The Moderator Saga #19: Time For GeniusThe Moderator Saga: The Impossible Win |
The Moderator Saga #19: Time For Genius
Previously:
The Moderator Saga #1 by Hatman
The Moderator Saga #2: Minions for the Moderator by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #3: Captured is the Carpathian! by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #4: Interview With the Archvillain by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #5: Lord and Master of All He Surveyed by various posters
The Moderator Saga #6: Mouse and Ming by Hatman
The Moderator Saga, oh let’s say #7 by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #8: One More Day by CrazySugarFreakBoy!
The Moderator Saga #9: Let’s Be Bad Guys by CrazySugarFreakBoy!
The Moderator Saga #10: With his Hands Tied Behind His Back by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #11: The Moderator Strikes Back by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #12: Acting On a Hunch by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #13: Something Nasty in the Cellar by the Manga Shoggoth
The Moderator Saga #14: My Little The Moderator Tie-In by L!
The Moderator Saga #15: New Players by Hatman
The Moderator Saga #16: Meanwhile… by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #17: Outlaws of the New Law by the Jason
The Moderator Saga #18: The Impossible Win by the CrazySugarFreakboy!
***
The seventh-smartest boy genius on the planet fell back off his computer chair and spilled his diet coke all over his clothing.
“Well that wasn’t very clever,” the girl perched on the edge of his work surface noted. “It doesn’t take a genius to soak their pants with fizzy drinks.”
Salieri Ming scrambled to his feet, his mind racing furiously. “You’re transparent,” he announced out loud. That helped to process the data. “No shadow, but no E-M effect from a hologram field. No evidence of telepathic projection or the detectors I set up against LOL INTERNET’s low-grade mind-control would have gone off. Unlikely to be mystical in origin since that would have crashed my Shoggoth-locator program…”
“How do you know you’re the seventh-cleverest boy genius anyway?” the girl wondered. “Who publishes the rankings?”
Salieri was coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t under immediate threat from the intruder. Still, sending out pretty much all the resistance forces on various missions and leaving him alone in the EEE firehouse wasn’t seeming like such a great idea now. “This place has defences you know. Harper was a genius too. A genius’ genius. I could so neutralise you to atoms.”
“If a boy was that clever, surely he’d be smart enough not to get on the ranking anyhow,” the intruder continued her line of thought. “I mean, supposing I was brilliant. I wouldn’t want people to know how smart I was. Why make myself a target? Why warn them of what I’m capable of?”
Salieri Ming forced himself to take a closer look at the girl as a girl rather than a manifestation. She was around his age, dressed in a neat white blouse and pleated skirt that might be some kind of school uniform. She had shoulder-length brown hair and very expressive eyebrows. There was something odd about her voice, as if it was coming down a very long tunnel that… “Of course!” the boy genius recognised, snapping his fingers. “You’re a temporal projection! You’re casting your image through time!”
Samantha Featherstone checked her wristwatch. “Four minutes ten seconds just to work that out,” she sniffed. “I can see why you came seventh.”
“Who are you?” Salieri demanded, stung by the comment. “And why shouldn’t I just generate a chronal counterwave to kick you back where you came from?”
“Number one,” Sam answered, counting on her fingers, “I’ve been sent a long way to talk to you, so you’d better listen. Number two, I never take threats seriously from boys with coke-drenched trousers. Number three, my grandfather can get very grumpy so if you try fiddling with time you’d better get some bandages to put your bottom in a sling afterwards. Number four…”
“Alright, I get it. You’re being projected to me from outside the current timespace continuum. You have vital information or something. Perhaps you could focus a little less on the editorial comments and more on whatever you’re bending the causal flow of the Moderatorverse to say?”
Samantha bit back a retort and took a breath. “Right. I’m one of the last people who still remembers the proper Parodyverse, before some Hooded Hood retcon catapulted this Moderator person to become ruler of the world and all that. Another one is my grandfather, Sir Mumphrey Wilton, so he’s projecting me here for a recon. Unfortunately you’re the only person around so I’m going to have to get my intel from you.”
Salieri sniffed. “And I’m sharing with you because?”
“Because I’m guessing you don’t get to talk to girls much. I can see why.”
“And if you are in fact another ruse of the Moderator, trying to get information from me?”
“Then I’d be an image looking like Samantha Bonnington, not Samantha Featherstone. Look, let’s just assume that if the Moderator wanted information from you he could rip it from you in all kinds of ways that don’t involve time-travelling teenage girls, shall we? It’ll move things along a bit.”
The boy genius calculated the odds that the annoying girl was speaking the truth and concluded that an information exchange was probably warranted.
“Well, we have a field operation in motion,” he reported. He clicked his mouse and brought up a flow diagram with icons. “We’re trying to locate the Manga Shoggoth, one of the few reality-spanning beings that doesn’t seem to be neutralised by whatever the Moderator’s doing to hold onto his position. Our first attempts went a bit wrong when the Moderator and his Legion crashed the party, and CrazySugarFreakBoy! is still fighting the Dominator, but Gamona managed to get D’ur Acell of the Yellow Flashlight Corps and Gamma Ray Gary to pull off a rescue for Killer Shrike, although they had to use up most of their vessel’s power to resist the Moderator’s first attempt to erase it and then…”
“Hey, genius,” Sam interrupted him, “you’re allowed to breathe. Treat yourself to a full stop every now and then.”
Salieri took a breath and forced himself to ratchet down the gabbling. “Okay then. Fortunately while the Moderator was going mediaeval on Shrike and CSFB!, Amy Aston was able to locate the mysterious Sorceress, an enigmatic figure who…”
“Who’s my half-cousin,” Sam supplied. “We both have the same grandfather.”
“You know the Sorceress?” Salieri boggled. “That could be useful. She’s known to be rather scary.”
“Runs in the family,” Samantha promised. “Of course the Shoggoth won’t be willing to come into play until exactly the right moment. I hope you have a plan B.”
“We’re still trying to locate a transient spatial anomaly on the site of the old Parody Island,” the boy genius. “We suspect somebody’s using dimensional manipulations to try and remain outside the Moderator’s envelope of influence, but their power source must be immense to resist the…”
“Some people are still holed up in the deleted remains of the Lair Mansion,” Sam translated. “Probably Liu Xi manipulating void and Lara Night providing the raw energy. You don’t have to wrap everything up in scientific gobbledygook. Anyway, I suspect they’re probably some kind of intervention the Chronicler of Stories is setting up with his cosmic playmates, so we probably won’t hear what’s going on there until a suitably dramatic turning point later on.”
“You don’t have to namedrop all the time, narrative-girl,” Salieri shot back. “I’m pretty sure you’re just making up most of those names anyhow.”
Samantha looked at the boy pityingly. “Seventh? Really?”
“My brain is functioning at levels you couldn’t even conceive of.”
“Probably at levels I wouldn’t want to conceive of as well.” Sam pointed to her face. “Could your eyes function up here though?” she asked.
Salieri coughed and hastily picked up a clipboard of notes to occupy his attention. “As a matter of fact, there is another interesting set of events unfolding,” Salieri admitted. “There was a breakout from Lair Tower about an hour ago. Our best information is that it was some kind of perverted generic experiment gone awry, a vile entity called Flapjack.”
“Flapjack?” Sam perked up. “I have extensive files on him.”
“Of course you do.”
“Well I do. He used to buttle for us.”
Salieri frowned as he tried to interpret that latest comment. Then again, the reflected, did he really want to know?
“What about Flapjack?” Samantha demanded.
“Well he slipped out of the Lair Tower and vanished into the sewers,” Salieri summarised, “and he somehow managed to get three of the Moderator’s staff to defect with him – the Mouse, Functionary, and Brap.”
“Who?” Samantha puzzled.
“What, people you haven’t heard of, had tea with, compiled life histories of? Amazing! The Mouse is Helen MacAllistair, a computer genius almost on my level. Functionary is some kind of… I don’t know, badly-made fake mascot maybe?”
“Ah,” whistled Samantha. “I know them now.”
“Brap is a kind of other mutated pig-bioengineering project thing. I think he was constructed from the technology they derived when they dissected the Sea Monkeys.”
Sam frowned. “No, that one’s not familiar. Who else is around that Lair Tower place?”
Salieri summarised LOL Internet and Search Engineer and the Crimson Lawnmower and the Link and Sigmund the Superlative Simulacrum and Content Filter and Dr Spoon and Pirate Monkey and Partial Man and Killer Flea and Doorman. Samantha interrupted him at Doorman.
“Jay Boaz, you say?” she grinned. “You need to send somebody to snaffle him. Then put an ordinary baseball cap on his head and see what happens.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. Free advice.”
“Flapjack also absconded with some unidentified bio-weapon they’ve been working on in there. As far as we know Search Engineer hasn’t noticed yet, but when they’re discovered all hell’s going to break loose.”
“I’ll have to try and look them up after this,” Samantha considered. “Any messages?”
“I’m still not exactly clear who you are and why you’re interfering,” the boy genius admitted.
“See, that’s probably why you’re still only seventh,” Sam answered ruefully. “But maybe you’ll work it out later. “
“Are you always this annoying or are you making a special effort for me?” Salieri asked through grinding teeth. “Look, if you do somehow manage to find someone else to annoy in that group of escapees with Flapjack, let them know they’re not alone. There’s a whole network making one last final attempt against the Moderator. Tell them to make their way here, secretly, and we’ll see if they can help.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Samantha considered. “Now with the Moderator’s minions quietly creeping up outside.”
“What?” yelped Salieri, checking the external monitors to find that Search Engineer was patiently hacking through the multiple layers of defences on the firehouse systems. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
“I assumed that the seventh-cleverest boy genius on the planet would already know. And I assumed he’d have some kind of escape route planned out.”
“Of course I have,” Salieri answered scornfully. “But really I don’t want to lose Dr Harper’s workshop.” He frowned down at his workbench. “I’m going to have to be extra clever.”
“They’ll have anticipated dimension-jumping the building,” Sam warned him. “I know I would. And the force-field approach, and the teleport estate transfer option.”
“They’ve got the Link with them, yes,” agreed Salieri. “She could interfere with those long enough for the Simulacrum and the Crimson Lawnmower to break in. We’ll have to try a different route.”
“What different route?” Sam wondered interestedly. “That big android thing’s about to blow the doors off, by the way.”
“I’ll just use what’s at hand,” Salieri decided. “It’s obvious, really.”
“What’s at hand?” Samantha wondered.
“You,” the boy genius said, jamming the temporal leech probes into the projected image before him. “Time-jump!”
The EEE lab lurched in a dizzying spiral then vanished despite the link’s best attempts to stop it.
Samantha became solid and punched Salieri on the jaw.
The firehouse happily settled a fraction of a second out of phase with the world around it, preventing it from invasion from the Moderator’s Legion, at least for now.
And somewhere on a different Earth by a time-wound caused by a Narrative Bomb an eccentric Englishman swore for ten minutes straight.
***
Continued…
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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Post By
The Hooded Hood plays catch-up
Fri Jan 25, 2008 at
09:49:17 am EST
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