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This message Premiere #18: New World Order was posted by The Hooded Hood on Tuesday, May 21, 2002 at 04:02.
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Premiere #18: New World Order
“It is like this,” Starpom Omega told the assembled vestiges of Sov-Blok government who sat nervously round the conference table in the SPUD helicarrier that hovered above the devastated landscape of Premiere’s Earth. “Victor Brooke, the science hero you know as Premiere, has returned to lead us out of the mess our planet is currently in and save us all. You are here to pledge yourselves to his cause and to donate your energies to restoring the world under a new elected government.”
Director Maranov laughed skeptically. “And why should we agree to this, exactly, comrade Omega?” he mocked.
The soviet super-soldier scowled down at the nasty little Party man. “Because he says so,” he answered.
“And why should we listen to a Technopolitan capitalist?” another Sov-Blok leader demanded.
Starpom Omega folded his arms over his chest and grinned nastily through his salt-and-pepper beard. “Because I say so,” he answered.
There was silence in the conference room for almost a minute. At last Maranov ventured, “And we are just to accept the absolute dictatorship of the Technopolis science hero?”
“Of course not,” Omega answered. He pointed at the Parodyverse humans sitting at the far end of the table. “These people will form the interim world government since they are demonstrably neutral in our local internecine disputes.”
“What?” objected Visionary. “Whose idea was that? I can’t…”
“Relax, fake man. He means Cheryl, Lisa, and Yo,” Dan Drury explained.
“Oh. Well Cheryl, yes, I mean she’s patient and understanding and wise. But Lisa… she’s evil?”
“And how does that disqualify me from politics?” the amorous advocatrix demanded.
“And… and Yo…”
“Yo am to have been ruling the Dreary Dimension previously, and Yo is thinking Yo is going to be good at this.”
“Unless you’d prefer it was you, dear,” Cheryl asked Visionary sweetly.
_______________
The nuclear detonations had shattered the tectonic plate around the great lakes. The river of lava was three miles wide and rolling south towards the already-devastated Service Conurbation Sigma Theta Twelve. With the power blackouts caused by loss of the techweb there was no chance that the forty thousands inhabitants could be evacuated in time to save them.
“Any response?” Conurbation Manager Issac Levi asked his communications officer for the fiftieth time. “Any response at all? Right now I’d even settle for Sov-Bloc help.”
“I can’t even tell if we’re transmitting, sir,” Linda McGuire despaired. The communications center had taken damage during the initial incursion of Sov forces. Half the wall and the roof were gone, the sensitive equipment it housed now open to the sky. “I can’t tell how long before the leading edge of the magma stream hits us. I can’t…”
The ground shook. On the horizon fragments of stone burst up in a channel perpendicular to the conurbation. Then there was the roaring of waters as Lake Eyrie discharged along its new-made canal, the force of the passage slashing turbulent foam across the shattered earth.
The waters reached the terminus of the new channel and washed over it onto the molten lava stream beyond. There was the scream of superheated stone splitting and a mushroom cloud of steam hissed outwards so fast that the conurbation was enveloped in its humid fog.
“What the hell is this?” gasped Levi. “What’s happening now?”
Technician McGuire frantically tried to focus damaged equipment as the steam cloud thinned. “I have no idea, sir,” she admitted. “But that water seems to be cooling the leading edge of the lava flow, forming a dam. I… think we might be saved.”
And the radio crackled to life as a confident, powerful voice boomed out, “You are saved. Now help others.”
Isaac Levi and Linda McGuire exchanged surprised glances. “Who was that?”
The technician tried making sense of her instrumentation but eventually gave up in favor of staring out of the shattered comm room. “Look! Up in the sky…!”
_______________
Visionary wandered down to the crowded sick bay to see how NTU-150 was doing after his ordeal with Mad Wendy, but he found that Jamie Bautista had already discharged himself and was down in the engine room with Al B. Harper.
“What are you doing?” Visionary asked, picking his way over the half-dismantled engines of the SPUD helicarrier. He wondered what was keeping the massive floating battleship airborne but was horribly afraid that if he asked they might tell him.
“I’m just revisiting my helicarrier designs,” NTU-150 explained, pouring over some schematic diagrams that he and Al seemed to find terribly significant. “In the light of a few gadgets that got kind of salvaged from those downed Sov Bloc Grav Cruisers.”
“We can rebuild it,” Al B. Harper enthused. “We have the technology.”
That was what Visionary was afraid of.
_______________
The Tech-Pirates burrowed up through the plascreet of the urban square, their massive mole machine shattering the already-damaged buildings in the habitation zone around it. The residents of Cáceres, long used to raids and incursions, screamed and fled as the heavily armed raiders spilled out from their vessel to claim food and slaves.
Such was life in the Buffer Realms even before the fall of the technet and the collapse of civilization. All that had happened was that the Tech-Pirates and Body Harvesters had got a little bolder.
Then something impacted with the mole-ship, dropping vertically onto it and hammering right through eighteen inches of reinforced titanium hull and through all the internal partitions beyond. There was the screech of tearing metal and a flash of heat as a miniature sun briefly flared inside the craft, liquefying the interior.
And then Premiere rose from the ruined shell, his grey cape fluttering in the updrafts of the devastation he had caused. “These realms are under my protection now,” he announced. “All piracy will stop. Now.” He glared down at the shocked Tech-Pirates pointing their shattercannons at him. “You have five seconds to surrender, or I shall show you how the new rules work.”
_______________
The newly formed world council had broken after it’s first six hour summit and Lisa needed a back rub in the worst possible way. What she got was an anxious young woman hovering outside her berth desperate to talk to her.
“Hello, Windblossom. What can I do for you?”
“Yo said I should see you,” Kareen O’Connor blurted. “I mean, she suggested you could… She said she thought Cheryl would be able to listen to any problem I have and she would be the ideal person…”
“And so…” Lisa prompted.
“Unless the problem was about sex,” Windblossm went on, blushing furiously. “Yo said all those sort of inquiries should be directed to you.”
Lisa shrugged. “I’ve heard about it,” she admitted. “You’d better come in to my cabin. What’s the problem.”
“Well,” Windblossom worried, “For starters, how do you know when you’ve had it?”
_______________
In Sverdlovsk the food riots had started once again. Rumor had it that a shipment of salt pork had arrived overnight from Kuybyshev and that the commissary was switching on the food dispensers again – but only for those who had bribed them. The angry starving crowd had broken through the security cordon and were busily ransacking the empty distribution warehouses.
“Stop that!” The voice echoed across the whole town, as loud as the wrath of God. Something black and white hovered in the sky over the center of town, bending the very winds to his will as he moved the air with hurricane force to break up the fighting.
Even in the heart of Sov-Blok people recognized Premiere. The rioting petered out and everyone fell silent.
Eyes that could see every grain of sand in the French desert swept the buildings to find an unoccupied warehouse. A thermal blast burst it asunder, leaving only blazing wreckage.
“I am saddened to see how frail our civilization is,” Premiere told the crowds. “Times of crisis are the times when our values should mean the most to us. It is the testing which proves our morality.” He surveyed the wreckage of the once-thriving Sov-Blok settlement. “You are friends and neighbors. Comrades in the true sense of the word. You must walk through the fire together, for you will burn separately.”
“We have no food,” somebody whispered.
“You have hope,” the last science hero answered. “And if you are unified you have a chance.” He pointed down to the crowd. “Choose from amongst yourselves fifty people that you trust – really trust – to distribute emergency supplies. And have them waiting by that crater I just made. Work together. Then we can rebuild this planet, better than before.”
Nobody moved for a long time after Premiere left. They were still selecting their leaders when he returned and dropped the entire supply boat into the trench he had made, saluted them, and moved on.
_______________
“Are you sure you want to do this, Victor Stephanovitch,” Starpom Omega asked the following morning. “I do not have the… what is word?… charisma to run the planet.”
“I’m leaving you Lisa, Yo, Cheryl, and Visionary,” Premiere replied. “Listen to them. And especially Yo, who has some remarkably good if radical ideas about world economics.” He turned to look at the fleet he had assembled. “I’m needed elsewhere right now. If the Red Watchman isn’t stopped then all of this will come to nothing.”
“This time you frag the bastard, yes?”
Premiere’s eyes narrowed. “This time he is going down.”
“Alright you chicken-scratchin’ yahoos, let’s get this show on the road,” Dan Drury called over the comm-link. His refurbished helicarrier was the first to rise into the skies. “Wah-hoo!”
Behind the helicarrier five Sov-Blok battle cruisers floated into formation. A hundred or more scavenged grav-platforms formed screens around them. Even an ancient dirigible from some forgotten science museum hovered to the rear.
“We’re ready, Hooded Hood,” Premiere announced to the air.
There was a ripple as reality changed, and the ragtag armada vanished as if it never was.
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