Tales of the Parodyverse

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This message #28: Politics of the Bomb was posted by International ramifications courtesy of... the Hooded Hood on Tuesday, September 10, 2002 at 19:55.

#28: Politics of the Bomb

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Sir Mumphrey Wilton and Asil Ashling arrived at the hidden government base in Harrogate, England to find they were most unwelcome. Guards reluctantly checked their security passes and scanned them before letting them inside the emergency conference rooms that were concealed and protected a quarter mile beneath the quiet market town. Mumphrey controlled his irritation with the knowledge that Project: Pendragon’s Captain Courageous and the armed forces were only being this protective because the heads of the NATO alliance and the G7 nations were meeting below.

Sir Nigel Orpington was the senior civil servant of Her Majesty’s Government present, the Permanent Private Cabinet Secretary. He was loathe to let anyone interrupt the delicate summit meeting.

“Orpington, you know who I really am,” thundered Sir Mumphrey. “Despite all the polite diplomatic fictions about m’ father and grandfather’s service to the Crown you can’t be so stupid as to not know the truth. I remember you when you were a jumped up little arse in short pants wettin’ himself on nanny’s knee. Mind you, you probably still like that now. Just get out of my way, you nasty little oik before I have to notice you!”

“Er, thank you,” Asil smiled at the civil servant apologetically as he quietly slipped aside to let the visitors pass.

Mumphrey didn’t bother arguing with the guards at the door. He simply shifted them a minute into the future and strode past without ever breaking step. Inside, the Head of the Foreign Office rose to his feet to intercept him. “You can’t come in here, Sir Mumphrey. It’s a closed meeting. You don’t have the…”

Mumphrey gestured for Asil to pass the man in his way the thick cream envelope with the red wax seal. The Foreign Secretary fumbled it open and read the handwritten note within. “Her Sovereign Majesty Elizabeth Regina, of Great Britain, Northern Island, and the Commonwealth requests and requires… Where did you get this?”

“Where do you think?” hissed the angry eccentric. “Now get out of my way or I’ll walk over you.”

The Italian Defence Secretary was speaking as Sir Mumphrey swept onto the floor and he faltered in his speech then demanded in rapid Italian what the interloper thought he was doing.

“Never bothered to learn dago,” Sir Mumphrey growled impatiently, brushing past the furious politician. "You all ran away too fast in the last war.” Then he oriented on the Secretary General of the UN Security Council. “You sirrah! Yes, you! What’s this abominable resolution to use nuclear weapons agin the Red Watchmen and his technoruffians?”

“Security!” called the President. “Where’s security?”

“They’ll be along later,” promised Sir Mumphrey accurately. “Answer the question, damn you!”

“We are not responsible to you!” the Secretary scowled.

“No, sir. You are responsible to the billions of people on this planet whom you are supposed to represent. And you will be held accountable for this foolishness if in your panic you follow this coward’s plan to use nuclear arms against a hostage civilian population inside an occupied friendly country.”

“And what would you suggest?” shouted the Russian ambassador. “A sharply worded protest?”

“I’d suggest you do your homework, laddie!” Sir Mumphrey warned him. “Send your most sophisticated nuclear missiles against Technopolis. They’re a hundred years behind the science levels of that damned place. Assuming they haven’t already cracked your launch and flight codes how long d’you think it’d take for them to take control of your own weapons and redirect them? Even if some do hit Technopolis, what evidence have you that they’ll even crack that force barrier round the place? It’s been designed to keep out weapons from a Soviet Union a lot more advanced than yours ever was.”

“He’s right,” Asil urged. “All you’ll do is irradiate North America and not even harm Technopolis. And Technopolis itself is under martial law. Most of the people there are prisoners in their own homes. They need rescuing, not destroying.”

“We have to use the nuclear option,” General Terlizzi argued. “There’s nothing else.”

“Hmph!” snorted Mumphrey, rounding on the soldier. “So you’re saying you want to slaughter millions of our own and turn the planet to a nuclear cinder because you can’t think of anything better to do?”

“We have had teams of experts working on this, calculating the odds,” the UN Secretary General explained.

“Really? What did the man on the spot say, then? What was Dan Drury’s view?”

“Colonel Drury is under arrest, pending charges,” General Terlizzi reported. “I have instructed the Lair Legion to take him into custody.”

“I know,” the eccentric Englishman agreed. “But they didn’t. They called me instead. The Lair Legion wishes me to point out that they are not an adjunct of the armed forces except under clause 27 of the Metahuman Affairs Act, and that this does not count as there has been no such order signed by both the UN Secretary General and the US President.”

“Your President is with Drury aboard the SPUD helicarrier,” Terlizzi objected.

“Exactly. You gave the Legion an illegal order, General. Call yourself a soldier?”

“Drury is committing mutiny, though,” Guliermo Terlizzi warned.

“Presidential pardon,” answered Sir Mumphrey. “He’s been annexed to the Presidential Security Service, as has everybody else currently aboard the SPUD helicarrier. They now answer directly to the President of the United States of America. It’s a chain of command thing.”

“In other worlds, they are not coming,” Asil smiled at the assembly. “Look, it’s a dumb thing you tried to do. Think of another plan.”

“We are resolved,” General Terlizzi shouted. “Resolved!”

“Then resolve again,” Sir Mumphrey warned. “This stupid, stupid thing is NOT going to happen.”

Terlizzi looked around the room and saw the doubt dawning on some of the faces there. He had nearly had them. “Very well then,” he muttered. “The hard way it is.” He pushed the stud on his collar and the two fully automatic machine pistols materialized in his hands. “A gift to your leaders,” he shouted as he sprayed the room, “From the Red Watchman!”

Three dozen of the world high command toppled across the room like bloody burst marionettes.

Sir Mumphrey pushed the first stud on his ornate gold temporal pocketwatch and paused time. “Hmm. Complicated job, this,” he murmured to Asil as the two of them stood in the middle of a paused massacre. “Going to take it back to where he conjured those guns, m’dear, but unlike the way I usually do it, on this occasion I’m arranging for the security council to remember the time I’ve reversed. Would you be so kind as to deal with that bounder Terlizzi?”

“Of course,” his amanuensis grinned. “Ready?”

“Now.”

Time slid backwards, halted, then began to unfold once more. Guliermo Terlizzi reached for his collar stud. As the weapons materialized in his hands Asil kicked him in the Adam’s apple them moved in to dislocate his shoulders.

“Aaagh!” screamed Bodyhopper, unused to being the one that got hurt. He shifted from the downed Terlizzi and leaped into Asil Ashling. From there he was able to seize up the fallen weapons and turn them on the…

Mumphrey fiddled with his timepiece once more. Bodyhopper made the leap across the void to Asil but she rippled into the future leaving him to manifest in his own emaciated spastic form.

Mumphrey kicked him in the head.

Asil reappeared, surprised by her sudden time jump.

“Sorry, Miss Ashling,” Sir Mumphrey told her. “This was the blighter causin’ all the trouble, what? Looks like the description we have of the Technopolitan science criminal Bodyhopper, hmm?” He turned to the shocked and pale delegates. “And I hope you notice that he was the one urging you to loose your atomic arsenals, hmm?”

“Yes,” agreed the Secretary General. “Perhaps we need to discuss this further.”

“I’m afraid not,” said the hologram of the Red Watchman that appeared before them. “This has all been extremely fascinating, but I don’t think I can stomach much more bickering. Instead, since Bodyhopper has now located your little hideaway for me I’m having Random Access transport your whole Council Chamber back to…” There was a nauseating vibration as reality shifted. “Ah,” the Red Watchman smirked. “Welcome all of you, to Technopolis.”

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