Jabberwock Jack (32 page)

"Of course it's not good for my enemies!" replied Honnenheim. "My enemies should feel my wrath! Everyone else needs to bow down and let me run this world! It's for their own good! I can easily eliminate war and poverty though my robot legions and a fully functional death ray!"

Dane sighed. This old line of thinking again. Whether the opponent was a technological genius with multiple advanced degrees, or they were an arcane sorcerer drawing power from artifacts and sacred geometries, or just simply a regular person who had stumbled upon something fantastic, they still always ultimately corresponded to one of two essential evil schemes. Either rule the world or destroy the world. Sure, they might
say
they just want revenge, world peace, safety for their children, an end to ecological destruction, the crippling of the Western free market, or just more freedom for the working class, but dig a little deeper and it was always about ruling or destroying the world. Always.

Closing up the rewired device, Dane hoped this would work. A short while ago, the device had worked beautifully and the jamming had disabled half a dozen drones guarding the building. However, that was only moments before the jammer sparked, caught on fire, and coughed grayish-green smoke into Dane's face. He also hoped these drones were on the same operating frequency as the ones he had previously jammed. It had taken an hour to find the frequency when he tested it on the ones outside the building. He didn't have the time to go through every frequency on the dial now.

Dane jumped out from behind the console as a second plasma volley rained down on the spot he just vacated. The drones rotated to face his new position and began charging their weapons again. Dane pushed the button on the jammer defiantly.

When nothing immediately happened, he winced, expecting either to be vaporized in a blaze of plasma or have the jammer light on fire and spit smoke in his face again. Possibly both.

Instead he heard the whirring noises of the drones slowing. Like dominos, the whole line of the drones dropped one by one, clattering to the ground. They almost looked like children's toys - if you excluded the large, imposing, and still-smoking plasma cannons on them.

Honnenheim paled and stared at the line of disabled drones with shock. “My-My drones! What have you done to my beautiful drones?”

Dane rolled his eyes and grabbed one of the drones from the ground. He tore the plasma cannon off it and then yanked off its propeller. He hefted the remaining robot body in his hand, essentially just a camera with a CPU and power pack. With one swift movement, he threw the robot at Honnenheim. Despite the unbalanced nature of the robot body, it struck true and hit Honnenheim in the head. The professor clutched at his forehead, and then swayed, his balance lost. He toppled off his platform.

Taking this opportunity, Dane grabbed at a nearby ladder and climbed up to the top of the catwalk next to the massive barrel of the death ray. It hadn't been fired yet, but it would soon if he didn't stop it. Before he had revealed his presence, Dane had watched as Professor Honnenheim set the coordinates for Akron, Ohio - which was a strange choice of targets for Honnenheim's New Avalon-based lab. Dane didn't know what real or imagined slight the people of Akron had inflicted on Honnenheim, but nor could he think of any reason why an entire city would deserve obliteration by death ray.

There was no abort button on the console or digital interface, but this was not surprising. Mad scientists were not ones to think about cancellation or aborting a countdown. Even if they had, they were always afraid of a James Bond type showing up to jam the scientist's head onto the abort button. Thankfully, being an evil genius did not mean they were also masters of UI or backup protocols either, so stopping their doomsday machines was always possible if you were willing to engage in a carefully refined technique Dane called
Push Every Button.

It had worked almost every time before. He'd go as far as to say it never failed.

Dane turned every dial on the console to maximum, pressed every button, and then held down any contradictory buttons (on/off, up/down, death/life, shrink/enlarge, chocolate/vanilla). It took thirty seconds of frantic and deliberate fiddling, but eventually the console screen went red and started filling with strange characters.

Dane laughed. It never failed. He was always amazed that the scariest doomsday device could be thwarted by the equivalent of dropping a cat on the keyboard.

He looked down to where Honnenheim was laying on the floor of the platform rubbing his head. Pulling the screwdriver from his pocket, Dane pried off the face of console and yanked off all the wires on the circuit board. Then he pulled out the circuit board itself and tossed it off the catwalk, where he heard it land with a satisfyingly ugly clatter. Because mad scientists were control freaks and because they trusted no one, there was
always
just one main console without backups. And the most fantastically elaborate doomsday device in the world was always worthless without the main console.

By this time, the death ray was billowing even more smoke. Alarms were now blaring, filling the entire lab with spinning red lights. As the alarms grew louder, it was clear that the death ray was going to explode. This was how it always worked. Doomsday weapons didn't just shut off when they got bad data or had a minor malfunction, they always exploded in spectacular fashion.

Dane quickly climbed off the catwalk and jumped down next to a shaken Honnenheim. He grabbed the professor's hand and helped him up. Once standing, the shaken professor pulled back his hand when he realized who had helped him.

“If I were you, I’d get out of here too!” said Dane, turning toward the door. “It's going to blow!”

As Dane ran for the door, while Honnenheim turned towards the device, as if just noticing its malfunctioning state for the first time. “My death ray!”

Dane was only half a block away from the warehouse laboratory when it exploded in a gush of flames, sparks, and hazardous materials, setting a fire that would take all night for city services to put out. Luckily, it would be a relatively isolated fire in the Husks that only affected two other abandoned warehouses.

After this evening's excitement, Dane hoped that he'd have a few days to rest before his number was called up again and he'd have to once again face evil. Unfortunately, there was no rest for him. The new adventure started almost immediately.

Jeopardy

After two long and punishing rounds, Dane had made it to Final Jeopardy. There had been a few Daily Doubles where he had nearly screwed up and lost all his money, but his lucky memory of Countess Bathory's gruesome life had saved him, and now he was in Final Jeopardy within striking distance of the other two contestants.

Patrick was the returning champion. Portly and shoehorned into a sweater vest, he nervously adjusted his glasses as he prepared for the final question. Dane wasn't sure why Patrick was concerned; Patrick had never answered a question wrong so far. His trouble was getting the chance to answer a question. Dane's strategy was to manically jam on his clicker as soon as Alex Trebek began talking just so he could beat the other contestants and answer first. This is also why he had lost so much money, as he buzzed in on so many questions he didn't actually know, causing him to stretch out "What is... uh...." and "Who is... umm... that guy... uh..." for as long as possible as his mind raced to find the answer. Unfortunately,
Who is that guy that was in that thing
had not yet been the correct response so far.

Olivia, the third contestant, had nearly smacked Dane twice because of this behavior. Even though it was causing him to lose, which was to her advantage, Olivia was so angered by him buzzing in first and not being able to answer the question that she was nearly bubbling over in rage at the center podium. According to the brief bio she talked with Alex about earlier in the show, she was a piano teacher and substitute teacher at an elementary school. Who knew that educational professionals had such unbridled rage lurking beneath the surface?

As the show came back from commercial, the host, Alex Trebek, went over his preamble for the nationwide audience about Final Jeopardy. He'd post an answer, and then Dane, Patrick, and Olivia would have thirty seconds to write down a question while the show's iconic music played. Then the questions would be revealed and a winner picked.

Alex turned towards them and said, "And now your Final Jeopardy answer." White words appeared on the blue screen behind him and Alex read them aloud.

1325 EGAN STREET, FLOOR FIVE, APARTMENT E.

"Good luck," said Alex. The music started.

Dane just stood at his podium staring at the address. He narrowed his eyes, trying to refocus them in case he was reading the words wrong. What was this? Most Jeopardy answers were really just veiled questions. They were things like, "Born during the Renaissance in Italy, he is known for his art and inventions, but is also history's most well-known illegitimate child" ("Who is Leonardo Da Vinci?"). They were always answers that prompted the question. But this? This was just an address.

He looked over to the other two contestants. There were large pieces of plastic set up to make sure he couldn't see what they wrote, but he could see their faces. Patrick seemed to pause meaningfully in thought, then almost jump in realization before he began furiously writing. Olivia furrowed her brow, her look sour. She began writing, but lacked the same enthusiasm that Patrick had. With a frown, Dane stared at his own writing area and wondered what to write.

The Jeopardy music went through its entire insistent tune to the obnoxious bit at the end, bluntly letting them know that they were at last out of time.

"And that's it, folks! Let's see what you have," said Alex Trebek. "Dane, you were in last place, so we'll start with you."

Dane smiled nervously as his writing flashed up on the board and the screens of nationwide audiences. WHAT IS I HAVE NO IDEA? He had started by writing the question portion to save time, but then had no clue what to write next. He had ended up scribbling his exasperation onto the tablet.

"Oh, no, I'm sorry, that's not correct," said Alex, his tone expressing a well-practiced sympathetic disappointment. "Let's see what you've risked."

Now the cameras showed Dane's wager. $1989.

"Ooo, quite a gamble. And that leaves you with $11," said Alex. "Now Olivia, what do you have?"

Her text flashed on the screen. WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT DANE SHOULD ALREADY KNOW?

"Oh, so close! Not the answer we were looking for, but almost," said Alex. "However let's check in with the judges. Judges?" There was a pause, but nothing was audible. "Oh, sorry, Olivia, they're not accepting that. How much has it cost you? $5000? Oh, that puts you down to zero dollars. We're sorry Olivia, thanks for playing.

"And now we come to our returning champion Patrick," continued Alex with a conspiratorial charm that he reserved for returning winners. "Patrick, did you get the correct question?"

Patrick smiled sheepishly while his question appeared on the screen for all the viewers.

WHAT IS THE LOCATION DANE SHOULD GET TO AS SOON AS POSSIBLE?

"Yes, that's the correct answer," said Alex magnanimously. "And how much did you bet?"

As they showed Patrick's wager, Dane's head began to spin. Like someone had pumped nitrous oxide in the room for some insane quiz-based dental procedure, everything began to whirl around him, the sound distorting and beginning to overwhelm him. He didn't even get to hear what parting gifts he would receive.

Dane woke up, sitting straight up in bed. His breathing was heavy and his muscles were tense. His clock radio was playing Weird Al's
I Lost on Jeopardy
. That struck him as very odd. He hadn't set an alarm for this morning. He wouldn't have had it go off this early. And now that he thought about it, he didn't even
own
a clock radio.

Still barely awake, he grabbed the pad from the side of the bed and wrote down the address,
1325 Egan St 5B
. The movement dislodged a cat that had been sleeping on his legs. The cat promptly disappeared. The clock said it was eight in the morning. That would be early for Dane on a normal day, but on the day after he destroyed a death ray, it was the crack of dawn.

He shook his head and took a deep breath, the last traces of the dream slipping away. Now he was truly awake. It was time for coffee.

Dane loved coffee. If there was one thing that stayed the same among the death defying escapes, the mad science, the apocalyptic madness, and the strangeness of his days, it was coffee. His joy, his sustenance, his lifeblood - Dane loved coffee. If there was a religion of coffee worship, say The United Apostles of His Unwavering Wakefulness The Saint Morning Joe, he would be a fervent member of that congregation.

He had two coffee makers, a traditional maker that gave him a whole pot of coffee and one of those new single use machines. Given the choice, he preferred the old fashioned whole pot coffee maker. Oh, he liked the quickness of the newer machine, the way it didn't waste coffee, and that it allowed him to try out all sorts of flavored coffees, but there was something about the old fashioned coffee pot he liked. He preferred this "boilerplate" coffee he got at gas stations, convenience stores, and delis over the frufru coffee at Starbucks or other coffeehouses. He liked the coffee that produced sludge at the bottom of the pot if left too long. He loved that strong, unapologetic coffee served in styrofoam cups that were a driving hazard on a morning commute. There was just something he liked about getting coffee out of a glass pot that had been used so many times that the bottom was a discolored transparency from years sitting on a burner.

Unfortunately, he was in a hurry, so he had to leave his beloved coffee pot cold and put in a single serve container to the other machine. A minute later he poured it into a travel mug. Grabbing his satchel full of experimental technology, assorted gadgets, and a few arcane items, he headed out to the address given in his dream.