Ebenezer Funkworthy
The Rasputin Stalemate
by Delroy DeLaroux
I don’t know how to do this. Not really part of my job, writing. My reports are usually fairly dry, so I’ll just try to do this in an annotated way at first.
Where to begin? I guess I’ll take it chronologically. It all began when Rasputin broke into the control room, knocked out Flex, and ordered me to create him an army of skeletons.
Too quick? Okay.
This might take a little bit of explaining.
I was working security detail on the resort with an old buddy of mine from the war. The company hired him for their disability quota but the only thing wrong with Flex was his taste in women and his AORD (That’s ‘Automatic Onomatapaeia Response Disorder’ to you and me). It’s an effect of his experience in the war. You see, both me and Flex served the Andusian War; the last great purge of the shapeshifting killer robots. Unfortunately for him, in the last few days he came up close with one of the ‘shifters when one of those damned things disguised itself as his helmet and started to crush his head. I managed to pry the damned thing off and killed it before calling in a copter to airlift Flex out of there.Didn’t end there for Flex, though. When he was en-route to the hospital his stretcher turned out to be another shapeshifting robot which threw him out of the window while strangling him. Flex somehow managed to fight it off and deploy his parachute mid-fall but his chute (would you believe it) turned out to be another ‘shifter which, then tried like hell to rip him apart in the fall while screeching anti-human propaganda in his face. By the time he was properly extracted this had happened seven more times. So you bet he was a bit mixed up in the head. Poor guy could only communicate in onomatopoeias. He’d mirror the sounds around him in times of stress. Damn that war. But we were both working pretty cushy security jobs before Rasputin got loose.
Yeah, him.
Rasputin had been out for a little while by that point. We all knew it. We had wanted posters all around, we had left some poisoned cakes and wine around the place since we all knew he liked them but we had no luck. We suspected he had stolen a janitor’s jumpsuit and was posing as one of the cleaning staff. A few staff uniforms had been reported missing, you see, at around the time he escaped the holo-matrix.
Listen, an escaped hologram is a pain in the ass but we can deal with them. When you run a leisure complex with four hundred and eighteen holodecks on it, you get used to having to deal with a rogue hard-light Hitler. Usually it’s just faulty holo-code, corrupted data, voodoo or users not shutting down the deck’s program properly that does it. They usually made themselves pretty clear. Atilla the Hun is not a subtle presence to have in an holodeck resort (I kinda think he wasn’t a subtle presence in Mongolia) so it’s pretty easy to track him down and shut him down. Usually you just look for the fella wearing the tall hat, trying to annex something and that’ll be your escaped program, nine times out of ten. Easy to spot.
But Rasputin? Yeah, Rasputin was different. He was wily, smart and very, very Russian. He slipped out of his simulation and blended in with the station some six weeks before the Captain arrived. The sweep droids we threw out could find no trace of him. Flex and I were flummoxed. I guess as the days turned into weeks we just assumed that he had either died by getting caught in one of the vent fans or gotten used to life as one of our janitors. You never know.
I get how you could think that I should have been more on my guard that day, considering that there was pretty definitely a Rasputin in my sector but how can you prepare for that? One minute you’re monitoring the historic holo sector, half watching the tall, slavic cleaner empty the waste paper bin, the next he’s turned, knocked out your buddy with a mop and he’s sticking it in your face.
That’s when he said that thing about raising an army of skeleton-warriors.
In detail? Okay. So I knelt next to Flex and Rasputin stood over me. Flex was barely conscious. I leant next to him and he whispered “Gurgle” up at me as he drooled into the carpet. He’d recover. But I got pissed. Flex was the best man I knew and the third best engineer I had met. He had fought and killed more beds and stretchers and parachutes than anyone I knew for all of our freedom and here he was bleeding out because of some jumped-up stream of binary. I looked up at him.
“Check your anger, my friend,” he said. “I vill do as needed to meet my aims. Besides...I am no fool. I do not storm a castle wiz just a piece of wood. I have allies.”
At that signal the door opened and six figures marched into the room, each with a weapon in their holo-hands.
Joseph Stalin, Hannibal Lecter, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Scaramanga, Ann Widdecombe and Stephen Premmel came into the room, discarding their uniforms.
“Gulp,” said Flex from the floor, putting words to my gulps.
“My god,” I gasped (as Flex muttered “gasp”), “you’re the greatest monsters of history, the most twisted creations of the human mind!”
“And our day has come again!” yelled Stephen Premmmel. I know I don’t need to remind anyone of his career of evil- the man was a stain on the universe from when he was born in 2099. I looked at his famous and interesting disfigurements, they were revolting but compelling. I would describe them but, of course, we all know what the man looks like so I won’t waste any more time.
Widdecombe stepped into the room and talked Rasputin, who seemed to be the leader. He’d been out of the matrix for a while now and I guess that meant he was more sure of himself. He took my chair with a and put his feet up, and stared down at me. I admit it; I was scared of the guy, which was a feat considering that he was a hologram programmed into existence by some grad students and he was now dressed like a janitor. I wished then more than ever that he had been made with less malevolent magnetism and more of an authentic accent.
"I do belieze you heard me, zir," he sneered. "Skeletons. I know that they are easy constructs to produce. No personality, no flesh, no systems either zirculatory, cardiovazcular or lymphatic. Why, if I’ve overheard the engineers correctly then an average holodeck can produce sentient skeletons at an alarming rate." He pointed his mop at me again "I would like you to make zese malfunctions. I would like you to make zem now."
They had formed a circle around me and Flex. Hannibal Lecter cracked his holographic knuckles, Scaramanga waved a makeshift shiv, Hitler pushed over my potted plant and stared me down.
"You can alvays take comfort in knowing you never had a choice" Rasputin said.
I sighed, looked down at Flex.
"Resigned sigh," he said.
"Yeah." I replied, getting up and walking over to the control panel. No alarms nearby, no weapons in the room, outnumbered. No options. I brought up the display.
"Code zem to me. I want zese skeletons to be at my command. I know you can link holograms in zuch a way"
I tapped the code and the lights flickered among the hallways on the floors below. Rooms began their malfunctions. In minutes the skeletons would begin to emerge. It was then that we all heard the voice.
"Listen, I’m just asking for a friend here," it said from the door.
We all turned to see the intruder; a guest, wearing the pink resort towel and our complimentary flip flops. He looked blandly back at us and continued like he didn’t notice anything askew. "Yeah, a friend. name of...Ebenezer Funkworthy. He (not me) was on one of this place’s pleasure decks. Lonely guy I guess... and anyway, something went a bit awry. Aaaanyhoo he came and got me from where I was in the, ah, in the educational centre where I was learning about….The Battle of Hastings...And he asked me to ask you to help him out. Listen, long story short; bring a mop, a sponge, a couple of buckets and some broadened horizons and there’ll be a big tip in this for you once you shut down my co- I mean, my friend’s companions. Wow, there’s a lot of people in here. Why’s everyone frowning?"
We stood stock-still watching each other. I could see this new guy growing suspicious and taking in each face in turn, me, with my hands hovering above the
controls, Rasputin frozen by the interruption and temporarily without a plan, Hitler standing over a smashed pot and my Peace Lilly. The skeletons were only just starting to materialize. I could hear the clamour and chatter building below as room after room started their malfunctions.
A cubicle went red on my display and we all heard a scream.
The visitor heard it, we all did. I caught him looking at Scaramanga’s shiv.
Another cubicle flashed red on the main display.
He looked to my screen with the flashing warnings, to the face of Rasputin, to Flex with his bleeding head wound.
"My god! Skeletons!" that was the shout we heard and an alarm sounded.
He looked at Stephen Premmel. I saw his pupils turn into tiny pinpricks and his hand go to his towel.
"Somebody help us! Angry skeletons! They’re everywhere." that was another scream. My screen was a sea of red now.
He looked up at me. I gave a tiny, terrified shake of my head.
"Never mind, gents," this guest said, turning back to the door. "I was being silly. I’ll clear this up myself. Nothing a spot of bleach and shame won’t take care of." He took a step away from us but Rasputin’s called to him.
"Nonsense," Rasputin said, ‘why don’t you join us? You can watch the festivities." The visitor stood there, his back to us.
Then in one smooth motion he turned back to us whipped an arm around and pointed a T36 disruptor at Rasputin’s head. I still have no idea where it was hidden.
"You first!" he cried, thumbing the safety off of the weapon.
"Vat?" asked Rasputin, confused by the stranger’s rejoinder.
"Scheisse!" cried Hitler, searching for a weapon nearby
"Click-clack," shouted Flex, imitating the stranger’s gun.
"Kill them all!" I shouted, turning back to the controls.
"Argh! My face!" cried a guest from outside, presumably due to a skeleton
The stranger raked the gun around the room, forcing everyone to be still.
"My name is Captain Space Hardcore and I am VERY confused! And I also happen to be holding the only gun here, so one of you better start making sense or I’m going to start making holes."
Rasputin stood slowly, raising his hand. "Please, sir, I can explain it all. Why simply- Now, Hitler! TAKE HIS EYES!"
Hitler sprang over the peace lily at this Captain Space Hardcore. Rasputin ran at me. I tore madly at the controls to the skeletons. The gun went off.
And that’s how the whole sorry god damned affair on Tremulon Prime started.
Part Two
ʘ
Section One:
The Laboratory and the Asylum
Chapter Seven
A Space Re-Run/ A Time Undone
* * *
A wise general keeps his friends close and his enemies very, very far away. After all, his enemies might attack him if they are very close or they may plot against him. If possible they should be in another continent or better yet, down a well.
Zi Ziyang
The Practical Art of Having a Great Big Ruck
Ѻ
Wailing klaxons.
Popping electronic fire
A sound; confident and self assured. "Impossible," it started and in that instant I felt it reverberate through my own throat, "is a relative...term." I felt it come out as if it were from me. It even sounded a lot like me. I felt my hands go to my throat as the last syllable died there. It was, I realized, me.
My own voice, faltering at the last line as I took control of it. My consciousness, my essence was stepping back into a previous version of me. Infiltrating one’s body through a time portal was, a disconcerting experience. My senses were coming to me in drowsy waves, my organs felt taut and young, my fashions felt outdated and passé.
Pain came next. Knuckle pain, that old familiar friend. I looked down the length of my arm to where the knuckle usually lay to find out what exactly it was punching. It was surprising how often I had to do this, really. A robot flew away from my flesh cudgel, the light going out in its lightbulbs as my chin-check rendered it unconscious.
Someone was looking at this, impressed, as was usually the case. I looked down the length of my arm, to where my knuckle lay to find out exactly who it was. She seemed uncomfortable at having me regard her in this manner so I dropped the arm by my side and attempted to look heroic as my insides shifted from queasiness to gassiness to iciness to laconic detachment and back to queasiness again (passing quickly by the looming specter of vomit).I don’t care what they say or how cool the COAR Time Corps play it, time dislocation feels like eating a rotten curry on an enema rollercoaster. Besides, I was still new to this whole time travel business. I had no idea what the results of a bodily expulsion would be mid-temporal dislocation. For all I knew I could cough up a baby or accidentally shit out an afternoon. It would be a hell of a capper to the robot defeat.
My vision blurred and started to settle. I regarded the scientist looking agape at me and the robot. I was getting a distinct feeling of c’est la vie, as the French say.
"But that IS impossible," she said. I was beginning to put together a name in my head. Bathory? Bathrobe? Bathby! The situation was familiar and not just because I had lived through it once before, it was the woman from the report I had been reading just a few hours ago, several years in the future.
It had to be her, the situation, the robot attack, but I didn’t want to be like one of those mad time travellers emerging into a moment barking questions and warning of dire future wars. It was important to look as cool as possible.I looked out of the command deck window. The stars were beginning a slow upward shift indicating we were starting to plummet from our orbit.
I checked below us. A sun burned intensely, its atomic surface of liquid fire starting to grow larger in my view.
I looked at the door. It glowed white hot as innumerable laser, phazer, quasar, razor and tazer bolts pranged off of its surface and it shook to the beat of robot fists.
I looked at Bathby, who looked like she was thinking about her work in robotics, the station’s history of uprisings and her current situation in a few pithy and entertaining paragraphs.
.I looked at the looming AI command screen where I already knew EVA was, trying to plunge us all into the sun.
"Yesss," I hissed quietly to myself. of all the situations he could have chosen, Tempus had given me the one I had most recently been brushing up on. This would be my Academy Ethics 101 finals all over again which I had also aced that by stealing the answer key the night before. Hell, I thought as I took a step toward Bathby, I’ll bet I can even remember most of my lines.
I looked up at the distressed robotician and cleared my throat a little
“Hey, Lady, what’s the sitch?” I called over, absolutely bloody nailing it.
“I am a professor, sir!" she said, redundantly. Next I knew she’d say ‘My name is Ellen Bathby and we are dealing with a code 67’ before I would cut her off rudely. I looked forward to that bit.
"My name is Ellen Bathby," she continued, "and we are dealing with a code 67-"
“Listen, doc," I yelled, cutting her off satisfyingly. "I’m the kind of chap that shortens the word ‘situation’ to ‘sitch’. What does that tell you? Don’t answer that, there isn’t time. Oh god, now what do I say? No, no, don’t help me, Okay, got it. What it tells you is that we don’t have any time. Do I need to say it three times? I can’t: there just isn’t the time. God, but I wish there was. That was all the right words, I think. Now what? Oh yes, I say ‘wha sit’! So tell me- wha sit?”
Bathby looked very puzzled at me. I would have to keep my notes to myself at a minimum in the future. Being in the past was bloody complicated- a lot more complicated than being in the present where you really don’t have to pay any attention to what you say at all.
"What the hell are you talking about? Are you alright? You seem to be having some kind of breakdown." she said, contrary to her previous iteration.
“I’m fine. N
ow say ‘wha sit’ in a puzzled way, please."
She gave me a strained look of indulgence, "Wha sit’?" she grudged looking at the window for some reason.
“Fantastic. Back on track. Ahem. That’s short for ‘what’s the sitch?’. I can’t waste time explaining all my abbreviations! If I did we’d all be W.B.P.K.C.I.L.C.” She looked baffled by this even though this was the universal shorthand for ‘Way Behind, Prone to be Killed by Current Impending Lethal Circumstances’. No matter. Someone had to keep this going the right way and if that meant puppeteering her then that’s what I would do.
I wheeled around as Funkworthy was approaching me, scraped and embattled from erecting barricades. I stopped him with a gesture and pointed an accusing finger right in his little know-it-all face "You’re about to tell me that a rogue AI has commandeered the station. It’s taken control of a robot army and turned off this station’s engines and we’re plummeting toward the sun." I sucked on my finger and put it in the air, as if testing the wind. "Probably in about six minutes, I’d say"
Funkworthy, his mouth still open and his first syllable still hanging on his tongue (or whatever his people have) looked at me in amazement. I could get used to this, I thought. It was like playing a computer game or dating a girl with a degenerative memory disease; you could always try again and do better the next time round. I swaggered over to a control panel and yawned nonchalantly.
"Professor Bathby here, first name Ellen if I had to make a guess, was just about to tell me about this AI. She designed it after all. Now, an idiot would ask where to punch this thing to shut it down, but I for one know that punching is not the answer to this. She’s an A.I construct and is intangible. I’d imagine there would be NO solution to defusing her." I brushed a piece of lint off my lapel.
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 8