Episode XXXIX

Abigail Gillis needed to get her life back together. She just didn't know what she was going to do.

Abby was only a year out of college. Graduating from Mammoth State University with a Chemistry degree had been the biggest thrill of her life. Then she landed the lab assistant job at Daze Springs Scientific Studies Labs. It was the perfect place to get a couple years experience before she went back to school to get a doctoral degree.

And now it had all blown up in her face. Literally.

She knew there was some kind of secret project going on in the lab. She knew it was big. The senior scientists had been whispering excitedly about it for a week. The talk was that it would put the lab on the map and possibly get someone there a Nobel nomination at worst and possibly even the prize. Dr. David Jockner, her boss's boss, had been so jovial you'd think the awards were already in the bag.

Then came the fateful morning. Abby was on her way into work when she pulled over for a fire truck that came racing by. Then another. And a third. The closer she got to work, the more smoke she saw. Finally, she got to the lab to see that it was what was on fire.

Like so many of her co-workers that day, she stood around and watched her place of employment burn to the ground. In the aftermath, they determined that her boss, Tim, had been among the victims of the fire.

But that was all in the past. Now Abby was trying to get on with her life. She was just polishing off her resume to send to other labs when the phone in her apartment rang. She clicked save as she answered the phone absent mindedly.

"This is Dr. David Jockner," said the voice on the other end.

Suddenly, the call had Abby's full attention. "Yes, Dr. Jockner. What can I do for you?"

"I have just gotten off the phone with our benefactors. They agree with the senior staff that the terrorists who blew up the lab will not win. We plan to rebuild, and I am calling to ask you to stay on staff."

"I'd be honored...."

But Dr. Jockner cut her off. "Before the attack, Tim had recommended you for a promotion. I'd like to offer you that promotion to his old job. You would answer directly to me. In addition, I might ask for your help and advise from time to time on sensitive data as well as some of our more secretive research. This does come, of course, with a raise."

"I'll take it!" There was no way Abby was going to let a chance like this pass her by.

"I'm so pleased to hear that," Dr. Jocker responded, the smile in his voice traveling over the phone lines. "While our lab is rebuilt, we'll still be conduction research on the site in some temporary buildings that are being delivered the end of the week. So I'll see you on Monday?"

"Sounds great," Abby said and then hung up the phone.

She just couldn't believe how her luck had improved so rapidly. Depending on how this went, she might not even go back to grad school.

Episode XXXVIII

Damien wasn't sure what he thought about Q Lab, but they weren't quite what Dr. Dinglethorpe had led him to expect. The scientist had often opined about the "secretive freaks in Q," though his language was normally less restrained. Privately Damien felt that Dr. pHinn was actually jealous of their abilities and funding. Pushing the thought aside Damien returned to speculating about his package.

“Remember,” Rubber Snake had quietly cautioned him. “Don’t open it until you’re outside the base. They told you about some of the security in the building, but that doesn’t even scrape the iceberg. We know about tuna and anchovies and all about Susan.”

Unbeknownst to Damien, Frodo Baggins had forbidden Nightrider from either meeting Damien or exposing him to knowledge of the Queen device. With the inscrutable wisdom of supervisors everywhere he assured her that he knew best and promptly sent her away. With the truth unavailable the Q Lab conspirators had resorted to inflating the reputation of the base’s actually ailing security system. It was the only way they could think of to explain everything they knew about him.

As his thoughts drifted towards Susan, Damien finally reached his apartment on the outskirts of Sector #XY1492. Once inside he sat down at his computer and opened up a new tab in the already open browser window. A quick search via Google (he refused to think of it as “googling” something) brought him to Susan’s blog. He chided himself for yet again forgetting the URL. After catching himself up on her accounts of books, school and boyfriends he checked his e-mail and was disappointed to see no replies from her. Once again bored Damien clicked on a link to a blog belonging to one of her friends, someone named Lakota. At first he was interested, but then he noticed that the guy hadn’t updated his blog in over two months.

“Pathetic,” Damien sighed before switching to searching for web comics. One comic strip in particular caught his interest, La Ardilla Loca, apparently written by a Mammoth U student as a cross-cultural project. If there was one thing Damien remembered from high school it was Spanish, he had suffered through four years with Señora Jackson. Engrossed, Damien followed the web comic until the end where he was disappointed to find a conclusion lacking. Instead he discovered that the artist, Carry Hobson, had dedicated the exploits of Enrique, the secret agent squirrel, to her boyfriend and promised to one day complete the saga.

Damien was ready to leave the site when he noticed the name of the boyfriend and webmaster, Dennis Brown. He remembered that his friend Hegel Jeremiah knew a kid named Dennis Brown that he said had been a computer wiz. Deciding that it couldn’t hurt to enquire Damien sent off a quick e-mail to Brown’s listed account, brownde@mammothu.edu. As he signed out of his e-mail and prepared for bed Damien recalled Blackbird’s apology.

“I’m sorry kid, I didn’t really mean to lead you on at all. It’s just that, well… The boss, see, he…” The scientist gradually trailed off. “Look, let me know if I can help you in the future, okay kid? R. S. here will show you out.”

Rubber Snake had indeed shown Damien out, but that hadn’t been all he’d done. He’d quietly slipped a small package of something into the assistant’s backpack along with some advice. Damien had refrained from opening the package, but a small handwritten note on the outside warned Damien that he would probably need the assistance of another geek when he finally opened the package. Damien figured that either Hegel Jeremiah or this Dennis Brown character would have to do, and it would probably have to be Dennis as Hegel Jeremiah was off on a backpacking trip in Yellowstone. He yawned and stretched. There would be time enough for this tomorrow. Right now he needed to take a quick flight in an area that Blackbird had indicated was free of surveillance before he’d become so unhelpful.

Episode XXXVII

Several minutes after regaining consciousness, Marla remembered to check her phone messages. She was pleasantly surprised to find that she had one request for room reservations and two calls from prospective employees who had seen the “Help Wanted” sign and wondered why the place was locked up during business hours. Maybe things were going to return to normal. And all it took was inhaling deadly chemicals.

Deciding not to go shopping after all, Marla ate a quick brunch, then opened the resort office for business. Before calling back the new employees (she figured at this point she’d hire anyone who walked through the door as long as they didn’t look like a servant of Acidity) she decided to tidy the place up a bit.

When she walked into the back rooms which were her living quarters, she noticed her gold necklace lying on the ground where she had dropped it. She bent down and picked it up, but collapsed again before she had straightened. She didn’t hit her head on anything this time, and as soon as the necklace fell from her hand her strength came back. Weird, she thought. I wonder if… She sat cross-legged on the floor, carefully reached out and touched the necklace. Immediately she slumped over, but was able to stop herself and sit up again as soon as her hand slid away from the necklace. “Okay, I’m convinced,” she said out loud. “Gold must be my kryptonite.”

Just to be sure, she tested her theory with various pieces of jewelry, some gold some not. She found that only the gold ones affected her, and then only if the gold directly touched her skin. If she picked them up with a cloth, she was fine. At least gold is rare, she mused. It would be bad if I went limp when I touched wood or something.

Heading back to the phone, she called the two prospective employees and arranged for interviews the next day, then called the prospective customer and set up the reservation. After hanging around the office for a couple of hours, she decided that business wasn’t going to pick up anymore just yet and went shopping after all. All in all, a good day.

The next day was also good. The two interviews went well. The interviewees were refreshingly non-zombie-like, and she hired them both, immediately putting them to work getting the place ready for the pending customer. Meanwhile, two more reservations came in. The monster rumors, it seemed, had died peacefully.

That evening she sat down to watch the local news before going to bed. The top story caught her attention: D.S. Scientific Studies Lab had burned to the ground. Good, she thought. With any luck, the monster died in the fire. On that positive note, she went to sleep.

As the week progressed, further news reports slowly eroded at her optimism. Twelve bodies were found in the ruins of the lab, but there was no report of any of them being unusual. Furthermore, the fire was started intentionally, by carefully positioned explosives. Maybe Acidity had simply been blown to unrecognizable bits, and the explosives set by a disgruntled employee…but maybe not. He might have escaped, in which case he was now at large in the city. This was an unsettling thought.

As the days went by, the uncertainty became less and less bearable. If he wasn’t dead, then why hadn’t he sent his zombie people after her again? Was he laying low, waiting to catch her off-guard? Or had he lost interest in her? That seemed unlikely; he must have had her kidnapped for a reason. Finally, she couldn’t stand just waiting around for something to happen. Having no particular plan, she just went for a drive through town late one afternoon, looking for zombie people, or any kind of evidence that Acidity was still around.

* * *

Ironically, as Marla Stewart was thinking about Acidity, he was thinking about her. As he surveyed the damage he had caused at the former site of the lab, he reflected that his power and influence was growing. His former captors were no longer equipped to attempt recapturing him, even if they were still inclined to do so. He now had absolute control of over a dozen individuals, including the entire staff of the hotel where he was staying. (These he instructed to continue doing their normal jobs, which they were able to do for the most part. Bookkeeping turned out to be too arduous a mental task, so he did that for them.)

His main problem was that he hadn’t managed to infect anyone who had significant amounts of capital, which made the prospect of obtaining new acid supplies a daunting one. But I wouldn’t even need more acid, if I could return to the pools, he thought. Everything was perfect for me there! And that woman had to go and ruin everything. What did I ever do to her? The more he thought about it, the more angry he became. And his biohazard suit made it difficult to monologue at his minions, which was his usual method of relieving tension.

There were two reasons why he hadn’t gone after Marla already. One was that he figured the acid pools would be the first place the scientists would look for him again. However, it seemed unlikely that they were going to do so. The other was that she apparently had superhuman strength, based on what one of his servants had told him. Well, I have superhuman acid, he thought. We’ll just see how strong she is after I dissolve her. Having made up his mind, he motioned to his minions to get in the car, and began driving to Acid Resort.

* * *

After driving around the shady parts of town for over an hour and not seeing anything useful, Marla decided that she was going about her investigation in the wrong way. She wasn’t sure what the right way was, but hopefully it involved burning less gasoline. It was nearly dark anyway, so she headed home. When she got there, she saw that there was a strange car parked in front of the resort. Maybe it’s a customer, she thought. She parked her own car in her garage, then walked out to the thermal pools to see if anyone was around.

As she approached the biggest pool – the one the monster had been captured in – she saw that two men were standing there looking at it. “Hello!” She called out. They turned and looked at her. “I’m Marla Stewart, the owner of this resort. Do you want a room for the night?” The men looked at each other, then turned back to the pool and began waving their arms over the water. Thinking that this was unusual behavior, Marla slowed down a bit in her approach. Then one of them began yelling at the pool.

“Lord Acidity! Lord Acidity! Marla Stewart is here!”

Marla felt a sudden chill run down her spine at the sound of the monster’s name, followed by a surge of anger. He had come back – to her resort – just when everything was returning to normal. He’s ruining my life! She thought. What did I ever do to him?

She was still several feet away when Acidity broke the surface. “Shoot her!” He yelled at his minions as he climbed out of the water. They clumsily pulled out guns, slowly took aim, and started firing in her general direction. Marla quickly threw herself to the ground, and none of the bullets found their intended target.

She realized it was safe to get up when she heard one of the minions talking. “Lord Acidity,” he said, “I’m out of bullets. What should I do now?”

“Reload, you idiot!”

Seizing the opportunity to act, Marla jumped to her feet and rushed at the nearest minion, punching him very lightly in the face so as not to kill him. He hit the ground rather hard and stopped moving. As she turned to face Acidity, she saw him flinging out his arm just in time to close her eyes and raise her own arm over her face in defense. A stinging stream of acid splashed over her. Rushing forward blindly, she grabbed the monster, swung him around like a discus, and threw him as hard as she could. She looked up to watch him arc through the air, quickly losing sight of him in the fading light. He must have gone at least six blocks, she thought.

Just then the air was filled with a deafening bang, and she felt a tingling sensation in her left shoulder. In an instant she realized that the second henchman had reloaded, and that he had shot her. Fortunately he was close, and she was able to grab and break his wrist before he fired a second round. When she let go of him to pick up the gun and throw it into the acid pool, he ran to his car. By this time the tingling sensation had turned into unbelievable pain, and Marla didn’t even try to stop him from driving away.

Episode XXXVI

by Yokanchi

One week after the lab fire at D.S. Scientific Studies Lab a few interesting characters were seen there: a photographer, and two gang members. This group was not out of the ordinary of course, because of the great amounts of strange characters already present, but this combination was particularly strange.

These particular photographers and gang members looked normal enough, although had you looked closer you might notice a certain glazed look in their eyes like the kind on a day-old doughnut. They did not do much, out of the ordinary that is. The photographer walked around with his extra-large and complicated looking camera snapping pictures, that is, seeming to, and the gang members... well, did what gangsters do when they're not causing havoc and defaming property. Although the camera man was getting great photos it was all in vain since the camera had no film inserted, and was more or less just a prop.

* * *

Acidity paced, scheming and flipping singular drops of acid at a dartboard. He wondered to himself where he might get ahold of a new, more constant supply of acid (his main form of nourishment). The acid brought just one week before from the lab, which was no longer existent, had begun to run low a day earlier.

A drop of acid burned into the wall behind the dart board, going mostly unnoticed between the multitude of past abuses to the room. Originally Acidity had tried bathing with the acid in the poor but useful bathtub included with the room rental, but unfortunately after one use the bathtub could no longer be described as "useful". He instead resorted to the chemical suit he originally used to disguise himself. The material had been able to contain the acid with little or no damage to the resistant material. The suit worked perfectly except for the hole punched by the unstandard appendage protruding from his left arm. So in a fail proof quick-fix,
he duct taped it.

* * *

After about seven hours of loitering, dodging police and other prospective troublemakers, the small reconnaissance group decided that the observation was complete enough to avoid "Lord Acidity's" wrath. They left silently and unnoticed.

* * *

Back at the hotel:

After hearing their report on the situation, "Lord" Acidity vocalized his opinion and let all know the details of his "glorious" plans as usual. The hazy and glossy faced minions could care less whether he told them anything or not. "I believe I shall go take a small glory trip to survey the damage done to these meddling idiots' little lab," he said with a high-and-mighty smirk on his lettuce-colored face. "The pictures in the paper certainly don't do justice to this beautiful work of art," he concluded after many minutes of lecture, leaving his newly acquired minions dozing, on why he was so grand and such that he would take in some of the views of his destructive hobby. The small posse gathered into the photographer's van (complete with tinted windows and sub-woofer) and drove to the site of Acidity's deconstructive activities.