> DATE & TIME: None. > LOCATION: None. > DIMENSION: None. Jason Low looked around curiously. There was a distinct absence of anything that might have lent a clue to his situation. "Amy? Bri? Jen?" he called out. The acoustics seemed to depict a small room, but a second or two later, back came an echo of his words. He thought about walking around, then thought better of it, what with the total darkness. Or had he been blinded? "Jay! Are you out there somewhere?" Brian's voice. "Yeah, over here," Jason said. "If 'here' helps any. Know where anyone else is?" "I'm in the dark, so to speak. What the hell happened?" "What the hell do you think?" Jason spat back with sarcasm, and then the two of them collided. "Ouch! Okay, at least we know where we are," Jay said, with humor in his voice. "In relation to each other," Brian amended. "But where are WE?" As if to answer, of course, their chunk of unreality lit up just then to reveal a dim, featureless plain that dropped off gradually in all directions. "Curvature of the earth?" Jason offered as an explanation for the topography. "Make that curvature of the concrete," Brian corrected him, stamping a boot on the 'ground'. "Hey--" Jason began. Brian looked at him while he appeared to fish for words. "We're in civilian clothes," he said, pointing at his friend, "not our flight suits." "Speaking of which, do we have any kind of equipment here? Like, oh, ahem a Frakes scanner, f'r instance?" Brian wondered aloud. He joined Jason in looking around. There was nothing to be seen except for their persons. They were silent for a few moments until Jason kicked idly at the ground and spoke. "Well, I wonder if This Is It." Brian threw up his hands. "I KNEW you were gonna eventually say that--" "Well, you've always gotta wonder, when we wind up in a place like this," he countered. "And every time, it turns out that This ISN'T It--" After a pause, Brian turned and looked at the non-landscape. "Is this getting us anywhere?" he said calmly. The other verbal combatant stopped and turned quietly to him. Brian turned back to face Jay as well. "If you look real hard over my left shoulder, and if I'm not seeing things, you'll see some kind of light source on the horizon there. I say we should head that way." Due to a lack of better ideas, they trudged off in that direction. "How long have we been walking?" Jason asked later. "Twelve minutes." "Feels more like eight days." Hmm. "Apparently time has no meaning here. What about distance? How far have we gone?" "Who knows? For that matter, who CARES?" he said. "We don't seem to be getting tired or hungry--" "Just cranky," Brian muttered. "--so let's carry on until we get there," Jason plowed ahead. They continued on in silence, not voicing their thoughts. Brian was fuming. So many times, they'd been promised 'nevermore', by so many people, regarding their condition.. and every time, just when they felt like they were about to be left alone, in came another shot out of deep left center field to screw up the works. He was quite disappointed, to say the least, to realize that Jenna had not jumped with the two men. Jason's thoughts were, as usual, mostly analytical. He had noticed the nearly- inconspicuous return of his left arm, as had Brian, surely. He also noticed the absence of Amy and Jen; Bri had picked up on it too, judging by his expression and attitude. Or maybe that was just the trauma of-- Jay's thoughts stopped short as he looked up. They were finally 'close'; the source of light was emitting from the mouth of a cave, on the side of a small mountain in a small range. And there was a man standing next to the cave. "Bell?" the two of them said breathlessly. They scrambled up the rock face, watching Edison Bell, Esquire beckon frantically to them. As they arrived, he was about to speak, but Brian beat him to it. "Is this.. your.. doing, Bell?" he panted. Edison was taken aback. "Have we met?" "Have we MET??" Brian sputtered. "Of COUR--" He stopped as Jason held up a hand. "We've met," the latter said to Bell. He then turned to Brian. "Remember our first encounter with him?" Realization set up camp on Brian's face. "Ohhhh...." "We have met," Jason confirmed. "Three thousand years ago for us; some time in your future." Edison nodded. "Always figured I'd do that someday." He gestured to the cave. "You need to go." Jason peered inside; random flashes of light so bright it was blue snapped back at him. "Did you.. y'know,.. 'go'?" Jason quipped to Brian. "Are you implying this is Movie Sign?" Brian countered. "Come on, come on comeoncomeoncomeon," Bell urged. "Time's a-wasting." "Yup, we know you well," Jason grinned at the agitated, impatient scientist. "What's the big rush?" "WHAT'S THE BIG RUSH??!" Bell exploded, pointing to the sky behind them. "Does THAT suffice?" The sky was a pulsating mass of light, much like the mouth of the cave. "All I can say is that you are crucially important to the multiverse--I DON'T know how--and you must get to a stable universe, ANY stable universe, before it's too late!" Brian held up a hand. "We gotta stay together." "No problem--hang on to each other," Edison said with exasperation. Jason spoke up. "Are we Frakesed?" Bell turned to regard him. "What??" "You know, the field that separates dimensions--in coming here, did we bounce off it and pass through it at the same time?" Bell looked Jason up and down rapidly, as if appraising him. "No," he said, and gave the younger man a shove towards the mouth of the cave. << Edward & Alex Van Halen "Respect The Wind" _The Twister Soundtrack_ >> It was not unlike floating or flying; the two of them were hovering about five feet off the rocky floor of the cave. Brian had a hold on Jason's ankle with one hand, as they hurtled down the tunnel at dizzying speeds. "Dee plus oh one slash oh three," a Voice from Nowhere(tm) said pleasantly. "D plus 19 slash plus 256," it said, quicker, more excitedly. "Plus 128/plus 512. Plus 480/plus 906. Plus 4096/plPlus 30Plus 9e41/Plus 402e96/plusPlPlPlus.." A ghastly silence ensued for millennia; then, a picosecond later, the voice not at all pleasantly boomed: "ERROR: DIMENSION OUT OF RANGE." The pair went tumbling towards another white-light portal. PROJECT HEARD presents Dimension Out Of Range with Jason Low Brian Burgess And a metric boatload of other people's characters > DATE & TIME: The Not-Too-Distant Future (Next Sunday, A.D.) > LOCATION: Atlanta, Georgia > DIMENSION: Unknown Bri and Jay slammed gracelessly against the exterior wall of the 7-11 headfirst. Then, still obedient to the laws of physics after all they'd been through, they obligingly fell the five feet to the ground. A delivery driver for the Atlanta Journal, having just made his 6am drop, came around the side of the building to get back to his truck. "Hey, you guys okay?" he asked after staring at the prone pair for a moment. "NNNNnnnyyuuuurrrrrrggghh," Jason responded as he managed to get to his knees before falling back down. Brian settled for lifting just his head. "Yeah. Rough night, that's all." "Want a cab?.. or maybe an ambulance?" "No, no.. we're OK." "Whatever," the truck driver shrugged, and was off. "Good save," Jason called out in a muffled voice after the trucker was out of earshot. "I work best when I'm lying on my face." Just then, a blur and the sound of wind tore past, making a right angle in front of the store. Jason shook his head and sat up, successfully this time. Sixty seconds (or so) later, the blur came again. This time, it slowed down, divided, and streaked to a stop in front of the store. It had been comprised of two young ladies. One looked like she was more cat than not. She had yellow- blonde hair with brown specks--and her skin .. fur? .. appeared to be colored similarly. She had peculiar blue eyes, peculiar because where a normal human's eye would be white, hers were a greenish-blue tinge. And she had a tail.. The other looked 'normal', except for the fact that she was, at about six foot ten, only a few inches SHORTER than the other. Also, she had green eyes and hair similarly colored--but normal looking human skin and other features.. and a black mark that ran vertically from her left eyebrow down over her eye almost to the corner of her mouth, much like her companion's two. "Oh my GOD," Jason facetiously whispered. "What?" Brian asked as the two not-quite-human girls walked into the 7-11. "I know them." "Oh, let's not start THIS again," Brian said. "Oh, come on. Where do you know them from, then?" Jason turned to him, and said, straight-faced, "From a comic book." Britanny Diggers, aka Cheetah, and her hybrid/clone sister, Brianna, walked into the 7-11 after their morning jog. The jog was routine; this stop was not. Brianna had wanted to make it, feeling that something new and exciting was to come from it. Britanny was just humoring her sister. Brianna bought a carton of milk and slammed it down her throat, then looked around. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happ-- BEE BEE BEE (whssss) BEE BEE BEE. The door alarm signalled that someone had walked inside. Brianna looked up and saw two guys entering. The one guy seemed to be having a one-sided conversation about staying sane with the other, who snuck the quickest of glances at her before walking to the back of the store briskly. "Hmm." She followed him. Jason opened the cooler door and was instantly rewarded with a cheerful voice. "The ones on the right are colder." "Yah!" he exclaimed, almost dropping the apple juice. He turned to stare at a neck. He looked up to see Brianna Diggers towering over him, a full foot taller, a huge smile on her face. "Uh.. thanks," he said, and exchanged the drink he had for a colder one. "Did you want to talk to me or something?" "Me?" "Well, you DID stare at me when you came in," she said, smiling, leaning against the cooler. "Um, well.." "What's your name?" she asked. "Jason Low." "Hi, Jason Low. I'm B--" "Brianna Diggers," Jason blurted out before he could stop himself. "Oh really? How did you know that?" Jason paused for a minute, then: "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." "Try me," she prodded. Jason twisted the cap off his juice and spoke. "I am from another dimension I just arrived here ten minutes ago in the dimension I came from you are a fictional character in a comic book but here you appear to be a real person along with your sister Cheetah and quite probably your sister Gina and all your friends and stuff." He downed the juice in one gulp. Victory! He always had been able to secure that long of a stunned silence whenever he explained his origin-- He looked up to see Brianna smiling and nodding. "Jinkies!" she exclaimed. "Sounds neat. Why don'cha come to our place and explain this to Gina?" So, twenty minutes later, Jason finished the Long Version, aided by Brian, with special guest stars Gina, Brianna, and Britanny Diggers as Members Of The Stunned Audience. Except, as Jason had already found out, they weren't stunned. "Well, that sounds incredible," Gina enthused. "What makes you jump through dimensions?" "If I knew, I'd stop it," Jason said, only slightly angrily. "It might be stopped now," Brian cut in. "Remember, Jay, what Bell forced us to do? That felt unique--I wouldn't be surprised if it'd cured us." Jason scoffed. "That's what he said before he sent us to work the D-Files." Gina stood up. "Well, there's one way to find out. Let's get you three into the Gina-Lab!" A few dozen nerve-wracking minutes later, it'd been confirmed: There was nothing to show that they had ever, or would ever, have any trouble with dimensional hops. Only when they deliberately tried would they jump. They were rooted in the present, just like any other mortal. "It's over?" Jason asked excitedly. He had a sense of deja vu, but that didn't matter. "IT'S OVER!" he hollered and slapped Brian on the back. He then went to the person beside Brian-- --and found himself giving Brianna a tight embrace. "Um," he said, at a loss for words for the one of the few times in his life. She smiled as she released him. "It's okay. I'd be happy too." Wait a minute.. had she returned the embrace? Wait ANOTHER minute.. 'just like any other mortal'? It took only seconds to check internally; yes, all traces of his immortality were gone. He was Jason Alexander Low, quite normal, quite human, quite MORTAL. He didn't look his 3300 years (of course). He looked more like 24. "Hm?" he said to Gina, who had been asking a question. "I said.. do you have any place to stay?" "Well, I had my eye on a cardboard box under the 285, but otherwise, no, we're homeless dimensional refugees." "Ah, a wit," Gina commented wryly. "We have a couple of spare rooms around here you can use till you figure out what you want to do." Jason nodded and offered thanks, as did Brian.
Jay asked himself, looking at the three adventurous young women. Later that morning, Jason happened into Gina's lab, watching as Gina keyed in some data and calculations. "Hi," he said. "What's up?" "Oh, I'm just trying to.." she began, then shook her head. "It's probably over your head." "Try me," he said, recycling a line he'd heard earlier. She sighed. "I'm trying to piece together some data that I found a while back on one of my expeditions. I can't make heads or tails of it." Jason leaned close to the monitor. "What's the problem?" he asked. "I'm trying to translate that into English, but I'm getting nowhere fast." "Hm." He put his chin in his hand, pretending to be lost in thought. However, it was very, very easy; it was the instructions on how to build a series of ExoSalusia Arms products, and they were all written in Salusian, which was nearly his native tongue, from all his years with Salusians.. like Kylie.. He shook his head and began reading it aloud. "Schematics for the J-9300 Tornado a-grav unit. Page 1. The J-9300 Tornado a-grav unit is one of the most advanced a-grav units of its time--" "Stop," she cut him off. "Are you making this up?" "No, it's a language I recognize," he declared. He hit Page Down a few times. "See, this is the diagram for the antigrav drive itself. Number 1 is the housing. Number 2, the fuel cell. Number 3, the exhaust condenser. --" "All right, all right," she laughed. "You sound like you know your stuff. Can you program?" With no more words, he sat down at an adjacent station, and within 2 minutes, he had a color 3D rendering of the a-grav drive spinning around in the CAD window. "Incredible," she breathed. "You and your friend would be a welcome addition to my team." Jason smiled. "We'd be glad to." > CORRECTION: > DIMENSION: 0/0 (Home) "That is, of course, if you had no other plans." "Gina, we're basically orphaned. I'm not even sure if my family exists here. I just popped in out of nowhere. I would be more than happy to stay and join your team. With one condition." Four hours later, Jason came back to the complex. Brian looked up from his self-guided tour of the garage bays as the ramp disgorged a brand-new, mid-grey 1997 Camaro Z28. It pulled into an empty bay and stopped, and Bri followed. The driver's door opened to reveal a shit-eating-grin-wearing Jason. "Where the hell did you steal that from??" Brian spewed. "Bought. Your local Pontiac Buick Chevy dealer, twenty blocks down the street," Jason said, pocketing the keys. "Then tweaked a bit by Gina and Brianna. Then registered in my name with my new driver's license and insurance, voila," he said, producing the identification with a flourish. "You guys feel ready for a mission?" Gina said, poking her head into the bay. "Sure. Let's go!" Jason enthused, moving back towards the Camaro. "Ever heard of the SDF-1?" Gina grinned. Brian looked at the blue haze ahead of them, then at Jason. "You really think we're not gonna become one with a tree here?" "I sure hope not," Jason said. Gina had decided that the two cars had to go in at the same time in order to lessen the strain on the light-gate; Jason pulled alongside the "Gina-mobile" as the distance closed. With a smirk, although still nervous as well, Jason noted that his exact speed as they entered the gate was 88 miles per hour. The two cars gracelessly crashed to the ground, suspension bouncing them into the air one time. It had only been a one-foot drop; no problem. They gradually slowed to a stop, the occupants climbing out to stare open- mouthed at the sight before them. Jason and Brian knew it well; Gina too (but from books, not from first-hand knowledge like Bri and Jay). The others were just astounded by the immensity of it. "We're here," Jason tried to quip, but he too was nigh-speechless. Having more than half of a twelve hundred meter tall spaceship tower over you would indeed generate such an effect. Especially when it A) felt like home, and 2) was right there in front of you. "Jinkies!" Gina finally said. Brian looked at her strangely. "Any signs of life?" Cheetah queried. "Nothing now," Brianna said. "Maybe remnants from the past, though." "Let's go check," Gina enthused, starting off towards a hatch on the Daedalus appendage. The rest followed. "Oh! Hang on," Brianna said, reaching into the car. She withdrew a monstrous- looking device and handed it to Jason. "This is for you." He stared at it for a second, stopping his mind from wondering about whether or not the life signs inside the ship could possibly be his. The weapon Brianna had tossed at him had a double-wide grip with two huge magazines inside, two barrels, and a scope, plus some other stuff he didn't begin to pretend to try to understand. "Um.." "It's a semi-automatic shotgun pistol, based on my GyroJet design," she said. "I built it over the past couple of days for ya. Hold it in both hands when you fire it--the kick is probably strong for someone your size." "Uh, thanks, I guess," Jason said, trying to find a way to hang it off his belt so that he didn't have to hold onto it. Two hours later, they had all split up inside the vessel; Cheetah and Jason had gone one way, Brian (with Brianna's death cannon gift to Jason in his possession) another, and Gina and Brianna yet another. So far they hadn't found anything of note, although at least Brian and Jason were still trying to grasp the fact that they were actually inside the SDF-1. It seemed like a bizarre twist of history; the ship crash-landed after the battle with Dolza, and the crew had either dispersed or died onboard. There were no signs of Macross City having grown up around it, and nobody on board that they could find. "I think it's just about time for us to try to meet up again," Jason said, glancing at his IndiGlo. "Two hours and nothing to show for it." "That's par for the course," Cheetah yawned. "Don't sweat it." As they neared the rendezvous point, Cheetah whispered, "Hmm. My sisters are talking about you." "Oh really?" Jason whispered back. "Interesting." "Brianna's doing most of the talking, too." "Um.. yeah, interesting," Jason repeated. "So anyway.. you seem to be pretty receptive to being around us," Britanny said to him. "Well, in a way, yeah," he shrugged. "I mean, my life has been turned inside out, but I don't have that much of a problem getting used to it." "That's what I mean," Cheetah said, forcing a door open. "Other people, when they see me or Bri', would go nuts." "If the circumstances had been different, I'm sure I would've too," he countered. "However, I've been, um, reading about you guys for years, and I've been writing fanfic about encounters with what I knew as fictionals all my life. It was only a matter of time before we collided with a dimension where it actually happened." Cheetah gave a half-hearted chuckle. "Now I know that you'll be great to help my sister out with her work--you sorta talk like her too." Jason was about to say something when Cheetah suddenly became rigid and alert. "Hang on," she said abruptly, and dashed off, apparently aware of a new threat. After a few moments, Jason cautiously made his way back to the rendezvous point, and-- --saw something carrying away Brian and Gina. He thought it might be a Bioroid, or something like that, but he wasn't 100% sure. It wasn't really a hot topic right now--more important was stopping it. But what could he do? "JAY!" Brian hollered, and hurled something at him. The autocannon. Jason scrambled for it when it landed, and scooped it up, sliding across the smooth floor. He readied the weapon and propped himself up on his elbows, facing the mecha, and pulled the trigger twice. BAM! BAM! Two shots erupted from the gun and peppered the Bioroid, doing virtually no damage at all. It continued to plod along towards an exit. Suddenly Jason heard a door behind him open, and he rolled over onto his back, weapon at the ready-- --to have it snatched from his hand, barely hearing "Gimme that and I'll redo it for you" drift by. There was no one between him and the door, although a breeze was blowing past him. He looked around and saw Brianna crouched down behind another console, tinkering with the gun, removing the guts of it and adding stuff from a spare- parts kit in her backpack. She slid it around the corner at him, and he scooped it up. "Bottom barrel's a beam weapon," she said. "Lots more power, better aimed." She looked up to see the door close behind the Bioroid, making the chamber silent. But not for long: Her watch beeped and a terrible noise came from it. "Anyone?!" Jason recognized Cheetah's voice. "Is anyone left out there?!" "Jay and me are here, Cheets," Brianna answered. "What's going on?" "Some big robot thing has got Gina and the others and I think it spotted me when I stopped--oh NO--*" "Brit! BRITANNY!!" Brianna hollered into the timepiece. Jason peered out from behind the computer console at Brianna, who was five meters away, behind the other side of the machine. "Looks like we're it," she called to him. "I guess so," Jason nodded, heart pounding. He looked at the hatch across the huge room. If the ship could claim Brian, Gina, and Cheetah, especially Cheetah, what would Jay and Brianna be able to do to it? But here he was, he realized, about to go into battle with a gun-crazy, action-loving hybrid girl at his side. And he couldn't shake the feeling that she was thinking the same thing as he-- that if they got out of this alive, they'd have to get together in a serious manner. He couldn't know how right that feeling was. << Def Leppard "Another Hit And Run" _High 'n' Dry_ >> The two leapt from behind the mainframe and dashed towards the hatch. They both blasted away at the controls for the hatch the Bioroid had gone through, and the door slid open as a result. Trying not to hesitate too much, they both ran through the doorway together and readied their weapons again. They heard the metallic footsteps of the mecha heading off down the corridor, shouts still ringing out faintly. They turned towards the noise and headed off. Fifteen minutes later, they were still trying to catch up. They must've run half the height of the ship, Jason realized. (He didn't want to try to comprehend how the gravity was keeping him upright on a 90 degree angle to the planet's surface outside, either.) Brianna stood facing the direction the sounds were still coming from. She wore a look of determination. "Jay, come here." Jason did as he was asked, and Brianna slung her pistol, then picked Jason up. "Hang on, this may get rough. Keep watching for things and shoot 'em." Jason was about to respond when Brianna kicked in the afterburners. Seconds later, Jason looked up to see the Bioroid closing rapidly on him--or vice versa, truth be known, since Bri' was running in excess of 100 miles an hour. Jason readied his weapon and shouted, "Firing!" Gobs of plasma spat forth from the muzzle of the weapon and impacted against the arm of the mecha, which summarily became violently disconnected. Gina and Britanny were tossed aside by spasms from the arm. Seeing this, Jason aimed again, jumped out of the grip of Brianna (who had stopped by then and was redrawing her weapon as well), corrected his aim to compensate for the robot having finally taken notice of him, and fired again. His shot and Brianna's both connected at the same time at the same joint, both blowing the arm completely off the mecha and sending spurious electrical pulses down to the hand actuators to release their grasp on Brian. He managed to tumble out of harm's way before the gigantic limb crashed to the floor. Cheetah suddenly rocketed into sight, towing an angry Gina. The latter began firing at the now disarmed (pun unintended but well worth the trip) mecha while the former went over to the first arm Jason had dismantled and pried the huge autocannon out of its grasp. She too then fired at the beast, and with all six blasting away, it was destroyed in mere moments. As the smoke was clearing and the superheated air was cooling down, Jason lowered his mini-cannon and said, "And that's just a warning shot!" "Good one!" Brianna said, grinning and slapping him on the back. "You'll fit in yet!" "Uh, yeah," Jason answered, turning to face her. "You know what, even though I'm a itty bit slower than you, we may just make a good team after all." The look on Brianna's face said she wasn't sure how to respond to that. "I like this," Brian said of the weapon he'd scooped up when Gina's backpack had been upended. He presently turned it over and over in his hands, inspecting it. "No kick at all, easy to use. You're good!" "Thanks," Gina said, trying to gather up all her gear, which was spread all over the area. "Keep it, I've got tons more like 'em." "You're gonna need it, if you guys stick with us," Britanny asided. "Anyone got any theories on whether or not there's any more of these?" Gina asked, gesturing to the defunct robot. "Good chance," Jason said, finally holstering the weapon after trying eight or nine times. "Bri', don't you have something that can map the ship out?" "I think you mean this," Brianna said with a grin, lowering her armor's visor. She looked around, eventually saying, "No more in this area." "Good," Cheetah said. "So where to now?" "This way," Gina and Jason both said, pointing in opposite directions. They looked at each other. "We just came from that way," Gina said, pointing the same way as Jason. "Big zero there." "Same this way," he said. "Anyone else?" "How about down here?" Bri called out. He was preparing to climb a staircase-- which hadn't been there before--on the far end of the room. The rest of them followed. Six hours later, they all found the exit and trudged out into the sunny day. True to form, only twenty minutes had elapsed outside while they had been inside the ship for almost twelve hours. Gina got what she'd come for--computer components from the ship, mostly, but they did find some worthwhile 'treasure' too, in the form of old Tirolian armor and such. They stuffed the cars past capacity with all their rewards and once again blasted through the warp. Jason's head was on a swivel, taking in the city of Atlanta (for basically the first time) as they drove off the interstate and onto a main street. "Wow.. it's all pretty much normal," he said. (Who knows? Maybe he expected to come across a big futuristic town or something.) "Hey, Jay, eyes front please," Bri said, gesturing to the stop sign they were presently blowing. "Aie! Thanks." He kept his eyes on the road for the remainder, telling himself he'd have lots of time to explore later. It didn't take long to get back to the Diggers' complex. Jason parked the car and the girls helped them unload the stash from the SDF-1 excursion. Brian announced that he was dead tired, and Jason agreed. Invariably, dimensional hopping sent their internal clocks awry. Everyone went off their separate ways. Cheetah and Gina went to show Brian the living room, where he could crash on a couch, and that left Brianna and Jason alone in the parking bay. "I'm afraid that takes care of all the extra flat surfaces anyone could sleep on," she said to him, shrugging. "But come with me, maybe we can get something worked out for you." He followed her through a maze of corridors and passages that he'd later know like the back of his hand. They came to a door marked "BRI'S ROOM", which she opened with a cardkey. Jason thought to himself, but Brianna proved his thoughts wrong. "I don't feel all that tired," she said. "You can crash here for the afternoon. I gotta go do some work on those computers we picked up. Tomorrow when we're all rested we can get some rooms put together for you guys." Jason sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. "Thanks, Bri'," he said. "No problem," she smiled, turned, and left, closing the door behind her. Jason was asleep in seconds. "Yeah," she said to no one in particular as she walked grinning back towards the lab, "we're definitely gonna make a great team." 29 July 1996 Atlanta, Georgia, USA 22h54 (EDT) The Diggers' Complex Jason awoke with a start as he tried to determine where he was. His mind did its usual "Yaaa! This is not my house!" routine, and eventually settled down and remembered what had happened the day before. He got up, and after some difficulty, figured out how to open the bedroom door. He walked down several corridors, getting profoundly lost, but eventually found the living room, where Brian still slept. He turned and meandered his way down some more hallways until he found Gina Diggers' lab. Brianna and Gina were just finishing off some work on one of the computers they'd salvaged from the alternate-reality SDF-1. "Oh, hi," Gina yawned. "We're just wrapping up. You slept all afternoon." "So I gathered," Jason said. "I'm way too awake to sleep tonight; mind if I play around a bit?" "Not at all," Gina said, handing over the cardkey. "Make sure you lock up when you're done." "I will," he promised as the girls headed off to bed. Jason tinkered for a bit, but couldn't really get into the spirit of things. At one-thirty, after fooling around in Gina's computers for a while, he climbed into the Camaro and drove out into the hot Atlanta night. << Blue Rodeo "5 Days In May" _Five Days In July_ >> He drove aimlessly, primarily because he didn't have any idea where anything was. For a long while, he drove the inner core of the city, stopping once at a 7-11 for some munchies and a map and some other stuff. He took in the sights and sounds, and when he noticed that this Georgia had taken a similar stance towards speed limits as Montana had (total abolition), he took it out to the I-85 for a quick 140 MPH run. He returned to the house just as the sun was rising. "Where did you come from?" Brian asked as Jason entered the TV room. "Out for a drive," Jason explained, depositing himself in a chair. "Checked out the city, took a blast down the highway to get a feel for the car, that kind of thing." "Uh-huh," Brian said. He passed by Good Morning America for the third time and gave up, tossing the remote on the table. Jason picked it up and switched to the movie channel. "How do you like it so far?" "Satellite TV?" "No, you twit.. being here." "It's pretty neat, actually," Brian admitted. "Call it crazy, but I actually find myself looking forward to the adventuring stuff. I think I'll like it." Jason chuckled. "If you think you'll like that, you should see the computer." "Jay?" Cheetah said, popping her head around the corner. "Can I talk to you for a sec?" "Uh, sure," he answered. He got up and moved to the corridor, where Britanny was waiting. "I'll be blunt," she said quietly, facing him so that his back was against the corridor wall. "What's your plans for you and Brianna?" "What? Nothing," he answered. "What do you mean, 'plans'? Like for a relationship?" "Yuh-huh," Cheetah nodded, leaning back so she wasn't invading his personal space. "Didn't you notice that that's what she's trying for?" "Well, yeah," he said, "I guess. Though since I hardly know her, I figured we should wait,.. if we do anything at all." "If you know the character in those comics of yours.. you know my sister," she declared. "Can I make a suggestion?" "I.. sure," Jason half-stammered. "You two should go out today together. Go see a movie or something. Better yet, find an arcade or a laser-tag arena you both like. Best case, take her someplace she can blow stuff up." "College Park?" "There! You're getting the hang of it. Anyway, the point is, since she seems determined to start something, and you're waffling, I figure you should get together and try to see if you can both agree on how you should continue." "I don't want to take Bri' away from any projects she's--" "Hah," Britanny scoffed. "You're her only 'project' right now. Gina does all the big stuff mostly by herself. You two go get to know each other." As fate would have it, Brianna took it upon herself to help the newcomers with their settling-in chores. Two rooms had been gutted and refinished; Brian got one, Jason the other. Bri was handling his own stuff just fine, so Brianna went to check on Jason. "Need a hand?" she asked, gesturing to the boxes of just-bought stuff he'd brought in from the car. "Actually," Jason said, putting a box down, "that's the last of it. However, if it's OK for me to have a link to the computer, I--" She held up a hand. "Say no more," she said while she backed out of the room. Jason busied himself by thinking of where to put things. He reeled back as he realized he was concentrating on whether or not Brianna would approve of his choices. He also thought about his earlier conversation with Britanny. "I think this one works," Brianna said as she carried a terminal through the door. "Anyway, if it doesn't, we can fix it." "Um," he said hesitantly, "why don't we leave that for later tonight? I have some stuff I wanna do around town, and I'd appreciate some.. company." The expression on her face was indecipherable for a few moments, then she broke into the largest grin imaginable. "All right, now you're talking! Give me three minutes and I'll meet you in the garage." She put down the terminal and walked out again. Jason sighed, lacing up his boots and wondering if he was doing the right thing. They stopped at the local government offices first of all, to get his proper documents. Gina had somehow come up with the right papers that said he was legally able to stay in America for an unlimited amount of time, and he wasn't about to question it, let alone argue. After that, Jason felt hungry, and Brianna had no objections, so they descended upon the nearest Burger King. "So what's your goal in life?" Brianna asked after they'd been seated for a bit. "My what? Oh.. hang on.. hm.. I guess I'd have to say doing something I enjoy for a living," he answered. "So being here with us is kinda top-drawer, huh?" "Pretty much," he nodded after a moment's thought. He decided to go with his life as if he had come here from when he was 24, leaving out the last 3300 years. "I mean, I used to think EMS was my preferred choice, but it hasn't gotten me much of an interesting ride. Sure, I get some fun stuff, but I think that I think too much about how for me to have a good day means that someone has to get shot, stabbed, run over, pushed off a building, or one of any other ten million bad things." Brianna just smiled, then sucked on her Coke. "What do you like to do in your spare time?" she asked. Jason shrugged. "Mess around with computers, go out, watch TV, et cetera,.." "Seen Speed 2 yet?" She pointed at the newspaper she was holding. "It's out?" He leaned over to look at the listings. "Hm--I thought it wasn't due out 'till next year." How did he know that, considering he came here from an alternate 20th century through the year 5215 via a realm that had no time at all? "Well, here it came out this past Friday. We can catch the one-forty showing, if you want." "That sounds.. great," he responded. Three hours later, they emerged from the theater, comfortably cool from the air conditioning. They were content to just drive around for a while, Brianna showing Jason where the 'important stuff' was, and then they returned to the house. "Hey, it's still daylight out," Brian quipped. "Why're you guys back already?" "Oh, ha," Jason said dryly as he headed for the kitchen. "We gotta leave something for tomorrow," grinned Brianna. A faint voice from the kitchen said, "I heard that!" Brianna and Brian looked at each other and shrugged. "Have you seen Gina?" Bri' asked Brian. "I have some ideas for stuff to do to Jay's car that I want to float past her." "Uh.. I THINK she's in the lab," Brian said. "I'm not sure where all the doors in here lead to yet." "Thanks," Brianna laughed. She went off towards Gina's worklab. Jason went to his room and checked out the computer terminal. Someone had hooked it up and he spent his afternoon playing around on the system and the Internet. All the while, he was thinking about how his day with Brianna had gone. First, the government, well, that had been a non-event; then the lunch at Burger King, where they just sat and 'talked'. That was.. interesting, to say the least. Then they had gone to see Speed 2. It was an eye-opener for sure, and not just the movie. Brianna had the same likes and dislikes as he did, from her MST3K- style quipping to her grumbling about the love scene right in the middle of the car chase. It was.. eerie, Jason thought. They seemed like the perfect match. So why was he feeling so unsure of himself? He couldn't answer that question, so he plowed on. He mucked about in the guts of the computer for a while, figuring out how it worked and where everything was going. Everything except his newfound relationship. He shoved the keyboard aside and leaned back in his chair, half angry at himself for dwelling on it. Then again, he also felt something else, something stirring in him reminding him that he actually had a person of the opposite sex who actually liked him and wanted to be around him. Fact: Brianna evidently liked him. Fact: He, according to his gut, liked Brianna. Normally, he reflected as he scooted back to the terminal, that would constitute a happy couple. He turned his attention to the monitor again. He played with it for a bit again, when all of a sudden bleep! up came a flag to indicate he had mail waiting. He read it. Jay-- Come on in to the lab. We've got something for everyone to see. Bri' He pushed back from the computer again and walked down the hall to Gina's lab. When he arrived, there was a big screen on the far wall displaying a map of a small island. "Hi," Jay said as he walked in. "Oh! Hi," Gina said, turning around briefly, then back to the screen. Brian entered as she continued to speak. "I just got word of this place and thought we could test ourselves as a team with it. It's an island off the coast of Mexico. Word has it that there's a whole lot of baddies there--" "--and their loot?" Jason asked. Gina grinned. "--and their loot," she confirmed, bringing another screen up. "They've got a prisoner, an American national, but nobody knows that yet, just us. We could be in and out, rescue the hostage, get the bad guys--" "--and their loot," Brian added. Gina nodded. "And their loot." She zoomed in on the display, showing a large roofed compound made of what appeared to be concrete reinforced with steel. "However, it's heavily protected. We'd have to hit it hard and fast--and now-- in order to get any kind of headway at all." "Hey, I love a challenge," Cheetah grinned, cracking her knuckles. Brianna also looked eager to jump in, and Brian seemed excited as well. "How long have we got?" Jason asked. "I'd like to leave ASAP," Gina answered. "The longer we wait, the more the chance of someone else finding out about it grows." "Fair enough," Jason said. "Give me a bit to do some work." The next morning, the lot of them were all piled into the two cars: Jason, Brian, Genn, and Brianna in the one, with Gina, Ryan, Cheetah, and Seance in the other. Brian was mildly astonished when Jason flipped a switch and the car took to the air, much like the car from Back to the Future. They arrived in the vicinity of the island just after lunch time. The two cars swept in low on the front side, where they were sure they'd grab the inhabitants' attention. That was part of the plan. "OK. Cheets, Seance, you two go up to the gate and try to keep 'em busy," Gina whispered as the cars unloaded out of sight on the beach. "That'll let the rest of us go around and do our thing." "I sure hope you know what you're doing," Cheetah said warily. "Trust me," Gina answered. "Now go. Ryan, you're with me." "Gotcha, babe," he answered. He picked up the extra backpack and followed her around the back. "Brian, follow me," Genn said. "We've got to get to the side by the time they're ready." "No problem," Brian said. He cast a glance at Jason, who was preparing to go off to the east with Brianna. "Be careful," he cautioned. "Null perspiration," Jason said. "Remember the ace in the hole that we're carrying." At precisely 13:47:51.02, all the side and back doors were opened--quite ferociously. Gina and Ryan used anti-grav packs to hop over the guards, and EMP'd their weapons, then subdued the guards themselves. Brian headed for the cells with Genn holding off the guards. "What do you think so far?" Genn whispered as the pair crept around a corner. "I love this," Brian enthused. "More excitement than I've ever had." "You like adventuring, then?" Brian grinned. "Wait 'til you see what Jason's cooked up." << Def Leppard "I Wanna Be Your Hero" _RetroActive_ >> Meanwhile, Jason and Brianna were busy causing all hell to break loose on the east side. They ran down three flights of stairs and beat down the door to the computer lab. Saying very little, they took out the guards there and started to work. Jason took the cartridge handed to him by Brianna and plugged it into a port. He grinned as its program ran, sending the baddies' computer's info onto the microdrive on the cartridge, simultaneously sending the kernel for a Commodore VIC-20 in the other direction. Repeatedly. "Are you done yet?" Brianna said, keeping one eye on the exit while doing more work on the computer herself. "Almost," he said. "Just gotta download one more set of drives." "They're probably waiting for us by now," she said. "Look, why doncha go look for something to blow up?" She chuckled. "Much as I'd love to, I was told to keep you in my sight at all times." "No matter, I'm done now." He pulled the cartridge out of the computer and stood up, tossing the cartridge into the pack in exchange for a flat, circular object about the size of an old 16mm film canister. "Take this one and plant it by the doorway. I'll put the other one at the other exit." "What are they?" Brianna asked while she did as she'd been instructed. "COBOL bombs." "Cobalt bombs?" "No--COBOL bombs. Watch and learn." With that, Jason dropped the bomb on the floor, grabbed the pack, and ran out. At the nearest fire alarm box, he reached up and pulled it. The gong started to run, signalling the others that they were ready. "Let's go," he said. He and Brianna exited rapidly while everyone else did the same. They met back at the cars minutes later. Gina and her team had managed to make off with some computer equipment and other goodies, and Brian hadn't come out empty-handed either. "All the COBOL bombs set?" Jason asked. "All set," Gina nodded. "Watch." Jason withdrew a remote from his pocket and pushed on the large red button on top. Suddenly, a hideous noise could be heard. It was muffled by the building walls, but it sounded for all the world like ten trillion dot-matrix printers running all at once. A rustling noise grew louder and louder until finally they saw white objects nearing all the windows from the inside. Within seconds they resolved into fanfolds of computer paper, rapidly streaming about, unfolding and spewing forth seemingly endless reams of documentation. In mere moments the entire building was jammed full of paper. "There, that oughta cover our escape," Jason said, dusting off his hands. "Let's go." > The next afternoon Brianna slid Jason's room door open quietly. She said nothing, but looked into the room. Jason was there, of course; asleep, sitting on the floor, propped up against the bed. The end of Van Halen: Live Without A Net was winding out on the tape deck. She tiptoed in and shut the TV and tape off, then stood there and watched Jason for a few moments. Finally, smiling, she turned and left the room. However, she didn't leave everything behind. << Stabbing Westward "What Do I Have To Do?" >> When she returned to her room, she flopped down on the bed, hands clasped behind her head, staring at the ceiling. she told herself. Neat, if not a little quirky. He was so much like her. In fact, she knew that if she'd woken him up and asked him if he wanted to go downtown, like she had planned, he'd've answered, "Are you nuts? Like we didn't have enough trouble yesterday with nine quadzillion people in town for the Olympics." She chuckled, grinning as she thought about his little quirks and qualities. Yeah, she did like him. she continued. She wasn't far off the mark; that was exactly how he felt. Little did she know he asked himself the very same question day after day. She found herself puttering around aimlessly, tinkering with this, playing with that. She came to the realization that this was yet another mannerism that she and Jason both shared--to be completely useless when they were lost in thought. She was trying to come up with ways to get him to relax. Building him stuff to give to him as gifts wouldn't work; he felt embarrassed that someone was giving him that much attention. Same would happen with helping him train to defend himself--although that would have to come sooner or later. Her mom had said as much when she first saw him. So what could she do? Ask him about his family? Nah, that usually generates the wrong kind of response. Get involved in something he likes? Out-and-out confront him about his tension/shyness? But would it have the desired effect in the long run? Later that evening, a knock came to Jason's door. "S'open," he called out, jabbing the Still key on the remote. Brianna slid open the door and walked in, closing it behind her. "Hi," she said tentatively. "Whatcha watchin'?" "The Best of 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes'," he answered, unpausing it. "Kind of a comedy show from home." She stifled a laugh. "Mind if I join you?" "Huh?" "Hey, I brought a bag of chips and some Pepsi. C'mon." She produced the snack foods and smiled. He returned the smile. "Ok," he said, sliding slightly to the left to make room for her on the floor. "Want me to rewind it?" "Sure, if you don't mind," she said, plopping herself on the floor. "Remind me, when we're done here, ..there's something I want to talk to you about." After the tape was over, she turned the TV off and set the remainders of their snacks aside, then reached up and locked the door. She turned so she was seated on the carpet, facing Jason. he thought. she thought, "Jay," she began slowly and deliberately, "you like hanging out with me, right? As much as I like being with you?" "Yikes," he voiced. Then he said it silently in his head as well. "Yikes??" she echoed, concerned. "Yikes what?" "Oh, boy," he squeaked, looking for a hole to crawl into. He decided to just answer her question instead. "Um.. yeah... yeah, I guess." She broke into a huge smile. "Good. At least we agree on that." She slid a bit closer. "I'm going to be blunt: Why, then, are you so nervous around me?" "Um, ok, if I can be even blunter.. I've been in too many fucked-up relationships." "What makes you think that anything we get ourselves into will be, um.." "Fucked up?" "Yeah." "Twenty-four years of unstable pessimism." "Oh, come on," she countered. "You're basing our continued future together on things that happened to you in the past?" "History just seems to repeat itself with me, I guess," he answered. "Not once in the past six years have I been able to conduct a meaningful relationship with anyone else, because we proved to be incompatible, to say the least." "How compatible do you think we are?" He looked up at her. "And am I like any other girl you've been close to?" she added with a smile. He smiled slightly. "You got me on that one." "Damn right I do," she nodded. "We share the same interests, Jay. You really struck a chord in me that day in the store. I knew that you were someone I could relate to.. and trust." He sat and listened for once in his life. "You've got the wildest sense of humor I've ever heard of. Your mind works on the same wavelength as mine when it comes to thinking things through, and your projects show your humor too, like that COBOL bomb thing you made. We have the same tastes in music, food, television, and so many other things. In you, I've met my match, Jay, and I like what I see." Several weeks later, on a hot August night, they and Brian and Gina and Cheetah were out at Lakewood Ampitheater for the Def Leppard concert as it rolled through Atlanta. They sat through the nigh-unbearable Tripping Daisy and then, when Def Leppard actually came out, were surprised at Jason's change into a screaming lunatic, singing every word of every song, throwing upraised fists and "number one" signs into the air, along with all the other fans. (Not throwing them into the air.. being a crazy idiot like them. Sheesh.) Gina nudged Brian as the band started to play Hysteria. He looked across to see Jason start to relax a fair bit and get into the mood of the song. By the time the first chorus had come up, he had turned to his right and taken hold of Brianna. Brianna, for her part, was initially startled. As the milliseconds passed, however, she became aware that Jason, a foot shorter than her, was trying to hug her. She remembered how he truly enjoyed the song in its recorded format and realized that hearing it live had had a profound effect on him, and made him finally accept her as his Significant Other. She smiled and fought back a few tears as she returned his embrace. 15 September 1996 Jason dumped his laundry basket down in front of the machine and started firing stuff in. It didn't turn out to be a full load, since Gina had expanded the machine's capacity somewhat, so he went around looking for the others' soiled clothes too. "Hey, Bri," he said when he got to Brian's room. "Seen anyone around?" "Yeah, they were all here a while ago," he said. "Well, not here here, but you know what I mean. Cheetah and Julia're in the gym. Brianna's in the lab, waiting for her sister to get back." "Didn't see any of them," Jason shook his head, "and I was just to all of those places." "Maybe they went off somewhere to plan out Cheets' wedding." "That's a possibility," Jason admitted. So the two of them took off that afternoon and just drove around, exploring their new surroundings. They spent many hours and two tanks of gas just wandering. Brian asked to be dropped off somewhere around dinner time, and Jason found a deserted parking lot (a hot commodity in Atlanta) and parked the car. He made sure the com was on in case the Diggers girls tried to get hold of him--even though he had scrawled a short note and left it in the lab--ratcheted the seat back to horizontal, and was asleep within seconds. Of course, they did call. "Hello?" he said as he sat up and pushed a key. Brianna's image popped up on the screen. "Where the heck are you??" she panicked. "Holy shit, relax," he retorted. "I left a note in the main lab. Bri and I went out for a drive and I dropped him off at a Wal-Mart. Where have YOU guys been?" "Trying to find El Dorado," she blurted out. "Something terrible's happened." "Trying to FIND it?" he echoed. "What's going on?" "We got a message from Tyr a few hours ago," she said rapidly. "El Dorado disappeared from the Pool of Legends altogether. Not long after, Ryan and Seance were attacked at the site where El Dorado used to be by Pee Wee's goons. Cheetah followed them there and was just about to kill Pee Wee when Gina and Tyr got there. Tyr received a message for Cheets from Stripe that .. that said that he and the rest of El Dorado had to leave Earth." "Holy crap," Jason whispered. "I've been scrambling around, trying to keep everything around here in working order. Mom went back to the mansion with Dad, and I'm the only one left back here to take care of everything. Now Gina just called me and says she wants us to work on it from this end--that means me and you and Brian." "I'll be on the way in a bit," Jason said. "I'll be waiting," she said. She hadn't smiled one bit during the whole conversation, Jason realized as the connection died. Three minutes later, the Camaro squealed to a stop before the complex. Jason patched out as he drove down the ramp, and found Brian waiting. "What's news?" he said to Brianna, who was there as well. "She's sending Cheets home," she answered. "And I located Genn and got him to come back here too. So now we're a bit overstaffed. Sorry. But I'm sure there's something we can find for you to do." "Say no more," Jason replied, and went to the lab. Twenty minutes later, he was seen driving out, alone, only promising he'd be back. THE NEXT EVENING "Where's the Camaro?" Brian asked. "Scrapped it," Jason replied simply. "Bigger and better ideas." "Beg pardon?" "Go look in my bay." Brian did. Actually, he got as far as to open the door and poke his head inside, and then immediately turned around again. "What the hell is THAT?!" "Nightmare Machine, Mk.III," Jason said proudly, walking towards the doorway. "Go on, it won't bite. Have a look." Brian turned back to face into the bay and took a tentative step or two ahead. Gradually, he returned to normal speed and began walking around the vehicle in question. Take a brand-new, six-miles-on-the-odometer black-over-red Dodge Ram 1-ton, dually crew-cab model. Drop in a five-speed standard with a shift-on-the-fly 4WD. Remove the standard bench seats and replace them with one Recaro racing seat for the driver and one for the passenger. In between the seats, place an equipment tree with three two-way radios, a scanner, two cellphones, and room for other such equipment. Now, go to a body shop (well, actually, do this part first) and have the back seat area extended by 50% again, a la a crew cab with a supercab tacked on the back of it. Put one more Recaro seat in, facing BACKWARD, on a swivel. Surround this seat with more computer power than most universities have. Remove the glass between the cab and the bed, and weld a custom-built (read: armored) topper to the bed. In fact, line the body with armor as well and build custom runflat tires (with the Hummer's central inflation system) that still look stock, and Kevlar based laminated "glass". Mount several frightening things in the bed, such as a minigun, more computing power, and sensory gear that would make an NSA or CSE chip wagon jealous. Make sure that from the outside it still looks stock, except for the small "THE NIGHTMARE MACHINE" lettering just above the tailgate, on the topper hatch. Now you're CLOSE to what Brian saw there. Even though it looked stock, there was nothing stock about it. Basically, a new Dodge had been bought, stripped, improved upon, armored, given a power boost, strengthened, improved again, revised, and reassembled. There was a V-12 engine under the slightly stretched front end; it was nowhere close to diesel. More like jet fuel. As previously mentioned, the body panels and windows were all reinforced and armored. The tires could withstand insanely high speeds, and would take a major drama to deflate them. All the aforementioned seats had five-point harnesses and the two front-facing ones had the standard airbags found in all Dodge pickups. The luxury extra was the custom-built sound system in the center of the dash. Come to think of it, Brian realized, it was very conspicuous on the dash. Mostly because it was one of the only things on it. "Where the hell is the instrument panel?" he said, climbing behind the wheel. Jason reached in and slotted the key, then drummed in a six-digit code on the keyboard on the center console. The engine rumbled (if that is the word for it) to life, and the windshield lit up. Virtual needles, bar graphs, and idiot lights flickered across the windshield briefly, then settled down to a patient frenzy, matching the idling of the engine. "Get out and go around to the other side," Jason said. "What? You mean it moves, too? As in, you're finished?" "I would've been still in here working on it if I wasn't finished," Jason said plainly as he climbed behind the wheel and restarted the truck. Brian looked at him skeptically as he opened the other door. "Shuts off automatically when it's totally unoccupied," Jason explained. "Unless I key in a special code. Makes it hard for it to run away or be taken. Also, watch this." Jason booted in the clutch and tossed it into first, then touched the gas pedal while letting the clutch out, as if to proceed forward. The engine whined higher in pitch, but the truck didn't move. "Your seat belt," Jason explained. He kicked in the clutch again while Brian snapped the racing harness together. "Okay, all flight controllers, go/no-go for liftoff," Jason droned as the garage door rolled silently upward. "Hope you didn't eat much for supper," he added, and let the clutch back out. << Van Halen "Humans Being" _The Twister Soundtrack_ >> The vehicle--lacking any better title--lunged forward and took the ramp to the street, idling at 45 kph, according to the HUD. Jason lightly touched the 'gas' pedal and stiff-armed the truck into a left-hander, and the dualies howled as the rear end fishtailed out onto the street. In fifteen seconds they were on I-285. In another hundred, they were on the I-85 on-ramp. "Check radar," Jason said. "What?" "Radar, screen 2, your side," Jason said, gesturing to the right side of the windshield. "Uh.. looks clean to me." "Roger.. go at throttle-up," Jason grinned. He reintroduced the accelerator pedal to the sole of his right Kodiak. Brian could imagine five-foot-long trails of flame from the straight pipes that came to a truncated end just aft of the rear axle. It certainly felt that fast. He only glanced at the speed readout once, to see digits go by in clumps of six kph or so: 188, 194, 201.. "And these aren't your regular stock Mopar brakes, either." With that, Jason put one foot on the power-assist brake pedal with mild pressure. An indicator reading "ABS" briefly lit up in the lower center of the windshield, winking out as the speed indicator read 0. Brian looked at the mile marker just down the road: they hadn't quite gone a hundred and twenty feet since Jason laid on the brakes, and no more than three miles since he hammered the gas pedal. "In Bloody Credible," Brian said. "It's a lot better than it used to be. This morning, I tried that, and decelerated so fast, the air bags blew. Watch this," Jason said, and keyed in a sequence which displayed on the HUD as 'LIGHTS OFF'. The H.I.D. headlights and standard marker lights winked out, and the windshield turned a familiar shade of green. "Nightvision??" Brian blurted out. "Everything," Jason responded. He walked all over the pedal again and took them to the next cloverleaf, then blasted back down the southbound lanes, still not another car in sight. Along the way, he showed off the radar, the tracking system, and the IR, as well as other bits. Jason backed into his bay again, the taller of the antennae on the left rear corner of the truck box whapping against the ceiling. "Damn. Gotta figure that out. Otherwise, I must say I am pleased." "I.. don't know WHAT to say," Brian said. "Well, from now on, when we go out, your spot is the number-3 seat. Ok?" "What, back here?" he said, gesturing with a thumb to the rear seat, then turning to look at the workstation there. "Yup. You've got everything at your disposal from the Internet to cellular modems. You can also pipe any of your displays to the HUD, and vice versa." Jason killed the engine; blessed silence followed. "Up to it?" "Are you kidding?" Brian said, full of excitement. "I'll beat you to the bay from now on." Jason awoke and immediately looked at the clock. Then he searched for his glasses, found them, put them on, and looked at the clock again. Eleven-twenty-one. he said to himself. He got out of bed and showered, got on some clothes, and went out-- --to find Brian and Genn the only ones around, looking rather upset. "Yo, what's up?" he asked Brian. "Didn't you hear that alarm??" "What alarm? No. What's going on?" "Some kind of warp field or warp drive or something just took Brit and Bri' away," Genn filled him in. "They just up and vanished about half an hour ago." Jason stood there trying to wrap his brain around the concept. Genn described it fully: Gina had just phoned with information about El Dorado, and then the warp field had activated and taken them away, right from in front of Genn's eyes. "Ho-lee shit," Jason whispered. "Uh, yeah, that's what I said," Brian nodded. "What can we do?" Jason asked. "Is there anything in that monstrosity that can help us find them?" said Brian as he gestured to the bay where Jason's truck was. "I'll try, but I don't know how much luck we'll have." Once inside, he powered up the system, running the memories (the electronic equivalent of recording tapes) back about half an hour. Then he synchronized it with the video feeds from the security cameras in Gina's place. They watched Britanny answer and slam down the phone two or three times, and then take a call that was apparently from Gina. Moments later, while Brit was being consoled by Brianna, a warp field indeed opened up--spiking all the instruments on Jason's sensors--and whisked away the two Diggers girls, leaving Genn there looking surprised. "Well hmmm," Brian said, holding his chin in his hand. "Can we track them?" "Like this," Jason said, tapping a few keys. "It's as easy as --*" "As..?" Genn trailed off. "Um. They've vanished from this dimension," Jason said quietly, pointing at a trio of lines that ended abruptly. "I have no idea where they are." The decision was made: Head to El Dorado, try to find out what Gina was up to, and try to continue on it. That is, if the girls weren't there already too. Brian and Jason would head out in the truck; Genn would stand by at the house in case anything happened there. And so, with Jason driving, trying not to think of the empty seat beside him, and Brian in the rear seats searching every possible way for the Diggers girls, the two set out for El Dorado. "Um, how are we going to get there?" Brian said, moments later. "I mean, I assume--(I HOPE)--this thing doesn't fly.." "No, it doesn't," Jason said, turning onto a deserted sideroad. "However, it goes one better." He keyed in a sequence on the control pad and a quiet siren noise sounded twice. Then, on the rear screen and the HUD, the four words showed up: LIGHT-GATE GENERATOR ACTIVATED The truck drove through a swirling mass of light and then thundered into the area of El Dorado.. or so they thought. They were speechless as they coasted towards the ex-location of the city. There was a large hole in the ground where the inner city used to be. "Um," Brian finally said. Jason just nodded. He braked to a stop just before the edge of the precipice. They climbed out and Jason aimed a small key tag at the truck, which gave a brief chirp. Brian laughed. "Anti-theft Tonka toy?" Jason paused, then broke into a grin. "That's an even better description than the Nightmare Machine. Mental note, rename the truck to the Tonka Truck when we get back. It's not a normal alarm system," he continued to Brian. "Whatever you do, never, EVER go near it when I've got it armed." "It'll be okay out here?" "Not only will it be okay, but it'll alert us to about a billion different things, should they crop up." He held up an alphanumeric pager. "And you did all this in one day and night," Brian deadpanned. "Well, I had most of the designs already. I've had the truck in a body shop for two weeks, and the computers were spare parts from Gina's basement. I did throw it all together in one night, though, so yes." He climbed down into the crater. The outer city was still standing, relatively undamaged. Using a map acquired from Gina's lab, they went around to the remaining hyperdrives, trying to find where Gina had been working. They found it soon enough: Near the one-o'clock position about five hundred meters out from the edge of the crater. As was the case with Britanny and Brianna, there was not a trace of Gina or her belongings--even the car was gone. "Oka--" Jason false-started, then coughed and tried again. "Okay! Let's try to determine if it was anything Gina did that caused this. Be careful." After some cautious investigation, it became apparent that the hyperdrive wasn't even functional, let alone capable of whisking the Diggers girls away. "So what was it, then?" Jay asked of no one in particular. "I dunno," Brian shrugged. "But maybe while they're gone, we should try to help them by working on this drive, huh?" "Agreed," his friend said. "Let's take a look.." A half-hour later, they were not much further ahead than when they'd started. Jason had managed to figure out how to open the squat little machine, and Brian was up to his armpits in the guts of the thing. "Half the circuits in these boards are cooked," his muffled voice came out. "Is this supposed to be the BEST drive of them all?" "I'd assume so," Jason said, standing beside the unit. "I would think she'd go after nothing but the most easily repairable." Jason noticed something out of the corner of his eye and put down the schematic he was examining in order to glance back towards the crater, which was filled with a white light. "What's going on?" Just then, his pager went off. He read the display, which indicated a huge distortion going on near the truck. "Let's go check it out." They hadn't gone quite all the way back to the crater when Gina, Britanny, and Brianna--in armor--and the car materialized before them. "Are you guys okay?" Jason said. "We're fine," Cheetah said, "thanks to.. my sister Brianna here." She beamed. Brianna smiled and nodded. "What happened?" Brian wanted to know. Gina filled them in, about the device she'd built that saved them from a temporal anomaly, and about what transpired during that time. She told of the time-travelling dog and his plan to erase Gina and her sisters from existence, and how it almost succeeded, due to what Gina called 'a stupid mistake' on her part. "Wow," Jason understated. "Let's get on with it," Brianna declared, removing her armor and packing it away in the car. "You guys go ahead, I'll be there in a second," Gina said. Cheetah, Brianna, and Brian walked back towards the hyperdrive, and Jason was about to follow when Gina called out to him. He turned and found himself caught up in a tight hug from the eldest Diggers sister. "Wh..what was that for?" he asked when it was over. Gina smiled. "Brianna was able to go back and stop the bomb because she's evolved from being just a clone of me and Brit to being a true individual person now. You had a big hand in her growing-up in the past couple of months. In a way, you're the reason why she was able to save us. We owe our lives to her, and indirectly, to you." Jason was at a loss for words. The old rhetorical question popped into his mind: How do you say 'thank you' to someone who just saved your life? He instantly came up with another question: How do you say 'you're welcome'? "Anyway, we'd better get back to work," Gina said. "Did you make any headway? I presume that's why you're here." "... Um, uh, yeah," Jason finally got back on track. "Well, we mostly only found out that it's toast, pretty much." Gina nodded as they walked back towards the hyperdrive. "Yeah. Gonna take a long time to fix." Several hours later, Gina looked with concern at Jason. The rest of them had taken breaks here and there, but he, in attempting to keep up with Brianna, had stayed for the duration, working steadily. "Jay, you're beat," Gina told him. "Go get some rest." "I'm okay," he mumbled. He grabbed a tool and climbed up a ladder to the point where the drive was plugged into the wall. As he reached it, he put his hand in a handhold that wasn't there, and fell.. ..into the arms of Brianna, who'd rushed over to catch him in a nanosecond. "Bri', take him up to get some sleep," Gina instructed her sister. "You too. You're the reason he's stayed up this long." "Gotcha," the hybrid girl yawned, and walked out towards the crater, cradling Jason in her arms. He stirred only once while he was being carried away by the girl of his dreams. He correctly guessed that she was taking him to the truck. "Shut off d'alarm b'fore ya open up th'tonka toy," he mumbled. "What?" she said, leaning closer. "Stunner field.. friendliest part.." She smiled and shook her head. About fifteen feet away from the truck, she shifted Jason around so that she could reach into his pocket and get the remote. The truck finally chirped twice. She opened the door and deposited him inside, then stepped back and watched him. She smiled. Momentarily, she opened the hood of the truck and started tinkering. Jason woke up many hours later to the surprising sensation of being hugged by a sleeping six-foot-ten hybrid girl, who was curled up beside him, apparently more tired than he had been. He allowed himself a smile to mirror hers as he drifted back to sleep. "Jason, wake up," he was hearing quite some time later. He awoke and looked at his watch. Since he'd been carried to the truck, nine hours had passed. Brianna had a hand on his shoulder, trying to wake him up. She had a look of concern on her face. The other thing he noticed was that she was in the rear seat, seated at the computer. "What?" he finally said, sitting up. "I just found a news article you might be interested in." She said no more and let him read the screen in silence. The first thing that caught his eye was his own name. The next thing that caught his eye was Brian's name. Both of them had been reported missing by the RCMP several weeks earlier. The police were reportedly not ruling out foul play or even fair play, based upon the fact that there was absolutely no trace of them. That and a bit more on the exact date of their disappearance--the same date they arrived here, Jason recalled--was about it for the article. "Aw, geez," Jason said. He climbed out of the truck and walked back towards the outer city. "Hey," Brian said, gesturing to the hyperdrive. "This thing is screwed up. The warp field won't generate, that's the problem. We've got to scout around for parts from the other drives." "That's not the only thing that's screwed up," Jason said. "Do the words you, me, and CPIC Missing Persons List mean anything to you?" "What??!" Brian blurted out. "This is gonna be tricky. We should probably go directly home without going to the police. Just to our, uh, families, and ask them to just tell the police they got word from us and that we're OK, and then we'll come back here and just carry on with what we're doing. Sound good?" Brian took a moment and then nodded. "Let's do it," he declared. They went to tell the Diggers girls. They understood and said they'd work by themselves while Jason and Brian were gone. "I'll meet you up top in a sec," Brianna said. "No you won't," Jason countered. Brianna looked at him. "You're needed here to help your sisters," he said. "We don't need you, no offense, to tell our families we're OK. You can meet the family next time." Brianna nodded. "Yeah, you're right. I understand. You guys go get 'em." The Tonka Truck emerged from the light-gate two blocks away from the Diggers' house. "Wha?" Brian said, looking around. "I haven't set the coordinates in the computer yet for anything except here and El Dorado," Jason explained. "We'll have to drive to Canada." "Augh," Brian said, putting his head in his hands. "Can we stop and grab some food and clothes and stuff?" "That's the plan," Jason said. "If you don't mind me saying, though," Brian added, "we should dismantle or hide or safety this big gun back here. It makes ME nervous, so think what other people'll think." "Yeah, I guess you're right. You go get your stuff while I start taking it apart," Jason answered as he backed down the ramp into the bays. "When you get back, I'll go get my stuff and you can take over." A little less than fifteen minutes later, with the minigun successfully removed and stashed in a corner of the bay, Jason and Brian set out again in the truck, this time turning right and heading north, having agreed to visit Jay's family first. "If you get onto the I-75, we can head northwestward through Tennessee and thereabouts," Brian declared. "I know," Jason said. "Listen, just select 'Navigate' from the 'Assist' menu, and then type in 'Calgary'. The computer will do the rest." After a series of keyclicks from the back seat, Jason was rewarded with a small road map on the HUD/windshield, directing him around the north end of Atlanta, and as previously mentioned, up I-75 to Chattanooga, then up I-24 to Nashville, and so on. They set off for Calgary at 23.45 on 20 September 1996. "Jay?" Brian said quietly, trying to wake his friend. "Mmnph?" came Jason's response from the passenger seat. "What can I put in this thing? It's almost empty." "Where are we?" "Just outside of KCMO. I'm gonna stop at the first gas station I find." "What time is it?" "Almost eight a.m." "The 21st?" "Yeah. The gas?" "Oh.. um, find the highest octane you can and use that, barring any places that sell Jet-B." "Okay, premium it is." "Wake me again when you find some place for breakfast." "Gotcha." About thirty minutes later, they stopped and had something to eat. Then Brian got behind the wheel again, and Jason worked on the computer in the back while Brian pointed them in the direction of I-29 towards Omaha, Nebraska. Jason watched the world whip by and shook his head. It seemed that here, ALL the states had wiped their speed limits. They'd averaged over 100 MPH so far. This difference from his original world brought Jason back to the purpose of their journey. He was a little nervous about it all. They were essentially from a different Earth than the one they presently inhabited. They weren't 24, they were 3300. They'd already agreed to tell their parents the whole truth, as bizarre as it sounded, and let them react to it how they may--and somehow figure out how to get the police to drop the whole matter. Would their parents accept it, though, and how well? He checked the old newspaper files off the Sun Media web page. It reported the disappearance as far back as the last week of July, but only short blurbs each time. Hopefully, that meant that they could just reappear without much of a hassle. He tried to enjoy himself on some random web sites, but he was still thinking about his upcoming meeting with his family. They stopped for supper in Great Falls that evening, realizing that they'd be in Alberta in an hour after they got back on the road. "And after that, another three hours will put us in Calgary.. at midnight," Jason declared. "Kind of late to show up unannounced, huh?" Brian contributed. "I agree. Do you feel like spending another night in the truck?" "Well, I guess we can't exactly go to a motel without being spotted and questioned," Bri said, realizing Jason's reasoning. "Precisely. What I suggest is that we drive right to Redwood Meadows and stop off behind the fire hall. We can sleep a few hours there and then drive down to the house in the morning." So, at 9am the next day, Monday, 23 September, they were driving into the driveway at 244 Wild Rose Close. Jason parked the truck outside, noting that his car was still there, the car that he'd grown up in, The Nightmare Machine Mark One.. it sure looked old and decrepit up against the Tonka Truck. Veering off on that train of thought, Jason wondered what his mother was thinking while she stared at a large red and black pickup with Georgia plates parking in the driveway. "Okay, this is it. Wish me luck." "Let's just do it," Brian said, and climbed out. Jason followed him and climbed the concrete steps together, up to the deck. "Mom," Jason called out when she opened the front door to stare down at them. "Please don't call anyone, just let us come in and explain." And so they did, a morning's worth if not longer. Jason glanced at the clock only once, when he was talking about Kylie, and it was almost ten o'clock then. "You've got to believe us," he said as he concluded his story. "We haven't been forced to do anything, we weren't taken against our will, or anything like that. What we've told you is 100% true. I am indeed your son, and this is the same Brian you've always known, but we have some things we've got to do now, and we'd like to go do them. But we'd also like to remain close to you guys as well." he reflected. They had to wait and repeat the story for Jason's father and the rest of his family. They all seemed to accept it fairly well, to the three travellers' surprise. Brian's parents were phoned and apprised of the situation, and they took it well also. They promised to go along with the story, so long as there was a return promise from the two ex-missing persons to stop by and prove they were OK. They agreed to that, providing that Jason's family would accompany them to Toronto and take a few days off. They scheduled it for the week after, affording Jason and Brian some time to sort out their new old lives. Jason stepped back in time into his bedroom. It was cleaned up and left otherwise untouched, as you normally hear about when people go missing. The computer was still chugging away, presumably running the BBS on autopilot. He shook his head in disbelief at how easily the memories were flooding back to him, even though technically he hadn't experienced them. He had been drafted into the Robotech War in 1995, spent a few dozen years there, then got hurled across to the universe of Undocumented Features (which, he had noticed, was a fairly successful fanfic here). He spent 3200-odd years there, and then got tossed like a piece of flotsam into a new universe which had no real description. He had worked there in a similar fashion to his previous work, in a team designed to right wrongs in the dimensional continuum. That's when Jenna had met up with him and Brian, plucked from another dimension by the fellow named Bell. Then, while they were battling a force threatening to rip reality to shreds, the two of them were torn away from what they'd considered their home.. once more. And they ended up here. And it was 1996, there was no Robotech war, no GENOM for a Wedge War, and, relatively speaking, this was quite a normal place. Names came back to him: Mike Sugimoto, Jason Schneider, and all of them, appeared to be fellow netters here. The name Rod Rehn popped into his head just then. Rod had died in the late 24th century, as far as Jason remembered. By this timeline, Jason had not heard from Rod since the former moved out of Toronto in 1990. And then another set of names drifted past, then came back and hung around a while: Aileen Scott, Kylie Spilogale, Michele Scott, and Amy Lorne. Four women he'd devoted his life to; two of them dead, two of them missing, probably somewhere 'out there' still, in another dimension, but not in his. Michele didn't exist here, and Amy never did. Aileen died during his Robotech days, and Kylie met an untimely end 2381 years into his Wedge Defense Force times. And now, of course, there was Brianna. He'd have to tell his family sooner or later, he knew. Right now, they were working on digesting the revelation that he was actually 3300 years old and had seen the entire universe twice. They took that awfully well, he reminded himself. He was expecting them to respond more like he'd said he was abducted by aliens and forced to write articles for the National Enquirer. Instead, they accepted his explanation as a perfectly understandable tale of his experiences. Maybe it was because Brian was there backing him up, or maybe it was that he had been able to tell the story in intricate detail from the first battle of his Robotech days to the last fight he engaged in during his time with the D-Team. A fleeting revelation struck him: He vividly remembered saying to himself during that last conflict that he wanted everything to be normal again. Jason, Brian, Jason's mother Jean, his father George, grandmother Marg, and sister Jen and brother-in-law Rob all sat down that evening to try to hash out a workable story to tell the police. "The missing-persons report was in error," Jason declared. "Yeah," Brian said. "We went to Atlanta to visit some friends just before the Olympics, and just ended up staying a little longer than expected." "How did you get there without leaving a trail?" George queried, trying to help fill in the story. "We drove," Brian said simply. "But Jason's car is still here," Marg said. "Hm, good point," Jason said. "Did they take any photos or run Ident over it or anything like that?" "Not really, they just saw that it was here," George answered. "Damn. That doesn't help. Anyone?" "We went with another friend who did drive," Brian piped up. "Ok, who?" George threw out. He smiled. "Whoever. Nobody. Get my point?" "Yeah," Jason cut in, smiling. "Gee, officer, I don't remember his name, but he's one of my son's friends. No, sir, I don't know the plate number of his car. Sorry, sir." "So what about your return with a new truck and a Georgia driver's license and all that?" "Well.. we do plan to go back to Atlanta," Brian spoke up. "At least I do." "Me too," Jason said. "The police don't have to know that, though. Our friend got us papers somehow that let us stay there indefinitely." "Your friend?" "Oh.. um, ok. We met a girl by the name of Gina Diggers, who is a very smart adventurer, kind of like Indiana Jones. This gets weirder than OUR story, are you ready for it?" "..I guess," George said. "Okay. Well, 18 years ago, Gina's dad, who's a professor and a.. magic-user, he was in Africa somewhere and came across a clan of were-cheetahs, kind of like were-wolves, but cheetahs instead. Anyway, all but one of them were dead, and he took the infant were-cheetah and adopted her as his daughter. He removed the were-cheetah's ability to inflict lycanthropy, and she was raised as his daughter's baby sister, and later, protector. Anyway, on one of Gina and Brit's adventures, they got a curse put on them. They removed the curse, and put it into a bio-mass, but it managed to resolve itself into a kind of a cross between the two girls. They were able to rid this new person of the curse, somehow (don't ask me how, I never found out), and she became their sister Brianna. And we're living with them in a lab complex-slash-house in suburban Atlanta, going on adventures and other kinds of missions and all that." Jason looked up to find his family staring at him. "No, really, it's one hundred percent true. In fact...." "What?" his sister asked. He'd been about to tell them about his relationship with Brianna, but considering his just-finished story about her, he chose not to. "Nothing. Really, it's exactly what happened." "From what we've heard today, I'm never going to disbelieve anything you say ever again," Jean said. Jason drove the truck to northwest Calgary the next morning, having packed up the computer and removed his hardware from it (floppy drive, hard drive, SoundBlaster, modem, keyboard). While his parents were informing the police that all was OK, Jason was closing up some of his own loose ends. He had to look up the number in the phone book, then dialled it from the truck phone. "Mornin'," came the voice from the speaker. "Hi, Vance," Jason said. "Jay?" "How's it goin'?" Jason directed at the visor-mounted microphone. "I thought you were supposed to be missing," Vance Friesen spoke up. "We weren't missing, just not anywhere where people could find us," Jason said, grinning to his passengers. "We went to Atlanta. Listen, we're right outside your door; mind if we come in?" They went inside, Jason carrying the computer. Vance looked at him curiously. "Did you get a new one?" "In a way," Jason said. "Actually, the two of us are moving to Atlanta and I'm just sorting out all my stuff here and returning things." Vance was silent for a moment. "Okay," he finally said. "Will you be visiting back here ever?" "Oh, now and then, when I find the time," Jason nodded. "We're gonna be pretty busy, though; we've got jobs with a group that sends us all over the place." "Uh, Jay?.." Brian trailed off, tapping at his watch. "I'm sorry, Vance, but we've got a fantastically tight schedule to keep. We've gotta go. Oh, sorry, say hi and bye to Brian Burgess. I've told you about him, I think.." "Hi and bye, Brian Burgess," Vance nodded. "Take care." Later, they drove to Brougham, taking five days. They went through the same routine with Brian's family as they had with Jason's. "What is it that you're doing now?" Brian's mother asked the three of them one night while relaxing in the peace and quiet of a Brougham evening. "Might as well tell them, too," Jason shrugged at Brian. Brian nodded, drew in a deep breath, and began their story, about meeting Gina and Brianna and Britanny, and about their adventures together so far. He explained what had happened in recent days, and what their role was in all of it, and was once again surprised when all the members of his audience took it quite well. They had found that the comic book which Jason remembered did not exist in this world. That only seemed logical, considering the fact that in Atlanta, the very subject of that comic book was taking place daily. So, after about a week, they climbed back into the truck and started it up. Jason's father came to the driver's door as Jason idled the machine. "You've got to promise us you'll come back," George said without preamble. "Hey, it's your turn to visit me next time," Jason grinned. He drove a short distance down the road, turned onto a side street, and engaged the light-gate generator. They arrived back in Atlanta seconds later. "Did you record those coordinates?" Brian thought to ask Jason. "Oh! Yeah, I almost forgot," Jason replied. He reached over to his console and drummed in the code that would bring up the last location visited. He drove with one hand while he saved that location as "Brougham, ON" with the other. They returned to the house mostly in silence, each of them wondering what headway, if any, the girls had made on the hyperdrive. Jason backed into the bay, hearing the antenna scrape along the ceiling still, and made a mental note to try to solve that problem the first chance he got. Brian shut down his station and concentrated on heading towards bed, being that it was just after midnight. Jason shut the truck off, sat there and sighed, then opened his door. He walked across the bay, shutting off lights as he went, then got into the corridor. Surprisingly, Julia Diggers was there. Jason nodded and tried to go around her, but she blocked his way. He backed up and moved in another direction and there she was again. He asked her what was up, but she didn't say a word, just kept on smiling and blocking his path. Finally, feeling slightly annoyed, he tried to push his way past, and found himself sitting on his butt on the floor, a meter and a half beyond where he'd started. She came up to him. "You show promise," she said, helping him up off the floor. "You're determined, but you don't know how to read moves and act upon them. Have you ever had any kind of martial arts training before?" "What? No, not officially," he answered, feeling tired. "Why?" "Because as of seven A.M., you're my newest student," she said, growing serious. "You're either going away with my daughters or you're going to hold down the fort here while they're gone. Either way, you have to know how to defend yourself so you can defend others. Do you agree?" "I guess so, but--" "I've already checked with Gina," she said, anticipating his protest. "She says there's lots to be done, and you'll have plenty of things to do when you get done. Brian'll be undergoing the same training later on. See you at seven." Brian looked up. He watched Jason walk right past the Bay of Tonka and down towards the gym, clad in a tracksuit. The door closed behind him and sounded like it was locked. Brian tried to enter the gym, but Genn blocked his way. "Uh-uh," the Rakshasa said, folding his arms. "This is a private session." Jason was still smiling weakly as Julia Diggers welcomed him to her one-on-one training session. "Are you ready?" she said, grinning fiercely. "I.. I guess so," he stammered nervously. If she let her guard down, it didn't show. "Jason, are you relaxed?" "Um, well, kind of," he said. "I must admit, I'm feeling a bit intimidated." "Don't be. I'm not here to humiliate you, I'm here to make you better." She looked at him. "I can't avoid saying it, though, you've got to lose some weight." "I know, I know," he said, looking down at his gut-- --and finding himself flat on his back. Julia was standing over him, grinning. "I also can't avoid stressing how important it is to never ever let your guard down." He smiled and sat there, willing to heed her advice. Only when she offered to help him up did he make a move. "As with any other student, we'll begin with sparring. Ready?" "Ready," he nodded, trying not to gulp too audibly. Several dozen minutes later, after learning some very valuable lessons already, he was allowed a rest. "Do you feel more comfortable now?" Julia asked. "Yeah, I do, actually," he said, stretching. "I enjoyed that. It was a real eye-opener." After a pause, he spoke again. "Um, do you mind if I ask you a kind of a personal question?" "People always ask that question without realizing that you can't know whether or not to mind until you hear the question." Jason thought about that for a moment, then shrugged and went on. "Did you ever think of having Dr. Diggers cure your problems with your back?" Julia smiled briefly. "I indeed had thought of that. However, it's not my style." "Don't want anything but what's natural?" She looked at Jason curiously. "Yes, something like that." She felt it was her turn to ask a question. "You have some interesting moves and manners," she observed. "What have you been doing with your life?" He sat down, then looked up at her. "You don't know?" "Not in the least." He shrugged. "I would've thought one of the girls would've explained." He prepared himself for the 378th retelling of his now (in)famous Origin Story. "Well, I was born in 1972 in Canada. But it wasn't here, it was another dimension. In my dimension, World War III was fought from 1995 to 1999, using conventional weaponry. In 1999, a giant spaceship crashed on Earth, making everyone realize that we weren't alone. This has been chronicled here apparently as a work of fiction called Robotech. So from 1999 to about 2030, I was a pilot in the Robotech Defense Force, first defending the Earth from alien attack, and then going to other planets to try to stop the Robotech War at its origin. In 2011, Earth was attacked by almost 5 million warships and about 3 billion people died. We rebuilt and launched the counteroffensive against the people who started the war in the first place, like I said. Then, when we were done, when we tried to come home, the spaceship screwed up or something--I've never really figured out what happened--and we--Brian and I and a few others-- ended up being sent back in time and sort-of across dimensions to a similar timeline. We seemed to be reduced in age from 60 to about 25, met up with a bunch of other pilots and formed another squadron, and carried on as if nothing had happened. However, we seemed to be having trouble with time and dimensions, a situation I've come to know as deltaReality. ..By the way, did you REALLY want the long version?" "Oh, no, carry on," Julia assured him. "I'm quite interested." "Okay, you asked for it. Anyway, we, meaning not only Brian and I, but the other dozen or so in the new squadron, got shuttled across time and space again, to a universe similar to the Robotech story, although slightly different. I understand here it's a story known to some people on the Internet as Undocumented Features. In it, a bunch of college students from Mass-- Massachush--whatever accidentally create lifeforms and entities from various comics and TV shows, and end up heading off into space in a spaceship built from the remains of one of their campus buildings. They were fleeing a company that was centered on global/galactic domination, which one of them had created, as I already said, accidentally. A city near Boston which I can never pronounce--" "It's pronounced boh-stan, I think." "Ha. Anyway, Worcester, or wooster, or wurster, or whatever, it got blown up just as the Wedge Rats--the term the college students gave themselves--left Earth. My squadron and I joined up with them about then, .. and found immortality, of sorts, from a guy who'd lived for 15 million years or so. We, as in the Wedge Defense Force, gallivanted about the cosmos for a few hundred years, stopping wars, saving planets, etc etc etc, yadda yadda yadda. In 2288, we got dealt a major blow in the format of a breakup engineered by the enemy, who planted spies and simulagents and all that in our midst, then walloped us as our guard was down from the entire military backbone being destroyed. We spent a hundred years in shambles, with no leaders to speak of except ourselves, and then resurfaced in 2389 after our leaders were cleared of any crimes or wrongdoing." He paused for breath. "So we carried on better than before, righting wrongs and all that, until 2958, when there was a monstrous war almost galaxy-wide. Everyone was involved--name any fictional alien race you can think of, they were there. Cardassians, Kilrathi, Daleks, Ferengi, and so on. So anyway, we all fought like hell for a hundred days in some of the fiercest fighting you've ever seen. We all lost a lot of friends--and not just to Death. Some people, ok, a LOT of people, after that fight, just up and quit, going to an uninhabited planet and settling down on their own. It was that brutal, it made people who'd been exposed to that kind of thing for 900 years want to give it all up. A bunch of us stuck around, though. In the 44th century, though, I lost someone real close to me, and sat out the next 300 years or so, until a friend had something even worse happen to him, at which point I realized how childish I was being, and got back into the swing of things. Then, in the year 5150, I retired for about 75 years--I guess it was more like a vacation, for such a short time, relatively speaking--and was re- drafted, basically, in 5216, as an instructor teaching young, um, 'space cadets'." He smiled, as he had through most of his rambling speech, remembering the better times. "And then, on our first voyage, the ship encountered another space-time distortion, AGAIN, and Brian and I got ripped away from our friends--AGAIN--and put in an entirely different timeline--" "Again?" "Yeah," he finished. "At that point, the same guy we'd met 3300 years before, the guy who'd lived for 15 million years and who'd given us near-immortality, told us that we'd never jump again unless we wanted to. I believed him, foolish me, and me and Brian met Jenna, an old SO of his who came from one of our alternate realities, from our youth, and joined up with someone else who I'd met along the way, and we formed a special task force designed to counter dimensional problems and/or spacetime-terrorism. We worked on that for about two years, and were just at the climax of a huge battle with some maniac who wanted to mold history to his own benefit when the two of us got separated from the main force, and then sucked into an alternate dimension one last time. There, we met Bell--the 15-million-year-old guy--for the first time. Well, it was the first time he'd met us, as far as he was concerned, but we knew him well, of course; time has done screwy things to us. Anyway, he pushed us into one last dimensional portal, promising it'd be the last ever time, and here we are. Your daughters backed up that promise with scientific proof, too; we're normal mid-20s-people, firmly rooted in this dimension." He was more out of breath now than when he'd finished his practice drill. "So you're saying you've been alive for three and a half millennia?" Julia said. "From our perspective, yes," Jason countered. "As far as this dimension goes, I've only been on the planet for 23 years and change. I was born in the same town in Canada at the same time on the same date, and grew up in a similar fashion, except I didn't go to war in 1995, I went to school to do a course on being a medic. 'I' vanished some time in July of this year--about the same time Brian and I arrived here. We've taken the place of our counterparts who used to exist here." "That is absolutely fascinating," Julia answered honestly. She did appear to be quite interested in the story. "I think you're overqualified to be helping my daughters--it might be the other way around." Jason laughed. "Oh, there are lots of things I can still learn. Besides, knowing the mean surface temperature of the planet Coutts may not benefit anyone around here." This time, Julia laughed. "Yes, I guess so." After a pause, she added, "Tell me, if you don't mind; other than Brianna, there's no one special in your life right now?" He paused for the briefest of moments, thinking once more of Aileen, Kylie, Mitch, and Amy. "There used to be," he finally admitted. "However, I've learned the hard way quite a few times that you can't turn back the clock, even if you have been put through what I've been put through." He looked right at Julia for the first time in almost an hour, having been staring off into space for most of his story. "Yes.. Brianna is my sole Significant Other right now." he failed to add. He also chose not to mention that Dr. Diggers had not yet done the infamous "flaming skull bit" on him. He hoped that that was a good sign.. "That's good. It's obvious you two are getting along pretty well," Julia said bluntly. "And I KNOW that she likes you a fair bit. There's one problem, though." "What?" "Gina told me when I called her that you almost got yourself seriously injured because you were trying to keep up with Bri' and stayed up all night. I know she doesn't lie, but I'll ask you anyway: Is there any truth to that?" Julia was serious again. "Yes, unfortunately," Jason said eventually, nodding. "I was concentrating so hard on A, working as closely with Bri' as I could, and 2, helping to fix the drive so that we could get underway, that I neglected my well-being. I'm sorry." "Don't be sorry to me," Julia said. "It's you that nearly got hurt. However, there is one thing I'd like you to keep in mind. Now that you're part of Gina's team, things you do could have a direct effect on the welfare of not only yourself, but your friends, which includes my daughters. I'm not trying to threaten you or anything, but think of what could happen to them if you allow yourself to get sloppy because of a game of one-upmanship." He started to answer, then stopped and reformulated his thoughts. "You're right. I'll work harder at that and keep it in mind." "Good." She smiled and got to her feet. "Now, let's fine-tune some of those moves you showed me, and then get on with Lesson 2." Jason smiled nervously, nodded, and stood up. The next day, after Brian had gone through the training as well, the twosome piled back into the truck and headed for El Dorado. Armed with new skills and fresh thinking, they were ready to help tackle the problem again. Brian was thinking of it as they passed through the light-gate. More than a week had passed; if Gina could do it in a month by herself, then with Brianna and Britanny helping her, she could very possibly be done by now. His eyes went wide as the truck emerged from the light-gate and narrowly missed a tree. They failed to evade, and the passenger mirror whacked a low- hanging branch. Brian twisted around in his seat to regard Jason, who was staring ahead without much attention to the road. Nearing the site of El Dorado, though, he slowed and braked to a stop, seemingly coming out of whatever world he was in. "Jay, what were you thinking about back there?" Brian asked. "Hm? Oh, um,.. well, the WDF, and Kylie, Mitch, Amy, and that sort of thing," he said reluctantly. "Are you still working on that?" Brian asked as they climbed out. "Do you remember someone resembling yourself having a philosophy about the past?" Brian was referring to Jason's oft-spoken statement about how the past was past, and couldn't be changed, so people shouldn't dwell on it. Jason thought about it, realizing what was about to come. "Yes," he answered. "D'ya wanna maybe follow your own advice, please?" "Sorry, you're right. Listen, you go ahead and help out. Tell 'em I'll be down in a bit." Jason did an about-face and got back into the truck, which drove off towards the woods. Brian climbed down to the level of the hyperdrive, and found the girls working on it. "They're back!" Brit said. "How was the trip?" "Not bad, not bad," Brian answered. "Interesting." "Where's Jason?" Brianna asked, standing up. "I think I was getting to him," Bri responded. "He drove off into the forest after he dropped me off. He said he'd be here in a while." Everyone got down to the task at hand, which was to repair the navigational computer. No one noticed that Brianna was working with slightly less enthusiasm and devotion as she had moments earlier. The Tonka Truck rolled to a stop, engine off, deep in the forests encircling the site of El Dorado. Jason was well and truly lost. Jason told himself as he climbed out and wandered around, arming the truck's alarm and engaging the pager system. He wanted desperately to call this home, but he kept on thinking back to the other realms he'd inhabited over the millennia, places he'd called home and he'd made friends in. In that way, he realized, it was not much different than any other person's problems when moving to a new place. Except his new place was an entirely different dimension, and he'd been there for a very short time, relatively speaking. Seconds, compared to his eons elsewhere. He knew that Brian was right--his obsession with the past was wrong, and it was probably endangering their safety, when he occasionally drifted in and out of la-la land, reminiscing. He felt embarrassed for droning on and on at Julia the day before, figuring she was probably just humoring him. And all the other times he'd rambled away, telling someone else his life's story, like it was something special. What Brian had said--about the past being the past and unchangeable--was true, but it didn't really apply. Jason didn't want to go back and change the past, he wanted to be there and live in it. But if he did that, he wouldn't be here with Brianna, would he? For the first time in a long time, he thought favorably of Edison Bell. Rather than laying blame upon him for causing their dimensional bouncing across time, he was looking upon the scientist as a wise old man (even if he didn't look it) who was almost fifteen million years older than Jason. Fifteen million years! Jason was still an infant by Bell's standards, even though he was ancient by normal human standards himself. No, he wasn't; tests had proven that he and Brian had no traces of Omega-2 or anything similar in their systems, and over the past few months, many opportunities had presented themselves to prove to him that they were most assuredly mortal. One thing which hadn't occurred to him until that moment was the situation with the Frakes effect. Bell, and later the Diggers girls, had confirmed that the two of them--him and Brian--for the first time in a lot of jumps, were not coated with Frakes particles. That meant without a doubt that he no longer existed back in the last place he was, with Amy and Jenna and the D Team, fighting against the forces intent on tearing reality to shreds. He shook his head. he scolded himself. Yes, indeed, why now? In the WDF, he never pined for the RDF days, at least not to this extent; same for the D-Team versus the WDF. What changed? he told himself. He reached out with his left arm--which had at one time been traumatically amputated, he reminded himself--and touched a gigantic tree, older than any other in the area. he realized. He sat down underneath the tree and looked around. Far off, almost obscured from sight by the forest, he caught a glimpse of chrome and red paint. This spurt of humor surprised him, then steadfastly refused to go off on a tangent, and stuck solidly to his reason for coming out to the woods in the first place. What was he unable to see? He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the forest. It bounced once or twice and then the area was silent again. For the longest time, he made absolutely no movement and had no thoughts at all, as if waiting for a response. Then, all of a sudden, his mind started up again and continued on. He looked up to the treetops, hundreds of feet above him, and closed his eyes. << Peter Gabriel "Solsbury Hill" _Shaking the Tree_ >> He could see his Veritech Fighters, all of them, from his first days in the RDF right through to the D Team. He watched Rod, Mike, Jason, Tal, Simon, Lander, Dave, Sean, Chris, Bret, and all the rest show up. (Not surprisingly, Brian did not appear. Jenna did, though.) Finally, Aileen, Mitch, Kylie, and Amy stood before him. "Goodbye," he whispered. He saw the images in his mind slowly vanish as he bade farewell to those eras, one by one. Naturally, since it had occupied the most time in his life, the era involving the WDF and Kylie disappeared last. he told her. A twig snapped nearby as he opened his eyes. He turned his head quickly and saw Brianna coming into the area. Her face showed relief that she'd found him. "Hi," she said, smiling. "You okay?" "I am now," he smiled back. Standing up, he added, "How's the drive coming?" "Coming," she nodded. "That's good." He looked around for the truck and could not see it any more. "I hope you know how to get back," he told her. She smiled again. "I might remember later on," she said, sitting down and forcing him to join her. "You know," Brian said, as he and Gina lugged a heavy piece of equipment from one of the bad drives towards the one they were repairing, "Mistake one was probably letting him go off on his own.." "..and mistake two was letting her go after him, I know," Gina finished. "But maybe this is a plus." "Wrecking my back helping you carry a six hundred pound piece of steel & electronics is a plus?" "At least we don't have to listen to the two of them going on about each other," Gina grinned. It would have surprised the old Jason if he hadn't been surprised at his comfort & confidence in being with Brianna. However, the old Jason was gone. "We're miles away from any other living creature, aren't we?" Jason said, looking about. "Uh-huh," Brianna said, grinning, "..but what you're thinking of wasn't my reason for coming here. I just wanted to talk." "Okay, but I think I've talked myself out today," he answered, gesturing to the tree. "Had a pretty long conversation back there." "What about?" she asked, hoping it wasn't WITH the tree that he was talking. "Oh, noth--" he began, then caught himself. "Basically, I beat myself up over pining for the past, and said goodbye to all my friends from there." She threw her arm over his shoulder. "Sounds like it could've been emotional." "A little bit, yeah," he acknowledged. He was about to say something more, but he held back the urge and remained silent. "What?" Brianna said. "What what?" "You looked like you were going to say something." "I was, but I've come to the realization that I talk far too much." He shifted a bit so that he was slouching slightly. "Besides, you said, and I quote, 'I just wanted to talk'. So I don't want to jump in on your time." She laughed. "I didn't really have anything specific to say," she told him. "I just didn't want you to be out here all alone brooding." "So you came to brood with me?" She shook her head, trying not to laugh again. "I came to keep you company." For a moment, he didn't answer, just content to be near her. Then: "I appreciate it." Suddenly, uncharacteristic of her, she turned around and kissed him firmly. He didn't waste any time in returning it. "Oh, come ON, now," Brian said, looking at his watch. "I was joking earlier, but this is ridiculous." "Hm?" Gina said, lifting her head from her task. "They've been out in the woods for 2 1/2 hours! I wouldn't be surprised if they come back with kids!" Gina couldn't help it; she burst out laughing. Brian, after a moment, appeared to have a hard time holding it in, too, as Gina smiled and said, "Let them be. We'll go hunt them down at suppertime, and then go whole-hog on the repairs tomorrow morning." "When we get the drive fixed," Brianna told Jason as they approached the truck, "I want to go with them." "Okay," Jason said. "Absolutely." "The reason I say that is that I figure Gina may want you guys to stick back here and keep everything under control at home." Jason stopped her and held onto her shoulders, trying to look into her eyes, a foot above his. "I know," he said plainly. "I expect that to happen. And yes, I also know that you could be in danger during the trip. That's the risk we take--all of us. I will tell you this, though. If you don't come back, I WILL hunt you down, find you, and MAKE you come back." She stifled a laugh and nodded. "You would, too, wouldn't you?" Gina looked at her watch, then out at the thin patch of sky that was visible from their position. It was a very dark blue, matching the late hour. "I think it's time we head back for the night," she told the lot of them. "We'll come back for nine a.m. tomorrow." As the Tonka Truck followed the Ginamobile to a safe light-gate point, Jason watched the sunset, feeling calm and serene, happy to be alive, and all that. Brianna was beside him, and the two of them had a much greater understanding of each other, and themselves, thanks to their time spent alone in the woods. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) Suddenly, Jason felt physically ill. He let his truck coast for a minute while his head cleared, but after that, his gut was still in turmoil and he had a headache that would easily last for hours. He was cold and queasy, and could only identify the feeling in the pit of his stomach as something similar to fear. he tried to quip to himself.. "Um.. hey, guys," he said. "Hm?" Brianna answered, distracting herself from the sunset. "Remember when we first got here, how I was so excited, jumping about and screaming 'it's all over'?" "Yeah?" Brian responded. "I may have been a little premature in declaring that." TO BE CONTINUED in FADE TO GREY