Main Page: Boys vs. Girls Book 1: The Conflict
Previous: Chapter I: In Which the Primary Characters are Introduced
Previous: Chapter I: In Which the Primary Characters are Introduced
Chapter II
In Which Things Get Weirder
(Unfinished)
“Mail!” yelled the stewardess droid, unceremoniously throwing a pile of letters at the surprised Louise, Dana, and Sammy, and the preoccupied Beth, who reacted little more than a tombstone.
They were staying in one of Florida’s finest motels, La Chalet de Something-or-other. Louise had fallen in love with the title right away.
Thus follows an account of their mail:
Louise received a letter coated with perfume and written in French. Actually it was a sample of her own perfume taken the night before she left, and the French was actually just random romantic-sounding gobbledygook, but naturally her nose had grown accustomed to her own smell, and even more naturally she didn’t know French from a dialect of Swedish Pig-Latin. Tyler knew this from experience.
Dana received a much shorter but more personal letter. It was a poem:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I’m schizophrenic
And so am I.
It was the most romantic thing she had ever read.
Sammy’s was sort of a combination between the two. Derek had simply written down the lyrics of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” and credited it as a poem of his own design. (He had heard this song when he was three years old, right before his parents kicked him out of the house.) Sammy found it very touching until she heard the ending.
Beth was jarred out of her meditative state by Sammy’s outburst and noticed the letter sitting on her lap. She opened it excitedly.
Dear Beth,
Things aren’t the same without you at all. We’re all bored and depressed. If Mr. Clumpox offered me a million dollars right now I wouldn’t take it. Well, okay, that’s a lie, but I’m still bored and depressed.
The others send their regards. Derek is being a whole lot meaner than usual, and we finally voted to make him live in another alley for a while. That’s the closest we have to psychiatric stuff here, you know. Anyway he came back with bruises all over and an ice pick shoved up his nose, so now we’re in the middle of a war with the Cougar Gang. This never would have happened if you hadn’t left.
You know Thomas’s favorite dream of stapling his eyelashes to a rabid wolverine’s butt and throwing senile chickens into a tree so the aliens can get them easier but the wolverine escapes so he can’t do the traditional alien greeting ceremony? Well, it finally came true. The Cougar Gang has a pet wolverine and the chickens are its food, and they were only too happy to lend them to him for this purpose. Thomas is in about as good condition as Derek and the aliens still haven’t showed up.
Tyler and Matt are pretty occupied. Tyler makes up stories and skits and Matt helps him for lack of anything better to do. They tried to show us their premier of “Death in the Mental Hospital” but about halfway through, when the detective was searching the autopsy room, a hand grenade came flying in. We thought it was part of the act until they started running and screaming. Thomas and Derek had to be carried out and I thought they’d never make it. When we returned half an hour later, someone decided to pull the pin and throw it back.
I’d enclose a paragraph about myself but I don’t want to worry you. If I’m still alive and mobile when you come back, we’ll have a nice surprise.
Love,
Oh, that’s a toughie, huh?
Beth wrote her own letter back to him and hastily attached the newspaper clip she had been reading a moment ago. It was from her tediously organized collection, mostly collected from dumpsters or even more commonly the side of the road. It read: “Votes are in. Citizen of the Year is Kayynar Laverĝe.” It was from less than a year ago.
Under that it read: “Long loved and admired by the residents of Buckitooey Falls, Kayynar defines a model citizen to the letter. She is always looking for opportunities to help her contemporaries and never rests until she has done so. This is a woman who smiles for absolutely no reason other than to brighten someone’s day, and picks up litter constantly with no thought of reward. Outspoken yet polite in her uncompromising belief of high moral standards during these sadly troubled times; Kayynar refuses to bend to the ways of the world. Congratulations to her on winning a week’s trip to the casino, which she has refused, a bundle of cash, which she has given to charity, and our undying respect, which she will never be able to dispose of.”
So what on Earth had made her act so shady at the symposium? It was a mystery, but Beth knew there was more to it than met the eye, and she sure as heck was going to figure it out. She had to make sure Christopher was on guard too.
***
Christopher read the letter, which was an account of the symposium, and the article. He frowned.
“Heads up!” yelled Derek. “Here they come!”
No one had to look up to know who. For the past week the Cougar Gang had done everything they could to make their lives stink even more than usual. Now they were here in full force, ready to end it.
Derek held them off with a piece of pipe while the others readied for war. Duff’s Stuff had financed them on this part, in return for a mention in the press release Derek was determined to make. They had everything under the sun, and they were going to use it.
First was a running chainsaw. Thomas flung it at random into the crowd and heard a satisfying shriek of agony. “Revenge,” he cackled, and followed it up with a volley of cordless power drills.
At the same time Tyler was throwing cans of soda which had been shaken for about three hours straight. They impacted on peoples’ heads, knocking them woozy senseless before a blinding, stinging spray hit them.
The Cougars were routed within five minutes. The boys cheered. “This calls for a round of soda,” said Matt.
“I think I used it up,” said Tyler.
“Well you could have aimed better,” said Derek, lifting his wet foot. “It’s all over the floor here – no wait – this is –”
They turned as a Cougar approached the mouth of the alley. He smiled cheerily at them and dropped a lighted match into the gasoline.
The flames rushed towards them. “In here!” yelled Christopher. He was pointing at the building next to them. It looked fireproof. It looked durable. It looked safe.
When they got inside, they realized that it did not fulfill that last requirement.
“Oh crap,” said Matt. They had interrupted a meeting of girls who were not thrilled to see them.
“Uh, hi,” said Christopher, who was the worst negotiator that ever lived and about to become the worst one that ever died, “We’re just trying to take refuge, see. We’re sorry if this is a private meeting or anything, but we’ll try to make this quick. Anybody got a phone we could use?”
He was met with twenty or so suspicious stares.
“Not that we want to intrude on your privacy and take your stuff,” he added hurriedly, “it’s just that there’s a really bad fire out there, and we’d really prefer not to be roasted alive like so many chestnuts. Only,” he added as an afterthought, “if it’s all right with you, since you appear to be the ones with a fireproof, durable, and… hopefully safe building. Just give us a phone for a sec, and we’ll be gone.”
The cold stares did not subside, but the girls discussed to each other in the corners of their eyes by means of a complex sign language about whether they should comply, or tell their visitors what they could do to themselves. Most seemed in favor of the second option.
“It’s in your own favor as much as ours,” he insisted, getting desperate, “because I don’t suppose you all want to be cooked either, do you?” What he didn’t know was that their lingerie was made of asbestos and they consequently couldn’t care less.
“Why didn’t you let me handle it?” hissed Derek. “I have a way with chicks.” The looks which crossed over their faces at being called chicks seemed affirmative of the opposite. “You know,” he hinted, “maybe we should find somewhere else to go. It’s hotter in here than it is outside.” If the looks on the girls’ faces had been cold, and then angry (which they were), then now they were filled with a very raw essence of primal ferocity and unchecked hatred that could have scared Satan into paying tithing (which they weren’t quite, but that was the closest comparison anyone has yet found).
Finally, one of them opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment another girl walked in from the next room. She took one look at the scruffy degenerates standing in the doorway, and her hand went to a side holster. The boys darted back out into the alley.
Instants later the five of them were running from an onslaught of bullets. Tyler, who was slowed down, caught one from same in the small of the back and went down.
The alley entrance was now blocked by the flames. “I vote we surrender,” said Christopher. “Hey, why didn’t we just do that in the first place?”
“They stopped shooting,” Matt pointed out, always the optimistic one.
“You! Civilians!” someone shouted. “Surrender, and this whole issue doesn’t have to get any more complicated!”
“Aren’t they civilians too?” Derek wondered aloud.
The girls were closing in like so many savage wolves, or rather like so many drunken Nazis armed with submachine guns, which are a good deal more frightening. Tyler, with his last fading ounce of strength, stuck his foot out and tripped the leader, who cracked her face open on the pavement. “Get… the… gun… and… tell Louise… ” Tyler fainted, with an unnecessary but dramatically enhancing rasp of agony.
Having her pretty little face mutilated did not stop this woman. She sprang to her feet and started shooting again.
But Christopher and Derek had already moved to grab the gun. Derek got hold of her wrist and tried to twist. The girl kicked him into a wall and shot at him, but Christopher chose that moment to leap at her and ruined her aim. She shook him off like a leaf, but then Derek was back with Thomas and Matt at his side. Together they wrested the gun from her grip just as she squeezed the trigger down and held it. Suddenly her figure was only lovely if you were into abstract art.
The other girls, seeing this could quickly escalate out of control, fired a staccato burst and fled. Thomas gasped and sank to his knees, a gaping hole in his sternum.
And speaking of fire, the flames were barely under control by firefighters, who had arrived when a nearby tenant had complained that her “bedroom is too warm.” The firefighters had rushed to her house, drenched her with a forty GPS hose, and had a hefty lawsuit filed against them before someone looked out the window and noticed the problem.
“There might be civilians in there,” one said.
“What, those vermin?” said another. “That’s not our concern. Just put out the freakin’ fire, will you?” In a rare example of karma, a stray bullet holed his oxygen tank. “Get the coppers!” he choked.
“Forget the coppers,” said the other, rather shaken by this turn of events, as he flattened himself against the wall. “We need the militia.” He pulled out his phone and punched an autodial to Buckitooey Falls militia HQ. The phone call went as follows:
“Hic! ’Allo?”
“This is Firefighter 1138 calling from Alley 297. There is some sort of a firefight going on here.”
“Well – hic! – thash yer deportment, fella.”
“Beg pardon?”
“A fuh-fuh-firefight,” the man explained patiently, “ish fer fuh-fuh-firefighters. Hic! Get the drift?”
“Sir, what I mean to say is, people are being shot here.”
“Well why didn’ chew shay so? Hic! Thash duh-duh-differen’.”
“Just get here right away, for the love of–”
“What kind of – hic! – peoplesh ish dey?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Y’know, nermal deh-dah-deeudes er them – hic! – shtreet ratsh.”
“We have no way of knowing, sir, but we’re assuming the latter.”
“The wha’?”
“The street rats, sir. This is an alley, after all.”
“Well, shon of a hic!-hic!-hic! Why’re ya callin’ at thish hour fer them flah-fah-fellersh! Ish only a coupla sixpacks left till dawn, y’know, I need a blah-bah-beauty shleep, hic! An’ I gotta hic!-hic!-hic!-hic!-hic!” Thud.
The firefighter almost took off his helmet so he could tear his hair out, but stopped when a droid came on.
“Thank you for calling your local friendly militia HQ,” it droned annoyingly. “I am sorry to inform you that due to circumstances within our control, our secretary is currently unavailable to take your call. Please tell the nature of your emergency, and I will inform the chief or transfer you to somewhere else that can better handle the nature of your situation. How may I help you?”
Actually no one ever heard it because the firefighter was busy yelling at it to shut up and get on with it. When he realized his voice was being recorded, however, he got on with it himself. “Hey, we got a little situation here,” he said. “There’s a little firefight –”
He stopped when he realized his voice wasn’t being recorded anymore, because someone, the chief in fact, had walked in and the droid was talking to him.
“Who was it, XKR?”
“Just some drunk lunatic cussing his head off. You don’t pay me enough for this job.”
“We don’t pay you anything for this job.”
“Ha, ha, how silly of me to forget.”
It is completely irrelevant, but may as well be pointed out, that while people have for centuries overestimated themselves in almost all fields of technology and science, robotics was an exception. They were still trying to invent artificial intelligence and didn’t quite realize they’d already done it.
“Why’s my secretary on the floor? He been assaulted?”
“No, just at the Budweiser again. I simply don’t understand why you humans enjoy abusing your bodies like that. You wouldn’t catch me filling my external input connection port with bubble gum, would you?”
“Call it a Zen thing. So, you got a number for that call?”
Firefighter 1138 suddenly realized that just because he wasn’t being recorded didn’t mean they couldn’t hear him, and since he could hear them that had darn well better be the case.
“Look,” he said, and explained the situation in five seconds.
“All right, we’re on our way,” said the chief. “Recommended course of action, XKR?”
“Suggest we charge the alley and kill everyone in our way, like always.”
“I really got to figure out who taught you sarcasm.”
“What’s sarcasm?”
***
When they arrived, they found that the girls had cleaned out. Tyler, of course, was playing a harp – or an accordion, depending on where he went – and Thomas was severely wounded.
“Dang it, we’re not the parameds!” yelled one, kicking Thomas’s limp form. When he saw the girl leader’s shredded corpse, however, with Christopher, Derek, and Matt kicking it as they shrieked curses to her ancestors and her family’s ancestors and her friends’ ancestors and some dead people who had nothing to do with her but wouldn’t be coming back to protest, he couldn’t help but smile. He admired spirit.
“Hey, looks like the date’s over,” he teased. “All righty, Red Group, help these civilians while me and Gold Group chase the refugees. They’re not getting away with this on my watch!”
Gold Group was the specialists. Leading the charge was a large golden retriever named Rusty, who sniffed them out and barked. Lorson Nells, who was sort of a reject for his geeky demeanor and irrepressible love of Star Trek but had become second-in-command of Gold Group for his combat experience and the fact that only he could understand Rusty’s barks, followed closely. “C’mon, they’ll get away!”
Rusty led them over the alley wall. Lorson found himself face-to-face with a small private plane preparing to take off. He ducked just in time to avoid being gunned down, but several others with slower reflexes were hit.
Lorson turned his duck into a roll, which put him in a position to blast at the aircraft’s vulnerable underbelly. Realizing at the last second that it would not be destroyed fast enough, he attached a tracking device instead.
“Fetch me a plane,” he ordered.
***
Gold Group fighter 11B was in the air before you could say, “Miles Standish.” Rusty piloted while Lorson Nells manned the guns. Along for the ride were Christopher, Derek and Matt.
“Look,” Matt protested for the fifteenth time, “we’re just a bunch of nobodies. We don’t even have last names. Why do we have to come along?”
“They may have had a reason to attack you,” Lorson explained patiently, also for the fifteenth time. “but not my group. It goes beyond the standard rights of such organizations, according to Regulation 62995328.4963. We need you to testify in court once we catch them.”
“‘Standard rights’ means nothing to those with resources, especially women,” Christopher protested. “And that Kayynar Laverĝe is some sort of tactical genius. She’ll weasel around this somehow.”
“Not around murder,” Lorson said confidently.
“Oh yeah?” Christopher shot back. “It’s a bit late to say that. How about that guy Dr. Glur–” Suddenly, the plane was rocked by gunfire. The other plane emerged from a cloud, charging them head-on.
“Dive, Rusty, dive!” Lorson screamed.
“Some tracking device,” Derek snapped.
“Well, if I hadn’t been busy discussing with you ignorant – they’re on our tail, Rusty! Loop!”
Rusty did all he could, but the other plane could not be shaken off. Warning lights began to blink all over the cockpit. “Gee, said Derek, “it might help if we were shooting back at them!”
“I must try for a diplomatic solution–”
“It’s too late for that, geek! Shoot them out of the sky before they do it to us!”
Reluctantly, Lorson swiveled the guns around and poured out everything they had. The other plane’s nose burst into flames.
“Yes! Let’s hear it for Regulation 45387690.216!” yelled Lorson. “According to that, no one may build a plane with more than 3.5-inch thick armoring for anything other than military purposes!”
“Of course,” explained Christopher, “there’s no reason that should stop them. As soon as Kayynar finds a loophole, they’ll update.”
“Oh, shut up, you whiny, paranoid freak,” snorted Derek. “You’ve lived in an alley your whole life. What do you know about politics!?”
“More than the politicians,” Christopher said in the most ominous voice he could manage, which was pretty pathetic and caused laughter to erupt all over the tiny cockpit.
“Uh, guys,” Lorson interrupted, “not to be a wet blanket, but the tracking device says they’re still up here.”
Derek snorted again. “And we just shot down a hallucination?”
“No, but – shoot!”
“I’m proud of you for controlling your language under pressure,” Derek mocked.
“No, I mean it! Shoot! Who’s got the freaking guns!?”
“You do, stupid!”
Lorson Nells flashed him a finger (and not the one way sign either) and poured everything he had into the plane which had come out of nowhere and was approaching them fast from the right. A few dents appeared in its surface and it sheared off.
“Uh-oh,” he said. Christopher started singing the “I Was Right” song and Lorson flashed him five more fingers. This time, however, they were curled into a fist, and came far too close for comfort.
Warning lights flashed and buzzers rang as the plane came back. Rusty tipped the nose up towards its underbelly to get a shot at the more vulnerable mechanics. But it was hopeless, because
They were staying in one of Florida’s finest motels, La Chalet de Something-or-other. Louise had fallen in love with the title right away.
Thus follows an account of their mail:
Louise received a letter coated with perfume and written in French. Actually it was a sample of her own perfume taken the night before she left, and the French was actually just random romantic-sounding gobbledygook, but naturally her nose had grown accustomed to her own smell, and even more naturally she didn’t know French from a dialect of Swedish Pig-Latin. Tyler knew this from experience.
Dana received a much shorter but more personal letter. It was a poem:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I’m schizophrenic
And so am I.
It was the most romantic thing she had ever read.
Sammy’s was sort of a combination between the two. Derek had simply written down the lyrics of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” and credited it as a poem of his own design. (He had heard this song when he was three years old, right before his parents kicked him out of the house.) Sammy found it very touching until she heard the ending.
Beth was jarred out of her meditative state by Sammy’s outburst and noticed the letter sitting on her lap. She opened it excitedly.
Dear Beth,
Things aren’t the same without you at all. We’re all bored and depressed. If Mr. Clumpox offered me a million dollars right now I wouldn’t take it. Well, okay, that’s a lie, but I’m still bored and depressed.
The others send their regards. Derek is being a whole lot meaner than usual, and we finally voted to make him live in another alley for a while. That’s the closest we have to psychiatric stuff here, you know. Anyway he came back with bruises all over and an ice pick shoved up his nose, so now we’re in the middle of a war with the Cougar Gang. This never would have happened if you hadn’t left.
You know Thomas’s favorite dream of stapling his eyelashes to a rabid wolverine’s butt and throwing senile chickens into a tree so the aliens can get them easier but the wolverine escapes so he can’t do the traditional alien greeting ceremony? Well, it finally came true. The Cougar Gang has a pet wolverine and the chickens are its food, and they were only too happy to lend them to him for this purpose. Thomas is in about as good condition as Derek and the aliens still haven’t showed up.
Tyler and Matt are pretty occupied. Tyler makes up stories and skits and Matt helps him for lack of anything better to do. They tried to show us their premier of “Death in the Mental Hospital” but about halfway through, when the detective was searching the autopsy room, a hand grenade came flying in. We thought it was part of the act until they started running and screaming. Thomas and Derek had to be carried out and I thought they’d never make it. When we returned half an hour later, someone decided to pull the pin and throw it back.
I’d enclose a paragraph about myself but I don’t want to worry you. If I’m still alive and mobile when you come back, we’ll have a nice surprise.
Love,
Oh, that’s a toughie, huh?
Beth wrote her own letter back to him and hastily attached the newspaper clip she had been reading a moment ago. It was from her tediously organized collection, mostly collected from dumpsters or even more commonly the side of the road. It read: “Votes are in. Citizen of the Year is Kayynar Laverĝe.” It was from less than a year ago.
Under that it read: “Long loved and admired by the residents of Buckitooey Falls, Kayynar defines a model citizen to the letter. She is always looking for opportunities to help her contemporaries and never rests until she has done so. This is a woman who smiles for absolutely no reason other than to brighten someone’s day, and picks up litter constantly with no thought of reward. Outspoken yet polite in her uncompromising belief of high moral standards during these sadly troubled times; Kayynar refuses to bend to the ways of the world. Congratulations to her on winning a week’s trip to the casino, which she has refused, a bundle of cash, which she has given to charity, and our undying respect, which she will never be able to dispose of.”
So what on Earth had made her act so shady at the symposium? It was a mystery, but Beth knew there was more to it than met the eye, and she sure as heck was going to figure it out. She had to make sure Christopher was on guard too.
***
Christopher read the letter, which was an account of the symposium, and the article. He frowned.
“Heads up!” yelled Derek. “Here they come!”
No one had to look up to know who. For the past week the Cougar Gang had done everything they could to make their lives stink even more than usual. Now they were here in full force, ready to end it.
Derek held them off with a piece of pipe while the others readied for war. Duff’s Stuff had financed them on this part, in return for a mention in the press release Derek was determined to make. They had everything under the sun, and they were going to use it.
First was a running chainsaw. Thomas flung it at random into the crowd and heard a satisfying shriek of agony. “Revenge,” he cackled, and followed it up with a volley of cordless power drills.
At the same time Tyler was throwing cans of soda which had been shaken for about three hours straight. They impacted on peoples’ heads, knocking them woozy senseless before a blinding, stinging spray hit them.
The Cougars were routed within five minutes. The boys cheered. “This calls for a round of soda,” said Matt.
“I think I used it up,” said Tyler.
“Well you could have aimed better,” said Derek, lifting his wet foot. “It’s all over the floor here – no wait – this is –”
They turned as a Cougar approached the mouth of the alley. He smiled cheerily at them and dropped a lighted match into the gasoline.
The flames rushed towards them. “In here!” yelled Christopher. He was pointing at the building next to them. It looked fireproof. It looked durable. It looked safe.
When they got inside, they realized that it did not fulfill that last requirement.
“Oh crap,” said Matt. They had interrupted a meeting of girls who were not thrilled to see them.
“Uh, hi,” said Christopher, who was the worst negotiator that ever lived and about to become the worst one that ever died, “We’re just trying to take refuge, see. We’re sorry if this is a private meeting or anything, but we’ll try to make this quick. Anybody got a phone we could use?”
He was met with twenty or so suspicious stares.
“Not that we want to intrude on your privacy and take your stuff,” he added hurriedly, “it’s just that there’s a really bad fire out there, and we’d really prefer not to be roasted alive like so many chestnuts. Only,” he added as an afterthought, “if it’s all right with you, since you appear to be the ones with a fireproof, durable, and… hopefully safe building. Just give us a phone for a sec, and we’ll be gone.”
The cold stares did not subside, but the girls discussed to each other in the corners of their eyes by means of a complex sign language about whether they should comply, or tell their visitors what they could do to themselves. Most seemed in favor of the second option.
“It’s in your own favor as much as ours,” he insisted, getting desperate, “because I don’t suppose you all want to be cooked either, do you?” What he didn’t know was that their lingerie was made of asbestos and they consequently couldn’t care less.
“Why didn’t you let me handle it?” hissed Derek. “I have a way with chicks.” The looks which crossed over their faces at being called chicks seemed affirmative of the opposite. “You know,” he hinted, “maybe we should find somewhere else to go. It’s hotter in here than it is outside.” If the looks on the girls’ faces had been cold, and then angry (which they were), then now they were filled with a very raw essence of primal ferocity and unchecked hatred that could have scared Satan into paying tithing (which they weren’t quite, but that was the closest comparison anyone has yet found).
Finally, one of them opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment another girl walked in from the next room. She took one look at the scruffy degenerates standing in the doorway, and her hand went to a side holster. The boys darted back out into the alley.
Instants later the five of them were running from an onslaught of bullets. Tyler, who was slowed down, caught one from same in the small of the back and went down.
The alley entrance was now blocked by the flames. “I vote we surrender,” said Christopher. “Hey, why didn’t we just do that in the first place?”
“They stopped shooting,” Matt pointed out, always the optimistic one.
“You! Civilians!” someone shouted. “Surrender, and this whole issue doesn’t have to get any more complicated!”
“Aren’t they civilians too?” Derek wondered aloud.
The girls were closing in like so many savage wolves, or rather like so many drunken Nazis armed with submachine guns, which are a good deal more frightening. Tyler, with his last fading ounce of strength, stuck his foot out and tripped the leader, who cracked her face open on the pavement. “Get… the… gun… and… tell Louise… ” Tyler fainted, with an unnecessary but dramatically enhancing rasp of agony.
Having her pretty little face mutilated did not stop this woman. She sprang to her feet and started shooting again.
But Christopher and Derek had already moved to grab the gun. Derek got hold of her wrist and tried to twist. The girl kicked him into a wall and shot at him, but Christopher chose that moment to leap at her and ruined her aim. She shook him off like a leaf, but then Derek was back with Thomas and Matt at his side. Together they wrested the gun from her grip just as she squeezed the trigger down and held it. Suddenly her figure was only lovely if you were into abstract art.
The other girls, seeing this could quickly escalate out of control, fired a staccato burst and fled. Thomas gasped and sank to his knees, a gaping hole in his sternum.
And speaking of fire, the flames were barely under control by firefighters, who had arrived when a nearby tenant had complained that her “bedroom is too warm.” The firefighters had rushed to her house, drenched her with a forty GPS hose, and had a hefty lawsuit filed against them before someone looked out the window and noticed the problem.
“There might be civilians in there,” one said.
“What, those vermin?” said another. “That’s not our concern. Just put out the freakin’ fire, will you?” In a rare example of karma, a stray bullet holed his oxygen tank. “Get the coppers!” he choked.
“Forget the coppers,” said the other, rather shaken by this turn of events, as he flattened himself against the wall. “We need the militia.” He pulled out his phone and punched an autodial to Buckitooey Falls militia HQ. The phone call went as follows:
“Hic! ’Allo?”
“This is Firefighter 1138 calling from Alley 297. There is some sort of a firefight going on here.”
“Well – hic! – thash yer deportment, fella.”
“Beg pardon?”
“A fuh-fuh-firefight,” the man explained patiently, “ish fer fuh-fuh-firefighters. Hic! Get the drift?”
“Sir, what I mean to say is, people are being shot here.”
“Well why didn’ chew shay so? Hic! Thash duh-duh-differen’.”
“Just get here right away, for the love of–”
“What kind of – hic! – peoplesh ish dey?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Y’know, nermal deh-dah-deeudes er them – hic! – shtreet ratsh.”
“We have no way of knowing, sir, but we’re assuming the latter.”
“The wha’?”
“The street rats, sir. This is an alley, after all.”
“Well, shon of a hic!-hic!-hic! Why’re ya callin’ at thish hour fer them flah-fah-fellersh! Ish only a coupla sixpacks left till dawn, y’know, I need a blah-bah-beauty shleep, hic! An’ I gotta hic!-hic!-hic!-hic!-hic!” Thud.
The firefighter almost took off his helmet so he could tear his hair out, but stopped when a droid came on.
“Thank you for calling your local friendly militia HQ,” it droned annoyingly. “I am sorry to inform you that due to circumstances within our control, our secretary is currently unavailable to take your call. Please tell the nature of your emergency, and I will inform the chief or transfer you to somewhere else that can better handle the nature of your situation. How may I help you?”
Actually no one ever heard it because the firefighter was busy yelling at it to shut up and get on with it. When he realized his voice was being recorded, however, he got on with it himself. “Hey, we got a little situation here,” he said. “There’s a little firefight –”
He stopped when he realized his voice wasn’t being recorded anymore, because someone, the chief in fact, had walked in and the droid was talking to him.
“Who was it, XKR?”
“Just some drunk lunatic cussing his head off. You don’t pay me enough for this job.”
“We don’t pay you anything for this job.”
“Ha, ha, how silly of me to forget.”
It is completely irrelevant, but may as well be pointed out, that while people have for centuries overestimated themselves in almost all fields of technology and science, robotics was an exception. They were still trying to invent artificial intelligence and didn’t quite realize they’d already done it.
“Why’s my secretary on the floor? He been assaulted?”
“No, just at the Budweiser again. I simply don’t understand why you humans enjoy abusing your bodies like that. You wouldn’t catch me filling my external input connection port with bubble gum, would you?”
“Call it a Zen thing. So, you got a number for that call?”
Firefighter 1138 suddenly realized that just because he wasn’t being recorded didn’t mean they couldn’t hear him, and since he could hear them that had darn well better be the case.
“Look,” he said, and explained the situation in five seconds.
“All right, we’re on our way,” said the chief. “Recommended course of action, XKR?”
“Suggest we charge the alley and kill everyone in our way, like always.”
“I really got to figure out who taught you sarcasm.”
“What’s sarcasm?”
***
When they arrived, they found that the girls had cleaned out. Tyler, of course, was playing a harp – or an accordion, depending on where he went – and Thomas was severely wounded.
“Dang it, we’re not the parameds!” yelled one, kicking Thomas’s limp form. When he saw the girl leader’s shredded corpse, however, with Christopher, Derek, and Matt kicking it as they shrieked curses to her ancestors and her family’s ancestors and her friends’ ancestors and some dead people who had nothing to do with her but wouldn’t be coming back to protest, he couldn’t help but smile. He admired spirit.
“Hey, looks like the date’s over,” he teased. “All righty, Red Group, help these civilians while me and Gold Group chase the refugees. They’re not getting away with this on my watch!”
Gold Group was the specialists. Leading the charge was a large golden retriever named Rusty, who sniffed them out and barked. Lorson Nells, who was sort of a reject for his geeky demeanor and irrepressible love of Star Trek but had become second-in-command of Gold Group for his combat experience and the fact that only he could understand Rusty’s barks, followed closely. “C’mon, they’ll get away!”
Rusty led them over the alley wall. Lorson found himself face-to-face with a small private plane preparing to take off. He ducked just in time to avoid being gunned down, but several others with slower reflexes were hit.
Lorson turned his duck into a roll, which put him in a position to blast at the aircraft’s vulnerable underbelly. Realizing at the last second that it would not be destroyed fast enough, he attached a tracking device instead.
“Fetch me a plane,” he ordered.
***
Gold Group fighter 11B was in the air before you could say, “Miles Standish.” Rusty piloted while Lorson Nells manned the guns. Along for the ride were Christopher, Derek and Matt.
“Look,” Matt protested for the fifteenth time, “we’re just a bunch of nobodies. We don’t even have last names. Why do we have to come along?”
“They may have had a reason to attack you,” Lorson explained patiently, also for the fifteenth time. “but not my group. It goes beyond the standard rights of such organizations, according to Regulation 62995328.4963. We need you to testify in court once we catch them.”
“‘Standard rights’ means nothing to those with resources, especially women,” Christopher protested. “And that Kayynar Laverĝe is some sort of tactical genius. She’ll weasel around this somehow.”
“Not around murder,” Lorson said confidently.
“Oh yeah?” Christopher shot back. “It’s a bit late to say that. How about that guy Dr. Glur–” Suddenly, the plane was rocked by gunfire. The other plane emerged from a cloud, charging them head-on.
“Dive, Rusty, dive!” Lorson screamed.
“Some tracking device,” Derek snapped.
“Well, if I hadn’t been busy discussing with you ignorant – they’re on our tail, Rusty! Loop!”
Rusty did all he could, but the other plane could not be shaken off. Warning lights began to blink all over the cockpit. “Gee, said Derek, “it might help if we were shooting back at them!”
“I must try for a diplomatic solution–”
“It’s too late for that, geek! Shoot them out of the sky before they do it to us!”
Reluctantly, Lorson swiveled the guns around and poured out everything they had. The other plane’s nose burst into flames.
“Yes! Let’s hear it for Regulation 45387690.216!” yelled Lorson. “According to that, no one may build a plane with more than 3.5-inch thick armoring for anything other than military purposes!”
“Of course,” explained Christopher, “there’s no reason that should stop them. As soon as Kayynar finds a loophole, they’ll update.”
“Oh, shut up, you whiny, paranoid freak,” snorted Derek. “You’ve lived in an alley your whole life. What do you know about politics!?”
“More than the politicians,” Christopher said in the most ominous voice he could manage, which was pretty pathetic and caused laughter to erupt all over the tiny cockpit.
“Uh, guys,” Lorson interrupted, “not to be a wet blanket, but the tracking device says they’re still up here.”
Derek snorted again. “And we just shot down a hallucination?”
“No, but – shoot!”
“I’m proud of you for controlling your language under pressure,” Derek mocked.
“No, I mean it! Shoot! Who’s got the freaking guns!?”
“You do, stupid!”
Lorson Nells flashed him a finger (and not the one way sign either) and poured everything he had into the plane which had come out of nowhere and was approaching them fast from the right. A few dents appeared in its surface and it sheared off.
“Uh-oh,” he said. Christopher started singing the “I Was Right” song and Lorson flashed him five more fingers. This time, however, they were curled into a fist, and came far too close for comfort.
Warning lights flashed and buzzers rang as the plane came back. Rusty tipped the nose up towards its underbelly to get a shot at the more vulnerable mechanics. But it was hopeless, because
