Black and White

A Fan Novel in Three Parts

By McPoodle,
Erik (Ice) Berg and Roxor

Edited by ModernTimes

See the last chapter for acknowledgements and credits.

To those who remembered while the rest of the world was forgetting.

Prologue: A Dark and Stormy Night

Once upon a time, in a world not too different from ours, four rodents and a fly band together to fight the forces of darkness. For their detective agency, no case is too big, no case is too small. They are: The Rescue Rangers.

A strong wind blew around Rescue Rangers Headquarters that fateful night of February 15th, in that dark and uncertain time between midnight and dawn. The old oak tree stood fast against the windstorm. Behind thick walls and tightly secured windows, all was deathly quiet, and the Rescue Rangers were sound asleep.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a roll of thunder. Five seconds later, there was another one. And another. And another. A constant stream of lightning bolts, at five-second intervals.

Dale was the first to awaken. He had been fond of thunderstorms since an early age. He also loved sharing the good things in life with his best friend, so he dropped down from the top level of the chipmunks' bunk bed and informed him of the good news: "Wowie, would you look at that, Chip!"

BOOM! went the thunder.

Chip opened one eye and peered at his roommate. "Dale, I don't care what it is..."

BOOM! it went again.

Chip continued where he was interrupted. "...I don't want to watch a movie, OK?"

BOOM!

Chip's other eye opened. "What was that?"

BOOM!

"Do you have the TV up too loud again, Dale?"

BOOM!

"That's no TV, Chip, it's lightning from outside."

BOOM!

"Don't be ridiculous," Chip replied...

BOOM!

...as he got out of bed. "Lightning doesn't fall regular like that."

BOOM!

There was a knock at the door of the chipmunk's bedroom. Chip opened it to reveal Gadget, fully dressed. "Hi, Gad-"

BOOM!

"Chip," said Gadget, "I think we should in-"

BOOM!

"-vestigate this storm. Take a look outside."

BOOM!

Monty jammed into the room with Zipper by his side. "What's the big idea, guys?" he asked.

BOOM!

"Follow me!" ordered Chip. The group raced out the front door, as that was the direction of the flashes. The gusting wind practically tore the door out of their grasp.

As they watched, a lightning bolt flashed down to the southwest edge of town. The following bolts all hit exactly the same spot, a spot the Rangers knew all too well. The former headquarters of their perennial foe:

"Nimnul," declared Chip, grimly.

BOOM! the thunder added, dramatically.

"Right," answered Gadget. "If he's..."

BOOM!

"...behind this, it can't be good. Also..."

BOOM!

"...this is no ordinary lighting."

BOOM!

"How so?" asked Chip.

Gadget waited for the "BOOM!" before continuing. "If actual lighting was striking that close to us..."

BOOM!

"...it would be a lot louder."

BOOM!

"And it wouldn't be orange," she added quickly.

BOOM!

"I guess that means only one thing," Dale added with a grin.

BOOM!

"Rescue Rangers, away!"

A few minutes later, the Ranger Wing touched down at the base of the small mountain owned by Norton Nimnul, prevented by high winds from reaching the summit. The Rangers looked up the twisty mountain road with some trepidation, but they had no other alternative, so they began the slow climb.

For an adventure that began with lightning bolts, an endless climb on foot was not what Dale had in mind. Even a lightning flash every five seconds lost its thrill after the first five thousand or so. The chipmunk was bored.

"So," he asked. "How many years have we been...stopping Nimnul now?...Four?" The pauses were for the thunder.

"Five," replied Chip, waiting for the next strike before continuing. "You're not counting...this last year, when he was missing."

"You know," observed Monty, "regardless...regardless of whether he's behind this or not...I'm not sure I want to be there...to find out."

"Monty scared?" asked Dale. "That doesn't make much sense!"

"I'm not exactly a fan...fan of the high voltages...if you catch my drift."

Zipper shrugged, as if to say "fair enough."

By keeping to the cliff face, the Rangers hoped to avoid being swept to their doom by the incredibly strong gusts of wind.

"You know," Dale observed nonchalantly, "I don't think...I've ever seen so much lightning."

Gadget pointed up to the top of the mountain, where the outline of a large domed structure was illuminated by a brightly-glowing orange tower beside it. "And I've never...seen a capacitor that huge before," she observed.

Monty scratched the back of his head. "I did once...back in the day. I was in Lower Louisiana...during a loony lightning storm."

"What do you think...might be causing all of this wind?" asked Chip, raising his voice to be heard. He was carrying a penlight under his arm, and the wind had nearly snatched it away from him several times already.

"Probably all the hot air...rushing away during the lightning...strikes," replied Gadget.

"Whatever it is...it's blowing me away," quipped Dale. "Hey, Chip...the answer is blowing in the wind...get it?"

Gadget rolled her eyes. Chip raised his fist to deliver swift summary justice upon Dale's cranium, but in raising it his arm brushed against the "Bonkaholics Anonymouse" badge pinned to his jacket, and with an effort he managed to stay on his twelve-step program.

About halfway to the top, the Rangers came across a pile of debris in the middle of the road. It was made up of the crushed remains of a giant robot, pieces of the load-bearing wall the robot had been tricked into walking through by the Rangers, and some packing materials caught underneath that hadn't been blown away yet-the remains of the group's last encounter with the mad scientist . They got around it easily and Gadget used the cover from the wind to improvise some ear protection out of Styrofoam and cardboard. Chip stopped to take a look at the obstruction. "This is a deliberate roadblock," he declared, "...and the police are probably...on their way right now...but they'll never get around this."

Gadget thought awhile. "A couple of sticks of dynamite...would probably shift that metal and concrete."

Chip rolled his eyes. "...And you just happen to have some on you?"

He was rather surprised to see Monty produce several sticks as tall as he was.

"No," replied Gadget, "but...nevermind. Monty, since when do you carry...explosives with you?"

"Since lightning decided...to be the next biggest thing since Constantinople."

Dale always recognized a straight line when he heard it. "You realize it's Istanbul, not Constantinople now, right?" He had to rush the joke out to make it between the lightning strikes.

Zipper stared at Dale as if to say "One more song reference and I'll see that you get the works!"

Having finished his preparations, Monty led the group a safe distance away from the landslide and detonated the dynamite. Of course, being Monty, the number of sticks of dynamite was rather large, so...

BOOM!

"Thanks, Monty," announced Chip dryly in the aftermath, "now I can't hear the thunder anymore."

"Can we do that again?" asked Dale.

"No!" answered the others.

Chip dusted himself off and picked up the penlight. "Well, if the police weren't on their way before, they are now. Onward!"

Finally, they reached Nimnul's mountaintop evil scientist laboratory/Astronomy Science Center [hey, a guy's got to make money where he can].

"Well," observed Gadget, "I can see what Nimnul's...using that capacitor for now, but what's he planning...after it's charged?" The capacitor was so tall its top lined up with the roof of the lab. Every time the lightning hit, a spark could be seen around its terminals.

Dale shuddered. "Real question is...do we want to know?"

Chip went up to the front door, and discovered it was unlocked. "I've got a bad feeling about this..." he said.

The majority of the laboratory was a single circular room with the partially open dome of the observatory as its roof. Visible through one end of this slot in the ceiling was the glow of the city below and through the other end could be seen the capacitor tower, which flooded the building with a blinding orange flash every five seconds. Between those intervals, the only illumination came from the red light bulbs studded along the upper walls that had come with the original observatory, designed to allow astronomers to study their charts without losing their night vision. Giant banks of computers from nearly every era lined the walls under those bulbs, all of them linked to each other. At the far end of the room from the Rangers' position was a long desk sporting an up-to-date supercomputer, clearly the control center of the entire operation. Next to the computer was a rectangular piece of World War II surplus, so identified by the distinctive loud droning buzz it gave off, the aural equivalent of the red light bulbs to fill the ears between the deafening blasts of thunder.

The Rangers made their careful way around the exposed inside wall of the lab, hoping to find shelter in the shadow of the desk. With the crazy lighting, it didn't seem likely that they would be discovered, and they could see Nimnul running back and forth between two pieces of equipment checking the displays, too busy to notice their presence.

A little more than halfway to the desk, Chip pointed at a spot just beyond their destination. "I see that Nimnul's finally repaired that robot-shaped hole in the wall, but who in their right mind would paint the replacement puce? Wait a second," he said, stopping. "Do you hear that?"

Gadget removed the padding from her ears. "The lightning strikes have stopped."

The others did the same. "We have to do something," ordered Chip. "Fast!"

Wires thicker than a human's arm led from the capacitor into the lab, there to be joined by smaller cables coming out of the bank of computer terminals. Nimnul took off his ear protectors and chucked them over his shoulder, almost hitting the Rangers as they settled into position. "That's all the lightning I'm going to need," he told himself. "Now for part two." With the light bulb near his head tinting his face the color of blood, he entered a few commands in a computer on the desk, then turned to the antiquated army oscilloscope and started adjusting knobs, the red glow now washed out by the unearthly illumination it emitted. Its angry buzz was now the only sound in the room.

Gadget stood where she was a moment, trying to take in the strange pieces of equipment and how they were connected. Just like every Nimnul invention she'd ever encountered, it was made up of sensible scientific equipment combined in nonsensical ways. The least sensible piece of equipment was apparently the most important, as it was located in the center of the room. It was a block of black obsidian stone, nine feet high by four feet wide by one foot thick. Giant gold-plated studs stuck out of the top of the block and received the wires from the capacitor and the computer banks.

"What should we do?" Chip asked his teammates. "Can we just unplug the computer?"

Gadget shook her head. "That would just cause the capacitor to discharge."

"And that would mean...?" asked Dale.

Monty responded with one word in Dale's ear: "Bzzt!"

"Never mind!"

"There," Nimnul concluded, "the coordinates have been transferred. Just a few minutes for the portal to align and I'm out of here."

He walked over to the edge of the opening in the roof and took one last look at the city below. "The greatest genius in the world, wasting his talents on petty theft," he declared in disgust. "No more!" he cried triumphantly, turning to face the great black block.

A low chorus began to fill the room, sounding like something out of the weird part of 2001. Nimnul raised his voice to be heard above it. "In just a few minutes," he ranted. "I'm going somewhere where my genius will be appreciated. A new world!"

As he watched expectantly, a massive spark appeared along the thickest cables and vanished into the block before leaving the cables as a rain of molten metal. The block increased in blackness until it was impossible to make out its surface - it appeared now to be constructed of darkest night. "Just a few more seconds..."

He looked at the block in anticipation as the sound of the unseen chorus increased its cacophony. Then in an instant, a sound dispersed the chorus:

PING!

For a moment, Dale thought his popcorn was ready.

Chip's head jerked as he caught Nimnul running for the block out of the corner of his eye. "Stop him!" he cried.

The Rangers started forward, but they were too late. Professor Norton Nimnul reached the portal...

...and bounced right off the solid wall of a block of black obsidian, knocking himself out cold.

The Rescue Rangers came to a sudden stop. Chip shook his head. "Never mind," he said.

Just at that moment the front doors were kicked open, sending the welcome white glow of automobile headlights into the scarlet laboratory.

"Freeze!" cried Officer Kirby, gripping his pistol in a Modern Isosceles stance.

His partner Muldoon reached around him to point at the prone body of Nimnul. "Looks like Nimnul froze himself," he quipped. Kirby cautiously lowered his gun, expressing his disapproval of Muldoon's wisecrack.

The two beat cops lifted Nimnul up and attempted to revive him. Zipper meanwhile noticed a rather ominous straining sound building in the obsidian monolith, which at this point looked exactly like you'd expect a block of obsidian to look. He informed Monty, who bounced a pebble off Muldoon's head.

Noticing the danger, the humans exited the room, followed by the Rangers. Shortly afterward, the block loudly fractured, and the red glow from the observatory winked out. A battery-operated clock fell off of the wall and hit the floor, forever fixing its time at 3:14.

"Uh, my head," Nimnul moaned. He was lying in the arms of the beat cops.

"Well," said Kirby, "look who returned to the land of the living."

"Francine, is that you?" Nimnul muttered. "Something's wrong with my eyes - I can't see a thing."

The police officers shared a confused look. "Curiouser and curiouser," said Muldoon. He shook the scientist's shoulder. "Professor Nimnul. Professor Nimnul."

"Huh? Who's that?" answered the small bald man.

Muldoon rolled his eyes. "You're not fooling anyone. Norton Nimnul, you are under arrest for the following crimes..."

Gadget didn't pay attention to any of this. As soon as she thought it safe, she headed back into the darkened laboratory, past the smoking computer banks, around the shards of shattered red glass and chunks of black obsidian embedded in the walls and floor, ducking to avoid occasional sparks of pale blue static electricity, up the table and past the burnt-out remains of the computer, and straight to the small piece of equipment Nimnul was playing with earlier, the only piece of equipment in the entire room that was still functioning. The object may have begun its life as an oscilloscope, but there probably wasn't a single wire left in the case that belonged in it. There were several dials with some strange sort of coordinate system on them, but that would mean at least ten axes. Two burnished metal rods as thick as bicycle handlebars were roughly soldered to the sides of the device and protruded a foot beyond the front at about the level of Gadget's waist. All of these modifications were spattered with spots of rust, signs that this device was older than Nimnul. The remains of an image were still on the screen, but it was quickly fading.

"Ten dimensions?" Gadget asked herself, examining the dials. What intrigued Gadget the most was that this device seemed to make sense to her, yet more proof that Nimnul had not built it. She didn't know how it worked yet, but she was certain she could figure it out if she had time to study it.

Chip checked to make sure all members of his team were all right in the aftermath of the explosion. He then entered the lab with his penlight to check on Gadget. "Gadget, are you in here?"

"Over here, Chip."

The small white oval of the penlight searched for awhile before it found the mouse inventor, then Chip cautiously climbed up to join her. "What is that?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. Some sort of viewer. I think we should take it back with us."

Chip vainly tried to brush down his fur, which had puffed out in all directions in response to the thick atmosphere of static electricity that hung in the room. Dale probably would have burst out laughing seeing that same effect on Gadget's hair, but she was completely oblivious, so Chip decided to not mention it. Instead he looked over Gadget's find. "Take it back with us? Is that so we'll be ready in case Nimnul figures out what he did wrong? Is it dangerous?" As he asked this, Chip casually rested his arm on one of the bars sticking out of the device. At that moment, the image in the viewer suddenly changed. Chip jerked his hand away in surprise, and the image began to fade like the last one had.

"I don't think so," Gadget answered, but like Chip was caught in surprise by the change in the image. "What did you just do, Chip?"

"I don't know. I just touched it, I think."

"Did you move anything?"

"No."

"Hmm," she thought. "Maybe you didn't adjust anything after all. Try touching it again, but keep your hand in place."

"OK." Cautiously, he placed his hand on the face of the machine. The image continued to fade. "No, wait, I think it was over here." He touched the bar, and the image sprung back to full intensity, and stayed that way as he kept his hand in place.

Gadget moved around Chip to get a good look at the image. It was made up of thousands, no tens of thousands, perhaps even millions of dots, like pointillism run amok. Each dot was a different color. Indeed, the screen seemed to be using more colors than should exist in the universe. Gadget gasped. "Ludwig Von Drake was right!" she exclaimed.

The entire image seemed to be in constant flux, yet something in the middle remained constant. There was no sound other than the deep buzz that had already started to permanently settle into their minds. Chip squinted. "I can't put my finger on it," he said, "but something about that looks strangely familiar."

"Hmm...greens and browns, and that swaying there...it reminds me of the view from Ranger Headquarters."

Chip turned his head sideways. "I don't see it." He took his hand off of the bar, and the image began to fade. "Here, you try it. I'll see if I can round something up to cart this back to Headquarters."

"Hey," exclaimed Dale from the lab entrance below, "are we done? I'm missing the late-late-late-late-late-too late movie!"

"Just a minute, Dale," explained Chip patiently, then he and his light made their way down the table, leaving Gadget lit only by the viewer.

Gadget hovered her hand over the bar. She somehow knew that touching that bar was not an act she could ever undo. Finally after a minute she willed herself to grab it. The image on the screen instantly shifted, bathing her face in its light and casting strange shadows on the wall behind her. This image was much simpler than the last one: shades of gray on the bottom, and more shades of gray above that, but this time the borders were straight lines and right angles, with an arched ceiling, but everything was exaggerated - the corners were more "right" than a right angle should be, and the ceiling was too curved to exist in Euclidean space. Nevertheless, using her superb powers of analysis she was finally able to identify what she was seeing: "It's an aircraft hangar!"

But there was more to the image than that. In the bottom center was a rounded whitish shape that extended beyond the edge of the screen, its motion animated by a constant nervous energy. If the rest of the image represented Man's inorganic creation (and some of the best of that creation, if Gadget's opinion of aircraft hangers was to be considered), this central feature was separate, natural, alive. "A...a mouse?" Gadget pondered. All she could see of the creature was the back of its head and hints of its face as it looked about, but that was enough to conclude that it resembled no mouse Gadget had ever seen: delicate long fur, a snout far too long, eyes a pure deep red the color of the busted astronomy light bulbs. Its ears were far too large, and its head far too small, and it wore no clothing that she could see. It was like some sort of mythical mouse-monster, a mouse conforming to Man's misconceptions of what a mouse was supposed to be. It was Fear battling with Hunger in a desperate battle for existence in a cold heartless world that not only did not care if you lived or died, but worse, didn't even bother to notice your existence.

Gadget knew this creature she was watching on a screen in an impossible number of colors and dimensions. It was the Thing that sat at the pit of Gadget's stomach ever since the day of her father's disappearance, the Hypothesis that could never be fully disproved, no matter how many triumphant experiments had been made to refute it: that Life had no meaning, and that bad things happened to good people. The mouse she was watching was herself, her true self.

As she watched, the mouse on the screen sniffed its way along the aircraft hangar floor, the illumination revealing the hour to be roughly the same Gadget herself was experiencing in Nimnul's lab. Gadget peered closer at the image. The mouse seemed to sense her interest, because it turned to sniff at her over its left shoulder. Gadget started back in shock. She was even more sure now that this mouse was her, but this mouse was clearly a wild animal, devoid of even a hint of intelligence behind those alien red eyes, eyes that seemed to be accusing her of the crime of abnormality, of not being what it was, accusing her of false hope.

Suddenly Gadget was struck in the face by the glow of Chip's penlight. She removed her hands from the bar in panic and stood in front of the fading image to keep Chip from seeing it as he returned with a cart.

"See," said Chip, "I found it." He noticed that Gadget's hair was now static-free.

It took a few moments for Gadget to find her voice and tell Chip how to load the oscilloscope. During this time she tried her best to dispel the images she had seen from her brain, but they kept returning to the inside of her eyelids every time she blinked. She had no answer for the silent accusation of the other-mouse, and she feared she never would.