Tales of the Parodyverse

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CrazySugarFreakBoy!
Sun Aug 21, 2005 at 09:53:51 pm EDT
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Untold Tales of the Junior Lair Legion: Agents of Chaos
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Untold Tales of the Junior Lair Legion: Agents of Chaos

“Got some reading material for you,” Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove told Zach Zelnitz, handing him a thick fistful of half a dozen yellowed paperback books. “I’m guessing your Internet privileges are gonna be gone for a good little while, at least, so these should help you get through your data drought, until the grown-ups decide you don’t need to be grounded from going online any longer.”

“Hard-copy print-outs?” Hacker Nine asked CrazySugarFreakBoy!, wincing with barely disguised disappointment at the dusty, tattered pulps. “Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment, by Frank Herbert. TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, by Hakim Bey. Agent of Chaos, by Norman Spinrad. These volumes must be decades old. Their texts don’t even scroll.”

“The medium doesn’t always gotta be the message, man,” Dream sighed, leaning back in one of the two reclining lawn chairs he’d set up on the roof of the Lair Legion Mansion. “You’re the guy who’s all about defying defined paradigms and challenging established boundaries. Everything I’ve just given you is all about subversives and saboteurs taking a stand against the encroachment of unnatural, oppressive order. So, you can either broaden your own horizons, by slogging through pages that you have to turn yourself, or you can be bored, for however long it takes before Mumph and Vizh feel like letting your code-breaking ass get near even so much as a Palm Pilot again.”

Zach’s shoulders slumped in resignation, as he laid the stack of three science fiction novels, and one collection of countercultural essays, on the small patio table between the two lawn chairs. “I suppose I could try to decipher these artifacts, especially since I doubt I’ll have much else to entertain myself with in the meantime. But thanks for thinking of me. Considering that everyone else has been taking turns lecturing me lately, I wasn’t exactly expecting to get gifts from my teacher right now.”

“Your former teacher, you mean,” Dream smirked, as he reached over to the patio table to sip at his virgin strawberry daiquiri through the loops and squiggles of his brightly colored crazy straw. “Dude, I’m maybe a year older than you, at the most. And now that Vizh is back, he gets to be in charge of disciplining you crazy kids again – not that I was ever that active in that department, even when it was my job. Besides, I’d have a hard time taking you to task for doing the same sort of stuff I probably would have done, if I’d been in your place. If it’d been one of the women in my life, and I didn’t know whether or not she was okay …” he frowned, his neon green eyes almost fading to jade.

This meditative silence only lasted for a moment, until Dream crouched forward to slap Zach in the back of the head. “What’s not cool about what you did was how close you came to screwing over several of your friends, without even giving them the courtesy of a heads-up,” he scowled briefly, before shaking his head. “Part of the difference between being a Science Villain in Technopolis and a member of the Lair Legion is that you now have a whole crew of fellow superheroes, who care about you and can be there when you need them, but only if you don’t shut them out. The door swings both ways.”

Zach rubbed at the now-sore spot on his head and halfheartedly sampled an experimental taste of his own strawberry daiquiri. “I don’t know about that. They all seem to be even more upset with me than usual. I’m not so sure I haven’t shut them out already.”

“Dude, don’t even worry about that,” Dream laughed, popping his CD copy of Enya’s Shepherd Moons album into the mini-stereo on the table, as the sun started to set in the western sky. “I broke into the SPUD command helicarrier to chew out Dan Drury, when he broke up with my mom, and you’d better believe there was some serious blowback after I’d pulled that stunt. A few weeks later, though, all was forgotten and forgiven, except among the contingent who never cared for me or my teammates to begin with. I mean, I wouldn’t advise you to keep on going for The Big Red Button option, every single time you opt to buck the system, but you gotta do what your gut tells you is right. Just make sure you leave yourself some wiggle room, in case your instincts ain’t 20/20.”

Zach finally began to relax, as he and Dream lay back in their chairs, drank their daiquiris, and watched the setting sun, with the sounds of “Caribbean Blue” in the background. Zach had wondered why Dream positioned the chairs facing away from the coastline, until he saw the blended layers of vivid purple, pink, red and orange blazing across the horizon of the Parodiopolis city skyline, with its towering buildings and glimmering lights. Even in the midst of such an urban sprawl, the night sky seemed so open to him.

“In Technopolis, no Science Hero would have even thought to say the things that you say, but in this reality, you can be a Science Hero and say such things without even thinking about them,” Zach marveled, his awkward phrasing betraying how blown away he was by such an alien state of affairs. “Almost all of the reasons you’ve given for being a ‘superhero’ here are the same reasons why I chose to become a Science Villain there. Except …” he lowered his voice in embarrassment, “sometimes, when you get going about mythologies and pantheons, you almost sound like a pre-technological Religionist.”

“‘Religionist?’” Dream grinned, chuckling incredulously. “Never been accused of that one before. I mean, don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are into the whole Jesus trip, but aside from a stint in the Church of the SubGenius when I was younger, I can’t say I’ve ever really taken part in organized worship or institutionalized faith –”

“You’ve devoted your entire life to promoting non-scientific elements!” Zach protested.

“So have you, you hypocrite!” Dream shouted back. “When all the intelligent logic and rational reason available to you must have agreed with the consensus wisdom that you should serve the benign forces of static Order in Technopolis, you threw in your lot with the swirling, flowing, unpredictable and utterly incomprehensible cause of Chaos.”

“I knew there had to be something more than the evidence suggested,” Zach muttered.

“Yeah, and you were right,” Dream reassured Zach. “It’s like the Jedi and the Sith in the Star Wars prequels. The Sith see the Force the same way they see everything else, as something to be bent and broken to their will. The Jedi, on the other hand, see the Force as external and elevated from their existence, so they try to distance themselves as much as possible from their own desires, in order to serve the will of the Force itself. Only guy in those three movies who has it right is Qui-Gon Jinn. He looks at the Force like a Taoist, kind of like how a surfer treats a wave. You can’t be separate from it, and you can’t make it do exactly what you want, but if you sync up with it, you can ride it.”

They allowed the music from the stereo and the noises of the city to wash over them.

“Do you think the Lair Legion would still be willing to consider me for membership at this point, if I actually managed to graduate from the Juniors?” Zach wondered.

“If not, then screw ‘em,” Dream shrugged. “I love being on the Lair Legion, but if they don’t want to open their doors to you, then plenty of other places will, starting with the Globetrotting Gangbusters. You are, as they say, a valuable resource. You know how to do some seriously cool shit, and for the most part, you do it for the right reasons.”

Dream stood slowly, folding up his lawn chair in one hand and picking up his strawberry daiquiri with the other. “I’m heading back inside. You’re welcome to stay out here as long as you want, as long as you bring the rest of this stuff back indoors with you, when you head on in. Mumph has a pet peeve about that.” He regarded Zach for a few seconds, then confided in a conspiratorial tone, “Look, whatever else has happened, you need to remember that you successfully and single-handedly held the whole goddamn world hostage, and you did it all for the woman you loved. Good for you, man.”


K-Box: Box in the Box



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