#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors

Part One: Coffee Break

    It was nearly four in the morning now, and the rioting and looting and screams and explosions had alerted most of the citizens of the Big Banana that Paradopolis was facing yet another of its perennial crises. In the avenues and alleyways of Paradopolis and Gothametropolis heroes great and small struggled and fought. Captain Astounding battled for truth and justice in besieged Sheldon. Dead Boy prowled the Hogan backstreets. Michael McKinley took down looters in Central GMY. Alcheman donned his new costume and protected Pierce Heights. Wangmundo stalked the Municipal Library. ManMan and Knifey patrolled off-central park, because for some reason of narrative convention vulnerable young women always decided to wander across it alone during a major civic upheaval.
    And one of the city’s most unsung heroes, Mr Spiro Georgius Papadapopolis, opened his Bean and Donut Coffee Shop, because if there’s one thing a city of heroes needs at four in the morning it’s thick black coffee.
    “Yes,” breathed the Chronicler of Stories, putting his cup down and pushing it back for a refill. “Life could suck more.”
    “I will be with you in moment,” Mr Paradopopolis told his regular customer. “It is hard to run this store without a waitress on duty, but Sarah is not home. I hope she is alright, not cavorting with some unsuitable man. Again.”
    “Oh, I think she’s with some unsuitable men,” muttered the Chronicler under his breath. After all, he knew what Dancer was doing.
    “She is good girl, but she has no nose for… how is it said? For men that are not so good for her,” confided Mr P.
    Xander the Improbable came from Mr Papadapopolis’ back room wiping off his wrench with an oily rag. “That should do it, Mr P,” he called out as he packed his tools away. “The water heater’s unclogged, the espresso’s espressing again, and the whole thing comes guaranteed against leaks, drips, clogs, and extradimensional incursions for three months.”
    “Is good,” beamed Mr Papadapopolis, handing over a herbal tea on the house. “Thank you for coming out on such a night, but without my espresso machine…”
    Just then the door was kicked open as three shaved-headed stud-nosed vandals burst in to loot and burn. The Chronicler of Stories flicked his finger towards them. “Go away.”
    …and they weren’t there any more.
    “As I say, guaranteed,” Xander assured the proprietor. “No problems for three months. My bill’s in the post.” And had been since yesterday.
    “Hmph,” hmphed the Chronicler.
    Xander smiled infuriatingly. “Ah, you’re just in a bad mood because of what Balefire’s going to do shortly,” he said. “I imagine it’ll cause a lot of trouble for you.”
    “Shouldn’t you be meddling somewhere else right about now?” growled the Chronicler of Stories. “Anywhere else?”
    Xander looked up at the clock on the wall. “Oops, you’re right. Can’t keep the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity waiting. Enjoy your interplanar crisis.”
    The Chronicler of Stories drank down his eighteenth coffee.

Next: It’s thuddy and Whitney on the road to Balefire’s castle, with a not-so-special guest star.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Two: The High Ground

    The anti-tech field was spreading, but quite slowly. The Lair Legion outpost along I666 wasn’t affected by the time dull thud and Sorceress got there, and thud at least was pleased to fall off his borrowed horse one last time and climb aboard the mothballed Lairjet at the Bautista Enterprises aircraft manufacturing plant.
    “Can you pilot these older models?” Whitney Darkness asked the scruffy roadie as he flicked switches for a pre-flight check.
    ~~Why should he be able to fly this one when he can’t fly the others?~~ wondered Cressida the wonder worm.
    “Hey, I can do this,” protested thud. “It’s as easy as…”
    ~~Falling off a horse?~~ Cressie suggested.
    “Can I go now?” whimpered Pudu Lad. “I mean, still in my own shape?”
    “No,” scowled the Sorceress who had located and captured the former member of the super-villainous Proctology team. “According to those criminals G-Eyed and the Shoggoth caught in that villain bar, you’ve been to Balefire’s headquarters, back when your team was looking for work, before you had the misfortune to be hired by Thighmaster. So you’re going to help us find that floating castle. Now we know who’s behind this blackout mess we know where to find our missing support staff.”
    “Are you sure it was him?” Pudu Lad stalled. “I mean, nobody could call you on the telephone to tell you, could they?”
    ~~SPUD received an intergalactic message from the Dark Knight when he hacked their security array, and they passed it on to us by couriers~~ Cressida answered. ~~Along with a very grumpy message from Dan Drury. We couldn’t get the warning Al B. programmed the technology generator to send out a fraction of a second before it shut down all the power in Paradopolis, but Finny and DK in space intercepted it and so learned that Balefire was behind the kidnappings and theft and why am I explaining this to you?~~
    “Because I have bambi-like brown eyes?” hazarded Pudu Lad winningly.
    “Dinnae forget that Pudu rhymes with doo-doo,” warned dull thud, whose telepathic tapeworm could transmute matter into other materials that rhymed with it.
    “Do not forget that I am the Sorceress,” warned Whitney Darkness. She raised her long-nailed fingertips to the trembling villain’s face and muttered something in a thick black tongue. The LairJet got colder. Pudu Lad’s eyes widened, then rolled.
    ~~What are you doing?”~~ demanded Cressida. Since Hatman’s apparent death, Whitney Darkness was becoming scarier by the day.
    “He’s in a trance state,” the witch answered. “Now he’s acting like a kind of psychic compass to Balefire’s castle.” She concentrated. “Head north and east, over the water..”
    “Okay,” agreed thud, “but I can’t get anything on the scanners.”
    ~~Which isn’t the same as saying there’s nothing to be got~~ noted Cressida. Whitney had the tapeworm spooked, and she was taking it out on her human host.
    “Oh, it’s there,” Whitney whispered, almost to herself. Most of the time now she just floated around the mansion like a woman in a dream, but when the missions came she was as focussed as a laser.
    ~~Are you sure you’re up to this?~~ Cressida checked. “You seemed exhausted by those divinations you performed back at the Mansion to work out where all the villains were operating in the Paradopolis blackout.”
    “Cold divinations can be hard,” admitted Sorceress. “That’s why we needed Pudu Lad here to help us find our last destination. He’s been there, when he and his team tried to get hired by Balefire and were tossed on their asses. He still has unresolved issues with the place. That’s how I’m getting the link.”
    dull thud looked over at the trembling entranced captive. “We might have just tried asking the laddie,” he suggested.
    “He doesn’t consciously know how to get to the castle,” Whitney explained. “We need to exploit his karmic link.” She realised that she was making her companions uncomfortable and forced herself to unclench her fingers from the arms of the co-pilot’s chair. “Look, I know that we’ve not really worked together before on a one to one, um one to two basis, but you did volunteer for this bit of the mission with me.”
    “Cressie volunteered,” clarified the rumpled roadie. “As usual I just get to walk her around.”
    ~~Those young people and Al B. were captured on my first solo mission for the Legion,~~ Cressida replied. ~~It’s my fault. So I have to get them back.~~
    dull thud blinked as he realised why his parasitic partner was getting Whitney-level intense these past couple of days. “Oh Cressie, hen, it’s nae yuir fault,” he told her. “Sometimes this stuff just happens.” He thought a bit more then added, “It’s the price we pay for trying to save the world instead of going for a pint with Big Thick Eddie.”
    “Yes, the price,” agreed Sorceress coldly. “There is always a bitter price.”
    Maybe the heating wasn’t working properly on the old Lairjet that flew out to locate Balefire’s stronghold.

Next: Jean-Pierre, personification of all things French, plunders Bautista Enterprises – and that anti-tech field means that its most famous bodyguard can’t get within three leagues to stop him. So it’s time to field a sub, and see if s/he can do anything to save the day.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Three: French Toast

    
    There was security at Bautista Enterprises’ headquarters building in Paradopolis, but the anti-technology field had eliminated most of the physical products of millionaire inventor Jaime Bautista’s genius. The security guards were easy to overcome when Jean-Pierre baffled them with the combined power of fifteen million French colognes.
    The mission was going well so far. There was chaos in the streets. Emergency services were overloaded and disorganised. The heroes were scattered far and wide trying to put out fires and rescue they wounded and quell the riots. Now it was time to empty out the Bautista vaults, with special reference to any unpatented top secret plans that might be lying around there.
    Balefire never mentioned Jaime Bautista, but he seemed more than eager to get his hands on the young technologist’s design database.
    “Sur le pont d’Avinion…” Jean-Pierre sang to himself as he made his way through the downed security guards towards the penthouse vault.
    One defender still stood between him and his goal. And she was a looker.
    “Bonjour, mais petite,” Jean-Pierre smiled, turning on the charm of the French nation before this slim young lady in the flattering black silk Zorro outfit.
    “Hello,” answered Yo, abruptly shifting to his/her male form. “You are being to be the baddie, yes?”
    “Alorz!” gasped the ultimate Frenchman. “A gender shifter. If only I ‘ad ze power of the Belgians.”
    “You are being one of the uncute villainings who is to be doing this to Paradopolis?” Yo checked, approaching with his/her rapier.
    “Ah, a duel! Yes, we shall fight for honeur!” Jean-Pierre understood. He produced a foil of his own from nowhere. “En garde!”
    “On your guarding too, villaining villain!” Yo called back as the two began to clash blades. “Yo is not to be allowing nasty uncute thieving baddie to be taking Yo’s Enty-friend’s cute exploding inventions.”
    “Zut alorz! And I thought I ‘ad a difficult speech pattern!” marvelled the Frenchman, pressing forward to pin Yo in a corner.
    “Yo is to be speaking just like everybody else,” the pure thought being advised him. S/he ducked low so that Jean-Pierre’s rapier thrust into an NTU-150 designed Drinksmaster 7000 automatic vending dispenser. It exploded, showering the gallic grafter in boiling mocha.
    “Now you ‘ave done it!” Jean-Pierre threatened. “Feel now ze waves of contempt at your so-called American culture!”
    So powerful was the wash of emotion that the carpets began to curl. Downstairs in the cafeteria the burgers slid under the counter and hid in shame.
    Yo shrugged. “Yo is not to be being from America. Yo is to be being pure genderless thought being for Yo-planet.”
    Jean-Pierre looked slightly horrified for a moment. “Ah. Well then, feel now my wrath, and ze sorrow of many strings of onions.” And he hurled the garlic necklace he was wearing right at his enemy’s nose.
    “Agh!” sobbed Yo as the sorrow overcame her. “Is not fair to be cheating like that. Is to make Yo unhappy. And when Yo is unhappy…”
    “Yo has no powers, and is easy prey,” concluded Jean-Pierre, lifting his rapier for the kill.
    “When Yo is unhappy, Yo goes to the Happy Place!”
    Suddenly Jean-Pierre realised he wasn’t in Bautista Enterprises any more. He was in green fields under a bright and cheerful sun. Yo was smiling at the many furry bunnies that were swarming over the grass.
    But the bunnies weren’t smiling at Jean-Pierre.
    “Wait…” he managed to say, before he vanished under a wrathful lapine swarm.

Next: Time to check on Bry and Laurie and Beth, I think; because we all need a little pain in our lives (and he’s coming to visit).

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Four: Passing By

    “There’s rioting on the streets, and some fires,” Goldeneyed told Lisette where she huddled in the corner of her bed in Beth Shellett’s guest room. “I have to go and help out.”
    Fear flashed across Laurie Leyton’s thin sweat-stained face. “No! Don’t leave me!” she almost screamed. “Please! Please Bry… there are other heroes.”
    Bry Katz swallowed hard. Laurie was at a critical time now, physically and psychologically,. as she withdrew from the heroin addiction her former boyfriend had hooked her on. “I might be needed, Laurie.”
    “You’re needed here!” Lisette shrieked. “I can’t do this! I can’t do this without you, Bry! I’m begging you!”
    Bry remembered the sly little grin that Lisette gave when something amused her, and the twinkle in her eye when she made some dead-pan caustic comment that belied how much she cared about things; and he wondered if they even still existed in the wreck of a woman who cowered on the bed before him. “Okay, don’t worry. I’ll stay. I’m not going anywhere.” He looked down at the trembling girl. “I’ll go get you some more of your meds, alright? But I won’t leave the apartment.”
    Lisette nodded and gritted her teeth. She hugged her knees tight and closed her eyes and rode out the next wave of pain.
    There was a rapid tattoo of knocks on the door to the lobby. Beth was already moving to answer it.
    “Hold it!” G-Eyed called out. “It’s rough out there. We don’t know who…”
    But the door was already open now, and in blurred the lithe running-spandexed form of Joshua Clement, De Brown Streak. “Goldeneyed?” checked DBS. He’d not seen Bry unmasked before. “I just knew you were too uncool to be a black man.”
    Beth placed herself between the two superheroes. “There will be no trouble with you two,” she said firmly. “Not in my place.”
    “He’s a wanted criminal,” Goldeneyed pointed out through gritted teeth.
    “Yeah, so you said last time when you crippled me with that anti-mutant gun,” De Brown Streak retorted.
    “Enough!” scowled Beth. “Don’t disturb Laurie. Josh, what did you want?”
    “Just called in to check you were doin’ okay in the big blackout,” the mutate rights fighter told her. “It’s getting nasty out there.”
    “Do you check in here often?” asked Bry Katz coldly.
    “Josh and I have dinner sometimes,” Beth advised him. “Why?”
    “Nothing,” G-Eyed almost spat. “Nothing at all.”
    “Bry?” Laurie called from the bedroom. “Are you there?”
    “Laurie needs you,” Beth prompted her houseguest.
    “Yeah. Look after Laurie,” De Brown Streak told Goldeneyed. “I’ll take care of Beth.”
    When Bry vanished back to Lisette Beth Shellett crossed her arms and glared at DBS. “Why do you do that?” she demanded. “You know we’re just friends, you and I. I’m not going to be another one of your conquests.”
    “Hey, that guy paralysed me from the neck down one time,” Josh answered. “I don’t need to cut him no slack at all.”
    “Well, Bry’s…it’s been a tough year for him. What did you really call for, Josh?”
    De Brown Streak swallowed and looked nervous for the first time since Beth Shellett had met him. “Yeah well,” he confessed, “I kind of came to say goodbye.”
    “Goodbye? I don’t understand.”
    “I got me a mission,” DBS explained. “Something special. Something dangerous. And I don’t think I’ll be coming back from it.”

Next: Back to the masterplan, as Balefire continues his takeover of ITC and Mr Limpqvist complains.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Five: Doorkeepers

    The dimensional safeguards were down, and Grrl broke into the inner sanctum of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation by the simple expedient of smashing down doors. Birthday Bandit dragged Al B. Harper, Miss Framlicker, and Mr Limpquvist along at gunpoint.
    “This is fascinating, absolutely fascinating,” Balefire marvelled as he regarded the complicated crystalline engines that created the portals and conduits between places and concepts that were the secret of ITC’s delivery empire. “All of this capacity and you use it for nothing more than moving a few parcels.”
    “We have very strict standards,” Mr Limpqvist argued petulantly. “We’re only allowed to operate because our charter guarantees we won’t interfere too much and allow cross-dimensional contamination.”
    “Unfortunately I never signed that charter,” noted the villain. “Shame, that. You see I’m spotting all the conquest opportunities that might be available to someone who made proper use of this equipment.”
    The power was coming back on now that the building was swathed in an exclusion field that prevented the anti-tech generator from affecting it. Balefire was able to decide which systems he wanted running and which wouldn’t. And his link with the corpusant flame that gave him his codename was back. Al. B had observed him at the moment the link was restored. Jeremiah Frost had shuddered like a junkie getting his fix.
    “What a shame that a once-brilliant mind can’t do anything now but try and take over the planet,” mocked Miss Framlicker as she and the others were placed in one of the dimensional holding cages. “Do you people ever stop and figure out what you’re going to do with the planet one you’re conquered it?”
    Jeremiah Frost considered this. “Well, in my case I imagine I’ll play with it for a while until it gets boring, then break it and go and find a new toy,” he admitted. “I have a short attention span.”
    Birthday Bandit was examining the control panels using Miss Framlicker’s knowledge. “We can operate everything from here,” he reported, “hundred of portals across the galaxy, and into other dimensions. The Mythlands, the Vortex, the Negativity Zone, Frightmare’s realm, some parallel universes, even the borders of the Deadlands and some of the Hell Regions.”
    “You have to be such a know-it-all, don’t you,” Al B. Harper accused Miss Framlicker.
    “We can refine teleportation gates from here,” the Bandit continued. “We can probably use the fields to shear an enemy in half or dump them in a sun. We can unleash the Brainless Ones on Earth or we can open a gate to where Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu sleeps in eternal waiting.”
    Balefire was also examining the controls. “All in good time,” he said. “Right now I just want to find two conduits. Ah, and there’s one.” He stabbed a button and a small grey doorway flickered into being.
    “No!” called Mr Limpqvist. “That’s a private area!”
    “Yes. The extradimensional apartments of your founder, I believe,” he noted. He gestured for Grrl to pound on the door. “Come out, my dear founder. You have company.”

Next: Remember how we left Mr Epitome about to take on Onslaughter, the Yurt-class killing machine with the high-range psionic abilities and the absolute hatred for all life on Earth? If not we’ll give you a reminder next time, as the paragon of power takes on the abomination of apocalypse. Bring your sutures.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Six: Weight Class

    Mr Epitome had fought enemies stronger than he was before. He was well trained in various combat techniques and he could generally use a combination of judo and classical boxing to overcome any strength imbalance. Unfortunately, Onslaughter was also trained in martial arts. And he was much stronger than the paragon of power.
    The battle had been going on for ten minutes now. Epitome reckoned that was about one rib every two minutes. Not to mention the leg that hurt to stand on and the problem he was having raising his left arm above shoulder height. Fortunately he didn’t have much more blood left to lose from the bright gashes the alien war machine had ribboned across him.
    “You’ve been trained well,” Onslaughter approved as he ripped a side from one of the cell blocks to hurl at Mr Epitome. “Back when I ran Battleworld I’d have offered you a chance to fight in the combat pits. I can’t offer you a better compliment than that, human.”
    “I’m deeply moved,” Epitome told him. “Now lie on the floor with your hands behind your back and I’ll arrest you properly.”
    “And you’re funny. I like entertainment while I’m killing people.”
    “You’re not walking out of here. You killed hundreds on your rampage through Canada, as well as property damage in the billions. Who knows what carnage you caused before you came here trying to conquer our planet.”
    “I don’t want this miserable planet,” Onslaughter assured him. “I’m just going to kill everyone on it for inconveniencing me, and then I’ll be on my way.”
    “One problem,” Epitome said. “Me. The Lair Legion might be too busy blackmailing the US to get their hands dirty stopping you but I will die before I let you out of here.”
    “That’s a small problem,” the villain noted, catching Epitome with a backhand blow that still rattled his teeth and left his face torn and bloody. “And yeah, you will die. But it’s been a nice fight.”
    Epitome tried to stand but he couldn’t quite figure out which way was up. He saw the vast bulk of Onslaughter standing over him, reaching down a cement-shovel hand to crush his skull.
    Then a thin leather whip wrapped round the marauder’s neck and impossibly jerked him backwards off his feet.
    “Hi there!” called Lisa. “For the record I’d like to correct Mr Epitome’s slanderous remarks about the Legion and contract negotiations. We’re on the job, taking names and kicking ass, and we’ll be discussing appropriate compensation for the slur on our reputation after we’ve got Onslaughter here back to his cell, big boy.”
    “Ms Waltz?” Epitome groaned, trying to focus. “Get away Lisa! He’ll kill you.”
    “He is a little bit out of my weight class,” agreed the first lady of the Lair Legion. “And also not at all sexy. So I guess I’d better summons the Manga Shoggoth!”
    Suddenly Onslaughter was buried in a gelid pile of translucent goo. “That was absolutely fascinating,” the Lair Legion’s resident elder-horror noted of being called forth by Lisa’s summoning power. “Do you realise that every time you do that you reorder the multiverse to make it happen? Fascinating.”
    Onslaughter growled and slashed a razor-boned forearm across the Shoggoth’s presumed neck. Shoggoth-stuff oozed round him until he was suspended inside the roiling jelly.
    “This creature has been extensively genetically modified,” noted the Shoggoth. “But nothing too interesting. I don’t know if there’s any point dismantling him at all.”
    “Fool entity!” shouted the villain, unable to swim free of the elder-slime he was suspended within. “I am Onslaughter! Onslaughter! And mighty as my physical prowess is, I also possess unmatched telepathic ability.” He focussed his will on the Manga Shoggoth. “And now, your mind will… aaaaaaagggghhhhhh!”
    “Aaagh?” Mr Epitome puzzled as Lisa helped him to his feet.
    “As in aaagh I’ve just invaded the mind of a Lovecraftian elder monster whose thought processes are so alien that when people just see him in his actual form they’re driven insane,” the amorous advocatrix noted. “It’s not a mind-link I’d be recommending.”
    “Aaagh,” agreed Dominic Clancy.
    The Manga Shoggoth allowed the catatonic bulk of Onslaughter to ooze through him onto the broken ground.
    “Hey, Lisa,” called spiffy as he and Warden Westwood picked their way over the rubble and bodies. “I wondered when the LL would get here. I think we’re getting things under control now.”
    “Any breakouts?” Mr Epitome asked urgently.
    “Not a single one that was successful,” Westwood assured them. “Not a one.”
    But then, nobody ever opened the door to Prisoner Zero’s cell, so nobody could ever realise he was free.

Next: Sorceress and dull thud carry on their rescue of Art, Randy, and Mindy – with only one teeny tiny problem to overcome first.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Seven: Technical Difficulties and Legal Niceties

    On the forty inch monitor screen, little stubby images of Art, Randy, and Mindy ran about trying to avoid the exploding mushrooms while collecting enough power points to get through the door to the next level. They were hampered by room-sized rolling acorns and by the tinny repetitive music that played in the background.
    Whitney looked over the three gurneys where the actual Lair Legion support staff lay in front of the computer bank, attached by wires to the VR console created by Balefire. “Can’t we just take the wires out?” the Sorceress demanded.
    “I don’t think so,” worried thud as he studied the lash up. “I think this is projecting their minds into yon computer game thingie. If we chop the connection we might just separate them from their bodies altogether.”
    Whitney Darkness scowled, looking round at the fallen rent-a-minions that were still tangled in the rapidly-growing thorn bushes that now choked Balefire’s headquarters. A standard Sleeping Beauty spell had taken down the entire complex, and Balefire would need to be doing some serious mouth-to-mouth with some deeply stubbly individuals before he could get his headquarters up and running again.
    ~~We need to take another approach~~ suggested Cressida. ~~Maybe we can go into the VR machine and guide them out?~~
    “I still don’t understand how he’s got them in there in the first place,” admitted thud. “I can do amplifier systems, but psionic-mind interfaces have too many mystery plugs.”
    “You’re proposing using your telepathic abilities?” Sorceress suggested. “You want to project us into the machine?”
    ~~I want to link my mind into the kids’ minds and use that to get into the program,~~ Cressie clarified. ~~And put Davie’s mind in too, if I can find it. But you’ll have to stay outside and keep watch on us, and the entranced Pudu Lad. I couldn’t get past your psychic defences anyway.~~ And I’m not too sure I want to be that close to your mind right now the telepathic tapeworm thought privately to herself. ~~I’ll set up a trigger you can activate to bring us back when you see us on screen with Mindy and the others. Hopefully we can bring them back too.~~
    “Hurry up then,” dull thud urged her. Looking at the screen. “I want a go at that big monkey with the barrels. And am I the only one that thinks Zelda is hot?”
    Sorceress didn’t admit how magically drained she was. Something about the corposant flame that Balefire had laced his flying fortress with clawed at her soul and whispered at the back of her mind. It was taking considerable discipline not to scream. “Fine,” she said. “Do it quickly. They seem to be approaching the final level, and I’m not convinced that Balefire will have a high score prize they’re going to like in there.”
    The wonder worm wasted no more time. She delicately reached out to touch the minds of the captured support crew. The control console beside them evaporated as she transmuted panel to channel to enhance her initial psychic link. dull thud sank onto the leather programmer’s chair and slumped into a scruffy heap.
    On the screen a little black t-shirted player four appeared. A pink worm-like player five blinked in next to him.
    “Now this is unexpected,” thuddy noted, looking at his intestinal parasite for the first time.
    ~~Don’t look at me~~ Cressida squeaked ~~I didn’t take time to groom my cilia~~
    “Um, are you dudes anything to do with level ninety-eight?” asked Randy cautiously. “Only we’re having maximum problems shifting these blocks into an interlocking pattern.”
    “Yeah, I can only do Tetris when there’s nude women on them,” admitted Art. Then,. Glancing at Mindy, he added hastily, “Back when I bothered with computer games, that is, before I got a girlfriend. Honest.”
    Whitney felt that there wasn’t going to be much greater contact than Mindy’s slap on Art’s cheek, and prepared to bring them all out of the VR world.
    “Ah,” hissed Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs, shimmering out of the shadows where the thorns were thickest. “I’m afraid not.”
    The Sorceress’ heart skipped a beat. “What now?” she demanded.
    “Now?” the demon told her, “why now I claim my pact. You do remember the bargain you struck with me a little while ago, Whitney-my-sweet?”
    “Since you whisper it to me every night at midnight it’s hard to forget it,” the Sorceress answered. Wasn’t it well past midnight now, getting towards dawn?
    “In exchange for me loaning you the power to conjure your dead suitor back to life, you agreed to let me have possession of your form for twenty-four hours at a time of my choosing.”
    Whitney glanced at the unconscious forms of thud, Art, Mindy, and Randy. “You also agreed that while you commanded my body I wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
    “You won’t be doing them any harm,” Blackhurt assured her. “But sadly you won’t be waking them up, either. Yes, Whitney-my-pretty. I’m calling in your debt.”
    “This… isn’t a convenient time,” Sorceress pleaded.
    “That’s rather the point, isn’t it?” the demon lord pointed out.
    Sorceress tried to send the recall trigger, but her body was no longer hers to command. She was a passenger in her own flesh, and Blackhurt could have it do whatever he willed.
    “Now,” gloated the Prince of Fibs. “Let’s play.”
    On the screen, the five players moved forwards to level ninety-nine.

Next:The only LL member we haven’t heard from now is Nats, so I guess we’d better see how he’s doing with Princess Uhunalura – on their mission to find the hidden Abhuman technology suppressor, of course. And it’s time to see who’s behind Door Number 1, the founder of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Eight: Introductions

    Nats flew Princess Uhunalura down over the charred shell of the burned out school and alighted in the wreckage-strewn schoolyard.
    “Is this the place?” he asked the Abhuman princess tasked by her people with recovering the stolen technology suppressor.
    “I think so,” the young woman in gold spandex agreed. “Um, you can probably stop carrying me now.”
    Nats realised he was still clutching the princess in his arms from the flight. She was great to clutch. “Oh, right, yeah. Sorry about that.”
    Uhuna looked around the devastated school with horror. “What has happened here?” she wondered. “Who would do this to a place of learning?”
    “This is Hell’s Bathroom,” Bill Reed explained to her. “It’s not a good neighbourhood. The kids did this to the school themselves, a couple of years ago.”
    The princess shuddered. “You let people live here? Children?”
    Nats felt suddenly ashamed for his civilisation. “Well… Dancer helps at the Seaman’s Mission,” he answered lamely.
    Uhuna’s root crunched down on a discarded hypderdermic needle. “That once contained mind-destroying chemicals!” she gasped.
    “Yeah, I guess,” apologised Nats. “Look, let’s just find that Abhuman gadget that’s causing the blackout shall we? We’re in roughly the centre of the field here, and you said you might be able to sense it if we got close enough.”
    But Uhuna was still being appalled. “No wonder Maximess thinks we should conquer the lot of you and sterilise you off the planet,” she noted. “I thought he was being extreme.”
    “Maximess? That’s the mind-controlling nutjob brother to your king Brown Blot, right?” Bill Reed remembered. “I’d take free will even with the drug problems over that ratbag any day.”
    Uhuna flushed. “You must not speak about my fiancée in that manner,” she told the flying phenomenon. Then she turned hurriedly and walked off through the ruins. “I believe the device is this way.”
    “Fiancée?” gasped Nats flying after her. “You’re actually going to marry that… individual.”
    Uhuna shrugged. “When the genetics council say the time is right, yes. It’s been arranged since before I was gestated. My sister Sylverkrin for Blot, me for Maxi.”
    Now it was Nats’ turn to be appalled. “You don’t get a say in that? You just have to… be with him?”
    Uhunalura smiled wistfully. “Abhuman genetic lines are very carefully combined, human. The wrong combinations could be unviable, or devastating. Our whole culture is based on genetics council pairing recommendations. That’s why they biologically suited Sylverkrin to be Queen, and me to marry the Chief Conspirator.”
    “There’s an official title for what Maximess does?”
    “Oh yes. His job is to plot Brown Blot’s downfall. He’s the catalyst for change in our society.”
    Nats tried to get his head round this. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together,” he said weakly.
    Uhuna pressed further into the charred shell of PS77. “Nobody says I’ll be happy,” her voice drifted back, “Just that I have to do it.”

***


    The woman looked in her late fifties or early sixties. She had swept-back white hair carefully coiffeured, and she wore a pale orange business suit. She came through the grey doorway and looked at Balefire with a disdainful glare. “Yes”? she demanded.
    “Dame Jana!” called Mr Limpqvist. “It’s intruders. Run madam!”
    “Run?” The Dame raised one elegant eyebrow. “No.”
    “Ah, Dame Jana!” bowed Balefire mockingly. “How delightful to meet the founder of the ITC at last. I’ve heard so little about you.”
    “I’m a very private person, Mr Frost,” the old woman told him. “I try to keep a low profile. I don’t like to be disturbed.”
    “Then we shall attempt to loot and pillage your Interdimensional Transportation Company as discretely as possible,” Balefire assured her. “I’m flattered you’ve heard of me.”
    “I keep track of all dimensional breaches,” Dame Jana sighed. “When you punched through into the realms of the Soul Source I obviously observed you. Or at least I observed the real Jeremiah Frost.”
    Balefire seemed a little taken aback. “What?”
    “Frost died, of course. Nobody can be exposed to what you term the corposant fire in such raw form and live. But the flame itself reformed you using Frost’s personality and memories – as best it could. There seem to be a few differences. Frost was sane, for example.”
    Balefire laughed. “That is one of the best mind games I’ve ever heard, Dame Jana.”
    The old woman shrugged. “No wonder you want to find your way back to the Source so badly, Balefire. Without your link to it you are lost, bereft of purpose. You seem to drift from mad scheme to mad scheme, never able to grasp the destiny you feel is rightfully yours. So you instinctively want to go home, reconnect with your roots so to speak.” She flexed long thin fingers. “Hence all of this elaborate charade to get to the conduit chamber.”
    Al B. Harper leaned over to Miss Framlicker. “She’s not real, is she?” he demanded. “I mean, that’s not her real form is it? I can tell because of the way she seems to move. The math is wrong.”
    “Dame Jana is one of the oldest beings in the Parodyverse,” whispered Mr Limpqvist unhappily. “The last survivor of a race that blossomed and fell in the very first fractions of time. Well, last survivor except for Exu, and he and Jana don’t talk.”
    “Exu?” hissed Miss Framlicker. “The rogue member of the Janus, keepers of the gateways? The guy whose experiments broke open the seals and let chaos out into the Parodyverse at the dawn of time? The GatewayTraitorGalaxyTraveller? She’s related to him?”
    “She’s hinted sometimes that she might be the last of the Janus, repository of their whole race’s history and knowledge,” Mr Limpqvist trembled. “Or she might be something else entirely. But she knows the dimensions better than any creature in the Parodyverse, instinctively, intimately as a lover. And she hates Dr Xeno Phobia, CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s sometime mentor, whom I suspect to be a modern iteration of Exu himself.”
    Birthday Bandit blinked in understanding as Miss Framlicker realised who Balefire was speaking with. “Boss, you’ve gotta know who…” he began.
    But Balefire raised an iron-shot gauntlet to silence him. “I already know who I’m dealing with,” the villain replied. He pointed to the shadows. “He told me.”
    In the darkness two green eyes glowed beneath a deep cowl. The Hooded Hood moved out into the conduit chamber. “Good evening,” he bade them. And he bowed slightly to Dame Jana. “Madame.”
    The founder of the ITC regarded him with suspicion. “I thought I had made it clear that I had nothing to say to you?”
    “I fear there is a conversation we must inevitably have,” replied the cowled crime czar. Then to Balefire he added, “Thank you, I believe that concludes our bargain.”
    “This is a Hooded Hood plot?” groaned Al B. Harper. “Oh crap.”
    “This is a Balefire plot!” shouted Jeremiah Frost – or the corposant fire ghost of Frost if Dame Jana was telling the truth. “Paying off an old debt to the Hooded Hood was just part of my genius scheme.”
    “I have no further interest in what Balefire is doing,” agreed the Hood. He gestured through the grey doorway to Dame Jana’s apartment. “After you madam.”
    The archvillain and the creature that might have been the last of the Janus passed through the grey portal. It closed behind them then vanished as if it had never been. Even the button that opened it was no longer on the control board.
    Balefire turned round and looked at the conduit chamber. “Well now, I wonder which of these portals – or should we call them Janus Junctures? – opens up on the Source?”
    “So you do want to go back to where you came from!” concluded Miss Framlicker.
    Jeremiah Frost clenched his fists in anticipation. “I want to go back to the most powerful force I’ve ever encountered and make it mine,” he declared. “As powerful as it made me before, I want more, infinitely more. I want to have power to shake the heavens, power to rule the universe! And I want it now.”
    “Um… Miss Framlicker doesn’t know where the corposant fire place is,” Birthday Bandit warned. “We don’t know which conduit to open.”
    Balefire laughed the laugh of a villain who is triumphant at last. “Then open them all,” he said.

In our next and final segment: Everything gets neatly wrapped up with no dangling loose ends and nothing is set up for the big finale in #150; well, maybe some things.

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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#147: Untold Tales of the Big Blackout: Opening Doors – Part Nine: “The Crisis is Over”


    “So how do your powers work?” Nats asked, desperately trying to keep up the conversation to distract Uhunalura from the wreckage of civilisation that was all around them. The searchers had made their way now into the assembly hall, a skeleton of a building with charred rafters reaching up to the dark skies. “Could you… oh I dunno, maybe sense if somebody was pregnant?”
    This wasn’t exactly a casual question, given Nats’ recent argument with Ruby Waver.
    “Yes,” Uhuna told him. “Given a close examination. But pregnancy isn’t really an illness, so I can’t transfer it.”
    “Shame,” snorted Nats. “That’d be one way to shut the Hooded Hood up.”
    The princess looked around her. “I don’t understand this. We’re very near. I can sense the power, thrumming away. But I can’t see it.”
    Nats dragged his mind back to business. “This tech suppressor of yours. It’s huge, right? I mean, it left a hole nearly half a mile deep.”
    “We haven’t really perfected miniaturisation yet, yes,” agreed Uhuna.
    “So if it’s near here but shielded, there’s only one place it could be,” the flying phenomenon reasoned. He pointed forward to help focus his telekinetic and pyrokinetic gifts and caused the floorboards of the ruined hall to spray upwards in fragments.
    The hologram warriors infused with corposant fire shimmered into being as the second line of defences went active.
    “Crap,” worried Nats. He scooped Uhuna into his arms again and manoeuvred out of the way of the laser-fire just before it vaporised the spot where they had been standing.
    “Those aren’t real people!” the princess told him. “They’re just light and… some kind of energy I’ve not sensed before.”
    “Corposant fire, whatever the hell that is,” Bill Reed told her, ducking and weaving to avoid the ever-growing web of lethal energy bolts. “Al B.’s message said a bozo called Balefire was behind this, and that’s his special shtick. Well, that an’ video games.”
    “And here we have both together,” Uhuna noted, trying not to toss her cookies as she twisted and lurched through the air with Nats. She considered transferring her nausea elsewhere, but the only viable target was the man doing the rescuing.
    “But how can he be generating holograms in an anti-tech field?” Nats puzzled as he flew over the silvery surface of the giant machine. “That makes no sense.”
    “He’s powering our device with this… corposant fire of his,” Uhuna sensed. “And he’ll be using an exclusion field to protect the devices creating his light-men,” she reasoned.
    “Really?” Nats grinned. “So if I just grab all of them, and all of the loose tech kit I can see and throw them into the air like this…”
    There was a fizzing of baffled technology and the hologram warriors blinked out.
    “Now get me down to the device quickly,” warned Uhuna. “That noise is the destruct siren.”
    “Destruct siren. That’s never good.” Nats landed her atop the vast machine.
    “No,” agreed Uhunalura. “This Balefire seems to have set it as a failsafe against tampering.”
    Nats looked nervously. He suddenly missed the convenience of having a countdown clock so he knew how close he was to annihilation. “How big a bang are we talking, Princess?”
    “Oh, something that will blow everything within two hundred miles into the Negativity Zone,” suggested Uhuna. “In very small pieces.”
    “But you can switch it off, right?”
    “Well, Balefire seems to have removed the counter-mechanism,” the Abhuman girl noted. “But there is this little red button hidden down here marked ‘Push this to thwart the wicked baddie’s plans’”
    Nats recognised Al B. Harper’s handwriting. “Hit it!” he cried.
    Uhuna pushed the failsafe. The generator fizzed to a halt, discharging corposant fire through Nats and Uhuna and shutting down its anti-technology field across the city.

***


    “Hey, comms are back!” Falcon called across to Dancer and the Librarian over in Paradopolis Plaza. “I’ve got CSFB!, Yo, Trickshot, Lisa, and Visionary on line. No word from Sorcy, Cressie, or Nats.”
    “It would seem that the anti-technology field has been successfully dispelled,” agreed Lee Bookman. “The crisis is over.”
    There was a screeching sound and reality seemed to ripple in the centre of the Plaza.
    “Boy, you’re really a newbie, aren’t you?” Dancer winced. “You never give fate a straight line like that.”
    Then the dimensional portal crashed open, and the unstoppable wave of Brainless Ones spilled out into Paradopolis, intent on killing everything in their path.
    And all across the planet, long-sealed dimensional doorways opened up, to the negativity Zone, to the Mythlands, to the demon realms, to the Vortex where the Hero-Feeders lurked, and beyond.
    The crisis was officially not over.

***


Next time: The Sorceress is Blackhurt’s toy, and he has all kinds of nasty games he wants to play with her. While thud, Cressida and the others die, Whitney Darkness is going to discover what hell is really all about. But what’s this? A brave challenger, willing to take on the fiends of the pit to save their helpless victim from their malevolent torments? A wager, double or quits? Join us and De Brown Streak in the contest of two lifetimes, in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Race With the Devil

***


Final Dark Blue Footnotes:

Heroes on Patrol: Captain Astounding is a do-gooder gifted with the fantastic ability to hold his hand out vertically from his shoulder for protracted lengths of time. Dead Boy is a reanimated corpse created in another of those shady government experiments. Michel McKinsley is a technologist crimefighter in the shadows of Gothametropolis. Alcheman, paradopolis’ newest hero, uses chemical-altering tattoos. Wangmundo is the troll that dwells in the attics of the Paradopolis municipal library. ManMan has all the proportional powers of a man. But fortunately he also has sentient talking weapon Knifey as a partner.

Bautista Enterprises is the multi-national technology company run by Filipino millionaire Jamie Bautista, who is secretly also LL founder NTU-150.

Pudu Lad one of the original line-up of the villain team proctology, was canned after its takeover by the even more villainous Thighmaster. Pudu Lad has, well, the powers of a pudu.

Goldeneyed and De Brown Streak conceived mutual dislikes for each other in UT#111: Last Run of De Brown Streak.

Onslaughter formerly ruler of the roving war asteroid Battleworld, was an ally of cosmic villain De Brown Streak. Genetically bred as a super-strong, invulnerable killing machine, Onslaughter also possesses high-range telepathic abilities and is trained in many forms of combat. His bone-like razor-sharp exo-skeletal ridges can tear through steel. He was originally captured after surviving the nuclear detonation of his Battleworld and an epic day-long battle with the Yurt and Hatman. In short, he big, tough, mean, and damn near impossible to stop.

Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs made a pact with Whitney Darkness in UT#131: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Sorceress: Dead End.

Dame Jana: is a complicated CrazySugarFreakCharacter. The best way to explain her is to reproduce another of those lengthy plot-point discussions with Kirk (CSFB!) Boxleitner, with thanks for his contributions:

IW: I'd appreciate a summary for Xeno Phobia's early history at the dawn of time, and with special reference to his inadvertent discovery of Janus Junctures and the consequent disasters that caused.

KB: See, this is where it gets tricky, because his origin is kind of almost meant to take place BEFORE "time" as we know it actually started.

In this null-zone before anything actually happened, there were the Janus, and there were the Janus Junctures. Both the Janus and their Junctures were already there, as they apparently always had been, utterly unchanging and constant in their seamless, indistinguishable uniformity, until one of the Janus finally evolved into an individual within the group, for reasons that I still can't claim to know.

The Janus were a race of beings who all shared the same mind, and all acted as one - or rather, remained inactive as one, since their only real function, as far as I can tell, was to ensure that all the Junctures remained closed, and that all the myriad possibilities that lie behind those doors would stay safely locked away.

With that in mind, all that the one Janus who had become an individual actually did, since both the Janus and their Junctures were already there, as they always had been, was to open one of those doors, thereby letting loose all of what we could consider creation in its wake.

I have the feeling that you may be working off the wrong paradigm in trying to map this out - it's not Krona unleashing the multiverse onto DC Universe continuity, nor is it even the history of the Time Lords, because the Janus should be so truly alien to our human point of view that we can only properly understand their actions in the same way that the ancient Greeks understood the stories of the broadly defined, single-concept beings who preceded both the Titans and the Olympians.

The lone Janus who would be branded Exu by the rest of his race, and become known as the GatewayTraitorGalaxyTraveler! (a.k.a. Doctor Xeno Phobia) after they cast him out, is representative of nothing less than the birth of Chaos within the Void,
and for the retelling to do his story justice, I would argue that it has to reflect the surreal, mythological nature of what "reality" actually was when he finally became an individual.

The only other aspect of his story that might be relevant would have to do with his creation of the Transformer robots of Cybertron, but I think we've already discussed that one at length, and besides, it's more of a postscript to his primal Promethean deed, anyhow.

IW: I'd also like to identify a female colleague/lover/wife who was involved in these experiments too, and who was seemingly lost in the disaster - think Omega to Phobia's Rassilon. I'll need that character, thought dead all these eons, for a forthcoming Untold Tales plot. I suspect she may well be the founder and secret force behind the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation, and I have a terrible feeling she may well be played by Judi Dench.

KB: When I was in grade school, back when I first created Doctor Phobia, he had an archenemy named Tycho, who was his evil opposite just like the Master was to the Doctor, right down to his skin color (dark purple, unlike Phobia's light green) and his outward personality (the voice of Jack Nicholson, rather than Phobia's voice of Orson Welles).

This wouldn't quite fit the character you seem to have in mind, so I offer an even simpler solution. First off, this "female" counterpart would only be "female" with regards to her gender traits in the same way that Phobia might be seen as "male" in his gender traits, which is to say, only outwardly, since the Janus do not and have never had distinct sexes of any kind, given the fact that every member of their race was identical, ageless, and immortal pretty much negates and nullifies any reason why they would even need to reproduce, much less in such a disorderly fashion.

That having been said, let's go with this. No big backstory is needed, because she is simply Janus, as in THE Janus, which is to say, the last remaining member of the race that cast out Doctor Phobia all those countless eons ago. By excising Phobia from the rest of their race, the Janus unwittingly inflicted change upon themselves, and since they could not create or grow or evolve, as Phobia had chosen to do when he was still one of them (and which he had been forced to do after he was exiled from them), the only avenue of change which was left to the Janus was that of destruction, and as such, in their own passive and inwardly-directed fashion, this was the path they travelled down, by decaying and dying off, one by one, until now, after all this eternity, only one of the Janus remains, invested with all the knowledge and collective consciousness of the Janus who have ceased to exist.

So, since Phobia is meant to have remade himself into something distinct from what the Janus once were, let's give the last remaining Janus (I'm just going to call her "Janus" from here on in) an appearance that's a striking contrast to that of Phobia.

Both Phobia and Janus should share some of the same basic anatomical traits that mark them as both being members of what used to be the same race - three eyes,
three arms, three legs, three fingers on each hand and three toes on each foot. But since Phobia is short and fat, with neon green skin and fluorescent orange eyes, let's make Janus tall and skinny, with colors in reverse of Phobia's - fluorescent orange skin and neon green eyes. Just on a whim, let's have both of them still have day-glow yellow tongues and bodily fluids.

Thus, simply by virtue of their physical characteristics, Phobia retains his Orson Welles persona, while Janus becomes more reminiscent of Dame Judi Densch, as per your request. There's bound to be a bit of animosity between these two, since Phobia will view the gradual near-extinction of his former people as an empirical vindication of his position, since he can say, not at all inaccurately, that the rest of the Janus race died only because they were incapable of changing and growing and evolving, as he did, while Janus herself will view the death of her race as proof positive that Phobia was in fact wrong, because she can assert, no less accurately, that his actions and decisions directly led to the death of them all.

And because they're both literally older than time itself and DAMNED proud as all living f***, neither one of them will ever admit to being even the least bit wrong, even though they both obviously are.

There are any number of reason why the last Janus may have chosen to start up ITC, not the least of which would be the fact that, when Carter Armstrong was playing Green Lantern Corps with his CrazySugarCosmicIconoclastCollective! in the 1960s, there were at least a few other Janus still left, since they were basically acting in the role of the Guardians of Oa at that point in time ... which, come to think of it, basically makes the last Janus the "female" equivalent of Ganthet.

Does this work?


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Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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