SFSTORY: HMS Golden Lance #19 - Bedroom Planet

"Mmmmmmmm," said Diana Dark, snuggling close to Time Agent 357.

"Mmmmmmmm, yourself," answered 357.

"Good morning," she yawned. "Or afternoon," she amended, seeing the shadows on the wall.

"Yes, good," he agreed, snuggling close to her in return. The bed creaked ever so slightly. "Very good."

"Honey," she said, "do you want to, you know, do it again?"

"Again?" he said incredulously. "Dear, I couldn't."

"Oh, please," she begged.

"You can't be serious," he said. "I can barely walk now."

"Just once more," she pleaded, her bottom lip quivering.

357 rolled his eyes. "Well, okay. Do you want to start?"

"Oh, no," she said quickly. "I mean, It's just SO much better when YOU do it."

"All right."

Diana lay back, quivering in anticipation as 357 moved over her, his strong masculine hands reaching forward to grasp...

...the phone on the bedside table. "Please connect me to room service. Room service? This is Mister Smith in room 127. Could you please send up a chocolate triple-fudge sundae?"

There was a pause.

"Yes, another one."

Another pause.

"Good. And remember, two spoons!" He cradled the phone receiver.

"Thank you, honey," Diana purred.

"You're insatiable," complained 357, though if Diana asks, he meant it as a compliment.

Diana Dark, previously of Earth, and Time Agent 357, formerly of the Interstellar Time Police, stretched back out in bed waiting for room service to deliver yet another chocolate triple-fudge sundae. 357 reflected that he was very lucky to have accidentally landed on a planet with such good bed-and-breakfast hotels. He glanced down at Diana beside him and amended that to VERY lucky.

357 contemplated how he had arrived here. After a minor ABPSARI, or Automatic Beet Peeler and Sub-Atomic Re-Integrator, accident, 357 and the rest of his crew found themselves caught in a very lengthy and poorly-written body swap episode. It was during the time that he was trapped in Diana's body, and she in his, that he realized his feelings for her, and she for him. He personally hadn't felt this much in love since that incident with the Niborian Princess on Bayrurn XXXVIIII. He wasn't sure about Diana, but he remembered having heard that she had kicked her boyfriend out of their apartment back when she was still on Earth, and back before the apartment exploded due to a small beer-Cheez Whiz explosion which propelled her into the storyline to begin with, though the police have attributed her disappearance to a bizarre Cruisinart accident.

They had remained trapped in each other's bodies, too squicked out to act on their newly-discovered feelings, until Omegas cross-wired the Temporal Teleporter Terminal with the Hypertechnical Orange Thingy and tied it into the ABPSARI drive. This returned them to their bodies but also bounced them into another dimension. After helping a local detective solve a little time warp problem, they were bounced back into the multiversal chaos stream and randomly ended up here. 357 couldn't quite remember exactly where "here" was, but they did accept his Anterean Express card, which he never left his home solar system without. In spite of the holiday weekend (though 357 never quite figured out exactly which holiday) they were able to get a cozy little room and began a one-couple run on the kitchen.

Eight non-stop hours of wild, passionate, monkey sex will give one quite an appetite, after all.

357 chuckled.

"What?" demanded Diana.

"I was just thinking about my old friend, the Intern," 357 explained. "We always kind of figured that we'd grow old alone, having such horrible luck in school with girls and whatnot. We figured if we were still bachelors when we hit 1000 years old or so, we'd look each other up and rent an apartment together or something. But he went and found Rader Vogel. Against all odds, they fell in love, which would prove to me that there was a God if I hadn't already known He existed. Rader and the Intern are probably married by now. I was going to be his best man, but I was trapped in that anomaly for so long, they probably decided to have the wedding without me."

Diana made comforting noises. "Well, maybe they're in an alterverse with a different time flow, or they've just been busy, or she's trapped somewhere about the be burnt at the stake waiting for him to rescue her, and you can still be at the wedding."

"Maybe, but doesn't matter," 357 said, kissing her lightly. "He found her, and I found you."

Diana was so touched by his words that things might have gotten decidedly non-PG-13 had the doorbell not rang, indicating that room service had arrived. They quickly demolished the sundae. Diana, eating AROUND the banana because real sundaes didn't have bananas where she came from, asked "Honey, how can you eat so much and not gain any weight?"

"Oh," mumbled 357 around a mouth full of chocolate sauce. "It's this silly metabolism of mine. My recuperative and regenerative powers require a lot of calories. You didn't think I drank all that beer just for the taste, did you?"

Diana admitted that she hadn't given it much thought. "Well, I'm lucky enough to have a minor hereditary genetic flaw. The women in my family are physically incapable of absorbing calories from any type of chocolate. My friends always hated me for it."

Diana headed towards the bathroom to take a shower while 357 made a few phone calls. Now that the holiday weekend was over, he felt obligated to start trying to arrange a way to get them back to the HMS Golden Lance for which this serial is named. She half listened to him while she tried to wash the chocolate sauce out of her... Hair. Yes, that's it. Where else would she have chocolate sauce?

"Any luck?" she asked as she was towelling off.

"No," he answered. "Looks like all the commercial and military 'matter transporters,' as they call them here, are still closed down. There are a few in private hands, but they're all rich snobby types who aren't likely to help us. But I have a plan..."

After they checked out of the hotel, 357 and Diana rented an anti-grav transport unit that the locals referred to as a 'slimmer.' 357 quickly figured out how it got its name. The anti-grav unit was powered by a small electric generator which was turned by a set of bicycle-like pedals. The exertion guaranteed you'd arrive at your destination at least a little slimmer than when you left. 357, thankful that he was wearing a jumpsuit and not any type of uniform that required a belt, decided that in a world with such good chocolate sauce, a transport like this 'slimmer' made good sense.

"...and that's my plan," 357 finished as they coasted to a stop in front of a large, ornate, mansion of a house.

Diana looked at him sharply. "That's your plan? Kidnapping? Auto theft? Breaking and entering? Shorting out the power supply for half the city as a diversion? Importing Superguys from another storyline to handle the alarm system? THAT'S your plan?"

357 paused in the middle of pulling on a jetpack and checking his grappling hook. "Oh, I suppose you have a better one?"

Three and one half minutes later, the robutler was escorting them into the mansion. "I must apologize, Mrs. Smith," it said in a more human voice than most humans had. "My masters must have simply neglected to program me with the information that the open house was starting today. For that matter, they neglected to program me with the information that they were selling the house at all!"

"That's quite all right, KBP74000-C," said Diana, reading the robutler's serial number off his nametag. "I'm sure it just slipped their minds. What, with such a fine unit as yourself running things, they've probably gotten used to not having to tell the staff such things. They were obviously so confident that you'd be able to instantly grasp the situation that it didn't even occur to them to tell you about it. What trust they must have in you!"

The robutler seemed to swell with pride. In fact, 357 suspected that if Diana laid the compliments on any thicker, the robutler with pop a rivet or something. "Hey, where's the matter transporter? You do have one, right? One that works?"

"Beg your pardon, sir?" said the robutler, eyeing him suspiciously.

"What my husband means," said Diana smoothly, "in his own unique and charmingly unsubtle way, is that a state-of-the-art matter transporter is just a must if we are to purchase this lovely home." She pulled the robutler to the side. "He fancies himself a do-it-yourself home improvement type," she confided in hushed tones. "I'd like to make sure the matter transporter works flawlessly so he won't be tempted to try to 'fix' it later."

"Of course, Mrs. Smith," said the robutler quietly, like some paragon of complete understanding. In a louder voice, "If you'll follow me, I'll be happy to show you that the matter transporter is in perfect working condition."

The robutler showed them the matter transporter platform, the battery- powered back-up power supply, the triple-redundant safety features, and the ultra-simple automated control panel, so easy to use that it was virtually idiot-proof.

357 tapped a few keys experimentally and the entire panel shut down.

If KBP74000-C's photoreceptors were capable of rolling, it would have rolled them. Gently pushing 357 aside, the robutler showed him the proper power-up sequence and how to set the coordinates. Quickly entering the set of coordinates that he had calculated earlier, 357 gave Diana the ultra-secret and totally undetectable signal.

"Excuse me, sir," said KBP74000-C. "Is there something in your eye?"

"Uh, no, nothing wrong" stammered 357. "I was just giving her the ultra... Um, never mind."

"KBP74000-C," Diana said. "Could you be a dear and get me something to drink? Something fizzy and cold would just be wonderful."

"I'm not sure the masters would like me to leave you unattended..." the robutler said hesitantly.

"KBP," Diana said familiarily, "if the home was sold, would you be considered part of it?"

"I'm not sure I understand, ma'am..."

"Well," she said, fingers brushing against its trimwork, "you see, my husband takes long business trips, and I'll need someone to take care of certain needs while he's gone." She paused to look it square in the photoreceptors. "You do know what I mean, don't you?"

"One cold and fizzy drink coming right up!" KBP74000-C announced.

357 rubbed his foot where the robutler had rolled across his shoe on its mad dash to the door. "Stupid machine."

"What kind of ultra-secret and totally undetectable signal was that supposed to be?" Diana asked as she double-checked the coordinates.

"Give me a break," he said. "It's not every day a man falls in love. I'm bound to be off my game for a little while." I used to be cool until I started hanging out with you, he added silently.

"All right, all right," she soothed as she joined him on the platform. "Are you sure this is going to work?"

"I've set interdimensional coordinates overlaid with a special homing signal that only I and the VAL9000 computer know. As long as the HMS Golden Lance is still transiting within a few million milliverses of this alterverse, her temporal teleporter terminal will automagically detect the homing signal and pull us in."

"And if it isn't? Or doesn't? Or cant?" Diana tried very hard not to sound skeptical.

"Then we're SOL," 357 admitted. "We'll be trapped between dimensions, completely out of reach of the current author. We'll be stuck, floating helplessly in the endless reaches of Netherspace, unable to even reach the Netherspace Nympho Beach, until we're adopted by another author or fade from memory altogether."

"That's a big risk," Diana said. "We'll still be together, right?"

"Always," promised 357.

"In that case, 'Scotty, beam us up!'" Diana shouted.

"Who's Scotty?"

"Just push the button, 357."

357 did, and they faded from sight, just as the robutler returned with something cold and fizzy. It looked around the now-empty room, gave a mental shrug, gulped down the cold and fizzy, and returned to cleaning up the place.

After all, KBP74000-C had a house to sell.

Will Time Agent 357 and Diana Dark get lost in Netherspace?
Did Rader Vogel and the Intern ever get married?
Just where is Time Agent 386, anyway?
Brain and brain! What is brain?

Please turn to the Book of Wards, Chapter Two, Verse Ten, which reads... SFSTORY!

Copyright 2006 by Troy H. Cheek. Free to read, but please reprint only with permission.