The Search for Ball Zero

by Tony Dormanesh

  attention and press buttons.

  The Telnet warstore launches a volley of missiles at Elohssa. Most of them hit

  the Elohssa store and it is covered in a cloud of smoke. The Telnet Captain’s mouth twists, is he happy or grimacing?

  When the smoke clears, the Elohssa warstore stands solid as a rock. Smoke

  swirls around it and the nearby trees burn, but the warstore is unphased. Before the smoke is fully gone, some superficial hull damage can be seen, yet remarkably, a few mechanical arms with a blowtorch and other tools are already hard at work fixing the damage. Other arms can be seen in un hit areas enthusiastically looking for damage, then retreating back into their homes when none is found.

  At the edge of the city, the Telnet warstore is still trying to maneuver to face it’s

  opponent. As the entire injured store turns un-smoothly, it runs over hundreds, possibly thousands more people. At the same time, it’s mangled vacuum arm swings around and cuts a one story hole through a few buildings. One of the buildings is an apartment complex; a few entire apartments are ripped out, one lady in the shower gets exposed to the entire city for a second before her and her bathtub slide and fall into the debris, a giant fish tank ripped in half drains it’s occupants, a fridge teeters for a second and then jumps to it’s death.

  Inside someone’s apartment on the ground floor, the occupant is home and eating. He sees the warstore on TV and then looks through his window and sees the same warstore is approaching his home. His eye’s widen as it gets closer, he drops his food and runs to the counter, grabs his wallet and begins laughing maniacally, he opens the front door and hangs onto it. He continues to laugh hysterically as one of the warstore vacuum arms swings his way. First, all his clothes are ripped off. Next, his naked body is ripped from the door and sucked into the vacuum. A half second later his apartment is completely destroyed.

  Back to inside Telnet’s warstore, the Captain is checking out some numbers on a tablet screen. One Telnet employee in the cockpit is manning the machine gun, furiously jerking at a joystick controller like he’s playing the most intense game of Quake ever with an Atari controller. The machine gun is so ineffective against the Elohssa warstore it’s laughable, but he’s trying his best.

  Telnet Captain, “We’re killing too many people! Those are potential customers you assholes! How about try not to go through neighborhoods!! But don’t let up on that Elohssa warstore, they’re too smart to be attacking us without something up their sleeve.” Then under his breath to Billy, “I’ve never seen a warstore that looked like that thing.

  What type of warstore is that Billy?”

  The Elohssa warstore is just standing there, unmoving on the edge of the forest,

  like a confident killer.

  Telnets warstore, still trying to face it’s opponent, ungracefully bashes through an elevated freeway on the edge of town like a football team running through a banner. The Telnet machine guns are blaring and tinging off the Elohssa warstore armor. If that machine gun was effective in any way, the Quake player employee would be doing good. But it’s not.

  Finally the Telnet warstore faces Elohssa’s; Telnet on the edge of town, Elohssa

  on the edge of the nearby forest, a grassy field separating the two. Two Gunslingers about to finish their duel. The world was about to move on.

  Two sirens on top the Elohssa warstore turn on and begin spinning. Next, a long

  thin part on top of the Elohssa warstore begins to rise, giant mechanisms lifting the many tons of metal The relatively thin piece folds back, and starts to resemble a scorpion tail.

  “What the fuck is that Billy?!” The Telnet Captain asks. “I’m getting the info right now!” Billy’s waiting, he reads as the info appears.

  “Brand new... Right off the line. Unseen in action.”

  The Captain breathes ,”Until now.” He pauses contemplatively,”Grandma may

  have just shit the bed.”

  Billy states the obvious,”Sir, they have superior firepower.”

  The Quake guy is still playing his game like a spaz going for a high score.

  The Elohssa warstore is in view from the Telnet cockpit. All eyes are looking at it in amazement as it’s main weapon continues to unfold like a Transformer.

  Telnet employee nerd,”Wow. Cool.”

  Telnet employee nerd 2,”My cousin works for Elohssa, he says they get every

  corporate appreciation day off and more vacation tha..” The nerd is interrupted by the commander slapping him in the face.. and yelling “Get back to work maggots!! Do you want to die with your thumb up your ass?!”

  The Captain walks around the cockpit while he barks orders. when he gets back

  to the front, the Elohssa warstore is almost done transforming. While he is walking around,”We may only have one chance at this. We’ve got to give em all we got. One quick volley of EVERY FUCKING THING we got!! Then make a beeline for the tree line and high tail it outta here. Do it…”

  Many crew members are staring at the Captain, some are transfixed on the Elohssa warstore through the main window, one guy is picking his nose, the Quake guy is unloading thousands of meaningless bullets, massaging their enemy, ting ting.

  “NOW!!!” The Captain yells, jarring some crew members back to their jobs.

  The Elohssa warstore is deploying its main weapon, the Scorpion Cannon. The consumer vacuum arms also are deploying now, giving it a real Transformer/Terminator Hunter Killer look. The warstore actually begins to look like a giant, scorpion tank. Some of the Telnet workers that jumped back to work are slowly turning their focus back the Elohssa warstore in amazement.

  Telnet Captain, “What the fuck is that Billy?” He said it before and he’s saying

  it again. Except this time you can hear uncertainty in the Captain’s voice. He slaps Billy across the back of his head to hurry him up.

  Billy hurriedly gives him a readout showing the Scorpion Cannon fully

  deployed, with pictures describing that it launches a giant, self propelled drill missile.

  Billy,”Scorpion Cannon, sir. It’s never been seen in action before. The data we have is from a prototype Lockheed made for Elohssa years ago, we thought it was a failure.”

  Captain is looking at this readout intensely, Billy is awaiting a response, very

  eager and scared at the same time. There is a short silence, only the Quake guy machine gun controller is still frantically trying to destroy his target to no avail.

  The Elohssa warstore is almost fully deployed, it’s an awesome sight. Any fan

  of science fiction would be shitting their pants as this massive real life special effect performs. As the tail and arms lock into place, a great sound effect is heard and a spark of electricity dashes up and down the Elohssa warstore.

  Telnet Captain,for the 3rd time,”What the fuck is that Billy?”

  Billy responds,”Scorpion Cannon, sir!” He pauses, and then tries to get the captain’s attention,”Sir…?”

  The Captain shakes his head, trying to snap out of it. Then realizes all of his crew are doing the same. “Goddamnit! Where’s my volley of missiles you useless fuckers!! Fucking shit you guys are gonna get me killed, get us outta here!”

  The Captain slaps the back of the employee’s head who is at the main controls (very hard) and the kid curls up into a ball like he’s been slapped like that many times before. The entire warstore jerks and everyone in the cockpit stumbles, like in Star Trek when the Enterprise takes a big hit. The warstore immediately and drastically changes course.

  The Captain is staring doom in the face while half his crew of 15 year olds are

  flailing around on the ground in front of him, “Get up you fucking idiot faggots or you’ll never get to watch The Simpsons again!!” Then, to himself, looking up, “God, don’t you still owe me one or two?”

  Back to the Elohssa warstore, the Scorpion Cannon begins to spin. The nose is

  separated into 3 sections, which are begin
ning to spin very fast and a high pitched whine is heard as it increases in speed. It reaches a maximum speed (a very high whine), and spins at that speed for a second as smoke begins to pour out of vents built down the length of the tail. Smoke flows out of each hole in sequence down the tail until it reaches the bottom vent. After the last vent begins shooting out smoke, the jet engine fires up with a roar.

  A giant metal detaching sound is heard as the missile separates from the tail. It begins moving away very slowly like it is immensely heavy. As it separates you can see the entire missile separate from the warstore and the jet rockets slowly begin to accelerate the giant weapon into the sky. First looking into the sky, the missile slowly rotates down as the horizon and the Telnet WS come into view.

  An awesome movie shot would be riding the Scorpion Missile on it’s decent all

  the way to impact, 1st person view of the impact as the scorpion penetrates the outer hull and the drill goes to work. The missile crunches into the Telnet warstore, plunging about ¾ of it’s length into the warstore body. It sits still for a second, before gravity and the drill start working and the missile slowly creeps into the hull.

  The tip of the missile drills its way into a hallways where workers are running

  back and forth. A fancy Telnet employee isn’t impressed, stops running, and lets out an “Psshh”as he tries to slap the spinning missile parts and turns into red liquid.

  After a few seconds of drilling, the drill loosens the missile enough to where it

  drops down a level. Landing in the consumer area with another great crunch. This is where the flood of customers passes through. It looks like a compact indoor shopping mall except there are no stores, just ads and facades that consumers pass. Customers pass by on an assembly line-like shopping conveyor belt, while robotic arms give them stuff and charge their credit cards. The drill settles into the shopping path, while consumers are pushed right into it’s spinning tip of death, splattering one after another.

  One especially smart consumer thinks a drill in the path seems out of place and

  says,”Is this supposed to” He then turns into a blood splash! After a few more seconds and a few more people turning into blood splashes, the drill turns off and slowly stops.

  Inside the Telnet cockpit chaos is reigning. Nerd employees are screaming and panicking. Smoke can be seen billowing through the front window. Alarms and damage warnings are everywhere. The Captain walks up to the window and looks down at his warstore, fatally wounded. Shaking his head, “I shoulda been a gigolo.”

  A loud sound of giant metal bending starts, like the Titanic breaking in half, and

  the view behind the Captain starts to tilt toward the ground as the cockpit bends in on itself.

  Outside of the Telnet warstore, the giant beast is collapsing onto itself, people

  are jumping and running for it. Some are sadly still trying to clamber in the Dust Buster entrance.

  Back inside the Elohssa warstore cockpit, the slick captain stands motionless, in the same position as we saw him before. Sunglasses back on. He smiles slightly and nods almost imperceptibly. One of his crew members acknowledges the nod and presses a button. The front monitor pops up a number 5 and begins counting down 4, 3, 2,..

  Back to the Telnet warstore collapsing, some customers are still filing out the

  back exit, having the time of their lives. A few notice that a war is happening around them and are looking back at the warstore, sad that it is crumbling in front of their eyes.

  There is a TV crew trying to interview customers, covered in blood. Paparazzi

  snapping pics like crazy, obviously not using cameras, just staring intently like insane perverts taking pics and recording video with their ICs. Just as the Telnet warstore is about to collapse the scorpion missile explodes, destroying the gigantic beast and everything within a few hundred yards in a massive, cool explosion. The blast sends giant pieces of smoking debris arcing over the whole city. Every customer around the Telnet warstore is vaporized along with all the news people, hobos, onlookers and any forest creatures dumb enough to not be far away by now. What’s left is a shallow crater, filled with a tee pee looking pile of black smoking metal sitting on top of giant mangled tank treads.

  Inside the Elohssa warstore, the captain is unphased, there is no celebration from

  the crew. The captain simply turns and silently walks out of the cockpit, “Continue the operation.” slides out of his mouth. The warstore smoothly changes course and enters the forest, carving a giant path, it slowly disappears over the horizon.

  That was the beginning of “shit splattering all over the face of humanity”. That

  was the first time they all saw a warstore. That was the beginning of the end of society, for them at least.

  8

  OUT OF THE WILD

  As the victorious warstore silently disappeared over the horizon, inside Treetop

  there was a short silence that seemed to last a long time as people tried to digest what they just witnessed. A few kids broke the silence with a chorus of, “Coool!” and then they descended into yelling about all the cool things they just saw. “I want to go to a warstore!”

  “Holy crap, look”, L said as she pointed away from the destruction at a different

  smoking part of the city. There were a few flames scattered throughout. “That’s right near our apartments.”

  Tony, L and Perry all lived within a few blocks of each other. It was about a

  mile away, one of those giant pieces of debris must’ve flown all the way over there. Perry appeared behind them with a stone smile on his face.

  “That was fucking crazy, huh?” Perry said.

  “Garfield!” L said and looked at Tony, her face saying “Let’s go… NOW”

  They all took off to the elevator.

  Walking home was surreal, they were all worried about our places. Well, except Perry, he didn’t give a fuck about his place, he shared a shit hole with a bunch of druggies and he wanted out anyway. But his suitcase of drugs was there. L had a cat and Tony had a dog. So they were all in a hurry, half walking, half jogging to check on those things. There were billows of smoke coming from many different parts of the city. There were sirens blaring in the distance in all directions. Valley Forest wasn’t that big, you could almost hear a siren half way across the city. When they first got to Main Street there were a few warstore customers. celebrating their loot. A block later they passed a bloody Ad who was injured in the sale, his right arm bent in a wrong way, must’ve been broken. He still tried to shuffle in their path, like a zombie trying to sell something. A couple cops sped by. Then they passed a body part that could’ve been a butt cheek.

  As they turned onto their street the destruction unfolded in front of them, their

  street got hit pretty bad with some massive debris. Perry took off towards his house yelling, “I’ll call you!” There was damage to almost every building: fires, water lines spraying randomly, light poles leaning into buildings, bus stop benches flipped over in the middle of the street, some entire apartments were gone or walls completely ripped off. L tried not to take off running, Tony grabbed her arm.

  “I’ll meet you at your place.” He said, and they both took off towards our apartments.

  As Tony came up to his apartment building, his landlady came running up and started screaming in Farsi. He had no idea what she was saying, but understood. Tony looked over her shoulder and saw his dog sitting in front of his apartment.

  “Fozzie!”

  She looked up, a little confused, then saw him and came running with a look of

  relief in her eyes. She was fine, a little dusty, but not hurt. Tony’s apartment was on the first floor, he started walking towards it. There was about a 3 foot high hole in the wall between the door and the window, with a bit of smoke floating out through the new hole. Something had smashed through, that’s how Fozzie must’ve got out.

  Tony approached and looked through the hole at the s
moking black ball of

  debris in the middle of his living room. It wasn’t perfectly spherical, but it was kind of ball shaped. It was burnt to a crisp, with a flakey covering, like a black croissant. It didn’t look like metal or anything explosive, but he had no idea. Fozzie cautiously smelled in it’s direction. Tony unlocked, opened the door and walked in. Fozzie jumped through the new hole, rushing past the smoking black ball and circling around it until she was back at Tony’s feet.

  He looked around, the rest of the apartment was fine. “Foz, let’s go.” And they

  took off for L’s place.

  Tony’s tiny Persian landlord was still in the same spot, still yelling what sounded like the same thing. He saw people packing, some cars were filled with suitcases. Others were busy boarding up holes in their place, some people trying to create makeshift walls. People were crying, yelling, sobbing, staring off into the distance, some neighbors were fighting, a few bodies were in the street, covered with blankets, It looked and felt like a terrorist attack aftermath video you’d see on the news.

  As they approached L’s house, Fozzie and Tony bounced up the stairs and heard her crying. The door was open and they quickly went in. L was crouched in the corner, leaning over something. As Tony got closer he noticed she had Garfield in her arms. His two hind legs crushed and twisted. Tony grabbed and hugged L and she cried even harder. Gar let out a haunting sound. He was always a strong cat, the poor guy was a trooper. He even tried to stand up when Tony looked at him, but it was a fruitless effort.

  Her apartment was a wreck, an entire wall between her place and the neighbors was smashed and crumbled. They could see into each other’s apartment. The neighbors were sitting on the couch, watching the news. The fridge had fallen over and there was a small puddle of blood half under it. That must’ve been where Garfield was. Fozzie went up and sniffed him, he sniffed her back, all previous rivalries gone.

  “Ohh my God, what do we do?”, L pleaded.

  The Vet went through Tony’s head, doubt it.