Light's Out (In London) <New Story>

[Syd]

A new story. As ever, any comments are welcome.



Lights Out (In London)





The building shone red in the midday sun.

The building stood on the corner of Sumter Street in Columbia. It's
brick glowed red in the sunlight, it's windows were large. It was
divided into three wings. The lot itself was gravely, weedy and
barren.

Syd Marduke stood by the stark black rear door, pausing in the cool
shadows under the awning. He then opened the door and went inside.

In the entrance hall, he inspected the lime-green walls and the start
of the stairwell. He nodded and then entered into the lobby. It was
bare and the reception desk was empty.

He started to ascend the lobby staircase and hesitated,

A distinct smell furtively hit his nostrils. It was a flowery form of
perfume, elusive and familiar.

Syd shook his head and entered the first large room he found upstairs.
It was crammed with childish artifacts, instruments and elements of a
different age. He moved a Saturday Night Fever soundtrack to a
different shelf and a view master to another. A child's record player
played Puff The Magic Dragon. A six inch G. I. Joe figure held Barbie
hostage.

Syd then walked into the next room. This one had little girl's dolls
hanging from the shelf and little tea-tables all laid out with a dolly
stove nearby. Frilly costumes hung from hangers in a shelf. Some of
the Barbie dolls had their hair cut to the scalp. They looked like new
marine recruits. Some G. I. Joe figures littered the shelves. Most
wore frilly girl clothings. Children's jewelry were piled on a chest
painted with monster movie images.

The next room had board games piled on shelves. Some were in a dodgy
shape. Monopoly money was scattered on a shelf. Dice littered the
floor. He kicked a nine-sided one under a shelf. Game book were piled
haphazardly on top of each other.

Syd pulled a Dungeon And Dragons rule book of the pile and thumbed
through it. He smiled, and returned it.

The next room after that had numerous sets of toy soldiers and toy
replicas of war machines littering the spaces. Picture books from and
about World War Two sat nearby. neon painted toy guns lay on the
books. Sitting in front of one of the huge bay windows sat a set of
toy soldiers painted neon pink.

He moved into one of the kitchens. From a nearby refrigerator, he took
out some meat and cheese and made a sandwich.

The furtive smell touched his nostrils again. He inhaled the scent
deeply, then headed for the last room on the floor.

This room contained several old computer consoles, most obsolete. It
also contained other computing paraphernalia. Floppy discs fell out of
their sleeves. Cassette tapes were piled on each other. Books were
scattered haphazardly on the shelf. Most of these were from the dawn
of personal computing, but some were before even that. Circuits
littered the floor.

A figure sat hunched in a chair in the middle of the room.

Syd entered the room.

At the echo of his footsteps, the figure turned her face to him, then
she slowly turned her chair to face him.

"Hello, Ms. Laurie." Syd had recognized the hunched figure dressed in
fur.

She smiled. Her long blond hair was disheveled. Her dark eyes glazed.
Her cheeks were sunken into her face. She looked terrible.

She was dressed in a long fur coat. It was several times too big for
her and dwarfed her slight form.

"Hello, Syd." Her voice was hollow and husky. She rubbed at her pale
cheek, then pulled the collar of the coat tight around her throat. Her
breath steamed in the hot building.

He moved further into the large room. "You don't look well."

She shook her head. "I'm not. I need your help."

"What's the problem?" Syd stopped by her chair and stared out the
window at the overhead sun.

She stared at the sun as if she hadn't heard him. But then, she looked
at him and said, "Reactionary factor, I think. Too many at one time. I
managed to neutralize the initial ones. But, the factors then came
from all sides. Even ones as far away as Alaska. I had a hard time
dealing with them. They just kept coming. Angrier. Darker. Not at all
like what had gone before. My usual formula wasn't working."

"Morality Fascists," Syd sighed.

She nodded. "That's what if felt like. The sums were angry.
Authoritative. Misogynist. Xenophobic. They were so hateful, I still
can't put it into words. It sapped me. I had to abandon my work. Just
in time, too. Another minute..."

Syd nodded. He felt the temporal shift, felt the hand of darkness
threatening the balance. He sighed. It's always something.

"Alright. I'll help you." He turned to Ms. Laurie. She had fallen fast
asleep.



In an alley just off Main Street, Syd leaned against the red brick
wall. He was tired. He reflected on the events of the last couple of
days. He had driven around town listening to several talk radio feeds
as he did so. They had all nearly sickened him with their venomous
rhetoric. It was nearly a physical sickness.

A figure walked down the alley towards him.

Syd nodded to the girl. She was tall, with dark hair, large eyes, and
an exotic set of features. Her eyes were dark. Her expression was
serious. She was dressed in blue jeans and cowboy boots and a large
coyote fur coat. She stopped next to Syd.

He offered her a jelly baby. She pulled a couple from the bag and
popped some in her elegant mouth. She then leaned against the wall.

"What... Is your quest?" he intoned.

The girl rolled her eyes. "To find the Holy Grail." She paused, then
added, "Are you still playing secret agent man?"

Syd smiled. "You... Are number six."

Hitori Mensh sighed in frustration. She had been called away from her
own investigation into the Recording Industry scandal and it irked
her. It also pissed her off that Syd was playing around. She hated
this side of him.

He reached over and touched her coat. She didn't react. She closed her
eyes as she felt his hand rub her coat up and down. She knew how much
he liked it, how much it turned him on. She never understood it. She
kept her face blank.

"We have a problem," he finally muttered.

She looked at him. "What's this 'we,' pard?"

He smiled and moved to her. She sighed again. He put his arms around
her waist. He stroked her hair with his free hand. He then kissed her
full on the mouth. She didn't resist. She knew that soon he'd
eventually tell her what this was all about.

"A big problem," he said into her ear. She nodded. She kissed him
back, and put her fur-clad arms around his neck. She smiled as she
felt him shiver. He rubbed his hands over the hair of her coat. She
gasped at one of his gestures.

He leaned in and explained what had happened to Ms. Laurie and his own
investigations. She nodded her head as she took it in, the gears in
her mind already turning. She requested more data, and he whispered
some figures in return.

They continued to make out until a cop came by and told them to move
on.



Under the stare of the toy-soldiers and pink G. I. Joe's, Syd and
Hitori listened to the latest feed from various talk radio shows.

"Sheese," she muttered. "They hang themselves."

"Pardon?" Syd glanced at her. The edges of her coat seemed to glow
with brilliant fire as she stood next to the window.

"We don't really have to give them enough rope; They do that by
themselves." She turned and regarded him.

On one of the numerous feeds, a left-wing commenter was criticizing
the other side for their xenophobic reactionary way of dealing with
immigration, while a separate feed had a conservative commenter
blasting the other side about the 'state-run media.'

The noise got louder and louder until it drowned out real facts.



John Loveman exited the studio after a particularly bad day.

So many right-wing callers had phoned in to shout at him, questioning
his morals, his patriotism, his intelligence, his manhood. It had been
nothing but insults all day. He had a headache. He usually ended the
day with one. He wanted to give up but realized that if he did that,
then they won. A balance had to be there. One side shouting to the
country did not produce good. He sighed. He was looking forward to a
trip to bed.

He would have a good meal, a hot bath, and a good night sleep.

He failed to see the dark shadowy figure leaning against a wall. He
didn't move, but continued to watch Loveman's every move.

When Loveman entered his car and started the motor, he found that he
wouldn't need that meal, the bath, or the sleep. This was because his
car erupted into a giant ball of destruction.

Syd stepped from the shadows with a sardonic smirk.



Syd punched up figures on his laptop computer.

The circle graph was almost all red. Other indicators were even more
dire. Red levels overpowering all the green neutral columns. And he
had little time left to correct them.

He sighed. This business was getting him down.



Rush Rimjob left his home in the early morning sun, sanctimoniously
popping a pill in his large mouth as he did.

He was feeling very smug about the death of his rival, Loveman. He had
been ripping him apart every day on his show about his character. He
didn't intend to let a thing like his rival's death deter his usual
character assassination. If anything, it gave him more to talk about
and he intended to use that freedom.

He was working out the finer points of his critique of the
progressives 'moral decay' in his mind as he started his expensive
Mercedes. He soon found that he would not be delivering that lecture
after all.

His car erupted into an expensive ball of fire. It blew out several
windows in his ultra-rich house too.



With Loveman and Rimjob out of the way, Syd could now set the two
sides against each other in Ernest. It wasn't difficult anyway. They
were adapt at yelling past each other.

Syd opened the feeds and upped the volume. The angry chattering filled
the screens. Syd winced and opened a temporal portal. The angry
chattering echoed through the multiverse.

Syd waited.

He heard an explosion erupt from down the street.

He nodded, activated the shutters which slammed shut over the large
bay windows and the doors. He touched another control, and the
building began to sink into the lot. When it finished, a metal sheet
slid into place.

The building was now secured.



Ms. Laurie shifted restlessly in the bed. She pressed her hands to her
ears. Her face was stricken with stark fear.

Hitori watched her. She was sitting in a chair across from the bed.
She still wore the fur coat. She rose finally and put her hands on Ms.
Laurie's shoulders. She tried to help calm her. Ms. Laurie's coat was
as disheveled as she was.

Hitori reached out and turned on a radio. The Blue Danube eased out.



On the banks of monitors, Syd watched the surrounding area. The
streets had filled with trash. Fires blazed around the corners. people
ran around. Dead bodies lay in discarded heaps. Lightening flashed in
the cool black sky. Gunshots echoed from the distance.

Syd nodded as the gauges rapidly hit the danger zone, where actual
harm to the balance was dangerously close.

Sherrie Plains spoke to a TEAParty group, gouging them for a big pay
check.

Sex-ed was cut to the bone and then some, as pregnancies tripled, and
reactionaries blamed the victim.

Hate speech escalated. Both side started to yell about killing the
other, and their followers took the rhetoric up and bullets were
exchanged. Soon enough, the followers turned on their numbers. Fragile
alliances shattered as old grudges resurfaced and were dealt with.

The gauges started backing back down to green.

Syd watched them, then, as they hit the lower fifty percent, he opened
another few feeds. This caused the gauges to leap forward back to the
danger zone. He then punched in several of Ms. Laurie's math formula
and a incantation in broken Latin. These defused the factors, and the
gauges crawled back away from the danger zone.

The violence on the monitors reached a crescendo, then rapidly calmed
down as more and more people stood and looked around blankly. They
then turned and went back to their homes. The feeds suddenly erupted
into white noise.

Syd settled back into his chair. He wiped the heavy sweat from his
brow.

Slowly, the indicator settled back into the calm green. The feeds cut
out automatically. The monitors showed only a heavily scared street.

And, the sun had started to rise on the heavily injured city of
Columbia.



Ms. Laurie sat in the computer room. Her coat was fresh, as was she.
Her long white-blond hair was freshly washed and styled. Her face had
it's shape again. Her eyes were still slightly glazed, though.

Syd entered the room with a nod to Hitori Mensch. He walked to the
center of the room and stood by the side of her chair. He gazed out
the window diffidently.

The street was slowly being cleaned of debris and corpses. It was
being returned to it's former state.

"So, you succeeded where I failed," Ms. Laurie commented in a
emotionless voice. She moved a strand of hair from her dark eyes.

Syd shook his head. "No. They defeated themselves. The US might be
conservative, but when they revealed their true colors, the population
revolted. They don't want to live under a dictator. The fake morality
of the fascists stirred the real morality that underlies the nation.
The regressive found that they couldn't win."

She looked over her furry shoulder at him. "I can't believe it was
that easy."

Syd shrugged. "You see the result."

"Indeed." She didn't sound convinced.

The three stood and watched the sun move skyward in it's endless road.

-End