by Paul Vayro
Chapter Thirty One
Brick continued to play with the map Fate had made, allowing thoughts to whir around his mind. Karma and Irony had stopped feigning interest in the mission. They hadn’t moved since Spiritwind revealed the aliens' intentions. The rest of the concepts were milling around the third floor of the development they were using as a base. Zarg remained strapped to the chair, almost bursting with smug frustration at being right about a band of heroes rising to thwart the Jefferians' plan. Spiritwind sensed the room was waiting to move on. He approached Brick, who had used the map to corner a pebble with half a toothbrush and a bent nail.
“I think they’re waiting for the next step.” Spiritwind prompted action from his friend.
“The next step. Yes of course. Got a little carried away there.” Brick back-flipped the pebble out of its trap and addressed the room. “The way I see things we have two options: either attack the aliens with brute, physical force. Which looking around the room is probably not the best idea, except for Fut who looks like he could punch the head off a horse…”
“…That horse would have to find my anger spot and massage it for a year and a day.” Fut waved away his impressive bulk.
“…and Karma, who could wipe out a nation with a miffed glance.” Karma demonstrated a said glance on Brick. It crept down his throat scaring numerous butterflies on the way. “Or we could use our minds.” Brick beamed nervously, still reeling from Karma’s expression. Everybody awaited the clear downside to relying on thought. It never came as Brick continued, oblivious to the concerns.
“My plan is the essence of simple. We need to disable the aliens hold on our time, thus waking the residents of Earth. We can then alert the police or army, or whoever you call in these situations, and ask them to come and sort this whole mess out.” Brick brushed his hands as though the job was done. Only gaping mouths responded. Calling the police wasn’t the expected plan of action, from the saviours of the world.
“How exactly do we break the hold on time?” Spiritwind sensed the room’s displeasure and gave Brick the opportunity to silence their doubts.
“Do I have to come up with everything?” The opportunity was turned down. Through a brief exchange of twitches and nods, Spiritwind convinced Brick to offer more. Reluctantly he continued. “If we are going to break the hold these tyrants have swept down and imposed upon us, we must firstly understand their ways, their motivations, their techniques and desires. What makes them stop one day and believe they can come to our home, our lives, and just sweep us to one side? When will they…..” An idea struck Brick as he threatened to tail off topic completely. “Ooh! Have you got your book of answers on you?”
“Always.” Spiritwind put down the yoghurt he had opened and reached in to his pocket. Checking one side of his pants he tutted, checking the other, he realised he was right the first time. With a wiggle of his hips and a twist of the wrist he pulled a hardback book as big as a man’s face from his pants. They, wandered over.
“Magic pockets?”
“Cheers.” Spiritwind took the question as a compliment.
“Are they magic pockets?” They didn’t have time to go round in circles.
“Nope.”
“Magic book?”
“Personally I think it is magic, but that’s more an opinion than an intrinsic quality of the item.” Spiritwind retrieved the éclair that had fallen from his pocket with the book.
“Then how did you fit that in there?” They continued to visually check for hidden compartments attached to Spiritwind.
“Simple.” Spiritwind ran his finger across the cover. It stated ‘pocket edition’.
“And that works does it?” They removed his notepad from his own pocket.
“You just saw it. As long as the book believes it fits in a pocket everything works out fine.” Spiritwind opened the pages and began searching for 'time'.
“Fascinating.” They, scribbled furiously.
“Here we go, Time.” Spiritwind read primarily to his friend, although the whole group listened. “Time, time as a dimension, time management, here we are; Time and the interplanetary mapping of.” They looked up, growing ever more curious at the book. It rang a bell at the back of his mind. Spiritwind continued. “Planets are possessive entities by nature. You only have to look at their unwillingness to let anything float away to understand this. Some say its gravity, I say it’s uptight. The point is planets make it very hard for anything on it to leave. To do so requires much time spent in thought, and even more time staring at graphs and working out the kind of maths that makes cockroaches deaf. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that it holds on to its perception of time with great resolve. Knowing ‘when’ it is, allows most of nature to take care of itself, leaving the planet free to occupy itself with its favourite past time of astronomy. This makes replacing one time with another difficult, but not impossible.”
“Firstly you must build up a store of the time you intend to impose on your chosen world. (See section headed ‘Containing Time’). Then attach this store to the planet via a physical connection, ideally a beam of easily transportable matter such as light. Now all you need to do is dislodge the current time. For this you require a jolt of dreams. (See section headed ‘Jolt of Dreams’). By firing the jolt down the already attached beam, the planet will be swamped by the desire to nap well before it’s due its afternoon doze. As we all know time has no place in the land of sleep, and its grip over the concept of when, will loosen. Whilst it is vulnerable you must fire the time you wish to implant at great speed down the same beam, dislodging the old time and awaking the planet through the impact. Bleary eyed and confused the planet will reach out for the nearest time frame to it and attach it to itself. As long as you maintain an input of the time you wish to overlay, the planet will never suspect a thing.” Spiritwind snapped the book shut as the last few words trickled into Brick’s head.
“Where did you get that book?” They had been mouthing along seamlessly.
“A mysterious man handed it to me in a train station. Hooded he was with breath like silver, and a staff of a thousand daydreams.” Spiritwind carried himself away.
“So where did you really find it?” They motioned to inspect the book further.
“High street. In the bargain bin.” Spiritwind glanced at the cover to see the name W. Denhar sniggering back at him.
“I thought they’d stopped publishing it after all the complaints. The council got tired of rescuing people from the top of telegraph poles.” They turned it over in his hands with proud disbelief.
“So all we need to do is break the time anchors hold, and our time will come back and everyone will wake up.” Brick interpreted the tirade of information. “How hard can that be?”
“There’s only one person here who can tell us that.” Spiritwind nodded towards Zarg whilst searching for a pen. Maybe They, would sign his book for him.
Brick acted on Spiritwind’s nod and wandered over to Zarg. The alien’s twitches couldn’t hold his frustration any more. Brick had barely reached him before he blurted out his rage.
“I told them I told them all this would happen but nobody would listen to me, oh no, just one of my moods again, go to your room ‘til you sort out your attitude they said, well we’ll see whose attitude needs sorting when they see I was right and they have to flee from our ‘perfect’ plan.” Zarg paused for breath and punctuation. “I wish they could all see this now, they wouldn’t be mocking me and calling me negative, they’d say how wise I was and maybe they should come and ask me about everything they plan to do in the future, and they’d apologise, oh how I’d make them apologise…..” Zarg gasped, drowning beneath his own fury. He took a few moments to regain his composure, and breath.
“You see. Silence is never the answer to anything.” Brick consoled the alien.
“Unless the question is ‘what’s the opposite to lots of noise?” Spiritwind couldn’t help himself.
“But my point is silence d
oesn’t help solve problems. You can’t finish a crossword by being quiet. You have to ask somebody at least one answer.” Brick tried to attach weak philosophy to his consoling arm.
“Wonder how they get on with crosswords in monasteries with vows of silence? That must be what sends many of them over the edge and towards spending their days rocking and chewing banisters. ‘If only I could ask somebody four down I could get back to finding inner harmony.” Spiritwind continued to witter aimlessly.
“That must be what that funny monastery smell is; old newspapers with half finished crosswords.” Both heroes raised their eyebrows with the satisfaction of an answer to something they had only just thought of the question to. Brick turned back to Zarg. “So who wouldn’t listen to you?”
“Anybody.” Zarg’s speech returned to a more normal pattern. “I told them the hero factor on Earth was too large for any plan to avoid. I said a band of heroes would rise and thwart it and look what’s happened.”
“Bet you didn’t think the heroes would be so dashing.” Brick pulled his best photo face.
“Not to disappoint you….” Spiritwind stepped in. “What’s your name by the way?” The bald hero suddenly realised the alien hadn’t been introduced.
“Zarg.”
“As you’d expect. Pleased to meet you. Where was I? Yes, not to disappoint you but we’re only just plodding along on this mission; however if you’d be prepared to give us a little information we could make sure you were right and give you a pocket of smugness that would last the rest of your life.”
“You want me to sabotage my own species?” Zarg had a grin that suggested he liked the idea.
“I wouldn’t call it sabotage. I’d call it opening your peoples' eyes to the true genius within their midst.” Spiritwind worded the sentence to a chorus of impressed murmurs from the concepts.
Zarg thrived on the idea of all those that mocked him having to grovel. He was so caught up in the daydream he almost forgot to bargain his release, almost. “You’ll have to untie me before I’d say anything.”
“That goes without saying. You wouldn’t be a prisoner anymore. You’d be part of the team. The rules clearly state no member of the team can be tied up unless considered to be infected by some weird mind altering alien type thing that’s trying to sabotage your ship/base.” Brick clarified the legality of such a move.
“Then I’m in. How can I help?” Zarg smiled, for the first time without hiding any evil intent behind it.
“We need a few questions answering.” The team shared a glance that confirmed things were going very well. Brick had to check he wasn’t asleep. Things never went this smoothly when he was awake.
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