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> The Baroness, Part 52a
> There are Worse Things Than Being in the Safe
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> Baroness Elizabeth Zemo once again was having a bad day. With Silicone Sally absent, though, no one was available to commiserate. In fact, the prospect of facing four reinforced concrete walls for the rest of the afternoon was so dispiriting that Beth Zemo resolved to undergo the ordeal of escaping the Safe.
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> Step one: activate the sound-dampening micro emitter in her left shoe sole. She ostentatiously kicked the oh-so-practical-but-klunky pump off her foot and complained for the cameras about the stone that had crept inside. A quick scrabble inside and her voice was muted.
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> Step two: subvocalize to trigger the video override. It took six tries to get the control phrases out without lip movement that would be picked up by the prison's cameras, but Elizabeth Zemo was nothing if not determined.
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> With the cameras and microphones foiled, she went on to step three -- the motion sensors. Steps four through 16 followed, spoofing everything from gravity pulse sensors to atmospheric Brownian motion anomaly recorders.
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> Step 17, two and a quarter hours later, was the most critical. Extracting a syringe from a Zemo pocket dimension, the Baroness plunged it into her left forearm and drove the plunger home as a 30 second timer began counting down. Turning swiftly to her right, she faced the stainless steel plate on the wall that served for a mirror and touched three precise locations along its rim in succession. The plate glided slowly downward, revealing a sinister-looking control panel. By now, the timer read 14 seconds and Beth Zemo was beginning to feel dizzy.
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> She hastily flipped a half-dozen switches and then scowled at a display showing two yellow lights blinking among the greens. Stealing a glance at the timer, now down to nine seconds, the Baroness shrugged, grasped the red handle to the right, and yanked feebly at it. It stuck. Six seconds.
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> Desperately, she leaned into the lever and forced it downwards. Then, on the verge of vomiting, she shuffled backward until she fell backward onto the narrow bed and fell unconscious.
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> The only sounds in the cell were the soft whirr of the steel panel replacing itself, a few seemingly random clicks and hisses from the Baroness's devices as they deactivated and the deep, slow rasping of her own breathing. In the control center, the guard sergeant logged that prisoner SM (Special Measures)-1 was taking yet another afternoon nap.
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> At that moment, a young woman with overdeveloped cheekbones and underdeveloped self-discipline was tottering on her high heels on the sidewalk of Rodeo Drive in the newly restored Arachknight City, outside a very upscale bar called Indiscretions. Paparazzi clicked shutters, camera crews zoomed in and reporters shouted as Picardy Pikes, bad girl of the moment, gave good pix by staggering in front of one of her favorite places to get wasted.
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> "Picardy, what will the judge do when he finds out you were drunk at lunch time?"
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> "Picardy, do you see yourself as a role model for other young mothers?
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> "Hey, skank! That's right, look here! Who's taking care of the kids?
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> "Ah-bluh. . .gurp . . . er." The blonde pop tart was obviously smashed at 11:30 in the morning; bad news for her custody battle.
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> "Picardy, is it true you're hoping to date Hatman to persuade the judge you're a decent person?"
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> The word "Hatman" seemed to penetrate Picardy's mental fog. Her head bobbed upward and her eyes darted around the crowd. “Franz,†she quavered.
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> “Hey, who’s Franz?â€Â
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> “Is he your new boyfriend?â€Â
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> “Are there videos of him and you in bed?â€Â
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> “Franz! Get me out of here!â€Â
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> In fact, prisoner SM-1 was the beleaguered celebrity standing outside of Indiscretions. Despite her best efforts and all the resources of ITC and the Zemo empire, Elizabeth Zemo had found that she could not bypass all of the Safe’s security devices. Teleportation was blocked, and no matter what she tried, if her body were to leave the cell, the explosive implanted in her skull would detonate.
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> On the other hand, there was always a way. Rummaging though Great-Uncle Heinrich Zemo’s archives and borrowing bits and pieces of the HAGGIE digitization algorithms, Beth had developed a robust mind-transfer device. Some careful planning and programming, a pull of the big red lever, and her mind was in someone else’s body. Of course, that meant that the host’s mind was now in hers. She couldn’t have someone else raving and ranting in her form while she was pursuing her business far away, completely undetectable as Baroness Elizabeth Zemo. The Safe’s management might actually believe the lunatic’s story.
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> A moment’s cogitation had provided the answer. Beth would sedate herself just before making the switch. The unlucky host mind would sleep away the hours in Beth’s cell and the autosystems would reverse the swap before the victim ever woke up. The Schloss’s staff, reunited after the Parody War, had identified suitable female candidates worldwide. The Baroness had already spent evenings in London, early mornings in Honolulu, and late nights in Sydney, enjoying a freedom absent any fear of discovery.
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> The staff, however, included Dolf, Dolf and Hrolf, the amazingly incompetent lackeys who had thought it would be great to have their employer inhabit a more exciting body for them to chauffeur and serve. When Gunther had left the report on Miss Agatha Swan, Princeton ‘99 summa cum laude, Harvard Law School ’02 with distinction, clerk to the Chief Justice of the United States ‘04-’05, on the table while he went for a beer (Becks), the trio had replaced several parameters with the vital statistics of Ms. Pamela A., a well known sexpot. Reacting to the inconsistencies and exaggerations in the data, the mind-swap program engaged its fuzzy logic and essentially directed the Baroness’s consciousness to the fuzziest person in the general area – Ms. Pikes.
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> Not only was the former ruler of Earth crippled by the inevitable disorientation that a 4,500 kilometer mind transfer induces, but Ms. Pikes had indeed spent the morning tieing one on, imbibing the hair of the dog, going for the Bolivian marching powder and calming herself with the contents of most of two medicine cabinets. Worse, the inimitable and unflappable Franz, instead of being ready to whisk her away, was eight miles away in downtown AKC, hovering over Ms. Swan and wondering what was delaying his mistress.
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> [more to come, I hope]
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> Playing the part of Baroness Elizabeth Zemo
> J. JONAH JERKSON
> Voice of the People
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