Hallie and the Sepulchre of Destiny, Chapter One

Chapter One

“The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.”
–Mark Twain

“Alright, let's increase the power to the retroscopic magnometer.” NTU-150, the world's foremost genius in cybernetic systems and likely half the sciences on Earth, suggested gamely as the lenses on his faceplate irised closed until they were just gleaming pin-pricks. “Al, how's the conversion rate holding?”

“Steady so far.” Al B. Harper, the world's foremost genius on temporal/spatial physics (at least those not involving the Shoggoth) and likely most of the other half of the sciences on Earth, answered confidently with a few bubbles from the pipe clenched between his teeth. “We've got the boost up by 87%, and the yield is still well within parameters. We're go for digitization.”

“Check. Initializing link... Download channels open. Digitize!”

With a blinding flash of green light, the magnometer discharged all of its stored energy towards the reflector dish containing the grapefruit that was the focus of today's attempt. The hum of the laboratory equipment filling the room rose to a fevered pitch until, with a snapping, popping sound, the motherboard shorted out and took the power grid for the surrounding 5 city blocks with it. The room was suddenly plunged into pitch black silence, broken a few seconds later by a squishy “thoomp” sound.

The emergency lights kicked in to find everyone in the room scraping grapefruit remains from their faces.

“So...” Hallie ventured with a wince, wiping a green hand across her eyes and noting the new experience that juice could really, really sting. “I'm guessing there are still a few more bugs to work out on returning me to Virtual Reality.”

“And now we shall rule the world!” the Abyssal Rasputatius promised.

The other ghouls shuffled uneasily in the abandoned cellar of the old Romanoff winter palace under St Petersburg. Eventually one of them put his hand up.

“Yes, Chompvski,” their cult leader called upon him.

“Boss, every time you rule the world we tend to get kind of… mangled. Lumpkov’s still in kit form from that time you tried to get hold of the Wakandybar diamonds…”

“Lumpkov was a fool. He should pull himself together.” Rasputatius meant this literally. Some of the Black Pantzer’s home security systems could get enthusiastic. “Anyway, this time I have a plan which cannot be foiled!”

“Like the other plans that couldn’t be foiled, boss?” worried Buggerov, Rasputatius’ right hand ghoul.

“No. This plan that cannot be foiled can’t actually be foiled,” Rasputatius declared.

“This isn’t all about getting into Urthula’s shroud, is it?” worried Fingers; don’t ask why a ghoul was called Fingers, you really don’t want to know.

“No, it is not about… what you said,” Rasputatius answered crossly. “Although when I am king of the world and master of all I expect Urthula will want to reconsider any things she might have said about me, things that were especially unkind bearing in mind it was very cold in that tomb.”

The ghouls under St Petersburg knew better than to snicker out loud. Their Abyssal had a tendency to pull off their body parts and make them eat them. “So, uh, how are we going to rule the world this time?” asked Chompvski with a sense of growing dread.

“We,” announced Rasputatius, straightening his rotting habit and standing tall, “are going to possess the prime manifestation of the Necronasticon, the Book of Rude Names itself! And with that volume we shall awaken the Fairly Great Old Ones and their rewards will be immense!”

The ghouls looked at one another in the gloom.

“So somebody find me my spectacles,” commanded the Abyssal Rasputatius.

“I really thought we had it that time” Enty complained, leaning against the counter in the darkened kitchen as Hallie rummaged through the refrigerator. “We have to be getting pretty close. It's just, well... the movie gun is proving exceptionally hard to reengineer. It's possible that the original might have used paranormal components of some sort. We never did crack that DNA chain extraction module we found inside...”

“That's because it was technology developed by a warped and evil mind with no regard to ethical or moral procedures, and who knows how he might have developed it in the first place” Hallie noted reasonably, moving a jar of pickles out of her way. “We all agreed that the only choice of action was to disassemble the original and encode the schematics so that it could never be used again except in the direst emergency.” She came up with her hidden treasures retrieved from the very back of the fridge. Opening the box of bon-bons (a Christmas present from Lisa) she inhaled the aroma of chocolate from it in a long, drawn-out breath. “This doesn't count yet” she assured him, with a nod towards her physical stature.

Enty rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “I'm flying out to the Philippines for a conference tomorrow, but I'll pour over the data and try to figure out what went wrong. Al and I will keep trying. We'll get it right.”

She smiled encouragingly at him. “I know you will” she assured him. “And in the meantime, hey… you've invented a hell of a juicer.”

She held the smile until, with a wave, he disappeared for the lift to take him back down to the lab levels. Sighing, she closed the box and returned the candies, untouched, to the back of the fridge. Dancer was already harping her to start an exercise regimen with the 12 pounds she had put on since she started eating. No reason to make matters worse than they were. She stood in the empty kitchen of the quiet house for a few moments, secretly hoping for a late night snacker to arrive and give her a reprieve. Finally, silently berating herself as a coward, she reluctantly made her way to bed.

Almost three hundred years earlier, the gaunt silver-haired man in the strict black vestments lifted his hand from his captive’s forehead and let her mindless body topple to the ground. “Nothing,” he grumbled to himself. “She knew nothing.”

He lifted his fingers to his mouth and licked off the last of the cerebral fluid, but even those last vestiges of memory didn’t help him find his enemies.

“Did she at least have contacts we can find?” one of his followers suggested.

“Oh, she knew plenty about her heretical cult, but they are hidden where we cannot yet reach them,” the silver-haired man replied. “Some of that may be useful later, I suppose. But she had only met our enemies on a couple of occasions.” The corners of his lips suddenly curled up. “Still, she was diverting,” he consoled himself, “and it will take the Heretics of Buto some time to train another Cobra to serve them.”

He turned back to the lectern where an ancient volume lay open. The language was so old that less than two dozen living humans could read it. He traced his sensitive fingers over the pages of the Necronastycon. “Perhaps it is time to try a more lateral approach to killing that troublesome hero from the so-called Lair Legion?” the silver-haired man speculated.

The horrific screams of Randy, Art and Mindy still echoed in her mechanical ears as the giant fingers closed about Hallie’s tiny form, crushing a fragile body that was too helpless to even cry out in fear...

Bolting upright in bed, she was barely able to choke back the real-life scream that was on her lips as the present came crashing back to her with the feel of the sweat-soaked sheets. The irregularly sewn plush purple bunny that Yo had given her sat on the other half of the bed watching over her with a fixed sweet smile, oblivious to the carnage she had been facing moments ago. Drawing a ragged breath, she looked to the nightstand where the digital clock announced the time as 4:17 am... A new personal best for her.

She grabbed the bunny and, not caring how pathetic she was, pulled it close to bury her face between its ears as she cried. She hated this. Hated sleep. Despised it with every fiber of her being. Yet every night this infuriating pile of meat that comprised her form demanded it of her… demanded that she give up control of her mind and lose all track of thought and self. Her existence had been one uninterrupted experience from her creation to her death at the hands of the demon Maladomini, when she had been squashed as an insignificant insect... helpless to fight back and unable to protect her friends when they needed her most.

But she didn't stay dead. She had been brought back as a human despite her weakness, while no such reprieve was given to the others. And now she spent her days both helpless and useless in a body she barely understood, only to have to surrender her consciousness each night and invariably be tormented by her demons, dying over and over and over again.

“Stop it” she sniffed irritably, though it nearly made her sneeze as she inhaled tufts of bunny hair into her nostrils. It wasn't death... it was sleep. It was something all humans do since the day they were born to replenish themselves for the next day. It was a simple fact of biology, and only the late hour was causing her to look at it in such a poetically morbid fashion. Children could learn to handle nightmares. She could as well.

She flipped on her bedside light and winced as the illumination stung her eyeballs. In truth she had been getting better. She had avoided sleep altogether for as long as possible after she first became human. But as the dark circles appeared under her eyes, as her attention flagged and her body continued to betray her aversion, it became impossible to hide the fact: She was terrified of going to bed.

And so Visionary had managed to drag the truth out of her late one night when everyone had excused themselves and the two of them were left sitting on the sofa of the well-lit family room. Feeling immensely stupid, she waited to hear how silly she was being, not to mention how hopeless it was to try to avoid the downtime this organic body so obviously needed. But he just put an arm around her, inviting her to lean against him, and then proceeded to talk to her unceasingly about the most mind-numbingly tedious parts of his day (of which there were apparently plenty). Unprepared for this dirty trick, she fell asleep despite herself, curled up against his soft green sweatshirt. She awoke three times that night, and each time he was there, awake, ready to continue talking to her as if there had been no interruption at all... despite the suspicious addition of an afghan draped across her body, and what may have been a bit of her drool upon his sleeve. By the third time, she willingly leaned into him and closed her eyes.

The next night it was Donar who stayed up, sitting in the big chair by the roaring fireplace while she gradually stretched out on the couch. She lasted until halfway through his recounting of the 3 year siege of the ravening Bjorkhogs before nodding off. Sir Mumphrey spent the following night giving a frighteningly detailed account of a championship cricket match he had played as a schoolboy. After that, it was Lisa and large sections of the penal code, then Dominic regaled her with word-for-word re-enactments of debates from within the Continental Congress. Yo, Dancer, Uhuna, Asil... none of them ever saying a single word about her weakness, all of them taking turns standing guard over her sleep.

The nightmares still came, but the presence of her friends kept them from lingering when she bolted awake, and reassured her that she had continued to exist unceasingly. Gradually, they reclaimed her associations of unconsciousness back from the void that so terrified her, and allowed her to progress to spending the nights on her own. But the nightmares had been creeping back this past week, growing stronger and more vivid, and a stuffed purple bunny was beginning to seem inadequate defence against their horrors.

She rolled out of bed and plodded across the cold floorboards to the bathroom where she stopped to regard herself carefully in the mirror. She was sporting what Vizh had helpfully termed “chicken hair”, a bristly coif that seemed to go in every direction at once, with a few choice locks standing straight up in parade salute. Her eyes were puffy, sporting both bags and dark circles underneath them, and her nose was a good 4 shades darker than the rest of her increasingly splotchy complexion.

“That's what you get for being a crybaby” she informed herself pitilessly, taking in the whole pathetic human package. “And frankly, you've smelled better as well.”

She stuck out her tongue to make sure that awful morning taste was naturally occurring, and that nothing had crept into her mouth to die overnight. Finally, she concluded this morning's inspection of her physical self with a decidedly unimpressed grunt and slipped into the shower.

If nothing else, she could take solace in the fact that the day invariably went uphill from this point...

Next: Things don’t go uphill as the events of "Untold Tales of the Tenth Caphan" come into play.

Footnotes and Epitaphs:

Hallie became human rather than her previous artificial intelligence self in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #196: Awkward Corners, or The Twist in the Untold Tale..

Cobra is the hereditary title of the prime assassin of the Cult of Buto, originally a sect worshipping the Egyptian snake-goddess whose special task is the rescue and protection of children. To every generation a Cobra is born. And so on.

Urthula is drop-dead gorgeous.

Post By An Untold Tales spin-off from Visionary and The Hooded Hood Tue Mar 29, 2005 at 06:02:59 pm EST	Subject Hallie and the Sepulchre of Destiny, Chapter One

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