Thursday, April 1
2173 AD
The chain running from the ring in Bob's ear to the one in his nose slapped against the side of his face as he hit the ground. His right knee pounded against the sidewalk, but he hardly noticed the pain that shot up through his thigh. He launched himself forward and continued running in a blind panic.
Moments later, two female figures launched themselves over the wall from which Bob had just jumped, one in a green jacket and Stetson cowboy hat and the other in sunglasses and a bright red longcoat. They landed on their feet, the shock from the impact dispersed by the weave in their boots, and took off down the side of the street, hot on Bob's trail.
"I . . . hate . . . this!" Daria wheezed as they chased their quarry.
Jane grinned, showing a wide expanse of teeth. "Come on, Morgendorffer!" she said, sounding perfectly at ease as she jogged alongside her partner. "Get the lead out!"
Daria flashed an evil eye at the taller woman and puffed, "Don't . . . hold back . . . on my account!"
"Alrighty then!" Jane replied with a shrug. She took in a deep breath, expelled it, and then poured on the speed, leaving Daria behind at an astonishing rate. Bob quickly came into sight, the AR marker of the tracking device stuck to his shirt bobbing up and down on the surface of Jane's glasses.
When he glanced back and noticed how close the bounty hunter had gotten, Bob went into a cartoonish skid and made a 90 degree turn into a nearby alleyway. Jane pulled the same maneuver, though much more gracefully, but then pulled up to a complete stop when the tracking marker disappeared.
Her breathing was quickened, but silent as it passed through her nose. Suspicious of this sudden development, she pulled her dual pistols from their holsters and took a quick look at her surroundings.
The alley was short, leading into what appeared to be a small backlot. There was no other exit from the lot visible from where she was standing, but it hardly mattered since no possible exit - not even stepping inside the surrounding buildings - should have been able to block the tracer's signal.
Daria tromped into the alley, then bent over double and started to gasp for air.
"That . . . was not . . . fun," she spat out around heaving breaths.
Jane motioned her to silence, then whispered, "You still have a bead on him?"
Daria swiveled her head around, then frowned deeply. "No," she whispered back, drawing her own pistol.
Carefully, the two bounty hunters edged along the wall, then sprang out around the corner, weapons forward.
The small lot was empty save for a rancid looking recycler sitting against one of the far walls. A back door to one of the buildings could be seen, but it had functional - if worn down - security pad next it, as well as an old fashioned padlock. Jane and Daria walked out into the middle of the lot and looked around as if Bob would reappear from thin air as surely as he had disappeared.
Jane glanced at Daria, who merely shrugged and pointed at the recycler. Though it was horrifically dangerous to do so, their bail jumper could have been just desperate enough to try hiding inside. They approached the machine carefully, noses wrinkling at the disgusting smell coming off of it in waves.
Daria put her hand under the lid, did a silent three-count, and shoved it open as Jane pointed both of her pistol inside.
"Freeze!" Jane shouted.
The recycler, like the lot itself, was empty. There was no criminal hunkered inside, just a few lonely boxes and the half-eaten remains of what looked like it might have been Chinese food once. Daria pushed the lid back in place and, just for the heck of it, hit the power switch. As the meager amount of garbage was churned and its constituent materials sorted into individually marked vacuum-sealed packages for easy transport to the nearest recycling station, Daria and Jane took stock of their situation.
"You lost him," Daria groused.
Jane looked at her bare wrist. "Is it time for the Blame Game already?" she asked. "Fancy that. So, now what?"
"Don't know," said Daria. "Feel like some Chinese food while we think about that?"
"As long as it smells better than the leftovers back here, sure."
Pistols holstered, they walked back through the alley and stopped short once they reached the sidewalk.
Everything around them had changed. Moments ago they had been in a middle-class neighborhood on the outer edges of Lawndale City. The buildings hadn't been the best constructed in the world, but at least they had been more presentable than the burnt out husks that Jane and Daria now faced. Broken machine parts littered the cracked street pavement, and the air smelled heavily of burnt petroleum and other less pleasant odors.
The sky, which had been the bright blue of a clear spring day, now roiled with heavy black clouds. Underneath it, the normal skyline of Lawndale City was drastically altered, lying lower and filled with a number of structures that were just as torn up as the local buildings.
Jane and Daria's mouths hung open in stupefied astonishment until the foul air invaded their lungs and caused them to start hacking and coughing.
"What the hell is going on here?" Jane asked once her lungs finally decided to stay where they were. "Did we miss a war or something?"
Daria wiped tears from her stinging eyes. "You'd think we would have heard Armageddon happening, at least," she said. "But I think our problem might be even more severe." She pointed at the sign sitting above the building they had just been behind. "I'd swear that that said 'Good Time Chinese Restaurant' a minute ago."
Jane glared at the sign. It said "Chuck's Chili Dog Shack" in big block letters.
"So . . . what?" she asked. "Alternate universe?"
"I guess it wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've run into," Daria replied.
As if on cue, a blur of blue passed by, moving down the middle of the street at an incredible speed. It was accompanied by a strong wind that threatened to knock the two women off their feet. Before they could even come to terms with how amazingly fast it had been going, it rocketed back and stopped directly in front of them, coalescing into a small creature with blue quills protruding from all over its back and the top of its head.
The roughly humanoid creature stared at them thoughtfully with impossibly wide eyes, rubbing its chin with a white-gloved hand and tapping one red-sneakered foot on the ground. Suddenly it snapped its fingers and pointed at them.
"Humans!" it said, speaking English in a high, nasal voice. "Funny lookin' ones, tho'. You guys don't look anything like ol' Buttnik and Snidely, anyway. Not that they aren't funny lookin'."
Daria and Jane gaped at the little being as they tried to comprehend what it had just said. Daria's jaw worked a few times before she finally managed, "Who . . . what . . . who the hell are you?"
"Who, li'l ol' me?" it asked, pointing at itself. "I thought everybody had heard of me! Why, ladies and . . . well, just ladies . . . I'm the one and only, tried and true, slick and blue, accept-no-substitutes Fastest Thing Alive . . .
"Sonic The Hedgehog!"
