To the Time Machine! - part 21

Today's story is in honor of Stegall Day 2009

We pick up our story after the pickup (truck) was the victim of a hit-and-run from the Space Chariot.


The Past, before the Dark Times
Buies Creek


Tied with a green ribbon to the rear-view mirror was an old CD, its label faded from years of sunlight. This CD flapped and spun about in the fierce wind.

Mo-Tron, Stegall, and Jernigan filled the cab of the truck with their screams. The ground rushed up at them.

Well, at least we'll have met our screaming quota, Germ thought. Did women always scream so much or was it the alcohol?

And to top it all, Mo-Tron was documenting the whole experience with her camera-bot. So the screams were interrupted by periodic, blinding flashes of light.

"Do something!" one of them shouted over the din.

"Working on it," Germ grunted. The only thing he could think to do was activate the chrono-circuits and jump to another time period, preferably one covered in pillows, marshmallows, and feathers.

Fate had other plans for our team. The temporal controls did not respond. Germ pumped the primer and tried again. Nothing!

Curses.

"Extend all drag flaps and braking fins," Germ commanded. "I'm going to try to level off and initiate emergency landing protocols."

Jernigan flipped switches and pressed buttons. "I don't see a landing strip," she shouted over the wind.

"Reckon where do they want one?" Germ yelled back.

"Are we going to make it?" Mo shrieked.

"No," Germ shouted over his shoulder at her. "I did the math in my head. We're doomed."

That was all she needed to hear: Imperial Plumber Stegall hefted her mighty wrench, turned in her seat, and bashed out the rear windows of the truck cab. Shards of glass filled the air as the wind rushed through the cab. Stegall covered her eyes, regretted shattering the glass, and crawled out the back of the cab. She hefted herself into the truck bed and straddled the chrono-incursion equipment.

"What are you doing?" Mo-Tron hollered, snapping photos with her F-stop-er-rator.

One of the camera flashes caught Stegall by surprise and the Empire was nearly short one plumber. "Do you mind?" she shouted.

"Sorry!" Mo-Tron called back. And although the camera was digital, Stegall could hear it rewinding, even over the ruckus of the airstream. It sounded like a growl.

Stegall cracked open a casing on the outer panels of the device. With her wrench she pried the cover off. The wind quickly whipped it away, almost smacking Stegall in the face. She docked the wrench safely in its tool belt loop

Holding onto the truck by just her tightly clenched knees, Stegall jerked first one and then another tube off the temporal engine. She reversed the two hoses, plugging them into the wrong receptacles. She disconnected some cables from their ports and plugged them into each other, somehow jamming the two female ends into one another.

Let me just skip the detailed description and tell you she hot wired the engine, rerouted the exhaust, and fired up the engine manually. The combination of the cold start and her improvised reconfiguration managed to funnel hot plasma byproduct through the time drive's secondary emitters.

Obviously, it superheated and vaporized the air around them, but the controlled explosion stalled the truck's downward progress significantly, if only temporarily. This was none too easy on the lungs of our truckers, but they would survive.

Stegall let the truck gain speed before she punched the ignition circuit again. In this manner, blow by blow, she slowed their fall enough to keep them from totaling the truck on impact.

"Keep it coming," Germ called back. This might actually work.

"No can do," Stegall replied, crawling back into the truck cab. "That was the last of it."

"We're gonna hit that great big tree (again)," Mo-Tron shouted and pointed. And took a picture.

Sure enough. She was right.

Germ hefted the anti-grav gun once more, braced, aimed, and squeezed the triggers. The device sizzled and fizzled and failed to comply. Perhaps the impact with the windshield earlier damaged it?

Next, Germ pulled up on the wheel like an airplane pilot would, which of course did nothing.

And then he noticed something peculiar down below. The skyscraper plant was lumberjack-knifing to the ground. If he timed it just right, Germ could use the leaning limb as a ramp to roll to earth.

Ironhide bottomed out when he hit the titanic trunk, but bounced up, subsequently smacked into the trunk a few more times, and careened down the tree.

Germ pumped the brakes with his right foot while also fumbling around with the left for the emergency brake.

"I've got good news and bad news," Jernigan said, bouncing around in her seat and holding onto the 'oh shit' bar. "Good news - we're not going to crash into the ground. Bad news - we're going to crash into that building instead."

"We have got to work on your bed side manner," Stegall told her.

Germ recognized the fine arts building, or what was left of it. Funny, he didn't remember it getting destroyed when he lived through this the first time. He must have slept in that day.

At the base of what was left of the flytrap, a small group of people stood gawking. Germ honked the horn at them.

"Who are those people?" Mo asked.

"We can worry about that after we hit them," Jernigan replied.

"If they don't like the way I drive, they should stay off the fine arts building," Germ added, grunting to keep the truck on the trunk.

"Death death death death death," the Death Alarm chanted, "death death death death death…."

"That is getting real old real fast."
He stood on the brake pedal, pulling back on the wheel for leverage. The Emperor had not been kidding about the "iffy" brakes.

"Truck, whoa truck," Germ urged. "Truck!"

He stomped on the emergency brake. And almost fell forward through the windshield.

They screeched to a stop not inches away from the Emperor himself.

"Thank you for using the Death Alarm," the truck said.

Imperial Guards surrounded the pickup, weapons trained on the cab.

"Come out with your hands up," shouted one.

Our time travelers complied. They had little Choice. Except for Germ. He in his fury leapt from the truck and proceeded to kick the left fender. "When I says whoa, I means whoa!"

"In the name of the Emperor, you are under arrest," the head guard bellowed at them.

Germ kept kicking on the truck. "Rackin frackin---!"

"Citizen, unless you wished to be charged with vehicular assault, I suggest you cease and desist," the guard shouted.

Reluctantly, reticent even, the Germ complied.

Stegall's tools and tool belt were wrenched away from her. They took Jernigan's stethoscope. They even took Germ's multi-tool.

"My camera!" Mo-Tron exclaimed, and struggled with the guard who tried to rip it from her neck.

"Leave it," Germ whispered. She complied, but pouted.

"A black truck full of white people," Lorma Doom observed, cleaning pulp from her blade, but then she stopped in her tracks. She recognized these white folk.

"Lorma Doom!" Jernigan said with glee. Her darker sister was alive and well. For now. She wanted to rush to embrace Doom, but one of the nice guards encouraged her to remain still.

The Foretold One looked from the newly arrested foursome over to the lumberjack and back again. The young Emperor prided himself on familiarity with every minion in his command, but these new arrivals were unknown to him. If this kept up, he was going to need some kind of filing system to keep track of everyone.

Just then, Screech and his charge joined them. To the pterodactyl's neck clung a very terrified young woman.

"Alright, who are you people and why are you here?" Emperor Andy demanded.

Germ and the girls looked at one another, not sure how much they should say.

Lorma Doom, on the other hand, had just battled a leafy leviathan and no longer cared about timelines or discretion. "We're from the future," she said bluntly.

"One possible future," corrected Germ.

"Secure these prisoners," Andronicus snapped. "Somewhere quiet. Not campus security. And impound the truck."

"Yes, my liege," the guards moved in.

"Drop the Ax," the head guard ordered Lorma.

"Nuh-uh, no way," she said, and tightened her grip on it. "You drop your guns!"

"Lorma, better do as they say," Dossey urged her.

"Why do I have to go to jail?" Lorma exclaimed. "I helped stop this plant."

"Aren't you with them?" Andy asked.

"Uh, no," the brutal wench replied, not lying very well. She then raised her Ax to the sky and shouted, "I didn't land on this plant! This plant landed on me."

"Lorma, I'll get this all straightened out," assured Dossey. "Just go along quietly - for now."

"Drop it now," the guards repeated, much firmer.

Reluctantly, she did drop the Ax. And there it stayed.

"Man, the past sucks," Lorma grumbled, as they were all six led away in handcuffs.