Charlie Chicanery #3 (of 4): Atypical Weirdness by Denny Hill 2 (DashApostrophe@gmail.com) Copyright 2006, 2012 All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------- Imagine if you will, Charlie's friend Wendell, careening through a star-filled void in what looks like high tech, a nuclear powered recliner, with only a 10' diameter force field separating him from the harsh rigors of space. Of course this doesn't seem to be bothering him all that much; Wendell's got a look of unbridled joy on his face as he soaks in everything the universe has to show him... (That should do for a 'cover', shouldn't it?) ------------------------------------------------------- Notice: for those of you that are faint of heart, the following tale isn't exactly what one would call G-rated in nature. It contains a plethora of bad language, excessive violence, sexual innuendo, and of course, things that would get this story burned, were it in a printed form, by the more fanatical elements of just about any religion on earth. In other words, if these things offend you - you've been warned. (That should do for a 'disclaimer', shouldn't it?) ------------------------------------------------------- Charlie sat in the recliner, drinking a beer and looking generally bored. He was in space, of course, in some chair of Wendell's design that he had to admit was rather comfortable. But then that was the idea, since Wendell would be using the chair to rocket himself through space for extended periods of time. Charlie himself was simply helping his friend test the strange contraption. As Charlie took in the usual spectacular view from orbit, he listened to the incessant chatter between his friend Wendell and Little-Spore-Resting-On-The-Squishy-Lakefront, the strange little Mhunghus he'd picked up on a previous foray into space. He was concerned that he'd wind up having the thing as a roommate, but as it turned out Wendell practically adopted the oddball, psionic mushroom. Fine with him. Except of course for the fact that with the alien's help, Wendell's primitive hyperspace applications had experienced a quantum leap forward thanks to the Mhunghus' practical knowledge of such things, not to mention his ability to telepathically teach Wendell all manner of technological disciplines that were heretofore unknown on earth. Seemed like a fair price for his share of the rent. The ultimate goal of this vehicle of Wendell's was to improve on Charlie's speed exponentially; if the duo could perform jobs for E.S.E. in a fraction of the time Charlie currently does, they could rake in a veritable fortune in no time flat. Charlie would have to explain how he magically managed this without violating his small novel of N.D.A. agreements (which he did), but that's besides the point. Money! Lots of money! That's the point! If anything he could just consider Wendell a subcontractor... and then split the increased cash with him. Dollar signs floated in front of Charlie's vision as he dreamed of exorbitant purchases like his own nuclear powered submarine, when his reverie was interrupted by Wendell. "Charlie? We're ready for you to test drive the Space Boy. Charlie?!" Returning his mind to reality, Charlie harrumphed. "Yeah yeah yeah. I'm here." Not bothering to wait, Charlie stepped on the gas, and his mind reeled at the sudden burst of speed. Going from zero to millions of times the speed of light will do that to you. Quickly adjusting, what with his being generally used to speeds in this neighborhood, Charlie put the strange 'Space Boy' through its paces, heading back to that nameless world where he first met the Tsort. ZAM. Speeding down, Charlie realized he'd made the trip in just a few minutes, as opposed to the day or so it took him before. Minutes! His mind reeling again, Charlie looked at the speedometer, and the insane device indicated that he'd moved more than 8 MILLION times the speed of light. The math of the situation bogled his mind, at which point Charlie realized that Wendell may not actually NEED him around. Shrugging, Charlie just did a quick orbit of the location of his very first adventure, then flashed back home in less than an hour. Once he'd arrived, Wendell started downloading telemetry from the chair, and seemed almost irrationally gleeful. Charlie wasn't, of course, thinking his friend may've easily surpassed him in raw speed, when Wendel brought up the 'boosters' he'd been working on... *** Later in the week Charlie was sitting in Riley's office, looking sort of bored. The man had called him in for a new job, but had been absent for the last hour. Eventually the man ambled into the office, noting that Charlie had his feet up on his desk, and scowled. Not that Charlie cared too much; he'd been left waiting for a while, and was fed up. "So what's the job?" Tossing Charlie a navigation pad, Riley noted that Charlie was to head to this world to procure an experimental piece of technology. Looking at the pad, Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Prototype Matter Duplicator?" Chuckling with glee, Riley answered in the positive. "Of course. Can you imagine just how much such technology would be worth? Even if the thing doesn't work, we need you to bring back as much as you can. "You lack a ship proper so we don't expect much, but anything you can get is as good as gold. Control boards, perhaps, or if you can get away with it a schematic and/or control software. Assuming the two are separate; we haven't had much dealings with this particular species, so their technology and the like are mostly fuzzy to us. However, E.S.E. believes your 'off the cuff' style should help you here." "'Off the Cuff'. That's a good way to describe 'making it up as you go', or 'faking it', or even 'bullshitting your way out of an intergalactic war you just started'", thought Charlie. Seeing the look on his face, Riley laughed. "Don't worry, Mr. Chicanery, we have full confidence that you'll bring us back at least something of use. It is kind of a long trip though, so you may want to head out immediately. "We estimate it'll be two months both ways at your current speed, which does seem to be a tad bit faster than our first scans. Working out, are you?" Not sure what Riley meant by that, Charlie shrugged. "A little bit. As much as I wind up getting attacked out there, I figured I should have a bit more oomph in me to deal with Things. And I deal with a lot of Things." Heading out, Charlie chuckled about Riley's estimated travel time. They may think him a bit faster now, but wait until they get a load of the new him. Not to mention his new side kick, as it were. Not that Charlie was going to even mention Wendell for the time being; no, that'd mess with a good thing before he was completely financially secure. Subcontractor it is! *** Putting on the bracelets again, Charlie followed his friend Wendell into orbit once night descended, and the duo then rocketed off towards the destination indicated on the navigation pad. Strapping the pad on in its normal location, the thing looked odd next to his new 'booster' units on each arm, but hey - it gave him that 'geek chic' look having all this high tech junk attached to his person. It seemed that these two units worked to help him reach into hyperspace just a little bit better than he can under his own steam, and Charlie was indeed flying just as fast as his pal Wendell's Space Boy craft. The flying chair even had a 'hook' for Charlie to be dragged along with when it was time for a nap, so he could actually recover energy instead of sleep-flying as he usually does. Two months, indeed. At his new, technologically improved speed, Charlie would make the trip to this new planet in about a day - once the duo were done there, they could spill the beans to Riley about their little partnership... or just work a few days every year. Though the nuclear powered sub sounded good, being paid a rather large fortune to work about ten days in a given year sounded even better. Ah, sloth. Even though Charlie was bored as usual with his space flight, Wendell was still bubbling over with sheer scientific ecstasy. Sure, Charlie'd recorded all kinds of data for him in the past, but collecting it himself seemed twenty times better to the kid. Well, he's 20 now, but Wendell would always be 'the kid' to Charlie, if only by a few days. Once there, Wendell then turned his attention to the new world. "My first alien planet!" Suddenly forgetting everything else, he just ogled it for awhile. Charlie didn't recall seeming quite so gaga over his first world, but then it was admittedly less impressive than this one. This one seemed heavily occupied, for one thing, with traffic coming to and fro from the world in the form of small ships that seemed to access some sort of 'gate' to elsewhere. Perhaps they lacked the kind of hyperspace technology that Wendell seems to have crafted in only months. Or it was illegal. Or whatever. Giving the orange world the hairy eyeball, Charlie consulted his navigational pad whilst Wendell crunched data, the six different holographic displays (built with the Spud's help, since Wendell didn't get the whole 'bending light to make pictures' thing oddly) reflecting off his round-rimmed glasses. Giant orange dust-ball looking thing. At least the pad showed WHICH city the duo were to rob. Once Wendell was happy with his crunching, the duo then sped down to the surface. While Wendell kept his twin tachyon cannons holstered on his hips, Charlie whipped out his (new) transient steel staff and vaguely menaced the compound before him. It consisted of about six buildings walled in by a forty foot tall barrier, with piles of orange dust building up about halfway towards the top. While Wendell went about 'locking up' the Space Boy, Charlie noted that there was someone waving at him from behind the nearest dust pile. Heading that way since the figure seemed awfully familiar, Charlie rounded the bend he ducked behind only to note that he was looking at... himself. "Heya," said the other Charlie. Giving 'himself' a long, slow visual inspection, Charlie looked at his counterpart and said "Hey. What's up?" The other version of himself looked back and forth rather slyly, as though he was attempting to avoid being listened to in this completely empty desert outside the complex, and grinned. "I need you to hang onto these for a few hours. Put 'em in your staff sling, whatever, just have 'em on your person for awhile. I'd explain but it's sort of complicated. Just trust me when I say you'll thank me later." Looking at the objects, Charlie noticed that they were also transient steel staves, though they had... a control pad embedded in the handle. He was suspicious, but it's kind of hard to argue with yourself, when you get down to it. "Okay. As long as it's not going to get me dead or anything, I can do that. But... who are you anyway?" The alternate him simply laughed and said "Duh," and flew off. Charlie wasn't sure why until he heard Wendell trudging up behind him. "Who were you talking to?" His turn to mock, Charlie simply said "Duh," himself. He then went about looking for a handy entrance to the complex, while Wendell looked around for someone else that he couldn't see. Of course, he knew Charlie wasn't totally insane, since there WAS a second set of footprints there in the dust... *** Forty foot walls aren't really that good at keeping someone out who can fly over the space they contain. With this in mind you can imagine just how fast Charlie managed to penetrate this seemingly abandoned complex - even when he had to tow Wendell, Wendell's gear, and Wendell's rather heavy space suit along with him. Mind you, getting past the walls was the easy part; finding this 'revolutionary matter duplicator' wasn't. Noting no footprints in the orange dust slowly blowing around, Charlie decided that it was okay to blast in a door and inspect one of the six buildings. Itself about seven stories in height, this particular structure was about the size of a large apartment building, so it took some time to perform a thorough sweep. Not that he found much, aside from a few highly dead aliens and vague hints of former residence. "Charlie!" Startled after being yelled at while staring at the strange, extraterrestrial (to him) remains, Charlie scowled and found his way to Wendell, who was pointing some sort of sensor dillybob of his own design at the ground. "We can't find anybody because there's nobody up here - this whole area is radio-dead, besides my own equipment. Except for something underground!!" Secret, underground government installation: Charlie could bend his head around that. "Hm. Better find a way in then." Before he could start hitting all the various other structures for a way down, Wendell extracted another sensor from one of his suit's many pockets, and started walking outside, and to the left. Following, Charlie trailed Wendell into what looked like a drainage tunnel. This particular tunnel was near the outer wall, and in fact circled beneath it. The duo found a secret door in the totally dry drainage tunnel, again thanks to Wendell's wacky sensors, and passed through. Hovering down the narrow, deep corridor instead of touching the ladder rungs, Charlie and Wendell managed to avoid two or three death traps inadvertently, and set down about 100' below the surface. At which point they noted that they were face to face with what they both assumed to be a guard. This entity resembled a ball of electrical energy about the size of a volley ball, nestled within what looked like a semi-spherical 'chair' with various cybernetic control arms and implements of destruction and/or utility attached. It buzzed at them in it's apparent language. "BZORRHALKSKSLLKKZZZZX!" Taking this as a threat, Charlie and Wendell both reacted instinctively, Charlie lashing out with his mutant blasts via his transient steel staff, and Wendell using the tachyon hand-cannons he'd built after studying Charlie's powers. The duo toppled the thing in no time, wrecking its 'exo-suit' and leaving it a quivering pile of sparkling electrical impulses. But still alive. "Take that, Sucka!" Once he'd done his gloating, Charlie then turned his full power against the massive metal door barring him from... whatever was inside the complex. One immense explosion later, alarm claxons began to sound out, and Wendell had a panic attack. "Charlie! Charlie!! They know we're here! They're gonna kill us! Then they're gonna eat us! Oh God I don't want to die! Nooooooo!" Ignoring his hysterical friend, save for dragging him along, Charlie made his way into the research facility proper, noting that it was rather small, really. The main interior hall also seemed circular, as was the huge wall upstairs, containing a solitary inner chamber with all manner of advanced alien goodness. The outer rooms, on the other hand, seemed to be room and board for additional, energy-based entities. Though not armed like the guard out front, these could nonetheless fire pulses of electrical power at him, which only served to cheese Charlie off. Firing blasts willy-nilly, he 'concussed' several of the aliens and routed the rest, giving up after circling the main lab twice and finally blasting his way in through one of the now-locked doors, much as he did when entering the facility in the first place. Wendell's panic faded when presented with a very wide variety of new toys to play with. "Oooohhh..." He then proceeded to start touching everything. While Wendell was (thankfully) distracted, Charlie checked out his navigational pad, which was pointing (naturally) directly in the center of the room. Making his way there until the navigational pad stated he was, in fact, there, Charlie looked around in a confused state. "Where the Hell is it?" Imagine his surprise, yet again, when a loud, booming voice started laughing at him. And then spoke. In English! "Oh ho ho ho ho. Pathetic earthling, you're standing on the matter duplicator." Several warning bells suddenly rang in Charlie's head, though unfortunately they were doing so in the wrong order. "Hey, this guy's speaking English," That was the first. "... and he knows where earth is." That was the second. The third, which finally registered about a microsecond too late, was "Wait. Why would standing on the matter duplicator be so funny?" Before Charlie could fly off the matter duplicator pad, which was mostly under the floor save for a large, flat steel pad about 30' in diameter, the device activated, bathing him in a blinding white energy. Wendell reflexively closed his eyes, only to find Charlie was gone when he reopened them. "Charlie! What did you do to him?!" Eyeballing the English speaking entity, Wendell saw that he was not only a he, but he was human - or humanoid at least! The burly man was over six foot six, and completely bald save for his eyebrows. He had unnaturally pink skin, and a decidedly malicious look about him. "Simple, you cretin. In order to scan an object for duplication, the machine must first codify its entire molecular state - not an easy undertaking, I assure you. Once this process is done, your friend will be reincorporated, as will a convenient duplicate... unless I press this shiny red 'abort' button and flush his molecules into interstellar space. Can you think of any reason why I shouldn't?" For some reason, Wendell found himself at a staggering loss for words... ------------------------------------------------------- Oh noes! Is the end of our stalwart, intergalactic burglar / hero? Or is something about to happen that would be even worse than being disassembled at the molecular level and being dispersed about the cosmos at light speed in a million different directions? There's only one way to find out, and that's to tune in next time for the grand finale of Charlie Chicanery's Caustic Capers! (We'd add more, but we're out of C-words) (That should do for a 'preview', shouldn't it?) ------------------------------------------------------- Charlie Chicanery #3 (of 4): Atypical Weirdness by Denny Hill 2 (DashApostrophe@gmail.com) Copyright 2006, 2012 All rights reserved.