by John Hulme
BLIP . . . BLIP . . . BLIP . . . BLIP . . .
“Glitchometer my fat Seemsian tuchus!”
Simly angrily tossed the machine aside, resolving to never activate it again. Here he was, on a Mission with Cassiopeia Lake herself—whose poster adorned the wall of his dorm room at the IFR—and he had yet to do anything other than ask a bunch of stupid questions and spray a can of Raid.
“This is it, French Frye. If you can’t come through now, you don’t deserve to be a Fixer!”
Simly closed his eyes and once again tried to follow Becker’s advice on how to activate the 7th Sense. He imagined he was the same schoolboy as before, except this time he was more specific, picturing growing up on a small farm in Dubuque, Iowa (for no apparent reason), where he rode with his father through the cornfields on a tractor, as in tune with the rhythms of Nature as humanly possible. He even went as far as visualizing himself crawling into bed, sunburned and worn out at the end of another long day, and ready for a much-needed Good Night’s Sleep.
“Something’s wrong in The Seems,” he imagined desperately, like Becker or Casey or any other true Fixer might. “Now, isolate the feeling of where the Glitch could be.”
But no matter how hard or how sincerely he tried, nothing would come his way. No feeling, no sense, no tingle, nothing.
“Frye to Fixer Drane,” his hand despondently reached for his Receiver, “I got nothing either.”
“Lake? Is that you, Lake?”
Back at the Decompression Chamber, Dominic’s mind had begun to play tricks on him. As soon as the Fixers had disappeared, he’d become convinced that there was a small tear in his suit and had covered himself with masking tape and glue.
“Identify yourself!” He shouted at no one in particular.
The lack of response only served to further chip away at Dominic’s fraying nerves. While his tenure as Administrator had been an uneventful one, there had also not been any major advances in the art. His greatest hope and the holy grail of Sleep had been to find the long-awaited cure for Insomnia, and he had driven his men hard, but the increasing sense of anxiety in The World (plus budget cuts) had conspired against any such innovation.
“I knew I should have stayed in Public Works! I could have had a nice fat desk job at the Flower Plant, but noooo . . . I had to be a big shot and transfer into Sleep!”
The worst part was, with annual reviews coming up and the Powers That Be looking to downsize at every turn, this entire fiasco could cause Dominic to be phased out entirely. He checked his beloved pocketwatch but that only exacerbated the problem, for Dawn was now only forty minutes away.
“Is that you, Lake? Is that you?”
Despite his bummedoutedness, Simly Frye kept his chin up and made his way over to Packaging. It was a low-lit room filled with long tables, measuring scales, and plastic bags exactly like the one revealed by the Glimmer of Hope. Each bag was filled with the same Sleep that coated the air, and hung on miniature hooks designed to carry them down to Central Shipping—but the assembly line had stopped dead. And so had the people who worked there.
There were rows and rows of them, all wearing protective Pajamas just like Simly’s, but they were slumped over their posts and unmoving. The fog of Sleep was even thicker in here, and piles of the stuff had blanketed the ground and people like snow.
“Hello?” Simly could feel cold fear spreading through his belly. “Are you guys all right?”
They didn’t look all right.
“What’s wrong with you people?” The moment Simly touched one, the Tireless Worker collapsed to the floor and rolled onto his back. He looked dead to the world, his face hideously encrusted and air filter hopelessly clogged with thick yellow grime.
The Briefer backed away, beginning to hyperventilate, but he pulled himself together.
“Concentrate, Simly!” The Glitch had obviously been here on its path of devastation, but the question of where it was right now still remained. “You can do this.”
For one final time, he closed his eyes and visualized his Iowan alter ego back in bed at the farmhouse of his youth. Listening carefully, he extended his awareness and picked up the sounds of the creaks in the floorboards, the swaying of the corn in the fields, and the groaning of the horses in the barn outside.
“Reach, Simly . . . reach . . .”
The moment was feeling real to him, realer than ever before. But it wasn’t until he conjured up Rufus, the old family dog (who slept twenty-three hours of the day), walking into his bedroom with an unexpected spring in his step, that Simly felt something he had never felt before in his life.
A tiny chill on his arms that quickly traveled down to his toes. It was a feeling that almost spoke to him, whispering in his ear, pointing to the main Exhaustion Pipe that led to each of the individual packaging spouts. If that feeling was right, then the Glitch was still here. So he carefully removed a Safety Net™ from his Briefcase, and was about to pry open the pipe, when—WHOOSH!
A jet of yellow powder exploded from the pipe, shattering his glass visor and filling his lungs with Sleep.
“Help! Help me!”
But it was too late. His eyes were rolling back in his head and he was going into REM.
“Simly!” Casey appeared over his shoulder, catching him just before he fell. “Stay with me, Brief. Stay with me.”
She reached into her Toolkit, pulling out a small balloon, which Simly rapidly inhaled. Almost instantaneously he popped back up.
“What happened? Where was I?”
“You’re okay, Simly. You just needed a Breath of Fresh Air™.” Casey removed a helmet from one of the lifeless Tireless Workers and replaced it on Simly’s head. “What happened?”
“The Glitch, Casey—it’s in that Exhaustion Pipe!”
The Fixer hopped to her feet, but when she removed the epoxy seal, the only thing inside were cables and fiberglass tubes.
“If it was there, it’s gone now.” Her eyes followed the pipe, which snaked along the floor, up into the ceiling, and back to the center of the Master Bedroom. “But there’s only one place left it can go.”
The Drowsenheim 4000 was the latest in Sleep reactor technology and produced triple the quantity of its underwhelming predecessor, the Outkold 42. Still, the machine did the same dangerous job of synthesizing Refreshment, Twinkle, and Snooze into the precious salve known as Sleep. Its core was located behind eight-inch-thick glass, which protected those on the outside from any possible meltdown, but to Becker Drane it looked like a meltdown may have already occurred.
In fact, the Control Center before him looked like a scene out of a movie that he and Benjamin had watched one day on AMC called The China Syndrome (which had freaked his little brother out almost as bad as Piñata). Workers lay passed out everywhere—not just the reactor crew, but the Security Detail, Packagers, and even some R & D types who must have come running when the alarms began to sound. Monitors and gauges were all in the red, and Sleep was burping out of the release nozzles in fits and starts, creating the ever-thickening yellow cloud in the air.
Worse yet, behind the glass the reactor itself was flickering and sparking as if ready to blow at any moment.
“Lake to Drane, come in, over!”
Becker picked up the Receiver. “Read you loud and clear.”
“Get over to the Drowsenheim—I think the Glitch may be inside!”
“No maybe about it. I’m here right now and it doesn’t look good.”
“On our way.”
Becker hung up his Receiver and turned to chapter 6 of his Manual. According to the sectional blueprints, the Drowsenheim was arrayed like a Russian Tea Doll, with one protective shell or “casing” inside another, inside another—all designed to protect the inner core from exposure.
“Let me have a gander.” Casey arrived with Briefer Frye in tow and pointed to the center of the diagram. “There’s still time to Fix it, but we have to stop the Glitch before it gets there—to the core.”
“But
the shells are rigged with magnetic trip wires!” cried Simly. “If anything touches the sides . . .”
“If it were easy, it wouldn’t be fun.” Casey winked at Sim, and he blushed like a schoolboy (from Dubuque).
“How do you want to handle this?” asked Becker, ready to follow Casey to the ends of The Seems.
“You tell me, #37. It’s your Mission.”
Becker grinned and picked up the gauntlet.
“Set up a Tool Table™, Simly.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Fixing has often been likened to operating on a human being, not just because of the self-evident stakes, but because of the slew of gadgets and Tools involved. Becker replaced his Pajama gloves with white latex as Simly spread out an array of silver instruments on the sterilized Tool Table top.
“Ready, sir?” The Briefer was fired up.
“Ready.”
Simly cracked his knuckles, preparing to hold up his end of the bargain.
“Takerhöffer™!” demanded Becker.
“Takerhöffer!”
Simly handed Becker a pair of titanium forceps, which he used to undo the seals on the reactor’s outer casing. Like she was handling fine china, Casey lifted off the first shell and placed it on the floor.
“Cutterhöffer™!”
“Cutterhöffer!”
With a small diamond-tipped scalpel, Becker cut four small holes in the second shell at equidistant intervals. Beside him, Simly suffered with every move.
“Lifterhöffer™!”
“Lifterhöffer!”
Becker inserted the four elastic prongs inside the holes and began to lift off the second shell. Immediately, a humming sound emanated from within—the sound of the casing’s defense mechanisms. If he dropped it or the sides touched any other part of the reactor at all, that was all she wrote.
“You okay?” asked Simly.
The Fixer lifted higher, and the humming sound got louder, becoming a piercing whistle.
“Walk in the park.”
Just as the noise threatened to split their eardrums, Becker finally pulled off the second shell, and everything went deathly silent. Underneath was a tangled forest of multicolored wires, snaking like vines over the final protective shell.
“I.C.U.™”
“I.C.U.”
Simly handed Becker a monocle-like lens, and he placed it up against the reactor shell. A satisfied grin came across the Fixer’s face, as the tool allowed him to see through the metal to what lay on the other side.
“There you are, you little son of a Glitch.”
As if in response, a stream of Twinkle shot straight out at them, threatening to get in their eyes, until the liquid was quickly sucked up by the empty space in Casey’s hand—her Portable Vacuum™.
“Carry on.”
Becker nodded, then steeled his nerves for the final barrier.
“Those Things That Look a Lot Like Tweezers That You Cut Wires With™!”
Simly was about to repeat it, then just looked at Becker, like, “You gotta be kidding me,” and handed them over. With remarkable quickness and precision, the young Fixer began snipping wires and working his way down to the core. But the closer he got, the more the reactor rattled and shook.
“It’s going into meltdown!” cried Simly, frightened by the violence of the shaking.
“Not tonight it isn’t.”
Beneath the tangled mess was one final wire, tucked into a deep recess and seemingly impossible to reach.
“Dweezer Extension™.”
But Simly was still frozen with terror.
“Dweezer Extension!”
Casey slapped Simly across the face.
“Thank you, sir. May I have another?”
“Just stay in the game, mate.”
“Sorry, sir.” Simly pulled the necessary Tool off the table.
Becker affixed the extension and lowered Those Things That Look a Lot Like Tweezers That You Cut Wires With deep into the recess, just like he had when he snooked the funny bone the last time he played Operation. Except this was no game.
“Now the second I snip this wire, get ready to move in.” He blinked away the sweat from his eyes and prepared to make the cut.
But from within the Drowsenheim, a new sound emerged— something sparking—followed by a fierce blue light. It was now or never, so Becker squeezed the Dweezer’s handle and split the final wire.
The last shell casing popped off . . .
There was a flash of blinding blue . . .
And finally . . .
Once and for all . . .
There it was . . .
The Glitch in Sleep.
26. Sleep can only be manufactured at under 16 hectopascals (6 millibars [8 kgf/cm2]).
27. The Seemsian day contains 25 hours (one extra, just in case).
11
Ripple Effect (Reprise)
“What were you expecting?” asked the Glitch, smugly flipping up its visor. “Some sort of two-bit Bleep?”
The Glitch was only four inches tall but with its scraggly hair, jagged-toothed maw, and mad, jaundiced eyes, it was certainly terrifying. The picture in Becker’s Manual didn’t do it justice, and it also didn’t feature the curious aluminum jet-pack strapped securely to its back. An acetylene torch extended from the pack and its owner was currently using it to carve a path into the reactor core.
“Freeze!” shouted Simly, holding it at bay with a Veiled Threat™.
“Anything you say, kid,” sported the little monstrosity, dropping the torch and raising its hands in the air. The Briefer got ahead of himself, however, failing to realize (or remember) that Glitches are masters of deception—and have three arms, the last of which was surreptitiously reaching for a small button near its chest. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Look out!” screamed Casey, as a thick cloud of black smoke belched from one of the tailpipes of its pack and filled the chamber. With Fixer Lake’s Portable Vacuum already expended, she and the others had no recourse but to stumble through the smog and try to recover their bearings.
“Where is it?”
“Where did it go?”
The smoke was too thick to navigate, but they could hear something whirring like a helicopter all around them. And then—
“There!”
The Glitch had rematerialized outside the glass enclosure, a propeller extending from the top of its pack and over its tiny misshapen head.
“Fix this!”
It flashed the same vulgar gesture on all three of its hands, then zipped up into the rafters and disappeared from view.
“Drane to Night Patrol!” Becker pulled his Receiver off his belt. “Night Patrol, come in!”
“Night Patrol here, sir. We read you loud and clear!”
“The Glitch is on the loose inside the Master Bedroom. I repeat, nothing comes in or out of this room without a personal okay from me or Fixer Lake.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“And remember,” Casey chimed in, “this bugger’s got a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock, so don’t try to wrestle it yourselves!”
“Understood!”
“Fixers over and out!”
Becker hung up while Casey pumped her Fists again, activating their ionic charge.
“C’mon, mates. This time we better stick together.”
Glitches had been part of the system ever since back in the Day, and no one truly knew how or why they had originated—only that they were constantly gumming up the works. For countless years, they plagued Jayson and his ilk until the Powers That Be finally said enough is enough. Operation Clean Sweep (in which all Fixers and Briefers participated) was green-lit soon after, and by and large it was a rousing success—rounding up all but a few of the craftiest stragglers and locking them away in a maximum security prison.
What was the story behind this one, Becker wondered as the team fanned back toward R & D. Was it a new Glitch, never before seen, which heralded the coming of a second terrible onslaught
? Or an old one, which had survived Clean Sweep and sworn revenge for that ignominious defeat? Regardless, it had to be neutralized, because a check of his Time Piece revealed that Dawn was less than thirty minutes away.
“We’re running out of Time, boss!” whispered Simly. “If we don’t get the Drowsenheim back online—”
“One step at a time,” answered Becker, focusing on the now. “Glitch first, Drowsenheim second, then we save The World.”
Casey hushed them both, then pointed straight up, as if she had a lock on their quarry. But unfortunately it was their quarry who had a lock on them.
“You’re too late!” A voice dripping with insanity rained down from above. “Sleep is mine! Then Nature! And soon I shall tear apart the very Fabric of Reality itself!”
Becker’s mouth went dry as the Glitch’s threat mirrored his own Worst Nightmare.
“The Plan is on my side this time, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it! Nothing!”
Once again, a psychotic guffaw echoed from up above.
“Delusions of grandeur,” said Casey. “This is gonna be just as easy as it was when we took down your mates during Clean Sweep!”
“Who dares to speak of that day? The agony of a thousand Glitches still rings inside my ears!”
“Don’t worry, bitzer,” needled Fixer Lake. “You’ll be seein’ them soon enough—when we take you back to Seemsberia!”
“Never!”
Incensed, the Glitch came rocketing down from the rafters.
The hunters scattered, and a chaotic battle of wills ensued.
The IFR’s finest were at the top of their game, wielding the latest innovations from the Toolmaster—Sand Traps™, Spheres of Influence™—but they had more than met their match in the Glitch.
Its Attak-Pak® was like an anti-Toolkit, stocked with every possible gadget and weapon imaginable.