The screen of Teena Rama’s mind machine now showed the night when her Xeta Gun flung its searing energies at the comic which lay open beneath it. Like dancing trees, mini lightning fingers ran up and down its length, colliding with each other, forming new patterns. In all creation nothing was as awesome as Teena Rama’s Xeta Gun. And it flung those energies in pulsing, pounding waves that struck like the footfalls of God. They battered the comic until it seemed nothing could survive. But Teena Rama knew two things would survive.
Finally drained, the gun went dead, its roar running down to a steady hum. The lightning fingers settled into the occasional phzz, then zzk, then nothing.
Billowing sulphurous smoke filled the room’s centre.
The operation had lasted just three seconds but it had seemed a century, as she’d waited, heart pumping, on the starting line of greatness.
She pushed the lever to OFF, removed her protective goggles, tossed them aside, then switched on the air extractor.
As the smoke cleared, Tinashta K. Rama straightened her grey pinstripe skirt bought for the occasion. She reached up inside her silk Chinese-print shirt bought for the occasion, and attached a second cross to her brand new nipple ring. What the hell; she attached a third cross – and a fourth. If any occasion deserved four crosses this did.
She tucked in and straightened the shirt.
She straightened the grey double-breasted pinstripe jacket bought especially. She straightened a new pair of stockings, slipped her best shoes on, tidied her hair, checked her makeup and, bubbling with pride, prepared to welcome the great Larry Hormonal to her world.
The last of the smoke drifted away.
A man coughed politely into the side of his hand. He stood beneath the Xeta Gun, small and bald, in round metal-framed spectacles. He wore a slightly too-tight brown suit and held a briefcase.
And Teena Rama demanded, ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Good evening,’ said the small man. ‘I’m an accountant.’
‘An accountant?’ She strode toward him, climbing over the low safety rail and into the gun’s circle of operation. ‘If I’d wanted an accountant, I’d have built a telephone! How dare you waste my Xeta Gun’s time?’
He stepped forward, saying with cartoon meekness, ‘I’m very sorry, Miss …? ’
‘Out of my way!’ Not breaking stride, she shoved him aside, snatching up the comic. She paced in ever tighter circles, rooting through page after page after page, trying to discover what had gone wrong. Where was Larry Hormonal?
‘Do you work here. Miss …?’
Her gaze scurried over comic book panel after comic book panel. ‘Work here?’ She yanked open another page, almost tearing it from its staples. ‘I must be the resident slave; I seem to be the only thing round here that works.’
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I seem to be …
Ignoring the idiot, she read on. By page twelve the Hormonal Fifty were among abandoned dockland warehouses. It was their standard practice to defeat villains by ganging up on them. It might not have been brave but it worked. But now, they looked mystified.
‘What happened to the accountant?’ Brawling Varney sat on his backside and scratched his head. ‘One moment he’s stood here, ugly as day, just asking to be bashed, the next he’s gone.’
‘That smell of sulphur.’ Larry Hormonal’s eagle eyes scanned the scene, his mighty intellect working overtime. ‘It can only mean one thing.’
‘What?’
‘Someone somewhere’s used a Xeta Gun on him.’
‘But, Larry,’ asked Birchie the tree lad, ‘who, besides you, has the brains to make a whizz-bang-gosh-wow machine like that?’
‘I wish I knew, Birchie. But whoever it is, I just hope they realize that the Xeta Gun, when combined with obstructive staff/customer relations, will turn Arnold Meekly into a …’
Teena turned the page. Frowning, she read out the one word contained within the one speech balloon,‘ … Monster?’
And she glanced to where she’d pushed the accountant when she’d told him she worked here.
She saw two huge feet – each with just two, clawed toes.
She saw two huge, furry legs.
And her gaze slowly climbed the awesome, fluffy bulk of the creature that had once been Arnold Meekly.
The monster glared down at Teena Rama, breathing in menacing grunts, clearly not taking her treatment of its alter ego lightly.
Before it could react, she grabbed its giant hand, ordering, in the tones of an old-style hospital matron who’s discovered a roaming patient, ‘Right, come along. This way.’
‘Huh?’ it said cavernously.
‘Yes, that’s it. I don’t have all day.’ And she tugged it toward the elevator.
The prod of a button summoned the lift.
Still holding his hand, she waited, her impatient foot tapping a floor tile as she watched an arrow above the door count down, from sixty to eight.
The door opened with a ping.
‘In here with you.’ Straight-armed, two-handed, she pushed the confused monster backwards into the lift, then leaned inside, pressed the BASEMENT button, and stepped back out.
As the door rumbled shut on him, she said, ‘Goodbye.’
‘So, what went wrong?’ asked Danny watching from his trolley.
Teena licked the final pie crumbs from her fingers, then removed her headphones, unplugging them from the panel. The screen went blank. ‘As usual I was let down by other people’s failings, not having beforehand read beyond the comic’s first two pages. I never complete books, invariably predicting the outcome.’
‘But …’
‘Unfortunately, being a genius, I’d failed to recognize the sheer stupidity of comic book plotting. Hence, rather than the Hormonal Fifty retiring to Jupiter to discuss gender issues raised by their fight with Android Andy – as I’d expected – by page five they were about to commence a slugfest with Arnold Meekly, the Human Tube Line. It was the estimable Tube Line who arrived in my lab.’
‘Then that was why you wanted to buy all his comics,’ said Danny. ‘To find out everything you could about him.’
‘And discover the best way of dealing with him,’ she completed the explanation on his behalf. ‘You see, thanks to Doors, I Teena Rama – the world’s greatest intellect – am now the world’s leading authority on the world’s stupidest comic book. Thank you for robbing me of all dignity. Doors.’
‘I’m sorry. Miss Rama.’
‘So you should be.’ And she clomped down the ramp toward Danny.
She removed his headphones, wrapping their flex neatly round and round her forearm then slipping her arm free. ‘The lift took Meekly into the caverns which surround this chamber, trapping him there while I re-designed the Xeta Gun to return him to his own world. That took two weeks. But when I searched the tunnels, I found no sign of him. Those passageways stretch for hundreds of miles in all directions. It could’ve taken years to find him. However, bafflingly, Meekly took just six months to find his way into your room.’
‘And you couldn’t tell me any of this at the time?’ said Danny, annoyed.
‘As your psychiatrist, I knew your mind is too small for such shocks. Fearing it might implode after your bedroom encounter with Meekly, I drugged your meals to help you forget him.’
‘And it never occurred to you to consult me?’
‘A good psychiatrist never consults her patients. But, as several weeks have passed since the incident, and you’ve discovered the truth, I feel I should now restore your memory.’
‘But I might not have wanted to be drugged in the first place. I might have wanted to tell people.’
‘I think my medical qualifications make me a better judge of that than you, Gary.’
‘No they don’t,’ he asserted outraged. ‘And my name’s not Gary, it’s Danny; D-A-N-N-Y. You know, like C-O-C-K-U-P, only spelt different.’
‘Your name’s Gary.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Your name’s Gary.’
‘I should know,’ he said.
‘On the contrary, forgetting one’s name is a common problem among those who’ve met monsters. I have several degrees in the subject …’
‘There’s a surprise.’
‘… being one of the world’s leading authorities. I’m going to publish a paper on you. You should be flattered.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Most would be.’
‘No one would be. And my name is Danny.’
‘Not according to my files.’
‘And who wrote those files?’
‘I did. That’s how I know they can’t be wrong.’
‘Like you weren’t wrong about the Hormonal Fifty’s picnic to Jupiter?’
‘It was the writer Dick Dicksley who got it wrong. That’s Dick as in G-A-R-Y, just spelt differently.’
Danny narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You think you’re so clever.’
‘I am clever. Now stop arguing, while I fetch you another pie.’ On her way to the lift, she deposited his headphones on the panel. The door swished open, ready for her.
Danny called after her as she entered the lift, his head raised as far as the constraints would allow. He taunted bitterly, ‘Meat and potato pies, that’s the great scientist’s answer to everything is it?’
‘That’s right, Gary.’ And, clunk, the lift door closed.