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Post By The Hooded Hood hasn't posted a story for 48 hours now and is getting twitchy. Wed Feb 11, 2004 at 05:33:13 pm EST |
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Tales of the Parodyverse #6: My First Big Felony | |
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| Tales of the Parodyverse #6: My First Big Felony Author’s Note: The Tales of the Parodyverse series is an occasional run of short stories in which writers are encouraged to offer stories about characters they don’t usually write. The fun comes in seeing how different authors handle characters and situations we’re familiar with from another pen. My problem is that there aren’t that many PVB characters I haven’t featured at one time or another; so this is an attempt as shining the spotlight on a couple of neglected cast members that I’ve wanted to give some screen time to for a while now HH In Hell’s Bathroom it was always important to look through the spyhole before answering the door. In fact even that was dangerous, because a shotgun blast could shred through a wooden door and the person using the spyhole behind it. But Lindy Wilson took her life into her hands and peered through the hole. It was a teenage boy in a bulky anorak, and she didn’t know him. That wasn’t really a surprise. All the teenagers Lindy had known were ten years older than her now, since she’d jumped forward in time to become the unexpected sister of Sam “Falcon” Wilson, the neighbourhood superhero. A lot of them were dead. “Who is it?” she called through the door. “I need to see Sam Wilson,” the teenager called back. “I need the Falcon.” Lindy made sure the chain was on and slipped the door open a crack. “Sam’s not here right now,” she told him cautiously. “Can I come in and wait?” “No.” Lindy didn’t like being alone in the apartment, but she’d like letting a stranger in even less. “I think you should let me in.” “Why?” “Because I have twenty pounds of explosives strapped to my chest.” Lindy sat across the lounge from the stranger. He’d shed the anorak and yes, there were neat sticks of some kind of dynamite fastened to a steel-frame harness over his torso. A small black electrical box mid-chest had a little red LED that was counting down. Right now it was at 91,593. “Sorry about this,” the young man rattling away on Falcon’s computer apologised. “Try not to be scared. I won’t hurt you.” He thought about this a little bit longer. “Unless I explode or something,” he qualified. Lindy ran a hand behind the sofa to where the baseball bat was concealed. “So who are you?” The teenager ran an embarrassed hand through a shock of slightly-greasy brown hair. “Me? I’m a science villain. But not one of the psychotic ones. Really.” The bat had fallen down out of reach. Lindy looked round for another weapon. “I mean, not homicidally psychotic,” the intruder went on as he bypassed the sophisticated security measures on the SPUD-linked computer. “I admit to having a kind of obsession with sending the authorities cunning carefully-worded clues to my next crime. They call me Hacker Nine” “Are you here to have some kind of horrible revenge on Sam?” Lindy wondered. “No,” Hacker Nine promised her. “I’m not really a horrible revenge person. And I never even really talked with your brother back in the Technopolis War. Seemed like a nice guy, though.” “He won’t , when he’s ripping you a new ass for threatening me,” Lindy Wilson promised. “I’m not threatening you. Honest. I’m just using your brother’s secure link to break into the SPUD mainframe, except… damn. Why have they revoked his user codes?” “Sam’s suspended from SPUD right now,” Lindy answered before realising she was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. “That’s a downer. I don’t think I’ve got time to take down Contessa Natalia’s security perimeter.” “Before my brother rips you a new ass.” “Before I detonate,” Hacker Nine confided. Lindy tried to stay calm. “We only just redecorated in here.” She looked more carefully at the scruffy young man. “What kind of villain name is Hacker Nine anyway?” “It was my online handle,” the science villain confessed. “My real name’s Zack Zelnitz. So you see why I go by Hacker Nine.” “I guess. And why do you have bombs strapped to you, Zack?” H9 looked a little sheepish. “That’s a bit embarrassing. I got caught by this bad-guy cartel outfit called B.A.L.D. Boy, they have the world’s biggest fat-head-in-a-chair leading them, you’d be absolutely amazed! Anyway, they seemed to want me to break into SPUD security systems for them. They seemed to want it very badly.” Lindy tried to keep her guard up, but it was very hard to feel threatened by this somewhat-hapless technogeek. “They strapped you in that harness-thing then?” “Yep. And I don’t have the tools to get it off yet. And the countdown says…86,039.” Hacker Nine shrugged and dropped Falcon’s keyboard. “I’m going to have to do this differently.” “How?” Lindy wondered in spite of herself. Zack considered this. “Would you have a pizza with me?” he asked urgently. “To save my life?” When she had first been recognised as Sam Wilson’s sister, Belinda Wilson had been put through a crash course of survival information by stern-faced SPUD training officers. She’d been warned about communications safety, about spotting tails, about attempts to suborn her and use her against her secret agent brother. She’d been drilled what to do in a hostage situation. It didn’t really include what to do when the villain wanted to take you to an Italian restaurant. That said, it seemed like one of the nicer ways to be held captive, and on the scale of nasty things a bad guy could do to a helpless girl this one ranked pretty low in Lindy’s estimate. Besides, she loved pastrami. “Okay, I’m confused,” she confessed as Hacker Nine gallantly let her have the last piece of the spicy hot deep pan. “Is this some kind of last meal before you die horribly or what?” She looked round the pizzeria and spotted three different exits she could make a break through. For that matter, she could just scream for help where she was. Maybe one of the diners in the crowded restaurant would actually come to her aid. But she didn’t. “Nope,” Zack told her. “It’s scouting. See that barber’s shop over there by the bus depot? That’s a secret SPUD outpost.” Lindy looked at the neon-washed frontage of a seedy old shop. “Really? I thought SPUD was all high-tech.” “It is. That’s just the façade. Get past that and there’s all kinds of serious security. Trigger an alarm and worrying men with enormous guns come and shoot at you.” “But you’re going to try and get in there anyway.” “Oh, sure. But I need your help.” Lindy blinked. “Me?” She took a long swig of her refillable pepsi. “Two questions. One, how on earth would I help you, and two, why on earth should I help you?” Hacker Nine nodded. “Good questions,” he agreed. “One, you could help me because your DNA is really quite like your brother’s, near enough that I can fool the sensor scanners into opening the door for you given that I’m a genius at this kind of thing. And two, because… well I’m kind of begging, and because you seem like a nice girl that wouldn’t let a guy explode when you could do something to help.” “And if I don’t help?” Lindy waited for the threat. “Then it’s been nice having dinner with you, and I guess I’d better go before I explode and ruin the mood.” Lindy sighed. Lindy hadn’t dated since she’d jumped to her new life. She hadn’t really expected that her first night out with a guy would include breaking into a top secret government installation. Still, Hacker Nine was being a perfect gentleman. “Those big killer robots seemed awfully upset,” Lindy pointed out, looking over her shoulder in mild alarm. “They’re quite safe now,” Hacker Nine assured her. “I programmed them to think they’re Talking Bert and Ernie Spelling Toys.” Lindy watched as the two five million dollar Sentinoids fell over each other. “They’re certainly living up to Bert and Ernie’s reputation,” she admitted thoughtfully as they struggled one on top of the other. Zack finished rewiring the security console and the main screens lit up. “I’m in,” he called triumphantly. “Okay,” Lindy told him, pointing the laser pistol she’d taken from the wall rack at the Science Villain. “Now put your hands up.” Hacker Nine looked round in surprise. “Why?” “Because I’m pointing this big-ass gun at your head?” “Oh that. Go one then, shoot. I’m going to explode anyway.” Lindy tossed the weapon aside and frowned. “Why are you being so damned difficult?” she demanded. “It’s part of the essential me,” H9 admitted. “Along with contempt for authority, geekiness, technical brilliance, and an inability to stop thinking like a crossword puzzle.” “I can’t let you give B.A.L.D. the SPUD mainframe,” Lindy told him. “I won’t betray my country.” “Well technically SPUD’s an international agency, chartered by your United Nations,” Zack noted. “Does that help at all?” His fingers flicked across the keys, neutralising firewalls and sophisticated security protocols with ease. The screen changed and an OPS logo flicked onto it. “These guys are the US-only bunch.” “It’s still not right,” Lindy told him. “Isn’t there some other way? Some way you could find in…” she glanced at H9’s chest, “9,931 seconds?” “Well,” considered the science villain. “I suppose I could try and hack into B.A.L.D.’s systems and extract the shutdown codes for the bomb harness.” “Do that then,” ordered Lindy. “Well, if you insist… Nope, that’s not them.” On screen the logo for the terrorist organisation HERPES flashed into view, along with the words FULL ACCESS ACQUIRED. “Hmm,” frowned Hacker Nine. “Nope, that’s mob accounts… Lynchpin’s hidden files… Shadow Cabinet minutes… ZOXXON secret acquisitions…” “Those numbers are counting down awfully fast now,” Lindy prompted him. “I’m trying,” Zack promised her. “Maybe you’d better go home now though. Sorry I can’t call you a cab. No, wait a minute, there’s the Paradopolis Cab Company mainframe… there’ll be a car here for you in ten minutes.” “I’m not just leaving you to explode. When I get kidnapped by a villain and forced to eat pizza I expect to be walked home afterwards.” “So your brother can rip me a new ass?” “At least. So get your act together, Hacker Nine.” The young man’s fingers danced over the keyboard. “Ah,” he breathed, as a set of number columns streamed across the screen. “It’s one of these.” “Which one?” “One of them. I, um, I can’t figure out which one yet, but it’s only a matter of time.” “More time than 712 seconds?” “Pretty much.” Lindy scratched her wavy black hair. “Okay. Do what B.A.L.D. wants. Save yourself.” Hacker Nine swivelled his chair to look at her. “Really?” “Really. All these secrets aren’t worth blowing you up for.” H9 blushed. “You are the best hostage ever,” he assured her. Then his eyes lit up. “Oh yeah. Now I know what to do. Yeah… that’s fair.” His hands raced over the keyboard again. Suddenly the screen went black and the LED on his chest harness went out. “They let you free!” Lindy gasped. “No. Actually they sent out a destruct code when I opened the SPUD data storage to them, but I was ready to readjust the signal to a release command instead.” He dropped the explosives harness on the floor and heaved a sigh of relief. “I really am pretty clever,” he grinned to himself. “Of course, you were my inspiration, my muse.” “The muse of larceny?” “Yeah. The face that launched a thousand security breaches.” Lindy looked around the secret base nervously. “Maybe we should get out of here. People are going to be awfully cross that you sent all of SPUD’s secrets to one of their biggest rivals.” “Not one of its rivals,” Zack told her. “All of them. Not just B.A.L.D. I sent the contents out to OPS and HERPES and all those other guys too. And I did the same for them, and sent all their records to each other and to SPUD.” “You did what?” “Sure. I shared it all out. Each of their databases is emptied out between all the others. Same information, just kind of… redistributed.” Lindy put her hands to her mouth. “Isn’t that going to cause an awful lot of trouble?” “I hope so,” grinned Hacker Nine. “That is the idea. It seemed fairer that way. Anyway, those agencies will all have backups, and it’ll be a while before they can interpret the data they got dumped with, and what the hell it’s the kind of stuff these spy-guys live for.” Lindy considered this. “Yep. My brother will be ripping you a new ass.” Lindy stood in the doorway of her Hell’s Bathroom apartment. “Thank you for a nice kidnapping,” she told Hacker Nine. “I especially enjoyed the pizza.” “Thanks for helping me not explode,” answered Zack. “Also, the bit with the Sentinoids was good.” They looked at each other. “I generally let guys kiss me goodnight after a first date,” Lindy prompted at last. Hacker Nine leaned down and kissed her. “What do you let guys do after a second date?” he asked curiously. Lindy gave him an enigmatic look with one eyebrow raised and a Mona Lisa smile and closed the door. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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