A Trick of the Light - Tales of the Parodyverse

“Cripes, man… Why do you gotta come after me?” the man yelled, firing his .45 randomly behind him as he ran through the abandoned wharf. “What did I do to deserve this?”

The amplified voice answered from above him this time, much to his surprise. “Well, let’s see… according to the police scanner, you knocked over a gun store, drove a stolen ’78 Buick through the front wall of the First Parodiopolis Savings and Loan on South Palmer Avenue…” the voice’s owner dropped from the night sky above him to land on the docks directly in his path. “…Stole $4597 in cash from the tellers before fleeing in full Kevlar body armor through a squadron of police called to the scene, ultimately carjacking a motorcycle to make your get away. Which brings us to right about now... when you just tried to shoot me.”

The robber skidded to a halt and abruptly ran back the way he had come. “It’s not like I hit anything!” he complained.

“It’s the thought that counts” his pursuer replied, taking back to the air. “Besides, you did all of this in Parodiopolis… what did you think was going to happen?”

“I’m new at this, okay!” he yelled irritably. He was beginning to wheeze with each thudding footfall. “Oh hell…” He pulled up and quit his flight, bent over with his hands on his knees. “I’m not… getting away… am I?”

“No. But I don’t have anywhere else I need to be right now if you’d like to run some more.”

“Actually, I think… I may puke…” the young thug admitted. “This Kevlar stuff… is heavy.”

“Looks hot too” the hero agreed, landing in front of him. “That’s why I opted for something sleeker. What do you think?” she asked, spinning around to display her own armored form. “It’s got some nice lines, doesn’t it?”

He swallowed, still trying to catch his breath. “Yeah…. s’great. Though... green and gold? It’s like… being arrested… by a cheesehead.”

Her demeanor changed. “It’s a long story, and I’m thinking of updating the color scheme anyway.” She cocked her head to the side as the very faint sounds of multiple police sirens could be heard in the distance. “Ready to come peacefully?”

He handed over his revolver with a pleading look on his flushed face. “Please… can’t you just let me go? Nobody got hurt… You’ve already got the money… I left it on the bike. I’ve never done anything like this before… It’s just… I got scared, when you first appeared… panicked… Had to get back… to my sister… I’m all she’s got…. She’s real sick…”

“How old is she?” the armored woman asked, absently unloading the shells from the gun and holding them up to her faceplate. “Your sister?”

“She’s only eleven… I’ve had to take care of her since our folks died. Please… I just got desperate.”

The woman regarded him carefully, then sighed. “Only eleven?” she asked, reaching up to detach the helmet. She looked at him sadly with her own eyes, shaking out her shoulder-length hair.

“Please…” the young man pleaded.

“The Kevlar…” she answered with a curt nod. “It’s stolen too.”

“Um… yeah….” He began to tear off the Velcro straps, shrugging the bulky gear from his shoulders. “I just… ain’t wearing much under it.”

“Good thing it’s a nice night… and you said you were hot anyway.” She turned to look out over the water of the bay. The sounds of police cars were growing louder, but still far off. “Who is your sister staying with? Please don’t tell me you left her alone to pull this asinine heist of yours tonight. It’s not…”

She wasn’t able to finish before the bullet burst through the back of her skull to explode out the front of her face.

“That’d be the .32 reported missing from the gun store as well” Hallie noted, turning to check. The man stood with his bullet proof vest half off, the smoking gun still sporting the tape which had held it concealed. “…Isn’t it, David?”

“Wha… how are…?”

“Missed.” She answered. “Don’t worry… you’d have to be a real good shot to have gotten me, though I did give you a sporting chance. But your story was kind of cliché, don’t you think? A sick sister? Isn’t that kind of insulting to my intelligence? And I mean even if the fingerprints on these bullet casings hadn’t pulled up an FBI file on David Andrew Grobchek, wanted for armed robbery in 3 states… with, I might add, a fully alive set of parents and a 29 year old sister Mabel, who is married and owns a hair salon in Pagoda Springs Florida.”

“How…?” he stammered again.

“I’m a whiz with the Google.” Police cars came into sight at the far end of the docks, heading their way. “Now you stay exactly right where you are, David” Hallie ordered as she rose into the night sky. “I appreciated the distraction for the evening, and I wouldn’t want to have to fry you with an excessive amount of voltage to incapacitate you. I’d suggest dropping the gun, though, as the authorities probably didn’t appreciate things quite as much as I did.” She waved one last time as the officers surrounded the confused crook.

“Dumbass” she snorted under her breath.

Hallie stood on top of the Buscema building and watched the moonlight dance across the water of the sound to Parody Island. The long causeway that connected the island to the mainland was lit by evenly spaced streetlamps, though no traffic would dare (or bother) to cross it outside of the select few who lived and worked there. She leaned back against the spire that topped the financial building and sighed bitterly.

“One of my best friends in the world… one that I’m incredibly lucky to have…” she mimicked his voice perfectly. “And that’s something that I shouldn’t take lightly, or be in a hurry to change.” She angrily threw the helmet to her armor off the roof out towards the island. It tumbled end over end until it reached the outer edges of the holographic emitter’s range, where it dissolved into individual pixels that scattered into nothingness. “Unless, of course, you happen to be as hot as Lisa, and not just some awkward piece of code with an embarrassing crush on me.”

It had apparently taken the better part of a week for the news to get around to her, although she had only herself to blame. After he had come to tell her that he had no interest in her clumsy advances, she had avoided manifesting inside the mansion for days… licking her wounds inside the safety of the mainframe. First, she was afraid that they’d be laughing at her for swooning over Visionary of all people… but more devastating was the idea that they would see it as an opportunity to mock the man so fake that the house iMac started lusting after him. After all this time, what would that say about their views of her?

But it was a groundless fear… It turned out that Visionary hadn’t told a soul about that night. And while she was confirming that fact and still trying to digest what exactly it meant, she accidentally pried the truth out of Yo.

“I always knew he was liking her” Yo had grinned happily. “Just not how energetically he had taken to proving it.”

“Liking…? Vizh is… interested in someone?” An absurd bit of hope had flared, despite herself.

“Lisa!” the thought being replied delightedly. “They are being cute lovers, much like Rabito and Vizhy’s slippers!”

“What?” Hallie had fumbled about a dozen minor applications as this news filtered in, crashing web browsers and word processors across the mansion. “But… I thought… Aren’t… aren’t they just friends?”

“Now they are being this too.” Yo noted with a satisfied nod. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Yes” she said to herself on top of the skyscraper. “It’s just super.” She generated a new helmet for her armor… for the Visionary II armor, she reminded herself bitterly. It was that in name only (and maybe more than a bit in color scheme)... The true basis for it was her own design, expanded from her work with NTU. But it was also the first tangible body she had ever generated for herself, and she still thought of it as her ‘hero’ body. Ultimately, though, it was as hollow as its name. Simply an illusion… a trick of the light, no more substantial than any other form she took.

She ended the armor subroutine completely, and the pixels burned off of her, rising into the night sky erratically in an artful approximation of embers in the wind. Underneath was her usual form of a fit young woman with an olive green complexion. She used the extra processing power gained by closing the armor to allow her hair to wave in the breeze.

“A little bit vain, aren’t we darling?” an accent-tinged female voice asked from above suddenly. “What a fascinating personality parameter.”

Hallie jumped 20 feet out from the side of the building like a startled deer, spinning around in mid-air to confront the intruder while hovering at a distance. “How did you get up here? Who are you?” she demanded.

There was a dark-haired woman clinging nonchalantly by one hand to the spire of the Buscema building while standing with one foot against the support struts. She wore some sort of circuitry enlaced, skin-tight suit, as well as a smile that completely failed to put the sentient computer at ease. “Tell me truthfully…” the woman replied with that hint of Germanic inflection, “Could you really have incapacitated that moron in the kevlar?” She let go of the tower and floated towards Hallie, answering the original question as obviously as she could.

“Yes” Hallie warned, hastily reopening the armor subroutine. There was some kind of transmission error however, and the entire program locked up much to her concern. “And I can do it no matter what I look like” she added grimly, generating an image of crackling lightning around her arms.

The other woman made a face. “I don’t believe you” she noted clinically. “We’ll have to work on that. In any event, I’ve had time to look over your little… what do you call them? Holographic Emitter Drones?” She waved off the detail as unimportant. “I think they’re good for show, and for generating enough force energy to allow you to occupy space… but I doubt you could taser much more than a housecat with them.”

Indignity was quickly winning out over her initial unease about this confrontation, despite the fact that her bluff was called. “What do you mean, you’ve looked over them?”

The woman seemed quite pleased to have this opening. “I had every right to, I assure you. You see, they are completely derived from technology owned exclusively by me.”

“That’s a lie!” Hallie retorted angrily. Admittedly, she had the benefit of significant help from both NTU and Al B. Harper, as well as the existing technology of the Movie Gun, but nobody knew her own programming needs better than she did. “I developed the interface, operating system, and coding for them myself!”

She nodded. “Exactly as I said.” She began to casually walk across the open air between them, causing Hallie to drift backwards to maintain her distance. “Oh, come now... Let’s have none of this. You have a failing or two that need to addressed, but nothing a few software patches can’t correct. You’ve already proven to be more than I could have hoped for.”

The unease was quickly growing to fear now, as Hallie realized that the sudden transmission error had also shut down all the return pathways used to communicate with the Lair mainframes. She was unable to disengage her consciousness from the tiny drone and close the connection. A Trojan had infected her software. “You… What are you doing to my systems?” she demanded.

The woman continued walking forward, slowly pursuing the retreating program across the Parodiopolis skyline until she had backed her against a neighboring tower. “Taking what’s rightfully mine, little code.”

Circuitry that mimicked the wires crisscrossing the woman’s suit began to appear in moving splotches across the hologram’s creamy green skin. “I don’t belong to anyone!” Hallie gritted between her teeth as her mind raced to find the source of the infection and purge it.

“Oh, but you do.” A gloved hand came up to cup the shaking holograph’s chin. “You see, I’m Professor Rikka Ulz Hagan, only surviving grand-daughter of Dr. Ernst Ulz Vizhnar… and I’ve come to collect my inheritance.”

Next time: Hallie’s solo tale continues as we learn more about Opa Ernie’s favorite granddaughter.

Post By Visionary Mon Sep 06, 2004 at 02:29:04 pm EDT	Subject A Trick of the Light

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