To the Time Machine! - part 7

The Secret Bunker
(actually, it grows less secret every minute)

Present Day
(actually, more like the beginning of March, 2008)


"My Demeritress!" Emperor Andy said, his face brightening.

The saloon-style doors rocked back and forth violently. Everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing to see the newcomer.

Demeritress Elsbeth stood before the doors, a scowl upon her face, her jaw set, and a dark, metaphoric cloud above her head. Her eyes green, she was in an obvious fury. As the doors wobbled shut behind her, she shoved handfuls of demerits (little tickets listing infractions) into people's hands and faces all about the room. Then, having properly ticketed the barroom, Elsbeth stalked over to the bar, where she stood and fumed, several newspaper pages clutched in her fists.

She pried off her ear protection and threw it on the bar. She lifted her goggles off her eyes and let them sit atop her head. While she was covered from head to toe in black powder, around her eyes was white and clean still thanks to the goggles.

"What's wrong, dear?" asked Andy from his perch on a bar stool.

"I'm fine," she repeated, her voice tense.

"She's fine," Andronicus said, and resumed prepping for time travel (and also making Morgborg nervous).

"Beverage," Mouthpiece Scott called out.

Having made bodily functions eternally difficult for the bartender, Stegall was now de facto, interim barkeep. She looked around awkwardly, not knowing how to make mixed drinks.

Els watched this for only a few seconds. "I suppose you want me to make drinks as well," she said, exasperated.

"Yes, Els Bells," Stegall said, smiling hopefully.

Elsbeth stopped at the end of the bar, her fury of movement coming to a pause, as she gathered steam for one big release, then exclaimed, "I never agreed to stop coating them in glass!"

You see, Elsbeth was also Firer of Writers, specifically speechwriters who were scapegoats for whatever verbal flub the Emperor might make or appear to make. Els had long been given hell in all the papers for her alleged practice of not just literally firing them out of cannons, but also coating them in glass so that the eventual impact would hurt even more. She was not a subtle person, but she was very creative.

Mouthpiece Scott and Emperor Andy exchanged looks. Andy turned to Elsbeth and asked, “Is that all that’s wrong?"

Els seethed, “I’ll. Be. Fine."

“She’ll be fine,” Andy told Scott, and turned again to Elsbeth. “Oh, there’s some broken glass over there, if you want it,” he told her, and he indicated the case lying smashes against the wall. “Somebody smashed it.”

"Have you seen this latest bullshit?" Elsbeth shook a newspaper at him. Andronicus could tell, despite the furious motion, that she held in her lovely but angry hands a print edition of the world's greatest news source. "Did you read Cathey's entry in the Pipeline?" she raged.

Andronicus turned to Morgborg. "Did I read it?" he asked her.

"Who screened this?" roared Elsbeth, not waiting for Borgan's answer. "I doubt anyone so much as looked at this before it went to print. This did not go through the proper channels. There was no due process. It wasn't written by a writer. You know what that means?"

"Not exa---," Andy started to say.

"I don't get to fire anyone out of any f***ing cannons!" she answered her own question.

Wide-eyed, Andy contemplated whether Elsbeth's expletives would make it to the print version of this story, but he did not have very long to ponder this point. At that moment the saloon doors flew open again, this time producing SSSG Jernigan, who yipped when the doors smacked her on the bottom.

"There's a bar in this bunker?" she said, stopping to look around, surprised.

"What news, Surgeon General?" asked Mouthpiece Scott, trying to move the plot forward.

"The best news," Jernigan said, beaming. "Success."

"Never mind that," Elsbeth. "I have more pressing concerns. And I was here first!"

"Your concerns are no concern of mine," Jernigan shot back, already reaching for her scalpel. Meanwhile, Morgborg hastily wondered if, as Nurse # 7, she was required to back up the Surgeon General in a bar fight.

"We've no time for this," Scott attempted to quell the fight before it started, or at least postpone it.

"Mouthpiece is right," Andronicus said, licking the last drops from a glass. "We're one big, happy Empire. Within these walls there is no conflict, only love, dammit." Attentive readers will recognize this precept as Temple of the Dossai Rule # 46.

Elsbeth whipped out her demerit pad and started a fresh demerit slip. "Jernigan with a J," she said to herself as she scribbled.

"I think you'll find it difficult to demerit without sunlight," Jernigan advancing into the room, moving to closer range.

"You have no power over me, general," Elsbeth spat her words at Jernigan, a finger of warning raised. "I've no sunlight left for you to steal."

"Very well," Jernigan said, fiddling with her utility belt. "Here," she handed Els some pills, "have a valium."

Els sniffed at and then devoured the valium. "Aaahhhhhhh," she sighed in relief. "Now, time for shots."

Andy warily looked at Surgeon General Jernigan, but she reassured him, "No, not that kind of shots."

"Line 'em up," a relieved Andy called out. Eight shot glasses clunked one after the other onto the bar, equally spaced, as if in formation.


***********


The Emperor raised his hand in a passionate gesture and spoke his best Imperial voice, "To the Time Machine!"

Carefully placed speakers all over the saloon sputtered to life and unleashed a pounding, pulsing, pompous march tune.

"What the hell is that?" Elsbeth shouted over the thunderous music.

"Time Machine theme music," Andy answered, meeting Elsbeth's angry grimace with a winning smile, "carefully composed in anticipation of the completion of the time machine. It automatically plays whenever the device is activated or whenever I say, 'To the Time Machine.'" Indeed, the blaring anthem started all over again when he said it.

"Jesus H. Christ," Elsbeth said, but no one heard her over the music.