Perspectives From the Magnificent World
by Matthew Atanian
based in part on ideas by Jason Bertovich
©2000 by Matthew Atanian and Jason Bertovich
Kenny's Laboratory created by Matthew Atanian,
based upon Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
by Matthew Atanian
based in part on ideas by Jason Bertovich
©2000 by Matthew Atanian and Jason Bertovich
Kenny's Laboratory created by Matthew Atanian,
based upon Boy Scouts ½ created by Matthew Atanian
Kenny turned around when he heard the sound of the door leading to the stairway open and then close again.
“Hello, Mr. Becker,” he said. “A pleasure to see you again.” It wasn’t a total lie, to be sure. It was nice to have some company in the Laboratory. Still, Kenny wished it were someone a little less… distracting.
“Hi, Kenny,” Becker responded. “I brought a friend. That okay?”
“What? A friend?”
From behind Becker, a small child stepped sideways into view. His skin was deathly pale as a ghost, his eyes were red, and his neatly combed thin hair was pure white. He was actually somewhat smaller then Kenny, and appeared even meeker then the young genius did when he was in the outside world.
“Mr. Becker, this is not a museum, this is my private, secret Laboratory,” Kenny said, pushing up his thick glasses.
“Woowww!” the young albino boy said in pure, unadulterated awe. “This place is… cool! What is all of this neat stuff!”
This kid has had the most normal reaction of any of the privileged few who have been allowed access to my Laboratory, Kenny thought. “So where did you two meet?” he asked Becker.
“I was walking down the street, and he kind of just followed me.”
“I see. So,” he said to the young boy, “what’s your name.”
“Len,” the kid timidly responded. “Len Nakrifs.”
“Kind of a strange name,” Becker responded.
“Mister,” the kid said to Kenny, “you are my hero! I wish I could be as cool as you!”
Kenny’s brain told him that there was something very wrong about all of this, but unfortunately a rare thing happened. His pride kicked in and told his brain to shut the hell up. “I guess he could stay for a bit,” Kenny said. “Now, Mr. Becker, I believe we were going to conduct a small experiment today on the recalibrated Gate System.”
Kenny walked over to the Stargate, followed by Becker. Len tailed behind them, keeping a more than respectable distance from the young genius and his assistant.
“We’re opening a small gate today,” Kenny explained. “No more then a nanometer in diameter, just large enough to get a scan through to the other side. Any time you’re ready, Mr. Becker.”
Becker walked up to the control panel and began to operate it. The gate began spinning wildly. A lock came down from the gate’s perimeter and latched onto one of the symbols on it, stopping that symbol yet letting the others remain in motion.
“Chevron one is holding,” Becker said, “and locked in place.”
Becker continued through the sequence as Kenny got his scanning equipment ready. Finely, Becker made the announcement: “Chevron seven is locked in place.”
At first, nothing happened. Becker and Kenny stared at the gate, expecting a watery explosion effect to be visible. Even if the gate itself was only a nanometer wide, the visual effect should still fill the gate’s diameter.
They waited. Still nothing.
Finely, the gate began shaking violently. Kenny ran over to the control panel and pushed Becker aside. “My god, no!” he exclaimed as he looked at the controls.
“What is it?” Becker asked.
“The gate! Instead of folding in on itself and creating a smaller opening, it’s expanded to create a larger opening! It’s spreading to the outside!”
“Is this bad?” Becker asked.
“Not if you don’t move! Then you don’t have to worry about accidentally walking through it! In another minute or so, it should expand enough where it loses cohesion and dissipates.”
“How wide will it be then?” Becker asked.
“It should reach outside of the house a bit, but if we don’t move we’ll be fine,” Kenny said, stressing the not moving bit once again.
There was a strange sound, and then silence. The gate stopped shaking and was still once more.
Kenny looked at Becker. “You’re still here. I’m still here. Len?”
“Yes?” Len responded, barely even a whisper. The boy was standing right where he had been before the experiment had begun.
“That wasn’t my fault, was it?” Becker asked.
“No, I don’t know why it went crazy like that, but it was nothing you could have done.”
Kenny looked back at the control console and noticed a blinking red light. “Oh no,” he said. He stabbed at a few buttons with his fingers. “Oh no, no!”
“What is it?” Becker asked.
“That strange noise before the gate shut down! Two people were walking by outside and they were… they were…”
“Sucked in? We have to help them!”
“We can’t. I can’t even locate where they went, yet. As impossible as it may be for them, we’ll may just have to hope they find some way back on they’re own.”
Jason Bertovich slowly gained consciousness.
“Where am I?” he asked. Actually, as there seemed to be no one else about, it would be more accurate to say he was wondering this aloud. Also, as no one else seemed to be about, it seemed to be up to him to answer his own question.
Well, first thing’s first. He thought back to the last thing he could remember.
He’d been taking a walk with Nicole…
“Nicole!” Jason shouted.
No one answered. He looked around a bit. He was in a clearing in an exotic looking forest, and he seemed to be alone. No Nicole. He had to find her, there was no doubt about that, but first he had to find himself.
He’d been taking a walk with Nicole. She had mentioned something about how oddly neat one house they were passing was, and the next thing he knew they had both been sucked into something… into something…
They’d been sucked into Something. Capitols were often the best way to deal with that which you couldn’t understand.
Now he was here. But where was here?
It did seem very familiar.
He picked a direction and began walking. There didn’t seem to be much else to do under the circumstances.
After some time, he came to the edge of the forest. What he saw when he cleared the trees refused to register on his mind at first. When it did at last do so, his mind rejected it and told his eyes to have another look. His eyes obliged, which for some inexplicable reason gave his jaw leave to completely relax itself and hang open.
A brief while later, his brain thought it might be nice for his vocal cords to have a bit of fun.
“That’s… that’s impossible!”
What his eyes were seeing and relaying to his brain was this: A magnificent city that would not have looked out of place in India.
It had huge, majestic looking towers rising from it, cylindrical in shape, topped off with that kind of round, organic shaped top that comes to a point. You know, like on the Taj Mahal. (This author is sure that that particular architectural structure has a specific name, but alas, he is not an expert in architecture.) Surrounding the towers throughout the city were many lower, simpler buildings that were hustling and bustling with the mid-day activities. The part closest to where Jason was standing (although it was still a bit of a walk away, and he could barely make this out from the distance he was) looked very much like some kind of ancient bazaar.
“That’s impossible!” Jason repeated. “That can’t be the city of Roshtaria,” he said to himself. “If it was… then that would mean… that would mean that I was in the magnificent world of El-Hazard!”
Nicole went through a similar ordeal upon awakening, although she at least wasn’t alone. When she gained consciousness, there was another woman leaning over her, a look of concern on the strangers face.
“Hey, are you all right?” she asked Nicole. At least, that’s what Nicole’s brain translated it as. Her Japanese was very rusty. Very rusty. Still, she felt confident enough in her abilities to hazard a reply.
“I think so,” Nicole responded in the same language. “Where are we?”
“In the forest, on the way to the city,” the stranger responded.
“What city?” Nicole asked, speaking slowly as she tried to remember the words. “I’m sorry, my Japanese is not the best. Do you know English?”
“Hey, are you from Earth?” the stranger asked, suddenly excited.
“That’s a silly question, isn’t it?” Nicole responded. “Who isn’t from Earth?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” the woman asked. She didn’t wait for a response. “I don’t blame you. It was a bit of a shock for me, as well. How did you get here?”
“Um… where is here?” Nicole slowly asked. This time, the slowness of her speech was brought about more from trepidation regarding the answer rather then difficulty even asking the question.
“Here?” The woman smiled. “This is El-Hazard!”
“El-Hazard?”
“Yeah, it’s a whole other world! Weird, isn’t it? I got here when Ifurita brought Makoto-chan here. Me, Fujisawa-sensei, and my stupid brother were brought along for the ride. What’s your story?”
“My story… I don’t know… I was walking with Jason, and then I was here.”
“Hey, can you wait tables?”
“What?”
“Can you wait tables? You’re new to this world, you know? You need someplace to stay. I have a restaurant, and we’re actually looking for a waitress.”
Suddenly, another part of Nicole’s brain kicked in. “Good pay? How are the tips? Is there room for advancement in the company? Ever think of starting a franchise?”
The woman smiled. “That’s an interesting idea!”
“I’ve got the footage from the external video system,” Kenny said as he furiously typed commands into the console he sat at. “At least we can see who it was who was sucked into the vortex.”
Becker stepped forward and looked at the screen with a determination. Len just kept back, quietly staying out of the way.
An image came onto the screen. Two people walking down the street. The image was a bit fuzzy…
“Computer, freeze image,” Kenny said. “Zoom and augment.”
The image zoomed in on the faces of the people and began to focus.
“That’s Kirstin!” Becker exclaimed.
Kenny looked up, alarmed. A moment later, he felt a guilty sense of relief. Guilty, as he knew he would never wish this on Nicole… but at least it wasn’t… “It’s not Kirstin,” he said.
“It’s not?” Becker asked.
“No, it’s Nicole.”
“How do you know? Do you have some exotic device for differentiating between identical twins from a still photo?”
“No,” Kenny said. Kenny had never told anyone, and probably never would, but he held a certain fondness for Kirstin, and would know her anywhere. “I just know. It’s not Kirstin.”
“Who’s the guy?” Becker asked. “He looks familiar.”
“Well, he was at the troop’s Christmas party. That’s Jason Bertovich, a… a friend of Nicole’s.”
Becker frowned. “Is there anything we can do? We can’t just loose Nicole.”
Kenny stared at the frozen image for a moment. “Well…” he said at last, “perhaps we can stop the event from ever having happened…”
“What do you mean?” Becker asked.
“Well, I’d normally be against altering the past, but in this case, I think we can make an exception.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes!” Kenny rose dramatically. “To the Edsil!”
Jason walked haggardly through the streets of Roshtaria. This was something he hadn’t expected… a language barrier. He’d never had any problem understanding the people of El-Hazard before. Of course, in the past, the citizens of Roshtaria had had their voices replaced with English speaking actors… Either that, or little words floated beneath them…
But now, he was here for real. Real life doesn’t have subtitles.
And while finding Nicole was still his highest priority, another was rapidly making itself felt…
He and Nicole had been on their way to get lunch somewhere… And he hadn’t eaten all day.
He was hungry.
Very hungry…
“Food…” he wailed.
Unfortunately, no one understood him.
“Welcome to Nanami’s. I’m Nicole. What can I get for you today, sir?”
“I’ll have one deluxe Nanami Special with soy sauce,” the customer said as he took a seat at his table. “Oh, by the way, there’s some guy collapsed outside your door.”
“Okay, that will be one deluxe Nanami Special with soy sauce, and one guy collapsed outside the door.” Nicole turned to take the order to the kitchen.
Half way there, she stopped.
She turned.
“A guy collapsed outside the door!”
She ran outside to see if she could be of any help, and stopped, startled, when she saw who it was.
“JASON!!”
Becker sat himself in the seat of the Edsil as Kenny opened up the doorway covering the acceleration track.
“Activate the temporal circuits,” Kenny instructed, “and set the timer to bring you back about five hours.”
“Right!” Becker responded. “Activating the… um… activating the… the… Kenny? The temporal circuits don’t seem to want to activate.
“What?” Kenny ducked into the car and pulled open a panel. He frowned. “There’s a reason it won’t activate,” he said darkly. “The one crucial circuit that makes time travel possible… it’s missing…”
Jason awoke to the feeling of cool air blowing over him. He opened his eyes, and saw that this was because he was lying in a bed that was next to a window. Nicole sat in a chair looming over him, and smiled upon seeing Jason move. He smiled at her. “I had the craziest dream,” he said to her.
“Oh?” Nicole said with a smile.
“Yeah, I was in El…” Jason broke off as he saw someone standing behind Nicole. “Nanami-chan!?” he then exclaimed, startled. He then shook his head, and said, “Gomen… Nanami-san.”
Nanami let loose with something in Japanese that Nicole, upon seeing Jason’s confused look, was more then happy to translate. “She wants to know how you know who she is,” Nicole said. “And I’d like to know what’s with this ‘chan’ business.” Nicole then smiled at him, and it was a smile that made him uneasy.
“Um… what ‘chan’ business?”
Her smile remained steady.
“Oh, that ‘chan’ business! Well, I’m just used to thinking of her that way… but to me she’s never been more then a character in El-Hazard. Nicole, somehow we’ve ended up in an anime series!”
“How the heck did that happen?” Nicole asked.
Jason scratched his head. “You’ve got me.” He sat in thought for a moment, and then a smile slowly began to form on his face. It continued to grow, and grow, and grow… until at last Jason was smiling like a kid with the key to the candy shop.
“This is great! I can meet Makoto! And Fujisawa-sensei!” his grin widened even more. “And Jinnai, and Queen Diva!” Somehow, the grin widened more still. If it widened much more, Jason would need a larger face to keep it on. “And Shayla-Shayla!”
Nicole turned to Nanami. “Shayla-Shayla?” she asked.
Nanami responded with something that didn’t sound very complementary.
Nicole turned back to Jason and soundly whapped him on the head.
“What do you mean it’s gone!” Becker exclaimed. “Flux capacitors don’t just disappear!”
“Actually, flux capacitors are quite unstable, and do disappear quite frequently, which is why I did not use one in the construction of this time machine,” Kenny said. “Instead, I used an approach similar to that hypothesized by Professor Acheson of MIT, who wrote in his 1996 paper entitled, ‘Quantum Theory and the Possibility of…’”
“Kenny!”
“What? Oh, sorry, Mr. Becker.”
“So what happened to the flux… the whatever the hell it is?”
“The temporal circuit? It’s… It’s been stolen.”
“Stolen? Who by?”
“That is a very good question,” Kenny said. He tilted his head slightly. “Computer, identify all persons who have been in the lab within the past twenty-four hours?”
“Working,” a pleasant female voice, which Becker was surprised to recognize as being very similar to Kirstin Porter’s, said. “The lab has been accessed by Kenneth E. Pendrell, Jonathan Becker, and one unauthorized person identified on audio records as Len Nakrifs.”
“Len?” Kenny called out.
“That’s odd, he was here just a moment ago,” Becker said.
“Computer,” Kenny said, “search all databases for any record of a Len Nakrifs. Include all birth records for the United States from eight to twelve years ago.”
“Working… … … No match found.”
“Expand by five years in either direction.”
“Working… … … No match found.”
The main screen lit up, and on it in large, red blinking letters were the words, “Len Nakrifs: No Match Found.”
Kenny sat in his chair and frowned at the screen.
Jason frowned as he sat in the chair. The evening had gone so horribly!
Nicole had persuaded Nanami to take her and Jason into the palace to meet Fujisawa and Makoto. Jason and Fujisawa seemed to develop an immediate rapport, which led to Jason’s being heavily intoxicated a half hour later when Miz Mishtal, the woman who loved Fujisawa, showed up for a visit.
Miz had been no happier with Fujisawa’s state of inebriation then Nicole had been with Jason’s.
Miz had, unfortunately, been accompanied by fellow priestess Shayla-Shayla who Jason, drunk as all hell, had thrown himself on.
The evening ended not much longer after that.
“Really,” Nicole said, applying some ointment to Jason’s wounds, “I can’t take you anywhere, can I?” She deliberately poked at one of the burns, causing Jason to wince in pain. “Baka,” she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.
All the times he dreamed of getting to meet his favorite El-Hazard characters… never once did he imagine it would go like this…
“I’m sorry,” Jason moaned to Nicole for the hundredth time that evening. “I’m so, so sorry…”
Becker had searched the lab thoroughly, and produced no sign of Len. “I don’t get it, where’d he go?”
Kenny didn’t respond. It was hours later, and he was still staring at the screen.
“Kenny, I’m sorry. I feel like this was all my fault.”
Kenny kept staring at the screen.
“Kenny…?” Becker walked over and tapped the young genius on the shoulder.
“I’m such a fool!” he exclaimed suddenly.
Becker leapt back, startled, as Kenny rose suddenly to his feet.
“That name!” Kenny said, pointing at the screen. “Computer, rearrange the letters in the name Len Nakrifs until you find a match within records. Specifically search the Laboratory’s communications database.”
“Working… … …”
Kenny, along with Becker, looked at the screen as the letters in the name Len Nakrifs danced around, trying out every combination until…
“Match found,” the computer said.
Kenny stared silently at the screen. Becker’s eyes popped out in astonishment as they scanned the single word written upon the screen in large, red glowing letters.
“Snarfinkle.”
A moment later, the silence that had descended upon the lab was broken by the urgent beeping of the World Super-Genius Hotline.
“Hello, Mr. Becker,” he said. “A pleasure to see you again.” It wasn’t a total lie, to be sure. It was nice to have some company in the Laboratory. Still, Kenny wished it were someone a little less… distracting.
“Hi, Kenny,” Becker responded. “I brought a friend. That okay?”
“What? A friend?”
From behind Becker, a small child stepped sideways into view. His skin was deathly pale as a ghost, his eyes were red, and his neatly combed thin hair was pure white. He was actually somewhat smaller then Kenny, and appeared even meeker then the young genius did when he was in the outside world.
“Mr. Becker, this is not a museum, this is my private, secret Laboratory,” Kenny said, pushing up his thick glasses.
“Woowww!” the young albino boy said in pure, unadulterated awe. “This place is… cool! What is all of this neat stuff!”
This kid has had the most normal reaction of any of the privileged few who have been allowed access to my Laboratory, Kenny thought. “So where did you two meet?” he asked Becker.
“I was walking down the street, and he kind of just followed me.”
“I see. So,” he said to the young boy, “what’s your name.”
“Len,” the kid timidly responded. “Len Nakrifs.”
“Kind of a strange name,” Becker responded.
“Mister,” the kid said to Kenny, “you are my hero! I wish I could be as cool as you!”
Kenny’s brain told him that there was something very wrong about all of this, but unfortunately a rare thing happened. His pride kicked in and told his brain to shut the hell up. “I guess he could stay for a bit,” Kenny said. “Now, Mr. Becker, I believe we were going to conduct a small experiment today on the recalibrated Gate System.”
Kenny walked over to the Stargate, followed by Becker. Len tailed behind them, keeping a more than respectable distance from the young genius and his assistant.
“We’re opening a small gate today,” Kenny explained. “No more then a nanometer in diameter, just large enough to get a scan through to the other side. Any time you’re ready, Mr. Becker.”
Becker walked up to the control panel and began to operate it. The gate began spinning wildly. A lock came down from the gate’s perimeter and latched onto one of the symbols on it, stopping that symbol yet letting the others remain in motion.
“Chevron one is holding,” Becker said, “and locked in place.”
Becker continued through the sequence as Kenny got his scanning equipment ready. Finely, Becker made the announcement: “Chevron seven is locked in place.”
At first, nothing happened. Becker and Kenny stared at the gate, expecting a watery explosion effect to be visible. Even if the gate itself was only a nanometer wide, the visual effect should still fill the gate’s diameter.
They waited. Still nothing.
Finely, the gate began shaking violently. Kenny ran over to the control panel and pushed Becker aside. “My god, no!” he exclaimed as he looked at the controls.
“What is it?” Becker asked.
“The gate! Instead of folding in on itself and creating a smaller opening, it’s expanded to create a larger opening! It’s spreading to the outside!”
“Is this bad?” Becker asked.
“Not if you don’t move! Then you don’t have to worry about accidentally walking through it! In another minute or so, it should expand enough where it loses cohesion and dissipates.”
“How wide will it be then?” Becker asked.
“It should reach outside of the house a bit, but if we don’t move we’ll be fine,” Kenny said, stressing the not moving bit once again.
There was a strange sound, and then silence. The gate stopped shaking and was still once more.
Kenny looked at Becker. “You’re still here. I’m still here. Len?”
“Yes?” Len responded, barely even a whisper. The boy was standing right where he had been before the experiment had begun.
“That wasn’t my fault, was it?” Becker asked.
“No, I don’t know why it went crazy like that, but it was nothing you could have done.”
Kenny looked back at the control console and noticed a blinking red light. “Oh no,” he said. He stabbed at a few buttons with his fingers. “Oh no, no!”
“What is it?” Becker asked.
“That strange noise before the gate shut down! Two people were walking by outside and they were… they were…”
“Sucked in? We have to help them!”
“We can’t. I can’t even locate where they went, yet. As impossible as it may be for them, we’ll may just have to hope they find some way back on they’re own.”
Jason Bertovich slowly gained consciousness.
“Where am I?” he asked. Actually, as there seemed to be no one else about, it would be more accurate to say he was wondering this aloud. Also, as no one else seemed to be about, it seemed to be up to him to answer his own question.
Well, first thing’s first. He thought back to the last thing he could remember.
He’d been taking a walk with Nicole…
“Nicole!” Jason shouted.
No one answered. He looked around a bit. He was in a clearing in an exotic looking forest, and he seemed to be alone. No Nicole. He had to find her, there was no doubt about that, but first he had to find himself.
He’d been taking a walk with Nicole. She had mentioned something about how oddly neat one house they were passing was, and the next thing he knew they had both been sucked into something… into something…
They’d been sucked into Something. Capitols were often the best way to deal with that which you couldn’t understand.
Now he was here. But where was here?
It did seem very familiar.
He picked a direction and began walking. There didn’t seem to be much else to do under the circumstances.
After some time, he came to the edge of the forest. What he saw when he cleared the trees refused to register on his mind at first. When it did at last do so, his mind rejected it and told his eyes to have another look. His eyes obliged, which for some inexplicable reason gave his jaw leave to completely relax itself and hang open.
A brief while later, his brain thought it might be nice for his vocal cords to have a bit of fun.
“That’s… that’s impossible!”
What his eyes were seeing and relaying to his brain was this: A magnificent city that would not have looked out of place in India.
It had huge, majestic looking towers rising from it, cylindrical in shape, topped off with that kind of round, organic shaped top that comes to a point. You know, like on the Taj Mahal. (This author is sure that that particular architectural structure has a specific name, but alas, he is not an expert in architecture.) Surrounding the towers throughout the city were many lower, simpler buildings that were hustling and bustling with the mid-day activities. The part closest to where Jason was standing (although it was still a bit of a walk away, and he could barely make this out from the distance he was) looked very much like some kind of ancient bazaar.
“That’s impossible!” Jason repeated. “That can’t be the city of Roshtaria,” he said to himself. “If it was… then that would mean… that would mean that I was in the magnificent world of El-Hazard!”
Nicole went through a similar ordeal upon awakening, although she at least wasn’t alone. When she gained consciousness, there was another woman leaning over her, a look of concern on the strangers face.
“Hey, are you all right?” she asked Nicole. At least, that’s what Nicole’s brain translated it as. Her Japanese was very rusty. Very rusty. Still, she felt confident enough in her abilities to hazard a reply.
“I think so,” Nicole responded in the same language. “Where are we?”
“In the forest, on the way to the city,” the stranger responded.
“What city?” Nicole asked, speaking slowly as she tried to remember the words. “I’m sorry, my Japanese is not the best. Do you know English?”
“Hey, are you from Earth?” the stranger asked, suddenly excited.
“That’s a silly question, isn’t it?” Nicole responded. “Who isn’t from Earth?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” the woman asked. She didn’t wait for a response. “I don’t blame you. It was a bit of a shock for me, as well. How did you get here?”
“Um… where is here?” Nicole slowly asked. This time, the slowness of her speech was brought about more from trepidation regarding the answer rather then difficulty even asking the question.
“Here?” The woman smiled. “This is El-Hazard!”
“El-Hazard?”
“Yeah, it’s a whole other world! Weird, isn’t it? I got here when Ifurita brought Makoto-chan here. Me, Fujisawa-sensei, and my stupid brother were brought along for the ride. What’s your story?”
“My story… I don’t know… I was walking with Jason, and then I was here.”
“Hey, can you wait tables?”
“What?”
“Can you wait tables? You’re new to this world, you know? You need someplace to stay. I have a restaurant, and we’re actually looking for a waitress.”
Suddenly, another part of Nicole’s brain kicked in. “Good pay? How are the tips? Is there room for advancement in the company? Ever think of starting a franchise?”
The woman smiled. “That’s an interesting idea!”
“I’ve got the footage from the external video system,” Kenny said as he furiously typed commands into the console he sat at. “At least we can see who it was who was sucked into the vortex.”
Becker stepped forward and looked at the screen with a determination. Len just kept back, quietly staying out of the way.
An image came onto the screen. Two people walking down the street. The image was a bit fuzzy…
“Computer, freeze image,” Kenny said. “Zoom and augment.”
The image zoomed in on the faces of the people and began to focus.
“That’s Kirstin!” Becker exclaimed.
Kenny looked up, alarmed. A moment later, he felt a guilty sense of relief. Guilty, as he knew he would never wish this on Nicole… but at least it wasn’t… “It’s not Kirstin,” he said.
“It’s not?” Becker asked.
“No, it’s Nicole.”
“How do you know? Do you have some exotic device for differentiating between identical twins from a still photo?”
“No,” Kenny said. Kenny had never told anyone, and probably never would, but he held a certain fondness for Kirstin, and would know her anywhere. “I just know. It’s not Kirstin.”
“Who’s the guy?” Becker asked. “He looks familiar.”
“Well, he was at the troop’s Christmas party. That’s Jason Bertovich, a… a friend of Nicole’s.”
Becker frowned. “Is there anything we can do? We can’t just loose Nicole.”
Kenny stared at the frozen image for a moment. “Well…” he said at last, “perhaps we can stop the event from ever having happened…”
“What do you mean?” Becker asked.
“Well, I’d normally be against altering the past, but in this case, I think we can make an exception.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes!” Kenny rose dramatically. “To the Edsil!”
Jason walked haggardly through the streets of Roshtaria. This was something he hadn’t expected… a language barrier. He’d never had any problem understanding the people of El-Hazard before. Of course, in the past, the citizens of Roshtaria had had their voices replaced with English speaking actors… Either that, or little words floated beneath them…
But now, he was here for real. Real life doesn’t have subtitles.
And while finding Nicole was still his highest priority, another was rapidly making itself felt…
He and Nicole had been on their way to get lunch somewhere… And he hadn’t eaten all day.
He was hungry.
Very hungry…
“Food…” he wailed.
Unfortunately, no one understood him.
“Welcome to Nanami’s. I’m Nicole. What can I get for you today, sir?”
“I’ll have one deluxe Nanami Special with soy sauce,” the customer said as he took a seat at his table. “Oh, by the way, there’s some guy collapsed outside your door.”
“Okay, that will be one deluxe Nanami Special with soy sauce, and one guy collapsed outside the door.” Nicole turned to take the order to the kitchen.
Half way there, she stopped.
She turned.
“A guy collapsed outside the door!”
She ran outside to see if she could be of any help, and stopped, startled, when she saw who it was.
“JASON!!”
Becker sat himself in the seat of the Edsil as Kenny opened up the doorway covering the acceleration track.
“Activate the temporal circuits,” Kenny instructed, “and set the timer to bring you back about five hours.”
“Right!” Becker responded. “Activating the… um… activating the… the… Kenny? The temporal circuits don’t seem to want to activate.
“What?” Kenny ducked into the car and pulled open a panel. He frowned. “There’s a reason it won’t activate,” he said darkly. “The one crucial circuit that makes time travel possible… it’s missing…”
Jason awoke to the feeling of cool air blowing over him. He opened his eyes, and saw that this was because he was lying in a bed that was next to a window. Nicole sat in a chair looming over him, and smiled upon seeing Jason move. He smiled at her. “I had the craziest dream,” he said to her.
“Oh?” Nicole said with a smile.
“Yeah, I was in El…” Jason broke off as he saw someone standing behind Nicole. “Nanami-chan!?” he then exclaimed, startled. He then shook his head, and said, “Gomen… Nanami-san.”
Nanami let loose with something in Japanese that Nicole, upon seeing Jason’s confused look, was more then happy to translate. “She wants to know how you know who she is,” Nicole said. “And I’d like to know what’s with this ‘chan’ business.” Nicole then smiled at him, and it was a smile that made him uneasy.
“Um… what ‘chan’ business?”
Her smile remained steady.
“Oh, that ‘chan’ business! Well, I’m just used to thinking of her that way… but to me she’s never been more then a character in El-Hazard. Nicole, somehow we’ve ended up in an anime series!”
“How the heck did that happen?” Nicole asked.
Jason scratched his head. “You’ve got me.” He sat in thought for a moment, and then a smile slowly began to form on his face. It continued to grow, and grow, and grow… until at last Jason was smiling like a kid with the key to the candy shop.
“This is great! I can meet Makoto! And Fujisawa-sensei!” his grin widened even more. “And Jinnai, and Queen Diva!” Somehow, the grin widened more still. If it widened much more, Jason would need a larger face to keep it on. “And Shayla-Shayla!”
Nicole turned to Nanami. “Shayla-Shayla?” she asked.
Nanami responded with something that didn’t sound very complementary.
Nicole turned back to Jason and soundly whapped him on the head.
“What do you mean it’s gone!” Becker exclaimed. “Flux capacitors don’t just disappear!”
“Actually, flux capacitors are quite unstable, and do disappear quite frequently, which is why I did not use one in the construction of this time machine,” Kenny said. “Instead, I used an approach similar to that hypothesized by Professor Acheson of MIT, who wrote in his 1996 paper entitled, ‘Quantum Theory and the Possibility of…’”
“Kenny!”
“What? Oh, sorry, Mr. Becker.”
“So what happened to the flux… the whatever the hell it is?”
“The temporal circuit? It’s… It’s been stolen.”
“Stolen? Who by?”
“That is a very good question,” Kenny said. He tilted his head slightly. “Computer, identify all persons who have been in the lab within the past twenty-four hours?”
“Working,” a pleasant female voice, which Becker was surprised to recognize as being very similar to Kirstin Porter’s, said. “The lab has been accessed by Kenneth E. Pendrell, Jonathan Becker, and one unauthorized person identified on audio records as Len Nakrifs.”
“Len?” Kenny called out.
“That’s odd, he was here just a moment ago,” Becker said.
“Computer,” Kenny said, “search all databases for any record of a Len Nakrifs. Include all birth records for the United States from eight to twelve years ago.”
“Working… … … No match found.”
“Expand by five years in either direction.”
“Working… … … No match found.”
The main screen lit up, and on it in large, red blinking letters were the words, “Len Nakrifs: No Match Found.”
Kenny sat in his chair and frowned at the screen.
Jason frowned as he sat in the chair. The evening had gone so horribly!
Nicole had persuaded Nanami to take her and Jason into the palace to meet Fujisawa and Makoto. Jason and Fujisawa seemed to develop an immediate rapport, which led to Jason’s being heavily intoxicated a half hour later when Miz Mishtal, the woman who loved Fujisawa, showed up for a visit.
Miz had been no happier with Fujisawa’s state of inebriation then Nicole had been with Jason’s.
Miz had, unfortunately, been accompanied by fellow priestess Shayla-Shayla who Jason, drunk as all hell, had thrown himself on.
The evening ended not much longer after that.
“Really,” Nicole said, applying some ointment to Jason’s wounds, “I can’t take you anywhere, can I?” She deliberately poked at one of the burns, causing Jason to wince in pain. “Baka,” she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.
All the times he dreamed of getting to meet his favorite El-Hazard characters… never once did he imagine it would go like this…
“I’m sorry,” Jason moaned to Nicole for the hundredth time that evening. “I’m so, so sorry…”
Becker had searched the lab thoroughly, and produced no sign of Len. “I don’t get it, where’d he go?”
Kenny didn’t respond. It was hours later, and he was still staring at the screen.
“Kenny, I’m sorry. I feel like this was all my fault.”
Kenny kept staring at the screen.
“Kenny…?” Becker walked over and tapped the young genius on the shoulder.
“I’m such a fool!” he exclaimed suddenly.
Becker leapt back, startled, as Kenny rose suddenly to his feet.
“That name!” Kenny said, pointing at the screen. “Computer, rearrange the letters in the name Len Nakrifs until you find a match within records. Specifically search the Laboratory’s communications database.”
“Working… … …”
Kenny, along with Becker, looked at the screen as the letters in the name Len Nakrifs danced around, trying out every combination until…
“Match found,” the computer said.
Kenny stared silently at the screen. Becker’s eyes popped out in astonishment as they scanned the single word written upon the screen in large, red glowing letters.
“Snarfinkle.”
A moment later, the silence that had descended upon the lab was broken by the urgent beeping of the World Super-Genius Hotline.
...to be continued.
Disclaimer and Author's Notes
Some things borrowed, obviously, from El-Hazard. Then, of course, the usual suspects of Sliders, Back to the Future, Stargate, etc… Also, a tiny bit of Douglas Adams crept in concerning the effects of capitalization…
This story was originally going to be written by Jason Bertovich, and would have been the only story in this series to have been penned by an author other then myself. However, do to various reasons we shan’t go into here, he was unable to write it. I was still intrigued by the idea, however, and so undertook it myself.
Only the basic idea was Jason’s, however… I’m quite sure that had he written it, it would have turned out quite differently. (Sorry, Jason… I just couldn’t resist that bit with Shayla-san…) I’m curious as to what he’ll think of this story… And I’m also curious as to how things would have unfolded had he written it. That second curiosity, however, shall probably be forever a mystery…
Have a nice day.
This story was originally going to be written by Jason Bertovich, and would have been the only story in this series to have been penned by an author other then myself. However, do to various reasons we shan’t go into here, he was unable to write it. I was still intrigued by the idea, however, and so undertook it myself.
Only the basic idea was Jason’s, however… I’m quite sure that had he written it, it would have turned out quite differently. (Sorry, Jason… I just couldn’t resist that bit with Shayla-san…) I’m curious as to what he’ll think of this story… And I’m also curious as to how things would have unfolded had he written it. That second curiosity, however, shall probably be forever a mystery…
Have a nice day.