Lawless Sign Part Eighteen (Fiction)

The Stunning Conclusion of 

Chapter 25: Beyond Step One 

“Everything you’ve seen from the moment you woke up is literally true. And you are entirely accountable for your actions, whatever it is you style yourself as. Perhaps I am wasting wind assuming that you are anything resembling a rational actor, but I will ask you to reflect for just the amount of time it might take you to ruin things further. Certainly your rampage deserves a bit of a pause, even insanity requiring a moment to feed itself. I ask you how much whatever theory you are operating under makes sense. Does it add up? There must be some coherence to those cobbled together parts of yours. Maybe you are the Space Police? If you are, then what’s the charge officer? Where’s your evidence?

“You have evidence that we are running a hospital. You have evidence that we are involved in a great industry reclaiming beings from a civilization lost to a disaster. You have evidence that we are lawful members of the establishment, bulwarks of the single most just civilization on this planet. What you do not have evidence of is that we would be involved in the wholesale slaughter of peoples on another planet. That we can even get to another planet is not in evidence, nor can you contrive a coherent notion to substantiate our motive for murder on any scale. If anything, the demonstration of your senses proves that we are a force powerful mostly in our restraint. We rule nothing! We seek to rule nothing! And there is no evidence that we seek to rule rubble!

“All of your memories are lies. There is no planet of the dog people for the massacre to have taken place on. Our contact with the stars has been limited exclusively to the unfortunates stored here in this library. It is these people whom we have spent the better portion of our fortune and precious time attempting to rehabilitate. That’s who we are. That’s what we do. That’s what you are out to destroy.

“What we do have is a sinister alien enemy, an undead spaceman who has declared the library contaminated and whose sole goal is its destruction and the destruction of all who chance upon it. From the moment we discovered this place it has done everything in its power to prevent our humanitarian efforts. But we have pressed on, despite its malice, despite the hideous casualties it has inflicted to us. Take whatever dim view you may have of our motives, but search your heart. Whose cause is just here, Captain of the Space Police?

“The only other space ship you’ve seen since you’ve been here is a simulacrum of your own vessel. The only technology truly alien to you has been wielded by our enemy—Joe Blow, Sulfur. Our technology is all quite familiar to you, as it should be. Whatever you think you are is wrong. You are from here, from this library. Forget your memories. Trust your senses. Search your heart.

“You have been cheated, poorly used. At best, our enemy has chanced on a victim with a mechanical memory and jammed it full of lies. At worst, he has gutted you, destroyed your mind and grafted in a stick brimming morose nonsense. Entertain the idea for just a moment, Captain. You’re only a single instant of clarity from freedom. Press on and you’re just a thing.”

“Nice!” I yelled to him. “Too bad Sparky confessed.”

I have to give Popeye credit where credit is due. He was much better at using telepathy than I will ever be. Moreover, he was doing this entirely flat footed. It hadn’t been a blink since Sparky and I had Zoom Tubed into his domain.

Popeye was the aspect of Cole I had first met in the library, the one with half a head. In truth, he was just a much a victim of Sparky’s crimes as the people of Tiamore were. He wasn’t born with half a head. He had sustained that injury on Tiamore. His continued existence was more an accident than anything else. Thanks to the outlaw matter in this room, he hadn’t expired. Once Sparky discovered Popeye didn’t have the ability to jump forms anymore (and couldn’t leave this room), he let Popeye live. Besides, Popeye’s body was useless.

I had gained an altitude of about twenty feet. Popeye was on his stage, in front of his giant televisions. Sparky, for his part, was making a head-long run for the hatch in the dried pool.

Sparky wasn’t moving so well. He kept changing direction and stumbling. This version of Cole may have been forty or so and did not seem to have a complete field of vision. Black splotches showed through his blue overalls. I wasn’t sure if Farmer Cole was confused, clumsy or disabled.

It wasn’t about the body. It was the magic smoke inside that was shot. Again, I didn’t know this.

If Popeye so much as twitched from his podium, I was going to let him have it. I wasn’t going to give him a chance to rig up one of his little tricks. I think he knew that, too. So far, he had remained stationary.

The two versions of Cole weren’t paying each other any mind. I’m not sure I would have put any effort in if I was Popeye, but it seems blood was thicker than water, at least with him. Popeye was attempting to be as useful as he could—and had made a game effort with nothing more than words.

Our appearance here had come as a surprise to the three of us. Sparky thought he was heading to the tower.  Claudia had indeed jammed him up. Other than the hospital, this was the only place where I could trap Sparky. That said, although this place was in scab space, there was no telling what sort of things Sparky had here.

Without missing a beat, Popeye continued “The confession is a fabrication—and one without logical impetus. Like yourself, Colonel Nasus has emerged from a tube, his mind chock full of nonsense implanted there by the enemy. Sadly, you are not the first of our patients to have been so hijacked by this fiend. Please, before you do something irreversible. Think in the moment.”

I knew he was reading my mind at that moment. My plan was set: I was going to do him in and then Sparky.

I might have bought what he said if Sulfur had ever demonstrated one iota of technical competence.

Just then, the hatch at the center of the pool lifted. Out came Claudia, dressed in her picker slave leather smock and a pair of my gauntlets. In her arms was the Thomson sub machinegun she had been murdered with.  She leveled it in the direction of the stumbling Farmer Cole and shouted “Mister Cole, I have your bonus!”

Flame and thunder spat from the weapon’s muzzle. Riddled, Farmer Cole spun to the ground. Black streams arced over Claudia and cascaded in a cluster behind her down the revealed hatch.

Sparky’s body shouted “Popeye! Popeye!”

The choice was to fire on Popeye or Sparky. I went for Sparky. The helmet weapon cracked and crushed him. Whatever was left in those overalls sizzled and then popped.

Popeye disappeared, reappeared, disappeared and then jumped on Claudia. One moment they were both wrestling for the gun, the next it was Popeye alone with the gun.

I gained some more altitude and leveled my arm at Popeye. Nothing fired. The baton was jammed. (It took Rover over two hours to get it out. Repairing the arm took a full week.) I shouted down “What did you do to her?”

From my perspective Popeye was moving like a zombie. He took two large steps backwards, away from the hatch. The gun fell from his hand. He said “It’s an odd military man who cannot sense victory. You command the field.”

“Where is she?”

“Where she’s always been. You have control of the complex. The Old Man has given you the keys to shutting us down. The rest of this violence you contemplate is for your own satisfaction.”

“Sticking with the snow job? Playing for time?”

“When he had time to play for, yes. At the moment, I am split between a drive for self preservation and the noble desire to not have a race enemy loose in our environment.”

“I spared the Old Man.”

“The single one of us we were united in getting rid of! Who do you think hired Nedor Services? Are you out to meddle in our politics further? We protect the Earth. We own the human race. We’re from here. You are an alien.—And I have news for you, Captain. Sparky didn’t start the fight. General Alcibibiades didn’t choose the battlefield, nor fire the first shot. It was a war of succession. All Sparky is guilty of is having won.“

I said “And the people of Tiamore just got in the way. You’re not making much of a case for sparing your lot.”

“You precious Countess was merely out to brainwash them. Climb off your high horse, Captain. If the portal had never been activated, our battle would have never spilled to Tiamore.”

Popeye could have been making all of this crap up. But to this moment I have nothing to refute any of his contentions. Cause for pause though it may have been, I was having none of it. I told him “Back away from the hatch and keep going.”

He did, backing away with his hands up.

I touched down  at the hatch and asked “Does Sparky have any more bodies here?”

“You’ve strewn him all over the place. There’s not enough left of him to take a body. Show some mercy.”

“Does he?”

“There’s a distinction between surrender and sedition.”

Fair enough. I thought I caught sight of Sulfur at that moment. I dropped down the hatch, content to leave Popeye to Sulfur’s mercy.

Or I may have been just seeing things. Having dropped into the multi-gravitational chamber, I had a choice of heading in two directions: back to the fluid filled chamber or the work shop. Both had portals back to the real world. Either would have been equally easy for a disembodied ghost being to navigate. If I were Sparky, I would have chosen the fluid filled chamber. It would have been difficult for me to follow him there with any speed and it dumped out to a place with several bodies at the ready.

For a moment, I wasn’t ready to commit to either one. Then the door to the wing marked as a singularity opened and out came Sulfur. Beyond him was what appeared to be the interior of a space ship’s control station. Sulfur blinked at me and headed to the hatch to the workshop. We both flipped over and landed on either side of the door.

Sulfur was trying to warn me about something. Hallucinatory terrain ahead? He was referencing the running thoughts from the previous chamber.

I soon understood what he meant. We projected through the door and, as expected, were promptly slammed to our backs. All about us in the air were melon sized globes containing animated scenes of various sorts. Most of them were cityscapes. Intermixed were interiors. All depicted what I judged to be common events from everyday life on Earth. The globes filled in all of the space, from catwalk to catwalk and heading up to the ceiling. They overlapped and at points merged. The entire massive jumble of them was in constant motion.

A life-sized horse wearing bright silk passed over me. The figure of the gambler, still in his tweed suit, stood next to me with his hand extended down. I took it and came to my feet.

It was a very effective smokescreen--which is what I thought the intention was. My sensors were registering each of the scenes as being real, with real mass, motion and atmosphere. I could not see the actual buildings Royce Cole had here through it. Only the rocky construction debris at my feet seemed intact. Tracking the contour of the ground, I spotted one of the bobcat mini backhoes, clinging halfway down a mound of gravel.

“The odds do change, depending on the jockey. Not much. But they do change,” the gambler explained.

I said “It still strikes me as squandering money.”

“You brought a friend. Think he wants a mint julep?” the gambler said, taking notice of the rising Sulfur.

“He seems like the type. Thank you,” I said. And with that the gambler took one step left and vanished.

“More of a whisky sour man,” Sulfur said in a tone usually deployed by vacuum cleaners.

“You should have piped up when you had the chance,” I snapped. “Can you see through any of this?”

No, he couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure what any of it was. “One of the library’s functions, run amok perhaps?” he guessed between sips of julep.

I lost him and the gambler. I was soon blocked from them, surrounded by a forest of globes with moving scenes. I had no idea what any of it was, what the intent was.

A globe centered itself in my path and started to grow. In a moment, I recognized the area as being the kitchen from Claudia’s apartment. I stepped into it. Finding it as real as anything else here, I called out to her.

“Coming. In a sec,” she called, seemingly from the direction of where the living room should have been.

I said “I need to find the atorecs. I need to turn the atorecs off. Can you turn the atorecs off?”

She appeared before me, still in clad her leather smock, with her arms extended upwards. I let her wrap herself around me. She asked “What’s an atorec?”

“Atomic reaction chamber. It’s a tube, sectioned in chemicals with a DC current running through it,” I explained. With a glance I could tell that I had asked too much. “Are you alright?”

“Same old, same old,” she said, pressing her forehead against my blast shield.

“They’re on top of the buildings. The place where you were doing the picking,” I said, trying my best to avoid saying ‘The place where you were gunned down.’

“Oh, there. Right,” she said. Claudia slipped from our embrace. The globes about us parted. Fifteen feet ahead of her was the chain link fence that demarked the work shop’s compound.

Although I don’t recall passing her, she wound up behind me. The further I was from Claudia, the more dense the arrangement of globes became. From my perspective at the fence, I could see the edge of the roof, but not the atorecs on top.

The ground exploded beneath Claudia’s feet, gravel showering in all directions. I recognized the sound. It was the weapon from Toots’ under-hull. My guess was that the corvette was somewhere above us, shooting down at a forty degree angle. It fired twice more, flinging gravel somewhere far to my right.

“Missed me!” Claudia yelled. No, it hadn’t. Claudia was improbably floating above a fifteen foot deep divot in the ground. The Tommy gun materialized in her arms and she returned fire.

“We have to get to the roof,” I told her.

“Go then,” she said, letting loose with a long volley of fire. “I’ll be up in a sec.”

 I floated up, staying as close to parallel with the electrified fence as I dared. Even up top, the globes had crowded out the entire roof. I had to guess at where the atorecs started. My arms flailing outward, I made a progression of steps in the steady direction of the roof’s center.

It was only after banging my arm into a ceramic casing that I realized that I had no feeling in my right hand. I could not get the fingers to move. The mechanical arm was flat out shot.

I plucked Toovy’s tool off my belt. It sensed the atorecs. That was the good news. The bad news was that there was no central control for the array. And of the several dozen atorecs present, only two were the same model.

Atorecs aren’t set up to be shut down in the first place. Once fired up, they can go for eons. (We discovered the atorec as an archeological find.) Shutting them down meant playing around with each tube’s interface. That might take hours, if I could do it at all. What the Old Man had proposed for me to do required shutting all of the atorecs on this side down.

I leaned forward and sensed the atorecs’ power. Shutting off my vision, I came to the long table of my ancestors. Grabbing Windy’s talons, I pulled her through.

The escaping fumes around me scattered the globes and partially revealed the atorec array’s face.

“We could just blow them up. It’s not like we have to worry about clean up,” Windy suggested.

I asked “Blow them up with what?”

“It will come to you. I’m going to go get that corvette before it picks you off,” she said, gusting away.

“If he’s in it, stay away from him,” I told her.

 I noticed the corvette had stopped firing. It had not shot at me, nor anywhere near this building. As for Windy’s instructions, I assumed she meant the Charliq mine, which did not strike me as being all that good of an idea.

The Charliq mine didn’t seem to think it was a good idea, either. I had just plunked it from my belt when all sorts of warning indicators went off. Atorec detected. Do not activate in atorec vicinity. Do not dispose of in atorec. If near atorec, get away from atorec.

Not kosher on a cosmic scale, it seems. It was doing everything short of disowning me. Normally these things were fairly specific when it came to explaining the scale of  screw up you were about to make. I had previously been automatically threatened with demotions and loss of licenses. Apparently this was beyond that.  

“He’s in there,” Claudia said. She just appeared. And all of the globes around moved away. Her arms were in the air, so I didn’t know what she meant other than she wanted another hug. I put the Charliq away and obliged.

I asked “Where is he?”

“Am I good for you, baby?”

“You’re the best!”

“He’s under our feet.”

Other than a building, I wasn’t sure what was under our feet. I asked “What’s he doing?”

“First he got rid of all of the assembly lines. Then he pulled some cargo containers out of storage,” she said, first pointing beyond the building and then to the left. “Then he moved the cargo stuff there. And then he went into the room with the bunk beds and up the stairs. That’s where he is now, putting papers in a steamer trunk.”

“Papers?”

The whine of landing jets intruded on us as Toots descended to level with the roof. Windy had the canopy up. She asked “Where did the Earth woman come from?”

“Columbus,” Claudia responded.

“Windy, he’s in the building below. I need you to check out what he’s done just to the left of the edge of the last building. Some sort of containers. But stay away from him. If he shows, get out of there.”

“I’ve shut the remote off on Toots here,” Windy said. “The cannon is locked on the autorecs. Get it as close to the ceiling as you can and then let loose.”

“You sure you’re good here?”

“The containers are close enough to the barrier and the other atorecs,” Windy said, her explanation at the time making as little sense to me as it does to you. She then said to Claudia “Nice meeting you, dear.”

With that, she was off, I think. I had a problem climbing into the corvette. Without my arm functioning, my balance was off. I wound up spilling into the cockpit. It took me a few moments to position myself forward in the seat.

Claudia was belted in beside me. She reached up and lowered the canopy.

I could not settle in. Something was jamming my side, the side I couldn’t reach. I wrenched about in the seat and reached back. My fingers found an oblong package wrapped in a grainy, opaque film.

The handwriting across the film belonged to Toovy. The writing itself was my name. I did my best to undo the wrapping.

“Present?” Claudia asked. That would be my conclusion, also. The film was of  a type commonly used to wrap postage, at least in the Combine.

Inside the packing was a golden firearm: the matching side arm for the uniform I was wearing. My belt sprouted a holster and it attached itself.  I commented “If all of this is in my mind, if all of my memories are lies, then all of this is getting so detailed that it’s scary.”

Claudia seemed to concur. “Yeah. What you said. Happens to me all the time.”

I examined Toots’ controls. Having never sat in this ship before, I wasn’t aware of the specific configurations. Toots was both a jury-rigged wreck and a different model than Honey.

“Like it’s a Toyota, huh?” Claudia commented. I’m not sure if she was reading my mind or my body language.

“Perhaps. I only have one arm here, so I hope you can help me a bit.”

“That’s what I’m here for. What’s first?”

“Two toggle switches to your far right. Please flip those up.”

It seemed to me that her hand was moving in the direction of the switches before I had finished my instructions. Her fingers tripped the switches together—something I had forgotten to imply. Then she turned to me and said “I know this is very important and you’re busy and everything, but I was wondering if you could help me with something when you have the chance and if it doesn’t get in the way of what you got to do.”

“Of course I will. What’s our rule?”

“Claudia first!” she said, smiling.

Toots began rising through the air. We were parting the globes. I wanted to make sure we halted well before the cosmic violence at the ceiling.

“And that is always our rule, Special Spaceman,” I said.

“I want to call my mom.”

Odd request. I still had contact with Honey, so it wasn’t beyond probability. “Certainly. The moment we can.”

The layers of globes ended at an elevation about one hundred feet short of the ceiling. At this height, the globes were transparent. We could clearly make out the fence line and the outlines of the brick buildings below.

Rapid successions of lines of light sprayed from the gun in Toots’ hull, each ending in rosy mini flashes tracing the buildings. In seconds all of the atorecs had been reduced to glowing flurries of fine dust. We began our descent and the globes again swarmed us.

“Get rid of the mirror. I don’t like looking at myself when I’m talking to you,” Claudia said.

I raised the helmet’s shield.

“Lose pretty boy.”

Once I removed Cody’s face, she leaned into me and put her head on my shoulder. “That’s my square eyed creature feature.”

The work shop was now mounds of bubbling clay. We flew through a jagged hole in the wall and into the hangar. My intention was to land Toots beyond the distortion barrier and back in real space.

Windy was signaling me to land just past the wall. That’s where we touched down. Per the Old Man, it would take a few minutes for the library to become unhinged from real space. If I didn’t want to go into scab space oblivion with it, I needed to be on the other side of the barrier.

Emerging from the cockpit, I spotted the clock on the post right out of scab space. Its hands were moving backward, then forward. I didn’t have time to tell what, if any, progress the clock was making.

Windy immediately came to immerse me. She said “See that? Left. I don’t know what he’s done. A lot of that is sticking into real space. I don’t know what you want to do here.”

She was referring to an area where the dust seemed suspended in air. Whatever the invisible thing was, it was blocking our path. I would have slammed Toots into it if I hadn’t landed where I did.

We were in the aircraft hangar, two thirds of which was in real space. The various containers and assembly lines had been cleared away. Most of the space was empty as if it were about to receive an airplane for servicing. (This should have perhaps clued me in.) All that remained was Cole’s control array and the line of atorecs, which were lining opposing walls. The framework of tubes was about five feet from where I landed Toots. For a moment I checked over the tubes.

I said to Windy “If it stays after the rest of this place goes, we are just going to have to live with it, whatever it is.”

Claudia stood up in the cockpit and asked “Phone call?”

“We might get better reception on the other side of the barrier,” I said.

She instantly rattled off her mother’s number. I patched it through my helmet and handed the helmet to her, saying “It’s ringing.”

“I hope my mom didn’t change her number,” she said, slipping my helmet on.

“If she has a phone, I can get her number,” Windy said. Windy then said to me “I don’t think that’s invisible, whatever it is. I think it’s in scab space, another scab space. Did this other guy say how long it would be for the place to go pop?”

I didn’t listen in on the other end of Claudia’s phone call, but I got the impression that her mother thought she was dead. “Mom? It’s me. Claudia. Sit down. Sit down. Look, I have to make this fast. I wanted to tell you that I love you. I didn’t say that the last time I talked to you. I said some things I didn’t mean. I said a lot of things to you that I didn’t mean at all. I don’t know where to start. Can you forgive me? Thank you! No, you never did anything wrong. Not to me. I’ll forgive you but there’s nothing for me to forgive you for. You were saying things I wasn’t listening to. But it’s like you said, no love given is ever lost. I love you! I’ll see you when I can! Got to go. I love you, too.”

“Happy thoughts,” I muttered in response to Windy. “Windy, get past the barrier. If I can’t get Toots out cleanly, Claudia and I will just walk out.”

“No problem getting past the barrier,” Windy said, seemingly having slipped through to the other side of the hangar.

“Sadly, probably where Sparky escaped through,” I said.

“He’s still in there,” Claudia said, handing me back the helmet. “He’s smeared all over that trunk. Sliming his way up through the junk.”

“Then there’s no reason for us to stay here. Are you ready?”

Claudia and I sat down in Toots. She lowered the canopy. Toot’s treads grabbed hold and we began crawling around whatever was protruding ahead of us. We seemed to clear it and headed into the barrier.

As the barrier started to wash over us, Claudia leaned over and planted a smearing pink kiss across my blast shield. And then she was gone, nothing remaining but streaks of day-glow lipstick.

I halted Toots and popped the canopy. I felt Windy sweep into the cabin.

Looking back, I saw a pair of jet engines, looming ever larger and immediately converging, thunder and racing wind as their accompaniment.

I am certain that the impressively named A-10 Lightning Bolt Warthog deserves a better description than that, but the rather large running engines are all I can recall seeing at the time. I felt the heated whirlwind, heard the trembling cannonade, saw the engines and dove.

That’s what Sparky had in his scab space within a scab space: a fully operational and currently running armored fighter aircraft. It was a heck of a battering ram. Or  a  distraction.

All I knew was that no one was flying the plane. My dive ended at the edge of the control array. I can’t say how fast the A-10 was going, other than to say that it wasn’t fast enough for the thing to take flight. It was out of the hangar in under a heartbeat. Streaking hot fumes and booms,  it missed me.

I scanned the barrier.

Windy sped Toots out and took a sharp right once clear of the hangar. The metal plated A-10 hopped the tarmac and then spiraled into a ditch between runways, nose down. Neither Toots nor the A-10 ever occupied the same space, which is good.

A metal steamer trunk came skidding through the barrier. I saw a form. I triggered the belt and the helmet. Then I fired my new sidearm.

Whatever was beyond the barrier looked as if it had been dropped from some vast height. I heard it warble “The Space Police! I’ve killed thousands! Nothing happened! I kill a bunch of dogs and suddenly the Space Police appear? The dog people sent you? Really!”

I looked down at the sidearm to see what setting I had used. It was fairly ominous and it kicked. (No, this is not standard field testing procedure, even for me. I was still a little stunned. ) When I glanced up, everything was gone--the entire rear third of the hangar. I was looking out over a ditch. Beyond that was a field, then another runway and then another set of hangars.

Then I spotted Sulfur, in the doorway next to the hangar’s massive service opening. Maybe he was satisfied with this result? He wasn’t lunging to attack. Then the black figure disappeared, perhaps simply stepping aside, perhaps vanishing from all reality. With the library and Sparky now dispatched, he may have sauntered off in hopes of hunting down and sticking his scythe through the other survivors. I don’t know. Since this incident ended, we don’t talk. That was, to date, the last I have seen of him.

Drawing Toovy’s tool, I approached the steamer trunk, which was registering as being made of plant fibers and  containing plant fibers. Inside it was a collection of pictures, mostly photographs, but also some ancient looking drawings. They were of Cole’s children.

Windy’s theory is that this is the godhead itself, that the aspect that can organically remember who most of these people are is the real Royce Cole. I have my own theory, which is less wild sounding and also probably as wrong.

Windy came up to me as I was examining the trunk, saying “Time to go.”

“I was thinking maybe we should shut off the atorecs on this side.”

“I’m thinking that whatever you want to do, you have just the time until the first person notices the rest of this building is missing. Or the running jet in the ditch.  Or our spaceship.”

“Point taken.” I was about to wipe the lipstick from my blast shield, but then stopped. If nothing else, it was a good reminder.

You get into space because you are certain of certain things. Having mastered your ball, you approach the void clad in what you think are stilts. Once you become aware, you realize that most of what you were so certain about are anecdotal anomalies, connected solely by the incidence of your having discovered them. By blinks it dawns on you that the god and gods in their heaven and heavens can do whatever they please. You will never master their whims nor make thorough note of them--and that is not why you have been invited here. This is an invitation to adjust your perspective. You are here to have your stilts resized to toothpicks, your awe renewed. The pink lipstick is still there, months later. 

Coda

The gig at the hardware convention went better than I thought it would. Right up until the time we set up at the pier, I didn’t think it was going to go down at all.

I’ll spare you most of it. Miss Tomlinson’s life had erupted in a spate of misery. Her mother had fallen and was hospitalized in Topeka. Vrecky’s sisters had called and said, in parts, that her mother’s condition was grave. Or maybe they were just “guilt tripping” her and rubbing it in that Vrecky didn’t have the money, time or inclination to come to her mother’s aid. To cut to the chase, the issue was essentially money.

It took me more detective work to nail that down than it took to uncover Sparky. So I flew Vrecky to Topeka. In Honey. And then we flew back. And then we loaded our crap into her Delta 98 and made our way to this miserable gig at Navy Pier.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this my was last appearance as  Cody. Cody has continued to make appearances since then, mostly in magazine advertisements. He’s in crowd shots, in the vicinity of imbedded intergalactic navigational symbols. I have no idea who is trying to contact me and I don’t care. The people who can and should contact me have a method of doing so. So far Colonel Nasus has greenlighted nothing. As for me, I am currently walking about in a more age appropriate guise, a sad-faced cowboy.

It was also the last appearance of the Captain Meteorphone. The non-plumbing operational guts of this device are now housed within the depths of a base fiddle occasionally lugged around by my sad faced cowboy self.

These changes were affected in short order, but were not even in the ethers as of the Navy Pier gig. That gig itself remained in the ethers for a good hour after our arrival at the pier. No one knew who we were or what we were supposed to be doing. All dropping Reynold’s name got us was the continual question “What’s a Reynold?”

No band was expected here. This was a dinner reception. There was no band shell of any kind set up. Vrecky started making phone calls. Someone did come to shag us, so I am guessing one of her calls bore fruit.

Fruit was the operant term, since that’s where we were to set up: in the fruit and Jell-o section of the salad bar. The bar ran about thirty feet and was in the shape of a horseshoe. An ice sculpture of a winged naked woman—Victory, Freedom or the Hardware Convention’s mascot—stood in a brass brazier, Kool Aid shooting from her feet, at the open end of the arrangement. Our actual performance area was a ten foot square patch beyond that, right before the curved array of dressing bottles.

This left us no real room for the amp nor Vrecky’s chair. There was also a problem with the plugs.

I wasn’t going to let anything stop us. I convinced Vrecky to sling the keyboard and play it standing. As for the amp problem, I assured her I could route the keyboard’s output through the Captain Meteorphone.

At that moment, Vrecky would have believed anything I said. She has since lost that willingness. And to think I used all of my magic up to play a gig inside a salad bar.

People did soon appear, vast lines of them—all tracking their well dressed paths about us as they piled plastic plates heaping with salad parts. The mayor even appeared, with his entourage. He pointed at me and he and his fellows laughed at my spaceman suit.

Romanian dance music was played.

Show tunes were played.

An ice sculpture melted.

The End

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