From: Kenneth Field (envision_at_fidalgo.net)
Date: Wed Aug 01 2007 - 15:21:43 PDT
"Get Out of Jail Free Card"
(continues from Joy's "We Owe You")
Location: GS-2
Stardate: 2.70801.1307
Scene: Impulse Drives, a shop on the Promenade
Maury R. Tee, Professor of English (Ret.) and proprietor of Impulse Drives, a little shop of needful things on the Promenade of the GATE, brought the security bars down, closing off the entrance to his shop. It had been a long, fruitless day, thanks to the Prophets.
"Whatever you are," Tee muttered to himself, "you're no businessmen."
His basketball-sized security droid, H.W., drifted down from his post near the overhead of the shop, humming to itself.
"It is unclear exactly what the Prophets are," the little droid lectured. "They seem to have no linear existence at all, if historical accounts from eyewitnesses can be believed. They rarely leave the Wormhole itself, but since all points in the universe are all the same and all the times are one time to them, it really doesn't matter whether they leave the Wormhole or not."
"I'm not interested in a lecture," Tee snapped, whipping the blinding white shop apron off and hanging it on a hook behind the counter. "I'm only interested in providing my goods to the discerning public. And thanks to the Prophets and their mystical, magical disappearing Celestial Temple, I have a lot fewer members of the discerning public to entice. However," the old gentleman paused with a grim, toothy smile, "I may have an answer to that situation at least."
He turned abruptly and strode behind the counter to a door almost invisible from the shop floor. It opened without a sound at his approach, and he stepped across its threshhold, H.W. hovering at his shoulder. The room behind the shop looked like nothing more than an elderly British drawing room, complete with fireplace, overstuffed chairs set before it, and heavy drapery covering false windows. In one of the chairs, drinking tea, sat another man. A blue man.
"Mr. Rixx," Tee addressed him from the doorway.
Zane Rixx carefully set his teacup aside on the doillie covering the top of a small end table near his chair. He smiled at the owner of Impulse Drives.
"Maury, thanks for the hospitality, but it's time for me to be moving on."
"Not quite yet," Tee replied as he took the other chair. "There's a little matter of the payment for your vintage *Get Out of Jail Free Card.*"
"I meant to ask you about that," Rixx looked interested. "Are you saying that's what killed the power in the Brig?"
"I suspect that it did more than that," Tee answered. "I think it also created a diversion of sufficient intensity that everybody seemed to forget you were even there. I see also that you are oppotunistic enough to take advantage of a situation when it presents itself."
Rixx inclined his head in recognition of the compliment.
"I remind you that it's still unpaid for."
"Then I best be getting your payment to you," Rixx began to get to his feet.
H.W. hovered over to block him.
"Is there a problem, Professor?" Rixx asked.
"As a matter of fact, there is. Everything I provide has a price. You have availed yourself of my services and my products, and yet I have not yet been paid."
"I can't very well pay you while sitting here in your parlor, now can I?"
"And I can't very trust you to make good on your promises, since you are a bit of a felon at the moment."
"I have always been a felon, Professor," Rixx waved a dismissing hand at the argument. "If you keep me here, I can't very well pay you back, now can I?"
Tee considered the Bolian mastermind thoughtfully before answering.
Without warning, he thrust his hand like a bladed weapon across the short distance between them and plunged it into the Bolian's chest, up to his wrist. Rixx tried to scream, but it was caught, gurgling in his throat. Tee pulled back his hand, Rixx's beating heart pulsing in his palm. Tee picked up a metal box filagreed with bloodgold, opened the lid and placed the Bolian's heart within it. Rixx looked on in horror, not even aware that his chest cavity had closed when Tee's hand had come out of it.
"I'll just hang on to this for safe-keeping," Tee smiled, that sharp, white smile of his, "and when your debt is paid ... well ... we'll see about your heart."
H.W. backed away and let the Bolian rise out of his chair.
"My droid will see you safely out," Tee told him, picking up his own cup of tea in a hand smeared with blue Bolian blood.
"Shameful," commented the little droid, but it was unclear to whom he was speaking.
-------------------- =/\=
NRPG: We know that Maury R. Tee is not what he seems to be. We're just not sure what he actually is. He's definitely not Q. But he's not entirely mortal either. I think of him like a mixture of Jack the Ripper, Loki and Coyote. A sort of vicious demi-godling interested primarily in creating chaos. But it's unclear yet just why. And now we know why everything blacked out, and how Rixx escaped. And now Rixx has his own problems. Muwahahahah.
-------------------- =/\=
Kenneth Field
envision_at_fidalgo.net
aka Commander Gene McInnis
CNS/GS-2
aka Lt. JG Mowree Nurunyon
aCNS/GS-2
aka Tomas' Alexei Vukovic
Former Chief of Staff to Ambassador Xana Bonviva
currently with the BORG
aka Maury R. Tee
Professor of English (Retired)
Proprietor of "Impulse Drives,"
a little shop of horrors
GS-2, Promenade
"To gently lie and prove the lie true ... everything is finally a promise ... what
seems a lie is ramshackle need, wishing to be born." -- Ray Bradbury
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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