Previous Post The Moderator Saga: A Deleted Scene Author’s Note: herein is the original version of a scene I cannibalised for the story above. By the time I came to post it others had already progressed the tale in other ways, so this "never happened" (like the rest did!) But I thought folks might be interested in a "what if" that shows another way the story might have twisted. ***     LOL INTERNET was a spotty youth with an intense stare that disturbed people. When he was forced to interact with humans he preferred it to be by texts to one of a series of online identities he’d established. Nobody was allowed to call him Zachary Zelnitz.     LOL wasn’t really comfortable round people (he’d once kept a cat-girl locked up in his sub-basement but she’d escaped eventually). Their emotions and responses puzzled him. So he was particularly disturbed by the reading he was getting off Test Subject 103394.     LOL 2 SRC NGN, he keyed into his mobile phone. CN U CM 2 LAB?     A few moments later Search Engine strode into the reprogramming area with a glower on his face. “What now?” he snapped. Every time he died the Moderator insisted on bringing him back in some new host body rather and just let him come back in his own time in his own way. He’d just spent the last two hours escaping back to his proper form.     THS XPRIMNT SUX, LOL texted, gesturing to where the young woman lay on the visualisation table with the VR helmet on her cranium.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Speak to me properly of I shall decompile you,” Search Engine threatened his employee. “Why have you interrupted me at this busy time?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It… it’s subject 103394,” LOL answered. “Sir,” he added hastily. “I’m getting some completely screwy reading from her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The power dampener is working, presumably, since you have unfortunately not been fried to a crisp?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. And the images are being pumped into her head just as we programmed them. But she’s not responding right.”     Search Engine touched the computer console and checked the data. “This is the elementalist girl we captured,” he summarised to himself. “She believes herself in the Lair Mansion of the world that was wiped to make way for this one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was the master’s brief, sir,” LOL answered. “Make things as familiar as possible for her, and subvert her from there. It was all going fine at first.”     Search Engine reviewed the readouts. “She accepted the shock of waking up ‘married’ to the Moderator. She accepted the reality of her surroundings – not surprising since we were tapping into her own sensitivity to matter to shape what she was seeing and feeling. She believed what Anna told her about her friends dying.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That Anna is one magnificent piece of kit,” LOL INTERNET enthused. “There’s no way a software patch could affect her without basically lobotomising her. She’s reacting to the VR telepathyware just like a flesh and blood human would. She believed everything she told the elementalist in the virtual world. She thinks she’s there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“For all the sophistication of her programming she is still very naive in the ways of the world,” observed Search Engine. That’s why we selected her rather than the cyborg or the energy conduit. Neither of them would have been a hundred percent safe in there.”     LOL got back to the problem. “Anyhow, it all seemed to be going pretty well. Subject 103394 was becoming more and more distressed as we hit her with all her nightmare scenarios – forced marriage, death of loved ones, loss of freedom, failing friends. She was well on the way to breakdown and surrender. Textbook. But then she changed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“At 0254,” Search Engine noted from the monitor data. “She suddenly had an entirely different set of emotional responses, including…” He frowned. “She achieved sexual climax?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Eleven times, sir,” LOL admitted admiringly. “I just can’t find out why. And after that she… well, she stopped contemplating suicide and surrender and started planning ways to destroy the Earth.” He pointed to the hasty patch he’d had to make when Liu Xi had wandered into the Lair Library to search for forbidden tomes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where was she?” Search Engine asked, more to himself than to Zelnitz since he was already skimming through the VR logs. “Where was she when she became… excited? Ah. A bedroom, of course. Jay Boaz’ bedroom?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Doorman?” sneered LOL. “That doofus?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That doofus flattened Scarlet Lawnmower with a well-placed fire extinguisher yesterday,” Search Engine pointed out. “But I believe the man Liu Xi went looking for would be Hatman.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hatman’s not in the VR program,” LOL INTERNET objected. None of the former heroes from the old reality are. All information about them has been expunged, just like you ordered. In fact not even Dooman’s in the Lair Mansion VR program. Then what the frak happened here?”     Search Engine dug deeper, his eyes unfocussing as he became one with the data. “There,” he pointed to a line of code. “That spike. Something was slipped into the virtual world at that point. Someone gatecrashed.”     LOL INTERNET was checking the video logs of Liu Xi strapped to the programming array. “Hey, there at 0254, where she’s squirming. She mouths a name: Jay.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hatman wasn’t there,” Search Engine said. He drew his conclusions and sighed. “She may have seen him, but that’s now who was there with her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then who? How?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just a theory,” Search Engine replied, “but bear in mind what happened. Before the encounter she was suicidal. After the encounter she was murderous. She wanted to destroy the world to spite the Moderator.”     That meant nothing to Zelnitz. “So?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So check the file on her ex-boyfriends,” he replied. “We can’t prove it, of course. We may never know. The question is whether this interference and Liu Xi’s post-coital change of mindset have irredeemably damaged her conditioning. Yuki Shiro and Chiaki Bushido are going to die whatever happens, as painfully as I can contrive it, but I had hopes of presenting Liu Xi to the master.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I dunno,” LOL admitted. “That’s why I called you. She’s doing all kinds of crazy screwy stuff in her virtual world that we never mapped and I’m having to shunt in data on the hoof. Last thing she did was summon some kind of occult book called the Necronastycon to wake up some guy named Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She what?” snapped Search Engine.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I said she wanted to do some voodoo thing with this due names Shabba…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Get her out of that program now,” Search Engine commanded. “Right now. Sedate her and get her out. Before she can wake that thing up.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Relax, man. It’s only VR. If she destroys the world the worst that can happen is… Oh.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is that she can break free of the virtual world we made for her, discover the truth, and wake up?” Search Engine challenged. “Quickly, man, get her…”     Just then Liu Xui Xian awoke the Groper Out of Grossness from his eternal sleep, cascading a change across the VR Parodyverse that changed the very stars and caused the fairly Great Old Ones to awaken. The program crashed. And burned. And the ashes gibbered in a corner. Bits of the system hardware crawled away.     Liu Xi Xian sat up.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not again,” said Search Engine as she sprayed the room with searing flame that destroyed everything it touched, and especially her captors. *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

The Moderator Saga Part Thirtysomething: The Great Escape

Mouse covered her ears. The loading bay doors to the storehouse that contained the spoils of the New Lair Legion were pried open. The bulky figure of Sigmund the Superlative Simulacrum ripped the titanium plating as easily as a person might tear off a sheet of Reynolds Wrap. To his left stood Search Engineer, his lantern lit and hanging from the end of the brakeman’s switch slung over his shoulder. He touched the brim of his cap and whistled.
“What a mess,” he drawled as he limped forward.

Indeed, the attendants of The Moderator had seen better days. Helen, glasses broken, clothing torn, was cradling the head of her college crush Muffy Framlicker, who happened to be sharing brainspace with another school chum Al B. Harper. The grotesque dwarf Flapjack was lying in a pool of his own blood, seemingly dead, but he did smile weakly when Link came from behind Sig.

“Just couldn’t keep away, huh, babe?”

“Hardly,” the young woman shot back, “We didn’t come here for you. Any of you.”

Brap looked around from the ruins of a sacrificial altar to Buto, “No? Zen why are you here? Surely it iz not to join the revolution?”

/The revolution is over. Moderator is dead./ Sigmund etched the news.

“Then we won?” Helen McAllister said haltingly.

Search Engineer smirked, “I suppose. Though I think you’re going to find the new boss every bit as bad as the old one. For as long as it lasts.”

The villain wove his way through several stacks of boxes to a large shape covered in a tarp, “Here we go. Clear a path, Sig.”

“For as long as what lasts?” Mouse stood and followed Search Engineer, ignoring the crashing sounds as the Simulacrum plowed his way up to the structure.

“This new status quo. It’s only a matter of time before the Deus ex machinas start flying around fast and furious, and I for one don’t want to be here when it happens. Hold these,” Search Engineer handed his accessories to Helen and took hold of the tarp. With a flourish he pulled it away, revealing a London AEC Routemaster, “All aboard the magic bus!”

Mouse watched as Search Engineer took the ring of keys from his belt and opened the door to the double decker, “This…. I remember this. This is the bus the Lair Legion used for its World Tour.”

“In another reality, yes. Which is where we’re going to be taking it. As far from Ground Zero as possible,” Link made her way onto the bus; sitting in the chair she would need to power the vehicle for their journey.

/Miss Link, are you sure you are up for this? That is called the Pain Chair for a reason. /

“I can handle pain, Sig, if it gets us clear from all the cosmic reckonings that the Engineer says are coming. Still, anybody got a Midol?” she joked.

“First rule of long distance travel is not to drive impaired,” Search Engineer said as he slid into the bus’s driver’s seat. He gave Helen a long look, “You know, we’d be willing to let you come along, provided you don’t try anything stupid like grow a backbone again. FramHarper too.”

“The pig stays, however. And so does Brap,” Link said severely.

Before, Helen would have considered it. But now, after seeing the courage her friends had shown against the overwhelming forces of The Moderator, she knew how wrong it would be to cut and run. No matter what came next, “No thanks.”

“Your loss,” Search Engineer swung the door shut and turned the ignition. The bus sputtered to life. It lazily turned towards the open bay doors, gathering speed as it went. Once outside it accelerated even more, until it became a golden blur. Then it was gone.

*****

/Where are we?/ Sig asked as he exited the Routemaster. Judging by the Brubaker Boulevard street sign, they were still in Paradopolis, albeit one that seemed deserted of people.

“I don’t know,” Link admitted, “but it can’t be an Earth I’ve been to before. My powers only let me teleport to where I haven’t been.”

Search Engineer looked around, “So it’s a new setting then. A place for new stories, er, opportunities, I mean.”

/With just the three of us?/ the Simulacrum wasn’t so sure of the possibilities, unless perhaps their number decreased by one.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before others show. Villains to serve. Heroes to fight,” the Engineer said confidentially. He scanned the storefronts until one particular establishment caught his eye, “Until then, I think I have the perfect place to set up shop for ourselves.”

THE END