Tales of the Parodyverse

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Since Vizh is back, all punch-drunk from a 3 day drive, now seemed like the worst possible time to post this story; so here it is, courtesy of... the Hooded Hood. Welcome home.
Thu Jul 29, 2004 at 04:24:01 pm EDT
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#160: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: A Possibly Fake Romance
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#160: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: A Possibly Fake Romance

    The telephone rang. Visionary winced by reflex, but the NTU-150 Ansagraphmatic 8000 didn’t explode this time. The normal message cut in. “BEEEP Hi, you’ve reached the Condo, home of the League of Regulars for tax reasons, and natural habitat of Visionary, living proof that you don’t have to have looks, money, or talent to be a loser…”
    Vizh sighed as he realised Lisa had updated the phone message again.
    “If you’re calling about some kind of major emergency, please press one and you’ll find yourself listening to some mind-numbing music until you lose interest and ring the Lair Legion or die horribly, depending on how bad your crisis is…”
    It said something about Lisa’s ability to wind Visionary up that he snatched the phone up rather than hear any more of the recording. “Vizh here.”
    The phone sparked, and as the possibly-fake man dropped it the glowing green hologrammatic form of HALLIE formed up on the sofa next to him.
    “Sorry,” Vizh apologised. “Nerves.”
    “Probably how you’ve survived this long,” the Lair Legion’s Artificial Intelligence suggested. “Do you mind if I manifest here for a moment?”
    It was so long since anybody had bothered to actually ask Visionary’s permission for anything he was more than eager to grant it. “Sure. Can I get you a cup of, um… coherent light? I’m not going to have any more caffeine myself this late at night, but if you need something I can, er, phone Enty and get him to invent it?”
    HALLIE formed up more fully, the green gridlines of her body filling out until she more resembled the female human whose brain-patterns had been utilised in designing her artificial intelligence. She added colour and texture to the mix, so that eventually she looked almost like a normal person sitting on the couch; except that her weight didn’t press down the cushions and she cast only the faintest shadow.
    “Sorry to call so late,” HALLIE apologised. “I can’t sleep.”
    “I didn’t know that AIs actually slept,” admitted Vizh.
    “That’s what I said. I can’t sleep.”
    “Ah. Right.”
    “And I keep thinking about a… a problem I have, and you seemed like possibly the best person to talk to about it.”
    “Me? Are you sure? I’m Visionary.”
    “Yes,” agreed the pixellated young woman sympathetically. “But… and don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve asked everybody else already.”
    “Ah.” Suddenly the world made sense to Visionary again. “So what’s the problem? If it’s anything to do with kitchen appliances I’ve had to fight lots of them in my time. Also, I’m getting very good at spotting sabotaged shower nozzles. And since Kerry moved in I’m learning firefighting pretty fast.”
    “I don’t think I need your specialised kitchen appliance knowledge, thank you. You see, I have a date. Tell me about dating.”
    The possibly fake man blinked. “A date. Then you probably won’t need kitchen appliances. Not unless it’s a date that Lisa set up.”
    HALLIE shuddered. “I did ask Lisa for advice,” she admitted. “But I think I should be able to purge my databanks over the next two hundred years or so.”
    “But you’ll never be short of recipes or novelty party games,” Vizh comforted the shaken AI.
    “I also asked Enty, Dancer, Asil, Zebulon, Fleabot, Sorceress, Cressida, and Yo,” admitted HALLIE.
    Vizh nodded. “And what did they say? About your date?”
    “Well, Enty said to make sure the person I was dating was really the gender I thought he was,” puzzled HALLIE. “Dancer said to just be myself and enjoy things before the guy turned out to be slime like they all do. Asil couldn’t help much, because she’s never had a date, but she basically said to ask Lisa what to do then do the opposite.”
    “That could work,” agreed Vizh.
    “I don’t know how to undo handcuffs or get kool-whip back inside a can,” HALLIE worried. “Zebulon asked if I had protection, and I told him I had an integral firewall and algorithms designed to locate and neutralise any virus or worm that was introduced to my system.”
    “Er, yes,” Vizh nodded some more. “Don’t discuss that with CSFB!, okay?”
    “Sorceress said not to go. I’d only fall in love and have my life shattered and live out my days a weeping shell with a hollow hole where my heart is.”
    “Whitney isn’t at her most cheerful right now, Hallie. You have to make allowances.”
    “Cressida was making sense, but I couldn’t really hear what she was telepathing over dull thud’s sniggering.”
    “Shame. And Yo?”
    “Yo said I should come and see you,” HALLIE smiled apologetically.
    Visionary looked at the expectant hologram. “Maybe I do need caffeine after all,” he answered.

***


    “I met Tony at an IT Expo in Tokyo,” HALLIE explained in the condo kitchen. She perched a virtual hip on the sloping table – the Condo still had a five degree list despite Donar’s best efforts to shore it up, but most of the ground floor windows were now at least half above ground – and watched Visionary struggle with the kettle lid. “He was premiering his new car engine management systems, and I was cruising for a new application to censor Flapjack’s e-mail correspondence. We got talking over the hard drive table and he asked me out.”
    “Sounds very romantic,” commented Visionary, running cold water over his fingers so they wouldn’t blister. “But I don’t see the problem. You must have dated before, back when you were…”
    “Human?” HALLIE prompted the embarrassed possibly fake man. “I never was human. I’m not the electric ghost of Helen MacAllistair, you know. I just have her engrams as part of my programming, and some of her memories and tastes slip in with that. I’m an entirely new life-form. You’ve written enough long rants to the Avengers Message Board about your comic hero the Vision to know all that.”
    “Well, I find it best not to prod too hard at people’s secret origins. Sometimes they get upset, or I find myself in multi-part crossovers.”
    “Anyway, Helen wasn’t much of a dating person either. We’re both more work-oriented gals. So dating… well, I’m not programmed for it.”
    “And it’s not as if CSFB! and Flapjack haven’t tried,” noted Visionary.
    “Electricity burns heal,” scowled HALLIE at the recollection. “Anyway, the point is I’m nervous. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to act. Everyone seems to do this differently.”
    “It’s been a while since I had to do the dating thing,” Vizh confessed, “and I think it might be different for guys. Well, for non-Tony guys. We just kind of try to impress the girl and make her laugh and hope she doesn’t notice us slipping our hand round her. And then we get slapped.” His brow furrowed in thought. “At least that’s how I remember it.”
    HALLIE buried her head in her hands. “Oh this is going to be a disaster,” she mourned. “I’ve been waiting for the right time with the right person and now it’s just going to be… horrible.”
    Vizh was deeply alarmed at the AI’s reaction. He wasn’t sure holograms were supposed to cry. “Er, maybe it’ll be alright,” he ventured. “Tony sounds… he sounds very nice.” And first thing I do is have the Dark Knight and the Librarian do a full background check on the little worm the possibly fake man added mentally. “And maybe have Donar pay him a visit.”
    “Sorry? What did you say?” HALLIE asked puzzledly.
    “Nothing. Just thinking out loud,” Visionary said hurriedly. “What did you say Tony’s address was again?”
    “I just don’t know what to do,” explained HALLIE, pacing up and down the kitchen. “What to wear, what to say. I don’t know any jokes. Well, only the ones Trickshot tells…”
    “Stay away from them,” Vizh advised his visitor seriously. “Really.”
    “I don’t know when to laugh. If he says something funny should I laugh like this: Hahahahahaha. Or like this? Hehehehehehehe. Or maybe some giggling?”
    “I don’t know,” Vizh admitted. “Maybe just take it as it comes.”
    HALLIE glared at him. “Visionary, I have the computing power equivalent to half the mainframes in America but I still can’t calculate when to laugh at somebody’s jokes!” She put her hands on her hips. “Tell me a joke,” she demanded. “Make me laugh.”
    “Err..” said Vizh as his mind went blank. “Three men walk into a bar. No, wait, it was two men and a duck. I think it was a duck.”
    “Hehehehehehehehehe,” laughed HALLIE. “How was that?”
    “Um, good start,” the possibly fake man promised her.
    HALLIE moved on to the next of her mental list of worries. “Kissing,” she said.
    Vizh spilled his coffee down his pants.
    “When should I kiss him?” HALLIE demanded. “If I use tongues will he think I’m some kind of cheap knock-off software? Or if I don’t will he decide I’m just boring code?”
    “On the first date he should be behaving himself,” said Vizh, having flashbacks of conversations with Kerry. “Also on all the other dates.”
    “But if there’s no kissing there won’t be any sex,” objected HALLIE just as Vizh was picking up his drink again. “Ouch, that must burn. You really need to change those pants Visionary.” The phone rang. “Go,” the Lair Legion’s AI told him. “I’ll get that.”

***


    Visionary retreated to his room, so flustered he didn’t even bother to check the doorhandle for magnesium flares. He dragged off his coffee-stained trousers and tried to get water from his night-stand onto the worst of the scalding.
    He could hear HALLIE in the living room answering the call. “Hello, Sir Mumphrey. Yes it’s HALLIE.”
    “I’ll be right there,” Vizh called. “I just need to find a pair of pants.”
    “He’ll be right here, Sir Mumphrey,” HALLIE relayed. “Visionary is just putting his pants back on. He has been teaching me about kissing and sex.”
    Visionary leaped for the door before he had time to properly fasten his new clothing. The pants slipped and Visionary skidded across the oddly-striated carpet and demolished the telephone table.
    HALLIE looked down at the possibly fake man and burst into genuine, spontaneous laughter.
    Visionary hurriedly adjusted his trousers.
    “No, there’s nothing wrong, Sir Mumphrey,” HALLIE spoke down the phone. “I was just laughing as Visionary dropped his pants. It was very funny.”
    “Kill me now,” moaned Vizh.
    HALLIE replaced the telephone receiver onto the base unit that was now somewhere on the floor. “Sir Mumphrey says he’ll call you back at a more convenient time,” she told Vizh. “He says he’ll want a good long chat with you.”
    “He’ll probably shoot me,” Visionary winced. “Now he thinks I’ve been taking advantage of you, Hallie. He thinks I’m some kind of Nats.”
    HALLIE grinned. “Lisa’s right,” she admitted. “You are easy. That was somebody trying to sell you aluminium sidings, Vizh.”
    Visionary swallowed hard. “You have a mean streak,” he complained.
    “I can always ring the real Sir Mumphrey if you insist,” HALLIE offered.

***


    “This is a bad idea,” Visionary said for the hundredth time.
    “You’re not having a good time?” HALLIE worried. “What am I doing wrong?”
    Visionary tried not to trip over his feet as he moved the AI around the dance floor of the Twin Parody Tower’s Revolving Restaurant. “Nothing,” he assured her. “You’re being a great date. I just… it feels weird.”
    HALLIE glanced down at her red sequinned dress and creamy green skin. “I can check my force field hard light generators,” she offered.
    “No, not that,” Vizh assured her. “You feel good. I mean, fine. I mean, not that I’m feeling you or anything. I just mean it feels weird to be pretending to date you.”
    “I thought it was a good way to practise,” HALLIE admitted. “Dancer rehearsed Donar before he dated Troia.”
    “And then Troia stabbed Donar with a spear,” Visionary pointed out. “Besides, I’m not exactly the date expert Dancer is.”
    “You don’t want to be here?” HALLIE asked, with a little plaintive tremor in her voice.
    “I can’t win this, can I?” Vizh realised. “Look, I’m happy to try and build up your confidence for an evening out with Tony, but…”
    “Is it the way I look?” HALLIE worried. “I can look different.” Suddenly she was a bubbly blonde in the Marilyn Monroe mould, then a slim Negro supermodel, then a sultry Roger Rabbit redhead with an improbable bust.
    “Urk!” choked Visionary as he shied away from her alarming chest growth. “Just the usual Hallie is fine!” he assured her. “Really. It’s more you.”
    The AI shimmered again and reverted to her pale green skin and quizzical expression. “I naturally default to this appearance,” she admitted. “It’s a bit like Helen was, only with a gamma shift.”
    “It’s you to a T,” Visionary assured her. “Tony’s a very lucky man. Um, do you happen to know his social security number…?”
    The music finished and the band took ten. The practise daters returned to their table. Visionary didn’t remember ordering champagne, but there was a bucket waiting for them.
    “You’re surreptitiously feeling to check you brought your wallet, aren’t you?” HALLIE noticed as the possibly fake man squirmed, worrying about the cost of a ’95 Dom Perignon. “Either that or those coffee scalds were more serious than you let on.”
    “No, I’m fine,” Vizh promised. “I keep plenty of burn kits at the Condo these days. But, well, I don’t get paid for looking after the Juniors, so…”
    “You’re such a joker,” HALLIE told him. “I’ve seen the accounts. I am the accounts. I know how you give your entire income to St Jude’s Orphanage to help those poor kids.”
    “Wait… what?”
    “Anyway, tonight you’re doing me a favour, so this is my treat. And I wanted things to be just right.”
    “For Tony,” Vizh noted. “Of course.”
    HALLIE poured some champagne into the frosted tall-stemmed glasses. “I can’t actually drink it,” she admitted, “but I like how it tickles my nose.”
    “I can drink it,” Visionary answered, “but afterwards I tend to start singing ‘I’m Henry the Eighth I Am’ and then fall over.”
    “Perhaps you should just let it tickle your nose as well.”
    They held the glasses and smelled them. “Tickles like a good vintage,” Vizh noted.
    “I have money, you know,” HALLIE assured him when the champagne had been properly nosed.. “I don’t even need the stipend Enty set aside for me. I’ve patented all kinds of software. In fact I’m donating to St Jude’s myself these days.”
    “Yeah, about that St Jude’s thing, you say I’m…”
    Just then the band struck up once more “Ooh, more dancing!” cried HALLIE. “Come on!”

***


    They walked across the long causeway bridge that separated Parody Island from mainland Paradopolis. Beyond the perimeter gates the only lights were the lampposts on the bridge, reflected on the waters of the cold Atlantic. The night city loomed up behind them, glittering across the bay.
    Visionary noticed that HALLIE’s hair moved in the night wind, or at least her hologram was sufficiently sophisticated to simulate it. The AI had also slipped off her high heels and was padding barefoot along the old flagstones.
    “What?” HALLIE asked as she noticed Visionary looking at her. “What have I done wrong?”
    “Nothing,” Vizh promised her. “I just… didn’t expect virtual shoes to pinch.”
    “Well, you loosened your tie, so I thought I’d get more informal too. Was that a mistake?”
    “No, that’s fine. But I didn’t so much loosen my bow tie as it kind of exploded into a tangled knot of fabric. At first I thought it was the start of some super-villain attack.”
    “I wondered why you were sawing at it with a cake knife.”
    “I panic easily,” Visionary explained. “That’s how I’ve survived the LL so long.”
    HALLIE continued along the promenade and stopped to watch the moon over the ocean. “How am I doing?” she asked her companion. “Dating, I mean? I’m not sure because I haven’t been able to use any of the witty anecdotes I downloaded yet and…”
    “You’re doing fine,” Vizh assured her. “Tony will be enchanted, Hallie.”
    The AI smiled at Visionary fondly.
    “What?” he worried. He checked his flies.
    “Nothing,” HALLIE told him. “It’s just I like the way you say my name. Hallie. As if it was a person’s name, not an acronym for a Heuristic Artificial Learning Life Intelligence Entity. It’s nice.”
    “Well, it only seems appropriate, since you’re a person,” Vizh pointed out.
    “I’m not a real person though,” HALLIE observed. “Just a computer program.”
    “You’re real, dammit,” Visionary assured her. “I’m the world expert on this field, so believe me. I have a robotic flea houseguest dating a talking raven of destiny. I’ve been dissected. When I don’t exist the Apostate conquers the Parodyverse. I know real. You’re real, Hallie.”
    HALLIE considered this. “Well, maybe I’m getting there,” she decided.
    She started to walk the rest of the way to the Lair Mansion. The portico was lit but HALLIE had the override codes to the stunulator disintegration guns that protected the approach. Visionary fell in alongside her and the two of them walked in companionable silence towards the house. After a while HALLIE linked her arm through his.
    “So do you feel up to your date with Tony now?” Vizh asked as they approached the door.
    “No,” HALLIE replied.
    “No? But you’ve been the dream date, Hallie, honestly. It’s been a lovely night out, best I’ve had for ages. Tony will be… well, he’ll be a very lucky guy.”
    The AI looked away, her face downcast. “Vizh, I’m sorry,” she confessed. “I didn’t tell the truth about Tony. There is no Tony.”
    “Wha…? Or rather… wha?”
    “There’s no Tony,” HALLIE squirmed. “I made him up. He’s fake. I mean, definitely fake, not just possibly fake. He’s fictional.”
    Visionary was baffled. “Then how can you have a date with him?”
    “I don’t have a date with him!” HALLIE answered a little crossly. “Do pay attention!” She sighed and turned away. “I just wanted… I wanted my first date to go right. To be special. To be something to always remember.”
    “I’m glad to help out,” Vizh assured her. “And when you go on that date, I’m sure it’ll be…”
    “Vizh,” HALLIE interrupted him.
    “Yes?”
    “This was the date. The date I wanted. The special one.”
    Visionary’s brow furrowed for a moment as he worked this out, then his eyes widened, then his mouth dropped.
    “Don’t laugh at me,” HALLIE warned him in a choked voice.
    “I’m not laughing,” Vizh assured her. “I’m…”
    “Disgusted with me? Abused? Furious? Contemptuous? Appalled? I’ve ruined everything haven’t I?”
    “Amazed. Flattered. Privileged. Awed. A little baffled, but that’s kind of baseline…”
    HALLIE looked carefully into her friends face to see if he was upset. “Is it okay? I’m sorry I…”
    “Okay?” Visionary laughed, hugging HALLIE to him with a fierce joy. “Hallie, there’s no words to describe how glad I am you picked on me.” He thought a bit deeper. “Well, there probably are words, but I can’t think of them right now. Words that express deep happiness in spite of second degree coffee burns.”
    HALLIE hugged him back. “Oh, I’m so glad. I had a lovely time, you know, just like I dreamed it would be, but I was unhappy as well because I knew it didn’t mean the same to you because…”
    “It meant something,” Visionary assured her.
    And suddenly the moment turned serious, and they both became aware that they were in the other’s embrace.
    HALLIE turned her face up to Visionary’s. “It’s not a perfect evening yet,” she whispered. And her lips were red and moist and how the hell did a hologram manage to smell of orange-blossom and taste like strawberries?
    Visionary found himself wondering these things even before he realised he was kissing her.

***


    “So…” HALLIE said shyly, uncertainly, as Visionary opened the front door for her, “do you want to… come down to my computer core? Or, y’know… I could make you some coffee again… in… in one of the guest bedrooms… if you wanted…”
    Vizh squeezed her hand. “It’s been a lovely night, Hallie,” he assured her. “Special enough already, eh?”
    It was hard to tell whether the AI was disappointed or relieved. “So you don’t expect to… to come in? I don’t want you to… not enjoy our date.”
    Vizh shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know where I should be,” he admitted. “I don’t know how I feel about you… I mean how I feel about you and I together, other than knowing you’ll always be a wonderful friend. I need to be sure I’m not just lonely and desperate to have someone interested in me again. Especially since when you make somebody feel that way, you deserve to have it all be about you.” He pushed the lock of hair back from his eyes and managed a self-depreciating smile. “But I know I should say goodnight now, Hallie.”
    The ghost of a smile played at the edges of HALLIE’s mouth. “Goodnight, Visionary. Thank you. For everything.”
    Visionary walked away over the bridge to Paradopolis again with the taste of strawberries on his lips.

***


Shall I Compare Thee To a Summer’s Footnote?

There’s very little to reference this time assuming you’re familiar with the current state of the Parodyverse. Visionary, one of the longest-time members if the Lair Legion, lives in a partially-sunken Condo in the suburbs. His former wife Cheryl has been absent for some time now, probably ascended to godesshood but we won’t know for sure until poster-Cheryl expresses some preference for her PV avatar’s future. But PV-Vizh is now single again. He is currently fostering teenage pyromaniac Kerry Shepherdson, the probability arsonist; hence all the fire jokes.

HALLIE is an artificial intelligence computer program originally created by evil Nazi scientist Dr Vizhnar from the engrams of murdered scientist Helen MacAllistair, a Paradopolis U. classmate of Al B. Harper and Miss Framlicker. Since breaking free of Baron Zemo’s control HALLIE has served as resident computer to the League of Regulars and the Lair Legion. Using technology adapted from the infamous Movie Gun, HALLIE can form a solid-light hologram of herself around a small portable mechanism, effectively giving herself a body to interact with the human world. She and Visionary have been friends for a long time now. HALLIE is still on a voyage of discovery about who she truly is – and should become.

“Enty” is NTU-150 a.k.a. billionaire industrialist Jamie Bautista, who invented a cyborg armour after being crippled in a car accident and served as a founder member of the League/LL. In recent months he has retired from active superheroing until he invents a way to solve his heart condition. Jamie’s unsafe inventions were a mainstay plot device of the early Parodyverse stories.

Donar, hemigod of thunder, is currently ruling Ausgard, home of the transported Asgardian gods. His father the All-Pappy is on walkabout, and has vested the Oldmanforce with Donar. Since the Prohibition of the Celestians forbids this power being brought to or used in Middlegard – the Earth and its universe – Donar has been unable to participate in recent Lair Legion exploits. He could only do so by passing the power to his wicked half-sibling Hoki, and that feels like a story in its own right.

And Special Thanks to Adam "Vizh" Diller for the HALLIE image and some help on how Visionary would react.

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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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