“Igor, being giving me power!” Blackwulf yelled as he almost burst the seams of a white lab coat.
“Yes, master,” the Luchadore said with a slight hiss. He hunched over as he walked to a wall filled with strange, technologically advanced equipment. The masked man flipped several switches.
Blackwulf hovered around a table with a white sheet draped across it. Thick, rubber gloves squeaked as his fingers wiggled. A stethoscope hung loosely around his neck. The blanket popped upwards as the form beneath it sat upright. “I have not being said ‘It’s alive!,’” Blackwulf protested.
“Why do I have to play the monster?” Johnny asked as he pulled the sheet from his head.
“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” Luchadore chuckled.
“Masked one is being correct. You are having most monster-like look.”
“So says the seven foot purple guy,” Johnny retorted.
Blackwulf frowned a bit. “I am one being having lab coat in closet. I am being genius doctor.”
“What is it with you and your fetish for dressing up like medical technicians?” Johnny asked as he reached for his backpack.
“Is being long story,” Blackwulf said as he pushed Johnny back down onto the table and covering him with the sheet. “Being throwing the switch, assistant being deformed and dim-witted!”
“Of course, mast...... HEY!” Luchadore then shrugged it off and began to flip switches and turn nobs furiously. A slight, electric blue spark jumped from behind one of the panels as he pushed a button. “Neat!” He pushed the same button again. Another spark flew. “Cool!” He pushed it again, harder. Another spark. “Awesome!” Yet again, harder. Yet another spark. “Tee-hee!” Harder. More sparks. Finally, he simply punched the whole console, causing a cobweb of electricity to engulf it. “Uh-oh!”
“Did Luchie just say Uh-oh?” Johnny asked from under the sheet.
“I am being afraid so,” Blackwulf answered.
The two looked in the direction of the masked member of their crew. Shyly, he held his two thumbs up and flashed a broad, nervous smile. When all he received were two heads shaking no at him, his nervous smile broke into an even more nervous frown. “Um..... I didn’t do it.”
“The hell you didn’t,” Johnny replied.
“Now is not being time to be placing blame,” Blackwulf yelled above the loud electric crackling. “Now is being time to be running away before Dr. Quantos is returning from bathroom.”
The Luchadore bent down and began to pick up a few knocked over items. “I don’t know, guys. Maybe we should clean this up and face the music together. I’m sure Doc........” He looked up to speak to his friends and noticed that they were not there. “Guys? GUYS!? Wait for me!”
The before-its-time Madelovian technology buzzed, hissed, and snapped with electric energy. Quantos walked in, trying to shake free from his shoe a fluttering strip of toilet paper, and was shocked (only a pun. He wasn’t really electrocuted) by the site before him. “I must shut this down,” he yelled to himself as he scrambled to turn off the now glowing equipment. Dr. Henry Quantos moved very quickly as he attempted to stop the great danger that was accumulating before him. One wonders how quickly he would have moved had he known the full extent of what was occurring at that very moment.
You see, Mandelovian technology is far more advanced and different than any other technology on the face of the Earth. For that reason, it must be handled differently than any other technology on Earth. Mandelovians know this and specifically build their lives around this fact. For instance, a Mandelovian would never put an Isotopic Graphometer near a Spectrographic Regulator, unless he likes the smell of charred bacon and ammonia. So all building are built in accordance with the needs of the technology to be employed. Unfortunately, this knowledge is never given to non-Mandelovians in an attempt to ensure that the nation’s secrets are not used outside of its borders.
Such was the case here. The Vanguard headquarters was not built in conjunction with the foreign technology that it held in its belly. This caused a most harmful side effect. The beams of the building vibrated. A strong, electro-magnetic pulse ran through the buildings wires. Every electrical device in the building went haywire. Television sets flipped between channels. Computer monitors flickered on and off. Even Montag’s security mainframe was affected. Strange binary code infected the system at random. It’s satellite uplink was enabled, connecting it to hundreds of them orbiting about the planet. They too were afflicted with a strange electric aura as the entire planet now began to experience cellular phone and other communication blackouts. Cable networks all began playing the same episode of Gilligan’s Island simultaneously.
Quantos could not shut down the machines properly. There was only one course of action left. He immediately ran to the power grid and began to shut everything off.
In the conference room, everyone had gone from a fever pitched conversation of whether or not to accept D’Goon’s offer to complete silence when the speaker phone in the center of the table began blaring Orson Wells’s broadcast of War of the Worlds. As Quantos flipped several switches at once in the basement, the room became dark and eerily silent. “For the love of God, I hope that was a joke,” Ringo was heard to say just a moment before the smell of ozone and a bright, blue-greenish light began to emanate from a large sphere over the table. The blurred image of a very tall, slender man began to appear before them with only his head visible.
The light around the strange man died down as the blur slowly disappeared as the emergency lights came up. He was very tall, about six feet, seven inches. A strange, green bag was draped around his shoulder. A blue blazer covered a multi-colored tie-dye T-shirt. Khaki shorts were held up with a leather belt. His feet were cover with sandals and yellow socks. The man looked at his own attire as if in disgust without saying a word.
“Um....,” Chance finally spoke up, “can I help you?” The man just looked at him and flashed another look of dissatisfaction without a word. “Maybe you would like to start by telling who you are and what you’re doing here.”
“And how in the hell did you get in here?” Priest demanded. “Are you EPS?”
“Settle down,” Danny commanded, trying to figure out what was going on. All the while, the stranger simply stood there as if he were waiting for something. Each time someone spoke, he seemed to get more upset and impatient.
“Who are you?” Grimm yelled as he stood. His hand perked on his axe at his side as the chair slid back with a screech.
The stranger looked at him intently. Then he spoke. Everyone stood in confusion as his voice seemed to sound like a mixture of several languages at once. Brianna whispered into Nadia’s ear, “Did he just say Adam Different?”
