Renegade T.M.

by Langley, Bernard

“Ah Mr Momid, at last,” said Mr Framer’s mind-beanie, which was sitting unoccupied on his desk.

  “Hello sir,” he replied nervously, before asking sheepishly, “will Mr Framer be joining us?”

  “I am Mr Framer you idiot, well I am Mr Framer’s brain anyway! Why am I not good enough for you?!” shouted the mind-beanie, clearly angered by his comment.

  “No, no, not at all,” he whimpered, “all I meant to say was that I expected Mr Framer himself to be here.”

  “And I am,” replied the mind-beanie.

  “Yes,” he said, realising there was nothing further that he could legitimately add.

  “Now,” began the mind-beanie, getting down to business, “it really is a very serious matter you being late like this.”

  Dink imagined the machine was tutting at him, and looking down on his biological self, as he might look down on a calculator if he was asked to compare his existential value against it.

  “Very serious indeed,” continued the machine, “and what wonderful excuse do you have for me?”

  He opened his mouth to answer.

  “No, no, don’t say it, let me guess, you were stabbed,” suggested the irksome machine, “no wait even better, you lost a limb, right? You lost a limb and had to have new limb transplanted?”

  “Erm , yes actually,” he replied timidly, instantly realising that perhaps honesty is not always the best policy.

  “Ha I knew it!” laughed the device, mocking Dink for what it considered to be nothing more than I pack of quite extravagant lies.

  “No really, it’s the truth.”

  “You can’t handle the truth!” shouted the machine, without fully understanding why.

  “Look see,” he declared, revealing his fishing-handle-broom-rod hand from his pocket.

  The mind-beanie may well have been completely astonished at this; however, being nothing more than an inanimate object, I guess we shall never know.

  “Going fishing?” asked the device in earnest.

  “No,” he replied, “it’s meant to be my new hand!”

  “Fascinating,” replied the mind-beanie sounding anything but, “look, Mr Mormid, I’m afraid Rikorn cannot be seen to condone tardiness in the office, or in this case, not in the office!”

  This clearly tickled the machine as it simulated a sort of laughter sound, and an orange light flashed up on its display.

  “And after weighing everything up,” it went on, “it is with no regret that I inform you that, you’re…”

  “Wait!” shouted Pete, Crinkle and Slip, barging their collective way into the room, “you can’t fire him!”

  “Oh no,” said Dink fearfully, “not you psychos again!”

  “Yes, it is us psychos,” replied Slip unashamedly, before adding convincingly, “again!”

  “Who are you people?” questioned the machine, obviously put out at their entrance, “and what the devil are you doing in my office?”

  “We are from the fut…”

  Crinkle swiftly elbowed Slip in the stomach before he could finish.

  “What my colleague means to say,” she said thinking quickly, “is that we are from the futon company, and we’re here to deliver a cushion.”

  “Well go on then,” demanded the mind-beanie, “we were in the middle of something!”

  “Of course,” interjected Pete finding his voice, “right away, all we need is a signature.”

  “And it takes three of you to deliver one cushion does it?!” sneered the machine.

  “Yes,” replied Slip, obviously thinking this a most complete and enlightening answer.

  “Least it would,” added Crinkle, “if we were actually in possession of said cushion.”

  “You mean to say, you don’t actually have the cushion with you?!”

  “Yes,” replied Slip, who was really on a role now.

  “So, what do you need a signature for?!” barked the machine, growing ever angrier.

  “That’s just to say that you didn’t take delivery of a cushion,” answered Pete with a wink.

  “What’s wrong with you people?!”

  “That’s what I said,” agreed Dink with the machine, glad that the attention had moved away from him.

  “Oh there’s nothing wrong with us,” answered Slip, “it’s the universe that’s at fault here, though it’s nothing that a silken weave, leather trim, Persian plumper couldn’t fix.”

  “The cushion?” queried Dink “Yes.”

  “The cushion you don’t have?” added the mind-beanie irritably.

  “Exactly,” said Pete.

  “And you know these people do you?” asked the beanie of Dink.

  “Yes,” he replied, “they’re the reason I’m late!”

  “Is that so,” mused the machine enigmatically.

  “Yes,” Dink almost yelled, finger-pointing furiously at the trio, “it’s entirely their fault!”

  “Is this true?” asked the device.

  “Alas,” ventured Crinkle, “it is entirely true.”

  “See,” said Dink, the relief evident all over his face, “they are all completely mental, certifiably so!”

  “Okay, I think I see what’s going on now,” declared the mind-beanie.

  “At last,” sighed Dink, relieved that the truth did finally will out.

  “You’re late by,” the machine paused as if checking some computer taskbar clock, “three and a half cycles, because…”

  The room was perched on a knife edge, and Slip tucked into a cheese wedge.

  “Rather then come to work at the expected time, you decided instead to…”

  This was proving to be a little too much to bear for Dink, and Slip was still hungry.

  “Go cushion shopping and fishing!” finished the mind-beanie damningly.

  “Noooooo!” he cried in despair, “that’s not true, that’s not what happened at all!”

  “I fear that is exactly how it happened,” continued the machine, “the appearance of these cushionless fools only confirms it.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” he pleaded with the trio.

  “Oh don’t try and lie your way out of this now,” warned the device, “if there’s anything I can’t abide, it’s liars.”

  “Well said,” agreed Slip turning to leave, “well we must be getting back to the futon company.”

  “Oh and Mr Mormid,” added the mind-beanie, “you’re fired.”

  “Please don’t fire me,” Dink grovelled, but it was too late, for the machine had gone into standby mode.

  “You’ve done it again!” he wailed, “ruined my life!”

  “Oh don’t mention it,” replied Slip not paying any real attention.

  “I’m…” he began, growing redder with every word.

  “Going…”

  “To…”

  “KILL YOU!”

  “Guys,” said Crinkle hurriedly, “run!”

  Pete, Slip, and Crinkle then legged it, with Dink in hot pursuit. Crashing through the atrium, the cyber-secretary barely batted an eyelid, before lethargically pushing the alarm button and calling for the Orderlies.

  38.

  “Kill Ben,” grumbled Pete to himself as he swam away from the palace, “as if it was that easy! He’s a big shark, and I’m just a little fish! And how in haddock am I suppose to find him anyway?!”

  “Hello,” said Ben the shark, who had been following him for some time now.

  “Whoa!” Pete replied, startled by his sudden appearance, “who said that?!”

  “Ben, Ben the shark, how do you do?” he introduced himself.

  “Oh fine thank you, thank you very much indeed kind sir,” babbled Pete, staring at his enormous, razor-sharp teeth.

  “I understand you want to kill me?” questioned Ben.

  “Erm, yes,” he replied, having yet to engage his brain, “yes I do.”

  “I see,” replied the shark, licking one of his enormous fangs, “well what’s stopping you then? Here I am, kill away.”

  �
��No, no,” he quickly replied realising what he had just said, “I think you misunderstand me.”

  “Do I now,” replied the shark slyly.

  “I don’t want to kill you, I want to thrill you.”

  “Thrill me huh,” replied the shark sounding anything but convinced, “and how pray tell, do you intend to thrill me exactly?”

  “I was thinking dinner and a movie?” suggested Pete.

  “How about we just skip the movie,” replied Ben menacingly.

  “Sure thing, what do you fancy, Indian, Chinese, Italian?”

  “What about fish and chips?”

  “Erm okay,” he squeaked, clearly frightened now, “what restaurant would you recommend?”

  “Oh we could eat right here,” stated the shark matter-of-factly.

  “So you’ve brought a pack-lunch?”

  “Not exactly,” replied Ben, advancing on him with his jaws wide open.

  Pete was about to die, he would be swallowed up by a very misleading shark who clearly had some unresolved issues, and would never see the Renegade gang again. As he puzzled over who or what the Renegade gang was, he felt an anger brewing inside of him. An anger born from his wasted life and farcical job in advertising, his cheating girlfriend and stupid, exploding car. Before he could make neither head nor tails of all these weird and un-wonderful thoughts, he opened his mouth and shouted:

  “Your muther is so fat, that whenever she sits down, a new star is born!”

  This stopped the shark sharply in his tracks.

  “Oh no you didn’t!” shouted Ben, “well your muther is so stupid, that she has to sign her name with a winking smiley!”

  “Well your muther is so stupid,” he yelled back, warming to the topic, “that she sits on the telly to watch the sofa!”

  “Well your muther is so ugly, that when she looks in a mirror, she cracks!” shouted Ben.

  “Well your muther is so stingy, that she won’t buy anything that’s over ninety-nine pence in Poundland!”

  “Well your muther is so ugly, that she came runner up at Crufts!”

  “Well your muther is so fat, that she has to book every seat in the plane when she flies!”

  “Well your muther is so fat, that when she goes swimming, whales ride on her back!”

  “Well your muther is so old, that when she recalls the big bang, she was already at university!”

  “Well your muther is so slow, that she thinks having a bubble bath is a frenetic, danger-laden trial!”

  “Well your muther is so stupid, that she failed a blood test!”

  “Well your muther is so stupid, that she thinks getting a bee in your bonnet is a recognized qualification!”

  “Well your muther is so fat, that when she did a dive bomb at the swimming pool, onlookers thought it was a re-enactment of Pearl Harbour!”

  This went on for many circuits, neither being willing to concede. The sun set on the fish-tank and throughout the night, “your muther” barbs were traded pitilessly between the two foes. As a new day dawned on the Kingdom of Slip, the duo were, by now desperately tired, and had lost the angry vigour that had sustained them for so long.

  “Your muther is so stupid that…” Pete was desperately trying to think of something pithy, before coming up with the less than convincing “…That her IQ is 70.”

  “Your muther is so stupid, that her IQ is 60,” came back a flagging Ben.

  “Your muther is so stupid, that her IQ is 45,” he fought on valiantly.

  “ENOUGH!” shouted the shark, “okay, okay, you win, I am defeated!”

  “Your muther…”

  “STOP!” Ben shouted, “I yield okay, you win!”

  “Oh right,” he realised finally, not really knowing how to celebrate his victory, “great.”

  “You are indeed a mighty warrior,” said the shark, “and if I’m brutally honest, I actually never knew my mother.”

  Pete could not be certain, but he was almost sure he could hear a violin start playing somewhere, a melody so heart wrenching, that even the coldest hearted fish would thaw.

  “I was just a tiny shark when they found me, abandoned on the doorstep of the orphanage. There was no note about me, all I possessed was a dirty torn blanket in which I was wrapped, and a photograph of some man I have no recall of, his name scrawled underneath as Pierre. The orphanage took pity on me and raised me in the strict accustoms they were used to, and there I stayed until that fateful day when the meteorites came. All I had come to know was destroyed that day. They fell from the sky, toppling buildings and making deep chasms into the ground. Those who weren’t killed instantly, died later from the radiation, until I was the only one left, alone, as I had started life, and looked set to remain.”

  Pete stared at the shark, tears welling-up in the beast’s eyes, and said, “your muther is so horrible, that she got kicked off the Evil Factor for being a professional!”

  This was too much for Ben the shark, who suddenly broke down in tears and rolled into a ball, as best any shark can.

  39.

  Dink had lost the Renegade trio outside the Rikorn offices, and all he could think to do now was to get home, quickly and recklessly if need be. He made a made a mental note to exact a horrible and twisted revenge on the Renegade gang at a later date, and hailing a transportable, jumped in. It seemed like only moments later that he was back in his own living unit, kicking off his shoes and making his way upstairs, wishing painfully that Petunia was out somewhere.

  He opened the door to their bedroom to discover she was not. In fact it turned out that she had company. It then turned out that the whereabouts of his boss Mr Framer were no longer unknown.

  “What?!” she shouted angrily at him.

  Dink was stunned. Not in any cheated-on, wounded pride type of way, but rather what he was observing had left him confused and unable to react. Mr Framer, without the aid of his mind-beanie was nothing more then a giant jelly, unable to communicate or portray any emotion. The only thing that this gelatine mass could do then was float about on a levi-aid, and occasionally make a disgusting squelching noise that sounded very much like the creation of road-kill on hot motorway afternoon. He had caught them in the act of what he imagined must constitute love making for his boss’s species. Pentunia was stark naked encased in the jelly so that only her head stuck out the top, Mr Framer wobbled about with her inside, his levi-aid now defunct at the side of the room.

  “Is that..?”

  “It is,” replied Petunia quickly, not showing any level of remorse.

  “And is that..?”

  “What?” she interrupted again, “fun?”

  “Normal?” he finished.

  “Of course it’s normal you numpt, in fact, on his planet, he is considered something of an expert.”

  “What?! An expert in wobble jelly?!”

  “An expert in the art of love,” she replied without the faintest trace of irony.

  “Are you saying that that,” he said pointing accusingly at them both, “is preferable in the bedroom to myself?!”

  “Oh God yes, practically everything is.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh I don’t know, like ironing, stubbing my toe, cancer.”

  “What about the time we spent the whole night…”

  “Hard-light hologram,” she interrupted.

  “And the holiday in the Diamond Nebula?”

  “Memory implant.”

  “Is there anything you like about me Petunia?”

  Her face seemed to crease all of a sudden, as she racked the deepest recesses of her brain hunting for any appealing facet to their relationship. It appeared briefly that she might have something, before he realised that actually she had just been trying to scratch an itch, (fairly difficult to do when you are entirely entombed in jelly).

  “Nope,” she answered.

  “Then why are you still here?”

  “Why am I still here?! WHY AM I STILL HERE?!”

  He had clearly angered h
er with this question. This was fairly deductible from the way she was currently shouting, but perhaps even more evident in the fact that she had then released herself from her gelatine embrace, and retrieved down from the wall his ancient fung-ku sword which she was now pointing eagerly at him.

  “I despise you Dinkle Mormid!” she bellowed advancing upon him with the sword, “the only thing that I have left to live for, is to see the look on your face when I kill you!”

  “Bit harsh,” he pipped meekly.

  “I’m really going to enjoy this,” she growled raising the sword up for the kill.

  “Wait!” shouted Pete barging into the room all of a sudden.

  “Who’s this clown?!”

  “Oh God, not you again!”

  Pete was by now between the two of them, huffing and puffing as if he had been running back-to-back marathons and also trying to beat the record for most cigarettes smoked without break.

  “Please stop this madness!” pleaded Pete, keenly aware that a razor sharp fung-ku sword hung precariously above him.

  “Kill him,” snarled Dink.

  “Do your own killing,” replied Petunia, “oh wait hang on, that’s right, you’re probably be a little too dead for any of that! Now eat my blade!”

  That said, she brought the sword down at her most murderous angle, and as Pete leapt out of the way, screaming an anti-heroic “mummy!” it was almost certain that Dink would lie dead in but a moment’s grace. At the very end however, Dink pulled his hand from his pocket, revealing to Pete’s understanding a handy fishing rod, and yet to Petunia’s, a hideous lynching device, and parried away the blow as it crashed down upon him.

  “What the hool is that?!” cursed Petunia, readying herself for her next attack.