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Post By HH dedicates this one to the seven people still replying to stories Mon Jul 18, 2005 at 11:10:01 pm EDT |
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Great Parodyverse Moments #1: Study Group | |
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| Great Parodyverse Moments #1: Study Group This is the first of what might turn into an occasional series exploring some of the key events in Parodyverse history that somehow never got told. Until now. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse  Image by Dancer The attractive blonde made a beeline across the classroom and slammed her hand down on the book Al B. Harper was reading. “You!” she challenged him. “A four-dimensional object has a negative mass with equal shear forces from gravitmetric, temporal, and quasi-polynomial nodes with values of less than pi. Why does it indicate a counterentropic sine wave on a Fibbonaci sequence?” Al B looked up at the tight, angry face of his assailant. “Because it needs to shed leptons or it’ll slide through a descending harmonic scale of transient actual vertices,” he answered with a shrug. “Why do you ask?” The blonde slumped. “Damn,” she said. “I was hoping you weren’t as smart as they said you were.” Al looked round at his classmates as they filed into the lab. “Was there any special reason you were hoping I was dumb?” he ventured. “It would be easier to despise you if you were a phoney,” the girl admitted. “Ah well, I’ll just have to try harder.” Al B pushed his hand through his unruly tousled hair. “Am I missing something?” he wondered. “Could I get the Cliff’s Notes?” “You’re not missing something,” the blonde told him. She was pretty but she’d pulled her hair into a severe pinned bun and chosen heavy wire-rimmed spectacles. “I am. I’m missing my scholarship. Do you know why I’m missing my scholarship?” “Because there was only one scholarship for this class, and I got it?” Al B ventured. “Right. So now you know why I am going to have to destroy you and everything you stand for,” the blonde explained to him. “By the way, I’m Miss Framlicker. Nice to meet you.” “Likewise,” Al agreed, puzzledly. “Sorry about my being brilliant and all that. I didn’t mean to be.” Miss Framlicker seized up her books and stalked over to check the seating plan. “Wow,” Brock Lyedekker breathed, leaning over to Al. “You know who that was?” “My new archenemy?” the honour student speculated. “I seem to have upset her by, you know, existing.” “That was Muffy Framlicker, Miss Wisconsin. Miss February.” “How can she have so many names? Or is she setting up aliases for when she destroys me and everything I stand for?” “I mean she’s a world class babe, Al. Who knew she could even add up, let alone make Doc Day-Vincent’s Advanced Particle Physics class?” Lydekker sighed. “I wish she was my archenemy.” Al B. looked over at the girl and tried to match the frumpy twin-set and severe hairstyle with his room-mate’s description. “Well, she must know her stuff to make Leonard Day-Vincent’s list. And that question she asked was pretty tough too.” “I’ll find out more about her, I promise,” Brock P. Lydekker promised. “Researching that will be my pleasure.” “We’re here to study particles, not our fellow students,” Al B. pointed out. “Hey, knowledge is always useful, Harper. And it pays to know who to know.” Lydekker pointed to a handsome young man in Armani casuals. “Take him, for example. That’s Montgomery Hole, the only son of the ZOXXON Oil CEO. He’s got a big future ahead of him being, well, fabulously rich. Be his buddy and you’ve got your research grants for life, and a big-ass ZOXXON lab with everything you ever dreamed of.” “I don’t need a big-ass ZOXXON lab,” Al B. argued. “I have my dad’s cabin.” But Lydekker was continuing his lecture. “And her,” he said, pointing to a shy-looking brunette who was carefully laying out her notepad and calculator. “She’s worth knowing too. That’s Helen MacAllistair, and some day she’s going to make Bill Gates look like Bill Cosby.” “MacAllistair,” Al recognised the name. “She wrote that paper on translating engram waveforms into binary code. That was a good paper!” “And she’s pretty cute,” Lydekker pointed out. “If you could get her out of those scruffy denims, rumple up that 70’s haircut…” “We’re not here for that kind of research,” Al B. pointed out again. “Look Brock, Professor Day-Vincent literally wrote the book on esoteric narrative particles, and we can’t afford to waste…” But just then the professor himself strode into the room and everybody fell silent. Leonard Day-Vincent, the Renaissance Man, was a scientific legend. In twenty years he’d achieved academic distinction and personal renown, despite a personal life laced with scandal and tragedy. Now he perched himself on the edge of his desk and looked round the new intake for his masterclass. “Morning all,” he greeted them. “And that’s all the time we’ve got for pleasantries. I need to assess your competence levels so as to determine where to begin my teaching.” Al B nodded, watching his idol avidly. “If you check your computers you’ll see I’ve set a little test for you,” Day-Vincent went on. “There’s a set of calculations for shifting matter through intermediate states to invert their causal framework through a Wrichards simple harmonic. But there’s a few glitches in the theorem and a couple of deliberate errors in the math. Find the mistakes and identify the theoretical boundaries. You have until lunch.” Al B.s face was painted with a big happy smile. “You’ll be working in groups of five,” Day-Vincent went on. “Let’s see…” “Professor, Al and I call Hole and MacAllistair,” Brock Lydekker cut in quickly. “And Framlicker,” he added mischievously with a glance at Al. “Fine,” the tutor answered absently, unaware of they dynamics of the choice. “And the rest of you team into study groups too. You have three hours, starting… now.” “Hi,” Montgomery Hole smiled at Miss Framlicker. “I’m Monty. Great to meet you. Are you doing anything later?” “Apart from sponging rich dweeb slaver off my hand?” the young woman retorted. “No. Why do you ask?” The son of the ZOXXON CEO had learned enough to know not to give up easily. “I was thinking maybe we could get some dinner and you could show me the sights.” He grinned at the curvy theoretical physicist. “I’d like to see your sights.” “There are no tours scheduled,” Miss Framlicker told him coldly. “Now do you think we could pack your social problems away and get on with looking at the problem in hand?” Behind them, Helen MacAllistair muffled an approving smile. “I can probably set up an auto-diagnostic function on the mainframe if I can just work out the polynomials,” she offered. Monty shook his head. “I can just call up dad’s company and get them to run it through the system at ZOXXON. They can get the answer back to us before lunch and we can get to know you lovely ladies a bit better.” “Must be nice having a multinational corporation on speed dial,” Brock Lydekker said wistfully. “We don’t need a multinational,” Al B. Harper said, staring down at the calculations he’d etched on his lunchbox. “We need a harmonic shift in the conceptual parallels through the matter/time interface.” “Where d and t are corresponding to the sympathetic resonances of the cosine of p!” Miss Framlicker added excitedly. “That was going to be my guess too,” Brock assured them. Helen ran the numbers through the computer in front of her. “It works,” she agreed. “And I can see where somebody’s deliberately fudged the Quimby constant. That’s got to be one of the deliberate mistakes.” Monty scratched his head. “Wow. I never expected to be the class dummy,” he admitted. “You guys are…” “We’re the elite minds of our generation,” Brock pointed out. “No shame at all in being the fifth smartest guy on the planet.” Al B. was miles – and planes – away from ranking intellectual achievement. “There’s another error on the vortices compilation,” he pointed out casually. “But I can see where the whole dimensional shift stack fails too.” “The Vizhnar Correlation has to be a fallacy!” Miss Framlicker agreed, leaning close beside Al and glancing at him excitedly. “Twenty minutes into our first class and we get to disprove one of the fundamental laws.” “I hope we don’t have to pay for breaking it,” Monty grinned. “Keep going.” “Wrichards postulated that for dimensional travel to be possible there would have to be not only a neutral state vortex but also a negative state interstitial stratum,” Miss Framlicker reasoned. A lock of her tightly bound hair had worked loose in her excitement and spiralled in a glossy blonde curl over her cheek. “If we can discount Vizhnar there’s got to be another transitory equation that ties mundane state reality to the narrative standing wave.” She glanced at Al. “But what?” Al frantically scribbled on the desk. “How about that?” he asked, stabbing his pen at the graffito. The others leaned in to look. “Would that work?” asked Monty. “I can computer-model it,” Helen MacAllistair offered. “The only problem is that because it’s unproved we’d have to tell the system to assume success. Unless…” “Unless?” Brock asked, sensing fame and glory. “Unless we actually set up a small-scale transfer ourselves,” Helen suggested. “The computer also links into the energy emitters and other lab equipment here.” “We don’t have the access codes,” Miss Framlicker pointed out. “Or permission.” “Prof Day-Wrichards never said we shouldn’t do a practical test of our calculations though,” Al B. Harper argued. “It’d be irresponsible to disprove Vizhnar and not check our facts, when you think about it.” “You’ve already cost me my scholarship,” Miss F frowned. “You’re not getting me expelled.” “They can’t expel us, the amount of money my dad contributes to Paradopolis U,” Monty grinned. “But aren’t the lab systems kind of passworded?” Helen snickered. “So do I set up this test run or not?” “What harm can it do?” Brock demanded. “Let’s impress the professor, ladies and gentlemen. Set it up.” Helen's fingers jabbed at the keyboard. “There has got to be a better way of programming this thing,” she complained as she had to delete script where her brain had run ahead of her typing. “Okay, I’ve got Al’s equation programmed into the transmundane emitter coils, and we’re set to generate the narrative shear feed.” “This is very expensive equipment,” Miss Framlicker pointed out. “I already spent pretty much everything I ever earned on my college fund…” “I’m sure you get plenty of modelling offers,” Brock pointed out. “I don’t do that now,” Miss F snapped. “I only ever did it to pay for this.” She glared at Al B. Harper. “So don’t screw it up.” “Of you’ll destroy me and everything I stand for again?” “And then I’ll get creative, Alaric B. Harper,” the blonde threatened. “Oh, just hit the damn go button, Helen!” The computer genius tapped the Enter key. The High Energy Physics building trembled. The sun went out as the laboratory shook. Then gravity failed as the whole room tumbled through dimensions where no high energy physics students had gone before. “Well, it works,” Al B. observed happily. He finished cobbling together the gravity generator he’d just thought of and hooked it into the generator that was maintaining the force field around the displaced laboratory. Everybody in the room hit the floor with a thump. “We could become the first students to get expelled less than an hour into their courses,” Miss Framlicker observed, picking herself off the floor and rubbing her backside. “What did you do, Harper?” “Oh, it’s just a simple graviton pulse generator set on a linear node sequence that…” Miss F caught him by the lapels and pushed him against the wall. “To bring us to wherever we are. What did you do?” Al B. blinked. “Well, you saw the calculations. We kind of fixed the Prof’s theoretical problem like he asked, and we identified the theoretical limits of the process, and then we… overcame them.” “We’ve been shifted out of time and space!” Brock Lydekker pointed out. “Thrown across dimensions!” A dozen other frightened and angry grad students added their concerns. “Oh stop bleating!” Miss Framlicker told them. “We’ve just accomplished something nobody’s ever done before. We’re scientists. Get some readings.” “Everybody should calm down,” Helen agreed. “Just think of it as a particularly unusual field trip. We should all get to work to find out where we are.” “And how to get back,” Monty added worriedly. “My mobile’s not getting a signal.” “We’ll have to do this without calling your daddy for back-up,” Helen pointed out maliciously. “Maybe…” Al B. suggested, “Maybe if I could be let down from this wall I could help?” Miss Framlicker realised she was still pinning the young genius. “Right. I’ll kill you later. For now, fix this.” Al B grinned at her and stared out of the window. A deep purple haze was striated with black dots of energy, rippling in eye-watering streams across the turbulent skyscape. “Hey Montgomery,” he called to his classmate. “Give me your mobile phone.” Monty Hole handed it over. “You think you can get a signal?” he ventured. Al B stole the battery and carefully threaded it through the perimeter force field with a pencil. It exploded on contact with the swirling dots outside. “Probably not,” he admitted. “But at least we know what that stuff there is now, and where we’ve been transported.” “We do?” Brock Lydekker said. “Er, I mean yes. Obvious.” “That’s pure negative energy,” Miss Framlicker observed, staring out of the window at the fantastic vista that spiralled around them. “We’ve found a Negativity Zone.” “It stands to reason there’d have to be one,” Al B. pointed out. “You can’t have our cluster of realities without an energy counterbalance somewhere in the multiverse. And if you eliminate the Vizhnar fallacy there has to be some medium that allows for the transfer of higher concept particles to link into the transdimensional vortex.” Miss F nodded. “So an hour and ten minutes into our course we’ve disproved a physical law, hacked the university mainframe, wrecked the particle physics lab, discovered an alternate dimension, and got expelled. Quite a morning.” Brock Lydekker was still staring through the windows. “A whole new dimension,” he breathed. “We’ll be famous.” “With who knows what mineral resources and weird energies to exploit,” Monty Hole pointed out. “We’ll be rich.” “I’m as excited by our discoveries as anyone,” Helen added, “Except the how to get expelled bit. But how do we, you know, get back?” The ten students from the other study groups vociferously seconded her question. Al B. looked at the waveform readings scrolling across the sensor monitors. “Challenging,” he admitted. “There’s some properties of this plane that we didn’t anticipate. That’s why our little experiment dragged the whole lab here rather than just a single sub-atomic particle.” “We can’t get back,” Miss Framlicker announced, looking at the same data. “We don’t know where we are.” “You said we were in a Negativity Zone,” Brock objected. “But not where in the Zone,” Miss F pointed out. “We didn’t set up a beacon or anything to guide us back. If we try another dimensional shift we could end up anywhere in our own universe. Anywhere at all.” “The odds aren’t good that it won’t be deep space,” Helen calculated. “Oh dear.” “But we have the force field, right?” Brick argued. “It’s holding the oxygen in and keeping the lab from breaking up. We can just jump again and again until we get it right.” “The lab generator’s good for about another hour at this rate, and for one more dimensional jump” Al B. calculated. “I wonder if I could invent perpetual motion by then?” Monty Hole shifted by the window. “Hey! I think there’s something out there!” “Out there?” Miss Framlicker frowned. “How can there be…?” Then the metallic insectoid screeched and flew straight at the window. “Fascinating,” admitted Al B. Harper. “An entirely alien life form. In fact we don’t really even have words for how alien they are if they’re native to this Negativity Zone.” There were hundred of the insectivoids now, wheeling around the dimension-lost laboratory, occasionally testing the force field that shielded it by smashing themselves into it. They were roughly human sized and they carried weapons, propelling themselves through the thick soup of the Negativity Zone on bat-like wings. “Note that they have a basic humanoid configuration,” Miss Framlicker pointed out. “That either has fundamental implications about the natural shape that evolution prefers or it suggests a common origin with…” “Can we save the science lecture until we’re not about to be eaten by metal bugs?” Brock P. Lydekker interrupted. “No offence.” “Why do they keep slamming into us like that?” asked Helen. “Surely by now they know they can’t penetrate the force field?” Al B was feverishly checking velocity calculations and the readings scrolling down the computer logs. “They’re not breaking in,” he answered absently. “They’re pushing us. Herding us.” Another slam span the lab again, sending it end over end through the purple void. “Pushing us where?” Monty asked nervously. “How about over there?” Miss Framlicker suggested, pointing to a bubbling pinkish wall that was colouring the distance. She checked the sensor readings. “Looks like an area of molecular disturbance. A Queasy Area.” “Is it a good thing?” Helen asked without much hope. “It’s an area where the usual rules of matter and energy are suspended,” Al B Harper noted. “I need to invent a better force field. Right now.” There was a screech from outside and the largest of the bug-creatures they’d seen glided up to the window. This insectoid had a golden-brass sheen to his carapace, and he wore strange accoutrements at wrists and neck that bled the same black energies that ribboned the Zone. His wings were larger too, although torn by ancient holes in the connecting tissues. And he spoke: “Humanssss!” “Uh oh,” whispered Monty. “Yes?” Miss Framlicker answered. “How do you do? We are homo sapiens from a dimension…” “I know who you are,” croaked Anihillatus, the Lord of the Negativity Zone. “I wasss born of your world millennia ago, before I wasss sssent here to become ssssupreme ruler of this dimension.” “Oh,” Al B. responded. “Good. So how are you?” “You will deactivate your force field, humanssss,” Anihillatus commanded. “You will sssurrender your technology to me. Or I ssshall have you cassst into the Queasy Area where your very molecular essences will be sssundered across time and ssspace.” “See, I knew it was a Queasy Area!” Miss Framlicker declared triumphantly. “A little focus?” Brock Lydekker suggested. “I think we’re going to have to bargain with this thing.” “We can’t,” Helen MacAllistair cut in. “I don’t think he’s a very nice thing. And I don’t think we can let him get to the dimensional engine we’ve just created. He could use it to get back to our own universe.” “Yessss,” agreed Anihillatus. “That is what we ssshall do. Your universsse is ripe for conquessst.” Monty swallowed hard. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Maybe we can do a deal?” “Ssssurrender or die,” the Lord of the Negativity Zone proclaimed. “You have no other choicesss.” “Tough negotiator,” Monty admitted. “Guys, I think we’re going to have to give in. Maybe we can bargain for our lives?” “No,” Miss Framlicker declared. “No surrender. Never. Earth doesn’t get destroyed because we screwed up our first day at college. Not even if we have to die to put it right.” “Right,” agreed Helen in a weak little voice. “If we have to.” “There’s always a third choice,” Al B suggested. “We could overload the dimensional engines, set off a cascade reaction that feeds on that Queasy Area, take out everything within ten thousand miles of here. We die but we take locust-boy with us.” He checked his calculations. “If you could just ask him to push us a bit nearer to that pink space…” Anihillatus looked disconcerted. “Er…” “But we’re still dead,” Brock pointed out. “And even if he doesn’t throw us into that Queasy Area, the force field will fail in less than an hour and he’ll be able to get us anyway. Um, did I just say that out loud?” “Yessss,” agreed Anihillatus. “Very ussseful information. We sssshall wait.” “Way to go, bigmouth,” Miss Framlicker scorned. “You’ve just doomed our universe.” She turned back to the others. “Al, we’ve got to destroy the equipment here, wipe the computer logs, so that creature can’t use what he captures here to invade Earth.” She closed her eyes. “And… and we have to kill ourselves too.” “So he can’t find out from us what we did to get here,” Helen understood. “You can’t be serious!” Monty exclaimed. “This cannot be fricken happening! I’m Montgomery Hole! My dad’s…” “In a different dimension,” Miss Framlicker pointed out. Al B sprang up. “Yes!” he cried. “Of course! We didn’t set up a beacon to give us the recall co-ordinates. But what if somebody back home did? What if…” “Who could work out what we did and where we went and devise a way of sending a signal all this way?” Brock challenged. “You don’t think it’s worth checking?” Helen asked him. “Al, can you…?” “On it right now,” the young scientist answered, plugging and crosswiring at the experimental apparatus. He glanced across at the monster hovering at the window. “You keep on threatening and stuff. Don’t mind us.” “What are you doing?” Monty asked. “Looking for a lifeline,” Miss Framlicker replied. “Hoping that Professor Day-Vincert is as smart as they say he is. Hoping we can…” “Got it!” Helen called out. “Co-ordinates and a standing wave to lock on to! I love my professor!” “You can get expelled for that too,” Brock pointed out. “Al, have you got the co-ordinates you need to take us home?” Monty worried. “Only locust-boy is getting kind of frisky out there, and they’re pushing us into that Queasy Zone.” Al B clipped home the last of the connections and chuckled. “Simple!” “Simple?” Miss Framlicker scowled. “You hurl us into another dimension where we’re about to get eaten by metal insects and doom the universe and then you have to invent a way to get us back home and not doom the universe and you call it simple?” “Well, simple and fun.” He flicked the switch and the makeshift dimensional transit coils whined to full power. Miss Framlicker couldn’t decide whether to punch him or strangle him. She settled for grabbing him and kissing him. The shift generator cut in and they shared a kiss that was spread out over a dozen dimensions. With tongues. “Busted,” Helen MacAllistair fretted as Professor Day-Vincent stalked into the wrecked classroom. On the bright side they had managed to return the errant laboratory to its right time and place. On the other hand, they were about to get graded. “Professor,” Brock cut in pre-emptively. “I know how this looks…” Day-Vincent laid the Harper-Framlicker equation down on the table before them. “It looks correct,” he said. “Well reasoned.” “Well…” Monty Hole’s jaw dropped. “I have now assessed the level of ability in the class,” the professor continued. “On the whole I find it adequate. Tomorrow we’ll proceed to the advanced material.” A huge beaming grin spread across Al B. Harper’s face. “Excellent!” Muffy Framlicker dropped her head to the desk. “We’re all going to die!” But she didn’t stop holding hands with Al under the table. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 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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