The Reality Drudge Part 2
Written by Scott Taylor
Last time in The Reality Drudge: reality is screwed up. Fired from the Department of Fact and Reality for a mistake he'd made, Ford must travel to Earth. Using a device called a reality wand he must find a way to make everything right again. But just as he explains the situation to the Trash Commandos he's captured by a flying drone with a telescoping pincer and carries him up the beach.
The pincer deposited Ford several kilometres from where he was grabbed. It was a place seemingly out of the way. No one around except for...
'Greetings, Ford' the voice purred, deep and monstrous.
Ford turned and discovered he was not alone.
'Who are you?' asked the frightened ex employee of the Department of Fact and Reality. 'How do you know who I am?'
'I know many things. I'm quite resourceful you know. I know that you worked for an agency that tampers in reality. And I know you still own a device capable of doing exactly that. And permit me to introduce myself. I am M. Malice. Though I think you know me better by my former identity: Harold Zarkmann!'
'No! Stay away from me! You're evil!'
The hapless creature scooped up some sand in his free hand, then hurled it at the face of evil.
Malice merely took the shot with a toothy grin.
'Now now. I didn't come all this way just to have sand thrown in my face. No, I want what you have.'
'My sunny disposition?' Ford looked up at the fiend. 'My charm? My collection of porcelain ballerina hedgehogs? Tell me, what is it you want?'
'This!' Malice growled snatching the reality wand from Ford's hand.
'With this I can complete my objective.'
'But first, I must whisk you to a place where you'll be no trouble to me.'
Malice held the reality wand in his hand, very much like a magician's wand, and aimed it at the hapless creature. In an instant Ford was gone.
London seemed quiet, eerily quiet. Cars and busses, as well as other city transportation had been abandoned in the middle of the road. In the centre of Oxford Street there was a pile up of vehicles, yet no one appeared to be around. What had happened to this once busy, sprawling city?
This was exactly what the Trash Commandos wondered as they surveyed the area. Somehow, they too had been magically whisked back to civilisation along with Ford.
Ford knew what had happened. He stood silently, apprehensively as he watched the Commandos rush out amidst the abandoned traffic searching for answers.
Commander Trash marched up to Ford and demanded that he start talking.
Ford felt intimidated.
'It's all my fault!' he cried. 'I didn't mean this to happen.'
'Didn't mean what to happen?' Commander Johnathon Trash demanded.
'The unfortunate transformation of every human life on this planet' Ford answered contritely. 'It was all my fault. All of it! I dropped my guard for a single instant! Malice got hold of the ancient technology to transform the entire human race! But that's the thing, there was no ancient technology! Its nonsense! A total non sequitur! Even a first grade student would know that technology didn't exist on ancient Earth! And that's my point, gentle mutants and ladies. There was a glitch in the reality matrix at the institute where I worked. It was this glitch that re-wrote your history, mutating history to make you believe that what you were in fact investigating in that temple in the Amazon rain forest was some higher, more advanced machine that was supposedly built by humans about a few thousand years ago.
But if you actually think about that for a moment you'd reach the logical conclusion, that humans were not that advanced, not back then! It was all a glitch I tell you, a stitch in reality, a manipulation of historical events which I caused. Yes, i Caused it. I rewrote your history books with a single miscalculation, and the result was devastating! That history that you went to investigate- it was never supposed to have happened! But the reality matrix reshaped your reality on this planet and now there is an ancient machine, and Malice did switch it on, and yes he even used it to change and mutate everyone here. Don't you get it yet? I am responsible for everything that's happened here! I made the oversight! I let this reality take shape! The entire human world has become like you...mutated! And they abandoned this city! They ran in panic, from what they became! But none of this was supposed to happen! Its like reality was moulded into something else in one instant, all future history was changed. You found that temple in the deepest reaches of the Amazon and you discovered that technology...that wasn't supposed to have existed.
'Okay, okay!' Commander Trash held up his hands, trying to comprehend the jumble of complicated facts.
Dirk Gumbo stepped in as Ford stepped away.
'So' he began calmly. 'Why are we here? We were somewhere near the coast of Lima, near Peru. What are we doing in London?'
'That was Malice's doing' replied Ford. 'When one of his devices grabbed me I was taken directly to him. He stole my reality wand! That was the only piece of equipment the Department of Fact and Reality let me keep, that is after they fired me from service. Its my duty to set everything straight, and try to put reality back together again. I can't do that without the wand! But Malice can do more damage with that device than done already!'
'No doubt he has plans to use it' added Danny Mult.
'You think?' Trash added sarcastically. 'Lets go. We have to get ourselves mobile. But first we need tracking technology...And I know just where to acquire it.'
Reality hanging in the balance, the Department of Realism and Intel (DRI), a subsection of the Department of Fact and Reality, had been ordered to take charge of the matter. Their intelligence agents had been notified that a certain ex employee at the agency had managed to lose a very sensitive and powerful piece of technology to maybe the most vilest and evil creature on Earth: M. Malice!
As such the DRI had been ordered by the supreme galactic council to send in the Sentinel Robot, R14-TDD to retrieve the reality wand at any cost. Deep within the underground bunker beneath DRI headquarters a massive robot stood towering over the many engineers and operatives who busied themselves preparing for the first mission on planet Earth.
'Activate!' the supervisor shouted to his team.
The robot quickly came alive. Its eyes glowed like a furnace. Its arms raised upwards, and its right leg too. It took a step forward and then another step, and another, and another. The very floor vibrated with its clanking footfalls.
Back in London, all that remained was the aftermath of what looked to be a wholly horrific display of panic and vandalism on a mass scale. The Trash Commandos had been walking several hours. In that time they had seen only the odd sign of life, if it could have been called life. Vagrants lay huddled beside shop entries. Though they could no longer be identified as human beings. One homeless person looked like some strange breed of alligator. Another had eyes that dangled forlornly on stalks, with a shell on his back. Yes, one could actually say without fear of contradiction, the world was truly screwed up!
'How long before we reach this place...what did you call it? Iggy's?' Asked Dirk.
'Only a minute away' Commander Trash replied. 'Iggy will help us out. I know he will.'
Just a minute up the road, just as the commander had described- just round a corner from a burning bus and a wrecked garbage truck- there was a used car shop and what looked like a scrap metal yard. It was an abandoned industrial estate.
'Here we are' Trash said as he commenced knocking at the door to a terrace flat.
'How do you know anyone's at home?' Cinderella enquired.
'Guess I don't.'
Trash knocked again.
'Maybe he's gone to the pub' Malloy spoke up.
Trash and Cinderella both looked over their shoulders at him, both giving him withering looks.
Eventually the door was answered. There, at the portal stood a seven foot reptile wearing spectacles and a tee shirt, and ripped corduroy trousers.
'Yes?' he answered looking at each of the strangers.
Commander Trash spoke up. 'Hey, Iggy. You remember me? It's me.'
The one called Iggy looked the human cockroach up and down.
'I recognise the voice' he said. 'John Trash, is that you?'
'Yeah, bud, it's me!'
'Yeah, bro'! Come on in! Come in!' the reptile spoke, letting the Commandos in.
'Don't mind the mess. Me an' ma bud'er jus' chillin'.'
The living room was small. Iggy bid his guests sit while he introduced them to his other friend, and associate, Sewer Spawn. Sewer Spawn just sat there on the couch with what appeared to be a bong perched between his legs.
'Can I get you guys anything' asked the reptilian host. 'Alcoholic beverage?'
'We're fine' Commander Trash refused. 'We were hoping you would help us.'
'How?' Iggy asked, removing his spectacles, then inspecting the lenses before placing them back upon his large green snout. 'I can't even help me self. First thing I recall chillin' in my front living room, watchin' Walking Dead Season 7, the next I look like a freakin' iguana! Not cool, man, not freakin' cool!'
'I know' Commander Trash said. 'It's happened everywhere. And I don't have time now to explain. Listen, we have a way we can change everyone back again, but we're going to need a big favour from you.'
'Anything' Iggy said.
'We need weapons. We need wheels' Trash said almost hesitantly.
'We need weapons and wheels' repeated Malloy.
Iggy raised his hand in an emphatic gesture.
'We have just what you need.'
To be continued....
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