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#2
FEB 08 |
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“Where & Why”
Bill Tockman, hardly a stranger to physical injury, had never had the resort to the use of crutches as a form of forward travel. Throughout the course of his long, semi-unsuccessful criminal career, he had been hurt numerous times. Most of those injuries had come at the hands of Green Arrow and his young sidekick, resulting usually in trauma to the midsection after being smacked by a boxing glove arrow. Multiple confrontations with do-good superheroes and no major injuries; it took an escape from prison and a run-in with a maniac criminal jailer to plant him on the disabled list with a broken ankle.
Tockman did not question why Robby Reed had the crutches so conveniently available. He had too many other questions to ask that they would not line up properly within his brain for him to coherently ask them. The last five minutes and sixteen seconds were completely different than the previous fourteen months, nine days, six hours and twenty-two seconds that Tockman was having trouble taking it all in.
“This place used to be called ‘Bunny’ before we got our hands on it,” Reed explained as he led the slow moving Tockman down a mammothian corridor of impossible architecture. Lining the walls were millions of colored lights and microcircuitry, leading Tockman to believe he was within the world’s largest computer. It seemed so large that the silly idea of the world being this computer was not out of the realm of possibility. “It’s a semi-sentient bacteria colony that used to be the home of the Elite, Manchester Black’s big bad force of inhuman nature.”
“I heard about them,” Tockman replied, although he was not sure of any details. A fight between them and Superman broadcast throughout the entire world, perhaps?
“Everybody’s heard of them,” Reed smiled as he continued walking, pacing himself properly so as to not rush along his injured company. “Haven’t heard from them since we got to them, have you?”
Clock King thought for a moment. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, almost impatient. “Who is this ‘we’ you keep mentioning? Looks like I’m the only one here with you.”
Reed stopped for a long moment and put his hand in his pocket. The motion led Tockman to believe that Reed’s coat was too small for him. “This place is miles big, Bill,” Reed said as he fished around in his pocket, finding nothing and pulled his hand out. “Some of us are here, some of us are doing other things elsewhere. I haven’t seen some of the guys in weeks.”
“Why am I here?” Tockman finally asked.
“Ah, you finally asked,” Reed grinned as he put his hand back into his pocket and resumed walking. After a minute of not answering the question, they reached something that was not a door until they reached it. The new door opened and Reed entered.
“Well?” Tockman asked as he maneuvered the crutches as best as he could.
Reed gestured for Tockman to enter the room and disappeared into the darkened room. As Tockman entered, Reed clapped his hands twice and the lights burst into illumination. The lights worked off of the Clapper. Weird.
The room was uncharacteristically small within a place like this, filled with a sole gurney wrapped in a medical sheet. Above it dangled a cheap looking 1950’s science fiction looking ray cannon, pointing its bulbous tip directly at the gurney below it. It definitely did not look operational, more like a silly prop.
“Lay on the gurney, Bill,” Reed said as he stood next to it. “I’ll explain while you heal.”
Tockman looked with doubt at the machinery, shook his head and declined the invitation. “You’ll have to start talking now,” he demanded. “I’m not sticking anything under that hunk of crap until you tell me what’s going on.”
Reed stuck his thumb toward the gurney, smiling impatiently. “Get on the gurney.”
“You have twenty seconds,” Tockman declared.
“Get on the gurney,” was Reed’s only reply.
As per his demand, Tockman waited the exact twenty seconds before turning from the room and exiting angrily. “Screw you, Reed,” he spat. “I’ve sat through nine minutes and forty-nine seconds too much of your bologna. Get me the hell back to my cell, I’m through listening to your ignorant non-explanation.”
As he exited the room, he was cut off by Robby Reed in the hallway, appearing without moving, preventing Tockman from moving further. Tockman stumbled on his crutches and almost fell forward.
“Sorry to do this, Clock King,” Reed said as he raised his hand from his pocket. Tockman saw for the first time that Reed was missing the ring finger from his right hand and the distraction from that realization prevented him from defending himself from Reed’s lightning quick attack. Reed’s hand moved faster than visually comprehensible, striking Tockman in the throat. Tockman gurgled momentarily before losing consciousness, tumbling to the floor as his crutches clanged and echoed throughout the cavernous corridor.
4:14:00
The smiley face was winking at him as he sat on the checkered folding chair, overlooking the white sands and the beautiful expanse of crystal clean blue ocean. The winking smiley rolled fluidly across the smooth sands until it exploded in a barrage of fire and meat, covering him in smoldering beef tips
4:14:24
He was no horticulturalist but he could recognize the flower that bloomed from the sandy beach even as he cleaned the burned meat from his Bermuda shorts. The lovely orchid unfolded and bloomed before his eyes, its purple petals spewing a black gunk from its stigma. Although he never expected it to speak, he was mildly surprised that it did not.
4:15:09
A tiny red remote control car rolled from beneath his chair, shocking him from his fixation with the orchid. He pulled his feet up to his chest, surprised by its sudden presence. The car did three donuts on the beach, sputtering sand into his face as he watched in growing delight. After it beeped a humorous tone, the car sped into the sea.
4:15:47
A fish flopped from the tide wearing a red robe and walking on a pair of little orange humanoid feet. It wore a crown of seaweed and carried a staff made of an eel skeleton. It tried walking on its awkward feet but kept falling over. It was slightly humorous but mostly pathetic.
4:16:23
It was dark outside suddenly, the only illumination came from a scintillating spheroid that hovered across the beach. It talked in a gibberish alien dialect, a hundred voices all at once. It tried to tell him an infinite number of universal secrets but his brain could not take in the exhaustive amount of information, let alone understand the foreign tongues.
4:16:51
He reached for his Corona, he was on the beach of course, you’ve seen the commercials, and saw that it was two yards away somehow. Yet, his arm reached for it, growing from the socket to cover the impossible distance to grab it carefully. This was strange to him, the strangest thing he had yet seen.
4:17:12
The fire started suddenly, he was aware of it immediately and he was warmed by the soothing flame instantly. It was close to him and did not harm him but he knew that if it wanted to, it could slice him in two with the blade of its searing heat. Upon investigating it from the warm safety of his folding chair, he saw that the fire originated not from a pile of wood or logs, but from a pile of burning swords.
4:17:00
Incessant laughter erupted from down the beach, its origin unknown. It was the crazed laughter of insanity not normally heard in comedy clubs or in the theatre during a wacky comedy. This was the laughter of a maniac. It began as a woman, turned into masculine laughter then back again, unsure of what it was supposed to be. It was slightly terrifying.
4:17:17
Someone had stolen his wallet although he did not see anyone and he had not risen from his chair. For a moment, he could not recall his own name, as if that had been stolen also. Someone had briefly taken his identity and absorbed it, making it his own before giving it, and his wallet, back to him.
4:17:40
Clock King sat in his comfortable folding chair, seeing everything anew through the slits of his clock-faced mask. Had he been a man who invested thought into his own dreams he would have known what was coming. Unfortunately, all he could think about was what happened to the first four minutes and fourteen seconds of his dream.
“What the hell was all of that,” Tockman stammered as he awoke with a jolt. He began to panic a little as he realized his disorientation but discovered he was strapped to the very gurney that he so recently had refused to mount. He was awake instantly and more than a tad angry.
Robby Reed turned from a control panel and smiled. “Finally awake, eh, Sunshine?” he smirked as he twisted a knob on the board. The silly prop mechanism that dangled from the ceiling blast a soundless yet brilliantly purple light onto Tockman’s injured leg.
“What was all that I just saw?” Tockman asked, trying to sort out the images that had manifested within his sleep. “And what the hell are you doing to me?”
“Amazon Purple Ray,” Reed said as he turned the knob further, increasing the intensity of the beam. “Almost instant healing. For the trip we’re going to be taking, you don’t need to be hobbling around on crutches.”
“You have an Amazon Purple Ray?” Tockman asked, not really caring through the serenity of the beams soothing invisible massage.
“This place has a frickin’ pegasus skeleton, Clock King,” Reed replied as the beam shut itself down, finished with the accelerated healing process. “Purple Rays grow on trees compared to real pegasus skeletons.”
Tockman seemed satisfied with that response but was silently eager to learn more of his whereabouts. The crazy dream sequence and the missing time within it had piqued his curiosity.
“Forty-three seconds and you’re only answered one of my questions,” Tockman said as he no longer felt the throbbing pain of his broken ankle. “You ever going to be straight with me or do I have to get strapped down and hit with an Amazon Answer Machine before I get any useful information out of this?”
“That’d be awesome if we had one of those,” Reed replied.
“Sixty-one seconds, Reed,” Tockman grew impatient.
“Fine,” he said as he began to unclasp Tockman’s restraints. “The images you received during your little nap is what I call a ‘cipher sequence.’ It’s how Bunny communicates with us. It’s not really a direct line of communication but a riddle you have to figure out along the way. It’s much more interesting than a standard briefing session. Information beyond regular means of absorption.”
“Doesn’t seem too efficient to me,” Tockman said as he stood from the gurney, fully healed and perhaps feeling better than he ever had. “Why waste almost four and a half minutes of my life showing me symbolic representations of things I should know instead of just telling me what I need to know?”
“It’s more fun this way,” Reed answered. “Don’t you think?”
“No. It’s not.”
Reed frowned a bit. “Well, then, every party needs a pooper, Clock King. I guess that’s why we invited you.”
Reed left the room, expecting Tockman to follow but would not have really been bothered if Tockman chose not to. Grabbing the pile of clothes and the clock faced mask, Tockman followed reluctantly.
“The Outsiders are a group of numerous individuals who work outside of the boundaries of contemporary rules of operations to prevent very bad things from happening,” Reed started. “We have over sixty operatives throughout existence, many of whom don’t even know they operate as an agent.”
“So you’re covert ops,” Tockman interrupted.
“Not exactly,” Reed continued. “When I said we work outside the boundaries, I really meant it.”
Reed and Tockman reached an enormous window that looked out into the infinite expanse beyond. The view did not make sense to normal sensory organs. The sight was outside the realm of description, moving shapes traveling at speeds immeasurable, stationary objects that perpetually transformed into non-stationary things while still remaining stationary. Weird stuff like that that can’t make sense.
“We’re in the space between realities,” Reed explained as Tockman awed at the sight on the other side of the window. “We operate literally outside of the universe.”
“Wow,” was all Tockman could muster.
“Yeah,” Reed grinned. “So now I suppose you want to know why we need you.”
“That would make me happy,” Tockman said as he stared into the bizarre sights.
“Believe me, it’s definitely not going to make you happy,” Reed said as he continued walking. “For this, we have a video presentation to show you.”
After several seconds of walking away from the window, Reed saw that Tockman was not following and went back to get him. Tockman had a bit of drool running from his lip as he could not pull himself away from the window.
Reed grabbed him by the arm and led him away, saving his sanity to be tested once again once Clock King learned the truth behind the reason for his recruitment.
Exactly Nine Years, Two Months, Three Days, Seventeen Hours, Fourteen Minutes and Nine Seconds Ago…
The letter had been placed in a secure location after it was confiscated from Tockman before he was placed into solitary confinement. The Master Jailer had no idea why it held such importance to the Clock King, but small details like that failed to really spark his curiosity. The Jailer was not a man to wonder, he had only thoughts of his occupation within his mind. Little personality showed through his full face mask and he rarely removed it for any reason. He did not even have a real name anymore.
Still, as he heard of Clock King’s second escape attempt today, this one successful and inexplicable, the Jailer knew that the letter held the key to the escapee’s recapture. He stood at the table with the letter still within the envelope and waited. It was only a matter of time before Clock King tried to steal it back and the Jailer had little else to do. He was kind of bored, very little excitement went around the prison on his watch.
As he stared at the sealed letter, never pondering its contents, he envisioned different ways in which to apprehend his target once the chance became available. It was rare that anyone ever got away from him, and he relished the idea of inventing something new to bring a criminal to justice. Usually, since he had very little capacity for creativity, he used his semi-sentient chain apparatuses to do the dirty work.
Never realizing that he was incapable of ingenuity, he lost in thought when his visitor arrived. Soundlessly and stealthily, the man appeared from nowhere. A dull white body ornamented with gauntlets and a headpiece of brilliant purple stood before the Master Jailer. Streams of spontaneously generated chain immediately shot from the Jailer’s torso in an attempt to incapacitate the visitor but the chains blurred ineffectually through the man’s intangible body.
“You will find your man if you come with me,” the strange man stated as the chains recoiled back into the Jailer’s body. “You have no choice in the matter, Master Jailer, for if the Clock King remains at large, how is it that you can call yourself a ‘master’ of anything?”
“Then I’ll go with you,” the Jailer replied. He had no argument to the statement.
“Of course you will,” the man said, a smile almost evident in the dull white facelessness in the front of his head. “As I said, you have no choice. You are to be my second-in-command. You already have been for six years, three months, one week, two days and thirty-nine minutes. You just haven’t started yet.”
“I don’t understand,” the Master Jailer admitted since the words had obviously not made any sense.
“Absolutely,” the visitor replied. “Get used to it. It happens a lot when you work for the Time Commander.”
“I’ve heard of you,” the Jailer said.
“No you haven’t, I assure you,” the Time Commander assured. “Shall we go?”
“Yes, the sooner the better,” the Jailer replied, ready for something new and challenging. “Clock King will be mine.”
“Grab the Clock King’s letter,” the Time Commander ordered before they left in a similar way as he arrived. “We’ll be needing that later.”
The Master Jailer grabbed the letter as they disappeared, never knowing that he would never return to this prison again. Never assuming that he was being played by a true master.
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To Be Continued...
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