ANOTHER NIGHT AT SID'S Parts 1 - 2 By R2Warped2
A SIMON CREATION
Written by R2Warped2
It was a chilly evening for Florida. The sun was getting low, and I'd soon have
to put on my headlights. After a quick street race with a vintage Mustang, the
Firebird was running quiet and smooth, all the carbon blown out of her. She
glided through the dimming light with the grace of a shark. I wanted to reach
the turn-off to Sid's Shack before dark, because it was nearly impossible to
find after. I checked my mirrors; nobody behind me. Nothing ahead. Slamming
down into second, I spun the wheel left, then cut it right and jumped from
pavement onto dirt, flying over the monster pot-hole Sid refused to fix. I
winced as the pile of stuff in the back seat rattled and banged around. The
distraction left me side-sliding into a tree. A quick jab on the gas pedal and
spin of the wheel, and we were straight again. I had to turn on the headlights,
even if Sid didn't like it. I told him I couldn't afford an infrared visual
system, so until he bought me one, it was headlights or nothin'.
The parking lot wasn't that crowded. A couple of monster 4-wheel drive pickups,
spattered with mud, Peg-leg Bertha's antique Rolls-Royce, some very
ordinary-looking sedans if you overlooked the wide tires and hadn't heard the
engines start. Sid seemed to have some shadowy friends. I'm no expert on spies,
mercenaries and the like, but if these guys were ordinary people, I was Michael
Jordan. The stretch limo seemed out of place. It gleamed in the rising
moonlight. I walked behind it, looked at the tag. Virginia plates, the little
plate frame listed a company in Herndon, Virginia. Interesting. AOL is
headquartered in Herndon.
I noticed the rear end was up on lifts, and the most beat-up, ugly, scratched,
scraped and rusted 1980 Camaro I'd ever seen was parked nearby. That rolling
junk pile could blow the doors off my Firebird.
"Buddy? You under there?"
Creeper wheels scraped along the rutted asphalt, and Mechanic John's shaved
head emerged. He peered through his Professor Nerd eyeglasses at me.
"Hey, man."
We didn't use names outside. The CIA agent in the old church tower had to earn
his pay somehow. Why he was there, only Sid knew, and he wasn't talking. He
just said every time we came by, expect to be filmed, recorded and
microprofiled, but not to worry about it.
"What's doin?"
"These guys didn't floor it over the pothole. Ripped their muffler off."
I smiled. Familiar story.
"You?"
"Got a bunch of electronic stuff for The Man."
He grinned his crazy-man grin, said, "Gotta work" and slid back under the car.
I went to the car, got out an old navy duffel, and started emptying the back
seat.
As I headed for the door, I looked at the place. Muted lights hidden behind
coquina rocks barely illuminated it. Weathered, unpainted planks, attached
haphazardly, stood like grey sentinels. An oversize steel door stood open, and
Lynrd Skynrd music boomed out.
An old-style overhead light that looked like an upside down cooking pan
illuminated a hand-painted sign that said "Sid's Shack". It looked
authentically like an old Florida fishing shack.
I knew, though, that behind the boards was reinforced concrete, lead plates
embedded to prevent electronic invasion, and interleaved steel struts in case
someone fired a smart bomb at the place. Enormous steel blast doors he got from
an old missile silo were inside the walls. The motors required to shut them
overloaded his entire electric system, as his one test demonstrated. I lived
with the assumption that Sid had paranoia on a grand scale and didn't pursue
the matter.
"Madame Butterfly" came over the speakers, and I shook my head as I walked in
the door. Eclectic was the ONLY word to describe the musical taste of Sid's
customers.
Bertha the peg-leg hooker was on a pool table to the right. No, let me clarify.
She was shooting pool on the table. It was Friday, and Sid had a policy about
sex in the bar on Fridays. "Go eat your fish somewhere else" was how he phrased
it.
Bertha was amazingly well-assembled for a 60 year old woman. She wore capri
pants in various shades of loud, with the legs chopped off just below her
amputation so you could see a nice calf on one leg, a thick hickory stump on
the other.
"Warpie" she chirped when she saw me, "Howzabout you give a girl a quickie?"
"Bertha", I said, "you know I don't do people with the same name as my grandma.
I can't afford the therapy."
The tall, gangly drunken sailor trying to shoot pool with her glared at me.
Bertha grabbed his crotch and said "Don't worry sweetie, I'm all yours tonight.
He doesn't put out, so I tease him."
He smiled down at Bertha, leaned down and started kissing her. I wondered how
he'd feel later when she pulled out the dentures. I'd heard stories about her
and the stump, too. I shuddered and moved on.
An enormous railed dance floor was to the immediate left, rigged up with lights
in the floor and ceiling. Sid kept the door locked in the area below this
floor. I sometimes wondered if Sid ever sat in there during dancing, since you
could see straight up through sections of the floor. Again, I didn't ask. I
just made sure my dates had on underwear if they wanted to dance.
Sid had purchased an entire saloon in some old western ghost town, and had the
bar moved and reassembled inside Sid's shack. It was as authentic as he could
make it, all modernization disguised with old-west memorabilia. A person walked
from elegant tiles onto old planking to get to the bar. As the stools wore out,
he had exact copies made to replace them. The bartenders always wore paisley
vests, long-sleeved tux shirts with a garter on one arm. Some accepted a bonus
to wear huge waxed mustachios at work. They also carried derringers on tiny
holsters on their belts. The top barrel fired a .44 magnum bullet, the bottom a
.410 shotgun slug. Nobody robbed Sid's. Not successfully, at least. A
voluptuous woman adorned the oil painting on the wall, naked. Bertha claimed to
have posed for it, but we all knew her butt had never been that curvy.
A couple of Sid's "mystery friends" were in conference with a small, dapper
Chinese man at a table in back. When the door closed on that area, it became a
casino. A small red neon sign over a doorway announced " est uran " lay just
inside.
I rounded the bar, gave the burly barkeep a Boy Scout salute. He managed to
curl up one corner of his lip imitating a smile. I paused.
"Stop that" I told him, "Your face might shatter if you actually smile."
He offered to put my duffel somewhere I'd hate, and, pleasantries exchanged, I
moved on.
I went under the big green "CRAPPERS" sign, and turned left instead of right.
It was dark, and the walls were real mahogany. A pay phone lay at the end of my
hallway, but I needed the door to the right. I put down my burden and faced it
squarely.
It got very "Maxwell Smart" at this point. I pushed the center hinge pin on the
carved door, the laminated panel that said, "Storage" flipped up, and a sensor
array slid out with a metallic humming. I put my chin on the proper spot, and a
retinal scanner did its thing. I once asked Sid what would happen if you failed
the eye test.
He smiled his gentle way and said, "Lasers burn through your eyes and brain."
See why I don't ask much?
The door latch clicked, and I bumped it open with my knee. The knob was charged
with 220 volts, constantly. You didn't forget twice.
I dragged the duffel in with me, and the door closed itself. Immediately, I was
in a tiny elevator going down. It seemed like about a 3-story trip. On arrival,
the door opened, and I left, carefully avoiding touching the knob.
The hallway had a terrazo floor, glaring neon ceiling lights. I turned to the
right, toward Sid's office, but an incredibly authentic R2-D2 copy from "Star
Wars" popped out of a wall, squeaked at me, and headed toward the laboratory. I
followed. In the lab, he was seated behind a shielded panel, doing
microelectronic soldering on something by remote control, staring intently at a
giant computer monitor while he toggled switches and keyboard. This, I thought,
is a REALLY different Sid than the guy on the message board.
"You got everything I asked for?" he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
"Yeah."
"Good. Feed it into the hopper on the wall."
I dragged the duffel over, began removing various parts I'd bought at auction
from the Space Center, and put them inside a metal door one by one. A conveyor
started itself up and began moving them into a large machine whose purpose I
decided not to inquire about.
"Almost done" he said, then suddenly stood and said, "My office."
Taller than me, there was no way I could match his stride. I tend to mosey
anyway. Wore cowboy boots a lot as a kid. I looked at the R2 unit and said
"Could you melt his shoe heels, slow him a bit?" It squealed and a laser popped
out of a panel. Sid spun suddenly, pointed a finger at the robot, said, "You do
it and you're a keg cooler tomorrow." It made sorrowful little sounds and put
its laser away.
I grinned.
"What IS it with you and that thing?" he asked.
"Family" I said, and we started off again. R2 made kissing sounds and I bumped
it with my shoe.
In the office, lounging on chairs that were exact reproductions from the
Chicago Playboy club, sat several men in the kind of suits I couldn't afford to
even ask about. Sid's gorgeous deaf-mute bartender, Devanti, was keeping them
plied with cold, brightly colored drinks. She smiled at me, I mouthed "nice
jugs" at her, and she bounced an ice cube off my forehead from 20 feet away. I
wondered if all Indian women could do that.
I felt just a bit out of place, since I was wearing tiger stripe BDU pants,
blue flip flops and a sleeveless, collarless t-shirt that said, "Shuck me, suck
me, eat me raw" and in tiny letters "Louisiana Oysters". Arrogant as I am, I
decided THEY were out of place, and took a chair.
"These guys" began Sid, and I said, "Are AOL officials, probably major
stockholders."
Sid smiled, they all stared at me like I was a garbage collector spouting
Physics equations.
"He's smarter than he looks," Sid explained to them, then added, "barely."
I reached in a cargo pocket, held a $10 bill even with the top of my head, an
ice cube bounced off Sid's forehead, and my bill vanished as Devanti moved by
me. He winked at her and we went on with business.
"We're about to turn the internet inside out," he told me.
"I can guess. Interactive 3D chatrooms where you can put yourself, and control
you with mouse clicks on macros at the bottom. One step away from face-to-face,
and we'll actually know what the people we chat with look like."
One of the suits chuckled, said, "You ARE smarter than you appear. We're
introducing that in three months. Premium service, only $25 a month more per
customer. But no. Sid has moved beyond that technology. This is a special, VERY
exclusive new offering. It will cost $50,000 a month for the first two years to
make up for research and design costs, we hope to cut the price by half after
that time."
"Uh, guys? I barely make my monthly fee and cable service. Why are you telling
me this?"
"We have selected the Wit's End portion of the Amazing Instant Novelist area as
Test Subjects," said another suit, "You will receive the service for free."
"Test Subjects?" I glared at Sid. "These people own that commie rag "Time"
magazine and you want US to be TEST SUBJECTS for them?"
"I control the technology," said Sid in his "Shut up and be nice" voice, "they
lease it from me."
"Just what", I asked, "is this super technology?"
Sid pushed a button on his desk. The top flipped up and rotated over on a
central shaft, and we went from Maxwell Smart to James Bond 2003 in a second.
It was a control panel, and that's all I understood about it.
"Well," said Sid, "I can make personal chat a reality now...."
Ok. That's it for the night. If y'all like it, I'll continue. If not, well,
we'll never know...
R2Warped2
~all wrote out.
Another Night At Sid's Part II
I was sitting in the underground office of Sid, electronics genius, possible
ex-spook, definite madman, Wit's End poster, and some AOL officials in an
interesting little Bar/Pool Hall/Restaurant/Nightclub named "Sid's Shack".
Having just learned that some incredible events were about to change the
internet forever, still a little shocked, I learned that some new, unknown
technology was about to be offered to the Wit's End posters in exchange for
being the guinea pigs to test it. Sid's personally programmed robot, mounted in
a duplicate of the Star Wars' Robot R2D2, apparently sensing my elevated level
of stress, was ultrasonically playing "Harlem Nocturne" into my head. It WAS
relaxing....
Sid, wearing a "Nuke The Whales" t-shirt under his grayed and frayed lab coat,
was sitting in front of a gorgeously arrayed control panel on his desk. He
would type furiously for a minute, stop, adjust a knob or flip a switch, type
some more, look at a tiny screen, mumble something under his breath, and keep
going. We ignorant cavemen watched and said nothing.
Finally, he seemed satisfied. He leaned back, laced his fingers behind his
head, and said, "Ok, we're ready." The enormous glass wall behind him, which
had been showing a scene from some zoo aquarium, began to clear. Behind the
glass was apparently two empty rooms, ceiling and walls covered with white
acoustical tiles. The back wall on the left was blue, the right, pink. A wooden
table rudely made from 2 x 4s sat in the center of each room.
It happened so suddenly, with no warning or buildup, that it seemed not to have
happened. No mysterious humming, no dimming of lights, no changes. Suddenly, a
puppy sat on the table in the pink room. It looked around, whimpered and lay
down, trembling.
"Would you go get her?" asked Sid, and since I assumed he meant me, I walked
around to the side of the room, opened the door and went in. As soon as she
noticed me, the puppy sat up and started making a high-pitched yipping noise.
She was some kind of hound, I wasn't sure what. Brown, black and tan, floppy
ears. I picked her up, and she wriggled around until I cradled her, then
immediately fell asleep.
I took her to Sid, who laid her in his lap. She didn't stir. He handed me a fat
ink marker and said, "Draw something on her."
I raised an eyebrow. He nodded. I drew a symbol on the fur on her chest. The
symbol was something personal to me, and no one else would find any meaning to
it. I call it my Rune.
"Now put her back on the table."
Shrugging, I carried her in, laid her down. She was still asleep. I walked
back, Sid pushed a button on his gaudy panel. I looked into the room. The puppy
was gone, then suddenly she was in the blue room.
"Get the pup again?"
I went in, and froze. The puppy still lay sleeping on its side. My Rune was
clearly marked on the pup's chest. But this dog was male. I felt the hair rise
on my neck. I picked him up anyway, carried him back out.
The suits sat straight up in their chairs. I had him cradled so that everyone
could see the rune and that the dog's sex was different.
Sid grinned.
"Side effect", he explained, "when I designed this thing, I was using frogs, so
I didn't notice the sex changes. Switched to rats, and there it was. I had to
figure out why, then reconfigure it to work with males or females."
"So", I asked, "If I showed up in the pink room..."
"Yep", said Sid, smiling, "I'd be responsible for making the ugliest woman in
history. I'd try it if you would, though. Like to see if you're a bearded
woman." I wondered briefly if Devanti would break a block of ice on his head
for $50, then realized it didn't matter. I didn't have $50 on me.
"Sid", I said softly, my back to the suits, "this has implications way beyond
meeting Wit's End people for real. This is huge. Global. Maybe more."
He winked and said "Well, gentlemen? The pup, as your agent at my house will
confirm, came from there. The times will match. He started off male, he's male
again."
"Put him back, all right?"
I complied. One of the guys dialed a number on his cellphone, and said, "Yes.
The dog's on its way to you."
I closed the door, saw Sid push another of his buttons. I looked in the glass.
He was gone.
"All right. Good to hear." He closed the phone, looked at Sid.
"The dog is at your house safe, sound and male."
Everybody stood. They shook Sid's hand, clapped him on the arm.
One looked me in the eye and said, "This is, of course, confidential."
"Yeah. Got it."
He reached in his coat, and as his checkbook came into view, Sid said, "I'll
take care of that." The checkbook vanished, and I considered drawing out $100
from my ATM for TWO ice blocks. Those damn people owed me money and aggravation
fees. I estimated the mid-post punt fees in the thousands. Same for mid-IM
punts. Sid was in trouble with me.
He escorted his guests to the elevator, saw them safely in and came back. He
did his magic with his desk, and quickly it was a desk again, the glass wall
became a lightning storm somewhere in the Australian outback. Devanti had
cleaned up and was gone.
I realized that Sid's deceptively gentle smile was making me more and more
nervous every time I saw it. I hoped he wouldn't smile. He did.
"I'm going to hold a drawing for the first human through. Winner gets paid
$100,000. Unless you'd like to..." he let his voice trail off.
"Tell ya what, Sid. You send your mother through first, and if she comes out
female, I'll take the trip for 50 grand."
"No mothers" he said. I remembered Sid had some interesting and well-developed
moral values. No use arguing with him on that one.
"Fine. You show me which button to push, you go first, me second, we split
75/25."
He sighed. "Drawing it is."
"Sid, I have a couple of questions here..."
"How good are you at Physics?"
"Not great. But not questions about the mechanics of this thing. You're leasing
out a technology that will eliminate the need for a car. You want to pick up
your dry-cleaning? Pop. You're at the cleaners. Go visit your family up North?
Take a trip to China?"
"I can't get it to work transoceanically."
"Not the point. Word of this gets out, and it probably already has, people are
going to be after it. You could blip into a room, assassinate somebody
important, blip out again. Whatever you did, teams of scientists are going to
improve on it. This might be the key to visiting other planets. Dude, it's,
it's, it's....bigger than HUGE!"
"It's under control. Nobody touches it, nobody else has this. Nobody can steal
it."
"Thanks. I'll sleep well tonight."
"Take the robot with you."
"He's not part of your security setup?"
"I had it build a duplicate of itself. It's identical except for a file I can't
seem to unlock. I didn't know it was there until today."
It was my turn to smile, at last.
"That file isn't needed. Trust me."
He looked at me silently for a while.
Finally he said, "I'll have to."
He pulled an ultrasonic dog whistle from his pocket and blew in it.
Identical R2D2 robots showed up at the door.
"Pick yours."
"The one on the right."
The robot began playing "He's So Fine" until I asked it to stop. It rolled over
to me and stopped at my right side.
"How could you tell?"
"He was on the right. I'm left handed, so he's programmed to cover my weak
side. Given a choice, he'll always take the right side unless told otherwise."
"Good thinking."
As we got into the elevator, I said, "Sid? I needed to get paid tonight."
"The robot has your money. However, only I have the password."
I heard the word "skunkwater" in my head.
"Skunkwater?"
A panel opened, a white envelope fat with bills emerged clamped with a tiny
metal hand.
"I'll get it later" I told the machine. The arm and my money withdrew.
Sid and I smiled evilly at each other, and the elevator door closed.
The upper level was empty except for the bartender. We made rude gestures and
didn't speak. The robot went outside, whistled, and I followed.
The parking lot still held the two big pickups, but they were on opposite ends
of the parking lot now. I got in the car, the robot loaded itself, and we left.
I left the headlights off, and it drove with its tiny arm. I handled the gas,
clutch and brake pedals, and the gearshift.
"Please accelerate as rapidly as possible" said a metallic feminine voice, and
I downshifted and stomped the gas pedal. Sid's pothole seemed to have filled
itself, and we squealed tires pulling onto the main road. I flipped on the
headlights, upshifted and the robot arm released the steering wheel.
"Cute voice" I told the robot, "when we get home I want you to modify this car
so that you can assume complete control if needed."
The machine chose to make no audible reply.
Once home, made the necessary introductions.
Xena, warrior kitty, chose to stay on the porch and observe this strange
creature.
Basher the dog and it seemed to hit it off until he hiked his leg. The robot
pushed him away and said in flawless imitation of my voice, "BAD DOG".
I went in, logged on, cleaned out my mailbox, and headed for home.
As soon as I entered Wit's End I was hit with seven IMs. I wanted to post and
play, but I found myself invited to the latest WE craze, the Private Chat.
Normally I can type like a madman and keep up, but this time things were
exploding. It seems I'd been dragged off before opening the "Special" folder,
so I had to ask a few questions and try to sort out the answers in bits and
pieces.
I gathered that we were to hook up videocameras, download software from a link
in the folder, and let the camera make a scan of us front, sides and back, then
upload it. As everyone was speculating about the reason for this, Sid popped
into the chatroom. I laughed as all my IMs stopped, and everything focused on
him. I minimized the chatroom and started posting. Once engaged there, I
noticed nothing else until an eighth window appeared in the chatbox and Sid
typed "God help me."
"Sid, buddy, first, you get NO sympathy from me, second, can I keep the
robot?", I answered.
"Why not?", came the reply, "you corrupted it so badly I can't use it."
It suddenly hit me that there was no point posting anymore. Wit's End as a
Message Board was going to be history soon. The new toys were going to rock the
entire foundation of modern civilization. I hoped Sid knew what he was doing,
and what the consequences were going to be.
Especially since I wasn't sure myself.
NEXT: WE Takes A Little Trip
R2Warped2
Comments welcome at R2Wa...@aol.com