by Ira Nayman
“Not necessarily,” White House insisted. “This could just be a…a lesson in self-reliance!”
Bowens gave Begbie a ‘you had to start a religious debate, didn’t you?’ look, and said, “Gentlemen –”
“Do you hear how lame you sound when you say shit like that?” pyramids, who admittedly wasn’t much of a debater, ad hominemed.
“GENTLEMEN!” Bowens got their attention. “That’s not actually what I wanted to ask you.” He gave Begbie a look that shouldn’t be explained in polite company. “I couldn’t help but notice that your shirts are every colour except red.”
“That’s right,” White House agreed.
“Why is that?”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. “Because whenever there are missions aboveground,” pyramids said, “the people in red shirts always die.”
“It was like some kind of creepy natural law,” White House added.
“So, command stopped issuing red uniforms.”
“Everybody knows that.”
“Un hunh. Okay,” Bowens nodded. “But, do people still die in aboveground missions?”
“Sure,” White House answered.
“So, what colour is the death shirt now?” Bowens asked.
The two men looked at each other. One’s shirt was blue, the other’s was yellow. They thought furiously and looked increasingly unsettled. Eventually, White House held up a finger and said, “We’re gonna consult on that and get back to you.” Then, they turned sharply and walked smartly out of the room.
“You. Evil. Bastard,” Begbie admiringly said.
Bowens shrugged off the compliment. “I was just killing time until –”
“Out of the way!” somebody bellowed. “Coming through! Coming through!”
A man and a woman in ragged, torn uniforms entered the room. The woman’s face was bleeding and the man had broken a nail. Between them, they were dragging the inert zombified body of what might have once been a middle aged woman. Her skin was green and missing in spots, but the pearls around her throat, while tasteful, did not suggest youth. The zombie was wearing a crown of technology.
“What’s this?” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier demanded.
“We caught this zombie woman in Sector Arbitrary Random Number,” the woman stated.
“Put her in cell three,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier commanded. After a second, she added: “What? That wasn’t an arbitrary random number – cell one is occupied and cell two has water damage.”
The zombie woman was carried out of the room.
“Was that zombie still alive?” Bowens asked. “I mean, not quite dead. Mobile. Umm…”
“Yes,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier told him. “We have developed a machine that neutralizes the brainwaves in a zombie, rendering it unconscious. Of course, the trick is getting it on the creature…”
Begbie frowned. “Isn’t bringing creatures through here dangerous?”
Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier shrugged. “We didn’t have a lot of time to design our underground living complex. If we had, believe me, we wouldn’t have put the horses next to the doll factory!”
After a suitably embarrassed silence, Bowens asked, “May we question the zombie?”
“Knock yourself out,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier bitchily responded. “You know the way.”
“Couldn’t get enough of us, eh?” Smikk asked when they appeared in the hallway of cells.
“I constantly get enough of us,” Smukk groused, “and I am us!”
They looked at Smukk, but he just grinned sheepishly. Be honest – you wouldn’t have much to say if you had to follow what Smukk just said, either, would you?
“We’d like to talk to the prisoner in cell three,” Begbie said.
“Oh, there is no cell three,” Smekk told him.
“What?”
“We believe in the assignment of arbitrary cell names,” Smikk explained. “What was once cell three is now cell Laura Secord.”
“She was one sweet lady!” Smukk said, looking at Smikk and Smekk, daring them to top him.
“Can you tell us where the zombie that was just brought in is?” Begbie asked. Demanded, really. Demasked.
As one, the guards pointed to the third cell from the door.
As they walked over, Bowens whispered, “I think you should let me take the lead on this one.”
“Any particular reason?”
“You have to know how to speak zombie.”
“How hard can it be? They only have one word!”
“Ah, but it’s how you say it that counts.” Bowens cleared his throat and said: “Buuuurrrrrraaaaains?”
“Brrrraaaaains!” the zombie moaned.
“What did she say?” Begbie asked.
“Hmm…I’m not familiar with that accent,” Bowens admitted.
“Aha!” Begbie ahaed. “A – bloody – HA!”
“But, it was either, ‘Let me go’ or ‘Your mother has a herniated septum.’ It’s all a matter of where you place the emphasis…”
“Your mother has a herniated septum?”
“I will allow that ‘Let me go’ is more likely.
“Brrraaaaiiiinnnnnnnnnsss!” the zombie moaned.
Bowens turned to her and replied: “Brrraaainnnsssssss.”
Looking down, she shuffled about, confused.
“Sorry. Sorry about that. I meant: brrraaainnnssssss.”
“What was that about?” Begbie asked.
“I may have inadvertently told her that a pumpkin was just elected Prime Minister.”
“Oh, this is ridiculous!” Begbie roared:
“BRRRRAAAAAAAAAINS!”
Bowens shook his head.
“What?” Begbie demanded.
“I understand that you’re trying to play good cop/bad cop, but I don’t really think that’s going to work, here.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” Bowens informed him, “for one thing, you just promised to marry her spleen.”
“Braaaaaiiiinnnnnnnnnssssss?”
“As you might imagine, she’s a little confused by that.”
7. Slo-mo Oh Oh
Granpa rummages around in the shopping cart, looking for something.
“You sure this is the right Prophecy?” the lad asks.
“As sure as I am that I done been wearing the same underwear for nigh on six year,” grandfather tells him.
“I dunno, Granpa. It don’t sound like they’s helpin’ us, any.”
“Wha’d I say ’bout ripples? Here, lad – hold this for a second.” The old man hands him a rusty iron falcon.
“Yeah, sure, I heard ya,” the lad, not sure what to do with the metal bird, looks around him for a place to put it down. Unfortunately, there aren’t many curio cabinets along a bleak road in a burned out, desolate landscape. “Only, ta cause ripples, you have ta drop summit into a body o’ water. It don’t sound to me like the saviours in the Prophecy are anywhere near an ocean, a lake, a stream or even a particularly large puddle.”
“That’s the part where you gots ta have faith,” the old man says. “Aha! Oh, son?”
“Yeah?” the young man sighs.
“Duck!”
The lad does as he’s told. The old man brings a baseball bat out of the shopping cart and swings it viciously at a zombie just behind the young man. The bat connects with the zombie’s head with a dull thud (this is no exaggeration: the thud doesn’t read anything more complex than the health warnings on cigarette packages, and doesn’t appear to have an interest in the arts, politics, taxidermy or, indeed, anything beyond how it can get its next beer – seriously, just try to engage the thud in conversation for more than five seconds without having your eyes glaze over!). In a spray of disgusting greyish-green ooze, the head flies off the zombie’s body, which immediately crumples to the ground.
The lad hyperventilates for a couple of seconds. Then, he shouts: “You coulda warned me that that thing was right behind me!”
“Didn’t wanna panic ya,” the old man calmly replies, shaking the ickiness off the bat before putting it back in the shopping cart. “’Sides, we was talking about the Prophecy. Nothing in the world’s more important than orally transmittin’ the Prophecy ta the next generation!”
8. Perhaps It’s “Find the Whether and the Wherefore Will be Revealed…”
“So, what did you find out?”
“Well,” Bowens took a deep breath, “when she was alive, the zombie was a big fan of Doris Day movies – now, not so much. She doesn’t enjoy eating beetles – they’re too crunchy for her taste – especially now that she has lost most of her teeth – but she will if no brains are available. She reminisced about how plentiful brains were in the early days of her being a zombie – I wouldn’t have pegged her for the sentimental type, but life is full of surprises, isn’t it? Zombies give each other dead roses on Valentine’s Day…Halloween…Victoria Day – pretty much any day of celebration, really. Oh, yeah, and they have no concept of alternate realities, so there’s no way they could have gone to one and brought back a Home Universe GeneratorTM, real or otherwise. This would also leave them without a reason to do so. So, the last two and a half hours have been a complete waste of time.”
“Not a complete waste of time,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier corrected him.
“How so?”
She swept a hand towards the computer screen. The zombie was less than five feet away from the force fields.
“But –” Begbie began. Before he could get any further, two men shimmered into existence nearby. One was tall, painfully thin and craggy (although, to be clear, his cragginess wasn’t painful, it was only mildly irritating). The other was shorter, younger and far more Asian. They were both wearing the uniform of a Transdimensional Authority investigator.
“Bertrand,” Bowens said.
“Barack,” the elderly man in a big hat said.
“Bao,” Begbie said.
“Blabber,” the young Asian man without headgear said.
“Bao,” Barack Bowens said.
“Barack,” the young Asian man said.
“Bertrand,” Begbie said.
“Blabber,” the old man said.
“Can somebody please explain to me what’s going on?” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier asked from the other side of the busy control room.
“YOU!” the young Asian man shouted. “Jesus begesus, is there no getting away from you?”
There was a pause for a couple of seconds. Then, Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier asked, “Was that dramatic interjection really necessary?”
“Aww, well, you know, I just thought…”
“Because,” she continued, “we’re in a war zone, and it’s not like we’re wanting for drama here.”
“It’s just that you, uhh, seem to keep showing up in places we, err, places we end up in,” the abashed young Asian man mumbled.
“What are you doing here?” Bowens asked.
“Haven’t a clue,” the older man cheerfully admitted.
“PortalTM malfunction?” Bowens suggested.
“Doc Richardson doesn’t seem to think so,” the old man responded.
“Dr.…Richardson,” the young Asian man said meaningfully.
“Yes, well, we’re really very busy, here,” Begbie asserted. “So, off you go, alright?”
“What are you doing, exactly?” the old man asked.
“We’re…that is to say…umm…” Begbie groped for words, “Okay, if you must know, we’re waiting for a zombie to walk into a force field. But, it’s very active waiting!”
“Fair enough. We’ve got our own case to work on,” the old man diplomatically responded.
“Best of luck,” Bowens wished him, but he and the young Asian man were already gone. He turned to the others and said, “Okay, the fake Home Universe GeneratorTM was not brought here by zombies or aliens. That leaves robots and humans.”
“It’s not one of my people,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier insisted. “What possible reason could any of us have to do that?”
“We have an old saying in the Transdimensional Authority,” Begbie informed her. “Find the who and you’ll find the why.”
“Actually,” Bowens corrected him, “that’s: find the how and you’ll find the why.”
“Since when?”
“Since it was approved by the Board of Directors. It will be in the next Alternaut Handbook.”
“How am I supposed to keep up with that?”
“Gentlemen,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier interrupted. “I get the point: some information leads to the collection of other information. We can fill in the details later. Mister Begbie, you had started saying something…”
“I did?”
“Before…your compatriots appeared?
“What?” Begbie said. “Oh. Right. That zombie is not actually going to walk into the force fields.”
Everybody peered closely at the computer screen, quickly satisfying themselves that Begbie was, in fact, correct, that the zombie was going to walk past the force fields by a few feet.
“Oh,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier commented. “That’s disappointing.”
“Well, we got the point,” Bowens said. “The force fields are nasty. Fortunately, we have scientists who are nas –”
Before he could finish his sentence, another figure appeared on the screen. Everybody peered at it, trying to make the figure out. It quickly ran down the street towards the zombie.
“Is that…Kardashanus?” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier asked. “What…is he doing out there?”
What he was doing out there was: tackling the zombie, his momentum carrying them both into the force field surrounding the Home Universe GeneratorTM. Their bodies burst into flames and were reduced to ashes in seconds, like moths caught in an electronic bug zapper, but without the angst-ridden teenage poetry.
“Well,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier stood erect and smoothed down her uniform. “That wasn’t exactly how I had envisioned that going, but you get the idea: the force fields are lethal.”
“Who was that?” Bowens asked.
“Jeroen Kardashanus,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier answered. “He’s been with us for about four years.”
“Didn’t you say you were sure the Home Universe GeneratorTM smuggler wasn’t one of your people?” Bowens questioned her.
Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier shrugged. “Human psychology is not my area of specialization.”
“Did he once play football?” Begbie asked. When he saw Bowens giving him the “not helping” look, he added: “What? Put your arms around the knees and squeeze – it was a textbook tackle!”
“Did he have any personal effects?” Bowens asked.
“Everybody gets a corner in a cave somewhere,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier told him. “We could see if there are any clues there…”
Five minutes later, the three of them were looking at a pile of dog-eared issues of Mad Scientist Monthly and Scientific American Death Wish magazines.
“These didn’t give you a clue?” Begbie asked.
Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier stiffened. “We try to let people have a little privacy,” she coldly replied. “It’s the least we can do under the circumstances.”
They looked at the rest of the effects spread out on the cot near the stalagmite that looked like a slightly used candle in the shape of the CN Tower with the top blown off. Damn! Bowens thought, I really must get to that gift shop before we leave! Clothes. A razor. An ornately decorated teacup. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Bowens picked up a keychain on which could be read: Joe’s Garage/You’re last encounter with…The Law. It didn’t mean anything to him, but he was getting tired of his Kristen Stewart head keychain, so he pocketed it for later use.
“I think we’ve found the who,” Bowens commented.
“We did?” Begbie asked.
“Sure,” Bowens responded. “Why would Jeroen Kard
ashian –”
“Kardashanus,” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier corrected him.
“Right,” Bowens continued. “Why would he kill himself like that? It’s a hell of a sacrifice to make just to make a point about the lethality of a force field. No, he must have been responsible for bringing the faux Home Universe GeneratorTM into this universe – he realized that we were closing in on him –”
“But, we weren’t,” Begbie objected. “We had no idea that he even exis –”
“He didn’t know that,” Bowens continued continuing. “Or, maybe he figured that, being experienced investigators, it was only a matter of time before we caught up with him. It doesn’t matter. The point is, he sacrificed himself so that we wouldn’t find out what he knows.”
“Jeroen Kardashanus?” Begbie asked.
“That’s right,” Bowens told him.
“Sounds…strangely familiar…” Begbie mused.
“So, now that you know the who, do you know why?” Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier challenged.
“That’s why the Board of Directors approved the changes to the Alternaut Handbook,” Bowens coolly answered.
Before she could say anything further, the two Transdimensional Authority agents shimmered out of existence. “Wankers!” she said under her breath.
Master Sleep Sub-Commander Rapier turned her attention back to the screen just in time to see the box and the force fields shimmer out of existence.
“The box and the force fields are gone!” somebody shouted, astonished.
“I can see that,” she muttered. The screen quickly filled with curious robots. The war went on…
9. Prophecy Schmophecy!
The sun, low on the horizon, threatens to set. It is not an idle threat – the sun had made good on it countless times before.
“THEY WHAT?” the lad shrieks. In response, a wolf howls in the distance. A lot is riding on the sun’s threat.
“We, uhh, we should get us to some shelter before the sun asets,” the old man awkwardly advises.
“Don’t change the subject!” the lad insists. “The two ‘saaaaviooouuurs’ got what they wanted and left. Without changing a dang thing.”
