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Nats' Simple Job Tuesday, 25-Jan-2000 17:53:14
At first it had seemed just like a normal job interview. Name – Bill Reed. Address – Well, I’m kinda staying at the Paradopolis YMCA until I get my own place, y’know, but… Super Powers – “Super Powers?” Nats stammered, flushing up to the roots of his red hair. “What kind of question is that? How could I have super powers?” Miss Framlicker looked over her somewhat sexy big round spectacles at him. “Mister Reed, we have no interest whatsoever in how you gained your abilities. Your origins are your own concern. Radioactive animals, divine parentage, bizarre mutation, mad scientist experiment, fallen celestial entity, demon possession, discovered item of power in cereal packet, racoon person, it’s of no concern to us. We are an equal opportunities employer. But we do need to know what your powers are. I need to fill this box out on the form right here.” “But… what makes you think I have any powers at all?” Nats prevaricated. “I mean, you just advertised for an office junior...” “The very fact that you even found the front door of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation indicates that there is something unique about you,” Miss Framlicker explained. “It’s a sixty story skyscraper in downtown Paradopolis!” objected Bill Reed. “Sometimes it is,” admitted the account manager, “but we take steps to prevent people who shouldn’t know about us noticing it. Now, about your super-powers…?” “I can fly,” sighed Nats. Miss Framlicker duly recorded this. “And?” “That’s it. I can fly.” “That’s all? You fly?” “Hey, it’s not the size of your powers, it’s what you do with them,” Nats argued hotly. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to do. The spec does call for a flyer. And the previous employee had loads of powers and that didn’t stop him for being eate… unsuitable. We’ll call this first job a practical test.” “What job?” Bill demanded. “Photocopying? Filing? Collecting the mail?” “A delivery,” Miss Framlicker pouted. “Most definitely a delivery…” “What the hell is this?” Nats shouted over the howling of the interdimensional vortex. “This is a Mark Three Vortex Navigation Harness, designed to prevent you from being dragged away by the turbulences between realities and shredded to oblivion with a 90% confidence,” Miss Framlicker explained. “I don’t mean the leatherwork, I mean… this!” the hero clarified, gesturing off the steel platform into the rainbow swirl of jumbled energies beyond. “Didn’t you read our brochure?” Miss Framlicker asked, her cool blue eyes dancing with devilment. “Interdimensional Transportation specialises in moving items and people from one place to another. The Vortex is a very tricky but necessary trade route you know. Like all frontier work it is dangerous but profitable.” “You want me to go into there?” “Oh yes. This is a Vortex Tracking Beacon. Use those… flying powers of yours to home in on the signal, retrieve the package there, and bring it back here. It’s very large, but the Vortex is gravityless and you can, after all, fly.” Nats sighed, checked his Mark Three Vortex Navigation Harness, and plunged into the maelstrom. Miss Framlicker watched him go, then turned as the immaculately dressed Mister Lundqvist joined her on the platform. “Well?” the manager of ITC prompted her. “If he survives this one, he might just do,” the account manager admitted with a crooked little smile. “Doh!” Nats cringed as he was buffeted out of the last in a series of increasingly furious energy-streams to the source of the beacon signal. He recognised the package at once. He’d seen it on the TV. From now on he could see it in his nightmares. “The Yurt!” he moaned. “They sent me to collect the f------ Yurt!” The multi-ton product of a nuclear accident including a Russian peasant hut and a hapless Commieslavian potato-picker turned at the sound of a voice. “Flying man say bad words about Yurt! Yurt will smash!” Nats had a pretty sharp temper. Right now it was hiding. “No, no, it’s just that I was… I was upset because I left behind the, um, the candy I was meaning to bring for you, that’s all. Honest!” “You get Yurt candy?” the inconceivableYurt checked. “Er, sure. But I left it back where I came from,” Nats answered quickly. “You FORGET Yurt’s candy?!” the building that walked like a man roared. “Hey, no problem, Yurt ol’ buddy,” Nats placated him. “We can go together and get it, OK. I’ll (I don’t believe I’m saying this) I’ll fly you there, okay?” “Flying man fly Yurt?” “Yeah. No problem. Let me fly you to the candy.” “Then Yurt not pull flying man’s head off until later.” The journey back was tougher than the ride out. Nats was dragging a massive, bad-tempered, deeply stupid bulk behind him, and the vortex seemed to whip at them and delight in dragging them away from their destination. The hero wondered how the Yurt had come to be in interdimensional space or whatever this was in the first place. But mostly he wondered how much he was going to hurt tomorrow morning. Finally he spotted the steel balcony and the welcome glow of fluorescent office lighting beyond a rectangle of portal. “There!” he told the Yurt. “That’s where we’re going.” He was idly wondering what exactly Miss Framlicker wanted the Yurt for as they entered the offices of IDC. He was hoping the Yurt would pull her head off first, because by now he had one hell of a headache to pay her back for. The Yurt dematerialised as he stomped into the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation’s building. “We’re delivering him to his agreed destination, Mr Reed” Miss Framlicker explained to the confused hero that had retrieved him. “Basic teleportation this time, of course.” “That was the Yurt!” Nats gasped. “The Yurt! That was the frickin’ Yurt!” “Of course,” Miss Framlicker shrugged. “We’d hardly have gone to all that trouble for spiffy or someone, now would we?” Nats took a deep breath. “But I did it. I got him here and I survived. So do I get the job?” Miss Framlicker pushed the teleportation remote control button again. “We’ll let you know,” she smiled at Bill as he dematerialised. “We’ll let you know.” Nats appeared in a garbage skip outside a Chinese restaurant in Gothametropolis, and no matter how hard he looked he couldn’t find the ITC building again. Until next time. A Nats story as requested, by way of welcome from the Hooded Hood |
| Put me in a story, somebody! Anybody! (n/t) (Nats, swearing Nats #2 will be out within the next year or two) (25-Jan-2000 10:14:24) |
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