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<center>Chronicles of the League and the Intrepid Sorority
Vol VIII No. 8
Soundtrack:
Gorillaz - Demon Days</center>
There is a noise: a strange, piercing buzz that sets the teeth on edge. A dog barks furiously and the birds in the trees scatter in a panicked mass of beating wings. The noise increases in intensity until a crack appears, a line of black that bends in the air, as if the buzzing is vibrating the fabric of reality so hard it is starting to shatter. The crack, resembling a conchoidal fracture in flint, gets wider and wider until it is wide enough for two people, two ravens and two bikes to emerge then snaps shut behind them leaving no trace or sign it was ever there at all.
The sudden silence is eerie. For a moment one would be forgiven for thinking that the buzz has caused a sudden affliction of deafness. Clouds scud silently in the sky and even the trees, still bending in the stiff wind with their leaves dancing, make no noise. Sound has been abstracted from the world. Just as the absence of light in a cave deep underground is more intense than mere dark, this somehow goes beyond silence.
Logan stares at the Priestess and pulls a face. It does not even occur to him to try speaking. It is as if the very idea, the concept of sound is missing. Something must have gone very wrong.
"Hey!" Thought exclaims. "We've got all our feathers!"
With that sound returns as suddenly as it departed. Trees rustle, the wind blats soft paws across their faces and there is the faint intrusion of traffic noise from beyond the protective shield of the trees.
RB takes a look around at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in the town of Salem Center in Westchester County, New York. At least the building is there. She was half expecting to arrive and discover it in ruins.
"Bugger," she says.
"Wassup? Place smells okay." Logan starts to worry.
"Isn't Charles in Genosha right now?"
"Gods, girl, I don't know," Logan growls, relieved but irritated by the scare. "He could be dead."
"Well I need him not to be dead, dammit!"
They move off across the lawn, wheeling their bikes. They know their arrival on the grounds will have been detected, and indeed it is not long before an imperious Emma Frost appears, wearing only marginally less than Kathy Pike had been last time RB saw her.
"My, my. Look what the cat dragged in," she says. Her husband Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, appears by her side, closely followed by the other teaching staff not currently taking classes. Shadowcat's dragon, Lockheed, eyes up the two ravens suspiciously. "Who is your friend, Logan? Some little hussy you picked up in a bar to take your mind off the corpse?"
Wolverine snarls, but keeps his mouth shut. RB is not going to like that and she is already in a bad mood.
"Ms Frost," the priestess says icily. "I know you are aware of the adage it takes one to know one, which lends me to the conclusion that you either consider yourself to be somewhat loose about the seams or else are simply exposing your ignorance in public for the world to see. And please don't try any of your little head-bending tricks on me unless you wish to spend the rest of the week in a darkened room with a migraine the like of which would give Galactus pause for thought. Logan and I are old friends and he has very kindly offered me some assistance in a rather urgent matter."
"Are you threatening me?" Emma Frost demands, skin shimmering into sparkling diamond. "I can make you spend the rest of your life vomiting uncontrollably every time you hear the word 'minge'."
"No, actually, you can't," RB says, suddenly grinning from ear to ear. "But it's a nice thought. I might have to try that on someone sometime. I was making no threat, Ms Frost. Merely observing the inevitable consequences of you attempting to do anything to my mind. Do have a bash if you like. No skin off my nose. And then, while you're lying in bed wishing that it didn't make so much noise when you breathe, I'll explain to everyone else why I'm here over a nice cup of coffee."
"I ain't doin' anythin' that don't involve beer," Wolverine tells her.
"Fine." Ravenbait is still meeting Emma Frost's gaze unblinkingly. Furious diamond eyes stare into expressionless onyx ones. A ghost of a smile appears on the priestess's lips. "There you go, you see?" she murmurs as the White Queen presses her fingers to her head in that age-old gesture that means has anyone got any aspirin? "You won't be trying that again. Now, Mr Summers, do you think it would be possible to carry on with our discussion inside? I think some of the children are starting to get curious and I really don't think you want to try explaining me to them."
In order to keep their discussions away from the prying ears of the students, Dr Henry McCoy, also known as Beast, programmes the Danger Room to provide a suitable environment for a meeting and they shut themselves inside. Emma Frost seems not to be suffering too badly from her brief foray into the incomprehensible, twisted and fertile mess that is the inside of Ravenbait's head. She takes two pills from a box labelled 'Bufferin' and joins them.
For some reason Dr McCoy has decided that the most appropriate surroundings for a discussion is a ball pit in a children's indoor amusement park. Emma perches on the side, doing her best to retain some dignified elegance. McCoy hangs by his feet from one of the bars of the climbing frame surrounding the pit. The others try to get comfortable while floundering in a mass of brightly coloured softballs.
"Well then, whoever you are," Emma says after everyone has settled down and Logan has popped the cap on his beer. "What's this all about? I have a school to run, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Let me explain," Ravenbait begins, then stops, frowning. "No. That would take too long. Let me sum up: someone or something has made a catastrophic alteration to reality in my world bringing about a right-wing, petrolhead, fundamentalist Christian revolution. People have started manifesting mutant abilities that are exact analogues of yours." She pops a couple of claws to demonstrate, causing eyes to widen. "I need to fix it before they declare open season on cyclists, if I'm not already too late. This seemed like the best place to start."
"How?" asks McCoy.
"Well, I thought coming here and chatting would be best..."
"I meant, young lady, how has this alteration been accomplished?"
"Ever heard of A-Time, Dr McCoy?"
"I can't say that I have." He raises his eyebrows, which looks quite odd as he is upside down.
"OK. I'll make this brief. You'll be familiar with the idea that perceived reality is no more than an interpretation of what is actually there. Well, if reality as we perceive it is the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave, then A-Time is the cosmic storehouse full of building blocks for making the things that cast shadows. Every world can be imagined as experiencing a separate projection. Everything that is, was or could be can be found in A-Time. Everything that can be imagined exists there. Change the nature of the projection, change the way the light falls, and you change the experience of reality."
"You're talking about information. An entire dimension made purely of information. Fascinating." He folds his arms, swinging backwards and forwards with an entranced expression on his furry blue face.
"That's right, and the information is controlled by ideas in the same way that molecules are controlled by the objects they comprise. But it's not like any old Bob, Fred or Euan can make changes like that..."
"Uh... excuse me?" Shadowcat raises one hand. "I don't get it. I mean we covered the Theory of Forms in Philosophy before I ditched it for Cryptography, and that just doesn't make sense."
"Just think of it like this, Kitty," Beast smiles. "We might think that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if it is the idea of the rose that is important, then it is the information that is being conveyed that controls what is perceived. If I give you the idea of a rose it would indeed smell sweet, but if I gave you the idea of dog excrement you would not be particularly impressed."
"A-Time is where ideas have life," Ravenbait says. "And those ideas can be made to bleed into perception in the really real world. If you have the knack."
"Life imitating art, as they say," Beast murmurs.
"Something like that. Look. A-Time is ruled by the Hierophant and normally I'd say he's the only who could do this, at least on this scale, and he wouldn't because that's not his gig. He doesn't think like that. Someone or something has got into A-Time, and that someone or something has a concrete belief that has been made real. I'm guessing it came from here because, well, you guys do." She favours them all with a level gaze. "People are dying. People I swore to support and protect. More people are going to die unless I fix this. Besides. I'm on contract. So will you help me?"
"What do you need?" Cyclops asks.
"I need to know what or who is responsible."
"Then what?"
"Then we get messy."
Logan grins. "Sweetheart, now ye're talkin' my language."
<br>
<center>* * *</center>
<br>
Things at the Club have taken a turn for the worse. During the night there has been a sudden increase in attacks by Spam Demons, who wriggle in to the public areas of the Club. These creatures are inorganic, metal skittering things that look like spider mites the size of Yorkshire Terriers. The damage each causes is minor, and individually they would be inconsequential, but there are a lot of them and left unchecked they could cause real problems.
Spesh and Jarvis are busy mounting a defence of the Club's premises. It is no easy task. Since ACF closed its borders and upped its security, sending occasional political dissidents to Hotel California and banishing repeat offenders, many of the League's former stalwarts have been wooed by what they see as a Utopian absence of aggression and members are thin on the ground. Far easier to remain locked in the safety of the ACF enclave than make the journey outside.
"Reload!" Spesh hands the riot gun to Jarvis, who swaps it for a fully-loaded one. The butler is wearing earplugs and does not even flinch when the corridor is rocked by the concussion blast of the weapon discharging. Another spam demon falls to ground, twitching.
"Bodyslide by one!" Zipperhead appears out of nowhere and sticks another one of the spam demons with a sword. It shatters into pieces that fall to the ground, fizzing. "Diddums not like that? Hey, Spesh, d'you think we could send these down to the lab and get Pingu to make something with them?"
Spesh blasts another of the critters into bits. "Like what?"
"Oh, I dunno. I always fancied having a go at building that Orgasmatron thing out of Barbarella. Can you imagine getting the Cheeky Girls in there?"
"Your tastes are getting more and more perverse," Spesh says, shaking his head. "Where are these damn things coming from? I didn't think anyone knew we were here. No one comes by here any more."
"Maybe they're being attracted by your irresistible scent. Gotta love those pheromones."
"No, I think we have a spy." A full blast from both barrels cuts a swathe in a small horde of them that had appeared seemingly from nowhere. "Why don't you go find Kathy and see if she can scan the Club for intruders. If there's someone here calling these things then we need to find who it is and deal with him. We don't have time to deal with little things like this."
Jarvis hands over a freshly loaded shotgun and Spesh destroys another half dozen or so of the spam demons with a well-aimed volley.
"And see if you can get me some back-up while you're at it. I think Cath Humes is in the library."
"Sure thing, killer," Zipperhead says. "Bodyslide by two!" He vanishes. Literally.
Elsewhere on the premises Spen has found himself a new pet. The little tabby cat purrs luxuriously as it winds itself around his ankles. He is looking out of the window of his top floor office and contemplating the legal implications of mounting a campaign against the current version of the Road Traffic Act (revised 2005) on the basis of the Magna Carta, the Human Rights Act and the Kyoto Protocol. A sly smile spreads across his face as he considers just how much havoc he could cause.
Spen's office is well shielded against psychic surveillance. He needs to ensure client confidentiality, of course, and for a man with his talents, especially with someone like Pingu on hand, it was a small matter to render it impervious to any form of eavesdropping.
The cat jumps up onto the leather couch by the well-stocked bookshelf and curls up contentedly.
<br>
<center>* * *</center>
<br>
The Brother hood is finally fighting back. Apparently abandoned by their landlords to the attentions of the Petrolhead and Safespeed trolls, there has been a rebellion. At Cuddy's instigation Heavymental and McBain have taken the most extreme proponents of the Petrolhead philosophy prisoner, and both are now incarcerated in a couple of Peugot 807s, the car ranked bottom in the 2005 Top Gear survey. Sidewalls is still conducting a full frontal practically single-handedly, producing so many copies of himself that even the Cake Stop regulars are having trouble keeping up to date.
"We could do to them what we did to Rather Not Say," muses Flying Monkey. "We can subtract them from this reality all together. I do not see why we should be obliged to tolerate their vicious and vindictive recidivism. This is still a place for cyclists, Cuddy. I have not seen a single sign from them that they even know what to do with a bike."
"True enough," Cuddy says. "If Nutty were here he would no doubt preach tolerance and forgiveness. But he is not. He is safely tucked away in the cyclist reservation of ACF, where residents pay the hefty price of enforced affability and no discussion of the world outside for their freedom from creatures such as these. What price are you willing to pay, Flying Monkey?"
"I'll tell you what price you'll pay!" screams one of the Petrolheads, trying futilely to start the engine of the car that is his prison cell. There is no petrol in it. "You can say goodbye to peace! We'll never leave you alone! The world is on our side, you stupid, naive fools! It's too late! God is on our side!"
"I'm sure that several of our members would beg to differ," Cuddy murmurs. With a gesture he sends both cars drifting across to Soapbox, where he mounts them on the wall near the ceiling. There they are high enough to be attainable by a determined throw of bait but not low enough to cause any trouble in the more genteel parts of the Cake Stop.
"I think that is probably the best solution," FM says, nodding with approval. "That's a far more appropriate place for them."
"Why can't we just get rid of them?" Tourist Tony asks. "I've got this great idea involving a threshing machine and a sledgehammer."
"Why Tony," Patrick Stevens says with a smile. "I had no idea you were planning on joining the LibDems."
With the worst offenders now stuck on display where anyone who wishes to exercise himself in futile exchange can do so, Cuddy strolls to the bike park at the front of the Cake Stop. There are signs of life in the stands once more. There is even the occasional snatch of bird song. Nature will always have its way. Even the mightiest of motorways will crack and crumble if not maintained. Entropy is an unstoppable force, much more so than any Toyota Freelander.
He looks up at the sky. Somewhere up there, hanging in orbit, is the Other Place, where the ideals of tolerance and camaraderie are held so highly that the inhabitants cannot cut their teeth on anything more serious than someone playing devil's advocate. All well and good as a safe space, a sanctuary for those tired of fighting and weary of the battle for the hearts and minds of the enemy, but no good as a training ground for warriors.
Warriors are what they need now. Warriors prepared to step up and go into the fray. Up there in the reservation they call ACF they are not even aware of what is happening down here. Discussion of events elsewhere are forbidden, lest any be tempted to go astray.
It is probably for the best. Let them stay there, then. Let them remain in blissful ignorance while those whose flesh and minds still have the strength and the willingness to fight on take the battle to the enemy. Outside their peaceful bubble people are dying and drivers are using the roads as racetracks, secure in the knowledge that anything involving the death of a cyclist will be classed an accident. A terrible tragedy. Poor driver. Must be awful to have experienced that. They shouldn't allow cyclists on the roads at all.
Here at the Cake Stop they have the strength in numbers to hold back the tide, at least as far as the boundary. They may be subject to invasion, but the Pistonheads, the SafeSpeed trolls and the ABD apologists cannot get the upper hand on this sacred turf. Not after last time.
He grimaces. What use is that when what really matters is what is going on out there?
"Gather the troops," he says. "They want war, we'll give them war."
He shifts his gaze, looking towards the horizon, past where the ruined Temple stands as a poignant reminder of all the good things they had once had here at the Cake Stop. That way lies the liminal region where reality becomes ever more flexible. Out there is well past the edge of the A-Time borders. Out there lies the headquarters of the League, the middle ground. He knows there are few of them left now, most of them having taken up residence on Asteroid ACF.
He wonders if it is worth taking a trip out there.
No, he decides. Let them choose for themselves whether to aid in this battle.
When he turns again there is a host of grim and expectant faces waiting for him. They think he is going to give a speech, something stirring and motivational. That's not his style at all. He offers them the glimmer of a harsh smile and says:
"Let's go."
Sam
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