SG: Rad #98 (1/3): Hostages Are

[Gary W. Olson]

                                 RAD
                             Episode 98
                 [ Rad Returns, Part Eight of Ten ]
               "Hostages Are Not to Be Served Canapes"
                                 by
                            Gary W. Olson

                                 ***

     "The one thing I want you to know," said The Programmer, as he
rubbed the back of his head, "is that none of this was my idea."
     Rumiko Moroboshi, standing a wary distance from the supposedly-
former villain, nodded.  She did not really believe what he said, but
she was willing to allow him his delusions of persuasion.  Akane
Moroboshi, her aunt, had indicated to her and Rad, her father, that
The Programmer was someone who ought to be found, and she had found
him.  More accurately, he had found her, after bursting into the
supply room into which she had only minutes before been magically
translocated.  A misunderstanding centering on the demon monkeys that
were wreaking havoc in his pants had caused her to hit him with a
psychokinetic blast that had briefly made him faint.  After he revived
and she had calmed him down, she confronted him about what little she
knew--namely, that a pack of pseudo-zombies had kidnapped her mother
and several of her friends, and that he was somehow connected.  A
metal made of a mysterious element called nectarisite was involved,
and... that was more or less it--aside from a guided vision involving
a bronze-gold, demon-monkey-crewed airship called the _Subtler Than
Light_ in 1899 Central America that had no immediate relevance she
could see.  Other than the involvement of demon monkeys.
     Esteban Veracruz would have known more.  His armored trousers,
Los Pantalones, were made of nectarisite, and she thought he could
have asked questions she would not think to ask.  But he, and
Shadebeam Moroboshi, had not translocated with her as expected.
Esteban's friend, Lemon Rydell, had unexpectedly burst in and rushed
the magic circle as Shadebeam cast the translocation spell.  But the
fact that she made it through and right away found The Programmer told
Rumi that she had reached the correct vicinity of where her mother and
friends had been kidnapped.  She could hope that Shadebeam and Esteban
had made it through as well, and were not too far away.
     "I haven't been a villain in six or seven years," The Programmer
went on, oblivious to her reflections.  "I was working for an
insurance company.  Only I was being used.  They had these nectarisite
liquid-metal fibers that would come up out of my keyboard, poke my
fingers, and take over my perceptions.  I did the programming and
circuit design work they wanted in c-space, and at the end of the day,
I'd be released with no memories of what I'd done."
     "Didn't you find that suspicious?" Rumi asked.  "I mean, if this
has been going on for years..."
     "You ever work for an insurance company?" The Programmer asked
back.
     Rumi shook her head.  The Programmer continued.
     "Then, just today, this limo shows up, and this woman's in it,
claiming she's an M.I.B. agent.  Which is weird, 'cause I thought the
M.I.B. got disbanded over a decade ago.  There were hearings about it,
right?  Anyway, I'm made to get in, then she shoots me with a dart,
and when I wake up I remember everything about what I've been doing
for them."
     "At which point you immediately protest and do everything in your
power to stop them?"
     The Programmer snorted.  "No, at which point I continue to do
their bidding because I'm a prisoner.  Plus, if I don't, they'll get
somebody else to do it, and that person will totally get to put it on
their resume if it works."
     "But, after what happened during the Genocidal War," said Rumi,
searching her memory of the quick brief on recent history she had been
given on the way to Earth.  "Psybernet's mind-controlled army..."
     "I don't know if that was the inspiration or not," said The
Programmer, "though references were made.  I think they wanted
something that could be controlled without putting a super-
powered individual at the center of it.  Something that could be run
by agents unquestionably loyal to the M.I.B."
     "Mystery metal is an improvement?"
     The Programmer shrugged.  "As far as the M.I.B. is concerned,
metal is metal.  As long as they're the ones issuing the commands,
it's all good.  The way it works--or worked, I should say--there's a
set of default instructions based on a particular 'character' we want
the chip-controlled to embody.  Diplomat, custodian, bartender, you
name it."
     "Zombie?"
     "Completely Secret Secret Agent Wader's idea.  Same with the
ninjas.  Maybe it's that sort of outside-the-skull thinking the new
M.I.B. likes about her.  Anyway, when no one's on the microphone
delivering specific instructions, these recorded defaults go out to
reinforce for anyone watching that they are who they say they are."
     Rumi considered the reference to Dana Wader, the former Empress
of the long-defunct Muuuahahahahan Empire, who was now working as a
high-level agent for a supposedly-defunct Earth-based secret agency.
Her parents had told her stories about Dana, through the years, ones
that impressed upon Rumi that Dana was thoroughly evil, to the point
where, if she had a mustache, the wind power its twirling generated
could power a fair-sized city.  Rumi was sure that Dana found her
present circumstances galling, and that what she was up to here was
somehow intended to elevate them.
     But there was little new The Programmer could say about *her.*
She went back to his statement, thought about it, then crossed her
arms.  "So zombies on this world go around *announcing* they're
zombies?"
     "I didn't write or record those tapes," said The Programmer,
spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness.  "One of the mike
guys told me they produced those based on this M.I.B. manual from the
fifties called 'Case Study on How to Stop a Zombie Uprising.'  They
had another one for ninjas, and another one for bank robbers, and we
didn't really have time to come up with our own material, so..."
     "They were worried about a bank robber uprising?"
     "I think the word in the manual was 'spree,' but---"
     "The bank robbery that happened this morning," Rumi interrupted.
"That was your 'bank robber' program in action?"
     "A test run," The Programmer replied.  "Um... do you mind if I
stand up?"
     Rumi nodded.  Despite his general tallness and looming nature,
The Programmer seemed no physical threat.  Possibly, she thought, it
had to do with the way he cringed and cupped himself whenever she
gestured at him.
     The Programmer got to his feet, though he continued to lean
against the wall opposite Rumi.  "A test run, which a superguy called
Rad, who wasn't even supposed to be on Earth anymore, broke up.  You
know who he is?"
     Rumi nodded again.  She had not yet given her name to The
Programmer, and saw no reason to give any other information unless she
had to.  It was The Programmer who needed to talk.
     "Dana blamed me for the failure of the system," said The
Programmer.  "Even though I warned her... well, users never listen,
right?  She had me come up with something that day to block these
alien comm channels, which I guess Rad uses so he can stay in contact
with the computer at his house.  She used to be this Empress chick
from outer space, right, so she knows this stuff.  Simple jamming.  No
problem for me.
     "Of course, I don't know I did this until later on, when she came
around in her limo and had me picked up.  Shot a dart in my neck, and
wham, when I wake up, I remember everything.  We get driven down
through this tunnel, which... um... was big.  And then we show up in
this underground base, and I'm put to work."
     Rumi frowned.  The Programmer, up until this point, had seemed
more or less forthright.  But there had been a look she did not like
on his face when he talked about the tunnel.
     "It turns out everything on their timetable has been sped up,"
The Programmer continued.  "And by 'sped up,' I mean they were
freaking out.  Up on the surface, there was this nectarisite portal,
and they found out about it, 'cause they have some nectarisite too,
and that gorilla-sized bonobo who's working with Dana, he knows how to
use it to detect stuff.  And that meant to him that the jig was up,
and the Hidden Empire was about to make its move to catch him.  So he
and Dana send out kidnappers to bring in guys to quick-fix the system,
thinking they still have a little time, only, as you can see, they
didn't."
     "Gorilla-sized bonobo," said Rumi, as a rush of alarm sped
through her.  "Named...?"
     "Erasmus Fancy," said The Programmer.  "Totally made up, right?
Like some kind of circus gorilla.  Only he could talk, right?  He had
kind of a clearer head than Dana, from what I could tell.  I got to
spy on him and Dana a bit, through c-space.  The rest of what I just
told you was in their project logs.  Did you know Dana can't spell
'eviscerate' right?  I mean, she should, she uses it often enough...."
     Rumi nodded, though her mind was on Erasmus Fancy.  After the
cryptic statements made in her vision by Akane, she had half-expected
to soon meet the imperious Capella, the captain of the _Subtler Than
Light._  But Akane had taken the time to specifically identify
Erasmus, who had been in a nearby floating bronze-gold bubble along
with an unnamed Reptiloid, an unnamed Burrolan, and two unnamed demon
monkeys.  Rumi tried to remember if Akane had said anything about
Erasmus she ought to remember.
     "On the other hand," said The Programmer, "The gorilla was saying
some weird stuff about how some Reptiloids buried seven engines in the
earth, and this attracted the attention of the Hidden Empire to the
surface world.  So maybe he was nuts, too, just better at hiding it.
Then he hooked this older babe to the nectarisite pile, said something
about how the nectarisite 'wanted' bioelectricity more than other
power sources, and---"
     Rumi's eyes went wide.  "Was she wearing a tiger-striped sun
dress?"
     The Programmer blinked.  "Um... yeah, I think.  Why?"
     Glum.  Her mother.  She narrowed her eyes.  The Programmer
noticed the change in her expression and pressed further against the
wall.
     "You've got to take me to her!"
     "We've got to get out of here," he said.  "We're eight-and-a-half
miles underground, did you know that?"
     Rumi shook her head, this time masking her surprise.  She had had
no idea that humans had underground dwellings this far down.  She then
thought of the Burrolans she had earlier met in Malaga, and wondered
if what she was in human-built, or just currently human-occupied.
     "Those demon monkeys that were attacking me," continued The
Programmer, "were trying to get me to stop running long enough for
more of 'em to pile on.  It takes a bunch of them to teleport a human,
I guess.  Anyway, they were trying to get us all to the central hub,
where there's this big elevator that goes to the surface.  I'd... like
to be on it.  And out of here.  Um... please?"
     He was leaving something out again.  She could tell because he
was looking sort of shifty now, and he was actually trying to smile.
     "Make you a deal," said Rumi.  "You lead me to my... to this
woman in the tiger-striped sun dress... and--"
     "And you let me go?" The Programmer asked, hope in his voice.
     Rumi shook her head.
     "I'll get you out of here alive," she said.  "And I'll refrain
from demonstrating the meaning of the phrase 'psychokinetic wedgie.'"
     The Programmer scowled, then nodded.
     "She's on the other side of the compound," he said.  "It's not
safe to take the direct route, via the hub, but there's a couple of
ring corridors that---"
     The Programmer was interrupted when a two-and-a-half-foot-tall
black-uniformed demon monkey appeared near the ceiling and dropped on
his head.  It screeched and swatted at him, and then Rumi could see no
more, as three more demon monkeys of similar size landed on her.
     She realized she had made a mistake in relaxing her psychokinetic
shields, but found she was too occupied to spare a thought to raising
them.  One monkey yanked her head back by her hair while the second
smacked the back of her knees and the third slashed at her stomach
with its paw.  She retained enough control to deflect the strike,
though it tore a deep gash in her day-glo orange t-shirt.
     The monkeys paused, surprised.  One psychokinetic pulse later,
they were even more surprised, and now flat against the wall.  They
disappeared, only to reappear behind Rumi, who had lunged for the
door.
     "Ack!" she exclaimed.  "Get... off!"
     She swung her arm around and behind her, trying to reach the
demon monkey clinging to her hair.  Her psychokinetic blast shattered
shelving and sent computer parts and monitors flying.  The monkey on
her back screeched and tried to reach her eyes.
     It was entirely unprepared for the hub router it received upside
its head.  Rumi watched as it fell off her, then looked up at The
Programmer, who seemed as surprised as she that his violent move had
worked.
     "They're'll be more," he said.  "We've got to split!"
     Rumi yanked open the door, grabbed The Programmer's wrist, and
ran into the darkened corridor.

                                 ***

     It was not the best kiss Rad had ever experienced, but it did
change the world around him.  So it seemed, in the following moments,
when Capella broke the kiss and pulled away, letting him take in the
sight of the enormous golden temple.  It glowed in the early morning
light, so brightly that Rad automatically reached into his jean shorts
pocket for his sunglasses, only to remember he had lost his shades
during the aerial battle that had brought him to the _Subtler Than
Light._  The ship he had, pre-kiss, been on.  Capella stepped to his
side and gestured to the temple and the many equally-goldlike,
equally-glowing buildings beyond it.
     "You're standing in Cibola... the City of Gold," she said, as she
swept a lock of her long blonde hair from her left eye.  "One of the
finest cities of the Hidden Empire.  My home."
     "It sure is... bright," said Rad, shading his eyes with his
incredibly well-tanned hand.  The 'like' and 'whoa' and 'I mean, like,
y'know' he had intended to say with the sentence somehow dropped out
when he actually spoke it, though Capella seemed able to understand
him despite these omissions.  The change to his speech patterns had
started the moment he crash-landed on the _Subtler Than Light,_ but so
far, it had not resulted in any confusion from his captors.  It
disturbed him nevertheless, because it felt symptomatic of something
else--as if his brain did not want to work the way it always had
before.
     "Yes," Capella replied, shielding her eyes with her hand as Rad
did.  "Not much cloud cover today.  I'd offer you a pair of goggles,
but as you may have already guessed, we're not really here."
     Rad, who had guessed no such thing, nevertheless nodded as if he
had.  He squinted a bit, and could see people moving about in the
golden streets and golden sidewalks that ran between the golden
buildings.  Though it was hard to tell with all the bright golden
haze, he guessed they were more or less human in shape and size, and
they appeared to be wearing--in stark contrast to Capella's black
military uniform--light tunics and sandals of varying colors.  All he
saw wore gold wraparound glasses, and seemed to have no problems with
the glare.
     The buildings themselves were marvels.  Around a central,
hundred-foot-high flat-topped, pyramid-shaped stepped temple, numerous
smaller stepped buildings ranged.  Rad thought he could make out faces
and shapes carved into the sides, though the golden haze made further
identification difficult.  He raised a hand to his eyes and looked up
at the sun... and gasped.
     The sky was a deep, perfect blue.  Too perfect, Rad thought.  The
patch occupied by the sun had the same strength as Earth's sun, but
felt wrong to Rad.  Perhaps that had to do with the 'not really here'
thing that Capella had mentioned, but Rad thought it was more than
that.  Such as how the sky and the sun rippled, as if made of water.
     "It is the sun," Capella said, as if understanding his thoughts.
"Our sun, anyway, through the filter of the nectarisite barrier that
is our sky."
     Rad considered it again.  All the nectarisite he had previously
seen had been a uniform bronze-gold, but this, if Capella was to be
believed, was transparent.  He wondered how the night stars appeared,
shimmering through the barrier.
     "Why are you showing me this?" he asked.
     "You must understand why we are desperate to retrieve Erasmus
Fancy," said Capella, taking his hand.  "And for you to understand
that, you must understand our world."
     "Your world?"
     "The Hidden Empire," said Capella, as she turned away to look in
the opposite direction from the city, "occupies a world within your
world.  Imagine, if you will, that the Earth is hollow, that its crust
is no more than thirty miles thick, and that, on the other side... is
this."  She gestured about her.  "What would you say?"
     Rad thought about it.  He thought about it some more.  He looked
in the direction Capella was looking, and saw where, not too far away,
the deep blue sky met the blonde summer grass.  A gold railing was at
this boundary, and Rad guessed the city was up on a plateau or cliff
or mountain of some kind.  Which was a strange place to put a city, he
thought, but he had seen weirder.
     "Well?" Capella asked.  Her lips were curled in a soft smile.
     "I... um... what was the question?"
     Capella's smile disappeared.  "Odd," she said.  "When I was
informed you were once an Emperor, I thought you'd be... brighter,
somehow."  She shook her head.  "Anyway, I wanted to know what you
thought of the idea that the Earth is hollow, that..."
     "Oh, that," said Rad.  He grinned.  "No way."
     "Why not?" she asked.  Rad became conscious that she had not let
go of his hand, and that her other arm had found its way around his
waist.  There was no denying that she was attractive, though Rad
suspected that pheromones of some sort were at work.  He doubted she
was trying to seduce him, though it was clear she thought she could
influence him.  But to what end?
     "Well," said Rad, again trying to remember the question.  "The
Earth isn't hollow.  Even if it wasn't impossible, and on top of that
absurd... we already know about the tunnels that lead to Earth's core.
They go through the liquid mantle all the way down."
     "In other words..." she prompted.
     "People have already been inside the Earth," said Rad.  "It's
full up of stuff."
     "And if I were to tell you that we're in another dimension, where
these tunnels you refer to do not appear?"
     Rad tried to say 'like, whoa,' but nothing came out.  He ended up
shrugging.
     "Come, now," said Capella, sounding to Rad as if she took his
shrug as a denial.  "You've had experiences with other dimensions, I'm
told.  The Television Dimension, the Scary Dimension, the Kitsch
Dimension, the Silly Dimension, the Shadow Dimension... you've either
been to these or know someone who has."
     Rad, wondering how she knew this, nodded.
     She let go of his waist and hand, and started walking toward the
railing.  He took a look back at the city, then followed.
     "Call ours the Aetheric Dimension, if you must have a name for
it," she said.  "We called yours the 'Mechanistic Dimension.'  Though
I suppose we'll have to rename it, once we determine what 'quantum' is
and why you think it explains things."
     "And you're just coming in to our dimension to get this Erasmus
Fancy," said Rad.  "You're not interested in conquest or invasion?"
     Capella laughed at his question, and Rad, who was usually a good
judge of such things, could not be sure if the laugh was genuine or
not.
     "If you knew," she said, "how much trouble just coming to your
dimension is..."  She shook her head.  "No, we're not interested in
your surface empires.  Even if we were... we have too many
difficulties of our own to deal with."
     Rad remembered something said earlier by Bhossi, a
superintelligent bovine scientist on the _Vander Harkness._  "You mean
Terra Subterrene?"
     Capella scowled, then resumed her friendly demeanor.  "They have
been difficult, yes.  We trade with them, for our mutual survival.
Long ago, it was more one-sided, to our benefit, which led to
certain... excesses.  I'm sure your informants, whoever they may be,
hold sharper views on these.  Terra Subterrene is still resentful--in
varying degrees, depending on which civilization you consider--which
is why we have crossed directly from our dimension to the surface of
Earth in yours in order to get to Erasmus's underground hideout,
bypassing the subsurface zones controlled by Terra Subterrene
altogether.  War would be devastating... to both sides."
     They neared the edge.  The sky faintly rippled.  In the distance,
hovering in the sky, Rad saw a metallic ring.  Several bronze-gold
objects hovered beneath it--some moving closer, others further away.
Rad noted other bronze-gold objects hovering close to where the sky
rippled.  They had tubes that went into the nectarisite and
disappeared.
     "That's one of our trade gates," said Capella, indicating the
ring.  "There are six fixed in place in the nectarisite barrier--
which would correspond, in your dimension, to the Earth's crust.  We
use these gates for trade with the civilizations of Terra Subterrene.
The gate the _Subtler Than Light_ used to cross over to the surface of
Earth in your dimension, beyond Terra Subterrene's jurisdiction, is
similar, though it is not visible from this point.  We can move it
about as necessary, though it is time-consuming to do so."
     They reached the railing.  Rad looked down... and gasped.
     He could see the green and brown of a large continent below,
bordered by oceans on all sides.  Two major rivers, a number of
smaller, barely visible ones, mountain ranges on the western edge and
the northern plateau.  Thick clouds over the continent's eastern
seaboard, a haze over the south... and above the clouds, numerous
islands, floating without any visible means of support.  One had a
tether that led down into a cloud bank, upon which Rad could see
something move.  An elevator, he guessed.
     Metallic airships floated between the islands, or between islands
and the world below.  Unlike the _Subtler Than Light,_ these did not
seem to be made of nectarisite, and bore sails and propellers and
other visible means of support and propulsion.  Some resembled
zeppelins, and some resembled longboats attached to large balloons.
Others seemed like nineteenth-century frigates and corsairs, which
should have been impossible, though it was clear to Rad that
'possible' had long since gone out for cigarettes and never come back.
     Most striking were the horizons.  Rad, who was no stranger to
seeing the curve of a planet while flying, thought there was something
off about the angles.  They were wrong, in a way he could not quite
think to express.  Narrowed, somehow.  He looked at Capella, who
seemed to be contemplating the island with the elevator-bearing
tether.
     "It is lucky that we were able to elevate Cibola in time," she
said.  "The aether is still full and rich, here, though the
temporological aspect has lost most of its thickness, and the
luminiferous aspect could stand to be slower, particularly on days
such as these."
     "I have no idea what that means," Rad said.  He peered over the
edge of the railing, and saw no rock face leading down.  A sign next
to the railing showed a stick figure leaning over the railing, with a
red slash superimposed.  A second scene on the sign showed the stick
figure falling off a floating island, landing on the planet below,
causing some sort of damage to the stick figure's head.  The stick
figure in the second scene had a frowny face.
     "We need Erasmus Fancy because the aether is changing," said
Capella, looking up at him.  He found it impossible to look away from
her large and compelling eyes.  "The aether is changing because the
nectarisite has become corrupted.  And we believe that only Erasmus
Fancy can restore the balance."
     "So why don't you just..."
     "He does not accept our good intentions," Capella answered.  "I
suspect because he was the one who made possible the corruption in the
first place, and he fled our dimension to escape our wrath."
     As she spoke, the world around them dissolved.  Island and world
below and airships and golden city and rippling sky all vanished,
replaced by the bronze-gold, oval-shaped room he had been in prior to
her kiss.  She did not watch the illusion dissolve; instead she
watched him.
     "Now," she said, "will you talk to your people, and convince them
not to oppose us?  Or, better yet, to aid us in apprehending Fancy?  I
would... reward you, for your cooperation."
     She ran a finger up Rad's chest to his throat, and Rad felt his
well-tanned skin tingle.  Her meaning was clear, and he felt the
attraction... and yet, he hesitated.  Not because of Glum--both he
and she had other lovers, and she would hardly have batted an eye at
this--but because there was a battle going on outside, and lives were
on the line.  Because there was something more important at stake.
     This thought, more than the loss of his psychokinetic powers or
the loss of the 'likes' and 'y'knows' from his speech patterns, made
him wonder what had happened to his brain.  He wondered what was next.
A fondness for line dancing?  A desire to winter in Minnesota?  Or
even--he quietly gasped at the very concept--an urge to apply a
sensible amount of UV-ray-blocking sun cream to his extremely well-
tanned skin?
     Capella seemed about to speak again, when a voice echoed in the
room.
     "Eeeek ook aaak eek aaak!"
     She frowned, then withdrew her finger from his throat.
     "The _Vander Harkness_ has returned," she said.  "They are
seeking to talk to you... and to me, I suppose, but they named you."
     "What do they want?" he asked.
     Capella shrugged, and waved a hand at the nearest part of the
wall.  An oval-shaped door irised open.
     "An end to hostilities," said Capella.  "This is where you come
in."
     Rad said nothing, allowing her to lead him out of the room.

(continued in part two, following...)
--
Copyright (c) 2009 by Gary W. Olson.  All Rights Reserved.
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
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