The Moderator Saga #23: Check Again
Previous Chapters
***
“What are you lookin’ at, Spoon?” demanded Bill Reed, the Crimson Lawnmover. His psychic blades slashed a little faster, as they always did when the sadistic doctor was grinning at him.
“I’m looking at nothing,” Dr Spoon replied with absolute precision of words. “I’m just planning what I’m going to do to you and the others when the Moderator turns you all over to me for failing in your tasks.”
“It wasn’t our fault,” the Link quailed. “There was some kind of time-forcefield around that old fire station that even the Shoggoth said couldn’t be broken down. And it was the Dominator who let CalmSereneFlunkyBoy get away. And nobody knows how Flapjack escaped.”
“I know,” Dr Spoon answered. “You left the hunchback with a teaspoon which he subsequently used to spring his fetters. The cutlery told me.”
/Do you think the master will be very very angry?/ worried Sigmund the Superlative Simulacrum. He glanced over at the pelts of Rocket Rabbit and Semi-Transparent Lass displayed on the wall of the Lair Tower Operations Room. Both had been part of the Moderator’s time-hopping group before they’d screwed up. /I hope my skin gets hung next to yours, Miss Link/
“Hey, I’ve been with the boss almost from the start,” the Lawnmower reasoned. “He wouldn’t do something like that to me… Would he?”
Dr Whitwell had once been a well-adjusted kindly surgeon before his world had been shattered. Now he lived only to inflict pain with his Agony Spoons. “Heroes running all over the place, disrupting plans for the final victory, absconding with gestalt bioweapons, breaking into secure storage and plundering the trophies, slipping away on alien space craft? How angry do you think he’ll be?”
The Moderator burst into the room laughing maniacally. “Good morning, everybody. And how’s my team? Wonderful. Wonderful.” He strode through the room and into his private office.
“Um…?” ventured the Link. “What just happened?”
***
The Moderator sat down at the chessboard and moved his King’s Bishop to King’s Knight Six. “Check,” he declared.
“But not mate,” replied the Chronicler of Stories, sitting on the other side of the board, studying the pieces.
“Not yet. Seven moves time maximum,” the Moderator predicted. “You’ve made a serious error.”
“Are we still talking about the chess game?” the Chronicler wondered.
“You wagered unwisely,” the reality raiding world-conqueror chuckled. “You thought I was a fool, an easy mark. I’m not.”
“The wager’s still on,” the Chronicler replied. “Nothing’s decided yet.”
The Moderator sat back and smirked. “Let’s review, shall we. In order to prevent a cosmic battle that would ravage whole dimensions, you and I agreed to resolve our conflicting claims of controlling events through a simple test on this version of Parody Earth. If I could seize command of this planet and remain in control for a period of one month then you and the others of the Triumvirate would resign your offices, cede your power to me, and slink away never to be heard of again.”
“Your month’s not up yet.”
“But it will be in two days time,” the Moderator pointed out.
“But the heroes have given you the slip. Again.”
The Moderator placed his palms against the sides of his face mockingly. “Oh no. Whatever shall I do?” His mood switched. “I know. I’ll let that pathetic hunchback escape from my tower. He’ll show me where the weak links amongst my personnel are. I’ll allow one or two of the former Lair Legion to become heroes again, to flush out the remaining power-bases that still oppose me, to be a rallying point for whatever resources the resistance still possess - like giant alien spaceships and time-meddling pocketwatches. I’ll make a few slips, seem to be struggling, commit some atrocities, encourage the uprising. That’s what I’ll do.”
The Chronicler was still studying the board. “You can try and position the opposition’s pieces, but it doesn’t always work.” He swept his queen across the board and sacrificed her to remove the offending bishop.
“Am I supposed to fall into a trap now, when unexpected help arrives from unsuspected places?” scorned the Moderator. “Am I not supposed to know about Sir Mumphrey Wilton clinging to the ghost of the world that was, hoping against hope that someone on this side of reality can restore it before he runs out of chronal energy and all hope of restoration is lost?”
The Chronicler kept his poker face.
“Am I not supposed to know about the elementalist girl and Faite’s latest toy hiding out with their menagerie of misfits in their hidden pocket dimension? Am I supposed to be unaware of the peanut gallery of random teenage freaks popping in and out of the plotline? Was that what the forces of regression were hoping for, Mister Burch?”
The Moderator ignored the offered queen and shifted his rook to take the dark knight.
“Sometimes the best traps are the ones that you know are there,” the Chronicler answered, moving his queen to claim a rook. “But they can still catch you. It’s one thing to know that your enemies are gathering. It’s another to find them and stop them from bringing about your overthrow.”
“Oh, I know where they are,” the Moderator replied. “And what they are. All of them. Flapjack escaped, but he’s got Killer Flea hiding out in his clothing, transmitting on a subspace channel invented by the late, great NTU-172. Quite undetectable. Flea will lead us right to them, as soon as they’re all assembled. And I have other agents in their camp too. One with the little Chinese girl, one amongst our brave outcast rebels. Back-ups and contingencies. Who says I learned nothing from my encounter with the late Hooded Hood?” He shifted the white queen to capture the other black knight. “Check.”
The Chronicler was slightly horrified that the Moderator had such good intelligence. He tried not to show it. “You seem very confident in your information sources,” he noted. “I’m sure I’m about to find out what my great mistake was.”
“Your great mistake?” The Moderator snorted. “Apart from opposing me? Your great mistake was in trusting too much. Everything you know your Triumvirate colleagues know. What a shame that your new Shaper of Worlds decided to align herself with me.”
The mask slipped. “Symmetry told you all this? Betrayed this information to you?”
“She’s an ambitious being, Chronicler. She’ll retain her power and gain more when our wager is concluded.” The Moderator pointed to the board. “Are you ready to resign now?”
The Chronicler of Stories moved his own queen to capture the Moderator’s queen. The Moderator took the black queen in exchange with a simple pawn.
Two light years from Earth, the warp core shielding inside Gamma Ray Gary’s massive interstellar spaceship was deleted from existence. Less than two seconds later the vessel blossomed with nuclear fire and was gone.
“It’s all just a matter of taking the right pieces away at the right time,” noted the Moderator. “I trust the resourceful survivors will find their way back to Earth for the grand meeting. It’ll be much more satisfying that way.”
The Chronicler surveyed the chessboard. The pieces were getting thin, and they were getting corned. “What about you then?” he challenged the Moderator. “Have you actually decided on a long-range goal yet? Any motivations? A back-story? Anything to make you memorable other than the power to cut things out of existence if you don’t like them? Only the Parodyverse has a long list of would-be rulers and after a while all but the very memorable ones blur together.” He moved his king to avoid an otherwise inevitable attack from the Moderator’s knight.
“I’m pacing myself,” replied the villain. “A time for every exposition under heaven. Perhaps when the last of my enemies grovels helplessly before me in chains, begging for me to kill them, then the revelation will come.” He pushed a pawn forward to command the middle of the board.
In Argos City, Search Engineer gestured and security troopers kicked in the door of a modest apartment. “Kat Gillespie, you are under arrest for treason, for promotion of terrorism, for sedition, and for conspiracy against the state. Congratulations. You’re going to be the big attraction at a state execution day after tomorrow.”
“Life isn’t a chess game,” the Chronicler said. “There are no pawns. Only people.” He shifted his king again, a final defensive manoeuvre.
“That’s the kind of thinking that makes you the loser and me the winner,” the Moderator pointed out. “It’s why two days from now you will hand me the power to make permanent this reality that the Hooded Hood sent me to as his little joke. Then we’ll see who has the last laugh, shall we?”
“The Lair Legion and Earth’s other heroes have fought more desperate actions against more dangerous things than you,” the keeper of the continuities declared. “Find them, attack them, they’ll still find ways to triumph.”
The Moderator considered this. “Did I mention that they stole my Harper/Framlicker hybrid?” he asked. “Mostly Harper and Framlicker anyway. I incorporated some data processing from the Librarian and some brain interface technology from Yuki Shiro. And of course, I laced the body with the Venom symbiote, waiting for the moment I choose to trigger it. And implanted a transnuclear bomb in its chest cavity.” He looked up at the Chronicler and flashed another smile. “And I wonder what dear little Salieri will do now that dear old Mrs Meng his mother is in my custody, being shipped over to Dr Spoon? Oh, and I contacted a being called Nyalurkhoptep about taking that Shoggoth off my hands. He’s possessing Whitney Darkness right now and coming to deal with that clever little snotball.”
“I… I see,” swallowed the Chronicler.
“But don’t worry. I’m sure the heroes will find ways to triumph,” the Moderator comforted him. He shifted his rook again and looked over at the Chronicler in triumph. “Checkmate.”
***
Continued…
***
Previously:
The Moderator Saga #1 by Hatman
The Moderator Saga #2: Minions for the Moderator by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #3: Captured is the Carpathian! by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #4: Interview With the Archvillain by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #5: Lord and Master of All He Surveyed by various posters
The Moderator Saga #6: Mouse and Ming by Hatman
The Moderator Saga, oh let’s say #7 by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #8: One More Day by CrazySugarFreakBoy!
The Moderator Saga #9: Let’s Be Bad Guys by CrazySugarFreakBoy!
The Moderator Saga #10: With his Hands Tied Behind His Back by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #11: The Moderator Strikes Back by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #12: Acting On a Hunch by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #13: Something Nasty in the Cellar by the Manga Shoggoth
The Moderator Saga #14: My Little The Moderator Tie-In and More Tie-In by L!
The Moderator Saga #15: New Players by Hatman
The Moderator Saga #16: Meanwhile… by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #17: Outlaws of the New Law by Jason
The Moderator Saga #18: The Impossible Win by CrazySugarFreakboy!
The Moderator Saga Part… What 19? by Visionary
The Moderator Saga #20: Visiting Time by the Manga Shoggoth
The Moderator Saga #21: Armed and Dangerous by CrazySugarFreakboy!
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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Post By
The Hooded Hood felt that things were going far too well
Sun Jan 27, 2008 at
08:14:45 am EST
In Reply To
CrazySugarFreakBoy!
Sat Jan 26, 2008 at
09:37:36 pm EST
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