SG: Rad #99 (3/4): is full of

[Gary W. Olson]

(continued from part two, preceding...)

                                 ***

     The Programmer opened his eyes, then immediately shut them again.
There were too many monkeys in his line of sight--always a sign, in
his opinion, that he had woken too soon.  Unfortunately, his brain
refused to cooperate, and remained stubbornly awake.  So he opened his
eyes again.
     Still a lot of demon monkeys, he thought.  But none seemed
specifically focused on *him.*  Good, he decided.  He could deal with
that.  He tried lifting his arms, and found they were bound behind his
back.  Not so good, he decided.
     "Still a 'prisoner,' I see," said a voice to his left, managing
to sound both mocking and woozy at the same time.  "You might as well
stay seated.  They don't seem intent on harming us, so long as we stay
put."
     The Programmer lolled his head, bringing Miguel Veracruz into his
field of vision.  Miguel was no longer a werewolf, but his lean and
muscular form did not seem that much less imposing.  He seemed to be
trying to undo the rope around his wrists--a fact The Programmer found
perplexing, given his statement.
     He recognized some of the other tied-up prisoners, including Tom
McCavish-Laffalot, Alice Seconds, and Eivandt Seconds.  They looked as
if they had been through the same disorienting teleportation process
he had, and barely took notice of what Miguel said.
     The transmitter was still in his right hand, concealed by his
clenched fingers.  Though it fit snugly in his palm, The Programmer
knew that the demon monkeys had seen him take it, and that they only
let him keep it because they either believed it was of no use, or that
he could not possibly find a use for it that would affect them.
     Of that, he silently vowed, he would see.  There was still time
to create a distraction, one that would enable him to make a break for
one of the corridors.  He had already re-activated the default
broadcast instructions, and could imagine the consternation this had
caused on the surface.  If he could give the chip-controlled people
specific instructions, the demon monkeys on the surface would believe
their fellows below had failed, and would... would... do what?  Radio
down to ask what happened?  Wander off?  Join a volleyball league?
     The more The Programmer thought about it, the more he realized it
was one of his less-focused brilliant plans.  In response, he
immediately stopped thinking about it, and felt much better.  Soon...
soon he would be on the move, with an army of mind-controlled people
at his command, and the world below would tremble---
     The air near him shimmered for a moment, and then there stood
Erasmus Fancy, Dana Wader, and a large number of demon monkeys.  The
Programmer tried to leap up and run away, but encountered difficulty
with the 'leaping' part, as being seated with his arms tied behind his
back was not a great position for starting such a move.  He settled
for falling onto his side and looking up at the newcomers.
     Dana Wader was transformed from the cool and ominous secret agent
who had taken him down to the underground.  Now her eyes were wide,
her grin was feral, and her face and clothing were bloody.  She
clutched a long, red-stained knife, keeping a death-grip on it even as
she staggered and fell to her knees.
     "I think," she murmured, almost too low for The Programmer to
hear, "you forgot some of my organs... whoa...."
     The Programmer expected her to fall, as had all the others the
demon monkeys had brought in via teleportation.  She did not.
Instead, she swayed on her knees, looking about her as if the world
was a nice, soft target she could slice open as soon as it stopped
moving about on her.  He edged away, scooting on the metallic floor as
casually as was possible in the given circumstances.
     Fancy, meanwhile, showed no sign the teleportation had affected
him at all.  The demon monkeys on him teleported away split seconds
before he could swat them, reappearing ten feet away.
     "I am not your enemy," said Fancy, addressing them.  His voice
was smooth, low, and rich.  "The corruption of our world can be
reversed.  But if you take me back, all of my progress--"
     "*Our* progress, yard ape," Wader slurred up at him.
     "--will be lost!" Fancy continued.  "And when I return to our
home dimension with the purification matrix, and take my rightful
place in the leadership of our world, I will command for you money far
in excess of what you are now being paid to take me in."  He smiled,
an expression on his grizzled face that came perilously close to a
sneer.  "What say you?"
     The demon monkey closest to Fancy, a three-foot-tall grey-and-
black furred horned howler monkey in a battered and torn little black
uniform, rubbed his chin as if seriously contemplating the offer.  He
raised a paw.
     In response, two demon monkeys shuffled forward, carrying a
weapon that looked as if it had been made for someone with twice their
size and maybe a fifth of their aesthetic sense.  It was a bronze-gold
blunderbuss--four feet long, with a curved handle and a wide-flared
barrel, plus enough rococo waves and curly-cues sticking out from
various places to make identifying critical parts a daunting task.
The monkeys pulled on several wavelike flares on the underside of the
weapon, in an apparent attempt to figure out which one was the
trigger.
     Fancy roared, then pulled something out of his belt pouch.  The
Programmer recognized it as the mask Fancy had worn when posing as
Wader's M.I.B.-assigned driver.  Fancy was pulling it toward his face
when the monkeys found the trigger on their blunderbuss, and the
weapon went off.
     At first, it appeared that nothing had happened.  No ray or
projectile came out of the weapon, though it did make a sound somewhat
like a man in rubber boots walking through mud.  It took a moment for
The Programmer to realize that both Fancy and Wader had stopped
moving.
     "What the hell...?" asked Miguel.  He was on his feet now,
despite still having his hands bound behind his back.  The Programmer
wondered if he had been feigning disorientation before.  Miguel
advanced on Fancy, clearly puzzled as to what had stopped the enormous
bonobo from moving.
     In mid-step, Miguel froze.  He was still three feet from Fancy.
The demon monkeys with the strange blunderbuss nodded to one another,
then with some difficulty carried their weapon away.  They were
distracted by the sound of a grating falling to the floor, and then a
cry.
     "Miguel!"
     The Programmer saw a teenage Hispanic boy leap out of the hole
formerly covered by the grating.  The armor-pants he wore looked like
they belonged to someone far larger--in fact, they looked like they
were currently stretched over someone far larger.  They also appeared
flight-capable, as the boy used them to swoop down to the ground with
fair speed.
     "Hey, Esteban, wait!" another teenage boy called from the hole
in the wall.  He leapt from said hole a moment later, and it was only
the intervention of Rumi Moroboshi--the red-haired teen girl who had
earlier saved The Programmer from demon monkeys and compelled his
assistance in finding her mother--who, by flying out and catching him
by the wrist, kept the boy from hitting the ground with force enough
to break something.  Rumi carried the blond-haired boy down to land
next to Esteban and Miguel.
     "Be careful, Lemon," Rumi said.  The boy, Lemon, seemed to be
having too much fun with the flight to care.
     The demon monkeys did not seem impressed with this display.
They watched it with caution, but did not intervene.  The Programmer
knew that would change if any of them looked like they were trying to
rescue Fancy.  He rolled his stolen transmitter over and over in his
palm.
     As if these events were not disconcerting enough, The Programmer
was surprised to see a two-foot-tall bronze-gold metallic bonobo
emerge from the right thigh of Esteban's battle pants, as if the
surface was liquid instead of solid.  The small monkey landed beside
Miguel, raised a hand of caution toward Esteban, and seemed to
consider the situation.
     Finally, the bonobo walked around in front of Miguel and pushed
on his knees.  Miguel stumbled back, and seemed to break out of
whatever had kept him in stasis.
     "What... what was that?" he asked.
     Esteban looked at the golden bonobo, who looked back at him.
Esteban nodded, then turned to Miguel.
     "Coco says they're in a slow-aether bubble," he said.  "That
weird gun they were using projects those.  It's basically a temporary
bubble where, inside, the aetheric physics of the Hidden Empire's home
dimension rule."
     "But why are they slow?" Rumi asked.
     Esteban and Rumi now both looked at Coco, who looked back at
them.
     "Oh," said Rumi, nodding.  "That makes sense... sort of."
     Some kind of telepathic communication was going on, The
Programmer realized, but only between Coco, Esteban, and Rumi.  Why
this was, he had no idea.
     "What'd he say?" asked Lemon.  The Programmer noticed that Miguel
regarded the boy with some considerable suspicion--suspicion of what,
The Programmer again had no idea--but was keeping that reaction in
check.
     "It's been adjusted," said Esteban, "so that the temporological
aspect of the aether is extremely thin.  In aetheric terms,
there's..."  The boy paused, looked at Coco, then spoke again.
"...not enough aether for time within the bubble to move at regular
speed."
     "So why did he freeze, then?" Lemon asked.
     "The field can expand to envelop any lifeform that comes into
contact with it," Esteban explained.  "It has to, otherwise you get
situations where you're half in and half out, and half of your
bloodstream is moving at regular speed, and half at super-slow speed,
one lung goes at one speed and the other slower, and... well, you
die."  He regarded Fancy and Wader, then shook his head.  "But that's
not what the monkeys want."
     "Why was it so bright?" Miguel asked.  "The light grew intense
when I was... I dunno, inside.  And why didn't it affect goldenrod
here?"
     Coco floated up to Miguel's eye-level and crossed his arms.
     "He says the light grew bright because the luminiferous aspect
was not thinned," said Esteban.  "So people outside the bubble can
still see those inside.  Which is..."  Esteban stopped, frowned, and
looked at Coco.  "But why isn't the light affected by time as... okay,
okay."
     Coco grinned and spun around.
     "As for the second question," said Esteban, "he can alter his
interior state to compensate for aetheric variances."
     "And he cooks some good omelettes," Lemon noted.  Coco gave a
modest shrug.
     "Hey, he's still moving!" Miguel exclaimed.
     "Lemon, back up," said Rumi.  "Stay away from the edge."
     The Programmer wondered if Rumi could see the edge of the bubble.
She was half-alien, he remembered, so he guessed it was possible.  She
restrained Lemon from moving any closer, and peered at Fancy.  The
Programmer saw that Fancy had indeed moved, his mask a few inches
farther up than it had been a few minutes ago.
     "Not frozen," Miguel observed.  "Just---"
     Another crash interrupted Miguel's observation.  The Programmer
looked up the wall, on the opposite side from where the three teens
had come, and saw another hole where a grating had once been.  Two
women emerged, both of whom The Programmer recognized from having
encountered them earlier--Cendra Seconds and Glum.
     "Mom!" Rumi exclaimed.
     "Cendra!" Miguel yelled.  Glum, who was only slightly less
supercharged-looking than she had been when The Programmer had last
run away from her, swooped in and set Cendra down in front of Miguel.
The Programmer observed that Cendra's eyes were wide, and that she was
slightly trembling.  When Miguel attempted to embrace her, The
Programmer heard a loud snap, and both Miguel and Cendra jumped back.
     "Ouch," said Cendra.  "Sorry about that!"  She grinned.  "Glum's
been carrying me around.  I feel like I've been drinking extra-
caffeinated coffee since, I don't know, forever."
     "I've lost some of the charge I got from the nectarisite pile,"
Glum said, as she gave Rumi a brief hug, "but I've still got a lot in
me."  She looked over at the horde of demon monkeys, who were
regarding the new arrivals with suspicion, though they did not seem
about to attack.  "I like what they've done with these two," she said,
indicating Fancy and Wader.
     "Esteban was saying..." Miguel started, but again he was
interrupted.  The square-forming line on the floor of the hub lit up,
and a rumbling noise filled the air.  The Programmer noticed for the
first time that all the vehicles and all the prisoners were inside
this square, and that the demon monkeys were hurriedly getting inside
it as well.
     "Looks like we're about to go up," Cendra observed.  "Okay,
everybody, hang on.  I'm not sure we're even supposed to be doing this
without a vehicle.  If it goes up at the same speed it came down---"
     The square rose from the floor of the hub, toward an opening in
the ceiling.  It moved briskly but not super-fast, giving anyone not
quite ready time to pull in any loose appendages.
     "Hey," said Lemon, looking around as if he had just gotten onto a
disappointing carnival ride.  "This isn't even sca... ry?"
     The Programmer noticed the change the same time the boy did.  A
feeling of hesitation in the platform.  Then it accelerated, as if
rockets attached to its underside had suddenly gone off.  Everyone
standing on the platform outside the busses immediately fell to the
ground.  The Programmer fell back, the blow of the deck against his
back knocking the wind out of him.
     He kept his grip on his stolen transmitter, and vowed that he
would someday return.

                                 ***

     "You!" Capella exclaimed, as she fired another bolt of
nectarisitic energy at Rad.  Rad dodged this time, fighting past the
pain of her earlier strike to concentrate his aim.  His psychokinetic
bolts struck her abdomen and shoulder, sending her hurtling toward
pavement.
     She recovered in time to turn a hard landing into a rolling one,
and was back in the air in the blink of an eye.  Rad took the
opportunity to reinforce his psychokinetic shielding.  Though it had
proved of limited use against the energies Capella projected, that
'use' had thus far turned killer strikes into injuring ones.  He flew
up farther into the night sky, above where the sphere-ships clustered.
     "You could have let us have him!" Capella yelled, as she flew up
toward him.  "We would have gone, and you never would have seen us
again!"
     Rad strafed psychokinetic blasts at her.  The first one struck
her leg, but she managed to avoid the rest.  Capella returned with a
single nectarisitic laser blast that missed him, though it came close
enough to scorch the skin of his lower arm.  She was wobbling a bit as
she flew, and Rad sensed another bolt might finish her off.
     "Like, surrender, heinous noble babe!" he declared.  "Or, like,
I'll have to, like, take you down, y'kno---"
     Rad was cut off as four demon monkeys appeared above him and
dropped down, screeching and clawing.  As before, their claws found no
purchase against his psychokinetically shielded skin, and they bounced
or slid off.  They disappeared as soon as this happened.
     He looked up in time to receive a nectarisite blast to the chest.
This one felt like being hit by a truck, and sent him end-over-end
down toward the sphere-ships.  He fought to regain control.
     Capella was there in an instant, her hand against his throat.
Rad realized he had dropped his psychokinetic shields in order to
focus on staying aloft and that she could kill him before he brought
them back up.
     "If it is war you wish with us," she said, ending the last word
with a hiss.  "Then it is war you shall ha---"
     Black boots struck Capella's back, slamming her down from where
she and Rad hovered.  Rad blinked, looked down, and saw Capella and a
dark figure falling fast.  Capella seemed stunned.  The dark figure
seemed determined to drive her into the broken asphalt of the Dodgers
Stadium parking lot.  Rad dove down, wondering if he would have time
to intervene.
     The dark figure relented, reaching down and pulling Capella up
into its arms.  It landed two seconds later, its impact accompanied
by a sharp crashing sound and an additional wave of spiderweb cracks
in the concrete.  The figure remained upright, having landed with
knees bent and Capella in its arms.  Rad landed, and immediately
recognized the figure.
     "Like, whoa, Chalandra," he said.  "That was some, like, most
excellent saving, like, y'know?"
     Chalandra Harkness grinned at him, revealing her fangs.  She had
changed into a black leather outfit, the kind he remembered her
wearing for motorcycling.  Her dirtwater-blonde hair was tied behind
her head, making her look even younger than the perpetual twenty-three
she had been for five centuries.  She regarded Capella with disdain as
she laid the unconscious woman down on some relatively unbroken
asphalt.
     "China told you reinforcements were on the way, right?" Chalandra
asked.
     "Like, yah," said Rad.  "Like, nice move, y'know?  It was very,
like, y'know... 'Underworld.'"
     "I get that a lot," Chalandra wryly replied.  "Where's Manny?"
     "He's, like, over... like, look out!"
     Capella--not so unconscious as previously believed--had risen
from where Chalandra had placed her and was aiming her right arm at
Chalandra.  Before she could fire, Chalandra spun and headbutted
her.  Capella collapsed, and did not move further.
     "I swear, it's like a board meeting, some days," Chalandra
commented.  Rad decided not to ask for an elaboration.  "Wh... oh,
there he is.  Come on, let's get to him."
     Rad saw Confusion, Criticalman, Guido, and the pseudo-ninjas and
pseudo-zombies they were restraining from rejoining the battle.
Nearby, a black-and-gold Harxxon helicopter--from which Chalandra had
presumably leapt--had just set down.  Rad could see Elizabeth Tirkoff,
Dr. Gigawatt, and two Harxxon employees climbing out.  He took to the
air, following Chalandra as she ran toward them with more-than-human
speed past dueling demon monkeys and armed goats.
     Halfway there, the air was split with a massive cacophony of
monkey screeches and howls.  Rad looked toward the underground
elevator shaft, obscured though it was by the main body of the demon
monkey horde.  They were wildly excited about something or other, he
could tell.
     A second later, the howls of excitement turned to rage, as a
massive form in a torn black limo driver's uniform leapt high into the
air.  Rad estimated the leaper made it twenty feet up before gravity
had its way and brought him down.  The massive figure wore a mask that
disguised his facial features, and had black fur where parts of his
outfit had been torn away.  He landed on his feet, between the demon
monkeys and a group of six goats.
     "Fancy!" one of the goats yelled.  "It's Fancy!"
     "Grab him, by Jove!" another declared.
     Darts flashed from the muzzles of the goats' gunbelts.  Three
struck the figure, who Rad realized was the elusive Erasmus Fancy that
Capella sought.  Fancy snarled and leapt again, unfazed by the darts.
     This time, it was the demon monkeys who intervened, appearing on
him in great numbers.  Too great, it turned out, as they got in one
another's way as they all attempted to latch onto him.  Fancy shook
two off and landed on the other side of the goats.
     Though Rad was unsure as to how much of what Capella had told him
about Fancy was true, he remembered that Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle had
earlier labeled him a 'criminal mastermind,' and decided that it would
be a bad idea to just let him scamper away.  He flew after the
gorilla--no, bonobo, he corrected himself--and landed before him.
     Erasmus Fancy did not slow, roaring as he charged.  Rad braced
himself and strengthened his psychokinetic shields.  Fancy struck him
hard, and Rad staggered, having slightly underestimated the opposing
force he needed to generate, or perhaps how much his fight with
Capella had depleted his strength.  But it was Fancy who fell to the
ground.
     Before the bonobo could get up, Rad snatched away his mask.  The
face revealed was very angry.  Rad recognized it from the description
he had been earlier given, right down to the missing left eye and the
scar that ran through the socket.  All that was different was that the
eye-socket had been filled by a bronze-gold metallic ball.
     The mask was now inside out, and Rad saw that one side of it had
a flexible, foil-like panel.  The foil was bronze-gold, and Rad
realized it must be nectarisite.  He was unsure of its purpose, but
given that the mask had no eyeholes, he guessed it at minimum allowed
Fancy to see---
     "Asylum!" Fancy declared, drawing Rad's attention.  "I demand
asylum!  Do not hand me over to Capella!"
     Before Rad could reply, the air was filled with demon monkeys.
Whatever discipline they had earlier demonstrated seemed abandoned in
their fervor to get to Fancy, and both he and Rad were buffeted by
them as they leapt and teleported in.  Rad heard the whine of multiple
darts fired by the goats, but the monkeys kept coming.
     Only Fancy was no longer there.  Rad saw him leap, back in the
direction of the elevator shaft and the hovering sphere-ships.  The
move took the monkeys and the goats by surprise, and they watched with
him, dumbfounded.
     Rad was about to pursue when his implanted radio receiver came to
life.
     "Rad, Rad, you there?" he heard Confusion ask.  "China said she'd
patch me through---"
     "Like, yah," said Rad.  "Like, what---"
     "The zombies and ninjas are revolting!" Confusion exclaimed.
"Also, we've lost containment!  Someone's giving them active direction
again!"
     "Like, on my way, dude," Rad replied.  The monkeys and goats were
already pursuing Fancy.  Rad looked at Fancy's mask, stuffed it into
the pocket of his blue jean cutoffs, then took to the sky once more.
     Whatever strategies the various sides in the conflict had
attempted had, by this time, degenerated into a melee.  Demon monkeys,
goats, superguys, jetpack-wearing agents, pseudo-zombies, and pseudo-
ninjas were all fighting one another beneath the lights of the stadium
parking lot and the hovering sphere-ships.  The concessions vendors on
the edge of the fray had moved their supplies back inside their
vehicles, though they continued to be ready to sell beer, soda,
snacks, and bananas to people, monkeys, and goats.  Finding Fancy in
all this would be---
     "Like, wait," said Rad.  "There he is, narrator dude."
     Oh, fine, he's over there.  Leaping, if you must know.
     "Like, right," Rad said.  "Like, where's he, y'know, think he's
going?"
     Not waiting for an answer, Rad flew into the fray.  He arced
between monkeys and goats, deflecting darts and personal space
invasions alike.  Bolts of electrical power projected by the sphere-
ships ripped the asphalt around him, forcing him to soar higher.
     Fancy was on the ground, fighting off a swarm of monkeys.  Rad
was unsure of what he was trying to get to.  Possibly the elevator
shaft, but he was facing the wrong way for... no, there.  Standing on
top of one of the busses, shouting something into a thing in his right
hand.
     The Programmer.  The guy he and Manny had been told to find.
     As he swooped down, Rad saw a boy in a far-too-large pair of
bronze-gold metallic pants lift into the air, also heading towards
Fancy.  Lifting off with him was a teenage girl in an orange t-shirt
and---
     "Like, Rumi!" he exclaimed, recognizing his daughter.  He started
to say more...
     ...then everything around him started moving at super-speed, and
grew overwhelmingly bright.
     "Hmmm," said Rad.  "That shouldn't be."

(concluded in part four, following...)
--
Elizabeth Tirkoff appears with permission of Eric A. Burns-White.
--
Copyright (c) 2009 by Gary W. Olson.  All Rights Reserved.
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
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