THE FUTURE Agghh! Part 13

The Rick Gallen Chronicles: Part 2, Murder was the Entree...for Death!

"...fontaine, lafontaine, la fontaine..."
Rick started up abruptly, realizing even before he began to question his wherabouts that he'd had another one of "the dreams." Same scenario, slight change in details, and once again ending with yet more of that uncertainty that continued to plague him. But as to his whereabouts....was he in...a closet? With an open porthole on one wall? Well, yes, else he wouldn't have bothered to ask himself such confused questions. The room, or rather closet, was small, of course, though that perception could have been caused by the surprisingly dismal quality of light filtering through the window. There were also no doors, a fact Rick ignored, so engaged was he by the scene outside the porthole.

"And this," quoth the narrator, "was what Rick saw."
[There was a picture of an explosion on some salt flats, but the internet didn’t seem to like it]
The burning wreckage of the salt mining platform was receding rapidly in the distance, like, when stuff explodes and it's really cool and shit like that, and Rick assumed he must be in the "ambulance." He stuck his head through the porthole, and the gold plating of the vehicle’s exterior confirmed his suspicions. He peered out farther. Beneath the porthole on the other side was a door handle. And nothing else. No balcony, no railing, just that door handle followed by what must be a rather bumpy drop onto the salt flat. But it was either that or wait to be killed by these crazy people who had blown up a mining platform, kidnapped him, and put a door handle where no door handle should rightly exist. He steadied himself and, sticking his arm out of the porthole as far as it would go, wiggled the door handle.

"Ejection Sequence for Pod 3A-alpha Initiated," stated a non-threateningly feminine robotic voice emanating from the ceiling. Rick froze. "Please select your ejection destination on the console to your right." Rick's arm shot back through the porthole as he spun to his side. There was no console there. He could just discern some wires hanging out of the wall, a testament to some thief’s handiwork. "Please select your ejection destination on the console to your right." Rick started getting nervous. "Please select your ejection destination on the console to your right." Rick started to panic. "Please select your ejection destination on the console to your right." Rick screamed and grabbed the wires, bunching them all together in his fist. "You have chosen 'Torture Headquarters, Ministry of Happiness, Glorious Capital City' as your final destination. If you have any other requests or changes to make, please do so at the console on your right. Make Sure to Buckle Up!" And with that, metal plating began inching down the outside of the pod, and an utterly viscous jelly began to pool around Rick's ankles. Rick banged against the walls shouting, "But there are no seatbelts!" That only seemed to make the jelly rise faster. Finally it encased his entire body, and, wouldn't you know it (you guessed it), he blacked out.

But it now seems the proper time to reveal the personages of those men executing the operations of the now-entirely-quotation-enclosed “ambulance.” Let us make them a duo, a slapstick duo, one always getting into foibles and hilarious misunderstandings that always have a way of neatly resolving themselves. Their names should be humorous too, to reflect their personalities and quirky characteristics, shall we say: Borkter and Sphinct. Well, Borkter and Sphinct worked in the retrieval and demolitions arm of the Chaldorean Freedom Association (CFA - the brutally oppressive secret police), carrying out their missions in an incredibly large van disguised as an ambulance that could hold large amount of munitions and prisoners. Their assignment for the past few months had been to capture the renowned and elusive terrorist Nick Fallon. How they ended up trying to capture Rick was a matter of typos, hilarious misunderstandings, or because they realized they would eventually get promoted if they continued to kidnap more than the required number of comrades per annum. And so, on that very morning, Borkter and Sphinct had been tailing Rick Gallen’s car, waiting until he got to his job at the grocery store to abduct him - Rick had been so preoccupied by his dream that he had not noticed the giant golden ambulance tailgating him for over 40 minutes. When Rick crashed into the mining platform, Borkter had stopped the “ambulance” by the side of the road so Sphinct could call in the abduction to CFA headquarters (Chaldorean cell-phone reception was notoriously bad - one could only make a call when stationary). It was at this moment when Nick Fallon and his cadre of elite special forces paratroopers trained in the deadly art of (insert your own made up style of karate), having tailed Borkter and Sphinct in turn, took control of the “ambulance” and efficiently, yet still quite gruesomely, dispatched our two humorous friends. (This was the end of the Hilarious Adventures of Borkter and Sphinct).

[Part 3 of the Rick Gallen Chronicles will be coming even more shortly than previously]

(OP: Nate, January 4 2009)