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Wakey wakey

Sep 29, 2014 LeberMac link
“Wakey, wakey!” The disembodied voice pierced LeberMac’s consciousness like bright morning clearing away the nocturnal fog.

His muscles spasmed a bit, and he discerned that he was lying down on something cold, yet form fitting. The antiseptic smell was almost as bad as the awful lingering taste in his mouth. “Mrrfghgrt…” he said.

“Yes, well you’ve been in cryo-sleep for a bit.” The annoying voice continued speaking, “After being deposited by a certain Mr. Asteroth approximately 18 months ago. You had quite the bounty, yes… quite the bounty.”

The voice attached something to his wrist. It hurt a good deal. LeberMac made uncomfortable grunting noises as the nanites spread from his radial artery through his system, cleaning him up for dethaw, clearing his cells of impurities and injecting much-needed vitamins into his body to prevent system shock.

The pain served to rouse him further out of cryo-sleep, his eyes flicked open, bright light searing them into an uncomfortable squinty watery mess. Coughing up a substantial volume of phlegm, he sputtered, “Imma goin kill yous whoever ya are…” Hell, even his fingernails hurt.

“Hrm. I’m sure you would,” the voice responded, “but I think you’ll reconsider once you come to your senses. Here. Drink this.”

A familiar aroma wafted into the room, which was getting clearer with every blink. Something… primal that he recognized, but couldn’t quite put his finger on. It smelled earthy and pungent and slightly alcoholic. The voice pressed the glass to his lips and he drank the liquid.

Instantly, he was awake and recalling everything that had happened throughout the last decade. In a flash, he recognized the room as a standard-issue respawning chamber, painted in Itani military colors signifying the Eo system. He was in Denia Watch, then. Sector I-7. Relatively safe. He was still a member of [ITAN]. But he felt… different. Unable to put his finger on exactly what was wrong, he sat up and swiveled his head around to get a good look at his tormentor.

With a shock, he realized he was looking at himself.

Specifically, he saw LeberMac offering him another shot of tequila saying “Yeah. You’re gonna need this.”

He passed out heavily, knocking surgical implements and reanimation capsules all over the floor.

**********************************************************

The two [ITAN] pilots waited outside the respawning chamber. CrazySpence frowned at his difficult subordinate LeberMac. “This. This is not a good idea. A few of us still remember what happened the last time you got cloned.”

“Trust me!” LeberMac grinned, “This will be NOTHING like last time! There’s no Serco influence or crazy religion or anything goofy with LeberMac 2!”

“First off, that’s a stupid name.” Spence said dryly. “I think call him LeberClone.”

“Not LeberMac Part Deux?”

“No.”

“Not LeberMac, the second Macking?”

“No.”

LeberMac considered the idea, and agreed. “OK, LeberClone it is. Just remember there’s only ONE original! And – this was YOUR idea, remember: One of me to hang around Deneb, and one of me to do my other awesome LeberMac stuff.”

Spence gripped the recently-reactivated pilot by his lapels and slammed him against the station’s bulkhead with a hollow thud. “There had better not be any issues…” Spence growled, “Or I’ll terminate LeberClone myself. Understood? And just keep your… ‘awesome LeberMac stuff’ out of my way and the guild’s way, and I’ll let you stay in the guild with your new twin.”

Suspended in midair, feet kicking under Spence’s deathgrip, LeberMac nodded vigorously. “Kay! S..sure thing, boss. I’m sure things are going to be j..just fine.”

CrazySpence released his grip and LeberMac slid down to his buttocks on the floor, rubbing his bruised chest. With a shake of his head, Spence left the troublesome pilot and made his way back to [ITAN] HQ in Pelatus to plan the latest offensive against the inept Serco forces.

**********************************************************

The door opened and LeberClone peeked outside the chamber in his standard-issue [ITAN] uniform, noticing his twin slumped over a few meters to the right of the door.

“So, who did you piss off?” LeberClone asked LeberMac as he sat down next to him.

“Spence. He thinks this is a horrible idea.”

“Welp, it IS a horrible idea. You remember what happened last time.”

“Sure, but there’s nothing corrupting this respawning effort, this was apparently a clean replication.” LeberClone paused, then quietly asked, “ Why’d you do it?”

LeberMac looked at LeberClone. “I… well I’m not sure. Since when did I ever have a coherent plan for anything?”

LeberClone nodded. “Just like old times.”

“Just like old times.” LeberMac opened the bottle of tequila, took a swig, and passed it to his twin. LeberClone took a long pull off of the bottle as they both stood up, preparing for duty. It was then that a familiar form waltzed around the corridor, wearing a ridiculous hat and sporting a new forehead tattoo.

“Ya gotta be kidding me. Smitty?”

Smittens had heard about the recent re-activation of LeberMac and the clone experiment, and wanted to be the first to stop by and “give his regards.” He regarded the two with an air of smug disdain. “Typical, the two of you hitting the bottle already,” he sniffed the air with a sneer, “When’s the last time you two had a shower?”

“Right after yer mom took hers, Smitty!” The twins laughed and passed the tequila back and forth again. Smittens frowned.

LeberMac noticed the odd tattoo on Smittens’ forehead, “Hey did you let somebody’s kid draw on your forehead? Is that a sparkly toaster or something?”

Visibly offended, Smittens replied “It’s an Itani Coat-of-Arms if you must know. Really you… the TWO of you... have not changed a bit.” He walked off towards the dock for another patrol of Deneb.

The twins chuckled, noticing Smittens’ hat, which looked like a deflated blueberry. “Niiiiiice hat! That’s the worst-looking hat I ever saw! What, when you buy a hat like that I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?” they called down the corridor at him.

“Looks good on you though!” both yelled just before Smittens got out of earshot.

The two sat a while in silence, then both stood up and shook hands.

“Well, good luck.” LeberMac said, “There’s a bit of a learning curve for you, a few levels to gain, some licenses to earn.”

“Yep. Shouldn’t be too hard,” LeberClone replied, “You might want to work on that TPG standing. Not to mention the UIT standing. Yikes.”

They parted ways, each to his own part of the galaxy, certain to cause problems in the near future.
Sep 30, 2014 abortretryfail link
Hahahaha yes!

I doubt the real CrazySpence would oppose to creating more trouble. :)
Sep 30, 2014 smittens link
Smittens stomped down the corridor towards his office, still fuming at the childish insults of the Lebers'. One LeberMac was bad enough, but now there was going to be a second stumbling & slurring, tequila-sodden excuse for a "pilot" roaming around? This could be a problem. NOT TO MENTION the whole stack of K1 Cloning Approval Forms Smittens would now have to fill out (...and doctor to show prior approval, of course)

Something else was bothering Smittens as he pulled together the foot-tall stack of forms, waivers, and documents onto his desk. As far as he could remember (which, granted, gets a bit fuzzy past a month back) LeberMac had always treated him with the utmost respect. Not only was a crude joke at the expense of his mother unusual, but as far as Smittens could remember, he couldn't think of even one instance of Leber ever insulting him. There wasn't a single polka dot suit or pair of neon-chevron boots that Smittens had debuted without resounding approval from Leber. Not to mention that whole term as Itan's Diplomat, during which Leber (probably) had his back like a shell on a space-turtle. Factor in the accumulated Commanderships, Captainhoods, and Council seats on Smittens' resume plus Leber's natural respect for authority, and you can see why Smittens was so accustomed to his unwavering admiration and devotion.

The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that something was wrong. In fact, it seemed very unlike Leber to have even forgotten this paperwork in the first place. Usually he was the very model of an upstanding bureaucratic citizen. There was nothing that brightened Leber's day like cracking open a "personal sized" (as he used to call them) jug of tequila and sitting down to fill out a stack of nearly identical papers. But now... now Leber was SHARING his tequila with another... AND skipping out on paperwork... AND in doing so, giving Smittens hours more work. It was just too uncharacteristic... it didn't add up... unless.......

"No!" shouted Smittens to no one as he slammed the space pen onto his space desk and shot to his feet. A million explanations ran through his head at once... it could've been an accident, or a glitch in the system, or maybe even his old frenemy the Doctor had gotten his meddling hands into the cloning process. The "how" would have to wait, for the more pressing concern was "how... to stop it." Smittens tore out of his office, even forgetting to put down the K1-508h form!!

As he sprinted through the empty hallways of Denia Watch, Smittens shouted his warning to anyone who could hear.

"He's EVIL! EVIL!!"

A right turn, then a left, then straight through two more long hallways. "EVIL!" he kept yelling. "HE'S EVIL!" Right, left, right, right. Then;

Smittens paused for a moment, realizing he was incredibly lost. "EVIIIIIIIIIL!" he kept shouting as he turned around and ran back the way he came. "EVIL EVIL EVIL!"

As he rounded another corner, he almost slammed into Jacob Helios, Itan's resident specialist in the Fine Arts (and the foremost expert in the history and interpretation of Divinian cave paintings). Jacob jumped out of the way just before impact, dropping his armfuls of paintbrushes and synthpaints.

"Sorry Jacob!!" Smittens called as he kept running, "How's the Itani Historical Mural coming?"

"Nearly done! Just need to paint a few more wrinkles on Arlina's face, apply one more coat of spacegloss, and... hey uh where are you going?" Jacob called out as the flustered Captain turned another corner out of sight. "And what's evil!??"

"The clone!" came the alarmed voice from down the hallway. "It's an EVIL CLONE!"
Sep 30, 2014 vskye link
Awesome so far. :)
Sep 30, 2014 LeberMac link
LMAO. "EEEEEVIIILLLLLLL!"
******************************************************************

It could be heard throughout the station. The relentless baseline, the pounding rhythm and the ancient “industrial rock” licks echoed throughout Pelatus Bunker in a muffled cacophony that was loud enough to send shock vibrations through the station powercore’s impulse dampners, setting off small seismic alarms. The alarms triggered blinking lights and klaxons in the station's command bridge. The lights relayed electronic notices to the galactic Ineubis command hierarchy, which triggered a series of holovid messages from executive engineering-level types, which Subcommander Markus did not appreciate. After the third holomessage from a very irate 2nd Vice President of Special Engineering, explaining specifically how quickly the Subcommander’s career in Ineubis could be over, and how lonely a posting to Sedina might be, all eyes on the command bridge were on him. It was third shift, he was tired, and he really didn’t want to deal with this crap right now.

Ensign Iddik Ro-Shala spoke up meekly, “Sir, perhaps it would be best if we simply jettisoned the bulkhead…”

“No. no… no. That’ll just make him relocate to yet another part of the station, and we’ll have to reattach another bulkhead,” Markus explained through a scowling face. “I’ll go ask him to turn it down again.”

Subcommander Markus stomped down the hallway, without a plan on how he was going to handle the situation. The last time had not gone well; he’d resorted to violence, physically beating the offender to a messy death with a large, jagged span of silksteel. That had felt good - he was shocked at how much he’d enjoyed it – but as he’d stood above the lifeless corpse with gobbets of brain matter still dripping off the improvised club, the station’s respawning engines shuddered to life and the offender rematerialized, even more bent on prolonging his weeklong bender.

He grumped down one of the seedier parts of the station and arrived to where the music was almost the equivalent of a prolonged riot-control sonic assault. Heavy appliances rattled on the walls. An abandoned food cart inched along the corridor with every bass vibration. Even with his tactical helmet on, Markus winced at some of the more intense parts of the “song.” The offender’s temporary apartment door loomed near.

Mustering his reserves of self-control, he picked up a decorative wall sconce which had fallen to the ground, and smashed it heavily into the door three times. Unfortunately, it corresponded with a flurry of drumbeats and blended in nicely with the rest of the noise. Closing his eyes, he decided he’d have to go in.

“Emergency override, authorization Markus-13-ZZ9-Plural-Z-Alpha,” he screamed at the door command panel. It opened, and the sonic weaponry inhibitors built into his officer’s suit kicked off in a failsafe reaction, straining to produce countermeasures against the military-grade sonic attack coming from inside the room.

The room was… predictably… filthy. In the half-light, he saw discarded tequila bottles strewn across the temporary apartment’s thin carpet. Stains from week-old burritos and… some kind of semisentient gelatinous material covered the walls and most of the floor.

Markus spotted his target across the room, back to him, headbanging with a bottle in each hand, sloshing tequila around with wild rhythmic arm motions that Markus supposed was to approximate dancing of some sort. He was screaming lyrics of some sort while standing on top of a bootleg black-ops Corvus Mk. III Aural Containment unit, “…mindlessness, it’s mindlessness… I… bled for days... I …. bled for days… I…”

Subcommander Markus drew his sidearm and placed two expert shots through the offending illegal speaker system, silencing it. As the shocking silence turned into a high-pitched whine, he expertly kicked LeberMac square in the ass, knocking him from his perch and landing him awkwardly face-first against the wall in a pile of discarded wrappers and leftover burrito parts. He slumped and rolled over to sit leaning against the wall, wiping filth from his cheek.

“Whathveuckyedoothafer?” LeberMac spat out, looking in horror at his expensive (now ruined) speaker system. "I hadda draw a lotta creds from [ITAN] ta payfer that!"

“What the hell WAS that?” Markus screamed.

“That!” LeberMac grinned and found a crumpled audiobook wrapper as he pointed a wobbly drunken finger at the smoldering audio system, “Was… ah… a wunnerful band I foun’ called… Static X . Theyrshe frum 21st cennury Earf! Sumthin bout a Wisconsin Death Trip. Yannow, I tink Wisconsin washa place on old earth… annyhoo the music came with the box ann I likeit.”

Markus leaned over the drunk pilot. “Pilot LeberMac, the… “speaker system” you bought is a highly dangerous sonic weapon that was used to subdue Bractus dragonworms in the years before the system could be settled.”

LeberMac looked up with wide eyes, “Ya mean tha ones that swallowed the Zeetax outpost whole?”

“Yes.”

“The same mile-long dragonworms that were immune to point-blank attacks from jackhammer missile platforms?”

“Yes…”

“The onesh where da UIT government had ta kill em with orbital Avalon bombardmentsh?”

“YES! Yes. Yes, these audio weapons were attached to atmospheric HACs, used to immobilize the dragonworms JUST enough so that they could be assaulted from orbit. LeberMac,” Subcommander Markus spat, “this is quite possibly the most dangerous sonic weapon in the galaxy, and you were using it to listen to ancient rock ‘music.’”

“Kickass!” LeberMac grinned widely with a drunkard’s pride of accomplishment , and thrust his hands out in the metal “devil horns” signal.

Unimpressed, Markus gestured to the burritos scattered around the room in various stages of decomposition. “What are these?”

“Burritos.” LeberMac said simply.

Markus sighed and composed himself. “Yes, I can see that. But what are they doing sitting half-eaten on the floor?”

“Oh, In order ta git alla the coopuns to buy my rockin’ setup, I hadta have 12 poofs of purchus from Corvus Burrito Factory.”

Looking around, Markus queried, “There’s certainly more than 12 burritos here…”

“Oh, no, 12 boxes, which ish 12 dozen.”

“That’s gross.” Markus said.

LeberMac smiled, as if he’d just made a great pun. “Well thatsh wat Rin said, in order ta get da kewl speekers, I gotta submit 12 proofs of purchass along with payment.”

“Wait. You purchased this illegal weaponized stereo system from Rin Ganborro, the notorious pirate?”

LeberMac twitched uncomfortably on the floor.

“And in addition, he made you eat 144 burritos from Corvus Burrito Factory?”

LeberMac looked a little more uncomfortable now. “… yes?”

“You know that chain’s been closed for over a decade, I hate to think how old those burritos were…”

LeberMac looked at the semisentient goo that was glorping in the corner, and suddenly felt slightly ill.

Subcommander Markus stood up to his full height and called in a hazmat team on his commslink. “…That’s right. Full containment gear with nanoscrub units, and bring the incinerators.” He turned to LeberMac, who was still sitting in burrito wrappers on the floor. “LeberMac, you are hereby banned from Pelatus Bunker for 30 days. You may not dock here, you may not home here. If I or any of the station guards see you in the sector we’ll engage on sight... Now get off my station.”

LeberMac stumbled to his feet and sheepishly wandered through the blessed silence to the docking bay, pinballing off the walls, burrito wrappers stuck to his feet, leaving the stench of tequila behind him as he passed.

Subcommander Markus signed deeply, satisfied to have this nuisance off his station, and allowed the cleaning crew to begin their job. He was tired and looking forward to getting off-shift and a good amount of shuteye.
Oct 13, 2014 LeberMac link
However, back in LeberMac’s room, a small patch of the semisentient burrito goo broke off from the rest and slithered into a ventilation duct, with its genetic instructions newly activated by the sonic bombardment…
Oct 14, 2014 Pizzasgood link
Oh hey, I didn't realize you edited in a new chapter. Awesome!
Oct 14, 2014 vskye link
:)
Oct 14, 2014 Surbius link
\m/,