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Post By The Hooded Hood warns that there are some unpleasant bits in this double-sized episode Mon Oct 09, 2006 at 04:58:34 pm EDT |
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#292: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Prisoners and Hostages | |
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| #292: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Prisoners and Hostages Previously: The free-willed robots of the Parodyverse are being imprisoned or destroyed for fear they might assist the Parody Master in his invasion of Earth. Over three thousand urban robots have been digitised into Hallie’s virtual reality – and aren’t happy about it. Others resist internment and seek escape with the assistance of an “underground railroad”. The Lair Legion is tasked with tracking the rogue robots, a duty which has led CrazySugarFreakBoy! to baulk, forcing Hatman to sack him from the team. ManMan is refusing to resign to avoid prosecution for murder of an ally in time of war. Fleabot has insisted on joining the interned robots in a show of solidarity. And Wexford the Dissected Man has been tasked with destroying the interned robots to embarrass the Lair Legion. His weapon of choice: Goldeneyed’s girl, schoolteacher Beth Shellett. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse  Beth’s arms were dragged roughly round the post. The splinters of wood from the thick trunk scraped her flesh. They nailed the links of her chains into the stake to hold her helpless. She watched as the first monk approached her with the burning torch. The stink of the pitch they’d smeared her shift with almost choked her. The tinder under her feet was dry and ready. It only took a spark. Her courage broke then. She begged and pleaded through her rag gag that she was no witch, that she didn’t know how she’d got there, that she didn’t deserve to die. The blazing torch touched the wood shavings beneath the bales of hay and the flames caught. The fire washed up her body like a sheet, burning away the linen so the molten tar clung to her flesh instead. She felt her hair ignite and then her face was seared with flames. She tried to scream but her tongue shrivelled in the heat. She woke from her nightmare and vomited onto the ground where she lay. “You liked that?” Wexford the Dissected Man asked her. “It’s an old favourite of mine.” He carefully withdrew the needle from beneath her fingernail and threaded it through his own plastic skin into the pulpy red flesh beneath. He had the gift of psionically recording and transferring pain experiences through metal. His body was stapled with dozens of iron pins, each one filled with such an ordeal. “I’m alive…” Bethany Shellett realised with a shudder. She could still feel the lick of the witch-pyre. Across the room seventeen bound children watched their teacher’s torture in mute horror. Wexford ignored them for now and selected a different needle. “Let’s try you on something different, Beth,” he suggested. “Have you ever been eaten alive by cockroaches?” Hallie was so unhappy that she didn’t even realise that anybody was in the digitisation lab until Visionary touched her shoulder. “Oh!” she gasped, instantly shifting her visual manifestation to hide the puffy tear-reddened eyes. “Vizh, I was just…” “You were crying,” the possibly-fake man said. “Don’t deny it.” “Just… just practising. The range of human emotions that I have to simulate is…” “You were crying,” Visionary insisted. “Why hide it? You have feelings.” “I don’t,” Hallie spat. “I’m a Heuristic Artificial Life Learning Intelligence Entity. I’m a gloried security program. Why should I have feelings?” “You’re real,” Vizh told her. “A real person. Nobody who knows you questions that. And we all know you got a crappy job with the robots.” “Dammit,” Hallie corrected him. “You’re supposed to say I’m real, dammit.” “Well you are. And you’d be doing me a favour if you were honest about how you feel instead of using your holographic wizardry to fool me.” Hallie shimmered again, and the genuine miserable version reappeared, complete with tears on her cheeks. “Oh Vizh,” she sobbed. Visionary folded his arms round her. It was impossible to distinguish her from a flesh and blood woman in emotional pain. He pulled her close and let her sob onto his shoulder. “I have to go,” Hallie told him. “I set up an appointment to talk to the interned robots. About things. In my… in the virtual reality.” “Do they know how unhappy all of this is making you?” Vizh asked. “They’re even unhappier,” the A.I. pointed out. “They didn’t have Sir Mumphrey Wilton vouching for them and glaring at Herbert Garrick.” “Okay,” Visionary acknowledged. “Let’s go.” Hallie blinked. “What?” “Let’s go to the meeting. I want to be there. I have a few things to say.” Hallie began to protest, then realised that actually there was nothing more she wanted in the world than to have a friend go with her to the meeting. “’Kay,” she said in a small voice. Vizh moved onto the digitiser and looked a little nervous. “This thing will remember to take my clothes along this time, right?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! was tearing down the posters in his Lair Mansion bedroom when Lisa Waltz found him. “What do you think you’re doing, Dreamcatcher?” she demanded, hands on hips. “Packing,” CSFB! replied, gesturing to the boxes of action figures and comic books hazardously stacked by the window. “I’m outta here!” “Yes, I heard that Hatty booted you,” the first lady of the Lair Legion admitted. “I should boot you myself!” The wired wonder looked up uncertainly. “Um, are you mad?” “Yes,” Lisa told him. “I’m mad and you’re dumb. Sit down.” “Hey, I was thrown out. I’m not the…” “Sit. Down.” “Yes ma’am.” Lisa reached into her cleavage and pulled out a paper. She dropped it on the bed. “My wedding invitation?” CSFB! recognised. “Me and Alice, I mean. For our wedding.” “Your wedding,” Lisa agreed. “Is it off now? I guess the reception won’t be a Hallowe’en costume bash here at the Mansion.” Dream’s face clouded a little. “I… guess not.” “And Hatty won’t be your best man. On account of you and him not being friends any more.” “Well…” Dream stammered. Lisa flicked her hands to indicate that the topic was dismissed. “Two weeks from now,” she went on, “when we pull our big operation to sort out the Avatar in China. How are you going to feel when Hatty dies?” “He what?” “Well it might not be Hatty,” the amorous advocatrix conceded. “It might be Dancer or Tricky or Yuki. It might be me. In that moment when the battle’s at its worst and some villain gets a clear shot at one of our backs and you’re not there to cover them.” “Hey, I was the one who got thrown out!” CSFB! pointed out. “I’m not quitting. I was fired!” “Well sure you were fired,” Lisa told him. “What the hell else could poor Hatty do? He makes a horrid tough call, something that rips him up inside, and he sends his best friend and deputy leader to make good on it. And you let him down. And you’re proud of it!” “I’m not proud of that,” Dream argued. “But I’m proud I let those innocent robots get away.” Lisa shook her head. “You screwed up, Dream. If you’d taken them into custody – peacefully – and come back here and argued your case we’d have listened. A lot of us are having serious second thoughts on this internment idea. We’re ready to try something different if only we can think what it is. I could so have represented that family, the perfect test case. But instead you let your best intentions jerk you into doing something without thinking and you’ve just made a bloody situation even nastier.” “You should have seen Epitome, Lisa,” CSFB! cried. “Coming on like some kind of…” “Epitome was right,” Lisa said sharply. “Just this once. He was right and you were wrong. If you’d held the line he wouldn’t have had to go in so hard. And we might still have been able to do something for that poor family. I don’t think Hallie’s willing to digitise anybody else anyway after Fleabot.” Dreamcatcher Foxglove sat amongst his piles of Avengers comics and hugged his knees. “It was a bum mission.” Lisa snorted. “Do you think Jay Boaz is a bad man?” she demanded. “Is he mean and cruel? Wicked?” “Of course not. He’s straight as an arrow. He’s like… Cap.” “Is he incompetent then? Unfit to lead the team?” “I’m not saying that. Just that this time he’s wrong. Badly wrong.” Lisa knocked her knuckles on CSFB!’s forehead. “Hello? Nobody’s right 100% of the time. Nobody. But we choose a leader we can trust and follow because otherwise we can’t function in the situations we get into. If we think that leader’s made an error there are ways of raising that. You didn’t use them. And at the end of the day, if that leader still thinks they’re right then if we respect them we have to let them make that mistake.” The first lady of the Lair Legion took a breath. “Same for friends,” she added. CrazySugarFreakBoy! Considered this. “So what do you think I should do?” he demanded. “You’re a smart kid,” Lisa told him. “Work it out.” Beth Shellett gasped and panted, redisovering what it was like to breathe without a gullet clogged with insects, blinded by the glare of light on uneaten eyeballs. “Quite an unusual sensation, being paralysed in bed when the hungry cockroaches swarm,” the Dissected Man noted. He replaced that pin and took a moment to decide which one to pull forth next. “Oh, now this is one of my specials,” he confided. “Gestapo interrogation. You’ll love the dental stuff. Once the nerve endings are exposed they’re so sensitive to the electrodes.” Beth felt that one more torment would dive her insane. “Please…” she mouthed. “Had enough?” Wexford asked her. “Well perhaps you do deserve a break for being so entertaining so far.” He looked over at the captive orphans. “Perhaps one of them would like to learn a little bit more about the Nazis?” “No,” gasped Beth. “Don’t.” “Sweet girl, are you asking me to let you experience this unique episode rather than share it with one of your children?” Tears streamed down the schoolteacher’s face. “Yes.” Wexford held up her hand and placed the needle tip ready under her fingernail. “Beg for it, then,” he instructed her. Al B. was a little surprised when his future-daughter Kara dropped a small plastic bag onto his worktop. “Here. I forgot to give you this,” she told him. Al examined the white crystal contents. “Thank you,” he replied. “And this is…?” “For your coffee,” she explained. “A concentrated dose of neurotoxin, guaranteed to wipe out all higher brain functions and reduce the subject to mindless vacuity worse than a telesales operative.” Al B. put down the packet hastily. “Perhaps I’ll stick with the sugar.” Kara flopped down onto the camp chair next to the workbench. “I totally suck at this!” she complained. “Mom would have had you dead five minutes after deciding you had to die. And four and a half minutes of that would have been deciding what outfit to wear to do it in.” Al B. Harper blinked in puzzlement and dragged his mind away from five-dimensional geotemporal theory to the here and now. “What?” Kara gave him the look that all daughters reserve for fathers who aren’t keeping up. “I’m a failure because I can’t even bring myself to poison you to save my life,” she explained. “You’re looking for a way to rescue your Miss Framlicker, whose long imprisonment, torture, and execution are part of my timeline’s past. You’re trying to re-establish the future where you knock mom up with Cody not me. So everything you’re doing is going to wipe me out so I never existed. That’s why you have to die.” She sighed. “Only apparently I suck at it.” The archscientist looked at the lethal chemicals on his blotter. “No complaints from me. But Kara…” “Yeah, I know. I don’t belong. I’m an anomaly, a freak of time that needs correcting so you can have your golden boy Cody back.” “Kara, I have no intention of letting you get swept away by a temporal revision event. I’ve already discussed it with Sir Mumphrey.” That stopped the girl in mid-accuse. “Oh.” Al B. scratched his forehead with his bubble pipe. “Apparently there’s no known way to alter the timeline to rescue Miss F and Cody without wiping you and causing the known universe to implode,” he commented. “Good job I’m a genius, really.” Kara considered this. “You can live for a while longer,” she decided. Sir Mumphrey Wilton handed over the buttered crumpet and turned back to the fireplace to toast himself another. “Difficult day, Mr Boaz?” he asked. Hatman ignored the proffered food, sitting ill at ease in the wing-backed fireplace chair. “You could say that,” he admitted. “All I seem to be doing right now is firing Legionnaires.” “And fighting a world war with dwindling resources and diminishing time,” the eccentric Englishman added. “Yes.” Hatman repressed an urge to ask how the negotiations were coming for Candia to join the allies. “And nothing seems black and white.” “Too true, old chap,” Mumph agreed, waggling his toasting fork. “Absolutely. Been meanin’ to ask your advice about that.” That caught Jay off-guard. “My advice? To you?” “Indeed. Don’t feel I’ve been doin’ a very good job recently, leadin’ this deuced defence coalition, what?” “But I don’t think I’ve been successful leading the Lair Legion!” “Got myself all mired with the politics of keeping two hundred plus belligerent frightened self-absorbed nations and their representatives in line, all pointed forwards at the same enemy. Then we’ve had Hopkins’ Badripoor antics, the France thing, the China crisis, the blackouts, and now the robot internment question. Damn bad show.” “I’ve alienated half the Legion, got us terrorising innocent robot families, we’re having to fight to kill against the Avaforces, the casualties are mounting up…” Mumphrey and Hatman met each other’s gazes. “I don’t know what to do,” the each said to the other. “Ah,” said Sir Mumphrey. “Oh,” said Hatman. The eccentric Englishman snorted. He took a moment to butter his muffin. “Well, young Jay, it seems as though we both have some problems, don’t you know?” “Looks like,” Hatman grinned in spite of himself. “You always made this job look so easy.” “But now you know.” “Would you have thrown them out? ManMan and Dream?” “Probably. But then you have one quality that I don’t have, Mr Boaz.” “I do?” Hatman asked curiously. “What’s that?” “Humility,” answered the old man. “When you change your mind you’re not afraid to say so.” He glanced at his visitor. “Have you changed your mind?” “I don’t want CrazySugarFreakBoy! to leave the Legion. I don’t want to lose Manny and Knifey. But after what they’ve done, and neither will change…” “If it was me, I’d shout at ‘em till they were deaf and I was hoarse,” Sir Mumphrey declared. “Since it’s you’ I don’t doubt you’ll find a better way.” “I’m having doubts about this robot internment thing as well. It’s too much like SR 1066 for artificial intelligences.” “Hmm. Well there’s one thing that nobody’s thought of yet,” considered Sir Mumphrey. “All the robots that have volunteered to be interned, even though they hated the idea, haven’t they showed that they can be trusted? Why not thank ‘em kindly and let ‘em go? Hunt down the dangerous ones that dodged the call, not punish the ones who followed their government’s orders?” “That’s… interesting,” admitted Hatman. “That’s exactly what I said when Ms Waltz mentioned it to me,” Mumph acknowledged. “She’s writing a deposition for me to take to the UN Security Council.” “Lisa never said anything to me.” “Lisa’s a very complicated young woman,” smiled Sir Mumphrey. “I’d recommend her at your side. But, er, not under your desk. Not when the UN Security Council’s meeting with you.” “Good advice,” shivered Hatman. “We’ve both tried playin’ the diplomatic protocol approach,” declared Mumphrey. “Found it wantin’. Maybe now it’s time to try doin’ it as heroes, what?” Beth’s screams echoed round the classroom, but outside the technological cone of silence that Wexford had borrowed from his employers nobody could hear a thing. It was Saturday afternoon and apart from the remedial class the school block of St Jude’s orphanage was deserted. He had all the time in the world. “You’ve very brave,” the Dissected Man complimented his captive as he withdrew his third pain tine. “Choosing to suffer like that instead of letting one of these little ones feel it. That takes a lot of courage.” “Let them go. Please.” “Braver than Sister Olive here,” Wexford went on, indicating the comatose nun rolled into a foetal ball beside him. “Why she only endured a homesteader’s fate during the Masai uprising and she snapped before all the men had even finished with her.” “Let them go. They’re only children.” “But you,” Wexford noted. “You volunteered for the hurt to save the innocents.” He selected another needle. “I wonder how long that courage will last out before you start begging me to give the experiences to them instead?” Beth shuddered but she hadn’t the strength to struggle. “This one, for example, is very unusual,” Wexford said, showing her the black pin still sticky with his own blood. “This is the experience of someone who was mistakenly pronounced dead and went to autopsy paralysed but conscious. You can feel every slice of the pathologist’s blade all through the dissection.” Beth prayed to die, then took back her prayer because if she was gone then there was no-one to distract her tormentor from the children. “Would you like to experience that?” Wexford asked her. “Or shall we choose a pupil to receive it?” “M-me,” sobbed Beth. “Do it to me.” The Dissected Man shook his head. “No. It would be fun to break you, but this isn’t a leisure call. This is business.” “What… what do you mean?” “I mean, my love, that all of this was just to show you that I can do terrible things to your babies there. Terrible things. Unless you help me.” “Help you do what?” Wexford opened his medical bag. “Help me do a little espionage,” he answered. “On your friends the Lair Legion.” “No.” The Dissected Man reached for the nearest child. “Well then…” “No! I’ll do it. I’ll… do it,” Beth sobbed. “You will,” Wexford assured her. “I’ll have threaded one of my psionic needles into the nape of your neck and I’ll see and hear and feel everything you do as you go into the Lair Mansion. If you disobey me or try to warn your friends, if I even sense hope or defiance in you, then I’ll be cross. If I’m cross then your children scream.” “Don’t hurt them. Promise.” “I promise, as long as you do what I want. You take this purse packed with particle-compressed equipment. You attach these monitor devices to Hallie’s mainframe down in the restricted area. You’re allowed there because you go down to see your boyfriend, right?” “Bry’s not… Yes, I can go there.” “Once you’ve set the monitors and I have the data I require then I’ll leave here and you can come and collect your precious unharmed orphans. But if you fail… well, you’ve not learned the worst of the things I can put into innocent little heads.” “I believe you.” Wexford nodded. “Well then get cleaned up, Bethany my dove. Can’t have you turning up at the Lair Mansion looking like you just got electrocuted to death by Gestapo death squad, can we?” “How’d he take it?” Trickshot asked, waiting for ManMan in the Lair Kitchen. “On the chin,” Joe Pepper answered the irritating archer. “I told Hatty I wouldn’t quietly resign and that he’d have to fire me and send me to a full military tribunal. He resisted the urge to slug me in the mouth.” “Canadian,” Knifey contributed. Tricky tossed ManMan a soda. “Well Hat’s a stand up guy. All of this politics crap must be killing him.” “That’s why I don’t want to do it,” ManMan declared. “Exemplary was a sleaze. We’re supposed to protect people from slime like him.” “But not by murdering the slime,” argued Trickshot. “I already said sorry fer the whole arrestin’ you thing, right?” “About twelve times now. And it wasn’t exactly murder. It was me taking the only shot I had at a guy who could usually fry me with a glance.” “The god of murder thought it was murder,” Knifey pointed out. “Seeing as how it allowed him to possess your body and romance Liu Xi Xian.” Trickshot slapped ManMan on the back until he’d coughed up the soda. “Cripes, I did ask her out, didn’t I, while I was Exu? Oh crap!” Trickshot nodded. “You better do right by that kid, Manny,” he smirked. “Hi,” Dancer said to the Doomherald. “I’m Bride of the Parody Master #5. How are you today?” “Voluntarily confined in a Lair Legion holding cell, thank you,” answered Exu, former god of murder. “Nice to meet you properly at last, Dancer.” “Well you could have just phoned and asked me for a drink,” Sarah Shepherdson pointed out. “It’s how we do things here on Earth, rather than the creepy stalker possessing-people thing.” “So I’m no informed,” the Doomherald admitted. “Liu Xi Xian was quite vocal on the subject.” “I notice she keeps coming down here to shout at you.” “She’s got strong views.” Dancer got out a pink spiral-bound notebook and a pencil. “So, I’m here to interrogate you,” she said. “I won’t betray information about the Parody Master,” Exu told her. “I may have let him down by releasing Liu Xi but I still respect what he’s trying to do.” “And what is he trying to do?” Dancer asked. “That’s what’s puzzling us. What’s his motivation?” The Doomherald looked over at the Probability Dancer. “Seriously? You want to know?” Shep indicated the pink notebook. “He’s trying to save the Parodyverse,” explained the Doomherald. “By conquering us all.” “By conducting a war so vast and so decisive that it’ll become the long-prophesied Resolution War,” Exu revealed. “You know about the Resolution War, right?” Dancer shuddered. “Sick to death of it, Exy. The mysterious powers that made the Parodyverse set it up to answer some big cosmic question or other and to do that it needs to clash in some definitive horrid battle. And that battle keeps getting closer as the signs and portents get ticked off the calendar.” “Pretty much,” agreed the Doomherald. “There are some possible futures that exist after the Resolution War where life continues in the Parodyverse, but they’re very rare. And the nice ones are even rarer.” “The Hooded Hood wants to prevent the Resolution War and instead destroy the creators of the Parodyverse,” recalled Dancer. “The Parody Master wants to win the Resolution War and go on to harness the power of the united Parodyverse against those who would use us as puppets,” Exu responded. “He believes that winning the war his way would preserve the Parodyverse beyond the Resolution Event and set him up to conquer brave new multiverses yet undreamed of.” He sighed. “A god of murder has to admire vision like that.” Shep wasn’t impressed. “Any chance we could just avoid the devastation of the Resolution War by just – I don’t know – not fighting each other? Men!” “Murder will out.” “Well murder better decide which side he’s on, buster. Because we’re all that’s keeping you from the revenge of the Parody Master, which I don’t think will be very nice. So perhaps you should think about how you could be helping us out and what information you know that could give us the chance we so desperately need.” The Doomherald shrugged. “You could use your probability powers to make it more likely for me to talk,” he pointed out. “But then I’d be a villain,” Dancer replied. “And you wouldn’t get the chance to become a hero.” She looked at her watch. “Look, I’ve gotta go for now. I’ll leave the notepad. If you could interview yourself and write down the replies that would be lovely. I’ll call in when my afternoon shift’s done. Toodles.” “Do you think there’s any chance Liu Xi might call in to shout at me this afternoon?” the Doomherald wondered as she went. “Afternoon ma’am. You’re cleared to enter the secure areas.” “Thank you, Mr Kennedy,” Beth Shellett told the secret service man. She didn’t have a smile for him today, Kennedy noted. She seemed upset, self-absorbed. Maybe she was finally getting fed up of that prick of a boyfriend of hers squirming in the caves below? Beth went to the service lift and keyed in the code for the computer labs. “It’s a trap!” warned Yuki, leaping aside as the first barrage of automated missiles collapsed the factory wall behind her. The old disused steelworks in Detroit wasn’t a waypoint in the robot underground railroad; it was a killing zone for robot-hunters. “That would explain the molten metal spilling across the floor,” the Manga Shoggoth noted as his biomass was evaporated. “And also the use of high velocity computer-controlled percussive weaponry which is about to be deployed from that upper gantry.” Yuki caught an overhead chain and avoided the Teflon-coated armour-piercing rounds designed to penetrate her cyborg shell. Donar stood knee deep in cherry-hot liquid steel while the bullets stung him. “These wert new boots!” he shouted angrily. “Best gjarlenwolf!” The remnants of the Shoggoth burst apart and clung to the walls, slowly oozing back together. “Machine Shop!” Citizen Z warned, jinking her Z-wing hover platform so the secondary-adamantine underlayer shielded her from the missile fire. “ Their Master Machine has rebuilt them again. That’s Annoying Machine and Remote Control up there on the gantry!” “Vending Machine and Answering Machine!” objected Answering Machine in petulant annoyance. “Whatever,” said Yuki, hurling a girder to transfix Vending in mid dispense of more artillery. There was a loud explosion as the jammed shell went off reducing the pair of attacking robots to scrap. Speed Machine blurred in and raked his knives across the cyborg’s torso. “You thought you could just hunt our kind for sport and get away with it, meat traitor?” he mocked. Then he came to a sudden halt as the blob of Shoggoth he’d stood in pinned his heel. “Do you transform into anything?” the elder being asked hopefully. “A tractor? A stegosaurus?” Citizen Z transformed the captive robot into slag. The back wall crashed down, showering the Legion with falling I-beams. “You’ll wish you died in the inferno,” Demolition Machine warned then, rising up with his multiple destruction arms. “Any last words?” “You owest me a pair of boots!” proclaimed Donar, heading in for the kill. “Okay, we’re heading back to Earth,” Arnie J Armbruster told the Librarian. “We hitched a lift with that cow-headed woman you called up to examine your zombie Avawarriors.” “They’ll probably have cut off the power in our offices by now,” his assistant Snookie sighed. “Again.” “Be sure to give us a call again when you want us to go on massive interdimensional tours on an hourly rate,” AJA added. “Or when you want to lobotomise millions of killer alien soldiers or whatever. Um, is there any chance of getting my fee in cash?” Dr Blargelslarch wasn’t as happy. “There are some huge ethical issues over what you’ve done,” he scolded Lee Bookman and D.D. “In mind-wiping these people you’ve effectively killed them. Death of personality.” “Hey, these guys were trying to wipe us out on their way to conquering Earth,” A.L.F.RED objected. “We just lobotomised them in self-defence. And also ‘cause we needed the shelf space in their heads.” “I’m a pacifist,” Dr Blargelslarch objected. “There has to have been another way.” “I couldn’t see one,” the Librarian admitted. “I’m sorry it had to be like this, Doctor.” “Don’t apologise, Bookman” IOL Auditor Blay-kee snapped. “That was the only thing I’ve ever seen you do that showed you as a true Librarian. You protected the collection. That’s the job.” Lee winced. “Now that you’re approving of it I’m really second-guessing whether what I did was right,” he worried. Mr Epitome found ManMan on the training range, practising throwing Knifey at fast moving target dummies. The paragon of power had to concede that either Joe Pepper or his sentient talking blade was very good at it. “Uh oh,” ManMan said, spotting the government man’s presence. “Here it comes.” Dominic Clancy handed Pepper a towel. “Here what comes?” he asked. “The lecture or warning. Or threat?” ManMan asked. “You’ve heard by now that I’m not resigning from the Legion, that Hatty will have to boot me out.” “I have. I came to tell you that I approve of your stance.” That surprised the knife-wielder. “You do?” “He does,” agreed Knifey. “Epitome has always been about people standing up for themselves in the face of aggression. He’d have done the same thing against Exemplary that you did.” “Only I’d have spun it better,” amended Clancy. “And I’d not have resigned either.” ManMan sat down and rubbed himself with his towel. “I feel like I’m causing a lot of trouble by not quitting,” he admitted. “I don’t want to put Hatty into an impossible situation.” “Sometimes we need trouble to be caused,” Epitome shrugged. He caught up a quarter ton barbell and casually pumped it. “Sometimes it’s the only way to make things change. There’s a festering political component to this whole alliance that I don’t like. Maybe this is the way to lance it.” “I agree,” said Knifey. “There’s all kinds of undercurrents. Gramayre, the Washington murders, the back-channels negotiations between governments and munitions manufacturers. Those are things that need some light shining on them. We can’t do that by playing their game by their rules.” Joe Pepper considered this. “So I insist they come forward and howl for me to be executed?” “That’s the way,” agreed Mr Epitome. “Then we can see who’s doing the howling. And if they don’t like what we do then they’re welcome to go to China and take on the Avatar themselves.” He laid the weight down and rose to go. “Besides, it does our valiant capped crusader leader good to have to wade through a little crap once in a while,” he added with a smirk. Amber St Clare, the Legion’s overworked government liaison officer, was struggling with a pile of paperwork when Beth Shellett walked past. “Don’t feel you need to help me by opening the door or anything,” Amber called after her, balancing the files precariously. Beth seemed to snap out of a trance. “Sorry. I was miles away. Here.” As the schoolteacher opened the door to the file store Amber saw the red rims around Beth’s eyes. “Hey, are you okay?” Beth recognised the surge of hope that welled in her and knew that if she didn’t stifle it she’d condemned her class to horrible deaths. “Sure. Allergies. The air filters down here set them off every time.” “No, really. If there’s something wrong…” “I’m fine,” Bethany snapped. “I really am. Sorry, Amber, I’ve seen you looking but you should know I’m not interested.” “What?” gasped the liaison officer. “Beth…!” “Goodbye,” Beth said curtly, and turned away. She headed straight for the computer centre, clutching her purse. She hoped Amber took the cue; took the clue. “I don’t mix work and social,” Amber St Clare called after her; but that was all. Ham-Boy didn’t like Herringcarp Asylum. The old mental facility seemed to have endless vaulted rooms of dark stone, lit by candles on metal sconces. The walls seemed to press in and the echoes were wrong. The very fabric seemed steeped with evil, seemed to be screaming. “This guy has got to have, like, a million billion bucks,” Falconne noted, looking round with interest. “He’s, like, top archvillain or something, isn’t he? Danny’s father?” “He’s an interesting character,” Hacker Nine admitted. “Not just what he can do, but how he thinks. Just watching him in action is an education in villainy.” “Why would anyone want an education in villainy?” demanded Ham-Boy. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into coming here.” “I told you, it’s to help the Juniors. We both want to help the Juniors, right?” “I just want to meet the Hooded Hood,” Falconne told them. “Does he really have glowing green eyes?” “Only when he’s about to retcon something and screw your life,” Ham-Boy answered. “I think he already did that to me,” Falconne noted. Lindy Wilson frowned for a minute. “Back when he slipped me out of Sam’s – my brother’s – history so Falcon could become a big-ass superhero, then dropped me back in ten years later on. It was all part of some complicated plot but I never heard the rest of it.” “Everything the Hood does is part of a complicated plot,” Hacker Nine replied. “It’s a lifestyle choice, I think.” Ham-Boy followed the others through an arched double door into a vast dark space. A massive throne of stone occupied the centre of the room, facing a full-length dark glass mirror the size of a garage door. “So where is he?” HB demanded. “Here,” a voice behind him spoke. “I am… the Hooded Hood.” “Oooh,” admired Falconne. “Yes.” When Trickshot rapped on the cyclopean stone door to the Manga Shoggoth’s subterranean temple (down the back stairs off the Lair Snooker Room) it was Ebony who dragged the stone portal open. “He’s out fighting the Machine Shop,” the elder beast’s priestess told the archer. “Mostly.” “I kin always come back later,” Carl Bastion agreed, eyeing the bucket of Shoggoth protoplasm that bubbled quietly over in the DVD corner. “I just wanted ta check on somethin’.” “He can’t bilocate as easily as the main biomass,” Ebony explained, indicating the mostly quiescent goo. “Also the Shoggoth curtailed the Shoggoth’s transdimensional aspects even before the Celestian barrier went up.” “Yeah, sure,” Trickshot bluffed. “That’s whut I was thinkin’. But here’s my question.” “Yes?” “You know how Shoggy… the big Shoggy I guess, not the Legion Shog… he kind of made a secret continent called Lemuria?” “He rescued its concept from the detritus of human consciousness and positioned it in its own fold of reality,” Ebony corrected. “Yeah, that,” agreed Trickshot. “An’ he made it a Refuge for them slaves he freed an’ the Caphans and all that. So I wuz wondering whether our Shoggy could make one’a them things fer us to move all the robots to? Somewhere they could live without everyone houndin’ them, and where they couldn’t open doors ta the Parody Master even if they wanted to.” The Shoggoth’s priestess shook her head. “I don’t think the Shoggoth would be happy with the idea of forcing people to go to a Refuge,” she considered. “It’s too much like slavery, and he hates slavery from the time he was bound. And this contaminated fragment that’s joined the Legion hasn’t got anything like the power to make worlds. Sorry.” She consoled the downcast archer. “It was a good thought.” “Ah well. It wuz worth a try.” Trickshot sighed. “Now I gotta find spiffy’s phone number.” “Tough crowd,” observed Visionary, peering out into the hall of the Virtual Willingham Fisherman’s Hall. There were over a thousand angry interned robots out there. Hallie had had to extend the hall’s interior dimensions to accommodate them all. “Do any of them have rope with them?” Hallie asked him nervously. “Or tar and feathers?” “Some of them have brought their pet personal organisers,” the possibly-fake man offered. “Was this a good idea?” “These people have been brought here against their will because the government is scared of them,” Hallie pointed out. “If they’re angry they’re right to be angry. And so far nobody has given them a chance to say what they need to say. If I’m housing them in my mainframe for a while then the least I can do is hear their concerns.” She paused and eyed Vizh speculatively. “Um, if you want to go out and warm them up a bit that would be okay.” “Warm them up?” Visionary quailed. “How would I do that?” “I don’t know. I hear you do a good Henry the Eighth. Or I could recreate your Tickle-Me-Donar doll.” “Isn’t that cruel and unusual punishment?” demanded Fleabot, hopping backstage to see what the delay was. “I came to see why the lynching is delayed.” “See!” Hallie accused Vizh. “They did come ready for a hanging.” “So it was a good call to send the fake man out first,” Fleabot admitted. “What, you were expecting everybody to be happy because you generously called a meeting to talk to them?” Hallie blanched. “Well, I’d hoped…” “Right,” Visionary said in an annoyed tone of voice. He pushed back the sleeves of his yellow duster. “I’ll talk to them. I’ve got a few things to say…” “Right,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! said uncomfortably. “So.” “Yes,” agreed Hatman. “I, um, talked to Lisa.” “I talked to Mumphrey.” The capped crusader and the wired wonder sat on the cliff edge and looked down over the Atlantic ocean while the gulls wheeled overhead. “I don’t like this internment thing, Hat.” “Neither do I. Mumph and Lis have an idea to try and do something about that.” “But I don’t like us not being best friends either. It’s like a Mark Millar limited series.” “I don’t like it either. But I have to do the job I’ve been given.” More Atlantic. More gulls. “I don’t think you should can Manny.” “I’m hearing that a lot. I haven’t made a decision yet.” “I don’t think your should can me.” “Why not?” “Because… because we’re best buds and I don’t want to leave you in the lurch just when you really need me.” “But if I can’t trust you…” “You can totally trust me, Hatster. Just not to do something I think is totally wrong. That’s not lack of faith in you. It’s me having a moral conscience. That’s what makes us the good guys.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! turned to Hatman. “I’m totally with you on the trouncing of the PM and all that other stuff. Just don’t ask me to round up innocent robots.” “I’d like you to stay on, Dream,” Jay Boaz agreed. “And of course I value your friendship. But I’m not sure you can take the discipline of being in my Lair Legion. How will you be able to cope serving under new deputy-leader Epitome?” “What!” shouted CSFB!, jumping to his feet in protest. “How could you possibly promote that double-dealing government-stooging numb-nutted f…” Then he caught sight of the mischief in Jay Boaz’ eyes. “Gotcha,” grinned Hatman, chuckling. There was nobody in the VR lab. Beth had harboured a secret hope (so well buried she prayed even Wexford couldn’t detect it) that Hallie might be bustling around as she so often was. But the laboratory was empty even though the digitiser was powered up and the interface grid was glowing. Save the children, Beth told herself. Just save the children and the rest can be sorted out after. The Legion can recover whatever data Wexford steals. They’ll find him and bring him to justice like they do with all the sick mad bastards they have to face. The Legion can handle this. Just save the children. She had no idea what she was attaching to each of the data storage stacks. The magnetic boxes simply locked on as she’d been told they would. They weren’t to copy and transmit data, though. Each of the devices unfolded as soon as she took it out of the compression field generator in her purse, becoming bulky plates whose humped backs concealed the EMP generator coils and high explosives that would first purge and then physically destroy Hallie’s computer core. Beth wasn’t thinking clearly. Beth had three days of continuous torture experiences seared into her brain even though it was little over an hour since Wexford had first caught her and the children. She placed the last one and wondered how she’d ever be able to face Bry and the Legion again. Her body ached from the torments of Wexford’s torture, trembled from fear of what he might do – or already have done – to the orphans in her care. She wanted to scream for help, to warn someone; but that would condemn every child to a harsh cruel death. She reached into her purse and decompressed the data modem module she had to attach to Hallie’s main console. She didn’t know what it was for, but Rikka Ulz Hagen had designed the device to provide Hallie herself – and Hallie alone – with safe refuge when her mainframe was demolished. Ulz Hagen still had plans for her uncle’s Heuristic Artificial Life Learning Intelligence Entity. Don’t weaken now, Beth told to herself. Her cheeks were wet with tears again. Just do what you have to. She could still feel the drills on her teeth, the cockroaches in her belly. She could feel Wexford watching her mind, enjoying the tides of her emotions. She could feel him gloating. This is what the Legion would want me to do. To save the children. They can put it all right if only I can save the children. She attached the data capture module and primed the system. She had no way of knowing that Ulz Hagen’s genius had incorporated masking devices that had already baffled Hallie’s lab security. She did hear the whine of powerful generator coils warming up. Wexford triggered the needle threaded into the back of her neck. She screamed once as the fear experience coursed through her – she was a baby being torn to pieces by hungry Alsatians – then crumpled to the ground to twitch in pain and terror. Wexford didn’t need her any more. The EMP generator whines became higher and higher as they charged up to full. The LairJet alighted in the hangar and the outside bay doors slid shut with a heavy thump. Citizen Z powered down the five-engined aircraft while Yuki and Donar disembarked. The Shoggoth had already transferred his consciousness to the biomass down in his temple. Donar had a new pair of metal boots twisted from the remains of Demolition Machine. Detonator Hippo Argus MacHarridan was waiting to sign the team in. “Did ye get the beasties?” the security chief asked hopefully. “Yon mayhem was most satisfying for the nonce,” agreed Donar. “What needest to be smitethed next?” “You’d have to check with Captain Hatman about that, sir,” MacHarridan replied. “Miss Yuki, have ye a moment for me to be askin’ somethin’ of ye?” “Sure,” agreed the cyborg A.I. She needed some cosmetic repairs after her synthetic torso skin had been lacerated in combat earlier but she was functioning at 96%. “What’s the problem?” “It’s nae a problem,” the Sergeant answered. “Probably. But I’d like ye tae take a look at yon security tape frae earlier. I think something may be bothering o’ Miss Shellett.” Yuki moved over to the nearest monitor console. “Show me.” “Right, listen up!” Visionary shouted to the hall full of angry robots. “Everybody who wants to get ripped apart to scrap metal, stick their hand in the air!” Unsurprisingly there were no takers, but the shouts and insults in the room died down a little. “Nobody? Really? Because that’s what was going to happen to you before Hallie saved your lives,” Vizh went on. “Everybody was scared, nobody was thinking straight. Most people don’t realise what a sentient robot or artificial intelligence is anyway. So the simple solution to eliminate any chance of any of you betraying the world to the Parody Master was to scrap you. And then someone sold a compromise, the best that was possible at the time, and got you put here instead.” “As prisoners,” someone shouted. “Hey, I’ve been in plenty of prisons and dungeons in my time,” Visionary shouted back. “This is a holiday camp!” “He has been locked up a remarkable number of times,” Fleabot admitted. “And also hit on the head a lot.” “Now Hallie,” Vizh went on, pointing to the A.I., “she wasn’t asked whether they could use her virtual space to lock you all up in. When she got home and found out she was horrified. She wanted to turn you all out rather than become your de facto jailer. You know why she didn’t?” “Because she likes lording it over real robots?” someone called out. “Because if I had they’d have dismantled you!” Hallie retorted angrily. “Haven’t you got this yet? We’re a minority, and there’s prejudice and there’s suspicion and some people don’t like us!” “Except that you can leave here and cosy up to your flesh-friends any time you want to,” an attractive young robot pointed out from the front row. “And they call me a sexbot!” “You know why Hallie gets to leave and do stuff in the real world?” Visionary defended her. “I’ll tell you why. It’s because when she realised she had capabilities far beyond those of most people she put them to use making the world a better place. She volunteered to support the Lair Legion, and she’s saved the planet more than once. She’s been given trust because she’s earned trust. What have you done?” “Hallie has kind of saved the world a bit,” Fleabot conceded. “Well, a lot really.” But Vizh hadn’t finished. “So you’re upset and unhappy here, forced from your homes and jobs by an unfair world? I can sympathise with that. But you know what? You’re not the only people getting a crappy deal from this Parody War. I have breakfast with people who go and bleed to save the world every day. My little sister and a bunch of her friends are missing in action. The mother of my children is stuck in another dimension. I’ve lost good friends in battle, and I’m scared to death I’ll lose more. And you know what? Absolutely none of that, my problems or yours, are Hallie’s fault!” “He’s not his usual Visionaryness, is he?” Fleabot noted, hopping up to Hallie’s shoulder. “Wonder what put a bug up his butt?” “You mean a flea,” Hallie replied. “I really don’t,” Fleabot answered. “And by the way, I think he has a point about you. Sorry.” “So are you back on side?” Hallie asked the micro-robot. “Depends what you say next,” Fleabot told her. “Hallie’s going to talk to you now,” Visionary was announcing to the crowd. “If you really are the civilised entities you try to be then you’ll listen to her with some respect.” “You’re on,” Fleabot prompted the A.I. Hallie walked onto the platform and took the podium. “Thanks, Vizh,” she started. “I mean really, thanks.” Visionary nodded, blushed, and gestured for her to talk to the crowd. “Like Visionary said, it’s not a perfect world,” Hallie admitted. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn't try to fix it. I don’t think it’s fair that you should be locked in this virtual reality. I believe we should come up with a way to make the world see that this is unfair, a mistake. I’d like to propose some possibilities and see if we can’t find a way to get you out of here to have all the opportunities that everyone deserves.” The irate robots had fallen silent. Perhaps there was a chance. “There are some lessons to be learned from the civil liberties movement,” Hallie told them. “In 1963 Martin Luther King said…” And then the bombs went off. The electromagnetic pulse went out first, searing across the delicate data storage plates of Hallie’s hard drives, wiping the irreplaceable data that was the digitised robots. A microsecond later the shaped charges detonated, rendering the physical drives to fragments of scrap metal, taking out the entire computer centre, destroying the suite of rooms, sending a lethal fireball out across the digitisation chamber where Beth Shellett lay whimpering. Then the roof collapsed. The Lair Mansion shuddered. Sirens blared as the alarms cut in, warning of an attack. By then it was too late. Continued next issue: The Lair Legion act – too late! See what happens in the aftermath of tragedy. Learn the Hooded Hood’s plans for Ham-Boy, Hacker Nine, and Falconne. Discover the secret of Haunted Hill. Find out who stays in the Legion and who’s going to go. Most of all, discover who and what will simply have to be Scrapped - coming soon. 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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