This message Premiere #1: The White Room was posted by on Thursday, January 24, 2002 at 21:41.
Premiere walked into the White Room and found that nothing had changed. The same brilliant, featureless walls. The same glaring lighting. No shadows anywhere. The Science Council sat in their white lab coats on their white chairs behind their white desk. Dr Zalas in their center, holding his comm pad with the mission evaluation report upon it.
“So,” Zalas said, looking up from his reading. “You did it.”
Premiere didn’t feel the need to answer. It was in the report. They knew what he had done. What they had made him do.
“It is gratifying to know that you are still… reliable,” Dr Zalas continued. He seemed determined to provoke some kind of response from the aging science hero. “Somewhat.”
Premiere looked at the smug little man directly for the first time. “I cleaned up your mess. Don’t push it.”
“Our mess?” Zalas asked. “Our mess? I hardly think we can be held responsible for your marginal performance on this mission, Mister Brooke. You may be somewhat out of training, but still…”
“Still I came back because you ordered me to, and I did the mission because you needed me to, and I did what a dozen of your high-tech hot new meta-agents died trying to do, and I saved Technopolis,” the tall graying man in the black and white jumpsuit told them. “Wrap it up however you want, Zalas. The Science Council thought it was untouchable. You pushed the Commblock because you thought you could get away with it. When they pushed back you found you weren’t as tough as you thought you were, and you had to come running to me with your tails between your legs to save you from the problem you’d provoked.”
The Science Council didn’t like hearing that. “How dare you?” Professor Brudas hissed. “We are the intelligence elite of Technopolis! We are the computer-chosen perfect leadership of the greatest city ever built! Your attitude smacks of the sour grapes of yesterday’s man, Brooke. You had your moment long ago, and you were found wanting.”
“You mean I chose not to use my abilities to force myself onto the Science Council, maybe to become its chair? That I instead helped to institute our modern system of government, the system which selected all of you to the power and privilege you hold today?” Premiere considered this. “Perhaps I should have done something different back then, if you are the best this system can offer to our city.”
“You dare threaten us?” screeched Dr Zalas, rising from his chair in his anger.
“I’m not threatening you,” answered Premiere. “If I was threatening you then you’d be in a world or trouble, because even now you haven’t a single science hero who could stop me if I decided to pull your snotty little head off.”
“You go too far,” Brudas warned, but fell silent as the old warrior turned to him.
“Level ten strength. Level ten stamina. Level eight reflexes. Level ten invulnerability, at least. Level eight senses. Level eight cognitive abilities. Level seven levitation. Level ten energy projection. Fifteen years as the Science Council’s principal operative, with four hundred and twenty-three completed missions, and more combat and tactical experience than any dozen of your current crop of feckless boy wonders. If I was going too far, believe me you would know about it,” hissed Premiere.
“And yet you struggled with your most recent assignment,” sniffed Dr Zalas, indicating the comm-pad before him. “And your near-failure almost destroyed us all.”
Premiere clenched a fist that could powder diamonds and forced himself to take a breath. “You political ambitions led you to force unjust trade practices on the Buffer Nations. When some of them turned to Commblock for help in combating your economic stranglehold you enforced your policies through deploying your Science Hero Squads. And then when Commblock turned out to have much better developed genetic re-engineering than you suspected and to be able to field operatives of similar power and ability you found you had overstretched yourselves and left yourselves vulnerable to counterstrikes on key strategic assets like the quantum turbines and the outer computerplex cores. In fact you left Technopolis itself open to invasion by our main rival.”
“Your views are irrelevant,” Zalas sniffed. “You are here for us to evaluate your performance, not the other way around. And your performance in this mission was… questionable.”
“Questionable,” repeated Premiere. “You assigned me to stop Xanadelle from capturing or destroying the quantum turbines in the Atlantean Ocean, to protect the computerplex cores, and to prevent no less than seven full Commblock Science Squads. By the time you put me in the field Xanadelle was already well entrenched, her plans fully formed. Your own operatives were neutralized or dead. I had few intelligence reports to go on, I had no time for preparation, and I had two million lives at stake. And I stopped her, and I stopped Commblock, and there is still a Technopolis. How exactly would you say that was ‘questionable’?”
The Science Council exchanged significant looks. “There is some concern,” Dr Crevlan noted, “about your relations with the Commblock science operative Xanadelle.”
Premiere’s flint-blue eyes narrowed dangerously. “What about them?”
“Our initial evaluation would suggest,” Dr Zalas said, “that you may have allowed your… past association with her to color your judgement, thus preventing the most efficient solution to your field mission.”
“And what past association would that be?” Premiere asked quietly.
“Oh come on,” Brudas sneered. “It’s all in the record. You encountered her more than a dozen times back in your active agent days. She was one of your regular adversaries. You even worked together on one occasion countering the Mynadrine Host which threatened the whole planet. Your admiration for her is evident from your accounts of her exploits. Are you seriously suggesting that you never had any feelings for her? Or that you never acted upon them?”
“Are you seriously suggesting that this is any of your damn business?”
“Of course it is our business,” Zalas smirked. “The Science Council must be concerned when an agent’s performance is compromised by treacherous and unprofessional liaisons.”
Premiere reminded himself that he could crush these bitter old men far too easily. He forced himself to remain calm. “You can’t bear it, can you?” he realized. “You can’t bear to lose face. You screwed up so badly that you were forced to call me back, after all you did to get rid of me. Now you have to try and smear what I’ve done to try and divert attention from the mess you made with your bully-tactics and your high-handedness.”
“Mister Brooke, this is not about the Science Council,” snapped Zalas. “You will maintain some sense of discipline.”
“Or?” breathed Premiere.
“Or we will take punitive action,” threatened Zalas.
“I see,” the science hero replied. “So you want to know about Xanadelle, do you? Very well. I’ll tell you about her. She was brilliant. Beautiful. Dangerous and deadly. She was velvet and steel. And if we had met under different circumstances we could have had a life together. As it was, fate cast us as enemies. But she was always an honorable foe. She was no Count Armageddon or Red Watchman. If I respected her it was because she was worthy of respect. If I loved her… if I loved her it was because she was worthy of being loved.”
“So you admit it,” Professor Brudas hissed.
“Yes,” Premiere told him. “I loved her. And when I had to choose between using lethal force to save Technopolis and letting her triumph, I killed her.”
“But first you gave her the chance to surrender,” objected Crevlan. “And in that moment she could have turned the tables upon you and cost you your victory.”
“You allowed your personal foibles to endanger us all,” Brudas accused.
“And then you disobeyed my personal instruction to retrieve her body for dissection, instead destroying it with your thermal spray,” Dr Zalas concluded.
“That’s right,” Premiere agreed. “I did the right thing. You might not have heard about doing right. It’s a personal foible of mine.”
The Science Council erupted into a buzz of angry conversation. Premiere’s attitude and arrogance were clearly out of control, and something had to be done.
“Mister Brooke,” Zalas said at last. “It is the finding of this Council that you have acted dishonorably, recklessly, and treasonously in your recent mission. If you are willing to admit to the findings and submit to a re-education and rehabilitation program we are willing to abrogate the charges against you. Otherwise we will be forced to take precautions to prevent further violations of Science Council policy.”
“Zalas, in the interests of Technopolis I let you throw me from the Corps long ago, and I’ve kept quiet as the Science Council became more fascist and more elitist with every new edict. But now I think the time has come for me to speak out about you all to the people of Technopolis. Do you think people might remember me and want to hear what I’ve got to say?”
The Science Council members looked a little nervous as the most famous science hero in Technopolis’ history rounded on them. Even the comprehensive media education program instituted by the reform committees had failed to eradicate the public’s affection for their once-savior.
Dr Zalas had the answer. “I think, Mister Brooke, that it is time for us to remind you why we are the Science Council, the rightful selected rulers of this great city, and why you are a tedious anachronistic functionary who needs putting in his place permanently.” As he spoke, the Chairman pressed a button so that the lead screen slid away from the white box before him, revealing the glowing blue substance within.
Premiere went pale.
“Quantium 40,” Zalas announced. “It emits particles on the Omega wavelength, which I believe tends to neutralize your powers, Mister Brooke. In fact I believe it provokes bouts of extreme weakness, and if you are exposed to it for a prolonged period of time will most undoubtedly kill you.”
“Fortunately,” added Professor Brudas, “we do not need to waste our precious time watching you die. We have securibots who are quite capable of finishing you off now so we can move onto other matters of more weighty concern.”
Two of the sleek white security machines glided forwards, their matter dissemblers charged.
“And I killed her for you,” Premiere whispered, so quietly that none of them could hear him.
The securibots discharged their dissemblers into the fallen science hero.
Premiere reached out and crumpled them like tissue paper.
“What?” Crevlan gasped.
“How?” Brudas mouthed.
Premiere dropped the crushed balls of metal to the floor, where they buried themselves into the white plastic. He reached forward to the Quantium 40, picked it up, and looked at it.
“There’s something you didn’t have in my file,” he told Dr Zalas confidentially. “That Quantium 40 thing? I made it up.”
“What?”
“Level eight cognitive functions, remember? I knew the Science Council wouldn’t be happy unless they thought they had a way of getting rid of me. So I invented an allergy to Quantium 40. You have no idea how many bad guys have tried to use that against me. It’s really useful.” And Premiere crushed the blue crystal in his palm and scattered the dust across Zalas’ pristine white control desk.
“What… what are you going to do?” the chairman of the Science Council stammered as the indestructible warrior leaned over him.
“I’m going to tell Technopolis what you’ve done,” Premiere promised. “I’m going to tell them what I think of you. I’m going to tell them all the sordid little secrets, the embarrassing mistakes, the sordid political in-fighting. I’m going to denounce the system, and call for a different one. I’m going to bring you down. And then I’m going home to mourn Xanadelle.”
The Science Council watched as Premiere bent the arms of Zalas’ chair round to trap the scientist in his own seat of office. Then the science hero turned and stalked towards the White Room door.
“Make all the fuss you want,” Zalas called after him. “You won’t win. And I shall still have made you destroy the woman you loved.” And the chair of the Science Council laughed.
The fist that hit him was travelling at nine hundred miles per hour, with a force which could shatter a small meteor. Zalas’ head disintegrated in a spray of blood and powdered bone and his pulped body was on obscene red splotch upon the White Room wall.
The Science Council hardly had time to react before Premiere’s thermal spray seared half of them to the bone. Crevlan died from a lightning-fast backhand that caved his chest flat, but Brudas had time to begin a scream before premiere closed his hand around the scientist’s skull.
In less than a minute the only living person in the White Room was Victor Brooke. His hands weren’t even bloody, because dirt and stains didn’t adhere to him.
“What do you know, Xanadelle,” he said in flat dull tones, “You won after all.”
Premiere walked through the wall into the adjacent Technology Hall. Nobody was going to get in his way. He found Red Watchman’s dimensional projector in the trophy gallery. He used his own stored energies to fire it up.
Premiere took a last look at his beloved Technopolis. He had failed in his duty. He had broken his oath. He had become a murderer. And he could not regret it. He could no longer feel regret or remorse. In fact he no longer felt anything at all.
He stepped into the projector, not bothering to set it to a destination.
The next morning he awoke in a place called the Parodyverse
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