So we did that, and an hour later, I found myself watching over Ampexia’s shoulder as she pawed through a rack of unboxed electrical components that all looked the same. Well, no, that’s not true. They all looked different, but in ways that didn’t mean anything to me.
“I wouldn’t think they’d have anything compatible,” I said, as she compared things to the lantern-shaped sonic weapon.
“There are smaller stores for that. I’m here looking more for something I can upload tunes to and then use the gizmo as a speaker. Why waste a unique platform like this with music files compressed for a phone?” She pointed at a hole around the lower edge.
“You could just buy something in Chinatown,” I said, as the person who had a dozen friends dying to sell her weapons but insisted on obtaining them the hard—and fun—way.
She shuddered. “No way. That place is full of freaks, and you can’t trust any of them.”
I couldn’t deny that. It was why I liked the place! Ampexia, having exhausted the opportunities of this rack, ducked around to the other side of the aisle. We’d traveled about twenty. This store was gigantic, dwarfing even the agricultural store we’d just robbed. Surprisingly, nobody had panicked when we entered, but maybe two high schoolers in costume were a lot less scary without a seven foot animatronic goat.
She slipped back into her explanation. “Anyway, you can do a lot with just normal equipment. Only the super crazy advanced stuff doesn’t try to be at all compatible with normal science. You may need to go adapter crazy with the old equipment. Sometimes you find one that takes a plug that got invented after the device.”
Tilting the machine on its side, she pointed at a hole. “That looks like an RCA jack to me. I hope it’s digital sound instead. Let’s see what this does.” Picking a cord off the shelf, she stuck it into that hole, then inserted a flash drive into the disk-shaped device on the other end of the wire. Its readout flashed lights, until it showed ‘01.’ Then she pressed a button.
People screamed. I couldn’t hear anything, but my metal heart vibrated in my chest, which was not a comfortable sensation. That stopped abruptly as smoke puffed out of the plastic disk, and Ampexia yanked her drive free.
“Time to go to one of those smaller stores?” I suggested.
She scooted around behind me, pushed a hand into the middle of my back, and pushed. “Yes. Now.”
Nobody stopped us exiting, either. When we were out in the parking lot and away from prying ears, Ampexia eased up on the pushing. Her anxiety faded to a wry half-smile. “Don’t spread it around, but that happens all the time. It’s why I’m always stealing or buying new equipment.”
“What? You’re an expert!”
She rolled her eyes. “No way. Three quarters of what I do is just trying stuff until something works. You’re the expert. How do you do that?”
Ampexia pointed at Gerty, sitting in the back of her truck, one foot raised, tapping her dull, knife-shaped toes one at a time. “Three point one cake cake cookie butter frosting pumpkin. Three point one cake cake chocolate chip cookie sundae…”
“Still counting to pie?” I asked my favorite goat as I circled around to the passenger side.
“I’m a good counter!” she answered, wiggling her toes one at a time. That particular foot had seven, now. I was pretty sure it had four when I’d left her here.
While we buckled our seatbelts, Ampexia picked up where she left off. “If I try to outwit her, she just runs off on a tangent and destroys something.”
I tried to shrug and failed. Curse you, robot shoulders! But it was a good sign I kept trying, right? “Some of it’s that I’ve seen all her shows. Most of it is knowing her obsessions. It’s like in combat.”
“You’ve lost me,” said Ampexia, spinning the steering wheel and guiding us out of the lot.
“If you know what your opponent’s going to do, you have the fight half-won. That’s easier with obsessive people. I mean, let’s face it, anybody wearing spandex tights and fighting crime is crazy. Normal people find something more practical to do with their powers.”
That got a cynical grin, and a nod. “Preaching to the choir here.”
I knew she’d eat that one up. Aside from her high-tech gear, in combat or regular life, Ampexia wore jeans with holes in them and T-shirts for bands I didn’t know. Today’s was for Boreal Network, with a logo I didn’t recognize. Maybe a circuit board? No, wait, those were roads. A map!
Drag yourself back to the topic, Penny! “Look at you. You love music. Someone could probably guess what you’re going to steal that way. It still wouldn’t help them in a fight. If I could claim somebody in Orange County was abusing a chicken, Diamond Pullet would abandon the fight to go save it. Most heroes and villains are like that, if you can figure out what their button is. It really helps coming up with schemes to fight them.”
Just to make my position clear, I repeated, “You love music. It’s not like it’s baked into your DNA. I haven’t got a clue about music. I don’t even know what genre your music is.”
She scowled, her head tossing in mild irritation. “It’s not a genre. I make what sounds good. Most of what I make lately is vaporwave, but there are a lot of micro-genres on the electronic end of the spectrum, and some of them blend.”
“So, what even is vaporwave?” I asked.
She looked at me for a second, before realizing I was serious. “Okay, electronic music is about taking old music that was not meant to be serious and reclaiming it. Video game music, elevator music, corporate training video music, even smooth jazz. Vaporwave is nineties, synthwave is eighties. Future funk is disco. It’s all about making the trivial meaningful. I like to make music that sounds like it came from a computer. You can communicate emotion in ways lyrical music can’t if you throw away human language and show people how to feel like a robot.”
I coughed into my fist. That is, I made a coughing sound into the curled, doll-jointed fingers of one hand.
Ampexia, who had been sitting up straighter, talking more passionately than I’d ever seen her before, slumped down again. “Sorry. Or maybe you get it better than anyone.”
“No, but I’d love to learn. It’s cool seeing you inspired, and it’s a neat topic. Do you have any samples?”
She perked up again. “Do I? Kid, you just called down the thunder. The beautiful, beautiful synthetic thunder. Are you sure you want this?”
I nodded, honest and earnest. “Hit me.”
Ampexia was already pushing buttons on the truck’s stereo. For this, she didn’t have to take her eyes off the road.
We had sidestepped into why Ampexia did or did not like individual heavy metal songs rather than having an opinion on the whole genre. I’d only been treated to half a dozen different songs. The topic had wandered fast. I’d been right about the lack of obsession thing, because while she might lean to one style when she made music, my teammate loved all music, or at least made no exceptions for style.
I had also been right about the experience being awesome. Bonus points, all signs pointed to Ampexia being able to talk about this nonstop for the rest of her life. In case of boredom, the Inscrutable Machine would always have a backup option.
No, what surprised me was when we pulled up into a parking spot on Melrose. It was weird enough that Ampexia found a place to park. This had been the last place I’d expected to find a mad science store.
My expression must have been something to behold. Ampexia switched off the stereo, and told me, “It’s not like they sell laser cannons, or anything. You can sell mad science graphics cards and heat sinks from a storefront like anybody else, with the right precautions.”
Those precautions would be the signs in the window. There were a lot of them. You could hardly see inside!
This technology does not meet any standards of anyone anywhere. Management takes no responsibility for what products bought here may do to your computer, or any collateral damage to persons, property, animals, or space/time.
We are
serious. The stuff here is as dangerous as it is awesome.
Those two summed up the message pretty well.
“So the owner is a mad scientist?” I said when we were both out of the truck.
She nodded, her eyes gleaming with the anticipation of acquiring new gear. “With zero interest in crime, and zero legal obligation to ask me what I’m doing with his experimental products. Plus, he gets a lot of salvage from mad science wreckage. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a USB-compatible universal game cartridge adapter. And I mean universal.”
I grabbed her by the elbow as she reached for the front door.
“What? Is it the goat?” she asked, giving me a puzzled look.
Looking her right in the eyes, I said, “You’re stalling.”
“Who? Me?” she asked, then sighed. “Okay, that might as well have been a confession.”
“Why do you keep putting this off?”
She chewed on her lower lip, looking up past the top of my head rather than meeting my gaze.
I tried again. “I get it, this opponent or whatever they stole is embarrassing, but you know, you haven’t made fun of my being stuck in a robot.”
Her awkwardness snapped into a disgusted squint. “What kind of jerk would do that? This isn’t a game for you.”
I nodded, and tapped her in the middle of her chest. “And I am going to return the favor. Besides, you know whatever you’re planning to do with that tracker, it won’t work if you wait much longer.”
Ampexia bared her teeth in a grimace. Her shoulders squirmed, and her head wriggled. Then they sagged, only to have her face snap back up and fix me with a sharp, challenging stare. “Whatever happens, whatever you see, you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“I swear.”
e plugged the signal from the stolen phone into Ampexia’s GPS, and followed it south, and then south some more, all the way down to Anaheim.
As the buildings got more pretty and white and modern, and the palm trees more lush, I wondered if bringing Gerty Goat to Disneyland would be the greatest thing ever, or absolutely unacceptable. She would break stuff. A lot of stuff. But Disney could afford it, and Gerty would make so many kids happy.
When the road sign at the intersection said to go straight for Disneyland, but the sly, quiet feminine voice of Ampexia’s GPS told us, “Turn left,” I knew my question would not have to be answered. Today.
We followed another pretty street Disney was no doubt proud to be seen next to, until the GPS said, “You have arrived at your destination, dummy.”
We got out in front of a big, cone-shaped building. Maybe more trumpet-shaped, since it curved out to the bottom floor, and swooped inward as it went up half a dozen flights. Picturesque place for a super-powered battle, definitely. Not only was it oddly shaped, the bottom floor was all glass walls around the edge, while the upper levels had white stone surfacing and very few windows.
A sign above the entrance read ‘FruiTastiCo!’ A sign just below it read ‘No Longer A Subsidiary Of Happy Days Sugar Substitutes, Thank Goodness.’
I peered over Ampexia’s shoulder at her phone as we got out of the truck. The dot that we were following was actually outside the building. So…
“Her.” I pointed.
As much as I like gloating, neither Holmesian deductive skills nor a genius with maps were required to make this judgment. First, the young woman I pointed at was wearing an obvious superhuman costume, of the ‘spandex one piece, gloves, and boots’ variety. Vertical white-and-orange panels stuck out in any crowd, as did her bone thin shape and bushy red hair.
Also as soon as she saw three supervillains pull up, she ran for it. That gave me a clue!
She sprinted into the building, arms waving, which is an appropriate reaction to seeing Gerty Goat go, “Oh boy, a squid hunt! Tallyho! Yip yip!” and charge across the pavement after you.
In fact, since I had nothing against this building or the company that owned it, I had to teleport in front of Gerty, one arm held out and the other with a finger to my mouth. “Shhhh! We’re trying to be stealthy. This isn’t just a chase. We’re looking for clues!”
Her mouth hung wide open, and she jerked up straight. “Clues?! My sniffer is at your disposal! I can smell a pinch of oregano in a pound of paprika at twenty paces!” A hatch in the side of her head opened up, extending three magnifying glasses that hovered twitchily in front of one of her eyes. A couple of seconds later, a fourth extended to pose in front of her nose.
Bending forward like a drinky bird, she went down on all fours and lurched and wobbled along with me and Ampexia into the big, circular lobby. It had nice burgundy carpeting and a lot of gilt. Whoever designed this place definitely had aesthetics over utility in mind.
Forestalling Gerty from knocking out this building’s supports gave our quarry time to duck out of sight, but the problem solved itself. My animatronic sidekick twitched her muzzle around as she crawled over the carpet, until she pointed towards some stairs. “A slime trail! I’mma getcha! All the world is my kitchen, and this chef knows where all her ingredients are kept!”
“Stealthy!” I reminded her. She nodded, straightened up, and started exaggeratedly tiptoeing up the hall. As she did, one of her eyes clicked, turned purple, and glowing spots showed up on the carpet in a trail leading upward.
People stayed out of our way, staring from doorways, as we followed the trail up to the third floor, around a circular hall, and to a women’s restroom.
I went to push it open. Ampexia kicked it open instead, a vibrating glove extended in front of her.
At the far end of the washroom, the villainess paused in trying to ratchet a little window wider, and spun around to face us. Back to the wall, she squealed, “I just wanted a pretty dress with jewels on it! I figured it’d be fine if I stole it from another supervillain. Why do these things happen to me? This is worse than when the octopus woman got too friendly!”
“Where did you get the dress?” I asked, trying to sound calm.
“Energizing soy sauce!” announced Gerty, not sounding calm at all.
“Take it! Just take it! I don’t want it anymore!” shouted the villainess. She pulled a glittery, tube-shaped dress out of her costume. Given her skinny frame and the modestly thick spandex, I really should not have been surprised she was able to hide it in there. Throwing the dress at me, she jammed her arms into the opening of the window, maybe three inches by twelve inches.
She fit. Her body writhed like a snake, compressing as she went through the gap. It looked pretty weird when her head flattened out to get through, but I saw no sign it hurt.
To be honest, I wasn’t that surprised. She was a supervillain, so she had to have powers. Boneless compression? Why not? It did gave me a serious déjà vu feeling I’d met her before, but there were only a couple of hundred active villains and heroes in the city. I couldn’t always be meeting new ones.
I caught the dress. The jewels, which couldn’t possibly be actual diamonds, not that many of them, weighed it down quite a bit. I had to feel around to find the phone.
While I did that, Gerty shouted, “Nooo! My stir fry!” and ran right through the wall after the escapee.
Ampexia gave me a guilty look, one hand scratching behind her headphones, not actually meeting my eyes but instead keeping her face tilted down. “You were right. I procrastinated too long.”
I waved it off. “Chicken lady doesn’t exactly keep a low profile. We’ll find her. Right now, let’s collect my goat.”
Since we were on the third floor, the hole in the bathroom wall looked down over a sloping roof, sharply angled near us but almost leveling out a floor down. Groove marks traced Gerty’s path for about ten feet, then disappeared. The explanation for that presented itself as, far down near the edge of the building, Gerty sped along on roller skate-style wheels, accompanied by a championship level yodel.
Personally, I blinked to the edge of the roof, then blinked down to the ground in time to watch Gerty cata
pult off into mid-air. Gravity, which two tons of robot has a lot of, took over quickly. She smashed into a small park area, gouged a deep furrow in the turf, broke a metal bench and a lamp post, and skidded to a halt in front of a second bench—on which cowered our noodly supercriminal.
Curled up into a ball with her arms over her head, she whimpered, “I’m not tasty! I swear!”
Holding up both hands in a sign of peace, I stepped pointedly between Gerty and the girl. “We are not going to eat you, I promise.”
A low, throbbing sound signaled Ampexia landing next to me, using the jetpack power of her giant speaker. She had one of those expressions so blank she seemed stunned, and the same quiet tone as she said, “She’s not afraid of us. She’s afraid of them.”
I followed a pointing finger as five velociraptors in frilly dresses trotted out around the curve of the building.
The dresses were magnificent: extremely girly, so elaborate they clearly were intended as costumes rather than real clothing, and color-coded. Red, blue, yellow, black, and pink—each dress was different, but Barbara would have been proud to wear any of them. Short skirts bared a lot of tail—some skirts in stiff bells, others made mostly of layers of poufy petticoats. There were bodices, bow ties, and round, starched shoulder ruffles. The red dress gleamed like plastic, the black dress had gothic crosses, and the pink had tons of ribbon bows, especially at the tops of the thigh-high white stockings. The other velociraptors had to be content with knee-high stockings, which didn’t cover that much since they had to end at the ankle where huge, sharp talons got in the way.
Frankly, the raptors needed the dresses. For long-tailed, razor-fanged, sickle-clawed murder birds, they were naturally drab. Their feathers came in brown with streaks of black. Bare, featherless heads had that wrinkly, scaly, gray skin of a particularly ugly vulture. Only the raptor in the pink dress had blue and red-and-yellow highlights shining in its feathers, which from my understanding of birds meant it was the only male.
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