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Post By The Hooded Hood decides to dangerously overload the board Fri Aug 04, 2006 at 04:47:11 am EDT |
Subject #281: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The Lights Are Going Out… Originally #280: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Sleep When You’re Dead |
In Reply To The Hooded Hood pushes his cast to the limits. Maybe the readers too. Fri Aug 04, 2006 at 04:39:14 am EDT |
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| #281: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The Lights Are Going Out… That night, crowds gathered in Parliament Square in London. As Big Ben struck 11 pm (midnight in Berlin) they sang God Save the King, and then ran home crying: “War! War! War!” As [Foreign Secretary] Grey watched the crowds leave, he commented: “The lights are going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”. John D. Clare: Causes of World War One – Four Steps To War Online at http://www.johndclare.net/causes_WWI4.htm “And how is young Boaz now?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton asked, looking up from Al B. Harper’s report. “He’ll live,” Citizen Z admitted with some chagrin. “He’d apparently arranged for back-up before going in. Very leaderly.” “You can’t keep Hatty down,” CSFB! agreed. “He’ll be out of the Lair Infirmary tomorrow with a few stitches. The wired wonder himself was still limping from his earlier injuries. He wasn’t healing as fast as usual. The leader of the Earth’s Combined Defence Force nodded. “Jolly good. And now we know what’s causin’ these sneak attacks, so we know how to stop ‘em.” “We do?” Amber blinked. “How?” Mumphrey pushed a pile of handwritten instructions over to her. The eccentric Englishman eschewed the use of a computer, preferring to write longhand with his old fountain pen. “Blackout, m’dear,” he replied. “Dr Harper tells us that generated electrical impulses combine with a flaw in the Markabian crystals and the fact that the Celestian field is being expanded to about a billion times its natural size to leave weak spots that the Parody Master can use to push his people through. So we stop generating those electrical impulses.” Amber was appalled. “You’re talking about turning off the entire world’s power supply,” she said. “At least until we can work out if there are other factors involved, other ways to stop the barriers being weakened,” Al B. Harper argued. “We could probably still use small portable generators to keep hospitals and other emergency services going,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! agreed. “But… no TV? Brrrr.” “The lights are going out across the Parodyverse,” mused Citizen Z. She seemed amused. “We’ll be okay with small local generators for two or three months,” Al clarified, “but as the barrier weakens then even those will leave us vulnerable. So will thunderstorms.” “And eventually the electrical activity of the human brain and body?” CV surmised. “And then game over.” “We always knew the barrier was a temporary solution,” Mumphrey snorted. “It’ll really feel like we’re under siege now,” CSFB! noted. “This’ll affect every household in the world.” “Only those that have electricity,” CV added wryly. “What will people do for entertainment now they can’t go online or watch soaps?” “That still leaves us with the problem of all the places where the Parody Master has already sent troops through to set up little dimensional conduits,” Amber pointed out. “What can we do about them?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton frowned. “I need to speak with ManMan.” Liu Xi Xian awoke. She felt weak and disoriented, and it took her a few moments to remember the last thing she’d seen: the Doomherald. And that was the first thing she saw on opening her eyes: the Parody Master’s elite emissary, sitting across from her, handing her a cup of coffee. Liu Xi took the cup, hurled the contents into the Doomherald’s face, then willed him to burn in a pillar of fire. The Doomherald didn’t burn, although his shirt was badly stained by the coffee. He pointed to Liu Xi’s neck. “Inhibitor collar,” he explained. “Sophisticated thing. Prevents you from using your powers, trying to harm yourself, or leaving this building. Amongst other things.” The young elementalist’s hands instinctively rose to the transparent plastic ring about her neck. Then she took in the room. It appeared to be a chalet. She was in a pleasant bedroom under the eaves, and the window looked down onto a sun-washed Alpine lake and a forested shoreline. The room was plainly furnished in traditional pine. She jumped from the bed and tried to get her hands round the Doomherald’s throat. He let her. She hadn’t the strength to strangle him. “Finished yet?” he asked her as it became apparent that she couldn’t actually do her cosmic-powered captor any harm. “For now,” she admitted at last, releasing him and sitting back on the bed. “But this isn’t over. I won’t go quietly to another forced marriage.” “Another?” the Doomherald asked, his eyebrow raising. “None of your business.” The Doomherald nodded and rose. “If I get you another coffee could you manage not to throw it at me? Coffee is one of the best things about Earth, but it doesn’t do Naicluvian silk shirts any good at all.” Liu Xi padded after him into the main room of the cabin. Her body was stiff and she realised she was ravenously hungry and thirsty. She was in a loose cotton nightdress. “Where’s Annar?” she asked. “Down in the village, shopping for supplies,” the Doomherald replied. He peeled off his ruined shirt and tossed it in a hamper, then pulled another one from a chest of drawers. Liu Xi noticed the old lash wounds across her captor’s back. “You’ve been asleep from almost a week,” he supplied. “The Parody Priests weren’t taking any chances with the stasis spell they gave me for you.” “I thought I’d be in the Parody Master’s torture pit by now,” Liu Xi admitted. The Doomherald actually looked abashed. “Yes. I’m sorry to have to give you over to that when the time comes. Genuinely sorry. That’s no way to treat a lady – or anyone, really. But it is the will of our Master.” “Then don’t give me up to him. Let me go.” The Doomherald smiled. “That won’t be happening, Liu Xi. But you do have a stay of execution, so to speak. I was sent to Earth to gather the Master’s brides before you did that clever creative thing with the Celestian barrier. Now I’m stuck here until the Master sends for me.” Liu Xi made it to the doorway before her inhibitor collar stopped her. “You realise that Xander and the Manga Shoggoth will come looking for me?” The Doomherald nodded. “I’ve made preparations, of course, but against those two, who knows? You might get rescued.” Liu Xi began to realise that this was going to be a very odd captivity. “I will make the coffee,” she conceded. Joe Pepper was in the Lair Infirmary, standing over the unconscious woman in the care of the military medics who now occupied the place. He’d just been patched up from his trip to Denver and he was paying his respects to the comatose form of Marie Murcheson, the former Lair Banshee. “I was there, you know,” he told Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “When she died.” “Technically you were here,” Knifey pointed out. “Since Marie died in the caves under this very mansion.” “It was a time travel thing,” Manny explained, “but I guess you’d know all about that stuff, Sir Mumphrey.” “Somewhat,” the ex-Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity agreed. “I understand Miss Murcheson was scheduled to be a sacrifice to Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, the Groper Out of Grossness, until the League of Improbable Gents interfered, what?” “Except that at the time most of the League were possessed by Legionnaires from the present,” ManMan clarified – or didn’t. “Wilbur Parody needed a virgin sacrifice to awaken the monster and do stuff to catch Celestians, I think. I was busy trying not to get fried by the Destroyer of Tales at the time. But in the end Marie chose to die another way, to save the world.” “And so became the banshee that haunted the Mansion thereafter,” agreed the eccentric Englishman. “Until she was resurrected at the same time as someone walked through our security to steal Badripoor and abscond with Liu Xi and Princess Annar.” “Xander’s pretty sure it was the Doomherald,” Knifey advised. “That bastard,” frowned ManMan. “And he raided our fridge.” That made it personal. “Resurrecting Marie robs the Mansion of its primary defence against people like the Doomherald,” Knifey pointed out. ManMan looked down at the pale dark-haired girl on the hospital bed. “She’s facing a brave new world,” he opined. “Whenever she wakes up. Very different from 1860.” “Yes,” agreed Mumphrey with a sigh. “Which brings me to why I came to see you, Mr Pepper. I have a special mission for you, what?” “We’re out of milk again?” Knifey suggested with a snicker. “I need you to act as my envoy to a foreign power,” the eccentric Englishman explained. “Havin’ problems with a few of them right now.” “Not everybody agrees on a draft,” ManMan pointed out. “And some don’t even want to support the war effort at all. Just to stay neutral.” “Not possible,” snapped Sir Mumphrey. “Like the occupant of one bedroom sayin’ they won’t help fight the fire in the adjacent one. Or refusin’ to use the ashtray that keeps their own room from ignitin’ and setting the whole house ablaze.” “Where do you want us to go?” Knifey asked, before the ethics debate opened up again. Sir Mumphrey had been waiting to explode ever since the French had announced that they were conducting a unilateral defence apart from the Combined Earth Force. Sir Mumphrey told ManMan his destination. Hatman could hear the screams from three rooms away. Then Mumphrey told ManMan what he had to do. They could probably hear the screams about that from Paradopolis. The lights went out across the globe. Power generation stations went off line, their turbines spinning down then going silent. In nuclear facilities the cores were dampened, the electromagnetic coils disconnected. One and a half billion homes found themselves facing a permanent power cut. There were riots in some cities as crowds closed on supermarkets to buy batteries, or tried to steal portable generators from construction sites and factories. Fuel prices spiked as people realised that automobile engines could be adapted as power generators. Emergency food rationing was introduced in many places where storage and transportation would be problems. Lobbyists argued for vital electrical energy for the oil and pharmaceutical industries. Stock trading was suspended to prevent the collapse of markets thrown widely askew by the sudden developments. An entertainment industry died for lack of outlets. Candles sold for $40 a pack. Not every nation agreed to shut down power production, though. Sir Mumphrey Wilton sent Mr Epitome and Trickshot to Argentina, the Shoggoth and Dancer to Sweden, Yuki and Donar to Libya. They had orders to turn the lights out by whatever means they found necessary. When Turrets Inc. tried to gouge up the price of essential munitions, CSFB! was sent to scream at their CEO Obadiah Blott. Complaints flooded in from every nation: GDP lost, jobs threatened, vital supplies short. Nations reconsidered their choices, and in particular their choice of who to lead them through the crisis. A UN summit was urgently scheduled. Sir Mumphrey Wilton declined to attend. And things got darker. “Baroness von Zemo,” Hans Fokker said, bowing slightly as he welcomed the villainess into the HERPES underground base. “Everyone seems to be of the opinion that you died.” “She didn’t,” Count Ottakar von Zemo, the Baroness’ unalive grandfather snapped. “I know dead and she’s not it. That’s why I agreed to set up this meeting.” “Anything for you, dear Baron,” Greta Fokker told the prickly old Teuton. Well, you know that anyhow, don’t you?” “As faked deaths go, yours was fairly elaborate,” Hans admitted. “How did you manage to fool Citizen Z?” “I’m not here to give away my secrets,” the Baroness told the Fokker twins who were no the joint leaders of the world’s largest terrorist operation. “I’m here to make you rulers of the planet.” Hans and Greta exchanged looks. “Then by all means have some champagne and tell us what you require,” Greta replied. HERPES bases tended towards 60s architecture in greens and purples. The Baroness and Baron followed the Fokkers through underground rooms with button upholstered walls and minimalist Swedish furniture. The office of the Lyon branch of the Hero Elimination Revenge Project Extermination Squad had a full wall lava lamp behind the twenty-foot long control desk. “What do you propose?” Hans asked Beth von Zemo after pouring her some sparkling Californian white. The Baroness put the glass aside untested. Not only might it be poisoned but it was also an inferior year from an inferior vineyard. The Fokker twins were Eurotrash. “I propose exploiting the current situation and bringing this little Parody War to a successful conclusion,” she said. “Hah!” snorted Ottakar. “A successful conclusion leaves a von Zemo ruling this planet with absolute power, nothing less!” The Baroness shook her head. “You’re thinking too small, grandfather. My plan is to leave this planet under the absolute rule of Hans and Greta here. I intend to be ruling a fair part of the galaxy.” Greta sipped her wine, and added a little umbrella. “Won’t the Parody Master object to that?” The Baroness shook her head. “He will not, because he will have given control of that domain to us, as a reward for handing him his victory.” “Ooh, I smell a double cross,” Hans Fokker declared. “As I see it, you have two courses of action,” Beth told the twins. “You can play nice and buckle under to the demands of Citizen Z and Sir Mumphrey Wilton, let them dismantle HERPES and use the parts for their tedious war effort. Or you can open the doorway to the Parody Master’s legions and reap the rewards of victory while your enemies scream their regrets in his punishments pits till the end of their days.” “I like the sound of that,” Greta admitted. “Would they let us help?” “The Parody Master’s torturers are very good,” Baron Ottakar admitted. “It would be fascinating to exchange procedures with them.” Hans wasn’t as convinced. “The Lair Legion are getting very heavy just now. That Hatman has no sense of humour at all. It’s very hard to get a handle on him. He seems immune to bribes, blackmail, sex. His only vice appears to be composing long e-mails to Candia that he never sends.” “The Legion has been fighting full out for more than a week now,” Beth pointed out. “They’re exhausted and distracted, dead on their feet. But they have made one useful discovery.” “And you know what that is,” Greta surmised. “I know the exact energy frequency that weakens the Celestian barrier keeping out the Parody Master,” the Baroness smirked. “And I know that HERPES has their secret particle ray weapon assembled here in Lyon. If that weapon was powered up at full blast, then set to generate the specific frequency…” “We could blow open a huge portal for the Parody Master to march through,” Hans recognised. “He could bring through enough troops to pacify the planet in days.” “He could bring through dimensional Dreadnaughts to pacify the planet in minutes,” Beth von Zemo corrected. “Masterful,” approved Baron Ottakar. “And then we find a way of destroying the Parody Master and taking his empire.” “Of course, grandfather. But everything in due course. First we have to let him in to rid the world of Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lair Legion.” The Baroness looked at the Fokker twins. “Do we have a deal?” “Is he here?” fussed Thighmaster, ruler of the little European nation of Borovia. “Can I kill him?” “He’s here,” confirmed Browning, Thighmaster’s long-suffering butler. “But you can’t kill him. Serious people would object.” “But he’s my arch-enemy,” the Terry Thomas lookalike objected. “ManMan has thwarted me again and again, and made me look… not magnificent.” “Yes sir. He has a remarkable ability to make you look like a complete plonker, sir. But he is here on a diplomatic mission from a united World Defence Force who have an awful lot of atomic bombs.” “The Lair Legion have been sending their people out all over the place to throw their weight around,” Thighmaster complained. “They threatened to buy the Shoggoth a summer home in Spango. I won’t let some little twerp in an Elvis costume threaten me.” ManMan was led into the room as the villain was making his declamation. “How about me?” Knifey asked. “Will you let me threaten you?” “I have three hundred and twenty-seven ways of causing your horrible death right here on this remote control, ManMan,” Thighmaster warned. “And that’s not counting Death by Soap Operas.” “I’ve only got one way to kill you, Thighmaster,” ManMan admitted. “And that’s sharp and pointy and in my hand right now.” “But we’re all under truce so we’re going to get along, yes?” interrupted Browning hastily. “I believe the master is quite willing to grant you an audience, humble supplicant. Right, sir?” Thighmaster controlled the twitch in his remote finger. “You may grovel,” he conceded. “What do you want?” ManMan took a deep breath and told him. After a shocked pause of about a minute, Thighmaster said, “What?” “I’ve called the whole team back,” Hatman told Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Nobody can keep going any longer. The new blackout’s preventing many new incursions. We need to rest the Legion.” Amber caught the qualifier. “Many new incursions?” “Not every nation and not every citizen is obeying the blackout edict yet,” Contessa Natalia Romanza explained. “A lot of places feel they’re the legitimate exception to the rule. We’ve got OPS and the vestiges of SPUD and all the other intelligence services on it. In the meantime there’s still the odd Avawarrior breaking through where there are infractions.” “Serve ‘em right,” snorted Mumphrey. “So Harper’s theory was correct, that they’re getting crammed across to our world at whatever point the barrier’s most weakened at that particular point?” “And only at that point, one place at a time,” Hatman confirmed. “Problem is, we don’t yet have a sensor grid to tell us where that point is at any given time.” “But we will have,” Amber promised. “Professor Wrichards worked out the theory. We should have the Lair Satellites reprogrammed by midnight.” The Contessa wasn’t satisfied. “In the meantime, we still have rogue nations to deal with that will not enforce a complete blackout.” “You mean France,” Hatman surmised. “We could send a delegation there like we did with the other places.” “No,” Sir Mumphrey said. “We’ve given enough warnings. We’ve played nice too much.” “We’ve been playing nice?” Amber asked. “That was the nice version, what Epitome did to the Argentinians?” “Oh yes,” breathed the eccentric Englishman. He didn’t like France. CrazySugarFreakBoy! bumped into Bernice Teshmaker outside the Lair Mansion Operations Room as midnight loomed. “Hey, Bern!” the wired wonder called. He’d just eaten roughly forty pounds of candy and he was looking much better. “What brings you to the neighbourhood?” “Well, I am embedded with Sir Mumphrey and the central command team,” the reported reminded him. “So I get to watch as the new invasion detector goes online.” CSFB! keyed in the entry code to the most secure area of the mansion and let his old friend through. The Operations Room was darkened and tense. The brightest light came from the hologram globe of the world at one end of the chamber. Almost by routine now both of them glanced at the telltales on the globe to see what new threats had arisen in the last four hours. “Still some problems in North England,” Hatman interpreted for them. “I’ve sent Tricky, Yuki, and Dancer. The Shoggoth’s gone to investigate some possible anomaly in Siberia.” “It’s quietening down, though,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove decided, relieved that perhaps the worst of this latest crisis was over. “I don’t think we’ve ever had to push ourselves this far for this long.” “Everybody did just great,” Hatman assured him. “They should be proud.” “Lots of people died,” Bernice reminded them. “But not us,” Contessa Natalia noted, coldly. Al B. Harper climbed out from under a console. “I think we’re ready for the beta test,” he told the room. “Nothing should explode.” Bernice edged behind CSFB! and noticed Amber shifting into partial cover beyond Hatman. Al B. powered up the upgrade. The hologram glove flickered for a moment then came back showing potential electromagnetic field problems that might allow Parody Force incursions. France turned bright red. “What the hell is that?” demanded CSFB!, leaping forward to examine the livid area on the map. “There’s some massive energy surge coming from… somewhere called Lyon.” Al B’s face had taken on an aspect of panic. “Hold on. Let me focus more sensors on that. Hold on…” Hatman moved. “Dream, get a LairJet prepped up. You, me, Epitome, Lisa, in the air in five minutes.” “No, Mr Boaz,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton stopped him. “Hold your horses, please.” Al B. pulled more data from the system. “There’s a rift active in Lyon. A huge one. I don’t know how long it’s been open, maybe hours. It’s being fed by some massive exotic energy source and it’s pinpoint perfect for cracking through the Celestian shield. They’re operating a formal dimensional portal using Parody Master technology.” “This is the big push!” Hatman recognised. “We have to go.” “The Legion can’t take on the amount of troops the Parody Master will have pushed through that gap by now,” Sir Mumphrey warned him. “Nobody could. On the bright side, all the smaller portals will have gone dry and closed up. That rift is the only game in town, what?” “We can’t just let them flood through,” Amber objected. “We have to do something!” Bernice Teschmaker realised she was the official observer as history was made. “Natalia, m’dear, would you be so good as to contact ManMan for me?” the leader of the Combined Earth Defence Force asked. “Mr Pepper?” The big screen flicked on to offer an unflattering view up ManMan’s nose. “Sir Mumphrey? ManMan here.” “Splendid. Mr Pepper, be so good as to ask your host to undertake his part of our mutual defence agreement, please.” ManMan looked appalled. “Sir Mumphrey…” Another face came into view. A moustached, gap-toothed, foxy visage stared into the com-card monitor. “Hello? You really want me to do this? Truly?” “Carry on, Thighmaster,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton instructed. “Right ho!” the villain said cheerfully. “Bombs away!” “Wait…!” ManMan called. “We can’t just…” Sirens started sounding the alarm in the operations room. Al B. raced to the monitor console and stared aghast at what he saw. “Bombs…” he gasped. “Thighmaster has just launched a multi-megaton nuclear strike on France.” “He what?” snapped Hatman, joining Al at the desk. “Sir Mumphrey…” “Only way to clean the nest,” the eccentric Englishman said viciously. “Scorched earth. Good riddance.” Amber turned on him. “You’re nuking France because they wouldn’t join the Defence Force? As a warning to others?” “He’s clearing out the combined spearhead forces of the Parody Master,” the Contessa replied. “He got them all gathered into one killing zone and then he killed them.” “Impact in ten,” Al B. said dully. “Nine, eight seven, six…” “What about the people in France?” Bernice demanded. “Civilians?” Sir Mumphrey sniffed. “Two… one… impact. A hundred and sixty-five nuclear missiles, bracketed across the nation. The world’s biggest nuclear event,” Al intoned. “Nuclear winter here we come.” He keyed up a satellite image of northern Europe. There was a bright flare then darkness. France was a grey wasteland below. And then it got better. Even as the satellite focussed down on the radioactive wasteland the terrain changed, regenerated. Buildings ghosted back in, and then the people who were in them. Clouds of lethal radiation faded away as if they’d never been. France repaired itself. Only the massive power surge and the things it had brought through the dimensional portal were gone. “Now you can go and mop up,” Sir Mumphrey told Hatman. CSFB!’s face lit up in a big delighted grin. “Of course!” he realised. “The pact! You remember, Hatty. On the World Tour we learned that the French Tourist Board had done a deal with the Devil. Every time France got destroyed it got reset! You can nuke France as often as you like and it’ll always come back!” Hatman breathed in relief as he recalled that memorable visit. “You’re right. You’re right. Sir Mumphrey, was that why you picked France to be the trap you set for those invaders?” “Hmph. Possibly,” the old man replied evasively. “I imagine there’ll be less opposition to our necessary war arrangement now, anyhow. Thighmaster’s used up his most dangerous toys. And now people understand the need for the blackout.” He turned away and walked towards the door. “I believe this calls for a round of buttered toast,” he decided. The Technical Officer looked up from his scanner array and made his report. “Sir, they have eliminated the spearhead force in Northern Europe through primitive nuclear and occult methods. They have also implemented sensors to discern the creation of any new dimensional breaches.” The Avatar of the Parody Master’s army took this in his stride. “No matter,” he said. “We do not need any additional resources. We shall conquer this planet the old fashioned way, by might of arms. For the glory of the Parody Master.” “For the glory of the Parody Master,” echoed the seventy thousand Avawarriors and their support staff and equipment now gathered on the ricefields of China’s Yalong river basin. Nobody knew they were there. Yet. The Avatar laid his plans. Next Time: We go out and about and find catch up with what’s happening away from Earth in places Beyond the Fields We Know, or Through the Looking Glass Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 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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