The Legend of Dan

by Robert Wingfield

  “Splong?”

  “It’s another colour—one which you can’t register with your limited optical radiation sensors. It denotes a proper name.”

  “I might have to go on a course. Hey, what’s happening now?”

  The mucronn had wrapped its tentacles around him.

  “The blasted thing’s got me.” He struggled. “It won’t let go. Is everything all right? I haven’t upset him, have I? I mean, I’m sure ‘splong’ is a lovely colour and all. I’ll get all my pants made of it in future.”

  “It’s okay to go with Overlord, Two-Dan; he’s showing you to your opponent, er I mean partner.”

  “I see. You’re not going to leave me?”

  “I won’t. Don’t be a baby.”

  The creature towed Tom out of the room, and into a grey corridor. Kara followed at a distance behind them. Tom gazed around, hoping to observe wonderful technological innovations in this obviously advanced culture. All he saw were grey and slimy walls, glowing with a subdued light.

  After a long and disappointing walk, the corridor led to the door of a vast hall. Through an observation window, Tom could see hundreds of inert grey lumps. He caught his breath when he saw what was encapsulated in a transparent non-biodegradable bag at the centre.

  “That is your, er, sparring partner,” whispered Kara in his ear. “Don’t expect to understand what he says, because he has been chosen simply for the effect, and the familiarity, you understand. He is instructed not to harm you. Use your skills on him to demonstrate for the Overlord. Don’t be afraid of hurting him; he is very tough, and would be most offended if you didn’t try.”

  The door slid open.

  “But, but...”

  “It’s okay, I’ll be here. Off you go.” Kara pushed him into the centre of the room, and then left him, to scurry back to the doorway.

  There was a blinding flash of multi-coloured light. When Tom’s vision cleared, he saw the creature in the bag stirring. It produced a penknife, and started to slit its way out. He shuddered. It certainly looked evil. Great bulges on its appendages twitched. In the head region, there were copious amounts of bristles, and the feet were encapsulated in large horny coverings. It stamped about and walloped its extremities on anything in the way, mostly the blobs he had noticed before.

  “Try and talk to it,” shouted Kara from the doorway. “Settle it down. Make friends.”

  “Do you think it will understand?”

  “Go on, have a try.” She stepped back, and the door closed, trapping Tom in the chamber.

  “Er, hello,” said Tom, extending his hand, “and how are you today?”

  “Errrr, yer fking nosy ye are, ye want to know errithink, don’t ya? Ye’re no ma doctor are ye? I’ll gi ye a maasba...!”

  “It’s all right, I mean you no harm...”

  The creature appeared to weigh Tom up. It growled and waved its arms at him again.

  “Er, hi there.” Tom decided that it must be a greeting, and nervously waved back. The monster responded by stamping its feet and crashing its arms together. Tom scratched his head. To the giant, this appeared to be the final insult. The creature charged from side to side of the room in a frenzy, and then started to advance on him.

  “Er, can I come out now, please?” Tom banged on the door. It was locked. Kara grinned through the observation window, and pointed behind him, mouthing the words, ‘Look out’. He turned as the enraged beast hurled itself at him, and bowled him over. He barely managed to roll backwards and out of the way, before the massive fists could crash down on his body. There was a clumsy second attack, which he dodged, and then took up a defensive position, his martial arts training coming instinctively back to him. The creature backed off, and stamped its feet, mouthing apparent threats at him in a low guttural voice.

  “It’s all right,” shouted Kara from the window. “It’s only saying ‘bully for you’. Now look out for the next attack.”

  Massive hands reached for Tom’s throat. He swayed backwards, and grabbed the arms before they could do any damage. Before the creature could pull away, Tom rolled on his back, planted his feet in his opponent’s midriff and straightened his legs. The creature flew over his head, forced high into the air and crashed into the wall behind him.

  Kara clapped enthusiastically. “It’s fine, he’s not hurt; he loves it. Watch out for the next round.”

  The Overlord mucronn flashed coloured messages.

  “Overlord says to now use the karate,” yelled Kara. “Go for proper punches. It knows what to expect and will dodge out of the way.”

  Tom nodded, and steeled himself. The creature rushed in again, arms flailing wildly in all directions. Tom relaxed, losing his fear as he saw the opening. He calmly blocked the aggressive blows, and then drove a short arm jab between the whirling fists. His opponent should have expected this, and backed off, but it continued moving forwards instead. The punch took it full in the face and it fell, like a sack of discarded rubbish into a nature reserve. “Properly done,” yelled Kara. “Game over!”

  Tom knelt down beside his stunned opponent and tried to apologise, but the creature did not stir. A tiny tentacle brushed his cheek and locked on. He jumped up to brush it off, and saw a mass of small grey blobs surrounding him, like Overlord, but much smaller. The hitherto inert grey lumps in the chamber were splitting into many more small, animated grey blobs. His cry was stifled as he disappeared under a forest of tentacles. He fought for breath and came up for air. Almost before he could fill his lungs, more and more tentacles connected, forcing their way into his mouth, nostrils, ears, and through his clothes into other, more personal, orifices. His feet lost their grip in the slime, and he was dragged to the floor. The combined weight of the tiny creatures pressed down on his chest, forcing the air from his lungs. Suffocating, he clawed at the mass of jelly covering him. His last thoughts were of embarrassment, and then relief that he wouldn’t have to explain his demise to anybody.

  Paradise Mislaid

  The Magus falls through a loophole.

  T

  he Magus lounged on a beach in an expensively comfortable chair, and gazed pensively at the faint shimmer of the defensive zone girding his planet, a mile up into the atmosphere. The coloured lights from the nearby sun filtered through, reflecting on the surface of the water lapping gently near him, making him thirsty.

  “A drink,” he thought. The planetary control systems deployed a high-impact, self-propelling rabbit-mug, which flew off to a drinks machine to recharge itself with Pepsastim, ‘The Most Sporty Beverage in the Galaxy, or your Quarter back’. In moments it had returned to his waiting hand. He supped quietly, marvelling at the way the taste changed according to his moods. Right now, it had a warm, heady flavour, that sent a relaxing buzz through his body.

  It was quiet, very quiet. He savoured the silence, enjoying the lapping of water on the shoreline. Since he bought the planet, the Magus had been alone, partly due to his reclusive nature, but mainly due to the defence zone in the sky. It was months since he had a visitor. “Not too surprising, really,” he said to himself, “when you consider that the zone keeps everything away...” He grimaced. “Except for those dreadful 'thought' travellers.”

  The drink in his hand took on a slightly bitter taste as he recalled the memory of his last visitor, “That horny blonde with the scanty outfit. I wouldn’t have minded if it was only my body she was after.” A projection unit popped out of the ice-cream stall in front of him, as he telepathically transmitted a command to the system, instructing it to refresh his memory.

  The sky darkened and a hundred-metre high hologram of the event of their meeting was displayed on the beach in front of him. The Magus liked beaches. The planet was nearly all beaches, having been designed by a previous owner with much the same ideas as he. Those bits that were not beach were tracts of calm blue water, precisely wide enough, so that one could not quite see to the beach on the other side, making adventures in rubber lie-l
ows more interesting. The former owner had apparently picked up the idea while staying, disguised as a rather strange mime artist, in a place known as ‘Sartha-Frans’ on that planet where the Magus had created the organic computer. His predecessor had redesigned the topology of the northern hemisphere, and had filled most of that part of the planet with artificial pleasure cruisers, hot-dog stalls, ice-cream vans and lighthouses. Being conservation-minded however, he had isolated the southern hemisphere using a ring of angry sea round the equator, and left it to the indigenous creatures, the main species being the hexacat, a six legged feline, of which the sole objective in life appeared to be rubbing against things and then dribbling on them.

  The Magus had a thing about cats, so he lived in the north, preferring not to get all his enigmatic black outfits covered with fur. “It kind of lessens the effect,” he mused. “Visualise… Galaxy needs saving… enter masked man, all in black… ‘I’m here to liberate you from the evil grip of the grand-master, Frenool,’ he shouts, and then pauses for effect.”

  There is a slight imaginary tittering from the oppressed masses. “How can you liberate us downtrodden proletariat? You can’t even liberate that fur from your sad outfit…”

  “See what I mean?”

  There was no reply, as the Magus was still alone. He shrugged. “I would go mad if I stopped talking to myself.”

  He watched the recorded presentation, as a large silver cylinder materialised in a bed of unspecified thorny flowers on his beach. A hatch slid open, and the Magus relived the same feelings of shock and delight as if the event was actually in progress. His drink fizzed on his tongue, as the beautiful girl who emerged smiled, held out her hand in greeting and said, “Hello, I am Kara-Tay; you must be the Magus. Pleased to meet you, Your Honour.”

  The Magus’s mixed feelings gave way to annoyance, as he realised that his ‘perfect’ defence systems could be penetrated by someone as obviously harmless as the vision of perfection now standing before him. He leaped to his feet. “But, how did you get through the force-field?” he heard himself asking.

  “Oh.” She dismissed it with a casual gesture of her hand. “Physical barriers do not exist for the new generation of 'thought' machines, and you would be advised to remember it. I simply reversed in time to when the force-field wasn't there, emerged below it and then moved forward in time again, back to the present. Easy.” Her tone appeared vaguely condescending, and the Magus started to feel a little foolish. He had not spent all that on money a system for perfect isolation, only to be patronised on his own beach.

  He reacted in his normal way, oddly not realising that it was one of the main contributions to his virginity retention problem. “Well, you slapper, you can rightly think your way back off my planet. This is private property!”

  Her manner became more ingratiating. “Look, I’m sorry to disturb you, but things are in a bit of a mess, and we could do with your assistance to rectify some tricky issues.”

  “Help? What help could I give you? What help would I want to give you? Why can’t ‘things’ look after themselves?”

  “It appears that the future rather hinges on organic computers, and you, surprising though it may seem, are the foremost expert on the same, having created the first, and currently most advanced, sentient unit.”

  “And if I help, what’s in it for me?” He eyed her body slowly, from head to toe, his implication being painfully obvious. “Have you been playing soccer?”

  “You like the outfit? I saw it in one of a mate’s dreams, so thought I’d try it.”

  “Very nice. I’d love a game with you sometime... although rugby would be more fun.”

  “Yes,” she said, after a slight pause, “when your job is successfully completed, my body and everything else will be at your disposal.”

  The presentation paused, and added something it had picked up in her mind. The Magus of course had not noticed it at the time; subtitles appeared in a thought bubble over her head, “In your dreams, Oilflig face.”

  In the present, the Magus snorted, and his drink tasted like warm lager, when it’s really gone off. He spat it out.

  “And a down payment, to demonstrate your good faith?” The Magus in the projection licked its lips, and caressed her bare arm.

  She pulled away. “When you do something to deserve it.”

  Suspicion crossed the projection’s mind as his rudimentary powers of telepathy caught a faint trace of deceit emanating from her. Another bubble appeared, this time over the Magus’s head, and said, ‘??*!’ as the systems did their best to translate. “What about a token gesture to motivate me into helping?”

  She nodded. “I'll share something with you. I did hear a rumour that the Galactic Consortium were on their way here to pay you a visit. You should come with me, before they find you.”

  “What are you on about? This planet is completely hidden from conventional detection systems.”

  “Yes, er, I suppose it was, until I fed your co-ordinates into their main data store. Apparently the place belongs to them.”

  “But, I bought it fair and square, with cash, catering and fracking rights.”

  “Yes,” mused Kara. “Apparently there was a legal loophole. The Consortium attorneys, who incidentally wrote a Wonkypedia entry about lawyer-free property purchase, had deliberately missed a bit. Everything they have sold in the past is apparently still theirs.”

  “The bastards.”

  “Any good brief would have found that out.”

  “That stupid organic didn’t use one. It did it all by itself.”

  “I know, I checked.”

  “You bitch!”

  Kara looked smug. “Would you care to come aboard? I’m about to leave on a cornucopia of reconnaissance.”

  The Magus pushed his face right into hers. The sweet scent of her breath almost shook his resolve, but that close up, he could only see her eyes, and the steely grey reflection of his own face. He recovered.

  “Why don’t you sod off?” he said nastily. “Even if the Consortium does find me, my defences are far in advance of anything that they have to penetrate it, in any time period. They can do nothing.”

  “So you don’t intend to help?” Kara held his gaze.

  “Go and fight your own battles.”

  “As you wish.” The girl shrugged, with the air of one who knows more than they are prepared to let on. “You are sure?”

  The Magus made obscene gestures with his hands.

  Kara gave a haughty toss of her head, and glided back into the cylinder. She stopped and gave a pitying look at him. “By the way, I picked this up for you on the way over. I don’t suppose I will get any thanks, though. Your stupid defence arrangement stop the mail getting through, too.”

  “I wondered why they kept leaving it behind the dustbins on the third moon.”

  “It’s here now.” She dumped a large carton labelled ‘Sucrose 100%’ on to the beach. The hatch closed, and the cylinder vanished. The camera panned round to the Magus examining the wreckage of his flowerbed.

  The image disappeared as the Magus deactivated the system. “Of course, she was winding me up. I had as much chance with her as anyone.” He looked wistfully at the deserted beach. “Maybe I could do with some company. I’ll get Ruddles to buy some bunny girls for me… but the Consortium… I’d like to see them try to take this place back.” He took another sip of Pepsastim. His drink adopted a defiant tang, and then, almost as though in answer to his challenge, there was a loud fizz and a crackle of static from the defence zone. A sleek red battle-spaceship of the Galactic Consortium poked its nose into his sky. The Magus fell off his chair in disbelief. It took him a few seconds to realise the implications, and then he rushed to a nearby hot-dog stall.

  Using the console hidden under the ketchup reservoir, he transmitted a command to his control systems to fortify the defensive zone. The power boosted, and the spaceship split neatly in two at the barrier. The severed nose-cone p
lummeted towards the sea, burning up brightly in the heavy atmosphere.

  “Hah!” The Magus called out loud into the communicator. “Ruddles, what’s wrong with the defence zone?”

  “I am losing power,” the systems responded weakly from behind the tea urn, “I have become gassy. That last consignment of sucrose was contaminated with antiseptic. I'm not sure how long I can continue.”

  On the Magus’ tongue, the Pepsastim tasted very worrying.

  He leaned over to the urn and poured a test sample of the organic computer's liquid. “Ugh!” He spat it out. “It tastes like Root-Beer. What’s going on?”

  “Perhaps you should check that sucrose delivery note,” said the system.

  “I thought I’d dumped it.”

  “Try the litter bin over there, the one with the holographic wasps. You forgot to organise anyone to empty it.”

  “Let’s see what that traveller left for me.”

  The Magus pulled out the empty parcel. It was gently biodegrading, and giving off a faintly perfumed pink gas. Before the package dissolved completely, he registered the name of the supplier, JWS Universal.

  The main defence system gave several loud burps, and the defence zone collapsed completely. The Magus watched helplessly as eleven red spacecraft descended in a cloud of smoke and noise, and settled in formation on his beach. Red uniformed troopers disembarked from the first one. They marched efficiently up the beach, and surrounded the Magus. A disturbing array of firepower seemed to be directed towards his head.

  “This is private property!” the Magus said, in a tone that implied he had some horribly dangerous weapon ready to blast the intruders from the face of the planet.

  “You will come with us,” said the leader, in a tone that implied that his military training had programmed him to disbelieve any warnings associated with horribly dangerous weapons, apart from those his troops carried.

  “You asked for it then.” The Magus attempted to carry out his threat, by manually operating the land-based defence systems from a remote control in the mustard dispenser. Jets of lethal fire and cellular disintegrating nerve gas entirely failed to appear in any form, and therefore had no effect on the invaders.