SFSTORY: The HMS Golden Lance #22 - Cowboy Roundup

[begin extended flashback mode]

Time Agent 357, Champion of Truth, Justice, and the Ability to Consume Large Amounts of Alcoholic Beverages, flew through Time and Space in a sleek Spam-powered timeship. However, Time and Space didn't mind this intrusion at all. As a matter of fact, they rather liked it, as both were slightly kinky.

Val, the ship's VAL9000 computer and for all intents and purposes the mind and nervous system of the ship, had finally picked up Omegas' teleportation trace. Omegas was a very powerful ex-immortal who had stolen a new experimental time machine and a new experimental miniABPSAR, and then teleported off to Parts Unknown. Parts Unknown is a little town in Texas, population of 319.

Anyway, Val was close in her estimate of Omegas' position. He was in actuality currently merged with the atoms of a '78 Pinto in a New Orleans junkyard, less than 900 miles from Parts Unknown, Texas. Omegas and his two assistants (Ron and Norm of the Association of Extremely Dedicated Watchers of Star Trek Who Dress Like Crew and Pretend We Have Phasers) were at this very moment preparing to liftoff, as they had successfully converted the '78 Pinto into a warp-driven craft capable of interstellar voyages. Or so Omegas said.

But I digress.

=Autopilot programmed,= reported Val in a clear, concise, yet somehow irritating female voice.

"What's our ETA with Earth?" 357 asked.

=Assuming we don't use time travel, 5.23 days,= reported Val. =Uh, 357? Are you running the microwave oven?=

357 looked through his mental filing cabinet, cross-referencing 'microwave' with 'oven' and 'running' and came up blank. "Not that I remember. Why?"

=Because my internal scanners are still a little glitched from our battle with Time Central. Last night I read an intruder in the galley and it was just the microwave oven running.=

"But the microwave oven isn't running now," said 357, walking towards the galley. "Which means that this has to be a real intruder."

=Or simply an attempt by the author to put some life into an otherwise boring entry,= quipped Val.

Zerox, the copying demon, had had a bad week. First, he had botched his attempt at copying The Book. Not just any book, mind you, but THE Book, which contained all the histories of SFSTORY to date. He had no idea where the copy had ended up. Now, he had really screwed up. On direct order from one of the Big Guys, he had been sent to Earth to perform a very special assignment. Let me explain...

In addition to being able to copy The Book and other documents, Zerox's powers also allowed him to copy people. This was very important for Satan's recruitment program, in that Zerox could replicate important people, and the replicas could be subverted into Satan's service. Afterwards, they could take the place of the originals and go about subverting others.

Zerox's assignment was very important. He was to teleport to earth to make a replica of an important political figure who was to win the next Presidential election. Unfortunately, he was still rather badly burned from his brief stay in Heaven, which caused him to miss his destination by a slim margin, and incidentally copy the wrong person.

"Needlewarp!" exclaimed Zerox as he realized what he had done. "I've got to get rid of him." So he picked a random spot in space and teleported the person there, confident that that was the end of his problems.

It wasn't. You guessed it, he happened to pick the exact location of the HMS Golden Lance.

357 arrived at the galley, to find a very confused man standing there.

The new arrival looked about the galley of the HMS Golden Lance. He was rather close to panic. "Damn," he muttered to himself. "This had better be a dream." He pinched himself rather roughly, and succeeded in bruising his arm and proving that it was not a dream.

"I'm in trouble," he said to the empty galley, which he suddenly wasn't quite empty after all.

"You certainly are," said 357. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

"Don't shoot, 357!" said the man. "Don't you recognize me?"

Time Agent 357 squinted over his gunsight. "You do look a little familiar. Didn't you used to host the night spot on ESPN?"

The man huffed and lowered his hands, only to raise them again as 357's finger tightened on the trigger. "You know me," he said. "Look at me real close and imagine a golden aura all around."

"Why, you're the Cowboy," mumbled 357. "This can't be right. You're an author. How can you be here while you're righting this entry?"

"That damn demon Zerox made a copy of me, and accidentally injected one of us into the story. My original is still on Earth, typing away and believing he's making this all up as he goes along." Cowboy looked around and spotted a comfortable chair, and decided to take the load off his boots.

357 was very intelligent, but still needed a little help. "Val, what's he talking about?" he asked of the ship's VAL9000 computer.

=Apparently, one of the authors has been injected into the plot of SFSTORY as a character, and without his author's powers.=

"You can say that again," said the Cowboy. "I've been trying to teleport out of here since I arrived. No dice."

"Is there any way to regain your powers?" asked 357.

"Only by breaking the Jeff Smith Accord and involving undue divine influence. 'Ceptin, of course, I go back to Earth and kill my original, which is what Zerox's copies usually do."

357 considered. "Val, what are our options?"

=We could return him to Earth.=

"I don't think so," said Cowboy. "Bringing me and my original into close proximity might cause problems."

=We could just kill him and dump the body,= said Val.

"Ha. Ha. Ha," laughed Cowboy sarcastically. "I have a better idea. This ship has multidimensional travel capabilties, right? Well, just find me an alterverse where I'm an author. I can live out my life happily and I'll be out of everyone's hair. Besides, I'd be better off it Satan doesn't find me."

"How'd he get into this?" asked 357.

"Well, way back when, I was sorta responsible for having Satan sent to alterverse 723, which is inhabited solely by fast food places. I believe he's out to get me. And now that I'm a character, I'll be a lot easier to capture."

=Last reports say that Satan is still in alterverse 723. Don't worry. Be happy.=

Down in Hell, things were getting pretty hot for Zerox. He lay grovelling on the floor in front of a much larger demon named Angorax. Angorax was a refugee from alterverse 8891, as he was kicked out for being a wimp. However, the laws of physics were very different in 8891 when compared to most of the multiverse. Though Angorax was a librarian in his native alterverse, he was a very powerful demon most everywhere else.

"You did what?" asked Angorax in his normal conversational tone, which would shatter windows at two miles and given even an INXS fan a splitting headache.

"I copied the wrong person," said Zerox. "So I destroyed him."

"Hardly," hissed Angorax as he summoned a viewing portal. "Look here. You teleported him right to the person who could help him the most, namely Time Agent 357."

"Hey, I'm so sor- YEEEOOOWWWW!!!!!!" said Zerox, who suddenly found himself changed into a giant slinky and walking down the stairs.

Angorax snarled. "Not half as sorry as you're going to be. You had one of the authors in your power and you let him go. Not just any author, mind you. You picked the one author that the Big Dude really has it in for." Sensing that Zerox was trying to speak, Angorax released his spell and allowed him to assume his normal, if somewhat worse for wear, shape.

"But Satan is still trapped in alterverse 723," snivelled Zerox. "He'll never know of the opportunity he missed."

"Wrong. I have it on good authority that Satan will be releasing himself sometime in the near future. And he'll know because I'll tell him." Angorax was not a nice demon. He was certain that Satan would send him to capture the Cowboy. He would no doubt be tortured to death. Even death would be no release, as then his Zeroxed soul would belong to Hell.

Angorax summoned some minor demons to drag Zerox away, and began to formulate a plan of revenge of his own.

The HMS Golden Lance, which was shaped nothing like a lance and was a nice shade of blue, sped through the multiverse, traversing all ten dimensions at once. Of course, you'd have to be in the non-existant eleventh dimension to see this, so I guess you'll just have to take our word for it.

Onboard, Time Agent 357 was having an indepth discussion with the Cowboy, a Zerox clone of one of the authors of SFSTORY. "...so the way I figure it," finished Cowboy, "is that we'll have to go to Netherspace and see if Doctor Bing Von Spleen has found a solution yet."

"How does he even know there's a problem?" asked 357. "Nobody's been in touch with him."

"Doctor Spleen's been watching ESPN (Extra-Sensory Perception Network), and last night they had a special on this problem."

"How would you know?"

"Remember, my original is an author, and he was thinking of something like that just before he was copied."

"Uh, yeah," agreed 357. "Val, how long to get to Netherspace?"

=About two entries,= answered the ship's computer.

"Good," said the Cowboy. "We'll have this problem solved before anyone can try to stop us."

He was wrong. Angorax whirled his clawed fingers and dismissed the viewing portal before him. He was not pleased with this turn of events. Barking orders at his various servant demons (who were canoid in form and only understood barks), he made his way to a secret hanger. There, he found his ship, the DMS Oxide.

The Oxide was the ship Angorax had flown to escape alterverse 8891. There, ABPSAR was an ancient art, and interdimensional travel was so old as to be passe. His sleek, angular ship would easily reach Netherspace before the Golden Lance. Although it was barely the size of a greyhound bus, it contained powerful ionic and matter/antimatter engines in addition to an ABPSAR (Automatic Beet Peeler and Sub-Atomic Re-integrator) of a very advanced design. Turbo-lasers, jaccuzzi, and a 50,000 year/5 mile drive train protection plan was also included in the sticker price.

"Angorax to Hell Central," said Angorax as he lowered himself into to cockpit. "Clear the runway."

"You don't have clearance," came the reply. "What's your code?"

Angorax growled as he brought his ship's offensive systems on line. Within a heartbeat he had cleared the runway himself, except for occasional pieces that still drifted down with the wind from time to time. He casually tossed his safety helmet out the window and took off, not bothering to close the window until he was well into deep space.

"Nothing like vacuum to clear the lungs," he laughed. He then began to scheme and plan.

"I'll find this Cowboy," he said to himself, as villians are wont to do. "And then I'll bring him back to Hell and when Satan returns he'll torture him to death. Nah, I have a better idea. I'll bring him under my control, and then have him kill his original and take his authorly powers."

Angorax chuckled, which filled the ship with fire and smoke. "I'll have an author in my complete control! I'll be master of SFSTORY! AHAHAHAHA!!!"

The sleek, streamlined form of the HMS Golden Lance raced through the multiverse towards Netherspace. With clockwork precision it arrived and set down in the parking lot of the new Hotel Nympho, right next to a sign:

Come stay at the brand new H O T E L N Y M P H O featuring: Deluxe accomodations Free Radar Vogel movies Hot and cold running maids Hot and cold walking maids Hourly rates on request And a free medical checkup for you and your family

However, their business was urgent, so they proceeded directly to Club Nympho. Pausing only long enough to order a round of drinks from a very round waitress, they proceeded to the rear of the establishment which contained, among other things, the offices and labs.

By way of introduction, allow me to mention that 'they' are Time Agent 357 and a Zeroxed copy of an author called the Cowboy, who was accidentally sucked into the story. They are looking for 357's longtime friend and companion, Doctor Bing Von Spleen, founding father of Spamology, and perhaps the cleanest complexioned man in the known universe. Spleen, incidentally, was the reason why a gambling casino and bar would have offices and labs in the back.

357 leading the way, the pair proceeded to the main lab and walked in without knocking, which got them shot at by several automated defense systems. But since said systems were designed to keep out drunken nymphomaniacs, and not relatively sober heroes, they quickly disposed of said systems and proceeded onwards. Inside, they found Doctor Spleen conversing with old man in a funny robe.

"St. Peter! Doctor Spleen!" called out 357, as he was acquainted with both men. "How's it going?" he asked St. Peter, shaking his hand.

"Pretty good," answered St. Peter, squinting at the form behind 357. "Say, isn't that one of the authors?"

"Dammit, 357!" cursed Spleen. "Last time you brought in Omegas, and this time you've gone and brought an author. What are you trying to do, get me killed?"

"Relax, Spleen," said the Cowboy. "I'm not an author. I'm a Zerox copy."

"So, Zerox is still at work," mumbled St. Peter. "We have reason to believe he attempted to copy The Book a few weeks back."

"That would explain why he was in such bad shape," said Cowboy. "You'd expect a demon to be burnt to a crisp after visiting Heaven."

Spleen finished his hissy fit and spoke. "What are you doing here?"

"We have to get Cowboy out of SFSTORY before Satan can return," explained 357. "If Satan gets ahold of him, he can get to the author Cowboy, and eventually control SFSTORY, or at least this part of it."

"Anyway," Cowboy cut in, "we figure that one of your Spam-powered devices might be able to get me out of here."

"Why not just take him away in the Golden Lance, 357?" asked Peter.

"Because the HMS GL can be tracked as it travels through the multi- verse. Hopefully, Doctor Spleen can rig a device that can't be tracked, like when we modified the TTT to jump dimensions and bypass Time Central's defensive screens."

"Hmm," Spleen hmmed. "It just might work. Actually, I've been toying with an idea very much like this for some time. Our big lab should hold the HMS Golden Lance very nicely. 357, have Val fly it in, and we'll hook it up to our main ABPSAR and start re-wiring the Temporal Teleporter Terminal."

And they began, not knowing how little time they had.

Angorax, flying his ship, the DMS Oxide, appeared in the skies above the Netherspace Nympho Beach just in time to see the HMS Golden Lance land inside the main lab. "They're up to something," he growled. With a precisely aimed laserbolt, he silently sealed the docking bay hatch to the lab, trapping the Golden Lance. "That will keep her out of the way."

Setting his own ship down several miles from the Club, he climbed out and began walking towards it. He was quite sure that with the Golden Lance out of the way, he could take on everyone in the building with his own powers, and therefore didn't have to risk messing up his ship's new paint job. Angorax whistled an ear-splitting tune, which was actually a love song in his native alterverse. His twenty foot tall crimson body cast a wicked winged shadow over the beach as he approached.

Angorax, the 20-feet tall crimson-colored ex-librarian-turned-Demon stalked towards Club Nympho. His ship, the DMS Oxide, lay hidden in the brush behind him. He casually conjured up a pair of sure-as-Hell disruptors and proceeded to vaporize the nearest group of nymphos. However, one of the nymphos, whose partner was particularly untalented and did not trim his fingernails often enough, happened to notice this, kick her lover into the line of fire, and run like hell towards the club.

By the time she had notified St. Peter and the rest of the gang inside Club Nympho, Angorax had frightened off the rest of the nymphos and was strutting towards the front door. He laughed hysterically as St. Peter, the owner of the establishment and head bouncer of Heaven, and Time Agent 357 appeared to block his way.

Inside, Doctor Bing Von Spleen and The Cowboy worked feverishly to finish the modifications to the HMS Golden Lance's Temporal Teleporter Terminal which would allow the Cowboy to leave SFSTORY. Modifications completed, they boarded the HMS GL and prepared to fly out of the lab and help with the fight against Angorax.

They didn't notice that Angorax had sealed the bay doors shut on his way down out of orbit. The resulting crash, the sound of which resembled remarkably that of a freight train hitting a gravel truck, rendered the Golden Lance unflyable, gave its VAL9000 computer a bad case of PMS, and scrapped all the modifications that were mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

Outside, St. Peter and Time Agent 357 had their hands full. 357 sent blast after blast from his telechronal displacement pistol towards Angorax, who simply absorbed them without effect. Angorax was currently ignoring 357, and instead was sending occasional low-power blasts towards St. Peter, amused at how he teleported to avoid them. St. Peter's blasts of energy did not seem to bother Angorax, though the resulting craters did slow his forward progress.

"We're in it deep!" shouted 357 as he dove to avoid what appeared to be a swarm of bees, except that they were white-hot and gigavolt electric discharges arced between them.

"I know! I know!" yelled St. Peter, as his tattered, yet immortal, body barely avoided another blast. He cursed as the Cowboy and Doctor Spleen ran out of the building and began to fire at Angorax. "What are you doing here?"

"He stole my pills," complained Spleen.

"We trashed the Golden Lance," explained the Cowboy. "And since I couldn't get away, I figured I'd help." He pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket and threw them towards Angorax. "And this was the only way I could get the good Doctor to help."

357 set his telechronal displacement pistol on "super-ridiculous-overload-that's-sure-to-do-in-the-bad-dude" and chucked it at Angorax. He was only slightly surpised when Angorax caught it one-handed and swallowed it. Angorax appeared only slightly distressed when the pistol overloaded five seconds later, sending him approximately two minutes into the future.

"Okay," said 357. "We've got about two minutes before we catch up with him. I'm fresh out of ideas. Anybody got a plan?"

"'Fraid not," said St. Peter. "We're too far away from Heaven for me to summon Divine Aid. And if I did, I'd be violating the Jeff Smith Accord. And as long as we're going to die anyway, call me Pete."

"Er, thanks, Pete," mumbled 357. "What about you, Cowboy? You're a copy of an author."

"Man," said the Cowboy. "On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy."

"Don't look at me," whined Doctor Spleen. "You're the hero type."

"There's got to be a way to get out of Netherspace in a hurry," said the Cowboy. "I remember reading about it, but I just can't recall."

"Of course!" shouted Spleen, slapping his head in the precise way that people in V-8 commercials do. "Just go through that green door right over there."

"What green door?" said everyone else. Everyone else's jaws dropped as they noticed a green wooden door floating in space a few feet away.

"Good," said Cowboy. "Where does it go?"

"It's always diferent," said Spleen. "You never know where. Usually, it ends up being the one place you don't want to be, but since right now this is the place you don't want to be..."

Angorax appeared, right on time. He did not seem to be bothered by the battel so far. In fact, he seemed refreshed. Actually, he was refreshed, as his two minute trip to the future had taken him several days, most of which he had spent sleeping. He summoned a fresh arsenal and was preparing to fire when he saw the Cowboy leap through the green door. Disregarding the others, he leapt in after him.

In alterverse 8891, the Cowboy arrived, followed shortly by Angorax. Or at least, what used to be Angorax. Angorax looked about him and screamed.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Cowboy, noticing that Angorax was no longer a huge, fierce demon, but was rather a small, timid librarian.

Several policemen came charging through the door. "Angorax, you're under arrest for violating your exile," growled the largest one. "Now who are you?" he asked, pointing towards the Cowboy.

But the Cowboy had already slipped out the back door, and was heading towards a bar he had just spotted.

[end extended flashback mode]

Isn't this just a repeat of a story of mine from October of 1988?
What does it have to do with the current story?
Have I been reduced to stealing story ideas from myself?
Does this mean that everything since has just been a dream?

To see what this chapter has to do with the price of tea in China, you have little choice but to tune into the next exciting episode of... SFSTORY!

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