***
Aside from the shades-wearing blank-faced man in the three-piece
suit on the front porch, the house seemed no different than any other
in the sprawling, sun-drenched Los Angeles suburb called Crescent
Crescent. Had her mother not told her the reason the muscle man was
there, Rumi Moroboshi would have assumed it was so that, if any member
of the Seconds Clan got drunk, they would be able to identify which
house was theirs from the back of the taxi taking them home.
The thought made her giggle, which her mother clearly felt was an
inappropriate reaction to being scolded for buzzing airplanes.
"...not taking any of this seriously," said Glum, as they
approached the porch. "Throwing Johnny at a moving airplane was very
dangerous."
"I don't think so--"
"The plane could have been damaged," Glum interrupted. "But as
long as this is the only time it's happened and the only time it
*will* happen, we won't ground you. Right, dear?"
"Like, yah," her father said, making his usual contribution to
the cause of Rumi's discipline.
Kent Clark had been more verbose on the subject when they brought
Johnny back to him and Key. He gave Rumi a speech on moral rectitude,
and Rumi guessed it would have been inspiring, had it not soon veered
into the subjects of the sanitary habits of criminals, steroid abuse
in baseball, why cricket was an apt metaphor for life, and breakfast
foods that went well with cereals. Possibly there had been more, but
Rumi's hearing shut down around that point. The Clarks had gone
sightseeing, rather than inflict on Eivandt's non-space-tech-
reinforced house something Key called 'the Clark charm,' and Rumi
supposed that Kent's speech could still be going on.
"And an *anvil,* too," Glum continued. "You've got your father's
strength, all right...."
Rumi, eager to change the subject, called out to the man on the
porch.
"Hey, who're you?"
"Secret Service, ma'am," the man in the suit replied. "The
party's through the house and on the deck in back."
"Like, don't we have to, like, show I.D. or something?" Rad asked.
The Secret Service man gave his head a single shake. "You've
already been identified. And if I might say so sir, on behalf of all
of us... that is one amazing tan."
"Like, ah, thanks, dude."
Rumi could tell that her dad's response to the compliment was
tempered by the way the Secret Service man spoke, saying 'that is one
amazing tan' the same way he might say 'that is some green grass' or
'that is certainly a mammal.' She remembered learning about the
Service on the voyage to Earth, and never being able to find the
answer to the question of why they called it Secret if everyone knew
about it.
The interior of the house was cluttered with magazines, games,
and other odds and ends, and they had to take a winding path to the
kitchen and its back door. Classic rock music at low volume greeted
them as they stepped out onto the 'rustic oak' deck.
"Dudes!" someone exclaimed. A vaguely Belgian man no taller than
Rumi practically leapt over to hug Rad and Glum. They returned the
hug with equal enthusiasm, which made the man's eyes bug out.
Manny Seconds was in no way dressed in a manner befitting a
former President -- even one whose short tenure had been officially re-
numbered to 41.5 by an act of Congress. His loose shirt was ringed by
images of numerous beer bottles, and his blue jean shorts looked like
they had crawled out from beneath a thrift store's bargain bin.
"Rumi!" he exclaimed, when the hug for her folks was done.
"You're... tall... er!"
"Hi, Uncle Manny," she managed to say before being swept up in a
hug as well. "Is Aunt Chal... no, that's right."
"She wanted to be here," said Manny -- who was no more 'really'
her Uncle than Kent Clark -- as he set her down. "Woulda had to stay
in the house, but... well, you know. Halliburton's still making
trouble with their hostile takeover bid, and there's been new
developments in the pyramid exploration project... hey, you hear about
that?"
Rumi nodded. She noticed the gray hair at Manny's temples, and
wondered when it had turned that way. The last time she saw him,
when he and the entire Seconds clan had visited Planet California, it
had been all black.
"It's something Chal's been wanting to do for a long time," said
Manny, after he released her. "Intercontinental Salvage got the
pyramid back in place after the Nun on the Road drove off with it for
a while, but they never checked out all the stuff that got exposed
while it was gone. She thinks it's part of this energy system that
could eliminate the need for oil altogether...."
Rumi let her 'Uncle' ramble on as she turned her attention to the
others on the deck and in the back yard. She recognized Manny's
brother Eivandt at the grill, fighting what appeared to be a losing
battle against burning the beer brats. His wife, Alice, was
attempting to hug Glum without tipping over the overloaded plate o'
meat she held. Rad had flown down to the yard, where three similar-
looking eleven-year-olds were playing some obscure variation on
croquet with their parents, Tom and Laura McCavish-Laffalot.
*Oh, this is going to be a _fine_ day,* thought Rumi. *I wonder
if I can feign unconsciousness until it's time to go.*
"...but enough about that," said Manny. "I have to go see your
dad about something."
She watched him head for the yard. Another blank-looking Secret
Service man was standing by the deck entrance, watching Manny as he
passed. Rumi had initially mistaken him for a post.
The one person she had been hoping to see was not around. Rumi
had a sinking feeling that it was not because she was inside the
house, but went up to Alice and Eivandt to ask.
"She was invited," said Alice, after setting the plate of brats
down to give her the inevitable hug. "Said her and Miguel were going
surfing today." Her tone indicated that she doubted it was the
complete truth.
"Cendra moved out, then?" Glum asked. Though it had been three
years since she had last seen the Seconds clan, Rumi knew that her
mother kept in close contact with them. This, though, was the first
Rumi had heard about Cendra leaving.
"Maybe two months ago," said Eivandt, as he waved smoke from his
eyes. "Day after her 21st birthday. Her boyfriend's got this
apartment near the beach, don't ask me *how* he can afford it since
the only work he does is part-time DJing for a radio station.
Cendra's still going to school full-time, though she says she's
thinking of dropping out and going into law enforcement."
Rumi caught his brief glance at Alice when he said this, and
deduced that Alice was less enthused about Cendra becoming a police
officer than Eivandt.
"You haven't mentioned the worst part," Alice said.
"I don't think we need to mention--" Glum started.
"Miguel is a werewolf."
Rumi blinked. She remembered that her folks occasionally had
adventures, back in 'the day,' involving a werewolf or two. She
remembered something.
"Libertarian or Revolutionary Anarchist?"
"Green," said Eivandt. He shrugged. "First I'd heard of it, but
he says that the packs are into all sorts of fringe politics these
days. My dear sweet wife doesn't like it because she's a dyed-in-the-
wool Democrat."
Rumi had barely understood what she had tried to learn of Earth
politics, and almost nothing of what was called 'the American
strain.' Ottsamaddawidu xenoanthropologists had written a lengthy
section on the American system, trying to explain it this way and that
before coming to the conclusion that a local drug called 'the crack'
was involved. She guessed the reason Eivandt gave would make sense to
someone using 'the crack,' and decided not to inquire further.
"Hey, you guys!" Alice called out to the yard. "Get some brats
before we eat 'em all!"
Her dad passed her, heading for the house. There was a mix of
excitement, confusion, and worry in his expression. While Rad was no
stranger to excitement and confusion, Rumi did not often see worry
there.
'Uncle' Manny passed by, a similar expression on his more lined
face. She remembered he had said he had something to tell her dad.
What had it been?
Glum, who was helping Alice and Eivandt with the food
distribution, handed her a brat and a bun. Rumi considered the brat
and felt faintly repulsed. It was probably stuffed with a lot of the
artificial gunk this area of the Earth inserted into its foods. But
it was all the lunch she was likely to have, so she took a bite.
It turned out to be surprisingly good... except for the papery
part in the center. Rumi pulled a rolled up piece of what appeared to
be wax paper from inside the brat.
She unrolled it, and read a single word.
***
"We should be okay in here," said Manny, as he closed the
venetian blinds over the front windows. The Secret Service man out
front was moving his lips and watching, but made no move for the front
door. "They don't like it when I close myself off from them,
especially here, but tough shit. I went years without Service
protection after I resigned, and nobody said a word. Then nine-eleven
happened, and... there you go."
"Like, yah," said Rad, though Manny's Secret Service status had
been the last thing on his mind. He watched as Manny dug around
through the piles of stuff in the living room, aided only by the light
from the partially open overhead skylight window. "Hey, did I, like,
tell you I saw, like, Karina Selanova, like, today?"
"Glum mentioned it," said Manny. "Said Rumi got into some
trouble."
"Like, yah," Rad said. "Karina, like, let her off, though.
Which, like, totally surprised me, like, y'know?"
Manny nodded. "She was working for Chalandra for a long time,
spearheading the effort to clean up Harxxon. Did as fine a job as was
possible. There's a lot more that *could* be done, and her successor
is all over that, but--"
"Like, who's her successor?"
"China."
China Kyoko Moroboshi. Akane's daughter, for lack of a better
word to describe her convoluted journey from dream entity to flesh-and-
blood human, and what that made her in relation to Akane.
"She's still the same," Manny noted. "Looks like a goth ice
queen, curses like a sailor, takes things apart in her head like...
ah, here it is."
He pulled out a thin manila envelope and handed it to Rad. Rad
noticed it was still sealed.
"What, like, is it?" Rad asked.
"I thought I'd better wait until we could look at it together,"
said Manny. "Considering the source."
Rad turned the envelope over, and looked at the return address.
He looked at it again.
"Like, whoah," he said at last. "A--"
"Sssh!" Manny sssh'd him. "Think, dude!"
Rad thought, and looked at the envelope again.
"Oh, yah," he said. "Like, it looks like 'Miranda Satori,' like,
who we barely, like, know and stuff, like, sent us something, dude.
It's, like, been how long?"
"Too long," said Manny. "Hell, after that business in Seattle
where the Mega-Intelligence Bureau got 'exposed,' I thought we'd never
hear from her again."
What had gone on in Seattle nearly a decade ago had receded into
the murky depths of history. Most who remembered only recalled that
there had been allegations that the various intelligence agencies in
the United States were actually fronts for something called the
M.I.B., and there were hearings that were going to take place, and it
was an outrage, and so on and so on and oh, look, Simon Cowell was
just totally mean to that fat singer on the screen there. No one
remembered if anything had actually been done about this 'M.I.B.,' but
you never heard about it anymore, so it must have been.
Few remembered that the circumstances around the warehouse
explosions that brought the M.I.B. to brief national attention, or
that a hero named Ramrod was believed to have perished in those
explosions. Almost no one remembered the single report in the Weekly
World Schmooze that the fireman who was the last to see Ramrod claimed
he had been in the company of an Asian woman who looked 'kinda
familiar, like that Zhang Ziyi chick, you know, the one in that movie
with the tiger and the hidden whatsit.'
To Rad's knowledge, only a dozen people -- not counting
transcended beings -- knew that the 'Asian woman' was Akane
Moroboshi. Only two people, to Rad's knowledge, knew where she and
Ramrod went after the explosions -- namely, she and Ramrod. The
letters she once sent via the mail drop she set up under the name
'Miranda Satori' dried up after that... until now.
He tore open the envelope and withdrew its contents -- a black-
and-white photo of a guy in some kind of 'business casual' office
clothes, holding a coffee mug and a partially unwrapped Pop Tart. It
looked like it had come from a ceiling-mounted surveillance camera,
but the photo was good enough for Manny to identify the man.
"That's the Programmer," Manny said. "Doesn't look like his
shirt has circuitry on it anymore, but... yeah, that's him."
"But, like, why does she, like, want us to find him?" Rad asked.
"I thought you said, like, he wasn't, like, much of a villain, y'know?"
"There's something on the back," Manny noted. Rad turned the
picture over and found red-pen writing. Manny read it aloud.
"Find him before it's too late. M. P.S., look up."
They looked up at the partially open skylight window.
Rumi Moroboshi's eyes grew big.
"Erk," she commented.
IS 'ERK' RIGHT?
SHOULD IT BE 'BWAH'?
WHAT ABOUT 'FWEE'?
WHO IS MANIPULATING THE PROGRAMMER INTO FRESH, INTERNET-EY EVIL?
WILL THEY GIVE HIM A BAD PERFORMANCE REVIEW?
WHO PUT THE PAPER INTO RUMI'S BRAT?
WHO WON THE CROQUET GAME?
WILL THE NEXT EPISODE HAVE SOMETHING RESEMBLING ACTION?
WILL IT TAKE LESS THAN 14 MONTHS FOR ME TO WRITE?
Blah blah blah *unsympathetic noise*... only on SUPERGUY!
--
Gary W. Olson
swede3000 at earthlink dot net
swede at novitious dot com
LiveJournal: http://gwox.livejournal.com