tell anyone."
     Esteban pulled his hands from Los Pantalones.  The bronze-gold-
colored metal filled back in as he did.
     "Yeah.  'Cause of what you said."
     "So why are you telling me?"
     He cocked his head, and for a moment his expression reminded him
of Coco's earlier show of curiosity.
     "I mean," said Rumi, "did Cendra talk about me?  Eivandt, maybe?
We've never met before, but here you're telling me about all this...."
     Esteban shrugged.  "The green lady said you were okay."
     Rumi blinked.  She was not sure she had heard him correctly.
     "She said the same about Lemon," Esteban went on.  "And he turned
out... well.  He helps.  A lot.  With Los Pantalones, I mean."  He
gestured toward the desk with the lamp.  "There's a picture of him
there."
     She picked up the frame next to the lamp and examined the
picture.  Esteban, wearing what appeared to be the same black shorts
he now had on, was carrying another boy on his back.  This boy
looked to be around Esteban's and Rumi's age, and had light, sunburned
skin, a pair of toxic-orange swim trunks, a shock of long and unruly
blond hair, and a wide grin.  To Rumi, it looked as though the boy had
jumped on Esteban's back just as the picture had been taken, though
Esteban's reaction had been open laughter.
     The background appeared to be open desert.  There were people in
the background, including one with face paint that reminded Rumi of
the designs she had seen painted on Cendra in her picture from---
     "*You* were at Burning M00se, *too?*"
     Esteban nodded.  "Last year was my first.  It was way cool, even
though there were lots of places I couldn't get into.  Lemon says it's
the magic that does it, not the tech, 'cause otherwise he'd find a way
in.  He lives out there half the year, when his mom gets him.  In
Malaga, I mean.  Says he's gonna try to get a tunnel going from his
house to the Freak Euclid Zone...."
     Rumi listened and nodded.  What he was saying matched what her
dad and mom had told her about the event.  Though it was considerably
smaller than the similar, more famous annual event-with-a-burning-
thingy in the Nevada desert, the annual (since 2002) Burning M00se
event in and around the town of Malaga, New Mexico, outstripped it in
terms of sheer weirdness.  A number of Ottsamaddawiduan and Dalan
engineers came every year to consume ayahuasca and contribute their
expertise (often in that order), using the advanced technologies of
their races to create areas that could blow even a sober mind.  If
that was not enough, the event attracted a fair number of mages, who,
in addition to casting a variety of entertaining and party-enhancing
spells, contributed to the security of the event.  Not only did their
spells contribute to ensuring that consensual experiences at the event
stayed consensual, they kept minors out of the areas where these
experiences were most likely to happen.  Such as, she assumed, the
'Freak Euclid Zone.'
     Her parents had said nothing about this year's Burning M00se, but
Rumi was now determined to attend, even if she could not get into half
of it.  Even if they did not want to go, she was sure she could
persuade Cendra to take her along with her and Miguel and Esteban.
And if it turned out to not live up to the hype... at least it was
something to *do.*
     Esteban had not stopped talking while her thoughts had drifted,
so she tuned back in.
     "...and Lemon climbed all the way up the pyramid and out on the
antler.  This was like a day before it was gonna be lit.  I had to
have Coco take me up--it was like fifty-five feet high.  We could see
the whole layout from up there, and it's like this eleven-sided thing,
a something-agon, and everyone was goin' around below, doin' stuff.
I don't remember everything, but---"
     "Esteban," said Rumi.  She had remembered what he had said before
she had been distracted by the picture and her thoughts.
     Esteban blinked.  "What?"
     "Who's this 'green lady' who said I was okay?"
     Before Esteban could answer, a loud crashing sound came from the
living room.  Rumi's first thought was that it was an escalation of
the verbal battle that had been brewing before she entered Esteban's
room.  Then it came again.  It was the sound of windows shattering.
     The next sound was that of a door being pounded off its hinges.
     Esteban and Rumi dashed to the bedroom doorway and peered out.
The front door was indeed off its hinges, having been knocked in by a
group of grim-looking men and women.  Others--apparently been
responsible for shattering the living room windows--were  climbing
in, heedless of the damage that the broken glass was doing to them.
Rumi, who had been subjected to several of her dad's favorite bad
horror films over the years, recognized their classic zombie behavior
at once.  There were only two problems.
     "They're not dead," Esteban said, before she could.  "That's gray
greasepaint they've got on."
     The other reason was evident in what the 'zombies' were saying.
     "Zombies!" they exclaimed.  "Moan!  Moan!  We are saying 'brains'
at you!  We seek the Miguel!  Brains!  Moan!  Moan!"
     Though they were clearly zombies of a kind that would have been
too low-budget for Roger Corman, there were a lot of them.  Miguel had
risen, and although he had not changed yet, Rumi could sense the flow
of the power beneath his skin.  Glum had also risen, her Hottentottian
bioelectric abilities at the ready.  They were shielding Cendra,
Alice, and Eivandt, who appeared more bewildered than afraid.
     She also sensed an energy in the 'zombies.'  It radiated from, of
all places, just behind their right ears.  Much of it went into their
heads, but some of it was in their bodies.
     Rumi started to cry out a warning to her mother, but it was
overwhelmed by the exclamations of the surging 'zombies.'  The battle,
such as it was, was on.

                                 ***

     The sun was close to set when Gary W. Olson emerged from the back
entrance of the Blue Pound Sign Company building into the employee
parking lot.  Few vehicles were left, and most of those belonged, he
knew, to various night shift personnel.  He massaged his wrists, which
ached for some reason.  Probably carpal tunnel, he thought.  Another
day, just like so many weekdays before, with only a blur of a memory
as to what it was he had done with it.
     He was startled out of his numb-minded reverie when he looked at
the '95 Saturn that was his present vehicle.  What startled him was
not the car itself, but the vehicle next to it--a classic black
Mercedez-Benz limousine.  He could not imagine whom it could belong
to, as none of the employees made the kind of money such a vehicle
required, and no one above a Director's level would lower himself or
herself to parking in the employee lot.
     When he reached his car, the driver's side door of the limo
opened.  What Gary presumed was the driver got out, though he could
not distinguish any features, save that the driver was big and wore
all-black clothing.  No, not all black--Gary could see a white shirt
and a thin black tie.  And beneath the limo driver's cap....
     "Hey, man," said Gary.  "What's with the black mask?  Your
employer make you drive like that?"
     "Mr. Olson?" asked the black-masked driver.  Its voice sounded as
if it had been pre-recorded on a low-quality cassette.  "Your presence
has been requested."
     This put Gary on his guard.  Though he had left his super-
villaining days as The Programmer long behind, he always knew it was
possible that any of the people he had used and betrayed, from former
henchmen to those whose PC settings he had screwed with, might come
looking for revenge.  He fumbled with his car keys, hoping the driver
would be paralyzed by the need to wait for an answer.
     The driver was not.  It leapt over the Saturn and landed next to
him.  A few moments later, Gary had the unwelcome opportunity to
reflect that, as fun as those slo-mo twisting jumps over vehicles
looked in the movies, they were considerably less so outside the
movies.  Possibly, Gary thought, it would have been less unpleasant if
the driver had not brought him along by grabbing his belt at the back.
     Only after the driver opened the rear door of the limo did it
release Gary's belt.  Gary staggered a bit.  He restrained his urge to
flee, doubting it would do him any good.  As he started to get into
the back seat, he looked at the driver's black mask.
     "Seriously," said Gary.  He paused, and mentally willed himself
to notch down his voice a few octaves.  "No eye-holes?  You have *got*
to get a better deal than that."
     The driver shoved Gary into the limo and closed the door.
     The inside of the limo was dim, with the only light coming from
the fading sun through the tinted windows.  For a moment, Gary thought
he was alone, and considered checking out the mini-bar.  Then he saw
movement in the shadow-cloaked seat across from him, and made out the
outlines of another person.
     This person also wore a black suit, white shirt, and black tie.
The wearer was considerably slimmer than the driver, and considerably
more a woman.  She raised her hand, and Gary could see a red-nailed
finger over the trigger of a gun that did not strike him as being
feminine in the least.
     "This wasn't how it was going to work," she said, and at once her
voice struck Gary as being very familiar, as though he had been
hearing it for a long time without knowing.  It was seductive, low,
and undeniably evil.  "I didn't want to bring you in to this.  But we
have to ramp up our timetable and complete our work tonight... in no
small part because you've been fingered."
     "Um," said Gary.  "What?"
     "You don't know what I'm talking about," said the woman.  Her
face was still shrouded in shadows.  Though he knew that this was a
calculated pose, Gary nevertheless found it effective.  His heart
raced.  "Your conditioning prevented your conscious knowledge of your
activities within our system.  But it is time to lift that
conditioning... permanently."
     She raised the gun and fired.  Gary, though he felt it was an
undignified move, reached up and pulled the dart from his neck.
     "Who... are you... it's not time for my... performance...
review...."
     As Gary's head began to swim and he slumped back in his seat, the
woman leaned forward.  Her long blonde hair did not seem entirely
natural, though its effect in the black-and-white landscape of the
limo interior was striking.  Her eyes were a sharp blue, and her lips
as they drew back in a mirthless smile were a particularly merciless
shade of crimson.
     "I'm a Secret Secret Agent of the Mega-Intelligence Bureau, Mr.
Olson... or should I say, The Programmer.  The name is Wader.
Dana Wader."
     Then she, and the world, faded to black.

WHY IS DANA WADER NOW WORKING FOR THE M.I.B.?
DID SHE ALWAYS HAVE BLONDE HAIR AND BLUE EYES, OR WAS THE AUTHOR JUST
TOO LAZY TO COMB THE ARCHIVES TO CHECK?
WHY ARE PSEUDO-ZOMBIES SEEKING MIGUEL?
WHY ARE PSEUDO-NINJAS SEEKING TOM?
WILL RUMI MAKE IT TO BURNING M00SE?
WILL ESTEBAN BE ABLE TO GET LOS PANTALONES TO WORK?
WILL COCO BE ABLE TO GET A MORE DIGINIFED NAME?
WHO IS THE GREEN LADY?
WILL RAD AND MANNY FIGURE OUT WHY THE PROGRAMMER IS CONNECTED WITH
HARXXON?
DOES ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN 1899 REALLY HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH
THE PLOT?
*IS* THERE A PLOT NOW?
WILL ANYONE GET TO REALLY ENJOY THOSE DONUTS?

In SUPERGUY are all our answers revealed!  (Or not.)
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
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