The Search for Ball Zero (7 page)

The Elohssa warstore is in view from the
Telnet cockpit. All eyes are looking at it in amazement as it’s
main weapon continues to unfold like a Transformer.

Telnet employee nerd,”Wow. Cool.”

Telnet employee nerd 2,”My cousin works for
Elohssa, he says they get every

corporate appreciation day off and more
vacation tha..” The nerd is interrupted by the commander slapping
him in the face.. and yelling “Get back to work maggots!! Do you
want to die with your thumb up your ass?!”

The Captain walks around the cockpit while
he barks orders. when he gets back

to the front, the Elohssa warstore is almost
done transforming. While he is walking around,”We may only have one
chance at this. We’ve got to give em all we got. One quick volley
of EVERY FUCKING THING we got!! Then make a beeline for the tree
line and high tail it outta here. Do it…”

Many crew members are staring at the
Captain, some are transfixed on the Elohssa warstore through the
main window, one guy is picking his nose, the Quake guy is
unloading thousands of meaningless bullets, massaging their enemy,
ting ting.

“
NOW!!!” The Captain
yells, jarring some crew members back to their jobs.

The Elohssa warstore is deploying its main
weapon, the Scorpion Cannon. The consumer vacuum arms also are
deploying now, giving it a real Transformer/Terminator Hunter
Killer look. The warstore actually begins to look like a giant,
scorpion tank. Some of the Telnet workers that jumped back to work
are slowly turning their focus back the Elohssa warstore in
amazement.

Telnet Captain, “What the fuck is that
Billy?” He said it before and he’s saying

it again. Except this time you can hear
uncertainty in the Captain’s voice. He slaps Billy across the back
of his head to hurry him up.

Billy hurriedly gives him a readout showing
the Scorpion Cannon fully

deployed, with pictures describing that it
launches a giant, self propelled drill missile.

Billy,”Scorpion Cannon, sir. It’s never been
seen in action before. The data we have is from a prototype
Lockheed made for Elohssa years ago, we thought it was a
failure.”

Captain is looking at this readout
intensely, Billy is awaiting a response, very

eager and scared at the same time. There is
a short silence, only the Quake guy machine gun controller is still
frantically trying to destroy his target to no avail.

The Elohssa warstore is almost fully
deployed, it’s an awesome sight. Any fan

of science fiction would be shitting their
pants as this massive real life special effect performs. As the
tail and arms lock into place, a great sound effect is heard and a
spark of electricity dashes up and down the Elohssa warstore.

Telnet Captain,for the 3rd time,”What the
fuck is that Billy?”

Billy responds,”Scorpion Cannon, sir!” He
pauses, and then tries to get the captain’s attention,”Sir…?”

The Captain shakes his head, trying to snap
out of it. Then realizes all of his crew are doing the same.
“Goddamnit! Where’s my volley of missiles you useless fuckers!!
Fucking shit you guys are gonna get me killed, get us outta
here!”

The Captain slaps the back of the employee’s
head who is at the main controls (very hard) and the kid curls up
into a ball like he’s been slapped like that many times before. The
entire warstore jerks and everyone in the cockpit stumbles, like in
Star Trek when the Enterprise takes a big hit. The warstore
immediately and drastically changes course.

The Captain is staring doom in the face
while half his crew of 15 year olds are

flailing around on the ground in front of
him, “Get up you fucking idiot faggots or you’ll never get to watch
The Simpsons again!!” Then, to himself, looking up, “God, don’t you
still owe me one or two?”

Back to the Elohssa warstore, the Scorpion
Cannon begins to spin. The nose is

separated into 3 sections, which are
beginning to spin very fast and a high pitched whine is heard as it
increases in speed. It reaches a maximum speed (a very high whine),
and spins at that speed for a second as smoke begins to pour out of
vents built down the length of the tail. Smoke flows out of each
hole in sequence down the tail until it reaches the bottom vent.
After the last vent begins shooting out smoke, the jet engine fires
up with a roar.

A giant metal detaching sound is heard as
the missile separates from the tail. It begins moving away very
slowly like it is immensely heavy. As it separates you can see the
entire missile separate from the warstore and the jet rockets
slowly begin to accelerate the giant weapon into the sky. First
looking into the sky, the missile slowly rotates down as the
horizon and the Telnet WS come into view.

An awesome movie shot would be riding the
Scorpion Missile on it’s decent all

the way to impact, 1
_st
person
view of the impact as the scorpion penetrates the outer hull and
the drill goes to work. The missile crunches into the Telnet
warstore, plunging about ¾ of it’s length into the warstore body.
It sits still for a second, before gravity and the drill start
working and the missile slowly creeps into the hull.

The tip of the missile drills its way into a
hallways where workers are running

back and forth. A fancy Telnet employee
isn’t impressed, stops running, and lets out an “Psshh”as he tries
to slap the spinning missile parts and turns into red liquid.

After a few seconds of drilling, the drill
loosens the missile enough to where it

drops down a level. Landing in the consumer
area with another great crunch. This is where the flood of
customers passes through. It looks like a compact indoor shopping
mall except there are no stores, just ads and facades that
consumers pass. Customers pass by on an assembly line-like shopping
conveyor belt, while robotic arms give them stuff and charge their
credit cards. The drill settles into the shopping path, while
consumers are pushed right into it’s spinning tip of death,
splattering one after another.

One especially smart consumer thinks a drill
in the path seems out of place and

says,”Is this supposed to” He then turns
into a blood splash! After a few more seconds and a few more people
turning into blood splashes, the drill turns off and slowly
stops.

Inside the Telnet cockpit chaos is reigning.
Nerd employees are screaming and panicking. Smoke can be seen
billowing through the front window. Alarms and damage warnings are
everywhere. The Captain walks up to the window and looks down at
his warstore, fatally wounded. Shaking his head, “I shoulda been a
gigolo.”

A loud sound of giant metal bending starts,
like the Titanic breaking in half, and

the view behind the Captain starts to tilt
toward the ground as the cockpit bends in on itself.

Outside of the Telnet warstore, the giant
beast is collapsing onto itself, people

are jumping and running for it. Some are
sadly still trying to clamber in the Dust Buster entrance.

Back inside the Elohssa warstore cockpit,
the slick captain stands motionless, in the same position as we saw
him before. Sunglasses back on. He smiles slightly and nods almost
imperceptibly. One of his crew members acknowledges the nod and
presses a button. The front monitor pops up a number 5 and begins
counting down 4, 3, 2,..

Back to the Telnet warstore collapsing, some
customers are still filing out the

back exit, having the time of their lives. A
few notice that a war is happening around them and are looking back
at the warstore, sad that it is crumbling in front of their
eyes.

There is a TV crew trying to interview
customers, covered in blood. Paparazzi

snapping pics like crazy, obviously not
using cameras, just staring intently like insane perverts taking
pics and recording video with their ICs. Just as the Telnet
warstore is about to collapse the scorpion missile explodes,
destroying the gigantic beast and everything within a few hundred
yards in a massive, cool explosion. The blast sends giant pieces of
smoking debris arcing over the whole city. Every customer around
the Telnet warstore is vaporized along with all the news people,
hobos, onlookers and any forest creatures dumb enough to not be far
away by now. What’s left is a shallow crater, filled with a tee pee
looking pile of black smoking metal sitting on top of giant mangled
tank treads.

Inside the Elohssa warstore, the captain is
unphased, there is no celebration from

the crew. The captain simply turns and
silently walks out of the cockpit, “Continue the operation.” slides
out of his mouth. The warstore smoothly changes course and enters
the forest, carving a giant path, it slowly disappears over the
horizon.

That was the beginning of “shit splattering
all over the face of humanity”. That

was the first time they all saw a warstore.
That was the beginning of the end of society, for them at
least.

As the victorious warstore silently
disappeared over the horizon, inside Treetop

there was a short silence that seemed to
last a long time as people tried to digest what they just
witnessed. A few kids broke the silence with a chorus of, “Coool!”
and then they descended into yelling about all the cool things they
just saw. “I want to go to a warstore!”

“
Holy crap, look”, L said
as she pointed away from the destruction at a different

smoking part of the city. There were a few
flames scattered throughout. “That’s right near our
apartments.”

Tony, L and Perry all lived within a few
blocks of each other. It was about a

mile away, one of those giant pieces of
debris must’ve flown all the way over there. Perry appeared behind
them with a stone smile on his face.

“
That was fucking crazy,
huh?” Perry said.

“
Garfield!” L said and
looked at Tony, her face saying “Let’s go… NOW”

They all took off to the elevator.

Walking home was surreal, they were all
worried about our places. Well, except Perry, he didn’t give a fuck
about his place, he shared a shit hole with a bunch of druggies and
he wanted out anyway. But his suitcase of drugs was there. L had a
cat and Tony had a dog. So they were all in a hurry, half walking,
half jogging to check on those things. There were billows of smoke
coming from many different parts of the city. There were sirens
blaring in the distance in all directions. Valley Forest wasn’t
that big, you could almost hear a siren half way across the city.
When they first got to Main Street there were a few warstore
customers. celebrating their loot. A block later they passed a
bloody Ad who was injured in the sale, his right arm bent in a
wrong way, must’ve been broken. He still tried to shuffle in their
path, like a zombie trying to sell something. A couple cops sped
by. Then they passed a body part that could’ve been a butt
cheek.

As they turned onto their street the
destruction unfolded in front of them, their

street got hit pretty bad with some massive
debris. Perry took off towards his house yelling, “I’ll call you!”
There was damage to almost every building: fires, water lines
spraying randomly, light poles leaning into buildings, bus stop
benches flipped over in the middle of the street, some entire
apartments were gone or walls completely ripped off. L tried not to
take off running, Tony grabbed her arm.

“
I’ll meet you at your
place.” He said, and they both took off towards our
apartments.

As Tony came up to his apartment building,
his landlady came running up and started screaming in Farsi. He had
no idea what she was saying, but understood. Tony looked over her
shoulder and saw his dog sitting in front of his apartment.

“
Fozzie!”

She looked up, a little confused, then saw
him and came running with a look of

relief in her eyes. She was fine, a little
dusty, but not hurt. Tony’s apartment was on the first floor, he
started walking towards it. There was about a 3 foot high hole in
the wall between the door and the window, with a bit of smoke
floating out through the new hole. Something had smashed through,
that’s how Fozzie must’ve got out.

Tony approached and looked through the hole
at the smoking black ball of

debris in the middle of his living room. It
wasn’t perfectly spherical, but it was kind of ball shaped. It was
burnt to a crisp, with a flakey covering, like a black croissant.
It didn’t look like metal or anything explosive, but he had no
idea. Fozzie cautiously smelled in it’s direction. Tony unlocked,
opened the door and walked in. Fozzie jumped through the new hole,
rushing past the smoking black ball and circling around it until
she was back at Tony’s feet.

He looked around, the rest of the apartment
was fine. “Foz, let’s go.” And they

took off for L’s place.

Tony’s tiny Persian landlord was still in
the same spot, still yelling what sounded like the same thing. He
saw people packing, some cars were filled with suitcases. Others
were busy boarding up holes in their place, some people trying to
create makeshift walls. People were crying, yelling, sobbing,
staring off into the distance, some neighbors were fighting, a few
bodies were in the street, covered with blankets, It looked and
felt like a terrorist attack aftermath video you’d see on the
news.

As they approached L’s house, Fozzie and
Tony bounced up the stairs and heard her crying. The door was open
and they quickly went in. L was crouched in the corner, leaning
over something. As Tony got closer he noticed she had Garfield in
her arms. His two hind legs crushed and twisted. Tony grabbed and
hugged L and she cried even harder. Gar let out a haunting sound.
He was always a strong cat, the poor guy was a trooper. He even
tried to stand up when Tony looked at him, but it was a fruitless
effort.