Target Rich Environment

by Larry Correia

  “Ahem . . . That’ll be all.”

  SecDef didn’t hear. He was drawing a bunch of little stick figure army men and saying “No. Not my scrotum!” Sadly, the purple blob thing got them. “Ahhhh! Noooooo!” “This will look good on my trophy necklace.” Then more exploding noises.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” POTUS spoke calmly, “this situation is under control. All is not lost. What you are about to hear is classified way beyond super black ultra-top secret. It’s like Bigfoot-riding-a-Unicorn level secret. Allow me to introduce Tom Stranger.”

  “Hello.”

  Tom Stranger stood up and waved.

  “Your reality took out a policy with my company back when John Wayne was your president.” Tom walked to the front of the room, handing out his business cards as he went. They read simply:

  TOM STRANGER

  INTERDIMENSIONAL INSURANCE AGENT

  He was wearing a suit and a green polka-dot bow tie. Tom was about average height, average build, average looking; so average, in fact, that it was almost like he had been genetically manipulated to be totally unremarkable. It was like he existed simply to provide excellent customer service.

  “Interdimensional insurance?” the Treasury Secretary asked. “What’s that?”

  “It’s just like home owners’ insurance, but for events relating to rifts between realities,” Tom answered.

  “Are you the insurance guys with the cute little gecko?” SecHeHum squeaked from beneath the table.

  “No,” Tom said.

  “What about the duck?” a Secret Service agent asked.

  “No.”

  “What about that weirdly attractive red-headed woman with all the makeup who lives in that somewhat Orwellian white room?” the other Secret Service agent asked.

  “Flo?” POTUS asked. “Damn, yeah, she is hot.”

  “No,” Tom answered as he adjusted his bow tie.

  SecDef looked up from his dry-erase massacre. “Cartoon secret agent chick that fights robots?”

  Tom shook his head sadly. “I am afraid my firm does not have any sort of attractive, ironic, or humorous mascots. What we do, however, offer is a full line of Interdimensional Insurance services. Since this Horde incident originated on Earth #789-Alpha-12567, it falls under your extended Space Marauder Protection. We’ll just need to fill out some paperwork, and by paperwork, I mean blow up a bunch of aliens, but we’ll get this all wrapped up in no time.”

  The room breathed a collective sigh of relief. This was why Tom Stranger had been voted Number One in customer service for three years running.

  “So there are other Earths?” SecAg asked.

  “Every time a Planck event warps the geosynergy matrix, a Thorne incident will cause an alteration in Hawking space,” Tom said happily. When the Secretary of Agriculture looked at him blankly, Tom continued. “My apologies. I must simplify my explanation for this universe’s Cow Lord. Yes, a whole bunch of Earths. A different one for every decision ever made.”

  POTUS whistled. That was a lot of Earths. There was an Earth where he’d had oatmeal for breakfast, and he didn’t even like oatmeal. “So what happened to 789 whatever?”

  “Sadly, that version of America hadn’t kept current on their policy and they were harvested. It was a strange planet. You see, they spent all their budget on odd things like tarps, or buying perfectly good cars so they could destroy them so they could buy new cars, or acorns, or Canadian-style healthcare.”

  “What’s a Canadian?” Secret Service Agent Number 1 whispered to Number 2. Number 2 shrugged. Whatever it was, it sounded silly.

  “I wonder how that America could possibly have gotten in such bad shape?” POTUS asked. “We were doing awesome until this whole invasion thing.”

  “What I say may shock you, but in my extensive travels across the multiverse, I have seen some truly terrible things. In a few horrible realities, rather than five seasons and a trilogy of hit movies, Firefly was cancelled after just one season, your Excellency,” Tom Stranger explained. Everyone present recoiled in horror. “There was never a Libertarian Space Cowboy revolution and you were never elected.”

  “Impossible!” SecDef shouted. “Lies!”

  “In that alternate universe, you had a show on their History Channel where you shot watermelons with machine guns. Only you didn’t have the eye patch.”

  SecDef put on his war face. “OooRah! Now that would be sweet!”

  Tom Stranger nodded. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. The claims have been filed. The Horde mother ship is in orbit and I will be meeting them for arbitration shortly. Thank you for picking Stranger & Stranger for all your Interdimensional Insurance needs.” He clapped his hands twice and his giant battle robot crashed through the White House’s bunker wall. The fifty-foot-tall monstrosity of bio-armor and plasma weapons had a single bumper sticker between its death ray and napalm sprayer. It read: You’re in Strange Hands with Tom Stranger.

  “Thank you, Tom Stranger!” President Baldwin shouted.

  Tom leapt into the cockpit of his battle mech. It was time to kick ass and adjust claims.

  CHAPTER 2:

  Tom’s 10:00 AM Arbitration

  THE BATTLE seemed to be going well, which made Tom Stranger happy, since even the slightest error could destroy their mech and eject them into the hard vacuum of space. Tom, having been biologically and cybernetically augmented by the finest tech available from a thousand worlds, would easily survive, but atmospheric reentry was hell on the wardrobe, and he’d worn his favorite bow tie. The charcoal three-button suit from Men’s Warehouse was easily replaceable—since it was a well-known fact that 92% of the cataloged alternative Earths in the Multiverse did, in fact, have Men’s Warehouse—but the tie was irreplaceable. He had found it in a thrift store on Home Office World. It was green, with small black polka-dots, which his secretary said brought out the color of his eyes—the green of which was actually the color of the holographic targeting system implants—but regardless, it was Tom’s favorite bow tie, and blazing through the atmosphere in a five-thousand-mile-an-hour fireball would surely destroy it. His new intern would probably not fare too well, either.

  Curious, Tom Stranger turned to the new intern. “What’s your rating on the Grylls Survivability Scale?” The GSS was the industry standard measurement of survivability in unforeseen circumstances. A 1.0 represented the amount of trauma necessary to kill a single Bear Grylls, which was a remarkably consistent measurement across many worlds. Being ejected into space was a solid 4 on the GSS, or enough to kill four Bear Gryllses, or a single Bear Grylls four times. Tom Stranger’s GSS was a 142.9.

  But Stranger & Stranger’s newest intern was busy staring out a porthole, holding onto the overhead strap in white-knuckled terror. “There are space monsters shooting lasers at us!”

  “Well, obviously,” Tom replied as he steered them around an exploding starship. “That’s what our evasive maneuvers and countermeasures are for.”

  The new intern had been rather emotional since he’d come out of cryo sleep. Tom checked his infolink. Apparently he was named Jimmy Duquesne, and rated a measly .07 on the GSS, which was a rating just above that of a standard Earth chicken.

  “Purple eyeball monsters, man!” Jimmy the Intern shrieked. “They’re coming right at us!”

  “You know, Jimmy, back when I first got into Interdimensional Insurance, we had to be at least as tough as a space marine. Are you sure you’re up for this internship?”

  “Dude! Man! No way—” Jimmy turned away from the porthole and vomited, which was an especially bad move in zero G. Tom activated his personal energy shields to protect his suit from the incoming secondhand nachos. It took Jimmy a moment to compose himself. “I just needed the last couple credits to graduate. I signed up for Insurance Agent because it sounded easy. I didn’t know about extra dimensions or outer space or nothing.”

  “And you didn’t notice when we went through the Thorne Gate to get to this dimension?”


  “I thought all the flashing lights were because my roommate made ’shroom brownies last night.”

  “And when we boarded the shuttle back on your Earth 169-J-00561?”

  “Shuttle? It looked a lot like my older brother’s Nissan Pulsar, man! How was I supposed to know?”

  “There were solid rocket boosters mounted on it,” Tom pointed out.

  “I don’t know, dude, I thought they were like . . . pontoons or something.”

  Jimmy seemed to be even dumber than most college interns. Curious, Tom checked his infolink again. Jimmy only had a 1.4 GPA and had majored in something called Gender Studies. He was from a relatively backwards Earth where the populace had very limited exposure to the Multiverse. Plus, Jimmy had attended that reality’s Chico State, which explained the sorry condition of both Jimmy’s brain cells and liver function.

  He was beginning to suspect that this intern’s placement had been a clerical error. The last time he’d gotten an intern this unprepared, one poor Earth had wound up dominated by a religion based on the Fifty Shades of Grey novels. Tom shuddered at the memory.

  “Jimmy, since you’re unfamiliar with Interdimensional Insurance, you should watch this brief infomercial to acquaint yourself with what we do here at Stranger & Stranger.”

  Tom activated the hologram. When the glowing images appeared, Jimmy screamed something incoherent about tripping balls. Tom did not understand whose balls he meant, or why anyone would trip over them, but then he had to concentrate on their epic space battle while the commercial played in the background.

  EXTERIOR SHOT—DAYTIME IN A PARK: Children play on a jungle gym. Happy parents look on. There is giggling and birds singing. Suddenly a tear appears in the fabric of space and time and dinosaurs wearing Nazi uniforms spill out onto the playground. Parents scream as children are plucked from the slide and eaten.

  VOICEOVER: “Has this ever happened to you?”

  CLOSEUP: A doll lies on the ground and is squished beneath a dinosaur foot with a swastika on it.

  CAMERA PANS BACK TO REVEAL TOM STRANGER: “Hello. I’m Tom Stranger, of Stranger & Stranger Interdimensional Insurance. Did you know that more than a million paradoxical Hawking rifts occur every day across the Multiverse?”

  EXTERIOR SHOT—STATUE OF LIBERTY: A giant Cthuloid tentacle horror beast is humping the Statue of Liberty’s leg like a deranged poodle.

  TOM STRANGER: “Well, now you do.”

  MAN-ON-THE-STREET INTERVIEW: “It was horrible. One minute we were eating dinner, and the next, this buffed guy wearing a hockey mask and driving a dune buggy crashed through our dining room. He said his name was Lord Humungous. The next thing I knew I was hanging from a bungee cord, having a chain saw duel against some guy with a bucket on his head! Master Blaster! No!” (HE BEGINS TO SOB.)

  Tom Stranger appears and pats the sobbing man on the back in a reassuring manner.

  TOM STRANGER: “There, there.”—TOM LOOKS AT THE CAMERA—“But because Mr. Lawson here had Stranger & Stranger Post-Apocalyptic Barbarian Insurance, he was fully covered.”

  CUT TO—INTERIOR SHOT—THUNDERDOME: Tom Stranger is arguing with Lord Humungous and somebody that looks like Genghis Khan. Hell, it probably is Genghis Khan. Lord Humungous throws his hands up in the air and stomps away, obviously frustrated.

  TOM STRANGER VOICEOVER: “I was able to get Mr. Lawson’s dimension fixed back the way it had been, and they even had to pay to vat-grow him some new legs.”

  MR. LAWSON: “These new legs are way cooler than my old ones!” —MR. LAWSON TWIRLS— “Wheee! Thanks, Tom Stranger!”

  EXTERIOR SHOT—THE PLAYGROUND: Nazi dinosaurs are all trying to do that Heil salute, but it is difficult with their stubby little arms. Tom Stranger falls out of the sky and lands, crouched, in the middle of the Nazi dinosaurs. They turn to look at him, surprised. Tom Stranger reaches both hands into his suit coat and comes out with an advanced CorreiaTech Combat Wombat pistol in each hand. A Tyrannosaurus with a little mustache roars, but then Hitlersaurus Rex explodes into a shower of blood and meat chunks as a 3mm hypervelocity round strikes it at more than 50,000 feet per second.

  VOICEOVER: “Rated Number One in customer service, three years running, Tom Stranger is here to help.”

  EXTERIOR SHOT—PARIS: Gritty shaky-cam style—The Eiffel Tower is on fire. It is chaos as an army of My Little Ponies runs through the streets with chainsaws. A mime silently pleads for his life but is brutally chainsawed by Sparkle-Butt. Blood splatters the screen as the camera falls with a clatter.

  VOICEOVER: “No one thinks they need Interdimensional Insurance until it is too late. Don’t let this happen to you . . .”

  CUT TO—A hand wipes mime blood from the camera lens. The camera is picked up. In the background a Stranger & Stranger Battle Mech stomps the stuffing out of Sparkle-Butt, then turns to the camera and gives a robotic thumbs up.

  TOM STRANGER SITS BEHIND A DESK, LOOKING CONCERNED: “Think of us as homeowner’s insurance, but for your dimension. All three of my hearts swell with sadness every time I see a planet destroyed when it doesn’t have to be. Because here at Stranger & Stranger, we care.” TOM STRANGER ACTIVATES A HOLOGRAM ON HIS DESK. HE IMMEDIATELY CHEERS UP. “And we’ll even provide a free rate quote from us and each of our competitors.”

  CLOSE UP OF HOLOGRAM: Stranger & Stranger is billions of dollars cheaper. The next quote is from Conundrum & Company.

  TOM STRANGER: -mutters as he stares into the hologram- “I hate you Jeff Conundrum, so very much.”—VOICE DROPS TO A DEADLY WHISPER—“You’ll pay, Conundrum. I swear you’ll pay.”—TOM REMEMBERS HE IS ON TV. TURNS BACK TO CAMERA AND GIVES A FRIENDLY SMILE.

  The hologram faded to black.

  “Whoa. What the hell did I just watch?” Jimmy asked. However, as the hologram disappeared, his now-unobstructed view out the front window showed that they were about to crash into a giant Horde space squid. “Look out!”

  But Tom simply rammed the monster. Purple guts sprayed across the glass. Tom turned on the wipers to clean off the goo. It left purple streaks, but at least he could see again. Judging by the number of explosions, it was clear that they were rapidly closing on the Horde mother ship.

  “Excuse me for a moment, I need to call my office,” Tom told Jimmy, not that it mattered, since Jimmy was too busy sobbing incoherently to hear him.

  Home Office World picked up on the third ring. “You’re in strange hands with Stranger & Stranger.” Muffy the Secretary sounded bored. “How may we best satisfy your insurance needs today?”

  “Good morning, Ms. Wappler.”

  She perked right up. Muffy “Sparkles” Wappler was a consummate insurance professional and a vital part of his team. “Oh hey, Mr. Stranger. How’s your ten o’clock arbitration with the purple people eaters going?”

  “Fine,” he said as they narrowly dodged a death ray. “However, I think there’s been a mistake with the new intern. Interdimensional Insurance is the most demanding and grueling profession in the Multiverse. But this one actually has something called a Gender Studies degree.”

  “Wow. Seriously? That’s a thing? Some universes sure are super lame.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Hang on . . . Okay. There’s been a mix-up in HR. The doofus you’re stuck with was supposed to stay on his world. It says here his last job was occupying a street. That can’t be right. It looks like your real intern was accidentally sent to a call center in their Nebraska to provide auto insurance quotes.”

  Well, that explained everything. “Thank you, Ms. Wappler. That’ll be all.”

  “Good luck, Mr. Stranger. Try not to die!”

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy, but according to my secretary there has been a mistake. Someone else is supposed to be my intern. I’m afraid that Stranger & Stranger only accepts the best.”

  “I’m totally cool with that!” Jimmy screamed as their battle mech bounced off the hull of the Horde mother ship. Missiles exploded against their energy shields, but they held long
enough for them to rip through an airlock. They were inside.

  “Very well, Jimmy,” Tom said patiently as he used the mech’s 20mm chain guns to mow down the mob of crazed, scrotum Harvesters charging at them. “Once we’re done here, I’ll take you back to your home dimension.”

  “How about we go now instead?” Jimmy squeaked.

  “I’m afraid that I can’t do that. You see, the most important duty of an Interdimensional Insurance Agent is to take care of our customer’s needs, no matter the risk, no matter what the cost. I’ve made a sacred vow that good customer service is more important than my life. And this mission is the deadliest type of all. We’ll be lucky to get out of here alive.”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened. “What’re we doing?” Then he flinched as a floating nacho struck him.

  Tom lowered his voice to a dangerous hiss. “Expect the unexpected. Stay behind me. Stay low. Do not make any noise. Do not make eye contact. And for heaven’s sakes, pull up your pants and turn your hat around the correct way. This is Arbitration.”

  “Well, howdy, Stranger!” Jeff Conundrum shouted in greeting as Tom Stranger and Jimmy the Intern entered the Horde mother ship’s conference room.

  “You . . .” Tom muttered. Instinctively his hand moved to the CorreiaTech Combat Wombat concealed beneath his suit, but Tom hesitated. Blasting Jeff Conundrum into a red mist would be satisfying, but wouldn’t necessarily be providing his client with the finest customer service possible.

  “Howdy, Stranger. Ha, ha, ha! Get it?” Conundrum was rotund and, as always, bore an expression of red-faced, forced joviality. Conundrum’s neon-blue hair and glowing suspenders offended Tom’s conservative senses. His rival Interdimensional Insurance Agent was always loud, always on, and always, always annoying. “That never gets old!”