The near-empty secret base of Doctor Strangelove is almost complete. Not having found the Martins or the research notes is concerning as the party moved back into the passageways for the last few rooms.
***********************************************************************
From the Powerplant, the party headed back to the fork in the passage and took the path leading to the living quarters. As they travelled, Rain was growing concerned they would ever find the two objectives for the mission: the Doctor’s notes and the Martins. Clearing his thought of nothing but the Allsong, he asked it a simple question,
Are Doctor Strangelove’s notes here?
Where the research notes were, so would the subjects of her experiments.
Yes, Came back the emphatic reply. He let the others know what he’d found out.
Peggy silently asked a question of the Strange,
Where are John and Athena Martin? She waited, but either because of the chaotic matrix of organic metal around them or because of her own fragmented thoughts, the Strange did not reply.
Up ahead, a locked door marked the start of the living spaces in the facility. As the party walked the path to the door, Algernon’s memory became clearer of what lay beyond. He could visualise the short hallway containing two more doors. Off to the left, a door led to what used to be his room. Straight ahead, the other to Doctor Strangelove’s private chambers. He remembered once sneaking through the second door to a lounge space and kitchen area before getting caught and marched back to his room. Only one biometric locked door stood between him and that past now.
Raising his hand, he discovered it rimmed in black cracking energy that matched his mood of trepidation.
That’s new, Rain said spotting the startling effect sizzling across Algernon’s palm, What is it?
Algernon consciously brushed aside his fears, and the black energy disappeared, I don’t know, He replied, determined to find out at the first chance.
He pressed his now normal-looking hand against the pad, unsure the scanner would still respond to him.
*Click* the lock opened. Taking point, Bruce steps in first, followed by the floating Peggy. Rain followed and looked back to see Algernon peering around the corner of the doorframe.
“Lend us a hand, kid,” Called Bruce, gesturing to another palm scanner, “Get it.”
“This is a trap,” Algernon murmured before stepping into the hallway himself.
*Click* All three doors locked and everyone could hear hissing from vents above their heads.
“See, I told you it was a trap.”
Floated up to the vent, Peggy tried to stop the thick white gas at the source. Without a cutting implement she couldn’t get access. The gas rolled down out of the vent in white waterfalls, quickly filling the room. Now Algernon’s black energy appeared on command around both his hands,. He placed them against the door that was once his room and instantly the material that made the door began turning to dust. He brushed his hands over the surface to create a hole the approximate size of a human (or at least one his size) and lept through the hole. Inside it was as he remembered, a bed, a wardrobe and a small desk. Rain followed quickly after, and the two of them stripped the bed of the mattress, as Bruce struggled through the hole too small for his large frame. Immune to the gas, Peggy alone stayed outside and tried to work out how to shut it off. As soon as Bruce was safely in the room, the mattress was unceremoniously stuffed in the hole, blocking the worst effects of the gas.
What sort of gas do you think it is? Rain asked Algernon and then started searching the Allsong for options based on the colour and its qualities.
I’m not sure…Algernon started searching as well before hearing clicking and then the arc of electricity as it formed a spark.
MOVE! He grabbed Rain and dragged him out of the way of the doorway.
*WHOMP!* The sound and the shockwave hit at once, propelling the mattress across the room to hit the wall on the far side. A gout of flame followed, incinerating everything in its path. Rain was smacked in the back of the head by the mattress, but otherwise unscathed. Thankful he wasn’t burnt alive by the fireball he turned to face Algernon,
Thanks, He blinked as Algernon checked the room and realised a person missing.
“Doctor Peggy?”
Bruce, who escaped the projectile mattress and fireball by inches, scrambled out the door and started searching for Peggy in the debris. He returned moments later with the dented Peggy-box. It sparked and sizzled randomly, her voice only just identifiable over the static of her tinny speaker.
“Ow! You’re poking me!
He knocked on the metal casing, “Do you need any assistance?” He grinned mischievously
“Yes, ow! ”
‘Sorry, I don’t usually heal machines. What seems to be the injury,” Bruce placed her on the still smouldering study desk in Algernon’s old room.
“Ow, you moron, I can’t move just yet,” Peggy grumbled as she assessed her mechanical injuries,” Did you really need to shake me up quite so much?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Bruce chuckled, backhandedly trying to cheer up his awkward patient.
As Bruce and Peggy traded insults, Rain looked around the room. If this had once been Algernon’s room presumably, it would now belong to the new kid. Maybe there was something personal that would give a hint to his name and personality. Sure enough, as soon as Rain opened the bedside table, he found a metal scroll. Unrolling it, a flexible screen lit up asking for a password.
Yours or his? He asked Algernon who picked up the scroll and flipped it over. Algernon had owned a tablet computer much like this when he lived here, one of his very few personal possessions. When he read the serial number on the back, the numbers didn’t match his memory. This was the usurper’s. He handed it back to Rain with a shake of his head.
His.
Now sure it belonged to the still-unnamed kid, Rain pocketed the scroll for later unlocking and viewing.
As Rain and Algernon spent a few moments searching the tiny room, Peggy regained control of her motor functions and followed Bruce back out into the hallway. Here, he was checking the next door and found it similar to the first. He was about to attack it with his crowbar when Peggy’s voice sparked over the speaker,
“You’ll not make much of a dent in that door, I can see the metal plates where the locking pins are going into the floor,” She pointed out with a laser pointer from inside her box.
“I know what I’m doing,” Bruce boasted with a cocky grin, “I’m a specialist in smashing!” And, finding a place to wedge his crowbar, started straining against the door. As Peggy had predicted, the door didn’t budge.
But this time Algernon and Rain had given up on the room and were watching Bruce’s attempt at the door. He stepped back to gain another view of the obstruction as Rain reached out and touched him on the shoulder,
“A simple door will not stop you, Bruce,” He said quietly as he pushed the Strange into Bruce,” I believe in you.”
“Bruce jolted and stepped up to the door once more. He braced the crowbar further down the floor, gaining the advantage of pulling it up as well as across the doorway. Getting a good grip, he strained. Veins bulged along his forehead, neck and arms as the mechanical work of his muscles were augmented by the Strange. Bruce roared with the effort; at the same time, the door also groaned. The end was short and abrupt, and something finally gave way. There was a sharp snapping sound, and the door pushed aside revealing the next room.
Bruce turned to face Rain with a manic grin on his face, “I know you have my back, Rain.” He said panting from the exertion.
Rain nodded and shivered as he heard his own words echoed back to him. It wasn’t the sentiment that was at fault, so much as it wasn’t Bruce’s sentiment.
“Er…yeah,” He replied and quickly followed Bruce into the room.
As Bruce stepped through the threshold of the room a piece of metal as wide as Rain’s wrist slipped out a hole in the doorframe and fell to the floor with a clang. Picking it up, Bruce looked back to the doorway and saw a similar pin sheered off at floor level. He stared from one to the other solid metal pins in shock, then flexed in front of the other, revelling in his own power.
Throwing the pin aside, he strode into a well-appointed lounge room complete with a wall-sized monitor in front of a comfortable form-fitting chair. The decor was simple and elegant, the intellectuals inner sanctum. Off to one side, a small kitchenette with microwave-like device and fridge stood ready to provide a ready supply of tasty meals. Off the lounge, another door seemed to head to a bedroom.
Rain was still a little woozy from the explosion. He plopped down into the chair and searched for a remote. He found another scrolling tablet computer, locked with a password. Pocketing that little find, he settled down for a rest as the others searched the lounge and kitchen for clues about where to go next.
Peggy was floated in the kitchen staring at a blank piece of wall. It seemed odd to her, an empty portion of wall in a small carefully thought out kitchen. At least it should have a handle. She pointed it out to Algernon. They considered the idea of a secret door and Algernon started pulling the panel off a hand scanner to get to the computer systems inside.
“I can help with that,” Bruce said and grabbed the sensor and yanked it off the wall. The cavity popped and sizzled as an anti-tamper trigger set off a small explosion. Black smoke started pouring from the hole.
“I think I’ll stick to doors,” He said and headed over to the bedroom.
This door wasn’t as hard as the first. Bruce quickly broke through into the very comfortable bedroom of Doctor Strangelove. After the barren little quarters of her minion outside, the comfort was ostentatious, but only by comparison. Rain wandered in after Bruce and checked the space for notes. There were none. It seemed to him that this space was for rest and not work and that they would have to look further if they were to find her research.
But there was nowhere else, except the blank piece of wall.
“She would have a control mechanism, a computer or tablet that she opened the secret door with,” Algernon mused, looking around the sparse space for just such a device. That was when Rain remembered the scroll tablet he’d found on the chair and handed it over.
Algernon looked at the tablet and recognised it as the same model as his own. He fiddled with the tablet a moment, remembering a back door into this series of devices and the tablet unlocked. Icons were organised under several subjects: science journals, building status alerts (it seemed all the icons were blinking under that heading) and Office Access: Locked.
Algernon pushed the last, and the black piece of wall slid aside to reveal a set of stairs going down.
Peggy flew through the hole and down into darkness. Bruce, holding his crowbar ready against attack, followed. Algernon and Rain found things to wedge under the door to keep it open before also following down into the darkness.
The stairs circled around and down, emptying into a D-shaped room dominated by a semicircular control panel and chair. An array of monitors their screens blank and empty. A door stood opposite the stairs.
“Algernon, get down here!” Peggy yelled up the stairwell.
“Yes, yes…” Came the exasperated reply as Algernon trudged down the stairs to face a very familiar set up.
He had no memory of being here before. Everything past the metal door was new to him, but the technology was familiar. He soon had the control panel booting and displaying a series of document files.
Complex information
Beacon Network
Log of specimens:
1. Balthazar
2. Horatio
3. Algernon
4. Mortimer
5. New Candidates
“Look, the kid’s name is Mortimer, “Rain read over Algernon’s shoulder, “And another Balthazar.” Referring to Algernon’s middle name. Algernon only nodded and sat down in the chair facing the monitor. Beside his hand was a headband that he knew was the equivalent of a VR headset. Picking it up, he placed it on his head and chose Balthazar.
Balthazar:
Genetic makeup
Physical
Date of service
Date of death
The genetic makeup information was as suspected, the result of a male and female kidnapped from Earth. She suspected that agents with human genetic markers would pass through security with ease. She’d selected the two individuals for their intellect. There was no mention of them being quickened. Sadly, the difference in the date of service and date of death was only three years. His death was only two years before Algernon’s memories began.
Algernon flipped next to Horatio’s who seemed to start in service a week after Balthazar’s death and was surprisingly still alive and working in Jir. He was more intelligent than Balthazar and had become something of a steward for Doctor Lovelace, managing her affairs when she wasn’t around. He was transferred to Jir a week before Algernon’s service date.
He opened his own file and saw his date of service two years before. As smart as Horatio with the added feature of “…not always being away that he was working for me…”, an innovative feature for a spy. The program that had modified his memory was saved here. Creating a private space in the Allsong, Algernon started uploading every file he found.
One note described how she’d staged a lab accident so she could smuggle him to Earth without the other Ruk factions finding out. Her last message in his file was regarding the beacons, “…transmitting useful information, significant success…”
He opened the Mortimer file and saw the Date of Service was during his first week on Earth. While they hunted out Spiral Dust sellers, Mortimer was coming online. He had been through a similar process to Algernon and would be sent out in six to twelve months to an unknown location.
In the last folder were only two entries: Two fully mature, in stasis.
One currently growing.
From what he could determine, Algernon believed the third specimen was the equivalent to an eight or nine years old child.
He next moved to the Beacon Network folder and entered. There he found several entries under his and Balthazar’s names.
Balthazar:
1. This was a first-person view of a metal-walled hallway as someone was running down it, and hiding in a small alcove where he started talking.
“ I’m on a large spacecraft. I heard that it has an impressive main weapon that can destroy whole planets. They call it a Death Star. This could be useful, Mistress.”
The voice sounded young and scared and alone. Algernon quickly flicked to the second file.
2. The view was inside a wooden shack. The beacon picked up light from outside filtered through the cracks in the wood panelling and the rapid breathing of someone terrified.
“I’m scared Mistress. This place is full of zombie creatures, and mad-man has captured me…I think he’s going to kill me…” There was a creaking sound and the camera angle shifted to the door. A silhouette of a man now stands in the open door, a machete also clearly silhouetted. The voice screams out for its mistress and then, silence.
Algernon shuddered, he had seen Balthazar’s death first-hand, almost felt it. She had watched this. She had watched him die and just went and made another minion as if it didn’t matter. Shakily, he reached out for the three files under his name.
Algernon:
1. Algernon found himself back in the garage of Peggy’s house outside New Orleans. It was exactly as it had been back then. The machine, a jumble of monitors and scrounged computers and other scientific equipment arrayed around the space. It was odd, as he’d seen that same equipment in the centre of Peggy’s lab only a few days ago. Stepping out, he checked the next file.
2. And just like that he was back at the Estate amongst the lab tables and equipment of Peggy’s lab, the machine just where he remembered it. Stepping out, he knew where the third would lead.
3. Sure enough, he was amongst the force-fielded exhibits of Ni’Challan’s collection in the Graveyard of the Machine god. He looked around, unsure how the Doctor had discovered the fragment of a planetvore here as it was nowhere. He shrugged, assuming she’d sent a probe to investigate later and left the memory.
It was a very sober Algernon who relayed all he’d found in the Beacons archive, including the death of Balthazar. Checking all the files were saved to the Allsong, Algernon now opened the last folder headed Complex Information.
A full schematic of the secret base appeared including information on each room and what they contained. The metal-clad creatures in the mud were called Wailing diggers and were something of pets to Doctor Strangelove. They were intelligent and were useful for simple retrieval missions. The Doctor had sent them to Earth via an inapposite gate to abduct the two donors for her grand experiment.
“They’re Peggy’s Rockwheelers!” Rain exclaimed, making Peggy jump.
“Really?” She said surprised, “I never really believed that I’d find the actual creatures behind my parents’ kidnapping.”
Below the complex, a series of tanks and piping were simply labelled, Gas plant. Lines of piping led from the main tank throughout the complex including in the Powerplant, the High Energy Lab and the hallway to the living quarters. Algernon surmised this was where the explosive gas was made and distributed throughout the complex. A ready-made bomb placed for them to set off. He showed the others and together concocted the final escape. Failing the one-way valves set up for safety in piping, he set the triggers on a timer. Several hours from leaving the base, the whole landscape of the wastelands was going to have a bad day.
He found the security system for the complex, and with a little help from Rain, on the Allsong, they found a suitable image of someone mooning a camera. This became the last and only image that the security of Doctor Strangelove’s security system recorded as it set on a loop for every camera. Now feeling a little more secure, Algernon directed his attention to the room beyond the door in this control centre. Here the three boys were kept as well as two large sarcophagus shaped structures just labeled Donor 1 and Donor 2.
Algernon entered the program to open the door and found it once more passworded. Even here, in the secret of secrets, the Doctor still kept things locked away. His first attempt to override the password failed. He paused to contemplate what she would have used to protect her life’s work. A hand touched his back, and a jolt of energy course through him. His questing thoughts became action as his mind searched for the correct combination, and found it.
A click and the last door unlocked.
Everyone leapt to individual tasks. Peggy floated straight into the room and to the two sarcophagi. Through thickly frosted windows, she could make out her parents faces, just as she remembered them, more than twenty years previous. She gasped and floated back realising that right now and in this place, she was not ready for them to see her. Unable or unwilling to think about a reunion, she focused her efforts on understanding the cryogenic sarcophagus and how to release them.
Rain walked in behind her, taking in the enormity of the task. Two parents trapped in time, three nearly fully grown adult infants.
“Do we try to save the specimens?” Algernon asked from the control room.
“I tend to leave those questions to Rain,” Bruce replied, and called through the door, “What do you say?”
Rain spun slowly around, watching as the two young men and boy floated unawares in their liquid-filled chambers. When he reached the door, Bruce was waiting expectantly for his decision.
“Please,” Rain said simply, “We have to try.”
“Okay then,” Bruce set off up the stairs looking for clothing and other useful items while Algernon started shutting down the incubator chambers and releasing the boys.
Peggy’s own penchant for mad science was coming in handy as she worked her way through the complicated steps and procedures required to open the sarcophagus safely. With a self-satisfied beep and a hiss of escaping gas, the two sarcophagi began to open and start the re-animation process. Instantly Peggy’s hologram flickered and died.
“I don’t want to face them…yet,” She said and turned away to oversee the boy’s ‘birth’.
“Don’t worry, I’ll give them a friendly face,” Rain stepped up between the two sarcophagi.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“ ‘Hi I’m your robot daughter, Peggy, that you haven’t seen in twenty years.’” He smirked watching as the life support systems disconnected one by one, “ I’ve got this.”
Slowly and carefully the birth and the reanimation of both parents and children progressed. Bruce returned with clothing for the two Martins but couldn’t find anything suitable for the boys. What was also becoming very apparent was the complete blank slate the three boys were. As each emerged from their cylinders, they were as uncoordinated and helpless and the newborns they were. Limbs fully grown and muscled had no idea how to work together to stand or walk. They had no experience with which to interpret the world and would either flail about knocking equipment or party members, or curl up in a foetal position.
The Martins were in much better condition, which led to more issues for Rain as they tried to make sense of their surroundings after decades on ice.
“Where are we? Who are you?” Athena asked as she climbed out of the sarcophagus with the help of Rain and accepted the clothes Bruce had provided.
“Hi, my name is…Rain, I’m a friend of P…Margarita’s.” He said without thinking and received a jolt of electricity from the pointy end of Peggy’s probe
“Escape now, chat later.” She murmured so only Rain heard.
“Margarita? Aren’t you a little old to be one of Margarita’s friends?” She said as she took in her surroundings.
“Yelp! Yes, lots of explaining to come, but right now I Suggest you come quietly with us.” And he pushed the thought first into Athena’s mind and then into John’s. Without protest, the couple dressed and followed Rain as he led them up and into the Doctor’s living quarters.
“What are we going to do with these near-adult babies?” Bruce asked, hefting one over his shoulder and the smaller one in his arms.
“What if we all translate back to Earth from here?” Peggy suggested as she floated up the stairs following her parents.
“I’ve uploaded the program used by the Doctor,” Algernon replied, picking up the third brother, almost as big as himself, with leveitation “But we’ll need to do the procedure here on Ruk, we can’t help them back on Earth.”
“Besides, Algernon and Mortimer also need their heads examined, it was the whole point of coming here in the first place,” Bruce added as he helfted his two burdens up the stairs.
Algernon made a face, clearly stating what he thought of the latter idea and continued with the discussion,” Doctor Strangelove used an inapposite gate to kidnap the Martins. The artefact used was discharged, but we could probably charge it up again in the Powerplant.”
They reached the kitchen still discussing what to do with the family when Rain chimed in.
“I was thinking about Peggy taking the Martin’s back to Earth. They’ve had more than enough of Ruk, and she could do with the chance to reunite with her parents. But, she couldn’t use an anaposite gate in her current state. Earth wouldn’t know what to do with a weird-science floating robot.”
“Besides she’s needed on Ruk. Her medical knowledge is going to be needed to reprogram the babies,” Algernon added.
“I think it’s going to have to be you, Rain,” Bruce finally said to Rain’s surprise, “Sorry, you’re the only one free.”
Rain turned to the Peggy-box. She made no protest or suggestion, and with her hologram hidden, he couldn’t get a read of what she was thinking. He watched Algernon, who was concentrating on slowly spinning his baby brother in the air.
I wanted to be there…for your procedure, He thought, and Algernon caught his eye.
Then you better hurry back before they change my mind.
Ha! Look after your brother, Mortimer. Save him and yourself.
Oh, yes. He could be a valuable asset. Algernon quipped back with a grin on his face.
Slowly a smile of his own appeared on Rain’s face as returned to Bruce, “Sure, I’ll smooth the path when we get there, answer a few of the Martin’s questions before setting them on a flight for Seattle, and…” His smile broadened, “I’ll finally get to New Orleans.”
Bruce laughed, a generous and open laugh, not like his usual sardonic self.
“You know even in another recursion I’m not leaving you?” Rain asked.
“Yeah, sure no problem, you’ve got my back.” The words again were like a slap.
“You won’t get to see much of New Orleans. One underpass,” Peggy said, now the decision was made.
“I’ll cherish every moment. Anything for Noel? You were meant to meet him in Berkley.”
The Peggy-box spun on the spot, and Rain decided that this was the Peggy-box thinking mischievious thoughts.
“Tell him, ‘See how nice it is to be left behind?’” She replied, floating out of the Doctor’s private quarters, “Oh, and you’ll have to take the babies to Earth with you.”
“Pardon?!”
It was soon apparent that the boys could not stay behind with the saboteur group. Bruce was already overburdened with two squirming bodies, and Algernon was concentrating on not to drop his brother. If it came to running, the oversized babies could be injured or killed and would undoubtedly slow down the party. In the end, it was clear that for the safety of both the boys and the party, they would need to go through the inapposite gate as well.
As they travelled back through the complex, Algernon set up their traps to trigger as soon as someone approached. He rigged the genetics lab, the hallway and Powerplant. He found the artifact that had created the original anaposite gate in storage and brought that, along with an energy cypher, to the Powerplant. There under the malevolent blue glow of the lightning elemental Algernon and Peggy connected the artefact using the cypher as a bridge. The artefact glowed and hummed as the inapposite gate formed in front of them.
Bruce went through first, taking the boys through. Peggy flew through briefly to report to the Estate and arrange a van to pick them up. Rain walked through with the Martin’s in tow. Silent, but wide-eyed with awe and delight at the scientific marvels around them, John and Athena Martin returned to a disused underpass, on Earth.
“That’s it, time to move out!” Bruce said as the anaposite gate flickered out and died.
Algernon gave the lightning creature a cheery wave farewell and blew out his cheeks on the forcefield surrounding its prison.
Walking back through the dock the party decided to take out one of the two flyers. Leaving the one they sabotaged earlier, Peggy connected into the flight computer and took them safely out of the base and towards the rendezvous location. As promised the flyer and pilot were waiting under the cover of the malformed rock features of the landscape. As they left the flyer, Bruce heard the sound of an engine in the far distance. High above and losing altitude fast was another flyer. And it was making straight for the secret base.
“Do you want to get out of here, sir?” The pilot asked Bruce who had pointed out what could only be Doctor Strangelove returning ahead of schedule.
“Wait until she’s out of sight, then get out as fast as you can.” He replied not taking his eyes of the flyer as it slowed and angled towards the small cave entrance. As soon as it disappeared inside the mountain, the pilot powered up and took off, putting as much air between them and the mountain as possible.
Bruce, Peggy and Algernon lined up against the windows of the flyer, expectantly. When the end came, it was sudden and violent. First a flash as the gas ignited and lit the inside of the mountain with fire. Next, a dramatic roaring scream as the whole mountain lifted into the sky on the cushion of superheated gas. the whole world shook as the shockwave, rippled out like an expanding glass dome. It hit the flyer causing it to dip and pitch violently. The spectators were thrown about the flyer’s cabin and lost sight on the mountain. The pilot, forewarned, was ready and soon stabilised the craft and when they returned to the window, the cloud had formed a familiar mushroom shape and where the mountain had once been, was now a crater.
Is Doctor Strange love still alive? Algernon tentatively asked the Allsong as their flyer sped them safely away.
No. Came the reply.
A Strange Life 